Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  “What…what is this?” Cezette asked aloud, in French. “Is this a dream? Or a nightmare?”

  “You can talk?” The dandelion said, in pained English.

  It was struggling to free itself. Cezette found she was holding the weed’s stem. If she wished, she could crush it to a pulp. One of its leaves dangled horribly loose. “And in French…La Maere…Nessie Drake’s ship. It means, ‘nightmare.’”

  “Is it?” Cezette asked in English. Her accent was halting, but she managed two words. Funny…Cezette had once read a person could not read, or form words, in a dream. Different part of the brain, according to the natural alchemists.

  What disturbed Cezette more was her own voice—it was not. This voice was tin-like, and deep, like Papa’s. She looked down at her arms. Arms that ought to have been thin, and pale, and hers. Instead, they were large, and soiled, and hard. For that matter, the dandelion in her hand was looking a good deal darker. Soot, perhaps? With her hair stained, the gold looked almost black…black, and silky.

  “Maman?” Cezette murmured.

  She dropped the dandelion.

  In the middle of a bridge over the Moscow River, deep in the warm belly of a metal titan, Cezette Louissaint began to cry.

  25

  Hikawa Shotaro Meets His Match

  His opponent was out of options, of that Hikawa Shotaro was sure.

  The oddly dressed woman with the hojicha, or barley tea, skin had tried to kill him with everything from daggers, to fire eggs, to fists wreathed in metal. Nothing worked, of course. Shotaro’s sword had been remade. Now it could cut anything. Now it could make the perfect cut.

  The cameo in his left glove was a nagging persistence. It didn’t seem to want him to lash out at this woman in her indecorous clothes. But its weight did not slow his sword as he slashed at his enemy.

  If at any time Hikawa questioned the wisdom of his deal with M-dono, those questions were drowned out by the sound of the sword. At first, he had been suspicious. After all, M-dono had been commander of the men who had taken him in.

  “I can save him,” M-dono had simply said. He was a man of few Japanese words. Pointing towards Esteban Dio, he had rolled up his own sleeve to show the gleam of precious metals beyond Hikawa’s understanding. “I can give him new legs. And I can show you how to cut through the clankers below.”

  For a samurai without a master, a ronin, the unspoken promise of being able to fulfill his life’s calling was more than enough. The worst part was his eye. The ball was beyond saving, though M-dono had kindly offered to replace it with a superior specimen. Hikawa had consented after a moment’s polite repose. It was important to maintain good form.

  So why had Shotaro found the idea of a mask so appealing?

  Hikawa paused in his reverie. The woman was up to something new. Quickly, before she could use whatever weapon she was slipping from her bustle, Hikawa drew his sword. The pull of it was familiar now, though the hissing sound it made still aggravated him. A silent draw would have been more useful, not that an opponent could dodge such a perfect cut for long.

  With a little snap of sparks, the blade cut through another of the bridge’s stone pilings. It slipped through like spring through snowmelt.

  Hikawa thought he knew what was going on in the woman’s head. Was the range of the weapon a yard, or three yards? Could it possibly be twenty? What blade could cut a trio of daggers down in midair, at a clearly impossible angle? It must be aggravating to tell, particularly when the blade was invisible. Hikawa was adjusting the length with each draw. M-dono had kindly provided the option with a brass dial in the hilt.

  Ah, so the new weapon was to be a deck of cards. They were palm-sized, longer than playing cards. Tarot, he believed they were called. The monks had frowned upon such pagan blasphemy. Hikawa was not fond of such things either. The onmyou, or magicians, in his country were untrustworthy. He and the monks shared a dislike of the occult that bred hesitation in Shotaro’s step. It was obvious his enemy was a mistress of projectiles, like the ninja of Nippon. Samurai versus ninja. The thought struck momentary pleasure in Shotaro before his thoughts turned to the thrown cards.

  Tricky.

  Very tricky.

  The cards wound through the air like predatory birds. One moment they were flying in straight lines, nowhere near Shotaro. The next, they seemed to change direction, scenting for his wrists, his neck, his spine. There was even one that seemed to go for his groin.

