Steamscape Page 7

Solindra could hear the splashes better than she could see the water rushing against the side of the boat. She glanced up. The stars shone like crystals and the moons were mostly dark tonight. She squinted. There wasn’t even a lamp on the prow of the flatboat.

  If it could be called a prow. The boat was just a rectangle. It had no steampowered paddlewheel, unlike all those pictures she’d seen with ladies lounging on decks of multi-storied floating hotels. No, these were bound logs that were piled high with crates covered in canvas. There was no roof or shelter. They would sleep between the crates and could only hope to outrun the rain.

  Jing shuffled up beside her, his limp causing the boat to rock. His jaw was clenched.

  “Something wrong?” Solindra prompted.

  “I don’t like being on the water.” He raised his metal leg, then lowered it. The boat rocked ever so slightly as the weight came back down. He forced a smile. “Everything will be sold in southern Eliponesia and Mekani. Even the boat.”

  Solindra raised her eyebrows.

  “Lumber that makes up the boat. Everything goes.”

  “Oh.” She glanced in direction of Ganther, the captain of the rectangle, and his two boys. She didn’t know if they were his sons or just another pair of conscripted orphans.

  She looked back down at the dark waters, but could only make out a few starlight reflections on the mutable surface. “We’ll run aground when the river curves. We can hardly see where we’re going.”

  Jing chuckled. “It’s a risk, certainly. But I don’t think Ganther wanted to stay in Consequences. We’ll probably stop for the night after a few miles.”

  Ganther whistled from out of the darkness somewhere nearby. The form of a man built like a bear waved his arms. “Steam man! You come here and steer this hog for a while.”

  “On my way!” Jing replied. He patted Solindra on the shoulder before limping off.

  After he’d left, the young woman sneaked a look over her shoulder. She set the tips of her boots into one of the edges of a crate underneath its canvas cover and peeked over the top. Eventually, she could make out the murmuring forms of the two boys and Drina off to the side. That other shape had to be Theo on the far end. Jing and Ganther were at the large rear paddle that served as the rudder.

  Soon, the singing of the crickets on the nearby bank overwhelmed the splashes of water against the flatboat. The winds carried fresher-scented air from downriver.

  Solindra slipped off the crate and pulled out a folded paper from her pocket. She’d wrapped the sancta in it, but replaced the item quickly. She pressed the paper against her thigh, trying to smooth out the creases.

  She tilted the poster into the starlight and sighed. The girl knew that she shouldn’t have gone back to steal it, but she couldn’t live with herself with the thought that it might be defaced like the other one.

  She really didn’t know why she’d carefully cut out Steam Princess Adri Saturni’s face from the propaganda poster. Solindra sighed again. How many years had she spent pretending that was her? All those years suspended on a mountain, never knowing anything about the real Codic or the real Steampower. The steam princess couldn’t turn out to be any different than what she had dreamt, not like the others.

  She glared ahead into the darkness. The River Eld pulled at the logs beneath her feet, but she barely even noticed the swaying of the raft anymore. This river that drained half the continent was deep, lonely, and cold.

  She shivered as the craft shifted underneath. The world moved on, and she with it. Solindra wanted to cry. She wanted to clutch the poster to her chest and hold herself.

  Instead, she held out the piece of poster at arm’s length and slowly, achingly uncurled her fingers.

  The paper fluttered off into the darkness. The singing of the crickets and the splashes of the water immediately overcame any papery sounds in the wind.

  Tears started to press against her eyes, but she ignored them and turned her back on the river. She crept to the center of the boat, jaw set. Her fingers slid along the canvas tarps, guiding her more than her sight. She felt a corner.

  Drina’s fist came sailing around it.

  Solindra gasped and bobbed back out of the way. “Drina! What–?”

  The cook swung again. Solindra could hardly see her hand moving! She threw up her arms and felt the heavy thud all the way through her shoulder blades as Drina’s hand came crashing.

  “Remember those games we used to play when you were growing up?”

  Solindra gulped. “What? Now? No!”

