A Parliament of Bodies

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  The other was Major Grieson.

  “You can go, young man,” Grieson told the patrolman, who scurried off.

  “Is this where you keep yourself, Major?” Satrine asked. “I’m a little busy.”

  “I know you are, that’s why I’m here. The Gearbox Killer has moved to the next level, right?”

  “That’s underselling it.”

  “I’ve heard. You’re looking for an expert to help disarm it, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but so far we haven’t found anyone.”

  “You talked to a woman, a colonel in Intelligence, yes?”

  “Right.” Satrine wasn’t sure where he was going with that.

  “Yeah, she—she’s apparently sabotaging that search. Blocking people from coming in for security reasons, that sort of thing.”

  That was absurd. “Why is she—”

  “Politics and absurdity. I can’t go into it. Instead, I’ve snuck an expert in here.”

  “But—”

  “I can’t go into it, and you don’t want to know.” He gave a signal that he didn’t want to talk details in front of the bound man.

  “Fine. He’s an expert?”

  “The kind that definitely would not get through a security screening.”

  “Do you have to talk about me like that?” the man said from under the hood. “I’m a perfectly legitimate businessman.”

  “Now,” Grieson said. He pulled the hood off to show a handsome young man, with thick curly hair. He looked like he was of Kieran descent.

  “And you are?”

  “Dressed fantastically,” he said, looking down at his outfit. “Really, Major, I understand the urge to undress me, and I appreciate these fine clothes, but . . .”

  “Shut it,” Grieson said. “If anyone asks you, he’s a Parliamentary functionary who’s helping you. Don’t ask him about himself, and don’t you talk, either.” He handed a satchel to Satrine.

  The Kieran shrugged. “Whatever you say, but you could have asked nicer. My brother—”

  “—Will put up with it,” Grieson said sharply. “Take him up, use his knowledge, and then bring him back to me.”

  “He’s shackled. That’s going to stand out.”

  “Oh, this,” the Kieran said. With a twist of his wrists, the shackles fell off. “Seriously, Major. Strip me down and shackle me. My wife will wonder about your intentions.”

  Satrine took the man by the arm. “You’re not going to give me any trouble, are you?”

  “Saint Senea forbid,” he said. “I’ve got a family and bakery to get back to, after all.”

  Satrine led him back up the stairways to the upper gallery, where Welling was now pacing back and forth, counting numbers quietly, while his odd cousin continued to sketch. Heldrin came over to her.

  “Who is this man?”

  The Kieran extended his hand to Heldrin. “I’m the expert you all need, apparently. Wow. The Parliament floor. Never thought I’d see this.”

  “You’ve found someone?” Welling asked. He glanced over at them. “Who is he, besides someone who doesn’t actually own the suit he’s wearing?”

  “I really don’t,” the Kieran said, coming over to the ledge. “But I think I should get to—great Saint Jontlen!”

  “I’m sorry, mister . . .” Welling fished for a name.

  “Nothing to apologize for,” the Kieran said in an awed voice. “This . . . never seen anything quite like this.”

  “I doubt many people have,” Welling said. “But what can you do to help us?”

  “Well, let’s see. You’ve got my tools there, lady?”

  Satrine sighed. She handed him the satchel.

  “What sort of experience do you have with this sort of thing?” Welling pressed.

  “The sort you don’t tell to Constabulary inspectors,” the Kieran said. “But watching people die horribly isn’t my style, so let’s not quibble. I’m guessing this moves like a clock, and kills someone on a regular interval? And time is short?”

  “About five minutes to the next one,” Welling said.

  “Right.” The Kieran limped over to the rope pulley the marshals had left behind. “Big guy, come over here.”

  “It’s Dayne.”

  “Glad to hear it. Who knows about this building?”

  “I do,” Heldrin said, approaching the pulleys.

  “Right, so here’s my first question—is there a furnace or something below us?”

  “I think so,” Heldrin said. “Why?”

  “Well, there’s definitely a heat source doing something with this contraption,” the Kieran said, grabbing the rope. “Because something is slowly cooking that dead man’s face.”

  “What does that mean?” Satrine asked. The Kieran scurried down the rope to the floor.

  “Careful!” Heldrin called to him.

  “Of course,” the Kieran said. “I don’t intend to end up like that fellow. But I’ve got to get a better look at this stuff.”

  “The heat?” Satrine prodded.

  “Oh, right. Most of this, on first glance, is running on prewound clockwork. Spring torsion. Plus there’s some—oh, that’s very clever.” He squatted down to look under one of the chairs.

  “What?”

  “All right,” he called out. “Wow, it’s like I’m a member of Parliament.”

  “Focus,” Welling said. “Three minutes.”

  The Kieran nodded, looking at the parts of the machine with feverish intent. He started walking, which Satrine thought seemed like a terrible idea, but then she realized he was moving in time with the machine, keeping himself from getting knocked by any of the moving parts. “Right. So there’s got to be a source of power to keep all these gears and bobs going, right? The main things are torsion springs— a series of them—that’re unwinding in this box right here.” He pointed to the large dome that was in the center of the room. “But I bet those springs are being rewound by a counterweight force, like in a hallway clock.”

