The Wonder Engine

by T. Kingfisher

  There were people of every possible nation, different races in different clothes. Caliban saw Chadori tribesmen (who were presumably genuine, unlike Slate) dark-skinned soldiers and merchant princes, great red-haired barbarians…every version of humanity imaginable. Even a minotaur, hooves clicking on the stones, and Caliban would have sworn you never saw them this far from the ocean.

  He got lost immediately, but that didn’t bother him. He was looking for temples in general, not any one in particular, and the city did not disappoint. There were temples to most of the major sects, and tiny cloisters dedicated to gods he’d never heard of.

  He asked the same questions at every temple. Were there any reports of demons? How long since there had been any? Really. Fascinating, thank you.

  Drop a coin in the alms box, go to the next temple, repeat.

  After the third one, he started to get increasingly uneasy.

  There simply weren’t any demons. No one had heard of one for years. The bishop of the Forge God had been right. Wherever the demons were, it wasn’t in Anuket City.

  “Well, there were reports of one when I had just come here,” said an olive-skinned person at the Temple of the White Rat. They had long hair and thin, elegant hands. “But it was actually a child with the falling sickness. You know how superstitious people can be.”

  “Was the child all right?”

  The priest made a maybe-yes-maybe-no gesture with their right hand. “Taken to the healers before anyone could do anything foolish in the name of exorcism. I’m afraid I don’t know much more than that.”

  “Thank you,” said Caliban, dropping a coin in the alms box.

  The fifth or sixth temple was a tiny hole in the wall and he’d have walked right by it, except that the priestess there wolf-whistled at him.

  “Look at you!” she said cheerfully. She was even shorter than Slate, very round, with a shaved head and enormous silver earrings. “Dreaming God always did know how to pick ’em. We don’t see too many of your kind out here, paladin.”

  He bowed to her, very deeply indeed. “Our loss, clearly, Sister.”

  “Ha! Sit down a spell, or are you off to smite something?” She patted the rug next to her.

  “I fear I am at a loss for things to smite,” he said, taking the opening, and sat down opposite her. “In fact, it seems that there are no demons anywhere in Anuket City to be found.”

  She had heavy eyelids, but the eyes under them were sharp as adder’s tongues. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “Seems like it should be, doesn’t it?”

  “You tell me.”

  She grinned. She had a gold tooth on the right side. Caliban could smell divinity clinging to her like expensive tobacco or cheap wine.

  If he’d been about ten years younger and not half out of his mind over Slate, he would have been rather attracted to her. A woman like that would drink you down to the dregs and leave you half-dead in the gutter with a smile on your face. There was a great deal to be said for that.

  As it was, even if he had been completely available, he was a little afraid she might break him in two. So he simply enjoyed the warmth of the divine that radiated off her. Even if it was not his god, it had been a long time since he felt such a power. Certainly no priest in the city that he yet met had it.

  Goddess, he thought. Not one he knew. He could taste salt and herbs and a strange, astringent tang, like leather.

  “Somethin’ weird about it, isn’t there?” she admitted. There was a brazier in front of her and she poked the coals with a thin rod. “City this size ought to be bringing ’em in. You’d expect some body-jumping murders, maybe somebody floating over the fountains screamin’ in devil-tongues, eh?”

  “I would,” he admitted.

  The power in the room was growing. Each time she poked the coals in the brazier, they seemed to pulse and the power grew deeper.

  “Strange. And none of the other temples troubling themselves to notice. That’s strange too, don’t you think?”

  “Yessss…” said Caliban. The word stretched out longer than he intended, with much more venom. Until that moment, he hadn’t even realized that he was angry.

  Why didn’t anyone pay attention? Why didn’t they tell us that they’d found a place without demons? We could have studied it—learned from it—found the cause! Instead they all just ignored it, as if we had all poured out our blood for a mild annoyance!

  The priestess looked at him for a moment, her heavy-lidded eyes lowering even farther. Then she reached out her hand and offered it to him, palm up.

  He inhaled sharply.

  “Your god’s a hard one, paladin, for all He doesn’t lay out many commands. Mine’s a bit kinder. Knows how to say thank you.”

  “I…”

  “Come on. I’m not old, but I’m not getting younger.” She snapped her fingers.

  She didn’t even need the voice. Caliban had spent a lifetime obeying nuns. He could no more has disobeyed than fly.

  His hands were shaking as he removed his gauntlets. He eyed them as if they belonged to someone else.

  He held out his hand and she turned hers and gripped his wrist, her palm across his pulse. Her eyes locked with his.

  The power of her goddess surrounded him and ripped his breath out of his lungs.

  She was an old, fierce thing, a thing of high places and the hearts of beasts. Her children would walk sure-footed in the dark. Her priests knew the taste of loneliness, and, knowing it, had put their boots on its neck.

  The places in Caliban’s soul that had been empty for too long cried out in anguish. He wanted those places burned away, filled with the certainty of divinity, wanted it like an addict wanted the drug that destroyed them.

  Yes. Please. Please, some god take me. Any god. I was made to be a sword in someone’s hand. It is all that I know. It is the only thing I’m good for. Please…

  The dead demon shrieked, but Caliban barely heard.

