by Kin Law
With a shock, General Karelin realized the dribble of blood running down his monarch’s chin was from no external injury. The Tsar had bitten down on his tongue.
In the Red Square, Albion Clemens and Elric Blair arrived at the gates of the Kremlin. The red brick gate was sealed with heavy timbers. Two lofty towers seemed to glower down at them, taunting them to find their way in.
Meanwhile, the snap and crackle of Mordemere’s weapons clashed with the steady boom of steam and powder cannon firing from the Balaenopteron above. The dirigible was not doing well, despite the inferno of violence now engulfing the Nidhogg’s cloud layers. It seemed every dirigible in the sky was firing into the cloud, yet it was the Russian Balaenopteron faltering and tipping to its side.
“This is strange. The Kremlin is literally a fortress, a guarded citadel. Where are the soldiers?” Elric Blair remarked. He was peering at the strangely deserted square. There were signs of recent occupation: meal tins left clattering on the ground, weapons in the midst of service, one armored engine still warm, dripping in Moscow’s frosty spring.
There were also signs of something more sinister: a hole in the side of an engine, for example, leaking a frothing blend of soot and water. On the way in they had seen blackened craters at the foot of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Charred marks stained the wide streets, where lines of sand bags were interrupted by gaping holes. Clearly, something untoward had occurred here.
When he finally looked up, Blair was shocked to see a second Balaenopteron appear from behind the first, this one emblazoned with the familiar lion and unicorn of the United Kingdom.
The Knight seemed to be firing anchors into the first ship, pulling the cables taut to steady the tipping decks. A ramp was extended across the breach, and figures seemed to be crossing from the first ship into the second.
“They’ve abandoned her,” Clemens said, slack-jawed.
“It means Valima Mordemere will be upon us soon. We must find our way into the Kremlin!” Blair reminded him.
Suddenly something exploded on the first Balaenopteron- but no bolt of lightning arched through the sky. It was the other side, the one not facing the dread Nidhogg, exploding a spray of gasses and violently hurled debris.
“There,” Clemens said. Of course- the pirate Captain had seen firearms in action often enough to determine the angle of attack. It took a moment of fumbling with the pocket-glass, but soon Clemens found the shooter, and passed it to Blair. “On the blue tower, the one that looks like blueberry cream gelato.”
“Gelato?” Blair parroted, but in a moment he had it: St. Basil’s Cathedral, or the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, after a local saint. They had passed it on the way in. Nine tall towers stood like nothing the Slavic peoples had ever built since, shaped to emulate a blazing fire. One of its beautiful onion domes was now emitting little glints of light. After each one, an explosion occurred overhead, in the side of the Balaenopteron.
Blair looked closer, turning the lenses in the glass for greater magnification. There! The shooter was a hooded figure, about man size, but weighed down with some improbable weapon. It looked like a rifle the size of ships’ cannon, with a great beastly barrel and a glimmering copper scope.
Blair could actually see the belt of ammunition feeding into the chamber. Each round must have been the size of a canned ham. There were odd lumps scattered in the square just before the shooter, like currants in a red jam.
“A Clanker… but none we’ve ever seen. They are not so strong as to be able to lift a gun of that caliber,” Blair summed up.
“He might be something a lot like Jonah Moore,” said Clemens grimly.
Even as the words left his mouth, a long tongue of flame erupted from the Balaenopteron overhead, and the shooter stopped firing.
“Go! Run!” Clemens hollered as vast slabs of armor began to shift with titanic groans. They were loosening from their moorings, beginning to rain down from overhead. Even the smaller pieces proved a danger, hailing a tattoo against the hard stone paving.
They gouged little divots from the surface of the Square, smashing the more delicate decorations outright.
Clemens and Blair dove for cover, just as the main portion of the debris fell with a cantankerous uproar. It cracked and dug into the ground, warped polygons of riveted steel and iron, and hung there, like portals to some giant’s castle. Then they fell, all at once, onto the red brick of the Kremlin, sealing the gate to the fortress beyond.
