Infernal Machines

by Jacobs, John Hornor

  Her face was awful.

  EIGHTEEN

  It Is Time We Changed The Game

  FROM BEATICÆ AND beyond, the Typhon steamed full speed ahead. I gave blood when Ysmay asked for it, which was infrequently. Tenebrae and Carnelia spent most of whatever free time they had in the sun above, working their strange armatura – that peculiar martial training they had learned from Sun Huáng in Kithai. Back and forth they struck at each other, like dancers feinting. Carnelia’s legs looked strong, sleek and muscular, and she laid waste to our rations. Lupina, when she separated herself from Fiscelion, ended up at the stern of the Typhon letting out line from a spool on a metal spike, trailing a flat, flashing metal oblong disc with a sharpened hook she called her ‘spoon’ and contented herself with watching the wake of our passing.

  We did not take much notice of her, or her odd pastime, until she cried out and bellowed for help. Tenebrae rushed over, hooting madly, and together they wrestled with the line, winding it in, until on the deck whipped a thrashing silverfish, flashing in the sunlight, leaking blood from its many-toothed mouth. Carnelia brained it with her wooden armatura sword until it stopped moving. Lupina produced a knife and immediately gutted the creature and tossed the offal overboard.

  That night, at least, we ate fresh. Soon, there was less armatura. Tenebrae and Carnelia joined Lupina at the stern, letting out their own lines.

  It was two weeks since we last sighted land and the sea began to rise while the skies grew dark. Ysmay, when he came above deck, looked worried and wan and far too thin. We’d continued plying him with rum, when we could, in hopes of increasing his appetite, but the man grew wasted, thin, and harried. He’d done what he could to repair the front deck gun, which was a loss. Without the breech cover and the bore plug, the sea water had eaten away at the internal mechanisms so much that it had become unusable. ‘Wet-mount guns require grease and constant maintenance,’ Ysmay had said. ‘And neither was in my purview. But if the Typhon is to have teeth, she’ll need constant care.’ But he managed to make it watertight.

  The rear deck gun still functioned. Tenebrae and Carnelia took it upon themselves to maintain the remaining swivel, spending hours on each, slathering the inoperable gun with grease and making sure the shrouding was tight as possible. For the working swivel, their labours included greasing treads, inspecting bore warding, and in general worshipping the more bellicose aspects of our floating world.

  ‘I fear our first storm draws near,’ Ysmay said, when I joined him in the command centre.

  ‘It seems that way. Seas are high and the clouds nigh,’ I responded. The man looked agitated, disturbed.

  ‘It will be my first storm at open sea,’ he said, blinking.

  ‘Oh. Do not fear,’ I said. ‘Your vessel, though small, is as well prepared for a storm as any ship I’ve ever been on. Should it get bad, I think we just fasten the hatches and descend beneath the foam.’

  This did not sit well with Ysmay. The idea of being submerged during a storm discomposed him. Possibly it was his mental state, in general. Possibly his fear of the great salt expanse of sea. I could not say. It was as if we had more faith in his abilities and creation than he did himself. Nonetheless, he was in high fettle and, it appeared, a great need to talk filled him.

  ‘I must show you something, should I not make it until our journey’s end,’ he said.

  ‘Please, don’t say such things, Mister Ysmay. On my honour you will find no hazard from—’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is not it. I’ve always been sickly, since I was a child, and I feel—’ He stopped and said no more for a long while.

  I waited, silently. He would speak when he would speak and not before.

  ‘I feel that sickness again, much to my chagrin,’ he said, looking at me earnestly with liquid blue eyes. ‘I hope I have shown you the operations of the Typhon to your satisfaction?’

  ‘Yes! You have been a marvellous teacher. I feel as though I could steer the ship myself. I know Tenebrae and Carnelia feel the same.’

  He gave a quick, insincere smile that did not reach his eyes. ‘I’ve something else to show you. I had hoped it would not be necessary but …’

  ‘But?’ I asked.

  ‘The eyes of the world are on the West, if everything you’ve told me is true. There is silver there, and—’

  ‘The world wars on silver,’ said I, quoting the old adage.

  ‘And for it,’ Ysmay said. ‘Many times I have wished for a greater supply. The things I could have created with a workshop and a silver pig.’

