Author's Preface
The unexpected rash of sunlight had most of Eccless in a good mood. We weren’t quite so elated as to throw parades in the streets for having more than a week’s sunlight in a row, but we were pretty close to it. It wasn’t even a boiling heat either, it was the height of summer but it felt like spring, the skies were cool and clear.
I’d seen some cafes set up outdoor seating like you got in Ruge or Kitzeh, not that I’d seen the latter outside paintings. The street vendors had started experimenting with selling tinted glasses rather than umbrellas, something about keeping the sun out of your eyes.
And most importantly, to me at least, the quarterly Eccless University tech show was being held outside, in the University courtyard rather than indoors in one hall or another.
Raspe hadn’t been the only academic who had work to show off. He’d managed to wrangle himself a special event, or rather, I had, trading on his name and prestige and an awful lot of promises to get him his own little demonstration, but most researchers weren’t like that. The ones without Raspe’s level of pull (or an assistant as capable as his) had to wait for the quarterly tech show. They’d gather in droves to show off their work in a cramped little hall, setting up stalls as passers-by and rich investors and parliamentarians trying to look erudite came out and gawked at them, all pretending like they had a clue what they were looking at.
It all rather reminded me of street food vendors, to be honest. They had everything displayed prominently, little advertisements and explanations, trying to draw the eye so they could sell what they had to sell. None of them were quite so talented at advertising as the actual vendors though, it was never as creative or flashy as what you’d see on a busy highstreet.
Speaking of which, I bit down on some meat-on-a-stick I’d gotten from a rather lovely Birdfolk who’d set up a stall just outside the courtyard. A few university staff members were glaring at her from a few feet away. I guess they didn’t want her selling out here, but couldn’t do anything since she was technically outside the grounds.
She was a few meters away from the great big stone arch that marked the entrance to the University. At the top of the arch was engraved simply “ECCLESS UNIVERSITY”, alongside their school crest, depicting a square map of the world inside the face of a clock. ‘Jagataḥ Sarvaḥ Kālaḥ’. “All The Time In The World” in Irenic, apparently, written by people who’d never met a native speaker.
I passed under it whilst taking another bite. The juices smeared onto my shirt collar a little, and I rubbed at the mark, frowning. As much fun as wandering around gawking was going to be, I was here for a reason.
The Society of the Infinite Staircase had a stall, probably several, out here. They’d set out at least a couple every quarter, like clockwork. I’d never really paid them any mind, but now I really needed to talk to them.
I also wanted to spend some time playing tourist, so I didn’t exactly head straight to them, though. I wandered a bit, enjoyed myself. Had some food. I deserved the downtime after, well, you know, everything.
The flashier stalls always got the most attention, completely irrespective of how high-quality the work was. There were a few mainstays that always seemed to be the stars of the show. I pushed through the press of bodies as I made my way about, trying to see if I could spot any of them.
The first one I saw was the traditional annual attempt to plagiarise Gnoll tech. An iron spike stood up from the ground arcing electricity everywhere. It wasn’t unlike the barrel of the gun that Gnoll had used to try to shoot me a few days ago. This one was being sold as a home defense tool, apparently, though I figured it looked a bit lethal for just deterring burglars. A few noblewomen in ruffled satin dresses were making oohing and ahhing sounds at the crackling noises, though. They seemed impressed, at least.
It had all the usual methods of trying to pretend this was Lysian work. They’d skimped on the glass that was a Gnollish trademark and painted it red, white and black, Priest’s Union colors. But the bulbed iron spikes were a giveaway, I’d seen too many of them up close to not know where the fundamental technology here had come from.
Before my train of thought could go anywhere too depressing, I moved on, mostly because I’d spotted this quarter’s new horse. There was always a new horse, some attempt to invent a more efficient way of getting from place to place. Last time I distinctly recalled one made of clockwork, but this year’s was a bit more grotesque. Somebody had been taking inspiration from Folkvangr, it seemed. The horse was dead and rotting, with little metal spikes stuck into the back of its neck, sending shocks down its nerves to move it. Whatever scientist had designed it was acting like a showman, wearing a blindingly white morning suit and inviting passers by and children to ride it to prove it was safe.
Somebody with a mop was clearing up where one such child had thrown up at the sight. This guy should’ve stuck to clockwork, it’s less… viscerally upsetting.
It wasn’t just actual physical inventions on display, that was simply what got most attention. Most people were here with papers, displays, drawings and diagrams plastered across their stalls like advertisements explaining in great technical detail their innovations in studying the reproductive habits of electric eels or the exact convolutions of the ratio of input sacrifices to output miracles in south-Lysian water deities at different times of day, or something.
