The Fire Cage

by Scott Hungerford

  “I can’t do it,” Davin told her. “I can’t do what you want me to do.”

  “I don’t need this mongrel,” Charette said to Davin, as she gestured to Verona. “While I will have Rajon’s soul with me for all eternity now, in revenge for everything he did to foil me, to steal away Mercuri’s legacy from your weak-minded father before I could claim it rightfully as my own, I have no need for the girl. If you want to save her, then give me a fire cage of worth and you both may go free.”

  “You’re crazy,” Davin yelled.

  “I know,” Charette said, with a little lilt to her voice. “But now I’m feeling murderous, and that’s the best kind of crazy there is.” She pulled the first lever, and the candyglass above the young woman’s chair began to alight with power, even as Verona whimpered beneath its wrath. “We shall see if you are made of the same stuff as your father was.”

  As the turbines began to whine again, Davin could feel the tears start to stream down his face. Anger gripped his heart, an anger he had never felt before, even as he watched Verona writhe and struggle to free herself from the clutches of the Electric Death. Feeling the current start to rise in the room, and the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle up, Davin concentrated on the heart, feeling its smooth, sculpted exterior with his fingertips, while trying to imagine what lay inside of its nautilus chambers.

  Charette threw the next switch, forcing Verona into a terrible cry of pain. Thrashing back and forth against her bonds, Davin was horrified to watch the girl’s hair start to stand on end, with blue sparks arcing through the brunette, airy strands.

  “No,” Davin said quietly to himself, as he suddenly felt the dam break in his heart. With a surge, he felt liquid fire rush through his body, pouring down through his hands into the metal heart. This time, with no qualms and no doubts, his power ran free. Within the interior of the device, even as his veins felt like they were coursing with molten brass, Davin could feel the rush of his Ignis boiling around a central structure of porcelain and iron, filling the gaps between the valves with indescribable power and flame. Even as Verona’s back began to arch under the lash of the terrible energies, he raised the uncomfortably warm device between his hands, channeling everything he could into Charette’s creation, all for the young woman that he loved, and for the horror that he’d been unable to save her father in time.

  “Excellent,” Charette shouted, as she yanked down the switches on the machines, killing the flow of power running to Verona’s chair. Above, the turbines started to whine down, and the steady rush of water slowed in the pipes, signaling the end of the terrible experiment. “Excellent work, Davin! You’ve done it!”

  Davin looked down at the heart, looking for any sign of success, but could see no outward sign that the device was functioning. But the heart still felt warm to the touch. The fire cage was functioning and the Vermeni would have his chance to ride within a modern automaton. But Rajon was gone, his burnt body left behind, his own freedom exchanged for an eternity as a prisoner of Charette’s vengeful madness.

  “Let her go,” Davin said, weakly. “Please, let Verona go.” Charette made a little mocking noise, then came over and cooed over Davin a little bit, like he was a little pigeon. She brushed a loose strand of hair out of his eyes, almost gently, as would a mother to a son.

  “All in due time,” Charette said. “But I keep to my promises,” she said, even as she lifted the heavy heart from his hands. “If this fire cage works the way it should, and my father is pleased, you will both be free. If it does not…”

  “Then we do this again,” Davin said, glumly.

  “Exactly,” Charette replied, as she lifted the heart and inspected it, turning it over and over again in her hands as she valued the worth of his work. “But I suspect you’ve done your part for now, Davin. This feels just as strong as it should be.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “I put it in my father’s newest creation, and see if it will stand to the test.”

  “And what about Rajon?”

  Charette, stepping away from him, carefully placed the heart in her butler’s waiting hands, then gestured to Altius at the other end of the chamber. Going over to Rajon’s chair, she lay her ear down next to the man’s mouth and listened for a long moment, even as she wrinkled her nose at the stench of lightly burned flesh.

  “For the moment,” Charette announced, leaning back up again, “I suspect Rajon’s body still lives. He is stronger than I thought. Many other men have died from far less torment. I find his endurance… commendable.”

