Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  Yens chuckled a little to himself. “He corrected a singer once, when he was about twelve, after the merrymaker missed a stanza. I remember that like yesterday. The merrymaker stopped playing his lyre in offense and told Hydon to sing it then. And he did. Flawlessly. The man gave him a coin afterwards and asked if he would like to apprentice. But becoming a merrymaker was not Hydon’s dream.”

  The lost ballads were both studied in school, and acted out as entertainment for children at Hallowmas. To sing them in full lasted well over an hour, beginning with the story of how the Corpse King disobeyed Great Elequa, both father and mother of all to exist, by killing the people of Phaleros so indiscriminately that the gods of the underworld complained. Elequa ordered the king to cease his campaign of death, but the king considered himself a god and committed an even greater atrocity by killing over Hallowmas, the divine week of peace.

  Jewels and Blood was also Elario’s favorite ballad as a boy. The last of the lost ballads celebrated the lives and deaths of Lord Atmos and Lady Birgit Rothshale, who lived two hundred years after the time of the Corpse King. They adventured sixteen times to the haunted Great Cities and returned with treasure. The Machesse jewels, trunks of gold bars and sapphires, the scepter of Elequa . . . that last find they presented to the royal family, who granted them titles as a reward. Each time those two intrepid treasure hunters went into the woods, they took along a hundred arms-men to protect them from the dervesh. On several occasions, they lost all save a handful of that hundred.

  The desire for more, when no more was needed, the confidence that they would emerge again victorious when they always had before, drove them into the trees on that doomed seventeenth expedition. Of the party of one hundred and five, a single one emerged weeks later with mortal wounds. His recollections of that fated journey were recorded before he died of his injuries, to be transformed into the last ballad still sung today.

  A last strip of mud flaked away from the package, showing the name in full. JAZAN REPSE. “He thought your father was still alive, and wished to rekindle their ties too late.” Yens’s voice was soft and laden with regret. “That was Hydon, always traveling in the dust behind the wagon of common sense. The day he bought that aithra pistol on the Cuthill was the day I knew what he was becoming. I did not want to believe what was in front of my eyes. A madcap, this same boy who was my friend, this boy I knew since my cradle days. This boy who climbed a tree to fetch me down when I was small and scared; this boy who taught me to swim and poked me in school to show me the frog in his desk. He was going to walk into the Wickewoods for a dream and throw his life away.”

  “An aithra pistol? Wherever did he buy an aithra pistol?” Elario asked. He had never seen one.

  Shaking his head at the recollection, Yens said in distaste, “It was a snake of a peddler who sold it to Hydon, claiming it once belonged to Lady Birgit Rothshale. There it was, engraved on the muzzle, the initials BR and a dragon claw beneath, the trademark of the lady. I tried to talk Hydon out of dashing his coin on it; it was a forgery, of course, but he would not listen to the younger boy tugging at his sleeve! The pistol still shot, which was his primary concern, the peddler encouraging him to test it. That pistol and a box of aithra bullets came home with us that day, and I was sworn to secrecy. It was his pride and joy, along with that old short sword he got from Elequa knows where. But I did not hold to his secret.”

  “You told?”

  “Only your father. Hydon refused to listen to me, but I thought he would listen to his elder brother. I was wrong. Neither did he listen to Jazan when confronted. No. No, he asked Jazan to come along with him!”

  Yens set down the package. Taking the broom from beside the fireplace, he swept the mud flakes together. “To have one another’s back in the woods, collect gold and jewels, to never again let their fortunes rely on what the soil burps up at them each season. They were going to take back what was rightfully theirs when they found the old Repse estate! Their inheritance! There was probably a safe inside! Your father exploded at him for stupidity in this very room. He told his brother that neither of them knew where the Repses hailed from in the Great Cities. Twelve cities! Twelve enormous cities to search, and dozens upon dozens of smaller cities and towns and little villages around each one! They couldn’t wander about dervesh-infested lands picking up gold coins and hoping to stumble over an estate long in ruins!”

  “That is absurd!” Elario cried.

