Metal and Magic: The Steampunk Adventures of Hanover and Singh

by Chris Paton

  “Subedar Major Nazari is not available,” Tarek turned away from the parapet and whispered in the ear of the marksman standing to his right. He stepped back as the man took aim and fired. The musket ball made a crater in the road in front of Bryullov’s horse. Bryullov struggled with the reins, twisting in the saddle as he calmed the beast.

  “Damn it, man. Do you not see the enemy approaching?”

  “I see them, sir,” Tarek nodded. “And the more of them I see the less inclined I am to open the gates.”

  “You will when you understand that I have one of their spies with me. The one in control of the metal man that you have bellowing in your Shah’s court.” Bryullov pointed at Jamie. “He can change everything, but only if you let us in.”

  Najma pulled the reins of Jamie’s horse tight sending a splinter of pain through his thigh as the horses squashed his body between them.

  “I am sorry, Englishman,” Najma leaned across her mount and whispered to the back of Jamie’s head.

  “It is best not to speak to him, Najma,” Bryullov cast a glance over his shoulder at the approaching walkers. The vibrations from the massive feet and the clacking of heavy gears juddered along the road, up through the hooves of the horses and grated on the nerves of the Russian. “He will not live very long once we get inside the city.” Bryullov looked up as a new face appeared alongside Tarek on the walls above him. He smiled as Tarek gave a brief command and the massive desert oak gates of Adina Pur creaked upon opening. “That’s it, Najma. Lead the prisoner through the gates, I will follow.”

  Two ranks of marksmen, lightning jezails held in the crook of their arms, lined each side of the road inside the gates. Swordsmen with scimitars drawn blocked Bryullov’s party’s exit from the rear as Nazari and his personal bodyguard of four men received them. The gates closed with a long creak of stubborn timbers, punctuated with the crash and thud of the heavy crossbeams securing the gates from the inside. Jamie noted the position of the beams. They’ll never hold. Two of the Shah’s men pulled Jamie from the saddle. He winced as his feet hit the ground, stumbling over his feet as the men dragged him to a prison cart waiting to one side of the road.

  “This is the spy?” Nazari waited as his men disarmed Bryullov and removed Najma’s jezail from where it hung from her saddle. “He does not look like a spy.”

  “They rarely do,” Bryullov made a note of who received his pistols. “That’s what makes them so effective.”

  “I am sure,” Nazari agreed. “But we will let the Shah pass judgement on him,” he nodded to the men guarding Jamie, watching as they lifted him into the cart and locked the door. “Judgement will surely be due on you, as well, Captain Bryullov.” Nazari extended his hand. “It has been a long time since we last saw you.”

  “It has,” Bryullov shook Nazari’s hand. He frowned as the Subedar Major tightened his grip.

  “News reached us of Gushtia, of course,” Nazari released the Russian’s hand. “You will find that the Tsar’s name is no longer any guarantee of safety, regardless of how potent his threats have become.” Nazari stood to one side, gesturing for Bryullov to walk beside him. “You have interesting travelling companions,” Nazari looked at Najma as she fell in step behind them. “A Pashtoo princess and a British spy.”

  The prison cart creaked behind them as the procession made its way along the road toward the royal court. The sound of the emissary wailing distracted Jamie for a moment from the conversation before him though he understood little of what was said. Hands behind his back, he shuffled forward on his knees and pressed his ear against the wooden bars of the cart.

  “I stumbled across the spy in the mountains above the city, the princess is another matter.” Bryullov stopped Nazari with a hand upon his arm. “What of the defences? You have seen what is coming?”

  Nazari smiled and continued walking. “Captain,” he let the Russian catch up, “let me show you the Shah’s newest military additions. Mountain guns,” Nazari steered Bryullov to one side of the road as they turned the corner before the royal court. A row of six sturdy artillery pieces behind four horses apiece were being moved into riding formation. Nazari waved at the leader of the artillery and the horses pulled the guns past them. Following the artillery and the gunners in charge of them came a modest cavalry of fifty men and horse and one hundred infantry on foot

  “You mean to attack?” Bryullov stared open-mouthed.

