4

The pyromancers’ guild hall has dozens of function rooms for hire. Ever since their acquisition of religious license, they have called their guild a ‘church’, and their day-trade a ‘service.’ Their continuing tax exemption was dependent on their subservience to the Maestros: whatever the Houses required, the pyros provided; whatever opinions the Maestros wanted spread, the pyros preached them zealously. Over the years, the Guild of Combustion has diversified into bonds and insurance; marriages and funerals were among the least profitable of their ventures now.

Hall #3 was small and low-ceilinged and packed with cold steel pews. The stage was cramped, the lectern behind which the twenty-seeds-an-hour pyro gave the rites was dirty, and the casket had the markings of a House that went bankrupt a few years ago. James had bought cupboards with identical markings from a flea market.

There were maybe thirty attendees, waiting for the droning pyro to shut up so they could go home. Sam recognized none of them save for her aunt: a hawk of a woman with a beak-like nose and a nose-like chin. She wore the band of mourning around her neck like a scarf, as if its prominence signalled empathy. She looked around at the sound of footsteps. Her eyes went wide.

“Samantha! Who invited you?” she demanded, her voice easily eclipsing the pyro’s.

“You did.”

“I certainly did not!”

James stepped into the hall. He gawked at the mourners like they were curios on display. Lucia followed behind him, the billowing of her cloak putting out a row of candles.

Sam could not help but smile. “This is Maestro James Cowen of the House of Dawn.”

The room turned quiet. The pyro on stage had his mouth wide open. The mourners stared; a man dropped his cup to the floor and spilt cheap wine all over the grimy mosaic.

“My condolences!” James declared brightly.

“One-one moment!” The pyro disappeared into a side door.

James frowned. “Where is he going? Is it over? We just got here. Aren’t we supposed to pay respects? What is this?”

The casket was open. A man Sam barely recognized rested within. His eyes were closed, his hands folded across his chest, cupping the photograph of a woman that was not Sam's mother. A pile of random objects lay at his feet. A deflated ball. A sculptor’s chisel. A bundle of burgundy linen. A pile of condolence cards, slightly damp.

Sam examined her father’s face. Rigor mortis had distorted the man’s cheeks into a grotesque smile. Preservative treatment had failed to retain his eyebrows; yellow mould had sprouted between the follicles like tiny mushrooms. His skin was a half-bloated purple, with ill-concealed cuts indicating the draining of fluids, likely to keep the corpse somewhat presentable.

Even without a sense of smell, Sam knew the stink would be terrible. Her aunt would not approach the stage at all. The Maestro stood beside her, taking in a million details Sam knew she had missed.

“Tell me,” he said.

“Liver failure,” said Sam, “then cardiac arrest. Twenty days ago. Preservation was abandoned halfway into the priming stage.”

“Fifteen days,” said James. “Note the pattern of discolouration. Decomposition was accelerated by infusion leakage into the subdermal layer. Treatment was not abandoned but botched. Liver was undrained. Infusion had pooled there. Not a natural failure.”

“Sorry, Maestro.”

“No, you did well. There was a deliberate attempt to mislead.” He struggled as if prying the words from some inner sanctum. “I am sorry for your loss.”

Sam started. “Do you think…” She was finding it difficult to speak. “Cognitive remnants…”

“No,” said James.

Her aunt called out from the pews. “Maestro Cowen, might I…might I ask a favour?” Her voice wobbled. “Money is…rather tight right now, and I was wondering if…if…my brother he…he consented to being raised, you see, before he passed. We were planning on a cremation but…we didn’t know how we could…”

“The Maestro does not conduct individual Rituals,” said Sam, surprised at the rage rising in her throat, threatening to turn every syllable into a shout.

“Samantha, dear, how lovely it is to see you, could you perhaps –”

James laid a hand on the lectern and looked down at the hawk woman with cheerful disdain. “Callout fee’s two thousand. Three thousand for a single Ritual.”

She blanched. “I thought there was a commission for-for presenting the Maestro with a body.”

“Only if I want it. I don’t know what you thought we necromancers do, ma’am, but it is not charity.”

“Samantha, please –”

“No,” said Sam. “Go fuck yourself.”

Footsteps echoed backstage. A pyro in a flame-patterned mask peeked into the hall. His eyes widened at the sight of Lucia sitting in the back row. He came up and stuck out his hand. “Maestro Cowen,” he said.

“Jack,” the Maestro responded curtly, not offering. “My apprentice.”

The pyro looked over to Sam, his eyes swirling. “We’ve met. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. We’re leaving, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

She followed in the Maestro’s footsteps, not giving her aunt another glance. The dead man whom she did not know had left a vile taste in her mouth. This hall, this cathedral, this Floor – she did not want to see them ever again.

Jack the pyro followed them out, trailing at a respectful distance. He held a black bundle under one arm. “Will you be attending Finley’s plenum, Maestro Cowen?”

“Get to the point.”

“The First Progenitor, she…told me to give you this.” The bundle was bound in thin metal wires and an oiled canvas. James tore at it, to no effect. “She says you’ll know what to…what to…oh.”

James had given the bundle to Lucia, who with one flick of the finger tore through the cover. Inside was a fist-sized metal box with a compressor nozzle on one end and a red slider on the other.

