Doncia's Demons

By Brett Buckley

Doncia has a secret: She sees weird colours on the walls, and strange creatures like the demon that flies over their tenement at night. But before her inventor father went crazy, leaving Doncia and her mother alone, he gave her a pocketwatch, and by squeezing it she can make the weird visions disappear.

When her teacher goes crazy too, the school is closed. To escape the factories Doncia and her friend Piri agree to work in the graf’s castle, where she learns to control the cleaning robots. When she becomes lost in the castle’s underground passages, an impossible flying pufferfish shows her a crumbling rift into a limitless cavern.

Can she solve the riddle of her visions before the demon’s sinister purpose tears her life, the castle, and the entire duchy apart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brett Buckley
• Release date: May 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513051253

Brett Buckley

Brett Buckley lives in Brisbane, Australia, and has worked as an engineer, a computer programmer, and a technical writer, but he is powered by a deep current of fantasy writing and illustrating. Brett is currently working on a new series set in a distant part of Doncia’s world. Check out the new characters and settings on his blog, Depicture This, and while you’re there, jump on the mailing list for notification when the next book is released. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on the site where you purchased it.    

Book preview

1

ANGRY RED APPEARED on the walls like a coat of paint. It blistered and peeled, then flaked off, each flake drifting slowly in the lamplight. Doncia sat on a rug near the warm stove, rocking slowly and watching. She forced her clenched hands apart and slipped one into her pocket to grasp the cool metal of her pocketwatch.

Mother was ironing, her face a sheen of sweat. The oil-fired iron hissed and burbled, and steam from other people’s clothes rose in angry clouds. Some of it snuck under the lamp glass, flaring the flame, and Mother paused and looked up, her eyes clear, grey, and sharp.

‘In no way is it your fault,’ she said, ‘nothing you could have done might have prevented it, and nothing you can do will bring him back.’

Things said once were often true, Doncia knew, and things said many times were possibly still true, but when somebody said something way too many times it was definitely time to doubt.

She squeezed her pocketwatch, willing the red flakes to disappear, and one by one they began to wink away. The pocketwatch was the last thing Father gave her. It told the time of course, and it could measure how long it took to run up to Clee Castle gate, but it was also somehow special on the inside. She squeezed it harder. Every little tick-tick-tick echoed from the walls, the cast iron stove, and even her own teeth.

The last of the red flakes disappeared, dissolving into the clouds of steam.

‘Good night Mother,’ she said.

#

A noise woke Doncia in the middle of the night. She hooked her fingers under the catches and heaved the window up. Cold blasted in, making her cough.

High in the gap between their tenement and the next, a few pinprick stars snuffed out then twinkled back to life. She felt something out there, something big and new and important.

She dragged her chest under the window, then stood on it and climbed out. The railing was old and rusty, goosebumps tickled her arms, and the metal treads made her feet numb, but it was only two flights to the top. She pushed open the squeaky gate and started out onto a channel between the sloping tiles. The milky-way arched overhead, seeming to hang close.

She found a relatively comfortable place to lean back. Though she wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, it seemed sensible. She shivered. Even if you might not believe in something, even when you see it, you still don’t want to miss it.

The stars twinkled so close she reached out and pretended to pluck one. Mr Langwish said philosophers thought each star kept a family of worlds, like a mother duck with a family of ducklings, and on each of those worlds lived people just like her. As unbelievable ideas go, it was a good one, and if it was true, those stars can’t have just gone out and come back on again. Something must had stopped her from seeing them, must have got in the way. So she waited to see if it might come back.

A bell chimed twice—the bell on the clock tower at Clee City Station.

A tiny bat flitted around her three times then buzzed away over the roofs.

She stretched her neck and moved her head around. The station clock chimed the half-hour. She started to shiver more, but didn’t want to give up.

Some of the stars went out! A big, dark creature was flying across the sky, from the direction of the castle, and as it flew got in the way of the stars. Doncia couldn’t quite make it out, but imagined it was shaped just like the tiny bat, only larger than a person.

The rooftop might not be such a clever place to be, but the creature was so close there was no time to flee. She scrambled along the channel and hid under an eave. She shivered more now, but not from the cold. It was going to fly directly over. Her left hand slipped into her pocket and gripped her pocketwatch.

The creature didn’t seem to see her, but she could see it was a little like a fox, a little like a woman, and a lot like a bat. The wings were black, but the body was grey, and it flew terribly fast. As fast as it had come, it was gone.

