Sam and the Dead

Chattel 3

On a quiet road in the outer city, surrounded by manors poor men bought to look rich, stood a red-brick house three stories tall. Its walls were discoloured and chipped, its windows clean but single-paned, useless at keeping out the cold. The only ostentatious display of wealth was the plaque hanging above its door: a gold-on-black sunrise, cast in solid bronze.

T'Lia stared at it. Every time she was called to this damnable place, she made sure to take in the sights, and remind herself that she, one day, could buy a property just like it: her very own workshop on the Floor of Seventeen. It would need to be humble-looking, yes, but also greasy-rich. Rich enough to leave a hunk of bronze hanging in the open.

By the curb, Three the three-armed ambler was unloading her fourth suitcase. Two years ago – only two – one satchel was enough to carry everything she needed for the abomination's maintenance; now she had to pack the lab every hundred days.

Maintenance contracts were the dregs. Touching up the decaying ones has never been lucrative, especially now that fresh cadaver was so readily available because of the...what did they call it?

The harvests.

Supposedly, the guilds threw big parties at these harvests. T'Lia wouldn't know. Unlicensed and blacklisted, she would never be invited, and to go uninvited to a Finley thing was to die.

~

Sam boiled up the kettle. A raid of the kitchen cupboard yielded only AirShip Tea – an apt name for tea that came in on airships. A jar of the stuff was worth as much as twenty loaves of bread; too valuable for a mouth like T'Lia's, and too flimsy to pinch with broken fingers.

Sam gave her water.

'Really,' T'Lia grumbled.

'Sorry.'

'If you're sorry then give me a kiss.'

'No.'

Lucia eased the Maestro onto the couch. James barely stirred when Sam slipped three endorph pills into his cup; it was late, they had worked all day, but T'Lia's appointments, as a rule, were always kept.

Pleasantries were exchanged. Congratulations were said regarding the successful harvest of Floor of Nine. Complaints were made and heard regarding the invitee list for participating alchemists and reasonable excuses were given and laughed away. Then they talked.

'My rates have doubled.' T'Lia said. 'You haven't raised me in three years and prices are always going up. No more of that "your compensation reflects your performance" bullshit. No one can do what I do, so why don't you reflect that –' She clicked her fingers and Three slipped the amended contract on the table, one signature already glistening on the line. '– in payment.'

'That third arm is working perfectly.' James said, looking at Three and decidedly not at the contract. 'One can't simply graft an extra limb onto a shoulder and expect it to work, there has to be new nervous connections –'

'Don't lecture me, James Cowen. Sign.'

'– not to mention extraordinary modifications to the Green. Humans can't use three arms, obviously, and it can't exactly be...taught. That ambler's Green had to be augmented beyond its natural recourse – that is to say, to deviate from the human template –'

'"The human template", Lords Below,' T'Lia laughed. 'Kissing your own ass never sound so fancy as you do it.'

James smiled. 'Now, Three's special. You won't find another like it, and I recall raising it for free as a gesture of appreciation for our ongoing partnership.'

'Bullshit. Only thing you ever do is shove souls inside dead people and there's a thousand necros out there doing the exact same thing. I could've done it, if you put me in one of your auditions!'

James laughed until he was out of breath, which was to say he didn't laugh long at all. 'First, no such thing as a soul. Second, no such thing as an audition. Third, go to Finley, Pierre, Ingel, Enri, Meredith, any of them, old Finley even, and ask them to raise a cadaver with a functional third arm. I'd like to see them try!'

And off they went, spit flying, an intimate duel between familiar duelists. Sam removed herself from the lounge and shut out the noise behind her. The debate might drag on, but the Pile will freeze over before James signed anything that made him pay more money.

Sam's desk was in the foyer, a neat rectangle of stainless steel with three drawers per side and a filing cabinet by the left elbow. The fountain pen was functional, the typewriter too, and for the sake of the rare walk-in client, the visitor's book was an impressive-looking leather-bound tome with bronze trims and copper-threaded leaves.

Sam sank into her chair. The cushions welcomed her with a sigh. There was nothing left to do except studies, charts, reports, quarterly earnings projections, the dirty floor, the dirtier lab, and dinner...but those can wait until tomorrow, or the day after that, whichever came later. Her right eye throbbed, the beginning of a migraine.

Three letters sat under the mail slot.

'Luciaaaaa,' Sam whined, sinking into her chair. Not loud enough for Lucia to hear, of course. That would be rude.

Rude to Lucia. What a funny idea. She chuckled and rubbed her eyes. Her hand was itchy. Another month and the cast will come off, and she will run out of excuses for putting off the chores.

The staring contest lasted five minutes. When it became clear that the letters will not move themselves, Sam slunk onto the floor. Fine, getting up then.

The first was addressed to Samantha T., House of Dawn. Inside was a single handwritten slip, with three names undersigned. She read it and put it aside.

The second was for Ma. James C., House of Dawn. For His Eyes Only. Inside was a velvety invitation from one Jackson B. Finley IV, to attend the 250th annual stakeholder plenum at the House of the Golden Fleece on the Floor of Twenty. Enclosed was a five-day itinerary full of banquets and competitions and awards and, naturally, meetings. Accompanying the letter was a metal pin featuring none other than a grinning cartoon skeleton holding up a clipboard.

The third letter contained an invoice from Charlie's foundry amounting to thirty thousand seeds or equivalent, which seemed a ridiculous amount of seeds to pay for what the invoice described as 'One Large Box'. James will undoubtedly pay Charlie in Finleybucks again, but only after all options of delay and denial have been exhausted.

Sam slumped back into her chair, leaving the letters in a messy pile. 'What a day,' she declared to the room. It sympathized with silence.

~

The two mortal enemies emerged from the lounge shaking hands and smiling. James slipped the amended contract onto Sam's desk. It was so densely riddled with red ink that no one would be able to tell what changes stuck and what didn't – which was the whole idea.

'Stamp and file.'

'Yes Maestro.'

'We'll be in the lab. Don't wait up.'

Sam looked at T'Lia, then shrugged. 'We received some mail.'

'Urgent?'

'An invitation from Finley.'

'Decidedly not.'

'An invoice for a...a large box, it says on here.'

'Ah, yes. Good, delay payment as indefinitely as possible. Charlie won't mind.'

'And,' Sam tapped the first letter. 'My father is dead.'

James gawked at her, lips slightly parted, one hand frozen on T'Lia's back. 'Is that urgent?' he asked blankly.