“The Orient,” she says, without no waitin’. “There’s only one man that can do what we need.”
The only question be’n would the Cap’n make it, and it’s dicey there for a bit. Caught a storm not twelve hours after he regained consciousness, at which point he passed right back out, if you please. The first mate’s still screamin’, but in the way that meant we ain’t moving fast enough for her tastes.
They say it’s bad luck havin’ a woman aboard, but when Mrs. Margaret Dashwood-Campbell gets in high dudgeon, it’s like sailin’ under the command of that Greek Athena, Goddess of War and Wisdom, a thing out o’ legend.
“Mr. Harris, get that sail into position, or your wrinkled brow will spend the journey to Singapore on the Maiden’s head!”
“Aye, Dashwood!” is all you can say, and hop to it.
We all knew she were worried for the cap’n, so we soldiered on, but two days of tossing on the high seas was nearly all we could take. Lucky for us, the storm blew itself out without leaving us becalmed.
Tweren’t easy makin’ fast sail at half rations for so long. Even havin’ the monsoons wid us, there’s more than a few unkind things said ’bout the cap’n and his first mate.
“Ain’t right sailin’ under a woman,” says Beakman one day at mess. “It’s her bein’ on board got the cap’n hurt. Now only God knows where we’re sailin’ to. I don’t like it. I won’t stand it much longer.”
“Beakman, you are as daft as Harris is old,” says Martin—who ain’t more than three summer’s my junior. “It was Dashwood saved the captain’s life, and we’re sailin’ to Singapore. Everyone knows that.”
“So she says, how do we know she ain’t sailin’ us all to our doom?” Beakman pipes back.
“’Cuz more than one man on this boat can navigate, you great lump,” I puts in. “Just cause you gots kelp and not much else ’tween yer ears don’t mean the rest of us can’t read a star or two. Now quit yer yammerin’ ’fore Dashwood finds outs, and decides to clean her knives on yer face.”
In the end, we touched the docks in west Singapore, sweet as you please, ’bout an hour before sundown, and not sixteen days after the cap’n was injured.
Singapore is a swarm of bodies bumpin’ and jostlin’—a great mix o’ peoples wid all different faces. First Mate Dashwood sets us a haulin’ them heavy crates of goods down, and in the midst of the bustle she calls Martin, Beakman, Boarhead, and meself aside. I enters the cabin, and there’s the captain all laid out in a wooden box. His face beat up and the color of the sail. His leg is missin’, just a great wad of bandages. Next to him is a long package wrapped up so’s we can’t tell what’s in it, but mark me if it ain’t just the size to be the leg that ain’t there.
“He’s dead?!” I asks.
“Of course I’m not dead, you water-logged moron!” he sits up, and shouts at me before he winces and drops back down.
“You think we can just move him through the streets, and no one will say a word?” Dashwood says looking me in the eye. “You think Captain “Dagger” Campbell would be allowed to hobble about looking for someone to bolt him up?”
I feel the shame of my stupidity burnin’ me neck. “’Course not, ma’am.”
“Do I look like a ma’am to you, Harris?!” she hollers. She grabs the nearest object, being a sexton with all the fine etching, and heaves it right for my face. She’s a dapper hand with the thrownin’ knives she is, but the sexton’s a mite big, see?
I catch the sexton, and cut me hand in the process. Ain’t nothin’ worse than a cut in a man’s hand. Makes all work harder, goes to infection faster than anything I know. Well, I suppose the cap’n’s leg is awful bad, but my cut hand feels like a stiff price for callin’ the first mate “ma’am”.
“Sorry Dashwood, just trying to be ’spectful.”
“Well, you can ‘spect me by putting the lid on and shouldering my husband off this tub.” She gestures at all of us, and we goes to work.
When a man is bein’ lifted in the glory after a skirmish or durin’ some good drinkin’, he’ll stay perched up on the shoulders of two men and hardly weigh two stone. But when he’s near death like the cap’n, laid out in the wooden box, it took all four of us to bear him aloft. And no light thing it were, neither. The dock swayed ’neath our feet as we left the gangway. Beakman’s knees buckled, and the captain nearly hit the drink.
