CHAPTER 6
The steamliner arrived on Wednesday, precisely on schedule, drifting in with its chain of levitating gondolas and cargo cars. The townspeople, also on schedule, came out to greet the steamliner. They were accustomed to seeing Marinda there on her weekly errands, but everything was different now. This was by no means a normal Wednesday. Not at all.
Albeit reluctantly, she had purchased a steamliner ticket and stood outside the station, waiting to board. Marinda held a battered valise she had found among her father’s possessions. She had no suitcase of her own—when had she ever needed one? Her father had been forbidden to travel, by order of the Watchmaker, and she guessed that this was the very valise that young Arlen Peake had carried with him when he was exiled from Crown City. Or maybe it had belonged to her mother and been left behind when she’d run off. Marinda got the impression that Elitia had done little planning when she tore up the neat blueprint of her life and flitted away from Lugtown, never to be seen again.
After the steamliner settled into place, the passengers disembarked, looking around at the village. Marinda had always given such people a wide berth, content with her own life and having no interest in theirs. Now, she had to go with them, ride aboard a passenger car through the sky and on the rails. These would be her traveling companions for several days as the steamliner stopped at other Albion villages en route to Crown City.
The steamliner pilot swung down from the main motivator car that not only served as the steamliner’s engine, but was also his home. As pilot, Brock Pennrose had served the run to Lugtown and points beyond for at least ten years, as long as Marinda could remember.
The steamliner remained parked while the porters unloaded and loaded cargo and refilled its boilers, but Marinda was ready to depart. She was done with Lugtown until she finished her quest.
While most villagers did not travel, there were always business passengers, traders, bureaucrats, speculators, and occasional sightseers making a pilgrimage to see the Clockwork Angels or to submit supplications to the Watchmaker. Marinda had never before bothered to think about who the travelers were or why they were aboard the steamliner. Now she thought they might have stories to tell, stories that would fill many pages; maybe she would even complete her book by the time she reached Crown City—and then she could turn around and go home. Job done.
Ready to leave, for a while at least, she had closed up the cottage, shuttered the windows, and covered the furniture with sheets. After bidding the three faithful clockwork Regulators a fond farewell, she made them stand at attention against the wall and powered them down. Zivo, Woody, and Lee would gather dust, unattended, but she promised them, and she promised herself, that she would not be gone long. As the last steam blew out of their release valves, the three Regulators sighed into mechanical slumber. For them, time would stand still until she returned.
After she departed, Benjulian Frull would nail a notice to the door, declaring the cottage closed and off-limits, no trespassing. Marinda did not want to see him do that. With the clockwork Regulators shut down, even her garden would grow wild and unruly by the time she came back.
Although she was leaving her home, her town, and her neighbors, none of them seemed to notice she was going. No one bade her a warm farewell; no one waved or cheered her on or wished her well in her endeavors. After accepting another load of fresh vegetables from the outlying farming villages, Camberon Greer raised a hand to wave at her as she stepped up to the steamliner, then went back to dickering over the price of lettuce.
Clutching her ticket and her valise, she boarded a colorful passenger gondola situated just behind the large motivator car. The gondola was suspended by a scarlet levitating sack, and the door and interior had ornate appointments with knobs and filigrees made of solid gold, which was plentiful, thanks to the Watchmaker’s alchemy. The gondola looked much too fancy for her, but the conductor glanced at her ticket, punched it, and gestured her aboard.
“On my way at last,” she muttered to herself, regretting every moment.
Marinda looked at the strange furnishings, the crowded opulence in the lounge car. When the departure whistle blew, the passengers who had been investigating Lugtown came back aboard. A few had bought burlwood sculptures or polished agate slices, but most hadn’t found anything worth carrying.
The steam whistle blew again, and Captain Pennrose climbed aboard the motivator car. Soon, the pistons began to chug, the big wheels spun, and the rails glowed blue with inner alchemical fire. Pennrose blew the whistle a final time.
The last passengers hurried aboard, some of them slipping through connecting doors to reserved sleeping compartments in adjacent gondolas. Marinda had not paid for such an extravagance. Even the gold-appointed community car seemed like too much, but she didn’t want to ride in the cargo cars or bunk with the roustabouts and porters (even though some of them might have had interesting stories for her book).
