Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  Spotting the handle of a knife, she made a grab for it and hamstrung the man as she rolled under his wrench. A gout of blood spilled across the shaking deck. The man crumpled, and Hargreaves knocked him out with a heel stomp. When she stepped around him, she found a few other engineers; a mix of freemen and Orientals with long braids. They looked at her but did nothing to stop her, looking curiously at the Indian before returning to work.

  “Daaaamnn,” said one of the freemen. Clearly they had no love for their boss.

  “Good knife,” she remarked just to be sure of cowing them, wiping it on a napkin. The Indian had been eating an apple and some jerky with it. The handle was wrapped bone, quite sturdy.

  The next guard was farther along in the next car. Hargreaves walked out the front of the engine, through a notch in one half of the fearsome cowcatcher. The next car looked like the caboose for the other half of the train, appointed as a basic mess car. Like the rest of the fort, it bulged with riveted armor and featured multiple gun ports, with one rear-facing rotary cannon.

  Hargreaves suddenly had to duck behind a bulkhead to avoid a sideways rain of motor gun bullets. About time, too, she thought in passing. Besides another man, there was a woman with a short, violently azure haircut tucked inside a bandana. Her shots gouged fist-sized holes in the wood paneling; a scatter-gun, loaded with lead shot. Thankfully neither were very bright. Hargreaves simply counted the shots until the motor gun rattled empty, and the scatter-gun fired twice. During the brief pause, she darted out of her spot and shot the first man through his gun arm, inside the elbow, with two tightly spaced 9mm bullets. It reduced the limb to bloody rags inside the sleeve. Bollocks. The owner of her new gunbelt had been cutting crosses in the bullets. She hadn’t wanted to do that. But her guilt had to wait. A lolling arc sheathed her new knife into the woman guard’s abdomen as she raised her scatter gun to fire. Chunks of the deck blew away as it howled harmlessly into the floor.

  “Mercenaries?” Hargreaves wondered, as she watched the first man fade dead away, clutching the ragged ruin of his arm. As she turned, the woman reared up with a vicious stiletto. The blade connected with her upper arm, causing searing pain. Hargreaves flailed open-handed at the bone handle still stuck in the woman’s stomach, extracting a scream of pain as it ripped sideways out of the wound. Hargreaves closed her hand upon it, but the azure woman slumped motionless in a puddle of blood.

  “Christ,” breathed Hargreaves, shaking. Not ghosts. Living, breathing people.

  She winced as she finished tightening the belt over her arm. The scratch was not serious, but she wouldn’t be wearing anything frilly for a long time.

  At the end of this car she found a stair up and a riveted, locked door. She tried the door first, but it was too thick to force and the lock was a complicated cryptex of rolling drums.

  Hargreaves climbed the stairs instead, and found herself amidst the fortifications and high castles of the rail fort’s top deck. The wind hit her like a whipping, but it was possible to cross. A narrow catwalk led across the top of the train. The sounds of the rails were very loud, but she thought she heard activity farther up. Mindful of an ambush in the warren of pipes and tall castles, she hurried ahead until she was perhaps five cars from the engine. There she found a vast pit-shaped cargo boxcar, open to the air that appeared to be a staging area. It held barrels of pitch, oil, and water. A smaller crate held traces of pure aeon stone on a padded cushion, as precious as white truffles. Boxes full of sawdust filled the center, as if some delicate equipment had been recently removed.

  She walked over the staging area on a center catwalk that spanned the length of the car. At the far end below, a door shifted back and forth with the movement of the train—a second car, but with its door closed. Now she looked around, seeing the toothed edges of the bulkheads’ top edge. This car was built to load and unload from top, so airships could make deliveries of the heavy crates. Walking in a crouch, she approached the following car, her gun at the ready. But this car’s roof was closed, the ceiling panels clenched together like a bear trap. Whatever the men were building seemed to be inside. She heard frenzied activity, and the walls hummed with arc power. Carefully, she stopped at the linkage between cars and took the ladder there down. She cracked open the door just enough to see.

  Inside, was a high-ceilinged space like the car she had just left. An intense arclight filled the space, but through the tiny crack she could just see a stave-like fixture, planted in the middle. The top looked like half an egg topped with a cluster of sprockets and shining machinery, about as big as a cask of whiskey. As she watched, a figure walked up and placed something inside the egg. She couldn’t quite see what it was or the figure’s face without drawing attention to the door.

