Jindosh Reader Insert
A Decade Gone
TW: blood, gore, death, classism, Jindosh being a complete asshole
Sorry if this seems rushed, but it was almost 9 pages!
Part 1
You’d been serving the Armstrong family for almost three years and you had begun to take pride in this fact. They were a wealthy family just at the edge of Karnaca on Amber Street, up near the Prieto Reserves. The Aventa Quarter was one of the safer neighborhoods in Karnaca, certainly the safest you had ever worked in. To say the least, you had a very cushy job that paid you decently and took care of you. There hadn’t been a moment where you had questioned your happiness or willingness to go into work each day.
Well, until today.
The Lady of the house had given you specific instructions to go downtown to Aventa Station and take the carriage to the infamous Jindosh Mansion. Her Husband, a salesmen who dealt primarily with ores and minerals, was currently away in Tyvia and would be staying there for five months. His absence left her feeling a little anxious about security on the estate. You couldn’t really blame her. While they were wealthy, they didn’t have the luxury of the Royal Guard patrolling their grounds day in and day out. In fact, the only security they really had was their serving staff—that’s you—and the fake sense of safety that comes with being a well-known family in a decent neighborhood.
Despite being in a safer part of town surrounded with equally wealthy families, there were still instances of robbery that occurred on a monthly basis. Up until the Clockwork soldiers were released, these families would just have to adapt around losing fortunes every other month.
Lady Armstrong had written at least three letters to her husband with more urgency in every new paragraph. They had been saving money for years in order to purchase a new estate in Tyvia—so that when the Lord of the house went to sell, the Lady could accompany him and live safely until they could return to Karnaca. However, with the release of the Jindosh Soldiers, the Lady felt inclined to come up with another solution.
“They cost a fraction of the price of a new estate,” she would say as you readied her morning tea and biscuits. “And from what I’ve heard, they work better than any royal guard. Just think of what a new manor would cost us—having to hire a new staff, having to maintain the grounds between sales trips—it is much more sensible to invest in a Jindosh soldier.”
You heard her say “Jindosh” more than fifteen times a day. Eventually, her husband wrote her back and permitted the purchase of a single soldier—that’s all they could afford. He also, unfortunately, insisted that she not be the one to go pick it up.
You caught a glimpse of the letter after she had discarded it. His exact words were “. . . Jindosh may be a genius, but he was banned from the academy for a reason. I don’t feel comfortable sending you into his house. You will send a maid and a worker in our behalf. Pick someone who you trust to represent us.”
He might as well have spelled out your name.
And so—that is how you arrived where you are now, nauseous and riding the carriage cart up the steep hill to the mansion. You were wearing your absolute best outfit; you had to repair a hole in the sleeve the night before in a nervous hurry. Next to you sat Henry, the most robust worker that the Lady could have chosen. He was hulking in size with worn skin that had grown tough due to tremendous labor. It was fairly obvious that he would be handling the mechanical murder device while you dealt with the more dangerous of the two options—speaking with Kirin Jindosh on the Armstrong’s behalf.
You had heard horrible things about his mansion; you knew that countless members of his staff had perished in the hallways of his home due to accidents with the clockworks or the man himself after rather terrible moods.
Despite your own pride, you found yourself shaking ever so slightly as you arrived at the moss-covered cobblestones that comprised the entrance to the mansion. Henry reached to open the door for the two of you and you could have sworn you saw him hesitate. If this giant of a man was afraid of Jindosh, then you certainly had reason to be as well.
To your surprise, however, the warm light of the main room immediately calmed your nerves. It wasn’t so different form the Armstrong’s lobby area. There were large wooden carvings of sea creatures lined against the walls and a single desk in front of the door that an audiograph stationed neatly next to a plate of fruits.
You were the first to step through the threshold, the sound of your footstep echoing in the empty room. “Do you think we should wait here?” Henry asks. It’s the first time he’s spoken to you all day.
“Let’s see,” your fingers aren’t trembling as bad anymore as they reach for the audiograph. The device turns on as you flick the switch and with a loud popping sound of feedback, a voice fills the room.
“Welcome to my home, stranger. The door is always open to those with the will to pass the threshold. If you are here by appointment, they proceed—and bide your time. Otherwise I’d be remiss if I didn’t inform you about the defensive mechanisms employed here—which are quite formidable! Many have entered without invitation for reasons as myriad as the fish in the ocean. But of those that have dared to explore further, very few have found their way back out.”
