The Earl of Brass (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 1) (17 page)

“Better?” the man asked as he stepped back.

Exploring Billawra

“Much,” Eilian muttered in disbelief as he stared up at the man’s intricately beaded and braided beard. “Am I speaking your language or are you speaking English?”

“You are speaking Billawrati, but if you’re willing, you could create a crystal to teach us English.”

Eilian looked back at Hadley and found her blue eyes wide and filled with terror as she watched him speak in tongues. Out of his lips came the language of her rescuers with its melodious cadence and drawn out endings that formed arabesques of sound. It reminded her of the Arabic tunes the men sang as they worked, but it also made her think of when she saw
Aida
and how mysterious the Italian opera sounded when she couldn’t understand the words. The sounds dipped and jumped, but the harshness of the multitude of consonants was softened by the language’s lack of breaks, making it waft through her ears like a song.

She grabbed his sleeve. “Tell them that I’m sorry for chasing the little girl. Thank them for stitching my head too.”

“Would it be possible to teach her Billawrati too? She wants to thank you for your kindness and hospitality.”

Hadley sat perfectly still, her knuckles white as she clenched the blanket between her thin fingers, while the crystal was placed against her pterion. She opened her mouth to speak and couldn’t believe it when the words came out fluidly in a language that only a moment before was completely unintelligible.

“Thank you, for stitching my wound,” she began hesitantly, clasping her hand to her mouth, unsure if the words would keep coming automatically. She turned to the child. “I’m so sorry for chasing you, little one. I thought you were lost.”

The girl of only seven or eight sheepishly scooted behind her mother, peering out at the foreigners with one large eye.

The woman with the ledger laughed softly as she patted her daughter’s head. “We heard a noise that rattled the entire cavern this morning, and I was going to the surface to see what caused it. Mae decided to follow me, but she got ahead of me. Somehow, I don’t think she will be running ahead of me anymore.”

“That scared us too. One of the men in our group blew up a tree with dynamite.”

Silence fell over the group as they looked to each other.

Hadley thought for a second and replied, “Fireworks?”

The group nodded in recognition.

“Why are you in the desert? We thought the nearest settlement was nearly an hour away,” the tallest man asked as he scrutinized their faces and strange clothing.

“We’re archaeologists. We dig up ancient artifacts to study them and learn about civilizations that no longer exist. We were digging on the other side of the plateau, but we did not find anything. We walked this way to see if we could locate any Roman or Byzantine sites nearby.”

“Teak, do we still have those topographical maps in the library?” The feeble gentleman with the tome nodded happily. “Good. If you would like to see them, you can follow me, and I will show you where you can find some Roman settlements.”

Eilian’s eyes lit up at the unexpected courtesy. “Really? Thank you so much, mister…?”

The scholar chuckled as he shook his head. “Pardon our manners, but your arrival has surprised us all. We haven’t had a visitor in nearly two hundred years. The seven of us make up the elected tribunal that governs the city. My name is Neuk, I am the head researcher.” He gestured to the women with the baskets. “This is Eta, the head farmer, and Skean, the head gatherer. You already know Mae and her mother, Paten, our inventory-keeper. You have also met our head physician, Muna.” He moved toward a stout man with a bald head and an apron. “This is Auk, our head craftsman, and finally, this is—”

“My name is Uta,” the tall woman stated with her arms tightly folded across her chest and her light eyes narrowed on his. “I’m the head artist, and you are?”

“My name is Eilian Sorrell. I’m an archaeologist and writer. This is Hadley Fenice. She creates machines, like this,” he explained, holding up his prosthetic arm.

Neuk and Auk drew closer, hesitantly touching the metal and following its mechanisms with their eyes as one would read a schematic. Eilian quickly reiterated what had transpired a year earlier, explaining that his limb had to be removed as it was beyond repair. The men readily asked Hadley about the design of the joint as well as the power source that allowed the hand to open and close. The two men asked question after question, delving not only into its rather elaborate design but into how the materials that were not native to their land were used. Hadley Fenice was in her glory as she explained all the intricacies that went into making it work properly, including Eilian’s surgery and how the spare body parts were used to create an internal harness for the elbow joint.

