Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (26 page)

THE GRAND ALLIANCE

“T
HE
T
INSKIN REPRESENTATIVE
, A
LHAMBRA
C
ORTEZ
, has arrived, Admiral,” Cantrell, the captain of the guard, declared, looking a bit harried by the new guest.

“Admiral Balthazar Crankshaft!” Cortez said. “How grand of you to invite us to your little parley here in your castle of boulders! We are most honored to be included, of course, we humble children of the south.”

Cortez was a graceful, silver-tongued woman with brown-black hair and a baritone voice clear and polished as a vespers bell. Her armored clothes glittered about her, and a high-combed morion helmet with cheek-guards rested in the crook of her arm, its tall peacock feather framing the left side of her head. Her skin was sand colored, her eyes deep brown and expressive, her face both pleasant and belligerent.

Buckle studied Cortez—she was young, perhaps only a few years older than him, but he sensed there was precious little youth left in her. He knew next to nothing about the Tinskins, but their ambassadors were reputed to be arrogant snakes—arrogant snakes with a lot of cannons behind them.

“We are most pleased you could attend upon such short notice, Ambassador Cortez,” Balthazar said. “Welcome to the Devil’s Punchbowl.”

“I would not have missed it, of course,” Cortez said with a wave of her white-gloved hand. She perched at the center of the table and with one sweep of her eyes, it seemed to Buckle, gathered all the details about the participants she might ever need to know.

Cortez placed her helmet on the table. “I offer my profuse apologies regarding my late arrival to the party. The captain of my airship has been suitably reprimanded, I assure you. So have we yet formulated any battle plans regarding the destruction of the Founders?”

“We do not seek their destruction, Madame Cortez,” Andromeda said. “We are organizing a mutual defense in the face of an expected invasion.”

“Ah, yes,” Cortez said thoughtfully. “The
invasion
.”

“We must move quickly,” Balthazar said as he folded his hands behind his back. “As soon as is physically possible. The Founders are on the move. Freight trains are crowding at their railheads, stocking supply depots. Their airfields are also experiencing heavy activity—provisioning, bunkering, arming—and the steampiper corps has activated its reserves.”

Cortez smacked her lips and narrowed her eyes at Balthazar. “If I may ask, Admiral—how did you obtain such detailed intelligence?”

“These things are well-known.”

“No, they are not well-known,” said Cortez.

“We have sources,” Balthazar replied cautiously.

“So do we,” Cortez said. “Excellent spies. In the port. But never has one ever been able to infiltrate the city proper.”

“Who says that our informant is inside the city?”

Buckle’s spine tingled. Balthazar was talking about Aphrodite.

“Oh, please, my dear Balthazar,” Cortez huffed. “Please do not play me for a fool. Of course you have an operative inside the city. How else could the Crankshaft and Alchemist rescue mission have ambled in and out under the very noses of the Founders themselves?”

“For a clan with few well-placed spies, you know quite a few things,” Balthazar said.

Buckle watched as a tense silence filled the hall, emanating from the stare between Balthazar and Cortez. The south-facing windowpanes rattled, thumped by a gust of wind rolling down from the mountains.

Cortez smiled, but there was nothing but suspicion in it. “How trustworthy is this spy of yours, this traitor to his own people, Admiral? There are numerous conspiracies of fanatics inside the city—anarchists and rebels—zealots who care nothing about our alliance, and who are determined to bring an apocalypse down upon the city.”

“Such is a risk I am willing to take,” Balthazar said evenly.

“Fine,” Cortez replied. “Considering the circumstances, it appears the rest of us have no choice but to trust your spy as well.”

Buckle got a sense of Cortez—she was a narcissist and a charmer, but also a realistic midwife to the aspirations of her clan. Conquest and plunder were what interested the Tinskins the most.

“We respectfully request that you join us,” Balthazar said. “I am certain you realize that none of us, not even the Tinskin fleet, can withstand the Founders alone.”

