“The Song of the City,” Gast said, his voice hushed. “Second most valuable of Nebulous Efram’s sculptures of the ideal. I also own the third through to the fifteenth. Naturally, I want the top one too. I want Urban Drift.”
The factory finished grinding past outside, exposing a swath of parkland. Sunshine streamed in through the window, splintering as it hit the cube, forming a bright web more elegant than that of any spider. Gast paused for a moment, basking in its glow, before an office block rumbled into view, once more blocking out the sun. In the dulled moments that followed, Cam was sickeningly aware of the sweat trailing down his employer’s skin.
The first servant returned and handed Cam a photograph. The sepia-toned image showed a stately house in an antiquated style, with wrought-iron balconies, a pillared porch, and wide chimneys protruding from a slate-lined roof.
“This is Alexandria Immanent’s place,” Gast said. “She has what I want. You’re going to get it for me.”
Gast paused to sip from a tall blue drink, then continued, jowls wobbling with enthusiasm.
“In three nights’ time a rundown tenement will be passing the House of Immanent. Your crew will be in it, disguised as a salvage gang. You enter the house, grab the prize, and smash things up on your way out. Poor Alexandria’s agents will spend months hunting for her art in the salvage slums. If they ever realize they’ve been looking in the wrong place, the trail will be long dead.
“Meanwhile, you deliver Urban Drift to me, and I deliver your next dozen highs on a silver platter.”
“I’ll need money too,” Cam said. “For expenses.”
“Rensford knows my limits.” Gast indicated a tall man Cam had taken for a guard. “Take him when you go shopping.”
“And for my colleagues.”
Gast shook his head. “Don’t push your luck. They’ll get the pick of the rest of Immanent’s collection. That’s more than enough.
“Now, are we on, or are you wasting my time?”
Cam found Grinning Jenny beneath a table in the Autoreeve’s Arms, a battered old tavern slowly crawling along East Reach. She squinted up at him through a haze of pipe smoke and brick dust.
“What d’you want?” she demanded, staggering to her feet.
Cam crouched, putting them face to face, and handed her a mug of the Arms’s watered ale. Jenny’s fellow crawlers fell into awkward silence at the familiarity of the full man.
“You look uncomfortable,” Jenny said, impatience seeping through her unbreakable smile.
Cam shrugged. “I’d pull up a chair, but....”
He gestured at the low stools, the rickety table barely rising above his knees.
The crawlers stared for a moment, then they started to laugh. Soon they were drinking and chattering as if Cam weren’t there.
Jenny downed her drink, pale liquid dribbling off her chin.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You need money to get high, and you want me to help steal it.”
“Something like that,” Cam replied.
She snorted and spat into the sawdust beneath their feet.
“You could stay in your factory with the crawlers and the press gangs,” Cam said, staring pointedly at her battered fingers. “Be like all the other little people. Or you could come with me.”
Jenny’s eyes twinkled dangerously above her meaningless toxified grin. Then she sighed.
“Why fight the inevitable?” she said, shoulders sagging. “Let’s go.”
Springheel was showing off again, somersaulting through the air high above a fast-shifting slum. People paused in the street below, staring up at the gangling figure as he leapt, hollering and whooping, across the unstable rooftops.
Cam waited to see where the routine ended, then headed into the stairwell of a decrepit terrace block. As dusk came creeping through the sky, he crawled out the end of a broken gable and onto the lichen-smeared slates. Soot bellowed from a nearby chimney, and in its shadow Springheel sat, his back against the red bricks, taking a screwdriver to one of his legs.
“Nice routine,” Cam said, stepping carefully across the rooftop. The tenements shook as they squeezed past each other, making space for other, more important buildings. The housewives and factory workers who warmed these rundown piles might never see a mansion or trading house, but they felt the tremble of their passing.
Springheel looked up with a grin. Clarasites darted across his blond dreadlocks, swallowing fragments of ash as they fell from the chimney.
“Hey Cam!” he said.
