The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (17 page)

“Tezoca?” Xochipil asked, though she knew the answer. “Then he failed.”

The woman said nothing, but the dullness in her eyes was answer enough. “The god-machine is strong,” she whispered, raising her bloodied hands as if to ward off a blow. “Very strong.”

There was movement, at the edge of Xochipil’s field of vision – workers, and a flash of white robes from downwards – and the voice of the hierarch echoing all around them: “Attend. There has been a violation of the Commonwealth—”

The compulsion was overwhelming; as before, there was nothing Xochipil could do to resist, she could do nothing but to abase herself and beg the forgiveness of the machine for interfering …

Hands, holding her – tracing something on the nape of her neck, warm and pulsing – a push in her back, sending her sprawling, out of the path of the advancing hierarch. “Run!”

And Xochipil was up, before she could think, slipping away from them – up, up, with barely any memory of being lame – away from the pressure of the rails and the voice of the hierarch, the instinct for survival stronger than anything.

It was only when she reached the twentieth floor that she stopped, the pain and weariness she’d kept at bay slamming into her, seeing, again and again, the face of the woman, transfigured as she stood awaiting the hierarch; feeling, again and again, the touch of the blood-magic on her, sharpening her mind around the single thought of saving herself.

“Why?” she whispered, but the woman, after all, had already answered her.

I make my own choices. And so should you.

Outside, the sun shone bright and unbearable, its warm light bleaching the desert sands, shimmering over the throbbing rails. Xochipil walked, her lame leg trailing behind her, the blistering heat shrivelling her skin, her lips, her eyes.

She’d had no choice but to leave the Well, for the alarm would be raised by now; and this time the hierarch would know her, take her as his own, break her into her smallest parts and remould her into the service of the machine …

Rocks tumbled under her feet. It was only after a while that she realized she was looking at the sky: for the sound of beating wings, the gathering of vultures overhead.

They cast his broken body into the desert, to be devoured by carrion birds and scavengers.

Tezoca …

She followed the rails, feeling the distant rumble in her body, weak and watered down – the beat of the god, the beat of the machine, all one and the same for this age of the world, and the next, and the next.

After a while, there was nothing but the merciless sun, nothing but the light swathing the rocks and the boulders, and the bronze of the rails. The flask of water by her side was heavy, but she mustn’t drink, mustn’t empty it so soon …

Let the sun remain silent
, the machine whispered, its voice coursing along the rails, mingling with the voice of the buried god, rising to silence it forever.
Let the altars be made of pristine steel, let the blood and the breath remain in our bodies
…

Let the sun remain silent …

After a few hours – an afternoon – an eternity – she saw in the sky the first vultures, circling over her.

“Not dead,” she whispered, stumbling on. “Not dead.”

But really, what was the point?

“Not … dead …”

When the vultures became a crowd, she walked on, towards the shrieking column of birds, away from the familiar beat of the rails – away from the god-machine and the hierarch and the heart buried in the soil, towards a mound at the base of a hill, a tangle of blood and broken limbs, wrapped in a torn cloak.

She threw rocks at the birds, and screamed until her voice was hoarse. They hopped away, watching her warily – waiting for her, too, to tumble and fall, to become carrion.

Then, in silence, she knelt by Tezoca’s side.

The skin of his face was torn and bloodied, the limbs slack under her touch. Broken bones shifted within the mass of glistening flesh.

She reached out to take the voice of the heart – and stopped herself inches from the bloody mass of the wrist. That would have been pointless. He was dead, clearly dead, his promises and goals meaningless.

Machine break you, she’d wished on Tezoca; and the machine had, indeed, broken him so thoroughly that nothing was left.

A hiss startled her. One of the birds, coming back? But no, it came from the body – a last exhalation of breath from shattered lungs, a last oozing from some mangled organ.

Tezoca’s eyes were open, and staring straight at her.

The shock of that sight travelled up her arm, devolved into the frantic beat of her heart.

“You’re dead,” she whispered, and remembered what he had told her, back in the Well.

Some things are hard to kill.

