by Jasmine Walt
The Council of the Royal Society convened an emergency meeting and confirmed what the populace of London knew already – in the absence of any immediate heirs to the throne, there was only one man fit to rule the Kingdom, and that man was Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
He took the title of Lord Protector, and would not wear a crown. He was given other honours – he would take over from Stephenson as Messiah of the Sect of the Great Conductor, and would replace Joseph Banks as President of the Royal Society. There were only two men in all of England who opposed the changes: Robert Stephenson, now demoted to the mere rank of priest, and Aaron Williams, who had disappeared into the tunnels and hadn't been seen for days.
Brigitte squeezed Nicholas’ hand. "You were right," she said, leaning into his shoulder. "Isambard is a brilliant engineer, and a truly great man. What better leader for this country than he?"
Nicholas smiled back, but in the back of his mind, questions swarmed. An engineer instead of a king – what does this mean for England? More importantly, what does it mean for Isambard? He'd not been near Isambard since the night they entered the palace. Isambard had been swept up in the affairs of state, but Nicholas wondered if the new responsibilities sat well with his friend – if the adoration of the populace, the responsibility of running a country, the title "Metal Messiah" being hailed from every corner affected him. Nicholas wondered too if Aaron knew of Isambard's appointment, and how he would be taking the news.
"And now," said Buckland, the new Prime Minister, "the Lord Protector Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunel will give his first sermon: On the Adoption of Boilers and the Nationwide Adoption of Broad Gauge Rail."
A great cheer rose up. Brunel stepped up to the podium, the grand sceptre out of proportion with his wiry frame. As he waited for the applause to die down, he turned around, searching the crowd. Brunel met Nicholas' gaze, his eyes shining with delight and humility, and he smiled.
Nicholas smiled back. He had nothing to worry about, after all. Isambard was perfectly fine.
Within the Engine Ward, every bell chimed, every whistle blew. Breathless messengers rushed from street corner to street corner, passing the word through the huddled crowds.
The Metal Messiah, the Metal Messiah is about to speak …
The Stokers had gathered around the rear of the Chimney, confined to stalls – a corral of high fences set up especially to keep the Stokers away from the populace of London, as though they carried some kind of disease. Aaron frowned as Chloe tapped her fingers impatiently against the high bars. "This is a fine way for heroes to be treated. After all this, we're still the ‘Dirty Folk'."
"Hush, husband," Chloe laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "No one saw what you did. They only saw the Boilers. Give Isambard a chance to work his magic on them. He knows he would be nothing if not for the Stokers. He will lift us up as he has been lifted."
All around them, Stokers chattered about Brunel's sermon, certain it would honour their efforts in the battle. "Do you think he'll announce a new engineering project, now that the Wall is finished?"
"Maybe he's had a message from Great Conductor?"
"I hope he's giving us a pay-rise."
Aaron remained silent, not wishing to destroy the mood with his suspicions. Below his feet, the engines whirred away, safe under the watchful eye of their Boiler furnace masters.
A loud buzzing emitted from the row of horns protruding from above the grand entrance, startling the crowd and causing Aaron to jump. This was followed by a sound like an elephant's trumpet, and then Brunel's voice grated across Aaron’s temples.
"Despite the tragedies of recent weeks, progress must continue unhindered if London is to thrive and move on from this tragedy. The success of my most recent Boiler prototypes has inspired me to create a new model, which will begin production immediately. The Boiler Version 3 … an iron machine that can be programmed to perform any mundane task. Thanks to a generous gift from the Royal Society, we will begin immediately constructing the new Boiler workshops. These new buildings – designed by the brilliant Nicholas Thorne – will occupy the western quarter of the Engine Ward, behind my Chimney—"
"That's where our homes are!" cried Chloe.
"—and from right here in the Engine Ward, I can produce Boilers to order for all your engineering needs. With my machines stoking the fires of Engine Ward, we'll work with an efficiency never before experienced, and this city's legacy of innovation will be unparalleled. London will be known across the globe as the city that engineered the world."
