The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  “But weren’t you pirates?” Byron asked.

  “Only half pirates,” Iren said, as she descended from the crow’s nest amid a welcome blast of fresh air. She’d just finished cutting the dead pirates free. To everyone’s relief, their view of the ink-wash sky was now free of swinging corpses.

  “We wanted to scare him, Byron. A frightening reputation is good armor,” Edith said, wrapping a length of gauze about Reddleman’s chest. She couldn’t quite look her pilot in the face when she asked, “You sure you’re all right?”

  Reddleman turned his dreamy smile toward her. “Yes, thank you, Captain. I just need you to change my vials, and I’ll be fine.”

  “You did well back there, pilot. Good work,” Edith said.

  “Oh, thank you, sir,” Reddleman said.

  “But surely we don’t have to go around telling people we’re monsters.” Byron plunged his mop into the pail a final time and brushed the perspiration from his whiskers. “Especially when some of us are so handsome.”

  Edith turned away so Byron would not see her shudder at the memory of what the Sphinx had hidden away inside his secret attic.

  Edith wished the Sphinx had never taken her into his confidence, yet she had no one to blame but herself.

  Shortly before their launch, the Sphinx had called them all to his cavernous port, to stand before the prow of the State of Art and bear witness as he rechristened the ship. Byron stood at the wharf’s edge, holding a bottle of champagne like a club at his shoulder. The stag wore his most grandiose uniform, complete with gold braids and tasseled epaulets. He patiently waited for the Sphinx’s signal to swing the bottle and douse the gleaming hull in wine.

  Edith stood in a line with Iren, Voleta, and Reddleman while the Sphinx delivered a rambling speech, which swung from historical review to pointed instruction in a manner Edith found confusing. After some minutes of boasting about the contents of the ship’s guest registry and her spotless battle record, the Sphinx began to adjure Edith’s new crew in a quavering voice. “You will parade her before every ambitious ringdom, king, navy, and pirate. You will dare them to raise arms against you and make them rue the day that they do. You will stir the sky like a summer gale and thunder out my name!” Swept up in the emotion of the moment, the Sphinx spread his thin black arms in benediction. “You will show the Tower that the Sphinx has returned! And the ringdoms shall give unto you those consecrated works of art, the Brick Layer’s tokens, to serve as tribute to my many gifts and—”

  “Surely Marat is the more pressing concern,” Edith said.

  The Sphinx dropped his arms. “What?”

  “If there is, as you say, a war coming, is this really the time to worry about a bunch of dusty artwork? I’m sure they have sentimental value, but—”

  The Sphinx interrupted her in return: “What about this ceremony made you think we were having a conversation?”

  “It just seems that showboating might not be the most effective way of disrupting a hod uprising. No offense, sir.”

  “Why would I be offended? Despite not knowing the details of what’s happening, or how it’s happened, or why, you still feel informed enough to interrupt me with a critique of my plan. How could that be offensive?”

  “If I’m uninformed, it’s not by choice.”

  “Ah. Well, why don’t we go for a walk, so I can give you my full and furious attention?”

  As the Sphinx and Edith proceeded to the heavy medallion door to the Sphinx’s home, Byron held up the bottle of champagne, craning his long neck as he called after them, “Excuse me, are we still going to …? Should I …?” He received no reply.

  Following after the Sphinx like a chastised dog, Edith resisted the impulse to apologize, an urge that only grew stronger when they arrived at their destination.

  As she parted the flock of ticking butterflies that flapped about the Sphinx’s workshop, Edith clutched the cool, humming elbow of her engine. The ache of the surgery had just begun to ebb. The arm still moved as clumsily as a limb in a dream, but already it felt like her own. She did not want to give it back. She wondered, should the Sphinx decide to take it, if he would give her an even cruder device, something club-like. A table leg, perhaps? Her gaze fell upon a mechanical hand on a workbench, curled up like a dead spider. She recognized the detached appendage at once. She had used it to lift a spoon, to hold a hairbrush, to tie a knot, to pull a trigger. She suppressed a shudder.

