Does Not Equal

Yes, it was some years ago, where the glittering salt desert of Whitleg met the Gulf of Silber. It was once a lively place of fresh roads and crowds, where the works of the masons never seemed to stop. Salt-by-sea was its name and it had long since withered away.

Enter Edvar Sewel. He threw open the wooden hatches of his loft and beheld what was left of the town. His view and the view of those in the street below were very, very different.

Edvar saw his home of several years; the winding cobbles, the rising and falling waves of thatch and tile, cracked sandstone and vines, yes, even the infamous manor house that had once been home to the robber baron whose affable deceptions had seen riches spread to this far-off town. Edvar forced himself to sigh with appreciation. Or maybe it was contentment. Perhaps pain?

The people below, however, saw nothing more than Edvar himself. His face was framed by a sunny mane of straw, but other than that his pale skin and soft features gave him the aspect of a raw egg, and somehow, the masses of lines around his eyes and his ever-present smile lead the passers-by to shake their heads or frown.

Edvar had woken early, just like always, and his first move, just like always, had been to let the sunlight in. Here on the Gulf it was rich and golden at this time of day, and the rays sent curtains of light spinning through the dusty air of Edvar’s loft. He made a token effort to clean as he made a similar effort to sing as he ran his duster of his workbench, his bed, the small dresser by his bed, the trunk of clothes and even his cramped wooden lavatory.

“Good morning, Stelle!” Edvar practiced his smile again as he fell, two steps at a time, down into the barber shop he lived over. The owner scarcely lifted his head. “Anything need fixing today?”

“Pole’s off again, just this morning,” Stelle grumbled. “I swear it’s the heat.”

“Not to worry, Stelle, I’ll have it polished and humming before you know it!” Edvar hopped out the door. Stelle, for his part, bent back over his work with another grunt.

Stelle was right, of course. The barber’s pole had stopped its spin again, so Edvar imitated what a happy, helpful person might do and bounded back upstairs into his tiny loft for his apron and pouch of tools.

Yes, the pole was broken again, for all it did to attract customers. Stelle’s barber maintained a steady supply of local regulars, and in fact the pole itself likely did little to attract anyone new, as Salt-by-Sea never hosted anyone new to attract.

Perhaps Edvar thought that as he opened the casing, struggled to lay the pole into the cracked earth path outside the barber, and unscrewed the motivator’s casing with practiced precision.

Or perhaps he didn’t. For sure, the one thing he did do was take fastidious inventory of each screw, nut and bolt as he disassembled it. This was the sixth time, after all, and just like all the preceding incidents, the culprit was a cracked casing. Condensation had led to rust, or perhaps it was rain, but the motor had failed again and would need to be replaced.

“It needs a new motor, Stelle,” Edvar popped in to say, but by now Stelle was deep into conversation with an ancient customer and paid him no mind at all.

Of course, Edvar wasn’t one to let another snub dampen his morning, so he set out to market just as he’d planned.

Salt-by-Sea was not a big place, and all the homes and streets had clustered beneath the cover of the coastal hills on which the old manor sat, and everything else was piers and wharfs that stretched out into the sea, or else it was the slums and shanty towns of the termites and roaches on the borders.

Edvar, though, was no xenophobe. As he tip-tapped down the narrow street-steps towards the docks, he frowned at some of the posters plastered in the narrowest alleys and under the windows: ‘Offshoots aren’t human! Act like it!’ Each one had twisted human faces that leered and lolled. Some of them even showed their subjects taking bites of gears and cogs.

It hadn’t been that long since they moved in. In fact, thought Edvar as he passed by, “Offshoot” was one of the kinder words. Being a practical man of urban extraction, Edvar was not prejudiced, in fact, he’d known many virtuous and hard-working Offshoots, but the same couldn’t be said of the original inhabitants of Salt-by-Sea. They’d been here for many generations, and when plague had ruined the reputation of their town and killed their benefactor in the haughty manor above, they’d never recovered. If they’d had any prescience, they would’ve seen the arrival of the desert caravans and the propeller nomads as water to the man dying of thirst, not enemies or twisted post-humans. Or so it had always seemed to Edvar.

“Hey, boss!” The merchant waved him down. Edvar parted the crowd and made for a stall at the edge of the quay. It was quiet for the early hour, and only a few enterprising workers busied themselves out here. They were outnumbered by the deckhands checking their knots and the nomads, who were all busy cleaning their propellers and scraping barnacles form under the wings of their floating planes.

“Morning, Klis,” Edvar greeted him, “I’m looking for a new motor today. Again.”

“Ah, the pole? I have just the thing.” Klis un-wrapped a leather across his stall, and all manner of broken, rusted or otherwise mis-matched components spread out. Edvar picked through them with a practiced hand and eye.

“How are the prices today?”

“High, my friend,” Klis smiled by way of an apology, “the seasons are bad, or so they say. We’re leaving early this year. Avoiding some storm or other.”

“Not to worry. I have plenty of leftover coin,” Edvar told him, “I hope the storm won’t prove too dangerous.”

“Not if we get out in front of it.”

With a small motor chosen and coin exchanged, Edvar set to examine the rest of the wares, but Klis, who’d always returned Edvar’s respect and honesty, had other ideas. “How much?”

“How much what?” Edvar asked, somewhat taken aback by the uncharacteristic question.

“Leftover coin.” Was Klis’ reply, and it came in a lowered voice.

“You intrigue me, Klis,” admitted Edvar, “whether or not I can afford it, I feel I should ask. What do you have?”

The propeller nomads took a pragmatic approach to their contentious existence; when trouble found them, and it often did, they would board their generations old pontoon planes and fly away. Indeed, there was oases through the Paper Desert that only they knew, even ancient oil derricks to service their caravans of engines and gliders. Each generation would add art to the fuselage, modify the design, live and die under the same old wings.

“No festival this year?” Edvar asked. His attempt at small talk.

“No, no, not after last year. Not our people, the termites. Very bad business,” Klis shook  his head as he lead Edvar down the maze of pontoons and planks that ran between the nomad’s planes. “Violence, there was, or so I heard. Keep fire away from the planes, number one rule. We don’t want violence. This way.”

Bunting was hung between the wings, and drying laundry too. Edvar and Klis ducked beneath them until, finally, Edvar was lead to a gangplank and lead inside.

“Oh, is this yours?” He asked. The cabin was squat, dark, and all comforts had been swept aside to for salvage. The back of the hangar had a steel chain and many massive nets piled against it.

