Ceaseless Steam: Steampunk Stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine

by Scott Andrews (Editor)

  Had I understood these things rationally, I would have realized that he was, therefore, limited. But this was not the case. I screamed, and ran to the mantle-piece, and took up one of the candlesticks upon it, and threw the candlestick at the mirror. The glass shattered into a thousand shards, and I threw myself up and through the space behind it, shouting “Why do I not want it to end?”

  And on the far side of the mirror was an odalisque, a harem-room, filled with women, young, beautiful, veiled and nude, all turning to look at me as I fell into their home, spitting froth from my lips, bleeding from the mirror-glass that had cut me on my way. For a moment I thought that this was where the Clockwork King satiated his clockwork lusts, and I felt it keenly that he should have for his plaything whatever he might pretend to desire while my own desire was so far from my grasp.

  But then I saw that among that harem were all the women of the court, and the Empress chief among them, in the guise of Venus. Not all the women of the court: Olympia was not there. But every other woman, and in their arms all the males of the Imperial court, disporting themselves as they pleased, the reality their dances had symbolized. As though I were seeing the hidden desires of everyone I knew being acted out before me, and I had no way to go but forward. I rose and began to cross the harem of the Clockwork King, and all the faces of all the men turned to me, and then I saw that they were all my face. It was I in the arms of every woman, it was I disporting myself for the amusement of the Queen of Love, yes, it was I too who was her lover, who was the male principle of this dissolute council.

  A darkness passed before my face; I felt myself stagger. My fever. My wounds. Sight and sense returned before I fell to the ground. I pushed on, howling out my questions: “Who am I, that I should love? By what right do I love, what have I done that I should deserve it?” No-one there dared to stop me as I drove myself on, and stumbled into a long dark passage.

  When the passage opened out again, I seemed to be inside a ruined mausoleum. There was broken stonework to every side, statues toppled and wrecked. A heap of fallen stones on the far side of the room served as a stairway up which raced the cloaked figure of the Clockwork King. Light came from a fire outside of the room, set by a fire or gunpowder explosion, flickers and flashes, and in the voluptuous shadows I seemed to see the worst of the automata, the gryphons and unicorns and foreign gods, all come home at the command of the roaring organ far below me; but they were moving at their own will, I saw them, reaching for me, and I could not say what was real and what was hallucination.

  “Why must Theodore die?” I cried, staggering through them. “How will I kill him? Why does she mean more than him?” They receded before me, and I reached the pile of stones and started to climb after the Clockwork King. “Who would I not kill for her?” I shouted. But there was no answer.

  Then there was fresh air upon my face, and the warmthless light before dawn. And the sounds and smoke of war.

  I had chased the Clockwork King to a rooftop garden, a thick mechanical forest where evenly-spaced metal trees shadowed iron sod. The King staggered away from me, and I jumped upon him. He fell, spread out beneath me. We rolled over together, and brass arms fell upon my back, crushing me up against him.

  “Why does no-one see the truth of Olympia but me?” I demanded. Roughly I tore the hood from the mirror that was his head. “How can I touch her, break her, to make her feel me?” His arms, embracing me, ground my ribs against each other and I could not breathe. Bleeding, feverish, drooling, my fingers scrabbled over smooth glass. “Why does love mean pain?” I gasped, and shattered the mirrored head of the Clockwork King, which was after all only a close-fitting helmet, and underneath was a human skull.

  The skull said: “Can a shadow weigh desire in a scale, or a serpent measure art by a cord?” And then the Clockwork King fell back, and did not move, done in by the fatal question he could no longer keep from asking. His dead arms bound me, and for a time I lay atop him, drifting in and out of wakefulness, gunfire and organ music surging in my ears. I thought it odd that the question he could not answer was not, after all, unanswerable; then it seemed to me that he could not answer the question not because he did not know the answer, but because he did not dare to provide it. To ask it was to answer it. To answer it was to admit his ruin. Thus I had killed him with a question.

