by Jordan Reece
“My parents did not spout lies to me.”
“Your parents spouted lies to you because their parents spouted lies to them, and their parents in turn spouted those same lies going back generations. Cease your quibbling with me; I find it tiresome. The older I become, the more tiresome I find humanity in general. What one Elario Repse believes is not the axis upon which any worldly mechanism pivots, so we need not argue about your misconceptions.”
Elario filled the pouch in a sulky silence and started on a second. Coldly, he said, “How many of these will we need?”
“One for each of us to carry will suffice. We may not need this much, but better to have it than not.”
Feet thumped down the steps to the cellar. Hobbe returned, having in his hands a pot of clay and a leather bag with two handles. He placed them on the table. A cloak was slung over his shoulder, with a weapon belt atop it. “Your clothes, sir, what wasn’t torn and dirtied, and your personals. There isn’t much. They did not find your pistols under the floorboard. I also came across this.” A scrap of black material suddenly dangled from his fingers. It was an eye patch.
“Put that on,” Westen said to Elario. “You cannot walk around with a huge bandage over your head. There are enough factory accidents that eye patches are not remarked upon in the golden ring.”
So that was where they were going, and when Elario had just left it! He removed the bandage and slipped on the patch, deciding since the bandage was soiled to just leave it in this room. Westen drew the weapon belt through the loops of his trousers, clipped on holsters, and slid two aithra pistols inside. Then he put on his cloak, grumbling that it was for appearances. Elario understood that this gesture was to further promote the lie that Westen was a real man. Nobody blinked at the sight of a mechanical man in the dead of winter wearing scuffs; mechanical creations were incapable of feeling cold. But Westen was pretending to be real. As autumn turned to winter, he needed to put on a cloak.
Unbuttoning his scuffs, Hobbe activated his chest cavity to open and placed a pouch of money inside. Another pouch disappeared into Westen’s pocket, and Elario took the third. It was so heavy that he feared it would rip his trousers, so he transferred it to his satchel. They returned the rejected coins to the safe, and the books were put back on the shelf to hide it.
Elario picked up an aged, slim volume still on the table. It was a book of history entitled The Mad King. “May I take this to read?”
“No.” Westen snatched it from his fingers and shoved it into position upon the shelf. “If you’re found with that upon your person, you foolish little farm boy, you might as well sign your death notice yourself. It is forbidden.”
“How can a book be forbidden?”
“Because the Crown forbids it, and punishes most severely anyone found with books such as these in their possession. Any market with book stalls is searched now and then by soldiers to ensure no volumes of certain titles have made their way to the shelves. Now, Hobbe, acquire three horses for us. Strong ones, and capable of traveling a fair distance. We’ll meet you on Canter Road south of town.”
“We’re stealing horses?” Elario exclaimed in dismay. But Hobbe was already thumping up the stairs to carry out his new order.
Westen extinguished the candles with a silver snifter, saying, “You worry about ethics, Master Repse, and I will worry about keeping you alive and whole, and out of the hands of soldiers, and a royal court that will be all too happy to slit your throat to put out that eye within an eye. If you will reach beneath the table, kindly remove the pistol there and conceal it upon your person. You may have cause to use it.”
Elario slipped his hand beneath the table. Rough wood changed to a strap, and he followed that to a pistol. Pulling it out in awe, he inspected it in the fading light of the room. His fingers ran over the gray patina, alighting on the smooth muzzle and stubble of the handgrip, the divots of the chambers. “I have never shot one.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Westen muttered in irritation.
Elario was becoming quite sick of the disagreeable program that he was being forced to interact with. Then he noticed the dirt stuck in the collar of Westen’s shirt, and his temper subsided. Real or not, Westen had been hanged today, his shop and home torn to shreds. He was as much an outlaw as Elario. Desperate times made for strange bedfellows, as the saying went, and these were his fellows. Holding his peace, he tucked the pistol down the back of his trousers.
