The Fifth City (2 page)

Two

The door of the glassworks shop slammed shut as Neve stormed out into the empty street.  The stone walk sent nothing but cold up through her soft leather house shoes that she hadn’t bothered to change.

Uncle Harry was mad at her again, and he had a right to be; but she couldn’t stand another minute of him glaring at her across the villa—the evidence of her incompetence stacked by the door as a clear reminder.  Three broken jars of cobalt coloring were thrown on top of the refuse bin in the corner, the ruined blue powder sifting out through the cracked glass.

With a steadying breath of cool night air, she headed down the empty streets of Lightcity to find a place to cool her head.  The anger that boiled through her veins was already subsiding, and she tugged her fur-lined cloak tighter around her arms.

She was tired.  Since Skycity had warned them of the threat to the Four Cities, Governor Estella had put the city on lock down. On top of that was the manufacturing contract Estella had signed to aid in the defense of the Four Cities.

Day in and day out, the glassworkers produced the orbs for Skycity’s army.  Neve’s hands ached from turning and turning the metal rods that she used to blow glass.  She sighed long and loud.  Earlier in the evening, she had turned too fast while transferring a rod from the cooling bin to the rack, and knocked the jars of cobalt clean off the shelf.  Her uncle had shouted at her the entire time she cleaned up, his face bright red from the effort.

The shops she passed were all closed, but their windows were lit by cheerfully glowing lamps.  After a few turns she saw the warm lights of the Broken Bellows, a small pub tucked into a dead-end alley.

As she approached, a tall Scout came out of the pub, clutching his friend and shuffling down the alley.  They ignored her, and she them. 
But perhaps Falcon is here
, she thought, and a small dart of anticipation jabbed her nerves.

She had already forgotten about the cobalt by the time she passed through the heavy stone threshold and descended the few steps into the warm pub.  Delicious scents from the kitchen wafted her way as she scanned the half-empty room, looking for Falcon.

A group of Scouts lounged around several tables that had been crammed together.  Each surface was littered with food and glasses of ale, cups and plates ranging between full and empty.  With no sign of Falcon’s shining copper hair, she edged through the chairs and tables to an empty seat in the corner.

She sat and leaned back into the shadows, trying not to draw attention to herself as she looked over the faces of everyone in the pub.  The Scouts had claimed the center of the moderately-sized room, but Lightcitizens made up the rest of the pub’s patrons tonight.

Scouts often frequented the Broken Bellows, but they were uncommonly wild tonight.  She pushed them out of her mind as Gemma came striding to her table, and the woman’s tired face cracked into a smile once she recognized Neve in the shadows.

“Evening, m’dear; what’ll it be?”  Gemma smoothed her worn but clean apron and stuck her hands in its pockets.  The barkeep’s mousy brown hair struggled to escape the bun at the back of her head.

Neve glanced at the Scouts and said, “Some honey-wine would be nice.”

Gemma nodded before weaving through the forest of tables and chairs, and disappeared behind the bar.

It was getting on the late side of the night, and Neve supposed there was a slim chance she would encounter Falcon, since he wasn’t here already.  She let out a long sigh as she remembered why she had stormed out of her villa in the first place.

She knew her uncle was frustrated with her, but there wasn’t anything she could do about her clumsiness.  She was constantly breaking things at the shop; though she did her best to hide it and replace or fix things before her uncle noticed.

But the incident last year…  She cringed and gritted her teeth.

She had been working in the shop alone at the time, experimenting with color pigments to try and impress her uncle.  She was the worst glassworking apprentice he had ever seen—or so he told her—so she was trying to come up with something that would make him change his mind.

There were several jars of minerals and compounds out on the workbench.  She was readying to add the composite she had mixed to produce a swirling black effect.  But her heel had caught on the stone floor, and she tripped—of course—and the mixture flew out of her hand toward the bench, where she had left a few jars open.

The workbench promptly exploded.

Out flew flames that stretched until they reached any surface they could burn.  Thrown to the floor, she narrowly missed the anvil, a hands-breadth from her head.  The yellow and white flames reached out for her, their hot fingers clawing at her heels as she scrabbled away to the hall, already choking on the smoke.

The entire room was on fire.  Even the stone walls.  She stood transfixed for a split-second, mouth wide, then lunged for the water hose as she heard her uncle’s footsteps boom down the hallway.  Turning the knob, she released a massive stream of water over the room, soaking every surface until the fires had gone, but the damage had been done.  And it had been monumental.

Utter humiliation.  Her uncle didn’t speak to her for days, except for a terse order to clean out the small workspace in the back of the shop, which she did without complaint, in just as equal silence.

She would
never
be a good enough glassworker
, she thought over and over again.  It just didn’t run in her blood.

Her father had been a Rider, but he had disappeared one day in the winter on a courier trip when she was little.  Only a few months later, her mother had left her too—taken fatally ill.  Her father’s brother was the only other family she had, and he had taken her in when she was only five.

Harry did love her, just as he might his own daughter—if he had ever married—but he had a short temper, and Neve just wasn’t cut out for her uncle’s trade.  But she didn’t have the heart to suggest she try another profession and break family tradition.

She wasn’t cut out to do much of anything, it seemed—until the day a few weeks after she had blown up the shop.

