Infernal Machines Read online

  I wandered back through the gulleys, and found Bess chewing on some scrub-brush. The mule chucked her head at my approach and blew air. I rubbed her neck and checked her burns from Harbour Town. The flesh on her rump was bubbled but healing. I would wash her wounds, soon. It was said the Bitter Spring had healing properties – that the earth sloughed off part of itself in the giving up of the precious water and its essence imbued it. Or it could just be dirty water. But it was what we had to hand.

  As I turned to lead Bess back, Lina said, ‘So, Grandfather, tell me about this hand.’

  She had followed me on cat feet and I had not heard her. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. I looked her up and down. She was bloodied some – though someone had bound her head, where she’d had the knock – and there was a nasty abrasion on her chin and her trousers were ripped, her knuckles bloody, and she limped as she approached. But on the whole, she was relatively unhurt from her encounter with Gynth when Beleth rode him. Most who tussle with vaettir (or engineers) fare far worse.

  ‘The vaettir, when he was daemon-gripped, he said for those things to “bring him the hand”.’ She cocked her head, waiting.

  She was very pretty, even with the injuries – clear, intelligent eyes, fair skin, lustrous hair. For a moment, I thought of Illina, my wife, so long ago. I had never forgotten her. But I had tried. The end had been so painful and the desolation it wreaked in me still smoked like the ruins of Harbour Town did now. She was the first to accept me, Severus Speke’s half-human dimidius. She was the first to treat me as someone worth more than meat, worth more than the strength in hands and back. This is how the world views us, the dvergar, as either workers or things to consume, in their avaricious appetites.

  ‘It is nothing, do not concern yourself with it,’ I said, drawing her away. ‘Let me look at you, child.’

  ‘I am no child, old one,’ she said. ‘I am a woman, full-grown, and of marriageable age.’

  I laughed. ‘Of course you are, and you know me not at all. So you’ll ignore me when I tell you that you should only marry who you want and when you’re ready.’

  A half-smile crept on her face, and she shook her head. ‘You are wily, old one, and shuck off an ambush easily.’ She put her index finger on my chest and pushed me, so that I rocked back on my heels. ‘What is this hand the devils were after?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s nothing that concerns you and I would warn you to forget it and not speak of it again,’ I said. Bess hawed in agreement.

  ‘Fuck that, Grandfather,’ she said, her eyes blazing. Here was a woman accustomed to meeting resistance from the world, and not accepting it. Never accepting it.

  I moved my hand in a chopping motion. ‘It does not concern you, child.’

  Lina grimaced, making her face turn dark, shadows in the hollows of her eyes. She’d not seen much sleep, lately. None of us had. ‘My oldest friend’s corpse lies cooling by the spring, and you tell me it is not my concern. A city burns in the distance, full of the bodies of my kin, but that is not my concern.’ Strange turn, her using Harbour Town on me in the exact way I’d used it on Praeverta. She jabbed her finger into my chest again, to punctuate the words. It hurt.

  ‘There is a greater danger here than you know,’ I said. ‘And it’s bound to the Ia-damned engineer.’

  ‘What don’t you want us to know?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t want you to know what I don’t want you to know.’

  ‘If I wanted horse-shite like that, I would’ve stayed with Mam and Pap,’ she said.

  I laughed. There was so much of Illina in her, it was frightening.

  Fisk called from the mouth of the gulley. ‘Shoe, you coming?’

  I brushed past Lina and made my way to where Fisk stood.

  ‘I could go to Praeverta,’ she said.

  I nodded and adjusted my hat on my head. ‘You would get her killed, and everyone else here,’ I said. She watched me go.

  ‘What in the Hell was that all about?’ Fisk asked.

  ‘The daemon hand, pard,’ I said. ‘One of them was paying attention, at least, when Beleth came a’bounding through wearing the Gynth suit.’ We came back to where someone had restoked the fire and begun cooking more of the horse.

  ‘She’s the one who’s your long lost kin?’ Fisk asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Granddaughter.’

  ‘Figures,’ he said. ‘You don’t miss many tricks yourself.’

  ‘She’s threatening to go to Praeverta,’ I said.

  ‘Make sure your six-guns stay loaded, then,’ he said.

