The Fire Cage

by Scott Hungerford

  Davin nodded, and gave Verona a quick glance, verifying that she had his package safe under her arm. Taking a moment to pour out the contents of another small jar of salt behind some boxes, Davin and Rajon carefully moved the remains of the still-warm serpent into the container, being careful not to let the green ichor dripping from its metal fangs get anywhere near their fingers or flesh.

  When it was done, Rajon took the jar, Davin took the package, and Verona took up her skirts, and they quickly made their way up and out of the Abbey of the Fourteen Saints. After a staircase and a few turns through an old abandoned prayer room — and taking a moment to drop Guiseppe’s whistle into a poorbox along the wall — they climbed a final flight the stairs into the afternoon sunlight, out into one of the small stone market squares that stood beneath the Saint’s Tower. Breathing a sigh of relief, Davin was very glad to outside underneath the light of the afternoon sun. Just a quarter mile down the way, the Emperor’s castle was visible. The seat of the Brass Empire, his namesake castle stood majestically in the distance, its four cardinal turrets symbolically guarding the great nation from attack.

  But before Davin could speak, bells in the tower overhead began to ring, solemn and somber, in a way that Davin had never heard before. “What is that?” he asked. “Have they discovered us?”

  “Those are bells of mourning,” Rajon said sadly. “Bells of mourning for a leader of the Church.”

  “Not Guiseppe?” Verona exclaimed.

  “I fear so,” Rajon replied. “I’d wager that Guiseppe is dead. Come, we must be quick, for soon the Guard will be here, and I have no doubt that our enemy has spies in their ranks as well.”

  Chapter Seven

  After making their way through the busy, cobbled streets back up to the Marble district, Davin tried to ignore the fact that he had lost his shoes. While Verona’s bare feet were mostly covered by her long skirts, Davin felt obvious in his noble but shoeless attire, attracting looks from passerby every few steps. Down in the markets by the Dob, nobody would have paid him a second glance. But up here on the hill, where style and presentation were everything, he knew he didn’t fit in, and even expected that he would be arrested if he weren’t following along in Rajon’s regal wake.

  After passing by the front doors of the Fates, Rajon followed the main road for a few blocks, then turned and led them down a steep little street winding between sets of hill estates, walled verandas and private flowering gardens. Halfway down Applegate Lane he stopped at an unobtrusive little door on the side of the way, marked only by a gas-lamp and a mailbox painted with faded wisteria vines. While Davin expected Rajon to just pull out a key, instead he merely stepped aside, allowing Verona to kneel down in front of the singing lock. A few softly sung notes later the door cracked open, allowing the three of them inside.

  Within the door, the small but luxurious house sat empty of furniture and fixtures, with every scrap of carpet and decoration removed. Even the grand staircase sweeping up to the second floor had been harvested for its runners and railings, giving the place a very stark and alien appearance. After Rajon set down the urn and gave him permission to explore, Davin poked around at what once have must been a beautiful home. He noted that the fire grate was missing from the fireplace, and oddly enough, even the glass flutes were missing from the stripped-down chandelier hanging in the dining room.

  As Rajon’s boot steps echoed loudly across the polished wooden floors, the three of them quickly made their way to the sitting room and closed the blinds and shutters over the leaded glass windows one by one, until the room was lit only by a single column of sunlight casting down from a solitary overhead skylight. Sitting down first by the pool of light, Davin lay down on his back and let out a long sigh of relief. Verona sat down moments later, and then Rajon joined them.

  “So, what is this place?” Davin asked.

  “It’s for sale,” Rajon replied. “The mother of a fellow gambler used to live here, before he decided to cease making his payments to me. I pressed the issue of his delayed payment with the Judges, and he is now fully engaged in the process of selling off the family home to pay his gambling debts to a number of parties. For the moment, because he has named an exorbitant price for this place, far above what the market will bear, it makes an excellent hiding place where we can catch our breath without anybody thinking twice to find us here.”

