Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  Boris glanced unimpressed at the man and remembered the deaths of the tramworker-gladiators in Technis’s amphitheater, deaths that Matisse had organized. He reached into his waistcoat, took a swig from his flask. “I don’t think anyone will miss you too much, Matisse.”

  The others laughed uneasily. Like Boris, they understood just how fragile the balance was in Caeli-Amur. The strikes, the meetings and discussion groups, the broadsheets, the subversive plays performed in little theaters in the Quaedian, the new philosophies springing up. If these continued, the populace would take even greater liberties. Two days earlier, Boris had sat at the House Technis executive meeting with the other officiates and argued that it was time for the Houses to unite, to strike together against the restless subversives in the population. The others had agreed. They were hard and efficient men, but none had seen days like this. They had insisted that the suggestion for a forum of the Houses come from the executive itself. They were trying to keep Boris in his place.

  Boris held one secret to himself: Only he knew about the growing seditionist group hidden away in some cavern somewhere, planning their demonstrations and their actions against the Houses. The impulsive action of the population was one thing, but a group like that was another. Tonight Autec would unite the Houses into a single steel machine. It would be the scene of his greatest triumph.

  The carriage entered the grounds of House Arbor’s Palace, great manicured lawns ending in sharply cut hedges, and beyond that meticulously designed gardens with trees and statues perfectly placed. Beds of flowers were shadows in the dark, but he could imagine their splendid colors. Walkways cut through the garden, sometimes rose up into the air in gentle curves and there met aqueducts, which fed the ponds and fountains. It was said that one could travel along those high waterways in gondolas, looking down on the perfect gardens from above. In the distance, far off in the darkness were what appeared to be thick, junglelike woods. Out there roamed man-sized blood-orchids and other deadly flora. Even now, Boris could hear the crying tear-flowers, a wail that at times seemed like a warbling song. He felt the sudden urge to find those flowers in the darkness, to lie down at their base, to let their nectar drip on him, and to fall into a strange floral-reverie as the flowers and he became one. He took a swig of hot-wine to calm the urge and waited for the surge of energy through his body. The surges came less and less nowadays, and he drank more and more of the wine to compensate. Soon he would need to visit the New-Man—what was his name?—at the markets for more.

  They circled a huge circular statue depicting the gods at war: Aya, the rebel god throwing lighting bolts as the others chased him. A short while later the carriage halted. The door was thrown open and Boris stepped down in front of House Arbor’s grand palace; how unlike the Technis Complex it was. Rather than the constantly growing mass of contradictory styled of its competitor, the Arbor Palace was classical in its construction. Built hundreds of years earlier, it was a single unchanged chateau. Towers on one end spiraled into the night. Arches suspended the opposite wing over a placid lake. The palace’s stately balconies were made of delicate curlicues of wrought iron and windows were set high in its walls, through which Boris could glimpse candlelit rooms. House Arbor, the most ancient of the Houses, still did things in the old ways.

  A row of carriages already stood quietly in front of the palace, joined now by the four from Technis—two carrying twelve officiates, and two others containing an entourage of guards, including several undercover philosopher-assassins. Boris’s bodyguard, Tonio, a bundle of muscle and repressed energy, was one of them.

  A suited intendant stood on the steps. He bore the air of ceremony that so often hung around Arbor. “Ah, dear friends, welcome.”

  Thirty years had passed since anyone from House Technis had officially entered the House Arbor Palace. Now they followed the intendant through long halls lit by candled chandeliers, the flames flickering above them, little lights of hope. Along the walls, shadows moved. Boris glanced at them, but as soon as he fixed his eyes on them, they were gone. Perhaps it’s the hot-wine, he thought to himself. But immediately afterwards he wondered, what if it wasn’t?

