Conclave to squash elections?!

Rumors run rampant!

House disarray, page three!

Elections in Lumia?!

Democracy was all well and good for savage bands of nomads, but Ruhum was no village council! The great mob of yeomen could scarce agree on the fashion of hats, and yet they demanded the right to select the next mayor of Lumia!

A few discerning souls voiced concern. Dozens of competing papers broke the story on the same morning, wielding nigh-identical language. How could reporters who would as soon shiv each other in the alleyways first conceal and then break such a momentous shift in social policy on the same day?

These voices were ignored.

Speculation raged through the streets, the workhouses, and the tenements. Would the new mayor declare Lumia independent, a sovereign city-state? Would he force the Houses to cut deals for access to the harbor? Who would choose the candidates? Would the church sanctify the list? Would the Conclave of Nobles squash this mad exercise before it ever blossomed?

The origin was irrelevant. Rumors flew swift and wild.

For his part, Oliver sauntered down Main Street in a newly minted suit, a wad of golden paper burning in his pocket. One gold note was almost a full year’s wages, and he had three! A young man could buy quite the night on the town for a gold…

Calm down, he chided himself. A pipe shop tempted him from the corner with the aroma of rare and exotic snuffs, but he steeled his resolve. Money is a test. Everything is a test when you deal with the Houses.

On the positive side, he could keep the money if this test crashed as hard as his application to the Electrician Guild.

Weaving through the light midmorning traffic, he averted his eyes from a prominent flyer.

Information sought on the Stonemason Donovan.

Description below.

Five gold reward.

Oliver shuddered. I could have been on those posters too.

Mirielle Visage had cleared his name with an idle word.

Now she offered even more for the man brave enough to seize that future.

Sebastian Mishkan would have seen me crawling home like a pauper. Instead I’ll waltz into glory with a clean name and a new suit!

Shopkeepers sensed the youth’s money and shouted out alluring deals. They offered the finest tailoring, smoked delicacies, and classy watches for very reasonable prices.

Dodging the solicitations, Oliver ducked into traffic. He cut off a wagon, dodged a car, and hopped to the opposite curb. The crowd there clustered around two bellicose criers, each perched on an upturned milk crate.

“Alva, master of the wires, stands tall in time of crisis. He brought light into your homes. Let him bring light to Lumia!”

“Alva the drunkard walrus? Please! That louse sulked in the dredges of his whiskey while Guildsmaster Reed, a true yeoman, took the fight to the Conclave itself! When they wanted you to work a holiday for no pay, Reed was there. When they wanted to slash your pay, he was there. Now that they want to steal your chance of a fair voice for your own future, Reed is here!”

“Reed? The man who staffs every Guild in reach with his own nephews?! The masons take showers of silver, and in return the laborers make coppers on the day!”

“This is why I lived in a barn,” Oliver remarked to himself, elbowing slowly through the crowd, one hand over his wallet.

Even after all this time in the city, the press of so many people made his skin crawl.

The crowd only thickened as he approached the Cathedral. Even midmorning, people milled in the plaza,

sharing leisurely meals or waiting for their ticket to one of the congested administrative offices. On a pretty Harvest day like this, every nosy grandmother for a hundred miles descended to the Cathedral’s shining steps to gossip.

Polished as a bronze vase, the Cathedral gleamed in the morning. A ray glinted off the nearest minaret and momentarily blinded Oliver. Did he imagine it, or was the reflection warmer than normal sunlight?

Legend declared that the church withstood storms, cannon fire, and time with equal ease. Would the vainglorious Visage Tower, ten vainglorious stories of metal and glass, still shine in five hundred years?

Perhaps she will buy the whole plaza, he wondered as he marched into the tower’s shadow. He dutifully followed a line of sad, paper-clutching applicants that stretched from the glass doors to the corner of the block. Joining the back of the queue, he crossed his arms and listened to another two criers arguing theatrically.

“Vote your faith! Father Lucas has shepherded a thousand youths into the one true faith!” hollered the first.

“And probably a thousand more into his bedroom!” accused the second.

“You knave! How can you accuse the Father of vile deeds when you support a foreigner?!”

“Tura, the Inventor, brings prosperity to all! He became an Inventor by merit, and by merit he will guide this city! Keenness of mind and stoutness of body make a man and make an Inventor! What a stark contrast to the crude nepotism of the church!”

They traded an inexhaustible litany of insults, spurious claims, and wild speculation for everyone in earshot.

Oliver chuckled, enjoying the show. “They’re pretty good at this.”

The man ahead in line snorted scornfully. “It’s the same show every day, boy. Same insults, different topics. Yesterday they argued eggs versus toast.”

“Ah.” Oliver sighed, the show soured by that attitude.

“Nice suit. Useless, though. Visage interviews a thousand people a month. Nine hundred of them leave crying, and ninety of those who remain get a weekend contract polishing boots!”

“I see.”

“You want my advice?”

This was a trick question.

“Visage culls the herd once a fortnight. You gotta interview the day after the bloodbath for a real shot!”

And that is why you are still queued here? Oliver swallowed his doubt. This old man wouldn’t take sass any better than Edward did.

Assuming silence meant approval, the man continued to offer advice indefinitely.

Three hours later, they finally trudged into the foyer. Neat rows of flowers and small palm trees lined the rows of stiff, cramped chairs where the applicants waited in dead silence. Behind the secretary’s desk, twin granite statues of young maidens offered poured libations into a fountain – offerings to the genius of mortal Inventors rather than Aure’s hearth.

By any sane standard, that fountain was heresy.

The secretary waved Oliver forward and drawled, “Purpose of visit?”

“Lady Mirielle is expecting me. I’m Oliver.”

