A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Nobody would forget what had happened, even though it would eventually pass into legend and become apocryphal, being a warning to both Apprentice and Tutor to ever keep a watchful, vigilant eye upon their own mental stability and the anxiety raised by expectation and duty. Yet life continued, the Program continued, and a new Tutor was brought in to continue the education, of the Machines, for the Apprentices. Hence Tutor Narro.
Kid’s attention, however, was pulled to a more mundane observance of the continued and unrelenting milling of the workers, Attendants and Retainers, Cooks, Servers and the like, on virtual assembly line rotation about the Halls and corridors of the Tower. it was the Retainers, however, that drew the largest portion of Kid’s attention from the lecture in progress. Kid noted how the Retainers of Nobles would wear an emblem, namely a badge, to identify their Family.
Even within the procession of Retainers there appeared a hierarchy, such that a lesser Retainer, coming from a lower Family, would give way to the Retainer with a higher Family standing. In the process of this debacle, would all workers give way to the entire litany of Retainers, regardless of rank. The system of internal politics was a complicated set of deliberately trouncing rules written over the old faded ink of the previous set of rules, until there were so many petty little rules to obey, the whole affair fell into a farce of a merry dance to propriety, duty and Nobility. The rules set about, piled over and over, full of nonsensical manoeuvres, for century upon century, for the Nobles, was no less uneven. Kid himself had forgotten more rules of the correctness of manner, dress and position than he cared to recall. Despite it all, however, Kid smiled, to an apparition of a life he had once known - a reminiscence more of jollity and happiness, than loss and loneliness.
Kid returned his attention now to the matter at hand, as the group began to walk and Kid, slower than the rest, would need to keep up. The Tutor was speaking, “It was a curiosity that led me personally to identify the m
Machines, understand their specified characteristics, learn the appropriate skills to operate them, until I became familiar with them, able to distinguish each certainty of insight the mechanics would reveal to me, no longer secret - irrefutable and impossible to deny. This is your future also, as long as you keep well my words, and the words of your betters. Follow.”
Kid was beginning to see the relating of vital information by Tutor Narro much more limited in scope, dull and avoiding anything particularly meaningful, certainly lacking true wisdom of someone like Tutor Kurban. Kid spared a thought for the late man, who only wanted to teach, yet was laid low by the insane mind of an Apprentice. That kind of occurrence happened, however, and Kid would just have to accept it. One saving grace was that at least Kurban had no living family, so would not leave too much grief in his wake.
They passed a door that was locked, to which the Tutor did not refer. Aggrieved, as would be appropriate and be their entitlement too, many of the Apprentices enquired why they could not enter, to which all Tutor Narro could utter was, “It is off limits.” With sorrowful agreement, the Apprentices left it behind, moved on, as they were commanded to do so. All except Kid.
He was truly cognisant of his intention, and it was simply that no knowledge should be hidden if he was certain to achieve full understanding of Unity and all of its functions. Therefore no place was off limits.
As a young child, younger than he was now, he had found entry into locked rooms with ingenuity and guile, often by discovering a hole somewhere, or a crawl space leading to it. There were no such passages here, thus Kid would need an alternative route. Close by, Kid found a black painted window. The catch was stiff and required manipulation of the mechanism. The window would not open wide, but it gave Kid enough room to slip by and climb outside, onto the ledge.
As the window opened, a sudden chilling gust stung his face. Kid straddled the window frame, placing his good leg first for stability upon the common walkway that was part of the construction of all Towers, originally set for the purpose of Vigilants, but also to dispatch repairs upon the edifice.
Nothing could predict the climate that would fall at that moment, and this particular beat, a strong wind had gathered, whistling through the gaps in the stone outside. The rapidity of flurry pulled at Kid’s jacket, buffeting him around dangerously. At six feet intervals was punched into the stone a hook, once used by the people who had walked the worn and slippery walkway to attach the line that would come from their belt, firmly affixed. No such instrument existed now, though the affectation of the belt and line had been incorporated into regular wear as decorative and nothing more.
The line that fell from Kid’s belt would do nothing to hold him, so he would have to employ sheer caution in order that he would traverse the ledge, his back firm against the stone, using the ridged and undulated surface of the stone as hand holds, and hoping beyond hope that the ledge itself still maintained the same solidity it had when the Towers had first been built.
