by Ginn Hale
Kiram raised his right hand. He squinted hard into the darkness and then almost shouted out when Javier suddenly rose up from the shadows of the pumpkin leaves just beside him.
“Here, this one is yours.” Javier held out one of the pies. “The tin is still hot so use the cuff of your jacket to hold it.”
“I didn’t want one,” Kiram said, but he still took the pie carefully. Even with his jacket protecting his hand, the metal was almost too hot to hold.
“The pulley lift is just a little further. Come on.” Javier started towards a small shed built up against the west wall of the dormitory.
The savory scent of meat and mushrooms rose up off the pie. He’d never been served anything this nice in the dining hall, nor could he imagine the cooks making enough meat pies to satisfy a hundred hungry students. He wondered if the pies had been intended for the scholars or the war master.
If so, Kiram sincerely hoped that he was stealing Master Ignacio’s breakfast.
Once inside the shed, Kiram realized that it had no roof. Instead, a series of pulleys and heavy chains dangled down from the third floor.
“There’s a trap door up there. Scholar Donamillo has the staff haul his mechanisms up there with this.” Javier sat down, carefully placing his pie to his right side. He gave the pulley chains a tired look. “How strong are you feeling?”
“I doubt I could haul us both.” Kiram paused as he studied the pulleys more closely as well as the shadowy shapes of gears, high above him. “You ass. This is a gear lift. An infant could haul us up so long as the counterweight was properly set. Is it?”
Javier sighed. “Yes. I should have known you’d know what it was right away.”
“Of course.” Kiram set his own pie down beside Javier’s and then located counterweight release. He couldn’t see them clearly in the gloom but his hands knew them by feel.
“I helped my father build two gear lifts when I was fifteen.” Kiram gently eased the release open. The hand crank turned smoothly. Someone took good care of the mechanism. The chains whirred as the counterweight slowly descended, causing floor beneath them to rise. The lift was surprisingly quiet and Kiram couldn’t help but admire its creator. He wished that he had a lamp so that he could examine its engineering more closely. He glanced back to Javier. “How heavy is the counterweight?”
“Heavy. I’ve cranked it back up by myself before, but it’s damn hard work.”
“It shouldn’t be. A gear lift this well built shouldn’t be hard to reset,” Kiram thought aloud. “Are you sure you had it in the correct gear when you cranked the counterweight back up?”
“I believe that my ignorance about the lift even possessing different gears is all the answer you need,” Javier confessed and Kiram smiled at his honesty.
They rose to the underside of an overhang below the third floor of the dormitory. Javier worked the trapdoor above them open. He hefted himself up into the darkness inside the dormitory. A second later he lowered an iron rung ladder. Kiram handed up the pies and then climbed blindly up into the pitch blackness. The floor beneath him felt like solid stone. The stagnant air smelled of machine oil.
He heard Javier close the trap door. Then a flicker of pure white light flashed up, momentarily illuminating Javier’s raised left hand as well as the rows of machinery surrounding them. The light died and then flared back up, flickering across several huge, faceted, glass spheres. Slowly, the light in Javier’s hand steadied to a dim, undulating flame.
They were in a windowless store room. Most of the space was neatly packed with the pieces of mechanical cures. They looked old and broken down. Spatters of rust etched the arching iron ribs. Many of the glass panes that made up the enormous spheres looked chipped. Some were blackened, as if coated with soot. Kiram could barely discern the shadows of the leather harnesses and wires hanging inside the spheres.
“The counterweight is here.” Javier held his hand over the lift gears mounted in the store room floor. His expression was intent and Kiram imagined that it took a great deal of his concentration to maintain the even glowing light that danced over his palm.
Kiram worked quickly, shifting the gears and then cranking the counterweight back up into its housing.
“Done,” Kiram said at last.
“Good.” Javier crouched down at the heavy iron base of one of the mechanical cures and the light in his hand guttered out. Total blackness enveloped Kiram again.
“Are you all right?” Kiram asked.
“Fine,” Javier replied. “Just catching my breath.”
Kiram sat down to wait. A minute passed and the silence began to worry Kiram. He wondered if Javier really was well. Could he have collapsed again?
“Javier?”
“Yes?” Javier’s voice was strong and relaxed. Kiram felt foolish for worrying. “What is it?” Javier asked after a moment.
“Oh,” Kiram said, and then a genuine curiosity came to him. “I was just wondering if you’ve ever been in one of these mechanical cures?”
“Once. My first year here Scholar Donamillo wanted to test one on me.”
“What was it like?” Kiram couldn’t imagine being strapped into one of the huge contraptions. As much as he loved mechanisms the mechanical cures unnerved him.
“It was much like a catastrophe,” Javier sounded amused. “Scholar Donamillo buckled me into the harness and closed the orb and then just when he had cranked the handle fast enough to begin building a current the glass blew out. It blackened and shattered. Then the iron supports broke apart. I think the remains are up here somewhere.”
“You weren’t hurt?”
“Not badly. But I’d rather not ever do it again.”
Kiram couldn’t help but remember Fedeles’ howls and the mechanical cure in the infirmary.
