3

A velvet rope hung across the entry with the sign NO AMBLERS BEYOND THIS POINT. A Finley ambler stood on the other side with a handbasin and a stack of towels. Its face, infused with preservatives, shone like polished marble.

Sam dipped her hands in the basin and laughed as ash turned to mud. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Lucia. Lucia said nothing.

As she passed the buffet, Sam loosened the filter on her mask, hoping to smell just a tinge of the pulled pork. Nothing. Having spent far too long in the company of volatile reagents in James’ lab, and despite all her precautions, her nose could no longer distinguish formaldehyde from water. It was an uncommon defect even for those in the alchemical guilds. She had been bitter about it, once, when she had fewer things to be bitter about.

The partygoers recoiled at first, for the apprentice stank of ash and sulphur; then they smiled warmly as they recognized her colours, but by then Sam had already passed, and they were saved from small talk.

James sat with his feet dangling over the cliff and the tail of his coat pooling in a puddle. Although he was no more than thirty, the Maestro’s hair was dense with grey, his eyes ringed with circles so dark they looked like bruises.

He waved. “I can smell you,” he said cheerfully. “How were the pyros? Fun?”

“No,” said Sam.

The silver crescent of the palisades shone on the horizon. The Maestro waved at it. “Do you prefer the mines?”

Sam closed her eyes and saw the children in their patchy uniforms, skipping down the decline. She saw the girl with azure eyes looking up at her. Are you a Maestro? the girl had asked.

“No.” She held out her clipboard. “I have the numbers from the evacuation. Ten thousand adults. I have recorded their age and desirability.”

“What?”

“Desirability. The handbook uses that word to denote physical attractiveness.”

“The handbook.” The Maestro flipped through the list. Cursed with photographic memory, he needed but a single glance to memorize it all, then he tore the pages into little squares and slipped them over the edge.

“If they ask, you lost it in the city.”

“Yes, Maestro.”

A single red flair rose from the palisades. High though it flew, it reached not even one tenth the height of the Dome Luminous. The Floor of Nine was one hundred and twenty miles in diameter, too small to maintain a stable climate. At night, however, with the Dome Luminous glittering with artificial starlight and the boundary walls all but invisible, one could almost be fooled into thinking that this place was more than a cage.

“Delays,” James said. He gazed at the red dot as it fizzled out in the darkness. “Do you know why everyone wants to go to the Floor of Twenty?”

“To see the sky,” said Sam.

“Why? What’s so good about sky?”

Sam shrugged. A migraine was growing behind her right eye, radiating needles of pain into her cheeks.

“You would have lived your whole life on a Floor like this one, had I not found you. Your corpse would have made thirty thousand seeds a year. Instead, you may become a necromancer – the very foundation of our society – and one day live on the Floor of Twenty. The recipient of such good fortune should be more inclined to thoughtfulness and gratitude.”

“I am thankful,” disputed Sam.

“They are thankful.” The Maestro nodded at the Finleys. Everyone in that entourage wore identical, orange-trimmed suit jackets with pins in the shape of the cartoon skeleton, seen here sitting on its pelvic bone and reading a book. Maestro Jack Finley, a man wider than he was tall, lounged on a divan the size of a double bed. Wherever he looked, his entourage looked; not a word he could utter without enduring protracted adulation. As he held out his hand, no less than five cups of wine were offered to him, but he was simply pointing at the fading flair. A hundred voices groaned simultaneously, perhaps to say that they, too, were disappointed.

“Do you want wine?” Sam asked.

James laughed. “You’ll clear the buffet and never come back.”

“I will come back,” said Sam.

The Maestro withdrew a thin rectangular box. Inside were a pair of threaded silver gloves. He pulled them on with deliberate slowness. His eyes were grey-on-grey and shine-less, like those of a blind man. Hints of Green glittered in the featureless expanse of his iris, so small a blink could unmake them. Sam could never meet the Maestro’s gaze for long; though his voice has always been pleasant, his eyes only ever resembled the abyss.

“Do you want to quit?” he asked.

The question caught her off-guard. Neither yes or no seemed right, and her hesitation meant she could not laugh it away. She opened her mouth and closed it without uttering a word. The Maestro raised an eyebrow.

“You think about that,” he said.