She could feel her own heart beating, hard and rapid like it was right up in her throat, and though she tightened her muscles she couldn’t stop shivering. There was a demon flying over the roofs! Only she had seen it, only she had come up onto the roof in the cold dark night and caught a glimpse of a demon.

She climbed carefully back down the fire escape and in through her window. The frame was stiff, and when she got it going it slipped from her hands and banged against the sill. She jumped into bed and pulled the covers up, so she could pretend to be asleep if Mother came to investigate.

A demon was flying over Clee. Now she just had to decide if she believed in it or not.

#

Doncia bounded three-at-a-time down the narrow stairs from her bedroom. Mother had already left; they had to get the laundry boiler going well before sunrise.

She tossed one coal into the remnants of the fire and worked the bellows to get it going. While her portion of gloppy porridge reheated she checked the cold safe. She placed the brown-paper-wrapped sandwich carefully into her satchel.

With a belly full of warm porridge, her satchel on her shoulder, and a last-minute check for her pocketwatch, she clicked the foyer door locked and stepped out into morning dazzle.

On Old Mirgaet Road shopkeepers were lowering their awnings against the sun, and the grocer was patting the chest of his horse as it backed a wagon of vegetables. Doncia made a quick detour through Hackney Lane to avoid the pickpockets. She climbed the collapsed redbrick wall of the old Delgarde factory, cut through the oily yard, and ducked under the chain fence.

A short amble uphill was the school, another crumbly redbrick building with only a few smeary windows. It squatted behind an ornate gate which usually hung invitingly open.

It was shut and padlocked.

Kids shoved and scrambled to read the poster on the brickwork. Doncia could only make out the larger print.

SCHOOL CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

‘Hey!’ she shouted, pushing into the crush. ‘Let me see!’

‘It’s Doncia,’ said Brom, and the whole crowd turned to stare. Closest were some of the other fifteen-year-olds: Brom, Tiber, and Essie. Behind them was a handful of the younger kids. Right up at the notice was her best friend Piri Hutchings. Father was one of the whispered words.

The crowd reluctantly parted, and she squeezed in to read the fine print.

SCHOOL CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Mr Langwish has suffered the touch and can no longer take classes. Until such time as a replacement can be found the school will remain closed.

By order, The Graf.

She closed her eyes, waited, and opened them again, but the words had not changed. Poor Mr Langwish.

‘Just like your father,’ said Brom, smirking. The others just stared.

Doncia found the smooth shell of her pocketwatch in its pocket. Things started to blur, but warm fingers grasped her other hand.

‘Come on,’ said Piri.

Doncia didn’t really remember walking down from the Mount, or even through the old city, but somehow the bay glistened before them. Gulls called, and the smell of the weed on the beach cleared her head.

‘No school,’ Piri was saying. ‘That could be good.’ She jumped down onto the sand.

Doncia tugged off her boots and jumped down too. She felt the cool sand grains squeeze between her toes.

‘I suppose,’ she said.

They walked right to the edge and braved their feet to the icy water and tiny nibbling fishes.

‘Work,’ she confessed to Piri. ‘If there’s no school Mother will make me work.’

‘Me too. There must be some other teacher!’

‘The graf’s only interested in the University. If you can’t pay to go he doesn’t care. If only Father....’

If only Father hadn’t gone crazy and left them.

‘Professor Javer got sick,’ said Piri, ‘there’s nothing you could have done.’

#

There was little point in going home, since Mother was working in the castle. Piri’s parents were working too. They played on the beach for a while, skimming stones, running through the shallows to splash each other, and turning over rocks to examine the tiny creatures underneath. After a long battle flinging ribbons of smelly weed, they walked out on the pier and ate their lunches with their legs dangling.

‘School was boring anyway,’ said Piri. She dropped a crust of bread into the lake and they waited to see if any fish would nibble it.

‘Mucking around is more fun,’ Doncia said, ‘but I want to learn stuff.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Technologics. How to make things.’

‘What things?’

Doncia took out her pocketwatch. She opened it up and looked at the time. It was nearly noon.

‘You’re always playing with that thing,’ Piri said.

Doncia snapped the watch closed and squeezed it between her palms. She felt the ticking of the second hand, the whirring of the internal cogs, and the minute reverberations in the timber of the pier. She closed her eyes and searched deeper, felt the infinite echoey chamber of the lake water, and somewhere in the deep the confident motion of a large fish. It was coming for the breadcrumb. She opened her eyes.

