EMILY WATSKEN
The metallic ringing of my door's bolt being thrown shocked me out of my morning doze. I'd woke up so many times throughout the night that it was hard to tell whether I was asleep or awake, but the moment Oleander Brone pushed my door open on its squawking hinges, I was as wide awake as if someone had thrown a bucket of electrified ice water on me.
A shiver ran through my body when I rolled over to find the Alacryan Instiller, Oleander Brone, staring down at me. Instinctively, my hands grabbed at the top of the thin blanket—my only source of warmth in the cool tunnels of Vildorial—and pulled it up to my chin. This caused it to uncover my bare feet, exposing them to the chill air, and was almost entirely pointless anyway since I was still wearing my clothes from the day before.
Brone sneered. His thin, pointed face made him look like a rat wearing a black toupee. My cheek twitched as I suppressed a smile at the image, causing Brone's eyes to narrow.
One of his thin, clawlike hands reached out and tore the blanket away. He threw it on the ground and turned back to the door. "Get up, girl. It's time to see to the day's work. If you seek escape, or work against our efforts in any way, you will be—"
Tried for high crimes and executed, I echoed in my head.
In a higher, thinner voice, almost a whisper, he said to himself, "Why that madman Gideon continues to insist upon this child's usefulness, I will never understand. By the Vritra…"
Groaning, I rolled out of my bed and set my bare feet on the cold stone floor. My head ached from the lack of sleep and my body creaked like I was a hundred years old, likely from weeks of sleeping on the crummy little bed they'd given me.
Brone waited impatiently outside my room while I slipped into my thin turnshoes. They hadn't given me socks, and there was a two-inch gap between the top of the shoes and where my rough cloth pants ended, allowing the cold air to bite at my ankles.
I don't think I'll ever be warm again, I grumbled internally as I made unnecessary motions around my tiny room, pretending to be looking for something. Really, I was just delaying the inevitable start of another day spent studying fire salts with Gideon while Brone followed us around, sneering and talking to himself.
Eventually, though, the impatient Instiller huffed and I was forced to follow him out of my room and down the carved halls of the Earthborn Institute toward Gideon's lab. My stomach growled on the way, but I knew we wouldn't get anything to eat for a few hours.
Gas-burning torches lined the halls, so I walked close enough to the wall to enjoy the intermittent bursts of warmth they provided, but it was only a short walk to the laboratory. Still, I found my eyelids growing heavy before we got there, despite the cold and hunger.
I rubbed my knuckles into my bleary eyes as Brone jerked open the lab door to the sound of an explosion that caused him to jump back and me to accidentally punch myself in the eye. A cloud of black, acrid smoke puffed out of the doorway, obscuring the Instiller and causing my eyes to burn even more.
"In the name of the High Sovereign…what is that foul stench?" Brone snarled, wheezing for breath.
"Oleander, is that you?" Gideon shouted excitedly from somewhere inside. "Come in then. I hope you've brought my assistant with you."
Pressing one hand to the side of my face, which was throbbing painfully, I held my breath and ducked past Brone into the lab, squinting against the burning haze and the tears streaming down my cheeks. A moment later, the smoke rushed past me as a gust of wind pushed it out of the door and into the hallway, and Brone, now caught again in the middle of the cloud, stumbled into the lab and slammed the door behind him.
Brone tried to choke out a few threats, but couldn't manage it through a fit of coughing.
Gideon's wrinkled face was smudged with soot, and his frizzy hair had been darkened around the tips. The heavy bags under his eyes had only grown more prominent during our time as indentured servants to the Alacryans, though his eyebrows hadn't managed to grow back. This morning he was wide-eyed and awake, and was grinning madly, staring at the choking Brone.
"I don't think it'll be much good against the asuras, but these fire salts make a heck of a smoke bomb, eh?" Gideon winked at me.
"More like a stink bomb," I groaned.
A disorganized mess of tools had been scattered around on the workbench to either side of a salt-tray—just a thick slab of metal, really, that was bent up around the edges. A single glowing ember of fire salt rested in the middle of the tray. Occasionally, a little spark would jump off the ember.
Movement from the corner of the room drew my eye to a scowling Alacryan mage. The man's bright blond hair was stained dark from the toxic cloud that had just been sent out to choke the dwarven halls. I didn't recognize this one, but there was always a mage with a fire- or wind-attribute mark or crest to help us with our experimentation.
Gideon's gaze followed mine, and he shook his head. "Useless! I swear, these Alacryans are just torturing me. I don't think they even care about the fire salts. Otherwise, why would they send me their worst? It's a wonder, really, they ever managed to recreate my Dicatheous."
The mage glowered at Gideon, but the old inventor was unfazed, as always.
"Wasn't the steam ship Arthur
Leywin's design, though?" I asked my mentor, genuinely curious. The Dicatheous had been designed before I'd started working with Gideon, but I'd seen the completed ship and the blueprints it was based on.
He gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "The basics, perhaps, but I'm the one that made it work. Perhaps Arthur could have effected some real change if he'd focused on generating more such ideas—fighting back against Agrona with his head instead of prancing around pissing fancy spells everywhere he went, but there you have it."
I wanted to talk more about Arthur, but Brone had recovered from his coughing fit and had walked up to us, his beady eyes bloodshot and a trail of snot running from his hooked nose to his lips. He wiped his face on his sleeve and glared at Gideon.
"You did that on purpose," he choked out before coughing again.
