Sabrina had loved the equestrian center with its horses and ponies and the smells of dung, wood chips and greenhouse-grown hay, complemented by the salty air blown in from the ventilation tunnels by the huge underground fans. The smells made it a lovely place to breathe in comparison to the more stuffy corners of the palace where things tended to take on the odor of decomposing vegetation and canary droppings.
It was a particularly bright afternoon—the clouds seemed thinner than normal—and Chelsea had taken the girls to their practice session with Darling. Isambard, their older cousin, had arrived, his face pink with an enthusiasm that clashed with his long, brilliant red hair. Sabrina always remembered how happy Isambard looked that day; he did have a dark streak in him which often made him melancholy and spiteful, but today he had a new machine and he was ecstatic. The engineers had unveiled an armored train, one which Isambard’s father had ordered built upon the day of his birth but only now, eighteen years later, had all of the train’s cars rolled out of the worksheds complete.
“Come with me, cousins!” Isambard said, clapping his hands. “I have something to show you!” Five people accompanied Isambard, all dressed in cloaks with breathing masks strapped on their shoulders, ready to go outside. The first was Isambard’s engineering tutor, Rodrigo, a tall, gangly man who always looked serious but could sing everyone under the floor at dinner parties when asked to perform. The second was Shuba, a young Martian male who was Isambard’s best friend and who often acted as a representative of Lotus: an older Martian female whom people rarely saw, sequestered as she was in her private chambers in the southeast corner of the palace. Lotus had the distinction of being the most trusted counselor of Isambard’s father. Sabrina had seen her only once, and the tall alien woman had frightened her, both with her big violet-black eyes and the set of winged alien armor she wore which looked like it was permanently attached to her body.
The third member of Isambard’s party was Greyfell, one of the military leaders of the Founders, a once-handsome man who kept himself quite fit and had a white beard and the saddest blue eyes that Sabrina had ever seen. Greyfell was unmarried, which was rare for a Founders man of his age, and the story went that he’d lost the love of his life in his youth and his heart had never recovered sufficiently to accept another. Sabrina couldn’t remember a time when she had not felt sorry for Greyfell.
The other two men were steampiper corporals, big strapping fellows in black uniforms and silver cuirasses and loyal to the death despite never being able to rise above the rank of senior sergeant. Such bodyguards were necessary for elites who wished to travel outside the gilded glass confines of the Crystal Palace. It wasn’t spoken of, but citizens unhappy with their station in life might sometimes express their displeasure with rocks and knives, despite risking a trip to the gallows for such traitorous behavior. No one seemed to be able to explain sufficiently to Sabrina why some citizens should act in such a way. Had not the Fawkes provided the citizens of the city with a home safe from the mustard gas? Had not the Fawkes built the city for their protection, the factories for their work, the greenhouses for their food and the hospitals for their woes? Such dangers confused and angered Sabrina.
Although Sabrina and Odessa shared many things they did not possess equal affections for Isambard. Sabrina was sufficiently relaxed with her cousin, for despite his sometimes mean teasing he cared for her, but there was always something between them—a sour note of indefinable condition which prevented them from being close friends. Odessa, on the other hand, adored Isambard and he adored her back. Sabrina never saw Isambard smile more than when he was playing with Odessa or when she hugged him or brought him a secretively plucked daisy from the palace gardens.
“The girls are not yet finished with their lesson, Isambard,” Chelsea said pleasantly.
“Please indulge me, Aunt Chelsea.” Isambard grinned. “I have waited all of my life for this train and today I have shown it to everyone except you three!” He motioned toward the steampipers, who carried cloaks and masks for Chelsea and the girls. “I have brought your outdoor gear.”
“Very well,” Chelsea said, laughing. “It is a momentous day.”
Odessa urged her pony over to the rail where Isambard stood, dismounted in one easy motion and hugged him about the lower waist. Isambard smiled and blew a kiss to Sabrina as she trotted her pony over.
“Ah, my favorite girls!” Isambard enthused. “I am happiest being able to show my train to you.”
