Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  The pamphlet had ranged over the history of the world and thaumaturgy’s place within it. The world had suffered a fall, and seditionism, it argued, was a regenerative philosophy. Seditionism recognized that the natural state of affairs had been replaced by a transitional period of recovery, through which they were now living, from the cataclysm almost a thousand years before. In this historical moment, all things were fragmented: thaumaturgy from everyday life, the heart from the head, freedom from responsibility, power from the people, the people from themselves. The Houses, Kamron argued, were the ultimate expression of this broken whole. The task was to regain the lost unity, to heal the broken parts. Max had spent the whole night reading, and then rereading, the pamphlet.

  By dawn he was an avowed seditionist. Odile laughed at him and quoted an ancient aphorism: “Impetuosity leads only to regret.” She was an intellectual, not a seditionist, she said. The two could not coexist. Max protested. A true intellectual needed to be a seditionist.

  Max had found Kamron through a series of intricate steps, following whispered rumors and half leads, until eventually he met the soft-faced Iniria in a secret room. Her slow-moving calmness had been the opposite to everything he’d expected of a seditionist. But later he realized it had helped him accept her directions: she blindfolded him and led him to the hideout. That was before Ejan had taken control of the initiations and turned them into brutal and testing affairs.

  Max had imagined that the seditionists must be a group of hundreds, so it was with some shock that he realized there were only eighteen of them, and Kamron was not at the head of an army fighting for freedom. But it was of no matter. Now, however, Max felt a desire to build that army, and here at the printing works seemed to be the very soldiers he sought.

  Beside him, the tall and willowy Odile ran her hand through her short-cropped blond hair as they watched the printers now setting alight the paper stocks that were piled up against one of the factory’s bluestone walls. The smoke billowed toward the roof.

  “Not just here—the tramworkers, too,” said Odile. “There’s been sabotage at their factory.”

  Max nodded. “The Xsanthians have been unhappy down at the docks.” Max had visited the strange fish-men where they lived in the darkness beneath the wharf that very morning. House Marin kept them like slaves; they spent their days diving for pearls and shellfish, or loading and unloading ships.

  “Guards!” someone called out, and the crowd scurried in all directions away from the printworks.

  “Take care,” Odile said. She touched his arm briefly, then was gone.

  Max, too, turned away. Everything, he knew, must be subordinated to the long-term interests of seditionism. Now was too dangerous a moment to connect with the printers, and he had already disregarded Kamron’s strictures by contacting the Xsanthians. Still, he thought of Nkando and felt the pain in his chest. Nkando—he pictured the dark skin of her face, the thickness of her lips, the way her head tilted up when she looked at him—he had turned his back on her, too. The memory burned in him and he pushed it away.

  Max walked quickly toward the foot of the cliffs but stopped while he was still within view of the factory. Blue-uniformed Arbor guards trotted up toward the printworks, long pikes in hand. They rushed into the building, and there were the sounds of violent struggle: the clash of metal on metal, belligerent rough-voiced calls, screams of pain. Max emmited a low sound of frustration that only he could hear, then turned, and walked away.

  As Max walked closer to the cliffs, so that their white faces loomed high above him, he was aware of the shadowy figure, a presence slipping through the remaining pedestrians, now close, now farther behind, like a ball being dragged on a string.

  The streets were even narrower here: three- and four-story buildings pushed up close to each other, the shops and bars miniature little things, able to only fit ten or so people. Iron balconies faced each other across the narrow spaces. The bars were busily being cleaned after last night’s Sun Parade. Great piles of rubbish—abandoned cloaks, minotaur hand puppets, empty bottles of Ayan flower-drafts, the last scraps of traditional goat stew—filled stinking barrels pushed up against the walls. In no time, rodents would begin picking through them, attracted by the fetid odor that wafted along the alleys.

