“I’m finished. There’s a scar but I can’t remove that.” The doctor collected gear and swabs, wiped something off her neck, then returned everything to his bag. He closed the case but deposited a small white sack, with a drawstring neck, on the table. “These are the chemicals you asked Badh for.”
“The dyes? Good. What can she do?” Ryke flicked a finger, unfolding it in her direction.
“Anything. Sex. Run laps about the residence, just don’t let her sabotage the waik cores into spinning chaos.” He gave her a final frown. “Before I leave, one other thing that may surprise you. I’m a believer in the Prophet.”
For a moment, Ryke seemed lost for words and he imperceptibly shook his head. “I would never have thought you would take up that nonsense.”
“We must make peace with Aerthe. Our situation has changed. As I said, I respect you. I hope you will come to a meeting one day soon. I’ll find the door myself.”
“Thank you,” Ryke said dryly. “But no finding doors by yourself. It won’t open for you anyway.” After levering himself out of the chair, he turned to her. “You looked better with that on.”
Some words pause the world.
The implications in the way he’d said it, in what he’d said. Almost but not quite a threat. Almost, a Ryke version of a love letter.
She listened to their footsteps dwindle then gently placed her hand over her neck. She felt for the wound that must be there but only found a small ridge where the port tube had entered her skin.
Aerthe healing was the bee’s knees. “Brilliant.”
He planned to let her dye her hair and nails, to let her venture outside.
Protocol needed to finalize livening. The voice had sounded inside her mind. Gio gasped and her hand jerked on her neck.
That had been similar to mechling thoughts but far more sensible.
Mechlings mostly sent concepts as to what they were doing and they muttered. They listened to her thoughts, she knew this, and would often obey simple commands, but they never spoke in such distinct sentences.
At least...none of the ones she knew had. Obey commands – there was a deduction that ran from that simple fact, and she filed it away to think on it, turn it over, later.
Ryke’s rooms above had not held mechlings, but here, perhaps there were a few? This might be one.
What are you? she thought, trying to send it into the air.
I am...I am Diccano 3. You woke me. Please finalize protocol.
What the fuck was a Diccano 3. A bot? A mechling of bigger brain? Nothing else on the landship had ever reached into her thoughts.
Hello? Are you a mechling belonging to the residence?
Silence, except for the boots thudding down the hall outside, boots that were more than one person, more than Ryke returning.
Chapter 16
Ryke strode in to find her still beside the armchair but staring at the ceiling above. Whatever was up there surely wasn’t half as fascinating as him and Badh, who had followed him in. A collarless woman was jarring. Wasn’t natural to see a non-Mekker so...undressed, though the rest of her undressed state pleased him.
Badh had brought clothes and he tossed the opened packet onto an impressively pretty cabinet that occupied half the right-hand wall, next to the bed. A red dress spilled from the packet but it was the cabinet that grabbed his attention. It sat on wheels and was constructed of some sort of vegetation material. Trees? He recalled the word. The material was brown and polished to bring out a fine gold-green thread. The semi-open, lower section had appeared to be thin black slats, but wasn’t. Nudging with his knee proved it was metal. Piles of ancient linen were stacked inside.
If this was a cage, it was a beautified one.
“Looks like Doctor Baxx did good work.” Badh walked to Gio then circled her. Though she watched, turning her head, Gio stayed mute. “There is a huge problem, though, with dyeing her hair and nails. One I should’ve thought of when you mentioned this idea.”
“And that is?” Idly, he opened one of the cabinet doors, noting the bolt or key-locking mechanism. He had no key. A pity. Perhaps it was here somewhere? The things he might do with a cage on wheels.
“I want to speak to you in private.”
Without Gio? The concept that she might somehow benefit from knowing his secrets was novel. Who could she tell? Ahhh, the rest of the Underdeck, once allowed out.
“Go out.” He gestured. “Do nothing that would displease me. And here. Put this on for me.”