“What do you think it does to him?” Kiram asked and then he realized that Javier couldn’t know who he was talking about. “I mean Fedeles. How does the mechanical cure help him?”
Javier said nothing for a long while and Kiram realized that the subject was probably too close for Javier to talk about. He wished he could take the question back.
“It eases his suffering a little.” Javier’s voice was soft and humorless. “The treatments exchange one kind of madness for another. He isn’t terrified or screaming after the treatments but he isn’t well either. The mechanical cure makes him happy, but it can’t lift the curse. Holy Father Habalan is certain that it’s helping to protect him from being consumed, though, so I suppose it’s worth it.”
“He was cursed? Nest—someone said that the white hell attacked him.”
“People say a lot of things. But they don’t know shit about the white hell or the Tornesal curse. They don’t know shit!” Javier almost spat the last word.
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked-”
“No, it’s not your fault. People start rumors. They know we Tornesals are linked to the white hell by our bloodline and so they assume that it is the cause of all our infamy and misfortune. But it wasn’t the white hell that attacked Fedeles or killed my father. The white hell is in me and I would have known if it had touched either of them. Something else attacked them. I don’t know what, but I’ve felt it. I…” Javier was silent for several moments, then sighed heavily. “I’m too hungry and tired to talk about this, that’s what I am.”
“Do you think you’re rested enough to make it to our room?” Kiram asked.
“I’ve been fine for a while. I was just stalling for time to remember where I put our pies.”
Kiram laughed, mostly out of relief to hear a note of humor return to Javier’s voice.
Once they located the pies, the two of them raced through the narrow tower halls to their room.
They washed their hands and faces together but Kiram left the bathroom when Javier began to strip off his clothes. While Javier bathed Kiram found a knife and sliced his pie into quarters. When he made an experimental slice in the pie Javier had been carry
ing he discovered that it was filled with cherries. If they shared, they’d both have a decent meal.
Javier returned from the bathroom wearing his dark blue dressing robe. He looked exhausted but clean. He brushed a wet lock of his black hair back from his face and Kiram caught a glimpse of his left wrist. The wound had closed, leaving that same raw red scar that Kiram remembered seeing the very first day he had met Javier. If he did regular penance then that wound must have been opened over and over again. It must never really heal. Disgust curled through Kiram at the sheer barbarity of the Cadeleonians, but he hid it when Javier pulled a chair up to Kiram’s desk in order to inspect the pies.
“We’re going to have to eat with our hands, you know,” Javier said after a moment.
Kiram shrugged.
They ate messily, sitting side by side, grabbing handfuls of pie and licking gravy and cherry filling from their fingers. Kiram’s mother would have been horrified. Actually he couldn’t think of many civilized people who wouldn’t have been appalled at the sight of the two of them.
When Javier leaned over and sucked a blob of cherry off of Kiram’s thumb the action seemed innocent and indecent at once.
“How do I taste, Lord Tornesal?”
“I think I would need another sample to form an opinion.”
There was a moment, with Javier so close, that Kiram almost leaned into him, almost kissed his mouth.
Then the night warden’s voice boomed through the quiet hallway. He pounded on the door and both Javier and Kiram bolted apart.
The warden pushed the door open and peered in. Kiram shouted out a little too loudly in response to his name. Javier simply rolled his eyes and glared at the old man.
“Lights out,” the night warden snapped, then slammed the door closed.
Kiram’s heart hammered. What had he nearly done?
He was no longer in the Haldiim district of Anacleto. He wasn’t in the company of the young men he had grown up with. He was in the very midst of a Cadeleonian institution with a man who he hardly knew and certainly didn’t trust.
He wanted to believe that Javier felt something for him, that Javier was somehow immune to the hatred and prejudice of his society, but he couldn’t be sure. From what he did know of Javier, he would be as likely to laugh at Kiram as to kiss him. Either way he would probably confess everything when he attended chapel. That could get Kiram thrown out of the academy or worse, put on trial for corrupting a Cadeleonian.
Kiram stood quickly. “I should wash my hands.”
Javier stared at him for a moment and then simply bowed his head.
“Scrub hard and use lots of cold water. You don’t want the cleaning women wondering how your sheets got so sticky,” Javier called after him.
When Kiram returned from his bath, Javier was already in his own bed, feigning sleep. Kiram wished him goodnight but wasn’t surprised when Javier said nothing in response.
Chapter Eleven
It took Kiram a few days to fully realize the importance of Javier inviting him to the third table. It wasn’t just a matter of better servings of meat or glasses of red wine every Sacreday. It signified his allegiance with the men at that table. It meant that the other students at the academy, from first year to fourth, now considered him one of Javier’s circle, one of the Hellions.
No one attempted to trip him as he passed and no one taunted him to his face. At the same time, some youths who had been cautiously friendly towards him no longer engaged him in debates during law class. Watching two of them slink away as he sat down at a study table in the library, Kiram couldn’t help but feel uneasy about his new alliance.
Nestor was delighted. The fact that his mother would have been incensed seemed to make it all the more exciting.
