by Jack Conner
The huge ship drifted overhead, realigned itself, then sank down to dock with the far side of Loqrin’s suite. Gently, so as not to be heard by the men below or to attract the pilot’s attention, Katya edged over to that side, feeling the gentle rasp of the roof below her fingertips and along her belly. A lock of hair fell before her eyes and she impatiently brushed it away.
The zeppelin docked. Through the windows of the docking bay, she saw Loqrin march into the zeppelin’s gondola, and the rough men shoved their prisoners after him. All vanished within. Various machines sparked through the gondola’s windows, and Kat saw that hunched Returners tended to them. Some turned to Loqrin and bowed. Loqrin acknowledged them as a king would his lowly subjects, with head held high and back erect.
The gangsters struck the prisoners with the butts of their guns and forced them to the floor. Kat’s heart went out to them. Strikers, she thought. She’d known nothing good would happen to them. Lavorgna would chew strikers up and shit them out bloody.
The zeppelin disconnected. Gently, it lowered itself slightly, pointing its bow toward the Sink. What would happen to the men who’d rebelled against the factory—what did Loqrin want with them? Perhaps the same thing he wanted with the men he abducted from the Fifth Ward, Kat thought. She’d imagined him sacrificing them all on his stupid altar and electrocuting their heads, but no. It seemed he had other designs.
And what was producing the haunts, anyway? If Loqrin had any part in it, she had yet to see it.
The zeppelin slowed in its turn, almost finished aligning itself. It hung like a great dark cloud, just a couple of feet from the docking bay.
Kat needed to know what Loqrin was up to.
But come on. She wasn’t mad. Not that mad. There was no way she could ...
No. Fucking. Way.
“Oh, to hell with it,” she said. It was either this or stay in the harem another day.
She descended to the roof of the docking bay, carefully. Her feet touched the metal, and the wind whipped her hair and stung her eyes. Balancing precariously, she stepped along the top of the tube toward the great ship that blotted out the sky right in front of her. The wind softened against her, blocked by the ship. She heard the creak of fabric, the whup-whup of propellers. As she went, she turned her jagged rings so that they faced inward, not outward. She didn’t need them for punching now.
The zeppelin began to drift away.
“No you don’t,” she said.
She ran the last few steps and flung herself out into space, toward the side of the ship. This had better work!
Chapter 6
She seemed to hang suspended in air for an eternal moment. She was weightless, a daffodil puff on the wind. She could see everything clearly, every detail of the zeppelin and the city below.
Then she struck, hard, and the impact rattled her teeth and bones. Worse, she couldn’t find a handhold. She slid, helpless, and panic welled up inside her like a live thing. The fabric of the zeppelin burned her cheek, rucked up her blouse and skinned her belly. The ground waited sixty or more feet below, eager for her to fall. The emptiness seemed to suck at her like a void.
She slapped her hands down, sinking her jagged rings into the fabric that stretched tightly over the metal alloy frame of the ship. Her slide slowed. She hit one of the struts that ran underneath the skin. If she’d been going any faster the strut would have bounced her off and flung her into space. As it was, she clung to it for dear life, digging her fingers through the fabric. The zeppelin swung through the skies, and dark tenements sulked below. Panting, Kat thought she smelled the stench of boiling onion in some family’s soup, but it was probably her imagination.
The propeller’s roar filled her ears. It sprouted from the hull just twenty feet from where Kat clung, and beyond it jutted the side fin—the rudder?
A plume of factory smoke enveloped her. She coughed wretchedly, her eyes burning. The zeppelin passed through it, drifted lower, while tenements scrolled below.
The great gaping maw of the Sink loomed ahead. Blackness waited. Nothing but blackness, going down and down.
The tenements ended, and the zeppelin swung over the pit. Kat stared into it, down into all that darkness. It seemed cold and alien, and the last thing she wanted was to go into it. Too late, kiddo.