“Perhaps,” Cortez replied slowly, splaying her fingers, stretching them, glancing at each ambassador in turn with obvious deliberateness. “But is this motley crew all you have?
Please forgive me, but the Brineboilers possess no weapons, the Alchemists possess no warships, and the Gallowglasses are about as dependable as a cracksman in a jewelry shop.”

“Damn you, Tinskin!” Mardigan yelled, slamming his fist on the table. “A Gallowglass lives or dies by his word! Not like you, you slippery, nasty, carbuncled Aztec blood drinkers!”

“Oh, my,” Cortez said evenly, an amused smile rising on her lips. “Perhaps we should leave you to die on your own, then, should we?”

“Charlatans!” Aleppo snapped.

Buckle almost laughed out loud. Hate her if you wish, but Cortez was antagonizing the ambassadors with aplomb. He wished he had a glass of rum to accompany the show.

“Please!” Smelt blurted. “Enough. We must avoid fighting amongst ourselves.”

Cortez’s dark eyes slipped back to Balthazar. “You have the right idea, Admiral—but in my calculation, even with the addition of our mighty fleet to the combined arms of your five, I would predict that still we would not be able to field enough men and machines to resist the Founders. The dreadnaughts would still prove too much for us.”

“I assure you that we shall soon count Spartak as one of us,” Balthazar said. “And I have high hopes to bring in the Steamweavers.”

Cortez raised an eyebrow. “Spartak? Really, yes? If you could bring in the Russians, then your Grand Alliance would live up to its name, and our strength would be sufficient to win the war.” She straightened her back, the metal plates on her coat glittering. “I can help you with the reluctant Steamweavers—we have a relationship with them. But with Spartak, those
wretched, penny-grubbing Cossacks, I am afraid we are not on speaking terms.”

“Your help?” Aleppo blurted. “So may we assume you are in, then?

Cortez looked at Aleppo as she might regard a cockroach. “In? Of course I am in. The Tinskins are in, you fool. Just by steaming here to your little ‘secret’ parley, we have cast the die. Do you really think that the Founders spies have not been watching, do not know exactly what we are up to? Your secret alliance—even if the Founders had not been planning an invasion before, we may well have triggered one. In the eyes of the Founders, just being here has made all of us their mortal enemy. Oh, yes, we are in. We are all utterly, perilously, irrevocably in.”

In the heavy silence that followed the Tinskin ambassador’s words, Buckle realized he was tense, sitting at the edge of his chair. Cortez was right. They were all in the stewpot now.

But he would rather risk a kraken as his ally than a Tinskin.

Where the hell is a bottle of rum?

WHISPERS IN THE CORRIDOR

“T
HE
T
INSKINS
?” S
ABRINA SPLUTTERED
. “R
YDER
is hitching a ride with the Tinskins?”

“Quiet, Sabrina,” Buckle whispered, glancing through the doorway and into the infirmary where Balthazar sat between Max’s bed and Tyro’s iron lung. Buckle did not want Balthazar to hear their heated discussion. The decisions had been made and war seemed inevitable—there was no point in him knowing that his children might disapprove. “It is a diplomatic mission.”

“It’s a bloody farce,” Ivan grumbled. “Ryder is as good as dead, I tell you.”

“I do not think so,” Buckle replied, taking a firm hold of his adopted brother and sister by the shoulders. Balthazar had called—demanded, really—that they come in from the airfield and attend that evening’s Seasonal ball. And it was something of a feat to keep Buckle, Sabrina, and Ivan away from the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
.