Sabrina cinched her black cloak around her shoulders and pulled on her elaborate breathing mask. Masks were worn by the elite during extended stays outside the Crystal Palace, for they were designed to filter out the coal and tar smoke which hung thick in the city’s air. They provided some protection from hurled rocks as well. Each mask was stylized in a sort of masquerade ball fashion, with Sabrina being a little owl, Odessa a wolf pup, and their mother the face of a doe. The steampipers donned their standard-issue helmets while Isambard put on his large mask, a grotesque metal hybrid of a lion and a raven. Sabrina always thought it was odd that Isambard did not wear a mask similar to that of his father, the traditional Fawkes phoenix with three large metal feathers thrust up at the top and a long, wickedly curving beak. But Isambard tended to go his own way; some even whispered that his own way was the way Lotus wanted him to go.
The filtering masks served two functions: to purify the air of the noble person breathing through it and to separate the royals from the masses in the street. Sabrina agreed with keeping one’s distance from the unwashed mob because, though the palace servants were lovely and clean, the general citizenry suffered from scabrous maladies and lived in various unhealthy and filthy conditions. The citizens coughed a lot and many succumbed to black lung disease from years working underground in the pits.
Odessa grabbed Sabrina’s hand, clutching it as they approached the equestrian center door. They’d rarely been taken outside, never to the railway yard, and now it was happening so fast, so easily. The steampipers swung the doors open and Isambard stepped in between Sabrina and Odessa, taking their hands in his. Sabrina had not minded, for she was always impressed with Isambard; he referred to Sabrina as the “older” sister—she’d arrived from the womb first, beating Odessa’s appearance by seven minutes—and Sabrina had always liked that. Mother and Greyfell followed close behind, Greyfell wearing the mask of a sullen bear which was barely more somber-looking than his own hang-dog appearance.
As she stepped outside Sabrina was immediately struck by the bottomless, upside-down heave of the sky, the high, ribbed-cloud ceiling of it, causing a headiness one did not feel while looking up through the palace glass. The still air chilled her cheeks and she shivered, though from cold or exhilaration she couldn’t tell. She’d always wanted to be outside and see the city. She’d always wanted to see the city from above. You can’t see anything from the air because of the sea fog, everyone said, but she wanted to see it anyway. Sabrina and Odessa’s father was a Commander of Zeppelins and he’d informed his daughters that each of them would earn an air officer commission and make a career out of the service unless they preferred politics. Sabrina had wanted to be a zeppelineer; it had been her heart’s desire from the first time she could consider such things, and it was agony to have to wait until she was twelve to enter the airship cadet program.
But therein lay the sticky problem.
The Founders never flew. Their zeppelins sat docked and mouldering in permanent reserve, hidden in huge hangars in the northwest quarter of the city. Air officers spent their careers maintaining the grounded airships while only a lucky few were assigned to the extremely rare scouting mission. Sabrina and Odessa, as the daughters of a high-ranking Fawkes family, might get a shot at one of the operational missions, but probably just one. And the dreadnaughts, the mighty near-mythical dreadnaughts which Sabrina had heard of but had never seen, remained always hidden in the darkest hangar, their earthbound crews sworn to silence. Sabrina’s father always said that the dread
naughts were more effective against the enemy as ghosts than real warships that could be seen.
Sabrina despaired over the prospect of a zeppelin career on the ground, but she also knew that she wanted nothing to do with politics. She always assumed that, when the time came, her father might provide her with other options.
Everything sounded different outside. The air took noises and carried them away and brought other sounds back with it. The click of Sabrina’s boot soles on the cold-brittled flagstones was new. The cold and space invigorated her and she wanted to run but there wasn’t far to go. The guards standing at the railway yard gate greeted them with salutes and they passed into a different realm of oily gravel, long metal tracks and dozens of looming locomotives and armored trains.
“Here she is!” Isambard said as he led the girls to the huge gold-copper locomotive. “I present to you, the locomotive Isambard! Isn’t she a beauty?”
Sabrina gasped, for the machine was beautiful: its metal skin curved into a thousand polished, gleaming lines. Its large, teardrop-shaped windows bulged like gecko eyes over the engineer’s turret and the sleek boiler stacks angled backwards so the noxious mustard could not force its way into the combustion system. It was a mountain of a machine, perhaps seventeen feet high, and it looked like a mythical whale to Sabrina, captured and recast in bronzed metal.
