by Eric Asher
Alice nodded and turned back to Furi. “Furi, this is Mary. She’s a friend. She helped us defeat the Butcher when he tore my home to the ground.” Alice hesitated. “She’s Eva’s girlfriend. You can trust her, though I know it will take time.”
“Girlfriend,” Mary muttered. “Like we’re twelve years old.”
Furi eyed the pair before nodding. “Can you tell me what your history says about Ballern?”
Mary laughed. “How many days you have to listen, kid?”
Furi offered a small smile at that.
* * *
Jacob stood in the cargo hold of Bollwerk’s largest transport ship. Beside him sat a crate filled with twenty bolt cannons, as requested. He sifted through the first two layers, inspecting the work of Bollwerk’s tinkers. The only word he had for it was impeccable.
They’d taken the time to round the metal, cutting off every sharp edge before wrapping each in leather to create a solid grip for any gloved hand. As impressed as Jacob was with that, the eight barrels of anchoring bolts they’d provided surprised him. It was several times more than what was left in Charles’s workshop, and quite possibly enough to wrap the entire city in stone.
He closed the last barrel before turning to face the construct behind him. It was one thing to see it on paper. Another to build a prototype. But to stand beside that mechanical beast mounted on a crawler base was something entirely different.
The only change Archibald’s tinkers had made was that the teeth of the climbing wheels had to be removeable. If they’d been permanent, they would have suffered stress and likely breakage every time the arm was placed on the ground.
Jacob rather liked working with Frederick, and judging by the results of the city’s tinkers, they hadn’t minded working with an outsider from Belldorn either. Or Archibald had persuaded them not to mind. That was always a possibility with the Speaker.
The transport ship was nothing like the Skysworn, and Jacob knew he was in for a long trip from Bollwerk to Dauschen. It would be nearly a day before he put his feet on the ground again. Tomorrow he’d try to operate the Titan Mech arm. That should prove interesting under the best of circumstances.
A small cluster of soldiers walked by, one offering a nod to Jacob, who waved briefly in greeting. Bollwerk was sending more troops into Dauschen, and it reminded Jacob that his excitement about testing the arm might have more difficulties from outside sources than he’d prefer.
Jacob settled into a padded chair at the edge of the cargo hold before opening Charles’s journal once again.
* * *
Samuel braced himself on the railing of the speeder. The constant up and down and swells of the water, so hypnotic at a distance, had him curled up and ready to vomit at a moment’s notice.
“Couldn’t you have hired someone who knows how to steer around the waves?” Samuel shouted back to Drakkar at the ship’s wheel.
The Cave Guardian grinned, the breeze snapping his cloak like a dark flag. “I see you are standing again! The tea helps, does it not?”
Samuel cringed. “If by helps you mean tastes like a rotted pile of spider dung.”
“A few more hours, my friend. Look at the majesty of the Silver Gulf! It is a rare thing to be on the open waters.”
“Rare for a reason,” Samuel muttered, longing for a ride on an airship. Even if it was with Skysworn Mary and her death trap of a ship. Not that he’d ever say that to Smith.
But when Samuel looked up, the horizon had changed. It was no longer the endless expanse of unknown depths. Shadows lurked, rising and falling with the motion of the boat. Only it wasn’t that the shadows themselves were moving like the spine of some great beast. It was the rocking of the speeder that lent itself to the illusion.
“The Spires!” Drakkar said, answering a question Samuel had not asked.
And Samuel had some small hope he’d survive the rest of the ride to the Sea of Salt.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was nearly dawn when they reached Dauschen. Jacob hadn’t slept well. The excitement of helping Dauschen and Ancora had grown as the hours grew late. Working the kinks out of the Titan Mech arm in Dauschen meant Ambrose might end up with a more refined tool.
Jacob walked outside the cargo hold when one of the soldiers mentioned they would arrive soon. He didn’t know what to expect when he stepped onto the deck and started toward the bow of the airship. It was easy enough to make out the mountains that flanked Dauschen, but everything looked wrong.