  “Come on, come on,” Verona said, even as Davin started to open his crinkling package. “It’s your birthday, let’s open some presents.”

  Sitting up, Davin gladly took the funerary bundle from Verona and set it in the middle of the shaft of sunlight. Snapping the old strings, he quickly unwrapped the package, revealing a collection of threadbare gentleman’s clothes — a pair of folded pants, a pleated shirt with a wine stain on one sleeve, and a brown, light-weight jacket that Davin recognized on sight.

  “This was my father’s,” he said with surety. “He wore this just about every time I saw him.” He held it up to the light, admiring the sleeves and the cut, and noting the wear and tear that the jacket bore from many nights of gambling and carousing in Agora’s best gaming houses.

  “It’s a nice color for a jacket,” Verona said. “But it doesn’t look like much of an inheritance.”

  “He didn’t have much left at the end,” Rajon said. “By the time his luck turned to the wolves, there wasn’t much he could do except gamble big and pray that he could pay his debts.”

  “It even smells a little bit like him,” Davin said, as he started going through the dead man’s front pockets. Within a few moments he pulled out a pair of bone dice, a single tattered Ten of Nobles, a lace handkerchief touched by the scent of tea rose perfume, and a rusted flint-lighter tucked into a pack of short pungent black clove cigarettes. In going through his pants pockets, he came across an old set of keys, a couple of penny coins, and most surprisingly, a beautiful but battered mechanical monarch butterfly with bright yellow wings.

  “What is that?” Verona asked, gesturing to the toy.

  “I’m not sure,” Davin said. Holding it carefully by the wings, he turned it over while looking for a crank of some kind to wind it up with, but found nothing of the sort. The two brightly colored wings were attached to a central body on tiny, delicate hinges, and it looked like no toy he had ever seen. Putting it down so it rested on his palm, Davin was pleased to see the wings start to move, to gently begin to rise and fall along their angles of rotation.

  “Oooh,” Verona said. “Can I see?”

  “Sure,” Davin said, as he handed over the butterfly.

  “Now, check the lining,” Rajon advised, taking a wary look over his shoulder towards the front door. “Be careful, as after another seven years, what you’re looking for might be delicate.”

  Davin nodded and did so. Turning the jacket inside out, he began to look for secret pockets in the interior, when he noticed a bit of out-of-place thread sewn along the silk. He was about to start picking at a suspicious-looking thread sticking out from the lining, when Verona handed him a sharp, wicked little knife she’d pulled from somewhere on her person.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Be careful,” she replied. “It’s bloody sharp.” She watched as he carefully cut into the lining beneath the inner pocket, stripping away the old stitching with quick, precise slices, until he could peel a small section of the coat away like a layer of skin. But when she caught a glimpse of the packet of embroidered gray silk secreted within, marked with the dragon crest of the DeLorenzo house, she could hardly contain her excitement.

  Pulling the small square of fabric free of the lining, Davin set it down in the heart of the patch of sunlight and unfolded it, revealing the contents — a single piece of onionskin parchment inked with a set of blueprint diagrams, cryptic alchemical symbols, architectural marks, and signs that seemed more astrological than scientific. Spreading it out smoothly on the floor, taking great care not to rip the paper, Davin was suddenly aware that Verona was kneeling on one s
ide of him, and Rajon on the other, like three school-kids about to play a very serious game of marbles.

  “So, what is it?” Verona asked.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Rajon said, sounding quite honestly puzzled.

  “It’s some kind of machine,” Davin said, noting some of the blueprint lines encircling the slightly oblong, cube-like object set in the middle of the tangled diagram. Davin carefully flipped the piece of parchment over, but didn’t see any other special marks on the far side that he could read or recognize.

  “It’s in Mercuri’s own hand,” Rajon said, “and the bottom corner here bears your grandfather’s personal sigil.”

  “It’s real…” Davin said, stunned. “It’s really real. But what does it do?”