The other passengers relaxed as the steamliner began to move. Marinda was the only new person who had boarded at Lugtown, and her traveling companions, preoccupied with their own invisible worlds, made no overtures of conversation. Obviously, she would have to approach them herself, explain the book and the golden needle, ask for a drop of blood—none of which was within her comfort zone. She had never done anything like that before.
First you will hate me for this. And then you will love me for it.
Marinda pushed back her sadness and impatience toward what her father had done to her. “All is for the best,” she told herself.
The steamliner began to move, building up speed. The levitation sacks inflated, the steam boilers came to full pressure, and the caravan of connected carriages raced headlong down the rails until the motivator car lost contact with the ground, lifting into the sky. With a lurch, the rest of the steamliner rose and flew away from the village. Marinda felt disoriented, seasick, and adrift as the steamliner began to fly…but she had not felt grounded since the day her father died.
Inside the lounge car, she sat with her valise on the floor and her alchemical book on her lap. She watched two gentlemen playing a game of cards, but they were engrossed in their strategy.
She listened to the nearby conversation of two women in trim business attire, not because she was interested in their words but because they were so loud. They were speculators, women who played financial games of chance with other people’s money, making vast fortunes from which they profited—or losing vast fortunes, for which they sincerely apologized and then blamed unpredictable market conditions. They talked about their secret plan as if no one else could hear them. The two were investors in mining futures and quite bullish about the price of silver. They had invested heavily in new mines in the north, and they saw bright times ahead for any visionaries who came in at the beginning.
“What is so special about silver?” Marinda interrupted.
The women lowered their voices, leaning closer. “Why, because the Watchmaker’s alchemy can create all the gold anyone wants. But silver…ah now silver! That is another thing entirely.”
“But what use is silver?” she asked.
The second businesswoman said with a sniff, “For all those things where gold will not suffice.”
They began to quote numbers—values of silver by the ingot, mine capacity, production maximization, output potential—until Marinda’s mind grew dizzy with statistics. The first woman lowered her voice even more, although everyone in the passenger lounge could still hear her. Out of the corner of her eye, Marinda saw some travelers roll their eyes, as if they had heard this supposedly secret conversation before. “Would you happen to have any money to invest, Miss? We could make you a fortune.”
Marinda thought of the gold her father had received from the Watchmaker, all those ingots held in trust for her whenever she came back with her book filled with stories. “I already have a fortune, but it’s not available for me to invest at the moment.”
Hearing that, the two women lost interest, and Marinda thought she understood what their game was.
She lifted the book of Clockwork Lives and leaned closer, pressing her own request. “I am collecting stories. Would you two ladies like to participate? Just a drop of blood from your fingertip, and the alchemy will spell out—”
The women closed their portfolios. “I’m sorry, but we have business matters to discuss.”
“Matters of a confidential nature,” added the second woman, turning away with a sniff.
Although disappointed, Marinda supposed the life stories of those two business-obsessed women would likely have been dull. Rather than creating sentences and paragraphs, their blood might have written mere columns of numbers.
After she had rebuffed, and been rebuffed by, the two silver speculators, Marinda caught the eye of a mysterious man who sat at the far end of the passenger lounge. He was wrapped in a silence of his own making, but his hawk-like gaze showed that he had been watching everything. He met and held Marinda’s gaze.
The stranger had a thin, angular face, a goatee, and significant eyebrows. And though he made no overt invitation, Marinda picked up her book and joined him. The man gave her a hard dissecting look as she set her book down in front of him. The imprinted alchemical symbols and the clockwork gears on the cover seemed to catch his interest. When he reached out to touch the book, she saw that an alchemical symbol had been tattooed on the back of his hand, just like one of those on the cover.
“Are you an alchemist, then?” she asked.
His lips quirked in a smile. “Alchemist? Not exactly the name by which I call myself, although at one time I was a student at the Alchemy College.” When he opened the book, Marinda saw that his other hand bore not a tattoo, but the waxy scars of a serious burn. “Circumstances led to my choosing a different career, and yet it all comes back to alchemy, doesn’t it?” He ran his fingertips over the pages, looked at the words written in blood.
“What circumstances?”
The man raised his significant eyebrows. “Oh, the more things change, the more they stay the same. After the Alchemy College, I went to many places, many possible worlds, even performed in a carnival, spent time with the Wreckers on the open seas. Good days…dangerous days…exciting days.” His smile had no warmth at all. “And what is this book?”
