Infernal Machines Read online

  He had a nice face. Soft around the edges, with downy blond hair framing it. His lips were, if not full and beautiful, at least expressive and intelligent, as were his blue eyes. His teeth were bad, yellowed, like a dog’s. His hands were articulate and knobby. For such a slight figure, his hands looked powerful. I could smell nothing of the man except the Hellfire and blood he’d been witness to. The blood I had shed.

  ‘I need you to understand that, from this point on, all of our eggs are in one basket. Our fortunes – yours, mine, and the rest of us – are joined. Whether you like it or not. I need your promise you will work toward our escape, now.’

  ‘I can’t—’ Our gazes met and held and after a moment, he depressed the two throttle levers. The Typhon surged and thrummed, as if we found ourselves in the barrel-chest of a large cat, purring rhythmically.

  ‘Ia’s table!’ Tenebrae called through the device. ‘We churn the sea! We make great waves and leave destruction in our wake!’ He fell silent, for a moment. ‘The speed is remarkable. I feel like we’re about to come out of the water.’

  ‘Full speed, Mister Ysmay,’ I said.

  He pushed the throttle fully forward. The thrumming increased even more. Tenebrae whooped and called and made sounds of delighted terror.

  ‘Ship, off the port, approaching.’

  Ysmay picked up a funnel with a scalloped metal tube connecting it to a command-board with many gauges, knobs, and levers. He handed it to me. ‘Speak loud and the man on deck and the woman at the aft deck gun will hear you, and so will everyone else in the ship.’

  ‘Why are you giving this to me?’ I asked.

  He looked at me like some dullard. ‘Are you not in command?’

  I felt the pulse of blood in my fingers, the beat of it in my throat, my temple. The prickle of sweat on my brow. Scaling blood upon my wrist, my fingers, my face.

  ‘Mister Tenebrae, give Carnelia assistance in aiming the aft swivel, sir,’ I barked into the funnel. It reverberated throughout the Typhon.

  ‘Aye, Livia. Carnelia, approaching vessel two points forward port beam,’ Tenebrae said.

  ‘What in the name of all Hell does that mean?’ Carnelia said. She must have found her own speaking device.

  ‘Find the front of the ship and to the left, Ia-dammit!’ Tenebrae shouted.

  Ysmay turned the peering device and stopped. ‘He is correct. Another ship approaches. Small, and slow, with no apparent guns.’

  ‘Can we outrun it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s small. We could, possibly, just plough right through it. But definitely outrun it. Yes,’ Ysmay said.

  ‘Hold your fire, sissy,’ I said into the speaker. ‘Hold. We will leave it be and make for open sea.’

  Ysmay nodded and turned back to the helm. He made adjustments and I could feel the invisible currents of speed pushing my body in near unfathomable ways.

  The Typhon continued to surge, a strange rocking motion, as if we rode on the back of a great horse, cantering, rocking back and forth in the waves.

  ‘The vessel falls away,’ Tenebrae called. ‘Diminishing in our port quarter but … Ia’s blood! Large ship. Four points broad of starboard bow! Carnelia. Turn the gun … Turn the gun. Turn the gun. Carnelia, turn—’

  ‘I heard you the first time, godsdammit,’ Carnelia growled. ‘Turning!’

  Frightening, this metal carapace hurtling through the foam. No windows, racing blind, toward the open sea. A disconcerting, sightless exodus from Rume. Fiscelion wailing in his metal crib like a siren, rising and falling. Dimly, far off – like a rock falling to splash hollowly at the bottom of a well – a boom sounded. Invisible pressures hidden away behind metal walls. The Typhon rocked dramatically.

  ‘Bloody Hell,’ Tenebrae said. ‘That was close. Carnelia, where is the—’

  A cessation of life. Hellfire blooming behind eyes. Despair. The crack and pomp of our gun.

  Carnelia howled. ‘Ia-damn me to all the Hells.’

  ‘That startled them. They’re turning!’ Tenebrae panted into the receiver. It hissed and whispered without voice – sea foam green and the wind of our speed. ‘They’re turning! More guns!’

  Another far-off boom, and the Typhon pitched precariously. I took a balancing step – styluses and charts and papers fell from counters and work spaces. Ysmay lurched and caught himself on the handles of the peering device.

