doorway, Auri peered into the dusty room. She eyed the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, she eyed the tables strewn with dusty tools. She eyed the shelves, packed with bottles, boxes, tin containers. She eyed the other door across the room. There was no hint of light around its edges.
Auri did not like it here. It was not the Underthing. This was a between place. It was not for her. But as much as she did not like it, the other options were all worse.
She eyed the floor, covered with a fine layer of dust except for a set of heavy bootprints, black smudges scuffing through the grey dust on the floor. The bootprints told a story. They entered from the other door, moved from a table to a nearby shelf, then made a line to the doorway where she stood.
Auri glared at the spot where they crossed the threshold. As they left the dusty floor of Tenance the bootprints became invisible. They were from long ago. But even now the sight made her heart thump. Her skin was all hot prickle, indignant at the thought of them. A second set of bootprints told the story in reverse. They returned to Tenance from the Underthing. They moved to tables, shelf, and out the other door. They made a circle of sorts. A circuit.
They were not new bootprints. Still, they told a story Auri did not love. They told a story she did not want to see repeated.
She drew a breath to calm herself. There was no time for this. They would be coming, all hard boots and arrogance and not one bit of proper knowledge of this place. A cold sweat swept the prickle heat all off her skin. She drew another calming breath and focused.
Her expression fierce, Auri took a deep breath and crossed the threshold into Tenance. She placed her small white foot inside the black print of a boot. Her foot was small enough that this was no hard thing. Even so, she moved with slow deliberation. Her second step brought little more than her toes in contact with the floor. Her feet fit easily inside the bootprints, making no marks of their own.
Thus she moved, one delicate step at a time. First to a shelf, she eyed containers before picking up a heavy bottle with a ground glass stopper. Next she took a brush and felt the bristles with her finger. Then she made her way back to the door, her steps as slow and graceful as a fawn’s.
She closed the door behind her. Then, breathing out a sigh of deep relief, she ran herself to Rubric.
Even moving quickly, it took an hour to find the proper place. Rubric’s round brick tunnels ran the length and breadth of Underthing, miles and miles of passages, twisting up and down and doubling back, taking the pipes where they needed to go.
Just as she was fearing she might never find it, just when she’d begun to fear it might not be in Rubric after all, Auri heard a sound like angry snakes and rain. If not for that, it might have taken her all day to track it down. She followed the noise until she could smell damp upon the air.
Finally, turning a corner, she saw water bursting like a fountain from a cracked iron pipe. The spray had wet the bricks for twenty feet in each direction, and the other pipes were dripping with it too. The tiny brass pipes for pressed air didn’t mind in the least. And the fat black pisspipe thought the whole thing rather funny. But the steampipe was not best pleased. Its thick wrapping was soaked straight through, and it was grumbling and steaming, filling the tunnel with a musty hothouse damp.
From where she stood, Auri eyed the dark line of the broken black iron pipe, carefully tracing it through the others. Foxen held high, she walked away from the leak, following the dark pipe backward.
After ten minutes and a quick detour through Tenners, Auri found the valve, a small wheel barely big enough for both her hands. Setting down her brush and bottle, she gripped it tight and twisted. Nothing. So she brought the handkerchief out of her pocket, wrapped it round the wheel, and tried again, her teeth bared with the effort. After a long moment, the ungreased age of it gave way, and it grudgingly let itself be spun.
She gathered up her tools and headed back. There was no sound of snakes. The spray had stopped, but the entire tunnel was still sodden. The air hung wet and heavy, making her hair stick and cling to her face.
Auri sighed. It was just as Master Mandrag said so many years ago. She walked back where the tunnel floor was dry and sat cross-legged on the bricks among the pipes.
Then came the hardest part. The waiting grit at her. She had so much to do. This was important, certainly. But he was coming on the seventh day, and she was nowhere near to ready. . . .
She heard something in the distance. Some echo of a sound. A scuff? A step? The sound of boots? Auri went startled and still. She closed her hand over Foxen and sat all quiet in the sudden dark, straining to hear. . . .
