by Kin S. Law
“With what?” Cid said, gesturing at the ruin of Alphonse. “It’s a longshot at best. You would need a fully kitted out manufactory, access to a forge, machines to shape and form metal. Or, anyway, an airship to bring him there.”
Ortega simply smiled. As if on cue, there was an answering whistle from the other side of the pass. The instrument did not sound like a train’s call.
Station 11
Do You Like Camping?
Albion made it to the West Coast during the wild beauty of twilight. Orange and purple clouds splashed across a dark blue sky and the mountains lit up like huge embers, flaming on one side and scorched shadow on the other. His travel fatigue momentarily forgotten, he watched twilight fall over the land. Actually, the sundown soothed more than bodily aches. He had been traveling and searching ever since getting out of the water plant in New York, and he felt the world weariness in his bones.
Part of the experience was his ride. Dragonwell needed little in the way of fuel, and Albion himself was hardy, so he had expected to catch up to the Huckleberry in little time. They had planned to consult Burgress’s documents at length, but there was no rendezvous, no plan to meet before the sewer attack happened. They were pirates, used to sudden upheavals. Albion recalled something Hargreaves had said about the Niagara, and so he headed north for some days. But the skies near the Canadian border proved unusually full of airship traffic, and there was the business with the New York State patrol. After what happened in the city, the roads were full of police cruisers with high-altitude rifles. The North was bristling with danger, but if it hadn’t he wouldn’t have come down far enough to see the wreck.
Albion took to flying by night. Rosa had taught him to listen in on pirate ether channels in America, and their soundings rippled through the receiving array in Dragonwell’s console. If he tweaked the dagger-shaped device, he could just hear their voices. It was enough to gather something big had left a trail of destruction through New York and torn into a small hamlet looking for Hargreaves. The ether rang with rumors; some thought a wendigo had come out of the forests and decimated it, others said the dead had come back to life and the end times were coming. The ether net was entertaining, but not very helpful.
Albion might have lost the way back to his companions, but he was nothing if not resourceful. So he did what he always did when he was lost: he went to a bar. This far inland, pirate bars were rare, but the waystations were plenty, offering connections in the form of grizzled lumberjacks, small town gossipers and the usual rumor mill. The east coast waystations were forest cabins and old Indian nation meeting places, more often than not. Sometimes they were treehouses nailed to wide old trees. Once there was an old seafarer anchored in the middle of a lake, like it had been dropped there.
The waystations featured a species of freight airship Albion had never seen, a pig-nosed, long-bodied type of tug that could take several containers lashed together like buoys, each one floated on its own balloon. Thusly loaded, the tugs flew cross-country delivering goods in a relay, one tug to another trading containers as they went. The tuggers were hard-drinking types who loved a good story. Several tankards later, Albion had a lead on a ship that could only be his own, and boarded a tug headed south by southwest. Some trepidation nagged him. The tuggers said the ship was damaged, and was limping along uncharted routes. It posed some danger to the regular freight lanes, which were charted over uninhabited places. The tuggers were happy to take him, though. They had never seen the like of Dragonwell, and just having carried it made a story they could brag about later.
In Pittsburgh, Albion tuned in to another set of ether nets, and determined the ’Berry was flying west. The direction could only be related to Vanessa Hargreaves’ unmentionable cargo. If he knew Hargreaves, she would want to get rid of the box as quickly as possible. Albion did not think the hermetically sealed box could be easily destroyed. What was out West that could help her?
By skimming the autumn fallow in the dead of night, Albion made all speed toward the West and the gray veil of the Lands Beyond. Dragonwell was an excellent traveling companion, with a comfortable seat. Even so, Albion had to stop occasionally to sleep and eat, and to keep an ear out for news of his ship or Hargreaves. There was the occasional tornado or dust storm to worry about. If he took to the ground at certain places, he could parley with the woolly bear captains, making deals for supplies. His Morse lantern came in very handy, phrases he thought he’d forgotten resurfacing like old wrecks. The oppressive heat of the Nevada desert threatened to dry up Dragonwell’s water coils, leaving them both to bleach in the sun.