Gideon's eyes went wide. "Dear Oleander, each and every day is one of experimentation, of trial and error! You, as an inventor yourself, should understand that as well as I. You've asked me to unlock the mysteries of the dwarven fire salts," Gideon said, practically shouting as he lifted the hot ember from the salt-tray with a heavy pair of pliers, "and to help you find a way to utilize the incredible latent energy locked within each of these little grains"—Gideon waved the fire salt ember in Brone's face, causing the Instiller to flinch and hop backwards—"and I've done just that!"
The pliers and ember clanked back down into the tray, and Gideon turned away from Brone. "Besides, I told this buffoon to create a current moving precisely five meters per second across the ember, but clearly such careful casting is beyond him!"
The glowering mage took a step away from the wall and pointed toward my mentor. "Now listen here you old loon—"
Brone waved the mage to silence. "Don't rise to his bait, Albin. Gideon specializes in being terribly frustrating, don't you, Gideon?"
"I strive to be on the level of maddening some day, but for now, yes," Gideon snapped. "Now, I have prepared several more experiments today, most of which are likely to get us all killed with this sledgehammer of a Caster working beside us, so there's no reason to chit chat anymore."
The Alacryan mage, Albin, turned his frown on Brone. "Sir, a word, please?"
Brone's face twitched, but he waved the man outside. A thin trickle of smoke leaked back into the room as they left, and I could hear Brone coughing through the door.
I sighed and rubbed at my sore eye again. "Gideon, why are we doing this? You know they're—"
"We've been over this," Gideon grumbled. "If we don't make ourselves useful, eventually my genius won't be enough to shield us, and we'll both be executed for—"
"—high crimes," I finished.
"Exactly," he said, nodding so that his frizzy hair bobbed around his head.
"But anything we create for the Alacryans will only be used against our own people—"
"My inventions have already been turned against us!" He was talking about the Dicatheous, I knew. He had been incredibly shaken when we found the Alacryans' crashed steam ship, a near-perfect replica of his own design, on our eastern shores… "But that hardly matters. The war is lost. Our deaths can't serve Dicathen now. The only way to survive is to go along."
I said nothing as I watched my mentor bustle around, picking up a tool then setting it down somewhere else, shuffling through hastily scrawled notes only to throw them back into the clutter and move on to something else.
"Besides," he muttered so that I could barely hear him, "at least I'm finally getting to investigate these fire salts." He turned back to me suddenly, his finger wagging. "The real problem, you know, is these Alacryan middle men! They're not giving us the resources we need."
"I don't think Brone likes you very much," I said with just a hint of sarcasm.
Despite Gideon's words, I was certain that his work on the fire salts was a ruse, some way to trick the Alacryans into giving him exactly what he needed to escape. It was just such a Gideon thing to do. He hadn't confirmed anything about his plan, but I knew the old inventor wouldn't just give up.
Gideon swept a handful heavy iron tools off a secondary workbench with a crash before spreading out several pieces of soot-stained parchment, ignoring my question.
The lab door burst open and Brone glared around the room before noticing the mess. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling and he took a deep breath, coughed weakly, then stalked over to me.
"Pick those up, girl, and sort them on that rack over there."
I made myself busy, doing as Brone requested and then moving on to organizing Gideon's clutter where possible, and keeping my distance from the Instiller.
I'd reorganized the tool shelf three times before the lab door opened again. My stomach rumbled expectantly, but it wasn't our breakfast.
Two manacled dwarves carried in a thick metal box. The dwarves wore stained leather aprons, heavy leather gloves, and a sort of coif that protected their beards. Each one held a handle at one end of the box, which was glowing with a subtle orange light.
"This delivery is ten minutes late," Brone said matter-of-factly as the dwarves shuffled across the lab to set the box into a specially designed furnace array, where the fire salts would be kept at a natural temperature until we were ready for them.
Gideon was right behind the dwarves, already wearing a thick glove himself in order to lift the lid from the iron box. He peered into it, then slammed the lid shut and snorted in disgust.
"Oleander, can you tell me how I'm supposed to do what you've asked when you only give me half of what I need!" Gideon's forehead wrinkled as his non-existent eyebrows rose. "Five grains, Oleander! I asked for twelve. Do you think that I—"
Gideon's tantrum cut off as the two workers both choked out pained yells and collapsed to the floor. Runes along their manacles glowed violently red. The dwarves' eyes rolled back in their heads as their limbs twitched in agony.
I had to look away, my eyes darting around the room in an effort to avoid watching the dwarves' be tortured. My gaze landed on Gideon's face, which was blank and detached, displaying none of the squeamishness and anxiety I felt.
I knew my own feelings were written plainly across my face, but I was equally aware that Brone would only derive pleasure from seeing me squirm.
After letting this go on for several seconds, Brone fiddled with something in his pocket and the runes went out. Both dwarves were gasping for breath, tears and snot streaming down their faces, but they stood shakily and gave Oleander deep bows, their noses practically touching the floor.
"You heard Gideon. The delivery is not only late, it is light as well. Perhaps Clan Lastfire's expertise in the art of fire salt mining is less than was promised." The Instiller gave Gideon a cruel smile. "Not to worry. I'm sure we can find other ways to make use of your clan, should you prove inadequate for your current assignment."
The dwarves both bowed again, mumbling their apologies before grabbing the empty iron box that had contained yesterday's fire salts and hurrying out the door.
Brone gave Gideon a satisfied look, his thin-lipped smile still plastered on his smug face. "So, what will we be working on today?"