For the first time in three miserable years, the sky over Synthetica was not the color of a bruised, weeping wound.
A massive, experimental atmospheric cycler in the Gilded Tier had temporarily cleared a small patch of the dense smog, allowing a single, brilliant shaft of pale, watery sunlight to hit the cobblestone streets of the upper districts. It wasn't warm—nothing in this city was truly warm—but it was blindingly bright.
"It hurts my eyes, Dot," Pip complained, shielding his pale face with a grimy, soot-stained hand.
"It's called the sun, pipsqueak," Dorothy smiled, gently pulling the boy's hand down and adjusting the high collar of her heavy tweed coat. "Try not to stare directly at it. The Syndicate probably charges by the minute for the privilege."
Dorothy walked at the head of a chaotic, joyful procession. The Giants—Jack, Rowan, Ivy, and the Twins—formed a loose but highly attentive protective perimeter around twelve wide-eyed children from the Orphanage of St. Gear.
They had come up from the depths of the Ash-Dregs for the "Day of Dust," a minor, patronizing holiday where the upper-tier aristocrats opened their public parks to the lower classes (for a heavily inflated entry fee, naturally).
The aesthetic of the Gilded Tier during the day was a jarring, dizzying mix of immense wealth and industrial necessity. The streets here were paved with smooth, imported black marble, glistening with a thin sheen of rain. Massive, polished brass pipes ran elegantly along the sides of the towering buildings, venting scented steam that mingled with the flickering, alchemically colored gas-lamps.
Wealthy men in silk top hats fitted with intricate clockwork monocles walked arm-in-arm past women in enormous, rigid Victorian bustles made of shimmering, aether-dyed fabrics. It was a world of steam and silk, of breathtaking elegance and hidden decay.
"Keep close, everyone," Dorothy warned as they passed through the wrought-iron gates of the Steam-Carnival.
It was a nightmare of overwhelming entertainment. Animatronic clowns with painted porcelain faces and clicking gear-teeth juggled balls of crackling static electricity, their vocal-bellows glitching as they begged the passing crowds for copper coins. A massive carousel spun in the center of the plaza, featuring horses forged from rusted iron and polished bronze, their glass eyes glowing a fiery red while excess steam vented furiously from their nostrils.
"Look! Look!" Tess, a ten-year-old girl with a bright smile, pointed excitedly at a colorful wooden stall. "Spun-sugar! It glows in the dark!"
"Can we, Ro?" Pip looked up at Rowan, tugging on the hem of his heavy jacket with impossibly wide, pleading eyes.
Rowan sighed, his hand slipping into his deep pocket to feel the reassuring weight of the remaining gold sovereigns they had stolen from the counting-house. He felt the cold metal—money they desperately needed for basic survival, for food, for medicine—but he looked down at the kids' hopeful faces. They had seen nothing but gray brick walls and sickness for months.
"Fine," Rowan grumbled, trying to sound strict but failing completely. "But if you eat too much and throw up on my boots, I am leaving you here with the clockwork clowns."
While the children swarmed the candy stall like a flock of hungry sparrows, the Giants stood watch. They stuck out like sore thumbs among the aristocrats—their clothes were far too practical, their coats smelled of engine grease, and their eyes were far too sharp.
"I don't like this, Dot," Jack muttered, his hand resting casually inside his coat, inches from the grip of his heavy revolver. "Too many people. Too many eyes. An Unregistered citizen stands out here like a stripped gear in a watch."
"Relax, Jack," Ivy said, discreetly checking a small, brass device disguised as a pocket watch. It was a localized aether-scanner. "Constabulary presence is minimal today. They don't patrol the Carnival grounds; they let the private Guild security handle it. Besides, who cares about a bunch of orphans eating sugar?"
Dorothy leaned against a lamppost, watching Tess laughing uncontrollably as the vendor handed her a massive cloud of blue, glowing spun-sugar. For a brief, fleeting moment, the crushing weight of the city seemed to lift from Dorothy's shoulders. Just for a moment, they weren't rebels or outcasts. They were a normal family enjoying a normal day in the sun.
But Synthetica did not allow for normal.
A flamboyant street performer—a tall, unnaturally thin man bouncing on pneumatic spring-heeled stilts, wearing a cracked porcelain mask of a weeping jester—stumbled erratically into the group of children.
"Whoops-a-daisy!" the performer cackled, his voice distorted and amplified by a brass speaking-horn built into his collar. "Watch your step, little sparrows! The ground is terribly hungry today!"
He danced away, his long, mechanical stilt-legs clicking sharply against the cobblestones, disappearing rapidly into the thick, swirling crowd of carnival-goers.
Dorothy frowned. A cold, terrifying prickle ran down her spine. The low, ancient hum of her blood—usually quiet and dormant—suddenly whispered a sharp, screaming warning.
"Tess?" Dorothy called out, her voice rising over the music of the calliopes.
The group of children turned around. Pip was there, his face completely covered in sticky blue sugar. The others were there, safe and happy.
Tess was gone.
"Tess!" Dorothy's voice cut through the cheerful carnival noise like a gunshot.
"She was just here," Rowan said, sheer panic flaring in his chest as he spun around. "She was right next to me holding my coat. That performer on the stilts... he blocked my view for a second."
Ivy whipped out her brass tracking device, flipping the lid open. "I'm scanning for her magnetic signature. I slipped a lodestone into the heel of her boot this morning, just in case."
She tapped the glass face of the compass. The needle spun wildly before locking onto a direction. Her face went deathly pale.
"It's moving," Ivy said, her voice shaking. "Fast. Toward the loading docks in the lower Ash-Dregs. She's moving at sixty miles an hour. They put her in a steam-carriage."
"The performer," Jack realized, his handsome face twisting into a mask of pure, murderous rage. "It was a snatch-and-grab. A Flesh-Broker team using the noise of the carnival as cover."
"Asher, take the rest of the kids back to the Dregs right now," Dorothy commanded, her voice terrifyingly, unnaturally calm. "Lock the orphanage down tight. Do not open the heavy iron doors for anyone but us."
"What about you?" Asher asked, already expertly herding the frightened children together like a sheepdog.
Dorothy looked toward the smog-choked horizon of the Rust-Belt, where the thick black smoke rose to block out the fragile clockwork sun.
"We're going to get her back."