Children of Artifice

by Danie Ware

  Trying to work out what had gone wrong.

  But it wasn’t difficult to understand. Looking down at the sleeping figure, he knew exactly what’d happened, of course he did. He’d played his role flawlessly, got as much information as he could, had even managed to get Caph drunk and talking about metallurgy, the Selection, and his family. The insights had been fascinating…

  And he’d let himself go – he’d let himself go. He’d been caught by Caph’s company, by his warmth and sincerity and laughter. By the strength and surge of his body, by the hot gasp as he came…

  By a sly tendril of affection that had curled in, right under his awareness…

  Hellsdammit.

  Hugely irritated at the loss of control, he cleared his thoughts and, very carefully, slid out of the bed. He needed to leave before Caph woke, and he padded around the room on bare feet, retrieving his clothing.

  Undisturbed, Caph slept on, his slow breathing counterpoint to the slow roll of the water outside, to the staccato rattle of the rain. His lips were parted, his refined face peaceful, his chest rising and falling. There was a scattering of old acne scars across his shoulders; they made him very young, both fallible and human. He looked—

  Proteus made himself look away, look out of the window, look out across the water to where the fishing villages glittered with lights…

  There is fear in this city, Austen had once told him. Old fear; it breathes in the stone. You, Ro, you never forget that. Give your trust carefully. Don’t wake it up.

  Trust, by the hells.

  He was a man with neither face nor explanation; trust wasn’t something he could afford. Aden was a fiction, albeit a very carefully created one. And just for a minute there, he’d forgotten.

  Lost himself in a fantasy.

  He wasn’t his sister, for the hells’ sakes; he had no ongoing need for affection. Pleasant though this was, his core objectivity was what kept him sane, stopped him sinking in a sea of different faces.

  He picked up his boots, turned to leave. Relentlessly ignored that part of him that just wanted to lie back down, curl around Caph’s back and to stay there, to pull the blanket over both of them and shut the rest of the world away. Relax, finally and completely…

  To be himself.

  And that thought nearly made him snort audibly – he didn’t even know what that was.

  The rain scattered again. Proteus checked Aden’s face one last time, tied the bandana back around his hair, and eased out of the room.

  Closing the door behind him, he walked away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: HAVEN

  Downstairs, the bar was all but empty.

  The barman was sat half-dozing, his reed hanging out of his mouth. When Proteus approached the bar, he glanced up and his face curled.

  ‘Six ripans,’ he said. ‘And another for the bottle.’

  The cost was extortionate, but Proteus said nothing – he dropped a handful of coins onto the bar-top.

  ‘Give him an hour,’ he said. ‘And then wake him up. This is to make sure he gets out of here in one piece. If he doesn’t,’ the comment was pointed, ‘I’m coming back.’

  The barman snorted. ‘Pay you well, did he?’

  Proteus smiled, the expression edged, then shoved at the pile of coins. ‘Just make sure he’s safe, okay?’

  His distaste apparent, the barman still wasted no time in scraping the pile into his apron.

  Once outside, Proteus inhaled the cold air and took a minute to think about his next course of action. He considered going back to Ivar – but it was too late now and the gates were all closed. He could find one of the more dubious night-boatman to take him round the outside of the city, but with all of the political rumours flitting about, there may be greycoat patrols on the water – and he didn’t really want to be answering questions. Perhaps the time could be put to better use.

  He could catch up with Austen in the morning.

  With a last glance up at the window, he headed away from the harbour. Not back towards the wharf itself, but sideways, away from the main roads and up into the narrow maze of ragged alleys that sprawled behind the buildings. He kept Aden’s face despite the change in surroundings, though a blanket over his shoulders gave him basic cover.

  Some habits were not only reflex, but common sense.

  Walls closed in like shelter. Over his head, shadow-walkways stretched silent, silhouettes against the clouded ghosts of the moonlight. In places, the light caught folded cranes, rusted with disuse, or ghost-signs, like memories engraved in the rock. Guild Danchar, said one, Property of house Milumar.

  But the signs were misleading – these alleyways were not empty. Behind the façade of the harbour lurked a smugglers’ den of storehouses and speakeasies, a tarras-nest of opportunity where the city’s high families stretched concealed and dirty claws, and where their guilds did their real wharfside bargaining.

