Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  “She’s a part of it, too.” Louis looked across at Kata.

  At that moment, she felt the tingling of her illness. Oh no, she thought, for she could not move. Not now. Always the fits came at points of emotional pressure, she knew. She looked over to her possessions, where her medicine flask lay.

  Maximilian stepped forward and struck him on the side of the face. “Stop trying to divert attention. Stop trying to blame others.”

  Louis laughed madly, as if a terrible joke were being played on him. His teeth were covered in red: he looked like an old man with rotten teeth. His eyes darted to and fro, as if there were some means of escape hidden in the crowd or the darkness.

  “How long has the ball been up there?” asked Ejan.

  Louis’s face was suddenly filled with hate. “The Houses will get you. They’ll crush you and your pathetic little group. They’ll get you and break you. It won’t be long before you’re tied in a chair speaking to the officiates or thrust into one of the terror-spheres.” He started to laugh manically.

  “How long?” said Maximilian.

  “Oh, they’ll hurt you, they’ll make you cry,” mumbled Louis.

  Giselle took out a long and sharp stiletto. At the sight of it, Louis laughed again madly, stopped just as suddenly, and looked down at the floor. “She’s in on it, too. Kata’s in on it.”

  Giselle struck him again on the face. “Stop lying.” She turned to the others. “His testimony will be filled with things to mislead us. Untruths mixed with truths. Only long hours of pain will unravel his story.”

  Ejan nodded and they all stood around in silence.

  Louis looked at the floor as if something there might help him. “I beg you. I’ll tell you everything. There’s a second ball in the Technis Complex. They can see you as if through a window, perhaps even now. It’s been there for three weeks. Technis knows all your plans now.”

  Kata was now filled with horror. For her, the best thing would be for Louis to be killed. She could not afford to have him speak, for soon enough the truth would be uncovered and she, too, would find herself strapped into a chair. Yet she could hardly bear to have more blood on her hands. During the House Wars, she had killed agents of Arbor and Marin. They had been part of a cruel system; there had been no moral transgression in killing them, for there was no question of right and wrong; at that time the world for her had been a war of all against all. But now things had become murky. She had sensed that somewhere in the mess of it all there was a right and wrong. As she thought these things, the tingling in her body became a slight trembling. The fit was a slow one, but she knew that meant it would be all the more powerful for that.

  Finally Maximilian spoke. “We cannot use the methods of the Houses. We are not the same as the Houses. To act like them would be to become them.”

  “Yes.” Louis’s voice brightened and he looked up. “You are not. You are seditionists. You live by a higher morality, a higher sense of purpose.”

  Ejan crossed his arms and stood with legs slightly apart in a powerful stance. “The higher purpose is the struggle against the Houses. When they are gone, we will have room for your niceties. But we don’t choose the field on which we fight.”

  Maximilian paced around the chair. Louis swiveled his head, trying to follow him.

  “You know the wisdom of his words, Maximilian,” said Aceline. “The time for a better way will be after the defeat of the Houses.”

  Maximilian glanced at Kata as he considered things. His face twitched, he pursed his lips and ran his hands through his curly hair. She could see the struggle occurring within him, between the words of Ejan and Aceline and his dream that seditionists should somehow act better.

  Kata’s hands felt moist. One of her legs was shaking, threatening to give way. With immense effort she steadied herself. She was starting to see everything through a mist of white. She concentrated. She knew she should agree with Ejan, before Louis had a chance to betray her. She shook herself. Louis must die. She stepped forward and, against all her interests, tried to save Louis’s life. “Ejan’s words have wisdom. But if we resort to these methods, it means we have already lost the war. It means we are too weak to fight by our own means. It means they have lured us onto their ground, a sign that we should not engage in the battle at all and Kamron was right, we should have waited.”

  Ejan’s eyes rolled back in disappointment. He then stared at Maximilian frostily. “I’ll do it.”

  “No!” cried Louis.

