Mainspring

by Jay Lake

  THE WINGED savages kicked Hethor awake the next morning. He felt shrunken, dried out. His tongue was a strip of leather. One of them handed him a broken gourd that proved to contain a small amount of water.

  Where had they gotten that?

  Hethor drank, eager but slow. He was terrified of spilling the liquid. He broke off a few fragments of the gourd for something to have in his mouth.

  He was almost feeling well again until they seized his sheep-ropes and dove over the edge of the ledge. Wings snapped wide to take to the air as the gleaming dawn of the world was spread below him.

  This was certainly the place where Satan had taken the Brass Christ to tempt Him with the kingdoms of the Northern Earth. Seeing the kingdoms of the Northern Earth mostly made Hethor ill and frightened, summoning a scream from his depths that he had to work to swallow without releasing.

  They continued to climb, but today his previously tireless captors seemed slower. Hethor worked on his nerve, peeking through squinted eyes at the world below him now and again, trying to reverse the fear. Wherever they were taking him, “up” figured prominently. Hethor would have little use for his terror. It would not serve him on his mission from Gabriel, to find the Key Perilous and wind the Mainspring.

  So he concentrated instead on his hunger and his thirst, ordinary and reasonable demands of the body however extreme they had become. He let that distraction occupy his fears while he looked across the kingdoms of the Northern Earth. Once the veil of fear was drawn aside, he saw that the world was beautiful.

  THE AIR grew thinner and colder through the day, the Wall increasingly desolate. The winged savages were definitely moving even more slowly now. Either they were tiring or up here they were less buoyed by whatever supernatural power lent them the immense speed and ferocity they had displayed at the lower altitudes. Hethor began to stare upward, at the stars that shared the sunlit sky, hoping for a clear look at the brass gearing that topped the Wall.

  With a rush they were over the lip of a cliff. The ground was flat instead of rising. Though the air was cold and thin, there were orchards and fields and copses of wilder woods. Behind it all, set back several miles from the cliff edge, rose a towering cliff face of brass.

  Hethor looked up to see the angle of the gear teeth making a valley within the brass almost directly in front of him. He estimated at least a mile from the ground to the base of the tooth, with the angles rising past any sense of distance he could find—there was nothing by which to judge. The brass gearing was pure and unsullied, in contrast to the Wall’s teeming lands of people and creatures and wondrous cities.

  Here was the very touch of God’s hand.

  Hethor closed his eyes in silent prayer for a moment as the winged savages skimmed over the orchards. He traced the horofix in the air before him with a trembling, fearful hand. When he looked again, his captors were depositing him in front of an imposing building, releasing the sheep’s tendon ropes before spiraling away on the thin air. They ignored him as though he’d never been there in the first place.

  Just like that, he was alone.

  The building rose in front of him in the style of one of the fabled temples of the Middle Kingdom. Somehow even the thought that the Chinese might already have conquered the Wall couldn’t stir Hethor’s concern. The structure was tall, perhaps four floors in height above the substantial marble foundation, with red lacquered pillars and a green tiled roof that swept to an upward curve at each end. Narrow windows almost the full height of the faded yellow walls punctuated the face of the temple—Hethor knew this had to be a temple—their frames filled with a carved wooden filigree that reminded him of the scenes woven into the wicker panels of the vertical city far, far below.

  But most importantly, an ornamental pond shimmered in the walkway just in front of Hethor. Golden carp flickered among the water lilies. He staggered forward to collapse into the pool, letting the cold water enclose his sore, chapped skin, his bloody lips, sucking it into his thirsty mouth, then spitting it out almost as fast when he choked, only to drink it in again.

  At that moment Hethor would have traded his soul to be a fish.

  He eventually sat up, his throat and gut aching, needing desperately to urinate, and wishing that there was food to hand. Hethor solved the urgent problem first. He then briefly considered the carp before stripping a water lily loose to chew on its pale underwater root. The orchards behind him, perhaps.

  It was a place to make him believe the wildest tales of the magics and sorcery of Southern Earth, as real and miraculous as the saints of the Brass Christ.

