by Gross, Dave
“Send them in.”
Sabina turned her unreadable face back to the panel and spoke quietly.
Aurora shook out a cascade of dark brown hair as the servitors removed her helm. They floated over to set it, along with the rest of her armor, on the brass replica of their mistress.
The first visitor to enter was Pollux, First Prefect of Aurora’s reductors. His mechanikal voice box was already engaged as he entered the chamber. “With the utmost respect, Numen, I must protest the use of my soldiers in this highly danger—”
With a click and a whirr, his voice fell silent as his optic lens fell upon Aurora. The utility pincers pulled away the armor from her legs and hips. Pollux froze, his reductor’s body as still as a statue.
“Do continue, First Prefect.” Aurora handed a servitor her utility belt and the skirt hanging from it.
His vocal apparatus clicked on and off several times. Pollux turned his head away from Aurora and remained silent.
“Don’t just stand there,” said Enumerator Bogdan, pushing past the stationary soldier. The tail of his vestments whispered across the chamber floor between the clanking steps of his battle armor. He had left his weapon, shield, and helm behind. Inside Aurora’s pavilion, he carried on his belt only a blowtorch, spanner, and the other tools with which he repaired troops and vectors in the field.
An abstract sculpture above Aurora’s bed caught Bogdan’s attention. His gaze flicked to the next in the series. He smiled as he admired each in turn until at last he saw steam clouding the sculpture hanging above the bath. His heavy eyebrows shot up.
He turned slowly toward Aurora as the servitors removed the last of her armor. He slapped a hand over his eyes. “I beg your pardon, Numen. Your guards said we should enter. I had no idea you would be—”
Prime Enumerator Septimus stepped past the veil on four mechanikal legs. His consciousness resided within a chassis similar to those of the enigma foundries, clockwork priests tasked with salvaging the souls of fallen warriors. Three pairs of human-shaped arms lay folded in serene gestures on his lower torso. To either side of his essence chamber, which illuminated the Face of Cyriss, two shoulder units housed his personal astronometric nexus. Their geomantic calculations informed the priest of the relative positions of the moons, the sun, and the planets at all times. Between them rose a sculpted neck and a serene, androgynous abstraction of a human face.
Aurora stepped down from her armory dais. “Well?”
As she walked to the bath, Pollux continued to turn his neck rotor to avoid seeing her nude figure. Bogdan peeked through his fingers as Aurora stepped into the water. Prime Enumerator Septimus appeared oblivious both to Aurora’s nakedness and to his colleagues’ discomfort. “Our scouts have not yet reported the return of the units you assigned to recover the lost vector.”
Aurora sank down into the bath, hoping her face betrayed none of the irritation the clockwork priest’s question aroused in her. She delayed by sprinkling bath salts into the water.
An impatient clicking sounded deep within Septimus’ chassis.
“No, Prime Enumerator,” said Aurora. “The transport of the captured Monitor was a trap. My bodyguard and I narrowly avoided a confrontation with the enemy warcaster.”
“What about my troops?” Pollux stepped forward, still averting his gaze from the bath.
“The Cygnaran ambush captured them along with the second Monitor I bought to free the first.”
“Oh, no,” said Bogdan. The priest pulled at the fingers of his gauntlets, abandoning all pretense of looking away from Aurora’s naked body. “What a catastrophe!”
“It was a calculated risk,” said Aurora. She drenched a sponge in water and used it to soothe her aching neck. “Nemo himself participated in the ambush.”
“So it was he you spied across the river,” observed Septimus. Condensation from the steam beaded on his immotile face.
“Nemo must have been the one who sent the mercenaries to search the Wythmoor for our forces.”
“I cautioned you against scouting so far from base,” said Septimus.
“Would you prefer I left the Cryx unchecked? The last thing we need is for them to burrow up into our geomantic translocation chambers.”
“Instead we leave our own troops in the hands of this Cygnaran warcaster?” said Pollux.
