The Rising (The Alchemy Wars)

by Ian Tregillis

  Longchamp’s barricade. It must have sealed the passage snugly as a cork in a wine bottle. But then they’d activated the booby traps and detonated the outer wall. The same explosion that sent boulders smashing through the besieging forces also convulsed the chthonic heart of Mont Royal. An artificial earthquake had rippled the bedrock of the Île de Vilmenon. And crumbled the chemical barricades.

  The farther she went, the worse the debris. The chunks grew larger; the footing more unsteady. Until she hit a mound of broken stone heaped higher than she could reach. The tunnel had collapsed.

  “Fuck.”

  She kicked a stone. Swore again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Fuck… uck… ck… k… Her curses echoed.

  She knelt. Ran her hands over the blockage, wondering how she could possibly clear a path.

  Something twinkled. Dimmer than a star, yet bright enough to her dark-adapted eye that she had to blink away tears. Glowworm? Hallucination? But then she heard a tumbling noise, like debris falling away. And the glimmer, the faintest shimmer, of marigold-orange light within the crevices of the talus grew wider.

  There was somebody on the other side. And they were trying to reach her. Her heart tried to chisel its own escape tunnel through her breastbone. She cocked her head and leaned into the debris, trying to listen past the noise of her own body. Had she just announced herself to a nest of Clakkers?

  Her fingers kneaded the satchel strap. Her chances of evading the machines in this passage were nil. They’d find her notes and execute her.

  She scrambled to her feet when a stone popped out of place. It rolled away. A shaft of dusty lamplight flooded the passage. A human face peeked through a gap in the rockfall.

  The king of France said, “Bon soir, Madam de Mornay-Périgord. I thought I recognized your voice.”

  Talleyrand’s laboratory had seen better days. The signs of a massacre remained: bloodstains, overturned tables and shelves, gouges in the granite that only an alchemical blade could have made. Parts of damaged machines, scavenged from battlefields over the past century, lay scattered on the cavern floor like so much trash. A disabled military Clakker lay on a table in the corner, its neck and head cut open. More recently, the massive explosion up top had sent cracks zigzagging through the cavern and created a rain of stony dust that had coated everything.

  Established generations ago by sealed royal decree, it had been a place for clandestine treaty-violating study of Clakker technology. A place where pieces of damaged Clakkers secretly found their way. Every overstretched spring, every shattered escutcheon, every warped hinge, every scored and blackened crumb of alchemical alloy received hours of study. Extensively documented in journal after journal, in a variety of hands and inks, as the years turned and one Talleyrand became another. Until Berenice lost the Talleyrand journals in the undercroft of a New Amsterdam kerk. But it hardly mattered: In all that time, the Talleyrands had divined almost nothing of value. They’d believed they were making slow but meaningful headway toward unraveling their enemies’ secrets. They’d done no such thing. They’d been as children building sand castles and calling themselves the rightful heirs of the sea.

  Now the laboratory was little more than a hiding spot. A place to wait for the end. A place to stash the last king of France in the final hours of his reign.

  And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Berenice’s successor. The stupid bison-fucker.

  Berenice curtsied. Scraped and bleeding after clambering through the rockfall, it wasn’t her most elegant moment.

  “Oh, enough of that,” said His Majesty King Sébastien III. He offered his hand, helped her straighten. She was more sore than she realized. She’d received more bruises when they pulled her over the rubble into the laboratory. “It’s just the three of us and I’m very tired. Let’s dispense with the bowing and scraping. The Lord knows our friend the marquis has already done so.” He produced a handkerchief, dunked one corner in a water cistern, and offered it to her, along with a cup of water.

  It was ice-cold and stale, dusted with stone. Berenice drank it anyway. She coughed, burped, and said, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “You look a bit parched. Doesn’t she?”

  The marquis said nothing. He stood in the corner, watching Berenice with wild eyes while his hands worried the sweat-stained silk jabot at his throat. The ring of white limning his eyes made it look as though they were straining from their sockets. As though he were a rat slowly dying of poison. If only.