  Then I was being pulled free of the corpse of the Clockwork King. I screamed as my flesh was torn again. But I opened my eyes, and I saw the glory that preceded the dawning sun, and saw who it was that had freed me, and then knew I was mad, mad beyond hope of return. “You,” I said. “Here.”

  “Yes,” said Olympia. Did I love her? Or did I love only the image of her in my head? At that moment those two things collapsed into one. “I followed the automata when they retreated from the city,” she said. “For I am being chased.”

  Behind her, climbing up the stone stairway from the Palace of Wheels-Within-Wheels, came Theodore. He had a new sword in hand, twin to his old one, which I still, somehow, held. “Ernst,” he said. “Stand aside.”

  “No,” I said. He stepped forward, left hand out.

  “Let us be reasonable,” he began.

  I stabbed him through the heart.

  He blinked, and stared at his own blade projecting from his chest. He whirled away, wrenching the sword from my hand. “Ah,” he said. “The Clockwork King . . . he said that I would perish here.” He fell to his knees, and then upon his side, and died looking no man in the eyes.

  For a moment in the mechanical forest Olympia and I stood, silent. The powerful throb of the organ music made a strange harmony with the shelling and gunfire at the edge of the fair-ground. I took Olympia by the shoulders. “He is dead,” I said. “He was a thief and a killer and a seducer and maybe a rapist and a traitor, for all I know; but he was close enough to my soul as to be a part of me; and now he is dead.”

  She said nothing. I stared at the light of dawn playing upon her face. Then I kissed her.

  We fell to the ground, which was no longer metal but true forest land, and there were trees above us with birds singing to the accompaniment of the great organ, and fireworks exploding all around us, and the sun shining; and we were there together, and loved one another.

  When I returned to myself it was past noon. Some noise had woken me from a sleep or daze. I sat up. I was still upon the roof of the palace, its metal soil, its artificial forest. What had happened? What had really happened, and what had been dementia? The Clockwork King was dead nearby. So was Theodore. But the metal of the place was unchanged. And Olympia was nowhere to be seen.

  I looked over the edge of the palace. Living soldiers, wearing the colors of the Empress, were demolishing the city; having shelled it from a distance for some hours, they were now evidently brave enough to approach to complete its demolition. The automata, such as were intact, were everywhere immobile. I watched the soldiers awhile, feeling the pains of the past night; then I descended into the palace.

  The Prodigy was asleep, curled up upon the seat of the organ. I woke him. He claimed he had played the organ all night, until he fell asleep; he thought that Kreisler had climbed into the pipes of the organ and never come out again. “He said something strange before he did, though,” the Prodigy told me. “He said, ‘Now I see the answer; I see the way by which the answer will come; sanity is, after all, madness, and our words are too small for the truth.’” I shook my head, and we left the palace.

  Outside, the soldiers glanced at us, and went about their chores. We clearly were not the enemy. It was a grey day; high clouds had rolled in, and a thin rain fell.

  I left the Prodigy with a colonel, to whom I gave instructions to see him carefully back to V—. I trudged through the city of the automata. Its every proud tower had been thrown down. Its jewels were scattered about in the mud underfoot; most of them quartz and pyrite.

  I came to the gatehouse with the hall of mirrors. The hall was dim, lit by the dull light from outside, bereft of mystery. Only gl
ittering shards upon the floor, throwing slivers of me back to myself, recalled what it had been.

  Then I saw, in one corner, a single mirror untouched. Whole. And madness rushed full upon me again, and I put my hand upon the glass.

  I said, “Can a shadow weigh desire in a scale, or a serpent measure art by a cord?”

  And at what I saw then, I gasped aloud.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Matthew David Surridge is a freelance writer who lives in Montreal. He has written non-fiction for a number of venues, including The Comics Journal. His story “The Word of Azrael” appeared in Black Gate.

  THE GOD THIEVES

  Derek Künsken

  MATEO DEL MONTE FELTRO was with his young daughter Luciana, praying to the god who would not fight, when an intelligence agent from the Bank of Saint George entered his house. After the fever took his wife and sons, Mateo had converted the west room into a chapel to the emaciated god nailed to the cross. Icons and amulets to other gods, he disposed of with respect. Though the gods who fought were unreasoning, the superstition that he might offend them was ingrained.