He slipped once or twice on the smooth and weathered ledge, presently bereft of the roughness it would once have had for a friction grip. Boots these days were smooth of sole, hence the danger Kid was putting himself in was purely for his driven curiosity. The ingress point into the locked room looked further and further away the closer Kid came to the windowless hole that led to the darkness within. The darkness without was no less efficaciously terror inducing, in it’s near infinite blackness as it stretched out a distance until the curve of the world caused it to drop. Each step, therefore, took Kid from a definite point of safety to a definite point of prospective danger. Kid was clearly unsure of what awaited him within that locked room, but this did not seem to intimidate him, any more than the journey itself. Yet he had made it, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief in compensation.
Once alighting upon the solid floor of the locked room, Kid suffered the indefinite anxiety of perpetrating a wrong, but for all the right reasons. The anxiety was not relieved by what he saw within that room however. There was nothing. It was empty, save for the fresh footprints in the thick dust from the boot of perhaps a Tutor, or more likely from the boot of a Vigilant. Kid followed those boot indentations until he reached a set of stairs, almost hidden in the ethereal darkness. He took them cautiously, following them up, taking his mark from the prints already upon the ground as his own, until he reached the top, and a familiar, if subtlety different sight welcomed him.
It was much like the heart Machine room, except here there was a little more light, so Kid was able to ascertain the layout of the said room much easier than he had the longer dark one. An apprehension caught him, of the soporific ether that had arrested him and sent him into a dream of preparative solution to a mental maze of mind bending proportions. It was a dream he didn't much wish to visit again.
Instead of the heart Machine and the entanglement, there was a semi-circular brass dome upon the Spine. Except for this, the situation appeared to be beyond contradiction. Despite his reservations, Kid’s curiosity was bent upon investigation, and that he must examine this object to seemingly complete the avid experimentation he had started a short while ago with the heart Machine itself. The dome, upon closer inspection, contained a hair-line split down the middle. Kid took this to infer the dome would open, to reveal a prize within. Kid touched the dome gently, whereupon it clicked softly and began to open, like a vain flower in the sunshine.
Within was placed, in perfect balance, a set of scales with the tenderest of filigree fixings, and seemingly carved into the indefinable material of the scales were symbols older than words, much like were contained upon the entanglements of the heart Machine. They were, quite obviously, Fratribus Praebuit Machina - Brothers to the Machine. Eodem. The same. The bowls of the scale were of latticework, crisscrossed in a geometrical pattern born of nature and its subtleties in design. The scales looked more like they had been grown than created.
Suddenly, one of the bowls dipped ever so slightly, which inexplicably led Kid to shudder inside, in a tiny pocket somewhere within his psyche. The scales continued to wobble, judder as though flicked by a sudden yet gentle gust of wind. It wasn't until the scales had righted themselves, that Kid felt the uncontrollable shaking within him dissipate. It was beyond description, the sensation and motion of that instrumenti deos. Kid was captivated by it and its every slight movement, which continually elicited a sensation of sympathy within Kid himself.
Once sated, Kid returned to the stairs, retracing the steps of the other, more previous observer, until he came to the window once more. More cautious and careful this time he passed over the exterior walkway, finding himself eventually back inside the South Tower interior, near the locked door. As to not be noticed actioning the motion, Kid found the tail-end of the Apprentices, the stragglers, and slotted into place, as though he had never left the group. That was, of course, except for being observed perpetrating the deceit by Ryla, who frowned at him and mouthed the words, “Where were you?” Kid thought about a reply - one that contained a deft touch and reporting seemingly truthful elements, white lies to a friend - but instead chose to shrug. Ryla shot her eyes ceilingward, in exacerbation at Kid’s apparent rebelliousness, shaking her head dismissively as she returned her attention to the Tutor and his well practiced words.
The whole episode had changed something in Kid, not least the discovery of the scales of balance to the Four Towers, but also a secret place he could disappear to, when he needed it most. He was sure he had nothing to fear from the Vigilant, however, as the boot prints had been far too old to be current. Finally, that masked part of his life, that which he had left behind unattended in the North Tower, released the mischievous child again, who had been halted - trapped in arrested development, now free once more to grow as he should within the body of the Broken Boy.
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