Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  “I like this one,” Rom said self-consciously, plucking at the pleats of her dress.

  Briseida nodded, and, noticing Kari’s expression, added, “Kari, you will have an appointment tomorrow with representatives from the Steamworks guild. They have received a very impressive recommendation from a Professor who knows you, and are sending some people over to talk to you.” She took a moment to enjoy the flash of excitement in Kari’s eyes before concluding, “Not to be overly optimistic, but I saw fit to add a few pairs of working clothing for you. Dresses may be fitting for a young lady, but are hardly appropriate for the laboratories.”

  Kari and Rom both restrained squeals of joy before curtseying hurriedly and running into the nearest door. Briseida waited in the hall, silently enjoying the sense of contentment and reassuring feeling that they had made the right choice in bringing the two girls here. The girls were both laughing and debating rapidly as she quietly went back downstairs to make sure Cousins hadn’t wandered off; the boy could be trusted with anything of value, certainly, but he could also be trusted to try and avoid anything which smacked of steady employment.

  In the end, Rom took the corner room, with one window facing the clock tower across the street, and Kari chose the room closest to the bathroom. The closet which connected their rooms was easily the largest such room either of them had ever seen, and, while not completely filled with clothes, had more fine outfits than they could have dreamed possible. They played an impromptu game of dress up for nearly an hour before finally settling on their clothes.

  Rom chose another dress similar to the one she had found in the land of the spirits, but this one was a dark charcoal – nearly black – and she borrowed a pair of boots likely intended for Kari. They were large and black and laced up to nearly her knees, but had good solid soles and weren’t too shiny. Kari chose one of the outfits which Briseida had suggested were intended for the laboratory instead of one of the dresses. It had a simple mid-sleeved shirt with a pair of overalls, and a pair of simple brown shoes. The overalls were a bit too baggy, so she tied it off with a thick black belt. The belt had several pouches on it, too, which, though empty, would probably hold a lot of useful things she could find later.

  Rom pointed at the belt with an amused expression. “You don’t have anything to put there,” she laughed.

  Kari frowned back at her. “You’ll see, I’m going to have lots of things here for all my experiments.”

  “Yeah, okay, Professor Kari.”

  “You mean ‘Steammaster Kari’,” Rom’s friend teased back, letting the words resound in her ears with a pang of delightful optimism.

  The two girls stood and looked at each other for long moments, scarcely recognizing themselves. One day before, they were two different girls, wholly unrecognizable from the two they saw now. Footsteps on the landing interrupted their thoughts. They both turned to see Cousins in the doorway, his eyes were wider than usual.

  “Um, Goya wanted to,” he cleared his throat, which for some reason was making it harder than normal to speak, “ahem, wanted to see us over in her study.”

  Mulligan leapt from the bed where he’d been waiting and perched on Rom’s shoulder. “Ready,” he said.

  Rom and Kari both nodded and followed Cousins back downstairs. At the base of the stairs, he took them back up towards the shop, but turned right and into the adjoining building. From here, he led them up a different staircase, one that opened out into a small landing with only two doors. He knocked at the closest door, and “come in” could be heard from within a moment later.

  He opened the door and held it for the girls. They entered a room which took up nearly the entire floor and whose windows were all closed off. The room was still relatively well-lit, but all the walls were covered in shelves. Most of the shelves were filled with all manner of books – more than either girl had seen in a single room before – but were also displaying dozens and dozens of curiosities. In the center of the room, beside a metal fixture supporting a glowing yellow perfectly smooth glass sphere, sat an exceptionally old woman. She was dressed in a simple green gown, a colorful scarf draped across her shoulders.

  “Welcome to my home, children,” she said in a voice whose strength belied her apparent age. “I am Goya. Please close the door behind you and come closer so we can have a little talk.”

  Chapter 12: The Looking Glasses

  Rom paused, one hand on the brass knob. She squinted, trying to be certain of this woman. The old woman smiled, nodding towards her.

  “No, my child, I am not the woman who attempted to possess you. I am not Artifice.”

  “But you know about her? I don’t know… can you prove that you’re not her?”

  Goya shook her head. “Our paths have crossed more than once,” she admitted. “I am allied with one of her enemies, one whose friends protected you while your soul was far from us. She is far more skilled in the arts of deception than I could hope to challenge – but I can attempt to secure this room with a measure of honesty. But as with all truths, there must at last come a moment where you must choose to believe that which you feel is right.”

  Rom looked at Cousins, Kari and Mulligan, who all nodded quietly. She chewed her bottom lip anxiously, at last deciding that whether the old woman was who she said or not, she couldn’t help but feel like more answers would be found here in this room. Rom nodded to Goya, and finally closed the door behind her.

  As the door’s latch clicked shut, the woman waved one hand in the air – Rom felt the air pressure in the room increase slightly, and Kari stumbled, placing her hands over her ears for a moment.

  “What was that?” Kari asked. “It’s - - it’s gone now, but it was so loud!”

  Cousins looked around, confused. “I didn’t hear anything. What did it sound like?”

