The Wonder Engine

by T. Kingfisher

  “…yeah, okay, that’s fair,” said Slate.

  “Demonsss…” It seemed to consider that. “I have…I am…I control…”

  It twisted on the chains for a moment longer, perhaps seeking the correct words.

  “Are you controlling the clocktaurs?” asked Caliban.

  He was using the voice. Slate didn’t know what that was costing him and couldn’t begin to guess.

  “Yesss….” It slowly oriented on Caliban. “I control…them. Yess.”

  “We found many of your writings, Brother Amadai. It seems that you learned something extraordinary.”

  “Yes!” The corpse bobbed up and down on the end of the chain. “Yes! The books…my booksss…I could not write down what…I have learned…so much…so much…”

  “A scribe could learn much listening to you,” suggested Caliban. His voice was soothing and trustworthy. His free hand was closed over Slate’s arm so tightly that the gauntlet was leaving red impressions on her skin, but she barely felt it.

  “Yesss….”

  “Have you bound demons into the clocktaurs in place of souls?”

  Again that dead, gutting laughter. “Yess…oh yess…the soulss will not obey...but I was wiser than the ancientss…demons alwaysss obey…”

  The corpse smiled. Slate watched its lips rictus apart and thought, Well, if I live through this, my nightmares will be amazing.

  “They trapped demons…” whispered Amadai. “The ancients…They trapped them in thisss…But they had no godsss. They did not use them. I have used them.”

  “And you put them in the clocktaurs and sent them to fight,” said Caliban. He apparently noticed what he was doing to Slate’s arm and stepped back from her, eyes wide. “I’m sor—”

  She shook her head at him and whispered “It’s fine! Keep it talking!”

  “But…”

  She jerked her chin at the body and gave him a meaningful look.

  Fortunately, the creature did not seem to have noticed. “Yess….wass that not extraordinary…?” Amadai’s corpse twisted on the chain. The ivory spines moved up and down like an insect’s legs. “Two devicesss…but I have made them work…together…”

  Caliban nodded to her, turning his attention back to Amadai. “Can you call the clocktaurs back?” he asked, in that gentle confessor’s voice.

  “Whhy….would I…?”

  “You could end the war. You could save many lives.”

  “Mortal…livesss…no longer…concern me…” Amadai smiled more broadly still, and the edges of the corpse’s lips split open, revealing pink, bloodless meat beneath. “I am…become…god…”

  “Shit,” muttered Brenner. “That’s it. Once they think they’re gods, there’s nothing for it but a knife.”

  Slate was torn between a desire to shush him and an intense desire to agree. She settled for backing away.

  “You are nothing…” whispered Amadai. “Nothing…you will be mortal dust…unless…”

  “Unless?” said Caliban.

  The corpse spread its arms wide in an embrace. “…all gods…need servantsss…”

  “You want us to serve you?”

  “Worsship me…” whispered Brother Amadai.

  “I’m gonna stab him.”

  “Shut up, Brenner!” hissed Slate. As long as Caliban kept him talking, Amadai wasn’t…wasn’t doing whatever a clockwork corpse did when it was angry.

  Please, gods, let me never find out what that is.

  Caliban gazed into the eyeless sockets. The echoes rang back and forth “…worssship….worrrshhhip….ip…ip…”

  “Yeah?” Brenner growled in Slate’s ear. “And what if our fine paladin decides to do it? What then?”

  She tore her eyes away from Amadai and stared at Brenner.

  “I told you’d he’s been looking for a god. You’re fine in bed, darlin’, but that thing controls clocktaurs. Little more impressive.”

  “When this is over, I am going to slap you so hard that your ancestors will apologize for you.”

  Caliban ignored them both. So did Amadai. Slate really hoped that the paladin couldn’t hear them whispering.

  “Worsship me…knight…and I…I will make you…a general…of clocks…and bones…”

  “And what would you have me do, as your general?” asked Caliban.

  Amadai ratcheted back and forth. It looked almost as if the corpse were excited by the thought.

