Foreign Devils

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Once the hold was loaded and the stevedores skulked back to the shady confines of the nearest saloon and the slaves returned to the hold of the ship, Captain Maskelyne bellowed once more and one of her burly freemen attendants withdrew a snare drum and two sticks and began a rolling beat. From somewhere inside the hold there was a chanting, lè a vini nan ranje ranje ti gason, over and over again in a rhythmic churning and then deep inside the ship a chorus of rich masculine voices answered not in Craulish but in common speech, roll boys roll, and the paddle-wheels began to turn slowly and build speed. Maskelyne gave a bright, echoing yawp as her freemen lascar threw off the hawsers and the Quiberon moved into the waters of the Big Rill and began churning upstream.

  ‘We are away! We are away, braws!’ she called and yawped again.

  That we were.

  That evening, with New Damnation miles downriver, Maskelyn had her off-team of slaves come up-deck for air. Some were dusky skinned, some fair, but all wore torcs and rippled with muscles. They were lean, but it took a lot of chow and a lot of tugging oars and lifting cargo to sculpt physiques like that. They found seats on gunwales and some joined us on the flat, wooden expanse of the roof while other slaves moved among them with jugs of water or stronger drink and others passed out hardtack or dry corncakes or dried aurouch. They lolled about, lying down, sitting cross-legged, speaking in soft voices to each other.

  ‘Fascinating,’ the woman in the brown tweed suit said to her companion in a slightly accented voice that I could not place. ‘I don’t understand why they don’t just jump in the river and swim for it.’

  ‘Winfried, I can think of two reasons, off-hand,’ her companion said, removing a small tin snuffbox from his jacket and pinching himself a measure. ‘First, they’re all wearing collars.’ He brought his index finger and thumb to his nose and huffed the dark powder deep into his nasal passages. ‘Second, where would they go? We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

  Some of the slaves watched us from where they took their rest, murmuring to each other. Maskelyne climbed onto the roof, clutching a bladder skin. She approached one of the older slaves, a bald, dark-skinned man with a rangy physique and wooden plates in his earlobes – an Aegyptian possibly, or Numidian – and presented him with the bladder. He smiled at her and nodded in a queer ceremonial fashion and then took the bladder and drank from it. He handed it back to her and she drank, nodding her head. He took it once more, drank deeply and then spat the liquid into a fine spray in the four directions. Finally, he passed the bladder to the other slaves who then drank as well.

  Fisk, who had been silent for a long while, said so that Winfried and her companion could hear, ‘They don’t run because they know, someday, they’ll be free.’

  ‘Yes, we are aware of the Lex Parens Parialis, even in Malfena Protectorate. However, that hardly seems a reason to stay enslaved, thralls to a simple riverboat queen.’

  Fisk shrugged and turned to look at the odd pair. ‘We’re all slaves to something, or someone. Sometimes to masters we don’t even know.’ He pointed to the slaves with his chin. ‘At least they know who they serve.’

  The man stood from his chair and approached us, extending his hand toward Fisk.

  ‘Well met, good sir,’ he said. ‘I am Wasler Lomax and this is—’ He gestured toward his companion. ‘My sisterwife, Winfried.’

  Fisk nodded his head in acknowledgement and slowly clasped the man’s forearm and then the woman with the manly name.

  ‘My name’s Shoestring,’ I said, brusquely grasping their forearms in turn. ‘I mean, Dveng Illys.’

  ‘Ah, you are dvergar!’ Wasler said, pleasure and excitement spreading across his face. ‘While I’ve seen many of your kind in … shall we say … functional capacities, I’ve never yet had the opportunity to converse!’

  ‘I would continue speaking on the subject that was broached regarding slavery,’ Winfried said. ‘It seems you approve of this custom of owning human beings,’ she said to Fisk.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Fisk said, slowly, as if thinking over what he was to say next. ‘I don’t approve of it, nor the bitter cold. Nor the bloodthirsty vaettir. I concern myself mainly with what is and what I can affect.’

  ‘So,’ she said, eyes brightening, ‘You see yourself as powerless to affect loathsome customs?’

