Chapter V
Anna Zoborik's darkroom was cramped and stank of chemicals, but the First Imperial Engineer felt just as at home there as she did anywhere else. She had converted it from a storage cupboard, much to the consternation of her peers, and fitted it with a lock to avoid any old fool wandering in and ruining her work. The aethergraph captured its images on a glass plate, but separating them into anything useful was a trickier task. The final product resembled a collection of projector slides that could be layered over one another, with elements removed and re-ordered to produce the picture she needed.
She worked quickly and efficiently in the dark, selecting chemicals by memory. She lost track of time, her focus so complete that, when she finished, she was surprised to find she was lightheaded with thirst. She shook off the feeling as best she could and rinsed her hands before unlocking the door and heading back to her workshop, the precious slides tucked under her arm.
She flipped the shutters over the workshop windows, casting the room into shadow, and slotted the wafer-thin slides into a special viewing box she had built for precisely this purpose. The flip of a switch made a lightbulb on the inside of the box flicker on. Steeling herself, Zoborik removed her spectacles and peered through an eyepiece in the side of the box.
Together, the slides looked like a jumble of nothing. But as she painstakingly began to remove slides one at a time, pictures formed out of the murk. She discarded the weak ones, the blurry ones - these came from the distant past and unlikely futures. Probability dictated that certain events would likely occur, and the greater the certainty, the clearer the images. Likewise, events in the recent past appeared sharper than ones from distant history. She tossed the rejected slides into a metal bin to be sanded and reused later on. And, ever so slowly, an image began to coalesce out of the fog.
Zoborik's heart beat faster. The picture made no sense. She drew back, rubbing her strained eyes. "I'm seeing things," she whispered. But no, it was exactly as she had thought. There was the dead girl, not yet torn apart like a ragdoll, but Zoborik's attention was fixed on the dark smudge looming over her. If it wasn't so perfectly shaped, she would have assumed she had made a mistake in the darkroom. It was as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut the shape of a man out of the air itself.
Dimly aware that she was grinding her teeth, Zoborik scribbled a note to remind herself which slides she was using, before shuffling them around, trying to form more images to complete the story. It was easier now she knew what she was looking for. Here was the girl running, her face a mask of terror. And there was the shadow, reaching for her as she stumbled up the stairs where she had met her end. Zoborik filled the paper with numbers until she ran out of space, and then she paced the room, trying to wrap her head around what she had seen.
"This is impossible," she muttered to herself. "Impossible."
But it's not, is it? whispered a treacherous part of her. What had Lord Corvo said earlier, when she had tried to explain how the aethergraph worked? Witchcraft. Magia Cienia, as her grandmother used to call it. Zoborik had taken offense at the royal protector's remark - why did people always fear what they didn't understand? - but now she felt her imagination failing her.
She switched off the viewing box and grabbed her coat. She'd promised to contact Watch Captain Sweeney as soon as she had something to show him, and she was a woman of her word. Besides, if she could trust her aethergraph - and she did, implicitly - then he needed to know what he was up against. Even if it didn't make sense to her yet.
•:•:•:•:•:•
The tide was halfway out, the sunset a smear of red cloud at the skyline. The Boy picked his way along the base of the seawall that ran along the banks of the Wrenhaven River. He was near the Old Port district, where the crumbling brick buildings had been knocked down to make way for an esplanade lined with dainty shops and taverns. It was as if, after so many years of stagnation, Dunwall was shedding its skin. Faint laughter and the clinking of glasses reached his ears, carried on the wind.
The Boy kept a hand on the damp, salt-encrusted wall to steady himself. The path - if he could call the narrow ledge a path - was slippery, and he had no desire to end up waist-deep in muddy silt.
For the past year and a half, he had felt himself drawn to the water's edge. Sometimes he came across ragged children searching for treasures in the muck, dropped by tourists or washed downriver from the Estate District. They didn't seem to mind him encroaching on their territory. He told them stories, knowing they would repeat them later, around their cookfires on dark and cold nights. He was keeping his promise to the Whales.
The Whales. He heard them no matter where he went, but it was here, at the seam where the city and sea joined, where their voices were clearest. It was here The Boy had first realised he could talk back.
