The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (13 page)

“You valued looks yourself,” she said. “Was it not my mother’s beauty that drew you to her?”

“At first, perhaps, but then I was taken by her manners, her bravery,” Lord Southland said.

“Claude may not be brilliant,” she said. “But he is respectable and well rounded, in the manner of English education. And he has thought a great deal about spiritual matters.”

“Spiritual matters!” her father exclaimed. “I thought I had brought you up better than to believe in a crutch that supports feeble minds in their mediocrity!”

Had he raised her as an atheist? I was appalled, but I knew I would be able to teach her otherwise, patiently and carefully, as a man must do with his wife.

“I want to believe in something other than science,” she said, and I thrilled at the earnestness in her voice. “I want to believe in something free and fierce, something that stands outside society.”

Her theology was muddled, but she could learn. Her father’s sound of disgust and frustration made me smile.

That evening we stood on the terrace overlooking the sea. I could not resist pressing the issue. “Desiree, do you think we are well matched in mind?”

She hesitated, taking a breath.

I did not care. I knew I outstripped her, but I could reach down, lift her to new heights of thought, of philosophy. Some hold that the Negro brain is structurally inferior to ours, but Desiree had already proved that she could get her mind around such things as mathematics and mechanics. I would show her theology’s wonders, the careful construction of a passage explicating God’s glory. We would read Milton together, and other poetry that would elevate her soul.

I decided to search for proof of Tyndall’s intentions, for evidence that he was not a man of science, only pretending to be one in order to seduce my gullible bride-to-be. Desiree always thought the best of people. It was up to my more rigorous mind to make sure she was not being too trusting.

A massive book lay on the table in Tyndall’s study, its pages well thumbed. I turned it to study the spine.

A chill ran through me and I pulled my hand away, as though from a coiled serpent. It was King James’s
Dæmonologie
.

Using a handkerchief, I turned it to me and opened it. The words burned up at me:

“This word of Sorcerie is a Latine worde, which is taken from casting of the lot, & therefore he that vseth it, is called Sortiarius à sorte.”

Was Tyndall a sorcerer, then? What unholy designs did he have on Desiree? This was far, far worse than I had imagined.

A cough sounded behind me. I dropped the book and spun round.

Tyndall.

He had the gall to stand there, polite enquiry on his face. “Some light reading, Stone?” he said.

I pointed at the book. My hand shook with emotion. “No honest man has such a book in his library! What foul magics do you practice?”

“I have never claimed to be an honest man,” he said dryly.

“Demon!” I hissed.

He shook his head. His tone was still polite, as though we spoke about the proper slicing of a breast of pheasant or the correct garnish for a trout. “I have been called that before, on my visits to this land,” he said. “But elf is more accurate.”

“I know a demon when I see one! You admit you are not human? You want not just Desiree’s body, but her soul!”

He snorted. “Her soul is her own. I want only her clever mind and machines, to entertain my Queen’s court.”

I gestured about the room. “Then all this is just illusion!”

He shook his head. A smile lingered at the corners of his mouth, as though it pleased him to speak so straightly to me. “No, the real Lord Tyndall is … elsewhere. He will return when I am done, none the worse for wear. Indeed, his fortunes will prosper as a result. As yours could.”

“You mean to threaten me.”

“I mean to say that the financial chains binding you to your fiancée could be replaced with other gold, of my own forging, as recompense.”

“Desiree is more than gold to me,” I said. “A good wife is a treasure. Fairy gold is said to melt away, or become dry leaves in the light of day.”

“So you refuse to give her up?” he said.

“She may not be much,” I said. “Prideful, and a little wanton, and overly obsessed with this world’s trumperies. But she is mine, and I will have her, and the rich dowry that comes with her, and the inheritance that will befall her when her father dies.”

“Do you love her?”

I hesitated too long. In the silence I heard a little gasp of betrayal behind me.

I turned just in time to see the tears in Desiree’s eyes before she fled.

She was nowhere to be found. No matter where I searched – even with the help of Tyndall’s servants, who were looking for their absent lord, mysteriously vanished as well. But when I let myself into my chamber that night, I knew she had been there. A tang of oil and steel hung in the air like dragon’s breath.

