Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (51 page)

"Alton, no!"

Sarsosa stopped. "I what?"

"Killed her lover. Oh, you didn't know? In Mexico."

Sarsosa looked towards Aldora with a smirk. "I am afraid you will need to be more specific. I killed many people in Mexico."

Through the pain in her leg, Aldora could barely focus. She felt herself falling, almost, descending as her fiancée exposed her wounds to her enemy. She had worked hard -- so hard -- to appear fierce, invulnerable, untouchable. Alton was one of the few she had admitted her weaknesses to. She had thought she could trust him. She thought she had his discretion. "Alton--"

"Hush." Sarsosa extended his leg, the ball of his foot rocking the bolt sticking through her calf. She screamed in agony.

"The guide," Bartleby said. "Leading the film crew."

"The one who was insolent," Sarsosa said. "Yes. That would make sense, then, why you opposed me so."

He took his foot off of the bolt and sank to one knee alongside Aldora. "Is that it? Did I kill your lost love?"

"Why are you doing this?" Rage and despair and panic and pain mixed together in her voice.

"Because you need to hear it," Bartleby said, stepping out from behind the mill's wreckage. "Because you've been hiding from it. You think you're so strong, Aldora, but all you've done is hide. You cannot banish pain by refusing to acknowledge it. You cannot fake strength by denying your pain."

Sarsosa looked from Alton to Aldora. "Even your fiancée despises you, Fiske. He understands you well enough to hate what you are."

A sob broke from Aldora then, a sound so sudden and raw that even her foe looked shocked. It was all too much, the sudden well of emotion long repressed, mourning for Grayson, for Henry, for poor betrayed Safiya. She felt hurt, she felt sorry for herself, she felt betrayed, like everyone was against her.

She could hear Sarsosa advancing. "Any admiration I once held for you is gone, Fiske. Whatever you were, the woman who defeated me is gone. Now all that remains is this pathetic mewling girl. I will end you, and remember you as the warrior you once were."

The sorrow flowing through her core quickly turned into a red molten fury. Rage at Sarsosa for killing her Henry, for endangering her family, for ruining her wedding. Rage at her brother for making her kill him. Rage at Cemal for betraying her affection. Rage at Alton for exposing her and opening this floodgate of emotions. Rage at herself for making that necessary.

There were no quips. There was no witty repartee. There was no finesse. There was nothing but a scream of fury so profound that it touched the primitive core of the parts of Sarsosa that were still human. He froze, he hesitated as he reached for her, and that was all the opening that Aldora needed.

Still screaming, she rolled to her side, pivoting at the hip as she rose back up onto her right shoulder and elbow. Her legs, locked at the ankles, swung mace-like in an arc towards Jago Sarsosa, slamming the iron bolt still in her calf into his chest with force sufficient to plunge the metal through the chinks in his brass breastbone and into where his heart should have been.

Sarsosa choked out something half-way between the grinding of gears and a helpless gurgle, brass mechanisms convulsing while his still flesh arm hung limply.

Bartleby was at her side, then, grabbing the machine-man before he could fall on top of her. She didn't look at him, couldn't meet his eyes. Without so much as a grimace she pulled the perforated meat of her calf off of the spike, now firmly embedded in her fallen foe's chest.

She slipped out of the way and Bartleby let the man drop, the blood-and-grease slicked spike driven up through Sarsosa's back by the force of his fall.

Aldora hobbled to her feet. Bartleby didn't say anything, didn't offer her his hand, didn't do anything but gaze levelly at her. He didn't apologise, didn't offer an explanation, didn't make any excuses.

They stood there for a short eternity, eyes locked, silent.

Bartleby took his hands out of his pockets.

Aldora crumpled, collapsed, fell into her fiancée as he stepped forward to support her, to cradle her, to hold her tight as the tears began to flow in earnest, and the couple didn't move from that spot until they had stopped.

***

In my own home.

You send this monster, here, in
my own home
, wearing the flesh of my departed son.

I am almost blind with rage as I pen this. The lack of respect you have shown me, have shown my house, by sending this creature to me. I wonder what I have done to earn your contempt in such a manner. Did I dither too long? Did you grow tired of my hemming and hawing? I must admit I had my misgivings, with your plans, with your aims, with your silly secondary-school code names, but I never thought you so foolish as to strike at me in this way, in my own home.

I simply cannot abide this lack of respect.

You have called me Sulla in these correspondences and I have humoured you, but I wonder if you even know who these men were, whose names you steal, or if they're just half-remembered words from your secondary school days. Do you know whom you have named me? Sulla marched on Rome twice, my Octovirate, when he found that his supposed allies had moved against him.

As you have clearly moved against me.

Do not contact me again. Stay far from me. Stay far from my daughter. If I even suspect that you have intentions to interfere with us, with our lives, I will bring against you resources you can barely begin to speculate upon. This is a war you cannot weather, and you know what a vengeful man I can be.

Do not make that mistake, or I will not stop until you and your families are dead.

I trust you understand.

Sulla

***

For a long time, Jago Sarsosa dwelt within a hell of unending agony. That was all that existed for him -- he could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing but a constant and almost ambient pain. It did not vary, it did not lessen. There was no way to measure the passage of time; he lacked even a sense of self to distract himself.

He dwelt within it, knowing it to be hell, for an eternity before he began to get used to it. His will was strong, and what would have driven another man mad, he simply forced himself to master. As he gained dominion over it, the pain became transformed into a misty sort of euphoria. The effort made it more difficult to think, but he managed to congratulate himself.

