by Kin S. Law
None of them knew how exactly they survived the onslaught. Exhausted and dirty, each of them would recall in their own unique way how the anarchy ensued. Rosa’s account was easily confirmed, as everyone had watched her leaning out of Dragonwell’s cockpit with her boot planted on his armor, wielding the Victoria and firing like she was downsizing a major manufactory. Albion recalled only the sting of the ichor as he pounded away at the horde, drops of it burning as they touched and turning the skin an angry red. Hargreaves herself only recalled the feeling of her cotton bloomers sticking in unfortunate places as she whirled with Alphonse inside the hot cockpit.
It was only when they emerged, their furnaces nearly spent and Alphonse’s boiler bone dry, did they realize something was deeply wrong with Hallow’s host. The dragoons had disappeared from the purple sky and pirate airships still limped along at the periphery, picking up straggling survivors. But where Hallow’s host was once an unstoppable horde, it was now reduced to straggler bands, limping along amongst their dead fellows, ignoring the living. There was a quiet to the twilight that was disturbing. Eventually even the last of the host slowed to a crawl, and then to a stop, their surfaces steaming like cooling lava slicks.
Scrabbling over the rubble with her lace hem not two feet from the ick, Rosa kicked at one of the sickly contraptions with her boot. No response. The claws had stopped clipping, jaws ceased to masticate, and all was still. The smell of them was pervasive, rank and chemical, like a hospice.
Hargreaves stood Alphonse up, reaching down to scoop Rosa from the sizzling ground. Bits of plate rained from him in chips and enamel flaked from his chest. Knackered, shot, pierced and battered, it was a wonder the automata knight could stand. Dragonwell had fared no better. His cape hung in strips over a score of holes, and the bones of him showed, like the captain of a ghost ship. It was a relief when the Huckleberry appeared from behind a building, even if it bobbed along like a diabolo.
“My ship! The blazes happened to her?” cried Albion.
“Sewer spelunking and combat with legions of darkness, you silly man,” said Hargreaves dryly. “Your Rosa’s been working overtime to get her air worthy.”
The helmswoman in question looked sheepish, and Albion was about to say something apologetic when an anchor with a thick cable hooked to it slammed into the ground nearby. Showers of rubble rained down on everyone, and when it cleared, there was the distinct sound of someone rappelling down the cable on a sprung grip. Hargreaves shielded her eyes against the strange half-light enveloping the city to see her ward somersault the last few feet, end over end like a circus act.
“Cezette!”
“Maman!” cried the girl, landing as well as a spring-heeled jack.
“Bloody Nora!” cried Hargreaves as Cezette came in for an embrace. She was decked out for battle, with sharp spurs on her knees and heels that made holding awkward. The skirts were rather too short for her liking, but they freed those deadly talons, like thorns on a rose’s stems. But her top half was soft enough, a leather camisole over sharp ship-pressed linen that made her look quite cavalier. Hargreaves held onto that awkwardly.
“What are you doing on the ground? You must withdraw, immediately,” said Hargreaves.
“Did we not go over this at the hospital? I am no good with the ’Berry like this,” said Cezette. “And there is to be a reckoning, oui. L’habit ne fait pas le moine.”
Albion looked her them both quizzically, but Rosa only snorted, her face a wide smirk.
“She’s after the bloody spider,” sighed Hargreaves. “The Orb Weaver that put me in the hospital.”
“With typical French flair, I might add,” said Rosa approvingly.
“You are no Edmund Dantes, young lady!” said Hargreaves.
“Non,” said Cezette. “Violet is not herself. She is hiding! She is…” and she emitted a frustrated string of French, in which could be heard clearly “Merde!” several times.
But before Hargreaves could give her customary lecture about the pitfalls of wroth, something moved in the street, a twitch of a leg, the glimpse of a stained claw. The group whirled to face it, weapons drawn.
The bones of a creature on the ground shifted, and some panel opened in its recesses, spilling a grimy figure from its depths. Bedraggled and dirty, the figure doubled over on a clean patch of street and vomited right then and there. But when he stood up, even the indignity and smell couldn’t hide the bobbing platinum coif of Arturo C. Adler.
