by Kin S. Law
Hargreaves lay motionless, wondering how many of her bones were broken now. Desperately she wondered what Captain Clemens would do. She recalled how he had kept Valima Mordemere talking long enough to buy the time to destroy the dread ship Nidhogg.
Hargreaves regularly gave the captain guff about mouthing off to a madman. Now she saw why Clemens had found the last conversation an ordeal. Quite aside from the massive physical trauma, it was difficult to wholly disbelieve what Hallow was saying. She had known The Queen hadn’t told her everything. She had in fact suspected she was being manipulated by the matriarch, maybe even put in a situation that very likely would be the end of Vanessa Hargreaves. What was it that kept her from believing Hallow now? It was hard to pin down.
There had been the conversation in Her Majesty’s tea parlor. Amongst all the finery of the Empire where Her Majesty was in all her rights to simply order Hargreaves about, Her Majesty had poured Vanessa tea. The Queen of the Pax Brittania, Empress of India, Bastion of the Lands Beyond, had poured the inspector tea. It was silly, stupid, and utterly naïve, but Hargreaves seized upon the memory of the Queen’s agile fingers, the fragrance in the cup, of the sunbeams lancing through the mangosteen flowers. Above all, she remembered Her Majesty’s youthful yet sagely calm face, her gentle smile hiding unfathomable troubles.
“Your Queen sent you running after a weapon,” Hallow began.
“Yes, I know,” Hargreaves wheezed, impatiently.
“But not the one you thought,” Hallow continued. “Shall I show you?” The Grimaldi stood fully erect on legs thicker than Hargreaves’ torso. The anatomy of the thing seemed impossible, with hips flared huge over thin legs.
The train was beginning to pitch with the thing’s steps. It leaned over Hargreaves, and now she could see its long, narrow torso, a gilded cabinet in white enamel and gold trim. Slowly the fluted metal opened along a seam, revealing a sight so wretched that she nearly turned away. There was no engine or boiler like a normal automata. Instead, Hallow’s face and shoulders peered out of a steaming, roiling mass of flesh. Strings of flesh were nailed to great orbs of gunmetal, peeking from the mass like caps of bone. Glimmering alloyed rings spun freely through, like celestial cartography, or coiled like a snake. They dipped in and out of the flesh, one with it, as if their substance was all part of some equation that made her head hurt. Whatever it was, it was pure nightmare fuel.
“Do you see?” Hallow’s voice echoed strangely. After a squelching sound Hallow’s pinstriped torso emerged from the gelatinous mass like a currant from custard.
“That is sick,” said Hargreaves. “Sick and wrong.”
“No, I’ll tell you what is wrong,” Hallow said as the rest of him slithered out of the fleshy blob. His foot made a popping sound as it came out. Despite no longer being inside the machination, the lumbering titan seemed to continue obeying his will, mimicking his movements. The tumorous mass pulsed and throbbed within its shadowed cavities. “What’s wrong is Mordemere and I built these things to remake the world, and the Queen intends only to preserve it as it is: rotten!”
“What are you saying?” said Hargreaves, horrified.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Hallow said. “Did you think the engines of the Empire were so advanced as to move such an intricate thing as this Grimaldi? Your Alphonse? Those automata we faced, Priser and Driver…weren’t they slow and clumsy, compared to MAD automata? Did they not suffocate and kill their drivers?”
“But this is monstrous!” said Hargreaves, looking at the writhing thing in Hallow’s shadow. Even as she did some part of her guessed at what Hallow had done, why he had come into the service of Her Majesty’s government.
“I conceived and offered up these innovations,” said Hallow, now free of the Cook abomination. He paced the deck. “I worked with Mordemere in his atelier. Did you think he could achieve all his wonders alone? I had Alphonse built in secret, to see how my works did in the field. And I have been lying in wait, until the Crown in its greed and fear helped to build the last part of my masterpiece!” Hallow gestured to the deathly white cliff behind him.
But that meant within Alphonse’s black boxes…Hargreaves knew this instinctively, could feel it as deeply and with as much hurt as when she stood in the core of the Nidhogg. Every time she had taken Alphonse for a leisure ride, every time she had sat in that warm, close space...
