Infernal Machines Read online

  Infernal Machines

  John Hornor Jacobs

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Part Two

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Also by John Hornor Jacobs from Gollancz

  Copyright

  EPIGRAPH

  Si vis pacem, para bellum

  If you want peace, prepare for war

  PART ONE

  I can show you what is left. The ruins of Harbour Town, in Occidentalia. Of Rume, the Immortal City, herself, if you wanted to walk among those charred stones, if you wanted to see what the machines of war, the machinations of man, and what Hellfire can wreak. And, maybe, someday, when you are ready, we will take you so you can learn. And by learning, rule.

  – Dveng Ilys

  It is the stillness of the mountain lake you must find within you so that at the moment the moon rises, its face is mirrored in the waters. Then action is equal. The still will always master the restless.

  – Sun Huáng, The Sword of Jiang

  ONE

  Kill Their Horses

  ‘IA-DAMN IT,’ FISK said. ‘Ia-damn it all to Hell.’ His horse, the new one, had froth working out from under the saddle-blanket and champed the bit furiously in her mouth. Fisk wore a pinched expression – he was irked. Like most men accustomed to the rigours of the Hardscrabble, he liked to do the chasing. Not be chased.

  ‘They’re what, a half day behind? This godsdamned place has a million hidey-holes we can bolt to,’ I said, sweeping my arm to take in the cracked and sundered expanse of the eastern reaches of the Hardscrabble. The bright, brittle sky became hazy at the edges this late in the summer, and the heat was on us something fierce. Bess barked and coughed occasionally, due to the burns on her rump from the titanic blast of Hellfire that had destroyed Harbour Town.

  And now the Hardscrabble, and soon the rest of Occidentalia, would be lousy with Medierans. Like the ones pursuing us – Beleth and his new moustachioed friends.

  ‘Half day, yes,’ Fisk said. ‘Maybe more. But he had some daemon-gripped stretchers with him, leaping this way and that. If he sets those damned dogs on us, we’ll be in a spot.’

  ‘We can’t keep this pace forever,’ I said. ‘We don’t have enough water and we’re too far from anywhere or anyone who might give us succour. We could make for the Bitter Spring, maybe.’

  Fisk thought for a long while.

  ‘We’ll rest the horses for a bit, over there, in the shadow of those rocks. Then we’ll push hard on to the Long Slide, and wait.’

  ‘You’re getting sly in your old age, Fisk,’ said I. ‘An ambush?’

  ‘That’s about all we can do, unless we discover that half-century of legionnaires toddling about the Hardscrabble.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ I said.

  We rested the horses in the shade of a crag of sundered rock as the sun rose. I stripped Bess of tack and saddle and tended her wound as best I could – water, maguey sap slathered on her arse, and kind words. She blew hot air through her nose and nipped at my britches with yellow-green teeth, her stubbly mane bristling. Fisk tended his own mount and we gave them what water we could, though there was scant to spare.

  The brutal sun rose in the sky and the shadow where we rested the mounts narrowed and shrank so that we ended up pressed against the rock face, moving to stay out of hammer-blow light. Weariness passed over me, and the injuries and insults all over my body pricked memories – burns on my hands, ears, and back of my neck recalled the incandescent flame of Harbour Town’s destruction; the throbbing knot on my scalp where he sapped me, Beleth and his daemon-gripped stretchers; my abraded wrists, where they bound me – Gynth, the vaettir, fighting, saving me; my hunger and thirst, the taproom of militarised dvergar. Beyond that, and before, I could not recall then. I passed a hand over my stubbled head where the hair was almost burned away.

  Everything had gone to Hell. And my old carcass was just a mirror of it.

  Not much shadow, by then. Even the horses seemed to feel the growing tension as pursuit neared.

  ‘This is Ia-damned ridiculous,’ Fisk said, finally, his boots on the line where rock-shadow met brilliant Hardscrabble. ‘Let’s go.’

