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Chapter Text

The bowed floorboards are distinctly hideous, Kirin Jindosh concludes as he groggily regains consciousness. He's been to quite a few unfortunate places—one often has to when one is positioned to remake the age and yet is horribly misunderstood by the hoi polloi, his fellows, and the police—but none quite so miserable as this swaying floorboard with its dents and dashes, like the telegraph of a madman. And yet, given his current circumstances, he'd rather be listening to the dronings of the common criminal than trying to deduce what line of unfortunate events brought him here.

Well, knowing was the first part of escaping.

There's a pain along the edges of his mind, curling around the right side of his face—he imagines it red, radiating, blurring into his cells like an oil smudge. He wants to retch from the pain, but he pushes the sensation down instead, surgically cuts it from his immediate awareness; he has learned how, he has had to learn how a long while ago. The way this pain dulls his thoughts frightens him, and as he lifts his right hand to massage the painful part of his head, he finds he cannot.

Someone has had the gall to shackle his wrist to one of the Void-forsaken pipes in this empty, windowless cabin. Just one wrist though. His other hand, denuded of its prosthetic, is still free.

Lovely. Charming. A delightful turn of events.

There were only a few reasons someone would want to do this to him: ransom, organ theft, sexual depravity, revenge... It wasn't as though he had a shortage of enemies, but some contenders were more likely than others. Probably not the duke, or the mechanical-parts supplier. Or a disgruntled former employee. He'd heard rumors of a Karnacan cult that stole blood from the dying to drink, but he'd dismissed it as utter nonsense. Then, all the pieces fall into place: the windowless cabin, the precautions to keep him from leaving or knowing when or where he was.

The empress must have him.

He swears to himself.

What a fine mess. He searches through the painful haze of his memory for anything that could tell him what preceded this: he'd been tinkering at his desk with some hardware for a clockwork soldier, thinking about what he'd do to dear old Anton next and steadfastly ignoring the pair of nobles who'd come to purchase one or two clockwork soldiers for themselves. Then, he was suffocating: there had been strong arms around his throat (like a common mugger, his mind adds sulkily) and then he must have blacked out. (Did he hit his head on the desk when he fell unconscious? Had he been dropped at some point along the long way from the Upper Aventa district to wherever he is now? He doesn't particularly relish the idea that he was handled with the same care a serving girl might give to a sack of potatoes.)

A clanging sounds out somewhere in the depths of the ship. An engine misfiring.

His head throbs in sympathy, and he closes his eyes to ground himself. He wants to retch from this auditory invasion into his mind, but he holds it back. If he's being held by the empress, there's only one reason for that. What was the saying? All birds return to the roost. (If he's amused by anything, it's that his mind doesn't bother to feign the pretense of Delilah being his empress. He holds no ill will towards Emily or the rest of the Kaldwin line; he just can see a good opportunity when he sees one, or when it sees him as it crawls out of the inky sea of the Void. Either way, he intends on making the most of it.)

He steadies himself. He's acutely aware that he's skipped out on one or two days worth of meals now. That frustrating bodily demand stretches painfully in his gut. Never mind. He'll see about that later, or perhaps his captor will. Or won't. Too many variables. He's never met the empress, and he's almost flattered she tracked him down in Karnaca—but then again, if the main constituents of a coup were all from the same city, he'd probably do the same. A less flattering conclusion. He'll have to ask how she got into his office undetected.

He turns his attention to his current accommodations. There's no dust or build-up on the frame of the folded cot. It's as spotless as anything on the ship could be, and a faint sweetness of boiled herbs and acridness of bloodfly viscera clings to the walls, reminiscent of Addermire Solution. Not in the sense of an opened bottle, but rather small-scale production. Hypatia? Had she been here first?

Oh, now his curiosity is piqued.

He tries keeping time by the rhythmic struggles of the secondary engine, but that does him no good without a starting point. It could be early evening, late night, or morning for all he can tell. Nevertheless, he waits only half an hour before the door opens and someone checks on him.

"Good, you're awake," the woman says, with the tone of someone who intends to be taken seriously. She surveys his form briefly. "And in better condition than I would have left you in."

"Charming accommodations," Jindosh retorts, hoarsely. "My compliments to the designer."

The woman kneels, so they are face to face. A deadly poise in her movements: sharp and practiced. "I know you think you're very clever, but I'm the captain of this ship. And I saw what you did to Anton. I have half a mind to drop you straight into the ocean for that one. Now, you can either shape up, or you can find out how the water feels this time of year."

She's not just a ship captain, Jindosh decides. She has the movement of a killer, even without her arm and eye.

"Understood," he manages.

"I'm glad," she replies with not a hint of mirth. "Emily has some questions for you, and if you're smart, you'll answer them."

Jindosh recognizes the empress's face only from coins. In the flesh, her face still has the softness of youth; she's tall and sinewy, with a tightly controlled poise to her movements. A hint of the back-alley—her father, perhaps. Dark hair from her mother, training from her father.

What brings you to my lovely abode, he almost replies, not quite knowing when to give in, but then he thinks the better of it. "Empress Emily," he says, gritting his teeth. "What a delight to see you." How was the travel from Dunwall? Oh, you were fleeing a coup? How inconvenient. I hear the weather down here is much more pleasant, anyway. First time in Karnaca?

"I can imagine," she says sweetly. A woman aware of her power. "Dr. Hypatia said that you and her visited the home of Aramis Stilton, and there something bad happened. What was it?"

"I wouldn't call it a visit," Jindosh amends. 

"What would you call it?" Emily asks with polite, measured interest at the same moment that the woman next to her swears.

"He's going to be doing this all night," she tells Emily. "Men like him have no real understanding of consequences. They've never had to face them."

It's night, then. He must have been unconscious for a truly worrying amount of time. Here's to hoping her little stunt didn't give him brain damage on top of everything.

"Traitor or not, he is still my subject," Emily replies evenly.

Good to know that torture wasn't on the table tonight. It was probably best to cooperate. "We held a séance," he offers in the same careful tone reserved for Duke Luca.

"For dead people?" the captain asks disdainfully.

Jindosh is careful to parcel out his words. He's not sure how far he wants to implicate anyone else. If the empress thinks it was just him and Hypatia, well, it might be useful to keep the rest of his knowledge hidden. A few cards up his sleeve. "For Delilah."

"To talk with her?" Emily asks, her brow furrowed.

Jindosh breathes in deeply. This is going very poorly for him right now. "To resurrect her."

The captain bites her lip. "Witchcraft. I fucking knew it. There's no way it was just him." She rounds on Jindosh. "Whose idea was it? I know damn well it wasn't yours."

That stings a little. Jindosh cannot help but glance around the room for anything that could help his situation. Finding nothing, he reluctantly says, "An associate of mine."

"Names, Jindosh," the captain says. "Don't play these games with me."

"Breanna Ashworth," Jindosh replies, and the flicker of recognition in the captain's dark eyes is almost worth losing this bit of information. Another witch, then? A defector from the Brigmore Witches coven? Now, he's really going to have to hope Emily retakes the throne, because Breanna is going to craft something vile from his skin when she finds out he's given her up so quickly.

Emily repeats the name, puzzling over it.

"She's a witch," the captian says. "A powerful one."

"You knew each other," Jindosh surmises.

A sharp silence comes over the room. Emily glances at the captain with confusion and, perhaps, under it, hurt. How Jindosh lives for these moments; he might be imprisoned in the depths of a failing ship with little hope of escape, but he's got the upper hand again.

"I knew he'd be trouble," the captain says. "You should have just put a blade in him and be done with it." She sounds as though she wouldn't mind doing it herself. Anger laces her scars and worn features—souvenirs from a hard life on the streets—but is that fear as well? He's fascinated by her now. A former killer and former witch? Which preceded which? None of Breanna's girls had been trained in combat, but this woman clearly had been.

"Did you defect from the coven?" Jindosh continues, lapsing into a pleasant pattern. "You'd have lost your powers if you'd—"

"Stop it!" The captain's face is hard, but there's a trembling in her hand as she clenches it. "I'm not yours to speculate about. None of us are. Not all of us have had soft lives, Jindosh. My past is my own. My choices are my own. I mean to see Empress Emily back on the throne. You can assist us, or you can continue trying to weasel your way off this ship and into the Void."

Emily places a cautionary hand against the woman's good arm, as she moves to collect herself.

"It's a long story, and I'd rather not discuss it in front of him," the captain tells Emily.

"I understand," Emily replies gently. She thinks a moment. "Aramis Stilton. I'd like to see him."

"That won't be easy," the captain says to her, as if Jindosh's presence is all but forgotten now. Somehow, that is more deeply unpleasant than her threats. "Ask him about the lock. The Jindosh Lock."

Jindosh perks up. He really can't help but brag about his achievements. "One of my unique contributions to the landscape of Karnaca. It's a riddle that no one has been able to solve. None save for yours truly."

"We're not listening to a sales pitch," the captain interjects. She turns to Emily. "No one has seen Aramis Stilton in years, but these bastards built a lock to keep people away from his house—"

"I built the lock," Jindosh interrupts, but his remark goes unnoticed.

"—and no one knows if he's even still living," the captain continues seamlessly. "He's a good man, but I shudder to think of what fate he might have met." Deep pain crosses her face at this thought; she cares for him.

This is so unusual a realization for Jindosh that he cannot help but stare.

"If you can bypass the lock," the captain continues, regaining her composure, "you won't have to reckon with the gangs in the area."

I'm certain they'd love to hear from their deposed empress, Jindosh almost adds maliciously, but the pain in his head quietens him.

"A riddle," Emily muses for a moment, before fixing her gaze on him. "What's the answer to it?"

"I think it's worth a moment to puzzle out on your own, if you're able to," Jindosh replies. "It's a masterfully crafted—"

"The answer, Jindosh," the captain snaps. "We're looking for the answer to it."

Jindosh reconsiders his chances of escape. The cold metal of the handcuff registers dimly in his mind. He closes his eyes briefly to compose himself. "You'll want to write this down," he concedes with as much feigned pleasantry as he can manage.

Chapter Text

The whole situation was like out of a penny dreadful. Not that he had read such dreck, mind you. He just happened to know what would be in there, if he did read it. Now here he was, shackled and left by his captors to sit and think about his crimes with no hope of escape. At least, he had gleaned the name of the captain before she shut the door on him: Meagan. It didn't ring a bell. Breanna had never mentioned her among her girls, her fellow occultists, which means Meagan must have defected a while ago.

Interesting.

Admittedly, he had never paid them much attention, but it was distinctive enough of a name that he thinks he would have recognized it. Maybe Meagan had been one of the lower-ranking witches. He ponders over this anomaly, trying to ignore the hurt of being made to give up the solution to one of his favorite inventions. The bank vault had nothing on the riddle he'd given his name to.

His thoughts are interrupted by Meagan at the door, carefully managing a bowl with a spoon tucked inside it.

"I hope you like stew," Meagan begins gruffly, "because I don't do special orders."