The zeppelin’s propeller, the one she could see, stopped spinning, then angled upward so that the blades faced the sky. She heard the ticks of machinery and enjoyed the moment of quiet. With the propeller still, she could hear the wind, then some tinny music coming from a tenement near the lip, maybe someone’s birthday. Katya remembered her birthdays with her mother, back before her mother had started hooking. She’d always baked Katya a cake, every year. Of course she’d used the cheapest possible ingredients, and the frosting was slapped on a bit too thickly, but somehow the result always satisfied.
Don’t think about her, Kat! Think about the living.
The propeller burst into new life, and the zeppelin shuddered. The propellers forced it down toward the Sink. Katya felt the hairs on her arm prickle as the lip of the pit approached her, passed her ... then was overhead. She could literally feel the change in temperature as shadow rolled over her. This is it, she thought. We’re really doing it. I’m really doing it. What have I gotten myself into?
The zeppelin plunged into the depths. The maw of the pit became a circle of light above, then dwindled until at last it was just a tiny dot.
Suddenly massive floodlights blazed from the zeppelin forefront. Great beams cut the darkness, their reflections hurting Kat’s eyes. She saw the beams scroll along rough walls, searching, searching. Then—ah!—a huge yawning cavern revealed itself. It must be hundreds of feet wide, a huge mouth in the side of the pit, and from what Kat could see it ran perpendicular to the pit tube. She couldn’t see its bottom. Maybe, like the pit, it had none, one abyss leading into another. The propeller Kat could see stopped spinning, adjusted itself so that if faced the rear, then cranked back into life. Without hesitating, the zeppelin passed through the grand archway and into the cavern. Although ...
Kat strained her eyes into the darkness, scanning the walls that were just barely revealed, more like hinted at, by the reflection of the floodlights that continued to light the way forward.
By their illumination, she thought she saw ordered lines, signs of architecture, not random curves and rough protrusions. This wasn’t a natural cavern at all. Her mind reeled. The Below, she thought. She was in the Below!
Sweet fuck, Magnar save me. She was in the godsdamned Below!
The walls were black and far apart, maybe half a mile or more, but she saw undeniable crenulations and vertical grooves that were almost organic, like the ribbing of the throat, proud terraces and massive bulwarks that might be buildings, just dimly guessed at by the refracted light, more intuited than actually seen. The Elders built this. What had they been, anyway? No Elder bodies had ever been found, at least as far as Kat knew. The Elders were ancient and unknowable, mighty beyond human ken. The mystery behind their disappearance had fascinated historians and thinkers since the discovery of their ruins long ago.
Kat found herself breathing fast and hard. Sweat soaked her hair, dripped into her eyes. She blinked it away. Her arms ached as she clung to the strut, and she didn’t know how much longer she could hang on.
To her relief, the zeppelin drifted toward one side of the great chasm, adjusting its angle as it went. Kat saw the lip of a precipice and what might have been a road, though not a human one. Alchemical lamps burned on the ground, winking, perhaps signaling to the zeppelin. The ship neared the precipice, then drifted over it. Firm ground below. Kat let out a deep breath. Just a little bit more.
It was quite bright below, actually. Many lamps blazed, set on high. Who had lit them?
And, more importantly, could they see her?
She climbed sideways, shimmying along the strut, making for the propeller. The engine that powered it had shut off, and the blades whirred slowly to
a stop. Whup. Whup. Whup. The fading wind stirred her hair. By the time she reached the propeller, it had stopped completely, and she hid behind it while Loqrin, his men, and the people below secured the zeppelin to the ground. A rope was thrown from the gondola to the ground, and the zeppelin was reeled in by dim figures that might have been homunculi. Another rope was thrown about the tail section, stabilizing the ship.
The gondola touched ground, and the zeppelin shuddered, nearly throwing Katya. She clung desperately to the propeller shaft, eyes wide. She noted that even though the airship had come to rest, it did not entirely stop moving. It creaked and drifted a bit. The rope about the tail was drawn tight, and it grew more stable. A breeze blew up from the abyss, curiously warm.
Loqrin marched from the zeppelin’s interior onto solid ground, his servants and prisoners in tow. Kat cursed him silently from her hiding place.
