Aveline (15 page)

Shouting emanated from ahead. The hallway
sloped downward to make room for a ceiling thirty feet in the air
and massive bays on either side of the hall that far exceeded the
sizes of barracks, kitchens and anywhere else Aveline had
visited.

Her step slowed, and she shifted to the
balls of her feet as she neared the door from where the voices
came. The wide, wooden door was cracked open, and she nudged it
farther into the room, curious.

This bay extended several hundred feet from
the door and was fifty feet wide with a thirty foot ceiling. Her
gaze fell to the curled, metal devices thicker than her legs and
twenty feet tall in the center of the bay, and she stared at them,
uncertain what exactly she was looking at. There were dozens of
these structures extending all the way to the far wall, a forest of
twisted metal.

An older man with white hair and a handsome,
young man her age with dark hair and wearing a burgundy sash were
arguing near the front of the devices. Aveline pushed the door
open.

“Hey,” she called.

The two stopped and faced her, startled.

Too late, she realized she’d spoken aloud.
Hoping they didn’t know who she was, or that she was supposed to be
mute, she went ahead. “What is this place?”

Both glanced down at her sash.

“Go. Fix it!” the older man ordered the
younger and spun to face the door. “This area is off limits or did
you not read the sign above the door?” he demanded of Aveline.

“I don’t read,” she retorted.

He froze mid-step, mouth agape, before he
managed to speak. “You must be the street dog assigned to the
Hanover girl.”

“That’s me,” Aveline confirmed, unfazed by
the common derogatory name.

The older man smiled suddenly. “Come! I have
questions for you!”

She moved farther into the room, unable to
take her eyes off the metal structures. “What are these?” she
asked.

“This is where electricity comes from,” he
replied.

“Really?” She lifted her eyebrow
quizzically. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“Electricity.”

He appeared taken aback. “Do you know what
electricity is?” he asked with a frown.

“Lights?” She shrugged.

His mouth fell open, closed and then opened
again.

“Maybe you should fix it, and I can talk to
her,” the younger man said, joining them. “Forgive my master. We
rarely have visitors, unless someone comes to scream at us for the
lights being off. Did you come here to scream at us?”

“No,” Aveline replied. “Why are the lights
off?”

“If you do not know what electricity is, how
can you possibly understand any answer we give you?” the older man
lamented.

“What he means,” the younger man said with a
patient but pointed look at his master, “is that electricity is a
complicated process with many challenges, such as consistently
keeping the lights on. When the Old World collapsed, we salvaged as
much technology as we could, but there have been problems since
then preventing us from returning to the level we once were.”

“I understood that,” Aveline told the older
man pointedly.

The younger man laughed. “My name is Jose
and this is my master, Mohammed. He is the smartest man in the
city.”

“Possibly the known world,” Mohammed
added.

“Possibly the known world,” Jose repeated
with a smile that told Aveline he had long since grown accustomed
to his master’s oddities.

“I’m Aveline,” she said.

“If you are not here to yell at us, why have
you come to visit?” Jose asked.

Because I can’t stop feeling
like something is wrong here, and I don’t know what else to do
except keep busy.
The answer was much more
complicated than she felt like explaining. “I was wandering around
and heard you shouting. Thought I’d see why,” she
replied.

“Jose, do you not know who this is?”
Mohammed poked his slave. “Tiana Hanover’s slave.”

“We have heard about you,” Jose said. “I
thought you were seven feet tall with fists made of steel.”

“No one has fists of steel, Jose,” Mohammed
chided him and spun, striding towards the towering metal trees.

“He does not always understand humor,” Jose
said quietly. His light brown gaze was on her, and Aveline peered
up at him, uncertain when she had met anyone with kinder eyes or a
brighter smile. “He is brilliant, though, and manages to keep the
electricity on most of the time, unless one of the electromagnetic
waves hit, which they do every forty eight hours or so.”