“You got a minute?”
Springheel nodded.
“Always. Just let me pop this back on.”
He set the screwdriver aside and strapped the prosthetic leg beneath the shattered mess of his knee. Then he rose to his feet, swaying rhythmically on the springy curves of metal that served him for shins.
“I’ve got a job for you,” Cam said.
“I’m in,” Springheel replied.
“You don’t know what it is yet.”
Springheel shrugged. “You always find exciting work. Besides, how else am I going to pass the time?”
The three of them sat in an abandoned shop, sunk in the darkness between office blocks. Somewhere outside, the sun was setting orange across the plains. Down here, there was only the flickering light from broken furniture burning in a rusty brazier.
Cam ran a knife down the miniature of St. Peter, scraping away fragments of paint. He caught the flakes in one hand, then crushed them with the butt of the knife. The fine dust disappeared up his nose in one swift sniff. Suddenly the world seemed clearer, brighter, a place of certainty and substance.
“I can’t believe this place is going to pass through banker central,” Jenny growled from beneath a heap of dirty blankets.
“It’s not an accident,” Cam said.
“And the lack of real scavenger gangs in this block?”
“Mr. Gast’s power reaches down as well as up.”
“Cool,” Springheel said, adjusting the torn trousers that concealed his mechanical legs. “You’ve sure covered the details.”
“There’s one more to address before we go in,” Cam said.
He opened one of the sacks by his feet and spread its contents across the floor. Gunmetal glinted in the firelight.
Jenny crawled out of her heap and across the room. She picked up one of the guns and span the chamber, eyes narrowing as she looked at the engraved butt.
“Morgan Number 16,” she said. “I thought these were barred from import.”
“Associate in the Assault Guard,” Cam said. “He brings things back from campaign.”
Springheel bounced forward and picked up another of the guns.
“Are we gonna use these?” he asked.
Cam shook his head. “Shouldn’t need to, but best to be on the safe side.”
They ate beans from battered cans and drank coffee brewed over the open fire. Outside, the darkness grew deeper. At last, the background rumble of passing pavement and walls softened, as they entered a region of smooth joins and well-oiled gears.
At a nod from Cam the others rose, strapping guns and tools into position beneath dark, shapeless rags. Cam turned the handle of the shop door and pushed.
The door remained stubbornly shut. Cam pushed it again, leaning his weight through his shoulder.
Springheel stepped forward, opened a window, and leaned around.
He sniggered softly. “Door’s too low. They must’ve raised the pavement to keep the riffraff out.”
He swung one leg and then the other over the sill, reaching back to offer Jenny his hand. She slapped it aside and scrambled out after him, leaving Cam to bring up the rear, grinding his teeth at the petty setback.
They stepped out into the scent of roses and the sound of a distantly playing fountain. Moonlight fell across them in bars, striped with the shadow of a tall iron fence. Springheel crouched, tensing the composite curves of his legs, and then leapt. He landed on top of the fence, balancing
with rubber-soled feet on a ridge of razor-spiked metal. He smothered the spines in a heavy blanket, then lowered a rope to Cam and Jenny.
Inside the grounds, they jogged across perfectly manicured lawns, moving from one shadow to the next between birches and cherry trees that protected the house’s residents from viewing the outside world.
Cam heard a scraping. He raised his hand and the other halted in their tracks, listening to heavy footsteps approaching on gravel. Stooped close to the ground, they backed into the entrance of a hedge maze.
Steam hissing from the joints of his motorized armor, a science soldier stomped into view. Electric lanterns cast dazzling beams of light from his shoulders, throwing vast, distorted shadows across the lawn. The glare paused on the maze entrance.
Cam felt sweat prickle his face and dribble down into his left eye. He didn’t dare move to brush it away. The seconds stretched out. Something clicked in the darkness behind those lamps. Was now the time to run? He tensed his legs, took a deep lungful of air, and....
The science soldier turned and marched on around the house, rifle swinging at his side.
