Beneath Ceaseless Skies #95 Read online

  “The big one called the little a—” and here she made a stuttering noise, an automata word that I am glad I do not know, judging by Natalya’s hiss. “And the little one called the big one a man-scraper.”

  Just then the Lower Kingdom official declared that both automata were “unworthy of their metal.” The automata turned to face him, and I covered Sulla’s eyes. I saw plenty of tram accidents when I was in the Staves, and they are not healthy viewing for a five-year-old.

  Before the man could be crushed, however, a tiny old woman made her way through the crowd. It took me a moment to recognize her as the same woman Pietro had put on the train to Akkuma, and by that point she had reached the side of the larger automaton. I could not hear what she said, but the tram-car settled back on its treads and the smaller automaton lowered its leg. Either one of them could easily have crushed her or even just set her aside, yet they remained still. The official attempted to interrupt her several times, but she raised one frail hand and he stopped as if confronted by a pikeman.

  Around us, the commotion in the street returned to its usual state, and Sulla pushed away, wanting to be let down. Unfortunately, her buckles had become caught on my bodice, and by the time we’d untangled ourselves, the old woman had dismissed both the smaller automaton and the official and stayed to speak with the tram-car, one hand on its treads. (I should mention that many Transit-born automata do not like to be touched; it is, I believe, a reminder of their history as machines before awakening.) After a moment, they parted ways, and the little old woman turned back towards us.

  “Grandma Lyle!” Serge shouted, echoed by Irra, and the two of them practically knocked her over. Natalya, Sulla, and I followed more slowly.

  If I did not know better—and I am not yet certain that I do—I would say that Grandma Lyle has some Imperial ancestry, as despite her age and dress she does not resemble either the disparate humans of the Hundred Cities or the Terranoctans. She smiled at me as I reached Serge and Irra. “Rosie, I take it?”

  “Yes,” I managed, around Sulla’s chatter. “Forgive me for asking, but are you a facilis?”

  Her eyes crinkled up at the corners, and she nodded. “One of the first. As are most of my family.” She gestured after the tram-car, which had trundled most of the way to the alarm tower by now. “Poor #41 doesn’t like being left out of the loop, and she’s returning to Akkuma tomorrow, so she saw this as the last chance to clear matters up.”

  Sulla asked her something that I could not catch, as the last few words were automaton-speech, and though Lyle responded in Imperial, I did not understand one word in five. Terms such as “sand-ogre,” “Rimarri banner,” and “fourpoint” must have meant something to the children, who listened avidly and nodded along. “So it was a business disagreement?” I tried.

  “No,” Irra said, and immediately tried to hide behind her brother.

  “Of a sort,” Lyle corrected. “Business covers a number of matters for City-born, and more for Transit-born. And of course the Lower Kingdoms like to think they know all about automata, so it’s hard to convince them otherwise.”

  Do you remember when I gave my first presentation in class, on the political structure of the warehouse district, and got an entire classroom full of glazed looks? I now understand what it’s like from the other side. “This happens often?”

  “This is Harkuma.” Ruffling Irra’s hair, she smiled at me. “Pietro tells me you are doing well.”

  “I—yes.” I have seen quite a bit more of Pietro since our introduction, though I must question his business acumen, since he’s missed appointments more than once due to his habit of hanging around Cromwell House.

  “Good. I’ll send some books along with him.” She bowed again, in the formal Lower Kingdom style. “I have work at the far end of the city, but I hope to see you again. And Serge, you should return those plums.”

  True to her words, Serge had taken another handful from the fruit stall while we were watching the conflict, and this meant another unwilling apology and a long talk all the way back to Cromwell House.

  Despite such setbacks, the children are starting to learn, although their knowledge of geography is absolutely terrible. I asked Irra to point to Svete-Kulap, and she ignored the map entirely and pointed east, which is nearly one hundred and twenty degrees off. Once they finally made the connection between map and directions, they took to it with alacrity, even if Sulla still cannot quite pronounce the names properly. Pietro brought us a copy of Atlas of the Clockwork Cities—the new edition, by C. and S. Vallom—and Serge can barely be parted from it for a moment.

