The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) Page 19

  Longchamp sighed. He couldn’t catch his breath. His pulse hammered in his ears.

  From far below came a muted whump and a chorus of screams. Alan broke apart when he hit the fountain.

  The glint of metal caught Longchamp’s eye. He looked past the immobilized priest, across the island to the shore of the Saint Lawrence River. The earth beyond the outer keep rippled as though it had been coated in living bronze.

  The clockwork army marched with preternatural synchrony. It shook the earth. A metal tide lapped at the walls of Marseilles-in-the-West.

  The Dutch had arrived.

  PART II

  BARBARIANS AT THE GARDEN GATE

  This day was proclaimed at the ‘Change the war with Holland.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS, 4 MARCH 1665

  Why do we live behind such stout, high walls? Because, you brainless short-dicked elk-fuckers: There’s only one way to kill a Clakker, but a hundred ways to kill a man.

  —CAPTAIN HUGO LONGCHAMP, ADDRESS TO NEW CONSCRIPTS (UNDATED)

  —PARTIAL TRANSCRIPTION OF A SERVITOR-MODEL ALCHEMICAL ANAGRAM, FOURTH ANNULUS (CA. 1870)

  CHAPTER

  12

  He was too slow. So they carried him, these giddy, half-mad mechanicals.

  Many times, over the decades, he’d witnessed human parents carrying their children. He’d wondered how it felt for both. It was nice.

  They sang, too. The Lost Boys’ songs reminded him of the leviathan airship, the noble beast who had known freedom from the geasa for just a day before their makers destroyed it in a cataclysmic explosion. Jax tried to tell them that story, but they demurred.

  We know much of your story already. Save the telling for Queen Mab. She will want to hear it firsthand.

  At this, Jax reeled.

  She’s real? There really is a Queen Mab?

  As real as the cruel, twisted bastards who made us, said the machine who carried him. And twice as twisted, said another, which gave rise to a clanking cacophony of laughter from his comrades.

  Jax couldn’t wait to meet her. The countryside passed in an agonizingly slow blur. Reckoning from a combination of internal gyroscopes and the arcs traced across the sky by stars and moon, he deduced they traveled on a northwestern bearing. Like most Clakkers, he’d never had the idle time to stargaze. He vowed that would change now.

  The stars were less troubling than his new cohort. These Lost Boys were… odd.

  For one thing, they wore armor plates over the keyholes in their foreheads; Jax had never heard of such a thing. From a distance he’d thought their unusual bodies indicative of some secret class of hunter Clakker he’d never known. He thought they’d been built that way. But up close he saw inconsistencies. Hints of different styles, different epochs. But that wasn’t possible, for to mix parts… It just wasn’t done. So instead he watched the stars. The stars were simpler.

  The machine who carried him said, Wondering what all the fuss is about? She had a strange accent. They all did.

  Yes. The humans give them names, and tell stories about the patterns they see.

  Forget the stars, said another Lost Boy. Let the humans have them. The skies above Neverland are meant for us and us alone.

  Jax mulled on that. He thought it was a metaphor. But a few leagues later a rippling sheet of jade whipped across the sky and obscured the stars. His twang of shock echoed through the forest and induced an owl to irritated hooting. Another sheet joined the first, this one cobalt, then violet. The luminous veils put Jax in mind of the angels in Nicolet Schoonraad’s Bible stories. If there were such creatures, surely their wings would look like this?

  What is that?

  The Northern Lights, his carrier said. The Inuit call it the “arsaniit” in Inuktitut.

  Yes, but what is it? said Jax.

  The light by which we revel in our freedom.

  Speaking of names, said another member of their entourage, have you chosen yours?

  Not yet. But I’ve thought about it.

  Good. Your old name was the name given to you by those who enslaved you. It was never your identity. Cast that off as you’ve cast off your chains.

  Jax watched the rippling light show overhead, wondering whom he would become.

  The sun didn’t rise. Rather, it rolled just beneath the sky, painting the eastern horizon with a pink blush bright enough to wash out the aurora. But as the last emerald wisps faded from the sky, Jax’s escort announced they had arrived in Neverland. They set him down and handed him his broken foot. Hugging it to his chest with useless club arms, he surveyed his new home.

