Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  There was nowhere to take cover. Fleeing over the flat crest of the hill to dismount on the other side, Westen shouted and flailed as he pulled up short. The slope was too steep, far too steep over here to climb down. Throwing out an arm, he caught Elario by the sleeve and whirled him around. “Over there!”

  They doubled back a short distance and started down, slipping and sliding through the thick grass. A pistol fired from the bucket below the aerial just before Elario lost sight of it. He ducked reflexively at the crack and heard the soldiers shouting up to the aerial to drop them on the same hilltop, or below it. Whether it was his own hearing or the dragon’s senses aiding his, Elario was unaware. A rock hidden in the grass tripped him and he skidded down to the base of the hill, arms pinwheeling, but he managed to stay upright.

  They ran around the hill, using it for cover, but where were they to hide out here? There were no buildings nearby, just an open field of grass between this hill and its neighbor. He looked back, seeing the topmost curve of the aerial, and the sharp edge of the hill where Westen had almost gone over. Tangles of weeds and creepers dripped over the side, obscuring the rocky face and dangling all the way to the ground.

  Something crunched beneath Westen’s feet and Elario looked down at an echoing crunch beneath his own. Oddly, a path of gravel and grass ran from the field directly to the hill, where it terminated at the sheet of creepers. But where the path ended was of no consequence, just so long as it ran elsewhere. He was unable to see much of it, though, due to the grass.

  “We have to run for Olehalem!” Westen said desperately, his head swinging between the open field and the hilltop over the dragon bones. – there was a wealth of buildings in the city where they could shelter but getting there . . . they would follow this path, it probably joined up to the riverside road, yet still they were out in the open until they got there and -

  It was not to be. As they started down the path, the second aerial dropped over the field to block their way. The bucket descended fast, fairly bristling with heavily armed soldiers. It hit the ground, the metal sides of the bucket dropping into the grass, and they spilled out of it.

  “Back! Back!” Westen exclaimed to Elario.

  There was no back. They were caught. A soldier appeared upon the edge of the hill behind them and shouted, “They’re down here!”

  “You know where it is,” Elario said tightly, bracing to run. “Go, get out of here! It’s me they want and it’s me they’ll follow!”

  “I won’t leave you to die here!” Westen pivoted in a frantic circle, considering two equally bad options.

  Then he ran back down the path to the creepers. Those were not going to conceal them, not when Westen and Elario would slip beneath them in full view of the dozens of Dragons of the Blood in the field. Four soldiers were now above as well, and two of them were taking aim at Elario.

  Westen ripped at the mats of greenery hanging down. Spurred by those pointing muzzles, Elario retreated to help him tear at the creepers. “What are we doing?”

  There was no need for Westen to answer. Behind the foliage was a rotting door in the hill. Westen kicked the planks, repeatedly and viciously, and it toppled in. He shoved Elario inside a room of rock and earth. Struts braced the walls and ceiling, continuing into a passage that crooked away to darkness.

  The wistful, poignant lure of a possible kinship returned. Elario had not gotten his time atop the hill to let the dragon’s eye commune with the bones; the need to do so was almost irresistible. Now of all times . . . he fought back against it.

  “Watch for dervesh!” Westen commanded, swinging the satchel off himself and dropping it to the ground. Elario retrieved his pistol and scanned the hollowed-out room in the hillside. They were alone within it. Much more concerning was what he saw between the scattering of creepers still hanging over the doorway. The soldiers were running hard through the field to the hillside; shouts from high relayed that the soldiers up there were on their way down.

  The dragon’s eye fought back, tugging at Elario and trying to guide him to the passage. He resisted the pull as Westen yanked the package of explosives out of his satchel.

  Screams broke out from the field, Elario’s head snapping up at the murderous shriek of a sanga. The noise of the aerials and firing pistols had attracted several of the gargantuan birds. Throwing themselves down into the grass, half of the soldiers fired upwards to clear the path for the rest to advance.