  ‘So what is it you wish to show me?’

  He walked from the command and I followed him, forward, past our berths. He stopped before the end of the passage, where the lascars’ berth was. Bending, he reached down to the grate and, with a heave and screech of metal, lifted it up. There were metal steps down, into a small opening covered with a hatch, which Ysmay unlocked and opened. Beyond, pitch dark.

  He descended and I followed. Soon the space below was filled with daemonlight from unshuttered lanterns.

  It was a small, cramped chamber that ended in front of us but dashed back down the length of the Typhon, this too with a grated floor. Yet, below the grate, in this space, was dark water. I could hear it sloshing. In it stood racks and racks of what appeared to be scaled miniatures of the Typhon, each one a pointed cylinder with fins and propellers, but upon closer inspection, they more resembled Hellfire rounds. Warded and deadly.

  ‘They call them armamare, but the lascars just refer to them as seashots. They are daemon-propelled missiles that shoot forth below the waterline and follow a path one point off the port or starboard bow,’ Ysmay said. He looked downtrodden, as if this was something he’d rather not be saying.

  ‘I can understand why you would keep this from us, since you did not know our motives or affiliations,’ I said.

  ‘Bringing you here was always necessary, if only to show you the bilge,’ he said. ‘There’s a delicate balance here, the counterweights of flotation, the ballast, and the trim tanks. Too much bilge water disrupts these systems for submersion.’ At my look of confusion, Ysmay waved his hand, dismissing his previous words. ‘None of these things are necessary to understand except that on occasion, the bilge must be flushed. Let me show you.’

  He brought me back, toward the rear of the chamber, underneath where the command and navigational chamber was. There was a small radiant star with an eye at its centre engraved in the ceiling, marking the point where the Miraculous was, I could only assume. There was a panel where quite a few runners of piping came to meet. There were levers there, each one with an engraved icon above it: one, a long nose; the next, a bare bottom; another, a figure of a man with one haunch lifted from a bench, with a bit of smoke emerging from his arse, farting; yet another with a figure of a man vomiting.

  ‘Why the colourful markings over the levers, Mister Ysmay?’ I asked.

  ‘Lascars. The ones that can read don’t remain lascars long enough to have to pull levers. The others? They need colourful iconography.’ He placed his hand upon the lever beneath the vomiting man and pulled it. ‘If we went above, to the aft, you’d see the Typhon evacuating the bilge into the Occidens.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘This is good to know.’

  ‘Let us load the armamare, so that you will know how to fire them,’ he said.

  ‘The shells seem even larger than the deck gun munitions,’ said I.

  ‘They are, considerably, since they have to propel themselves through water. In each munition are bound two daemons. One harnessed for propulsion, the other for a more, let us say, incendiary effect. Extremely deadly. However, as always, the main weapons of the Typhon are the deck guns. Or, the remaining one,’ he said. ‘And one more thing. Had I not been so discomposed when you … when you commandeered the ship … I might have remembered.’

  He led me even further aft, where two racks of many deadly metal spheres lay in rows, each one intricately warded on the steel b
anding, with smaller parts crafted of wood and blown glass.

  ‘Munusculum,’ he said, giving a wan smile. ‘Our little gift.’ He placed a hand on one of them and looked at me. ‘They are for pursuers. Both the armamare and munuscula require blood to be initialised. Cut your palm, and slap it here—’ There was an evil ring of concentric silver warding and a tiny glowing hole. ‘Place the orb in this,’ he said, and pulling a lever on a circular port set into the wall, swung it open. He lifted a munusculum and placed it in the chamber, very gingerly, so as not to mar the warding. He closed the opening and pulled shut the locking mechanism. ‘From here you can release it, or from the navigation “centre” above. An outer door will open and the sea will flood in the chamber and the munusculum will float out and into our wake, there to wait for whomever or whatever follows.’ He tapped a part of the blown glass. ‘If there is blood, and the glass breaks – say, from the impact of a following ship – there will be a great explosion and if the munusculum does not destroy the pursuers’ ship, it will give them serious pause. Possibly even make them re-evaluate their motives for pursuit.’ He gave a tight smile. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Conflicting emotions warred within me. Happiness for knowing the full extent of the Typhon’s armaments. Fear and awe at knowing the extent, as well. ‘I have seen the destruction daemons can wreak on land, and at sea, Mister Ysmay.’