  “You’d better!” She struck at the girl again. Solindra managed a weak block.

  A shrill whistle echoed around the flatboat. Ganther jogged up between the crates, shaking his own fist. “Hey now! Don’t rock the boat!” The two young boys trailed in his wake, giggling and jostling each other.

  Back at the rudder, Jing only sighed. “Oh, Drina.”

  Solindra dusted her skirts and straightened. She tried to glare at the older woman, but memories were starting to crowd her thoughts. Games we used to play. With them. With Dad. Like the one done hopping on one leg while everyone tried to strike with pillows, and she had to dodge. Or the one where she had to duck and weave through the maze of ropes. Or the other one where she had to take a running person and shove him off balance…

  She glared at Drina’s current smirk. She had been convinced up until this very moment that she knew this woman. The cook had never been much of a mother, but that was all right because she’d had Dad. But Drina had never attacked her before.

  Solindra dusted off her skirt again and launched herself at Drina’s knees. They both went down on the narrow path between the rows of crates. The younger woman growled the entire time.

  Drina’s laugh shattered her concentration. She patted Solindra’s hair. “Well done!” She disentangled her legs from the teen. “It’s not quite the same, but you know the basic motions.”

  “Teaching the steam princess to fight?” They looked up to see Theo crossing his arms and frowning. He scoffed.

  “I’m not the steam princess!” Solindra pulled herself upright and swayed a little until the dizziness passed. “I… Wait, what’s that?”

  Around the entire flatboat, steam suddenly rose off the water on the deck and even across the river around them. It hissed like snakes. The sancta started to glow inside her pocket, its light escaping the fabric.

  Theo gasped and pointed at her cipher medallion. “You are a crypter!”

  Ganther inhaled like an angry swine. “Crypter! I don’t take truck with no crypters.” He raised his hand as if to strike, but then suddenly held his breath at a very slight thump of weight behind him. The boat shifted a little.

  “Crypters don’t exist,” Jing said quietly from behind. “Therefore, the girl is not a crypter.”

  “Then what about the steam?” Ganther was breathing heavily now, his chest bobbing as much as the boat. The boys were silent on either side of him, their eyes wide.

  “Fog, heated up by a nearby swamp. Maybe some of the flammable gasses had been sucked into the river.” Jing smiled tightly and steered the captain toward the stern. The boys followed.

  Ganther scowled. “There aren’t any swamps around–”

  “I’m sure there are.” Jing thumped a heavy hand on the other man’s shoulder, causing Ganther’s knees to sag involuntarily. The captained stomped to the back of the boat with the boys.

  Theo still glared at Solindra. He shook his head and turned away. “I should’ve just gone on to Redjakel.”

  “Alone? Even if you weren’t, what could four of us do against Steampower?” Jing asked. “We only have one professional saboteur here.”

  “Hey! I don’t appreciate the sarcasm.”

  “Are you so certain that was?” Drina purred. She looked up at Jing. “We could do it, you know.”

  The mechanic shook his head. “With the vessel?”

  “What is a vessel, damn you?” Solindra demanded.

  “Vessel?” Theo s
norted. “You mean that old Steampower conspiracy story?” He froze and then swung his head directly at Solindra. “To create a born crypter.”

  “No,” Drina said.

  Theo kept staring.

  Solindra found herself blushing.

  “Who are you people?” he asked, leaning away from them.

  Drina smiled flatly. “I’m just the cook.”

  He shook his head and stomped across the boat to its edge. After a moment, he struggled to unlace his boots and then dipped his sweaty feet into the dark Eld. The water pressed his feet down under its current. To the east – and he just now realized which way was east after riding the large turns of the river at night – dawn was beginning to glow. There wasn’t any sun yet, and wouldn’t be for a while, but the darkness was losing its grip.

  Solindra sidled up beside him. “I want to hear the story.”

  Theo shrugged. “Not much to it. I mean, there are lots of stories, but the only thing they have in common is that Steampower wanted to make a crypter.”

  “Make a person? Why not just teach someone? Why make a crypter?”