‘Watch the bread,’ she said.

A toothy mouth slurped open and popped closed on the bread crust. A flick of tail broke the surface of the water, and a flash of silver shimmered into the green depths.

‘How did you know?’ Piri asked.

‘Saw it coming.’ Doncia slipped the pocketwatch back into its pocket. ‘Come on,’ she said, and grabbed her satchel.

Doncia led Piri through the docklands and up the road toward the Mount. The footpaths narrowed and they dodged across the road between trailers towed by chugging motor-trucks, with mounds of coal headed to the Delgarde factories. Sooty footmen scurried behind with chocks for the wheels in case a motor failed on the steep climb.

‘Do you believe in demons?’ she asked as they caught their breath under the grimy canopy at the front of a workshop.

‘Course not,’ said Piri, staring at Doncia through the pale strands of her hair.

‘I’ve seen one,’ Doncia said. ‘Just last night.’ She stepped back onto the road quickly before Piri could respond. She wished she hadn’t said it, and hoped running off made it seem a boast or a joke, instead of like she might be crazy. She dodged behind a huge flatbed truck, loaded high with dusty pink pig iron, and crossed the road.

‘Wait!’

‘Come on,’ Doncia said, ‘I want to get back.’ She felt suddenly exposed.

‘We’ve got all day.’

Doncia couldn’t tell Piri how she felt. She couldn’t tell her about the things she saw that she couldn’t believe, like blood red walls, like the demon. Piri wouldn’t believe her; she would think she was crazy. Piri had always supported Doncia, and she didn’t want to do anything to lose that.

‘Come on. Through the railway reserve,’ Doncia said.

Piri flashed a smile. She was tall, pale, and blonde, with a dusting of freckles and a broad nose. Her smiles lit up her icy blue eyes. Doncia was sometimes jealous of how Piri looked—she was the complete opposite with average height, dark hair, brown eyes, and a high-bridged nose Mother said was good and strong.

The railway was in a cutting and the street crossed over a brick arch. Doncia stopped in the middle and leaned over to admire the shiny tracks. She picked up a tiny pebble and flicked it over the edge. It hit a sleeper and ricocheted into a steel track with a satisfying ping.

‘Come on!’

She ran across the bridge and down the sloping street to where it curved back around toward the track, with Piri close behind. They stopped for a moment to check there was no one about before sneaking into a yard, racing past a little house, and hurling themselves up and over the timber fence into the railway reserve.

On the other side Doncia felt like laughing, so she did, and Piri did too.

Doncia felt a rumble through the soles of her boots. A train swung into view round the bend and approached, puffing and chugging, tar-black smoke billowing. She crouched down in the long grass to hide, Piri beside her. The streamlined engine hurtled smugly past, followed by flat cars loaded with metal ingots for the factories.

Doncia loved to count carriages off as they passed.

‘One. Two...’

Piri mouthed the numbers beside her, hair blown across her face.

There were five flat cars, followed by five closed wagons. Then there were passenger carriages, each full of weary, bandaged soldiers returning from the war. Some were slack-faced, mouths and eyes open wide, but staring at nothing. Doncia’s hand slipped into her pocket and closed on her pocketwatch. Carriage after carriage trundled past, all the faces the same.

‘Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,’ Piri was saying.

Eighteen was empty except for a grey cloud of nothingness pressing at the windows. It escaped through the gaps to swirl behind in oily streamers which curled around the remaining carriages, as if prying for a way in.

The pocketwatch’s ticking seemed to slow. Time stretched.

Nineteen and twenty had big red crosses on the sides, and closed curtains. Twenty-one had no windows at all.

‘Twenty-two.’ The last. A tiny guards-van. Someone watched them from inside.

Doncia felt like running, but when she jumped up her legs were a little wobbly from crouching. Piri steadied her.

‘Let’s go home now,’ Piri said.

Doncia nodded. She kept seeing the slack-faced soldiers.

They continued along the trackside, following cables that controlled the signals and switches. A little cabin with wide smudgy windows and flaking chalky-blue paint commanded a view up and down the reserve. Tens of control levers spiked out of a panel, variously positioned up or down. A brass spider robot scurried past on its springy legs, and entered the cabin. A single arm, designed for the task, pushed one lever down and another up.

They slipped through a gap in the palings to the backyard of a warehouse, staying out of view behind stacks of rusty junk and parked trolleys. Their cover ran out and they gathered the courage to make a run for it.

