The Chamber in the Sky (5 page)

T
he lumpy doctor released his grip on Brian's scalp. Brian felt the oddly jointed fingers slip out of his hair. He backed away as Brundish skittered a couple hops to the side.

The boy breathed deeply and held himself up against a counter. His ear still hurt from where the gun had been jammed into it. He blinked tears of pain out of his eyes. He thought frantically about what they could do.

Gregory would know. Gregory always had a plan. Brian looked up carefully at his friend.

Gregory just looked horrified. Astonished.

“Printouts,” Darlmore was saying. “Up in my study.”

“I did already have a little look-round of your study. When you were out fishing. I saw nothing there. Not related to the capsule.”

Darlmore held out a hand to be hoisted. He said, “Hand up?”

“Not a chance, Archbishop.”

“The printouts I'm talking about are hidden.”

“Where?”

“Behind a bookcase. In a safe.”

If this was true, Brian thought, this was a disaster. Brundish had no reason to keep any of them alive once he found the location of the Umpire.

“Show me,” said Brundish.

“I can't.”

“Crawl.” The doctor said to Brian, “Step aside, young man. You're in the archbishop's way. Slump over in that corner. You might as well accustom yourself to being a corpse. In my professional experience, the patient becomes quite relaxed. At first.”

When Brian had stepped aside so the way was clear, Brundish bobbled over and nodded his head at Darlmore. The ex-archbishop began a slow and awful crawl across the floor. The man winced with each move. He left a streak of his elfin blood behind him.

With horror, Brian watched the hermit pull himself over to the staircase that led up to the study. He couldn't believe Brundish's cruelty. But he couldn't believe Thomas Darlmore would betray them, either. He kept waiting for something to happen, for someone to save them.

Convulsively, Darlmore began to tug himself up, step by step. His dead leg thumped against the stairs. He grunted in pain.

Brundish leered at the children, then followed the hermit, hopping oddly, as if he, on the other hand, had one leg too many.

They heard him growling at Darlmore on the landing. He clearly enjoyed the pain.

The second Brundish had gone, Gregory started waving Brian wildly toward the back door.

Brian gave a questioning glance.

Gwynyfer, without speaking a word, pointed at the flour on the counter.

In the moments before Brundish had come down the stairs, Darlmore had scribbled three Norumbegan runes in the powder. They read:
BOATHOUSE
.

Brian didn't quite understand, but Gregory swiped the flour off the counter, grabbed his arm, and pulled him toward the back door.

The three of them galloped across the bridge toward the boathouse.

They heard a cry of anger from inside the house. They heard the gun fire upstairs.

“What'll we do when we get there?” Brian asked, falling behind the others.

“I don't know,” said Gregory. “Take the boat? Leave?”

“We can't leave Mr. Darlmore!” Brian protested. “Dr. Brundish is going to kill him!”

The others didn't answer.

He knew what they were thinking: that they didn't know what else to do. That Darlmore had given them a chance to escape. That they had to take it.

They slammed the boathouse door open. They ran for the dinghy. Gregory grabbed some of the gear from the wall and handed it to Brian.

“We can't just leave him!” Brian protested.

Gregory threw things they might need through the hatch. “You can't help him,” he said. “He doesn't want to
be helped.” He looked straight at Brian. “Bri, Mr. Darlmore didn't have anything to show Brundish upstairs. He just said that to get the guy away for a second so we could escape. Mr. Darlmore knew that if someone had found the house, there was trouble. He wrote in the flour so we —”

Then they heard a horrible clomping. Brundish was thundering down the bridge toward them.

Brian said, “So we're just going to leave —”

“Yes!” exclaimed Gwynyfer. She was heaving up a can of gasoline. “Now
this
shall be delightful!” She ran out the boathouse door.

Gregory, standing in the dinghy, stared after her. “Don't ask me,” he said.

Gwynyfer stood on the little boathouse porch. The doctor hurtled toward her. She shook the gas to douse the bridge. The doctor slowed up and watched her. He raised his pistol. He fired. She flung the can at him.

The thin bolt of blue fire pierced the can, and the whole mess erupted.

The flames were tremendous. Gwynyfer tumbled backward into the boat shed, a strange, triumphant smile on her elfin face. There was another explosion. The end of the bridge was an inferno.

