Lana’s eyes flickered to Clive and then back to Plat, a knowing look on her face. “I’ll be sure to pass it along,” she said in a worried tone. “Be careful.”
Plat bowed his head with a smile and made his way to the door. One of the rats stepped in behind him, pistol still cocked, while the other hit Faen with the stun-stick to get it moving in the same direction. The third stepped in stride as they walked out. Every set of eyes followed them as they moved, eyes that glowered with impotent rage.
Plat turned in the doorway and looked over the room. “Don’t worry, me hearties!” he shouted, “I’ll be back to drinking and whoring before you know it!” He let his eyes flicker to Lana. She whispered something to Clive and gave him another of whatever delicacies she kept under the bar. Plat spun and stepped out into the cobblestone street, thick fog cocooning the city in a damp embrace. Halos of light shimmered faintly in both directions, streetlights forming bright islands amidst the gloom.
Stepping down from the wooden walkway, Plat stared at the beckoning rear doors of an armored steamwagon. The vehicle hissed and clattered, idling in the street. Another Raelish sailor stood just outside the door, and Plat could see yet another in the driver’s seat. The rat behind Plat shoved hard, forcing him towards the waiting contraption.
Plat knew the drill. It wasn’t the first time he’d been arrested. Such steamwagons were moving jails, the long interior lined with two rows of eight, closet-like cells made of brass plating, with just enough room inside a cell for one to stand upright in.
Without a word, Plat moved up the shallow steps, walked to one of two open doors and stepped in. He heard Faen’s metal feet stumbling up the steps behind him. He looked back at Faen along the dark, narrow corridor and placed a finger to his bill, telling the automaton to stay silent. Then he grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut with a loud Clang!
Darkness enveloped him.
Plat expected a short ride through the city. The prison was only a half-mile away, but the steamwagon sputtered and clattered for nearly thirty minutes. As it rolled, the smell of the sea grew stronger while Plat bounced around inside his cell like dice in a cup. With several final lurches and the sound of the wheels shifting from cobblestone to wood planking, the steamwagon came to an abrupt halt. Plat heard large wooden doors slamming shut behind the vehicle, and then the engine sputtered to silence.
“Bring the prisoners!” a rough voice commanded from somewhere beyond the steamwagon. Plat knew the voice; it was Caan. He’d heard the fat bastard ordering his crew around the docks many times.
Plat then heard several footsteps bustling outside as well as the sound of chains rattling. The back doors of the steamwagon opened, and heavy feet stepped up into the wagon. A key hit the lock of Faen’s door, and he heard shuffling, clanking and another hit from a stun-stick as Faen metal feet shuffled along the corridor and stepped outside. Plat’s door was opened roughly, a thick shadow filling the doorway. A set of shackles flew into his face. The chains wrapped around his neck and slammed into the back of his head.
“Put those on, you scum!” a deep voice ordered. The silhouette raised something in the dark, and Plat heard the click of a hammer being pulled back. “We don’t want to keep Commander Caan waiting, do we?”
“Of course, we don’t,” Plat replied coolly. Fumbling in the darkness, he discovered that it was a full set, not just wrist shackles. He locked the hasps around his wrists and then his ankles.
“Now move,” the voiced ordered, stepping away from the door and backing down the corridor.
Plat did as instructed, albeit awkwardly. The short length of chains binding his ankles didn’t allow for more than a shuffle. Beyond the steamwagon was what appeared to be the interior of a brightly lit warehouse, although Plat could only see the closed doors they had obviously passed through. A massive rat in a lieutenant’s uniform stood off to the side at the bottom of the steps, his pistol still aimed into the wagon.
Plat stepped up to the edge. Off to the left he noticed expectant, malicious looks upon the faces of the three rats who had arrested him. Each of them now stood at attention, holding standard-issue rifles. Plat started to take a step down and then paused. Instead of stepping down, he hopped the three feet to the wooden floor. Dejected looks appeared on the faces of the rats, although they stayed at attention. Plat had guessed correctly. The chains of his ankles were shorter than the length of the steps. Had he not jumped, he would have fallen face-first onto the floor.