She arched one eyebrow and made a show of consulting her books. “Cromwell?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Evans?”

“No, ma’am.” He fought an urge to plant his head on the desk. “Oshton. Oliver Oshton.”

She examined the lists. “Well, isn’t this a change of pace? You are expected.”

“I wouldn’t lie about that!”

The secretary laughed, marked her log, and motioned for security. “Please see our guest to the tenth floor west receiving room. Enjoy your visit, Mister Oshton.”

“Thank you…”

Dozens of envious eyes tracked his every step as he passed the stanchions and entered Visage’s world.

“Ever been in an elevator, boy?” the towering guard asked affably while they waited for the car.

“Yes, sir. Helped build a couple.”

The guard nodded. “Guildsman?”

“Afraid not. They wouldn’t take me.” He grimaced at the memory. The Electrician Guild can suck an egg.

“Eh, me neither.” The guard laughed. “Who needs ‘em?”

Oliver nodded emphatically.

The elevator opened, and they stepped inside the empty car.

“What are you here for?”

Have you ever wanted to be an Inventor? breathed a woman in his ear, one hand upon his knee in a cramped car.

The youth shivered. “The Lady Visage graciously offered me an interview.”

“That’s rare! Stay on her good side, kid. She treats her own right.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The security officer led Oliver through a gleaming hallway lined with landscapes in charcoal and oil into the fanciest room in all creation. Two crimson divans squared the center, flanked by coffee tables crowded with replicas of iconic Inventions like the generator and the turbine. There were flower displays like miniature gardens in the corners and portraits as tall as Oliver hung on the walls. The entire northern wall was a single window, and a small, well-stocked bar offered exotic liquors from Wave’s Lament.

“By Aure…” the boy muttered, approaching the window. Facing north, he surveyed the ships in the harbor, the merchant road, the noble hill, and even the ripple of golden fields. Far below, the normal people milled, ants beneath his feet.

Was this a noble’s vantage?

Is this really the most productive line of thought while alone in a Lady’s receiving room? Focus!

He stood in a Lady’s demesne. Every proper noble woman maintained a receiving room or three to soothe the anxieties of important guests. Social protocol dictated the layout down to the inch: three chairs, north facing windows, a view of a garden or natural vista, and tasteful displays of wealth like vases, tapestries, exotic tea sets, or calligraphy.

Presented with crimson divans, a view of the city, and Inventions scattered like toys on the table, Olvier stood with hat in hand and elbows tucked in. All sorts of scandals started in a lady’s den…

Take, for example, the story of the Queen who invited a dirty mendicant into her personal studio. She claimed that they did naught but chat behind closed doors, but rumors swirled for months that she painted the mendicant in the nude!

Alice Mishkan, he remembered from dusty lessons. Last of her line.

The Conclave had forced her to surrender the throne to a nephew in order to marry that mendicant, and that had been the end of Queen Mishkan in the history books. A woman who sacrificed her crown for love…the story was popular with girls of a certain age.

No one interrupted his thoughts, and he rehearsed history to pass time.

Even in the days of Queen Mishkan, the Houses conspired for influence. While the monarchy survived, the kings could play the nobility against each one another. Now, the Houses warred only amongst themselves. Where kings fell, the Guilds and the Inquisitors rose. All claimed to eagerly await the return of the true King, foretold in song and dance, but they collectively forgot to actually search for that fabled child.

The days of gods and kings lay behind; this was the age of Houses and progress.

A tapestry with no place for hicks.

He let his eyes drift far west. Faint smudges of purple announced the distant mountains of home. Somewhere in the rain shadow, his father would be toiling dawn to dusk to gather the grain.

What would my brothers think of me now? I stand in House Visage, my pockets bursting with gold. How much further might I go?

Was it hubris to think he could stand with the men and women who tamed the primal forces of the world?

Still he waited, waited, and waited; the lump in his stomach fermented by the hour. Was it presumptuous to wait at the windows like some distant lord? Perhaps he could feign ease by reclining on a divan. Would he offend Lady Mirielle if he removed his suit jacket? Despite the air conditioning, he began to sweat.

Hooking two fingers into his tie, he swallowed hard. “I should have spent more time on etiquette in school. Maybe less on mooning over Inventions…”

Speaking of Inventions…

He busied himself at the table, squinting at the replicas on display. Beneath each was an engraving, the words etched in swooping characters across black metal.

Squinting at the first engraving, he read:

For Thea.

You believed in me when no one would.

Novia.

Oliver swore softly. The Inventor Novia?!

These weren’t replicas – they were prototypes!

Lady Mirielle of House Visage chose that perfect moment to announce her presence with a polite cough.

The youth swallowed a scream. “Ah, Good Lady! Great Lady! Th-thank you for having me!”

She examined a nail and left him to squirm a moment. The Lady wore a split dress of jasmine silk and perched on pencil-thin heels. The fabric molded against her body, and the force of her perfume rattled the boy’s head with dreams beyond his station.

Mirielle let him gawk a few seconds. Then she spilled herself over a divan with an artful sigh. “Ah, I come from a meeting where a dozen powerful, wealthy men stumbled over each other to offer the most effusive compliments on my beauty. Such obvious praise is so tiresome.”

Oliver swallowed back the praise for her radiant ruby hair, her eyes of deepest mystery, and her grace like the morning dawn. She was his walking fantasy, intoxicating in color and curve, and his bumbling adoration soured on his tongue.

Instead, he sank onto the opposite divan and pinned his wrists between his knees like a truant schoolboy.

“Let us suspend the ceremony, young man. This is my private receiving room, after all.” She wiggled – tiny adjustments that hinted at greater prizes. “How are your lodgings?”