“No!” Captain Clemens groaned, watching the destruction from beneath the cover of his buccaneer coat. Blair was under there, also, and he could feel the Captain’s frustration vibrating through his every fiber- how would he sneak inside now? There went his hope of seeing his adoptive father again.
“Captain, we must move! The shooter could see us at any time!”
Albion paused. He was watching the cumulus of debris settle with a plunking clatter, but he and Blair hadn’t made it this far without a dollop of sense between them. The two scrambled to their feet, racing towards the closest cover, a downed lorry. Even as they slipped and slid behind the thin sheaf of its metal chassis, the ground shook beneath them with the force of the Clanker’s gigantic gun.
“Did he find us?”
“No, it was too far away,” the Captain replied. The explosion had come from the opposite direction.
“Maybe one of the soldiers survived,” Blair said.
“I’m going out there,” Clemens declared.
“And I will cover you,” Elric decided right then and there. Clemens’s searching look felt like an arclamp, peering into his soul. Blair was shivering, not from the cold, and his hands shook around a little peashooter, like the one he had when the Captain first met him. At least it was in his hand.
“Um…Don’t die…” Clemens managed awkwardly. Blair smiled.
“Just go. The ladies are handling the real monsters. I think I can manage a man with a gun.”
11.2: Cezette
Cezette Louissaint was having a very peculiar dream.
In the dream, she was walking through a strange city.
She could tell it was a dream, because the city looked so much like Paris. Yet, it was not. There were oddments, little things out of place.
For one thing, Cezette had never seen any other cities. There was nothing for her to create into a tangible dreamscape, no paint with which to finger into these streets and kiosks.
It was far more likely, she thought, the dragons on the roofs and the square undecorated buildings inserted between the Parisian beauty came from Maman’s books, or the fragments of schooling hanging together in Cezette’s mind. She was old enough to know the difference, though she had no words for some of the things here. Everything felt soft and cheap, like the silk roses in Maman’s library. Everything seemed too low beneath her, as if she were astride some tall steed. Things fell to pieces when she touched them.
Reality should have been made of sterner stuff.
Then there was the man- the nice man, who had seemed so much like Papa. He was tall, like Papa, and his hair was gray. Cezette remembered him from the beginning of the dream.
“This is your garden, Cezette,” The Gray Man told her. “Yours alone.”
“But there are things here,” She protested. Her voice had sounded far away, as if it was coming back to her from a deep well. “Insects I did not put here.”
“Then remove them,” the Gray Man said. His voice was well rounded, reasonable, and he could speak French.
“All right,” Cezette agreed. It did not seem too difficult.
In the dream, it was all too easy to move things from her garden. She simply picked them up, and tossed them aside. Even the heaviest things seemed to fly from her fingers, impossibly high.
Stranger still, she had felt the ground drop from beneath her, and suddenly reappear several seconds later.
In her dreams, she usually woke up when she began falling. Not only did this dream continue, there were others on this new ground, dark,
sinister others. They made her dream shake and rumble, until she decided to remove them too. Then they stopped.
Cezette found it odd the dream would be so long, and so varied in scenery. She even found herself having some fun, a feeling she had all but forgotten. She only ever had fun in Maman’s garden.
The feeling was what made her certain: she was dreaming, and this was Maman’s garden. There were pests in the garden. That was all.
Until the woman appeared, Cezette had never seen someone with golden hair, except in books. Of course, in dreams, everything was possible. No matter, the woman did not belong in Maman’s garden. She would have to go, no matter how pretty her hair. She was a dandelion- beautiful, but if Cezette let her stay, she would choke out Maman’s topiaries.
The dandelion was not so easy to move. Everything else fell apart at Cezette’s touch. The gold woman would not be touched. In a way, it made a strange sort of sense. To Cezette’s mind, there existed some definitely untouchable things. Her Paris, for example, had always stayed behind the rippled glass of her window. She never placed a single finger on it.