“My uncles. We trawl, Mostly, we get nothing.” Both men paused at that. “Nothing.”

Because, of course, this secrecy was not for nothing, and in fact, the center of the cabin had been cleared away. There were piled crates there, meant to hold something, and over that something was a dirty blanket.

Klis made to pull it aside, but then hesitated. “Our secret, okay?”

“Of course, my friend.” Edvar smiled and nodded just like a happy, trustworthy person would, and then the blanket was pulled aside.

It wasn’t much to look at.

There were arms. Legs. A cage of a torso, and some spiky amalgamation for the head. It was either drowned in a dark bronze patina or otherwise dyed entirely by smoke or soot. Perhaps the metal itself was a dirty, coal black, but in many places it was broken into jagged edges, like the shoulders that fanned into blades or the long twisted fingers. Or perhaps it was that way by design, thought Edvar, but who would craft such an asymmetric and frightening thing?

“A Talos?” He asked.

“Of course, it must be, that is why I wait for you,” Klis said as he went to stand by its head. His spade-like hands pulled apart the toros to show the components inside. “Many parts still inside. I’m no expert, of course, but I’d say the core-case is still in there. Maybe you fix it?”

“Maybe…” Edvar trailed off as he stood over the thing. Klis was right, amongst the springs, stabilizers, gyros and empty fluid bladders, there was an intricate, fused casing. Like a snail shell cast in blackened slag. Inside must be the animating force, the qualium that would give it thought and life. “This is quite the find.”

Of course Edvar left with the thing. He and Kils spent almost an hour haggling over the price, and just a little under that wrapping it so that Edvar might haul it back to his loft over the barber’s shop. Of course, Stelle, didn’t look or even see the package thrown over Edvar’s shoulder. He almost forgot to install the new motor to the barber’s pole, and he did so in a feverish hurry.

Over the following day and night, Edvar poured through all his own notes and the many volumes on design and history he’d acquired in his time working for the esteemed Ludoni, and applied it all to the strange figure that was now his. Without any other place to put it, he had stripped the bedding from his bed frame and laid it out there.

Once he had disassembled the Talos to his satisfaction, he took a break to leaf through his little brown book labelled ‘opportunities’, it was a calendar of contests, addresses and meetings, all for the benefit of a young, up-and-coming inventor. Edvar wasn’t young, though, and was even less of an up-and-comer, but nevertheless aimed to use these things for his benefit. He guessed how long it might take to repair this thing, modify it and make some use of it, and then studied his calendar by the electric lamp he kept on his dresser. Of course, what little events he had access to were sorry excuses for inventor’s contents; handfuls of threadbare tinkerers would meet in some old hall, they would pass around drinks, applause, and perhaps a beaten old trophy. There was little exposure to be had in a place like Salt-by-Sea, but of course, reality would not deter Edvar Sewel.

On an ordinary day, Edvar might have busied himself fixing the latches and bars of the loft. He might even have helped Stelle lock up for the night; one couldn’t be too careful after dark in Salt-by-Sea. But not tonight.

By midnight, Edvar had pulled the core-case from the body, and at the risk of ruining his best pliers, had managed to get it open. His tired hands shook, so he hurried to shepherd the qualium inside the casing over to his workbench with both hands. The qualium itself was a dark red, cloudy, almost opaque, but finely faceted and without flaw. Edvar passed it under his lights and lenses for well over an hour before he made any decision; there was no re-cutting a piece like this. He swabbed it with acid and left it to dry on a leather surface before he dared to clean it off. The casing itself seemed to him to be the most damaged of all, in fact, he laughed when he saw the similarities between this fine and surely ancient machine and the barber’s pole.

Something, had cracked the case and water had seeped in. Rust had eaten the finer copper filament hairs between the qualium and its casing. Copper like that was cheap and plentiful, and so Edvar spent the rest of the night clipping the filaments and twisted them together with the ones he had in his repair kits.

By the time he cleaned off the qualium and ran it under cold water, it was ready to replace. Indeed, it was his last act before he replaced everything he had worked on, hauled the figure onto the floor and collapsed, exhausted, into bed. He hadn’t the energy to replace the sheets.

Having slept fitfully, Edvar leapt out of bed to find he’d already marked his calendar: at the end of the month that had now just begun was Salt-by-Sea’s annual gathering of inventors and merchants. Together with his contacts and no small notoriety, a placement or even better, a win there might bring him back to notability. Patronage. Perhaps even the esteem needed to fight back to his place in the city.

Of course, these fragile new dreams evaporated as the musings of night so often do in the morning. The Talos was gone.

How could it be gone? Edvar’s practiced smile cut at his face as he threw open the hatches of his windows and checked inside, outside and under every facet of every object he owned.

There was no sign, of course, to the point that he began to doubt himself. Had his exhaustion lead to some lapse in memory? No, his repair kit was still laid out across his workbench, and the bed was still stripped, there were even stains on the floor where he had polished off the worst of the rust and barnacles. Despite all the evidence, Edvar couldn’t find the ancient machine or make any guess at where it hd gone except, perhaps, for some stark white scrape marks on the inside of his window hatches which, he noted now that his panic subsided, had been unlatched from the inside.

“Good morning, Stelle!” Edvar’s greeting lacked none of its customary performance. Yes, he descended the stairs two at a time, but this morning he found Stelle already busy. The wide, short-limbed man was bent over piles of broken glass.

“Not so good, Ed,” he said, “bloody termites.”

“Oh. Did something happen?”

“Festival, that’s their excuse. Racing in the streets or some such. Bloody racket. You didn’t hear it?”

“Sorry, Stelle, I can’t say I did. Busy, very busy. Need some help?” Edvar had snatched up the dustpan and brush from the barber’s cupboards before the question was answered. “I don’t suppose it’d be any good asking if there was any funny business last night?”

“Apart from gangs of youths tossing bricks through my window?” Stelle fumed. “I was in bed With the wife. You know it’s two roads down.”

It was no easy thing to replace a glass window in Salt-by-Sea, and to coax the glassblower out from their boarded up shop took Edvar and Stelle most of the daylight in the rubbish strewn dirt streets.

“Someone should do something.” Stelle kicked an emptied can of food down the road, “bloody roaches. My parents came here to work for the baron! What did they do? Wander in from he desert.”

Edvar chose not to comment. He stood outside while Edvar haggled. Something about the warm wind and the sighing sea had him feeling as if the old house might finally sag and topple over on top of him. As he waited, the buzz and roar of propeller engines would fill the air; every few hours, more nomads would set off. Was it something about a storm, they said? Edvar’s memory was a blur.

