*Chapter 4 brings us into the city proper for the first time. Amalus and Gharom's role in the tale is moving in ways I didn't expect.*

*This chapter is long, so I've split it up into three parts. Part a is about 2,400 words*

*There's no art for this chapter as I have clear pics in my head, but can't find a suitable translation. If any one would be interested in collabing on art, drop me a line.*

*In [Part 1 Chapter 3](https://peakd.com/hive-199275/@stuartcturnbull/solstice-in-sar-chona-part-1-chapter-3) we met Heneroch Finnen, and got an insight into his character, but not his motivations.*

Amalus shuffled through a back alley in the printers quarter, heading for Chooner’s Lane. A smell of ink suffused the air; solvent and colorants. She sniffed, snot bubbled in her sinus. She dragged a sleeve across her face and mucus smeared the ragged and greasy cuff.

At the corner of Chooner’s Lane there was a pie stall which sometimes had left over wares to give away before it closed until the morning. She shuffled to the end of the alley and peeked round the corner. Chooner’s Lane was a shopping street which Amalus avoided during daylight hours - her scabrous appearance wasn’t appreciated by the traders who feared it would scare away custom. Looking along the street she watched the varying light in the shop windows. Shop windows which remained illuminated overnight had come recently to the city, previously this street would have been lit only by the few street lamps scattered along it; small pools of light with enough darkness between them for a body to keep to the shadows. Some shops still used gas lamps and the shadows of mannequins dressed in current fashions and fabrics seemed to shift with sinuous sensuality. In other stores new electro-magnetic lights flickered jaggedly and made displays of wares dance in pale blue jerks.

A late-night monorail passed overhead with a hiss of compressed steam and Amalus glanced up. The carriage pulled into the station, darkness against a backdrop of thick grey clouds that reflected the lights of the city. Passengers departed the machine and most headed along the raised passages to nearby parts of town but some of them made their way down to Chooner’s Lane. Amalus coughed into her sleeve and hung back in the alley, not wanting to be observed. She watched a couple who seemed inclined to linger, to take in the late night show of free advertising offered by the shops, a justification of the the effort and expense put into creating the displays, if they transferred the evenings interest into a purchase during business hours.

They passed the end of the alley without looking and after they had passed, heading away from the pies stall, Amalus coughed and turned her attention back to hopes of a still warm pie.

Steam wafted from the open canopy of the pie-stall. Amalus went over and peered around the edge of the serving hatch. Two pies sat behind glass in the warming oven. Her saliva glands started to flow. If she smelled correctly one was marhog and fhungberry, the other was spicy lamb.

“Gharom?” She whispered the name of the worker who should be caring for the stall.

“Amalus, I’ve been waiting for you.” Gharom appeared from the rear of the stall, her sightless gaze passing a hands-breadth above Amalus’ head. “I have a two pies left. I guess you already know what they are.”

Amalus grinned, and nodded uselessly. She snorted again, wiping her nose in her fingers, and her fingers on her leg. “I can smell fhungberry, and spice.”

“Right as ever. However you can tell with that constant cold I’ll never know.” Gharom placed the two pies in a paper bag. She put the bag on the counter top. “I kept a spicy lamb one back special. You always like the spicy pies.”

Amalus coughed, and wiped her arm across her mouth. Gharom was right - she did like spice. “Thanks, Gharom.” She lifted the package and shuffled away.

“Wait,” Gharom called. “I need to ask you something.”

Amalus stopped, and turned back. Her breath rattled in her lungs. The pies were warm in her hand and she clutched them to her chest protectively.

“What do you want?” she asked.
“I need to see what you see.”
“Don’ understand,” Amalus muttered.
“Something strange’s happening.”

Amalus moved back to the stall. She scanned up and down the street, fearful of anyone else approaching. “Strange?” 
“People who don’t belong”
The monorail hissed loudly, another carriage pulling in. 
“Why me?”
“Because they’ll be here soon and you’ll tell me what they are.”

