Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  In the last weeks, Maximilian had come to rely on Kata more and more. She liked his dream for a world without the Houses, even if she realized it was impossible. In other ways—in his decisiveness and drive—they were alike. But while she dreamed of an escape from the Houses, of a villa in the countryside, he thought always of the struggle against the Houses and of his ambition to reach the Library of Caeli-Enis. At times, Kata wondered if these were not contradictory goals.

  Still, for the first time in her life Kata felt that there was some meaning in her work. She was no seditionist, yet the idea of a purpose greater than her own personal desires was more than seductive; it allowed those very desires of her own to fade away. The seditionists talked with passion about things that to Kata had always been only words: freedom, justice. If they were captured or killed, they felt that this was of little consequence, for their movement was larger than themselves. Each of the tasks she was assigned seemed now to be of greater import, and even if they were difficult or boring or dangerous, she carried them out with some feeling of happiness. This was not an experience that Cajiunism of apocalypticism could encapsulate. It was an experience beyond her understanding of free will and determinism. Somehow it was about existence, about the way that particular goals were connected to her sense of self. Yet, even as these feelings grew in her, she pulled herself away from them. She was an agent of the Houses. She had a task to perform.

  Now allowed to come and go from the hideout as she pleased, the day after Ejan and Maximilian’s confrontation, Kata, moving randomly around the city until she was sure she had not been followed, visited Boris Autec.

  The officiate sat in his little office looking like a frog. He had a tinge of green to his slippery-looking skin, and though he hadn’t lost his roundness, his eyes had sunk back into their sockets like the bottoms of deep wells. His hands shook as he incessantly moved papers around on his desk. He sweated in a way that couldn’t be attributed to the relentless summer heat; great wet patches stained his shirts beneath the armpits.

  “This Maximilian, the dreamer the seditionists call him behind his back. What do you make of him?” Autec said.

  Kata felt a slight tug of guilt. “His strategy is complex, perhaps contradictory. He thinks that true power lies in the citizenry who will one day rise and that the seditionists need to obtain knowledge of thaumaturgy to fight the Houses. The first overestimates the potential of the people, and the second…” She trailed off.

  At that moment, there was a knock and the head of a handsome young man with a long, aquiline nose popped his head around the door. “Officiate Autec, forgive me for interrupting, but the games—you wanted me to remind you.”

  “Thanks, Armand. Wait a moment, we’ll accompany you.” He turned to Kata. “You’ll have to endure this entertainment with me. It’s one of Technis’s, uh, ‘social gatherings.’”

  They walked with Armand into the Palace grounds. In between buildings and through gardens, which, when observed closely seemed poorly tended: the flowers wilting, the bushes tinged with gray in the rainless summer. A stream of Technis agents and officials was heading toward the southeastern corner of the Complex, where an amphitheater stood, a smaller version of the Great Arena that sat in the Lavere district at the base of Caeli-Amur’s Thousand Stairs. There battles occurred in carefully constructed environments. At times the floor was flooded with water, and gladiators fought great squids. Recently Kata had heard that Collegium Caelian had equipped its gladiators with great metal exoskeletons, powered by rumbling steam engines mounted on their backs.

  The Arena, the slums, the Collegia—all these gave the Lavere its criminal tone, its base culture. For these reasons Kata avoided it. She had no desire to venture among a population where all relationships had been stripped to their basest economic interest. But now she wondered if the self-interested individuals of the Lavere were in any way different from the officials of Technis.

  As they entered, a number of officiates and subofficiates approached Boris, “Congratulations on becoming an officiate, Autec! We must dine one night.” “Officiate Autec, do visit my wife and me when you have the time.”

  “Apparently, one must be seen,” Boris said to Kata.

  “This way, Officiate Autec,” Armand gestured gracefully toward one of the stands. There was something charming about the young man: the straight back, the way he nodded his head, the gentle smile on his face. He had the nobility that one might have expected from a House Arbor official. Grace, that’s what it is, thought Kata. He does everything in the simplest way.

  “Call me Boris, please.” Boris turned to Kata. “Armand is the subofficiate responsible for coordination and administration of the Palace building. He’s an adjutant to the officiates.”

  Their seats, as befitted an officiate, were close to the sandy arena floor. Beneath the grounds surface, Kata could see the faint outlines of structures. Like the Great Arena in the Lavere, tunnels presumably ran beneath it, and the floor itself might open up to reveal rising elevators on which stood gladiators or exotic beasts.

  “So how does this Maximilian plan to discover thaumaturgical knowledge?” Boris asked.

  Kata hesitated. What was it, that she should feel some kind of loyalty to the seditionists? Yet there it was, a heaviness inside her, as real and substantial as any of her feelings. She thought about the air-cart, and settled for, “He wants to visit the Sunken City. He has us searching through old books.”

  “As if he could reach the Sunken City! Dreamers, fools.”

  “Ejan, though, is the most dangerous,” she said. “His workshop is filled with secret activities. Only a day ago, some of his followers carried chemicals into the hideout. The other seditionists are intimidated by the ortherner. And until now he has been responsible for most of the group’s income. He holds the levers of power.”

