Pinion

PINION

TOR BOOKS BY JAY LAKE

Mainspring

Escapement

Green

Pinion

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

PINION

Copyright © 2010 by Joseph E. Lake Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lake, Jay.

Pinion / Jay Lake. — 1st ed.

     p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

“A Tor book”—T.p. verso.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2186-2

1. Magic—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3612.A519P56 2010

813’.6—dc22

2009040730

First Edition: April 2010

Printed in the United States of America

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I finally wrote a love story. Submarines, airships and all.
Shannon, this one is for you. So are all the rest.

This book would not have been possible without the wonderful assistance of people too numerous to fully list here. Nonetheless, I shall try, with apologies to whomever I manage to omit from my thank-yous. My deepest gratitude to Ginjer Buchanan, Kelly Buehler and Daniel Spector, Sarah Bryant, Ann Cannon, Todd Christensen, Michael Curry, the Fireside Writers Group, Dr. Daniel Herzig, Ambassador Joseph Lake, Shannon Page, Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, Ken Scholes, the Scholes twins, the Omaha Beach Party, Amber Eyes and everyone in the blogosphere and the Twitter-verse who followed my adventures, answered my questions, and generally kept me entertained through this writing. There are many others I have neglected to name: that omission is my own fault and does not reflect on any of you.

I also want to recognize the Brooklyn Post Office here in Portland, Oregon, as well as the late, lamented Fireside Coffee Lodge and Lowell’s Print-Inn for all their help and support. Special thanks go to Jennifer Jackson, Beth Meacham, Deanna Hoak, Melissa Frain and Kyle Avery for making this into a book. Also I want to thank Irene Gallo and Stephan Martiniere for such a wonderful set of series covers as I have been blessed with.

This is the book I wrote between my first bout of cancer and its return. My greatest thanks go to everyone who struggles, and everyone who heals, and most of all, to those who love.

Errors and omissions are entirely my own responsibility.

PINION

And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass.          
—Leviticus 26:19

Red-brown Ethiopian dust blossomed under British artillery shells, furrowing the violently turned earth as if by the plow of God. Overpressure from the explosions buffeted the Brass man like angry fists. The British were standing off to take their vengeance for ships lost and the city of Mogadishu half-burned, one whistling projectile at a time. Fear glistened on the grim faces of the Chinese air sailors who had taken him prisoner long weeks ago.

His kind did not know fear. Fear was an animal emotion, a rush of hot blood driven by squalid monkey unreason. Boaz was heir to an unbroken line of cool precision, the Brass race first created in ancient days by the wisdom of King Solomon and since perpetuated in magnificent perfection.

Or so he told himself as the man Lu Hsu screamed in terror just before a whistling shell dropped into his sheltering hole. Bloody spray erupted laced with rock fragments. Chin Yuen, the surviving petty officer, bawled a Chinese order that Boaz had learned meant “move out.”

Boaz once again considered simply walking into the rain of hot steel and lead. Brass were not invulnerable. Solomon’s First Seal glowed within his head as with all his fellows, but even it could not remake severed limbs, shattered chest, or tangled clockwork.

He realized Chin Yuen was screaming at him. The little man had much in common with Boaz’ closest friend, Angus Threadgil al-Wazir. Those two shared a petty officer’s view of human frailty, the idiocies of command and the general uselessness of civilians.
That
came through from Chin Yuen even without a language in common.

The Chinese shouted, his face flushed a dusky rose as his dark eyes
glittered. Boaz just stared, wondering what the man was about, until a bullet spalled off his own shoulder with a sound like a flat-toned bell.

Chin Yuen shook his head and raced off bent low, as if incoming fire could distinguish between a man walking tall and a man scuttling.

Boaz decided that the Chinese petty officer was right. This was not a good day to die. The Brass walked after Chin, passing through smoke and fire and boiling dust as if he were the hollow wraith that his heart had become in the absence of Paolina.

Memory is perfection.

To misremember is impossible, in a proper man.

To misthink is impossible, with proper memory.

To act imperfectly is impossible, with proper thinking.

