A Student's Dream (Twisted Cogs Book 1) Page 5

  As he spoke, he finally removed a twisted black key from the necklace, it’s haft made of cast iron and its fine teeth bent at exact angles. Elena wasn’t sure from a glimpse, but it might’ve been Machinator-made. It was certainly not easily duplicatable. Rolf carefully inserted the key into a small slot that lay lengthwise across the back of the woman’s mask, unlocking it with a small click. The mask fell off and onto the table with a dull and heavy sound.

  Elena scrambled to her feet before the sound had even died away, backing up until she was pressed against the wall behind the table.

  “W-what are you doing? Why...how...” She gasped. The Rhetor held her gaze, looking up at her with a sad smile. Without her mask, she looked almost human, a beautiful girl whose feelings were hurt, but who took on the offense as if it was to be expected.

  “There’s no need to worry,” Rolf chuckled, “we do this three times a day, after all. They can’t exactly suck food through the mask now can they?”

  “I just-I didn’t think of it.” Elena’s heart pounded, her legs weak, and the thought of eating across from a Rhetor with no mask made her stomach flutter.

  She wasn’t sure she had it in her to sit back down with the woman.

  “Elena, you’re being incredibly rude,” Ele said.

  Easy for you to say, Elena thought, she may be able to see you, but I doubt she can hurt you.

  Ele turned from Elena to the Rhetor. “Since you can’t tell us your name, if you don’t mind I’ll call you ‘Emerald’, because of your beautiful emerald eyes.”

  The Rhetor flashed a wide smile at Ele again, and Elena felt an ugly twist in her gut at the sight. Without her mask “Emerald’s” smile was even prettier, and the fact that Ele was so enthralled by her wasn’t doing much to help Elena’s confidence in the situation.

  “What happens if she runs off? Or what if she starts talking before you can get the mask back on?” she asked Rolf.

  “I wouldn’t try to get the mask back on, in that case,” Rolf had seemed good-natured up until then, but his voice took on an air of gravity as he spoke now, “I would use this.”

  For the first time Elena noticed the knife that Rolf held, its blade thin and the metal dull. He held it against Emerald’s throat, gently enough that it didn’t cut her, but firmly enough that the edge of the blade pressed into skin.

  “You’d just kill her?” Elena asked, horrified, “what if she sneezes? Or someone bumps into her chair and makes her move suddenly?”

  “Then she dies,” Rolf replied simply.

  “But that’s horrible!” Elena sat back down and leaned forward, too aghast to remember that she was frightened. “How is that fair, that Emerald should die because of a simple mistake? Doesn’t that bother you?” she directed her last question to Emerald. The woman raised her shoulders in a slight shrug, then began to dig into her savory pie.

  “The rules of the Guardhouse may strike you as harsh, but they’re there for a reason. A few Rhetors may be unjustly punished over the years, but it’s better than risking one of them walking and speaking free. There are some who feel like the laws are too lenient, since they can respond to direct questions. From your reaction a few moments ago, I would’ve thought you were one of them.”

  “But I didn’t...I don’t think...” Elena blushed, struggling for words.

  “Nice, Elena,” Ele admonished.

  “I apologize for my harshness,” Rolf sighed, “I just feel sorry for her sometimes, having to deal with the fear and suspicion every day of her life. I’ve been assigned Rhetors before who haven’t been nearly as well behaved as mine...what did she call you? ‘Emerald’?” he suddenly asked the woman, “do you two know each other?” Emerald smiled, and shook her head once. “You seemed to like it. Should I call you that?” He was rewarded with another smile and a single nod. “Emerald, then.”

  Elena felt intrusive watching the exchange, the juxtaposition of the man’s tenderness and the knife he held to the woman’s throat.

  “You really care for her, don’t you?” she asked.

  “It’s hard to spend every second of every day with someone and not come to care for that person.”

  Elena glanced at Ele. Annoying as he sometimes could be, she could see what Rolf meant. She tried to imagine how much strength it would take, to hold a knife to Ele’s throat, knowing that in an instant she might have to decide to end his life.

  “Would you really kill her?” she asked.

  Emerald nodded before Rolf could answer, and just for a moment the knife blade pressed a little bit harder against her neck. She froze, a forkful of food halfway to her lips.

