Clockwork Phoenix 3: new tales of beauty and strangeness

by Mike Allen

  With a click of gears, the bird tilted her head arrogantly up. “No king of mine,” she said.

  “A wise choice.” She was a pretty thing, even tarnished. On what board might so valuable a piece be placed so deep in enemy territory? How large a game was Alexandros being challenged to—and how far into lands half-imagined did it stretch? He took a breath, tasted for the first time the new-washed air, the honey hint of something more than tedious, played-out endings. “What are you called, bird who belongs to nobody and claims nobody?”

  She tilted her head. Sunlight ran liquid down her neck. “I have borne different names,” she said, “in different lands and times. Most recently I am called Vaacha Devi. The voice.”

  “What is it you give voice to?”

  “Tales, Basileu. I weave stories.”

  * * *

  Once, long ago, before the time of the first Darayu, before even the time of Kurush, before empire claimed these lands, there lived a prince not so much younger than yourself.

  This prince’s father had conquered vast territories, and in his endless war he won a city in the hills made of alabaster filigree and blown glass, of gemstones and spinning gears, a city of artisans and merchants and artificers. And the people of this city were made of beaten bronze and copper springs, as I myself am made.

  Now the prince’s father did not stay in his alabaster city, for he was too busy fighting over new lands to enjoy the ones he had, but the prince lived there with his mother. He befriended the only son of the city’s richest jeweller. They were tutored together; they fell together into mischief; and when they were older they travelled together, bronze boy and flesh.

  They snuck out one summer day to ride across the land. But they were very young men, and raised with servants; they did not think to check how tightly their horses had been wound. So it was that they ground to a wobbly stop in the middle of an arid plain, forced to wind springs under the glaring sun. The horses stood with legs splayed and heads down, skin pinging with the heat that poured from them. The prince had to wrap his key in saddlecloth not to be burned. And by the time the horses were well again his friend had run down, heartspring nearly undone, and the prince had to wind him up too.

  All this left the young prince hotter and thirstier than he ever had been in his life, and when he saw the smoke of a village, he whistled his horse to a gallop and left his friend far behind.

  At the village well, he found a mechanical girl of surpassing beauty. She wore a frock of sackcloth and went barefoot, but her legs were shapely, her movement graceful, her body adorned with a winding, green-enamelled snake. Her eyes when she turned to look at him were blown glass clear as the desert air.

  “Water,” croaked the prince. The girl tossed a bucket into the well and drew it up with ease. Then she looked thoughtfully at him, smiled, and poured water from the bucket into an amphora.

  But when the prince reached for the amphora, the girl pulled it away, laughed, and poured the water back into the bucket. Again the prince reached. Again the girl poured water from one vessel into another, and again, making him watch its crystal stream and listen to its cool music. Only when his friend drew near did she hold the amphora up. “Now,” she said, “you may have it.”

  “Why now?” the prince demanded, though it was a whisper through his parched throat. “When I have been thirsty all this time?”

  “You were overheated,” said the girl, “and the water icy. Such opposites make humans ill.”

  He drank. It was sweet and fresh and still so cold it sent jolts of stabbing pain into his forehead. And in the girl’s beauty and her cleverness, and the rushing joy of water after too great a thirst, he fell in love. “Tell me your name,” he begged. “Tell me why you live here, when you would bring grace and beauty even to the city of golden clockwork and alabaster light.”

  “My name is Anaeet,” she said, returning to the well to draw more water. “As for why I am here, I am enslaved to the headman of this village.”

  The prince slid down from his horse. “I will free you,” he said. He took her hands in his, but she would not let go of the bucket’s rope. “I will marry you.”

  She said, “What is your trade?”

  For a moment he stood stunned. Then he laughed. “Am I so covered in dust as to seem a tradesman? I am the prince of this land. My father is lord over everything you see, from the greatest house to the lightest feather. Why should I have a trade?”

