Steamscape (27 page)

Smith’s face contorted. Jing breathed out and started to relax his grip.

The Reaper’s face twisted into a grin. Jing looked down. The bullet was rapidly spinning in place, trapped in a cloud of steam in front of Smith’s stomach. Steam pulled from the moisture of the blood across Smith’s arm.

Smith’s pupils suddenly dilated and the bullet shot back at Jing. The prosthetic kneecap sparked and exploded into scrap metal. The mechanic stumbled back with the force of the shot, a surprised expression widening across his face.

The Reaper spun and put his foot down in front of Solindra.

She tried to straighten and swing the rifle between herself and Smith. He raised the cane over her chest, pointed end aimed at her heart.

Solindra thrust out with the rifle butt, the fastest move possible from her lopsided position. It slammed into Smith’s thigh.

He staggered back half a step. She spun the rifle around so that the barrel pointed toward his head. It wasn’t aimed, not with the fight. The barrel’s end bobbed and swayed, but couldn’t find its target.

Theo bowled himself shoulder first into the Reaper and knocked both of them back. Drina had circled around and dropped a thick silken cord around Smith’s neck.

Where Smith no longer was. The silk hissed through the empty air.

The Reaper whirled the cane around in front of him like a stave.

On the table behind him, a telephone bell started to ring.

Smith scowled. “Excuse me, the Gentlemen require my services.”

He slammed the point of his cane into Drina’s side, spun around behind Theo and, in the second of chaos, retreated from the fight.

He trotted over to the table and ignored the ringing telephone. He lowered his hands to the typewriter, wired into the floor, and his fingers tapped out, “Truth.”

Drina hesitated and glanced back at Jing. She stepped between Solindra and Smith.

Gears started to click and whirl along the wall. The structure rumbled and fissures crackled into existence along the wall. Sections of metal sheeting fell away to reveal that an entire wall of the warehouse was clockwork.

Theo held his hands over his head as chunks of twisted metal rained down. Jing tried to limp away from the wall, but his broken prosthesis held him in place.

Drina and Solindra lunged forward. The vessel aimed the rifle, but the Death Spinner was two steps ahead and in her line of sight.

“Truth will win.” Smith raised his hand to the wall.

Drina thrust with two knives. One swept wide across the top of Smith’s chest, drawing his gaze while the other plunged straight toward his gut.

The Reaper batted away the first knife with the cane.

He grabbed her wrist with his other hand. His thumb dug into a pressure point and her hand slackened involuntarily. With his thumb, he flipped the thin stiletto back toward her.

Drina’s face pinched with anguish as the knife pushed into her chest against her ribs. She gasped.

Smith shoved her away and whirled to face the others.

And he stopped. Solindra was only three feet away with her rifle barrel at his chest.

Smith held the glass cane crosswise across his chest.

Her last bullet boomed as it spiraled out of the barrel. The glass cane shattered underneath the bullet, and the round bit deep into Smith’s heart. His cipher medallion swung over the bullet hole, but it was too late.

Smith’s eyes widened. He slumped forward and his knees buckled. Then he collapsed face-first onto the concrete floor.

Solindra exhaled and lowered her rifle. It felt ten times heavier now.

Jing wheezed and pointed. The clockwork wall was spinning faster. Several of Theo’s large switchpacks fired into life with pillars of flame along the wall.

Aether bands creeped up the wall as slivers of the element started to escape the underground storage. Automatic pulleys retracted well covers and crackling glass bulbs rose up from the floor. Pumps were pushing the aether into the glass.

“Chain reaction,” Theo gasped. “What can we do? Is there anything we can do?”

Jing shook his head. “Aether itself can’t explode.” He tried to lift his metal leg, but the joints wouldn’t move inside of it.

Solindra dropped the rifle and landed in front of him. She turned to Drina, who was pressing a hand against her bleeding breast.

The assassin heaved for breath. “I’m okay enough for now. We have to run.”

Jing shook his head again. “Can’t outrun this.”

“Then stop it before the aether ignites!” Theo screamed. “You’re Ghost! You’re the Hex! You can do anything.”

