“Oh, Sweet Lily,” said Slate, amused. “Does the fact that she’s female not bother you, Learned Edmund?”
Learned Edmund glanced up, and she caught a flash of humor in his eyes. “Gnole pronouns are very complicated,” he said. “More than I realized at first. All rag-and-bone gnoles are she. All job-gnoles are he. I don’t know what the grave-gnoles are—they either don’t get a specific pronoun or the pronoun is they, I can’t tell.”
Slate frowned. “You mean Grimehug’s a job-gnole because he’s male?”
“No, no.” Learned Edmund steepled his fingers. “That’s just it. The pronoun’s a caste marker. It’s the other way around—Grimehug’s a he because he’s a job-gnole.”
Everyone tried to work this out in their heads.
Caliban got there first. “You mean’s he’s…”
“Female. He’s born several litters, apparently.”
They stared at the dedicate. Slate began to laugh. “No wonder he wasn’t concerned about my modesty!”
“You mean he’s a she?” said Brenner.
“No!” said Learned Edmund. “Quite the opposite. He’s a female gnoll, but he’s still he,” Learned Edmund said. “Because all job-gnoles are hes. He’ll be puzzled if you call him a she. Only rag-and-bone gnoles and hunt-gnoles are she. Job-gnoles are he. Garden-gnoles are ‘our gnoles’ rather like Brenner says ‘our Slate’ in that it’s an affectionate possessive—”
Brenner draped an arm over Slate’s shoulders and beamed. She grumbled at him.
Caliban, who was sitting quite close to her and very carefully not touching her, went absolutely expressionless. Slate felt a flash of mingled pleasure and irritation. Brenner, who missed very little, beamed even harder.
“Oh, and you’ll like this, Caliban!” said Learned Edmund, who was completely oblivious. “It’s hard to change castes, but possible. But there’s another group that isn’t casted, and they’re the priests and the warriors. They’re the same. Their priests are supposed to bite the darkness’s tail, they say. They’re all he, but it’s a different he than a job-gnole. Honored-he, maybe. When he says ‘he’ about you, he means the honored-he, although you can’t tell unless you look at his whiskers.”
Slate rubbed her forehead. “Did you write this all down in case we die?”
“Oh yes. I think other people probably know this, some of them. Surely someone’s talked to the gnoles before this!”
“People don’t even talk to other people much,” said Caliban.
“The gnoles are people,” said Learned Edmund. “Very much so.”
“You’re right,” said Caliban. “Humans, I should have said. I hope some—other human—has talked to them, but just in case, I’d make an extra copy of your notes.”
Slate shook her head. “Learned Edmund, do you think we’ve offended Grimehug with our—err—ignorance?”
The dedicate coughed. “Ah. No. I think…well.” He actually looked faintly embarrassed. “I asked, actually. Because…um…well, I fear I have not always been entirely tactful on the subject of female people…”
Slate’s lips twitched and Brenner gazed at the ceiling. Caliban became very interested in a nonexistent spot on his gauntlets.
“But he said…ah…no. Well, he said ‘humans can’t smell.’”
“He’s said that to me, too.”
Learned Edmund nodded. “I could be wrong, the Many-Armed God knows, but when I asked him to explain, I think what that means is that he isn’t offended because we’re...um…not able to tell when we’re offending someone. We can’t smell that they’re insulted. So the gnoles don’t take offense because…ah…we can’t be expected to know proper manners.”
“You mean he thinks we’re not smart enough to know better,” said Caliban.
Learned Edmund nodded. “I think the gnoles think we’re not very bright,” he said. “As far as they’re concerned, we’re very powerful and rather slow.” He coughed again. “Grimehug, as near as I can tell, thinks of us as something between a smart horse and a very dim child.”
Slate laughed. “Given the way things are going, I can’t say he’s wrong in that assessment…”
“So why are they helping us?” asked Brenner. “If we’re not that smart?”
Learned Edmund shrugged. “I can only tell you what Grimehug says. He says he likes you, Slate. And me.”
