Aether Spark

by Nicholas Petrarch

  They’d moved his laboratory almost a month before, when Ponti’s place had been found out.

  Everything was a mess, from his equipment to the remains of food left untouched to rot. Chance had reached a new disregard for cleanliness, but that was what happened when one was living in spare corners and working with scrap.

  “What were you making?” Rhett asked, his nose turning up at the smell. One of the burners was still on, the contents of its cauldron burnt black as char. It reeked of sulfur.

  “Nothing,” Chance said, switching off the burner. “Just testing a compound.”

  Rhett picked up Keller’s open notebook; it was full of notes tucked into the pages. Chance had been recording what he hoped was the first real step in decoding the cipher in the past few months. It had proven one of the most difficult undertakings Chance had ever faced. Keller’s cipher was even more elaborate than Ashworth’s, with few similarities to Chance’s.

  Rhett flipped through the pages curiously, staring at the symbols. Chance had been doing the same thing for months now. He didn’t expect Rhett was about to make any more headway than he had. But, he let the boy look. There was no harm in that.

  Chance dipped a rag in his wash bin and wiped his face. The cool water helped ease his aches, and he let out a weighty breath. It was getting harder every day to get himself going in the morning. As Rhett had pointed out, he was making a habit of skipping morning altogether.

  “Did you get those supplies I asked for?” he asked.

  “Most of them.” Rhett pointed to a few satchels by the door. “They’re rationing the Exchange more every day.”

  “Greedy cogs,” Chance cursed. “What’s their excuse this time?”

  “They say it’s because of the colonies making trouble.”

  “Can’t blame them for wanting to defect. They’re just as sick as we are of having the meritocracy breathing down their necks.” He tossed the rag back in the wash bin. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll find another way.”

  “How? We’ve used up almost all of Foxx’s money.”

  “Let me worry about that, why don’t you?” Chance said.

  They’d certainly burned through Foxx’s investment quicker than Chance had anticipated. It hadn’t helped when their first lab was seized by the city. Fortunately, they’d all been away when the raid came, but Ponti’s place was out of play.

  It alerted them to a new realization: whomever was after the Aether spark wasn’t playing around. They were after him. Somehow, they knew he’d survived the fire. Chance had had to withdraw almost entirely from the public eye to keep safe.

  Rhett took care of most of the errands, which left Chance ample time to worry over Ashworth’s work. He’d had a difficult time starting over a second time, especially with the conflicts breaking out across the sea making commodities harder to come by. The timing wasn’t ideal.

  Lately, he’d hardly had resources enough to experiment. Sure, there were other ways to get by if they were resourceful. They still had some friends sympathetic to their plight, and there were places both within and without the city with parts to spare if one knew where to look—but it didn’t make it any easier.

  Rhett certainly had stepped up. He’d seemed to grow three years in a few short months. He was almost unrecognizable from the timid little boy he’d been, with a new decisiveness. Chance wondered where he’d picked it up.

  “Where have you been?” Chance asked.

  “Nowhere,” Rhett said. “Just over at Welch’s place.”

  Chance gave a shudder of annoyance. “You and him are getting along pretty well it seems.”

  “He’s interesting.”

  “Yeah? Well, don’t let him fill your head with too much of his pseudo-spiritual nonsense. You’re unbearable as it is. I don’t know if I could handle it.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Rhett smiled.

  Chance grabbed his boots from one of the chairs.

  “The recruiters tried to stop me again,” Rhett said.

  “Yeah? What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Like you told me.”

  “Good.”

  “What if...” Rhett began. “What if I did sign up to go?”

  “Why would you do that?” Chance asked. “You’re like, ten years old. War isn’t for boys.”

  “I’m eleven,” Rhett said defensively.

  “Yeah?” He’d honestly forgotten. “Well, you don’t know the first thing about fighting. Or what this whole scrap with the colonies is really about. You want to be some militia pawn in their hands?”

  “Simon was in the militia. He doesn’t think it’s so bad.”

  “Simon,” Chance said, lacing up his boots, “tries to scrounge together a living just like you and I. If he’s willing to sacrifice his freedom to do that then that’s something he’ll have to square with someday. But you and I, we’re better than that. We’re our own agents. Whatever shots we’ve got to take, we’re the ones who call them. You got that?”

  “Yeah.” Rhett nodded. “What are we doing today?”

  “I’m going to go visit the scrapyards to see if I can’t scrape together some more equipment for the lab. You can do whatever you’d like.”

  Rhett frowned, but didn’t protest. He’d stopped arguing with Chance these days. Instead, he picked up his bag from the floor and went to the stairs. “Oh! Margarete wanted to talk to you.”

  Chance winced. “She say what about?”

  “No. But, she seems awfully upset. She tried to hide it, but I could tell.”

  Chance swallowed hard.

  “Are you going to talk to her?”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to her,” Chance said.

  “Now?”

  “I’ll talk to her!” he repeated.

  “Just being helpful,” Rhett said as he descended the stairs.

  The noise from the girls below drifted through the open door. Chance heard them making a fuss over Rhett. They loved him, perhaps because he was still harmless. But not Chance. Despite their efforts to make him feel welcome, he could tell they weren’t altogether comfortable with his being there.

