Chapter 22: Chapter 21

“We’ll be rid of that chair,” Sheena said as I limped out of the shower. “You seemed to have an awful time with it.”

“It was…hard…to push,” I sighed. “I’m kind of weak I guess.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” She smiled and patted me on the head. “your mind is where the worth is to be found.”

I limped across the floor and sat down on one of the benches, letting a small moan of relief escape my lips as the pressure was alleviated from my ankle. Off in the distance, I heard the broken showerhead sputter again.

“Will they ever fix that?” I looked to Sheena who stood leaning against the door to the locker room.

“They’re trying, I think,” Sheena shrugged. “I talked to Parsifal, he said it’s the convection mechanism.”

“Everything is steam powered,” I rolled my eyes. “Surely they can figure that out.”

“In the past, perhaps,” She said. “but now there is a new power source. They’ve been working on it these past thirty years or so. They call it ‘Arctesonite’. I just call it ‘Arc’. Whatever that means. Parsifal hates it. It convectifies the water faster, but it has these…surges, can’t really control them.”

“So it makes the shower head sputter? Just that one?”

“All of them, on occasion. If you stand in here long enough and watch,” Sheena shrugged. “Just that you always see that one. Happens with the lights too. Works most days, but if you pay really close attention, you’ll see a light dim, here or there. Most people aren’t paying close enough attention but servants see everything.”

“Apparently not me.”

“Apparently not.”

As I pulled my work dress from the foot locker, Sheena stopped me and pulled out a dull blue one instead. She helped me into it and then gestured to an empty chair she’d set up near the bed. I dutifully climbed over and sat down, wincing slightly as I momentarily put weight on my ankle. She walked behind the chair and and gently ran a brush through my hair; I closed my eyes and relaxed. 

“This is getting long,” She observed. “I rather like it.”

She was right; my hair had reached below my shoulders and I had a vague memory of my ‘father’ making crude comments about it when I’d started growing it out in Axock. Fortunately I was unable to recall any specifics. It was scary, feeling my memories of Micah Lavoric fade, but exciting that I was becoming more of Lyra. Many of my inhibitions were fading along with the memories; things that I’d been hesitant to do because of them being overtly feminine now came naturally to me. I closed my eyes and let Sheena continue to run the brush through my hair; she held her hand to the side of my head, tilting it ever so slightly, and then finishing up as she hummed to herself. 

“The physician said you should be able to walk on it in a few days,” She said idly as she stepped around the chair and began to apply the cosmetics. “I want to get you away from toilets. Mayhap convince Marcella to let you in the kitchen.”

“I already work kitchen,” I said, not realizing what she meant.

“Aye well, mayhap you’ll cook; I don’t want to see my sister scrubbing lavatories.”

“Would that not be nepotism?”

“In the extreme,” She laughed. “But I can make a good case for it, should anyone ask. Come, stand up, we can’t be late.”

“Do you think I could work again soon?” I asked her, probably a bit too eagerly.

“Why is it that you are so anxious to work?” She laughed. “I appreciate this new side of you but do take a rest when it is offered!”

“I don’t like sitting around,” I sighed. “I just…I want to do something.”

“You are doing something now, are you not?” She smiled, indicating the corridor we currently walked down. We were moving in the direction of the Octagon and I was moving painfully slow. 

“I mean something import- you know what I mean, Elder Sister,” She eyed me with her head half-turned. I’d been trying to work on my voice and while she said nothing about it, I was certain that I sounded like a diseased mouse. 

“How old are you, Lyra?” She asked me, her voice delivered with an upward inflection that betrayed her amusement. 

“Seventeen, Elder S-”

“You need not say it every time,” She interrupted me. “I appreciate you making such a wonderful effort but context must be understood. Now in any case, you are seventeen years old, several years below the age of majority, which means you have ample time left to do many things, and that includes scrubbing latrines.”

Though I felt useless, I felt joy at the way we were interacting. There was something about it that made my heart happy, and I couldn’t help but smile a little. She noticed and chuckled. 

