Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (22 page)

In truth, Trisk had a point, one that most of us were too terrified of our parents to utter on our own. Spring and autumn were what made summer and winter who they were. One could not pass from sun-warmed fields of lengthening hay to the deep crackle of the ice in the forests without journeying through the golden days of autumn. Neither would the frozen lakes yield to the pounding glory of summer heat without the mediating touch of spring.

Pride, it was always about the pride. What Mother and Father had not anticipated was producing a child with even more pride than their immeasurable stores of that emotion, both their virtue and vanity.

My little sister Triskaidecalia, difficult as she was, served as the undoing of much, and the doing of much more. I played my part, too, not to be immodest about the whole business, but on her so much of several plots did pivot.

Lord High Counselor Festus

There’s something wrong here, I tell you, but despite my best efforts I have not been able to place my finger upon the nub of the matter. No one in my position survives long without a web of informants and many whispered conversations behind one arras or another, but not even my slyest, most loyal creepers have been able to unravel the skein of my worries in these matters of late.

It does not aid my cause that King Grimm has been seized of mad enthusiasms with the impending arrival of his fatherhood. He dreams of his heir and babbles constantly of how they will forge a friendship between father and son that will be the envy of all Talos. In his swelling pleasure, he also has forbidden to me some of my instruments of statecraft, both certain elusive philosophies of mind as well as the more literal instruments hidden in my Cellars of Inquiry.

I have had to pension off my torturers, and amnesties are granted as fast as arrests are made these days. Is that any way to run a kingdom, I ask you?

Still, His Highness prates on about new eras and enlightenment and the beneficent role of government, and all I can wonder is, where did he learn those words? Grimm is a good man, or at least a man who aspires to be good, but he’s never been one for political theory and a life of the mind. I suspect Queen Perrault has been reading him books again, and talking up the future of Talos that they will leave for their son.

Even to that matter, what will happen if the queen bears a girl? This I worry about as well, for matters of the royal succession are my purview. The question of inheritance has dogged our politics this last decade and more. Grimm seems certain his sweet wife is bringing a son into the world. I would not wager more than even odds that this will be true, royal seed being no more or less prone than any other to defining the gender of the offspring in advance.

And it is not as if the ordinary affairs of the kingdom have taken some sort of departure from their fractious norms during this period of royal pregnancy. As ever our neighboring kingdoms bear their weight down upon Talos’s diminutive borders. Mountebanks come to town to swindle, beaten wives set fire to their husbands, horses are stolen, marriageable daughters elope with unsuitable sons, and all the petty, sordid dreams of people find their outlets in matters that ever seem to need my attention in order to be resolved.

All of this passes below King Grimm’s notice like pond muck
beneath the rounded bottom of a swan. He abides only on the surface of all things, pleasantly thoughtless and small of mind, though he cuts a fine figure parading through the streets of Talos City on his pale charger, gleaming in bright armor and waving to the cheering crowds.

Perhaps it is enough for a kingdom to have such a king. Queen Perrault certainly fills in some of his deficiencies, but in her condition she seems to spend far more time closeted with that infernal, clanking priest, and the only doctor she will trust, Dr. M. T. Scholes. That strange red-bearded man from the Nordic countries claims learnings beyond our poor Sorbonne- and Heidelberg-educated physicians who serve the court and country of Talos as ably as they might and perhaps no better than they should.

In all of this, there is a wrongness. My bones tell me so, and I have been Lord High Counselor all these years since I helped Godfrey the Shrewd choke on a peach pit. My bones are smarter than my thoughts, but they do not communicate so clearly as to put those intelligences to use.

So I badger my informants and walk the halls in slippers and scent the winds as best I can. A plot is afoot, and I do not know its name or nature, but I will discover it. And when I do, I will act in the best interests of king and country.

That is who I am. The best interests, walking on two feet and talking in a voice like a rusty hinge, but always watching, listening, scenting for trouble.

And trouble there is to come.

NARRATIVE INTERLUDE THE SECOND: CHRISTENING BEAUTY

The Royal Palace of Talos was bedecked with even more finery than had graced the wedding of Grimm and Perrault. Strings of spark-lights had been run along the gutters and the ridgepoles of every roof from the stable privy to the King’s Tower. The mechanical roof over the Great Hall was repaired and lubricated so
that it could be opened to the sky for the first time in two generations. Every flower bed on the grounds was fresh and beautiful. Every vase within the palace halls nodded with fresh blossoms.

Talos City was hardly any less beautiful. The meanest drudges in their hovels had scrubbed and whitewashed their tiny, grubby doorsteps. The Brass Quarter turned out their own hand-cast finery upon lintels and window boxes and eaves.

Father Brassbound watched over the little princess. Zellandyne was only a week old and, as the maids said, still warm from her mother’s womb. Somehow he and Queen Perrault had kept the truth of her pregnancy secret, relying on only one more conspirator, Dr. M. T. Scholes. A foreigner overflowing with scientific charm, the doctor’s trust could be assured under the veil of medical discretion and a goodly sum transferred in payment. Even better, much like the priest himself, Scholes had no familial or political loyalties in Talos to tempt him to betray his well-bought confidences.

Zellandyne was an unquiet child. Even now, she fussed in the priest’s arms. Of course his brass limbs were not the soft warmth of her mother’s breast, but Father Brassbound privately thought that the girl somehow intuited the lie of her birth and was struggling to force the secret out.

King Grimm had been taken aback when his beloved child turned out not to be a son, but he quickly recovered and swore love eternal to his surprising little daughter.

