The Sunken

by S. C. Green

The question hung in the damp air, carrying with it a twinge of malice. Aaron shivered, but pressed ahead with his inquiry. “Quartz told me you’re sending a crew of Stokers into the swamps to begin building the Atmospheric Railway?”

  “That’s correct. With the money from the Society and the Royal contract, I can finally afford to realise some of my projects. Once complete, the line will provide a speedy goods route between London and Plymouth. I’m hoping the men will be able to leave within the week.”

  “Lying doesn’t become you, Presbyter.” Anger rose in Aaron’s throat. “You’ve been talking to Buckland.”

  Isambard smiled. “Buckland talks too much. It’s true, Aaron. I want to find out why the dragons are coming to London. It could aid the construction of the Wall, and the Wall absolutely must work. Anything that aids it …” he shrugged. “It’s a secret because I don’t want to reveal my intentions to the rest of the sects. It will make me appear weak, unsure, especially in front of Stephenson. I don’t see what has you so upset—”

  “Isambard, you know how much I want to go to the swamps. Why didn’t you ask me? Quartz is old. I fear for his health—”

  “Quartz’s health?” Brunel laughed. “The man has more grog in his system than blood. It’s the swamp that best look out for him!”

  “You know I’m more comfortable around animals than I’ve ever been around machines, and I’ve always wanted to see where my grandfather hunted—”

  “Of course. Aaron Williams Senior — the Great Dragon Hunter. Clearly, he wasn’t as great as everyone thought, or we wouldn’t be building this Wall to keep out the dragons he supposedly hunted to extinction.”

  Aaron gritted his teeth. “All the same, I’d like to go.”

  Brunel shook his head. “That’s out of the question. I need you here, Aaron. You’re the only one I trust. I have another job for you, one that’s even more important.”

  “I don’t want your job. You’re not listening to me. You only care about what’s right for Isambard. I want to be with Quartz, I want to go to the swamps.”

  Brunel reached out in the darkness and clasped Aaron’s hand.

  “As always, my friend, you are right. I thought this was what we had been working for. We’re on the cusp of creating a better life for the Stokers, and I need you by my side.”

  Memories flooded Aaron’s mind. Peering in the windows of the engineering schools, watching Isambard scrawl complex formulas onto scraps of paper and old bits of tin. The two of them, working away in silence in their secret workshop, building the locomotive that would make Isambard great. The way Isambard had embraced him when they finally got it to work. “This is only the beginning,” he’d said. “The beginning of a new life for the Stokers. And you’ll be here to live it with me, Aaron. Whatever changes, you’ll be here.”

  Aaron said nothing.

  “Aaron?”

  He sighed. “Of course, Isambard. I won’t leave you, not if you need me. What is this job?”

  ***

  His hands shoved deep in his pockets, his face down to avoid eye contact, Nicholas pushed his way through the crowded, rowdy streets behind the Chimney. Here in the Stoker camps, the buildings leaned inward, the tips of the tin roofs pressed up against each other — a precarious maze of well-balanced scrap. Stokers filled every available space, dancing and drinking together as they celebrated the dawn of a new life. Steam rose from raised vents in the pavement, obscuring the narrow alleys with thick, haunting mist. Occasionally, a tongue of flame shot from the sewer gratings, and the revellers jumped back to avoid being singed, laughing all the while.

  It was a mistake to come here. He would never find Aaron in this crowd. Someone crashed into him, slamming him against the wall of a shack. The drunk picked himself up, calling an apology with a cackle. His fetid breath wavered past Nicholas’ face.

  He’d no sooner righted himself when he leapt out of the way, landing on his hands and knees in the mud, having narrowly avoided crashing into a speeding carriage pulled by two cackling youths. Its cargo of two fattened pigs screeched in terror and kicked at their wooden cage. Nicholas was picking himself up when one well-timed kick to his jaw sent him reeling into the mud again.

  “Here, let me ’elp you up.”