“Wonderful!” His bed at the hotel was so soft that he woke repeatedly from dreams of falling.

“Excellent. You have had time to recuperate. Let us discuss my proposition.” She supported her chin with her palm, attentive to him alone in the entire universe.

Her smell lingered in his nose, and every move of her fingertips provoked a twitch in his chest.

Have you ever wanted to be an Inventor?

“I don’t have any ideas,” he admitted bashfully. Oh, he tried! Every kid did. They all shared their little charcoal designs in the schoolyard and bragged about their future riches. Big dreams and cheap sketches. No amount of doodling would make genius sprout from between his ears.

“Inspiration often needs a muse to jumpstart the process,” she said, tapping a nail on her cheek.

“I am serious!” He rushed to confess his shame. “Lady Visage, I’ve racked my brain up and down trying to think up an Invention. I don’t have anything. My school had dirt floors!”

Oliver’s teacher had cycled between four villages, one a season, to teach reading, civics, and basic mathematics. A petty priest, his most advanced course was algebraics!

By the standards of Oshton, Oliver was a bookworm. He had read more than one.

Mirielle shrugged off his objections. “Is that so? My library has marble tile. I never visit. Would you like to discuss flooring or your future prospects? I have taken the liberty of sending a variety of introductory texts to your hotel. Give them your full attention.”

“Like…seminary?” he hazarded. He would never dare to suggest college. Such leisurely learning was only for those born to or approved by the Houses.

“How droll. You would be wasted on those fawning and backwards-looking tomes. The books are to tide you over while I prepare your laboratory.”

“My…my…my laboratory?”

“Of course.” She played her fingers through the air. His dreams trailed in their wake, and a soft music trilled from the unseen corners. “Every Inventor must have a laboratory. It is part of the image. The persona. Just as every Inventor must have a sultry and decadent mistress to fund his works and spin the gossip. It is such a romantic image, isn’t it? Brilliant minds gathered together to cleave a path into the brightest future…”

What was this music? He heard only when he did not listen. He felt lyrics on his neck, but no one sang.

What do you dream for? What do you wish?

The fermented worry in his gut began to froth. “This…this is too much.”

The sweet violin his mother used to play teased the gaps in his attention.

“Oh, this is nothing. A few gold for a clever boy.”

He spoke faster, filling the room with the concrete sound of his own voice lest that ethereal lullaby dull his mind. “I’m not that smart. You have scores of applicants in your lobby right now, and your word would summon thousands more from every corner of the world. Surely, there must be men among them who deserve this more than I!”

A lilting voice, high and sweet, from just beyond the cusp of dreams…

What makes a man an Inventor? he wondered. Is he born a genius? Struck by lightning? By inspiration? How is he found? Are there meet-ups?

One day, he is nobody. The next, he is lauded. How do the papers know?

How can the man be hailed as ‘The Inventor So-and-so’ in his very first appearance?

Unless he is preordained…

Mirielle uncoiled from her divan. “What a contradictory boy. Did you not come here hoping for exactly this?”

“Of course, everyone wishes to be…” He swallowed, ashamed of his words and too aware of her gaze. “But what is the cost?”

She crossed the space between divans like a tightrope, and her purr rattled the windows. “Do you not wish to be elevated? To rend the skein of fate? To etch your name in history? Why do you grovel in the dirt? Leave behind your pains.”

A lullaby winched him into the depths, one note at a time. Her perfume swirled through his sinuses like the taste of a summer day, stretching forever…

He focused his gaze on the silk clinging to her diaphragm and fought like a drowning man to form coherent objections to a lifetime of fame and fortune.

“Your brothers will be so jealous…” she whispered, and the lullaby assured him this was true.

In the haze on the border of dreams, some tiny part of Oliver fastened on an interesting factoid:

When focused on her prey, Mirielle sometimes forgot to breathe.

He became aware of sweat soaking his back and the sound of his own panicked gasping.

“I should…I should go…” he rasped.

Mirielle brought her fingertips together like a spider connecting her web, and the lullaby erupted from quiet suggestion to full blown orchestra. The drums beat against his shoulders, the trumpets resounded through his brains, and the violins ran sweet yearning through his blood.

“Concentrate, Oliver Oshton.”

He realized suddenly that Mirielle’s voice sounded just a little bit like every girl he had ever crushed on mixed with his mother at her kindest. A perfect voice, tantalizing and soothing in equal measure.

“All your dreams await you.”

Staring at her breathless chest and hearing her stolen voice, he found enough strength to speak instead of stammer. “I doubt an angel needs my help.”

The orchestra stuttered, faltered, and stumbled to a stop.

In the silence, Mirielle considered him anew. “Hm…”

Then she seized his jaw with slender fingertips and forced his head to tilt. Examining his jaw like a thoroughbred, she hummed, “Of course. Something old lingers in you. How far you have traveled, a soul well versed.”

She pinned him with delicate pressure, debating with herself. “Ah, the program will fall behind schedule at this rate. Of course, I can find others. Men line the block to beg for the minx in the tower. Hmm, but this boy helped create the circumstances that banished Lynne to the hunt. Surely that merits some reward…”

Oliver thought to squirm. In response, the slightest twitch of her fingertips sent a pleasure beyond comprehension blowing through him like a gale. The cornucopia at the Harvest festival; a dance with a pretty girl; the elation after a ten-mile run…

“Now that I consider the matter, I’m going to have to muck about in there one way or another, won’t I? We can’t very well have you tattling about dear Thea’s lab.” She nodded to herself. “As long as I’m here, why don’t we both get what we want?”

Through the haze of endorphins, he began to understand that her questions were, in fact, rhetorical.

The orchestra began anew and quickly built.