Aveline frowned, concerned not only for
Tiana but for herself. “I don’t know what that means. Will these
waves endanger us?”

“No. They are of no concern to anyone but us
down here.” Jose’s grin was dazzling, and heat unfurled within her
lower belly in response.

They gazed at one another too long.

“Shall I give you a tour?” Jose asked at
last.

Aveline found herself nodding, mesmerized by
the man in front of her in a way she did not recall experiencing
before. Was it his straight teeth? The warm shade of his eyes? His
husky, soft voice? He was tall with wide shoulders and lean,
indicating he performed some kind of exercise, though his hands
lacked the callouses one obtained when training with weapons.

“This is our control station area, where we
can monitor the flow of electricity to every point in the building.
Well, when it works, we can,” Jose said, oblivious to her scrutiny.
He motioned to a wall of tables inlaid with bulbous buttons and the
darkened, glass panes that resembled windows above them.

At Aveline’s doubtful look, he continued.
“It is far more impressive when the electricity is working.” The
tips of his ears turned pink in embarrassment.

“Hmmm. What are these metal trees?” she
asked, uninterested in the control station. She walked towards the
towering spires.

“Metal trees?” Mohammed echoed from
somewhere within the structures. “Is this what our world has come
to?”

“We rarely have visitors interested in what
we do,” Jose said apologetically. “This is where electricity is
generated. A river runs beneath the city, and we use it to power
our internal grid.”

Aveline did not understand at all what he
meant. For the sake of not offending his master further with her
ignorance, or alerting Jose to the idea she was not as smart as he
seemed to think she was, she nodded.

Jose showed her a separate control station,
their break room and residences, and a warehouse where more metal
trees waited to replace any of those that became broken by the
strange waves he mentioned. Some of his explanations became
convoluted, and many were beyond either her desire to understand or
her limited education. Assassins were not hired because they could
read or write or figure out how to use a river to power light
bulbs. They were successful because they read people and situations
and understood how to survive. Even so, she was able to appreciate
the mind it took for Jose to work in such a place.

“ …
and that’s it,” Jose
said, returning them to their starting point.

“You really are the smartest people in the
city,” she said, impressed.

“Possibly the world,” Mohammed corrected
her.

Aveline snorted. “Possibly the world,” she
repeated, eyes on Jose, who was grinning.

“You get used to him,” he said quietly.

“Jose, did you ask her yet?” piped up
Mohammed from within the forest of metal trees.

“When one has guests, one does not ask the
kinds of questions you often try to,” Jose scolded the older man
gently.

An exasperated sigh was his response.

“What can the smartest man
in the world possibly want to ask
me
?” Aveline countered.

“She has opened the door, Jose,” Mohammed
said.

“Now you may ask,” Jose replied. “But be
respectful, like we discussed.”

Mohammed appeared from behind one of the
metal trees, clutching a toolbox in his knobby hands. “My dear
Aveline, I am grateful you chose to visit us this day.” He glanced
at Jose, who nodded in amused approval. “If I may ask, does Tiana
exist?”

“Yes,” Aveline replied, trying not to laugh
at Mohammed’s pained expression as he attempted to be polite.

“You have seen her?”

“Every day.”

“May I ask what she is like?”

The level of his curiosity caught her off
guard. Were they asking because they suspected Tiana had special
abilities, or because no one had ever seen the mysterious Hanover
girl outside of events where she was veiled from sight?

“She’s very sweet, very honest. She
embroiders all the time.” Aveline picked up her sash and motioned
to the flowers Tiana had sewn into it. At the center of the pops of
color was an eagle like the one tattooed on Tiana’s shoulder. “She
likes to read.”

“She is educated. This is wonderful.”
Mohammed nodded. “Her stepmother says she is of a sickly nature.
What a beautiful, noble woman to care for her stepdaughter.” He
sighed wistfully.

Aveline bit back her retort. She disliked
every aspect of Matilda but grudgingly admitted it was not wise to
say so, no matter how much the woman deserved to be widely
despised.

