Foreign Devils

by John Hornor Jacobs

  And here we are, my love, two days at sea. The Malphas thrums and shivers. The stateroom I share with Carnelia is large – relatively – and well appointed; full of clever storage cabinets and thoughtful fastenings for the inconstancy of high swells. I can reach out my hand and feel the shudder of the great dynamos of daemonic fury, driving screws, pushing us through the water. And the speed! It’s hard to tell exactly how fast we travel for lack of markers, but Tenebrae and Juvenus tell me that we’re travelling far faster than a horse can gallop.

  The sea itself is vast and unforgiving. The shore is but a memory and the thought of stable land impossible. Seagulls screech and dip into our silvered wake. Lascars let out massive tin hooks with flashing metal spoons behind us, dragging in the swells, and yell when they hook some great leviathan and haul it in. We eat fish and drink fine claret and whiskey and Falernian wine, watered only slightly. The skies remain slate grey and the swells are like great valleys where the Malphas dashes down one watery mountainside and up the other to hang on the wave’s peak and then, like a child’s teeter-totter, tip over and race down the next valley. It took days for me to become used to the constant shifting of my weight. Our first passage to Novo Ruma was not this rough in my memory. But we travelled then by sail in a magnificent barquetine.

  Secundus, in his daily visits, tells me we were paced by a Medieran vessel of some sort for a while, but they fired one of the Hellfire cannons – under the watchful eye of Valerus and the Malphas’ engineer, a man by the name of Tricomalee – and the Medieran ship turned tail and ran. I had no awareness of this other than feeling the hollow boom that shuddered the bulkhead. I was holding Carnelia’s hair back as she vomited into a porcelain washing-bowl, sea-sick. She’s losing quite a bit of weight and I’m worried for her.

  Father is drunk. Secundus plots. And I hold my sister’s hair.

  Our son grows within me.

  It is enough.

  You are thrice loved. Once loved for your kiss so fair, twice loved for your son I bear, and thrice loved for the cut we share.

  Ever your loving wife –

  Livia

  TEN

  16 Kalends, Quintilius to Sextilius, 2638 ex

  Ruma Immortalis

  We were saddled and ready for the trail before the sun was up.

  ‘I’m going with you.’ The voice came from the stable door.

  She was dressed, her face pale and severe, and she held her personal bags in her hands.

  ‘What about the funeral—’

  ‘I’ve arranged for Wasler to be buried. I can pay my respects and mourn properly later. When our business is settled.’

  ‘Our business?’ I asked.

  She glanced at me. ‘The business of catching this man, Beleth. I will not be left behind.’

  Some folks spill their grief. Some folks tamp it away, deep down inside. Some folks are born without knowing how to even express the most common emotions. I don’t know where Winfried fell in this, but she had cried, I knew that. She wasn’t a person who felt the need to act out her grief publicly to validate it.

  Fisk nodded, chucked his head at Buquo. He wasn’t without sympathy, Fisk. Especially at the death of a mate. But he would not wait. ‘Shoe, help her harness her wagon.’

  We made good time for five days without much talk, camping in piney breaks and gulleys with no sign of stretchers, not that they leave much sign to begin with. We rode through the forested skirts of Brujateton, descended some, into the thickly wooded foothills to pick up game and follow the Big Rill, which flowed below us on the shoal plains, upstream. The river was narrow now, not quite in a canyon, but the banks were twenty feet at least above the surface of the river. We could hear the roar of the Terminus Falls miles before we reached them and began to climb upwards again.

  It took a day to rise above the falls, to take the trail there to Passasuego. The Terminus Falls dumped water from a great height in thunderous amounts, half of which seemed to sublime into the air as it fell, wreathing the moss-slick rock face leading to the escarpment above in water vapour and mist. A switchback trail that had been hewn into the living rock centuries before by my Dvergar brethren, before the Rumans had come, led the way. When I was a lad, it was said that there were hidden, in the White Mountains, a lost tribe of dvergar warriors, called the Illivatch Seva. Dvergar children loved stories of this heroic race, these Illivatch, taming the mountain wyrms and riding massive bears instead of horses and fighting with the vaettir, their mortal enemies. The Illivatch were masters of rock, and stone, and the metal sap of the earth, and could forge anything. Their weapons, according to storytellers, were wrought of a mythical metal called brillignatha, what we today know as steel, and the weapons had their own personalities and wilful minds, and often sang and argued with their wielders. Once, in a losing battle with vaettir, the legendary hero Dveng – from whom my mother took my name – raised his greathammer Vringbretha to do battle with the stretcher host, but the hammer told him not to smite the leaping vaettir, but the earth itself, from which, seemingly, vaettir and dvergar sprang. And so Dveng smote the earth. From that mighty blow rose the White – or Illivatch – Mountains.