Gregory, swaddled in life jackets, could only look on in admiration.

Through the flames, Brian saw the doctor retreat back toward the house. There'd be no way for him to get to the boathouse now.

So he was stuck there, on the other side, with the wounded hermit. If that final shot inside the house didn't mean …

Brian didn't want to think about what would happen to Darlmore. What might have already happened.

Gregory was handing Gwynyfer into the dinghy. He said, “What was that? With the gas?”

She laughed and clapped. “Did you
see
?” she said. “The
flames
?”

The boathouse itself was on fire now. Brian crouched low, because the smoke was thick. He couldn't believe how it dirtied his lungs. He was terrified about the air in the dinghy. It had to hold out for a while.

He jumped in. They were all secure. They slammed the door.

In the boathouse, oars hung crossed on the walls caught like kindling. Life preservers split into flame.

There was a clunk as the dinghy detached itself from the wall.

Another tank of gas caught, and blew.

The shed was now nothing but flames on stilts. The fibers around it vibrated with a strange, metallic hum as they heated. The bridge burned.

Dr. Brundish stood at the back door of Thomas Darlmore's cabin. He aimed his pearl-inlaid pistol, for no good reason, at the flames. They burned and roiled.

He didn't fire.

He went inside the house.

The door banged shut on a spring behind him.

T
he Imperial palace had finally stopped smoking the day before. Now courtiers combed the rubble. The ramshackle fortress with its turrets and its chimneys lay in four or five huge mounds, messy welts atop the city of New Norumbega.

On the peak of one of those mounds stood a tall, walking machine that looked like a fortified chair on kangaroo legs. On that striding war-sofa sat several figures: General Malark, a grizzled old soldier with a slice out of his mechanical face; two mannequins from his Corps of Engineers; and, finally, a clockwork troll in the armor of a knight. They looked out over the city.

New Norumbega did not look healthy in the glaring light of the veins above. It had been bombed by the Mannequin Resistance. Its lopsided palace had erupted and collapsed after the unfortunate explosion of the previous Emperor. The tall townhouses of Wednesday Row had holes torn through their slate roofs. The shanties in the Windings were blasted flat. The bronze dome on the
Divine Andraste Theater was crumpled in like green paper. The plywood spire of St. Rugwyth's Cathedral was in a heap. People ran up and down the streets, shouting, making demands. Jeeps bumbled over the rubble.

“The fairest of cities brought low,” whispered General Malark. “The walls of chalcedony and gold, the white turrets with their pennants flying, the squares where our masters met and carried on their mysterious trades … so much of it's in ruins.”

“Never there,” said the troll Kalgrash. He shook his head. “Remember: Never there, never there, never there.”

General Malark sadly gazed down at the levers that controlled their walking battle tower, the clanksiege.

He said, “So you've told me.”

Kalgrash said, “It was always a wreck. Most of New Norumbega was held together with twine.”

“I saw the beauty of the city with my own eyes.”

“All of us are built to see what they want us to see,” said Kalgrash. “I was built after you all left for this world, so they didn't stick me with the razzle-dazzle blinders. I was built by a really good guy. Wee Snig. I just see what's there.”

The general looked out over the city of his former masters through the haze of diesel smoke. He said quietly, “Tell us about the city as it really is.”

Kalgrash nodded. “It's a mess. Most of it's built out of old stuff. There aren't any town walls. There never were. I don't know what you thought you were bombing, but there weren't any walls to knock down. There aren't any gates. The nice, big houses are made of chunks of dry
muscle cut out of the heart. There's no way this place can stand up against a Thusser invasion, not even for five minutes.”

Malark pressed his finger to the top of his nose. “The Empress has asked that I defend her city. I can't refuse.”

“I'm telling you,” said Kalgrash, “we have got to make some decisions.”

General Malark considered strategy. “I estimate we have at least two weeks. The Thusser have taken Pflundt, our own fortress down in Three-Gut. But it will take them a while to get here from there. They'll need subs to get through the veins of flux. Otherwise, there's no way to get to the Dry Heart from Three-Gut. Not by marching or land vehicles. It's in a different system. They're stuck in digestion until they can get enough subs to transport their troops up here. And then we'll put up a firm fight before they can unload through the airlocks.” He frowned.

