Don’t get me wrong, even if I wasn’t romantically involved with one of them, I’d still like the Freemakers.
They keep things interesting. Unbound by any nation, law, or desire beyond becoming great at whatever it is they decide to do, they have schemes that shape the Scar as surely as the Revolution or the Imperium does. There are a thousand warlords, murderers, and Vagrants who owe their careers to a Freemaker.
Myself included.
You’ve probably heard a story or two about them, yourself. And if you’ve heard of the Freemakers, you’ve heard of their defiant, mysterious city.
Ocytus.
City of Wonders. The Halls of Intellect. A world beneath worlds made of pipes and machines and whirring gears and sliding halls. A place where the brightest, most ambitious, and cleverest meet to debate, to invent, to create beneath spellwritten sigils whose glows never dim. A city full of machines that walk and talk as people, of cannons that level mountainsides, of potions that can make you older, younger, someone else entirely.
Eventually, the stories get so fantastic no one can even believe them anymore. Ocytus and its wonders fade from minds as stress and worries take their usual spots, like all stories. But the fantasy…
“Now listen here, you miserable little twat.”
But the reality is way, way more fun.
“I got no problem with you coming out here, pretending you know what you’re talking about,” the woman known as A Dire Hag Laughs at Cruel Jokes said as she walked slow, stiff circles around the arena. She paused, glaring at her foe across the floor. “And if you were just talking about shitting your pants, I’d trust your expertise. But you’re talking armored mobile explosive delivery here, and that”—she rapped her knuckles on the tank’s iron hide—“is where the boys call me Mommy.”
The tank, a compact little thing humming away on earth-chewing treads and spewing severium smoke from its exhaust released a happy little roar of its engine, spinning its turret around like just the cutest little weapon of mass destruction. In response, the crowd—some forty-odd people looking the kind of wealthy that’s so wealthy it just looks insane but you can’t say anything because they’re wealthy—roared their approval, waving coins in their hands and barking wagers.
A Dire Hag Laughs at Cruel Jokes’ opponent, tall and slim and dark-skinned with perfectly coiffed hair to match his perfectly polished spectacles and perfectly fastidious suit, seemed unimpressed.
“I gaze upon your trivial offering and see nothing but a devotion to efficiency,” the man, Black Wine for a Funeral, replied, sneering down his nose at the tank. “Practical. Sensible. Utterly devoid of heart or flair. Destined for the same ignoble scrap heap of perfectly reasonable and unimpressive ideas, like the doorstop and the paperweight. Whereas I…” He gestured to the giant man beside him, bowing deeply. “I like to think aesthetically.”
The giant man made of iron—a body of rattling weapons and severium fumes cobbled together in the sleek design of a suit of armor—rumbled. To look at it, I’d have called it a Paladin, one of the Revolution’s weapons, but this one was… gorgeous. Carved into a many-limbed man of perfect musculature and features, its arms moved with mechanical precision, each one ending in a different but equally horrific killing implement.
“I’ll see your fucking aesthetic if there’s anything left of it, you sniveling elitist,” the older woman snarled, shaking a fist at her foe.
“You’ll see me make a throne out of the ruin of your rubble, you backward hick!” the other man shouted back.
“LIGHT IT UP, LADS!”
I couldn’t be sure who yelled that: her, him, or the crowd. Actually, it might have been me who did it. The mood swept through the crowd as those assembled around the arenas howled in anticipation for the coming slaughter, waving sacks of jingling money as they placed bets.
The excitement exploded, along with part of the arena, as the mechanical man and tank waded into each other. The tank opened up with a salvo of turrets, blowing two of its foe’s limbs off. The mechanical man retaliated by digging hook-like appendages into the tank’s shell and hammering on it with a mighty mace of a hand.
“Ha. See?” I nudged the person beside me. “How the fuck is that thing going to fight a tank?”
The Freemaker—I hadn’t caught his name, something about Two Turgid Owls or something—cringed at my nudge, wiping his suit clean. “Boast while you can, knave,” he said. “Black Wine for a Funeral’s creations are works of art, peerless in design that never fails to inspire.”
“We didn’t bet on whether it would inspire, motherfucker, we bet whether it would beat a tank.” I snorted. “You ever seen a still life painting beat a gun?”
