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When you were younger—also the Younger, always that—your parents sometimes spoke of the Kains and their oneirotects. Not frequently. But from time to time.
Dreamers, said your father, the curl to his lip both derisive and satisfied. But mark my words, my boy, we hold together the foundations of this town on which they build.
There is a coldness to their visions, said your mother. Lovely they can be, and sweet, but still as cold as heavenly fire. As she peered out a window the morning sun swallowed her face, turning it into a blaze of featureless white.
The Town then had the air of a porous, respiratory being, inhaling visions and exhaling them as buildings: the Kains’ tripartite Crucible, the great Cathedral on its spidery legs, the stolid, star-facing globe of the Stillwater. By then, you were a little too old to climb the stairways or scrape your knees running too quickly through newly-raised stores, warehouses, tenements—not that your father would have allowed it, regardless of age.
Your mother might have. Capella had barely begun to toddle when she’d permitted—even encouraged—her to explore, to socialize with her peers, from grubby-handed urchins to Kin children treading the grasses of the Steppe. Not so for you. For you only the company of Maria Kaina, a few years younger but already scornful and forbidding, whose eyes only ever brightened when she spoke of family projects you scarcely understood.
They’re building a tower of dreams, she pronounced, with an icy excitement that had conjured up your mother’s words. A place of miracles.
And sure enough, you would see them around the Crucible when you tailed your father on social calls. Colorful people from the Capital: a pale-haired, limping woman with marvelously clear eyes; a man in red whose words were accompanied by sweeping, animated gestures; and twin brothers, sharp in gaze and profile.
Then your mother had gone, and with her your childhood.
You step out from the Lump to empty streets divided by a tired sky, a haze-pale blue with sunlight still bleeding away at the edges. Leaves spiral and dip in the wind, though the buildings of the Gut stand as brown and stolid as ever.
It feels… chillier. As though a dam has burst and let winter’s fingers come crawling through.
Strange to think that the outbreak had lasted less than two weeks: the first trains back have borne away the last of the Army, leaving only bodies and the lingering scent of ash.
For your father there had been no body found. You can still see him, there in the dusk: an unshakeable silhouette before the Termitary doors. Speaking in his old authoritative voice, though he knew himself condemned.
You remember the voice but not the words. You should have stepped in, said something, followed him into the blood-scented dark—but all you could do was stand at the threshold with one hand outstretched, openmouthed and silent. A coward until the end where you might have been noble, might have atoned for villainy if not enacted heroism.
Those two weeks retain the quality of a dream. Impossible that he should vanish after so long looming over you, the Lump, the Termitary itself. If not for your later viewing of the interior (brief, indescribable, carried out first in duty and then in something like a trance) one could go on pretending that nothing happened.
One could. Not you. You who had given the orders, you who should have been judged and condemned and executed. For the past weeks you’ve buried yourself in paperwork: supply lines to be reestablished, policies reviewed. Compensation for the families of the dead.
The problem is that you can do so little. The problem is that you can do anything now, and the possibilities soar so high as to be dizzying. Reform the Enterprise, help the Kains with their new Town-Across-the-Gorkhon. Speak with Burakh about the Kin… or the new Mother Superior, the girl Taya Tycheek. Mop up some measure of what stains your hands. You could talk to Capella.
But instead your footsteps find themselves winding down the old familiar path across the bridge and through the Hindquarters, toward the Broken Heart.
You find the interior little changed, qualitatively speaking: the same shifty-eyed bartender and slow, drowsing music that snakes its way through the tiers with their same smattering of small, uncomfortable seats and weathered leather armchairs.
You’d never quite trusted Andrey—a man who could move through the airy stratas of society with as much ease as his own pub, as though his ownership extended to all who entered his demesne. A man of infinite freedom, to be enjoyed or squandered as he wished. There’s a perverse defiance to the place that cleaves to him inextricably, even now. It feels emptier without him.
You wonder if the barkeep’s taken over. It can’t be Peter. If you’ve guessed correctly, he would be… you glance around the room and, finally, spy a person-shaped lump huddled in a far corner. Dankovsky’s not around, then, nor Lyuricheva.