“I assume this starts a fire,” said James.

“Ah, the prototype flamespitter.” The pyro put on a good show of acting surprised. “How…wonderful.”

“I went to see a doctor yesterday.”

“Oh…oh?”

Lucia, without warning, grabbed the pyro by his collar and lifted him off the ground. The pyro gurgled, flailing.

“He told me I was dying,” said James. “What’s new, right? Who isn’t? But I got stuff to do, places to be. I took time off today to come here, and for what? A farce. A farce, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

“I –” the pyro sputtered. “I don’t follow.”

“Of course you don’t. You are just an errand boy, a leech, doing what you are told with no clue why you are doing it. You don’t care about plans or goals or schemes. They are just tasks to you, like camping, or burning houses. Except you are trying to play coy with me. That’s a bit much, don’t you think? You, a leech, a tool, trying to fuck with me?” Lucia let go, and the pyro fell in a heap. “Go get your boss.”

“She-she’s busy.”

“He still doesn’t get it. Explain it to him, apprentice.”

“Go to the First Progenitor and tell her that Maestro Cowen awaits an explanation for this gift,” said Sam. “She can then tell you – to tell us – whether she is still busy.”

Jack the pyro scampered off in a hurry. James took a seat in the atrium and leaned against the ancient mosaic of Stars Beyond Twilight, breathing hard. The place seemed empty. Their altercation might have had something to do with it. On the Altar of Combustion, the likeness of the Prime Progenitor gazed down at them with disapproval, the eternal flame sputtering in her outstretched hand.

“A bit much, maybe?” James rubbed his eyes.

“That was amazing,” said Sam.

“You want to be like me? Fly off the edge at a moment’s notice? Treat the Second Progenitor like the ass that he is?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to quit?”

“I…” Sam started. “How did you know?”

“We spoke about it, remember?”

“Oh…” She had blocked the Floor of Nine from her memory, it would seem: the children skipping down the decline, singing, holding hands; the mother, pointing at the gleaming pikes and trying to smile; the little hand, tugging at Sam’s sleeve. Are you a Maestro? the girl had asked. “This is different.”

The Maestro laughed, then began to cough. Sam had stuffed a flask of suppressants into his coat pocket before they came out. He fished it out with a look of mild surprise and took a swig. “You don’t get to enjoy the perks without putting in the work,” he said, “or we’d be a society of assholes. What a terrible world that would be.”

“You saw a doctor.”

“I’ll live until your audition.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“You should have.”

“I’m not…I’m not.”

“You should have. Apprentices are expendable. I can go outside and wave my arms and get a hundred more. What sets you apart? What special skills do you possess? It doesn’t take a genius to raise the dead, so why you? Because you remembered my meds?”

“Sorry, Maestro.”

“Don’t apologize. Show me your hunger. All this –” he waved his hands at the opulence. “– is worthless if you don’t enjoy it. So, impress me with your greed and your depravity. Am I making myself clear?

“Not really…”

James sighed. “You have a way to go yet.”

The woman who came to them did not look like a pyro: her stilettos and low-cut suit belonged to boardrooms on the Floor of Twenty. In this faux-grand hall of marble and mosaics and big statues, she seemed unreal. The Stars Beyond Twilight reverberated with the sound of her clicking heels, almost subservient.

The Maestro stood. Sam fought the urge to hide behind Lucia. The woman’s face was beyond beauty, beyond human. Not a hair was out of place, not a single blemish on her skin. Her eyes shimmered, their myriad hues indescribable, as if some cosmic being was peering through her pupils.

“Hi,” she said, her voice like rain upon water. “Please follow me.”

The woman led them through a hidden alcove, where a winding staircase led up into the primary spire. James sighed but did not protest. He hung on to Lucia’s shoulder as she half-carried him up the steps. Sam followed at a safe distance.

“Your neural dystrophy has progressed, James Cowen,” said the woman. “You won’t be getting anything done at this rate.”

“Miss Yin is a representative of the Palace Above,” said James, loudly. “I had a crush on her when I was younger. Then I got older, and she didn’t. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“How was the funeral?” she asked.

“It was you,” said Sam. “You sent the invitation.”

“Now why would she do that?” chided James. “If Miss Yin wanted me here, at this time, she could have just asked.”

She gave Sam a wink. “Men and their pride. Cute, aren’t they?”

Jack the pyro paced atop the staircase, in front of a double set of mahogany doors. He grabbed Sam’s arm. “Don’t go in there,” he whispered. “You don’t want to know.”

“Let me do my job,” said Sam, yanking her arm away.

“Admit no one,” the woman said. “If they ask, tell them –”

The pyro cringed. “– that she’s busy, I know, I got it.”

“Good boy.”

The office of the First Progenitor resembled a library built by one who despised reading. There were bookshelves on three walls and a floor-to-ceiling window on the other overlooking the heart of the Floor of Twelve. At its centre sat a monster of a desk, big enough to seat twenty. Two copper ingots acted as paperweights, and the inkwell was a half loaf of stone-baked bread – it looked beyond stale, the ink soaking through and oozing onto the floor.

In her throne, wrapped under a clear tarp, the corpse of the First Progenitor stared at her guests with disinterest.