Chapter 1: Keys

Sixteen-year-old Rianne can see the world in an unusual way, which leads her to possible danger.

Chapter 1: Keys

 

Music flowed out of the huge fortepiano and into the clean air of the household. Though it was storming outside and the windows were shuttered heavily, the yellow arclights and diffusion lenses situated in the high corners of the atrium gave the impression of sitting outside on a sunny day. The illusion was reinforced by the green-painted cables exiting the fortepiano’s undercarriage, crawling up the walls like ivy and terminating in conical speakers that had been painted to resemble overgrown flowers.

Rianne had never seen a real flower, or a sunny day for that matter. It was never brighter than overcast in Bleakness Cove, even during highsummer when the warm breezes were blowing the factories’ stink out to sea and the men sometimes went about in open shirts without fear of the ash or acid rains of winter. It was spring now, and the storms that hammered the sides of the house, sometimes making the shutters rattle fit to dispel her guardian’s carefully crafted illusions, made it virtually impossible to go out of doors for hours or even days on end.

Even if the light hadn’t been brighter than any she had seen outside, or the air cleaner than any she had smelt in the city’s reeking streets, the illusion was a poor one for Rianne. Every time she struck a key on the fortepiano, she could see the small flicker along the cable that indicated a transmission of electricity from the instrument to the cleverly-painted speaker. When the speaker reproduced the fortepiano’s rich, full sounds, another flicker came from its depths. The lights fairly hummed with their own sub-visual illumination.

Rianne did her best to block it out and focus on the music. Her fingers moved skillfully among the white and black synth-ivories, playing one of the light, mellow bagatelles that she preferred over her guardian’s more baroque fancies. The doctor had insisted that she learn how to play, as befit a girl her age, but she had been equally insistent that she be allowed to play what she liked.

She would never admit it to the doctor, but she had grown to enjoy playing an instrument. It kept her mind focused enough that her head hurt less, and the physical act of working the keys and pedals helped keep her extremities limber after her daily exercises threatened to make her stiffen up. In order to maximize her efficiency, she had taken to coming straight from the gymnasium to the atrium, much to the chagrin of old Ms. Shadewell, her instructor.

Ms. Shadewell had become indignant the first time it happened, unwilling to tolerate a student who was not “properly attired.” A quick arbitration by the doctor had put an end to that. Rianne remembered her guardian’s appraising stare move up and down her body, showing no more interest than in any patient in the clinic, before turning to old Ms. Shadewell.

“She’s covered,” the doctor said simply, sipping intermittently from a ceramic cup.

“A body stocking,” huffed the matronly musician, “is hardly appropriate wear for teenaged girl learning music.” She had looked at Rianne, her disdainful expression saying that she saw something more than the doctor did, something worthy of ire and umbrage. “She’s also still sweaty from her exercise. This kind of strong-headedness might be appropriate at six, but not at sixteen.”

“I am not coming to practice sweaty,” Rianne insisted. “I’m just damp from a quick bath and towel. I’d no more come to practice stinking of sweat than I would to dinner.”

“Hmmph,” came the witty retort. “She’s barefoot and her arms are uncovered.”

“Rianne,” the doctor said in the tone that indicated an imminent scolding, “you know I’ve told you to wear slippers in the house. Especially when you’re in the atrium.” Another sip, longer this time. “You could slip and fall on the tile if your feet are wet. I expect better sense from you, young lady.” Another critical, clinical glance. “Though I honestly can’t see why covered arms are necessary for playing a keyboard.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said contritely. Inwardly, Rianne had smiled; she could afford to be contrite when it was clear that her guardian was going to side with her. “I’ll make certain to wear slippers in the future.” She paused, thinking of an additional concession that would seem reasonable without actually giving anything up. “I shall also be sure to put my hair up before coming to practice. It would be irresponsible of me to risk getting my damp hair on the keys.”

“That’s a good girl,” the doctor smiled around the cup of tea. “Your hair is getting rather long these days. Are you sure you don’t want to cut it? I hear that shorter hair is stylish among young women these days.”

Ms. Shadewell fumed at the turn of the conversation, realizing that her concerns were being dismissed. She began to open her mouth to interject but a steely glance from the doctor stopped the words in her throat. Rianne and the doctor had continued to discuss trivialities for another ten minutes before allowing Ms. Shadewell and Rianne to bow out of the conversation and return to the atrium.

So during subsequent lessons, while Rianne played and did her best to ignore the synesthetic lights and colors that the music produced in the electrics around her, Ms. Shadewell also labored with teaching a student she could barely bring herself to look at. It amused Rianne endlessly to be sitting at the fortepiano as completely covered as if she were wearing a tea gown, with her hair up in a neat bun under a net, but for the matron to avert her gaze as though teaching a naked person.