He realized why as they grew closer. The slab of mountain he’d dropped on an unknowable number of soldiers had changed the face of the city entirely. The base was gone, hints of it littering the rubble at the base of the mountains. And where there had once been a fortified wall, there was now only open space, and the half-collapsed buildings that flanked it.
Memories came screaming back to Jacob. Of the shadows beneath the city, and the brutal demise of his friend and mentor. Images of Charles’s last moments gutted him, and he braced himself on the railing, not looking away from the ruin he’d left of that city.
But it had changed more than that since he’d last set foot there. Scaffolding soared into the sky near the edge of the city, close to the area that had collapsed into the gaping pit in the mountainside. The start of Archibald’s new docks. This was where he’d test the Titan Mech’s arm. This was where he’d repurpose Charles’s work.
Somewhere below them, in that twisted pile of metal and ruin, Jacob knew Charles was with him. And perhaps, if the old man were still around, he would have been proud of his apprentice.
* * *
Jacob thought the soldiers that had joined him on deck were about to have a heart attack when they screamed for him to stop. He grinned on the way over the side, throwing a sloppy salute as he fell. The city wall had been high. The tower in Bollwerk had been higher. Leaping from the supply ship was a thrill like no other.
The moment his fall stabilized, Jacob threw open the wings to the glider, clutching his backpack to his chest. He knew he needed a better way to carry the pack. Steering and trying to hold on to the pack at the same time was unwieldy at best.
He soared over the old graveyard where the cargo ship was deploying its soldiers. They stood in a lift in groups of ten, slowly lowered by cables. Jacob thought the whole process looked terribly inefficient. They could use landing lines and wheels and save half the time, if not more.
Then he remembered the main lift was currently occupied by the enormous Titan Mech arm. He nodded to himself and pulled the left lever, swinging around to sail over the northwestern wall of Dauschen. Not a wall so much as it was simply built into a sheer cliff face.
Jacob followed the line back toward the construction on the docks, remembering the underground train station and the Scythe Beetles that were hidden away there.
Another ship crossed the rising disc of the sun, and Jacob grinned when he saw the squat gas chambers and sleek forward cabin of the Skysworn. He felt bad dragging them across the continent again, but Mary seemed to like nothing better than flying.
A cool breeze cut through the mountains, lifting him as he rounded the construction site. A good deal of work had already been completed. Jacob suspected that meant Archibald had been planning it for some time. But if they intended to raise the dock as high as Bollwerk’s, it would need to triple in height. A feat both dangerous and time-consuming.
Jacob studied the struts and braces along each side. Evenly spaced, and to his eye nearly identical to the scale Frederick had built. If the Titan Mech crane had enough power, Jacob suspected it could climb the structure.
If Frederick’s calculations were wrong when it came to the struts’ load-bearing capacity, the abyss that sat in front of the city might have more rubble joining it.
Someone waved to Jacob from a small group of workers. He couldn’t make out a face, still in shadows from the rising sun, so he changed course to land nearby. Pulling up at the last second, Jacob made a somewhat clumsy landing that le
ft him sprinting and cursing to catch himself.
Not the most graceful entrance he could have imagined. He collapsed the wings and turned back to face the group. More practice was needed.
“Jacob!” a man shouted, his face finally out of shadows. An unremarkable face with wide eyes. Someone who looked so average you might never notice they were there.
“Cage?”
The man laughed and nodded. “It’s good to see you, kid.”
“Last time I saw you, your helmet was cracked and I thought you might bleed out.”
“Head wounds bleed a lot,” Cage said, pulling his hair back so Jacob could see the line of stitches arching over his ear.
Jacob cringed at that. “Ouch.”
“Hurt less than losing your leg, I imagine.”
A nearby guard glanced down at Jacob’s legs, his Mech components hidden behind leather boots and pale denim.
“Are you still with the resistance?”
