5

The House of Dawn’s monthly profit exceeded eight figures on the third of July. James celebrated the occasion by purchasing eighty-eight properties across the Floor of Seventeen. For two months, Sam’s desk became a cesspool of real estate agents, bankers, financiers, guilds looking for vacancies, alks looking for cheap rooms, and all manner of tagalongs who had declared themselves close allies of the House of Dawn overnight.

Maestro Enri sent an entourage of carpenters and architects, promising to renovate every house for a moderate commission; T’Lia tried to investigate the safe with a crowbar; Charlie presented a bouquet along with half the foundry staff. A revised technical manual was given to Sam as a gift, featuring two dozen corrected grammatical errors and minor edits to inject humour. Sam thanked her, and procured prostrations of future discounts.

All eighty-eight deeds remained on Sam’s files for all of ten minutes, enough for James to give them a glance and sign them off, then they were carted off to a secure deposit. Sam has never seen the places they bought. Neither has James. Neither of them cared in the least.

Sam managed to retain twenty thousand seeds for herself through a variety of rounding errors. They were now stashed under her bed, inside a box marked SUNDRIES. Despite the trivial sum, she correctly assumed that the Maestro would notice but would not care.

As the goldrush dwindled, the House of Dawn returned to a semblance of normalcy – for about a week. It was the last week of her life that Sam could remember being bored: waking at seven, breakfast, prepping the office, the lounge, at her desk by ten to nine, prepping work schedules, expenses, correspondences, running a hundred odd errands for the Maestro – the mundanity of routine made the Floor of Nine seem a distant dream, if only for a little while.

On the last day of August, Moeffe Bant came to visit in a low-riding rickshaw pulled by four piston-legged amblers. There was a scar across his neck, as if someone had tried to cut off his head.

He sat in the lounge for fifteen minutes, made small talk, and presented a cheap-looking card that spelt CONGRATS in colourful fungi. Then he left, and James disappeared into his office and re-emerged wearing a coat with chainmail inlays and gloves threaded with silver.

“Wear this.” He presented Sam with a Command Ring. The topaz inset was larger than her thumb and protruded like a spiked knuckle. “Make sure people see it.”

“Does it…?”

“You can try.” He opened Charlie’s box. The Maestro had chewed through the technical manual in about twenty minutes and then left it as a paperweight for his transmittances. He pulled a hidden lever that Sam did not know existed and fitted himself inside the box, surrounded by a bed of fluids and cushioning. “Follow Lucia. Act like you are giving her orders. And if this thing fails and I asphyxiate – well, it’ll make life easier.”

With that, James pulled a lever and sealed himself inside the box. Hidden ventilators hissed imperceptibly. Lucia strapped the box onto her back as if it weighed nothing, then turned toward Sam, waiting.

Sam shook her head and put on her walking shoes.

~

Electricity was once produced by steam engines the size of houses – outlawed now, of course, and unnecessary when amblers could spin turbines cheaper than steam.

“This is our last commercial power station,” said Bant, indicating the subterranean cavern full of gigantic copper disks. Thousands of amblers kept them spinning with a network of turnstiles, pedals, and gears. “The House of Solutions bought the rest.”

“Did you kill anyone the other day?” asked Sam.

Bant frowned at her. “Where is your Maestro?”

Sam patted the box. Bant frowned at it. “What, is he dead?”

“You got to speak up,” said James, his voice muffled and metallic, like it had passed through a hundred miles of steel tubes.

Bant frowned until his brows conjoined. “What is this?” He jumped when the coffin-like box on her back opened with a hiss and James fell out like a corpse. “Uhm. Why are you in a coffin? Is this a joke?”

“It works,” said James, dry-swallowing the endorph pills Sam had slipped into his hand. “Less talking, more going where we are going please. It stinks like the canals in here.”

A defunct power junction on the far side of the cavern opened up at the press of a hidden lever. Cables thick as limbs ran across the tunnel walls, buzzing imperceptibly. They converged in a cavernous room deep in the bowels of Seventeen. Hundreds of incubation vats rose from the floor like columns of basalt. Alks with no recognizable sigils busied among them. Bant dismissed them with a nod.

A four-poster bed sat in the very centre, where all the power lines converged into a disk-like headboard. Gathered around it was a small crowd dressed in emerald-and-gold, plus one nonchalant-looking Maestro Enri. They parted to give way to Lucia.

Maestro Catherine Pierre smiled at them from her nook among the pillows. Her left arm was riddled with tubes and needles. Her right was cradled around a ledger written in Braille. She tapped her nail against the binding. It made a bright ding, louder than any bell.