A sudden rattle of thunder shook the windows and murmured through the house’s soundproofing enough to create a scratchy burst of feedback on the speaker. Rianne jerked her hands away from the keys as if bitten, slamming her eyes shut to try and close out the jagged flashes of light that tore through her brain.

“Are you all right, dear?” Ms. Shadewell asked, laying a long-fingered hand on Rianne’s shoulder. The girl felt briefly remorseful about winding up the old lady. She wasn’t a bad soul, just old-fashioned.

“Yes, thank you,” Rianne murmured. “But I suddenly have a dreadful migraine. Would you mind terribly if we ended early today?” Ms. Shadewell nodded indulgently and Rianne thumbed the nearby intercom button. “Hawthorne, are you there?”

“Yes, Miss,” the doctor’s aged butler replied, his voice tinny and crackling on the intercom. To Rianne, it looked as though the grilled speaker were pulsing sickly green light, sparks crackling each time the storm made the house’s electrics surge. The sight of it made her stomach heave but she forced it back and closed her eyes.

“Ms. Shadwell is leaving early today,” she said in calm, measured tones. “With the storm out, it’s hardly practical for her to take the tram home. Would you mind bringing around the gyro for her?”

“Of course, Miss,” Hawthorne’s crackly facsimile voice said. The clarity of the voice indicated to Rianne that he was in the main house instead of tinkering about in the garage or in his apartments. “I’ll come up and escort her out to the garage.”

Rianne smiled with her eyes closed and thumbed off the speakers. She had been expecting Hawthorne to be willing. The old butler had his eye on the long-unmarried Ms. Shadewell. He had never said anything naturally, but Rianne could see the way his skin warmed when looking at the music teacher. Rianne supposed that Ms. Shadewell wasn’t all that old"maybe in her forties"but she was definitely younger than Hawthorne, who had looked old ever since Rianne could remember.

“Hawthorne will be up momentarily,” she said, finally opening her eyes again. Without the pulse from the fortepiano’s speakers or from the intercom, the lights alone were easier to deal with.

“Thank you, dear,” Ms. Shadewell responded, patting Rianne’s shoulder briefly before going to gather her things. Originally, the older woman had rarely brought more than a small purse and her glowpad full of sheet music, but she had taken to bringing old-style paper music books after Rianne had complained about the glowpad hurting her eyes. Thinking about it made the girl feel even worse about winding up her instructor so often, but it was so difficult to avoid when Ms. Shadewell made it so easy.

Hawthorne came chuffing into the atrium a few minutes later, just as Ms. Shadewell had finished stuffing her purse and music books into a small duffel bag. She started to pull out a collapsing umbrella with a faux mother-of-pearl handle when Hawthorne trotted up.

“No need for that, Miz Shadewell,” he insisted, showing her the sturdy full-length umbrella he was carrying. “Don’t think that flimsy thing would stand a guster like this ‘un anyway.”

“Oh, but you’ll get soaked, Hawthorne,” she fussed. “I wouldn’t feel right.”

“And I wouldn’t feel right letting a lady get drenched while I stayed dry,” he retorted. “Besides which, I’m liable to get drenched driving the gyro either way. No sense for both of us to be soaked.”

“What a gentleman,” Ms. Shadewell tittered, bringing a blush to Hawthorne’s grizzled cheeks. Rianne rolled her eyes and stood up from the fortepiano stool.

“If he were a real gentleman,” Rianne interjected, “he’d offer to carry your duffel.” Hawthorne looked at her with a frown.

“Why, I was just about to do that,” he said. “If’n you don’t mind, o’ course, Miz.”

“Such a dear,” she said, passing over the duffel bag. Holding it with one hand and the umbrella with the other, Hawthorne started leading her to the door that opened onto the portico. As he got to the door, he paused, shuffling awkwardly for a moment to grab his keyring.

“Let me get that for you,” Rianne said, reaching for the keyring.

“Thank you, Miss,” Hawthorne replied. He had managed to pull the keys partway out of his pants pocket with his fingertips, but actually using them would have necessitated putting something down. He bent his wrist and let Rianne pluck the dangling keys from his hand. She unlocked the portico door and stood aside.

“I’ll just put them on your desk,” she said as Hawthorne shuffled out onto the covered walkway and started unfurling his umbrella. The old butler nodded his thanks as a sudden shudder of wind crossed the portico, almost making him drop Ms. Shadewell’s duffel bag onto the wet tiles. He put his weight into the wind and tilted the umbrella against the direction of the rain.

