Authors: Dru Pagliassotti
“They ran it in your memory!” she snapped, her eyes flashing. “They held a wake for you!”
“That was thoughtful of them.” He seemed unperturbed by her violence. “Listen, my swan. We can all be friends again. You and Cristof will find me, thrown clear of the wreckage. I'll be shaken up, feverish⦔ he touched his face ruefully. “Scratched and bruised. You'll be heroes, and everyone will be happy to have me back. Is Cristof in trouble over the bomb?”
“Yes! How did youâ”
“I'll clear his name. One of the lictors you've just killed must have tampered with the clock while it was sitting in my office overnight. They were saboteurs, stopped just in time.”
“Cristof will never lie for you.”
Alister started to speak, then paused.
“Well. Maybe not. I hadn't realized he was working for the lictors until you told me about Pins. That was a real surprise, although it explained a lot. Still, we're family.” He looked wistful. “Cris and I have gone through a lot together.”
“You just threw him over the railing!”
“Oh, for the Lady's sake, I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought he'd get hurt. I'm sure he'll understand. He loves Ondinium as much as I do, although he shows it differently.” He caught her eyes. “It's convincing you that worries me, my swan. What do I have to do to prove I'm not your enemy?”
Despite the heat, Taya felt ice crawl down her spine. Her calf was starting to throb in time to the Engine's pounding.
Behind Alister, a lone bead of blood dripped down from the rifleman's needle-punctured neck, falling through the crosswalk's grille floor and into the depths.
“I'm not going to lie for you, either.”
“I could guarantee you a position in the diplomatic corps.”
“I don't want it badly enough to protect a murderer.”
“You don't even know what I'm doing. Iâ did you hear something?”
Taya listened, but all she could hear was the Engine's roar, its vibrations making her wing feathers jingle.
“No.”
“This place. A man can't hear himself think.” Alister reached down and picked up a tin punch card that had fallen to the crosswalk floor. Taya tensed to kick him while he was looking down, then flinched as a jolt of pain ran through her calf. The decatur straightened, oblivious to her aborted action. “All I'm doing is setting up a few permanent subroutines. I'm not stealing any data, and I'm not sabotaging the Engine.”
“What kind of subroutines?”
“Iterative simulations. They'll need regular checking and adjustment, which is why I need Heart in place. I can't afford to waste my time guessing the Labyrinth Code every time I need to run some cards.”
“You stole the backup program.”
“I borrowed it,” Alister corrected her. “I was planning to return it. Unfortunately, losing the last few cards to Cris rendered months of effort completely worthless. That's why I had to do it this way, instead.” He sounded proud of himself. “However, I replaced all the cards I bought from Pins. Nobody will ever know they were stolen. Well, they'll know about the twenty-five Cris obtained, but we can say the lictor who set the bomb was the same one smuggling out the cards. This could be flawless, if you cooperate.”
Taya looked down at the wire-mesh platform beneath her feet, wondering if she should lie and agree to work with him so she could fly down to find Cristof. She couldn't see any sign of him.
He's all right. I counterweighted him well. He might be terrified, but he's safe.
She looked up and took a deep breath.
“What kind of simulations do you want to run?”
“Immigration, crime, breeding⦠I want to make sure Ondinium stays healthy over the long term. The ideal population ratio is ten to five to two to one, plebeian to cardinal to icarus to exalted. But Ondinium's always been open to immigration, and my research indicates that we're starting to accumulate too many plebeian castes. That's been causing an increase in poverty, violence, and crime.”
Taya nodded, reserving judgment. So far he hadn't said anything she hadn't heard before from self-styled social critics.
Alister smiled as if her nod had been an endorsement.
“I plan to run the simulations on a regular schedule to calculate the city's ideal annual immigration and childbirth rates.”
“And you couldn't have done that openly?”
“The Council has a strong conservative element when it comes to relying on simulations to inform public policy. Look at the fuss they kicked up over Clockwork Heart, and all it was going to do was ensure stable marriages and healthy, caste-appropriate children. Who could argue with that?”