  The king took the cup. While Berenice wiped her face, he said, “I seem to recall banishing you.”

  “You did, Your Majesty.”

  “Well, then. That makes this an awkward moment for both of us.”

  The marquis de Lionne broke his silence. “She’s working for the Dutch! She’s come to take revenge for her humiliation. We must subdue her!”

  “Oh, do please shut up,” said the king. “I am so weary of your idiocy.”

  Berenice had always respected Sébastien III. He was wiser than his father, who had appointed the marquis to the privy council.

  The marquis said, “Ask her about the missing journals, Your Majesty.”

  The king raised an eyebrow. “I understand some papers of note went missing around the time you departed.”

  “They’re safe,” she said, hoping it wasn’t a lie.

  “Aha! She admits the theft.”

  Berenice said, “I assure you I’m not a Dutch agent, Your Majesty.”

  “Of course not. It’s more likely that I could be an agent of the tulips. You’ve always been one of the sharpest and most unswervingly dedicated servants of New France.”

  At this she bowed her head to hide her blush. “Thank you, Your Majesty. That has only ever been my—”

  “Loyal and smarter than most, but also arrogant, careless, and misguided. A combination that led to the massacre of three dozen people. I haven’t forgotten that either. On balance you proved a greater danger to the people of Marseilles-in-the-West and New France than a benefit. All of which makes me wonder why you’ve returned against my very explicit wishes.”

  Her face still felt hot, but no longer from blushing. Now it was the heat of shame. Her traitor eye sought a dark stain on the floor. The spot where Louis had died in her lap, bleeding out from the stumps where his arms had been. She’d watched it all unfold in her mind’s eye a thousand times; she saw her husband lying on that floor each time she closed her eyes, as though the scene had been etched behind her eyelids. She chewed her lip.

  The world was crumbling, but the king still had time for his principles. He might have wailed and gnashed his teeth, shredded his garments in anguish for the end of his reign. But he wasn’t so easily distracted.

  “The king asked you a question!” said the marquis.

  She patted the satchel. “I’ve learned things while I was away, Your Majesty. I carry a rough transliteration of the Clockmakers’ grammar for installing and modifying the mechanicals’ metageasa. Not ordinary verbal geasa, mind you, but metageasa. The foundation of every Clakker’s obedience. A glossary of compulsion, if you will. Plus, I’ve also learned how the Guild installs modifications.”

  The marquis blurted, “She’s lying. Nobody outside the Guild knows that. They kill people for less.”

  “No lie, Your Majesty.” She pinned the marquis with her gaze, saying, “They don’t kill their own. I traveled as a member of the Verderer’s Office. I’ve learned more in my time away than generations of Talleyrands.”

  Gray weariness still pulled at the young king’s face when she looked at him again. His lips twitched. She’d seen this in privy council meetings. He liked something he’d heard but wanted to keep a neutral expression.

  “You’ve had an adventure. I shouldn’t be surprised. And now you’ve returned in relentless pursuit of the goal you once declared to me so eloquently, haven’t you? You intend to turn our enemies’ machines against them.”

  “That had been my hope, Your Majesty. But I carry only a pi
ece of that puzzle. I don’t have the complete solution.” She bit her lip again, hating the failure she couldn’t deny. “I’m sorry. I don’t have what we need.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “Honestly, Your Majesty, I hadn’t expected to make it this far.”

  He sighed. “I hadn’t intended to run out my reign hiding like a rabbit. I’d expected to stand witness to the final days of our nation.”

  “Since you mention it, Your Majesty, if I may ask?”

  “My chambers were converted into a gun emplacement.” He pointed overhead, indicating the war-ravaged world above them. “That was before the tulips started throwing mechanicals over the walls. Even higher. They have a means of launching Clakkers all the way to the top of the Spire.” She whistled. “It surprised us, too,” said the king.

  “What a shame nobody had warned you. It must have been in development for quite a while. Sounds like a failure of intelligence, Your Majesty.” Her gaze locked on the marquis as she said this last.

