by Jay Lake
It was a confusion of persons that reminded her once more of the great scope of Creation. Mixed between were a scattering of carts and vehicles, some drawn by men, horses or other creatures, others that creaked and steamed on their own power.
“I do not wish to traffic with Authority yet,” Boaz muttered. “There is much here which passes beyond my memory. I would head to the lower city and inquire in certain houses there as to what has transpired.”
“How so?” She gawped at the pull and press around her.
“Ophir was never in life this crowded. And mark how many of them are under arms.”
She looked. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder at that. Every person seemed to be bearing a sword or spear or firearm, some of familiar make, others of strange device indeed. “Why?”
“I do not know. This disturbs me.”
“What of the gleam I carry? Many along a Muralha could sense it as I passed. Will it mark me out here?”
Boaz shook his head, shouldering past two mules heavily laden with baskets of oranges. “Half the weapons here are gleamed. Moved by seals or djinns or words, as was the brass car.”
They came to a square island in the middle of the road, ringed by an iron fence. It was another stair, she saw, much like the one that had led down the ascender shaft. This stair also followed a shaft, thronged with people of all shapes and sizes, but when Boaz stepped down into it, Paolina saw nothing but air and clouds in the bottom.
Everyone seemed to descending to nowhere.
The crowds in the streets of Ophir were not hurling themselves into the empty air along the face of the Wall. The stairs ran down a hundred yards or so then broke out into an expansive set of metal walkways depending from the bottom of the city’s ledge.
Paolina realized the city was built on the curl of a wave of stone. An entire second city hung here, dangling over the open air of a lengthy slope to a folded forest far below, just barely visible through the clouds. These buildings were inverted wooden cones, some with truncated tips, others with crystal or glass at their lower ends to provide a view of the long fall. Balconies ringed the cones, with connecting walkways. Foot traffic from the stairwell fanned out among the various levels and catwalks to various destinations.
It was beautiful, in a strange way. The buildings seemed great bats ready to drop away and take flight, the undercity poised to be something other than what it had been made to be.
She and Boaz were soon on a quiet ledge of their own. He stopped to look about, then spoke. “Many of these buildings are contiguous with the lower levels of those above.”
“Did you run out of space on the upper surface?”
“Precisely. Some structures are tunneled back into the Wall itself. The Palace of Authority is such a one. But building here granted far more flexibility.”
“The cost . . .” Paolina realized she had no idea how the Brass reckoned labor or expense. The design process alone for something like this passed her understanding.
“Pride is the greatest coin in the treasury of Ophir,” Boaz replied. “We are King Solomon’s children.”
He led her on, until they turned into a doorway set in one of the cones. The building’s wall loomed forward in a strange forced perspective that caused Paolina to want to bend back—a very bad idea indeed.
Boaz stepped in, Paolina followed. Beyond was a low room crowded with Brass, mostly standing in twos and threes around tall tables. Hoses rose from the table centers to their lips. Some of them twitched and hummed. A few were dented and rusted—something she had not seen on the surface streets of Ophir.
Humans moved among them, tending the hoses and bringing small vials of a dark viscous liquid. A sharp-eyed man, pale as any Praia Novado, watched over the room with a spear in his lap, which crackled with some blue fire.
Boaz made for the overseer.
Paolina followed, afraid to be left alone, but almost as afraid to confront the man.
“Where might I find Anlis?” Boaz asked the man.
“Who?” He leaned forward, a hard expression on his face.
“Anlis. One who oversaw this establishment betimes.”
Now the man picked up his spear. “I run this place, and that ain’t my name. Been here quite a few years, and Old Golokoshe before me. Anlis weren’t his name neither.”
“I may have been some time,” Boaz said. “I do not intend to offend.” Paolina noted that the Brass did not back away as he spoke.
“You want a hose, see the boys. You want to sell her, I’m not buying.”
Paolina opened her mouth in startled protest, then shut it almost as quickly. She would learn nothing and gain less by interfering with Boaz’ efforts.
Boaz flicked his wrist. Something slid into his palm, though Paolina could not see what. He must have had it stored within. “I have not taken the hose since long before you were alive, man who is not Anlis.” He opened his hand to display a jeweled nozzle. “I will give you this in payment for an answer.”
“What answer?” the man asked suspiciously.
“What all this crowding and numbers of people means in the city. I request a reasonable response, not some grudging djinn’s bargain. Tell me whom we seek to fight and why.”
The man took Boaz’ nozzle. He examined it critically, then closed his fist over the little device. “There are English on the Wall again. As there were two years ago. This time they have brought machines to tunnel. The oldest Brass have proclaimed this anathema, and so the city fights their redcoats and bluecoats and common men clad in earthen brown.”
English! thought Paolina. She was so close to them now. That she might be on the wrong side of their fighting was a small matter, easily disposed of.
“Thank you,” said Boaz.
The man laughed, a bitter sound like rain on rust. “You have been among people too long.”
Boaz propelled Paolina before him as they exited.
