Chapter Six
It was hard to track the daylight from inside the terminal, but Ikki’s coat had dried by the time the Captain of the Guard returned with bundles for each of them, and nine more for the offerings that weren’t there.
The bundles were wrapped in a bed-mat, the kind used by workers in the cooler maintenance levels. They contained a pair of lights, a box of dried fruits and breads, and a bundle of canisters tied to one another. Three contained water, a fourth contained wine.
“Does Poseidon keep any fountains down there?” asked Ikki. “How many days will the food last?”
“Do not question the gods,” said the Captain.
“I’m not. I’m questioning you,” said Ikki. She didn’t care if he hit her again. He looked like he wanted to, but he cast a wary glance up at the dip in the ceiling instead.
Aha! thought Ikki. That’s where the monitor’s installed.
When the packs were dispensed, stacked carefully beneath an empty space of the bench, the captain and his men left.
“He didn’t even say anything to you,” said Ikki, to Theoldus. Theoldus hunched more miserably in his space. “He should have.”
“Child,” said the Atenos Scholar, “I think your word quota has been met for today.”
“I just want answers,” said Ikki.
“Then perhaps you ought to ask better questions,” said the Scholar.
Stung, Ikki went quiet.
About an hour after the guards had left they returned alongside the robed figure of Minos III. Although officially it fell on King Minos to see to it the offerings were made, it was well known Minos III presided over the offerings. She liked doing it.
The chief oracle came with her, more harried than usual. Ikki almost smiled. He must have had a time of assessing the damage to his fountain. His red dress robes were rumpled. Beside him was the High Priest of Hestia: a thin, bald woman who wore a plain grey work-suit in place of ceremonial robes. The captain brought up the rear. He had changed his armor to the ceremonial gold of official proceedings. The plate covered his face, chest, arms, and legs—he could have been one of the mechanical men of the old archives.
This strange parade stopped in front of the elevator doors. They slid open.
The boy hissed through his teeth at the sight of the chief oracle, who gave him rather a similar look. If the Captain spared any attention to Theoldus, it was impossible to see beneath his severe helmet. His armor was more for dress, but he’d upgraded his weapon for the occasion: a true charge launcher, the sort that were said to have been modeled off the cannons positioned over the dome.
Outside, a bell sounded. This came from the Temple. It marked the beginning of the Ceremony of Offering. Everyone in the city would hear it, and know that the sacrifices were about to made.
“Good evening, Citizens of the Tower,” said Minos III. Ikki was glad she wasn’t Tierce. She would have said something snide. “On behalf of the House of Minos, I thank you for the challenge upon which you are about to embark. We of the House of Minos, the Oracle Consul, and the Temple have seen to it that you go safely and with all fairness.”
The captain of the guard pointedly adjusted the sights on his charge launcher.
Minos III continued: “So that you receive fair judgment in the Labyrinth below. Charon, we ask that you accept these citizens. Ferry them with haste and efficiency to the area of judgment: the first floor of the tower, which has stood for two thousand years.”
It’s more like eight hundred, you twit, thought Ikki, but the bustling of the high priest distracted her. The woman nearly tripped on Minos III’s train. Steadying herself, the high priest looked up at the indent in the elevator’s ceiling. She held out a sheet of paper with the mark of the temple stained into the grain.
“Accept these people,” she croaked, in a voice that sounded like crumpled papers covered in dust. “Theoldus, child of Theodine, of the House of the Guardians.”
The elevator seemed to shiver in acknowledgment.
“Agnan, child of Dargnan, of the House of the Learned.”
“And Atenos Chair of Genetic History,” said Agnan, in annoyance. “Forgot that already?”
The high priest had little interest in the particularities of the sacrifices at hand: “Akadden, child of Aural. House of …” here she hesitated, if just for a moment. Ikki could detect a faint relish in the high priest’s tone as she finished, “the Oracle.”
The oracle sucked in a harsh breath but said nothing.
“And Daelika, child of Dael,” the lights in the elevator seemed to flicker just a moment. It could have just been in Ikki’s head. It could have also been the fluctuation of power as the elevator began to activate around them. “House of the Architect. Charon, do you accept these offerings?”
The elevator around them came alive. The wires that spiraled through the disc-shaped ceiling hummed with energy. From around them, a mechanical voice recorded many centuries ago said:
“Charon Service Elevator 1, ready to serve you. Please do not hold elevator doors.”
The high priest nodded to Minos III, who turned to the column just next to the open gate. She pulled off her glove. Ikki got a glance of white, long fingers before Minos III passed it over the column and a panel snapped open. On the other end was a series of small silver levers. Minos III pulled these levers in quick succession.
“Will that do?” she asked, replacing her glove. She took care to pinch the fingers, and one could nearly hear her lips twist into a sneer.
