I figured it out?” I grinned a little grin.
She laughed and leaned back, resting on her elbows, kicking her boots out over the water. She arched her back and smiled.
“Yes, darling, you have me. I’m the secret angel minion killer. I’ve been in the business of killing my friends with secret angel minions since I was a wee child. My father, you see, was heavily involved in the sale and maintenance of secret angel minions.”
I smiled and twisted to look at her. My arm brushed the warm strength of her belly. Her eyes flashed.
“You’re a ridiculous woman,” I said.
“Perhaps.”
We sat there for a moment, quietly. The water beneath us was very still, the stone cold.
“So,” Emily said. “What now.”
“I’m going to talk to Matthew. See if I can find out where the package came from. What happened to that girl.”
She flashed her dark eyes down to my hands, the holster on my belt, then settled on my face.
“And me?”
“You? I think you should stay here. Watch this.” I set the Cog on the pier between us. “Wilson will be back.”
“Sooner or later.” She pulled her hair from its knot, let it fall as sunshine cascaded across her face and down her neck. Her body was stretched, the muscles taut beneath the soft comfort of her dress. She smiled at my distraction.
“I think I’m going to take a bath,” she said quietly. “I’m in desperate need.”
I stood awkwardly and busied myself with my belt, fitting the holster more comfortably.
“I’ll, uh. Be back,” I said. She laughed, a delightful lilt that glanced down my spine and stuck in my bones. “Watch the Cog.”
“Attentively,” she called to my retreating back.
Behind me I could hear fabric falling, water splashing. I closed my eyes and hurried out.
I got Emily’s laughter out of my head by walking. I stitched my way across the city, crossing bridges and riding carriages, climbing the gentle avenues that led up to higher terraces or descended to the city’s lower districts closer to the river, traveling randomly to lose the image of her stepping into the water, her dress falling away, hair loose as the water rose up her legs, the warm hum of the frictionlamp the only light on her skin.
I sighed and signaled for the busser to pull over. I was where I needed to be, where the guy I wanted to talk to was most likely to be found. I got out of the carriage, paid, and lost myself in the crowd. Plenty of crowd, even this time of night, here in the Three Bells. In other parts of the city, this many people on the street was usually the preamble to a riot. Three Bells, though, this is just what happened at night. Drinking, carousing, art. I used to be comfortable in this crowd.
The crowd slowed around the BlackIron Theater. The show was getting ready to start, and folks were trying to sneak in before the gate closed. I edged my way around the logjam until I was standing by the reserved gate. Reserve ticketholders arrived when they wanted to, sat where they wanted to. Trick was, reserve tickets couldn’t be bought. Something you had to be born into. I went up to the gate.
“Evening, sir,” said the well pressed guard behind the iron bars. He looked over my clothes with little respect. “This gate is for reserved seats. Main entrance is that way.”
“I’m familiar with the arrangement. I’ll be claiming the Burn seats this evening.”
“Ah. I don’t know that I’m acquainted with your claim, sir.”
“My claim? Should I bleed out a little nobility for you? Or are you unfamiliar with the Family Burn? We have a tower, don’t we, right over that goddamn hill. Would you like a tour of the grounds, perhaps, a short walk through the Deep Furnace? Would that suffice? Sir?”
The man had gone pleasantly white. “Ah, no, no. What I mean, sir, is that the Family Burn is here frequently. Just the other night. And, ah, I am… I know them all, sir.”
I tilted my chin, hooked my thumb in the loop on my holster in the traditional dueling stance of the Families, and stared him down.
“I am Jacob Hastings Burn, first son of Alexander, formerly of the Highship Fastidious.”
His face fell. He looked me over again, trying to decide if he could turn me down based on my history, my unsure place in the complicated world of obligation and honor that ruled among the Families.
“No weapons in the theater, sir?” It was a desperate try.
“Bullshit. Every father’s son in there has his iron. Don’t think to lock me out on that.”
He looked down, fiddled with the baubles on his cuffs, worried the corners of a program that he had picked up.
“So what’s the show, friend?” I asked.
“ The Ascension of Camilla.”
“Swell.” I stuck my hand out for the program. “Let’s see it.”
He looked at the program in his hand, deflated, and handed it to me through the bars. With a clatter he slid the gate open and showed me inside.
“This way, sir.”
“I know the way.” I shouldered him aside and disappeared into the velvet darkness of the theater. The BlackIron was a remarkably complicated building. A complicated entertainment, really, but it served to show off the city’s extravagant innovation. It was a majestically conceited engine.
The main hall was cool and dark when I slipped inside. The show had started, and the terraced rows of booths were bathed in the reflected light of the stage. It was just enough light to find my way. I spent a lot of time here in the fragile days of my youth, but it had been a while. I stood by the entrance while my eyes adjusted, scanning the rows of booths. Matthew Four put in an appearance at the BlackIron almost every night. He was in the business of being available to the Families. Probably the first criminal I had ever met.
Tonight’s story was of young and imperfect Camilla, and her being raised by the Church of the Algorithm. It was one of the thinner propagandas, but the trappings were remarkable. Unlike the more primitive theaters, the stage of the BlackIron was at an angle, slightly steeper than the terraced seats of the audience. There were dozens of trapdoors and metal tracks, whipping cables of wire and rope gathered up by pulleys, all of it painted black to give the impression of a blank slate, the empty table of storytelling.
Into this emptiness came the contraptions of the Theater. Moved along the tracks or across the pulley-lines, the actors of the BlackIron told the story of little Camilla, following her from childhood, portraying the struggles of her family, the conditions of their poverty at the hands of an uncaring king, a distant court. I had seen the play a hundred times. It was an old favorite of the city, a familiar tale repeated until it was ritual. Much like The Summer Girl , come to think of it. I shuddered, only half watching the production.
They told the story well, precisely, hitting every cue, reciting every line. But of course, their perfection was the conceit, for these were not the actors of just any theater. This was the BlackIron, renowned and remembered, the pride of Veridon. These actors were artwork, engines of cogwork and performance, assembled especially for each show, half-made and remade every night.
As I stood in the dim hall, Camilla herself was taking the stage. The preamble was over, and the ascension was beginning. I had seen it dozens of times, but it always held my attention. The director here was a clever man, personally rebuilding the performanceengines each night, bringing out some new reaction from the cogwork, so that every show was slightly different, slightly more… perfect.
Camilla appeared from the central trapdoor, high up on the stage’s palette. She unfolded, unbound by the rules of biology, shuffling open to her full size, exaggerated to aid the viewing of the audience. No bad seats at the BlackIron. The girl’s voice was gentle, quiet, but utterly clear. She sang about her family, gone over the falls, swept away by flood. Her voice wavered as she went on, describing her sickness, the rot of her lungs, the weakness of her heart. My heart is falling, winding down. My heart is empty, falling down. I whispered along.
Another voice, offstage, joined her. The churchman, the Wright. His brown robes and oil-grimed hands whirred into view along a track. Their voices joined, the song continued on, rising until the hall shook with her sickness, with his solution. The complicated trick that was the center of the spectacle began, her arms first folding out, unbecoming, the Wright adding, replacing, creating. Making her something more, something complicated.
