by Kin Law
As Albion trudged through, he could see Mordemere’s stolen landmarks slowly pulling away from the Nidhogg proper.
The room might have been meant as a parlor or observation deck, save for the obelisk on the opposite side of the spire from the elevators. After inspecting it, Albion found it was a door- but a door of so cunning make, it was impossible to discern what seams lay in it.
Albion pushed on the obelisk before him experimentally. They swung open on invisible oiled hinges, hidden mechanisms whirring away in two wide slabs, and Albion stepped through. Immediately, they shut again, locking with thundering snapping and clicking sounds.
Albion found himself in another room much like the first, still filled with the casual luxury and beauty of a man used to the ripe fruits of society. The only difference was a majestic crystal dome overhead, spilling the azure light of the Leviathan into the room. A mural clung to the skirts of the dome roof, lit by its radiance. It was brighter in the center of the spire, like being in the inside of a rainbow. A raised dais sat in the middle, presenting a bank of controls and gauges that seemed to defy understanding.
An aristocratic, sonorous voice echoed through the chamber.
“Nobody ever lets a villain monologue anymore. Where’s our sense of the dramatic, you think? Blown away with the first of us aeronauts, or rent asunder by our tedious industry?” The voice sighed. “I will settle for a dialogue instead.”
Albion froze. Where had Valima Mordemere’s voice come from? There was a certain undersea quality, with the odd specimens suspended in taxidermy or crystal here and there. Yet, even in this place, it would take Kitty Desperado to get the jump on the Manchu Marauder.
Mordemere was standing quite casually by one of his bookshelves, a slim tome in one gloved hand. He looked exactly as the daguerrotypes and photograms made him out to be: gray eyes, gray hair, smooth chin, the picture of aristocracy, though it was public knowledge he came from common engineer stock. There was an oddly aquiline quality to his uncannily youthful features. Slotted precisely into a herringbone suit, Mordemere seemed to embody the idea of nobility, rather than the actuality.
Albion started, his breath catching. Atop the dais, the body of his assailant, Wood Shoes, lay crumpled before a polished silver pedestal. On top of the pedestal, Captain Samuel’s guidance crystal floated over a reddish glow. It was a jagged, shining knife, pointing doggedly through the air, presumably at the Laputian Leviathan. Albion didn’t like the look of the light; he would have bet his prize stash of aged Scotch it had something to do with Jonah Moore’s dread Core.
“Would you like to sit?”
“How did you find the Leviathan so quickly?” Albion asked instead.
“There are more things on Heaven and Earth, Horatio…” Mordemere began, but he trailed off when he saw Albion understood, and didn’t give a damn.
Mordemere sighed. “The Leviathan isn’t in any one place. It exists all around us. I merely needed to assemble the appropriate offerings, and voila! Like Faust conjuring Mephistopheles. Like how I summoned your adoptive father by seeding the haunts of scoundrels with rumors. Where Albion Clemens goes, so too goes Samuel Clemens, with my athame.”
Mordemere gestured towards the guidance crystal, so recently plundered from the body at his feet. Albion suddenly felt like a foil.
“But we set the landmarks of Europe free, you shouldn’t have been able to gather the...”
“My dear Jonah Moore has been telling tall tales again, to my advantage, I might add,” Mordemere mused, as if he were alone. He put an ornate silk ribbon into the book and placed it back in the shelf, then immediately looked for a second one. Albion was about to go for his Victoria, but he thought better of it.
Though he looked the part of an absentminded professor, Mordemere was holding a strange, silvery weapon in his other hand.
“I’m afraid my colleague and I were mistaken,” Mordemere continued to speak. “We were originally led to believe the Leviathan is a physical thing, floating here and there like a nomad. It is not. The aeon stones create the Leviathan, from our thoughts, and dreams. You have just witnessed their effect yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Albion answered, not quite honestly.
