Children of Artifice

by Danie Ware

  Come to me. The might of her welcome was wordless, devastating; it called to the fragment in him, the piece of her that had given him his abilities. It hollowed out his chest and left him gasping, falling almost to his knees. It was lover and sibling, parent and child, many voices in one body. Come and be one. Family. Belonging. Needed. We know who you are. We have always known.

  We love you.

  Around them the music and the chaos seemed to pause – a moment of stillness in the eye of the storm. Cool rain scattered.

  ‘Finally.’ Her voice was soft but massive; its potency made the air shudder. Those unbroken, metal fingers brushed his cheek. ‘My Proteus. Home at last.’

  The pull was like mercury, like they would be drawn inevitably together into a silver and shining puddle. And in that thought, he understood something – he understood the final figure that Ebi had drawn in her casting, the hellspirit Viluy.

  Many faces, tearing from the same body, all of them screaming. He’d thought it had referred to himself…

  …not that he would be one face, lost in the morass, ever-screaming for his freedom.

  Proteus was aware that Ganthar was still struggling with Austen, but he couldn’t help, he could only fight for bare life as if his heart was being slowly pulled from his body. His versatile flesh and bone, his adaptability and comprehension and will and vision and insight… everything that made him who he was…

  Come to us. We will hold you in our arms forever.

  Beside him, Austen moved like black lighting – Ganthar spat blood and fury, gagging on the claws that were embedded in his throat. Tearing. The air hissed from his windpipe as he raised his hands to try and cover the wound.

  And, right there, in the middle of the cashing, screaming music, Proteus realised what he had to do.

  Hanging in Artifice’s grip, he let his flesh shift. He remembered what Caph had said to him, there in the darkness of his rooms, touching his skin at the unseen scarring.

  I know my real face, he thought. I know who I was. I know who I was before you found me.

  Against the magnetic pull of the creature, against his gathered siblings that dwelt within Caph’s flesh, against the sheer presence and might of Artifice herself, he set will and focus and he said…

  No.

  He was himself. He knew what he looked like. All the training that Austen had given him, all the years of learning emotional control, all the truth that Caph had shown him, were now solidifying, being woven strand by strand into a pattern that Artifice could not break.

  I know who I am.

  I have a real face.

  Ganthar was falling, a giant crashing finally to the floor; the room reverberated with shock as his knees folded. His hand was wrapped over the gash in his throat, the four ragged and rusting rips that had dragged down into his chest, tearing his windpipe from his flesh. He reached for Austen, for Proteus… for just a moment, there was an after-echo in the smoke and the steam…

  A younger man, with an endearing, lop-sided grin…

  Then he fell on his face in the blood that had pooled about them.

  The stone shook with the impact.

  And Artifice shrieked, a high and tearing noise that resounded in the instrument about him, in the crumbled brickwork of the chamber, in the thousands of tramlines that webbed the great city from end to end. The sound was terrible – and it was death.

  Above them, the sky was red with fury; Kei raged savage and lightning flared cloudless, flashing all across the caldera as if its very walls themselves would come down. The spike of the upper city was shaking, right down to the roots; the stairways were crammed with people, pushing, panicking. Figures fell screaming into the river.

  ‘Stop her!’ Austen bellowed.

  In the moment that Proteus hesitated, Caph-Artifice fell to his knees beside Ganthar, plunged both hands into the muscled flesh of his back as though each fingertip was a claw-point.

  Ganthar’s last breath shrivelled into desiccation; a piteous end.

  But Artifice was swelling until Caph’s flesh was too small for her might and presence. There, crouched on the floor, covered in the blood of friends and family and followers, she faced Proteus with Caph’s face twisted into a feral, ecstatic grin.

  ‘You can’t stop this,’ she said. ‘Not this time.’

