Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  Frustrated at a crowd that blocked the road from end to end, including the sidewalks, Elario burst, “Pardon!” Not a head turned, so his head did, to see what new model they were all gawking at.

  There upon a podium was a mechanical man, dressed in a suit and combing his hair with care and concentration. His hair was a wig of true hair, brown and parted to the side, and his face was as real as the faces in the crowd. His movements were fluid, or close enough. Over his head was a sign that read Marvalle’s Mechanical Men & Parts. Another sign propped up at the podium listed the programs that the mechanical man sported: cooking, cleaning, reading, child-minding, and entertainment.

  A bespectacled vendor sat to the side as his audience gaped. Elario’s annoyance doubled at the slightly scornful cant to the vendor’s eyebrows. Cow poke country, those snide eyebrows expressed. The vendor had two children collecting coins for what was not truly a wonder in mechanics at all. Anyone who had ever been to Penborough was familiar with mechanical men working as servants. There was one in the Grand Market selling fruit, and so real was he that all to indicate the truth of his nature was the company stamp high on his right cheek. Only the very richest owned them.

  But these were farmers in the crowd. Shop workers. Fishers. Day laborers. Children. They had never been north of the Hopcross. While everyone knew about mechanical men, which had existed for hundreds of years, this was their first time seeing one. Why would a vendor even bother to bring a mechanical man to Ballevue anyway? Who could afford one?

  There were other unimpressed people like Elario. Most of them were well-dressed, either from Penborough if not farther north, or with the money to visit those places. With rolling eyes and irritated whispers, they surged onwards through the mob around the vendor. Elario resumed shouldering through the throngs, people so fascinated by the mechanical man that they staggered and straightened only to look forward again. Now the man was sliding his comb into his pocket and giving a saucy wink to a woman below the podium. Laughter broke out from all but a merrymaker nearby, who caught all six of his juggling balls to glare at the reason for his lack of audience.

  The vendor stood. “Who wants to hear him sing and see him dance?” Cheers and claps resounded. Requests were shouted out as Elario pierced through the crush, still more people pushing past him for a look.

  Remembering the Red Guard with a start, he surveyed his surroundings. Here the traffic was much thinner, and divided between the stands to look over the goods for sale. Ahead was a shimmering blue, the harbor in sight at the end of the Hopcross. No plumes were anywhere.

  He had to change. Then again, that younger man in scuffs at the inn in Jumario was down from Penborough. There were humbler cutters than the ones Elario had taken in the past. He needed to see what was due to leave, and also who was on the dock. Then he would have a better idea of how to present himself. Taking the stairs down to the harbor, he scanned it.

  Its sail dropped, a small, flat-bottomed cog rocked gently as the crew brought down the covered cargo. Tuggers bobbed in the slips as nets of fish were transferred from hand to hand. Several cutters were anchored off shore, too large to dock, and a boat was rowing in from one of them with passengers. Elario recognized the flag flapping atop that cutter. It was the Silverwater, which he had taken to Penborough and back many times. The captain knew him and knew him well; Elario was so spooked at present that he wanted to maintain his anonymity, so he could not buy passage upon it.

  He walked the harbor in full before he was convinced that there were no Red Guard soldiers. As for harbor-jacks, however, they were everywhere. Burly and sour-faced, the jacks had their keen eyes trained upon the flow of traffic along the dock. Elario had to make a decision now; walking about aimlessly would soon attract a questioning eye.

  He offered a copper to a towheaded dock boy with a dripping net over his shoulder. “Any cutters left to leave today?”

  “The Indus to Crevve, shipping out, yah,” the boy said, giving a discerning look to Elario’s scuffs. “Bit pricey for you.”

  “Too pricey. What about north to Penborough, and less pricey?”

  “You just missed the Harthall bound to Ruzan. You want a ride bad enough? You sleep deck on a tugger?”

  That was disappointing, since tuggers were slower, but Elario had to get away from Ballevue. “Bad enough that I’ll sleep deck on a tugger.”

