Steamscape (11 page)

“A man who may or may not have been a traitor. However, his actions brought you to me alone, so I will consider him favorably.” She reached out and touched Solindra’s fiery hair.

The vessel flinched, but held her ground. She closed her eyes and squeezed the rifle against her chest. Something seemed familiar about it, like a scent she recognized from long ago.

“I knew Silvermark hadn’t killed you like he’d claimed before vanishing.”

“Silvermark?” Solindra frowned in thought. “The Hex.”

Adri pointed at the rifle. Solindra followed her line and saw an inscription engraved just to the side of the trigger.
Veritas temporalis est
.

She didn’t know the language of the ancient empire, the one civilization that those in Steamscape had finally surpassed only a few decades ago. But she knew her father’s favorite saying.
Truth is temporary.

“Mark Canon’s rifle.”

Solindra hugged it a little tighter.

“Oh. It looks as if you never really knew the man, not if you can’t recognize his own gun.” Adri reached out and pried the rifle from Solindra. The girl let go, helpless against Adri’s will as if in a dream. Her arms wouldn’t work. They were too heavy and too slow to stop the sylph. Adri turned around and handed it back to the granite-faced servant.

“Maybe when you’ve earned it, little bird.”

Solindra stared as the man walked away. Something inside her slipped free. “No!” She leapt forward, never taking her eyes off the rifle.

Adri grabbed her arm and spun her around. She narrowed her eyes and leaned into Solindra’s face. All sweetness had evaporated like the steam around them. “Silvermark stole a valuable asset from us. You. If you survived into adulthood, my father had wanted to build you up to destroy the Priory. The Hex betrayed both us and Codic and stole you away. Ripped apart years of research and planning, expensive years. And just to steal a baby from its mother? Your mother.”

Solindra gasped. “I had a mother?”

“Yes, but the poor woman died of a broken heart after you were stolen. All because the Hex decided that a mother wasn’t good enough to raise her own child.”

“No,” Solindra wheezed. “No! Stop it! My father was a good man!” She staggered away, slamming her hands over her ears.

“Father?” Adri sneered. She stalked closer. “You had no father. Silvermark was just afraid that you would replace the Hex. You would have been a dragon.”

Solindra gasped for breath, her chest heavier with each inhalation. She shook her head dumbly. The room was spinning, and the steam rising up from the embers below clouded her vision. She remembered sitting on her father’s knees every morning while he read the telegraph dispatches. She remembered his chuckles when she’d try to steal the threads of paper. That had been real!

“But he died.”

“Good.” Adri turned her back and did something Solindra couldn’t see. The training circle started to tremble beneath them and then it split down the middle.

Half of the circle rose, carrying Adri up like a soaring angel. Solindra’s half sank a few feet closer to the fire below.

She didn’t notice. She stormed up to the line of slick poles, grabbing them and shaking them. “I dare you to say that again. I dare you!”

Adri stood on the lip, smiling serenely down at the young woman. “First, you come up here. If you can.”

Solindra heaved up at the bars, still clinging to her cipher medallion in one hand. No good. The metal was too slick with condensed droplets. The bars, having been much closer to the fire, hissed at her touch.

She withdrew her hand, noticing the blisters rising. Her bare feet were starting to feel the heat again.

“Use the steam, child!”

“What?” She didn’t know how to do that. Not unless she could fly. Then again, she had not known what she’d been doing on the Killing Train either, and that… Well, that certainly hadn’t worked out in her favor. But she remembered the feeling.

She brought up the cipher medallion and tried to ignore the blisters forming on her feet. She’d let that sensation surge within her and then just let it out somehow, like a primal yell.

Below her, the steam started to gather and swirl.

Solindra glared up at Adri and then turned her entire attention to the red sancta. It seemed to expand in her vision. She thought she saw her father’s face in its depths.

The steam became a tornado under her feet, scattering the embers at its base and spraying them across the stone floor and walls of the cylindrical hall.

It pushed up from underneath her feet, whipping up her hair and her clothes. The steam should have been scalding, but it could not hurt her unless she allowed it. She didn’t fear it in the moment, hardly even felt its tingling warmth.

She rose up, all the while staring at the cipher medallion. When she was even with Adri, she simply walked off the steam tornado and onto the raised platform.

Solindra had meant to keep on walking and use those steam winds in the grand slap she was going to deliver to Adri’s beautiful, flawless face.