  The music crashed around him; Austen was shouting at him, he had no idea what he was saying. Above them, buildings were crumbling like sand, sloughing sideways into rubble. Dust trickled though the hole over his head. Proteus could hear Artifice’s screaming music in the seething metal, in the tramlines, in the metalwork of the glasslights, in the Builder’s thundering and destructive greycoats, blades loose as they raged through the upper city, in the golem that still crouched over the mines now rasping into ancient life, in the very mines themselves…

  And, while he might be able to retain his own skin, there was nothing he could do to stop the destruction of the city.

  Austen was down; had been thrown back like a child’s toy. Artifice was stronger now and she was laughing with the joy of her coming freedom, of her newfound strength.

  But Proteus, out of any other options, hit Caph full-on.

  For a split-second, the sound was torn from the air, there was sudden, utter silence, a ruined wind blowing hollow in his ears. He thought he heard shouting, running feet – but it was too far away and he couldn’t focus on it through the sheer force of the energy that burned within him.

  He pinned Caph-Artifice back against the remains of the wall, said, ‘I hold a part of you. And I’m not giving it up. You can’t achieve your full power without me – can you? – and I’m not letting you take it.’

  Caph screamed at him, visions from too many sets of eyes – in him, Proteus could see his sister, her crystalline laughter and her joy in life; he could see Anatar’s magnetism, Ganthar’s strength. He could see Thantar Vel Raife searching always for the right host, breaking some, healing others, feeding them to the growing metal of the ouroboros as it unwound slowly through the city’s foundations. He could see Caph…

  Caph!

  For a moment, Proteus almost reached him – there at the very heart of the screaming madness that was Artifice, Caph was still fighting. In amid the insanity of the savage physical grapple – tearing and slamming and snarling like stray tashwyn – there was a flash of melody, a musical thread, a dream.

  He said, ‘I’ll do you a deal.’

  Austen said to him, ‘Ro, what are you doing…?’

  But he wasn’t listening. His attention was all on Artifice, now resident in the body of his lover. He said, ‘Let him go. Let him go, and I’ll surrender. You can have me, all of my skills, everything. Be complete.’

  Artifice laughed at him, Caph’s mouth, Caph’s voice. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ she said. ‘You listen to me, my renegade son: Caph is a musician, the finest this city has ever seen. And he’s a metallurgist; he has every skill I need. Do you know what roils around us, what this great and crafted serpent really is? It’s pure metallurgy, the ultimate expression of the all the equations he never taught you. And do you know how metallurgy works, how the Builders really crafted the city?’ She was smiling, inhuman and insane, the expression too wide for Caph’s mouth. ‘It’s all music. All those equations, the patterns they make, they’re music. Had his fingers not been broken, he may have even put the link together himself; become the first new Builder the city had seen – the first in thousands of years. All the little copper tags you people like so much? Their patterns made music. The lights and harmony of City Hall, was all music, music, music.’ She lifted Caph’s unbroken hands, played the creature above him, made it sing. ‘The drug that Raife made – it sung in the veins of a thousand people, and their song was enough to cover my voice. And now, I have life. What can you offer me that’s better than this?’

  Proteus said, ‘
Raife thought you’d help him.’

  ‘Raife, the poor child,’ she said. ‘Right from the beginning, he thought I would just… do his bidding, jump when he told me.’ Her laugh twisted with the music and gave Proteus chills. ‘But – he guarded my safety for long years. He served his purpose well enough.’

  Austen had come to stand beside Proteus, hand on his shoulder. The old man looked deeply saddened, very weary. Ganthar’s blood still covered his hands.

  He said, ‘Give it up, love. You can’t win this, not this time.’

  ‘I want to live.’ Her voice was rage, desperation. ‘Is that so much to ask? Defy the despair that destroyed our people, that took the lives of everyone we’ve ever loved. Why did we come here, why did we build this city if we were only going to fade and die?’

  ‘You’re leaving our city in ruins, love,’ he said. ‘Your craving for life is too much, it destroys the stone, even as it raises the guards, the golem at the mines. They’ll cut the people to pieces. These are your children that are dying, Arty. They’re what your life should be.’ His voice was gentle, sad. ‘And I’ve watched them, loved them, raised two of them as my own. Please, this has to stop.’

