Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (39 page)

“My father told us of your discovery of the Founders zeppelin disguised as one of ours, and your apology for your reprisal raid,” Bismarck said. “But I cannot say I blame you for what you did at the time. It hurt us both. I blame no one but Fawkes himself.”

“Aye,” Valkyrie said.

“The Founders airship arrived early this morning, unannounced, just before dawn,” Bismarck said. “A biretta-hatted lackey disembarked—a noxious little prattler named Wallach—and told us to prepare for the arrival of their ambassador at nine o’clock this morning.”

Buckle took out his pocket watch and held it under the green glow of one of the boil lamps: it was 8:27 in the morning.

“The Founders ambassador did not come on the airship?” Washington asked.

“Oddly, no,” Bismarck replied. “He is arriving by locomotive.”

“Locomotive?” Valkyrie asked, stunned. “No locomotive has rolled into New Berlin for fifty years.”

“Fifty years, exactly. But the tracks are still there, more or less,” Bismarck said. “And the Founders ambassador is coming by train.”

THE RAILWAY STATION

T
HE ARMORED MOTORCAR CAME TO
an abrupt, steam-wheezing, creaking halt. The armor-plated door was heaved open, and Buckle emerged into a day of cloudy brightness, eyes blinking. The windy bluster of the open air was a fresh wake-up, quite welcome, and under the monumental vault of the sky, he felt more at home. In front of him, behind the Imperial cavalrymen, a double set of railway tracks ran along the edge of the cliff twenty paces beyond.

Buckle turned around to peer up at the Imperial railway station, an architectural marvel that had been dazzlingly hewn out of the very face of the mountain cliff itself. Overlooking the castle-like facade of ramparts and turrets was a gigantic iron eagle, wings spread, perched atop an iron cross on the highest gable. The exterior metals suffered from severe corrosion, their bolts and undersides running with waterfalls of rust, while the stones showed the omnipresent fissures caused by expanding ice and other signs of erosion.

Sabrina and Washington were soon at Buckle’s side, followed by Valkyrie, Bismarck, and Rainer. The household cavalrymen surrounded them, forming a cordon of cuirasses and steel helmets.

A cavalry captain politely ushered the group forward. “Please, Princess, Ambassador, ladies and gentlemen,” the captain urged. “Let us get inside, shall we?”

“I must say, Captain Albard,” Bismarck said. “Well done.”

“Thank you, Prince Smelt,” Albard replied, his olive eyes serious between his prodigious brown mustache and the polished brim of his pickelhaube. “It is not safe for you out here,” he said, stepping forward to lead the way. “Quickly, if you please.”

The cavalrymen escorted Buckle and the others through the towering glass-and-bronze front doors of the railway station, guarded by two magnificently rendered marble statues of warhorses, with armor plates on their skulls and swords on their saddles.

The towering grandeur and wide-open space of the Imperial railway terminal stunned Buckle’s senses. The walls of the rectangular edifice soared up six stories to a roof constructed almost entirely of glass, the panes coated with a mix of snow and coal debris that imparted a glowing, liquid softness to the sunlight illuminating the room.

Sabrina elbowed Buckle, blinking and grinning as she looked up alongside him, taking off her derby. “Grand as they get, aye!” she whispered.

The station was surely nothing short of an architectural and engineering masterpiece, far finer than anything Buckle had ever seen. Arched doorways led away at every cardinal point, set in walls carved in glorious stone reliefs with ornately curved iron crosses. Old, discolored flags hung from marble facades, their folds thick with dust, framed by sculptures of hunting eagles and condors. The huge bronze-and-glass doors dominated the front of the building, opening onto the railway platform and the endless gray sky past the edge of the cliff beyond.

Light drifts of stone powder, chunky with marble fragments, sloshed around Buckle’s boots as he walked, impregnating the air with dust. The grand Imperial station had been transformed
into a sculptors’ work studio: the original wooden benches were stacked high against the back wall to make room for a crowd of haphazardly arranged tables crowding the floor, some covered in small, rough-hewn statues, unfinished, emerging from the marble blocks that held them, others piled under hundreds of stone-cutting implements, buckets for chemical plasters, and smocks.

At the center of the room stood a huge, mostly completed statue of a pawing stallion, perhaps twenty feet high at the shoulder, nostrils flaring, tongue loose, eyes wide, saddled but riderless, a snapped spear gushing blood from its right flank, every muscle poised to initiate the final, defiant charge, to break free from the fortress of wooden scaffolding penning it in.

Chancellor Smelt, dressed in his usual military grandeur, stood in the middle of the room with four Imperial household cavalrymen near at hand. “Ambassador Washington, Captain Buckle, and the dauntless Lieutenant Serafim,” Smelt said, without his usual venom. “Welcome to New Berlin.”

“Thank you, Chancellor,” Washington replied. “I wish our visit came under more auspicious circumstances.”

“I profoundly apologize for the tight security. I am afraid the day has come that the avenues of New Berlin have become unsafe for the Smelts,” Smelt said ruefully.

As they approached Chancellor Smelt, Buckle could see that the man was agitated—no, incensed—and his eyes sought out his children.

“What is it, Father?” Valkyrie asked, also having sensed Smelt’s dismay, a hint of unguarded worry in her voice.

“There has just been an attempt on your mother’s life,” Smelt said.

“What?” Rainer gasped. “Where was the guard?”

Valkyrie and Bismarck stopped before their father; they were well trained, stoic, but their eyes flickered—Buckle knew that their hearts were pounding.

“What is Mother’s condition?” Bismarck asked calmly.