I feel you there, black-eyed one.
The Whales' song carried with it images, impressions of meaning. The Boy had struggled to make sense of them at first. As the Outsider, he'd been able to converse with them as their equal, or at least, he thought he had. Human memory was a shockingly frail thing. Their image for him was a smudge of pale skin and black clothes, with eyes that seemed to snatch the light from the air and drown it. He wished they saw him as he was now, but to argue with them would be like arguing with the Wrenhaven itself.
You stink of burning. Just like every other human in that blight of a city.
"Better than the smell of the slaughterhouses. Dunwall isn't the most fragrant of cities." The Boy had to speak aloud; another reason he preferred to venture down to the water's level. There was less chance of someone walking past and hearing him carrying on a conversation with himself. People already looked askance at him, put off by the way he moved and the way he talked. He tried to emulate them, but it was as if they felt a piece of the Void clinging to him. Some were drawn to it, but most were frightened by it.
It smells of death. The Whale was angry, or as close to angry as it could be. Its emotions were as alien to The Boy as The Outsider was to the people whose lives he'd once meddled in.
"I know." The Boy sounded petulant, and he hated it. "I'm trying to change things, but I'm only one man." Dunwall was a big place for a man adrift. What could he do against all the Whalers in the empire?
It used to be easy for you.
"That's not who I am anymore." The Boy gripped the wall, knuckles whitening. As if in response, images flooded his mind. Frozen lands where winter clung year round, young Whales driven from warmer waters by the threat of harpoons, only to freeze and sink to the ocean's depths, lost forever. They were unrelenting.
The Boy pressed a hand to his chest as a hollow ache swept through him, dropping to his knees. "Stop," he begged, hating himself for it. "It's too much." He gasped as the hollowness gripped his heart. It stuttered, and his blood turned sluggish in his veins. "You'll kill me!"
So weak, came the disapproving reply. You gave up your power for this? The Boy couldn't respond, only knelt, shivering, as the river lapped at the muddy banks a few feet away.
If you do not hurry, the cities will consume us all. Our stories will be lost. And then the world you claim to love so much will crumble.
A glint of white caught The Boy's eye. He leaned out, his hand reaching over the ledge, before he realised that it was a scrap of Whale bone. A bone charm, painstakingly carved by unknown hands and worn smooth by the sea. Gingerly, he pulled his sleeve down and pulled it free of the silt. It gleamed in the moonlight as he cradled it in his palm. He felt its power through the fabric of his sleeve, that incessant tug that gripped him whenever he came into contact with Whale bone in any form. The Void was still hungry.
A gift, said the Whale. It was mocking him. For when you decide you've had enough of being helpless.
The Boy drew his arm back and hurled the bone charm as hard as he could. It landed in the river with a soft splash and disappeared, carried away by the current.
•:•:•:•:•:•
"What am I meant to be looking at, Anna?" Sweeney had his face pressed to Zoborik's viewing box, but what he saw made no sense. He squinted into the eyepiece, frustration mounting, while Zoborik hovered nearby, trying not to yawn. The First Engineer was a natural at reading the aethergraph's images, but he'd had a lot less practice.
"Unfocus your eyes," said Zoborik. "Focus bit by bit. You'll know when you've got it."
"That's exceptionally unhelpful," Sweeney grumbled, but she was right; out of the murk, shapes were beginning to form. "Is that the girl?"
"It is."
"Then what in the Void is that?" He couldn't point to what he was looking at, but he didn't need to. The workbench creaked as Zoborik leaned closer.
"That is the question, isn't it?"
"If I hadn't seen the girl's body for myself, I'd say it was a ghost." Sweeney drew away from the device and rubbed the dark spots from his vision. "There's only one other way I can think of to create an apparition like that, and I thought all Dunwall's witches had been driven out or hanged."
" Magia Cienia . I was correct." Zoborik looked pale, Sweeney noticed, as if she was unwell.
"Are you alright?"
"Of course," she scoffed, but when she took a step away from the desk, she swayed dangerously. Sweeney grabbed her arm in case she fell.
"Easy," he muttered as she regained her footing. "When was the last time you ate anything?" She made a noncommittal noise, and he sighed. "Damn it, Anna, you can't carry on doing this to yourself."
