The House, Chapter 1—The Raven

Chapter 1—The Raven

The conflict between the factions within the House did not start with Niuen Adalowe and Darien Gwyston—indeed, blood had been spilled over the House’s non-intervention policy since the earliest recorded history—but for a long time it seemed to come to an end in the power struggle between them—a struggle that would rewrite not only the future of the House, but the fate of the Spheres. 
—Half a History, edition 4243 Joint Archives – Martim, Tia

—

Reesa Burn sat at someone else’s desk in someone else’s office doing someone else’s job. And she hated every second of it. Her predecessor’s blood still darkening the carpet under her chair didn’t help. Not that Reesa would ever be so stupid. She had been working long enough for Sirena Mayers not to start any sentences with ‘No’ or ‘I can’t’ or ‘That is not possible’. When one of the Eschaton’s inner circle asked you to do something, you did it. 

Reesa picked a terminal from the box in front of her. Its sleek crystal screen and carbon frame weighed less than a breeze. Only yesterday, she would have given anything to get her hands on one of these. She, like everybody else in the lower ranks, had to put up with the crappy local equipment.

She ran the serial number against the inventory, then searched for its ID in the access logs—it had been connected when the data plague had spread through the system. She sighed and dropped it into the box for the incinerator. 

Mayers’s memo had blamed the current data blackout on an incompatibility caused by changes in the local feeds, requesting everybody to turn in their devices for an upgrade. That the memo was on paper and had been hand-delivered hadn’t helped to suppress the whispers, neither had Mayers’ sour expression. Now rumours about a plague targeting only the shiny toys the Eschaton’s personal staff use, were running wild.

Reesa picked another device from the box. She ran it against the inventory and network logs, then marked it for quarantine—its owner hadn’t been in the Protectorate the day the plague hit.

She cast a glance around the room. Almost a dozen of Mayers’ minions made themselves useful at the desks around her. Surely one of them could do this? She had worked hard to become one of Mayers’ top feed socialites—work Reesa actually liked. Work that got her out of depressing offices and into the society glamour the Sector Governing Board liked to present to its citizens—not that any actual citizens could ever be a part of it. Like all other aspects of life in the Protectorate, leisure and glamour were carefully managed resources, curated and staged for consumption on feeds and not available in day-to-day life in the lower levels.

A sudden chill in the office’s backdrop of efficient boredom drew Reesa’s attention to the door. Sirena Mayers had entered the room, carrying two folders under her arm and talking to Tuen Woburn. Both had been here when Darien Gwyston had shot the previous owner of her desk—the analyst who had told Gwyston that the girl he wanted to find did not exist. Now rumour had it that a high-ranking officer—maybe even one of the Eschaton—had left Gwyston’s office in a body bag.   

Reesa picked another terminal and tried to look extremely busy. She found the serial number and was checking it against the logs when Mayers approached her desk.

She stood. ‘Ma’am.’

‘Reesa.’ Mayers opened one folder, keeping the other one clasped under her arm. Another thing they had to thank the plague for—paper files somebody had dug out from who knows where.

Mayers scanned the contents of the folder. ‘Your records show that you still have contacts at the House? Tobias Amry? He is on secondment to the Auditor?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Reesa said, careful to keep any tension out of her voice. She had spotted her name on the folder and knew that whatever Mayers was looking at had holes the size of a lifetime of lies in it. 

‘I have an assignment at the House for you. There will be a briefing this afternoon.’ Mayers closed the folder. ‘We will need footage for your feed to cover… ’ The second folder slipped out from under Mayers’ arm, and Reesa bent down to pick it up. Mayers was faster, but not fast enough for Reesa to miss the name on the folder. ‘…to manage both. Reesa, are you with me?’  

Reesa, still crouching, stared at the bloodstain on the carpet where a moment ago the folder with the impossible name had lain. She blinked and stood straight. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ 

‘Terrin scheduled a shoot. She is going to send the scripts to you.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ 

‘Good.’ Mayers looked from the terminal Reesa was clutching in her hands to the box on her desk. ‘You are finished here. Give that box to someone else.’ 

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

But Sirena Mayers had already turned and was striding back to the door, leaving Reesa with a name on a folder.

A name she had tried so hard to forget. A name that could burn her lies and her life to cinders.

Niuen Adalowe.

—

Eass studied the two circles on the chalkboard in front of her, each drawn with precision, one on either end of the board. She looked at the box of chalk sticks lined up next to the felt eraser and picked one. She set the tip against the board in the centre of the first circle. The chalk screeched as she started to draw a line connecting the circles. The closer she came to the second circle, the heavier the chalk grew in her fingers, the more the surface resisted her. She pushed harder. The screech grew louder; the chalk vibrating under the pressure. Blood leaked from the white line, running down the board as if from a mortal wound. 

‘You can stop this.’ 

The chalk crumbled between her fingers. She turned. ‘I am not the one doing this.’ 

Max pointed to the blood-soaked remains of the chalk in her hand. ‘Then who is?’

‘Gwyston. He—‘

‘—killed me.’ Max’s voice was calm. 

She looked down at her blood-covered hands. ‘He killed you because of me.’ 