Her uncle had been in the workshop, which stood next to the villa, though unattached for well-reasoned safety concerns.  A loud knock came at the villa door.  Neve sauntered over to answer it, assuming someone just chose the wrong building, and was looking for her uncle. 

A man from Skycity stood towering over the doorway.  A scraggly beard hid most of his face, and one of his stubby fingers was missing from the hand that rested on a knife at his hip.  He wore a leather vest lined with fur, the type Skycitizens seemed to favor, and Neve noticed several holes in his boots that were in desperate need of patching.

She had to tilt her head up to meet his eyes, and she forced a polite smile to her face.

“Are you looking for Stoughton glass?  My uncle’s shop is next door,” she leaned out of the doorway and pointed to the right.

The man cleared his throat and growled, “Thanks,” and walked away, taking only four great steps to reach the glass shop.

Neve kept the door open, wanting to hear what the gruff Skycity man wanted.

Her uncle answered the door at the man’s knock.

“Harry Stoughton?” the huge man grunted.

“That’s me, what can I help you with?”

She heard her uncle’s voice fade, as if the two of them had drawn back into the shop.  She left the villa door open and crept over to the shop, the door of which was still cracked.

“I understand your shop had an… accident.”

Neve’s insides contracted. 
Was she in trouble?  Were they going to close her uncle’s shop for her clumsiness?

But on second thought, why would someone from Skycity care?

She sunk into a crouch, her ears pressed to the lintel, waiting for the hammer to fall.

Her uncle puffed impatiently.  “My niece…  Yes, our workroom suffered some damage.  What do you care about it?” he added angrily.

She had to give it to her uncle, he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.

“I wonder if the accident could be recreated?” the man asked quietly.

Neve’s brows stitched together. 
What was he talking about?

“Recreated?  What the hell for?”

“We’d pay, of course.  My contractor is very interested in what could create such damage.”

Neve heard the clinking of coins and she raised an eyebrow.

“Well I—Well,” her uncle stuttered, “I—think we can work something out.”

It must be quite a bit of coin
, Neve thought as she pulled away from the doorway.  The conversation continued, but she didn’t want to be caught listening, so she crept backward toward the villa.

She stumbled on her doorway as she heard the Skycity man say goodbye to her uncle out in the street.

Neve quickly returned to the kitchen where she was supposed to be cutting up bread.  She had the knife back in her hands by the time her uncle appeared in the doorway.  He walked sedately to the table.  He had a leather bag in his hand, and he dropped it on the table, and said, “Come here, Neve,” but it wasn’t angry. 
What was going on?

She brushed the breadcrumbs off her hands and went to join her uncle, the bag of coins between them.

Neve shooed away the awful memory.

That had been the beginning of this whole strange situation.  Embarrassingly, Harry had worked with Neve to sort out which compounds she had accidentally combined to create the explosion.  They had worked in the destroyed workspace, with only the smallest measurement of the various possible compounds, until they had recreated it.  The water hose was always at the ready.

When the man from Skycity finally returned, they gave him the information, and he gave them another sack of coin.

Not long after, Governor Estella had called a city-wide emergency meeting, in which she announced Skycity’s discovery of a dangerous foe in Arcera, who sought to destroy the Four Cities.

The Lightcitizens had descended into near chaos in the Citizen’s Hall, and the glass walls echoed with their shouts and cries.  Finally, Estella told them of Skycity’s plan for defense, and the contract she had signed with Governor Greyling to manufacture weapons to use against their enemy.

Something about it had seemed very odd to Neve.  Still seemed odd.  As she eyed the Scouts from the shadows of her table, Gemma approached with a tall golden glass.  Neve gave Gemma her thanks and slid a few coins into the woman’s hand.

It had been bothering Neve for weeks.  She took a sip of the honey-wine, and the cold sweetness that slid down her throat eased the tension in her shoulders.

The Scouts were always in and out of the city, sometimes gone for weeks at a time.  She never asked Falcon where they went.  She wasn’t entirely sure he would tell her.

Governor Greyling himself had visited Lightcity before winter, to make a speech about the threat they faced, and how the Four Cities were going to work together to protect themselves, with each city doing its part.

But the orbs were carted out of the city, and she didn’t know where to.

Neve rested her head on the back of the bench and peered out of her shadowy corner at the Scouts.  One of them dropped a handful of coin into Gemma’s palm, calling for yet another round.  They really seemed to be celebrating something.

From her shadowy corner, Neve sipped her honey wine and waited.

After an hour, most of the other patrons had filtered out, and Gemma had brought Neve another golden glass.  There was still no sign of Falcon.

“You lucky curs, why can’t I come with you, eh?” one of the Scouts suddenly blurted from behind a forest of empty glasses.

Neve slid further into the shadows of her corner bench.

“We’ve got orders, and you don’t, that’s why,” another Scout replied, his short hair streaked through with grey.

The others guffawed, and the first Scout gave them a dirty gesture.

“Maybe you can see it next time,” a third Scout said, then drained his glass.  “We’re only doing observation anyway.”

“Thanks to that bloody fight in Meadowcity,  we don’t have enough boats yet.  Those woodworkers in Rift are horrible.”