Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures

by Sean Wallace

  Even though the film ended on a powerful note, I was relieved it was over. Carmouche weathered the film better than I did, though he kept rubbing his left shoulder as though it was sore.

  Katarin returned. “Anything?”

  “A few anachronisms here and there, and two hieroglyphs I’d like to revisit, but none of the same runes from the first film,” I said. “Though I must say, Katarin, there were gross historical inaccuracies with Miss Harbin’s costume.”

  “Ah, but no one will forget how well she wore it,” Katarin said, a tinge of envy in her voice. Was Carmouche right? “It’ll immortalize her . . . if anyone ever sees the film again.”

  “Only The Lioness in Summer left.” Carmouche stroked his moustache. “Whatever it is, it should be in the first half-hour, to trigger the panic.”

  I nodded. “It certainly narrows down where we look next.”

  Then, the answer hit me like a one-tonne golem. One thing did appear in all three films . . . or more precisely, before them. I’d grown so used to it at the ciné that I forgot all about it.

  “The studio mascot!” I struggled to my feet. “You filmed a new opening with a new chimera, didn’t you, Katarin?”

  “We had to . . . the old sequence was in black-and-white, and the animated clay model simply couldn’t convey realistic colours.” Her eyes widened. “Goddesses, Bernard Marec was responsible for it!”

  “How did he do it?” I asked.

  “Taxidermy, with hidden gears inside, I think.”

  Marec had built the studio mascot using animals that were once alive. The thought sent shivers through my body.

  “Necromancy. It’s three animal corpses stitched together to mimic a beast of magic. There’s power in that.” I took a deep breath. “The chimera cursed the opening sequence, which is why it took effect so early in the third movie.”

  Katarin understood. “That’s why the pre-screened scenes weren’t dangerous – the mascot clip was spliced in later! And Philippe would’ve seen that chimera more than anyone else. Framing, focusing, threading the film—”

  “Maybe the chimera’s bleeding us.” I thought about the victims’ bloody eyes. “Ever hear of shadow-plays? Silk screen, puppets and their shadows? They’re a form of entertainment as popular in the Orient as films, but older and more ritualistic, involving prayers and offerings of food to the spirit. The first shadow cast in a shadow-play was always that of the World Tree, blessing the performance to come, and the same image closed the show.”

  “But instead of a World Tree blessing, the chimera cursed the films?” Carmouche asked.

  “Exactly. The longer you watch a cursed film, the more life force you lose. Philippe would have taken many wounds after seeing the chimera many times but not ‘bled’ to death until the third film was well under way.”

  “Then we must destroy that chimera to break the curse,” Carmouche concluded.

  I grabbed my walking stick. “Take us to it, Katarin.”

  I’d been to the studios on numerous occasions but had never seen inside Warehouse Three, a hulking grey building at the far end of the lot. It took longer than usual to walk there, with Katarin and I still suffering from a twice-viewed curse. Strangely, my lethargy was slowly fading while Katarin remained weak.

  As Katarin unlocked the door, I took my foxfire-amber out of its cherrywood box and mentioned my returning strength.

  “Same for me. What do you think it means?” Carmouche asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “We may have overlooked something.”

  The warehouse was dark but for a glimmer of light near the other end. I held my foxfire-amber high, illuminating the rows of movie props. I recognized a few iconic set pieces in the shadows: a two-storey Tarot card depicting Ankou, the personification of Death in Graalon myth; the massive Bronze Gong of Shangdu; and the colossal clockwork griffin, star of a series where it terrorized the Great Undrowned Cities of the World.

  “The light’s from Marec’s workshop,” Katarin whispered. “That’s where he keeps the chimera.”

  Carmouche drew his palmcannon. “Go back to your office and lock the door, Madame.”

  “No.” Katarin was adamant. “My company, my responsibility.”

  “Then stay well behind us,” Carmouche said. He and I led the way deeper into the warehouse, with Katarin a distance behind us. The row we walked down held props from Lioness in Summer: a rack of spears and mirrors from the Hall of Mirrors scene, arrayed facing each other. The mirrors magnified the light from the amber, creating the illusion of infinite corridors as we passed.

