Floor of Three was factories. Angular sheet-steel roofs formed waves in an undulating ocean that sprawled from the lift core to the smoke-shrouded boundary wall. A thousand smokestacks, far as the eyes can see.

Two columns of amblers marched through the cargo gates, their arms swinging in unison, locked steps on the concrete floor. Stiff grey overalls covered them from neck to ankle, the yellow sun of the House of Dawn glinting on their shoulders. Their vacant faces had a reflective, marble-like sheen, as if the skin itself had transmogrified into some reflective mineral.

Sam tallied them. There were supposed to be two thousand in the first shipment, but a dizzying number of factors could lead to unforeseen losses during treatment. The Maestro couldn’t possibly keep track of the tens of thousands of tethers spread across multiple Floors – even with the most meticulously kept records, and these were not – but one must make a show of diligence, lest the alchemists get away with pretending that nothing was amiss.  

James accompanied two of them by the marching columns. One wore, of all things, a paint-ghoul mask featuring a devilish avatar grinning ear to ear, displaying two filed rows of teeth. The other was the older woman they had met during the harvest. Her face had not a single wrinkle – a mask unto itself.  

‘More preservers,’ Sam said to Lucia.

Lucia said nothing. The blindfold today was midnight black and smudged, courtesy of Sam not caring.

‘…I can’t work with these barbaric routines! I can’t!’ The woman yelled. ‘Go tell Finley there will be no more throughput until I get competent encoders!’ James said something that only made her throw up her hands. ‘I don’t care! I don’t care! Not my problem! You get me new encoders or we’re done!’

She took a step back, probably attempting to storm off all angry, but she got too close to the marching amblers and a swinging arm struck her in the back. She would have broken her nose on the concrete floor if not for her companion .

‘Barbaric!’ she shrieked. ‘How dare they hit me?! How dare they hit me?! I who made the infusion for their blood, the bonder for their bones?!’

Likely a repeat victim of such tantrums, the masked encoder half-coerced, half-carried her toward the lifts, and managed to give James a small wave at the same time, as if to say: sorry about that.

From the overseer’s office high above the factory floor, Sam had a view of the production floors. Rows upon rows of workstations as far as the eyes can see, joined haphazardly by a maze of conveyers. Working amblers were delegated into modular groups, with strict divisions of labor: one to cut the steel, one to punch holes, two on the sander…

The amblers’ overalls, the branding on the machinery, the markings on the floor, the conveyor carts, the uniforms of the supervisors, the painted walkways, the minimalist décor on the overseer’s desk… all of it was Finley orange, with a sprinkle of grey or blue here and there.

Hunched over the conference table, James was assigning tethers to a waiting line of supervisors. With a handshake he can impart the ability to control an ambler to any individual – a Slave Tether, so aptly named – but that was the easy part.

Seven thick ledgers, full of serial numbers painstakingly, time-consumingly collated by Sam, were sprawled out around her. Keeping track of whom was given how many had long become impossible, but an attempt must be made, otherwise what was the point of numbering them in the first place?

‘Where are we now?’ James asked, sweating.

‘Three-seven-three, three-nine-five,’ said Sam with a surety she did not feel. It was good enough for James though, apparently, as he yanked on another man’s hand. The spark of Green was feeble. That man can now issue the simplest of orders to that ambler, like ‘go over there’ or ‘pick that up’. Lucky for him.

‘Duplicated?’

‘Two shifts.’ Sam scribbled with one hand and sifted through a pile of papers with the other. ‘Mister, over here, please sign this waiver.’

An[JQ2]  ambler must be assigned to more than one supervisor, as humans, disappointingly, must work in shifts. But with that came risks. If ever two contrary commands were sent simultaneously, the ambler could tear itself apart.

For a while, implementing a failsafe was common practice, where in case of conflict the ambler would simply stand still and do nothing. Encoders charged extra for that feature, however, so it was quickly dropped.

Thus, every few weeks, an ambler on the production floor would randomly implode.

The common practice now was to have supervisors sign waivers, acknowledging that they had been thoroughly trained and knew how to handle the tools given to them, and that neither the Maestro, the alchemist, nor the encoder would be responsible for damages incurred from operational error.

Convincing people to sign that waiver, well, that was Sam’s job. A great Maestro like James Cowen couldn’t possibly be expected to personally haggle with illiterate plebs.  

‘I dun wanna sign nothin’!’ yelled the man. Sam cringed at the spittle delighting upon her hair, then shoved the waiver closer to his face. Ever since they perfected fibrous paper, the act of making people sign things has really gotten out of hand.

‘Mister, I’m afraid your employment is conditional upon –‘

‘What’s next?’ James interjected.

‘Seven-one-two-’

‘Seven?!’

‘Well they weren’t –’

‘I’m not signin’!’ the guy yelled again to better emphasize his point. Loud as he was, he was not walking off in a huff. Yelling at a woman is one thing, risk offending a Maestro is quite another.