“I’d have to do a damn sight more than like someone to give them a safehouse and smuggle them into a factory full of clocktaurs,” said Brenner.
“Yeah, but you don’t actually like anyone,” said Slate.
Brenner looked flattered. “Hey now, I always liked you.”
“Liked,” said Slate. “Uh-huh.”
Caliban cleared his throat. “Learned Edmund? Your understanding of the gnoles is fascinating, but how are you doing with Brother Amadai’s notes?”
The dedicate sighed. “Not well. Or too well, perhaps, but everything I learned is distressing. I will read something that seems like wild speculation, and then I will read something else and realize that it was true. Terrible, but true.”
“What sort of things?” asked Slate.
Learned Edmund tapped the page in front of him. “For one thing, I don’t think anyone knows how to turn the wonder-engine off.”
* * *
“Okay,” said Brenner. “That thing you just said? That was not a good thing.”
“Grimehug will have to confirm for me,” said Learned Edmund. “I could be wrong. I hope I am. But I think once they started the wonder-engine back up, they’ve been producing columns of clocktaurs, over and over, without stopping.”
“I could have told you that,” said Ashes Magnus. She leaned one heavy forearm on the table and lifted the page that Learned Edmund was studying. “Takes a little over a month for a column and then they send them out. They lost one in the river the first time, I hear—a column, not a clocktaur. Why?”
“And they haven’t halted production at any point?” said Learned Edmund.
“Why would they?”
“Because the people who started the war are no longer in power,” said Slate. It was falling into place in front of her. Boss Horsehead saying, Those damn things. Sparrow saying, He’s not the one in charge of them.
She stood up and began pacing restlessly back and forth. Caliban scooted his chair in to give her room. “Look…dammit…I can almost see it in my head…the Dowager had a couple of spies here, all in the government, right? And the spies couldn’t point to someone to say ‘kill that person there.’ So the Dowager figures that hey, this must be a really well kept secret, something run out of the underworld, and so she sends a forger and an assassin to deal with it, right?”
“I’m with you so far,” said Caliban.
“And we show up and start poking around and asking a lot of dumb questions and we figure out that the people who started the war aren’t even in charge any more. And because we’re idiots—”
“Speak for yourself, darlin’.”
“—we start thinking ‘oh, sure, now they just like having a war.’ But what if we’re wrong? What if there isn’t anyone who really wants to keep the war going? What if they’ve just got all these damn clocktaurs and they can’t shut the damn machine off?”
“Then why bother to attack people with them?” said Caliban. “You don’t prolong a war just to use up your war-machines, do you?”
“You might,” said Learned Edmund. He looked over at Ashes Magnus. “You might if you were afraid they would turn on you instead.”
“Better to have them pointed out than pointed in,” said Slate.
Ashes appeared to have stopped listening to them. She slowly set the page down, then pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.
“He figured it out,” she said quietly. “The crazy bastard figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” said Brenner. “Look, I’m just a simple murderer for hire, you’ll have to explain it to me in small words.”
“The point,�
� said Ashes Magnus. “Brother Amadai figured out the point of the wonder-engine.”
Forty
“To make horrible monsters?” said Slate.
“Yes, but not quite like we thought. They were made to be an army. But we’re using it wrong. Or at least differently.”
The artificer picked up another sheet of paper and began writing in a swift, blocky hand. “Here. Once we get through the code, this is what we’re left with. ‘The souls of fallen warriors seek a last chance to serve. This the ancients knew. Give the dying to the engine and they will be reborn into ivory and glory.’”
“What does that mean?” asked Slate.
It was Caliban who spoke up. “It means the ancients took dying soldiers and fed them to the wonder-engine to make clocktaurs.”
Slate felt her lips curl back from her teeth, the way Grimehug’s did when something disgusted him. “Who the hell would do such a thing?”
The paladin sagged against the wall. “They probably volunteered.”
“What?!”
Brenner shook his head in disgust.