  “The world…the whole world…my servants…will go everywhere…I will see…everything…everything…the bone ones will walk and I will sssseeee….”

  Caliban’s throat worked. Slate saw him try to form words, his lips curling in disgust.

  “What will you see?”

  “…everything…” whispered Amadai, swinging back and forth on the chain, the bone arms rising and falling. “Every…mystery…will be…flayed open…my general…”

  He can’t lie with the voice. Damn, damn, damn. Caliban, you could just not say anything—

  “I’d rather die,” Caliban said, in the paladin’s voice.

  —or we’ll just go straight to the next idea.

  “Ahhhh….” breathed the corpse.

  “Can I knife him now?” asked Brenner.

  “You cannot,” said Brother Amadai. “I am become the Many-Armed God. I see…everything…”

  “Be my guest,” said Caliban.

  Brenner hefted a knife and threw it directly into Amadai’s left eye.

  The corpse shot upward toward the ceiling. The knife hilt protruded from the empty socket like an obscene tumor.

  Amadai began laughing again.

  “This body…isssn’t…alive…any more…” it said, clinging near the ceiling like a massive ivory spider.

  The three of them stood looking up.

  “We must never tell Learned Edmund about this,” said Caliban.

  “Yeah, well, unless we manage to get that thing down, we might not get a chance.” Brenner peered over the edge of the catwalk. “If you haven’t noticed…well…”

  Slate looked over the railing and started to laugh. Of course. It wanted only that.

  Four clocktaurs that had been nursing had come detached. Two were obviously unfinished, undersized and missing their forelimbs, but the other two were almost fully formed. Their blunt, eyeless heads had turned upward, toward the catwalk.

  As Slate watched, the final two unlatched from the wonder-engine. These had been the closest to the front, and they looked as large and complete as the ones that had been walking through the city.

  “They obey…” whispered Amadai, in a voice that filled the whole vast room and sent hissing echoes against the walls. “They obey…me…”

  * * *

  “Can you stop laughing, darlin’?” asked Brenner. “Between you and the dead guy, it’s gettin’ on my nerves.”

  “Right,” said Slate, snapping her mouth shut. It had felt more like a laugh-shaped scream than humor anyway. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine, darlin’. We’re all a little tense.”

  “Now what?” said Caliban.

  They looked down at the clocktaurs and up at the spidery figure of Amadai.

  “If we could break those chains he’s on…” said Slate, “we might be able to smash the thing.”

  “The chains are on a pulley up there,” said Brenner, tracing the lines with his knife. “But they’re anchored down…there. On top of the wonder-engine.”

  Slate examined the place where the chains appeared to have been bolted. They seemed to protrude from the wonder-engine’s neck, attached to what looked like a crude collar.

  “That’s not part of the original,” she said. “Look at it. They bolted it on.”

  “Maybe they had to keep him out of the way of the clocktaurs,” said Brenner.

  Amadai’s choking laughter continued overhead. “Yess….” it said. “One of my servantsss…did not wish to serve…like you…”

  “If a demon slipped loose, it could use the clocktaur to
smash things up,” said Caliban. “Makes sense they’d get him out of the way after that. I’m surprised he lived.”

  “Maybe he didn’t.”

  “Ah.”

  One of the clocktaurs, suiting words to action, slammed a massive limb against the wall. The room shuddered.

  Slate made her way down the suddenly swaying catwalk and leaned out over the railing. Caliban followed and grabbed the back of her shirt.

  “Relax, I’m not going over. Yet.” She studied the collar from her new vantage point.

  “Yet?”

  She sighed. “The chains connect there. It’s moving up and down on them through a winch or a pulley or something up above. But they were only able to forge one side to the collar, or they wouldn’t have been able to loop him onto it.”

  “What’s holding it in place, then?”

  Slate cracked her knuckles. “A very, very large lock.”

  Forty-Five

  Both Brenner and Caliban argued with her. Slate let them.

  “Slate, you cannot be serious!”

