Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection

by Michael Coorlim

  ***

  When Bartleby and I arrived at Humphrey Hall, where the village was housed, we found that the chains sealing the grand front doors had been cut. Our lantern did little to illuminate the gloom of the interior, or of the darkened homes and hovels of the mock-up. I held it in one of my hands, a pry-bar in the other. Bartleby held his pistol.

  We made our way through the maze-like structure of the buildings, past homes and tea-halls, looking for the temple. As we progressed we could hear the chanting, indistinct at first, then resolving itself as Latin.

  Exorcism, Bartleby mouthed.

  We pressed on, past stores and workshops, the quaint medieval decor painted with an eternal night. The temple sat alone in the middle of an open square, sallow light flickering from within. The chanting was louder, and under it we could hear a low moaning. We crept inside, careful to avoid making too much noise, past foreign statues of angry looking gods and bright murals so different from the sombre trappings of our own churches.

  At the centre of the temple was a great chamber dominated by a large golden statue. Furniture from some of the other buildings had been broken up and fashioned together to form a large cross, to which a young woman had been lashed. She hung limply, her clothes in dirty tatters, head hung. Curate Lakewood stood before her, dressed in a cassock modified to the Japanese fashion, a blank white mask covering his face. The voice coming from behind it was ragged and hoarse, as if he'd been chanting for hours.

  We didn't make any noise entering, but the Curate must have heard us. His face cocked towards us, and the long curved Oriental blade he held in his hand came into view.

  "Let her go, Lakewood," Bartleby demanded, raising his pistol. "Drop the sword and surrender yourself."

  "You don't understand!" he cried, his voice cracking. "She's possessed! This is the only way I can drive the evil from her body and save her immortal soul!"

  "We know about the murders in Japan, Lakewood." Bartleby judged the light and his ability to drop the Curate before he harmed Miss Fortier, he then lowered his pistol.

  "Murder? No. Not murder. A murder is an unlawful killing, Mr. Bartleby, and I obey the laws of God." He slipped in next to the girl, blade's edge to her neck. "A common error in translation, the commandment. 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder.' The gangsters that I... in Hokkaido, they were like this girl, here. Possessed by foreign demons. I... I could not drive the evil out, their barbs sunk in too thick. I had to release them the only way I could."

  "So you killed them."

  "I had to!" His voice entreated us to forgive, to absolve, to understand. "The first... I didn't know what he was. I thought he was just another gangster, coming to extort the church as they do their own temples. When I refused him he came at me. We struggled and he fell and... and at first I was afraid that I'd accidentally killed a man. No matter his earthly crimes, he was not beyond salvation. But then, as I rushed to his side, I saw... I saw the marks, the ink upon his flesh as if the demon inside him was bubbling to the surface. His arms, his back, his chest... it was then that I knew – knew – that he was hell-spawn."

  "It didn't stop there, did it?" Bartleby asked quietly, stepping around the temple's interior, circling around the Curate and his hostage.

  "No. No, then I knew they were there. Demons, Detective. The other criminals, they had the same sorts of tattoo-work. I used my station as a priest to lure them to a secluded mill, where I ambushed them and tried to drive the demons out. But I couldn't, not before their bodies gave out, as I couldn't with this poor woman."

  "If you kill her now," Bartleby said, "She won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven in a state of grace."

  "I've absolved her of her sins, Detective," the Curate said "The demon will perish in the lake of fire, but she will return to sit at the throne of God for eternity."

  "You poor, poor, sick fool," Bartleby raised his pistol again. "You've been lying to yourself. You killed a man -- an accident -- but you convinced yourself that he was a demon. That he had to have been one, to justify an accident. But then... but then you had to see his fellows as demons, or that meant that you were wrong. That you were flawed. That you were a killer. And so you kept killing. Even here, back in England, you cannot stop."

  The Curate's breathing had almost stopped while Bartleby spoke.

  "You're a mad dog, Lakewood," I snarled. "Give it up, give yourself up, or we'll put you down like a dog."

