Infernal Machines Read online

  ‘It’s a hard thing we have to do, to ensure our freedom. You are having second thoughts?’

  He shook his head. ‘I loved Secundus. Can you understand that?’ He looked at me, imploring. But he was confused. In him things warred, his ineffable sense of honour and loyalty and the dawning realisation of his new situation. And even he did not understand how that loyalty could have shifted from Tamberlaine and Rume to a dead man in a cask of oil. And that dead man’s sister. And her son.

  ‘It’s done, whatever the case,’ I said. I walked over to the bulwark and vomited the contents of my stomach over the side, adding to the Tever’s miasmic and foetid swifts. My hands shook and I sank down to my knees.

  Tenebrae, not knowing what to do, exactly, came and squatted near me. ‘It is hard, your first killing,’ he said. ‘It’s good to talk about it.’

  ‘I have killed before,’ I said, thinking of the vaettir, thinking of the battle at the Winter Palace of Kithai.

  He touched my shoulder. ‘It is not the same.’

  ‘No,’ I said. No, none of that violence had been close, or so personal. Regulus’ head was there and then gone, and all that was left behind was stench and red mist.

  How could I hold my son in these hands? How could I?

  When the shaking ceased, I stood and smoothed my dress.

  ‘It is done,’ I said. ‘We have the ship. Let us take it away from here.’ I laughed. ‘We took the ship.’

  ‘Aye,’ Tenebrae said. ‘We have become pirates.’

  Carnelia, Tenebrae, and Lupina cleaned up the bodies while I spoke with – interrogated, rather – the engineer Ysmay. It was, as Tenebrae and I had discussed, a messy business. They threw the bodies overboard as I directed Ysmay to give a quick rundown of the functions of the ship. He did not prove recalcitrant, but I had points of coercion.

  ‘And these gauges here,’ I said, pointing with the sawn-off. It was a good instrument of indication. The man’s eyes followed the bores assiduously.

  ‘Those regulate the steam pressure and flow.’ He touched one. ‘This one is important – once Typhon has fresh blood—’

  ‘Typhon?’

  ‘The daemon that turns these screws. Did you not know this?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I just did not know that we had fallen so low that we named our ships after them. Or that they required blood.’

  ‘Low?’ He cocked his head and looked at me strangely. ‘Rume propels itself on their power but cannot bear to hear their names? It is a weakness—’

  I centred the bores of the shotgun back on the engineer. ‘Mister Ysmay, we will have ample time for discussing Rume and her citizens’ prejudices and peccadilloes in the coming months, but now—’

  The look on his face spoke volumes. The vastness of the Occidens Seas filled him.

  ‘But the Typhon is a littoral ship, a vessel for the coasts and bays. She’s not to make journeys of—’

  I waved the shotgun and he ceased making sound. ‘Littoral or no, prepare yourself.’ I touched the barrel lightly on his forehead. ‘Here. And here.’ Again, the lightest touch on his breast. Blued gunmetal kiss above the heart. I did not even wonder what person I had become.

  ‘Now,’ I said, once he had settled his discomfort at the realisation of where we were going. ‘Turn the Typhon downstream. Carnelia, Tenebrae! Come. Watch his every move.’ I tapped him again with the gun. ‘And you, talk. Everything you do, tell us how you do it, as you do it.’

  He blinked rapidly. Glanced about, as if something in the room could save him. He was smeared in blood, possibly some of Albinus’ faecal mire staining his trousers. His eyes fell upon the place where Regulus fell. And his eyes snapped back to me.

  ‘This is, of course, the compass,’ he began, reaching to place an unstable hand on a gauge. ‘It indicates the direction of true north. And here.’ He touched a small wooden and metal wheel within reach of the peering mechanism. ‘This controls the rudder.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘There are two screws, as she is a littoral and should one become damaged, the other can take the burden of propulsion.’ He reached forward and tapped two levers, capped in wood, hand-sweet. ‘These are the throttle for both of the screws. Pushed forward – like as to like, the thaumaturge’s dream – they propel the boat forward. Pushed back, beyond this marking, they reverse the boat.’

  ‘And this contraption, what is it?’ Carnelia slapped the metal side of the handled peering mechanism.

