Magical Mechanications

by Pip Ballantine

  “Then there is a chance?”

  Even Stella’s jeweled eye could not meet Eleanor’s, but she finally did manage to grunt out, “Yes.”

  So there it was. Eleanor sat back and thought for a moment. She thought about how she’d always had to be the sensible one, and how her brothers had always come to her for advice, because princes were supposed to know everything. She thought about how—trapped as they were now in their mechanical swan bodies—they would most definitely want her advice, and yet for once she had to ask someone else for it.

  Carefully, she cleared her throat, and probed Stella further, “So, how would I go about getting my brothers back?”

  The witch stepped away from the window, and dragged her chain clanking behind her back to the workbench. She jerked a magnifying glass down on a boom arm, adjusted the gaslight brighter, and began to screw a tiny fly-wheel into the chest of the automaton—all the time as though nothing had happened.

  Eleanor could hardly believe it; after all it was Stella that had showed her the scene out the window in the first place. She walked over to the witch and stood behind her shoulder, silent and waiting. She was completely at a loss to know what words to use that would get Stella to help her. Perhaps the witch had only wanted to drag her fellow captive down into the mire of despair she had been in for so long.

  However, it appeared that silence weighed on Stella, because after a moment, she sighed heavily and put down the screwdriver. “To break the magic and undo the machines you would need to make skins for them.”

  “Skins?”

  “Her magic and tinkering are strongest when creating creatures for the air, and you would need to counter that by building metallic vices to interfere with her workings. It is the only way to allow the men to come out of the machines.”

  “How do you know about my brothers?”

  “I’ve always known who you are,” Stella tilted her head. “She talked about you a great deal. Well, you, your brothers and your father. I don’t know why…” The witch’s voice trailed off as though she were thinking on something unpalatable.

  Eleanor shuddered, however she was not going to travel old paths with her fellow prisoner. She had to think of the future.

  “So, I can make the cloaks here, and we can save them?”

  Stella flinched, presumably at the liberal use of the word ‘we’. “Even if I wanted to help you, I don’t have the necessities here. Spun silver must be used to make the cloaks—it is the only material that can bear the magical component.”

  “Silver?” Eleanor bit her lip. “The City of Eagles is the only place to get quantities of that.”

  Stella croaked out a laugh. “Even Madame dares not attack that city—at least not yet. However there is more and worse to hear.” She rubbed her finger on the rough edge of the nearby hacksaw.

  Her pregnant pause drove Eleanor crazy, but she managed not to snap.

  “It is the silence you see.” Stella smirked, and for a second the princess worried that she could read her thoughts. “You have to bind a bit of your soul into each cloak, and every ounce of your being must be bent to the task. Every sinew and effort must be put into this undertaking. Should you speak you would destroy not only the materials but the magic too.” The witch shot her a gaze out of the corner of one eye.

  “Silent the whole time?” Eleanor couldn’t help an edge of dismay creeping into her voice. She could never remember having been silent for a day, let alone a month!

  The other woman snorted. “You shouldn’t have had so many brothers, should you!”

  Eleanor frowned. “It wasn’t as though I had a choice!”

  Stella wanted to end the conversation there, but the princess would not be turned aside.

  The next few days were spent trying to convince her fellow prisoner that they had to do this. The witch kept to her task of creating the automatons, but the princess could detect a change in her speed—as though other thoughts were tangling her concentration.

  So, Eleanor kept lightly on, discussing how much of a challenge making the mechanical cloaks would be, and how the person who would do it would have to be a master of the craft. She even sketched out from memory the workings she had observed on the surface of the mechanical swans.

  Stella grumbled, “Don’t even try and tempt me, girl!” Yet she could not hide the light of interest in her eyes.

  Eventually, on the third day after she had pointed out the swans to the princess, Stella set down the gruel she had been eating, and grabbed Eleanor’s hand once more.

  “If it is to be done, we must make our escape quickly. We will need every day that remains. If it can be done tonight then it should be.”

  Eleanor blinked. “What about you? This chain is not going to stretch all the way to the City of Eagles!”

  Stella stared down blankly at the finely constructed chain. “She imprisoned me here with my own work, but it is held together by her magic. She said I did not know the meaning of loyalty and friendship, but I would know the strength of my failings. It is unbreakable.”

  “Unbreakable? There is no such thing,” Eleanor said with the firmness of one who had studied every book on metallurgy she could find from an early age. She dropped to the floor and picked up the chain. It was heavy, and she observed spots on Stella’s good leg were it had rubbed for years. As she studied the chain, she realized that it was in fact made up of several strands of metal, bound together tight, and that each was engraved with words. After fetching oculars and pliers from the workbench, she was able to read them. Proud. Arrogant. Friendless.

  The strands labeled Proud and Arrogant were strong and seamless. She pulled and tugged at them fruitlessly with the pair of pliers. Nothing. However when she applied the pliers to Friendless she felt it give a little.

  With a grunt she was able to bend one strand. So the weakness was in the strand that was inscribed Friendless. The princess stared through the magnifying glass at the hairs-width crack and then glanced up at Stella.