But she had; when was that? The thought there were no topiaries drifted through her mind, looking for a bell to ring. It did not find one.
No matter. The dandelion was not so resilient as Cezette first thought. Her littlest finger felt one the dandelion’s petals, so evasive, but so fragile to the touch. It would not be long now before the weed could be plucked.
But what was this? The dream was changing. The scenery was not the same. Was there ever a river running through Paris? Yes, of course, Cezette had read it in a book… but she had never seen it up close. She had never seen the banks of the river, flanked by a red, red wall. She had never seen the stone slabs lining the river, so well ordered, as if death were a commonplace thing.
What had her books called it? Yes, a necropolis. The word struck a chord somewhere, like an alarm.
Why would there be such a thing, in her Paris? Maman loved living things. She would not allow such a place in her garden. To think, a city of the dead in the city of lights. The word ‘necropolis’ struck a feeling of morbidity in her she found alien and unpleasant. The French could make even a field of graves sound romantic- why was it she felt sickened and deprived instead? The streets were bleak, undecorated. The weeds looked helpless and sad. Was this really a dream? Or was it some nightmare from which she could not wake?
Cezette slowed. She felt the dandelion slip from her grasp once more, and she let it. It did not matter. She looked around, at her dream, and found she could- she could see whatever she wished. She was in control, lucidly dreaming. There were no smells, no feeling of touch. There ought to have been a sound, at least, the whisper of the wind on her skin, the moist sprinkle of the river. Cezette saw dry, brittle fingers on the snow-laden trees, but she felt warm, steamy even.
“What…what is this?” Cezette said aloud, in French. “Is this a dream? Or a nightmare?”
“You can talk?” The dandelion said, in pained English. It was struggling to free itself; Cezette found she was holding the weed’s stem. If she wished, she could crush it to a pulp. One of its leaves dangled horribly loose. “And in French… La Maere… Nessie Drake’s ship. It means nightmare.”
“Is it?” Cezette said in English. Her accent was halting, but she managed two words. Funny… Cezette had once read a person could not read, or form words, in a dream. It was a different part of the brain, according to the phrenology text too difficult for Cezette to understand why.
What disturbed Cezette more was her own voice- it was not. This voice was tinny, and deep- like Papa’s. She looked down, at her arms, arms that ought to have been thin, and pale, and hers. They were large, soiled, and hard. For that matter, the dandelion in her hand was looking a good deal darker. Soot, perhaps? With her hair stained, the gold looked almost black… black, and silky.
“Maman?” Cezette murmured. She dropped the dandelion.
In the middle of a bridge over the Moscow River, deep in the warm belly of a metal titan, Cezette Louissaint began to cry.
11.3: Shotaro
His opponent was out of options, of that Hikawa Shotaro was sure.
The oddly dressed woman with the hojicha skin had tried to kill him with everything from daggers to fire eggs to fists wreathed in metal. Nothing worked, of course. Shotaro’s sword had been remade. Now it could cut anything. Now it could make the perfect cut.
If at any time Hikawa questioned the wisdom of his deal with M-dono, those questions were drowned out by the sound of the sword. At first, he had been suspicious- after all, M-dono had been leader of the men who had taken him in.
“I can save him,” M-dono had simply said.
He was a man of few Japanese words. Pointing towards Esteban Dio, he rolled up his own sleeve to show the gleam of precious metals beyond Hikawa’s understanding. “I can give him new legs. And I can show you how to cut through the Clankers below.”
For a samurai without a master, a ronin, the unspoken promise of being able to fulfill his life’s calling was more than enough. The worst part was his eye- the ball was beyond saving, though M-dono had kindly offered to replace it with a superior specimen. Hikawa had consented after a moment’s polite repose. It was important to maintain good form.
So why had Shotaro found the idea of a mask so appealing?
Hikawa paused in his reverie. The woman was up to something new. Quickly, before she could use whatever weapon she was slipping from her bustle, Hikawa drew his sword. The pull of it was familiar now, though the hissing sound it made still aggravated him. A silent draw would have been more useful, not that an opponent could dodge such a perfect cut for long.
