Steamscape Read online

  Adri folded her hands into her lap while sitting up straight at the edge of her chair. Her smile beamed. “Now eat up, and then there is a hot bath being drawn for you in the next room. After that, we can discuss everything.”

  There was nothing left for Solindra to argue.

  ***

  An hour later, Solindra drifted on the edge of sleep in the tub with just her nose poking above the water. It was so warm. She was certain heated pipes ran though the walls of the tub to keep the water from cooling. And she was glad of it.

  It was silent except for the little notes of a silver music box in the shape of a tornado. The metal funnel spun, singing out cheerful melodies.

  She could even forget the screams of the Killing Train here. The water carried her weight, leaving her floating in this perfumed world. She could even forget there was a war in the moment, or that she had ever left Pitchstone.

  The scent of spiced chicken meandered its way into her nose. Her gray eyes bounced open, and she lifted her head.

  More food and wine were waiting for her. She hadn’t even heard anyone setting them up! Had she fallen asleep?

  She glanced at the table beside the tub. A towel that could probably wrap around her twice laid next a new floor-length navy dress. Her old outfit had vanished.

  Solindra splashed up a tidal wave in a crashing effort to lunge out of the tub. Her old clothes were missing! Dripping wet, she pawed at the pile of towels, perfumes and dress.

  She clutched the towel to her chest and leaned back against the tub, staring blankly ahead. Her mouth instantly dried.

  It was missing.

  Surely Adri wouldn’t have gone through that act just to steal the thing. There were easier ways!

  But… but the sancta had belonged to her father. She’d stolen it from his grave.

  And now it was missing.

  She scrambled to fit inside the new dress, and then raced barefoot to the washroom’s door. She slammed it open.

  A plump woman on the other side of the door automatically ducked into a curtsey. She nailed her gaze to the floor. “The lady of the house is waiting for you. This way.”

  Solindra reached out to shake the servant, but held her hands back. She nodded. She didn’t dare trust her own voice. Instead, she followed the plump woman through the huge maze of vaulted corridors. Everything gave the illusion of openness and space – from the high ceilings to the huge windows, all gilt and gold. There was also food everywhere, just sitting in bowls along the hallways: apples, grapes, oranges and more. Solindra had eaten a proper orange only once before in her life.

  The servant wound her way mutely through the palatial estate. Solindra couldn’t even believe they were inside the city – not with the gardens and courtyards. This was a country manor inside the city. Nothing was stained by grit or smoke at all, and no steampipes were visible. She tried to fix her drying hair and hide her bare feet beneath the skirt.

  Birds sang through half open walls to courtyards. Solindra followed the servant around another enclosed corridor that ended with two massive doors.

  The woman pushed on through into a larger, domed room. Solindra swung her head around. The space was much taller than it was wide, with a tall stained-glass dome on top and a pit below. She stared down into the red ember glow of the coals below. Steam was rising up from the water being sprinkled on them by some sort of small fountain.

  In the center of the room was a training circle, suspended by thick cables. The floor was bronze lattice-work with hundreds of interconnecting poles hanging down beneath it.

  Adri Saturni glided barefoot across the suspended metal frame like an angel, or a ghost. She had also changed outfits, and now wore a shorter skirt that was seamlessly woven into her lace leggings. She turned to face the newcomers. The overhead light of the above dome caught the sparkle of the chains in her hair.

  “Ah, my vessel.” She beckoned with one hand, and unfolded her fingers to reveal Solindra’s cipher medallion in the other.

  Solindra’s undressed foot hovered over the edge of the circle. She set it down. The metal felt cool enough, despite the steam below. She jogged out a few steps toward the proffered sancta. She stopped. Her feet were burning at the middle of the circle.

  Adri didn’t move, still standing barefoot in the center of the ring.

  The younger woman gritted her teeth and marched forward, sure that burnt skin was peeling from her soles as she walked.