‘The number!’ James snapped.

‘‘Seven-one-two-three-zero-six. No duplicates.’ Sam scratched at the ledger. ‘Please sign, or we’ll be here all day.’

And they were there all day.

It took ten hours to assign two thousand amblers, and by the end Sam was struggling to stay awake. At least the delivery was single-destination. If they had to roam across factories or, Lords Above have mercy, across Floors…

Two familiar faces had showed up in the afternoon. They now sat at the other end of the table, busily occupying themselves. Maestro Enri, that lovely old lady, sat knitting what appeared to be a multi-dimensional sock. Next to her was a young man with dark skin and blonde hair. He had his face buried in a thick book, and ink on his nose.

Fifty or so supervisors had come to them over the course of the day. A meagre sum, true, but even so their bookkeeping had seemed somewhat lackluster. Neither had assistants, nor the slightest willingness to pick up a pen. The pile of signed waivers tittering on Sam’s chair must seem to them like some alien edifice of unknowable purpose.

The overseer, meanwhile, had departed for lunch some eons ago and was nowhere to be seen. As it happened, his signature was needed on the master invoice, or the two thousand new amblers now laboring below would be rendered nonexistent on a technicality.

It was too late in the day for polite waiting. James had Lucia ransack the office pantry. Sam, feeling somewhat embarrassed, gave Enri the half-empty flask of gin she had been hiding between the pages of the ledger.

The old lady was greatly buoyed. ‘Samantha, my dear, have you met Maestro Moeffe Bhusaku? He is one of Madam Pierre’s. Where is that old fart nowadays? I’ve not seen her since…’

‘Since the Floor of Six, Maestro Enri,’ the young man said, gracing Sam with a passing glance. ‘My master’s ill health prevents her from travelling far from the estate. Those of my House have had the privilege of fulfilling her ongoing obligations.’

James’ voice cut across the room. ‘And what would those be?’ 

‘The remainder of our profit-sharing agreement with the Finleys, for one, Maestro Cowen. Although it has grown increasingly…trivial…in recent years, we intend to see it to its end.’

‘She never imagined we’d be harvesting whole Floors, did she? Got cheated out of the cake. Shame.’

The look on Bhusaku’s face was answer enough. Lucia returned with an armful of liquorice and dried apricots. Sam grabbed ten of each, then ten more.

‘Maestro Cowen very much enjoys the Finleys’ confidence,’ pouted Enri. ‘For a single man to be allotted ten percent of a harvest –’

‘Master Pierre has spoken often of Maestro Cowen’s expertise.’ Bhusaku said. ‘I know I could not raise ten thousand by myself, even with months of preparation.’

‘Spare me. Jack and his cousins raised eighty thousand.’ Enri muttered that it was seventy-three, and James waved her off. ‘One’s mastery over the Green is meaningless in this endeavor. We take what they see fit to give us – the assigned quotas. The defective trimmings of their personal harvest.’

Bhusaku let go of his book with a thump. ‘But this is not the way it used to be! It’s…insanity…that the Palace Above continues to grant approval for the harvesting of entire Floors. It has utterly broken the economic model we have been following for centuries! Profit-sharing be damned, there is only one signature on the royal contract. How do you think that happened?’ He cut himself short. ‘I find your nonchalance disconcerting, Maestro Cowen. Did you not have your own disagreement with Finley, on that day?’

‘He was acting, my dear,’ muttered Enri, eyes on her needles. ‘He’s in their pocket.’

‘Very true,’ said James.

Bhusaku grew red. ‘They wouldn’t need you for much longer, nor the rest of us. The auditions are full of their handpicked candidates. Soon they’ll have enough necromancers in-House to forgo contractors altogether.’ He took a dramatic breath. ‘And the rest of us would be relegated to the old times, forced to roam the Floors for volunteers and convince the grieving to part with their recently deceased –’

‘Oh don’t be such a spout!’ Enri threw down her stitching in a huff. ‘Ours was a noble profession! My grandmother, may she rest in peace, had her own little shop on the Floor of Ten, and every morning I went out to pick up the broadsheets there would be flowers in the mailbox, and letters in there thanking the Lords Above for her care and dedication! They loved her! They loved! The only Maestro on the whole Floor!’

Under Sam’s astonished gaze she emptied the flask in one throw.

Bhusaku ignored her. ‘We must unionize if we are to break their stranglehold on the harvests. You may be in a position of advantage for now, Maestro Cowen, but look at us. We’re chums. We fight over their scraps on this shithole of a Floor, when Jack Finley can snap a finger on Twenty and every sector of the economy would come groveling for his money.’

‘So would we,’ Enri muttered again.

James stared across the table. There were dark circles under his eyes, his skin more sunken and flaky-looking than the day before.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid.’