This was validation that Amalus had not received in times unremembered. She coughed, and wiped phlegm against her wrist. The action bought the pies close to her face and the rich odor of marhog and fhungberry rose in her nostril. Her stomach jumped with desire. Yesterday she has eaten a single vegetable pie, since then she’d consumed nothing but water from a public fountain. She looked at the packet Gharom had wrapped, and her belly rumbled. Her heart pounded in her chest. Solitude had been a way of life for so long that the concept of being asked to assist was difficult to contemplate.

“Okay,” she said. “But tell me what you think’s wrong about them.”
Gharom smiled her thanks. “I smell oil and machinery, but also earth and straw.”
“They’re mek-mek’s?” Amalus asked.
“No. They are more than people with mechanical parts. They worry me.”
“Why?”

“The street speaks to me,” she said. “All the things I can’t see, I read from the people who come past. Even the ones who never stop and speak. They may think they’re unobserved but how they walk down the street tells me who’s sad or glad, mourning or courting. Like that couple who went past just now. I heard them come down from the station with others. But while others headed straight off, probably home, this pair dawdled and stopped at nearly every shop. They’ve been coming by twice a week for a couple of months. I reckon they’ll be moving in together soon.“ Gharom wiped the countertop with a damp cloth. “And then there’s ones who do stop and speak, they…” She wiped the counter again.

Amalus nodded understanding. She used to like the company of others. Now she roamed alone, crept about in dark places. But she remembered how it felt before. She gurgled in her throat, a sound of acquiescence, and said,

“Gharom, of course I’ll help. When do they come past?”
“Soon. They normally start appearing around the time I’m closing up.”
“I’ll wait in the alley,” Amalus muttered and shuffled away.

She settled down where hot pipes ran behind the bricks and warmed the wall.
The pies oozed grease and gravy which coated her chin and fingers. She licked her hands and wiped her face. Movement on Chooner’s Lane caught her attention. An automaton walked stiffly down the middle of the street. Amalus dropped the empty pie bag and scrambled up. At the corner of the lane she met Gharom who had closed the stall and now stood in the street with her clockwork seeing guide. The machine was the size of a medium dog, but with thin spindly legs articulated in a way which gave it a feel of an arachnid. A braided cord hung from a small box in Gharom’s hand down to the machine in a loose parabola. For all the world it looked like a leash.

“What are they, Amalus?”
“Automatons.”
“But what type? And what are they doing in Sar-Chona?”
Amalus grunted, and coughed. She scratched her face and twitched her head from side to side. Gharom’s unseeing stare went through Amalus.
“Do you think they’re dangerous?” Gharom asked.
“No. Thanks for the pies.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” Gharom turned her head towards the street, a noise catching her attention. “Here come more of them.”

Amalus looked. A loose group of six automata walked along the street. Not quite together, but moving with a common purposes, to a common destination. Watching them made Amalus nervous for a reason she couldn’t articulate, but only because she didn’t want to think to hard about it. None of the machines were pristine. All were rusted and marked. A few had guano accretions around their shoulders; another had been painted bright blue at one time, though it was now faded and patchy. As they drew closer their sounds grew louder. Creaking and grinding, scraping and hissing, ticking and clunking. It was clear their internal mechanisms were as abused and neglected as the outer casings. But still they walked with steady steps.

“Best go home,” Amalus said to Gharom. “Will there be pies tomorrow?”
“Maybe. Probably. Are you sure these things are safe?”
“Yes. Go and get your sleep.”

Gharom nodded and pressed a switch on the box she held. The seeing guide whirred into life and turned its head left, right, up, and down, to orientate itself, then they moved off. Amalus watched Gharom walk down the street. Without knowing of the blindness, or what a seeing guide was, there would be no ready way to tell the woman was blind from this observation, you would think it was just someone walking their mechanical pet. When Gharom disappeared round a corner Amalus turned her attention back to the automata. More were passing, and still others could be seen in the distance, a steady procession of mechanical creatures making their way into Sar-Chona. 