  “Darlin’, you’ll be standing on top of the damn engine.”

  “You could be killed!”

  “Why don’t I do it?”

  “Why don’t you let Brenner do it?”

  Slate shook her head. “Because when Brenner goes down there and can’t crack the lock, we’ll have wasted a whole lot of time. And when the guards come because the clocktaurs are smashing up the joint, I can’t shoot them.”

  Paladin and assassin looked at each other, then back at Slate.

  “Besides, if they hammer on the walls long enough, they might take down the catwalks. But I don’t think Amadai will let them smash up the wonder-engine.”

  She stepped up onto the railing. Caliban jumped to grab her around the legs and nearly knocked her over.

  “Slate!”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” she said, with marvelous patience, “but stop touching me.”

  He paused for half a heartbeat, then reluctantly stepped back.

  She eyed the distance to the chain. Hardly anything, really. She hadn’t missed a jump like that in a decade. She took a deep breath. Below, the clocktaur raised its arms for another strike that would shake the catwalk.

  Better move quick.

  “Caliban, try not to die because I don’t want ‘stop touching me’ to be the last words I say to you.”

  “I…uh…”

  Slate swung out over empty space and grabbed the chain.

  He swore behind her. Brenner whistled.

  Climbing down the chain was ridiculously easy. It was like a rain gutter with convenient hand and footholds. She could have done it in her sleep.

  The only bad moment came when Amadai slid down on his chain. That meant that the links Slate was standing on shot upward and suddenly the corpse was dangling opposite her.

  “What...are you…doing…little girl…” whispered the corpse.

  “Sightseeing,” said Slate, scrambling down the chain.

  The corpse sank down and she rose.

  Dammit.

  Well, sooner or later he’ll take up all the slack, I hope.

  Amadai tilted his eyeless head. As Slate watched, Brenner’s dagger began to work its way loose from the corpse’s eye.

  He reached out with one ivory arm and Slate swung around the side of the chain in sudden panic.

  “Hold…still…”

  Two more ivory spines moved toward her from the other side in an insectile embrace. The blade wiggled loose and fell. Slate saw movement inside the corpse’s eye socket.

  She flung herself down the chain, not even bothering with footholds. Her shoulders screamed at her, but she didn’t care.

  Amadai sank down further, pulling her upward as swiftly as she descended.

  “Why…do you…run…”

  Ivory tapped the chain. If she hadn’t been extremely busy, Slate would have violently sick. Instead she swayed sideways, away from his touch, setting the chain to spinning.

  The warehouse dipped and spun crazily around her as they circled in midair. She heard Caliban shout from above.

  Something whistled past her head and a crossbow bolt sprouted from the top of Amadai’s head.

  “Gaah,” she heard Brenner say, sounding disgusted. “There’re things inside his skull.”

  Slate almost started to picture that, slapped the thought down hard, and nearly ran down the chain.

  Fortunately, the bolt had distracted Amadai. He spun up again away, toward Brenner, and Slate shot toward the floor as the chain went slack.

  She could hear Amadai saying something, but her vision narrowed to the rapidly approaching back of the wonder-engine. If she didn’t jump off at the right moment, the chain was going to slap into the ivory machine with her underneath it.

  Probably not fatal, but I do like having my ribs intact…

  She flexed her feet to make sure neither one was jammed too tightly into the links. If one caught, it was gonna be bad.

  Ivory loomed. Slate leapt.

  She landed in a sprawl across the wonder-engine’s back. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs. Caliban shouted her name.

  She lay there for a minute, trying to breathe. The chains rattled behind her. If Amadai came down, it would pull up the slack, but she would have to deal with Amadai. If he went up, the chain would drop on top of her.

  Neither option was appealing. She gave up on breathing—air is overrated anyway—and scrambled forward, along the wonder-engine’s vast back.

  She heard the hum of Brenner’s crossbow and chain crashed down behind her as Amadai rose toward his attacker.