Again, the same hiss: words, whispered through crushed lips. Asking for her help?

“I wasn’t able to help myself,” she said bitterly. She hadn’t even been able to help the woman. Nevertheless, she tipped the last of the water within her flask – a few sips, nothing more – past his wasted lips.

His throat contracted, swallowing the water; then he convulsed, and the water came rushing back out in a spurt that splattered on the rocks.

The hiss again, and his eyes, boring into hers – not angry, not amused, but pleading.

She knew, of course, the only thing which would sustain him. The mere thought was revolting.

But here they were, both of them, both broken and dying in the desert; and he had given her his protection, in the cruel, desultory way of the old gods – but it was still more than the god-machine had ever given her.

“All right,” Xochipil said. She reached out and foraged in the cloak, spreading out the obsidian shards as she found them. They glimmered in the sunlight, with the remembrance of a dead age.

She picked what looked like the sharpest one, and held it for a while in her hand. “It’s not because I worship you,” she said. His eyes watched her, unblinking, unwavering. “It’s not because I fear your anger, or that the sun will tumble from the sky if you’re not properly honoured. But you watched out for me, and I’d be sorry to see you go.”

Then, as smoothly, as effortlessly as if she’d done it all her life, she brought the edge of the obsidian against her wrist, and before she could think, sliced through her veins. Blood spurted up in an obscene fountain – much, much faster than she’d expected, a stream of red falling like rain upon the dried earth.

Pain spread, too – lines of fire radiating from the slit, pulsing in her arm like a red-hot axle. Her hand wouldn’t stop opening and closing, her fingers clenching like claws; she couldn’t control its movements. She had to use her other hand to guide the wound over Tezoca’s mouth, and watched him swallow and not spit anything out his wasted throat muscles greedily contracting.

Something was flowing, a shadow across the desert floor, an invisible wind. The air shivered as if in a storm, and dust rose, billowing like yellow sheets unfolding. Grains of dust skittered across the obsidian shards, making a noise like nails on copper, skittering across the body of Tezoca until his skin seemed to shift in the wind, until the colour of the desert had sunk into his bones and covered the red sheen of his muscles.

His hands reached up, iron coils, and drew Xochipil’s slit wrist against his mouth. His lips closed around the wound, hungrily sucking at the flowing blood like a child at his mother’s breast.

And he didn’t stop. The wound didn’t close, and still he drank, making quiet, sickening suckling sounds. Pain knifed her with each sip he took – repeated stabs with obsidian blades.

Xochipil’s thoughts were scattering, growing hazier and hazier – how much like an old god, to take everything that was given; how naive had she been, to slit her wrist and expect it to heal, to feed a god and hope he would stop …

The shadows were growing, pooling under the obsidian shards – and then, in a flash of dazzling light, the shards leapt towards each other and vanished.

“Enough,” Tezoca said, his voice echoing like the anger of the storm. “Enough!” He pushed her away – sent her stumbling, fighting to hold herself upright, her fingers fumbling to close the wound in her wrist.

The ground would not stop shaking under her. Through hazy eyes she saw her blood spattered among the rocks, encircling the place where Tezoca now stood.

He was tall, and his face was streaked with black and yellow; and the stars shone in the curls of his hair; and his eyes glimmered like water in underground caves. In his hand, something shone: an obsidian mirror, in which she could still guess at the faint line of cracks. It reflected nothing but smoke; but even from where she was she could feel its heat, and the power within, the beat as strong as that of the rails.

And he was walking – flowing across the sand, reaching out to her – and in a single gesture pinching shut the wound in her wrist. Xochipil stood, shaking, trying to hold herself up, falling to one knee, and then face down on the ground, until oblivion swallowed her whole.

She dreamt that he carried her in his arms, under the shelter of a large rock, and carefully laid her on the ground like a sick child. She dreamt that he was sitting by her side, staring at the skies, weeping tears of blood for all the old gods who had fallen – for his brother Quetzalcoatl, who had once been his friend, who had once been his enemy, and who was now subsumed into the machine, in this age and the next and the next.