  Halfway along the corridor, tendrils of vines climbed along the walls: at first spidery little things, like great splayed hands, but then thicker, with candle-flowers branching from them replacing the lamps that had hung on the walls. Finally, the entire corridor had become a wild organic mass, hundreds of candle-flowers gleaming white in the greenery. The vines even grew along the now uneven floor and were worn flat by the passing of many feet.

  The corridor opened into a great semicircular theater. Boris could not tell whether it was a part of the palace’s internal structure, or a transformed courtyard, for the faraway walls were all composed of the same thick wiry vines, candle-flowers glowing brilliantly around them. The air was redolent with the sweet smells of the flowers’ perfumes. Furnace trees stood like pillars throughout, their bulbs emitting the softest warmth, an ingenious method of heating, for as the air in the room became colder, the bulbs would emit more heat to compensate. To survive, the trees needed sun, yet the roof was shrouded in darkness. Perhaps some secret method was used to overcome this. Seats were carved intricately from the aboveground roots of trees and vines that intertwined just so around each other; interlaced as they were, it was unclear to which particular flora the seats belonged. All in all, the theater was a brilliantly, carefully tended, construction—a forum of great imagination that could house close to two hundred people.

  The right hand third of the theater was occupied by thirty or so green-suited men—Arbor’s officiates. In the center of the semicircle sat twenty officiates dressed in the traditional aqua suits of House Marin. The left side was vacant for House Technis. At the table at the front of the forum sat three Arbor Directors, and two from Marin.

  Boris walked toward the table, but Matisse clasped his arm. “We are all equals. We have no Director. We sit in the theater seats.”

  Boris clenched his teeth. First the death of the tramworkers in the Arena, now this. I’ll get you, Matisse, he thought. There will come a time when the scales will be once again tilted in my favor.

  Ancient Director Lefebvre of House Arbor, a shock of gray hair above his still dark eyebrows, his face stern but his eyes fierce, stood from the table and raised his arm. “Technis have called this gathering. But I don’t see any reason why we should cooperate. The waves of strikes can be crushed, as they have been. The dungeons are currently carrying out their reeducation of these subversives. None of us is directly threatened.”

  Boris raised his hand, but Lefebvre chose an officiate from Arbor to speak first. Bitter at the decline of his House, the officiate claimed that Technis had upset the balance of things. Their relentless growth, their rejection of the old traditions of stability, principle, responsibility toward the society as a whole, had caused these troubles.

  Immediately, a hundred arms were raised. Officiates stood up and called out to Lefebvre. As Boris himself was only an officiate, he too took to his feet and raised his arm, but to no avail. First one, then another officiate was called to speak before him. Like the others, Boris sat again, his arm raised, stood up as another officiate was chosen, then sat once more. The debate raged around him. Marin argued that Arbor had always monopolized wealth and power. Both Arbor and Marin claimed that during the wars, Technis had broken the House laws by assassinating officiates at their houses or the forbidden places: the Opera, the steam baths, the parks. No wonder order had broken down in the city. Technis responded that Arbor and Marin had refused to change with the times, and that that was the underlying cause of discontent. Each argued that the other was responsible for the situation.

  From Technis, Matisse was called to speak. “You are fools. You are sitting in your own houses while the gardens around them burn! We have all seen the rise of dissatisfaction with the Houses—”

  “Upstarts. You don’t even have a Director!” yelled a hoarse voice from the galler
y.

  A Marin officiate leaped to his feet. “Technis manipulations. How they speak with honeyed tongues even as they undermine the whole order themselves. This gathering is nothing but a waste of time!”

  Boris sat uncomfortably in his seat. The meeting was turning into a farce. In desperation he looked at the other Technis officiates. No help was to be found. He had suggested this meeting. He would have to be the one who took control.

  Pushing through the officials who blocked his way, Boris strode onto the floor at the front of the forum, his face red with anger. These fools would get them all killed.

  Behind the table, Director Lefebvre stood in anger at Boris’s audacity.

  “Sit down!” yelled Boris, but the red-faced Lefebvre, eyes like serpents, stood motionless. Next to Lefebvre the other Directors eyed Boris with wide-eyed surprise.