“This is tomorrow,” continued Hallow. “This is the innovation even Mordemere himself was too frightened to make use of, but your Victoria, oh, your splendid Victoria. She is no pushover. Once her soldiers found the plans in Mordemere’s atelier, she knew it was the only chance she stood against the Ottomans. But of course, such a thing had never been built before. It had to be tested, and what better place to do so than against the nationalists of India and the sepoys? Plenty of test subjects, and plenty of raw…materials.”
Hallow sneered. Hargreaves marveled at how different he was from the person she thought she knew. Normally patient and taciturn, Hallow now seemed condescending and loquacious, quite eager to prattle on about his master plan. She fingered the bronze knife at her waist, but Hallow was much too far away. She had to keep him talking.
“Materials?” she wheezed.
“Harvested, of course, from those foreign undesirables England is so fond of sweeping out of the way of progress. That has always been the way of it. The Queen’s predecessors plundered India until it was a desiccated husk, just like she is doing now in Argentina. Only now, Victoria III has the benefit of airships, those cataclysmic angels on high. My Grimaldi, my Conqueror Worm eats only dead flesh, and those lands had been thoroughly killed.”
“I won’t have you speak of Her Majesty that way!” cried Hargreaves. Amazingly, patriotic fire remained in her belly. “You’ve created a monster!”
Hallow kept talking. It seemed he couldn’t stop.
“Inspector…though you never caught on I had been sending missives to my agents from your very department, I can see the comprehension in your eyes,” Hallow allowed. He began to laugh, his voice cracking. “Oh my, it is nice to have someone understand. You know why picture villains monologue? Because they’re never allowed to just talk. To just take the piss. Maybe if we had an outlet for change we wouldn’t have to go to all this dramatic tosh. We’re always cut off before we get a chance to—”
“Ah, so that is your intent.”
The voice of Hikawa Shotaro was a shock to both of them, but the sight of his blade cleaving the air was a greater shock to Jean Hallow. It stoppered his words before he could finish relating his master plan. One second he was striding about, gesturing with his scarecrow arms. The next, his hand and forearm up to the elbow went arching through the air, some three yards away from his body.
Hallow let out a long, high scream of pain. He whirled, spraying blood across the deck. Tears streamed through new furrows in his usually smooth, pale face.
“Orby! Help me Orby!”
His cry of help went unheeded. Vera Jasper lay prone some yards away, crumpled and unconscious. But she hadn’t been of no use; Hikawa moved much slower, limping over a fresh leg wound.
“Your assassin will not save you,” Hikawa said as he lunged, uncharacteristically clumsy with his leg, to finish Hallow.
The clang of the blade rang across the blasted deck. Hikawa’s blade came down as a glowing arc, only to be cut off by the Grimaldi. The infernal machine put itself between Hikawa and his target with deft swiftness. Then the white chest plate swung open, crashing into the swordsman and sending him flying. The Grimaldi turned on Hallow, engulfing him whole into its cavernous trunk.
The train wobbled and pitched at an angle too steep for Hargreaves to stand. Not that she could, with her wounds. They were rolling, pitching fast into a turn as the train picked up speed. Hurt and straining, she felt her body tip, the door to the boxcar no longer supporting her on ruined hinges. With a terrible, slow foreboding she began to succumb to gravity’s hold. She reached out, scrabbling for purchase.
>
Her fingers closed around a bit of unbroken bulkhead. Almost there!
And then she found herself in free fall. She watched the white form of the Grimaldi crouch down once more, the car’s ceiling doors closing over it. From afar, the thing had a terrible beauty, all fluted posture and deathly finesse. It looked like some angel of the apocalypse.
That was the last thing Hargreaves saw before the blurring tree line enveloped her.
Station 10
Terra Incognita
For the second time in as many days, Cezette found her maman in dire straits. She had whisked her to the hospital, clutching an appropriated toolbox while Cid made some last minute adjustments to the velocipede. The inspector was determined to continue fighting, even though she was broken and in need of patching. Now, Cezette seized upon Maman’s familiar scent of goldenrods, cherishing it, committing it to memory. She did not know why, but she had a terrible urge to clutch Maman close. But it was not to be, for the moment they had her stitched back together again, Maman prepared to set out.
