Djinn (The adventures of Hanover and Singh Book 4)

by Chris Paton

  Lena's mare bumped her flank alongside Bystro and nibbled its neck. Bystro snorted and turned to bump noses with its mate. Lena stood in her stirrups and squinted into the distance.

  “There,” she said. “There he is.” With a swift kick she pulled her mare away from Stepan's horse and encouraged her mount to a quick gallop with a string of Cossack words too fast for Stepan to understand.

  “Come on then, Bystro,” Stepan said and kicked his heels into his horse's flanks and took off after Lena. He spotted the bent form of a man jogging through the brush ahead of her, one hand clutched to his bloody side and the other wrapped around the grip of a long flintlock pistol. “Bryullov,” Stepan said and tugged Bystro's reins to go wide of their quarry, leaving Lena to run him down, while Stepan covered her from the side.

  Bryullov whirled and lifted his pistol. He fired as Lena bore down upon him. She ducked and the lead ball whistled over her head. Bryullov flicked the pistol into the air and caught it by the barrel and raised it as a club. Lena reined her mare in and circled the Russian as her horse snorted a stream of clear bubbles from its nose. Stepan approached from the side and Bryullov flicked his gaze from the Cossack to the sniper and back again. He tossed his pistol onto the ground and held up one hand.

  “Kapitan Skuratov,” he said. “I am your prisoner.”

  “Alas, Kapitan Bryullov,” Stepan said as Lena slipped off her horse and handed him the reins. “I ride with Ivan Timofeyevich.”

  “And what does that mean?” said Bryullov. He tensed as Lena pulled a pistol from her bandolier and pulled back the hammer.

  “It means, you are mine,” she said and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 14

  The Tanfana

  Imperial Russia

  July, 1851

  Luise rapped her knuckle on Kettlepot's globus tank and waited for Emilia to squirm her upper body out of the boiler. The young girl blinked in the lamplight of the engineering car and stared up at Luise.

  “What?” she said and let the wire brush in her hand fall to her side. “What are you laughing at?”

  “I am laughing at you, Emilia,” said Luise. “You are black with soot from the waist up. You should have worn goggles – your face is blacker than shoe polish.”

  “Oh,” said Emilia and studied her hands. She turned to look at her reflection in the bronze plates of Kettlepot's tank. “Yes,” she said. “I can see that now.”

  “But did you get it finished?”

  “Yep. He is as good as new.”

  “Good,” said Luise. “I want to show you something.”

  “What?” said Emilia as she followed Luise to a small window squeezed between two busy workspaces.

  “Russia.”

  Emilia stood on tiptoe and pressed her nose against the glass and smudged it with a greasy, black print of soot. With the cuff of her sleeve, Emilia tried to clean the spot only to make it bigger and greasier. Emilia gave up and stared around the smudge at the lights of a nearby town and the huts and houses of blackwood dotting the countryside as they steamed past.

  “It's a little too dark to see anything,” said Luise. “But it was about time you crawled out of the emissary's guts. I brought you some supper and I thought we could go upstairs and talk while you eat.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “To the observation nest,” Luise said and pointed to the ceiling above them. “It's where they communicate with the flyers and airships. Come on. The ladder is this way.”

  Emilia followed Luise up the ladder and onto the roof of the engineering car. Two of Wallendorf's soldiers draped rough wool blankets around their shoulders and opened the door to a large glass dome with thick brass fittings. Inside was a circular bench with space to put one’s feet facing inside or outside the dome. Luise shut the door behind Emilia and nodded towards the small stove in the centre. Apple dumplings sizzled in a griddle on the stove beside a coffee pot black with soot, just like Emilia.

  “Drink first,” said Luise and poured warm milk from a thermos into Emilia's coffee. “Sugar?”

  “Yes please,” Emilia said and sat down on the bench. She tugged the corners of the blanket around her shoulders and took the mug of coffee in her hands.

  “The dumplings are nearly ready. I will tend to them while you tell me all about Kettlepot and the Şteamƙin.”

  “All right,” Emilia said and took a sip of coffee. “”What do you want to know?”