A klaxon blared in the distance. 

‘You can’t stay here,’ Max warned.

‘I can’t go back either.’ 

He shook his head, and there was sadness in his voice. ‘You need to wake up.’

…

Max’s voice faded as the klaxon outside blared a second time. Eass kept her eyes closed a moment longer and counted. The klaxon blared one more time, then fell silent. Three short blasts, thirty seconds apart—thirty minutes to the end of curfew. She opened her eyes. The cold from the stone floor had seeped through her parka. Every bone in her body hurt, her throat felt dry, and her stomach felt hollow with hunger.  

She straightened, wiping her face and adding to the dirt already sticking to her skin. Dim light fell through the broken panes of a window above her, and the brick wall against her back felt damp. She must have fallen asleep while watching the lane leading to Niuen’s safe house. She stood, brushing off the worst of the dirt clinging to her parka.

The window looked down on a cobbled lane. The weathered wooden door in the opposite wall stood slightly ajar, a faint impression marking where the round disc that had acted as a lock had been. Niuen hadn’t waited for Gwyston’s SES troupers to come crushing through the door, but Eass needed to find her and this was her only lead. She pushed the window open. The lane was deserted. The abandoned lower levels were off-limits for all but the city’s security forces, and they preferred drones to manned patrols. 

Eass climbed onto the windowsill. A pipe ran down the facade, offering enough hand and foot holds to get her down to the cobbles. Another quick glance up and down the lane, and she was at the door. The wooden frame creaked open at her touch, revealing a dust-covered hallway. 

Eass hovered on the threshold, looking back out at the lane. She was in the right place. She had been here with Max and later after he—

But the safe house had been polished to a shine, and now it looked as deserted as any other of the neighbouring buildings—cracks split the wood lining the walls, broken light bulbs dangled from dull fixtures, and spiderwebs covered every corner. She slunk down the corridor to the door at the end. Niuen’s study was empty except for a crumbling desk, a rusted chair, and a shelf ready to fall over at the slightest breathe. Last week, Eass had stood in this room, facing Niuen across her desk, desperate to blame her for Max’s death. But the room looked so different that it might have happened in another world. 

She drew a line through the dust on the desk, then saw that someone else had already left a mark—someone had sat in the rusted chair and put his boots up. The marks looked fresh, no older than a few days. She took a step back and stared at the floor. More than one set of footprints had left marks in the dust, some of them the unmistakable prints of heavy boots. 

She stepped to the window, keeping to one side so that she would be hard to spot from the outside. The marks had not been left by a random patrol—this was the work of Gwyston’s Eschaton Security.  

She should not have come, but where else could she go? Niuen had erased all of Eass’ records, and without an ID, work order, or anything else the city required to allow its citizens to move through the streets, any drone would report her as a stray to the nearest patrol. 

The klaxon rang again, two short blares announcing 15 minutes to the end of curfew. She needed to get to the closest tunnel before the service levels above her filled with crews on their way to their morning shifts. If she found one of Max’s stashes—

She looked at the boot prints in the dust. Neither she nor anyone around her would be safe until Gwyston was gone, but anywhere must be safer than here.

The door to the lane almost collapsed as she leaned on it to peek out. The sounds of the waking city drifted down into the empty lane—the distant hum of dirigibles mixing with the busy hiss of delivery drones and the buzzing of news feeds. The closest access hatch to the tunnel sat in front of a gate, blocking a service staircase to the higher levels at the end of the lane. 

She stepped out onto the cobbles, keeping close to the wall and out of sight of the rooflines on either side. She had almost reached the metal hatch when she spotted the red seal taped across it. It would alert every guard drone in the area if she so much as scratched it. The SES had not only found the safe house; they had also made sure that no one could enter the tunnels unnoticed. And as if this was not bad enough, the poster glued to the gate’s metal bars made it worse.

Underneath a slogan proclaiming ‘Security through Surveillance’ sat a drawing of a girl with dark, wiry hair, large black eyes, and a surly expression. The large block letters below asked: ‘Have you seen this person?’

Eass ripped the poster off the gate. This made no sense. Why would Gwyston advertise that someone had slipped through his precious surveillance web? And why print it on paper if with one click the notice could pop up in every feed across the city?

Footfall on the stairs a few levels above reminded her that anyone looking down might spot her. She ducked into the shadows under the stairs and looked up to the crisscrossing walkways.

A clicking sound drew her attention to the opposite wall. Someone had sketched a black bird onto the bricks. Charcoal lines skilfully traced velvet feathers; a large beak shone like polished glass, and the beaded eye reflected an impossibly blue sky. 

The eye blinked. 

Eass took a step back, her boot scraping over something on the cobbles. She had all but convinced herself that she had imagined the blinking eye when the bird leaned forward to sharpen its beak on the pipe it was perching on. Its blue gaze never left Eass as it straightened, stretched its wings, and hopped onto the shadow the gate cast on the wall. 

A quiet but insistent bleep carried down the lane behind her. She turned; her boot had nicked the security seal on the hatch. It wouldn’t take the surveillance drones more than a minute to follow up on the alert. The bird hopped over the iron gate and onto the stairs. It climbed up, pausing after each hop to look back at Eass as if daring her to follow. 