  “Only answer questions directed to you, you know the rules,” Rolf murmured, gently but firmly, before turning back to Elena. “I would, in an instant. I don’t think she would hurt anyone, not for a minute. But smarter guards than me have been fooled by Rhetor in the past. There’s no use to a Rhetorguard who lets his own feelings affect his judgment, and I take my duty seriously. I don’t think she resents me for it.”

  Emerald reached out, slowly, and laid a hand across his on the table in a comforting gesture, and Rolf smiled at her as a father would smile at his daughter. There was more affection and love in that look than Elena could ever remember seeing in her mother’s face.

  The knife never left Emerald’s neck.

  Chapter VII

  Stars and Wine

  All in all, the dinner with Emerald wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as Elena had first assumed. Even so, Elena couldn’t deny the small measure of relief when she and Ele left the small pub. Pleasant though she seemed, Emerald was a Rhetor, and the other diners in the room had given Elena long and suspicious looks as she left, as if even sitting in close proximity to the woman might’ve left its mark on her. Rolf had ordered rooms for the pair in the inn, so Elena and Ele left alone.

  By the time they left the moon was overhead, so bright that it lit the streets. The street was still alive with a subdued bustle, though, despite the late hour. Merchants who had been shouting their wares were now cleaning up their storefronts, or quietly talking to one another in the flickering lantern-light. Fewer horse-drawn carts rattled and rumbled down the streets, but there were more pages and messengers, silent and serious looking. The city of Milia didn’t sleep. It simply rested for a few hours.

  Elena didn’t want to torture herself further by the reminder of what she had lost the day before, but her gaze was drawn against her will to the tall building at the end of the street; Master De Luca’s studio.

  “We should write down every part of the tour we took, so we don’t forget a single detail,” she said to Ele as they wandered down the street. The people talking and passing by didn’t pay them any mind, a benefit of this bigger town that Elena was beginning to enjoy. She liked talking to Ele without feeling like a freak.

  “Why? All we did was see how the Studio artists live. What’s the use of keeping a record of that?” Ele kicked at the ground with a petulant gesture, as if he could toss up a cloud of dirt.

  “We saw how the most revered artist in Milia keeps his studio running! That’s going to be useful information for when we’re running our own mercantile shop. Even before we start our shop we can still probably learn a lot from how Master De Luca keeps such a huge place moving from day-to-day.”

  “How his page and head housekeeper keep the studio moving from day-to-day, you mean. Pietro and Bea were the ones who we should be emulating, not De Luca.”

  “What’s gotten into you, Ele?” Elena stopped beneath a lantern-post, leaning against the wooden pole and crossing her arms. “We’ve both always respected Master De Luca, that’s why we’re here! Why are you so moody?”

  “Why aren’t you more moody? I respected Master De Luca when I thought he was a master instructor as well as a master artist, but he’s not. He doesn’t train people up into the best artists, he only takes the best artists in the first place and then takes credit when they become famous. That’s easy. He doesn’t deserve the
respect.”

  “We don’t know all the circumstances. You think we could do better if we were in his place?”

  Before Ele could answer, a cry arose from behind them, and she turned to see Arturo stumbling towards her, his cheeks bright red, with Arta following behind with a look of mixed amusement and embarrassment.

  “Halloo! It’s the De Luca girl!” Arturo waved a large bottle towards them. “Told you she’d be here, Arta.”

  “Yes, yes you did, why don’t we go sit down with her for a bit?” Arta made herding motions until the man slumped to the ground at the foot of the lantern post. “He didn’t handle the rejection quite as well as you seem to be doing,” she added, looking down at Arturo with a beleaguered smile.

  “What better way is there to handle it?” Arturo slumped down so far that he was more laying on the ground than sitting. Though he was smiling widely, there was a sharp edge in his eye that made the expression slightly bitter. “A little wine, a couple of fine looking ladies, a paper and some charcoal, stars in the sky, those are the ingredients to a fine night.”

  Arta sighed before turning to Elena, “I’m sure he’ll apologize once he’s sobered up.” Elena didn’t mind, she was more interested in what the sloshed artist was doing that how much he had had to drink. Arturo had pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the pouch at his side, and Elena recognized the sketch he had been working on earlier in Master De Luca’s antechamber.

