I stared, dumbfounded, trying to understand what this thing was. Was it a beast? No, it was clearly a machine, but it had obviously been modeled after the other creatures in the forest. That didn’t make any sense, though. Who would model a machine after a wild animal? For what purpose? And not only that: the creature could speak!
I stared at it, frowning as it turned away and lumbered down the ravine and across the hillside on all fours. It paused to turn back and wave at me, urging me onward. I heard the chatter of the other creatures in the woods behind us and I pushed to my feet and ran.
5
The creature guided me to the edge of the forest and down a steep, grassy slope. We climbed over a small fence at the edge of the lawn and I found myself standing in the middle of a wide street paved with smooth stones. Massive structures rose up in front of me, buildings of unimaginable proportion that pressed right up to the sky. I stood staring at them, awestricken, the strange beast at my side nearly forgotten.
The buildings were incredibly tall, not five stories or even ten, but dozens. The glass was perfectly smooth, reflecting my image back at me like a mirror. Most of the buildings were rectangular in shape, but they had very differently shaped roofs. Some were like pyramids at the top, others like large discs or bulbs. A few had plain flat rooftops like those of Avenston. The walls were constructed out of some sort of concrete or brick, but the materials were far superior to anything I had ever seen. From a distance, the buildings had looked almost white, but up close I saw shades of violet, blue and red. The colors were the soft pastel hues of sunset.
I had never imagined construction like this. I gazed into the darkened windows. Until that day I had only seen handmade glass, full of surface imperfections and bubbles. This hardly seemed like the same material. At that moment, I couldn’t be sure it was actually glass. I wanted to reach out and touch my reflection, but I didn’t dare. I had no idea how the strange substance might react.
“You are safe here,” the beast next to me said in a low rumble. I slowly turned my head to stare at him. After a moment, I found my manners.
“I… thank you,” I said awkwardly.
“No need. I am created to serve.”
I tilted my head, my gaze straying to the exposed metal and machinery on the creature’s head. “Are you a machine?”
He bowed his head. “I am the greatest of all machines. I was created in my master’s image.”
I stared at him, wondering, hardly knowing where to begin. “Who created you?”
“The Creator,” he said patiently.
I took that as meaning the creature had an inventor, an engineer who had designed and built him. “Can you take me to the Creator?”
He didn’t respond, but instead turned away and began walking. I hurried to follow after him. “I’m Breeze,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“The Creator named me Socrates. I am the greatest of all machines.”
“So you said.”
Socrates maintained a brisk pace as he led me through the city, but I had to stop him several times. First, when a machine the size of a steamwagon came rolling down the street, spraying a mist of water in its path. I stopped in my tracks and stared in disbelief as I saw the wide brush turning underneath, cleaning the cobblestones, leaving them sparkling clean and damp in its wake. A large steam engine on the rear of the machine seemed to power it, but I saw no sign of a human operator. The thing appeared to be driving itself.
Socrates realized I had stopped, and he came back for me. “What is that thing?” I said.
“Street sweeper,” he said, his tone implying that it should have been perfectly obvious.
“How does it drive?”
“The street sweeper is propelled by an eight cylinder fifty-two gallon external combustion steam engine,” he said as if reciting the words out of a textbook.
“Yes, I understand… but who’s driving it?”
“The street sweeper is,” he said impatiently. He took off down the street and disappeared around the corner. I had to jog to catch up with him.
A few blocks later, we passed a toy store. My heart leapt as I heard the voices of children playing in the distance and I assumed that we had finally found some semblance of humanity. As we got closer, I realized that the children were in fact machines made of gleaming brass and copper. Half a dozen of them ran in and out of the toy store, chasing one another, playing with the shop’s collection of toys. They were human in appearance, but with exaggerated proportions. They had large bulbous heads and no hair. A few of them had smooth gleaming metal for skin, others had exposed gears and springs. Some of them had windup keys attached to their backs, while others simply had an opening to attach a key or some other device.
I slowed down to stare at them as we passed by. They seemed to take no note of us. I glanced into the store windows and saw that there were no humans in sight. Only toys, many of them strange and seemingly intelligent like the children and like my companion Socrates. I noted however, that the children didn’t have Socrates’ intelligence. Instead, they seemed programmed only to play games.
Despite my disappointment, I was enamored of the creatures and I desperately wanted to stop and examine them, to understand how these strange machinations worked. Socrates had no patience for that sort of thing. I had asked him to take me to the Creator, and he was determined to perform this task as quickly as possible. As he lumbered down the street ahead of me, I promised myself that I would come back to the store later, when I had more time.
We pressed deeper into the city, until at last we came to a large park in the footprint of several tall buildings. The lawn was perfectly manicured, surrounded on all sides by neatly clipped hedges and decorated with tastefully appointed flowerbeds and ivy-covered fountains. In the distance, I saw some sort of tall robotic creature shaped like a box with wheels trimming the hedges by driving over the top of them.
The place was thick with trees, mostly oaks and chestnuts and a few others I didn’t recognize. In the center of it all, Socrates guided me to a tall marble obelisk bearing a statue of a Tal’mar man with long hair. There was an inscription carved into a bronze plaque, but I couldn’t decipher the script. As we approached the monument, Socrates fell to one knee and bowed his head in quiet contemplation.
