Reign of Stars

by Tim Pratt

  The entry to the main building wasn't guarded, and inside were the old familiar broad corridors, lined with doors leading to workshops and labs, the biggest and best for captains, according to their prominence and influence. Those positions shifted wildly with each new discovery or practical application, and when someone died, the other Leaguers swarmed like beetles on a dog's corpse to pick their labs clean of anything that might be useful. The air stank of mingled chemicals, sharp and cloying and astringent all mixed together, and the sounds of screeching grindstones, clashing metal, and sobs and screams (the latter arriving from a great distance, at least) formed a background hum with occasional spikes of loudness.

  "Are people being tortured here?" Skiver cocked his head at a particularly sharp scream.

  Alaeron nodded. "Oh, most certainly. Anyone committed to death for whatever the Black Sovereign considers a crime is given over the League for experimentation. After all, it's very tempting to graft a weapon that shoots lightning to one's forearm, but first you have to test it on someone else, to make sure it won't liquefy your bones or stop your heart. And there are all sorts of interesting things dripping down the walls of the Mount, some of which have miraculous properties, and others of which are poisonous—and so they're often fed to those condemned to die, to see which is which."

  "Does anyone ever survive those experiments?"

  "Oh, some. Not most, mind you, but some. A few even thrive, or gain superhuman strength, or have skin that turns hard as armor, or develop glands that let them spit acid...those that might prove useful are quietly taken into League service. The others are just experimented on again, tested to destruction."

  "Alaeron," Skiver said, "these people are evil. Don't get me wrong, I'm bad, but evil is a whole other thing entirely."

  "You'll get no argument from me."

  "Are you sure you want to work for them, is what I'm saying."

  Alaeron shook his head. "Not at all. But Zernebeth isn't so bad. She's...cold, certainly, but not cruel, unless she feels the need to prove a point. Not sadistic for sadism's sake."

  "That's reassuring. Look at me. I'm reassured."

  "This is the place where the wonders of the world are buried, my friend. I understand if you don't want to be here, and I can get you passage back to Almas anytime you like—I never expected you to stay once you'd seen me settled anyway—but for me, the chance to find the mysteries Zernebeth hinted about overcomes my disgust at the circumstances."

  "I'm not going anywhere just yet. I've got a lot of high-quality goods to sell, after all."

  They reached a staircase, and Alaeron paused. "Skiver, I think you should stay here. I'd better meet Zernebeth alone." He took off his pack and handed it over. "Just in case. If I don't come back soon...well, try to stroll out as nonchalantly as possible. Maybe no one will notice you."

  "You're expecting treachery?"

  "Not necessarily. But we're in Starfall. Treachery is this city's greatest natural resource."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  He was halfway up the stairs when Zernebeth snapped in his ear, "Where are you? Lodger reported that you were delivered an hour ago."

  "Just seeing a bit of the city," Alaeron said. "You know how charming it is on a cool summer night. I'm coming up the stairs to your workshop now."

  "Yes, yes, just hurry."

  The top of the stairs ended in a set of heavy metal double doors, and Alaeron knocked, though his knuckles barely made a sound against the density of the metal. They swung apart a moment after he touched them, opening onto a single huge room with high, vaulted ceilings. Alchemical lanterns in various colors hung everywhere, and long worktables lined the walls, broken up only by towering bookshelves stuffed with volumes and scrolls and tablets. Zernebeth's living quarters were mixed in with her work space, including a four-poster bed large enough to hold six people—eight if they were sufficiently friendly—and two armchairs next to a stone fireplace big enough to count as another bedroom in most places.

  And there was Zernebeth herself, standing in the center of the room, looking at Alaeron with the last expression he'd expected: a fond, sweet smile. Standing over six feet tall, her skin the color of ice (complete with undertones of blue), her hair the color of white gold, her cloud-pale eyes...he'd never seen anyone who looked quite like her. She wore a black cloak threaded with silver wire, and underneath he glimpsed a sea-blue dress that clung to her figure provocatively. Given that in the past she'd always preferred plain, workmanlike clothing, Alaeron assumed the dress was yet another way for her to assert control of the situation, trying to take him off balance. He could be aware of the manipulation and simultaneously enjoy the view; he didn't even have to feel guilty, as he knew she wanted him to look—to be unable not to look.