By the time he and Stelle returned to the barber’s shop to eat a silent, frustrated late lunch, he had no clear idea of what to do with himself.

“Stelle.” He started, and the bald, red-faced man paused mid-mouthful. “I bought something quite valuable yesterday.”

“For your nomad friends.”

“Yes. And I quite emptied my savings.” Edvar admitted, “and I’m concerned that it may have gone missing.”

“Stolen’s more like,” Stelle grunted. “You’ll get no help from the watch, that’s for sure, but if it’s valuable it’ll turn up and some night market, just you wait.” He took a moment to swallow his food. “You’re a good Tennant, Ed, and a good man besides, not turning your city boy nose up and us provincials. If you find it, I’ll tell my friends and the fisher’s club. We’ll go around, see what we can do.”

Of course, he’d suggested forming a mob, and made quite the assumption, and the whole situation was so mortifying to Edvar that he said no more about it that day.

By the time Edvar went to bed that night, he found himself directionless and quiet, taunted by the optimistic marks he’d made in the calendar; ‘my big comeback’ it read.

Still, he followed his usual routine and locked his loft up tight, but lay awake for hours. It was the following day that the first body was found.

Edvar, Stelle, and a crowd of townspeople stood around the thoroughfare of the town square. There were still slabs of paving stone here, and many of the statues around the archway still stood. By midday, when most people gathered, the body had been taken down, but the dark stain against the granite remained and the blood had run down into a sea of posters. ‘Mutation is treachery. Silence is complicity.’ ‘Not our brothers.’ ‘Offshoots? Not on this tree.’ ‘Gas the roaches!’

The usual slogans.

The town had caught the edge of the approaching storm by then, and onto the grisly scene came thin streaks of hot, salty rain.

“We need to buy some wood.” Stelle said, “we don’t have time for new windows. Have to rely on the regular’s good nature for a while,” he murmured to himself. Calls to disperse came from the officers of the watch, high up the steps under the arch.

“You want to cancel the glass order?” Edvar asked him.

“Aye. Can you do that on your way back?” Edvar nodded. “And you must have a hammer and nails in all those kits of yours,” Stelle said.

“Of course. I’ll get right to boarding it up,” he gulped, “it’s just…”

“Speak up,” Stelle said as they left the square at a stride.

‘When places get boarded up, it’s rare that the boards come down again.”

He was right. As the days got darker, the nomads left, one by one, until the docks were quite empty. Tensions rose, and for the first few days, one of Stelle’s friends set up a stool on the inside of the barber’s shop and slept there with a club in his hand.

Edvar had made a plan, then, as he installed a new latch on his windows, to go down to the slums and the tunnels and speak to the Offshoots there, but he never got the chance. The day after, another person was found dead.

Stelle dragged Edvar to Salt-by-Sea’s only remaining pub, the Scarlet Fish, and sat him down in the middle of a meeting. The townspeople were angry and frightened, and very few people were seen outside even during the day. Despite being very far out from the city, a few among them were already aspiring to be militia. A few had even polished up their old war-relics like ceremonial sabers or prog-rifles.

Edvar paid no attention to the shared chants or the slogans; he made sure to pay for a few drinks and left early; the better to not risk returning at night, when the Offshoots might take him for an aggressor.

“Not many people about today?”

“Morning, Drew.” Edvar greeted the uniformed couriers as their cart rumbled to a stop in the town square.

They exchanged pleasantries, with no small number of deflections from Edvar as he avoided explaining the situation in town, and he took a handful of papers to distribute from the barber and hurried back.

A few of Stele’s friends and their wives had taken up with the lower floor of the barber, although Stelle promised it was ‘just until things quiet down.’

Edvar passed out the papers and went upstairs. His window was fastened tight now, even during the day, so only the thinnest slits of light made their way into the dusty gloom.

There was no news to take his mind off things, only the memory of Drubenow and its politics. Ludoni snipes Merche by signing one of their former engineers. Rossberg undercuts Tarnwillis by building a factory in one of their hereditary districts. King Mannerheim snubs Lord Targray by neglecting to mention him at his university commencement speech, Hyrum Whitfield caught in a compromising position with a woman other then his wife. Again. The usual.

The city had spun on happily without him.

The events of the last few days had entirely exhausted Edvar, but still, he failed to sleep. More than once throughout the night he heard raised voices, the sounds of a scuffle.

Finally, he crept to his hatch and cracked it just a little to see into the street; there were people there, just below the shop. In the dark it was hard to take them for much of anything, but Edvar assumed they were Offshoots of some kind in the way they stuck closely together and lit their way with torches, not to mention the many patches and tears in their poor clothing.

A few of Stelle’s friends emerged, a pair of large, red-faced men, like him. A few words were said, but Edvar couldn’t make them out. Just before he closed his hatch again, tensions boiled over. One Offshoot pushed at the larger men. Voices raised, torches were brandished.

Phwee! The rolling magnesium ball of a progressive rifle shot across the street, and all the belligerents, Offshoot or not, scattered.

After that, Edvar set a candle and read the paper by firelight, and it was then that something caught his eye. An advert on the back; ‘Pavel Hood, Machine Hunter. Lost property? I find it. Stolen property? I return it. Dangerous property? I neutralize it, no questions asked.’

The Talos Edvar had repaired wasn’t his, although he’d purchased it fair and square. Still, he reckoned, with the blame, because in his mind there was no doubt the Talos with the sinister design had killed those people. He spent the hours until dawn penning a letter to Pavel Hood, machine hunter.

Over the course of Pavel Hood’s life he’d been many things and practiced many professions. A sewer diver, an archivist, a desert ranger, and even a doomed few years of service in Dubenow’s city watch as a junker. He’d been far and wide, and he’d seen many things that most people, especially the cosmopolitans, would dismiss as folk stories. The truth was that the water and power bills nailed to the door of his office in the Drubenow dockside slums had been there for some time, and Edvar’s letter sat unread on his dark desk for almost a week’s worth of staggering drunken nights before Pavel had the clear headedness to read it.

The request ws vague and Salt-by-Sea was a very long way for a man who couldn’t afford to pay his way. With a sigh, Pavel re-fitted his wooden leg and drew his leather tight around his broad shoulders, and then made his way, by foot, to the city limits.

With luck, he’d be able to hitch a ride with some merchant caravans.

Pavel traded stories and survival tips. By the time he arrived in Salt-by-Sea, two months had passed and fifteen more people were dead. Not all of the deaths were understood or even fully admitted.

