'You have so many!' Taya breathed, her annoyance forgotten. She clutched her bundle and stared. Enamelwork and metal gleamed in the lamplight like moving jewels. Cristof had a small fortune hanging on his walls and sitting on his shelves. 'Did you make them all?'
'No. Not all.' He hesitated, then walked to a desk. The lamplight reflected off his cheekbones, making his face look even thinner. The exalted's waves tattooed on his face seemed to move in the unsteady light. 'Put the net on the table. Make sure the armature doesn't float too high.'
Reminded of her business, Taya tied two ends of the net to the table legs, letting the rest of the bundle float. Cristof returned with two knives and offered one. His hands were covered with dark smears — dirt or machine oil, she guessed. It was another indication of his outcaste status. Exalteds were fastidious about their appearance.
'It'll be faster to cut the ropes,' he said. 'That way we won't bend any feathers.'
'If those bastards broke my wings, I'll kill them.' Taya grabbed the knife, sawing at the cords.
'You might have, already. The man you stabbed was losing a lot of blood.'
Taya cut through a rope and attacked the next. Then she set down the knife a moment, looking at the blood welling from the cuts on her fingers.
Had she really killed a man?
If he got to a hospital, he'd be all right.
Of course, he was a foreigner, and probably not even a licensed resident. Physicians weren't obliged to treat anyone who didn't pay Ondinium's taxes, and any respectable doctor would ask questions about those wounds that the Demican wouldn't want to answer.
Why did she care what happened to him, anyway? He'd tried to kill her.
'Scrap,' she muttered, angrily.
Cristof paused, on the other side of the table.
'What?'
'What about you? You shot him, didn't you? If he dies, he'll probably die from that.'
'Maybe.' The exalted studied her. 'Although needlers seldom kill at range. They're intended as deterrents.'
'Oh. So if he dies, it's my fault.' The thought depressed her. How would inflicting a fatal injury on a foreigner affect her chance at the diplomatic corps?
'If he dies, it's his fault for going icarus-hunting, not yours for defending yourself.' Cristof went back to work, his slender fingers tugging at the net strands. 'And it's his fault for letting himself be led around by Alzanans. A Demican should know better.'
Not feeling very comforted, Taya picked up her knife again.
'I guess you don't like Alzanans.'
'Half the Alzanans in Ondinium are spies. Maybe more.' He sawed through another rope. 'It doesn't surprise me that they'd want an operational armature. They could demand a king's ransom for these wings.'
Taya began working on another rope, considering his words. She knew her wings were valuable, of course, but she'd never thought they'd attract thieves.
'Do you think they were specifically looking for wings?' she asked.
'They came with a net. That isn't a standard mugger's weapon. Did anyone know you'd be on Tertius tonight?'
The rope unraveled beneath her blade, and she sighed.
'Just about everybody in the neighborhood. I was at my sister's wedding.'
Cristof was silent. Taya kept working, ignoring the fresh trickles of blood that ran over her hands as she worked.
She didn't like the thought that those men had been hunting her. They must have heard she would be attending the wedding in armature and — what? Had they waited to see if she'd leave alone? Had they guessed that an icarus would find it easiest to launch from the Market Tower? Was she that predictable?
She could have foiled their plans if she'd done something unexpected, but why would she? No one harmed icarii. They were Ondinium's couriers and rescuers; its alarm system and its luck.
Of course, those three had been foreigners. They wouldn't have an Ondinium citizen's respect for icarii.
The armature jerked as the net slid apart. Taya grabbed the harness before it could hit the ceiling and hauled it back down. Without a word, Cristof tied one of the severed ropes to a harness strap and anchored it into place over the table.
'It doesn't look too bad,' Taya said, inspecting the wings. The net had yanked them out of their locked position, which meant they might have sustained damage to the joints, but she wouldn't know until she tried them on again. She caressed the metal feathers closest to her, tugging them. They still seemed to be securely fastened to the wing struts.
On the other side of the table, Cristof was doing the same thing, frowning as he concentrated. His dirt- stained fingers moved confidently as he tested the feathers and their housing.
Taya surreptitiously studied him. His coat was as plain and well-worn as any other craftsman's. He didn't wear any rings or necklaces. He didn't have any pins in his lapels or any clasps or jewels in his short black hair. Even his spectacles were ordinary. There was nothing in his appearance to indicate he was anything other than a simple famulate mechanic, except the curling blue waves tattooed on his cheeks.
Once you get past the discrepancy between his castemarks and the way he dresses, he's not so bad- looking
, she thought. He still had an exalted's features, after all. His copper skin was smooth and his badly cut hair was thick and glossy. His features were sharp, though, and there wasn't much extra weight on his tall, thin frame. Grey eyes were unusual for an exalted. He must have foreign blood in his ancestry; Demican, maybe. His pale eyes were what made his face so cold, their light color emphasized by the silver rims of his spectacles.
'This wing seems all right,' he said at last. She collected her thoughts.
'Mine, too, unless some of the joint mechanisms have been damaged.'
He glanced at her hands.
'You're getting blood all over everything. Sit down.'
'They're just cuts.' She looked down and made a face. He was right. She'd smeared blood on her flight suit, and blood had dripped on the table beneath the armature. The scratches weren't deep, but working with her hands had been keeping them open.
Cristof pulled off his greatcoat and threw it over a chair, then vanished through a doorway. Relieved to be free of his critical gaze for a moment, Taya curled her bloody hand in her lap and looked around with wonder.
All of the clocks and timepieces indicated the same time, but otherwise they varied widely, from the somber black long-case clock standing in one corner to the fanciful jeweled stag-shaped clock set on a high shelf to the open-geared clock under a glass case that took up two feet of the top of a tool cabinet. Three short shelves next to a worktable were covered with wind-up toys, the kind Taya had played with as a little girl. Two caught her eye: small birds that floated over the top of the shelf, tethered with pieces of string. She stood and walked over to them, holding her bleeding hand close to her chest to avoid making any more of a mess.
The birds were cunningly crafted with tiny, bright enameled feathers and little beaks of gold. The miniature keys between each set of wings looked gold, too. The birds’ eyes sparkled in the lamplight, and Taya wondered if they were made of cut glass or gemstones. Gemstones, she guessed, if they were the expensive toys they seemed to be.
'They have ondium cores,' Cristof said, returning with a basin and two hand towels. He put them on the table beneath the floating armature. 'Wash your hand.'
'They're beautiful.' She pulled herself away and dipped her hand in the cold water. Blood stained the cold water as she rubbed the cuts clean. 'Are you repairing them for someone?'
'They're mine.' Cristof held out a handkerchief, and she pressed it against her cuts. He'd washed his hands, too, she noted, but dirt still smudged his shirt cuffs and the sharp bridge of his nose, where he must have touched