“May I ask a personal question, Elder Sist-,” I cut of honorific when she glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t want you to be an automaton, little sister,” She chided. “I want you to respect me but you are your own person. Yes, please, ask your question.”

“What of your family?”

“What of them, Lyra?”

“I was just wondering….what of your inheritance?”

“Lyra,” She said in a lecturing tone. “Do you believe that I will suddenly choose to bow to their whims and simply abandon you?

“No,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean-”

“Honesty, Lyra, we talked about honesty.”

“Yes, I do fear that,” I admitted. “I feel like…like I need you but I also know that it would suck to lose your inheritance.”

“Lyra, I can do just fine without an inheritance,” She insisted. “Don’t worry about me leaving you, you are safe.”

“Thank you, Eld-”

“No.”

We passed through a glass walkway at ground level, and my eyes went wide when I realized we were adjacent to the Vice. The buildings just outside the walk way were the color of copper save for their blue shingled roofs, and most of them I had only seen from the walkway above. I was prepared to ask Sheena where we were going when it occurred to me that we were back in the medical wing - just in a different part. 

Walking with the crutches was exhausting and my armpit began to grow sore, so I neglected to ask Sheena any more questions and concentrated on my forward momentum instead. 

“You worry unnecessarily,” Sheena said; she could sense my concern growing. “My father has no wish to lose a daughter, he will change his mind.”

“And if he doesn’t?” I asked quickly; avoiding talking as much as possible.

“My father is many things, Lyra, but a man of conviction, he is not. He will come to regret his actions, and then he will convince himself that he was wrong with help or not. And, if he does not, then there are a great many people in Klocby who have managed to get by without a sizeable inheritance.”

We stepped into a lobby with copper-paneled walls and brown tile floor polished to a sheen. There were several chairs set up in a semi-circle around what appeared to be a low table covered in paper periodicals, but we ignore those and stepped over to a lift. Sheena gripped the brass lever jutting from the wall and pulled it downward; inside the shaft I could hear the grinding of gears and the rumbling of the lift-car making its way down the shaft. Finally, a bell sounded and the trellis door slid aside with several clanks as the sections closed in on themselves. Sheena waved me in and as we stepped inside, she pressed a button on the brass panel, indicating the sixth floor.

“Are you nervous?” She asked me.

“A bit,” I admitted.

“But you still have no idea where we are going.”

“No,” I admitted.

“Had you asked, I would have told you,” She lectured. “There are things you have a right to know.”

I shrugged. She shook her head.

“We will work on this. Lyra I apologize if I had a negative impact on you, but once things are settled, we will discuss what these familial relations mean to you. I don’t want you to fear; know that I will not abandon you, I just want some idea of what you are thinking. Do you understand?”

“I do,” I assured her. The lift came to a halt, and we made our way down a brief hallway. We passed through a door, and suddenly we were standing in a reception area where a woman in servant gray waved us through a door. Clearly we were expected.

“Well hello!” A man with graying hair and gold horn-rimmed glasses greeted us. “Sheena and Lyra, I presume?”

“You presume correctly,” Sheena told him. The man stepped around, behind a mahogany desk and gestured for the two of us to take a seat. The room was a well equipped office complete with towering bookcases that reached the ceiling, a diagram of the human anatomy affixed to what would have been a blank wall, a tall grandfather clock in one corner, ticking down the seconds. 

“The request made of this office, by the High Lady, was unusual, and certainly unorthodox, but also within the realm of possibility. As a servant in the house of Jenwise, Lyra has undergone a full medical screening and from the records we have been able to determine important aspects of her physiology. This can be done. The thought, is for perhaps two days from now?”

“As soon as possible,” Sheena nodded. “Right, Lyra?”

“Uh…” My eyes darted around the room, trying to get at least a hint of what was going on. Sheena could contain herself no longer and burst into laughter.

“I gave you every opportunity to ask!” She said between laughs. “Lyra…I…oh Goddess this is ridiculous.”