  ‘The armamare work in the same fashion. It will take one, or even two of us to lift them, but there is a convenient mechanism – a trundle – for moving them.’

  For the next hour he drilled me on the priming and usage of the Typhon’s hidden armaments. When we were done, he sighed and rubbed his face.

  ‘Mister Ysmay,’ I said. ‘Because of our delicate relationship—’ He winced at these words. I charged ahead, without thinking overmuch. ‘I have abstained from issuing direct orders to you. But I have had a change of heart on that score.’ I placed my hand on his shoulder and was gratified when he did not pull away from my touch. ‘I order you to take two generous pours of rum and sleep for eight hours. The seas are growing higher and higher, the skies darken, and we might need you desperately and in top condition. So rest.’

  He said nothing, but bowed his head. We returned to the upper world of the Typhon in silence.

  The seas grew green-grey, frothed at each summit, moving mountains of brine and foam. Ysmay increased the Typhon’s speed, so that we cut through the water like a dolphin dancing upon waves. From the prow came huge billows of spray, rising high in the air and dousing the deck. Tenebrae and Carnelia slathered both deck guns in grease, cocooned them in oiled tarp and taut ropes, and fled for the relative dry safety of the command. We closed and fastened the hatches, tight. Our only views of the world were the prow portholes and the deck gun and command’s Miraculous.

  The Typhon felt as a toy in the hands of a mercurial and mischievous child, always shifting, inconstant. Carnelia grew green and cursed us and dashed to the head.

  We had weathered storms in the Malphas, and were no strangers to life aboard seagoing vessels. The storms in the Nous and beyond, near Kithai, had been titanic. But there was something of this storm that dwarfed even those. I went to the front of the Typhon, to the berth that Lupina and I shared with Fiscelion, and peered through the thick glass porthole.

  It was a view of intermittent foams and benthic gloom, then terrifying vistas of slate-grey waves and low-slung clouds, with curtains of rain. We would hang in the air, far above the trench of sea, perched on the wave summit, the Typhon’s engines whining, pitching upward as the screws came out of the water. Then we’d fall, the Typhon’s nose tilting toward the deep, and the screws would catch, the ship would surge forward, and like a needle burying itself in flesh, our ship would dive, dive deep into the Occidens, until it rose once again.

  Hours upon hours we bore this, the world in constant upheaval and uncertainty. It was as if the events of the last year were distilled to their essence, and our immediate surroundings became their expression. Their art. Their culmination. Fiscelion seemed to be not bothered by it at all, though I daresay he grew tired of our storm-malaise and being prevented from crawling about above deck. At some point, I slept, though the slumber was fitful as occasionally when the ship fell, my body would rise away from the mattress and then slam back down. But with each soft impact, I would find myself in a watery dreamscape.

  I did not dream of Fisk much, any more. Or the Hardscrabble. Or my father. My dreams were immediate – adrift in a skiff, wondering where my son was, straining at the oars, my back bent to the sea. Lightless sinking in a steel coffin, a soft impact and knowing I was in the deep, alone. Swimming in Salonica, surrounded by silverfish, my mother frantic on the shore. I dreamed of Albinus, and Regulus, and Ysmay; giving orders in the Typhon’s command, drenched in blood.

  We came out of the other side of the storm to luxurious cerulean skies and calm seas.

  Carnelia and Tenebrae tended the deck guns – as they did with every submersion – greasing and buffing it. Lupina caught silverfish and red tunny, sharks and grindal. We ate well and drank the ship’s wine. Fiscelion crawled with assurance, not so unsteady, saying ‘Rume, Rume, Rume,’ and other childish babble. Finally, he said, ‘’Pina! ’Pina!’ And Lupina snatched him up and kissed him all over.