Now, this day, they would be christening Zellandyne, welcoming her into the protection of the Church and the arms of society. She was bound for greatness, indubitably so being born to the throne, or at least being born to be marriageable for the throne. All the nobility and wealth of Talos was gathering even now in the Great Hall along with assorted dignitaries and nominal allies from the surrounding kingdoms and farther afield.

They had even invited the Court of Seasons. That had disturbed Father Brassbound a bit—the Church did not enjoy warm relations with the fae, to put the matter mildly—but Queen Perrault had assured him there was little chance of the king and
queen attending, let alone their obnoxious swarm of children. Still, the Talosoise Mistress of Protocol had invited all twelve of the unholy brood by name. They were familial relations to the queen, after all.

A knock echoed from the door of the little tiring room where Father Brassbound currently awaited events in the Great Hall. “Come in,” he called.

The king slipped in, the anxious face of a guard close behind. He smiled and pushed it shut, leaving privacy for himself, his daughter, and the priest.

“How is she?” Grimm’s great, noble face with its aquiline nose and glittering eyes was as paternal and wise as ever.

Father Brassbound sometimes thought Grimm and Talos both were quite fortunate that the face did not match the mind behind those eyes. “Fussing, as you can see.” The priest hitched his arms a bit and elevated Zellandyne so the king could examine his daughter. “She is as ready as a child her age can be, however.”

Grimm thought this over for a moment, his lips moving as he worked through some difficulty with Father Brassbound’s statement. “And the queen?” the king finally ventured.

“I would not know, Your Highness,” the priest replied truthfully. “I have been here with the baby this past half hour, and the princess was brought to me by Dr. Scholes. The queen has been about her own affairs this morning, preparing for the christening.” All their plotting was long since done, the main point of it already come and gone with the birth and presentation of the princess.

“Oh,” the king said. He paused again, lost in the very short train of his thoughts. Then he visibly brightened. “Oh, yes, I just saw her.” He looked around a moment, as if expecting to discover someone new in the small tiring room. “I need to tell you, Father…” Grimm’s voice trailed off.

“Yes?” the priest asked patiently, jiggling the child who was beginning to whine. He was quite used to the king’s ways.

“Winter and Summer did not come.” Grimm’s lips moved silently a moment. “But their children have.”

Father Brassbound sighed. The Coven of the Seasons. A swarm of difficult children ranging in age from eighteen to six. Witches. Fae. Magical people of some sort, though opinions differed. And they were said to be hellions, setting fire to cottages and souring milk across the provinces of their parents’ demesne.

“Thank you, sire,” he said to the king. “I trust they will not disrupt the ceremony.”

The actual baptism itself would be brief enough, a mercy for all concerned but especially priest and child. However, there was to be a lengthy presentation of gifts, a demonstration of goodwill, and—for some, at least—loyalty to the new princess who would someday sit on the throne of Talos. Plenty of opportunity for mischief.

“Who won’t?” the king asked brightly. He smiled with regal dignity at the priest. “I believe I am supposed to be at the queen’s side now.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” Father Brassbound watched his monarch slip back out the door, leaving behind the usual cloud of vagueness and confusion that he seemed to spread like some magical aura.

He looked down at the princess. Little Zellandyne was fussing, but her eyes were heavy. “Let’s hope you take after your mother,” the priest whispered with a mix of kindness and frustration in his voice.

F
ather Brassbound entered the Great Hall with the princess still in his arms. The roof was open, starlings circling overhead under a clear, blue spring sky. There were more people gathered here than he’d ever seen in the palace. Their breath was like the sound of a distant ocean, a great tide of open mouths and wide eyes, heads bobbing as people craned for a glimpse of the princess in his arms. All around the audience, lights glittered and bunting hung, while banners depended rippling and bright from beams and buttresses.

He walked with measured tread to the altar that had been
laid on a dais at the head of the Great Hall. A baptismal font was set before it, already filled with water that had been boiled on orders of Dr. Scholes and blessed prior to the ceremony by Father Brassbound himself. He trusted the water had been kept warm as he’d requested, as that made matters with the child much less difficult.

At the altar, facing the audience, he took a deep breath. The king and queen stood before him, just below the font, their backs to the mass filling the Great Hall.

“We are gathered here,” Father Brassbound began, feeling the tremolos and imperfections in his voice box as strongly as ever, “to celebrate the birth of the princess Zellandyne Olivia Rosebriar de Talos, and to welcome her into the embrace of the Holy Mother Church.”

The crowd sighed, as if the distant surf of their breathing had decided to sweep across the intervening landscape in a tidal surge.

“Let all who stand witness before the altar this day, flesh and brass alike, know that the princess Zellandyne is offered to the Lord by her parents, the good King Grimm and his wife, Queen Perrault.”

He held the child high so that everyone could see her in her white christening gown, itself a fall of lace and silk and fine-grained lawn that made her look like a small, squirming confection. Zellandyne woke up at the motion and opened her mouth wide in preparation for belting forth an outraged squall.

Father Brassbound swooped the child down to the font. “I enjoin you now and commit your soul to the Holy Mother Church,” he said swiftly, settling Zellandyne into the water, which was thankfully—and as ordered—warm. “As we are so told in holy scripture, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The princess was so surprised by the water that her own impending scream was interrupted. He traced the chrism on her forehead, then lifted her up again, dripping water down his own
vestments and onto the platform. “I now call forth King Grimm and Queen Perrault,” he said, anxious to hand off the child before she summoned a new burst of infant outrage.