Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories

by Unknown

  “Found you,” Bee says, her voice bright again, waking me. It seems the walk has done her good. “What are you doing here?” She lies down next to me on the servant’s bed, gently shoving so that I will make room for her. We fold each other in our arms. We kiss and sing the song that only those who love know, that sweet low song.

  “I was just thinking,” I say when I have air again to speak.

  “Don’t,” she commands. “It’s made you miserable, whatever it was you were thinking about.” She kisses me again, her lips warm, her tongue soft. She has eaten honeyed figs and drunk imported tea from the Ten Thousand Island Heaven Empire. “Never leave me,” she says between kisses. “I know I’m a pain, but you make me human,” she says between touches. “You are my right eye, my right hand—”

  “Shh,” I tell her.

  “My right ventricle, my right foot, my right big toe—”

  I quiet her with my mouth.

  The rooster is almost done. The gas lamps are turned low, and the beast stands regal on the table. The feathers are soft gold, warm and welcoming. The tail curves high, black and green, each filament enamelled. It is a thing on the scalpel-edge of living. I look to the open windows where the darkness is still looped with stars. Outside, the birds have not yet woken, but they stir in their dreams of rice and grain.

  “So?” Bee spreads her hands and looks to me. Under the arrogance is her fear. Am I good enough, or have I wasted my time, my money, have I deluded myself, tell me, tell me, tell me that my work is sweeter than palm sugar, more precious than salt. Please tell me. “What do you think?”

  “It is very beautiful.”

  She sniffs. “Of course,” but she winks after she says it and smiles shy as a child.

  “When will you present it to the king?” I lean forward from my seat and touch its beak. It shivers gently.

  “Tomorrow,” Bee says, and before I breathe deep at my momentary stay, she continues, “but first, I need to make sure it will work.”

  I tuck my hands back in my lap, and the bangles she gave me as marriage gifts clatter softly.

  “Pray for me, Kavi. Pray to your funny little house gods.” But she doesn’t wait for me to say yes or no, so eager. She’s a child showing off, caught up in the joy of her creation. Bee bows her head, her eyes closed. She looks like a temple reverent, her dark lashes spider leg shadows on hollow sockets, her ringlet hair unbrushed for days. Like all students of the floating university, the first thing she ever learned was stillness, to tame her breath, to use it to call up power from the earth and channel it. Her breath is her magic, machinery her art. The air changes as the magic builds, gathering in her belly. Minutes pass as she charges her breaths, pulling energy from the lifewells that track below the skin of the world. Before, I wasn’t attuned to these currents of power, but now, I can feel them. I can see ribbons of light. The dark hair on my arms stands up, and a million spiders dance out a strange new song against my skin.

  The breath moves from body to body. From warm lips to cold bright beak, and like paper catching fire, the energy crackles along every wire and cog, turns the dead heart into a lightning pulse. The rooster opens one dragon eye on me.

  Oh, enemy.

  There is still time before dawn, before daybreak, but my lover’s art has no care. It throws back its gleaming head, heavy feathers flushed with warmth and magic.

  First crow.

  The sound is harsh and over-loud in the loft, and it tears the anchor of my heart, uproots me.

  “Kavi!” Bee says, cheeks and eyes shining. “Look! Oh, Kavi, our fortunes are made.” She turns away from her monster to catch my hands and draw me to my feet, to spin me around in a tight dance. She is hot and breathless, and her kiss tastes like bitter tea and too little sleep and funerary coins. “Oh, love, you’re so cold,” she says when she draws back from me, brow crinkling in concern. “You’ve been so patient with me, and I’ve been ignoring you.” She holds me tight, drawing me close to her until I can pretend her heartbeat is mine.

  Second crow.

  My feet disappear first. Bee cannot see them, hidden under my long skirt of red ochre. My legs and hips fade, and all that is left is painstaking embroidery and rustling linen. I grow light.

  “Are we still fighting?” she asks me, her breath damp against my ear, and I will her magic into me. If I were made of cogs and wires, she could make me dance again.

  “You forgot,” I whisper back, but the rooster has thrown back his sharp head, opened wide his savage beak. He crows again and there is no more time left.

  Three crows to call the dead home.

  We leave Pal-em-Rasha in a sea of misting grey, thick as dreams. The shades that have spent the weeks since the king’s command in a hell of waiting. The pull rushes us, whistling hard in our ears, dragging us willing or no. I force myself to turn my head and look back down at the house where I died alone, retching up blood in a servant’s room so that my lover would not see.

  Bee dances in her loft, the empty pleated skirt and tunic top held crumpled in her arms. Her tears fall bright as feathers. On the workbench, the golden rooster struts and calls.

  Cat Hellisen is a South African-born writer of fantasy for adults and children. Her work includes the novel When the Sea is Rising Red and short stories in Apex, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Shimmer Magazine, and Tor.com. Her latest novel is a fairy tale for the loveless, Beastkeeper.