by John Daulton
The boy was beyond startled, and he recoiled spastically, flinching away from her and making a very embarrassing panic face for all to see. In the moment after, he glanced to the tray on the floor then back up at Pernie. She leaned her little face forward, her gaze predatory, inviting him to say or do something else pushy or mean. His eyes widened for a moment, then he bent and picked up his tray. He turned and lifted it up for the round-faced lunch lady without so much as another glance in the direction of Pernie or her friend.
When Pernie and Jeremy were finally seated, at the far end of a long row of tables and benches, Jeremy stared across the table at her, openly amazed and perhaps a little terrified. “He’s a seventh grader,” he proclaimed. “Are you crazy?”
“I don’t care,” Pernie said, grimacing as she took a bite of the mashy white stuff they called potatoes. “Size doesn’t mean anything. Neither does age. Not even weight or weaponry. Nothing does.” She’d killed the king of the sargosaganti; she knew for fact that this was true.
He frowned at that. He, unlike her, enjoyed the food here, and he ate heartily. “Why do you say that?”
“It just doesn’t,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be afraid.”
“But I am,” he announced, perfectly at his ease. “But that’s okay. I don’t come here to fight. I come here to learn.”
That’s what Pernie had said her first day on the bus. Nobody else had said that before.
“Well, you still shouldn’t let them push you. They’ll just do it again.”
“We’ll see how much they push when I make my android.”
That lit up Pernie’s eyes. “Really?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ll make mine a full combat droid. I’ll program him so he can even wear the big battle suits. The Tesla-Matsura Six, even. Mine will be the first mech-pilot android. Mine will be so close to human that it will be able to control everything in it too. All the heads-up stuff and twitch controls. Then they’ll see.”
“Why don’t you just make a big robot like the arm in the robotics lab?”
“Because machines don’t have instincts. You have to have a human brain. That’s why I have to make an android. You have to get the human part. The skin, the nerves, the brain. It has to be human enough to hook into the mech, but machine enough to think a million times faster than we can.”
Pernie thought that made robots sound like elves. “Elves don’t have instinct either,” she said. “Maybe they are robots inside.”
“Elves?”
“Yes, they are a different kind of people on Prosperion. I know some. They are teaching me how to fight. But I’m not supposed to talk about that, so I can’t say anymore or they won’t teach me how to ….” She blanched and snapped her teeth together in an awkward grin. “Well, I’m not supposed to talk about that either.”
Jeremy looked like he really wanted to know super bad, but he didn’t make her say. That’s why she liked him. He didn’t make her talk about things she didn’t want to. Sophia Hayworth did. Sophia Hayworth was always asking, “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” and “What’s on your mind?” But that was okay. Pernie kind of liked Sophia Hayworth most of the time. She was teaching her a lot, and she never got mad. Pernie had even stopped thinking of her as “fake mother” most of the time. She was just Sophia usually.
Don Hayworth was nice too. Don said he would teach her how to play baseball this weekend. She didn’t know what that was, but Don said it was an old game that everyone loved to play. Playing would be fun. She’d been very focused on learning everything. The more comfortable she got with the computers and the devices the Earth people made, the more she learned—and the more she learned, the more she began to think that it might be harder than she thought to learn everything right away. She also thought Orli Pewter might know more things than Pernie had originally anticipated. And Pernie was very far behind. But one game of baseball would be okay.
And some time working on Jeremy’s robot.
When they were done eating, and Jeremy was done eating most of Pernie’s food, they headed to the science room to spend some time on just that very thing. Jeremy had to take the thumb apart, because it wasn’t working properly.
She sat watching him struggle with it for a time, and finally asked, “What are you trying to do?”
“I have to get this tensioner off. It’s like a ligament, holds the joints together. But it’s super tight. And if I nick it, it will tear right through.”
Pernie watched some more. Jeremy’s hands and face were trembling with the effort of trying to get the pieces apart. “It’s not supposed to be this hard,” he said.