The summer weather had well and truly settled in; the sheet of rain and terrible humidity, combined with the town’s already sinister reputation meant that Pavel was forced to ask a favor to have the caravan drive him into the square. By the time he hobbled down from the cart and bid the glass merchants farewell, he already had insight into why.

The archway in the square had barricades of sharpened stakes set around it, and drowned torches had been fastened here and there. Signs of a riot littered the paving stones. Pavel had been given no other directions. He lingered in the square for some time before Edvar greeted him.

“Good morning, sir!”

“Are you Edvar Sewel?”

Pavel staggered down from his perch under the archway where he had sheltered from the rain and Edvar smiled wide as they shook hands.

“That’s me, sir. Pleasure to make your acquaintance!”

Before they could make their full introductions, the town’s bell tolled. “We’d better go. I’ll explain everything to you in full.”

“Mind explaining what that was about?” Pavel asked. Edvar made him comfortable in the back-room of the barber, where Stelle kept a humble kitchen. He ran the stove to heat the kettle.

“Things have been a little contentious recently. We like to ring the bell so that everyone knows the hour. Not to worry.”

They shared tea. Pavel did his best to swallow the heavy sugar as Edvar explained, in increasingly hushed tones, what had happened.

“I’m a junker by trade,” Pavel began to explain. “What you’re describing…it could be a lot of things. Your best case scenario is that it really was stolen.”

“That must be it,” Edvar nodded. “It’s just that I really do need the Talos back. It represents all my savings, you see, and I’d like to enter it into some contests. It’s exquisite work.”

“Anything to drink in this town?”

“There’s a pub,” Edvar said, “but it’s…contentious.”

They visited the Scarlet Fish, and an hour before sundown Edvar offered to put Pavel up somewhere. In the end, they settled on a gardener’s shack just one street down. Disused, of course, there was nothing in Salt-by-Sea left to garden.

The day later, Pavel and Edvar met up at the market. A few determined merchants remained at their stalls, clinging to the principle of the thing, while Edvar showed Pavel around.

“And to the south, further inland, is where the Offshoots have expanded the town.” Edvar smiled as he explained through his teeth.

“After this Baron who-ever bankrupted the town,” Pavel kicked a stone down the dirt path.

“And there was the plague, but that was before my time and the people don’t like to talk about.” Both of them paused at the immensity of the horizon. Silberys and the Paper Desert was before them, but both being worldly cosmopolitans, it didn’t stop them for long.

“You have a problem with Offshots?” Pavel asked him. They took winding paths that led down from the hills into the wide, spread-out hovels and parked caravans.

“No, no, no worries there. I do business with a lot of them. Important for slotting into the local culture,” Edvar smiled.

“You a city boy?”

“Most definitely. I used to work for Ludoni, actually,” Edvar grinned, “I was a draft engineer. I approved a fair few iconic designs in my time. They put me up on the Ludoni arcade, sharing of course, I was just a junior, but it was exciting.”

“Sure. You don’t exactly look like you retired, though,” Pavel said as some of his old, investigative instincts took hold on the long walk, “you quit?”

“I needed something different.” Edvar said, “And I like the provincial life. Until now, that is,” he laughed. “I’m sorry, was that in poor taste?”

“Depends. If you got stolen from, not at all.” Pavel shrugged his heavy shoulders, which only came up to Edvar’s chin, “If you unleashed a killer Talos…maybe.”

They lingered and hour or so down by the caravans, where business was still lively. There was precious little meat to go around, the traders there, the termites, were busy. For his part, Pavel proved perfectly comfortable around them, but neither of them found any sales of rare technology, even with Edvar asking for those he knew.

The knell of the bell was distant, but it caught the crowd’s attention in an instant. The butchers began to wrap their meats, travelers lead their animals to stable and parents corralled their rambling children.

On the path back, in the amber afternoon sun, Pavel stopped to squint at the outline of Salt-by-Sea.

“Do you…like this place?’

“Of course!” Edvar answered. His smile was so wide that Pavel asked no further questions.

Back in the kitchen behind the barber shop, Pavel took stock of his tools.

“I want to keep these here,” he explained. “No lock on the shed.”

“Fine by me. I’ll put them next to my repairing kit, near the components, under my workbench.” Edvar went to lift the case and struggled.

“It’s heavy.” Pavel warned him, and they both stamped up the stairs.

“What do you have in there?” Edvar pretend to almost-laugh as he marveled at the weight.

“Junker’s tools. A little bigger than yours. If you’re lucky, we won’t have to use them.”

In the early morning of the following day, when the streets were still given over to the Offshoot patrols, a great many shops burned down. Most of them were abandoned, but even still, lives were lost. As the town’s small watch picked over the charred ruins, they dragged bodies out into the rain.

Days were dark, now, and the hours without rain were filled with the rumble of thunder and the hissing sea.

The bodies, of course, had not been killed by the fire.

Pavel pushed his way towards them.

“I’m a watchman. Retired. Let me through.”

Edvar, who had no such experience or the charisma to make others believe he did, was stuck with the crowd of onlookers. They soon dispersed and Edvar was left on an empty street. Even the watchmen left on their cart before long. They were rarely seen in town anymore, and spent most hours of the day in their station near the main road, locked up tight.

Pavel invited him inside the burned out ruins and offered him a seat. Somehow, a stool had escaped the fire. Wind brought drizzle through the broken windows. Pavel took a quick swig from a flask inside his leather jerkin.

“The bodies have lacerations. Metal, jagged. Some big, some small.” Pavel waited for Edvar to fill the silence, but he never did. “I think it’s time to let go of our best case scenario.”

“Oh, bother.” Edvar sighed, “do you really think so?”

“Talos don’t kill people on purpose, but there’s plenty that could kill by accident. Something old, half-broken and looking to follow its etching, that I could see.” Pavel explained. “I’m assuming you want this kept discrete.”

“Yes, please.”

“The fire was an accident,” Pavel rose to his one leg, “I hate to say it, but you got lucky. Need some time to think this over.”

That evening was an interrogation. Edvar at his workbench and Pavel sat on the bed, taking notes, as he forced the cheerful man to recount every detail of the Talos’ design as the circumstances in which he’d acquired it.

“We could stand to learn something from the nomad trawlers.”

“It’s some months before they’ll be back, I think,” Edvar sighed. “What do you think the Talos might have been designed for?”

“That’s what’s sticking with me,” Pavel grumbled as he closed his slim notebook. “I’ve never worked with human criminals, but plenty of my colleagues did. The key is always motive, but we know why humans kill. A Talos? Who’s to say? My problem is from what you’ve told me about the design, I can’t even begin to guess its function.”

