The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (16 page)

The old gods – who were all dead, bested by the machine, their remains scattered over the desert like ashes.

When she came back to her room, exhausted from the strain of the communion, she found Tezoca already there. He had made himself at home, as neatly as a soldier on the move: he’d managed to unfold his things in a small patch of free space amidst the clutter on the ground, and he’d wedged his lanky body between the cooking-stove and the pallet. Even cramped as he was, he looked ludicrously at ease.

“It’s an interesting town,” he said. His face was expressionless; his lips thin, the colour of bronze – no blood anywhere, not anymore.

But Xochipil was too tired and too frightened to pretend she hadn’t seen anything. “What in the machine’s name are you?” she asked. “What game do you think you’re playing?”

Tezoca’s face did not move. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Not—” of what you were, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She tried again, but the enormity of what she was about to say dwarfed her. “You’re dead,” she whispered finally, because it was the only thing that her mind could hold onto – hoping he would deny it, that he would laugh at what she suggested. “All the old gods are dead.”

“Some things,” Tezoca said darkly, “are hard to kill.”

“The machine?” she asked, because it was the only thing that came into her mind. A god, she was standing there facing a god …

“That too.” For once, he didn’t look amused. He unfolded himself, gradually, standing bent under the ceiling, his hair almost tangling with the iron filigrees. His eyes held her, quiet, thoughtful; and in their depths she saw the blue of the sky, smelled the reek of copal incense rising into the heavens, and the rankness of blood pooling down the altar grooves, watering the earth, mingling with the rivers and with the lakes.

It would have been her, in the old days: her they held onto the altar, her they split open with obsidian blades, her heart they held aloft to the glory of the sun or of the rain. Her blood. He’d have drunk it all, as he’d drunk the blood of the woman – and with no more pity than he had shown her.

Something, long kept at bay, finally snapped. “How dare you – how dare you come here, how dare you work your foul magic and your blood sacrifices in full sight of the hierarch? How dare you—” She quelled the shaking of her hands, and went on, “Do you have any idea of what they do to those they catch still practising the old rites?”

“I guess it doesn’t happen very often.”

“We still remember the last one. They can make the dismantling last for days.” She couldn’t suppress a shiver, remembering the screams that had rent the Well from top to bottom, drowning even the beat of the rails.

“Well,” Tezoca said lightly, “that won’t happen here.”

“How can you be so sure?” Hadn’t he seen the god-machine, hadn’t he felt the communion? Even with his blood-magic, all he had done was tear one mind, for a small time. That was pitifully slight.

His voice was light, arrogant. “The histories are right: I’m cruel, and twisted, and vicious. But I take care of my own.”

“Your own?” So much like one of the old gods, to see the world in terms of ownership, and to take everything for themselves. The histories were right.

Tezoca pulled out one of the obsidian shards, stared at it for a while. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? What a sacrifice truly was. You don’t remember anything.”

“I remember enough.” Bodies tumbling down the altars, so many hearts that they rotted in the sacred vessels, so much blood that the grooves overflowed, skins, casually flayed and worn like costumes – and the old gods, laughing at them from the heavens, seeing nothing in mankind but veins and arteries, nothing but beating hearts, waiting to be gobbled whole …

Why had she ever thought it was a good idea to welcome him into her room? Why had she believed he’d make her life better? The days he’d bring back weren’t days she could desire, not under any age of the world.

“Get out,” she said, fighting not to strike him across the face. “Get out of this room now, and don’t come back.”

Anger leapt into Tezoca’s eyes. She expected him to strike her again, or worse, to do to her what he’d done to the woman – but he did none of that. Simply stood, tall, unmoving, waiting for her fury to spend itself.

When it did, and she still hadn’t said another word, Tezoca said, “Very well.” And he picked up his things, one by one, and left.

She watched him go, her heart more at ease than it had been for a long, long while.

Xochipil woke up the following morning and instantly knew that something was wrong. The beat of the rails was so strong it was shaking her room, making the tech on the shelves ring against each other – the deep, resonant sound of glass against copper, of bronze against crystal – and the fundamental
wrongness
at the heart of the Well, so strong it was splitting her apart.

