Clockwork Chaos

by C. J. Henderson

  “I can’t. Not if you are in danger.”

  “It’s an order!”

  I shook my head and whispered, “I cannot follow that order.”

  “Clankers don’t say things like that. Clankers follow orders, Leo.” She stopped turning the windlass. Endless seconds were filled with nothing but the metallic clicks of my body. She hesitantly started up again, “You aren’t normal.”

  I looked at my hand again, very certain she was correct. “Are you unhurt?”

  “Yes? No? Whichever one means I am fine.” I nodded gratefully, feeling the increased potential inside my body indicate she was nearing full tension on my springworks, “You smell like burnt oil.”

  I shrugged. “I probably burnt most of it off.”

  She tensioned the last little bit of torque into my storage springs and pulled the windlass away. She took a small bottle of oil from her wrapped belt tool kit and sprayed it inside my body. “Your sword is bent.”

  I considered the dangerous, deformed hunk of metal. then I offered the arm to her, “You had better take it off, then.”

  She took up her tools once more and attacked the blade until it was straight enough to slide home smoothly. I looked from it, to her.

  “Thank you for saving me, Leo.” she said.

  “You are very welcome, Esmeralda.” I replied.

  Then we stood together and entered LøveSlottet.

  Esmeralda noticed there was no knob on this side of the door and sat her pack to block the door as we walked inside. It was a wise idea, for a hidden switch in the floor would have had the thing swing shut. We congratulated ourselves on our cleverness, but it was short lived, pride sucked out of us under the weight of forgotten majesty.

  LøveSlottet was built of huge hunks of stone, with lions peering from every corner and flourish. The grand entryway was just as old man VanMeek had left it, if he had left it as a spider sanctuary. Thick, dusty webs hung from the ceiling in curtains, and the once golden yellow rugs were black with mold and rot. The fireplace could have once roasted a side of cow, if the iron grid work had not been reduced to red slag by years of incoming rain. Dark passageways delved more deeply into the grand home, and rickety staircases flew from the floor like a broken winged bird up to dangerous looking balconies. The chandelier, a time-frosted affair of crystal and glass, was barely holding onto the ceiling by its fingertips. But what caught both of us flat footed was the-

  Esmeralda gasped, “Leo, it’s—”

  “Yes.”

  “—A clanker voicebox.”

  “My voicebox.” I said, with no doubt. Way back in the shack I had seen the schematics for the complex resistance vibrator that I used to speak. This was the exact same design, but the size of a rain barrel.

  “Is that the voicebox for LøveSlottet?” she asked, but it seemed to me she was actually asking the mansion itself.

  I walked down into the main entry chamber and looked closely at the device, noting the two long poles extending from either side. I grasped one gingerly. “We can find out.”

  Ignoring webs, dust, dirt, and the accusing eyes of a hundred lions, she came down and grasped the other pole on the far side. Lips pursed, she nodded and we pushed.

  Half a decade of accumulated crud snapped free in an instant, and the poles began to turn on a ring situated around the voice box. Electric lights along the wall began to light feebly as we pushed, and water started to fill the hollow tube basin of the box itself.

  Then it began to speak. The sound at first was blurred and unrecognizable, but then it started to reveal itself as the voice of an older man. He was a foreigner, with a thick accent, leaving little doubt it was VanMeek.

  “You came here for my wealth, like all those that came before, but now I am dead, and I am free to do what I should have then.” Esmeralda stopped pushing and gasped, but the poles continued on inertia alone. I felt danger in the air, and safeties disengaged within my chest as the wind took me again. The voice continued, “My tears have become suffused with power and can kill with a single touch.”

  Hatches opened in the base of the contraption and water flushed along the ruined floor in a great wave. Even without full comprehension I vaulted the pole in front of me and picked Esmeralda from off the floor. I heard a mechanical snap as a corded electric light was ejected from the wall and I tossed my friend up onto the stairs just as it touched the water.

