Steamscape (19 page)

Solindra jerked her attention back to the nearest Reaper. He brought his sancta on level. It was like looking down the barrel of a gun. His expression was empty, bland even.

She did the only thing she could think of. She clenched her sancta and swung her arm around wide, stealing a swath of the boiling steam from the other Reaper’s attack and wrapping it around her attacker’s neck.

She jerked the cipher medallion down and it read her intention. The steam dropped down into his mouth and then his lungs.

His face twisted into a silent scream, but his throat no longer worked. Red and black burns circled his entire neck. His eyes bulged and his body convulsed as it burned.

Solindra looked at the device trembling in her hands. She felt like she should have burned her hand by now.

The body finally collapsed at her feet, horrified and blistered.

She yanked up the rifle, clutching it to her chest, unable to believe how lucky her panicked attack had been.

Only a few feet away, the two Reapers with their backs still to Solindra held their sanctas out at Adri. Steam slid along their arms in blasting, scalding streams.

Solindra dropped the rifle case’s strap over her head and crouched. She glanced between the exit path and Adri. She glanced at both again, unable to move.

Adri feinted toward the archway and then dived right between the two Reapers, somersaulting under their swings. She rolled right back to her feet and lunged for the path around the side of the water. She swung around, one hand on the railing to the exit path and beckoned rapidly at the vessel. The Reapers stood in front of the shadow of the mechanical arch with Solindra caught between them and Adri.

Adri threw out a hand. “This way! I will show you the power that these old fools have squandered by not combining it with our technology.”

The vessel started toward Adri. The Reapers were closing in from behind. But then she stopped, staring. She inched backward and shook her head. She glanced behind at the Reapers, raising their own cipher medallions and shook her head again.

Solindra adjusted her father’s rifle on her back and then pressed her sancta into her chest. She turned and leapt into the waterfall.

“I am aware that you don’t know where the vessel is.” Smith sat with his back to the wall inside the private lounge he had purchased for the evening. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have gone to Adri’s office.” He returned to writing out his letter to his employers in a smooth, flowing cursive.

“You were looking for clues to Solindra’s whereabouts too.” Theo glared hard at the bottle of spiced cider and the self-boiling pot of coffee beside it. The tiny boilerbox below the pouring jar hummed along nicely.

“Yes, and it appears that Adri is well armed in the civilized art of secret-keeping. I didn’t expect to find much, but even a careful man, or lady, gets careless at some point. The trick is to intercept that point.” He turned the letter over and kept writing. “For example, you did catch me off guard in the town with that nasty business with the children.”

Theo’s fingers seized tight against the handle of his coffee cup.

“Never fear, Mr. Meilleur. As a professional, I admire such temerity at times. I am not a vindictive man.”

“Lucky for me.”

“After this war, what are your career aspirations?” Smith didn’t stop writing to look up.

Theo coughed. “What?”

“A significant percentage of my comrades have fallen to Boras Saturni’s machinations. You were raised a bricoleur, so you’re familiar with the fundamentals of the aether ghosts.”

Theo crossed his arms. “My only goal is to kill Flame. I am a vindictive man.”

“Your goal is personal. It can wait. We have professional business first.”

“Yeah. That’s what the Hex said too.”

A knock echoed from the center of the door. Smith raised his eyes at Theo in no uncertain manner. The young man oozed out from his seat and trudged over to the door. He cracked it open. “What?”

A boy’s young hand held up a sealed envelope. “Special telegram for Mr. Martin Coxwell. Station boys said he’d left a message that he’d be here.”

“Do accept the missive,” Smith said.

Theo snatched the note and slammed the door. The boy kicked it from the other side. “May your next boilerbox explode in your face!”

Smith held out his hand. “I do loathe resorting to pseudonyms, but the Hex makes it a necessity.” He slit open the envelope and removed the telegram.

“Well, where do we go next?” Theo suddenly flinched deep inside his heart. Solindra had tried to save him; she had smiled at him. Why was he even doing this?

And then the image of Flame burned through Solindra’s sly grin. Because Flame was more important, that’s why.

“Our hunt has been postponed and we’re to destroy Redjakel. Tell me, have you ever heard of an aether bomb?”

***

Solindra retched again and clawed her way farther up between the boulders. She gasped for air but couldn’t stop the convulsing of her stomach. The vessel lay clenched and helpless, fighting for breath, and unable to do anything but collapse against the black rocks.

