Children of Artifice

by Danie Ware

  Proteus was watching him now, oddly fascinated. Outside, the workforce had begun to shout and jeer as it left the harbour gates and spread out to head home. The mines never stopped, and the new shift would be already waiting to replace them, and get on with their long night’s work.

  Proteus asked. ‘So – what? – this thing’s a watch-critter?’

  Austen shrugged, still poking at the bits. ‘Which would imply that Sahar left it.’ He glanced up, eyes bright, raised an eyebrow. ‘And is coming back to get it. To see what it did see.’ He prised out one of the tiny crystal eyes with the end of his needle-file, and lifted it to the light.

  ‘Let’s hope she does,’ Proteus’s smile was cold. ‘Luye gets on with the neighbours – anyone goes near Lyss’s house, we can find out pretty quick. In the meantime, Aden has contacts at the wharf, and at the harbour. You stay with this thing, see what you can work out. I’ll go track the powder, see where it came from, who’s selling it. If I can get a fix on Sahar, I’m in.’ The word had an edge of viciousness.

  ‘In up to your neck, I’m guessing.’ Austen still looked thoughtful. He’d stubbed out his reed and was still poking at the bits of creature, fascinated by how they went together.

  Proteus said, ‘That’s when the fun starts.’

  The old man glanced up properly, and Proteus caught the expression. He thrived on information – it was a game, one he enjoyed, and one he played very well. But--

  ‘Go careful,’ Austen told him. ‘And stay quiet. We don’t know what this is, or where it’s going to take us, not yet. Don’t you get emotional on me – you lose your detachment, you lose your fine control.’ He held Proteus’s gaze as if making sure he understood. ‘This time, Ro, this isn’t a game. Your heart’s in this, and it’ll touch and hurt you—’

  ‘She’s my sister—’

  ‘I mean it: you keep quiet. You do what you’ve always done, you be part of the background,’ the old man said. ‘And before you do anything else, you go home and you get some rest.’ He flickered the very edge of a grin. ‘And maybe, if you want to know about living brass beasties, you should talk to young Caphen.’

  The name sent the slightest chill through Proteus’s skin, a thrill of recollection. Carefully dismissive, he said, ‘I know his family study—’

  ‘He’s a smart lad, you said it yourself.’ The grin was still there. ‘And maybe it’s just the excuse you’ve been looking for?’

  Proteus snorted smoke. The noise was meant to be sceptical, but it came out more like consideration. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll get him a message.’

  ‘You do that,’ Austen said. ‘Take him on a date, or something.’ The grin fully manifest now, he picked up a piece of the insect and held it to the dying red sunlight. ‘And you can ask him about the symbols on Teka’s coin, while you’re at it.’ He grinned. ‘You never know what you might learn.’

  In answer, the broken edges of the creature shone like tiny copper blades.

  Dawn.

  The sun was not yet as high as the crater and the sky was a glory of colour, the richly layered reds of pure indulgence. Proteus was back in his own rooms, the far side of district Ivar, and all thick-headed from a patchy night’s sleep. Dreams had invaded the long night’s quiet: dreams of his sister when they’d been small, racing round the back streets with skinned knees and dirty fingernails, dreams of Austen and the scuttling insect, dreams of Sahar, of crystal eyes in living stone…

  Dreams of Caph, and of the hot skin on the back of his neck.

  There was a half-drunk bowl of tea on the dresser at his elbow. Cursing himself, he drained it, and tried to focus.

  He was stood before a long silver mirror, sodium lights illuminating his every pore to flawless detail. A second mirror reflected his back. As a peculiar quirk of his ability, he had no need to shave, but his mornings had a habit that was just as regular. Down the years, it had become almost ritual, a focus of clarity and discipline. It was something that made everything else fall into place, that made the day make sense, and it had become as much as part of him as the questions with which he awoke, every morning of his life…

  Who am I?