  Our deck gun boomed again, filling the Typhon with dismay and the reek of Hellfire. Fiscelion’s shriek pitched higher and higher – so frantic I felt it was going to snap, like an overstretched hawser or metal wire, and he would fall silent, never to make a sound again. A murmur overlay the din, the thrum of the screws, turning, Lupina’s faint voice, there lad, there my good boy, there there, I’m with you, dumpling, there now.

  Another blast of our swivel, and a pounding, invisible head of despair. Carnelia’s screeches reverberated off the metal walls.

  ‘You’ve hit the bastards!’ Tenebrae crowed. ‘Ia-dammit, you’ve punched a hole in them!’

  For a long moment, nothing. Just the rise and fall of the Typhon, surging. ‘They have taken no notice of the wound,’ Tenebrae said, his voice strangely calm. ‘Hit them again, before—’

  There came a far-off crack, resounding, and the Typhon shivered and shifted violently in the water. For a time, I feared all was lost. Inside the command spray wetted my face from a riveted seam. Ysmay cursed.

  ‘I may not have been wholly honest with you, Madame,’ Ysmay said, scrambling to work gears.

  ‘Are we breached?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ the engineer said. ‘Possibly. But I doubt it. We would be drowned, if that were the case.’

  ‘Do we have time for this?’ I asked. Above, the Typhon shook again with a blast of Hellfire. After-images of infernal flame flashed behind my eyes.

  ‘A miss!’ Tenebrae called. Carnelia’s cursing pinged off the metal hull. ‘We are outpacing them. Three points off starboard charter. Another volley.’ No indication then if that was an imperative or informative exclamation – then a far-off hollow boom sounded again. The Typhon shifted in the waters. ‘We are too fast for them! No time to take a bearing.’

  ‘How were you dishonest, Mister Ysmay?’ I asked.

  ‘A sin of omission,’ he said. ‘That is all. Call Mister Tenebrae down.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, my voice pitching upwards.

  ‘Call him down. Call him down!’ He had abandoned all sense of self, of dignity, of importance. He was in the trench, under fire. The enemy bearing down. The veneer of civilisation swept away. He dashed away from the controls. Leapt toward the hatch leading to the deck.

  ‘Stop, sir! Stop,’ I said, centring the shotgun on his chest. I thumbed back the hammer on the shotgun’s barrels and placed my finger on the trigger. But he was out of sight, by then. I began to follow, but no sooner had I taken two steps, he was back, and Tenebrae followed him shortly after. They shut and turned the lock on the metal door.

  ‘Mister Ysmay, return to your post. Now.’ I have spent a life listening to men of command use their voices to great effect, cracking them like whips. It came to me without much consideration, or thought.

  ‘The aft hatch,’ Ysmay cried, racing back to the command centre. Tenebrae bounded past, sodden and hurried, droplets of salty water flying about. ‘Fasten it tight.’

  Tenebrae did as Ysmay said, whipping the locking mechanism down. The sounds of the sea were walled away. A hush fell upon us. I placed myself near the engineer and raised my voice again.

  ‘What is this? What did you omit, sir?’ I said. The man was terrified, battle-fear making him weak and panicked.

  He turned to me. His throat worked painfully, swallowing.

  ‘This,’ he said, and pulled a lever. ‘Prepare for descent.’

  THIRTEEN

  An Army That Carries The Crimson Hand

  Before It Will Be Invincible

  WE RODE EAST to the Smokeys until dark. Fisk packed a trussed Beleth on his horse’s
rump, as if the engineer was a sleeping roll, and touched his gun when Inbhir toddled around to question the particulars of Beleth’s bindings, position, and general arrangement.

  After Fisk had run him off, Praeverta herself appeared. Fisk already sat on his horse. The other dvergar – those that had mounts – watched from saddle. Those that didn’t had already begun the long march east.

  ‘That man is important,’ Praeverta said, the corners of her mouth tugging down. I couldn’t tell if that was her displeasure or a natural state. ‘And you would never have captured him without our help.’

  ‘And your party, had they run across him, would now have daemons or worse riding you like ponies. Didn’t you comprehend that when the daemon-gripped came barrelling through?’ Fisk swept his hand across the Bitter Spring and the fresh graves in the Hardscrabble dirt. ‘We both helped each other, so let’s stop this cock-play. I have taken the man into my custody and that’s where he will stay, until we get to Dvergar or wherever else the Hell your Mister Neruda is.’ He glanced at me when he said Dvergar, referring to the town, not the race.