  He tossed up his gloved hands. “Like I know.” He scowled ahead into the darkness. “All I know is that both sides deserve what they’re getting.”

  “Not those people on the train.”

  “Not them,” he growled. “But the lords of Codic and President LaBier and Boras Saturni and all of his board members! Them, they deserve worse. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Why?” she asked softly.

  Theo coughed, surprised. The fiery wind, the screams of the dying and smell of burning meat assailed his memory. He looked down to see his gloved fists bunching. He didn’t even feel anything anymore in some places. There had been too much damage to his skin.

  He swallowed. “I– We, that is, bricoleurs move around all the time, especially between Codic and Redjakel and the areas in between. So both sides tried to pay us or force us to spy for them in the months before Steampower’s assault.” He sighed. “And both sides punished us. I don’t know which one, but one side sent Flame.”

  “Of the Hex?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She shivered. “But the Hex has been gone for nigh on twenty years.”

  “Not Flame. Both Steampower and the government used us and threw us out like trash. And what do you do with trash? Burn it to make steam.”

  Solindra shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me. I’m not sorry for me. They are the ones who will be sorry. Codic, Redjakel and Flame.”

  The logs that made up the flatboat groaned. Theo and Solindra rolled forward as the raft suddenly slowed.

  Theo jerked his feet out of the water. “Did we hit something?”

  “It’s still so dark!” Solindra’s hand went straight to the cipher medallion.

  “Cylinder!” Drina called from the other side of the flatboat.

  The boat stopped. Solindra squinted. “Is that a net? Across the river?” She couldn’t be sure, and the idea was too foreign to frighten her. Her eyes explored the webbing, and she covered her nose from the oily smell.

  The net exploded into flame.

  Solindra felt the wind from the sudden heat push her hair back. Her jaw dropped. Even parts of the river were on fire! She sniffed; it was oil. Barrels of oil, and the net had been soaked in it too.

  Someone was reclining in the fiery net, a foot propped up against the flatboat.

  Theo’s breath caught in his throat.

  He’d seen that face before, whistling to itself. Strolling down the road toward the caravan like a man wasting a lazy afternoon. “Flame.”

  Flame jerked forward as if propelled by some explosion behind him. His arms spread out like the fires and the short man was smiling like a god. His chest and hips were covered with crisscrossing bandoliers holding pistols, a saber, two rapiers and other devices haphazardly stashed together. The stench of burnt flesh rolled off of him like a perfume.

  The dark red-haired man jogged down the edge of the flatboat to Solindra and Theo.

  Theo froze. He tried to grab the knife hidden in his boot, but his hand wouldn’t respond to the screams of his mind.

  Flame reached down and yanked Solindra up by her shoulder. She tried to roll out of the way, but wasn’t fast enough. He clutched a rope in his other hand. It led off into the river, where a canoe with an engine bobbed in the fiery waters. All the while, the short arsonist hummed to himself. He moved as if dancing to music inside his head.

  Ganther was yelling. Splashes rose up behind him as the boys jumped for safety into the Eld. Jing and Drina both brought up their small pistols from hidden pockets.

  Flame’s head bobbed up toward the movement. He blinked and the hum died on his lips. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Oh no,” Drina breathed. Jing blinked in surprise.

  That gave Flame enough time to draw his pistol and shoot Ganther in the forehead, using the same hand that held the cord. Solindra tried to elbow him, but only bruised herself on his armaments. He resumed humming and jerked his canoe up to the flatboat.

  He pulled Solindra in between himself and Drina. “Ah, ah, ah! Now don’t pop your monocle, Death, but we’re off to meet the sorceress.”

  “What?” Drina breathed.

  Solindra kicked out with her boot heel, striking at his knee, but Flame didn’t seem to notice. He hopped backward, dragging her with him. The engine-powered canoe splashed and rocked wildly with their sudden weight.

  Solindra screamed, “It didn’t work, Drina!” She kicked at him again. “It didn’t work!”

  “No!” Theo yelped, breaking free from his paralysis.