  Leaning forward now, he turned his jaw from side to side and, carefully, began to trace his fingertips over his skin. Forehead and cheekbones and jaw, eyebrows and nose and mouth. His ears, the end of his chin, his throat and shoulders and chest. He checked his hair, and he held his arms out to the rising light, minutely examining shift and colour.

  As a child, his face and form had been unsettled, instinctively responding to his emotions, fluctuating almost without his knowledge. As he’d grown older, he’d understood himself more clearly, and learned how his responses could be both used and controlled. Under Austen’s guidance, he’d trained himself to an emotional quiet, a stillness in which he could read a district or a place or a party, could observe the moods and movements and garments of its people. And once he’d understood, he could let its atmosphere flood into him, and lead his mood, and then his form.

  Some of his abilities were limited – he could change his flesh, but not his body mass or bone structure. He could be more muscular, or less, softer of outline, overweight if he chose to be – but that was all. Changing his height or the breadth of his shoulders was down to performance and confidence, and had nothing to do with trickery.

  Proteus had become a consummate actor. He still worked on core instinct, but fine-tuned, now, by his experience and observation and his ever-growing knowledge of the city. Twenty-five years of training had left him with significant skill, and with the ability to go anywhere, and remain unseen.

  And now, he had several contacts, Caph among them, which he intended to use. The first one was probably the easiest, but also the least likely to be any use – he very much doubted that the loudmouth Rhentaka trader actually had skills descended from the Builders, but the questions would be quick, and he could cross the man off the list.

  Besides, he never knew what he might learn.

  He paused, thinking.

  Rhentaka was an artisans’ district, much of it taken up by traditional indoor markets. Like all the districts, it was run by Council offices, but many of the high families owned property and trade routes within. Rhentaka was loud, and busy, a constant tessellation of political interests and byplay. And Proteus needed a face that fitted, someone who could ask the questions without being questioned in return.

  The man that looked back at him, stretching and grimacing, was the not the bland comfort of the ‘home’-face, not the lined and weary figure who huddled in wharfside doorways, nor was it Luye, or Aden. His skin was rich and dark, his hair long and black. His body lacked Aden’s wire-tight muscle, though it was trim enough; he flexed his shoulders, feeling how they moved, and thinking about habitual gestures, body language – all different, all new.

  Proteus named the character, ‘Khavas’.

  At the top of one cheek, just tugging at the corner of his eye, he gave Khavas a long, well-healed scar. It was the same device as Aden’s blue eyes, as Luye’s coat – not only the distinctive feature that people remembered, but the cornerstone of the new creation. He decided it was a fight-scar, from the Brass Man Bar on the edge of district Kier. A fight over a girl, a fight he’d lost, but only so the girl wouldn’t get hurt. Khavas was a good man, apparently, and a wise one. He greyed the hair at the roots slightly, gave the face a scatter of lines. A little age carried a lot of credibility, if he used it right.

  Satisfied, he looked through the rack of clothing – uniforms, shirts, robes, jackets – and pulled out what he needed. He tried a voice, an accent, a trigger phrase – the one that would settle his vocabulary and tone of voice.

  ‘Try some,’ Khavas said to himself in the mirror, straightening his shirt. ‘It’s the best kelentar in the city… kelentar… kelentar in the city.’

  It was enough – it would get him through
the district gate, and to where he needed to go.

  He checked it one last time, then, identity complete, he chose one of the building’s multiple exits and headed out into the day.

  The dusty streets of Ivar were trudging with the morning shift, obedient only to the long hoot of the horn. He moved sideways through them, against their current, but they had little interest in his presence – they were too morning-weary to care. Dimly, he could hear the crier on the steps of the council building; it made him wonder, briefly, about Caph and his father in the paper, but the news was too distant to distinguish from here.

  He glanced up at the tall twist of the city, at its stairways and balconies and pillars and waterfalls, at its glasslights all glittering… Then he shook his head, and moved on.

