His squad scoured the plaza and side streets all afternoon. Near nightfall, they returned to the Armory. Other squads reported back at the same time and Mateo mingled in, following a pair who walked purposefully to the door of the reception room he’d so recently fled. Mateo slipped in with them, waiting with the bored patience of a tired soldier. The other two showed their licenses to carry augments and signed in with the seated sergeant. Then, the three of them eyed Mateo. He pulled out Stefano’s license and gave it to the sergeant.
“The Captain told me he wanted an extra hand here tonight,” Mateo said.
The sergeant grunted, then jerked his thumb towards the Anubis scale that had exposed Mateo only hours before. “I’m not taking any chances,” he said.
Mateo stepped onto one of the polished plates. They switched one finely-wrought copper feather for another, over and over, while he bobbed on the scale, like a gondola in the lagoon. Finally, they found the balance. Two feathers. Two souls. Precisely.
The sergeant noted this with stained fingers, then rose, belted on his sword, and told them to lock the door after him. He left into the waxing night. One of the men locked the door. The other claimed the chair, pulling out a set of dice and a few coins. Mateo pulled out his coin pouch and leaned onto the table
After a few rounds, it was Mateo’s turn to throw. It was easy to cheat at dice using a Thoth device, but all three were using their augments to smell for magic. The room itself was also set with sensors keyed to detect any magical emanations.
Mateo had to play this physically.
He tossed the dice a little too hard, rolling one off the table. The two men watched it tumble over. The nearest stooped to pick it up. Mateo rammed the edge of his hand into the seated man’s throat, crushing it. Before the other could even turn, Mateo was upon him with a knife, under the chin, slicing wide. He finished the gasping soldier in the chair before the man’s augment could call for help.
Mateo stepped to the door of the inner Armory but did not touch it. It would be physically locked, and certainly magically, at least with a Janus lock and more probably with a Cardea chain or a Portunes weave. All were arts of the known world. The art of the Mongols was not.
Batu, it is time for the Odlek clock.
The Mongols’ single god, Tengri, had different embodiments. Odlek was Tengri’s personification of time. While the magics of the door might be warded against the cyclic seasonal effects of Chronus, Odlek’s time was deep and linear. And none of the alarms would detect Odlek.
Batu loosed waves of corroding time. Dry rot filmed the door. Decades warped the boards. Dust rained from splitting wood. The protective magics, never meant to last decades, much less centuries, failed. The remnants of wood, like a net of lace, powdered silently to the floor.
The corridor beyond led to the inner sanctum of Venice. Stone walls sweated water onto the marble floor. Oil lamps pushed doughy light into darkness. Mateo crept in, clinging to the shadows.
Listening scarabs were certainly transmitting his location. Mateo couldn’t reveal his abilities yet. He needed to draw them out. He pulled free his sword, surprising a man emerging from a laboratory. Mateo gritted his teeth and plunged his blade into the man’s throat.
Two Venetian operatives bared their swords behind him. Mateo spun, knocking back their weapons. An operative electrified his own blade with a Jupiter tongue, shocking Mateo back. Four others appeared. They surrounded him. They were close enough.
Batu! Give me a Vulcan storm!
‘Negative,’ Batu said. ‘Harm to Don Mateo’s soul proportional to quantity of killing.’
What? Do it now! Or we both die!
A sword point bit deep into the muscles of Mateo’s shoulder.
‘Theological belief, subset Don Mateo: soul more important,’ Batu chattered.
Mateo knocked away two swords. I’ve made my choices, Batu! Obey me!
The Vulcan storm was a weapon for a battlefield of cannon and arquebusiers, prior to footmen and lancers diving in. It was too big to use in close quarters without consuming its summoner. This was true for basilisk, goblin, and wyvern, but Mateo carried a dragon brain.
Mateo’s skin hardened, stiffening his movements. Then yellow fire bloomed before him. Finding no room to grow, it shot down the corridor, cooking the air dry. Fuzziness filmed his sight as a membrane of dragon-eye shuttered over his own. Mateo’s clothes burned. His sword softened in his hand, the leather of the hilt charring. The Venetians were incinerated on their feet before the yawning whump of expanding fire dashed their ashes away.
Mateo, in his dragon skin, stepped woodenly over blackened bodies. Slate-colored smoke shuttered the hot orange light of the burning ceilings. A wooden door lay in flaming splinters. Beyond it, a membranous veil separated this world from the esoteric one, the skin of the world scraped passable by magic. Mateo stepped through.
Instead of a vast headquarters like the one Genoa had hidden in a god, only a small laboratory lay beyond the doorway in Venice. Thick glass on walls of imported stone showed orange god-blood. White blobs gnawed at the scored glass, eroding, scratch by scratch. The Venetians had not succeeded in co-opting the god’s humoral response.