  It was a woman. She was young — not a year past eighteen — her eyes sparkling from her soot-caked face. Her clothes, like all Stokers’, were made of rough canvas and leather, patched and repaired in several places. She smiled at him, and her face seemed impossibly kind. He held out a hand and she pulled him to his feet and wiped the mud from his coat and ushered him into a nearby courtyard, less crowded, probably because it was filled with barrels of foul-smelling alcohol. He gripped the wall, his head spinning from the stench, hoping he wouldn’t pass out.

  His rescuer, who seemed not to mind the smell at all, squinted at him as she wrung out a rag in the well and dabbed at his clothes. “You’re dressed awful fine for Engine Ward. You ain’t from around here, are you?”

  He shook his head. A loud mob of men entered the courtyard, grabbing one of the barrels and rolling it out toward the street, splashing the foul liquid over Nicholas and the woman. “I’m looking for Aaron Williams!” he yelled over the din.

  “What?”

  “Aaron Williams! He’s a Stoker—”

  “—and a right bloody pain in the arse.” She smiled. “You must be Nicholas. He’s talked of little else since he met you. I’m Chloe, his wife. He was talking to Quartz last I saw him, out by the bonfire — apparently he’s gone up to the Chimney to have words with Isambard.”

  “What about?”

  She shrugged. “Quartz said he was hopping mad. If you see him, tell him he’s not to come home if he’s had even a drop o’ this.” She gestured to the barrels behind her. “I only just cleaned up the mess from his last revels.”

  “Thank you. I shall look for him there. It’s a pleasure, ma’am.” He tipped his hat to her. She gave his hand a push.

  “Don’t you ma’am me. We’re Stokers out here, scum the lot of us.”

  Mounting the Chimney steps three at a time, Nicholas rapped on the door, reeling when he saw the hard eyes of Oswald staring back at him through the door.

  “Aaron is down in the workshop,” the priest said.

  “Isambard is expecting me,” Nicholas said, passing a paper through the hole in the door. “He sent this message to my lodgings this morning. If you don’t let me in, he will suspect something, and you will be questioned. I can hardly do wrong to Aaron in his presence.”

  Oswald snatched away the message. Scowling even deeper, he slammed the hatch shut — nearly taking Nicholas’ fingers with it — and swung open the door.

  “Don’t forget our little talk,” Oswald growled.

  “I couldn’t possibly,” said Nicholas as he stepped into the elevator.

  Once the elevator had creaked into the shaft and he was out of sight of Oswald, Nicholas withdrew his notebook from his coat pocket. Bound in leather and tied up with heavy twine, this book was on his person at all times. In the back, he’d written out a simple code for the Free-Thinking Men’s Blasphemous Brandy and Supper Society, and he knew Aaron would want to see it. Tonight might be his only opportunity, while they were together in Brunel’s presence.

  When he reached the bottom he was surprised to find Isambard’s door, which had been locked for the last three days, was ajar. Inside he could hear voices — Aaron’s and Isambard’s. They sounded as if they were fighting.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Aaron hissed. “You only care about what’s right for Isambard. I want to be with Quartz, I want to go to the swamps—”

  Nicholas recoiled. Aaron wants to leave the city? He remembered how Aaron talked about the swamps with such reverence. What could possibly be there for you, my friend, besides mud and the unending clamors of the voices? Why would you leave the city now, when we have just met each other?

  The voices lowered, and seemed friendly again. He coughed loudly.


  “Ah, Nicholas.” Brunel called from inside the darkened workshop. “Come in.”

  The furnace was unlit; the only light a faint glow from an Argand lamp in Aaron’s hand. He squinted at his friend in the darkness, saw his face set into a stony expression.

  “Isambard was just informing me of his secret project,” Aaron said, his tone even.

  “You’re building the London railway?” asked Nicholas.

  “The King wants you to build a railway in London? Isambard, this is—”

  “Amazing. Miraculous, Incomprehensible, I know!” Isambard’s excitement filled the room. “It’s only a small section of track, but it’s a start. He wants me to build a railway from Windsor Castle into Buckingham House. It will be the first railway inside the city. Apart from the first mile of track across the castle grounds, the entire railway will be underground. And it must be built in four months.”

