Blightcross: A Novel (8 page)

“As you say, Leader.”

Not a second after the door clicked shut from the Colonel's exit, the door flew open once again. A blond woman in a neat skirt sauntered in and dropped a folder on Sevari's desk. She left as silently as she had come.

Sevari picked it up casually. His bored, slack expression transformed into a serious frown, like molten iron poured into a mold. He brought the papers closer to his face, read for two minutes, slammed the folder onto the desk.

“Well, this is not going very well. Not very well at all.”

“Sir?”

Sevari stood, and Alim did the same. “Come with me, Valoii.”

So he followed Till Sevari, The Leader of Blightcross, out of the office and into a long hallway decorated with a purple carpet, numerous portraits, and chandeliers. At the end of the hall, they came to a round door, riveted all round, and fitted with a wheel at the centre to operate a seal mechanism. The Leader pointed to it, and Alim rushed to open the door. During the final turns of the wheel, a hiss issued from the wall. He recoiled at a burning sensation in his nostrils.

Opening the door filled the hall with a loud grating, staccato banging, hissing, all mixed with metallic footsteps and the shouts of workmen. This sealed door was the demarcation between Sevari's wing of the place and the actual refinery. Alim stared, speechless at the immensity of what he saw beyond the door. A labyrinth of pipes and catwalks, and he could not begin to understand how any of it worked.

“This facility stretches far into the desert,” Sevari said. “There are seventeen different pipelines that all feed this refinery.”

“I have seen the largest factories in Tamarck, and still this amazes me.” He made tentative steps along the grated floor. A steady vibration shook his knees.

Sevari led him through the facility. “I would prefer it if you would wear your uniform from now on, except when you are working in the city and need to be inconspicuous.”

Alim scarcely heard the directive. There were too many things going on around him to argue about it. “As you wish.”

“Now, I did bring you in here for a reason. I have a potential problem with a large percentage of my workforce here.”

“I don't follow you, Sir.”

“They are Ehzeri, and they are becoming scared. A few of them have died. Murder, they say.”

“Is it true?”

Sevari stopped and gazed at a group of workers across the way. They were huddled around a pipe juncture, and a shower of sparks bathed their work area, like a fountain of fire. What machine could do such a thing? Unless Sevari were employing Ehzeri for their
vihs
... but surely a man like him would not degrade himself. It must be some new machine. Each day there came to be new machines to replace the various
vihs
powers that were falling behind a curtain of obsolescence.

“The issue I have is how to deal with Ehzeri.”

“Respectfully, Leader, if my people had figured that out, the border skirmishes would have ended and we would all be shitting rainbows.”

Sevari ushered him along with a fatherly hand. “I am speaking on a purely psychological basis. I know of your extensive training. Even Tamarck is jealous of it.”

“You mean to ask me how you should keep your workers in line?”

“I merely wish to find out how to calm them. They need to realize that they are safe in my refinery. I need them. You need them. Tamarck needs them. We all need these workers to be working in my refinery, and the more talk of Ehzeri murders floats around, the greater risk there is of them causing trouble.”

Alim narrowed his eyes. “You mean, the greater risk there is of them leaving?”

“Whichever. I'm sure this could cause any number of production problems.”

The conversation gradually died, swallowed by the quicksand of distractions around them. Sevari took the time to speak with many of the workers, and Alim had the impression that these were the collaborators—the ones Sevari could trust not to report back to the others. Very few of these were Ehzeri. Despite the complex social situation, his main question was what exactly did they refine here?

He was not up on his sciences or mechanics, but now he understood that many innovative mechanisms required fuel. Like a steam engine—which had been a miserable failure—only clearly more powerful. Coal was not enough. This substance, this fuel, was a kind of concentrated spirit that required much processing. He could only imagine the sheer scale of the operation. He had always known of the deposits of volatile liquids locked in the earth—the blood of the giants. To pump it across vast distances and dig wells...

It did not make sense. Yes, they had various engines to aid in the work, but back home, there was not even talk of developing similar deposits. It simply was not feasible or necessary, yet Sevari had created this monstrosity and his district had become a constantly mutating organism as a result.