Intriguing. He had figured she'd let him starve. He certainly would have done so, if he were in her position. And rather than take that moment to reflect on how other people might have better moral codes than he does, he simply turns his attention to her.

She sets the bowl with its spoon before him without further ado, practical to the very end, and then steps back, out of range.

He frowns. "How am I supposed to hold the spoon?" he asks with more than a little frustration. "You took my prosthetic."

"You'll manage," Meagan replies coldly. She might never forgive him for what he did to that old goat, her old goat. 

He exhales and sets himself to an impossible task. He reaches for the spoon and attempts to position it so that it rests under his fourth finger and over his pinky. Instead, the Void-damned utensil twists in his fingers and clatters to the floor. Under her gaze, he tries again to pick it up: again, it falls through his fingers, unused to such strain. On his fifth try, he balances it precariously between his third and fourth fingers, unable to get it into position, but at least it was now off the ground.

His fingers are bent at such an unpleasant angle that he can't keep the spoon level. His hand keeps shaking from the stress and fatigue of the day, and the traitorous broth splashes onto his sleeve. He stares at the darkening droplets, before setting the spoon back in the bowl.

"I can't," he says in frustration, unsure of whether his humiliation stems from that admittance of his own weakness or having someone witness his disability so openly. He hates it. "Happy now?"

Meagan watches him. "I see," she says in a carefully toneless voice, and he wants to snap at her, but what would that do now? He's tired and in pain, and he wants to wake up in his messy bed in the Clockwork Mansion and know that all of this was just a dream.

She considers him with her dark eye, weighing some consequences in her mind. Her mouth sets in a telltale line of resignation. "Let me," she says at last with a grimace. "Unless you want to wear the stew."

Her eye darts between him and the bowl, trying to manage her task while making sure he doesn't surprise her. Unease shows in her form at having to be so close to him, within arm's reach. Slowly, carefully, as they head into uncharted waters, she offers him the spoon.

He has difficulty making out what's in the stew: the lights from the hallway are too harsh on his eyes.

She raises an eyebrow at his reluctance. "I don't have all night," she says. "I should make Emily come in here and feed you instead, for bringing me two old men to take care of."

"Old men?" Jindosh repeats, half in disbelief and half offense. He can't be more than a year or two older than her.

"You heard what I said, Grand Inventor," Meagan retorts and takes this moment to raise the spoon to his lips. "I've known toddlers less difficult than you."

"Well, then," Jindosh says, meeting her gaze levelly, "which am I? Old man or toddler?"

"Both," Meagan replies evenly.

Jindosh cannot quite think of another jab. His head hurts quite badly. Reluctantly, he steadies himself with another breath and accepts the spoon. The stew is, unfortunately, rather flavorful and nice: potatoes, carrots, peas, with a little beef. How depressing. He's being fed nice soup with bits of fresh bread thrown in, rather than some horrid gruel with a maggoty heel of a loaf. It is distinctly harder to feel bad for himself now.

"None of my friends will believe this," Meagan says wryly, as she scoops another spoonful.

Jindosh cannot quite express how mortifying the whole ordeal is for him. Rats, those he could deal with. Torture, considerably less so, but it was the price to pay for being so close to the duke. But this? Being fed by some killer-turned-witch-turned... illicit smuggler? Wandering, regretful captain? One of those downtrodden people he had found so easy to overlook?

It was agony.

He was never going to live this down, if only to himself. Still, he'd gotten himself out of worse predicaments, though being held captive by the empress he helped depose was definitely in the top three.

Meagan raises an eyebrow at his silence, but wisely decides to say nothing on it. And they pass this strange moment between them quiet, save for the clinking of silverware and the scraping of the bowl. Jindosh is grateful for the darkness: he's quite certain he's flushed from the embarrassment of it all. Perhaps, a gauche prisoner would spit the stew back at her or knock the bowl down like a caged animal, and he does consider the gesture, but unlike Delilah, he knows when to fold his cards and wait for a better hand.

He'll take his silence and his stew in stride.

Meagan exhales when the stew is gone. She rises to her feet again, stretching out her back. (And he's considered the old man here!) Then, she collects the empty bowl and spoon, and without a word, leaves him. Jindosh is grateful for her abrupt exit. He doesn't think he could bear it if she added any pleasantries or any more commentary. He never wants to acknowledge what just happened. 

He shuffles around in the darkness like a rat, trying to find a comfortable position to lie down in. He could definitely have done with another bowl, but he keeps that to himself, to save whatever dignity he still has left. Still, the stew does him good: his hands are steadying again. 

Much to his surprise, Meagan returns with a rough blanket and a pillow.

"Sleeping on the floor would do you some good. Give you some perspective," she says. "But the old man said you should have a pillow and a blanket. He's better than the both of us."

Jindosh notes the singular old man. He's been redeemed from that slight to his dignity, at least. That almost leads him to overlook her comments on dear old Anton. Fascinating that she thinks so highly of him. She must not know about the man at all.

"I swear on the Outsider if you try anything," Meagan continues, "I won't hesitate, Jindosh."

He doesn't doubt it either.

Keeping her eye on him the way someone might approach a dangerous beast, she slowly sets the pillow and blanket in front of him before retreating again. "I draw the line at lullabies, Grand Inventor," Meagan replies, coolly. "You'll have to tuck yourself in, I'm afraid."

And with that, she leaves him to the darkness, the light from the hallway slipping around her like a shawl. Only the moonlight from unpatched cracks in the cabin's walls crawl across the floor. He shuffles the pillow around until he can find a suitable compromise between his chained wrist and his preferred sleeping position. Then, he settles the blanket around so that it both covers him and provides a small buffer from the floor.

What a predicament.

The pillow is not particularly exquisite: the covering is coarsely woven cotton. If he had to guess, the pillow must be handmade, stuffed with scraps of cotton and linen. He would need better light to examine the stitching to confirm this, though. The blanket is coarse wool, better suited for a cold night in Dunwall than Karnaca. He runs his fingers along the edge of both for any hint of a previous owner, and failing to find any embroidered initials, sets his attention elsewhere.

He turns on his side.

He supposes he should sleep now, but he simply can't. He needs to know how to escape from here. He'll die of embarrassment if he has to be fed breakfast the same way. Perhaps that was the empress's plan all along: humiliate him into cooperating.

He turns on his other side, adjusting his wrist.

The sensible thing to do would be to preserve his strength. He needs to figure out how to pick the lock around his wrist first. He certainly won't be doing it with fabric, as Meagan is, no doubt, aware. He needs something metal. Wood might do in a pinch, but he doubts he'd be able to pull anything out of his surroundings with his bad hand. An overwhelming desire to smoke comes over him.

Later, later. Soon, he'll be back in his mansion, and this horrible derelict will be underwater. He'll just have to give it time. Surely, the most brilliant and unrivaled mind of his age can swing one little escape.

And, gradually, as he fusses about the logistics of his situation, sleep finds him.

Chapter Text

Jindosh has slept better, but he also can't say his first night on the Dreadful Wale was the worst experience he's had. That would belong to the dismal dingy that brought him back to Karnaca, after his deportation was ordered. The humiliation of being penned up with unwashed, uncouth criminals as he had to grapple with the immense loss of the Academy still stung him.

Daylight sinks in from the cracks in the cabin, and for the first time, Jindosh recognizes a folded cot. That would be leagues above sleeping on the floor. Perhaps he can get Meagan to understand that he's seen her point about building character, and wouldn't it be more suitable to have a cot instead having to sleep on the floor like a wild animal or a beggar? His thoughts are interrupted by a turn of the key in the lock.

"You settled in well," Meagan remarks dryly, staring down at him.

"Never slept better," Jindosh replies caustically, or rather, as caustically as he can manage, unearthing himself from his warm, bundled blanket, a mild embarrassment coming over him at the sight of his dishevelment. He imagines himself much like a groundhog grumpily peeking out of its burrow before turning away and retreating into the cool dark. The stubble on his face is irritating. How he hates to not have the upper hand anymore.

Meagan rolls her eye and sets a washbowl and washtowel in front of him. Again, the unyielding gaze. "If you're done now, you can get ready for the day. Or not. I don't really care."

Jindosh surveys the room, uneasy. "Do you want a show?" he asks crossly, as a means of demanding his privacy.

"Not from you," Meagan replies. She pauses for a moment, deciding on something. "I'll wait here until you're done."

Out of his reach, she turns to face the door, an unmistakable tension in her form. 

Jindosh moves to pull the bowl closer to himself for better reach. The wooden bowl slides roughly against the floorboards, and the result is nearly instantaneous.

"Don't," she tells him sharply, her head tilted towards him and her hand on something. A blade? "Don't move it." Perhaps, she had thought he meant to throw it at her, to incapacitate her somehow and then hold her hostage or kill her. She's good at this, Jindosh begrudgingly admits to herself. Not quite of equal caliber, but unusually cleverer than most.

Delicately, haphazardly, without moving the bowl, he gives himself a quick wash-up as best he can, finding it difficult to unbutton his clothing with only three fingers. The water is pleasantly warm; the washcloth is worn, yes, and threadbare in places but also clean. He cannot help but register a note of surprise at this. The whole ordeal takes him much, much longer than he'd anticipated, largely because he had grown used to having a prosthetic. The buttons slip through his curled fingers: he can already tell that it'll be a struggle to refasten them.

"How did you meet Ashworth?" Meagan asks, arm crossed over her front.

"So, my personal life is up for discussion, then?" Jindosh replies, though not as crossly as before. He could never resist a good monologue about himself. He peels back the sleeve. "Summer of 1846. She'd just become the new curator of the Royal Conservatory. I wanted to know if she'd be interested in lending me one of the Sokolov manuscripts from her collection to aid the greatest mind in a generation."

"She told you to shove it, didn't she?"

Her back is to him, but he can sense a small smile from her—a decidedly nostalgic smile. A killer first and witch second, Jindosh decides.

"Not in those words," Jindosh replies, keen on drawing out more information from her. Let her think, then, that this was a one-sided interrogation. "But we discovered that we had similar interests in the occult. The frayed edge of natural philosophy and, well, something else."

"Sedition?"

"Have you ever seen the Void?" Jindosh continues, his pride wounded. "I hear it commands your attention like no other once you've glimpsed it. Surely, Breanna must have shown you—"

"Don't push it, Jindosh."

Jindosh closes his eyes and smiles, tight-lipped. "I wouldn't dream of it."

He finishes his washing up in silence, with only small murmurs of annoyance or frustration. "I suppose our dear empress could find it in her merciful, boundless heart to let me have a shave too?"

"She can't," Meagan replies flatly, collecting the washbowl and towel. "And besides, I'm not in the habit of handing prisoners straight razors."

"What about a pen? A paper? Am I to spend my days bored out of my mind here?"

"The Prison Journals of Kirin Jindosh will have to wait, I'm afraid," Meagan says, before she turns to close the door behind her. "I'm sure you'll think of something ghastly to occupy your time."

