Motus, page 9
“If there were, it happened just before they started recording it,” Corun said.
“Maybe it was a cave-in. A big one. But something that bad, someone would have mentioned it in the histories.”
Corun tapped the page in thought. “Didn’t you say they lost power too? Wasn’t that why they started the Archives? Could the power outage be to blame?”
“Again, someone would have mentioned it. Most historians brush past this point in our history as if nothing of note occurred beyond the establishment of the Archives.”
“Well death isn’t the only reason they issue a birth permit, right? From what I’ve seen in the logs, whenever the tunnel length increases, several births follow. Could they have found a large cavern?”
Cassi nodded slowly.
“That’s not nearly as rare as hundreds of people dying, so it’s possible they neglected to mention it in the histories. And for all we know, they built the Archives when they did because there was now room to spare. While it’s not what we came here to find, it’ll only take a second to verify. These maps detail everything about the surrounding rock, including caverns.”
Cassi stood abruptly and returned to the shelf full of maps. She pulled a cylinder from the topmost cubby before returning. Corun joined her at the table as she rolled the map out centimeter by centimeter. The yellow coloring of the paper hinted at its age.
“This is the oldest map in the Archives and should correspond to the dates in the city planner’s logs. If there was a cavern, it would have been recorded on here.”
The map had only spooled out a single meter when it came to an abrupt end, causing the glossy tube it was wrapped around to roll unceremoniously across the table. Corun caught it before it could fall to the floor.
Cassi stared at the ragged edge of the map in horror.
“Torn?” Corun asked, but the answer was obvious. Not only was the broad line depicting the path of Motus cut short, but a written annotation beside it was bisected entirely.
“Why would anyone do this? This is our history. What reason could there possibly be to destroy it?”
“There aren’t any other records older than this?”
Cassi shook her head in dismay. “No, and now I’m beginning to think our written histories began when they did for a reason other than a power outage and failing machines. They’re hiding something.”
As she fingered the edge of the torn map, Corun hefted the now empty cylinder in his hands. It had a weight and texture that felt distinctly familiar.
“What are these used for?”
“Huh? Oh, to keep the paper from folding, I suspect. These old maps are very fragile,” she said absently, hardly sparing it a glance.
Corun continued to turn the cylinder in his hand, the sense of familiarity still tugging at him. He glanced back at the cubbies containing the maps and frowned. The cubby from which she had withdrawn this one was lacking any of the wire spools, and none of the maps in cubbies that contained them appeared to be wrapped around the strange cylinders.
It hit him all at once.
“It’s a recording.” The waxy surface was just that, wax, and when he peered closely, he could make out faint groves circling the cylinder.
Cassi regarded him and the cylinder, her expression dubious.
“No, they wouldn’t start recording the board meetings until the wire cassette was invented some thirty years after this,” she said, gesturing back at the hundreds of wire spools in the cubbies across the room.
The smile he gave her only deepened her frown. It was nice knowing something she didn’t for a change.
“This is different. It’s meant to be played on a phonograph. It doesn’t require electricity. My mother has one. Careful not to touch the wax,” he added when she reached out to take it.
“They recorded the meetings,” Cassi said softly, staring down at the cylinder held between them. “Maybe whoever did this to the map didn’t get to the recording. Would your mother let us use her phonograph?”
Cassi lifted her head to look at him, but their proximity left them staring into each other’s eyes from mere centimeters away. Corun watched her excitement transform into a quiet curiosity as they regarded each other. Then the moment was over.
The sound of the guard speaking to someone outside the Archives made Cassi’s eyes go wide.
She quickly rewrapped the map around the wax cylinder and returned both to their cubby. She grabbed a random book from a shelf on her way back to the table and quickly sat down as the door to the Archives creaked open.
“Remember, we’re supposed to be here,” she hissed. A moment later, she looked every bit the scholar as she sat there, focused on the open book in front of her.
Corun promptly sat back down on the sofa and grabbed one of the logbooks. He tried to appear as calm as Cassi even as his heart thundered so loudly, he was sure it was audible across the room. In the end, he couldn’t resist looking up at the sound of footsteps on the tile floor.
The Archive’s latest visitor was dressed as elaborately as any other in the Foredistrict, but with a distinctive red suit and an opal on the pommel of his knife.
“You,” said an all-too-familiar voice, “are not supposed to be here.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Director Kyan Wolfram’s expression was livid, and he even reached for the hilt of his knife.
Before the tension could escalate, Cassi rose from her seat and inclined her head in respect to the board member. Only then did he seem to register her presence, his scrunched-up features relaxing minutely as they took in the attractive and well-dressed woman across from Corun.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Cassi said.
“Are you sure?” he said, eyeing her up and down. “You look familiar.”
“You’ve likely seen me accompanying scholar Jasper,” Cassi said, smiling in a way that infuriated Corun for a reason he could not explain. “I’m weeks away from completing my tutelage.”
“Jasper,” he said, the name eliciting a flash of recognition on his face. “That old man’s still teaching?”