“Are you sure you’re doing it right?” Pernie couldn’t know for sure if he was or wasn’t. She wasn’t trying to be mean. She just wondered. She had been watching him for a while, though, and she was pretty sure she knew what he was trying to do. The tool was very simple, and she thought it might just be that he was kind of weak.
“Yes, I’m sure. I don’t know why it won’t work.”
“Can I try?”
He looked up at her. She was absolutely serious. She could tell he was afraid she would break it.
“If I break it, I’ll buy you a new one,” she said. “I have money, you know. Master Tytamon sent me a lot of money. Or he had a lot of money made for me here.” She shrugged. She hadn’t figured that stuff out yet because it didn’t seem to matter and it was really boring.
Jeremy paused, and pulled his chin toward his throat. “You had money made?”
“Yes,” she said. “They did something with a heap of Tytamon’s gold back on Prosperion. He gave it to the man from the TGS office, who said he would turn it into money here on Earth.”
“Oh,” Jeremy said. He looked back at his project.
“So will you let me try it?”
His mouth shifted back and forth across his face.
“I won’t break it,” she said.
She was sure he was going to tell her no, and she was preparing her best pouty face, when he reluctantly agreed. “You’re sure you can get me another one if it does? At least the tendon and ligament? They cost a lot, you know. Eighty credits each.”
She smiled happily. “Of course I can. I have enough to buy that thing you said was where you park.”
“That what?”
“You said you wanted to buy something near where you park. In town, by your house.”
One eye closed as he scrunched up the left side of his face, trying to figure out what she was talking about. Then it dawned on him. “A townhouse by the park.”
“Yes, that was it. I can buy you one of those if you’d like.”
It was his turn to frown.
“Come on,” she said, reaching for the tool. “I promise I won’t break it.”
He was just staring at her, like he was trying to decide something. She reached for the tool in his hands, a small metal rod with a hook. He didn’t snatch it from her when she gently pulled it from his grasp.
She moved around the workbench to where he was, shouldered him gently aside, and quickly found where the joint was he’d been working on. She pushed the hook underneath the expanse of dark gray material that looked like polished string. She tugged on it gently, and found it to be on very tight. She pulled a little harder. Still nothing. She continued to pull harder until, just like that, it popped off.
She turned triumphantly to him, presenting him with the tool. “I told you I could—”
He was crying.
Chapter 14
The Earl of Vorvington sat at his opulent desk in his opulent offices on the top floor of the opulent Castles, Inc. building. Castles, Inc. was a construction and transmutation business the portly nobleman was forced to operate to augment the paltry earnings his earldom provided.
Still, his station gave him advantage in business, and he was privileged in his contracts, operating almost entirely for the Queen, who awarded to him almost every job his company bid on. In the aftermath of the war, he was making a fortune
repairing damage to the city, in particular to the Palace walls, as he was one of the few people with access to any wizards at all these days. What the TGS hadn’t taken, Her Majesty nearly had, and with Her Majesty tied up in her own affairs more so now than at any other point in his memory, she’d given him all the more leeway to get things done. Which was good. Leeway provided a man of opportunity with, well, opportunities. And a man like Vorvington prided himself on his vision when it came to such matters.
Speaking of which, he was just stuffing a set of very special plans pertaining to a section of the Palace wall into an ivory tube when a knock came upon his door, announcing the arrival of a diviner from the temple of Anvilwrath. She was a young acolyte, very pretty, whose name was Klovis, as he recalled. He’d been expecting her. He opened the door and gazed at her, a smile creasing his fleshy face.
Her face was stern but comely, high cheekbones and a narrow nose above lips that likely did not smile much. But most noticeable about her was the scar, a long, straight line cutting from just below her throat down between her breasts and vanishing into her rust-colored robes. It was narrow and well healed, the slight rise of it only a shade paler than the rest of her flesh, but she made no effort to hide it, much less have it properly removed by a cosmetic healer. Rather, she seemed to wear it with pride, and his eyes were even directed to it by the copper spearhead medallion she wore suspended from a copper chain around her neck. His tongue crept out from between his lips, wetting them, as he thought about where that scar went.