“Arturo!” cried Hargreaves.
“Hello old girl,” said Arturo, wiping the sick from his face. “How does my hair look?”
“Oh, you stupid toff! You’re hurt!” Hargreaves cried. She sighed, looking from her hurt friend to her adopted child. Rosa was pluck-plucking at Cezette’s outfit, giving her tips on where to slip weapons or pull back to show a distracting glimpse of skin. Hargreaves shared the role of parent with Rosa, she remembered. It wasn’t her place to reel the pair in, or to send Cezette packing to safety. And if she was coming along, then Hargreaves felt better if they were all prepared for the worst. “I suppose a spot of rest and recovery is in order,” she allowed.
At a nearby café that had somehow survived the destruction, they righted a table and harvested the spoils of war: a tin of amaretti wrapped in waxed paper, and some bottles of pop, cold packed in ice blocks and sawdust in the back of the pantry. There were also innumerable cans of meat and a haunch of ham, but none of them had the appetite for such delectables, not after what they had seen. But there was bread and, wonder of wonders, a packet of silken pouches in the back of a drawer; Vanessa Hargreaves had found tea.
“Oh dear, it’s almost as if I’m having my constitutional in Rome,” said Arturo fondly. After a little toast and some hardy black ship’s tea, he recovered quickly enough and was much his old self. “Save the scenery, of course.”
“There is the Conqueror Worm,” said Hargreaves quietly, unable to tear her eyes from the sinuous shape of Hallow’s machine wound around the Ubique tower. It was now impossible to separate the legs of the creatures holding it up from the original boxcars of the Ghost Train. The thing may well have been birthed from an egg sac, not welded together from steel plate. Somewhere in those coils lay the Grimaldi, where it had retreated after destroying the dragoon kites.
“How did you come to be inside that creature?” asked Rosa. She stared at Arturo.
“And who is this luscious creature?” asked Arturo, oily as sin. He continued to munch on a biscuit in quite good humor, as if the destruction all around them were only Hyde Park at high noon. Rosa glared at him, but Hargreaves could see the weight of what he knew upon his brow. Arturo was contrary when he needed space.
“How did you wind up there?” asked Hargreaves eventually.
Arturo took the time to finish his cup before answering.
“What is it I do best, Inspector?” asked Arturo with a long sigh.
“Drink,” said Hargreaves immediately. “Smoke. Gamble. Patronize brothels.”
“Quite right. And?”
“I hate to say it,” said Hargreaves. “Oh all right! Insufferable as you are, you are first and foremost, a first-rate detective.”
Arturo seemed pleased, and surprised, which made his words direct. “I was investigating the cockpit of the creature that pursued us not so long ago. You will recall, I bid you go on ahead. What happened after you left, by the way?”
Hargreaves filled Arturo in, briefly.
“My, my,” said the detective. “And I thought I had difficulty sneaking into Jean Hallow’s Ghost Train.” They all snapped to attention, turning with wide eyes to catch Arturo’s every word.
As it happened, Arturo had discovered return coordinates in a sealed glove box of the machine that had terrorized them on the road. It had been encoded, but Arturo was quite fond of puzzles. As his father would say, it was elementary. Of course, the way Arturo told it, only a master mathematician could have done better.
“I traced the address to one of t
he stops of the Ghost Train. Hallow calls it his Conqueror Worm. Poe. How melodramatic,” said Arturo. “The facility you found under the cabaret was only one of Hallow’s laboratories, devoted to the manufacture of these horrors you see around you.”
“I wish I had stayed to watch the show upstairs instead,” said Albion. Gallows humor, but Rosa pinched his cheek anyway.
“I had a good long run through the place before the train began to move, and I hid myself in one of the creatures thereafter.” continued Arturo. “There were so many, all deactivated and hanging on brackets. They seemed empty, like dolls awaiting a soul. Hundreds of them in the train. I snuck into the stations and stole food, water. I saw terrible things.”
“Ubique’s people, most likely,” said Hargreaves. “Harvesting the destitute for Hallow’s furnaces.”
