Corambis

by Sarah Monette

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Bridger said, diffident again. “But that’s what warlocks do, and that’s how it starts. It’s why you must never look another magician in the eye for too long.” And, faltering, “It’s terribly rude.”

  “I apologize,” I said stiffly, well aware that although I had certainly not been trying to enthrall the child, I had been bullying her. As Cabaline wizards habitually did to determine who ought to defer to whom. It was an ugly habit anyway, and in Corambis it looked as if it might get me in more trouble than I could talk myself out of.

  “You must be a magician, then,” Miss Leverick said, her voice carefully neutral.

  “Wizard,” I corrected and, bracing myself, showed them my palms.

  Miss Bridger actually gasped. Miss Leverick said, “That will teach me to dismiss Una Semmence’s novels as nothing but lurid nonsense. Are they really . . . ?”

  She started to reach out, then stopped and looked at me. “Go ahead,” I said; I owed them this much for being so dramatic about it.

  Miss Leverick’s touch was very light. “How fascinating,” she said. “Is it true they’re done with magic?”

  “They’re done with needles,” I said and pulled my hands back, resisting the urge to tuck them against my sides.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Miss Leverick. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You must get tired of all the ridiculous notions people have. Have you been in Corambis long?”

  “Only a few weeks,” I said, returning her smile. “And that mostly confined to a hotel room. My brother fell ill coming over the pass.”

  “Oh how dreadful,” said Miss Leverick. “And traveling is tiring enough without adding illness into the equation.”

  “Do you travel a great deal?” I asked, hoping to distract her away from my affairs. Corbie was still staring fixedly at the door of the compartment, face and neck an unbecoming blotchy red; there would be no help from her for a while yet.

  But my stratagem worked very well, as it turned out Miss Leverick had traveled from one end of Corambis to the other. She had even been south of the Perblanches—once—although she said apologetically that she had found things very uncomfortable and had no particular desire to do so again.

  At that point, the train began to move—with an appalling lurch that both Miss Leverick and Miss Bridger assured me was normal. Corbie looked more than a little wild-eyed; Mildmay didn’t even twitch.

  “Have you not traveled on a train before, Mr. Harrowgate?” Miss Bridger said. Again like a cat, she was now carefully ignoring Corbie.

  “I’d never seen a train before this morning,” I said, entranced by the rapidly moving view out the window.

  “Oh,” said Miss Bridger, another little gasp.

  “The railways don’t extend past the Perblanches,” Miss Leverick said, “and as far as I know, no other people have developed steam-powered travel. Am I correct, Mr. Harrowgate?”

  “I’ve certainly never heard of such a thing before,” I said.

  They left us alone for a while, as Corbie and I watched the buildings and streets of St. Melior gradually give way to countryside: farmland and then, after perhaps an hour, open meadows which then shifted again to farmland and then another city unfurled itself around us.

  “Granderfold,” said Miss Leverick before I had to ask.

  Granderfold was smaller than St. Melior, and not nearly as prosperous. The buildings looked older, and most of them could have used a fresh coat of paint. I took the opportunity of our stop to fetch Lilion out of my pocket and unfold the map. Corbie leaned in, and we read the names of the towns: Bernatha, Granderfold, Wildar, Kilrey, Skimfair, Follenfant, Esmer. And the Forest of Nauleverer in the middle of it all.

  Miss Leverick and Miss Bridger returned from a brief promenade along the platform, and Miss Leverick said with immediate interest, “What a fantastic map! That must be Lilion’s Guidebook. He was a surveyor for the Company, so he actually went to the places he writes about.”

  I thought of Challoner cribbing from Virenque. “Quite. ‘The Company’?”

  “The Corambin Railway Company, sorry. My father also worked for them, and I’ve never entirely lost the habit of thinking of them as a sort of combined god and scapegoat. Whenever anything went wrong in Father’s life, it was always the Company to blame. In his old age, he even blamed them for his gout.”

  The train jerked into motion again. This time Mildmay made a faint sound of protest, but did not stir. Miss Leverick said, “We reach Wildar in half an hour or so. Is that your destination?”

  “No,” I said, “we’re going to Esmer.”