She muttered a curse, stuffed the poster into her pocket and experimentally shook the bars. The gate’s lock held, but the wrought iron offered enough hand and footholds to climb over. She set her foot on a crossbar and pushed herself up, then swung her legs over the top and lowered herself onto the rusty stairs on the other side.

When the Conglomerate had occupied the city, they had built their looming towers on metal stilts, cutting through the historic quartiers like steel spiders squatting over a discarded past. For a few years, people had hung on to their homes, but their children soon fled the perpetual twilight under the shadow of the upper city. The incoming Sector government feared that the emptying warren of narrow alleys might turn into a refuge for dissidents. It relocated the few remaining residents, using force when needed, and stripped the buildings of services. The lack of water and electricity, and the ever-present surveillance patrols, had driven the rest to seek shelter elsewhere, leaving the lower levels to fall into darkness and disrepair.

Eass followed the bird up the stairs to the service level underneath the city’s underbelly and crouched to peek over the edge of the landing. A newsline on the opposite wall scrolled through a Sector Citizen Education notice, reminding passers-by to report any disruptive or recusant behaviour, followed by a prompt not to loiter and to keep IDs and work order codes visible at all times. Somewhere overhead, mechanical legs scuttled over steel grates. She ducked down. The walkway was still deserted except for maintenance bots and drones on early delivery runs.

After Eass had graduated from the institute, Max had found her a job as a courier. There were many official and unofficial businesses in the upper city that preferred certain wares or messages to be transported by a human rather than delivery autons that required barcodes matching official records. Word had gotten around that she would run jobs with no questions asked for customers willing to meet her price. She had learned how to move through the city like a ghost, and she had never been caught. 

Or not until Max had asked her to run a pickup for Niuen eight days ago. 

A shadow passed along the wall, and the bird’s silhouette hopped onto a handrail a few paces ahead of her. It pecked the metal, then hopped further along the rail, keeping to the shadow of the buildings looming above them. Eass shook her head, but she had no more promising ideas than following a shadow to skies knows where.

To her right, an auton delivery cart patiently waited by a door for its parcels to be picked up and carried inside. Shrugging out of her parka, she turned it inside out to hide the orange colour, then stuffed the red scarf into a sleeve before tying it around her waist, hoping her grey tunic and trousers would help her blend in. She found a hair band in a pocket and pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail. With a last glance to left and right, she left the cover of the stairs and stepped out onto the walkway. 

The bird waited at an intersection a dozen paces ahead, stretching its wings impatiently. Eass ignored it and grabbed a smaller parcel from the cart. She tapped the ‘damaged in transport’ button on the decline label, spinning a story in her mind of a supervisor sending her to complain about the damage—it would not buy her more than a few seconds of confusion from any patrol, but even a few seconds would give her a head start, and she was a fast runner.

They climbed up into the city, avoiding the busy elevators in favour of the less used maintenance stairs and fire escapes. The bird flickered along walls, skipping the few brighter patches where the first light of the day found its way into the lower levels, only to reappear somewhere ahead of her.

They had made it onto a catwalk on level five when their luck ran out—an auton cleaning the floor gratings rolled around a corner, heading directly towards Eass along the narrow walkway. There was nowhere to go, other than to climb over the handrail and jump, hoping to land on one of the lower walks—something Eass was not desperate enough to consider. To her utter surprise, the auton swerved around her legs as if she was an unexpected but inanimate obstacle. Eass stared after it in disbelief as it continued down the walkway without so much as a glance at her.

Every auton spied on the human population, and this one couldn’t have missed Eass’ missing ID. So why had it not raised an alarm? She looked at the bird, but it only hopped impatiently from one rail to the next.

Other autons crossed their path, all of them ignoring her as if she had become invisible to the city’s automated workforce. When they reached the main pedestrian level, the raven hopped onto a gate leading into a public roof garden. 

‘What’s in there?’ She asked.

The bird shook its feathers and faded into the growing light, leaving Eass alone in front of a locked gate too tall to climb. 

The lock on the gate clicked open. 

Eass tried very hard not to kick the gate in frustration and instead stepped through and drew it shut behind her. The lock clicked back into place. The park was empty except for half a dozen runners out on a morning run before they headed to the city’s offices. A few trees cast dappled shadows over the benches along the main track around a central lawn. She circled the park twice before she sat on one of the benches. Nothing happened. Nobody approached her or came even close. She stood, circled the park two more times, then chose another bench next to a drinking fountain in the shade of a tall tree.

She fidgeted with her sleeves. This was ridiculous—she could not be more conspicuous if she tried. What had she expected would happen? She had worn a hole into the already strained fabric when a tall woman in tight-fitting black running gear entered the park on the opposite side and headed toward the running track to join the other runners. The woman passed her bench twice, then stopped at the fountain, before sitting down next to Eass, leaving an arm-width space between them. 

Keeping her eyes on the track, Niuen Adalowe said, ‘You shouldn’t have come back.’

And Eass didn’t disagree with her.

—

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