“I saw cargo containers and documents from Mordemere’s atelier in Leyland,” continued Arturo. “But I also found plans that were laid with Her Majesty’s firms in Scotland, the ones that made Alphonse and his black boxes. Hallow is a master engineer. He has been designing these automata since before we knew there were automata…I daresay he is the father of this particular steamcraft, operating as a clandestine second or third party at every step, leaking vital innovations where he needed them. His entire existence at Scotland Yard must have been to facilitate the creation of the Cook box and his nightmare army.”
Everyone looked up at Alphonse, before Arturo continued.
“Unfortunately, his designs needed an aeon power source to move his creatures. I believe he approached Mordemere and his research into aeons to obtain it. Then he variously solicited the British government, Ubique and private investors to gather the funds for his army.”
“That blackguard!” said Hargreaves, fuming.
“That shiny-headed fancy boy is absolutely barking mad,” came a voice across the wasteland of corpses. “He is also absolutely correct.”
“Violet!” cried Cezette, who had sunk into an exhausted torpor after her string of expletives, and now sprung up like a freshly wound clock.
“The Orb Weaver,” hissed Hargreaves, and threw out her arm to stop her ward in her tracks.
But the sight of the Orb Weaver was not what any of them expected. Vera Jasper approached with her hands held out, and she had no sleeves in the cold to hide any weapons. Her hair blew loose in the wind, and there were tiny gems in it, accenting the glitter dusting her brown face. There were streaks in the makeup—she had been crying. It looked like she had just come from a party.
“Just Vera,” said Vera. “I have so many names…Vera is as good as any. Please, I’ve come to talk.”
“You tried to kill my ’Zette,” accused Hargreaves. “You nearly killed me.”
“Maman! Vera was only—ah, ça me saoûle! I have not the words!” cried Cezette. She spun, getting in between the group and the deadly girl before them. She turned to look at Vera. “C’est vrai? C’est cela l’amour, tout donner, tout sacrifier sans espoir de retour,” said Cezette.
Arturo’s head perked up then.
“Is it true?” said Arturo. “You…you love Jean?”
Vera’s eyes shone for a moment, and something passed between them. She took a step forward.
A sliver of light flashed from behind her and pinned a length of sari to the ground. Vera stopped in her tracks, glancing down at the throwing knife not two inches from her foot.
“No farther. The next goes in your head,” said Rosa, and Hargreaves could hear death in those words. She was surprised. It seemed the helmswoman had formed a bond with the French girl as well. But then Rosa had helped Hargreaves save Cezette, pulling her from the belly of Mordemere’s iron monster.
“What do you want?” asked Albion to Vera before his helmswoman could stick her like a pincushion. He alone hadn’t tasted the Orb Weaver’s treachery. A moment passed, and when the Orb Weaver spoke her voice shook.
“I am sorry,” said Vera. “Cezette. And you, inspector. I was…not in my right mind. I believed Jean wanted the best for all of us. But…I am sorry.”
“Something’s gone wrong,” said Arturo. He rose from his seat.
“This thing…this Grimaldi…it is killing Jean. Slowly, painfully, in unimaginable agony. It’s drinking his mind dry,” said Vera. “I know it as surely as I know he was kind to me, once, a long time ago. Please, it’s making him do something terrible. I…I’ll take you to him. You have to help me stop him. Save him.”
Almost clipping her words, a dragoon kite struggling to stay aloft crashed nearby, sending up a plume of smoke and debris. It turned heads and served to hide Arturo’s expression, and no one except Hargreaves, who had to look past Arturo toward the kite, saw the pain there.
Before anyone could stop her, Cezette had crossed the few steps to Vera’s side, and had her by the shoulders. And just as suddenly, she burst into quiet tears. The cocoon had broken to reveal a girl child, not a monster. The others stood around rubbing their heads and hiding faces behind empty cups.
“What did he want?” asked Rosa after a while. “Doing all this, it defies comprehension.” She looked first over the ruin of San Francisco, then at Vera, accusingly, expectantly.
“It doesn’t matter. If Jean is not stopped, this will go on,” said Vera. “Please. You have the…the means. The trickery, the power, I don’t know. Please.” Vera Jasper sank a little lower, and then Albion was there, holding her up with Cezette while Vera sobbed quietly. It left the two other women and Arturo together. Arturo slowly maneuvered to turn his back to Vera. His platinum coif looked umber in the beginnings of sundown.