  “That’s preposterous!” Aaron said. “You’ve only built one railway before, and that hardly stretched a mile, and it took a lot longer than four months.”

  “Especially not when work on the Wall begins next week,” added Nicholas. “That too shares that same impossible deadline, and since it stretches outside the Ward and will be in full view of the public, the Stokers are not permitted to work on it. Where are we going to find men?”

  “I am aware of both these issues. That’s why I’ve been holed up in here for the last three days, trying to come up with a solution. Now that you’re both here, I can show you what I’ve created.”

  Brunel reached over and, with fingers that seemed unusually cold as they brushed Nicholas’ arm, pushed the light toward the far corner of the room. There stood two machines that made Nicholas recoil in fright.

  “Isambard—”

  “What is that?” Aaron demanded.

  “You can approach them.” Brunel grabbed Nicholas by the shoulders and dragged him across the room.

  “They look so—so—”

  “I know. Aren’t they beautiful?” Brunel reached out and stroked the belly of one of the machines, angling the light to give Nicholas and Aaron a better view. “I call them my Boilers. They will revolutionise the manufacturing process.”

  Each Boiler stood a little higher than Brunel — round furnace bellies balanced on metal skids, with a complex labyrinth of wheels, tubes and gauges protruding from the top. Their shape appeared too natural, too human, to be made of iron, but iron they were, and ingeniously designed. Clawlike limbs extended from the furnace body, and where one would expect a head, Brunel had given each a double chimney. More dials and gauges protruded from the rear of the furnace, and Nicholas recognised some of the controls from Brunel’s steam locomotive designs — a regulator, a water glass. Obviously prototypes, the metal was rough, unfinished, but Nicholas immediately grasped the basic idea.

  “They’re … workers?”

  Brunel nodded. “There aren’t men enough in England to finish the railway and Wall as soon as the King wants them, but with machines to work day and night, and men like Aaron to run them, we can do it. These are just prototypes, of course, but fifty units are being finished in the workshops as we speak. I plan to have the first Boiler workgang operational by the end of the week. Watch.”

  He opened the furnace of the nearest one and stoked it up. It spluttered to life, churning steam from its double chimney. Brunel worked the controls from behind the Boiler, stepping aside when it lurched forward. Aaron stumbled back, tripping over Nicholas as the Boiler barrelled toward them, claws outstretched, steam billowing from its mechanical neck.

  Panicked, Nicholas rolled out of the Boiler’s path, dragging Aaron back with him. But the Boiler wasn’t after them. It tore straight past Nicholas and picked up a length of pipe from the bench behind him. Holding the pipe in its clawed hands, it bent the length into a perfect U, fitted a pressure gauge on the end, then fitted it to another pipe protruding from the wall, tightened the whole apparatus, and stood back, awaiting its next instruction.

  “See?” Brunel clapped his hands together. “The Boiler will repeat that task, again and again, until he is given new instructions. Aren’t they the most amazing invention that ever your eyes did see?”

  Aaron grabbed the lamp off the bench and directed the light toward his friend. Nicholas watched Isambard’s eyes gleaming with excitement. He knew that look well — the expression of pure glee Isambard always wore when he’d found the solution to a particularly perplexing problem.

  “Isambard …” Nicholas’ head spun. He hadn’t expected this.

  Aaron spoke first, his voice dripping with anger. “If these machines can build the railway and the Wall, they could also run the furnaces of Engine Ward, and then what will the Stokers do? Isambard, your own people will no longer have any place in London.”

  “Nonsense. These are machines, Aaron. They need men to run and manage them. These Boilers merely enable the Stokers to take their rightful place — as overseers, foreman, and innovators in their own right.”

  “I don’t know, Isambard. The men won’t be happy to share their work with these … these machines”, replied Aaron.

  A note of irritation crept into Isambard’s voice. “I thought you’d be happy. You’re the first to see them, of course, apart from the King, who approved the design. He thought them marvellous.”

  “The King is, it has been firmly established, stark raving mad.”

  “Well, what do you think, Nicholas?” Isambard snapped.

