[2.21][Lydia] Upon the Alikonia

Lydia Aetos,

The Young Miss-tocrat

First light was just seeping through the wool curtains of the captain’s quarters when Lydia entered, bumping the heavy oak door open with her hip and sweeping through the room with a platter of food balanced on her left hand, a jug of water and a jug of wine tucked under her right arm, and a third jug filled with honey swaying precariously atop her head.

Her steps were certain as she paced across the quarters towards the captain’s commandeered bed, the steady sway of the waves nigh imperceptible even to her refined senses.

More than it was a ship, the Alikonia was a city that happened to sail. As was the case with so many of his designs, the Sand-Reckoner had achieved his primary aim – namely, making sure the ridiculous thing could float – almost as an afterthought, satisfying every other nascent impulse along the way first. The result was an unwieldy behemoth of sophic engineering, overburdened with amenities and riddled with thousands of little insanities that Archimedes had installed in place of a proper crew in order to keep the beast moving.

Lydia set the platter of salted meats, pickled vegetables, and fresh-caught fish down on one of three dining tables clustered beside the captain’s bed – a bed more plush and lavishly adorned than her own was back home, and nearly three times the size, set aside for a man that slept on the floor surrounded by his work if he ever slept at all.

In the Sand-Reckoner’s perpetual absence, Niko had claimed the captain’s quarters for his wife.

Lydia brushed a few limp strands of honey-wheat hair from Iphys’ face, idly setting down the jugs of honey, water, and wine while she did.

“Good morning, Iphys,” she murmured. Her law-cousin didn’t respond, beyond a strained gasp and a fresh wave of tremors.

With her eyes clenched shut and her lovely face pinched with pain, she could almost be mistaken for mortal. Her Heroic frame gave her away, of course, along with the iron manacles fastened around each of her wrists. Her wrists weren’t bound together in the way of chattel slaves, but fastened down at her sides by fat iron chains anchored to a pair of heavy iron rings set into the floor on either side of the bed. The restraining irons had been there already, a mystery that the Sand-Reckoner hadn’t bothered to explain and no one else had bothered to investigate.

The least alarming possibility was that they’d been installed for a situation exactly like this, a wounded cultivator in need of rest and restraint. As if summoned up by the thought, a fresh wave of agony sent the Heroine into hysterics, arching up from the sweat-soaked sheets and screaming through clenched teeth. Lydia inhaled sharply and snatched back her hand, mindful of the terrible strength her law-cousin had even while the bulk of her cultivation was bound by iron.

All she could do was watch helplessly as Iphys Aetos suffered, until finally the worst of it passed and the Heroine collapsed back into the bed with an explosive sob and the dull rattle of settling chains.

Lydia didn’t waste a moment. Experience and more than a few close calls had taught her that the safest time to tend to the bedridden Heroine was in the immediate aftermath of such a throe, and so she made short work of the sheets and the ruined silk dress that her law-cousin had torn at some point in the night. She wrenched open an ornate wooden chest at the foot of the bed, geometric carvings flaring with faint light and a release of pneuma across its surface, and plucked a chunk of ice the size of her clenched fist from the pile before latching it shut again and activating the chilling array with a careful application of her own pneuma.

The ice sublimated instantly where it touched the Heroine’s fevered skin, scalding Lydia up to her elbow, but she was made of sterner stuff than most. The Young Miss carried on implacably until all that remained of the frozen block was a thin film of condensation on the ceiling.

In this way, Lydia settled into a small routine that she’d built up and refined in the weeks since that stark light had split the heavens. She cleansed her law-cousin as best she could, slid clean sheets beneath her and dressed her in fresh silks, then set about feeding her. The soiled linens were dropped through a hole that opened up in the floor like the yawning mouth of some great beast, panels of wood sliding open and shut at the behest of grinding iron wheels that the Sand-Reckoner called gears.

Coaxing the Heroine into relaxing her jaw enough to pour liquid past her lips was ordeal enough, but Lydia persevered until the older woman had taken a savage bite out of a bonito, shearing through scale, flesh, and bone with little regard for which was which. Only once that was done and the kykeon jug was empty did she whisper a quiet farewell to the suffering flower of the Aetos family and take her leave.