  “I don’t know,” Rajon said, taking a closer look. “There aren’t any clear indications of moving parts. But I suspect this is part of some kind of combustion engine, or maybe details the design of a chamber better able to compress steam without fear of explosion. The crossed line on the side is the alchemical mark for ‘fire’, the dotted circle indicates ‘water’, and the gate-like symbol there means ‘cage’ or ‘chamber’.

  “Doesn’t the dotted circle also mean the soul?” Verona asked. “I’ve studied some of Mercuri’s work.”

  “You have?” Davin asked, a little surprised.

  “Of course. Especially Mercuri’s earlier papers detailing the suspected presence of an etheric current contained within every living body. A current that he believed could be used with the proper training to embody all manner of physical effects.”

  “Poppycock,” Rajon said, sitting up. “Machines are machines. People are people.”

  “You mean…” Davin said to Verona, not quite sure how to ask the question. “You mean my grandfather believed in etheric theory?”

  “I believe so,” Verona said. “Your grandfather shared many passions. He wrote a number of interesting letters towards the end of his life confirming a number of theories about the inner workings of the supernatural.”

  “It’s still amazing he wasn’t hanged for it,” Rajon replied darkly. “For such a great mind, to dabble in ley-witchery and elemental nonsense, it just seems a waste. As he grew older, after the death of his wife, he started to explore other mediums outside of the bounds of accepted science.”

  “So, he was right?” Davin asked. “Did he find anything?”

  “She thinks so,” Rajon replied, earning a dark grimace from his protégé. “Back when your grandfather was experimenting with all manner of energy sources, he believed that the human body could be used as a kind of etheric battery, up to a point. But his experiments could never be proved publically. Thankfully, he soon he returned to engineering mechanical devices before he became a laughingstock.”

  “It was a waste,” Verona said. “I really think he was onto something.”

  “It was possible that if he had persisted, he would have faced the Judges for the crime of disturbing order. The Empire was a different place then and people tended to frown on those that tried to shake things up.”

  “But if he was onto something,” Verona said, tapping the parchment page by the dotted circle as if it proved her point. “The symbol for soul — ”

  “Water.” Rajon corrected. “Scientifically speaking.”

  “But at the Cultural Fair, he showed examples of a number of etheric engines.”

  “But in the end, his displays went for naught,” Rajon said, much to her irritation. “While he boasted some initial laboratory successes in private, his demonstration at the Cultural Fair with Vermeni was a total disaster.”

  “Vermeni?” Davin asked. “That’s a name I know from my father. He was a villain and a scoundrel, wasn’t he?”

  “He was far worse than that,” Rajon said. “Vermeni was a slaver and a sadist without morals or principles. But Vermeni was also a determined inventor, which is why your grandfather liked him despite his social flaws.”

  “Vermeni zan D’Alabastria, if I recall,” added Verona, “was also interested in the research of etheric devices, but was part of a strong following investigating the darker side of the occult. His mother, Verbena, was reputed as some kind of witchy fortune-teller, who could see the future and took traffic with the souls of the dead.”

  Rajon made a disparaging noise in the back of his throat. “Davin, despite what people may have written about Mercuri’s and Vermeni’s more nonsensical pursuits, the two of them together were largely responsible for a great deal of the accepted scientific technology that drives the Empire so today, including the automatons. But compared to brilliant Mercuri, in my own humble opinion, Vermeni was a second-rate inventor with a jealous, selfish streak that made him dangerous and unpredictable at every turn. He died years ago under mysterious circumstances, shortly after Mercuri did, and I haven’t heard much about the family since.”

  “So, what do we have?” Davin asked. “What is this secret paper all about?”

  “It’s something that might well be worth selling,” Rajon replied. “Or even making, if we can find a Technician capable of deciphering these arcane signs. Aside from the ones I recognize, a lot of these marks are beyond my training, and we’ll need someone to tell us about what Mercuri’s machine is really supposed to do.”

