The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 13.1

That autumn passed like a ghost, fleeting and thin, and Seffa and Key slowly came to the sort of mutual understanding only possible between people of their particular breed. Key had few friends—no friends, really, if you didn't count the other young scions of industry his father encouraged him to play with—a fact which Key was as quick to admit as his parents were to deny. The fact was he didn't want friends, didn't need them, didn't think of the acquisition of any kind of social circle as an appropriate ambition for someone such as himself.

Key might have described his feelings on the subject as simple neutrality—a disinterest arising from the obvious irrelevance of social interaction to his chosen pursuits. Seffa, had she been asked about the topic, might have opined that the problem was simple pretension at worst, self-absorption at best. But Seffa did not say anything of the kind to Key, as she worried that Key, being her only friend, might understandably take it badly.

Seffa was also possessed of a deep obsession with her own privacy that, for the most part, Key respected. He was able to recognize his own, if nothing else. It was this mutual acceptance of each other's boundaries that allowed the two of them to grow past the stage of interested acquaintance and into true friendship, a bond that, it seemed to Key, was only strengthened by the fact that they did not share everything with one another.

Their careful restraint made for a surprising tenderness between them: as if the very fact that they'd decided to keep certain parts of their lives secret encouraged them to be all the more forthright about things they did share. She knew intimately of his ambitions in the sciences, and of his love for adventure stories, just as he knew that she suffered the expectations placed on Oridosi women, even women of Seffa's apparent class, with little patience. She knew what she didn't want as clearly as Key knew what he did, which turned out to be rather complementary desires.

On a brisk winter afternoon, Key happened to glance over at her while she tended the small wood stove he had set up to banish the bone-deep chill of their underground chamber. With the iron door open, her face was lit up by the fire within, and Key found himself transfixed by several points of interest all at once. In no particular order, there was the way her eyes caught the amber light and the soft line of her jaw, the unfortunate loss of heating efficiency each time the door had to be opened, the fact that the makeshift chimney he'd constructed seemed to be moving the guttering smoke into the drain pipe above rather effectively, the shadowed view into the neckline of the ill-fitting dress she wore when she bent over the stove, and the sudden appearance of a gem dangling from a silver chain around her neck.

Though a curious stirring below the belt struggled for prominence in his mind at the unexpected sight of Seffa's growing body, it was the jewel that caught him. It, too, caught the light of the fire and shattered it into broken spectral rays on the gentle ridge of her collarbone.

"What is that?" he asked.

She glanced up at him, then down at the dangling pendant, then into the gaping bodice of her dress, and stood up quickly, tucking the necklace away and smoothing her clothes with her hands. She seemed to be blushing.

"Sorry," she said.

"Was that—"

"Just a necklace," she said, wringing at her hands. "I've had it as long as I can remember."

"But the gem—is it elekstone?" Key couldn't help himself. The awkwardness of her response should have told him all he needed to know about the necklace: that it was off limits, part of Seffa's other life, the one she didn't share with him. Just as he didn't share parts of his life with her. He briefly considered reassuring her that he didn't mean to pry, but dismissed it as pointless remonstration. He did mean to pry. He wanted to know. Suddenly he wanted to know very much.

"Yes," she said quietly, closing the door to the stove and latching it. She turned away from him, tidying something on the small table she kept next to her favorite chair.

"Could I see it?" asked Key. She paused, then looked at him over her shoulder, hesitant. After a moment she turned and approached him, taking the necklace out of her collar again and holding it up for him to see. The silver chain was plain but well made, the setting a simple set of prongs that showed off the cut stone to its best advantage.

"Elek," he breathed, taking it gently in his hands, weighing it in one palm. The unnatural weight was there, and the way it took the light...Key was entranced. "It's just...I've never seen a piece up close."

"But I thought your father—" Key shook his head. His father was indeed an industrialist. His manufactories drew power from the phirotic generators the same as all the others. There were even smaller, backup generators in the factories themselves, fed by elekstone—glowcoal, as the workers called it—in the event of a failure in the Forge's public power plant.

"He knew how much I wanted it," Key explained. "He kept it from me. As motivation. I'd never give him the satisfaction." He said it without the usual bitterness, too swept up in the glittering amber depths of the aetherstone's glow. Valkin was a savvy man, and knew indeed that his son's scientific passions drew him to the substance as a moth to a flame. He knew that if there were one thing Key might trade his convictions for, it might be access to the mineral more precious than gold, the gemstone that, in its raw form, was fed into the power mills like so much coal, fired like crude iron bloom to produce the electrical reaction that made the city's greatest machines run.

Valkin had yet to make the offer outright; he'd only hinted, made subtle suggestions, playing to his son's interests as he invited him to shadow his father at work, to see the factory's operations. He was saving the hard sell, Key knew, for the day he became a man. The day he was old enough that Valkin would have to force a decision or come to terms with the fact that his son would spurn his legacy.

"So precious," he whispered, turning it to make it glitter. "You must let me study it."

"I mustn't," Seffa said, taking it from him and dropping it back under her dress. Had Key been more observant of people than he was, he would have seen the sharp line that had appeared between her eyebrows as a warning sign. He stood, confused, his palm still held out where it had supported the pendant. He put his hand down.

"You don't understand," he said. "I need—"

"I don't care what you need," she snapped. "This isn't about you. And you didn't even ask. You can't just take my things."

"I didn't take it," Key explained, trying to remain calm. "I simply—"

"You simply think that everything exists to either interest or dissatisfy you," yelled Seffa. She squinted down at her shoes, suddenly quiet.

"It must be lonely, Key," she finally said, still looking at her shoes.

The precise nature of the interchange had yet to assert itself in his mind, but Key was dimly aware that he had done something wrong.

"I'm sorry," he said. Seffa only nodded and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Had she started crying? He replayed his actions in his head and couldn't find anything particularly offensive about them. Surely enthusiasm for one's jewelry couldn't be deemed inappropriate behavior?

It was only after she left, explaining that she had to go home, that Key realized her reaction might not have had anything to do with him at all.

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