She found an old man waiting for her outside the threshold, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main hall and scribbling away with a stick of charcoal on a scroll of papyrus.

“You took your time today,” he said irritably without once looking up at her. Lydia inhaled slowly, imagined a world where she’d brought the soiled laundry with her and dumped it on his head, then exhaled with a small smile.

“Good morning, master.”

“Is it, now? I suppose it must be, for those blessed with diligent students and quiet workshops. Of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that—”

Lydia dropped the platter of Iphys’ uneaten breakfast onto the Sand-Reckoner’s lap, smearing the latest of his scribbles and jarring his hand in the midst of a stroke. The charcoal stick snapped in his gnarled fist.

“A satiated mind is a sound mind,” she said dutifully.

“There is no such thing as a satiated mind, girl.” Archimedes shoved a cut of salted lamb into his mouth, giving her an ugly glare for her troubles. “Meet me in the Antikytherium. Now.”

“I’ll be going to the gymnasium first, master. The others are expecting me.”

Archimedes spat an oath through a full mouth of food, slammed a fist against a mosaic panel on the wall behind him, and fell abruptly out of sight, consumed by the iron teeth of yet another gear-driven chute.

Hours later, dripping sweat and aching in places she hadn’t known could ache, Lydia gratefully accepted the offered hand of a woman with black, burning eyes, and an aura of horrible malice.

“Thank you, my lady,” she spoke, and the Heroine’s expression darkened further.

“I wish you would call me Heka. At my age, it’s embarrassing to be called a lady by a flower in full bloom.” The words were so at odds with the Heroine’s appearance that it was as if another woman entirely was speaking through her as a medium. It was a disorienting effect, but one that Lydia had long since gotten used to.

“At your age?” she asked, puzzled. “Aren’t you and Niko peers?”

“Worse,” the menacing woman said, her lip lifting in a sneer. “I’m older by a year. I’ll be thirty soon enough, too old for anything but a loom and my mother’s despair.” She spun her iron staff around and up onto her shoulder like it was a hollow reed, nodding derisively down at Lydia. “You did well today. I can see why Niko brags so much about you. I’ll be back tomorrow morning if you’d like to exchange discourse again.”

That said, the Heroine spun on her heel and stalked out of the gymnasium, looking for all the world like she was off to commit unspeakable violence.

Heka was an odd one, but she was as kind a woman as Lydia had ever met, and an able sparring partner besides. She’d be back tomorrow.

“Antikytherium,” the Sand-Reckoner called from the far corner of the gymnasium, waving a needle-tipped compass at her like he meant to throw it. “Quickly, now! With a purpose!”

“I’ll be bathing first, master.”

Archimedes snarled and thumped his left heel against the gymnasium floor, falling through it a moment later.

The baths were one of many miracles that Lydia hadn’t been able to help herself from examining further, and the mechanisms that kept them functioning in the belly of a ship put out to sea were truly fascinating. Great spiraling screws spun tirelessly, driven by ceaselessly turning gears, funneling new water in from the very seas beneath the ship to be heated and transferred through to the primary bathing pool, the fouled runoff of which was collected and then returned to the sea by screws of the same type.

A dozen other little sophic oddities filtered and heated the water on its way to the primary pool, creating a bathing experience just short of otherworldly.

Lydia wasn’t too proud to admit she spent more time than was strictly needed in that bath, basking in the steam and tracing the passage of golden spirals behind her closed eyelids.

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She leaned back against the lip of the pool with a soft sigh, letting her eyes drift shut, ignoring the persistent hammering of a fist coming from the other side of the wall.

When she finally emerged from the ship’s belly, the sun was on its downturn and the deck was buzzing with the noise of Niko’s companions, returned from their latest venture inland.

“I’ll be speaking to Niko first, master.”

The Sand Reckoner had only just opened his mouth to speak. While he processed that, outrage darkening his already dour face, she bumped her hip against a mosaic tile in the wall and sent him plummeting down through another vent in the floor, waving pleasantly as she passed.

“No need to thank me,” she called over top of his fading ranting.

Preempting their master’s desires was a diligent disciple’s pride.