Clockwork Heart (16 page)

“Was your brother angry when you went?”

“Of course he was.” Cristof's expression was blank. “I wasn't his ideal older brother anymore. But he got over it. Maybe he managed to reclassify me as the ideal outcaste. I don't know. But he started talking to me again, and he listened when I told him what was wrong with Ondinium. When he was named decatur last year, he told me he was going to make a difference.” He raked his hand through his short black hair. “A marriage program. Some difference.”

“He meant well,” Taya said, hurrying to catch up with Cristof's long strides. “You dealt with your parents' deaths by running away. Alister dealt with them by writing a program to keep it from happening again. I think a lot of people would say his solution was more useful than yours.”

“I wouldn't.” Cristof climbed up the broad marble steps of one of the buildings. “A clockwork heart can't replace the real thing.” He pushed open the giant wooden doors and walked inside.

Taya had to duck through the doorway to enter, but the vaulted ceilings inside the building were high enough to accommodate her wings and two span more. She'd visited the Science and Technology building before, receiving and delivering messages, but never at night. Now the halls were dark, the industrially themed frescos on the ceiling hidden in shadow. A low, steady chuffing and rattling from the bank of steam engines in the subbasement level echoed through the corridors.

Her courier duties usually took her upstairs to the offices, but Cristof headed down a short flight of steps to the basement labs. The sound of the engines grew louder, but not loud enough to drown out the argument in the first lab they approached.

Three men and two women sat in the cluttered room, ale flagons and beer jugs scattered about. A board of bread and sausage shared table space with a variety of mechanical devices and tools, and a huge analytical engine spanned the wall behind them, clicking and chattering. One of the women was feeding it a set of cards with one hand and holding a tankard in the other. All of the programmers bore the spiral castemark of a dedicate over their right cheekbones.

“—we won't know until we get a Cabisi programmer in here to try it out,” one of the young men was saying with finality. The others raised their voices in disagreement.

Cristof cleared his throat.

“If you break that engine while you're … celebrating … you'll be blinded and sent into exile,” he said in a cold tone.

“They wouldn't dare,” the woman at the table replied, turning. “We're too—” She stopped. “Oh, scrap.”

The others turned, then scrambled to their feet, making awkward bows. Taya expected Cristof to shout at them the way he'd shouted at her, but instead he stalked forward, his lip curled with disgust.

“I assume you have some excuse for this mess?”

“I-It's a wake, Exalted,” one of the men stammered. Cristof froze.

“It's for Exalted Forlore,” another added.

“You must be his brother,” said the third man, looking up. “He told us about you. There can't be more than one exalted who goes uncovered in public.”

“This is Exalted Cristof Forlore,” Taya hurried to say, before Cristof could respond with something unpleasant. “And I'm Taya Icarus. We're investigating Alister Forlore's death, and we need your help. There are things about his programming work that we don't understand, and we hoped you might be able to explain it to us.”

The five programmers relaxed.

“You think his work has something to do with the accident?” one asked.

“Maybe.” Taya left the answer hanging.

“Well, we can try,” another man said, with an air of condescension. “What do you want to know?”

“How about your names?” Taya asked, forcing herself to give him a friendly smile despite the emotional turmoil she was feeling. “You were … you were Alister's friends, weren't you?”

“Yes, ma'am. We're his programming team.” The man who'd recognized Cristof held out a hand to her. He was handsome in a conventional way, with brown hair and blue eyes. “I'm Kyle. The big guy over there is Lars, the one with the scary beard is Victor, the skinny one is Emelie, and the tall one is Isobel.”

Taya greeted them all, shaking hands. Standing to one side, his hands in his pockets, Cristof seemed disinclined to speak. She was glad of it. She needed to do something useful to keep her mind off everything that had happened.

“I'm glad to meet you. I understand you've just finished an important program for the Council?”