“You trust the Tinskins now, brother?” Ivan asked. The light from the corridor lamp gleamed on the copper plate covering half of his face—he was something of a contraption now, if only a temporary one. The injuries he had sustained to the left side of his body from the steampiper bomb three weeks prior had been brutal. His left arm had been shattered
by shrapnel; amputation had loomed as a real possibility until Fogg and Doctor Lee found a way to get the circulation flowing properly through the flesh again. He been back on his feet for a week now. The left side of his face was covered by a brass-and-copper faceplate crawling with cogs and gears, dominated by a brass-ribbed medical half goggle over the left eye. Brass rods ran down Ivan’s neck into a large shoulder piece, which supported a mechanical assist encasing the length of the injured arm, a clockwork exoskeleton creaking with turning springs and hinges that ended in a knight’s gauntlet of metal fingers.

Ivan would have to wear the mechanical arm until the muscles and skin beneath had been given enough time to recover. He hated it. Being an inventor himself, he constantly criticized and cursed the clan inventors’ effort of design. The screws on the shoulder were too loose, the neck support too restrictive, the goggle reservoir too wet, and the fingers too tight, ready to crush anything fragile he held in his hand. The “bloody nutcracker,” he called it.

“Ryder’s presence among the Tinskins will show the Steamweavers that the Grand Alliance is real,” Buckle said. For some strange reason, he trusted that Cortez would take care of Ryder. She had guaranteed his safety, of course—mere words—but Buckle believed she would safeguard him, if only to secure Crankshaft loyalty.

“Who is in charge of this Grand Alliance?” Sabrina asked, looking unconvinced and worried, ever the skeptic.

“Balthazar,” Buckle replied. “It took two hours of arguing—mostly between Cortez and Mardigan—but Balthazar will become supreme commander of the combined fleet, with the exception of the Tinskins, who would only accept a condition of
joint command. Once the city falls and Fawkes is dead, we shall embrace the citizens as brothers and sisters. No plundering.”

“Once the city
falls
,” Sabrina whispered. “As if that will be easy.”

Once the city falls. Buckle felt a shiver run up his spine. Here, in the quiet whisperings in the darkness, the reality of the situation suddenly grabbed him with sharp, ice-cold fingers. War.

“When does it begin?” Ivan asked.

“The fleets are to rendezvous over New Berlin two weeks from today,” Buckle said. “But before that we must engage Spartak and the Steamweavers with all haste, to garner their loyalty before the Founders can coerce them into their own ranks.”

“Who is sending an envoy to Spartak?” Sabrina asked.

“The Imperials,” Buckle replied.

“The Imperials?” Ivan huffed. “They have been in a skirmish war with Spartak forever. The Russians are not going to warm to them fast enough.”

Buckle nodded. “They know that. So Balthazar is sending them one of our airships, to carry the Imperial ambassador to Muscovy. Once again, presenting a united front for the Grand Alliance.”

Sabrina and Ivan stood silent, considering the new information, mired in helpless disapproval.

Buckle heard the flame crackle in the overhead lantern. War made for uncomfortable bedfellows. “What is done is done,” he said softly.

“And Balthazar is going ahead with the Seasonal ball?” Ivan muttered. “Is that appropriate?”

“I agree with his decision,” Buckle replied. “It looks like we are in the last few days of peace, Ivan. We should raise a glass of beer and celebrate this moment, for I fear much blood and pain awaits us on the morrow.”

THE MARTIAN IN THE IRON LUNG

I
VAN AND
S
ABRINA DEPARTED
,
AND
Buckle strode into the citadel infirmary, where Balthazar huddled close to his wounded daughter.

The quiet hospital was Doctor Edison Lee’s little healing kingdom, a long chamber, bright with double-paned windows, and every surface scrubbed with disinfectant. It was a place of white walls, a white ceiling, and white-painted floor timbers, of black iron bedframes, of light-gray blankets, gray pillowcases, and gray infirmary gowns. The soft daylight easing in through the windows—all the heavy white curtains were drawn back—glowed sweetly as it illuminated rainbows of color inside the medicine bottles lining the shelves. Even the whale oil in the glass reservoirs of the night lanterns glimmered, in a lugubrious way.