  A strange whining cry came out from behind the mask, and the Curate pushed away from the girl to rush towards me, blade raised. From his stance, from his grip on the blade, I knew he'd had training in how to use it. I am not a trained fighter. I don't know the secrets of combat, or of style and technique. As William Lakewood neared me, I relied on the tools I always do when it comes to violence: Force and Acceleration.

  He came in with an elegant drawing strike that, had it connected, would have neatly parted the skin of my throat and sent my lifeblood free from my jugular. I countered with the broad side of my crowbar, smashing into the side of his blade and knocking it aside. It did not, as I had expected, shatter, but before he could bring it around again to gut me Bartleby fired his pistol, shooting the man in the chest. He dropped to the ground, his sword clattering aside, rasped out a few rattling breaths, and died.

  ***

  "Unofficially the Church wishes to thank you both for excising this sickness afflicting the St. Barnabas parish," the Bishop told us. Shortly after the Metropolitan Police had sorted things with Buckley we had been contacted -- and collected -- by representatives of the Church and brought to the imposing confines of an audience room with the Archbishop of London, where we were to be debriefed by the Bishop, on behalf of His Eminence himself. Buckley and his accomplice, Miss Fortier had been collected as well, and looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  "Unofficially," Bartleby echoed, doing his best to seem unaffected by the austere luxury of the audience chamber.

  "Unofficially. We cannot, of course, be seen publicly condoning the slaying of one of our own, and cannot admit to the misdeeds he committed here or abroad during his missionary work."

  "That would be gauche," I snorted.

  The Bishop regarded me coldly. "You're an Engineer. I don't expect you to understand the politics of the matter, but it is a delicate thing. Relationships between the Empire and Japan are tense -- I can assure you that the Home Office would quite agree with us that discretion is in order."

  "And of the men the Curate killed?" Miss Fortier asked in a dusky voice without a trace of a Russian accent.

  "Criminals and murderers themselves. Their own sins would have caught up with them eventually. And as for you, Miss Fortier and Mr. Buckley... you will be well compensated and are strongly encouraged to leave the city."

  "The broadsheets have made that a certainty," Buckley crossed his arms, gaze steady on the Bishop's desk. "What with the light they've shed on the pair of us."

  "Yes. Well. We have added our own incentives towards that goal, and we strongly recommend it. Considering the alternative. But now there's the matter of your own discretion, Mr. Bartleby, Mr. Wainwright."

  "What of it?"

  "We cannot have rumours of the Church's complicity floating about, gentlemen."

  "Complacency, then," I replied. "You knew that Lakewood was an unstable psychotic, yet you returned him here to London."

  "It was hoped that his indiscretions were mere xenophobia."

  "Mere?"

  "It's a different culture there. Far different than what you can imagine. Some men cannot handle the culture shock. But we digress."

  "You want to buy our silence?" Bartleby asked.

  "We wouldn't put it in such vulgar terms."

  "We are not gossips, your eminence. Nor wags. Our consultancy prides itself upon discretion."

  "Excellent. I believe we understand one another."

  "We do."

  "Then go with God, gentlemen, and should you require any ecclesial assistance, I am at your disposal."


  As we left, I couldn't help but voice my displeasure. "That whole meeting left an unpleasant taste in my mouth."

  "Get used to it, James. That's the taste of power and authority. We're making waves here in the city, and it's being noticed by power players. The Home Office, wealthy industrialists, and now Mother Church herself."

  "I don't like it."

  "I'm afraid that doesn't matter. It only gets filthier from here on. Trust me, someday we'll be glad the Church feels like it owes us a favour."

  "I have the feeling that I'll like calling in that favour even less."

  "That's the spirit, James. Now come on, let's get home. We've got some celebrating to do."

  Perhaps it Wasn't so Bad

  It was some time after midnight when Aldora found me on the roof of her townhouse, sitting on the edge of its eve. She walked the gabled ridge with careless ease, one booted foot in front of the next, as casually as other women made their way down the sidewalk. Her features were pale in the moonlight, and I've been reliably told that they are considered by some to be quite fetching.