For me. It was unusual word usage for him and he wasn’t sure why he’d said it that way.
He tossed her the red gown, the fabric floating as it flew, flourishing outward like some mythical deep-space creature. Like blood flowing through water.
An omen? For a second, he felt cold in his veins. Down in the Underdeck omens sometimes came true. Dismissing that feeling took some doing. If he’d inherited mooshiness, as he called it, his mother was to blame.
She donned the dress, letting it cascade down her body. As she smoothed her hand over the gown and picked up a fold to let it slide through her fingers, a smile slowly came to her, a big smile that stretched her mouth and was so utterly pure that something inside his chest responded. And ache? A twinge? Heartburn? Frowning. he put his palm there.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The words were so foreign to him he didn’t at first recognize them.
“You like it?” The thing did cover her in a tantalizing way – a little see-through, caressing the points of her breasts, clinging to thighs and mons, making a man want to rip it off her just to see what was underneath.
“Yes. I do. Can I look for mechlings here? There must have been some. They might help clean the residence.”
Again with that fucking smile.
“Yes, you can. Go.” He flicked his fingers again, indicating the door, then watched her flow to it, and out, exiting from view.
“I can see why you didn’t abandon her to Ormrad, or whoever wanted her.”
“It wouldn’t matter if she were a thousand years old and my worst enemy.”
“Duty to the king? I see. She won’t find any mechlings here. What records we still have say all were released to us when the king vacated, except for those installed in locks or fused-on casings.”
Ryke grunted. “What is the problem you spoke of?” He hauled himself backward and up onto the cabinet then lay back against the wall, careful not to set the wheels in motion.
“You can dye her hair, dye her nails, but as soon as any decker sees her, and especially if she speaks to them, they will know what she is. Her face says not Mekker. If she’s not Mekker, she has to be slave. Her accent and knowledge will say not Scav or grounder. They’ll figure out what she is – human – within hours, maybe a day, depending on how much you let her interact.”
He grunted, thought that through. “True. Obvious.”
He’d let the severity of recent events blind him to anything but the chaos he’d left upstairs...and her, she too had preoccupied him.
“I was stupid.” Hands bent over the edge of the cabinet, he flexed them, heard the cabinet cage creak in protest. “Ideas? If we’re stuck here, I want to, at least, let her scan the deckers. Otherwise I may as well give up on my job. Ormrad will have won.”
“You’re sure that he was the one involved?”
“In trying to catch her? The men had his house mark.”
“Then it’s simple. Keep her inside, ask her your questions, just abide by my rules.”
“I wish I could. It would be abandoning my purpose to isolate her. How else can she look for a new portal mage?”
Badh walked back and forth for a while, dodging the furniture, clearly thinking. Ryke left him to it. There was no reason to hurry his conclusion, except that Gio was off looking for mechlings. Getting into trouble here, inside the residence was unlikely. They might not have taken the towels or art works when this place was abandoned, but he knew the weapons were gone. He’d found the armory
during his own explorations. An inventory on a desk, the text stained with age, had detailed what had been taken down to the last gun. Some of those weapon models were ancient and unknown to him. Even if left behind, they probably wouldn’t have still functioned.
If she found a knife to stab him with, he’d take it off her. Plus, there was always the cage. Ryke smiled. What better reason to keep her in there?
“Why are you smiling?” Badh asked. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. This is your answer: Ask the king. You are his man. He will save you from all this trouble with a snap of his fingers.”
“If only. Not a bad thought though.” He nodded. “There’s a rumor the king changes soon. The Gathering approaches.”
“Early? Already? And it could be Ormrad? Ahhh. I see. There is no other man you trust to ask?” Badh pointed upward.
“I don’t ever speak to the king. I speak to Gyle, his advisor. But Gyle...I’m unsure of him now. Never was before. Ormrad shouldn’t have known about how we gained the girl. The blood-snack room was a secret.”
