by Gross, Dave
The Cygnaran camp lay less than a mile south of the Dragon’s Tongue River, just beyond the border of the riverside village of Calbeck. Nemo nodded with satisfaction as he saw the rest of his advance troops had finished erecting the tents.
A third of the structures glowed with lantern light, while another third were concealed with foliage. The remaining tents served to muddy the difference between the decoys and the inhabited tents.
Deception was their first weapon against an unknown force. Deception was almost all they had until reinforcements arrived.
With Cryx forces continuing to threaten the northern border, and the alliance with the Khadorans still unstable, Nemo had been able to divert only a modest force to this new emergency. As soon as the Devil Dogs had turned over their captive machines, Nemo had sent riders to summon more troops and warjacks. In the meantime he meant to be prepared for any further surprises.
He had only to look up to see the structure that had caused such concern.
The tower dwarfed the riverside community. Its graceful lines married art and utility, clockwork and abstract design. The tower’s four arching legs planted it firmly in the center of town. Between them, an incomprehensible conglomeration of giant gears and axles plunged into the earth. Their constant grind and clatter echoed across Nemo’s camp, even at a distance of half a mile. From the tower’s northern and southern sides, the glowing Face of Cyriss gazed down upon the countryside. Atop the tower rested a globe covered in six tapering shields, like a flower bud nestled inside its leaves. Now and then a crackling ribbon of voltaic energy climbed between the edges of the “petals,” the promise of some imminent bloom.
The wagon halted near the engineers’ shelter, a large canvas tent that glowed with the lights of portable forges and storm chambers. The tattoo of a rivet gun competed with the chug of a steam engine for the honor of the racket most likely to prevent the camp from sleeping.
A tall, muscular woman stepped out to greet the wagon. Her salt-and-pepper hair stood up straight on her head, thick as a hedgehog’s spines. With every other step, her mechanikal left leg squeaked and hissed as she put her weight upon it.
“What have you brought me, ’Bastian?”
Nemo bristled at Sergeant Mags Jernigan’s contraction of his given name. Seeing his reaction, she grinned, revealing a broad mouth full of tea-stained teeth.
Nemo wished the veteran mechanik would address him by rank, at least in front of the soldiers, but he had long since surrendered in their eternal skirmish between propriety and, well, Mags Jernigan.
Nemo reached into the wagon and lifted the detached head of one of the clockwork soldiers. Except for its now-dimmed eye lens, it looked more than ever like a stylized helm. “What do you make of these, Mags?”
Wiping her hands on an oily cloth, Mags beckoned to the nearest Stormblades, who lugged one of the fallen soldiers from the wagon into her tent. There they laid it upon a heavy worktable as Mags’ assistants removed the half-reassembled shin of a Firefly warjack. On a larger table behind her lay the disassembled pieces of a warjack similar to the one in the wagon, missing only the arm that Nemo had planted as a lure atop the tarp.
Mags circled the table like a coroner examining a murder victim. She wore a sleeveless shirt under her leather apron, revealing tattoos of cogs and gears on either shoulder. The designs on either side converged toward the center of her flat chest in an increasingly complex pattern of clockwork.
Mags’ eyes narrowed at the symbol on the fallen soldier’s chest. “That’s funny. The Maiden of Gears.”
Nemo nodded. “Cyrissists.”
Mags peered into the brass cogs of the soldier’s torso. She hefted its blade and firearm assemblies with an appreciative grunt as she felt their weight. As she let go of them, she clutched her swollen knuckles and hissed.
“Are you all right?” asked Finch.
“It’s just the arthritis,” said Mags. “This close to the river, I can feel the damp in my joints.” She touched, first through the rag, then with her naked hand, the lightning scars on its integral greaves and pauldrons. Behind her, Finch craned her neck to see what the mechanik was doing.
“How long since you took them down?” asked Mags.
“Half an hour,” said Nemo. He set the soldier’s head on her worktable.
“The only heat I can feel is from its burns.” She touched the still-glowing symbol of Cyriss on its chest. “Is this the power assembly?”
