Steamscape (16 page)

He stopped, but listened to his footsteps still echoing against the walls for a moment. The cement underneath his feet rumbled. He hopped back.

The concrete swelled up in front of him like a bursting bubble. Pieces broke apart as the ground punched up from below with the sound of snapping bones.

Theo stared as a huge metal pole exploded up from the ground. Torn wiring stuck out of it like a frightened cat’s tail. It sparked a couple of times and died.

A tiny aether band curled around it, drifting up past Theo’s nose. He stared cross-eyed at it.

The ground began to fall in on itself.

He jumped. A gray curtain of gas erupted like a geyser out of the hole, sending him careening for balance. He spun on his heel and tried to sprint.

The collapsing alley was faster and it snatched him into the earthen maw. He grabbed at the pieces of flying cement, but nothing was anchored enough for him to grab onto. More chunks bounced off his skull and into darkness.

And then… he wasn’t falling. Nothing had caught him, but all of his weight seemed to have left his body. He gasped, or at least he tried to. There was nothing to inhale.

He screamed. There was no sound. His throat ached and he felt the air passing from his lungs and through his mouth, but not a whisper escaped him. His blood felt like it was boiling and all he knew was coldness. So cold that it didn’t even feel cold anymore.

He held up a hand in front of his face and wondered where the light was coming from. Lights. Hundreds tiny little lights swirled in this void.

A blob of luminous color passed between his hand and his nose. It shifted through the colors of a prism, drifting through this place like oil in water.

It passed. Dozens more floated around him, drawn toward his body. Then he noticed how his fingers were changing from bright red to a pale blue at the tips in these strange lights.

He tried to scream again, but he felt like he was choking. His lungs were aching. He inhaled desperately, but there was no air.

Something grabbed his foot and yanked him up.

Now he had nothing left to scream with. Something pulled him through what looked like a cloudy updraft and then suddenly he was back in the alley.

He hacked and heaved, but he was breathing again. His head throbbed like it had been hit with an axe and his vision was blurred. He curled up into a ball.

Drina coiled her makeshift lasso. “Leash was a good idea. What is that?”

Theo dared to open an eye, chest still heaving.

“It couldn’t be…” Jing trailed off.

“Aether.” Flame stuck out his hand into the slowly rising gray fountain, tittering as the weightless cloud drifted between his fingers like silk. Twists of rainbows curled in and out of the band. The stream rose high up between the buildings to join its brother bands in the sky and above.

Theo gulped. The fifth element was only visible when it was in contact with the other four material elements. That was why the sky always had aether bands high up in it where the air met the edge of the sky.

Theo held his heaving chest and stuck his fingers under his arms. What was such a concentration doing buried under an alley? Someone had committed a corruption of nature.

***

The buggy bounced as its wheels rolled over the gravel road. Solindra bit her lip much harder than she’d intended when the carriage hit another pothole. She stared through the narrow windshield while her hands fumbled with the control levers. The vessel still didn’t even know what half of those gauges meant, but she’d figured out speed and engine pressure.

She’d never driven before – not even a buggy with a horse – but she’d grown up under Jing’s tutorship and would be damned if this could beat her.

And that blimp ride! She’d thought sky-sailing in such luxury would quell her stomach, but that indulgence hadn’t been in Adri’s plans. They’d spent the entire trip in some dark corner by the door with the cold air pressing through the seams. When the blimp had docked at a waystation in the mountains, they’d slinked off.

Solindra had thought this would be like home, but it was Steampower-built, owned and operated. It ran like clockwork: efficient and mechanical. The blimp’s staff had even come off the airship to run the waystation. No one had been there before them, and no one after.

Almost no one. Adri and Solindra had waited until the blimp was climbing higher than the foggy mountains before stealing the steam buggy from the waystation’s carriage house.

Solindra grinned. She’d never stolen anything before! Of course, the question of why Adri had stolen something that she had free access to had been nagging her for the entire trip, but she did her best to ignore the question.

Now her attention was on this slender, rocky road. But it was smoothing out and widening as they drove down into the valley.

“Codic!” She gasped and pointed. “I see it!” She jerked on the levers and gears, slowing the buggy to a halt.

“Hm?” Adri raised her head, absently pulling off her dark wig. The reclining couch had been bolted to the floor of the metal buggy.

Solindra pointed through the front windscreen. “Almost there.” The looming mountains were the outer walls of Codic’s fortress. The ancient city was squat and hunched compared to Redjakel’s soaring skyscrapers. Some of the buildings looked carved out from the native rock, rising high up into the backs of the mountains.