I first saw the note on my writing desk. Desiree’s handwriting was clear as copperplate.

It read:

Claude,

I do not think we will suit after all. But I have left you something that will, I think, let you have the kind of woman you desire. She comes with my dowry – I will not need it where Tyndall is taking me. I wish you only the best, Claude. I hope you wish me the same in turn. The key is on the mantle. Remember to wind her up every seventh day.

I looked around and finally saw the shrouded figure by the fireplace. I pulled away the cloth covering it. At first it looked like Desiree standing there, stiff and rigid, dressed in a gown of pale blue moiré that I recognized as the one she had worn to Lady Allsop’s ball. But closer examination showed that the skin was dyed cloth laid over a harder surface, the hair sewn onto the scalp. A hole nestled in her décolletage, just big enough to accommodate the brass key I retrieved from the fireplace.

I inserted the key and twisted it, hearing the ratcheting of the cogs and gears inside my clockwork bride, until her eyelids unshuttered and I stepped forward to take her in my arms.

As we waltzed, I wept. Wept for my Desiree – not just what I had thought she would be to me, but for what she had been, for her clever hands and heart and laughter, and that she had loved me as much as I had loved her. Tears stained her silk bodice as I held her close, sky-blue darkening to stormy. The fairies hung in a circle around us, abandoned by their former mistress. I wept, and we danced.

She danced very well indeed.

Now Akbar-e-Azam, the Shah-en-Shah, Emperor of the World, who is called the Light of Heaven, has built markets and mosques and schools for his people of flesh and of metal and for the eternal glory of God. But he commissioned the mechanical aviary for himself and only himself. Not even his favorite wives could enter – only the Emperor, his slaves and the Artificer, who is herself a bird of metal.

It was a small aviary, notable only for its roof: panes of thin clear glass which cast no latticed shadows but let the Sun light up the birds unhindered. Birds of cog and gear and lever, their mechanical lives powered by springs, they were made from shining copper and silver and bronze. Enamel coated their heads, their tails, their wing-tips, in gleaming colors for the Shah-en-Shah’s delight. From Falcon, whose beak and claws were edged with diamond, who had once brought down a tiger, to Phoenix, whose mechanism built a child within her and sealed its final seams in the fire that melted her away – every bird was a wonder. Not a feather rusted, not a joint squealed, not a single spring wound down, for the merely human aviary slaves were careful and skilled.

The Shah-en-Shah (blessed with long life, Allah be praised) was at that time barely more than a boy. He loved his birds and denied them nothing. Most especially he could not deny his favorites, Peacock and Bulbul.

For though he was proud of Falcon and Phoenix, he came most often to hear Bulbul’s sweet song and see the flashing colors of Peacock’s dance; or to have Bulbul sit on his shoulder while he rubbed jasmine oil onto Peacock’s feathers. This brought him peace; and to Akbar, who inherited a crown and a war when he was thirteen years old, who had to execute his own foster brother for treachery, peace has always been harder won than pride. For the joy of their music and dance he loved Bulbul and Peacock above all others – and for the joy of their music and dance they grew to love each other.

And so they approached the Artificer.

“O Lady with human hands,” sang Bulbul, “will you build us a child who can both dance and sing?”

But the Artificer bird would not.

“O brightest of eye and feather,” said Peacock, “does our wish displease you? Do you find these slaves presumptuous?”

“Not presumptuous,” said the Artificer, “but certainly unwise.”

They were so distraught that Peacock tripped over his own tailfeathers when he next tried to dance, while Bulbul piped one thin, flat, endless note. “Are you ill?” asked the Emperor. “Are your cogs slipping, one from the other?”

“Son of Heaven,” Peacock said, “the illness is in our heartsprings. We wish to make a child together, but the Lady will not help.”

At this the Emperor frowned. “Is such a task below you?” he asked her. For the Artificer was no slave; she had once been his teacher, and was now an honored guest. She rustled her copper tailfeathers.