  Stopping to glance in one of these bars, Max sensed the figure hovering behind. He walked on a little, pretended to look in boxes of books standing outside a bookstore. He ran his hands through his curly brown hair, feeling the locks with his fingers, and glanced at his pursuer: a suited man, unremarkable in every way, a man dressed to be unseen. Max was of two minds. He should hide, lose himself among the winding streets. That’s what Kamron had always argued: lie low, hide, wait. But Max was filled with the desire to strike back, to uncover his pursuer, to act.

  Maximilian moved on, nearing the place where the houses ran up against the cliffs like an incoming sea. The streets doubled back on themselves or opened out into small squares, hidden away, some no larger than a small room. Staircases led to arched walkways that ran high above street level, a second network above the first.

  There were fewer people on the street here: mysterious pedestrians, faces hidden beneath their cloaks, students scurrying, he assumed, to meet their friends, elderly men or women carrying bread, bottles of milk, cartons of tomatoes.

  In this little maze, Max flitted from street to alleyway until, coming to one of the squares, he pressed himself into a corner, drew several forms in the air with his hands—small mathematical ideograms—and uttered a couple of equations beneath his breath. He entwined the two together just so. Thaumaturgy had its own language of numbers and symbols. Like any language, it possessed a grammar. Its elements—its calculations and processes—had to come one after the other at the appropriate time.

  Around him, the world seemed to light up. The walls, the paint that adorned them, the cobblestones—everything pulsed with radiant power, bursting with a previously unseen life, immanent with meaning. He considered beginning one of the protection incantations that would protect him from the harmful effects of the thaumaturgy, but he didn’t have time. His pursuer would turn the corner at any moment.

  As he waited, his uncertainty grew: his heart hammering on his ribs, his mouth dry, his hands sweaty. From the alleyway he heard the sound of footsteps, a soft pat-pat-pat on the cobblestones. Maintaining his illusion, he drew his knife, long and thin. The sound rang out in the quiet stone walls. He held the blade with one hand to kill the sound, and clenched his teeth. The footsteps came closer now, pat-pat-pat, and Max tensed, ready to spring.

  A lone figure walked through the archway. Max remained rooted to the spot, unable to leap, his heart rattling like a broken engine within him. The figure passed though the tiny square, not six feet from him. He exhaled: it was only a servant woman with an apron, holding a small basket of oranges in her hands. Max leaned back, his back hard against cold stone.

  Before long he again heard the sound of footsteps approaching. On the opposite side of the square, the woman passed through the archway. The second set of footsteps stopped, close to the archway out of sight. Max tensed again; his heart raced.

  The suited man looked around the corner of the archway. Around his eyes were lines of worry and fear. When he opened his mouth, perhaps in fear, Max could see a couple of teeth were missing, the others yellowed. He looked straight at Max, but did not see the invisible seditionist in the corner. The illusionist’s charm was effective. The man quickly looked away toward the opposite corner of the square.

  Max leaped and slammed into the man with his shoulder. Someone let out a gurgling cry and Max realized it came from his own throat. The world lost its immanence as the thaumaturgy shimmered away. He crashed to the ground with the twisting body beneath him. Somehow he pushed the man down and straddled him, his knife pressed against the man’s neck.

  “No!” The man’s eyes widened in fear.

  Max looked down at that face, now twitching and shuddering, as if un
dergoing some kind of fit.

  “Please.” The man shuddered again.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Max clutched the knife madly, driven on by some unknown force within him, his heart thumping now with exhilaration.

  The man looked at him, “Because…” The man’s face gave one last tremble and froze in a final spasm. He let out a wail and started to cry. “I’m only, I’m only…”

  “What?” asked Max. “You’re only … you’re only.… Which House?”

  “Technis,” said the man.

  “What do they know about me?”

  “I’ve got children. A family. My daughter’s name is Camille. She’s four.”

  “Shut up.”

  “My name is Pi … P … Pierre.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m—”

  Max struck the man’s cheek with the back of his hand. His wrist hit bone. Pain shot up to his elbow. “What do they know?”

