The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (55 page)

I barely heard him. Below me were the green fields of Aaris as I remembered them, the mesh of white roads stretching from the Mittelgeist hills into the fragments of arable land that were so assiduously tended, the clutter of houses, even the sheen of Lake Varno where I was born, where I was decanted, where I swore citizenship …

The serpent’s hide below me rippled, and I followed it with a shiver of my own. No. Not as I remembered. The roads, long irregular from necessity, had been smoothed out into a patterned web, and the hills and rivers that had blocked them smoothed away into similarly perfect shapes. I adjusted my eyes again and again, as if a more magnified landscape would show not just what had happened but why. Nothing but the same iterated regularity; nothing of what I remembered as home.

I shook my head and shifted my eyes back to their normal state, then leaned back, trying to take in the whole valley. My breath caught with a crackle.

It was as if I gazed upon a great green clock, a hybrid land that was not just land nor automata but both. Every part of the landscape bore a design I knew from study of my own inner workings. The slow motion of it – even the patterns of glaciers sliding down the mountains – communicated a vast unfathomable purpose. A purpose of which I was no longer a part.

And in the fields and villages and kennels and stalls, eyes all like mine, adjusting as they looked up, lenses shifting to see one of their own above them. No full automata. No full humans. Only the same Merged calm on every visage.

I shuddered, viscerally aware of the hole in my side, of the mess of blood and bandages so at odds with the careful, clean lines of this new Aaris. “Home,” I whispered. “Home. Please.”

The serpent, either wiser than I or interpreting the indecision of my hands, curved into a wide arc. I heard Dieterich gasp as we turned away, but I did not turn to see his reaction. Instead I gazed ahead, to where the
Regina
, spilling smoke and the telltale glitter of lost thaumic power, was limping away back down the pass. Its decks were a flutter of rescued andropters and wreckage, but though the mass of serpents parted to let their brother through, it did not fire upon us as I guided my serpent back to the ship.

For the first time in twenty years, I did not have to make the tea. Dieterich brought a tray down to the remains of the observation deck, where the Professora and I sat in silent contemplation of the receding Sterling Pass. Below us guns boomed, unaware that they had failed in their work of keeping us out but that their greater mission had succeeded. I got up from my place on the deck (the benches having been used for temporary hull patches), but Dieterich waved me back to my seat.

He poured two cups, then tipped the contents of a third into the Professora’s nutrient filter. She murmured thanks, and I took the offered cup gratefully.

“You needn’t worry,” Dieterich said after a moment, “about the, hm, shrapnel I extracted. I disposed of it among the bits we took from that first dratted serpent’s carcass.”

One set of gears in among the other. Fitting. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome. Don’t let that sort of thing happen again, hm?” He gave me a searching look, but whatever doubts he’d harbored had been erased when I brought us both back to the
Regina
’s splintered decks. “Good man,” he said, drained his tea, and returned to the depths of the ship.

I took a sip of my tea. He’d made it well. “How much time do you think we have?” Lundqvist asked softly.

I attempted a shrug, winced, and settled for shaking my head. “There’s no indication that Aaris intends to undo its isolation. They may be content to stay in the valley.”

“You weren’t,” she pointed out.

“No.” I gazed back into the smoky pass, thinking of the great clockwork of the valley, the machine that it ran, of serpents on the wrong side of the mountains and lensed eyes looking back at me. “Ten years, perhaps. Five if we’re unlucky.”

The Professora was silent, though the constant hiss from her phonograph resembled a slow exhalation. “Well. We’ll just have to hope we’re lucky.”

Five years. I’d been in service for twenty; perhaps a different service was needed for the coming five. I got to my feet, glanced behind me at the pass, and began setting the cups back on the tea-tray.

“Yes. We’ll hope,” I said. “More tea?”

Dear Madame,

My sincerest apologies for my inexcusable delay in responding to your enquiry after the celebrated carousel of the Margravine of Blois. The truth is – and I write this with utmost regret – that the reports responsible for so much distress in your admirable person are accurate in every respect. I myself bore witness to the destruction of that most miraculous clockwork, and what remains – a handful of silver gears, and a pair of bay horses with the most phenomenally lifelike coloring and expression – allows only for positive identification.