  It was curious, that glance. He must be worried about the silverlode that he, and Winfried, had sussed out when I was in the hands of the Tempus Union.

  ‘We should bypass Dvergar, then, and head toward Tapestry. And after that Wickerware, if what the vanmer at the moot told us was true. Neruda plans to take up our cause and rally there.’

  ‘Maybe so, ma’am, but we’ll head for Dvergar first.’ He raised his hand when she opened her mouth. ‘No, you can argue all you want and dicker, but Dvergar is on the way and you’ll find no more water in the Hardscrabble until you reach the Eldvatch.’ He shrugged and put his hand on his saddle-horn and shifted his weight, ready to ride. ‘Makes no difference to me. That’s where I’m headed. Follow if you want. Try to stop me, you’ll regret it.’ He rode out.

  I followed, touching my hat and nodding at the old woman as I passed on Bess’ back. Praeverta’s curses followed me as I rode.

  ‘We keep on as we were,’ Fisk said, looking at Inbhir and the other dvergar struggling to maintain pace on horseback. Some remained behind to escort the walkers. ‘Nothing has changed, except now we have Beleth. Isn’t that right, sir?’ Fisk said, slapping the engineer’s arse. The man moaned in response.

  ‘I despise the man as much as you, pard,’ I said. ‘But do you think he’ll survive the ride trussed up like that?’

  Fisk glanced at me, eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not too concerned, either way.’

  ‘He’s a trump card,’ I said. ‘And we’ll want to be able to play him should we come face to face with Neruda.’

  ‘We’ll come face to face with Neruda, don’t you worry.’ Fisk spat – his spittle hit the Hardscrabble dirt and became an ochre bolus. ‘Rume wars on silver. The Medierans have taken and destroyed Harbour Town. They’ll be headed upriver to retake the Talavera silverlode at Passasuego. But they don’t know about the lode in the mountains north of Dvergar. Cornelius, Marcellus, all the Rumans do, thanks to Winfried’s and my recon of the place. It’s possible the dwarves do, too, and have been sitting on that knowledge in hopes of getting their hands on an engineer like our friend here.’

  Bess and Fisk’s new roan trotted for a while. It was a pace most Hardscrabble horses could keep up for a long while, though Fisk rode a Medieran capture. I remained silent, stroking my beard with a free hand, mind working at what Fisk had said.

  ‘So, all of Occidentalia will be looking to Dvergar, soon. Rume, Mediera. Neruda and his people,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe not the stretchers,’ Fisk replied.

  I looked far off in the distance, where Gynth bounded as vanguard. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

  The next morning we rode into the shortening western shadow of the Eldvatch Mountains, commonly referred to in the Hardscrabble as the Smokeys. Blue pines stood on the heights, ash and gambel on the flanks of the gunmetal-grey hillsides and peaks, and mist wreathed their summits, the clouds welling up like ravenous ghosts around the haunted, towering figures. We found a stream, hobbled the horses and set them to graze and drink, and built a fire, watching for Praeverta’s company to catch up. We had pulled ahead slowly, inexorably, so they didn’t ever feel the need to chase – and, truly, we were not running from them, but leading. They would follow us.

  I caught two trout and rustled some sage and wild onion. Bess carried one last pan from the old days; I had dumped most of our gear after the daemonic burning of Harbour Town to ease the beast’s pains – and maybe some of my own. She was a good girl, if cantankerous, and I did what I could for her in the silent hour before the dvergar reached us: tended her hooves, brushed canescent fur, washed her burns and applied salve to the bubbling skin there (and to my own, if I speak true – the back of my arms and neck were a Hellish wasteland of wrecked skin). We watched the sun set as I cooked the fish.

  I minded after Beleth. Other than wounding and taunting him, Fisk did not want to touch, talk, or tend to the engineer.