The dark water nipped at the heels of her boots. The wet weight of her clothing acted like an anchor. Silvermark’s rifle on her back pinned her down.

“Hello?” a voice quavered.

Solindra’s head snapped up, or at least attempted to. Above her, someone stood on the rocks. She squinted, but couldn’t see through the water and exhaustion clouding her eyes. “Dad?”

She hacked again and focused all of her remaining strength on the figure. A boy, no older than seven, looked at her with pure terror etched across his face. He dropped the pail he’d been clutching and skedaddled.

The bucket bounced down, almost hitting her head, but it ricocheted off a boulder instead and rolled to the side of the young woman.

Solindra surrendered. She could do nothing but focus on breathing. Her muscles weren’t even shivering anymore, despite how freezing the water had been. She just didn’t have the strength.

So how in the hell had she had the strength to jump off a waterfall? She remembered swimming with the current in the river – and that was the only thing that had saved her from drowning. But not much of the fall itself.

There had been a ball of comfortable steam, floating down the waterfall slower than the water around it, cushioning her and protecting her from the rocks. The cipher medallion had glowed like the sun.

The vessel retched again, unable to fight the spasms. She was cold, wet, lost and alone.

Darkness closed in around her.

***

“My shrill steam whistles!”

Solindra jerked her eyes open, but still wasn’t entirely certain if she was dreaming or not. It was still dark.

“Oh you poor girl. What happened?”

She squinted through the moonlight. There was the boy who had dropped the bucket, Now he was trembling behind an elderly woman. The plump, grandmotherly soul was trying to reach down between the boulders toward Solindra.

“Wha…?” managed to fall out of the vessel’s mouth. She swallowed and tried again. “W…” With a mental sigh, she gave up.

The woman managed to grip one of Solindra’s hands with farm-grown strength. “As cold as a ghost you are, child. Davey, get down here and help an old lady out.”

Half-conscious, Solindra had no power to stop them pulling her away from the river. She lifted her foot and tried to put weight on it only to collapse down into a pile. Once again, darkness closed in on her.

***

When she opened her eyes this time, it was almost black. No stars, no wind, no light glowed overhead. After a moment, she started to see. Enough moonlight spilled in through the rounded mouth of the cave to squelch any panic, if she’d had the strength to panic.

Solindra felt around her front pocket. The sancta was safe. When and how she’d put it back in her pocket was a mystery to her. She rubbed her face against a scratchy cloth, presumably a blanket.

But she was breathing, she noticed, and no longer straining to do it. She heard others breathing all around her, perhaps dozens of people. She squinted in the dim blue moonlight. Many children, some as small as toddlers and others closer to her age, lay curled together on the floor.

Solindra twisted around in her seat. Torchlight beckoned from deeper in the cave. She grunted and pushed herself up onto her knees and then her feet. She reached out a hand to steady herself on the stone.

Taking shuffling steps, she slid toward the light.

The old woman sat in a rocking chair, knitting. Solindra blinked – she had half expected the woman to have been a dream all along. She knew she’d seen her father at the riverside too, and that was wrong.

Also wrong was the sight of a woman making scarves in the middle of a cave by torchlight.

Solindra leaned against the wall and fought off a wave of dizziness. Crates and burlaps bags took up most of the available space around.

The woman stopped rocking. “Still got some crackers here if you’d like some. Stale, but what isn’t these days?”

The teenager blinked again, just to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming. The old woman’s hair looked slightly blue in the light and very thin, but her hazel eyes sparkled.

“I’m Elclei, dear.” She started rocking again, and the chair’s creaking bounced off the walls.

“Elk-lay?”

“From the lands beyond the steam, young miss.”

The vessel patted her chest with a shaking hand. “Solindra.”

“You’d better have a seat.”

She obeyed, grateful for the relief. “You don’t look like a barbarian.”

“And you don’t look like a piece of driftwood, Miss Solindra.”

The young woman blushed. “Where am I? Surely I’m not out of the Steamscape.”

Elclei shook her head. “No, you’re near Ronna, west of Codic.”

Solindra frowned. She couldn’t place herself on the map.

“No sign of your boat either.”

“It…” She swallowed. “It, um, dissolved.”

“Mmm.” Elclei didn’t react. Instead, her fingers spun about her knitting needles. The torch flickered again.

“Why are these children here, Miss Elclei?”