“This is the Creator?” I said, the disappointment clear in my voice.
Socrates nodded silently. I sighed. I had been searching the windows and doorways ever since we entered the city, desperately hoping for a sign of life. Now at last I had to accept that conclusion which at first had been obvious, had I not refused to accept it. There was no life here. No humans, no Tal’mar. Only the trees, the machines, and the strange creatures out in the woods. I was alone.
“Turn around slowly,” said a voice behind us.
I spun around. Half a dozen Tal’mar warriors appeared, melting out of the shadows under the trees. I recognized a few of them and I smiled to see them, though they didn’t seem happy to see me. Their bows were drawn, their faces dark and unreadable. The one who spoke was middle-aged with long, jet black hair streaked with violet. I glanced at him and then the others, noting that most of them weren’t wearing traditional Tal’mar clothes. The Tal’mar prefer close-fitting leathers and light fiber fabrics, and they always dress in natural colors that blend with their environment. Instead, they wore long robes, many of them brightly colored.
“I’m Breeze Tinkerman,” I said. “I’m unarmed.”
“Shackle her,” said the leader, “and take her to the prison.”
“Wait!” I said. “Don’t you remember me? Don’t you know who I am?”
“Of course I do,” he said, turning away. “I should kill you now and be done with it.”
I was speechless. Socrates scratched his rump and wandered off into the trees as the warriors pulled my arms behind my back and locked them in shackles. “Thanks a lot,” I called after him. He didn’t seem to notice.
The Tal’mar led me through the park and int
o one of the adjacent buildings. To my surprise, the doors opened as we approached. We entered a broad lobby with doors and passages sprouting out in every direction. The walls were covered in smooth plaster, and ceramic tiles lined the floors. To my immediate right was a large room with an entire wall made of glass. Inside, I saw a long hardwood table surrounded by velvet-upholstered chairs made of wrought iron and carved wood.
I noted that the brass sconces that lined the walls were not gas lamps or lanterns, but were electrical lights like the one Tinker had shown me before I left. The old merchant had told the truth. He had actually been to the city in the Wastes, and he’d returned with one of those lights as proof. If not for that light, I might never have come.
The guards pushed me forward, and another set of doors opened in front of us. We stepped into a small room that turned out to be an elevator. I had never seen such a thing before. I was baffled until one of the Tal’mar twisted a dial on the wall and pulled a lever, and we began to descend. My legs nearly went out from under me and the Tal’mar guards smiled at my country simplicity.
When the doors opened, they shoved me out. I found myself in a massive subterranean chamber. “Wait!” I said as the door slid shut. “I must see the queen!”
I heard the whirring sound of the elevator ascending back up the shaft. I was alone. Instantly, my senses closed in and a claustrophobic sense of isolation washed over me. I recognized the feeling. I had been a Tal’mar prisoner before. They have a way of turning off one’s senses, making it so that you can’t reach out with your mind. I suppose for a normal human it would be similar to losing the senses of touch and smell. The world around you remains unchanged, but the way you perceive it is altered.
I turned slowly, studying my environment, trying to fight the panic rising inside of me. I was in a massive basement. The floors, walls, and ceiling were made of the same smooth concrete as the building’s exterior. Pillars rose to support the heavy steel beams lining the roof. Here and there, every few yards, a dim light shown down. I could see them lined up as they stretched into the distance.
I forced myself to take slow, deliberate breaths. I knew that whatever spell the Tal’mar were using on me was temporary, but that knowledge did little to allay my fears. I opened and closed my fists, gripping my skirts, feeling a bit like I had just woken in a coffin to find myself buried alive. Don’t be distracted, I told myself. Find a way out!
I started by trying to pry the elevator door open, to see if I might climb the shaft. I was unable to make it move. The perfectly machined metal didn’t leave space for a fingernail between the door and the frame, much less something useful like a dagger (which I didn’t have anyway). Failing that, I decided to test the rest of my prison. I started by examining the walls. I walked the entire perimeter, searching for an opening or vent of some sort that I might fit through. I found nothing. I scanned the darkened corners and the shadowy spaces behind the pillars and beams, all to no avail.
What I did find at last was a ventilation shaft that opened up in the ceiling in the middle of the room. It was fifteen feet in the air, well out of reach, and located far enough from the adjacent beams that I’d never be able to jump that far even if was I lucky enough to climb up there. My situation was futile.
If nothing else, the two hours I spent going from end to end of that massive basement served to exhaust me. My body was still repairing the injury I had suffered in the crash, and I was hungry and spent. My injuries and the cold had taken a toll on me. I curled up on the floor next to the elevator and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
I dreamed of my daughter. I saw her playing in a bright sunny meadow, smiling, waving. I watched as she ran through the tall grass, turning in circles, spinning until she fell dizzily to the soft, mossy ground. I smiled and she laughed. Her voice was like music drifting on the wind, sweet as honey to my ears. She pushed awkwardly to her feet and began spinning again, and a warm sense of pride rushed through me. She was so beautiful, so perfect. She was the greatest thing I had ever accomplished.