  Land hove into view. We spent a long time staring at the impenetrable shoreline – thick with massive trees and huddled with moss and bramble between them – inhaling the scent of land and breathing, leafy things even standing offshore. We’d had a month of salt seas and spray in the air, and nothing else. In this way, the ocean is much like the desert, devoid of life for the most part. Occidentalia is rich in trees and wildlife and we knew we were near just by scenting the air, before we saw the ink stroke of land on the horizon. As we moved north, other ships, some Ruman, some unidentifiable but definitely warlike, came into view. Ysmay, frantic, let blood for Typhon. Racing back into the command, he changed course and pressed the throttle fully forward. It took hours, but we outpaced pursuit.

  When it was obvious we were not going to engage with ships or have to deal with continued pursuit, Ysmay collapsed into the helm chair, and shook. His hands would not keep still.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘You seem unwell.’

  ‘Nothing, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Just a touch of nerves.’

  ‘You’ll be right as rain with a salad and a bath,’ Carnelia said, slapping his shoulder. He did not react at all to this familiarity. ‘I would gut a man right now for some fresh spinach dressed in oil and vinegar. And new cheese,’ she added.

  ‘All of that soon enough, sissy. Mister Ysmay,’ I said, ‘I’m happy to relieve you of duty so you may rest.’

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘No. I can’t leave Typhon now—’

  ‘Leave? I simply want you to rest,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet. Not until I know she’ll … we’ll be safe.’

  ‘Your loyalty is commendable, Mister Ysmay. Yet, I fear you need—’

  ‘Soon! I promise,’ he said, looking at me. The look of a beggar’s desperation. ‘Soon.’

  I nodded. The hard truth of it was Ysmay steered and manipulated the Typhon far better than I did, those times I had the helm. Or Carnelia or Tenebrae. He had an affinity with the ship: it was his creation, his ward, his care. He knew its secrets and foibles and peccadilloes.

  A small fishing village at the mouth of a marshy river came in view late in the afternoon, and we decided to find out where we were in relation to Novorum. There, we could assess the situation in the Hardscrabble and either take a baggage-train west or remain on the Typhon and use it to take us to the Bay of Mageras and the western territories.

  South of Sulla, at the outflow of the Weald River. The village of Okrefor offered us fresh fish, mussels, slaughtered lamb, corn-cakes, eel, carrots, onions, greens and molasses, all of which Tenebrae purchased with the considerable amount of money I had remaining from my father’s safe. The s
tevedores, porters, and wharf master were amazed at the sleek lines and evil look of the Typhon, with many questions. But Tenebrae waved them off, intimating that we were on official Ruman business, which, I think, was not totally a lie. Carnelia and I were once again dressed as lascars (though she’d never stopped, really).

  When Tenebrae pulled out the money bag, I couldn’t help but think of my father. As a girl, asking him for treats in the Cælian streets, hand out, one sesterius, two sestersii, for shaved ice. Sometimes, out of the blue, I’m reminded, when Fiscelion is feeling ornery and non-compliant, of my father’s obstinacy and drunkenness, his bright moods and his vicious humour. I feel some happiness that he left this world having at least held Fiscelion.

  We took on water and sailed north without lingering, as much as we all would have loved to spend a night in beds with clean linens and eiderdown pillows. The last time we’d seen these waters, I’d been recently separated from my husband and my belly was just beginning to show, and we’d stood on the edge of the land and sea and boarded the Malphas that took us to Far Tchinee. Seagulls wheeled in the sky, then, and the bay was whipped high as the skiffs and jackadaws passed before us on the face of the sea.

  But it was night this time. Two days hard steaming north, off the coast far enough that we’d have no dangers running aground on unknown obstacles, and we came within sight of Novorum glittering in the night, its lights reflecting off the waters of Viridi Bay. We hung a red-filtered daemonlight lantern up on the prow, indicating we wished to dock, and the wharf master brought a green-lit skiff out to meet us. However, when it drew near, a horn sounded, and bells began ringing, and the wharf master’s ship unbanked more daemonlights and turned back to shore.

  Tenebrae, in his captain’s mummery, yelled, ‘We’re found out!’ He raced for the gunner’s roost, and the speaking device there. ‘Word has travelled across the sea!’ he said into the funnel.

  There was no response immediately from Ysmay, below. I took the receiver from Tenebrae. ‘Turn the ship, sir! Now,’ I said. ‘Turn and full speed.’