  Then Flame, grinning like an angry cat, tossed a canister onto one of the canvas-covered crates. It hissed and flared into life, saturating their world with fire.

  Laughing, he kicked the canoe away from the flatboat and back into the flow. He tilted the nose upstream, and he and Solindra vanished into the gloomy dawn.

  Chapter Eight

  “Cylinder!” Drina’s voice carried louder over the water than the snaps and roar of the fires.

  But the young woman was gone. There wasn’t even an outline of the canoe in the dawn’s light.

  “Cylinder!”

  “Drina, help!” Jing slammed down another canvas tarp in an attempt to smother some of the flatboat’s flames.

  “Here!” Theo ran up with another canvas tarp, but he tripped over Ganther’s body and stumbled nose-first into a crate. He closed his eyes and fought another shiver. He shouldn’t be so cold with this heat, but he could barely breathe.

  Flame…

  He was half-convinced he was in a nightmare, and he was sure that he’d imagined that whoever it was had been Flame. That just couldn’t be! It had to have been someone else.

  Jing growled and smashed down the tarp again. The fires that had started with the arsonist’s burning nets were spreading to the front of the flatboat. The glorified raft was already sinking in one corner where the fires had chewed through.

  “Stop, just stop.” Drina slipped around some smaller fires. “What can we do?”

  Jing shook his head again. “Can’t save the boat.”

  “Swim for it?” Theo eyed the fat, deceptively lazy river. How many thousands – no, millions of cubic yards of water was it draining? How could one human body survive against that?

  “I sink.” The mechanic lifted up his metallic prosthesis. “But this thing ain’t going to hold on for long.”

  Drina leaned her shoulder against the rudder’s handle. The flatboat started to inch toward the shore. Jing and Theo joined her, pressing their weight against the lever. The boat shifted its course.

  “Not too much,” the mechanic warned. “Or we’ll just flip around and be backward and burning.”

  Theo stepped away from the crowded rudder. The craft was starting to float diagonally in the direction of the nearest point bar. He breathed through his mouth, not
wanting to smell anything. But the scent crept up to his nose via the back of his throat and he whimpered against his will.

  He slid closer to one of the newly uncovered crates. He hadn’t dared ask Ganther the smuggler what else he’d been transporting. He tapped one of the clear glass jars suspended in frames and held up by string. He popped off a cork and the burning vapors of moonshine assailed him.

  Okay, selling to barmen so that they could cut their beer and inflate their prices. The bottles clinked as the raft shifted again. Theo moved on.

  The next crate held a couple barrels of oil. Also flammable.

  He inched forward, closer to the fires. He wiped the tears out of his watering eyes and tried to brush away the smoke from his face.

  Fire was already merrily eating at the canvas tarp of the next crate and up the edges of the wooden case. Theo yanked the canvas aside.

  “Shh– Shh–” He stumbled back over Ganther’s body, turned and sprinted at Jing and Drina.

  “Get off the boat!” he screamed as he dived right past the pair and into the Eld. He heard his own splash, but felt only coldness as the waters closed in around him.

  Drina and Jing exchanged a glance through the smoke of the fiery boat and looked back to the goods just starting to burn.

  Each face of the crate was stamped T.N.T.

  Without a word, Jing reached down and picked up the nearest barrel. He stepped up to the edge and just kept walking.

  The river swallowed him whole.

  Drina took a running swan dive, jumping as far away from the flatboat and as close to Jing as she could manage.

  He bobbed back up to the surface, still clinging to the barrel. A permanent grimace had been etched into his features. Theo paddled farther behind him.

  Drina surfaced a few feet away. She risked a grin before glancing back at the boat. “Under!” Theo dove and Drina pushed herself back under. Jing tried to roll the barrel over his head.

  The explosion boomed. Searing white and orange fire flared up like the sun on earth. Wooden fragments, glass and other shrapnel expanded out in front of the main fire, stabbing at the river’s surface and scything through the air.

  Theo, Drina and Jing rolled back to the surface. The bricoleur flailed and splashed in the water, gaping at the pieces of burning wood in the water around them.