A field of tall wind-blown grass, the breeze warm and reeking of earth; as the sun spun into night, and day, and night again, she laid amongst the slow-living, her fingers combing the dirt, thinking not much of anything.

The smells. The stink of her own sweat, the rot of decomposing leaves, the sweetness of nameless flowering weeds, mingling.

One more minute in the grass, please. One more of suspension in paradise, until the alarm clock struck her out. But the harder she tried to remain the more lucid she became, and more faded that green sanctuary. Fifteen minutes before she had a need to, she woke. 

The green dream came the night after the Floor of Six, clear as life, and recurred every night of her first week in the House of Dawn. Sam quickly learned to savor it. Over the course of a month it gradually faded away, the endless fields degrading into an indistinct smudge. The smells too slowly lost their sharpness. Just as flasks of formaldehyde became dangerously indistinguishable from water, so went away the sweet pollen of the dreaming flowers and the sour sting of freshly-broken grass.

The more it slipped away, the harder she tried to hold on. It was a ludicrous thing, to go to bed desperate for an illusion, then to be terrified of waking. Still, the dream did not care.

Six months into her internship in the House of Dawn, two days after James Cowen had hired for her good, Sam dreamt for the last time.

A steam engine waited for them in the lobby. It resembled a steel box with six wheels and a chimney, with a passenger cabin tacked onto the rear like an afterthought. The drivers sat astride the water tank behind a panel of dials and valves and levers. They gave a friendly wave. Living drivers, a rare sight.

Sam waved back. Emblazoned across the passenger door was an arc of golden text:

IMPERIAL TAXI SERVICE

Luxury Travel Solutions (Official Currencies ONLY)

The cabin was cramped even for four. After some grumbling, the fat encoder took his ambler and left to hail a rickshaw. Lucia managed to squeeze into the luggage compartment as the engine sank two inches lower on its suspension.

They departed the lobby through a low tunnel carved from the bedrock. Yellow bulbs illuminated a bright-red warning painted the walls, repeating over and over:

EMERGENCY EXIT: DO NOT COLLAPSE

They emerged five minutes later, and Sam saw the place of her dreams.

A rolling sea of green spilled into the corners of the world, dotted by cottages and flat-topped trees, ensconced on three sides by great white peaks that struck into the clouds. The midday sun was liquid gold, its light warm on her skin, the air cold and pristine. A flurry of snow drifted from high, chasing its tail and twirling into nothing.

In the distance, across rolling green hills, the City of Twenty stood in the shadow of the mountains like a castle out of fairytale, its whitewashed walls melding into the snowy banks until there was no telling where its artifice ended and nature began.

Sam pressed up against the window, wanting nothing more than to hop out and roll on the grass. Out the corner of her eye she saw James grinning at her.

The carriage veered away from the city and began to climb. An ancient grove of pines rose from the craggy snow, their canopies greener and thicker than they had any right to be. A herd of deer ran past, startled by sound of engines, and Sam almost broke her neck keeping track.  

Then the path narrowed between a pair of jagged granite cliffs. In the sliver of sky between them, an airship rose, languid as a balloon, the distant boom of its propellers diminished to an insect-like buzz.

Carrying tea, maybe. Sam laughed.

The road twisted and dipped as the trees fell back, revealing a far green plateau embraced by a crescent lake and surrounded on all sides by insurmountable peaks – save for a great chasm to the east, where the mountains dropped away completely to reveal a roiling sea of thunderclouds stretching to the horizon.

Overlooking that pandemonium was a city-sized palace spanning the width of the plateau, with one wing beside the lake and one poised above the precipice. It was larger than the entire market on the Floor of Twelve. Countless marble columns, each as thick as a Pillar of the Pile and inlaid with gemstones, held up layer upon layers of domed roofs that intertwined like the pedals of a rose.

Their carriage turned onto the garden path and came to a stop in front of what Sam later found out was two hundred and eighteen ascending steps to the front door. A row of palanquins sat at its foot, each with a compliment of six bearers (all amblers). A few were already halfway up the stairs; rickshaws were pulling in a dozen at a time, unloading hundreds of guests.

Their reception was a gangly teenager covered in acne from brow to neck. He called himself – you guessed it – Jack Finley, apparently sixteenth of his name. He jumped at the sight of Lucia, then jumped again when Sam tried to stop him from tripping over himself.

‘M-Maestro Cowen? My great uncle told me to take you to him as soon as I am able – as you are able, I mean,’ he said, voice breaking faster than the sweat on his chin. ‘If you don’t mind uh, following me…’

James eyed the stairs then the palanquins. Sam looked longingly over her shoulder, at the manicured lawn and the nameless flowers blooming in the cold. Waking came all too soon.

