by Chris Paton
“Oh, that won't happen, Miss.”
“Why not?”
“The Şteamƙin inside Kettlepot are there for good.”
“Then where will the others come from?”
“Anywhere and everywhere,” Emilia said and swept her arm in front of her. “Şteamƙin are in the ground and the air, all around us. But they're lazy, see. They have to be roused, and with all that stomping on the ground and the heat from their furnaces, and the steam running through the pipes, if there are any Şteamƙin within a mile of here, you can be sure they will get the message, and come for a look-see.”
“You're quite sure?”
“Yep. Positive.”
“And how long will it take?” said Luise as she checked the time on her pocket watch. “We have to get to Arkhangelsk before Khronos.”
“I think we'll know in another few minutes,” said Emilia and nodded towards one of the emissaries waltzing furthest from Kettlepot. “Look at that one, there. He's twitching.”
Luise searched for the emissary Emilia had pointed out and recognised it in an instant – it was the only emissary not moving. Its controller dodged between a quartet of spinning emissaries and fiddled with the levers inside the control box from within a distance of a few feet. The emissary did not respond. Instead, it bent at the knees and gave the controller what appeared to be an intense scrutiny.
“Yep,” said Emilia and leaped down from the ladder onto the tracks. “We've got one.” Luise watched as Emilia whistled for Kettlepot to come and meet the new Şteamƙin. Kettlepot stepped off the stage and clanked over to the emissary and its controller.
“It won't respond to any commands,” the controller said and looked at Emilia. “Is this what happens?”
“Yep,” she said. “Now you have to greet it and treat it proper like.”
“Like a friend?”
“Yep.”
“All right,” the controller said as he put down the control box and held out his hand. The emissary stared at him for a moment and then looked at Kettelpot. Emilia's emissary lifted its own hand and shook hands with the controller. Kettlepot took a step back and let the new Şteamƙin emissary come forwards. The emissary held out its hand and closed its fingers around the controllers. The man screamed as the emissary squeezed, crushing the bones in the controller's hand as the man sank to the ground in pain.
“Not so much,” said Emilia and waved her hands in front of the emissary. It let go and held its hand in front of its face, turning it one way and then the other in the light.
The controller's scream stopped the dance and an officer lifted needle on the gramophone to stop the music. Hannah walked up to the controller together with the doctor.
“He crushed my hand.”
“Ja,” said Hannah. “But it worked. Put this emissary in the car together with the others. Be sure to keep them all steamed-up and ready for battle. Perhaps we will get lucky and more will turn before we reach Arkhangelsk.” She stopped to smile at Emilia and then looked at Luise. “Time to get on the train. The engine is repaired and we need to get moving. I suggest you use the time to study your notes and prepare for our next encounter with Khronos.”
Luise watched as Hannah organised the officers and then waited for the doctor to finish binding the controller's hand.
“Doctor,” she said. “Do you have time to hypnotise me once we get onboard?”
“Are you in pain? Are there signs of bleeding?”
“No, not so much, but I have an idea that I might be able to reach out to the man in Arkhangelsk, the one who has been helping me with the khronoglyphs, if I am under hypnosis.”
“I am not sure how,” the doctor said. “But I am happy to assist you.”
“And what about me?” said Emilia. “Can I help?”
“I don't think so,” Luise said and smoothed her hand through Emilia's hair. “I think it best if you spend some time with Kettlepot, but come and find me at lunchtime. The doctor and I should be finished by then.”
“Okay. I'll be in engineering.” Emilia whistled for Kettlepot to walk with her and Luise watched as the unlikely pair made their way down the length of the train.
“Now then,” Luise said and climbed up the ladder and into the passenger car, “to the books.”
The doctor joined her at the table closest to the door. He poured Luise a cup of tea before he sat down. She pulled her notebook from her pocket and placed it on the table. The doctor looked at it.
“It's my khronoglyph diary,” she said and took a sip of tea. “A chronological record of each glyph, the day I discovered or received it and the notes I have made since using them.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Once I am under hypnosis, I want you to show me the khronoglyphs and ask me if I can think of any different combinations, and take notes. If you don't mind?”