  The grey tones were well-suited to the image: a small boat in a dark ocean, a few black gulls framed against rolling thunderclouds in a charcoal sky. The gulls flapped their wings lazily, and the boat dipped up and down on the waves, moving across the paper.

  “You’re an Artifex,” Elena sat in the dirt next to him, too fascinated by the rolling waves on the paper to care much about the dirt. “Why didn’t Pietro accept you? I thought he was only turning away people like me.”

  “Wouldn’t say.” Although he reeked of liquor, Arturo didn’t slur his words at all. “Just that I ‘wasn’t exactly what the Master was looking for’. I suspect it was my clothes.”

  “Why would your clothes matter?”

  “He’s saying Pietro didn’t accept him out because he’s not high-class enough,” Ele answered.

  “Perish the thought, sir Echo! Surely Master De Luca only cares about talent, not class,” Arturo raised his bottle towards Ele in a salute with a knowing smile.

  “Arturo, why don’t you share your wine now that you have another human to share it with?” Arta suggested, settling down cross-legged next to him. Ele sat down as well, the group forming a small circle beneath the lamp.

  “Arta thinks I can’t handle my liquor,” Arturo grunted, using his finger to smudge the hard edges around the clouds.

  “Arta thinks you’re going to get hit with the full effects of that in about ten minutes,” Arta pursed her lips and pulled the paintbrush from behind her ear, dragging the handle across the ground in lines absentminded lines. “Then you’re going to pass out in a gutter, and I’ll be stuck within a hundred yards of some filthy alley for the entire night until you wake up.”

  “Arta worries too much,” Arturo grinned, but passed the bottle to Elena. She took a sniff and blinked, scrunching up her nose. “Eh, try some. Won’t kill you.”

  “I don’t really drink,” Elena said, eying the strong-smelling bottle, “at least, I haven’t in the past.”

  “Ah, what’ll it hurt? Neither of us have to be anywhere in the morning anyway, fellow reject.”

  Elena took a sip, and although it burned on the way down, its taste was sweet and cool.

  “Have you always been able to make the pictures move like that?” she asked, starting to pass the bottle to Arta before she remembered that the girl was an Echo. Arturo shook his head without looking up from the drawing.

  “I can’t even make them move now, not always. It’s the artist’s curse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The different types of Storms work differently from another. You have the artists in the Artifexes and Caelators, the fighters in the Lanisti and Saggitari, and the builders in the Machinators and Faberi.”

  “What about Rhetors?”

  “Eh, Rhetors are Rhetors, they don’t count.” Arturo waved a hand dismissively, “Anyway, the artists get a curse along with their Storm. Anyone else tries to use the Storm, they either get it right, or they know you messed up somewhere. Hell, the fighters, Saggitari and Lanisti, can’t mess it up. But for an Artifex, or a Caelator? Sometimes it just doesn’t work. A picture that lays there flat on a page, or a statue that just stays a hunk of marble. Lifeless. I never know if my power will work until it actually starts working.”

  His good-natured smile hadn’t wavered, but the bitterness in his voice was sharper, and Elena didn’t press the subject. She leaned back and took another drink of the strong, sweet wine, watching him work and trying to take in his technique.

  The four of them sat in silence for a long time, the only sound the vague buzzing of insects and the muted and quiet bustle of the city around them. After a day of travel and a hectic few hours to finish it all off, it felt nice to simply relax, out on her own and without her mother around. Occasionally Elena took another sip of the wine, and with each sip the sweet tang of it was more pronounced than the bitter alcoholic sting, and she found herself enjoying it more and more.

  “What are your plans, now that being a garzoni to De Luca is off the table?” Ele asked, less concerned with Arturo’s painting. He was watching Arta’s hand motions, the doodles inscrutable since her paintbrush didn’t actually make marks in the ground.

  “I was just about to say how nice it was to be able to enjoy the silence,” Arturo grumbled, “between Arta and Isadora I never have a moment’s peace.”