“Attend,” a voice said, resonating within the confines of her room. The hierarch’s voice, as deep and far-reaching as it had been on the previous day. “Workers of Mictlan’s Well. There has been a violation of the Commonwealth. Stand on your thresholds and wait for the inspection.”

A violation? Tezoca. Machine break him, what had he done? What had he done to set the Well afire in such a way?

Time to see later. Right now, what she needed to do was survive the inspection – with blood-magic still clinging to her, a stink that couldn’t be washed off.

The inspection started at the bottom. Xochipil stood on her threshold for what seemed like ages and ages, feeling the rising beat in her chest, in her lame leg – tearing her apart, slowly grinding her bones to dust, turning her muscles to mush.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the procession approach: the hierarch in his robes so white they hurt the eye, the governor and the supervisors in muted turquoise all servile behind him.

He stopped by each worker, asked them a few questions, looked at them for a while, and then moved on. Ten workers left before he reached her – nine, eight …

He’d be a poor hierarch indeed, if he couldn’t see what she’d done. But there wasn’t anything she could do, other than stand straight, and hope against all hope that he wouldn’t see, that he’d move on without a second glance.

And then the hierarch was standing before her – his skin gleaming in the dim light, his verdigris gaze boring into her eyes – quivering in her vision, blurred by the throbbing of the rails. “Your name?” he asked.

“Xochipil,” she said. “Worker 18861 of Mictlan’s Well.”

He was silent for a while, looking at her as if something bothered him. Please, please …

“Daughter of Huexocanauhtli and Camahuac,” the hierarch said, finally.

“Yes.”

“Do you know why I’m here, Xochipil?” His eyes were a wide, shining green: a many-layered patina over the perfect, pristine metal of his skin – wide, compassionate, it would be so easy to tell him, to throw herself on his mercy before he discovered the truth …

“No,” she whispered. “No.”

The hierarch’s gaze held her, weighed her. “Is that really the truth, Xochipil?” He put a peculiar stress on her name – lingering on it, like a lover, like a mother, caring for her, for the communion she had with the machine and everything it meant to her.

No. It wasn’t the truth. Of course it wasn’t. She had only to confess—

Machine break him, she wasn’t going to give in so easily. “Yes,” she said, and words came pouring out of her mouth almost faster than she could think them. “Every word the truth, by my will to serve, by my bond to the god-machine, in this age and the next and the next.”

The hierarch’s hand reached out, brushed her hair. His touch left a tingling, a slighter beat to counter the excruciating one of the rails. “I see,” he said. “Thank you, Xochipil.”

And then he was gone, and it was as if someone had cut tight bands of copper from Xochipil’s chest. She stood, breathing in the beat of the rails, the throbbing within her, knowing she’d won, for now.

It was only after the inspection was over that it occurred to her that everything had gone far too smoothly. The taint of blood-magic wouldn’t have been so easily removed; and the hierarch should have seen it.

Unless …

It took her half an hour to find it. By then, the beat of the rails was so strong it watered her eyes, and she could barely focus on what she was doing – could barely keep her thoughts straight enough to act.

But it was there, all right: a small, barely visible glyph inked in blood, and its twin on the other side of the threshold, forming the word for “protection”. They throbbed, too, beneath her fingers – not like the rails, but like a living heart.

Tezoca, it seemed, had left her a farewell gift.

Xochipil went down, knowing that whatever had happened would be at the bottom of the Well, where the power was stronger – where whatever Tezoca had been looking for doubtless resided.

Work had resumed, and the crews had little patience for a crippled girl. Even Malli threw Xochipil a warning look as she descended the footpath. Xochipil retreated instead: going down again, on the paths that coiled around the shaft of the Well. All the while, the intensity of the beat increased, and there came a growing sense of anger, of outrage from the rails.

