Burnished Brass and Delayed Smiles

Grease and tallow have a distinct smell when they burn against eighty pounds of live steam, and none of it smells like madness.

I worked the chamois cloth along the brass casing of the lantern armature, wiping down the carbon crust that drifted off the arc-lamp. Down below the catwalk, three stories down into the belly of the Shard, the primary boiler thrummed against the soles of my heavy work boots. It was a low, guttural vibration that lived in my teeth. If the steam dropped below seventy-five pounds, the void-skiffs crossing from the outer rim would lose their line of sight and drift into the black between the plates. If it spiked past ninety, the cast-iron manifold would blow and paint the chamber walls with three hundred gallons of scalding condensation.

Neither outcome helped my monthly tally, so I kept polishing.

"Keep your head down, Ealasaid," I muttered to myself, scrubbing at a stubborn bloom of soot near the lower gimbal. "Two more hours. Just two more hours, and you can drink bad chicory tea in peace."

The glass of the primary parabolic lens curved overhead like the frozen belly of a wave. It was twelve feet across, cast from leaded quartz and silvered on the reverse with mercuric salts. When the arc ignited, that concave expanse gathered thirty thousand candlepower and hurled it straight into the void, cutting a corridor through the perpetual dusk of the Prismatic Shards.

Every glazier knew the company handbook by heart. Rule four was simple: never stare into the silvering for longer than a single count of breath. The company called it refractive fatigue. The older technicians in the canteen called it the creeping gaze. They swore that after six months on the high platforms, a worker started seeing cousins who had died in the coal mines, or dogs they had left behind on the home shard, pacing back and forth inside the depth of the leaded glass.

I didn't believe in ghosts, and I certainly didn't believe in company folklore. When a glazier started talking to their mirror, it usually meant the brass seals on the condenser were leaking carbon monoxide.

A sharp, rhythmic ping rang through the iron framing.

I froze, the chamois still pressed against the brass bracket.

The sound hadn't come from the lens. It was three yards to my left, deep inside the feed pipe where the superheated vapor met the secondary turbine. The pitch was wrong—too brittle, rising by a quarter-tone every three seconds.

The pressure needle on the brass dial was still sitting comfortably in the green at seventy-eight pounds. It was lying. The float inside the chamber was stuck on mineral scale again, dampening the spring while pressure built in the bypass.

I dropped the rag into my tool apron, unhooked the brass-headed deadblow hammer from my belt, and swung myself over the catwalk railing.

My boots hit the narrow service gantry with a clang. The heat here was dry and vicious, radiating off the boiler casing like a bakehouse oven. I didn't wait for the needle to catch up with reality. I slammed the flat of the hammer against the float valve housing once, hard enough to jar the internal needle loose.

The dial jumped instantly. The red needle swung past eighty-five, past ninety, and slammed against the brass stop-pin at ninety-eight pounds with a frantic hiss.

Steam began screaming through the emergency relief seals, shrill and white.

"Not today, you miserable kettle," I grunted.

I reached for the counterweighted bypass lever above the main manifold. The iron bar was searing hot even through the oiled buffalo hide of my work gloves, biting into my palms with a dry scorch. I threw my entire weight downward, hauling the lever against the tension of the counter-spring.

The bypass valve groaned, metal shearing against lime deposits, before the seat gave way with a heavy, concussive thud.

A plume of superheated steam vented out the exterior exhaust chimney, roaring into the dark void outside the beacon tower. The shriek in the pipes dropped into a ragged hiss. Inside the gauge, the needle trembled and fell back toward eighty-two pounds, settling into a safe, steady pulse.

I leaned my forehead against the cool iron of the safety rail, waiting for my breath to slow. The smell of singed leather rose from my gloves. My forearms were slick with sweat, streaked with grease from the gantry chains.

A textbook save. Murchadh would still find a way to dock half an hour of pay for the vented fuel, but the beacon was still burning, and the void-skiffs were still on course.

I pushed myself upright, rolling my shoulders to work out the cramp between my shoulder blades, and climbed back up the ladder to the central optic platform.

The massive parabolic lens hung before me, dark and deep where the light hadn't caught the silvering. The arc-lamp at the focal center sputtered, throwing long, razor-edged shadows across the concave curve.

I pulled the chamois from my apron, reached toward the upper rim of the mirror to finish wiping away the soot, and paused.

My reflection stood in the silver.

It was familiar enough: the heavy canvas coat cinched with utility webbing, the smudges of black grease across the bridge of my nose, the dark hair pinned up with brass glazier pins to keep it out of the gear-teeth.

I wiped the sleeve of my coat across my forehead, smearing the sweat.

In the glass, my reflection stood perfectly still.

The hand in the mirror remained resting on the brass frame. The face didn't move. It watched me with wide, unblinking eyes, its shoulders relaxed, while I stood frozen on the catwalk with my arm half-raised in mid-air.

One second.

Two seconds.

A bead of cold sweat tracked down the back of my neck, distinct and sharp against the heat of the room.

Then, three full seconds after I had lowered my arm, the figure in the glass finally moved.

It didn't mimic the exhausted, jerky wipe of my sleeve. Instead, it raised its right hand with a slow, deliberate grace, tilting its head to the side. Its lips, stained with the exact same charcoal smudges as mine, curled at the edges.

It wasn't my grim, habitual scowl.

It was a sharp, predatory smile, wide enough to show the edges of its teeth.

The image leaned forward, pressing its palms against the inside of the glass. The leaded quartz groaned faintly, as if under the weight of something solid pressing outward against the silvering.

Then, maintaining direct eye contact with me, the reflection curled its index finger and tapped twice against the glass.

Clink. Clink.

The sound was sharp, metallic, and came entirely from the inside of the lens.