  The steam princess nodded. She waved behind her with a free hand. The servant closed the double doors and vanished. Then Adri curled Solindra’s fingers around the red medallion. “Here is your sancta, or cipher medallion. Either is acceptable. And this…”

  A male servant with a face carved from granite marched out onto the ring, carrying a rifle. The wooden stock had been polished, but bore scars of use and battle. Everything metal had been plated with what appeared to be silver. It had a pump and cocked like a shotgun, so it was faster than the normal lever-action rifles.

  “And this,” Adri hefted the rifle, “belonged to someone I think you knew well.” She passed it along to Solindra.

  The girl imagined it would be heavier, but it wasn’t. It had just enough weight to be real. “Who?” she formed on her lips but didn’t dare whisper.

  “A man who may or may not have been a traitor. However, his actions brought you to me alone, so I will consider him favorably.” She reached out and touched Solindra’s fiery hair.

  The vessel flinched, but held her ground. She closed her eyes and squeezed the rifle against her chest. Something seemed familiar about it, like a scent she recognized from long ago.

  “I knew Silvermark hadn’t killed you like he’d claimed before vanishing.”

  “Silvermark?” Solindra frowned in thought. “The Hex.”

  Adri pointed at the rifle. Solindra followed her line and saw an inscription engraved just to the side of the trigger. Veritas temporalis est.

  She didn’t know the language of the ancient empire, the one civilization that those in Steamscape had finally surpassed only a few decades ago. But she knew her father’s favorite saying. Truth is temporary.

  “Mark Canon’s rifle.”

  Solindra hugged it a little tighter.

  “Oh. It looks as if you never really knew the man, not if you can’t recognize his own gun.” Adri reached out and pried the rifle from Solindra. The girl let go, helpless against Adri’s will as if in a dream. Her arms wouldn’t work. They were too heavy and too slow to stop the sylph. Adri turned around and handed it back to the granite-faced servant.

  “Maybe when you’ve earned it, little bird.”

  Solindra stared as the man walked away. Something inside her slipped free. “No!” She leapt forward, never taking her eyes off the rifle.

  Adri grabbed her arm and spun her around. She narrowed her eyes and leaned into Solindra’s face. All sweetness had evaporated like the steam around them. “Silvermark stole a valuable asset from us. You. If you survived into adulthood, my father had wanted to build you up to destroy the Priory. The Hex betrayed both us and Codic and stole you away. Ripped apart years of research and planning, expensive years. And just to steal a baby from its mother? Your mother.”

  Solindra gasped. “I had a mother?”

  “Yes, but the poor woman died of a broken heart after you were stolen. All because the Hex decided that a mother wasn’t good enough to raise her own child.”

  “No,” Solindra wheezed. “No! Stop it! My father was a good man!” She staggered away, slamming her hands over her ears.

  “Father?” Adri sneered. She stalked closer. “You had no father. Silvermark was just afraid that you would replace the Hex. You would have been a dragon.”

  Solindra gasped for breath, her chest heavier with each inhalation. She shook her head dumbly. The room was spinning, and the steam rising up from the embers below clouded her vision. She remembered sitting on her father’s knees every morning while he read the telegraph dispatches. She remember
ed his chuckles when she’d try to steal the threads of paper. That had been real!

  “But he died.”

  “Good.” Adri turned her back and did something Solindra couldn’t see. The training circle started to tremble beneath them and then it split down the middle.

  Half of the circle rose, carrying Adri up like a soaring angel. Solindra’s half sank a few feet closer to the fire below.

  She didn’t notice. She stormed up to the line of slick poles, grabbing them and shaking them. “I dare you to say that again. I dare you!”

  Adri stood on the lip, smiling serenely down at the young woman. “First, you come up here. If you can.”

  Solindra heaved up at the bars, still clinging to her cipher medallion in one hand. No good. The metal was too slick with condensed droplets. The bars, having been much closer to the fire, hissed at her touch.

  She withdrew her hand, noticing the blisters rising. Her bare feet were starting to feel the heat again.

  “Use the steam, child!”