He might have continued to fly west past where Hargreaves had fallen if Dragonwell’s engine didn’t give a worrisome shudder between his legs. Albion at first paid it no mind. Unexplained noises were a common occurrence with all automata. Dragonwell was battered and barely being held together with gaffer’s tape. Every moving part rattled, and the rips in the canvas joints whistled maddeningly. Its ragged cape billowed, catching the breeze like a loose sail.
As he flew on, following the rail tracks below, Dragonwell’s rattling picked up an urgency that was not just the air rattling through its bones. Over the weeks, Albion had learned to trust the big fellow’s instincts and listen to its desires. The shard at the Gear’s heart had once been inside of Albion, and sometimes he felt a pain in his shoulder where the crystal had lodged at high speed. Perhaps a piece of it still rested inside of him.
“All right, all right!” Albion said aloud. It echoed in the cockpit over the engine noise. His ears were full of Cid’s words. On the day he left the ’Berry, Cid had cautioned the captain as only an old hand could—gruffly, yet tenderly.
“Be mindful of this,” Cid had said, patting Dragonwell’s exposed engine. It had not been completed yet, and the tin man’s bones stuck out every which way. They had just fitted the shard into the engine’s carriage, and already it was whirring and glowing furiously.
“Cid, you helped me build the damn thing. You helped bring me up from a tyke, you watched me climb all over your clanking engines. Now you’re saying you built something I should be careful of? Why would you hammer together my gallows yourself?”
“Mindful, not scared,” Cid had answered. “This thing was in your body, lad. We’ve never seen anything like this aeon crystal, let alone one that was inside a human body. You know I unwrapped it expecting your blood all over it, but there was nothing, not a drop. The blasted thing was clean and glittering.”
“What are you saying?”
“If the old analytical engine is right,” Cid went on, tapping his noggin. “And if I didn’t cock up the tests, this Gear needs only minimal fuel, very little pressure, and only a little fine tuning now and again. The condensers will give you water enough to carry the aeon stream. Can’t say for the rest of it, but Dragonwell’s engine might very well run indefinitely.”
“That’s all right then,” Albion said, relieved. “The Lands Beyond are wild and uncivilized. We might not be able to find fuel or water where we go.” That was their plan, Albion, Rosa, and the ’Berry, to venture out in the wild frontier beyond the gray veil. The thought of it made him smile. That was why they had spent so much time staking out Burgess for parts, building Dragonwell—the automata that could fly, that could clear the way for the ’Berry in unknown lands.
“I don’t know.” Cid had said, picking up after his tools. “I’m saying I don’t know what it’s capable of, so you better watch yourself. It might be this here was what Mordemere was trying to build, before he went nuttier than the last bite of figgy pudding. If I were you I wouldn’t finish building this at all.”
They both looked up to the Gear’s silent, unfinished face, grinning at them with its one eye, really a scope for the pilot. In the other hole, the gaping muzzles of a triple-barreled gun stared hungrily.
“A future that never was,” Albion murmured. “A world without want.”
“Lad,” Cid had said while looking at Albion very carefully,
“If you’re not frightened by the notion, you’re a fool.”
Albion had only piloted Dragonwell a couple times before taking him out to battle, and only to test the parts they commandeered from Burgess’ stores. Even then, the machine seemed to anticipate his movements. A lever stuck in exactly the right place sometimes, or a gauge might gurgle to show him a hidden patrol. Other times, the Gear had a mind of its own, stepping a little ways further than intended or not always staying exactly where it was left. Albion knew aeons reacted to the people around them. But there was a ghost in this machine.
Albion had an ear to listen now, when Dragonwell made itself heard, whatever the thing’s motivations were. Albion had long ago decided to work with it, not against it. As he drew nearer the shape of a riverbank appeared from under a canopy of trees, and now Albion saw a swatch of land that sloped from the tracks to the river. The slide was full of smooth clinker and soft, rotted leaves. He picked a spot and landed Dragonwell.