‘Go!’ Piri whispered.

They hurtled across the loading apron, darted behind a reversing lift truck, and continued out to the road.

‘I know this road,’ said Piri. ‘This way!’

Doncia followed, grinning. Piri led them across the cobbles into a lane between high fences.

‘There’s the old aqueduct.’

They continued under the arches, and Doncia craned her neck to look up. Something was odd.

‘Someone is watching us,’ she said. She squeezed her pocketwatch, but it was strangely dormant, slowing like it had when the train passed.

Piri looked at her doubtfully, then laughed. ‘You worry me.’

‘There,’ Doncia said, and pointed surreptitiously at a shadowy figure back beside the aqueduct column. It was just a boy, but his head was bald. He wore a long, heavy, purplish-black woollen coat. He stepped out of the shadows.

The pocketwatch stopped ticking entirely. Doncia squeezed it harder but felt nothing. Her hands began to shake, and fear crept over her with a thousand fingers.

The boy’s eyes were wide and almond shaped with dark irises. His nose was stubby and his cheeks were broad. His lips were full and rosy. For a boy, he was a bit too girly looking, and with no hair he certainly was odd.

Doncia took a step back, grabbing Piri and tugging her. The pocketwatch began ticking again.

‘Do you see him?’

‘Course,’ said Piri.

‘He is a demon, I think.’

‘It—It’s the beautiful boy,’ Piri whispered.

The beautiful boy stood still. He pressed his palms together before his chest, and nodded, never taking his giant eyes off them. Doncia’s fear was gone.

He disappeared.

‘Now you’ve seen a demon too,’ said Doncia.

#

Doncia and Piri delayed on the steps to Doncia’s tenement. Evening chill came creeping as the sun went behind the buildings. Doncia hugged herself. It was just the cold.

‘They say he is good,’ Piri said.

‘Do they?’

‘They say he helps those who have the sight, those who are touched.’

Does he take them away? Doncia wondered. Is that what happened to Father?

‘But we’re not touched,’ she said, searching Piri’s eyes.

They sparked. ‘No!’

The beautiful boy’s eyes had been dark—they still smouldered in Doncia’s memory like coals.

Mother came round the corner with a folded clothes rack balanced on one shoulder and a sack of clothes hung on the other. She trudged up the stairs behind them. She looked weary, like her feet were heavy.

‘What’ve you girls been up to?’

‘Nothing.’ Doncia said—the easy instant answer. Mostly nothing. Piri was nodding her head in earnest agreement.

‘I heard about the school, about Mr Langwish. I’m sorry.’ She put down the sack of clothes and fumbled in her satchel for the building key.

‘Should go,’ said Piri, hopping from foot to foot.

‘Actually, Piri,’ Doncia’s mother said, ‘would you come in a moment?’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Piri.

They traipsed up the staircase to level three, and Mother fished for her keys again. She unlocked their apartment and pushed the door open with the ironing.

Doncia mixed them drinks of lemon juice, water, and sugar.

‘With the school closed the children are supposed to work,’ Mother said, leaning on the timber table. ‘For the war effort.’

Doncia studied the walls. Reddish.

‘Most will be sent to the factories.’

‘No!’ said Doncia.

‘But,’ said Mother, holding up her hand. ‘I can get you work in the graf’s castle. You also, Piri, if you want, if your parents agree.’

‘In the castle?’ Piri’s eyes went wide, and she grinned.

‘The work will be hard, mind. Probably harder than the factories, but it won’t be so boring.’

‘What work?’ Doncia asked.

‘Domestic work—cooking, cleaning, whatever.’

Work like Mother did. Hard work for other people.

‘All right,’ said Doncia. Better than factories.

‘Yes, please Mrs Beltran,’ Piri said, with her brightest smile. ‘If it’s all right, if it won’t get you into trouble.’

Mother laughed. ‘No trouble. If your parents agree be waiting in your foyer in the morning at five.’

‘Yes’m, thank you.’ Piri said, and grabbed her bag.

Doncia saw her out.

‘Don’t forget,’ Doncia said at the tenement entrance.

‘They say there’s demons beneath the castle,’ Piri teased, and ran off.

‘You don’t believe in demons,’ Doncia called after her.

Later Mother ironed while Doncia prepared potato pie with cheese.

‘It’s not fair,’ Doncia said. ‘I want to study and become a technologician like Father.’ She wanted to provide properly for them, so Mother didn’t have to slave into the night ironing.

