The Wonder Engine

by T. Kingfisher

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” said Learned Edmund. “They may still be making the clocktaurs, or growing them. This is pure speculation. Perhaps the site had an ore they need, and they invented a tale of archaeology as a cover for their operations.”

  “True,” said Slate slowly, “but I think Brenner may be right, as far as it goes. Somebody knows how to make them, or at least how to wake them up. And surely they must have written it down somewhere.”

  “It could be kept on site,” said Caliban.

  “It could,” acknowledged Slate, “but show me a clandestine operation without leaks, and I’ll show you one where everybody involved is dead.”

  “We’re a clandestine operation,” said Caliban.

  There was an awkward silence.

  “And I won’t swear that the Captain of the Guard, or the Dowager, or Grimehug here isn’t going to talk about it,” said Slate.

  Grimehug opened one eye and said, “Not telling anybody, Crazy Slate. Nobody listens to a gnole, ’cept other gnoles.” He adjusted his rags. “’sides, Crazy Slate, got a warm place to sleep, plenty of food. Living the good life now.”

  “Thanks, Grimehug,” said Slate. “You’re a prince among gnoles.”

  “Gnoles got no princes. No kings, either. Too much trouble.”

  “There’s a certain amount of wisdom to that,” said Learned Edmund. “I wonder if anyone has written a book on gnole culture?”

  “Human words,” said Grimehug. “Human books, book man. Not gnole words.”

  “A good project for you when this is all over,” said Caliban. He stared at the elbow guard in his hands. “No demons in Anuket City. That can’t be right, can it?”

  “I never heard of any,” admitted Slate, “but it wasn’t like I was paying attention. Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Brenner, who had been silent for some time, said, “The building’s not looking promising. We might get in once, but I don’t think we’ll get in twice. Too risky.” He leaned forward. “But I’m thinking—if we can find out who the officials involved are, we can send Slate to their private offices. See if we can’t turn something up. Then when it does come time to break into the warehouse, we won’t be going in blind.”

  “You think they’ll leave a big folder lying around that says “Care And Feeding Of Clocktaurs” on it?” asked Learned Edmund dubiously.

  Caliban laughed. “People leave idiotic things lying around,” he said. “Even I can tell you that much. I’ve gone into houses after demons and seen things out in plain sight…” He shook his head.

  Slate smiled at him. “He’s not lying. You’d be amazed the things I’ve found. Everybody assumes that people act sensibly and lock everything up in a safe. But they don’t. I’ve found stacks of love letters shoved in the nightstand where the maid could read them.”

  “Fair enough,” said Learned Edmund.

  “The problem, as I see it,” said Caliban, “is in learning who’s in charge. I could try to find out, in my position as Knight-Champion—”

  “Which would be about as subtle as a siege engine,” said Brenner. “And maybe word’ll get back to them that somebody is asking about clocktaurs, and maybe they will start locking stuff in a safe.”

  “Mind you, I can break into a safe,” said Slate. “But extra guards are a little more difficult to work around.”

  “I can ask among the artificers,” volunteered Learned Edmund. He smiled sheepishly. “People expect scholars to be overly-interested in things. I don’t think it will be remarked. And Brother Amadai was working on something related, so it is only natural that I try to find out what.”

  Slate nodded slowly. “You may be right.” She thought of the artificers she had known, years ago—yes, Learned Edmund would fit right into that company. The hard part might be getting him back out again.

  “How do you know he was working on something related?” asked Brenner.

  Learned Edmund blinked at him. “The last correspondence,” he said. “We couldn’t read half of it. It had been water-damaged and his handwriting was never good to begin with. But it had a drawing of a clocktaur from multiple angles.”

  Slate sighed. “With our luck, he included simple directions on how to stop them, and that was what got damaged.” She drummed her fingers on her boot. “There’s another way to find things out. There are people who know how everything fits together. Who works for who, where they live, what they do. They make it their business to know.”