  I gave her a scant glance. "Bartleby's finally passed out, has he?"

  "Not yet," she said, standing still behind me. "He's still playing cards with the commodore."

  "A boundless font of energy undamped by the spirits he's consumed."

  "It's honestly exhausting some times," Aldora said. "Like an excitable terrier when he regales with stories of your little adventures."

  I watched the trees blowing in the wind. "Cases, Miss Fiske. He calls them cases."

  "Just so." I heard her sit. "Though I'm impressed he's maintained a steady interest in them for, what, a year?"

  "Almost two," I said. "I think his interest had been waning when the Spider case came up. It'd been nothing but lost inheritances and paternity cases... Alton enjoyed the near scandal, but it wasn't much the challenge. The last eight months though..."

  "Clockwork assassins, aerial sabotage, monsters, and madmen," she said. "It's a bit much."

  "It does nothing but inspire and invigorate him," I said.

  We sat for a few moments in silence.

  "Did you want something?"

  "I wanted to see why you were sitting out here your lonesome."

  "I don't much enjoy social gatherings," I said. "And I find many of Bartleby's associates to be trying."

  A touch of warmth entered her voice. "There's more to life than your workshop, Mr. Wainwright."

  "A fact I am continually reminded of," I said. "Alton has this... infectious enthusiasm about him, though, that pulls me in despite my best intentions to the contrary."

  "I have noticed, yes," she said. "The two of you... you're very different. Perhaps that's why you work so well together."

  "We mitigate each others' weaknesses."

  "As much as you allow yourself to be mitigated," Aldora said.

  I didn't reply. She was saying more than the words she uttered. Some subtext, perhaps, some question she wanted to ask, some topic she wanted to broach. It was a common means of communication in London, one in which Aldora perhaps surpassed her fiance's abilities, but I would have none of it. It wasn't an arena I was capable of competing in, so I preferred to remain straightforward and purposefully obtuse until my frustrated conversational partners were forced to speak plainly.

  Aldora, unfortunately, played the long game. I could hear her rise. "I'll be back to my guests then, Mr. Wainwright. Do try not to damage the slates when you come in."

  I climbed to my feet. "I'll come in as well, if only to bid my good-nights before heading home."

  She looked back at me over her shoulder. "To the workshop, then."

  "No, home. To sleep." I paused. "Perhaps just a few moments in the workshop before bed. To square some things away."

  She smiled. "Of course, Mr. Wainwright. I suppose Alton has more cases lined up for the morning."

  "Not so much that I know," I said. "Though I leave it to him to keep track. You've business yourself?"

  "Some shopping that I've let neglected for too long," she said. "Then maybe a trip abroad. Unlike my fiance, I prefer not to spend all my time in one country, let alone one city."

  "If you've the demeanour for it," I said. "Though I do believe Bartleby's seen enough of the world for the time being. Sometimes I think that that's why he's chosen hobbies that keep him near the city."

  A shadow fell across her face, and I could see her lip quirk. "Perhaps, James, perhaps."

  We spoke no more as we climbed back into the attic window that made a convenient roof access. He was a strange man, the one that tied us together, Alton Bartleby. Her fiance, perhaps my only friend. A nimble spider sitting in the midst of a social web of no certain purpose, at turns flippant and insightful.

  This detective business had been his doing, his interest, but at some point over the last year, perhaps when I'd rescued Xin Yan or when I'd put things square between Buckely and myself, it had ceased being "his" and started being "ours." I still didn't know if I really liked being a detective, but I couldn't really deny that I was one.

  I don't know if Alton had intentionally sculpted our practice and our relationship in the mold of Sherlock and Watson, but that wasn't who we were. It was the 20th century now, if barely, a new world from their 19th. Whoever we were, whatever we were, it was something different, something new, and I've always been a fan of innovation. Let us be what we will be.