  ‘Hopefully they won’t shoot any more horses out from under us,’ I said, leading Bess to where she could get to a full bucket of spring water.

  ‘They’re taking us to Wickerware, by way of Dvergar-town,’ he said. ‘Hopefully we can rejoin Winfried there. She was injured when we were searching for Beleth, in the Smokeys. Buquo took a fall and she broke her arm. Big horse, and not one suited for mountains.’

  ‘You were checking on the new silverlode for Cornelius?’ I asked.

  ‘We’d had rumour of Beleth sniffing around, and worried he’d got wind of the silver.’

  ‘Think he did?’ That would be bad news.

  ‘I don’t know. If he did, he would’ve shared that information with his new Medieran partners,’ he said. He rubbed his chin, thinking. ‘I doubt they’ll move on the Dvergar silverlode, even if they do know of it. Talavera is producing right now and has all the machinery and industry running. Getting the Dvergar-town silverlode to produce will take some time. The Medieran course is clear – push north, up the Big Rill, all the way to Passasuego. The third legion is gone in the destruction of Harbour Town. The sixth can move south – closer to home – and try to get the Dvergar silverlode to produce, or it can move to protect Talavera.’

  ‘The world wars on silver,’ I said. ‘Will the new lode produce, do you think?’

  ‘It’s a rich one. The dvergar have control of it now, it’s in a remote and rugged little valley they call the Grenthvar, but the Ruman legions will be moving south, most likely, as fast as possible to take over. The real problem is that Rume has soldiers, but no workforce to mine it,’ he said, and looked around at the dwarves, tending to the remaining horses, refilling canteens and waterbags, taking stock of their supplies. Refugees, all. And we were of their number.

  Praeverta sat cross-legged looking at Gynth, who had taken a seat and was holding a haunch of horsemeat, bloody, and taking big bites.

  I sat down near him. Fisk squatted on his hams. Someone had brought the stretcher some trousers and he’d put them on.

  He smiled at me, meat hanging in streamers from his teeth, and offered me the haunch. I did not think I could hold it. I waved it away.

  ‘Will you stay with us, Gynth?’ I asked in my mother’s tongue.

  He bobbed his great head, up and down. ‘I know of no other place to go. Where else?’ His command of dvergar was solid, if halting.

  I took off my hat and scratched my head. ‘I don’t know. Do you have family? Other—’ I gestured in the air, unsure what to refer to his kind as.

  A puzzled look overcame his big, angular face. ‘I am newborn. I woke in the earth and pulled myself up. And I found you.’

  ‘You woke in the earth?’ I remembered the first time I saw him. His clothes were tatters, and there was mould and the whiff of the grave about him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said in dvergar. ‘In the earth, high upon the mountains.’

  ‘And do you remember anything else?’ I said. ‘Anything before that?’

  ‘Fire,’ he said. ‘I remember flames. And before that water. And hunger. Terrible hunger.’

  ‘Hunger? For meat?’ I asked.

  He looked down for a moment, in one of those thousand yard stares. ‘For … for life. For the green in the flower, the green in the grass. The wind. The shoal heart. But that was before sleep.’

  Fisk said, ‘What’s he saying?’ I told him. Fisk’s brow furrowed. The
re was distaste there, writ in his features, for Gynth. I could sense the currents in him, after so long as partners, wanting to kill the stretcher. But he was Ruman, and I had to remind myself of that. Expedience and reason won out. He would stomach his distaste and endure the stretcher’s company. And, I hope, my word went some way toward staying his hand, for Gynth had saved me, over and over again. In the creature, I felt, lay the secret of the vaettir, our cousins, and by puzzling out him, something of the rest of them might become clear. ‘He’s talking about what Livia wrote. The Autumn Lords.’

  ‘She said they called it Qi,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know how to pronounce that. But it’s like … energy or life force or something.’

  ‘Like blood, maybe. The essence. Maybe that’s why stretchers always played games. Cat and mouse. They take energy from fear, maybe,’ Fisk said.

  ‘Like the vorduluk you Rumans are always going on about,’ I said.

  ‘Blood drinkers, yes.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘We all devour life, but there were so many times that the stretchers seemed to relish it,’ he said. ‘So, why is he so different?’