Smelt placed his hands on his children’s shoulders. “Fear not, my dear offspring. She is unhurt beyond suffering a shock, and she has Briar Rose and her chambermaids to comfort her now. The assassin was killed in her bedchamber, in the very heart of our manor, just a few moments ago.”

“Thank the grace of the Oracle,” Bismarck muttered.

“Thank the household cavalry,” Smelt said, and looked to Albard. “Your brave man, Lieutenant Murat, gutted the fiend on the spot.”

“The Founders dogs,” Albard snarled under his breath. “The curs!”

“I am overjoyed that the queen escaped unscathed, Chancellor,” Washington said. “Where is the Founders ambassador?”

“The man here now, the one that came on the airship—the name of Wallach—is not the ambassador,” Smelt answered. “Just a foul-tongued herald, an envoy. I stalled him, then sent him the long way, in one of my royal carriages, hoping that one of his own assassins might blow him up by mistake. He will probably arrive without incident, unfortunately.” Smelt turned to Valkyrie and Bismarck, his gaunt frame taut with anger. “The snakes are loose, children. Watch yourselves, in everything that you do. In every move that you make.”

“We shall be vigilant, Father,” Valkyrie replied softly.

“The cat is out of the bag, Ambassador,” Smelt said, turning to face Washington. “If it ever was in it, which I doubt. I have sent a fast clipper to the Devil’s Punchbowl with a warning
for your clan. I cannot imagine but that the Founders have also dispatched assassins to your stronghold as well.”

“Thank you, Chancellor. You have done us all a great service,” Washington said.

“I assure you that you are safe here,” Smelt said. “We are sneaking about like cellar mice, but I keep no secrets from the household cavalry.”

A burly Imperial cavalryman strode in through one of the tall doors. “The Founders envoy has arrived, chancellor.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Krupp,” Smelt said, then turned to Buckle. “I was hoping the infamous brute wouldn’t make it here alive.”

THE ENVOY

T
HE
F
OUNDERS ENVOY
, W
ALLACH
,
SLITHERED
into the grand Imperial railway station holding a large pewter pocket watch, flanked on each side by two Imperial cavalrymen with their hands on their scabbards. Wallach was a small, slight man, dark eyed, clean shaven, and unsettlingly pale skinned, draped in a long black-hooded cloak with red facings. His four-cornered red biretta stood out oddly against his short-cropped orange hair. Wallach glared at Smelt. “Traveling in armored buggies, are we, Chancellor? Such things do not become you.”

Buckle saw Wallach immediately notice Sabrina’s red hair, readily visible now that she had tucked her derby under her arm.

“Our means of conveyance is of no concern to you, sir,” Valkyrie replied dismissively.

“You are mistaken, Princess,” Wallach snapped. “Since you are a Founders family—bred by us, fathered by us—your well-being is of every concern to me.”

This is fascinating, Buckle thought. If Wallach represented the attitudes of the Founders—and there was no reason to believe that he did not—then the Founders still believed that they ruled the colonies they had lost a hundred years before.

“Watch your tone, sir,” Albard said, his voice dripping with menace.

Smelt stepped in front of the much shorter Wallach. “It takes all of my self-control, sir,” Smelt said, “to keep from drawing my sword and piercing your heart right here and now. My wife and nobles have been attacked. I demand you call off your assassins!”

“You vent your spleen upon an innocent, Chancellor,” Wallach replied, scratching his neck in a detached fashion. “I am nothing more than a lowly envoy, a messenger who knows nothing of what you speak.”

“I have warned you,” Smelt growled.

Washington was silent, but he very deliberately stepped up alongside Smelt.

Buckle decided not to be silent. “If you think that any of us shall stand aside while you Founders try to conquer the world, you are sorely mistaken, sir.”

If Wallach was perturbed he did not show it, barely glancing at Buckle; he held up his pocket watch, a bizarre timepiece with a red face and black hands. “It is eight fifty-six. Let us assemble on the platform and welcome the ambassador back to his loyal colony, shall we?”

“We have not been your
colony
for a very long time,” Smelt snapped.

“I shall allow the ambassador to resolve that little misunderstanding,” Wallach said. “Shall we?”

Smelt raised his hand. Two cavalrymen hurried forward to the front doors, slipping aside the bronze latches and swinging one of the great portals open. A whistling burst of mountain air swept in, raising whirlwinds of white stone powder. Wallach led the group out onto the platform, followed closely by Smelt, Washington, Rainer, and Albard.

It was like following a hangman, Buckle thought.

Passing out the doors and under the high archways of the train platform overlooking the high cliff, Buckle felt like he was facing the edge of the world.

“Here it comes,” Albard said, his binoculars pressed to his eyes, looking southwest.

Buckle drew his telescope from his hat and stepped alongside Albard, finding the train in the lens as it came around a bend in the cliff. Two identical locomotives surged at the head of the train, metal monstrosities, hulking masses of iron plates and riveted window bubbles—the cars were likely sealed for transit through the noxious mustard—their driving wheels issuing rivers of vapor into the freezing air, their double smokestacks wreathed in clouds of black smoke.

The first locomotive pushed a big armored pod with a cantilevered plow that glowed red hot at the blade edges, melting the ice in great waves of hissing steam as it scraped the rails clear of decades of accumulated debris. Two massive iron arms, affixed to the armored pod, gripped the tracks behind the plow with iron claws, designed to straighten the rails before the locomotive wheels reached them.

A steam whistle blew. The locomotives slowed to a halt. The hatchways of the armored pod flung open, and men began to pour out of the hatches.