  The music had faded now, shafts of sunlight were lighting the dust to a surreal celebratory dance. And Proteus was looking from face to face, a terrible understanding growing in his heart.

  Austen put his hands on Caph’s shoulders. ‘Let the boy go. For the sake of the love we shared, too long ago to even mention. These are good lads, let them have their chance.’

  ‘It’s just infatuation,’ she said. ‘They’ll forget soon enough.’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ Proteus told her. He couldn’t take his gaze from Caph’s red eyes, from Artifice within them. ‘Lyss asked me once, what the difference was. What’s love and what’s infatuation, and why she kept getting it wrong. And it’s time, Artifice, the difference is time. You loved once. Let us find the answer out for ourselves.’

  The gaze dropped. Austen let Caph’s shoulders go and stepped back. ‘Please,’ Austen said. ‘Give this up...’

  Artifice raised Caph’s hands, looked at them, then at Proteus. She seemed to crumble, and the music to tumble from the air. She said, ‘I don’t want to die. I never did.’

  ‘We all die, in the end,’ Austen said. ‘Your life goes on through those you love. As it should.’

  ‘Through my family.’ Artifice turned to Proteus, put her hands to the sides of his face. ‘My children.’

  ‘Let him go,’ Proteus said softly. ‘Please.’

  She looked at him, red eyes in Caph’s face. ‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘For now. Give this lover of yours one last kiss, Proteus, and I’ll do as you ask.’ She glanced at her husband. ‘But I warn you, Austen. This isn’t the end.’

  Austen nodded. ‘It’s never the end. I’ll always be here for you.’

  Artifice held his gaze for a minute, then looked back at Proteus, expectant. ‘Very well, then. Say goodbye to your father, my son.’

  Proteus glanced back at Austen, the old man’s face all creased with emotion. And then he stepped forwards for the kiss that would wake his lover from oblivion.

  That would trap him, all his faces screaming for freedom, forever.

  *

  Caphen Talmar had a headache.

  Nope, not a headache, a monster. A hellspirit. A righteously-earned miner’s hammering, a rock-rubble-rumble in the back of his skull that prevented him from lifting his head. He was limp-limbed, parch-mouthed, and he felt like he’d been hit with a shovel.

  He groaned.

  Beside him, an unfamiliar voice said, ‘How you feeling, Caphen?’

  He sat up, wincing. The great metal creature over him was twisted through broken stonework; much of the theatre was collapsed. The morning air was thick and red and cold. And the voice belonged to an old man, long legged and spindly, his eyes full of rust.

  On the floor beside him, a slumped figure lay still.

  With a flush of panic, Caph scrabbled over to look more closely.

  As he moved, he realised, slightly foolishly, that the pain in his fingers – so much a part of him now that he almost didn’t notice it – had gone. Stunned, he raised one hand, then the other. Both were straight and true, unbroken. And his actuators…

  Shock went through him. He looked at the old man for an explanation, but the man only shrugged, as if it should be self-explanatory.

  Then Caph forgot his hands and stopped beside where Proteus lay, the dust slowly covering him. He bore the scarred face that Caph had only seen once before, when he was sleeping.

  His real face.

  His first fear was unfounded – Proteus was breathing, his chest moving with the air. Caph let out his breath in relief, wanted to wake him, went to shake his shoulder, but the old man extended one long, filthy hand.

  ‘Leave him, lad. He won’t wake for a while.’

  ‘What happened?’ Caph asked, looking up. ‘Did he… did he stop Raife? Ganthar?’

  ‘No,’ the man said. ‘He didn’t.’

  Caph frowned, ‘Then—’

  ‘Caphen,’ the man said. ‘You have a lot of work ahead of you. Up there, the gates are broken, the walls destroyed. City Hall is damaged beyond repair, its vision ruined. Its control is over. There’ll be no Selection, not now.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The mines are blocked at the entrance, and the damage is extensive.’ The man smiled. ‘You need to go home, and find your sister. You don’t know it, Caph, but you’re about to be one of the single most important figures this city has ever seen.’