  Then the figure did something very queer indeed. He produced a thin instrument from a suit pocket and pricked his left index finger. He squeezed a few drops of blood inside. Suddenly, the egg whirred into motion, closing over itself until it was a smooth, seamless orb. The man took the egg, with an effort, and gave it to a nearby workman.

  Hargreaves carefully closed the door, and wanting to get out of the wind, stepped inside the staging area. There was a reflective bit of bulkhead and she caught her reflection in it. Her hair was a horror, a bird’s nest of blond. Proper decorum, Hargreaves, she thought.

  Stooping, she started to fix her hair in the mirror. Not a moment too soon. Something rippled through the air where her ear had been a moment before. An ambush! She instinctively rolled into her stoop, over her shoulder and up kneeling, her gun at the ready. Instead of scalping the inspector, the blow overshot her and cut a tall crate in half, turning inch-thick boards into a pile of firewood. Someone stepped through the wreckage, crushing the timbers underfoot. He had a long rusted cutlass.

  “You! You were at the…the Nidhogg!” gasped Hargreaves.

  And so he was. Hargreaves had never known the name, never seen the man under the mask, but had the tale from Rosa and Albion. It could be no other. Hikawa Shoutaro of Okinawa, who had fallen to Rosa Marija on the edge of the Red Square, and survived to deliver the Nidhogg its ill-fated heart. He still wore the remnants of his flaming robe, an Oriental affair that seemed more at home on a society belle. His distinctive mask hung down at his neck, the horns cracked and broken, and square wooden shoes propped up his feet. Rolled down on his hips and layered with belts, sashes and other garments, his attire looked all the more like some overly large bustle. The folds bulged with long, narrow shapes, which Hargreaves speculated were swords. The variety of lengths and thickness to the bulges implied he had a myriad of blades at the ready. The most shocking thing about him was his face; half of it gleamed with copper and oiled leather, framing a swiveling, twitching glass eye.

  What was more, according to Captain Clemens, this man standing before her ought to be dead, killed by Valima Mordemere on the eve of his downfall after surviving Rosa’s fearsome tarot deck.

  Hikawa lunged at Hargreaves, surprisingly nimble on his wooden shoes. Instinct took over and she dove, rolling clumsily under a cutting wind. Uncomprehendingly, she saw a strand of gold float down before her, as if the sky was raining treasure. It was her own shining hair, sliced in two in the moments the blade drifted over her head.

  The inspector scrabbled to her feet and opened fire. Amazingly, the strange Oriental was deflecting her bullets with sword strokes almost too fast to see. Blades simply appeared where the bullets would be. The glass eye spun wildly in his skull. His sword flaked and sparked, then finally broke. Unfazed, he drew two more from his robes. One rippled in the light like water. The other grinned cheerfully, its edge a saw blade of toothy nicks. In Hikawa’s passing crates exploded into clouds of sawdust and barrels gushed, decapitated.

  “Wait! Wait! You don’t have to do this! Whomever you’re working for, they’re not who you think!”

  With a gasp, Hargreaves put up her knife in time to take the cutlass, feeling it bite into the hammered bronze. Somehow, the Oriental had come cl
ose enough to strike.

  “Bloody Nora! How did Rosa even…?” Hargreaves said. Her prior wounds were hurting abominably, and she suspected a torn stitch. She spun, using her best weapon, her legs, to sweep the Oriental off his feet. The swordsman hopped nimbly away, up onto a barrel.

  “Curses, Clemens, can’t you even make sure a man is truly dead?”

  The swordsman hesitated. He glided off the barrel, coming to a stop a ways from Hargreaves. Both blades spun in his fingers, and the inspector expected some blasted Eastern trickery. Instead, the swords slipped gently back in their sheaths.

  “You know…Captain Albion Clemens-dono?” he asked quietly.

  His voice was clear and deep, yet inexplicably jarring. Hargreaves puzzled at the words, until she realized the queer sounds at the end of the sentence was something akin to a title, and she was merely thrown by the redundancy. The man himself seemed straightforward, and in truth Hargreaves was glad of the reprieve. Black of eye and hair, stern and stoic, he reminded her of a thinner, shorter, older Albion. Yet, he possessed a worldly weight Albion did not have.