In the lot of the hospital, Maman asked, “You’re sure you’re not coming with us?” Alphonse’s torn arm sat discarded next to the purring velocipede.
“The velocipede seats two,” said Cezette. “Uncle Cid and Jean will take care of me.”
“You’re trying to reassure me,” said Hargreaves. “Which means you’re planning something.”
“What other choice is there? Sit and do nothing?” Cezette answered simply. “Go catch the box, Maman. You can tuck me in when we get home.”
“Silly girl. You’re a bit big for that,” the inspector said. She sighed, and held the girl to her breast. “Keep those legs working. Listen to Cid.”
But Hargreaves was right: Cezette had been planning something. A germ of an idea had been growing in the clever little French girl’s head. Finding her maman, making and suddenly losing a friend, it all felt like some roller coaster ride, with a deadly drop behind every hairpin turn. On the one side were the bright, shiny attractions of America, and finally being outside of MAD. On the other, there were the real dangers of murderous automata and shadowed forces she could barely glimpse, let alone control. Who had given them the cab? Who had warned them of the men in the hotel room? Questions plagued the girl. The whole journey was an emotional whirligig, but she wasn’t about to get off the ride.
Cezette’s plan was actually Cid’s plan as well. She had run into him hiring a car when she went to the hospital’s front desk. All the better—she hadn’t been sure she could hire a car at her age. She also had little in currency. Cid, the old graybeard knew better than to question Cezette if they made too much fuss, it would give away the plan to Hargreaves. The inspector would never have allowed her ward to poke around in the sharp, rusting wreckage of a train, not even to piece Alphonse back together.
“I have the left leg!”
“And I the right arm!”
Cezette and Cid fully expected the derailment to be scoured clean, and every piece of Hargreaves’s metal companion carted off to a junkyard or evidence lot. The prodigious amount of wreckage meant that hadn’t happened, not by a long shot. The local authorities had brought in a steamer crane, to start hauling the wreckage from the rear of the train first. Additional lines needed to be diverted, compounding the inconvenience of so many trains already being rerouted for the Ghost Train. Days after the accident, the locals had only begun to excavate the middle cars. There was simply too much wreckage to sift through, and downed engines were known to keep burning for hours, sometimes days. Best to leave that end for last. Cid intended to retrieve Alphonse’s corpse before those dread steamworks could be exploited by an immoral entrepreneur.
As the unlikely duo dragged the detached components to the bulk of Alphonse’s torso, they found a rather large Latin man sitting on Alphonse’s knee where they had left it on a pile. Cid dropped the leg he had been dragging with a clunk.
“I expected the inspector herself,” the man said to the panting, sweating duo. Like a proper gentleman, he took off his fedora and stood up. Though he had a large paunch, the man’s arms and shoulders were thick with muscle. He looked over the rickety bones of Cid, and sized up Cezette. “Unless, of course, you’re more of Burgess’ goons.”
“Like the Orb Weaver,” said Cezette. “Violet Jade, or Vera Jasper.”
“If you’re implying you’re not one of Burgess’, then who are ye?” Cid grunted. Seeing no recourse than to deal with the Latin man, he squatted on the chunk of leg and took a drink from a hip flask.
“Our mutual friend believes, of course, I am a detective in the ranks of New York’s finest.” The Latin man replied. “Vanessa Hargreaves is a magnificent woman, and a fine specimen of Scotland Yard, so it gives me pride to say I was able to deceive her. Sancho Ortega. I work for America.”
“American intelligence. Secret Service?” said Cid
“I work for America, not the American government,” Ortega said simply.
Cezette came to stand by Cid, searching his face for how to respond to this unexpected intrusion. She got the impression Ortega did not want anything from them—not that there was much to take besides their lives and Alphonse. Still, the automata was still there and they were still alive. She concluded this “detective” was here to help.
“Don’t buy it,” Cid said. He offered the Latin man a drink from his flask, but Ortega declined. Cezette thought she saw decades of heartburn in the momentary grimace. “Why would you haul your bollocks all the way from New York and not deliver our metal friend to your masters?”
