Escapement (19 page)

The streets were crowded with more people than she’d ever seen. The throngs of Karindira’s city paled by comparison, the little tribes and villages through which she’d passed becoming so many shrunken fireside circles in contrast to this mighty reach of Creation.

There were Brass, of course. This was unmistakably their city. Most walked with a swagger far more insolent than Boaz even at his most
irritable and uncertain. Others cleared the way, stepping to the side or simply reversing direction. It was as if each Brass were a little moon, drawing tides among the sea of people through which he swam.

But there were others, too. Humans, some pale and fair, others with skin dark as the inside of a cave and ivory eyes gleaming within faces that contained their own shadows. There were near-humans as well, tall hairy men who looked much like the enkidus of Praia Nova with their gaping nostrils and sloping brows; tiny cousins of those, slender apes with intelligent, girlish eyes and narrow faces. She saw thin men brown as carob beans, who wore linen wraps and headdresses clipped on by lapis bands made to look like coiled snakes. They seemed little more than shadows when they turned away. There were several of another race much like Karindira’s people, save these had orange skin the color of sunset and eyes that constantly wept black tears. Winged creatures with a rude and savage look to them, mad yellow eyes shifting as they stalked the streets. Even a few other mechanicals not of the Brass race—a giant crystal automaton, thirty feet or more tall, with a barrel-shaped head and flaming eyes, that towed a wagon loaded with mewling kits waving tiny swords and spitting on passersby.

It was a confusion of persons that reminded her once more of the great scope of Creation. Mixed between were a scattering of carts and vehicles, some drawn by men, horses or other creatures, others that creaked and steamed on their own power.

“I do not wish to traffic with Authority yet,” Boaz muttered. “There is much here which passes beyond my memory. I would head to the lower city and inquire in certain houses there as to what has transpired.”

“How so?” She gawped at the pull and press around her.

“Ophir was never in life this crowded. And mark how many of them are under arms.”

She looked. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder at that. Every person seemed to be bearing a sword or spear or firearm, some of familiar make, others of strange device indeed. “Why?”

“I do not know. This disturbs me.”

“What of the gleam I carry? Many along
a Muralha
could sense it as I passed. Will it mark me out here?”

Boaz shook his head, shouldering past two mules heavily laden with baskets of oranges. “Half the weapons here are gleamed. Moved by seals or djinns or words, as was the brass car.”

They came to a square island in the middle of the road, ringed by an iron fence. It was another stair, she saw, much like the one that had led down the ascender shaft. This stair also followed a shaft, thronged with
people of all shapes and sizes, but when Boaz stepped down into it, Paolina saw nothing but air and clouds in the bottom.

Everyone seemed to descending to nowhere.

The crowds in the streets of Ophir were not hurling themselves into the empty air along the face of the Wall. The stairs ran down a hundred yards or so then broke out into an expansive set of metal walkways depending from the
bottom
of the city’s ledge.

Paolina realized the city was built on the curl of a wave of stone. An entire second city hung here, dangling over the open air of a lengthy slope to a folded forest far below, just barely visible through the clouds. These buildings were inverted wooden cones, some with truncated tips, others with crystal or glass at their lower ends to provide a view of the long fall. Balconies ringed the cones, with connecting walkways. Foot traffic from the stairwell fanned out among the various levels and catwalks to various destinations.

It was beautiful, in a strange way. The buildings seemed great bats ready to drop away and take flight, the undercity poised to be something other than what it had been made to be.

She and Boaz were soon on a quiet ledge of their own. He stopped to look about, then spoke. “Many of these buildings are contiguous with the lower levels of those above.”

“Did you run out of space on the upper surface?”

“Precisely. Some structures are tunneled back into the Wall itself. The Palace of Authority is such a one. But building here granted far more flexibility.”

“The cost . . .” Paolina realized she had no idea how the Brass reckoned labor or expense. The design process alone for something like this passed her understanding.

“Pride is the greatest coin in the treasury of Ophir,” Boaz replied. “We are King Solomon’s children.”

He led her on, until they turned into a doorway set in one of the cones. The building’s wall loomed forward in a strange forced perspective that caused Paolina to want to bend back—a very bad idea indeed.

Boaz stepped in, Paolina followed. Beyond was a low room crowded with Brass, mostly standing in twos and threes around tall tables. Hoses rose from the table centers to their lips. Some of them twitched and hummed. A few were dented and rusted—something she had not seen on the surface streets of Ophir.

Humans moved among them, tending the hoses and bringing small vials of a dark viscous liquid. A sharp-eyed man, pale as any Praia Novado,
watched over the room with a spear in his lap, which crackled with some blue fire.

Boaz made for the overseer.

Paolina followed, afraid to be left alone, but almost as afraid to confront the man.

“Where might I find Anlis?” Boaz asked the man.

“Who?” He leaned forward, a hard expression on his face.

“Anlis. One who oversaw this establishment betimes.”

Now the man picked up his spear. “I run this place, and that ain’t my name. Been here quite a few years, and Old Golokoshe before me. Anlis weren’t his name neither.”

“I may have been some time,” Boaz said. “I do not intend to offend.” Paolina noted that the Brass did not back away as he spoke.

“You want a hose, see the boys. You want to sell her, I’m not buying.”

Paolina opened her mouth in startled protest, then shut it almost as quickly. She would learn nothing and gain less by interfering with Boaz’ efforts.

Boaz flicked his wrist. Something slid into his palm, though Paolina could not see what. He must have had it stored within. “I have not taken the hose since long before you were alive, man who is not Anlis.” He opened his hand to display a jeweled nozzle. “I will give you this in payment for an answer.”

