Infernal Machines

by Jacobs, John Hornor

  I must remember never to give her unchecked access to sweets, otherwise Fiscelion will grow outward rather than up.

  The sun fell toward the western horizon, colouring the vault of sky in brilliant hues. We shut the hatches, and made our descent and powered into the harbour. Tenebrae had the helm, peering into the Miraculous. Over the last weeks, he’d developed a fine hand and second sense at the controls. I stationed myself on the armamare and munusculum triggers, awaiting his command.

  Carnelia was hushed and watchful. Even Fiscelion was quiet, as if sensing the coming events.

  ‘Approaching the Medieran warship,’ Tenebrae said. ‘Stand by.’ He wrenched back the throttle and the Typhon slowed. ‘Barge passing to our fore.’ He reversed, and our vessel slowed even more. There was a long silence broken only by our own breathing. Tenebrae depressed the throttle again, never taking his eyes from the Miraculous. ‘Closing on the Medieran warship. I can see her name. Tormenta d’Fuegae.’ He chuckled. ‘I think we can arrange that.’

  He turned to me. ‘Fire, Livia.’

  I turned the lever and felt the armamare release, angry missiles lancing through the foam. ‘Done.’

  ‘Turning now to the mouth of the Big Rill,’ Tenebrae said.

  ‘Full speed ahead,’ I said.

  ‘Already there,’ he responded. ‘Passing the ruins of Harbour Town.’ Something scraped the bottom of the Typhon, making a long sustained screech that had a palpable physiological effect on us all.

  In a moment there was a boom to our aft. Tenebrae turned his face from the Miraculous as the light from it poured out. Soon after, the concussive wave.

  We were a mile upriver when the Tormenta d’Fuegae’s daemon was released and emerged into our world, wreathed in fire and clawing at the sky.

  ‘Good,’ Carnelia said. ‘Damn them all to Hell.’

  We surfaced. Carnelia and Tenebrae unshrouded the deck gun. Tenebrae manned the helm, Carnelia and I kept watch from the fore of the Typhon since we had no pilot’s roost like the Cornelian had. We made slow time, navigating the river. Open sea was much faster, and I had become accustomed to the heady, wild thrumming of our ship’s engines and the great salty sprays of water geysering up from the prow. I had forgotten how somnolent river travel was. The Typhon’s engines were banked, barely noticeable.

  We passed no ships. We saw neither riders nor soldiers. What villages we passed were destroyed, either by retreating Ruman soldiers or Medieran bloodlust, I could not tell.

  We reached Confluence, and found it destroyed as well, though it was not total destruction as at Harbour Town, but damage from large artillery. We took small arms fire as we approached. I could not be sure if it was Medieran soldiers, Ruman legions, or native Occidentalians. I ordered Carnelia to target the largest standing building with the swivel and fire. It was reduced to travertine and timbers.

  There was no more gunfire.

  We entered Lake Brunnen and found a troop transport and small Medieran littoral there. Carnelia destroyed both with our deck gun.

  The reach of Rume is long.

  We spent the night where once the Cornelian had, looking at shore, miles upriver from Lake Brunnen. There would be no more descents below; the river was too shallow now and we remained in constant fear of grounding. The wind coming from the White Mountains was chill, and every star bright and brilliant in the crystalline heavens. It was the first time I felt as though I was home. I knew this place. These waters. These mountains. We remained on deck, wrapped in blankets, watching and waiting, Hellfire not too far from hand.

  We had passed riders, earlier in the day. And even now, I sensed movement from both sides of the river. I knew not if stretchers still came down raiding from the high mountains, or if the Medierans had driven them further west. There remained something ineffably different about the land. Dispossessed once more. Lost from all men, all those who would lay claim to it, to place boot on it. None could claim it without contest – this was its history. This was its legacy.

  It was with these thoughts that I noticed the tall silhouette on shore.

  You can see a million things in a life, and forget all of them, but you will never forget the sight of a vaettir.

  It watched us.

  ‘Tenebrae,’ I said. ‘You have your carbine ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Carnelia? Do you see it?’ I said, hushed.

  ‘I see it,’ she said. I heard the metallic rasp of her jian being drawn.

  ‘Lupina, go below, please,’ I said.