  Fisk stilled. His eyes narrowed and he looked at her closely. ‘I choose to fight where I may yield the best results. There are some that say the Malfena tradition of incest should be abolished.’

  The Malfena Protectorate is a small island nation off the coast of Tueton. I know of it only through camp talk about their sexual practices. Because of the limited resources on the island, only certain members of each family, chosen by lottery, are allowed to marry and breed. The others are made sterile. And so, over the millennium, the taboo of incest has faded there for the sterile ones, and unions between siblings and cousins are, if not commonplace, then accepted. And Rume, with its love for all things other, especially loved that which seemed forbidden and hinted at perversion.

  ‘Ah, that old logical fallacy. Should a sisterwife or brothermate get in some sort of lively discussion, out come the cries of incest! It is, in essence, admitting a weakness of argument.’

  Wasler coughed into his hand and said, ‘Please pardon Winfried. We’ve had a long journey with only each other to engage in conversation.’ He had a precise accent, reminiscent of the Tuetonic speech yet not having all the hard edges and ugliness of that language. Winfried turned to him, delivering a withering stare. He continued: ‘We are here on a grant from the Malfena governor to document the indigenous life of the Imperial Protectorate and the Occidentalis Territories.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re journalists!’ I said, understanding. ‘What paper do you write for?’

  Wasler bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘Journalists, of a sort. Our endeavours are funded by a private grant and the results will be our patron’s to do with as he pleases. I hope he chooses to publish, in some form.’ He looked worried for a moment and then waved the thought away. ‘But yes. We are journalists in that we record. We are infernographists.’

  ‘Infernogra—’ I began.

  ‘The capturing of portraits through daemonwork engineering. It is, in essence, an anthropological exercise.’

  ‘How does that work? The capturing of portraits?’

  Wasler smiled, showing brilliantly white teeth. Apparently, in addition to having no problem with inter-familial sex, Malfenese people have exceptional dental hygiene. ‘We were hoping to be able to show you the process, Mr Ilys, if you agree to it, since you’d be the first native Occidentalian recorded.’ He was like a pup, quivering with excitement. If the man had a tail, its wagging would have thrown him off-balance.

  ‘Only half dvergar, myself,’ I said. ‘My pap was a Ruman soldier.’

  If possible, the man’s excitement grew. ‘Wonderful! Even better. We’ll take your name, age, a short biography.’

  Thinking of the Quotidian, I said, ‘And have a daemon commit my likeness to paper?’

  ‘That’s the idea!’

  I looked at Fisk, who shrugged in response. I wear Hellfire now. My former reticence to involve myself or use the infernal machines all around me no longer had any grounds to stand on. Ia is not some benevolent God but some sort of jumped-up yet meaningless daemon and if the Pater Dis was there to judge the sully I’d done my soul in life, he didn’t take into account Hellfire, however it made me feel. Yet it still didn’t feel right to me, this reliance upon the dynamos of devils.

  However, I was curious to see how this process differed from the Quotidian.

  ‘How much blood?’

  ‘Ah, so you have experience with infernography?’

  ‘A tad,’ I said, holding up my hand and exposing the cut still healing there.

  ‘Not too much. A cupful, possibly,’ he said. ‘But we’ll replenish your sanguine humours with strong drink and companionship!’ Wasler said, beaming. A nice fellow, this Wasler. His
sisterwife Winfried, while pleasant enough, was not nearly as ebullient. ‘Please sit.’

  I sat cross-legged on the far side of their small chest while Fisk sat and then leaned back on his hands, his booted feet crossed and stretched out in front of him, watching now as Maskelyne rousted the slaves and made ready for the night’s mooring. Other boats – daemon-driven, equipped with daemonlights – might travel upriver at night, but not this one. A slow boat is faster than none at all and the horses needed rest after crossing the Hardscrabble back from Dvergar Spur.

  After a few barked commands at the slaves, a group disappeared in the hold and then re-emerged, grunting and straining, carrying two large canvas-wrapped objects. They brought them onto the hold’s roof, setting them down on the rough wood, and unfurled them, revealing wooden struts, ropes, and more canvas. Tents. Speaking to each other softly, the last bits of sunlight failing, they set up the tents on the barge’s roof and returned with folding cots while the freemen hung oil lanterns along the perimeter of the boat.