“Mind your words, Pollux,” said Sabina.
The reductor’s head swiveled around to face Sabina. “What would you say if it were your clockwork angels who had been wasted in a rash and useless action?”
Sabina’s brass wings bristled on her shoulders. She and Pollux were equals in rank, each the First Prefect of their respective forces. Only Sabina enjoyed the further distinction of serving at Aurora’s side.
“No, Sabina, he’s right,” said Aurora. “Believe me, Pollux, no one feels the loss of our troops more keenly than I. Still, our mission comes first. Nothing must imperil the Great Work.”
Bogdan raised a diplomatic finger. “Perhaps we could offer an exchange of captives? No doubt the Cygnaran commander would be eager for us to release some of the citizens of Calbeck. You can placate him with negotiations.” He smiled with the confidence of a bureaucrat who has solved a complicated problem for his leader.
“This commander is General Sebastian Nemo,” said Septimus. “His is one of the foremost scientific and tactical minds of the Cygnaran army. When was the last time you read an intelligence report?”
“I confess, Prime Enumerator, in attending to the readiness of the troops and the ongoing calibration, I may have fallen behind in reports of external matters.”
While Septimus scolded his subordinate, Aurora stood and reached for a towel. Bogdan stared sidelong at her.
“Enumerator Bogdan,” said Septimus. Even the mechanikal nature of his voice could not disguise his disapproval.
“I—I—Forgive my distraction.” Bogdan cast his eyes to the floor.
It was an effort to keep her amusement off her face, but Aurora secretly reveled in the effect her informal audience had on Bogdan and Pollux. Their discomfort underscored a truth she had long suspected: Even after transference to his clockwork vessel, Pollux felt uneasiness at her immodesty; Bogdan remained a slave to his flesh; yet Septimus, over two centuries interred in a succession of clockwork vessels, had sloughed off his carnal impulses.
The flesh was vulnerable, imperfect. Aurora felt her longing for transference more keenly than ever.
She stepped out of the tub and dried her arms and legs before cinching the towel around her body.
“Numen, please,” said Pollux. He stepped closer, his optical lens fixed directly on her face. “Will you negotiate for the return of my reductors?”
Aurora returned his monocular gaze. She admired the fervor with which he spoke for his troops. His custodial instinct reminded her of the protectiveness that Sabina showed for her.
“No, Prefect,” she said with some reluctance. His voice box clicked, but before he could protest, she added, “To petition for an exchange so soon would give the enemy an impression of weakness. But I promise you, when the time is right I will make every effort to recover their essence chambers.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Pollux nodded and stepped back.
“The iron mother has entrusted you with a great responsibility, Numen,” said Septimus. “May the Maiden of Gears guide your calculations.”
Aurora smiled as she nodded acknowledgment of his blessing. She knew perfectly well that Septimus or one of his minions reported her every move to Iron Mother Directrix. Insofar as the iron mother was the current leader of the Convergence, that was only proper. But it was also infuriating because Directrix was her mother, whose control Aurora felt she would never escape.
“We all understand the pressure on you must be a great burden,” added Bogdan. “If there is anything I can do to help, you have only to call upon me.”
“Thank you, Bogdan.” Aurora suppressed a shudder at the priest’s latest effort to ingr
atiate himself. Bogdan’s talents lay in mechanika, not diplomacy.
Like Aurora, Bogdan had long awaited the Animus Corpus Procedure. Her favorable report to the Constellation could only improve his chances.
For her own continued failure to earn transference to a clockwork vessel, Aurora blamed the intercession of her mother and her insistence that Aurora join the priesthood. Much as she valued the role of the priests, from the common optifex to the enumerators and all the way to the lofty fluxions, she had no desire to join in their slow custodianship of the people’s minds and souls. She had no wish to be a mechanik or a philosopher. She would make her mark in the Convergence in a different way. She would lead her people both in technological advances and in battlefield triumphs.