  “Slip some bits to Captain Kalame of the Flasing. She’ll give you a spot. You’ll find her at the end, but step fast-fast, yah?”

  Elario found the steel-hulled steam tugger at the end and gave the name of Ild, common and forgettable. The captain was an old woman, whip-thin and focused on getting her mended nets and eel traps on board. She took the bits and waved him on with a warning that he had better have some rations of his own if he cared not for meals of hard bread and eel.

  Her crew of twelve were calling to one another and readying to leave, Elario settling down near the capstan as they rushed about. This was a family boat, the Flasing, the crew too similar in face and frame to be unrelated. To have a passenger was neither new nor noteworthy to them, nor was Elario the only one. Two men were seated to the sides, wrinkling their noses at the scent of denje eel that permeated the air. One noticed Elario and gave him a prolonged look of curiosity.

  Elario touched the box in reflex, feeling that strange, somewhat out-of-body sensation. He was within, in his body and upon this tugger, and he was without, watching himself, and seeing . . . seeing too deeply into the world around him. The school of fish skirting beneath the surface of the water . . . the fibers in the net heaped close to him and the grain of each plank . . . He heard more deeply, feeling the aggravation in the shout to have that net put back where it belonged, and the nervous skitter of feet in answer. Then a strange sight on the dock brought him to the side. A yell choked in his throat at a creature pacing behind a woman in a dress too fine for Ballevue.

  Not the woolen gowns or scuffs to grace the other women in view, but green velvet held out by hoops, so that she took up the room of two people as she strolled along. Her hoops swayed like a bell with each step. Elario saw the tiny yellow ribbons that twined down her bodice, and each barb of the three red feathers in her hat. The choker at her neck was gold, and dropped a tear-shaped pearl pendant. She had stepped off the boat from the Silverwater, where more finely dressed people were getting out, but she wasn’t waiting for them.

  The woman was walking in the shadow of a monster, a twisted, towering thing with its skin burned black. The thing shambled along behind her on the dock like an adoring, obedient puppy, its face mottled and rotting. Its expression was frozen in a grimace, exposing jagged teeth, and there was nothing where a nose should be. The forehead was collapsed over one eye, concealing it; the second eye stared unblinking.

  Nobody screamed to see it there, not the men bringing cargo off the cog, the jacks standing about at every corner, the workers gutting fish or the passengers from the row boat stepping onto the dock. The woman being followed did not sense her shadow.

  The creature reminded Elario of the dervesh in the picture. He forced himself to blink, but it was still there when his eyes opened. It could only be a dervesh, yet a dervesh could not be there! They were unable to pass into Ballevue, and if one could, it wouldn’t be following placidly behind its prey!

  Then his two halves came back together. He lost the keen sight and hearing, and stood there in bafflement. The woman turned to the stairs going up to the street fair, but turned back at a call from the boat. She walked through the dervesh, which evanesced, reconstituted, and padded silently and invisibly after her again.

  Elario backed away, fearing that he was going mad. It was just a trick of the light, or a delusion from nights of poor sleep! That was all. The other passenger was watching him again, and Elario made himself smile.

  On a speedy cutter, it took three days to reach Penborough. It would take over a week aboard this tugger, since the crew was stopping to set out and check on eel traps. Over a
week in which Elequa only knew what would happen in Alming, whether the soldiers would bunker down to await his return, or commandeer the fastest horses to Ballevue and purchase passage on cutters. Elario might disembark right into them.

  But it was too late now to do anything about it. The Flasing pulled away, the wake nearly overturning a small fishing craft that cut too closely, and headed north.

  Chapter Six

  He had to leave, sir. It’s fixing up to be a snap-winter this year. If he didn’t go now, then not until spring, and his argetonia stores are short. Master Repse has been out collecting as much as he can, but the cold is killing the creepers faster than he finds them. He’ll be back quick enough, sir, just as soon as he buys more.