  Bess and Fisk’s mount weren’t ready to move in the heat of the day, but our urgency swayed them, though Bess hawed something fierce. I loved Bess dearly, but she was still wilful, like any beast, or offspring, possessed of abnormal intelligence where parents simply want for a docile and accepting child.

  When I had her tacked out, I took the saddle and she chuffed hot air and chucked her head – in annoyance or agitation from the chase, I could not tell. Her smarts were hard to fathom.

  We lit out, taking it easy. Taking it easy, urgently. No canter, but alternating between trotting and walking, over the Hardscrabble. It was a matter of hours before the Long Slide hove into view and then a matter of hours more before the ascent was well made.

  ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ I asked Fisk as we took the rise.

  ‘We wait here for them, there’s no other approach except up the Long Slide for miles around.’ He looked back behind him, over his horse’s rump. Far in the heat-warped distance, something moved on the horizon. Horses, maybe. ‘We kill as many as we can. If he’s got daemon-gripped with him, kill them first and then, once it’s just us …’ He paused, thinking. ‘Just us men, well, we know what to do then.’

  I assumed he meant more killing. ‘We need water. We can’t hold out pinned down here for days on end.’

  Fisk nodded. ‘If it comes to that, then, you’ll ride on to the Bitter Spring. But it won’t come to that.’ He looked at me closely. ‘You let the stretchers and the daemon-gripped get right on top of us, Shoe. Close enough for a kiss,’ he said, pulling his carbine and checking the rounds. He thumbed each one’s warding, checking the integrity. He’d restocked his supply in Harbour Town – possibly the work of Samantha or one of her junior engineers. Some paltry comfort there, that she was here with us now, even if it was solely through her handiwork.

  I laid out my six-guns and began unloading and reloading them.

  Almost to himself, Fisk said, ‘Yes. You kill the stretchers and daemon-gripped, my friend. And I’ll kill their horses.’

  TWO

  A Thousand Tomorrowless Days

  THE HARDSCRABBLE: THE tawny gold of the dirt from which sprang the dvergar and vaettir, emerged from some fathomless, impossible origin; the countless skeins of bramblewrack veining through the gulleys and mountainside, the impassable breaks and soars of gambel and ash and keening pine, traced now with the passage of native creatures – shoal auroch and turkey buzzard and lickerfish suspended in eternal movement, to rise and fall, to eat and be eaten, in a steady progression of a thousand tomorrowless days; now comes the tread of man, first the Medieran boots flickering across the Hardscrabble plains, then Northmen for a year or day, for a blinking moment, and then again Medieran for years follo
wing the mapless miles of the Occidentalia wildernesses; blood, the piping-hot blood of the creatures hunted and harvested by man, dvergar, and vaettir alike, spilling into the dust to be joined by the blood of Medieran and Ruman and Northmen, watered with blood, drenched in the hot stuff, at the clawed hands of vaettir, and the swords and guns of men. Dispossessed, too, the land: the dwarves held it, and the stretchers hunted it, ravenous ghosts, not knowing the bounty and treasure they had and with the coming of the Ruman, Hellfire in one hand and whiskey in the other, they lost it; dispossessed of land and identity too, not knowing where to belong and only realising it maybe when the Rumans – when we – gave them something to fight against. Dispossessed of home and hearth, but never the vaettir, never the stretcher, the genius loci, the leaping lord. It is he that is the possessor of the land, and the West, and while he might die, he will never relent of it or be dispossessed.

  Unlike me.

  We sail to Rume.

  I have no home but where Fisk is, and he is lost to me.

  Juvenus, pale-faced and sweating, entered our stateroom after a polite knock. He’d put on his suit and even worn a tie, though we’d become inured to the sight of the man sweating in shirtsleeves. The Nous Sea grew high with towering swells and the weather had turned cold, but the innards of the Malphas were always hot. Hellish hot.

  I greeted him as Lupina fed young Fiscelion and Carnelia stretched, sore from her armatura.

