by Jay Lake
It was quick enough, though. They stood beneath the gates.
“Wotcher got, Perks?” shouted a man from above. He was silhouetted in the morning light.
“Girlie who wants to go to England, traveling with Johnnie Brass.”
“Brass boy gave yer some trouble, eh?”
“Nar.” Perks laughed, bitter and cold. “She did for Augie and Bells. I figger on letting Hornsby and red Arab handle ’er.”
“You marching under their orders?”
“Nar.”
The silhouette vanished. Others watched. She saw the dull gleam of guns up there. One man ostentatiously stropped a bayonet.
When the gate creaked open, half a dozen men sprinted out and dropped to their knees to cover her group with rifles. More appeared upon the wall. A small man in a woolen uniform followed the covering party out. He had a pistol at his belt, which remained holstered as he studied her.
“Perks,” he finally said, without taking his eyes off Paolina.
“Sir?” Perks’ voice lost a great deal of its insouciance.
“Where did you capture the prisoners?”
“Erm . . . guests, sir. Guests they is. We found ’em up along the ridge a mile east.”
“I see.” He frowned. “Take your man in to hospital.”
“She did for Augie,” said one of the others sullenly.
The officer—she realized that was what he had to be—sighed. “I am very sorry to hear that. Every man among us is irreplaceable.” Still staring at Paolina, he waved them away. “Now off with you lot.”
In a moment she and Boaz stood alone with the officer.
“I am Captain Hornsby.” One hand strayed to his gun butt. Paolina wondered if he realized he was doing that. Hornsby continued, “Her Imperial Majesty’s Royal Marines. Commanding the uniformed forces here, I am afraid.”
“I am Paolina Barthes, late of Praia Nova,” she responded. “Traveling with Boaz, a Brass of independent loyalties.”
“Meaning he is not set to kill me?”
“No,” said Boaz, standing just behind her shoulder. “I am not set to kill you.”
“Your men, however, were quite set to kill us,” Paolina added.
Hornsby cleared his throat. “Ah, well, yes. About that. How did you dispatch poor Augustine and wound Bells?”
“By a secret means of my control,” she said tartly. “Suffice to say I dropped a rock on him.”
“For a woman and a Brass to walk in with Perks and these men requires extraordinary circumstances, given our current intercourse with very nearly all the locals.”
She snorted. “I tried to approach in the manner of a civilized person. They were too intent on not having seen a woman in some months.”
“Bells and Augustine I would not have trusted to leave a pound of fresh liver unmolested. Even so, I should have you confined for trial and execution as an enemy combatant.”
Paolina stiffened, but he raised a hand.
“However, very few young women have walked off the Wall to address us in the Queen’s English. Not a one thus far, to be precise. And your . . . ah . . . Boaz is the first brass man we have seen who has not essayed to kill us on sight. I am therefore prepared to take civilized self-defense into consideration in this matter and set the death of Augustine aside for future consideration. Bells has only himself to blame for being wounded by an unarmed woman. He will receive no consideration from his fellows or from me.”
“I shall not thank you, sir,” she said coldly, “but your conclusions are reasonable enough.”
“That is excellent.” Hornsby took his hand off his gun butt and rubbed his chin. “So, now that we have set that issue to one side, what in the name of all the monkey gods of the Congo are you doing here, and what is it you wish of me?”
“Of you? Nothing, sir. Of England, I wish much.”
“Of England . . . Not to be indelicate, madam, but we are quite some distance from England, or truly from much that is English. What is it that you imagine England can do for you?”
Paolina took a deep breath. This was her first, and perhaps greatest, chance to make someone in authority see what she could bring to England, and England could bring to her. All the time she’d spent considering this, back in Praia Nova, walking along the trail, dreaming, thinking, planning, it came down to now.
She was standing inside her moment.
“England has the greatest wizards in the world,” she told him. “The heirs of Newton. Those who sail Bassett through the air. Those who understand the secrets that beat at the heart of the world. Please, sir, I would find my way to England and into their company, that I might learn what your wizards can teach me.”