The steam princess brought up her own hand. Something purple glowed inside of it. Solindra’s tornado vanished and the young woman was left reeling for balance, her back and heels leaning out over the edge of the platform.

Adri grabbed her in one hand. She held out her own purple cipher medallion in the other. She smiled and pulled Solindra forward onto secure footing. Then she replaced her medallion back inside her dress. A friendly smile lit her face and she clapped. “Well done, Solindra, well done. Better than I’d dared dream.” She walked across the circle and flipped a dial on the lever panel. The circle rattled as it began to reset to its planar level.

The steam princess smiled wider. “I apologize that I had to act in such a manner.”

“Act?” Solindra stumbled, off balance.

“But I knew the only way you can make the steam react is through anger at the moment. Forgive me, my little bird. I can show you how to do that without such an emotive stimulus, but it won’t be easy.” Adri strolled off the training circle.

Solindra followed. She didn’t know what else to do. At this point, she felt frozen and hollow, like an old tree trunk in a blizzard. “How did you use the cipher medallion? Everyone–
almost
everyone who has touched it has terrible hallucinations. But you’re not a crypter, are you?”

Adri just smiled. “Perhaps. Depends on how one defines a crypter. I did the rites for myself, and I have the research, stolen from the Priory itself. I can teach you to use your sancta. In return, you will help me to end these nonsense atrocities of this war.”

“Me?” Solindra hesitated stepping out of the ring.

“It may not look like it, but we – Steampower, excuse me – is going to lose this war.” Adri’s face softened. “An untrained eye can’t see it now. Codic has more soldiers, but we have better, far more capable war machines than they. However, such technology is beset by many…mysterious accidents.”

Solindra licked her lips, trying to keep pace. “Ghosts in the steam.”

“The Priory’s work, no doubt. It’s been suspected they’ve been dipping their fingers into Codic’s government for a while now.” She offered another brilliant smile. “But you can control the ghosts in the steam too, and far more powerfully than those stodgy old men. You never fed on your mother’s breast, only on steam. Who knows? You can probably even talk with your lost father again through the ghosts, and demand to know why he stole an infant.”

Smith tapped the glass cane against the floor of the dry goods store quickly. His lips were pressed into a thin line. “Where is my vessel?”

“A Priory Reaper,” Drina growled. She, Jing and Theo remained motionless. The only sound in the room was the creaking of the door in the wind and the hushed breathing of the assembled townspeople. Nothing moved except for Smith’s tapping cane.

The man in black exhaled. “It will take me less than two seconds to destroy the heretical thing, and I’ve already wasted too much time on this venture. I didn’t know
you
were involved.” He doffed his bowler hat to Drina and Jing. “So, well played, but the game is over. Where is she?”

“Blown up,” Jing said. “Smuggler was carrying dynamite, and wouldn’t you know, he smoked too close to the damn crates. You heard the explosion, you said so.”

“Your work was finished by an idiot before you could do it.” Drina stuck up her chin.

Smith frowned. He glanced over his shoulder to the townsfolk. “Go find me a red-headed young woman, probably hiding by the river. Do so, and your children will be able to thank you in person.”

Most of the people stiffened at the remark. Two or three of them glanced down at the floor, refusing to look at Drina or Jing, and hustled out the door. The majority of the local population remained motionless, rooted with fear.

Theo swallowed. He could feel the tension in the room as if he could feel a tightrope beneath his feet. “And take some government stranger’s word against the Hex?”

Smith lifted up his own cipher medallion. “Some stranger who has already demonstrated that he is more powerful than an old campfire story.”

“The Hex is real.” Theo straightened his shoulders. “They don’t have to sneak in during the night and steal your children away.”

“Yeah!” A young man around Theo’s age pushed his way through the crowd. “They’ll save us. My old man said that he saw–”

Smith swatted him across the mouth with the cane. That finally shook the people into motion. Several moved to catch the falling teenager while the others packed closer in to Smith and Theo.

The Reaper raised both his cane and free hand. “Folks, listen to me. All I want is this traitor girl whom these people are harboring. I want nothing of your town or your children.”

“You’re a crypter!” Theo shouted.

The following silence stunned him. No outraged shouts erupted. Instead, he heard the sharp intakes of breath from Jing and Drina behind him.

“And?” Smith said into the echoing silence.

Theo nearly swallowed his tongue. “And…and everyone knows what crypters do! Twist the ghosts in the steam to your bidding! And, oh yes, that they steal children away in the night.
Am I close, sir?
”

“Walking on fire, boy,” Smith growled.