And as he stares at the walls of the cabin, he cannot help but wonder if his life is meant to be punctuated by moments of imprisonment. First, the Academy fiasco, then the Karnacan jail. Well, he'll get himself out of this one too, he supposes. The fact that he hasn't been strangled in his sleep by some horrible witchcraft is proof enough that he's been forgotten already by Delilah, and for once, he's not sure what to make of that.

It's startlingly lonely.

Breakfast is the same embarrassing affair as before. This time it's a grain porridge and Morley figs. At least, he can feed himself the figs, and he almost wonders if this was a deliberate choice on Meagan's behalf, but then quickly dismisses it, unused to this strange little thing called empathy. He cannot help grimacing after the first bite of the porridge, though—too sweet.

"Too common?" Meagan asks coldly.

He coughs. "Too sweet."

"I thought you'd be used to excess," Meagan replies, scraping out another spoonful.

He breathes in deeply, trying to steady himself. "Not like that."

Meagan raises an eyebrow, before glancing down at the bowl and weighing what to do next. She won't cook him a new batch—she was on a tight-enough budget as is, before the empress added an entirely unplanned person to her ship—nor does she particularly relish the idea of forcing him to eat it. How quickly she's grown used to this new adjustment in her life. Does she tend to washed-up, old Anton first, tending to his hurts and needs, before coming down the stairs to deal with his former captor? She must. He tracks her movement throughout the ship by her footfall—already, he can distinguish it from the general creaks and groans of the ship. 

Somehow, he doesn't doubt that she's aware of this as well.

Perhaps, an acquiescence would help to endear her to him, just a little, if only for better living arrangements.

"It will suffice," he tells her with a certain reluctance.

Meagan stares at him in disbelief. "Well, then," she replies with a raised eyebrow of disbelief, if only to have something to say in return.

And they spend the rest of the meal in silence—or at least, Meagan tries to. Jindosh has spent most of his adolescence being quiet and he's ready to make up for lost time. She's not quite as good as conversing with a member of the Academy, but she'll do.

"There's a leak in the pipe closest to the boiler room," he tells her between mouthfuls of porridge. "I hear it constantly."

"I'll tell the captain," Meagan replies dryly.

"It's damaging the interior of the ship," he insists, not out of a particular love for this tilting wreck of wood and misplaced hopes, but rather out of a love of being right. And hearing himself speak. Truly, was there anything better?

"I don't lack for things to do on this ship," she tells him decisively, as she scrapes the bowl clean. "Dealing with you being the most taxing."

Just wait until dear old Anton is walking around again, he almost retorts. If you think I'm insufferable, wait until you hear him drone on. Just on and on about this sin, and that ache. Clearly, being a natural philosopher comes with an expiry date, and he's well past his.

But dear, old, washed-up, insufferable Anton has cast his charm over her too, and there's no point in antagonizing her, amusing as it may be. No, he'll have to keep his thoughts to himself, for now at least. If she's as busy as he thinks she is, sneaking out of this decrepit place might be easier than he'd thought. Once he got past the problem of the handcuffs, anyway. He has a vague idea of which floorboards creak, which are weak, and which appear to be relatively soundless.

He just has to wait for the right opportunity.

It must come.

It has to.

Jindosh can't admit to being interested in whatever the empress has gotten up to in Stilton's house. Doubtless, she'll see the remnants of the séance, endlessly playing out its temporal wound and unable to resolve itself. From there, she'll likely piece together how Delilah came to be immortal. What a pain. There's probably another unpleasant interview in store for him when she gets back, either about the Void-damned lens or how to get into the Grand Palace.

How boorish. How predictable.

He turns on his side, and he begins to sketch out a blueprint for an energy-storage device across the dented floorboards. If he could only harness the relentless energy of the waves that knock against the ship like an insistent caller...

This was the price of greatness—to be perennially misunderstood and subject to the whims of the lesser.

A clang in the pipe jolts him from his reverie of self-pity. He glances in its direction reproachfully, before turning over to lie on his back. Above him, movement on deck. Meagan shuffles some cargo around. He can't imagine how she does it with just one good arm. He's never thought about how disability might affect others: he thought he'd patched up his own, neat and clean and better than before. An improvement on nature's design, as always.

The damnable tap, tap, tapping of the water from another pipe makes a play for him, boring into his mind, interrupting his thoughts with its childish insistence on itself. He'd rip it out of the wall if he could, horrible bother that it was, consequences be damned. And for a moment, the air itself seems to waver, like a plucked string, vibrating between two states, though what he cannot tell. A peculiar sensation of something nearby and yet not...

He's been here before—and also not. If he reaches out, he feels as though he can touch himself, another self, a doppelganger of other choices made and made for him. He's... he's in his laboratory, but everything is wrong. The beautiful glass and polished wood hold no meaning for him now; rather, it all slips away. He's surrounded by papers he cannot read, tools whose use escapes him, an assortment of mysterious levers. He doesn't know how to leave this place; his head is buzzing with a horrible sensation. He stumbles out of the chair, his muscles strangely stiff. His laboratory is suddenly so large, too large. The world is simply too big for him now.

He wakes up—he thinks he wakes up, he must wake up! The horror is too much to bear! He'll die here or go mad! He'll smash his head into the wall if only to forget—and he is violently sick. And as he lies there on the floor of the Dreadful Wale, gasping, his throat raw, he wonders what in the Void he's gotten himself into.

Chapter Text

He turns and turns on the floor, but he can't find any comfort now. By the Void, he's bored to tears following Meagan's footsteps throughout the deck. She's cleaning, perhaps, or else making repairs here and there as best she can. The Void-damned engine coughs and sputters, too worn or too ill-used—it tears at his frayed nerves! Does no one on this ship think of his nerves!—and Jindosh tries to block out the noise as best he can, with one (almost) good hand. Classical music streams in from one area of the ship: Meagan is, no doubt, trying to keep him from tracking her. Clever, clever girl.

He turns over again.

He's not used to the cool air on his left hand anymore, so sharply marking out the part of his body that was, well, damaged. Was there another way of thinking about it?

Anton hacks and groans nearby, encased and reeking in the belly of this tin wreck, no doubt. Jindosh hates him for his vulnerability, for everything, really. Everything seems to be breaking down on this wretched, wretched ship. He can hear everything.

A second set of footsteps at his door—well, what he's come to accept as his door, if only to have something of his own here. He frowns. Light. Not Meagan, no, she was on deck, and most importantly, the footfall suggests one unused to having to hide themselves.

Hypatia.

Jindosh swears to himself. Oh, of course, she hadn't gone anywhere. Meagan had likely made her move into another, less-secure room. And he doubts she'd have stuck him in the engine room where he could do some significant damage if freed. No, it had to be the spare cabin for him, and... hmmm, where would Hypatia be put? Surely the empress wasn't sleeping on a pallet somewhere. There was at least one more guest cabin, and perhaps a captain's cabin as well. Plus, Anton. Jindosh hopes he's sleeping on a sack somewhere. It would serve him right.

And sure enough, Hypatia peeks behind the door, her soft, dark eyes regarding him with that impossible gentleness.

"I knew you were here," he says. "You stayed in this cabin."

Hypatia gives him a small smile. "I did." She closes the door behind her. "I wanted to see how you were doing."

That's not all, of course. He knows her all too well. She needs the world to be innately good, capable of righting itself with the help of a few just people, and for that, she needs him to have some speck of goodness—which he doesn't. He's quite sure of that part. The world, however, doesn't run on goodness; it runs on power and those who wield it. He's had many late-night discussions with her on this matter at the Academy.

"This is a considerable downgrade in living quarters," he says wryly.

Hypatia laughs a little, a carefully indulgent laugh, the delicate laugh of a physician at a bedside. "It's a little unfurnished at the moment," she concedes.

"If the walls were any more bare, I'd be looking at the ocean."

He cannot repress the small note of triumph in his chest when the corners of her eyes wrinkle in amusement. He can still be an entertaining host, chained up as he is.

"How have you been sleeping?" she asks, turning the conversation elsewhere. "Have you been feeling ill? Any headaches?" She rests the back of her hand against his forehead to check for fever.

They go through the motions of this small play of hers, this show of caring, until she's found her answers and he's humored her. In those moments, the tenderness of having known each other so young, almost old friends, lingers. 

Then, she sits back, considering everything. What conclusion she comes to he's not privy to, but he can anticipate her next topic of discussion, the one she really came here for.

"Anton is..." Hypatia begins in her soft voice and then falls silent again, searching for the most tactful words. "You know how Anton is, don't you?"

The responses fall fast on his lips. Oh, what clever retorts he could give her. He's not sorry for any of it; if he had killed Anton in the process, the only regret he'd have felt would be that of a child who's played with their toy too roughly. Poor old goat, did he think his status would save him?

"I was looking for answers," Jindosh replies smoothly, though this illusion is broken by the lingering acridness of vomit. (His moment of weakness.) "Dear old Anton would have done the same to me if he'd have deemed it necessary. Isn't this the purest application of natural philosophy, then? To seek answers where we must?"

The way Hypatia grimaces tells him otherwise. She's always been soft. "The experiments of the rat plague were a long time ago, Kirin."

Jindosh regards her carefully. "Dead is dead, Alex. He chose to experiment on the living, unwilling, uninfected prisoners. He kept them in cages until they died of the rat plague. What is so different from my research? I am only following in his footsteps."

"It was a different time, a desperate one." She casts her gaze elsewhere, momentarily. "He's not proud of what he did back then."

"He's not proud now."

Hypatia gives him a pained smile. "Time will do that, Kirin."

"Not to me," he replies. I will reshape this era. It will bear my signature, as an eternal witness to my deeds and thoughts.

Sadness only creeps into Hypatia's form, dappled and unyielding. She twists her fingers, as if she wants to say something to him, but refrains from it. "Kirin," she begins again. And for a moment, she is not his unasked-for physician, nor is she the chief alchemist of Addermire, but she is only Alexandria, the dark-eyed girl who smiled so kindly in class over a stack of books. 

"Don't intercede for him," Jindosh tells her, more crossly than he means to. 

And she only shakes her head. "It's not for him."

How incredibly foolish he's been. She's the only one on this ship willing to talk to him outside of the barest of necessities. Of course, she'd worried for him, with her useless heart: she'd wanted to be an intermediary for him.

He doesn't want her pity or her charity, or whatever passes for it in her heart. He's acutely aware that he hasn't be able to shave recently, and the stubble grows in as fast as it always did; his clothes are wrinkled from being slept in, and the blanket keeping him from feeling the firmness of the floor is tangled around him.

It bothers him, even as—or, perhaps, because—it doesn't disconcert her.

He could have a powerful ally in her, and yet, he cannot bear to humble himself so. No, not this. 

She nods sadly, sensing his reluctance, and leaves him be.