I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of it, but at the very least I struck up a conversation with some poor guy who was convinced he was going to fix the baking industry with some new flour. He had an oven set up, belching enough heat that people were avoiding him in the already sunny weather, with a glass front to demonstrate how his new flour rose faster than the regular kind.
He had little chocolate-filled brioche rolls he’d made with his technique. They uh, they tasted of sawdust. I tried not to let it show on my face.
Eventually, I had to make my way to the Staircase’s stall. It was right near the center of the courtyard, near a fountain, and hard to avoid, especially as the hours wore on and I started to get paranoid they might leave early. I tried to approach obliquely, to not look like I was staring too hard.
“I swear, they’re giving us all a bad name, man. Cover up the neck! Cover the n- he can’t hear me, can he?”
Doctor Erwin Shreck was staring at the abomination of a horse from across the yard, though people were milling around and chatting loudly enough there was no way the guy giving that demo could possibly have made out one shout amongst the rest.
He had the same messy hair and slumped demeanour as before, though this time his clothes didn’t have any, ah, burnmarks. He seemed a bit more grounded too, and less, well, high.
“Don’t worry about it, he’s about to get tossed out. Pansies.”
Somebody was standing next to him. That somebody had dark hair and a thick beard contrasting against a white suit, gilded with golden threads, just barely under the line of being gaudy in its ostentation. He had a cane and a bit of a military bearing to him. I wasn’t sure how I could tell, it was something in how he held his back, the grip on the cane. Or maybe it was the burn marks on his hands. Sure, if he was one of the Staircase’s researchers he was in one of a handful of professions that had excuses for having electrical burns like that, but researchers only got those burns if they were careless.
He didn’t look careless.
“Excuse me, Doctor Shreck? You might remember me, we met a few weeks ago. Alexandria De La Ruge?”
I approached with my best smile, and he returned it. He extended a hand and I shook it thoroughly.
“Oh! Wow, yeah! I almost forgot about you. Uh, sorry I never quite got in contact, I forgot, a bit. Uh- wait, it’s fine though. You wanted to talk to Lucas, right? That’s real, real convenient. He’s, uh-”
“Doctor Lucas Sellers. You were Raspe’s assistant, right? You impersonated one of my people to get information out of Schreck here.”
I almost reeled at that. He had a low, growling voice. I don’t think he was even trying to intimidate, it was just his natural register, and that was one hell of an opening.
Schreck rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly “I wouldn’t put it like that… Did I put it like that?”
“Yes.” Lucas replied, simple and firm. He just kept staring into me, expecting a reply.
“I- suppose I did? I was trying to figure out what happened. It, uh, was in the papers.” Well, a variant of what happened was, one that avoided having to admit to the lies they’d already told. “Our Lady of the Infinite Regress killed him.”
They’d gone with the version of the story where it was a suicide. I still didn’t know how to feel about that. I didn’t know if Irons or Sarah had made that call, or both together.
“Rude of you, but he didn’t exactly spill secrets. And you solved a friend of mine’s murder, call us even.”
He smiled, but was still talking in that horrible throaty growl of a voice. It really was just his natural voice, huh? His face looked friendly enough, somebody I could go for a pint with, but he perpetually sounded like he was three seconds away from cutting my throat with a rusted straight-razor.
“Even, right.” I tugged at my collar awkwardly, before saying “I had, uh, I had some follow-up questions actually, for Doctor Schreck, if you don’t mind.”
“Can I ask what they’re about?”
Schreck had actually already taken a step forward to go with me to answer them, but Lucas said that with such force he stopped in his tracks.
I opened my mouth to reply, before realising it was probably a bad idea to ask why he’d attempted to frame the Liberationists of a crime they were already guilty of abetting the actual comitter of.
“The- well, actually, you worked with Raspe on the Godbox too, right?”
“Yeah.” He grunted.
“The mechanical parts, the- liquid void, the monster parts. When we retrieved the box, there’s no evidence they were ever, uh, included in the design. I was kind of wondering if you guys might have any idea why?”
“No clue.”
That was all he gave me. It was like talking to a brick wall. Schreck was obviously bursting to comment, fidgeting with his hands. I turned to him, asked “How about you?”
“Squire here doesn’t know either.” Lucas grunted before he could reply. Schreck huffed a little, disappointed at being cut off.
“Squire?”