  “Oh!” said Miss Bridger. “So are we!”

  “Three cheers for you,” Corbie muttered, but I didn’t think either of the women heard her.

  “You’re welcome to share our compartment on the Esmer train,” Miss Leverick said. “It will certainly be more restful for your brother.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Dennifell Station was even worse than Clave; it was, Miss Leverick informed me, the Company’s southern hub and the busiest station in all of Corambis: “Esmer has more traffic, but three stations to sort it through.” Mildmay was groggy—not insensible, but truly not capable of managing by himself—and Corbie was showing a distressing tendency to cling, which I diverted by giving her to Mildmay to lean on. Miss Leverick, I decided, was almost certainly a saint, for she led us through the chaos of Dennifell and got us established in a compartment that was the mirror image of the one we’d left, all without turning a hair. I didn’t even have a chance to worry about missing the train until after we were all sitting down again and I’d unfolded Lilion’s map.

  From Wildar to Kilrey was an hour; Corbie and I again watched out the window while Mildmay slept and Miss Leverick and Miss Bridger talked quietly. As we left Kilrey, Miss Leverick said, “We stop for lunch in Skimfair. Would you and your companions care to join us, Mr. Harrowgate?”

  “We would be delighted,” I said promptly, but couldn’t help checking my pocket watch. “Lunch? Isn’t it a trifle early?”

  “There are no stops in Nauleverer,” Miss Leverick said, “and we don’t reach Follenfant until seventeen-thirty.”

  “Ah. I see.” I looked at Nauleverer sprawling across the middle of the map. “Lilion says it’s all wild?”

  “There are some villages,” Miss Leverick said, “but all near the edges. No one lives in Nauleverer Deep.”

  “There are stories,” Miss Bridger said.

  “Oh, not just stories,” said Miss Leverick. “I don’t remember the final count of casualties for the laying of the Follenfant-Skimfair line, but it was appalling. More than twice that of the Esmer-Whallan line, which is I don’t know how many times as long. One of my students was a spike driver, and he says the forest hated them. When he’ll talk about it at all.”

  “Nobody cuts wood in Nauleverer,” Miss Bridger said. “Not deeper than you can see the edge from.”

  “And this train journey is safe?” I said, half-suspecting that they were merely teasing me.

  “The rails are iron,” Miss Bridger said, as if that explained everything.

  “And . . . ?” I said.

  “Iron for warding,” Miss Leverick said.

  Iron for warding was sheerest nonsense, otherwise every wizard in the Mirador would be wearing iron rings. But I didn’t want to start an argument with an annemer and an untrained student; I created a diversion by opening the Guidebook to the entry on Nauleverer and reading them what Lilion had written, as I’d read it to Mildmay in our room at the Fiddler’s Fox.

  “Good old Lilion,” Miss Leverick said fondly. “Didn’t believe in anything that didn’t bite him first. I wonder what stories he heard.”

  “Stories?” said Mildmay, coming suddenly alert. Then, “Powers, where are we?”

  “Good morning,” I said. “I’ll remember this in future if I ever need to get your attention in a hurry.” He ducked his chin, blush
ing a little, and I answered his question: “We are somewhere between Kilrey and Skimfair, where we are going to have lunch with Miss Leverick and Miss Bridger.” Mildmay looked warily from one to the other; I remembered belatedly how much he disliked having strangers watch him eat and added, “And perhaps we can prevail on them to tell us stories about Nauleverer. Here,” and I directed his attention to the map.

  He forgot instantly about his self-consciousness, and over his bowed head, I said to Miss Leverick, “You said one of your students was a spike driver. What do you teach?”

  The answer to that question brought us into Skimfair; clearly Miss Leverick had been drawn to teaching by a natural propensity to lecture. She was employed by something called the Society for the Advancement of Universal Education, and she gave lectures on Corambin history to chapters of the Society all over the country. When she wasn’t traveling, she taught a history class. “In the evenings,” she said.

  “For people who work during the day,” Miss Bridger added, hero-worship naked in her eyes. Miss Bridger was the daughter of the Society’s chapter president in St. Melior. The occasion of Miss Leverick giving a lecture in St. Melior had been utilized to provide Miss Bridger a companion for her trip to Esmer and the Institution, where she was starting at the Women’s Thaumaturgical College. Beside me, Corbie shifted, but did not speak.