  But no one has been able to find their smelts or dwellings. And so the Illivatch retreat into legend.

  Once on the escarpment, we camped and I spent the rest of daylight spearing the fat, brown speckled trout that teemed in the waters here, beyond the falls. That night, I fried them up nice with some onions and spuds. We bunked down, Fisk and I, by the fire, Winfried close-by beneath her jaunting-hearse.

  Later, after an hour or more of silence I heard a stirring and smelled tabac. Fisk, restless.

  Then Winifred’s voice, soft. ‘Might I join you?’ she asked.

  Nothing from Fisk, though I imagine he nodded. Fisk’s many things and generous with words isn’t one of them.

  ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fisk,’ she replied. There was a long time of silence then and I fell back asleep for a while, like a fish diving and then returning to a stream’s surface. When I came back up, I could hear the fire crackling again.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Fisk was saying. ‘Hurts now, like the world’s full of pain and loss. If you’re anything like I think you are, it won’t overcome you.’

  ‘You have lost someone—’ I could hear the grief in her voice, but I’d wager a silver pig that she was dry-eyed.

  ‘Wife. Daughter,’ he said, and fell silent once more.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m still sorry.’

  ‘My thanks.’

  ‘This man you seek?’

  ‘Name’s Beleth. A real piece of work.’

  ‘He is the man responsible for Wasler’s death, then?’

  Fisk was quiet for a long while. ‘Yes. Stuffed a daemon into the boy. Left him here to ambush us.’

  ‘A part of me wants to blame you,’ she said.

  ‘A part of me is to blame,’ he said. ‘And a part of the blame is yours. Beleth wants us dead, and you got in the way. But we never asked you to ride with us.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘But I will ride with you. Until we find this man.’

  ‘To kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. Her voice sounded puzzled then. ‘I want to see him. To try to understand how someone could do that …’

  ‘You look at him, all you’ll see is a sober little fella, looks like a book-keeper. You’ll gain no understanding there.’

  ‘I need to see him, then. Only then will I be able—’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Fisk said. ‘What’s knocking around inside of you is vengeance. You’ve been hurt. You’ve had something taken away from you. You want to even the scales,’ he said. The words were harsh, but his tone wasn’t. It was as if he was trying to get her to understand what was going on in the currents of her own heart.

  ‘Revenge, then.’

  ‘That I can’t give you. My orders are to return him to
Ruman custody,’ he said. He neglected to tell her about returning his head, if capture wasn’t possible. Fisk was a hard man, but maybe he was trying to spare the woman something.

  ‘I would look upon him.’

  ‘As would I. In chains.’

  A rustle then, and a whiff of tabac. Fisk stood, or Winfried. Hard to tell.

  Winfried’s voice came from further away. ‘I will retire, now. And—’ She paused as if wanting to say more. ‘Thank you, Mr Fisk.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. ‘If you try to get your revenge on him, before I can get him back into custody,’ Fisk said, voice flat now. Hard. ‘I’ll have to stop you.’

  She said nothing.

  In the morning, we moved on after chicory and coffee and by afternoon we reached the division point of the Big Rill and the White River. It was a churning, torrid affair where the two rivers split on either side of what we always called the Sundering Rock, in tremendous sprays of foam and lashing water, the White River racing east to descend in a dramatic series of waterfalls into the Great Chasm that passed near Broken Tooth and Breentown and flowed outward then to the Mammon and eventually to spill into the Gulf of Mageras by way of Covenant; and the Big Rill, flowing out from the escarpment to descend from the Terminus Falls down to the shoal plains to be swelled from the springs and creeks coming from the Whites and eventually make its way to the same Gulf by way of Harbour Town. From what I understand, this is one of the few places in the world where rivers do not obey the natural order of things: Water does not split, it comes together, like fire calls to fire. Yet here, the White River divides into two.