  At the four-way juncture, we turned right and then left onto the adjacent row. An open work area, illuminated by a gem-dish of foxfire-ambers on a cluttered table, lay at the end of the row of obelisks and sarcophagi. Bernard Marec stood behind the table clutching a glassy object in his left hand. When he saw us, he raised his free hand and flicked his wrist.

  The shelves to our left came crashing down on us. Carmouche pushed me forward in the nick of time, but I hit the ground hard, and the foxfire-amber skittered out of my hand. I glanced back: Carmouche was half buried under the avalanche of boxes. Luckily, Katarin had been far enough behind us that the shelf missed her.

  Then I saw the chimera.

  The beast stood in the adjacent row, its lowered goat horns undoubtedly what toppled the shelves. The lion’s head clicked its jaws open in an odd staccato motion while the serpent’s tail stayed motionless.

  “Katarin, run!” I shouted.

  She turned to flee, but the chimera darted behind her with the speed of a live lion, barring her way. When it stopped moving, it remained as still as taxidermic art.

  Without turning, I called to Marec. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “No one was supposed to die!” The chimera trembled in time with his shaking voice. “I only meant to steal enough life to give me back my strength. My body’s breaking down, Voss. This arthritis, these failing eyes – I won’t become a prisoner of my own body.”

  So that was it: he stole strength from others to stave off his illnesses! That explained his speed at Le Pégase.

  I turned towards him. “But you took too much. People are hurt, and a young man’s dead.”

  Would he kill us now to keep his stolen life energy? Yes, if he were desperate enough. But if the same power animated the chimera like a puppet, then the puppeteer might need to see us to attack with it.

  “What of you, Tremaine?” Marec said. “Wouldn’t you want to feel young again, and walk as though you’d never injured that leg? I can teach you how.”

  Oh, to be able to run again! How the thought tempted me. But the cost to my humanity would be too great.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked. “A spell from a book in my museum?”

  “Exactly. I needed a way of drawing enough life force all at once from the audience, so I made a taxidermic chimera and used stop-motion photography to simulate its life and motion. The viewer’s eye interprets the fast-moving frames and thinks the dead model’s alive, their energy in fact willing it to life.”

  “Clever, making the audience unwitting participants in their own doom.”

  I finally recognized the crystalline object in his hand: a polished lens. But if it wasn’t the projector’s lens . . . it must belong to the camera that had filmed the chimera.

  “That’s why you were at the theatre, wasn’t it? The chimera’s physically too far from Le Pégase, but you could capture the audience’s life energy if you were there with that lens.”

  “You have it,” Marec admitted. “I etched the spell on the lens I used to shoot the stop-motion.”

  The chimera model owed the illusion of motion to the ensorcelled lens, so any life force torn from the audience would flood into the crystal. That explained why Carmouche and I had regained our strength soon after the screening room viewing; the crystal lens wasn’t physically close enough to trap our life energy.

  “You had to come back for the chimera, didn’t yo
u? It’s a linked set, the lens and the model. Brilliant.”

  “They say that photography’s the art of stealing souls, but my art has stolen years of—”

  As he was gloating, I reached out with my walking stick, hooked back my foxfire-amber with the lion’s head and scooped it up, hiding its light. The area around me turned pitch black. I could still see Marec but hoped he had lost sight of Katarin and me.

  “—Vooosssssss!”

  Under cover of darkness, I moved and crouched, trying to ignore the pain that flared in my leg. I managed just in time: the chimera crashed into the spot that I had vacated.

  Marec beckoned the chimera back towards him with a gesture, and as it padded past me, its fur brushed against my hand.

  Marec grabbed a glowing amber from the gem-dish and made its viper’s mouth bite it. He sent the puppet back towards me, now bearing its own light source.

  Time to run. Marec would have to move to keep both the chimera and I in line of sight. I uncovered the amber to light my escape and hobbled at top speed into the next aisle, fighting the ache in my leg—

  —and came to a dead stop when I entered the corridor of mirrors.