“Far below me,” she said, “to betray you so. Every bird here has one purpose, and one bird fulfills each purpose, and thus is peace maintained. Will you breed strife in your sanctuary?”

“Children strive against us,” said the Shah-en-Shah (who had yet no children). “We raise them in love nonetheless. If you are truly my friend, give my birds their wish.”

The Artificer was silent for a long time. Finally she said, “As I am your friend, I shall. But hear me first.”

In the Golden City of legend, Mechanical Pukar (which Westerners called Khaberis), there were wonders lost now to the ages. Rooftops and roads inlaid with yellow sapphire, emerald, cinnamon stone and the other astrological gems; mechanical people wearing spun and filigreed gold; markets piled with ingots and fine tools. There were slaves of flesh to tend to people and wind them up. There were pools of fragrant oil to bathe in, tiled with obsidian and warmed by the Sun. And there were temple dancers, who also sang.

Nothing compared to the dancers’ beauty; but having both abilities wound their heartsprings so tightly that they could think only of themselves and their art. So, too, could any who grew close to them think only of them.

There was an artificer once, a young man of gleaming bronze, with sharp eyes and skillful fingers. He and his wife worked hard and well together. They made a fortune. Then he made a dancing girl and fell in love.

He squandered everything he owned, everything his wife owned, save only her anklets. Instead of his commissions he built treasures for his dancer, treasures which the Shah-en-Shah himself would gladly accept if they existed today. But the girl thought only of her dance and her song.

She danced away, in time. His heartspring nearly snapped, but he woke from that dream and found that, despite everything, he still had a wife. They left Pukar together that day, in shame, walking barefoot through the dust.

“So I shall make them a child,” said the Artificer, “but it shall either sing or it shall dance. Not both.”

“We could not love such a child equally,” said Peacock.

Bulbul said, “It must do both.”

“Pukar is but an old legend,” said the Shah-en-Shah. “Will you deny them for a story?”

“A story?” The Artificer clicked her beak. “I wear one of those anklets around my neck.”

Akbar smiled; but as he smiled in court, with grace rather than belief.

“What you ask worries me,” said the Artificer. “But it worries me more that I seem to have taught you nothing. So be it, King of Kings; bring me beaten silver to replace the worn copper in my tail, and precious metal and enamel enough for this task, and they shall have what they want.”

And so it was; she made a little golden child with wings and tail enamelled green, and named her Devadasi. Bulbul and Peacock raised her and taught her with love and patience. Being made by the Artificer, whose skill exceeds all others’, she soon sang with greater range and sweetness than her father and danced with more grace and expression than her other father. All the birds were entranced – except the Artificer, who stayed away.

One day, when Akbar came to the aviary with trouble on his shoulders, Devadasi fluttered down to him. “May this slave sing to ease your soul?” she asked. “May I dance to give joy to the brightest star in the Heavens?” For her fathers had also taught her manners.

Now, the Shah-en-Shah had just abolished the pilgrim tax, and he was anxious to forget his mother’s anger (remember that he was very young in those days). So he smiled, and accepted, and Devadasi sang for him and danced. And like all others, the Emperor of the World was entranced.

“What a clever bird you are,” he said afterwards.

Devadasi preened and asked, “Do you not think my singing sweeter than Bulbul’s, o my lord?”

The Emperor said, “Yes, little bird, it is sweeter than any other music in the world.” This was thoughtless of him; but indeed he was not thinking.

“And do you not think my dancing prettier than Peacock’s?”

“I do, little one,” he said.

Bulbul and Peacock had approached to see how their daughter fared; but their heartsprings broke at Akbar’s words, and they sang and danced no more. Struck by grief and guilt, the Shah-en-Shah bent his head and wept.

“Do not mourn, Great One,” said Devadasi. “They are merely metal now, it is true, but surely it would please their springs and screws to be made beautiful. Have the Artificer bird use them to build more birds like myself, and my fathers’ very cogs will rejoice.”

And so the Light of Heaven commanded.

The Lady obeyed (for even an honored guest obeys the Ruler of All). She sawed Bulbul and Peacock apart, melted them down, re-formed them. But their balance wheels and their broken heartsprings she quietly set aside.