“You wanted me to obey the familial traditions!” I argued. “And now that I am-”

“Doctor, please?” Sheena waved to a very confused Caius who shook his head and then adjusted his glasses with one finger.

“Lyra,” He said in a confused tone. “We…the High Lady asked that you be made…more…feminine, so that you would be more comfortable. In two days time, we plan to make that happen, do you understand?”

I frowned. “I already look like a girl, Sheena and Jen, they help me paint my face. Wait, Sheena, do I not look right? We did it right this morning, didn’t we?”

Sheena blinked and then turned to me slowly, her mouth slightly parted as she tried to find the words to describe the situation - or maybe she was confused by my apparent ignorance.

“Lyra,” She said. “when the procedure is done, you will not need cosmetics. You will look as any other girl. Do you understand?”

“What?” I looked from her, then back to Caius who looked to me expectantly. “I don’t…what do you mean?”

“Lyra,” Sheena reached across and squeezed my hand. “I mean that you can awaken every morning and look exactly as you are. You can look in a mirror without paint, and you can truly see yourself. You can be the girl you know you are on the inside. Would that not be wonderful?”

I shook my head again and frowned, trying to assemble the adequate words. 

“This…this is possible?”

“Yes Lyra!” Sheena smiled broadly. “You are not him, and you should not look like him. Do you understand?”

I nodded profusely, completely at a loss for words as I looked into her eyes. Was this really possible? Could this happen? Could they turn me into the girl that I truly believed I was? It seemed impossible and yet…

We stayed for another hour, discussing specifics, such as what sort of face I would want, things I wanted done with the rest of my body. Caius explained that the surgery was far safer than it had been in the past as they now had a sculpting procedure that could be aided by recycled Mah’kur crystals, which meant that it could all be done in less than an hour, and the recovery time would be just a few days. It was amazing news and I was boiling with excitement by the time Sheena and I stepped back into the hallway.

“Lyra,” She said to me as we walked away. “I must return to my work. In two days time you will undergo the procedure and you will become as you are. Today I wish for you to relax and contemplate. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Elder Sister,” I nodded rapidly in agreement. She smiled and touched my cheek. 

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“I am glad, that you are not him, Lyra,” She smiled and left me. I stood there for a moment, contemplating, and then decided to pay a visit to Keniel. It was difficult to make my way across the campus but I found him in his office, hunched over a stack of papers as usual. He gave me only a quick glance as I passed through the doors, hobbling on my crutches. 

“You see that machine over there?” He pointed at one of the six presses off in the corner, beneath a painted-over casement window. “It’s not running. While it’s down, go open that front panel and pull out the bias roller.”

“The bias roller?” I asked him. “What is that?”

“The one near the top, it’ll be coated in green.”

I tossed my crutches aside, getting another glance from Keniel who then simply returned to his work as I hobbled over toward the machine. I tested my leg, putting some weight on it and found that is was bearable if I walked slowly. Once I reached the machine, I gripped the handle on the front and opened a compartment. Inside, I found the roller in question; it was coated in green and after some considerable jostling, I managed to free it from the machine. 

“Aye, that’s all used up,” Keniel said from across the room. “Toss it and take another from the cabinet.”

“I’m having a procedure done, the day after tomorrow,” I told Keniel whose eyes barely left the paper. “They say they can make me look like a girl.”

“You already do, to my eyes,” He muttered. I grabbed the new roller and placed it inside the machine.

“But really, really, like a girl,” I said. “I will no longer need to paint my face.”

“Pull the brass lever, there on the side,” Keniel pointed. I closed my eyes, feeling deflated, but then reached down to pull the lever. The machine sputtered to life and began to shoot paper out onto the stack. “Now, recite the Letragraph for me.”

And so I did, all forty symbols, and then he asked me to do it again. Once we were finished sputtering off the names of symbols, he handed me a sheet of paper and asked me to use the symbols, or ‘letras’ to form some simple words. 

“You see that?” He said, pointing to the paper once I was done. “You use these supporting words to form a sentence-”

“I understand how sentences work, Keniel,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I can write…it just comes out strange.”

