Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (47 page)

Eleanor stood tall and for a second almost spoke. Her mouth dropped open, but then she shut it with a snap. Her brothers’ fate and that of all the cities that flew the skies depended on her strength of will. It would be weak of her to falter now.

“It is as they say,” one burly guardsman rumbled. “She does not speak…even in her own defense.”

The word
witch
was passed from man to angry man, and Eleanor knew there was no way out of this situation. They were blocking her way from the room, and where could she go without her works anyway?

The four dragonflies buzzed and snapped on her windowsill,
but the princess gestured them back. They would only create a worse situation. Brave little insects that they were, she didn’t want them destroyed.

Then a voice from the back snapped, “Make way, make way!”

Suddenly the guardsmen were shifting, jostling, and some of them slipping out of the tiny room. They all hurriedly got out the way to make space for the man who demanded entry.

Eleanor was sure she was hallucinating. Though she did not know the tall young man with the military uniform who loomed in the doorway, she did recognize the silver badge on the scarlet sash over his shoulder. It was an eagle, with its wings spread. Only one person could wear such a thing. She had seen its like only on her father.

This was the king of the City of Eagles. Eleanor wobbled on her feet as her stomach growled and her brain struggled to catch up. This was the last person she wanted to seem weak in front of, but going so long on so little food had finally caught up with her.

Eleanor’s vision blurred as her legs buckled. She tried desperately to prop herself up against the wall, but it was treacherous and she ended up sliding to the floor. Throughout it all she kept her jaw locked shut, refusing to let out even a pained sigh.

Through her graying vision she saw the king bend down toward her. He had startling eyes; they gleamed gold like a hawk’s. He turned and commented over his shoulder, “She doesn’t much look like a witch to me. And most certainly not a very good one.”

“But, sire, you know the temple will…” From her place on the floor, she couldn’t tell who spoke.

Darkness was washing over her, but the last thing Eleanor heard was the king saying, “We must keep an eye on her, that is for certain.”

W
hen Eleanor struggled back to consciousness, it was to find herself in a bed as soft as the one she had left back in the Swan City. For a moment, a blissful moment, she believed she had imagined the whole horrible Madame Escrew event, but then as she sat up
she realized that she was not in the City of Swans, but the one of Eagles. It was the decorations that told her that immediately.

Great birds of prey were shown everywhere: in tapestries, paintings, and most disturbingly of all in sculpture, where a spread-winged eagle had a tormented swan in its claws.

That bought her back to reality with a start. So she slid out of bed and gently to her feet. Immediately the smell of food on a nearby table drew her over. Eleanor had devoured all of the soup and bread before she even worked out that it was onion broth and good millet bread.

Feeling her brain starting to work, like a furnace finally fed coal, she began to explore. The room was decorated in outrageously rich fashion—even more so than she was used to in her home. It was a two-room suite of some kind. Eleanor entered cautiously to find the second room was some kind of observatory. Her father had one very similar in his own palace. This was, however, even larger, filled with many long benches, and on these were all her tools, the cloaks in progress. Even the starlight opals were there and the four little mechanical dragonflies.

She rushed over and ran her hands over them to make sure she was not imagining it.

“I think you will find everything there.” The king, standing in the window, overlooking the swirling clouds, had gone unnoticed by her.

A hundred questions bubbled in her mind, but she managed to hold them back.

“I imagine you are wondering,” the king said, stepping toward her, those emerald eyes locked on her, “why I would give you this chance to complete your work, when you might be some kind of witch.”

Eleanor looked away, totally unsure how to deal with a man without her tongue.

“Well,” he said, picking up the jar of starlight opals, “you are a most unusual one, and I think perhaps you are silent by choice.” The look he shot her was direct and probing.

The princess had never felt such a wash of warmness over her
body for a man’s sake. Certainly there had been suitors in her time, but with her the sole sister in a line of eleven brothers, not many had lingered long. Now she wished most fervently for the freedom to use her voice, to show him her wit and intelligence. Instead, all she could do was smile. Even writing was something she dared not attempt.

The king shook his head, as if emerging from a deep pool of water. “But where are my manners? I have not properly introduced myself! I am King Nikolai Swoop, of the City of Eagles.” His fingers tweaked his cravat almost nervously.

A little confused herself, Eleanor picked up an end of the silver metallic tape and gestured for his permission to begin. The ticking of the clock in her head reminded her she had little time for embarrassment—or any other emotion, come to think of it.

Nikolai tilted his head. “They say I should see if you fly, but I am preparing a city for war from the King of the Swans and I cannot turn down this chance to see what you are building. None of my tinkers can fathom what this is all about. Maybe it can help my city survive.”

He seated himself on a stool near the window, out of her way but near enough that he could observe what Eleanor was doing. And thus they proceeded.

He came and watched her every day while the dragonflies circled the observatory. Sometimes he sat silent and watched, departing without a word after no particular length of time. She imagined he had many things to deal with since they were—as he said—on the very edge of war. Part of her—the smallest portion that she allowed freedom in those brief moments she stopped to eat—was flattered at the king’s attention.

For there were times he talked. At first they were words of a ruler: light matters of court, moments of his family history, and the minutiae of ruling that grated on him. However, as the days passed he delved deeper and, perhaps emboldened by her silence, told her things about himself. He revealed his fears, his hopes and dreams.

For herself, Eleanor yearned to tell him the same, but the work and the magic held her tongue.