Adri patted Solindra’s shoulder. “Good work. Now perhaps we can end this war together.”

Theo’s mouth was still dry. He, Flame, Jing and Drina had backed into the cusp of a crowd staring at the rising pillar of aether. The column had consumed the entire alley. Cords and swirls of rainbow twisted around inside. No one had seen aether this close. It was always above the clouds, above the sky.

The Death Spinner tapped the bricoleur on the shoulder. “Watch for whoever seems to react differently from the rest of the crowd.”

“What? Why?” Theo hissed.

“Look for who doesn’t seem surprised, who seems angry instead.”

Theo took several short, sharp breaths and sliced his gaze away from the aether cloud. He scanned the crowd, looking for marks as if he were a child again. But his gaze was driven back to the aether. He’d never been so close. No one had ever been so close. All the fools who had tried with their hot air balloons never bragged about it, and they came down half-frozen or not at all.

Drina bumped him with her elbow. “Do act suitably awed. They might also be watching us.”

Jing loomed over them, but he kept his face toward the rising aether. “Steampower troops, seven o’clock.”

Theo sneaked a glance. They were staring as slack-jawed as the rest of the crowd. Then again, he guessed, the average grunt wouldn’t be guarding such a secret.

He didn’t even know how the aether could be contained. He didn’t dare think about who could have possibly done it. His mind closed that door before he could get a foot through it.

Flame kept striking matches with his calloused thumb and tossing them into the aether.

The broken pole with frayed wires laid at their feet. Jing tapped it with his boot, but didn’t move his eyes away from the cloud. “Containment barrier. Somehow, they contained it.”

“But it’s lighter than air. Obviously.” Drina nodded up to the heavenly aether bands.

“They put a roof on it, Death. That’s easy enough. I just don’t know how they got it down here in concentration. Where did they harvest it from, and how?”

Theo shivered and rubbed his still cold fingertips. No one could fly that high; everyone knew that.

Jing continued, “It’s dissolved in everything.”

“They sieved out the ghosts?” Theo asked incredulously.

“No, not in such a large field. I don’t know. But I damn well want to find out.”

Flame chuckled. “Everyone who has messed with pure aether has died. Oh, I know the stories that you mechanics swap.”

“’Scuse me. ‘Scuse me.” A blond boy, possibly about ten, was shoving his way through the crowd. He didn’t even glance at the impossible cloud, as if seeing such miracles were commonplace. “Hey! Anyone named Theodore Meilleur here? Mr. Meilleur?” The child put his hands on his hips. “Look, I was told he was here.” He waved a yellow paper over his head. “Telegram for Theodore Meilleur.”

Jing tapped Theo on the shoulder and pointed.

Theo barely glanced away from the aether. “That’s me, son. What are you–?”

“Telegram.” The youth shoved the paper into his hand and walked away.

“Uh, okay.” The bricoleur flipped the page over.

Drina plucked it from his hand before he could read it. “Paper can be poisoned, but the boy was holding it just fine. Oh my.”

“Death?” the mechanic prompted.

She passed him the note.

Flame whistled. “What is it?”

Theo took a half-hearted swipe at the missive. “It’s for
me
.”

“Smith,” she said.

Jing passed the telegram back to Theo. He turned it around. Stamped by the typewriter, the telegram stated, “Do not waste my time. C.S., Esq.”

Theo swallowed. “It’s proof he is after us, at least.”

“I can always set him on fire,” Flame pointed out.

“That’s not always the answer, you know,” Jing replied, still watching the rising aether. The colorful cloud was finally starting to shrink as the underground storage slowly depleted. He nudged the broken pole with all the wiring with his foot. “I fear we may have bigger troubles now. If there’s more of this, no one in this city is safe. Not us. Not Cylinder.”

Drina snapped her fingers. “Flame, we may need you to do what you do worst.”

The pyromaniac grinned and the fires sprung alight in his eyes.

The assassin said, “We make a run for Cyl at Steam Central. We’ll just have to deal with Smith along the way. Our best ally is speed, as well as breaking from the pattern that we’ve already built with him.”

Jing nodded. “Sounds like Silvermark. I agree.”

Flame raised his hand, which happened to have a clockwork grenade in it. “Can I also set fire to Steam Central?”

Drina batted his hand out of sight. “Sure, why not?”

“Okay, I agree then,” he replied.

Then they turned to Theo. He gulped and rubbed his still cherry-red fingertips. “I– I don’t know about this anymore.” He looked past the group to the hole, still silently spewing up the gray and colorful aether to the omnipresent bands in the sky.