  Incidentally, Natalya has quite surprised me. She is as quick and intelligent as any of the Staves’ thiefmasters any Jenkins School valedictorian, and teaching her is an enjoyable challenge. It turns out the spiders were her way of welcome; the girl has a passion for studying arthropods, and I suspect the mechanical lobster was mainly her work. I would like to recommend her for the Royal Society when she’s of age, since if she’s not given enough of a challenge she is likely to make one of her own.

  Yours,

  —Rosalie

  * * *

  R:

  I’d rather not lose more of our students to the Society, but as it’s unlikely we could bring Natalya here without causing more trouble for the Cromwell children, I’ll consider it.

  I can’t help noticing that your letters still say nothing concrete about the potential for a Jenkins School. Is there a chance of founding one or not? This is not a difficult question.

  —E.J. (M.)

  * * *

  Dear Matron Jenkins,

  It might not be a difficult question in a place like the warehouse district, where despite the many “confraternities” we all knew where we’d go at the end of the day. But Harkuma is not an Imperial city, and its shifting population makes the question much more troubling.

  I have, however, sought out more information on the subject. At my request, Pietro took us to visit his grandmother yesterday. The children pounced on her as soon as we reached the door, which she bore with better grace than many of my classmates would have demonstrated, and I was left to help Pietro with the dust shutters (the storm season has begun in earnest, leaving me wondering what life was like before grit accumulated in every part of my wardrobe).

  Grandma Lyle’s house is unusual even for the mishmash of architecture that makes up Harkuma. It is old—so old the red brick has faded to rose. Few structures in Harkuma have been in place for more than a decade, but I found myself marveling at the tiles set into the clay that showed the tarnish of time. “So old,” I said as we entered, mostly to myself.

  “Rosie!” Pietro said reprovingly, and I looked up, remembering a little too late that I really should inform him of my preferred address.

  “She means the house, Pietro, not me.” Grandma Lyle closed another of the dust shutters. “It was built when Harkuma wasn’t much more than a well and a rail depot.” She turned to her grandson and nodded to the next room, where the children were arguing over some many-jointed toy. Obediently, he joined them, I assumed to keep them from tearing the toy apart. “Come,” she said to me. “Sit.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I hope we’re not imposing on your hospitality.”

  “Not in the least.” She smiled and settled into a worn chair in front of what I belatedly recognized as a writing-desk. A long case of oversized books stood beside it, as well as tools I’d last seen in our advanced mathematics classes. “As it is, your timing is good; I’ve only just returned from Akkuma.”

  “Akkuma? But—” Of course; as a facilis, she would travel between the two, which would explain why she had been the lone human passenger on that train. “It must be a difficult journey.”

  “I have an old friend there,” she said, still smiling. “We share an interest in cartography. These days, I split my time between the two cities. Sit, please.”

  I did so, pulling a stool to the high table. Through the door, Natalya had begun to i
nspect the little toy with, I suspected, an eye toward copying it, while Serge had dragged out the Atlas and was flipping through it to show Pietro something.

  “Pietro tells me,” she went on, “that you wish to build a school here. Do you understand what that would mean?” She raised one hand to the wall behind her desk, where a metal disc had been set into the clay like a talisman.

  I did have the whole speech prepared, Matron, I promise you that. But the words seemed to slide away from me. “I’m not sure,” I told her. “I know what it meant for me, when I lived in the warehouse district.” Lyle raised one white brow, but did not speak. “For me it was a step up, a hand helping me off an unsteady walkway—but there are so few children in Harkuma, and so many of them are only here for months at a time. What good would a school be for them?”