“That is where you people go to get drunk,” she said excitedly. “Like the men in the great hall back in Praia Nova. How can you trust them?”
“I cannot. But I espy no reason why he should have lied to us.”
“The English.” She practically skipped in her glee. “I can take the gleam to them and—”
Boaz took her arm in a tight metal grip. “First we go to the Palace of Authority. There I will discharge my duties. After, if you are once more free to go, you may search out your Englishmen.”
“Please. This is more important.”
To her shock, his next words came in her voice. “ ‘All you can do is go to the Palace of Authority and demand that the theft of your memory be redressed. You are bound there by duty, now, to carry me. You will serve both yourself and your orders if you take us both there.’ ” Then he added in his own voice, “You yourself have reminded me of what is truly important: to serve myself and my orders.”
“And if the Solomnic Kingdom of Ophir is indeed at war with the English?” she asked bitterly.
“I will not aid you to seek them out. You are not English, are you?”
“No,” she muttered, feeling obscurely disloyal.
“In that case, there is little to fear.”
They headed for an undercity entrance to the Palace of Authority. Paolina considered running away, but Boaz could readily outpace her, and he knew this city as well as she knew Praia Nova. She couldn’t escape him. Meanwhile, his willingness to listen to her out in the wilds of a Muralha had morphed into a mechanical certitude here in his home city. Ophir had brought him back to whatever it was that being Brass signified to him.
They circled around various cones, occasionally crossing wider gulfs on narrow, swaying bridges. The wind was warm and questing, tugging at her, bringing forest and stone scents from below to mix with the warm miasma of city life. Even though this place had been built by and for Brass, it was teeming with other races—their foods, their clothing, their hygiene, their animals.
Down here, people sat in the doorways and windows, legs dangl
ing over open air. Cats, opossums, and rodents ran along the railings and stabilizing cables, most with little bells on looped collars. Leashed children toddled here and there.
Boaz continued to advance toward the deeply shadowed cliff face at the back of the ledge.
The farther they went, the quieter and colder the walkways became. The cones seemed dedicated to storage or matters of commerce. There were fewer animals, and no children, and the smells became mustier.
He finally stepped onto a cantilevered stone balcony with a triple arch at the back, carved right into the face of the Wall.
“This is the Penitents’ Door,” he said quietly.
“Is that just a name, or does it mean more?”
“Merely a name.” He added vaguely, “There are ceremonies.”
Paolina tried the only thing she thought might work at this moment, in this place. “And down here somewhere is your memory?”
Boaz turned to stare at her. “If my crystals were stolen away from me, they would be near to this door. It is my intent to ascertain the current orders concerning gleams and other Wall magic.”
“What if you are commanded to kill me?”
“Then we will see.” He began to vibrate slightly. “I am Brass, after all.”
“You are Boaz, too,” she reminded him. “You said that beyond Authority, there was me. Don’t forget that.”
“Brass does not forget.” His voice was sullen now.
“No, but you can have it stricken from you.”
With that, Boaz turned on his heel and marched through the center door. Shrugging off one last temptation to run, she followed him into the Palace of Authority.
The entrance hall was dusty and quiet. A faint breeze brushed at them. Pale seal-lights, weak copies of the magic that powered the brass car, cast sufficient glow to see by. There were stone benches carved from the rock of the floor where supplicants might once have sat. A hallway stretched in two directions from behind a lectern, where doors led on deeper into the rock of the Wall.
“This is improper,” Boaz said. “There should be busyness afoot here.”
“There was no one outside. What were you expecting within?”
He set out walking. They quickly came to a stairway leading both up and down. It wasn’t another vacant ascender shaft, just a carved flight. Boaz chose to go up without making any comment. Paolina followed.
The next level had been used for storage. There were wooden boxes filled with scrolls and silk-tied stacks of paper. Old maps and charts were racked in great fanlike frames. Tables and chairs and desks had been stacked.
He led her farther up.
She wondered what had happened. Had his precious Authority somehow collapsed? Or been replaced by some other form of governance?
The next level had more pale flickering lights, along with electricks, and even carpets. There was noise from behind the doors. This was a working hall, not abandoned territory like the floors below. He began walking back the way they had come as if to pass above the Penitents’ Door.
Paolina looked at the signs they passed, but she did not recognize the script.
Boaz pushed open the fourth door on their right. She hesitated a moment, then followed him in.
As she entered, Paolina saw two Brass within, standing to each side of Boaz. One touched the back of his neck as the other peered into his eyes with a small instrument. The neck-toucher looked at Paolina and snapped a question in a language she didn’t know. She shrugged. He tried another language, then, in oddly accented English, “Is it you that broughting him here?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Froming where?”
“The Armory of Westmost Repose.”
“Thanking you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
The two of them fussed at Boaz a minute or two more, then stepped away.
Paolina summoned her courage. “May I have him back now, please?”
The one who’d spoken to her sounded surprised. “He ising not yours.”