  Some internal resistance seemed to give way in Maximilian. His face stopped twitching; he straightened his stance and spoke. “Death. Louis must die. All House agents must know that just as we risk death opposing the Houses, so they risk death upholding them.”

  “Then you carry it out.” Ejan said to Maximilian. He took the stiletto and placed it in Maximilian’s hand. “Does anyone challenge this verdict?” he asked of the group quickly. A few responded with, “No,” and “Death it is,” and “It’s a war.” Others remained silent, watchful, fearful.

  Kata watched Maximilian, the stiletto in hand. He stared at Louis, who looked down at his feet, a crumpled and disheveled wreck of a man.

  “Maximilian,” said Ejan.

  Still Maximilian did not move.

  “Maximilian!” said Ejan.

  Maximilian looked up at Ejan. His confidence seemed to be flagging with the pressure of the task. Kata realized now that he had never killed a man. Indeed, she knew that he was probably incapable of it. Yet to fail now would mean that he did not have the courage of his convictions. The group waited, silent in the tension of the moment.

  A small whine came from Louis: “Please.”

  “Fine,” said Ejan definitely. He took three long strides across to Maximilian, took the stiletto from his hand. Louis’s face convulsed with fear as Ejan strode purposefully in front of the chair. Looking out into the darkness over Louis’s shoulder, Ejan pulled his arm back. The stiletto glinted softly in the darkness. Ejan plunged it into the agent’s chest: one, two, three times. Louis grimaced but did not scream or cry. Instead, he let out a series of growls, like a dog in the dark, one after each strike of the stiletto. His body shook violently, like a broken engine, lurching and jumping. The chair creaked and shuddered and shifted over the ground. Again and again Ejan plunged in the stiletto and again and again Louis growled, but the rough sounds became softer and softer until they were almost sighs. All the while the crowd looked on in horror. Finally Louis’s head slumped to the side, his eyes staring at the ground. It was done.

  Ejan strode across to Kata and aggressively took the scrying ball from her hands. He placed it before the body of Louis. “You see,” he said to the ball. “That is what awaits you and your Houses.”

  Ejan then took the ball in his hands and threw it onto the stone floor. The sound of glass shattering echoed through the cavern. On the ground lay the remnants of the intricate contraption, fragile pieces of metal crushed against each other like the broken wings of a butterfly.

  Kata dashed to her mattress and took long swigs of her medicine, the preparation as pungent as ever. Her body trembled all over and she was struck by a cruel headache. She lost track of events as the migraine took her over, but the medicine halted the fit. Later, as she regained a sense of things, the images kept replaying in her mind. She felt herself tremble again as a second fit came on. She drank quickly from her flask again. Perhaps she was building up a tolerance to the medicine. Several times recently she had felt oncoming fits and had to drink twice the amount of preparation to halt them. After some moments, the trembling again ceased. She finally drifted into a weary reverie that was plagued by terrible dreams. In these, it was Louis who walked around Kata, and she who was tied to a chair. In his hand Louis held a stiletto. He leaned in toward her. “She’s in on it, too,” he said. Then he leaned back and smiled. His teeth were red with blood, and there was madness in his eyes. “She’s in on it, too.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Boris lay on h
is bed without the strength to move. The bedclothes were sweat-soaked and fetid, as if they had not been washed in months. In the first hours of his withdrawal from the hot-wine, he had vomited on the floors of his apartment what little liquids he had in his stomach, and after that, in great uncontrollable heaves, as if his body was fighting for its life, yellow bile, until it seemed impossible that he could vomit anything else. Some hours later, the lethargy had settled in, draining his limbs of strength, so that all he could do was lie on the bed. Unable to reach the toilet, he had relieved himself so that he wallowed in a great dampness of sweat and other excretions.

  The scrying ball rested on the bed next to him. Throughout this torment, he had seen many of the seditionists’ activities that he had not previously noticed. Maximilian had constructed an air-cart for breathing beneath the water—with the help of the New-Man, Quadi—the very man who was responsible for Boris’s predicament. Ejan had stockpiled all manner of incendiaries and hand-weapons. The group around A Call to Arms busily ventured into the city, stirring up trouble and anti-House feeling. It seemed that they even had the Collegia on their side, a development that surprised Boris. Two weeks away, Aya’s Day now loomed as a decisive moment, when the seditionists and the Houses would face each other in open war.