  “How about you start at the beginning?”

  “I can do that.” Emilia warmed her hands around the mug and watched as Luise turned the dumplings with a wooden spoon. “When I was younger, I lived in Romania,” she said. “That's where people say the Şteamƙin come from.”

  “And what are they?”

  “They are like mites, tiny creatures that inhabit the pipes of machines that run on steam. They like it hot – really hot. Once they move into a machine they make it their home, forever. That's why Herr Schleiermacher wanted me to run Kettlepot into the sea, he knows that once the Şteamƙin are in a machine you will never get them out.”

  “Not even when they go cold?”

  “Nope, they just go to sleep, and wake up again whenever the fire is lit and the boiler produces steam.”

  “You talk about them as if there is more than one in every machine.”

  “That's right. There is. The Şteamƙin are a community, they live together, and the more of them, the better. You see,” Emilia said and leaned forwards on the bench, “the more Şteamƙin there are in the pipes of a single machine, the cleverer it is.”

  “Clever?”

  “Yep, like it can do things. Take Kettlepot, for instance. All we had to do was catapult him onto the airship. He did the rest. He knows how to fight. Of course, the engineers don't get that. They think that once the Şteamƙin are in a machine it is ruined, like gremlins got into it or something. But they haven't seen what I have seen.”

  Luise scooped three apple dumplings from the griddle, sprinkled them with sugar and handed them on a plate to Emilia.

  “What have you seen?” she said and poured more batter from a jug into the empty cups of the griddle.

  “I've seen looms that weave night and day, the most amazing patterns, as fast as you can thread them. Tractors that pull a plough around a field while the farmer walks in the furrows behind it and sows his crops. He only has to whistle and the tractor stops and waits while he refills his bucket or takes a new sack from the driving seat.”

  “So any manner of machine can act independently?”

  “Almost any. It depends on how many Şteamƙin are inside it. If the machine is old or broken, then it's probably not interesting enough for lots of Şteamƙin, so it only has a few and that can be right dangerous. Then it really is best to let them go cold. You can't even split it up for parts, as the next machine will have those same Şteamƙin inside, and,” Emilia paused. “It gets complicated,” she said and frowned. “But I think the Şteamƙin have some kind of social order. Not all of them get on or mix well. I've seen some pretty scary digging machines go nuts and tear holes in barns until they ran out of steam. That kind of thing gives the Şteamƙin a bad name, and I can understand why engineers don't like them.” Emilia stopped to take a bite of dumpling. “These are good.”

  “I'm glad,” said Luise and poured herself a mug of coffee. “What about Kettlepot?”

  “Ah, he's prime real estate for the Şteamƙin. Emissaries are advanced machines and they have a huge range of movement. Herr Wallendorf really created something special when he designed them, that's for sure. Anyway, I think that some Şteamƙin colonies look for something like an emissary, and they build a social order of some such inside it. But Wallendorf can't risk having a bad crowd settling inside his emissaries' pipes, so that's why they spend so much time and effort to make sure they don't get infected in the first place.”

  “That would explain why they don't like Kettlepot.”

  “And why they didn't mind losing that one in the sea,
” said Emilia. “That was a shame. He showed promise, he did.”

  “And how long has Kettlepot had Şteamƙin?”

  “Five months, three weeks and two days,” Emilia said and pulled a leather-bound notebook from her pocket. “I've got it all in here. From the moment he started to anticipate what I was asking him to do, and his favourite songs.”

  “That's right. You sing to him.”

  “We kind of use the control box like a telegraph machine. You know, to talk to each other.”

  “Yes,” Luise said and smiled. “I understand. And, I must say, I am also impressed with your note-keeping. You will make a first class scientist one day.”

  “Oh, I don't want to be a scientist,” said Emilia and stuffed another piece of dumpling into her mouth. She licked her lips clean of sugar and soot.

  “No? What then?”

  “I want to be an engineer. But not like them below,” she said and nodded at the floor of the dome. “I want to be a maker.”

  “Yes,” said Luise. “I imagine you do.”