I noticed something in the woods behind the meadow, a shadow looming just beyond the tree line. I called out to River, warning her to get away, but she was caught up in her laughter and she couldn’t hear me. The shadow crept closer, suddenly forming into a Vangar warrior with a broad-headed fighting axe and a collection of scalps dangling from his belt. A wicked smile turned up the corners of his mouth.
“River!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Run! Get away!”
I ran towards her, but the softy muddy earth clung to my boots making it nearly impossible to move. I cried out, thrashing as my legs sank into the mud, terror washing over me, gripping at my chest. The Vangar strode forward, grinning like a devil, fresh blood splatters painting his face.
“Run!” I screamed vainly, tears flooding my eyes as I watched River dance right into his waiting arms, and he raised the axe…
6
I woke on the cold bare floor and heard the sound of the elevator descending into the basement. I pushed up into a sitting position, waiting, staring at that heavy steel door. I had no idea what to expect. The last time we’d parted ways, my grandmother had made it clear to me that her loyalties lay with her subjects rather than her own kin. She had turned her back on me as easily as she would a complete stranger. She had also made it clear that some of those subjects might try to kill me, and that she would do nothing to stop it. Perhaps that was about to happen.
At last, the doors parted, and my jaw dropped open. “Tam?” I said in disbelief. He gave me a half-smile as he stepped out of the elevator. He held out his hand, offering to help me to my feet.
Tam was the sullen warrior who had fallen in love with me before I married Robie. For a brief time, it seemed the two of them might kill each other in their efforts to win my affection. Eventually, I had chosen Robie and sent Tam back to his people. It wasn’t a pleasant parting. I didn’t know what to think when I saw him there, staring down at me. For some reason it hadn’t even occurred to me until that moment that he might be among the other Tal’mar.
I felt like I should say something; like I should tell him that I was sorry or that I had made a mistake, but those things weren’t true. I had made my decision. It was Robie I had loved. Sending Tam away had been the best thing for both of us.
I accepted his hand and he pulled me to my feet. Socrates lumbered out of the elevator behind him. “I’m sorry for what they have done to you,” Tam said in a quiet voice. “It was wrong. Socrates told me you were here, and I came as soon as I could. The others would have kept this a secret until they decided what to do with you. They may not have told me even then.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” I said. “What are the Tal’mar doing here?”
“The same as you. We followed the legends. We passed through the Borderlands and made our way across the Wastes. Eventually, we found this place and knew the legends were true.”
“Legends,” I muttered. “The Tal’mar’s ancestors truly came out of the Wastelands, then.”
“Indeed. Not just the Tal’mar, though.”
I stared at him frowning. “What do you mean?”
“I will explain it all later. For now, we must focus on keeping you alive.”
“They plan to kill me, then?”
“Some do. When last we met, I warned you that they would.”
“Will you help me escape?”
He took a deep breath. “Breeze, I will help you but you must make a promise: you must swear to me that you’ll never try to leave the city.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t be your captive here.”
“You don’t understand. I can keep you alive. I can protect you, but I won’t go into the Wastes with you. If you try to leave, the others will know. Make no mistake, they will follow you into the wastes and kill you.”
“Why?” I said. “Why won’t they just let me go? I have a daughter, Tam! I must go back to her.”
He s
ighed, drawing his gaze to the ceiling. “Breeze, the Tal’mar have claimed this city as their own. They won’t endanger it by letting outsiders know about it. We are forbidden to leave the city, ever. None of us can ever leave, not even me.”
Looking into Tam’s face, I could see the truth of his words. And knowing my grandmother as I did, I had no reason to doubt what he said. The Tal’mar had always been isolationists. When the Vangars attacked, the Tal’mar chose to run into the Wastelands looking for refuge rather than fight with the rest of us. Now that they had found that refuge, they were going to protect it at any cost.
“Come,” Tam said, stepping into the elevator. “We will discuss these matters later.”
Socrates and I stepped in after him, and Tam activated the elevator. On the way up, he turned to me and in a serious voice said, “Remember this well, Breeze Tinkerman: I will protect you to the death. Socrates will as well. Other than the two of us, you must trust no one. There are nearly three hundred Tal’mar in this city, and any one of them would betray you on a whim. The goodness is gone from my people. When the Vangars attacked, they killed the best of us.”
I listened quietly, nodding, thinking about all that he had told me. His oath of loyalty surprised me. After all that had happened between us, I had expected Tam to hate me. I stared into his eyes and the darkness I saw there brought me pain. What had become of the haughty young warrior who had stolen kisses from me right in the midst of battle? This was not the Tam I knew. This man seemed hollow. I couldn’t help but feel that in some way, it was my fault. I turned away from him, not wanting to face my own feelings. I didn’t know what to say.
When the elevator doors opened, I saw that the glass room in the lobby was now brightly lit and filled with people. My grandmother and a dozen others sat around the table, and at least as many more stood hovering around them. They were excited, arguing. I could tell even without hearing their words that they were deciding my fate. I glanced at Tam, wondering how we were going to sneak past them.
Blood and Steam (The Tinkerer's Daughter) Page 18