“The demonstration is not over yet,” the Freemaker said, pointedly wincing as another pair of arms were blown off. “We agreed.”
“You agreed. I agreed to go get shit-faced with someone with my winnings that you owe me, you flaccid worm.”
“Apologies. Which Freemaker did you say you were again?”
I met his eyes, smiled. “They call me… A Dour Tune to Dance To.”
The Freemaker was a wealthy man. Fine clothes, snobby attitude, dripping with arrogance. I didn’t start to feel the urge to hit him until he sneered at my fake Freemaker name, though.
I had put thought into that.
My arm tensed, my eyes locked on his ears, already picking out the spot I’d slap him to knock the stupid out of him. So it was probably a good thing someone grabbed my arm.
“Would it inconvenience you too much,” Liette hissed as she pulled me away from the crowd and my potential assault, “to act slightly more subtle here?”
I blinked. I looked over her head.
The halls of Ocytus sprawled out, hewn from the earth with impossible precision and bedecked with glistening halls of brass and chrome. Mechanical servants whirred alongside golems—paper, wood, metal, everything—as they hauled ever-increasing barrels of liquor to laughing intellectuals. Impromptu bets over whose acids could burn faster or whose explosions could ring out louder filled every avenue with noise and ensuing cheers. Alchemic lights flashed alongside spellwritten sigils, illusionary dancers of impossible beauty beckoned people into beautiful parlors, the smoke of a thousand pipes of a thousand drugs filled the air in a near-constant cloud.
“Sure,” I said, “I guess I can tone it down. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone.”
“Quaint. You are quaint, Sal,” she said in that I-want-to-call-you-something-worse tone of voice. “And while I am certain that will affect some charm here, I would be considered derelict in all definitions of the word duty were I not to point out that the clientele here are heavily concerned with money, explosions, and pursuing petty pleasures.” She drew in a breath, exhaled. “Do you understand?”
I opened my mouth.
“Do you understand in a way that is not about to result in you saying ‘but I like those things’?”
“Then no, I don’t.” I scratched my head. “If they’re as bad as that, what makes you think they’ll intervene in this mess?”
She hesitated before answering. I saw the doubt weigh down her eyes, draw them away from mine. It had been one thing to dream of the Freemakers’ aid outside of Ocytus. This close to their decadence, their spending, their sheer power…
Well.
Who the hell would give that up if no one could make them?
“Well.” I put a finger under her chin, tilted her eyes back toward me. “If anyone’s smart enough to pull it off, you are.”
“We are surrounded by genius intellects, each one capable of a multitude of feats of brilliance unfathomable to minds that have yet to be born,” she responded calmly.
“Yeah, but you smell nicer.”
I leaned down, found her lips, her scent, her warmth. I held her there, as long as I dared to, before she gently pushed me away and adjusted her spectacles.
“Your attempts to varnish the severity of the situation with overtures of affection are obvious.” She cleared her throat. Her face flashed a gratifying shade of crimson for a single instant. “But… appreciated. Thank you. I trust you can keep yourself entertained.”
An explosion rang out behind me. I whirled around to see the arena, bathed in a cloud of smoke as the mechanical man stood triumphant over the smoldering tank, their two creators raking in the scorn and accolades alike while money changed hands.
“Well, fuck, I was going to,” I sighed, “but yeah, I can—”
I turned back. She was gone.
And I leaned against the cold metal wall and let out a breath I’d been holding for six months. And I hated myself for it.
Just like I hated myself for kissing her like that. Part of me thought she’d have caught on by now, realized I was full of birdshit. Part of me hated her for not doing that, for trusting me, for making me admit to myself.
I hadn’t come here to stop any war.
A tap on my shoulder. I looked around. Two Cats Shit in a Drawer or whatever I had named the foppish Freemaker I’d made a bet with stood there, palm outstretched.
“Madame… A Dour Tune, was it?” he asked smugly. “I believe you owe me something?”
“A Dour Tune to Dance To, you ass.” I took his palm, held it steady. “And yeah, she does owe you something.”
I snorted, pressed one nostril shut and… well, back in the service we used to call it “nature’s crossbow.” I spat the glob of glistening phlegm into his palm, took a moment to savor his horror, patted him on the cheek.
