The Knowing Doll, page 17
The Doorman shook his head, “Pity. Pity that. Anyway, I’ll open the elevator for you. Head on up!”
Delilah joined a small group walking into the elevator and pressed the button to the penthouse floor by muscle memory. As the elevator rumbled and slid up, occasionally making stops as it carried their group higher to their destination, Delilah felt the distinct, foreboding sensation that she was being watched. Her gaze flicked to the mirrors tastefully embedded into the wood-panelled walls until she spotted not one but two people staring at her.
She flipped through her mental catalogue of faces, listing off from the most threatening people she’d worked with, to the strangers she’d passed randomly on the streets over the years until something finally clicked.
Both former neighbours, clearly recognising her. Not protectors, not threats. One a wealthy socialite who’d had a crush on Delilah, and the other was a man who kept investing all his wife’s money in pyramid schemes.
Delilah sighed. They were harmless, to her at least. But she knew these strangers more than she had any right to, and it was chafing at something in her heart more and more these days. Each secret uncovered and excavated left the lingering image of Jessica’s disapproving face, silhouetted in the sunset, as they sat on the rooftops of Stonetown together.
The people with whom she rode the elevator got off three floors before her and Delilah leaned against the wall – weary. Her screens depicted old paper, fading and crumbling as its many colours were washed away by time, and its edges lost their lustre.
I can’t change the past, no matter how clearly I see it. I can only chart a path forward.
Delilah could have traced the steps from the elevator to the door in the dark. It wasn’t hard, since it was a straight shot. But each step brought back the memory of other steps, ambitious steps, angry steps. The steps of a woman more lost then than even now. That was why she’d come back – to face what she had given up, the luxury of it, and the ease of power – and know that she was right to choose.
Delilah’s old apartment was beautiful. The atrium could have contained two of her current home. And the less said of its comparison to her home in The Scatter-
Delilah abandoned that thought in the darkest recess of her memory.
From the door, the room expanded outward in a massive semi-circle, its boundaries marked by floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering a clean and unobstructed view of the city and the valleys beyond. The floors were of a light brown polished wood that did not bare a single scuff or stain. Carpets of a dark blue, with matching furniture of greens and whites, stretched across the centre of the room, taking up space around tables carved out of thin layers of marble and decorated with bright plants and flickering candles.
Chandeliers hung from a snow-white ceiling, wine was stored neatly in dark varnished wooden racks along the walls and yet, despite all that stood within the room;, the size and the designer’s eye left it so wonderfully open and breathable that Delilah felt perfectly balanced with every step. If she had a mouth, Delilah would have smiled.
And the warmth of the illusory smile remained with her until she saw the creature who stood beyond the glass walls, on the wooden veranda. In place of the real estate agent, was Nadir’s latest Lord Protector, Matthew Sharpe himself.
“Welcome home,” he said, spreading his white-clad arms wide as Delilah stalked out of the room towards him, the warmth and comfort of her old home, the designer’s clever lies, laid bare for what they were, with this ratty mongrel in her presence.
Sharpe’s grin was so smug that Delilah wanted to punch him, to see how easily he could smile between a split lip and a broken jaw. But she withheld the violence, instead leaning against the door frame and putting the pieces together.
“The protectors still owns my apartment, then?”
Sharpe laughed, “The protectors own this whole bloody building, Delilah. We’ve expanded since I took control, I’m amazed you didn’t look into that.” He shook his head, “I really do remember you being better at this.”
Again, Delilah wanted to punch him. Again, she decided not to, but only barely.
“So-” Delilah began, “why put my old apartment up for rent? Just to see if I’d come up here?”
Sharpe shrugged, “I wanted to organise a meeting with you, off the books. I figured you’d come through and take a look, I figured that nostalgia would come biting at the back of your mind. And I figured that if it did, then you might be open to... Well...”
Sharpe walked across the room, each step languid, until he reached the hot tub at the balcony’s corner, and sat himself on its edge. He shucked off his boots and socks as the water started to bubble and heat. “Did you ever use this thing yourself?” Sharpe asked.
Delilah gestured to herself, “What would I even have used it for, Sharpe?”
“Getting yourself clean in style,” he said, dipping his gnarled furry feet into the water and shivering at the contact. “Clearing the grime from yourself after a hard day’s work of clearing the grime from the city itself. It feels right, to me, to do it all at once.”
“My shower was fine enough for the task,” Delilah said with a voice like stone, waiting for Sharpe to arrive at some sort of a point. In truth, she had used it, often. Walked through it as naked as her doll’s form would allow, walked her apartment and balcony as bare as she could be.
It wasn’t the same as the world before. Nothing ever was for Delilah.
Sharpe, ever incompetent, did not notice the contemplation falling into Delilah’s shoulders – the way her posture changed as she considered her past. No. He simply spoke on about whatever he wanted. “God, we did end up filthy after some of those jobs. Do you remember the one where you fell into a garbage bin?”
Delilah’s screens turned to a frustrated red, “No,” she murmured. Don’t you dare to remind me, you slimy bastard.