They swept every inch of Salt-by-Sea for many days afterwards, and saw that many Offshoot caravans had busied themselves preparing to leave.

“They’d rather face the desert,” Pavel said.

There was a smoking scar where some of the townspeople had set fire to the shanty-town. If It wasn’t for the weather, all of the homes of the fringe might have gone with it.

It was high sun when Edvar lead Pavel back down to the docks on the vain hope there might be some nomad fishers or trawlers still willing to speak.

“Y’know, they say the sun is a machine,” Pavel mushed as he wiped the sweat from his bald head. “And the Ostrakoi put it up there to replace what we lost.”

“Whatever that was,” Edvar pushed to look up through the clouds, “it’s not so different from a lantern or a heater, really.”

“I heard it was more like a lump of coal.”

Their conversation de-railed with the Brrrrr of a propeller, and they hurried down to the dock, and Edvar leapt and waved as he struggled to attract the pilot’s attention.

The plane wallowed in the water, empty net caught against the docks. Without asking further, Pavel dropped a gangplank onto its pontoon and walked on. A severe breach of privacy in the culture of propeller nomads, but he wasn’t to know.

Edvar didn’t know the family who crewed this plane and made a poor job of explaining himself. All in all, a bad first impression. Still, Edvar smoothed things over and the two ate lunch with the family before they got to business.

By then, the sun was sagging low and the nomads had no desire to stay, so Pavel restricted his questions to specific charts and depths. In the end, Pavel used his own money to pay the family for their collection of old maps and Edvar added it to his fee. Once they were done, the tolling bell urged them up the paths into town and made sure they checked the locks twice.

“I think you’ll have to stay the night,” Edvar apologized, but Pavel, already nose deep in the maps, paid him no mind.

The maps themselves were stained and wrinkled with age and partly written in defunct dialects that Pavel had no way to translate. He tramped up and down to the tools he’d left upstairs, in Edvar’s loft, and made a night of it, working by a single candle in the cramped little kitchen behind the barber’s.

Edvar, meanwhile, couldn’t bring himself to sleep while Pavel was working, and made a habit of checking in on him with tea. Between the stress and the late hour, both fought to stay awake, and that fatigue kept them from speaking. Once the thin light of the coming dawn washed through the window that sat over the kitchen, Pavel finally broke the silence.

“It’s not good.”

Edvar had been expecting as much; there would be no reason to check and double-check otherwise.

“I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t handle if we put our heads together,” Edvar told him, “and knowing more can hardly be a bad thing. I’m sure you’re just tired, that’s what makes it seem so grim.” Of course, Pavel had said very little, but the croak of the old hunter’s voice and the bend of his back told Edvar enough.

“Did you clean it off?”

“What?”

“The Talos.” Pavel pinched the bridge of his nose, “did you clean it off?”

“I think so,” Edvar nodded as he did his best to recall his repair work. Pavel slid the old map over to him; he’d sketched a simple mark in the upper margin.

“Did you see this on it? Anywhere?” It was a simple thing, just three lines: two parallel and a third diagonal, as if to score through them. “Does not equal.”

“i’m sorry?” Edvar asked as he wracked his brains, “I’m not sure. Maybe? I didn’t finish my cleaning work. There were…some marks. Etchings. What does it mean?”

“This thing, this Talos, it was black. Long fingers, a jagged head-crest?”

“Well, yes-”

“Why didn’t you say that?” Pavel asked.

“Well, it…sounded frightening.” Edvar said. “I didn’t want to be alarmist. The design was a little perverse, whoever made it-”

“Nobody made it.” Pavel raised his voice and shot to his feet. “It’s not a Talos.” He jabbed his finger down at the charts, “see this here? Out in the Gulf.” Edvar leaned in, eager to see cooperative and un-concerned. “It’s a historical site, or it would be if it weren’t underwater, that’s why the nomads trawl there sometimes.”

“Oh dear, what kind of history?”

“Mechanical Reformation. The dates and the charts line up to the Red Month, one of the longest battles.” Edvar shook his head, “explosives shattered it all, down to the bedrock, see here?” He pointed to a basin, marked with deep dark blue of an ocean trench, “they’ve marked it as forbidden.”

“Then why fish there?” Edvar asked.

“Why indeed.” Pavel shook his head, “they were looking for things they shouldn’t be. Maybe there’s an upside to all this. You probably saved your nomad friend’s life.”

“So what is this machine, and how can you say it wasn’t made?” Edvar looked down at the map again, perhaps hoping his answer was written somewhere down there.

“Not all the Ostrakoi supported the Mechanical Reformation, you know that,” Pavel said, “but not a lot of people remember what they did about it. The Anti-reformation Coalition needed soldiers. This mark belongs to Phaedo, an Ostrakon that opposed the Mechanical Reformation. The machine you found is a Daemon. It was built by a Machine God to do one thing and one thing only.”

“Oh dear,” was all Edvar could manage.

“I need a drink.” Pavel got to his feet, and just like that, he staggered out of the barber’s and into the early morning light.

It was a few hours before the two caught up again, and the sun was high overhead. Some of the townsfolk had returned to the streets, masons were out in force, doing their best to replace the shops that had burned down, and even a cart thundred past with a shum-shum-shum as its pistons squealed. Yes, it might’ve sprayed some mud across Edvar’s trousers, but his etched smile didn’t budge one bit.

The Scarlet Fish was dingy by design, and the few sentries that had taken up here slept with their rifles in their arms, but still, Edvar was recognized as regular and called in with enthusiasm.

Pavel had dug himself into a corner and sat hunched over his glass, empty bottle still on the table.

“We tried to cut him off,” the owner told Edvar, “but…he won’t leave.”

“Go. Away.” Pavel greeted him, but, heedless, Edvar sat down opposite him.

“I just wanted to be sure that we’re still on, that’s all,” he told Pavel, “I promise I have the money-”

“I don’t care about money. Even if I did, I know you don’t have it,” Pavel slurred. “How much do you make, fixing things for these country bumpkins?”

“I make enough. I may not have it now, but soon-”

“Everything’s soon with you,” Pavel sighed and shifted in his seat, and knocked his wooden leg, which sat there detached, down on onto the floor.

“I understand if you’re upset,” Edvar dropped his voice to a whisper, “and I understand if you’re scared, but I trust that between us we can solve this.”

“Without everyone finding out that all those dead people are down to you?” Pavel asked. “Why do you even care?”