“That little voice inside will be quiet now. You may have traveled far, but in this time and this place, you are young Oliver bursting with dreams of glory.”

She straddled him, heavy and warm, and squeezed her thighs against his sides. Her heart thundered in his mind, carrying the swell of an orchestra in a silent room.

“You are going to help us make this world a better place.”

The demon forced her tongue into his mouth, poured forth her breath into his lungs, and filled Oliver with wonders.

Metal could fly, and men could travel the stars. The fire of the sun was an endless chain of collisions so powerful that the leftovers formed planets. A man might converse with a friend across the world with a simple signal. A small hunk of the right rock could level a city, and a handful of magnets could slam a pebble through a steel barricade.

He knew these things to be true.

Polio would become a memory.

He savored his future on her tongue.

Old age would become a memory.

He swallowed her truth to the dregs.

A tiny voice inside pounded at bonds of silk, but it could find no purchase. Where was the lie? She only spoke of truth. The world that would be.

All it needed was someone to Invent it.

Known or occult, we will stand astride the world. We will tame earth, sky and sea. This place is here for us, is it not? We have been chosen to guide and to rule: we who see and we who know. We have only to reach out and grasp our dominion, and we will make a paradise of this place.

Who thought these things? The predatory or the prey?

The Chorus will never claim me. I will never lay undying dead and alive unmoving banished in the Foundation of cold stone!

Who was he at all?

The torrent continued. Mathematical formulae whispered the roar of the tornado and the patter of rains. Why was air different from water? Both flowed. What was the sky but another sea? Both danced.

Hypocritical angels mistake apathy for wisdom let men die when a single word would save multitudes. Oh, they care so very much for the fate of mortal souls so long as that compassion requires them to exert not a finger!

He needed to let his father know: rotate the crops. They could not rely on the volcanic soil to maintain fertility indefinitely. Mix in legumes before the nitrogen ran out…

Yes, Oliver. You see that brighter future! Grasp it!

He could feed every living soul. He could wipe out starvation like a stain on a shirt! He could raise children who never learned the pain of an empty stomach or watched two men fight over a loaf of bread.

Invent it, Oliver! Dare to make it real!

As the whisper deep in his heart grew dim and quiet, drowned under the noise of progress, he found a cause worth fighting for. Something worthy of an Inventor. Worthy of history.

No sacrifice could be too great and no demand too onerous.

Mirielle slipped through him, arranging thoughts like furniture.

He tasted her nature. A demon, angel fallen, who reached to claim the world as her own.

Dominion.

But if he could steal the knowledge to fuel his visions, he would work with demons!

A clever boy such as yourself can steal what you need even from immortals… Mirielle added, smoothing details like bed sheets. Plucking notes of cleverness and sacrifice from his bones.

Heresy, yes, and blasphemy too. Aure would damn him, but he would bear that terrible, noble damnation.

And is it not right that you enjoy a few perks in exchange for your sacrifice?

Fame, fortune, and membership in the most exclusive club around.

You are a shining beacon of the future. You deserve.

Oliver nodded along. Did he think these things? Did Mirielle? Who could even say?

Bear the secret sacrifice. Be the hero who braves my darkness.

He was going to make the world a better place.

***

Oliver awoke.

“I need a pencil!”

He twisted, tumbling, and spilled from the divan like a drunk. Where was a pencil?!

“Have you struck inspiration?” Mirielle hummed. The demon tapped a finger to her lips, a gesture she inherited quite by accident from Lynne.

Any man who pointed out that connection would have a bad day.

Odd, foreign thoughts rattled in his head. Who was Lynne again? Why did she matter? Why did he have a sudden impulse to thumb his nose at her?

He dismissed the figments. Every heartbeat that passed further dimmed his clarity of vision. His Inventions would bleed from his ears like dreams after morning coffee!

There! A pencil where none had been found a moment before! He snatched up napkins and scribbled furious across the corner desk.

Hydrostatic forces aren’t enough. Laminar flow – that’s only a simplified case. Easier if we disregard viscosity. No, no! We need more information! How do the clouds dance, and how does a bird fly? Account for turbulence. It’s a smooth system…isn’t it?

His finger hovered. The perfect equation in his mind wobbled; the elegant symbols smeared.

Isn’t it?

Oliver swore softly.

Mirielle peered over his shoulder. “And what is this?”

“It’s…” He rubbed at his face. “It’s…fluid flow. Heat and gravity. A spinning orb. The top and the bottom spin opposite and collide in the middle…” The young man gave a tiny, half mad chuckle. “Weather. It’s weather!”

The demon rested her palms on his shoulders and kneaded gently. “A worthy Invention indeed.” Leaning down, she kissed him gently. “Would you like to share it?”

Can I really say this is mine?

No sacrifice too great – including his honor and pride. He would accept a mantle he did not deserve on behalf of those who would know plenty.

“We have to.” Early warning for tornados. Predictions for the rains and the Harvest winds. Perhaps even more if he could wrest the secrets from the fugue. Something about flattened sheets of metal – the top plane swept and the underside flattened. Faster air above, slower below…no, no, that was a popular misconception. Wasn’t it? “How can I hoard this? It can do too much good.”

“Indeed, my little Inventor. Enough for now. Put down your pencil. We are to have a guest.”

Oliver shook his head, still dazed. Why was it dark outside? Why was his stomach growling angrily?

“I guess I got caught up in the moment,” he muttered.

Gently, Mirielle pried the pencil from his grip. “House Visage treasures your contributions, Oliver. Both those for today and those to come.”

Unseen, the pencil evaporated back into dew against her fingertips.

Mirielle pressed herself across his back, and her fingers played across him with a teasing promise of pleasant rewards. Odd. She was beautiful, soft and willing; he was a young man in every respect. Yet he found himself cold to her touch.