  ‘No idea, pard,’ I said. ‘Livia wrote you that the Autumn Lords fell to a heavy trance. A great lethargy, almost like a drugged slumber. And only occasionally would they rouse themselves. To hunt. To take life.’

  Fisk nodded, thoughtfully. ‘They live long, long lives. Maybe they change.’

  ‘Maybe they were changed,’ I said.

  We were silent for a long while and then both of us looked toward the engineer. He was sitting upright, gagged, his remaining hand tied to his feet. His stump oozed blood into the bandage some dvergar had applied. Inbhir sat nearby, guarding the engineer with the carbine Fisk had given him.

  But it was Beleth’s gaze that we noticed.

  It was one of pure hate.

  TWELVE

  I May Not Have Been Wholly

  Honest With You, Madame

  MANY THINGS HAPPENED then, and all of them at once.

  The sawn-off jerked in my hand. Smoke and the flash and despair of Hellfire filled the small space of the navigational room of the Typhon, and a gigantic boom shook us all. Regulus’ head exploded with a welter of blood and brain and shattered cranium. A blood mist rose, I tasted it on my tongue. One of the lascars screamed and his voice joined Fiscelion’s.

  Carnelia fired and more overwhelming sound and blood filled the small space, leaving my head ringing. Wheeling, she shot another lascar – another tremendous boom – and he fell. She twisted away from the dying sailor’s grasping hands, falling into the grasp of the other lascar, who snatched up her hair and whirled her about, one hand pawing for a gun at his belt. Albinus, already disengaged from the peering device and wearing a horrified expression upon his face, pulled his sidearm. With the remaining Hellfire shell in my sawn-off, I shot him as well, this time in the chest. He rocketed away from the muzzle flash and fell in a bloody heap upon Ysmay, the engineer, who was screeching like a scalded dog.

  My sister placed a hand on her head, holding her hair, and lashed out with her boot at the lascar holding her. Her foot met instep. He howled, releasing her. In a flash, Carnelia had booted him between the legs, hard, so hard his body rose off the grated floor, shoulders folding in over his stomach. He fell then, his legs turned traitorous and leeched of strength. Carnelia stomped on his neck and he ceased to move. Lupina pulled his gun from its holster. He never had a chance to cry out.

  Tenebrae appeared at the base of the stairs, a naked gun in his hand, Carnelia’s sword in the other. He tossed it to her and she snatched it out of the air and drew the blade.

  ‘There are two more lascars down here,’ Carnelia said to Tenebrae, looking around. She pointed with her pistol at an open metal door. ‘At least, if what the first officer said could be trusted. What happened to the lascars above?’

  Tenebrae grimaced. ‘One down. The other jumped overboard.’

  ‘So, they’ll know about us soon enough,’ I said. I popped the chamber of the sawn-off and replaced the shells. I snapped it shut with a chunk. Fiscelion was screaming now with the noise and the horror of it all. Lupina came and took him from me and began cooing. My ears rang. My mouth tasted of thick blood and not my own. I was struck, momentarily, by the dreadful absurdity of it all – the blood, the baby, the ship – all of it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to go back and raise the captain from the dead. I had crossed a line. I healed people before this, I tended wounds and sutured them and found ways to make them mend. But now, I was a killer – maybe not a remorseless one, but a killer all the same. I did not think when shooting Captain Regulus. I acted. And there were two more lascars to deal with.

  We’re born into pain, and we live our lives in it, and we visit pain upon others and ourselves. All to protect those we love. And we love ourselves and our children above all.

  ‘Come out,’ I yelled, into the confines of the ship. ‘Come out, you lascar! You have my word you will live to see shore.’

  Silence. The Typhon shifted, and a hollow clang sounded throughout the vessel.

  ‘The ship,’ I said, and approached Ysmay, who still lay half-buried under the first officer’s body. Albinus was still alive, but gasping now, holding his stomach, where the sawn-off’s buckshot had penetrated his body cavity and made a swamp of his innards. His mouth opened and closed, as if trying to voice some curse, but he did not have the wind for words. A spatter of blood traced his cheek. He looked at me, not with surprise, but with bald intention. He would see me dead. These were the last thoughts of his life. My doom.