Logic flows in ratios, the magnificent alignment of radii and teeth and the tiniest cuttings of gear trains creating inconceivable precision. Events are captured to be ever available, ever ready.

Until someone reaches into your head and tweaks the crystals. Stores them in the archives of Authority without leaving a record of where the memory has gone. Undoes the mighty power of the Seal and replaces it with monkey unthinking and the wretched errors to which flesh is prone.

Until someone touches you with a bowl of oil and pronounces a name you never knew you could have, then flies away in a cloud of canvas and hydrogen and newborn regret and you are left among shouting madmen who labor like ants at the will of their distant, bloated queen.

Self is a flaw in the patterns of memory, errors in the unbroken chain of reason stretching back through time. Imperfection is unthinkable, literally.

Until you have been broken beyond repair.

Chin Yuen’s band of air sailors and marines once more slipped the British trap. They were being driven north, repeatedly forced inland. Their sole blessing was that the Royal Navy could not field sufficient airships to harry them effectively. The fires at Mogadishu had reduced the fleet until reinforcements could arrive.

Only one sailor in the contingent spoke English—Chin Ping, no relation to Chin Yuen. He was small, as most of these Chinese were, his blue quilted uniform torn and patched and smeared with grubby dust until he seemed a soft, mobile part of the landscape. His eyes retained the midnight purity that Boaz had come to associate with these people.

“He ask you,” Chin Ping said.
He
was always Chin Yuen. Beyond that,
the sailor’s grasp of En glish pronouns was shaky, as if the entire class of words existed only to refer to his commander, or Boaz himself.

The Brass man sat in the shade of a thornbush. The westering sun cast long shadows—his blended with the tree’s. The air was still miserably hot for the humans. Dust grated in his joints and scarred his body and sometimes clouded his vision. They were safe enough; no En glishman could approach their rocky highland without being observed long before his arrival.

At least the total lack of water offered little risk to him.

“What does he inquire of me?” Boaz finally responded, speaking to Chin Ping’s air of expectancy.

“He ask you find direction.”

“Each point of the compass is accounted for.” Boaz could scan three-quarters of the circumference of the horizon from where he sat. “Every possible direction.”

“Ah . . .” Chin Ping tried again. A few swift, liquid syllables of Chinese spilled from his mouth, with neither the emphasis of a curse nor the resignation of despair. Then, in En glish: “Path. To big water. Make fire for help.”

“The British continue to drive us inland.”

Chin Ping nodded vigorously. “Time now, time now.”

“A rendezvous.”

Boaz stared eastward across the miles toward the sullen glint of the sea. The thread of Earth’s orbital track gleamed crisply in the sky. The Wall loomed to the south, rising like a woman’s hands to—

Incorrect thought
.

Boaz forced himself to stop. Some memories were too difficult. Not painful, for he was no monkey to live on the frothing edge of emotion, but difficult. Paolina had given Boaz to himself, conquering his will like an invading army.

“Tell,” Chin Ping was saying. His fingers touched Boaz’ forearm, tracing the textured brass greave. “Tell, ah, then have problem no more.”

“No more problems,” Boaz echoed. He stood, not worrying if the last of the sun would flash bright off his body to catch the eyes of distant watchers. “You have need to reach the sea soon, and avoid the British.”

Oddly, something in this high, wasted terrain did stir memories. Africa had its secrets, just as did the Wall. Boaz held the merest fraction of either of those books of knowledge, but his sliver of wisdom was the only sword these lost Chinese could wield to cut their way back to freedom.

Later, there was more labored conversation around a smoldering fire. Chin Ping served as the mouth for two dozen anxious pairs of eyes. They’d
cremated seven of their fellows thus far, and a pair of the wounded were not likely to last another day.

“Need tall place,” Chin Ping told him. “Tall place close to big water, ah.”

“For your signal fire,” Boaz said. “At some arranged moment.”

Chin Ping nodded vigorously. His shipmates stared like wolves.

“We make for east of north,” the Brass intoned, one hand out to point the way. “Past that ridge of rocks we will find a drainage course. We may follow that off these highlands and so approach the sea.”