Both men and women alike seemed interested in what she did with Neuk and Muna jotting down notes, and her sex was never called into question. They were surprised by the piece itself and not that a
woman
created it. Hadley smiled bitterly to herself. If only the people of England could see her as an inventor rather than a woman who didn’t know her place. A woman who is able to achieve what a man has not is merely a threat to the very fabric of society. She is to be promptly chastised and ostracized until she stays home, shut away like a nun until she is carried off to the grave and beatified with only a memento mori left as a relic to remember her saintly virtue by.
Is two hundred years underground all it would take for women to be seen as equals?
she mused as she listened to Eilian tell them about airships and steamers.
If it is, let London fall into the pits of Hell while we’re gone
.

Withdrawing from Eilian’s side, Neuk cleared his throat. “I’m sure you both would like to get back to the surface and continue working, so I will take you to the library to get that map.”

“Why don’t you show them around while they’re here?” Paten piped up as the basket bearing Eta and Skean left without a word. “They’re going to be busy once they go back to their jobs. From what I’ve read about past visits, usually no one comes back here.”

Uta scoffed as she loosened and re-braided a long swath of hair. “We should just send them on their way and have someone bring them the map. What if they won’t leave? We don’t want them knowing where everything is.”

Neuk furrowed his brow at the Amazon. “Uta, we
will
be hospitable to our guests. These people haven’t done anything to cause us to be so defensive toward them.” He turned back to them with softened, colorless eyes. “If you two would follow me, I would be honored to show you around our city.”

Eilian and Hadley looked to each other as Neuk lifted up the curtain of fabric for them to enter into the city. There was no other choice than to follow the strange people. They stared up in awe, mouths agape, as they gazed up at the vast cavern the city was carved into. The entirety of Billawra sat atop a league-long corkscrew that funneled down into the rock until it hit a large lake at its center, which flowed with canals of turquoise water. Half a mile above the lake was the plateau’s roof. Covering the ceiling was a luminescent fungus that created an eternal twilight in the ray-less cave. Rather than using smoking lamps, the streets were lined with tall, stone poles covered in a fibrous, mossy net that glowed a vibrant blue. As they followed the scholar through the paved streets, Eilian couldn’t help but notice the grout between the tiles glowed dimly just like the lake at the bottom of the pit. Every surface had been buffed smooth and plum unlike the roof of the cavern, which retained its numerous stalactites and natural roughness. The levels of the spiraled city were connected by sets of steps hewn into the rock at every quarter turn, and the buildings were born from the rock with only their great, stone facades jutting out. Their fronts were an eclectic mix of architectural styles ranging from classical Greek and Roman to highly decorative Indian designs and even to the lacy High Gothic.

From where they stood near the center of the helix, Neuk described how the fish and crustaceans that were eaten daily were raised and caught in the water below. The conditions of the lake were controlled precisely to keep the creatures in their optimum environment, and if the temperature or water changed even slightly, they would stop laying eggs until the error was corrected. Near the lake was a large amphitheatre carved in such a way as to have optimal acoustics that carried the hauntingly clear instruments and voices throughout the city. As they stood near the edge and listened closely in the near silence, they could make out the occasional echoing drip of water or the fall of a hammer in the distance, but the thin, ariose melody from below carried crisply through the air, spiraling up to the ceiling where it crashed into the stalactites and died away.

“Why is it so quiet?” Eilian whispered as they passed the Gothic-spired hall where the tribunal met weekly.

“Everyone is engrossed in their work. When your job is your passion, it’s very easy to fall silent as you become focused.”

“No one is forced to do a certain job or inherit a career from their parents?”