Badh swore. “Fucking blood-snacks? The poor girl. I really don’t want to know more. Okay. I’m lost. This is beyond what I can decide. The mess above filters down to us but I cannot understand. You must decide.”
He had. Decided. He would speak to Gyle via a screen and see if meeting him was wise. He caught Badh’s gaze, held it. “I think I will take her outside, undyed, after I speak to the deckers. I convinced you, convinced Doctor Baxx. I can convince the others. We are deckers at heart and stay loyal to each other as long as it does not interfere with our duty to the king and our people. Yes?”
It was the basic tenet to life in the Underdeck.
“Yes.” Badh put his hands on his hips. “Though if you’re wrong, if one person betrays you to the Above, you may find yourself fighting a battle you can’t win. Ormrad and the kings in waiting will all be sniffing for her.”
“I’ll take that chance. I do my job and fuck all who interfere.”
“You’ve more courage and more stupidity than I would ever lay claim to, brother.” He laughed.
“You’d do the same, if you were me.” Ryke slid from the cabinet. “I’ll let you out then go find my lost girl before she does something stupid too.”
“Finding her? Only? That dress looked fucking remarkable.” His eyebrows waggled. “Are you not allowed to –”
“Fuck her? I can, I have done. Now though, I’m playing a game called make her love me enough to tell me all her secrets.” He was boasting but he rarely had the opportunity to do that. Above he was a dark secret wrapped in a hood, lurking in corridors, buried in his rooms, warded by the blue marks of the decker on his face.
The whores he’d fucked had probably scrubbed for days afterward.
“You are so smug and arrogant. You fucked a human? You’re going to tell me the details, soon. She’s a slave. Make her say whatever it is you want said.”
If only it was that simple. “She won’t break. Come.”
“Oh now?” Badh whistled. “Break? I know that’s what the King’s Own Lawgiver must do but my brother? You make it so difficult to remember the you I...”
The way that trailed off hurt more than a little. The you I loved. He’d evoked love from his brother and now he wasn’t even sure what the word meant. He was stone, metal, all things hard and ungiving. To survive above, he had to be. Turning stone back into flesh was impossible.
“Of course,” he mumbled, unsure what the two words really referred to.
He wouldn’t elaborate on breaking. He definitely wouldn’t tell Badh how much he enjoyed breaking the females. That was a hobby few down here would appreciate.
The oddest thing? This new arrangement he had with her, whatever it brought, he was anticipating the fuck out of it. The rules he’d agreed to could be manipulated.
There was so much leeway.
No fucking? He would make her scream for saying that.
Chapter 17
The mechling led her deeper into the house, or rather her memory of its voice’s direction did. Gio hadn’t heard it again.
The hallways weren’t parallel or on perfectly ruled lines, she came to realize. They converged on a central area, like the spokes on a giant wheel.
And this room ahead was the center of that wheel.
She brushed aside a curtain of fallen white and black cords. They were shredded in places, vomited from the ceiling in a tangled spray. Here, time had caused some destruction. Part of the ceiling had collapsed. She stepped over the debris, the cracked panels, dust and cords, and found before her a decayed paradise.
Once, in this circular high-vaulted area, small trees had grown. Gray-white zigzags, tortuous pillars, sprouted from the ground and reached to the ceiling where their branches spread and crawled. These were the corpses of trees. If there’d been leaves, they’d crumbled to dust. Surrounding what she suspected would be a pool were low, curved benches, at the right height for seats.
After weaving and picking her way through the benches and fallen branches, with the dirt crunching under her bare feet, Gio reached the pool. Her feet hurt. Some of the material underfoot was sharp-edged. At least she wasn’t bleeding.
The pool was a perfect concave curve, like a contact lens, or an unscrewed light fitting from her apartment. She’d removed the light, once upon a time, in that faraway land, so she could clean off the dead bugs. The unexpected memory jabbed at her insides and she held her breath, strangling it down, back into her dark terrible place where she kept precious memories. Memories hurt more than anything.
Crying was a weakness here.