The same familiar motions guide you to the bar, where the barkeep nods. “The usual?”
“Yes—and I was wondering, has there been a change of ownership?”
He looks away for a moment, uncomfortable. “Andrey left the place to Peter, of course. But…” A glance toward the corner of the room. “...he seems content with letting the rest of us run things, for now.”
Further down the bar sits an herb bride, nursing a drink you don’t recognize—the bright red of fresh cherries. The flowers in her swooping mass of hair look somewhat wilted, but she looks up to you and waves, flashing a somewhat unsettling smile.
“I understand,” you reply. From the relative desolation, you guess that business has yet to recover. It occurs to you that you could offer to buy the place from Peter, that it might even, eventually, be profitable—but that may be tactless.
There is also, of course, his general state to be considered.
Having acquired your drink, you finger the glass, at a loss for what to do. Drink seems the obvious solution, but should one not be sitting somewhere for that? Preferably in company? Of course, the bar is right in front of you. But sitting with the laconic barkeep and solitary herb bride would feel… odd. Both are employees and so share a world from which you are definitively, and by definition, barred.
One option remains. Weaving between tables and chairs, you head for the corner where Peter Stamatin sits. The smell of twyrine hangs thick in the air; not even on your worst days, you flatter yourself, had you allowed things to become so bad.
You sidle up cautiously and take a seat across the table. Bog-green bottles cluster there, some of them overturned. They need more staff, you decide, to clear this sort of thing away.
(But how could they, with all the dead? With all those that you made so?)
Peter doesn’t look up, nor give any indication of noticing. And why should he? You’re hardly close acquaintances, for all you share—in theory—a common cause. Even the last time that you’d spoken directly seems hazy and remote.
“Excuse me,” came a voice. “May I sit here?”
The world lilted upward in a violent amber sunburst. Eyes like something out of a bad dream regarded you. For a moment, you thought of the well you had been digging. But no, they were ordinary eyes, clear and green. Only the hollowness around them made them terrible.
Peter Stamatin drummed his fingers uneasily on the back of the chair opposite you.
Startled, you said the first thing that came to mind: “Why not sit with your brother?”
Even through the vague meltedness of everything, you knew this had been the wrong thing to say. You were the heir to the Bull Enterprise, and this was Andrey Stamatin’s bar; you had barely exchanged a handful of words with Peter, and this was the wrong thing to say.
But like a particularly dreary and waterlogged horse, Peter only gave an irritated toss of the head. “He’s being… difficult.” As though this explained everything. “I thought it was time for a change of pace.”
There was nothing unreasonable about this. You had no reason to refuse. Still you hesitated. You could see Andrey standing by the bar, on the other side of the pub and—sure enough—giving you a pointed look. Not-so-friendly was a charitable term for the feeling behind that look. A warning, and something bitterer.
“Of course,” you replied, with an ease he did not feel. That could be amended with a few more glasses: the night was still young. Avoiding Peter’s gaze, you swallowed the rest in a single gulp. Cheap vodka, not twyrine—thrift in all things, you thought sourly.
Peter’s fingers were twined about a bottle of the usual; as he sat down, it tilted dangerously in his hand, which he flung to his side with a seeming lack of care. Perhaps he expected the chair to have arms. It did not, however, and his own arm hung there limply.
You had seen him here countless times—leant against the bar and murmuring something to his brother, storming in on wild fits of inspiration, perched with his hunched, spindling posture on tables, chairs, balconies—but could not remember having had a proper conversation. God, you thought, how many years has it been? Three? Five? You found it hard to imagine being as young as you were when you’d first begun to visit the Broken Heart, but at the same time, did not feel so much older at all.
“You know, I envy you.”
The statement was so unexpected that you looked up to see if there was anyone else who might have served as the target—or might have spoken. But there was only the glass-green gaze of Peter Stamatin. “What?” you blurted, feeling exceedingly stupid.