  But amid that surge of existential dread, Edith had an abrupt revelation standing there amid so much half-assembled wonder. She realized something obvious, something that should’ve occurred to her much sooner.

  She stopped and said, “You’re desperate, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve given me command of your flagship and brought the Red Hand back from the dead and sent someone as inexperienced as Tom off to spy on your behalf. You’re desperate. I’ve been so afraid of you, so overwhelmed by your gifts and your contracts, that I couldn’t see it. But you’re backed into a corner. You’re playing your last cards.” Edith laughed dryly. “And they don’t seem to be particularly good ones.”

  The Sphinx surprised Edith by laughing, too, though more generously. “We all have our backs in a corner, my dear. Just not all of us realize it yet. I admire how loyal you are to your friends, but I fear that loyalty has blinded you to your greater obligations.”

  Edith bristled at the implication. “I follow orders. I keep my word. What other obligations do I have?”

  “You have a duty to the Tower. To your fellow man. Where is your sense of responsibility?”

  “How can you expect me to be responsible for things you keep from me? Why are you obsessed with those paintings? If everything is so bleak, and war looms so large, and the Tower is a powder keg, why waste time gathering up a bunch of old canvases?”

  “Why are the young so impatient when they have the most time!” the Sphinx asked the empty room, tilting his mask back in wonderment. “You’ll have your answer soon enough, Edith. Come on. I hope you slept well last night, because it’s the last good night’s sleep you’ll get for a very long time.”

  At the back of the cluttered workroom stood a rack full of mismatched pipes and rods. The jumble appeared to have not been disturbed in a decade at least. The Sphinx turned to make sure Edith was observing, then gripped the end of a rusted length of rebar and pulled. The bar clicked, and the entire cabinet slid smoothly to one side, revealing an open doorway in the workshop wall.

  The spiraling stairs beyond seemed to go on forever, an impression that only grew stronger once they began to climb. The ascent didn’t appear to tire the Sphinx in the least, but after chasing the black tail of his cloak for some moments, Edith was ready to beg for a rest when the stairs came to an abrupt end, and she found herself standing, wobbly kneed, on a landing.

  The Sphinx hesitated before the only door—an iron-banded oak slab that looked nearly as old as the Tower itself. “I don’t show my attic to many people. I’d appreciate if you’d not share what you see with anyone. That includes Byron.”

  Edith was surprised to learn there were places in the Sphinx’s home that Byron had not seen, but she quickly gave her word.

  When Edith thought of an attic, she pictured exposed rafters, curtains of cobwebs, and old furniture shrouded under bedsheets. Attics were for the unwanted artifacts of youth and the tedious evidence of past generations; they were for outgrown ice skates, toy chests, wedding dresses, and some great-aunt’s china that no one loved well enough to live with, nor hated enough to throw away.

  But what lay behind that creaking door better resembled a wing of a museum than an attic. The airy, wide gallery ran on for some distance. Electric spotlights threw islands of light, which tempered but did not banish the gloom. Formal exhibits, like something from a natural history museum, lined either wall. The displays were set upon shallow stages behind red velvet ropes. At first glance, Edith mistook the subjects of those exhibits for the assembled bones of extinct beasts, interspersed
with suits of fanciful armor. But as they drew nearer, she saw they were in fact machines like Ferdinand or the wall-walker, though stranger and more primitive.

  The first cordoned-off engine reminded her of a scarecrow. Its limbs were long and lithe; its head round, its features painted on and crude. The materials that made up its arms and legs were irregular, a patchwork of mismatched parts. The engine stood some seven feet tall and was posed like a slouching butler. When the Sphinx passed it, he declared, “Ah, Mr. Ekes! He was my first! So slow and clumsy—always falling over. But, oh, how I loved him!”

  Confused by this sudden effusiveness and not knowing what to say, Edith said, “You made him?” By impulse, she reached out and set the palm of her engine upon the shoulder of the gawkish machine. The iron bones seemed to rise to meet her touch like a cat asking to be pet. She almost recoiled in surprise but willed herself to hesitate. She held the contact and focused upon it.