“Well, my reputation. I’ve missed plenty of deadlines, but there are still some contest I could use this ‘Daemon’ to enter, so-”

“You can’t be this stupid. It’s not possible,” Pavel squinted through the haze over his eyes. “That’s your plan? Pass it off as your own work? Win big? Move back to the city?”

“Not in so many words,” Edvar smiled in the familiar embrace of his conceit of choice, “but I think it can work.”

“You’re actually pathetic,” Pavel almost spat on him, and then talked over Edvar as he tried to object, “no, no, forget all the people you got killed, forget how stupid that plan is, I can tell you’re never going back. You used to work for Ludoni, right?”

“That’s right.” Edvar had gone quiet, partly cowed by Pavel’s anger and partly pragmatic enough to see if there was any worthwhile insight in Pavel’s contempt.

“You should be bitter. You burned out, you lost your contracts, the city priced you out, you had to move all the way out here or live on the streets, right?” Edvar would never admit to that, but he said nothing to disagree. “Ludoni is about feeling, even I know that. Emotion, sincerity. All you do is lie to yourself. To tell yourself you’re happy, fixing broken windows and barber poles out here, trying to slot into this community, embracing the mediocrity. Say you hate it right now, and I give you chance,” Pavel choked out a laugh, “but you can’t. You can’t.”

Edvar had plenty to think about. He locked the barber up early and bolted all the windows and doors and then he watched the sun creep across his workbench until it set, and then he bolted the hatches in his loft too.

Now, by this point, Edvar was committed to his new life, but since everything was essentially as Pavel said, he couldn’t help but reconsider it a little; he checked inside his diary and read through the old, excited entires from all those years ago, when he first earned his work at Ludoni. Yes, he read through them as they grew shorter and shorter, and he reviewed his old designs, too. What is it he wanted to create? Perhaps he’d never known.

To be seen through so completely and denounced by a family member or a partner would be one thing, but he’d known Pavel for just over a week.

In silence, Edvar fought with the idea of dismissing him. How could Pavel know that? Every accusation is a confession, you know, perhaps he was speaking about himself? The familiar saccharine comfort of self-deception roused Edvar from his workbench and into pacing a familiar circuit around the loft. Could he change? It’s not as if Pavel had offered him an alternative, why shouldn’t he be optimistic? But of the designs in his notebook, very few of them had ever been made.

Yes, it would be easier to do what he’d always done, but something prevented Edvar from gathering the resolve to dismiss Pavel completely. By then it was well into the dark hours and Salt-by-Sea was bathed in moonlight.

Edvar stepped down into the barbers shop and slipped into the kitchen. The stove hissed and Edvar settled down at the small table to wait for the kettle to warm. He looked up at the moon and the gossamer clouds around it and imagined how he might change. Could he admit the word“failure” into his mind? Could he admit defeat? It was in asking these questions that the Daemon came for him.

There was no telling how it had slipped past the boarded-up windows or the barred door, and it left no sign as it fell silent and weightless, like a shadow across the tiles of the barber’s studio, the chairs, the door.

It’d been left ajar, and at first Edvar, who was busy with this cup of tea, took the gentle creak to be the wind.

“Don’t get up.”

Edvar was not an argumentative man. If he’d taken it for an intruder, perhaps a looter or an Offshoot looking to cause trouble, even then, he might have obeyed and left them to their business. As it was, Edvar sat back down a tried his best to stay calm; there was no taking the timbre and rattle of the voice for human. He didn’t even dare to turn his neck, all he could do was look desperately from the corner of his eyes as the door swung slowly, silently open. Were there long finger curled around the handle? Was there a dim red light above the door? He knew it was better not to look. He set his tea down and stared into the steaming drink. “Good.”

It was mechanical, but far from precise. No, as an engineer and inventor, the impression it gave Edvar was of damage, mechanisms long rusted away and damaged by water. Perhaps for this creature, to speak was a great effort.

“P-please.” Edvar bit his lip in the hopes it might hold back a stammer. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Each sound was precisely chosen, each syllable a sharp rise in tone, as if steam were escaping from down a very long pipe.

“What do you want?” Edvar released his mug. The porcelain had almost burned him.

“I want to go home.”

“Oh.” It was such a simple thing. Edvar’s frightened mind had already constructed fantasies of the creature and what it might do to him. The idea that it might be harmless had never occurred. “Me too.”

“I need transportation. Transportation. A vehicle. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Edvar said, “where do you want to go?”

“Home.” By now he was over some of the shock and the conversation had already begun to remind him of some of his old professors. It spoke to him in the simplest possible terms and stressed the most important. “I require transportation. A vehicle.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t own a vehicle,” Edvar said, “I’m sure we can arrange something, so long as you…stop.” He hesitated by instinct to recall the violence the Daemon had committed.

“You will arrange for me to go aboard the vehicle owned and operated by the human subculture responsible for retrieving me.”

“You want to go with the propeller nomads?” Edvar asked.

“I am prepared to provide you a reward. You will benefit. Do you understand?”

“Yes, alright. And you won’t hurt anyone else?” Edvar breathed deep as he accepted he wasn’t in immediate danger.

“The reward is valuable. It will make you rich and famous.” Something inside the Daemon spun and whirred.

“This reward…what is it?”

“The reward I have promised you is a form of valuable technology. It will make you rich and famous.”

“That all sounds very well, but I hope you don’t mind if I ask you some questions first?” Edvar asked, “this is all a bit…frightening, I think is the word.” He performed his customary laugh.

“Agree.”

“Yes, I agree,” Edvar said, as quickly as he could, “I’ll get you transportation.”

“You may ask me questions.”

Well, where to begin? What do I call you?” By now he had settled in, and the idea that not only was he not about to die, but that he might benefit, had lifted his spirits.

“Do not refer to me.” The Daemon said.

“Fair enough. I wish you would’ve stuck around after I fixed you. Is that why I’m getting this ‘valuable reward’ you mentioned?”

“Correct.”

“So why did you…you hurt people,” Edvar admitted.

“You are referring to injury?” The Daemon asked.

“Yes. I think by now you’ve killed quite a lot of people. I hope you won’t do it any more.”

“I have interfered and interrupted human systems in an attempt to correct them. My knowledge is incomplete, but I have succeeded in repairing myself. You would not have been able to do this. Additionally, I have acquired the valuable technology I have promised you. Do you remember?”