Nemo nodded. “That is as good a guess as any. It glows with a light resembling what I’ve seen in other Cyrissist devices.”
“It looks a bit like your work, old man. Have you been copying the other students’ work again?”
Finch gasped and swallowed a laugh.
“Relax, kid,” said Mags. “I’m just being amusing.”
“I am not amused,” said Nemo.
“No, you hardly ever are. That’s the problem with you,” said Mags. She winked at Finch. “Try not to catch what he’s got, kid. Especially in this outfit, you need to learn to live a little. Before you die.”
Nemo scowled to warn Mags that he was in no mood for levity. “What are your first impressions of the mechanisms?”
“Well, there’s obviously a clockwork element to the motor functions. But there’s no way these boys are just wound up like spring toys.” She twisted and pulled at the Face of Cyriss on the soldier’s chest, but it remained fixed. “These power units on their chests don’t look big enough to keep them going for any length of time. The one on the ’jack you snuck into camp earlier has already faded. Either they don’t work for very long, or else there’s another power source in there somewhere.”
“Perhaps the power comes from the tower,” suggested Finch.
Nemo opened his mouth to disagree, but he stopped himself. The rest of the new enemy’s technology was so advanced that he could not discount the notion of power fields delivering energy to the nearby clockwork soldiers. “An interesting idea, Storm Chaser.”
Finch tried and failed to hide a smile at his praise and his use of her title. Nemo tried to ration such compliments to avoid inflating her ego, but this one slipped out.
“Now you’re talking magic, I can’t keep up anymore,” Mags said in mock complaint.
“Here’s something more mechanikal for you to study,” said Nemo. He tossed her the bag of spring-loaded projectiles.
Mags stepped forward to catch the bag, but her mechanikal leg screeched and held her back. “Dammit!”
Nemo also reached for the falling bag but gasped in pain as another back spasm struck.
Finch caught the pouch before it hit the ground. She passed it to Mags, shaking her head as her gaze flicked between the mechanik and the warcaster. “Should I summon a nurse?”
“Finch!” they warned her in unison.
Aurora
Aurora’s bodyguards crowded her as they fled the Cygnaran ambush.
Sabina flew especially too close. Aurora felt that at any moment the razor-sharp tips of her broad wings might shear through her lieutenant’s shorter brass wings—not that losing the appendages would cause them to plummet.
The wings provided only guidance. Aurora and her bodyguards flew by virtue of Aurora’s own enhancement of the arcane displacement fields, the same gravity-defying devices that reduced the load on Convergence vectors and allowed certain of them, along with servitors, to hover above the ground.
Through years of study and experiment, Aurora had discovered the means to miniaturize the displacement field emitter and enhance its range, installing the improved devices in both her bodyguards’ clockwork vessels and her armor. Thus equipped, she and the clockwork angels could soar high above the surface of Caen. When she had presented her invention to the Constellation, the convocation of the wisest minds in the Convergence had bestowed a new title upon her: Numen of Aerogenesis.
Aurora banked, diving to escape the “mother hens,” as she had sometimes thought of her winged bodyguards in the weeks since arrivi
ng in Calbeck. A pang of guilt spoiled Aurora’s mischievous delight at the unspoken comparison of her bodyguards to the birds whose filth stained the streets of the town. Her elite clockwork angels were peerless in combat and unquestionably loyal. They were nothing like the dirty animals pecking for seed in their squalid yards.
Foremost among Aurora’s bodyguard was Sabina, one of the most veteran warriors of the Convergence. For well over a century she had fought for the Maiden of Gears, mastering a number of clockwork forms in defense of their subterranean temples and striking down the druids who sniffed too close to their buried secrets. Sabina had long played the role of doting aunt, training Aurora in the ways of combat, listening patiently to her complaints about her strict optifex mentors, and finally accompanying the fledgling warcaster as her First Prefect for the clockwork angels on her earliest missions.