  The sweeping grew vigorous as Yens relived the argument from long ago. “Yes, it was absurd! That is exactly what it was. But Hydon argued all the harder while Jazan pleaded with him to see reason. Riches, Hydon desired riches, and the ease they would give him. No more grubbing on a farm in cow poke country but a grand house in the golden ring! No more chores! The best horses, the finest carriages and clothes and entertainments, he had an entire list worked out in his head of what he planned to acquire with his treasure.”

  Yens brushed away a flake that had fallen upon Elario’s boot. “Your father said no, obviously. No, no, no. He had grown up, for all your uncle hadn’t. He had a girl he was sweet on, your mother, a farm that needed care, petty spices to be gotten from the mountains and sold. Jazan didn’t intend to die as a treasure hunter. A hard life as a farmer is preferable to no life as a madcap. They quarreled terribly all afternoon, and then Hydon left days later alone.” He swept all of the flakes into the fireplace and put the broom aside.

  Hesitantly, Elario withdrew the box from his pocket. Cradling it in his palms, he said, “This is what Hydon sent.”

  Yens took the box, his rough fingers traveling along the smooth lid and the silver hinges. “An eye inside, you said?”

  “It is not a human eye. It is . . . it does not even seem real, this eye, golden mist around a red iris. But it is somehow alive. Do you want to see it?”

  Now Yens was the one showing hesitance. He shook his head and gave it back. “Hydon wrote that command for a reason.”

  “Was there any part of him that was truly mad?”

  “True madness was never his burden to bear. What he wrote to Jazan, I trust he wrote in clear sight. His faults were in his desires, allowing his greed to override his good sense, not in his sanity. This . . . whatever this is . . . must be very dangerous. Or why would he not send it straight on to this Westen at’Inamon? Why take a circuitous route? This has to be something that others desire greatly.”

  “How can this put me in danger when nobody knows that I have it?” Elario asked. “Could somebody be coming to Alming?”

  “If people knew he had this and wanted it from him, and anticipated that he would send it to this man in Drouthe, then they would have somebody intercept the post on its path, or await its arrival in the town,” Yens said, his eyes on the letter upon the worktable. “And should it not arrive, or should it not be with the sarge driving it to that destination, then they would look to where else Hydon could have sent it.”

  They looked at one another.

  Panic was a tight, knotted ball in Elario’s stomach. “What if they’re coming right now? I should go!”

  “At ease,” Yens said nervously, and nervousness from a man who was normally a steady rock of calm unnerved Elario further. “They can’t travel the Hopcross at night any more than you can. If nobody has arrived here by now, then they aren’t going to arrive.”

  “I’ll head out tomorrow morning.” Going to the kitchen with Yens on his heels, Elario said, “If anyone shows and inquires after me, I went to Penborough to buy herbs at the Grand Market. It is not so much a falsehood; you can say I need argetonia, which I do. This season has been poor. I let Conton think that this package contained herbal sachets, so he will be none the wiser.”

  “I’ll ready Orman at dawn.”

  Elario opened the oven grate and dropped in the letter. He slipped in the ribbon after it, and tore the packaging to pieces. As he stuffed them in, he said, “You need Orman to work, and Jersey is lame. I’ll leave on foot. I can pass a coin to a crop dr
iver on the Hopcross and hitch a ride on the back of a wagon to Ballevue.”

  Once he arrived in Penborough, he would have to take an aerial to get farther north. It was a faster way to travel than by cutter. With winter approaching, there was no time to dally. The closest he had ever been to an aerial was to see them in the large airfield east of the Grand Market, rising higher and higher in the air to glide north like silver bullets.

  Snapping a strike-stick, Yens dropped it flaming into the oven. The paper caught light and charred. “You’ll need to take food, and wear your poorest until you are in Ballevue.”

  “Why?”

  “So no one looks at you! You cannot appear to be someone who might carry an object of worth. Eyes never linger on a fellow dressed in the scuffs of a farmhand. What you usually wear to Ballevue, your green vest and good trousers, all of it is too fine for someone walking the Hopcross or sitting in the back of a wagon. A man who can afford those clothes should be able to afford his own horse. You have a young face still; nobody will take you for more than the driver’s son . . .”