Once the pain had almost been subdued he could think clearly enough to take stock of his situation. He still couldn't feel his arms or legs. He still couldn't move or speak.

Footsteps in the darkness. Followed by a shaft of light that resolved itself into a tall rectangle -- a doorway.

Someone had opened a doorway into the dark room where he was being kept. In its light, after his eye adjusted, he could see that he was suspended in a glass case. He still couldn't feel his body or move, but from the flatness of his vision he determined that his mechanical eye had been removed or destroyed.

He yet lived. His imperfect vision proved that. He felt the muted stirring of hope -- if he lived, then someone had recovered him. Perhaps it was his patrons. Perhaps it was the authorities. It didn't matter; to Jago his survival was proof that fate had more in store for him. He would escape, he would survive, he would bring to the world his great work of unending war. He would have shouted in triumph if he could, but his greatest efforts brought forth no movement.

A figure appeared in the doorway, shadowed in the light, and approached his glass prison. He couldn't make out the features.

"Sarsosa," there was an undercurrent of barely suppressed rage, and he recognised the voice as belonging to the father of his hated foe.

He stared at Lucian Fiske, unable to respond.

"I have kept you alive for the simple reason that I am a vengeful man. You have come to my house, threatened my family, endangered my bloodline. My house, Sarsosa. I do not know if you had the blessing of your masters, but I do not care. Our association has ended, and if they get in my way, I will destroy them."

Jago would have smirked if he could.

"At first I had planned to send you back to them with that message, but I decided a simple letter would suffice. No, I kept you alive because I am a small man. In some ways a petty man. But a vengeful man."

He tapped on Jago's cage. "I have taken your technology, and much of your remaining flesh. What I have left you with is, my technicians assure me, enough to keep you alive indefinitely. They assure me that the opiates they have given you are enough to make sure you can understand my words, so before they run out and return your world of pain, I wanted you to know that as long as I draw breath, so shall you. I'm an old man, Sarsosa, but I've got perhaps a decade left before I leave this world."

He turned to go. "I hope you enjoy our remaining time together as much as I will."

As the drugs faded and the pain returned, Jago very much wanted to scream.

***

DREAMS OF THE DAMNED

Arthur Paddock's hand hovered briefly over the brandy, before continuing on past it to the bottle of Gilbey's hidden in the back of his liquor cabinet. He did not often make a habit of drinking gin, preferring the brandies and sparkling wines typical to a gentleman of his station. On nights like tonight, however, he felt the need for something coarser, a little more base, to steady his nerves, and the mantle's fire did little to make the night cosier.

Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the lawn visible beyond his office's picture windows, followed by a distant thunder. It was not the weather that had drawn a knife's edge along his nerves. His thoughts flickered briefly to one of his patients, a timid brontophobe. The poor man would start and fly into a panic at so much as the sound of an airship's engine backfiring in the sky above; heavy storms like this required his sedation lest he injure himself or others in his terror.

Paddock poured himself a small glass of gin and returned to his desk, reaching out to touch his brass Director's nameplate. Funny, that. He, a man who had always hated confrontation, hated conflict. Hated the way it made him felt inside, like his core was filled with molten sick. Here, in this position. One that essentially guaranteed he'd end up confronting others, the patients, the doctors, the orderlies.

Sometimes he wished he'd never gone into administration. He loved the rest of the parts of his job. Loved it a great deal, loved helping people, but most especially loved building devices of brass cogs and wire to help them help themselves. He had made a great use out of his Royal Academy of Artificers and Engineers education, a damn sight better than most of his former academic peers had. His best days were those when his services as director went unneeded, and he could just focus on the arts of mental healing and tinkering on his Great Work.

A knock on the door, a small polite rapping, broke his reverie.

He downed the rest of the drink and hid the glass in his top desk drawer. Pushing back his chair with a sigh, he rose and approached the door. He was not looking forward to this.

He never even saw the knife.

20 September, 2011 - 7:45 am

The pounding of my rubber-glove-clad fist set loose a splatter of caustic chemicals, but the damage done to Bartleby's bedroom door's teak finish was not my concern. The rapping was as rapid as my quickening heartbeat, its volume rising with my growing anxiety, its force intensifying with the headache that had been growing since my routine had been interrupted. Each blow reverberated through the upper floor of the finely appointed London townhouse that my partner and I shared.

It took him several moments to open the door, clad in crimson and gold flannel oriental-style pyjamas, a carefully disinterested expression upon his face. He stood to block my view of the room. "Unless London's afire, James..."

"There are men, Bartleby." I was so upset that coherent speech was proving difficult. "Strange men. In my workshop."

William, the houseboy, ducked past us on the way to the second floor washroom, his arms laden with clean towels.

"Your predilections are none of my concern," Bartleby said, starting to close the door. "And, frankly, I expect more from you than such braggadocio."

I gripped its edge with one hand, stopping it. "I have no patience for your cheek, Bartleby. Men have invaded my workshop. Workmen. Carrying... things."

"Those 'things' are mine and Aldora's wedding presents. We discussed this."

"I don't recall discussing anything of the sort."

"Oh, but you must!" Bartleby pulled at the door with both hands, but my grip was steadfast. "I remember it quite clearly. Two nights ago, the dinner party at Aldora's."

"I attended no such party."

"No? How very strange. I distinctly recall inviting you."

"Then I'm sure I was busy." Bartleby was frequently inviting me out -- to shows, to galas, to dinner parties and social events. I seldom accepted.

"Well, that would explain why you raised no objection when the question of storing the gifts in your workspace was raised." Bartleby picked up a silver-handled walking stick from beside his door and began prodding me with the capped end.