The wind picked up across the desert. General Malark activated the clanksiege and walked several gargantuan steps across the pile of rubble. He faced the machine toward the city's black railroad yards. Train tracks stitched their way across the salty plain toward faint red arches of muscle.

“So we have two weeks,” said Kalgrash.

Malark nodded. “They're probably running raids on villages down in the guts right now. Trying to find any submarines they can. I'd guess it will take them at least that long to gather a naval attack force. And until then” — he looked around — “we have to fortify this city. Or part of it. We'll evacuate people from some of the farther
reaches. Concentrate them. Build a wall out of the flesh. Dig a fosse. Raise a scarp. Ravelins. Redoubts. Revetments.”

“I have no idea what any of those things are.”

“Of course you don't, troll. You're a machine of peace. I am a machine of war.”

“I'm not just a machine of peace. I mean, you know, I smite. Well, I've smitten.”

General Malark clapped him on the armor. “Good man,” he said. “Good man.” He put the clanksiege into gear and began stalking down the mound. The iron feet clomped down spills of concrete and broken glass. Over the grinding of the engine, Malark said, “Look, we're going to need you, troll. We need someone who can see. The Norumbegans will never draw the damn lace curtain from our eyes. You're the only one of us who knows what's lying in heaps around us. We see ruin, too, but of fair palaces and goodly temples.”

“Packing crates and aluminum ladders,” Kalgrash corrected.

“Stay by me,” said General Malark. “We're going to have to abandon some parts of the city and fortify other parts. You'll have to tell us what's really there.”

The clanksiege strode across broken towers toward the Empress Elspeth and her Court.

The Empress of the Innards was sitting in a folding metal chair under a tarpaulin held up by planks. Her maids-in-waiting were painting coats of arms on the tarp with poster paints. The Imperial Council and members of the Court sat around her on blankets and towels. There was Lord Attleborough-Stoughton, a captain of
industry with a top hat and a ferocious mustache, sitting cross-legged on a traveling rug. There was the Earl of Munderplast, the Prime Minister, a gloomy old man dressed in medieval robes and a velvet cap, crouched uncomfortably on a beach towel. The Duke and Duchess Gwarnmore, Gwynyfer's parents, lay back on a fine cotton sheet smudged with ash. The two of them were dressed for a picnic: she in a white summer dress, he in striped white trousers. A page boy stepped between the blankets, offering cucumber sandwiches.

General Malark, the troll, and the two engineers climbed down from the clanksiege on rungs riveted onto the left leg. They approached the Imperial Presence.

The General bowed. “General Malark of the Mannequin Army greets Her Sublime Highness, the Empress of Old Norumbega, New Norumbega, and the Whole Dominion of the Innards, Electoress of the Bladders, Queen of the Gastric Wastes, Sovereign of Ducts Superior and Inferior, Ruler of All. I come with a report.”

The Empress Elspeth did not reply. She was a sly-looking woman with long, gray curls bound up in complications on her head. She wore regal robes and held a scepter. She stared at them all. The girls in their garlands painted sloppy shields on the tent behind her.

General Malark said, “We've been reconnoitering, Your Highness.”

She didn't respond. She simply watched him.

He said, “We've been looking at the city, ma'am. We're coming up with a strategy to hold off the Thusser. Big
question: how long it will take the Thusser to put together a submarine naval force that can navigate the flux.”

The Empress of the Innards did not say anything.

The General continued, “Ma'am, it's clear: The best thing to do is to concentrate the city's population. Gather them all on this hill, probably, and then fortify the jenkins out of the place. We don't have time to surround the whole city with a wall.”

The Empress said nothing. The girls behind her whispered softly while they painted.

One of the councilors on the ground asked suspiciously, “General, who told you there isn't a wall
already
? A large, beautiful wall of gold and chalcedony? How do you know that?”

General Malark explained to the Empress, “If I am going to defend the city, ma'am, I will need to know whether there is a wall or not.”

Lord Attleborough-Stoughton, frowning under his top hat, said, “Look here, Malark. Those railroads out there are my piece of earth. I can tell you they're important. I want them protected.”