With a little snap, the blade cut through another of the bridge’s stone pilings. It slipped through like spring through snow.
Hikawa thought he knew what was going on in the woman’s head. Was the range of the weapon a yard, or three yards? Could it possibly be twenty? What blade could cut a trio of daggers down in midair, at a clearly impossible angle?
It must be aggravating to tell, particularly when the blade was invisible.
Hikawa was adjusting the length with each draw. M-dono had kindly provided the option with a brass dial in the hilt.
He watched the woman twist, agile, and perch on an uncut piling.
Ah, so the new weapon is to be a deck of cards. They were palm-sized, longer than playing cards. Tarot, he believed they were called. The kappa monks had frowned upon such pagan blasphemy. Hikawa was mildly amused. What new trick was the woman up to?
He did not have to wait long. It was obvious his enemy was a mistress of projectiles, like the ninja of Nippon. Samurai versus ninja- the thought struck momentary pleasure in Shotaro before his thoughts turned to the thrown cards.
Tricky.
Very tricky.
The cards wound through the air like predatory birds. One moment they were flying in straight lines, nowhere near Shotaro. The next, they seemed to change direction, scenting for his wrists, his neck, his spine. There was even one that seemed to go for his groin.
Thunk! The edge of a card dug deep into Shotaro’s mask. It was a calculated risk- the swordsman did not know what these cards really were. He yanked it out of the lacquer and peered at the strange illustration- a man hung by the neck, against a background of a battlefield. Odin, it read.
Kudaran- he threw it over his shoulder flippantly. Such frippery did not belong on the battlefield. He sliced another card in twain, seeing the image of jewels flip past his face.
The card half embedded itself into a bridge pylon with far more weight than it should.
Hmm. A mistake, Shotaro realized. His sword relied much on form- the sheath filled the hilt with vital gases needed to form the blade. It made him slow, sheathing and unsheathing now to fend off the barrage of cards.
Meanwhile, his opponent could fling four or five cards at once, some diving right for Shotaro, some hanging in the air to join in a hail of missiles. He could not
always catch them in one swipe, and as his forms began to fail, he found himself falling back, step by clicking step on his wooden geta. They were split-second motions- the woman was a whirl of pleasantly textured cloth and leather, tossing her weapons with tiny flicks of her fingers, all the while keeping her distance. At this rate, either she would run out of cards or he would run out of gas in his sheath.
A gambit, then, Shotaro thought. Sheathing his blade once more, he undid the reserve on the machinery. Instantly, the gauge in the hilt began to rise, the needle creeping towards a red swath. He sidestepped, dodged, scrambled to stay away from the murderous fortunes striking all around him now- an Ace of Air, The Engine, Anubis, challenging Shotaro’s ability to pronounce the English letters. They stuck in the stone corner-first, feathering the bridge.
Just another few seconds…
A slew of cards stuck a line right near his right geta, cracking the pavement. The Patriarch now, with a squadron of Knights. Where they hit edge-first, the card with the ornate art cut clean through steel fixtures.
He found himself reading the cards, letting the pips strike his mask and geta.
This was bad- the enemy was managing him, letting the card faces distract him from his target.
Worse, there were some that were not blades- some suits erupted into tongues of flame, and others into clouds of stinging vapor.
No two were alike, and it threw Shotaro into confusion .It was a devious scheme- the cards flipped through the air, face and back interchanging in a deadly dance.
In a moment he would slip, become distracted and find one embedded in his body. He wondered if they could cut through the false eye and cheekbones M-dono had placed in his skull.
All the while, his blade was filling with the precious energies of the perfect sword. Just as his geta were about to slip, throwing him off balance, there was a click at his hip.
Shotaro cried out, and leaped high into the slate sky. The woman peered, ready for the attack- but this cut would be impossible to avoid. Shotaro unsheathed.