Jose was watching her.

Aware of how much time she had been away
from her ward, she decided she had learned enough about electricity
for the day. “I had better go,” she said. “Thanks for showing me
around.”

“Wait! I have something for you to take
her!” Mohammed cried. He darted into the room where he shared a
bunk bed with Jose.

“I had heard the opposite about Matilda
Hanover,” Jose admitted for her ears only.

“Not my place to say,” Aveline said with
great control.

“Tiana is fortunate to have you.” Jose
smiled.

Aveline said nothing, suspecting he already
knew enough to understand why she was quiet on the topic of
Matilda.

“I rarely ever leave here. Someone has to
look after Mohammed and his metal trees,” Jose said with another
winning smile. “If you ever want to come back or … if you ever have
electricity problems …” He cleared his throat.

Aveline gazed at him, startled. His cheeks
were pink, and he ducked his gaze. Uncertain how to respond, or
even what was appropriate to say, she was silent. The daughter of
the most feared assassin in the city had never been propositioned
before or even considered it possible. She had been attracted to
many men without imagining what happened if one of them were
fascinating enough for her to pursue.

Jose was one of those men
fascinating enough to pursue. Smart, kind and with pretty eyes that
made her insides flutter whenever he looked at her. That he, too,
noticed
her
unsettled her. She was accustomed to men viewing the Devil’s
daughter as off-limits.

Mohammed returned with a small pouch,
dispelling the light tension between them.

“I made these when the twins were born,”
Mohammed said and tugged two necklaces out of the pouch.

“Twins?” Aveline echoed, grateful for the
distraction from the rare uncertainty of her thoughts.

“Tiana had a twin. The twin was born with a
deformity, so her father ordered the other child and his wife burnt
at the stake,” Jose explained quietly.

But if Tiana’s twin was
deformed …
Aveline was unable to process the
thought fully. Had Tiana’s father burnt the wrong
daughter?

“Her father would burn a newborn as well as
his wife?” Aveline asked, appalled. This truth was even worse than
Tiana’s factual declaration of her mother’s fate.

“It is the law. He had no choice,” Mohammed
said.

“It is a harsh law,” Jose said. “Why we do
not send the deformed to the Free Lands, where they have a chance
to live in peace, I do not know.”

“It would be better than murdering
children,” Aveline agreed, thoughts on the young girls sentenced to
the butcher. The outer city had its horrors, and the inner city did
as well. Jose’s solution was much more rational than burning or
eating or enslaving children no one wanted.

“
Many people believe Tiana
is deformed, too, or perhaps something else is wrong with her,”
Mohammed said. His focus was on detangling the two thin silver
chains holding pendants. “She is never seen in public.”

“If that were the case, she would have been
burned at birth with the others,” Jose reasoned.

“
Ah. Done.” Mohammed held
out the two necklaces to her. “She can decide what to do with the
second.”

Troubled by the latest revelation
contributing to Tiana’s tortured existence, Aveline accepted them.
“These are timepieces.” She calculated the resale value in the
inner city and decided they were of little more value than Tiana’s
blue perfume bottle. The pure silver chains the pendant watches
hung from would fetch enough bread for a week.

“They are powered by kinetic energy!”
Mohammed declared.

She held them away from her warily.

“Kinetic energy is movement,” Jose
clarified. “It is nothing forbidden. The clocks use the energy of
your everyday routine to tell time.”

“Hmm.” It certainly sounded like magic to
her, but so did their explanation of electricity.

“They have one more quality you will
appreciate.” Mohammed reached out and placed them beside one
another. The faces behind the moving hands began to glow. “When
they are close to one another, they will light up.”

“Is that more … kinetic … uh …” Aveline
started.

“Yes,” Jose said.

“No,” Mohammed replied simultaneously.

The two exchanged a look, and Aveline
waited.

“Is that part magic?” she prodded.

“Magic is forbidden,” Mohammed declared.

Jose said nothing.