Steamscape (9 page)

He pulled Solindra in between himself and Drina. “Ah, ah, ah! Now don’t pop your monocle, Death, but we’re off to meet the sorceress.”

“What?” Drina breathed.

Solindra kicked out with her boot heel, striking at his knee, but Flame didn’t seem to notice. He hopped backward, dragging her with him. The engine-powered canoe splashed and rocked wildly with their sudden weight.

Solindra screamed, “It didn’t work, Drina!” She kicked at him again. “It didn’t work!”

“No!” Theo yelped, breaking free from his paralysis.

Then Flame, grinning like an angry cat, tossed a canister onto one of the canvas-covered crates. It hissed and flared into life, saturating their world with fire.

Laughing, he kicked the canoe away from the flatboat and back into the flow. He tilted the nose upstream, and he and Solindra vanished into the gloomy dawn.

“Cylinder!” Drina’s voice carried louder over the water than the snaps and roar of the fires.

But the young woman was gone. There wasn’t even an outline of the canoe in the dawn’s light.

“Cylinder!”

“Drina, help!” Jing slammed down another canvas tarp in an attempt to smother some of the flatboat’s flames.

“Here!” Theo ran up with another canvas tarp, but he tripped over Ganther’s body and stumbled nose-first into a crate. He closed his eyes and fought another shiver. He shouldn’t be so cold with this heat, but he could barely breathe.

Flame…

He was half-convinced he was in a nightmare, and he was sure that he’d imagined that whoever it was had been Flame. That just couldn’t be! It had to have been someone else.

Jing growled and smashed down the tarp again. The fires that had started with the arsonist’s burning nets were spreading to the front of the flatboat. The glorified raft was already sinking in one corner where the fires had chewed through.

“Stop, just stop.” Drina slipped around some smaller fires. “What can we do?”

Jing shook his head again. “Can’t save the boat.”

“Swim for it?” Theo eyed the fat, deceptively lazy river. How many thousands – no, millions of cubic yards of water was it draining? How could one human body survive against that?

“I sink.” The mechanic lifted up his metallic prosthesis. “But this thing ain’t going to hold on for long.”

Drina leaned her shoulder against the rudder’s handle. The flatboat started to inch toward the shore. Jing and Theo joined her, pressing their weight against the lever. The boat shifted its course.

“Not too much,” the mechanic warned. “Or we’ll just flip around and be backward and burning.”

Theo stepped away from the crowded rudder. The craft was starting to float diagonally in the direction of the nearest point bar. He breathed through his mouth, not wanting to smell anything. But the scent crept up to his nose via the back of his throat and he whimpered against his will.

He slid closer to one of the newly uncovered crates. He hadn’t dared ask Ganther the smuggler what else he’d been transporting. He tapped one of the clear glass jars suspended in frames and held up by string. He popped off a cork and the burning vapors of moonshine assailed him.

Okay, selling to barmen so that they could cut their beer and inflate their prices. The bottles clinked as the raft shifted again. Theo moved on.

The next crate held a couple barrels of oil. Also flammable.

He inched forward, closer to the fires. He wiped the tears out of his watering eyes and tried to brush away the smoke from his face.

Fire was already merrily eating at the canvas tarp of the next crate and up the edges of the wooden case. Theo yanked the canvas aside.

“Shh– Shh–” He stumbled back over Ganther’s body, turned and sprinted at Jing and Drina.

“Get off the boat!” he screamed as he dived right past the pair and into the Eld. He heard his own splash, but felt only coldness as the waters closed in around him.

Drina and Jing exchanged a glance through the smoke of the fiery boat and looked back to the goods just starting to burn.

Each face of the crate was stamped T.N.T.

Without a word, Jing reached down and picked up the nearest barrel. He stepped up to the edge and just kept walking.

The river swallowed him whole.

Drina took a running swan dive, jumping as far away from the flatboat and as close to Jing as she could manage.

He bobbed back up to the surface, still clinging to the barrel. A permanent grimace had been etched into his features. Theo paddled farther behind him.

Drina surfaced a few feet away. She risked a grin before glancing back at the boat. “Under!” Theo dove and Drina pushed herself back under. Jing tried to roll the barrel over his head.