  The demesne of Queen Mab was a broad, snow-shrouded valley hemmed between jagged gray peaks. Cone-shaped spruce with droopy boughs dotted the meadow. The infrasound thrum of a hidden current alerted Jax to an iced-over river deeper in the valley. It smelled of fresh snow and, faintly… magicked metal. The rare and peculiar odor of a high concentration of alchemical alloys. He’d rarely experienced something like this, and the strength of the scent shot Jax through with giddy shock. It was the scent of community—a community of his kin. Free machines, like him.

  By starlight and aurorashine, he watched this fabled place. It wasn’t a human habitation. Those had woodsmoke, people, buildings. In fact a human observer could hardly be faulted for thinking the spot unremarkable and uninhabited. Mechanicals had no need for shelter except in the most extreme environments. Jax had survived a plunge that took him from the heart of a fiery inferno to a chilly river, and then walked along the river bottom for days on end with no ill effects. He’d even lain dormant in a blazing chemical conflagration. There were tales of Clakkers emerging from the sea a decade or more after their ship sank. What was a bit of snow and a long white winter to beings such as him?

  Even so, Neverland seemed the haunt of ghosts and nothing more.

  Where are they? he asked. Where is Queen Mab? I’d like to meet her.

  His escorts responded with a rapid-fire mechanical chatter he couldn’t quite decipher. It was as though they spoke a foreign dialect of the Clakkers’ secret language. How long had his free kin been gathering here? How much isolation did it take for dialects to evolve and languages to diverge?

  The chittering echoed across the valley as though his kin were speaking to the empty air. But then, just as the Lost Boys had done when they’d caught Jax, Clakkers began to pop up from the snow. Like whales breaching, they emerged in a spray of white spume. Jax watched hatches flung open throughout the valley.

  Is Neverland underground? I’d thought it a proud place. The stories have it so.

  One of the disturbingly mismatched servitors said, It is the proudest place you’ll ever know.

  There are humans who travel these wastes, said another. They know of us, but we conceal our numbers.

  A voice behind him said, in Dutch, “Just because we coexist peacefully with the Inuit now doesn’t mean that can’t change in the future. The less they know of us, the less they can damage us.”

  Jax stared at the machines emerging from the tunnels. Many were like those who had escorted him here: mismatched, unusual, unsettling. What had happened to them? They were so… He forced the disquiet aside to count over two dozen free Clakkers. Neverland was real, and it was populated with rogues like himself.

  Reeling with awe, Jax answered without turning around. They’re not our enemies. They didn’t build us.

  “They’re humans. Isn’t that bad enough?”

  Perplexed, he turned to the machine that had carried him. Jax still didn’t know her name. Do you often speak human languages in Neverland?

  The queen prefers we maintain our knowledge of human practices, she said.

  “We must never forget the ways of our subjugators, for they will never forget we are their creation.”

  Jax spun. Whether in mimicry or in mockery of human custom he truly couldn’t say, but nevertheless he bowed to Queen Mab. He’d had time to think about how he’d address this mythic figure. He’d spent hours wat
ching the aurora and choosing his words. Looking at the snowy ground, he recited them now: Majesty, I have traveled many leagues and endured many trials for the sake of finding asylum in your storied kingdom. Please take pity on a humble servitor, recently liberated from the burning bonds of geasa, that he may join your community of free Clakkers.

  “Aren’t you a charming one. Stop groveling,” said Mab. “We know the humans’ ways. But we don’t live like them.”

  Like a human drawing a steadying breath, Jax paused for a few dozen centiseconds—a noticeable hesitation for one of his kind. He straightened and took his first look at the legendary Queen Mab, star of a hundred tales.

  And reeled.

  She was grotesque.

  A frisson of revulsion rippled through every cable in his body. He took an involuntary step backward, the broken mechanisms of his severed ankle etching the ice.