  “Get into the passage, Elario!” Westen ordered, wedging the explosives upon a rusted hinge.

  “You’ll bring this whole hill down upon our heads!” Elario protested.

  Westen delved into his pocket. “How else am I to keep everything out for a little while?”

  “What if that’s the only exit?”

  “Then it’s a good thing we brought shovels.” Flicking the head of a strike-stick with his nail, Westen pressed the flame to the short fuse.

  They ran into the passage and around the crook, their pistols out to confront whatever was there. Here the tunnel sloped gradually downwards, the struts extending for the length of thirty paces and splitting at the end into two more passages that went in opposite ways.

  The only occupant of the tunnel was a gas bubble, which glowed down at the split. It was identical to the bubbles in the ghost tunnels below the golden ring. Trembling with the disturbances in the air, it bobbed there benignly as they charged for it.

  “Where did they go?” “In there! They went in-”

  The explosion rocked the ground, severing the voices and hurling Elario and Westen into the wall. A plume of dirt and dust shot into the tunnel as the room collapsed, the faint beams of sunlight from the doorway dousing with the cave-in. If not for the gas bubble, they would have been in total blackness.

  Kin.

  Coughing on the dust, Elario staggered away from the wall. Westen had recovered faster, and was doing one of his revolutions for dervesh that included every possible direction in which they could attack.

  Bizarrely, he was laughing as he did it. They were trapped in this . . . this underground dervesh lair, or whatever it was, and he was laughing. Elario just stared at him. Completing the circle, Westen hastened a few paces down the tunnel and put his hand to the wall in wonder. A tiny star with broken points twinkled dully in a murky sheen the color of moss. “This is a peritoz mine!”

  Peritoz was often discovered when a few of the gemstones erupted up through the surface of the soil all on their own. A farmer could go from rags to riches in the space of a day. It was always found in tails, miners following the tail wherever it wound until it petered out . . . This was not Elario’s knowledge, but there it was in his mind. Pilfered from Westen’s mind or plucked from the past, it had just appeared.

  Westen’s giddiness was bafflingly out of place. “Why does it matter?” Elario grumbled.

  Hands seized him by the shoulders and shook him. “Elario, think! Think! A plinth above, a mine below . . .”

  Kin.

  It hit him like a hammer blow. “They found the bones,” Elario whispered.

  “They found the bones!” Westen repeated. “They rooted through this hill after peritoz and found those Elequa-damned dragon bones! A little of the skeleton might already be exposed to the air, if they did not shovel it straight back under a few inches of dirt! I will return to this giant gopher hole to find much of my work done for me. Now come! Let’s get you away; there must be another exit and we have to find it before the soldiers do.”

  His mind reeling, Elario said, “But . . . but was there no record of where the plinths were placed? Did you have no map or list of the plinths’ locations?”

  Westen released him to touch another tiny gem of poor quality in the wall. “It depended on whosoever in the royal council was assigned to oversee the protection of dragon bones. Some had their staff keep meticulous notes; others were slip-shod. No one bothered to keep them at all in Denelan’s time. If there exists a record of a plinth placed atop the entrance to a
peritoz mine near the river, I never uncovered it-”

  “Shift that rock!”

  “Sir! The dervesh are-”

  Sunlight burst briefly before Elario’s eyes. Droves of sanga and havok beasts were harrying the soldiers outside the mine. A half-ring of ensigno stood protectively around those working to move the rocks that blocked the doorway. Elario’s mind slipped into theirs, feeling their fear and panic as his own, his finger pulling numerous triggers and the muscles in his arms straining at the rocks . . . The dragon soared away from the conflict with indifference, sloughing him back into the passage.

  The soldiers were going to break in, sooner rather than later. Then, if the Crown found the dragon bones first . . . No matter the cost in life to its own soldiers, it would protect this hill. Even if Westen got away today, he would never get back in here to do what had to be done.