The crowd drew closer. A blue light began to blink on the headboard. Maestro Pierre’s voice seemed to emanate from every direction at once, softer than a whisper and perfectly clear. “You may begin,”

Bant cleared his throat. “The Maestro has made the difficult decision to terminate her own life.” The crowd muttered, and Bant carried on. “For one hundred and seventy years she has watched over the House of Verdancy. It is her child, and we are her family, but the Maestro has seen much. She is tired. Two centuries is too long a life for one whose loved ones are gone. However,” Bant looked each of the gathered in the eye, “things cannot be left as they are. She cares not for legacy but the redemption of our souls.”

“No such thing as souls,” muttered James, too quiet for anyone but Sam to hear.

“There remains none in our House who can maintain our current portfolio. It is difficult to admit, but my colleagues and I could manage but a combined one hundred thousand tethers – a fifth of the total. The Maestro has made the difficult decision to transfer the remaining four hundred thousand tethers to Maestro James Cowen of the House of Dawn – in exchange for a favour. On the Second of September, while the plenum of the Houses is underway at the Finley estate, we, the combined portfolios of the House of Verdancy, the House of Juniper, and the House of Dawn, will sabotage and destroy all Finley assets from Floors Three through Nine.”

The silence was absolute. James’s expression was unreadable. Enri was drinking from a hip flask.

“You will appreciate the logistics involved in this undertaking,” Bant looked his people in the eye: the junior necromancers, the apprentices, the aides in emerald-and-gold. “I will brief each of you in private, but know that this is the Madam’s final wish. We, her family, will see it through. I have sent instructions to your stations. Return to work and begin preparations immediately.”

Instead of filing out into the gloom, the employees of the House of Verdancy lined up before the Madam’s bed, taking turns clasping her hand and speaking soft words. A few had even begun to cry. Sam watched them with a strange detachment, as if the scene was playing out behind an impenetrable pane of glass.

Bant stuck out his hand, and James shook it wordlessly. Enri patted the young necromancer on the shoulder. “Good. Well done,” she said. “Where is the restroom?”

A woman in emerald-and-green took Enri’s arm and led her away. The room emptied, but James remained. As the last footsteps faded in the distance, red lights began to blink atop the incubator vats. The closest one spun on its base and let out a hiss as its shutter opened. James looked on impassively as an eight-foot-tall giant stepped out of the congealing fluid. “You think they bought it?” he asked.

“Was I not convincing?” returned Bant, suddenly sounding unsure of himself.

“No, but the plan is logistically unworkable.” Lucia put down the box by the foot of the bed, and James sat down, peeling off his gloves. “No one with half a brain will believe it.”

“With my life at stake, they must.”

Bant hurried to the Madam’s side, checking a series of confounding knobs and scales on the headboard. “Volatile concentrations are off. I’ll have the room sanitized right away,” he gathered up a stack of papers and made to leave. “Stay put, Cowen. She wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I gathered.”

Bant squinted at Sam. Sam shook her head. With a shrug, he rushed off and closed the tunnel behind him.

The Madam beckoned. “Lucia,” she called.

Lucia went to her and held her hand. The headboard bleeped out an alarm and was quickly silenced.

“She misses you,” said James.

“She misses nothing. She is dead.”

“I am trying, Catherine.”

“In vain.”

“Still, I try.”

The ledger fell to the floor, spilling its pages. No one cared.

“Forgive yourself, James Cowen, as I have forgiven you.”

“No, you haven’t.”

A cool breeze swept by Sam’s feet. Motes of dust coalesced into little piles by the corners of the bed, and the lights on the high ceiling burned a little brighter. The giant disappeared into an alcove and returned with scrubbers and a bucket. It began to clean out its former residence with surprising diligence.

“How many?” asked James.

“Enough.”

“How do they stand against the Finley prototypes? The butlers?”

“We shall see.”

“You will need Lucia’s help.”

Lucia bent down so the Madam may lay a shrunken finger against her face. “No. Keep her safe.”

“Do you…” It took Sam a moment to realize that James was – for the first time since she has known him – hesitating. “Do you ever regret taking me in?”

“Always.”

“You could have sent me away.”

“It is worse to be alone.”

James trembled. “With my life and death, I will keep Lucia safe. Whatever happens. This I swear to you.”

“It is too late.”

“No –”

“She is dead.”

“And so am I,” snapped James, “yet I’m still walking and talking and playing games. We are masters of life and death, Catherine! Defilers of the natural order! Some optimism would be nice.”

The vats around the room spun all at once, hissing on their gimbals. A carpet of steam blanketed the floor as two hundred and sixty-seven muscle-bound giants stepped out of their incubators. The floor trembled as they marched into formation, each picking up scrubbers and buckets along the way. Then they began to clean. The pools of congealed infusion were mopped up, the walls passed over with cloth and sponge.

James wrinkled his nose at something that Sam guessed was bleach. “Are you making a point or is this just for fun?” he asked.

The Madam gave him a withering look, her rheumy eyes suddenly brimming with Green. “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?”

James laughed. “I am.”

“Then listen.”