  He laughed again, but she only shook her head. “When your father’s men came through these lands, prince,” she said, “they kept only the tradesmen and dismantled everybody else. I remember it still. I shall not wed a man without a trade.”

  Persepolis sat quiet, its daily work muted. Behind the fallen statue, palace walls glowed bright as alabaster in the red-gold light. Alexandros cleared his throat. “Hardly a prince worth the name,” he said, “if he thought he loved a village automaton.”

  “Nevertheless,” the bird replied, “he did. But if the story is not to your taste, Basileu, I do not need to tell it.”

  So lightly did she shrink the world to dullness. And no hint yet of who she came from, or why. Alexandros hesitated, glanced back toward his camp. He turned back. “Tell it quickly,” he said. “There is work waiting. A true king hasn’t time to learn a common trade.”

  She flitted from the dead king’s nose to his sheared-off knee, above their heads. “As the statue fell without you, King of Asia,” she said, “so too does a story go at its own pace and not yours. If you haven’t the patience to hear it, someone else will.”

  “Are you asking to be caged?”

  She looked down her beak at him, wordless, then took to the air. Kleitos pulled a knife and aimed in one smooth motion; and indeed she was an easy target, bright-edged in the sun. Too easy. Alexandros put out a hand again to stop the throw. “No,” he said. “I would not simply destroy a wonder.”

  “It’s an automaton.”

  “There’s a mind there.” That itself was a marvel. Whose? “And one behind that, guiding her moves. I made one bad throw, yes; I shall not make another.”

  “Another?”

  “She’ll be back.” His hand still lay on Kleitos’ arm; he turned the gesture into a caress, eyes on the bird as she shrank to a gleam. “I wonder how she works,” he said.

  He had darker questions that night, when fire broke out in the palace and grew to paint half Persepolis in deadly light. The last king who tried to own me… He pushed through men scurrying like ants with buckets and blankets, reached the statue, and climbed onto its arm. Tilting his head up to watch smoke eat the stars, he said, “Your point is made, bird.” He fingered the charm at the nape of his neck. “But poison will not touch me, and the stories that spread from this night will not hurt my name.”

  Scant days later, he marched on.

  * * *

  The Phoinikes dare any siege to break the island of Tura, whose walls rise, impregnable, from the ocean itself. No ship can break down those walls, and no men can land. The island’s men mock Macedon.

  “They say we cannot take them by sea?” asks Alexandros, soft-voiced. “Well enough; I say we have no need to.” He gestures around at the smoking ruins of Tura’s mainland sister. “We have stone, do we not? Build me a causeway.”

  Remembering, he smiles. His challenger may seek mystery, may not choose to reveal himself, but he has already revealed arrogance. He will have blind spots, as they all do, and blind spots stand unprotected.

  He next saw her in the middle of a dusty road, perched over a body in a broken ox cart. She was a point of brightness in the grey day, her tarnished wings replaced with feathers of polished and graven copper.

  The body was that of Dareios.

  Alexandros said sharply, “Did you kill him?”

  “No,” said the bird. “Did you want me to?”

  “I might have taken his surrender.” A meager victory, this, and ashen. Dareios. Dead. By another’s hand. “His mother—” he had another mi
ssive from Sisygambis, received just the previous day— “His mother was owed, is owed, an explanation. His daughters will want to know.”

  Stateira would want to know. He raised a hand to the base of his scalp, to the spell woven of her hair and braided into his, waiting to quench poison and turn away the sword. More a sign of Sisygambis’ ambition than of the girl’s fondness for Alexandros, surely, but the token reassured. And he could not deny that Dareios’ daughter might make a useful wife for Dareios’ successor.

  If that was all he meant to be.

  The bird said, “For his mother, then—his kinsman killed him, and now lays claim to the name of Artaxerxes. Will she mourn, do you think?”

  Ha. The only son I have is Alexandros, she had written. Persia misses him, and I will find joy only when he comes home. He said merely, “I will tell her.”

  “And will you turn back now, with Darayu dead and your vengeance fulfilled?”