As for the events that permitted such a wrenching tragedy (your words, madame, but I find them wonderfully apt) to occur, I enclose some pages which I wrote from the seventeenth of September to the fourteenth of October last year, in faith that all will be clarified. In this, madame, as in all things, I hope to show myself to be

17 September

The lady Porphyrogene’s house is called Summerfall, and it stands at the end of a long white drive lined with plane trees and elm. To the east, bare hills roll up to meet the lowering autumn clouds; to the west, the land slopes sharply to the sea, where clear waves fold over reddish weeds and palely colored stones – lavender, glass-green, dogwood-blossom pink. The front lawn is left barren, the better to show Summerfall’s magnificent façade. In back are the gardens, and in the center of the gardens, the carousel of the Margravine of Blois.

“Most of them want to see that first,” Porphyrogene said the moment I stepped down from my carriage. She took up my bags, two in each hand, and headed for the central stair. “I trust
your
tastes are not so common, M’sieur Saint-Pierre.”

“No,” I said, hardly sure what I was agreeing to. I have concluded, over the full three hours of our acquaintance, that this is quite common with Porphyrogene. She is a smaller woman than her letters led me to expect, with whitening hair and skin the color of cream-clotted coffee. I must confess, I anticipated a woman of greater beauty, familiar as I am with my hostess’s many amorous conquests. Apparently, Porphyrogene’s expectations were the reverse.

“You’re rather handsome, for a professor,” she said. “I suppose some pretty, dithering little fiancée will be sending you love letters to interrupt your work?”

“Have no fear on that account, madame. I was widowed last April.”

“Oh.” She said it quite flatly, and gave me an odd look over her shoulder. “My condolences, m’sieur.”

Presently, we reached my apartment – a series of six rooms at the top of the eastern wing, damp-smelling and paneled in sage-colored wood. My bedroom, library and private parlor all overlook the sea. By ingenious design, or my own imagination, the faux balconies covering the windows are like cast-iron bars.

“You will be spending most of your time alone,” Porphyrogene said. “Business keeps me outside the house. Perhaps you would prefer to take your dinner here?”

“Yes,” I said, “if that can be arranged.”

“It can.” She paused for a moment, one hand on her hip, the other tucking a white curl behind her ear. “I would prefer it, m’sieur, if you left the north wing to itself. The rest of Summerfall is yours to investigate. If you need anything …” She pointed to a frayed cord hanging over the bedside table. “Ring for Jean-Baptiste.”

Such is the living mistress of Summerfall. Tonight, I expect, I shall be introduced to its ghosts.

18 September

I found no ghosts last night, regrettably, and sleep was not much more in evidence. This house must have a thousand clocks in it; I’ve counted over a dozen in my own apartments, chiming and sending out miniature automata processions on every hour. I know little enough of the Clockmaker’s art, but judging from the uniform and uncanny realism in the tiny figures, I believe they were all crafted by the same hand.

And while my pen dwells on uncanny uniformity: it is my conclusion (from an admittedly hasty collection of data) that every room in Summerfall has at least one portrait of the same woman in red. Her features are very distinct: dark skin, pillowy lips painted scarlet, two severely straight eyebrows, of which the left is always raised a fraction of an inch higher than the right. I am sure this woman is no relative of Porphyrogene – nor does it seem likely she is a past lover, as my hostess is not the sort to cling sentimentally to old mementos.

At breakfast this morning, I was introduced to the shadowy figure of Porphyrogene’s valet, Jean-Baptiste. He is a man as gray as his livery, and he moves with an unpleasantly mouse-like scurry.

“Where is Porphyrogene?” I asked, pushing a reluctant clump of dry eggs around on my plate.

“Madame is occupied in the gardens today.”

“Enjoying the last flowers of the season, I expect?”

“Perhaps. I couldn’t say.”

My eggs, deeply dissatisfied with their treatment at the tines of my fork, promptly made their dissatisfaction known by plopping onto the parlor rug. I dropped my fork in surrender. “Would it be possible for me to join her?” I asked – purely for the sake of politeness, as I could not imagine permission being denied.