Half a dozen men bearing alchemical lamps met him in the open. Bizarrely, the men wore suits and hats, and not the gaudy ones favored by gangsters, but expensive, tailored suits designed to be as bland as possible.
Guildsmen, Katya realized. It was for them that Loqrin had dressed up, not his goons. Katya should have known. But what would members of the Guild of Alchemists be doing down here? For that matter, what would Loqrin?
One or two of the Guildsmen touched their hats in a gesture of respect to Loqrin, and others nodded their heads, just slightly. He inclined his head, too, but only just. Peers acknowledging each other, nothing more. No one admitting inferiority.
They exchanged a few words that Katya couldn’t hear, then turned about and strolled down the lamp-lit pathway. In the distance, set into the rock of the chasm wall, loomed a great dark structure of some sort. Katya was too far away to see any of its details, and there was too little light to see it by in any case. It was the only building on this shelf of rock, the only one in the area for that matter, which struck her as odd. She thought the zeppelin had passed numerous other buildings, maybe even a city of the Elders, but if so then this building had been isolated, remote from the city. Why would the Elders have set it apart?
Loqrin and the others vanished inside, Returners, homunculi and prisoners bringing up the rear.
Eerily warm wind gusted up from the abyss. Katya clung to the propeller, wondering what she should do. She was all alone, weaponless. Surely she didn’t dare follow them. But if she didn’t then why had she come?
“Damn it all,” she whispered.
With great care, mindful of her aching arms, she crawled over to the fin assembly and found one of the ropes that moored the tail section to the ground. Very slowly, hand over hand and leg over leg, she shimmied down it, and, when she at last alighted on the ground, she collapsed. Quivered. Her arms shook, her hands spasmed, and her back muscles bunched and writhed. She bit back cries of pain. Fuck fuck fuck!
When at last the agony diminished, she just wanted to lay there and rest, but she knew she couldn’t. She hauled herself up, stretching her shoulders as she did so. Ravic better appreciate all this.
She picked her way toward the building, along the line of lamps. Another line led into a tunnel in the chasm wall, off to the side. The Guildsmen hadn’t flown here as Loqrin had, then. Maybe their homunculi had carried them on little litters, like kings, down through corridors in the rock.
As she went, Kat twisted her rings so that the jagged edges faced outward. She was ready.
She neared the great building, feeling tiny hairs stick up on the back of her neck. Green lamplight lit the structure’s bulging lower surface, and she saw what resembled a massive protruding belly, studded with odd projections and architectural flourishes that were alien to her. Above the belly stretched a large, thick tower that vanished into darkness. At the very edge of the light above, she thought she saw protrusions like spikes jutting out from the building, high, high above. Things that might have been large bats wheeled about the points.
She faced the opening, a large archway of inhuman dimensions right in the middle of the bulging belly, something that was almost obscene. The Guildsmen’s lights were vanishing up the tunnel, and she knew that if she didn’t hurry she’d lose them.
“Rat piss,” she whispered, and started after them.
Organic lines arched over her, similar to the ones she’d seen in the chasm chamber, like the ribbing of someone’s throat. I’m walking into a gullet, she thought. Organic-looking archways opened right and left, but the light of the procession of alchemists and mobsters continued straight ahead. She followed, light on her feet, back hunched like a feline, ready to spring into the shadows at the least provocation.
The procession wound up a spiral rampway that must be what the Elders used instead of stairs. No feet, maybe. Whatever, the procession continued up the ramp two floors, then took a hallway to the right. Kat followed, breathless and sweaty. At last, finally, the procession reached their destination: a strangely cavernous room, its walls lined with what looked like black grills and a huge apparatus toward the center rear. Kat hung back, watching from around the corner of the doorway.
