Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (40 page)

Buckle flipped his magnifier lens down from his hat and focused on the brawny bodies spilling out of the lead pod. They were work teams—a lot of them—leather-jacketed hammer men following a shift leader to a warped track. As the huge clamp arms, the steam valves at their joints pumping furiously, bent the rail back into shape with a wrenching squeal of bending metal, the hammer men laid newly oiled timbers and
pounded spikes into place, their pickaxes sending up bursts of shattered permafrost.

After only a minute, the work teams hustled back into the armored pod, disappearing into the hatches. The steam whistle blew, its echo rebounding off the cliff, and the wheels of the train started rolling again, boilers thundering as the armored beast lurched up the mountain toward New Berlin.

LEOPOLD GOETHE

T
HE ARMORED TRAIN ARRIVED THREE
minutes late—though the wretched Wallach announced it was perfectly on time—coming to a halt alongside the station, its smokestacks belching banks of ashy black smoke. The iron-sheathed cars creaked under their own weight, their driving wheels sending up showers of sparks, every valve gushing waves of steam that eddied around Buckle and the others on the platform.

The train had seven cars: the boxy utility carrier pod at the very front, three locomotives, two in the lead and one at the rear, and two passenger cars in between, with a gunnery car behind. The gunnery car, even more heavily armored than the rest, had two revolving pillbox turrets, where cannon muzzles poked ominously out of the open gun ports. Buckle guessed they were thirty-two-pounders, judging from the diameter of their mouths.

Buckle saw Valkyrie’s left hand drift down to the pommel of her sword and grip it reflexively.

“The duke is here!” Wallach shouted imperiously. “Prepare to receive Colonel Leopold Goethe!”

The hatches of the forward car banged open, iron on iron, and the hammer men emerged, barrel-chested apes, their long leather coats, and their faces and hands, stained black with tar
and oil, their bodies humped from endless hours of backbreaking work, shouldering the tools of their trade—pickaxe, shovel, and hammer—with their cold-gnarled fists. They clambered one after another out of the steam-blurred hatches, forming a line on the tracks.

Buckle peered at the hammer men. There had to be at least fifty of them.

The doors of the two passenger cars clanged open as one. A soldier appeared, tall and straight, a sword and pistol at his belt. The sight of the finely fitted uniform gave Buckle a start. The man was not wearing the steam pack or the helmet, but there was no mistaking a steampiper. Nineteen more steampipers marched out, perfect tin soldiers in their silver-piped black coats and caps, their silver cuirasses emblazoned with the phoenix.

Buckle scrutinized the steampipers, scanning the strong-featured faces, the light-orange and strawberry hair. There were four females in the company, but the redheaded twin of Sabrina he had seen aboard the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
during the battle over Catalina was not with them.

“Is this an ambassadorial visit or an invasion?” Albard snarled.

The ambassador, Leopold Goethe, appeared; he was a man of medium height, gripping his gold-handled sword at his hip so the scabbard did not bang on the hatchway. With the steam swirling around him, Goethe looked every bit the conqueror, clad in a white uniform with silver buttons and draped with a crimson cloak that swirled to the heels of his black jackboots. His long, well-combed hair fell to his shoulders, blond and thick, and his beard, closely trimmed but full, was the same color.

Buckle sensed immediately—from the fashion in which Goethe strode, casting his glance in the way a slave owner might
look upon property—that the duke was already counting New Berlin as Founders territory.

And there was something about Goethe, something about him…it was slight, but unnervingly familiar. Buckle could not put his finger on it.

“It is my proud duty to present to you,” Wallach said with a flourish of his arm, “the honorable duke of industry and prime ambassador of the Founders clan, Colonel Leopold Goethe!”

Goethe stopped in front of Katzenjammer Smelt to bow and offer his hand. “Chancellor Smelt, I presume?” Goethe said in a solid, well-trained baritone voice.

“Colonel Goethe,” Smelt replied with far less enthusiasm, shaking Goethe’s hand, if almost reluctantly, his monocle gleaming in the swirling mist and harshening wind.

“It is a great honor to be here in New Berlin, to meet with you face-to-face to discuss the most pressing and urgent matters of our times, Chancellor,” Goethe said.

Goethe glanced at Sabrina, at her brilliant-red hair, and Buckle saw a flash of dismayed recognition in his blue eyes. Goethe jerked his attention back to Smelt.

Damn it, Sabrina Serafim—who are you? Buckle thought.

“Most certainly,” Smelt replied. “Shall we step inside to talk?”

“Very good, sir,” Goethe said. “Please, after you.”

Albard and the Imperial cavalrymen, their pickelhaubes glittering with half-crystallized condensation from the locomotive steam, rushed forward to push open the glass doors as Smelt, Goethe, and the rest followed behind.

The twenty steampipers swung into single file and marched in after them.

ULTIMATUM

L
EOPOLD
G
OETHE HAD BARELY TUGGED
his white gloves free of his hands before Smelt launched into him. “I must say, Ambassador,” Smelt announced, “I find your methods of negotiating unacceptable.”

Goethe smiled, looking up at the roof. “I must say, the sketches I have seen of this edifice simply do not do it justice. Our Founders architects may have done their best work right here.” He then looked over at Smelt, almost as if he had forgotten the man was there, and said, “But we have yet to even begin negotiating, my dear Chancellor.”

“Do not play the fool’s game with me!” Smelt snapped. “There are assassins loose in my city, killing my officials and threatening the lives of my family. You have attacked the Brineboilers without provocation. And now you show up on my doorstep,
uninvited
, with a trainload of armed soldiers.”