He recognized some of the engines by the layouts of their piping. Genoa had similar models. The Shamash engine. The Neptune driver. The Balder point. None of these were important. Genoa already had engines for all these gods. Beside each were massive codices showing how to build and work the devices.
But the configurations of two of the engines were unfamiliar. Each was as large as a hay wagon, tall with copper pipes, greased gears, and polished mirrors. Deep beneath rotors and flywheels, the layout of the piping became difficult to view, the angles no longer fitting neatly into the three dimensions of the world. Imaginary angles led to dimensions governed by ordinal number systems where gods slavered.
Which one was the Enlil engine? Had Venice weaponized two new gods? His escape plan only included carrying one codex. He didn’t have the strength to make off with both, and he couldn’t commit the safety of Genoa to a coin toss.
He opened the first codex. Everything was ciphered. Even the symbols were slippery to the eye. Magical encryption was based on the factoring of imaginary numbers. Only esoteric beasts could perform such maddening calculations.
Batu, decrypt the text.
The dragon brain hummed. ‘Decryption key formed,’ Batu said. ‘Codex describes the Grace engine.’
Then the other codex contains the plans for the Enlil engine, Mateo thought. But what is the Grace engine?
‘Grace engine function: to move the god who will not fight,’ Batu said. ‘Deliver grace. Wash a soul clean of sin.’
“What?” Mateo asked out loud, suddenly cold. Forgiveness?
‘Function not limited to forgiveness. Includes sanctification,’ Batu said.
Mateo’s stomach lurched. What do you mean ‘sanctity’?
‘Concept, theological, subset sanctity: the especial holiness of those who have been touched by Christ,’ Batu said. ‘Those who can work miracles.’
To work miracles. To save souls, both living and dead. To bring grace to the souls Mateo had consigned to hells. To be forgiven.
Batu, can we carry both?
‘Calculation: combined weight of codices exceeds tolerances.’
Nor could Mateo receive the benefits of the Grace engine now. It would need hours to heat up, align its mirrors and spin its governors to the right speed. And Mateo was no engineer.
Could grace be used as a weapon? To counter the Enlil engine?
No. Christ was healing. The souls of those Mateo had sent to hell stared up from memory with yawning, worm-eaten eyes.
Apostlehood and sanctity. Healing of his soul. Healing of all souls he touched. Or a device of unutterable destruction.
Thou shalt have no other god above me.
Could his mutilated soul be trusted to choose?
If he returned with the Grace engine codex, Venice would inflict Enlil
upon Genoa, followed by mercenary troops. Mateo would be killed. Luciana would be shipped into slavery or killed.
Clean souls. Dead bodies. They would meet in Heaven. With Christ.
Luciana.
He hefted the Enlil codex. He had no tears to offer forsaken grace. He struggled to the portal with the weight of the great book. Past the veil, in the real world, the stones were hot under naked feet. Stinging smoke hovered. Voices sounded. Straight, cutting shines from Apollo lenses wobbled in the distance.
He was cut off from the exit, and the last dragon trick had to be played. This was why Selvaggi had sent Mateo. Mateo could pull all the magic of an augment, all at once.
I am sorry, Batu.
‘Batu forgives.’
Then fly, Mateo whispered, opening the dragon’s mind wide.
The ground crumpled. The ceiling sheared open, dropping paving stones and building blocks around him.
They leapt into the night sky.
This was not the flight of a Persian or Slav dragon on leathern wings. This was the flight of a wingless Mongol dragon, whose young rose into the heavens on their own like worms on hooks.
They hurtled towards Genoa.
Mateo clutched the Enlil codex tighter, even as Batu’s voice slipped from his mind. He now sailed through the ether alone, above still clouds, riding the last of Batu’s magic back to Genoa. The grace was gone. The cup too fouled. He had become like the gods.
Copyright © 2011 Derek Künsken
Read Comments on this Story in the BCS Forums
Derek Künsken is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Gatineau, Québec. His fiction has sold to Asimov’s, On Spec, Black Gate, and other markets. Although trained as a molecular biologist, he left science to work with street children in Latin America and eventually found a career in refugee issues. When not writing, he is invariably to be found with his six-year old son, playing with action figures, building forts or reading comic books. He is just finishing a fantasy novel set seven years after the events in this story.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
COVER ART
“New Lands,” by Rado Javor
Rado Javor is a Slovak artist who splits his time between Bratislava and the UK. His favorite subjects include gothic Colonial America, WWI aircraft, dark science-fiction, and Napoleonic naval engagements, many of which were featured in the game Empire: Total War. See more of his work at http://radojavor.com/.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2011 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #84 Page 4