  The agent was followed by two others and Vicenzo Selvaggi, Chief of Staff to the Master of the Intelligence Guild. Mateo removed his cap. Signor Selvaggi was an ascetic prodigy of magic, surgery, theo-taxonomy and theo-ecology. The Guild did not risk his genius on missions, and Mateo did not think him to be in the habit of visiting damaged operatives. Agents whispered that Signor Selvaggi put strange things into his skull, giving him access to magics and esoteric insights unmatched by other augments. The latest rumor, for what it was worth, alleged that he carried a pair of fetal gryphon brains in his skull. Monstrous.

  Luciana hid behind Mateo. He rested a gentle hand against her cheek.

  “Don Mateo,” Signor Selvaggi said, with a voice as light as a castrati’s. “I am returning you to active status.”

  “The board said I would not be recalled until my injuries had healed.”

  “I am not so convinced as your surgeons that your…spiritual injuries prevent you from serving Genoa,” Signor Selvaggi said. “A man who follows two paths arrives nowhere.”

  “My following the Christ does not interfere with my service to the Bank and Genoa. The Christ may have something to teach us.”

  “Christ exists, but no engine will make him do anything useful.”

  “His powers may be subtle,” Mateo said.

  “Our strategic military needs are not. Venice has acquired a new theo-military asset. It is from the first circle.”

  Mateo’s hands felt cold. He exhaled slowly, years of training keeping expression from his face, movement from his stance.

  “I cannot give you the details here,” Signor Selvaggi said. “Come to the Bank.”

  Mateo’s stomach hollowed. First-circle. Probably every available operative was being recalled, no matter their condition.

  He knelt and put a hand on Luciana’s shoulder. Aging spies at least were the best liars. What tore at his innards never sounded in his voice.

  “I must go for a trip, Luciana. I may be some time, but I will bring you back a present.”

  “You don’t need to bring me a present, papa. You can stay if you want.” He saw her trying to be brave, but tears collected at the edges of her eyes.

  He hugged her and felt her hands make little fists around the sides of his shirt. He let her go, replaced his smile, and gently freed his shirt from her fingers. He could not look at her anymore without putting himself further under Signor Selvaggi’s thumb. He rose and threw a tabard over his doublet and followed Signor Selvaggi into sun-stained, puddled streets.

  Venice outpaced Genoa in the maritime trade with the Levant and Constantinople, but Genoa controlled the movement of capital and credit with the Bank of Saint George. Neither held an upper hand militarily. Where the Venetians could scour the Levant and Mediterranean for new gods to harness, the vast wealth of Genoa could attract knowledge of divine weapons from as far away as China, India, and beyond the Sahara. A perilous balance. Much running but no movement. A new first-circle asset changed everything. It would leave Genoa a smoking ruin.

  The Bank of Saint George came into view, a massive structure of brick and column work, a solid block of competence and wealth. They entered, passing layers of well-paid Mantuan condottieri with cross-bows and swords. At the lowest sub-basement, beneath even the vaults, two dour-faced Bank of Saint George marines met them before a high wooden door and a man-sized set of bronze scales, based on Egyptian magic.

  The marines saluted, examined Mateo’s license to carry an augment, and motioned him onto the Anubis scale. Mateo stepped onto one of the pans. It thumped against the wool padding beneath. On the other one, the marine set a luminescent feather of copper. He switched one feather for another from a collection of them in a blue velvet case until Mateo balanced against two copper feathers. Mateo weighed two souls. The marine saluted and repeated the process with Signor Selvaggi. The Anubis scale balanced with three feathers. It was true! Monstrous.

  Past the door, Signor Selvaggi led Mateo a short distance to a curtain of light stretching across the corridor. Mateo had only been this deep into the Bank on three other occasions, none of them pleasant. He stepped through the barrier into stomach-tipping eeriness. They were no longer in Genoa, or anywhere within the celestial spheres. Light traveled poorly here. Guttering lamps were blots of light without reference to the world.