  “As I thought. I want you to move the scrying ball to Ejan’s workshop.” Autec licked his lips and looked around the crowd, as if he were expecting spies or enemies to be hidden among it. “Do you think we should strike now, crush them?”

  Kata hesitated once more. “We should wait. They are no threat yet. We have time.”

  At the side of the amphitheater, a gate opened to their left. Hesitantly, a group of eight gladiators trepidatiously entered the arena floor. Armed only with long spears, they walked forward, stopped a little, looked up at the audience, which yelled and cheered. House Technis was ready for blood.

  “Who are they?” Boris asked Armand.

  “Some of the captured tramworkers who refuse to submit,” said Armand. “Officiate Matisse instructed the master torturer to bring them up. He thought you would be especially pleased.”

  Boris grimaced and looked toward a thin middle-aged man sitting nearby who waved and grinned malevolently. His bottom row of teeth was broken and blackened.

  Another gate opened on the opposite side of the amphitheater. Lumbering through the opening came a great elephant, its back painted in extravagant reds and greens. The crowd gasped. Brought with other wild animals from Numeria, elephants were sometimes used in the Arena games, but only rarely were they killed nowadays. They were too expensive and too magnificent.

  With the back of one hand, Boris wiped the sweat that beaded on his forehead. “It’s really quite beautiful isn’t it?”

  Armand touched Boris on his arm. “Officiate Autec, you’re not the only one to recognize Matisse’s…” He hesitated and finally settled on, “joke.”

  “Kill it! Kill it!” yelled the crowd.

  Five of the spearmen surrounded the elephant, their spears ready. Kata could sense the fear emanating from them. These were no gladiators, only workers from the factory district. The three remaining retreated to the amphitheater wall where one worker seemed to have wet himself.

  The elephant stood still and blinked dumbly, unaware of the danger it was in. Kata found herself watching the delicate elephant eyelashes interlacing as the eye closed. There was something soft and gentle about tho
se lashes, and the uncomprehending eyes they protected.

  One of the gladiators ran at full pace and plunged the spear into the side of the elephant, which roared, leaped onto its back feet, threw its trunk in the air, let out a powerful trumpet, and turned on the man. Its giant feet came down on the sandy ground and dust billowed around it. The spear was torn from the man’s grasp and jutted from the elephant like the pin from a cushion. The gladiator turned, but had barely taken a step when the trunk lashed at him. He flew into the amphitheater wall and the huge feet trampled over him. No longer still, the elephant was now a picture of power and motion. Its trunk swayed; its feet moved from side to side; its head swiveled.

  The other spearmen charged. Spears plunged again into the elephant. Again, it roared and turned, trampling another man. Again, and yet again the men charged and again the elephant struck at the gladiators, crushed them beneath its gigantic weight. Finally, the elephant stood alone and still with spears jutting from its belly. Blood ran down its giant legs and dropped onto the dusty amphitheater floor in black pools. Around it lay the bloody corpses of the gladiators, legs and arms askew at odd angles. The crowd bayed like dogs, an ancient tradition from the Veiled Years, when all knowledge and meaning had been hidden from the world, after the cataclysm. Officiate Autec took a swig from a flask, moved to replace it in his jacket, but instead took another swig.

  For a while the elephant stood motionless, the three remaining gladiators pressed against the wall. The one who had wet himself had dropped his spear and was shaking.

  Autec looked away from the carnage toward Kata, his face strained. “We have enough to deal with on the streets. They’re strange creatures, these seditionists, aren’t they? Dreamers. But then, we all have dreams, don’t we? We all have things we want and cannot achieve, no matter how hard we try.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Kata.

  “Have you never wanted something out of reach?” Autec focused in on her with a kind of desperate curiosity.

  Kata thought of Aemilius, and then the image of Maximilian flashed into her mind. “No matter where you go, there is always something you cannot have.”

  “That’s the difference between us and the seditionists,” said Autec. “We accept that and make do. They strive for the impossible. There is no realism in their views. There is no realism in absolute love. And yet, what we would do if we could have it!”

  “Love! Has that anything to do with it?” asked Kata irritably.

  “Exactly!” said Autec. “Nothing! And yet…”

  “Everyone you love must leave in the end,” said Kata. “Or you must leave them. There is no other alternative, no matter how wonderful the journey.”

  “You’re a good woman,” said Autec urgently, caught in some daytime reverie. “You will do well. I will make sure you have a good life if you serve the House well. Your star shall be bound to mine. We will rise or fall together. And I say we will rise, higher than any other, to shine in the vast darkness of the night!”

  The crowd now screamed at the gladiators. The denouement to the fight was turning out to be an anticlimax. The elephant dropped to its knees; its body heaved, and a dimness had come over its eyes. The remaining two men charged toward it and plunged their spears in again and again. First the elephant groaned, then it emitted a keening sound, and finally it collapsed in on itself, its trunk making a couple of attempts to lift before resting still.