“Oh, no, monsieur,” Jean-Baptiste said. The weather, he intimated – and it truly is horrendously gray and chill – might affect monsieur’s mood in undesirable ways, and wouldn’t monsieur rather spend such a dreary day before a roaring fire in monsieur’s well-apportioned library?

In truth, he sounded much like Violeta’s old maidservant – though Jean-Baptiste, at least, does not seem worried that I am going to walk purposefully into the ocean. Whether such a possibility continues, nearly a year and a half after I first voiced the intention, I cannot say. Though I do know this: it is good to be hunting again, good to be seeking a ghost whose tragedy has nothing to do with mine.

18 September, later

I think Jean-Baptiste is right, and the miserable weather is exerting an unpleasant influence on my nerves. I woke moments ago from a most disconcerting dream.

I was standing on a beach of gray stones, and as each wave rolled in it stained the rocks a different hue – powder-pink and eggshell-blue, cream-yellow and sage-green. The water felt warm against my feet, over my ankles and up to my knees. I bent and spread my fingers in the prickling foam.

Suddenly, I caught Violeta’s scent mingling with the brine – the smell of lavender soap, the sickly-sweet tinge of sweat. I looked up from the stones – they were dark colors now, crimson and cobalt and golden as egg-yolks – and turned to my wife, my heart pounding beneath my tongue.

The woman beside me was not Violeta. Her black skin, her red lips and gown, her left eyebrow lifted in vague amusement … it was the woman from the portraits.

I woke a moment later to the chiming of a hundred clocks.

20 September

Porphyrogene took her dinner with me yesterday afternoon. She must have come in from the gardens without stopping to dress, as her hair and gown were positively soaked.

“Have you found anything yet?” she asked. It would be difficult to overemphasize the impatience in her voice; it was as though her sleeve had caught fire, and she was asking after a pitcher of water. “Sounds, apparitions, cold spots in the doorways?”

“Nothing of that variety, no.” I felt unaccountably reluctant to mention my dream of Violeta. We sat for a few minutes in silence, before the clock on the table between us began to chime four. “Who is the woman in the portraits?”

Porphyrogene looked faintly startled as she glanced at the nearest specimen, hanging in an oval frame between the parlor windows. “She was the Margravine of Blois,” she said, and took a slow sip of champagne.

“Was? The Margravine of Blois is dead?”

She chuckled softly over the rim of her glass, but her eyes looked pained. “Yes, rather.” A pause. “She died six years ago – here, actually.”

“How?”

“I didn’t murder her, m’sieur, if that’s what you’re implying.” Her fingers drummed on the glass’s stem. “That’s not to say I didn’t want to. Perhaps you are too young to remember, but it was quite a scandal when she left me twelve years ago. A popular rhyme or two was made about it – they say I still keep the blankets turned down on her side of the bed, waiting for her to come home.”

“But she
did
come home.” I leaned back in my chair, gazing at the portrait. “If she left you twelve years ago, why did she come back six years later to die?”

Porphyrogene sighed – deeply, from her chest. “Well, I’m sure it wasn’t to see me again. Perhaps she wanted to be near the carousel.”

“And what is so special about the carousel?”

Porphyrogene shook her head. “Everything.”

23 September

Jean-Baptiste brought breakfast to my rooms this morning – a small blessing, as what little sleep I can afford is soured with unsettling dreams, and by dawn I am in no shape to navigate Summerfall alone. In addition to its usual burden of cold coffee and overcooked eggs, the tray carried four or five keys on an iron ring. They were old work, plain but sturdy, with a faint shield-shaped impression on the bows that may have been Porphyrogene’s coat-of-arms.

“For the library, monsieur,” Jean-Baptiste said, indicating the largest of the keys.

I glanced at the door in the back of my parlor, eyebrows raised enquiringly.

“No, monsieur. The library in the north wing.” He held up a delicate hand to forestall my protestations. “Madame told me to offer. She thinks it will allow your investigations to … progress.”

How delightful, I thought sourly – as if it were due to some intellectual ineptitude on my part that Summerfall’s ghost had failed to manifest. I’d have her know, in seven years of investigations I had never once lacked results. Still, curiosity always has gotten the better of me; I took the key with profuse thanks, finished my breakfast, and went down to the north wing just as the clocks in the corridor were chiming nine.