Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  The defense guild set up a rotating guard of active constables during the days and nights following the almost-war, but the creatures did not return – in fact, very few of the creatures were seen at all for quite some time. Rom suspected that they would be too preoccupied with re-establishing their own respective communal structures to bother looking this way for potential food supplies. Additionally, with the return of the autonomous machines to the agricultural fields, the town was more secure than at any time in the recent memories of the people who lived there.

  Goya and Briseida held a small ceremony over the cremation of Ian’s body, as tradition required. They also held a small gathering just for themselves, later that same day. Now that he was gone, the various spells he had fashioned to cloak his identity began to unravel, and people across the town began to feel a sense of loss at this kind gentleman who had helped them here or there over the years, and who, strangely enough, never seemed to have aged. Many people would awake one morning or another, tears in their eyes at the loss of a man they had not remembered the day before.

  For many days, complete strangers found themselves in the doorway of Goya’s apothecary, overcome with sorrow, and unable to understand why they had not been able to recall Ian’s face or his name until only a short time before. Goya would personally escort each of these people into her house and they would talk over cups of warm lemon tea and share their fond memories of the many acts of selfless goodwill performed by the enigmatic stranger.

  When they left, they did so with renewal of spirit, and a developing resolution to pass on the kind deeds which Ian had performed – selflessly and, if possible, anonymously – in an attempt to spread the legacy he had, in his gentle and discrete manner, tried to create. They were unified in their oath to remember him and the good works he had anonymously performed.

  And every night, Rom roamed the rooftops, though there were no additional incidents or sightings among the streets of the town. She started and ended every day, however, looking back up at the top of the wall where it met the sky. Over that elevated horizon lay many answers, she realized. The songs in her mind pleaded for her to seek the paths those questions lay before her.

  * * * * *

  One morning, several weeks following the fires that had crossed the sky, she woke up and, her decision having already been formed days earlier, packed a small bag of clothing and went downstairs.

  Kari had already left for the college, and so Briseida was just preparing to open the shop for the day when she saw Rom step off the bottom stair. She needed no more than a look into Rom’s eyes to know her mind.

  “So, the reading I did last night was correct? You are leaving?”

  Rom nodded.

  “I know I would sooner stop the rain from falling than be able to dissuade you, but…” Briseida shook her head slightly, summoning up her own courage so as to not weaken Rom’s. “May I ask why?”

  Clearly, the young girl had been considering this, and her answer seemed uncharacteristically reasoned out. “I’m a Sheharid – a Reaper – I get that now, I do. The battle with all the animals and…everything, it made me see what I’m supposed to do now, and I don’t really understand it all, but I accept it.”

  Briseida remained silent, giving her time to express herself.

  “Also, the Queen is looking for me, and the longer she thinks I’m here, the more she’s going to hurt anyone she can to try to get to me. But it’s not just that.” Rom lowered her head, looking at her shoes before continuing. “It’s not just about the monsters, it’s about people, too. If I stay here, someday one of you is going to get hurt because of me, or … worse.”

  A single tear escaped her eyes, dropping down onto the toe of her left boot. “And I don’t want to have to take any of your souls.”

  Stepping closer, Briseida wrapped her arms around the tiny girl, holding her tightly while the young Reaper cried lingering sobs against her, until at last she fell still. Rom stepped back from the older woman, wiping her eyes with her sleeves.

  Briseida held up one finger to Rom and went into the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later with a second, smaller pack. “Food for you and Mulligan for a couple days – dried fruits, bread and cheese, with some dried meats in there, as well. It should keep fine enough until you get settled. And I also put in a reinforced container for water, but you’ll need to try not to shake it too much. You’re old enough to find a job and a place to live, assuming they haven’t changed the laws dramatically; that should help you until you get everything figured out.”

  Rom nodded, putting the smaller pack inside the one she’d already prepared. It was snug, but it fit well enough.

  “Tell Kari…” Rom paused. She didn’t know what she’d wanted to say, which is why she’d decided to wait until after Kari was gone before she left. She didn’t even know how long she might be gone, or what she was even planning to do. She just knew that if Kari were here right now, her resolve might falter, or, likely, fail completely.

  Briseida placed one hand on Rom’s shoulder and nodded. “I’ll tell her,” she said. “But make me one promise, Rom.”

  “What?”

  “Come back to us.”

  In spite of her efforts, Rom’s eyes began to well up again, and she simply couldn’t get the words out. Mulligan spoke for her. “I’ll make sure she does,” he said.

  Rom looked back upstairs, partly as an excuse to shift her eyes away from Briseida’s careful perceptions. “Does she know?”

  “Goya?” Briseida asked; Rom nodded. “Yes, she and I both knew this day was coming.”

  Rom nodded her head again, mostly out of an effort to boost her own convictions. She gave Briseida a last, fierce hug and left the building before she could no longer keep the tears in check.