“Never went up against the Priory,” Drina gasped.

“Aether can’t ignite,” Solindra said, staring into the middle distance. “It’s not energy. It’s the medium through which energy is transferred. It reacts with everything else.”

A gear snapped and wheeled off the wall, twisted and smoking. The entire wall seemed to bulge and waver like a mirage.

“Too late.” Theo smeared the sweat across his face. “Too late.”

Aether bands spiraled up in the air and curled their tendrils toward them. Solindra tried to walk toward the wall, but the bulge no longer seemed to be in the same world.

“Can’t stop it!” Jing cupped his hands to be heard above the sounds of machinery.

The entire wall twisted and rose away from the floor. Chunks of concrete rumbled to the base. Rebar and steampipes hung uselessly into the empty air. Switchpack fires burned.

“It’s the fuel!” Solindra screamed. “The aether is just converting everything to energy, and that’s what will destroy Redjakel! Everything in Redjakel will be converted into pure energy.”

Another automated switchpack flared into life.

“Can’t stop it, the fire’s already burning.” Solindra started to hammer the rifle butt against the concrete floor. “Release the aether! Get the fuel away from the fire.”

More aether spiraled into the machine hovering over the ground, feeding the frenzy.

“Make holes! It can’t destroy the city if there’s no aether to make the transformation from matter to pure energy, so make holes!”

“What with?” Theo spun around, looking for anything. His hands fumbled for the thermite bombs he had grabbed from Flame’s bandolier.

Jing snatched up one of them from Theo’s slick fingers and tried to lurch forward, dragging his metal leg behind him.

Solindra slid into place alongside the mechanic’s leg. She pressed her red sancta against it. Steam from the sweat rising from their skin coalesced into a cloud around his metal knee. Jing moved it, and the metal squeaked, but it worked.

She rose, her uniform blowing in the winds. “Release the aether.”

The wall was hovering fifteen feet now and spinning slowly. The gears whirled as if spun by tornadoes. Behind it, a cogwheel started to curve unnaturally and glow, then it disappeared into a burst of white light. The building shook at the small burst, and a shockwave pushed them to the ground.

Theo, staring at the machine the entire time, handed each of them a thermite container.

“Oh, Flame.” Drina smiled at the small magnesium switchpack on top of the device.

They limped into a circle. One by one they met each other’s eyes and set the devices on the concrete floor. They lit the thermite’s switchpacks and stepped back in unison.

More items started to spin within the field of the machine. Aether tendrils encircled them and more white bursts flared and shook the entire world around them. They ate through the floor and the distant wall, beginning to convert the very matter into energy.

The burning thermite canisters melted through the floor. Aether bands, lighting up in their rainbow hues, began to seep up through the holes. At first they were only as wide as a fist, but they expanded as the fifth element began to escape.

“Is that enough?” Drina asked. The aether still caught in the chain reaction was eating away at the wall and buildings beyond, carried with the wind.

Solindra pulled out her sancta. The colorful aether swirled around her hands, answering her call without the intervention of steam. It spun faster and faster. She dropped her hands to the concrete and the aether streams followed, spiking through the floor like a meteor shower.

It blasted apart the center of the concrete and glass floor, sending fragments flying in all directions. Aether started to rise while cracks spread out across the floor in all directions.

“Run!” Theo bellowed.

Solindra turned but her gaze stuck on Smith’s body. The glass cane was shattered. The floor beneath his body was vaporizing.

Theo held back for just a second. He pulled the old coin out from around his neck and lifted it over his head. He tossed it down onto the floor ahead of him and into the rising tide of aether. He watched it dissolve into a flash of light and send out its own thunderclap.

Then he turned and ran for the warehouse door after the others.

They sprinted down the alley and into the avenues, and vanished into the fleeing crowds. Behind them, the rising explosion ate through the pieces of the buildings where it touched, vanishing them into light. But the flashes grew smaller with each passing moment, as the aether drifted away from the warehouses, swirling as it rose to join its brothers and sisters in the sky.

“Codic with no city. Steampower with no army.”