  Maskelyne approached, carrying two lanterns. She handed one to me and then placed one near Wasler and Winfried. ‘Braws, I hope this will make you comfortable. I’d offer statesrooms if I had them but I don’t.’

  ‘This is just fine, ma’am,’ I said, opening the tent flap. ‘Better board than we’d have on the trail.’

  ‘Figured as much,’ she said, nodding her head. I got the feeling it wasn’t us she was addressing, though. Fisk and I are pretty rough and tumble.

  Winfried stood and moved to the lantern, picked it up, and entered the tent. With the lantern inside of it, the light-dun fabric yellowed and brightened, becoming a squat, faintly glowing obelisk in the darkness. She returned shortly without the lantern.

  ‘It will do,’ Winfried said simply.

  ‘It’s all part of the experience!’ Wasler exclaimed in his clipped, precise accent. He glanced at Winfried as if checking a clock or barometer. ‘This is the Hardscrabble Territories!’

  ‘It is that, my canvelet,’ Maskelyne said, not bothering to explain the unfamiliar phrase. She turned to Fisk and me. ‘Moment or two, one of my boys will be cooking some fish and hoecakes near the paddlewheel, braw.’

  Fisk nodded. My stomach rumbled. It had been a while since my last meal.

  ‘There’ll be guards set, cherkme, but if you hear some sort of alarum – bells, a’whooping and a’hollering – that Hellfire will be needed.’

  ‘Understood,’ Fisk said and I echoed that sentiment.

  Maskelyne, seemingly satisfied, gave a little half-bow and departed.

  ‘She seems especially worried with the guards,’ Winfried said.

  ‘Nope,’ Fisk replied, slowly standing up and stretching out the kinks in his long frame. ‘Like your brother, er, husband …’ He paused, putting both his hands at the small of his back and bending backwards. ‘Like he said, this is the Hardscrabble Territories. Always the chance of stretchers.’

  ‘Are they really as terrifying as the papers say?’ Wasler asked, like a child hearing of the great wyrms for the first time.

  Fisk looked at me. ‘Shoe? I’m gonna go get cozy in the tent.’

  I nodded. If there’s anything Fisk didn’t want hear it was tales spun to greenhorns about vaettir.

  When he was gone, I said, ‘You mentioned something about strong drink?’ Wasler laughed and after a moment of digging in a satchel, handed me a flask.

  ‘Well,’ I said, taking a sip of some sort of burning liquid. Insects – mosquitos, moths, mayflies – swarmed the lanterns. The ship’s cats prowled about, looking for rats and other vermin. Even here, moored on the eastern shore of the Big Rill, the sound of coyotes yipping and screeching reached our ears. Wasler and Winfried looked at me with faces open and eager for tales of the shoal plains. These two could use a little local lore. Or colour. ‘Let me tell you about them stretchers.’

  Later that night, after I’d eaten some dinner and fielded many questions and listened to statements of disbelief from the two Malfenians, I returned to our tent. Maskelyne’s watchful freemen had armed themselves with gigs, then lowered the lanterns close to the still surface of the river and waited, still as statues, as fat, smooth-bodied lickerfish rose to the surface to examine the lights. No exclamations as the gigs lanced out, hooking the thick, muscular fish with such force and surety that many only struggled weakly as the men hauled them aboard. Others, when the gig went slightly awry – enough to hook but not to stun – erupted in furious thrashing and splashing while the other freemen scrambled over to assist in the harvesting.

  I entered the tent in the dark, my dvergar sight was keen even under a starless sky and this one was brilliant and sprayed with wavering pinpricks of light.

  Fisk sat on his cot, holding the Quotidian in his hands, turning it over and over. He did not acknowledge me when I entered, nor did he say anything as I piled onto my bunk and closed my eyes.

  I don’t know how long he sat there, pondering the infernal thing.

  In the morning there was lamb stew; one of the sheep had expired in the night and before we woke, Maskelyne’s burly freemen had flayed and filleted the creature. The smell of the meat, mixed with the scents of coffee and chicory, perked up everyone – even the Lomaxes, who looked as if they had not slept well.