“Come now. If you truly intended to shoot my old collaborator Samuel, you would have hit him on the first shot. Ever since the advent of your ‘lift compound, all our alloys have become tainted with aeon stone particles. At this density, even a blind man could hit a fly at fifty paces.”
“You’re saying simply being in the vicinity of the stuff is enough to summon the Leviathan,” Albion guessed. “You only needed to have the five landmarks of Europe in the same place.”
“If you want it enough. If you have something to focus your intent, like this magnificently fortuitous athame here. Ah Ah Ah, I would not touch your weapon, if I were you. Set that beastly pistol over there, beside my bust of Aristotle. There’s a lad.”
Albion did as he was told. He wasn’t sure if Mordemere was entirely sane, or what the odd silvery weapon did.
“What do you want from the Leviathan? If Moore was wrong about it, he might have been wrong about you too,” Albion said, biding for time.
“Should I? No, there isn’t any need… though I suppose…” Mordemere spoke aloud. He seemed to come to a conclusion. “All genius requires an audience. It’s the great failure of the species.”
He hovered, uncertain.
“All right, I will tell you. You survived my little creations below, after all, which shows you have some ability… though this one seems to have taken the brunt of the punishment.” Mordemere nudged the body of Wood Shoes off the dais with his shoe.
“All ears,” Albion said, barely holding back a wince.
Where had Rosa and Hargreaves and Blair gone? Was the ship about to come down around his ears? He had barely spared them a thought, everything was happening so quickly. No- he had to stay in the moment, aware of the one chance to strike.
“See this mural?” Mordemere began. The light of the Leviathan was now bright enough to see all the details of the room. In the mural all around them were fantastic scenes of tall, shining ziggurat shapes, men and women conversing through strange devices, vehicles seeming to defy the laws of physics much as Moredemere’s flying city defied them. The Leviathan lit all from overhead.
“There, a man who can talk to his fellow on the other side of a country, without resorting to dirigibles or telegraph, but through a device no bigger than a pocket-glass,” Mordemere was saying. An airship flying through the air with no dangerous gasses, but by great forward momentum and the innate nature of air to occupy space!”
He seemed to grow more impassioned by the second.
“Vast networks of metal filament, linking everyone to everyone else. At the center of it all will be my Laputian Leviathan, an infinite power source fueling it all, at cost to none. The animals of the world will live rationally once more, wanting for nothing, yet possessing of everything. What a glorious future!”
“Animals?” Albion asked, to fuel the alchemist’s passion. The silvery weapon was caught up in gesticulations, aiming to and fro. The Captain scented a chance, yet the words pricked at something in Albion’s chest.
“What else are they?” Mordemere asked. Wrong move, Albion thought. Now the alchemist’s attention was square on him. Mordemere was taking in the goggles, the airman’s jacket, the inquisitive brown eyes.
“Animals fighting over coal, water, steel. Animals willing to do anything to survive, betray each other to get ahead. Animals fighting over who gets to live where. Look at this world, this Europe at the brink of war. The sky is endless and free, yet the Ottomans think themselves rightful possessors of a piece of infinity. The British are no better, parading their Knights of the Round over trade routes until they’ve driven their competitors to drastic measures. Surely you understand this travesty, air pirate!”
“You sold the Ottomans arms,” Albion accused.
“Why not? Their way leads only to war,” Mordemere continued. He seemed to be confirming the statement to himself. “Let them scour the land clean of the surplus population. Better my way. Better I take the ruin they leave behind, take this Leviathan and rebuild. I can use it to provide free energy, clean energy to the world!
Casually, Mordemere held out a simple compass with his free hand. The needle stayed resolutely north, until it hovered over the crystal pedestal. Then, it began to spin with such violence that it cracked the glass.
“With energy comes food, comes potable water, warm places to live. Think of it- when an Animal receives everything it needs, it becomes Tame. Surely it is better than this chaos?” Mordemere continued.
“I can bring to our world a new Energy Age, an Age long since abandoned and forgot. I can restore a Future that Never Was, the one depicted there!”