"I promised you the pictures, didn't I?" she gave him a shaky smile and let him steer her toward a chair.
"Not at the cost of your health. Stay put. I'll make you some tea." Sweeney set about finding two teacups and rinsed them in the sink, then filled her little copper kettle and set it on the stove to boil. He felt the First Engineer's eyes on him, and knew it hadn't escaped her notice that he still knew where everything was.
He poured each of them a cup of tea and added sugar and lemon - no fresh lemons imported from Cullero this time of year, only bottled juice - before carrying Zoborik's cup over to her.
She took a sip and made a face. "How much sugar did you put in this?"
"Enough to keep you from keeling over." Zoborik rolled her eyes at that, but the corner of her mouth curled upwards.
"What will you do next?" she said, when the colour had come back to her cheeks. "You can hardly tell the Watch to keep an eye out for witches and mysterious shadows roaming the streets."
"Not unless I want to start a panic," agreed Sweeney. He ran the pad of his thumb across his knuckles - they were beginning to ache again, a sure sign that he was in for a rough night. "I'll send a notice to my superiors recommending they send more patrols to the area. As if we didn't have plenty to worry about with the strikes all over the city."
Zoborik bared her teeth in a grimace, though whether it was the subject at hand or the sweetness of her tea, Sweeney couldn't tell.
"Well, it is as they say, with that ridiculous Dunwall expression. 'When it rains, it pours.'"
•:•:•:•:•:•
To say the mood in the safehouse was subdued would be an understatement. Huddled around the stove, the crew sat in grim silence as they ate their evening meal of jellied eels and toast. The Boy was curiously absent, but no one seemed to think it unusual. At least Jennie seemed in good spirits, as she gave the room a blow-by-blow commentary of Billie's fight against the strikebreakers.
"And then she went whoooooosh!" she mimed whirling a sword in one hand, her other arm held to her chest. "And then - hyah! - she stabbed the big cove in the leg, and-"
"As if you saw anything through the smoke," Dubosc muttered. Jennie fixed him with a scowl.
"I could see!" she retorted, pointing her imaginary sword into his face. "And you're welcome, by the way. If Ms. Ames hadn't told me to keep a lookout, you'd be well and truly fu-"
"-Language," chided Ames, her tone sharp. She had merely picked at her food, seemingly lost in thought. She set her plate aside with a sigh.
"Today was a disaster," she said, lifting her voice so the others turned to look at her. "But we can't let the strikebreakers threaten us into silence. This show of force is proof that their masters are worried. We're putting pressure on them, and the cracks are starting to show."
A murmur of agreement suffused the room, but Billie kept her head down. Most of them weren't there when the riot broke out. They hadn't heard the screams as the strikebreakers opened fire on the unarmed crowd. They hadn't seen the way the Watch had cleared out right before it all boiled over, and she doubted Ames would bring that particular detail up.
"An' what if the Metalsmiths' Guild won't listen to us, after that riot?" someone interrupted, breaking into Billie's thoughts.
"I will deliver our demands to them by letter," said Ames firmly. "I won't rest until they have given us their response. When that happens, we will decide on our next course of action."
Billie let herself fade out of the discussion once more. Ames had paid well for her work today, but it was nowhere near enough to resupply the Knife of Dunwall . The Boy had shown her the meagre stash he kept squirreled away in his room, but it didn't feel right to use it. They'd never talked about the kind of life he'd had before… well, before , but if it was anything like Billie's, she knew every coin felt like a fortune.
Dunwall was a big place, though. There were always people looking for black market contacts, or someone to collect on debts. She'd done worse. It would take a while, but if she got the ship operating again, she could make plenty of coin by smuggling goods into Gristol and Morley. Maybe even enough to retire on. She could track down Sokolov, wherever he was. The idea of introducing him to The Boy made her chuckle inwardly.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and Jennie darted to the door, mouth full of Billie's unwanted dinner. The doorman, Ted, had gone off in search of his missing sister, and so it had fallen on the girl to look after it. She peered through the keyhole.
"Storyteller!" She unlocked the deadbolts, and a moment later The Boy appeared in the doorway. "You'll never guess what happened today! We was attacked by strikebreakers, a whole gang of 'em, and Ms. Foster was all-" she launched into another series of gestures and sound effects, as The Boy met Billie's gaze, concern clouding his face.