  “What?” She didn’t know how to do that. Not unless she could fly. Then again, she had not known what she’d been doing on the Killing Train either, and that… Well, that certainly hadn’t worked out in her favor. But she remembered the feeling.

  She brought up the cipher medallion and tried to ignore the blisters forming on her feet. She’d let that sensation surge within her and then just let it out somehow, like a primal yell.

  Below her, the steam started to gather and swirl.

  Solindra glared up at Adri and then turned her entire attention to the red sancta. It seemed to expand in her vision. She thought she saw her father’s face in its depths.

  The steam became a tornado under her feet, scattering the embers at its base and spraying them across the stone floor and walls of the cylindrical hall.

  It pushed up from underneath her feet, whipping up her hair and her clothes. The steam should have been scalding, but it could not hurt her unless she allowed it. She didn’t fear it in the moment, hardly even felt its tingling warmth.

  She rose up, all the while staring at the cipher medallion. When she was even with Adri, she simply walked off the steam tornado and onto the raised platform.

  Solindra had meant to keep on walking and use those steam winds in the grand slap she was going to deliver to Adri’s beautiful, flawless face.

  The steam princess brought up her own hand. Something purple glowed inside of it. Solindra’s tornado vanished and the young woman was left reeling for balance, her back and heels leaning out over the edge of the platform.

  Adri grabbed her in one hand. She held out her own purple cipher medallion in the other. She smiled and pulled Solindra forward onto secure footing. Then she replaced her medallion back inside her dress. A friendly smile lit her face and she clapped. “Well done, Solindra, well done. Better than I’d dared dream.” She walked across the circle and flipped a dial on the lever panel. The circle rattled as it began to reset to its planar level.

  The steam princess smiled wider. “I apologize that I had to act in such a manner.”

  “Act?” Solindra stumbled, off balance.

  “But I knew the only way you can make the steam react is through anger at the moment. Forgive me, my little bird. I can show you how to do that without such an emotive stimulus, but it won’t be easy.” Adri strolled off the training circle.

  Solindra followed. She didn’t know what else to do. At this point, she felt frozen and hollow, like an old tree trunk in a blizzard. “How did you use the cipher medallion? Everyone– almost everyone who has touched it has terrible hallucinations. But you’re not a crypter, are you?”

  Adri just smiled. “Perhaps. Depends on how one defines a crypter. I did the rites for myself, and I have the research, stolen from the Priory itself. I can teach you to use your sancta. In return, you will help me to end these nonsense atrocities of this war.”

  “Me?” Solindra hesitated stepping out of the ring.

  “It may not look like it, but we – Steampower, excuse me – is going to lose this war.” Adri’s face softened. “An untrained eye can’t see it now. Codic has more soldiers, but we have better, far more capable war machines than they. However, such technology is beset by many…mysterious accidents.”

  Solindra licked her lips, trying to keep pace. “Ghosts in the steam.”

  “The Priory’s work, no doubt. It’s been suspected they’ve been dipping their fingers into Codic’s government for a while now.” She offered another brilliant smile. “But you can control the ghosts in the steam too, and far more powerfully than those stodgy old men. You never fed on your mother’s breast, only on steam. Who knows? You can probably even talk with your lost father again through the ghosts, and demand to know why he stole an infant.”

  Chapter Ten

  Smith tapped the glass cane against the floor of the dry goods store quickly. His lips were pressed into a thin line. “Where is my vessel?”

  “A Priory Reaper,” Drina growled. She, Jing and Theo remained motionless. The only sound in the room was the creaking of the door in the wind and the hushed breathing of the assembled townspeople. Nothing moved except for Smith’s tapping cane.

  The man in black exhaled. “It will take me less than two seconds to destroy the heretical thing, and I’ve already wasted too much time on this venture. I didn’t know you were involved.” He doffed his bowler hat to Drina and Jing. “So, well played, but the game is over. Where is she?”

  “Blown up,” Jing said. “Smuggler was carrying dynamite, and wouldn’t you know, he smoked too close to the damn crates. You heard the explosion, you said so.”