“No, the members of the tribunal are the only ones who are forced to take on a certain role. Every few years we cast our votes to determine the ones who are the best scholar, craftsman, artist, physician, farmer, gatherer, and inventory-keeper. We picked our jobs solely on what makes us happy.”

“Money doesn’t influence their interests?”

Neuk hesitated, turning the alien word over in his mind as they mounted the steps. It was a hollow concept. “We don’t use money. We haven’t had any outside groups to trade with in centuries, which makes mercantilism pointless. Money, from what I have read, only causes division in the name of measurable prosperity. We live communally, and everyone contributes to the well-being of the city and each other. We measure our prosperity by how happy and productive everyone is.”

For a moment, Eilian fell silent. The idea that money held no value in their world brought all other thoughts to a halt. The rest of the world would be in chaos without it, yet these strange beings lived in absolute peace. How would his brother and father react to having all they worked for hold no value beneath the surface?

“What about picking up garbage or cleaning the lake for the fish? You know, the unpleasant jobs no one wants.”

A humorous grin played across the older gentleman’s thin lips. “I’m sure in your country you know people who are obsessed with cleaning. We allow them to embrace those tendencies since they are beneficial to the city.”

“What do the artists contribute?” Hadley asked as she watched a group of colorfully dressed young men apply minute mosaic tiles to a wall. Looking around the streets, she noticed most of the walls had been decorated with shining tiles or lustrous murals. Even the organic street lights appeared to have been molded by hands into arabesques and humanoid shapes.

“Artists bring us beauty and entertainment. They put the finishing touches on the city and make our lives more enjoyable. Without their minds, our city would not run nearly as well as it does. They are able to see things differently than our inventory-keepers or our farmers and are able to solve problems and disputes creatively. I assume your society doesn’t reward artists for their efforts?”

Hadley shook her head. “Not really, not unless the art can be sold or someone pays them to create something. Most writers or artists have another job. Actors and dancers are the only ones who get paid, and they are looked down upon for it.”

“Passion makes them disreputable? What an odd world you live in.”

They climbed higher up the corkscrew, passing houses and a school where the children learned the history and customs of their people, a brief history of those on the outside, and more importantly what they were passionate about. Situated a ring above the center was a vast dining hall with hollowed, stone rafters that soared as high as a cathedral’s ceiling. It mirrored a church’s cruciform shape with two kitchens large enough to handle the entire population located in its transepts. The room’s artfully coffered ceilings and walls were dusted with luminescent pigment to create dramatic shadows and highlights, and the grout of the floor contained the same luminous diatoms between the tiles as the road that encircled the city. As Neuk and the Englishmen reached the final spiral, the path branched into six worn and muddied paths that sporadically broke off the ring.

“I would like to show you where we harvest the crystals and other minerals we need, but I think it would be too dangerous for people inexperienced with cave climbing. I’ll take you to our orchard instead.”

Tracing the long, twisting tunnel of mosaic tile, they reached two massive stone doors entrapped in the rock. Neuk pulled a small lever on the wall, and the doors hesitantly creaked open, invading the cold, damp air of the cavern with a balmy, tropical fog. The air rolled past as they followed him inside, the doors softly shutting behind them. The room was lush with great trees and bushes, all flowering with fruit and vegetables. Everywhere they turned, their eyes caught pops of vivid reds and oranges against the brown and green vegetation. Eilian stared up at the ceiling in awe. Tiny shafts of sunlight burned his now unaccustomed eyes as they flooded down from slits in the side and top of the plateau. They started out narrow, but with the aid of mirrors within the tunnels, the sun radiated out, mimicking that of countries near the equator. Men and women carrying baskets bustled about, easily scaling the trees or using long poles to knock the fruit from their canopies. Others carried oversized swabs that they dabbed from plant to plant to help them cross-pollinate and ensure they would bear fruit. Eilian and Hadley looked at each other in disbelief.