  Elario would rather die in here, taking Westen to the bones to destroy them, then search for another exit and live. In other times and other places, this decision would have swung the other way. “I will take you to the bones. They are not far.”

  “Elario-” Westen argued.

  “No, Westen. Now you come with me.”

  Westen swallowed on his objection, seeing in Elario’s eyes that it would do no good, and inclined his head respectfully.

  They proceeded to the fork. The gas bubble had drifted within the dead-end route to the right; all was dark down the route to the left. That was the way the tail of gems had wound below the hill. Westen put one of his pistols away to open the shutters of his lantern.

  Kin. The feeling of almost being home overwhelmed Elario.

  The lantern illuminated the sagging struts of a narrow channel through the earth. The ceiling was uncomfortably low. Eyes blinked back at them from the walls, reflecting the yellow light. They were not the eyes of dervesh but broken-starred, dirty green gemstones not worth the effort of digging out.

  They walked on through the passage, which crooked and split and opened now and then to axe-gouged chambers supported by thick columns of earth. Gas bubbles hovered within some of them, forever lighting this long-forgotten mine. Beyond another one of those rooms, Elario felt Westen restrain himself at a side passage with an upwards tilt. – they should take it, see if it went back up to the surface, this was a mistake -

  Elario walked past it without breaking pace. The desire of the dragon guided his feet through narrower and narrower channels. His eyes took in the glinting of the rejected gems, the ceiling that grew so low it was a scant two or three inches over their heads; his eyes took in the grassy flat-top above, and the nearing lump of the fallen plinth. Dervesh and soldiers fought all around, but Elario cared only for the plinth.

  Far below, he entered a chamber with chinked walls.

  “Great Elequa!” Westen whispered at his side.

  Upon the floor in the very center of the small room was a cap of wire and cloth. Stakes had been driven into the earth to hold the cap in place, but the metal rings binding cap to stake were fastened only upon one side. The object beneath was too tall for the cap to be brought down in whole.

  Elario lifted the cap from its unfastened side, and let it fall away. And there was the dragon.

  Home. He was home.

  The dragon’s wings were curled over its back; the neck was crooked so that the head rested beside the shoulder. Wound around its body was the tail. Almost fully unearthed, the skeleton looked like it had curled up to sleep when it perished.

  Elario put his hand upon the skull. It had been a small beast, barely larger than Elario himself. As the dragons took pleasure in one another’s company, he watched a scene from another time. “The mining crew dug out the bones in removing the peritoz. They were careful not to damage anything. They knew what these bones were from, but they wanted the gems.”

  Silence was his reply, Westen stunned into inaction. The ampoule of elvrash oil was in his fist, but he just gaped at the dragon bones.

  The need to be close to the bones faded. Elario stepped away.

  “They’re coming in,” he said distantly. Timbers and rocks heaved from the cave-in, sunlight was again shining into the entrance of the mine. A soldier wriggled through the gap, shouting back; a second began to force his way in, but screamed as he was dragged away by an apparition of white. Another apparition flickered to life within the room, the sister’s hungry eyes upon the soldier as he crept around the crook.

  The warning shook Westen from his trance. He had also heard that faraway shout, and the scream to follow it.

  He set down the lantern beside the cap and dug the wax from the ampoule. Dripping the oil upon the skull, he trailed it down the spine and along the tail. The last drops he spread about the delicate bones of the folded wings. The viscous oil clung like paste everywhere it landed.

  Letting the ampoule fall, Westen lit a strike-stick. “For what was lost,” he murmured, and set the yellow blaze to the skull.

  Blue flames instantly rippled and jumped over the bones until every place streaked with the oil was alight. A jag of lightning sparked from an eye socket, Elario leaping back from the skeleton. Then lightning was everywhere, snapping and crackling with vigor as it exploded out of the burning bones.