A cheer rose up from all around – the people clapped and screamed their applause for Brunel's vision for the city, but the Stokers remained silent, too shocked to utter a word.
Finally, someone spoke.
"Drop my balls in sulphur and call me a Navvy!" William swore. "I bloody knew that pox-ridden scallywag was up to no good. He's gonna flatten our homes to build more of them rotten machines. Oi, Williams, get your lead-puckered arse back here!"
Aaron vaulted the railing of the stalls, pushed past the Stoker guard who, used to seeing him walk where he pleased, didn't attempt to hold him back. He shoved his shoulder into the riveted door and swung it inwards, stalking through the Nave, where the gentry seated inside clamoured with the exciting news. The gentlemen talked with ardent gesticulations as they ran their hands over the shining Boilers that rolled up and down the aisle. Aaron saw Holman and Nicholas and Brigitte standing in the far corner, and they called to him, but he ignored them, stormed past the ranks of priests, and ascended the stairs to the pulpit.
"You can't go up there—" A young Stoker priest grabbed for his arm, but Aaron jerked it away.
"Someone has to stop him, Johnny Ringley," Aaron hissed. "Someone has to tell him that with our homes flattened and these metal beasts at the fires, the Stokers will be ruined. Someone has to tell him he's ruined his own people. How will your daddy pay for that fancy priest school now, Johnny?" The kid let go of his arm.
Aaron grabbed the chain and pulled, and the collapsible metal staircase – a trademark of Nicholas' industrial designs – slid down from the ceiling and uncoiled into an ecclesiastical spiral. Aaron raced up the stairs, three at a time, and fell, panting, onto the platform in front of Brunel's pulpit. He banged on the door of the hatch.
"How dare you disturb me—" Brunel flung the hatch open. "Aaron?"
"How dare I? How dare you!" Aaron's rage flew from his mouth. He grabbed Brunel's collar and pulled him onto the platform. "Have you no concept of what you have done? You've made us redundant. You're turning our homes into workshops for those abominable machines."
Brunel smiled, and in that instant, Aaron knew what he'd suspected for many months; Isambard was forever lost to him.
"You misunderstand me," Brunel said, his voice calm. "I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm sending the Stokers back to the swamps, to hunt once again."
"You're sending … us … away?"
"Yes, as you have pointed out, the Stokers are useless here in London," Brunel said. "I have no need of them anymore. But I do have a job for them, one my Boilers cannot do. I need them to hunt in the swamps, to send as many live specimens back to London as possible. The larger the animal, the better."
"Why?"
"My experiments are of no concern to you. You will be the foreman, of course, and you will lead the hunters, just like your grandfather. Isn't that just what you wanted, to live with the mud and the animals?"
"You … you …." Aaron had no words. He balled his hands into fists.
"You can thank me for this boon later." Brunel shoved him back toward the staircase. "But right now, I have a congregation to address. You'll receive your new instructions tomorrow." He clambered back into the hatch, pulled the door shut, and locked it from the inside.
Aaron beat his fists against the grating, barely noticing the rough steel cutting his hands. He buried his face in his hands, slivers of blood mixing with his tears as he wept for the friend he had lost and the doom of his people.
<
br /> "Nicholas! Open this door!"
The window on the upper story flew open. "Aaron? What are you doing? It's three in the morning, again—"
"Now you see what your beloved Messiah has done?" Aaron roared, beating his fists against Nicholas' door. "He's no friend of mine!"
"You'll wake the whole neighbourhood!"
"He's sending the Stokers away! We finally have the opportunity to make a good life for ourselves here in the city and he's sending us away!"
"Stop yelling. I'll be right down." Nicholas' head disappeared from the window. Aaron paced across the stoop, his rage boiling, until he heard the bolt slide across the lock and saw Nicholas open the door.
"He's a rotten scoundrel and I hate him!" Aaron yelled in his friend's face, painfully aware he was being uncouth and vile, but too drunk and angry to stop himself.