  “Only Directors can—,” said Lefebvre.

  Ignoring him, Boris took the ball from his bag and placed it on the table. Rare though they were, the officiates knew the scrying ball’s function. As they quieted, Boris said, “Watch.”

  Three-dimensional images of the seditionists’ hideout sprang to life in the forum around them. There was a great gasp from the officiates, not only at the size of of the seditionist group as they industriously went about their business, but also at the dark visions of the ancient technology that surrounded them: the panels, levers and wheels barely visible on the shadowy walls, the six black pillars of unknown function.

  Boris manipulated the image he had recorded earlier so that it focused on Ejan and Louis, who stood close to the door to Ejan’s workshop.

  Ejan held a bolt-thrower in his hands and turned it over, as if examining it. “It’s all very well for Maximilian to have his plans, but we need everyone to be part of the army. And an army needs discipline. There’s no room for formlessness in an army. So we shall have to impose this from above. When Maximilian is gone searching for his precious knowledge, but before Aya’s Day, before the great demonstration—that will be the moment we strike against the Houses in open warfare.”

  “Maximilian’s followers?”

  Ejan nodded with menace, as if to say, yes, we shall have to deal with them. “Anyway, you have the list?”

  Louis rolled out a scroll. “Most of the Directors’ and the officiates’ houses: Matisse, Strazny, Thorel, Dosois, Autec, Lefebvre. There are some that we haven’t yet located, but we will soon. And the subofficiates. When do we strike?”

  “As soon as we can. The citizens will see the Houses topple, and then, in the days before the demonstration, we shall behead the Houses. The whole system will collapse and a new order will reign.”

  There was silence in the theater after Boris halted the image.

  Director Lefebvre said, “Our houses? Our families?” Behind those words, Boris sensed a changed attitude. Lefebve saw the world now at a different angle.

  Boris spoke: “They are organized and experienced. They are building an army of seditionists. Until after Aya’s Day, I suggest we maintain more than a truce. I suggest we cooperate. We will crush these subversives. We ruin them, we tear their lives asunder, we break this demonstration, and we show the people just who rules this city.”

  At first there were a few nods and then a few claps around the room, until the clapping grew and grew, reverberating around Boris like the sound of victory itself.

  Flushed with his success, Boris came to the Opera and strode through the labyrinthine tunnels. He would share his triumph with Paxaea and she would feel its colossal significance. She would see him as the architect of this new world, and see a place for herself within it. Boris could sense the inevitability of their union, and the idea of a family filled him with savage joy.

  Boris threw open Paxaea’s door and was already speaking as he walked inside. “I have united the Houses! For the first time in history, they will be working together. An agreement never before seen! Those fools knew nothing. If it were not for me, they would barely be hanging on to their precious system. Me! Once a tramworker!”

  Paxaea stood by her window, her back toward him. “Do you know that if you lean close to the window, you can catch just the smallest glance of the sea?”

  Boris stopped. “Don’t you realize?” he said. “Don’t you comprehend what this means for us?”

  “Far away lies my island.”

  “Forget that,” snapped Boris. “I’ll get you a room where you can see the ocean. Once I’m Director, I’ll get you an entire palace.”

  She leaned forward, craning her head, pushing her face against the bars.

  Boris continued, regardless. “They thought I was a no one. I brought them together, and I unified them. I showed them the real state of affairs. In a sense I’m a prophet, an oracle.”

  “Have you visited the Augurers?” asked Paxaea.

  “No,” he said. “It is a long climb through the mountains, and they speak in riddles. They are nothing but obscurantists.”

  “But they can show you your future,” said Paxaea. “Can’t they?”

  “So they say.”

  “Everything they showed me would be as if seen through a barred window.”

  Boris strode over to her, grabbed her by the arms and turned her around. “Enough of such talk. You wallow too much in your misery.”