  “What a sad end,” said Autec. “What a grubby little spectacle. One day, we’ll stop these gladiatorial events. One day the world will be at peace.”

  After she left Technis, Kata was in despair. The elephant’s death, the gladiators’ deaths, her complicity in it all. She walked back through the city with its evening crowds, with the graffiti on the walls: FOG IS BLOWN AWAY BY A NEW WIND, TOMORROW A NEW SUN DAWNS. And where did she stand with the seditionists? Why hadn’t she told Boris about the cart that Maximilian was building? Yes, Ejan was the real danger, but she had protected Maximilian. She had downplayed the group as a whole.

  She looked around at the city that surrounded her like a besieging army.

  Louis had joined Ejan’s group, and Kata now saw him only occasionally, which suited her. His presence had always unnerved her: his shifty eyes, forever moving from side to side, the way he turned away and looked at the ground when he spoke. She had always been the dominant one, for Louis seemed by nature conservative, perhaps even frightened. This time Kata resolved that Louis would move the scrying ball. She had scaled the pillar the first time and now it was only fair that he should perform the task.

  The following morning, she sidled up to Louis in the little circle around the pot of the morning’s potato and sardine broth. Each of them waited as an old woman called Lara, said to have been with the group for decades, scooped the breakfast into the waiting bowls. Kata wondered at the backwardness of the group: that it should fall to a woman to make the food, that with the exception of Aceline, the leaders—Maximilian, Ejan, Kamron before his exile—were men. The same divisions occurred in the Houses also. For the philosopher-assassins such prejudices did not exist. For them a woman was just as deadly as a man, and just as wise. Indeed, there was one whole school of philosopher-assassins—the matriachists—who believed that women should rise to positions of power because they felt more deeply than men and so were more likely not to be led astray by Olympian abstractions, by the tyranny of pure rationality. They would be bound closer to the real world of people. The matriarchists were not all women.

  When their bowls were full, she sat next to Louis, away from the others. “Officiate Autec wants you to move the scrying ball to Ejan’s workshop.”

  Louis swallowed a mouthful of broth. “You know when I was a child, we ate this every week. I come from a fishing village to the south, where sardines and anchovies are in everything. It’s funny the way certain things bring back memories, isn’t it? Just the sound of the water on rocks, or the taste of salty fish. The days I spent on my father’s fishing boat, dredging up the nets. And then returning home to this.”

  “They sound like good days,” said Kata.

  “They were terrible. I dreamed always of escape to Caeli-Amur.”

  Kata laughed. “Some dream of escape from Caeli-Amur.”

  They ate the broth quietly beside each other until they were finished. Kata said, “So you will move the ball?”

  Louis shrugged. “I’ll try. But you know that you are better suited to it. I am just an agent. I am not … a philosopher. It is wrong of you to endanger me, when you could shift it without the slightest worry.”

  Kata softened her voice and looked deeply into his eyes, which for once were transfixed. “Come, we’re in this together, you and I. We should share our tasks.”

  Against all her instincts, Kata reached over and took his rough hand in hers. A lascivious look crossed Louis’s face. He was not a man, Kata realized, with a great knowledge of women. He did not have the confidence or decisiveness to be attractive. Kata had always know that men found her lithe body and her dark flowing hair appealing, though she could never imagine why. She knew now that she was using this appeal, and though she herself did not have an intimate knowledge of men, that she was blurring a line between herself and Louis, intimating something that repulsed her. And yet, some part of her liked this newfound, strange power over him.

  His voice came out softly. “I’ll try.”

  Kata smiled sweetly at him and let go of his hand. She let her eyes linger on him as she stood up. As she walked away, her bowl in had, she felt dirty. She ignored the feeling: she would do what she had to. A villa awaited her, and with it, escape from this petty world of intrigue and betrayal and cruelty.

  Kata spent the morning with Maximilian and Quadi, Oewen and Ariana, planning the air-cart with Quadi. The whole venture had started to take hold of Kata’s imagination: the sheer daring of it, to build an underwater apparatus and descend to Caeli-Enas, that ancient metropolis of legends. The fragmentary knowledge she had
gained had made her all the more curious. What would they find? Shadowy figures of broken statues, like the ghosts of the past? Great palaces on the Arrian Hill to the east of Caeli-Enis’s center?

  She hoped she would be the person to accompany Maximilian on the mission. She fulfilled all the criteria. She was athletic, healthy, trusted. But she stopped herself: she should not think like this, for there would be no venture to the Sunken City. The House would intervene before any such thing happened. The House would crush this little group.

  In the afternoon, she ventured into the Quaedian with Maximilian and Quadi. There they bought screws and washers, springs and metal bars.

  As they neared the university, they found two groups of students facing off against each other, each a sprawling mass of two or three hundred, alternately surging forward, backing away. The group farther along the street was dressed in more sharply cut suits, with cleaner colors, while the other was slightly more ragtag in its dress, green pants mismatched against blue coats, their shoes scuffed. The near group loosed a volley of stones that suddenly stopped midair and dropped into the street halfway between the groups.