  I do not know what pain is. Perhaps I did not know what pain was. When my Edison tubes started working correctly there were a few minutes of memories so vile, so corrupted by the burst of electrocution I felt an immediate revulsion of the experience. I would do anything to avoid ever repeating it.

  I heard the splash of water before my eyes cleared, but when they did she was there. Tears streamed down her face even as she sobbed with relief. “You’re alive! I was so afraid, Leo.”

  I sat up and shook myself slightly as my gyroscope stuck, amazed that the water was already draining away through gates that opened in the floor. “Are you unhurt?”

  “You saved my life.”

  If I could have blinked, I would have. “I would never have lived without you.”

  She took that in, her eyes going wide as she looked at me, and the voicebox, and back again. “Can you go on?”

  My internal gears ground together as I remembered being electrocuted, but she was asking, pleading, “I can.”

  Esmeralda stood and tried to brush the water borne mold from her overalls. “How did you know it was a trap?”

  I repeated VanMeek, “My tears have become suffused with power and can kill with a single touch to their misery.”

  She thought it through and nodded, “Can you do it again next time?”

  I shrugged as I stood, my gears feeling a little less crisp and tempered than they used to be, “I don’t know.”

  “You know what is at stake here.”

  I nodded, “Your father.”

  She tried to explode, “NO! It’s the whole town—”

  But I laid a hand on her shoulder, and could sense the pure emotion pouring through her and making her tremble, “It’s your father, and that is understandable. It is human.”

  She flipped her hair from her face and set her dripping jaw determinedly, “How do we do this?”

  “You have to push. I’ll keep you safe.”

  And she pushed. VanMeek shouted again from every wall, “Tyranny is an easy thing to accept when it comes as a pauper. But the begger’s bowl is as much a weapon when it refuses to take no as an answer.”

  Three rounded protrusions carved into the décor of the wall flipped downward and three darts were coughed from three holes. I felt my system scream into action as my buckler deflected them from the young gearsmith’s body.

  “Only gifts of an open heart carry mercy or grace, the rest is theft and it creates hatred and sorrow. Mercy is a shackle when forged to a soul with rivets of iron.”

  I leapt onto the voicebox and with one hand pulled my companion up after as poles sprang up from the floor. I wrapped my arms around her and we ducked into the empty chamber of the box as long lengths of chain came from the poles and spun maniacally. The whistling was like something from a preacher’s sermon on hellfire, leaving no doubt that they would have cleft flesh from the body even as they broke bones like sticks. They spun and spun until they unscrewed themselves from their bases and fell noisily to the floor. But then we were out, and she went to push again. I laid a hand on the lever.

  “What is it?” she said, looking around for danger.

  “I don’t understand.” I said, “What is the point of this? Why the complex mechanisms? Why trap after trap?”

  “Because we are getting closer to the treasure!”

  “Are we?” I asked, “Everything VanMeek has said so far has said that he despises people who come for something they are not owed. Why would he leave this here, where everyone would come looking for his treasure, and then try to kill them over and over?”

  Esmeralda�
�s eyes lit up, “Maybe he isn’t trying to kill the same man over and over, maybe he’s trying to kill many people.”

  “Everyone, maybe he’s trying to kill everyone who comes for the treasure. He wants to kill each and every one who seeks to take what they are not owed.”

  “But that’s insane, what would make a man turn into such a monster?”

  “I don’t know, but Esmeralda the treasure isn’t here.”

  The strange voice caused us both to jump, “Oh it’s here.”

  It was the rat-faced man. He had changed his pants. He had changed his attitude. He had also changed tactics: a gun clicked dangerously in his hand. My sword sprinted from its sheathe and I felt my organs immediately begin to scream, but he pointed the gun at Esmeralda and shouted through crooked teeth, “I’ll shoot her now, clanker!”

  It took constant concentration to bring my body back under control, but I think the added effort only made it sweeter for him. Behind him came the limping form of the thin man, who carried a shotgun, and the hulking brute who only had to bring himself. They glared at me sourly, still nursing fresh wounds. The brute absently kicked the bag that held the door and it closed and loudly latched.