  The air scattered with rain. The sun had barely crested the edge of the crater before the clouds had amassed to swallow it; they’d left it only as a lidded eye, an angry red line across a jagged horizon. Had Proteus believed in omens, he would have been catatonic.

  But he had no interest in such whimsy. Kei and Vei were superstitious myth; the hellspirits a manipulation, created by the Builders to keep control. He just wanted the information that would keep him ahead of the game.

  He came to the district gate, the gargoyles looming sombre in the evil light. The greycoats were still yawning; they waved him through without even looking up.

  And on the far side, the mood of the city changed almost palpably.

  Unlike the workers’ trudge of Ivar, Rhentaka was awake and alive – the fishing fleets were in, the cargo was already moving, and despite the spotting of the rain, the streets were alight with energy, a morning eagerness that saw people stopping and gossiping, exchanging the news of the previous night. There were new, rumbling rumours of a change in the families Elect, and a thrill of delicious speculation as to what would happen next. Intrigued, Proteus slowed down to listen.

  The information didn’t take long to put together. House Claisal had lost much of its property and holdings, it was surely doomed. Claisal Danwar herself would be thrown from the upper city, said some, her family would be driven across the Taar and down to the outskirt, their property would be seized and reallocated in order to preserve the almost-sacred ‘balance’ of City Hall… the rumours were gleeful, and rife. He heard the world ‘Caphen’ more than once, refused to let himself react to it; he learned all he could, then pushed away from the conversations and towards the great indoor marketplaces that housed the man he sought.

  The chatter of the morning crowds followed him like his night’s dreams.

  Once inside, his progress grew slower; the bodies were pressed close, in here, shoving at each other with good-natured insistence. The building’s stone roof had a ring of glass windows and they cast a pattern of lights across the crowds below, the colours sliding like paintbrushes over the rustle of shoulders. The place stank of sea-life, of shellfish and crustacean, of weed and wrack, of soap and medicines, of manta-ray leather and sharkskin-sandpaper, all of it thrown in together until the stone building itself seemed to be bulging at the corners.

  And the noise. It was a tumult, a buffeting chaos of sound that rang in his ears and his skull.

  But he had prepared for this – the claustrophobia was safe, secure. Proteus had made Khavas to belong here, and Khavas understood these people; this was his place and he moved through it, affably confident, at home in the press and the sweat. Stopping only to grab a fresh fish roll for breakfast, he twisted sideways, catching gazes and grinning with an easy empathy, slipping through the crowd to the stall he was looking for…

  …he found it empty.

  He stopped, surprised.

  That wasn’t right. These spaces were profitable and popular, most of them owned by the guilds and, in turn, by the houses of the upper city; they didn’t stay empty for long.

  Seeing him, the woman at the closest stall called out, ‘You looking for Vinkar?’

  Kelentar in the city.

  ‘I was actually looking at the space,’ Proteus said, a polite half-smile creeping up Khavas’s face. ‘Would you happen to know who owns it?’ He came over to speak to her, casting an eye over the bone-crafted jewellery on her stand.

  ‘No-one,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Not now. Vink got took. About a week back. No-one wants this patch. Bad luck.’

  Something in her tone of voice prompted him: ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer man.’

  That made her look at him again, then chuckle, low and filthy. She leaned forwards in a conspiratorial gesture, and he approached the front of her stall, picking up a random brooch as if to ask her how much it was.

  She said, ‘Must’ve upset the big boys, if you take my meaning. Woman who came down here wasn’t messing around.’

  ‘I thought he had skills descended from the Builders?’ Proteus made the question a joke.

  ‘Builders.’ The woman snorted. ‘They shut him down so fast he didn’t know what’d hit him.’

  Proteus looked at the brooch – it was an eye. The faintest of shivers went across his shoulders – anticipation, or fear. He said, ‘Who shut him down?’

  ‘Greycoats. Poor Vink. Scared the life out of him.’

  Proteus turned the information over, but could make nothing of it – and this had been a long shot at best. He shrugged, as if uninterested, and continued looking at the brooch.

