by Storey, Rob
Together with their small group from the elevator, Velirith and her father made their way through the air gardens. When she was younger, she’d found the trek frightening; now she just found it to be frighteningly bad taste.
Greenery was sparse, considering it was a garden. As the visitors neared the great hall they were channeled between two rows of gigantic statues, three or four times life-size. On either side of them—looking down on us, Velirith thought—were the dark likenesses of… House Ek!
The statues were odd not just because of their size, but because they were grey. It was a good color for a tacky effigy—dark, loamy grey, as if the sculptor was short on funds so the material was pulled out of a magal mine, lumped into a mold, and then fired to harden into some stodgy ancestor of Ek Threzhel. Which is exactly what they did, Velirith realized. But the oddest thing about the score of superhuman statues lining the path to the great hall was that they were very highly magnetic, completely cast of magal.
Velirith shook her head at one particularly stern Ek looking down at her accusingly. It evoked an emotional response she could not help voicing, “Ek!”
Because of the proliferation of magnetic statuary, it was well known that one did not wear steel to the New Year’s Gala. Buckles, swords, and particularly lady’s brooches that could tear away, all had to be non-ferrous. Otherwise one was suddenly and unnaturally attracted to the masculine figures lining the approach.
This presented a problem Velirith hoped she could overcome. In her satchel was a tiny cord knife. It was a dull, wooden hook with the only metal being an incredibly sharp blade around its inside curve. It was used in theatre when a strap or small rope needed to be surreptitiously cut to bring down a dramatic effect. It could be hooked around a cord and, with the flick of a wrist, slice through a line of fair strength.
Unfortunately, the cutting edge itself was made of steel.
Holding her father’s arm with her left hand, she clutched her satchel in her right, fiercely pushing down on the satchel to keep it from flying out toward the magnetic Eks.
Even though the sharp sliver of metal around the inside hook was lighter than a hatpin, Velirith could feel the piece jerking the purse from side to side as the massive statues fought for possession. She gently nudged her father so that she was precisely in the middle of the opposing statues. Though she tried to be graceful, her steps wavered.
Her father gave her a sidelong, curious look, but this time said nothing, perhaps attributing it to her nerves.
They climbed the stairs up to the stone promenade surrounding the great hall and entered through its towering doors, joining the queue for Ek Threzhel’s receiving line. Predictably, and the pinnacle of gaudiness in Velirith’s opinion, a magal statue of Ek Threzhel himself stood behind the flesh and blood model at the end of the receiving line. It seemed taller than the others and no less repulsive.
Waiting to greet the Executive Chair, Velirith surveyed the huge interior of the great hall. The domed ceiling of the oval hall was easily sixty feet above them. The room was longer than wide, but not by much. In the center was a mosaic tile pattern typical to all Avertori, a large honeycomb consisting of smaller hexagonal pieces. This was the floor on which the dancers would be paired in the Family Harmony Dance. She involuntarily tightened her grip on her father’s arm at the thought of the dance.
“You okay, Velirith?” he asked.
She forced herself to relax. “Yes, fine, Father. Just jittery. You know I have trouble with events like this.”
Velator nodded, accepting her excuse. Around the dance floor, to both the right and left, were high tables and chairs, all assigned to specific guests. Velirith assumed these were carefully segregated for minimum conflict just as the partnering in the dance was supposed to be.
The assignments did make it easier for the wait staff to find people, especially for the task of delivering New Year’s Greetings during the social hour before the fireworks. The tradition of notes, begun long ago, was initially a warm, loving way for families to uniquely express appreciation or well-wishes to another cherished family. Some families still honored the tradition. But nowadays, many used it as an anonymous way to jab or jibe a rival house. It could get brutal.
The tradition allowed for only one greeting from each person, making the note particularly special. Velirith winced inwardly, realizing that the twenty-two notes in her purse would definitely not add to “family harmony.” But they might make a point that reform was necessary—no, she refused to delude herself: This was a practical joke for her own amusement and to antagonize people who definitely deserved it.
