by Beth Cato
She pounded out her frustration on each metal step going down, and by the time they reached street level, she was breathless yet felt better. Brick buildings around them looked old and eroded but in good shape, with windows intact and doorsteps swept. Residents reflected the same shabby tidiness, as mothers with out-of-fashion hats pushed prams loaded with babies and groceries. Older-model steam cabriolets cluttered the streets, as did numerous bicycles.
The smell struck Rivka as strange. It took her a block to realize why—there was almost no horse manure in the street, even in a poorer neighborhood such as this. The few horses they encountered were in good health, too, quite a contrast to the bony nags that dragged wagons throughout Mercia.
Rivka spied a parasol jutting out of a rubbish bun. The stick was wooden and curved. The cloth of the parasol was stained yet mostly intact, barring a few tears near the edge. She pushed the canopy open, causing Tatiana to glance back in surprise.
“What are you doing?”
“Picking up a weapon just in case. Back in Mercia, I used to carry one of Mama’s old rolling pins.”
“That’s just a parasol,” scoffed Tatiana. “And this isn’t Mercia. People are civilized here.”
Rivka pulled the parasol shut again, her grip tightening. She had imagined how her rolling pin would meet Mr. Stout’s skull so many times. When Mr. Stout finally did die—though not at her hand—Rivka had been unnerved at how accurate her imagination was. The way his skull crunched. The strange, almost chemical smell it emitted.
She still dreamed of that moment. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure if she’d call it a nightmare.
“A parasol can do more than ward away the sunlight and rain,” she said quietly, and hooked it on her arm. “As for the civilization here, Tamarania likes to think well of itself, but there’s still the Arena and that bloodlust. There’s still Mr. Cody.”
Tatiana dismissed the argument with a flick of her wrist. “That’s still not as bad as Caskentia and its fifty years of war. You don’t even see many teenaged boys there. So many are already wounded or dead.”
“There are different kinds of awful.” She hefted the parasol and walked on. Tatiana tried to act as nonchalant as always, but Rivka noted she was much more alert. Good.
The address Tatiana had acquired led them to a redbrick building five floors high. Beyond the roof were high spires of airship-mooring towers, some with ships attached. The wind carried a stronger scent of the sea.
They took two flights of stairs up to a cramped hallway with mostly functional electric lights. The wooden floor griped beneath every footstep. Doors were adorned with signs of various residents and businesses, ranging from homeopath to seamstress to baker. That latter made Rivka smile—a home baker, just like Mama. She inhaled deeply to take in the lovely, yeasty smell that had penetrated the corridor. Maybe as they left, she’d buy something.
Tatiana knocked on the door bearing Miss Arfetta’s sign. Even her knock was clipped and commanding. The floor creaked in warning of an approach. The door cracked open.
“Miss Arfetta’s Medician Shop . . . oh. It’s you two.” Broderick opened the door wide, his expression puzzled. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re potential customers.” Tatiana, short as she was, breezed inside beneath his extended arm. Rivka offered an apologetic shrug and ducked beneath his arm to follow.
They each made formal introductions. The small room sang of fragrances. Shelves lined the walls to shoulder height and displayed jars of ingredients and poultices used in common doctoring. On a table sat a large mortar and pestle, the bowl mounded with partially ground red leaves.
“Miss Arfetta is out on rounds. What did you need? I can sell you doctoring herbs, but I can’t do much more, not without her present.”
“We don’t want to talk to her. We want to talk to you.” Tatiana leaned on one hip as she gazed up at him. “We want to know more about the big gremlin.”
“I’m not supposed to talk about the behemoth chimera. Trade secrets.” He said it wistfully. He wanted to talk. Good.
“Okay then,” said Rivka, her arms folded across her chest. “What do you think about the creature?” The behemoth chimera. It was good to know the proper term.
Broderick blinked. “What do I think?”
“Yes.”
“I . . . I just . . . I do my job, but . . .”
“Miss Arfetta doesn’t treat you very well,” Rivka said softly.