  It took almost two days to get beyond the division point because we rode the south side of the White River, away from the Great Western Road that ran from Passasuego all the way to Fort Brust. Like the arrival in Hot Springs, we were staying away from the more populated approaches. The land here was rough and no mythical Illivatch trails led the way – the only roads were on the north side of the river. At some points we led the horses through piney-woods and gambel thickets choked with bramblewrack. Other times we had to dismount and help push the jaunting-hearse up and over some obstruction – rocks, deadfall, narrow gulches – and only once did we require ropes and Bess’ assistance. At night, we spent more than the usual amount of time brushing out the burrs and checking the hooves of our mounts. Bess couldn’t have cared less.

  The next day we passed broke-dick derelict tenement camps in travertine quarries, long ago deserted when the Talavera Silverlode was struck and seamed. Passasuego, one of the oldest Medieran settlements in Occidentalia (in addition to Chiba, Harbour Town, and Encantata) grew fat and prosperous on travertine and silver, and with each moment, we drew nearer the town.

  Passasuego had always put on airs. Built with the pink travertine that had been mined nearby, the town had the soft, lush hues of a conch pulled from some southern sea, rotting in its luminous shell. Built by Medierans, and guarded by Medieran Castillejo cavalry until the last twenty years – when the Rumans had pushed them out and taken over silver mining rights and profits – Passasuego was the home of the sole remaining Medieran Embassy west of the Dvergar Mountains.

  I didn’t like the town. It was large enough, but small of spirit, a petty town, trying to be more than it was. Many of the citizens were of Medieran descent and proud of their blood – and outraged by the Ruman control of what they felt was theirs by right. There was an air of barely concealed contempt and possibly rebellion in the pastel streets. I think the only reason the Rumans allowed the Medieran Embassy (once the ‘governor’s’ house) to still exist was the fear of uprising. Uprising itself would be dealt with at the point of a sword, a spear, and the stink of Hellfire, but the silver mines would slow and possibly stop production. And Rumans would not countenance that.

  The town’s population was in support of the silver industry; the smelts and forges, the arrastras where the silver ore was crushed, and the slag haulers and tenders, the engineer college and workshops, the engineer’s munition factory, and the itinerant pistoleros and the Ruman cohort that guarded it all. Silver was precious. Silver was life. Silver was poison.

  This country is big, and for the most part, pristine. Passasuego sat like a canker on the prick of the west, pink and oozing infection.

  We came up over a rise and in view of Passasuego nine days after leaving Hot Springs. The walls shone roseate in the light, but the slag heaps in the fields on our side of the river stood tall and obsidian, some still smoking. We waited until evening and the light was beginning to fail.

  ‘No point in trying to disguise ourselves,’ I said. ‘Because I’m the sore thumb.’

  Fisk raised his eyebrow, looking at me.

  ‘I imagine the description goes something like this. “A hard-bit man, grey-weathered, and his dwarf”.’

  Fisk said nothing but nodded, slowly.

  ‘I’ll circle around and come in on the East Gate, alone. You remember the Icehouse Hotel?’

  ‘Yes. The surveying escort contract.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ I said and then took Winifred’s reins and looked up to where she sat perched on top of the jaunting-hearse. ‘You’ll need to ride Bess in,’ I said.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘You might not look remarkable,’ I said. ‘But your baggage does. And anyone watching will mark you, a woman, and the fancy wagon you drag along behind.’

  She blinked and then dismounted. We switched mounts, but not before I draped and tied off an old canvas tarp around the jaunting-hearse.

  ‘Best I can do on short notice, I figure. Gimme your hat, Miss Lomax,’ I said.

  She hesitantly handed the brown bowler over and I gave her mine. ‘I’ll want that back.’

  ‘This seems extraordinarily silly, Mr Illys.’

  Fisk said, ‘Folks look at hats more than you think. It’s a shape thing, if you understand. A profile.’

  She set her jaw but nodded her acceptance.