Hornsby’s face twitched. She thought at first it was anger that moved him, but when he began to shake and flush, Paolina realized he was laughing at her. He held the outburst of voice within, but finally he took a great gasp. “Girl,” he said, still shuddering, “of what do you think the world is made?”
“I think the world is made of men!” Her vision seemed to be reddening. She yanked the gleam out of her pocket. “I think men are imperfect!” Her voice kept rising as she began twisting the stem. “I think—”
Boaz grabbed her arm, yanking hard enough to interrupt her thoughts and words. “Forgive us, Captain. The girl is overwrought at the molestation she received in the hands of your men. I should believe she will be better off with a place to rest and some food and water. Humans require provisioning.”
Paolina fought to keep her temper behind her teeth. Boaz was right. She had been on the verge of showing herself either a fool or too dangerous to tolerate. Hornsby had his holster open now, his hand openly on his weapon, but he stared at Boaz. “You speak English, too?”
“It is the lingua Anglica of the Wall.”
“He is educated,” Paolina added, in control of her temper now.
The captain reached a point of decision. She could see it on his face. “I will bring you within our camp,” he told them. “You will be kept under guard for your own protection until my counterpart who handles affairs of the Wall can interview you. After that you will either be released or we will discuss further possible course of action. In either case you will be safe from further molestation.”
“On your word as an English officer?”
“On my word.”
She was insulted and offended, but at the same time, she was gaining what she’d wished—access to the English camp. “Thank you. I have but one question, sir.”
“Yes?” He buttoned the flap on his holster.
“Is your counterpart a wizard?”
Hornsby shook his head. “Come within. I will let him explain matters to you. I will say this: He served on the selfsame ship Bassett you mentioned. If anyone knows wizards, it would be the chief.”
She tried to hide her smile of triumph, but Paolina was sure that the officer marked it as he whistled for the gates to reopen, waiting to lead her into his camp.
They sat inside a steaming hot tent. It was tall, made of pale canvas. There were no cots or bunks. Rather, the interior furnishings consisted of a folding table and six chairs. There were several frames standing in front of cloth walls, each holding cork boards. She was not certain what they were for.
“Here we are.” Paolina’s nervous ness had overcome her excitement. What little patience she’d had was blown out like a candle flame.
“I do not discern what you hope to accomplish next,” Boaz told her. “And even less do I see what is in store for me. I am traitor to Authority. I am bound and beholden to you. Will you take ship to England and carry me with you as servant, slave, and bodyguard?”
“You have been thinking.” She kept her voice soft. “No, my friend, you are not bound to me. Not at all.”
“You robbed the light from my eyes, then vouchsafed it to me once more.”
“That was wrong of me.” Paolina summoned her sense of herself. She had to set this right. “I plead foolishness and ignorance both. I woul
d speak to you your word, the one that stands outside your thoughts, and release you to yourself.”
“You cannot speak my word.” He was sullen now, sullen as that graceful mechanical voice ever could become. “You do not hold my word, no more than I do.”
With a flash of insight, she knew the answer that had nagged at the edge of her thoughts since he’d first explained the problem to her. “No, but I can tell you what your word is.”
“Why? Is it written on my forehead?”
“No, my friend.” Paolina shook her head and smiled. “It is written within your head, in those crystals and valves which make up your thoughts. Consider this: Brass are gifted. You have strength, wit, intelligence, perspicacity, astute judgment. Everything a competent and proper being might want.”
“I will not thank you for flattery,” Boaz said tightly.
He is so human, she thought. “Not flattery. Description. You are all of those things and more. But there is one thing every Brass lacks, from the very first Brass onward through time.”
“We lack many things. Souls. Individuality. Free will.”
Paolina smiled. “Those things are all part of this. You lack names. Without a name, there is no ‘I,’ no way for the light behind the eyes to speak to itself without equivocation or confusion.”