‘I know, I know,’ said Mother, ‘but hold tight, Doncia. At least it is not the factories, making bits and pieces of machines for the war. It won’t be forever.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Doncia.

‘No, I don’t, but there’ll be opportunities, just keep an open mind.’

Doncia checked the walls. Pinkish in places.

2

DONCIA AND PIRI followed Doncia’s mother up to the castle. Mother was wheeling the rack of ironed clothes, struggling each time the metal wheels caught in cracks in the pavement or cobbles. As they walked the stars and galaxies hid themselves behind the new dawn light. A crowd of sandstone mansions shied back from the stone wall and the giant ornate arch, leaving a rare open lawn around the top of the Mount.

‘Morning Nola!’

It was a guard calling down from an open window in the archway. Mother waved.

‘Morning girls,’ the man continued, sounding amused. Doncia and Piri waved too.

‘Captain Anton is a strange little man,’ Mother whispered. ‘He’s short for a soldier because the ceilings inside are low.’

They continued under the arch and along the footpath between the cobbled road and the long reflecting pool. Already the castle loomed both high above and deep below in the reflection. It was angular, many-turreted, and rambling, but she couldn’t get a proper sense of the size because it was impossible to tell what was around the corners, and that only made it seem bigger, and her smaller.

The castle had stone lacework around every window and stone serpents for handrails. Gargoyles like screaming eagles tried to launch from the rooftops.

Doncia heard the put-put-put of an automobile coming up the drive behind them. It was a long streamlined limousine with ornate vines and flowers etched into bodywork. Doncia and Piri stopped to stare as it passed. The windows were dark in the back part of the cabin.

The road curved around a grand entrance, and the limousine eased to a halt before the wide steps. A waiting page opened the door with a flourish, and a rotund man in a brown suit and top hat stepped out.

‘It’s Mr Delgarde,’ Mother whispered.

Doncia stared. Mr Delgarde owned most of the factories. ‘What is he doing here?’

‘None of our business,’ Mother said, ‘and we don’t go in that way.’

She led them around to the left, away from the entrance and between a Cathalite chapel and a long colonnade. They turned into a courtyard where a bronze mermaid swam in a fountain. The fishy spray tickled her nose.

Mother pushed the clothes rack up a ramp and through a doorway. Doncia hesitated at the entrance. The pocketwatch was ticking in her pocket, and her hand started toward it, but Piri marched straight in, and Doncia felt silly left behind.

‘Stand to the side and wait,’ Mother said. ‘Ma’am knows you’re coming.’

Doncia was terrified. Everything was tinged yellow.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,’ Mother said. ‘Nobody bites.’ Doncia imagined people with big teeth, biting, but her eyes adjusted to the light, and she saw them then, in a kind of parade, and none of their teeth seemed particularly large.

Mother went to stand in line. There were women in neat grey dresses like Mother, some with aprons of various designs—striped, checked, and a few with flowers. There was a woman with chessboard-checked clothes and a chef’s hat. There were men with overalls and boots, men with laboratory coats and spectacles, and men with long-tailed black suits and crisp white shirts.

A short woman strode in, wearing a formal gown and her hair in a lace net. Her head moved slightly back and forward as she stepped.

‘Anybody missing?’ she squawked.

‘No Ma’am,’ said the tallest of the suited gents, bowing. Though he towered nearly twice her height it was clear who was in charge.

‘Just as well. Delgarde is here and the graf will be in a temper. Watch yourselves. Dismissed.’

Doncia tensed as the bird-woman’s eyes beamed around toward Piri and her.

‘What’re you doing here?’ she said, pointing at them. Doncia swallowed.

‘We’re...’ Doncia began.

‘Well?’

‘Here to work,’ Doncia managed. She saw Piri nodding furiously.

‘Here to work, Ma’am,’ said the woman. ‘You’re Professor Javer’s whelp, aren’t you?’

‘Yes—Ma’am,’ she said.

‘You’ll forget that if you want to last, and muck in. Hear me?’

Doncia nodded.

‘I can’t be seen to be giving you any special privilege, so it’s bottom rung. Work your way up, if you can. Report to Isolde. Tell her you’re the new cleaner.’

Doncia looked to Piri, realising they were to be separated.

‘Now!’

‘Yes, Ma’am. Thank you Ma’am,’ Doncia said and took a step. ‘Which way Ma’am?’