  Alaeron thought, not for the first time, that Zernebeth was like a statue of a goddess carved from ice, her proportions somehow just slightly larger than life-sized, and even though he knew her skin was so cold it burned, even the hint of her curves beneath the cloak gave him exceedingly warm thoughts.

  The last time he'd seen her, blood had been pouring from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, and her hair had stood on end and crackled with lightning. She appeared none the worse for wear.

  Until she approached him, opening her arms to embrace him. Her right arm was bare and unblemished, but her left...

  Her left arm was gone, and in its place she'd affixed a vaguely armlike device of gleaming silver, convex bubbles of black glass, and transparent panels revealing tiny, silently whirring gears. The arm ended in a hand of sorts, with six fingers and two thumbs, all with at least one more joint than their natural analogues.

  "Zernebeth," he said. "Your arm...I knew you'd lost it, but..."

  She paused, looking at the prosthesis as if noticing it for the first time. "Oh, do you like it?" Her voice was faintly accented from her youth among the white witches of Irrisen. "I did not emerge from the Mount entirely undamaged, as I may have mentioned. Merging my mind and body with whatever information poured out of the Mount took a toll on me—I was not the intended vessel for that knowledge, you know. I think it was like pouring acid into a wooden cup: not so good for the cup. But knowledge isn't free, and an arm isn't such a high price to pay."

  "It's my fault," Alaeron said. "I left you behind."

  She shrugged. "True. You might have spared me the injuries, if you'd pulled me away. But you might have died yourself—I understand I was sparking with lightning? If you'd broken my connection with the ship, I wouldn't have seen the things I saw—oh, such things, Alaeron! They're the reason I brought you back here."

  "I was expecting a bit more viciousness in your welcome, I confess. Perhaps more piling on of guilt. Well earned, of course, but—"

  "I used those as tools to make you come. That objective has been achieved, so we can dispense with them now."

  "Ah. So it's to be honesty and forthrightness between us?"

  "Oh, I don't know about that. But certainly different sorts of manipulation. I'd hate for you to get bored." She put her arms around him and pressed him against her body. Her metal arm felt strange against his back, but not necessarily unpleasant. The chill that radiated out of from her body made him shiver—though it was possible the chill wasn't the only reason. She pulled back and favored him with another smile. This was more than she'd smiled at him during the entire time he'd been her assistant.

  He coughed. "Speaking of manipulation, that's a lovely dress."

  "Isn't it? I thought it would be kind to give you something nice to look at, before..."

  Alaeron tried not to visibly tense. He scanned the corners of the room and didn't see anything dangerous lurking...but there was no telling what sorts of devices Zernebeth had primed in the room. "Before what?"

  She tapped one metal finger against her lips, then said, "What would you do if I told you this was all a trick to lure you back here for your execution, runaway?"

  Chapter Fourteen

  New Business

  Ah
. I would probably ask you what you think of my coat."

  Zernebeth frowned. "It's nice, I suppose. Fashion doesn't interest me much, and I didn't imagine you'd care about it, either. I would then ask you why you were talking about your coat when you're about to be handed over to the boys in the basement who test dangerous technology on prisoners?"

  Alaeron opened his coat, showing the dozen vials sewn into little pockets inside, carefully padded so they didn't clank when he moved. Then he held up his right hand, careful not to wriggle the fingers. "You might not be able to see them, but there are threads tied to my fingers, and each thread goes back to a stoppered vial. If I move my fingers just so, the tension will release the tops of the vials, and unleash a particularly virulent poison gas of my own invention. I, of course, ingested an antidote at the same time I put on this coat, so I would stroll away while you and any other living League members in the vicinity of the cloud died in agony. The Gearsmen might get me, I suppose, but at least I'd make my capture cost you."

  Zernebeth smiled again and clapped her hands. "Oh, Alaeron, I'm so proud of you. I was terrified you'd gone soft in recent years, down in the weak lands of the south. Even more so when you whined about Char trying to kill you. But you're still thinking like a man of the Technic League, so this might work out after all."