  Emilia looked up as The Tanfana slowed and the excited calls and shouts of the soldiers between the car roofs drifted through the cracks in the door. Luise and Emilia put down their mugs and pulled their blankets tight around their shoulders before opening the door and stepping out into the night air. The lights of the town flickered in the distance behind them, and the whistle of the wind dropped as the train slowed, only to be replaced by a new sound: the whirring of propellers.

  “Look,” said Emilia. “There's a flyer.”

  “Ja,” said the soldier waiting for them outside the dome. “There's two, and they bring news of the airship.”

  “The Flying Scotsman?” said Luise.

  “Ja, the same.”

  The first flyer flew low over the train. As the pilot drew close to the engineering car, he held out his arm and dropped a leather sandbag onto the roof. The soldier exchanged a wave with the pilot and then ran forwards to pick up the bag. A brass message cylinder was attached to the side with a metal ring and pin. The soldier removed the pin and pulled the cylinder free.

  “I have to get this to Fräulein von Ense,” he said and turned towards the ladder.

  “No need,” said Hannah as she climbed up the ladder and stepped onto the roof. “I heard the flyers were close. Do you have a message?”

  “Ja, Fräulein,” the soldier said. He dipped his head as he handed the cylinder to Hannah.

  Luise waited for Hannah to read the message. It was difficult to read her expression in the dim light, but there was no mistaking her body language. A shiver of excitement rippled across Hannah's shoulders and she handed the message to the soldier.

  “Take this to the officer's car and see that Oberleutnant Schmidt gets it as quick as you can.”

  “Ja, Fräulein,” the soldier said. He pocketed the messages and slid down the ladder and climbed into the train.

  Luise waited for Hannah to walk across the roof to join them. Hannah glanced at Emilia as if making a decision, and then she spoke.

  “The Flying Scotsman has crashed up ahead. There is wreckage everywhere.”

  “Crashed?”

  “Ja, maybe it was damaged in the fight?” Hannah said with a brief smile for Emilia. “Can Khronos fly?”

  “I don't know?” Luise said and gripped the edges of the blanket. “I don't think so. Once he has taken a human body...”

  “Then he is limited to travelling as humans do. Ja, it was the same with Aether and Khaos.”

  “Then we have a chance to stop him.”

  “Ja,” said Hannah. “I think we do. Come,” she gestured towards the ladder. “We must make preparations.”

  Chapter 15

  The Hindu Kush

  Afghanistan

  July, 1851

  The village had a name once, Tahir told Hari and his companions as they ate around a cooking fire outside a small compound of packed earth. But ever since they had created the djinn and been abandoned by the bandits, people had stopped calling the village by its name. In fact, he explained, the people in the neighbouring villages had stopped referring to it by name at all. Sast simply ceased to exist, and was avoided as a cursed place. Trade stopped, the number of travellers on the road thinned to the point where they were like short lengths of straw in the wind – bleached by the sun and twisted away from the village by the wind.

  “The first winter was hard,” Tahir said. “The second was unbearable. We lost many people, and many others moved to other villages, only to return, shunned and desperate.” He took a handful of earth from the ground around the fire. “Dust is all we have left, and the few goats that wander into the village.”

  Hari watched Jamie as the man spoke of the village. The young Englishman chewed at the meat he was offered, but was distracted every second mouthful by the djinn pit. Hari could only imagine what horrors the sight of the pit conjured in Jamie's mind. I must get him away from here, as quickly as possible. The meat was succulent, Hari noted, but a glance at Najma and further observation of Jamie suggested that none of them enjoyed the meal, for every mouthful seemed to evoke another story of starvation and woe from their host.

  “And then,” Tahir said, “we had a visit from one of the metal djinn.”

  “What?” said Hari and snapped his head towards Tahir. “What kind of djinn?”

  “Like a man, but very big. We had heard of them, but had not seen them. It was made of metal and it moved of its own accord, but it could not fly like djinn,” he said with a quick look at Jamie.

  “When was this?”

  “Last month.”

  “And where did it go?”