Ma’am rolled her eyes, mumbling ‘Cathal protect me.’ She pulled a rope attached to a contraption on the wall. A tiny bell tinkled in the distance, and a young woman hurried in. She was one of the few who wore flowery aprons. If not for the birthmark which blotched her forehead and left cheek she might have been beautiful.

‘Take Doncia here to Isolde, please Moni,’ Ma’am said.

‘Yes’m,’ said the young woman, dipping her head. She inspected Doncia with dark eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said, and dashed away.

Doncia waved to Piri and chased after, eventually catching up as Moni disappeared down a corridor to the left, which quickly turned right again. Doncia looked around in awe; the ceiling was three floors high, but each floor was twice as high as the ceiling in Doncia’s tenement. Determined not to get lost, Doncia counted the halls and doorways. At the fifth they entered a tower staircase that spiralled both up and down. They went down past two doors, and Doncia realised they must be underground. They exited at a third door. Gaslights hung on the rough stone walls only at irregular intervals, and sometimes it was quite dark.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Isolde is in the robot store.’

‘Robots?’

‘Cleaners. You’ll see. Not far now.’

The passage had doors on both sides, all with identical green paint. A little way along one door was wedged open.

‘Go in,’ Moni said abruptly, as if she was afraid to do so herself, then sped away.

Doncia watched her disappear, then rubbed her fingers over the engravings on her pocketwatch to work up some courage, and stepped inside. The cavernous room was lit by hissing gaslights, but it was filled with so much clutter it was hard to see where to walk.

She went along what must have been the main path between the rows of shelves. Labelled cardboard boxes of different sizes were stacked treacherously. It smelled like the Clee City Library.

‘Hello?’ Doncia called softly. ‘Madam Isolde?’

Something clattered and there was a loud curse.

A shiny robot sped toward Doncia on many springy legs, like a huge brass spider. It bounced off the boxes and crates. It was only about as high as her knees. She jumped out of the way and it continued out the door.

‘Well, now it’s working,’ said a throaty voice.

A woman came into view around a tower of wooden crates. She was middle aged and thin. The cords of her muscles were like taut wires, and thick branching veins crossed them. The skin of her face was so tight Doncia could see the shape of her skull underneath.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Doncia, Madam Isolde. I’m the new cleaner.’

‘Are you now?’ Sharp blue eyes measured her. ‘We can always use more hands, especially little nimble ones. Show me yours.’

Doncia let go of her pocketwatch and held her hands out hesitantly, remembering a time she’d got herself into trouble and Mr Langwish had caned them.

Isolde grabbed and squeezed.

‘Bit soft. Never done a day’s work, have you?’

‘Been at school, Ma’am, but the graf closed it.’

‘Don’t call me Ma’am, we reserve that for her. Call me Isolde, because it’s my name and I don’t have no airs or graces, Doncia Beltran.’

Doncia wondered if everyone knew who she was, knew her as her father’s daughter, and had unknown expectations.

‘You knew my father?’

‘Yes, and I liked Professor Javer, mind, but he didn’t go out of his way to make friends, and there are many here as didn’t like him, so have a care girl.’

Doncia looked down. ‘Yes, Isolde.’

‘Now, let us see. Brooms or bots?’

After a moment Doncia realised it was a question, and she looked up again at Isolde, who clearly expected an answer.

‘Robots, definitely....’

‘Perhaps later—brooms first,’ Isolde said with a gaslit sparkle in her eyes. ‘Mops, actually. Come along.’

#

Doncia pushed the mop back and forth across the checkerboard marble floor, which was already quite clean before she started. Isolde had said otherwise; it was a main hallway and must be spotless. Apparently the robots did a fine job of whisking up the dust, but nobody had designed one that could mop. She wondered what Piri was doing.

A brass spider robot waited patiently for the section of floor to dry before it crossed. Every few minutes it began to click and whirr, waggled its feelers, then seemed to test the floor with one springy leg. It had a turret on top with an eye mounted, looking a little like a short telescope, and she wondered how it knew the floor was wet with such an ineffective-looking eye, and how it knew it was supposed to wait anyway.

She pressed really hard on the ringer and gave the floor a good drying. The next time it tested the floor the robot was satisfied, and it scurried off on its errand.

Goodbye little fellow, Doncia thought after it.

She slopped water onto the next section.

‘Not so wet, girl!’ The voice was right behind and she started in fright. It was an old man with a shock of wavy white hair and piercing blue eyes