  “It’s hopeless isn’t it,” the witch muttered, and since they had spent so much time together, Eleanor was able to discern that the bleak disinterest her fellow captive had been wrapped in when she arrived, was nothing more than an act now.

  She managed to smother a smile, but dared to pat the witch’s leg. “I am not leaving without you. We need each other.”

  Stella swallowed, but when the princess bent once more she saw that the strand now looked corroded. Now when she applied the pliers and tugged, the strand snapped.

  “Holy steam!” Stella yelped.

  One strand was all it took—even the remaining two could not hold themselves together without the third. While the witch watched, the princess pulled the chain rope apart and gently untwined it from her leg.

  Stella stared at it a moment, her breathing unsteady. “I could have cut off my own leg,” she muttered, “but she knew I would never do that.”

  “Now you don’t have to,” Eleanor whispered.

  The witch’s lips twisted, and her eye glittered dangerously. “She also thought me too far gone. Lost to humanity. She never was very good at judging kindness in people. It is a quality she knows little about.”

  The two women clasped hands tight.

  “Then I think we should go and teach her how wrong she is,” Eleanor said with a savage grin. “What do we need to proceed?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Together then, they raced around the workshop, taking the specialized tools that Stella pointed out, and shoving them into a pair of large canvas bags. They took the sketches that the princess had made, and she saw with some pride that the witch had made some notations on them already while she hadn’t been looking. The last item that Stella insisted on was a jar of gleaming gems; tiny pinpricks of light that looked like trapped fireflies. “Starlight opals,” Stella said with a grin. “We will need these for the cloaks.”

  Eleanor knew that a combination of tinkering and magic would be required, but starlight opals were
the most rare stones to be found in the cloud mountains. That the witch had so many was heart stopping.

  Yet, neither of them could afford to stop for anything. Stella picked up a mallet and tossed Eleanor a thick metal spike. It passed briefly through her mind that only a few weeks ago, she would not have had the strength and dexterity to catch it so easily. Yet she did.

  Placing the spike on the bottom hinge, she glanced at the witch. She did not flinch when Stella struck it hard. The hinges broke away like children’s candy, and the door fell out with a muffled bang.

  The chill night air invaded the princess’ chest and she gasped reflexively. Suddenly the task of freeing her brothers lay before her. Yet, she paused for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the weak moonlight. Thankfully at night, the factories ran on reduced workers, and the clouds of poisonous smoke were lessened. Both woman pulled the front of their shirts up over the mouths.

  “The ferry,” Stella hissed. “It is the only airship we can manage, with just the two of us.”

  Eleanor nodded. It looked quiet out there, and the ferry was not far. If they unhitched it and floated away, they could start the engine once they were clear of the mountain.

  So the two of them scuttled in the shadows of the factories, towards the ships. The whole place was so still that Eleanor could hear her heartbeat in her head, but their footfalls were softened by the thick layers of ash, and they made it to the pier with no signs of pursuit. Quickly as they dared, they unhitched the ferry.

  Eleanor began to breathe again—or at least it felt to her like she did. She had just slipped onto the deck from the dock, when a group of men stepped down from a larger airship on the other side. For an instant, the women and the men stared at each other in the moonlight. Then the men snatched up their rifles. Eleanor standing exposed on the deck, made a perfect target, but when the rifles of Madame’s soldiers came about, it was Stella that stepped before them.

  Eleanor screamed, but the weapons fired anyway. The witch fell, but the soldiers had one more barrel to unleash, and they turned again on the princess.

  That was when her own art—almost forgotten—saved her. A cloud of gleaming green shapes darted down. They were sharp and metallic, and glowed in the dusky confusion of the clouds. Eleanor recognized the shapes—her little mechanical dragonflies that she’d made back in the palace.

  Yet these little creations of the tinker’s art did not come to their creator. The dragonflies, with their sharp, long legs flew at the soldiers—straight for their eyes. It was the last thing they could have expected, and they actually shouted in surprise.

  Eleanor saw in a moment that this was her only chance. She spun the wheel wildly, and let the wind grab ahold of the airship. She heard gunshots fire after her, but it was dark and they flew wide. The cloud of dragonflies—now only four in number—came back to her, perching on her shoulders. The wind had its way with the airship, dragging it away and smothering it with clouds.

  Eleanor slumped down on the deck and let her head fall into her hands. As she wept the eddies and currents of the air played with the ship. This tumult would give her some advantage. By the time they had prepared and stoked the engines of larger airships, she would be on her way.

  They would think that she would set course for the City of Swans and the comfort and refuge of her brothers. They would never guess that the princess was in fact aiming the airship for the City of Eagles—the traditional enemy of her home.

  Finally, after shedding her tears, she crawled to her feet, and made her way to the engine room to stoke the boiler to life. She had never piloted an airship, but her memory of traveling on her father’s ships served her well.

  Still it took two days to find her way to her destination. They were chill, frightening days, in which she sat on deck rummaging through the two bags of tools that Stella had collected, and scanning the diagrams they had done. Her head felt stuffed and overfull. The idea that she was going to have to do this thing alone was enough to drive her brain to distraction.