Westen handed the last lit candle in its holder to him. “Take this into the wine cellar.”
Elario breathed through his mouth to avoid the heavy aroma of wine, and watched as Westen closed the door to the secret room and painted over the gouges where his fingers had gone in. They went upstairs and the mechanical man dropped the pot carelessly over the beads and ribbons, so that it looked like further wreckage.
For a moment, he looked over his shop with an inscrutable expression. Elario said, “I’m sorry. I suppose you too can never return home.”
“I can return,” Westen said, turning away resolutely. “I have left many places. All I must do is wait for the turning of the generations, and then I can walk about these streets again with ease. One hundred years from now, there will not be a living soul in Drouthe who knows my face. But it was careless of me to keep my collection here, and it will be some time before I can come back for it. I suppose I did not truly expect your uncle to prize free a dragon’s eye from the caves.”
His laugh was short and bitter. “Take the words of a man over five hundred years old, Elario Repse. Just when you believe that life holds no more surprises, you receive one.”
“You saw the Troubled Times through your own eyes,” Elario marveled. What a scholar like Brother Shanus would give to spend an hour in the company of this creation! Elario had not known that the invention of mechanical men went back so far in time. Clearly, Westen had received many program updates and overhauls of parts over the centuries; one only had to observe Hobbe for a minute to see that he was out of date, but Westen moved and spoke with the perfect fluidity of a human, and his eyes had all the liveliness that Hobbe’s lacked.
“I did see them,” Westen replied, going to the door. “Back then, your surname was known from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low from Essec Shore to Pentris. Repse Spices and Incense. The family had an estate in every last one of the Great Cities, and in Ruzan less than a mile from the palace. I remember their cutters on the rivers of Phaleros, their wagons of bulk goods upon the roads, and the cooks at the big house running out when the spice carriage came down our drive. Repse was one of the proudest, wealthiest merchant families in the country, wealthier even than many of the lower nobles, and hard indeed it has fallen.”
He motioned for Elario to be quiet, and opened the door. The block was as they had left it, shuttered and silent. Creeping down the steps to the road, Elario protected the flame from the breeze with his cupped hand. The light it gave was hardly adequate to see by, but paired with the faint moonlight, he made out enough to walk. Westen moved with sure-footed swiftness away from the shop, and then the night was interrupted by an enormous crash.
It was the door, which had broken off the hinges and fallen down the stairs to the street. The noise was shattering. A light went on in the upstairs window over the tavern a moment later. Elario’s moment of ill-attention allowed the wind to put out the candle.
“Run!” Westen whispered furiously, yanking the holder from him and setting it down on a step, and they ran.
Chapter Ten
They traveled south from Drouthe upon the backs of three stolen horses. Drizzle fell on and off, stopping just long enough for Elario’s hair to dry, and then dampening it again. With his cloak closed, he was warm, but he kept having to disturb the snug cocoon to wipe drops off his neck.
The light upon Hobbe’s forehead was better than a lantern, its highest setting of blinding intensity that eliminated shadows as effectively as the sun on a summer day. Westen had him lower it
by half, fearing the beam might waken someone in the farmhouses. It was a testament to the power of the beam, as none of the farmhouses butted up to the road.
If the bay horse beneath Elario was surprised at her nighttime adventuring, she gave no sign of it. She trotted along in good spirits, seeming to like his infrequent pats to her neck. Her disposition put him in mind of Jersey, his happy old girl. That visit to Briars to the Dremenger farm felt far in the past, but Elario still had a visceral memory of the blow he sustained when Jersey threw him.
The dragon’s eye did not permit him to peek into what was going on in Alming, though he was curious and worried for Yens and Nyca’s welfare. It acted as it willed, and for now it was quiescent. The patch was far more comfortable to wear than the bandage, so he was glad of it.
Reining up beside Hobbe once they were several miles out of Drouthe proper, Elario said, “Where did you get these horses?”