  ‘If you’re interested in the patch, though…’ The women left the hint hanging.

  He grinned, paid her for the thing, dropping it in his pocket. ‘Let me think about it,’ he said. ‘I—’

  ‘Not sure now?’ She nodded, understanding, and reaching for change in the apron at her belly. ‘People are nervous now, if there’s a Selection happening. Going to be more greycoats down here than just that one.’ She winked at him, though the expression seemed to be complimenting his cautiousness. ‘Maybe you’ll come back when it’s all over, hey? Talk then.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll do that,’ Proteus said to her. ‘And thank you.’ Remembering the axiom about making new contacts, he passed her an extra ripan, and returned the wink. ‘I’m Khavas. Nice to meet you.’

  As he turned back into the crowd, she said, ‘Good luck. And go careful.’

  He raised a hand in acknowledgement, though the stop had shown him nothing useful, and carefully shoved his way back out through the seething crowd.

  Stepping back out into the morning, he looked back at the upper city, at the clouds gathered about it like some mantle of shadow. Anyone else would have a problem getting up there, and through the gateway, but Proteus… well, if he was going to have to speak to Caph after all, it just took knowing whom to be.

  *

  Wearily twitching through his endless, mindless finger-exercises, Caph was startled by one of the household footmen, standing outside the door to his rooms.

  It was afternoon. The weather had cleared and the red sun tumbled though the long windows, lighting lazy rectangles on the rugs. With a slight bow, the liveried footman offered Caph a folded letter.

  ‘This came for you, Sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Lant.’

  ‘Anything good?’ Bec was sitting on the floor of her brother’s room, carefully polishing her long blade. Housebound and going crazy, the fencing had been a good distraction – though his stupid fingers hampered that too, and he wasn’t as deft as he had been.

  ‘Sir. Ma’am.’ The footman bobbed another bow and stepped back, closing the door behind him.

  Intrigued, Caph turned the letter over, looking for marks. It was a single piece of paper, not very clean, no envelope, no watermark. He had no idea what it could be – or why it should come to him directly, and not go straight to his parents, or to Darrah.

  Bec craned to see what he’d got – for all the city, as if he was small and he’d found a toy that wouldn’t show her.

  ‘Go on – what is it?’
>
  Mystified, Caph unfolded it. It was coarse on his fingers. He read the writing, ragged and black and slightly spiky. Then he crumpled it and stared at his fist, not quite sure if he’d somehow made it up.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Bec said. ‘They’ve conjured you artificial hands that’ll make you play like a hellspirit.’

  ‘That’s not even funny.’

  ‘Sorry. But what is it?’ She was on her feet, now, almost jumping with impatience.

  He stared at her, the paper held in his hand like a hope, a lifeline. Like an impossibility. He had no idea where this had come from and for a moment, he expected some elaborate hoax – though sense told him that, for all his father’s flaws, he just wasn’t this underhanded.

  You’re going to lose your purse, or your house keys.

  I just go to lose myself.

  ‘Don’t keep me waiting, damn you!’ Bec was nearly jumping up and down.

  Caph said, his voice thrumming like the zanyar, ‘I can leave the house with you, yes?’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Because I need to beg a favour. A really big one.’

  Pulse racing, he held out the parchment, his face breaking into a huge grin.

  It said, ‘Festival Day’, though the word ‘Festival’ was spelled incorrectly.

  And it was signed, ‘Aden’.

  CHAPTER SIX: FESTIVAL

  Caph stood on the sunlit harbourfront, surrounded by a seething, clamouring hubbub, a whirl of shouts and scents and colour and music. This was Vowen, the largest and wealthiest of the city’s fishing ports, and the Festival had turned its normal workers’ bustle into a bright and gleeful chaos.

  Hyped on nervousness and mutiny, he was pacing restless, heart pounding. He searched the crowd constantly, looking for a face he wasn’t sure he’d see, wasn’t even sure he remembered… and flatly refusing to ask himself just what the hells he thought he was doing.