Diabolus ex Machina

By Grace Swaim

It is January 1, 1913; and Ilaytha is about to begin her service as a test subject to the warlock Edwin Hubble. Despite being a brilliant scientist, Ilaytha is human and thus will never be able to work on her own. Only warlocks like Sergei Diaghilev and Henri Becquerel are allowed to pursue art, science, or literature. Humans exist to perform hard labor and to produce warlock children; but Ilaytha believes herself to be the exception to the rule. Her pride will force her to learn what lies behind the façade the warlocks have created.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grace Swaim
• Release date: Nov 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310372230

Grace Swaim

Grace started writing long enough ago that she has actually rewritten more books than she has ever finished. She loves both English and Science and wishes that they met more often outside of lab reports. She is currently pursuing a degree in Biology in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Diabolus ex Machina

By Grace L. Swaim

Copyright © 2014 by Grace L. Swaim

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

First edition

Cover art by Rachel Dudley

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my lab partners: Carla Becker, Molly Burdine, and Natalie Burdine.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Aster Infinitus

Chapter 2 Visum Perfectum

Chapter 3 Vita Occulta

Chapter 4 Deus Mendax

Chapter 5 Insidia Picta

Chapter 6 Cantio Rebellata

About the Author

Acknowledgements

On the English side, I would like to thank Patrick Green for his invaluable help in shaping the direction of this story; Jennifer Rossuck, who taught me that I actually had no idea how to write; and Nathaniel Gee, unrelentingly enthusiastic to the last. On the Science side, I would like to thank Deborah Ormond, who has shown me some of the amazing things physics can do; Ruth McMichens, who managed to get me through Chemistry without wounding myself; and Chui Sien Chan, who could have been a human Bishop of Biology.

I would also like to thank my parents, who are the most reliable of all my editors and the most exacting.

Chapter 1 Aster Infinitus

In the building where Ilaytha had lived for all of her life, there were only a set number of beds for the children. Of these beds, which the older children claimed with only one exception and clawed to keep, there were some that were better and some that were worse, as were all things in the world. The best beds were midway between the door and the far wall; not too close to the matron (a warlock of the very lowest station) and her ukase’s watchful eyes and ears, but still near the warmth of the old heater. A quick child, too, could easily beat its way through the lines to reach the morning bread first, and fill its arms and shirt with as much as it could carry. The closest beds to the door were not the best, as the children who slept there sweated incessantly and sometimes burned their limbs on the heater, and their various indiscretions were more obvious than those of the other children. But still, these beds were fought over almost as savagely as the middle beds, because no one wanted to sleep in the icy, mildewed sheets of the beds against the far wall, where the wood of the roof had rotted away and allowed the rain to pour in. Younger children, constantly sniffling and coughing, were forced to take those beds.

Among these unfortunates, there was one older girl, whose legs almost stretched off of her small bed. Ilaytha, when she was very young, had picked the bed under the biggest gap in the roof, uncaring of how far it was from the door or how cold it was at night, and she had never tried to find a better one. She loved to look up at the stars, the white pinpricks of cold fire that could hold their own against the wavering yellow light of the lamps. Amidst those infinite stars were infinite worlds she could live in, infinite thoughts to entertain her mind, infinite possibilities that made her, for eight hours a day (often less), happy. And Ilaytha never suffered the mildew and cold of her fellows. She had found, left folded on her pillow one day, a sheet of some clear, slightly stretchy material she could not identify and a handful of tiny pins. She climbed up on the railing of her bed when everyone else was asleep and pinned the clear sheet over the hole. After that, nothing else came in, and she was able to keep her sheet and mattress, if not perfectly clean, cleaner than any of the other beds on the far side of that huge room.

Ilaytha had never been able to discern the identity of her benefactor. When the children were freed from the interminable series of tasks the matron assigned them, she took the time to explore the city and try to find something like the clear sheet. She had discovered that the wealthier warlocks who came looking for new servants in the district on rainy days carried long sticks with a large folded swatch of the clear material on the end. Sometimes the material was a different color, but Ilaytha could always tilt her head far enough to see through it. The idea that a warlock would give her such a present was unthinkable. She simply hoped that it had no terrible meaning to it and enjoyed the small protection it gave her.

Yet, when she looked up on the sky on the night of her thirteenth birthday, she felt little comfort in her glimpse of the shining stars. Ilaytha had no idea of her real age, but every child that was left to the matron’s care on a certain year had their age counted from that year. She knew the date as well as she knew anything---the children were not given an extensive education, but Ilaytha devoured books as eagerly as the others devoured food. Today was January 1, 1913.

Ilaytha, who also knew the Synod-approved account of history, sometimes wondered why the time was still counted using pagan figures for month-names and marked years from the birth of an imaginary man in an old, false religion. She supposed that it had been used for so many hundreds of years before the beauty of the Alignment had been discovered and that it simply continued by force of inertia, like the society of the warlocks itself. Ilaytha was conscious of a sort of unfairness in the Alignment, as she was very much aware that the matron’s ukase was a sleepy, grumpy creature and no paragon of justice, but she believed in it as wholly as she believed that she was alive and had a name. She believed that the warlocks were those perfectly in tune with the harmony and balance of the Alignment, born to lead her kind, who could not understand it like warlocks could. Yet, despite her vague sense of contentment with the way things were, she still felt unsettled when the warlocks would come each year to pick out new servants. Many of them seemed just like other humans, without any sort of transcendent understanding. Sometimes they would even blaspheme the Alignment casually, laughing to each other like they had not just damned themselves to be reborn without magic. The warlocks, though, always made sure the common people had plenty of food and plenty of priests to preach about the Alignment, and that went a long way in confusing Ilaytha’s heart. She was not starving, and she was not dead, though surely the warlocks could have annihilated the common people without a thought. She was well cared for, and in return for her care, she would serve the warlocks as she could.

Still, though, a tiny worm of discontent gnawed at her as she watched the stars. The very next day, she would be presented with every other child her age, to be chosen or passed over as the visiting warlocks willed. She was not sure whether she hoped to be ignored or chosen. The Alignment told her service to a warlock would give her great attunement to Law, and she wanted to be reborn as a ukase, like most of the other children.

Her eyes closed, almost without her will, and the stars were lost to her. She started to imagine what she would look like as one of the beautiful golden eagle demons before she fell asleep.

A cold, wet nose on the palm of her hand woke her in the morning. She shifted unhappily, drawing her arm back onto her chest. All pretense of rest had fled in an instant. Ilaytha opened her eyes, trying to seem relaxed, ready to flee, or strike at any motion. When she saw what had wakened her, she bit back a scream. There was a mercurial, a wolf demon, sitting on the floor beside her bed, close enough that she could smell the cool mint scent of its coat and breath, its calm blue eyes studying her intently. She could see every edge of its glass fur outlined in the faint sunlight.

You are brave, the mercurial said, surprised. Or maybe sleepy.

It had the voice of an older woman, rich with sharp amusement. Some of other children shifted at the clear sound of a voice, and the mercurial laid her head beside Ilaytha’s, who had not dared to sit up. She touched her long muzzle to