  Thunk! The edge of a card dug deep into Shotaro’s mask. It was a calculated risk. The swordsman did not know what these cards really were. He yanked it out of the lacquer and peered at the strange illustration; a man hung by the neck, against a background of a battlefield. Odin, it read. Kudaran. He threw it over his shoulder flippantly. Such frippery did not belong on the battlefield. He sliced another in twain, seeing the image of ten jewels flip past his face. A card half embedded itself into a bridge pylon with far more weight than it should.

  Hmm. A mistake, Shotaro realized. His sword relied much on form. The sheath filled the hilt with vital gases needed to form the blade. It made him slow, sheathing and unsheathing rapidly now to fend off the barrage of cards. Meanwhile, his opponent could fling four or five cards at once, some diving right for Shotaro, some hanging in the air to join in a hail of missiles. He could not always catch them in one swipe, and as his forms began to fail, he found himself falling back, step by clicking step on his wooden geta. They were split-second motions. The woman was a whirl of cloth and leather, tossing her weapons with tiny flicks of her fingers, all the while keeping her distance. At this rate, either she would run out of cards or he would run out of gas in his sheath.

  A gambit, then, Shotaro thought. Sheathing his blade once more, he undid the reserve on the machinery. Instantly, the gauge in the hilt began to rise, the needle creeping towards a red swath. He sidestepped, dodged, scrambled to stay away from the murderous fortunes striking all around him now: an Ace of Air, The Engine, Anubis. They stuck in the stone corner-first, feathering the bridge.

  Just another few seconds… Shotaro spoke, to distract his enemy. He knew a little English, picked up to facilitate his long journey from Nippon.

  “Woman! Why use all this frippery?” said Shotaro. “You wield a blade! Do you not wish to fight fairly, to find who is the stronger?” The answering voice came too quickly, seeming from all directions. Even M-dono’s new eye could not follow his enemy. Shotaro lashed out at a blur, cutting only brightly patterned cloth.

  “Gorgeous, these knives are a dime a dozen. Here, have a few!”

  Shotaro swung, cutting down two slim stilettos before the hail of cards peppered the ground at his feet once more. She was throwing her swords away, and it shook Shotaro to his core. For a samurai, his sword was his life. He sighted the woman again, a flash of tantalizing skin. Curvaceous flesh.

  “You shame your parents with those clothes and your behavior!” shouted Shotaro.

  “I didn’t get half of that, but my parents abandoned me in a gutter,” said the voice. “They’re probably long dead of drink or shot in a gutter themselves, gorgeous.”

  “Such disrespect!”

  A slew of Earth cards stuck a line right near his right geta, cracking the pavement. The Patriarch now, with a squadron of Knights of every suit. Where they hit edge-first, the major arcana cut clean through steel fixtures. He found himself reading the cards, letting the pips strike his mask and geta. This was bad. The enemy was managing him, letting the card faces distract him from his target. Worse, there were some that were not blades. The Fire suits erupted into tongues of flame, and the Water suits into clouds of vapor. No two were alike, and it threw Shotaro into confusion.

  It was a devious scheme. The cards flipped through the air, face and back interchanging in a deadly dance. In a moment he would slip, become distracted, and find one embedded in his body. He wondered if the Air suits could cut through the false eye and cheekbones M-dono had placed in his skull.

  All the
while, his blade was filling with the precious energies of the perfect sword. Just as his geta were about to slip, throwing him off balance, there was a click at his hip.

  “Now!” Shotaro cried, and leaped high into the slate sky. The woman peered, ready for the attack, but this cut would be impossible to avoid. Shotaro unsheathed. He cut the bridge in half.

  Only when he landed in the midst of the crumbled pylons and mangled steel did he discover the card pricking him in the hand. The others were probably only ever meant as decoys.

  Of course, there was ever only one perfect, unavoidable cut in the world, and it had been stalking him ever since the heavenly buildings of the Vatican. He did not need to see the grinning face to know the edges were coated in poison. His peripheral vision was already white with its effects. His knee found the shaking ground.

