Creative Writing Excerpt: Steampunk Novel, "Minus"

About This Excerpt:

In a poisoned, post-blast world ruled by an immaculate elite, Minus paints from The Warrens—where defiance is a death sentence and the only way of life to survive.

When the Empire’s most feared highborne woman asks him for a portrait only he has the skills to deliver, Minus agrees under one, unspoken condition; that he remain true to his eye without losing his head.

---

Another Sacrifice

I turn in my box bed. Thirty minutes later, I’m still on my back and the air is still hot. I can’t go back to sleep like this. I never do unless I’ve had too much Warren wine and the bruising hangover forces me to forget my obligations.

One thing brings solace in this thick miasma of choke, stone, dirt, and longing. The first part of this physical sacrifice for her Highness’ painting is done.

Abel has mixed enough blood-of-youth Innocence to drip that Harpy’s canvas from her crowned head to her steel-heeled toe with it until she swims. If I did that though, if I covered her in the blood of the innocents she’s disposed of as cruelly as waves drowned thousands of refugees at The Gates three hundred years ago, surely I’d be extinguished like them.

I imagine my dark red essence pooling at her feet as she steps over my corpse after she’s cut me down, head from body. One stroke is all it would take. Our Lady, the Harpy of Empire, smiles as every last drop of my ink runs. Then she laughs. I was just like everyone else all along. Worthless Warren flea.

I won’t do it. She’s the one who has asked for this commission. She’s the one who stomped into this stone studio with her gloved arms spread too wide, elaborate buttons running every spare inch of her, demanding that she have her own Minus portrait before the Empire officer’s commission parade. Her guards threw the richest sum of coins, sealed in a deerskin purse, in my lap to seal the contract before I could object.

Why do I keep thinking about her? Because something about her is different, though they’ve all been bred to be perfectly alike in their flawlessness and vitality.

In her last sitting, when her guards walked away, she came close to me and asked me if I thought she was beautiful and if I could capture this to her liking. There was a simple pleading behind her raven irises that portrait-seekers often have. Her face was near to mine and I smelled the cleanliness of her biogen skin and purewater wash. The many gears on her biotech corset hummed and the watchface cameo near her heart ticked with the pleasant clicks of fine Empire craftsmanship.

Even at uncomfortably close range, her snake-shaped face is astonishingly symmetrical, her skin has a transfixing translucence to it. A pity her mouth is too small and her eyes too almond and deep-set for my liking. Of course, I didn’t tell her that. My studio may be small and I may be smaller. But I am no fool. 

I nodded my head. She called her two guards. They gathered one in front, one behind her, extendo canes at the ready to powershock me to death should any threat arise though no one from Warrens has ever stood against the better-armed Empire. She turned and left, dragging layer upon layer upon layer of expensive Empire brocade behind her in the burnt dust like writhing Blast snakes mark the green sand when they’ve been hookshot by runhunts. Her dress alone could buy me four new arms, at market price.

I have agreed on the surface to perform for her. However, I have one last trick up my special-made mech arms, as I always do.

She will never be satisfied with her portrait when it’s done. She’ll always have this feeling of unease when she looks at it. She’ll put it in a hundred different rooms in her tower and light it a thousand different ways. Still, the portrait will seem wrong. Not wrong enough for her to hate it or hide it in a backroom in one of her many backrooms. She’ll have it displayed in the best place in her home. And that will bother her. In that small way, I will unconsciously torture her as she’s openly tortured many.

She will feel the Foreboding that makes up her eyes and sense the Malice within them. She will see the mud-brown Guilt that weaves through every inch of her fine garments. She will wake at night from horrible dreams about the Regret she’s never felt before and can’t understand that’s in every inch of her commission. When she looks at her painting when she wakes up, it will be staring back at her, looking through her.

Rumor has it she’s over one hundred years old and some Empire elite can live to be two hundred years plus, looking never a day over fifty, no matter how the time has passed or how much Blast exposure they’ve had. That means she’ll despair over her portrait for another century. She will remember me.

The best part is no one else, no matter their age, will like it either and will move on to other conversations and paintings as soon as they can without looking impolite. Inside, they’ll all feel it's wrong. But that is what will make it perfect.

They will remember me in the Empire long after I have expired.

For now, I will live to see another long day in the bowels of our rat’s maze of tunnels and burrows that is The Warrens.

---

Excerpt from Minus, an unpublished novel by Elizabeth Gabel