The Maestro’s face spasmed at that word. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a sycophant, James Cowen. Master Pierre holds you in such high regard, yet I have seen nothing from you that resembles a spine.’

The overseer, red in the face and stumbling, chose that moment to barge into his own office. The Maestros stared at each other, then stood up to shake his sweaty hands. How are you? Oh fine – business lunch, you know, new clients on Nineteen. Ah yes, of course, revenue streams naturally take priority. Mmm yes, naturally. So on and so forth.

It took another hour of pointless nagging for the overseer to sign everything that needed to be signed. Now, if anything went wrong – say, a cascading explosion of cadavers on the production line – he would be held liable for compensation, since supervisors were not paid enough for that sort of extravagant spending.  

He was well equipped to handle any emergency, of course. The Maestros left him with a two-hundred-page manual that contained every obscure technical detail regarding the operation of Green tethers, a manual that received meticulous updates every quarter. If the overseer failed to convict the entire thing to memory or, Lords Above have mercy, did not read it at all, well, that would be his own fault.

Elevated catwalks linked the factories together like arteries. In theory, one could walk to the lifts and back without ever setting foot on the filthy production floor. The roof hung low over their heads, the lower trusses almost scraping the top of Lucia’s head. Hammer and saw turned into hissing furnaces as the Maestros took a shortcut through an adjoining smelter. The wash of heat was welcome at first…for a few short seconds.

Bhusaku slid a hand on the railing as he walked, tapping with his fingernails. Tap, tap. It was rather annoying. Enri was red in the face and wobbly on her feet; Sam half-carried half-led her along and felt the damp under her armpit. Even more annoying.

James was drenched in sweat, his face waxy. The catwalk veered to the left and rose a dozen steps as it edged around a pool of molten metal the size of a street block. He tripped on nothing and went to his knees with a soft, pathetic grunt.

Lucia turned around, but Bhusaku was already helping him up. ‘You are unwell,’ he said, not unkindly.

‘This is as well as I’ll ever be, lucky for me.’ He slung an arm across Bhusaku’s shoulder. ‘Ahhh…I remember when I was your age. Two days without a wink of sleep and still raising them fifty a minute. No tethers dragging you down, no obligations…no money either, which was the worst.’

They shared a manful chuckle, walking side by side. ‘I didn’t know holding too many tethers would affect your health,’ said Bhusaku with some alarm. ‘My master has never mentioned such a serious side effect…or experienced it, I don’t think.’

‘Some people were born better. Healthier, stronger, smarter…though not always better looking.’ James wiped the damp from his hair and stared distractedly at his fingertips. ‘You think you’re good at what you do, you work hard to get to where you are, then you look up and see them standing on mountains so high you can hardly see the top, and they’ve barely made an effort. Never was a competition.’

‘But we still try, for what else is there?’

‘A young man’s defiance. I like that.’ He gave Bhusaku two solid pats on the back. ‘That feeling as you look up at them, that hate and envy and despair – it keeps you going, way past what your body was made to handle. It is the greatest motivation in the world. Use it.’

‘We should take a break,’ said Sam.

‘Here? On top of these…cauldrons? We’ve appointments to keep! Ledgers to sort! The debrief, prep for the next batch, the written reports! There is no time to rest for chums like us. I would say we can rest when we are dead, but even that is up to the bidder! So, onward, Maestro Bhusaku - more work to be done!’

By the time they reached the lifts Enri was snoring over Sam’s shoulder, while James and his newfound best friend laughed ever louder at yet another inane anecdote about life and death and all things in between, all professional decorum forgotten. They were so very, very annoying.

‘Heading back to the House?’

‘Yes. Separate lifts, I’m afraid.’ Bhusaku offered his hand, and James pumped it energetically. ‘We have our differences, Maestro Cowen, but I hope that, in time…well, as you said, I am still young enough to be optimistic.’

James smiled at that. Not one of those horrid sneers, like he was laughing at some crude joke no one else could hear; a genuine smile – if there was such a thing. ‘Will I see the Madam at Finley’s? It has been a long time.’

Bhusaku worked his mouth. ‘My master is…blessed with the luxury of being able to do whatever she wants. It is not my place to say.’

Their lift was empty. The ones that went directly to the higher Floors often were. Sam sat Enri down in one of the cleaner-looking couches, wishing that she would wake up before they were gone. Judging by her not-so-gentle snoring, the Maestro was nowhere near young enough to be optimistic.

James slumped down in a corner, breathing hard and shallow, all vigor and bravado gone. Lucia stood to one side looking as imperious as ever, her blindfold perfectly complimenting the tilt of her chin.

‘I was like him, once.’ James muttered. He did not look so jolly anymore, only exhausted. ‘All angry without the slightest idea how it all worked.’

There was a lot she could have said, but Sam was tired too. Not that she was verbose on the best of days. So she said, ‘yes, Maestro,’ and left him alone. 

Next Chapter: Chattel (5)