  “Do you think they would know where Brother Amadai has gone?”

  “They might. We just have to find them, and pay the right price.”

  “Can you find them?” asked Learned Edmund.

  “All too easily,” muttered Slate.

  “And they won’t talk to anyone else about your questions?” asked Caliban.

  Brenner smiled faintly. “Only if someone else pays them even more.”

  Nine

  While the thieves descended into the city’s underworld, the Knight-Champion escorted the scholar of the Many-Armed God to the Artificer’s Quarter.

  It was a strange neighborhood in the old part of the city. The buildings leaned together, sometimes touching over the top of the street. The impression was of walking under dozens of ramshackle bridges.

  Everywhere he looked, Caliban saw clockwork. Doors did not swing, they ratcheted open. A display window crawled with oiled brass insects. One of the teapots at an outdoor café had climbed up the side of the building and clung there, exhaling steam.

  “I hardly know where to start,” murmured Learned Edmund. “My temple provided me with a name, but no address.”

  “We’ll start with the name,” said Caliban.

  “He signs all his correspondence as ‘Ashes Magnus.’ My temple orders multiple copies of all his treatises. So many artificers do not keep good notes, and Master Magnus writes everything down. And indexes it correctly, too. A good index is a thing to treasure.”

  Caliban went over the café. A waiter had emerged with a broom and was trying to knock the teapot off the wall.

  He returned to Learned Edmund a moment later, trying to hide a smile. “This way,” he said.

  “You’ve gotten an address?”

  “Oh, yes. Ashes Magnus is very well known here.”

  “It is gratifying,” said Learned Edmund. “The world is often sorely unappreciative of quality indexing.”

  Caliban led him down the street. Behind them, the waiter succeeded in knocking the teapot to the ground and shoved it into a wicker cage. It whistled irritably.

  There were so many marvels that it was hard to know where to look. Half of them didn’t work, but Caliban had to admire the minds that could even conceive of the idea. Who would have thought to build a balcony on rails that moved around the building to take advantage of the sun? Even if it kept ramming itself into the building next door.

  They passed a stable full of clockwork horses. One didn’t have a head, and a disgusted looking artificer had an arm jammed down the stump of the neck, rummaging around inside.

  “I confess,” said Learned Edmund, “I find such things…disturbing. They seem to contradict the natural order. At least with mules, one knows where one stands.”

  “Usually in mule droppings.”

  “Well, yes. Still.”

  Caliban eyed the clockwork horses thoughtfully. They were bound to be expensive—Slate undoubtedly knew to the penny just how expensive—but there was something appealing about them. For one thing, they probably didn’t ever get possessed. Demons couldn’t do much with unliving things. The memory of the demon-haunted draft horse chasing him around the field was still entirely too fresh.

  His own demon lay very quiet. The magic of Anuket City was all in machines. It was a strange kind of relief.

  He led Learned Edmund down the street, sidestepping some kind of mechanical golem. It had rusted in place and there were flyers plastered to it. A bird was nesting in its open mouth.

>   “There is an odd consolation in knowing that these devices don’t always work—” Learned Edmund began.

  “Look out!” somebody shouted from overhead.

  Caliban’s immediate reaction was to throw himself over Learned Edmund. The scholar squawked in alarm.

  Something exploded several feet over Caliban’s head. “Crap!” yelled the voice from above.

  Debris rained around them. Caliban was suddenly glad he’d come dressed as the Knight-Champion. His shoulder guards took most of the damage. Something small whacked him on the back of the skull and he winced.

  “Sorry…” came from above them.

  Caliban straightened, one hand going to his sword. People didn’t usually yell apologies while they were trying to kill you. It made it difficult to know how to retaliate.

  A door slammed open, and a skinny young boy came out. He was wearing thick smoked-glass goggles and enormous leather gloves. “Sorry! It went the wrong direction. It wasn’t supposed to go out the window…”

  “Was it supposed to explode?” asked Learned Edmund.

