The Wonder Engine

by T. Kingfisher

  “Oh, and I suppose you’d be the safe, sane option? The hired killer?”

  Brenner examined his nails.

  “Brenner…”

  He reached out and tapped her cheek with one finger. “I know what you’re like. I may not be pretty, but there’s nothing you’ll do that’ll ever disappoint me.”

  “We’re all gonna die,” said Slate, swatting at his hand. “Probably in short order. This is pointless.”

  “Speak for yourself, darlin’. I’ve got a trick or two left up my sleeve.”

  “Then feel free to yell at my corpse about how you warned me,” snapped Slate, and stomped off to see if Learned Edmund and Magnus had had any more luck with the translations.

  Forty-One

  “Sweet Lily reported back. The grave-gnoles will come tomorrow,” said Learned Edmund. “Will that be enough time to prepare?”

  “Prepare what?” said Slate, leaning against the wall. “I don’t have a plan. Does anyone else have a plan?”

  “Lots,” drawled Brenner. “None of ’em will do any good, but I got ’em.”

  “I believe that we are, as my lady says, ‘winging it,’” said Caliban.

  My lady. That’s a new one.

  Do I like that or is that getting too close to ‘my liege’ territory?

  Brenner raised a derisive eyebrow at her. Slate decided it was worth it, just to spite him.

  Learned Edmund was still turning the strange drawing over in his hands. “Mistress Slate?”

  “Eh?”

  “The cascading code from the journal. What if you apply it here?”

  Slate frowned. “There’s not enough to work with there, is there?”

  “Will you help me try?”

  She sat down beside him. “Of course.”

  It took them twenty or thirty minutes, working letter by letter. Brenner got bored and began rolling cigarettes and lining them up on the table in front of him.

  “The other…debris?” said Slate finally. “Delivery?”

  “Device,” said Learned Edmund. “It must be device. Something about the other device.”

  “Oh god, not another one,” said Ashes, putting her face in her hands.

  “Isn’t one enough?” asked Caliban.

  “I don’t understand,” said Slate. “These were his own personal notes. Why would he even bother hiding something in code? Even just a fragment?”

  Learned Edmund shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where this page goes. It was only a guess to apply the code.” He chewed on his lower lip. “Could it be an artifact?”

  “Like the wonder-engine?”

  “No, no, an artifact of the code. It’s a letter substitution, and we’re guessing at some of the letters. We could be making up information that isn’t really there.”

  “It’s possible,” said Slate. “I’d like to say that I’m better than that, but…” She braced her forehead against her fingers. “Half of a good forgery is knowing what people want to see. I won’t swear that I’m not wanting to see something here.”

  “Darlin’, if you want another of those wonder-engines lying around, you’d even more of a glutton for punishment than the paladin.”

  Slate made a rude gesture. Caliban put his hand on Slate’s thigh under the table.

  “Aaand that’s all I think I’m good for tonight,” said Slate. “If I am seeing things…oh, I don’t know. I don’t suppose it matters. We’re still riding in with the grave-gnoles whether there’s one wonder-engine or a dozen.”

  “I will find some shrouds,” said Ashes Magnus. “You’ll need those. Otherwise you should all get some sleep,” said Ashes Magnus. She paused, looked Caliban up and down, and then said “Well, eventually.”

  Learned Edmund looked baffled. Brenner made a rude noise, not entirely under his breath.

  Caliban actually blushed, which, so far as Slate was concerned, was almost worth the price of admission.

  “Good night, all.” It seemed like a dumb thing to say for her last night on earth, but she couldn’t come up with anything better, so she waved.

  Caliban followed her down the hallway. For a minute, she was afraid that she was going to have to coax him back into the bedroom again, but he held the blanket door up to let her pass and was stripping out of his armor almost before she turned around.

  Good. Good.

  It’s about damn time something went right.

  Slate had wondered any number of times what Caliban would be like in her bed.

  The first time probably didn’t count. That had been a haze of relief and lust and two people falling into each other’s arms because somehow they were not dead.

  It was very, very good, don’t get me wrong, but when you’re starving, any meal is a feast.

  What would he be like when he had his choice? Ruthless like Brenner? Careful? God help her, chivalrous? Or perhaps simply a Knight-Champion, used to being serviced like a pedigree stallion when he came back from slaying demons?

  Slate was starting to think she’d never find out because it seemed like he was almost frightened to touch her. She stripped off her shirt with no assistance and looked up to see him watching her.

  “Well?” she said.

  He stroked his fingertips up her arms, barely touching her skin. His eyes were dark and unreadable in the candlelight. He ran a fingertip over her collarbone and she wanted to scream from frustration, but she was a little afraid that he might run out of the room if she did.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t break.” Dear god, if Boss Horsehead didn’t break me, you certainly can’t…

  He set his lips next to her ear and whispered “I might.”

  It jolted her harder than his touch had done.

  Two words. Two words and I’m ready to go right now. I don’t even care if we make it to the bed. God help me. Perhaps it's just as well we haven't been doing this. I'd have been screwing him up against walls every ten minutes.

  She shoved him backward toward the bed, determined to make his eyes roll back in his head before she was done.