“My father was an inventor. The pages are treated with a special alchemical substance that reacts with human blood. I am collecting stories, and I would like to add yours.”
He glanced at the words on the pages without reading them. “Collecting stories with a drop of blood…how interesting.” He looked at the other passengers in the compartment, unable to hide his scorn. “So, each one’s life is a novel?”
“Or a short story.” Marinda glanced down at a few of the other descriptions. “Sometimes just a sentence fragment.”
“That’s because people are boring. Some of us lead truly magnificent lives while others just waste theirs.” He shook his head. “I learned that from the Watchmaker himself. I was his prodigy at the Alchemy College.” He gave his thin smile again, as if thinking himself clever. “He had his too-perfect Clockwork Angels, while I was his…fallen angel.”
Marinda removed her golden needle. Yes, this man must have a significant story—if he could be believed. “Then, if you please, sir, I would love to have your life recorded in my book.” She flipped to the next blank page, offered the needle.
Though he seemed amused by the request, he hesitated. Marinda pressed. “Because of the alchemical reaction, this will be a true recording of your life, not fiction. Anyone can say he was the Watchmaker’s protégé. Your story, in this book”—she tapped the next blank page—“would prove it.”
He took the gold needle from her as if it were a toy, then pricked his finger and smiled rather than winced. As a large drop of crimson blood welled out, he turned his finger over so that the drop hung like a tiny ruby, balanced on his fingertip above the blank biographical canvas of the page.
He let the droplet hang there, trembling, as if his heart had stopped beating. Then, just as the drop of blood was about to fall, he snatched his finger away, and the red liquid struck the deck instead.
He handed the needle back to her, and his voice was like an edged weapon. “My story is my own. I don’t just give it away.” He took a moment to wipe the blood from the deck, then stood. “I have a purpose aboard this steamliner, and it is time to act. Go ahead and collect your stories.” He raised his significant eyebrows again. “I have a feeling you will remember mine, regardless.”
He stalked off and departed through the connecting door into the long line of passenger compartments and cargo gondolas.
Frustrated, Marinda was even more determined now to get at least one important tale on her journey to Crown City. None of the travelers in the lounge seemed interested in conversation with her, and she did not yet know how to convince likely candidates for her book.
Then it occurred to her that the steamliner pilot traveled from one end of Albion to the other, again and again, from Crown City to the outermost pivot point, and back. Captain Brock Pennrose had seen the whole land, so he certainly had to have a story.
Forgetting the mysterious stranger with his arrogance and his tattooed hand, Marinda went to the connecting door into the front motivator car, the engine, the coldfire boilers, and the pilot’s private quarters. The door was marked RESTRICTED AREA, NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.
“It is forbidden,” said one of card players as he saw her standing before the door. “Rules are rules.”
Marinda held up her book. “It says no unauthorized access, and I am an author.”
And she was, in a way. She was collecting the stories, compiling her book, and she had to choose her subject matter from the material available. She hoped to get the steamliner pilot’s tale.
The card player hesitated, then realized that her answer was well considered. He lay down a card, challenging his opponent, more interested in his game than in her possible trespass.
When Marinda opened the hatch she was suddenly buffeted by the loud background noise of engines, pistons, and stray gusts of high-altitude wind. She crossed over the connecting ramp and opened the second door, calling out, “Excuse me! I would like to speak with the pilot.”
Hearing no answer, she ventured toward the sounds of machinery, the hiss of steam. She followed a blue glow to a large chamber where the barrel-chested steamliner pilot stood with his shirt off, his trousers held up by a set of suspenders. He grunted, flexing his muscles as he shoveled a load of alchemical crystals into a hungry boiler furnace.
He looked up at her, startled. “Sorry, miss, but this is a hazardous area. You’re not allowed.” He threw another shovelful of crystals into the furnace, then slammed and latched the door.
She clutched the book. “Could we go someplace less hazardous? I’d be interested in talking with you.”
“That is highly irregular.”
“I understand. My life has become quite irregular of late. My name is Marinda Peake, and I have a request for you.”
Hearing her name, the steamliner pilot swayed before catching his balance, as if he wasn’t accustomed to this kind of turbulence. He wiped a grimy hand on his forehead, which only distributed the grime more widely, but even so his face seemed suddenly pale. He snatched his shirt from a peg on the metal wall and pulled it on over his broad chest. “We’d better go where we can sit and talk.”