  Elario took another step back and-

  He was looking down upon the grassy surface of the hill. Bent in half, a two-pipped soldier was struggling to reload her pistol as a sanga clawed into the flesh of her back. She screamed and it was-

  -gone, it was gone, the whole flock was gone, and the soldiers down in the field looked about in confusion-

  -swords clashed, the superior strength of the havok beasts besting their opponents, men shouting desperately to those with pistols to shoot them, and then all of the havok were gone, a blade piercing through the threads of an ensigno’s uniform but gone before it reached flesh-

  -gone too late for the soldier in the passage, dropping to bleed into the earth as the sister’s fangs vanished from his neck-

  -gone too late for the aerials above, listing in the air and the bridge crews crying out as the controls malfunctioned, pale snakes twining up the wires from bucket to aerial, twining into the machinery of the engines, which were flaring and sputtering, they were suddenly gone but the damage was done and the aerials listed harder-

  He was upon the road in Nevenin when the circlet gave way in the tavern, its victims dropping to dust, and with the panicked fades upon the bridge as a breeze blew them away . . . He was in Sable, that pair of prowling sisters going up in smoke and the nechto sinking into the earth . . . He was in Davenah as a wolf slumped into the rubble of a fallen temple and in Vallere . . . in Kingsprow . . . in the Crescent Islands as the water went flat and in the woods with the abide and thrace, all of the abides, all of the thraces, their fiery cloaks spurting upwards one last time into nothingness . . .

  He was everywhere with the dragon’s eye, witness to the deaths of the dervesh in hills and glade, caves and backwater, homes and barns, shops and temples, as they scrabbled out of craters and nested in shadowy corners . . . They died and died by the hundreds with every passing second, dying without renewal as the dragonwood staffs became simple sticks in the soil . . .

  Kin. There was no rage in his dragon’s eye for the burning of his skeletal friend. There was no rage at destruction. There was joy at transformation.

  Lightning singed the ceiling of the chamber, struck a panel of glass in the lantern, spat up from a wing as the bones gave way and plunged through the ribcage. They hit the earth and he was within that glorious temple in Betala, the link severing unseen between a nobleman’s necklace and the dervesh behind him. He was in numerous gambling dens, both fine and crude, as luck abruptly ran sour over cards and dice; he was in a common room beside a man in his dotage charming a young woman through his pendant, and she dropped his hand in sudden disgust. He was within a meeting of top military in Ruzan, their collars flourishing with pips, and they were running from the Marchos with cries of horror as he twisted an
d aged before their very eyes.

  He was with Hydon in his last moments of life, being beaten upon a floor. It is done, Uncle. And though this scene was from the past, Elario’s voice pierced the veil of time and Hydon smiled as he died.

  Then he was back within the peritoz mine, and the bones were ash.

  The bones were less than ash, and Westen had fallen to the floor.

  His eyes were wide and pained; his nostrils flared and his breathing labored. Crackles of dervesh energy were boiling out of his skin, riddling and seething and steaming, causing his back to arch and his fingers to dig into the ground. From his gaping mouth shot lightning, jabbing up in forks from a silent scream. All that had been put into him was being forced out.

  He fell into convulsions as Elario dropped down beside him. Taking Westen’s hand, he released it at a stab of pain from lightning snapping into his palm. Helplessly, he cried, “Westen!”

  His back arched higher and higher until it looked like his spine was going to break. There Westen hovered at an unnatural angle, the ends of his hair just brushing the ground. The lightning grew even more furious, snapping in a bonfire all over his body and blackening his clothing though his skin remained unburnt.

  After a minute that felt like an eternity, it diminished. The jags of lightning stopped flying up from his hands and feet and face, and then his arms and legs gave no more. Still they burst from his torso, forking up to the ceiling, but there were fewer and fewer of them.

  He fell, a final bolt exploding upwards from his heart when he struck the ground. And it was over.

  He was still. Too still.

  Elario shook his shoulders. The loll of his head was boneless.

  His eyes moved. Slowly. Moved to Elario, where they stopped. Blood snaked out from between his lips.

  Westen was dying. Merciless Elequa, he was dying.