Sharpe tried to remind her anyway, “We were working a job, and things went weird. Crowd started chasing us, can’t remember the details of how and why we were there if I’m being honest, but what I do remember was you deciding that we needed to blend in with some teenagers on the street!”
Delilah said nothing. Let him blather on. I think I know where he might be going with this story, but there’s no point in interrupting him when he gets going like this. Instead, she only looked out into the distance.
From this height, she could see beyond the city itself, past even the Scatter, and into The Twisting World proper. She looked back into the churning chaos of mists and mountains and fires and forests. She saw rivers bending in corkscrew arcs and a massive herd of bronze cogs – taller than the mountains – forming from a whirlwind of leaves. They rolled thunderously across the horizon. In the air behind them, bubbles the size of elephants blossomed and drifted lazily through the air. On the ground, a dense new line of shining trees grew in seconds, rising up and up and ever up. The lowest fliers in the herd of cogs joyously dipped downward into the trees, dancing between them, flitting between the leaves, reflecting brilliant rainbow arrays of light across the valley that stretched for miles.
Delilah inclined her head and pulsed her screens in a gentle blue, her version of a smile, at the sight.
Water splashed around Sharpe’s knee as he gave it a firm slap – his laugh overtook the balcony, and his telling of the story only grew louder. “And you – and you! You ollied a skateboard right into a dumpster, trying to make it look as if we belonged with those miscreants!”
Delilah sighed.
Bereft of further details, perhaps I’d laugh as well, Delilah thought, Jessica would certainly laugh if she learned that I lost my balance so thoroughly that I practically rolled down the hill on one foot and let the board slip out from under me. I didn’t even get a chance to try the ollie; I simply fell over the ledge and landed in the garbage.
Sharpe bared his crooked teeth, offering up the most pleasant smile he could. “I miss those days; I really do, Delilah.”
Delilah’s screens snapped back to a fuzzy grey, hints of red burning into the static, “Do you? Are you so sure about that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s all so nasty now, the politics of it all. The backstabbing, the in-fighting. We had more fun back then.” Sharpe shrugged and he genuinely looked tired.
Delilah barked out a laugh, it was sharp and furious, the static in her screens turning an angry red as her eye narrowed. “Nasty now? Only nasty now? Sharpe... You might not remember why we were being chased on that job, but I do!” She jammed a thumb at her chest.
“The information we stole,” Delilah snarled, “was used to blackmail a teacher’s union into returning to work without a pay increase.” She threw up her hands, turning away from him, “We went through all of that, called ourselves protectors of Nadir and its people just to snatch pennies from the hands of a few teachers? Really!?”
Sharpe crossed his arms, “Oh come off it, Delilah. Is that really still keeping you up at night? I thought your Uncle taught you better than that.”
Delilah did not look at Sharpe. She refused to give him that privilege. Instead, she kept her attention on the herd of cogs, continuing their path through the valley beyond Nadir. But something strange happened. The cogs slowed down. Their movements turned fuzzy and lost their smoothness. The great expanse of air between Delilah and the cogs took on a strange, sickly green colour.
And then she understood, and her screens darkened, and her shoulders sagged.
Delilah focused on the cogs, trying to ignore Sharpe and whatever he was saying, letting his voice blur out, forcing his entire being into the back of her mind as she tried to memorise each detail. As though feeding the Far Lake a eulogy for the dead.
One of the cogs sprouted something shiny and beautiful on its side that Delilah couldn’t quite make out the details of, but which must have been positively massive for her to have seen from where she stood.
“Why am I really here Sharpe?” Delilah asked. “Why did you want to talk?”
Sharpe sighed. “I’m not saying… I’m not saying things can, or should, go back to the way they were before – with you being my boss. But you could work with me again. This apartment? You can have it back today if you want.”
Delilah stared at Sharpe, body as tense as her wooden form could get.
“Sharpe,” Delilah said, “We were never friends, I can’t imagine you’re doing this out of your own sense of nostalgia.”
“Like I said… Things used to be easier.”
Sharpe’s words, and offer, hung between them for a long time. For a minute, an hour, a year. Eternity passed by and Delilah stood on the other side of those words and that offer, and she considered everything Sharpe said. She reached a hand into the water of the hot tub, letting her fingers dip beneath the surface, letting it lap up past her fingers and wrist. The water brushed gently against the broken screen.
And then Delilah spoke.
“I hate you Sharpe. Not just because of what you took from me. Not just because of the things you do to the people in this city and how little you care about the pain you inflict. Not just because you’re a fucking unpleasant shit to be around. I hate you because you’re everything I left behind. What legacy do you plan to leave when you die, Sharpe? You kept a ruined city ruined. You rebuilt the mirror image of humanity at its worst when you had a chance to start from scratch and ask if you could do better than the people who came before you. When you die, if you’ll be remembered, that’s how you’ll be remembered. A snivelling footnote, disgraced by association to the worst inclinations of human history.