Albion’s boots splashed down in water. He looked around. What did his big metal friend want to show him? For a moment he felt silly, as superstitious as the old augurers back in the Kowloon Walled City. How could an assemblage of clockwork and steam engine parts want anything? But as he turned in a slow circle, he could make out the traces of something that had come rolling down the slope, dislodging a long slide of dirt. And at the base of it, there was something gold floating in the water.
“What the blazes—Hargreaves!” he cried out.
Vanessa Hargreaves did not respond to his calls, continuing to float face-down in a little eddy. She was starting to get pulled out into the main current. Albion splashed deeper into the river, and that was when he saw the cloud of darkness Hargreaves was floating in—blood! He knelt in the water, turning her and holding her up by her armpits. Amazingly, she was alive, her pulse weak, but still she breathed. Despite being unconscious her knuckles were clenched white.
“You’re hardier than you look,” said Albion, and pulled her onto the bank.
As the sun set slowly over an indifferent west, the river was treated to the splendid cacophony of Hargreaves waking.
“Bluh…”
“Ah. Glad to see you’re awake, Inspector. I’m afraid I plum forgot the tea, but there’s roast trout.”
Captain Clemens sat across a glowing fire from her, a sight for very sore eyes.
Hargreaves looked about, groggily, and then her blush spread like wildfire. Beneath Albion’s swashbuckling jacket, not a stitch covered her.
She picked up the closest missile she could find; a river rock. “Why…why you lout!”
Dodging the rock, Albion held up his hands in submission. Hargreaves’s cheeks grew hotter. . The bloody pirate was naked as well. The next rock hit him in the right temple, knocking him for a loop. Colorful curses flew from her lips.
“Mind the gap,” he said, pointing and holding his head.
“What gap?” shrieked Hargreaves. Looking down she saw Albion’s coat edging into the ditch of the fire. With a start, she saw she was well covered by it, and quite dry besides. It didn’t comfort her very much.
“Don’t move around too much. You lost a lot of blood, from the look of the water. I put the stitches right, but they’re temporary at best, wire meant for Dragonwell,” said Albion. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the hulk behind him. “It will still be numb, from the spot anesthetic. You must have been hit hard, the needle did not wake you. ”
He showed her the needle: a fishing hook. The chrome syringe for the anesthetic was an altogether more terrifying affair. It was a foot long and had to be disassembled to fit in its tin box. Focused on those, Hargreaves nearly missed the looming shadow at Albion’s shoulder. She turned dully until her eyes focused upon it, and she saw the Gear’s bulk. Grimaldi!
“Get that monstrosity away from me!” she shrieked. With all the laundry hung drying on his steaming flanks, the automata’s silhouette was freakish, otherworldly. For one terrible second she thought she saw the manic rictus of Hallow’s creation.
“Whoa, whoa!” Albion said.
He threw a flaming branch at Dragonwell’s feet, the shifting light glinting off the tricorn helm. Hargreaves calmed, pulling the coat closer over her. Albion walked over to take his shirt off the lines. The rictus faded back into the pirate grimace of Dragonwell’s own face.
“You had quite a scare, now just sit back before you bleed out again,” said Albion.
“I…I…” stuttered Hargreaves. But as much as she hated to admit it, Albion was right. The stitches holding her together was a dull hurt. Hargreaves slumped down, dizzy. The captain sighed, brought over a canteen of fresh water, and a leaf with a skewered fish with some late-season blueberries on it.
Hargreaves grabbed for the canteen, and tilted her head suspiciously.
“Not river water. Fresh from Dragonwell’s condensers,” said Albion. She took a long draught, then set to the leaf, popping four or five berries at a time. The fish she picked apart, flaking and hot.
When she’d had her fill, Albion asked, “Was there something in the ship?”
“Something, all right,” she said, and filled him in while he set a smallish saucepan on the fire. She began with leaving Rosa Marija and the crew of the ’Berry, which he took stoically. His trust in his crew showed as total indifference to their plight, which was oddly comforting. When she got to the train wreck, Albion added a paper pouch of some brown powder to the pot, and bits and smidgens from some other envelopes hidden in his coat pockets. By the time she finished relating her one-woman airship raid and Hallow’s betrayal, Albion was pouring some viscous, beastly liquid into a sturdy metal cup.