  ‘We should all go below, Livia,’ Lupina said.

  ‘And hide?’ I asked. ‘Where any ship might find us and fire while we cower in the dark. No. They cannot fly.’ I looked to shore. The stretcher seemed to have turned his attention to the ground. He bent and lifted something. A creature. No, a man.

  He struggled in his captor’s grasp. Screams echoed out across the water.

  ‘Ia-damn,’ Carnelia said. ‘It’s got someone. Poor fucker. That thing will have it naked, skinless, and dressed to the bones in a trice.’ She lifted her sword and drew her Hellfire pistol, like some pirate from a children’s book.

  ‘I never saw them when we were in Kithai, except the boy Fantasma. And he was so—’ Tenebrae said.

  ‘Tiny,’ Carnelia said. ‘A toy stretcher.’

  ‘That one yonder, though, it chills my—’ Tenebrae stopped.

  The vaettir on shore moved, racing downstream, his doomed captive over one shoulder. He bounded up, vaulting high, clearing scrub-brush and bramblewrack. The screams grew louder. ‘EEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee …’

  The vaettir’s speed was ungodly, feet moving faster than the eye could discern. Suddenly, it changed course, lancing toward where the Typhon stood in the slow-moving waters of the Big Rill. Like a stone skipped on a pond, it came at us.

  Carnelia bleated surprise. Tenebrae fumbled at his carbine. I stood standing there, dumbly, watching our death come.

  It hit the sloped side of the Typhon with a metallic thud and suddenly the stretcher was airborne again. Tenebrae let off a wild shot, Carnelia barked her outrage and tried to sight her pistol down her wildly swinging arm.

  The great creature came down upon the deck with a meaty twhack! and let spill its captive, who rolled onto the deck, cursing.

  ‘Fucking Hell, Gynth, I’m not a sack of potatoes,’ Shoestring said. He stood, felt for his hat, found it missing, looked flustered. Finally, he saw me. He gave a clumsy bow. ‘Howdy, Livia. Fancy meeting you here.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  They Will Kill Me For The Waking

  WE DID NOT tarry the first night or break for camp, but rode on through, despite hazard to the horses. Some things you keep tight in the secret chambers of your heart and I did not want to admit to Fisk how much I worried for Lina.

  It’s one thing to have a child. It’s another to find a child, unlooked for, on the wild uncaring breast of the Hardscrabble. I would make sure she lived out her days to their fullest number.

  Yet, I don’t know if Fisk would have made dispensations for my departure and use of resources if he thought it was purely sentimental.

  Though it wasn’t.

  Lina knew of the daemon hand. Should she be taken by the Medierans, the knowledge of who possessed it and its location would pass to them, if it had not already. And if I knew anything of war or the methods of the great powers in the world, the Medierans would have a host of engineers who would know what the hand signified.

  We found evidence of a small camp a half day’s ride from the Big Rill, in a riven dry-creek cutting through the shoal grasses. A long-dead fire had burned itself out, and there were bones there, among the ashes. A calf auroch, from the looks of it – bones cracked, marrow sucked out. No sign of their departure. No hint of their direction.

  Riding hard, we made for the Big Rill and reached it on the eastern shore of Lake Brunnen. This was a populated region, for decades relatively free of vaettir raids and strife, situated so close to New Damnati
on. There was a homestead here, with orchards of albermarle and blackcurrant bushes in neat rows, cotton fields and beans nearer the lakeshore. Sodbuster’s heaven now turned to Hell. The farmhouse was just a charred husk, and no inhabitants to be seen.

  ‘Got a decision to make,’ Catch Hands said. ‘North to New Damnation? Or south to Confluence?’

  I shrugged. ‘They’d go north. We know the Medierans have taken Passasuego, and even though Lina and her scouts did not know it, they would’ve seen evidence of the disposition of the Medieran forces. Maybe.’

  Gynth came bounding up. He pointed toward the shore, past the house. We followed him to the shore.

  It was a lovely view, despite the burned homestead. A brisk breeze whipped down from the Whites, their peaks crowned in sunlight and clouds. The lake’s waves, churned by wind, broke on the rocky beach, making a dull roar that took some effort to speak over. Far from shore there moved a shadow, like some shark lost from the sea. A black needle, steaming north.