“The Grand Maul says that it is done,” the young priestess said. “Your people have dug it out. He thanks you and assures you that you and he and … that everyone is on the same line of the prophecy.” She handed him a sealed envelope. “Here is what you asked us for in return.”
“Right,” grinned the earl, ignoring the envelope in his hand in favor of studying the scar. The neckline of her robe had shifted when she handed it to him, revealing another finger length of the wound. He’d heard that scar ran all the way to her nether parts, carved into her by the claw of a demon. He licked his lips again. “You’re very pretty, you know.”
“I’m sure that I am grateful that you say so, My Lord.” She spun and left.
He watched her go, the pendulous movement of her robes tracing the athletic body underneath. His fingers twitched, his hand shaping itself as he imagined what her buttocks might feel like to the touch. He imagined clutching it, and his breath quickened. There were other advantages of station as well, pressures that could be applied, favors called.
But the marchioness would be furious if she caught him. And she watched.
He looked down at the envelope. It was the Grand Maul’s seal. That wrinkled old demon made Vorvington twitch. Half a millennium at least, that cripple of a man had been asserting his influence in this city. Long before Her Majesty was here. He was as patient as he was old, and he had the light touch of a thief. Of a weasel perhaps. But powerful. A Five: two Ws and a T at the top, which was a lot of magic in a body so frail.
Vorvington opened the missive. It read:
The office of your dead nephew. You will find it there. The key. Follow it.
He actually laughed. Damned diviners were all the same. All those years in a wheeled chair rolling around in the darkness under the temple of Anvilwrath had made the Grand Maul even more abstruse than all the rest. But they were all the same, diviners, mystics, blathering nonsense most of the time. Often their “visions” were only explained in retrospect. He could go find anything in Thadius’ old office, an acorn or an old pot of ink, and if things shaped up well for the old priest and his prophecies, then of course that had been the key. If things went poorly, well, then it would be Vorvington to blame. He’d found the wrong thing. Or he’d misread it. Or he’d followed it to the wrong place.
What in nine hells did it mean to follow a key, anyway?
Nonetheless, the marchioness would be expecting him to do it, so he did. He closed up his desk and tucked the note inside his ivory case, rolling it up and stuffing it into the plans.
He wheezed a little by the time he made his way down the stairs to Thadius’ old office. In truth, he hadn’t been in the room in well over a year. Not since Thadius had died. He’d been fond of his nephew—at least, as fond as a man like Vorvington could be of a man with Thadius’ temperament. Thadius had provided him a vicarious life of seduction and depravity, stories shared over fine bottles of wine, stories of things that Vorvington was no longer allowed to do.
He sighed as he looked upon the dusty desks. There were two: one had been Thadius’ and the other had belonged to the transmuter Aderbury, whom Her Majesty was so fond of. The man was a fabulous transmuter, perhaps the most artistic of them on all Prosperion, but the poor bastard was flying Citadel now. Vorvington liked Aderbury well enough—he’d certainly made the earl a fortune with his exquisite talents melding stone—but, all of that was done now. Vorvington was making do with what transmuters he could find in Aderbury’s absence, and he’d brought on a great deal more numbers of blanks. They were dreadfully slow, but they worked cheap. That was the beauty of a blank: you could pay them a pittance, and they’d take it for fear they might not have enough to eat. They did all the work, and produced nearly everything, and yet they were ever willing to leave all the wealth to the nobility, satisfied to live on what they were handed back from the sale of what they themselves had made. It was a beautiful system, and Vorvington was eternally happy to have been born on the right side of it.
He rummaged through Thadius’ old desk. He had no idea what he was looking for. A key. What kind of key? A key-key, or something else? Some kind of epiphany? Some object or document that would suddenly flash an idea into his mind?
Maybe he was looking for a map. Maps had keys. Perhaps he was supposed to follow it.