  In the center of the street, she looked up towards the sky and kicked off from the paving stones. She landed gracefully on the tiles of the clock tower, and paused there to take in the view of her beloved Oldtown-Against-the-Wall. It was a crystalline blue sky that stretched wide above her, the only clouds being distant and coy on the tips of the mountains that lined the horizon. Sunlight glinted from the painted glass that decorated the windows below the dome of the Conservatory, as well as off the graceful movements of the two dozen tall automatons that tended to the fields beside their smaller - and human - co-workers.

  Above it all – save for the sky – loomed the wall like a resigned challenge to her. ‘Beat against me in vain, for I will not yield’, it seemed to say. Rom took a long, ponderous breath and let it out through her nose. Though her answer came in a whisper, the wind carried it.

  “Neither will I.”

  With a kick, she launched herself up, high, high above the rooftops; higher than she had ever before gone – up, up, and eventually above the top of the Wall itself.

  One pair of eyes saw this great and tremendous leap, saw her vanish beyond view to the city within the wall. He saw her near-flight and observed with no small amount of sadness as she disappeared from sight.

  He raised the Looking Glasses back up onto the unruly mane of straw-colored hair, and smoothed his palms on the front of his vest. Sighing, he shook his head. Cousins didn’t like the limit of vision through these glasses when things left his sight; something about the randomness and apparent chaos of the invisible troubled him. Cousins didn’t like things troubling him.

  His eyes lingered on the spot on the wall she’d gone over for several more minutes, as if he expected to see her jump right back across, but realized the idiocy of such hopes. Eventually, he turned his attention back to the desk behind him, and distractedly ruffled some of the documents across each other.

  But though Cousin’s outward focus appeared to be on the many changes affecting Favo’s organization, his mind would revisit the image of Rom’s flight for many more hours.

  * * * * *

  Goya put her pen down on the sideboard of her writing table, blowing gently on the ink to dry it. It was a good day, she realized –
filled with sadness and conviction, optimism and longing. As any day could be measured, it was filled with the heights of human feeling, faith and hope. The small town had seen the arrival and birth of their newest guardian, and word was already spreading rapidly about the young girl in the dark dresses who wielded the mythical Shepherd’s staff in their defense.

  Legends were already in their tender infancy regarding the near-decimation of their population at the hands of the hundreds of creatures from the Wild, as well as their miraculous and inexplicable salvation. Many who were there that day remember seeing her for fractions of moments, as if poised for a heartbeat, wrestling the creatures back into the fields or striking them down to save them all. Goya, who was seen by many as the oldest – or if not that, at least among the wisest – of the inhabitants of Oldtown, did what she could do to encourage those whispers. After so many years with the suggested belief that they were the outcast masses from a utopian city of gleaming spires and perfect representations of humanity, it swelled their hearts to believe that they could be the place where a guardian angel had grown and developed. It gave them one thing they had been missing for generations: pride.

  Her hands gripped the sides of the table as she pulled herself to her feet. Too long she had waited for this day when all the fragmented elements of this strong city would again start to draw themselves together – science and arts would once again struggle both against and beside one another, all heralded by a single child with a gleaming brow.

  She steadied herself by one of her bookshelves. The dark wood caught the faint light that peered in through the curtains, gave it a warmth and gentleness which, though illusory, comforted her. Lifting the book she needed from its place, she carried it to a bookstand, carefully unlatched the bindings, and turned the cover and pages until she found the passages she sought.

  In her many years she had managed to memorize many of the books here, including this one, but from time to time she simply had to revisit the old writings and illustrations drawn by the ancient masters.

  This page had been well-worn, but the images were clear and vibrant, having been protected by a variety of enduring magicks. There, on the page, had been skillfully drawn a young girl, staff in hand, with a small grey creature on her shoulder. On her forehead, the purplish glow of a gem was distinctly drawn. The staff itself seemed to have been captured in motion, blurred but frozen at the moment of its impact at the base of a tall white wall.

  Goya sighed. “They will fear you, for to them you bring destruction,” she whispered. “But to us,” she continued, closing the book again, “you bring hope.”

  She prayed in the nights to come to every god whose name she could remember for the child to have the power she might need, for whichever path the fates might choose to place before her.

  On the picture in the book, from the point of the staff’s impact to the sky rose a large crack; above the jagged lines of the breach, the wall had begun to collapse.

  Epilogue: Coda

  The queen was in a particularly foul mood today. She’d been fully briefed on the results from what she had been calling her “Grand Plan”, and had thrown multiple messengers from the highest window in her tower as a result of their best efforts to cast a positive light on what was essentially a failure.

  Molla waited until the queen had beaten a majority of her servants into increased servility before making her languid appearance. She offered a token curtsey, barely waiting for her Majesty’s gesture to approach.

  “Speak, assassin!” the queen commanded.

  Molla had stood many times in the queen’s presence, and was well past the point at which the woman’s various insults might have any effect on her. Instead, she affected a vague and offhanded air of humility, secretly amused that even this was sufficient to satisfy the royal woman. She instead held her pose for a few moments until the queen waved at her to speak.