  “You might be surprised. And the children are not the only ones here.” She touched the disc again, and in the slanting light I could make out the design that had once been stamped there: a rodent of some kind, turning back to regard its stump of a tail. “There have always been people who shuttled between worlds.”

  I thought of the friends I had left in the Staves when I was given to the Jenkins School—and yet I have never regretted the change.

  Lyle gestured to her desk. “I traveled for quite some time, as did my friend in Akkuma. As did my husband, before we met. Harkuma was very small in those days, but even then, we kept returning here.” She rose to her feet again. “Come. I’ll show you some of our work.”

  I’m afraid all thoughts of the Jenkins School fled while we examined her work. Serge eventually joined us to examine the number of maps Lyle and her family had created over the years. It was quite possibly the most peaceful afternoon I’ve had since stepping off of the train.

  So there is one opinion on the viability of a Jenkins School in Harkuma: open to the possibility, if not entirely wholehearted. Though I suspect her position as facilis gives Lyle a perspective that few share. I can’t help but think the faciles would be instrumental for the foundation of any school a Jenkins School.

  —Rosalie

  * * *

  R:

  Let me be perfectly clear about this: I am not asking for everyone else’s opinion of a Jenkins School in Harkuma, regardless of how old their houses are. I am asking for your opinion. I would hate to think that I had made the wrong choice in selecting you for this work.

  —E.J. (M.)

  * * *

  dere Matron Jankins,

  if YOU tak our ROSIE away we will send Fiftene LOBTSTERS to your mailbox and they willEAT ALL YOUR MAIL. Do NOT tak ROSIE back we liek her here and she lieks it here TO.

  also send one hundrud THOUSND gold Bulls to this Adress or maybee we will send the lobtsters ENNIWAY.

  sinserely yours,

  —YOULL NEVER CATCH US

  * * *

  To the Cromwell Children:

  I have enclosed your “ransom note” with corrections made in red. You will make those corrections, copy out the result ten times apiece, and return the copies to Miss Syme. In future, if you intend to threaten anyone, you have no excuse for doing so ungrammatically.

  Also, your lobster is currently on my desk. I rather like it. Miss Syme tells me this is your work; if so, well done.

  —Emma Jenkins

  * * *

  R:

  What in the world is going on out there? And why haven’t you gotten to basic spelling and grammar with these children?

  —E. J (M.)

  * * *

  Dear Matron Jenkins,

  I do apologize for the note, as well as for their spelling. Irra has apparently decided that poor spelling is intimidating, and I have yet to convince her otherwise. I believe Natalya allowed the letter to be written solely to comfort Serge and Sulla, for which I cannot really blame her.

  Their concern springs from a failure on my part, and one I am ashamed to relate. Several nights ago, Eutropius held yet another social for his business contacts. I would have simply put the pillow over my head and endured the noise had it not been that we have entered the storm season, and for the past two nights the rattle of sand against my shutters had kept me awake. I left Sulla curled up on my bed and descended to the lower reaches of the house.

  I am not certain what I expected to find—although my classmates would probably have whispered about some form of mechanical debauchery, I doubt they would know such if it were presented on a platter. The werglass fixtures of the house were lit, as were several of the lamps, and by their weak light I found my way to the same great chamber where I had first met Eutropius.

  Five automata, ranging from a lacy creature very like a transplanted sea animal to a hulking thing created from barrels and treads, stood in a semicircle in the center of the room. Eutropius's scorpionlike angularity perched in the middle, and he seemed to be the one in charge: though each continued in either screech or drone or arrhythmic clank, he was the one who gestured to each in time, much as a conductor does before an orchestra.

  “Fascinating, yes?” I turned to see Pietro, who had been standing just at the edge of the lamplight. “I don’t quite have the ear for it, but it’s still amazing to hear them practice.”

  “Practice?” I shivered, looking from him to Eutropius and back. “This is practice for something?”

  “Of course.” He shed his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. “Automata music. Although it’s not so much practice as a friendly concert, say. Like singing with one’s family.”