“I’m not her, though.”
I stalked off before he could raise protest. No one came after me. I suppose the indignity of being paid in personal fluids was more overwhelming than the need to collect a debt. And in a few moments, it didn’t matter. I disappeared into the veils of severium-tinged steam, beneath halos of spellwritten light.
The wager, anyway, had only been something to keep me from getting bored while I waded into that crowd for a different reason. A few greasy compliments and just enough feigned flattery and the crowd of Ocytus had managed to tell me exactly what I wanted to know.
Three streets up. I recounted their instructions in my head, counting the slick metal avenues and the pale lights dancing off their streets. Take a right. Left at the second alley. And then it’s at the far back.
“Dreadful little shop, if I’m honest,” one of the crowd, a lady with a hat that had commanded authority, had directed me. “Antique technology might be quaint in the cities, but this is Ocytus, darling. If you’re there to collect a debt, you’ll get it paid in junk.”
Fortunately for me, I wasn’t there to collect a debt.
“We’re closed,” someone—a bored-looking young woman with unwashed hair to complement her unwashed clothes—called from behind a counter crowded with haphazard pieces of outdated salvage. She didn’t bother looking up from the novel she was thumbing through. “We open again next week. Maybe. Or not. Whatever you— HEY!”
I didn’t blame her for being upset. I had, after all, just shoved a bunch of crap off the counter. When she shot to her feet to grab it, I caught her by the wrist, hauled her forward.
“I’m here to see him,” I growled.
“Who?” she replied. “Lady, I’m not like one of these brains. I’m just trying to—”
“I buried him under a dead tree,” I interrupted. “Its last leaf fell in autumn, two years ago.”
The young lady didn’t react. But she didn’t struggle.
“Did you get another?” she asked.
“Never again. There will never be another.”
See?
That’s how you do a fucking secret password.
“All right, fine.” The young lady shoved me off of her. “Don’t see why you needed to mess up my counter to tell me that. I work hard trying to make this place look like shit. Go lock the door.”
I grunted, returning to the shop entrance. The bolt clicked with a heavy snap. A well-maintained lock in a dirty, run-down slab of wood. I doubt anyone had noticed.
I followed her to the back of the shop, where she was moving multiple stacks of old paperwork and musty wares aside. After a small eternity of shuffling, a tiny door in the wall was unearthed.
“It’s tinier than I thought it would be.”
“Yeah.” She collected an ancient-looking lamp that was suspiciously full of oil, sparking it to life. “It’s a real pain. I have to bend down to get in there.”
I grimaced, noting that she was several inches shorter than me. “What’s the point of that?”
She kicked the door; it opened stiffly. “Well, would you want to go in here? Come the fuck on. I want to go home.”
We crawled through, emerging into a dank cellar beyond. Between even more piles of debris, the floor opened up into a narrow staircase spiraling downward. I followed the dim glow of her lantern as it led me to the bottom of the earth.
“Hang on,” she grunted, setting the lantern aside. “This part’s always such a fucking pain.”
She walked to the edge of the chamber, nothing more than a stone square at the bottom of a hole, and grabbed what looked like a brick. With a grunt, she dug her heels in and started to pull on it.
“Come on,” she said, wincing. “Come on, you stupid—”
She was interrupted with the groan of metal relenting. With heaving grunts, she began to walk backward, dragging the brick with her. It gave way, along with the rest of the wall, sliding out to reveal a thick slab of metal.
And on it…
The man I’d come to Ocytus to see.
A sarcophagus greeted me, lying in the hidden compartment, roughly two men wide and just as tall. The metalwork was horrific to look upon: ribbons and seams of metals of purple and red and shades I’d never even seen, all arranged in an offensively structured array of sigils. It hurt my eyes to look upon.
I wanted to turn away. But someone else didn’t.
Heat at my hip. My hand was drawn to his hilt. Steam slipped out between my fingers as I drew him from his sheath. His metal rippled. His voice slithered into my ear.
“I sense him now. I could not before.”
“I imagine he has good reason to hide,” I said. I glanced down at the Cacophony. “You ready for this?”
And I felt him smile.
“Oh yes. It’s been too long.”