  ‘That is the mirrored occulus, or Miraculous, and allows us to steer. And,’ he paused here, looking at me, and then back to Carnelia as if we would react to his name for the device, ‘other functions that we can go into. But I think time is—’

  ‘Yes,’ Tenebrae said. ‘We’ve been wallowing here in the brown long enough.’ He wiped his hands on a bloody cloth. ‘Downstream. Now, and swiftly.’

  Ysmay took station at the Miraculous – it was a ridiculous name, an elision, and obviously a pet one – and pressed forward the throttle. ‘I am giving her more steam, and now turning her downstream. All is clear.’ He looked from the Miraculous to the throttle and back. He made a small adjustment in the rudder. ‘The Typhon, she’s very sensitive.’ A note of pride there. A whiff of ownership. He was the architect of the vessel, he was her father. And if I knew anything about parentage, he would do everything in his power to protect his child.

  ‘Mister Ysmay,’ I said. ‘It is a marvellous vessel you’ve created. How do the guns work?’

  He removed his face from the Miraculous. His features were animated. ‘The key to making things for the Ruman Fleet is that everything must be the same. No variations!’ Enthusiastic. A beaming father. So simple a deceit, to play to one’s strengths and loves. ‘The swivels came later, after the design of the Miraculous,’ he said.

  ‘That name is so preposterous, it makes me want to slap you,’ Carnelia said. ‘It is a scope that allows peeping. It’s a peep-o-scope.’

  ‘Ia’s ballsack,’ Tenebrae said. ‘That’s idiotic.’

  Ysmay remained silent for a moment, looking into the peep-oscope. The Miraculous. Whatever.

  The Typhon shifted beneath us. There was movement in the waters and the pressure of acceleration, surging.

  ‘Uh, shouldn’t there be someone on deck? Just to make sure we’re heading the right direction?’ Tenebrae said.

  ‘There’s a station beneath the stack where you can see the front quarter, and it would be well if it was manned. It comes equipped with a vocal horn that directs sounds to this chamber via sympathetic vibrating daemons. In case of issues – mis-navigation, obstacles, antagonistic vessels—’ He raised his eyebrow here and I could not discern if it was in hopes that we would be killed or he’d have a chance to show off his wondrous vessel. ‘It should be manned,’ he repeated.

  ‘I shall man it, then,’ Tenebrae said. He bounded up and out of the navigational centre. In but a few moments, a hollow sound, buzzy, tinny, came. ‘Hello, below. We make good speed downstream. On our right … our starboard side … now passes Rumina and the shanty town of Little Flamina.’

  Ysmay looked into the peering device and then picked up a horn – connected by some sort of tube – and said, ‘I see something in the Tever, now, ahead and to port.’ He adjusted the peering scope. ‘Maybe a rotted hull of ship? Maybe a downed tree?’

  ‘It’s but a discoloured bit of foam. Some detritus. Some flotsam,’ Tenebrae said.

  There was a bump and shifting. The hull of the Typhon echoed strangely.

  ‘My mistake,’ Tenebrae said, in the horn. ‘That was some deadfall. It seems there is a knack to reading waters that I do not have, yet.’

  ‘And the guns, Mister Ysmay? How do they work?’ I asked.

  ‘Much the same as the Miraculous, but with some modifications. I would have to abandon this position to show you their usage. If they are to be put into use, they will need to be unshrouded.’

  ‘That is no good,�
� I said. ‘We must make speed.’ And we are dreadful short of hands. Would that Fiscelion would sleep so Lupina could assist.

  I drew Carnelia to the side and spoke in a hushed voice. ‘At this point, even Tamberlaine knows of our escape. And soon, they’ll know that we have taken the Typhon. We have no teeth. Uncover the swivels, figure out their design and usage. Can you do that? Ysmay said that it is mostly automated.’

  Carnelia’s eyes brightened. Excited at the prospect of the deck guns, colour flushed her – her sense of play made her lovely. And deadly.

  She scrambled out of the command room to move on deck. I remained still, watching the engineer. After a few moments, Carnelia reappeared, smeared in black grease and bearing a great wad of evil-looking canvas – the gun shroud. She dropped it at the foot of the topside hatch and disappeared into the front of the ship. A metallic clang and curses sounded. ‘I’m fine, have no worries for my sake!’ she called.