Theo could feel sweat stinging his forehead. The added weight felt like it could tip him over in a gust of wind. Surely Smith and everyone else could see it too. But he set his jaw and continued, “Talking to the ghosts goes against nature!”

“It
is
part of nature!” Smith slammed his cane down. “As much as dying is.”

Theo took a step back, slightly faster than he’d meant to, but it put him closer to Jing and Drina. “But the Hex has always protected us from unnatural enemies!” Through the air and in the floorboards, he felt the tension in the room tightening. The tigers would leap all at once.

Smith ducked his head. “Well played, my young foe. I had scant information on you, Mr. Theodore Meilleur. I won’t be out-talked again.” He removed an almost flat cylinder three times the size of an egg timer from his jacket. Water sloshed inside the glass tubes. “And you’ve made their decision for them.”

He flipped it around to show that his blue sancta had been fastened into the device. He pressed his thumb down on the plunger on the top. “Can you live with yourself?” The water distorted the rising glow of the sancta. Bubbles started to form as the water began to heat. Smith pocketed the device.

Suddenly, an impenetrable cloud of black smoke choked the room. Its acrid taste seared the inside of Theo’s mouth and nostrils. He struggled to open his eyes.

Smith was gone. People were shouting and shoving; someone knocked Theo aside. The bricoleur had grown up knowing to watch for the doors and behind counters and tables for the person in the center of the smoke, but Smith had been surrounded by people on all sides. If it had just been a distraction, it had been a good one. If it had been something more…

Theo tried to spit the acrid taste out of his mouth. He shivered. Crypters – the Priory could keep the lot of them. His world stuttered to a stop.

How the hell had Smith known his name?

Someone shouted something very near to his ear.

“What?”

“I said, the boiler tower!” Drina slapped him upside the head with enough force to send him staggering forward.

“What?” Theo managed.

Drina smacked him again. “Logic, stupid.”

“The boiler!” a woman screamed. “They were here the entire time?”

Drina, Jing and Theo rode the tide of the surging crowd down the street to the boiler. It was the squat, square tower with one side overhanging the Eld that they’d seen on their way in. A massive wooden waterwheel turned ponderously, but the sluice had been closed, allowing no new water into or out of the tower itself. The wheel brought the water up, splashed it against the concrete of the tower and spilled it right back into the river below.

Several people hurled open the double wooden doors at its base to reveal the metal framework, supporting the bulb of the boiler itself.

“No fire,” Drina said as calmly as if she were looking at a broken wagon wheel. She stuck a hand through the door, ignoring the mob. “But there is heat.”

Theo squinted, trying to see the boiler in the darkness of the tower. “How can we get in there?”

Jing shook his head. “Those things are built to stand up against fire and time itself. We can’t drill in there before the water boils.” He waved his hand toward what felt like an invisible fire.

A descending silence surrounded them. Everyone had turned to them as the heat continued to rise all around them. Theo immediately began to scan for hidden cables. Smith had to be controlling this through some trickery.

He shoved the mechanic’s back. “You’re Ghost, right? Do something.”

Jing forced his muscles to remain taut and not shake his head. “This is a crypter’s work.”

“What?” Theo blinked.

“It’s not like I can outsmart the ghosts with mechanics! Besides, the ghosts aren’t real, it’s all just dissolved aether.”

“But you
are
Ghost.”

“Kid, that was just a pool-hall name to make us seem larger than life. That’s all.”

Theo’s mouth hung agape. “Folks pray to you!”

Jing pulled the bricoleur aside. “Well, I’ve never heard any prayers, except maybe very personal ones along the lines of ‘please don’t kill me’ and those never ended well, not when we were in the service.”

“But you’re not in the service now!”

“I hadn’t noticed, kid.” He reached out and put a hand on the metal of the tower. He could feel the vibrations of the panicking children and the heat cascading down the line. “Never did a favor like this before in my life.”

“You raised an orphan,” Theo snapped.

“Because Silvermark said to.”

Drina gritted her teeth. “If we’re not doing anything else now, we should at least be getting ready to steal a boat.”

Jing still stared up into the tower. There was no fire to quench, no drill fast enough to get through that bowl. He imagined young Cylinder in there. He remembered raising her and imagined finding her in that tank.

What would he do? Crypters used steam, and steam meant water.

“Death, I need my tools.”

“Death?” Theo echoed.

“Right-o,” Drina called. “They’ll be whatever we can nab.”