  Dripping, he climbed out of the pond to stand shaky on the tiled walk. The sheep’s tendons still clung to him. They were wound tight. Hethor spent some minutes working the dreadful things free. As the wind and the cold air were chilling him, he reluctantly abandoned his ideas about the orchard in favor of the shelter of the temple’s pillared portico.

  He glanced back as he stumbled along the walk. There were stout, hairy men among the trees now, wrapped in orange robes. None returned his looks that he could see, but Hethor thought he recognized them from the city of the stone man-towers. Or not-men, perhaps. These folk had something of apes about them in both their hairiness and in the flatness of their faces with enormous nostrils and sloped foreheads.

  There were three marble stairways ascending in parallel to the temple portico. Carvings covered marble ramps between them, depicting dragons chasing clouds up their slope. Hethor chose the right-hand way. With a grip on the marble banister, he limped upward. He wanted to be out of the wind very badly. Climbing the stairs was making his legs shiver and threaten to fold flat. Even after slaking himself in the fish pond, his thirst was still great to the point of madness.

  The portico at the top faced three wooden doors, each lacquered red in the Chinese fashion. These doors were as tall and almost as narrow as the windows farther along the face of the building. There were gold filigree panels inset upon them, no broader than Hethor’s hand, but running high up the door. Above the doors was a large blue panel with Chinese writing on it in gold, incomprehensible as Hethor’s lost tablet.

  He stepped to the closest doorway and saw that the threshold was a high beam, just like in the vertical city miles below. Hethor touched the door panel with his fingertips. It swung noiselessly open. Dust-specked light beckoned from inside, golden beams falling from some high clerestory. Furniture loomed in the shadows like monsters in a well.

  Hethor stepped over the high threshold. Immediately he was out of the cold wind and into a silence so profound it seemed to echo. The peace was broken only by the faintest susurration, as if someone whispered in the distance, or walked carefully in shoes of silk. The sun-dappled hall was easier to see once his eyes adjusted to the interior. Enormous tapestries hanging on the walls featured bulk-muscled devils or gods with skin of unlikely hues and far too many eyes. Low lacquered tables stood beneath the hangings, their legs slightly bowed out, each holding a vase or bowl or jade statuette. The center of the room was dominated by a great metal statue. Or perhaps it was a suit of armor. Though with a height of almost ten feet, Hethor was unsure who would wear such a thing.

  The vases and bowls placed artfully about did not seem to be the sort that might contain water or food, so Hethor resolved to strike farther in. As he walked past the metal statue, one great arm shot out, a gloved fist the size of his head nearly touching Hethor’s chest. It made no noise at all.

  He shrieked and jumped backward. The distant sounds fell to utter silence as the armored head swiveled to face him. Was there a gleam within the dark eyeslit of the helmet?

  “I need water,” Hethor gasped.

  The armor turned in place, still eerily quiet, then walked away from him, into the interior of the temple. Stumbling in his chill and his fright, Hethor followed it.

  The journey was short, but astonishing. They passed through a series of similar rooms—high-beamed thresholds, tapestries on the wall, dusty sunlight from above—each
holding different works of art or science. In his urgency to keep up with the walking armor, Hethor did not stop to look. Nonetheless some things caught his eye.

  There was a boulder of jade, taller than he was, worked cunningly into the semblance of a mountain, or perhaps the face of the Equatorial Wall itself. Tiny roads were carved into it, little farms, villages, even castles and stout walls around which jade battles raged. He could have stared at that alone for hours.

  Another room held a man whose waist was embedded in a tabletop. A chessboard was set in front of him. The man was turbaned and bearded like a Turk, grinning and glaring from his dark-skinned visage. Hethor, briefly startled, realized that this was an automaton—a gaming machine of some sort. Others of the same ilk lined that room, but he was still staring at the Turk as he passed through. The Turk’s head swiveled to stare back.

  On they went, through rooms filled with armaments and maps, animals stuffed and mounted, a demiglobe of the Northern Earth rendered in stained glass and silver. Finally the armor stopped before a set of doors that seemed no different from the rest. There it resumed its ordinary, settled state.