He couldn’t pinpoint why.

“Do I have time for food?”

Frowning, she relented.

When she stepped away, his awareness broadened. He belatedly noticed the pan of lasagna, still steaming, that waited in the center of the room.

“Ah!” He inhaled deeply. “Basil and parsley. Just like my mother made.”

“Fancy that. Eat quickly.”

Oliver accepted his mission with gusto. The pasta was so hot he had to exhale every bite, and it glowed in his gut. He savored the flavors, eyes closed, lost in the memory of holiday dinners when his mother would break out the spices.

Mom will be able to afford lasagna with spices every day of the week now.

Two thirds the way through his meal, a servant knocked on the door. “Good Lady, your next guest has arrived.”

“See him in. Oliver, wipe your face.”

“Good lasagna doesn’t require manners,” he replied. Nevertheless, he wiped the sauce from his chin.

A bushy-bearded patrician entered the receiving room. He wore a gentleman’s dining jacket and a pair of spectacles across his thick nose. His cummerbund struggled to restrain the girth of a prodigious gut, and he wheezed with every step. “Good evening, madam.”

“Good to see you again,” Mirielle sang. She mocked a curtsy with the sheer hem of her split dress, letting the fabric tease at secrets. “How was the doctor?”

“A lout! He warned me against bacon and whiskey!” His bellicose voice rattled the windows.

“But what would you have for breakfast?” the demon tutted.

“Exactly!”

Oliver regarded the newcomer and wondered at social graces. They sat in a noble Lady’s receiving room. Which introduced themselves first? Or did they wait for her to grant leave?

Mirielle caught him in the corner of her eye and smiled. “This is my dear friend Oliver. He has shown a certain gift regarding natural phenomenon that you may find remarkable.”

He relaxed, sneaking another bite of lasagna. One social conundrum solved. Am I going to have to get a tutor on upper crust society?

“Oh?” The man’s thick eyebrows skyrocketed fast enough to waggle his beard. “A newcomer to the fraternity?”

“Oliver, this is Alva.”

The young man choked on his pasta. Alva, Inventor of electricity, master of the wires, scion of the thunderstorm!?

“A pleasure to meet you, young man.” The Inventor chortled. “Mirielle, I find the timing of your invitation quite suspect.”

“Oh?” She smirked.

“You submitted a newcomer to the symposium…”

“Was that today? How convenient!”

Oliver finished coughing. “What symposium?”

“The symposium. You’ll do marvelously,” Mirielle assured him.

His heart began to hammer wildly. “An Inventor symposium?!”

“Do not believe the yellow papers and their lurid lies, boy,” rumbled Alva. “The fraternity meets once a month or so to share notes and display our in the spirit of friendly competition.”

“I might throw up!”

“A stiff constitutional should clear that right up! I can give you the name of a very reputable trainer and sauna.”

Reputable, perhaps, but certainly not effective, if the Inventor’s jowls were any indication.

Oliver concentrated on breathing through his mouth. Is Mirielle insane? Is this the price of demons? I have nothing to show Inventors! These are the geniuses that rule the world, and I have…I have…

He stared morosely at his scrambled, scattered notes.

Alva peered over his shoulder at the scribbles. “Ah, vector calculus! You’ve studied up, lad.”

No, I really haven’t!

“Would you mind if I took a gander?” The Inventor leaned in, his paunch pressing against Oliver’s shoulder, and squinted behind his spectacles attentively.

Mirielle cleared her throat. “Alva, my dear. If you get absorbed in Inventor talk, you will most certainly miss the symposium.”

Alva retreated, his face growing red as a tomato. “Ah, quite right. Perhaps another time. Shall I give you a drive, Oliver?”

“That would be wonderful,” Mirielle said on his behalf.

“Excellent. We’d best be off!” Alva fled the room, muttering and harrumphing.

Mirielle gathered the scattered napkins, shoved them into Oliver’s quaking fingers, and offered quiet advice. “Do not ever let Alva see your notes.”

She locked eyes with him. For a heartbeat, he heard the whispering music that floated around her like a shield.

“I can’t do this,” the youth admitted between gritted teeth.

The music stopped.

“If you do not, the cycle of famine and storm will continue,” the demon replied mercilessly.

The music resumed, its tone cajoling.

“Hells,” he swore softly, accepting the papers. I have paid the price. Sold my soul and stained my honor. I may as well use it.

He might be a fraud, but he was at least a fraud for a higher purpose.

“I will be your muse,” Mirielle whispered. “The rest is on you.”

The youth stuffed the notes into his suit pocket and fled her knowing smile.

Down the elevator, he met Alva in the back lobby. The Inventor led him to the private parking behind the tower, padding the walk with nondescript chatter.

“This is mine,” he said, gesturing at last to a black car with an extended cab.

Oliver stopped and stared. But of course an Inventor would own a car. A custom one at that!

“Called a limousine. Public release won’t start till next summer.” Alva smiled, pleased with himself. “Only five of these things in all the world.”

A farmboy could scarce imagine the gold flaunted on a prototype like this…

Alva’s Livery Guild butler emerged from the driver’s seat. Like every butler from that Guild, he stood stock straight in a black suit ironed to within an inch of its life. His lapels could gut a man. In perfectly polished syllables, he asked, “Shall we make straight for the symposium?”

“Yes, that will be fine, Jeeves.”

Oliver blinked. “Is his name actually Jeeves?”

“Considering what I pay him, his name is whatever I want!” chortled Alva.

The boy winced with a stab of sympathy. Maybe the guys hauling bricks aren’t the only ones with tough working conditions.

