The Madness Project (The Madness Method)

by Bralick, J. Leigh

  I stifled a laugh. “You dan’ na where you’re gannin’?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Fooled me. Well, you’re headed the right way, anyhow,” I said. “We’ll turn right about three big streets east of here. The mill’s at the end of the road on the river bank. If we gan on past it a bit, we can get up near it kind of sneaky-like.”

  “Thanks.”

  We paused at a cross street, watching a plain black carriage roll past. The horses’ coats steamed, the faint wind bringing us the smell of wet leather and sweat, the ringing of metal shoes on cobblestones, the murmur of the coachman’s voice as he steadied the beasts.

  “Newshawks,” Shade muttered.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  He startled, just barely, and shot me a quick glance. “Guessing, really. Don’t those boxes on the back look like their cameras?”

  I frowned. The only thing I knew about cameras were that they miraculously made the photographs show up in the Herald every day. I’d never seen one myself. They were so spanking new, even here in Cavnal, that it surprised me Shade would be so quick to recognize one. I couldn’t imagine they were more popular in Istia, which everyone said hadn’t quite caught up with the latest science.

  Another carriage rattled past close behind the first. A man inside pulled back the black velvet curtain from the door as they passed by, pressing his pale forehead to the glass. I wanted to turn my head and wander away, because of the way the lot of us stood there looking angry and ready for mischief, but Shade just straightened up and stood still as could be, staring right at the man as if he was the one who didn’t belong.

  A minute and the curtain fell back into place. I peeked a glance at Shade. His face was hard and cold as marble, and even his eyes seemed cut from stone.

  “Shade?” I whispered. “D’you know that bloke or something?”

  “No.” He beckoned to the lads and strode off across the street. “I just didn’t like how he was looking at us.”

  “Get used to it,” I muttered. “That’s how they all look at us.”

  We reached the third street and turned right. This far east the buildings were all low and old-fashioned brick affairs, with wide windows and ivy and a smell of peat fires about them. I’d always thought they looked like they belonged in a country village, not the royal city. An old woman standing outside her front door got one goggle at us and hurried inside, only to peer out at us from behind her half-closed door. A man who might have been her husband came out from behind the house with a bucket of water. I stared at him longer than I should have, because there on his face I saw a tattoo, brown swirls like a mustache rimming his lips.

  Shade glanced over and caught his gaze, and for half a moment the two of them just studied each other. Then Shade held up his left hand, making a V with his thumb and pointer finger—the sign of Wake, patron of mages, an outlawed gesture. The man started. A slow smile spread over his face, and he mirrored the gesture with his right hand.

  The woman grabbed at his arm and hauled him inside, but not so fast that I didn’t see he was still grinning like a cat.

  “What was that all about?” Jig asked, running a few steps to catch us up.

  “Spreading the word,” Shade said.

  He gave me a mad kind of smile and picked up his pace, tracing his way through the patchy bits of ice that turned the streets beastly treacherous. We didn’t have far to walk before we could see the massive blast furnaces of the steel mill towering over the buildings. Black smoke coiled up from them, stinking with a sour, acid kind of smell.

  Shade slipped into the shadows of the shop across the street from it, waving us back beside him.

  “We’ve got coppers,” he said after a moment. “No surprise there.”

  I poked my head past him. The mill was enormous, the lower halves of the buildings all brick and ivy and soot-streaked glass, with a crown of iron structures laid on top like an afterthought. I’d never imagined how many buildings would make up the mill, but at least it was fairly easy to tell where we needed to go, by the crowd gathered in front.

  After watching a minute I picked out the newshawks with big bulky devices in their arms, shouting at each other over the excited talk of the other folks who had come. The surly man who had glared at us from the carriage stood near the front of the crowd, arms crossed like he didn’t want to be there, and all around him were fine ladies in furs and grand hats, chattering like squirrels. A small swarm of coppers milled about the crowd. I recognized one of them, the police sergeant with his ridiculous helmet who had marched Prince Tarik off the night of his birthday.

