The Giant's Seat

by Dave Butler

  He climbed to his feet just in time to see the Hound tossing a large yellow constrictor from its mouth.

  “Ollie!” Charlie stood. “Bob! Get out of here!”

  Before he could charge again, the Hound saw him and ROARED! It lunged forward—

  Charlie dodged to the side—

  and the Hound fell over, whimpering.

  Charlie hit the ground at the same moment, puzzled. But through the briars he saw Gnat, nearly underneath the giant Hound. She held her knife in one hand and a large splinter of wood in the other.

  There was blood on the splinter and blood on one of the Hound’s paws.

  Gnat dived forward, driving the splinter deep into the flesh under an uninjured paw.

  The Hound shrieked, then lunged forward, snapping its jaws at Gnat. Gnat leaped straight into the air, and the huge yellow teeth snapped shut on empty space.

  She jumped with such grace and energy, she looked as if she were flying.

  Gnat rolled in midair at the top of her leap, and she came down on the back of the Hound’s neck.

  Charlie climbed to his feet and struggled forward through the briars.

  Gnat planted her knife in the Hound’s good eye.

  With a ROOOOOOOAR! that echoed off the cliffs like thunder, the Hound rolled over and threw Gnat off. It gnashed at her again and again, but it was blind now. Charlie stopped his charge, afraid he’d be crushed by the huge animal in its thrashing.

  Gnat didn’t step back.

  She grabbed another splintered piece of Charlie’s club. She ducked one bite attempt, and then a second, and then, as the jaws snapped at her a third time, she dropped to one knee and planted the splinter like a spear.

  The Hound bit over the splinter with all its weight, driving the sharp wood deep into its own brain.

  It fell, shaking as it died.

  Charlie staggered forward. There was blood everywhere, and he didn’t know whose it was. “Ollie?” he called. “Bob? Gnat?”

  “Yeah,” Ollie groaned. He crawled out of a thicket of bushes, clutching his leg.

  “ ’Ere, Charlie.” Bob slid down the bank from above. She hobbled and held one arm gingerly, but her eyes glittered.

  No answer from Gnat.

  Charlie grabbed the Hound by its shoulders and pushed with all his strength. He felt his inner mechanisms strain to deliver more power, and with a grunt he shoved the Hound aside.

  Gnat lay on the ground, covered in blood. In one hand she had her knife and in the other a long, sharp tooth, which she must have pulled from the Hound’s mouth.

  She opened her eyes, looked up at Charlie, and held up the tooth.

  “That’s one great deed.” She grinned.

  Charlie wanted to laugh, but he suddenly realized they were not alone. On the other side of the Hound’s body stood the pale boy. He looked at Aunt Big Money’s ruined burrow with sad eyes, and then at the Hound.

  “She was my friend,” the boy said.

  “She was mine, too,” Charlie answered.

  “My name is Thomas.”

  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll take terrible revenge.”

  Charlie and his friends stood again high in the crevasse, having reached the spot in Bob’s flyer. The night was chilly, but the only one who seemed to suffer was Ollie. He had a bandage around his torn leg, and he wore Thomas’s scarf around his neck.

  Charlie had an idea what terrible revenge might be. He’d read The Count of Monte Cristo, and besides, he had his own desire to exact terrible revenge on the people who’d killed his bap. Stomping Heinrich Zahnkrieger’s fingers and kicking Gaston St. Jacques in the face didn’t begin to cover it.

  He nodded his acceptance. “We’re not with the Iron Cog. My bap—that’s my father—and your father worked together. My bap made me the same way your father made you, and he sent me to warn your father.”

  That almost makes us brothers was the thing he didn’t add.

  Could he and Thomas together be a folk? Not by the dewin Lloyd Shankin’s definition, since they didn’t share stories. Or did they? Did they share a story that went back to the stories of their fathers? A story that included, in different ways, the witch rabbit Aunt Big Money?

  And what was it the rabbit had said to him? You have a deeper past than you know.

  “I ’ave to say,” Bob added, “I am a great entomologist of your father’s work.”

  “Enthusiast, Bob,” Charlie said.

  “That’s right.”