  ‘That thing have guns?’ Catch Hands said. ‘Looks like an Ia-damn moccasin cutting across a pond.’

  ‘If it’s Medieran, it’ll rendezvous with troops. Our best bet is to find Lina and get the information Fisk needs. Get the mounts. We’re following it. Gynth, make sure it doesn’t get out of sight, and once it stops, get us. We’ll be on your backtrail.’ Gynth nodded and dashed away, following the shore to the north. Catch Hands returned with the mounts and we followed along behind.

  It was nightfall when Gynth returned, after we’d skirted the town of Lake Brunnen. What was left of it.

  Catch Hands shook his head and sighed. ‘Them Medierans are hard sons-a-bitches,’ he said. ‘A-burning every building they pass.’

  ‘I have my doubts it was the Medierans. The Rumans, in any sort of retreat, will burn as they go so as not to leave any resources for the enemy. Ruman legions torched that town, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Damn shame. There was a scullery maid there I quite fancied,’ he said. ‘And she kissed sweet.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ I said. ‘And still kissing errant dvergar.’

  Catch Hands glared at me for a moment, then smiled.

  Hugging the river, we made our way north, Gynth leading us on. It was full dark by the time we’d overtaken the shadowed vessel. It was slung lower than a barge, its only telltales the guns on its deck.

  We watched for a long while. Eventually figures appeared above deck to turn their faces to the moon and mountains. Undeniable faces. Faces I knew. Some, even, I loved.

  I screamed. I hollered. Livia and her crew jumped, startled. I saw furtive movement, Carnelia ducking below the gunwales.

  ‘Ia-dammit. Gynth, we spooked them. Can you—’ I waved my hand at the Big Rill. ‘Do your … waterwalking.’ This last word created wholly from Dvergar. Gynth’s large mouth cracked in a jagged smile.

  He took me in his big hands before I could protest, slung me over his shoulder, and then moved. My gut lurched. I felt as though I’d spew up the hardtack I’d eaten earlier. Lightning fast, the shore diminished behind me, I felt a fine spray of water and then the world turned upside down and we were in the air and tumbling head over arse. The boom of Hellfire sounded and the smell of brimstone spiced the air.

  Then I was tumbling on metal. When I came to a stop, I pushed myself upright, as fast as my spinning head was able.

  ‘Fucking Hell, Gynth, I’m not a sack of potatoes,’ I said, glaring at the vaettir. I reached to doff my hat – it was gone, maybe lost for good down river. I gave my friend the best bow I could manage. ‘Howdy, Livia. Fancy meeting you here.’

  She gasped. Then, before I knew it, I was crushed to her breast and merry peals of laughter rang out – Carnelia.

  ‘You know these two?’ A man’s voice.

  ‘I know this one,’ Livia said, holding me out at arm’s length. ‘Oh my, Mister Ilys! Never before in my life have I been happier to see someone. Anyone!’

  ‘I imagine we can change that,’ I said. ‘I can take you to Fisk.’

  The reaction in her was immediate. Her hands tightened on me, as if she would not let me go for fear of losing her connection to her husband.

  Gynth remained still, but Carnelia stirred at the big stretcher’s presence and turned to face him. ‘Holy Hell,’ she breathed. ‘Will he—’

  ‘This is Gynth. I believe Fisk wrote to you about him,’ I said. ‘He is a friend to us all.’

  Carnelia looked at me and back to the vaettir. ‘It is hard to countenance. But we met elves in Kithai, and not all of them wanted us dead, either.’ She shrugged, though she did not sheathe her sword.

  That one had changed, I saw immediately. No longer a wine-soaked little rag. She’d put on meat, and moved like one of the big cats coming down from the mountain. It’d been more than a year, at least, and how things can change.

  ‘Howdy, Miss Carnelia,’ I said. ‘Glad to see you well. I was terrible sad at the news of Secundus. He was a good lad. One of the best.’

  The man standing, loosely holding the carbine, said, ‘You knew Secundus?’

  ‘Aye, sir. For my part, I counted him among my friends,’ I said.