  ‘We were not,’ I said, under my breath.

  So I was left to watch the engineer, who turned knobs and peered into the Miraculous. He explained the markings on the rudder’s wheel, and made note as we came to a sweep of the Tever where the Typhon would need to turn some thirty degrees. He beckoned me to look into the scope to see the river, the twist of currents.

  ‘I think not, Mister Ysmay, until we have some company,’ I said, shifting the shotgun in my grasp. ‘I have no urge to hurt you, but can have no assurance that you would not bludgeon me given half the chance.’

  His expression paled, his eyes searched, searched in a private corner where motivations hide. ‘I-I wouldn’t, I—’

  I held up a hand. The blood on it had dried to mud-brown, like the Tever’s waters. ‘No need to explain, Mister Ysmay. No need.’

  I continued to observe him – making minute adjustments at the helm, checking gauges, ‘a good head of steam, ma’am’, tweaking the throttle – until Lupina appeared. She approached me, giving glances toward Ysmay as he manned the helm.

  ‘He is asleep, for the moment, which is well,’ she said. ‘Though I had to stuff him full of masticated dates before he would go down. The berths in this beast do very well as cribs, with enough swaddling. Each one has a rail.’ She wiped her mouth. ‘I could use a wash.’

  ‘Wait until you see Carnelia.’ I handed her my shotgun. ‘No time, now. Keep an eye on Mister Ysmay while I see to my sister.’ Lupina took the weapon and sat near the engineer on a metal stool at another station. The command of the Typhon was cleverly designed, and most of that, I had to assume, rested on Ysmay’s shoulders – a consequence of his engineer’s mind. The slick, calculating part of me made figures and levies and calculations of his worth, once we arrived in Hardscrabble. A clang and hollow thonk sounded on the Typhon’s metal hull.

  If we arrive in Hardscrabble.

  I followed where Carnelia had gone, stepping over the porthole openings that passed for entryways in this vessel – each one fixed with a thick metal door and curious levered locking mechanism – down the tight gullet of the daemonlit hallway, passing shut metal doors that led to chambers whose function and contents I knew not and would have to wait to discover, until I came to one that was wooden with steel bands and densely wrought with intaglios and skeins of silver warding, like blue veins on a god’s skin.

  I wrenched it open and passed through. Inside was a circular chamber packed tight and claustrophobic with what seemed like warded metal casks – until I realised that each container was a Hellfire round for an impossibly large gun. Each one was polished and gleaming, every inch warded deep. The room smelled of oil and the residue of brimstone and human sweat. It was hot in there. I put out a hand and touched one of the Hellfire shells; it was as warm as the flesh of beast or man.

  Carnelia stood in the centre of the room, looking into another peering device, this one handleless. She was ringed in a copse of levers sprouting from the floor, each one terminating in a handle with a smaller releasing device integrated into the whole.

  ‘How comes it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is impossibly simple. And impossibly complex.’ She pointed to a vertical steel framework containing a stack of the massive Hellfire rounds, with cotton wadding between each munition. At the chamber’s roof, the framework entered the undercarriage, ringed in a greased circle, of what must be the aft swivel gun. Runners of chain and pulleys ran beside the framework from the chamber’s floor to ceiling. ‘Pull that lever – and you really have to pull it, it requires such strength, I could not have managed it a year ago – and it pushes open a hatch and inserts one of the rounds into the maw of the gun. This I have done.’ Indicating the peering device, she said, ‘There are no handles like in the command centre to swivel the view about. It remains fixed to the bore of the gun with hash marks indicating, I must assume, distance. I was considering pulling one of these—’

  There was a moment of indecisiveness on her face, which changed quickly to dissatisfaction. It was almost as if I could hear her thoughts whipping around in her head: this is troublesome and makes me feel of no consequence. However, I am of consequence, gods damn me, what am I afraid of?

  Her hand stretched out and I said, ‘Maybe we should bring Mister Ysmay—’

  She pulled the lever.

  For a moment, there were flames, billowing flames filling the universe, not just above and below, but stretching back in time immemorial to the beginnings of the earth and lancing forward to the far reaches of all our possible futures, where our children’s children’s children might have lived. There was only flame, black flame, noxious. Forever and always.

