But even though no part of Ondinium was completely free of heavy industry, the lowest sector of the mountain grew flatter as it spread out toward the foothills and rivers below, and thus it bristled with more chimneys and smokestacks per square mile than anywhere else in the city. The streets were narrower and dirtier, especially as one traveled further down into the sector's depths, and the residents, on the whole, were poorer.
Taya had studied other countries to prepare for her diplomat corps examination, and she knew that many foreigners, whose first encounter with Ondinium was through Tertius, considered her city to be a sulfurous hellhole. They objected to its smog and dirt, to its cable- and tower-filled skyline, to its tightly built streets and buildings, and to its caste system and strict, sometimes ruthless laws. But at the same time they envied Ondinium's material wealth and rich culture; its high rates of education and employment and low rates of poverty. They wanted her city's technological resources and, most of all, they lusted after its priceless mines of ondium.
Ondinium hadn't sent an army to war in two hundred years, but it had weathered numerous attacks, and its lictors were among the best-trained security forces in the world. Not even Alzana, Ondinium's most aggressive rival, bothered to attack the city directly anymore. Now warfare was carried out with spies and thieves instead of soldiers and cannon; with bombs and terrorism instead of armies and sieges.
Taya glanced around, but the site of last night's refinery bombing was obscured by the walls and rooftops surrounding her.
The streets in the lower sector were darkened by a gritty haze of coal smoke and wood ash and by the crisscrossing cables and iron girders that formed the lowest level of the wireferry transit system. Buildings were constructed with jutting upper levels that formed wooden arches over the narrow streets, leaving only narrow slices of sky open to view like skylights.
When she'd been a child, Taya had spent much of her time climbing to the roofs of those buildings, playing on the broken, sooty tiles and watching the bright-winged icarii swoop overhead. None of her family or friends had been surprised when she'd been chosen to join the icarii after her Great Examination. She'd considered it a dream come true.
But despite being gone so long, she remembered this part of Tertius well. It didn't take her long to locate the street where Cristof Forlore's shop was hidden among a row of small workshops, most of them geared toward mechanical repairs of one kind or another. The outcaste's basement shop had nothing that set it off from the others; nothing to indicate that its proprietor had a wave on his cheek instead of a circle on his forehead.
Taya stopped at the stairs that led down from the street to its basement door. Three grubby children, two boys and a girl, were sitting on the steps, trading small chunks of metal.
One of them looked up at her. He was the oldest of the three, but his bare face indicated that he hadn't taken his Great Examination yet. Still under seven, then.
'Shop's closed,' he said. 'But the clockwright's coming back soon, should you wanna wait, then.'
She glanced at the shop door. Just as the boy had said, a sign hung on the knob.
Closed
.
'He's not hiding inside?'
'Nope.'
'Oh.' Taya debated with herself a moment, then shrugged. If she had been wearing her wings, she wouldn't have thought twice about leaving and coming back later, but she didn't care to climb Whitesmith Stairs more than twice in one day. The clocks in the shop window showed that it was half past noon. 'I guess I'll wait. Are you his friends?'
'Neighbors.' The boy jerked a thumb at the shop next door, a wigmaker's.
'You wanna play pick-up?' The younger boy held up a small, vulcanized rubber ball. 'We're playing for disks.'
Taya crouched. 'I don't have any disks.' She remembered having them, once. Just like these three children, she and her friends had collected chunks of slag from the forges and used them as a makeshift currency between themselves.
'How about that feather, then?' the older boy asked, pointing to her lapel pin.
'Sorry — it belongs to the government.' Taya dug into her pockets and found a few coins. 'I'll play you for pence, though. Six disks to a penny.'
'Four.'
'Five.'
'Done.'
The youngest child, a girl who couldn't be older than four, drew an unsteady circle on the cobblestones with a nub of chalk. Taya and the three children knelt around it, concentrating on the bouncing ball and the bits of colored stone used as markers.
Taya lost the first five games and then won back three of her pennies as her old skills returned. She laughed, snatching the ball in midair as it bounced off the edge of a cobblestone and angled toward the steps. The oldest boy grinned.
'You did that on purpose,' she accused, bouncing the ball into the circle for the next player.
'Just testing you, weren't I?' he replied, cheerfully.
The little girl's head snapped up from the circle and she looked down the street. 'Clockite's back!'
Moving fast, the two boys swept up the remaining markers. Taya grabbed her three pennies before the oldest snatched them up — he gave her an unrepentant smirk — and turned. The three children flung themselves on top of the steps again.
Cristof's steps slowed as he drew nearer.
Even after meeting him twice, Taya couldn't help but feel an odd jolt as she compared his castemark to his naked face and simple garments. The outcaste was dressed much as he'd been last night, in a dark suit and greatcoat. He held a paper-wrapped bundle in the crook of one arm. The autumn wind played through his defiantly short hair, making it stand up in dark, uneven chunks that emphasized how poorly it had been cut.
He glanced at her, then fixed his gaze on the three children who stood in a line between him and his shop door. His expression was disapproving as he peered at them from over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles.
'What are you three loathsome brats doing on my stairs?' he demanded.
Taya drew in an indignant breath, but her protest died as she saw that none of the children were upset by the outcaste's words.
'We cleaned ‘em for you, din't we?' the girl piped up.
'Did you?' Cristof took a step forward and looked past the children. His expression as he gazed at the steps down to his shop door was one of profound disgust. 'Am I to consider that clean?'
'Uh-huh.' The girl squatted, her ragged smock pooling around her feet, and wiped her hand over the step. She held it up. 'See, no dirt!'
Taya bit her bottom lip. The girl's palm was filthy, just as hers were, from playing pick-up on the street. But the shop steps, although stained, were free from the loose layer of ash that covered so much of the rest of the street.
'I see.' Cristof gave the boys a skeptical look. 'I suppose you two made your sister do all the work.'
'Nope. We got three brooms.' The youngest boy pointed to the twig brooms stacked at the bottom of the steps. 'We all took a turn, din't we?'
'And you all expect to be rewarded for it, no doubt.'
'Fair's fair,' the boy declared.
Cristof turned his relentless gaze on the oldest boy.
'Nothing to say for yourself?'
'Sixpence for sweeping, then, and one for keeping your customer here while you was gone,' the boy replied smartly, jerking a thumb at Taya.
'I doubt she's a customer,' Cristof muttered. He dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, counting two pennies into each boy's hand and three into the girl's.
'Thank you, sir.' 'Thank you, Mister Clockite.' 'See you tomorrow, sir!'