“Name?” He was incredulous, almost angry. “You think I but lack for a name.”
“You are Brass. That is who you are in your deepest thoughts. I have named you Boaz to set you apart, and you answer readily enough, but it is not within you yet.”
“I am Brass,” he said slowly. “It is who I was made to be, it is who I am.”
“But when you belong to yourself, you can be whoever you will.”
The brass man shook his head, as if trying to force the idea to slide away. “So if you tell me I am Boaz, you are setting me free? It cannot be that simple.”
“It is not. The matter isn’t whether I tell you that you are Boaz; the matter is whether you tell you that you are Boaz. Name yourself.”
“How?” The anguish was back in his tone.
“Chrism,” said a burred, deep voice.
They both turned in surprise to see a large man—almost a giant, topped by red hair shot through with gray—standing at the tent flap.
He grinned. “You want to give a man a name, you give him a chrism. Baptize, like the water of the Lord.”
“I . . .” Paolina wasn’t sure what to say.
“Never mind that. Yon metal man wants a chrism, he’ll be having one.” The big man leaned backwards to call to someone outside. “Trucci! Get me a gill of the number two machine oil, from stores. And a decent bowl. Bring it chop-chop!”
He stepped in and dropped the flap behind him. “Chief Petty Officer Threadgill Angus al-Wazir of Her Imperial Majesty’s Royal Navy, detached here to see for the safety of the diggings in light of whatever the Wall throws at us.” He clapped his hands together, as if he were a great child. “And you would be my visitors, Paolina Barthes and her talking brass man, come to tell me in the Queen’s plain English what is happening high above us and why they march against us in their ragtag rows, carrying arms to a fight we never meant to pick.”
At last, a wizard, Paolina thought. No man who carried himself so could be any less than a master of his own surrounds and the world at large. “Chief al-Wazir,” she said. “I am most pleased to meet you. One of Bassett’s wizards, and England’s ambassador to a Muralha. It is as if you have been sent to meet my requirements.”
He looked amused. “Hornsby said you was a bit cracked. I don’t think he did you justice, lassie, but still it’s good to meet you. You can’t be all vapors and womanish words, not if you did for two of Perks’ men.” His smile narrowed. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve half a dozen outside with rifles and bayonets, should something go terribly awry here between us. I don’t reckon on that.”
“I am not half the danger you count me,” Paolina said.
“Oh yes, you are,” al-Wazir and Boaz replied in the same moment. The two of them locked gazes. The big Scotsman began to laugh, at first a rumbling chuckle, then with a great uproar that brought tears to his bright blue eyes.
A few minutes later they shared a solemn silence that she felt certain was uncharacteristic for al-Wazir. He’d insisted that Boaz kneel—“Only proper way for a man to present hisself before God.”—and now stood before the Brass with a little clay bowl of machine oil.
“T’ain’t that you rightly need a true christening,” al-Wazir rumbled. “ ’Sides which, we’d need a wee gown for you, and a parson you could pee on the arm of.” He dabbed a finger in the bowl, then traced oil across Boaz’ forehead. “Still, in the name of God and man and your own Brass self, take you now this name of—” He stopped and glanced at Paolina.
“Boaz,” she said.
“Boaz. To be your own till God should call you home, or you lay yourself down for the long sleep.” He wiped his fingers clean on Boaz’ shoulder. “There lad, you’ve been given a proper name.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Paolina didn’t know whether to giggle or to cry.
AL - WAZIR
“It’s like this, lassie,” al-Wazir said. He found himself spreading his hands, as if there were some part or piece to explain to this little chit of a girl. That wasn’t his purpose, and so with a sigh he let his fists fall to his thighs. “I don’t know who’s been filling your head with what, but neither Bassett nor England is as you seem to think.”
“Davies,” she said. “Clarence Davies, the doctor’s boy, told me all.”