  “Isadora, that other girl who was there wiv you?” Elena recalled, slurring slightly. “Is she...is she...” her mouth felt a little dry, and she took another drink of the sweet wine, ignoring Ele’s concerned look. He was already moody anyway, he couldn’t blame her for enjoying herself. “She came wiv you didn’t she? Is she a garzona of Master D’Luca?”

  “Isadora is an garzona for Master Omerto DaRose, on the Street of Grey Artisans. We’ve known each other since we were children. I guess that’s my plan now. Master DaRose will take me on in a heartbeat if she vouches for me. I’m sure she’ll be very happy, I think she was hurt when I chose to supplicate to Master De Luca.”

  “But she went to th’ studio wiv you anyway? Tha’s th’ sweetest thing in the world! Didn’ approve, but still went wiv you to wish you luck on your...on your....” Elena’s head was admittedly a bit fuzzy, but she knew she could find the right phrasing if she thought about it, “...on your day of days,” she finished emphatically.

  That sounded about right, didn’t it? Judging from the appalled look on Ele’s face and the grin that Arta hid behind a hand, apparently it wasn’t. Elena blushed and took another sip of the wine.

  Arturo held his drawing at arm’s length, looking it over with a critical eye. Elena didn’t really know what made a painting good or bad, but as far as she could tell it was absolutely beautiful. The rolling ship and the tiny gulls were so realistic that she had to run a finger along the paper to convince herself it was only two-dimensional. The angry sea seemed so lifelike that for a moment Elena felt actually seasick, and she turned away and closed her eyes. Even sitting down, the sudden motion destroyed what balance she had, and she slumped backwards to stare up at the stars in the night sky.

  Elena realized belatedly that she had laid her head in Arturo’s lap, but he didn’t seem to mind, and his leg was quite comfortable. In that moment, everything seemed perfect, especially the heavy slosh of the bottle that promised much more wine.

  “What was it you said?” she asked, looking up in the blackness above her, “stars inna sky an’ good company an’ paper an’ tha’s all you need t’be happy?”

  “Something like that.” Arturo’s smile was so charming when
it was upside-down. Was seeing it upside-down what made it so charming? That would be odd, if all men smiled better upside-down. But what did Elena know about men after all? What did she know about friends and smiles and charming Artifexes with comfortable legs? Elena took another pull of her wine as she mused.

  “Elena, don’t drink that so fast,” Ele warned, his brow furrowed in concern, “you’re really not handling it very well.”

  “Bu’ i‘s nice!” Elena managed.

  “Nice it is, but you’ve hogged enough of my wine for one night,” Arturo teased, taking the bottle from her grasp with little resistance. She pouted, but managed to forget about the wine after a few moments of staring at the stars. A thought suddenly occurred to her, and she took some time to figure out how to say it before speaking.

  “Wish I had somfin’ like that. Like Is’dora. You’re nice, Ele, didn’ mean you’re not nice, I just wish...I wish I had friends like tha’.”

  “It’s funny hearing her talk all sloshed with her proper lady accent,” Arturo said to the Arta, grinning down at the girl on his lap. “I could be your friend, Elena.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her face.

  “Sss...sss...sank yew,” Elena replied with dignity.

  “Perhaps even more.”

  “Watch yourself, Artifex,” Ele said quietly, and Elena turned to look at him with surprise. It was an awfully rude and abrupt thing for Ele to say.

  Arturo shook his head, “I didn’t mean to give the wrong impression. I like you, and I’d be happy to call you a friend. I’d also be happy to...but that’s for later, when we have less alcohol in us. I’m a little affected by the drink, but I really do mean it. Is that good enough for you, Echo lad?” Arturo held out an unsteady hand to shake, and Ele sighed and pretended to take it, their hands moving through each other in a faux-shake. “I like your Storm friend, Ele, I really do. And I’ll bet Isadora and I could convince Master DaRose to take her on as well.”

  “And what would that little favor cost her?” Ele snapped. Elena’s eyes widened at how sharp his tone was. Arturo must’ve heard it too, as he leaned back suddenly, and Elena was disappointed in a way she couldn’t quite articulate. She tried her best, both to convey how she felt and to calm the situation down, to ease whatever Ele’s worries were and to let Arturo know that he shouldn’t feel unwelcome by them.