The first person to greet them in the receiving line was Fechua MgFellis, Moshalli’s mother.
“Velator! Velirith! Wonderful to see you,” she smiled broadly. Genuine affection still exists, Velirith noted. It struck her how similar Fechua’s greeting was to her daughter’s just two days earlier. Velirith let go of her father with her left hand and briefly embraced her friend’s mother. Immediately her satchel swung out behind her, repelled by the magnetic statue behind the EC. Of course, that statue would be designed to push steel away from the EC, not draw it in.
Her bag tugged at her shoulder. Without looking, Velirith stretched out her right arm to clutch the willful satchel and hauled it back as gracefully as possible.
Fechua seemed to notice nothing and asked if they had their New Year’s Greetings ready. Velator handed her an elegant envelope which she passed to an assistant behind her.
“I’m sorry, Fechua. I’m not done with mine,” Velirith apologized. “May I bring it up in just a couple of minutes?”
“Certainly. You’re not the only one. Just hand it to the attendant at the table.”
The man behind Fechua took Velator’s greeting over to an elegantly decorated table guarded by another attendant.
“Velirith, that uniform, you designed it, didn’t you?”
Velirith nodded. “Working with theater costumes has serendipities.”
“It is both beautiful and striking,” Fechua admired.
Striking, yes. “Thank you,” Velirith replied. The Merckle trio was just finishing their hellos to the Executive Chair and his wife.
Turning to the EC, Fechua introduced them formally despite the familiar association Velator had with the Executive Chair. “May I present Velator, Prime of House Vel, and his daughter, Velirith.”
Velator gripped arms with the Executive Chair and greeted him congenially, despite full awareness by both that less than a century ago, the Primes of House Vel had occupied the position of Executive Chair. Velirith knew her father simply chose not to harbor ill will. And Velirith herself—she didn’t care. Who would want to rule such a petty society anyway?
She felt her father’s quick sidelong glance, checking that Velirith wouldn’t do anything unbecoming. One year, when she was thirteen, she pretended an over-familiarity with His Eminence, and hugged him ebulliently. His guards, always standing behind him, didn’t appreciate the gesture of “affection”, but couldn’t exactly chastise a thirteen-year-old girl in front of hundreds of guests.
She greeted him with only a sly, confident smile, but did nothing untoward, keeping her right hand tight upon her purse. The Executive Chair returned her greeting politely but warily, as if handling a beautifully wrapped, but dangerous package.
The Executive Chair’s wife was overweight, but not grossly so. She looked as bored as Velirith would have been had she not appointed herself Alternative Entertainment Chairwoman. Their salutations were cursory.
Velirith read a vague suspicion in her father, but Velator simply led her to their table behind one of the wait staff where she pretended to finish her greeting.
“I’ll be right back,” she told her father. She strode over to the decorated note table and stood in front of the box next to the guard. She held but a single note in its stylish envelope. She glanced at the attending guard and smiled. He nodded in return, looking at her a bit too long.
“Oh,”
she said, feigning surprise. There was no name on the envelope. She set the envelope on the edge of the table and used her stylus to scribe the name. As she lifted her hand, the card fell to the floor. “Oh!” she said again. She moved to bend over and retrieve it, then stopped as if realizing the impropriety of a young lady crawling under the table to pick up the note. “Would you be so kind?” she asked the attendant.
The man was more than willing to please. As he knelt and ducked his head, she deftly removed the remaining twenty-one notes—all differing in content, packaging and handwriting—and dropped them into the box. The attendant rose, smiled and bowed. Then he placed her final note in the box for her.
“Thank you very much.” Velirith returned the bow with a charming smile. Then, with great composure, she walked back to her table, passing another young man with a belated note heading for the box.
Chapter Eight
They won’t shoot yet.