“Move it along, you louts!”Dashwood hollers, and we know there’s a man out of a job or worse if the cap’n goes tumblin’.
We follows Dashwood away from the crush of the pier, the hawkers of the markets, and the patrols. More than once we had to hold up while some group or other went past, the stillness addin’ to the cap’n’s weight. And I notices that we go straight past the surgeon’s street. I see a few walkin’ past us there with a bit of work done on an arm or a leg. You see a man with a bandage or a rag holdin’ some bit of hisself together, and you knows he’s goin’ straight for the street of the butcher surgeons. That’s where they can patch any hurt.
A man crosses our path, so’s we come up short, and you can hear the heavy fall of one foot that’s made of something weightier than flesh and bone. Each physic puts his mark on his work. Some you can see, like the lad with the tree of cogs etched in platin’ on his arm, but others don’t like folk knowin’ where their work been done.
That’s Dashwood. No one knows why or when or what for, but when her gloves and her sleeves part a bit you can see there’s something shinin’ where the flesh ought to be. But she don’t turn for the street of the medics.
We wanders back alleys and weaves ’tween houses barely standin’. It’s darker here, no lamps, and we stumbles more than walks as we carries the cap’n onwards. The smell of opium slithers about here and there. We huffs and gasps as we does our best to keep the cap’n from banging about in his injured state. Finally, Dashwood stops at a door. It’s all bamboo and thatch, and there’s an elephant with a dirty great cog rising off its back painted in gold. She knocks twice, and the door opens ever so slightly.
“Please tell the admiral that Dashwood begs a favor, and expects a return on her investment.” The words is crisp and sharp with the tension only a long history of deeds and words with a person brings.
A moment and then two we wait. I gets twitchy, thinkin’ we ain’t welcome, and the sweat is drippin’ in my eyes. The cut in me hand is burnin’ somethin’ fierce after all that carryin’, and I adjust my hold to take the heft off it. The cap’n moans a bit at the jostle, and Dashwood turns to eye us a bit. I clears my throat when she looks at me.
Finally, the door opens, completely this time, and there stands the tiniest woman I’ve ever seen. And then I realize she ain’t just small, she’s too short to be right in the legs, but the dark masks all the details, and blimey if the cap’n ain’t heavy as a shark caught in deep waters.
We haul the cap’n inside, but there ain’t nowhere to set him, just a rug and a doorway hung with beads, so it’s more followin’. The little woman’s feet click and clang as she makes her way cross the floor and through the clatter of the beads. Dashwood disappears behind her, and as we move to follow, we hear, “It’s stairs, lads. Careful with the cargo as you step down, now.”
Stairs it is indeed, and barely room enough for us and the box. We have to lower it ’tween ourselves and go sideways as the floor becomes the ceiling. The tiny clicking woman stops at the bottom, so we stops too, hangin’ on the cap’n by our fingertips. It’s black here, and I can’t see nothin’, but I hear more clickin’ and clangin’ and then the door swings open and I’m blind again for the light spewing forth. Again we follow, and when me eyes clear I’m near dumbfounded.
Tables covered in silk and food and opium is surrounded by lovely, dark-haired girls with shinin’ metal arms, their cogged shoulders peeking out of their robes, men with eyes that glow jewel-bright surrounded by brass fixings that move and turn as they watch us go past, and people who almost ain’t got enough flesh left to be peopl
e at all.
I’d known a man or two as had work done like the captain needed, injury made right or lameness corrected. They walk up and down the piers lookin’ for work like any man. And I’d seen a few of those night ladies by the harbors with they ears plated on the outside so they shines in the dark a bit, but I ain’t never seen a lady with silver eyelids clicking open and closed, nor a man with not but metal from his waist up ’fore. Right unnervin’ it is.
We follows Dashwood and our miniature hostess through another beaded doorway and then down a hall lit with kerosene lamps. The laughter from the room echoes behind us and bounces ahead of us down the corridor. The click-clang, click-clang, click-clang of those tiny feet fills the passage, but I still can’t see her for the crate on me shoulder and Dashwood in front blockin’ the view.