He turns and turns on the floor, but the floor greets him again and again with its unpleasant press against his skin. Classical music echoes from one of the guest cabins—he's decided there must be more than one—and seeps into the walls, into his head. The engine clangs and groans. Meagan steps onto the deck, scolding Sokolov. The whale oil hums; the doors close (acridness of vomit); a sword scrapes against a sharpener; the engine cries out (cold metal against his wrist); a pen scratches against a page (rough, rough stubble); a pipe rings out—why won't it stop? Why can't it stop invading his head?

There's too much, far too much going on this damned ship. He can't bear it anymore. The engine, the engine, the Void-damned engine won't be quiet!

He bangs his free hand several times against the wall; anything to block out the rhythmic clanging of the engine as it slowly fails. Sharp pain breaks across the edge of his hand, before radiating downwards. He's a finely tuned machine, and like all delicate instruments, he can't function outside the careful environment he's set himself.

Everyone on the ship must be able to hear his breakdown, and sure enough, it doesn't take long before Meagan bursts into his room.

"What in the Void are you doing?" Meagan asks. Confusion and alarm show on her face, as her eyes search him—her eyes!! It's all wrong! It wasn't like this! She's changed somehow!—and his head is a tangle of wires. He wants the gnawing sensations to leave: they pick at his mind, invading it.

He can't find the words to explain the horrible cacophony that's crawled under his skin like a bloodfly, biting and humming. He glances about wildly. "It's the engine," he insists. "Let me fix the damned thing, or throw me overboard, but that wretched thing has—"

Another shadow falls across the wooden floor. Hypatia peeks over Meagan's shoulder, concern on her face.

"It's the engine," he repeats.

"I can't fix it today," Meagan says, “and I’m not letting you loose."

Hypatia considers the situation for a moment, then steps forward. 

“Lock me to him,” she says decisively, offering her wrist. Her pale face is flushed with determination. “He won’t be able to escape, and I can escort him to the engine room. He can take a look at it, and we can determine which parts are needed.” She pauses for a moment. "I can reimburse you, Meagan. No, no, it's the least of what I owe you—for everything."

Meagan regards him warily.

"Please," Hypatia says, laying a hand on Meagan's shoulder.

Meagan exhales sharply. "Never should have let him on this ship. I told her he'd be trouble."

But she acquiesces in her own way, locking Jindosh’s wrist to Hypatia’s, before reluctantly unfastening the handcuffs that bind him to the pipe. Then, Hypatia has him walk in front of her as best he can, as she guides him with her free hand on his back, though whether that was for reassurance or control, he couldn’t determine. He's much quieter, having exhausted himself now and, already, embarrassment is beginning to fill in the lines left by overstimulation.

He's unsteady, both from the fact that he hasn't be able to walk around lately and from the slowly fading adrenaline in his systems. Still, Hypatia guides him down a flight of stairs, and from the rush of warmth, Jindosh knows where he is before he glimpses the machine.

The engine room is pleasantly warm and most importantly, familiar. Following the lines of pipes and rivets, Jindosh is once again in the precise world of engineering. One engine gasket has been coated in… guano? No, that couldn’t be right. Who would do such a thing? Still, he quickly diagnoses the problem: a failing crankshaft.

"I'd be happy to pick it up," Hypatia tells Meagan. "I've been meaning to pick up a few things, and this won't be a bother. There's a shop in Lower Aventa that should have it."

He's exhausted now; his words elude him as he's brought back to his room and Meagan refastens the handcuff to his wrist. She gives him an appraising look.

"Next time you have something to say," she begins, "you can do it without trying to break down my ship, understand?" For all her reproachful words, she's less wary around him now, though he shudders to think of how much blackmail material she's amassing.

Oh, well. One can't go though a coup without a little embarrassment.

When Jindosh awakes from his sleep (maybe he can pretend to the rest of them that he didn't have a fit), near the door is a small device cobbled from odds and ends. His heart racing, he retrieves it and mulls it over, picking at the workmanship. It's smooth, careful work—only one man could have done this. What does it do? Why has it been left to him? Surely, this isn't a test, and he'll be vaporized for his curiosity. 

The sides are carefully crafted to prevent him from getting inside; Jindosh almost laughs at this consideration, but his drive urges him onwards. His fingers clumsily find a switch near the bottom. Static crumbles into the air.

It's a white-noise machine.

Chapter Text

Oh, Jindosh is embarrassed after yesterday's little affair.

The Void-forsaken machine means everyone on this damned ship heard his breakdown—momentary lapse in judgement, he smoothly corrects—and now, he has to deal with the consequences of it being known that he has his sensitivities. This is going excellently.

Unless, of course, it had been the empress's plan from the start to break him, and if so, she really hadn't needed to do so. Why had Sokolov gotten the Tyvian brandy, and he got some miserable, unfurnished cell in a reeking, noisy, failing ship?

Clever girl. She's thrown him completely off-balance with this one; he'll have to consider his next move carefully.

He glances, with more longing than he cares to admit, at the folded cot. Hadn't he provided dear old Anton with a cot, at least? A cot and a canvas—what more did the old man need? Jindosh is too old to be sleeping on the floor like this. By the Void, he's learned his lesson about assisting witches now!

He sulks for a little before considering the machine itself. In the daylight, he can (begrudgingly) admire the craft-work. As with everything Sokolov creates, it has that charismatic touch of genius. The joins are smooth to prevent him from tampering with it, or even better, taking it apart for raw materials. A single switch at the top controls it: on. Off. So small and contained yet precisely planned, built on the fly with aged hands, under unfavorable conditions.

He's tempted to throw the damned thing against the wall—this gift just for him, made just for him, the only one of its kind—like an enraged animal, but his pride prevents him from doing so.

Void, he really hates Sokolov now.

The empress graces him with a visit soon after lunch. He notes that Meagan is no longer accompanying her: so, he's been defanged in her eyes as well. Just great. He supposes that at the end of all of this, they'll be great friends.

The empress smiles benevolently at him, and Jindosh suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.

"How have you been?" she asks, with the air of someone who already knows the answer.

"Enjoying my charming abode," Jindosh replies sarcastically.

Oh, he shouldn't have done that. She only gives him a knowing, sweet smile of someone who always gets her way in the end. "I hear you've offered to help Meagan with the ship," she remarks casually, surveying him for any clue as to his state.

Jindosh picks at his fingers in annoyance. "One of us has to, empress."

She leans against the wall of his cabin thoughtfully. "It must be enjoyable to work on something mundane for a change."

That's where this was headed—the damnable witches, again.

"I can't say I care for the occult," Jindosh replies haughtily. "Isn't that what you want to know about?"

"Your device," she continues, "the lenses. You've found a way to combine machinery with witchcraft."

"Amplify witchcraft," Jindosh corrects, his need to be right outweighing his instincts to be cagey.

"Not many could have performed such a feat," she says. Her next words are carefully measured. "Perhaps, not even Sokolov."

Jindosh smirks. "Flattery gets you nowhere, empress."

"Is it flattery if it's true?" she counters. "I merely seek the opinion of one of the Isles' most learned. If something can be amplified, can it also be nullified?"

Jindosh pauses a moment. "Correct."

"And is this something you'd be able to do? I understand that the Overseers employ music boxes in their struggle against heretics."

"Those cumbersome, inelegant scraps?" Jindosh offers. Oh, he's digging himself deeper into this mess, but he understands what she means for him now, how he slots into her plans. A clockwork soldier with a nullifying device to combat the witches. "I would have to think on it," he concludes.

"Don't think too long," the empress replies sweetly, rising to her feet. "You don't want to be caught in the tides."

She moves to leave, before reconsidering something—or perhaps, she only means to give the appearance of reconsidering.

"How good are you with crafting?" she asks nonchalantly. "I have a crossbow that could use some adjustments, and I found some odds and ends near the markets—"

"What?" Jindosh interrupts.

"From the markets," the empress says. "Sokolov has been working on a new stun mine with bits and bobs from the hull—"

Jindosh stares at her. "Bits and bobs," he repeats incredulously, "from the hull. He's ripping the ship apart for a contrivance? And you—you think I can make your crossbow better with bits you stole from around Karnaca?"

The empress shifts, uneasy. "Is that not what inventors do?"

Jindosh cups his head in his hands and laughs a little to himself, despondently, at the absurdity of the situation. "The mighty empress of the Four Isles, with the budget of a fishmonger. How we've all fallen." Still, the spark of competition alights in his heart at the thought that decaying old Anton could create out of odds and ends. He could most certainly do it better.

"Give it here," he says, forgetting for a moment that this is Empress Emily, who, until a few days ago, had been a complete mystery to him, not some errant maidservant.

She does so with a faint smirk of triumph, as if she is settling into her father's familiar ways.

Hypatia comes later on, to cuff him to herself and bring him down to the boiler room. She's almost apologetic as she connects them together, but he shakes his head at her questioning face. And there, under the groaning pipes, are a few neatly wrapped packages. 

The replacement parts.

Jindosh surveys them idly, aware that every time he moves his right arm, Hypatia mirrors his action. He almost wants to ask her how much she remembers, but from the way Meagan watches him, steely-eyed, he thinks better of it.

Still, the work does its job of giving him something to focus on, besides the predicament he's in. Perhaps, in time, he could even grow to, well if not love, then be fond of this derelict parked somewhere in Karnaca's murky harbor. Climbing under the pipes, he considers their construction and the rusted bolts. Gradually, the ship begins to reveal itself to him, as he maps his engineering knowledge onto the layout of the ship.

It's a fairly standard little ship, commonplace around twenty years ago. Likely, it's been in use for far longer.

"I'll need a wrench," he tells no one in particular, and to his surprise, one is placed beside him.

It is murderously difficult to unbolt the pipes to the secondary engine with only one good hand, but he staunchly refuses Hypatia's help until she puts her hand on his and tells him that she can't be up all night on account of his pride.

He gives her what he hopes is a withering look, but she ignores it.

Perhaps, its effect was dampened by the oil smudges on his face. Perhaps, it's because he's on his back like a common rail-carriage mechanic, oil staining the rumpled clothes that he's worn for three (four?) days straight now. (But how is he to change? It's not like the empress stole a second set of clothes from his mansion.)

"I mean it, Kirin," she replies earnestly. "We're both too old for this."

Meagan snickers.

"Fine," he concedes, if only to prevent any more commentary on his age. (As if rotting old Anton wasn't also on board!)

Hypatia sighs, that weary show of patience that he recognizes from their Academy days. She's not much, but he finds, much to his surprise, it's a relief to have her in his corner. Her hands, soft as they are, support his with a careful steadiness, as they work on the first of the six bolts together. 

He's almost disgruntled at the fact that the work goes by quicker with help. The first bolt gives away under their combined strength, and Hypatia tucks it next to her.

Meagan shifts from side to side, clearly uninterested in watching them work. "I'm checking on Anton," she tells Hypatia, before leaving.

"He's doing better," Hypatia begins carefully to Jindosh, as her fingers nimbly catch the second bolt, and transferring it to her other hand, sets it aside to join the first. "He's still feeble." As you probably know goes unsaid. But there's another reason she's brought up the matter. Why? Why go to all these lengths to imprison his old teacher?