  Photography was the art of stealing souls, Marec had said. But I knew my anthropology well enough to know the superstition came from a similar taboo against mirrors. A mirror was said to trap a creature’s soul as reflection within itself.

  I turned and saw Marec coming down the shadowed aisle, sending the puppet chimera after me. The reflection of the great beast filled the expanse of the mirror next to me.

  With as much strength as I could muster, I smashed the mirror with the pommel of my walking stick moments before the beast reached me. As the mirror shards fell, the force animating the chimera peeled from its frame like a glove. The lifeless puppet skid to a halt at my feet.

  “How . . . ?” Marec rushed towards the fallen chimera but didn’t see a rune-carved spear extending at ankle height from under a shelf. He tripped, and the crystal lens flew from his hand, smashing to pieces against the floor. “No!”

  I stepped over the inert chimera, drew the blade from its cane sheath, and put Marec at the point of my sword. He grew wizened before my eyes.

  “Mirrors steal souls as well, Marec. It’s said that if a mirror breaks while you’re reflected in it, it damages your soul. You imbued your chimera with stolen life force, a pale imitation of a soul at best.” I ground fragments of the life-stealing lens under the heel of my shoe.

  Katarin and a bruised Inspector Carmouche emerged from the adjacent aisle.

  “Well done, Professor,” Carmouche said. “Bernard Marec, you’re under arrest for murder and several counts of attempted murder.” He grabbed a length of rope from a prop shelf and tied Marec’s hands.

  I once thought Marec had a decent man. It might have been a facade, I supposed, but I sincerely believed he had not strayed until the spectre of death changed him. For the sake of his soul, I hoped he remembered who he was, and who he could still be.

  Katarin touched my face with a hand, her touch warming my cheek. “My strength seems already to be returning. Will the others recover as well?”

  “In time, Katarin.” I turned my head, my lips grazing her fingers. It was all I dared. “In time.”

  Memories in Bronze, Feathers, and Blood

  Aliette de Bodard

  This is what we remember: the stillness before the battle, the Jaguar Knights crouching in the mud of the marshes, their steel rifles glinting in the sunlight. And the gunshot – and Atl, falling with his eyes wide open, as if finally awakening from a dream . . .

  It’s early in the morning, and Nezahual is sweeping the courtyard of his workshop when the dapper man comes in.

  From our perches in the pine tree, we watch Nezahual. His heart is weak and small, feebly beating in his chest, and sweat wells up in the pores of his skin. Today, we guess, is a bad day for him.

  The dapper man, by contrast, moves with the arrogant stride of unbroken soldiers – his gestures sure, casual – and he has a pistol hidden under his clothes, steel that shines in our wide-spectrum sight.

  We tense – wondering how much of a threat he is to Nezahual. His manner is brash; but he doesn’t seem aggressive.

  “I’m looking for Nezahual of the Jaguar Knights.” The dapper man’s voice is contemptuous; he believes Nezahual to be a sweeper, someone of no importance in the household.

  What he doesn’t know is that there’s no household, just Nezahual and us: his children, his flock of copper and bronze.

  Nezahual straightens himself up, putting aside the broom with stiff hands. “I am Nezahual. What do you want?”

  The dapper man shows barely any surprise; he shifts his tone almost immediately, to one of reluctant respect. “I’m Warrior Acamapixtli, from the House of Darts. We had hoped you could give a speech on the War to our young recruits.”

  Nezahual’s voice is curt, deadly. “You want me to teach them about war? I don’t do that.”

  “Your experience . . .” Acamapixtli is flustered now – we wonder how much is at stake, for this speech to be given.

  “I went to war,” Nezahual says. He’s looking upwards – not at us but at Tonatiuh the Sun-God, who must be fed His toll in blood. “Is that such a worthwhile experience?” His heartbeat has quickened.

  “You don’t understand. You fought with Warrior Atl, with Chimalli—” Acamapixtli’s voice is disappointed.