“See you next week, dear,” Ms. Shadewell smiled as she turned up her coat collar and walked outside. Rianne smiled cheerfully in return.

As soon as the door clicked closed, Rianne turned the key in the lock and put her back up against the cool wood. She closed her eyes, listening to the thunder rattling the windows, and clutched the keys to her chest. It had taken her weeks to get things to come together like this; seeing Hawthorne’s attraction for Ms. Shadewell had made it easier, but it had still taken the perfect combination of circumstances to get Hawthorne’s keys in her hands without anyone else in the house.

Her own keys opened almost everything in the house. She was hardly a prisoner, after all. The doctor had been a generous and giving guardian for her sixteen years, if not a particularly loving one, and it had always been clear that she could come and go as she pleased. Some things were off-limits even to her, however. The doctor’s rooms and private study were locked with keys that even Hawthorne didn’t have, not that she could have gotten them even if the doctor weren’t at the clinic late tonight. The old butler had keys to the generator room, the supply room, and the roof access. All three were off-limits to Rianne because the doctor considered them too dangerous for her to go poking about in casually.

She wasn’t interested in the grimy basement where the house’s batteries and cracking pumps churned in the dark or the liquor cabinet where the doctor’s strongest spirits lurked. Tonight, she was interested in the roof, the home of the house’s four lightning collectors. She had seen something outside her window a month ago, something that she had thought was impossible, and it had haunted her dreams ever since. Tonight, she would go to the roof and see the truth of the matter, whatever the doctor thought otherwise. She opened her eyes and jogged to the stairs leading to the roof.

The home that she shared with the doctor and Hawthorne was a double-width brownstone rowhouse. The place had originally been two rowhouses that shared an adjoining wall, but the doctor had bought both of them, torn out the dividing wall, and then reconstructed the interior according to some floor plan that only made sense to professional architects and madmen.

The interior had been wired thoroughly with the most modern electrics, including arclights in the atrium and studies, but the hallways still used common gaslamps fueled by hydrogen from the cracking pumps in the basement, which also provided the house with clean air instead of the general fetid muck that filled the streets and alleys outside. The walls were soundproofed and the windows opaque; the doctor preferred to be able to ignore the city as much as possible when at home.

Rianne’s atrium and a gymnasium took up most of the first floor, while the remainder was used for a small foyer, sitting room, drawing room, and kitchen. The doctor’s private suite and study were on the second floor, along with a supply chamber connected to the kitchen by a dumbwaiter and a small formal dining room. There was no public water closet in the house; the doctor preferred for their few guests to not stay long enough to need such amenities.

The third floor had been divided into smaller chambers for various purposes long before Rianne had come into the doctor’s care, but when she was old enough to have her own room, several of them had been connected to make a private suite like the doctor’s. The old room dividers were still obvious to Rianne’s eyes, though; she could see the places were the wall brackets and frame bolts glowed through the plaster with the house’s general static resonance. Her suites only took up half of the floor, though; the other half was a library and tape-reader room where Rianne spent a lot of her time. She loved reading, though the glowpads that most people used for the task hurt her eyes terribly. The doctor’s collection of rare paper books was magnificent, and she could spend hours on end losing herself in their coarse pages.

Hawthorne lived in a separate building at the far end of the rear lot, which the doctor said had been a neighborhood trash pit before being purchased and fenced in. Nowadays, the lot was a cramped maze with a portico running from the main mouse to the building that housed the doctor’s gyro, with Hawthorne’s apartments above the garage. From her window, as she changed out of her body stocking and into something better suited for the weather, Rianne could see the vague glow that marked the garage. The greenhouse on the left side of the portico was dark at night, so she could only make out its vague reflection intermittently when lightning flashed.

The piece of land on the right side of the portico had been several different things in the course of Rianne’s life. For a while it had been a playground for her, a small open square filled with packed sand where Rianne could get some exercise outdoors. That had been before the doctor had become ever more paranoid about the air quality of the city, which had finally culminated in the installation of an interior gymnasium"it required removing the downstairs water closet, the dining room, and a much larger kitchen"and air purifiers.

After that, the spot had been, in succession, a stone garden, a weather station, an extra workspace for Hawthorne, and finally a foundation for some project that the doctor had abandoned. Rianne had no doubt that some new mania would induce her guardian to rip the whole thing up in another year or two and put in some new pet project. She doubted that she would be here for it, though.

Her mouth unconsciously turned into a moue of displeasure as she thought about the doctor’s declared intent to move her out of the house in a year. The two of them had argued long and hard about it, but in the end she had been unable to sway the doctor"as was the case whenever her guardian had well and truly made a decision. She might be getting shipped off to some girls’ school in Far Fuligin in six months, but she was going to be dragged each and every step of the way.