Solindra stood apart from the wall and the shadow where the others waited. She looked between the shining pillars of Steam Central and its surrounding skyscrapers, to the warehouse district. Even the aether bomb’s failed destruction wasn’t too apparent from this short distance. Not against the gritty, whirling machine of people that kept Steam Central’s lights glowing. She watched the sun setting, coming to earth in between the two worlds that shared one city.

Drina, Jing and Theo weren’t watching. Jing leaned against a walking staff while he fiddled with his leg with his free hand.

Drina shook her head. “I still think Codic has the advantage here.”

Jing frowned. “They’re without a lot of their leadership. Still no word on LaBier.”

Solindra turned away from the setting sun, putting it at her back. The golden and orange rays reflected on the silver rifle. “Priory’s intact, if they were hiding.”

Theo shrugged. “Hard to say on that. We don’t know. All we do know is that this isn’t over.” He snorted. “No more Smith, but what about Adri? Or more Reapers? Which side do we go after? There’s no end in sight to this.”

Solindra shook her head. “We’re all Eliponesian. We are still one nation. We’re suffering the same.”

He dusted imaginary dirt from his shirt. “Really, Sol? How are four people going to put a nation back together?”

“It doesn’t take much to start an avalanche.” She swung the rifle over her shoulder. “Maybe we should start by rescuing Helen Saturni.” She leveled her gray eyes with his. “Theo, you’re the new Flame. We still need a spy and fighter now.”

Jing pushed himself away from the wall and leaned on his walking staff. “Solindra, do you honestly want to do this?” He and Drina exchanged a glance.

The vessel nodded firmly. “I will not stand by while people who live on the wrong side of an imaginary line are killed for other men’s bounties.”

“We can teach you.” The mechanic pressed his lips together. “Their peace will only exist if we do our jobs well, and they’ll never know.”

She nodded again.

Drina put a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “Upfront, we are telling you that you will have to do things to protect these people that will haunt you for all your life.”

Solindra looked down into the pillars of steam rising up from the city below. “I’m already haunted.” She started walking.

Nearby, steam drifted out from the pipes that disappeared into its depths. Machinery played its own deep, rhythmic music from inside the buildings. But along the edge of the alley, where the vapor drifted, a few blue and purple steamflowers opened their petals.

“This is what you wanted, Dad,” the vessel whispered to the flowers.

“What was that?” Jing prompted.

“I need to send a message. Everywhere. All at once.”

“Won’t be easy,” he said.

“Yes, but you’re Ghost.”

She looked at each of them: Jing, Drina and Theo. “Ghost, the Death Spinner and Flame.” She dropped her gaze to a puddle, shiny with spilled oil but still enough like a mirror. “And I am Silvermark.”

***

Adri smoothed the lace of her white dress in one fluid motion as she turned away from the giant mirror at the head of the board room. She dipped a hand into her handbag, but didn’t retrieve anything immediately. A glow seemed to surround her, as the sunlight bounced off her dress and mixed with the glimmer from the diamond moon through the window.

In the mirror, she watched behind her as Boras Saturni slammed his hand against the conference table again. “Unacceptable losses!”

A board member raised his index finger. “But they left most of our equipment intact, and we can always get more uniforms. Heavens know there are more than enough people in the city without much to do. Give them a job, a leg up.”

“Hmm. There might be a food shortage next year though,” mused a second man, “since those people aren’t farming now.”

“That’s a problem for next year, John,” corrected a third. “Also, our tractors should be in mass production by then. Harvesting so much that we won’t hardly need farmers.”

“Gentlemen,” Saturni’s voice creaked from the head of the table. He barely glanced over as Adri stepped up beside him, hand still in her purse. “Our immediate objectives have always been to usher in a smarter, economical age against the antiquated government, and to rescue my wife.”

“Why?” Adri asked crisply. The room seemed to dim at her voice, except for the fading sunlight radiating off her dress. “You raised your daughter just fine, didn’t you?”

Saturni opened his mouth, but the steam princess had pulled the bag away from her hand, revealing a revolver.

She shot her father through his ear and pushed the body away from his chair before it could fall over. She smoothed her skirt with her free hand and took her seat.

The board inhaled collectively.

