Clockwork Requiem

Prologue - Death's Pale Horse

And stood thy master with hooked scythe,

Clad black against thy pallid side,

Turned cowl and fixed me still in sight,

Yet seemed thee 'loof and blithe.

Her father once said: "If ever you're fixin' to shoot someone, for fuck's sake, wash your hands after." As a child who'd never seen a gun, let alone could fathom how to use one, she hadn't understood at the time. Not until she shot her first man did she comprehend what he meant. Gun powder. More specifically, the scent of the residue.

It was by sheer bad luck that day that, as she made her getaway, Octavia plunged into a busy inner-city laneway and straight into a Badge. This was after their automaton counterparts were decommissioned due to the mech sickness – before it'd been coined The Red – and the human officers were eager to prove they were still useful.

Seeing the delicate flower – the guise of a docile young Caelum lady – the officer had excused himself and offered to escort her home. Several modest and grating refusals later and he let it be. He'd taken her gloveless hand in a dainty farewell, and she'd offered her gentlest smile. Until his eyes narrowed. Until the bastard tipped his nose to her knuckles. Then she wasn't smiling. And he wasn't so gentlemanly.

She'd been sixteen at the time. Still underage – barely. And she figured she could lie her way out. Unfortunately, the man she'd shot survived to testify. Oddly enough, it had been her impersonating a lady of breeding that somehow affronted his rich family most, and they'd asked for the severest punishment under adolescent law. She was three months shy of being tried as an adult, so in lieu of the death sentence they put her in The Gallows. Five years felt a lifetime.

This night she carried another pistol. Heavier. More chambers. Amazing how quickly industry flourished when the product was death. She wouldn't miss the important parts this time. No witnesses.

Below her, through the leaded glass skylight of The Crow and Raven, Octavia watched the last drunken patrons stagger toward the exit. As they spilled into the grimy streets, so too did their factory shanties and folk songs about clockwork princes. It was past midnight and the begrudging matrons along the lane shouted through their shutters for the fools to move on.

The barkeep stacked the last of the glasses on shelves beneath the bar and set about dimming the lamps to conserve gas. He took a cloth to the tables and bid the fiddler a good night. Indeed, it seemed the lad had had a profitable evening. His case was heavy with coin, and a streetwalker with rumpled skirts and a red ribbon tied around her neck waved at him from the door. They disappeared to enjoy each other's company, leaving only the barkeep.

Even from a distance he looked the size of a bear. With a great black beard and a more-on-top haircut, she could imagine him barrelling through the ranks of rival gangs. Cost effective, Octavia mused. A barkeep and thug in one. But, as she'd learned, that was the nature of every member of the King's Bastards. Gangster first, employee second.

A strong wind swept in from the west, bringing with it smoke from the foundries further along the river. She covered her mouth with the kerchief about her neck to keep from choking on the acrid plumes. Above, she heard the gale disrupting turbines and glanced up at the steaming underside of Caelum.

The city above the city.

Octavia was convinced, any time she heard the turbines falter, that the whole damned thing would crash down upon the lowly hovels below. If not for the great, thundering engines and the various mechanisms in place to keep the city in perpetual suspension, she thought maybe it might. She dreaded the day that eternal drone went silent.