  “Oh, definitely. That part went well.” The boy pounced on some of the remains. Bits of metal shell were smoking in the gutter.

  “Just be more careful next time,” said Caliban, sighing.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Um, your cloak’s on fire.”

  “So it is.”

  The boy went back into the building. Caliban extinguished his cloak. It was now gray with black-edged holes.

  “You were saying, about the devices not always working…?”

  Learned Edmund shook his head, his eyes wide. “And Mistress Slate lived in this city?”

  “For some years, apparently.”

  “Goodness. And she survived!”

  Barely, if you listen to the things she’s not saying. And I would guess it wasn’t the artificers that were the threat.

  The storefront belonging to Ashes Magnus was narrow and discreetly marked. The wooden door had burn marks around the bottom.

  There was a door knocker in the shape of a dragonfly. When Learned Edmund lifted his hand to it, the wings thrummed against the door—tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

  A moment later, the door opened with the silence of impeccably oiled hinges.

  The front room was small and had a high wooden counter. There were no mechanical devices visible inside, except for a single, elegant clock.

  Caliban had been to tailors with storefronts like this. The results were usually wonderfully well-fitted clothing and an extraordinary bill.

  There was a woman behind the counter. A great deal of woman, in fact.

  She was very large—not just fat, but with a large frame under it. Standing, she would have been easily as tall as Caliban. She had gigantic forearms with slender wrists and scarred, nimble fingers.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “I am seeking Ashes Magnus,” said Learned Edmund.

  “Well, you’ve found her,” said the woman. Her eyes travelled over the pair of them. She gave Caliban an appreciative up-and-down, which he was weak enough to enjoy.

  Learned Edmund gaped at her. “Ashes…Magnus?”

  “That’s what the sign on the door says. What do you need?”

  The waiter at the café had said, “Sure, she’s three streets down and one over.” Caliban had been waiting for this moment, and it did not disappoint.

  “I…that is…” The scholar held his satchel in front of him like a shield.

  “This is Learned Edmund,” said Caliban, taking pity on him. “A scholar in the service of the Many-Armed God.”

  Ashes tilted her head. “They do buy my monographs.”

  “You wrote Reflections on Interchangeable Gear Construction?”

  “Volumes One through Five. Forgive Volume Four, the engraver didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.” She eyed Learned Edmund. “Why?”

  “He is,” said Caliban, “a great admirer of your indexes.”

  The artificer’s expression thawed somewhat. “Really? No one ever appreciates a good index.”

  Caliban looked over at Learned Edmund. Come on, he urged internally, you can do it…

  The scholar took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Indexes,” he said determinedly, “are essential to the proper functioning of a civilized society.”

  Ashes slapped the top of the counter. “There, you see? A man after my own heart. I am sorry about Volume Four. How can I help you?”

  Learned Edmund walked forward and offered his hand. “It is an honor to meet you, madam.”

  They shook. Caliban bowed, and turned to the door. “I’ll return in a few hours, shall I?”

  Learned Edmund nodded, distracted. Ashes pushed her stool back. “So what brings you to Anuket City?”

  “My order has lost contact with one of our scholars who was working here in the city…”

  Caliban let himself out.

  Ten

  Someone knocked on the door to the suite.

  Caliban opened it and saw Slate, who was apparently dressed as a Chadori tribeswoman. A veil covered her face to the eyes, and a band of cloth covered her hair. Her boots had been replaced by broad, shapeless shoes lined with tassels. She had black robes, black gloves, and looked like a stray bit of extremely modest shadow.

  “Ah—hmm,” said Caliban.

  “It’s me! Slate!”

  “Yes, I know.”

  The only visible bits of her scowled. “Damn. So much for my disguise.”

  I would know you anywhere. I would recognize you at the bottom of a mineshaft on a moonless light, if I were deaf and blind.