The mechanical delivery system was ready—or as ready as it was ever going to be—but it was the cloaks that would wrap tight around the forms of the swan machines that were the most time-consuming.

As she sat on the floor, her fingers worn almost to nubs by the work, Eleanor’s mind contemplated the thousand ways that this could have been made easier. If she had the voice, she could have asked Nikolai to get some of his subjects to help—but Stella had asserted that it must be done by the princess alone. Once when her fingers started bleeding, Nikolai tried to take the link work away from her and do it himself. Her frantic dismay had been enough apparently to keep from trying that again. He did, however, remind her to eat.

As she marked off the twenty-first day on the wall of her prison—something that made the king’s brow furrow with confusion—Eleanor sighed.

Nikolai looked up from where he sat, in the sun, his gold hair gleaming. He looked so normal and wonderful that Eleanor risked another sigh. She slid down to the floor once more and picked up the cloak.

Despite her protestations, the cloaks were nearly done. In fact, she was working on the final one, confident that she was going to finish it well before the end of the month and the deadline that Stella had set. She only had to stay the course and finish the final loop work, as dull and painful as that was.

All would have been well had the bells not begun to ring. It was not in a happy way, but in a discordant chorus that spoke of imminent threat. Nikolai leaped to his feet even as Eleanor ran to the windows.

Together they looked out into a clear blue sky, and the princess felt her chest tighten and her throat close. The machines were so much more incredible and frightening when seen in the daylight.

Great wings of brass and bronze beat the air as the eleven swans descended on the City of Eagles. Eleanor and Nikolai watched as the city’s ornithopters flitted out to meet them. Compared to the
stout realism of the machines, the ’thopters looked like a child’s set of paper planes. They lasted just about as long.

The elegant swan necks were bent toward the attackers. Above the desperate ringing of the bells could be heard a dreadful, constant stream of explosions. “Holy steam,” the king swore, thumping the back of the chair.

The delicate wings of the ornithopters caught fire and crisped. Their descent was silent and dreadful.

“Wait here!” The king grabbed her shoulders and planted a kiss on Eleanor’s silent mouth. It was sudden, unexpected, and made her blood rush to her head, but before she could react further, he darted out the door to see to his city.

The princess was left standing in the conservatory, the final cloak trailing from her fingers, and watching her brothers destroy a city she had come to see was no enemy. Eagle and Swan had been at odds for generations, but it had never broken out into real war.

Some of the smaller airships were punctured already, their envelopes sagging and collapsing in on them. People on the deck below ran backward and forward like disturbed insects, cutting the ties between the stricken ships and those still untouched, trying to save them. It seemed like a pointless attempt to Eleanor because soon enough the whole city would be in flames.

The princess knew, despite one of the cloaks not being completely done, that this was the only chance she would have. She cast about, grasped hold of a chair, and flung it through the nearest window of the observatory. It shattered, spraying glass out into the void, and the sound joined the screaming of the citizens and the rattle of the swan machines.

“There she is!” The guardsmen had entered the workroom, and at their head was a priest of the Sky God in his bright blue vestments. He looked as though he was about to have apoplexy right there and then.

“Witch!” he howled, his pointing managing to encompass both Eleanor and the devastation beyond the window. “She has bought these demons of the air down on us.”

Eleanor knew she only had mere moments and that all of her
work of the last weeks hung on this few heartbeats. The four dragonflies, quiet for so many weeks, flew once more to her defense. Eleanor flung another chair at the advancing guards and spun away.

Then as they scrambled toward her, she turned to the window and screamed, “Brothers! Brothers!”

Something in her blood, something in the bond they shared, must have reached them, because the machines turned. For a long second they flapped in position, outlined against the bright blue sky, with the flame light of the airships below them reflected on their brass wings. Then they dived.

The priest and the guards screamed behind her, leaping back almost as quickly as they had surged forward. Eleanor stood there, one cloak held in each hand, and waited.

The swan machines, each about twice the size of a man, crashed through the glass of the observatory. Eleanor could see that her memory had not failed her. The details of the gears and workings of the swans were as she had seen them in the moonlight.

The swans all bent their heads to her, and she could see the weapons that Madame Escrew had fitted them with: devices to spurt flame, and repeating guns the like of which she had never seen. All of which could be turned on her in a moment.

If the remains of her brothers were truly gone, then this would be her last moment. Eleanor stood poised, knowing that she didn’t have any chance should they turn on her. The articulated necks and gleaming jeweled eyes of the birds were all directed at the princess below.

“Come away….” Nikolai’s voice came soft from behind her back. He sounded as if he were calming a falcon, trying to put a hood on it.

Eleanor dared not glance back at him; one sight of his face twisted with concern and she would be quite undone. Yet she couldn’t tell him what to do, not yet…not when she was so close to the end of her task. She just had to hope he would follow her lead.

With quick strides, she walked toward the first of the swans and flung the cloak over the metallic back. With eleven brothers she had to work fast, but then she heard the king himself step up and help her. He couldn’t have known what he was doing, but her heart swelled at his trust in her.

Finally the swans all stood, covered in their cloaks.

“See, my liege,” said the temple priest, finally collected himself, “the witch knows them.”

“I think perhaps she does.” Nikolai held up his hand, to stay the guards from making a move.

Eleanor took out of her pocket the largest starlight opal. The one worth a fortune in any kingdom. Every love meant sacrifice.

Dropping the gem to the floor, she pulled her mallet out from her other sleeve and bought the weight of it smashing down on the precious thing.