***

Solindra dropped her gaze from the bands of aether high up against the heavens. They looked closer up here in the mountains. Much more like home.

That was the only thing similar. Solindra had dreamt of Codic, but she’d never imagined it correctly. Her magazines only had showcase pictures, apparently. She’d read about the Tears of the Sun Waterfall, but never imagined how high it fell over the city at the mountain’s base.

Codic’s buildings weren’t as sleek nor as tall as Redjakel’s, but there were more of them. The capital still had pieces of its medieval wall surrounding the city. It also smelled wrong, and not like the mountains should smell at all. There was no pine or even a chill on the wind. Codic’s few factories were busy pumping out heat and smoke.

Solindra looked back up to the aether bands. They were at least something familiar. She felt for the weight of the sancta in her pocket while Adri led her down another avenue, but she kept her eyes in the sky. She needed aether to make it work, and their world needed to run on the ghosts in the steam. But water ate aether like a fire eats wood.

She nearly ran into a child. The young girl turned her face toward her, never rustling her massive jade hoop dress, and just glared.

Solindra thought she’d nearly trampled a doll. They made dolls that moved like people on internal clockwork, but this was a real person. The girl’s face was painted white with extravagant rouge across her cheeks.

The vessel gulped and jogged around the girl after Adri. She had nearly lost the steam princess in a knot of people.

This was where she’d always wanted to be? She scrunched up her nose. It seemed too foreign. They passed by the fabrics emporiums, the dress stores, and even a chocolate shop. She remembered the day she’d torn out a picture of a chocolate fountain and pinned it up in her room for months.

But, as the smell of chocolate overwhelmed her, all she could think about was the Killing Train, or those downtrodden workers in Valhasse. Codic and Redjakel dozed in comfort and the war they had precipitated wasn’t even bothering them!

Solindra grimaced and marched after Adri. They were on a mission to stop this chaos. She accepted that. While they walked, several government soldiers tossed the steam princess a curious glance. They whistled and waved while Adri ignored them.

The vessel wheezed under the weight of the two haversacks and her father’s rifle on her back. She had been right about what was in the carrying case; she had peeked while Adri had dozed inside the carriage. Adri had not given her any ammunition for it though.

She was surprised to find that she liked the weight of the case. Of course, it was her father’s rifle, but that was the second thought in her mind. She liked the gun itself.

“Miss Adri?”

The steam princess glanced over from underneath her dark wig.

“What are we doing here?”

Adri smiled. “We’re attempting to end this fracas. You know that.”

“With what? Is there a peace treaty in one of these bags?”

The older woman shook her head. “Not so much. But as you witnessed, Papa doesn’t listen to me. I don’t have power to sign a peace treaty. I do, however, have information as well as… other things.”

They leaned into the slope of the rising hill.

After a moment, Solindra asked, “Like what?”

Adri paused. She glanced around the street and over her shoulder. She leaned close to Solindra. “Well, you might as well know. I have it on authority that my mother may,
may
, still be alive, and that’s what Papa wants.”

The vessel’s eyes widened. Adri grabbed her hands. “Please. This is a secret. I don’t actually
know
if she is. And I dared not say this where someone in Redjakel may have heard. I didn’t know you well enough in Steam Central. Please forgive me for keeping this secret until now.”

Solindra nodded.

Adri released her grip and risked a smile. “Thank you.”

“Are we here to break her out? Using our cipher medallions?” Solindra felt her heart hammering in her chest at the thought.

Adri frowned. “Do not be ridiculous. I am here to negotiate in a meeting.”

“Oh.” Solindra felt her blush rising up from her neck like an invading army. “But then why not tell your father? If he went to war over her–”

“Because I lack proof.” An edge glinted somewhere in the steam princess’s voice. “You are my servant, remember that.”

“I thought I was just playing your servant.”

“It doesn’t make a difference here.” Adri snapped her fan open with a sound like a gunshot.

“Well if we’re not using our crypter abilities, then why just the two of us? Surely some soldiers–”

“Solindra, respect!” Adri smoothed out the front of her dress. “Steampower crypters, here? I don’t think that would go over well.”

Solindra nearly tripped over her own boots. She stammered and felt embarrassingly pink in the face. “But-but, you could …”

Adri spun around like a twirling leaf and smiled. “Never fear. I have a plan, little bird.” She held out her hand. “Your sancta, please.”

“What?” Solindra turned her shoulder between herself and Adri. “No.”

“I can’t trust that you won’t attempt to use it here, especially since you are questioning me. I will not let your childish follies jeopardize my mission.”

The vessel stuffed her cipher medallion deeper into her pocket just as the street exploded.