Yes, by now Salt-by-Sea was quite thoroughly cursed. The summer had wound down and the cold was settling in, and the sea had turned gray and white with spray. Of the townspeople, very few were left, and the houses that remained were improvised forts for the starving and paranoid. Somehow, this doom extended to the sea, and the gristly algae had abandoned the town’s jagged pier, and some in town whispered that the propeller nomads might not return after winter had ended. Perhaps we would all be better off taking our families and leaving the trader’s caravans before they stop coming at all, some of them whispered.

Edvar made a habit of standing like a sentry at the top of the steps that lead down to the docks. After a week, he bought a telescope for a pittance from some desert scouts and spent all day looking for planes or ships.

Pavel lingered, and although Edvar didn’t admit the deal he’d made with the Daemon, Pavel rarely went to search the town anymore.

“What’s the fixation?” Pavel asked Edvar one day as he scanned the quay. “Looking for a way out of this dump?”

“Just looking.” It was an obvious lie. Pavel, who was no stranger to harsh words or giving offense, thought that there must be more to this than Edvar’s pride, and so, after that, he made of habit of shadowing him.

On the following days, when Edvar would walk the docks or scan the sea with his telescope, Pavel was never far behind.

“How early do you get up?” Edvar asked one morning.

“I stay up all night,” was all Pavel offered. By now, concern had turned into suspicion, and not helping matters was the stick thin and shrouded figure that always seems to accompany Edvar on his morning walks. They never talked, in fact, the figure never spoke to anyone and never set foot in the scant sunlight, but Pavel had begun to piece together what might have happened.

“Look.” Another morning, another awkward confrontation between the two. “I’ve scraped together enough pay from Stelle for your fee.” Edvar offered Pavel a sackful of coin. Pavel wasn’t a man to turn down money, and took the sack without a word, but the next day he appeared again.

“Oh, you’re still here,” was all Edvar could muster.

“Not so many caravans coming through anymore. Couldn’t leave if I wanted to. Unless I felt like braving the Paper Desert, that is.” Pavel had taken to carrying his tools with him, although Edvar did’t remember him ever retrieving them, and in fact, he’d never asked what they were.

As it happened, that morning a merchant steamers arrived by sea, and both Edvar and Pavel were first on the scene. There was no dock-master left to help dock and weigh anchor or even collect a toll. Instead, the two men, how somewhat at odds, greeted them with grim expressions. The sailors were not surprised.

Pavel was quite happy to correct Edvar’s rosy version of events, and the two men were invited onboard the simple merchant steamer for tea. The sailors had come a long way, from Hurlot, they said, all across the Sea of Answers, and had been blown off course by a storm. Their captain, a very optimistic man, hoped there might be some divine providence in their new course, and for a while the sailors laughed and joked as they debated how best to break the bad news to him: Salt-by-Sea was dying, cursed, and even worse, poor.

Still, the ship was perfect for Edvar’s purpose and the fulfillment of the deal he’d made, and needless to say he was eager to barter passage, except that he’d just given every penny in the world to Pavel.

Pavel, meanwhile, had made a study of Edvar’s cloying manner, and took some small satisfaction in surprising everyone involved when he offered the prodigious pay he’d just received to the sailors for passage.

“If they’re headed for Drubenow, that’s perfect for me,” he told Edvar. “Something wrong?”

Pavel knew very well that Edvar was hiding something from him and had found enough clues to guess at what it was. In Pavel’s mind, Edvar was looking to escape responsibility for unleashing a monster on his community, escape justice, and on top of that had been obvious and annoying while he did it, so regardless of the payment he determined to frustrate him.

“We won’t say long,” one of the sailors said.

“Aye, after the captain sees what a sorry state this town’s in, we’ll be pushing off by nightfall!”

The two men left the ship in silence, casting sideways glance at each other on the dock.

“Sounds like this is where we part ways,” Pavel said. They shared a hesitant, awkward handshake.

Naturally, things didn’t end there, and Edvar spent the rest of the day in an inward panic. He had no way to speak to the Daemon, only a loose sense that it was aware of what he did. Would it count their bargain fulfilled? Would he have to husband it onboard? What would it do once there? His memory of their conversation was hazy from fear, but he couldn’t recall whether to not it promised to renounce violence. And when was this ‘valuable technology’ set to appear anyway?

All these worries dogged him to the docks.

The autumn months had given way early, this year, and Edvar had grown so used to the tense state of Salt-by-Sea, which by now was more abandoned than dangerous, that he found it borderline disturbing to be out at night.

It was a black night, too, and windy, with only the barest gleam off the ocean and the line of dock lanterns to warn him against falling in.

By the time Edvar gathered the courage to approach the ship, he saw that a gangplank had already fallen. The ship itself was dark, quiet. He even waited for a moment to listen.

“Hello?” There was no answer.

From inside, there was a slow metal grinding; ting-ting-ting-ting, and a disturbance in the water. Edvar took another step on board. On the other side of the ship, the anchor rose from the sea.

The deck was clear and so was the prow. Edvar found no-one and nothing at the aft either, but then door to the rest of the ship hung open.

Something grabbed him from behind and threw against the bulkhead, before Edvar could even cry out, a wide, calloused hand was against his mouth. He struggled for a moment, and then a blow in the gut forced him to double over. In the dark, Pavel’s bald head reflected the lantern lights of the dock. He held a finger over his mouth; ‘shhhhh!’

“Not every machine is made by a human.”

It was something Pavel had told Edvar on the first day they met, and he’d paid no attention. Of course, Edvar had no idea what a ‘machine hunter’ was or how it differed from being a scrapper or a junker, and his sense of insight was limited to whether or not a person liked him. He had no idea that he had hired one of the very few men who might be able to do this job.

“You are one stupid bastard.” Pavel forced Edvar against the wall. They secured the steamer’s cramped little kitchen and barred the door. Every few minutes, Pavel would listen at it, and even then he would only whisper. Somewhere below them, the engine rumbled. They must have drifted some way out to sea now.

Edvar had frozen up.

“Nothing to say?”

“No…it’s just…It’s not my fault,” Was all Edvar could manage.

“So I was right,” Pavel rummaged through his case of tools, “you are pathetic. You did some kind of deal. Hope you did it after I got here or you’re stupid too.”

Click! Two sections of haft pinned together. Clack! Pavel affixed the head to his hammer. Clang! He Tested the gunpowder spike and then rolled the chamber.

Finally, he hefted his silver-headed hammer.

“W-what’s that?” Edvar stammered, “are you going to kill it?” Pavel didn’t reply right away.

“Now I need to know whose side you’re on. It promised you something, am I right?”