Cassi’s confidence didn’t falter. “Not so much anymore these days, but he always makes time for me. He was the one who asked me to show Corun around the Archives.”
“Why allow him into the Archives?” he asked, his expression darkening as if only just remembering Corun was sharing the room with them.
“Well, you were there weren’t you? Last night when the chairman appointed him honorary archivist?”
“Chairman Bertran did say that, yes, but being an honorary archivist doesn’t mean . . .” He paused as he saw the pin on Corun’s collar. “Where did you get that?”
Even Cassi turned to him, her eyebrows raised in question.
Corun supposed it was his turn to fabricate a lie, but it didn’t come nearly so easy to him as with Cassi. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people from the Foredistrict he’d spoken to. Then, he remembered one of them. She was one of the chairman’s administrative assistants, and he had asked her about her electric headlamp that morning at the mines. Wolfram may have even seen them speaking.
“One of the chairman’s assistants handed it to me this morning. She said all archivists had to have one. When I asked for directions to the Archives, she gave me the name of Jasper, and he asked, uhh, Miss Hali here to show me.”
“I bet it was Lantha. She shouldn’t have done that. Archivist titles are given to distinguished scholars, not handed out like shares to the poor. Give it here.”
Corun shot Cassi a nervous glance, but her expression was as unreadable as before. Slowly, he stood and unclipped the pin and placed it on the table between them.
Huffing in annoyance, Wolfram stalked forward to swipe up the golden pin. He examined it, perhaps to certify it was genuine, and placed it in a pocket within his suit jacket.
“Why are you here? Can you even read?” Glancing at all the maps strewn on the table, he shook his head. “No, I suppose you don’t have to read to look at maps.”
“I can read just fine,” Corun responded. “And why are you here? To fabricate more history?” He couldn’t resist the barb but regretted it as soon as it left his lips.
Wolfram’s expression darkened. “I suggest you leave. If I see you again, you won’t be getting away so easily.”
Corun swallowed the lump in his throat and gave Cassi one last glance.
She still looked completely indifferent to his plight, which comforted him more than he expected. If he had done something she didn’t want him to do, she would have intervened. She still had a plan. He had to believe that.
Still, he expected her to follow him as he made his way to the door. Instead, her voice, sickeningly sweet, sounded out behind him as if through a smile.
“Mind if I stick around for a little while? It’s been so long since I’ve been in here. I miss the smell of the old books.”
“I wouldn’t say no to the company of a beautiful woman,” Wolfram said, his voice oozing with a smug satisfaction. “And you’ll be able to appreciate the smell better without him here.”
Her snickering laughter was the last thing Corun heard as the door closed behind him.
He scowled at the compliance officer outside, who, true to his word, patted down his pockets the moment he exited. The guard’s smug smile was more irritating than the search, and Corun endured both with his jaw clenched. He was a few buildings away before his temper cooled.
“She has a plan,” he said to himself. “She always has a plan.”
Instead of continuing his retreat to the Reardistrict, he stopped at the nearest café.
The server looked appalled to find Corun standing at the threshold, a common laborer, if recently bathed. Fortunately, there were no rules explicitly forbidding a laborer from dining there, so she took his order with a tense smile. Her expression relaxed slightly when Corun asked to sit at a table outside. Not for the first time, he wondered if he really did smell bad.
Handing over the remaining shares he’d earned the day before, he took a seat at one of the two small tables outside the entrance to the café. From there, he had a good view of the Archives.
A few minutes later, the server brought out a small cup of orzo and a cookie. The drink wasn’t any better than what he brewed himself from low-quality barley every morning. The thoughts of one day opening a café of his own and running this place out of business provided a pleasant if momentary distraction from wondering what was going on within the Archives.
Thirty minutes later, the lights on the street dimmed to indicate the end of shift, but there was still no sign of Cassi. With nothing but time to think, his imagination was running wild. According to Cassi, Wolfram had a history of sexual harassment. What if she was counting on Corun to rescue her from the situation?
As he was concocting an excuse to tell the guard in the hope he would let Corun back in, the door to the Archives opened. Wolfram stepped down from the door to the street and struck off toward the front of the city, his steps hurried. He no longer wore his suit jacket, and Corun hated to think what that meant.
A little over a minute later, the door opened again.
Cassi stepped out, the board member’s red suit jacket draped over her shoulders and held together in front of her. She exchanged a few words with the guard, her bright smile visible from where Corun stood.
Then she headed down the street in the opposite direction of Wolfram.
Corun stood from his table at the café and hurried to get ahead of her. When they were far enough away from the Archives, he slowed his pace until she closed the distance.
“What happened in there?” Corun asked.
“That man was not interested in scholarship, I can tell you that,” she said, her voice thick with disgust.
“He didn’t try anything?” Corun asked, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Cassi.
“Of course he tried something. But I’m not so easy. I told him I was parched, and he eagerly ran off to fetch us some liquor to ease my thirst . . . and inhibitions.”
“What did you say to the guard?”
“To tell Director Wolfram I was going home to freshen up, and that I’d return shortly. That should keep him waiting long into the night.”