He led her out of the engine room, up a spiraling metal staircase to the upper deck, but he seemed unaccustomed to company. A large framed map on the bulkhead showed the whole land of Albion with Crown City at its heart and roads spiraling outward from Chronos Square; straight lines like the spokes of a wheel showed the steamliner routes ranging from the Mainspring Hub out to the end of the land, with stops at numerous villages just like Lugtown, back and forth, back and forth, like the pendulum of a giant clock.
“I’ve been the steamliner pilot on this route for well over a decade,” he remarked as he saw her studying the map. “But even before that—long before that—I serviced Lugtown.”
“Then you must have many stories and many experiences. My father was an inventor. He recently passed away.”
The pilot looked queasy, then he turned away. “Poor Arlen…I am sorry to hear that.”
“Oh? Did you know my father? From Lugtown?”
“In a way…”
She held up Clockwork Lives and launched into her explanation. “He bequeathed me this book and gave me a quest. You see, after my mother left us when I was just a little girl, my father grew lonely and infirm. I took care of him, as a daughter should, but he felt guilty that I gave up the life I should have had. He concocted a way to make up for it, even though I didn’t ask. I have to collect the tales of interesting people I meet.”
His shoulders slumped. “I am not sure you want my story.”
“Of course I do,” she said, all business. “Every page I fill brings me one page closer to completion. I am on my way to Crown City to gather other tales, but the more I accomplish during this steamliner journey, the less work I’ll have to do there…and the sooner I’ll be able to get back home and back to normal.”
Pennrose adjusted his compass and set the steamliner on autopilot, so he could talk with her. His voice cracked as he said, “Come back into my private study, behind the piloting deck.”
By now it was full night outside, and the steamliner steered across the stars. On the ground far below, evenly spaced like luminous dots on a map, were the regularized villages of Albion. Marinda stared at the view; from up here, the world looked so wide. She knew that was one of the things her father would have wanted her to see.
The pilot looked as if he carried a heavy burden. He gestured her to a comfortable reading chair. “Marinda Peake…if you will sit, I can tell you my story and answer your questions.”
Next to the chair, she saw a shelf full of books that looked well read, including Before the Stability, the classic historical account written by the Watchmaker himself.
“Actually, I need a drop of your blood on the alchemically treated pages,” she said apologetically. “If you tell me your story aloud, that won’t help me achieve my goal—although I’m sure it would be fascinating. I need to fill this volume. My father was very specific.”
As she settled into the chair, she spotted a chronograph mounted in a frame—a burlwood frame—resting next to the books. The image of a beautiful young woman looked strikingly familiar, with a face that showed some hint of Marinda’s own features.
She caught her breath. She had just seen this chronograph mounted inside her father’s optical enhancement helmet—one of the two images old Arlen had been viewing on the night he died in his sleep. She stared. Why would an image of her mother be on the shelf in a steamliner pilot’s library?
Pennrose fidgeted. “Marinda Peake…it’s such a beautiful name.”
She picked up the burlwood frame and turned the chronograph toward him. “Is this my mother?”
The color drained out of his face—but before the pilot could answer, an explosion rocked the steamliner, an eruption that shook the caravan of levitating gondola cars like a dog killing a snake. The motivator car lurched. Steam blasts vented from pipes that ruptured. Alarm bells clanged. The books toppled from the shelves, and Marinda dropped the chronograph of her mother as she fought for balance.
The deck tilted at a terrible angle, and she realized they were falling out of the sky.
As the motivator car spun through the air, Marinda saw that the back half of the steamliner caravan had been severed. Three of the swollen levitating sacks were on fire; two others had burst. An entire cargo car broke away, tumbled and reeled as it plunged toward the ground. The rearmost passenger and cargo cars were falling free with nothing to keep them aloft.
And, astonishingly, through the window she saw the lone figure of a man dropping gently through the sky, suspended by a fabric scoop tied to his shoulders as a makeshift parachute.
“Damn! The engines must be damaged.” Pennrose lurched toward the piloting deck. The front motivator car and the next three gondolas attached to it were also dropping out of the sky, but slowed by the boilers and levitators. “The explosion would have caused feedback in the coldfire.” He dashed to the spiral metal staircase, flinging himself down to the engine deck below.
