He was more of a puzzle than ever.
She followed the path he was making toward the towers, looking like upended torpedoes in the gray skies. It was hard going through the field, with ice forming crusts on the drifts and the smoldering debris causing snow to melt into puddles. It was also cold and she rubbed her arms. She was wearing nothing more than her torn blouse, corset and breeches, having somehow lost both bowler and peacoat in the crash. She kept telling herself that she might still find them in the debris. Hope, she’d learned from St. Katharine’s Docks, was a difficult thing to kill.
“By god you’re stubborn,” said Christien, turning his head. “It’s cold as hell out here and you have yet to ask me for my coat.”
“Perhaps you have yet to offer it,” she said.
“Is that why you haven’t kissed him then? You’re waiting for an offer?”
“What? No!”
“I thought you were tougher than that.”
“Well, you’re wrong and I’m not.”
“You are. That’s what I first saw in you. You were a tough, smart, bricky little thing. You knew what you wanted and you went for it, no matter what people thought.”
They slowed as they approached a fence of twisted wire. She could see his breath in the grey light.
“I liked that in you, but you changed.”
“I changed? I never changed! You changed, Christien! We used to talk about forensics and murder and writing and crime, but once you put that ring on my finger, I was bound for babies and whist and elegant parties!”
“You’re a silly girl, like all the rest. Just wap him and get on with it.”
“You’re rude.”
“You’re welcome.” He studied the fence, the twisted wire and rusty barbs. There was a dark shape on a post fifty yards east. “Is that a coat?”
“Looks like one.” She raised her chin. “A gentleman would fetch it for me.”
“I’m no gentleman.”
“But there’s no path,” she said. “And the snow is very deep. What if that fence is ionized? I could be shocked and killed in a most gruesome way. Remember when I helped you with the necroscopy of that old bludger in Cobb’s yard? His eyes bulging out of his head, his hair fried like kippers on Sunday. It was a horrible way to go.”
“You want the coat? Go get it.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“It’s time to grow up, Ivy.”
She scowled at him before turning and stomping through the snow. But she did fetch it and wasn’t fried in the process. It was a boy’s coat, small and snug but warmer than nothing. She cinched the belt and trudged back.
“Right,” she snorted. “Shall I get us through the fence as well?”
“No entry,” said Christien. “That’s what the signs say. Kein Einlass and Verboten.”
“Of course you speak German.”
“Part of an expensive and now completely wasted education.”
“Verboten,” said Ivy and she narrowed her eyes. “Forbidden?”
“I gather we’re ignoring it?”
“Definitely.”
And he reached out with his clockwork hand, twisted the wrist and a pair of tiny snips popped out. She grinned wickedly.
“What else have you got in there?”
“God knows,” he grumbled. “I find new gadgets every day.”
He cut the wires and they sprang back into large coils at the base of the post, leaving a new and open way to the towers.
“After you,” he said.
She rolled her eyes.
They stepped through the fence and into the snow.
***
Mirrors, mirrors, smoke and mirrors. White horses filled with arrows, red horses with manes aflame. The dead were coming for him, calling him, setting a crown upon his head—
“Aw now sir,” said Castlewaite as the man nudged his arm. “No sleepin’. Tha’s what Mister Christien said.”
“I’m not sleeping,” he lied, opening his eyes. “There are simply so many dead on this field. Thousands, in fact. I’ve never seen so many. And these poor little boys.”
“Boys, sir?”
Three boys had appeared before him, crackling into existence like frost on a window. Three boys not more than twelve. It should have broken his heart but he was as cold as stone.
“I’m just, it just…” He looked away. “Gads, what has she done to me?”
“Sir?”
“Arclight.” Her name on his tongue, filling his head with glimpses of power, time, life and death. “Arcus lux, quid vis tibi? Quid tibi opus est? I don’t know…”
The little fire roared and he scrambled to his feet.
“Castlewaite?”
“Sir?”