"You need to calm down." Nicholas grabbed his shoulders and shook him roughly. "You're drunk, aren't you? By Great Conductor's steam-powered faeces, man, we'd best get you inside before you wake the whole neighbourhood."
He pulled Aaron into the downstairs drawing room and settled him into a chair. "I saw you in Mass today, climbing up to the pulpit like a drunken fool," he said sternly. "I can see you've further inebriated yourself."
Brigitte appeared at the doorway, clutching a candle, her nightcap askew. "Aaron? Nicholas, what's the matter?"
"He's just a little upset. Could you fetch us some water, love? And perhaps a bread roll for Aaron." She disappeared across the hall.
"Do you want to stay in the city, Aaron?" asked Nicholas, holding his friend's face upright. "Is that what you want? Because I can talk to Brunel for you and see if he'll let you stay—"
"No!" Aaron bolted upright, his eyes flashing. "My people need me, and I will be stronger in the swamps. Every day I live inside that Ward, surrounded by iron and without the comfort of the voices, I feel the press of my own madness, Nicholas. Even if there are no tricorns anymore, I want to walk where my grandfather walked, hunt with the dogs, feel the breath of the dragons on the back of my neck."
"If this is what you wanted, why are you so upset?"
"Brunel has sent the Stokers to a death trap. Those swamps are swarming with dragons, and no one knows how to hunt anymore. When Stephenson hears Brunel intends to connect London and Bristol, he'll descend with force. Even though he's not a Messiah anymore, the Navvies still outnumber us five to one, and they'll fight us to the death to keep the southwest free of broad gauge. I won't allow my son or my wife to die in the mud, not while I still have breath in my veins."
"Blood in your veins, Aaron. Breath in your lungs, blood in your veins, although I think yours might be well supped with alcohol."
Nicholas remembered Quartz' warning, not to allow Aaron to return to the swamps. He brushed the thought aside. That was the last thing Aaron needed to hear right now.
Brigitte returned with a roll and a pitcher of water. She set them down on the table in front of Aaron. He stared at her with reproach, then leaned over and snatched up the roll.
"I think you misunderstand Brunel's intentions—"
"I think you misunderstand," Aaron cried, globs of sticky bread dribbling down his shirt. "Did you know these new Boiler workshops would be built over our homes?"
"No, of course not—"
"I know how his mind works, and he's consumed by those machines. His entire being is focused on their creation, on their perfection. He doesn't care about the Stokers – he never has. He doesn't care about you, Nicholas. I'm his oldest friend, and look what he's made of me." He gestured to his bedraggled frame.
"You did this to yourself," Nicholas said. "He cares for you very much. He thought this was what you wanted."
"Is that what he told you? No, Nicholas, he stopped caring about me when that first Boiler rolled out of the factory. He—" Aaron fell back into the chair, his eyes glazing over and his head flopping onto his shoulder. He started to snore.
Nicholas patted Aaron's hand, and together, he and Brigitte stretched him out across the couch, placed the pitcher of water beside him, and left him be.
Nicholas stood outside the door of Isambard's workshop, peering through the gap, just wide enough for a thin man to squeeze through, into the gloom beyond. Brunel sat in his wingback chair by the roaring furnace, the spidery apparatus that had sprung from his sleeve on the night they'd killed the King now holding a teacup to his lips. "May I come in? I want to talk to you about Aaron—"
"I don't want to talk about Aaron," Brunel snapped.
"He thinks you hate him. He thinks you're sending him away."
"Don't I? Aren't I?" Brunel smiled. "Pull up a seat, Nicholas. Let me tell you about Aaron Williams."
Nicholas squeezed through the door, found an empty crate under the workbench, tipped it over, and sat facing Brunel. The mechanical arm held out a teacup for him, but he waved it away.
"Don't you like it? Without this arm, I couldn't have saved your life, remember?"
"I remember, but why do you wear it?"
"I like it. A man can never have too many arms." He extended the limb to its full length. "Besides, it has more strength, more flexibility, and more functionality than both my real arms put together."