But no. There was nothing. The Underthing was host to a thousand small moving things, water in pipes, wind through Billows, the rumbling thrum of wagons filtering through the cobblestones, half-heard voices echoing down the grates. But no boots. Not now. Not yet.
She uncovered Foxen and went to look at the leak again. The air was still hot and thick with wet, so she went back to her sitting place where there was nothing to do but fidget and worry. Auri considered running back to fetch the brazen gear. Then at least she would have company. But no. She had to stay.
A leak was bad. But a leak might go unnoticed for some time. Now, with the water to this piece of pipe turned off entire, there was every chance that something vital up above was all alack. No knowing what. The pipe could lead to some disused piece of Mains, where it could stay dry for years with no one anyways the wiser.
But perhaps it led to the Master’s Hall, and right now one of them was halfway through a bath. What if it led to Crucible, and some experiment left to calmly calcinate was instead undergoing unintended exothermic full cascade?
It led to the same thing. Upset. Folk finding keys. Folk opening doors. Strangers in her Underthing, shining their unseemly lights about. Their smoke. The braying of their voices. Tromping everywhere with hard, uncaring boots. Looking at everything without a single thought of what a look entails. Poking things and messing them about without the slightest sense of what was proper.
Auri realized her fists were knots of knuckle white. She shook herself and stood. Her hair hung lank around her head.
The air was clearer now. Not wet and steaming any more. She gathered up her tools and was glad to see the steampipe had finally roasted both itself and everything around it dry. Better still, the slow regard of silent things had wafted off the moisture in the air.
Auri brought Foxen close to the black iron pipe, and was relieved to see the trouble was no greater than a hair-thin crack. Though the pipe looked dry, she wiped it with her handkerchief. Wiped it again. Then she unstoppered the bottle, dipped her brush, and spread clear liquid all across the tiny break.
Wrinkling her nose at the knifelike smell, Auri dipped her brush again, painting all around the pipe. She grinned and eyed the bottle. It was lovely. Tenaculum was tricky stuff, but this was perfect. Not thick like jam, not thin like water. It clung and stuck and spread. It was full of green grass and leaping and . . . sulphonium? Naphtha? Hardly what she would have used, but you couldn’t argue with results. The craft employed was undeniable.
Soon she had coated the entire pipe around the crack in glistening liquid. She licked her lips, looked up, then worked her mouth and spat delicately onto the far edge of the wet. The surface of the tenaculum rippled and her grin grew wider. She reached out a finger and was pleased to find it hard and smooth as glass. Oh yes. Whoever wrought and factored this was living proof that alchemy was art. It showed pure mastery of craft.
Auri painted two more coats, laving all way round the pipe and for a handspan off beside the hairline crack. Twice more she spat to set and glaze it. Then she stoppered up the bottle, kissed it, smiled, and sprinted back to turn the water on.
Her duty done, Auri tended to the brush and headed back to Tenance. She pressed her ear against the door. Listened. She heard a faint . . . No. Nothing. She held her breath and listened. Nothing.
Even so, she opened the door slowly. She looked inside to see there was no light around the other door. For a moment her heart stuttered as she thought she saw new bootprints on . . . But no. Just shadow. Just her own breath-catching fear.
Carefully she put the bottle back upon its shelf, setting it inside its own dark dustless ring where she had found it. And then the brush. She stepped carefully inside the big black brutish treadings of the boots. She wasn’t one for rucking things about. She stepped the way the water moves within a gentle wave. Never mind the motion, the water stays unchanged. That was the proper way of things.
She slowly closed the heavy door behind her. She checked the latch to make herself most certain sure. Stepping back into the Underthing, the stones should have been sweet beneath her feet. But they were not. They were mere stones. The air seemed strange and strained. Something was wrong.
She stopped and listened at the door again. She listened closer, then opened up the door a crack to peer inside. Nothing. She closed the door and checked the latch. She leaned her weight against the door and tried to sigh but could not find the breath for it inside her chest. Something was wrong. She had forgotten something.