by Jasmine Walt
The thoughts drifting in and out of Nicholas' head had been the usual cacophony of city animals – horses thinking about warm hay, pigs wondering what the nice man with the knife would be getting them for lunch, pigeons scouting out the perfect gentleman's hat to use as a convenient latrine. But one by one they too fell away, and he was left with a humming chorus of voices – rodents, all thinking together. Not rats, like in Paris, but something even more intelligent.
As they neared the wall, they passed blocks of abandoned tenements, their crumbling walls streaked with filth and gutted by fires. So thick and poisonous was the air not even the poorest people in London would live in the streets surrounding the Engine Ward. His eyes stinging, Nicholas pulled his kerchief from his pocket and held it to his face.
"Do you hear it?" Aaron asked. "The choir?" Nicholas nodded, instantly understanding. The rodents' voices rose in volume as they neared the gates, the thoughts coming to him in waves, rising and falling in pitch like the chorus of an opera. Their thoughts – harmonious, like a song – sent complex messages, and Nicholas saw maps of the rodents’ tunnels impressed in his thoughts.
"It's the compies – they took over from the rats about five years ago. They're the only creatures who feel at home in the Ward. Besides us Dirty Folk, of course."
As Aaron had said, the towering iron gates were locked tight, and a crowd of engineers and acolytes blocked the street, their brightly coloured robes flapping about their bodies as they banged on the doors and yelled insults at the guards on the wall above. Aaron grabbed Nicholas' hand and began pushing through the crowd.
As people realised it was a Stoker trying to push through, they stepped back, tripping over each other to avoid having to touch him. "Oi, Stoker!" called an Aether engineer. Aaron looked up, and the engineer spat in his face. "You ought to wash your face," the Aetherian smirked. A man wearing the purple robes of the Isis Sect swept his hand along Aaron's arm, then folded it into his sleeve and pretended it had fallen off. His companions sniggered.
Aaron kept his chin high, and did not acknowledge their taunts. Nicholas stared at the Stoker's blackened overalls, his ears burning as the crowd whispered to one another about the shabby gentleman being led by a Stoker.
Once through the crowd Aaron pulled Nicholas into an alleyway, and pushed open the door to an empty tenement block. He motioned for Nicholas to enter.
"Aaron, those engineers back there. They—"
Aaron shook his head. "C'mon Nicholas, you can't have thought things here would be any better? You're lucky – you're a stranger to them. You have freedom men like me can only dream of. You could be anything. Are you sure you want to get in with Isambard and the Stokers?"
Nicholas looked into Aaron's eyes – gleaming against the blackened skin on his face like two orbs of hard, cold marble. He hears the voices. All my life I thought I was the only one. "I am no more free than you are," he said, and ducked inside the tenement. Aaron closed the door behind him.
Aaron led Nicholas down a pitch-black staircase into the cellar. He pulled a rotting doorway off the wall, picked up an Argand lamp that lay abandoned beside the wall, and shone the dim light behind the door, revealing a low stone tunnel. "I presume you remember the existence of these tunnels below the Ward," he said. "The Stokers use them to move between areas of the Ward. Now we have some, like this one, that stretch beyond the Ward – we use it when we need to move outside the Wall without being harassed. If the Council were to discover these tunnels, we'd be in a lot of trouble. So don't be surprised if folk down here aren't friendly to a stranger, do you understand?"
Nicholas nodded. As he peered into the darkness, the chorus of compies turned into a roar, thundering against the sides of his skull with such force he cried out and jammed his fists into his ears.
"It comes in waves," Aaron said. "You get used to it. Follow me. You got that Stoker pin still?"
Nicholas nodded, and followed Aaron into the tunnel, ducking his head to avoid scraping it on the low stone ceiling. The tunnel sloped sharply downward, and Aaron's Argand hardly penetrated the gloom. Nicholas held onto the bare brick walls, trying to keep his footing on the damp slope.
Down they went, ‘till the tunnel widened out into a round antechamber, lit by flickering Argand lamps and a faint shaft of light from a ventilation shaft above. Aaron met a guard, and both he and Nicholas displayed their Stoker pins before being ushered into the hall beyond.