A speaker with a beard as wide as his hat roared to his feet. “Ms. Saturni, how dare you? We are important men who are the leaders of this country–”

A second gunshot exploded in the chamber. The speaker’s body slouched forward across the table.

Adri placed the smoking pistol onto the table. “A bullet kills each of you equally. And I can always find more uniforms for this table.”

Several other men had their mouths open in protest and rage. Then jaws clicked shut. Gazes wavered and fell.

She purred into the gathering silence, “Since you made yourselves little kings and put the law into the paws of this board, I have done nothing illegal. Not unless one of you speaks out against me.” She held up the smoking gun. “No? No one? Good.” She straightened her shoulders and leaned forward. “Now, gentlemen, to business. We must finish this war that my dear, late father began. I have a plan to kill the Priory and steal the rest of their secrets. This will work wonders for profit with their information in pocket.”

“What about the Hex?” a chair asked, and hid his face behind his gloved hands. “People are drawing that blasted symbol everywhere.”

“Yes, we must tell everyone how they abandoned our troops in battle.” Adri smiled viciously. “In order to win this war and conquer the hearts of all our citizens, we must dismiss their beacon of false hope first. We will destroy the Hex.”

The board member named John swallowed. “Um. Excuse me, Ms. Saturni?” He stuck his hands under the table to hide their shaking. “We learned about Flame’s demise. But, um, what could the two remaining rogue soldiers do?”

As if on cue, the telegraph machine, wired directly to a mechanical typewriter, began to hum. The keys punched out the ghost message.

We are the voices in the darkness. We are the riders on the storm. We are the Hex, and to those who visited these atrocities on our land, we’ll be hunting you.

When the keys fell back down into silence, Adri ripped the page away from the spool. She slid it across the conference table. “Let me put it like this. You’re either on my side or theirs, and I don’t think they like you very much.”

***

Down in the streets of Valhasse, tiny strips of telegraph paper were circling faster than dust devils. Many of the grime-smeared workers were cheering. A few older men and women who remembered the Hex were in tears. Others had just gone home or to their tents and barricaded themselves inside.

An urgent whistle down in the train yards squealed to no pattern. The heavy train cars rocked with the power of the mob behind it. The cattle train had been fitted to hold people instead, another Killing Train was ready to ride the rails. Only the people had stolen the rails out from underneath it.

First one car toppled on its side, suddenly useless to the world. The two linked cars on either side hung halfway on, halfway tipped into the air. Then, like a swarm of ants, the rioters began to take apart the Killing Train bit by bit.

***

The Hex’s message had gotten through. The train yards in Redjakel crumbled under the weight of the mob. A steam whistle coughed out one last alarm and went dead.

Across the blocks and avenues, in a less mutinous part of town, a man limped into a hotel. He sidestepped a pair of arguing teenagers.

The older one tried to yank the telegraph tape from the other’s hands. “Don’t get caught with this. Steampower will hang you for it!”

“Oh yeah? Are they going to hang everyone? The Hex is back! Ain’t nobody gonna fu–”

The older one tried to cram a fist into the other’s mouth. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

The man drew his jacket tighter over his chest and limped to the counter.

The manager of the hotel pulled out his guestbook. “Bit of trouble, sir?” He pointed to the bloodstains on the newcomer’s shirt.

The man scowled, but then forced a tight grin. “Indeed.”

“Such trouble out tonight! I hope it stays away from those of us who just keep our heads down and–”

“Pardon me, sir,” the man interrupted. “I just need to know if you’ve a room for rent.”

“I do. Name please, sir?”

The man straightened. “Martin Coxwell, Esquire.”

Once up in his private room, Coxwell listened against the tiny window. He could hear the roar from the warehouse district and the train yards, but it was just a beast in the distance. He removed his jacket to reveal a blue cipher medallion hanging by a small chain around his neck.

And a hole over his heart. In fact, a hole clear through his chest cavity. Candlelight shone visibly through the cavity. The top half of his heart was missing, and in its place steam glimmered in the meager light. Tiny, insubstantial gears pumped blood in and out of the organ in veins and arteries composed of steam. The clockwork heart continued its beat.