Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  Elario looked through a hole in the roof to a study. Most of the shelves had collapsed, raining books down into piles upon the floor. Furred in moss and other growth, one lay open with a moldy page stirring in a faint breeze. The weight of the fallen roof had caused part of the study’s floor to fall in as well. Beneath the study was a bedroom. There stood a canopy bed, the fabric eaten away and the metal frame rusted.

  “If you’ll follow the line of the drive,” Nollo suggested to the passengers, “you’ll see what is believed to be the family’s carriage at the gate.”

  The pavement of the driveway was damaged, yet easily recognizable for what it was. Elario trailed the spectacles down its quarter-mile length to the iron-barred gate at the end. Resting on its side just beyond the gate was a shell of a fine carriage. Both horses and reins were long gone, the wheels rotted away, and the windows were shattered. A greenish lump was near the roof. It was in the shape of a trunk.

  There was so much horror in that overturned carriage, upon which elegant scrollwork still showed. This was where dervesh overcame the baron and his family, who hadn’t even made it to the road. “Those poor people,” Elario mumbled.

  “Yes,” Brother Shanus said, his gaze traveling out farther than the Brizadore estate. “Only the heartless can fly over the Great Cities and remain untouched. Each story was a tragedy, and slender the string of hope for the populations of certain cities who had nowhere to go. They were boxed in on all sides. There are no known survivors of Nevenin, for example.”

  “Not one?”

  “Not even one. The queen and her retinue perished to the last in their escape. Only in places like Vallere was there a modest chance of getting away, and only for those who luckily chose south and west as their directions to flee, and left early, as the jockey did. I have read the account of Gilwan. He lost his entire family that day: grandparents, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, wife, child. Later in life, he told the scholar who recorded his story to count him as another death of Elequa’s revenge. One did not survive it. One breathed afterwards, as he did, but died with all the rest.”

  They tore me apart. They hung me, ate me alive, slashed me through with swords, and ripped my flesh with their claws. I was the baby torn from his mother’s arms and hurled over the wall. I was the man who ran for his beloved wife as she was pulled away screaming, and then I was the one screaming to be pulled away. I was an old woman clutching a stranger’s child as I rode south through the trees, my family gone, all gone, and so was this girl’s kin gone, the two of us alone and upon no road. I was a little boy who witnessed his family surrounded and sliced apart by havok from the upstairs window, in the attic where I hid, and there it was I starved until other dervesh found me, and by then I did not care but for the pain.

  It was young Hydon’s voice in Elario’s ear, mesmerized and nauseated, thick with grief. A madcap desire for treasure had brought him into the Wickewoods, so where did that pity for the dead suddenly come from? Why did he speak of their fates as if they all belonged to him?

  The estates beyond the Brizadore manor had not fared as well. Naked chimneys reached up into the sky over scorched heaps of rubble. Past thickets of trees were the remnants of a downtown, carriages blocking the roads between lines of sagging buildings with broken windows and caved in roofs. Trees grew out of some of them, the canopy bursting from the shingles.

  One road led to a mammoth stone bridge. It was like no bridge Elario had ever seen, standing one hundred paces high over a gorge that split the city of Vallere in two. The stone was a rich, deep gray color, and polished so that long streaks of minerals within blazed in scarlet, orange, and green. Gleaming in the sun, the bridge stood strong and radiant and untouched. The only sign that anything was amiss was upon the bridge itself, where carriages and wagons stood in a timeless gridlock.

  Brother Shanus got up with his book of drawings, pencil, and cane to take another chair with a better view of the downtown. Nobody claimed his abandoned seat. As Elario looked out to the second half of Vallere, Nollo answered questions about the unusual bridge. “There was a knack only in children born within Vallere. A stone knack, it was called. Its holders created the wall around Vallere, and this bridge, as well as bridges and other monuments in other cities. They will stand for eternity, just as all stone knacker relics will. This knack was lost forever to Phaleros with the fall of the Great Cities.”

  They flew over Vallere for several hours, the passengers given views of every region within the wall. Infrequently, spires from distant cities in the east broke the horizon and wavered tantalizing in the haze. Some people were disappointed that dervesh were not much in evidence below, though the spectacles gave Elario infrequent glimpses of something, some being, sliding out of sight in those spoiled dwellings and parks. A creature was spotted by excited passengers on the other side of the aerial; he did not stir from his seat to witness it for himself.

  In the late afternoon, the aerial turned north for Port Galderon and greatly increased its speed. Once they passed over the wall, there was nothing more to see but trees. Elario pushed the spectacles up to the top of his head again. His stomach rumbled.

  It was another hour or so until they landed, so he took up his satchel and joined the stream of passengers to the second level. At the top of the stairs was a warren of small hallways to rival the tangled roads of Ballevue. They walked past closed doors to private compartments and emerged after half a dozen turns into an open dining room. Though there were chairs at the windows, passengers were choosing to sit at the tables in the center instead.