Here the stone walls were barely visible behind bank after bank of machinery. At one end of the long room, four men took turns shovelling coal into two Cornish furnaces, while another stood ready to rake the coal flat over the fire. Hundreds of pipes crisscrossed the expanse of the cavern – nearly more than a hundred feet long in all and sixty wide, with at least twenty men swarming about on two levels, pulling levers, checking gauges, and yelling at each other in an incomprehensible language.
"One-twenty for boiler seventy-two, C Quarter. Better pump her up!"
"Wheel's shot out in D quarter – get Oliver on it!"
'Williams!" a croaking voice called. Nicholas turned to see a hunched man, his face pinched and crumpled with age, leaning over the gangway leading to the upper level of the galley. He gestured for Aaron. "Don't stand there like a useless Navvy. We're losing pressure in seventy-two—"
"Not now, Quartz," Aaron called, his stern face breaking into a smile as he tipped his head at the old man. "I'm on church business."
"Of course you bloody are." The man smiled, revealing a row of rotting teeth, and made a rude gesture at Aaron before returning to his work.
Aaron led Nicholas down another tunnel, pushing past several Stokers jogging in the opposite direction. "Don't mind Quartz," he said. "He's the closest thing to a father I have. We're a little uncivilised down here."
Nicholas noticed how the Stokers in the tunnel moved to the side so everyone could get past without pushing, the men calling friendly insults to each other as they passed. "If you want to see uncivilised," he laughed, "you should visit France."
They ascended a set of metal steps, and Aaron pushed open a heavy iron door. Nicholas, his eyes accustomed to the dimness, squinted as light flooded the stairwell.
He stepped out into an open square, surrounded on each side by the towering cathedrals of the four richest sects: Aether, Isis, Morpheus, and Great Conductor. From the lofty spires of these great edifices the Messiahs worked – Shelley penned his verses, Turner painted his landscapes, and the great plume of smoke and debris spewing from the top of the Aether Church suggested Banks was conducting some kind of chemical experiment. Worshippers crowded the marble steps – the Isis acolytes in floaty dress, setting up their easels and positioning the courtesans they'd hired from Convent Garden, banging elbows with the Aetherians and their chemistry sets, while the Morpheans called insults across the square and scribbled their favourites down in their notebooks. Only one church remained silent, the front doors firmly locked. Stephenson's worshippers had gone north to build his railway, leaving Brunel the most prominent Great Conductor Church in London.
Engineers from every sect crammed the square, their arms laden with plans and supplies as they pushed against the tide of people, dodging the elaborate shrines built by prominent politicians. Along Industry Street – the main thoroughfare for the Ward – drivers yelled obscenities as they attempted to navigate a traffic jam that stretched right back up to the gates. The horses spluttered and neighed in protest as they were forced to stand in the soot-blackened air.
Nicholas gripped Aaron's arm as he was pulled through the surging crowd, ducking into the alley between the Isis and Aether cathedrals and emerging on one of the side streets. Smaller churches crammed the roadside, built leaning up against each other and jutting out at odd angles. These churches didn't have the patronage of wealthy Royal Society members, so they built their houses of worship with what they had available – usually wood, brick and metal salvaged from the now-defunct shipyards. Some of these religions were affiliated with
official Gods of Industry, while others, like the Metics and Dirigires, were cults devoted to strange foreign deities. (The Metics – who believed imperial measurement was an affront to the Gods – and the Dirigires – men who flew great balloons and worshipped a goddess of the sky – were both French religions, which meant they'd never found much favour in England.)
Down another side street, only a block from where Nicholas had attended Marc Brunel's school as a boy, Aaron stopped on the corner and pointed up. "Here you are: the Chimney."
He gazed up, unable to believe Isambard had really created this. The Chimney was a modest building, the spire a disused smoke stack that had formed one of the earlier Ward workshops. The Stokers had reshaped the workshop, widening the space and creating a vaulted nave. Short wings protruded from either side, slotting into the gaps between the giant Lord Byron shrine and Joseph Banks’ Aether Church that flanked the structure. The giant iron doors were closed. Engineers wearing the robes of the Great Conductor sat on the steps, and Stokers rushed in and out, attending to various chores.