  “Your work was finished by an idiot before you could do it.” Drina stuck up her chin.

  Smith frowned. He glanced over his shoulder to the townsfolk. “Go find me a red-headed young woman, probably hiding by the river. Do so, and your children will be able to thank you in person.”

  Most of the people stiffened at the remark. Two or three of them glanced down at the floor, refusing to look at Drina or Jing, and hustled out the door. The majority of the local population remained motionless, rooted with fear.

  Theo swallowed. He could feel the tension in the room as if he could feel a tightrope beneath his feet. “And take some government stranger’s word against the Hex?”

  Smith lifted up his own cipher medallion. “Some stranger who has already demonstrated that he is more powerful than an old campfire story.”

  “The Hex is real.” Theo straightened his shoulders. “They don’t have to sneak in during the night and steal your children away.”

  “Yeah!” A young man around Theo’s age pushed his way through the crowd. “They’ll save us. My old man said that he saw–”

  Smith swatted him across the mouth with the cane. That finally shook the people into motion. Several moved to catch the falling teenager while the others packed closer in to Smith and Theo.

  The Reaper raised both his cane and free hand. “Folks, listen to me. All I want is this traitor girl whom these people are harboring. I want nothing of your town or your children.”

  “You’re a crypter!” Theo shouted.

  The following silence stunned him. No outraged shouts erupted. Instead, he heard the sharp intakes of breath from Jing and Drina behind him.

  “And?” Smith said into the echoing silence.

  Theo nearly swallowed his tongue. “And…and everyone knows what crypters do! Twist the ghosts in the steam to your bidding! And, oh yes, that they steal children away in the night. Am I close, sir?”

  “Walking on fire, boy,” Smith growled.

  Theo could feel sweat stinging his forehead. The added weight felt like it could tip him over in a gust of wind. Surely Smith and everyone else could see it too. But he set his jaw and continued, “Talking to the ghosts goes against nature!”

  “It is part of nature!” Smith slammed his cane down. “As much as dying is.”

  Theo took a step back, slightly faster than he’d mean
t to, but it put him closer to Jing and Drina. “But the Hex has always protected us from unnatural enemies!” Through the air and in the floorboards, he felt the tension in the room tightening. The tigers would leap all at once.

  Smith ducked his head. “Well played, my young foe. I had scant information on you, Mr. Theodore Meilleur. I won’t be out-talked again.” He removed an almost flat cylinder three times the size of an egg timer from his jacket. Water sloshed inside the glass tubes. “And you’ve made their decision for them.”

  He flipped it around to show that his blue sancta had been fastened into the device. He pressed his thumb down on the plunger on the top. “Can you live with yourself?” The water distorted the rising glow of the sancta. Bubbles started to form as the water began to heat. Smith pocketed the device.

  Suddenly, an impenetrable cloud of black smoke choked the room. Its acrid taste seared the inside of Theo’s mouth and nostrils. He struggled to open his eyes.

  Smith was gone. People were shouting and shoving; someone knocked Theo aside. The bricoleur had grown up knowing to watch for the doors and behind counters and tables for the person in the center of the smoke, but Smith had been surrounded by people on all sides. If it had just been a distraction, it had been a good one. If it had been something more…

  Theo tried to spit the acrid taste out of his mouth. He shivered. Crypters – the Priory could keep the lot of them. His world stuttered to a stop.

  How the hell had Smith known his name?

  Someone shouted something very near to his ear.

  “What?”

  “I said, the boiler tower!” Drina slapped him upside the head with enough force to send him staggering forward.

  “What?” Theo managed.

  Drina smacked him again. “Logic, stupid.”

  “The boiler!” a woman screamed. “They were here the entire time?”

  Drina, Jing and Theo rode the tide of the surging crowd down the street to the boiler. It was the squat, square tower with one side overhanging the Eld that they’d seen on their way in. A massive wooden waterwheel turned ponderously, but the sluice had been closed, allowing no new water into or out of the tower itself. The wheel brought the water up, splashed it against the concrete of the tower and spilled it right back into the river below.