  Alexandros smiled grimly. “This Artaxerxes displeases me. And there are lands yet to claim.”

  “But how much more will you take, whose empire borders five oceans?”

  “A sixth.” His smile grew a touch. “To the east and the south, past the river called Indos.” It lay as far from Persepolis as Persepolis did from Macedon, but he had come that distance once and could cover it once more. “The land bordering that sea is a rich one; they trade gemstones and silk and cinnamon. Their warriors ride elephants, and their defeat could bring glory even to the king of Asia.” Such a land, unknown, unseen, might hold even a city of alabaster and blown glass…“I will own it, and I will ride it down to fabled Khaberis itself.”

  When the bird did not reply, Alexandros said, “I hear the Eastern mountains are home to children of Typhon who live in lakes and bring storms, who fly without wings, whose wisdom challenges the gods.”

  “Oh yes,” said the bird. “They are called Zhug. But an army would never see one, only the ice storm sweeping down to blot out their final sunset.” She raised wings of molten fire, hesitated. “But I had been telling you a story,” she added slowly, lowering her wings. “Would you hear the rest?”

  “I could listen for a time,” said Alexandros, “if you will ride with me.”

  * * *

  The prince returned home that day thinking so hard that he barely noticed frightened servants scolding over stolen horses. The next morning, when sunlight spilled over the alabaster city and its clocktower cockerels crowed harmonies, he went with but one slave to his friend’s father, the jeweller. And he said, “I would learn to cut gems so that stars wake inside them, and set them in beaten gold to dazzle every eye.”

  He was a diligent student, at his studies by dawn so he might return to his duties by noon. And so he came quietly into a trade. He made rings and armbands and jewel-studded shoes, and discovered a genius for fine detail. He made glittering planets the size of pomegranate seeds, their metal entirely covered in a dusting of stones. He engraved a golden sun no bigger than the tip of his thumb, and he helped his master set them all into a miniature orrery. And he watched, amazed, as it turned with astrological precision.

  For his masterwork he made a bracelet set with a tiny clock. A green snake circled the face; its head, marking noon, was a diamond clear as Anaeet’s eyes.

  Oh, I remember your complaint. She was a mere automaton. But he wanted to impress her, so back he went to the little village across a barren plain. “I have a trade now,” he told her proudly.

  She took the bracelet from him and turned it over and over. She examined its hinge and clasp, and checked the clock against the sun. Slowly, she wound it up. “Yes,” she said to its regular tick. “It seems you have a trade.”

  He said, “So when next the stars bring fortune, we shall be wed.”

  The ceremony was grand, for she was his first wife, and a sign moreover of the new peace between human and mechanical. And she was lovely. When she rode into the city over flower-strewn streets on a silver-plated horse, her prince was not the only young man to stare.

  Now, Anaeet had been a scholar of law before her slavery, so the prince started giving her documents of taxes and properties and inheritance. He sat nearby while she studied them, sketching, or sorting gems, or twisting wires of gold into filigree, and later she would tell him what he needed to know. Soon she was ruling beside him. The mechanicals adored her, for they now could gain fair trials without bribing the jeweller or his son; and for her reason and forethought the humans came to respect her word. And every night, with loving hands, the prince wound her heartspring tight.

  When they had been married a year he added a sun-room to his palace, and set thin slices of mica into the cross-hatched roof. They took to holding court there, hearing their people’s quarrels and complaints amidst slanting diamonds of light— and so they could have lived for many years. But the army returned, bearing news. The king had died in a distant land.

  The general who brought these tidings was loyal to the old king, but he hated the thought that his men should fall into the hands of an unblooded boy. It mattered little to him that the new king was an able administrator who would bring justice to the land and care for the ragged, exhausted troops; the general’s only trade was war, and the young king was no warrior. Worse —he had married one of the conquered, foreign mechanicals.

  So when the new king and queen came out from the city to greet the troops, the general drew his sword on them.