  It was absurd, of course, but she felt an inkling of a connection to the cold, dead engine. No, not a connection—it was more like a slow echo, an internal mumbled dialogue …

  The curious sensation was chased away by the Sphinx’s chatter, and Edith withdrew her hand.

  “I was sixteen years old, I think, when I built him.” The Sphinx sighed, the noise like a leak in a bicycle tire. “I made every one of these machines. I brought them to life, taught them to serve, and mourned them when they died.” The Sphinx continued down the hall, pointing and remarking upon the bizarre pieces of his collection as he went. There was Horace, whose bottom half resembled the wheel of a riverboat, but was cleated with iron spikes. Horace had the chest and arms of a man and the head of an ox. He had been built to till the fields of the garden ringdoms. Then there was Zoë, who looked like a sofa-sized tortoise, and who rather than a head possessed a single lidless eye at the end of a cabled neck. Zoë was created to be a sewer inspector, though she proved to have a knack for getting herself lodged in unsavory places.

  The Sphinx paused before the biggest engine in his maudlin collection. Of all the machines, this one unsettled Edith the most. It seemed a mixture of praying mantis and steam shovel. Its forearms curved into scimitar-like blades. Most unnerving, the engine had a woman’s head, statuesque and pale as marble, set on the end of a long, barbed spine. “I had to remove Penelope’s batteries after she killed several dignitaries. An accident, of course. But it was quite an unpleasant scene.” The Sphinx reached up and patted one of the engine’s armor-plated knees.

  “What was she built for?”

  “Shepherding spider-eaters.” The Sphinx moved on, his black robe slithering across the pine-green carpet. “Have you ever heard the parable of the plagued farmer?”

  “No,” Edith said, the question catching her off guard.

  “There once was a farmer who was plagued by black flies. They were vicious things that chewed the leaves of his crops and bit him when he slept. So the farmer bought a pair of frogs to eat the flies and reproduce, which they did—but too well. Soon, he was finding frogs in his sugar bowl and frogs in his bedpan and frogs in his boots in the morning. So the farmer bought a pair of herons to eat the frogs and reproduce, which they did, but they also scratched up his seeds and trampled his seedlings. So the farmer bought a pair of cats to chase off the herons and reproduce, which they did, but they also killed his chickens and ate all the songbirds and pounced on him like little tigers wherever he went. So he bought a pair of dogs, and when that went wrong, he bought a pair of bears, and then a pair of elephants, and then after the elephants had flattened his house and his barn and everything he owned, he bought a pair of black flies. They were vicious, biting things, and they drove the elephants off.”

  “It’s the curse of unintended consequences,” Edith said.

  “It’s the curse of giving a damn!” the Sphinx said sharply, rising to his full height. “The Brick Layer tried to meet the Tower’s needs with domesticated beasts, but they were unpredictable and dangerous. They consumed too many resources, contracted too many diseases. It was unsustainable. So I built mechanical alternatives to serve the Tower. But the engines were mindless, dangerous, and susceptible to sabotage. So I founded the Wakemen, hoping that strength with a conscience would bring some balance and sanity to the Tower, but instead I blighted the ringdoms with Luc Marat and the Red Hand. At every step, I meant to sow the seeds of freedom, equality, and ease, but I only scattered plagues.” The Sphinx shrank again as if exhausted by the outburst. “So rather than persist in my failure, rather than compound my errors, I withdrew.”

  “Errors.” Edith repeated the word under her breath.

  They were drawing to the end of the grand hall. The last exhibits in the Sphinx’s so-called attic were unlike the others, and Edith could not help but stop and stare. The three machines were all more or less human in dimension. They had arms and legs, hands and feet. Two were dressed in fitted suits; the third wore a blouse and riding breeches. Edith might’ve mistaken them for mannequins in a shopwindow had it not been for their heads. One seemed to have belonged to a ram, another to a lion, and the last to a wolf. Their bleached, bare skulls jutted ghoulishly from the starched collars of their clothes.

  She thought of Byron and how shocked he would be to see his predecessors displayed like trophies. No wonder the Sphinx wanted to keep this from him.

  Edith noted the empty space beside the final exhibit. The area was roped off and spotlighted and seemed to yawn for a subject. “Still room for me, I see,” she said, meaning to be cavalier, though her voice sounded flat and morose.