  Alaeron was no keen student of human behavior, but he chose to believe that Zernebeth had merely been testing him, and removed the loops of thread from his fingers, gently, before taking off the coat and draping it over his arm. "It's a pleasure to be back," he said. "Would you like to meet my friend Skiver?"

  "Not especially," she said. "I'm told he's lurking downstairs—I'll have someone show you to your rooms, and you'll join me tomorrow morning for a meeting with the League council. The Sovereign is having a feast tomorrow night—some cousin of his is getting married the next day, so it will be even more debauched than usual—and you should attend that, too, so the right people can see you, and recognize that you are my chosen ally. It will help cement your authority when you're out in the field. Then we'll see about organizing the reason you're here. All right?"

  "As long as I get to see things no human has ever looked upon before, I am content," he said. "I can tolerate a bit of the social sphere if that's the price to pay for access to arcane wonders."

  She patted his cheek with her metal hand—amazingly, it was less cold than her flesh. "Good boy. Tell me, how tired are you?"

  "Middling," he said. "I should be exhausted, but I find myself excited as well. Eager to begin the work."

  "Mmm." She shooed at him. "Go on down, a slave will take care of you. I'll see you soon."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Skiver and Alaeron were given separate rooms, but with a door connecting the two, albeit one that could be barred from either side for enforced privacy. Soon after Alaeron got into his room and shut the door, Skiver wandered in through the connecting door, looking around and nodding, holding a glass of something amber-colored in his hand. "Oh, good, it's not just my room that looks like it was decorated by someone who had a lot of old scrap to get rid of."

  Alaeron laughed. The Technic League's guest rooms were full of things deemed useless for debauch or destruction but interesting enough to impress visitors. A gear the size of a wagon wheel hung above Alaeron's bed, and his headboard was decorated with a mosaic made from broken fragments of silverdisks, the small etched metal objects often used as currency in Numeria alongside more ordinary coins. "This blue lampshade is made of glass from one of the wrecks. Quite pretty, isn't it?"

  "I've got a piece of melted slag, looks a bit like a windblown tree, almost as tall as I am, just standing in a corner. I've got no idea what it's for, so I hung my coat on it." Skiver sat down on the mattress and bounced up and down once or twice. "Your bed is like this too. Bloody bizarre. Why's it jiggle like this?"

  "The mattresses are made with springs."

  "Springs? What, you mean coiled-up metal? Numerians are all mad. There's something wrong with feathers or straw?"

  "Someone invented the spring-loaded bed, and the Black Sovereign liked it—something about the way the, ah, bosoms of his nightly visitors bounced as they romped on them—and so there was a brief craze for the things. The ones left over when the fad passed got stuck in the guest rooms for want of any better fate, I suppose."

  "Spring-beds fell out of fashion, then?"

  Alaeron nodded. "I understand one of the coils uncoiled at an inopportune moment and poked up through the mattress, jabbing the Sovereign in a moderately delicate place. He had the bed destroyed and the inventor...well. I don't think he ever slept in a bed again, let's say."

  Skiver sucked air through his teeth. "This Sovereign of yours is a dangerous man to try and curry favor with."

  "Indeed. Fortunately, he mostly leaves the League to its own devices. Though if you please him, the Sovereign will raise you up high, or at least, what he considers high—which mostly involves eating larks' tongues and quail eggs, ingesting mind-altering chemicals, and rutting with the slave, servant, or even courtier of your choice. They don't exactly have ‘nobles,' here, unless you count the Sovereign's family and original tribe, partly because there's precious little in the way of nobility. Which reminds me—we're invited to a feast at court tomorrow night."

  "Oh, good. I was hoping to do a little business."

  "Ha. Best of luck. Be prepared to see sights that will shock even you."

  "I would have said that was impossible, but after a few hours in Starfall, hearing entirely secondhand horrors, I'm beginning to realize the limitations of my imagination. I'd best rest up, then."

  "Ring the bell and one of the servants will bring you a bathtub. I know I've got days of road grime to wash off me."

