3

The Dome Luminous brightened into noon. Heat rose from the pavement in palpable waves. The clientele in this part of the city preferred palanquins or litters or rickshaws at the least. James, however, out of sheer stubbornness, preferred walking. His face was pale and flush all at once. Sweat drenched his hair and ran down his chin. Lucia half-carried him on one arm, but that was all the assistance he allowed himself.

He pointed to a shop on the corner. AUTHENTIC BEEF! The signage declared. “Table twelve,” he muttered.

The blast of refrigerated air invigorated him; the sight of Ingel devouring a stack of ribs straightened his back and put a grin on his face. He strutted to the table with all the bravado of a man freshly woken up from a twelve-hour nap.

Ingel looked up from his feast. “Were you followed?”

“The butler.”

“So it’s true.” He clicked his fingers and four servers appeared at his elbow. “Sirloin, medium-rare. And more wine.” He waved them away before they could utter a word. “It’s annoying how they try to speak. The hospitality sector is hard to penetrate. Too much uh…”

“Health and safety?”

“Nothing more hygienic than tier-four preservatives, Cowen. I just like watching them grovel for tips. Where’s the giant?”

James sat down with a sigh. “Counter-butlering.”

“Not going to be an incident, is it? Yesterday was ugly.” Ingel eyed Sam as if she were a cut of beef. “You take her everywhere.”

“Where are yours?”

“Procurement. Cleaning the engine. Charts. My apprentices have a hundred things to do before they get to stand there looking dumb.” He clicked his fingers at her. “Go check the back.”

He spoke with such prerogative, Sam almost obeyed out of reflex. “I like her standing there looking dumb,” said James. “She spares me from explaining basic things to stupid people. Try it. Might elevate your brand.”

“What if she’s bought?”

“Then I’m a sucker and you are too.”

“I don’t get it. You talk like you don’t give a shit and yet here we are.”

“What, having lunch?”

“And you think you are clever but –” Ingel tossed the bone onto the floor. “- you are an idiot.”

“I’d rather be known for my compassion and my sense of justice.”

Ingel laughed, spitting marrow juice everywhere. “And? Is that bullshit getting me the two million?”

“Want a guarantee?”

“I want certainty.” The sirloin arrived on a platter bigger than Sam’s desk. Ingel jabbed his knife at it. “Know how much this costs?”

“Should I?”

“No, but you paid more for it than you are paying her.” Ingel jabbed his knife at Sam. “Jack can put down a slab of mutton and it’ll be more than you’ve paid her this year.”

“But he won’t.”

Ingel downed his wine in one gulp. “Robert Finley poached four of my apprentices. Offered them a whiff of meat, and they went over without so much as a ‘thank you for having me’. Hurts a man’s feelings. Makes him rethink the meaning of friendship.”

Sam was suddenly sweating.

“Your problem,” said James.

There was fury in Ingel’s eyes, charm and marrow on his lips. “You think she’s got your back? What can you give her that they can’t? The moment any of these graduates see an opening they are going to leave you shitting your pants wondering where all your friends are. Loyalty is a bygone concept. We’re too rich for it.”

James frowned, there and gone. “Sounds like you have a grudge.”

“You going to eat that?”

James shook his head, and Ingel yanked the sirloin onto his plate. “You’ll remember what I said when your girl runs off for an extra ten-percent – and don’t pretend it won’t bother you. Everything bothers you.” He tore into the steak like a man starved. “You don’t have time to pretend, Cowen. How long do you have left?”

“You make it sound like I’m dying.”

“Are you not?”

“Not soon enough.”

Ingel laughed. “Businessmen like me, one can tell at a glance what I want, but you – you are playing a game. We all want entertainment, fair enough, but you don’t got time to fuck around, do you? So what do you want?”

“To die in peace, in my mansion, surrounded by those who love me,” said James, sipping the wine like it hurt him. “You?”

“Some men want to live forever,” said Ingel, “and some men envy that.”

“One step at a time, Maestro Ingel.”

“I like my pleasures.” Ingel chewed. “Food. Women. Money. You get me more, you are my friend. You dangle me on a rope, make excuses, deprive me, waste my time, and I will ruin you. It is that simple.”

“Your point?”

“Guarantee me two million amblers from Twelve, and you and Catherine can scheme all you want, it’s none of my business, but your priority has to be –”

The door banged open. Lucia entered with a fleshy bundle, dripping infusion all over the floor. Her flawless complexion was marred by an angry welt across the cheek, and her coat was torn in a hundred places, the chainmail underlay hanging in pieces. She dumped the bundle before the Maestros’ table and set a pair of purple-stained spectacles next to James’s wine glass.

Ingel leaned over, smacking his lips over a particularly tough morsel. “Is that the thing?” he asked, chewing. “Where are its limbs?”

The tux clinging to the ambler’s body had been shredded down to strips. Its face had been pummelled into an unrecognizable grotesquery, but its eyes of faceted glass were still intact and hanging out by their fleshy tendons. Infusion leaked out from what remained of its ears, far slower than usual.

James crossed his arms. His grin was mocking, his eyes dead and terrible. “What do you think is happening here?”

“Mmm. Nothing in Jack’s portfolio should be able to touch your…”

“Lucia.”

“Lucia. Yet here we are. I suspect this was not his idea.”

The thing on the floor flopped like a fish and made a lunge at James’s ankle. Its ruined jaw almost made contact before Lucia put down her foot and crushed its skull with a brittle clink.