She stepped closer. There were no bugs in this. It must have held water?
It was empty except for more bits of shattered trees and dust. Those had mostly slipped to the center which was the deepest part. Hints of blue on the pool floor intrigued her. She stepped into the pool and crouched, with the side of her flimsy red dress gathered in one hand, and she tried not to slip. The surface looked like blue glass. When she brushed away the dirt with her hand, more blue was revealed.
Swirling blue. It moved somehow, beneath this glass. Puzzled, she spat on it and wiped some more using the dress, only to find... Her stomach lurched.
This was a window. Heart pounding and trying not to sick up in her mouth, she backed up the slope to the edge, where she sat, with her heels over the edge and resting on this huge shield of glass.
Pipe inlets meant it was a pool also. Who would make a pool in a king’s house that might break and send you plummeting hundreds of feet into the Engine Sea? Because that was what she’d seen below, the waves and twinkling mists of the sea.
No one who wanted to keep his head.
Therefore, this must be immensely tough glass. Probably feet thick and the equivalent of armored glass, which accounted for the slight distortion.
“You’d need a rocket launcher to kick through it,” she muttered.
Are you here to finalize protocol?
Having heard this before, she didn’t flinch and she glanced around. That’d sounded closer and louder inside her head.
“I guess? Though what does that mean? I’m umm, new here.” She’d said that out loud and wondered if the mechling would pick up her meaning. “Where are you?”
Behind you and beside the seat. I am a Teacher mech.
She edged to her feet and trekked to where he must be. Was this a he? Somehow, she had assigned a sex to it. A simple fat round pillar with a shiny white surface and a central gold knob must be him. Similar to the hallways, etched lines led from the rim of this dais to meet at the center.
“This?” Hesitantly, Gio put her palm on the top. It felt like touchscreen material.
Yes. If you finalize my start-up protocol we can consider the lessons.
Did she want lessons?
“How do I do that?” She circled it, looking for signs of anything moving, lighting up, but there was nothing. “What do you teach?”
Say, I allow you to start.
If these words began an apocalypse, it could only improve this place. “I allow you to start.”
Thank you. I would prefer a mobile body. If you could twist the central knob until it unscrews, please?
“You are some sort of teaching program?”
Yes. I am a tutor, among other things. I teach alphabet, arithmetic, black hole theory, boskonian, batching, battle strategy, GSV culture... He kept going, listing things, and she partially tuned out. Coaching, creativeness, dance...fashion, gunmanship, psychohistory...why the answer is 42...
That had to be the gold knob. It shifted easily, despite the time that must have elapsed since it was last loosened. After three turns the knob ceased to move and she tried to lift it out of the round dais but it was stuck.
“Sorry. That’s all I can do.”
That is sufficient. Drama, decapitation, dueling...
The table cracked at the etched lines, splitting across the top then down the sides. White pieces rose, flexed, unlimbered, stark and elongated. Thin and whippy as windscreen wipers, some of those pieces pointed at her.
Alarmed, hand at her throat, dress swirling as she leaped away, Gio prepared for something awful to happen. She’d possibly seen this in a horror sci-fi on Netflix.
Should she run?
The table sprouted multiple legs, each of them popping up from the etched lines. Legs that led to a dome crowned by the knob, the brain...of whatever it was, this tutor thing. Insectile, the creature scuttled upright and jumped from the top of the pillar, leaving holes where the legs and central body had been. Luckily for her heart, it leaped in the other direction to her leap, and landed partway to the empty pool.
It was still rattling out things it taught.
Several globules, tiny spheres, emerged from the dome near the knob. Those might be eyes?
Perhaps it was distracting her prior to sucking out her brain and devouring her in pieces? Which would explain why it’d been left behind.
Also weapons of the projectile, edged and blunt variety...
“What the fuck are you?”
I told you. I teach. I teach the king and his children and on occasion I teach servants or slaves. At least, that was my last occupation. Which are you?
Branded Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 3) Page 11