“I can. A program can't tell you how well a marriage will work or whether a child will be âcaste-appropriate.' What does that mean, anyway? I'm completely different from my sister, and you're completely different from Cristof.”
“You're being distracted by superficial differences. I'm looking at deep behavioral similarities. Now, I grant you, nothing's guaranteed, but if I can control enough of the variables, Clockwork Heart should be able to guarantee satisfactory statistical likelihoods.” His eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. “Logically matched marriages and rationally directed childbearing programs can help Ondinium raise a stronger and smarter generation of citizens.”
“Childbearing programs?” A fresh wave of dizziness overtook her and she leaned on the Engine, trying to collect her thoughts.
“Certainly. Mareaux has been breeding superior horses, cattle, and dogs for centuries, and they're nothing but uneducated farmers.”
“Wait.” Taya frowned. “You want to breed people like farm animals? That's insane.”
“You're grossly simplifying the matter.”
“We're reborn according to the Lady's judgment. You can't breed for caste.”
“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand. “And there will always be a certain amount of movement between castes due to the social and environmental variables of individual upbringing. Those issues are too difficult to control, which is why we established the Great Examination to reassign children who don't fit their birth caste. But as a society we can take logical, progressive steps to improve the quality of the bodies into which our spirits are reborn. It's not a matter of breeding better people; it's a matter of breeding stronger castes.”
“What if Clockwork Heart recommends a cross-caste marriage?”
“It won't. I built in caste as a selection parameter. After all, the goal is to
strengthen
desirable caste traits, not dilute them. The Lady gave us intelligence so that we can improve ourselves as we work toward our final, perfect rebirth.”
“And the Lady also gave us free will to choose who we love.” The pain in her leg was growing worse. “What about Viera and Caster? Would Clockwork Heart have let them marry? Would your childbearing program have come up with Ariq?”
“I'm sure it would have.”
“Cristof said both of you objected to the marriage.” Taya leaned over and felt the back of her left leg. Her flight suit had a ragged rip in it, and she felt something damp. She pulled her hand back.
A thin smear of blood. Just what she'd been afraid of.
“Weâ” Alister's eyes fell to her hand. “You're hurt.”
“One of your men shot me.”
“I thought they'd missed.” Alister stepped forward and knelt, examining her calf. Taya flinched and braced herself on his shoulder. “It looks like a bullet went in and out. You're bleeding into your suit padding. Give me your knife. I want a better look.”
She reached up with her right hand and pulled the utility knife off her harness. Alister's back was protected by layers of silk, but his bare neck was vulnerable, draped with loops of long, gold-wrapped black hair.
She steeled herself and pressed the blade against Alister's carotid artery.
“Let go of me, Alister.”
The decatur's left hand shot out and grabbed her wrist before she could move. He stood, his grip tightening as he forced her arm up and aside, over her left shoulder.
“Tayaâ”
She jerked herself around, spinning all the way to her left. Her wings screeched over the face of the Great Engine, and then the metal feathers sprang free, slapping Alister across the face and chest. He swore and released her, more startled than injured.
She dropped to her left knee, gasping as her wound sent a fresh pulse of pain shooting through her leg, and slashed behind her with the knife.
The blade slammed harmlessly into Alister's leather boots, but the impact was enough to make him hop backward.
“Stop that! You're being foolish!”
She looked down. A square box of tin Engine cards sat on the platformâ Clockwork Heart, she presumed. She shoved it sideways and it hit the metal guardrail.
“No!” Alister dropped to his knees and grabbed it.
They knelt shoulder-to-shoulder, yanking the box back and forth as the tin cards inside jingled against each other. Then Taya jammed her knife into the box's side and sawed down, ripping out one of the corners.
Slick metal cards poured out of the ragged hole, tumbling into the chasm.