Mordemere gestured widely, at all the magnificence he surrounded himself with. He looked to his captive audience, and for a split second Albion thought he saw the alchemist seeking approval. How alone must he be?
Albion could not fathom the nights here in this tower room, for months on end, meticulously playing with others’ lives and bodies, selling weapons to both sides of a war in hopes of scavenging the carrion leavings. Suddenly Albion was seeing through the veneer of mature aristocracy, at a soul even younger than his own sophomoric one, a weak, lonely soul wishing for a better tomorrow.
It was always children who were the most unforgivingly cruel.
“You’re right,” Albion agreed in spite of himself. “It’s not a conflict I want to happen. But you’re wrong, also. This energy you want? It’s not free.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ve seen where this energy comes from. You have too, if you think about it. All this aeon energy doesn’t just come from the stones alone. Even the stones are not unlimited.”
“Ridiculous! This ship here is proof enough!”
Albion knew it was not wise to stir up the alchemist, whose brows were beginning to knit, but he could not stop.
“Perpetual energy comes from people. Not animals- people who have emotions, who have dreams and wish for your better tomorrow.” Albion said. “Maybe, if you had involved others in this epic quest, it could have come true. But by stealing the Big Ben, the Vatican, even Red Square… you’re stealing their fondest dreams to fuel your own.”
He knew what would come next.
Like Mordemere said, even a blind man should be able to hit at this distance- but Albion was not blind. He was a seeing, resourceful air pirate, and when he saw Mordemere begin to aim his weapon, he didn’t even need to think about moving. He simply reached for the closest object, the marble bust of Aristotle, and flung it at Valima Mordemere.
“Bollocks,” Mordemere said, laconically, as if he’d scorched himself making beans and toast. His silvery weapon discharged a blue streak, profanity given fire and life, arcing through the air. It struck the bust of Aristotle and detonated it with a pop, filling the room with a great cloud of powdered marble and a smell of burning copper.
“Crikey that’s nasty,” Albion remarked. His goggles, though cracked, shielded him from the dust.
“There you are,” said Mordemere, whirling about. There was too much stone dust in the air, and it was in his eyes- they screwed up like a crying baby’s. He wielded his terrible lightning weapon again, but the arc only tore the air over Albion’s scalp.
Albion had guessed correctly- Mordemere was used to judging his world through words and datum points, not his eyes and ears.
True, in the aeon-rich environment of the Nidhogg, all it took was something to focus intent, but the alchemist was accustomed to seeing his intended victims. If Mordemere had focused on the sound the Victoria made as it settled next to the father of modern science, he might have noticed it seemed a bit light to be in the possession of a daring pirate like the Manchu Marauder.
“There’s the difference between a wailing child latched on to his betters, and someone willing to carry through his dreams, Mordemere,” Albion continued to say. He allowed himself this one luxury- once the deed was done, there was no telling what would happen. “The latter is prepared.”
Albion pulled the trigger of the Red Special, sending the single bullet he removed from Victoria rocketing into the crystal floating in the center of the room.
And then there was Chaos.
Dimly, Albion sensed the ship lurching all about him, loose objects freed of their moorings. Insect dioramas, rare paintings and finely bound tomes floated in a soup of vintage liquors and alchemic potions. Some of it splashed onto the elaborate control panels, sending up arclight sparks. Others collided into each other, fizzing and exploding in flames, blooming and writhing loose from the caress of the Earth. Albion felt something strike him, and when he touched there, something hard was embedded in his shoulder. Then he was thrown away from the dais, rolling and scrabbling, by the force of a sudden explosion.
“You fool! You blasted fool!” Mordemere’s voice echoed after him. His neat suit had been ripped, and there was gold glittering beneath. The alchemist could not get up. His steamworked limbs had been thrown akimbo, jerking uncontrollably from the aeon explosion.