She finished dressing and paused to look at herself in the mirror without turning on any of the lights in her dressing room. The dim light coming from the hallway was still enough to see herself clearly"long brown hair done up in a tight coil, a dark blouse tucked into oilcloth trousers, and knee-high boots. As soon as she grabbed her ushanka and greatcoat out of the closet, she would be ready to brave the inclement weather.

The heavy wool coat and faux fur hat would keep her warm and dry enough in the gale, and she had left her smoked goggles in the coat’s pocket the last time she wore it. She didn’t plan on wearing them"she would need her eyes uncovered if she wanted to find what she had seen before"but she might need to put them on for a little while to rest her eyes if they became too strained.

Rianne steeled her nerves.

It was time.

She forced herself to walk slowly up the narrow stairs that led to the roof and pause by the thick, insulated door. The light next to the door was glowing red; if she had the key into the lock without looking, a nasty shock would have been the mildest thing she could expect. When the lightning collectors were going at full capacity, she had seen them knock birds out of the air, their feathers blackened and charred from the ambient discharge.

When the light turned amber, she pulled the heavy lever next to the light. The violent hum outside told her that the collectors had shut off and released their remaining static back into the humid air. The light turned green a minute later, and Rianne quickly unlocked the door, rushed out into the rain, and closed it again behind her. Once the door was sealed, she locked the lightning collectors’ switch into the open position. The doctor didn’t want her up here unsupervised, but she had known the basics of safety with all the house’s machines since she was old enough to climb stairs on her own.

Once everything was shut down to her satisfaction, Rianne’s face was already soaked, and she kept running a hand across it to clear the water out of her vision. She pulled down the brim of her ushanka and held her hands in front of it to make more dry space for her eyes, scanning back and forth across the rooftop.

The lightning collectors still glowed with a menacing blue light to her eyes, a light that she knew no one else would be able to see. When she had mentioned the glow that pervaded electrics to her tutors, they had thought she was making up stories. So had most of her childhood playmates, the few that she had. The doctor knew the truth, of course, as did Hawthorne, but neither of them would back up her story to outsiders. Eventually she had stopped telling people about the things she could see.

A flash of lightning lit the sky, ripping through the heavens like a great blue-white spear. Rianne gasped as the world flooded into stark contrast for her, everything for a mile around jumping into crisp focus in ghastly shades of green, blue, and purple. She clutched at her right temple where the pain was at its worst; she hadn’t been lying to Ms. Shadewell when she said that her head hurt. The thunder that came a second later made her bones ache and her teeth rattle from the force. The lightning collectors shuddered and shook free droplets of water, redoubling the deluge for just a moment.

Rianne forced the pain away and looked skyward. The roiling mass of black clouds above would have just been a blank sky to everyone else, but she could see the whorls and eddies of the cumulus cell moving like the waters of the Bracken Sea in a high wind. They glowed from within with their own pregnant power, static rippling through their wet masses and discharging in great glowing arcs. Each time a thunderhead rippled with lightning, Rianne saw the flash twice"once from the normal white light of the strike, and once in the green-grey tones that washed over the cityscape.

She stood in the pouring rain for nearly half an hour, water eventually soaking through her ushanka and even beginning to soak through her oiled woolen greatcoat. Rianne was shivering from the chill that slowly seeped into her muscles. The round trip for a gyro to take Ms. Shadewell home would be something like an hour, maybe a quarter more than that in this weather. She cursed herself for a fool.

And then she saw it.

Just as a month before, when the shape had swooped by her window in the dead of night, a pale golden glow zipped across her field of vision. The light from the shape was different than any she had ever seen before, diffuse and peaceful instead of sharp and harsh. Rianne’s eyes widened in shock as she saw it clearly for the first time. The second or so of light she had seen that night, and several nights after, had been enough to convince her that something strange was going on. Seeing it without the intervening glass or obstructions was a lesson in beauty. The light almost seemed to sing in her vision.

It moved swiftly through the downpour, dropping dozens of feet at once only to suddenly rise again. It looped, danced, and shifted, but it was never completely still. As she watched, it would disappear behind the towers of industry at the middle of nearby Greyward, almost dropping out of sight from the sheer distance, only to come rushing back toward Alabaster. The light seemed almost playful to Rianne as it ducked, dived, bobbed and weaved.