  A GENTLEWOMAN'S CHRONICLES

  Sky Pirates Over London

  Magnesium-white and fire-orange flashes burst high above the streets of London. Dark shapes drifted through the ochre industrial smog like great birds of prey, drifting past one another before belching forth their dazzling coloured lights. Occasionally the fog around one would clear enough for keen-eyed observers to catch a glimpse of hull or rigging, but true awareness of their nature was reserved for the luminaries up among the clouds.

  Captain Newton Mitchel had the questionable fortune to be close enough and he wasn't made much happier for it. "Hard to port!"

  The midshipman at the helm of the HMA Brigadine, inexpertly hauling the ship's wheel into a rough spin, sent the Royal Armada Airship listing and stumbled over the corpse of the previous helmsman. Previously stationed over Gibraltar, the crew hadn't been sufficiently trained to replace casualties in the heat of battle.

  The hull shuddered as a bolt of electricity slammed into it, hurled by their fog-shrouded opponent as it sailed into view. Their foe was larger but sleeker than the staunch British airship, a modern commercial vessel designed to sail for weeks between ports. A pair of electro-mechanical cannons had been bolt-mounted to the hard-points at its fore, cone-like devices of wire and clockwork covered in circular copper plates capable of drawing forth the essence of the sky itself and focusing that energy into powerful blasts of concussive electric force. Each hit from these terrible weapons had shaken the Brigadine's integrity and killed a sizable portion of her crew.

  The Brigadine coasted in an arc to orient its broadside towards the oncoming vessel.

  "All starboard fire!" Captain Mitchel shouted hoarsely into his command tube, his ragged voice transmitted throughout the ship to those crew that yet possessed ears capable of hearing.

  A bass vibration ran through the hull as twelve cannons fired simultaneously, their iron payloads soaring towards their oncoming foe. The other ship slipped out of the way with a surprising manoeuvrability for a vessel of its size. The cannons at its fore began to spark and glow ominously, and Mitchel knew that another attack was imminent.

  "Dive! Dive!"

  He fancied that he could hear the shuddering impact of at least one of the munitions the Brigadine had let fly, and allowed himself the faint hope that he and some of his crew might yet survive.

  That hope shattered when he saw the second pirate vessel closing out of the fog, its cannons already charged and glowing.

  "Queen Victoria preserve us," he said, closing his eyes.

  ***

  Chunks o
f burning wood and hot steel rained down upon the darkened streets of London, accompanied by showers of cinder and the smell of burning ozone. A few of the larger pieces smashed through rooftops, and the scattered pedestrians took cover under bridges and thick awnings.

  Gentlewoman Aldora Fiske stood unfazed, shopping bags in hand, next to her carriage, squinting at the fog-enshrouded sky. A large plank landed with a clatter to smoulder at her feet, a quarter of the Royal Armada's heraldry visibly etched into its charred surface.

  "Miss Fiske, please." Agitation was palpable in her driver's voice. "You'd best climb in. The horses won't stave off panic for long."

  She watched the other pedestrians running for cover that wouldn't protect them. "Indeed."

  ***

  Aldora and her fiance Alton Bartleby sat in her parlour on either side of a silver-plated tea service. In most circumstances it would have been inappropriate for the pair to be alone without a chaperon, but special considerations were afforded them due to the length of the engagement. Even so, tongues did wag, and they limited how frequently they were alone together. It was only proper. While some might be tempted to relax their standards of propriety in the privacy of the home, Aldora was dressed in a proper and practical pigeon-breasted blouse, her skirts brushing the floor. The fashion houses of Paris had begun to showcase hemlines that cleared the floor and approach the ankle, but Aldora would never. Not in London.

  "I'm afraid I've no cream to offer you, but would you care for some sugar?" Aldora paused mid-pour.

  "Yes, please," Alton said. "One lump. They've cut the milk rations again?"

  Aldora nodded, scooping a sugar cube into her fiance's cup. "I am afraid so. Dairy products are in short supply. Much of what hasn't been turned to cheese has soured."

  "I blame the heat."

  "I place the blame on the blockade," Aldora sniffed. "They're the ones preventing shipments into the city. Have you insight into who they are or who they represent?"