Ceaseless Steam: Steampunk Stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine

by Scott Andrews (Editor)

  “Bless you,” Mateo said.

  His heart thumped dumbly. He had not meant it. The blessing was just words. Sounds.

  “Please, Lord, keep him safe,” he said, aching to mean it. But he did not. He was empty.

  Batu! What did you cut?

  ‘Anatomical analysis: Excised section does not code for any emotive functions, spiritual pathways, or esoteric sensory processing traits. Don Mateo is experiencing a spiritual-somatic reaction.’

  The door to the basilica banged open.

  “Stefano!” someone yelled.

  Batu, change my shape to match Stefano’s!

  Mateo jumped from the corpse on the floor. Once again, bones shifted in his cheeks, like someone pulling him from the inside.

  “I’m done searching,” Mateo yelled back, already in Stefano’s voice, emerging from the east chapel. “But I didn’t even find dog shit.”

  “Then look for shit outside.”

  Mateo followed the senior agent into the blanching harshness of noontime sun and locked the basilica door. He had played soldier on many missions: condottieri mercenary, city loyalist, naval marine. No one had penetrated his disguises.

  His squad scoured the plaza and side streets all afternoon. Near nightfall, they returned to the Armory. Other squads reported back at the same time and Mateo mingled in, following a pair who walked purposefully to the door of the reception room he’d so recently fled. Mateo slipped in with them, waiting with the bored patience of a tired soldier. The other two showed their licenses to carry augments and signed in with the seated sergeant. Then, the three of them eyed Mateo. He pulled out Stefano’s license and gave it to the sergeant.

  “The Captain told me he wanted an extra hand here tonight,” Mateo said.

  The sergeant grunted, then jerked his thumb towards the Anubis scale that had exposed Mateo only hours before. “I’m not taking any chances,” he said.

  Mateo stepped onto one of the polished plates. They switched one finely-wrought copper feather for another, over and over, while he bobbed on the scale, like a gondola in the lagoon. Finally, they found the balance. Two feathers. Two souls. Precisely.

  The sergeant noted this with stained fingers, then rose, belted on his sword, and told them to lock the door after him. He left into the waxing night. One of the men locked the door. The other claimed the chair, pulling out a set of dice and a few coins. Mateo pulled out his coin pouch and leaned onto the table

  After a few rounds, it was Mateo’s turn to throw. It was easy to cheat at dice using a Thoth device, but all three were using their augments to smell for magic. The room itself was also set with sensors keyed to detect any magical emanations.

  Mateo had to play this physically.

  He tossed the dice a little too hard, rolling one off the table. The two men watched it tumble over. The nearest stooped to pick it up. Mateo rammed the edge of his hand into the seated man’s throat, crushing it. Before the other could even turn, Mateo was upon him with a knife, under the chin, slicing wide. He finished the gasping soldier in the chair before the man’s augment could call for help.

  Mateo stepped to the door of the inner Armory but did not touch it. It would be physically locked, and certainly magically, at least with a Janus lock and more probably with a Cardea chain or a Portunes weave. All were arts of the known world. The art of the Mongols was not.

  Batu, it is time for the Odlek clock.

  The Mongols’ single god, Tengri, had different embodiments. Odlek was Tengri’s personification of time. While the magics of the door might be warded against the cyclic seasonal effects of Chronus, Odlek’s time was deep and linear. And none of the alarms would detect Odlek.

  Batu loosed waves of corroding time. Dry rot filmed the door. Decades warped the boards. Dust rained from splitting wood. The protective magics, never meant to last decades, much less centuries, failed. The remnants of wood, like a net of lace, powdered silently to the floor.

  The corridor beyond led to the inner sanctum of Venice. Stone walls sweated water onto the marble floor. Oil lamps pushed doughy light into darkness. Mateo crept in, clinging to the shadows.

  Listening scarabs were certainly transmitting his location. Mateo couldn’t reveal his abilities yet. He needed to draw them out. He pulled free his sword, surprising a man emerging from a laboratory. Mateo gritted his teeth and plunged his blade into the man’s throat.

  Two Venetian operatives bared their swords behind him. Mateo spun, knocking back their weapons. An operative electrified his own blade with a Jupiter tongue, shocking Mateo back. Four others appeared. They surrounded him. They were close enough.