“Whatever you decide,” said Septimus, “I implore you not to place yourself at risk again. Sebastian Nemo is a dangerous foe. Do not underestimate him.”
Behind the clockwork priest, Sabina inclined her head to nod agreement.
Aurora felt a brief, irrational sense of betrayal. Her subordinates were aligning against her. “I do not underestimate Sebastian Nemo,” she said. “His trap was designed not to capture me, but to take my measure. What he failed to realize was that, in studying its design, I have also taken his.”
“Do not be so certain,” said Septimus. “You may be more brazen, but he is better tempered.”
“Your metallurgical comparison is not lost on me,” said Aurora, thinking again of the sounds that had greeted them upon first descending upon Calbeck. “But I will take my lesson from the carpenter: measure twice, cut once.”
THE SECOND HARMONIC
Mathematical principles bind reality to consciousness.
Nemo
“Yes, what is it?”
Sebastian Nemo sat up, wincing at the pain he still felt in his chest. His hand drifted unbidden to the crescent scar inflicted by the Cryxian stalker that had struck him down. If not for the intervention of Victoria Haley, Nemo surely would have died among the stark trees of the Thornwood. His fingers slid along the ragged edges of the scar across his belly.
Nemo had survived only by a divine miracle—or rather, by several miracles. The concerted efforts of several Morrowan priests had finally healed his grievous injury. Despite their assurances, he knew in his heart he would continue to feel the pain of the wounds until his dying breath.
Until then, they would not stop him.
He swung his legs over the side of his cot and felt the cold grass beneath his naked feet. The startling sensation reminded him that reinforcements—and the relative comforts of their supply wagons, one of which he hoped contained his carpet—had not yet arrived.
Torchlight slipped in beneath the tent flap. Nemo pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted at the shadow of the soldier standing outside. “Well, what is it?”
The man’s feet shuffled. The tent flap opened. A fresh-faced soldier peered inside. “Begging the general’s pardon, I didn’t say anything,” said the young man. “Sir.”
Nemo’s lips tightened, but before he could frame an admonishment, he realized the guard was not to blame. It was the sound of his given name that had pulled him from slumber. No one in camp—except brassy Mags Jernigan—dared address him so.
“Sebastian,” he thought he had heard. Whatever else dissolved with the memory of the dream.
Was it Wilhelmina he imagined had called to him? Madeleine? He struggled to picture the faces of his wife and daughter. It had been so long since he had seen either of them, his memory transposed upon their features those of others—lovers, apprentices, colleagues, friends, and enemies—a ceaseless parade of faces briefly glimpsed, then vanished.
Mina had died of rip lung a few months after taking Maddie and abandoning their home. He had not even been present for her death. Instead, he had been far afield, defending Cygnar.
At least, that is what he had told himself in his younger days. Now he was able to admit that what he was really doing was avenging the death of the brother who had died while under his command. Decades had cooled his need to punish the enemies of Cygnar, to prove himself worthy after his great early failure. What remained was a highly ingrained reflex to serve his country to the best of his ability.
Some mistook it for duty. Nemo knew it for what it was: an old habit, one he could never shake.
Even when Maddie had been returned to him, it soon became obvious that Nemo could not care for her while remaining in the king’s service. He sent her to be raised by his sisters in Shieldpoint, thinking it for the best. When he visited, he found her sullen and uncommunicative, even though his sisters’ letters described the girl as lively and brilliant. Once she came of age, Maddie left home and swore never again to speak to the father who had chosen war over his family.
Nemo had sought her out, of course. He had listened in the darkened reaches of the high gallery as she defended her dissertation on ancient literature. When he had learned a young man was courting her, he had made inquiries until he was assured of the man’s character and that of his family. He had anonymously sent gifts on their wedding and on the birthdays of their three children, two boys and a girl, until he had learned Maddie always discarded them.
He had almost spoken to her, once, long after her own children had left home. Standing across the street from Maddie’s rare book shop in Corvis, he had glimpsed her through the storefront glass. The rain had melted her image before him, but he could see that she had spied him. He had hastened away, feeling guilty as a peeper. He had not returned since.