  Davin sighed. “Well, it’s a start.” He looked at Verona, expecting her to say something. But she sat quietly, clearly tired of her father-by-law’s admonitions.

  “We have our own skins,” Rajon said. “Which after this morning’s adventures is a pretty good thing. I know some experts that I trust, and they should be able to help us figure out what the device is for. More importantly, they may be able to tell us why your father held onto this one scrap, above and beyond everything else he sold from your grandfather’s estate.”

  “Then,” Davin said, satisfied with the answer, “we have this additional puzzle as well.” He indicated the small urn of snake parts.

  “That we do,” Rajon said, kneeling back up again. “Now this device is much more within my field of knowledge. Something mechanical with parts that go together in a logical, working order is much more my speed.” Grabbing the urn, he waited until Davin had carefully folded his grandfather’s diagram back up in the silks and slipped it back into its hiding place in the jacket. Then he popped the lid and dumped the remains of the metal serpent out into a clattering, clinking pile.

  “It’s beautiful,” Verona said, quite honestly stunned. In the direct sunlight, the scales of the mechanical viper glistened like mother of pearl, casting a haze of brilliant colors in reflection around it. While the protruding fangs, blank eyes, and shattered coil housing revealed the creature’s true mechanical nature, for a moment Davin had a hard time discerning that the serpent was an automaton, and not a living creature. While the rounded coil pieces, built to turn and spin at opposing angles, would clearly give it the traction and momentum required to allow for the crossing of flat, smooth surfaces, because of the clever construction Davin had a hard time imagining that the thing had been built, and not born.

  “It’s old, too,” Rajon said, as he set the jar down and huddled down next to the remains. “Look at the brass workmanship. This dates back to a time when Florin’s wasn’t automated yet, back when inventors were forging their metal pieces by hand rather than by assembly line. Some thirty or forty years ago, by my guess.”

  “It’s old?” Davin said, confused. Poking at it with his finger, he rolled part of the serpent’s carapace over to reveal a tear in the housing, showing a set of interior rods and pressure cords that allowed the creature such beautiful, fluid movement. “I worked at Florin’s for most of my life, and I’ve never seen craftsmanship like this.”

  “Where are the ether tubes?” Verona said, even as she lay her down alongside the floor and looked in the mouth. “How do you control it?”

  “I have no idea,” Rajon said. “When it attacked you, in the Archives, what level of intelligence did it show?”

  “It hu
nted us,” Davin said, even as he took Verona’s knife up again and nipped through a couple of thin rubber pieces that bound the carapace together. “It made choices, and didn’t just follow corridors blindly until it came upon us.”

  “Hmm…” Rajon said, as he sat back on his heels. “I’m not sure what to think. There must be some kind of remote device, some sort of thing that allows a greater level of autonomy than is usually capable in a machine. Maybe this is some kind of prototype, a very old prototype of Mercuri’s or Vermeni’s which ended up in the wrong hands.”

  Tearing further, cutting his way up the length of the snake’s tubular body, Davin had almost reached the engine compartment when Verona put her soft hand atop his. “Be careful,” she said. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

  “I will be,” Davin said as he cut the last scrap of pearlescent skin and leaned in for a closer look. He then stopped, nearly dropping the knife with his sudden shock.

  “What is it?” Verona asked.

  Saying nothing, Davin fidgeted a little closer to the snake, and used the tip of the knife to quickly unseat a tiny screw. Fingering it out of its crevice, Davin held it up into the light, noting how the sunlight glinted off of its silver surface.

  “A screw?” Verona asked.

  “A very new screw,” Rajon observed. “A factory-made screw, at that.”

  “The kind of screw made at Florin’s,” Davin replied. “The rest of the pieces in the construct’s housing are decades old. But this screw is a very new one, made only in the last year or two — and in a most unusual fashion. The stripping along the edge is backwards, counter-clockwise rather than the industry clockwise, which is very unusual.”