  The harbour might have a pretty frontage, but it appearance was deceiving – everything that landed here, marked and taxed and tagged and labelled, cast a shadow. And those shadows were for sale, if you knew where to look.

  Proteus kept his head down, his blanket hunched across his shoulders. He passed figures lounged in doorways, all long shadows and dark eyes; he passed dockworkers and soldiers, reeling with drink and intent. Where there were dealers – buyers and sellers and brokers and whores – there were always those who lived at their edges, picking at the leftovers. They hunched in the half-light, and he drifted among them like flotsam.

  The moonlight faded, and the alleys became narrower. The scavengers thinned to desperation, hungry and unwell. Many of them had addictions, and nastier things than reeds. One pulled a blade on him, teeth bared in a half-rotted grin, but he had nothing to prove by facing her, and was gone before she could articulate the threat.

  Another corner, and he could see his target, the place where he might yet find answers to the thing he needed the most…

  Answers to Lyss’s absence.

  ‘Ad!’ Jay greeted him like an old friend, grasping his wrist and grinning. ‘Been far too long. You bring me anything good?’

  ‘Always.’ Proteus returned the grip. ‘Only the best, you know that.’

  They stood in the side office of an abandoned tram-station, its ironwork rusting now and its cracked glass roof all glimmering filthy. The tram still stood out there beside it, mossed wheels unmoving and windows long since blinded by time.

  Next to the office, in what had been a waiting room, some thirty people huddled on mats, some spooning soup from steaming bowls. The susurrus of conversation was comforting, a pulse of information that moved and breathed with the drafts across the floor.

  Proteus had let a smile bring subtle shifts to Aden’s face – gentler lines, a crinkle of humour.

  ‘So you always tell me.’ Jay was small and slender, scruffy and amiable, deceptively youthful despite the lines at eyes and mouth. He stepped back, waving a hand at the bench along the wall. ‘It’s been weeks, where’ve you been?’

  ‘You know how it goes,’ Proteus told him. ‘Everywhere.’

  He chuckled, and the sound brought an odd understanding, a sudden, sartorial flash: Aden may be a fiction…

  …but he was a fiction that existed in the hearts and minds of more people than just Caphen Talmar.

  The thought caught at him like a fish-lure, tempting.

  He put it aside.

  Instead, he laid the blanket on the desktop and emptied his pockets of ripans. It wasn’t much, but Jay counted it, nodding.

  ‘’Preciate it,’ he said. ‘We’ve had an outbreak of Ambrie’s disease, and we’re struggling. House Yannsar messenger brought us food, but not much more – I swear she only wanted to go through the ledgers. Selection’s not even announced yet and they’re already paranoid – who’ll get Selected, what’ll happen next. They might tell everyon
e they’re our sponsors, but they’re watching us like sharks, wanting to know everything we do. Who’s been in here, what they were carrying, where they’d gotten it. All the info. Bloody woman was obsessed, she must’ve sat in here questioning me for an hour.’ He snorted. ‘And how are you? Going up in the city?’

  Proteus raised a curious eyebrow. ‘Not last time I checked?’

  ‘Caphen?’ Jay’s tone was mischievous. ‘That Festival’s pretty damn public.’

  That rocked him slightly. ‘That was fast.’

  ‘Say the same thing about you.’ His chuckle was filthy, but it didn’t last long. ‘You watch yourself, hey? If a Selection does happen, Caphen might start getting picky about their friends.’

  And I’m – what – a dirty roustabout?’ Proteus winked, his tone carefully casual. ‘Don’t worry, Jay.’ He made the point of saying it, as much for himself as for his audience, ‘Nice guy, but wa-ay out of my district.’