  Atl. Chimalli. The names that will not be spoken. We tense, high up in our tree. Beneath us, Nezahual’s face clenches – a mask to hide his agony. His knees flex – in a moment he will be down on the ground, clutching his head and wishing he were dead. “Atl. I—”

  His pain is too much; we cannot hide any longer. In a flutter of copper wings, we descend from the pine tree, settle near Nezahual: the hummingbirds on his shoulders; the parrots on the stone rim of the fountain; the lone quetzal balancing itself on the handle of the broom.

  “Leave him alone,” we whisper, every mech-bird speaking in a different voice, in a brief, frightening flurry of incoherence.

  Acamapixtli’s hands turn into fists, but he doesn’t look surprised. “Your makings.” His voice is quiet. “You sell them well, I hear.”

  We are not for sale. The other mech-birds – the copper hummingbird who leapt from branch to branch, the steel parrot who mouthed words he couldn’t understand – they were born dead, unable to join the flock, and so Nezahual sold them away.

  But we – we are alive, in a way that no other making will be. “Leave,” we whisper. “You distress him.”

  Acamapixtli watches Nezahual, his face revealing nothing of what he feels. His heartbeat is slow and strong. “As you wish,” he says finally. “But I’ll be back.”

  “I know,” Nezahual says, his face creased in an ironic smile.

  When Acamapixtli is gone, he turns to us. “You shouldn’t show yourselves, Centzontli.”

  He does not often call us by our name, and that is how we know how angry he is. “Your heartbeat was above the normal,” we say. “You were in pain.”

  Nezahual’s face is unreadable once more. “Yes,” he says. “But it will happen again. That’s of no importance. That’s not what I made you for.”

  Nezahual made us to remember, to hold the images that he cannot bear any more. And for something else; but no matter how hard we ask, he will not tell us.

  This is what we remember: the dirigibles are falling. Slowly, they topple forward – and then plummet towards the ground at an impossible speed, scattering pieces of metal and flesh in the roiling air.

  We stand on the edge of the ridge, the cool touch of metal on our hips. Atl is dead. Chimalli is dead – and all the others, piled upon each other like sacrifice victims at the altar of the Sun God.

  What have they died for? For this . . . chaos around us?

  “Come,” a voice whispers.

  Startled, we turn around.

  A man is standing over the piled bodies – his unif
orm crisp and clean, as if he were just out of his training. No, we think, as the man draws closer.

  His eyes are of emeralds, his lungs of copper, his heart of steel. “Come,” the mech-man says, holding out to us a gleaming hand. “Your place isn’t here.”

  We remember a war we never fought; deaths we could never have prevented; but this, we know, has never happened.

  This is a vision, not memories

  It cannot be real.

  “Come,” the mech-man whispers, and suddenly he towers over us, his mouth yawning wide enough to engulf us all, his voice the roar of thunder. “Come!”

  We wake up, metal hearts hammering in our chests.

  Nezahual has shut himself in his workshop. He’s making a new bird, he’s said, moments before closing the door and leaving us out in the courtyard. But his hands were shaking badly, and we cannot quell the treacherous thought that this time the pain will be too strong, that he will reach out for the bottle of octli on the back of shelves, hidden behind the vials of blood-magic.

  The youngest and most agile among us, the newest parrot – who brought memories of the blood-soaked rout at Izpatlan when he joined us – is perched on the windowsill, his head cocked towards the inside of the workshop.

  We hear no noise. Just the swelling silence – a dreadful noise, like the battlefield after the dirigibles fell, like the hospital tent after the gods took their due of the wounded and the sick.

  “Nezahual,” we call out. But there is no answer. “Nezahual.”

  Footsteps echo, in the courtyard, but they do not belong to our maker. The second hummingbird takes off in a whirr of metal wings and hovers above the gate, to watch the newcomer.

  It’s Acamapixtli again, now dressed in full warrior regalia – the finely wrought cloak of feathers, the steel helmet in the shape of a Jaguar’s maw. “Hello there,” he calls up to us.