"Is it painful?" Nicholas saw parts of the machine – gears and rods – extended under Brunel's shirt, into his skin.
"Not at all. It is partly my own design, partly made with Dirigire technology. Those Frogs understand fine clockwork better than I understand steam. Now, I was going to tell you why I sent Aaron away."
Nicholas leaned forward.
"He's not taking this very well." Brunel gestured around himself, at the Chimney, the Boilers, and his mechanical hand. "When we made the engine all those years ago, he told me he didn't want any credit. He didn't want to hang if anything went wrong, and so he left me, alone, to live or die by the whim of the priests. Things could have gone very differently for me, and Aaron knows it. He knows if I had died, it would have been on his hands. He feels guilty, because he deserted me when I needed him most. And over the years, that guilt has turned to resentment, that resentment, to jealousy, and that jealousy to his current rage. He hates me, Nicholas, and has hated me for a long time. Here in the city, hemmed in by my success, he's falling apart. He's drinking more than ever, haven't you noticed? And Chloe …." He frowned, leaning forward and lowering his voice, even though there was no one else to hear. "I've seen her, Nicholas, walking through the Ward with bruises on her face and arms. The men fear his temper. He's cracking up. He needs to leave the city as soon as possible. I had to send him away. Do you understand?"
Nicholas felt ill.
Aaron loved his wife, he would never … but Nicholas remembered how rough he'd been with her when they'd shown up at his home, how he'd dismissed her, how his eyes shone with hatred, how he saw fault in everything Brunel did.
"Yes," he nodded. "Perhaps you're right."
Holman and Nicholas saw Aaron off at the train station. They were two of only a handful of non-Stokers present, for the Stokers' work and insular society afforded them few friends in the city. Brunel, the Metal Messiah himself, was not in attendance.
The train they piled into was barely functional. The carriages had no walls, only wiry metal frames secured with chains. The locomotive itself spluttered, spewing sickly gases through a cracking blowpipe. Aaron knew his men could have done a better job, but men hadn’t made this locomotive – Boilers had. He’d seen them churning away in their new workshops for the past two weeks, putting together this prototype to send the Stokers away.
Aaron settled Chloe into one of the forward carriages, then rushed up and down the length of the platform, checking the supplies and machinery had been correctly loaded and secured. He was the last to board the train when the whistle blew.
His friends waited for him, and he faced them both, shrugging off his exile with his usual bravado. It was Holman who broke the silence first, extending his hand a little from his body in the habit
of a blind person, and Aaron reached over and shook it.
"Goodbye, friend." Holman's voice was kind. "I trust you to be safe and look after this sorry lot."
Aaron smiled. "As well as I'm able, James. And you stay out of trouble."
"You know that's too much to ask." Holman let go of his hand, and Aaron turned to Nicholas, the only other man who understood the voices, the man whose peace he'd shattered and whose drawing room he'd thrown up in.
"Goodbye, Nicholas, and good luck with everything."
"Thank you, Aaron, and … I'm sorry."
"I know."
Nicholas leaned forward and embraced him, patting his shoulders. Aaron returned the embrace, savouring the texture of his friend's wool coat and that familiar smell of fresh aftershave.
"How will we contact you?" asked Holman.
From the hidden pocket inside his greatcoat, Aaron pulled a thin metal plate, which he pressed into Holman's hand. "There's a woman in this village. You can trust her, but to be on the safe side, you should use the code."
He shook each of them by the hand again, his eyes imparting more than his lips could say. He collected his bag and climbed the steps onto the train. Setting down his rucksack, he leaned out against the railing and gave one final wave just as the whistle blew and the train lurched forward. For the last time, he stared at the soot-stained London cityscape, her regal buildings and lush pleasure gardens whizzing by in a blur, the great Engine Ward far in the distance – a black smudge on the skyline. He knew he would never set foot inside the city again.
He was going home.
THE END
To be continued in The Gauge War
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