“No, no, of course not. He is his own. You are all Brass.” She smiled. “But he committed me to aiding him in scouting the English positions. As I am of their race and speak the language, Brass felt I would serve him well. I am enthused to begin our work, yet here you have turned him away.”
“He is needing of maintenance.” The brass man looked at his colleague. They had a rapid conversation in a burst of clicks and chatters.
“Please,” Paolina added. “I would serve Ophir and the eldest Brass.”
“Not of you.”
“He is.” She grasped for something that would make sense to these rude mechanicals. “He . . . he brought me here from the Armory of Westmost Repose. He is to take me before Authority.”
Her interlocutor stared at her a moment, in a very human way, then adjusted something in Boaz’ neck. “Going then.”
“Thank you.”
Boaz stirred, an indefinable ghost of life reentering him as it had that day on the trail. Paolina grabbed at his arm. “Come on, Brass. Time for us to do our duty.”
She could hear something in him whir, but he turned and walked with her.
“How do we get away from the Palace of Authority,” she whispered once they were alone in the hall. “Back as we came?” Up seemed foolish—there were more Brass that way, and people in general.
He led her downward, still unspeaking. They exited via the Penitents’ Door and into the cool shadows of the rearmost part of the undercity. Boaz seemed content to remain mute as he took a different way this time, along catwalks and stairways that paralleled the face of a Muralha. She remained very conscious of the fact that the Palace of Authority lay just behind the stone to her right.
They came to a point where a stair led farther down. It was cut into the face of the Wall, so that the rock formed a half arch. The steps were staggered, sometimes small and close together, sometimes larger and farther apart. A slow procession of people, both Brass and flesh, headed down. There was no room that she could see for someone to come back up.
Each bore a bundle, some great knot of supplies and gear. The loads were wrapped haphazardly. It was as if every porter had conceived of his own burden and sought out stick by stick what to fill it with. Each trudged staring only at his own feet. None watched their fellows; none looked forward or back.
When she stared along the maze of walkways between the wooden cone-buildings of the undercity, Paolina realized that many of the folk she’d seen before must have been laden for this trail.
To her shock, Boaz grasped Paolina by the waist and hefted her to his shoulders. She was torn between beating at him and grabbing for the gleam, lest its pouch slide free of her dress pocket. She settled for silent protest with gleam safe in hand, though she was furious.
Once he started down the trail, she began to understand why he’d grabbed her. Boaz held Paolina so that her head was on the inside, passing near enough to the stone of the Wall to make her flinch over and over. The other side, though, would have had her head hanging over empty space.
She could not have borne that.
And the trail went on and on. There was a sloping country far below her, woodlots and fields barely visible through a layer of fog. They would be walking downward for miles, it seemed.
Paolina closed her eyes, finally, trusting Boaz not to slam her head into the rock passing so very close. She wondered awhile at why the walkers were all so automated, so quiet and slow, but eventually the lull of his steps and the warmth of the sun sent her slipping into sleep.
AL - WAZIR
Acalayong was a disaster. The port wasn’t even a town, just a stinking jungled river mouth with sufficient draft to admit large vessels. Al-Wazir knew as soon as Wallachian Prince sailed within sight of the harbor that they were in for some nasty work. One of the specially built freighters that had brought the first two steam borers here to the Wall was in the channel, burnt to the waterline.
As far as he could tell, the borer had been ta
ken off before the burning. He told himself that was a blessing.
The Equatorial Wall loomed south of Acalayong’s river, the Mitémélé. Water lapped at a stone bluff that footed a rising plain, which in turn was backed by soaring ribs of rock where the Wall proper vaulted into the sky, blocking the horizon in an immensity of clouded stone. The area at the base lay in deep shadow, something he assumed to be perpetual with the sun directly overhead.
There was a wooden trestle leading out into the channel. A crane stood at the end. It looked like something out of the Middle Ages. Ivanhoe, maybe. But this was what the advance engineers had built, at least until someone sank the ship in the river.
Al-Wazir’s gaze followed a graded roadbed leading from the trestle upward toward the Wall. The track was very wide as it vanished into the jungle. Somewhere up there, a few miles distant, lost in the glossy green chaos of the tropical forest, were one or both of the steam borers and almost a thousand men, waiting for Ottweill to arrive.
Down here on the river there wasn’t an honest English face to be seen. Just a scattering of locals in canoes, and the fire-damaged hulk.
He looked up to the Wall again, realizing the mists he saw were smoke.
Al-Wazir shouted toward the deck from his perch atop the pilothouse. “There’s been fighting here on the water, and there’s fighting now upon the Wall. Tell Captain Hornsby we’ll be going in with Plan Red.”
Plan Red was to land all the uniformed forces under arms—a battalion of Royal Marines with a small army detachment—followed by as many of Ottweill’s men as could be induced to take up weapons. Under Plan Red, al-Wazir himself was to stay behind and secure the unloading of Wallachian Prince. He’d objected strenuously to being left out of the action, but had been overruled.