Cage raised an eyebrow. “Not much left to resist these days, other than a few Fel soldiers sheltering in the ruins.”
“But Archibald told you his plans for the city? The new airship docks?”
“Only that they’re building them here. It will be easier to ship supplies and people.”
Jacob squeezed his hands together. “You know, Bat told us to trust you before he died.”
“Bat was a good friend. I was saddened to hear of his passing.”
Passing, Jacob thought. As if a brutal murder could simply be called a passing.
Something clanked and squealed in the distance. Jacob looked up, his gaze finding the supply ship’s cargo hold as the enormous lift began its slow descent again.
“Are they mad?” Cage asked, watching one edge of the cargo lift sag lower. Two tinkers stood beside the looming shadow of the Titan Mech’s arm, but no one else was on the platform.
Jacob eyed the positioning between the airship and the supports of the dock. It was going to be a tight fit, but it could save them monumental effort, if it worked.
Jacob glanced at Cage. “You might want to clear the site. We tested this out with a scale model, but …”
Cage nodded and started shouting orders to get all personnel clear.
He circled back to Jacob once everyone else was gone. “Now, tell me kid, why is Archibald actually building these docks?”
That was more the Cage he knew. Suspicious, keen, and not one to trust a gift from a politician. Even one who had helped them as much as Archibald.
“He wants Dauschen to be a deterrent to Fel and Ballern.”
“Ballern?” Cage asked.
Jacob nodded. “They’re deeply allied with Fel. I think he wants one of the warships, or maybe some of the smaller destroyers, stationed at Dauschen. Archibald didn’t say that exactly, but they can easily reach Midstream, Bollwerk, or Ancora from there.”
Cage shook his head. “It is farther to Midstream from here than Bollwerk. By a good distance too.”
Jacob frowned. “Midstream will need more protection, then.”
“That is a likely scenario, yes. But look at it from Archibald’s perspective. Comparatively, there are more citizens in Dauschen, Ancora, and Cave.”
Jacob blew out a breath. “So if he hopes to one day unite the land under a single government rule …”
“Exactly. To a ruler, a king, a government, a life is not a life. We are all only numbers.” Cage did a double take as he looked up at the supply ship again. “What is that? It looks like … like an arm.”
“It is, sort of. I changed the plans for a Titan Mech Charles designed for the Deadlands War. So we can use it for something more benevolent, I guess.”
Cage smiled as the supply ship drifted backward, the tinkers letting the arm come to rest so they could begin attaching the hooked anchors that would propel the monstrosity up and down the airship docks. And when that was completed, they could remove them and exchange the climbing wheels for something fit for a railroad.
And a small part of Charles’s legacy would not be soaked in blood.
“Assassin!” someone screamed from across the airship dock.
It was an odd thing, being in a place that had seen so much war and violence, whose people had been so downtrodden that a scream of assassin did not bring panic. It brought the area around the docks into a tense attention. A focus that rivaled anything Jacob had ever seen.
A lithe form clad in mottled blacks and browns slipped through the shadows of the dock construction, leaving a crumpled shadow behind them. They’d only struck down one worker before being spotted. Jacob’s heart hammered in his chest, both impressed at how fast the assassin had been called out, and suspicious that they’d been seen at all.
Each shadow they slipped into wrapped them in near-absolute darkness. The more he watched the careful engagements, the deliberate evasion of line of sight with every raised crossbow and bolt launcher, those suspicions grew.
But the airship above them didn’t know what was happening. They couldn’t hear the shouts over the roar of the boilers and engines and the heavy clangs that echoed out from the descending arm.
Two times the assassin passed close enough to a leather-clad guard that they could have easily struck them down. Instead, the assassin danced away, drawing the soldiers into the framework of the docks, pulling the focus toward the airship lowering its load.
Every eye around him was focused on the assassin, Jacob realized with a start. Which meant … He spun, and his heart nearly stopped when he saw a dozen shadowy forms climbing out of the abyss that had once been the base at Dauschen.