“I envy you,” repeated Peter. He must have had a few bottles already—but then, when had he not? “Tell me, do you ever contemplate the stars?”
For a moment you wondered if you were being mocked, but then remembered who was talking to you. It was a genuine question. “Unfortunately not,” you said. “Too many earthly matters to be concerned with.”
“But you are fortunate.” Peter gestured abruptly, fingers fanning out like the wings of some great ungainly crane—not with his free hand but the one that had held the bottle, which dropped to the ground and rolled away alarmingly. “Once I’ve seen them, you know, they wheel about in my mind.”
This seemed like a bad route for him to go down. Quickly, you clutched for something to say—some way to intervene. All of your clever, diplomatic phrases had fled you. You felt as though your brains were sloshing around in your skull, caught in the murkiest eddies of the Gorkhon.
“Well, I rather envy you.”
The words should have been nonsense: a spur-of-the-moment, reflexive phrase. But in speaking you realized how true they were. How often had you wished you could throw off your responsibilities and drift into the world of dreams like these oneirotects? Your work with Maria was all to carve out a place for the Enterprise in their cold and star-scattered future. But even allied thus, you would forever be taking inventory and tallying figures. You were good at it; even enjoyed it. That was immaterial—even if you despised it, it was all you could do.
Peter blinked slowly. “How is that?”
You gazed after the bottle of twyrine on the ground; it had stopped by the leg of another table. “Drink, for one thing. Doesn’t it inspire you?” You allowed yourself a bitter smile. It does nothing except get me drunk.”
“And yet, is that not its purpose?” Peter looked odd without a bottle, like he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. He elected to continue gesturing. “You wouldn’t want my kind of inspiration.”
No, you suspected you would not. You were no artist. Anthropology was about as far as you could go. And yet, and yet. You could not help but track those fluttering hands, featherlike and skeletal, and think of the man in red. The Stamatins had murdered him, hadn’t they? And how—by blade or poison? The thrashing panic of strangulation or a push, a cry, a single swift fall? Could you be capable of that, in the pursuit of mere dreams?
Perhaps you really had had too much to drink.
You stood up abruptly and pushed in his chair. “I, er, have something to do. Urgent business.” Peter glanced up, looking almost disappointed. For some reason this gave you pause, and you said, guiltily, “Goodbye, Peter.”
Then you fled off into the night.
Peter, still living, has changed as well. Never exactly hale, now he looks cadaverous—and that faint shade of stubble has become downright scraggly. He sinks in his chair like a doll. Those alarming eyes are rimmed with red, and the look in them is one you recognize from the mirror, long ago.
He doesn’t look like a lofty, enviable oneirotect, or a crazed murderer. He looks like a man grieving his brother.
“Peter,” you say quietly. He blinks, perhaps at your face, perhaps at the stretch of space that it occupies. “It’s me, Vlad Olgimsky.”
No need for an appendix. For the first time, your name belongs to only you. You’d imagined this in the past, of course: not with any particular relish, only in the knowledge that your father for all his cunning and stolid immovability had still been a man.
Imagination is no match for reality. Surely you cannot be single, sole, alone.
“I know who you are,” he says. “Here to drown your sorrows, too, old boy?”
“No, not exactly.” But aren’t you? You sip your drink, for effect, and the warmth that blooms at the back of your throat beckons you to continue.
You add instead, “How long have you been here?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea… hours? Days?” Avoiding your eyes, Peter clutches at one of the bottles, then seems to realize that it’s empty. “What does it matter? He’s gone… and so is she. Fallen from the sky, like a vanquished angel.”
Andrey is obvious. It doesn’t take a genius to see that he had been something load-bearing in whatever framework holds Peter up. As for the other—ah. You would never have claimed to understand the so-called specular tower, but the western sky does seem oddly empty without it, like a tree with barren branches.
“Where are Dankovsky and Lyuricheva?”
“They were here. But then…” He closes his eyes, as though against the pain of a headache. An unsteady smile pulls across his face. “Yes, they tried.”