“Because my masters do not will it,” Ortega said amiably. “We are many.”
“For we are Legion,” answered Cid. His entire attitude seemed to change in an instant, not relaxing, but regarding Ortega with an analytical gaze instead of a threatening one. His grizzled brow wrinkled. “Why are you here?”
“What is this?” said Cezette, confused. She looked from Ortega to Cid.
“The little one is not initiated,” said Ortega. “No, but we ought. She is…resourceful,” grumbled Cid in his usual way.
“Uncle!”
“An old pirate like me would not still be alive if he did not have some connection to the Incognito,” Cid murmured quietly.
“Sacre Bleu…”
Cezette had heard the tales from Maman, both her birth mother and Hargreaves. Her natural mother had read her penny dreadfuls in bed, while Hargreaves had spoken of them tersely. The Incognito were elite rogues, the most honorable of thieves. The Pirate Parliament, those who dwelt in the shadows, striding the line between brigand war-princes and aeronaut lords. Those foolish enough to cross their black sails or fail to pay their protection soon found themselves at the mercy of ten thousand cutlasses. Trade route blockades, inexplicable missing cargo, raging stock house fires in monsoon season, nothing was beyond their power. The Incognito were the only authority at waystations like the Straight Hook, and their dark hand could be felt in every world-changing deed. Air pirates with the Incognito’s mark could fly mostly unpoliced, without fear of the gibbet, though it was said the mark did not come cheap.
“The notes! And thee convenient cab!” said Cezette. “Arturo’s belly!”
More loudly, Cid continued, “There is no such thing as a member of the Incognito in good standing, but you seem to be one of those uppity-ups in a great deal of power. What is the meaning of guiding us this far? Nearly killing us?”
“I do apologize for this,” Ortega said, gesturing vaguely at the blackened carnage all about him, and presumably, at Arturo’s stabbing. “I had nothing to do with it, but it was not well done. The Ghost Train and the Orb Weaver was near. By putting Inspector Hargreaves’ friends into our care, my agents hoped to secure the Cook box before the Ghost Train arrived to take them. It was bad luck the inspector herself arrived with the box.”
“Those poor sods,” said Cid, looking at the downed form of the barrel-shaped automata nearby. He had some fellow feeling for the plains pirates.
>
“Even the Orb Weaver thought those saboteurs were working with her and Burgess when they derailed this train, which is often the way we prefer it. We make small changes in others’ plans to facilitate our ends. I, for example, specialize in social mediation. I tell a cab driver to meet you at your hotel. I keep tabs on Mister Arturo’s informants. I employ agents where to find you. Sometimes we must employ agents who are…heavy-handed, let’s say. The Incognito is not what it was.”
“Pirates,” said Cid, rolling his eyes.
“Putos, pinche pendejos,” Ortega agreed. “I saw the ether flare Orb Weaver sent up. I presume the inspector is hunting them down? She was injured. I am, again, very sorry for that.”
“You seem awfully eager to share. Won’t your secret club kick you out?” said Cezette.
Ortega gave a deep, bellowing laugh. “Regrettably, the situation did not turn out as we hoped, and we require a…better hand of cards. The Ghost Train now holds the box, for whatever nefarious purpose, we cannot say. I assume you know what is inside?” Ortega asked.
“Of course. The instant the box arrived at the Yard, I poked around with an echogramoscope,” Cid answered, snorting. “That thing is a menace.”
A menace? But surely it is much more than that, Cezette thought. They could not all be fighting over a thing simply because it was dangerous, as if it were a gun or a bomb.
“Cid Tanner. Also known as the Oxfordian, and the Bull Shark. I always wondered if you were one of us.” Ortega sounded impressed. “The job with the Sultan’s jewels, how was that done?”
“Why are you here?” Cid growled as he drank the remainder of what was in his flask. It sounded alarmingly empty.
“I am going to help you. Well, not you exactly,” Ortega said. He reached down, below his knee, and with one knuckle, rapped against Alphonse’s punctured chest plate. Was Alphonse integral to the Incognito’s plans? What would they want with fixing him?