  “Our goal is particularly to reach those people who did not have opportunities for conventional schooling,” said Miss Leverick. “I teach a great many retired railway workers, house servants—I have one student who began as a chimney sweep and is now a jockey.”

  “So anybody can come?” Mildmay asked.

  I startled; I hadn’t realized that he was paying attention, much less that he was interested.

  He’d made an effort to speak clearly, and Miss Leverick went up in my estimation, for she made a corresponding effort to understand him, and did not look to me for a translation. “Yes,” she said. “There is a minimal fee for the classes—we have to rent a room, and there’s the matter of supplies—but the lectures are always free.”

  Mildmay nodded his thanks and went back to the map. Miss Leverick watched him for a moment, then said to me, “It has been very painful, these past few indictions, giving lectures on the historical schisms between Corambis and Caloxa. I am grateful, of course, that the Insurgence has ended without further bloodshed, but I remain convinced that if the Convocation would pay better attention to its own history, it need not have happened at all.”

  “Ah,” I said weakly, and counted myself fortunate that we were slowing to a halt in Skimfair before Miss Leverick could launch into one of her classroom lectures.

  Lunch was at the station; much of Skimfair’s economy seemed to be centered around providing food for railway travelers, and Miss Leverick said we would find the same to be true in Follenfant. She was clearly known and liked by the station staff; it was not accidental that we ended up at a secluded corner table with a servitor saying in a confidential murmur, “You don’t want the fish today, Miss Frances. Fairlee put too much pepper in again.”

  We followed the course of wisdom, and let Miss Leverick order for the table. The food—not fish, but a chicken en casserole—arrived promptly, and I reminded Miss Leverick that there were stories about Nauleverer.

  “Of course,” she said. “There was one I remember, about how you must never go to sleep in the Forest of Nauleverer. That if you lie down for too long, the roots of the trees will reach up and pull you under the earth. Old Mrs. Worthing used to say that all that was ever found of people who slept in Nauleverer were a few well-polished bones.”

  She went on easily, and we learned about the wolfmen said to live in the forest’s heart, the streams whose water was as beautiful as daylight and as lethal as nightshade (which was also said to grow in the forest in vast quantities), the will-o’-the-wisps who tempted unwary travelers off the path, and a dozen other such stories.

  “And what about the, um, doom that came to Corybant?” I said, remembering Lilion’s dry skepticism.

  “Well, that depends very much on whom you ask,” said Miss Leverick. “Some don’t believe there was ever a city in Nauleverer at all—our records before the reign of Lessander the Archivist are spotty at best, and so there’s no conclusive proof that Corybant is more than a cautionary tale.”

  “Cautioning about what?”

  “The dangers of machines,” Miss Leverick said, dropping her voice dramatically. “The story is—well, the most common story, for as I said, there are several. The common story is that the people of Corybant built a great machine which could move by itself.”

  “Like a train?” said Mildmay.

  “No,” said Miss Leverick. “Well, maybe. But not on rails. The Automaton of Corybant could walk. It was the guardian of the city and walked the streets at night, keeping the people safe.”

  “But,” I said.

  “Yes, exactly. But. The story is that the Automaton went mad.”

  “It went mad? How can a machine go mad?”

  “They send people mad,” Mildmay said. “Like Nemesis.”

  “Not the same thing. It went mad?”

  Miss Leverick spread her hands. “It is the doom that came to Corybant. Their machine that they had built to move and act as people do went mad as people do. It destroyed the city down to its foundation stones, all in one night. And it slew every person who crossed its path. Some say the knocken are the descendants of those who escaped.”

  “The knocken?” said Mildmay.

  “I imagine Olive knows more about the knocken than I do,” Miss Leverick said, and Miss Bridger blushed and murmured, but did screw up enough confidence to speak. As we finished our meal, she explained the knocken, gnarled, anthropophagous creatures who lived along the course of the Wildar River. She even related how a childhood friend swore he had once seen a knocken peering at him from a sewer grating in Kilrey. “And a man my father knows who works for the Wildar Water Utility, he says that sometimes when they find bodies in the sewers, there are bite marks on them that don’t look like rat teeth. But,” Miss Bridger added scrupulously, “he may have just been saying that to scare me.”