“I don't mind...”
“And thanks for the tea,” Luise said. She spilled a drop onto the saucer as The Tanfana lurched into motion. “You look troubled doctor...”
“Please, call me Mirko. We have known each other long enough now.”
“Yes, all right. But what is it that troubles you?”
“Hypnosis,” Mirko said and warmed his hands around his cup. “For people with your condition, haemophilia, it is used to calm them, to put them in a slow state of mind and body, to allow the body to heal...”
“Exactly what I achieved with my impediment machine.”
“Yes, but I don't like the idea of you working while under hypnosis – it defeats the purpose.”
“Ah,” said Luise. “That depends on the purpose. I am not asking you to hypnotise me so that I can heal – I want to learn. I have reached an impasse and I think hypnosis can help me get around it.”
“If you are sure?”
“Many people have lost their lives already because of me...”
“Not directly.”
“Yes, directly, because of what I have done. It is time to make amends and to put that right. I am sure, doctor. Now, let's begin.”
The doctor pulled a locket from his pocket and held it in front of Luise. The daylight caught the gold plate and it glittered as it swayed.
“Don't laugh, Miss Hanover.”
“I am trying not to,” Luise said and took a deep breath. She straightened her back, placed her hands on the table, and leaned forwards. “I am ready... Mirko.”
The part of Luise's mind that was obsessed with science observed that it took less than three minutes for her to become entranced by the locket swinging from the doctor's grip. The other part of her mind, the part more prone to imagination and flights of fantasy, was lost all of a sudden in a cloud. It was real, cold with moisture wetting her cheeks and beading upon her clothes and in her hair. She wasn't falling, her mind knew that much, but she was suspended in the cloud, sealed within a pearl white mist, deafened but for the incessant drone of a propeller that seemed to engulf her. In the back of her mind, she heard the doctor's questions, and imagined him holding up the corresponding page of her notebook. But the khronoglyphs were all but forgotten as Luise realised where she was, and who she was with.
“Khronos.”
“Khronos?” said the doctor and opened the first page of his notebook and wrote down what Luise said. “Khronos the demon or a khronoglyph called Khronos?”
Luise didn't answer. In her mind she was far, far away from the passenger car of The Tanfana. Khronos confirmed that fact as the Wallendorf flyer he had commandeered droned out of the mist and into Luise's sight. Khronos stared at her from the pilot's seat, his initial surprise converted quickly into a scowl.
You, he said. How can you be here?
“I think you called me here. To this place.”
I have no need of you. You had your chance to join me – you chose poorly. Now will die poorly. Khronos circled the flyer around Luise. Tell me, how do you exist here? You are no demon, unless... He flew closer and cast a tendril of demonlight at Luise. She watched as
it passed through her body.
“I am not here, and yet we must be connected.”
I asked for no such connection, Khronos said and drew the demonlight back into his hand. You seek to delay me. That is your purpose.
“No,” Luise said with a shake of her head. “I wish only to stop you.”
And you think Abraxas can help you? Hah, Khronos threw back his head and laughed. That old man is past his prime. Was it Abraxas that sent you the khronoglyphs, the ones that allowed you to open the Passage? Of course it was, Khronos said and thumped the frame of the flyer. For that alone I will kill him.
“And if you can't?”
Can't? Can't what? Kill an old man? Khronos reduced the throttle and let the flyer drift closer to Luise. I will kill everyone and everything that dares to stand between Abraxas and me. Do you dare, Luise Hanover?
“I dare to stop you, yes,” Luise said and clenched her fists. Khronos glared at her and then let his eyes drift down to her side.
You cannot be touched in this form, he said and flicked his eyes back to Luise's face. But time works across all dimensions – for better or worse, faster or slower. I think, in your case, it will be worst if it moves fast. Let us see if your friends can heal you now. Khronos curled the fingers of his right hand and spun a sphere of demonlight around Luise. She jerked once as the sphere spun a violent rotation around her body. She gripped her side as fresh blood pooled beneath her skin and she sank from the cloud and plummeted towards the train below.