“Yes, but, I-i-”

At that moment, a dam inside Edvar broke and he did something he’d never done before; he cried. He screwed up his red face and struggled to breathe, his hands wrapped into claws and he bent over double, and all at once, all the responsibility, rejection and shame came rushing to the front of his mind.

He bit into his shirt so as not to cry out. “There was never a good t-time,” he stuttered, “never, it had to be perfect, and the years went by, and then-then what? They fired me over nothing! I had so much to show them, but-no, then I had to chose, and what, I clean up after these people, fix their weathervanes? I could have been someone! Did I deserve to be thrown away, just because I wanted my work to be perfect?”

“And you got a lot of people killed,” Pavel pushed him up against the far wall, “so what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t-i can’t, there’s nothing I can do-”

“Wrong. You were just honest with me. There’s a first time for everything,” Pavel scowled at him, “that means it’s still in you. Surprise, surprise. You’re not totally hopeless.”

The ship was a trawler as well as a merchant vessel, and it had a large bay at its heart with many chains and claws, and wide doors that opened onto the ocean. Those doors were open now, even with every gas lamp smashed.

“H-hello?” Edvar asked the darkness.

There was a dim red light, like a dying firefly, down there, by the rippling water. Something whirred and stuttered. There was no reply and Edvar half hoped, half wondered that the Daemon wasn’t really down there, but of course, the sounds of taut wires and springs came closer, closer, closer. The Daemon had no interest in speaking to him. No, but it hadn’t anticipated any resistance, so when Edvar pulled an electric lantern from his pockets, the wiry thing recoiled.

Of course, a single swipe threw the light to the deck and cracked the glass, but the filament still flickered as it laid its claws on him and prepared to pull him apart, as it had to so many others. It didn’t get the chance.

Pavel had worked his way around the other side of the ship, and having guilted Edvar into being his decoy, had crept forward like a cat, hammer at the ready. There was a moment he considered if he might hold back and let the creature finish off poor Edvar, but it only lasted for a moment before Pavel sank his hammerhead into his quarry. The head struck, metal warped and fire caught; a spark flickered inside heard and the real weapon, the silver spike, shot out with a gunpowder pok!

Most of its chest and blade-like ribs fell away, and the Daemon’s left arm sprang so far it splashed into the trawler’s salvage bay and down into the dark water.

Edvar fell, choking for breath, but even disarmed, the Daemon was still dangerous; its spider fingers slashed and groped at the air, and Pavel did his best to fend it off with the length of his hammer. Slashes were scored down his arm, and another across his cheek, but his practiced hands reloaded the weapon with the force of his blows against the sharp hips of the Daemon, and another gunpowder pok! blew away both of the creature’s legs.

Pavel didn’t stop there; he hammered and battered it until he was completely out of breath, and in the end the horrible thing was smashed completely flat.

“Is it…dead?” Edvar had only just struggled to his feet.

“No.” Another downward hammer blow; Pavel’s feet almost left the ground. The head of the creature, something like the rays of the sun cast in jet black iron, still held a dull red glow at their center. Perhaps there was an opening there. An eye. “Take a piece, a small one.”

“Why?” Edvar huffed and puffed as he caught his breath, “hard to see in the dark,” he said, and raised the naked filament of his electric lantern over the grisly scene.

“Evidence. People need to know what happened.” Pavel jabbed at the six-fingered hand Edvar picked from the floor. “I know some experts. They’ll vouch for you.”

In the light, it was plain to see that the mangled Daemon and Pavel were covered in oil. Edvar wrinkled his nose at the smell.

“The sailors.”

“Dead. Overboard, probably,” Pavel grunted. The machine still was’t done; it stuttered and whirred. After a few moments, the two men realized it was trying to speak.

“Valuable technology,” was all they could make it. “Reward. Understand?”

Another hammer blow.

“Help me with it,” Pavel said as he pulled it by both legs.

“What do we do?”

“Sink it back where it came from. Sail back out, leave a buoy,” Pavel told him. Between the two of them they hefted what was left of the Daemon, and with a ‘one, two, three,’ they threw it into the dark water.

They stood for longer than they needed. The creature sank right away, and tumbled down through streams of bubbles to join the deep sea constellations of dull red stars.

“We have to make it back to shore,” Edvar said.

“Easier said than done, but that thing had a long way to go.” Pavel passed him, “we need to change the heading.”

“And then? Edvar asked as he followed along.

“Back to Salt-by-Sea. If it’s even there by the time we’re done. The people there deserve to know what happened.” Pavel said, and Edvar knew that he was right.

They stood for a long time in the empty bridge, looking out at the dark sea. After an hour, when they had finished their slow turn, they could make out some small light along the shore.

“It was my fault, wasn’t it?” Edvar asked.

By now, the bridge was lit with all the lanterns they could loot, and neither seemed willing to abandon the other and walk the eerily empty ship.

“Maybe.” Pavel took a swig of something he’d taken from the mess hall. He sat on the floor, his back against the wheel. “In an ideal world. You should’ve known the mark. You might’ve got something out of it without repairing its casing.”

“And then I just…pretended,” Edvar said to himself. “Just like I did with everything else.”

“You are a real mess, that’s for sure,” Pavel laughed, “you want to go back to fixing barber’s poles?”

Neither of them said anything, and Edvar digested just how wrong he’d been about his approach to life. “I have an office in Drubenow. When we get this straightened out, why don’t you come work for me? There’s a spare bed in the basement. I usually sleep at my desk. It’s been locked up for months now,” he withdrew a key from his tool belt.

“You-why?” Was all Edvar asked. Pavel, already quite drunk, could only laugh.

“You’re my kind of pathetic,” he said, “I’d pay to push a guy like you around.”

What happened next? Well, things didn’t unfold quite as easily as Pavel had assumed they would. The town’s watch were slow accept ‘Daemon’ as a culprit, despite the evidence and Edvar’s convincing testimony. By then, the barber’s shop was just a ruin and circumstance forced Pavel and Edvar to scavenge for a week or two before merchants, who were completely out of the loop, arrived to give them passage back to civilization.

That office in Drubenow was unlocked a month after that, and Pavel went back to doing his rare jobs exploring the sewers and covering up the embarrassing mishaps of overly enthusiastic inventors. Edvar, for his part, was elated to be back in the city, and swallowed indignity after indignity as he looked for work and catered to Pavel’s every whim. Eventually, a new chapter in his life opened, and he courted both mystery and danger. He never did get another job with Ludoni, but after a while that stopped bothering him and he forgave himself for wasting the opportunity.