She dreamt that he gathered rocks and scraggly bushes and turned his smoke-filled mirror towards them – that they burst into flickering, warm flames – and that he stood outlined by the fire, watching her sleep.

Now you understand about sacrifices
, he whispered.

And she didn’t, and he must have seen something of that, because he said, his voice booming like the wrath of the heavens,
Not out of fear or of greed or because the sun will tumble from the sky, but because you cared
.

I was sorry for you
, Xochipil thought, thrashing, trying to reach him through a pane of glass – but he wouldn’t answer.

When she woke up in the dim light of the rising sun, she was alone, and the air still smelled like ashes.

He had left her his wide-brimmed hat, and some food; and had refilled her water-flask. Her hands throbbed: he had traced the glyphs for “safe journey” and “water” on their backs – all the favour he would grant her, all the thanks he would ever condescend to give.

Rising, she walked away from the ashes. In the distance was the familiar line of the rails, pulsing on the rhythm of the god-machine; and, still further away, growing fainter and fainter, a figure walking, with the stars in his hair and the glimmer of obsidian in his hands.

She could still hear his voice in her mind, lightly amused.

All gods are cruel, Xochipil. What else did you expect?

He would make his way to the capital, as aloof and as lonely as he had always been, bearing alone the burden of his struggle against the machine, never allowing his devotees to offer more than a little aid, a transitory comfort. And in the end, he would stand in the huge palace of bronze and copper: alone against the machine and its endless might, so pitifully small and defenceless, as easily crushed and broken as his obsidian mirror.

Pity closed like a fist around her heart. “Please be safe,” Xochipil whispered to the silent desert. “Please come back. Please.”

And her words, rising under a sky as red as blood, had the intensity of a prayer.

New Orleans stank to the heavens. This was either the water, which did not have the decency to confine itself to the river but instead puddled along every street; or the streets themselves, which seemed to have been cobbled with bricks of fired excrement. Or it may have come from the people who jostled and trotted along the narrow avenues, working and lounging and cursing and shouting and sweating, emitting a massed reek of unwashed resentment and perhaps a bit of hangover. As Jessaline strolled beneath the colonnaded balconies of Royal Street, she fought the urge to give up, put the whole fumid pile to her back and catch the next dirigible out of town.

Then someone jostled her. “Pardon me, miss,” said a voice at her elbow, and Jessaline was forced to stop, because the earnest-looking young man who stood there was white. He smiled, which did not surprise her, and doffed his hat, which did.

“Monsieur,” Jessaline replied, in what she hoped was the correct mix of reserve and deference.

“A fine day, is it not?” The man’s grin widened, so sincere that Jessaline could not help a small smile in response. “I must admit, though, I have yet to adjust to this abysmal heat. How are you handling it?”

“Quite well, monsieur,” she replied, thinking,
what is it that you want from me?
“I am acclimated to it.”

“Ah, yes, certainly. A fine negress like yourself would naturally deal better with such things. I am afraid my own ancestors derive from chillier climes, and we adapt poorly.” He paused abruptly, a stricken look crossing his face. He was the florid kind, red-haired and freckled with skin so pale that it revealed his every thought – in point of which he paled further. “Oh dear! My sister warned me about this. You aren’t Creole, are you? I understand they take it as an insult to be called, er … by certain terms.”

With some effort Jessaline managed not to snap,
do I look like one of them?
But people on the street were beginning to stare, so instead she said, “No, monsieur. And it’s clear to me you aren’t from these parts, or you would never ask such a thing.”

“Ah – yes.” The man looked sheepish. “You have caught me out, miss; I’m from New York. Is it so obvious?”

Jessaline smiled carefully. “Only in your politeness, monsieur.” She reached up to adjust her hat, lifting it for a moment as a badly needed cooling breeze wafted past.

“Are you perhaps—” The man paused, staring at her head. “My word! You’ve naught but a scrim of hair!”

“I have sufficient to keep myself from drafts on cold days,” she replied, and as she’d hoped, he laughed.