  When things were worst with Boris, these developments meant nothing to him. He was in too much pain. The yearning for hot-wine had now become something deeper within him. The whole world had been emptied of meaning, had lost its color and was painted in shades of gray. But after a day into his ordeal things gradually regained a terrible import. His own actions flashed through his mind. He was filled with rising panic and despair: images of Mathias, dying in front of the Tram Factory, visions of Paxaea lying on the bed before him. Again and again these visions occurred in his mind, no matter how he tried to pushed them away. What had become of him? Disgusted with himself, he thought of escape, somewhere, perhaps to Varenis, perhaps across the sea. Maybe he and Paxaea could leave for Taritia after all, and live there, away from everything. But then, the Elo-Talern had offered him the elixir of eternal life. Immortality. How could he leave such a promise, when it might mean that he and Paxaea could live together forever?

  That night, as he lay in the darkness, watched as Ejan, with the coldness of an assassin, stabbed Louis as he sat tied in a chair. Motionless on his bed, Boris looked on as the agent had growled and shaken the chair in rapid side-to-side movements as if he were having a fit. Ejan had then stared through the glass into Boris’s eyes. “You see. That is what awaits you and your Houses.”

  Boris stirred, and a flicker of anger emerged beneath the depression that overwhelmed him. He had allowed the seditionists to grow and plan while he obsessed about Paxaea. If he acted quickly, he could still crush them. Kata would need to lead the House guards to the seditionist hideout, hidden somewhere beneath the city. She would need to do it soon, yet Boris did not know when he would see her next. The acrid taste of defeat hovered over him. Already he could imagine the other officiates moving against him, jostling for position of Director now that he, an ignorant tramworker, had failed.

  On the second day, when Boris was able to crawl to the water pump and drink a little, there was a knocking on his door. A voice called out, “Director Autec? Director Autec?”

  Boris tried to get to his feet, but collapsed on his weakened legs like a baby.

  “Direcor Autec?”

  There was the rattling of metal in the lock and Boris felt despair at his incapacitation. When the door opened, the final days of his Directorate would begin. News of his enfeeblement would spread among the officiates. Boris could see Matisse grinning malevolently and clenching his insectlike hands with glee.

  The door swung open and Tonio stepped through the door, a bunch of thin keys in one hand. He scrunched up his face at the smell and stepped inside. Craning his neck around the doorway was Officiate Armand. The two of them stared at Boris, who turned his face away in full knowledge of his ruin.

  Armand turned to Tonio, “The physician, quickly.”

  “No!” called out Boris.

  At this, Armand held Tonio back and instead closed the door. “Director, you are unwell?”

  Boris could see his own vulnerability and desperation registered in Armand’s eyes. Armand surveyed the scene: the bottles of hot-wine lined the walls, lay strewn on the floor. Armand pressed his lips together and touched his chin. “All right, Tonio, we must keep this completely secret.”

  They carried Boris to the washroom and cleaned him. They stripped the sheets from his bed and replaced them. All the while Armand was talking, telling the others ways in which to cover for Boris’s absence. Boris admired Armand’s calm at he outlined the story they would tell. Boris, Armand explained to the other two, had been to the Dyrian coast, rallying support for the Houses among the villa owners, fish and oyster farms. They would claim that Boris had negotiated for the Dyrians to send their watchmen to the city, if necessary. Armand drafted instructions for the other officiates, which Boris signed. They were to make lists of all the factories that were still functioning, the level of support for the Houses, assessments of the morale of the guards and the thaumaturgists. Tonio, Armand decided, would stay with Boris and help him recover.

  After they left Boris resting in the bed, he examined the scrying ball once more. But it it revealed nothing.