“I thought you were out of tea,” Hargreaves said, scowling.
“Herbal tincture,” Albion said. “Mostly Cantonese, with some Japanese Kampō touches and a dollop of honey for flavor.”
“I didn’t see you put in any,” she complained.
He reached over to another leaf, wrapped securely with cord, and produced a fresh chunk of honeycomb, crumbly and sticky. “Roadside trader. Things are closer to their natural shape out here. Drink! It will help you heal.”
At first, Hargreaves regarded the minging sludge as she might the leavings of a horse. The smell was cloying, sticking to her mucus membranes and befouling them. The stains felt permanent.
“I think I’ll save this for later,” Hargreaves said, setting the cup on a flat rock.
“No, you’ll have it now. The doctors may have sewn you back together, but your insides need topping up.”
Hargreaves winced. It was true; her guts felt like someone had taken a steamthrower to them. She remembered Rosa Marija once saying she had spent some time with the captain learning healing arts from a…What were they called? Some kind of doctor, in the Kowloon Walled City. Still, surely pirates had cause to appropriate medical knowledge that worked, she thought, with all the scrapes they fell into.
“It’s best to hold your breath,” Albion said helpfully.
Hargreaves sighed, pinched her nose, and downed the awful stuff in a single gulp. When she came up for air, scrabbling, Albion held the honeycomb just within arm’s reach. The bitter taste couldn’t be fully washed out, but the honey was fresh and floral, tasting slightly of orange blossoms. The combs were the same color as her bedraggled hair.
“It sounds to me,” said Albion while Hargreaves laid waste to the honey. “It sounds to me like Hallow’s plans can’t be so simple.”
“How so? Hallow’s got his bloody Ghost Train to deliver the box anywhere he likes,” said Hargreaves. “He could take over the country with his new army.”
“We know Ubique funded him and helped build Alphonse along with this…Grimaldi monstrosity,” said Albion. “His coffers aren’t infinite.”
“It makes sense, in a way,” said Hargreaves. “This Ghost Train…I heard of it as a terrible rumor when I traveled America. It had shut down the rails of the North and I had to take plains crawlers to get through. So i
t had the run of the North.”
“The Ghost Train created a rumor to protect itself. Hauntings and abductions terrible enough to keep people away from Hallow’s moving laboratory,” agreed Albion. “An armor of stories.”
“Not just a laboratory. A manufactory,” said Hargreaves. “I bet you his boxcars are full of flat-packed nightmare engines, ready to come to life once he infuses them with the Cook box’s...” She struggled for a word. “Essence? But he can’t go on making them. There isn’t enough room on the train.”
“Maybe more like his white automata…?”
“The Grimaldi...” Hargreaves muttered. She remembered the way its long, white fingers had moved when Hallow twitched his head. The casual way it had destroyed the airship, the way it had cast Hikawa aside like a rag doll. Despite being dry and close to the fire, Hargreaves shivered.
Albion took a deep breath.
“When I was swept aside by the floodgates under New York, the spider automata left me for dead, and stopped attacking. At the time, I thought it was simply leaving when the Cook box slipped out of reach. But it wasn’t. It was avoiding something,” said Albion.
“What could an enormous steam works spider be afraid of?” said Hargreaves.
“When I found my way out, it was through a municipal tunnel. New York’s underground is a warren of blind corners, built layer upon layer like a giant stone cake. There are tunnels and byways in there that could hide anything, Hargreaves,” Albion said. “What I saw was right on the surface, a passage into a government water processing plant. I could see people walking at the windows. That tarantula automata knew the place was there. It could have followed me in but it didn’t want to lead me there.”
“You aren’t usually this verbose.” Hargreaves’ eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you…could you be afraid?”
“Yes, damn it, yes,” said Albion, nearly spitting the words. His hands shook, but his brow was as unreadable as ever.