As he pressed the last button the box hummed, and Rafik felt a strong jolt of pain hitting his fingers and travelling up his arm. He must have screamed—he certainly heard something resembling his own voice—but it was as if he were screaming from a long distance away. He was somewhere else, somewhere safe, enveloped by darkness and staring into emptiness, happy to be away from the people and the noise. They were all bad people, he knew, even Khan, even Dominique—they were like the Tarakan infidels he was warned about, and Jakov was the worst of them. He was a metal man. The man who lets metal be a part of him is cursed for eternity. He and all of his shall perish in holy fire.
In the darkness, shapes and symbols began to form. They were closer than the symbols in his dreams, much less numerous and all drawn in a faint greyish colour. The symbols moved sluggishly around and in obvious patterns. Rafik stopped one symbol from moving the wrong way before he realised what he was doing. Then he did it with another symbol, and another, again and again. The pattern was so evident that Rafik almost laughed. He quickly stopped the symbols to form half the pattern, and then, with a surge of inexplicable pride, he exposed the entire pattern. There was a soft buzzing sound and a flash of light, and he was suddenly in the room again, with his fingers out of the box.
“I did it,” he said excitedly, “I solved the puzzle.”
“Yes, you did.” Jakov’s half grin was as wide as it was unpleasant.
“Are you sure?” asked Khan. “It was only a couple of seconds. What do you mean, ‘puzzle’? What did you see in there?”
Rafik was too confused to answer, but he heard Jakov say, “Yes, I’m sure, only his kind can do this, anyone else gets a mighty jolt, believe me. What you have here, my friend, is a genuine Puzzler.”
Khan whooped and even clapped his hands, unable to contain his joy, but Jakov kept calm and turned back to the boy. “Tell me, Rafik, who is Khan to you?”
Rafik turned his head towards Khan and said, “He is my uncle.”
“Really? Uncle?” Jakov’s made a show of turning his gaze back and forth from boy to man. “Strange, you don’t look alike at all. Even your skin colour is different.”
“Uncle twice removed,” Khan said quickly. “Or even three times. I don’t know, my family’s history is a bit … eh … complex, shall we say.”
“Interesting. Well, I can take him off your hands for a fair price, my friend.”
Khan shook his head vigorously at that. “No, no, no, I’m sorry I can’t. I promised the boy’s mother, you know how it is …”
Jakov leaned back in his chair. “Oh, well, of course. Promised, you say. Very important, a man’s word, that is. I can get you connected with someone, then, how about that, twenty-five percent of the agreed purchase?”
Khan spread his hands wide, “I’m sorry Jakov, but the family is in debt and desperately need the coin. I could do fifteen.”
Jakov’s human face hardened as if it were the metal part. He leaned slowly forward and gently brushed some dirt from Rafik’s shoulders. The boy was too scared to move away.
“Twenty-two, and you are making me look bad in front of my own men.”
“Eight—nineteen is what I can do,” said Khan hastily.
“Let’s agree on a nice round twenty, shall we?”
Khan spat on his hand and thrusted it forward before realising he was offering to shake Jakov’s metal hand. He dropped the hand to his lap and stuttered, “That’s a deal, Jakov, thank you.”
“Good man, good man.” Jakov smiled without humour. “Why shake hands when we could drink to our success, my friend? You should try this cheese I have. There’s a farm I stop in every time I come here. They are all cousins or something, some of them can barely speak, but they make the best cheese I’ve ever tasted. It’s really an art form.”
Khan turned his head, “You hear this, Rafik? You’re a lucky boy. There are some important people who want to see you, far, far away from this rust hole.”
Rafik did not understand too much of what was happening. He was still in a daze from what he had gone through only moments before. Everything around him seemed distant and sharp at the same time. The guard at the door had an interesting pattern engraved in the belt of his power armour; there were seven chairs in the room but only three of them were grey. Jakov’s metallic hand had long fingers with four joints each and two thumb-like digits with two joints each for a total of thirty-two joints …
At the front of his mind though, above all else, was the answer to the question he’d been searching for since the day the tattoos appeared on his fingers. These men told him what was wrong with him; they named his malady. He was a Puzzler. Now he had to find out what that meant.
The way back to the bar was a blur, but Rafik did remember Khan hugging him and pinching his cheeks. Khan hailed one of the small metal carts that could drive without a pony and paid the driver coin to bring them back to the bar faster. Rafik never sat on or in anything that could move so fast. Cold air blew through the open windows, and the setting sun warmed his face. The seat was soft and comfortable, and he was suddenly very tired from the excitement of the day. Rafik saw symbols dancing in front of his eyes. They merged into the Tarakan symbol that marked the tower they’d passed on their way to see Jakov. He was startled when Martinn shook him awake.
“We’re here. Now you can sleep on your own mat.”
As soon as they got into the bar, Dominique came charging at them and peppered Khan with questions. Every time Khan tried to deflect she became angry, and every time he answered truthfully she became furious. It was quite peculiar, really.
“You went to meet that tin head? Have you lost your mind, Khan? That man is more vicious than a rabid dog with hot peppers stuck up his hole.”
“Everything is under control,” Khan said. “We’ve been handed a truck load of of metal.”
Dominique shoved Khan aside and pointed at Rafik. “What are you going to do about the little mutt now?”
“I’m going to arrange transport for us—you, me, Martinn, and the boy. We will go to Regeneration, maybe even visit my brother Gandir, and take the long tube to the City of Towers. I know someone there, a contact. He can arrange things, he knows some influencial people. We’ll get the guilds interested, maybe even set up an auction.”
Dominique was not impressed. “Any plans involving your idiot of a brother is as foolish as you are.”
Khan spread his hands. “Who said anything about involving the lard bucket on this? I just want to see his face when he sees us chest deep in metal. I’ll even buy that stupid house he stole from me and toss him to the streets, that’s what I’ll do.”
“And who is going to take care of the bar?” Dominique shook her head at Khan. “Or did you forget the amount of coin you owe or the kind of people you owe to?”
“Dominique, bane of my existence, thorn in my side, sweet unreachable lips”—Khan lowered his voice to an almost inaudible whisper—“if this deal goes the way I think it will, there is no coming back to this lousy bar. There are far better places to live than Newport. I hear the coast has some wonderful ruined cities that are being reconstructed. We could build a house there, maybe even on the seashore like you always tell me that you dream of …”
Dominique glared at Khan and grunted something about him being too much of a miser to buy passage for four. “You’ll be lucky if he takes you with him,” she said to Martinn when Khan left, “and that will only be because he needs you to watch his back.”