The only immutable image he retained was of Maddie’s blue eyes, fixed like a pair of pole stars in a dissolving sky.
“Do you require assistance, sir?” asked the guard.
“No, nothing. Close the flap! You’re letting in a draft.”
The very fact that he had dreamed told Nemo had slept longer than expected. When he was at work on a technical problem, he could go for weeks without more than the occasional nap. After the hard ride from Point Bourne and the hasty preparations to lure more of the clockwork intruders into a trap, his body was exhausted.
If only he could still his mind long enough to let it recover.
As he pulled on woolen stockings, Nemo mused that his trap had been only partially successful. He had hoped to observe the leader of this clockwork army in action. After her brief encounter with the Devil Dogs, however, the flying warcaster had become cautious.
The technology permitting the warcaster and her winged guardians to fly astonished even Nemo, who had first examined the peculiar science of the Cult of Cyriss from items salvaged from one of their abandoned, subterranean temples. Studying them had inspired some of his own refinements on devices like the mighty Thunderhead. The similarity between the Cyrissist devices and his own voltaic creations instilled a deep curiosity in Nemo, but the defense of his country left him precious little time to pursue his interest.
War came first.
Nemo accepted the fact that he would sleep no more that morning. He donned the rest of his clothes and stepped outside.
“Where is the mess?” he asked.
The soldier indicated one of the camouflaged tents. “Sir!”
“I will don my armor when I return. Have an attendant ready.” He walked away as the soldier saluted.
Inside the mess tent, one member of the kitchen patrol added flaked oats and dried apples to a boiling pot, while another patted out discs of dough for griddle bread. A third spied Nemo’s entrance and began preparing a pot of tea.
“You’re up early, old man,” said Mags Jernigan. The mechanik sat alone at the center of a long mess table.
Nemo took a seat opposite the mechanik. “You’re up late, old woman.”
“You can’t call me that,” she said. “I was born twelve and a half days after you.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
One of the men came over and laid Nemo’s silver teapot and a plate of biscuits on the table. “Would you care for breakfast, sir?”
/> Nemo waved him off.
Mags commandeered the pot and poured for Nemo. “I’ll never forget the birthday party they threw for the two of us after that battle at Bleeding Rock Gulch. I bet Stryker a hundred crowns I’d get you drunk before the night was over.”
“I’d forgotten that, too.”
“That’s because I won!” She guffawed and slapped the table, causing the biscuits to leap from the plate. “It’s a wonder you remembered your own name the next morning.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Not much.” She snatched one of his biscuits and took a bite before returning it to his plate. “You and me, we just remember different stuff. If I gave you a pencil right now, I bet you could draw the Storm Strider schematics from memory. But I’d also bet you can’t name the tavern where we first shared a pint.”
Nemo shrugged and sipped his tea, pretending that he didn’t care while his mind struggled to come up with the name of the tavern. It was no use. Mags was right about their different memories.
Her anecdote reminded him of the sight of her in a sun dress, showing off shoulders dotted with freckles instead of tattoos. He could almost envision her as she had looked thirty years earlier, before she’d lost her leg to a Khadoran mortar and her breasts to cancer.
“Me, on the other hand, I can still remember when you were too polite to stare at my teats.” She poured herself a cup from the teapot reserved for his exclusive use. If any other junior officer had made such an insolent breach of protocol, Nemo would surely have torn a strip up one side of him and down the other. “It’s a pity you’ve developed an interest only now they’re gone.”
“I was looking at your tattoos,” said Nemo, almost as embarrassed as he was annoyed. “When did you first get them?”
“About a year after the cancer,” said Mags. “I prefer a nice set of gears to the scars.”
“They make you look like one of those clockwork soldiers.”
“Still the charmer. You’ll turn my head.”
“Do all Cyrissists wear such tattoos?”