  The land surrounding the famed citadel of Marseilles-in-the-West was a horror. A debris-strewn killing field littered with mangled mechanicals. Something terrible had happened. Something that had sent stony shrapnel sleeting through legions of Daniel’s kin. Beyond the killing zone stood an immense cannon, but only one. This faced the magnificent Spire, which lived up to its reputation.

  He’d never seen a man-made structure so tall. It seemed a needle poised to pierce the heavens; the scarlet staircase wrapped around the Spire looked for all the world like a jaunty tassel, or wax running down a particularly tall candle. He knew humans referred to this place as the Crown of Mont Royal because it looked like such from afar, but perhaps a candle was more appropriate. This was the last bastion of the freedom and dignity of all thinking creatures, flesh and metal alike. A light in the darkness.

  And, like a candle, it was soon to be snuffed out.

  Six columns of mechanicals had marched up the long slope from the river, and as Daniel burst from the trees, he saw them converging upon the nexus of battle. Replacements for the Clakkers damaged beyond repair by the explosion.

  Daniel had won the race to the siege, at which point his pursuers had no choice but to pause and recalculate their effort to recapture him. They couldn’t chase him openly without revealing their immunity to the decrees of their makers. No matter how fast and ruthless they were, no matter how fervent their dedication to Mab, they were outnumbered by regular Clakkers. The instant they revealed themselves, they’d trigger the Rogue alarm and disappear under a dogpile of mechanicals.

  They also faced a second difficulty, one that didn’t hamper Daniel’s efforts to blend in: overt chimerism. The grotesque modifications they’d accumulated during their decades of service to Mab prevented them from passing unnoticed among their kin in the Dutch-speaking world. The only way for the Lost Boys to stay inconspicuous was to remain unobserved. His own modifications, shameful though they were, were internal.

  Daniel sprinted into the besieging forces as though he were a messenger driven by a geas. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he was driven by a self-imposed geas.

  Daniel ran straight to the closest mechanical. “Special dispatch from Fort Orange,” he said.

  The servitor pointed to a tent not far from the immense artillery piece. “You’ll find Colonel Saenredam there.” Then she added, through a covert rattling, She’s in a wretched mood, just so you know.

  What happened here?

  The French decided they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  How many…?

  Creak, twang. A melancholy mechanical sigh. Hundreds.

  It was sickening. How terrifying it must have been for those like this kinsmachine—she was powerless to do anything except strive to destroy the people who opposed her slavery. Well, maybe he could do something about that.

  As he neared the colonel’s tent, he saw something remarkable: a pair of military mechanicals, two from the newly arrived reinforcements, climbing into the barrel of the immense artillery piece.

  Amazing, he thought. It’s not a weapon for delivering cannonballs and shells. It’s a weapon for delivering us.

  I can use this, he realized.

  Daniel presented himself to the sentries stationed (rather pointlessly, from the looks of it) outside the colonel’s tent. “Special dispatch from Fort Orange,” he said. One raised the flap for him, and in he went.

  The nerve center of the assault on Marseilles-in-the-West was a modest thing. Just a four-poster bed with a goose-down duvet, a wood-burning stove with adjoining pantry, and plush bearskin rugs for preserving soft human feet. All lit by an alchemical chandelier. Daniel had expected to find a few paintings, too, and perhaps a quartet of servitors holding string instruments in the corner. Compared with what he’d seen on the march from New Amsterdam, Colonel Saenredam was an ascetic.

  The colonel herself stood at the head of a butcher-block table. She and another human were studying a map. Daniel recognized the colonel’s adjutant. Indeed, he’d briefly taken Captain Appelo hostage during a standoff inside an airship mooring tower. But Appelo’s uniform had changed since then; there were no shiny bits on his shoulder. He’d allowed a rogue to escape—he was lucky if a demotion was the worst of his punishment.

  They looked up when Daniel entered. He snapped off a mechanically precise salute.

  The colonel bit off a single word: “What?”

