The House of Dawn sat on a quiet road in the outer city, surrounded by manors poor men bought to look rich; three stories of shabby red brick, complimented by a gold-on-black sunrise above the door that was cast from solid bronze. Expensive, that. Anything copper was expensive.

T’Lia waited on the front steps with three suitcases. By the curb, Three the three-armed ambler was carrying down a fourth from the rickshaw. There was a time when one case was more than enough to ferry everything she needed to this damnable House; now she had to empty half the workshop.

Maintenance contracts were the dregs. Touching up the decaying ones have never been lucrative, especially when fresh cadaver was so readily available now that whole Floors were being…what did Enri call it?

Harvested.

Supposedly the guilds threw big parties at those. T’Lia wouldn’t know. She was never invited. To go uninvited to a Finley thing was to die.

Lucia eased the Maestro onto the couch as Sam boiled up the kettle. A raid of the kitchen cupboard yielded only AirShip Green – desiccated tea that came in on airships. A jar of the stuff costed as much as twenty loaves of bread. Too valuable for a mouth like T’Lia’s; too flimsy to pinch with broken fingers.

Sam gave her hot water.

‘Really,’ T’Lia grumbled.

‘Sorry.’

‘If you’re sorry then give me a kiss.’

‘No.’

James did not react as Sam slipped three endorph pills into his cup. It was late, they had spent the entire day working, but T’Lia’s appointments, as a rule, do not get rescheduled.

Pleasantries were exchanged. Congratulations were said regarding the successful harvest of Floor of Nine. Complaints were made and heard regarding the invitee list for participating alchemists and reasonable excuses were given and laughed away. Then they talked.

‘My rates have doubled.’ T’Lia said. ‘You haven’t raised me in three years and prices are always going up. No more of that “your compensation reflects your performance” shit. No one can do what I do, so why don’t you reflect that –’ She clicked her fingers and Three put the amended contract on the table, one signature already glistening on the line. ‘– in payment.’

‘That third arm is working perfectly.’ James said, looking at Three and decidedly not elsewhere. ‘One can’t simply graft an extra limb onto a shoulder and expect it to work, there has to be new nervous and muscular connections –’

‘James Cowen. Sign.’

‘– not to mention extraordinary modifications to the Green. Humans have no idea know how to use three arms, obviously, and it’s not exactly a teachable skill. That means the Green had to be augmented beyond its natural recourse – that is to say, to deviate from the human template –’

‘“To deviate from the human template”, Lords Below,’ T’Lia laughed. ‘Kissing your own ass never sound so fancy as you do it, but you’re wrong. I did the real work.’

‘And an excellent job you have done.’

‘Now –’

‘Now Three’s special. You won’t find another like it, and I recall raising it for free as a gesture of appreciation for our ongoing partnership.’

‘Bullshit. Only thing you do is shoving souls inside dead people and there’s a thousand necros out there doing the exact same thing. I could’ve done it, if you put me in one of your auditions!’

James laughed until he was short of breath, which was to say he didn’t laugh very long at all. ‘First, no such thing as souls. Second, no such thing as auditions. Third, go to Finley, Pierre, Ingel, Enri, Meredith, any of them, old Finley even, and ask them to raise a cadaver with a functional third arm. I’d like to see them try!’

And off they went, spit flying, an intimate duel between familiar duelists. Sam removed herself from the lounge and shut out the noise behind her. The arguing would take some time, but the Pile would freeze over before James signed anything that made him dole out more money.  

Her desk was in the foyer, a neat rectangle of stainless steel with three drawers per side and a filing cabinet by the left elbow. The fountain pen works, the typewriter too, and should the rare walk-in client materialize, the visitor’s book was an impressive-looking leather-bound tome with bronze trims and copper-threaded leaves.

Sam sank into her chair. The cushions welcomed her with a sigh. There was nothing left to do except studies, charts, reports, quarterly earnings projections, the dirty floor, the dirtier lab, and dinner…but those things can wait until tomorrow, or the day after that, whichever came later. Her left eye throbbed, the beginning of a migraine.

Three envelopes sat on the floor, slipped in through the mail slot. Wished she had noticed them before sitting down.

‘Luciaaaaa,’ she whined, sinking into her chair. Not loud enough for Lucia to hear, of course. That would be rude.

Rude to Lucia. What a funny idea. Sam chuckled and rubbed her eyes. Her hand stung. Broken bones, itchy cast. Another month, the doctor said. Just enough time for forget about that day and relegate it to the box of unresolved traumas.  

The staring contest lasted five minutes. When it became clear that the letters would give no ground, Sam slunk onto the floor. Fine, getting up then.

The first was addressed to Samantha T., House of Dawn. Inside was a single handwritten slip, with three names undersigned. She read it and put it aside.

The second was for MA. James C., House of Dawn. For His Eyes Only. Inside was a velvety invitation from one Jackson B. Finley IV, to attend the 250th annual stakeholder meeting at the House of the Golden Fleece on the Floor of Twenty. Enclosed was a five-day itinerary full of banquets and competitions and awards and, naturally, meetings. Accompanying the letter was a metal pin featuring none other than a grinning cartoon skeleton holding up a clipboard.

The third contained an invoice from Charlie’s foundry amounting to thirty thousand seeds or equivalent, which seemed a ridiculous amount of seeds to pay for what the invoice described as ‘One Large Box’. James will undoubtedly pay Charlie in Finleybucks again, but only after all options of delay and denial have been exhausted.

Sam slumped back into her chair, leaving the letters in a messy pile. ‘What a day,’ she declared to the room. It responded with silence.

The two mortal enemies eventually emerged from the lounge shaking hands and smiling. James slipped an amended contract onto her desk. It was so densely riddled with red ink that no one would be able to tell what changes stuck and what didn’t – which was the whole idea.

‘Stamp and file.’

‘Yes Maestro.’

‘We’ll be in the lab. Don’t wait up.’

Sam looked at T’Lia, then shrugged. ‘We received some mail.’

‘Urgent?’

‘An invitation from Finley.’

‘Decidedly not.’

‘An invoice for a…a large box, it says on here.’

‘Ah, yes. Good, but not urgent, delay payment as indefinitely as possible. Charlie won’t mind.’

‘And,’ Sam tapped the first letter. ‘My father is dead.’

James gawked at her, lips slightly parted, one hand frozen on T’Lia’s back. ‘Is that urgent?’ he asked blankly.

Next Chapter: Chattel (6)