Any sense of calm that you had gathered left you shortly after you realized whose voice greeted you. The hint of threat in his smooth voice was enough to set you on edge before he had even gotten to the part where he admitted that some guests had never left the mansion. There was a very large, apparent trace of arrogance that dispelled the fear and replaced it with something else, something bordering irritation.
Your agitation was likely due to the fact that you had grown accustomed to the Armstrong family and their politeness and agreeable nature. “The audacity,” you mutter, balling your fists and turning toward Henry. “Can you believe the nerve of this man?”
Henry looked positively pale. He didn’t answer.
As if by some sort of summoning, the foyer doors opened and a female guardsmen passed through the doorway, her body stiff as she greeted the two of you formally. “Armstrong?” she asked. All emotions fled from you as you rushed to best represent your household. You folded your hands in front of you and replied with a curt, “Ah, yes.”
“This way, please. You will need to wait in the guest room until Mr. Jindosh is ready to greet you. He’s in the middle of a huge project, currently.”
“A huge project?” You asked as she led you to the doorway between two sets of carpeted stairs. “Forgive me, but I was under the impression that we were here by appointment. Did Mr. Jindosh not receive the Armstrong’s letter—?”
“Mr. Jindosh is aware of your appointment. He sends his condolences.”
The way she says it makes you press your lips together firmly so that you don’t end up saying anything else. Her back is to you, but you can practically see the irritated look on her face. Henry is silent, ghosting behind you despite his enormous size.
The three of you arrive in an open room with a high glass ceiling. The walls are lined with tables of food that looks like it was freshly put out. The smell of roasted rabbit swims in your head and you try to ignore the guise of it all—how they are trying to make you feel at home. The floor is made of glass, below your feet you see an arc-pylon waiting to be brought up if a threat arises. You try not to think about the possibility of someone dying in this room.
“This way,” says the guardswoman. She directs you and Henry into a small waiting room on the right. There are striped couches awaiting you as well as a couple of bookshelves full of literature. You got the immediate feeling that Mr. Jindosh was quite used to being ‘in the middle of huge projects.’
“If you’ll take a seat, Mr. Jindosh will be with you shortly.”
“Ah, if you don’t mind me asking—” you begin to say. The guardswoman pauses and you can see her hands clench into annoyed fists. You are reminded very abruptly of where you are and who you are. She’s probably dealt directly with noble men and women up until this point. Her curtesy toward you most likely won’t extend past formalities. She has every right to admonish you; you’re beneath her. “—Nevermind, I’ve sorted it out in my head.” You finish discretely, taking your seat on the less than comfortable furniture.
She gives you a curt nod, acknowledging your submission more than anything else, and takes her leave.
As soon as she’s out of ear-shot, you let out a deep sigh of relief and are shocked to hear Henry do the same. “I don’t know about you, miss,” he says, looking completely out of place on the tiny furniture. “But this whole place gives me the creeps.”
You couldn’t agree more.
The next couple of hours were spent reading books that were on the shelves and trying to stay awake as you waited for Jindosh. You took the time to recount the money that Lady Armstrong had sent with you to pay for the clockwork. It had been kept in your pouch, tightly secured to your waist. It was more money than you’d ever held in your life and likely would ever hold. It would pay for a clockwork, yes, but it would also pay for you to go back to school and for every maid in the household to feed their children for a year. You run your hands over the pouch every few seconds, astounded that its there and that you were entrusted it with it. Its true that you could have run away with it the second she let you out of her sights, but you knew that was never an option. The Armstrongs were too good to you.
In the midst of deep thought, you feel yourself begin to yawn. How long had it been since the guardswoman had left? Two hours? Three? The light coming from the glass ceiling in the main room was artificial. You had arrived hear around 2 o’clock, it would be getting darker by now, yes?
Attempting to stretch your legs, you hoist yourself up from your seat only to have your legs threaten to go out from under you. The room was moving! The glass lobby sunk in front of you as the room you were began to rise. Henry clutched a dainty pillow within his great big fists and looked like he would be ill. You place a calming hand on his forearm, though you yourself were soon to be sick as well. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, only a few seconds in fact. The room stopped with a jolting motion that sent you back into your sitting position with an undignified thud.
“By the void,” you grumble, trying to steady yourself again. This was worse than sea legs!
“You’ll have to forgive me for making you wait,” came a familiar voice, “But you see, I’m a very busy man. I’m sure you understand.”
