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He had seen his fair share of dead bodies, living in The Roots it was inevitable, but Martin Knightsbridge had never seen one that had fallen from the sky with wings sprouting from its back. To be honest, he hadn’t seen this one. Fall that is; but he saw it after, because it took his entire audience’s hard earned attention away in an instant and the crowd that had gathered around him suddenly moved en masse to crowd around the crumpled body that lay outside one of the arched entrances to their part of The Tree.
He heard hushed voices “It’s from the Branches,” he heard someone whisper. “Look at how it’s dressed,” said another, prodding the clean white trousers of the unfortunate soul with a grubby shoe. The man was wearing entirely white from head to toe – white short cut jacket, over a shiny white waist coat overtop of a white button-down shirt that was tucked into white trousers, now with a dark smudge on one of his shoes from the intrusion of a dirty Roots shoe.
“Those Upper people are ridiculous with their fads,” said a third, a man, Martin noticed, who was covered in brightly coloured tattoos. A middling, he thought, shaking his head and smiling at the hypocrisy of the stranger’s statement. He had heard rumours that people from The Trunk liked bright, garish things, supposedly as a way to distance themselves from people like him; people that lived underneath. Those in the middle levels were unlike everyone below in the Roots who favoured more subdued...everything – clothes, personalities, jobs. Martin briefly wondered what someone from The Trunk was doing down here in the below, but then noticed the bag slung sideways across his chest and hanging at his side. Of course, that explained it. He was a messenger. As a messenger, the man with the jumble of tattoos on his arms underneath a vivid yellow top and bright red trousers and matching canary and crimson shoes was one of the only people allowed to travel between the layers of The Tree.
Martin sighed and began packing up his stall, removing the banner that hung above him proclaiming that he was the one and only Marius the Magician. There was no way to get people interested in his magic now, not now with this new visitor to their part of the city. People would be talking about now for at least a few days. Through gaps in the crowd, Martin could see people inspecting the person’s wings, tugging and pulling, and Martin was sure, the poor man would be lightened of any jewellery or valuables he may have had.
He rolled up the banner, folded up the small table down into a portable size, pocketed the kerchief that contained a paltry amount of coins, and was all set to ignore all the and walk right by the man who had elicited such interest, when something glinted, catching his eye.
Martin had never cared about the other levels. He was born in the Roots, and he knew that was where he had to stay. There was no way around it. That’s just how it was. The Golems were a pretty definitive answer to those who questioned their status. People like him were born into the Roots, the lowest level of Tree, and other people were luckier, those that were born in the Middle levels, affectionately called the Trunk. And if you were especially blessed, you’d be born in the top levels, what everyone down here often in bitter tones called the Branches. Sure, it would be nice to have a bit more money, but Martin couldn’t complain, not too much. He had already managed to move into a new abode in the Second Level. He was literally moving up in the world. It was far better than the lower level, the very bottom, where there was nothing much, including hope. At least in the second level, they had windows that let in actual daylight from the outside world, and not the sickly watery glow from fireflies trapped in glass. The top level of the Roots also had entrance gates to Outside of Tree altogether, which is where this sudden visitor had appeared and stolen his dinner money. And the money Martin earned here as a Magician would buy him more than watery stew and a stale, often mouldy, chunk of bread. He was as happy as he’d ever remembered. Even though the law stated he could never move further than the second level; could never become a Middling, just as a Middling could never become one of the people who live in the top Branches, he was content.
People around the body had begun to thin as the curiosity and novelty began to wear off. In the distance Martin could hear the loud piercing whistles of the police, above the rattle of carriage wheels. Martin jumped at the noise as the sound of hooves became louder. He still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that people at this level travelled by carriage. Below, he’d spent his life walking everywhere, just like everyone else. It seemed each level had its perks and privileges.
Martin casually inched forward toward the victim, as if he was just taking a curious, morbid interest like the rest. It was an older man with a shock of white hair surrounding a bald spot, his head bent unnaturally to one side, underneath a jumble of polished brass and large thin feathers made of some kind of stiff material. He leaned down peering at the man’s clothes which had a strange shimmering quality. He’d never seen anything like it. Even on the second level, people wore earthy colours – browns, beiges, greys, greens.
He saw out of the corner of his eye the messenger was still hanging around, his red trousers and bright images inked on his skin were almost like a beacon. He stood out as a foreigner.
Another long whistle pierced the chatter of pedestrians on the street, and Martin knew he had to act fast. He leaned down as if admiring the sleeve of the man’s shirt, and quickly slipped the object he’d seen as people milled about the winged man up his sleeve. Being an illusionist came in handy sometimes, and glancing over his shoulder, Martin was confident no one had seen him take the thing that glittered at him like it was calling him.