Cam slumped into the shadows, heart hammering, waiting for his vision to return. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the icon, crooked fingernail scraping a few flakes free and up his nose.
“Great timing,” hissed Jenny by his ear.
Cam shrugged her off and headed closer to the house, tension receding to a warm tingle.
Around the back of the building, noisy gravel gave way to paved footpaths. On edge against further guards they approached the reinforced windows beneath a third-floor balcony. At a nod from Cam, Springheel took two swift strides and jumped, springing onto the platform above. He lowered a rope and the others scrambled up.
The balcony door was locked, a big brass keyhole covering an intricate assemblage of bolts and gears. Up here, a solid bolt would have sufficed, but such simple solutions were far too common for the House of Immanent.
Jenny unrolled a leather cylinder, revealing a set of slender brass instruments. She took up the tools with nimble fingers trained to unblock the dangerous workings of steam looms. Hooks and levers prodded at the lock’s innards, probing, testing, turning, until Jenny gave a satisfied nod, twisted her wrist, and the mechanism clicked.
The door swung open.
As Cam stepped across the threshold he knew they were in the right room. Carefully contained gas lamps cast a soft glow across dozens of priceless pieces of art. Paneled walls of unadorned wood were hung with rows of paintings, from tranquil pastoral watercolors to bright oils of city life.
The only furniture was an oak pedestal in the center of the room, topped with a small glass cabinet. In its center lay a velvet cushion, and on that the most beautiful object Cam had ever seen.
It was a glass cube, like the one Duodiseus Gast had shown him but smaller, perhaps six inches across. It seemed to suck in all nearby light, focusing it into perfect points, like stars frozen in clear amber. They hung in a sparkling web, a network of still streets caught in the moment before they would burst outward, spreading across the face of the city. Each dazzling fragment drew the eye to the next, creating a sense of motion within stillness, a tension between the frozen crystal landscape and a desperate desire to move. The sight touched a sad corner of Cam’s soul. He too was trapped, caught on the brink of tears by its beauty. This was their goal. This was Urban Drift.
Springheel nudged him.
“C’mon mate, let’s get on with it.”
Cam nodded and moved forward, forcing his gaze away from the pedestal, looking down and around for traps and alarms. Twice he stepped around floorboards with suspiciously well-defined, dirt-free edges. At several points they stopped for Jenny to examine thread-thin wires crossing the room at knee height. She would squint carefully at the wire, watching the way it vibrated under her breath, before either cutting it or signaling to the others to step over.
Cam could feel his legs trembling as he crossed the room. Instinctively, his hand reached for the icon in his bag, but he cursed himself for the weakness and kept moving.
At last, they stood beside the pedestal. Jenny found and disabled two more wires, tiny clamps screwing them into place before she brought out the snips. Then Cam spun the wheel on a pocket fire knife and ran its tiny white flame across the glass, catching the clear circle that fell away.
Cam reached through the hole. Moving slowly to suppress the shaking of his hand, he lifted Urban Drift from its nest and drew it toward him. All three of them held their breath as he edged the glass cube through the gap. The only sound was the echo of footsteps elsewhere in the house.
Cam didn’t even think about the icon now. His whole attention was on the artwork in his hand. Not just the professional attention of a thief at work, but that of a man enraptured, his gaze drawn by those tiny points that, even in the shadow of his hand, gleamed with the fire of stars.
A spasm ran through him, comedown and adrenaline. His arm twitched and there was a clink of glass against glass.
“Crap.”
He yanked Urban Drift clear and thrust it into his satchel.
They hung in a moment of silence. Springheel shook his head, clarasites bouncing through his dreadlocks.
Something in the case clicked. Cam had just enough time to swear before a bell began clanging above their heads.
They rushed onto the balcony. Voices cried out across the grounds and heavy footfalls raced across gravel.
“Go!” Cam cast a rope down into the darkness.