The master study: chandelier, armchairs, fireplace, mahogany shelves, crystal decanter, boxes of caviar, papers arrayed on a slab of a table. Jack Finley, cucumber slices plastered all over his face, strode from behind his desk, plaid pajamas billowing.

‘Get out. Shut the door.’ He shooed the boy, then made the same gesture at Sam.

‘My apprentice will stay,’ said James.

Finley grunted, but plainly this was too small an affront over which to take offense. ‘You’re aware that my acquisitions division has recently bought out the last independent printery on the Floor of Twelve.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘You’re aware that there has been… talk, lately, regarding the details of my harvesting strategy among our associates.’

James sat himself down. ‘No more than usual, I hope.’

‘I understand that such talk is, disappointingly, inevitable.’ Jack uncorked the decanter a flick of his thumb. ‘To control a leak, we must not squeeze too hard.’

He poured. ‘Naturally, I receive a draft of the broadsheets before they are printed. Benign and amusing tabloids, mostly, but I was informed thirty minutes ago that the copies submitted to me of tomorrow’s sheets had been tempered with, and that at least seven printeries are planning to run a headline without my approval. Take a guess, Maestro, as to what that headline will say.’

Finley held out a full glass, and James took it with an easy grin. ‘A moronic betrayal.’

‘That it is.’ Finley emptied his in a single swallow, the cucumbers falling off his face like chipped paint. ‘Only a credible and powerful source could have given them the confidence to take such a risk.’

James laughed. ‘Exactly how many guilds participated in the…?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ said Sam.

‘Twenty-seven guilds,’ said James. ‘And they each had a retinue. A month is long enough for any one of them to grow a conscience. Maybe they grew tired of losing hair. Harvests are so very stressful.’

‘Very funny.’

‘There’s no telling whose gossip they are printing. Could be anyone’s. Could even be mine.’ James took a swig under Finley’s deepening frown. His neck turned red almost immediately. ‘Better to restructure your printeries than to waste time chasing the wind.’

Finley eyed him a while longer, swirling his empty glass. ‘Yes, the printeries… I have made plans to dismantle the rogues – tonight. Twenty thousand amblers are standing by across six Floors with three pyro field teams for immediate rehabilitation.’

‘That’s…extreme. There’ll be riots.’

‘Riots can be pretext for further intervention. The insurgents will be herded into the mines and repurposed with Kohn’s Miasma. To eliminate liability and gain premium cadaver at the same time… I think there’s a saying for that. Two birds with one rock?’

James opened his mouth, then closed it. His glass shook and almost spilled.

Finley slapped his belly and laughed; a booming, slobbery noise, like hacking up phlegm. ‘A jest, Cowen! Only a jest!’ He grabbed the decanter by the neck and refilled their glasses to the brim. ‘How about this – I will push a must-print with the marketing division. Some inane piece with a positive spin, focussing on the winners of our booming economy. A tale of hardship to riches, perhaps – I recall a few preservers that came up through the lower Floors. “The Untold Story!” Plebs love that trash.’

‘A chance for the printeries to demonstrate their loyalty,’ said James. ‘How benevolent of you.’

‘Make no mistake, Cowen. I detest traitors, especially those that delude themselves with “doing good” or “saving the Pile” or that jargon bullshit. It’s all a façade, eh? What they really want is chaos, so they can take a bigger bite than they deserve from the hand that feeds them, then parade their thievery as justice. Envious, greedy, ungrateful little bastards!’

Finley tossed back his glass and waited until James, with a poorly disguised grimace, drained his.

And Finley promptly refilled them. ‘One other thing. Several factories on the Floor of Three are behind quota. The overseers have submitted identical reports – that productivity under the subleases of Maestro James Cowen are declining at a…troubling rate.’ He swirled his glass. ‘Now, I have begun the process for a stakeholder inquiry, but before we move too far with the formalities…?’

James frowned. ‘A baseless accusation.’

The two men stared at each other, waiting. Finley did not ask a question, not directly, but he was looking for a particular combination of words, and time itself might as well have stopped until he received them.

 ‘I…will check when I have the chance.’

‘Good, glad to hear it!’ Finley smacked James’ shoulder with an open, affable hand. ‘Lots to do this week, my friend, lots to do! Can’t let this these annoyances get in the way of our core objectives. That’s what it means to be a leader – always eyes on the prize!’ Finley laughed, and the walls wobbled before the might of his leadership. ‘Drink up now, James – to your health!’