Was the machine really supplanting the old ways—the
work?
Or was Sevari using the
vihs
in a roundabout way?

For now it didn't matter. These Ehzeri were out of Mizkov's badlands and the less of them there the better. Now he had something far worse than dirt-poor Ehzeri to apprehend.

CHAPTER FOUR

It tickled Capra to see Dannac descend into a subdued mood. If she didn't know any better, she'd say he was embarrassed that the woman had called his bluff. For ten minutes, he had traced his fingers along the glassy metal and wood of his new hand-cannon. As for Capra's own gift, she caught a quick glance in the mirror and shrugged. Her trousers were neither stylish nor practical, but by now she had realized that despite this group's forward-thinking nature, it still in some ways suffered from the backwardness of Tamarck-influenced style.

Style was the furthest thing from her mind as they headed down the Orvis Dunes to the bookshop owned by Noro Helverliss. The sun splashed across the horizon, stabbed by the black spears of Blightcross's towers, and it looked as though it would swallow the entire city if not kept at bay by these jagged silhouettes. When, ten minutes after putting it on, her blouse was damp, she began to wonder if maybe the sun were devouring them. The air flowed in her lungs with a stifling weight. At their feet, a thin black mud softened their steps. And even though there played snippets of good music in this part of the town, her ears still rang with the constant screeching and hammering that came from nowhere and everywhere.

The bookshop smelled of mould and stale shalep. There were towers of unsorted books, and the shelves themselves leaned enough that Capra stepped lightly around them for fear of causing a catastrophe. Cookbooks sat with philosophy texts, mathematics tomes with novels, and if there was any kind of order to it, Capra couldn't see it. Perhaps this Noro Helverliss was such a genius that he could make sense of this chaos.

In one corner, a glass vase glowed from within. A flowing figure of a woman, tendrils of hair draped in sinuous curves. Capra ran her fingers along the serene, knowing face, traced the intricate details of the figure's leafy crown. It took her a moment to realize that this was a lamp, not just some sculpture.

Irea strolled through the stacks. “Noro? Noro, you bastard, where are you?”

There was no answer. Capra soon became absorbed in the room's paintings. They were like nothing she had seen before.

Figures, twisted and warped by what looked like evil magic. Landscapes that were deranged. Obscene colours and sometimes primitive, blocky figures and grotesque creations, inappropriate combinations like a desert cactus growing out of the body of an angel, or an eye set into an otherwise realistic portrayal of a stone hearth. Capra wandered around the shop to visit each painting, and was especially intrigued by ones that resembled nothing in particular—in fact, they looked rather like someone had spilled paint accidentally and called it art. Yet there was something sublingual, something that grabbed her and made her stand in a thrall, staring into the patterns so that her entire world framed this strange graphic—

“Capra!”

She tried to pry herself from the painting, but could do little more than shuffle her feet a few steps. It was Dannac's huge hand on her shoulder, pulling her away, that finally broke the trance. “Have you gone dumb, woman?”

She jerked free, and her breaths came in short rasps. “I...” A moment later, she began to feel normal. “What?”

He led her to the open loft, where they found Irea and a thin, stoop-shouldered man sitting in low chairs and gazing at the store below.

Irea rose and said, “Capra, Dannac, this is Noro Helverliss.”

Helverliss inclined his head slightly and raised his mug. His frock coat and trousers hung as if he were a skeleton. The mad, obsessed intellectual, baking under gaslight and forgetting to eat, surviving on stimulants. Capra had fallen for more than one in the past—

“Mr. Helverliss,” she said. “I am intrigued by your paintings.”

“Those are my early works,” he said in a raspy voice. “I really dislike most of them.”

—although admittedly, those men had been younger and just a bit more charming.

A chill raced through her. There was a strange depth to Helverliss' blue eyes. She could only think of lightning storms when she looked into them.

“A woman like you is hard to find,” Helverliss said, while his eyes traced Capra's figure.

“Most of us wear trousers back home... practicality dictates, Sir.”

“Ah, yes. Mizkov.” He lit a cheroot and sighed with a stark heaviness.