  And although the king had been raised among mechanicals, travelled with one, learned from one, and taken one to wife, he learned something new about them then. There was a whirr, a clang, a snap. Before the king could so much as flinch, the general was dead at Anaeet’s feet. She bent over him, clutching her left arm; it bore a deep groove, seeping oil where the sword had split skin. And shards of glass from her shattered left eye glinted on the road like tiny diamonds.

  The general’s second fell to his knees. He offered his life for this treason, asking only that the men might be spared; in response, the king set him in command. Then he ordered the people of the city to care for the soldiers, and he took his queen home to mend.

  They called in a master smith to hammer the dent from her arm and a master artificer to check her gears and springs and make sure all was still in order. The king made new eyes for her himself, grinding the lenses from two flawless emeralds, perfectly matched to the snake coiled across her skin.

  New-burnished, with eyes of polished stone, Anaeet was more beautiful than ever. The court whispered about how lucky she was to be so loved.

  But have you ever looked through green lenses at everything, King of Asia? They were fine, surely, but she might have preferred glass; and the king never thought to ask.

  * * *

  Alexandros next saw the automaton a year and more later, in a tower in Marakanda. He climbed while the world slept, wrapped against the wind in a chlamys cloak and the warm haze of wine, to find a bird-shaped hole cut into the star-spattered night. She sat on a parapet, and the sliver of moon behind her served only to darken her shadow.

  He said, “I thought your cursed story was done.”

  She clicked her beak. “You of all people,” she said, “should know that stories do not end when a prince becomes king.”

  “They merely go badly.”

  “So do they go badly for any of us if we choose to kill our friends.” A pause. “You’re drunk beyond reason.”

  He put fists to his eyes. “I am drunk.” Which made it easier not to think. But harder not to talk. “I am never beyond reason, though I grant the wine loosened my hand.”

  Silence.

  “It was the wine loosed his tongue, too, but—how could he think—he said I plotted to send him to an honorless death, to lead all my Greek soldiers into a trap, to better be Persian myself. Where did he hear such tales? Who did he tell them to in turn? If I wear Persian tunics under my cloak, do I not still speak Greek?” And why, after all, should Alexandros be merely one or the other?

  “Hard to
say what he thought,” said the bird, “since you killed him.”

  “And not even the son of Zeus-Amun can bring him back to life.” The words shredded his throat. Kleitos had been a loyal general till that quarrel, and almost as fine a lover as Hephaistion. If only Alexandros had more wine.

  She said, “I am sorry for your—pain—but he is not the last of Greece that you stand to lose. Why will you not go home, Basileu?”

  “Because I have not finished, bird.” An echo of the words he had written to Sisygambis.

  Feathers rattled irritably. “I am called Vaacha Devi.”

  “Yes, yes. I am so close to claiming that sixth ocean. It has jungles, they say, where you could walk from one tree to the next for ten days without ever catching sight of the ground.”

  “They say true.”

  “Then it will be worth it.” To have a world larger than the limits of Kleitos’ mind.

  “But do they also say,” the bird continued, “that the jungle goddess’ tigers will hunt men who desecrate her land, and her swamp demons swarm up from the fetid water, so that days before you might see ground your army will be shrunk to a sad handful of men puking their stomachs out? For that too is true.”

  Alexandros turned away. “I prefer your story of the king and his mechanical queen.”

  Gears whirred. “They ruled for many years,” said the bird. “From home.” And she would say no more.

  He saw her next in a town newly named Alexandria,

  in pouring rain that churned the streets to mud, perched on a huge statue of the long-eared sage the locals called Gautama. “In your story,” he said, “did they kiss the king’s hand?”

  Her new-made, enameled tail shivered in distaste; the sound blended with the ping of raindrops off her skin. She said, “Such things humans do. Yes, it has been the tradition in Persia for a very long time.”

  “My generals don’t like it either.” Nor the men, whose eyes still reflected Kleitos’ death. Alexandros glared over his shoulder at her, chin up. “But why should I not take Persian traditions? I am King of Persia.”