Gwynyfer's father, Duke Gwarnmore, complained, “Quite true, Malark. What we really want is for you to defend the whole city. Not just part of it.”

General Malark winced. “There's no time, sir.”

“Well, that seems awfully moldy for the people who'll lose their homes.”

“We cannot fortify the entirety of New Norumbega before the Thusser arrive.”

“But, I say, Malark,” Duke Gwarnmore protested, “you can't just chuck half the city!”

“It'll be more like three-fourths,” said General Malark. And to the Empress, he said, “I am sorry, ma'am.”

One of the maids-in-waiting stopped painting and said, “Your Highness, my colors are getting muddy. I think the awful Clarice is dabbing her green in the red pot.”

“Am not,” muttered Clarice. “Stinko to you, Brendolyn.”

The Empress did not respond. Her face was taut and furious.

Duke Gwarnmore drew himself up and put his arm around his knees. “Your Highness, we cannot have this mannequin talking of chopping up the ruddy city. We can't ask our citizens to abandon their homes.”

Lord Attleborough-Stoughton said, “See here, I want to talk about this question of the railroads. Those are my tracks, and only a damn fool would try to tell me whether they should be defended or not.”

Suddenly, the Empress Elspeth rapped out, “Will all of you keep clacking on when your Empress sits still? I have not yet admitted this … personage … into my Imperial presence.” She gestured at Malark. She said, “He calls himself the general of the Mannequin Army.”

“Your Highness,” said Malark, “I am General of the Mannequin Army.”

“There
is
no Mannequin Army. Not yet, General. There is no separate mannequin kingdom. There is no mannequin republic. There is only one empire, and it is mine”

Kalgrash stepped forward. He said, “Your Highness, does it really matter? I mean, what you call the army?
We're defending you, and after we've defended you, you're going to give us our own republic in the guts. The name — who cares about the name? We have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks.”

“It matters a terrible lot, actually. Because if
that thing
is called the general of the Mannequin Army, then there is a Mannequin Army. But you are not another army. You are not my allies. You are my own army. You are my subjects. You are my servants. You, sir, are General Malark of the Norumbegan Army, or you are nothing — and until you bow before me, and call yourself General Malark of the Norumbegan Army —”

General Malark said, “Ma'am, we fought to a truce. You agreed to recognize the claims of mannequin independence —”

“Once you won your territory back from the Thusser.”

General Malark took two steps away from the pavilion. Then he took three steps back toward the Empress. He said, “Ma'am, I am prepared to defend your city with my life. But until I am recognized as the general of a free Mannequin Army, we will not put one spade or shovel into the dirt — we will not put one stone on top of another stone —”

“No!” said the Empress. “You will not! You are forbidden! Until then, you are an enemy army! An occupying force! Submit to me, mannequin. Bow. Say your true rank: General of the Norumbegan Army.”

“This is treachery,” complained General Malark.

“It is entirely according to the terms of our truce. You do not become your own separate nation until the Thusser
are defeated. Until then, turn a nice leg, bow, and declare yourself mine.”

General Malark turned and marched off. His engineers and Kalgrash, startled, looked around at the snickering Council, then followed.

As the chugging of the clanksiege started up and the machine began to stomp away through the ruins, the Empress settled back on her seat and reached for a glass of iced tea.

“Your Sublime Highness,” said the Earl of Munderplast, her old, grouchy Prime Minister, “was it really wise to bicker over names with the one man who may defend this city against the Thusser invader?”

“He'll be back, Munderplast,” said the Empress Elspeth. “He can't help himself. He's built to love me.”

“And who isn't, Your Sublime Highness?” said a doting bishop.

“Exacters. On the button.” She squinted at the silhouette of the retreating clanksiege. “I don't like that troll overly much. We can't have anyone telling the manns what's what. Nothing like a spot of blindness to keep them marching in single file.” She considered. “One of you kill the troll. Deactivate him. Magnetize him. I don't care. Things will be easier when he's unspooled.”

She turned to the side. “Oh, Clarice,” she said, “you
are
an awful girl. Your lions look like wombats. And what are they doing, dear? There's a difference between
rampant
and hitchhiking.”

She sighed. In heraldry, as in everything else, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.