  The old woman nodded again. “It was I. I placed a seal upon the room, protecting us from being listened to or spied upon. The spell itself creates no actual sound…except to others who are suitably attuned,” she added, looking straight at Kari. “It is as I suspected, child – you have the gift within you.”

  “What gift?” Kari asked, taking her hands from her ears.

  “I will explain that in a moment,” the woman said. “But first, introductions are necessary. There should be no secrets between us.”

  She pointed towards herself. “I am called Goya. I am a seer, a shaman. I own this small area of land and the buildings upon it, for I have been in this city for most of my life. I am well studied across many of the schools of magic, and am a Master craftsman in several more.” She paused long enough for that to sink in, before adding, “I am quite old now – and, before my magical skills begin to fade, am fortunate enough to see the arrival of you three youths, who hold in your hands the necessary abilities to correct the failures of our city – both within and without the Wall.”

  Cousins looked from her to the two girls and back to Goya. “Um, I don’t know--” he began, but she cut him off.

  “You are Ballis Furthore, first generation arrival to Oldtown – you were found here when you were scarcely three years old, and you are the last known citizen to have been sent from Aesirium, from Inside the Wall. You have other skills, as well, but I am not at liberty to divulge them at this time; you yourself do not know them as yet. I would suspect you would be disappointed if I revealed them to you before you were ready to know them.”

  Not giving him a moment to respond, she turned her attention to Kari. “You are Hikari Sandston, only child of Nobumaso and Joriel Sandston. You have a comprehensive love of science; in particular, an unmatched natural understanding for the school of atmology, which I have already taken steps towards granting you full access to. You also possess a natural gift for the perception of magic, which marks you as a candidate for any one of the schools of magic you might be so inclined to study.”

  “And you,” she said, her voice changing in tone as she turned to Rom, “were given the name Rom. You have no given family in the common se
nse of the word, and as you only too recently discovered, have been marked for great things and powerful responsibilities in this life. Beyond the nature of that purple gem, I have little else I can tell you about your nature that your own disposition has not already confirmed in you, but can assure you that what you perceived was not a dream. You are what they said you are, and what you will do with that only you can say.”

  Kari turned to Rom, unable to form her question into words.

  Rom saved her the effort. “I’m a Reaper,” she said.

  Cousin’s face went white.

  The old woman’s voice was filled with compassion. “It is true, Cousins. But that calling is not so dreadful a thing in nature as you have often feared. She will present you no harm.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Rom asked. She felt angry, but couldn’t put her finger on why, exactly.

  “Because it is time for you to know,” she answered simply. “Cousins, I knew of for many months, now. And he told me before of your apparent sensitivity to magic, Kari.” She turned back to Rom. “But you…. I knew of you the moment we found you. Your arrival from the sky marked you as unique, but we could do nothing until you awakened. We were given a very small window of opportunity in which to hide you, mingle you in among the other children and so conceal you from Artifice, who has hungered for you ever since she claimed the life of your predecessor.”

  Rom’s mouth gaped. “Arrival from the what?”

  Goya sighed, a faint touch of sadness in her voice. “I will explain more to you, later. But I would like first to give the three of you gifts, as proper manners would dictate.”

  Cousins had looked as if he would have liked to have asked more questions, but the mention of gifts altered his priorities sufficiently to wait. Goya pointed to a small table across the room, which was cleared – unlike the other tables in the room – with the single exception of a pair of strange-looking glasses. They resembled goggles more than anything, with a variety of protrusions and levers surrounding the thick and multicolored lenses.

  “Of all the artifacts I have collected over the years, three items here belong to you three children. Those, I call the Looking Glasses,” she said. “They will show you what you most need. And what you three will most need will be yours.” She allowed them a moment for that to sink in, then said, “Kari, dear, why don’t you go first? Simply try them on and look around the room.”

  Rom was glad Goya picked Kari to go first – her own natural suspicion would have kept her from following instructions, but Kari couldn’t resist anything remotely technical. Kari slipped them on and turned to face the room, her mouth open in undisguised wonder.

  “Wow! Everything’s….colorful!” she said. “Everything is glowing and sparkling,” she whispered, slowly taking a few steps towards the center of the room. She seemed to lock onto something sitting on one of the bookshelves. Her hands hovered over whatever it was for a few moments, then she looked back towards Goya. “I found it. Now what?”

  Goya smiled. “Then you must take them; you are meant to have them.”

  Kari slid the goggles up onto her forehead and looked more closely, before reaching up and taking them off the shelf – at last, Rom was able to make out what they were. They were a pair of strange gauntlets – metal gloves, far too big for Kari. Kari put one on her right hand – it extended all the way to her elbow before snapping on around the joint of her arm. Although the gloves looked much too large, she seemed to have no difficulty moving the fingers – she was able to put the other gauntlet on her left arm and connect it without challenge.

  “These are wonderful! You really mean it – I can have them?”

  “They are already yours,” Goya nodded, then gestured towards Rom. “Now, it is your turn.”

  Rom stepped over to Kari, and Kari handed her the goggles, giving Rom a closer look at the gauntlets. They were comprised of hundreds of small plates of metal, beneath which Rom could see the curves of yet hundreds more tiny gears. Each plate had an almost invisible design etched into it – together, these small designs seemed to make some larger pattern on the exterior of the gauntlet, but Rom couldn’t make any sense of it. As Rom put the goggles on her own head, Kari had already seemed to lose interest in anything else, focusing herself almost entirely upon the gauntlets themselves.