  Her lips curled up at the corners. “I never saw the need for paladins of My own. But my, what lovely, broken creatures you are…”

  It occurred to Caliban, as he fought for breath, that he was no longer sitting opposite a mortal.

  Her eyes were full of wolves and shadows, snow and thornlight. She would have him go to empty places and hold them against those who would destroy them. When he fell at last, ravens would carry bits of his flesh away on black wings and make one final use of his sacrifice.

  The strength of his own desire to serve shocked him. His god had abandoned him. He had made his peace with that.

  He had not quite realized that he would crawl on his knees to any other god that would take him.

  Please. Please! Take me—use me—make me useful again—give me meaning again—

  “Ah…” She said, with real regret. “No, paladin, you’re not for Me. Shame. I’d take you if I could. You’re too good a weapon to leave lying around unclaimed. But you were made to answer to one hand only, and it isn’t Mine.”

  She released his wrist. Caliban nearly cried out in pain. The power melted away like a handful of ashes, and he was mortal again and his soul was still so much less than it had been and…

  …and someone was pushing a teacup into his hand.

  The heavy-eyed priestess had gotten up and returned. He didn’t think that much time had passed, and yet here she was, carrying tea, looking as tired as he felt.

  “Drink it,” she said. “It isn’t poison. Didn’t expect to be an avatar today myself, but that’s what I get for not eating breakfast.”

  He drank. The goddess had not been evil, whatever else she had been. He did not fear poison.

  Their hands met as she took the empty cup, and he felt only skin heat and the warmth of a distant divinity, not the raging bonfire of a god in mortal flesh.

  “Do I pass her test, then?” he asked hoarsely. Fairly sure that he hadn’t passed it, whatever it was. In the end, he hadn’t been the one who chose.


  “Heh!” The priestess grinned. “That wasn’t a test—or if it was, it wasn’t a test of you. But I meant what I said. She knows how to thank someone who’s given up everything to keep the rest of us safe. So by way of Her gratitude, I tell you this: the demons are being pulled in by a mechanism somewhere in the city. Have been for some time.”

  “Someone’s made a device that traps demons?” said Caliban.

  “It seems so. One of these mad artificers, perhaps. Perhaps something else. She does not know. She does not pretend to be all-seeing. But the demons that come into the city go very quiet. If they jump from their host, they don’t land into another one.” She scowled. “I’ve pushed my fellows at the other temples to investigate, but no one listens to me. They tell me to go back to the hills and wilderness, that I’m jumping at shadows. Even the sweet ones say that if there is such a device, well, we’re all the better for it, aren’t we?”

  She leaned over and spat.

  “Thank you,” said Caliban. He was still kneeling. He drew his sword and set the point to the floor, forehead pressed against the crossguard, an obeisance made to one’s liege and the highest of one’s order.

  The priestess sighed. “Ah, She’s right. Damn shame. You’d have been welcome, brother.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Caliban, and meant it. “Will you give me your blessing?”

  She smiled and tapped two fingers on his shoulder. “You already have Hers.”

  “I’d rather have yours,” said Caliban, and meant that, too.

  Twenty-Four

  He found his way back to the inn easily, as if the complicated city had unwrapped itself. Perhaps the blessing of the priestess of the wild goddess had something to do with that, or perhaps his feet knew the way, once he stopped thinking that he knew where he was going.

  Something was trapping demons. A mechanism. From the artificers? Or Learned Edmund’s wonder-engine?

  It was possible that it had nothing to do with anything. It was possible that he had stumbled into a second, minor mystery, of interest to no one but a paladin of the Dreaming God.

  Caliban entertained this notion for about five seconds, then discarded it.

  He was not one of those people who believed that there were no coincidences. There were plenty of coincidences. They frequently worked out badly, but they happened.

  But you did not grow up in a temple without learning to see the hands of the gods at work.

  The gods work through mortals. We are their tools. They have used mortals to make the world into this shape.

  What shape is it? What are They hoping to achieve?

  Where do They wish me to strike?

  All he had ever been was a sword in the hands of the gods. He knew no other way. If a god would not wield him, then very well, he would have to wield himself and hope to do Their will regardless.

  The priestess had said one thing more to him before he left. She had risen to her feet and said, “Listen. I say this as a mortal to another mortal.”

  He leaned down to hear her. She was almost whispering, as if whispering would hide her words from the gods.

  “Be careful, paladin,” she whispered. “The hole in your heart is very large. Be careful what you allow to fill it.”

  Slate looked up at him as he came back into the main room of the inn. “Do I have to make you swear not to clank off anywhere by yourself?”

  For a moment, he could not think of an answer. The priestess was tangled in his head with her goddess, and the hole in his soul was tangled up with Slate, who was draped over her chair as if she had no bones.

  “What?” said Slate, as he stared at her. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

  “Uh…”

  Rescue came from an unexpected quarter. “Easy, darlin’, the man’s walking like he just took a set of brass knuckles to the face. What happened to you?”