"Strikebreakers?" he echoed. Billie shrugged, hoping he wouldn't press the matter. Nothing I couldn't handle.
"And where have you been, Storyteller?" sneered Dubosc. When The Boy turned his way, Billie caught fathoms-deep dislike in his gaze.
"Out," he said simply. Something unspoken seemed to pass between the two of them. Dubosc was the first to look away, with a shiver.
"That boy's not natural," he muttered, loud enough for Billie to hear. She pointedly ignored him, though The Boy's expression unnerved her. She had believed he'd learned to hide those depths of himself, well enough to find himself a place among this rag-tag bunch of agitators and outcasts. Had something changed in him since last night, or had her fondness for him blinded her to his peculiarities?
The Boy didn't linger in the common room, only gave her a nod and left for his quarters. She couldn't begrudge him that - she recognised armour when she saw it. She waited until people started to wander off to their rooms before getting up.
A wary voice in her head warned her to be careful when Ames followed her into the hallway.
"I owe you my thanks, Ms. Foster," said the older woman, carefully shutting the door behind her. "For protecting my crew against the strikebreakers." Billie shrugged a shoulder, and hoped Ames would take that as a sign she didn't want to talk.
"You already paid me." Her voice was huskier than usual; a side-effect of breathing Jennie's smoke cloud.
"And there's plenty more coin where that came from, with skills like yours. Not a prizefighter," she added with a smirk. "You would put Dunwall's best pugilists to shame."
"I don't know," said Billie, folding her arms. "Working for you sounds like a whole mess of trouble. In case you've forgotten, there are strikebreakers paying off the City Watch."
Ames made a humming sound, with a thoughtful tilt of her head. "Did you actually see any money change hands?" Billie thought back to the paper the strikebreakers had handed to the Watch captain, and his defeated look as he ordered his men to leave.
"Not as such," she said slowly.
"Then they must have something even more powerful than a bribe. Something the Watch is scared of."
"Who in the Void are you working for, Ames? What kind of shit have you got me mixed up in?"
"How many times do I have to tell you? I don't trust you enough to divulge that."
"Then I'm out." Billie spun on her heel and headed for the stairs. "And if your crew has any sense, they should be, too."
"Wait." Ames' voice was low, urgent. She cast a quick glance at the closed door. "I work for Cora Rothwild." Billie stilled, with one foot on the bottom step. "Yes, that Rothwild," Ames said, correctly inferring that Billie recognised the name. What she didn't know was that Billie didn't just recognise it - it was imprinted on her memory like indelible ink.
"And why in the Void would Bundry Rothwild's daughter, the head of the biggest Whaling company in the Empire, hire a known agitator and saboteur?" And the woman who nearly took apart everything her father built, she wanted to add.
"Keep your voice down! It's simple, really. Miss Rothwild has a hundred times more business sense than her old man ever did. She offers her workers the best pay and the safest working conditions anywhere in this Void-forsaken city."
Which isn't saying much, I'd bet, thought Billie.
"While every other Whaling magnate in Dunwall struggles to keep their workers from outright revolting, Rothwild's factories produce enough Whale oil to keep the city running. More than enough, if she can corner the market. And when she solves the shortage crisis? Imagine!"
Billie had turned to stare at Ames with her good eye, but now she uttered a humourless laugh. "Stupid," she said, shaking her head. "I should have realised there was more to all this than fighting for the working class." Workers' rights. Fair pay. Rot, all of it.
"Oh, the cause is worth fighting for, believe me." There was a glint in Ames' eyes that Billie hadn't seen before. She closed the distance between them. Billie tensed, her hand flexing on the banister; she hated feeling boxed in. "My crew will fight for the working man until the bitter end. But they're idealists - I'm the one with the drive and the funds to see their dreams actually come to anything."
"So what you're saying is you're doing the right thing for the wrong reasons."
"For fuck's sake, Foster!" Ames snapped, her Dunwall accent broadening despite herself. "You should know the right reasons don't pay for bribes and make up for lost wages! Without Rothwild backing me, none of us would be here, let alone gaining support in Parliament!"