Aaron rapped his knuckles against the door. A slot opened and two beady eyes peered out suspiciously.
"We've no services today," the mouth belonging to the eyes said.
"Don't pretend you can't see me, Peter. I've brought Nicholas Thorne to see Isambard."
Nicholas paled. "Please don't use that name," he said. "It's Rose now."
"Nicholas Thorne?" The man spat. "The scoundrel who done killed our brother?"
Nicholas stepped away, shocked by the resemblance between Aaron and the priest. Although at least ten years his senior, the priest shared Aaron's piercing eyes, curled black hair, and gaunt features. Nicholas remembered the fearsome reputation of Henry's elder brothers among the Stokers – priests who delighted in finding religious transgressions within the Ward to bring before the Council. They'd been particularly diligent in weeding out troublesome Stokers, and had played a crucial role in convicting Marc Brunel. Nicholas decided it was prudent to keep his mouth shut.
Aaron had no such qualms. "Henry got himself killed with his own stupidity, and you will too if you don't open this door."
Aaron's brother slammed the cover over the slot, and with a hiss of steam, the door swung inward. Peter – who towered over them both in his silk robes – scowled at them. "What's he doing here?"
"Priests don’t ask questions," Aaron said. "That's the price you pay for not ever having to get your hands dirty."
"You'd better watch your tongue, or I'll report you to Oswald." But Peter sloped off into the shadows, leaving them alone in the Nave.
"Oswald?"
"My other brother. He's Head Priest, and not as angry as Peter, but even more dangerous. You'll meet him in time."
"I thought your brothers were priests in Stephenson's church."
"They were – and a fine penny they were making from it, too. But Stephenson refused to take them with him when he left for the north. Being Stokers, he didn't consider them trustworthy." He snorted. "They'll do anything to avoid manual labour, and Oswald was smart enough to realise the priesthood of Isambard's church would incur no wrath from the Stokers. It's less power, less money, but it's an easy life. We take the elevator here."
He pulled aside a panel decorated with a pattern of rivets forming a Stoker cross, and stepped into a metal cage. Nervous at once again entering the darkness, Nicholas stepped in beside him. Aaron closed the panel and leaned his weight against one of the levers sticking out from the floor of the cage. With a jerk, they lurched downward.
Aaron had brought no light with him, and Nicholas had plenty of time, lost with his thoughts in the darkness, to wonder what awaited him at the bottom of that elevator shaft. It occurred to him briefly that maybe he was being set up. Maybe Isambard had used Aaron to lure him here, to exact revenge for Nicholas' part in Marc Brunel's sentence. The knife in his pocket felt heavy, and Nicholas wondered if he would have to use it.
The din of the compies still came upon him in waves, but it was abating. Not even the compies would come this far into the earth.
Finally, the elevator jerked to a stop. Nicholas heard Aaron pull open the grate, and a hand grabbed his sleeve. "Through here," Aaron said, directing him through a low door.
The workshop was dim, lit by a roaring furnace in the far corner and a row of Argand lamps scattered across the benches. Nicholas could barely make out the shapes of the long tables, laden with strange machines and rolls of technical drawings smudged with oily fingerprints. Sheets of metal, half-formed cogs and stacks of miscellaneous parts leaned against one wall.
"Nicholas."
The voice startled him. He whirled around as Brunel stepped out of the darkness and rushed forward to greet him.
His emotions on edge, Nicholas' first instinct was to step back, his hand flying to his pocket. Isambard, seeing his distress, held up his hands in surrender. He extended one, and after a few awkward seconds of staring at it, Nicholas stepped forward and shook.
"It's been too long, my friend," Isambard said, his cold, bony fingers entwining with Nicholas' own. "Please, sit with me."