The doctor caught Luise as she slumped to one side. He lifted her hands from her side and tugged her shirt out of her skirt to examined her abdomen. Her skin was flushed with a deep blue in the area she had been beaten when he had first examined her, and now the doctor could see that all his previous work had been undone.
“Miss Hanover,” he said.
“It was Khronos,” Luise said as she fought to open her eyes. “We have to stop him.”
“Yes, I know, but first we must stop the bleeding.” The doctor looked around the car for help and found the cord attached to the servants' bell. Luise watched as he ran to the end of the car and rang the bell. She heard the bell ring once and then all was black.
Chapter 23
The Svyato-Troitsky Cathedral
Arkhangelsk
July, 1851
“Abraxas is a strange name,” said Nikolas as he waved at Molotok to give him a bit of space. The storage room was only just big enough for the emissary.
“Perhaps,” said Abraxas. “But no stranger than you and your friend here,” he said and straightened his woollen cloak as he sat down at a desk. “The other emissaries are controlled by men with boxes. Where is yours?”
“I don't have one. Molotok and I...”
“You have named your emissary?”
“Yes,” Nikolas said and he lifted his chin. “It is a good Russian name.”
“It is the Russian name for a hammer.” Abraxas pointed a wizened finger at Molotok's fists. “Appropriate, too, I'd say.”
“Molotok is good in a fight.”
“Something you have been doing a lot of lately. Fighting, that is.” Abraxas pulled at the largest of the drawers in the desk and jogged it open with short tugs. Nikolas walked up to the desk and sat down on the chair next to Abraxas as the old man set a battered teapot on a charcoal burner he retrieved from the drawer. “Tell me, Nikolas,” he said, “how is it you can control Molotok without a control box?”
“I don't really know. It's a bit like magic, I suppose.”
“Magic?” said Abraxas and beckoned Nikolas closer to the desk. “Like this?” With his left hand, Abraxas tugged his right sleeve above his wrist and pointed his index finger at the charcoal inside the burner. A brilliant bolt of blue light burst from the old man's fingertip and lit the charcoal. “Demonlight,” he said as Nikolas let his jaw drop and stared at Abraxas' finger.
“Are you a magician?”
“Of a sort, perhaps.” Abraxas filled the teapot with water from a bottle on the desk. “Now, our kind of magic, your emissary,” he said with a nod towards Molotok, “and my demonlight, these are things best kept secret from the likes of Rutger Venzke and his men.”
Nikolas sat up straight and held his head like he imagined his papa might do when talking about serious battle tactics. “I am not scared of Rutger Venzke.”
“That might be so. But he is scared of you.”
“Really?” said Nikolas and he dropped his adult-like pose. “He is scared of me?”
“Don't get too excited about that, young man. Fear makes a man dangerous. And Rutger Venzke is a dangerous man. You have seen the reward posters, I am sure?”
“Yes,” Nikolas said and reached into his satchel for the latest one he had ripped from a telegraph pole.
“I don't need to see it, there are more than enough in the city. Which is why I would like to invite you and your friend to stay for a little while.”
“Will you show me more magic?” Nikolas said as curiosity overcame him.
“I might, but I want you to promise to stay with me for at least two days.”
“And after that?”
“Then you can go back to your night time ambushes.”
Nikolas looked around the room, at the high ceiling and the blackwood ladder leading to a loft that, if he tilted his head, he could see had two wooden beds and a table between them. The bubble of the water boiling made Nikolas think of food, and he leaned to one side to look around the old man, and spied a shelf lined with packets of food and small sacks of flour and rice.
“Can I eat your food too?”
“Not all of it,” Abraxas said and laughed. “But of course, I would never invite a guest to stay without offering him something to eat.”
“Do you have fuel for Molotok?”