  “Oy, him,” I muttered.

  “Who?” Shade asked.

  “The sergeant. I’ve seen him before.”

  Shade didn’t say aught at first, just watched the sergeant and the other constables. Then he said, “Should I be worried about him?”

  “Dan’ think so.”

  “There’s an awful lot of coppers, don’t you think?” Anuk asked.

  “There’s an awful lot of people,” Shade said, frowning a bit. “Wonder what’s going on.”

  We all crouched in silence for a tick, watching some scraggly-looking folks in greasy grubs congregating near the crowd of fancy-hatted spectators. The coppers seemed to be trying to keep the two groups apart, but far as I could tell, the workers just wanted to stand there and get a goggle of the new tram, too.

  A carriage rolled up and some important looking Minister stepped down, all done up in his official sash and ribbons. He was a puffy looking fellow, with blotchy skin and eyes that were owlish-wide behind his thick spectacles. A small, wraith-thin boy climbed down after him, who I supposed was his son, and the two of them marched off toward another pair of Ministers in the thick of the crowd.

  “Do you think anyone really important will come?” I asked.

  “Like who?” Coins asked.

  Jig smirked at me. “Like the Prince?”

  “Oy, shut up,” I snapped.

  Shade shot me an odd kind of glance but didn’t turn away from his post. “Doubt it,” he said after a minute. “He’s probably too busy playing polo to care about things like this.”

  I scowled but didn’t reply. He was probably right.

  A minute and I fidgeted, my legs cramping up under me, but no one else seemed too keen on moving. Shade watched the crowd and we all watched Shade, wondering what he’d got so fixated on.

  “Shade? When do we move?” Jig asked.

  “Something else is going on. Not sure what.” He turned to me. “Think you can get close and find out what those folks are doing here?”

  “Me,” I said.

  He smiled and said, “Yeah.” His fingers flicked at the lads. “Those two are fighters, and Coins doesn’t like talking to people.”

  We all laughed.

  “A’right,” I said, excitement prickling down my arms. “Hang on a tick.”

  I slipped out onto the street and ambled toward the crowd, slow and bored as could be. The knot of workers had turned into a little mob, but they just shuffled their feet and watched the coppers and the elites, like they were waiting for something. I sidled up beside a kid who might have been a few years older than me, though I couldn’t quite say with all the grease and soot on his face.

  “What’s gannin’ on?” I asked.

  “We’re done,” the lad said, dark eyes flashing.

  “Done with what?”

  He jerked his head toward the factory. “Foreman’s ganna have to listen to us now. We’re done till he agrees to do what he promised five months back.”

  “What was that?”

  “Raise our pay,” he said. “Cut our hours. We’re starving and exhausted, and he dan’ even care. We keep losing folks, too. Old Guff ate it last week. And then the mage. He got so tired he fell in the furnace.”

  “You think he fell in?” I asked.

  He scuffed his boot toe against the cobbles. “Not sure. But Arne was a good man. Odd, a bit, bu
t we all liked him. But that’s just the thing. He worked so hard, but still couldn’t finish the job in time if he had to wait on the furnace. And if he div’n finish, he’d get fired, so he did it his own way. Mite creepy, I’d say, but that’s as it is. Things are bad. No one wants to get fired.” He gave a rueful laugh. “Bet he wishes he got fired, now. Better than getting…you know…on fire.”

  I grimaced.

  “Sorry, that came out wrong,” he said.

  “So what are you here for?”

  He nodded at the factory. “Just wait till the foreman shows up. When he sees all of us here, in front of these fine folks, he’ll have to listen to us, or he’ll look like the greedy bastard he is.”

  “You ganna make a scene?” I asked.

  “Nah. We can’t or the coppers will take us down. Arrest us. Foreman’ll fire us. Then we’ll get shipped off to the mines and no one’ll ever see us again, count on it.”

  I chewed on my lip. “Maybe it’s not such a great day for this.”