  Batu! Give me a Vulcan storm!

  ‘Negative,’ Batu said. ‘Harm to Don Mateo’s soul proportional to quantity of killing.’

  What? Do it now! Or we both die!

  A sword point bit deep into the muscles of Mateo’s shoulder.

  ‘Theological belief, subset Don Mateo: soul more important,’ Batu chattered.

  Mateo knocked away two swords. I’ve made my choices, Batu! Obey me!

  The Vulcan storm was a weapon for a battlefield of cannon and arquebusiers, prior to footmen and lancers diving in. It was too big to use in close quarters without consuming its summoner. This was true for basilisk, goblin, and wyvern, but Mateo carried a dragon brain.

  Mateo’s skin hardened, stiffening his movements. Then yellow fire bloomed before him. Finding no room to grow, it shot down the corridor, cooking the air dry. Fuzziness filmed his sight as a membrane of dragon-eye shuttered over his own. Mateo’s clothes burned. His sword softened in his hand, the leather of the hilt charring. The Venetians were incinerated on their feet before the yawning whump of expanding fire dashed their ashes away.

  Mateo, in his dragon skin, stepped woodenly over blackened bodies. Slate-colored smoke shuttered the hot orange light of the burning ceilings. A wooden door lay in flaming splinters. Beyond it, a membranous veil separated this world from the esoteric one, the skin of the world scraped passable by magic. Mateo stepped through.

  Instead of a vast headquarters like the one Genoa had hidden in a god, only a small laboratory lay beyond the doorway in Venice. Thick glass on walls of imported stone showed orange god-blood. White blobs gnawed at the scored glass, eroding, scratch by scratch. The Venetians had not succeeded in co-opting the god’s humoral response.

  He recognized some of the engines by the layouts of their piping. Genoa had similar models. The Shamash engine. The Neptune driver. The Balder point. None of these were important. Genoa already had engines for all these gods. Beside each were massive codices showing how to build and work the devices.

  But the configurations of two of the engines were unfamiliar. Each was as large as a hay wagon, tall with copper pipes, greased gears, and polished mirrors. Deep beneath rotors and flywheels, the layout of the piping became difficult to view, the angles no longer fitting neatly into the three dimensions of the world. Imaginary angles led to dimensions governed by ordinal number systems where gods slavered.

  Which one was the Enlil engine? Had Venice weaponized two new gods? His escape plan only included carrying one codex. He didn’t have the strength to make off with both, and he couldn’t commit the safety of Genoa to a coin toss.

  He opened the first codex. Everything was ciphered. Even the symbols were slippery to the eye. Magical encryption was based on the factoring of imaginary numbers. Only esoteric beasts could perform such maddening calculations.

  Batu, decrypt the text.

  The dragon brain hummed. ‘Decryption key formed,’ Batu said. ‘Codex describes the Grace engine.’

  Then the other codex contains the plans for the Enlil engine, Mateo thought. But what is the Grace engine?

  ‘Grace engine function: to move the god who will not fight,’ Batu said. ‘Deliver grace. Wash a soul clean of sin.’

  “What?” Mateo asked out loud, suddenly cold. Forgiveness?

  ‘Function not limited to forgiveness. Includes sanctification,�
� Batu said.

  Mateo’s stomach lurched. What do you mean ‘sanctity’?

  ‘Concept, theological, subset sanctity: the especial holiness of those who have been touched by Christ,’ Batu said. ‘Those who can work miracles.’

  To work miracles. To save souls, both living and dead. To bring grace to the souls Mateo had consigned to hells. To be forgiven.

  Batu, can we carry both?

  ‘Calculation: combined weight of codices exceeds tolerances.’

  Nor could Mateo receive the benefits of the Grace engine now. It would need hours to heat up, align its mirrors and spin its governors to the right speed. And Mateo was no engineer.

  Could grace be used as a weapon? To counter the Enlil engine?

  No. Christ was healing. The souls of those Mateo had sent to hell stared up from memory with yawning, worm-eaten eyes.

  Apostlehood and sanctity. Healing of his soul. Healing of all souls he touched. Or a device of unutterable destruction.