You turn around in your seat a little too fast, obviously frightened. So much for not giving away your state of mind. Standing before you is a tall gentlemen who is mostly legs and the rest suave. His hair is styled back, his eyes thin and unforgiving. It’s the way he’s standing, too, with an arm behind his back and the other loosely holding a clipboard in front of his chest—like he’s trying to present.
And he was. This was almost exactly how you envisioned him. Complete with the smug moustache and smirk. Of course, there were paintings of him but they didn’t really do him justice. They always made him look shorter than he really was.
You have to shake yourself out of your thoughts in order to stand up and properly great him. “I do, sir. It’s no trouble.”
You give him a small curtsy; Henry bows himself slightly. Jindosh says, while you’re leaned down, “I’m used to dealing with nobility and they often times are not keen on waiting more than a half hour. But I suppose the help, such as yourself, don’t have any standards to go by.”
There’s a burning feeling in your stomach. You bite your tongue.
“We are here to represent the Armstrong family, sir. They have made arrangements to purchase a Jindosh Clockwork Soldier from you. I’ve brought the coin and a letter from the Lord of the house giving his permission to carry the money in the Armstrong name.”
He says nothing to you for a good seven seconds, merely looking you up and down with an unimpressed expression plastered on his face. You feel your ears grow warmer the lower he glances, knowing that he’s aware of your tattered clothes.
“He’s walking as he’s talking, down a railed pathway that hugs the right wall. Below there is a glass maze that allows the viewer to see inside. “Armstrong . . . Armstrong . . . Oh, yes, the miniscule manor uptown. The salesman, correct? Hm. Very well. I have the paperwork here. I’m assuming that you want a standard model, the ones that don’t have depth perception yet. Those are prototypes and while they are available for purchase, they cost a pocket’s worth more and are still under construction. I know my letter with the Lady of the house negotiated a newer model, but after later consideration, I have decided against that. Your household is far too small.”
You stiffen with indignation, “Sir, it’s not . . . miniscule.” There’s a bit of spite in your voice and he definitely takes notice of it. “The Armstrongs are a respectable house in Karnaca, just as deserving as any other noble household.”
He stops walking and turns to face you fully. There’s a glint of something in his eyes that you don’t like at all, directing your gaze elsewhere as his falls upon you. He says, “I don’t usually do handouts to such small families. They aren’t at risk of robbery as larger households are; they don’t provide a very good experience for the Clockwork and they don’t typically yield useful results.”
“But sir,” says Henry. His voice is thick from all the tension. “Lord Armstrong is away in Tyvia. The Lady of the house is all by herself and would feel much safer if—,”
You interrupt Henry, “Mr. Jindosh, you don’t seem to understand—,”
That does it.
Jindosh draws his clipboard in front of him and scrawls something down as he speaks, “Listen, the both of you, while I loathe having to take time away from my studies to deal with business affairs pertaining to noble men and women, I do find it incredibly insulting that the Lady and Lord of house Armstrong have sent their serving staff to address the Grand Inventor. Now. We can do this one of two ways: I can send you home with a standard Jindosh Clockwork model and you can pay the typical amount, or I can have you both sent home to your houses with a letter signed by myself stating the exact amount of time that you’ve wasted here today. Are we at an understanding?”
You feel yourself growing angrier and angrier the more he opens his mouth. This man wasn’t frightening at all. He was infuriating.
Henry rushes to say, “Yes sir, we understand. We apologize, deeply, truly.”
Jindosh isn’t looking at Henry, he’s looking at you.
“Are we at an understanding?” He repeats, slower this time.
A pause fills the space between the two of you. You take a deep breath and let it out, saying, “Yes, sir. My deepest apologies.”
“Very good,” he says, like you’re some sort of animal that he’s conditioned. “Now then. The loading area is a floor down. I’m going to assume that’s why you’re here” he gestures to Henry with the tip of his pen. The bulking man gives him a swift nod. “Meet with my staff down there, they will debrief you on the handling of a clockwork. Do mind their instructions.”
Henry doesn’t move from his spot next to you. After second, you realize that Jindosh didn’t give you instructions to go with him. He’d be leaving you alone.
The inventor didn’t seem to notice the hesitance as he continued to jot down information on the clipboard. You turn to Henry and once more place a hand on his arm, ushering him away. He goes, but only after a wary look at Jindosh then a squeeze of your shoulder.