“What’s happened here?” a gruff voice shouted loudly from above.
“Oh!” Martin jumped and almost head butted the officer’s horse. “You startled me, Sir, Officer.”
The man peered down at him with small, dark eyes. “So I see,” he said. “Now,” he leaned to look around his horse, and lifted the visor of his hat slightly, “what do we have here? It looks like we have someone from above.” The officer turned to one of his companions. “Oooeee, look at those nice threads! Do you see that?”
The second officer nodded and then shook his head, clucking his tongue. “Look at those wings. Those Uppers and their crazy inventions. Obviously this one didn’t work too well.”
Martin nodded vigorously, feeling like an ant under a spyglass. “Well, sirs, I’ll get out of your way, I was just packing up my things,” he lifted the folded table draped with the purple banner up by way of explanation. “All my customers were distracted by this…gentleman paying us a visit.” Martin didn’t know if the man was actually a gentleman or not, but seeing how he was from above meant that he was rich, and that automatically made him a gentleman in Martin’s books.
The officer barely gave Martin a second glance, “yes, yes, go on,” he said, waving a dismissive hand in Martin’s general direction.
“Wait!” the second officer shouted, raising his energy gun and point it squarely at Martin. “He looks familiar.”
The officer in charge looked over his shoulder. “Does he?” his eyes barely registered Martin and took in his things. “Oh he’s just one of those street mages,” he said, turning away again and looking instead at the victim.
Street mage! Martin bristled at the insult. He was more than just a common street mage, he was a full-fledged illusionist! But the second policeman’s energy gun popped and crackled with flickers of blue electricity, and Martin decided he valued his life more than his dignity.
Martin took the cue without another word and slipped away through the scattered crowd of on lookers. He realized he was holding his breath only when he stumbled upon one of the Golem guards, and tried to let out a startled scream, but his breath came out in a whoosh instead. He hated the Golems, even though they had never done anything to him. They gave him shivers each time, so he avoided looking at them if he could, especially in the dark holes of their eyes. They just looked so…unalive that he felt like he was looking at the dead encased in metal.
The metal Golem turn
ed to stare at him, holding its large energy gun across its chest. It stood stoically in front of one of the lifts that lead to the Middle two levels of the Tree. “How are y-,” he started, but swallowed the greeting. When he got nervous, he started to ramble. And emotionless automatons holding weapons made him nervous. He was never sure if the person trapped inside was man or woman, not that it mattered. It would have been horrible for anyone to be voluntarily stuck inside a hunk of man-shaped metal, and moving around with the help of steam and levers. He also knew they rarely spoke through the perpetual grimace that the mouth grille gave them, so even if he spoke to them, they would just stare back at him through a tinted window where the person inside could look out clearly, but anyone looking back just saw unnerving darkness.
“Excuse me!” a voice piped up behind him. Martin jumped, his heart pounding in his chest. It was the delivery man, with his bright clothes and satchel across his body. Martin smiled at him nervously and stepped out of the way as the Messenger showed the Golem his credentials. Only then did the guard move out of the way of the lift door, the metal ratcheting noisily and the accordion gate closing with a rattle and clang behind him. The messenger flashed a smile, straight white teeth under a neatly trimmed moustache and waved his pass tauntingly in front of Martin before the lift took him up into the unknown and Martin was suddenly self-conscious of his own smile and closed his mouth over yellowed teeth.
Martin had never seen a real tree, having been born underground, and none of the people in the Roots were allowed to leave without penalty, but he’d seen pictures of trees in books, and he was pretty sure that the seven level city, that everyone called the Tree, did not resemble anything of the sort.
He shook his head, and continued on his way through the dim cobble stoned streets that were only slightly brighter punctuated by the odd street lamp than the bottom-most level. Only when he’d closed the door behind him did he open his palm to reveal the item he had hidden in his sleeve.
He fumbled for the dial on the gas lamp on the small table in the foyer to examine the thing that filled his palm. A scrap of paper was wrapped around it and tied with a piece of string. Martin tugged the string free and was about to throw the paper aside when he noticed black marks on the underside – writing – just three words. “It wasn’t me,” Martin read aloud. He shrugged and tossed the paper to the table, his attention drawn by the silver thing that glittered with a cold light. It was a gun with an energy coil spiralled around the muzzle. He flinched and almost dropped it. He’d never even held, let alone used, an energy gun. They were forbidden. Only certain people were allowed to carry them, mainly those in the military, but you rarely saw them down in the Roots, the Armies were all from the Upper Branches, or Golem guards. You had to be important to be protected by people with energy guns. Or if you weren’t important, you were more likely to be on the receiving end of a gun if you were caught disobeying the law or trying to leave your level.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he whispered under his breath. “You’re Marius the Magician for Emperor’s-sake!” Marius. It was who he became when he didn’t want to be plain, boring Martin. He was still wearing his outfit, after all, and the half mask he wore over his face so children wouldn’t pester him in the streets to do illusions when all he wanted to do was look for a new brooch to secure his cloak or get up early to get the best pick of vegetables at the daily market.