  The pacemaker began drumming, the wind picked up, and the Quiberon moved upstream, against the current.

  Fisk, unused to waiting or the wasting of time, busied himself in our tent in the maintenance of gear and guns, checking the integrity of wards, oiling the action on his carbine and disassembling his pistols and ammunition on a chamois cloth and inspecting all the warding very closely.

  The Lomaxes beckoned me to join them at their tea. For folks in a rough foreign country, far away from their own home and carrying limited supplies, they were quite nicely accoutred both on their persons – dressed neatly in sombre woollen suits, tailored in similar style that highlighted neither Wasler’s masculine traits nor Winifred’s feminine ones – and their gear, which was well maintained and quite clever. Light-weight folding chairs and tables, a chest that doubled as another table with interesting access points on the side and back for when the top was in use, folding umbrellas and stands that they’d arranged outside their tent, and a miniature portable stove which really captured my attention.

  As I joined them, Winfried pulled a teapot off the tiny stove and banked the flames. ‘Would you care for some tea, Mr Ilys?’ she asked, and gestured for me to sit, placed a curious metal device in a cup, and poured near-boiling water over it.

  I wasn’t much of a tea drinker, honestly. Coffee, whiskey, water and some cacique in a pinch when my spirits were low, and that’s about it. But I didn’t want to offend so I took her up on the offer.

  ‘That is clever,’ I said indicating the small stove, holding my tea a tad nervously. The steaming liquid was in a small, delicate little porcelain cup and hard to keep level on the ever-shifting deck of a boat, even one plying the relatively calm waters of a river. I sipped the tea – it wasn’t too bad, really – and chucked my head at the device. ‘There’s no daemon in that, is there?’

  Winfried laughed. ‘No, Mr Ilys, there’s no infernal presence here. Just an incredibly strong alcohol, under pressure. One of the Malfena college of engineers is a mountaineer as well.’

  I was puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, slowly, in a slightly school-marmish voice. ‘On any mountaineering expedition, everything – every bit of gear – must be multifunctional.’ She indicated the stove with her hand. ‘This is a stove, but it is also a heater in cold weather. The alcohol inside it is fuel for the device, but also a cleansing agent and, while horrible to the taste, quite intoxicating.’ She smiled, showing teeth nearly as white and gleaming as Wasler’s. ‘Daemons are cheap, yes, but in many ways they are cumbersome and not very versatile.’

  ‘Cheap? I’ve only had a few dealings with engineers and the word “cheap” never entered my mind.’
>
  She nodded. ‘Well, they are cheap if you consider the time a summoned daemon can last. Barring any unforeseen consequences, a daemon in, say, a steamship or mechanized baggage train can remain bound for hundreds of years. Daemonlight fixtures will last millennia – we think, at least. So, if you amortized the initial cost of the engineer’s work over the life of the infernal object …’

  I could see what she was getting at. ‘Ammunition is another matter.’

  ‘This is true. Hellfire pistols, with their Imp rounds, are a different proposition all together.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t believe on a reliance on any single technology. So, little things – like this stove – are important.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having one of those stoves myself. How pricey are they?’

  ‘I can send a letter at the next post we encounter. It might be a few months before Persa receives it and then months more before he can answer. Where shall I have him send his response?’

  ‘To the Postmaster General in New Damnation. He will hold it for me there.’

  From one of the pockets in her jacket, she withdrew a charcoal pencil and small bound notebook and took that down. When she was finished, she smiled again.

  Wasler, who had remained silent all this time, clapped his hands lightly, and said, ‘Are you ready for your portrait, Mr Ilys?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ I said.

  Wasler made a great fuss about how he wanted me to sit and the comportment of my body for the portrait while Winfried busied herself setting up the infernographical device that would record my image. It wasn’t very large, the image-making machine – only slightly larger than the Quotidian – but the wooden contraption they had to mount it on was quite big. Like most of the Lomaxes’ gear it was a collapsible folding wooden artifice, which when fully deployed came to about eye level on a man and had a horizontally-aligned board suspended behind it.