  Even Margarete seemed to be second guessing her decision to let him stay.

  Chance collected his coat and the carrier he’d fashioned to replace his old on. He checked one last time to be sure he hadn’t left any burners on. Ignoring the door, he opened the window and scrambled out as quietly as he could. Clutching onto one of the gutter drains which ran down the side of the building, he clambered down, dropping to the street and slinking away before anyone noticed.

  Chance hurried across the tracks, careful to keep his balance as he made his way through the train yard. He’d gotten his foot caught once between the tracks when he was a young boy, and the memory of that experience gave him reason to exercise more caution than he typically did.

  A train passed by slowly and he waited for it to go. The yard was filled with cars and boxes, tucked away here and there to be retrieved later when they were needed. A large train was in a dock, unloading what looked like carts of old scrap.

  When the track was clear, Chance ran by some unused boxcars, popping his head in a few as he passed. Most were vacant, but after a few minutes searching he spotted what he’d been looking for.

  There, in one of the open cars, lay Ponti. He was leaned up against his signature sack of junk, sleeping away the day. Chance banged his hands on the wooden floor and called to him.

  “Time to get up!”

  Ponti started with a jolt, but rolled back over on his sack when he saw who it was. “Blast it, a man’s got to sleep. Leave me alone.”

  “Not this time. We’ve got work to do.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t got things of my own to do today?”

  “The fact that you had time to spend with one of Margarete’s girls last night,” Chance said, climbing into the boxcar. Ponti looked up at him, blinking away his sleepiness.

  “Who said I did any such thing?”

  “We had an agreeme
nt, Ponti.”

  “Yeah?” Ponti looked indignant. “Well, I don’t remember us saying anything about whether one of them found their way to me.”

  “You leave her girls alone,” Chance warned. “I mean it.”

  “Since when do you care for a bunch of—”

  “You’ll leave them alone!”

  Ponti recoiled. Chance wasn’t usually so short with him, even in his foibles. But he recovered quickly, stretching himself out on his sack.

  “Whatever you say,” he said with an air of dismissal. “You’re the boss, it seems.”

  “Good. Now, seeing as I’m the one who’s going to have to face Margarete when I get back, you’re going to help me with a little errand today.”

  Chance’s tone was no nonsense.

  “Alright!” Ponti fumed, throwing up his hands in surrender. “Mangy slag. I swear, she wasn’t worth it.” He said the last part under his breath as he rose from his resting place and shouldered his sack. He cleared his throat and spat.

  “So, what’ve you got me doing today?”

  Chance smiled. “Junking.”

  It was about an hour by train to reach the scrapyard. The two of them managed to steal away on an empty flatcar without too much difficulty. Ponti remained in a sour mood the whole way, complaining constantly and pointing out the trouble they could get themselves into.

  Chance let Ponti’s attitude wash over him without response. Instead, he let his mind puzzle over the compounds he’d worked on the night before. For months he’d been working with the hints he could glean from Keller’s and Ashworth’s notebooks.

  The rest he had to discern from trial and error.

  At one point, he’d thought he’d been making real progress, but had ultimately come to a dead end when the mixture turned volatile and ate through the cauldron he’d been heating it in. He just couldn’t get the compounds to react the way they should.

  He wished silently Ashworth was still there to talk to. He’d always had a more patient mind in the face of failure. What Chance wouldn’t have given for one more kitchen conversation.

  When they arrived, Chance wiped his eyes, and he and Ponti hopped off the train just before it pulled into the station. They made their way down the tracks until they came to a small supply shed.

  A tall metal fence, perhaps a dozen feet high, blocked their way into the scrapyard, but they weren’t deterred. Chance followed Ponti down the fence until they came to a ribbon wrapped around one of the posts. Ponti pushed on the fence. It opened easily on cleverly disguised hinges, and the two of them slipped in unnoticed.

  The scrapyard was busier than normal. A few workers were milling about near the depot, preparing to load up another shipment of scrap back to Hatteras.

  Ponti looked nervously at Chance.

  “Not sure why Hatteras got themselves such an interest in junk all of a sudden,” he said. “I haven’t done nothing to bother them, and they go put me out of business in a single day.”

  “It’s because of the blockade,” Chance said, watching the men work. “They can’t keep the factories going without it. They’re salvaging what they can, wherever they can.”

  “Then scrap that pretty Spire of theirs. They’ve got plenty and more to share if they need it so badly.”

  Chance rolled his eyes. He couldn’t imagine any gentleman parting with their fine china or fancy watches just to smelt another gun or two.

  Pulling a list of items he needed from his coat, the two of them set to it. It was challenging work, sorting through the colossal piles of trash and scrap, collecting pieces which might do in a pinch. A broken valve. A curved plate of metal. Anything that might resist high temperatures or store compounds was useful.

  Chance couldn’t afford to be picky. Much of what he was able to collect wasn’t ideal, but with some tampering he could make it work. Again, he thought Welch might be a good one to ask for help, being a tinkerer and all, but he shook the idea off.