“Why don’t you show me that again?” He said, suddenly, as if he’d remembered something. I shrugged and took a piece of paper from the stack next to me. Taking the quill, I wrote out: ‘the lazy dog jumps over the quick brown fox’. Or at least I thought I did; it came out as more jumbled letters, except I could read them. I found it difficult to understand, I was thinking in the common tongue but my writing was….well, whatever this was.

“What did you write?” He asked me. I told him. “What’s a fox?” 

“I…I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think it’s…I….”

I tried to think of what it was, and it was right there, right on the precipice of my own memory but it just…wasn’t coming. 

“Calm yourself girl, it isn’t all that important,” Keniel slid the paper away from me and wrote a set of symbols beneath it. “There, I wrote it in the common script, you see?”

He asked me to write a few more things, and then I was on my way again, wandering the halls with very little to do. I found myself sitting on a bench in the main concourse, watching the people wander by and as I did, I wondered a bit as to what it might look like outside the palace campus, in Klocby proper. While the area was widely referred to as Klocby palace, the proper name for the surrounding city was Auglire. Confusing, somewhat, but in essence, the country was known as Klocby, the capital city was Auglire. Auglire was a sprawling city with a central campus that housed the palace and the supporting facilities - which was where my world ended. Technically, I was to keep to the buildings that I lived and worked in, the only exception being the occasional trip to one of the many surrounding courtyards. But what did I know of Auglire itself? I had seen some of it the very day that I had come here. It was indeed a sprawling city with dozens, or perhaps hundreds of districts all bustling with people of different colors and creeds. Market stalls sold fresh fruits and entertainers shouted at the top of their lungs to draw the attention of adults and children alike as they walked and scampered down uneven cobblestone streets. These were the things I remembered - that I had briefly witnessed in a gasp of vision as the motorcar had brought me to Klocby Palace. Auglire had been brimming with life and at the time I could concentrate only on the task ahead of me, the request that I was to make of the High Lady. The anticipation had burned a hole through my chest, my heart had pounded as the drums of war while I prepared for the ultimate rejection and embarrassment - at least one of those had never come. But now, here I was, wondering just what I was missing.

“Lyra!” Elric’s voice tore me from my stupor, prompting me to look upward. Sunlight streamed through the concourse window, lighting his hair into a million different hues of red. He smiled, I returned the smile. “What are you doing out here, all alone?”

“I am…thinking,” I said, my voice sounding apologetic. “I just…in a few days I-”

“The procedure, yes!” He said in a happy tone. “Sheena spoke to me of it, you must be ecstatic!”

“Nervous,” I said quietly. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Nonsense!” He laughed. “Caius, the physician? He is a brilliant man, he will take care of you!”

“I’m…glad you’re so confident,” My voice was shaky. Elric extended a hand to me. 

“Come,” He said. “I wish for your help with something. A matter in the stables.”

“The stables?” I took his hand, allowing him to pull me off the bench. “I don’t think I can work in the stables.”

“Did you know, Lyra,” He said to me as we made our way down the concourse. “that in Eplos, Lord Featherstone as all but abolished these archaic gender roles? It would be a wondrous place, for one such as you.”

“Oh, Elric,” I laughed. “I don’t think I’m to travel, besides, Sheena enjoys it here, I think.”

“Seems so,” He smiled. It seemed to me as if he wanted to say something more, but he stayed silent as we walked the halls. We took a staircase down to a ground floor landing which saw us leaving the building and crossing a small courtyard along the servant’s path and finally, we cane to a long building set apart from the rest of the structure. It was situated in a field of green grass seemingly growing out of control when compared to the lawns on the rest of the campus. I strode alongside Elric cautiously, my anticipation rising at the notion of being somewhere that I shouldn’t be. Partway through I realized that I wasn’t really using the crutches all that much and stowed them under my arm. “Feeling better then?”

“It still hurts a little,” I told him. “I guess I’ll keep my temper under control from now on.”