The flames, dancing, rearing, rushing, burning.
“Do you see any horses in the fire, Castlewaite?”
“Naw, sir. Just a few bits of wood. Why? Do you see an ‘orse, sir?”
“Not yet.”
“Why don’t ye sit down wi’ me?” Castlewaite patted the snow. “Right ‘ere.”
He looked across the field, past the towers, past the world. He could see all of the Industrial Republic of France from here, all of Blood and Iron too. Austria, Poland, Russia and Slovakia, an entire continent on fire because of one man. One man and a set of lockets.
“He’s dead,” he said, his voice echoing and hollow. “The Crown Prince is dead, shot in the head. War is coming on iron feet.”
“Sir, ye’re scarin’ me and yer bleedin’ sommat fierce. Please sit down wi’ me, sit ‘ere…”
Sebastien dabbed his forehead, looked at the fingers shiny with blood. With a grunt, he reached behind to pull his pistol, the remarkable clockwork pistol, from his belt. It was a fine musket-bore walnut and steel officer’s piece, with carved ivory laid in the grip. He spun the chambers once, twice, three times.
“Three balls,” he said. “Three balls of lead. Still three.”
He looked at the coachman and smiled like the sun.
“You see, Castlewaite? I didn’t kill the Crown Prince.”
And he bolted through the snow toward the towers.
Chapter 8
Of Mechanical Monsters, a Shooting Mishap and a Maritime Disaster of Titanic Proportions
Reuters, Int., January 30, 1889
Excitement in Vienna
Sudden Death of Gilded Crown Prince
Intelligence has just been received from Mayerling, a small village in the vicinity of the Gilded capital, announcing the death of Crown Prince Rudolf. There are conflicting reports on the manner of death, one indicating a stroke of apoplexy while another mentioning the notion of a single gunshot wound to the head.
State Police have begun an official investigation.
***
“These are strange, don’t you think?” Ivy asked as they approached the towers. “Are they grain silos? Windmills without vanes? Very ugly huts? And why has no one come out to meet us? Someone has been here recently – look at all the foot prints in the snow. But surely, if someone were here, they’d have seen something as monumental as an airship crashing in the fields outside their homes.”
“Surely.”
“And it’s almost noon, so we certainly don’t have the element of surprise.”
“Certainly.”
“Do you think it’s an army base? It looks rather like an army base. But if so, where’s the army?”
“God, I’d forgotten how much you talk.”
“You used to like talking. Now you’re a grumpy old buffer.”
He smiled to himself. Not that he would let her see.
She spied a mound under the trampled snow, nudged it with the toe of her boot.
“Oh look, Remy,” she said. “It’s a cap!”
He shook his head. She was such a contrast, a ‘good’ girl who dreamed of more. Change couldn’t come fast enough for Ivy Savage, not in Victoria’s Empire of Steam but still, he couldn’t fault her for the dreaming. He had dreamed once. It had all come
to ruin at the edge of a very sharp blade.
She pulled the cap out of the snow, slapped it a few times before slipping it on her head.
“You look like your brother,” he said.
“Don’t I though?” She dug a little more with her toe. “Now what’s this?”
He turned to study the towers, all gunmetal gray and industrial like the airship hangers at the Heath Row Fields. One of the windows was shattered and the metal was blackened as if by a torch.
“It’s a boot,” said Ivy.
He studied the panel doors of aluminium. They looked to slide on inside tracks but the towers were tall as opposed to wide, with lightning rods atop like the peak of a helmet. This was a wine region. He wondered if they could be filled to the ceiling with barrels and oak.
“Remy,” said Ivy.
Now if they were houses, they’d be the most unusual houses he’d ever seen. He’d heard of houses made of grass in deepest Africa, houses of snow in colonial Canada. Perhaps, in the border regions of Blood and Iron, houses of aluminium were all the rage.
“Remy, please,” said Ivy. “I need you to see this…”
He sighed and turned, eyes flicking down to the shape at her feet.