Sar-Chona was a city that sucked people towards it. They came to get rich, or famous, or for a better life. A few succeeded. The majority failed. Some had success for a time, until they were broken and discarded - left to find a level of obscurity and penury to cling to. Amalus had found hers - begging wasn’t easy, but it placed few demands on her and she had developed a regular route of places that would provide the little sustenance she required. She wondered what brought these automata back to the city. 

Another mono-rail carriage hissed into the station. Doors swished open and the voices floating down hinted at drunken bonhomie amongst the last of the nights revelers returning home. Amalus shuffled out of the alley and moved in the direction of the machines. She matched her speed to theirs. They left the lower shopping district, passed the fringes of the theatre area, climbed beyond the entrances to the salt-sea docks and ware-houses, and finally came to Artificers Square. A rare piece of level ground in the city’s middle area, it was part of a small ridge which cut halfway across the steep slope between the upper and lower sections of Sar-Chona. Around the edges of the square craftsmen and mechanisters worked in sheds and workshops that sprawled out to abut other streets. Here were the makers of shock-flails and sprackle-cannons; constructors of vacuum globes and frictionless flywheels; designers of seeing guides - such as Gharom’s - and other automata, like the ones which gathered there now.

The climb up the city had taxed Amalus. She slunk into a wide doorway and wheezed, coughing dark phlegm onto the back of her arm. The square steadily filled, both with the machines and the sound of their workings. A cacophony of whirring, ticking, buzzing, knocking, and hissing as gears, pistons, cogs, and flywheels moved constantly. 
The square was about half-full. It was the most automata Amalus had seen in one place since… She stopped, willing the thought to a finish, yet not wanting to. It was the most automata she had seen in one place since before the decline, the fall, the fracture. She was wracked by another bout of coughing. More expectoration, and with it the taste of iron that was becoming more common. Looking around the buildings of the square was like looking back in time. The same doors, the same windows, even most of the signs remained the same as when she had worked here in a small workshop. The old workplace was just visible from the corner she pressed into. In the poor light of the street lamp it was impossible to say if the door was painted the same green color, but the name above the door was different. She wondered what Dinore Developments made. It probably wasn’t automata like AmInd had made, did make. It still produced machines she believed, of course the company name was different, no longer hers, and the workshop was a huge warehouse somewhere along the Wyrnal Canal.

AmInd hadn’t crossed her mind for years. Artificers Square wasn’t on her begging route. Not just because there was little food to be had here, but because it had the potential to call to mind memories which were vivid and real and she fought to keep such things away. 
She watched the machines. They stood unmoving. When a new one arrived it filed into line and stood as still as the rest. A steady drip of arrivals continued. When it stopped Amalus expected something to happen but the machines just stood facing the same direction.
A short time after the last automaton arrived, it left. The steady drip of arrival turned back on itself and the tide of metal flowed from the square. Amalus watched it go, unsure of what it meant or why they went. 

Staring at the retreating machines Amalus felt herself sink through the years. She had watched automata walk from this courtyard, had felt pride as they followed their owners down the hill, off to fields and farms where they would be used to for jobs as big as hauling machinery as small as scaring birds. Now she watched these machines depart to wherever they had come from. She counted as they left and reached forty-two by the time the last one departed. The number meant nothing to her. Some of the machines did trigger memories though, they looked familiar. Of course, there was no reason an automata she had built fifteen or twenty years ago wouldn’t still be working. In the early days she would have expected any of her machines to last far longer than the person who purchased them. Later, when the company was being stolen from under her, when she stopped watching the end product and only worked on new ideas, then quality became poor. Machines bearing her name started being sent back for repairs within weeks.

A violent cough dragged Amalus out of her reverie. She crossed the square to her old workshop and ran her fingers across the door. The new owners kept the paint as thickly glossed as she used to. It felt like a link, that somehow the door, and the workshop behind it, were still part of her. 

The urge to yawn overwhelmed her and the desire to sleep came with it. She turned and began the long walk to where she slept on a grating behind the bakery. The bakers never gave her any food, but it was a warm place to sleep.