  Verona sagged in her chair, letting out a great sigh of relief. Looking over at Altius, Davin saw that that the old man was wheeling in a long candyglass box into the room, one that looked like a large, translucent coffin with a hinged lid top.

  “As result of this, I will put Rajon into my stasis chamber,” Charette said, “along with the rest of those sworn in my father’s service. As an added bonus, Davin, if you do not thwart me, I am in a position to return Verona’s father back to life.”

  “In exchange for more fire cages,” Davin stated, sensing her motive.

  “Exactly,” Charette said. “But I will let you think upon this, even as you recuperate in one of my holding cells.” Going around to the back of Davin’s chair, she lifted out a strange rubbery funnel-mask, with a bulbous hose leading from out from the mouthpiece to a bottle lashed behind the seat.

  “You’re a most gracious host,” Davin said nervously, eyeing the strange device in her hand.

  “Indeed,” she said, even as Altius started to unstrap Rajon’s body from the chair in preparation for moving him into the coffin. At the same time, Charette reached behind Davin, turned some kind of squeaking crank, then placed the mask over Davin’s face, flooding his nose with the bitter, terrible smell of burnt ether.

  “You’ll pay for this,” Davin told her through the muffling mask, as the room started to swim to black on the edges of his vision. “You’ll pay for everything you’ve done.”

  “I suppose I will,” Charette said, even Davin slumped forward in his chair, gassed to unconsciousness, limp as a sleeping kitten. “But not today.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Davin woke up gradually, trying to fight his way out of the fog of the clockwork lightning dreams clouding his mind. Lifting his head from the velvet pillow, at first he thought he was in some plush hotel room overlooking the Dob. With purple velvet curtains and cushions, a roaring fire in the fireplace, delicate lace cloths draped on hardwood tables, and the expensive-feeling cool down quilt beneath his fingertips, it reminded him greatly of a top-floor room in River that he and Yori had broken into on a lark when they were kids. But when he sensed someone else laying at his side, he suddenly he remembered where he was, and what had happened. Mercuri’s house. The underground laboratory. Altius in the tunnel. Then Charette’s madness, Rajon, Verona and the Electric Death.

  Sitting up groggily, his mouth tasting like his mother’s washing water, Davin looked around at his posh, stone, underground windowless prison, complete with sitting chairs, tea cozies, and plush loomed rugs with geometric butterfly patterns sewn along the edges. As he sighed out loud at the depth of his predicament, Verona rolled over next to him, her long soft, staticky hair strewn wildly across the pillows. But before he could say anything, she spoke.

  “You’re an idiot.” Davin rolled his eyes. “But thanks for trying to get me out.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said carefully, knowing that he was already walking on thin ice. “How did they get you?”

  “The Warden’s wife? Mrs. Aston? She was Charette in disguise. I walked right into her trap.”

  “It probably couldn’t be helped.” Davin looked down at the quilt, fingering one of the little nubbins with his fingertips. “We found the shipment of screws. They were slated for Stonegate Prison. For Charette’s husband, the Warden and whatever evil is they have planned.”

  “Ah,” Verona said, unimpressed.

 
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Davin said after a moment, barely able to get the words out beyond the guilt that threatened to drown him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t... save him.”

  “I don’t think you could have,” Verona replied. “I think that spirit transference is kind of the point of Charette’s crazy machine, and I think that hurting Rajon, and making you feel guilty for it, was kind of the point of that whole gruesome display. It was all a torture show for your benefit. So you’d do as she asked.”

  Davin turned to swing his legs off the bed, but a wave of dizziness struck him, some kind of leftover effect from the knockout gas. While he didn’t quite want to get up yet, what he really wanted was to think for a moment, in a manner where Verona couldn’t read his face. Where she couldn’t read his own self-doubt about what he’d done to Rajon, and about the fact that after everything Rajon had done for him the last couple of days, he still didn’t trust him.