“Sorry to disappoint you lads,” He said with a smile.
“Tripping is about to be the least of your worries,” Caan said in a menacing voice from somewhere further off to Plat’s left.
Plat turned in that direction, peering around the open door of the steamwagon. What he saw filled him with loathing. A long, wooden table sat along one side of the warehouse. Behind it stood Commander Caan in all his Raelish regalia. The heavy-set rat wore a bright white uniform. An avalanche of medals and ribbons flowed from his left shoulder down to nearly his waist. A bejeweled saber rested upon his hip, and he wore a tall, bicorne hat with a long red plume flicking behind him with every movement.
To the Commander’s left and right sat two junior officers, each of them dressed in crisp navy uniforms and wearing haughty looks upon their faces.
Faen kneeled before Caan, his forehead pressed against the floor. A Raelish sailor stood above the automaton, the butt of his long rifle pinning Faen’s neck to the boards. Plat had never seen a living soul look so defeated.
As Plat shuffled forward, he gasped in horror. He spotted Dimont off to the side, and the sight wrenched at Plat’s guts like a twisting dagger.
Dimont stood upon a high stool, his head lolling to the side, his eyes closed. His face had been beaten severely. Blood leaked from a cut above his right eye, and his left eye was swollen shut. Thick rope bound his hands, and the pale streak of a noose circled his neck. The length of rope looped over a high support beam and tied off behind Caan. Dimont’s mottled-gray tortoise shell appeared to be intact, but his limbs had also been beaten badly, with dark bruises appearing across his dark, greenish limbs in a pattern that suggested systematic and repeated hammering with a billy club of some kind.
Plat turned furious eyes upon Caan and realized that a bloody baton rested upon the table in front of the commander. Caan’s eyes followed, resting upon the baton and returning, locking with Plat’s. A wicked smile slowly split Caan’s face, and his eyes held what could only be delight.
“I’m gratified you could join us, Captain Plat,” Caan said, his enjoyment of the situation a palpable miasma that filled the air. “We’ve just finished condemning your First Mate for piracy and theft of Her Imperial Majesty’s property. I, of course, took my time with his questioning, and what is questioning, after all, without a little corporal punishment? Hmm?” A sick, satisfied venom dripped from Caan’s words. “We’ve delayed his execution only long enough to let him see us condemn you to the same fate.”
“You’ll pay for this, Caan,” Plat said with as much hatred as his heart could muster. “I swear to you, on my life, you’ll pay for this!”
“Oh, I think not,” Caan said as he walked around the table. His eyes never left Plat. “Although, I will say that you have half of it right. This will all be on your life … or the end of it, at least.” Caan placed his hands behind his back. “However, before we proceed, I must ask you a question. I asked it of your First Mate, and despite my best efforts, he was unwilling to provide me with the information.”
“If my First Mate defied you, what’ makes you think I won’t?” Plat asked.
Caan ignored the question. “I must know where your vessel is. That metal monstrosity has snuck past our picket lines and scurried away with Raelish property for the last time. I’ve sworn it to Her Majesty. If you tell me where it is, I might just let you and your First Mate live.”
Plat hesitated, his tongue running along the edge of his bi
ll nervously. He couldn’t give up his entire crew, and The Kraken was all he had … all they had. She was the finest submersible for a thousand leagues. And with it, his crew could continue rescuing slaves. Plat thought about the automaton who had sacrificed its life for him all those years ago.
Maybe, Plat thought, it’s time to pay that debt in full.
“Why do you hesitate?” Caan asked, his maw curling into a snarl as he stepped up to Faen. He stood before the prone automaton and looked down at it in disgust. “For this?” He screamed the question and threw a kick into Faen’s head for emphasis, eliciting a dull clank and the whining of gears. “Such pathetic sentimentality over a thing no more alive than a crowbar … or a spoon.” Caan kicked Faen again.
Plat turned away from Caan in disgust and stared at his First Mate. “Dimont, can you hear me?”