  ‘I don’t want importance,’ Caph protested, one hand touching Proteus’s sleeping face. ‘I just want him to wake up…’

  He had a sudden memory of stamping out of the house, of hiding at the wharfside, in the strong, inked arms of a blue-eyed dockworker. But the house had been destroyed and the dockworker now lay unconscious in the rubble, the dust settling on his skin.

  He said, suddenly, ‘You’re Austen.’

  ‘I am,’ the man said. ‘And I’ll help you. Both of you. As you learn what you can do, how your music can repair the city, I’ll teach you – as much as I can remember.’ He grinned, his teeth reed-stained. ‘Though I bloody swear, I’ve forgotten most of it.’

  I don’t understand, Caph thought, but it didn’t seem important. He said, ‘When will he wake up?’

  Austen’s grin faded. ‘I don’t know, lad. But the upper city still stands, at least most of it – and your sister’s in the Hospital, taking care of your house manager. And that’s where you need to take this one, Caph. Place him in the best care, and never abandon him. Your life may change – may change sooner than you think, in fact – but you must keep him safe.’

  ‘But when will he wake up?’ He touched the old scars, tracing their edges with his metal fingers.

  ‘No way to tell,’ Austen said. ‘You’re going to have to wait for him. I’ll explain as much as I can as we go back into Kier and we see what’s left.’ His rust gaze caught Caph’s. ‘He’s my son. And he gave his life for you, Caphen Talmar; he took the ending that should have been yours. Don’t make that a wasted choice.’

  Caph found his breathing tight, his eyes stinging. His home, his family, and now this… He reached into his pocket, took out the dice, gripped it like a promise. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Good lad.’ There was no condescension in the words, they were almost paternal. ‘Now, you’ve got a long journey ahead of you, and if you’re going to rebuild this city, then you’re going to need all the hellsdamned help you can get.’

  EPILOGUE

  Caph sat in the kitchen of the house in district Thale, his zanyar across his lap. It was far too hot to sleep, and he sat alone and sweating in the moonlight, a bottle of spirits on the table in front of him, and his music filling the air.

  Hi
s calluses were returning, and the strings hummed at his touch.

  When the kitchen door creaked open, he stopped playing, and glanced up.

  ‘Ah. Sorry, sir.’ Darrah had stopped in the doorway, hesitant as he saw that the kitchen was occupied. His face was half-shadowed, his shaven hair now starting to grow back. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I came to get water.’

  Caph nodded at the bottle. ‘Have one of these.’

  Darrah paused for a minute, then closed the door behind him and padded across the kitchen on bare and silent feet.

  Four months had passed since the second great storm, since the rage of stone and metal and weather had destroyed City Hall and collapsed the entrance to the mines. The casualties had numbered in the hundreds, many of them fallen from the long stairs as the city had shaken to its soul, others cut down by the anger of the Builders’ metal guards, loose in the upper city. Darrah, in the Hospital, had been one of the lucky ones. And upon his release, Caph had asked for him to come to the new house, to help himself and his sister with the enormity of what they now faced.

  Because Artifice had left Caph a gift.

  He was still struggling to understand it: the new ability now awake in his hands and his music and his understanding. Like a man given a weapon with no idea of how to use it, he was clumsy, and cautious, and relying very much on Austen’s patience and training. He was also afraid – as Austen had said, he had a long journey ahead of him, a huge responsibility that towered over him like the fatally damaged spiral of the upper city…

  He was the first Builder the city had seen in five thousand years, and the weight of expectation was more than his name had ever been. It wasn’t something he’d wanted – hells, he’d wanted to hide at the wharfside and never come back to his name – but those days were lost, as lost as Proteus was, and Caph had work to do.

  Sacrifices to be worthy of.