The Wonder Engine

by T. Kingfisher

  * * *

  Slate got the assassin up onto his knees. Caliban looked disapproving but he didn’t say anything, which was good because Slate would have taken him apart if he had.

  And right now, I could do it, too…

  Then Brenner tried to talk, and it reclaimed all her attention.

  “Hard…t’talk…” he whispered. “Lot of…lot of…” His eyes rolled back in his head for a moment. Slate cradled his head against her shoulder. He swallowed a few times. “Lot of voices…in here…”

  “Brenner,” said Slate miserably. “Brenner, you stupid bastard. You were supposed to have a trick up your sleeve. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

  She heard the scrape of steel as Caliban slowly drew his sword.

  “It’s done,” he said quietly. “They’re all in there. All the ones that are left.”

  He looked as unhealthy as Brenner. Thin skeins of blood had dried on the sides of his face where the wonder-engine’s teeth had cut him.

  “No,” said Slate, looking at the sword. “No. Not yet!”

  She held out one hand, as if that would really stop a slash from the demonslaying sword.

  Caliban shook his head. Brenner laughed weakly into Slate’s shoulder. “Time…”

  “Brenner, I can’t let him kill you!”

  The assassin’s smile was a shadow of its old self. “Darlin’,” he said.

  It was the last word he spoke that she could be sure was Brenner. The next words were a demon’s voice—“Nngaa! Hai! Ha!”

  The difference between a living and dead demon was extraordinary. When Caliban’s demon spoke, it sounded like inhuman words from a human tongue. This sounded like nothing human at all. Slate didn’t know how those sounds could even come from Brenner without shredding his throat to ribbons.

  She had too much experience with demons now to panic. She took a deep breath and kissed Brenner’s forehead. He smelled like sweat and tobacco and blood.

  The demon began to laugh, high and terrible.

  “Kneel,” ordered Caliban, and the demons pulled the assassin’s body upright and away from Slate and knelt him at the paladin’s feet.

  She rose and stepped back.

  “Don’t look,” said Caliban.

  “I owe him,” said Slate. “He’s saved my life so many times. I owe him.”

  “He wouldn’t want you to see this.”

  Slate closed her eyes, but not for long enough. She opened them when the demon stopped laughing, and she saw too much anyway.

  The first blow had killed him. It was a heavy sword and Caliban knew how to use it. He grabbed Brenner’s shoulder as blood washed over his gauntlets, and he spoke words in the paladin’s voice, in that language that Slate did not know, the same words he’d spoken over the old rune woman.

  Words of exorcism. Words to bind the demons to Brenner’s death.

  Words that could not change the fact that her strange, maddening, dark-souled friend was dead.

  He saved me from assassins. He kept me from giving us away on the road. He came after me when Boss Horsehead captured me. We were in the Grey Market together…we worked together…

  Caliban released the assassin’s body and it fell over onto the walkway, boneless and lifeless, with neither demon nor man left inside it. Slate heard herself cry out: a short, ugly sound of surprise. It had all happened too fast. It could not be over so quickly. Brenner could not be gone. Caliban could not have killed him.

  The paladin turned to her, bloody sword in his hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “Brenner bought us some time. Let’s go.”

  Forty-Nine

  It was easier to get out than it had any right to be. Possibly because no one was expecting to try to keep anyone out of the compound, but more likely, Slate thought, because there had been a rampaging clocktaur there until just a moment ago.

  “You drove one out here before you exorcised it,” said Slate.

  “Yes. I was having the others destroy the wonder-engine. It seemed a shame to waste them.”

  There were guards around that clocktaur now, bashing it with any weapons they could bring to hand. It wasn’t moving, but Slate knew how much courage that must have taken, just to walk up to it at all.

  All the gates were open. People were running away. No one noticed two more people running. The clocktaurs had broken down order as easily as they had broken down the walls.

  One guard near the gate did look at them and Caliban snapped, “The building’s on fire! Form a bucket brigade!”

  The guard saluted and ran off. Slate shook her head in weary disgust.

  “How…?”

  “People want someone to tell them what to do in a crisis,” said Caliban tiredly.

  Shadows leapt behind them. Maybe there was a fire, or maybe it was people bringing lanterns to see what was going on and how much damage there had been.

  The paladin seemed to be recovering strength with every step away from the bound demons. Slate hated him a little for that. Her bruised leg had stiffened up and she was limping.

  She was careful not to touch him.

  They went through the gate. Slate’s shoulderblades itched, expecting a crossbow at any moment, but none came. No one was worried about mere humans, when ivory monsters might go rampaging through the city at any moment.

  “What about the other ones?” she asked.

  “The ones already on the road?” He grimaced. “Nothing we can do. I expect a lot of them will attack each other, or smash themselves up. It lets the demons out, but I suppose it can’t be helped. The temple will be cleaning up after that for a long time.”

  And then, just like that, they were walking through the streets of the poor part of the city, sliding through alleyways where rain gurgled in the gutters. The warehouse and the clocktaurs and Brenner were very far away. They might have been two people out for an evening stroll.

  “This is your territory, not mine,” said Caliban. “Can you find us a way back that avoids pursuit?”