  Thou shalt have no other god above me.

  Could his mutilated soul be trusted to choose?

  If he returned with the Grace engine codex, Venice would inflict Enlil upon Genoa, followed by mercenary troops. Mateo would be killed. Luciana would be shipped into slavery or killed.

  Clean souls. Dead bodies. They would meet in Heaven. With Christ.

  Luciana.

  He hefted the Enlil codex. He had no tears to offer forsaken grace. He struggled to the portal with the weight of the great book. Past the veil, in the real world, the stones were hot under naked feet. Stinging smoke hovered. Voices sounded. Straight, cutting shines from Apollo lenses wobbled in the distance.

  He was cut off from the exit, and the last dragon trick had to be played. This was why Selvaggi had sent Mateo. Mateo could pull all the magic of an augment, all at once.

  I am sorry, Batu.

  ‘Batu forgives.’

  Then fly, Mateo whispered, opening the dragon’s mind wide.

  The ground crumpled. The ceiling sheared open, dropping paving stones and building blocks around him.

  They leapt into the night sky.

  This was not the flight of a Persian or Slav dragon on leathern wings. This was the flight of a wingless Mongol dragon, whose young rose into the heavens on their own like worms on hooks.

  They hurtled towards Genoa.

  Mateo clutched the Enlil codex tighter, even as Batu’s voice slipped from his mind. He now sailed through the ether alone, above still clouds, riding the last of Batu’s magic back to Genoa. The grace was gone. The cup too fouled. He had become like the gods.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Derek Künsken is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Gatineau, Québec. His fiction has sold to Asimov’s, On Spec, Black Gate, and other markets. Although trained as a molecular biologist, he left science to work with street children in Latin America and eventually found a career in refugee issues. When not writing, he is invariably to be found with his six-year old son playing with action figures, building forts or reading comic books. He is just finishing a fantasy novel set seven years after the events in this story.

  PLAYING FOR AMARANTE

  A.B. Treadwell

  I FIRST CAUGHT SIGHT OF AMARANTE in the sea of pale silk that glimmered in the low light of the concert hall like pearls underwater. She wore carmine.

  Even from my poor vantage on stage, that color spoke its name. Would that it had also spoken—what? A premonition? A warning?

  A carmine bodice, auburn hair caught up with combs of amber, and a rapt, transported stillness. She leaned forward from the second row, listening. My foot on the treadle slowed and stopped, my hands stilled against the glass rims. Ethereal tones from the armonica lingered, mingled, sustained themselves into haunting disquiet. The last reverberation died away.

  The concert hall held its breath, and I held mine.

  In the wash of rising silk and waistcoats and stunning, concussive applause, I caught one flutter of falling. The woman on the second row spilled into the aisle. A flash of carmine pooled on the floor.

  I remember leaping from the bench. The applause trebled. I ran to the edge of the stage, but already I had lost her. The crowd closed over her without a ripple.

  My instinct was to find her, she who was no one to me but a listener in a crowd of hundreds. Even then, before the threads of my life began to unravel, when my innocence was complete and my heart untroubled, I trembled at the intensity of my response.

  I would have sworn on my life that I had never seen her before, but I startled nearly out of my skin when my own voice whispered in my ear that her name was—is—Amarante.

  ~ ~ ~

  My patroness the Comtesse Sophie de Grasse parades me through the concert hall foyer. Her skirts swish down the grand stairs, and her open bodice breathes perfume: essences of iris, jasmine, and orange blossom.

  I open the coach door and lift her by a gloved hand. We sit facing one another. It would be a mistake to ask Sophie about the woman. The way she strokes my knee, I can tell her mind is on other things.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she says. Her face is aglow this night, and she looks the age she pretends to be.

  “Oh?”

  “We have an invitation to dine with Madame Geoffrin.”

  Even as a newcomer to Paris I have heard of Mme. Geoffrin. She is the most famous hostess in all of Europe. “At the Monday salon?”

  “No!” Sophie pulls me closer. “Tonight!”

  Now I understand the blush that glows from her cheeks and neckline. The most preeminent salon in Paris has rearranged its schedule for us.