Caliban stared straight ahead, not looking at any of them. “If you fell on the battlefield, but you knew that you could be put into the body of a clocktaur…a body that could strike a last, terrible blow at the enemy…”
“Should we be stuffing you into a clocktaur to go kill demons, paladin?”
“Shut up, Brenner.”
“Not me,” said Caliban. “I’ve been an unstoppable killing machine. I don’t recommend it.” His smile was a horrible, humorless thing to witness. “But I doubt you’d find any shortage of people willing. They don’t know. You don’t know unless you’ve been there. And no one listens. They’d tell themselves things about glory and service and they’d crawl into the machine on their knees if you let them.”
Grimehug’s ears were flat. “Crazy people,” he said, and Slate suspected that there were nuances there that even Learned Edmund couldn’t read.
“But they’re not feeding it dying people,” said Learned Edmund. “They’re feeding it corpses.”
Ashes Magnus nodded. “That’s where I think this other bit comes in that you translated.” She shuffled a paper across the table.
“A binding of demons?” The dedicate picked up the paper and frowned. “Well…oh, you’re right! If we assume this page goes here, then things make more sense. But what does he want with demons?”
“There are demons in the clocktaurs,” said Brenner. “Doesn’t it make sense? The one trapped in the hills said there were.”
“They’re binding demons into the clocktaurs in place of souls?”
“Could they do that?” asked Slate.
She was watching Caliban and actually saw his lips start to form the word, “No,” and then he stopped. He closed his mouth and looked at the ceiling for a minute instead.
He finally said “A year ago, I would have said no. They aren’t supposed to inhabit unliving things. They can only enter something with a soul.”
“And now?” said Slate.
He lifted his hands and let them drop. “They aren’t supposed to die inside someone’s soul, either. They aren’t supposed to be able to bind each other. So I don’t know if I can say, any more, what they’re not supposed to do.”
Ashes Magnus looked up from the notes spread across the table. “Die inside a soul?”
“It’s a long story,” said Caliban wearily. “And not a particularly relevant one, I don’t think.”
“Couldn’t you tell if there was a demon inside one?” asked Brenner.
“How?” Caliban shook his head. “It’s not like livestock. I don’t know how a clocktaur is supposed to act, and I highly doubt any paladins have stood next to one long enough to attempt an exorcism.”
Slate remembered the image again of Caliban standing in front of a clocktaur, sword raised, and felt dread wash over her.
“They don’t speak in tongues, I don’t think,” he added. “Do they even have mouths?”
Grimehug shook his head. “Clocktaurs don’t eat, big man. Or bite. Just smash.”
“Isn’t your little…err…friend…bothered by other demons?” pressed Brenner. “You said it was.”
“My little friend’s been laying low,” said Caliban.
Ashes looked from one to the other as if she was a spectator at a bout. “Your little friend?”
“I was possessed,” said Caliban. “I am now rather less possessed.”
Slate knew Caliban well enough now to see the muscles in his jaw tighten as he waited for Ashes to press the matter.
The artificer said “Oh. Huh. Well, it happens,” and went back to her notes.
I regret enormously that I did not meet Ashes Magnus before we were going to go off and die in a wonder-engine. I wonder if she teaches classes in how to be unimpressed?
“Mistress Slate,” said Learned Edmund, “can you decipher this set of notes? My skill is failing me.”
He slid a sheet of vellum across the table. Slate picked it up. It was covered in Brother Amadai’s by-now familiar handwriting, the letters run together so tightly that the words looked like single, incomprehensible glyphs. “Oof. What a mess.”
Caliban put his hands on her shoulders and began to rub them. Slate started to think that it was worth keeping a paladin around just for that. If I can break him of acting like an honor guard…no, wait, dammit, going to die very shortly. Damn, damn, damn.
“Was he trying to write this in code too?” Caliban asked, peering over the top of her head at the page.
“Doubt it,” said Slate. She began copying letters down, one at a time, in her own neat hand. “At a guess, he was writing very fast and sloppy because he knew what he meant, and the notes were mostly for himself, to jog his memory later.”