Ingel devoured the last of the sirloin and clicked his fingers. Four servers appeared at his elbow, their expressions painfully pleasant. “Soup,” Ingel said. “Make it thick. Cowen?”

“No, thank you,” said James. His coat was splattered with infusion and bits of putrefied brain but he did not seem to care. He nodded at Sam.

Sam opened her satchel and wrote TEN THOUSAND on a pre-signed cheque marked with the sigil of the House of Dawn. The servers took it and within two minutes returned with a golden bowl of soup loaded with mutton, then they flipped the sign to CLOSED and retreated to the kitchen, probably forever.

“You like this place?” asked Ingel.

“Never been here before,” said James. “The menu’s not for me.”

“You can’t leave it here. The traceback. The cheque.”

James tapped his fingers on the table, once, twice, three times. “This coming plenum will the last in which the minor Houses hold any sway, and it is too late to form a unified opposition.”

Ingel listened and said nothing, his soup untouched.

“I don’t have a play, Maestro Ingel, and neither do you. Frankly, I don’t care. Jack and I collaborate on a wide range of mutual interests.” James tapped his fingers, once, twice. “There is one thing I shall not compromise on, however, and it is outside Jack Finley’s control.” Lucia bowed. James reached out and examined the red welt on her face, his touch gentle, his eyes dreaming. “I no longer have dreams. Catherine clings to hers and she will do what she wants. I will help her where I could, because it is sad for one nearing the end of her life to see her wish unfulfilled.”

“My two million,” growled Ingel.

“You will get it, but not from Twelve.”

Ingel nodded, satisfied. He kicked at the cadaver on the floor. “You can deal with these things? Your…it took damage.”

“She was acting autonomously.”

Ingel shook his head, apparently impressed. “Jack is no match for you.”

“If only he were my enemy. I –” James covered his mouth. His face drained of colour. He flipped through his pockets in a hurry.

“Inside, left pocket,” said Sam.

“Excuse me.” The Maestro stumbled to his feet, box of pills in hand. Lucia carried him into the restroom.

Ingel slurped his soup with the gusto of the emaciated. “You. Sit.”

There was no one else in the restaurant. Sam sat, carefully avoiding the pool of congealing infusion. She was exhausted even though arguably she has done nothing. Up close, Maestro Ingel looked older than she had expected. There were liver spots on his cheeks, his forehead, dampened by powder but now visible from his profuse sweating. “So,” he began, “how does he do it?”

Sam smiled and waited for him to elaborate.

Ingel chuckled. “Smart with your mouth, aren’t you? Here’s what I’ll do.” He laid out an ingot of copper. It was the length of a hand and completely nondescript. “It’s yours if you tell me who coded the giant.”

“I…I’m not at liberty to say, Maestro.”

“So you know. You can have ten more of these if you share some insights into its autoroutine package.”

“I…I can’t.”

“You are familiar with tier-five autoroutines, are you not? It’s part of your core training. If it’s a matter of price – name it.”

“I can’t.”

“What is it that you want, apprentice? A house on Twenty, isn’t it? You can live there or resell it and be set for life. I am offering you that house without the burden of twelve million lives, and all I ask is that you tell me what you know about that ambler – how he made it, who helped him, what he’s doing with it. A very good deal, I think.”

“I…” Sam closed her eyes for a moment. The man who had once been her father stared at her indignantly. His eyes were azure. No, that was the little girl’s. Her father’s had been…she has forgotten. She has never tried to remember. “Only what I know?”

Ingel nodded, his silence overbearing.

“He…” Each word weighed a ton. Her lips were parched. “It’s not a…” What was it like, on the Floor of Six? She had forgotten. An old woman, laughing in her face. She had cried on the way there and on the way back. The lift was full of blood. The Floor had some kind of intestinal disease. Half the cadavers shat out their guts. The smell, she could still remember. She remembered wishing to never smell anything again. That one came true.

She could walk away from it, all of it, with two minutes of talking. She did not know much, but she knew Joran Guiyu, and she knew what T’Lia did in the lab. Spill, and never again would she need to burn a city, blockade a shelter, raise the dead for money. It sounded like a dream. It was a dream – she knew because she was awake when she had told a little girl with azure eyes to go down to the shelter, where she will be safe from the fire. She did not do that in a dream. Clearing her ledger with words was a fantasy, and so was this.

“Only Maestros can own property on Twenty,” she heard herself say from across the room. “It won’t be my house, and James will come for me. Having money is not…it doesn’t help. I’m sorry.”

Her decision was made, and the silence remained. Ingel put down his spoon and burped, loudly. The ingot disappeared as if it was never there. “I see why he keeps you,” he said, and clicked his fingers. The servers cleared the table and presented the Maestro with a mushroom-shaped souffle drizzled in caramel. Ingel pushed it toward Sam and stood up with some effort. Sam, surprised, scrambled to match and gave a half-bow.

“Tell your Maestro we see eye to eye,” Ingel said. “I wish him well, I do. What we do is just business. Nothing personal. You have received an offer from Robert Finley, have you not?”

Sam started. “I…I’m not…”

The Maestro laughed, his eyes sad. “To be able to count on someone else is the greatest privilege in our line of work. Cowen, you son of a bitch.”

With that, Ingel swaddled over the twitching former butler and stepped out. The huff of a steam engine faded into silence, and Sam was left alone with the distant and indecipherable rumblings of James’s bowels.