“Yes, Ivy. It’s a boot.”
“Not just a boot.”
Frowning, he crossed over to where she was standing, peered into the leather.
“Oh god,” he breathed.
The sound of propellers echoed down on the breeze and they looked up.
Led by the Stahl Mädchen, the Imperial Fleet of airships had begun their descent on the snowy field of Reichsland.
***
Suddenly, an orb folded into life on the path before him and he skidded to a halt, twisting into the snow as he did to avoid sliding into it. He had no idea when or where he would come out if he did, or if in fact, he would come out at all.
He pushed himself to stand, looking up at the skies as the underbellies of airships appeared through the grey clouds. They looked like whales, he thought. Like great black and white whales, lowering as if to land. The Stahl Mädchen was nearest and on her decks somewhere, Arclight. He could hear her singing to him, calling him to her the way a siren called seamen to their deaths. He would go and willingly if only he knew Ivy Savage would be safe. As long as she was with Christien, she should be. Surely, he would protect her. His hatred could not go that far.
The orb hovered above the snow and he studied its surface, at once silver and mirrored as well as black and shiny. It was like a pearl, he thought, a large black pearl and he could see something as it spun before him. He stepped closer. It looked like a face.
No, three faces, three mouths open in a scream, three heads separating, three bodies with arms and legs, young arms and legs running toward him in the snow. Three children, boys, the same ones from the fire and suddenly, they appeared before him again, dead and pleading and so very young.
A red flash crossed the orb and from the towers, the sky lit up with lightning.
***
The sky was dark with the underbellies of ships as the fleet hovered over the field, preparing to land.
“Airship docks?” asked Ivy as she staggered back to look at the towers. It was something she had not considered. “But they’re not tall enough.”
They could hear the rumble of the gunports, saw the black iron glint in the grey sky and suddenly, a flash of red and the boom of cannon fire.
“Run!” Christien shouted as the earth in front of them exploded with the impact, sending clods of frozen mud raining down like shrapnel. A second boom hit the ground near the fence and they slid in the snow as they tried to stop.
A siren rose from the towers and the lightning rods began to crackle between them. Suddenly, the skies thundered as beams of light arced from the roofs to the Stahl Mädchen, racking its iron hull. The dreadnought heaved forward, sails engaging and propellers straining to gain altitude.
“Anti-airship docks,” Ivy gasped as Christien pulled her to her feet. His face was streaked with mud. “So do we try to get in?”
“No,” he said. “To the trees.”
But they ducked as the lightning struck again, this time catching only the rudder as the ironclad rose upward into the snowy skies. The fleet dispersed, taking position low in the clouds as if awaiting orders from the Stahl Mädchen.
“Listen,” said Christien. “Do you hear that?”
Between the towers, there were voices. Thin and tinny, a man was shouting orders like Castlewaite through the bosun’s pipe. It sounded a world away.
“That’s German,” she said. “Is it a photophone?”
“Aktivieren die Eisenmänner,” and he frowned. “Activate the iron…men?”
“Iron men?”
Suddenly, with the screech of metal on metal, a tower door shuddered, revealing a crack of red.
“Iron men,” she breathed, stepping back.
And with the groan of a train on a track, the tower doors rumbled open on massive shapes within. Almost three stories high and illuminated by a red glow, they looked like ironclad warships. Beams of light swept from their helms.
“Sentinels,” she whispered. “Remy, they’re Sentinels…”
“Ivy,” said Christien, shielding her with his body. “Run!”
And he grabbed her hand and bolted for the trees.
***
His heart sank as the Stahl Mädchen lurched upward, her hull racked by lightning from the towers. He could see her gunports darkening however, flinched at the boom, watched the cannonballs tear up the ground. More lightning and the fleet broke to hover, deadly and silent over the snowy field. The air was holding its breath.
Something was happening with the towers.