  “I shouldn’t have made the cage for her,” he said.

  “Probably not,” Verona replied, groaning as she sat up behind him, smoothing her rumpled blue skirts out with both hands. “But before you got there, I watched Charette take two other men, two prisoners from Stonegate and do the exact same thing to them, right down to moving their spirits into fire cages. The chairs, the lightning, the spirit-work, and the candyglass coffins afterward. The men wanted her to do it. They trusted their bodies would be safe, and that Charette had plans for them, big plans, that they were really excited about.”

  “They’re building an army,” Davin said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But if she has so many fire cages already, why did she need the big one for her father? Is she telling the truth? What is she hiding? That’s what worries me, even more than an idea of an army of felon-haunted automatons marching on the capitol.” Davin looked around the room searching for any means of escape. But only a single door stood between two framed portraits, with weasel-faced Vermeni on the left, and thoughtful, tousle-haired Mercuri on the right. The door was iron made, and iron-bolted. Two slide-slots were cut into the door, one at eye level and a larger one at floor level, so a watcher could pass in food without putting themselves at risk.

  Reaching over, Davin took a box of infernals from the table next to him, struck one on the box, then lit all five of the beeswax candles ensconced within the artistic, peaked brass candelabra mounted on the bedside table.

  “I’m sorry that she hurt you,” he said at last.

  “She hurt you more.” Verona reached over and gripped both of his shoulders and gave them a squeeze. Reaching up with one hand, he interlaced his fingers with her own without looking her in the eye.

  “So what are we going to do about it?” he said, trying to sound brave.

  “What is it you really want to ask me?” she said, quietly.

  He thought for a few seconds, trying to figure out what to say. “Why me?” he finally blurted out, embarrassed.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did Rajon pick me? Why did he back all of those other people, and help them regain their family titles?”

  “Initially, vain self-interest.” Verona said. “He wants that mansion estate, the one he told you about, more than anything else in his life. His own father lost the family lands to a vengeful bureaucrat with imperial connections when he was just a boy. His father died in debtor’s prison for a hundred noble sum, and Rajon swore that he would never be part of such an unjust system. That he would always fight from the edges with all of his might. But with you...”

  “With me?

  “He loves Mercuri’s inventions. He loves the ratchet and clank and the way all of the hard pieces work together in such an amazing dance. When Rajon met your father, quite by chance, Vincent was already deep in Charette’s clutches, and she was doing everything she could to take his estate at the gambling table, by loans, by lawsuits, and even with offers of marriage in order to pull him apart from both ends. Rajon, infuriated with her, started taking everything he could from your father, bit by bit, so Charette couldn’t monopolize the legacy Mercuri had worked so hard to build. In the end, Rajon beat her out — but your father died before Rajon could win the last of it and hand it all back to him, free and clear.”

  “But Charette killed Vincent first,” Davin concluded. “Killed his body, anyway, and trapped his essence in a fire cage.”

  “Yes. I don’t think Rajon knew until tonight that Charette had stolen your father’s spirit, as he refuses to acknowledge anything regarding the occult. Though I suspect by now he’s just about ready to recant.” She thought for a moment, knitting together what she knew of the whole story. “But your father, when he died, he was penniless. After he was gone, the Empire’s brokers sold off his estate house to the highest bidder to pay off his debts, mostly owed to Rajon. The only loose ends were what Guiseppe had hidden away in the folds of the church, and you and your mother.”

  “So that’s why Vincent left us when I was a boy,” Davin said, putting it all together. “Not because of Rajon. But because of Charette, to keep the two of us safe.”

  “Yes, I suppose. But when you made legal inquiries about your title, they made moves to eliminate any heirs. Only later, when she realized you had power, that you had the gift that had skipped over your father to your generation, only then did you become a commodity worth preserving.”

  Davin, checking the pockets of his father’s coat, already knew the regular pockets were empty. But he could feel the blueprints safe inside the lining, preserved against Charette’s hasty search.