“Yeah, although now that Alister's gone, who knows if it'll ever get run through the mill?” Victor grumbled, dropping back into his chair. He was pale and thin, with a bushy black beard and moustache that did, indeed, make him look a bit scary. “That's why we're running it here tonight.”

Taya thought about Victor's use of Alister's first name. It would have been impossible for the exalted to work with a team while he was wearing a mask and robes. He must have trusted them with his first name and bare face.

Good. That would make this easier.

“It's sort of a commemorative voyage. We wanted to run it through once, in case the Council rejects it,” Isobel added, turning back to the machine. She was still holding a box of punch cards. Her height and blond hair suggested Demican blood, although her dedicate castemark meant she was at least second-generation.

“Is it his romance program?” Taya asked. “Are you running any names through it?”

“All of ours.” Isobel flashed her a quick smile. “We wanted to see if any of us are romantically compatible.”

“What happens if the program says you are?”

“The couple goes on a date, and we test the program's validity,” Lars said. He turned to the table. “Can I get you anything, Exalted? Icarus?”

“I'll have some of that beer,” Taya said, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat. “Since this is a wake.”

“Refills all around,” Kyle commanded. Cups were thrust forward. Taya was surprised when Cristof stepped up, his eyes hooded, and took a tankard.

“Will you make the toast, Exalted?” Isobel asked, turning to him.

Cristof hesitated, then nodded and lifted the tankard.

“To my brother, whose work I'll do my best to see preserved.”

With a murmur of thanks, the group touched cups and flagons and drank.

“Can you do that?” Kyle asked, looking at Cristof with new interest. “Your brother told us you'd rejected your caste.”

“I can try.”

“Well, it'd be great not to lose a whole year of programming.” Kyle tipped his cup toward the clicking analytical engine. “Clockwork Heart was Alister's obsession. Even when the rest of us went home, he stayed be here running tests and trying new approaches. He pretty much lived in this room for several months.”

“He was the best of us,” Victor said heavily, pouring himself more ale. Before Taya could protest, he'd refilled her mug, sloshing some over her hand. “No one'll ever punch code the way he did.”

“On the Clockwork Heart program?” Taya asked.

“On any of 'em. Lady knows what'll happen if something he wrote ever needs to be modified. It'll take the whole team to figure out what he did.”

“What other programs did he work on?” Cristof inquired.

“Lots of things.”

“Top-secret things.”

“I heard he was fourth programmer on Labyrinth,” Emelie said.

“Labyrinth was before his time,” Lars objected.

“No, they brought him in for it,” Victor asserted.

“Not a chance.”

“I'm telling you, he worked on it.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

Cristof refilled everyone's drink as the argument continued. Taya was surprised until she observed that he didn't refill his own flagon.

He wanted them drunk.

“Didn't he work on Refinery, too?” Isobel asked, giving Cristof a distracted nod as the exalted topped off her tankard.

“Oh, yeah,” Kyle said. “He was second programmer on that one.”

“And he got the job because of his work on Labyrinth Code,” Victor insisted.

“What's—” Taya started, then caught Cristof's warning look and let the question die on her lips. The programmers didn't notice, caught up in their argument. Then the analytical engine began to click, and Isobel flinched and began feeding it cards again.

“How much longer is that going to take?” Lars complained. “We've been running it all day.”

“Not much longer. We're almost down to the bottom,” Isobel said, hoisting the box as evidence.

“Good. Here's to us, beautiful.” Lars lifted his glass and winked. She snorted, unimpressed, and went back to work.

“Why did the Council permit Alister to work on something as ridiculous as Clockwork Heart after he'd spent so much time on important programs?” Cristof asked.

“It's not ridiculous,” Isobel objected.

“Oh, they kept him working on their projects, too, but Heart was always part of the deal,” Kyle explained. “Alister agreed to work on the Council's programs as long as he was given equal time to work on his own. Tells you something about how much they needed him that they let him cut the deal.”

“He charmed them, just like he charmed everyone,” Emelie said with irritation. “Alister always got what he wanted.”