“Please, Chancellor,” Goethe answered calmly, a hint of condescending amusement in his face. “We Founders do not endorse assassins. Our conflict with the Brineboilers is our affair, and of no concern to you. And as for my little train and my ceremonial guard, surely you are aware of how perilous it is to travel the outlands without protection.”

Smelt glared.

“Why are you here, Ambassador?” Washington asked, stepping forward.

“And who are you?” Goethe asked.

“I am Ambassador Rutherford Washington, representative of the Crankshaft clan.”

“You have no right to be here,” Goethe snapped. “Ragtag clans are of no interest to the Founders. There is no place here for your kind—pirates and swindlers—at the negotiating table of the true clans.”

Washington’s back stiffened, but he said nothing.

Buckle raged at Goethe’s dismissiveness, but he held his tongue. Right now the battle was between the Imperials and the Founders.

“Then I shall ask,” Bismarck blurted, eyes flashing, but infinitely better at hiding his emotions than his father, “why are you here?”

“Ah, straight to the point, are we?” Goethe said as he handed his folded gloves to Wallach. “Even before you offer me tea?”

“There is no tea,” Bismarck said.

“Pity,” Goethe replied. “I was anticipating a brilliant cup.”

“What do you want?” Bismarck asked.

Goethe sniffed. “I have tried to keep the tone of this meeting pleasant, but it appears such a wish, faced with insulting accusations, a lack of tea, and the aggressive tone of your voices, is not a possibility. Fine. As you wish, Chancellor. The Founders clan is prepared to make the Imperial clan an offer of friendship.”

“Friendship?” Valkyrie repeated, as if the words stung her tongue.

“Yes, friendship, my lovely Valkyrie,” Goethe answered. His aide handed him a leather satchel, from which he drew a
wax-sealed parchment scroll. “A pact of nonaggression and preferred trade that will reforge our association during these difficult times.”

Buckle did not need to read the scroll—and neither did the Imperials—to know it was nothing more than a sugarcoated sham. Things were about to get ugly.

“On whose terms?” Valkyrie asked.

“The terms are laid out in the agreement,” Goethe said, offering the scroll to Smelt. “And I assure you, much to my own personal surprise, they are quite advantageous to you.”

“Are these terms negotiable?” Smelt asked.

“No,” Goethe replied. “Such a document, once ratified by the Founders parliament, is irreversible.”

“We would demand to negotiate our own terms,” Smelt said.

“Not possible,” Goethe replied, still trying to hand the scroll to Smelt, who so far had made no attempt to take it.

“And if we refuse this ‘deal’?” Bismarck asked.

“Break the seal and read it first, at least, I would highly recommend,” Goethe said.

“As a sovereign clan, we present our own terms, Ambassador,” Smelt said.

Again, Goethe thrust the scroll toward Smelt. “I urge you to reconsider. A rash action could prove highly unfortunate for you and your people.”

There was a long pause. The still air glittered with disrupted marble powder.

Goethe stood there, still offering the scroll, the insult of its rejection visible in his face. Buckle enjoyed that.

“You know that we are no easy target, Ambassador Goethe,” Smelt said.

“And that is why we urge you to join us, Chancellor,” Goethe replied. “Together we can form a mutual defense that will ensure the survival of both of our clans, and potentially win us more territory in the bargain.”

“We are not interested in war,” Smelt said coldly. “But we know you are gearing up for invasion.”

“You should not trust spies,” Goethe replied coldly.

“As much as you trust yours,” Smelt answered.

Anger flared across Goethe’s face, and he waved the scroll like a schoolmaster. “Do you think me a fool, Chancellor? Do you think Isambard Kingdom Fawkes a fool? Do you really think we do not know of your clandestine meetings up in the mountains, of your secret alliance of rogue clans to the east, your girding for war? The Grand Alliance—ha! You have signed your death warrants. And do not think that the offending Gallowglasses, Tinskins, and Alchemists shall be given clemency from their crimes either.”

“I do not know what you are talking about,” Bismarck said, but Smelt clutched his son’s arm.

“We shall all suffer the same fate as the Brineboilers, shall we?” Buckle said venomously. He could hold his tongue no longer, and he wanted to knock a hole in Goethe’s condescending smugness.

The anger disappeared from Goethe’s eyes; he sighed, never acknowledging Buckle. “Securing your trust in the least trustworthy clans shall only bring you to ruin, Chancellor. They shall surely fail you once fire and blood is in the air. Think about that.”

“We Crankshafts are with the Imperials as well,” Buckle said. “And we fail no one.”

Goethe looked at Buckle as he might look at a fly he was about to squash. “The Crankshafts?” he said with a laugh.

“If all you did was come here to force your will upon us, take your scroll and go,” Smelt said. “We have no need of your one-sided
terms
.”

Goethe glared. “I recommend that you quickly reconsider. For you should surely know that the Founders are of a strength and capacity far exceeding your own, even grouped in an illegal coalition, and that if you resist you shall be overrun, and the more strenuously you resist, the more your people’s backs shall bleed for it.”

Buckle’s hand shot to his sword handle. He wanted to rage, to howl his indignation, to be in the thick of it. But he stilled himself.

Valkyrie stepped forward, shaking with a fury that showed in her body, but not in her voice. “You, Leopold Goethe, you are no ambassador. You are the mouthpiece of a war machine, and your words are designed to sow fear. But hear this—your bloody machinations shall fail you, for your treachery reaps only hatred and resolution.”