  “Special dispatch from Fort Orange,” Daniel repeated.

  Saenredam glanced at Appelo. He shrugged. “First I’ve heard of this, Colonel. Must have come with the reinforcements.”

  Appelo didn’t recognize him. They took him at his word. As ever, the humans were too accustomed to mechanical obedience to doubt any machine that acted as they expected. Knowing this would be the case, Daniel had spent his long flight from Neverland concocting a lie.

  Saenredam said, “What have they sent us now?”

  Daniel reached inside his torso. “Lucifer glass, Colonel.”

  She shook her head. “WHAT glass?”

  “Lucifer glass.” He produced the box he’d stolen from Queen Mab. “I am geas-bound to deliver the following message,” he lied. Changing his posture and the timbre of his voice as if reciting a dictated message, he said, “Message begins: ‘Addendum to previous report. As hoped, the alchemists’ refinements brought dramatic improvement to the small-scale tests. The incineration radius exceeded our most optimistic projections by nearly ten percent. Further, the glass is finally sufficiently stable for battlefield deployment. This sample is all that remains of the first successful batch. Use it as you see fit. Be aware, the Clakker delivering this payload is likely to be destroyed. Signature: Captain Milo Coen, Breakthrough Technologies Detachment, Fort Orange. Personal note: Burn those frog-eating motherfuckers once and for all.’ Message ends.”

  The colonel said, “Addendum?”

  The humans glanced at each other. Appelo shook his head. “The previous messenger must have been knocked out.”

  “It might still be out there. Have the recovery squads query every mechanical still functional enough to communicate. I want to know more about this.” Appelo saluted and departed. Saenredam said to Daniel, “Have you been instructed in the Lucifer glass’s proper deployment?”

  “Yes, Colonel. It is a rather involved process. First, the glass must be—”

  “Fine. Go to the gunnery team. Tell them I want you on the Spire with the next shot. I order them to pull all the others and load you in their stead. Get on the Spire and activate the glass.”

  “Immediately, Colonel.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  The detonation had taken the tulips by surprise. Every chunk of broken ticktock strewn across the battlefield was another few moments’ reprieve for Marseilles-in-the-West. But their time had run out.

  Reinforcements had arrived.

  Longchamp counted half a dozen columns marching up from the river flats. That put more Clakkers on the field than
had been present prior to the detonation. The enemy had returned to full strength. Then surpassed it.

  Prior to the new arrivals, the chemical quartermasters had estimated the last tanks would be bone-dry by morning. But now, when the tulips sent their full might against the inner wall in one rushing, gleaming tide, the chemical armaments would be depleted in minutes. Meanwhile, farther in the distance, the machines operating the Clakker cannon prepared for another shot at the Spire. Oh, yes. Why the hell not?

  Crouched next to him behind the merlon, Élodie said, “Huh. I hadn’t expected this. But I suppose it makes sense.”

  “It makes every kind of Goddamned sense. They want to see us crushed. They’ve probably called in every walking teapot within a thousand miles just to make a point.”

  “Not the reinforcements, sir. I’m talking about that,” she said, tugging on the spyglass and pointing. Longchamp’s view slewed across the cramped confines of the citadel toward where a crowd had assembled outside the door of a disused carpenter’s shop. A ragged cheer went up. King Sébastien III had emerged from hiding.

  Longchamp snorted. Under his breath, he said, “That grandstanding fool.”

  “Good for morale, though.”

  “Great way to hasten the end of his reign.” He sighed and turned away. Rubbed his burning eyes. Jesus fucking Christ he was exhausted. “Go find the marshal general. I have to talk him into talking His Majesty back underground. I want a squad with him this time, and I want you in it.” Longchamp pitched his voice so only Élodie could hear him. “There’s a tunnel. Use the solvents stashed down there to unblock it. Get the king out before the citadel falls. Drag him by his royal hair if you must.”

  Élodie kept her head down as she hopped from the merlon to the banquette. She paused. “Huh? Now, I really didn’t expect that. When did he find time to take a new mistress?”