The explosion boomed. Searing white and orange fire flared up like the sun on earth. Wooden fragments, glass and other shrapnel expanded out in front of the main fire, stabbing at the river’s surface and scything through the air.

Theo, Drina and Jing rolled back to the surface. The bricoleur flailed and splashed in the water, gaping at the pieces of burning wood in the water around them.

Drina waved at him. “Help us!”

Theo, gulping for air, tried to nod. He kicked and paddled his way over toward them, unable to fight the river’s flow. The water felt like the sucking sensation when he had trapped his boots in the mud, but now it was trapping his entire body, pulling him ever deeper.

Meanwhile, Jing clung to his barrel with white knuckles. His jaw was set and he stared straight ahead.

Drina leaned to her side, grabbed the barrel in one hand and started to kick, her face set in the same determined grimace. Theo, swallowing river water, joined her. Splinters cut into his fingers and palm, but he barely noticed. Eventually, they drifted downstream to the rocky bank of the river.

They stood, covered in mud and watery weeds, to see some of the still-burning pieces of the flatboat curve around the bend.

“Ganther was still on that thing,” Theo murmured.

Drina shrugged. “Buried at sea is what he would’ve wanted. Probably. But very classical, the burning boat.”

“Not in the civilized parts of the world,” Jing said. “Not to mention that this isn’t a sea.”

The cook shaded her eyes and leaned against the barrel. “Still, fire is what Flame does.”

Theo grabbed his chest and jerked forward, suddenly in shock. He tried to move his mouth, but no sounds escaped. He couldn’t breathe. Flame! That had really been Flame!

Jing looked like a crate of T.N.T also ready to explode. “How could he have known? No one knew.”

“Not until Smith.”

The mechanic whistled. “You think they’re working together?”

“I don’t know.”

“Flame!” Theo wheezed. “That really was Flame.” His eyes widened. “And I didn’t kill him! I couldn’t even move! Merlina even said–”

“And Cylinder is with him!” Drina gasped. “That poor child has never been away from us, and now she’s with that senseless moron.” She curled her hands into fists and met Jing’s eyes. “But we tried to prepare her.”

He shook his head. “No, we didn’t. We just tried to protect her.”

Nothing moved in between the three of them except the wind for a moment.

Theo pointed downriver. “I think I see some smoke that way. Might be a town, or a camp with traders.”

“Or a camp with soldiers,” Jing sighed.

Drina stepped behind the mechanic and pushed. “There’ll be coffee either way. Come on, boys.”

They stomped away from the sandy shore.

Theo licked his lips and stared down at Jing’s leg, which was still leaking water. “You alright?”

Jing grunted and kept on with his steady, unending limp. “Yeah.”

Theo eyed Jing’s mechanical leg. “But the river, you have no steam left.”

“I can fix it,” the mechanic grunted.

Drina kicked at the nearest tree and then swiped her hand, bent like a claw, at its trunk. “Mark told us to protect her. Those were our orders.”

The mechanic grunted again.

“Our orders. The only thing we’re good at.”

Theo opened his mouth, but quickly shut it.

Finally, Jing replied, “We’re just going to have to figure this out on our own.”

***

The smoke turned out to be from a town, housing forty to fifty people. Underneath the stronger smell of burning coal, the scent of baking bread soon teased on the breeze.

Theo licked his lips. He was already drooling. His stomach started to yowl and tremble on its own and he couldn’t help himself. They stepped out into the dirt street. A waterwheel turned alongside a building on the river, and several small steampipes left the tiny boiler house to spread their fingers throughout the town.

The only two visible people turned their faces away from them and ducked inside the nearest structure. Theo slowed his pace and leaned back to the other two. “This ain’t such a good idea.”

“Too late now.” Drina pointed ahead to what was both the dry goods store and the local eating hole. The scent of honeyed wheat baking amplified in the wind. Theo nodded dumbly, his stomach already protesting.

The boards creaked against their boots on the wooden sidewalk as they stepped up to the store. They pushed through the doors to find what appeared to be most of the town inside. Pale faces with sunken eyes swung toward them.