He hoped. Kieler had considered the possibility that he’d be discovered on the way to the Charlaise building and decided they wouldn’t shoot in the crowded Garrist Ring unless they thought they would lose him. At this point, it looked like they would run him down in about six seconds.
He broke into a dead run to change the intercept point and kept arrow straight as if he were going to pass right by the Charlaise building. His conspicuous speed and the purposeful movement of his first pursuer attracted more unwanted attention. Within a few steps, another half-dozen Cortatti roughs emerged from hidden posts and were angling toward him. They were all running now.
Kieler made the front of the Bintle-owned bank and cut right. Once through the sturdy doors, he reduced to a brisk stride across the large lobby and headed directly for the inner stairwell door. Behind him every Cortatti seemed to burst through the doors at the same time, weapons drawn.
The head clerk gave a shout, “Lock down!” and dashed for an emergency lever.
Kieler had about two seconds before the stairwell door in front of him would be sealed. He dove for it as the clerk yanked down on a huge brass lever to lock the doors of the building through a complex series of magnetic relays. Behind the general din, he heard magguns spinning up.
He hit the door, slamming it open. Once in the stairwell, he spun and threw his weight back onto the door to shut it. Now that he was through, he wanted it locked. Within a second of it closing, he heard the very satisfying, metallic thunk of a huge bolt sliding into place.
He rolled right as metal rang. A huge hole split open just inside the handle. Fortunately Kieler’s hand wasn’t on the handle as the maggun bolt tore through. He scrambled away before any more bolts hit and ran up the stairs.
That the Cortatti’s had fired inside a Bintle bank showed how intent they were on getting him. It also showed a frightening confidence that they felt they could wield their increasing power amongst the other houses. Kieler could hear more of the bolts flying below, but he had no idea whether the Cortattis were blasting the door or if Bintle security was laying down fire of its own. Regardless, in less than thirty seconds, all shots ceased. Kieler smiled.
This was a good break. He was trapped. Supposedly. They thought they had him, and sure enough, as he tried a door three levels above the lobby, it too was bolted. The Cortatti goon squad was probably figuring they had only to secure the exits and wait him out. They were sure to send contingents to the levels below as well. But he knew there was only one way to the roof, and he was on his way to it. On an earlier night, he had ensured that no bolt would bar him from rooftop access. In the lobby, tense and heated negotiations would be underway.
Regardless that his pursuit had been delayed and that he had trained extensively for this night, trotting up fifty flights of stairs was still a physical challenge. He shed his outer clothes, but carried them so they would not know whether he had gone up or down. The Bintle lock down could be overridden, but only one door at a time—so Movus’ intelligence reported. Kieler doubted the bank Officer-in-Charge would cooperate quickly with the Cortatti thugs trapped in his building.
On the roof, Kieler dropped the spare clothes and went to work. It had taken him many nights over the past weeks to carefully and methodically prepare for this. And he hadn’t done it using the stairs either. Behind a ventilation duct Kieler threw back the dark cover and felt a thrill of pride. There, secure against any wind, was the lightweight metal frame of a small airship.
A sharp crack sounded just off the edge of the roof and Kieler dropped to the deck. His heart sunk wondering how they had caught him before he could enact his plan. But then he realized; the fireworks had begun!
A giant sphere of purple and gold lightning expanded in the space between the roof and the Executive Palace, right in the center gap of Garrist Ring. The magal-luzhril burst produced a crackling thunderclap as it expanded, its aura lingering in fading radiance. Purple and gold, the colors of House Ek.
Kieler climbed to his feet and began to ready his ship. The hard rains had slackened but the clouds were still thick and threatening, waiting for reinforcements from the northeast. The wind was thankfully light.
His father had been obsessed with making energy production available on a smaller scale. This obsession had developed because Ek Threzhel had manipulated the magal supply to increase his own fortune. Kieler’s father wanted to break the hold House Ek had on everyone’s lives by their monopoly on magal. Out of this awesome and horrible obsession had come the engine that now drove Kieler’s magnificent little airship. It had also cost Kieler’s father his life.