  Hethor edged past the enormous metal thing—for all its mobility surely another automaton like the Turk, as it had never spoken or even breathed to the best of his hearing—and pushed at the middle one of this last set of doors.

  The interior of the next room was white, much brighter than the dark reds and golds through which he had passed. There were wider windows and floor mats woven of welcoming straw. A man in a blue jacket sat with his back to Hethor, cross-legged on the floor, facing a low red bed or couch on which a sallow man in saffron robes sat, also cross-legged.

  “Welcome,” said the sallow man. Hethor realized his host was Chinese, though the man spoke ordinary English. “Your journey has been long and perilous.”

  The other stood and turned—it was Simeon Malgus!

  “You … ,” Hethor began, then stopped. He was shocked at seeing this man who had been lost to the winged savages.

  As he himself had been lost, Hethor realized—at least from the point of view of Bassett’s captain and crew. Was Malgus on a mission from God as well? The navigator had hinted at such in Georgetown, when he seized Hethor’s notes and warned him away from further inquiries. As for Firkin’s last words to him … the doctor must have known Malgus’ true nature.

  “And you,” Malgus said. “Welcome, Seaman Jacques. Though I don’t suppose you’re here on a sortie from Captain Smallwood.”

  “I was taken by those winged savages. Just as you were.” Or by you, Hethor thought with a chill shiver of betrayal.

  “They are not savages,” said the Chinese gently. “All of Creation serves God, though some of His creatures pursue purposes opaque to such as you and I.”

  “They tore apart five of our men to capture him,” Hethor protested. He pointed an accusing finger at Malgus.

  The Chinese bowed slightly from the waist, hands palm-to-palm in front of him. “How many died for you to be brought here?”

  “At least three,” Hethor said grudgingly. “Probably more.”

  “Are you to blame?”

  “No, I—”

  “When people fight them,” Malgus interrupted, “they fight back.”

  “But—” Hethor stopped himself. Then: “You sent them, didn’t you?”

  Malgus’ face flickered with the ghost of a smile. “I no more call the winged savages than I can call the storm.”

  Hethor gave the Chinese a long, slow look. “You, then? They did not come to me on their own.”

  “Who am I to say?” He tipped his head forward. “Enough,” he said. “I neglect my hospitality to you.” He pressed his palms together again. “I am the abbot of the Jade Temple. The esteemed Mister Malgus you already know.” He paused. The silence invited Hethor to speak.

  Hethor stopped, took a deep breath. “I am Hethor Jacques, a seaman on Her Imperial Majesty’s ship Bassett, of late stolen away by those creatures. I began as a clockmaker’s apprentice of New Haven, Connecticut. In New England. In America. And I am very thirsty and hungry.”

  “I know where Connecticut is,” said the Jade Abbot gently. “And I know what it means to suffer terrible thirst and hunger.” He clapped his hands once, very gently. Hairy men of the same race as those in the orchards outside promptly streamed into the room. Their robes were orange as well, and their hairy feet were bare.

  This group brought trays to set before the Jade Abbot, Simeon Malgus, and Hethor, along with great ewers of water, lengths of linen, and a small stool for Hethor to sit upon. They came and went in one lengthy, sinuous movement, as the waves wrapped around the rocks upon the Connecticut beaches. They left only their offerings behind.

  Hethor studied his tray for a moment, even as he reached a trembling hand for a ceramic cup of crystal water. There were dates, olives, apricots, along with a seed-covered dark purple fruit he could not name. Little balls of rice with bits of vegetable in them. Flat leaves rolled up around yellow paste. A small bowl of steaming soup that smelled both alien and delicious.

  Chinese cooking? Hethor had heard of monkey brains and dog stew and warm plates of slugs. This food was appetizing, almost ordinary even in its unfamiliarity.

  Malgus had a similar tray, but the Jade Abbot’s held only two dates and a pomegranate. Hethor sipped his water as the Jade Abbot folded his hands again.

  “Homage to the Divine, homage to the Spirit, homage to the Community,” said the Abbot. “Blessing on this food and those who made it.”