  “Our gates are not strong enough to resist even one of their machines,” Nazari swapped smiles with the men as they passed. “If we are to protect the Shah and the city, then attack is our only option. You can watch from the ramparts if you wish. The Shah has tasked me with commanding the battle. If you will excuse me, my men will see you safely to the Shah.”

  The column of men and guns marched past Jamie as the prison cart was hauled over to the side of the road to give them room. The shudder of the approaching machines rumbled through the ground, Jamie felt the tremors through his cheeks pressed between the bars. Snagging the gag on a large splinter, he ripped the foul cloth from his mouth.

  “You can’t defeat them,” Jamie called out to Nazari as he passed. “They are too strong. Their armour is too thick.”

  “Too thick for British guns?” Nazari switched to a clipped and precise English and crossed between the ranks of his men. He reached between the bars and pressed his finger into Jamie’s chest. “I have seen British guns destroy the great walls of Burkhat. What do you know of armour and guns, spy?”

  “Enough to know that the walls of Burkhat do not move. Those things,” he nodded in the direction of the rumbling encroaching on the city gates, “have travelled from Peshawar, charging up the river in the same time it takes for just one of your raiding parties to cross the border, and raiders travel light. There is nothing light about them.”

  “Enough, spy,” Nazari rejoined his men. “The Shah will deal with you. I will deal with them.” He slapped the back of the man in front of him. “Just like we dealt with the British, eh?” The men cheered, the rumble beneath their sandaled feet forgotten at the memory of past victories.

  “It will be a slaughter,” Jamie slumped to the floor of the cart as his guards pulled it toward the court where the emissary wailed to the rhythm of impending battle.

  Chapter 9

  Adina Pur

  Afghanistan

  December, 1850

  The Shah’s men pulled Jamie out of the prison cart, one man tearing off the lieutenant’s greatcoat while another pulled open his shirt ripping the buttons from their stitching. Jamie staggered to balance on his good leg, hands tied behind his back.

  “What are you doing?” Jamie shouted above the wail of the emissary. Staggering backward he tried to retreat from a third man approaching him with a small clay pot of azure paint. The men on each side of Jamie stalled his movement with a tight grip around each of his arms. The man in front of Jamie, his breath as foul as the broken teeth angling his smile, dipped a crooked finger into the paint and spiralled his finger upon Jamie’s bare chest. The course paint pricked at Jamie’s skin as the man applied another layer to the anticlockwise twist. “A djinn ward? Is that it? Why should I need protection from the djinn?” The men laughed at Jamie as a fourth man pushed the lid off a circular wall of mud. Jamie paused. “Is this a djinn pit?” he tried to stagger backward. The painter stepped back as the men either side of Jamie slit his bonds with a long knife and thrust the lieutenant forward, plunging him into the deep pit of Adina Pur. Steep-sided, round, rotten, Jamie slid down the wall and landed on his feet. Biting back the scream of pain from his thigh, he crumpled to the floor. The light from above rolled into black as the pit was covered with a stone lid and the rumble of battle beyond the city gates was deafened by the silence of the prison walls.

  “The Admiral never mentioned this,” Jamie stared into the darkness. He brushed his hands over the floor, turning balls of damp, fusty material between his fingers. “Lovely.” Jamie pushed himself up onto his feet and made
a tour of the pit. As his eyes accustomed to the light creeping in around the pitted edges of the lid, Jamie found iron rings, chains and empty manacles bolted to the smooth rock walls. The pit had a large diameter and Jamie was only halfway around when he bumped into something. He stifled a gasp of pain and reached forward to investigate.

  “Sleeping. Don’t disturb.” Brushing off Jamie’s hands, the object, a small human form, turned its back on the lieutenant.

  “Your accent,” Jamie placed his hand on a bony shoulder. “You’re French?”

  “Get off me.” Cold hands wrestled with Jamie’s fingers. Jamie held on. “I said get off.”

  “Not until you tell me who you are, how you came to be here.” The person’s hands, those of a man, were dusty to the touch. Jamie coughed in the darkness.

  “That’ll get worse the more you move around,” the man slipped his fingers free. “Find your own corner to weep in.”

  “Weep? I don’t want to weep. I want to get out of here.”