“You’ve nothing to feel bad for,” Elric assured me. “I understand what it is to have your entire identity called into question. Ah, here we are.”

Elric slid open the huge door; it revealed the interior of a building that was far bigger than I hand anticipated. I saw a row of stalls on either side preceded by a pristine white concrete walkway that ran up the center. Within, there were dozens of servants, grooms, busying themselves with all manner of tasks. One man pushed a wheelbarrow filled to the brim with feed while another unloaded a bundle of straw into an open stall. Still others walked around engaged in conversation, all of them dressed, like Elric, in white button down shirts with brown slacks rather than the servant black I’d seen most of the male house staff wearing.

“This is our main stable,” Elric explained to me; I walked alongside him quickly, doing my best to keep up. “The motorcar may be popular, but the nobles, they do love their horses and I cannot disagree with them. There is nothing quite like the feel of the wind bursting through your hair on the back of a living beast. There is something about it that gives you a surge of life. Come, I will show you.”

“Show me?” I asked nervously as we walked the length of the stable, past open stalls and finally toward a man who was busy brushing a tall brown horse in the center of the walk.

“Indeed I will,” He smiled. “Jerome, fetch a saddle for this horse.”

The groomsman nodded and stepped away for a moment, returning with a leather saddle. I gulped.

“Elric,” I whispered. “I can’t ride!”

“You cannot?” He frowned and then chuckled. “Surely you rode in Axock!”

“I…” I thought hard, trying to recall a visual memory of riding. Of course Micah Lavoric had ridden but…what did it feel like? What were the smells? What would I hear? A wave of terror washed over me as Elric ordered one of his grooms to help me up onto the horse. “I can’t do this!” 

“Of course you can!” He laughed as he led another horse, a black stallion alongside me. He saddled it and climbed on. “Even if you don’t know how, old Muggie will do all the work for you.”

“Old…Muggie?” I asked, confused.

“The horse, of course,” He grinned at the rhyme that had just rolled off of his tongue. He reached over, taking the reigns of the beast, and at the same time, gave a click of his tongue and gently brought his heels in, onto the sides of his own. Both horses immediately began to move, my stomach lurched as I realized we were headed out of the stables. “See now? You tell it to move, you give old Muggie a good kick, and when you want her to stop, you just pull back on the reigns and give her a ‘woah!’, you see?”

“I…see…” I said shakily. “Why are we doing this?”

“Why wouldn’t we do this?” Elric laughed as we cleared the stable and emerged onto an open field surrounded by a black fence far off in the distance. “You are in desperate need of some relaxation, Lyra, even your sister seems to think so.”

“So Sheena put you up to this?” I kept a death grip on the little bump on the front of the saddle; I felt as if I were going to slide off, onto the grass at any moment. Elric stared straight ahead, apparently oblivious to my current plight.

“Sheena put me up to nothing,” He informed me. “She is worried about you, it is all over her face.”

“And this is supposed to calm her down?! I’m going to die!” I scrambled, leaning forward even as the horse continued at a slow pace; Elric laughed as I hugged the beast’s neck, clamping my legs around its body. 

“Lyra, you are not going to die, that horse will not even buck. Now sit up and ride with some dignity, enjoy the scenery!”

Slowly, carefully, with my teeth gritted I pulled away from the horse’s neck and did my best to sit up in the saddle. I felt as if I were on a raft in the midst of the ocean, lost and alone, terrified, even though Elric was right there beside me. 

“What are you worried about, Lyra?” He asked me very pointedly as we passed under a tree, the expanse of field in front of us filled with a dozen grazing horses. 

“I um…” I managed to pull myself upright, still barely holding on, or at least I thought. “Why…why do you want to know?” It was a fair question, how many times had he even spoken to me? Why had he abducted me, stuck me on the back of a horse, and started asking me personal questions?

“Because, Dear Lyra,” His tone suggested a smile, but his face was stoic. “Sheena is a very good friend of mine, and if she is worried, then I am worried, so let us talk, and let us calm your mind, hm?”