  Full meals were not served, since the aerial was bringing them into the port well in time to find a common room, but bowls along the tables were piled with fruit, and a second mechanical man with an eagle on his cheek filled silver goblets with wine. Elario took two apples and a goblet to a window, wishing to be alone. The thrill of seeing one of the Great Cities had long ago faded to sadness. Vallere was a place of horror, not entertainment. He could not look at those carriages in the roads without thinking of what it had been like to be in them, trying to flee, but with every avenue leading to death.

  The voices of Hydon and the second man had stopped speaking in his ear, and for that he was thankful. Conversations rolled over him from the passengers at the tables, concerning what they had seen, and what there was to see in the other tours. Some passengers were not returning to Penborough, but catching a crawler at the station to various destinations in the golden ring. That was good. Nobody would think anything of Elario not boarding the aerial tomorrow.

  He ate the apples down to cores, and turned back to the tables to find where to discard them. A man across the room looked at him. Garbed in an outfit of muddied tan and green, his pale hair was clipped to his scalp and covered in a black cap. A flicker of memory tweaked at Elario’s mind, but he lost it in an instant.

  The man was sitting alone at the farthest table, his finger tapping on the wood. He stared fixedly through the hubbub. Several women were seated between them, and Elario assumed that the man was truly gazing at one of them. But when Elario stood, the man’s eyes lifted with him.

  Tan-and-greens. The memory cleared to the inn at Jumario, and the two quarrelsome men at the long table. Dragons of the Blood wore tan-and-greens for uniforms. That was what this man had to be. At his collar was a single bar of silver. A pip, and to have only one marked him as the lowest rank of ensigno.

  Something about Elario had drawn this soldier’s eye. Suddenly afraid, he composed his face to a blank expression and maintained a casual pace to the hallway. In his peripheral vision, he saw the soldier stand and start after him.

  Elario’s fingers tightened on the strap of his satchel, his mind racing through the limited options of where to hide. There was no hiding place in the lowest level of the aerial, where the tallest object was the bar, and Nollo working behind it.

  Upstairs. He had passed the staircase to the next level while in the warren. A red rope was pulled across its lowest step t
o ward passengers away, but nobody guarded it. He would step over the rope and search for a place to conceal himself on the bridge or in engineering.

  Retracing his steps hurriedly through the hallways, he found the stairs just as feet appeared on the topmost step. An aerial worker was descending. Elario pivoted and pressed on the closed door to a random compartment.

  It was locked. He tried another, which flew open to a woman and two children pointing out a window. They turned to him in alarm. “Forgive me! Wrong room!” Elario cried, and closed the door to try another in the hopes it was unoccupied. But all the rest along the hallway were locked.

  He turned right at the crook, hearing a quick clip of boots somewhere behind him. Running down the next hallway and trying doors, Elario was nearly at the end when one flew open to a dim space. He jumped inside the room and closed the door fast.

  This was an interior storage compartment, and very small. With no windows to the outside world, the only light emanated from a lantern fixed to the wall. One shutter was open, revealing shelves bolted to the walls and floor. They were piled with items ranging from spectacles to towels to mugs, and more that he did not take the time to investigate.

  He pressed his ear to the door. Steps sounded, almost indiscernible in the rumble of the aerial. A knock, muttered voices, and then further steps edged ever closer to the storage compartment. Elario softened his breathing. The soldier was trying each door, and there was no way to lock this one. Nor could he block it, since the shelving units were bolted down.

  Great Elequa. He was cornered in here.

  The knob at his side jiggled and gave. As the door opened, he flattened himself against the wall. Just peek, he thought to the soldier, but the door opened wider and wider.

  The muzzle of an aithra pistol extended into the compartment. It swung left to right. Then the soldier came in, snapping the pistol behind the door as if he knew where Elario was before he saw him in the shadows there.

  To be on the wrong end of a pistol put water in Elario’s knees. The soldier elbowed the door shut, keeping the pistol trained on his chest. “So, you’re the one. Drop that satchel to the floor and kick it to me!”

  “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elario stammered.

  “Do as I say!”

  Swallowing hard, Elario lifted the strap over his head and set the satchel down on the floor. He kicked it over to the soldier, who knelt down and turned it over. Shaking out the contents, he picked through the clothes with the pistol still pointed at Elario. Then he made a sound of triumph and opened the herbal case.

  Anger flooded his face at the herbs, mortar and pestle, the clippers and bandages and the rest of Elario’s accouterment. Rustling through them, he spat, “Where is it? I can feel the thing on you! There’s no use hiding it from me when anyone with a knack can sense something queer! Turn out your pockets.”

  Elario didn’t move.

  The soldier straightened and stepped over the mess on the floor. Shoving the muzzle of the pistol under Elario’s chin, the man hissed, “Are you playing games with me?”

  “No, I’m not trying to-”

  “Let me tell you something, you son of a dervesh, there are no games in the dank hole where you’re going to spend all the days of your life for carrying what you’re carrying! You turn out those pockets when I say!”

  Slipping his hand into his pocket, Elario’s fingers closed around the box. The muzzle jabbed into his chin as a warning. He took it out and the soldier snatched it away. “Is this the weapon?” the man demanded, taking a step back.

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  The Dragon of the Blood ensigno gave the box a measuring look, Elario blurting, “Don’t open it. Whatever is inside, a weapon or something other, it’s . . . unnatural.”