Down, down, past the sunspheres and the stark whiteness of steel and chrome – fewer workers now, and the fevered beat was so strong she could barely walk, could barely hold on to the thought that she had to put one foot before the other, that she had to …

She realized that for the past moments she’d been standing absolutely still – and started walking again.

The rails were above and below her. They had narrowed, becoming close enough to reach, with the steam-cars steadily going up and down, and Xochipil was standing alone between them, staring at the white steel of the walls. The beat was too strong – in her bones and in her heart, growing until it was all she could do not to fall to her knees.

She couldn’t go further down – not to the platform where the hierarch had stood, not to the very bottom and whatever had gone wrong.

Turn back, she had to – it was folly to come here, folly to seek Tezoca. Everything was fiery pain, a pain she couldn’t bear, not for this long …

Machine break her, she wasn’t made of such pliable stuff.

She reached out and touched the rails.

Pain unfolded a thousandfold within her: the beat coursed up her arm, squeezed around her heart, spread in her chest like a starburst of knives – and her hand was welded to the rails, she couldn’t take it away—

She was falling, down, down, into a chasm that had no end, the earth opening itself to receive her, and the beat pounding in every fibre of her body was the beat of a huge, glistening heart, buried under the soil of the desert – a heart that was the only thing of flesh amidst the entombed human bones.

Over and over it beat within her, booming, overflowing in her ears, the liquid sound of blood in an organ so vast she could barely apprehend it – over and over …

At last, at long last, it ended, and she fell to her knees, gasping, with the beat still coursing in her – muted now, the pain almost bearable,
almost
, like rubbed salt instead of knives …

But the beat was a voice now, and it whispered, over and over,
brother, brother
…

A god. There was a god down there, buried beneath Mictlan’s Well. The power Tezoca had been seeking, the power the god-machine was finally ferrying back to itself – a god’s heart, a god’s magic, setting the earth atremble, energizing the rails.

That was … impossible.

Why would it be? Was it such a great leap of imagination, once you accepted that gods were as hard to kill as the machine?

Brother
, whispered the rails – and they were angry, so angry because he was dead, or going to die – it wasn’t clear, just a jumble of impressions, a hodgepodge of words she couldn’t untangle. And, in the distance, steadily rising, was the voice of the machine, seeking to subsume the god in its midst – a persistent ache, a darkness slowly rising to smother everything.

Dare she—?

There was no other choice.

Xochipil reached out and touched the rails again.

The pain was the same, arcing straight to her heart, the beat that was so much stronger than her. Through gritted teeth she fought to get the words out, to ask her question …

Where is he?

Where is Tezoca?

Brother
, whispered the rails.

Where … is … he?

The machine’s voice was rising, blindly questing for whoever had the audacity to touch the rails, to meddle in the link it was establishing between Mictlan’s Well and itself …

She had to let go; but if she did so, she wouldn’t know what had happened. Still she kept her hands on the rails, asking them over and over about Tezoca.

“You won’t find him there,” a voice said, far behind her.

Startled, Xochipil withdrew her hands from the rails – and the pressure in her body and in her mind diminished, faded to a dull, throbbing ache.

Behind her, on the floor of steel and chrome, stood a woman. Her hair was the black of congealed blood, her skin the colour of dulled copper and her face was achingly familiar.

“What do you mean?” Xochipil asked.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the woman said, shaking her head.

Xochipil suddenly realized that this was the woman Tezoca had used to cast his blood-magic, and who now stood beside the rails as if they were a minor discomfort. “What would you know?” she asked.

The woman smiled, and raised her hands. Thin red lines ran along the tips of her fingers; and there were scabs on her arms, too.

Blood-magic. Blood-offerings. But the age of gods was past, the Change had come upon them – there was no longer need …

“He forced this on you,” Xochipil whispered – move, move, they had to move, for the hierarch would soon come, attracted by her touch on the rails … “He bewitched you, tricked you into making your offerings …”

The woman smiled again. “I make my own choices. And so should you.” Then, without preamble, “They cast his broken body into the desert, to be devoured by carrion birds and scavengers.”