  But Jay didn’t let it go. ‘I mean it – Caphen might keep themselves out of the light, but they’ve got significant investments, and not just in Ivar.’ He was watching Proteus’s expression, making sure he’d made the point. ‘They own the mines outright; they control all of the assaying and smelting and much of the raw export. Don’t underestimate him, Ad.’ When Proteus said nothing, he went on. ‘City Hall watches every single thing we do, you know that. Claisal messed up, they got caught, and now it’s all descending into some bloody bunfight. The families that want to be Elect are consolidating their assets, and the families already Elect are running scared, because they’ve got stuff to hide and every one of them’s afraid that they’ll be next. And they’re all trying to brush the dodgy stuff under the rugs.’ His look was direct. ‘You watch your own ass, okay.’

  ‘Thanks for the lecture.’ The comment was edged.

  Jay held his gaze for a minute, then turned round to sit at the stationmaster’s desk.

  The desk was old and scarred, graffiti gouged by long-forgotten knife-edges. It bore a heavy, ink-marked ledger, opened to a half-finished page. Proteus ran an eye over the records, who had been in, and where, and why. Yannsar’s wheel-symbol hovered over the top of each, a statement of possession and control. Many of the high families sponsored charity outlets, and not from generosity – a place like Jay’s offered a unique opportunity, a bridge between upper city and lower. It offered a flow of information, tax reductions, public reputation, deniable and tag-free labour, and a location for the discreet storing or movement of capital or goods. Jay had played both sides for many years, and he was about as good at it as Proteus had ever seen.

  He accepted the lecture and the wisdom that went with it.

  Above the desk, the wall was striped in a series of rickety shelves. Last time Proteus had been in here, they’d been all glass bottles and heavy, leather tomes – the medicines and journals that Jay had taken from his Hospital job in the upper city. Now, they were layered with candles and artefacts, incense burners and images of the various hellspirits.

  ‘What’s up with the souvenirs?’ he asked. ‘You been summoning something?’

  ‘Mostly trouble.’ Jay leaned back and picked up a figurine, a little bronze image of Hisham, all spiked teeth and long chain. ‘These are Ebi’s. There’s a spirit for every hell, she tells me, and she’s got a hundred of them. I think she’s trying to scare me.’

  ‘’Ebi’?’ Proteus expression cracked a smirk.

  Jay shrugged, delightedly embarrassed. ‘When I asked her where the ‘heaven’ was, she told me I was already living in it.’ His smile was genuine, gorgeous. ‘Apparently, that’s why I came out here, to try and make that statement true.’

  His happiness was radiant, warming the room; somewhere, a part of Proteus’s soul was almost envious. He smiled back. ‘You’re an idealist, Jay. One of the few. It’s why I love you.’

  ‘Flatterer.’ Jay turned to face him, grinning, and put Hisham back on the desk. ‘So – spill it. What do you want?’

  ‘That obvious, huh.’ Proteus spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, one not entirely contrived. ‘Your help. Because this time, this shit’s got me baffled.’

  They sat in the little refectory, at a round and battered table holding steaming bowls of tea. Ebi had joined them, a small woman, dark of skin and eyes and hair. She had an exquisite smile, and she wore the gleefully coloured clothing of the marketplace performer. Jay’s affection for her was new, and obvious, and wonderful – it warmed the air between them, and it touched their every word and gesture.

  The little pouch sat in the table’s centre. Caph had identified the symbol, but Proteus wasn’t in the habit of giving information away.

  ‘This,’ he said. ‘I need to know what this is, and where it came from. And you’re in just the best place to tell me.’

  A frown flickered across Jay’s face – a reaction to his tone of voice, perhaps, or to the tension in his shoulders. He picked it up with a physician’s careful fingers, lifted it to the yellow glitter of the sodium lights. His face tightened into a frown.

  Watching him, Proteus found his breath suddenly tight – a flush of fear of what the information might show him.

  Jay’s eyes met his, his expression clouded. ‘Where’d you get this?’

  ‘Long story.’ Proteus didn’t elaborate. The touch of personal distress was deliberate, and it was just lever enough. Jay raised an eyebrow at him, and he gave a short, tight sigh, said, ‘I just need to know what it is.’

  ‘You haven’t touched it yourself?’

  ‘Had to try it out on the way,’ he said, straight-faced. ‘You know how it is.’

  Jay gave a short, mirthless chuckle.

  Proteus was still clenching his jaw. Despite his efforts, his emotions were bothering him, weeds growing through his critical detachment. Aden’s thoughts, his own. He was worried about Lyss, about Austen…

  About Caph.