“Behind us!” Jacob shouted as the soldiers closer to the scaffolding sprinted toward the rear guards. The warning came fast enough, but the assassins moved with a deadly grace.
One of the shadowy figures fell into a heap when a bolt caught him in the neck. But the damage was done. The guard who had struck the assassin down fell to a knee, clutching the throwing knife embedded in his chest.
Metal crashed against metal above them, the anchors for the arm latching into place as cables grew slack, finally falling away from the mechanism as the hooks slid from their loops. It was only then the tinkers noticed the chaos unfolding below them.
Jacob sprinted to the nearest ladder. It was a blend of rope and metal and swayed as he started up it.
“We could use a hand, kid!” Cage shouted after him.
Jacob glanced back, seeing the next line of assassins climbing from the cliffside. “Get the guards away from the cliff!” He turned back to the tinkers above him as he closed on the Titan Mech arm.
“Start the engine!”
“Are you mad?” the older tinker called down to him. “There’s a battle on the ground!”
But the younger tinker with him didn’t hesitate. Flames exploded from the side the of arm and the rollers pulled against the arm’s braking system as Jacob climbed.
Charles had designed that. A thin, flat boiler, longer than anything he’d seen. It could be heated in an instant. For the Deadlands War, he’d had to abandon the design. It had been a weakness. But for a simple construction tool, Jacob had adopted it, and the tinkers of Bollwerk had executed it masterfully.
Jacob placed one foot on the towering spike of the airship dock and leaped off the ladder, catching the edge of the pilot’s seat on the base of the arm. He slid inside, ignoring the seatbelt and instead wedging the now-extended plates of his Biomech leg into the grooves in the base.
“Off!” Jacob shouted to those who remained above him.
“You need more hands,” the younger tinker said, dropping in beside Jacob. He buckled himself in like he’d done it a hundred times before.
Jacob didn’t argue. Shouts and cries echoed up from below as another wave rose from the cliff. Jacob threw the two main levers, and the arm extended. He shifted the levers in opposite directions, wrapping the elbow joint around the tower of the dock.
His copilot already understood what was happening. He twisted the wheel to co
ntrol the ratcheting mechanism in the forearm as Jacob increased the angle.
Jacob shifted another lever forward, spreading the fingers of the hand before dropping both main levers at once. He released the brake on the secondary ratchet that held the arm aloft, feeling the teeth retract with a clank. “Hold on!”
The arm gave way. Half a ton of steel and gears and bronze threatened to throw them into the air as the hand sped to the earth without resistance. The assassins had only a moment to wonder what the shadow above them was before the hand of a Titan Mech crushed six of them at once.
A retching sound rose from the seat beside him as blood and viscera oozed from the impact. Jacob engaged the ratchet and closed the fist, pulling up earth and stone. To the tinker’s credit, he worked the hydraulics in sync with Jacob, even as he vomited over the side again.
Jacob extended the fistful of stone to the cliffside and released an avalanche on anything waiting below.
There was no more fight after that. Two of the assassins fell on their own blades, while the remaining either ran, or were taken down by Cage and his men.
Jacob looked at the ruin on the ground beneath the arm of the Titan Mech, blood staining the earth and the machine alike. He’d wanted to use Charles’s creation for good. But again, again it had come to death.
He wiped at his eyes, trying to rid himself of the fury and pain that welled up inside his chest.
One day it would end. One day …
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Archibald stood on the outskirts of Midstream, waiting for Gladys and George. He wanted to be sure the fortifications at Midstream were coming along. At the northern edge of the city, flanked by the ruined clay and stone homes that had fallen to countless wars, he could scarcely believe so many of its residents had returned.
Gladys had a great deal of influence over her people, and her return on the heels of Rana’s death had brought a vibrance to the ancient city he had not fully expected.
“Confirmed, Speaker,” the guard standing beside him said. “Anders and Cage survived. As did the city tinkers.”