  He yielded to her touch, but only for a moment, and only until she set to work in earnest.

  “Careful!” he said, catching her wrists and pulling her hands away. “Much more of that, and we’ll both be done before we’ve started.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  He chuckled. “If we are possibly going to die tomorrow, at least let me take my time tonight.”

  Slate raised her eyebrows. Well, well, well…

  In the end, the answer to how this particular paladin made love seemed to be that he treated her as if she were holy.

  This would, under normal circumstances, have been infuriating, not least because it proved Brenner right. Slate did not wish to be worshipped, she wished to be bedded, preferably with skill but failing that, with enthusiasm.

  Then he used the voice.

  “Let me know you,” he said, running his hands over her skin. “Let me see all of you.”

  “Not much to see,” she said, feeling awkward in the face of so much sincerity.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “Also, beautiful. But wrong.”

  “But—”

  He kissed her.

  When a ridiculously handsome man decides he thinks you’re beautiful, maybe you should just shut up and enjoy it instead of trying to talk him out of it.

  So they left the lamp on, and Caliban mapped out her skin with his fingertips, murmuring words that did not matter nearly so much as the tone in which he said them.

  Slate began to think that there was something to be said for being worshipped after all.

  He brushed his lips over each scar, even the ugly ones, like the knotted line on her ribs, earned when a rain gutter had given way and dumped her unceremoniously onto the ground. He kissed each of them, ignoring only the one scar that both of them shared, the welt under the tattooed teeth. That one, she was happy enough to leave alone.

  He lingered over the blotched acid
marks that had left her wedding ring scarred onto her right hand, a brooding line between his eyes.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” Meaning the marriage, as much as the scar.

  “Did you burn it off?”

  “Good heavens, no. Spilled the acid on it and the ring saved everything underneath. Had to have a jeweler cut it off, though. It was more than time.” She shrugged. “It had been over for years. I just…hadn’t gotten around to it.”

  He kissed each scarred knuckle in turn. “You are beautiful,” he said again, into her palm, and she believed that he believed.

  The only other words she remembered came much later. “There?” he asked, his fingers moving across her flesh, and Slate’s own voice sounded very thin and hoarse in her ears as she said “Yes—there—please—”

  “Shh…” he whispered a moment later, gathering her up in his arms and muffling her cries against his shoulder. “Shhh…”

  Later, she’d remember that they were in a gnole burrow and the walls were not so much thin as nonexistent. At the time, she thought nothing of the sort and perhaps would not have cared if she did.

  “I need you,” she said in his ear, and he nodded and there were no more words.

  Probably he meant to take his time there as well. But Slate was in no mood for that any longer. She caught his hips and set a bruising rhythm and after that it went quick and hard and he, too, forgot about the walls.

  Slate lay there, feeling warm and sated and a bit sore, feeling Caliban breathing heavily atop her.

  Eventually, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at her. His eyes were shadowed, but even the shadows were warm and kind.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’ll work.”

  He started laughing almost soundlessly, which she felt all along her ribcage.

  “What? I’m not good at pillow talk!”

  “Never change,” he said, kissing her forehead.

  She thought about telling him that she probably wouldn’t live long enough to get a chance, but it seemed like a waste of a perfectly wonderful afterglow, so she didn’t. Instead she stretched out alongside him and wondered what, if anything, she should say.

  Hey, Brenner says I’m kinda your god now and it’s a bad idea.

  No. Definitely not.

  I think I’m in love with you.

  Even worse.

  Before she could think of anything that made better pillow talk, she drifted off to sleep.

  In the morning, the grave-gnoles came to take them away.

  Forty-Two

  “Shrouds,” said Ashes. “I’m wrapping live people in shrouds. Of course I am. What a week this has turned out to be.”

  “You’ve got to leave my mouth clear,” warned Slate, “or I’ll be the only corpse in the place having an allergy attack.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Ashes. “You allergic to the gnolls?”

  “Strangely enough, no.” Slate watched the artificer lift a shroud and drape it artfully across Slate’s forehead. She closed her eyes. “Seems like Grimehug’s the only thing I’m not allergic to.”

  Learned Edmund made a thoughtful noise. Ashes wound the cloth, leaving a gap over Slate’s lips, tucking it tighter across the body. “You, we’re going to have to drop under a real werkblight corpse. You’re breathing too obviously. Fortunately your grave-gnole buddies brought a couple. Now, I just need to—oh, drat that Edmund boy, where’d he go?”

  “He said that he needed to write down a thought,” said Caliban.

  “Gah. Fine. This isn’t blood, incidentally, it’s oversteeped tea with beet juice. I don’t keep blood just lying around.”

  “That’s a great comfort,” said Slate, feeling liquid splatter around her.

  “All right, handsome, your girlfriend’s ready for the body cart.”

  “I feel like this is warping our relationship in some fashion,” said Slate, as Caliban hefted her in his arms and laid her down in the gnole cart in the courtyard.

  He snorted. “I am trying not to think about that, thank you.”

  “What, our relationship?”