  Thomas reached into a crack in the rock, and the rock wall that had been a featureless slab of flat stone revealed a door that swung inward.

  Beyond were stairs leading down. Gas sconces in the walls provided light. Thomas gestured and Charlie led the way. The cold breeze on the back of Charlie’s neck stopped when Thomas shut the door.

  Other halls crossed their path, and at each turn Thomas pointed the way. Charlie couldn’t be sure, but he thought they traversed identical hallways more than once. Was Thomas leading them in circles?

  They were walking through a maze.

  Ollie leaned on Bob for support, and Gnat walked at Charlie’s side. She carried the little knife she had taken from William T. Bowen’s steam-truck—the knife she had used to slay the giant half-flesh, half-machine Hound—tucked in her belt. The Hound’s tooth hung on a thong tied around her neck. She walked with her head held high, and Charlie didn’t think she could look any better, however glorious a pair of wings she might have on her back.

  Charlie saw dwarfs in the complex as they passed through, but he didn’t recognize them, and none were dressed in the red and gold colors of Charlie’s dwarf family. He saw devices, too, things that moved about on wheels or springs or stalking legs. But nothing that resembled Thomas and him.

  “Here it is.”

  Thomas pushed forward and joined Charlie at the front. They stood at a door that looked like many others they had passed. Thomas opened it without knocking.

  The man behind the door was definitely Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

  “The ’eck.”

  Charlie recognized the man from his daguerreotype in the Almanack, from the Sky Trestle tokens, from the murals in Waterloo Station, and from pictures he’d seen of the great inventor in newspaper accounts of how his impressive engineering feats, such as the Sky Trestle, the Great Western Railway, and the Gibraltar Mooring Tower, were faring, years after their builder’s death.

  Only he wasn’t dead.

  He stood in front of Charlie, large as life, with bushy white side-whiskers and the stub of a cigar between his teeth. He was significantly older than he’d been in any of the images Charlie knew, but his back was straight and his grin was fierce. When he saw Charlie, he removed the cigar and pointed at him with it.

  “By Jove,” he said. “You must be Joban’s boy.”

  Charlie had only heard the name Joban for the first time earlier that evening, but the Iron Cog’s men had called his father Dr. Singh when they’d captured him, and again at Waterloo Station. Joban Singh must have been his father’s name before he fled the Cog and changed it to Rajesh Pondicherry.

  “My father named me Charlie. Charlie Pondicherry.”

  “You’re perfect.” Brunel didn’t take his eyes off Charlie, though Bob was beginning to fidget. “You’re a work of art, Charlie, do you know that? Your father always had a flair for the stylish.”

  “I’m a boy,” Charlie said.

  “Of course you are.” Brunel nodded. “And have you met my boy, Thomas?” He grabbed Thomas by his shoulders and drew him closer.

  “Thomas is a boy…like me.” Charlie wanted to say so much more. This man was taller than his bap, and older, and had a fair English complexion, but standing in his presence and talking about being a boy made Charlie feel as if he were talking with his bap. “He brought us here.”

  Brunel clapped his hands. “So we all understand each other. Excellent! Now tell me, what else have you learned?”

  “Papa.” Thomas’s voice had a plain
tive note in it. “They killed Auntie.”

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel looked at Charlie and his friends, puzzled.

  “Not us, sir.” Bob’s voice shook. “We’re the greatest admirers of your work.”

  “Ah, no. You mean the Iron Cog.” Brunel pulled at his hair with both hands. “Bowen and his snotty, pretentious middlemen, who think they own the world because they buy and sell commodities and get to meet the queen once in their lives. The meddling little conspirators who think they have the power and the right to fix everything. The Iron Cog killed poor Big Money.”

  “The Iron Cog killed my father, too.”

  Brunel looked at both boys with a furrowed brow.

  Thomas nodded. “It was the Hound.”

  “My bap was killed in London. By a Frenchman named Gaston St. Jacques.”

  “St. Jacques?” Brunel’s eyebrows jumped to the top of his forehead. “The rogue!”

  Charlie remembered seeing his bap dead, a tiny dot from a great height. He didn’t mean to, but he made a single sound, like a sob. He realized Thomas had made a similar noise.