  They walked past laboratories with furnaces, crucibles and flasks, and others where strange expiring animals were kept. In a large office, Signor Selvaggi indicated a table flanked by two antique chairs festooned with Greek-styled icons: Juno, Ceres, Christ, Poseidon, Vulcan. Surely taken in the sack of Constantinople, when the fourth crusade had turned the mindless goddess Freya on Genoa’s allies. A trophy of cunning.

  Mateo sat gingerly. Behind the desk, eight inches of glass protected the room from the sanguine haze beyond— the slowly thumping heart of a god. The Guild’s alchemists and philosophers were not only capable of implanting the brains of beasts into the skulls of men, but they’d co-opted the humoral immunity of a god and planted their headquarters inside its invulnerable body.

  Geniuses or parasites. Cunning.

  “What is the mission, Signor?”

  “The Venetians have unearthed ancient texts about an Assyrian god called Enlil,” Signor Selvaggi said. “From the first circle. Fully weaponizable. They are constructing an Enlil engine. You will steal the plans. They are being kept below the chambers of the Council of Ten in Venice.”

  ”But how? No one has ever penetrated the Armory of Venice,” Mateo said. There was no more secure place in the world, except for the Bank of Saint George.

  “Not with normal magics,” Signor Selvaggi said.

  Despite himself, Mateo leaned forward.

  So did Signor Selvaggi. “I have a dragon augment for you, Don Mateo.”

  Mateo sat back abruptly. “Not possible.”

  An augment’s brain had to fit inside a man’s skull. Wyverns and basilisks had small brains. Despite this, they still had to be so lobotomized that nearly nothing of their personality was left to run the magic that operatives needed for espionage. A dragon’s brain was as large as a pony’s.

  “I’ve cut everything from it,” Selvaggi whispered. “Appetite. Humoral systems. Motor nerves. Taste and smell centers. All that remain are the mapping cortex, the processing lobe, and the seat of the soul.” Mateo must have looked doubtful. Selvaggi leaned closer. “There’s more. It’s a hatchling. A twelfth the size of an adult.” He quivered with excitement.

  “How? Did you take it by force?”

  Esoteric beasts were dangerous, even as disembodied brains. Mateo wouldn’t want to be trapped in his own skull with one that didn’t want to be there. The Intelligence Guild usually acquired brains from ancient beasts willing to sacrifice the flesh to hide from mortality.

  “This is no normal dragon,” Selvaggi said. “It had been abandoned. Its egg had cracked. A m
old infected it. Covered its scales.”

  Mateo pitied the creature abandoned by parents. He couldn’t bear the thought of his own daughter possibly becoming an orphan.

  “The power of this augment is like nothing we have ever seen,” Selvaggi said. “It comes from the land of the Mongols, through the Portuguese. It knows all our magics and the magics of the Mongols.”

  “It won’t prevent the Venetians from putting an arrow in me, or something worse,” Mateo countered, “before I get anywhere near the Armory.”

  “The Intelligence Guild is not a safe trade at any time, but the cunning agent can exploit his advantages.”

  “Why me? There are better agents.”

  Selvaggi snorted. “Younger perhaps, but you are far more experienced. And only you have been able to unleash the full power of an augment.”

  “I’m not the same man I was, Signor. I don’t know if my soul can do it anymore.”

  Selvaggi’s face stiffened. “I will be frank with you, Don Mateo. I don’t care about your soul. If this is about your Christ, you’d best make some decisions. We don’t have anyone else to send in. I don’t think anyone else could handle a dragon augment. So either Don Mateo takes the assignment, or Genoa is leveled.”

  Mateo’s mouth dried. “Signor Selvaggi, there is no way to survive this mission.”

  “You will see,” Selvaggi said. “This augment is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. An Apollo burst is a trifle for him. He can change your shape. His brain is not just one brain. His consciousness rides a series of small brains. He can decipher codes in moments. He can emit epiphany pulses under field conditions.”