  And then it was gone and we were gasping.

  ‘I believe, sissy,’ Carnelia said, ‘we’ve just had a wee taste of Hell.’ She took a large breath. ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  I did not answer. If I had anything left in my stomach to retch up, I would have done so then.

  Tenebrae appeared in the door to the room. ‘Ia’s great sack, what is going on? I almost shat myself.’ Streaming rainwater and wild-eyed, he looked like he’d been goosed. In effect, he had.

  ‘Just figuring out the deck gun, Shadow,’ Carnelia said. ‘Eggs. Omelettes. All that.’ She waved a hand at him.

  ‘Most omelettes don’t require you to visit the netherworld to eat them,’ he said.

  ‘Only the really good ones do,’ Carnelia said. She tapped a lever with one long finger. ‘All right. So this one fires the beast.’ Her hand strayed to another. ‘What does this one do?’

  ‘No—’ Tenebrae lurched forward, hands out.

  She pulled the lever. Gears clanked and strained. Metal groaned. The gun’s Miraculous turned, as did the floor beneath her and the undercarriage above.

  ‘Aha!’ Carnelia said, and clapped her hands like she used to do when she was a girl and had discovered some choice bit of rumour, or made some embarrassingly snarky bit of sexual commentary or innuendo. ‘This swivels the gun about.’ She turned to us. ‘I have this well in hand, you two. Resume your former activities.’ She made shooing motions with her hands. ‘Go.’

  ‘You better have this figured out, and soon,’ Tenebrae said. ‘Because you just rang a great dinner bell for the sea-wolves of Rume.’

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

  ‘We are between Rume and Ostia, heading fast downriver. Despite her draught and low-slung appearance, the Typhon is a formidable vessel, that’s for sure. She could not take the Malphas in a battle, but she could outrun and outmanoeuvre her.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘We should check on Mister Ysmay and Lupina.’ I turned back to my sister. ‘And you will fire no more?’

  ‘I can make no promises, sissy,’ Carnelia said. Before she could stop herself, a grin came to her face.

  ‘I should not have phrased that as a question. Fire no more, until necessary. Understood?’ I said.

  ‘If you insist,’ Carnelia said.

  Tenebrae and I returned to the command room. Lupina glanced toward us, eyebrows raised. ‘Carnelia woke th
e lad, I can hear him crying now.’ The echoes of his wails bounced off the metal walls, amplified.

  ‘I will take over here,’ I said, taking the shotgun. I was somewhat dismayed at the logistics of babysitting the engineer, but there was no alternative other than watching him closely. ‘Mister Tenebrae, back on the deck, please. If we are approaching the bay, we’ll need your eyes on the sea. Ostia will have sent other ships against us, possibly, if they’ve moved fast enough.’

  Tenebrae nodded and bounded back up and in moments the tinny sound of his voice came through the speaking device.

  I faced Ysmay.

  ‘Sir,’ I began. ‘It has been an eventful morning and I am quite sorry for the manner in which I had to commandeer this vessel.’

  Ysmay did not remove his gaze from the Miraculous, but I could tell he was listening. ‘We are coming to the Bay of Ostia, as you know. I need from you a promise.’

  He finally turned from his labours to face me. ‘What sort of promise?’

  ‘In moments, we will be making steam into Ostian waters, and with every passing second we’ll be further from shore. Surely you see your predicament.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘My predicament? My commanding officers murdered in cold blood? Being kidnapped and my ship taken hostage?’ He said ‘my ship’ like I might say my son. Something in his tone told me he was more outraged regarding the treatment and commandeering of the Typhon than at the death of his officers.

  ‘It was a necessity,’ I said. ‘I will do what I can to make amends to you, and shrive that sin – it is mine and mine alone. But until then, I need to you to understand your predica— your situation.’ I paused. ‘Have we left the Tever?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Just.’

  ‘Increase speed, then,’ I said. ‘Are you a strong swimmer?’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Are you a strong swimmer?’

  ‘I cannot say. I haven’t swum in a long while. When I was young—’

  ‘Soon, we will be in the middle of a bay, far from shore. Even should you be able to abandon the helm and make your way topside without being stopped, if you flung yourself overboard, you would drown before reaching safety.’