Hobbe was mounted atop a giant black gelding. With the mechanical man’s own height added to it, he towered over Elario. “I went to the Plow and Horse Inn, Master Elario. They had a fire in their stables two days ago. It was put out before it spread to the inn or surrounding buildings, and all of the horses were gotten out in time, but many of the stalls are ruined. The smell is so bad in there that all of the horses are picketed outside at night in the yard.”
Elario had a dark thought. “Are these the horses of the Red Guard?”
“I believe so, sir, but I dressed them in saddles without Red Guard dragon slashes.”
“Oh, for the love of Elequa,” Westen swore. “Could you have taken any other horses than those belonging to the damned Red Guard?”
“You did not specify, sir,” Hobbe said. “Forgiveness, sir. I am not equipped with the programming that would-”
Making a sound of disgust, Westen fell back upon his white horse, which was frisking to be so close to the gigantic black. Elario felt sorry for Hobbe. “Well, they are good horses you chose, so thank you.”
“You are welcome, sir,” Hobbe said, the beam bobbing with his nod. “I loosened the ties of the others, so that initially it would look less that these three were stolen than tied poorly by a groom, and broke free in the night to wander.”
“How long ago were you made? Who owned you originally?”
“I was first activated eighty-one years ago, sir, and purchased in a lot of twelve mechanical laborers to work for Bering in Faywin. We were assigned to the copper mines.”
“Did you like to do that work?”
“I was not installed with a personality imprint back then, sir, or the ability to speak and converse. I am unable to answer that question. Forgiveness. I was simply a machine that drove steel pins and loaded carts.”
“There is no need for forgiveness, Hobbe. You said nothing to offend me. How long did you work in the mines?”
“I worked below for twenty-six years, and then the cost of replacing my parts exceeded the cost of a new Model #7. I was reassigned to light work cleaning equipment above ground. Since I often interacted with humans in that capacity, I was given a set of basic personality imprints, a voice box, and conversational skills. Eventually I was sold for a twentieth of my original purchase price to Selsen, another mining company, but I broke down from being returned to heavy labor. After that, I was deactivated and discarded. It was not worth it to even strip me for scrap; I am too outdated. That is where Master Westen discovered me. For twenty years and three months now, I have belonged to him. He says, at the times I have failed at tasks, that he is going to sell me to a mechanical man menagerie. But he has not followed through for all the times he has threatened it.”
It was likely a joke that Hobbe was unable to understand. “And what is your role?”
“I help in the shop with sales and inventory, sir, and it is my task to receive the wine barrels and transport them to Drouthe. There are not many these days who know my model. Court & Ave is no longer in business. Do you recognize my model?”
“No, I do not,” Elario admitted.
Hobbe looked disappointed. “This is because you are from the south, sir, am I correct? Master Westen says often that people from the south live in backwards times.”
“I would not call it backwards,” Elario said testily, “but there is no great wealth south of the Hopcross. No one can afford a mechanical man, so they are not brought there to be sold. On my way here was the very first time I have ever seen a mechanical man in Ballevue. Even basic farm droids are a rarity where I am from.”
“Mechanical men are rare to the far west, too, I have been told. There is no great wealth in the Gates either, so people cannot invest in mechanical men, and some do not believe we exist. Yet we are a common sight from the golden ring to the northeast. All noble families own at least one mechanical man, if not more, to provide security at their estates and attend their needs.”
The Gates reminded Elario of Hydon. “Did you ever meet my uncle?”
“No, sir, I never met Master Hydon Repse in person, but I carried his letters to the shop when they arrived in the post, and delivered barrels to the crawler going west to him, so that he could trade. I have never been as far west as Rathgate.”
“Neither have I.”
“Count your blessings, because I have,” Westen said abruptly. “It’s cold enough there to freeze the nipples off a man flesh or mechanical. The wind roars by day and night, flapping cloaks and dresses, and people walk with one hand clapped over their hat to keep it from being ripped away and thrown over the cliffs. There is an entire graveyard of hats at the base of those mountains.”