  “No, that you’re currently wrapped in a burial shroud and I’m about to drop a corpse on top of you.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “You’re not bothered about having a dead body on you?”

  “I’m much more worried about having a tattoo eat me.”

  “You could catch werkblight.”

  “My dear paladin, I don’t think we’re going to live long enough for the werkblight to be an issue.”

  He sighed, bent down and kissed her. Granted that all Slate could see through the wrapping was light and dark, it looked like a dark blob bending over her, but she figured it out quickly enough when his lips touched hers.

  It was a pretty good kiss. His tongue flicked across her lips. She wondered vaguely if he was getting tea with added beet juice on him, and then wondered, much less vaguely, if this was going to be the last kiss they ever had.

  “Hey, Caliban?” she said, when they broke apart.

  “Yes?”

  “If they figure it out and stab us while we’re on the body cart, or we get split up or whatever…”

  He was very still. Slate had no idea what she had been about to say, except that it seemed like she should say something.

  She settled on, “I wish we’d had more time.”

  His fingers curved against her face. She could feel their warmth even through the cloth.

  “We aren’t dead yet,” he said.

  “Yeah, well. Go get your shroud on and let’s hope the guards don’t realize that.”

  Slate named the corpse on top of her ‘Frederick.’ It seemed rude, given that they were becoming increasingly well acquainted, not to think of the body as a person.

  Welp, Frederick, guess it’s you and me now…

  Frederick, of course, had nothing to say. Given her travelling companions of late, that was actually somewhat restful.

  Brenner knows how to be quiet, he just doesn’t always choose to be. Learned Edmund is…well, Learned Edmund.

  Caliban…

  It was obviously not fair comparing Frederick to Caliban, although the paladin would probably be the first to admit that Frederick was less likely to say something stupid.

  He was heavy, though. In Slate’s experience, corpses usually were, so she wasn’t sure if Frederick had actually been a weighty individual or if any body thrown on top of her would be equally uncomfortable.

  Any body. Hah. I am hilarious.

  The grave-gnole cart hit a bump and Slate’s tailbone bounced off the wooden bottom of the cart. She gritted her teeth over a yelp.

  Frederick’s not yelping. Be like Frederick.

  She concentrated on breathing through her teeth. Frederick had not yet started to smell of death, which was good, but he smelled strongly of Frederick, which in this case was garlic and sweat.

  Well, I have no idea how he died. I don’t get to judge. Maybe he came out really well, considering.

  The grave-gnoles trundled onward, presumably toward the Clockwork District. Slate surreptitiously stretched her foot, which was falling asleep, and hoped that no one was able to see it.

  Cover for me, Frederick.

  It was probably safe. Nobody stared at body carts for very long, and if things moved, they usually assumed that it was the motion over the cobblestones. Presumably they would stop before reaching the door to the warehouse, and Slate would be exceedingly motionless.

  Great-grandmother, if ever you loved me, please don’t let your stupid rosemary power go off right now.

  Not that rosemary wouldn’t be an improvement on onions, but if she started sneezing, everything was over. Slate did not want the mission to end because of her allergies, and there was no Brenner here to politely strangle her to keep her quiet.

  Brenner was, in fact, in the body cart behind her, as far as she knew. Slate thought she and Frederick were in the first one, with Caliban
bringing up the rear.

  I suppose that means that if I do start sneezing and give away the game, the other two can get away. That’s good.

  Which likely meant, assuming that the guards didn’t kill her outright, yet another daring rescue by the Paladin and Assassin Traveling Road Show.

  That would be awkward. Caliban would rescue anyone from anything, of course, but Brenner was bound to get sarcastic about it if it kept happening.

  Also, there was the small matter of gratitude. One rescue was probably payment for her having rescued both of them from the rune, but if it kept happening…well. She’d be grateful. Really grateful. She wouldn’t even know how to express that kind of gratitude. What did you do with all that emotion?

  Swear fealty like Caliban had to her, maybe. Brenner would find that hilarious.

  The cart hit another bump and Frederick slid an inch to one side, compressing her ribcage until she almost couldn’t breathe.

  Well, I’m not supposed to be breathing anyway.

  She was starting to get light-headed. Were the gnoles taking the long way around the city?

  Far more of a concern than the sneezing, truly, was that the gnoles might sell them out. They had a longstanding business arrangement with the clocktaur’s keepers. Why would they jeopardize that for a few humans?

  As near as Slate could tell, the answer was “because Sweet Lily asked them to.” And Sweet Lily had asked because Grimehug had asked, and because Sweet Lily liked Learned Edmund.

  And Grimehug…well. Grimehug was playing a deep game, that was obvious. But he seemed to be playing it for his people. It would have been very easy indeed for Grimehug to have sold them out at any number of turns. All he had to do was not relay the information about where Slate was being held, and that would have been the end of her.

  Bit late to worry about that now, isn’t it? You’ve put yourself entirely in his people’s hands. Or paws.

  She still didn’t fully know what his goals were. She had a sneaking suspicion that the gnoles had decided that the clocktaurs were bad for business and war between human cities were bad for gnoles. But that was only a guess. Grimehug could have been thinking anything behind his eyes.