Still clutching her book, Marinda ran after him, trying to keep her balance on the shuddering metal steps. “But how could that happen?”
“Mechanical failure—but not likely. The Watchmaker has rigorous maintenance performance requirements.” He paused halfway down the staircase. “No, the only time I’ve seen this happen before was deliberate sabotage.”
She followed Pennrose into the engine room, hoping to help, if possible. She knew the other passengers in the lounge gondola would be screaming in panic—if any of them were still alive.
Steam gushed out of the burst pipes like spurting arterial blood. Captain Pennrose threw open the furnace and furiously shoveled alchemical crystals into the combustion chamber. As the blaze brightened, he grabbed a crate that had tumbled to the deck beside the furnace, stomped on it with his heel to smash it open, then poured dense redcoal into the chamber as well.
Coldfire shimmered through the pistons, and the steam built up again, but the large water reservoir was leaking. The gauges connected to the pipes pointed accusingly into the red zones, while other gauges had simply given up. The pilot hammered the side of the furnace with his bare fist, and his flesh sizzled, but he was too angry, too desperate, to acknowledge the pain.
“Come on!” he howled at the boiler. “Build up pressure! Just enough to keep us levitating!” He shot a glance at Marinda. “We are going to crash. The only part up for debate is the matter of degree.” He coaxed his engines, even prayed to them as if they were the Clockwork Angels.
Suddenly alarmed for a different reason, he shouted, “Marinda, get to the upper deck—strap yourself in to my chair and save yourself! It’s anchored and protected. That may be enough…just barely enough.”
She was startled. “I should help, if I can—”
“Go! There’s nothing you can do here.” His voice carried such a force of command that Marinda did as she was told. She pulled herself up the metal stairs, gripping the rails to keep herself from being flung down as the steamliner careened through the air. When she reached the piloting deck, the wide window showed them plunging toward the scatter of lighted villages, weeping steam from all the damaged machinery. The ship would never survive.
Behind them, the attached passenger gondola’s levitating sack remained intact, and that suspended them somewhat—a small blessing. Maybe the Angels were watching over them after all, working overtime.
The ground was coming up fast. Marinda strapped herself into the chair, as instructed, still clutching the leatherbound book, although she doubted she would ever fill it with tales now. From the engine deck below, she heard the clamor of tools, loud clangs, shouts as Pennrose cajoled and cursed his boilers.
Then the plummeting steamliner slowly, grudgingly began to level off, changing its angle of descent…but a hill on the rolling countryside rose up in front of them. The bottom of the motivator car scraped the hillside, gouging dirt and grass while stealing some of their forward momentum, and then the wounded steamliner careened forward again, over the hill and tumbling into the valley.
Belowdecks, the main furnace exploded with a resounding roar, and the shock wave was just enough to shove them into the air, drain away some of their velocity, before the steamliner plowed into the ground. The vessel carved a long divot forward, groaning, spraying, and then rolled over on its side like a collapsing beast of burden.
Marinda expected to be crushed at any moment, but when the steamliner came to rest, with the front window shattered and the bulkheads smashed, she was alive, unhurt, and strapped into the protective chair. Stunned, she released the straps and climbed out. Her ears rang, and colored splotches sparkled all around in her vision.
Then she remembered Captain Pennrose down in the engine chamber.
Dazed, she found the metal staircase, then climbed and crawled and pulled herself forward until she got to the mangled wreck of the engine room. The furnace had exploded as Pennrose wrung out a last bit of pressure to keep them aloft just a few seconds more.
The steamliner pilot was in no better shape than his furnace. The explosion had caught him in his chest, throwing him back into a bulkhead so that he left a large dent in the metal. His skull was cracked, and his arms hung at unacceptable angles. His eyes were dulled, and blood spilled from his mouth, but he sensed her nearby. His lips moved, and he managed to rattle out a sound that was something like “Peake.”
Marinda had so many questions, and he had wanted to tell her his story. Why did he seem so guilty, so burdened? And what was he doing with an old chronograph of her mother?
In her confusion she still clung to the book, and as Brock Pennrose slumped there in his last moments of life, she realized that he could indeed tell her the story he wanted to share. Frantically flipping pages, she opened the volume to the next clean sheet of paper and bent over his sagging body where blood dripped from innumerable wounds.
Crimson splashed on the clean white page, and the words of his life story raced out.