  “Yes,” Hargreaves replied. “Vanessa Hargreaves…” Inspector? Agent? Traitor? She decided to opt for facts. “I was with him all last year. We stopped Valima Mordemere together.”

  “M-dono,” the swordsman murmured. “What do you want here?”

  “These men,” Hargreaves began, indicating the other car. “They have something of mine. I am here to get it back.”

  The whole fight had taken less than ten seconds, and with the train’s rattling, Hargreaves had not been discovered. They stood there, looking at each other. Hargreaves breathed heavily, but Hikawa seemed untouched by exertion. What had happened to him in Mordemere’s ateliers?

  The swordsman seemed to come to a decision.

  “Hargreaves-dono, I am Hikawa Shotaro to mosu. If you take me to Captain Clemens-dono, I will help you take back what was stolen.”

  “Pardon? What?” Hargreaves gaped. “Aren’t you a…”

  “I am not what I seem,” the swordsman declared. “I am in the employ of those you call Incognito. Most shameful for a samurai, but I am samurai no more.”

  Incognito! Hargreaves started. What could the secret powers of the Pirate Parliament want with the Cook box? No. Hikawa had seemed to want to keep a pretense of protecting the workspace. The Incognito must have infiltrated this ship to keep an eye on these box thieves—which meant they were hopefully on Hargreaves’ side. Hikawa Shotaro seemed just the agent they would send. A fish out of water, but highly skilled and hard to read.

  “Well, I can’t promise when I will see Clemens again, but I suspect it will be soon,” Hargreaves said honestly. “The bugger tends to pop up now and again. Why, exactly, do you want to meet?”

  “We have an agreement?” the swordsman Hikawa said, ignoring the question. His face was implacably blank, the way some Orientals could do. Perhaps his reasons were as mysterious, ones only Captain Clemens would understand.

  “Why, yes, I suppose we do,” Hargreaves said cautiously.

  “Then all is well. I will help you.” So saying, the swordsman walked calmly to the next car. He opened the door, and then came sounds of screaming as he lay into the workers there with his swords. Hargreaves gaped for a moment, before rushing in herself, mindful to clear her corners.

  Inside the next car, the space was full of machinery. The bulkheads were lined with writhing, welded piping and churning cams. The workmen wore full head masks with thick telescopic goggles, but their surprise was unmistakable. Crates were dropped and cries of pain rang out. To their credit the workmen scrambled for weapons, but Hikawa was far too quick for them. Snicker-snack, neat as tea-time. Hargreaves admired his deftness and speed, but questioned the wisdom of allying with him. A moment ago he had been ready to murder her, then on nothing but her word he had turned on his comrades. But then, it fit; the Incognito were known to be devious and fickle.

  I may regret this later, she thought. Probably an understatement.

  She clotheslined the man nearest her, toppling him mid-run. Instead of shooting him, she slammed the butt of the pistol into his temple as he scrambled to get up. Her stomach felt taut, smooth, and painless for the first time since London, save her large wound. Now that she was no longer an inspector she was not beholden to police protocol and could dispatch her assailants however she pleased. But that made going for the humane option more important. Soon, the aeronauts outside the canvas wall and those who had come running were laid at their feet.

  “Where did you learn to fight like that?” Hargreaves asked of her new ally. As she spoke, she tied her hair back with a cloth from one of the crates, some kind of packing wrap, and settled her hat more securely.

  “This? This is nothing,” Hikawa said. “Compared to…”

  “But you saw those men coming even from behind you. Was it the eye?”

  “This?” Hikawa touched the rim of his brilliant blue-glass eye. Intricate frames, like the gyroscopic rings of a velocipede, swiveled in it when he looked at things. “This is only an eye.” He showed her the flat of his cutlass, polished to brilliant mirror sheen.

  “You see around you in the reflection of the sword!” Hargreaves deduced, drawing a smile from the grim swordsman. It was a fine trick. She felt a little better about her impromptu alliance.