Isambard pulled a stool in front of the furnace, and Nicholas sat on it gingerly, still nervous in the presence of his old friend. Isambard sank into a wing-backed chair opposite him. Once opulent, its fabric was now blackened with soot and the stitching was unravelling around the arms. Aaron sat on the floor behind Brunel, his thin legs stretching across the floor.
"I'm sorry, I do not have any tea to offer—"
"You did not answer my letters," Nicholas blurted out.
"No, I did not." Isambard stared at his hands. "I treasure them, every one, but I could not bring myself to read them, let alone reply. You have to understand … I felt like a failure. You and James went off on your adventure, but I was trapped in Engine Ward. You would both return as gentlemen, your Stoker heritage forgotten, and our friendship could not continue, for gentlemen do not associate with Dirty Folk. I knew your letters would be filled with new sights, strange smells, great adventures … but I had no stories to tell in return. I woke up, I shovelled coal into the furnaces ‘till my fingers bled, I fell asleep, and I did it all again the next day. I wanted to wait ‘till I had this," he gestured around the room, "to show you, but by then you had stopped writing. But you're here now, and can see it with your own eyes."
"And it is truly amazing, but Isambard, you should have known James and I would not judge you. We knew against what you've fought. You must be the bravest man I know to have built this church right under the nose of Stephenson and the Royal Society."
Isambard's face brightened. "Wait ‘till you see my locomotives. But please … I want to hear about your adventures. Aaron tells me you came to England from France. A border crossing is no easy feat—"
"No, it is not. And you must appreciate that I can't discuss it," Nicholas said, his voice sharper than intended. He didn't mean to offend Isambard, but he had to keep the details of his flight as secret as possible. His survival depended on his presence in London remaining undetected.
"But you have been studying at one of the French schools?" Isambard pressed him.
"I have not sat for a degree," Nicholas answered, not willing to explain any further. "But I have studied under many of the great European architects. My knowledge of architectural principles is sound. Aaron tells me you have a job for me?"
Isambard led him to a table, covered in a grimy cloth. He whipped away the cloth, and Nicholas leaned over to get a better look at the intricate model that spread out across the bench. The model of London city sprang to life, clockwork gears crunching under the table as the figures crossed the narrow streets. Around the perimeter of the city, bisecting many of London's richer suburbs, was a high wall. Atop this structure, a locomotive and two carriages made a lazy circumnavigation of the city.
"This is my design for the engineering competition," said Brunel. "But I am a man of machines, Nicholas. I know how to make something work, but I don't kn
ow how to make it appealing to the discerning eye. The poets and artists of the Isis and Morphean sects are going to have something visually stunning, and for my Wall to impress the King, it needs the touch of an architect."
"You want me to—"
"Make my Wall beautiful." He handed Nicholas a sheet of paper. "The fee is modest, I'm afraid, but there will be a permanent job for you with me when we win."
"If we win," Aaron corrected.
Isambard laughed. "Mr. Williams doesn't share my optimism." He circled the table, pointing out details of the design. "Each gate operates with steam-powered doors. These pistons drive the locks. If the French ever think to invade, they’ll have to break through these first. And here." he pointed to the districts of Belgravia and Kensington. "We will build the Wall double height."
"Why?"
"The richest people in London – including the men on the Council – have residences in these suburbs, and they will want to maintain an atmosphere of exclusivity. When I build the railway, it will go through a tunnel in Belgravia, and so their garden parties and croquet games are unspoiled by the soot and steam. We’ll install separate gatehouses and private train platforms, also."
While Brunel explained the various features of the Wall, Nicholas scribbled notes and watched Aaron out of the corner of his eye.
Aaron leaned back against the workbench, closed his eyes, and rested his head against his chest. Within moments, he'd fallen asleep, his head bobbing against his chest as he let out a loud snort.
Brunel noticed him watching Aaron. "He often falls asleep down here. His wife must keep him busy at night," he said, smiling.
Suddenly, Nicholas realised the reason for his friend’s slumber. He'd been so awed by entering the workshop and seeing Isambard again, so thrilled with the prospect of working on the Wall, he hadn't noticed the most remarkable thing of all.