As much as the unexpected foiling of her rescue mission, Aurora blamed her ill temper on the weeks she had spent in the village, which reminded her all too sharply of the dross and disorder of life outside the pristine subterranean chambers of the Convergence. Even soaring high above the ground, she imagined she could still smell the wood smoke from the cottages, the filth of stock animals, and the decay of the riverside vegetation. When she had first arrived in Calbeck, the clamor of blacksmiths, carpenters, and stonemasons filled her head with tumult. When the villagers saw what she brought with her, the noise of their work turned to the chaos of panic. She had done what she could to minimize casualties among the villagers before confining them for their own safety.
Hundreds of feet below her, the village resembled the scale model Syntherion had created as part of their battle plan for the attack on Calbeck. Every bend of the Dragon’s Tongue River, every stand of woods, and every building in the tiny community was just as the Forge Master had rendered in miniature. Aurora smiled to think of Syntherion, whose cold and enigmatic demeanor made him seem so unapproachable to others. She understood him better than most, appreciating his unwavering perfectionism.
“Numen, please!” called Sabina. She dove after Aurora. The other bodyguards followed close behind. “We cannot protect you if you insist on escaping us.”
Another of Aurora’s innovations, the clockwork angels were magnificent beings, over seven feet tall and modeled on Aurora herself, albeit taller and with less magnificent wings. She had chosen only the most skilled warriors, and each had already fought at her side in over a dozen battles.
When she had first unveiled the angels, Directrix remarked on the resemblance between Aurora and her bodyguards. “Do you not think it self-indulgent?”
“Self-reliant,” Aurora had dared to correct the iron mother. She restrained herself from noting that no one understood self-reliance better than a girl whose mother had abandoned her mortal body when the child was only three years old. Now Directrix pressured Aurora to go into the priesthood, rather than helping her daughter join her in clockwork perfection.
Another prominent Convergence warcaster still remaining in his living body was Axis, known as the Harmonic Enforcer. The fanatical warrior had joined the Convergence when Directrix spared his life after eliminating the other leaders of his radical sect. He had since proven his loyalty countless times, often in battle at Aurora’s side. Axis’ erratic temper, however, led many to question his sanity. While she saw him as a beloved if unhinged uncle, Aurora was unsurprised he had not been chosen to take on a clockwork body.
Yet Aurora deserved the transfer. Her innovations alone should have earned her the honor. Each time she saw others receive a perfect clockwork body, she seethed with resentment. Axis sought to soothe her disappointment by reminding Aurora that her youth was the reason the Constellation had not yet chosen her. In time, he said, she would have what she desired.
Sabina drew up beside Aurora, shaking her head in exasperation. As they circled the upper tower of the astronometric nexus, the Baleful Moon reflected off Sabina’s perfect, chromium face.
Before her bodyguard could speak, Aurora dove again, this time hurtling through the scaffolding toward the great gears and axles driving the tower’s geomantic stimulators deep into the earth. She folded her wings at precisely the right instant to pass through without touching the support pipes. A mischievous smile tugged the corner of her mouth as she heard the tip of Sabina’s brass wing chime against the iron.
The astronometric nexus was as complete as necessary for the mission, but Aurora had ordered the servitors to leave the scaffolding in place. She hoped its presence would provide the illusion of an unfinished construction and thus inspire less urgency in the Cygnarans.
Despite Aurora’s capturing the entire population in one swift action, a mercenary company had discovered their presence sooner than calculated—worse, they had captured a vector and two servitors. The Cygnaran Army had responded even more quickly than the most conservative projections of Aurora’s mission schematics. When one of her clockwork angels had spied the Cygnarans transporting the captured units across the Dragon’s Tongue River, Aurora had hoped for an unexpected opportunity to recover her captured forces. Instead, she had fallen into a trap.
Now the enemy commander counted another Monitor and a squad of reductors among his captives. The loss of the clockwork soldiers stung the most, for they were no mere automatons; they were human personalities enclosed in clockwork vessels. To lose a vector or servitor was to lose a machine; to lose a clockwork soldier was to lose a soul.