  She spoke some words, which he could not quite comprehend. An irresistible urge overtook him, as if his limbs were driven by a part of himself that he could not control, and yet it seemed like the obvious thing to do: He walked from the room. As he walked, the motion made sense to him, but once he was outside the room, he struggled against himself, took control. He pulled out his flask, took another swig of wine, and stormed back into the room.

  “Don’t use your voice!”

  Again she was looking out the window, and she did not turn around.

  As he walked to her, he noticed the hundred little muscles on her back, revealed by her low-cut dress. They were finely cut, as if chiseled from rock. He touched her neck and ran his hand softly along the top of her shoulder, onto her dress, and down to her upper arm. He leaned in to her raven black hair and smelled its exotic spices—ginger and clove perfume. “Have faith in me,” he said. “I’ll take you out of this night and into the day. I’ll take you away, wherever you want to go.”

  She turned to him. “You’re my only hope. Take off the torc. Set me free.”

  Boris felt close to her. She was confessing her true feeling to him, and of course it made sense for her to be emotionally cold. She was, after all, under his control. But sometimes, like now, she opened up to him and he felt he could trust her.

  He touched the torc that was fastened around her neck. He ran his finger along the top of the winding metal, where it touched her skin. He could set her free, and perhaps she would stay with him of her own volition. His grasped the thing between his fingers.

  “Let me go to Taritia,” she said. “Let me go back home.”

  “But you would want to stay here with me, wouldn’t you?”

  She looked up at him, and he was lost in her huge eyes, the lights from the room’s lamps reflected in their glistening whites.

  “Say it,” he said. “Say you’d want to stay with me.”

  “I’d want to stay with you,” she said, one of her voices trilling softly. “We could go together, to Taritia, and then we could return here.”

  He knew it! He knew that ultimately she wanted him; ultimately she saw something in him. She had said it herself: You are not like the others.

  He leaned in and his lips met hers, so soft and large. He pushed her against the wall. Musk and clove-scent aroused him and he felt her body—her breasts, her thighs— voluptuous against him. He pushed her toward the bed, but she slipped aside. “I have to perform tonight. I must get ready.”

  He nodded, “I’ll return tomorrow. Then we’ll have more time … for each other.”

  She nodded and looked away, no doubt shy. He liked the way she would turn her head away to hide
her feelings. Timidity wasn’t something that he had previously associated with her, but he saw it now. Their bond was strengthening.

  As he left the Opera, a crowd milled in the Market Square, waiting for the night’s late performance. Boris he was pleased with himself. Everything was coming together; everything was turning out as he had hoped. He took another swig from his flask and licked his lips, which felt bloated, like those of a deep-sea fish. He wiped them with the back of his hand and noticed a white sheen. He wiped them again, licked his lips and then realized that his mouth was producing a strange froth. He swigged the bottle of hot-wine, but the froth came again. He spat it out onto the cobblestones and concentrated on stopping his salivation. Finally it abated. He took a final swig from his flask and stepped into his waiting carriage. Tonio flicked the reins and the horses hooves clopped against the stones, a rapid drumbeat accompanying the rattle of the wheels.

  He examined his final bottle of hot-wine, with its complex Anlusian wax stamp depicting a machine composed of cogs and wheels and pistons. In the back of his mind, something stirred, but he couldn’t bring it to the fore. It had to do with the New-Man, but what was it? What was his name again? He grimaced as he tried to recall the man’s name, then put the thought aside. He had things to do. In the morning, he would demand the Directorship from the Elo-Talern.

  Boris had come to know the long journey through the empty Technis corridors, deep down into the mountain, into the heart of things. His bursts of laughter echoed eerily down the hall and back. He kicked at the dust-laden floors; little puffs of dust motes billowed up.

  “I see you! I see you!” he yelled madly at the shadows around him. He laughed at them, as they flickered around him, shifting and moving like animals in the night. “You don’t scare me. You’re nothing.”