He held the gun away from him, willing his hands to stop shaking. He moved his finger over the button on the side of the handle, the trigger, and with a steadying breath, pressed it. He’d expected the buzz and flares of blue of live electricity to jump from the coils on the outside that charged the muzzle and allowed the gun to shoot streams of electricity, but there was nothing. He pressed the button again, harder this time. Still nothing.
As he cautiously shook the gun, he noticed the outline of a rectangle in the handle. He ran a thumb around and came across a raised tab that flicked open. He was expecting to get some idea of why the gun wasn’t functioning. Instead something fell out and clattered to the stone floor.
It was something else wrapped tightly within a piece of paper. This time he unfolded it carefully revealing a small silver key, and a larger message written on paper torn from a notebook.
The writing was small and cramped and messy.
My name is Armistice-
“Armistice! What kind of ridiculous name is that?” Martin wondered aloud shaking his head. It seemed the higher up in Tree you went, the stranger people became.
My name is Armistice Wells, and if you've found this then you must use this key to expose the lies and secrets that the government has kept from all of us. Kept all of us in the dark, in order to protect us they say. But in reality, they are hurting us, and soon we will start dying. They are stopping all airships, turning them away and not allowing them to dock, even to deliver supplies from other areas of the Empire. They say we need to become self-sufficient.
That we need to make our own food. I have a feeling they are trying to get rid of us, to shut down the top levels. We are unnecessary; we are wasting space, being too frivolous. It’s the middle and lower levels that run the city, not any of us in our nice clothes and our past times. We don’t need to do anything; we live off the rest of the Tree. We are disposable in their eyes. You will know this if you have found my first note. It is how they protect the ArcHive. At all costs, it must be protected, they say. It is the heart of everything. But they can’t see that how they are doing the opposite of protecting, and instead harming people. If they see that people are doing the wrong things, what they,” this word was under lined darkly, “perceive to be the wrong thing, they interfere.”
Martin’s eyes skimmed the words hurriedly trying to absorb this strange message. The ArcHive?
He scanned the page again. Did he really just read what he thought he had? His eye fell on the word he was looking for. He hadn’t imagined it. “Airships?” he said with awe. “Airships are real?”
Martin had never really had any real ambition. Besides getting money to put food in his belly, that was. He had seen death too much and didn’t want to be one of the many that were literally swept off the street by street cleaners like so much rubbish. That was a goal enough for him.
But holding the silver key in his left hand, and Armistice Wells’ letter in the other, he realized there was something more than just doing illusions in the street for kids with nothing better to do than try and steal what few coins audience members felt charitable enough to throw into the ragged hat he placed on the ground in front of his makeshift stall.
I need to go to the Branches. On autopilot he made his way to the kitchen, turning on gas lamps here and there as he went. “But first thing’s first,” he said grabbing the kettle from the stove top and filling it, “a nice cup of tea.” He sat at the small square table that took up most of the space in the small kitchen while he waited for the kettle’s familiar, comforting whistle. “I need to find what this key belongs to.” Really, what he wanted to do was to see an airship. He’d read about them, just like he had of real trees, but had never been outside of the walled towering city. Curiosity burned inside him. He re-read the letter again, and twisted the key through his fingers like a baton. He had to find a way to get to the top. “I need to find out about this secret Armistice wrote about,” Martin said to his tea, his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on the side of the mug. “Whatever it is, he died because of it.”
He gulped down his tea when it was a drinkable temperature, changed out of his Illusionist outfit and into something less remarkable and left in a rush for the one place he didn’t really want to go. The lift to the Middle. He nervously and awkwardly made an attempt to wave at the Golem staring at him, he assumed, and holding the energy by its side like it was simply a cane to support oneself, and not a highly charged weapon.
He didn’t have to wait long. Soon the lift descended, and in it was exactly what he was looking for: a Messenger.
&nbs
p; The gate opened and the man, the same one as before, stepped out without acknowledging Martin’s existence.