Machines that looked like they were man-made littered the room, and cables snaked from them, across the floors, vanishing into the black grills. As Kat watched, the alchemists toyed with the machines, which began to hum, click and pulse with lights. Loqrin Mars watched on, face impassive. The captured strikers were still hooded, so they couldn’t see where they were, but they must have felt something unnatural, or perhaps they merely knew something unpleasant was going to happen to them—it wouldn’t have taken much effort—because they suddenly began shaking and struggling against the ropes that bound their wrists. One wet his pants; the urine puddling on the floor. Another tried to bolt, blindly, but was struck in the face with the butt of a rifle and knocked off his feet. Kat said a prayer under her breath. She wished there was some way she could help them. But if she revealed herself, she’d only wind up next to them, hooded and bound.
The alchemists finished with the machines, and the huge apparatus began to make an odd thrumming noise. The Guildsmen must have found some way to hot-wire the machine, to awaken Elder technology using human devices. How long had they been working at this? Katya couldn’t imagine it had been easy.
“Let the first one go,” announced a Guildsman. He was not the tallest, but he was the broadest and he carried himself with a certain air of authority, more so than the others. He had a short black mustache and a square, balding head. Intelligent eyes peered out from gold-rimmed frames. “Do you agree?” he asked Loqrin.
“I do,” said Loqrin. He motioned to the man with the scarred face, who oversaw the other goons. At the man’s command, they dragged one of the prisoners toward the huge machine.
The Guildsmen pressed buttons, and the machine ... opened. Kat gasped. Made of the same weird black material as the walls, it was shaped something like two great, monstrous bells, one pointing up and one pointing down, joined like clamshells, and now the upper bell rose, revealing a cavity inside, huge, maybe fifty feet high. More man-made machines stood here. Obviously the apparatus had not been meant for people, but the alchemists weren’t letting that stop them.
The mob men forced the prisoner up a shallow ramp to the lip of the upward-facing bell, which was slightly submerged, so that the bottom of its bowl was visible. The goons chained the hooded striker to a narrow wall the Guildsmen had installed, and then the mobsters yanked the hood off. The man was pasty and jowled, with an open, honest face and bugged-out eyes. He blinked against the sudden light, then, obviously perceiving that he was in no place he’d ever imagined, he opened his mouth and screamed—and screamed.
Katya jumped at the sound and drew back behind the wall. What are they going to DO to him? He’s probably got a wife at home, kids. Fuck. He didn’t do anything to them.
She peeked out again. The man had screamed himself out and stood there, ragged and panting. Tears coursed down his whiskered cheeks. His legs trembled and had given out, but the chains held him upright
.
Completely oblivious to his terror, the Guildsmen stood over their machines, punching and tapping at buttons, spinning dials. Intent expressions twisted their faces.
“Well?” Loqrin demanded.
The black-mustached man glared at him. “Just a moment more, Minister.”
Minister? Kat thought. But that doesn’t make any sense! She knew the Guild was run by a cabal of Ministers, the chief one being Archminister Barnes. But Loqrin was a Boss, not a Guildsman.
“As you will,” Loqrin said, then added, “Minister.”
Kat frowned. They were both Ministers?
The black-mustached Minister went back to his work, until at last he straightened. “There. We’ve reached the next frequency on our list. Everything is on schedule.” He said this shortly, as if insulted by Loqrin’s doubt.
“Excellent,” Loqrin returned, as if he were humoring the man.
The Guildsman narrowed his eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses. Rather than reply, he directed his attention at a subordinate.
“Begin,” he said.
The subordinate began a procedure, tapping buttons into a console. The huge overhead bell-shaped dome that had lifted before, revealing the cavity, slammed closed, locking the striker inside and sealing him off from view.
“Beginning translation,” the subordinate said.
The humming noise the bell-shaped apparatus emitted grew in intensity. The room began to shake. Loqrin and the Guildsmen were prepared, donning ear-muffs. The sound washed over Kat, shaking her, making her bones ache, her ears pop. She stuck fingers in them and ground her jaw.
At the same time, light flashed out of the machine, seeping through the minute crack that joined upper and lower portions, and out of light-vents at its top. The illumination, to Kat’s shock, was purple. The air seemed to ripple around the machine, and Kat smelled strange scents, things she had never smelled before. She had no names for them.