  Tonio attended to him later that evening and offered him a simple potato soup. To Boris it tasted sweet, something he had yearned for. “To think that life can be made so much more bearable by something so simple.”

  Tonio stood calmly, his hands behind his back. “Some say that our lives have become filled with too much sophistication, too much pleasure, too much of everything. Our mistake has been to think we need more and more. But really, we need only the basics, the simplest of things. Potato soup.”

  “Some say? You mean that’s what you Cynics argue,” said Boris, smiling weakly.

  “This is the ground where we meet with the Cajian philosophers. They, too, suggest that the world has lost its way with its constant obsession with becoming smarter, better, more complex.”

  Afterwards, Boris wondered if perhaps he too was mistaken in his goal of changing things for the better. But what other choice did they have? The Cajiun philosophers simply emptied their lives of material objects, lived alone with nothing, hermits in the city. That was possible for a philosopher-assassin, but not anyone else.

  By the third day, Boris felt the world coming together once more, and to his surprise, there were no more shadows. But the horror of events and his place within them still overwhelmed him, and the flashes of the past came just as frequently. Although Armand had saved his Directorship, Boris’s priority was clear: He would escape with Paxaea. There was no future for him in Caeli-Amur. He felt guilty for Armand, who had surprised him with his efficiency and grace and would be betrayed by this decision. He mourned his loss of the elixir of life, promised by the Elo-Talern. But perhaps she had only been seducing him with an idea. For if she had access to it, why had no one else drunk that draft? Perhaps it was only a myth, invented to manipulate him.

  Tonio fetched his carriage and Boris rode along the boulevards, their walls covered with graffiti and posters calling for insurrection against the Houses. With each moment, as he approached the Opera, the feeling of dread grew in him. Surely Paxaea would understand; surely she would see that he had not been himself. He had been overtaken by anger, by hot-wine. The feeling of dread did not pass; rather, it intensified.

  When he arrived, the usual intendant rushed from behind the desk area, “Director Autec, Director Autec,” he said. “Do let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

  “Get away.” Boris pushed the intendant in the chest, took a few steps past him. He turned back. “Paxaea?”

  “In rehearsal,” said the intendant.

  Boris climbed the stairs up to the grand gallery where he looked on from one of the theater seats in the the vast empt
y expanse above. A group of six was rehearsing a tragedy, in which an upper-class girl’s family forbid her to marry a poor small-town fisherman. In a desire to enrich himself, the fisherman heads out into the terrible storms beneath which the priceless gem-fish swam in schools like great rivers of multicolored treasure, a current of red and sapphire and emerald. Each day the girl waits, singing out into the storm until one day a body washes up onto the beach, still grasping his net with his clawed hand. Wrapped inside the net is a glorious gem-fish. He has returned rich after all, but dead.

  When Paxaea sang to the wind, one of her notes rose to unnatural plaintive heights, the second trembled low, a rhythmic gutteral sob. The exquisite pain of these melodies washed over Boris and he found himself crying. Filled with longing, he grasped the armrests to stop himself from throwing himself from the balcony and onto the stage. This desire, he knew, he shared with all those fishermen who had been drawn onto the deadly rocks and shoals of Taritia. There the lucky ones would drown or be dashed against the rocks. The unlucky ones would wash up on the shore, to be come captives of the Sirens.

  “Just a little softer, a little less, Paxaea,” said the Opera director from offstage.

  Boris slipped from the seats and made his way to her room. The door had been repaired, and he entered the room, sat on her bed and waited. His heart thumped madly and emotions coursed through him with an intensity he had forgotten possible. What had the hot-wine done to him? Emotions had raged within him, but there had been a distance between his mind and everything else, as if he had seen the world through the haze of the industrial quarter. Now he felt a terrible maelstrom of guilt and fear and self-loathing.

  The door opened and Paxaea stepped in. Her face quivered, as if it might suddenly crumble. She composed herself. “Director Autec.”

  He looked at the ground, “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “I wondered where you have been,” said Paxaea.

  “I’ve been getting well. The wine—it was making me into something I did not care for.”