Now Kieler’s own life was on the line. He stripped another tarp off three hydrogen tanks stowed next to the empty metal airframe. The inflatable envelope that would hold the gas was still secure and draped carefully around the frame for quick deployment.
He opened the valves on all three tanks, one after another, and could hear the steady hiss of gas entering the envelope. He easily had twice the hydrogen he needed for liftoff, but since there was no second chance, Kieler had flown in backup cylinders. Now that he was expecting company, there were other uses for the excess hydrogen. His ideal plan had been to slip up here unnoticed. A maggun shootout in the lobby was hardly ideal.
At first, the envelope looked as if it were barely filling. He checked that the valves were full open and then left the filling airship while he ran a thin wire in front of the rooftop door. The likely charge out of the door would yank the tripwire. After the airfoil was inflated, he would hook the hydrogen canisters into the trap.
By the light of multicolored aerial explosions he changed clothes. He had cooled from his ascent despite the work of setting up the airship. Donning his final disguise, the one he had stashed here on the rooftop just two nights ago, he buttoned the high collared dress uniform of House Ortessi. It was a sharp set, he admitted. Most houses had sunk to the loftiness of extremes, having colors and cuts that were gaudy and garish. But house Ortessi had risen to prominence with the classic houses, and thus fell when greed and self-aggrandizement became the style. At any rate, the deep green uniform trimmed with gold was simple and elegant, even if this particular formalwear was not suited for surreptitious excursions. Far too restrictive. He kept the Ortessian sigil tucked in an inside pocket for now.
Stepping over his wire, Kieler listened at the door. Nothing. No—wait, a banging far below. They were opening the door from the lobby!
The airship was taking shape. It was a large, bulbous wing that tapered toward the rear of the craft. It was not simply a balloon. Simple balloons had been tried, but were too susceptible to the whims of the wind. They were dangerous and unwieldy. Kieler had created a semi-buoyant craft which used his fathers small engine to provide forward motion for extra lift and control.
To create this forward velocity, a motorized fan was needed. And that motor had been unavailable until his father had made it possible to create one smaller than a man’s chest.
The dimples on the surface of the envelope were fast disappearing as hydrogen poured in from
the three tanks. Kieler quickly shut down the first one, disconnected it, and rolled it over to another ventilation duct near the door.
Carefully, he balanced the tank on the edge of the duct so that the slightest pull from the wire would send it crashing down and break off the valve, turning the tank into a very distracting rocket. He listened at the door but a moment. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard footfalls far below.
He dashed over and disconnected the second canister. While he rolled it into it’s place for his crude trap, he allowed the last cylinder to finish filling out the airfoil. By the time he was ready for the final tank, the skin was tight and sleek, having formed into shape. He rolled the last canister over and balanced it next to the other two, then gently threaded the tripwire.
There was nothing left to do. Kieler jumped over the wire toward the door to listen for a brief second. He didn’t have to try very hard. The slow clomping of exhausted men was close.
Kieler leapt back over the wire, ran to his ship, and slashed the tie-downs. He then jumped into the pilot’s seat as the craft began to drift. As he pushed a lever forward, a core of highly purified magal slid into the engine and the fan whirred into motion. Revving softly, his airship started rolling across the roof.
Fireworks splashed the sky, illuminating his short takeoff. The beautiful explosions were a good distraction, pulling attention away from him. He just didn’t want to become part of the evening’s fiery entertainment.
The ship picked up speed, handling well. He had to be well clear of the roof when they barged through that door. If necessary, he could accelerate more by diving. Upon clearing the roof, the ship dropped sharply, but then picked up enough speed to be controllable and leapt back above the rooftop. He was airborne! No one in Zotikas had a machine like this one!
The airship pulled steadily away. His plan was to climb high above the bursting fireworks and enter the palace via a high balcony.
