Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) (32 page)

Something came clacking, rolling toward him.

He glanced down the causeway and saw a fist-sized black iron ball rolling out of the mist, its stubby neck flashing yellow with a burning fuse, clattering on the marble paving stones as it wobbled.

Grenade.

Buckle shoved Sabrina, sending her sprawling across the causeway stones, away from the grenade. He opened his mouth to shout a warning. The grenade exploded before he could utter a sound.

A bright, violent flash blew up the world.

Blinded by whiteness, Buckle sensed his body hurtling through the air, but the hard landing he expected never came; instead, a floating, velvet darkness swallowed him whole.

THE VELVET DARKNESS AND THE DUCKLING

“R
OMULUS, WATCH YOUR LINE
!” A voice came to Romulus Buckle, echoing across time. He was six years old, holding a fishing pole over an icy mountain creek. The fast-flowing water was a liquid transparency, gurgling under and around pancakes of ice that collared frost-rimed rocks and dead vegetation. The creek bed, wavering with the undulating current, was lined with oval stones, all smooth skinned and colored black, gray, and blue, but among them lay the real treasure: chunks of quartz that dazzled in the water, but lost their magic when you took them home and let them dry out in an old glass jar on your bedside table.

Having long forgotten his boring task as a fisherman, little Romulus was peering down at his fur-lined boots—too large for him, making room for a doubling of socks, which was warmer—as the toes pressed down on the rubbery brown strip of earth along the stream bank. He imagined that the imprints might remain there forever, a reminder to all that the great Romulus Buckle had once passed this way.

“Romulus! Son! Your line is getting tangled!” Romulus’s father, Alpheus, shouted again, with considerable amusement.

Romulus focused on his fishing line: it had drifted into a clump of dead brush on the stream bank and caught on a low-hanging twig, where it was now jerking against the current. He yanked at the line with his small hand, but he could not work it free.

“Here, Romulus, let me help you,” Alpheus said as he arrived, his boots ploshing in the snow, making footprints on the sludgy riverbank much bigger than those of Romulus. Alpheus took the fishing pole from Romulus’s hands and gently swept it back and forth, the tip just above the surface of the water, working the line out of the riverbank tangle.

Romulus looked up at the form of his father, silhouetted against the cold, gray sky. Alpheus was a slender man but tall, at least he always seemed very tall to little Romulus, and his heavy wolfskin greatcoat did little to reduce that impression. And when he picked Romulus up and carried him, which was often, the boy was always aware of his father’s exceptional physical strength, a strength he witnessed daily, as his father carried immense armloads of wood up the trail for the cabin fireplace, pounded a bent axe back into shape with a hammer, or dragged the horses into their harnesses as they dithered and kicked.

Romulus never saw his father, who seemed to exist in a pool of loving calmness that flowed over the people around him, commit an act of violence or raise his voice in anger, even with the hardships of life in a tiny cabin, alone in the high mountains of a land forever locked in winter.

Ever since he could remember, Romulus knew that his family was in hiding.

“Romulus wasn’t paying any attention at all, Daddy,” Elizabeth tattled, appearing at Alpheus’s waist, bundled in a hat and coat of white rabbit fur. She eyed Romulus with all the
disdain and superiority of a sister one year his senior. “He keeps losing hooks, and you said we don’t have very many.”

“It’s all right, Elizabeth,” Alpheus said, patting her head and gently pushing her on her way. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I’m telling Momma, too!” Elizabeth, squealing with delight at any prospect of pillorying her brother, ran off, her boots shedding globs of snow as she skipped up the trail that led to the cabin.

Romulus watched as his father tried to work the line free without losing the hook, and he suddenly felt bad. He sank his cold hands into his pockets and folded his fingers over some odd-shaped twigs he had collected there for safekeeping. He hated Elizabeth, but she was right: fish hooks were difficult to make, and he was letting his father down by constantly losing them in his tangled lines. Romulus crushed the twigs between his fingers, drew his hands out of his pockets, and opened them to watch the broken sticks drop and make little holes in the snow.