  Taking a slow, deep breath, Rom put on the goggles, and kept her eyes closed for a long moment. At last, she opened her eyes and looked around. Sure enough, as Kari had described it, the room swirled in colors – each object in the room looked like rocks thrown into a pond, sending out perfectly-shaped ripples in all directions that gradually faded into the surface of the water. She looked around the room, taking in each object’s color and pattern. Then, two objects jumped out beyond the rest. It was as if they danced there before her eyes or waved their arms to get her attention – obviously they did not, but the effect was the same. She found herself walking closer to them to see more directly what they were.

  The larger item was a long pole, taller than she was by at least a foot or more; the top was curved to resemble a crescent moon, and the lower end was curved as well, only more sharply before straightening out to rest on the floor. At the midpoint was a silver-inlaid leather grip, two feet long.

  Nearby on the same shelf rested the second item. At first, she thought it was an overly large pendant on an ornate silver chain – but as she moved closer, she saw that it was too large to be worn about the neck. What she had thought to have been the ornament itself was as wide as the length of her thumb, round, with a thick button release at the top at the point where it connected to the chain. She picked it up and depressed the button – the cover snapped open, revealing the face of a watch. The interior of the lid had an unusual design on it which she had never seen before; it looked like a random pattern of overlapping flattened circles with a small dot in a different place on each oval and connected by a series of thinner straight lines. Something about it felt…familiar, somehow, but she couldn’t place it.

  She looked at the staff but did not touch it. Instead, she held up the watch and turned around to face Goya, who was shaking her head.

  “If the glasses show you two things, you should take them both,” Goya said. Red faced, Rom turned back and picked up the staff as well before removing the Looking Glasses. She placed the pocket watch in a hidden fold of her dress, clipping the free end of the chain to a small black bow on the opposite side of the dress; Cousins was already standing beside her when she had taken the goggles off.

  “So, Goya,” he said, “these glasses will show me what I need?”

  She smiled. “They show you what you need because I have told you they will do so.”

  His smile was lopsided. “What do they normally show?”

  “They show you the truth of what you ask them to show you.”

  He nodded, placing them on his head and looking slowly around the room. After a few moments of looking around, he nodded again, and took them off. “Then I already know what gift I need,” he said. Holding the goggles up, he grinned. “I choose these.”

  “They are yours, then, of course,” Goya said, nodding.

  Cousins smiled and placed the goggles in the breast pocket of his vest.

  Goya looked up slowly towards the door. “Ah, I believe Briseida could use some assistance with the preparation of lunch. Would you mind going to assist her?” She waved her hand again, unsealing the room. As the three children said their thank yous and began to leave, Goya motioned to Rom. “Please stay a moment, Rom, could you? I have something else to ask you.”

  Rom nodded to her friends who left the room, talking cheerfully as they descended the stairs. She felt a strange tingling, like an itching at the base of her neck. Mulligan lifted his head. “My whiskers are twitching, too,” he said.

  Goya watched the girl for a moment and then turned her head to the side and addressed the open air.

  “She knows you are here, Ian, please do show yourself.”

 
A man appeared to one side of them, equally distant from them both. He wore a long blue frock coat with a golden vest and black and white leather shoes. His chestnut brown hair was long, pulled back into a ponytail, and a thin design of hair surrounded his lips and chin. Immediately, however, Rom was struck by the instant sense that he was familiar to her, somehow.

  At last, she remembered him from the other day in the market – “You!”

  He bowed low to Rom and Goya both. His voice, when he spoke, felt like springtime.

  “I do humbly make myself known to you, youngest of the Sheharid Is’iin,” he said, rising back to his full height. He was thin, but quite tall, with long and expressive fingers; and green eyes that glistened beneath his brown eyebrows. “You may call me Ian,” He allowed the statement by a long pause before adding, “And I am your brother.”

  Chapter 13: Of Death, Life & In Between

  Rom sat on the floor, resting her head in her hands. “You people need to stop this…for just a moment,” she clarified, looking back up at the two concerned adults. “The past two days have been really rough; it feels like someone keeps throwing some new thing at me every five minutes.”

  Ian nodded. “I am sorry, I was going to wait and tell you later, but…” he looked at Goya accusingly. “You put a truth spell up, didn’t you?”

  The old woman smiled. “It was leftover from earlier; I hadn’t been expecting you.”

  He sighed. “Well, again, I am most sincerely sorry. See? I can’t lie to you about that, even if I wanted to.” His playful smile, Goya noticed, was lacking somewhat. It had been some time since they had been together, and for the first time since she had met him, she noticed small creases around his eyes and a few strands of grey in his hair.

  Rom looked from Goya to Ian. “So you’re one too – a …” she struggled with the word.

  “Sheharid Is’iin? More or less,” he replied. He pulled up his left sleeve, which revealed a deep scar on the back of his wrist. “I was awakened as the Harvester for this world, more than three hundred years ago.”