  “We’ve been planning for weeks! Ever since they announced we’d be rolling out the new tram for the high-streeters.” He turned and studied me, his thick curly hair hanging in his eyes. “Why? What’s it to you if we strike now or later?”

  “No reason. Just looks like a lot of coppers. Maybe they’ve got a bit antsy and won’t like what you’re up to.”

  “Nah, they’re swell. Honest, I’m more worried about me chums here. Some of them got pushed a lot harder than me. They’re sore for any kind of fix. Hope they dan’ get overly jumpy when Foreman shows up.”

  I nodded. “Hope so. Well, good luck.”

  “You could stay if you like,” he said, smiling. “We can always use another voice.”

  “Can’t stay,” I said, borrowing Shade’s line. “Sorry. I would if I could.”

  “My name’s Mitra,” he called, as I started to walk away.

  I laughed and held up my hand in a wave. “Hayli,” I said.

  “See you later, Hayli.”

  Probably not, I thought, but I smiled as I headed back to the lads.

  Shade had got to crouching against the wall, arms resting on his knees. Jig stood beside him like a watchdog, but Anuk and Coins stood a bit off, chunnering on in their usual nonsense. When I joined them, Shade didn’t move, just glanced up at me and waited for me to talk.

  “Workers are protesting,” I said. “Did we pick a bad day?”

  “We didn’t pick it,” Shade said, eyes darkening. “Did Kantian know about this, I wonder?”

  “Don’t matter now, right?” Coins said. “What should we do about it? Go forward?”

  Shade wrapped an arm around his knees, worrying his lip with his thumb. “We need to get them behind us.”

  “Shade, these folks are just mill workers. Why would they care about us?” I asked.

  He glanced up at me. “Because they’re already on a quick trigger. If they’re already mad enough to get up and protest…” He got to his feet suddenly. “Stay here a minute. I’ll be back.”

  Chapter 12 — Tarik

  I strode toward the milling crowd of workers, searching every corner of my soul for a reason to turn around and walk away. Inciting a riot in front of half the Ministers of the Court…I had to be insane. When I reached the knot of workers and saw a boxy turn his camera in our direction, my stomach pitched and it took all my will not to shift aside and hide my face.

  My face.

  I was just lying to myself if I believed I could separate myself from Shade anymore. The realization hit me with a sudden force, turning my blood cold. I wanted to protest. Wanted to walk away and forget all that I’d done…but how could I? Maybe the world had seen Shade do these things, but no matter what face I wore, no matter what name I called myself, I was the one who had done them. Me. The things I’d done would haunt my dreams for years to come, but showing another face to the world would never undo the truth of who I’d become. Nothing would ever be able to change that.

  Someone tapped my shoulder. “You’re the second face I dan’ recognize…” he began, then as I turned toward him he stopped, and dropped a step away from me. “Oh. Oh. You’re a mage.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  It was the kid I’d seen Hayli talking to, staring at me with a fear in his eyes that I hadn’t expected, like I wasn’t quite human. I frowned. The kids at the Hole seemed indifferent to me being a mage, and I knew how Samyr and Vessa had reacted to me, but…I hadn’t expected this, not from other low-streeters.

  For a moment the kid wouldn’t meet my gaze, but scanned the crowd around us, chewing his lower lip. “Look, I dan’ got a problem with it,” he said. “But just so you know, it might not be safe for you to be about. I overheard Foreman say he’d be happy to send any other mages he meets to the chill with Arne.”

  “He can try,” I said, with a vicious kind of smile. I nodded at the other workers. “You think this will work?”

  “Course it will.”

  “Of course,” I said, and didn’t meet his gaze. “The foreman sounds like a reasonable fellow.”

  “Reasonable? He ain’t reasonable. Not even close.”

  “So…” I turned to him, then. “Why do you think he’ll listen to you?”

  “He has to!” the kid cried, flushing. “He’ll get what’s coming to him if he dan’ listen.”

  I let him ponder the frailty of his claim for a moment, then I slanted him a sidelong glance and asked, “And you think it’ll stop with Arne?”