The Livery butler held the door while they entered. Alva settled into the expansive seats, eating three chairs between his spread knees and draped arms, and Oliver took the smaller seat facing backwards.

As soon as the door closed, Alva roared, “Hurry it up, Jeeves!”

They roared up the ramp and onto the dark streets, shooting past the line of applicants still clutching their papers in the dark.

Sinking into the seat, Oliver pressed one hand against the notes in his pocket, eyed Alva, and decided to set the conversation himself. “So…You decided to run for election already?”

Alva snorted. “That? Oh, well, this city needs a bit of spit work and gumption! Lumia is the city of light because of my work! I know better than anyone the challenges facing a growing metropolis.”

“You made the decision to run quite quickly…”

“You have to seize the moment, boy!” chortled the Inventor.

Or listen to the right whispers… offered a smug purr in his ear.

“The election is going to be a ton of work. Won’t it interfere with your Inventor projects?”

Little boys dreamed of Alva’s laboratory under the flicker of the lights he pioneered. While Novia was the first, Alva was not far behind, and his electric marvels spread as fast as blacksmiths could hammer together crude generators. His works were simple enough for mass production, unlike the vehicles that suffered enormous production delays in distant foundries.

But now all I dream of is a horde of faceless dolls…

Alva harrumphed loudly. “Never mind that! I worked my fingers to the bone, dawn to dusk, to bring us the tungsten filament. The conducting wire! A few extra hours a week of paperwork is no match for my mettle!”

The young man leaned away in his seat. Touchy! Does he think I suggest he retire?!

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

So much for cozying up to the Inventors. He hated to presume, but Alva seemed rather…overbearing.

Alva poured himself a whiskey on the rocks and tipped it back like a glass of water.

They traveled in frigid silence to the private wharf where Inventors built miracles. The fraternity claimed a small district, ten city blocks of warehouses and private laboratories fenced behind barbed wire and patrolled by humorless gangsters shouldering rifles.

Ships moored at the private wharf, and Inventors lived in private apartments. A world apart, reserved for the worthy.

“I thought guns were prohibited in the city?” Oliver muttered, staring out the window as they stopped at the gatehouse.

The guard swaggered to the car, bolt-action rifle on full display.

Nonplussed, the Livery servant rolled down the window and offered a bundle of paperwork.

“And that’s military grade, too…”

“Never seen a rifle before, boy?”

“We have a couple in Oshton!” he defended. Older models, clunky and inaccurate, but sufficient for driving small game off the farm.

“And you’ve fired one?”

Oliver flushed. His older brothers claimed first rights on that as well. “My grandfather trained me in the longbow,” he deflected.

“An old country longbowman?!” Alva jeered. “Quite the slice of history!”

Exactly what my brothers said…

Paperwork complete, the car jerked towards parking. A fleet of black cars already waited at the largest warehouse at the center of the district.

Alva’s mood darkened, and he poured another drink. “Let’s get this over with…”

Oliver had met men who drank like that before – usually in between excuses for their failures. He scooted further away.

“If you please,” the butler offered, opening the door for Oliver.

The youth scrambled out, nodding. “Thank you.”

The butler offered a tight smile.

Good luck, brother, Oliver thought, leaving Alva behind.

He was not sure what fantasies lingered in the back of his mind before he entered, but they were shattered as soon as he ducked in the side door.

Instead of sleek chrome seating, the warehouse had a single set of rusty bleachers. Instead of polished displays, the giant prototypes waited beneath cotton tarps. A few uncovered designs were mad with wires, markings, and last-minute modifications. The air was harbor-dank and stale, and dozens of powerful lamps left the warehouse bleached of color.

The Inventors themselves lounged on the bleachers in street clothes, foreign garb, or even pajamas!

Almost like they flaunt their common birth, Oliver thought.

After all, not a single noble House had spawned an Inventor.

Nobles are wound too tightly into their games and their names, offered a fragment of memory not his own. What do they care if the peasants starve? Their own tables always remain bountiful…

Oliver contemplated taking off his jacket. He was by far the most formally dressed, and the humid air weighed like sandbags on his shoulders. No sensible laborer accepted work in a closed warehouse! The stale heat could kill a man, even in Harvest!

Alva arrived behind him, announced by that wheezing.

“Ah, the walrus returns!” cried a querulous woman in a billowing blue robe. “At last, the meeting may begin.”

“Glad to see you too, Novia,” Alva grumbled. “Our glorious patron dropped the new arrival on me.”

In press releases, the picture of Novia was always the same: a young, grimy woman with the olive skin of the heathen south. She grinned from a cluttered workbench, surrounded by fragments of brilliance, uncaring that there was a streak of grease across her nose.

Only belatedly did Oliver realize the photo had remained constant as long as he could remember. This rheumatic old woman would be Novia!

Novia, first among Inventors, gaunt as a bird, cheeks sallow, arms peppered by red blotches.

“House Visage amazes yet again,” she remarked drolly. “Mirielle pulls another candidate from her hat.”

Another Inventor shrugged. “The schedule is the schedule, isn’t it? Everyone is here.”

Yes, agreed the music in his head. The schedule is the schedule. Never forget.

Novia suddenly coughed, sharp as gunfire. She hacked over and over, thick and heavy, like an old miner. Finally, she spit and waved a hand. “Very well. On with the symposium! Tura, you’re first!”

Lost for direction, Oliver reluctantly accepted a seat beside Alva at the edge of the bleachers. He stripped off his suit jacket but began to sweat anyways. The fabric clung to his shoulder blades, and he thought of Mirielle’s delicate touch. Both were chilly and unwelcome.

How cruel, how loathsome! hummed his music. You suffer these slights for a greater cause.