  “What’s the counterweight?” This question came from Minox’s charcoal-sketching cousin.

  “That’s the—oh, hello, didn’t see you before—the genius. All these chairs our victims are strapped to, they’re slightly off the ground. They’re the counterweight.”

  “Blade!” Welling shouted.

  The Kieran ducked as one of the spinning blades whirred over his head. “Didn’t see that one, thanks.”

  “So how do we—”

  “Here’s what I think I’m seeing, though that’s the real problem. The heat.”

  “From the furnace beneath this room.”

  “Yeah,” the Kieran said. He crouched down and gingerly touched the floor, and then one of the pipes, pulling his hand away quickly. “My guess is, that’s a failsafe if we try to stop the rest.”

  “Failsafe?”

  “Yeah, right,” the Kieran said. He looked back up, and for the first time his expression was dead serious. “Someone who’s fast, run. We need that furnace shut down.”

  Satrine didn’t wait another moment.

  * * *

  Satrine was halfway down the stairs before she realized Jerinne was keeping pace with her.

  “You don’t know your way around here,” Jerinne said, taking the lead. “I’ll show you the furnace.”

  “Lead the way,” Satrine said. As they pounded through the lobby, Satrine called out, “I need Fire Brigade with me, and Yellowshields up top. Now!”

  She kept after Jerinne, not bothering to see if the Brigade boys really were following her.

  Down two flights of stairs, and then through several darkened corridors—but not quite as deep as the catacombs where she met with Grieson—until they reached a heavy metal door, with some kind of wheel on the front instead of a handle.

  Jerinne strained to tur
n the wheel, but it didn’t start moving until Satrine helped her.

  “I’m guessing,” Satrine grunted out, “that when we had people search the building, they didn’t look in here.”

  “Probably . . . not . . .”

  The wheel finally gave way, and the door opened.

  The heat coming out of the room was intense. Satrine felt the hair on her neck singe just from the gush of air that came out.

  Jerinne held up her shield in front of Satrine. “Let’s go.”

  The shield kept the worst of the heat off them, but Jerinne had to hold the shield low enough to see over, and the crackling heat dried out Satrine’s eyes. She kept blinking and could barely see.

  “Is someone there?” a voice called out. “Help!”

  Satrine used the voice as a lighthouse, leading her way deeper into the heat.

  Three men were shackled at the ankle, throwing wood into the furnace in front of them with frantic madness. They were drenched in sweat, stripped down to their skivvies. “Help us!” one of them shouted. “Get us out of here!”

  There were so many questions racing through Satrine’s head that none of them could find voice.

  “Why the blazes are you feeding the furnace?” Jerinne shouted. “We need to shut it down!”

  “Because of that!” one of the men shouted. He pointed to a device mounted to the top of the furnace. In the center of the device was a glass tube with some liquid sloshing back and forth. “We have to keep that hot!”

  “Get us out of here!”

  Satrine took the shield from the Tarian girl and moved closer to the men. The shackles around their ankles were thick iron, no keyholes. These were never meant to come off.

  “Where are those brigadiers?” Satrine snapped. “We need tools to get them free.”

  “We need to stop the fire burning!” Jerinne shouted back. “They said—”

  “No!” one of the men said. He seemed the only one remotely in his senses. The second was still madly throwing logs at the fire, while the third was half collapsed with exhaustion.

  Jerinne got closer to the mouth of the furnace, peering at the device. “What’s the story with this?”

  “He told us—” the maddened man said. “He showed us! If that stuff cools, this whole room explodes in a fireball!”

  “Is that possible?” Jerinne asked, seeming to aim her question at Satrine.

  “Wouldn’t put it past this madman,” Satrine said, though she had no idea. She slammed the shield against the chain holding one of the men in place. All she accomplished was denting the shield.

  Two fire brigadiers ran in. “The blazes is going on in here?” one asked.

  “We’ve got to get these men free!” Satrine shouted. “And douse that furnace!”

  “No!” one chained man yelled, throwing another log on.

  The brigadiers pulled at the chains. After their fruitless attempt, one of them looked up. “Maybe with a doorcracker?”

  “Worth a shot,” the other said, and he ran off.

  Satrine knocked the wood out of the reach of the three men. “We’ve got to stop the fire.”

  “You don’t understand!” one shouted. “If it doesn’t keep burning—”

  “I got it, thanks,” she said. “I don’t care.”

  Jerinne had found a barrel of sand, and was throwing handfuls into the furnace. “Do you have a plan, Inspector?”

  “Not really,” Satrine said. She used the shield as a scoop and hurled more sand into the furnace. The sand started smothering the flames.

  “You’re going to get us killed!” the chained men shouted.

  “Help get them free,” Satrine said. “I’ve got this.”

  “What about if they’re right about that thing?” Jerinne asked, nodding at the glass tube mounted over the furnace door. The liquid in the glass vial was already more like honey than water.

  “Then we need a plan,” Satrine said.

  She hoped one would come to her before too long.

