The silence in the smithy smelled of ozone and bitter scorched almonds, the lingering trace of spent vapor. Laima held her ribs still, caught against the edge of the brass casing. He stood less than an arm's span away, his breath puffing against her collar. He tracked the joined brass-resin mechanism on the beam, glanced across the sealed pipe joints, and finally looked at her.
“It… it flexes,” Jurgis murmured, his voice rough. He reached out, not quite touching her, but his calloused fingers hovered near the shimmering green-brass bond. “It moves. It’s… alive.”
Laima felt a blush creep up her neck, a strange heat that had nothing to do with the workshop’s ambient warmth. “My grandfather experimented with the *Flos Aeris* resin. It’s naturally adaptive. I just… gave it something to adapt *to*.” She tried to sound detached, professional, but her voice quivered slightly. What they had managed by frantic luck lay quiet on the beam.
He finally met her gaze, and for a long moment, the world outside the workshop, the societal rules, Ruta’s machinations, all faded into irrelevance. The quiet held until Jurgis drew back toward his stool.
“We need to register this,” he said, his voice regaining a fraction of its usual gruffness, though the intensity in his eyes remained. “Before someone else claims… inspiration.”
Laima nodded, her mind already racing. “I’ll go to the Registry of Industrial Arts. I still have some of Grandfather’s old identification chits.” She imagined the smug satisfaction of presenting their revolutionary invention, the quiet triumph over Ruta’s underhanded tactics.
The next morning, Laima adjusted the collar of her worn, but immaculately clean, travelling coat. The cedar and dry pennyroyal of her grandfather’s old storeroom still clung to the wool. She made her way through the smog-stained avenues of Ostrava-Krin, past the towering brass edifices of the Conservatory, towards the Registry building. Its grand, arched entrance, usually bustling with frantic inventors, was strangely quiet.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of stale paper and cheap tea. The clerk, a portly man with a perpetually damp brow named Olav, peered over his spectacles as Laima presented her request. “A patent for a flexible, biomechanically integrated prosthetic, co-developed by Jurgis Ruzgas,” she stated, trying to project an air of confidence she didn't quite feel. She had carefully drafted the patent application herself, detailing the *Flos Aeris* resin’s unique properties and its synergistic bond with engineered brass.
Olav paused, his quill hovering, then squinted down his nose. He slid an ink-stained ledger across the counter. “Ruzgas, Jurgis… ah, yes. Here we are.” He rapped a knuckle against an entry. “Under the directive of the High Council of Karmic Arbitration, all patent filings from applicants with a ‘Sub-Standard Chit Ledger’ are suspended indefinitely.”
Laima blinked. “Sub-Standard? What does that mean? What council?”
“New civic statutes, mistress. Very binding,” Olav said, smirking behind his inkstand. “Dr. Balodis, through his upcoming curative, has acquired an exceptional credit balance. His betrothed, Miss Ruta Varnas, filed affidavits ensuring those with delinquent ledgers do not delay genuine benefactors.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “She cited a premonition that your husband’s contraptions invite civil disaster.”
Ruta. She had cut Jurgis off from the registry before dawn. This was not about clerical infractions; it was a targeted embargo to shield Ignas's tincture from rival displays.
Just as Laima was about to launch into a furious, probably ineffectual, argument, a shadow fell over the counter. Borys the Undertaker stepped up to the brass railing, dressed in pressed gray wool smelling of dry myrrh and clove buns. He slipped a folded paper parcel across to Olav. “Almond tarts, fresh from the tins.”
Olav’s eyes lit up. “Borys! Always a pleasure. What can I do for you?”
Borys merely winked at Laima, then nudged her gently towards a secluded, velvet-lined alcove near a perpetually steaming tea urn. “Come, dear Laima. Step away from the municipal ledger-keepers.” He decanted a cup of brown herbal tea from the brass samovar. “A pity about your husband’s official demerits, isn’t it? Almost as if someone paid to print them.”
Laima stared at him, the sting of Olav’s words still fresh. “Manufactured? Can one petition for revision? Buy credits?”
Borys chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. He took a delicate sip of his own tea. “My dear Laima. The ‘Etiquette Manual,’ the tokens, the entire council... it is pure theatre. A lucrative, gilded grift.”
Laima’s teacup clattered against the saucer. “A… grift?”
“Indeed. The scullery stewards and gravediggers noticed how the nobility obsessed over portents and caste purity. So we drafted the codex ourselves. We bound handsome calfskin registries and issued amendments to the rulebook—which I co-author on quiet Thursdays. It funnels cash from credulous parlors straight into our larders.” Borys took a swallow of tea. “Your cousin Ruta buys three dispensations a week. Terrified her visions will expire.”
Laima felt a dizzying shift in her perception. The foundation of everything she believed about society, about her own place in it, crumbled into dust. The imaginary rules she had so meticulously followed, the etiquette she had obsessed over, the quiet survival she had strived for – all a ludicrous, elaborate lie. And Ruta was simply an easy mark paying coin to a guild of smiling footmen.
A cold, hard resolve settled in Laima’s gut, replacing the humiliation with a searing, righteous anger. She didn’t just want to survive anymore. She didn’t want to quietly navigate the system. She wanted to smash it, to expose its rotten core, and to watch Ruta’s stolen destiny collapse around her.
She marched back to the foundry, her knuckles raw in her pockets. Jurgis sat tracing pencil lines over grease-spotted vellum.
“They rejected the filing,” she said from the doorway. “Ruta bought an injunction. The token ledgers are a fraud run by parish clerks. Borys admitted it.”
Jurgis leaned back on his stool, a thin grin twitching on his lips. “I assumed the paper smelled too heavily of cheap turnip ink to be holy. What now, botanist? Sit in the corner and wait for permission?”
Laima’s chin lifted. “No. We crash the Solstice Exhibition. We show them our invention, without their permission, without their chits, and without their fake rules. We stage a hostile takeover of the market. We don’t just win, Jurgis. We obliterate them.”
Jurgis leaned back, a flicker of genuine interest in his eyes. He slowly rubbed the metallic knuckles of his prosthetic hand. “Bold. Reckless. I like it. But how do we get in? The Solstice is an invitation-only affair. And Ignas’s panacea is the star attraction.”
“We’ll find a way,” Laima said, a fierce light in her eyes. “We’ll refine the prototype. Make it undeniable. Make it so revolutionary, they won’t be able to ignore it.”
Through the afternoon, they tore through paper and tin. Laima drafted cross-sections of the *Flos Aeris* tubules, calculating flow rates under gear torque, while Jurgis cut miniature levers from scrap sheet and tensioned piano wire along the armature.
When dusk turned the high clerestory windows the color of bruised plums, three sharp raps hit the heavy iron door.
Laima and Jurgis exchanged a puzzled glance. Visitors were rare, especially at this hour. Jurgis moved to open it, his hand resting instinctively on a wrench. The door creaked open, revealing the figure of Dr. Ignas Balodis, his usually immaculate clothing disheveled, his face drawn and pale, dark circles under his eyes. He looked hollowed out and gray, looking only at Jurgis. “Jurgis,” he rasped. “I need your help.”