The mechanic nodded, kneeling down and opening up the compartments in his leg housing. He snapped his head up to the crowd. “There’s a hatch on top, isn’t there?”

One man twisted his hat between his hands. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, get some men up there and start digging those children out!”

“There won’t be enough time,” Theo murmured as several townsfolk, men and women, ran to the far side of the tower, presumably to a ladder.

Drina returned, carrying several spanners and a large wrench. “What’ve we got, Ghost?”

Jing snatched the wrench from her arms and marched as quickly as his metal leg would carry him to the waterwheel. “Simple enough!” He heaved himself up and out onto a thin, wooden walkway. “Standard river pump. Wheel turns, collects water and pumps it up into the boiler.” He wedged the wrench in between the sluice and the turning wheel. “Displacement, no suction. The water just has to move up into the boiler because of the weight of water behind it after it passes through a one-way valve.”

“Break that valve, should all spill out.” A flash of a smile crossed Drina’s face.

“Right.” He heard the scrabbling from the top of the boiler and shouts from the hatch. He yanked the sluice partway down and jammed the butt of the wrench into the valve, shattering the cast metal. He slammed the wrench home again and the cheap valve flew apart, sending pieces flying up past his face.

Nothing happened. No water trickled.

A young girl screamed from inside the tower, her voice muted and tinny to their vantage.

He brushed aside the flakes of metal and poked his fingers inside. They ran right into the freezing wall. Jing bent down and brought one eye level with the pipe.

The water was frozen inside the pipe. “What the hell?”

Above, the girl screamed again.

He looked down at Drina and shook his head. “He’s using the aether to pull the heat up to the bowl. It’s freezing down here at the bottom because he’s pulling all the heat upward.”

“Freezing?” Drina echoed.

“But the ghosts are only alive in the steam – in the heat,” Theo protested.

“Perhaps not to a crypter.” Jing frowned.

“So what do we do?” The bricoleur glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. Too many were still just standing and watching. “I think we’re out of time.”

“The hell I am.” Jing hefted the wrench and slammed his metal leg down off the walkway, back onto the ground. “No machine has ever beaten me before. And no crypter occultism either.”

He limped around the walls of the tower to the open doors. “Right,” he grunted and walked underneath the bulb of the boiler. “Drina, Theo, help up top.” He didn’t turn around. Instead, he started to climb with his wrench in hand.

***

Drina shoved her way through the mob at the base of the tower. She didn’t even bother with the overcrowded ladder, and instead dug her fingers directly in between the stones of the tower and started to climb. Her movements were slim, efficient and infinitely practiced.

Theo raised his eyebrows in surprise and then started to climb as well, wedging in his boots and thrusting up with his legs. Beside him, a screaming young boy fell, splattering Theo’s cheek with warm water. The bricoleur turned his head to see him caught by several other people below.

Theo caught up with Drina at the edge of the open hatch. Steam was already starting to curl off the water’s surface. At least ten remaining pale and horror-scarred faces were waiting inside. Once he’d processed their faces, his ears allowed him to hear their screams. A couple of the smallest ones were just floating in the water, being too short to stand.

He reached across the open hatch, next to a bearded man from the town, and yanked his hand back from the waves of heat from inside the boiler tower.

“Move back!” The Death Spinner elbowed her way past the man. She threw down a thin, gossamer cord with a weight at the end. “Grab on!”

Many small hands seized at it, scrambling with all their fury.

“We’re out of time!” Theo screamed.

***

Jing jammed the wrench into the arm-thick pipe that fed the tower. He could see the frost on it below where it curved into the sluice outside. Up here, it was sweltering. He lodged both feet into the spidery framework of metal holding up the boiler itself.

Muscles bulging, he started to heave the wrench to the side. He counted his breaths and kept on pulling.

With a jerk, the pipe shuddered in its place. The metal squealed and turned almost a quarter of an inch. Bolts popped along the wall.

Jing kept applying the pressure and turning the wrench to the side. The pipe continued its slow twist, like an old ballerina.

Beneath the wrench, the metal started to glow a dark orange, as if the ghosts were attacking the new bend in the pipe. Jing didn’t stop to wonder why. His entire world was consumed by the tug of the pipe.

The tube was now twisted halfway around itself. The heating made it even more pliable and easier to twist than he’d hoped. On the other hand, it made it harder to break.

Droplets sizzled as they flew from the pipe, landing on his forearms and face. He didn’t even feel them; his entire world was bending this pipe.