  The door opened. “Papa!” Nyca cried, thumping into the entryway. “Papa, I got seven-bit per basket! Where are you?”

  Yens motioned to Elario, who rounded the corner to the back staircase. As he climbed the stairs, Yens exclaimed below, “I’m in the kitchen! Seven-bit? Tell me over our dinner, boy, but right now we have to make some provisions for Master Repse.”

  Footsteps raced for the kitchen. “Is he going to the Grand Market?”

  “Yes, and leaving shortly, so he can get back in time to prepare for Hallowmas. He’ll start on foot for Winchistie tomorrow before you even wake up, and there he will hire a carriage to Ballevue. Jersey needs to rest her leg. Look at this! We’ll have a lovely meat pie for dinner. Find his flask and fill it with water-”

  Elario closed the door to his antechamber. This was not a story that anyone would question, or question too closely. There was nothing unusual or gossip-worthy about Elario going to the Grand Market. To leave without a horse was odd for him, yet strong Orman could not be spared in harvest, and Jersey was old and lame. Plenty of people walked the Hopcross. As long as one left no later than mid-morning, the next town always came within sight long before sundown.

  Odd would be to see him leaving town in his roughest clothing, in addition to on foot. It was not dawn that he should be leaving the house but darkness for cover. Dawn should see him placing his first step on the Hopcross, beyond the reach of Alming’s curious eyes. Well gone by the time the first doors and windows opened.

  A man in the back of a wagon or on foot would not have a fine satchel tooled in silver either. Going into the closet, he took out an older, weathered satchel made of leather that had been in the Repse family for longer than anyone remembered. A long strap fitted to go over a shoulder and across the chest would hold it to his back. Clearly it was a quality piece in its heyday, but that heyday was generations in the past. Hitched to the body of a young man in scuffs, were such a man to pass Elario on the road, he would assume it contained nothing more than a change of clothes, a ration of food, a box of strike-sticks and a knife and the other small necessaries for a traveling farm worker. There were many people just like this on the Hopcross, and more this year with Piper Hollow’s misfortune.

  The roughest clothes would be on his back, but he needed finer for the cutter in Ballevue. To show up on the dock in scuffs with gold or an unusual amount of silver for passage would turn the suspicious eyes of the jacks to him. They’d think he stole the coins and alert the harbor-master. Elario took his vest, fine shirt, and best trousers from his closet. His best shoes, too. Laying the shoes at the bottom of the satchel, he piled the folded clothes on top.

  His comb and shaving kit were slipped in at the side, and wedged in atop the clothes was his travel blanket. The box could fit in there as well, but he did not move to include it among his belongings. It felt safer to keep it on his person. The advantage of wearing scuffs was that they were so voluminous no one would see the small bulge of a box in the pocket.

  Reaching for the highest shelf in his closet, he took down the flatbox safe. Then he got down onto his hands and knees to pull the key from its hiding place in the frame of his bed. He opened the safe and surveyed the money within.

  What an aerial ride cost, he was unaware, but it must be a great expense. And he required two of them, one to get there, and one to bring him back. On his blanket, he set a heap of silver bits for the aerial and cutter passage, and three of his golds just in case. Should disaster come to Alming, he reasoned, he should leave Yens and Nyca with money, too. Another heap of silver bits formed, a fistful of coppers too, and a single gold. That would carry them far, far away, if need for drastic measures arose. He slipped the coins for Yens into a spare pouch.

  A little room remained in the satchel, some of which had to be spared for his provisions. The rest he filled with the smaller of his two carrying cases of herbal treatments. Never again would he be caught short, as he was during the contagion, without easy means of supporting himself. Should ice and snow trap him away from home, he could peddle his skill elsewhere.

  Light on coin, the safe was placed back upon the highest shelf, and the key to the bedframe. Then he sat upon his bed, feeling the presence of the box in his pocket. It could have been a trick of the light what he saw within, yet he was unable to convince himself of that well enough to open it a second time. Outside the window, the sky was deepening with evening. No one was upon the road or in the drive, and he checked it often in his unease.