  It was almost a relief when the city itself came into view. The City of Eagles Eleanor had read much of, but naturally never seen for herself. Unlike the carnival of colors of the City of Swans, the Eagle airships wore cloth of silver on every single envelope. In the morning’s light the collection that made up the city gleamed like the light’s in her father’s ballroom.

  “No,” Eleanor whispered to herself, using up her voice while she still could. “I mustn’t think of father. Only my brothers—they deserve my thoughts.”

  It also helped to think of Madame Escrew, and her face if she could just complete her task. That would be a sweet return.

  The ferry was accompanied into the city by a squadron of ornithopters. Eleanor stood at the wheel, her mouth dry, and followed the shouted instructions of the pilot to follow him in. She couldn’t help but contemplate that if these were the City of Eagle’s idea of a defensive perimeter then they would have no chance against the mechanical swans Madame Escrew had constructed. It was not just her brothers she would be saving; the City of Eagles and all the others would be saved too.

  The squadron guided her towards a small dock, and the workers there helped her tie up her ship. She was lucky in that she was not dressed in anything that bore the emblem of her home and neither did the ferry.

  The princess threw the two sacks over her shoulder with a grunt and then stepped out into foreign territory. The dock-master came bustling over to her, wearing a brown coat bearing the eagle crest. “Two ducats a day,” he snapped, not meeting her eyes, but instead scribbling down notes on the ferry.

  “Actually,” Eleanor interrupted him, “I am looking to sell it and take up lodgings in the city.”

  The dock-master’s sharp blue eyes darted up to meet hers. “Lot of that these days. You should find Master Pettingren on the lower docks. He’s been buying up airships of all sizes. People appear to think war is coming. We’ve had to lash in three dozen new ships this month at least.”

  Eleanor shuddered. The Cities grew a little, but that many new arrivals seeking the perceived safety of the Eagle meant that the free travelers of the skies were also getting nervous.

  She had to hurry. She sold the stolen ferry to the thin, but remarkably cheery Master Pettingren very easily, and earned a healthy sack of ducats; even in a time of approaching war a ship was still an expensive object. Then she found herself a small workshop in the lower hull of an airship hulk.

  It was full of desperate people, packed into tiny rooms in the lumbering ship. The place ran with gossip and contagion in equal amounts. Again, Eleanor forced herself to ignore all that. Instead she set herself to the calculations of what she would need. Then the princess went into the city and bought the strands of silver that Stella had said were required for the cloaks. She bought all she could find, but by her calculations she knew that it would only be enough for six cloaks. She would have to venture out later and find more.

  Still it was surprisingly cheap. That she had not expected.

  Once she said thank you to the shop owner and gathered up her materials, she knew that had to be the last time she spoke. It was too important a task that she couldn’t leave anything to chance. Stella had told her the magic and the crafting would requite everything she had. She would have to give it that.

  As she returned to her little cell, she weighed the remaining coins in her pocket. She hoped they would be enough to not only buy the remaining silver she would need, but also to purchase the things a human body needed as well. Silver might be cheap in the City of Eagles, but food was not.

  She would just have to do the best she could. In her cell she laid out all the tools from the two canvas bags. There were various sizes of little saw, some with diamond blades, a set of gleaming screwdrivers that tingled in her fingertips. And then there were the starlight opals.

  Eleanor sat back on her heels. She had been thinking what might be required to interfere with the workings of the swan machines, and though she had many ideas
it was the use of the opals that she was really guessing at. Their function was something Stella had not had time to explain. That was the sticking point, and the one thing she was least confident about.

  However doubts had to be left behind. First, Eleanor laid out and measured the silver tape, and hoped her calculations were correct. She had only the glimpses of the swan machines she’s managed to catch from the prison window, and so was forced to rely on her own sense of size to go by.

  The clockwork underneath of the cloaks was the easiest part for her to do. She designed spikes that would drive into the workings of the mechanical swans, locking the skins on them tight—this was just in case Madame Escrew had set some defenses on her devices. The skins that would hold these mechanics were by far the harder to construct. The silver tape was flexible, but reluctant to give itself up to her. She knew that she had to weave the skin in just the right way. It had to be strong and yet conform to a shape.

  The solution she settled on was one that drew inspiration from ancient armor—the kind that she had seen on display in paintings in her father’s palace. It was called fish armor, though no one in any city had seen a fish for ten generations.

  First she fixed the silver tape into a tiny loop of no greater circumference than she could make with her index finger and thumb. The next loop she threaded through the first and welded it shut. It was long, tiresome work that made her head, her eyes and her fingers ache. It would have been nice to spare a curse word now and then; but she was careful never to do that. Always in her mind was the witch’s reminder that she needed to put everything into it.

  She ate little with her stinging fingers, but still ventured out to buy what silver she could find. A princess had no experience at thievery, and dare not risk being caught—that would mean an end to her project. So instead she bought what little cheap food could be found. Though in times of war there was little enough of that.

  So as the days and weeks went past, Eleanor’s figure began to dwindle, and her mind grew foggy with hunger. Now the cloak making was going on by shear habit.