  “You are the guest of honor,” she says. Her eyes sparkle. “Joseph Haydn will be there! He’s here for one night—rumor has it the head of the Loge Olympique orchestra hopes to persuade him to write a Paris symphony—but Madame Geoffrin has taken great pains to make sure no one knows. He asked to meet the young virtuoso who’s turning Paris inside out. Can you believe it? This could be our gateway to Vienna!”

  Vienna. Winter home of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, builder of palaces with gold-plated halls, theaters dwarfed by murals of Apollo, and sponsor of the finest orchestra in the world. Suddenly Sophie’s dream of introducing me to Haydn’s patron seems dizzyingly real.

  Her words penetrate too quickly. I am to play the armonica for Joseph Haydn. The most celebrated composer in Europe. Tonight. Sweat turns to ice on my skin.

  The carriage jolts to a stop, and Sophie slides into my lap. She kisses me deeply. “Carry yourself like an artist.” She smoothes the ruffles of my shirt.

  I am dizzy with perfume and the rush that answers Sophie’s touch.

  Vienna is a dream; meeting Haydn, delirium. Perhaps one day, to train under him and play alongside the best musicians in the world with Apollo’s reflected glory falling over us. In all my life, there will never be another chance.

  I whisper a prayer in my mother’s rustic dialect.

  The coachman opens our door, and we step out.

  ~ ~ ~

  The bellman announces us as “Monsieur Persèe Durand and the Comtesse de Grasse.”

  The inverted order of our names arrests me until Sophie gives me a nudge, and I remember that in this room, on this night, it is my name that matters.

  The drawing room is draped with brocade and tassels in shades of sea foam. Niches hold potted orchids, gilded cages with rare birds, and chaise lounges where the silken curves of the old aristocracy brush against the rumpled waistcoats of the intelligentsia.

  A great mirror hangs above a marble fireplace, doubling movement, guests, and light.

  A woman with a long white braid draped over her shoulder sweeps toward us. “Welcome, Comtesse! Monsieur Durand, a pleasure.” She presses Sophie’s hand in both her own.

  “Madame Geoffrin.” Sophie’s voice is breathless.

  Our hostess, the most coveted contact in Paris, holds a hand to me. I kiss it.

  Madame Geoffrin laughs. “What pretty manners! I see your
hand in this one, Comtesse.”

  Sophie smiles at me and links her arm in mine. “No, I’m afraid he came to me this way. I have only taught him bad habits.”

  “But what a lovely bouquet your bad habits make, Comtesse.” Sophie and I turn to see a man in a well-cut dress coat sweep a dashing bow.

  “Monsieur Franc La Ronge, philologist, playwright, philanderer, poet to the Hapsburg court.”

  “Madame Geoffrin exaggerates. My poetry is doggerel.” La Ronge kisses Sophie’s hand. “How is your husband, Comtesse?”

  Sophie colors prettily. “At home, poor man. Managing distillation. Perfume is a demanding mistress.”

  “I would not want any other kind,” says La Ronge.

  My head is spinning. This La Ronge fellow pens verse for the Empress. How many heads of state are but one degree away from the guests in this room?

  Mme. Geoffrin touches my arm. “I have a place for you in the great room.” She pulls me away, and I glance back only once at Sophie. She does not look for me.

  Heads turn as I cross the room with Mme. Geoffrin. I pass faces as familiar as the profiles on currency. They stare because I am out of place, I think, but then a second thought sends bright hot needles across my skin. Perhaps they stare because they know exactly who I am.

  The most beautiful and powerful men and women in all of Europe know my name.

  The most beautiful save one. I search the room and find every shade but carmine.

  “Madame Geoffrin,” I venture. “Did you attend this evening? There was a woman in the second row. Did you see her fall?”

  Mme. Geoffrin inclines her head toward me. “I was not in attendance, but surely my guests would have mentioned anything untoward. The second row, you say?”

  “Yes. She wore carmine.” For no reason at all, I blush.

  “I will inquire discretely for you.”

  “Thank you, Madame.”

  Mme. Geoffrin leads me to a curtained alcove lined with low benches. Another great mirror catches the reflection from the other room. Below it sits an inlaid stand the size of a sewing table. The stand conceals the instrument, the armonica. A chair waits for me.