  “Of course you do,” the man turned his face toward Jamie’s. “Everyone wants to leave in the beginning. Right at the start, when you think there’s hope.” The man paused, his eyes dancing over the mark glowing faintly on Jamie’s chest. “The funny thing is,” the man chuckled, “leaving here only means you are leaving this mortal plane for good. And if that doesn’t work, you’ll find yourself at the end of a rope or at the point of a sword, it’s the same difference.” In the gloom, Jamie could just make out two very round eyes and cheeks so smooth the light from above made them shine.

  “You haven’t been here long,” Jamie smoothed his palm over his own dusty beard. “You are clean shaven.”

  “Clean shaven?” the man laughed. Turning his back from the wall he crawled onto his knees. His face hovered inches from Jamie’s, bobbing in the gloom. “I plucked them, every last hair, just this very morning. It takes time, see,” he whispered to Jamie. “First you have to let them grow long enough before you can pluck ‘em. Then you have to find them, all that exploring, pinching hairs between nails, one at a time. If I didn’t have my nails,” he sat back on his heels. “Just think what would become of me, if I didn’t have my nails.”

  “How long have you been down here?” Jamie reached out to take the man’s hand, but he shuffled back in a cloud of dust. Jamie coughed as the thick dust settled on his tongue and filled his nostrils, pricked at his eyes.

  “Many beards,” the man whispered. “I don’t like to think. Must not think.”

  The dust began to settle on the two men in the pit. The wailing of the metal emissary filtering in through the lid reminded Jamie of a baby’s cry or the squealing of a stuck pig. Khaled’s arrogance at the coming battle worried Jamie, but there is little I can do from here in this pit. He leaned back against the rock wall and tipped his head to gaze up at the thin circle of light rimming the lid.

  “You say you have been here a while,” Jamie rolled his head to one side, seeking the man in the gloom. “When did you learn to speak English?”

  “Learn to speak English?” the man chuckled. “All Villeneuve’s men must learn the language of their enemy.”

  “Villeneuve’s men?” Jamie leaned forward. “Why are you here? What do you know of Trafalgar? Why does the Shah condemn you to this pit?”

  “It is not the Shah that condemns me,” the man spun slowly upon the floor, his eyes burning a malevolent blue in the darkness.

  Jamie recoiled, dust puffing between his fingers as he moved backward upon the floor. “What manner of man are you?”

  “I shan’t tell you who I am,” the man laughed. “It is who I have become that you should concern yourself with, Englishman.” Stretching his hands up toward the light, the man stood, the light from his eyes singeing motes of dust trapped within his gaze. “Let me tell you of the Qarin, mine and yours, for are you not also a prisoner of the pit? Jamie Hanover.”

  “How do you know my name?” The wall behind Jamie brought his retreat to a sudden stop. He pushed his fingers into the dirt in an effort to push himself to his feet, I might have to fight. Jamie blinked at the blue light growing harsh in their close proximity to one another.

  “I know many things,” the man’s body dissolved in the light, blue motes of dust, thousands of them, whirled within the walls of the pit. Jamie grew dizzy, disoriented; he flicked his hands out to the walls, his fingers inches away and yet miles from contact. Enveloped within the frantic swirl of blue dust Jamie gasped for air. “I know things about you, Jamie Hanover. Things you would rather have hidden, buried, forgotten.”

  “You don’t know me,” Jamie reeled within the dust.

  “All men are appointed a Qarin, a djinni,” a pair of blue hands formed within the dust. “They whisper to us. Oh, how they whisper,” the fingers of each blue hand flexed and fanned before the lieutenant.

  “I know of no Qarin. No djinni,” Jamie stumbled within the pit blindly seeking a corner, a sharp edge, anything to hold onto.

  “Let me whisper to you, Jamie Hanover. Let me accompany you on your journey.”

  “Stay away from me,” Jamie pushed at the blue hands seeking his throat.

  “Poor boy. Once your mother’s favourite,” the voice of the man, Jamie’s Qarin, vibrated around the walls. “I know you, thief.”

  “Beast, what does that matter?”

  “Beast? You call me beast?” wicked waves of laughter reverberated through the lieutenant as he groped about in the blue hell. “What bestial acts have you turned, Hanover? Did you not steal from the pauper on the streets of your hometown of Gamlingay? Steal from the poor mother and her child so that you might get a drink?”