Alpheus had taken a step out into the creek, planting a boot on a rock that thrust up from the water, as he concentrated on saving the line and its precious hook. Romulus kicked a clod of snow and wandered away, clomping up a small hillock with some vague idea that, with a little elevation, he might be able to see some of his dozens of lost hooks glittering in the shallows and retrieve them for his father. He reached the crest and stopped, looking down into the bend of the dark creek as he brushed traces of crushed bark from his hands. Pieces of quartz glimmered everywhere along the creek bed, and it was difficult to tell if any of the sparkles might be iron hooks instead.

Romulus took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, watching the white vapor of the warm air curl in front of his eyes. Though
all months were winter, it was a nice day for the month of April, and the hidden sun was almost shining through the clouds.

Romulus’s attention drifted away from Alpheus, and he peered down into the quiet pool the creek formed as it spread out under the other side of the hillock. The water was deeper here, darker, and a grove of willow trees hid much of it under the curtain of their whip-thin, frozen branches. He noticed a mother duck with three yellow chicks huddling at the edge of the pool; she was acting strangely, waddling back and forth, her honks low and hoarse, as if she were exhausted.

There was something struggling in the pool. It was a duckling, the yellow puff of its body thrashing back and forth in the space where the willow branches touched the water.

Something silver flashed at the duckling’s beak. It was a fisherman’s hook—one of Romulus’s lost hooks—and it had snagged the poor little creature, who was now captured by the line.

The duckling had to be saved. It was his hook and his responsibility. Romulus thought no more on it than that. He skidded down the hillock and jumped into the water. His heart leapt at the icy shock as he plunged in to the waist. He waded slowly, his boots stone heavy, into the dangling branches of the willow tree, his hand reaching for the line. The duckling frantically peeped and slewed around as he approached, its head angled back awkwardly as the hook and line allowed it no more escape than a small circle. The mother duck leapt in from the opposite bank with a splash, honking, wings beating.

“I’m helping! I’m helping!” Romulus shouted, waving off the mother duck, afraid that she might peck an eye out or worse. He heard a slash of fear in his voice, for though he had been certain of the depth of the water in the pool—he had many times
poked long sticks into it—he was suddenly afraid that he might have miscalculated. The freezing water was already up to his chest, and he wasn’t sure if he was sinking any farther or not. The dark bottom of mud and roots was dangerously soft, and with his heavy winter clothes now waterlogged and impossibly heavy, he felt like he was in quicksand.

Romulus fought off a surge of panic.

His feet found something firm, a sunken log, perhaps. He was not going under—not yet, anyway. If he did, he figured that he could kick off his boots and twist out of his coat, letting them sink down to the black bottom of the pool, and make it back to the riverbank. Of course, his parents would be furious if he lost his fur clothes.

Romulus edged closer and grabbed the duckling, being careful not to close his cold-numbed fingers too tightly around its delicate strugglings. The duckling stilled, its eyes bright. He could feel its tiny heart pounding against the palm of his hand. He took hold of the shaft of the small fishhook, which had impaled the duckling’s upper beak, and pulled, but the barb held fast. There was a sudden flurry of wings and a clacking beak behind him, and he froze, squeezing his eyes shut, hunching his shoulders, waiting for an ear to be ripped off. The blow from the frightened mother never came, however, and she retreated to the riverbank to honk plaintively alongside her other three offspring.

Romulus’s teeth started to chatter and he could not stop it. It was strange, because the water did not feel cold anymore. He felt terribly numb below his knees. If he was going to save the baby duck, it had to be fast, and more brutal than he would have liked. He pressed his fingers tightly around the hook and drew the barbed end down through the puncture with all the
force he dare apply, lest he kill the animal in the attempt. The hook rattled a bit as he worked it loose—unpleasant for both the duckling and Romulus—but it popped out. The duckling, realizing it was free, peeped and kicked wildly. He let it go.