  Ebi touched his arm, support and sympathy. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You know we’ll help. Did you say where this came from?’

  Again, he sidestepped the question. ‘It was a gift.’

  ‘Special.’ Ebi watched him for a moment, then took the bag from Jay and studied it, her expression curious. ‘Why would someone give this to you?’

  She was asking too many questions; Proteus needed to get out in front of the conversation, pilot it, but a sudden thought stopped him. What if Sahar and Lyss had not met by coincidence, as he’d originally assumed? Perhaps this wasn’t just a question of his sister’s hedonism getting her into yet more trouble; perhaps this was more than that.

  Deliberate.

  It would explain the presence of the insect.

  Jay had taken the bag back. Very carefully, he eased the drawstring open. He touched the end of a table-knife to the contents and raised it to the light. The blade was flecked in tiny, glittering black fragments, no more than dust. It looked odd, almost metallic. He eyed them, brushed a tiny touch between the fingers of the opposite hand, then tested it with very tip of his tongue.

  At the taste, he recoiled, dropping the knife and spitting, wiping his mouth. ‘Augh…’

  ‘What?’ Proteus asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

  He shook his head, picked up his tea. ‘Hells, that’s horrible.’

  ‘D’you know what it is? Where it might’ve come from?’

  Jay swilled the tea round his mouth and spat it back into the bowl. He looked at Proteus, his face etched in concern; he seemed to be searching for words. ‘Who gave you this? This isn’t some wharfside recreational, Ad. This stuff’s new.’

  ‘’New’?’ The word was sharp.

  ‘Very,’ he said. ‘Been creeping out, down here, only in the last couple of weeks. And whatever it is, it’s not coming through the usual routes, not via the harbour, or the wharf. It’s coming from inwards, not outwards.’

  �
�From the upper city?’ Proteus asked, surprised.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Jay said. ‘We had a guy come in, two days ago, absolutely off his head. He—’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Proteus pounced after him, merciless. ‘Is he still here?’

  ‘He died.’ The words were blunt, Jay’s expression tense. ‘I tried, but there was nothing I could do. I pretty much sat there and held him down.’ His face twisted, and Ebi rubbed his shoulder. He said, ‘He was hallucinating, had no idea where he was.’

  Died.

  ‘We’d never seen the stuff before, either of us,’ Ebi said, ‘But it was all over his fingers, all round his mouth, embedded in his skin. It felt like… like he couldn’t get enough of it. Like he was trying for every sensation, every last drop of its thrill.’

  Died.

  Time lurched forwards, gained urgency. Something that been Lyss’s usual mischief became suddenly very cold and very real. Understanding rose like fear, claws against his throat.

  Every last drop.

  He said, ‘Did you keep his tag?’

  ‘We had to hand it in—’

  ‘Did you tell house Yannsar?’

  ‘Hells, no.’ Ebi eyed her now-cold tea and put the bowl back down – then she grinned like a fiend. ‘We faked the ledger entry. Give me a minute and I’ll go get it.’

  She came back with Jay’s heavy ledger, dumped it on the table with a dusty thump. Leafing through the crackling pages, she found the reference: the man’s name had been Galeas, a resident of the harbour, and a crafter of scrimshaw. He’d had no family affiliation, no guild membership, no artisan status. He’d just carved bones and sold them.

  The ledger recorded that he’d died of a heart attack. Apparently, house Yannsar saw exactly what Jay wanted them to see, and nothing more.

  Some contacts, Proteus mused, were worth their weight in ripans.

  Looking through the entries, he spared a thought for the Selection. Caph had told him that, forty years previously, five members of house Balkar had died in a kitchen fire, and that the family had been deemed too weak to remain in power. Rather than risk the unElected families scrabbling for the undefended assets, City Hall had simply stepped in and taken control. They’d eradicated every member of the suffering house, right down to the last child. Then the greycoats had marched in and taken possession of every resource – properties, infrastructure, guild sponsorships, charities. And then, when the assets were secure, City Hall had made their choice, and a new name had joined the families Elect. The assets were redistributed, and the balance restored.