The man strode past Martin without so much as a glance, and Martin lunged at him, grabbing a tattooed arm. “Excuse me,” he said, apologetically as the man threw a scowl at him. “I’m sorry, I was just curious, could I take a look at your…um, pass, uh, thing? I want to become a Messenger, and I’m just curious what sort of things they ask for on your credentials.” He tried to peek at the small booklet that the messenger showed the Golem, but the man snapped it shut hastily, as he took in Martin’s drab beige pants and brown tunic with a look of contempt. “You can’t,” he said simply. He gave Martin that look: the one that said we know you’re not from here, we know you’re not one of us. Martin remembered the stories his parents, and he was sure countless other parents told their children to scare them away from finding a way up to the Middle where they didn’t belong – it was a bad place, an alien place. And Martin was just fine where he was. He’d had no reason to want to leave the Roots. But the words of Armistice’s letter burned in his brain and under his skin.
“Why not?”
“Because,” the man said. Martin thought he would continue, but instead he continued walking, his delivery bag swinging slightly with each step.
“Dammit,” Martin muttered under his breath. Being normal Martin Knightsbridge wasn’t getting him anywhere. He needed to become Marius the Magician. He needed some magic. Or, if not strictly magic, a little something that would get him what he wanted.
He ran up to the man and tapped him twice on the shoulder, and then leaned down quickly towards the dark, often slippery cobbles. He popped back up quickly like a spring, causing the colourful man to jump. Martin held out a piece of paper, folded into a neat, tight square. “I think you dropped this,” he said, the square resting in his palm. He flexed his hand slightly and the square grew, and puffed out, until it was a small balloon, that hovered an inch or two above Martin’s hand.
This did the trick. The man leaned forward, dumbstruck. “That’s not-” he began, but then stopped, taking a step forward and leaning in to peer at the little paper balloon that bobbed gently. “How in the Empire-?” the man stated, reaching a hand out. Martin had worked his magic, and then worked some more. As the man was admiring his simple trick, Martin slipped his hand into the man’s trousers and withdrew his credentials, and silently placed it in his own pocket. “Oh, you mean this isn’t yours? Sorry, I thought I saw you drop it. Here, you can have it anyway.” Martin wrapped his fingers gently around the paper-balloon and gave it to the man. The man stared at the tight square of paper the balloon had become once more, and looked glum. “What happened?” The man looked like a pouting child.
Martin shrugged. “No idea. Sorry to bother you,” he gave a curt nod and resisted the urge to run. Only when the man had begun to walk away, still glancing distractedly at the paper, did Martin walk quickly in the opposite direction. He turned down a narrow alley and up an even narrower one, before stopping under a street lamp to look at his pilfered prize. It had a photo of the man’s face, his name, where he was from, and as a watermark behind it all, the Emperor of the United American Empire’s Seal – a purple lion rearing up on hind legs. Martin rubbed the paper between his fingers. “It shouldn’t be too hard to forge,” he said. “As long as you know the right people.” And being an illusionist, you got to meet a lot of different people, some right people, some wrong people, and most of the time people who you could ask for favours because they had asked him to perform at their child’s birthday, or at the grand opening of some shoe maker’s shop. Martin did these with aplomb and grace, never asking for anything in return, at the time, as he knew that he could then ask favours of them when he really needed help. Like now. He took out his pocket watch as he slipped the passport away. You never knew what the time was down here; there was no sun to mark the hours.
The shop was closing in ten minutes. He ran. When he reached the door he was so out of breath he could barely open it. Being a magician didn’t require being physically fit.
“I’m sorry, we’re just closing,” said a muffled voice floating up from behind a counter. A man with hair that seemed determined to leave his head popped into view. “Oh, Martin, it’s just you.”
Just me. Martin thought glumly. Of course, when I’m just regular Martin, I’m not important. He pushed the negative thoughts aside and plastered on a smile. “Yes, Jeffrey, it’s just me. I’m wondering if you’d be able to do me a favour. Since I’ve done your three kid’s parties this year, at no extra charge.”
“Oh yes, of course!” Jeffrey said, slapping a stack of paper down on the counter and lifting up an ink roller. “How can I help?”
Martin handed over the messenger’s identification. “Would you be able to replicate this?”
Jeffrey looked at it, punctuating his examination with hmmms and grunts and vigorous nods. “Yes, I think it’s doable. We definitely have the paper stock, and I can match the inks, and the colour of the Emperor’s seal, most definitely. You’d need to get your photograph taken, of course.”
“Of course.” He knew a photographer that owed him a favour after entertaining her overbearing mother-in-law to give the woman and her husband some well needed time away. “How long will it take?”
“I can get started on it right now,” Jeffrey said, coming up beside Martin to flip the open sign on the door to closed. “If you come by tomorrow morning, just as we open it’ll be ready then.”
Martin shook Jeffrey’s hands heartily. “Thank you! You don’t know what this means.”
Jeffrey smiled with a twinkle in his eye. “No, I’m sure I don’t. You’ll behave yourself though, won’t you Martin?”
Martin didn’t like to lie, so instead just gave the printer a smile before taking his leave.