Romulus smiled as the duckling scrambled up the riverbank to its mother. He turned back to head to the shore but staggered, toppling forward, nearly dunking his head in the black water. His waterlogged clothes, ponderous as anchors, threatened to suck him under. His legs and feet were immovable blocks of ice. He tried to scream for his father but he barely wheezed: the vise of cold had squeezed his lungs tight.

He heard a loud splash of water behind him. A wave rippled across the pond, bouncing the ice at the bank; it kissed the underside of his chin as it passed him, but he could not feel it. In the next moment he shot into the air, lifted completely out of the water by Alpheus’s strong arms.

A few minutes later, Romulus sat beside a raging fire inside the cabin, stripped naked, rubbed down and wrapped in two of his mother’s thickest quilts, sipping harsh tea and still shivering a little.

Romulus’s mother, Diana, gave his big toe, which was sticking out of the covers, a good tweak. “That’s for being reckless, my reckless little boy,” she sighed.

Diana was a small woman—though her plentiful, curly blond hair made her seem a bit bigger—who in every moment worried about her children, and Romulus knew that his adventurous spirit and defective judgment gave her no relief. “Two more cups of tea—you drink every drop—and then off to bed. No discussion,” Diana said, wiping her hands on her apron as she turned to tend her kettle on the potbellied stove.

Alpheus appeared from the bedroom, having changed out of his wet clothes. When Alpheus had been carrying him up
the hill to the cabin, Romulus thought he had heard his father curse under his breath. If this was true, it would be the only time in his life he would hear his father do so. Now Alpheus looked angry—but only for a moment. He grinned as he took a cup of tea from Diana and settled down into the rocking chair he had made, folding his leg over his knee and leaning in to whisper to his boy.

“Rescue all of the ducklings you wish, my son, but I beg you to be more thoughtful and inventive in your methods,” Alpheus said, rubbing Romulus’s wet head with his powerful hand. “Become a man of peace, and every act of kindness, no matter how small, no matter what the cost to you, tips the balance of the world in your favor. Promise me that you will always be a man of peace and that you will never, ever, become a man of war.”

“I promise, father,” Romulus replied.

The flames in the fireplace leapt strangely.

Buckle found himself a grown man again, standing in a long stone corridor lit by the fluttering blue flames of gas lamps. It resembled the architecture he had seen in the Founders’ city, but this was no underground prison. The archways were high and vaulted, their columns adorned with grotesque but fancifully chiseled gargoyles and phoenixes, and in every alcove between the arches hung a painting. From each portrait stared a stern face, which, whether male or female, was bordered by varying shades of red hair.

The echoing neigh of a horse and the resounding clatter of horseshoes on stone made Buckle spin around. At the far end of the corridor, he saw a man atop a magnificent white charger, whose hooves threw sparks as it pawed the floor stones.
The rider was hidden beneath a flowing scarlet cloak, the hood drawn down over his face, but it did little to obscure his obvious physical strength, or the menace of his presence.

Buckle grabbed for the weapons at his belt, but they were not there. Fury surged up inside him, fury with the raw unfairness of the nightmare. “Have at it then, specter!” Buckle howled. “But dare not hide your face from me!”

The rider threw back his scarlet hood. The face that emerged, a handsome pale visage with a high forehead and a great mane of crimson hair sweeping to the shoulders, struck Buckle with the hardness of it, of the cliff-like cheekbones, as if the face had been cut from the same rock as the gargoyles in the grand hall. And the green eyes, witch’s-cauldron-green eyes, were cold and murderous. The rider drew his sword from its long scabbard with a metallic swish, the cold steel streaming with the blue reflections of the gas lamps, and spurred the white horse forward. The horse charged down the grand hallway, gathering speed at a furious rate.