"You wouldn't understand," he replies impetuously to her unasked question. As his reward, a glob of oil from the pipe above lands on his face. His face wrinkles as he tries to wipe it off with his bad hand. This foul ship must be in league with Sokolov, he thinks.

Hypatia sighs. "Kirin."

"You mean what you have to say, and so do I," he says, as he returns to loosening another bolt.

"Some people send letters, Kirin," she says, with more than a hint of disapproval. "Not kidnappers."

Void, what could he say to that? That it wasn't a proper kidnapping if Anton deserved it? That Jindosh had to make him face the greatness he tried to extinguish? Well, dear old Anton wasn't going to invite himself to the torture chambers, but that was beside the point.

Jindosh focuses more than necessary on the damned bolt. The pipe gurgles, unpleasantly.

Hypatia breathes in deeply. "If this is about the Academy," she begins again, as if everything he did wasn't about the Academy. "It's been more than two decades, Kirin. I'm sure we can sort something out at this point."

"I'm banned for life, Alex," he retorts, more harshly than he intended.

Hypatia reaches past him to twist the bolt out with her nimble fingers. "People change. Administrations change. Sokolov had Piero expelled, and just look at what they did together. They cured the Rat Plague together."

Oh, this appeals to Jindosh greatly, but he understands enough about people to know it's very unlikely to happen. A trinket is one thing, forgiveness is another. And, away from the ostentatious protection of his mansion, he's starting to sense he's been profoundly reckless in his arrogance. Oh, well. Those regrets are for a better man, perhaps.

"Dear old Anton," Jindosh replies, if only to say something, if only to fill up the space with his own voice, "has always had a proclivity for things that were bad for him."

Hypatia frowns as she sets aside another bolt. "What do you mean?"

The pipe gurgles unpleasantly, and Jindosh has the overwhelming urge to strike this thing too, this useless, miserable, rusted-out pipe. Aging, fumbling Anton, with his pitiful bruises and liver-spotted hands. How Jindosh hates him now. It's so gauche to want to make amends so close to death. What about all those years in between?

"He only wants whomever he shouldn't have," Jindosh replies nastily, faster than he means to. "He let Delilah be his apprentice, when he could have had his pick of the finest minds at the Academy. Delilah!" How close he is now, at that terrible line he cannot cross—this confession he cannot bring himself to make. To his eternal embarrassment, his face flushes with jealousy. "It's no secret what they were up to."

Something akin to a slow realization crosses Hypatia's worn face. "Oh, Kirin, he's not proud of th—"

"I don't care!"

He really can't bear to listen to whatever mealy-mouthed excuses she has to offer for Sokolov, twenty years too late. He pulls at the bolt with more force than he'd intended. The pipe groans and lurches in the empty air, stripped of another bearing. Hypatia moves to support the pipe with her free hand, but it falls towards them and spews its putrid, oily build-up. 

The vile sludge splashes onto both of them.

"That's enough for one day," Hypatia chokes, as she tries to wipe it off her clothes, and, coughing, Jindosh wholeheartedly concurs.

But, despite her efforts, their clothing is ruined.

Jindosh groans internally at the thought of having to spend the night reeking of old machinery fluids and bad decisions, but as he's led back to his room, he finds the empress inside it instead.

"I heard what happened in the engine room," she says and gestures to a neatly folded pile of clothing. "Sokolov is the only one closest to your size," she adds almost apologetically.

Oh, by the damned Void!

Jindosh closes his eyes in disbelief and rubs his fingers along the bridge of his nose. "Perhaps, next time, you could bring a proper change of clothes from my closet, since you seem to be so adept at breaking into my house."

"I'll keep it in mind," the empress replies, knowingly.

And then, he's left alone to dress himself. He rifles through the clothing: a plain white linen shirt, dark trousers. An undershirt. The clothes themselves are not particularly offensive, though they hang on him far past the fashionable point and Meagan has diligently tried to get the smell of old sweat and alcohol out of Sokolov's clothes with what could only be half of Karnaca's supply of vinegar. Experimentally, he ties the linen shirt at the waist with his corselet. Not the worst decision. At this rate, he'll be mistaken for a smuggler, rather than the esteemed Grand Inventor. (And it's not the worst thing to change up his look, especially if the witches were looking for him...)

He thinks fondly of his black shirt with the ruffles that he'd left on his bathroom side table. In time, he reassures himself. In the meantime, well, he'll figure out just what he's supposed to be.

Meagan knocks at his door (Void, it's his door now, isn't it?), and after a moment, she peers in. She blinks at his fashion choices, but wisely says nothing on it.

"Dr. Hypatia said sleeping on the floor was bad for you," she says, as she unfolds the cot. She briefly raises her eyebrows. No doubt, she'd have him sleep on the floor for the rest of his life if it were up to her.

"Don't try anything," she warns.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Jindosh smoothly replies.

He closes his eyes as the bolt slides across the door (accessible only from the outside; it must be new, just for him). Then, he turns his attention back to the enigma Sokolov has left him.

Chapter Text

Jindosh can only assume he's making his way up in this new world now. His night on the cot is far more pleasant than the floor, or rather it would be save for the distinct pain in his head, neck, and groin, as if someone had repeatedly stabbed a rather large pin there. This explanation was, of course, patently ridiculous, but that seemed to be Jindosh's life now.

He rolls over, determined to ignore this twist in fate.

Sokolov's linen shirt is surprisingly nice against his skin. Still, Jindosh misses his old clothes. He glances over at the pile. When was wash day on this miserable bucket anyway? He actually wasn't sure how often they should occur. He always had some cowering head of staff to see to it that his shirts were starched and his linens clean. He's starting to suspect that there's an awful lot to life that he's been overlooking.

He doesn't ponder this for too much longer, however, before the door unlocks. Meagan brings in today's breakfast: fresh rolls with some jam and fruit. Clearly, she's been to the market. 

"Crossbow, first, Jindosh," Meagan tells him. "Slide it over here. I'm not asking you a second time."

He considers not loosening the tension first and just letting it go off as he slides it towards her, but as so much of his future depends on her good graces, he thinks better of his plans. (The crossbow is merely a sample of his work to the empress herself, he thinks, an introduction to what he could do for her.) Meagan pockets the upgraded crossbow, which had been meticulously adjusted between the wee hours of Sokolov's snores to the time Jindosh turned on the sound machine, having gotten sick from the excess noise. She surveys the piece with a coldness that cannot hide a flicker of interest when she spots his careful work on the string, cable, and limb of the device. She's used them before, he notes. And frequently.

Oh, this was getting fascinating now. A hired cutthroat who spoke in the same accent as the empress. There was really only one gang active in Dunwall around the time she would have been young enough to be a part of. All the Gristol gangs dabbled in bloodshed, but that was only part of the territory. Only one gang specialized in efficient murder. They'd only rarely been sighted; Jindosh himself had chalked it up at the time as the imagination of a fearful populace, but now, he realizes how wrong he must have been. She was—

"A Whaler," he says triumphantly. "You were a Whaler, weren't you?"

Meagan opens her mouth to retort something, but nothing comes. It's only a second before she regains her composure, but in it, he has his conformation. "You are out of your fucking mind, Jindosh."

Then she hands him his plate. As it trembles with her barely contained anger and fear, he realizes how profoundly foolish he's been to kick the proverbial bloodfly nest.

She doesn't speak to him again but rather accompanies Hypatia as a cold shadow when she fetches him to work in the engine room. He privately counts his blessings that she didn't take away his cot and takes this new development in stride.

Hypatia attempts to bridge the stony silence between them with some chatter on the weather, and when that fails, her latest thoughts on the news Meagan brings her from ashore. As he idly listens to her, if only to have a scrap of information on the outside world, Jindosh considers his predicament once again, and how badly he's jeopardized the whole thing. Oh well. He'll make this work as well. 

He has to.

As they approach the engine room, the familiar smell of the sludge—damp and metallic—from yesterday greets them. Jindosh crinkles his nose in disgust. Of course, no one had dealt with it.

"Kirin," Hypatia begins, as she surveys the damage from yesterday. "We'll have to clean this up before we can continue." She pauses in thought. "Buckets and a mop, I think," she tells Meagan.

As Meagan leaves to procure the items, Hypatia turns to Jindosh. She must realize that he can't clean up the sludge while chained to her. She bites her lip in thought. "Please, Kirin, don't do anything" she tells him. Her free hand finds his. "I vouched for you."

Jindosh is almost embarrassed now.

He feels as he did when they were quite young at the Academy together: small, slightly intimidated, but also filled with a sense of incomparable adventure. A few days ago, he'd been lost in the monotony of receiving guests and fiddling with the clockworks, and now, (if he could see it) the skyline seems so vast.

Meagan returns with the items, and, eyeing Jindosh suspiciously, gives them to Hypatia before leaving again.

"The empress is stuck out at sea until we can get this fixed," Hypatia tells him, "so we'll have to work quickly. But you can do that, can't you?"

She offers him a small, knowing smile.

"If you take the installation of the crankshaft," she says, "I'll clean the sludge. I don't think there should be much more in there."

He's keenly aware that she's just as capable as installing it as he is—she may have diverted her talents to medical applications, but she's still profoundly mechanically skilled—but in her magnanimity, she's chosen to play a supporting role. This is for him.

She takes a deep breath and, producing the key, unlocks him. "Please, Kirin," she repeats.

He rubs his newly freed wrist. "Shall we, then?" he says, if only to have something to say.

Hypatia's shoulders relax and she gives him another small smile.

And they set to work.

Despite the uncomfortable warmth of the engine room, Jindosh cannot help but find himself returning to the familiar routine of tinkering. With his sleeves rolled up, he carefully twists the crankshaft into place, humming to himself and making little asides: the bearings were showing some wear, and the piston wasn't as efficient as it could be.

"I'm not sure Meagan wants a war ship," Hypatia quips in response to one of his asides. "It doesn't have to outrun the Grand Guard."

The phrase sparks something in him. What if the ship could be above the water? Mechanical legs, perhaps? Chemical reactions? Strategically placed wind turbines?

He tells Hypatia as she wrings out the mop, and she laughs, though not unkindly. "That would be something."

He's definitely onto something there. He'll just try out a few sketches later: Karnaca's naval military will never be the same after this. He just knows it. He turns his attention back to the engine, as he carefully wipes off and reattaches the slippery parts, when a shuffling at the door interrupts his thoughts. He glances up, dreading what Meagan will say upon finding him out of his restraints, but instead, a weary, slow-blinking face looks back at time.

"Anton," Hypatia says gently. "You're up."

"Blasted noise brought me up here," Sokolov replies, bracing himself against the frame for support. "I wanted to see who was trying to sink the ship."

"The ship is doing a fine job of that on its own," Jindosh replies irritably.

"Jindosh," Sokolov says with a curt nod of acknowledgement.

Jindosh begins a mocking bow, but Hypatia nudges him.

