Hot and Steamy (17 page)

It wouldn't be fair to Riun to get him expelled because of her own confusion. He was a traveler, an explorer of new cities. She wouldn't rip this one from him, she decided.

 

Her cardmate sat across from her, partially hidden behind a staggering assortment of elaborate cakes, pots of loose teas, coffees, and fancy aerated drinks.

It seemed like half her street had boiled out of their multi-storied tenements bolted to the sides of the beginning the ravine's steep climb to celebrate.

And Tia found herself forcing her smile.

One of her aunts patted her shoulder sympathetically. “It gets better,” she whispered. “Give it time. All of us are in shock at first. It's okay.”

So apparently her smile was not very believable.

Later into the night Owyn found her, trying to hide behind a flower display.

“Are you feeling well?” he asked hesitantly.

“Everything is fine,” Tia insisted.

Owyn stood awkwardly by her, then finally nodded and walked away. Tia sighed. He looked crushed and frustrated. And none of this was really his fault, was it?

Neither of them left the banquet happy. When Tia got home she just sat in the middle of her room, frustrated and getting angrier.

Her dad knocked and entered the room. “We have a problem,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” Tia said, looking down at the carpet on her floor. “The city provides. It calculates the best outcomes for us. We have jobs we are engaged with. Lives that are often fulfilling. And I know that Owyn is a good choice. I'm struggling, but I think I'll get through.”

“Your aunt just sent a runner, he's at the door. She says a quarantine order has been issued for you.” Her dad squatted down in front of her. “What have you been doing, Tia?”

His face was so full of concern it hurt to see. Tia flinched. “I haven't done anything since I came home.”

“There must be probabilities or some new calculations the city has made,” her father muttered. He sat down on another chair and rubbed his forehead. No doubt he was wondering where he had gone wrong in raising her. Or trying to figure out what he could do.

Which was nothing.

“Or,” Tia said, “the city is right.” It was strange to think of
the city
itself bringing its attention on her. It was more than strange: it was scary.

“What do you mean?” her father asked, looking up.

“I'm an ambassador. I'm exposed to things that come into the city. It's my job to stop them. It does mean there is a risk. And I know who I need to talk to.”

“You can't leave, there are ambassadors on the way,” her father protested, but Tia was already out of her chair.

 

She used a long black cloak with a hood to help her slip around the shadows of the streets and flit her way to the guest houses.

When Riun opened the door again, she pushed him back inside and closed the door behind her.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded.

“What are you talking about? What are you doing here?”

“There's a quarantine command on me. You've infected me with
something
; I want to know what.”

“It's just me,” Riun protested. “I'm not an agent. I'm not anything. I don't
have
anything.”

“Then you must have gotten something from someone else,” Tia insisted. “Do you have anti-city propaganda you've been exposed to or thoughts?”

“What? No!”

“What city sent you?” Tia poked his chest.

“It was my own idea. I wanted to see the world. That's all.”

Tia threw herself down on the couch. “Then why am I suddenly a threat to peace and order? Why is the city going to quarantine me?”

“I don't know,” Riun said. He looked just as upset as she did. “There's always a risk, being a traveler. That you picked something up somewhere. Some mannerism that a host city will get upset by. But I swear to you, Tia, I haven't set out to do anything to you. I would never forgive myself if I did.”

She looked at him sharply. “You seemed quick enough to push me out of the guest house earlier.”

“For both our sakes, Tia. You and I both know you have a cardmate. You have a place in this city. I won't jeopardize your life here.”

But he already had. Just be revealing his existence, she realized.

She opened her mouth to try and explain this, and a loud rap came from the door.

“Open up!” shouted an authoritative voice. “Traveler Riun, in the name of the city open up!”

 

Tia stood. “I've ruined it all for both of us, haven't I?” The city had figured out she came here. Now Riun would be expelled.

“What will they do to you?” Riun asked, eyes narrowed. He didn't seem to be worried about expulsion. “Answer me quickly, for I've been to many cities, and the punishments for disorder vary wildly, Tia.”

“Long term quarantine,” Tia said. “Maybe a year. A recomputing of my personality profile based on an interview, pending release. Reeducation during the quarantine.”

Riun grimaced. Tia stood up and walked over to him. “It's not your fault, Riun,” she said. “It's mine for wanting something that isn't mine to have.”

She touched his lips with her fingers. To her frustration, he didn't seem to be sharing the moment with her. His brow was creased with thought, as if he were struggling with something.

Then he gently held her shoulders. “And what is it you really want, Tia? Is it me or the traveling? Or to escape the city? Some want to leave it, but there always more cities, more places you'll have to navigate carefully. More places you'll be considered an outside threat by the city's Mind.”

Tia looked into his eyes. He looked quite earnest at this moment. So she returned that with honesty. “I know I'm attracted to the outside. I think that's a part of it. And I think a part of it is you as well. I hope that's the greater part. But how am I to know? You are not my cardmate.”

The hammering on the door stopped. They would be breaking it down shortly.

“If you truly are in love with both, and not just one of those things, then come with me,” Riun said, and held out a hand.

 

Riun led her to his room and pulled on a coat, then swept his books and notes into his trunk.

“Lock my door,” he said.

Tia did, hearing the ambassadors crashing against the outside door. It creaked, seconds away from breaking open.

“It's not uncommon for travelers to have to run for it when a city changes its mind,” Riun said. “So we always have a way out that we note for each other.”