  The man came forward, hand extended. We shook. ‘I am Marcus Tenebrae, once of the Praetorian. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘And I, yours,’ I said. ‘Your ship is quite a number.’

  He chuckled and released my hand. ‘It’s not mine! It’s Livia’s,’ he said.

  ‘We’re pirates now, Shoestring!’ Carnelia said, voice bright.

  ‘Much has changed,’ I said. ‘And things are cracking. Mediera has taken Passasuego and the Talavera silverlode. Their troops are on the move in the west. Fisk now commands this theatre for Rume.’

  Livia said, ‘My husband?’ There was disbelief there, but some pride mixed in too, I thought.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. ‘He is as surprised as you at this turn of events. Marcellus took his best men and legions east, to protect Novorum.’

  Livia sighed. ‘I fear that was a mistake. The Medieran fleet firebombed Novorum – we witnessed it first-hand.’

  ‘Are you saying that the two understrength legions at the Dvergar silverlode are all we have in the west?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘There’s much for us to discuss and we have some decisions to come to before morning.’ She looked at me closely. Like Carnelia, she was different too. Before, there was always merriment with Livia, like a fire banked low, simmering behind her breast. She could shift from fierce to kind, loving to wrathful, easily and by turns, but a good humour always ran underneath it all.

  But no more. This world makes monsters of us all, eventually.

  ‘But first, Shoe,’ Livia said. ‘Let us get you acquainted with my son, Fiscelion.’

  The boy and I hit it off from the start. He yanked my beard and squealed, drooling, and tried to stuff my paw in his mouth. Gynth would not go inside the vessel, and I found it not much to my liking either. Livia brought the lad to me and showed no fear at the dark of night, the Whites in the distance, or the vaettir towering above us all.

  It seemed that Lupina, Cornelius’ old servant, still found very little in my visage or demeanour that pleased her. And Gynth pleased her even less.

  ‘I must go to Fisk,’ Livia said. ‘I have crossed half a world to get back to him. To present him Fiscelion, his son.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I filled her in on the situation with Fisk and Neruda at Grenthvar, and Beleth’s sorry end. She stared at me grimly as I recounted the tale and gave a single nod of approval. I also told her of Lina, and the scouts.

  ‘That is a definite concern,’ she said. ‘But one that will have to wait.’

  ‘The disposition of the Medieran troops is something we need to know,’ I said. ‘Fortifications of the Grenthvar have begun, but we’re woefully unprepared. But Fisk needs to know of the firebombing of Novorum.’ I gnawed my lip. ‘It’s a hard choice. I do not want to abandon Lina.’
>
  Gynth moved to stand near me. With each of his movements, Livia, Carnelia, and the man named Tenebrae tensed. Living with vaettir takes getting used to.

  ‘That one is also gynth,’ the vaettir said. ‘And she would not thank you for collecting her.’

  ‘You’ve got a point. But I’m concerned for her, not her feelings,’ I said.

  ‘Are they not part of her?’ he asked. ‘She’ll return. We are gynth.’

  ‘Yeah, I got that,’ I said.

  ‘I go to find my kind,’ he said in dvergar. ‘I will bring back your hat.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked. Sometimes it was hard to tell what the big lunk was talking about, his mind moved down such strange pathways.

  ‘Our kin. Like Neruda, I will make bargain with them,’ he said.

  ‘Stretchers?’ I asked. ‘You’ll make bargain with stretchers?’

  ‘Yes,’ he responded. ‘They are gynth. They are of this place like you, like me. And we will plough a furrow together.’

  ‘Fuck me with a rake,’ I said.

  Gynth cocked his head and said in common: ‘What is a rake?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, waving it away. ‘Can you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing is written, nothing is sure,’ he said, switching from dvergar to common and back again. ‘But I will try.’

  Livia and her companions watched and listened closely to me conversing with Gynth. I helped to fill in the gaps. They had seen vaettir in motion, their utter viciousness when attacking, their mischievousness. The disbelief was plain on their faces, even in the half-light of the stars and moon.

  ‘Not all are—’ He paused, thinking. ‘Brindrelivis,’ he said, using the word for poison. ‘But they do not come down often to these lands. They dream in their nests and caves,’ he said. ‘I will wake them. And we will cut a furrow.’