28. TWENTY-EIGHT #2
Pinto stepped through the basement, green robes trailing on the stone floor, mouth agape at her oasis: dozens of projects and inventions, pushed into the room’s corners and forgotten; hundreds of schematics, organized into shelves along the wall; countless bulbs, stripped of their ruxechorin cores. “How did you—”
“With serious engineering, five years of off-days, a handful of broken building codes, and probably twice as many broken laws.”
“Atti…”
She expected a scolding—or for him to turn around and alert the authorities, perhaps.
“This is exceptional.”
Attilatia’s chest swelled to such an extent, she thought her heart might burst clean through it and splatter over Pinto’s spectacles.
“This technology—I’ve been waiting to bring it home.
It could bring back the economy. Help us to regrow.
And I’ve transcribed instructions so that someone else might be able to analyze my blueprints and replicate my work. So if anything happens to me, you can—”
“Atti,” Pinto shook his head, “as much as I would be honored, this is not mine to share. Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“Yes. But still. I need you to know, and to promise you will bring it home, with Thedexemore, should I disappear.”
Pinto watched her in quiet contemplation before tilting his chin.
“And there is something else.” More than ‘else’: the real reason she had brought him down here. Attilatia removed her bracelet and held it out. Pinto lifted a hand, and she set it into his palm. She nodded at the pea-sized ball of glass affixed to it. “That is not a bead.”
“Of course not.”
“That is a remote activator. It controls every distortion product ever produced by Aethertech Mechanics.”
“You are joking.”
“I… I am not.” It was information she had sworn she would take with her to the final cavern. “It is fairly sturdy. But should you crush it, it will render all of Aetech’s devices useless. The lights. The aqueducts. The filtration. The guiderails. All of it.”
“Would people die if this were to happen?”
She answered slowly. “Possibly. Unlikely. Depends on how steeped their lives were in distortion technology.”
Pinto’s wrinkles compounded. “The more I learn, the less I wish I knew.”
She wished she could feel that way. Maybe that was the difference between them: why Pinto was so insouciant and she so…
“What is the failsafe?”
At least he had some faith in her. “There are four beads in total. Any one of them can rectify the situation with three turns. One is in safekeeping. One I will wear. That one is yours. The last is with Thedexemore.”
Attilatia had sworn that she would never weaponize distortion technology.
But she’d instructed her brother to use the bead as such—as leverage for his safe return—should anyone threaten his life.
“You see now, I am not presenting you with an honor. I am saddling you with a burden. Should anything happen to me, I want you to use it, to see if there is a way to bring me back.”
“And if there isn’t a way to bring you back?”
Attilatia’s eyes narrowed. “Then they got what they deserved.”
Now, surely, he would chastise her. He would turn it in to ensure she didn’t have that kind of control over the Skywalk’s economic decline.
Instead, he cleared his throat. “A precaution, only. You will be the one to bring your knowledge to the homeland.” Pinto’s fingers folded around the bracelet. He placed it in an inner pocket of his robes, then gave her shoulder a squeeze. “And Jenolavia’s kin with it. Believe it.”
As though in response, a lamp on the far lab counter began to blink. Their heads turned in unison to stare at it. Its dim red light pulsed slowly at first, then rapidly. The message took a near minute to complete. Then it repeated thrice more. Attilatia sank to her knees.
‘Aetech plates manipulated. Tera’thian ambush plotted for Steila. I’m safe. Watch your back.’
She wove together the only story which made sense. It felt as if all the world were a black bag, cinching closed around her.
“What is it?” Pinto inquired.
“It is Dexe…” Her voice drifted off, and she clawed back control as she repeated Dex’s message to Pinto. “He—we—are in trouble.”
And the plates she’d made with a mind for Nelfinden defense had been weaponized.
She’d thought she was getting Thedexemore to safety—away from the assassins that had pursued them for months.
Had she instead placed him into the jaw of a Kovathian sympathizer?
She traced her interactions with Rosakaad.
He’d admitted to her they were in trouble, hadn’t he? Why would he, if not to help them?
Hiking up the hem of her tipiana, Attilatia stood and dug into a drawer for a second bracelet, identical to the one she’d given Pinto. She pulled a knife down from a holster on the wall. It hovered over the bead.
“What are you doing?” Pinto’s words broke through the sheer veil between her reality and madness.
Her heart pounded in her ears. “Taking out my insurance policy.”
Pinto stepped beside her slowly and pulled her hand into his. Her face contorted as she resisted the impulse to smack him.
“You are a marvel,” he whispered. “There are few minds in this world that could compare, and fewer still that have acted proactively on their talents. You are capable of so much good, and you are capable of so much destruction, and I can only imagine what a struggle every moment of your life must be, given that each must be a decision between one or the other.”
Attilatia’s nostrils flared. Damn him. Damn every whisker on his withered face.
“Before you do anything rash, I must ask you… Can you wait one more day and see if there is another means for resolution?”
She would ensure Thedexemore’s safety by any means necessary. He was the reason for all of this. “I don’t have a choice. What other resolution has been made available to me?” There was a combativeness to her voice that made her feel like she was fighting with her mother all over again.
“It would be a grave mistake, Attilatia Mitar.”
“How do you know?” she snarled.
“Live enough years, see enough pain, you come to realize that the things that you want in the moment are the enemy of the things you want for a lifetime. Laughter is more intoxicating than anger. Trust is sweeter than redemption. And love… love is all that really matters. What you are doing will not give you love.”
She bit her lip. Then she placed the knife back into its wall holster. Tears broke free from her eyes.
Pinto wrapped her in his arms. “How many times have you been here?” he murmured into her hair.
More than she could count, she didn’t tell him.
“It’s ok, Hakuni,” he said. “It will all be ok.”
“You think you’ll convince me to do what’s right? Pinto, I’ve killed people before. Not just people I hate. People I love. Even the homeland diagnosed my misanthropy. You can’t fix me.”
“Misanthropy.” Pinto tasted the word like it was something bitter in his tea.
“That is a silly word to affix to someone who sees things differently. I have spent countless hours with you, and—given my knack for dinner parties—have countless friends to compare you to. Most people use the lens of simplicity to explain the great truths in life. You use the great truths as a lens to understand simple things. So there is nothing more wrong with you than someone who likes to eat their dessert before dinner.” He shrugged.
“And the palate is cleaner at the start of the meal, so they might have it right. What I am trying to say is… why would I seek to fix you, when nothing was ever broken?”
Atti glared at him, but let him run fingers through her bobbed hair. Where had he been all her life? “Then what am I supposed to do? Just wait and see what happens?”
“For now, yes. Thedexemore is not in imminent danger. You’re both smart. You’ll think of a plan.”
Call it a moment of weakness—she was ready to go all in with this old silk trader, Chaos curse the repercussions.
“I need more help, Pinto.” She shuddered. “I need answers, and your currents run deep. Please tell me anything you know about Roskaad Thyatira?”
He pushed her out to arm’s length, eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I might be dating him.”