"Don't be ridiculous," she tells him before turning to Sokolov. "We've been repairing the secondary engine for Meagan." She pauses and then adds, "It was Kirin's idea."

"So I've heard," Sokolov replies. He shuffles down the stairs with great difficulty, gripping the railing with tense, white hands. "I've been telling Meagan to take a look at it. Noisy old thing she's got down here."

One of many, Jindosh almost retorts.

When he finally reaches them, Hypatia instinctively moves between her old mentor and Jindosh, before Sokolov waves her away. "No, no, Alex. It's not necessary." He eyes Jindosh. "You're looking better, Kirin, now that you've decided to be helpful."

"That's more than I can say for you," Jindosh replies.

"Kirin," Hypatia scolds.

Sokolov holds up a hand. "I'd say let him speak his piece, but I've heard enough in my captivity to last me a while." He briefly closes his eyes in weariness, before sitting down on a step. "Have you come around, then, Jindosh?"

Jindosh pauses, decidedly irked by all of this. "For Karnaca," he lies.

Sokolov almost laughs. "Karnaca and yourself, I imagine." He considers something a moment before ruefully smiling to himself. "Life is funny sometimes, Jindosh. That's all." He pauses. "What about your witch friend?"

"Why? Are you looking for a new apprentice to bed?" Jindosh snaps, more than a little set on edge by this man. And before Hypatia can give him a disappointed glance, he returns to the secondary engine. "I've let you keep me from my work for too long."

Sokolov raises his eyebrows, but says nothing.

"There was nothing remarkable about Delilah," Jindosh continues. "Mediocre painter, frivolous leader. No skill to speak of. And that's whom you chose to mentor?" He lapses into a furious silence as he reattaches the bolts.

"Keep that up, and Meagan will have you rebuild the ship from the engine room up," Sokolov replies. Another pause. "Delilah intrigued me. She had a sensual ambition, a hunger to her for knowledge and more. But you don't want to hear that, do you?"

Jindosh certainly did not. "And I didn't have ambition?" he retorts. "I've made more than she ever will. I've brought the world more than she ever will."

Sokolov composes himself. "It was a different time, Kirin. I was a different man back then."

"Well, I wasn't," Jindosh snaps as he tightens the bolt too hard—the wrench catches his fingers. Wincing, he draws them back. Hypatia, alarmed, starts to move towards him but he shakes his head. Just a surface scratch. "I'm sure in a few years, you'll be a different man then too."

Sokolov closes his eyes for a moment. "There's nothing to be gained from this line of inquiry.  You must know this."

Of course, Jindosh knew it.

That was the problem.

Back in his room, ensconced in the belly of the beast, Jindosh lies back on his cot, staring furiously at the ceiling and meticulously annotating his conversation with Sokolov.  Void, what a miserable old goat he was! Far away, the engine hums healthily, now quiet and efficient. One problem solved, another one still in progress.

Speaking of which, the filthy laundry in his room is really starting to bother him. When Meagan returns with lunch, he brings up the matter with her, despite his better judgement.

"I don't have time to deal with your dirty laundry, Jindosh. Clean it yourself."

He stares at her. "What?"

She repeats herself more firmly this time. "I'm the captain of a ship, not your maid. If you want it cleaned, you'd better do it yourself."

Ship was highly debatable (flotsam was much more accurate) but, wanting to remain on what was left of on her good side and out of the handcuffs, Jindosh only gives her a thin-lipped smile.

"Delightful," he manages through gritted teeth. "Simply delightful. By any chance, do you have soap on this esteemed vessel?"

"I'll bring you some later," Meagan replies coldly.

Clearly, she means to humble him, but she must not know him all that well if she thinks a bit of drudgery can break the Grand Inventor of Karnaca. As long as he doesn't have to make soap from the stove ashes, he'll count himself lucky.

She returns sometime later, although he has tracked her footsteps this whole time (kitchen, cabin, different cabin, kitchen, storage area), with a bucket of relatively warm water, a grater, a small bar of castile soap, and an even smaller amount of washing soda. At least, she didn't bring him chamber lye.

"Here you go," she tells in him a tone that announces that she doesn't particularly care for his opinion.

She sets the items in front of him, then leans against the wall with her arms crossed, clearly meaning to dissuade him from any nefarious activity. He doesn't doubt that she'd shoot him at the slightest sign of trying to escape.

He frowns. From his books, he remembers something about a paddle and a river. "Where's the rest?"

"You'll have to soak it first," she replies. "A day or two."

He exhales at the thought of the tedium ahead of him. Void, how did he get himself into this mess? Carefully, he sets to dissolving the washing soda. The soap itself needs to be grated into the water, and he does so with some difficulty, holding the grater down with his bad hand and the soap with his better one.

Then it's time to soak the garments. He casts a few glances at Meagan, but she remains stony-faced and silent. Void, he's really messed up this time. He cannot help wrinkling his nose at the way the sludge swirls on the surface of the water.

When the clothes have been thoroughly saturated, she takes away the materials from him, no doubt depositing the bucket in some wretched part of this floating piece of nautical debris, but this doesn't deter him. Oh, no, he has absolutely no intention of going through the torments of a washerwoman. Instead, he leans back, rotating the odds and ends the empress has left him.

And his mind starts turning.

He (eloquently, he must add) pleads for a little bit of scrap from around the ship to experiment with, just a little, mind you, just enough to see if there's a way to bypass all the drudgery of washing clothes. And Hypatia, who has never been able to resist an earnest request, finds it for him. She brings him a washboard (rusted), another bucket of water (questionable provenance), random wires, metal odds and ends, pliers, something that may have been part of an arc pylon at one point (he'll have some questions for Meagan later), and a rotted wooden plank.

No whale oil, though.

She was quite firm on that end.

The first prototype blows sparks across the room. He glances around guiltily in case the smell of smoke had progressed past his room, but no one comes. He's much more careful after that.

It takes him five iterations, but by the end of the day, he has a rough prototype of the Marvelous Garment Washing Device. He'll workshop the name later. It's handpowered with  a crank for now, but he suspects it could be converted to wind power or whale oil.  

He's so proud of his new creation that he doesn't bother hiding it from Meagan when she brings him stew for the evening. She swears loudly when she spots it.

"What is that?" she asks with an incredulous stare, her curiosity overriding her anger towards him.

He tells her. "Marvel at the efficiency, the time freed up for further pursuits. No longer will you have to hire out a washerwoman to take out the laundry. The handle allows for—"

Meagan takes it out of his hands, examining it carefully. "You made this?" she asks, frowning in thought. "Out of debris?"

Jindosh cannot help but grin. He hasn't lost his touch. "Have you considered improvements to the ship beyond the necessary repairs? I've thought of a few ways to make the ship more elusive."

Meagan exhales sharply. "If you're planning on attaching knives to my ship, we're going to have words."

With the back of his heel, Jindosh quietly kicks the prototype back under the cot. But still, he cannot repress a note of triumph in his heart as he watches her consider his newest invention.

Chapter Text

It only takes a few more days before his cabin has begun to resemble his lab. Bits of scrap are piled in the corner, while thrown next to the cot are half-finished scribbles on the back of the newspapers pleaded off Hypatia. He even has a pot of tea and a chipped teacup on a fold-out table (just one teacup, though, not a trail from room to room, like in the Clockwork Mansion). He'd really prefer the boiler room now that it's been restored to a familiar gurgling, but this would have to suffice for now.

He's just finished adjusting the empress's crossbow again. In that moment between sleep and wakefulness, he'd realized how to deduct a fraction of a second from the trigger, and so, he doublechecks the tiny sketches on the back of The Silver Spike, which are nestled between improvements to the Clockwork Soldier's audio feedback system. Yes, yes, the calculations all look correct.

As much as he would love to lean back in a chair, satisfied with his genius, Meagan still refuses to supply him with the necessary office furniture. So, he'll have to settle for sitting on the floor for now with only a small candle (borrowed from Hypatia) for company.

Still, he's come out on top again.

Just a little bit longer and he'll be worming his way into the empress's personal assortment of royal inventors and physicians and who knows what else. Isn't the better question what he can do for the empire (and, of course, himself)? Soon, the whole unpleasant affair of the coup will be over, and he can get off this damnable ship and onto some land for a change. He tries to not think too long about his soft bed in the Clockwork Mansion, when Meagan knocks at his door (it really is his door now, he supposes).

"Get up," Meagan says brusquely. "You're going to help us cook. None of us are your servants, Jindosh, and you're going to have to start helping around here."

"it'll be a nice change," Hypatia adds, from over Meagan's shoulder, "for all of us."

"How, pray tell, am I supposed to do that?" Jindosh replies irritatedly, waving around his left hand. "Surely, the ship hasn't sunk as low as a one-handed cook."

"We'll find something for you," Meagan replies with a jerk of her head. "If you can tinker around, you can help."

"Aramis Stilton will be joining us for dinner," Hypatia explains on the way to the ship's hold. "I thought it would be a nice change of scenery for you."

Clearly, there was no greater force in the Isles than Hypatia's earnest wish to rehabilitate people, Jindosh thinks, and his second thought as they reach the closed-off little kitchen was that he really didn't know how to cook. Making small meals when his inept servants couldn't be there to anticipate his every whim, yes; full meals, no. Before him, a bag of potatoes; some raw meat in a brown paper wrapping; various vegetables in various stages of peeling, as if someone had suddenly gotten the whim to, or been talked into, fetching him; a small sack of flour; some butter; a small bag of dark berries, mulberries most likely; eggs—oh, she wanted to make a cake for Aramis.

"You can't peel," Meagan begins, as she surveys the spread of ingredients. "You can't chop—no, Hypatia, I'm not giving him the knife—but—"

"You want me to make the cake," Jindosh surmises.

Meagan crosses her arms, unnerved in a way he's long since gotten used to. "I think you can manage that."

"We'll do it together," Hypatia amends.

Jindosh has a feeling that Hypatia's inclusion is the only reason he's allowed to do this. Well, that's fate, he decides. High on the hill one day, lowly baker the next. He adds a note to himself to make the Clockwork Soldiers waterproof: that way, they could rescue him from the next predicament that he's bound to be in. Perhaps with some sort of homing device—a miniature map in their heads, relative to the position of the Isles.

He'll have to workshop that one.   

Jindosh has never made a cake before in his life, and he hopes he'll never have to again. Hypatia reads off a small, scribbled recipe as she helps him with the ingredients, cracking eggs on the corner of the table and slicing the butter into tiny chunks. His role in all of this, he might reluctantly confess, is that of a glorified stirring spoon. Hypatia weighs and adds the ingredients, and he mixes them in.

The only change from all of this is when Hypatia lets him pour the mixture into a buttered baking pan. (He spends much of the time trying to figure out how much the ship would be worth if he sold it for parts versus if he burned it down for the cargo insurance it no doubt didn't have.)

Meagan watches him carefully over the bubbling stew, no doubt to make sure he's not putting in any strychnine (maybe if he could synthesize some on this wretched ship, this would be a different matter...).