  They took the Drenellos Bridge over the White River – constructed of more pink travertine – and I waited until full dark and then followed.

  At night Passasuego smelled like barbecoa and exotic spices. Whatever Passasuego’s flaws, it had good travertine paved roads and excellent Medieran food and fresh water drawn by aqueduct down from the headwaters of the White. When I came through the East Gate near the sledge-rails, a legionnaire questioned me and I provided the man with my papers and he waved me through without even the intimation of a bribe, for which I was grateful. He must’ve been new.

  I stopped to buy a meat-filled torta from a street vendor on the Plaza de Rhiboza and as I stood there in the shadow of the statue of Capitan Alonz Rhiboza, the first Medieran who encountered the vaettir with any semblance of victory (he survived) the torta vendor, a dvergar half-breed like myself, said, ‘Brother, you have come a far piece, judging by the looks of you.’ He said this in the common tongue, heavily accented with Medieran. I could not understand why he didn’t use the dvergar tongue.

  ‘Yep. Long ways. All the way from Fort Verrier on the edge of the Big Empty.’ I lied easily. It’s a problem I have, but not one that keeps me awake at night.

  He shook his head. ‘We all do the Ruman work, eh?’

  ‘Seems so,’ I replied, and then took a large bite of the hot meat-filled torta.

  As I ate, the vendor seemed to gain courage or realize my mouth was currently indisposed. ‘People like you and me, we’ve had their boots on our backs all our lives, no? Would that I could do something about that.’ The way he said ‘their’ was a hint and a half he was getting to something. I figured the best way to draw him out was silence. And the torta was good. When I said nothing, he continued. ‘And some men intend to.’

  I swallowed, then said, ‘Intend to do something?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And who might that be? You?’

  He laughed, nervously. ‘Me? I am just a street vendor! But I will do my part. We all have a part to play,’ he said. Hi
s eyes narrowed. ‘Neruda will speak. At the Plaza del Monstruo he will speak! At sundown, two days hence!’ His expression became ecstatic, almost as if going into some numinous or old-goddriven madness or glossolalia.

  ‘The Plaza del Monstruo, is that right?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I don’t know if my errand here in Passasuego will be complete by then, but I will try to make it,’ said I.

  ‘You haven’t heard of Neruda? He is the greatest philosopher of this age! Not afraid to spit in the eye of the Ruman legions and the corrupt old governor Cornelius!’

  I nodded then, frowning. I didn’t care much for Cornelius myself, but it was surprising to hear his name on the tongue of this bilious torta vendor.

  I left him there, drawing the covered jaunting-hearse after me.

  Passasuego is divided into three loose districts. Because the town sits on a slope of the White Mountains, it obeys the rule that shit rolls downhill. In the higher neighbourhoods, or Rosa Distrito, you have the luxury markets, the counting houses, haberdashers and dressmakers, bathhouses and gymnasia, the Adolpho Theatre bracketed by two of the nicer hotels, the Pynchon and the Manteras, along with the homes of the wealthier tradesmen, slave mongers, and captains of industry – most of these buildings and domiciles in the Cantabrian style, full of airy arches, painted shuttered windows, with ochre-hued clay tiles on the roofs and pink stonework, the finest example of this being the Medieran Embassy.

  Go downhill a piece, and there you’ll find the Centro Distrito, where the working class lives, crowded with smaller homes done in Cantabrian style but on a smaller scale. The neighbourhoods teem with bodegas and parks and miniature plazas so that at any moment, walking the streets there, you might find yourself in a shaded, tree-covered space, cool and quiet, dedicated to some Ruman-hating Medieran nobleman or hero. The neighbourhood schools ring with bells and the peals of children’s laughter, the markets are full of brightly woven fabrics and fragrant meats and spices. Vigiles walk the streets warily, always ready for a well-aimed piece of horse-dung flung by a pilluelo. There is an artisan’s district, where the College of Engineers keep a great behemoth of a building near the south wall and sculptors work to create elegant shapes from the pink marble, and stonemasons cut the travertine blocks for building and export, placing the stone on the rail-sledges that run with the White River down from the heights to where the land levels some and merchants continue porting them on the Great West Road overland to the Mammon River.