  As his sight began to fade, a fog of white in the corners of his eyes, something clattered to the floor at his knee. The woman must have dropped it…Shotaro reached out to turn it over, and it was a cameo brooch exactly like his own. Just to be sure, he took off his glove and produced it. How could this be? The two were mirror images of each other. Who was this woman? What did she have to do with his past?

  But of course it was already too late. Shotaro managed to laugh. When he picked up the two baubles again, he read the card stuck in the glove there.

  The card buried in his hand was called the Death.

  26

  A Sniper Is Burned

  Albion

  I thought it was mighty stupid of a man to try to sneak up on a sniper’s nest without any sort of weapon. But I did it anyway, since the sniper was preoccupied with somebody else. As I passed an upturned lorry, I hurled my highly visible buccaneer coat into its shadow for safekeeping. Victoria was warm in my holster.

  The seventy-caliber airship buster lay at the sniper’s feet. I could see it through the pocket glass. Its explosive cartridges and steam propellant were spent, the portable engine supplying both discarded nearby. A sooty residue dripped from the edge of the cathedral’s tiny balcony. The sniper was using an elephant gun now, trying to hit somebody holed up on the street.

  I thought it was an illusion, but for a moment I saw a floppy Stetson disappear behind a kiosk. The stacked vodka bottles in the window blurred the light coming through it, so I couldn’t be sure. But I ran towards it anyway, hoping beyond hope that Captain Samuel was the one hiding behind the kiosk. Overhead, the Balaenopteron spat a gout of flame, lighting the slate clouds a brilliant orange.

  Now the sniper squeezed off a shot, turning a mirror on the red cabriolet into a glittering cloud of debris. The round passed through the fragile part and dug itself into the street, gouging a neat teardrop shape. I expected the man with the Stetson to reappear. Instead, a short man with ginger-tipped black hair emerged from a tipped-over lorry on the other side of the square. Blair! He was wearing a duster that could not have concealed a rifle.

  “All right!” Blair announced. “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed!”

  The mangled bodies lying at the bottom of this very perch stood testament to the sniper’s busy afternoon. The sniper took aim, sending a needle of guilt through me. Blair was only in this because he had followed me! I leveled Victoria at the tiny balcony where the sniper held his nest.

  That was when the filigree railings near his elbow suddenly burst into iron splinters. The Stetson was right under it, pumping rounds into the nest one after another.

  “Damnation!” I heard a raspy, unnatural voice curse. The sniper pulled back from the edge of the window, momentarily halted. Blair yelped, ducking behind another steam car. “Blair! Are you all right?” Gunshots answered me, obscuring Blair’s answer. That was right; the Stetson couldn’t be sure who was the enemy. I ducked down, watching glass hail over my head. Then came a deathly silence.

  “Albion? Boy, is that you?” I heard echo through Red Square. It was the captain!

  But before either of us could answer, the Square shook with the impact of something heavy. Pebbles skittered across the ground. When I looked, I saw the sniper in a huge cloud of dust in the street under St. Basil’s. He cut a strange figure, standing there in front of the carnival colors of the cathedral behind him. The tatters of his hooded cloak hid all but the large silvery repeaters at the end of his arms. They were steamed clean and shiny, like the blades of scythes. Death before the House of God.

  Fireworks glittered in the cloud, and the Red Square filled with bullets.

  I got on my hands and knees, taking cover behind a steam car. A Guelder-Rose? Some other kind of cheap engine mass-manufactured for the people. Anyway, it was being reduced to mangled steel slowly enough to provide a little cover

  “What!” I heard Blair’s voice come, inexplicably clear, but the air rang with a hurricane of shredding metal.

  “You son of a—!” I heard Captain Sam cry, and the bark of a heavy revolver.

  Emitting a stream of expletives, I popped over the bonnet of the car and let Victoria have her say. Almost immediately the car began to disintegrate, its cheese-colored surface going all Swiss with holes. I ducked down immediately, screaming. It felt like being pinned down by a Gatling, except from the tiny glimpse I had seen, the sniper had switched to a pair of boxy repeaters. Long belts had hung from them, full of bullets. The strange guns were steaming from every vent as they reduced Red Square to rubble.