  ‘Miss Livia,’ the captain said. Behind him stood two lascars bearing carbines and frightened, taut expressions. He cleared his throat and scratched at his arm. The bare white of a fresh bandage peeked from the cuff.

  ‘How may I help you?’ I asked. I pointed at his wrist. ‘You come to me freshly bandaged, and not by my hand, so I assume you have had use of a Quotidian and have received a message and that it bodes ill for us.’

  ‘I am here,’ he said, clearing his throat and tugging down his cuff to cover the bandage, ‘to relieve you of your Quotidian device, Madame. By order of Tamberlaine himself.’ He looked uncomfortable and his voice pitched toward nervousness, rather than villainy.

  ‘And what reason did he give?’ Carnelia said, straightening. She had sweat plastering her hair to her neck and was dressed in the loose, flowing garb that Sun Huáng had insisted they – lost Secundus, Tenebrae, and her – train in. Carnelia placed her hand on the jian that she’d negligently sat upon the dresser. The two lascars shifted their weight.

  ‘He is Emperor and our Great Father,’ Juvenus said. The words were rote, and came from him like stones falling from one’s mouth. ‘He need not explain himself to me.’

  ‘I am of as noble blood as he,’ Carnelia said. ‘Cornelians can trace our history back to the gods, just as Tamberlaine can.’

  Juvenus lowered his head. The muscles popped and worked in his cheek. ‘I am sorry, Livia, Carnelia. I am sorry. You are to be placed under guard until we reach Rume. This is his command.’

  ‘Is Tenebrae also to be placed under guard?’ I asked.

  Juvenus paused. ‘No, he is not.’

  ‘I see. We are to be corralled home to become pawns on the knightboard of Tamberlaine once more.’ I went and took Fiscelion from Lupina and kissed his fat cheek. He cooed. ‘Are we to be confined below decks?’

  ‘No, Madame,’ Juvenus said. He gestured to the lascars standing behind him, white-knuckling their carbines. ‘You will have an escort should you want to venture about.’

  ‘Guards, you mean,’ I said.

  ‘Escorts. You remain my guest and will receive all due honour and civility that the Malphas and I have to offer,’ Juvenus said. ‘I am sorry it has come to this.’

  ‘You are sorry,’ I said, thinking of how the folk of the Hardscrabble used that word. ‘I have never seen someone as sorry.’

  Juvenus, bowing his head, said, ‘Please send me a message if you have any needs and I will make sure they are addressed.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said I, though I can only imagine that my tone belied my words. ‘Thank you. You may go,’ I said, waving a hand toward the passageway behind him.

  He stood there a long while, looking agitated and sheepish. Eventually he screwed his courage up to say, ‘But you have not turned over your Quotidian. I cannot leave until you do.’

  Handing Fiscelion to Carnelia, I retrieved the argent-warded box. It smelled of sulphur and blood and woodsmoke and when I handed it to Juvenus, I felt heavier rather than lighter because of it.

  When Juvenus was gone, Carnelia began cursing and clenching her fists – maybe because she felt some great furore at being controlled once more by the patriarchs of Rume, or maybe because she knew that by forcing us to return to Rume, Juvenus consigned Fiscelion to be bereft of a father. I did not know. Lupina watched implacably, sucking her teeth.

  ‘Sissy,’ said I. ‘We must come to an accord.’

  ‘What? And let them do this to us again? Let us be corralled like beasts? I think not,’ Carnelia said. Her neck was flushed red, as if the anger in her belly grew and moved through her like fallowfires across the shoal grasses.

  I approached her and lowering my voice, said, ‘I do not know if they will stoop to eavesdropping on us, but I say to you now I will not submit. We will not submit to Tamberlaine. I will not remain in Rume. The Emperor has said I am divorced, but I am not here.’ I struck my breast with a fingertip. ‘And I will get back to Fisk and Occidentalia.’

  ‘I will stay with you, sissy, unto the ends of the earth,’ Carnelia said.

  I embraced her then, which was made awkward by Fiscelion being held between us, and he squawked and made infantile coos and gurgling noises.