  Beads of sweat glistened on Nyca’s forehead, though his voice had an expressionless cadence to match his expressionless face. Elario saw only the boy’s upper body, lit by an unseen lantern. A deep, masculine burble sounded, and Nyca said, “He often gets packages from dealers in the Grand Market, full of the rarer herbs he needs to heal, but not argetonia leaves. He didn’t know it was going to be a snap-winter until now, so he had no order placed for them.”

  Once more came the burble. A small, baffled furrow creased Nyca’s forehead. “No, I didn’t see the package for myself, sir. It fell into the muck when the sarge’s post wagon broke down on the Hopcross. Papa said it was reeking and flaking mud all over the floor, so Master Repse burned it after he got out the herbs.”

  The burble cleared for a moment. “-think you’re lying-”

  Nyca’s answer was in full, and tinged with agitation. “You can think as you please, sir, but that won’t change the truth. There aren’t carriages for hire in Alming, so he had to walk to Winchistie for one. That’s why he left so early. He couldn’t take either of our horses. Jersey isn’t sound, and we need Orman to haul the last of the crop. Master Repse and Papa decided over the summer that we have to purchase a new horse sometime next year. They put in a word with the Seerlings up the Cuthill. They breed good stock, strong and even-tempered, and train them up proper.”

  “-Jazan Repse-”

  Now even Nyca’s voice was retreating, along with the light to illuminate him. “-and he’s dead, sir, I told you that. He died five years past in the contagion, along with the mistress and my own mam and sister-”

  For an immeasurable period of time, Elario drifted without form in the darkness. If this was a dream, then it was a bizarre one indeed to be so lucid. Pinpricks of stars suddenly livened the blackness below him, or he assumed it was below when he had no shape. The stars glittered and rolled, each at the crest of a ripple in a night sea. The meaningless burble resumed, Elario flying without wings over the ocean of stars.

  To the Gates.

  To the Gates! Are you mad?

  One pinprick star grew brighter with the voices. Elario tumbled into a room shivering in shadows and candlelight. Atop a table was a map of Phaleros. It was very old. The Great Cities were named upon the parchment, but there was nothing save overlapping triangles for trees where the Hopcross, Ballevue, and all the farm towns now existed. In the north, only some cities of the golden ring were named. Those names were written in the small print afforded to mere towns, whereas the names of the Great Cities were large. The golden ring was not golden when this map was made.

  A finger was pointing to the Gates in the distant west. “You asked,” a man’s voice chided. “You asked, and here is my answer. If any still exist, they will be here. I will never get close to them as I am. The Hethai see right through me.”

  The masculine voice to respond was impatient and doubtful. “But how can I get closer to that pack of cave-dwelling barbarians?”

  “You will do the one thing allowed to you: trade. Trade and befriend them, as much as they’ll let you, learn their ways and language, gain their trust. It may be the work of a lifetime, and all to no avail. It may cost your life in the end. I will not lie. But what a success could undo, Hydon, will change the very face of this country. You have seen the loss through your own eyes.”

  “I didn’t see it! You speak as if I stood apart. I lived it and died in it twenty thousand times over.” The map slid away from Elario, and he looked upon his father’s face.

  No! This was not his father, yet one who looked much like him back when Elario was a young boy. Hydon Repse was near a twin in his resemblance to Jazan, but with a slimmer face and wider set to his shoulders. His upper lip raised, he studied the map with an air of discomposure.

  Wildness stirred in his dark eyes, another small but notable difference from Jazan. It was just this side of mania, that bright, shifting gaze with twin flames of candlelight reflected in them. “The Gates,” he muttered, his finger lowering to the map to trace the names of the mountain towns in the lower reaches. “I have nothing to trade, and I know little of trade either.”

  The voice of the invisible man answered him. “I will teach you both of these things, and outfit you with what you need. Do this, Hydon, and you may have the vengeance you seek. Do this and the Cabal of the Crown is broken irrevocably.”

  “It will shatter the world again.”

