Chapter 12: Chapter 12

The placard read, "These stone tablets were excavated from the same island chain. Judging by their unified art style, they appear to have been made by the same tribe or clan."

Jacob could have flattened his face against this glass.

He was going with it—these tablets were not a hoax. They were real and they were just one step away from revelatory.

Bits of pictorial, top-to-bottom script surrounded drawings of people in profile. People native to the sky (if Sir Huxley and his placard writers were to be believed) (which Jacob decided they were).

A weaver at a long, spidery loom. Farmers planting seeds in a line, flanked by crystal.

A potter shaping clay that made him wonder about the golden ball again.

And then, placed triumphantly at the end of the line, the tablet that was longest and closest to complete.

It depicted a line of people, some kneeling, some raising their hands. Though they wore the same clothes on their bodies, some wore elaborate fur hats or bulbous crowns. One had webbed feet. One had angel's wings.

They were standing and kneeling along a low, gradual staircase. Everything about it suggested that these people of the sky were worshiping the being on the far right.

Which was chipped off.

"Hi!" Pip said. Not to him. This Citizens of the Sky exhibit, though small for lack of impressive samples to show off, was popular and buzzing. That gave Pip a lot of people to say "hi" to.

They still ignored her. Occasionally someone would skip over Pip and go right to Jacob, expressing condolences for the "inconvenience" last night. Every time, he accepted these curtly, then awkwardly mentioned Prince Oraias.

This one was an elderly woman in lavender. She laid an unwelcome hand on Jacob's shoulder, and he turned halfway. "Terribly sorry about last night," she said. "I've have attempts on my life. Several. I'm the Duchess of Hollow, by the way."

Thank goodness she'd introduced herself. Otherwise, her callous boasting about her own popularity would've gone to waste. "It's nothing," he said, "but what really troubles me is the gift basket I got from some guy I barely know. You've heard of Prince Oraias?"

She wrinkled her already-prunish face. "I try not to."

"Wow, we agree on something."

She gave him a death glare, then marched away. Jacob was in no mood to be nice to ladies, no matter how old. Pip reflected that if she'd brought any candy, she would've thrown one to the poor duchess.

Soon the two were back in transit, going from the Citizens of the Sky exhibit to the City of Tomorrow—mostly for Pip's sake.

"Jacob, I can't believe I'm better at good manners than you!" Pip cried.

"Why's that hard to believe? I was raised to have fine manners, doesn't mean I have to follow through. If you're rude, you don't eat."

"Wouldn't manners help, though?"

"Not as much as you'd think. A predator on the hunt isn't going to get much meat if they're nice."

Pip was...troubled by his choice of metaphor. She didn't argue with it, though, because she found another thread to pull on. "What are you saying? You hunt much?"

He didn't reply.

"Aha! Ha!" She pointed with her free hand. "I don't get to say 'I caught you' often, but I like to! You have hobbies! Say more!"

"You didn't catch me at anything. It's free information," he said, blase. "The only part that isn't free is how I killed it, but, no real harm in telling you."

Pip's smile twitched, a sign that it was being stretched across her face too tightly.

Jacob lowered his voice as a fresh crowd of particularly loud people walked past. He said, "I do hunt casually. Most princes do. You have to know that part—I mean, that's a big reason why you lower classes can only hunt so much and so often every year: so that we can kill the best while all our friends come over and watch."

"Yeah," she said, shrugging.

"But there've been a few times when I took a hunting trip with Malcolm. For big game, you could say. Dangerous game."

"Like dragons?"

"Once, a dragon."

Pip stomped her foot. "No," she said incredulously. "I was being sarcastic."

"Well, don't be, it's true."

Jacob was blushing and he didn't even know it.

"I bet I know why you don't want this getting out. You don't wanna be famous!"

"Sort of. I don't wanna compromise my side job by drawing attention to my..." He sighed heavily. "Heroic exploits."

"Why are you sighing?" Pip elbowed him in the ribs, which hurt more than he wanted to admit. "That's amazing! Especially for someone as lackluster as you." As a hint toward systemlessness, that last word "lackluster" was this close to subtle.

"There's no nobility among royals. If there ever was a golden age, it is long gone. If people found out I'd done it, they'd accuse me of acting for the worst, most selfish reasons—vanity, glory, political maneuvering. They would never shut up about it. I don't want my good deeds to be recognized. I don't even want to see them as good or bad. When something pisses me off—dragon or otherwise—I either ignore it or get rid of it."

"I guess I'll never understand you," Pip said.

Now they were stepping inside the City of Tomorrow, land of the washing machines Pip craved, and yet all she could think of was how willing she'd be to embrace the title and persona of a great hero, given the chance.