“I want more than that. I want to live. I want to breathe. When I left the protectors I understood, a little, of what I’d done wrong – but not so clearly as I see it now. The scope of it. Do you get it? Do you understand yet? Do you know what I want to do, with the accumulated worth of my life, Sharpe? With all the blood and sweat and screaming that I have left in me, no matter how much you hurt me, or fight me. No matter how far you reach into nature and try to force it to obey… I’m going to stand on the side that says ‘no.’ And I’m going to move the world, even if it’s just by one inch.”
Sharpe’s face went pale, “Where did you hear that phrase?”
Delilah looked to fear in his eyes. “What phrase?”
He tried to play it off, but his shoulders remained tense, his jaw clenched. “Nothing – never… never mind… This is your last chance Delilah, take my offer before I change my mind.”
Delilah barked a laugh, “Eat shit, Sharpe.”
Sharpe sighed, exasperated, standing and trying to kick his legs dry, almost losing his footing on the tiled surface surrounding the tub as he did. “You’re impossible.”
Delilah shrugged, looking back toward the herd of cogs which rolled across the horizon, “We live in an impossible world.”
Finally, the moment she’d been waiting for, came. A slight, nearly imperceptible pulse rippled through the air, outward from Nadir. The pulse burst through the air beyond them with a pop almost inaudible to anyone not listening for it. A flux pulse, built to keep the city stable but not to prevent magic’s use within its borders. Delilah watched as a wave of reality crashed into the majestic cogs beyond the city. They wailed and moaned mechanically, one of them tilting over sidewards as though buffeted by a great wind, before they all imploded into dust.
CHAPTER 20 – The Ugly Fucking Truth
Nadir’s minister of transportation looked surprisingly suited for the role, Delilah had to admit. A four-armed man whose shoulders were broad and square and whose body was constructed from a metal that she did not recognise. He was almost humanoid, minus a few strange quirks – bumps and valleys across the surface of his self. By far the strangest feature of the man were the train tracks. Leading from his neck and winding all across his body, trains chugged along his perimeter with contented ease.
His head was contained within a gyroscope, spinning in place so as to always look directly at Delilah no matter where on the body the head was moving. And every time it moved, steam and smoke puffed out of his ears.
Honestly, if they hadn’t been sitting in the restaurant for business, she could have sat and watched his head move around him all day.
The restaurant itself was nice enough – exposed bricks in a style popular before the apocalypse – wooden floors, and large windows, with what would have been a nice breeze to anyone with functioning skin.
It was not Delilah’s usual pick of meeting spot, but she’d pulled some fascinating information from Councillor Hamish’s memories two nights earlier and if she was to make any headway with this man, then this was the place to do it. Already his eyes couldn’t stop flicking from Delilah to a beautiful painting of a woman on the other side of the room. They had an excellent view of it, Hamish most of all. Delilah had been sure to arrive early and ensure their seats for that exact reason, of course.
“I am so impressed!” Hamish said, dabbing at his lips with a cloth serviette as his starting soup was replaced with his lunch. “It’s as though you know my favourite meals better than I know them myself.”
Delilah would have smiled if she could, “Just lucky, I suppose.”
“This has me wondering something,” Councillor Hamish said, offering a feverish grin and allowing his head to rotate fully down to his elbow, letting loose a trail of smoke and steam as it whirred and clicked. “You are treating me so well, so kindly.”
Delilah’s screens pulsed a soft orange, “Nadir is at odds with Stonetown at the moment; that does not mean I should be rude to a potential business partner, or a possible friend.”
Hamish’s smile was a leer, “But word around town is that not all my colleagues have been given such... kind treatment.”
Ah, yes.
Delilah could not allow herself to react.
Jessica’s little rampage and every other fight she’s gone and got herself in must appear to be a calculated part of our plan, a considered step preceding some hidden masterstroke.
“Mayor Khora and I met with each of your colleagues in turn,” Delilah began, “just as I am meeting with you now.” Let the threat settle, unspoken... I could push it further but let’s not resort to the stick when the carrot will do just fine. I have no need to turn my stomach with unsavoury attitudes just yet.
“You’re here,” Hamish said, “to buy my vote.”
“To remind you,” Delilah countered, tone placating and sweet, “of just how much you would prosper from Northern independence.”
Hamish spread his arms to the side, “Remind me then.”
Delilah reached across the table and placed the salt shaker in front of Hamish. “Nadir,” she said, “is insular. The same can be said for Anthem in the east,” she placed the pepper shaker, “Clockwork Rise in the west,” marked with a toothpick holder, “and The Net below us all. All your policies are to hunker down. Any resources you find outside the city just come right to the city and build on what you already have.”
Delilah took the small bowl of mints placed on the corner of the table and scattered them in front of her, all so small in front of the other ‘cities’ she’d used as examples. “Towns in the North aren’t like that. We’re smaller, we’ve built communities. We’ve survived that way but interference from Nadir threatens to bleed us dry. Annexation would just...” Delilah knew this wasn’t going to work, but Khora really wanted her to try appeal to Hamish’s sense of decency first. “Under Nadir, we’d lose everything.”
She fell into silence, waiting to see if her little speech had any impact on Councillor Hamish. She doubted it. But that will simply be a prelude to a more effective solution... Though not as effective a solution as she knew she could take if she just... let go of her inhibitions.