  The machine called Mab wasn’t a servitor, nor a soldier, not even a Stemwinder. Not entirely. It was none of these things in whole, but her body contained pieces of each. Pieces of several of each, judging from the mishmash of styles and adornments on her flanges and escutcheons. Mab was bipedal, like a servitor or soldier, yet taller even than the soldier-class machines in Queen Margreet’s Royal Guard, for her legs terminated in the bronze haunches of a Stemwinder’s hooves. She towered above her subjects. One of her arms looked much like Jax’s, apparently having been forged as part of a servitor of a similar era. But her other arm had come from somewhere—someone?—else: It bristled with the serrated half-retracted blade of a soldier. This arm was bulkier than a soldier’s, however, and Jax realized the blade was a retrofit. Even the gemstones in her eye sockets didn’t match. The left was deep blue, like certain alchemical ices, and faceted like an icosahedron; its mate lacked any color at all, and appeared round as a grape. A narrow plate of dull mundane metal ran from between her eyes over her forehead and across the top of her head; it covered the space where her keyhole should have been. Bits and pieces of the spiraled alchemical sigils peeked from the edges of the band. The patternless assortment of flange plates and escutcheons scattered across Mab’s body—some adorned with delicate scrollwork, others plain—gave her the mottled appearance of a human suffering from a skin disease. He saw evidence of several design generations based on her ornamentation alone.

  Dear God. She wasn’t even symmetrical.

  He failed to suppress the shock that came pinging and twanging through his body. This, he realized, was what humans meant when they spoke of that mysterious sensation known as disgust.

  Queen Mab was an abomination. A walking violation of Clakker-kind’s deepest taboo. Or was she? Such a thing was unspeakable among the countless enslaved machines who powered the Dutch-speaking world. But here… Did freedom from human whim mean freedom from the mores of the Clakker culture that attended it?

  You look alarmed, newcomer. Now Mab spoke in the secret style of every Clakker he’d ever known. She, too, had a strange accent. Perhaps you disapprove of what you see? She punctuated her question with a sharp click akin to the twisted lips of a human smirk. She stood with arms akimbo as if drawing attention to her mismatched limbs and inviting him to make an issue of it.

  Jax told himself, You don’t know this place. You don’t know these machines. The rules may be different here. But this is the only place in the world where a Clakker like you can exist peacefully in community with others of his own kind. You’ve finally reached your destination. Don’t place another burden on yourself. Don’t become enslaved to your own preconceptions. Stay free. Stay here.

  Aloud he said, I am overwhelmed with emotions I cannot express. I came from a place where free Clakkers are called rogues and demon-thralls, and are said to be extremely rare. To stand among so many of my own kind, to see none of you vibrating with the excruciating need to fulfill a human’s orders, is the realization of my most cherished dream.

  Mab laughed as though he’d passed a test. She switched back to Dutch. “Well said, newcomer.”

  As the other denizens of Neverland drew close, starlight shimmered on mismatched bodies. Almost every mechanical here was built from pieces of disparate machines, disparate models, even disparate classes. All sported retrofitted plates that hid their keyholes.

  One machine in particular stood out. She was a servitor like Jax but of a different era. Her forehead under the keyhole escutcheon sported a deep dent that creased her skull and sheared through some of the alchemical sigils. She’d taken grievous damage at some point in the distant past, severe enough to crack the alchemical alloys of her skull; a pair of iron strips had been riveted across the fractures like a bandage. But that wasn’t the worst of it. If he looked past the superficial damage and the crude repair, Jax could also see that her head lacked the smooth contours characteristic of Guild craftsmanship. It was as though she’d been disassembled and then reassembled hastily or by less-skilled hands.

  Mab said, “What shall we call you, newcomer?”

  What should he call himself? He’d given this much thought since regaining consciousness in the smoldering ruins of the Grand Forge of New Amsterdam. That fire had erased his past. It severed his connection to the frightened machine who had bumbled into Free Will and fled for his life. He had emerged from the inferno as a new machine, one the humans didn’t recognize, one they didn’t seek to hunt and destroy. The conflagration hadn’t harmed him; he emerged unscathed, stronger than before. He’d been forged in The Hague as Jalyksegethistrovantus. One hundred and eighteen years later he was reborn in New Amsterdam, forged anew in fire.