  Stop, he chided himself. To Drouthe he would go, hand over this box to Westen at’Inamon, and to Alming he would return. That was all. Should thieves be after this box, for thieves was all he could imagine them to be, they were traveling in the wake of the post, and a distant wake, since Drouthe was their first target. If they traveled to Alming in time, they would find naught but Jazan dead, Jazan’s son gone to buy herbs in Penborough, a stoic houseman in Yens, and a boy who genuinely knew nothing. And if, perchance, these thieves thought to wait in Alming for Elario’s return, they would be disappointed yet again. He’d buy a few things in the Grand Market on the way home, so that no one could countermand his story, and explain that he stayed there overlong to attend a few births for extra coin.

  Then this mystery was out of his hands, out of his life, and all was normal once more.

  Nyca called up the stairs that dinner was laid out, and Elario got off the bed. Though he was without hunger, it was important the boy sense nothing amiss. That would keep him safe from thieves, his total ignorance of the eye and this journey.

  Going downstairs, Elario stopped in Yens’s tidy bedroom, and stuffed the pouch of coins under his pillow.

  Chapter Four

  The sky was still black when Elario rose, having had no more than a few winks of sleep. The glowing embers from the fire was the only light in the room. Sloughing his nightdress in the near darkness, he drew on the scuffs folded upon the chair. The box was already in the pocket, Elario checking on it before he took a knee at the altar. Elequa, let this go smoothly. Turn Halassa’s face to me.

  Halassa was the goddess of luck. Taking a silver bit from his coin purse, he added it to the altar for her. He hardly expected a mere copper or two to sway her eyes to him, but he could not risk leaving a gold.

  The house was silent as he walked down the outside of the stairs to prevent them from creaking. Yens and Nyca would be up with the cockerel, but that was still some time away. At the front door, he slipped out and closed it quietly behind him. Then he paused on the porch to put on his boots and stuff his cloak into a satchel that had little room for it. The seams practically groaned as he forced it in. Though it was cold, the walk was going to make him too warm for the cloak.

  No one was skulking about in wait for him. The dim gray light in the sky outlined the shapes of fence and bush and tree and barn, still hulks without feature. Even the air was still. Afraid to reveal himself with his smal
l travel lantern, which was affixed to the satchel’s buckle, he walked slowly and with care in the pre-dawn darkness.

  Cuthill Road led him past fenced fields and snug homes down long drives. Flocks of sheep were huddled in the pastures, the ewes and their spring lambs asleep in the grass. In time, there was enough gray light to quicken his pace. Farms separated by fields became townhouses and shops snuggled up close together. All of them had dark windows. As he approached the Sixes, a single light went on upstairs on the side of the inn reserved for guests.

  He slipped into the deep shadows in an instant. The curtains parted at that window on the second floor, a woman stepping up to the glass. At least he thought it was a woman. The light around the early riser showed a tent of colorless hair falling from crown to shoulders. The face was in obscurity. She stared below for a full minute, never moving in that time. Finally, she stepped away but left the curtains open.

  The inn’s sign creaked in a breeze. Elario broke into a run, taking the right-side path around the inn lest the sound of his feet bring the person back to the window. He did not slow until he was at the Green. On spring and summer holidays it was a place of celebration; now in late autumn, it was just an expanse of grass soon to be covered in snow.

  As he walked on, Elario’s mind went to Hydon. Hydon Repse had been a strange boy. Perhaps he would not have sounded so strange had Elario grown up with a madcap in the schoolhouse, but all of the little boys and girls around him were no different from Elario himself. They played in the schoolyard between lessons, pretending to be soldiers and dervesh in turn, locked in desperate combat and dying dramatically in the grass. They imagined themselves to be Atmos the archer and swordsman, and Birgit the shooter, as in love with one another as they were of the treasure they sought. They presented chests of jewels in fistfuls of smooth pebbles to pretend kings, and took knees to be titled by a stick held in a royal, and royally grubby, hand.