He stood on the edge of the dock, looking out at the water with the same sort of trepidation one saves for a distant glimpse of a well podded tentacle. No captain ever loved the idea of tangling with a creature from the depths, except perhaps Nemo and he was well documented as an Asylum level genius. Hardly a role model for children. His attentions were paid close to the falling sun, a glimmer of speed in it's descent as if it were in a hurry to fall away and leave the stars, clouds and moon to clean up after it. The colours made fire out of the chop not too far out, that splashed slight excess and green sludge up against the wharf's tree-trunk stocks and supports. He inhaled and felt the salt cling to the edges of his teeth and the gaps between, nostrils flaring as the sting of it touched the archaic scars gilding his sinuses from countless powder mishaps and mis-measurements.
Were it not for the frothing whorl of steam rising from the waters, not twelve feet off the piers edge, chains meant to moor a half dozen galleons by tensile strength jutting from the bubbling mess, he might think the colouration on the horizon was beautiful. Then, of course, that was the job. Finish it, then you can eat, sleep and dream, day and night, as much as you want.
“Artigiano?”
He grunted. The Italian still felt a little odd. He pulled himself away from the colours and steam, to catch the presence of a half dozen of the leather apron clad cretins they had shoved into his workshop some few days ago. Most of them were olive skinned ‘Slightlys’ who struggle to raise a wrench half the time, nevermind the cogs they were turning in place with them. Wet behind both ears and eyes half of the time, they never bothered to come and see him individually. It was always a small mob of them, thin pencil moustaches twitching, their goggles a rusted garden of fogged up lenses on their lanky heads.
“What?”
“Artigiano-“ One of them struggled, flicking a glance back over his shoulder at the others, his hands, in gloves two sizes too big for him, were held up in front of his face, as if blocking his thin lipped mouth might provide him a few precious seconds protection while he struggled for the English language. Since his rise to the head of the Guild, he had outlawed the use of Italian in his presence until either he learned to speak it or they learned to do their jobs without asking him questions.
So far, translations had been going poorly.
“Well?” He perked a brow at the kid, taking no small amount of relish from the struggles that had the apprentice shrinking by a couple of inches with each passing second.
“Artigiano, we…begin the…knowing of…the roooomm-“ Another glance back at his fellows who nodded sychophantically, encouragingly “-above…“ A hand rose, well over the apprentice’s head. Gestures had become a sort of grammatical stop-gap “…but have…no…” He tapped the side of his head “-...pensante…uhhh…Thinking? On where to…” Hands rounded and flapped at chest level, mimicked in perfect synch by the five others standing behind the lad.
“Begin?” His brow had yet to climb down from it’s amused heights. The word brought the student to a close, grinning broadly at the finished sentence, a celebratory huddle erupting among the five behind him.
“Well, gentleman, I’ll try to make this brief and to the point.” He levelled a hand with a pointing finger down at the bubbling steam that vomited from the sludge clinging waters off the pier. The students, hardly ones to let a lacking grasp of the English language stop them from being obedient, followed his finger’s direction.
“That is our Drive there, sitting in what can only be described as our cooling unit, because at this juncture, we’re sort of boned for anything else to provide us a means of super-conductive cryonics.”
His finger then leaped to point over their shoulders, toward a rather large dangling mess of torn up and perforated metal, hung from guy lines, pulleys and no small square tonnage of rope. The apprentices, diligently, followed suit.
“That is the remains of our housing containment. As you can see, the manifolds have been fused together at their joints and chokepoints, the housing for most of the insertion tubes contaminated by foreign slag from the alchemical reaction and the brass filaments that once lined the entirety of it’s interior have…for lack of a better word…evaporated.” He let his hand drop, clasping both behind his back, the squeak of the leather apron he was wearing accompanied by the dull clank of tools tucked into a hundred different pockets bringing the apprenticed attentions back around to him.
“The remains of our coolant fuel-“ He nodded casually out to the waters “-is currently floating in the Grand Canal, most of which was responsible for roughly a third of our budget and the constabulary dynamos that were meant to be fitted last-“ He pronounced this last word with a sharp and acute ruffling of his overly large grey beard and a narrowing of his eyes at the gathered apprentices, who all seemed to have recognized his tone by now and were making remarkable strides in hiding themselves behind the one who had spoken “-went up with the rest of the Powder Ingredients upon the initial Conflagration event.”
He paused. For effect, mostly, regarding the face of the trembling speaker and the variety of now goggled eyes, hiding behind each other’s shoulders.
“So when you come to find me with a curious little notion of where you’d like to begin as far as the dead obvious floor-plans for the Torso Chassis-“ He took a long look at the lead apprentice “-Which was the room you mentioned thinking about by the way-“ and then back to the whole “-I have an all too overpowering urge to strap the lot of you to a cannon charge and see what sort of distance I can get across the Canal.”
He turned, one hand shading his eyes to regard the sunset again, a light ‘Hmmmm’ drifting off his shaded lips.
“I figure based on rough trajectories and aeronautical graphing, I could put at least three of you somewhere in the vicinity of San Michele. A rough estimate, to be certain but eh-“ He shrugged “-a few leagues is an acceptable error margin in my ledgers.”
He turned around again to regard the empty pier, catching the tails of apron strings as the group scattered back into the workshop. A few moments later and the sound of buzzing, frustrated Italian tore it’s way out of the doors and into the night.
A chuckle ran off with his voice into the last dregs of the sunset. He folded ironworking arms over his chest and clapped rope-burned fingers over his ribcage. The wind was shifting and he could feel the heat off the steaming drive, nestled in the Canal for safe keeping turning the leather of his apron. The press of the warped material reminded him of their situation and doused the last of the momentary mirth.
Six days remained in the timetables, before the Alchemical Society sent their Ledgerman to inspect their books and inevitably call an audit. The separation of understanding Artificing and the Merchant class was profound, enough that any lack thereof usually resulted in a fine-toothed scrutiny of everything the Guild did to ensure all funds were being spent properly.
It also meant, hiding several hundred ingots worth of smelted, tempered and now, useless, iron and brass would be about as conspicuous as a Titan are Farlow Ave. during Rush Market; that is to say, quite and very.
The Duke would throw a fit and three firing squads in their direction before too long, no doubt with the repeater Flintlocks he had designed for the smug bastard at that!
Irony!
“Sad day, innit?” He turned to regard the whirling steam, squinting into the cloud bank as it shifted fully to nearly envelop him in it’s gushing white. He took several steps back, noting the humidity was already causing his tea-sweeper to droop and drip about his chin.
“You’d think genius would trump the Politico for worldly rule. Funny…”
Somewhere behind him, he heard a grand clamour, as if a half dozen apprentices had suddenly gotten into something they shouldn’t have. The next moment, a great crash resounded through the pier, shrieks and high-pitched squeals of alarm, followed closely by the rapid call of
“Artigiano! Artigiano!”.
He sighed. Loudly.
“Ok. Not horribly funny. Not terrifically at all.”
He pressed a finger to his nose, cleared one nostril and, wiping the excess on the back of one glove, turned and strode toward the Workshop, one wall of which was suddenly dented and tumbled outward under the weight of the Torso Chassis and it’s rigging.
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