We comes to another great door. This one has the cogged elephant on it, too. The smallish lady’s arm reaches up, pulls the elephant’s nose, and the cogs in the elephant’s back whirl and the door opens.
“Come in, Margaret! Come, come, come!” says a most English voice. “I understand you have something for me.”
“You know me, Admiral,” she says, and suddenly sounds nothin’ like our first mate. She sounds like the girlish thing that said, “I do,” to the cap’n all them years back. “I never ask a favor empty-handed.”
He comes waddling over like some young fop, with spectacles on his face that make him look like a great fish. She allows this short, round little man in a white coat to kiss her hand, and I near drop the cap’n at such ladylike behavior. The other lads groan, and Dashwood remembers we been heftin’ him all through town.
“On the table there, lads,” she says, and we stumble and drops the cap’n a little harder than we mean. This earns an eye from Dashwood the likes of which could kill a man, and I sees the mettle that makes her the first-mate in her face again. We’ll be pullin’ barnacles off the sides of the ship, and no mistake.
“Well, let’s see, let’s see, then!” says the admiral, and he comes bustlin’ over. He tosses the lid off like a feather, and I’m wonderin’ how many gears he’s got on his own self under the coat and the simperin’. The captain moans and tries to sit up, but the admiral just pushes him back, cluckin’ like a mother hen. Then he notices the wrapped leg and gasps like a babe at Christmas. He unwraps the bindings at the bloody end and starts inspectin’ and pokin’ about.
“I think I could reattach it, but the toes would have to be replaced,” he says, and I believe he could do it.
“No, no, Admiral. We aren’t here to make the best of a bad job. The leg is the gift. He needs full hardware,” Dashwood insists.
The admiral gets this simpery little smile on his face, like that’s just what he wants to be hearin’. He just chortles a bit and goes wanderin’ off to these tables of metal bits and instruments, and starts rummagin’ about.
“I’ll need two days to get him outfitted properly, and the brass won’t come cheap,” the admiral looks up to see Dashwood’s reaction. He’s a man been cheated before and no mistake.
“I’ll pay you half now, half on safe delivery.” she assures him.
“Splendid!” the admiral gestures her over so they can haggle the price. I feel for him now. No one gets the best of Dashwood, ’cept maybe the cap’n from time to time.
The lads and I are starin’ ’round the room, lookin’ at the hooks and chains coverin’ the walls, and some of ’em ain’t empty. Arms and legs lookin’ like they ain’t fit to be part of any person are danglin’ all around the workshop. The skull of a man, long lost to this world, half bone, half plated metal is smilin’ forever from a shelf above the admiral’s head. And all over the workshop I’m seeing that cogged-up elephant markin’ the admiral’s work.
I realize now the cap’n’s off me shoulders I might get a look at that wee lady, but she ain’t nowhere to be seen. And I notice that great metal door is closed behind us, and I shivers a bit to be held up in such a place.
“That’ll do just fine,” I hear the admiral pronounce, and I wonder what kind of deal could make him so happy.
“Come on, lads,” says Dashwood, and she leads the way back up to the street. As we go, I don’t see the tiny lady nowhere, but there was plenty of others to watch us as we went. When we’re finally breathin’ air that don’t smell like kerosene and opium, she hands us each ten pound.
“Captain Campbell will need strong shoulders to get him back to the ship, so don’t be too drunk when you meet back here to fetch him,” she says, stern as that storm that blew us here. “You heard the admiral: two days to get him set right, so be here at dawn in two days’ time.”
“What about the rest of our pay?” demands Beakman.
“How do you think I know you’ll come back here? You’ll get your pay when my husband is safely aboard his ship again.” And there ain’t no arguin’ with that.
‘Tain’t hard to find a pub in Singapore. The wine’s different, but beer’s beer the world ’round. I was guzzling a good portion of my wages with the lads when one of those shiny girls comes walking in the door. Everyone in the place is givin’ her a ’preciative eye, and in behind her walks the biggest fella I ever seen outside a boxin’ circle. Folks stop lookin’, and more than a few realize they have other places they ought to be.