“Wants to meet a dragon, ride around in the old world where there was still magic. Plus, he’s second in command. Squire. Look, blondie, I don’t know what you’re doing here but the big mystery is solved, okay? Cat got killed by a god ‘cause he was scared of getting caught scamming us and the church both at once. I kind of don’t want people coming around digging up old graves and reminding me of my old friend.”
My mouth dropped a moment. Blondie? I- “Wait, cat?”
He shrugged. “You know that old thought experiment about the cat that goes into a box and ain’t alive or dead? Raspe wouldn’t shut up about everything he could do going inside that box of his.” And then he wound up dead, neither of us said. Lucas had set his jaw. That was as close as some men got to grief, I figured.
Either way, I wasn’t getting anywhere with this. I was getting stonewalled, which was suspicious in itself, but not helpful. I didn’t really have a solid plan on how to deal with this, probably should’ve come up with one before I went blundering in asking open questions. My only thought was to keep the conversation going, so I said “I’m sorry. I- I’ll change the topic. What’re you showing off here, then?”
All of a sudden the two scientists seemed to switch places. Lucas’ eyes lit up whilst Schreck sighed, clearly disinterested. “Home appliance. Nothing that special, honestly I can’t wait to go back inside and work on the good stuff, but Lucas insisted I be out here helping to advertise…”
The Staircase was one of the larger groups in the courtyard. Mostly it was individual scientists strutting their stuff but these guys had multiple academics across multiple stalls. The main item on display at Lucas’s stall was a white cube with a door on the front.
For a split-second I thought ‘Dear gods, they can’t have made a Godbox themselves?’. Then I realised it was only waist-high, much too small for somebody to ever get inside of, and reality seemed to be pretty firmly in place.
“Don’t talk it down, this is important stuff. Here, watch.”
Lucas opened up the top of their machine. It seemed to be comprised of three compartments. A vat of water, an electric motor very carefully separated from said vat of water, and a set of wire racks which it was pretty clear something was meant to be slotted into.
“...Okay, I’m at a loss. What’s it-”
Lucas took out something I hadn’t expected, a plate. He extended a hand to me, saying “Mind if I have that meat stick you’re holding?”
I’d basically eaten it down to the core, there were just a few scraps left attached to the greasy stick, so I shrugged and handed it over. He wiped it off, dirtying the plate, then it inside.
“The motor cycles water through. Cleans it. Frees up time better spent doing more important things.”
“Like actual research… man, is it noon yet? I gotta feed one of my projects at n-”
Lucas gave Schreck a murderous glare, shutting him up. “Don’t. Knock it. You have any idea how many wives’re chained to pointless, repetitive chores like this? About as mind-numbing as factory work. This is freedom just as much as using gods to handle manufacturing is.”
The words sounded odd coming out of his mouth, but hey, I couldn’t really disagree, I’d love to spend less time cleaning after eating, it took forever. I grinned a little. Maybe I could get on with this guy after all.
Lucas closed up the lid and hit a large button on the side, and the motor roared to life. It made a deafening noise, and if the courtyard wasn’t already loud with the crowds talking I’d’ve had to raise my voice to be heard over it.
I was impressed at first, but then, of course, my brain cut in and I had to ask questions. “So- wait, first of all, this takes electricity and water. A lot, I assume. Electricity’s expensive as hell to divinely generate, how much does this cost?”
Lucas just stared at me like he didn’t understand the question, but Schreck was all too happy to undercut him. “A lot.” Was the answer.
“Thought there’d be a reason this isn’t already in every house. Is this- would the savings in sacrifices be more than the time’s worth? I- wait, is this even cheaper than just hiring a servant or getting a god to clean for you directly?”
“Give it a few years. We’re looking for investors for a reason.” Lucas didn’t seem perturbed by the question, but I just pinched the bridge of my nose.
“I see.”
That just kind of hung there for a moment. Lucas’s lip twitched, getting agitated that, what, I wasn’t praising his stupid invention?
“Given the amount of benefit kettles have already brought, I figured people would appreciate us being one more step closer to-”
“Told you the radio would be more impressive.” Schreck pouted.
“The radio?” I arched a brow. I was starting to get into this now, these two were surprisingly into their work, and it wasn’t like it was uninteresting. Unproductive, maybe, but an excuse to butter Schreck up for further questioning once he’s alone. I extended the meat-stick to him, or what was left of it. “Want some, by the way?”
He waved me off. Disappointing, but I took another nibble anyway.