  “So you were right about the alchemy,” Davin said. “About the power.”

  “And you were right about Charette and her involvement in your father’s death. But you’re wrong about Rajon. You can trust him. When he learned that your mother had died... it broke his heart. For ten years he’d been fighting Charette’s influence. He really thought that she was in the Baronies and that you and your mother were beyond her notice. But she’d been here all along, just under his nose and he missed it. He was shocked to find you at the Fates, sitting across the table from me, playing yourself into harm’s way. He had to draw you to him, and if you had won that pot, he knew it would have put you forever beyond his reach.”

  “But do you trust me?” Davin asked. “Still?”

  “You’re an idiot,” Verona said. “But, yes.”

  “Then let’s find a way to get your father back. Let’s find a way to avenge my mother and Yori, and Guiseppe, and everyone else that Charette and her crazed father has hurt on their path to power. Let’s find a way to get out of here.”

  The top slide in the door ratcheted open, banging hard enough to scare them both. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Altius said from beyond the portal.

  Verona, in response, got up off the bed and went storming towards the door with Davin closely following behind.

  “You can’t hold us like this,” Verona demanded. “It’s not legal.”

  “Who says?” Altius said cheekily, his breath reeking of wine and gum rot.

  “The Emperor’s laws.”

  “The Emperor will be dead by the end of tomorrow, and his laws with him.”

  Verona stared at him, with a dumbfounded look on her face.

  “What do you want with us?” Davin asked.

  “I do as my mistress pleases,” Altius said. “And she pleases for you to be here until she’s ready for you. Now, step away from the door if you want your lunch.”

  “To hell with your food!” Verona yelled, somewhat uncharacteristically.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Davin said, shocked at her sudden change in demeanor.

  “To hell with you, too!” she exclaimed, then neatly slapped Davin across the face, leaving a burning palm-print behind.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  “Ah, young love,” Altius cackled.

  “It’s your fault you’ve stuck us in here,” she hissed at Davin. Raising her hand, she tried to strike him again, this time nails fir
st. Grabbing her arms, trying to stop her mad assault, Davin was shocked when Verona bodily swung him into the wall by the door with more strength than he’d expected her to possess.

  “Play along,” she whispered, even as she drew in a great breath. Screaming, she launched herself backwards onto the bed, arms and legs flailing.

  Davin went after her, fists clenched. Taking advantage of the catfight, behind them Altius slid the top grate shut, then opened the bottom one and shoved through a metal tray laden with food and bottle of wine. By the time they heard the lower grate slide shut, and some kind of outer door beyond seal them in, Davin was straddling Verona on the bed, his right fist raised as if he was about to punch her square in the nose. But with Altius gone, he relaxed, and was suddenly aware of her tempting presence beneath him.

  “Now what?” he asked, a little out of breath.

  “Not what you’re thinking,” Verona said playfully, then shoved him off of the bed onto the floor. Getting up, she went over and picked up the tray of food from the floor and carried it back to one of the tables.

  “Stuffed lamb, peppered bloodchoke soup, and a vinegar salad.” She held up a single flimsy wooden spoon. “And a piece of stupid tinderwood to eat with.”

  “Not a knife or a weapon to be seen,” Davin said sadly. He picked up the bottle and inspected the label. It looked expensive, but he didn’t know enough about wine to be sure.

  “There’s lots of weapons in here,” Verona said, gesturing to the well-furnished room. “But brute force isn’t going to help us get out of here. We have to get that door open first. That means the fight we’re going to have to have over the next few hours is going to have to be convincing.”

  Davin goggled. “Fighting? For the next few hours?”

  “It’s how long we’re going to need,” she said, as she took up the bowl of reddish-colored vegetable soup and poured it into the privy pan she’d taken up from beneath the bed. “Hand me the wine.”

  “Not the wine,” Davin said sadly, eyeing the pan.