“Acknowledged,” sang the strange, artificial voice. “Charon Service Elevator 1, Local White-Line Track. We will be making stops at Residential Levels Five, and Four. We will be making stops at Maintenance Level L1.”
“That is correct,” said Minos III.
“Thank you, Minos,” said the elevator. Like all the potential princes, Minos III cringed at the name.
The gates slammed shut. The chief oracle, who had started for the exit, jumped. The captain of the guard stuck out an arm to steady him. The high priest took a seat as far from the offerings as she could. The elevator began to rotate in place, sending the terminal outside into a blur of dark browns and greys. Then, with series of clacks and cranks, the elevator sank through the terminal floor.
They descended through the dark, whorled elevator shaft and down into the dual floor of Hestian and Poseidos. The glare from the Helios lights flashed through the windows, fierce even close to the official sunset. Most of the occupants turned toward the wall and away from the heat. Ikki pressed herself to the window and looked out.
For years, on errands to the lower level, she had marveled at the gold, silver, and bronze lines of the great elevator cables. They hadn’t done offerings while she was young, so she had only seen the elevator fully active a few times growing up. When the central cable flashed white, a signal of oncoming traffic, all citizens ran to have a look at it: the squashed, silver cylinder making its descent from the skies above.
They didn’t ring a bell on Hestian-Poseidos. This was because they wouldn’t be stopping there. Hestian-Poseidos was accessible to Grand Minos by a set of stairs.
The second terminal was located in the center of a park filled with metal sculptures the shape of a number of the maintenance gods. Its roof parted as the elevator drew near. Even in the dimming Helios lights she could see the figures of citizens stopping near the gates to watch the elevator spiral downwards. It must have been close to curfew. They would be in trouble if they broke it, but it was worth it to see the elevator, just once.
They passed through the wires and pipes of the Hestian-Poseidos disc and down into Atenos.
Atenos had once been the highest floor in the tower. As such it had a sizable Temple, which was the first thing Ikki saw as they broke through. It wasn’t as big or as tall as the Grand Minos temple, but it took up most of the southern rise. The second thing she noticed was the Academy of Atenos. The Academy had been what this level was built for, in a period where the House of Minos valued an enlightened ruler above all else.
Agnan saw this and made a soft hissing noise through her teeth. “And I am sure that thief Parditta is moving herself into my office right now.”
“Were you important in the Academy?” asked Ikki.
“Was I important?” Agnan for a moment forgot she had decided Ikki was mad. “You heard the high priest over there, I am the Chair of the School of Genetic History.”
“Did you know my mother?” asked Ikki.
“I knew of your mother,” admitted Agnan. “Everyone did.”
They were interrupted by the harsh shudder as the elevator spun to a halt. The Terminal on this level was located in one of the many gated development yards that made up the surrounding territory around the academy.
While the inside of the terminal at Grand Minos had been large and spacious and elaborately carved, the terminal on Atenos was barely large enough to fit more than the elevator. The doors opened, and a set of silver-clad Atenos guards led an old man in pale pink administrative robes into the elevator. Ikki wondered if he knew Agnan, but the scholar curled her lip at them with no sign of recognition. By contrast, the chief oracle turned an interesting shade of red at the sight of him. He must have been his employee, then. The old man looked nearly relieved as he stepped into the elevator.
“Oh, good,” he said. “Judgement arrives.”
The high priest read off his name and House. She repeated the statement she had made from above. They handed him a pack. He settled himself in a quiet, cross-legged slouch. He sat as far from the chief oracle as possible.
“What were your charges?” asked Ikki.
“Charges!” exclaimed the elderly oracle, “Try mistake. We read predictions illegally obtained through some means. We come to purge ourselves of these accounts. God be praised, we will have forgotten by the end of this.”
The chief oracle looked more awkward than ever. Ikki thought she caught the boy smirk out of the corner of her eye.
The Demetrius floor was an explosion of green. Although the Helios Lights had been set to dusk in Atenos, here the day cycle was much longer to account for the greenery of the nature preserves below. There was an Oracle Consul, to the west, and a scattering of smaller homes between the various patches of crops and trees. The eastern rise of the disc was devoted to trees for construction and oxygen circulation, the rest of the disc was devoted to food and, it was said, hunting.
Here, Akadden gazed out the window and sneered. “Oh, damn. It sure is ugly on this level. I hear they’re all half animals down there. Must not be able to tell a bull from a person in all this green muck.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” said Agnan. “You are thinking of retrogrades. They are delivered to their gene donors the same as any other child. And they are completely creatures of chance, not a common occurrence at all.”
“So, why has the king been so gung-ho about putting down people like you who talk about them?”
Agnan sucked on the inside of her cheek and said nothing.
