by S. M. Peters
They parted. Penny spun and took a low stance just out of arm’s reach. His injured leg hung delicate and curved like a dancer, his other tensed and bent like a cat. The knife floated in front of his eyes, and his left hand hung loose at his side, injured but not useless. His shirt was in a tatter. Bergen could still see the hole where he had shot the boy during their first confrontation; it quivered with a red jelly. The fresher wounds, however, leaked copiously.
Bergen tossed the Gasser away.
“Now there is only me,” he said. “Come and see what stuff I’m made of, boy.”
They shared the intense, calculating stares of equal opponents. Bergen stared hungrily into Penny’s eyes, red veins around dilated pupils, and waited for the moment of synchronicity to come, when they both charged and the lesser man met his fate on the asphalt.
Penny sprang. Bergen rushed in low. The knife whistled past his ear and Bergen brought his fist into Penny’s gut. Blood splattered out as red as his satisfaction. Then Penny’s left clapped him open palm on the ear. The blow was weak, but Bergen’s head still exploded in spots and pain.
A line of fire flared on his back as Penny’s knife sliced back—it hadn’t been a miss, but a feint. Bergen clamped his left hand on to Penny’s elbow and shoved it away. The left hand hit him again, a clumsy strike across the face. Bergen ignored it and clamped his right hand around Penny’s throat, digging his thumb into the boy’s windpipe. Bergen growled and pressed in.
Penny’s teeth opened in a silent, slavering roar. His left came in unseen and hammered Bergen on the wound in his stomach. Bergen choked as weakness and nausea flooded him. His left arm and legs buckled. Penny plunged the knife into Bergen’s body between his collarbone and back, and drove him to his knees. Bergen snarled and leaned in, and Penny’s windpipe cracked inward like a dry reed.
The boy did not react. He leaned his weight onto the knife. Bergen pushed his left hand into Penny’s elbow, but the slashed muscles could not drive the knife out. Penny’s left struck another haphazard cuff on Bergen’s cheek. Bergen released the boy’s neck, drew back, and pounded him squarely in the teeth.
Penny’s head snapped back and he fell. Bergen fell as well, crashing hard onto his back and winding himself. The instant the spots cleared he drew the knife out, heedless of the sting or the damage. Absently, he pressed his right palm over the wound while he rolled to look at the boy.
Penny lay on his back, his chest convulsing, his hands mechanically groping at his throat. He must have heard Bergen’s chuckle, because his eyes drifted sideways.
Bergen watched Penny’s face turn purple, then blue. He watched Penny’s eyes water and shiver. He watched Penny twitch and lie still.
Sterner stuff than you, boy.
He used the knife to cut his sleeve off and jammed it down over the wound, holding it by pressure since he had nothing to bind it. He chuckled to himself all the while—a mad, exhilarant act.
He left the corpse behind, shambling up the street in pursuit of Heckler and the Boiler Men. After just a block he faded from weakness and collapsed in the middle of the road. He dragged himself upright against a nearby abandoned cart, and waited there, slipping in and out of consciousness until Heckler found him.
“Bergen! They’re all right,” the lad said as he ran up. “The Boiler Men were after cloaks. There were two crows in the crowd. That’s all they wanted and now they’re just standing there like they’ve been shut off or some such.”
Bergen smiled. “Good.”
Heckler’s cheer wavered. “You all right, suh?”
Bergen could only nod. Heckler bent and gently moved Bergen’s hand aside, cursing when he saw beneath.
“Ah’ll get the doctor. You just hold on, Bergen.”
Bergen looked up at this brave lad and saw something that brought up tears. “Don’t,” he said.
“Suh?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Uh…All right.” The lad hesitated, puzzled.
“Get the damn doctor, boy.”
“Right.”
He fled.
It was all wrong. Missy knew that. Though her hands shook and her knees felt watery and her stomach sat heavy with fear and sickness, she could not help but see it through.