“Brilliant,” Sabrina breathed, and heard her mother and the others murmur their approval.
“Can we go for a ride?” Odessa asked. “Please, please, please?”
Isambard laughed. “Not quite yet, little bird,” he said, patting the top of her wolf pup mask. “Her airtight seals have still to be approved. She must pass her trials out in the noxious mustard. But once that is done, yes, you may go for a ride. With your mother’s approval of course.”
Sabrina looked up at Chelsea, who looked disappointingly skeptical. “We shall see,” she said.
“Oh, they must!” Isambard laughed.
Sabrina and Odessa never did get to take their ride on the Isambard.
***
Sabrina jumped as the opposite hatch clicked and swung open, pushed by the white and gold gauntleted hand of an Atlantean soldier. Odessa stepped in, wearing her black steampiper uniform and its black cloak with red lining, her face the mirror image of Sabrina’s, her hair the same saturation of crimson, her features bearing the same Asiatic influence— but there was also a harshness in the green eyes and a gauntness in the line of the cheekbones which were absent from Sabrina’s visage.
Odessa paused, locking her gaze on Sabrina as the hatch closed behind her. She crossed her arms, her black-gloved fingers sinking deep into the folds of her uniform cloth above the elbows. She was nervous also.
“Hello, sister,” Sabrina said.
“Hello, sister,” Odessa repeated coldly.
Odessa’s voice was strong, with a hoarse quality that Sabrina remembered. “You look well,” Sabrina said.
Odessa nodded. “As do you.” She motioned for Sabrina to sit at the table, sweeping her cloak aside as she seated herself.
Sabrina sat down. It was strange, unsettling, to suddenly be so close to Odessa, and she could not tell if there was any connection left between them or not. If there was, it was at first blush entirely imperceptible.
“You wished to speak with me,” Odessa said. “I am here.”
“Had you never wanted for us to see each other again?” Sabrina asked.
“I had thought you to be dead for the longest time,” Odessa said slowly.
“In some ways I was.”
Odessa folded her hands on the table in a slow, deliberate movement. “Not long ago, perhaps a year, I was informed that you had survived the purge and now lived among the Crankshafts. At least you could have picked a proper clan to live with and not trader-pirates.”
“At least they don’t murder each other.”
Odessa stiffened. “Was it you—were you the traitor who led the Crankshafts and Alchemists into the city that day, the day Balthazar was taken from the prison?”
“Yes, I did.”
Odessa’s mouth tightened. “You are my blood, my sister. I do not think I need to speak with you anymore.”
“What has become of you, sister? Sabrina asked. “Isambard murdered our parents, everyone we knew.”
“That is not true.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Who told you that—Marter?”
“Yes,” Sabrina answered.
“You should not believe the things Marter said,” Odessa replied. “Look at what his association has brought you to. A life of hiding? Leading enemy forces against your own clan? Many good citizens, comrades of mine, were killed during your incursion. Since when did you become my enemy, sister?”
“If Isambard has not stolen every last bit of who you are, Odessa,” Sabrina said, unable to contain an anxious current from rising in her voice, “you must listen to me. You must believe what is the truth!”
Odessa looked angry for an instant and recovered with a dark, pond-still calm. “Why am I here? Not to comfort the enemy. Ah, yes. The Vicar thought it would be appropriate that I invite you back into the family.”
“The Vicar? What about you?”
Odessa did not blink. “Isambard approved of the request. He too, wants you back. You are one of us. You are the blood of Fawkes. Come home and you shall be forgiven.”
“I left the family of Fawkes with its rivers of blood. I no longer wish to be a part of it.”
Bristling, Odessa leaned forward. Sabrina felt her sister’s anger and frustration and she knew that the connection between them, deeply submerged, was still strong. “You have no idea what happened,” Odessa whispered, “why it was necessary for Isambard to order the purge. Many of the people you remember were not as innocent as you might think.”
“Including mother and father?”
“Including mother and father,” Odessa said slowly, leaning back.