And since they were so close to crowds, Jacob finished his story by dropping his voice and getting close to Pip's ear: "You've heard of the Elgrahan Wyvern?" She nodded, and he continued. "I went out that way pretending I had business elsewhere. Disguised as a no-name. This was when I first met Malcolm—he was off to hunt the monster, but he was so green that he would've died if not for me going the same way. He called me out immediately as a prince, said my gestures gave it away. Mortifying. But also why we became partners."

Famously, the wyvern wasn't killed by a sword. By all accounts, it hadn't been killed by anything. Mysterious means had done it in. An illness? A spell?

"A needle of friam jammed far into its ribs. That's how I killed it. At the time, most people didn't know you could shape friam instantly that way."

"But even a needle," Pip whispered, "should've left a hole!"

Jacob huffed. Talking about this made him feel wormy and impatient. "Not on a dead body," he said. "Skin shrank. Scales closed the hole. Now, come on, this one's your exhibit."

A vision of techno-utopia awaited. Everywhere, wood merged with sparkling, polished metal and glass globes of active magic. Aetham glowed behind hard black screens, telling the time. An animatronic arm, churning smoke and pumping pistons, moved a futuristic kind of broom called a vacuum. Advanced refrigerators got their own section. So did dollhouses with their own working dynam fires, guaranteed small enough to never burn the dollhouse down. (Yeah right.)

The washing machines got a lineup to themselves. Pip crouched and drew her hand across the bubble-shaped window, marveling at the distorted shapes of clothes inside as they tumbled, tumbled, tumbled...

A few seconds later, she got bored.

Fifteen seconds later, she found herself in a tantalized, trance-like state.

Jacob had the, um, fortune to crouch next to her as this happened.

As his ears picked up something familiar...

He rose, expecting Pip to feel the motion and follow. She didn't, meaning Jacob was standing and turned one-eighty degrees around while Pip stayed motionless. Like a dog on a short leash tied to a tree, Jacob stopped.

He gave her a kick with his heel.

She felt it. "Mnnrgh!"

Yep, he heard right: a chatty posse nearby was sharing snippets of poetry, including a lyric by Prince Oraias. If Jacob were any pettier, he'd mentally call him something rude yet uncreative, like Bastard Oraias. Thankfully, Pip was right and he was the true, insult-less hero of our age.

Now, how to hatchet himself into this conversation...

Jacob dragged Pip onward. A few steps later, he felt a tingling in his legs that he knew was the sign of oncoming tremors, so he left a gap between himself and the crowd that was unusually wide. They could chalk it up to generalized eccentricity.

"Hey," he said, his voice booming to be heard by the crowd. "that's one of my favorite poems."

They clammed up, and a third of them turned to face him.

He sensed a silent demand: Prove it.

"All about the futility of man. The tree struck by lightning is such a powerful metaphor for our condition. And the extended interstitial ballad about boozing—I'm not ashamed to say I nearly cried."

One woman, wearing a jaunty beanie, approached Jacob and Pip. Most of this little Oraias Fan Club was women, perhaps because most people were straight. Pip waved despite this. The woman ignored her, turned to Jacob, and said, "That was one of his early works, you know?"

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"There's an intensity there that he hasn't quite matched since."

Her gaze wandered, a tiny sign that she wasn't satisfied.

Jacob continued, "Nowadays, his writing is a lot more subtle, refined." (That was bullshit, it could've applied to any artist.) "And you know what else? He's really a stand-up guy. Sent me a gift last night in sympathy. I'm Prince Jacob, if you somehow don't know...this is my maid..."

Pip had only a half-second of recognition, but she took it with a half-second of aplomb.

"...and I'm actually curious about..." He found a euphemistic way to put it. "The wonderful world of Prince Oraias. Who is he, really?"

Another woman's face lit up. "I was his mistress for sixty-two days!" she splooged. The rest of the crowd smiled gently upon her, as if she were their adulterous daughter and they couldn't be prouder of what she'd done. "My prince is...complicated. He's hard, but soft. He can be cruel, but he's also tormented."

That zodiac sign fit anyone. "Huh, interesting."

"He doesn't let a lot of people in. Since he doesn't speak. he exposes most of his soul in his writing." She sighed wistfully. "I heard he makes unique sign languages with all his closest lovers..."

"Wait, what?"

Surprised whispers of "he doesn't know?" went through the group like an electric charge.

"He's a duelist! A loner at heart! You know that."

"Yeah, I just didn't know the part about him taking an entire vow of silence."

"It wasn't a vow, it was an accident. A knife. It tore his throat like this." She drew a line down her own, right down the middle, and Jacob got the sickening image of a cut fish.

"Amazing. I'm impressed. How can he retain power like that? I mean, a prince without Curse and Persuade?"

She got a woozy look on her face. "The sheer strength of his poetry."

Another woman chipped in, "And right after he lost them, he wrote that he was glad for the loss—never felt like a prince anyway."