  “No, that spot is mine,” the Sphinx said. “One day, I will climb those stairs, lock the door behind me, and complete the collection. Oh, don’t look at me like that, young woman. That day is not today. And this is not what I wanted to show you.”

  Around the corner from the great hall was an antechamber, which seemed entirely out of place. It resembled the changing room at a spa: tile on the floor, a well-worn wooden bench down the center, a dozen lockers set into either wall. Edith opened the nearest one and stared at the dark rubber suit hanging inside. A bullet-shaped helmet gleamed upon the shelf. It was the same armor the sparking men had worn when they had accosted her and Adam on the Tower’s peak.

  “Find one that fits,” the Sphinx said. “I have to put on something a bit more dramatic, I’m afraid.”

  The process of selecting, comprehending, and squeezing into the rubber armor took Edith some minutes to accomplish. She had to choose a suit large enough to fit over her engine, which resulted in every other seam being too loose. The rubber squeaked horribly the entire time she struggled to fasten the gold cuffs and collar.

  She had just begun to examine the inside of one of the smirking helmets when she heard an approaching clicking sound. The noise was sharp and rapid as the clack of a typewriter. She turned to see a glass orb walking across the tile on eight golden legs. The Sphinx’s black shroud hung inside the crystal carriage like a flaw in a polished opal. The coach was nearly twice as tall as Edith.

  Inside the sphere, the Sphinx mimed putting on a helmet, and after a moment’s confusion, Edith did just that. The interior of the gold helmet was snug with padding. The visor slit appeared to have been sealed with smoked glass. Edith was still getting used to the weight and the narrowed view when the Sphinx’s voice spoke directly into her ear. She flinched and ducked, ramming against the locker, even as the Sphinx said, “Don’t be alarmed! You’re perfectly fine. Please don’t thrash about.”

  Edith gripped the sides of her helmet. “Can you hear me?”

  “Don’t shout, woman! My god, we’ll both go deaf. Yes, I can hear you.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t have time to explain all my miracles to you. Now, come on, quick as you can.”

  Edith found walking in the heavy suit difficult. Her feet didn’t quite sit right in the rubber boots and her gait was lumbering as a result. But she followed the Sphinx as best she could as he ticked along in his spider-legged
soap bubble. Beyond the changing room were the broad doors of a service elevator. The control panel inside the spacious lift contained just two buttons, one labeled ATTIC; the other, ROOF. The Sphinx asked Edith to do the honors. As the car rose, she asked if they were going to see the sparking men and whether Adam would be there.

  “Having regrets about helping him escape already, are you?” the Sphinx asked.

  “Not at all.” It was odd to feel her breath bounce back against her lips as she spoke.

  “Ah! There’s still time. The wonderful thing about regrets is that it’s never too late to have them. But to answer your question: No, we’re not going to see Adam. We’re going to my roof, not to the roof of the Tower.”

  “Why?” Edith asked. She tried to guess how quickly they were rising and how far the elevator had already traveled.

  “As you probably already know, the Tower is essentially a mill, but rather than milling grain, gravel, or silk, it mills lightning. That energy not only powers our batteries, it supplies many of the upper ringdoms with light, water, industry, and even fresh air. If the Tower were to go dark, tens of thousands would perish in the span of an hour, and hundreds of thousands more in the course of a day. We cannot allow the spark to go out.”

  Though her rubber armor muted her sensation, Edith became aware that the passage of the car was growing more unsteady the higher they climbed. The electric lamps in the ceiling flickered out briefly, then flared back to life.

  “But lightning is not an easy thing to manage, and short of some act of violent sabotage, which would turn a third of the Tower into a tomb, I can’t slow the pace of production. I believe those controls are kept behind a sealed door, and the means for opening that door is encoded within those paintings.”

  The floor of the car shuddered violently. Edith reached out to steady herself. The wall jumped and shook like the handle of a plow.

  “For decades, I’ve been catching the excess lightning and storing it in a reservoir. But I’m running out of room, and the medium can only hold so much energy before it undergoes a catastrophic degradation.”