  Miss Leverick and I raised our eyebrows at each other, but held our tongues, letting Miss Bridger tell us how the knocken were supposed to come from the part of the forest that had been logged long ago. “I never heard that about Corybant. It’s the spirits of the trees seeking revenge,” she said.

  We were all silent for a moment, and then Miss Leverick consulted the watch she wore at her lapel and said, “We’d best get back to the train.”

  Corbie went ahead with Miss Leverick—pointedly not with Miss Bridger—while I waited for Mildmay to brace himself up. When I found a way to get letters to the Mirador, I would have to remember to write to Rinaldo and tell him how passionately grateful I was for the cane he had given my brother. “How are you doing?” I said, hoping it would be a more acceptable question than Are you all right?

  The look Mildmay gave me under his eyebrows told me he knew exactly what I was thinking, but he said amiably enough, “I’m okay. Think I slept better on the train than I did in bed.”

  He looked better, no longer tinged with gray, but I was careful to let him set the pace as we went back to our compartment. He looked up and down the crimson length of the train with keen interest, said, “Hey, Felix, what runs this thing? Is it magic?”

  “Steam power,” I said, remembering Miss Leverick’s comment, “but I have no idea how they generate it.”

  “You mean like a laundry boiler? What if it busts?”

  He looked genuinely worried; I said, “I doubt that will happen, but we can ask Miss Leverick. She seems to know a great deal about the railways.”

  “She’s a nice lady,” he said neutrally.

  “I’m sure we can find the money, if you want to attend her class.”

  “You’re sure these hocuses in Esmer won’t just throw you in jail or something?” He looked even more worri
ed; I hoped the idea hadn’t been preying on him all the way from Mélusine.

  “It’s not heresy here, remember?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Later,” I said, for I did not want to have this discussion in front of an audience.

  “Okay,” he said and let me steady him into the carriage.

  There was a forest near Arabel; I had gone there with Malkar to be taught the names and properties of the trees and plants. It had been nothing compared to the Forest of Nauleverer, like a single ragged militiaman beside the massed and shining armies of the Emperor.

  Within minutes of entering the forest, the train was wrapped about in darkness as thick and sharp as night, and a polite crimson and gold gentleman came to light the lamps in our compartment. Looking out the window, I could see only the shadowy and massive shapes of the trees, but I felt the mikkary with all the distinctness my eyes could not provide. “And it goes on like this?” I said involuntarily.

  “Six hours,” said Miss Leverick. “And pray that nothing goes wrong.”

  Chapter 9

  Felix

  But, of course, something did.

  It started, so far as any of us knew, with a juddering, screeching, howling halt, so abrupt that we had no chance to brace ourselves—and I was not sure it would have mattered even if we had. Corbie and Mildmay and I were thrown forward onto Miss Leverick and Miss Bridger, and there was nothing I could do about my elbow colliding with Miss Bridger’s ribs. There was a yelp from the direction of Miss Leverick, and then the lights went out, and all five of us were jerked off the bench and onto the floor. My back thumped against the opposite seat. Miss Bridger got inadvertent revenge for my elbow when her knee hit my groin an instant before the rest of her weight landed solidly on my solar plexus. I made a painful, keening whine between my teeth, lost under Miss Bridger’s scream, and then the train was finally still.

  I couldn’t find up, but I shoved and scrabbled sideways out from under Miss Bridger and called witchlight. I would have liked to have claimed cool-headed pragmatism—if anyone had asked—but it was as much animal panic as getting away from Miss Bridger’s weight had been. I discovered I had pressed myself up against the door of the compartment, somehow crawling over Corbie in the process; Corbie and Miss Bridger were a heap of dark cloth and straggling flaxen braids in the middle; and over by the window, Mildmay and Miss Leverick were as entangled as the last king of Cymellune in the coils of the Thalassant Wyrm. Someone was cursing in a steady and very inventive mutter; I realized after a moment’s blankness that it was Miss Leverick.