Without warning, the light shifted so that it was moving almost directly toward her. Ahead of it rushed a flock of great crowing birds, their noise muffled from the rain but still loud enough to startle Rianne into taking a step away from them involuntarily. She almost slipped in the frigid rainwater, but managed to keep her feet. The light rushed by in pursuit of the flock, so close she could almost touch it. Her normal vision had a brief impression of black wings, leathery and bat-like, and she could smell the rough scent of cracked granite and ozone. The sudden passage of wind ripped her ushanka off her head, and by the time she grabbed it back from the sodden roof, her hair was soaked all the way through.

When Rianne looked back up, the flock had passed on and the golden light was nowhere in sight.

She sighed with relief"both at being right about what she had seen, and about it passing her by"when a sudden thud from behind her drew her attention. She wheeled around toward the source of the noise and saw the glow, more subdued now but still golden, crouched on the far end of the roof. Among the golden light, she could make out a shape that was larger than a man, but twisted from the human norm. She had the sense of wings and dark hide and a mane of coarse black hair, but then the lightning came again and washed her vision out almost completely. The strike had been close enough that the thunder that followed almost knocked her off her feet.

Rianne screamed in surprise, and the thing at the heart of the golden glow roared like the engine of a shrike. It stood up to its full height, the tip of its head almost brushing the cables connecting the roof’s lightning collectors, and Rianne scrabbled backwards away from it. This time, she did slip in the oily rainwater and ash that had mixed like sludge on the rooftop. She toppled backward into the muck, pushing away from the shape as fast as she could as it began to stalk toward her.

The shape was glowing less and less as it moved, becoming more a part of the darkness on the rooftop. Part of Rianne prayed for another bolt of lightning so she could make it out more clearly, while the rest of her was panicking and begging for it to stay dark so she wouldn’t have to.

Just as the creature’s slow pace brought it among the tall, sphere-topped towers of the lightning collectors, Rianne managed to wrap her hand around the safety lock for them. She used its weight to haul herself to her feet and risked turning her back on the creature to tear open the door to the interior. She rushed through it like the devil was chasing her, pulling it closed behind her. She fumbled out the keys and dropped them, cursing under her breath as she stooped to grab them one-handed while leaving the other holding onto the door handle.

The heavy footsteps ended just on the other side of the door, which shuddered as the thing on the other side banged into it. Rianne stood up quickly and leaned all of her weight into the door, trying to fit the key into the lock with a shaking hand. The door shook again as the creature rattled it again.

Rianne turned the key, snapping the multilock into place with one turn. The door’s insulation shut out the sound and the shuddering died to a dull intermittent thump. She looked over at the safety gauge, which now showed an amber light. She must have shut off the safety lock when she grabbed the lever. With a vicious grimace on her face, Rianne’s hand grabbed for the activation lever. Her death-grip on the molded synth-rubber handle left impressions of her fingers in its surface.

She paused.

Slowly, unwillingly, she let go of the handle. If she pulled the lever, whatever was on the other side of the door would be hurt"probably killed"when the lightning collectors turned back on. Even if the thing in the glow was a monster of some kind, she couldn’t imagine killing something. And it hadn’t hurt her really, just scared her a little. The more she thought about it, the more she leaned toward it being as startled as she was.

More than that, more than anything logical or reasonable, she simply couldn’t imagine a creature that glowed with the beautiful light she saw within it as something evil.

She waited long minutes, her back pressed against the insulated door, water pooling on the hardwood floor under her feet as she dripped from her exposure to the storm. After what felt like forever, she heard heavy thudding steps on the other side of the door, then a sudden explosive rush of air. The creature had taken back to the sky.

Rianne felt her knees unlock and she dropped to the floor. She shivered and shook, only partly from the cold that had seeped into her bones. The raw terror she had been suppressing bubbled up into her throat, catching like a hiccough before exploding out of her in ragged, nervous laughter. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, closing her eyes and roaring laughter at the top of her lungs. Ever since she was little, whenever she was truly terrified, Rianne had laughed instead of crying or screaming. She laughed now, long and hard, until it felt like her stomach was on fire.

When the gales of laughter had finally died down enough that she could hear the rain and thunder outside again, Rianne shakily pulled herself to her feet. She didn’t have long before Hawthorne was home, and the doctor would not be long behind in all likelihood. Before they got back, she had to clean up the water and muck inside the roof access door, change into house clothes, and return Hawthorne’s keys to his desk.

As she staggered stiffly back to her rooms, Rianne mused that Far Fuligin was sounding better and better. Still, the glowing shape haunted her thoughts. Now that she was over her panic, she couldn’t believe that it had actually been hostile in any way. Something about the glow it gave off just seemed too peaceful to be dangerous.

Even as she stripped off her soaked clothes and went hunting for a towel, Rianne was already making plans to watch for the shape again.