  “Thanks be to God,” Hethor said. He knew a prayer when he heard one, even if it was to some heathen Chinese deity.

  For a while he became lost in the flavors on the tray. The fruits were wonderfully fresh, the seed-covered one filled with a tart, fibrous flesh pale as ice. The rice balls were tangy, the soup vinegary and sour and peppery all at once, while the paste within the leaves proved to be an unexpected admixture of bananas and corn. The smells wove with the tastes to settle Hethor’s stomach and smooth his sense of self back to something resembling the ordinary.

  Hethor finally emerged from the spell of the food to find both the Jade Abbot and Simeon Malgus studying him. The Abbot had not touched his sparse meal. Malgus snacked slowly.

  “I’m sorry,” Hethor said, unsure what he was apologizing for.

  The Jade Abbot smiled. “Sometimes there is immense pleasure in observing the satisfaction of others.”

  “Feel better?” Malgus asked.

  Hethor poured out some more water and took a long drink before answering. “Yes,” he said, “though I expect I should clean my clothes soon.”

  Malgus nodded, with the ghost of a wink.

  The Jade Abbot smiled. “Now that you are rested and returned to sound mind, how may I help you?”

  Hethor studied Malgus for a moment. “What is he doing here? For that matter, what am I doing here?”

  The Jade Abbot also stared at Malgus, who cleared his throat and stared briefly at his hands before meeting Hethor’s eye.

  “As should be clear to you, I am not merely an officer in Her Imperial Majesty’s navy.” Malgus sighed. “I took an oath at my commission, which I continue to regard seriously. But I also serve other, higher callings.”

  Nothing is higher than this place, Hethor thought, save the gears themselves.

  Malgus continued. “On the other side of the Equatorial Wall lies the Southern Earth. It is vastly different from our contentious, industrialized Northern Earth. Where we have smoky mills and laboring children and great cities of brick and wood, the Southern Earth has cathedral forests whose dwellers live free of misery, without even the need of labor for their daily fare. Where we have competing empires shaking the very air with the thunder of their cannon, the Southern Earth shakes to the thunder of hooves as great beasts migrate across endless plains. Where England and China each struggle to bend Creation to their will, the Southern Earth abides comfortably in the lap of God’s world. As man was meant to
do.”

  “So you are an agent of the South?”

  “No, no.” Malgus shook his head, irritated. “It is not so simple. There is no ‘South,’ in the sense that there is a China or an England. There are just races, the hairy men and the fliers among them, who live side by side with men very similar to ourselves. There are animals and forests and oceans untrammeled by steel and flags. If I am an agent, I suppose I am an agent of Creation.” His voice trailed off a moment; then Malgus gave Hethor a look that was almost haunted. “But yes, it could be said that in part I serve the interests of those who abide in the Southern Earth.”

  Hethor was skeptical, but could not find it in himself to be scandalized. “As well as your oath to the queen?”

  “In a practical sense,” said the Jade Abbot in a pleasant voice. “Do not be swift to judgment. Malgus takes counsel with me from time to time. I have certain … counterparts on both sides of the Wall. Every soul has its place in Creation. Some of us are blessed with an occasional glimpse of how those places are fitted together.”

  He would find no higher, holier destination than this, Hethor realized. As best he could tell, Malgus had never betrayed his trusts, not directly. Though he supposed Captain Smallwood might see that question quite differently. Nevertheless, the Jade Abbot was a man closer to God than Hethor ever would be.

  “So you are holy, and Malgus is worthy. What about me? At least three men died to bring me here. Why?”

  “Were you not bound upward already?” the Jade Abbot asked gently.

  “I am searching for …” He had been so cautious of his tale, since the disaster at the viceroy’s court in Boston. Perhaps it was time to entrust his story to words again. “I met the archangel Gabriel,” Hethor blurted. “He came to me in New Haven with a message. Was he one of those winged sav—flyers?”

  “Are you a savage?” The Jade Abbot’s eyes sparkled with amusement.

  “No. Neither do I resemble an angel.”