He kicked at a panel, and a small section of the wall swung aside. They walked into the empty room next door and closed the false wall behind them. Outside, ambassadors trooped down the hallway and started banging on Riun's door.

Riun took them through two more rooms until they stopped at one with a window onto an alley.

They squeezed through, yanking his trunk along with them, and clattered out into the alleyway. Riun pulled his collar up, making to run for the street, but Tia stopped him.

“This way,” she said, pointing at their feet. Wisps of steam leaked out from the edges of a manhole. “There'll be watchers on the streets. I know the steam tunnels.”

Inside the dark tunnels they ran for the edge of the city, and emerged near the ravine elevators. Again, Tia directed them away from the street. “I know a faster way; my dad works around here,” she huffed.

They broke through the doors and ran down the long halls of a calculating factory instead. Clean white, brightly lit, and filled with thousands of sober-faced men and women, leaning over abacus trays, flicking beads in response to equations being offered up to them by blinking lights near their control boards.

Their presence caused a rippling effect of commotion as they passed through, with calculators in clean white robes standing up to shout at them.

Tia threw open the rear doors, and they pushed past the handfuls of people waiting to board the city elevators. Curses and complaints followed them, but Riun shut the cage to the elevator shut and Tia hit the switches.

The elevator climbed up the side of the ravine, hissing and spitting as it passed street after street level, and the roofs of houses at the lower levels and clinging to the sides slowly slid past them.

There was a balcony on the High Road near one of the bridges that ran along under the glass roof that capped the city. Riun grabbed Tia's arm, and pulled her over to the railing. “Look,” he said.

Tia did, and gasped. The city below was changing. People were spilling out onto the streets. Lights were turning on. It wasn't orderly, or staggered in shifts as normal. Instead, the focus of the disturbance was the calculating building they'd run through. People were wandering the streets randomly, not using the flowchart sidewalks and lights.

There was chaos in the Abyssal City and it was spreading.

Lights flickered randomly, and gouts of steam burst from below the streets.

“Did we cause that?” Tia asked, looking at the masses of pedestrians wandering aimlessly about, shouting and arguing. They could hear the grinding shudder of machines coming to a halt over the bubbling hum of discussions and arguments drifting upwards from the entire city. “Did
you?
”

She glanced at him, and realized from the look on his face that he was just as horrified as she was. “I'm just a traveler,” he whispered. “Just a traveler.”

They looked at the spreading chaos, rapt. “Do you think it'll bring the entire city to a stop?” she asked.

Riun shook his head. “No. No I've seen this before. It's a temporary fault. A system failure.” Warning klaxons fired to life throughout the city. “Soon they'll order a return to homes, empty the streets. Stop all the machines then restart them. Order will return.”

“I've never seen anything like it,” Tia said. Not in all her life. It unnerved her. She'd always thought of society, the system around her, as stable and everlasting and solid.

Yet here she was, with Riun. And there chaos was. In the distance, she heard the rumble of an intercity train.

They had to move through the sandbox and get to it.

“Listen,” Riun told her, hearing the train and turning to face her. They were so close, their lips could almost touch. “If you leave with me, I can't promise you anything. I can't promise you a home or a city that you fit into. I can't promise you my love, I've only known you a week. All I can promise is a travel partner, and the fact that I do find you beautiful and interesting and I want to escape with you. Can that be enough?”

Tia pulled the silvered card off her neck and looked down at it. “Yes,” she said. “I'm willing to take chance and uncertainty.”

And then she threw the card out into the space over the ravine and watched it flutter away, down toward the steaming, chaotic streets of the city.

N
ight wind howled through the colonial village of May's Landing, sending a loose shutter slamming against a shop window. Elizabeth Holden wrapped her overcoat more tightly around herself, shivering beneath the red wool. The long, floaty fabric of her nightgown bunched beneath it, making her look bulky in odd places, but she appreciated the long sleeves and high-buttoned collar for the first time since arriving in the New World. She clenched her hands inside the rabbit fur muff and tried not to think about the growing numbness in her fingers and slippered toes.

The same village that seemed so bright and welcoming during the day now seemed like a strange forbidding place, rife with hulking shadows. The dark alleys drew her gaze more fully than the doorways now. Smoke streamed from every chimney, engulfing the village in a pungent fog. The machinery that usually spouted friendly billows of white steam now looked like huddled monsters prepared to spring at the unwary. Suddenly wishing she had never ventured out, Elizabeth glanced toward home. The mansion sat in darkness on the hill, looking as odd and uncomforting as the village itself.

Elizabeth forced an image of Byron to her mind's eye: an adorable armload of black, all huge brown eyes and clumsy paws. She had illegally dragged him across the sea, hidden in a basket of knitting. The law was strict about bringing animals to the pristine environment of the New World. It allowed for a limited number of domesticated cows, goats, pigs and chickens, all carefully cataloged and all ultimately intended for the dinner table. No exceptions were made for any other living creatures, although they encouraged the mechanical dogs and cats that had become the preference of the Old World as well.

Elizabeth had lost track of Byron nearly three months earlier. When he had grown too big to hide in her room, she had moved him to a clearing in the forest outside her window. There, she had spent many happy hours romping with the animal. Large, calm as windless sea, and mercifully quiet, Byron had grown from an awkward puppy unsteady on his saucer-sized paws to a gawky adolescent dog with a tongue that could wash her entire face in a single, happy lick. She had managed to pass him off as a mech-dog on the few occasions when someone had spotted her with him.