  ‘Oh, sissy, how you have changed,’ I said, looking at her. There were lines at the corners of her eyes, and a fierceness in her disposition that was marked and new. She had always been fierce and wild – but before, it was the fierce outrage of uselessness, the restlessness of chattel. But now she was like me, dispossessed, divided from a home, her fierceness had meaning and usefulness. And she had her jian, her talon. And her wits, which had never been inconsequential, but the pettiness had fallen away and left something altogether remarkable.

  She smiled, but it did not touch her eyes. ‘And what of this accord?’

  ‘We must wait and watch for a time to escape. I doubt we will be allowed off ship at the Ætheopicum port when they take on fresh water, wine, and supplies. And so, we will find ourselves at the Ostia pier before the Ides to be returned to the society of our father and the rest of Rume.’ I touched her hand. ‘We will appear entirely content with our situation until the moment we must move. We will dote and exclaim over our father, as he dotes and exclaims over Fiscelion, and do whatever Juvenus asks with absolute aplomb and grace.’

  ‘That’s a fucking bitter role,’ Carnelia said. ‘Where’s the fun in playing nice? I would spit in their faces. Or,’ Carnelia said, wetting her finger in her mouth and then drawing circles in the air with it as if it were a sword, ‘Better, prick them with my sword.’

  She smiled, and it was not wicked, but avid and predatory.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know you would. I hope you will not have to.’

  Carnelia was quiet for a long while, thinking of it. Fiscelion reached up and played with her hair with fat, pink hands, and gurgled.

  ‘We must raise no suspicions of our intent,’ I said. ‘And be compliant.’

  ‘And mendacious.’

  ‘Yes, mendacious. Yes, coy. Yes, docile, if we are to have a chance,’ I said.

  ‘Too much of my life have I been so,’ Carnelia said. ‘I do not want to be so again.’

  ‘Would it ease the chafe of having to be so to know you will be working toward that break?’

  ‘A little,’ Carnelia said, and wandered over to the settee, where her hand found the jian’s hilt as if of its own accord.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  She thought for a while. ‘Livia, once you denounced Rume and parentage and everything else in front of our father, and tossed it
all into his teeth. I watched you then with a little girl’s grubby heart, only thinking of my own pleasure and ease. But when you said those words, something stirred in me that I didn’t know was part of my make-up. And I was jealous and envious and terrified for you all at once.’

  ‘I remember,’ I said.

  ‘It has taken me a long while to get to that place myself. Gnaeus is gone. Secundus is gone. I would renounce all, like you, without home and without destiny except that which I make and I will not give that up lightly.’

  ‘So, you will be compliant until it is time to not comply?’

  Carnelia withdrew her sword and held it up so that it caught the daemonlight.

  ‘I will,’ she said, looking at the blade and turning it this way and that to catch the light as she once might have a mirror.

  Writing becomes habit. Over the long months separated from Fisk, I’ve become used to taking down a history of my events of the day, my thoughts. And now the Quotidian has been taken from me, it is to myself I write, instead of my love. Indulgent. Indulgent but necessary. A much less bloody endeavour altogether, and I have not yet decided if that is a good or bad thing. Sometimes, when I write, it is like whispering my secrets into the great Occulus of the Cælian, the eye of Rume peering toward the heavens, the hushed voices of its visitors echoing strangely. Other times, it is like a cough, a reflexive exhalation – all my love, my hate, my worries, my concern for Fiscelion the Younger – all exhorted in a mad rush of words that I pen down.

  There are nights, though. There are nights when young Fiscelion snuggles with Carnelia or Lupina in our stateroom, and on numb feet I go onto the deck and stand on the prow, in the shadow of the swivel guns, the salted air heavy and cold, the Malphas rising and falling on the swells as the lascar guards watch me silently, gripping their carbines. I ignore them as best I can. I would scream but for the observers and the accord Carnelia and I made. Off in the distance Rume awaits, and there’s no turning away from it. No amount of bribery or wheedling could change Juvenus from this course.