  “I don’t know. They just pay me to keep an eye on things at the docks. I was supposed to follow anyone approaching the Xsanthians. I … I’m supposed to find out where the radical groups are hiding.”

  Max prepared to kill the man. He pressed the blade against the House agent’s skin. The man tried to elongate his neck to escape the blade, but it was no use.

  “I won’t work for them anymore!” said Pierre. “I have a child. Her name is Camille.”

  I’ll kill him, thought Max. I should not let a Technis agent know me, recognize me. Max hesitated. He had never killed a man, and now the very notion seemed surreal and impossible. He lost a sense of all his reasons, of the world itself and his place in it. He stared at the knife, gleaming against the man’s neck. But he couldn’t do it. The man’s name was Pierre. He had a child.

  The blow struck him on the side of the head, hard. Max’s body went limp and he collapsed to the cobblestones, face first. Instinctively, he curled into a ball as a second blow glanced off his shoulder. Then he was kicked hard in the leg. He felt the foot sink into his soft flesh. Pierre was already up, and Max caught sight of his leather boot, the sole coming away from its heel.

  “You scum. You seditionist scum. I don’t have no daughter. You believed that?” Pierre laughed. “I don’t have no children.”

  A vicious foot come down on Max’s ribs. He groaned, curled into a ball.

  A second voice said, “You’re supposed to follow them secretly, you fool.”

  “Not so secretly so you lose sight of tthem. Where were you, huh? We were supposed to be working together, and you just disappear.” said Pierre.

  A foot struck Max’s head and he lost all strength. He slumped down and his head fell sideways on the cobblestones. A properly placed blow could kill him now.

  Pierre held the knife to Max’s throat. He felt the tip sharp and cold and felt his own helplessness. Max lifted his head and shuffled to one side on his stomach, but Pierre followed him, the knife breaking his skin.

  “What are you? A cockroach?” said Pierre.

  “Don’t kill him,” said the second voice. “We’re just supposed to follow them.”

  “Come on then,” said Pierre. He stood up, kicked Max one final time, knocked the breath out of him.

  “Let’s get back to the factory,” said the second voice. “No use pretending to follow that one anyway.”

  “You think the captain will let us off for the rest of the day?” said Pierre.

  The two kept chattering as they walked away, leaving Max crumpled on the ground.

  Some minutes later, Max struggled to his feet. He checked himself; everything was all right. He had bruises, especially on his right side, a cut on his head, the lightness of concussion perhaps.

  He brushed himself off and walked onwards, at first leaning forward and holding his side. Then he straightened up and walked with more purpose. This was just the beginning, he knew. The worst of it was yet to strike.

  Ten minutes later, the sickness hit him, as it always did after he used the Art without a protection incantation: first the waves of lethargy as all strength was stripped from him. He found a little alcove where he leaned back against the wall and, again pressed himself against the cool stonework, feeling its rough edges against him. What use was it, this thaumaturgy, if it struck you down like an invalid? That was the price of power: nothing spent, nothing received, though sometimes, for no reason, the sickness was worse than at others. He knew this was only the beginning. He had seen the Houses’ skilled workers—engineers, tramworkers, mechanics—with strange growths on their faces and bodies, who died young or ran mad in the streets. For those who stood unprotected, unable to control the powers, it was worst. It was said that the ancient Prism of Alerion, in which the god’s very soul was encased, would enable the thaumaturgical arts to be used without penalty. But the Prism had been lost in the dark years after the cataclysm. Now the only defense was to be found in charms of protection, deflection and control. But even the Houses’ thaumaturgists, who knew those formulae and could control the forces as one did a dangerous animal, often ended knobbly and warped, as if their bodies were made of wax that had been heated just a little. Others seemed physically unaffected, but their personalities had changed deep within. It was the fate of all who used the Art—it would be his fate also.