“She’d be furious if she knew Elezar and I were called Hellions.” Nestor smiled as he glanced up from his sketch of a man in armor. “She’s a very religious woman, you know. Doesn’t allow anyone in the household to have sweets the entire week of Our Savior’s Misery. She would piss blood if she found out.”
Kiram’s own mother had apparently laughed when she received his letter informing her that he was now considered a Hellion.
Along with her letter, Kiram’s mother had sent a package of fresh pen nibs, dried tea, and hard candies. Beneath the satchel of candy was a note from his father.
It congratulated him on making friends and fitting in so quickly with the Cadeleonians, but also warned against getting any tattoos that he would regret later. Apparently one of his cousins was now wearing long sleeves to hide the bare breasted mermaid emblazoned on his forearm with the words ‘wet fuck’ written beneath her. His uncle Rafie was looking into the removal of the image.
Then, in closing, Kiram’s father had encouraged him to keep up his good grades.
Kiram sucked on one of his apple candies and scowled at the thought of grades.
He was doing very well in most of his classes. Now that he was training daily with Javier, he was even beginning to improve in the war arts. Master Ignacio no longer scowled at the mere sight of him. But in history he seemed unable to score the kind of grades he was used to.
He had worked harder on his essay analyzing the reign of King Nazario Sagrada than he had ever worked on any assignment. He’d spent a week combing through the library for original source material. He’d searched through old diaries and ancient tax records.
It had been with a sense of triumph that he had detailed and documented, on page after page, how Nazario Sagrada’s excessive violence and persecution of even his own nobles had set in place all of the elements of the civil war that unseated his heir. He had even felt confident enough to point out that the divisions that Nazario had created had later contributed to certain noble families choosing to support the Mirogoths against their fellow Cadeleonians during the invasion nearly a hundred years later.
Kiram had never been so proud of an essay. It seemed nearly as perfect as one of his mechanisms.
And then it had been returned with the lowest mark Kiram had ever received. The ugly red note scrawled across the last page informed him that his lack of understanding of his subject obviously revealed the failings of his earlier Haldiim education.
A month before, such a comment would have made him want to weep. Now—he didn’t know if this was a result of constant battle training or just the extent of his outrage—he wanted to beat Holy Father Habalan to a pulp.
He had been so angry that he had paced through the room ranting while Javier sat at his desk, looking on in amusement.
“Would you like me to kill him?” Javier offered offhandedly.
“No, I’d like to kill him myself.”
“You can hardly wrestle Nestor to the ground by yourself,” Javier replied. “Holy Father Habalan is about three times Nestor’s weight.”
“I’ll roll him into the lake.”
“He’ll just float on the water like a bloated pig bladder,” Javier said. And Kiram laughed in spite of his anger.
“You’ve got to consider these things when you plan a murder, you know,” Javier had added.
A little later, after Kiram calmed himself by bolting together a small housing for a miniature glass boiler, Javier had tossed him an essay of his own.
“What’s this for?”
“To keep you from failing Holy Father Habalan’s class.” Javier hadn’t looked up from the book he was reading. Calixto Tornesal’s diary. Again.
“I can’t just copy one of your essays.”
“I didn’t say that you should. Read it. Then write your own.”
Kiram had read the paper and several others of Javier’s since then. They were the funniest and most scathing criticisms that he had ever encountered. Javier described King Nazario Sagrada’s reign entirely in terms of the advances made in chastity belts and dog breeding during the king’s lifetime.
Kiram remembered snorting with laughter as he read the conclusion:
While other rulers may have contributed more to the art
, science, medicine, law, irrigation, architecture, agriculture, political stability and economy of our great nation, it is Nazario Sagrada to whom so many a virginal girl owes her greatest happiness as she cuddles one of this nation’s many three-to-seven pound lapdogs.
The genius of it was that it was all true and all written glowingly, as though Javier were really in awe of the literally miniscule contribution of lapdogs.
Kiram couldn’t manage the same level of sarcasm, but he had realized that if he wanted to pass Holy Father Habalan’s class then he would be wise to resort to minutiae.
Since then he had turned in an essay on the advances in saddles during the civil war and was rewarded with his highest score so far. Another paper detailing the numbingly dull history of the southern warhorses brought his overall grade back up to passing.
But now the class had reached the era of the Mirogoth invasion and Kiram was determined to write his next essay on Yassin Lif-Harun. He already suspected that he would receive low marks for his efforts.
Holy Father Habalan didn’t really understand Yassin Lif-Harun’s contribution to astronomy or navigation, and he always looked annoyed when the subject came up. There was a chance that he would fail Kiram simply for making him aware of his own ignorance.
It frustrated Kiram that he could write a perfect essay and still be failed, simply because the scholar grading him didn’t like his ideas or worse yet, just couldn’t comprehend the subject. Things were so much more straightforward with machines. Either they worked or they didn’t. Anyone using one knew which it was.
Kiram flipped through the pages of an old diary, scanning for any mention of Yassin. He’d found only one reference so far and it was buried in a list of men who had joined Calixto Tornesal’s boar hunt.
“Yassin Lif-Harun was an acknowledged genius at the age of sixteen, and all this idiot can think to write about him is that he wears his hair a little too long for a proper gentleman.”
