Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (24 page)

That, at my own age of eight, was when I first knew the rumors about Mother to be true. I have no idea if she literally has ogre blood in her veins, though she is a large enough woman to put fright into one of those Teutonic Valkyries, but she certainly has an ogre’s soul in her hard heart.

Yet she is my mother, and she loves me.

So when I turned sixteen I announced that I would quest. First to the Holy Land to worship in the shrines where our Lord was originally venerated. Then to hypocaustal Rome and her younger cousin Venice, where the workshops that birthed the brass world still clang and burble and echo with devilish imaginings amid the foundations of lost empire. Then, I’d told the court at my celebratory feast, I would circle among the countries of Europe seeking deeds of valor and righteousness in the manner of the knights of old.

What could they do but cheer me?

Mother had been furious, of course, her eyes smoldering, but she would hardly tear down her beloved son before court and king. Even she had to answer to Father, when he bestirred himself to venture a preference in some matter besides governance of the kingdom and the vintage to be drunk at dinner.

So I fit myself into the tales she had caused me to be raised upon and rode away from the palace and from Nouveau Kronstadt as free a man as I would ever likely be.

Someday I will have to return and take up my father’s crown, whether I wish it or not.

I have worshipped at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I have fought against the armies of the Musselman, myself personally bringing down one of the great, jointed walkers out of the fabled workshops of Samarkand through a combination of dumb luck and a well-aimed petard. Decidedly not a nobleman’s weapon, but the lessons of my father’s court had far fewer applications on the field of battle than my arms masters had believed, or at least
been willing to confide to me. With that in mind, I spent several seasons apprenticed to a twisted little woman in Murano, a mistress of clockwork and chemical fires who was building weapons no sane man would use.

And now I am once again ahorse—my third mount these past seven years of wandering, this one a Berber mare of cunning mind and fine footwork—wandering the fields and forests of Mediterranean Gaul and Iberia, wondering if I should finally turn my face toward home.

NARRATIVE INTERLUDE THE THIRD:
TRUE LOVE LEAVES NO TRACES

The prince, riding on his horse Lightning as a road-dusted and exhausted knight-errant, approached the Royal Palace of Talos by the westward road. These past years the palace had become one of the most famous residences in Europe, thanks to the fantastic stories about the daughter of the house. It was, indeed, a curious sight to see.

Smoke belched from three high, brick stacks that rose behind the tiled roofs. Even at a distance, he could hear the clang and shudder of foundry hammers. Machines not so much in the shape of men stalked and slouched along the palace’s outer walls, or stood atop towers and roof ridges like so many sculptures left behind in the retreat of some mad metalworker.

Puissant smiled behind his rough Maghrebi scarf. So some aspect of the stories was true, if they’d banished their guards in favor of obedient automata. Or perhaps these were even brass men, whose kind he had met so many of on the island of Murano during his long ago days in Venice.

A king and queen afraid of comely young men being too close to their daughter. Mother probably took delight at the cosmic joke played upon these people.

Prince Puissant was in truth on the way home to see his parents, after years of wandering. Somehow his mother’s ambitions
had become less overwhelming and less important to him with the passing of years. The papers said Father was ill, and not expected to see another winter. He’d never really meant to leave them forever, just to live outside the shadow of Mother’s will awhile.

Well, he’d certainly done that.

But this business of the curse on Talos, that had always interested him. It seemed one last, fitting piece of errancy to pursue on his way home.

He wondered what life was like inside the palace.

T
aking a knee before King Grimm and Queen Perrault, the prince had already seen plenty of evidence inside the throne room of what had passed over the years. Soot gathered in odd corners even here, a sign that the standards of the house had been relaxed over time. The guards were, as he thought, all brass. Most of them possessed the slack-jawed stillness of automata, but the sergeants were keen-eyed, their gaze gleaming with the intelligence of well-wrought punchtapes. There was even a brass priest attending the king and queen as they received him.

“Your Highnesses,” Puissant said, raising his face to meet their tired gazes. “It is both my duty and my pleasure to present my compliments to you.”

“You are a traveler, yes?” The queen’s voice was as weary as her gaze.

The years have not been so kind to her,
the prince thought. She had been mourning her daughter since the girl’s birth. How hard that must be for a parent, to raise a child thinking only that you would have to watch her die. Or at least sleep away a generation, if the tales of the curse were true. “Yes,” he replied aloud. “I have these past years been to the Holy Land, and all across the south of Europe and the north of Africa.”