  The sniper turned and sprayed a vodka kiosk with bullets. I could feel, in the air, the boxy weapons thrum on smooth, lubricated axles. Through a hole in the car I saw bullets tear into the kiosk like termites in a house, filling it with holes and shredded newsprint until the little painted shed collapsed on itself. The remains caught with periwinkle-blue flames; there must have been something with a little kick in stock.

  The machines in the sniper’s hands were wreathed in steam. Were his fingers still human, the flesh would have melted into sludge even through clanker greaves. But now I could see glimpses of steel flanks, huge hips wreathed in plate metal. Pneumatic whining accompanied the sniper’s every move. Worst of all, he had a plainly handsome face perched on that tangle of machine monstrosity.

  Neither Blair nor Captain Sam were in the kiosk anymore. Ringing echoed in the square as the sniper’s chest took fire. The sound was like tiny sleigh bells. Not even a dent, I noted, and didn’t bother using Victoria again. Instead, I fingered the Red Special in the other holster. How many chances would I have to get at The Nidhogg’s core? But Captain Sam was here...I felt my chest clench, a war between my better self and something darker.

  That was when a lighter tinkle announced the appearance of Blair’s courage. He had stood up and planted two derringer shots into Mordemere’s abomination. They rang against the sniper’s chest, doing no damage. But it did make him pause, his repeaters ratcheting down to a stop.

  “Really? A fucking derringer?” the sniper asked of the ginger-tip firing at him from the cover of an overturned engine. He gave the broad side of it a good hosing, pitting the cheap Zebra until it looked more like a spotted giraffe. As if on principle, I got the impression. His heart wasn’t in it. I heard Blair screaming through the gunfire.

  “All right, all right, I’m coming out!” Blair announced. He stood up, throwing aside his tiny derringer as he did.

  “No!” I said quietly on my side of the Square.

  “What are you, a moron? I’m going to kill you,” said the sniper.

  “The sword was never my strong point. I’m more the pen type,” said Blair.

  The bookish bumpkin actually thought the soldier would talk with him. In all likelihood this was some strange kind of clanker, and clankers were killers. Ex-military, mercenaries, cold-hearted murderers who had nowhere else to turn. There were rumors of the clanker armor turning men into even more sadistic psychopaths. He would put one in the heart, and another in the brain, quick and easy. He would be merciful.

  “Wait, wait! Your other mark is getting away,” Blair said.

  “You think I’m a
s green as that?” the sniper replied. “I’m going to turn around, and your friend will put one in my face while you put one in my back. News for you, the clanker suit doesn’t penetrate easy.”

  “I was about to say, you could use me as a hostage. Make it easier for you to find my friend.”

  That was smart, and the sniper would never expect it. He stopped, pausing to think about it. I poked Victoria through the tiny hole in the car, aiming for the sniper’s head. Now I could see it, the soldier’s noggin was clearly flesh and blood. The crotch was a bigger target, but that whole area was tubing and copper cup. I wondered–if he tried to scratch there, would he find a pair of purely cosmetic tin bearings? He must have been feeling a little reckless and pissed off.

  The sniper motioned Blair—that lunatic—over and kicked his knees out from under him. A couple of gestures later and Blair’s wrists were together over his head, hot muzzles threatening at every turn.

  Red Square was quiet, even the burning of debris reduced to a background crackle. I heard a murmur of Blair speaking quietly with the sniper.

  Even a minute of waiting seemed far too long. I expected the sniper to put one in Blair’s scalp at any moment. But there really wasn’t very long to wait. Valima Mordemere’s ship was moving into position. In another few minutes it would burst through the few Balaenopterons in its way and be in place to collect its prize. Where was Captain Sam? The old captain would have put a stop to this. He would have never let someone else take a shot meant for him.

  I adjusted my aim, waiting for the sniper to move into position. His steps hissed steam, and there were gaps in his body where the steel had been drilled to save weight. Reduced to a clanking skeleton. I did not want the bullet to pass straight through. It might hit Blair, who was still talking, amazingly enough.