  As I watched, a pattern seemed to accrete around Eutropius's movements: percussive, devoid of melody, and yet with a strangely harmonious result, like a mathematical formula drawn in calligraphy. I shook my head, too weary to either make sense of the sound or reject his loan of the jacket. “But this isn’t music. This is noise.”

  Abruptly Eutropius's gears clattered to a halt, and the noise stopped, leaving only a deafening echo. “Noise, is it?” he said without turning. His voice, so close to human, seemed all the more artificial now. “And what would you have to say about noise?”

  Pietro started to shake his head, but I let my exhaustion speak for me. “I—had hoped to ask you to quiet it. The house is so loud, and following the storms—”

  “You ask me to quiet my friends?” Eutropius's central body rotated so that he faced me, and his legs unfolded from underneath. “In my house?”

  Some time before I was given to the Jenkins School, I had the unfortunate experience of walking a roofline in winter and finding that several shingles retained a glaze of ice. I have never forgotten that sudden shock of my footing falling away. And yet then and now I had the same reaction: reach out for the first handhold and hope. “It was your partner’s house as well,” I said.

  Eutropius went still, even the lights of his eyes going out, and I briefly thought he’d lost power, that his own life had stopped at the mention of his partner’s. Instead he made a horribly discordant noise, and the other automata began to move, gliding or thumping their way to the door. I started to speak, but Pietro put his hand on my shoulder and shook his head.

  For a moment the hall was silent—I would have said blessedly so only a few minutes earlier, but now it carried a hollowness that shivered through me.

  Eutropius turned away. “Edgar,” he said finally, “hated our music. He could not stand it, and so I only played on nights when he was in Akkuma, or trading in the Capitol. It—makes me miss him less, to play now. I can imagine he is only temporarily absent.”

  I caught my breath, stung by the pain in his automaton voice even as I knew it for a mechanical response. And yet there are Society doctors who claim that human pain is a mechanical response as well. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I should hope so,” Eutropius said with a grinding noise almost like a laugh. “And I should threaten you with termination, for interrupting our music. Or if not for that, then for your little side project.”

  A chill ran down my spine, freezing me in place. “Project?”
I said, as innocently as possible.

  Not innocent enough. “Do you think I don’t know that your matron sent you to found one of her staid, straitlaced schools here? At the very least this constitutes a foolish endeavor; at the worst, I’d consider it a strike against the Hundred Cities and all free automata. We have no need of a foothold of Imperial culture here.”

  “It’s certainly not meant as such,” I tried, but he would not hear me.

  “In any other of the Hundred Cities, you would be scorned, but here you only look a fool. This is Harkuma, Miss Syme. No one is here because they want to be. No one belongs here. Edgar didn’t, I don’t, and the best we can do is continue.” He shivered, or maybe that was the automaton way of shrugging. “Or perhaps I will simply inform the Jenkins School that you have proved unsuitable.”

  “I—” I would have defended myself, but the last few weeks have taken their toll. I have been a tolerable governess for the Cromwell children—but a governess is not a school, and Harkuma is larger than one house. I have failed in the task you set me, Matron, and taxed your patience in doing so.

  “You are correct,” I said.

  “Am I, now? You finally think so?” He turned to regard me, werglass eyes flaring. “Take your silence and go.”

  Pietro shepherded me out of the hall, to the foot of the stairs. To my horror, the children were already there, even Sulla. Tears welled in my eyes as I saw them. “Thank you,” I managed, shrugging Pietro’s jacket away. “I am sorry.”

  “He won’t write to her,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Write, don’t write, what does it matter?” I pressed both hands over my eyes. “Matron Jenkins—she has every right to call me home—” I caught myself before I could sound any more idiotic and hurried up the steps, Natalya and Irra parting before me.

  It was an ill-chosen remark, and one I regretted once I had slept, but I believe it is what triggered the children’s assumption that you were planning to take me away.