  “What d’you mean by that?”

  “If he’s the sort of man who thought he could off Arne without any guilt, then he might just be the same kind of man who would do the same to any worker he decides he doesn’t like too well. Especially, say, the workers he might see in this crowd, making him look like a fool.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, but his face turned terribly pale. “He just thinks Jixies—sorry, mages—aren’t really people. Hate to say it, but lots of folks see it that way.”

  “And what about you lot?”

  “What about us? We’re plenty human.”

  I nodded. “You ever heard about one of your number getting knighted?”

  “Who’d want to be one of them? High and mighty and good for nothing. We dan’ need nobles.”

  “What if they decided the same thing about you?”

  “But they do need us,” he said. “They wouldn’t eat if it weren’t for us and the sweat on our backs.”

  I smiled. “For now. What happens when it’s not steam-powered trams instead of chauffeurs, but steam-powered automatons instead of factory hands? Or mechanized miners instead of ones of flesh and blood? You want to become like the horse? Just watch, in a few years, no one will be relying on horses to get them around. They’ll all be driving in those vutting motorcars.”

  “You think they’ll make machines that can do what we do?” one of the other workers asked, turning toward me.

  “What do you think they’re up to in the Science Ministry?” I shrugged. “Look, it’s no matter to me. I’m not from here. But I see how you lot are treated, not to mention those poor folks who are worse off than you and don’t have stavos to keep them in jobs. Shuffled off into the shadows, while the boffins and society folk congratulate each other on their genius and take all the power and fortune for themselves. They’ve already tried to write you out of existence with their laws and what, but that didn’t work. Maybe they’ll decide you’re not worth the effort once they’ve made you obsolete. Decide you can’t be made proper.”

  God, I thought. What am I doing? I don’t even believe this nonsense, do I? Things are bad, but I know where this road leads and it isn’t good. But it’s the only way. Isn’t it?

  “They have no problem shipping off troublemakers to the mines,” I went on, “and everyone knows that’s a death sentence. And if you really get on their bad side? You won’t need to be a mage to go the way of Arne. You know why they hate mages? It’s because mages stand for something these elites
don’t care for. Something older and deeper and stronger than any of their steam engines and science. We know we’ve got to rely on each other, not on ourselves. All those machines and all that knowledge…what does it do but fracture everybody? Make everyone stand alone, or rely on them and their science? But you lot, you’re more like the mages than them. You stand together too. You rely on each other. You’re stronger that way. And they’re dead afraid of that.”

  I had other workers clustered around me now, listening, frowning.

  “That’s right,” one of them said. “Any time one of us gets hurt, or needs help, first thing Foreman does is drive everyone away who wants to give a hand.”

  “And he or his lackeys take care of the problem themselves?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Trying to teach you that they’re the ones to look to, right? They’ve got the answers. They’ve got the power. But they’ve only got it so long as you believe they do.” I paused, for effect, then finished, “If you realize that it’s you who’re strong…that you are the ones with the power…they’ve got nothing.”

  “They are nothing,” the kid said. “All they do is take our wages and tell us where to live and what to eat and what clothes we can wear.”

  “You’re already getting a feel for what it’s like to be one of my kind, then,” I said. “We get told all of that, too, not to mention what jobs we can do and what people we can talk to. Do you really think they see you any differently than they see us? Contempt is contempt no matter who it’s aimed at. Keep the public rich and the workers poor, that’s their motto. They don’t want you to have anything. Certainly nothing that they’ve got. They think the whole point of power is to keep themselves powerful and you powerless.”

  “Cursed the Crown,” someone muttered, and a few others repeated it.

  Tarik blushed; I grinned. “What good is law when all it does is justify how they treat you?”

  “The laws dan’ protect us,” an older man said.

  Another said, “They only protect the elite.”

  “The king’s supposed to be our voice in the Assembly, but he dan’ even care,” the kid said. “The Ministers have got him so wrapped about their fingers that he won’t do aught to contradict them. We might as well not even have a King.”