“Now,” Irea said. “About your painting, Noro.”

“Oh.” Helverliss blew a thick cloud of smoke from his nostrils. “My best work. Sevari sent his thugs to take it from me.” He inhaled for a long while, eased back his head. “I should have never showed it. I should have never showed it.”

Just listening to the man made Capra tired. While Dannac took a seat next to Irea, Capra forced herself to stand.

Helverliss went on: “I called it
Akhli and the Shadows
. Superficially the painting is mostly a canvas of flat black, with a simple red emblem in the corner.”

Dannac made a disgusted grunt. “How is that art? And why would an important man like Sevari care about a black canvas that portrayed nothing?”

“You stupid cretin,” Helverliss said. “Nothing of its kind exists. If Sevari were smart enough to just sell the damned thing he would be able to build another refinery and double the output of that monster in which he has burrowed himself.”

Dannac shifted in his seat. The muscles of his jaw rippled, and Capra knew the only reason he had not struck Helverliss was because of the gift Irea had given to him.

“Was it like the one downstairs?” Capra thought for a moment, remembered how it had transported her to some unknown landscape. “I felt it... I mean it was amazing, it's just a few splatters of colour but...”

Helverliss waved his hand, as if she had oohed and ahed over a vulgar caricature. “It was nothing like that shit.” He sighed and took a few quick puffs on his cheroot. “But yes, my work from that point on does involve aspects that go beyond mere appearance.”

“There is more to his work than superficial images,” Irea said. Her tone reminded Capra of a translator. “While Tamarck and Naartland bask in their infantile return to folklore and bastardized aesthetics, Helverliss has used Ehzeri tradition in an innovative way.”

Dannac shook his head. “Tradition? My people do not create paintings like this. Ours look like the things they are supposed to be.”

“Yes. But your people also possess certain techniques. Surely you know of them? For most of our history, we have used
vihs
in some capacity or another. The war should not have changed this. Just because certain political forces have deemed
vihs
as corrupt and out of date doesn't mean it is true. I find it a remarkable tool for modern art.”

Capra grimaced and motioned for Irea to abandon the issue. But it was too late.

“I know nothing of what other families are capable of, or what most of us used to possess a century ago. I was not fortunate enough to belong to a family capable of managing what little power remains.”

Helverliss let out a frustrated sigh. “In any case, much of my work is infused with... well, let us just call it magic. The viewer is affected in ways traditional art can never achieve.
Akhli and the Shadows
was a portrayal of the legend most of us know. But instead of glorifying Akhli for some sacrifice he clearly never meant to make, I showed the darkness. The darkness of the blood pits in the desert, the darkness of the shadow beings he locked underground forever. Akhli was not an innocent boy. I believe Akhli was complicit in the chaos. I believe he was playing with our reality, as if it were a game. He was a sadistic creature, and I wanted to show the similarity between Akhli's darkness and that of the shadows.”

“That is ridiculous,” Dannac said.

“The painting is the first and only glimpse mankind can gain of pure darkness. Without harming themselves or others, that is.” His voice became shaky, and he paused to smoke. When he resumed, his voice regained its steady ennui. “And so Sevari thought this was a threat to his order, his stupid vertical trade union, his distaste of modernism. He stole that painting and other works of mine. Some of it theoretical, and my only copy. But all I ask is that you return that one painting. Sevari must not be allowed to keep it.” Helverliss flashed a sardonic grin. “The fool could hurt himself if he's not careful.”

Aside from the fantastic details—an artist who somehow found a way to utilize
vihs
for his work—it was a familiar request. Now Capra began to slide back into her routine. The mining scam had thrown her off; she was not at heart a confidence trickster, although they had resorted to that in desperate times.

Within the month she would be back in the Little Nations—perhaps Prasdim, near the Sparkling Sea—working as a chef, and all without having to worry about Alim. Not only that, but if the painting she had seen downstairs was his idea of a shit painting, she could only dream of what this piece would be like. At once she began to picture Akhli skipping around the plains and stumbling upon the shadow men while they set their final trap to rid the world of the fire giants. Did Helverliss really know what they had looked like?