A willowy, middle-aged man, Tura strolled to the brightest circle of light like a circus maestro. His hair followed, trailing like a silken black wedding train.

Only one tribe in the world grew their hair to such lengths, better to feel the kiss of open prairie winds. They considered the Spring and Harvest winds to be sacred, and they roamed the great continent to the east astride horses from birth to their dying day.

Tura bowed to the crowd and brushed hair from his cheek.

His tresses left loose. I think that means he’s a bachelor?

“The Whistler,” the youth muttered to himself. Inventor of the camera and several new painting techniques, this was a man of visual splendor, and he dressed in the garish colors to prove it. Perhaps he hoped that his vest would dazzle the onlookers so that they might forgive his cocoa skin and heathen birth.

How were relations with the Whistlers these days? All Oliver knew for sure was that the nomads extracted excessive tolls against any land routes to the lucrative south and that their sages paid homage to no gods.

For this, they were to be pitied as misguided children.

Without God, how can we know what is good? Oliver reflexively recited.

The music in his head scoffed.

If Tura recognized the condescension in his audience, he ignored it with practiced ease. Instead, the Whistler motioned forward a strange contraption. A fat metal frame held a rotund, chugging motor; the motor fed a belt into a flattened gear; the flattened gear spun just below a narrow aperture. Behind this, a camera lens poked from a covered box, aimed at a blank canvas across the gymnasium.

“Oh, not this again,” somebody muttered.

“Dearest Inventors…and guest!” Tura offered a grandiose twirl for the Inventors and a wink for Oliver. “I have perfected the moving picture!”

“That’s what you said three months ago!” another Inventor called.

“Yes, it is true that there have been setbacks. But what genius is not fraught with peril? We must be willing to persevere through the hard times to reap the rewards of vision!”

Alva ordered a whiskey.

“Yet I have had another dream of insight, and in it I perceived my own folly. It is not the pictures that must move…but our minds!”

Oliver frowned. In his dreams? What is he on about? Something tickled at the edge of his mind, a connection waiting to be made. When he pried at it, though, a subtle music swept the thought away.

Two servants cranked the motor. The engine roared to life with a cough of water vapor, and a cylinder behind the aperture began to spin. A lightbulb crackled to life from deep within, and the canvas began to flicker.

“Behold…the movie!”

The flickering shapes on the canvas resolved into a horse, and that horse ran. Grainy, blurry, and grey, the horse cantered across the canvas while the machine rumbled.

“Aure above, that’s amazing!” Oliver gasped.

Several Inventors burst out laughing, and Alva shook his head into his drink.

“Ah, but if only the crowd shared the young mister’s enthusiasm,” bemoaned Tura. “Leave your cynicism behind, my fellows. This technology is the key to all the world! Imagine! We will watch the Conclave of Nobles debate as though they sat before us thanks to these recorded reels. We will send Guild messages across the seas, wrapped in convenient metal plates!”

Tura plucked a flat cylinder, presumably the recoding mechanism for this movie, and spun it on his palm.

“Can I get dancing girls on it?” someone shouted.

“Why, yes, it has that capacity.”

“I’m sold!”

Tura sighed to himself. “Thank you for your time, my colleagues. I surrender the floor.”

“Next!” Novia shouted, sharp as a reed.

More Inventions – and more heckling – followed. The warehouse only grew hotter, and the moving machinery kicked sawdust into the air until the lights dimmed to twilight. In this miserable heat and darkness, Oliver contemplated his doom: they expected him to present something.

“Next!”

He had nothing to impress these men and women with! They scoffed at movies, and they rolled their eyes at submarines!

“Next!”

Would they throw drinks at him when he proved a fraud? Given how many empty glasses surrounded Alva, Oliver worried that he might be bludgeoned to death.

“Alva, you’re up!”

The bushy Inventor gave Novia a very disrespectful hand gesture that originated with the southern pirates.

“Like you could even bend that far!” Novia snorted.

“How many months does that make since Alva demonstrated?” someone whispered.

“Years,” corrected a neighbor.

Alva took a swig.

“Very well.” The old woman rubbed at her blotched hands again. “Newcomer, what is your name?”

The young man jerked upright, spraying sweat. “Oliver, ma’am.”

“Are you going to pass out?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Excellent. Show us what you got.”

He trudged to his execution. At the center of the arena, he reluctantly regarded the Inventors on their bleachers – a disinterested firing squad.

If I fail here, I won’t even have a chance. I’ll have sold myself to a demon for nothing.

No, that was a selfish thought. The bargain predated the outcome. If he failed here, he was simply a fool with some gold.

Make a better world.

“Do you know how clouds form?” he asked the assembly, trying to suppress the sudden squeak in his voice.

“Water vapor,” called an Inventor. “I hope that wasn’t your Invention!”

“Yes. No. Anyways!” Oliver coughed nervously. “But why does one cloud storm and another mist?”

That Inventor drummed his fingers impatiently. “The power of fire. Even vapor in a bottle will react vigorously as flame is applied to the base.”

He remembered that experiment from his own schooling. Storms were born in fire; hence, the tropics saw hurricanes that would swallow the Isle of Peace whole. Of course, the natives of that land attributed the power of storms to their ancestral god, not Aure, but that was beside the point.

“Right.” Oliver swallowed. Somehow, this was more stressful than a full day of work under an irate foreman, but he soldiered on. “Which begs the question: shouldn’t we see less storms than in ancient times? Aure stilled the volcanoes to transform our home into the Isle of Peace. Less fire. Shouldn’t there be less rains?”

He wiped an arm across his forehead. The Inventors as an audience seemed unimpressed, but none of them threw shotglasses yet.