  SIX

  Satisfied that he was no longer being followed, Maximilian climbed the rising pathways to the top of the cliffs, where scores of cafés overlooked the low part of the city. On the other side of them ran Via Gracchia, one of Caeli-Amur’s wide thoroughfares, where carts and carriages competed with steam-trams. Halfway along Via Gracchia, to the south, stood the steam tower, powering the cable car, which swung through the air toward the docks. Yet farther along, the via ended in the Arantine, where Arbor’s mansions sat on their stately and cobblestoned streets. Max rarely passed in that direction: it lay beyond the realm of workers and factories and universities, where he felt most alive, where he felt the pulsing vitality of the people whom he loved. But the Arantine lurked in his mind like an unexpressed thought. One day the seditionists would march into the neighborhood not as outsiders but as victors.

  Max continued up toward the towering, sheer-faced peak of the mountain. His body ached from the beating, and he still felt the Art’s unnatural sickening somewhere deep inside him. But he continued on. The pain and the illness would pass. Around him, picturesque white houses nestled one above the other, clinging to the ever-steeper incline as if at any moment they might slip and tumble down. The higher he walked, the more the houses thinned out and were interspersed by small cliffs and thick tough vegetation. In a wide space between two houses, Max stopped and scanned the streets around him for pursuers. He then turned and scrambled up a rough path into a dry brushland. There he entered what might have been a dry and barren sewer outlet, ten feet in diameter. Yet its perfect circularity, the grooves that ran along its walls, hinted at another, lost purpose. Entering the tunnel still excited him, even after these last years. There was a mystery to the tunnel and the darkness beyond that fired his imagination, as if below the crust of the earth lived a world of possibility.

  Within seconds he was in the dark, the spring sunlight a sheet of white at the end of the tunnel; with each step the darkness became more profound. After twenty paces, he reached an alcove where twenty or so lamps hung on the wall. He lit one with a match and passed farther into the tunnel. After some time, the path widened and he passed through a gigantic open door. Here the floor and walls became rough, as if excavation deeper into the mountain had been hastily abandoned. Max continued through the tunnel, rising and falling, widening and narrowing. At places the rocky passage was dry and dusty, at others water dripped from the roof and along the walls. Having passed through the memorized sequence of turns, Max turned and walked directly into the rock wall and passed through it, as if it were not there at all.

  Max came to a T-intersection where the walls were flat and again consciously constructed. Perhaps those who built the underground complex ha
d here accidentally broken through to the cave tunnel. Light warmed the walls, and farther down, a heavy door with a wheel mechanism that gave way to a dark cavernous hall—the Communal Cavern. At its center a number of figures moved around the strange combination of banks of levers and tables set with glossy surfaces—technology whose use had been long lost and which now lay dead and cold. Wood-fired ovens glowed in the gloom; people sat in reclining chairs and couches. Along one side of the cavern stood four black pillars, fifteen feet tall, like giant sentries overlooking the space. He inhaled the smell of woodsmoke and dampness, a comforting scent that reminded Max of his safely hidden hopes.

  Out of the shadows stepped a figure. “Max, there you are.”

  “Kamron.” Max’s arms hung leadenly by his side, a sign of his repressed shame and disappointment. The older man had been waiting for him and obviously knew that Max had been out in the city.

  “You’re hurt. You were caught.” Kamron squints at him.

  “It was nothing, just a scuffle,” says Max It would hurt more tomorrow, he knew.

  “Come with me, son.” Kamron, walking stiffly and unevenly, led him away. One of Kamron’s legs was longer than the other; one knee straightened a little more easily. Max knew that beneath those clothes, he was bent and misshapen, like a bag into which odd-shaped vegetables had been forced.

  Max followed Kamron along the side of the cavern. Here the walls were marked with flat and shiny surfaces; streams of wires jutted from the wall and fell toward the ground like frozen waterfalls.

  They entered Kamron’s room, with its hundred miniature glittering lights that danced across the walls. Having achieved a new configuration, they would freeze, little clusters of light in a new and beautiful arrangement. Then they’d burst once more into motion, one of the few of the old technologies that functioned in the seditionist base. Mostly the lights were gone, the levers jammed and broken, the pads blackened, the glass melted.