Tasted of plate. I’d uh, already forgotten he’d wiped it on that. I put the stick aside, after that, in a nearby bin.
“Radios are Lucas’ specialty, actually. But- well, this’s a tech fair, not really allowed to bring divinely powered stuff, but…” He started rummaging around behind his stall. I could see Lucas wincing a little at this, but he was proud of his work in his own way, he didn’t stop Schreck. “Hey, where’d you put it?”
“Left it at home, this isn’t the place.”
“That’s a lie. I saw you tinkering with it earlier, man. What, you only bring some of the parts?”
“It doesn’t work without the idols. What tinkering would there be to do?”
What Schreck found in the end wasn’t an actual device but a schematic for- I swear, why was everybody’s genius invention some kind of cube? I suppose a box is just the best shape for putting a bunch of components in, but even so, this was getting repetitive.
This particular cube had some horns sticking off’ve it, or maybe big spikes stuck into it? There were rather a number of dials on the front, which were surrounded by a familiar looking script. It was the same language that was on Raspe’s diagrams, the ones I couldn’t make sense of. Dreaming Empire, maybe? Irenic was the ancient form of their language but I had no clue what they spoke now, it wasn’t even the same script, all weird concentric circles. The University motto had been in Lysian lettering.
“This is a ‘radio’.” He put the word in quotes like he didn’t expect me to recognise it, but I had a broad understanding of what it was. It was definitely Dreaming Empire then. It was some kind of communications device all their sailors and merchants carry around, none of them go anywhere without them and they get tetchy about letting Lysians get ahold of ‘em. They insist the things aren’t divinely powered, but the going theory is they just think we’ll insist whatever god is powering it sign the Divine Charter if we ever get proof it’s not pure technology. They aren’t wrong, there, either, we probably would.
Schreck was grinning from ear to ear and even Lucas was suppressing a smile. I looked the schematic over, though I couldn’t make heads nor tails of the details. “That’s pretty cool, how’d you get one?”
“Pirate raid. Salvaged from the debris.” Lucas said, tersely.
Was the Dreaming Empire the ones trying to pirate our people and we defended ourselves, or…?
I didn’t ask that out loud. I just stared at the paper. This was very, very familiar notation. Could this tell me anything about Raspe’s work? I’d come here on a very different set of leads, but this felt…
“Lucas here’s a counterphysical mechanic. The radio, ah, it don’t work, man. Sound doesn’t operate like that, and we’re pretty sure the Dreamers’re doing something weird with physics in their territory to make it operate right. His job is finding out what set’ve physical laws make this work so the gods can set that up for us.”
“Any, uh, any progress on that?” I asked just to keep the conversation going. My mind was going a mile a minute now, barely able to focus on his reply. Schreck said something excited about pressure waves and electricity and magnets and I just tuned it out.
I knew the pieces fit. I damned well knew it. It felt like I’d just been handed a corner piece to a gigantic jigsaw whilst everything was still in a pile, the final bit of information I needed slotted into my brain, and I just needed a free minute to logic it all out.
Lucas was a counterphysical mechanic. Lady Regress’ worked in that department, it was her main job as a deity, according to Sarah.
“-pretty confident we’ll be able to find it in another few dozen permutations, just a shame that the church keeps double-dipping for these experiments, insisting we sacrifice to Anchorhold for protection for safety regs on top of getting the physics redone. Didn’t you used to help Raspe with his regs compliance? Wow, what a pain!”
I flapped a hand to shush him, trying to buy space to think, barely even thinking about how rude I was being.
Lucas’ entire job was finding out how to change physical law to make things possible, using divine power. The Godbox’s entire function was changing physical laws. Lucas’ people were trying to frame the Liberationists for Raspe’s death, even though they were guilty. The box was a fraud using Lady Regress, who worked with the University’s counterphysical mechanics department. Sarah had openly told me the Priest’s Union were still hiding secrets about the whole affair. The pieces felt so much like they ought to fit together cleanly, everything was so connected to everything else, so why couldn’t I form a coherent picture?
Raspe had probably gotten Lady Regress from the Staircase.
Was that why she wouldn’t talk to me?
Some questions still fit into the picture like jagged pieces.
Why would Raspe even bother committing fraud in the first place if he knew it would all come crashing down so promptly?
Where were the missing components?
Lady Regress was working with the Staircase, fine, but for what purpose?
“...Can I have some?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Schreck was so close I could feel his breath in my ear, whispering. I shrieked and flailed, hyperventilating as I tried to calm my pounding heart.