“What about that orphan girl, Grace?” You’d heard that she’d stayed with him for some time before the Saburovs took her in. “Could she be looking for you?
At this, he seems to flinch. “No, no… she must be, yes, but I can’t possibly face her. Not like this.”
“You know, Peter, when my mother died…” Even to your ears, your words sound insipid as the transparent platitudes they surely are. “I started coming here more often. I thought I could bury myself in here, hide from the world. Numb myself.”
“No,” comes the reply. He looks agitated, twisting the lank strands of hair that hang down from his head. “A human woman, even a Mistress, is nothing to what I lost. She was my muse. And he was…” His eyes, downcast, look far away. Impossibly far, lost to the world. “My other half.”
Still, you press on with some unknown conviction.
“No, that’s true. It’s not the same. I don’t pretend that I was… close to her.”
(How to explain? One is not close to an obelisk or a marble column. Yet when it falls the ground still shakes, the building still crumbles, the sky still shatters above you. You had never understood your mother, nor she you. But her easy magnanimity, her hand through your hair, her bright weft through the world like a thread of gold—all of those had been lost, forever.)
“But with time, I discovered that… I had to go back into what was left of the world.” You try to find the words. “Drink wouldn’t clear away the… wrongness. Only making purchases, overseeing the facilities, speaking with those still alive.”
It had been a mistake to come here, but could you make it something worthier? Turn platitudes into truth?
Excoriation descends no sooner than the thought. What self-delusion. You are no Inquisitor, have neither Capella’s powers nor Burakh’s will. How can you expect to save a single soul when you’d condemned thousands to the plague? This is self-serving, clownish, grotesque.
And yet you find yourself getting up, extending a hand.
“What I mean is… I’m inviting you to join me for a walk.”
Miraculously, Peter follows you out into the mid-afternoon chill, still wrapped in that shabby patchwork blanket—but not before acquiring three bottles of twyrine. “An offering,” he mumbles. “For them.”
You assent with some nods and polite noises. This solves a number of your problems neatly. Embarrassing to admit that otherwise, you’d have no idea where to go.
The two of you follow the tracks from the Factory out to where the Steppe unfolds before you like something woven, a tapestry rustling in the wind. For a moment you understand why so many myths are born from this place. As a boy you’d thought it was like a landscape from a painting: all the details picked out in oil, glass behind canvas, to be captured and displayed in some grand museum in the Capital. How wrong you had been.
(And yet, a small voice strains against the glass—and yet you presume. Always you are taking liberties, even in your thoughts. Can you truly understand? Who are you, to name them myths?)
Something woven of living grasses, rough strands and fine. Billowing out into the far distance. A sky the color of blood. You run a hand over your face wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, doing neither.
Peter gives you a sidelong look. “Just… thinking,” you begin, unsure what to say. “Of how much stranger the world is than I’d ever thought.”
Andrey is buried in the cemetery near a tall stone painted with the ruddy image of an eye. A small bunch of dry flowers lie before it, crumbled almost to bits. Peter’s eyes drift away from the headstone raised for his brother, toward the other, like wind over water. “Her work. She says he speaks to her—can you believe it?”
“Farkhad,” you offer, as much a question as confirmation. He nods.
“What things he must say of us. Of me.” Almost unconsciously, Peter shifts his weight onto one leg, crossing one hand over to the other forearm. You recognize the posture—it’s Andrey’s, sure as daylight, even to the upturned chin. On a grieving man it looks odd, but also not so very odd at all. “Sometimes I wonder…”
He must be thinking of the gravekeeper’s daughter. How he could ask her to speak with Andrey, but ought not. Should you say something? Before the outbreak, you might have counseled against entertaining this kind of thing: the folklore of the Kin is one thing, but the imagination of a teenage girl? Now you wouldn’t know.
Perhaps she can hear your mother and father as well, and all those thousands dead of plague. Bits of lore come back to you, disjointed—would they speak of the void underground, falling forever through the silence of Suok?
Something shivers up your spine, like a drop of water falling skyward. With a start, you notice that Peter’s lips are moving. Whatever passes them does so inaudibly. His words are meant for Andrey, not you, and rather brief.