  “Here, now.” Brunel dropped to his knees and opened his arms. The boy stepped into his father’s embrace, and Brunel wrapped one arm around him. “She was a good auntie. She served her purpose well.”

  “She took care of me,” Thomas murmured.

  There were tears in Brunel’s eyes. “She did more than that, son. She was your prototype. Big Money showed us we could do it!”

  “You mean build…make a person?” Charlie asked.

  Brunel laughed, a gut-deep sound that was full of sorrow. “Yes, among other things!”

  “She gave me visions,” Charlie said. “She made me dream dreams and see things.”

  “Did she?” Brunel looked surprised. He still had one free arm, and he beckoned Charlie forward. Charlie stepped into the embrace of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and restrained more sobs. Brunel was warm and smelled of tobacco, and he held Charlie’s head tight against his shoulder. “Joban was a good man. The best.”

  Goodbye, Bap, Charlie thought.

  “She did more than that.” Ollie was suddenly lively, though still leaning on Bob. “She was a witch.”

  “Yes, she was.” Brunel released both boys from his hug and stood. “Well, that was half the point, wasn’t it? We needed to see if we could build a magician, as well as a creature with free will.”

  Build a magician? Prototype? But what did that mean about Thomas? Was he some kind of wizard?

  And what did it mean about Charlie?

  “You’re a magician yourself, Mr. Brunel.” Bob grinned a wider grin than Charlie had ever seen on her face.

  Brunel laughed. “The lads of the Cog think so, too. You might think they’re the greatest admirers of my work, the way they keep trying to get their hands on it.”

  “What do they want?” Charlie asked. “What’s the new world they talk about building?”

  “Hmm, they want power, I think. You’ll learn, Charlie, that when people in this world organize themselves to achieve an objective, most of the time the objectives are depressingly the same. Power, money, pleasure, and pride. There are exceptions, and they are as noble as they are few. For every hospital, there are a thousand professional associations.”

  “So why do you say it’s power they want?” Bob asked. She stood on her tiptoes and grinned from ear to ear.

  “Hmm? Simple. Because they already have the other three. Because the reason Joban and I fled their company was that we learned they were planning to use our…creations to impersonate monarchs and prime ministers, and other influential people. The new world? In the end, however they dress it up as a paradise of no work and no pain, I think it’s only a world in which the Cog rules. Because I know many of them personally, and they are a pack of power-hungry, ankle-stinging scorpions. Mind you, by some accounts, that makes them extremely ordinary people.”

  “Too right,” Ollie muttered. He kicked his toe at the floor.

  Brunel noticed Ollie’s injury. He produced a chair from behind him and pushed it toward the wounded sweep. “Forgive me my denseness, young man. Have a seat.”

  Bob dropped Ollie into the chair, and Charlie finally took a moment to look at the room. There was a central table, surrounded by chairs and covered with schematic drawings. Speaking tubes and periscopes jutted from a panel running around all four walls at waist height. Overhead, the ceiling was glass, and through it Charlie could see a few bright stars twinkling, even with the light filling the room from gas sconces in the walls.

  “Is this a control room?” he asked.

  “Good intuition,” Brunel said. “Are you a mechanick, or has your father got a room like this?”

  Charlie shook his head. “My father’s workshop was much smaller than yours.”

  “I’m a mechanick.” Bob’s grin seemed wider than her head. “An’ an aeronaut.”

  Brunel patted her on the shoulder and she beamed. “Very good,” he said. “I hope you take good care of Charlie.”

  “I do my level best. It’ll be easier, as we’ve got ’is spare bits back now.”

  Brunel gestured at the panels. “The viewers let me see tactically sensitive places around the mountain. Entrances, key air vents, the water supply, and so on. When I built this refuge, I hoped I’d never need the viewers. I’m certainly glad I have them now.”

  “Did you know you were building so close to the Cog’s people?” Charlie asked.

  “Bowen and his Machine-Town lot? Ha!” Brunel’s laughter shook his entire chest. “Of course I did; I had been one of them and I knew just where they were having their little monthly meetings! I built here to keep an eye on them, and I had dwarfs and other friends bring me what I needed.”