“A graveyard of hats, sir?”
“It’s a fancy,” Elario explained. “There is no such thing as a graveyard of hats.”
“And one as well-traveled as Elario Repse would know,” Westen retorted.
It was a fair jab. “Then do enlighten me, should I be wrong. Is there a graveyard of hats below the Gates?”
“It’s a fancy,” Westen admitted begrudgingly. “Sometimes I fear what is in your mechanical brain, Hobbe, after so long in my employ.”
“Sir, you can send me to a tinkerer for a full erasure and a fresh installation of programs if you f-”
Westen sighed. “No, I like you the way you are, which is why I keep you the way you are, as innocent as a dewdrop in spring.”
“I do not understand, sir.”
“I know. Let it not trouble you. It would take time to find a tinkerer who specializes in equipment as old as you are anyway, and I doubt many of today’s programs are compatible with your operating system. Remember when I put your memory chip in that reader to run the basic scan after I first got you?”
“The reader rejected the chip as a glitch.”
“Indeed it did, and that was two decades ago. It will be even harder now. We are both too out-of-date for this world. Reduce the beam a little more.”
The next farmhouse was closer to the road. They passed it in silence and turned at the crossroads beyond, taking them east. As this led them along the same property, they held their tongues until the farmhouse was far behind. “Are we going to the cabin, Master Westen?” Hobbe asked.
Westen nodded. “We must. I could not risk keeping a large store of ammunition in the shop.”
“For what do we need ammunition?” Elario said, startled. He had already forgotten the pistol down the back of his trousers.
“For protection,” Westen said.
That was not an answer. The flat land of the farms and pastures gradually changed to softly rolling hills, upon which no home or farmed field rested. There were only oaks, and sing-sung and maples. A short line of dragontrees scored the land, leafless ribs waving with the breeze as they grew up a slope and dropped down on the other side.
The horses were stepping upon sifts of fallen leaves, which crackled loudly. As to the road itself, it was not well-tended, nor did it appear to be oft-traveled. Wagon ruts grew lighter and lighter as the miles fell away, and finally vanished altogether.
&n
bsp; “What is this place, Hobbe?” Elario asked.
“There were once several boom towns in these hills,” Hobbe said. “It was around the time I was activated, sir. There was not as much gold as those to rush here had hoped, and all of the towns were abandoned.”
They happened upon the first of the boom towns some time later, Elario half-asleep in the saddle and rubbing the grit from his eye to look around. An array of sagging cottages in late stages of dilapidation were beneath the trees. No glass was left in any of the windows. The trees thinned for a line of taller buildings with weather-beaten signs over the doors, a tavern and general store and a game parlor, and an inn that was less than half the size of the Sixes. The stables had fallen down in back.
“Funny,” Elario said. “Some of the buildings I saw in Vallere from the aerial were in better condition after five hundred years than these are after less than one hundred.”
“Not so funny,” Westen countered. “Many of the buildings in the Great Cities were the work of craftsmen at the top of their art, using materials meant to last and some reinforced by knack skills of stone and wood. These here in the town of Kurchen were built up in haste and cheaply to house the prospectors. In another generation or two, there will be no trace that these towns ever existed.”
Kurchen ended with a bridge over a thin, gurgling stream. The rotting wood creaked warningly as they crossed, Elario kicking his bay to get over it faster. Another mile ferried them to the remnants of a second boom town identical to the first. Yawning, Elario closed his eye and let his horse pace along with the others while he dozed.
“Sir? Sir, we are here. Go inside, sir. I will care for the horses.”
They had stopped. Hobbe was standing beside Elario’s horse, and shaking his arm to wake him. The sky was pale gray and a breeze dropped yellow leaves onto the roof of a log cabin. The early morning chill was biting. They were high on a steep hillside, the trees so thick as to obscure all but a rough path cutting up the slope and this driveway upon which the horses stood. The cabin was whole. There were even curtains over the glass windows.