A flush darkened his cheeks. “She’s willing to apprentice me. I’m grateful for that. Most young medicians here give up, or have to go to Caskentia for training. But, uh. You’re Caskentian, aren’t you?”
Her smile was wry. “I know better than to be offended every time people shudder at the mention of my home country.”
He still looked discomfited. “Sorry. It’s just, Tamarania is my home. I don’t want to leave if I can help it.”
“Did everything go well with attaching the behemoth chimera’s other arm?” Rivka asked.
He hesitated a moment, then shrugged, as if giving himself permission to talk. “Yes. The arms aren’t the worst part. The legs are, and that’s next. After that is the wings. The physical construction on them is about done.”
“The next Arena bout is in what, three or four weeks?” asked Tatiana. “That seems awfully close.”
“We started on this right after Mr. Cody lost the last chimera. The most time-consuming work is done. We made the living body, the mechanist made the limbs. We then prayed over the metal, infusing it with magic.”
“Why do the arms first?” asked Rivka.
“It has to be taught how to manipulate items with hands and fingers. That fine motor work takes longer to develop than learning to walk.”
Rivka recalled how it had awkwardly waved her farewell. “Don’t you get tired of calling it ‘it’ all the time?”
“Yes, you really should name the thing. It’s much tidier,” said Tatiana. “Is it a girl or boy? I couldn’t . . . tell.”
“A behemoth gremlin doesn’t have . . . outward parts. It creates vulnerability.” He flushed more. “Most creatures are female by default, but Mr. Cody wanted this one more male, more aggressive.”
“It didn’t seem aggressive to me,” said Rivka.
“Well, sure. It’s chained in a circle. Get up close, and it tries to bite. Did you see those teeth? They’re made to tear through metal.”
Tatiana gave Rivka a direct, appraising look.
Rivka pressed her hands together, thankful she still had them. “I say we call him Lump, because that’s what he looks like.”
“Not exactly the name of the next victor of the Arena,” said Broderick.
“Is that what it’s all about for you, making this . . . Lump into a winner?” Tatiana wrinkled her nose.
Broderick’s mouth was a hard line. At midday, his jaw was already fuzzed with hair growth. “I’d rather heal people, but the behemoth chimera is Miss Arfetta’s biggest contract right now. I do my job.”
“And how often does she leave you here to grind herbs all day, mind the shop while she does real healings?”
“Tatiana?” Rivka wasn’t sure why Tatiana was goading him like this, but she didn’t like it.
His brown eyes turned cold. “I’m learning from Miss Arfetta.”
“Certainly. Learning to use your mortar and pestle.” Tatiana motioned to the work in progress on the table. “What if you could learn more? Really learn?”
“How? There are only five other master medicians in Tamarania and they already have—”
“There will be one visiting here at some point, I imagine. The best of all. She’s the one who befriended that other mecha-chimera—”
“Tatiana!” snapped Rivka.
Tatiana ignored her. “See, this medician is marrying my brother, and she has ta
ken over as headmistress of Miss Percival’s school, so you know she’s the best. Since I live here, I know they’ll return eventually.”
“You’re talking about Miss Octavia Leander,” he said slowly.
“You’ve heard of her?” asked Rivka.
“I suppose most all medicians have, with what she did during that poison attack during Caskentia’s war last year. She’s good.” He shook his head as if dazed. “But why? What are you wanting?”
Tatiana scowled; her manipulation was too transparent. “We want to watch you work on the big chimera. Lump.”
“We want to do more than watch. We want to help,” added Rivka.
“Help, how?” Broderick looked between them.
“Can you get us in?” Tatiana offered a bright smile.
“Is this one of those games where we keep answering questions with questions?”
“We’re not sure what we can do yet.” Rivka frowned and worked her lips together as she tried to articulate her emotions into words. “But down there the other day . . . all those little gremlins, missing parts . . . seeing Lump like that, knowing he’ll be sent into the Arena to maybe die . . . and the jockey would be at risk, too. Tatiana’s brother was the rider in that last Arena bout. She understands the dangers involved!”