The empress, who miraculously appears to be exempt from this whole endeavor (Jindosh notes this with more than a little annoyance, such is the privilege of royalty), stops by later, as Hypatia peeks into the small, barely adequate, barely up-to-code oven.

"Emily." Hypatia greets her with a subdued smile. "How is it going?"

"Hypatia," the empress beams. "I'm looking forward to conversing with Aramis tonight. He will prove a worthy ally and a great help to me." She turns to Jindosh, who, quite frankly, would really prefer to not be noticed at this moment. "We'll have much to discuss."

Jindosh contemplates the likelihood that refusing to join the empress for dinner would be added to his burgeoning list of crimes. "No doubt." He pauses, as he attempts to weasel his way out of showing up unshaven to Stilton's little get-together party. (He might not ever be able to grow out anything more than a little mustache, though lovingly tended, but Void damn him if he doesn't have an impressive and persistent 5 o'clock shadow.) "But it's ever so noisy at sea, and the—"

"I'm sure it is," Meagan cuts in. "But you're eating with the the rest of us now. I'm not serving you in your hidey-hole."

"I cannot say I've had much say in the choice of room—" Jindosh begins.

"How delightful that you'll be joining us," the empress interrupts. "We have so much to go over."

Jindosh considers how his life has gotten to this point. He's quietly still hoping he'll wake up on the floor of his laboratory with a headache from having smelled the wrong fumes. "What an honor," he manages. 

She smiles back at him.

Jindosh straightens up as best he can for Stilton's cherished presence tonight. He's still unsuccessful in procuring a razor, but he does manage to tie his clothes together in a way that is less shipwrecked wretch and more fashionably moored eccentric with the help of his pinned brooch that he has salvaged from his ruined vest.

Hypatia fetches him with a knowing look that asks for restraint and decorum tonight, and not monopolizing the conversation to be about himself and his genius.

Jindosh sighs.

"Really," Hypatia adds. "I mean it."

She means a lot of things, he's finding.

But still, walking beside her, he cannot help but repress a little note of excitement at this silly little dinner, an anticipation akin to what he felt at his first dinner away from home and at the Academy.

It's ridiculous, really.

Meagan has arranged a table on the deck of the ship: the fresh air, unbounded by walls, is almost overwhelming to Jindosh—how narrow his life below deck has been! On the table rests the stew, washed cherries in a bowl, hunks of aged cheese, neatly arranged prawns (for the old fool, no doubt), fresh rye bread, the slightly deflated mulberry cake with its very own age spots, candles, and assorted tableware in stacks in the middle and silverware in piles (was this what her life in the Whalers was like?).

He takes a seat next to Hypatia, or more precisely, Hypatia guides him to a place next to her.

She busies herself with making Stilton feel at ease. Stilton himself is slightly worn and plainly dressed for his station, but lively, and as the food is distributed and the chatting begins, Stilton slowly warms up to him.

"I hear the Clockworks have been well-recieved," he begins, and that opening is really all Jindosh needs.

"They're a stunning combination of form and function," Jindosh says, as Meagan rolls her eyes. "Exquisitely priced for the craftsmanship."

"He's going to do this all night," Meagan says.

Stilton pauses. "Surely you must have thought of other functions for these mechanical men beyond matters of security. The mines, perhaps?"

Jindosh has not, in fact. Perhaps, he would make a prototype or two when he's back in his mansion. He means to continue the conversation, but Meagan quickly steers them to another topic. As he listens for another opening to pitch his inventions, he eats the cherries with his hands, like everyone else on deck; the dark-red juice stains his fingertips as he piles the fraying pits in a corner of his plate, and he's having the most fun he's had in a long while. How ridiculous.

The longer he considers Stilton, the more intriguing he finds him. It's hardly a secret in Serkonos what Stilton got up to, in the privacy of his mansion or elsewhere. And yet, somehow, Stilton seemed to be the repository for this hidden world that had so obliquely revealed itself to Jindosh. What parts of Stilton's brain commanded him to do so? Could this desire be located down to the wires of the mind?

And the longer he stares at Stilton (and the longer Stilton generously pretends to not notice this), he finds himself envious of the man. How could it be that Stilton came to know things he did not?

The dark-grey clouds race across the silvery setting sky, as night settles on the deck of the ship.  Meagan lights candles, clearly keen on talking to Stilton and Hypatia as long as possible. Together with the empress, they branch off into a small group near the railing of the deck. They must be old friends. It hardly matters to Jindosh, only... only it's strange to watch them interacting, like they care about each other, like they understand each other. Their stupid little jokes, the way Stilton touches Meagan's arm in jest. How silly. How weak. How lonely it makes him feel.

But that was only the demand of genius, he decides haughtily. A high and lonely cliff—nowhere to go but down.

And the only one could understand him is gradually shuffling off this mortal coil, aged beyond repair.

He wants this knowledge—he thinks he wants this, anyway. What else is there to want? What else was there to be? This was only a missing piece. And who better to educate him in this matter than lascivious old Anton? And after he'd gotten this over, he'd know more about the world; this was merely another experiment.

This was natural. Every foul beast and screeching bird knew this; it was simply buried somewhere in their genetic code as a series of clicks and switches that motivated them so. (And what about him? Was he so alien, then, that this desire had simply been omitted in him?)

How would it feel to simply have with Sokolov what apparently everyone else in the Isles got to have? 

He doesn’t understand what to say to him; words fail as he turns them over, looking for a collection that could convey his wants.

Meagan casts a worried eye periodically back at them, but Sokolov only shakes his head. "Jindosh knows better than to toss me off the ship," he replies. "It's unbecoming."

That, and the witch-empress would probably kill him where he stood if he harmed a hair on Sokolov's head in front of her. (How had Jindosh ended up with a second witch-empress? If he ever met the Outsider, he'd have some words for him, like maybe start empowering different people. If the Outsider really was after entertainment, he could start with marking an Overseer, for starters.)

Meagan looks skeptical, but also slightly relieved. She turns her attention back to Stilton and Hypatia as they discuss the conditions of the Dust District, and Jindosh finds himself drawn to the only person still left at the table. Sokolov looks out onto the sparkling bay, the city lights flickering dull yellow against the darkness of Shindaerey Peak. If there's a chance, now is a good as any time.

How did one seduce a genius, anyway?

The hem of Sokolov's sleeve is smooth; this is the only thought that goes through Jindosh's head as he bridges the gap between them. His heart is loud. His fingers curl into the fabric. "I propose that we could learn from each other," he manages artlessly.

Sokolov raises an eyebrow. "You wouldn't be the first, Jindosh." He wets his lips, and then, with the trembling that comes with age, gently removes Jindosh's hand. "But I'm too old for this now. You must know this."

Jindosh crosses his arms. Hurt slowly flushes his face. He's never propositioned anyone before—how foolish it was to start now! He's had dozens of people throw themselves at his feet, but this was different. He'd wanted this. "Genital problems?" he retorts nastily.

"Jindosh," Sokolov scolds, with a hint of scandalized amusement and the professor he'd once been. But that past was the problem.

"What does Delilah have that I don't?" Jindosh demands. "You should hear how she speaks about you." The flash of pain that moves across the old goat's face brings Jindosh no pleasure now. "I would have given you everything. We could have remade this age. An unparalleled age of invention. A glorious age."

"We can't keep at this," Sokolov replies.

"You have eight bastards across the Isles," Jindosh continues. "You probably seduced Piero Joplin too. Everyone at the Academy knew." Void, why did that forsaken old goat unravel him so? He feels sixteen years old again and overawed and overwhelmed in a new city bursting with possibilities. Why can't he keep it together?

"If you can ever stay out of prison, Kirin, you can experience that for yourself." But Sokolov doesn't sound proud of his prior exploits; rather, regret tinges his words. He picks at his fingernails, as if to distract himself from something he's been running away from.

Jindosh hates this weakness in such a formerly proud man.

"I'm going back to my room," he announces bitterly and leaves the deck before Meagan can escort him back, no doubt with sharp words. (Void, it really was his room now.) Only now, he doesn't feel like a celebrated, refined inventor, and as he catches Aramis's stunned face, he knows that everyone on deck has heard every accusation.

The only small mercy was the he's almost certain the gossip rags wouldn't hear of his outburst.

The thought brings little consolation  as he slams the door behind him, like a petulant child. He sits on the edge of his hard-won cot with its lingering traces of bloodfly solutions and contemplates the very real probability that Meagan will be furious with him, that he's ruined any goodwill he might have built up, and that he's almost definitely going to spend the rest of his life in prison now.

A shuffling at his door diverts his attention, then a knock. Meagan wouldn't bother with the formalities. If Aramis was going to give him dating advice, then he'd just throw himself overboard first. (What a fool he's been!) But this time, it's not Aramis at the door.

"Kirin," Hypatia's soft voice calls.

"No, Alex," he replies flatly, swallowing down a lump in his throat, acutely aware of his humiliation. This was far worse than anything the empress had done to him so far, and even worse, he'd done it to himself.

A soft exhale, then a second plea. "Kirin, please."

"Leave me," he tells her, fumbling with the smooth edges of the noise machine to distract himself from the overwhelming embarrassment that came from knowing that she'd been witness to everything on deck. "The whole evening has been a mistake."

"Let's talk in the morning," she replies. "Good night, Kirin."

Her footsteps trail off, and he continues picking at the device in the dark. Much later, a key turns in the lock—Meagan, no doubt. She walks off to a nearby room with a pair of shuffling feet (the old goat), and then to her cabin. Silence. 

He continues to fiddle with the noise machine, more out of habit than purpose, until his fingers catch on a slightly raised piece on the bottom. It's not a mistake on Sokolov's part, Jindosh is certain of it. Carefully, he pries out a hidden compartment. From there, it's only a simple matter to dismantle the whole device, even in the dark. It's been constructed so there's a piece that could be easily used for lock picking.

This has been another stupid test from that old fool. Stupid old creature! Useless old man! It would such an easy matter to pick the lock and escape now while everyone is asleep, but that stupid old fool wants to know if he's changed.

No, Jindosh decides. He hasn't changed. Not at all.

Consequences be damned. He's sick of playing these little games, humoring his lessers and the empress who had only wanted her throne when it was taken from her. There are simply no more choices left to be made.

He briefly considers stealing the small boat, but the noise would wake up everyone on board. No, he has to be as quiet as possible to evade them all and get as far ahead as possible. Meagan has kept the boat closer to shore than usual, and so he steadies himself before climbing into the water. The worst thing in the bay was probably the whales and the pneumonia that would inevitably follow.

Then, he takes a deep breath and begins swimming.

Chapter Text

Kirin Jindosh was done learning lessons. He hadn’t learned any since he discovered at the age of sixteen that no one could teach him anything new. And yet, now, as he swims across the dark expanse of the Karnacan bay, he starts to think that this may have been a mistake. The worst thing about his impromptu swim, he is finding, is not in fact the physical exertion, but rather the vast amount of time it has given him to ruminate and reanimate conversations long since past. His hands are not as busy as he'd prefer. 