He has a massive piece of metal where his left arm should be and a huge collar of brass round his neck. His left cheek is a brass plate as well, the skin around it puffed and puckered like a quilt, all pieced together. And there, smack in the center of his face plate is the admiral’s cogged elephant, its trunk held high, like it’s trumpetin’ a warning. He might have been there in the admiral’s salon, and sittin’ among the rest of ’em. Too many bolted and plated for him to stand out there, but standin’ here like Goliath in that doorway, can’t help but see him.
The lady walks to the bar, and whispers to the barkeep who nods emphatically and goes about his business. I’ve got a mind to head back for the ship and see how the other lads made out with the cargo, but that big fella is still standin’ at the door lookin’ like no one is leavin’ without his say so.
The shiny lady walks up to our parcel with a bottle of wine and cups enough for the table, but I knows better than to touch libations from strange women with fingers what clink against the glass of the bottle like that.
“You are Dashwood’s men?” she asks as she sits herself down. Her accent makes the words sound like fish goin’ back and forth in a pool o’ water, quick, then slow.
The lads and I just nod and try not to look as nervous as the big guy makes us. I shoot another glance his way and the lady sees where my attention is.
“He is here to protect me, not to harm you,” she assures us. “I am Whipsnake.”
“Whipsnake?” Martin says, chucklin’ like a fool.
She brings her arms up and flexes them twice. Each of her silver, pointed nails begins to grow to nearly four inches and then is followed by a tether of silver cord. Ten lethally-tipped whips hang from her hands, and her statement ’bout needin’ the big fella’s protection is seemin’ less likely.
“He names us as we are built,” she says. “I do not even remember what my first name was, but then, I was very small when he bought me. He will do the same to each of you. That is why I am here.”
She flexes her wrists again, and the cords work slowly back into place, and I can see the slither of them just beneath the flesh of her arms and the silk of her sleeves.
We’re watchin’ her, so it takes a minute for the five of us to get hold of what she’s sayin’. When it strikes me, my eyes must open to the size of the moon rising out of the water.
“Captain wouldn’t let that happen,” insists Martin.
“Perhaps not,” Beakman says, “but Dashwood might, if it meant the captain gets what he needs.”
Whipsnake just nods.
We sits there stunned at the revelation that we’s been sold like barrels of cargo.
“What’ll he do wid us?�
�� Beakman asks, the only one of us with the courage, or maybe he just wants more reasons for belly-achin’ like he do.
“He will drug you, so you do not feel or struggle. Then he will decide which pieces of you should go. Sometimes,” she hesitates, “sometimes he just takes what he needs for what he calls ex-per-ee-ments. He did not become as proficient at what he does by going to a physician’s school. Here in Singapore, they call him the Elephant Butcher.”
The lads and I just looks at each other, and shake our heads.
“No one would go to him, unless they owed him something. Dashwood is not all she appears to be,” Whipsnake says, and she’s lookin’ right at me like she’s tryin’ to say somethin’ more than she’s sayin’. I won’t lie, I were thinkin’ of the metal beneath her gloves and wonderin’ how she knows the admiral so familiar-like. But the whole thing churns in me stomach. Something about the look in Whipsnake’s eyes ain’t right.
“Why you tellin’ us this?” I asks.
“There are many that are owned by him that wish to be free. If you keep your freedom, perhaps you will remember it was because you were warned, and come back to help us,” she says.
“Why would you need a couple of salt-crusted sailors when you got a big feller like him?” asks Martin. He tips his baldin’, red head to the giant still standin’ at the door.
“The admiral is not all he appears to be, either, and some of his creations prefer their new life of metal to what they had before.” She glances around a little nervous-like, and lowers her voice. “Also, we have no way of leaving Singapore. But you have access to a ship, yes?”
A tiny gasp, just a wisp o’ noise comes from behind the big fella. I look but I don’t see nothin’ at first.
“Whipsnake!” The voice carries all the authority of a sea cap’n, but it came from that tiny woman who had let us in at the admiral’s. Now that I sees her properly I can tell that she was small, maybe five feet, even if she where whole. But her legs had been replaced with nothin’ but brass seagull’s feet, pokin’ out from beneath her silk shirt.
Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology Page 6