“Safer than town, miss. Killing Trains are driving closer every day. Now I know they’re supposed to be on our side and taking away the Steampower loyalists. I honestly think it’s a way to get rid of those that aren’t useful to them. If they catch any young men sans uniform or any citizen without a government-stamped card these days, or they just don’t like you, well, you’re off to the desert. Cards cost near fifty silver dollars now.”

“But it wasn’t this way in Codic! I was there…” The squeal of the Killing Train’s whistle echoed in her head.

A draft whistled by the torch again, and this time, some of the pitch-wrapped cloth fell off. Little fireballs collapsed down onto the stone floor next to the crates of supplies.

“Blast.” Elclei squinted and held up the scarf to her eyes. “Can’t see in this.”

Solindra eyed the little flames burning themselves out. She pointed at a glass lamp with an electrical filament on it. “Why not use that?”

“No electricity out here, miss. Although we might have some ammunition for that gun of yours.”

Solindra forced a grin, trying to shove away the memories of the Killing Train. “I think I can help.” She crawled forward and spent the next few minutes dipping into crates and perusing through the burlap sacks.

When she was done, she had laid out two delightfully ornate brass candlesticks, a glass jar, some sticky pitch from the torch supplies, a large iron nail wiggled loose from a crate and the electrical lamp. Using the nail, she pried open the bottom of the lamp to reveal a coil of copper wiring.

She chuckled. “Pay dirt.” Then she wrinkled her nose and kept looking around. “Are there any cooking supplies like some lemons or grapefruit? I need the juice.”

Elclei smiled sadly. “No, can’t say that there are.”

“Vinegar?”

The old woman shook her head. She tossed her gaze into the deepest part of the cave where most of the glass had been piled. “There’s some ancient wine that was smuggled out. It’s probably vinegar by now. They said it’d be worth a fortune, being from the time of Eliponesia’s barbarian days, but they couldn’t find a buyer. Still, I say, vinegar’s vinegar.”

“Perfect!” Solindra scrambled for the glassware. “Hmm.”

“Blue bottle on the left. Dusty as a demon.”

The vessel pulled up the bottle. “This one?”

Elclei nodded. “But I don’t see what you could possibly use it for.”

Solindra kneeled back down in front of the supplies and grinned. “I had a guardian who taught me a lot about machinery.”

Ghost
. The thought arrived like a train crashing into the terminus. Adri had said they were the Hex. Jing was Ghost!

She tried to close out the idea and set to wrapping the copper wiring from the lamp around the brass candlesticks. Next she coated the insides of the candlesticks and the wiring with the pitch and placed them inside the jar. They poked above awkwardly. “Don’t touch those.”

She double checked the wiring’s connection to the filament on the lamp. Then she filled the jar with the centuries old wine. She held the bottle as far away as she could. “That stings my eyes.”

Elclei chuckled. “Vinegar’s vinegar.” She set her knitting down into her lap to watch.

Solindra dropped the nail into the ring created by the copper wires and pitch. The filament began to glow with warm, soft yellow light. It wasn’t much at all, fading away into darkness only a few feet beyond the lamp.

Solindra wrinkled her nose. “I tried. Sorry it’s not more.”

“My word!” The old lady grinned and then sighed. “Only wealthy people have electrical lamps. That’s what makes them better than us.”

“It’s hardly even glowing. If I could get some sodium-mercury batteries up here, then maybe…”

Elclei turned her stitching into the meager light. “It’s enough, dear. Did you hear that Steampower outlawed wool? You have to buy it from them now. I think these socks are now illegal.”

The old woman set back to work. “Now, if you’re none too tired, you can start boiling water for laundry.”

“In here?” Solindra shook her head. “The torch is already too much smoke, let alone to build a fire.”

“No worse than in the cities. And no fires outside at night neither.”

The girl smiled. “Fair enough, I suppose.”

Elclei nodded deeper into the cave. “There’s firewood and a pot. Davey brought back the rest of the water.”

Solindra pried the torch down from its crude sconce and tiptoed into a new, bulb-shaped opening. She gathered up the firewood and lit it. When the fire was hot enough and embers glowed down deep among the flames, she set the pot atop it. She continued to build up the fire around its base.

She sat back against the wall and sighed. Her head drooped forward and she realized exactly how exhausted she was. In fact, she hoped Elclei would forgive her if she fell asleep. She wondered how hard the lands outside of Steamscape were since the old woman hadn’t seen it fit to give her a reprieve after her ordeal. She was awake, so she could work.

She jerked her eyes back open. The steam was flying off the pot now, crowding out the smoke around it.