“Hey, don't complain,” Lars protested. “We're lucky he wanted us, or we'd still be punching accounting programs for the slagging Bank of Ondinium.”

A chorus of groans greeted his comment.

“Besides,” Isobel commented, “if he got everything he wanted, it wasn't entirely his fault.” She gave Emelie an arch look. “Just because he asked didn't mean you had to say ‘yes.'”

Taya felt her heart skip a beat. Emelie turned red and leaped to her feet.

“I thought he was—”

“Oh, please, you can't tell me—”

“What other programs was he working on?” Cristof repeated, raising his voice over the imminent argument. He turned, and Taya felt him study her red face before addressing Victor. “What program would be worth killing him over?”

Silence fell over the room. Taya glowered at Emelie. The programmer was dressed in casual clothes, with her long black hair caught back but slipping from its pins. She wasn't as petite as Taya, but she was thinner, without an icarus's wiry muscles. She was good-looking enough, in a careless, bookwormy way. Taya had a hard time imagining Alister being interested in her.

Of course, Taya couldn't figure out why Alister had been interested in
her
, either. Pressure built in her throat and she shook her head.
Not now.

“Do you think that's what happened?” Lars asked, at last. “He was murdered?”

“Forgefire, Lars! He was killed by a bomb.” Victor scowled. “What did you think ‘bomb' meant? Natural causes?”

“Well, it might have been random…” Lars looked at the others for support.

“It was murder,” Cristof said, tersely. “It may have been aimed at him.”

“Oh.” The big programmer took another drink, subdued.

“He wasn't working on anything unusual,” Victor said, slumping in his chair. “Encryption, decryption. Some modifications to Refinery.”

“What's wrong with Refinery?” Cristof asked.

“Well, Decatur Neuillan slipped past it, so the Council asked Alister to look it over, figure out what it missed, and patch the holes in the algorithm.”

The loyalty test, Taya realized. That's what Refinery was. It was the name of Ondinium's loyalty program.

“What holes?” Emelie sounded bitter. “That program was flawless. Neuillan just knew how to beat it. Alister told him.”

“What?”

“Not a chance!”

“Alister would never do that!”

“Well, not in so many words,” Emelie hedged. “But they were friends, or at least Alister thought they were. He told me he might have let too much slip, that Neuillan might have been able to figure out what kinds of answers would trigger the program to flag a profile.”

“I don't believe that,” Cristof objected, the lines around his mouth deepening. “Neuillan was one of our guardians when we were orphaned. He was a good friend, but Alister wouldn't have compromised Ondinium's safety for him.”

“He didn't do it on purpose,” Emelie protested, looking around the room. “You know how much he liked to brag. Even when he wasn't supposed to talk about something, he'd drop hints or tell you some little secret to make you feel special. That's how he made friends — and found out more secrets. Everyone felt like he was trusting them with his confidences, so they trusted him back.”

“You're saying he was manipulative.” Taya felt cold. Was that why Alister had so easily entrusted her with the “secret” of his Clockwork Heart program?

“No,” Lars protested. “It wasn't like that. Sure, he liked to make friends, but there's nothing wrong with that. Emelie's just got bent edges because he dumped her.”

“He didn't dump me! I dumped him.”

“Either way, it's coloring your perceptions.”

“He told me Neuillan was his fault,” Emelie repeated. Her tone was sullen. “He said he felt bad about it.”

“Maybe someone else was afraid that if Alister fixed Refinery, he'd get caught,” Victor suggested. “So he killed him.”

“Doesn't have to be a ‘he,'” Isobel objected.

“At least we know he was working on something more important than a marriage program.” Cristof's voice was strained. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the stack of cards Taya had seen the night before. “What do you know about these? Somebody smuggled them out of the Engine Room.”

“Why do you still have those?” Taya asked. Emelie's comments about Alister had depressed her, and she was feeling contrary. “I thought you were suspended.”