  “You’d like me to think that.” Holstering the pistol and pinching the lid, he began to raise it.

  Elario acted without thought. Lunging forward with a cry, he and the soldier tumbled down to the floor beside the shelves. A leg threaded through Elario’s and jerked, spilling him onto his back and knocking the spectacles off the top of his head. Then the soldier was stooped over him, a boot stepping hard onto Elario’s stomach.

  Breathing heavily, the man said, “Attacking a Dragon of the Blood? They’ll find an even deeper hole in the Shivves to stow you in now, if they don’t kill you outright!” He straightened, though his boot stayed digging into Elario, and pried open the lid.

  The eye.

  It rolled out of the box and split apart in the air. It was neither gas nor liquid nor solid, yet all of those things as it dropped. A short, curling stream of gold, it broke into a helix and rejoined as one, shattered and renewed again. The soldier dropped his hand to catch it, shouting in surprise, but the eye that was not an eye fell faster than he moved.

  It hit Elario in the chest and was . . . gone.

  Just gone, as if it had never been.

  Fingers scrabbled roughly at his chest where it had vanished, the boot lifting off his belly and poking into his side as the soldier searched him frantically. “Where did it go?” Gathering up Elario’s vest in his fists, he banged Elario into the floor. “What did you do with it? Where did it go?”

  There would be a dank hole in the earth. Elario heard it as an ironclad certainty in the soldier’s voice. No light shined in that lawless, underground prison north of Ruzan, where the worst of the worst were ensconced.

  This had not been in the stores of Elario’s knowledge only moments ago, but it was here in his mind now. The absolute conviction of his fate stormed him with a maddened energy. He grappled with the fists at his vest, seeking to loosen them and failing. Rolling to the side in another attempt to free himself, he unbalanced the soldier. The man stumbled backwards and released him. Elario leaped up to his feet, his fingers balling into fists.

  The man’s hand went to his pistol. And stopped.

  Frozen in place, he stared wildly at Elario in the dimness of the compartment. Elario was already throwing a punch, which cracked with devastating force into the man’s nose. Staggering, the soldier struck the shelves at his back and went down in a spill of towels and baskets.

  He was unconscious. Blood trickled from his nostrils.

  Elario scooped up a ball of twine and tied together the ensigno’s ankles. Turning him over, he tied the man’s wrists behind his back and snatched up a filthy cleaning rag. He made a gag of it, knotting it viciously to stifle the soldier’s screams for help when he awoke. The aithra pistol was not in the holster when Elario checked; it had fallen out somewhere and there was no time to hunt for it.

  He jumped away once the man was bound to gather everything that had fallen from the satchel, stuffing it in willy-nilly and hooking the borrowed spectacles to his vest. The soldier’s eyes opened as Elario picked up the laden satchel to put it on. He flailed once, nostrils flaring as he discovered his various confinements, and then he stilled upon Elario’s face. Fear.

  There was no reason for this man to fear Elario, who brushed dirt off his vest and glanced at the floor for any more of his things. Only the box was there, lid gaping and nothing within. Leaving it where it was, Elario let himself out into the hallway.

  He had lost the eye. He had lost the eye and attacked a Dragon of the Blood! His mind was in a tangle as he strode away from the storage compartment. There was no longer any point in continuing on to Drouthe to deliver what he did not possess, yet to go home where the Red Guard might be waiting . . .

  Do we run, Papa?

  It was Nyca, and Yens answered him. No. The moment we run is the moment they believe we lie. We stay, and we go about our business. Better they only suspect a lie than believe a lie.

  Elario rounded the corner. A girl was exiting the ladies’ necessary and looked up to him, her expression instantly changing from placid to fearful. Backing into the door as it swung shut behind her, she retreated inside with a gasp.

  The fight with the soldier had happened so fast. There m
ust have been a blow to Elario’s face that bloodied him. Wiping a curious hand over his forehead and cheeks, he pressed on the door to the men’s necessary and helped himself to a folded cloth from the stack beside the sink. After setting down his satchel on the counter, he inspected his reflection to take stock of the damage.

  A scarlet iris stared back at him from his right eye.

  His yell echoed in the empty room, and he leaped back from the mirror in terror. Then he returned to it in utter disbelief. It was not upon his eye but within his eye, as if he had been born with one dark brown iris and one that was red. Bright red upon a golden, swirling vapor instead of white.

  And it saw. He closed the lid of his left eye and there was the mirror and sink and his gaping mouth. Opening it, he watched his eyes track together over the necessary. Then he dug his fingers into the flesh around his right eye, trying to pop it out of there.

  It stayed where it was. This . . . this was a dream! A nightmare! He could not walk around with his eye like this! At best, people were going to take him for the carrier of some fresh contagion; at worst, it gave him away to any Dragon of the Blood or Red Guard who knew what they were pursuing.

  He fumbled for his herbal case, his fingers clumsy from horror. Taking out a clean, rolled bandage, he wound it around his head so it passed over his right eye. This hardly made him less conspicuous, but better a bandage than a scarlet iris!