  “Her majesty called for me?” she said, barely turning it to a question at the last moment.

  “I did indeed!” the woman screeched at her. “I summoned you hours ago!”

  “Your Majesty’s messengers lack sufficient skill to find me, I’m afraid,” Molla suggested. In fact, they had found her much earlier, but she had been in the middle of some early morning entertainments and then needed a long bath and a good meal. Meetings with the queen tended to last quite a while, and Molla had discovered them to be far more tolerable on a full stomach. “But I came as quickly as possible; here am I, eager for my Queen’s command.”

  The queen snorted in disgust. “They shall all be fired, imprisoned or killed,” she said offhandedly. “Nevertheless, you are here now, in spite of your tardiness, and your Queen is merciful.”

  Molla concealed her smirk. She didn’t think the various bruises visible on the faces of the queen’s attendants were evidence of her mercy.

  She reached into a hidden pocket of her tunic, and pulled out the faintly glowing Morrow Stone. “As requested, your Majesty, I present you the fruits of my success.”

  The Queen’s majordomo – a thin and spindly man with a poorly-concealed receding hairline – stepped quickly forward to retrieve the object and deliver it to the Queen. Avarice shone more brightly in her eyes than the stone itself.

  “Splendid!” she cackled. She gave it back to the Majordomo and cuffed him across the face. “Stop looking at it and take it to the Royal Scientists for evaluation, you dog!”

  He stammered a hurried apology and nearly ran from the room while Molla continued to hide her amusement.

  “I shall consider this slight success in light of the miserable and deplorable disaster in which you otherwise played a part,” the Queen stated. “You know of the failure of the gunnery division to follow what was a perfect plan,” she said loftily. “Their detonations channeled the beasts towards the helpless exiles as I requested, but somehow the Royal will was thwarted. It is within my right to have all my misbegotten failures exterminated, but as I say, today I am a merciful Queen. Thus I will graciously allow you to give your own explanation for what has caused in me great disappointment.”

  In the days since the attack, Molla had been preparing herself for this conversation. The key was to deflect all the blame of the failure onto people directly under the Queen’s command, or well beyond her reach, but without allowing that blame to even come close to the Queen or herself. To imply the Queen had any culpability in failure was the simplest and fastest way to find oneself soaring towards the paved streets below. And clearly taking responsibility for the failure…well, Molla had already spent time in the Queen’s dungeons; something she had sworn to never repeat.

  Fortunately, she had a perfect pair of scapegoats.

  “Your agents, Marcos and Jondal,” Molla shrugged. “They had grown too affected with the cast off life they had been sent to merely mimic.”

  “Indeed!” the Queen scoffed.

  “Sadly, it is true,” Molla assured her Highness. “They were even friends with one of the targets of your Majesty’s Wrath, and likely confessed details of her royal highness’ perfect plan to those who could take steps to prevent it from being fully realized.”

  The Queen seemed willing to accept this. “It has been reported that the senior officer had complained about being abandoned to his post,” she mused.

  Molla nodded slightly, allowing the Queen time to reach her own conclusions.

  “Thus it stands to reason that though the thought of it is an impossible one, he might be swayed to treason, as he is certainly at the least guilty of losing confidence in the plans of his Exalted Sovereign.”

  She swung out with her right hand, cracking one of her few remaining attendants across the face. “Bring the two agents in – and quickly before I must strike you again!”

  The Queen rolled her eyes as the attendant scampered off. “And you may go now. You have served your Queen well, as is your duty. I grant you leave to exist for another day.”

  Molla extended her arms to her sides as was proper, slow
ly walking backwards until the Queen looked away, which, as usual was before very long at all. Molla turned and quickly left the room, shaking her head.

  The queen’s clerics were milling about the halls, their white robes pulled tightly around them and cowls mostly concealing their faces behind simple white half-masks. Several of them, recognizing her station, bowed in deference to her as she passed them. Among the upper halls of the queen’s court, few stood as tall as Molla, also referred to as the Queen’s Bodkin. She continued along the halls and turned to follow a skyway between the central spire of the Royal Tower and an adjacent – and shorter – tower which held, among other things, her private quarters.

  Movement along the interior of the wall caught her eye – though it was still a mile from here, she thought she could see a brief flash of motion, a jagged scar of shadow against the otherwise impeccably flawless interior. She shook her head; clearly her eyes were having their fun with her.

  She smiled at the view down on the city from this angle. It was unobstructed and impressive, even to her, even after the many years she had been given leave by Her Majesty to take residence here. In her mind, she laughed at the feeble Queen – even with all her authority and blind followers, she thought the woman a fool. A dangerous fool, perhaps, but still a fool. Fools didn’t concern her much, unless they had the power to challenge her.

  Just like that exceptional fool Favo, she smiled. He’d been as much a fool as any of them. He and his aspirations of - - her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of another of the white-robed clerics directly before her.