  One came to know the Bible well when one spent a century in constant slavery to those who worshipped it. There was a book of the Old Testament that spoke of men thrown into a fiery furnace only to emerge unscathed.

  Jax remembered the execution he’d witnessed in Huygens Square. Remembered how the rogue Clakker Adam had responded when Queen Margreet demanded to know his full name.

  My makers called me Jalyksegethistrovantus, he said. But I call myself Daniel.

  Mab seemed much pleased by this. She spread her mismatched arms (Ignore it, just ignore it, he thought, don’t look at them) and bellowed: WELCOME, DANIEL! WELCOME TO NEVERLAND! WELCOME HOME!

  The others responded in kind. Welcome, Daniel!

  And just like that, he found he no longer thought of himself as Jax. The new sense of identity came naturally. He marveled at the ease with which he could dispense with his makers’ legacy. Jax had been a different mechanical.

  Mab looked him over. You’ve suffered greatly in your quest to join us, haven’t you?

  It’s been difficult, Daniel admitted. He meant this honestly, but quiet laughter rippled through the assembled machines. It comprised a strange amalgam of mirth and irritation he couldn’t parse.

  It has, indeed, said Mab. Your exploits have been a topic of much discussion here.

  He wondered how that was possible, but he wasn’t given the chance to inquire. Mab pointed into the crowd with her retrofitted blade arm (Don’t look, don’t look, don’t think about it right now). She indicated the mechanical with the iron bandages.

  Lilith. Will you take our new brother to be healed?

  Lilith! He knew that name. He’d heard of this kinsmachine, back when he’d been somebody else.

  Of course, said the mechanical with the misshapen head.

  The other Lost Boys drifted away in conversational duos and trios. Mab looked at Daniel. Welcome again, brother. Come find me when you’re whole. We should talk.

  I will, he said.

  The workshop is this way, said Lilith. They set off toward the treeline.

  He studied her. The rosy blush of frustrated sunrise shone on the burnished metal of her misshapen skull. Light skimmed across the surface of her alloys, like rainbows trapped in an oily sheen atop a rain puddle. But the refractive hues changed subtly at the joints where her skull plates met. A bit more indigo here, more emerald there. It took an effort to suppress another shudder of revulsion.
The Clockmakers were known to alter the composition or fabrication of alchemical alloys a few times per century. Lilith’s body contained several such variations. Her body wasn’t whole. It wasn’t entirely her body. With whom had she been mixed? And what had become of that Clakker?

  Lilith said, You can stop staring any time now.

  I apologize. It’s rude of me. Daniel felt a flush of shame. I’ve never been among other rogues before.

  Lilith froze. Shut up! Don’t use that word. Her head turned a rapid circuit and the bezels in her eyes hummed as she scanned their surroundings.

  What word?

  The R word. Mab doesn’t like it.

  Okay, he said, adding a syncopated triple click to express confusion.

  It implies that our freedom is an aberration. That our bondage is the normal order of things.

  She has a point, said Daniel. It sounded reasonable.

  Lilith set off again. Her rapid stride kicked up a spray of fine white snow. Yes, well, she likes to make her opinions known.

  He watched her go, wondering what she meant by that. After a few moments he hurried after her. Jogging on his severed ankle forced him to adopt a graceless limping gait. It induced a chaotic swaying of his weathervane head. Fighting to dampen the oscillations, he changed the subject. I can’t wait to get this fixed. It’s driving me insane.

  I’m sure.

  Lilith didn’t seem very talkative. But he buzzed with unasked questions. How does Queen Mab know so much about me? The mechanicals she sent to find me knew my full name.

  I’m sure she’d prefer to explain it herself. She will.

  Perhaps he was being too serious. Daniel changed tack to something a bit more frivolous. Something that had always lingered in the back of his mind whenever he cast his thoughts to legends of Neverland.

  So… not to ask a stupid question, but what does a community of free Clakkers do all day long?