  “Go? It didn't go anywhere. It stopped here.” Tahir's face stretched unfamiliar muscles into a smile. “Would you like to see it?”

  “It is still here?”

  “Yes,” he said and stood up. “Come.”

  “I will wait here with Jamie,” said Najma. “I will make sure he eats,” she said with a nod to Hari as he glanced at the pit. “Don't worry, Nightjar. I will keep a close eye on him.” Najma tapped the barrel of the Lightning Jezail where it lay in her lap.

  “Truly,” said Hari. “I know you will.” He followed Tahir through the tumbledown village and into the parched field in the shadow of the mountain. Tahir gestured at a path between the grasses and led Hari into a shallow gully. Hari squinted into the gloom between the rocky sides of the gully and nodded as Tahir made to lift a heavy dust-laden cloth from a large object lying on the gully floor. As Tahir removed the cloth he revealed the familiar shape of a brass emissary like the one Hari and Jamie had chased through the Khyber Pass, and fought at the battle of Adina Pur.

  “Yes,” Hari said as he stepped forwards to examine the emissary's brass plates, boiler and appendages. “It is an emissary. But why did it come here?” he wondered aloud. “And how did you stop it?”

  “Stop it? We did nothing. The emissary walked around the village,” Tahir said and described the emissary's route with a hand in the air tracing the path and contours from remains on the village to the gully. “When it reached the gully, it climbed down and stopped. It just lay down.”

  “Truly? It just lay down?”

  “Yes,” he said. His teeth flashed in the light of the moon creeping above the mountains.

  “This I have never heard of,” Hari said and frowned. He kneeled down to open the door of the boiler. The furnace contained only ash and the tank was empty of water.

  “We want to sell it. What should we ask for it, mystic? What is it worth?”

  Hari stood and clapped the ash from his hands onto the ground. He studied the sides of the gully and traced the route back to the emissary.

  “Mystic? What are you thinking?”

  Hari walked around the emissary before speaking. He kneeled by the head and studied the grille, and then he continued his examination, smoothing his hands along the arms from the shoulder sockets to the double-plated brass fingertips. Hari moved to examine the legs, the
knee joints and the cloven feet. He squirmed a finger beneath his dirty turban and scratched his head.

  “There is nothing wrong with this emissary. It is in perfect condition.”

  “Ah,” said Tahir and clapped his hands. “Then it is worth a lot of money. This is a good day. Our village is saved.” Swirls of dust puffed into the air around Tahir 's sandaled feet as he danced at the head of the emissary.

  “Perhaps,” said Hari. “You can try and take it to Cabool. The British engineers would be interested in a perfect specimen such as this. But...” Hari stopped talking and walked to the gully side. He climbed up and scanned the terrain. It was flat, all the way to the mountains. “Are there any other gullies like this?”

  “No,” Tahir said and moved to cover the emissary with the cloth. Hari noticed the renewed vigour in the man's movements, but the greater puzzle still eluded him.

  “Why here?” he said. “The man that controls the emissary must have line of sight between the emissary and the control box,” Hari said aloud as he recalled what he knew of the Wallendorf emissaries. “And if that contact is broken, the emissary will continue on its course, until it runs out of fuel, or is stopped by some obstacle.” Hari remembered the early emissary models he had found wading hopelessly through snowdrifts until the furnace ran out of fuel and the water in the boiler froze. “But this one, crawled down a gully and lay down to die... Or,” Hari lifted his head and blew out a small whistle. He jogged a short distance away from the gully and turned to look back. Even in the moonlight the thin scrub was enough to hide the gully from view. “You crawled down there to hide,” Hari said and laughed. “But from whom? Your controller? Hah,” he said and gripped the pommel of his kukri. “Yes, you are like Luise's demons. You have something inside that drives you beyond the range and imagination of Wallendorf's technology and his men. Truly,” Hari said and strode back towards the gully, “there is much to learn and much that can help us on this quest.” He stopped at the lip of the gully. “Tahir?”

  “Yes?”

  “I will give you ten gold sovereigns if you promise to leave the emissary under that cloth until I send someone to come and retrieve it.”