"And what's even more fascinating," yet another woman said, "is that he dabbles in the occult."

"What? Okay, slow down, why didn't I know he had so many layers!?"

He searched his memories. If the Circle of Darkness was an occult group, it was only one of dozens across the land. Since "occult" was defined as "anything claiming to pertain to magic or systems which, in fact, does not"—which was a crappy definition, but the best one this world got—occult groups were, by definition, failures. They could never be relevant except in the level of poetry or debauchery they attained.

It would make sense if Jacob never knew about this one...or if he once learned but discarded that fact as useless.

...Not so useless if the Circle of Darkness happened to be right, but leaving that possibility aside...

...Man, how could these people continue to respect someone who was always leaving a string of broken hearts and constantly getting mysticism wrong?

"Because you're not erudite?" a dude said.

"Amazing!" Jacob cried. "Clearly I need to research this man more!"

"And I'd be happy to do it with you!" Pip cried in chorus.

Then, as they started walking off, she muttered, "No wonder you don't try kindness so often. It's so unnatural!"

Only because you know me well enough to tell, he said to himself.

***

"Jacob, sir, this...isn't an exhibit."

"It is if I want it to be. Hey!" he said with a brisk nod toward the captain and co-captain of the Known World's Fair. They were still engaged in skysailing.

Breaking into this cabin had been easy: a few imposing guards had stopped them at the door, but when Jacob told them he was friends with Sir Huxley and Sir Huxley actually confirmed it by radio, they let up.

The room was small, but the round, spoked steering wheel was huge, dominating the long steering console. Buttons, levers, switches, and pulls studded the rest.

Captain Micus and Co-Captain Eirdre looked much less haggard than the abnormality checker down in the sewers. They didn't have to do anything magical, but Jacob surmised that by using the console, they sent commands to those that did.

"Would you mind setting the skyship to 'idle' for a minute or so?"

"You're more than welcome to!" the captain said as she and her partner rose with their hands up. Uncertain whether the prince would prefer to have them out of the room or in it, they hovered at the doorway.

Jacob and Pip slid into the chairs. Thanks to the wheel, Jacob's had to be significantly higher and further back than Pip's.

Pip wondered, "Are we just here because you like skysailing?"

"As far as Sir Huxley has to know. But it's more about testing every eventuality."

Pip's eyes widened. "You're assuming you'll have to steer the ship?"

Jacob's eyes were trained on the console as he fiddled, gently, with every knob he could find. Fiddling gently. It's possible. "Not exactly, but I'll be kicking myself if I don't even attempt it. Besides, it's more about evacuation.

"There are smaller skyboats inside of this one—lifeboats. And while they run on the same principles, every skycraft manufacturer uses their own unique version of the mechanisms. They don't even use the same words to describe the same parts. That's basically the biggest reason I'm not a skysailing nerd: it gets complicated, but not in a good way."

"So the console here," Pip said, slathering her hand across the controls, "looks like almost nothing else, except its own child-boats."

"Yeah."

"I think you're just here because you hate interacting with others."

"Uh...that too—"

"Captain and co-captain!" Pip called out. "We love skyships! Would you please take us on a guided tour through all these buttons and things?"

But no one was there...

...because they reappeared moments later with the captain saying, "Radio from Sir Huxley. He says he wants to see you in his private café. It's about the affair last night."

"Oh, nice. Tell him I'll be there soon."

This could present a good opportunity, Jacob figured. In fact, in gaps of idle time during his museum walk, he'd been brainstorming what he might say to him on their next meeting. How he might try and inch closer to the truth about systems.

"Oh! And there's—please forgive me, Prince Jacob—there's a message that we actually received from the ground, from Alzeny."

Jacob's heart stopped.

Castle Alzeny didn't just "send a message." This could've been anything. A coup. A rampage. A sudden assassination. The start of war, collapse—

The captain, who was suddenly short of breath, took a piece of paper from the co-captain and noisily unfolded it.

"It says, 'How's the weather in the old heavens? Lovely time down here. Signed, King John the First and Queen Liza.'"

...Okay, so this time his parents did just..."send a message."

Unless it was code for—

No, no, don't take your mind in circles, thought Jacob, fuck, calm down.

Jacob's face took on a glazed, unreadable expression. Pip slid a baffled and sympathetic arm around his.

"...Oh, I should mention," the captain added with a cough, "this message was recorded five days ago."

Of course. Jacob remembered now: messages could be wired to the sky using the exciting and game-breaking technology that was radio. All such messages in Alzeny were processed by the same company for exorbitant fees. (The processing time was why it took five days.) So even if the message had been something war-related, it would only have come about a century too late to remain relevant.

Jacob didn't shoot the messengers, but he only gave them the most perfunctory thanks.

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