  “I’ll try,” said Slate. Thinking Brenner could have and then Brenner is dead and there was a demon in him and then she thought she might have to scream so she stopped thinking about it.

  It would be just her luck to get out of the clocktaur’s warehouse and get picked up by Boss Horsehead’s people. She focused on a winding route, doubling back, going into a tenement building and out the back door, while Caliban walked behind her.

  She could see gnoles, out of the corner of her eye. A few looked directly at her. Friends, she thought. I hope you’re really on our side, Grimehug.

  And then finally, they were in the Gnole Quarter, and the gnoles closed ranks around them. Sweet Lily appeared and Slate realized that she was crying with relief.

  “Is all right,” said Sweet Lily, in her high voice. “Is all right, Crazy Slate.”

  “No,” whispered Slate, shaking her head. “No. It’ll never be all right again.”

  The gnole didn’t try to argue. Instead she led them onward, deeper into the quarter, and at last into the safehouse.

  “You’re here,” said Learned Edmund. “Were you not able to enter the district?”

  Slate blinked at him, and then thought, It has only been about four hours. The whole world has changed and it has barely been four hours.

  How is that possible? It should have been years…decades…we should have died of old age instead of on each other’s swords…

  “We destroyed it,” said Slate. “The wonder-engine. The Clockwork District is on fire.”

  “What?”

  Learned Edmund sounded astonished. He could not have been more astonished than Slate felt.

  Is it over? Is it really over? Did we do it?

  God, she was so tired.

  Learned Edmund cried out. Slate started to recoil, until she realized that it was with joy.

  “I knew you’d do it. I knew it! I prayed and I thought—I hoped—” The dedicate flung his arms around her and Slate thought, in a night full of te
rrible surprises, that at least here was one positive one.

  “Yeah,” she said. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “Yeah.”

  Learned Edmund looked over her shoulder. “Sir Caliban! And…”

  Slate didn’t know if he looked for Brenner and didn’t find him, or if something in Caliban’s expression told him.

  “No…” he whispered. “No, oh no.” He pulled away from Slate and signed a benediction. Slate had a mad urge to laugh, thinking what Brenner would have said at that, but if she started laughing, she would start crying.

  She was going to start anyway, very soon. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep walking and talking like a normal human being.

  “I’m very tired,” she said. “I need to sleep. Later. Tomorrow. Something. Please.”

  “Of course, yes, of course…” He dashed tears from his eyes. “You did it. You succeeded. But the cost…oh, by the Many-Armed One…”

  Slate patted his arm. It was all the comfort she had left in her, and she spent it on Learned Edmund without a second thought.

  He stepped out of her way. She walked into the gnole-burrow and went to the kitchen. She found that she was very thirsty.

  She poured a mug of water and stared into it, her mind absolutely empty. If she felt anything at all, it would all come crashing down around her.

  She thought, I am very tired, and the thought lay in isolation in her mind, words without context.

  She turned away, the mug still in her hand, and Caliban was standing behind her.

  “Slate—”

  She looked up at his face, streaked with soot and blood. Sweat had left snail tracks through the soot. Under the layer of grime, his face was a mask of anguish.

  He reached for her and she leapt backward.

  He froze. His arm was still outstretched, and they both stared at it, at the blood that had dried in stiff black patterns on the bracer and left thick black lines in the gauntlet’s joints.

  Brenner’s blood.

  It was hard to tell which of them was more horrified in that moment. Slate shook her head, backing away, and Caliban dropped his hand and said, “I’m sorry.”

  She fled to her room. Which had been their room. His clothes were still neatly folded in one corner, his pack beside it.

  The pack flung very satisfactorily out the door, but there was something about folded clothes. Her mother’s training, probably. She had to set them outside the blanket door, still in their folds.

  When she looked up, he was standing at the end of the corridor, watching her.

  Her vision blurred with tears. She wasn’t sure if they were from rage or sorrow or both.

  She couldn’t slam a blanket behind her. She wished that she could. But she stalked into her room with all the dignity she could muster and then she fell down on the bed and sobbed as if her grief were an ocean and she were drowning in it.

  Caliban stood in the hallway, listening to Slate weep.

  He had no idea what to do next. Paladins were chosen partly for their endurance but he was so tired he could hardly think. The Dreaming God was a bar of molten iron in his soul, but the flesh that held that soul was exhausted.

  He had never commanded more than one demon at a time. The ones that had inhabited the clocktaurs had been small, weak things, already bound by the wonder-engine’s power, but there had been so many of them…and the rune demon had been anything but weak…

  Slate sounded as if her heart were breaking. He made a fist against the post that held up the door and leaned his forehead against it.

  He wanted to go to her. He wanted to hold her and comfort her and say words that would fix things.

  And what words would those be? She watched me bind the demon and cut Brenner practically in half. Am I supposed to touch her with hands that were covered in her close friend’s blood?

  Am I supposed to say her name in a voice that can make demons kneel?

  He bent down slowly and picked up his gear. She’d made her wishes clear. All that was left for him to do was obey.