  They moved carefully, always mindful to avoid the men who were working the piles. A few times they were forced to abandon their search as city men came by with their carts, but the yard was large enough that Chance and Ponti could always find another unoccupied section.

  It was a slow, tedious search. The sun beat down on them mercilessly. Ponti voiced complaints at every opportunity. Despite being a junker by trade, he wasn’t accustomed to keeping at any single task for long—and he made sure Chance was aware of it.

  “How much of this scrap are you looking to collect?” he asked for the hundredth time as they paused for a rest. “You can’t possibly have enough room for all of this back at Margarete’s.”

  “We need as much as we can get.” Chance tossed another bent metal strip into his sack as Ponti let out a groan. “Don’t worry,” Chance assured him. “I think we’ve gathered enough for today. We can call it.”

  Ponti let out a sigh of relief and tossed a pair of worn boots aside. “About bloody time. Not that I don’t like risking my life for a bunch of junk. How about a drink after all this rummaging, when we get back? It would do me finely.”

  “Sure,” Chance shrugged. “And if we hurry, perhaps we won’t have to walk the whole way.” He pointed to the depot where an engine was just linking up with a fresh load. “That’s our ride.”

  “What?! What are we still scrapping for then?” Ponti grumbled, shouldering his pack. “If we miss it, it’s your fault.”

  “Quit complaining,” Chance said, passing him as he ran with his own sack. “Hurry!”

  The two of them hustled back to the hole in the fence and fed their sacks through. They hurried across the tracks as quickly as they could, their awkward parcels weighing them down. The train was pulling out just as they reached it.

  “You see an open one?” Ponti called.

  Chance scanned the boxcars. “There,” he said, pointing to a cracked door. “Hurry up!”

  They ran alongside the cars as the train picked up speed. As the boxcar came up beside them Chance hurled his sack up onto the open platform and leapt on. Ponti came up close behind, swinging his sack and scurrying onboard just as the train pulled away.

  “That could have been a long walk,” Ponti said, setting up a comfortable spot beside the door with his sack and laying himself out. “So, tell me, how goes this little enterprise of yours? Any headway yet? Or you still chasing your tail?”

  “A little progress, I think,” Chance said. “The notebook is still the key, and the thing giving me the most trouble. I’ve been able to figure some of it out by running my own tests, but it’s slow progress—and costly.”

  “I know what it costs,” Ponti said, chuckling weakly. He looked out the boxcar.

  “Ponti, you know I’m sorry about what happened to your place. I never meant for my troubles to spill into yours.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Can’t change what happened now,” Ponti shrugged.

  Chance sat down at the edge of the boxcar, his legs dangling out of the door, the ground racing by underneath them.

  “You know, if I manage to figure this out then we’ll all have a share in it. You as well, for what you did for us when Rhett and I were out a place.”

  Ponti raised his hand to silence Chance’s words.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t promise me something you don’t have. I made the mistake of being drawn into your little enterprise by those promises before, and it cost me almost everything. I won’t let you do it again.”

  “I’m just trying to make things right.”

  “Then you do that, but keep your promises to yourself.”

  Chance let it go and focused instead on the landscape outside. The train moved at an easy clip, the countryside passing lazily on. The sun was approaching the horizon, its rays casting faint reds and golds.

  Chance watched it sink, soaking in the openness of the space. It had been some time since he’d seen a sunset that grand. He would have to remember to bring Rhett out sometime. It was so easy to get trapped in th
e cramped city; it would do the boy good to see there was room still to stretch.

  In a short while, Chance’s thoughts drifted into dreams as the moving scenery and the gentle rumble of the train lulled both him and Ponti to sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Manufactured Chaos

  It’s only a matter of a few degrees and a simmer becomes a boil.

  — Alchemical Proverb

  T he train gave a shudder and stirred Chance from his dreams. He blinked the sleep from his eyes, and stretched his sore legs. Ponti was there, as always, leaned up against his sack of junk. Chance couldn’t understand how he slept like that, night after night. Ponti’s backbone must be as twisted as the junk he carried.

  Chance rubbed his arms. It was getting colder, and with the sun gone the wind from the train chilled his skin. The boxcar shuddered again, reverberating offbeat to the jostling of the tracks.

  Chance stood up and grasped the edge of the door while he looked out of the car. The wind rushed past him, whipping his hair and clothes. They were moving slower now that they were within the city limits, passing through the factory districts.

  Coming up on a tunnel, Chance stepped back as the darkness overtook him and watched electric lights flash by like a flickering picture show. They left streaks of light in his eyes that lingered even when he shut them.

  When they emerged from the other side, Chance had to blink to refocus before he could believe what he saw.

  One of the factories was in flames, casting a bright orange glow on the surrounding street. The flames licked the air from broken windows as people gathered in the streets around it.

  Chance stood mystified, watching the scene unfold before him. The boxcar trembled again and entered another tunnel. Chance stepped back inside and shook Ponti awake.

  “We there yet?” Ponti asked. He rubbed his eyes and looked out of the car as they emerged from the other side of the tunnel. He too caught sight of the blazing factory just before they turned and it was lost from sight. “What was that?” he asked.