“Aye, Cap’n. I can hear ye,” Dimont replied weakly. He opened his eyes and stood a little straighter. “Don’t you worry about me, and don’t give in to that filthy bastard. I’ll be fine,” Dimont said calmly. “You’ll figure something out. You always do.”
The bony plates of the turtle’s face didn’t lend well to showing emotion, but Plat could hear Dimont’s resolve and was proud of it. A better First Mate there never was, Plat thought. Most sailors would be blubbering in the face of their imminent demise.
“Trust me,” Dimont added, locking eyes with his captain. The turtle exhaled once, a long, drawn-out thing and then inhaled deeply, seconds ticking by. He closed his eyes, aimed a rude gesture with his bound hands at Commander Caan and then kicked the stool out from beneath him. He dropped. The rope snapped taught with a hiss of hemp as the noose pulled tight. It bit into his flesh, yanking his neck with a jolt and stretching his pale, green head another six inches out of his shell.
“Dimont!” Plat shouted, his guts churning with despair. “Dimont!”
The rats chuckled as Dimont’s bound hands clutched at the rope, clawed at it as it dug deep into his skin. His legs kicked violently, setting him to swinging.
Plat tore his eyes away from his friend, unable to watch anymore. His shoulders sagged, and he clenched his eyes closed until the sounds of Dimont’s struggling ceased.
Faen’s metallic voice rose up amidst the laughter of its masters, starting as a whisper, growing into a fearless cadence. It was a prayer. “Beloved Chimaera, deliver us from evil. Protect us from those who condemn and enslave us. Grant us the strength to find freedom.” Faen started again, praying for salvation in a desperate whisper.
Caan guffawed once and snorted his derision. “What does a machine need with a god? Eh?” He kicked Faen again as the automaton continued its prayer. “Your god is nothing more than the childish invention of some long-forgotten tinker, someone else’s dream addling the clockwork of your lifeless, soulless body!” Caan leaned over and grabbed Faen around the neck, hefting him up to unsteady, metallic feet. His derision turned to rage. “You’re not alive. You’re a machine. You’re all machines! Tools! Automatons were built to serve, and serve they SHALL!”
Faen never stopped his prayer. “Beloved Chimaera, deliver us from evil. Protect us from those who condemn and enslave us. Grant us the strength to find freedom.”
Caan grabbed the pendant around Faen’s neck, yanked it off and, tossing it down upon the floorboards, gave a mighty stomp. Then, with a vicious tug, he pulled his pistol, placed the barrel against Faen’s forehead. Faen’s prayer never hesitated, never changed its cadence.
Caan pulled the trigger, ending the prayer with an explosion of smoke and flame and metal.
The room fell silent, finally, horribly.
Faen hovered, his ravaged cranium smoking and sparking. He tottered slowly backwards. His knees buckled. With a clatter of metal upon wood, Faen dropped to the floor in a heap at Caan’s feet.
“NO!” Plat shouted as he leapt towards Caan. “I’LL KILL YOU!” he screamed. He crashed into the Commander, knocking him to the ground. Straddling the commander, he wrapped his hands around the rat’s throat and squeezed. Caan’s eyes bugged out, but strong hands yanked Plat back. As he struggled against the men holding him, a rifle-butt smashed into his back, sending him to his knees, his entire spine on fire.
Caan rose from the floor, rage blazing in his beady eyes as he dusted himself off. “Get him off the floor,” he raged. “And this time, hold him!” Strong hands locked onto Plat and lifted him to his feet. Caan slowly turned towards the table, grabbed the bloody baton, and turned back.
“I had originally planned on a proper hanging for filth such as you, but Her Majesty has recently granted me a certain amount of leeway in meting out punishment. Hanging is just too quick, and not nearly painful enough.” He stepped up before Plat and the baton rose. “Where is your ship?” Caan asked, his voice as sharp as a razor. Down came the baton with a dull whack. Pain shot through Plat’s temple and danced along his spine as his hat dropped to the floor. The agony of it blurred his vision. “Where is your ship?” Caan growled again. Again, the baton rose; the question came, the baton fell like a hammer. Over and over again.