“What answer?” the man asked suspiciously.

“What all this crowding and numbers of people means in the city. I request a reasonable response, not some grudging djinn’s bargain. Tell me whom we seek to fight and why.”

The man took Boaz’ nozzle. He examined it critically, then closed his fist over the little device. “There are English on the Wall again. As there were two years ago. This time they have brought machines to tunnel. The oldest Brass have proclaimed this anathema, and so the city fights their redcoats and bluecoats and common men clad in earthen brown.”

English!
thought Paolina. She was so close to them now. That she might be on the wrong side of their fighting was a small matter, easily disposed of.

“Thank you,” said Boaz.

The man laughed, a bitter sound like rain on rust. “You have been among people too long.”

Boaz propelled Paolina before him as they exited.

“That is where you people go to get drunk,” she said excitedly. “Like the men in the great hall back in Praia Nova. How can you trust them?”

“I cannot. But I espy no reason why he should have lied to us.”

“The English.” She practically skipped in her glee. “I can take the gleam to them and—”

Boaz took her arm in a tight metal grip. “First we go to the Palace of Authority. There I will discharge my duties. After, if you are once more free to go, you may search out your Englishmen.”

“Please. This is more important.”

To her shock, his next words came in her voice. “ ‘All you can do is go to the Palace of Authority and demand that the theft of your memory be redressed. You are bound there by duty, now, to carry me. You will serve both yourself and your orders if you take us both there.’ ” Then he added in his own voice, “You yourself have reminded me of what is truly important: to serve myself and my orders.”

“And if the Solomnic Kingdom of Ophir is indeed at war with the English?” she asked bitterly.

“I will not aid you to seek them out. You are not English, are you?”

“No,” she muttered, feeling obscurely disloyal.

“In that case, there is little to fear.”

They headed for an undercity entrance to the Palace of Authority. Paolina considered running away, but Boaz could readily outpace her, and he knew this city as well as she knew Praia Nova. She couldn’t escape him. Meanwhile, his willingness to listen to her out in the wilds of
a Muralha
had morphed into a mechanical certitude here in his home city. Ophir had brought him back to whatever it was that being Brass signified to him.

They circled around various cones, occasionally crossing wider gulfs on narrow, swaying bridges. The wind was warm and questing, tugging at her, bringing forest and stone scents from below to mix with the warm miasma of city life. Even though this place had been built by and for Brass, it was teeming with other races—their foods, their clothing, their hygiene, their animals.

Down here, people sat in the doorways and windows, legs dangling over open air. Cats, opossums, and rodents ran along the railings and stabilizing cables, most with little bells on looped collars. Leashed children toddled here and there.

Boaz continued to advance toward the deeply shadowed cliff face at the back of the ledge.

The farther they went, the quieter and colder the walkways became. The cones seemed dedicated to storage or matters of commerce. There were fewer animals, and no children, and the smells became mustier.

He finally stepped onto a cantilevered stone balcony with a triple arch at the back, carved right into the face of the Wall.

“This is the Penitents’ Door,” he said quietly.

“Is that just a name, or does it mean more?”

“Merely a name.” He added vaguely, “There are ceremonies.”

Paolina tried the only thing she thought might work at this moment, in this place. “And down here somewhere is your memory?”

Boaz turned to stare at her. “If my crystals were stolen away from me, they would be near to this door. It is my intent to ascertain the current orders concerning gleams and other Wall magic.”

“What if you are commanded to kill me?”

“Then we will see.” He began to vibrate slightly. “I am Brass, after all.”

“You are Boaz, too,” she reminded him. “You said that beyond Authority, there was me. Don’t forget that.”

“Brass does not forget.” His voice was sullen now.

“No, but you can have it stricken from you.”

With that, Boaz turned on his heel and marched through the center door. Shrugging off one last temptation to run, she followed him into the Palace of Authority.

The entrance hall was dusty and quiet. A faint breeze brushed at them. Pale seal-lights, weak copies of the magic that powered the brass car, cast sufficient glow to see by. There were stone benches carved from the rock of the floor where supplicants might once have sat. A hallway stretched in two directions from behind a lectern, where doors led on deeper into the rock of the Wall.

“This is improper,” Boaz said. “There should be busyness afoot here.”

“There was no one outside. What were you expecting within?”

He set out walking. They quickly came to a stairway leading both up and down. It wasn’t another vacant ascender shaft, just a carved flight. Boaz chose to go up without making any comment. Paolina followed.

The next level had been used for storage. There were wooden boxes filled with scrolls and silk-tied stacks of paper. Old maps and charts were racked in great fanlike frames. Tables and chairs and desks had been stacked.

He led her farther up.

She wondered what had happened. Had his precious Authority somehow collapsed? Or been replaced by some other form of governance?

The next level had more pale flickering lights, along with electricks, and even carpets. There was noise from behind the doors. This was a working
hall, not abandoned territory like the floors below. He began walking back the way they had come as if to pass above the Penitents’ Door.

Paolina looked at the signs they passed, but she did not recognize the script.

Boaz pushed open the fourth door on their right. She hesitated a moment, then followed him in.

As she entered, Paolina saw two Brass within, standing to each side of Boaz. One touched the back of his neck as the other peered into his eyes with a small instrument. The neck-toucher looked at Paolina and snapped a question in a language she didn’t know. She shrugged. He tried another language, then, in oddly accented English, “Is it you that broughting him here?”