  The talker pointed his revolver at me, “You, get back, clanker. I don’t know how you move so fast, but I’m going to get rich finding out.”

  The thin thug snickered, “Richer.”

  “Yeah,” Rat-face said, “Richer. We’re taking the treasure. We’re taking you. We’re going to spend old man VanMeek’s riches, and then become rich again scrapping off your little golden ass.”

  I put myself between him and Esmeralda, pushing her back into the relative safety of the fireplace. Still she stuck her head over my shoulder to shout, “What about Ironton?”

  “Ironton is dying. Your father saw to that.” Relishing the expression on Esmeralda’s face, he nudged the brute, “Look at that. Don’t reckon he ever told her. Go work the machine.”

  The brute looked annoyed at the order, then glanced meaningfully at the bloody bandage on his right hand, but Esmeralda would not be ignored, “What? What about my father?”

  “Git down there, Lewis!” Rat-face barked, then turned his attention back to Esmeralda, enjoying twisting the knife, “It was years ago that two women fell sick in Ironton. One doctor to see to their cases.” The hulking man picked his way past the chains and poles to the voicebox as Rat-face continued, “Both of them sick on a stormy night. Old man VanMeek’s wife all the way up here seemed to be improving. That’s when your mother took a turn for the worse and your father called the doctor all the way back to town to see to her—LEWIS ARE YOU GOING TO TURN THAT THING OR SIT THERE LIKE A DEADBEAT?”

  Lewis’ thick brows puckered angrily, but in the end he reached out and tested the mechanism. The pause allowed the young gearsmith to get her head of steam going, which erupted out of her mouth, “You don’t know me, my mother or my father you hard case!”

  Rat-face sneered, “Know you? Don’t have to. The whole town knows what happened. Doctor’s cart took a spill on the way back to Ironton. Both women die. VanMeek already hated the town for hitting the greedy bastard with tax after tax to keep the town alive once the iron ran out. Now he’s got no interest in nothing. So he brings your father here and he rebuilds this damn house for him.”

  I glanced back at Esmeralda, “And gives your mother his burial plot, the one next to his wife.”

  The whip thin man cocked his shotgun, “Quiet there!”

  And it was then Lewis, mountain of a man that he was, put one hand on the poles on the voice box and pushed. I hustled Esmeralda back into the firepit as VanMeek continued, “For what man can benefit when he does not provide for himself? What growth is there without the toil for survival? Sacrifice is not made to leeches. Parasites never thank the host they kill for their livelihood, but only complain that death has robbed them of their largesse.”

  I barely saw it coming in time, and only shoving Esmeralda into the corner and covering her with my entire body saved her a worse fate. Seven lions heads opened to roar, and inside each a tiny spring driven turret started spitting out shards of metal at a fantastic rate. All three thugs cried out, and they looked like they had been savaged by miniature porcupines. Esmeralda cried out and I soon found she had caught five or six in the shin. I was relieved to find out they had not gone deep, and were easy to pluck out. The thugs discovered the same and they started to pluck the tiny needles from their skin. I held one up, and noticed it was quite hollow.

  Rat-face shouted at the ceiling, “Stupid old Norwegian! You’re not going to shove us off that easily! Lewis, push!”

  But Lewis was less than sure. He had plucked the hollow needles from his front and arms, but he couldn’t reach the ones on his back. They were acting as straws, each siphoning off a drop or two of blood at a time. The hulking man looked into Rat-face’s wild eyes, down to the pistol, and then started pushing again, leaving a silent rain of blood down his back.

  Van Meek continued, “What life has society? What breath draws community? These are but shadows of many individuals. They are lies that dissolve in direct light. There is only the individual, and the choices—good or ill—that are made. And yet the grave robbers will come still, releasing poisonous vapors even as they hack up our corpses to sell for their pies and steaks.”

  Lewis paused, his back dripping blood. The thin man pointed his shotgun into every corner, perhaps expecting to blow the next trap to bits. The rat-faced man shifted from foot to foot, but nothing came.