“Davies?” Al-Wazir had to think that through. “Small lad, pretty sort of face? Never too sure of himself, bit of a bully? He went over the rail, oh, let me see . . . two months before the ship was lost.” Memory stirred. “He did have a parachute, as I recall. Where did you say you was from?”
“Praia Nova.” She smiled sweetly. “A little port, hundreds of miles west of here, far beyond the western extents of the Solomnic Kingdom of Ophir.”
“Long way from the Bight of Benin, then.” Al-Wazir tugged at his beard, suddenly conscious that he was a great unwashed bear next to this woman-child. She seemed barely old enough for her skirts, though she carried herself with poise. “Why is it you think a wizard might help you, assuming I would have had one to hand?”
“ ’Wizard’ might not be the right word for what I intend,” she said slowly. “Someone learned in the movements and timings which drive the world. Someone who has discerned the hidden cycles behind God’s handiwork. Someone who can show me where to look next.” She stopped a moment; then her next words came in a rush—a rehearsed plea, if he’d ever heard one from an air sailor brought up on charges. “I have calculated the motions of the planets and the tides. I have found the diameter of the earth, and I believe I know her weight. I can find the timing that counts the heartbeat of Creation. I just don’t know what it all means, or how to make more of it.”
“Ah, missy. Most people never even find the sense in the world’s turning, let alone more. You talk like a navigator. Who taught you these things, then? What teacher or wizard was in Praia Nova to open your eyes to that view of the world? Was it perchance a man named Simeon Malgus, lost from Bassett as well? Perhaps you are protecting him.”
“No one.” Paolina glanced at her metal man as if for support. He was strangely beautiful, and all too real looking, like a man who’d been dipped in gold. “No one. I figured it out for myself, even when they told me to stop.”
That gave al-Wazir pause. He’d beaten and cajoled and led enough boys to their manhood on decks asea and aloft to have a sense when a young thing was spinning tales. This girl was not. Or at the least, she believed her words, whether they held any truth outside of her own experience.
But what she said made no sense at all. It was the work of years to teach a navigator what he must know, or a cartographer or horomancer or any of the other disciplines that sat in quiet rooms to give the orders that moved men an
d ships alike. A certain talent or inborn skill was certainly required, but so was a great pass of learning. Al-Wazir himself could read a manifest or a crew list well enough, and he knew how to check a paymaster’s book or a quartermaster’s receipts, but he’d never been one for the long, deep abstractions that made men like Malgus or Lloyd George.
He’d never heard of a man who raised himself from a pup to the understanding of the world. He’d certainly never known of a woman to do any such thing.
“What is the noise that comes at midnight, girl?” he asked gently. This was something that boy Hethor used to be on about.
“The earth touching her track as she turns to go about the sun,” Paolina replied promptly.
“And how wide is that track?”
“I believe it to be twenty miles.”
That was more than al-Wazir knew, truth be told, but the prompt confidence in her answers would have pleased an officer. Not to mention her direct honesty.
“How do you know that, girl?”
“Over time I measured the angle of the track in the sky at all hours of the day. I then compared my observations, calculating from the differences in size and apparent brightness.”
“If you’re lying,” he said after a moment, “you couldn’t prove it by me. Dr. Ottweill might know better, but I don’t wish to disturb him with your presence. You’re a creature of the Wall, Miss Barthes. Your fate is my decision. As it happens, I don’t expect that the good doctor professor will be able to see the sense that lurks in a woman’s head, no matter how right she might actually be.”
“What does that mean?” she asked suspiciously.
“It means I can’t prove you’re not another Newton, girlie. It means I don’t know what to do with you here. It means that I think you should go to England and talk to a man I know there, to steer you where you might need to be. Most of all, it means that I think your cleverness is probably wasted here upon the Wall.”
“The Wall is no wasteland,” said the brass man.
Boaz, al-Wazir recalled. “No. It’s no wasteland at all. But it is a wildland. This girl was born to be a creature of civilization. I seen your lot down here, throwing lightning with spears and burning the life out of honest men. How’s your civilization faring, Johnnie Brass?”