As he leaves, you stand and wait for Jindosh to finish his note taking. He doesn’t seem to have anything left to say, glancing from his clipboard to the maze below, then back at the paper. You take the time to observe him closely; this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity after all. The other servants will want details when you return. There’s a cook by the name of Milly back at the manor who goes on and on about Jindosh’s attractiveness. She had once seen him give a press release when he had first introduced the clockworks. While his attitude spoiled him for you, you could not help but admit she had been right. He was perfectly agreeable visually. And, yes, there was an appeal to an intelligent man. Regardless, that was all the good you could say about the Grand Inventor.
After about five minutes, you ask, “Sir, about the payment method—,”
The man sighs. He sighs! Like you had interrupted him from something important!
“Yes, yes, of course. You’re paying in coin, correct? The price was already discussed, but of course it’s going to be reduced now that you have a later model. I do hope you don’t intend to steal the rest of the money. I’ll be sure to send a letter with the receipt to the lady of the house.”
This man. This man.
“I would expect nothing less,” you grit through a smile.
“Hm,” he responds doubtfully. With one last pen flick, he moves to hover over your shoulder, placing the clipboard in your hands. He’s too close now; you have to fight the urge to elbow him in the side.
“You’ll need to sign here. It’s not a very legitimate signature; I would have preferred to have the Lady or Lord of house Armstrong here to sign. But if they trust you, then what can be done?”
You finish signing your name and eagerly hand the clipboard back to him, desperate to get some space between the two of you. He doesn’t move, examining your signature from over your shoulder.
He says your name aloud and it’s like you’ve never heard it voiced before. There’s something about how it sounds coming out of the mouth of a genius that is unique and equally terrifying.
“Yes, sir.” You turn around so that you can face him without having him breathing over your shoulder. “First of my name.” There’s a smirk on your face that he returns.
“We’re all royalty in our own eyes, aren’t we?” he muses, not really expecting an answer. You watch him tear off a perforated bit of the paper at the bottom and hand it to you. You take it and glance at the line of numbers that have been written on it.
“Is this the price?” you ask meekly. He gives you a sly smile.
“More than you make in a decade, yes?”
You couldn’t even be angry; he was right. Fortunately, the Armstrong family had sent you well prepared to pay it. The price looked much larger when it was written on paper.
Jindosh directs you back to the waiting room, pulling the handle that lowers the room back to the first floor. You don’t feel as dizzy this time around, but that might be attributed to how much you’re focusing on not showing weakness in front of him. As the room settles, he leads you out of it and into the room across from it. There’s a desk with paperwork that had barely been touched and a safe in the corner. He dials in the code, not even bothering to hide it from you despite all his talk of thievery.
You open the pouch and deal out the coin to him, counting it aloud to make sure that you don’t miss a single cent. He takes his own pouch from the safe and stores the coin away, closing the safe and laying the clipboard down on his desk. “Very good. Now, let’s go down to the loading area to make sure that your husband has finished with the heavy lifting.”
“He’s not my husband,” you say, though you’re not sure why you have to.
He doesn’t seem to notice or care, leading you to the elevator at the end of the glass foyer. Walking above the arc pylon makes the hairs on your neck stand up, but you quickly smoothen your façade so that he doesn’t notice your displeasure.
It occurs to you as you’re waiting with him in the elevator that you’re being very aware of your appearance around him. Instead of thinking about it too hard, you attribute it to your need to represent the Armstrong family and ignore all other possibilities.
As the elevator lowers, you can hear something that sounds . . . not good.
You hadn’t heard the sound of men dying before, but it was a sound that one recognizes the first time that they hear it. Screams like this would paralyze even the most experienced soldier.
“What in the void?!” Jindosh snarls, taking a step back from the elevator doors. He hits the override button just as the wooden panels separate and just before the bars open. This allows the two of you to see the entire scene at a safe distance.
For the most part, you had lived a very safe and sheltered life. You had never witnessed a war and you had never had to attend to anything worse than an accident with a kitchen knife.
The amount of blood that you saw before you set your stomach turning. Before you, in the middle of the loading area, was a dismembered clockwork. Its wooden attributes were missing and it looked as though it had been in the process of being dismantled and packaged when whatever happened had happened. Really, though, it was hard to tell what was what when everything was covered in visceral entrails and body parts.
The clockwork itself laid in several different parts on the floor, smoking and sizzling in the puddles of blood. The sounds of screams had stopped right as the elevator had opened up, but there were still bodies lying everywhere, writhing or convulsing.
One of those bodies belonged to Henry.