  He stilled. His chest ceased its rise and fall. His eyes dulled, his gaze fixed upon the ceiling, never to see again.

  Ysmay cried.

  ‘Get up, man,’ I said, nudging the engineer with my weapon. ‘Get up and make use of yourself and you will live.’

  ‘What—’ His voice was raw, ripped and torn from screaming. ‘What do you want of me?’

  ‘If you cannot steer this ship, then halt it,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  Ysmay blinked in the daemonlight of the chamber. He remained still, panting, watching me.

  ‘All right then,’ I said, and thumbed back the hammer on the sawn-off.

  ‘Wait,’ Ysmay said. ‘Wait.’ He pushed himself off the floor and went and cranked some levers and knobs and the thrumming that had shivered the Typhon before lessened. He went to the peering mechanism that Albinus had occupied before and turned a crank on the column. The Typhon shifted and tilted, almost imperceptibly.

  ‘I have the Typhon’s nose upstream and she’s holding position,’ Ysmay said, voice quavering.

  I turned to Carnelia. ‘The remaining lascars?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ she called. ‘Gentlemen, throw down your weapons and come out. We will take you on deck and you will be able to swim for shore.’

  ‘I swear to you by all the gods, both old and new, by Mithras and Ia,’ Tenebrae said. ‘We would not waste any more Hellfire, nor life. You are free to go, if only you throw down your weapons.’

  ‘Should we keep them,’ Carnelia said, out of the side of her mouth. ‘To man the ship? We have only us and the engineer?’

  ‘Would you guard them, non-stop?’ I asked. ‘Would we lock them up at night? I think not. There are five of us. One less than their full complement. We will manage.’

  We fell silent. The carnage that I’d wreaked upon the ship was glaring, now. Captain Regulus’ bowels had released in death, and the stench was awful. It was not just that I had ended their lives, it was that I had ended them so messily. Thankfully, the grated floor did not allow for pooling blood, or viscera.

  Fiscelion quieted. Lupina had masticated dates and was feeding him like a bird.

  Inside the ship, where the remaining lascars hid, there was hushed arguing. A gun clanged off the metal flooring. And then another.

  ‘Approach, hands visible,’ Tenebrae called.

  The two lascars hesitantly came forward, hands o
ut. ‘Please, please,’ the dark headed one was saying. He looked like a boy, any boy, from any family on the Cælian. Any street in Rume. His companion, a thickset, burly man, covered in hair, looked like a gorilla and just as eager to squeeze the life from us. I was reminded, by his glare, that it was our lives. Or theirs.

  Tamberlaine would not take me, or my child.

  I gestured with the sawn-off for the lascars to take the stairs. The youngest bounded up three, in a rush to get out of the aquatic charnel house.

  ‘Slow down,’ Tenebrae said. ‘You get more than five paces ahead, and I’ll have to put a hole in you.’

  We followed behind, onto the wind-wracked deck. The Tever was muddy, the sky was grey. The breeze made the river’s surface ripple, thousands of tiny whitecaps rushing toward the far shore. The smell from below gone. The Typhon stood in the current, holding steady.

  The lascars went to the bulwark. The tow-headed one launched himself overboard and hit the surface with a muted splash. The other sailor looked at us closely, face twisted in rage and distaste.

  ‘There’s a special place in Hell for you,’ he said. ‘Betrayers. Traitors.’

  Tenebrae tensed. ‘I can send you along ahead of us, if you’d like. You can make sure they’re waiting for us when we get there.’

  The lascar flipped over, backward, into the water. Tenebrae went to the bulwark to watch them swim for shore. After a moment, he returned.

  ‘Gods,’ said he. ‘What a mess.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And before we’re done, there might be more messes. Now to take this ship away from here, quickly.’

  He looked at me closely. ‘It was necessary.’

  ‘Are you asking me? Or telling?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘It was necessary,’ I said. ‘And I killed the captain and his officer. You will not take that sin upon yourself.’

  ‘If killing is a sin, I’ve sullied myself well enough for torment before I met you Cornelians.’ He shook his head. ‘But it has never been those that did not deserve it.’