  I changed the dressing on his stump, and he squirmed with pain as I washed it in water. I had no cacique or whiskey to sterilise it, and I don’t think I’d waste the liquor on him anyway. When I removed the hemp rope that served as a gag to give him water, he gulped at it hastily, coughed. His mouth was cracked and bloody, his eyes alert and shifting, taking in all the surroundings. He looked even thinner now than he had in the warehouse in Harbour Town – was it just five days ago? Six? Just six? The whole world had changed since then. A city stood in cinders and ruin, and the southern reaches of the Hardscrabble teemed with Medierans. A fleet stood on the Hardscrabble’s southern shore. I could only imagine how and where the Medierans would dump their troops. But they would, and quickly, that was sure. As we fled the conflagration, the flotilla moved toward the shore, and it was massive. Rume was no longer the sole power in Occidentalia.

  ‘Thank you, Mister Ilys. I require more water,’ Beleth said.

  I was tempted to put away the waterskin, since it was something he wanted, out of pure spite. But I tamped that urge away. I knew not what Neruda (or Praeverta) might do if this man died – but their followers were fierce in their devotion to them. Neruda, I could understand. He was a firebrand, a natural orator, and his words came with clarity and conviction – he wanted Occidentalia for the dvergar, the indigenous population. Praeverta’s draw was one of determination and raw will – she would be obeyed, or she would see you dead. I gave the engineer more water.

  He coughed, and sighed. ‘I am hungry. The fish smells good.’

  ‘It’s gone,’ I said. ‘And the bones go on the fire.’

  His eyes shifted in their sockets. Of old, he never looked at me when he spoke – I was beneath true notice, or consideration. But now his baleful glare slid over to me, and there was real menace in his gaze. He considered me for the first time and did not like what he saw.

  ‘Here we are again, Mister Ilys,’ Beleth said.

  ‘My lot to administer to the one-handed. I would rather be kissing Agrippina than here with you, sir,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘A toothsome kiss, that would be, I think. And you’d not be wagging your tongue much at the end of it, I think.’ He did not know the half of it.

  I extended a finger and made it hard. We have thick skin and dense bones, we dvergar, even those of us whose blood isn’t pure. I jabbed him in the sternum with my index. He gasped and sucked wind.

  ‘That was just a wee poke, Mister Beleth. Save your breath for when you need it,’ I said. I leaned in close and drew my silver blade. My hand still burned from when I threatened Beleth before, when he wore Gynth for his Sunday suit. But I held it tight and my fist smoked around the hilt, the silver eating into my flesh. His narrowed eyes fixed on it. ‘I slew her when she wore the Crimson Man, engineer. Never think I won’t send you to Hell to meet her.’

  ‘The Crimson Man?’ He looked toward Fisk, who had disappeared around a small copse of trees. ‘It pulls at him, the da
emon hand, and he’ll have to use it eventually.’ A smile crept upon his face. ‘And Hell? The burning fields of home, Mister Ilys. I’d not be there long.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’ll have to use it eventually? Does it have some glamour or trick about it?’ I asked. I lowered my blade and nestled it in his ribs. I thought of William Bless’ Our Heavenly War. Just a small prick, I’ll give thee. But thou hast one already.

  ‘Now you are the one doing the Lingchi, it seems.’ Beleth’s glee grew, maybe in remembrance of his torturous exercise on Agrippina so long ago, or moved by something else. Something darker, if that was even possible.

  He was different, now, than he’d been on the Cornelian. If he was anything, he’d become the promise of the creature he’d been at the Pynchon. A distillation. Before he was a rising man, new money and one of the avaricious breed. A man of industry. But now there was something fell about him, and old. His breath stank of putrescence. His glee was unholy, totally inhuman. He’d gone beyond the simple economy of mankind, into the invisible war, the fret and tug of the infernal, and all its unknown eddies and currents. It was a black tide, and it had sucked this husk of a man away, and what it coughed up on the shore afterward, no one could explain or comprehend.

  I brought up the knife. The pain in my hand was excruciating. But so was the desire to shove the blade in Beleth’s eye and tickle his brain with it. But I did not. It was not some spasm of conscience or morality. How exciting life would be if I could wander about the world, doing just as I wished, stabbing people in the eyes.

  Not conscience. I just did not have the energy to deal with the Nerudian storm that would blow then, once he breathed his last. It was pure selfishness that I spared him.

  ‘The full attention of Mediera and Rume are here, on these blue mountains,’ Beleth said. ‘They will come to take possession of the silver. Yes, I knew of it before your indiscreet conversations with Mister Fiscelion. They will come with Hellfire to make war on each other. And an army that carries the Crimson Hand before it will be invincible.’