  “I …” Nicholas fought for words. “They are marvellous. I’m simply trying to understand how their use will affect society. Machines that take orders from a master? Nothing like this has ever been conceived before.”

  “Think of your own people, Isambard,” said Aaron. “Their livelihoods depend on the work you and the other engineers give them. With machines to do that work for them, our men cannot feed themselves. How do you expect them to embrace these terrifying metal beasts?”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The men listen to you, Aaron. I need you to get them to see the brilliance of the Boilers. You will oversee the construction of the King’s new railway. It must be kept secret from everyone — our men, Quartz, the priests, the Royal Society. Everyone. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “You need to handpick ten Stokers to work on the project and learn the mechanics of the Boilers. Choose the most intelligent and trustworthy men you know. They don’t have to be strong — the Boilers will do most of the work.”

  “But the Stokers can’t work outside the Ward. How will we—”

  “The King has granted special permission in this instance.” Brunel grinned. “Our fortunes are already changing, Aaron.”

  “I lead men, Isambard, not machines—”

  Something tore Nicholas’ attention away from the conversation. In the darkness of Nicholas’ mind, a voice prickled at the edge of his consciousness, weak and in pain. It was a compie — the tiny mind barely a whisper within Nicholas’ jumbled thoughts. He wouldn’t have noticed it at all, except that the voices never came to him down here. The workshop was too deep, too well fortified. What’s happened to you, little fella? Somehow, it must have found its way into Brunel’s workshop and got itself trapped beneath some equipment.

  He tried to push aside the little voice and concentrate on his two friends. Isambard was explaining the particulars of the railway to a stony-faced Aaron.

  “We’re creating a secret branch of the railway line, stretching through the old sewer tunnels below Buckingham Palace. You’ll be laying the track in those tunnels, widening them when necessary, and constructing a platform in the specially prepared room under the palace.”

  “All within four months? I must learn the secrets of these machines and instruct them to build an underground railway all within four months? I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “There’s always a choice, Aaron.” Brunel held out his hand.
Nicholas watched Aaron take it, feeling odd, as though he were witnessing something private. “You choose our friendship, or you choose to shun me, a Presbyter, which is heresy. You decide.”

  He said it with lightness, but Aaron’s face contorted in anger. Nicholas was stunned by the thinly veiled threat. A feeling of dread settled in his stomach. Brunel continued to talk, his voice rising with excitement as he discussed the Boilers, the new railway, his plans for the Wall. He stroked the barrel of the Boiler again, his eyes betraying a tenderness Nicholas had never seen before.

  He seems as I’ve always remembered him: driven, intelligent, excitable. But these Boilers … I don’t trust them—

  Help me, the tiny mind called, forcing out his own thoughts. Nicholas felt it trying to voice the thought, to scream out to its brothers, but it couldn’t. Nicholas’ chest clenched as he felt what the compie felt — the terror of dying alone.

  Nicholas tried to send a comforting thought back, but it was as if his sense met a wall of iron — he could not push the thought out. Inside his head, the compie screamed.

  He watched Isambard tinker with the mechanisms on the back of the Boiler’s neck, leaning his whole body over as if embracing the metal worker. Nicholas felt like screaming, too.

  ***

  After their meeting with Brunel ended, Nicholas and Aaron took the elevator together. Nicholas patted the faded notebook under his arm. “I was hoping to find you tonight. I’ve made a draft of our code for you to look at, but Oswald does not want me to see you—”

  “So he’s been at you, too? I wouldn’t worry about him. He won’t risk his comfortable life enacting any threats — not that he can do much from the swamps, anyway,” said Aaron, his tone dark. “Chloe won’t expect me home for many hours yet. Not with all this grog and merrymaking in the streets. I’ll take you to a workshop, and we’ll look at it together.”

  “I met her tonight. I went to look for you in the Stoker quarter, which turned out to be a mistake. She saved me from being decapitated by a pig.”

  Aaron sighed. “She’s a good woman. She tolerates my drinking and my temper, and that’s no easy task sometimes. She does not know about the voices, but she suspects … something. This is why she worries so. Isambard asks so much of me, and I wish—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”