Billie had never been a sentimental woman - you didn't survive on the streets long unless you silenced the part of you that longed for what you'd lost. And what Ames was saying did have a twisted kind of logic. Dunwall ran on Whale oil, blood, and Coin. The rest was merely a matter of leverage.
"If you've got coin, I'll work," she told her, "but try to bullshit me again, and I'm done. You'll have to find some other poor fool with a sword to fight your battles for you." She didn't wait for an answer, but turned back to the stairs and began the climb to the rooftop.
Seeing Ames in this light wasn't disappointing - to be disappointed, she would have had to expect better of her to begin with. But it made a whole lot more sense. She only hoped The Boy understood what Ames' game was.
She also hoped he was still awake, she thought as she reached the roof, and that he had something better than jellied eels to eat.
•:•:•:•:•:•
Emily had been to every major city in her empire. She'd walked through sun-drenched vineyards, explored every forgotten inch of Karnaca, swam in palace pools, and looked out at starkly beautiful Tyvian glaciers from the deck of a navy ship. But of all the places she had been to, the roof of Dunwall tower would always be her favourite.
She shared it with two others. The first was Corvo, who taught her to balance on roof shingles, jump gaps without faltering, and trained her to fix her gaze on the horizon, rather than at the ground hundreds of feet below. The second was Wyman, who didn't love the experience, but did love Emily enough to tolerate the wind whipping through their hair and the alarmingly sheer drop on every side.
"I never get tired of that view," they said, when the two of them reached the side of the tower that overlooked the Wrenhaven. They wrapped their arms around Emily's shoulders, drawing her close. They were exactly the right height to rest their chin atop her head - an opportunity they took whenever possible. Emily didn't mind - they fit together perfectly.
"I used to run away from my lessons and hide up here," she said, snuggling into the warmth of Wyman's jacket. "I don't remember nearly freezing to death, though."
"We could find somewhere warmer." Wyman's breath tickled her ear as their fingertips danced over Emily's signet ring. "I happen to know a place…"
"...and that's the first place father will look for us," answered Emily. She tilted her head to catch Wyman's eye. "Unless you enjoy awkward dinner conversations…"
Wyman made a face. "No, you're right. Wouldn't want to give the old boy a heart attack."
"What did I tell you about calling him 'old boy'?"
"That he'll hang me out of the clock tower by my ankles?"
"Yes, yes he will."
They allowed themselves a little longer, watching the river below them turn from pinkish grey to black as evening drew in. One by one, street lamps flickered on, lighting the streets with their unearthly glow. Other parts of the city remained in darkness, and the effect was rather like patchwork. Wyman reached into their pocket and drew out the scyphic lamp they had pilfered to light their way.
"We should head back for dinner," said Emily, "before father comes looking for us."
"Actually, there was something I wanted to say. To ask you, I mean." The scyphic lamp floated past their nose and they pushed it away impatiently. "It's just that, well, we have courted for some time. A long time, actually. A very long time." Wyman's accent was getting plummier by the second, a sure sign something was up. Emily extricated herself from their arms.
"You're starting to worry me," she said. Wyman squirmed and set about straightening their sleeves - a nervous habit they usually reserved for public speaking.
"I was thinking, perhaps… perhaps we ought to make it official. That is... oh, rats. I'm messing this up." They swallowed nervously and sank to one knee. "Emily. Your Majesty. I love you. Will you marry me?"
Emily couldn't help it. She burst out laughing.
Wyman looked pained. "What?"
"I'm sorry, love. It's just-" Emily took their hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, before pulling them to their feet. "I was going to propose to you."
"You... you were?" Wyman said, dazedly. "Is that allowed?"
"Of course it's allowed." Emily lifted her chin. "I'm the empress."
"Oh, I see." A blush had crept its way across Wyman's freckled cheeks. "Well then. I apologise for ruining it." They bit their lip. "I mean, you still can. Propose. To me. If you want."
She clasped their hand between hers, and drew a quiet breath. "Wyman. Your Grace." She looked up into their earnest face. "Will you marry me?"
Wyman's smile could have powered all of the rail carriages in Dunwall. "You know, your majesty, I think I will," they said, and kissed her.