  “Come,” said Hikawa. He gestured to the middle of the workshop car, where a tarpaulin had been drawn across the middle, partitioning the space. The car was very long, about the size of a warehouse.

  Hargreaves nodded, plucked a saber from one of the guards and parted the curtain with the tip, hesitant to go too close. In Hikawa’s sword, she caught sight of herself. With the wide hat, sword in hand, she was becoming far too comfortable playing at air pirate.

  Inside the canvas, even harsher arclight momentarily blinded her. She stood behind the covering a moment to adjust. Hikawa had no such problem, and advanced into the space. The crack of a gunshot sounded, followed by the familiar sound of the swordsman’s parrying. Then came a sound that chilled Hargreaves to the bone.

  “Oh, it’s you, the Oriental we hired. Hi…something, wasn’t it? Good, you can take care of the interlopers. I’m almost done here.”

  The words were of no concern, meaningless, but Hargreaves recognized that voice. As much as she did not want to admit it, she knew it well.

  It was the voice of Jean Hallow.

  “Honestly, I might have a word with Stevie about the quality of henchmen this organization accepts,” a female voice answered. Hargreaves knew this one, as well; the Orb Weaver, Vera Jasper.

  “He…Hi…Harry, just nip on out there and take care of it.” Hallow’s normally calm subdued tone was now high and cruel, as if he did not mind who in particular was going to be cut down. There was a quiet moment. “Oh. Well it’s you then. All right.”

  More gunshots, but the sound soon stopped. Hargreaves recognized the chilling silence of tactics, and she darted her head in to take a look. At the far end of the shop, lay a shape covered by a tarpaulin, filling the bulkhead to the top of the car. Something white peeked out the bottom. Not being able to make sense of it, she sighted Vera Jasper about to flank Hikawa’s position, and acted with the closest thing at hand. She threw her saber at the devious little spider’s head.

  With a heavy clang the sword was snatched out of the air, shattering into thousands of pieces. The handle stuck by its broken point into the wall of the castle, quivering, and still Hargreaves could not see what had done it. A fluttering of the tarpaulin sounded, that was all.

  “Orby, you mustn’t let your guard down!” Hallow’s voice rang out, but Hargreaves could not see where the skinny Englishman could be. Hargreaves raised her .22 at Jasper, who was wielding a wicked looking knife. No, the blade was strapped somehow to her wrist, like a stinger. The rest of her was wrapped in dark blues and blacks, veils and shawls, much as she had been at Temple Mills when she attacked the inspector.

  “Jean! Stop this
at once!” said Hargreaves. “Show yourself! What have you to say for this?”

  “My, my, but that would take far too long,” Hallow said. “Why don’t you take a look?”

  Before Hargreaves could react, pale, swooping fingers reached from under the tarpaulin and closed in about her, each a needle claw as long as her arm. An automata, surely, but one much faster than any she had encountered before. Suddenly she was rising, turning in the air as the metal hand brought her face to face with the machine. The fabric slipped, ruffling to the floor, and now she saw the automata’s face was a sallow off-white, like the skin of a corpse. Its eyes were huge empty slits. Below the face, a second pair of eyes peered at her from between the collarbones of the machine. They were unfamiliar, though they should not have been, the face they were seated in a twisted gray mask of cruelty.

  “Hallow!” gasped Hargreaves.

  “In the flesh!” yelled the usually quiet Hallow.

  Before the fingers could tighten, Hargreaves squeezed off a shot at the cockpit of the strange machine. She merely intended to disable what controls she could see, a panel strangely bereft of levers or control mechanisms. The shot went high, sparkling off the white enamel armor of the automata.

  Perhaps Hallow had not expected Hargreaves to be quite so violent. Perhaps the shrapnel found its way into the cockpit. Perhaps Hallow was simply shocked by the burst of gun smoke. Whatever the reason, the fingers loosened just enough for Hargreaves to shimmy out of them, falling five feet to the floor of the train car.

  “Hargreaves-dono!”

  She barely registered the voice as Hikawa’s. Instinct took over and she rolled across the floor. Vera Jasper’s wrist knife dipped into her jacket’s furred collar, missing her neck by hairs. It pulled out immediately as Hikawa’s swords became a scintillating hurricane, forcing Jasper away. Freed, the inspector scrambled to her feet.