  He went to the kitchen and drank water until his bruised throat felt a fraction less dry. Then he walked down the hallway, past the room that had been Brenner’s, into the first unused one. The bed on the floor was a gnole-style nest, too small for a human’s comfort, but it hardly mattered now. There was no power under heaven that could have enticed him to sleep in the dead man’s bed.

  He shed his armor, piece by piece. He was so tired that his hands seemed to be moving automatically. He cleaned his sword because you did not rest while your sword was still bloody, no matter how tired you were.

  Had Slate been in love with Brenner after all?

  Disgust nearly gagged him. How dare he even think such a thing? As if she wouldn’t have mourned for a friend. As if I have any right to ask.

  As if it matters now.

  The sword was clean. His armor was a bloody ruin, but that he could clean in the morning.

  He fell over into the bed.

  The blankets were cold but the Dreaming God burned inside him. It was the thing he had wanted most, to be centered again, to know with a core of certainty that he stood on the side of angels.

  He would have knelt but he no longer thought his legs would hold him up. It didn’t matter. The god was there. The god remembered his name.

  Thank you, he prayed. Thank you. Thank you for coming back to me. Thank you for using me to stop the clocktaurs. Thank you for letting me be your sword.

  Thank you for letting me save Slate.

  And then, a terrible prayer he knew he could never make aloud, Thank you for letting it be Brenner, and not her.

  Fifty

  Slate sat in the largest room of the gnole warren, the one that they had used as a meeting room. Grimehug had brought her food.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  “Doesn’t matter, Crazy Slate,” the gnole said. “Body’s hungry. Body ought to be hungry.” He pushed the plate toward her. It was bread with some kind of jam on it. Slate took a bite mechanically, then another, then had to stop and put her face in her hands for a bit, waiting for things to settle.

  “It’s all right,” she said to Grimehug. “It’s not…I’m not sick. I’m just…”

  The gnole leaned against her. There was something undemanding about the gnole’s presence, something that required no words. Slate passed him the plate and he finished off the rest of the bread.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Grimehug smiled with his sharp little teeth. “Used your money to pay for it.”

  “Heh.”

  “Tomorrow will be easier, Crazy Slate.”

  “God, I hope so!” Her voice cracked when she laughed and she let out a sob. “Because I can’t handle another one like yesterday.”

  “None of us can,” said Caliban from the doorway.

  She stiffened.

  He looked like hell. He had washed, of course. Probably a dozen times over, probably in a bath hot enough to broil. He still looked like hell.

  It was a grim sort of comfort.

  He was careful not to touch her as he passed. He took the kettle from the health and poured it into a mug for himself, then poured more for her. She resented that, even though her tea had gotten cold and the warmth in her hands was welcome.

  They sat there in cold silence for what seemed like hours, until the knight finally broke it.

  “Slate, taking the demon yourself wouldn’t have saved Brenner.”

  She set the mug down. It seemed that they were not even going to make a pretense of normalcy.

  Might as well get it all out now. Might as well drag all the ugly bits up and throw them out into plain sight.

  “It wouldn’t?”

  Caliban sighed. “No. Because when a demon leaves a soul, it doesn’t do it gently. I could have ordered the rune-demon to possess someone else, yes…and it would have torn Brenner’s mind in half on the way out. A demon is like a barbed arrow. You can’t pull it out. You have
to push it through instead. If they’re bound in a body when it dies, they follow the death back into the demon realm.”

  Slate grimaced. This was not what she wanted to hear, and yet already her mind was working at it, pulling it apart, looking for angles. “So you can’t just order them to jump to…I don’t know, to a chicken or a mouse or something?”

  The paladin shook his head. “Not unless you want to destroy the current host’s mind.”

  “You said the exorcism is drowning?”

  Caliban nodded. “If you drown someone, you have the best chance of having them die—at least briefly—without actually killing them. Someone worked it out a long time ago.”

  She stared at him.

  “It’s fast,” said Caliban grimly. “And it can be brutal. If we can get anything into them beforehand, there’s a drink the priests make so they’re not really conscious when it happens. The demon won’t always let that happen, though.”

  There was something about the way he paused over the last words that made Slate think he spoke from grim experience. She did not want to think about it. It made her skull and her heart ache.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that then?”

  “We were a little busy and you had a knife at my throat. I didn’t think you were in the mood for a lecture on demonology.”

  She grunted.

  After a minute, something occurred to her. “Wait…you’ve exorcised people.”

  “I have.”

  “Lots of people.”

  “Enough of them.”

  “And paladins on temple duty are exempt from murder charges.”

  Caliban sighed. “If you are working up to asking how many possessed individuals I have personally exorcised, eleven. Not including the one who was bound in the infant as bait for its mother’s trap. Six of them survived the experience. I offered each one the choice of the sword, and each one chose the water instead.”

  Slate’s mouth had fallen open and she closed it with a click.

  “Our survival rate is higher than surgeons taking off diseased limbs,” he said. “If you can get to a temple, the odds are better still. No worse than childbirth, say. But in the field, paladins have to do the best we can with what we have available. It is much like field surgery, in that regard, and the results are much the same.”