He went through every drawer. There were heaps of parchments, documents, plans, and maps. None of them prompted any sort of epiphany. None of them did anything at all. He could name every project for each of them from memory.
Maybe it was something else. A book open to some prophetic page. Maybe a quill had been laid aside, and now, by the hand of fate, lay pointing at something vital somewhere in the room, or perhaps at a suggestive portion of some painting on the wall. It was just the sort of idiocy that a diviner might rely on—especially a five-hundred-year-old crippled one, rolling around in Anvilwrath’s tomb picking through the rubble of a war he did not predict, at least not in any way that counted meaningful, meaningful in the way of preventing it or even leaving time for preparation.
He looked and looked, but there was nothing. There were no pens, no knives, no ivory toothpicks. There were no revelatory lines in the dust, no fringes of carpets or angles in the arms of a damned chair … nothing that pointed conspicuously to anything in any pictures on the wall. There was nothing. Not even an actual key.
He sighed and turned to leave. He was wasting his time. Let the marchioness send her own private diviners to come do something with the Grand Maul’s message. He’d been looking for a half hour and it was nearly dinnertime. He hadn’t eaten since tea, and that was nearly three hours ago.
He looked one last time around the room. There was nothing. Not even anything on Aderbury’s desk. Although he hadn’t looked through it. The note said Thadius’ old office, not Aderbury’s.
Still, he supposed he should, just so that he didn’t get berated by the marchioness. The young priestess Klovis had stirred his loins, so he might as well try to stay on speaking terms this evening with the marchioness.
He opened the top right drawer, and lying there was a key ring with a handful of keys. Vorvington cursed. “Sons of harpies, all of them.” He took the ring and looked through all the keys. None of them were spectacular. They were simply regular old keys. One key to the building, another to the basement, one to the room on the third floor where they kept the more important designs and patent documents. There was a house key and three more smaller ones that likely unl
ocked chests or drawers. There was literally nothing among them remotely remarkable.
He looked around the office for a box or a trunk that he might unlock with one of the smaller keys. There were none. There were no small boxes in the other desk drawers. There was nothing.
He shook his head, his breathing heavy now for the effort of bending down and rummaging through everything. Then it occurred to him that it might be obvious after all. The damn house key. That was the key, and he already knew where it led. It led to Aderbury’s home.
He had to go to the records office on the second floor, but as it was his business, it was only moments before the clerk found the address. Vorvington’s driver had him at the premises in twenty minutes more.
No one answered his knock, and the key on the ring fit exactly as Vorvington figured it would. He went inside. There was no one home. He looked around, saw nothing out of the ordinary. He ran his finger over the table in the front room. It was lightly coated with a film of dust. So was the counter top in the kitchen and surfaces every where he looked. Nobody had been there in weeks.
He looked around some more, rummaging through the kitchen and the pantry. He went through closets. He went through bedrooms. He had no idea what he was looking for.
He found Aderbury’s study as he made his way down the hall. He opened the door and went in. There was a desk, a few shelves full of books, and a cabinet upon which sat a homing lizard cage. The lizards were all dead. Starved to death by the look of them, that or thirst. They were all shriveled up like dried apricots. He wondered if that was why he was there, if they were the sign he was supposed to find. Some sort of ironic clue.
It didn’t seem likely.
He went to the desk first. Aderbury’s desk at Castles, Inc. was where he’d found the key. He was prepared to check for locked drawers, but there in the center of the desk, set there prominently as if left out for him to see, was a set of plans for the strangest series of fortresses he had ever seen. Nine of them, vaguely like those hastily built in wilderness areas, depicted as having been built upon formations that looked like rock. Eight of them formed a loosely shaped circle and were joined to the ninth at the center, connected by ramparts that arced ridiculously, high humped and steep at both ends. There were other pages to the plans as well, interior plans and top views and other details pertaining to customized transmute spells required for the making of them. None of it was particularly unusual other than the design.