The child brought her to two polished oak doors.
“ ’E’s there,” the boy said. They had halted at the far end of the hall, at the top of a flight of stairs. The boy pointed to the doors and did not descend the staircase. “ ’E said not to step on the third stair or the fifth. And ’e said to open the door by twistin’ the handle. Two turns left, one turn right, ’e said. Was real perticaler about it.”
Missy felt the boy’s fingers tighten around hers. She knelt next to him and smiled. He looked at his shoes.
“Thank you for showing me,” she said, as soft as she could manage. “Run upstairs, now, and the girls will give you something to eat.”
The boy nodded slowly.
“Run along.” She gave him a gentle shove back the way they’d come. The boy shuffled off a few paces, then ran, leaving Missy alone with nothing but her task.
The doors loomed before her. Doors to hell. Doors to heaven. Doors to nothingness.
God is always just, said Gisella. A wicked and low death for a wicked and low animal.
The doors were her whole world.
Who are you to defy fate, bird? That is your end. Every woman has her time.
She could not go back. Without the boy’s direction she would be either lost or slain in the maze.
She could see Gisella staring down her nose. And every woman has her duty.
You’re dead.
And you are not. It was not I that made this decision, young lady. I am not the one with the diseased mind.
She rose.
It won’t matter. You’ll never leave me.
Quite correct.
Then I will leave you.
Gisella laughed. Two bullets for him and one for yourself, is it? You are quite foolish, to think you can escape me in such a manner.
Missy took a step down.
But you are still going to try, and that is both lovely and insane.
She marched heavy and slow, walking her last towards the gallows. Tears ravaged her cheeks until they stung. Her whole body sagged with exhaustion. She lurched with each step, the gun swaying in her hand, the doors in her vision.
Quiet lay beyond those doors. Eternal and deep and pure.
How many more will you take, bird, after this one fails to rid you of me? Will you go on killing to silence me? Perhaps Emily, perhaps Elizabeth, perhaps strangers you have yet to meet? Will you prefer men or women, I wonder? Will you develop habits or favourite methods? How many more bullets, I wonder?
Missy placed her cold fingers on the iron doorknob.
“One, if it rids me of you,” she said. “Two if it doesn’t.”
She turned as the boy told her and drew the doors wide. The air blew out down the hall, carrying the stench of human sweat and urine, overtones of acrid and fruit smells, and an invigorating chemical tang. A single lamp lit the room, placed on a side table beside a beaten, ancient armchair.
On the left sat a bed, heavy velvet curtains scorched and torn. On the bed lay an unmoving figure who could not have been taller than three feet. On the right, a closet gaped wide, showing rows of tubes and bottles, a collection to put Gisella’s to shame.
In the chair lay the hobgoblin man. His skin was flushed a deep red, his fingers curled into palsied knots. Drool ran down from his mouth, and an empty glass bottle lay on his lap. His menace had fled, leaving him a shrunken old man.
She’d wanted to find him like this, so he could not turn those black eyes on her.
This will not end it, bird.
“It will.”
She raised the gun.
Ah, my love. Look to your husband! Watch him shrivel and die, and do nothing to win you back.
Scared’s spectral grin spread wider as he watched the infini
te copper lattice of the Great Machine collapsing from within. Black tendrils raced over it, strand by strand, stifling the sparks of calculation, corroding the wires, and tarnishing the brass. He’d known it would work, of course, but to actually see the fruits of his lover’s inspiration and his own intellect…it staggered him. He had brought down a god.
I never thought it would be so beautiful, my love. Won’t you watch?
Mama Engine lashed with molten fury against the claws Scared had driven through her. The child struggled as well, though its toils were weak and barely noticeable.
Mama Engine cried out, loosing streaks of fire across the city that burned and scorched the towers.
He was your protection from the wicked world, I know, Scared said to her. And protection from yourself, as well, wasn’t he?