  “Until they found out you were here. And they released the Hound on your mountain.” Charlie’s shoulders slumped. “That’s my fault.”

  “Nonsense! It was bound to happen sooner or later.” Brunel rapped his knuckles on the nearest viewer. “And I had plenty of time to get prepared.”

  “An’ the speaking tubes.” Bob pointed. “They let you give instructions.”

  Brunel nodded. “Mostly to automata. Servants who are powered by springs and cogs. I have very few servants of flesh and blood.”

  “I’ve seen some dwarfs,” Charlie said.

  “They’re not servants. They’re business partners! I hire a few dwarf families to find certain things for me.”

  “Like certain dwarfs I know whose colors are crimson and gold.”

  Brunel arched an eyebrow at Charlie. “Hmm. Someone here has spent time among the cat friends.”

  “I don’t talk to the dwarfs much,” Thomas said. “They make me nervous.” He crept around and stood behind his father.

  “Thomas is shy, you see,” Brunel said to Charlie. “It keeps him from approaching people who might be dangerous.”

  Charlie thought back to one of his last conversations with his bap. “I’m disobedient,” he said. “A little. It keeps me from cooperating too much with people who might be dangerous.”

  Brunel clapped his hands again. “Oh, well done, Joban!”

  “So what are you doing?” Charlie asked. “What are the dwarfs collecting for you?”

  “Well, right now, I’m mostly preparing to flee. Today, in fact, as the Cog has found me and I’m under assault. Since you’re here, I expect you should plan to come with me, so I’ll show you my airship shortly.”

  “What about all this stuff?” Bob gestured with both hands, as if trying to encompass the entire mountain in her arms. “You just plan to leave it, do you?”

  “Why not?” Brunel shrugged. “It’s toys, all of it. I don’t need it, and it won’t help the Cog any. The things I need for my…plans are in the airship. The only thing in this mountain that matters is Thomas. He knows my plans, and he’s equipped to carry them out alone if I’m stopped. Not just equipped…” Brunel leaned forward as if sharing a secret joke. “He’s built to carry them out. Well, as are
you, of course, Charlie. But you’ll come with me, too. All of you.”

  What were Brunel’s plans?

  “Thanks.” Ollie didn’t sound very convinced.

  Bob just beamed.

  “But really, I won’t leave it behind. I’m going to collapse it. The whole thing. Bury it.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “Collapse the mountain? Do you mean that?”

  “Well, I’m being a bit dramatic. I won’t collapse Cader Idris, really. It’d be a shame to damage a good old mountain like this one. No, I’ll just cave in all its tunnels. I’ve built all the main junctions in the passages on large, weight-bearing pistons, and I can trigger the collapse by ether wave from the airship, with a little creation I like to call my Final Device.” He looked at Charlie and smiled. “Well, the name is so theatrical I couldn’t resist it. So as soon as we’re off the ground, us and the few dwarfs still here, I collapse all the tunnels with the Final Device and we’re done.”

  Charlie’s mind boggled. “And your plans? What are your plans?”

  Brunel’s eyes twinkled. “Hmm? Why, Thomas and I will defeat the Iron Cog, of course. What do you think Thomas is for? Why build Big Money as a prototype? I’m going to take the fight to them and poke them right where they live. You can’t win any game playing defense the entire time.”

  BOOM!

  The ground under Charlie’s feet shook.

  Brunel rushed to his control panels. He stepped sideways neatly from one viewer to the next, looking in each for only a moment or two. Occasionally he listened to the speaking tubes, and twice he shouted into the tubes’ mouthpieces. Charlie didn’t understand the words.

  Bob rushed to the panels, too. She stayed out of Brunel’s way, but she pressed her face to each viewer in turn, like a child examining an entire row of chocolates in the window of a sweetshop.

  Charlie helped Ollie to his feet.

  “Come with me!” Brunel marched out of the room at a brisk pace.

  “The ’eck, lads,” Bob whispered as they all trotted to try to keep up with the old man. “We’re under attack.”

  As he stepped into the hall, Charlie hesitated—the air was thick with dust, and the passage by which they’d come into Mountain House was filled with rubble. In one hit, the attacking forces had taken away the only escape route Charlie knew.