  This is not the sort of thing you can say out loud. Caliban was a little surprised that he’d even thought it.

  He settled for, “It’s probably fine.”

  “It’ll do,” said Brenner, peering around the doorframe at her. “Just try not to sneeze.”

  “If I sneeze in this outfit, I’ll fall down. These shoes were designed by an evil genius.” She focused past him. “How’d it go with the artificers, Learned Edmund?”

  The scholar set aside his stack of notes. “Amazing. Simply amazing.” He ran a hang through his hair. “Mistress Magnus has an incredibly tidy mind.” He shook his head. “She showed me her workshop. I’m going back tomorrow. What she is working on will revolutionize the way we create complex machinery.”

  “He’s been like this all afternoon,” whispered Caliban.

  “Damn. No one ever tells me I’ve got a tidy mind.”

  “It’s tidier than mine,” said Brenner.

  “Yes, but yours is full of spiders.”

  The assassin looked absurdly flattered by this.

  “Did you learn anything about the you-know-whats?” Slate asked.

  “The you-know—oh!” Learned Edmund shook his head. “I didn’t want to ask right away. It might look suspicious. Though I cannot believe that Mistress Magnus holds to anything but the highest ethical standards…”

  Slate watched the dedicate sing the praises of Ashes Magnus for a few moments, then leaned over to Caliban and whispered, “An afternoon of that would be a bit much.”

  “You have no idea. I believe he has fallen passionately in love with her indexes.”

  “Did you find anything about your lost scholar?” asked Slate.

  Learned Edmund paused in his raptures. “Mistress Magnus said that she’ll look into it. No one’s heard from him in some time, but that happens fairly frequently with scholars.”

  “He probably tripped and fell into an index,” whispered Caliban. Slate made a strangled noise.

  “Beg pardon?” said Learned Edmund.

  “Nothing. Allergies. Slate twitched a veil into place. “Well, I’m glad you and this Magnus person are getting along. Hopefully it’ll lead somewhere. The less time I have to spend in the Shadow Market, the happier I’ll be.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Caliban. The flimsiness of her disguise worried him. If he could see through it
…

  The robes were very loose when she stood upright, but when she folded her arms and stood on one leg—as she was currently doing—things pulled more tightly around her body. He always thought of Slate as small, probably because she was so much shorter than he was, but was occasionally reminded that she was rather more generous through breast and hip than one normally saw.

  He understood perfectly well why she wore shapeless clothes. It just baffled him sometimes that people didn’t notice her anyway.

  “Plenty of people dressed like Chadori in the Shadow Market,” said Brenner. “People dress like this when they don’t want to be recognized and we all…um…”

  “Maintain a polite fiction,” said Slate. “I’m told genuine Chadori think it’s hilarious. Apparently only old women dress like this, so you get assassins wandering around dressed up as somebody’s spinster aunt.”

  Caliban did not believe for a moment that anyone who mistake Slate for someone’s spinster aunt.

  “She won’t stand out, believe it or not,” said Brenner. “It’s…ah…a courtesy. You don’t try to figure out who someone is in the robes and they don’t try to figure out who you are when you wear them.”

  “And this works?”

  “…more or less.”

  “And you’ll find the people you need to talk to in this place?”

  Brenner and Slate exchanged a glance.

  “Eventually,” said Slate. “We’ll find the people who know the people who know who we should talk to. And we will pay them a little and then we will pay someone else a little more and by gradual stages, we’ll get to the people who know what’s going on.” She took off a glove and wiggled her fingers, grimacing. “Seven years ago, I could have just walked up to Blind Molly and said, “Okay, give me the dirt,” but times change.”

  “She might recognize you?”

  “She’s a little bit dead, actually.”

  “Ah.”

  Brenner slipped under Caliban’s arm, and into the hallway. “I’m ready. Shall we?”

  “Right. Yes.” She tried to adjust her veils again and dropped her glove. Caliban picked it up and handed it back.