Fire burned across Plat’s skull, and he could feel a river of warmth running down his scalp into his collar. His eyes rose, his vision blurred but not so much that he couldn’t see the dark shadow of a seagull alight upon the windowsill beyond the table. It made him smile. He locked eyes with Caan and spat in the commander’s face. A grim sense of satisfaction blossomed within Plat’s heart.
The baton rose again and came down … again and again. Plat fell limply at Caan’s feet, and his eyes focused on the only thing in his field of vision besides Caan’s booted feet. A pendant. Faen’s pendant. He’d never looked closely at the automaton god before. It was the image of a female simian of sorts, with a clockwork heart. Her lower half consisted of an octopus’ tentacles. Such was Chimaera.
He closed his hand around the pendant as the baton fell down like thunder from an angry god.
Each impact seemed thankfully more distant than the last, and Faen’s prayer floated up amidst the thudding of wood against Plat’s skull.
Beloved Chimaera, deliver us from evil. Protect us from those who condemn and enslave us. Grant us the strength to find freedom.
It reverberated in Plat’s mind in cadence with the hammer-falls until, finally, he steeped headlong into a blissfully black pit of unconsciousness.
Plat awoke to darkness … and an ocean of agony. His head pounded, as if it were caught in a vice someone was hitting with a sledge hammer. His whole body blazed with pain, a roadmap of it. Apparently, his beating had continued after he lost consciousness, directed at his limbs. He could feel where every blow had landed. He tried to sit up, but the agony flashed through his body, magnified ten-fold. A part of him wished he were dead, but then revenge took hold of his heart, a spark that turned to flame and then a blaze of hatred that could only ever be quenched with Commander Caan’s blood … and the blood of all Raelish.
He slowly realized that he lay upon a bare wooden floor, stripped down to his breeches with his back against a rough, wooden wall. The air vibrated with the sound of creaking timbers. He smelled the sea and felt his cell swaying slowly to and fro. Through the haze of pain, it dawned on him that he was in the brig of a ship.
Well, he thought to himself, at least I have a chance of dying at sea. It gave him some comfort, but not enough to assuage the thousand agonies that danced across his entire body. It occurred to him that his fist was clenched around something. He tried to open his hand and finally resorted to prying it open with his other hand. Resting there in his palm, he could feel Faen’s pendant. He traced a finger over the strange god: the upper half of a mechanical woman, a tangle of tentacles beneath. Plat smiled in the darkness. If only there was a god to look out for foolhardy privateers. He closed his hand around the pendant once again, determined to take it with him wherever his journey ended.
Plat took several deep breaths, preparing for the pain to come, and
struggled to get off the floor. He screamed as flame danced across his limbs. He staggered and fell against the wall, sliding down into a seated position. A whimpering groan escaped his lips, but he cut it off when he heard boots outside the dark cell.
An iron key hit the lock, and wood slid across wood. With a creaking of rusty hinges, the door opened, spilling the pale glow of a lantern across him. Someone aimed the lantern directly at Plat’s face, and the light, weak as it was, hurt his eyes.
“Ahh, good,” a dark voice said, following it up with sinister laughter. “You’re awake. Just in time for your execution. Come with me.” Plat recognized the voice of the rat who had taken him out of the steamwagon. I guess I will die at sea, he thought, but he didn’t move. He’d be damned if he was going to march to his death. The filthy rats would have to drag him. “I said, get up, you dog!” the jailer growled.
Plat shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid Caan’s generous ministrations with the baton have left me unable to move. And if you hadn’t noticed,” he added weakly, “I’m not a canine. I clearly derive from the noble line of platypi.” He tapped his bill for good measure, wincing with the movement of his arm. “One would think an educated rat such as yourself could tell the difference.”
The Rat’s tone went icy. “Drag that scum out of there and drop him on the deck at Commander Caan’s feet.”
Out Through the Attic Page 13