I need to write. The visions in his head would not yield to easy discussion. He needed the precision of the mathematics so suddenly injected into his consciousness. Just like a mendicant teacher.

He motioned, and a servant dragged over a blackboard.

“Boy sure doesn’t have much on his bones, does he?” one of the women teased.

“Tanned as a coconut, too. Boy, were you a laborer?” her companion called. “Or perhaps you hail from lands where the waves dance?”

“Ditch digger and concrete layer,” he replied, a trifle annoyed to be confused for some heretic. Not everyone could spend all day inside like some noble!

“Good,” Novia declared. “We don’t have time for frivolity. Assume we know the basics, please, and move to the point.”

Oliver cleared his throat. “Very well. This is what we’re missing.”

“Prove it!” the audience challenged.

I intend to.

He began to lecture. An equation, an implication. A cause, a result. What began as a static force became interplay across three dimensions. Mathematics was a constant in a universe of variables: the same formula that told the water to flow from a spigot could command the mightiest currents.

Current theories were not truly wrong. Merely incomplete. Fire and water vapor danced back and forth in the rains. But there was so much more. Tiny perturbations could ripple across the globe…

Somewhere in his rambling, sweat leaking from every pour and voice buckling, the Inventors ceased their teasing.

“...following this line of reasoning, we can make this declaration: the relatively minor axial tilt of our earth and the forces of a spinning globe control the very basis of the great currents we call weather.”

Drenched and dizzy, he dropped his chalk and turned to the crowd.

“Interesting theory, newcomer,” Tura said. “I mean, what little I understood of it.”

“Complete balderdash!” someone further back yelled.

“Passionate balderdash,” countered another.

“I do believe a deeper inspection is warranted,” Novia agreed. “Sailors and farmers would hardly object to more precise measurements of the skies.”

But I haven’t even gotten to nitrogen fixing in the soil…

“Raise your voice in objection if you would stay a provisional license for our young newcomer then. Anyone?”

No one spoke against him.

“Very well. Oliver, you will be provided half a year in which to provide proof of your theories. You and your sponsors are solely responsible for your well-being in the interim, and you must abide by the contract of exclusivity which binds us to each other.”

He swooned on his feet, giddy. I bargain with demons, but not in vain!

With a little luck, perhaps he could truly change the world for the better.

“A schedule of requirements, terms, and obligations will be forwarded to your sponsor. The rest falls to you.” Novia smiled wryly. “So breathe a little, boy. You’re here.”

Oliver surveyed the audience of geniuses. They are not the somber and fastidious lot I would expect from their publications, but perhaps the same dream beats in all our chests.

There would be costs to this bargain, he knew. Later.

Aure forgive me.

***

The Inventors moved on to matters of housekeeping, and the servants cleared the prototypes from the warehouse floor to make space for dinner. With the clandestine business carefully hidden, other servants could finally open the warehouse doors and let fresh air flood through the building.

Yet two servants remained idle in the wings. Neither the sweat of work nor the sawdust muck clung to their perfect attire.

“Weather, hmm?” mused the shorter. Thin and delicate like a ballerina, she stood at perfect Livery attention in her black dress. Her straight black hair cascaded to the small of her back, brushed to a brilliant shine. Her joints were intricate works of wooden bearings, and her expression was carved in place, but few mortals noticed such things. The occasional child, perhaps, but Thea had little time for children.

Thea the Illuminated, wellspring of Inventors, shepherd to mankind, contained within herself multitudes, but all of her many faces worked to one grand purpose.

Mirielle shrugged. In servant’s guise, she was merely pretty, and her crimson hair was clearly a dyed affectation. After all, a Livery maid surrendered the right to her very appearance in everything except hair color, and the freedom restrained was all the more cherished. “I shoved aerodynamics down his throat, but he fixates elsewhere.”

“He is a farmer’s son,” Thea noted.

The demon of Indulgence patted her partner in crime on a jointed shoulder. “As long as he reaches airplanes according to schedule, I don’t care what path he takes.”

“There are subtle interactions which require a comprehensive understanding.” Thea regarded the young man on the bleachers with dispassion. “Still, gross approximations will suffice for basic powered flight.”

“One step closer to the heavens.”

Guided by Mirielle, of course.

“If the tools behave.”

Many of the Inventors adjourned, fleeing rather face the prospect of a social dinner with their own fraternity.

Belatedly, a Livery supervisor noticed the two women lazing in the corners. He marched towards them, expression stormy.

Mirielle wagged a dismissive finger, a soft note of power whispered through the air, and the servant simply forgot they were there.

Mortals forget so very easily…

“Always fractured,” Thea mused. “What truly unites them?”

Mirielle laughed. “That’s easy, my dear. A single, simple thought. ‘Dear God above, I am such a fraud.’”

By dream or by drug, demon’s bargain or stolen insight, all the Inventors built their castles of sin. They all danced to the song of progress. Did it matter if they pretended ignorance to the orchestrator?

“Thankfully, their motives are irrelevant,” Thea said. No one cared if the man who cured a disease was a braggart or a drunkard. Inventors were the titans of industry who forged the world. They were allowed peculiarities that would see a normal man dragged to Inquisition.

“This is our wisdom,” Mirielle replied. She reached to brush a lock of hair from Thea’s carven cheek. “Our world.”

“It remains to be seen if certain angels will remain neutral,” Thea warned.

“Are you still mad about Alisandra and her little toy?”

The demon lurking inside the doll did not answer.

“Leave her be. She is closer to our way of thinking than her father would fain admit.”

Now Thea scoffed. “Have you informed her of this eventuality?”

“Leave her to me, dear heart. Everything is going to be fine.”

A new world poised on the brink of dawn.

All that was required were a few mortals who would follow directions.