“I’m…I’m worried that she’ll get tired of me,” I finally admitted it out loud. “What if her family convinces her to get rid of me? I don’t want to be alone. I don’t know how to explain it. I know I was kind of…rude about it at first but having her tell me I’m her sister, and having her want to take care of me? I like it and I don’t want it to end but I know it has to.”

“And why does it have to?” Elric directed us toward a stream, which we easily crossed. Though the field was vast, I could still see the tall buildings of Klocby on our right, and the foreboding city wall to our left. 

“Her father…and…well…me. Look at me, Elric, I’m not worth losing her entire family over, am I?”

“Her father, is not a bad man,” Elric told me. “He is a man who will see reason. You know the Rossi name, yes?” 

“No,” I admitted shamefully. “Not…before I came here. I just know it’s Sheena’s last name.”

“Ah,” He chuckled. “Did you know that he was not always wealthy?”

“I find that hard to believe,” I admitted, thinking of the manse we had visited so many weeks ago. 

“It is true, Lyra, my friend,” He smiled broadly. “Have you heard of a town called Silverhall?” 

“I have,” I nodded. “Southwest of Strading, yes?”

“Indeed,” He confirmed. “Martin Rossi got his start there, as a clockmaker. He was just fourteen years old, so it was, hm, thirty two years ago. Silverhall was a wasteland then, you see, his father had taken out a loan on the family home, and when debts came due, well, the money just was not there. It was the same for many, not just in Silverhall, but throughout the region. Dry spells killed crops, jobs were lost, people starved. Wasn’t all that much business for a clockmaker, but Martin Rossi, he knew the ins and outs. The gears, the hands, the crystals, it was all second nature to him. The gear is a part of him, and he is the gear, you see? Even as his father died and his mother took her own life, he toiled in his workshop and he made the best clocks Faidyre has ever seen. People came from near and far to buy his inventions and he brought the town of Silverhall back from the brink of death. If only his father could have seen it.”

“So…then he got rich and moved to Klocby?” I asked, wondering if that was the climax of the story.

“Nah,” Elric shook his head. “Wouldn’t you know it, the Minxwork Clock Company, over in Uphey, they took a special notice of Mr. Rossi, and they came, told him that if he didn’t close up shop, they’d close it up for him.”

“So then he moved?” 

“He’s a stubborn man, Sheena says he lacks conviction, but his actions there in Silverhall, says different to my eyes and ears. No, he called the townsfolk together, told them that they’d come too far to just back up and go. See, it wasn’t just his clockworks that were in danger, Lyra, was the town. They’d crawled their way out o’ the depths of poverty, and they’d made a name for themselves. No one wants to fall back to the dirt after they’ve touched the sky. So they spent all night, with Mr. Rossi’s help, buildin’ contraptions and scheming. When the Minxwork thugs came at the next sun, they killed them, all o’ them, and they saved their town.”

“Well, that’s good then,” I smiled a little. “So he won!”

“The Minxwork Clock Company has a lot of people in its employ, and they’ve got grease in many palms, Lyra. It was no surprise that they came back in force, with airships and thugs a’plenty. Razed Silverhall to the ground. Martin Rossi fled town with the clothes on his back, and of course his sweetheart, Colleen. Sure he recovered his fortune, but runnin’ away from his home while it’s burnin’ to the ground? That’s something a man is not like to forget. You must understand that Mr. Rossi is a cautious man and he is not likely to give way to anything if he thinks that it could bring ruin to his family. You cannot blame him, but you can believe that when Sheena says she loves you, she is telling the truth.”

“She loves me?” I perked up a little in the saddle. “I’ve never heard her say that.”

“You’ve got to listen with more than your ears, dear Lyra,” Elric said. “Now, we ought head back before the day is out.”

I suddenly realized that I felt more relaxed and I was now sitting more naturally in the saddle. The ride had helped, maybe if I’d just calmed down in the first place it would have been better.

“Could we stay out a little longer?” I said hopefully. Elric smiled.

“Very well, a little longer.”

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