He let out a long, relieved breath.
Cassi chuckled. “I’m flattered that you worried about me, honestly. But I’ve been dealing with people like him all my life. I can take care of myself.”
An awkward silence fell over them as Corun struggled to come up with a reply. Abandoning the subject after a long minute when nothing came to him, he instead indicated the jacket over her shoulders.
“He’s bound to notice that missing.”
“Let’s hope that’s all he notices is missing,” she said with a mischievous smile. Her hands, which had been holding the two ends of the jacket together at her chest, opened wide. Tucked under one arm was a small stack of papers, her notes on the city’s heading. Under the other was a map wrapped around a familiar wax cylinder.
“You’ve outdone yourself,” Corun said when his laughter subsided.
“To think, if not for him stopping by and leaving his jacket, we would have had no way of smuggling these past the compliance officer,” she said, concealing her spoils from view once again.
“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person to accept our gratitude, though I’m sure the other members of the board would love to hear about his complicity.”
“Trust me, from what I’ve seen of the other directors’ dirty laundry, this is a drop in the bucket. Their corruption is matched only by their incompetence. The only ones without an ounce of either in recent years were my parents, who were summarily stripped of their titles and branded as criminals.”
He nudged her lightly with an elbow. “I’m sure they would be proud of you,” he said with a smirk. “Criminal that you are.”
She continued staring at the ground as they walked, but Corun glimpsed a soft smile from behind her dark amber locks.
They received a few odd looks as they made their way through the farms, but with the lights dimmed, he hoped they appeared no more suspicious than a lady on her way to a business meeting with a paid escort. Corun had a more imposing figure than any compliance officer.
When they reached her quadruplex, they ducked into her room. Breathless, Cassi shrugged out of the jacket and gently passed the paper cylinder and her notes to Corun.
Last but not least, she pulled her father’s archivist pin from one of the pockets. She smiled at it fondly before hurriedly placing it on a shelf. The jacket itself was dropped to the floor and kicked beneath her bed. Corun smiled at the thought of Wolfram’s pristine suit lying crumpled on a dusty floor inside a laborer’s one-bedroom shack.
Cassi turned to him, her fingers resting lightly on the knot of string behind her neck.
“Can you wait outside? I should only be a few minutes.”
Face flushing, Corun nodded and made his escape.
He felt foolish as he leaned against the side of her quadruplex, thinking of how useless he’d been the past few hours. She had single-handedly conned her way into the Archives and left with more information than they could have hoped for, even if it wasn’t the information they sought. He had been little more than a metal post on which to hang an Archivist’s pin.
Maybe he could cook a meal for her, show her that he was not without talents of his own. Or were her tastes too far removed from his laborer’s palate?
He was pulled from his sour musings when her door opened, and a completely different woman emerged. Her hair, once so meticulously styled, was now pulled back and hidden beneath her hardhat. Her clothes were once again those of a laborer, course-spun cloth dyed with nothing but rock dust and sweat.
“Lead the way,” was all she said. And so Corun did.
His mother’s home and studio were on the far side of the Reardistrict from the barley mill, and when they arrived at her doorstep, Corun found himself wishing Cassi had remained in her disguise. How his mother would have gushed over her.
Celest, used to his knock as she was, didn’t turn around from her work at the throwing wheel when he made his entrance.
“How was your date?” she asked over her shoulder.
Corun froze, his heart threatening to seize within his chest. Cassi’s eyes twinkled when he cast her a horrified glance.
“He was a true gentleman,” Cassi said, her refined voice sounding out of place in the dim, dirty confines of his mother’s studio.
Corun was satisfied to see her spin around in her chair, looking as embarrassed as he felt.
“Oh dear. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting Corun to bring his date back here of all places,” she said, her look saying she expected better of him. “Corun, please introduce us.”
Blushing madly under Cassi’s stare, Corun introduced them, fumbling only slightly when he introduced Cassi by her full name. She had been rather protective of her identity in the past, but if there was anyone she could trust, it was Celest Benton. She didn’t know all the gossip in the Reardistrict by eavesdropping out her window. People came to her window specifically, for who better to keep secrets than a woman who never left her home? To Corun’s knowledge, she had never taken advantage of that trust.
“I’m sorry, I would shake your hand, but it’s a hazard of the trade,” she said, displaying her clay-slicked hand in apology.
Cassi nodded and politely took off her helmet and hung it on a purpose-made hook by the door. While her back was turned, Celest mouthed, So pretty!
“Sorry to bother you, Mom,” he said, eager to change the subject. “I was telling Cassi about your phonograph, and she asked to see it.”
“I have a recording of my own,” Cassi added without a hitch, lifting the paper-wrapped cylinder in her hand. “But I’ve never had a way to listen. Would you mind if we used your phonograph?”
“Oh, not at all. So long as you don’t mind me overhearing. I don’t really get out of the house these days.”
Corun hadn’t told Cassi of his mother’s fear of cave-ins and was glad to see her agree without batting an eye.