The main terminal of Demetrius had been dug into the earth, with a silver plate that slid aside to allow the elevator to pass through. Here, the high priest read the names and the rites for three more offerings: one was a broad woman with tightly braided hair and workman’s gloves rolled up past her elbows. The other two were quiet, undersized men who seemed to shrink in her shadow.
“Well, so long as our family’s paid, I don’t much care what the gods think of me,” said the woman.
“Finally!” said Ikki.
Ikki spent the trip through Aegea, the reservoir run by Poseidon, talking with the new offerings. The woman’s name was Lila, and she and her brothers were there simply because Grand Minos had been demanding more from her farm. They hadn’t had enough to feed a house full of ten children. Lila and her weakest brothers had volunteered themselves as offerings in exchange for Grand Minos easing up on the quotas they demanded from her family.
Ikki in turn told them the story of the flying machine and the breach. Lila whistled as she described the flying machine, and marveled over the bruises she’d earned in the crash. But when Ikki got to what she’d actually seen in the breach, Lila’s forehead wrinkled in deep thought.
“You say the sky is what?” asked Lila.
“Silence,” snapped the high priest, from her seat.
“Blue. Like down there.” Ikki pointed to the lighted segments of water, each of which were divided by fences in accordance to the demands of Poseidon: fresh water for the pipes and fountains, salt water for fish and seaweed, which would be caught and sold in the markets above and below. “Except less green. More like … mm. Priest’s robes.”
“The high priest demands silence,” said the Captain of the Guard.
Ikki looked to Lila, hoping that the woman would be interested in discussing it with her, but Lila’s brow only wrinkled more. Finally, she nodded. “Well, huh,” she said. “If you say so.”
That was when Ikki knew Lila wasn’t going to even think about what she said. She went to sit back by the windows as the elevator passed through the large metal island in the center of the Aegean level.
Ikki could tell they were coming up on Hephaiston before they even exited the shaft. There was no mistaking the red glow that vibrated below. The Helios lights had dimmed almost completely by the time they entered into the fourth level, but Hephaiston produced its own sort of light. It came from the grates of the factories and the steel mills that made up its most outer rim. The air howled with the power the wind gods applied to this place. They had to, to keep the exhaust from those factories and steel mills from choking the population, or boiling them alive.
In the dark grey and black shape of the thousands of packed-in buildings below, Ikki could just make out the dome of the lone Oracle Consul, stained black and nearly unrecognizable from the rest of the workman’s city.
Ikki had always had a fondness for Hephaiston. She had been there a number of times, both with her mother and with Tierce. Hephaiston was the best place to go for good metals.
The bell that welcomed the elevator to Hephaiston was a loud workman’s siren. The terminal was little more than a basic landing indentation. The elevator came to a stop, sparking slightly. Ten guards waited as the doors opened, waiting with three rough looking men in thick leather clothes. The Captain held up his charge launcher until the offerings had stepped all the way in.
Ikki almost sympathized with the guards. The men were large and looked unhappy. What’s more, the man who the Captain kept his weapon trained on was a retrograde: his thick forearms were covered in thick orange hair. What Ikki had initially assumed were workman’s gloves were his own cracked, leathery fingers.
“There you go,” said Agnan, to Akadden. “Care to ask him about his mother’s husband?”
Akadden immediately crossed his arms and pretended he hadn’t heard her.
None of the men had a house for the high priest to name. She rushed through the rites, careful to keep at least an arm’s length between her and the men. One of the others had to be at least a partial retrograde as well: the discoloration around his eyes that might’ve been burn scars looked suspiciously like scales.
Rather than hand them their packs, the oracle gestured to the pile.
“And that is all of them,” said Minos III, sounding bored. “Good. I’ve grown tired of seeing you two rush about. Charon, take us onwards. And do it at top speed, if you can.”
“Understood,” said the elevator.
Hephaiston dropped away from them. The high priest and the Captain didn’t have to tell anyone to be quiet now.
It took much longer to reach the first floor than it did any other level in the tower. The shaft at this level was completely dark, and the only shapes Ikki could make out through the gleam of the elevator’s inner lights were the twist of metal and the occasional bump that indicated a series of huge cables, each approximately the width of the captain’s leg. Occasionally the elevator grumbled as its runners passed from one cable to another, which led it in a slightly different direction than before. When this happened the white cable flashed, briefly illuminating the jagged world of dark metal and steam around them.
Finally, with a final sort of crank, the elevator wound to a stop.
“This is the last stop on this elevator,” called the automated voice. “Thank you for riding with Charon. Please watch your step as you leave and enter the lift.…”
The gates slid open. The door spilled a rectangle of light like a carpet out across a gunmetal floor.
“Oh, gods,” someone whispered, “There’s nothing out there.”