“Far too dramatic. This is why we don’t monologue. I thought you wanted a conversation? Don’t ask if you don’t like my reply!” Albion yelled back, before staggering out of some sudden opening in the walls. He vaguely saw it was the obelisk doors, thrown open and jerking back and forth on chaotic cogs. As he left, his foot kicked into Victoria, fallen into the opening and jamming the doors open.
Life draining from his body, strength gone from his limbs, Albion honestly thought it was over. So much for the Scourge of Shanghai, the Corsair Chinois, the Manchu Marauder. He had never even set foot in Shanghai. The name was a slur. With all the raids he had been on, the best crew in the world, was this how he was to end? Bleeding to death thousands of feet over Europe?
The faces of everyone he held dear seemed to flash before his eyes, like some cheap picture house melodrama. He had thought such things were a myth, and he, Albion Clemens, immune to such sentimental swill. Cid Tanner, Auntie and Alex, who had cared so much for the Huckleberry’s Captain they would safeguard his son, adoptive or no, from his own folly. Vanessa Hargreaves so full of fire and loyalty, true to the last to Queen and Country. Elric Blair, even, the pointless idiot, sacrificing himself for the truth- what was truth in the face of earth-shattering, overpowering might?
Rosa Marija danced into view, as she oft did in the evenings, all beauty and grace and lack of compromise. Albion regretted not taking her up. Wasn’t it the pirate way to chuck out the rules and do whatever they wanted? Rosa deserved better.
Finally, Captain Sam swam into view, through a familiar fog of cigar smoke. He seemed to waver, then solidify, walking through the fog of smoke and slapping Albion clean across the cheek.
“The hell are you doing, you danged stupid boy?” He yelled in Albion’s face.
“Captain?” Albion blurted, shocked. Confusion, love and murder warred somewhere between his strained lungs. “How…?”
“None other,” Captain Sam drawled, seemingly unconcerned. “Just look around.”
They were no longer in Mordemere’s anteroom at the peak of the Nidhogg. Warm wood, tea smells, and comfortable worn cushions threatened to smother them both. It was Auntie’s galley on the Berry.
“I see. I guess when you die, this is what happens,” Albion sighed, earning another roundhouse slap. It stung like the devil.
“Keep talking like that and you will be, boy,” Captain Sam said, lighting up another cigar. “You hurt, means you’re still alive. Not for long, just for now, until your brain succumbs to lack of air, now the ship’s gone haywire. Funny, an air pirate suffocating to death.”
“So you’re not really the Captain,” Albion said, disappointed. “What happens now?”
“I’m real enough. What do you think happens? It’s your own damn mind, make it up.�
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“I really wanted to find you, and beat the tar out of you.”
“What made you stop and take on this fool’s errand, then?” the Captain asked. “You ought to have followed me when I left this devil ship.”
“Don’t rightly know. Obligation, maybe?”
“Right.”
“I guess… I thought it was what you would have done. Not the Sam you showed me, but the one you show other people. You were always going out of your way to help.”
“Maybe I was working out my repressed sense of guilt over the Kyushu Maru. Ever think I just did them things because I wanted to?”
“It’s the only reason to do anything.” Albion smiled. “I’m all right. I can die knowing I did what I thought made a difference. We all chose to be pirates, in the end, just doing whatever we wanted. It makes no difference now.”
“Why in the blue blazes not?”
“Why not? I’m bleeding to death, and with the ship not working, the elevators are shot. There’s no other way down. My only way out is if the ‘Berry flies up to this window, and she can’t hardly make it this high.”
“You’re a damn pirate, ain’t ya? Figure it out yourself!”
A sign Albion was fading: the anteroom with its Chesterfields and brocade was coming back into view. There was a faint sound of something smashing its way down the hall- Mordemere, most likely, making the most of his thrashing machine limbs.
The floor seemed tilted, a fact Albion initially attributed to the blood streaming down his arm, but it wasn’t- the sky looked wrong outside. He caught sight of a regal clock face staring him in the eyes- the Big Ben, not a hundred yards away. Then it passed as they drifted higher.