Rivka looked to her for support, but Tatiana’s expression was unreadable. Maybe she couldn’t bear to think of her Alonzo in such danger.
“I get it.” Broderick’s voice was soft. “I don’t like it, either, but you two shouldn’t do anything aether-brained.”
“We won’t!” said Tatiana with another smile.
Broderick grunted. “I’ll be there early tomorrow morning to tend the gremlins and set things up for Miss Arfetta. I can’t guarantee you’ll get in, but I’ll see what I can do. Meet me at freight door A on the east side at nine.”
“Thank you!” Tatiana almost sang. She headed toward the door while Rivka lingered by the table.
“Thank you for this. Really. I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she murmured.
“You won’t.” His tense smile said otherwise. “I don’t know what you really hope to achieve, though. It’s not like we can stop working on it—Lump—in the middle of the process. That’s no life. Nor can you release the little gremlins. In their conditions, they have no chance in the urban wild.”
She tucked down her chin and stared at her hands. “I’m a mechanist. Not certified yet or anything, but it’s what I do. I fix things. I’m just not sure how to fix this yet.”
She envied him, his magic. He, like Miss Leander, had a power that she could only imagine. They could save people. What could she do? By Tamaran academic standards, she was yet another ignorant Caskentian refugee. To Grandmother’s dismay, Rivka’s writing skills were abysmal. She had a knack for mathematics and machines, true, but had no comprehension of the advanced skills required to work on a behemoth chimera. That entailed decades of training under a true master craftsman.
“You might regret this, though,” he said. “Working on the chimera won’t be pretty. This is surgery, of a sort.”
“I’ve seen blood. Death, too. That’s why I don’t like to see others suffer.” She shrugged away images of her bloodied past. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tatiana awaited her in the hallway, beaming like an electric light. “That went well!”
Rivka grabbed her by the arm, looming over her. “You had no right to imply Miss Leander would instruct him. You could have just asked him to help us.”
“I could have, and he would have said no. What else would we do? Approach Mr. Cody directly? How do you think he’d respond? We have to get him to like us again—or even better, respect us—before we dare ask him for anything. Besides, if you’ve been around Miss Leander, you know she’d help him. She helps anyone,” she said with a sneer.
Tatiana was like a feral cat Rivka once knew on a tower roof—pretty as could be, and claws quick to swipe if you got too close.
Rivka released her hold. “She helped your mother, too.”
Tatiana’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want to save the gremlins or not? And Lump. What kind of name is Lump?”
Rivka felt so tired all of a sudden. Tired of Tatiana and her manipulations, of the sneer that crept into her voice. Tired of wondering if every whisper was about her face. She wanted to bury herself in her projects and books—even the damned grammar exercises from her tutor sounded pleasant at this point. At least she’d be home.
But the gremlins needed her. She wasn’t sure how to save them, but she knew she couldn’t do it alone. She didn’t want to do it alone.
“Lump is just a name,” Rivka said, looking away.
“Just a name.” Tatiana harrumphed. She walked by, then turned, sudden worry crinkling her eyes. “Are you coming?”
Tatiana was scared to walk back to the tram alone. Good. She should be scared. Maybe on some level she knew that she couldn’t bend everyone to her whim.
“Can you meet me downstairs in a few minutes?” Rivka asked as she switched the parasol hook to her other arm.
“What, are you going to talk to Broderick without me?”
Was that jealousy in Tatiana’s eyes? Rivka shook her head, loose hair lashing her cheeks. “No. I’m going to buy something here. Give me a minute.”
Rivka waited until she heard the stairs creak beneath Tatiana’s weight, then she opened the door to the bakery. The full smell smacked her: bread, yeast, sugar, and so many childhood memories.