There were no Helios lights. Only Nyx lights hung from the walls at varying intervals. Ikki craned her head sideways to try and get a better look at these through the windows, struck by the impracticality of it.
“It’s probably a power-save function,” said Ikki, swallowing down her own flash of unease. It was hard to see far beyond the elevator’s light. “They couldn’t have made people work in the dark.”
She could only just make out that it had settled in a large chamber, like a warehouse.
Minos III stood up from her seat. Ikki had almost forgotten about her. Most of the offerings had. Even the rough looking men jumped at the ghost-like whip of her robes as she strode to the center of the room.
“Welcome to the Labyrinth,” she said. She was careful to shape her voice around each word, so that it carried to every corner of the vast, dark space. “On behalf of the House of Minos, I will explain the terms of what it is you are about to do.”
It would have to be the House that explained it. It was their damn idea. Ikki saw the way the high priest scowled at the sound of humming machinery. The chief oracle shut his eyes. There was no way people like that could have thought of anything like this.
“You are free to wander as you please. You have food and supplies that, with careful rationing, will last you approximately seven days. After those seven days Charon will return to pick up whoever is still in this chamber. If you are not in this chamber by the time of the elevator’s return, it will be assumed that the gods have claimed you. If you are in this chamber upon our return, you will be deemed pardoned by the gods and all charges against you will be dropped. You will be allowed to continue your lives as citizens of Minos.”
As though any of us would want to! thought Ikki, meanly. I’d never talk to Tierce again.
It occurred to her then that Tierce probably wouldn’t care if she didn’t speak with him again. She clenched her hands. She clenched them harder as the captain of the guard stood up. His charge launcher whined as he slid his armored hand up the safety latch.
Minos III made a grand gesture with one slim arm. It should have looked silly, but her robes and the shadows against the gate gave the gesture a strange weight. “Now, go.”
The oracle and the farmers stood up instantly. Lila slung her bundle over one shoulder and her brothers’ bundles over the other. They were followed by Theoldus, who kept his head low and didn’t look at the captain as he strutted out into the darkness.
Agnan and Akadden took their time adjusting their packs. The three men drew closer together. The retrograde with the scales on his face regarded Minos III with a hateful narrowing of his eyes:
“You say you’ll come back for us,” he said, “but have you ever come back for anyone? You haven’t said a damn thing about the Minotaur. Who’s to say any of us should leave this elevator? Maybe we want to wait it out with you, right here.”
“That would be unacceptable,” said Minos III. “But if you must insist, you may stay in this elevator.” She gave a flick of her index finger.
The captain shot him. The flash from the charge launcher briefly lit the chamber around them from the floors to the ceiling. The man crumpled to the side with a faint croak. There wasn’t a mark on him, but the ends of his clothes sizzled. He fell with a muffled sort of thunk. He didn’t move after that.
His eyes stared ahead glassily. Ikki felt her throat go dry. She’d never seen someone die before.
The chief oracle made a choked noise. “You idiot,” he yowled, throwing up his arms. “That man was an offering. We were already one short—”
Minos III’s voice overrode him. “Offerings are brought to the Labyrinth to be judged. This man is in the Labyrinth, and he has been judged. The gods have found him guilty of criminal mischief and treason against the House and the Temple. Would anyone else like to discover their sentence quickly? Yes, Daelika?”
“Ikki,” corrected Ikki, trying to shrink away as the captain swung the launcher in her general direction. Her arm had risen on its own accord. Her voice came from far away. She kept looking at the dead man. “You consider your judgment the same as the gods?”
“The House of Minos is the line chosen by the gods to rule,” said Minos III, simply. “Do you intend to challenge that?”
“I was just asking,” said Ikki.
“You are not an offering worth returning to the surface in any form,” said Minos III. “But should anyone else like to return with me like this gentleman here, by all means, stay in this elevator.”
There was a great rush for the door. Ikki felt a tug on her arm.
“Come child,” murmured Agnan. “For the love of your great mother, do not waste your life here.”
Ikki grabbed her bags and walked with great purpose through the gate. Her boots clanked on the metal floors of the ramp. When she had reached the end of the square of light afforded by the gate, she turned. Minos III stood shadowed by the elevator lights, reaching for the controls at the side of the gate.
There’s one more thing I want to say, thought Ikki.
“The sky is blue,” she said. Her voice roared ahead of her up into the cavernous chambers above. “And tell Tierce—tell Minos XIII, if he doesn’t throw the proof down the well, he can choke on it for all I care!”
The captain made a sharp movement with his arms, but Minos III held her hand out.
“Child of Dael the Architect,” said the prince. “That last part I would convey most gladly.”
And then the shadow of the gates closed across her white figure. The elevator detached itself from the floor, carrying the prince, the high priest, the oracle, and the light up and away.