“What kind of monster—” Sabrina stopped herself. She was shaking on the inside. She had to choose her words carefully. Isambard had raised Odessa. “I may no longer wish to be a part of Isambard’s family but no matter how long we are apart we shall always be a part of each other.”
Odessa’s eyes had now gone cold, their sleek green mirrors betraying nothing, no vulnerability or emotion, but Sabrina could feel the tightness of her muscles vibrating the chamber air. “I am Fawkes. You are Fawkes. You are a part of Isambard’s family whether you think you wish to be or not.”
“I reject all of it but you,” Sabrina whispered. She almost said something else, words rushing from her mouth unbidden, but she stopped herself. The memories upon seeing Odessa, some long repressed, flooded back to her, reawakened echoes, vague childhood memories of sunlight in the atrium and birds in the Crystal Palace, of her father’s bouncing knee and statues of the three Founders, of gurgling fountains and red-headed relatives and the lurking, rarely seen shadows of the tall, black-violet-eyed Martians standing in the shadows wearing hoods over their strange black and white faces, whispering into the ears of the powerful.
Sabrina grabbed Odessa’s arm and squeezed. The move shocked Sabrina—as if a part of her she did not understand was now taking action. “Sister,” she whispered.
Odessa ripped her arm out of Sabrina’s grasp and stood abruptly, her chair legs screeching across the metal floor. “There is no family here, as you have said. If you are here to negotiate with the Founders, know this: Isambard will accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the rebellious Grand Alliance. Is this what you offer?”
Sabrina’s stomach hurt. The woman sitting across from her looked exactly like her, shared memories with her, but perhaps they were not sisters anymore. “Odessa, please be reasonable,” Sabrina said. “You have the ear of Isambard and I have the ear of Balthazar. Perhaps the two of us can help stop this war.”
“I do not know what you have become, sister,” Odessa replied coldly. “But you disappoint me. I am Odessa Fa
wkes, blood of the Fawkes, adopted daughter of Isambard Fawkes, and I do not negotiate with the enemy.” Odessa spun on her heel and swung the hatch open, vanishing through it without a glance behind her.
Sabrina placed her hands palms down on the table, unsure as to whether she was upset or not, unsure as to whether there had ever been another person in the room with her or if she had been speaking with a ghost.
XXXII
THE PONTUS CHILDREN
“I am a child but I am also very old,” Penny Dreadful said.
Buckle nodded. He sat on the edge of his chaise lounge as Penny Dreadful stood in front of him, her eyes glowing, her arm manacles rattling on any occasion she might move. She whispered with a metallic whir and she seemed not averse to answering his question about her past but he could not shake the sense that she was an unreliable narrator of her own history.
They were alone, at least, alone in the sense that Welly was fast asleep again. Buckle had not removed his clothing, not even his sword belt, since Lady Julia’s visit. He didn’t trust the Atlanteans with their secret passageways. “How did you survive after all of the adults died in the Pontus?” he asked Penny. “You were just children.”
“It was terrible, of course, for all of us little ones,” Penny said. “Uncle Lombard did his best to save as many of us as he could but so many died during the transfer of brain to machine. I was distraught when my parents died of the plague, but it was so long ago I can speak of it with little emotional distress now. There are good memories of my first family and the families I lived with after.”
“But how did the twenty of you children survive alone for decades?”
“We played a great deal in the beginning,” Penny said.
“That isn’t surviving, Penny,” Buckle said. But he had to be more careful now. This was a child, a very old child, but a child nonetheless.
“It was surviving for us, you see, Captain. Once we had recovered from our bereavements and disposed of the decomposing bodies in the ejectae tubes we needed joy. But the urge to play left us, perhaps within a year. One of our machines, Teresa, malfunctioned after thirteen months. Just dropped dead. That frightened us. We had a ceremony for her and buried her in the sea. After that we put ourselves on very low settings and waited. For decades, we just waited. Our biological elements are maintained through a mixture of water, carbon, and minerals drawn from steam humidity and byproducts of fuel incineration, so food was not a problem. With the exception of combustibles and oil my system is largely self-sustaining.”
Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) Page 18