“As much as he requires.” Nikolas caught the look that Abraxas gave his emissary and it occurred to him that Molotok was perhaps the reason they had been invited to stay.
“Why two days?” he said. “Why not one or five?”
“You are welcome to stay as long as you want.”
“Yes, but you said two days. And that look you gave Molotok...”
“What look?”
“Like you needed him, like he could be useful to you,” Nikolas said and tilted his head to one side to study Abraxas. “Is someone coming that frightens you?”
Abraxas removed the teapot from the burner and selected black Russian tea from a cloth sack. He filled a brass strainer with tea leaves and put it in the teapot to stew. When he was finished, he looked at Nikolas and nodded.
Nikolas thought about who might make the magician nervous and he decided that it might be someone quite important. “Who?” he said.
“Someone from my past, and,” Abraxas said and leaned back in his chair, “someone or some people quite unexpected. I think we are in for a busy time, the three of us.”
Abraxas opened the top drawer and took out a tin of biscuits. Nikolas recognised them as Navy hard tack, the kind his papa took on long journeys beneath the sea. He took two when Abraxas offered them to him, and dipped them in the tea the old man poured into a chipped cup. Nikolas sucked the biscuit and studied the old man. The wrinkles around his eyes were deeper than he had ever seen, even on the sick and the old in the hospital of Arkhangelsk – a common sight when he and his papa went to visit Nikolas' mother. Abraxas' beard was also whiter than most, with long thin hairs that rippled when he breathed. The magic though, what did he say it was called? Demonlight, yes, that was it. That was the strangest thing about the man, that and the visitor he was frightened of receiving.
“What is demonlight?” Nikolas asked as he dipped his second biscuit. The crumbs swelled and bobbed on the surface of the tea.
“Ah,” said Abraxas. “That is the magic of time.” Nikolas wrinkled his brow and Abraxas continued. “Demonlight draws its energy from time past, present and future. Like a clock that needs winding to keep ticking, time itself needs energy to keep movi
ng forwards, faster or slower, as time and place allows. That energy, captured in each revolution of the earth around the sun, can be tapped into by people, like me, who have been in the Passage of Time.”
“There is a passage through time?”
“Not through but of. The passage is of time – all time.”
“I don't understand,” Nikolas said and tried to hide a yawn with the back of his hand.
“I will try and explain later. But, tell me, Nikolas, when did you last sleep at night?”
Nikolas cast a guilty look at Molotok. The lodestone behind the emissary's grille glowed warmly for a moment and then returned to its normal brightness.
“We have been busy.” Nikolas paused and then said, “Most nights.”
“Then I suggest rest,” Abraxas said and stood up. He paused to take a sip of tea as shadows rushed past the window. “It seems we are not alone. Stay here,” he said and placed his cup on the desktop. “I will have a look.”
Nikolas turned his head at the sound of crashing in the garden alongside the storage room. He pushed back his chair and walked to the ladder leading to the loft as Abraxas made his way to the door. Nikolas climbed two rungs of the ladder and used his elbow to rub a hole in the grime through which he could see. He recognised the officer that Molotok had knocked out earlier, before they had taken refuge with Abraxas. The man standing next to him, however, Nikolas knew by reputation only. He towered above the officer, held his arms stiffly to his sides and every piece of leather on the man's uniform gleamed, polished and smooth like his face and head. Rutger Venzke, Nikolas realised, was bald.
“Please get down, Nikolas. I will get rid of Rutger Venzke, but that will be difficult to do if he sees you. Now, come down below the windows.” Abraxas paused at the door. “There is plenty of fuel stacked along the far wall. Be sure to keep your friend well-supplied. I will be back shortly.”
Nikolas climbed down the ladder as Abraxas slipped outside and locked the door. Molotok ducked its head and clanked towards the window, only to stop as Nikolas waved his arms in front of him. The emissary stopped and studied the small boy below him. He pointed a stubby bronze finger towards the wall. Nikolas shook his head and placed a finger on his lips. Molotok lowered its hand, the servos in its neck whined as it nodded its head up and down once.