The Mechanical Crown

Arranging the board

"One of the boys down at the barracks mentioned something odd," Pent reported. Since he'd first encountered Martoc a few months prior he now always made a point of checking in with her, especially when he had something to share. Having a friend here would serve him well one day, he knew, and she seemed to like him. It helped that it gave him an opportunity to sit near her and take in the contours of her face and the curves of her body, dimly lit as it was in the alcove. He'd pushed for promotion three times already, always in the hope of being elevated to a palace guard, or even to patrol duty atop the mesas, in the hope of catching a glimpse of her more often.

He relayed what he knew of the boy from the sewers.

Pienya had little time for ambitious, untalented young men. She would tolerate them if they had information but otherwise felt nothing but disdain. This morsel had legs, though, and had her worried. The filthy boy who had emerged from the sewers triggered too many potential implications, as light on detail as Pent's story was, and wasn't something she could ignore. He clearly wanted to remain at her table and be part of the ensuing decisions but she put paid to that idea with a stern look and a dismissive offering of coin across the table. She knew that offering payment for the information would insult Pent. It worked, inevitably, and he pushed his chair back and departed, not forgetting to bitterly take his payment.

She waited for a while, not wanting to depart too rapidly and look alarmed by the conversation, then paid her tab and emerged into the Treydolain night. The lamp- and star-lit streets always felt more like her city than when it was flooded with sunlight. Fewer people clogged the streets, with those still venturing abroad doing so for more overtly nefarious purposes. The diplomatic nuances and restrictions of the day vanished as the moon began its patrol. It made her job easier.

The mesa on the southern side of the river loomed over this part of the city, blotting out the stars and replacing them with its own, lights blinking out from half-shuttered windows and the paths carved into the rock face. It was a short walk to its base, where the ground began to incline, first along a series of terraced parks and houses, then to steeper ground until she reached the sheer vertical cliff. Staircases wound their way up but she had no need to traipse up those, which would be a good half hour climb at a brisk pace, and instead presented herself at the lower guard station. They greeted her by name and opened the shaft, before locking it shut behind her once she'd entered the car.

She signalled her readiness to the guard, who nodded and pulled on a lever. The machine mounted into the floor next to the shaft whirred into action, steam venting intermittently, and she felt the familiar jerk of the cable pulling taut. Her legs wavered a little as the car was hoisted up the shaft, beginning its long ascent to the top.

Treydolain dropped away, the gardens and streets and alleyways merging into a maze of urban chaos. She could identify each of the districts from here, all the way out to the enormous lake, which reflected the moonlit sky with such precision that it felt as if all the city would tumble into it.

The cable pulled the car up and up, sliding past hewn rock, its ascent revealing occasional structures built into the side of the mesa itself, slender paths winding their way around its steep edges. There were places where the angle of the cliff eased off, resulting in clusters of houses connected by walkways and tunnels cut through the rock. As she neared the plateau at the top, the structures became more spaced out, built on less extreme surfaces and looking more like a hilltop village than the cliff-embedded, gravity-resistant holdouts below.

The car reached the summit and clanged to a stop. She threw open the metal gate, nodded to the guard stationed outside the shaft, and made her way along the south mesa. It was home to diplomats as well as the military centre of the kingdom - such as it was - and existed as its own miniature town within the wider city of Treydolain. Many who lived here never ventured down to the city in the gorge and on the lake, arriving and departing exclusively by airship from the aerial docks. Visitors from other parts of the Lagonian valley would only ever experience the carefully curated life on the mesas, with the city being little more than a sparkling backdrop far below.

She passed through the streets of the southern mesa, each of them carefully aligned and planned, unlike the often deranged layouts of the other districts. The mesas had supposedly been home to a fortress outpost and a religious monastery, before being repurposed as the seat of the monarchy once the technology had existed to properly settle upon them. Up in the cooler air above the city Pienya felt a calmness; that knowledge that she was in an exclusive place accessible only to the chosen few. She wasn't nobility and never would be, but she walked among them, protected them, and they relied upon her skills.

The bridge never ceased to be a wonder. Each year she thought it would become ordinary to her but it hadn't happened yet, even as she entered her tenth year in Queen Anja's employ. The stones used to construct the bridge were each twice the size of her head, and its design continued to puzzle historians and architects who were unable to conceive of how it could have been built several centuries ago. But, then, the history of Lagonia was a blurred and largely forgotten thing.

At this time of night the bridge was deserted, save for a lone figure standing at its midpoint, where it broadened out into a small circular viewing area. Fenris Silt did his best to walk out here every evening, once his duties were concluded, so that he could absorb the valley's character before sleep, letting it seep into his dreams. He would look out to the east, across the city and beyond the Lake, taking in fields and hills as far his eyes would see. Then he would cross to the opposite side and look up river, along the deep, winding gorge between the mesas, where little could be seen but sharp rock and sometimes moonlight shimmering in the water three hundred feet below. He knew he had fewer days ahead of him than had already passed and he wished to spend as many of them as possible in the open air, in the presence of the valley.

He saw Pienya's approach. She moved with such deliberate poise and purpose, as if she regarded the fate of the world as her responsibility. He remembered when she had first been brought to the palace, all those years ago, orphaned by a hunting accident and taken under the queen's protection. Though she had never wanted for shelter or food since that day, there remained the inescapable consequence of her birth: she was not of nobility, and thus had to earn her keep. She had chosen to serve in the King's Eyes, which had brought her within Fenris' orbit. Pienya was volatile and brusque but she was highly skilled and would most likely succeed him in not so many years. Too many of the other Eyes were closer to Fenris' senior age than he would like.

"News from our friends downstairs?" he asked as she approached. He didn't avert his gaze from the landscape.

"It could be nothing," Pienya said, leaning on the wall next to him. "I received a report of a young boy emerging from the sewers. Looked as if he'd been down there for some time."

"How young?"

"Uncertain. Seems nobody got a good look at him, or couldn't tell through the dirt."

Fenris ran a hand through his beard. "As you say, it could be nothing."

"If it isn't?"

"Quite." He stretched his back with a disgruntled sigh. "Where did this information come from?"

"The usual tavern circuit. Guard who spoke to another guard who saw it happen."

"What would we do without the drunkards and bartenders?" Fenris laughed. "The taverns truly are the veins and arteries of this city."

"What should we do?"

"Circulate a description of the boy," Fenris said, "as best you can. Track down where he went, find him, then we'll find out what he was doing in the sewers."

"I'll start by the docks," Pienya said. She was already on her way back across the bridge towards the southern mesa.

A boy from the sewers. Fenris tried not to let his imagination get the better of him but there was no overlooking the fact than an escapee could change the entire shape of the political and social landscape in Lagonia.

The young man would first have to survive a night in the city. That would not be an easy task.

Only earlier that day Roldan Stryke had failed to return on his airship and now a boy was said to have risen from the tunnels below the city. Fenris looked out over the valley and sensed a shifting on the wind.