From somewhere in his coat—it must have voluminous pockets—he retrieves two of the bottles. Now he looks surprisingly lucid. Perhaps that is a bad sign. Perhaps he is very far gone. His voice is thick when he says, “Care for a drink, Olgimsky?”
A drip in the sky, rippling. You accept one bottle. You drink.
(The third bottle is given, with shaky fingers, to Andrey’s grave.)
On a small island in the Gorkhon, at the western extreme of the Stone Yard, there is a wound in the ground where the Polyhedron used to stand. From behind him you can barely see it—no more than a faint furrow in the ground, cupped by grass, like the den of some small animal. Peter stops a few steps from it and falls to his knees. You linger at a respectful distance. His face obscured, you are afraid the moment will stretch into eternity.
At last an invisible tension falls from his shoulders, and they sag.
“Yes, yes… I know.” Again the words sound unmeant for you, though you are the only one here. “It’s over, isn’t it?”
After a time you step forward and place a hand on his shoulder. The gesture feels awkward, unfamiliar. You half-expect him to be insubstantial or to crumble into particles.
It’s not enough. No, not this quiet witnessing, not on that first chalk-white morning with her heart idle as a stone in her chest. Your father’s fury, Capella’s tears, and you. Your eyes filling the room only with silent regard. You have always been coldhearted. You did not rush after him into the death-scented dark. Had it been fear of this, this feeling of falseness?
You close your eyes and let the twyre-smelling wind sieve burningly down your lungs. The patchwork coat scratches your fingers. This is the present, after all: the past is sealed off, for better or for worse. Ahead lies only the future.
You remain like this, the two of you, for a long moment.
(This time, you drink deeply, scorching your throat like the wind. Peter takes only a sip.)
The sun sinks, slowly but surely. You could call it a day now, extend your offer of purchase and be met by whatever degree of lucidity Peter has or hasn’t regained. (By the looks of him it’s hard to tell: he’s swaying on his feet somewhat, and worries at a loose thread on his coat with startling concentration.)
But as you wend your way back across the Bridge Square, toward the Broken Heart as if by silent agreement, you can’t help but make one last invitation.
“If you’ve grown… tired of the pub, I have this house in the Maw.” You clear your throat. “More of a shack, really. But something there might be of interest to you.”
You are aware, of course, that out of all of the proposals you’ve ever made, this ranks among the worst-sounding. Surely he’ll read something untoward into it; suspect some ulterior motive. Yet Peter only raises an eyebrow and asks, “What is it?”
A glance confirms the street is deserted; in the dusk not even children run among the falling leaves. Likely the terror of the plague-stricken streets will be long to linger. Even you go armed with a small revolver.
And so, unsure what it would mean to him, you whisper: “A well.”
“Oh.” For the first time today, his eyes take on the faintest hint of a gold-green, catlike glint. Perhaps it’s just the streetlights. “Quite a marvel, in this place. I hadn’t taken you for the type.”
“Usually,” you assure him, “you’d be correct. I don’t simply go around digging them.” Do you sound too defensive? “This is perfectly discreet, secure, and contained.”
Or so you’d thought. The truth is, after the plague, you’re not sure you should continue.
Peter shrugs, rubbing his hands together. “Well, lead the way.”
He must be cold—that coat hardly looks sturdy, and the drink might be making things worse. Perhaps this hadn’t been such a great idea. You can think of worse places for warmth than a dilapidated shack, but there aren’t many.
Since the workers have cleared out, the building stands dark and silent, looming out of a lavender sky. They’ve left tools scattered around the site—shovels, ropes, a lantern. The last of those you grab as you enter, striking a matchstick that you take from your pocket.
In the yellow light the well’s interior looks reddish, like the glistening view down a throat or intestines. It’s just earth, you tell yourself. Never mind that Artemy Burakh had climbed from it covered in suspicious fluids and staring with the rigormortis shock of one pulled from—no, not from the dead nor some otherworld. Somewhere living, entirely of this world. Utterly so.