He leaned closer to her, dripping a thousand tongues of obedience from his skull-jaws, lashing them to the wounds in her psyche and ensnaring the desires that ruled her.
Well, you will soon be a queen of that wicked world, beloved. And I will keep you in the cage you so long for.
The Great Machine came apart. The enormous sheets of glass fell from the towers around. Sparks leapt into the air and burned away. The golden metals in the Stack and the towers rusted, flaked, and broke apart in an unfelt phantom wind. Scared laughed to see them flutter away.
Does it not excite you, my love? You and I in eternal…
A shadow fell over Mama Engine’s fires.
You and I…
Her fires went cold. Her furnaces closed and dimmed. Scared gasped and drew back.
What is happening?
The tower of arms arched back and fell still. The sun-heat of his bride’s womb faded.
No! He clutched his bride to him, drawing her close as she slipped through his claws like ashes. How did this happen? We were careful. We were in control.
Mama Engine whined for him, as her chains cooled and her glass parasites solidified. She cried as her mechanisms jammed, and she slid out of his reach.
The mei kuan burned in him. He lashed out with his hundred fingers, raking the sludge and shattering the towers, tearing holes in Whitechapel’s dream and filling them with his tears.
It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t fair.
If he could not rule it, it would die. All of it. This accursed city would crumble to rust. Then he would eat the dreams of the world, of all these frail humans that had failed him and the Englishmen who had fought against him.
He ripped down a tower, shattering its lifeless beams and supports and scattering them into the putrid sea below. He pushed over another. In the other world, rivets snapped and beams bent, and the real towers began to fall. The souls of the dying burst into the dream with screams on their lips. Scared ground them between his teeth.
He would have them all. He would—
Missy pulled the trigger three times.
—What was that?
The mei kuan evaporated into nothing and his equations splintered. Scared swung his skull-eyes inward to see the last wisps of power leave him, sucked into a black point that had appeared at his roots. Even without the calculations to aid him, Scared recognised it and shuddered with a primal fear. He had anticipated at least a few days to consolidate himself as a god, and to bind himself to his bride. This was too soon, far too soon.
The city rumbled, and he glanced up to see thousands of spectral forms crossing the Wall, free now from whatever force had kept them at bay. They were the ghosts of old London, angry at the affront to their pride and their city. Scared looked at his skeletal fingers, his thousand tongues, and realized he could not face them without the Chinese drug. Then he shrieked as his nightmares broke through from beneath his skin and leapt for his face.
He made to flee, slashing his own body. His mortal death eagerly consumed his roots and tendrils while he turned his upper body towards the cusp of the red sky. He could escape into the dark rents, ride them anywhere in the world, find a safe place, and there, heal and plot. He snagged his fingers on the edge of one, when sparkling blue eyes filled his vision. Tendrils of the mei kuan’s influence curled around them.
What is this? Get out of my way.
“I’ve come to know you, John,” said the other, “and I’m sorry.”
The blue eyes beheld him sadly, and their force stayed his motion. The ghosts swarmed up his flanks, tiny creatures dressed in the fineries of all the city’s lost eras, right back to knights and legionnaires. His nightmares tore open his carefully disciplined mental defences, and led the ghosts within.
They’ll kill me.
“You are already dead, John. Perhaps you were never really alive.”
The ghosts dove into him and ran amok, shattering his carefully constructed ice caverns and freeing the nightmares he had so long kept hidden. They closed on him from all sides, faces of forgotten children and memories of hurt.
He screamed. The ghosts grabbed him as one and hauled him down into the black well of his death. He and his nightmares fell into the void and vanished.
Oliver’s eyes flew open. His vision blurred. His body jerked.
Brass claws entered him through the chest. A rush of pus greeted them and a flash of fever brought Oliver’s eyes into focus, to watch the creature of brass tearing at him. It ripped Scared’s weapon out and crushed it.