“Which would mean he never expected to send these to the temple,” said Learned Edmund, a bit sadly.
“He might have planned to transcribe the notes later,” said Ashes. She flicked another sheet aside. “These illustrations, though…”
All of them leaned over the table to look.
“Looks painful,” drawled Brenner.
A man hung suspended, apparently impaled on long pointed poles. The poles were wrapped in chains. “What do those notes say?” asked Brenner, pointing to a scrawl alongside the drawing.
Slate frowned down at the lines of text. “Gods of scribes and fools have mercy…”
“Bad?” asked Caliban.
“His handwriting? Yes. What it says? Ah…something something the Many-Armed…something…is a…not sure if that’s a T or a Y…will see all things through the…that’s probably ‘eyes’…” She sat back. “That’s it. The rest of this page is him wiping his pen to get the ink blobs off.”
“What does it mean?” said Caliban.
“How the hell should I know? I’m a forger. Magnus?”
Ashes Magnus shook her head. “I don’t even know if this has anything to do with the wonder-engine. It’s not up to his usual standards of illustration. It may be an idea he had, or a dream, or just a doodle.”
“If only we could ask him…” said Learned Edmund.
Strained silence followed.
“Learned Edmund,” said Caliban gently, “I am afraid he must be dead by now.”
The dedicate sighed. “I…yes. I know. I had not wanted to believe it, but when we rescued Mistress Slate…” He closed his eyes. “This city. This terrible city. I did not know that life could be held so cheaply.”
Caliban and Brenner, who had ended quite a number of lives last night, exchanged a look that Slate couldn’t read and didn’t want to.
She straightened up, rubbing her back. “Well. I gotta stand up or I’m going to have a permanent hunch.” She pushed the chair in and wandered off to find where the gnoles had built the privy.
She was heading back, trying to decipher the twists and turns of the burrow, when Brenner said in her ear: “Bad idea, darlin’.”
“What, going to the privy?”
<
br /> The assassin shook his head. “Don’t play dumb. You know perfectly well what I mean.”
Slate sighed. She’d hoped, somewhat foolishly, that they could get into the warehouse and thus all probably die horribly before she had to have it out with Brenner.
Apparently the assassin was determined to have his say before then. Although at least he’d had the decency to ambush her on the way back from using the facilities. The conversation wouldn’t have been improved by a full bladder.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said, stepping into another room of the gnole-warren. It was hard to tell what it was used for—spare bedroom, broom closet, extra dining room. The gnoles liked all rooms to be nearly identical, presumably so they could change their function as needed.
“He’s a paladin,” said Brenner.
“We’ve been over this.”
Brenner shook his head. “You’re gonna break him.”
This was not the angle that Slate had expected. She blinked at him. “You’ve been telling me that he was gonna go berserk and chop me up into pieces! Who’s side are you on?”
Brenner grinned, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “I’m on my own side, as you ought to know, darlin’. Not yours, not his.” He considered. “Well, more yours than his, obviously.”
“Thanks. I think.”
The assassin leaned against the wall, arms folded. “I’m sayin’ this badly. Look, our fine paladin went sniffing around temples, looking for some god to take him, didn’t he? And then he stopped. And now he’s so wrapped up in you that he’d have gone charging into the Grey Church barehanded if he thought it’d help.”
Slate stared at the ceiling.
Brenner drummed his fingers on his bicep. “Some men like to be used. Our paladin more than most, I’d say. He couldn’t get a god to do it, fine. He found somebody else.”
“You’re saying he wants me to be his god?”
Brenner smirked. “Someone to worship, anyhow. And he gets to bed you in the bargain, which is a pretty sweet deal, religiously speaking.”
Slate threw her hands in the air. “I don’t need this right now.”
He laughed. “Darlin’. I know you. You’re gonna fall off that pedestal before he’s got you all the way on. Might break him even worse when you do. Just be careful.”
The Wonder Engine_Book Two of the Clocktaur War Page 21