He pushed through the boys and ducked around the orb to study them. The towers were splitting open like over-ripe oranges, rumbling with the sound of thunder and shaking the ground beneath his boots. Three shapes could be seen through the wide panel doors, three silhouettes in red and he thought they might be giants until they moved into the light.
“Good Lord,” he breathed.
The boys appeared before him once again. He turned, watched the orb for a moment as it spun and flashed with red. Suddenly he understood.
He turned back to the boys.
“Those things? Did they kill you?”
One of the boys nodded. Another began to cry, his tears forming an icy slick along his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do. I can’t kill them for you. They’re machines.”
Sentinels, he corrected himself. Huge mechanical soldiers moving on iron legs out of the towers, iron legs churning up the ground like the strides of very large horses. One raised its massive arm, pointing it toward the dreadnought as one would aim a pistol. Its fingers were artillery shells, five on each metal hand and fire leapt from its wrist as four rockets flared up to the sky.
Arclight sang and he raised his own hand, trying to understand her song.
“Wilhelm, Children, Red, Peace!” he shouted, naming each rocket as she flew.
The orb disappeared only to reappear beneath the Stahl Mädchen, swallowing all four rockets in succession in a kaleidoscopic burst of ice. Another Sentinel fired, sending a fifth rocket hurtling towards the Maiden but she swung hard to port, taking her well out of range of the hovering orb. The rocket pierced a hole through a starboard sail and the Stahl Mädchen soared up, up, up into the cloudy skies, taking the rest of the fleet, and the orb, with it.
The Sentinels turned their attention away from the ships and beams of red swept along the ground, targeting mechanisms built into the Sentinels’ helms. It was only then that Sebastien noticed two figures racing across the snowy fields.
Another rocket flared from the arm and the earth erupted as if struck by a cannonball. Christien and Ivy dodged the snow, dirt and sparks that rained down on their heads. Another rocket and Ivy was thrown into the air. Only Christien’s clockwork grip kept her from being crushed by the
massive feet.
The boys stared at him with vacant eyes.
Sebastien studied the pistol.
Three bullets. Three Sentinels.
“Crackerjack,” he said.
He spun the chambers, raised his arm, and fired.
***
January 30, 1945
Baltic Sea
The MV Wilhelm Gustloff is evacuating civilians and navy personnel from the threat of the Red Army. Its navigation lights are on to avoid collisions with the many minesweepers in the area but it’s not flying the Red Cross to mark it as a hospital ship. There are upwards of ten thousand people on board – most children – and the fact that they are fleeing signals a turn in the war.
Suddenly, the night sky is lit up by rocket fire as four torpedoes strike the Wilhelm Gustloff, the first in the port bow, second amid ships, third below the funnel while the fourth sputters harmlessly into the water.
It is rumoured that the ship has been attacked by a Steel Kosatka, or Killer Whale U-Boat, although the only submersible in the vicinity returns to port with a full bay of faulty torpedoes. Alexander Marinesko, Captain S-13, will take credit for the sinking and be awarded the Order of the Red Banner, but will later be dishonourably discharged from the Navy of Steel.
While the minesweepers are able to save some, it is reported that over nine thousand people, including the five thousand children, lose their lives in this most tragic of maritime disasters.
***
She was grateful for Christien’s hold as they flew across the field, wave after concussive wave threatening to send them into the air like kites. She could hear nothing but the wail of sirens and boom of exploding earth, could see nothing but his black-clad shoulders and the line of trees in the distance. Another blast and this time, the impact sent them both skidding sideways, the snow immediately melting under the heat. Her hand slipped out of his grip as another rocket blast stuck like a wall, and she was flung high and far only to hit the ground hard, forcing the breath from her lungs. She spat out the dirt and lifted her head, freezing at the sight of barbed wire not inches from her face. She scrambled backwards only to slam into a huge iron foot that went up and up and up.
Cold Stone & Ivy Book 2: The Crown Prince (The Empire of Steam) Page 10