  "Good idea," Skiver said. "We want to smell sweet for the barbarian courtiers tomorrow, eh?"

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  A noise woke Alaeron, and he rolled off the mattress, landing on the side away from the door, reaching underneath the bed for a clay bulb. The bomb contained a substance that would immobilize anyone it splashed without killing them, and he'd laced the fluid with inert flakes of skymetal, so that it would even work to paralyze the immaterial Char.

  "Master Alaeron?" muttered an elderly slave wearing a skymetal collar that marked him as a valued possession, not to be casually murdered. He raised up a lantern. "Sir, are you here?"

  Alaeron cleared his throat and stood up, aware that he was wearing only his underclothes. "Ah. Yes. I...the bed is a bit too soft for me, so I was sleeping on...Yes, I'm here."

  "Mistress Zernebeth desires your company in her workshop."

  Alaeron frowned. There was a waterclock in the room, elaborate and ugly, but it hadn't been maintained and didn't work at all, so he had no idea what time it was. The very black belly of the middle of the night, was his guess. "Ah, very well, I'll dress—"

  The slave cleared his throat. "I was given very specific instructions that you are not to dress, sir. The hallways have been cleared. You will not be witnessed."

  "I don't— Oh. Oh." Could he refuse? Of course he could, the slave wouldn't be authorized to physically drag him upstairs. But what would the consequences of refusal be? That question aside, did he even want to refuse?

  He'd never taken advantage of the ladies of negotiable virtue Skiver knew from his business, because the need for physical release he felt every day or two was more quickly and efficiently dealt with on his own, over in the space of minutes, with no necessity for negotiation or conversation. But Zernebeth...she was more than his equal intellectually, an altogether fascinating figure, and moreover, she was unlike any woman he'd known. It would certainly be a new experience, and what else did he live for, after all?

  "Of course," he said, and followed the slave through the empty hallways to the staircase that led to Zernebeth's workshop. The slave stayed at the base of the stairs while Alaeron ascended, and the metal doors of her room stood open. Only a single light glowed inside, illuminating the bed�
��and Zernebeth herself, who wore nothing at all. She lay on her stomach, leaning on her elbows, chin propped in her hands, one metal and one flesh.

  "Mmm," she said. "I told the slave not to let you dress. I didn't expect you'd sleep in your underthings—I was expecting you naked. How barbaric. Take those off."

  Alaeron complied.

  "Good. Now come to me."

  The alchemist walked to the bed, stirring in all the predictable ways, and Zernebeth sat up and swung her legs over the side, reaching for a vial on the bedside table. She tossed it to him, and he managed to catch it while simultaneously staring at her bare body. "Drink," she said.

  "Ah. Not that I doubt your intentions, but...what am I drinking? If it's something meant to enhance performance, I don't think that will be a problem." He gestured vaguely downward.

  She chuckled. "It had better not. No, it's a potion to protect you from frost. I'm sure you've noticed I give off a bit of a chill—blame it on a brush with ice magics in my youth, compounded by a few experiments with siccatite when I was new to the League. The potion won't make me feel much warmer, but it will keep the cold from...interfering, or harming your flesh. I'd hate for you to feel any pain. At least inadvertently."

  Alaeron tossed back the contents of the vial. It tasted like summer wine. He suspected Malica had mixed the potion—she'd always had a gift for making her nostrums palatable. Then he wondered if Malica knew what the potion was for, in the general sense or the specific.

  "You said you don't doubt my intentions," Zernebeth said. "What do you think those intentions are now?"

  "To strengthen my loyalty."

  "True," Zernebeth said. "But I also want to enjoy myself."

  "No reason one mechanism can't fulfill two functions," Alaeron said. "I am a great admirer of efficiency."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Alaeron woke up in his own bed to the sound of pounding on the connecting door, but he hadn't been sleeping for long. He was groggy and faintly hungover, without the benefit of having ingested alcohol—an effect attributable to lack of sleep, or dehydration, or some side effect of the potion. Still, given the choice to do the night over again, he wouldn't have chosen to get more rest instead.