“...what?”
“You zoned out for like, two full minutes. Whatever you’re on man, can I have some?”
“I’m not on anyth-” I started, before realising I really didn’t need to justify myself to him, not at this juncture. I didn’t even really need to ask him questions anymore, or try to butter him up.
I turned on my heels and walked away. He stared at me in confusion and shock.
“I- what? Are you just- why do you keep doing that? You just walked away mid-chat last time too! Rude!” He grumbled, folding his arms.
“Schreck.” I heard Lucas growl, though their conversation was fading into the background as I walked.
“I’d’ve shared back in turn, I got some potent stuff that-”
“Schreck!” Lucas hissed, lower. He looked furious. Schreck blinked.
“What? What?”
Schreck followed up with something angry. I couldn’t hear it. It occurred that showing up, asking a number of very probing questions, staring at his diagrams for two minutes then leaving was probably not the best way to convince him I wasn’t suspicious of his organization.
He wasn’t like Irons, he couldn’t just summon the police to harass me, but it occurred to me that making him think I’m a threat was probably a bad idea.
Too late for it now. He waved over one of his assistants, barking out orders, probably asking for raised security on something or other, or ordering inquiries into who I was and what I was up to.
I didn’t really care.
I had a theory. Nine Chartered Gods help me, but I had a theory. On what had happened, what the Union and Staircase were hiding. On a way to make another Godbox, a real Godbox.
On how to convince Sarah that she hadn’t driven her friend to suicide.
He’d have his guards in place but they were researchers, academic types, not professional officers, they’d take time to organise. I probably had thirty minutes or so before they got their act together.
And, I thought, if I sabotaged them, so much the better.
I walked right up to the electric zombie-horse thing. I smiled at the presenter, a bit too wide, but he was desperate for anybody to be willing to get near his creation, I don’t think he questioned it.
“Hey, can I try riding it? Is, uh, is the flesh all cold? Is it comfortable?”
“Of course, of course! Come and try, come and try!”
He guided me into the stirrups. I’d ridden horses before, they were practically ubiquitous in Ruge, moreso even than Eccless, so it wasn’t hard.
I tried to keep my gorge from rising from getting this close to a creature's exposed spinal column. I couldn’t help but peer in interest at the arrangements of metal spikes attached to wires that were stuck in there though. One of the spikes was removable, a little crackling wand about as thick as my finger and twice as long which was used to control it. It had a leather handle, of course, else I’d shock myself touching it.
“We’ve handily made little contact points on the spine, see the clumps of metal there?” I did, about the size of pennies grafted to the vertebrae. “They hook into specific nervous clusters. Just tap the electric pointer to the left one to make it go left, the right one to make it go right…” The man explained, cheery at having somebody brave enough to get this close. He obviously expected me to have it canter in a little circle, and indeed I did so, for about ten seconds. Getting the hang of riding it, how to control it.
“How are you enjoying, Miss? Is it not much more convenient than trying to control a live, unruly animal?”
I did my best to look innocent and ignorant, gave my best Sarah impression, all wide eyes and a faint tremble in my voice, like I was scared of the great big beast I was riding.
“Sure. How, uh, which thing do I press this to if I want it to go faster? Is it, uh, is it this one?” I asked.
As I jammed the tip of the metal wand in between two vertebra, whilst keeping the exposed metal touching to the ‘forward’ button.
The beast went off like a shot. I’d been planning to dismount anyway but I was thrown, and not gently, hitting the ground hard with a cry of pain.
Nobody’s eyes were on me, though. The horse ignored pedestrians, stalls, and anything else a real horse would normally object to being told to run headfirst into. It just ploughed ahead, and whilst people mostly made it out of the way in time, people’s inventions didn’t.
Cries of confusion, fear and fury filled the air. “Police! Police!”.
I figured that was my chance to slip away. That would keep the Staircase busy, and everybody else, too.
I pushed through the crowd. Eccless pedestrians were all idiots, most were trying to get closer to the rampaging undead animal, rather than further away. That made it easy to leave the university courtyard then circle right back around, across the side of the building. The place had entrances from pretty much any direction, and honestly the university itself was less one big building and more a collection of smaller ones. I went towards the engineering wing, the laboratories Lucas worked in.
There were still some missing pieces, fragments I didn’t quite understand. But Lady Regress working for the Staircase made a lot of things made sense.
I had absolutely no idea what I would find in those labs, but I knew for a fact it would be something that would let me understand why Lady Regress had done what she did.