Springheel grabbed Jenny under one arm and leapt, bounding across the garden in a series of arcs that carried him high above the treetops. The sound of voices and footsteps receded after him, interspersed with the snap of gunfire and hiss of tesla beams.
Cam scrambled hand over fist down the rope, knuckles scraping against brickwork. As he reached the ground he turned and scurried, low in the shadows, along the side of the house. With a trembling hand he reached again into his bag and drew out the Morgan Number 16, its butt reassuringly heavy in his hand. His fingers brushed against Urban Drift, and the thought of its beauty sent a tingle up his arm.
The starboard wing of the house, currently facing east, was well lit but badly guarded. A quick glance told Cam that the science soldiers who patrolled this space were gone, chasing Springheel into the night. Cam took a deep breath, steeling himself against disaster, and ran. Gas lamps flickered in the corners of his vision as he sprinted along a mosaic pavement toward a discrete gate.
Cam’s heart pounded. The gate was close. Thirty meters. Twenty. Ten.
“Halt!”
Without pausing, Cam pointed the Morgan over his shoulder and fired. The gun barked once, twice, three times. Cam’s instincts were still good, but his hand was unsteady. The science soldier grunted as bullets hit armored plates, ricocheting off into the darkness.
Cam jumped, fingers grasping the top of the gate, and flung himself over in a rough cartwheel. Bright tesla fire crackled where he had been. He landed heavily in the road, the impact jarring scar tissue in his ankle.
For a moment, he was back on a wind-blasted battlefield. Trapped beneath the smoking ruins of a tank, blood pouring from the twisted top of his boot as he screamed for a medic.
The smell of melting tar snapped him back. The science soldier was racing toward the gate, tesla fire licking the road around Cam. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his ankle, he jerked upright and along the road. Behind him, the gate clanged back against worn stonework and the guard began to run, the heavy footfalls and hiss of his motorized armor pursuing Cam down a wide, tree-lined street.
Cam knew he wasn’t in the proud shape of his youth, but he’d always been an impressive runner. He kept his lead past the wide gates of three grand houses and into a settled cluster of upmarket shops, together so long that moss had grown over the joins between them. Ducking round corners and down alley-ways he tried to shake his pursuer, firing his remaining rounds as a deterrent wh
en he got too close. They ran for an hour through the warm summer night, Cam’s training keeping him going long after he should have collapsed. But the science soldier had steam armor on his side, and his pace never flagged. Cam tried to lose him by leaping aboard a fast-moving workshop as it disappeared into a huddle of factories, but the guard soon reappeared, a hulking silhouette pounding along a fire escape. The sky turned gray as they raced through a shifting checkerboard of artisan suburbs and into a junction cluster. Around them, roads and paths twisted around and across each other before disappearing into a central shaft.
Cam’s body endured, but his mind was beginning to buckle. He couldn’t endure the tension and adrenaline this long without help. Flickers of memory were playing across his brain, moments of mayhem whittling away at his determination. St. Peter was in his satchel, in easy reach. If he could just find a moment to pause, to take breath and catch a hit, then everything would be all right. If only....
He felt the pavement twist beneath him. Up ahead, paving slabs stood up one by one and disappeared into a dark maw of whirling gear teeth. The broken end of a drive-belt lapped out like a tongue. His pulse mingled with flying dust and the footfalls of pursuit, forming a fog that surrounded and penetrated, flooding his mind. The jagged junction tunnel became the rim of a crater, the ground shaken by the hammer of approaching artillery. Fear froze him in its sights, a tortured past screaming in his ears.
Then the present hit him hard, the science soldier slamming into his spine, sending him skidding across rough concrete. Blood speckled the slabs as skin was scraped from his face. His bag slid from his grasp, its contents tumbling away toward the dark opening. An empty gun; a tiny, scarred icon; and Urban Drift, sparkling in the red light of early dawn. Its pattern glowed like blood drops in a blasted land, then turned from crimson to white, from horror to hope, as the sun rose above the street and cast its clear rays down upon them.
Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution Page 26