  “I had to. I couldn’t help it.”

  “Oh, but you could have. You just didn’t want to.”

  “No.”

  “There were others,” the man’s voice cut into Jamie. “Another family of beggars, easy prey. Their little girl, not two years old, she died, you know?”

  “That was,” Jamie coughed, hooked a finger in his mouth to claw out the blue motes sticking to the roof of his mouth, clogging his tongue. “That was another time, another place. Another me.”

  “Another you? Perhaps?” the voice cackled. The swirl of dust intensified. The floor dissolved.

  “No,” Jamie reached for the walls, he descended. Wrapped within the dust he dropped. All the while, for every fathom he plummeted, the voice reiterated the sins of the lieutenant.

  “The neighbour’s purse. The husband’s savings.”

  “A gift,” Jamie fell.

  “A gift? Hard-earned, smartly wasted. No gift, lieutenant.”

  Jamie drew short, ragged breaths, his lungs squeezed, he clawed at the shirt hanging open across his chest.

  “You stole from your own mother. Her locket,” Jamie’s Qarin cackled. “From her bedside table. While she slept.”

  “I was hungry,” Jamie felt for the locket.

  “Hungry? Thirsty more like,” the blue hands grasped Jamie’s shoulders. “It’s not there, Jamie. It has been replaced with something much better.”

  Jamie pressed his fingers around his neck. Sliding them down his chest he gasped.

  “Yes,” the voice soothed. “Find it, feel it, trace your fingers once, twice around it.”

  Within the choking dust an orange fire burned with flames three, four inches high, flickering along the lines of the djinn mark pasted upon Jamie’s chest.

  “It burns,” Jamie’s fingers trembled.

  “Yes,” the dust evaporated from Jamie’s body, funnelling around him creating a vacuum within which he fell. “Trace your fingers through the fire, it will heal, it will stop, it will cool.”

  “I can’t,” Jamie forced his chin downward to stare at his chest.”

  “You must,” the voice soothed. “You will.”

  Jamie stretched his right hand toward the fire spiralling about his chest. The middle finger extended, he pressed it into the fire, pushing it flat at the beginning of the spiral. He felt the gritty
azure paint smear beneath his fingertip. Where his finger pressed the fire extinguished in a brilliant white wisp of smoke.

  “Yes,” the voice crooned. “Feel the relief, the coolness. Complete the spiral.”

  “What will happen?” Eyes smarting from the needle-sharp dust, lungs panting from his wild descent, Jamie flicked his head up. “What is happening to me?”

  “Complete the spiral, Jamie. Become one with your Qarin. Complete your one true self. Become djinn.”

  “Djinn? The djinn? But I have the mark.”

  “Yes,” the voice slipped away in the dust. “You have the mark.”

  “Wait,” Jamie reached out with his left hand. “Come back.”

  “Complete the spiral, Jamie. Become djinn.”

  Jamie’s finger tingled upon his chest, the flames licked at his nail, singed the tiny hairs on his knuckles, crisped the skin.

  “Become djinn, Jamie.”

  The funnel shrank, the fire on his chest raged and Jamie, lost in the shrinking, needling cloud of dust, traced his finger along the spiral flaming upon his chest.

  The fires cooled. The funnel swelled and his descent to the bottom of the pit slowed. As the fire on his chest extinguished, Jamie inhaled the white smoke, sucking long tendrils into his lungs. They expanded, he expanded. Jamie’s ribs, every bone in his body flexed and stretched. Three times his normal size, Jamie lifted his head, pressed his palms downward and ascended. Faster and faster, escaping the dust, barrelling upward like a musket ball blasting along a smooth-bore barrel. Jamie Hanover – once a young man, now djinn.

  ҉

  “A djinn pit?” Ignoring Bryullov’s entrance, Hari sank to his knees. “You threw him in a djinn pit?”

  “He was marked,” the Shah rested his hands upon the pommel of a jewelled cane, the elder wives supporting him as he rose and shuffled to where Hari knelt. “Your friend, the lieutenant, will save the day, Hari Singh.” The Shah pointed a wizened finger at Bryullov. “That is worth remembering when you speak to your Tsar.”