Oliver broke into a grin and a cackle. His neck tendons tightened to steel cords, and his back bent inward. You’re too late.
Images in his mind: prophecies, whispers. An end, they promised. Preserve us. Build us a home-body-kingdom. Give birth to us and we will make all your pain end.
The poison coiled in his vision, whirling, spreading.
The brass creature staggered, rusting and weakening as the poison fed on his patron god.
Blackness, circling lights, devouring, lessening, shrinking.
The brass creature with hands around his throat, crushing down. Fluid rushing into his neck, then into his joints and limbs, hardening them, filling gaps and repairing damage.
Oliver ripped his hands free of the chair, grabbed the creature’s arms, pulled them away.
Fluid in veins, pulsing like blood. Hands oozing pus, fingernails bursting with it.
Gods screaming. Lights flickering and fading. Sparks showering from above.
Porcelain eyes cracking. Brass limbs breaking.
The world jolted. The Stack shook.
His assailant came apart and clattered to the ground in pieces.
Oliver rested his head against the high back of his chair and let air trickle out of his lungs.
The gods cried out to him in their alien tongue, and he understood every word and inflection. Mama Engine and her child screamed their terror as the darkness took them. Grandfather Clock faded away without a sound.
The last spark of electricity fizzled out. The omnipresent churn of machinery turned to grinding, then scrapes, then clatters and clangs, finally halting altogether.
The light of his eyes faded, until the chamber was a glimmer of afterimages in pitch darkness. Oliver removed his hat and set it on the arm of his chair. He smoothed his hair back and folded his hands in his lap.
He stayed awake a long time, listening to a silence more perfect and profound than any he had ever experienced. Then he closed his eyes, and gave himself to dreams.
Epilogue
He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.
—Heywood Brown
Missy closed her eyes and tilted her head back, listening to the play of the wind on the fields. Her hair fluttered across her face and she pushed it back. Her skin was already red from the sun today, and her nose was peeling from an earlier sunburn, but she couldn’t resist it.
She set her heavy basket of clothing down beside her and sat in the soft grasses. Some bowed and moved under her, others cut her with their edges, but her hands had grown callous working in the laundry, and she barely felt it.
She
rolled down her back until she came to rest on the ground. The movement was still fresh for her, as she had spent so much time wearing corset and cage and had since forsaken both. The grasses cushioned her, and immediately made her sleepy. She smiled and blinked herself back to wakefulness. The head housekeeper would be cross if she lingered much longer. Too much time spent getting lost, she would say.
Missy wished the moment would last, knowing it wouldn’t, knowing it would come again. Eventually, she forced herself to her feet, gathered her basket, and turned to return to the mansion. It was a summer home for the lord and lady who owned it, with grounds as large as a whole level of Shoreditch Tower and acres of fields besides. The servants lived and worked in the lower levels. They were officially not allowed out onto the grounds, but Missy had found that if her tasks were attended to and she didn’t disturb the guests, the owners paid it no mind. Missy found her small, sparse room comforting, and the work forgetful.
She walked back a ways and spotted a man standing in the shade of the tall willow that stood alone at the edge of the lawn, just past the low brick wall encircling the grounds. He was tall and dressed in a smart blue vest and black coat, sporting a top hat and leaning on a cane.
One of the guests. Well, I hope he doesn’t tattle on me.
She strode purposefully towards him, with a mind to pass him by with a polite greeting and then through the gate and into the laundry by the side door. He watched her as she approached, holding a small wicker basket over his right arm, obviously laden as he seemed to have difficulty holding it up.
“How do you do, sir?” she said.
“As well as can be expected, Miss Plantaget.”
She hesitated. “Do you know me, sir?”
“Try as one might, you’re not an easy one to forget,” said the man. He held out his basket. “If you’d be so kind.”
Missy wedged her own basket against her hip and freed a hand to take his. It was indeed full. The smell of fresh bread drifted up from it.