  * * *

  Minox was out of time. Inspector Rainey had responded to the urgent call to douse the furnace, but there was no way she could get it cooled before the next scheduled murder.

  “Sir!” he called down to the trapmaster—there was no other word to describe him, and he was obviously the sort who had found himself on the wrong side of the law more than once. “We need to act quickly, or that woman with the dark hair will be killed.”

  The trapmaster gingerly glanced at the woman, and the aspects of the device immediately around her. “Are you sure?”

  “Reasonably,” Minox said.

  “What do you need?” Heldrin called down.

  “It’s just . . . I think something more is happening in a few moments.”

  “More as in—”

  The trapmaster crouched next to the larger box of the machine. “I mean, if I’m guessing right, we’re gonna get something of a grand finale now.”

  “Is that possible?” Jillian asked.

  “Anything is possible,” Heldrin said.

  “Can you cease the operations?” Minox called down.

  “I’ll be honest, this is the trickiest bit of blazes I’ve ever seen,” the trapmaster said. “I may be able to disarm the triggers on the chairs and the strap, but not while this is still moving.” To accentuate his point, he dodged out of the way of a swinging pike. “And as far as it still moving is concerned, there seems to be a lot of redundant gearwork.”

  “Meaning?” Minox asked. Talk was getting more and more pointless.

  “Meaning—here, look, big gear right here.” He pointed to it. “I could jam something in there and gum it up. But there’s another gear over here that seems to be doing the same thing. So jamming one might not make a difference, as long as the other gear is working. Or one of these is a dummy that’s doing nothing.”

  “How can you figure it out?”

  “Another hour or two.”

  Heldrin went over to the rope. “We need to take more direct action before it’s too late. Dark hair is in danger?”

  “I believe so, but our expert—”

  “No, she definitely is,” the trapmaster said, slinking over to that woman. “Just she’s not the only one. This whole thing is like a clock—”

  “I had ascertained that.”

  “And it’s time for the big bells.”

  And in that moment, the motion of everything accelerated. Bells started to ring in the machine. Blades and axe heads all rose up for powerful, fatal swoops down.

  “That can’t be rutting good,” Corrie said.

  “Heldrin!” Minox called. The Tarian was already on the rope, dropping down to the floor.

  “Wait, there’s—” The trapmaster dove under a blade to reach the woman. “Maybe if I jam that gear, I can stop hers, but I can’t jam all the gears.”

  Bells grew more frantic, and the grinding gears added to the cacophony. Heldrin was on the floor, going for his shield.

  The bells suddenly stopped, and everything swung down with deadly intent.

  Minox reached out with every bit of will and might he had to grab hold of the machine.

  Everything stopped.

  The gears ground, then blades inched and pipes and chairs strained and pushed, but Minox held it all still, surrounding everything in a green, sickly glow of magic. It took every ounce of concentration he had, and it fought against him.

  If he released the magic, it would all crash down.

  “What happened?” the trapmaster asked. An axe head was inches away from the woman with the dark hair, and he was enough in its path he would have been sliced as well.

  “Welling?” Heldrin called up. He had his shield in front of one of the other victims, though it looked like it wouldn’t do any good with death coming from three different directions
. “Are you—”

  Minox found himself unable to speak. His jaw was clenched, teeth grinding. He couldn’t spare an ounce of concentration away from holding the machine in place.

  Fortunately, Corrie was there. “Start to get them rutting out!” she shouted. Then she ran to the doors, first blaring her whistle, and then shouting. “Yellowshields, sticks, all hands! Get your worthless asses up here!”

  * * *

  The blades and gears were frozen in place, but straining to move. Dayne hadn’t expected Inspector Welling to have this kind of power as a mage, but in this moment he wasn’t complaining.

  “Friend!” he shouted to the mousy fellow. “We need to get all these people out now!”

  “I’m with you,” the mousy man said. He was on the chair with the woman who had the dark hair. “Help me with this, big guy.”

  Dayne came to him, ducking underneath the staves and spikes to reach him. “We must—”

  “Yes, in haste,” the mousy man said. He had pried open a panel under the chair. “Oh, but isn’t this a beauty. Grab her shoulders.”

  Dayne did as instructed. “What am I—”

  “On my mark, pull her toward you. Ready?”

  “Yes—”

  “Now!”

  The man released something, and Dayne pulled her forward. Her wrists were still strapped to the arms of the chair, but when he pulled her up, a spear shot up out of the seat of the chair. Had she still been in it, she would have been skewered. She flailed in panic, attempting a scream that the gag over her face wouldn’t let her make.

  “That’s one,” the mousy man said, undoing the straps on her ankles. When he released her wrists, she desperately clung onto Dayne.

  “I need to—” Dayne tried to say, but the woman was half-clawing him.

  “Get her out. I’m on the next one.”

  The gears and blades jarred for a moment, surging an inch before holding again. Inspector Welling cried out.

  Dayne rushed over to the rope. A team of Yellowshields were now up on the gallery, with Fire Brigade hurling down ropes.

  “Should we come down?” one of the Yellowshields asked. Dayne glanced over at Inspector Welling. He seemed to be barely holding on to whatever he was doing to keep things together.