“And you know of our troubles?” King Grimm’s voice was reedy and weary, nothing like the glorious rumble that must have once emerged from that great chest.

“Only what anyone on the street might know. There are half a hundred tales, but the truth seems likely simple enough, if all the more sad for that.”

The queen leaned forward. “Do you bring some wisdom that might break this spell?” Old woe flashed in her eyes.

“Only common sense and a good sword hand, I am afraid.” The prince’s fingers strayed momentarily to his hilt.

“You are welcome to the hospitality of our house,” King Grimm said. “There is only one condition on your visit. You may observe our daughter as opportunity permits, but you may not speak to her.”

“This would seem to be like solving a puzzle without touching the pieces,” the prince replied, “but I understand your fears, and will heed your condition without reservation.”

“Then be welcome,” Queen Perrault bade him.

T
he prince abided awhile in the Royal Palace of Talos. He swiftly came to like the king and queen, and could see beneath their twinned mantles of worry and fear that they were not so far beyond their young and energetic years. If the curse could be lifted, the royal couple would be rescued from a generation of sorrow.

Taking his cues about discretion and what was permissible from Otho, the elderly Lord Chamberlain, Prince Puissant observed Princess Zellandyne from a distance. She was almost wanton in her exuberance of movement and action, he noted, as if she’d been raised a boy. She was handsome enough, if not precisely beautiful. The muscled arms and thick legs engendered by long hours in the forges and workshops of the Royal Palace kept her from the classic beauty associated with her breeding and station.

Still, she moved with a flashing vivacity to which he could not help being drawn.

“What projects does she pursue in her workshops?” he asked Otho one day as the two of them looked down upon the metal
yard where the princess was sorting through pipe stock in pursuit of some unknowable aim. The prince and the lord chamberlain stood together in the Weather Tower of the palace, hidden from Zellandyne’s view by the shadowed embrasures.

“These past several years, automata,” the old man replied. “She built a leopard in the memory of her old pet ocelot, that stalks the gardens to this day terrifying the servants. Then an improved model of palace guard. Lately the librarians inform me she has been much at study of the books on punchtapes and clockwork intelligences. I know she spends long hours with Father Brassbound.” He added a bit sourly, “The old priest can refuse her nothing, not even inspection of the contents of his head.”

The prince reflected on how many meanings that phrase could contain, but said nothing to goad the lord chamberlain’s obviously wounded heart.

Still, what would one in her position truly be thinking to make oneself a man?

A
few days later, he caught the old priest in the upper gallery above the Great Hall. “Father,” called out Puissant, “a moment of your time, please.”

“Of course, my son.” Father Brassbound sat on a carved bench and met the prince’s gaze. “I apologize if I have been dilatory in making you welcome here in Talos.”

“No, no, not at all. I am made most welcome. But I wish to ask you something rather personal, if I may so boldly presume.” The prince drew a breath. “This is in pursuit of the problem of the princess.”

“Anything, my son.”

“To cut to the core of my question, in your experience, how long might a brass man such as yourself expect to live? Are you bound by the fleshly three score and ten?” He knew what he’d been taught amid the forges of Murano and Rome, but he wanted to hear this one’s answer.

“No….” Father Brassbound stared a moment at his feet as if
they were newly arrived at the end of his legs. “Barring accident or murder, of course, we live the life of our component pieces. Which, unlike those of my fleshly brethren, can for the most part be replaced. Some of the earliest brass men from the workshops of Samarkand and Constantinople are still said to survive, four centuries after their creation. The art of crafting the punchtapes and the intelligences ever improves, of course. While those cannot be changed without changing the man within the mind, the bodies go on.”

“I have met a few of those old brass along the shores of the Golden Horn,” the prince said, musing a moment on memory. “So if the princess were to lay true love’s first kiss upon a brass man, she might sleep for centuries while he walked the Earth.”

Father Brassbound closed his eyes and sighed. “Do not suggest such a thing to the king and queen, I beg you. Besides, it is not done. Flesh and brass do not mix that way.”

Puissant laughed softly. “Not even in the manner of their birth? We both know better, sir priest. And if you believe that people do not mix according to their passions, then you are more naive a prelate than I would give credit for. Do not confuse your wishes for the way world might be with the complex realities of the heart and body.”

“Wishes are all we have left to us here in Talos.”