  “And then the world will mend at long last.” The map became candles, flickering upon a side table, and then the other speaker was in view. Only as a glimpse, because Elario’s uncontrolled gaze continued to move to the packed bookshelves against another wall. The man was not much older than Hydon, and striking in his handsomeness. Lanky, dark blond hair fell down around proud, almost regal features. His eyes were as blue as the River Avys. A scarf was tangled carelessly about his neck.

  The voices softened, as did the quivering light in the room. “How many others have you sent to the Gates to fail?” Hydon demanded.

  “-the third, but you are diff-”

  Darkness fell for the length of a heartbeat. Then blinding light blasted it apart. Elario opened his eyes with a hand already halfway raised to shield them. His satchel was a lumpy pillow under his head. It was morning, and they had arrived at the harbor in Penborough.

  The days aboard the Flasing had passed slowly. The three passengers were expected to stay out of the crew’s way, which they did. Onetto was a petty spice gatherer like Elario, the two keeping a respectful distance from inquiries about what and where the other collected; Luce was a peddler of trinkets and a death knacker. They played cards with Onetto’s deck while the crew labored around them. It was Luce who had given Elario odd looks on the first day, and all the days after that. The death knacker was a little off in the head, missing a hinge but not the whole door. He meant no ill. Still, Elario kept a tight watch on his satchel.

  Each time the Flasing anchored to let the traps collect, a handful of cutters, cogs, and tuggers traveled by. As the deck rocked from the wake, Elario squinted at those vessels in search of plumes. None. Was that good? Or bad? Nor had he seen any sight like the dervesh behind the woman upon the Ballevue dock, which further convinced him that he had not seen it at all.

  Now stepping to the dock in Penborough, he looked about in anticipation of soldiers. There were just jacks, the nearest pair of them jawing obliviously to one another as Elario walked by. His traveling companions bid him goodbye at the end of the harbor, Luce looking back over his shoulder as the two headed for the Grand Market in search of a hot meal. But Elario stepped into the first inn he came across, where he paid for a bath.

  Over a week of travel had left its mark in his skin, and the nasty smell of eel saturated his clothing and hair. Skinning himself of his scuffs in the back room, where a half-ring of tubs awaited bathers, he heaped his clothing upon a stool and sank gratefully into the steaming water. His body ached from sleeping on the deck. The heat kneaded at his sore muscles as he reached for the scrub cloth folded over the rim of the tub. A bar of soap was atop it. Another man had fallen asleep in his bath, soft snores echoing in the room.

  There wasn’t time to waste. Elario cleaned off hurriedly and shaved. An attendant provided him with a fresh towel when he rose from
the water. Wrapping it around his waist, he gathered his things and retired behind the changing screen. The contents of his satchel had to be reorganized, his smelly scuffs and dirty boots put at the bottom, his best clothes taken out to wear. Just as he slipped on his nice shoes, he remembered the box in his scuffs. Unearthing it, he slipped it into the pocket of his trousers.

  What was this thing inside? The dream returned to him, the perspiration on Nyca’s brow as he answered questions, the young Hydon Repse studying the map, the handsome stranger with the scarf. The Hethai. He knew that name. They were an ancient people, who lived in the western mountains before the country of Phaleros existed. Their tribe stretched so far back in time that they had dwelled there in the last days of the dragons. They never left the mountains. That was where his knowledge stopped short.

  As for the reference to the Cabal of the Crown, he knew even less. That was not a term that he had ever heard in his life. The royal line of Malave went back all the way to the Corpse King and much earlier than that, handed down from father to daughter, daughter to son, son to grandson, but always within the same family. Other noble families fleshed out the council of the king and the court. Where the crown passed after the king’s death, Elario could not say, for King Crucien and Queen Inora had no living children, and now she was too old to bear. Sickly, too, from the rumors.

  These were not subjects that had ever involved or interested Elario, nor anyone in Alming, except for the yearly imposition of the kingstax. Little news of royal affairs ever came their way. As their lives never changed very much, what news was vital? Why did they need to know the line of succession? The crown would pass to someone in the end, as it always did, to whoever the nearest relation was, with those south of the Hopcross untroubled by the transfer.