“Scrap!” Alister grabbed the box and tore it from her grasp before all of its contents could vanish into the depths. She slashed at his wrist. He slid the box behind him and sprang to his feet.
Taya tried to do the same. Pain skewered her and she dropped back to her knees, tears stinging her eyes.
“Now look what you've done,” Alister growled, reaching down. He snatched the knife from her suddenly weak hand and tucked it inside his robes. “You're bleeding to death and you're still trying to fight me.”
“Nobody bleeds to death from a calf wound,” she gasped. She was almost certain she was right, but Lady, she'd never been shot before, and her calf hurt like Forgefire. She looked down through the grillwork.
The incandescent lights flashed off a small mass of moving metal crawling up the side of the Great Engine.
She blinked.
“Take off your armature.”
She looked up.
“No.”
“Take it off or I cut it off.” Alister reached down and grabbed her arm. “I need to see that wound, and I can't get a good look with your tailset in the way. If the bullet left any leather or padding under the skin, your leg could get infected.”
She looked up at him. He looked just as concerned as if she hadn't just foiled his plan to control the Great Engine.
“Why do you care?”
“You still don't understand, do you? I'm trying to take care of youâ you and Cristof both. But you aren't making it easy.”
“What about Caster Octavus? Were you taking care of Viera when you killed him?”
“Iâ” He looked away. “I'm sorry about that. Caster was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You murdered him!”
The exalted sank into a crouch, facing her. She pulled her arm back and he let it slip out of his grasp.
“I'd intended to get on the wireferry alone. But at the last minute, Caster hopped on with me, wanting to talk about the Clockwork Heart vote.”
“You could have waited.”
“No, I couldn't. The alarm was set, and I couldn't pull the clock open and disarm the bomb while Caster was standing there arguing with me, could I? Besides, it was obvious from what you'd said that Cristof was close to discovering me. I had to do something drastic to knock his investigation off its cables.”
“So you framed him for your murder?”
“I wired the bomb into the clock in the hope that it would implicate him. I knew if the lictors arrested Cris, it would keep him off my trail. I've always intended to show up again to clear his name.”
She swallowed. “But why kill Octavus? Couldn't you have taken him prisoner?”
“It was hard enough to climb out of the car on my own. I couldn't have done it carrying another man. I knocked him out, though. He didn't feel any pain.”
Taya shuddered, imagining the burned and mangled body parts in the wreckage.
Body partsâ¦
She looked at Alister again, filled with cold fury. “No. You
needed
Caster. If you'd been alone, there wouldn't have been any body in the wreckage. Everyone would have known you weren't dead.”
His green eyes shifted, and she knew.
He was still lying. Even now he was trying to charm her, trying to convince her that the deaths in his mad scheme had been accidents.
But he'd known exactly what he'd been doing when he'd gotten on that ferry with Caster. Not only would Viera's husband provide gore for the search team, his dissenting vote would be removed from the Council chambers.
“You're a monster,” she spat. She grabbed the railing with one hand and pulled herself up, ignoring the pain in her leg.
The flash on the side of the Engine caught her eye again. It was closer now. She squinted, then spun, turning her back to it.
She had no idea how he'd managed it, but somehow Cristof was climbing up the shifting, floating, cliff-like face of the Great Engine, his ondium wings strapped in a bundle on his back.
“How did you get out of the car in time?” she demanded.
Alister's expression seemed colder now. He wasn't trying to charm her anymore.
“It's easy to reprogram a wireferry driver. I had it pause at a maintenance tower for a minute, just long enough to swing out and climb down.”
“And you hid on the mountain for two days?”
“Hiding from the rescue teams by day and traveling at dusk and dawn.” Alister shrugged. “I've hiked before, although I hadn't anticipated how cold it would get at night.”
“You hiked in your public robes.”
“Of course not.” He smiled. “I'd hidden climbing gear and supplies by the maintenance tower. After Neuillan's arrest, I realized that a wise decatur must be able to drop out of sight at a moment's notice.”