  I could feel the whole thing building, the end coming fast and deadly, now. I glanced up through the huge chimney over the fire pit and hoped I could move the grate at the top. I whispered to Esmeralda, “Hold your breath.”

  And the whole of LøveSlottet shuddered and started to scream. Immediately I guided Esmeralda’s hands around my neck and leapt up into the rough stone throat of the chimney. Below I heard the chandelier give way from the ceiling and land on Lewis. His bellowing only added to the chaos. Though he probably stopped pushing the box, VanMeek continued to crow, “And so I curse you, Ironton: city I built. I curse you to ruin and rubble, to despondency and death.”

  My sharp, nimble hands found cracks easily and we rocketed up to the iron grate. With years separating it from any loving hand, the bars turned into red ash in my hands, giving way and releasing us from the trap closing below. Van Meek’s voice continued, “For you shall never kill my dream, steal my children, nor discover the furnace that birthed them.”

  I pulled us up out of the stone tube and shimmied down the outside to the ground. Esmeralda tried to stop and catch her breath, but I pushed her on, “No! Run!”

  And run we did as one thug desperately tried to shatter a window, and only succeeding in releasing a thick steel plate that sealed it tightly, “But you shall never even get the chance to try, for your greed has stolen your breath, and God himself shall scour you from the world with fire.”

  Someone tried shouldering the front door once. But it held.

  Still we ran.

  They tried shouldering the door again, then hammered with something hard.

  Still we ran.

  Probably choking on gas that was odorless, colorless, and tasteless, whoever was at the door tried one last ploy and discharged a firearm at the front door.

  There was no sound, it was too big for that, there was just a rumbling feeling that was so big it enveloped the world and bruised everything within reach. Esmeralda and I were picked off of our feet and tossed underneath the boughs of the last healthy tree on VanMeek’s land. The mansion around which his legend revolved flew apart as if made of matchsticks. Flames lit up the twilight sky like the breath of the Devil before quenching themselves.

  It was a quarter of an hour before pieces of house stopped floating down out of the sky. It was longer before we got up and walked over to the smoking crater that used to be LøveSlottet.

  Esmeralda cried quietly, with dignity, at the sight. Finally, when
her ears quit ringing, she decided to break the silence. “So... I guess that’s it, then.”

  I started and turned to her, “No. It isn’t.”

  She laughed mirthlessly, “What is there then? Search the hills for a treasure that obviously never existed?”

  “We go find VanMeek’s children.”

  “His children?”

  “He said it in his book and on his wife’s gravestone: ‘Our legacy shall only be discovered in the furnace of our dreams.’ Then he just said it just now ‘For you shall never kill my dream, steal my children, nor discover the furnace that birthed them.’ The treasure is in his furnace.”

  “Which furnace? There are dozens around Ironton.”

  “Which was the first one he owned.”

  “Vesuvius furnace off of Storms Creek.”

  I took her hand in mine, “Then let’s go.”

  Night had fully taken the world by the time we reached Storms Creek. The Vesuvius iron furnace was a tall, narrow pyramid with a gaping mouth hungry for ore that would never come again. The building around it had been salvaged for scrap, and only the dross of the smelting process and the narrows of Storm Creek in the distance gave any hint that this was not some relic of a forgotten race.

  The furnace had been gagged with a bronze plate which read:

  Vesuvius Iron Furnace

  Year Built: 1833

  Went into Blast: 1834

  Blew out: 1896

  Daily Tonnage: 10

  Though I sought to feed you, you ate my seed.

  Though I sought to clothe you, you would not weave.

  Though I sought to employ you, you would rather steal.

  So upon this place I put my seal.

  We nodded to one another, and Esmeralda took out the only piece of property she had left through the whole adventure, her leather wrap of tools. She brought them forth and selected a spanner alongside a bottle of oil. She applied one, and then the other to little effect. Wordlessly she beckoned for my help, and I gripped the little wrench as well as we heaved together. The bolt screeched, and gave. The next three followed suit, exposing a cramped spiral staircase hidden inside the old furnace.