Peter peers in as well. The old desolate look lingers on his face, but a spark of interest seems to have stolen into it—or do you flatter yourself?
“What a coincidence,” he says suddenly. “Grace, she gave me an idea like this. A sort of pit… like the Polyhedron inverted.”
“Will you start it,” you ask, “when you go over the river with the Kains?”
“…I’m not sure.” Still staring down the well. His brow creases. “I’ve never done it without him. And I can’t leave her—she’s the only daughter I have left.”
“Ah.” You nod just once. “I understand.”
For once, it’s not a platitude. Even when all seems lost, there are things he feels duty-bound to remain by: a sentiment you know well.
“If this could serve as inspiration of some kind…” You trail off, spreading your hands in a gesture you hope conveys magnanimity. “You’re welcome to make use of it.”
All at once, Peter turns toward you. The flickering light makes his face wild, bright and shadowed in turns, like an abstract painting.
“You’re a much stranger man than I would have thought, Vlad Olgimsky.”
The kiss is unexpected, rather wet and must taste strongly of twyrine—if you had not turned your face so that it lands on your cheek. This is flattering, you think, or terrifying. Useless to play the gentleman but you’d rather not play a part in another regret. No, no more regrets, if you please.
Stepping back, you straighten your jacket awkwardly. Your voice sounds pinched. “I—I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Oh,” he says morosely. “I had thought you were offering to become my new patron.”
What an idea. Although if you were, you would start by recommending some warmer, more practical clothes.
Evidently, you’ve had a little too much to drink as well. You clear your throat. “Actually, I was hoping to buy the Broken Heart from you.”
Ridiculous, you think—talking business with a genius sot who has certainly misread your intentions. At best a hopeless deflection; at worst, obvious manipulation. But whatever anger or outrage you might have expected, it manifests neither on Peter’s face nor in his voice. Instead he looks suddenly very tired.
“Have it, then. It was always his, and now that it can’t be… it’s an empty shell.” Spiritlessly, he retrieves the bottle of twyrine from his pocket. Only a little liquid sloshes inside. “As for this, I don’t suppose you’ll continue to humor me.”
“Perhaps these things are best discussed when you’ve slept?”
He nods agreement, no more than a droop of the head. And so you exit, the well peering back as though in accusation until you close and lock the door.
It’s dark when you arrive at Peter’s loft in the Skinners. At the top of the stairs, you reach toward the door, hesitating, and glance back at him. Lingering behind, he looks oddly relieved.
You knock. In a moment, the door opens to a rectangle of yellow light—from which a pale-haired girl peers curiously out at you. She smiles at the sight of Peter. The tiredness of her eyes remind you of his, but the smile is genuine. This must be Grace.
“Hello,” you say, unsure. Knocking on strange doors in the Skinners is not something you make a habit of doing.
“My foster mother allowed me to wait here—I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.” Her voice has a certain soothing tonelessness, like fog. “And you must be Vlad the Younger. They’ve told me a great deal about you.”
Though it’s tempting, something tells you it’s best not to question whom exactly she means by they.
“A pleasure,” you reply, stepping back. “I’ll leave him in your care, then.” Best to let them have their reunion.
As you turn to make for the stairs, you hear Peter’s voice from behind you.
“Olgimsky?” Framed in the light of the doorway, his eyes waver greenly within his silhouette, like glass over water. “I won’t forget your offer.”
Weeks later, in the pre-dawn hours, a messenger scampers up to your doorstep. The child looks sleepy, but enunciates the message solemnly: Peter Stamatin has started a new painting titled A Man Drowned Stares Into the Throat of the Earth.
You send him off with a handful of coins, wondering if he would have appreciated a walnut instead. Then you walk a little ways down the steps.
By habit, your eyes turn southward toward the Factory. A broken thing, your father’s Enterprise and now your lot, to maintain or reshape as you would. Back to the life of business, which contains neither time for drinking nor gazing down wells.
But on the way, just maybe, you could stop and see how the painting’s gone.