Though the Cryx had been destroyed or driven off and the mercenaries had returned to count their coins and bury their dead, Aurora knew that she now faced a far greater threat: the nescient savant named Sebastian Nemo.
Even before capturing his most recent prizes, the Cygnaran warcaster had apparently studied many examples of captured or salvaged Convergence technology over the years, turning that knowledge to the improvement of his nation’s weapons. It was thus no surprise that the latest Cygnaran war machines glowed with the same voltaic light that supplemented the spring-wound gears of Convergence constructs.
Nemo had proven as crafty in the field as he was learned in the workshop. While at Sabina’s urging Aurora remained to the rear of her ambush force, she had still been surprised to see Nemo personally spring his trap. If he had left the matter to subordinates, Aurora would have swept down with the clockwork angels to defeat them utterly. Yet once she saw the arcane runes of his spells and the devastating power of his chain lightning, she hesitated.
At the sight of the Thunderhead running up behind the wagon, she knew her strike team was too small to take on a fellow warcaster—especially one such as Sebastian Nemo. While his age might fool some into discounting his battle prowess, Aurora knew his most dangerous weapon was his mind.
Aurora consoled herself with the knowledge that she had lost another Monitor, not a different model of vector. Nemo would have no new vectors to study if Aurora could help it. The man was dangerous enough without allowing him to unlock more secrets of Convergence technology.
Aurora led her bodyguards in a dwindling spiral until they swooped beneath the legs of the tower. In the shadows of two of the tower legs stood the Transfinite Emergence Projectors, Aurora’s battle engines. Behind a third leg lurked the titanic Prime Axiom. Aurora smiled to imagine the reaction of the Cygnaran troops if she were to reveal the colossal. Part of her hoped that would not be necessary. Another part hoped very much that it would.
Aurora rose, curling her wings to rise and stall just as she flew onto the aerie Syntherion had built for her. An instant later, her bodyguard landed to either side.
Four of them took up guard positions at the corners of the observation deck, where the automatic stairs emerged from the tower legs. Beside the stair openings, lift tubes rose into the upper reaches of the tower.
In the center of the aerie, a curtain of rippled steel concealed the central pavilion. At a gesture from Aurora, the veil descended to reveal her personal sanctum. She stepped into the pavilion, Sabina at her side. Moments later, the
veil rose back into place.
Aurora set her polynomial staff in a chrome-and-brass rack suspended from the ceiling. Once in place, the weapon’s shape combined with the intricate shape of the rack to form a work of abstract art.
The day’s exertions had left Aurora filthy with sweat and grime. She longed to feel clean again, to scrub away this daily reminder of her imperfect human body. Even more than that, she wished to wash away the memory of failure and retreat. She moved to a steep tub and opened the brass water fixtures. Steaming water poured from the tap.
A pair of modified accretion servitors rose to hover beside the tub. Unlike clockwork soldiers, and like the vectors, servitors housed no human consciousness. Instead, a series of brass cards dictated their default behavior. These servitors had been designed long ago by Aurora herself, both as an exercise in programming cards and as a personal indulgence.
A chirping sound at the veil announced a visitor. Sabina went to a panel hanging from the ceiling, pressed a button, and listened.
As the tub filled with steaming water, Aurora walked to a circular dais, beside which stood a featureless brass model of her body. As she set foot on the topmost tier, four more modified servitors floated down from their perches in the ceiling. Two of them descended to grip her armored legs. Their whirring screwdrivers unfastened her chromium boots, and she stepped out of them.
The two other servitors grasped her steel-and-brass wings. With a few economical ratcheting motions, they detached the wings and drew them to the ceiling, where built-in appendages reached down to tighten screws and probe for damage.
“Numen,” said Sabina with a smart salute, “First Prefect Pollux and Prime Enumerator Septimus to see you. Shall I tell them you are indisposed?”
“Not at all,” said Aurora, raising an arm to allow a servitor to grasp her bracer.
“But—”