  Slate wanted to yell, “You could wait until I was out of the way!” but she was still dealing with having the wind knocked out of her. She scrambled up into a crouch and crabwalked across the wonder-engine’s back to the lock.

  She hadn’t been entirely truthful about the lock. Brenner could have picked it too. The lock was gigantic, and a lock that big was easy to work with. It was the little tiny ones that gave you trouble. Slate struggled with it mostly because the tumblers were absurdly heavy and her lockpicks were made for smaller things.

  God’s stripes, I could probably do this with my fingers…

  The reason that she had offered to go was because given the choice between working the lock and keeping Amadai occupied, she knew damn well what she would prefer.

  The crows took his eyes…

  Locks she knew. Fighting corpses, not so much.

  It was enormously heavy, though. The padlock was holding the last link of chain to the collar of the wonder-engine, and the bar was nearly as thick as her wrist.

  She snapped off her first lockpick and cursed.

  She slid another one in and the chain rattled violently as Amadai came down to see what she was doing.

  “…ssss….”

  “Nothing to see here,” muttered Slate.

  She risked a look up, saw ivory spines coming at her, and swung out of the way.

  How far can that damn thing move? It can’t come loose from the spines, can it?

  Slate had a sudden image of the corpse pulling itself lose from the chains and chasing her along the back of the wonder-engine.

  That was not helpful. Let’s not think about that again.

  The spines rippled like a centipede’s legs, back and forth, as Amadai reached for her again.

  “I transcribed some of your journals!” Slate shouted.

  “…ohhh....?”

  The corpse stilled. Slate jammed the lockpick in, fingers working frantically.

  “The cascading code was very good,” she said. “We had to get another brother of the Many-Armed God to crack it.”

  “…yessss…a brother…”

  “You’d like him,” Slate assured the corpse, feeling a tumbler catch and slide upward. “Very dedicated young man. He said you’d done amazing things. That no one in the order had imagined was possible.”

  “…ohhh…”

  “
Two devices!” said Slate. “Two wonder-engine things! Nobody’s ever made two work together before, have they?”

  “…hhhhheeeehheeee….” The corpse began to swing back and forth in tiny, pleased arcs.

  I think it’s giggling to itself. I think I made it giddy. Oh gods, gods, any gods, all the gods…

  She was working the lock by feel now, her eyes on the corpse. Brenner’s crossbow bolt was sticking out of its head and as she watched, a thin bone needle emerged from the back of the skull, moving like a living thing, and began tapping blindly at the arrow shaft.

  Slate’s mind was nothing but screaming horror, but her hands never faltered on the lock. Another tumbler popped.

  The corpse hissed at her. Words. A question?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, astonished at how automatic the words were. “Can you repeat that?”

  The little bone needle bent into segments and wrapped around the arrow shaft. It began to push down. Another needle slid out and joined it, feeding the arrow downward into Amadai’s skull.

  “….sss…my brothhher…will hhhe tell…thhhe order….of my…achievementsssss…”

  “Yes!” Another tumbler fell. Last one now. “Monographs. He’ll write monographs about it. More than that. Volumes. The whole order will be in awe. He said so.”

  “Sssss…!”

  The point of the crossbow bolt appeared on Amadai’s cheek and began to push forward, distending the skin. Slate watched in horrible fascination.

  The clocktaurs slammed into the catwalks again, shaking them, and she had to wait for the vibrations to die down. She nearly had it now, she just needed another few seconds…

  The skin peeled bloodlessly back from the point of the bolt, sliding along the wicked swallowtail point.

  Makes sense, Slate thought If you pull Brenner’s bolts out, they’ll tear you open. You gotta push ‘em through. Absolutely sensible. Also I’m going to be sick and I really don’t have time to be sick.

  “I can’t get a good shot, darlin’,” called Brenner. “Not without maybe hitting you.”

  She didn’t dare yell an answer. The corpse cocked his head like a curious dog, watching her, while the ivory needles continued pushing the bolt through Amadai’s head.

  “…I…know whhhat…you’re….doing….” he assured her.