  “Heh…” Caliban dropped into a chair. “Brass knuckles. Yes. That’s about what it feels like.” He stared at his hands for a moment, pulled off a gauntlet. It seemed like the priestess’s touch should have left a mark, but it hadn’t. “I met a goddess.”

  “Well, these things happen,” said Slate. “Except, wait, no, they don’t. What the hell? Why’d you meet a goddess?”

  “Which goddess?” said Learned Edmund, finally glancing up from his notes.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Caliban. “I mean, I know—I’d know Her again—anywhere—but I don’t know what she’s called. A goddess of wilderness and lonely places.”

  “Inzaa, perhaps,” said Learned Edmund, his gaze returning to the page before him. “Sometimes folded into a triple goddess figure. The hunting crone. Not sure what She would be doing in a city, though.”

  “Cities are often lonely places,” said Caliban.

  He didn’t mean to use the voice, but the words tolled out with the ring of prophecy. Learned Edmund did look up at that.

  “God’s stripes,” muttered Grimehug. “You pick up gods like a gnole picks up fleas, big man.”

  “I think She tried to recruit me. No, I know She did. It didn’t work. I would have—well. It didn’t work. She wanted to tell me about the demons, but…” He raised his hands helplessly, let them fall.

  “What about the demons?” asked Slate.

  “Something’s catching them,” he said. He repeated what the goddess had told him.

  “Somebody putting you out of a job?” said Brenner.

  “God, if only!” said Caliban, with more passion than he intended.

  “What, you don’t like chopping demons out of peasants?”

  “Shut up, Brenner,” said Slate. “Are you thinking they might get your demon out?”

  Caliban’s head snapped up so fast that he heard his vertebrae crackle.

  “…so you weren’t thinking that,” said Slate. “All right.”

  He hadn’t been. It honestly hadn’t even occurred to him.

  “It—it doesn’t work like that,” he said haltingly. “Demons jump between those they possess or are driven out by a stronger demon or they are bound and they choose to go back to hell. But they choose to leave. You could force a bound demon to possess someone else, but once they’re dead they’re…well.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Dead demons don’t leave. The rune-demon seemed to think that it could take the dead one’s place, but it was not a bargain that I wished to make.”

  “Might have been interesting,” drawled Brenner.

  “I’d rather not go on another killing spree, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Aw, but—”

  “Shut up, Brenner. Do you think the demons are related to the Clockwork Boys?”

  Caliban rubbed his sternum. It felt as if the goddess had reached inside and touched a hollow place underneath his breastbone. He could still feel Her fingers on his heart. “Yes. And no, I don’t have any proof. But the Dreaming God’s paladins are the only ones who can catch demons. It’s what we are.”

  “Not the only ones,” said Learned Edmund absently, still looking at the page in front of him.

  “What?”

  “Oh.” He blinked over at Caliban. “The Many-Armed God’s dedicates made a study of it, a few years ago. One of them did, anyway.” He frowned. “I can’t recall which one…the folio was bound in red leather…”

  Caliban was used to Learned Edmund’s digressions by now. “How long ago?”

  “Oh, only a century or so, I think.”

  “Practically current,” murmured Slate.

  Learned Edmund tapped his stylus on the table thoughtfully. “He determined that binding a demon is a skill possessed by individual humans, with the backing of a god to provide the power. The Dreaming God, of course, selects among those individuals for his Knight-Champions, but presumably there are others not emotionally suited for such work who still possess the talent involved.”

  Caliban considered this for a moment. “All right…” he said slowly. “I suppose that is more or less what the temple teaches, if you look a
t it sideways. But those other individuals, if they exist, still couldn’t bind a demon without a god’s help.”

  Learned Edmund steepled his fingers. “Unless they found another source of power.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe like a wonder-engine,” said Slate.

  Twenty-Five

  “I still can’t believe we’re breaking into a library,” said Learned Edmund.

  “You make it sound like we’re robbing graves,” said Slate. “It’s not like we’re stealing for the fun of it. We’re taking notes that should they should have given you anyway.”

  This distracted Learned Edmund nicely. “I cannot believe they did not hand Brother Amaudai’s writings to me! A fellow dedicate! Those works belong to the Many-Armed God!”

  “And He’ll be happy to have them back,” said Slate cheerfully. “We just have to go get them for Him.”

  Learned Edmund gave her a level look. “I am fully aware what you are doing, Mistress Slate,” he said.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “…no.”

  “All right then.”

  They entered the great Hall of Artificers. It had once been an extraordinary building, full of marble pillars, high ceilings, and clean lines. Now it was dimmed with soot and bits of clockwork clung like tree-mushrooms to the pillars. A spidery thing ratcheted up and down one pillar, clinging by two legs, while a disgruntled trio of men stood underneath, glaring up at it.

  “The library is through here,” murmured Learned Edmund, pointing to a set of double doors in the corner. A large sign on the door read: NO STEAM OR EXPLOSIVE DEVICES IN THE STACKS.

  A man looked up at them as they entered. “Learned Edmund,” he said. “Again. And…?”

  “My scribe,” said Learned Edmund.