The men were smoking their pipes almost feverishly. Women, in respectful if dirty high-collared dresses, rested shoulder to shoulder, leaning on each other. No one spoke.

The only person not staring at them was a man in the back, obscured by the crowd, and playing the keyboard. The notes were twangy and slightly out of tune, but nevertheless, the player was pulling out a graceful melody.

Overhead hung a dead ceiling fan, usually powered by a pair of chains that disappeared into the establishment’s ceiling. “No steam,” Jing murmured.

“No children,” Theo whispered.

This is a trap, the dark voice said. The bricoleur’s fingers tingled.

The piano hit a discord and the player grunted.

The man in black twisted around on the player’s swivel stool. Smith flipped the bowler hat back on his head, but didn’t smile.

That survivalist instinct voiced itself again as it massaged the back of Theo’s neck. Run away. This government’s man won’t bother you. Leave them to their fate.

“I heard the explosion.” Smith pulled the glass cane away from the wall and leaned his weight on it, still sitting in the chair. “Sound carries so far on the water. As far as a rumor, they say.” He stood up. “Where’s my vessel?”

Theo froze, just as helpless now as he had been with Flame.

Drina suddenly sniffed. She brushed her face, still damp with river water, and streaked the mud across her cheek. She shook her head. “She didn’t make it.”

Smith tapped his cane on the floor. “You’ve learnt to act, Ms. de Avila. Well done, but I doubt you’ve ever shed a tear at a death.”

She sniffled again, but couldn’t hide the flash of surprise and then contempt from her face.

Smith frowned. “Please.” He reached into his pocket and tossed out a yellowing photograph. It drifted across the air and landed in front of Jing’s metal foot. Theo stared. He unconsciously backed away from them.

Smith continued, “Yes, I know who you were, Ms. de Avila. Or should I call you by your true name, Ms. Death Spinner?”

Still glaring at him, she squatted and picked up the photograph. Her own face stared back at her from over twenty years ago. Jing glanced over her shoulder and grimaced.

They were all there. Mark Canon/Silvermark holding his silver-plated rifle. Stetson James/Parrot nonchalantly drinking a brandy while still managing his trademark smirk. There was herself, glaring at the cameraman with a taut garrote cord in her hands. Jing/Ghost was behind her, and he looked the same as ever, metal leg included. Next to him was Sava Zhidkov/Steam Slayer leaning on his homemade, shoulder-mounted cannon. And lastly, Flame, just Flame, holding what appeared to be a magical fireball but was actually a mirror lost in the camera’s flash.

The Hex.

Theo snatched the picture from Drina. He found his thoughts stuttering. The photograph was even labeled and dated with a Codic military archive stamp.

The Hex.

Smith smirked. “It was your leg, Mr. Li, which pointed me in your direction.”

Theo stepped back away from them. He raised an accusing finger. “Y-You! Y-You knew Flame!”

Smith swatted Theo’s hand aside with the length of the glass cane. “Killers, the lot of them, and so on and so forth.” He narrowed his gaze at Drina and then Jing. “Where have you hidden my vessel?”

Jing shook his head.

“I’ll give you a medal for not just walking into town with her, but if you don’t tell me where the young lady is, I shall have to boil this town’s children alive.” He retrieved his own cipher medallion from his vest pocket, just as casually as one would retrieve a pocket watch. “Not that I would ever suspect you to care about them, but if you don’t, well, mob rule is so messy.”

He shifted back far enough so that the trio could view the huddled crowd behind him.

“They know that only I can safely rescue them. If those poor kids die, and you did nothing to save them… Tsk, tsk.”

“You’re lying.”

Everyone spun to find this new confident speaker. Theo nearly slapped his hand over his mouth as he realized it was him. The vicious corner of his mind eased out his next words like a snake gliding through the grass. “You’ve got Ghost here. The Hex are Eliponesia’s patron saints.” He nodded at Jing. “He can do anything with the mechanics and steam. That’s why he’s called Ghost.”

Smith raised an eyebrow, probably stretched it to the limit of his patience. He leaned forward. “Young master, I know more than the stories. I know their histories. And I very much doubt that even Ghost can speak to the steam ghosts better than me.”