“So we kill Hallow,” said Rosa to Hargreaves quietly. There was a finality to it.
“Your pirate captain hasn’t the stomach for it. He’s too kind,” said Arturo.
Neither have you, thought Hargreaves. That’s why Arturo was asking. He knew Rosa could do it, was itching to do it, and the notion of Arturo manipulating his allies to confound his heart was almost too much to bear. His affection for Hallow was clear as the glass in her hand.
“God forbid Cezette should do it. So it leaves us,” said Hargreaves, giving Rosa a meaningful look. They had known each other long enough, and the other woman gave an imperceptible nod. But what of Vanessa Hargreaves? This was no longer a simple self-defense killing. This was premeditated, homicide in its purest form. But the look in the inspector’s eye was even, at peace with herself.
“Agreed,” said Rosa, watching Albion pluck her knife from the ground.
“We stop Hallow. We stop him and the monster doesn’t come back,” said Arturo.
“Oh, it will be back,” said Hargreaves, surveying the ruin around her. “It always comes back. I’ll see it on my desk every day. But it won’t come back like this.”
The impromptu siesta lasted a little longer, but after Vera’s revelation the pop was a little less fizzy in their bottles. The coils of the Conqueror Worm were still visible, a great serpent with the city in its clutches, gleaming in the last sun before twilight. Somewhere inside it, Jean Hallow sat waiting.
“It’s now or never,” said Hargreaves, watching the light cast the city ruins in shadow. “We can walk right up to Hallow.” She left the next part unsaid, for Arturo’s sake.
“We know where he is. Why do we need you?” said Rosa to Vera, a bit hatefully.
“I will get you to Jean, and I will do it without you being seen.” Vera offered. She seemed as anxious to move on.
Vera led them through narrow alleys, tunnels through wreckage and side streets just wide enough for a person to pass. She had hidden a grappling hook in the rubble a few yards back, which launched with a quiet hiss and buried itself into the rubble high over the ruined chasms of fallen buildings. It held the promise of crossing the divides by the expediency of swinging across. But to do so required someone to cross first. If Vera did anything to the hook, or held out a knife as someone landed on the far side, they would fall to the mess of twisted steel and rubble far below.
&nb
sp; That is, for everyone but Cezette. She simply hopped across, light as a feather.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” she mouthed across the gap, though they were still far from the Ubique tower. She was bursting at the seams to help everyone, even someone who had threatened Hargreaves’ life. Vera shrugged, as if to say, “How do we argue with that?”
Because they were all nervous around the contortionist and assassin Orb Weaver, they hung back until Vera had crossed and tossed the hook handle back over the gap. Albion was the first to try it, and even he hesitated, inspecting the grappling mechanism for any tricks. Eventually he swung across, legs pin wheeling, and the two young women caught him with open arms on the other side. When Hargreaves landed, she gave Vera a piercing look, but saw only sadness there. In the half-light and with her posh garb, Vera didn’t look like a seasoned killer. She looked like a sad girl who had been ejected from her own birthday party.
As they made their way through a quiet, deserted canyon formed by scorched gap-toothed row houses, Arturo walked abreast of her and they shared a brief exchange. Vera began to speak, just loud enough to hear.
“You have guessed rightly. Jean needed to sell his army to Ubique and the other wealthy investors to move on with the next stage of his plan. But when you destroyed the Darklight Cabaret, you rather put a bee in his bonnet,” said Vera. She stopped to indicate a turn. “He had to suppress the insurrection as efficiently as he could, so he unleashed his horrors far too early. They were still malleable, in the crude minds he crafted for them, and in the clockworked flesh, as well. Like children, newly born.”
“Because they are children,” said Rosa. “I saw the early work in a church in Maryland. Horrors hatched in the bowels of a holy place, corrupting innocence into creeping evil. And you, Orb Weaver, you spun the sick web that holds his plot together.”
Hargreaves thought of the things they had seen in New York, the half-made spider creatures that sang with taut, steam-driven cable as well as with the apparatus of a human throat, and she shivered with the nausea that sprang to her throat.