He was alive, from what you could tell, but just barely. His arm was missing, his stomach slashed open. He was whimpering.
You fling yourself at the metal bars, prying them open with your bare hands. Jindosh voices his disdain from behind you, but you aren’t really listening. “Henry?!” You cry out, trying to run to him without slipping on the mess. “What happened? Henry!”
You fall to his side, taking his head in your hands. His eyes look beyond you, somewhere far away, but he is still alive. “We were taking it apart,” he mumbles, “we were gonna package it up—they said it wouldn’t wake— they said it wouldn’t attack us unless something triggered it.”
The sound of Kirin’s footsteps approach from behind you. He says nothing.
“Henry, how did this happen?” you wipe away the blood from his mouth, but more keeps coming as he tries to relay information to you.
“It wasn’t supposed to come alive! It—they said—they said it could be taken apart safely—I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to take off the headpiece first—they didn’t tell me—they didn’t see me do it until it was too—late.”
You feel a lump well up in your throat as you watch him dying in your arms. “It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault. I’ll take care of this, don’t you worry.” You squeeze his arm one last time, watching as the light in his eyes fades away right in front of you.
“If you take off the headpiece, it relies only on audio feedback.” Jindosh says. His voice doesn’t sound too terribly invested in the scene before him. “They probably did tell him not to take it off first and he didn’t pay any attention. It wouldn’t be the first time. This is by far the worst case scenario, though, I must say. What a mess.”
You lay Henry’s head down on the wet floor, your hand trembling, covered in blood all the way up to your elbows. “This—this wasn’t supposed to happen.” You murmur, “No one was supposed to die—I wasn’t supposed to let him die.”
“Well, he’s dead. As are at least eight of my own employees. Not to mention the destroyed Clockwork! I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how much it costs, considering you just handed the coin to me just a moment ago—.”
You whirl around; your hand stings as it connects with his cheek. “How dare you? How dare you? You insufferable piece of shit.” Tears sting at your eyes. You hadn’t even known Henry for very long but he didn’t deserve to die like that, terrified and thinking that it was all his fault. Even if it was!
Jindosh’s hand touches his face, his eyes boring into you so hard that by the time you realize what you’ve done, he’s already made up his mind about what to do next.
“So that’s eight dead men and one destroyed clockwork. I’d say that calls for some ample reimbursement, wouldn’t you?” His hand leaves his face and you blanch at the mark your palm had left on his skin. “I’ll be sending a letter to the Lord and Lady of house Armstrong denying their request for a Clockwork, after all. And let’s see,” he points out the bodies in the room, pretending to recount them. “Exactly eight dead employees of mine? I think you, at the very least, should be compensation enough. A servant that can read and write is worth at least ten that can’t even give decent instructions, wouldn’t you say? I’ll write the Armstrongs asking for your transfer in the morning. In the meantime, I hope you wouldn’t mind cleaning up this mess? It’s beginning to stain the hardwood.”
“Transfer?” you echo, “Mr. Jindosh, I’m so sorry—I shouldn’t have ever raised a hand to you—I can’t tell you how horrible I feel—,”
“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time to do that while you work here for me. I hope you won’t mind my mentioning your assault in the letter. That might help them send your paperwork faster.”
You take a step forward and feel your shoes beginning to soak up the blood. You look down and feel yourself grow light-headed. Surely this isn’t happening; you never would have struck Kirin Jindosh in your right mind. This must all be some sort of hallucination. Just thirty minutes ago you were sitting in his waiting room!
“This—it’s all a misunderstanding—I can’t—you can’t—,”
He turns his back to you, walking toward the elevator. “You’ll work here until you can pay off the clockwork your incompetent cohort destroyed. How long did we say it would take, earlier? A decade?” he spits the last word at you as the wooden panels of the elevator close before him and he disappears.
You hear his voice over the intercoms calling for more maids to meet you as well as some guardsmen to help clear out the debris. All you can do is stand there, soaked up to your ankles in someone else’s blood, watching as they drag Henry’s body out of sight. The house keepers try to speak to you, snapping their fingers in front of your face and guiding you to a seat. They ask if you’re alright, but they don’t ask what happened. They have probably seen something like this a thousand times.
If you hadn’t hit him, you would just be another number. You’d still get to go home.
What a fool you’d been.
Note:
So I know that the loading dock isn’t an actual floor in Jindosh’s home but like…how does he ship them off to people? Do they just strap them to the top of the carriages? Fictitious loading dock area it is then.