Should he be swimming in the waters so close to Pandyssia? What if an errant current dragged him out to the midnight shores of Pandyssia and he spent the next twenty years building a little makeshift raft cobbled together from the underbrush while fending off the Void-touched wildlife? He's not sure he's particularly built for that kind of lifestyle: he has rather gotten used to the pleasures of hot water, styling cream, and soap. What if he was actually wrong about the marine life and something enormous, beastly, and unseen was swimming below him, ready to gobble him up with its many rows of worn teeth this instant? Void, he’d never live that down.

He can see the headlines now: Disgraced Natural Philosopher Eaten By Monstrous Shark During Midnight Swim, Estate Left in Ruins.

Damnable Luca would probably seize his estate after that. Jindosh has a sudden vision of his beloved mansion, with its high ceilings and meticulous woodwork, being used at the next site of one of Luca's orgies; he cannot repress a shudder of horror (no doubt drawing the attention of some Void-damned beast in the deeps). The audio-surveillance system would likely prove particularly enticing to that libidinous group.

No, no, he'll have to live after all.

The lights of the city ride and extinguish themselves on the mild waves of the bay. Fortune has smiled on him. Had he picked a rougher night, he'd be halfway to Tyvia right now, but for now, the cooled water merely laps at him. His clothes, however, are likely ruined, again. He shudders to think about his closet being ransacked by that fool empress, or worse yet, his private stash of gold and shame and spite. Had she spent the time to explore the mansion, glorious and secretive as it was, with him in an unconscious, untidy heap beside her, dragged along through the mansion like a parcel or a suitcase, only to be put down and picked up as she looted the place?

And what of his clockworks? Would they be there to welcome him home or be strewn about in piles of wires and cogs and broken paneling in complete disregard for the craftsmanship or the princely sum each one had cost him to create. Sour, sour thoughts indeed.

Mercifully, the lights draw closer together, so bright now that he thinks for a moment that he must be climbing onto a theatre stage. The trappings of the city begin to delineate themselves from their surroundings: a balcony with its clothesline there, an open window  with a patchwork curtain there. Quilts flutter in the breeze, left out to dry, while citrus trees nod in their teracotta pots, white blossoms peaking out from behind their dark leaves. Gentle grey smoke floats from a chimney as the baker begins her preparations for the morning rush for baked bread and sweets. A seagull calls out somewhere beyond him, circling the shore.

He's done it.

He's come back home.

Pulling himself out of the water, Jindosh realizes how exhausting that whole matter has been. He shouldn't have let petty resentment cloud his reason like that; he'll bring embarrassment to his good name if word ever got out that the glorious Grand Inventor, the man with the Duke's ear, let himself walk around looking like a drowning rat, but fortunately, none of the Grand Guard are awake enough at their post to recognize him. 

Sopping wet and disheveled, with his hair plastered to his face, he rides the railcar back to his mansion in the quiet of near-morning, as the sky lightens into a pale lavender. The damnable railcar stops and forces him on his shaky legs to aggressively jab in the gate's security code. He is not particularly proud of what he tells the inanimate control panel when it beeps in approval.

Sometimes, the price of greatness was threatening machinery with a hanging. Or so, he thinks, anyway.

The mansion itself, is always quiet, and a sense of relief fills him as he staggers through the beautiful (elegantly carved, meticulously sourced) double doors. (Good, good, no signs of an orgy yet.) He snaps at a nearby housemaid for looking at him for too long (any length of time is too long now), relishing in her wide eyes and the way she clutches the feather duster closer to her in fright; dismissively waves off any questions from the Grand Guard posted in the atrium; threatens to turn at least one Clockwork into scrap for failing to protecting him; and finally, at the very end of his rampage, peels off his now uncomfortably dried clothes, throws them onto the floor, envelopes himself in a bathrobe, and curls into bed.

When he awakes, standing before him is the empress.

Jindosh swears.

"Again, so soon?" he retorts, anger finally getting the upper hand as he sits upright in bed. "And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Have you not turned my home inside-out enough to your liking?"

The empress doesn't smile sweetly back at him like before; instead, worry lines her young face. "You're a loose thread, Jindosh. I can't have that."

The Clockwork Soldier in a heap says as much.

"I'm not a loose anything," he snaps back. "If I'd wanted you and your coterie of troubled associates dead, don't you think I'd have gone to the Duke first?" He seizes on her pause of indecision. "Don't you think I'd have cut each and every one of your throats in the dark when I escaped? I'm done with you, and I'm especially done with witches. Void be damned, I only stood in a circle at a seance, helped Breanna with her Void-damned lens, and sold some Clockworks to the Duke—the esteemed leech who controls my pocketbook. Do you mean to persecute her seamstress next? Show up in the house of the merchant who sold her paint brushes?"

"They didn't sell her weapons," the empress counters coldly, as if remembering something.

"Mea culpa, your highness. They only do as they were programed to do."

"You tortured Sokolov."

"He tortured others back in the day, empress. Ask the Lord Protector to tell you the details about the rat plague sometime. You might have been but a child back then, but the rest of us remember it keenly."

The empress seems unconvinced; perhaps, her attachment to the old goat is too strong. "He's not proud of what he's done."

"I'm certain that will revive the dead, your highness." It feels good to speak so openly to her like this. Finally, no more cat and mouse.

The empress is silent for a long moment, one in which Jindosh resists yelling for the guards. There's little they could do against a witch-empress, anyway.

"Assure me of your allegiance, Jindosh," she demands.

"I'm not sure I'm dressed enough for that," he retorts. "Anyway, haven't I supplied you with your own custom weaponry? Haven't I spared you and your shipmates? What more do you want? A song and dance like some cheap theatrical show?"

He almost regrets it when she smiles at the thought. "Humility would do you some good." She reconsiders something. "I want your clockworks—what's left of them anyway—and I want the code that overrides their allegiance. I know they have one."

"Aren't you worried about the witches at Dunwall Tower?"

"Brambles and thorns make a poor defense against metal men," she replies. "But I see what you mean. Yes, you will also build one resistant to Void magic. That one will be for my aunt. Those are my terms."

Jindosh can tell that there's no room to wriggle out of them. "I'll need dear old Anton's help if you want one before the year is done."

"Is it not within the realm of your abilities?" the empress replies sweetly.

"Given that you have decimated my stock," Jindosh retorts, "it will take me sometime to build a new one by myself. With the help of another genius, perhaps a few weeks."

"A week," the empress amends. "You'll have a week."

Jindosh swears. "You drive a hard bargain." He exhales sharply. He won't be getting much sleep from here on out. "Consider it done." He glances down at his bedsheets. "Perhaps, you can leave me to dress now, your highness?"

Soon, the empress brings him a lightly damaged music box from the Overseers, and then, her coterie. It's not that he's afraid of being found out—he's known to host eclectic guests; it's one of the few privileges of being an eccentric—but rather that both Hypatia and Meagan have profoundly strong feelings on how he's been treating his staff.

"Kirin," Hypatia begins, reading one of his many handwritten notes. "These people work so hard, but must they work in the cold and silence as well?"

He hems and haws a little, but the determined set of Hypatia's face tells him he'll make no ground here.

Reluctantly, he has a few mobile heaters sent down to the kitchens and other places the servants might be gathering. Hypatia nods to herself and no doubt starts making further plans for his staff. If he wakes up tomorrow to find out that they've unionized, he'll have strong words for her.

Sokolv refuses to step foot in Jindosh's laboratory, and so, as a reluctant compromise, Jindosh moves all but one of the half-finished Clockworks out of his bedroom for them to work in. The new location does not go unnoticed by Sokolov.

"I must say, Jindosh," he quips, glancing round, "I imagined it to be gaudier."

Jindosh rolls his eyes. "Were you like this with Piero as well?"

"Piero never propositioned me and then leapt off a ship."

A flush comes over Jindosh as he fiddles with a wrench. "I didn't leap."

Sokolov chuckles. "I must say, I didn't expect that degree of melodrama from you." He settles near the new workbench, surveying the machinery rigged up before them. "It shouldn't take too long. As for other improvements to these clangers, I can't say I'll be of use."

Jindosh exhales sharply. "I imagined as such."

And then, they set to work. The first hour is awkward, full of side glances and tools quickly retrieved, but slowly the atmosphere begins to warm. Sokolov cracks more jokes at Jindosh's expense, typically on the construction of the Clockwork Soldiers, and Jindosh is emboldened to retort back. And by the end of the fourth day, Sokolov's companionship feels more natural than anything he's ever had before. It's talking with a kindred spirit, for better or worse, and he has a sudden glimpse of how his life could have gone.

"These silvergraphs of yours," Sokolov says as they take a break from adjusting the Clockwork Soldier, "these are much more promising than your scrap heaps."

"Mercury and light on a plate," Jindosh replies, more than a hint of smugness reviving him now. "It's a simple and elegant, yet versatile invention."

"You have the light performing tricks for you now, hm? Your device can only capture what no longer is."

"It preserves," Jindosh insists.

"Preserves and buries all the same." Sokolov casts an evaluating eye over his silvergraph equipment. "Still, not without its merits, I suppose. I could use one on my trip to the ice seas up north.”

Hope springs inside Jindosh. "You must need an assistant," he replies. "Take me with you."

"Oh, a great man like you?" Sokolov says, suddenly preoccupied with examining a connection on the machine. "Your ego would sink the boat. No, no, I must go it alone."

Then, Jindosh is sullen again.

"Don't sulk now, Jindosh. I've almost fixed your contraption." Sokolov tightens a bolt. "You know me, a cantankerous old goat—isn't that what you called me?—an old goat who could never share the spotlight. Besides, surely the great Grand Inventor must have better things to do than chaperone an old man."

Jindosh privately adds that he doesn't, but he keeps silent.

Sokolov pauses a moment in his work. "You ask more of me than my own children." He takes a deep breath before fumbling for something. "Here, have this." He pats something into Jindosh's oil-stained hand. "There, keep it and think of the old man you couldn't best."

As Sokolov's worn and rough fingers leave his own, Jindosh unfurls his hand to find a small black ring. The one Sokolov has always worn. Holding it, still warmed by Sokolov's body heat, Jindosh feels small, a little petulant, and very foolish. Still, he doesn't say anything as Sokolov hobbles back to the machinery.

"Won't you put away your war toys, Jindosh? It's time to grow up at last and think of the future."

"You're only good at running away from your mistakes," Jindosh manages sullenly. (It's real! This cherished little piece of Sokolov's is all his! Only his.) Still, he turns the black ring over in his hands.

"One of us has to be," Sokolov concludes wryly. "Come, the future is waiting."

Jindosh surveys the onyx ring, running a finger along its perfect smoothness. He can almost not bear to look away from this memento; if he does, he'll have to make a decision, and even worse, make a change in his life. But, surely, there must be more than Clockwork Soldiers in this new Karnaca, his new Karnaca. So many problems still need his genius.

He pockets the ring and nods.