“Can I help you?” The woman in the kitchen had to be Grandmother’s age, her skin like mahogany, her hair white and unconstrained like a halo. A table was laid out with the usual Mendalian flatbreads of the southern nations, and speckled egg rolls, and . . .
“Is that . . . a Frengian maple-sugar cake?”
“Yes, yes! Used up the last maple sugar I took as a barter. You Frengian?”
“My mama was. I’ll buy a loaf.” She fingered the coins in her pocket as the baker wrapped a block in paper.
As she headed downstairs, she heard heavy footsteps ascending. Tatiana’s expression was anxious, angry, but upon seeing Rivka, she shifted to her usual haughtiness. “Oh. You really were buying something.”
Had Tatiana really been so sure that Rivka would desert her here, without so much as a parasol for defense? Rivka paused on the steps. She broke the small loaf in half and handed over the larger piece. Food was the only way to earn the trust of feral creatures.
“Here. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”
“What is this?” Tatiana’s nose crinkled as she sniffed it.
“Maple-sugar cake. One of the best things in the world.” Rivka continued downward, taking a small, delicate bite of her half. Maple-flavored glaze glossed over her tongue. The cake beneath was dense and sweet but not too sweet. Sporadic walnuts added crunch. It was perfect.
“Oh.” The voice was small. “I didn’t expect . . . I thought . . . Thank you.”
“If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it. My mama used to make these.” They exited the building and followed the sidewalk toward the station.
Tatiana took a bite of the cake. All was quiet but for a tram rattling overhead and the distant horn of a cabriolet. “No. It’s good. I like it. Really.”
They walked on together, saying a great deal through nothing at all.
CHAPTER 4
Miss Arfetta stalked before them, her boots solidly resounding with each step. “Those who are not graced with the powers of the Lady have difficulty understanding the miracles they witness, but I will not tolerate questions or interruptions. Nor will you gossip about what we do after the fact. I am here to work, not perform theatre. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Miss Arfetta,” answered Rivka and Tatiana, almost in concert. Behind Miss Arfetta, Broderick stood at the edge of the copper circle in
the laboratory. He hunkered over, not meeting their eyes. All their effort to seek out the shop on the south island, to avoid a confrontation with Mr. Cody, and Broderick broached the subject for them. Tatiana and Rivka had been met at the freight door by a cadre of Mr. Cody’s guards. Mr. Cody had approved of their presence in the lab so long as they followed Miss Arfetta’s rules.
Mr. Cody didn’t do favors; he was like Mr. Stout in that way. Both men didn’t simply like wielding power; they liked accumulating it. Mr. Cody had hoped to befriend Tatiana in order to get some connection with her mother. Now Rivka wondered what he wanted of her—or Grandmother. Her publishing company was doing very well and was probably the largest press in Tamarania that he didn’t already control.
“Gentlemen!” said Miss Arfetta with a grand sweep of her arm. “Bring out the legs.” The liveried men went to large crates already open on the far side of the room.
Tatiana shifted in clear discomfort.
Rivka couldn’t resist sidling closer to the workmen to peer inside a box. These mechanical legs bent like the hindquarters of a horse and looked almost as tall as Rivka. The brass gleamed. The feet were broad, with three clawed toes and a rear dewclaw. She imagined it would grant a chimera more balance in the Arena, perhaps the ability to coil and jump. The massive joints certainly looked to have a lot of propulsion power.
“Back off, girl,” growled a man. She glanced up. Unlike the others, this fellow wore a workingman’s suit in gray, his wiry beard bushy. He glowered beneath thick, cigar-like brows.
“Oh! You’re the mechanist.” She kept her voice low to not attract Miss Arfetta’s attention, excited as she was to meet a master craftsman. “I’d love to know what alloy—”
“Don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about. I don’t have time for this.”
That got her dander up. “I might be a woman, but—”
“What do I care for that? My daughter’s my apprentice.” He shook his head. “You, you’re Caskentian. This job requires math, reading. I’m no schoolteacher. Leave my things be, or I’ll make sure you’re not in the laboratory at all.”
