CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Clockwork Prime, it turned out, was a kind of airship. Not surprising, considering Ida’s origin story and the practicalities of her Gestalt image, but it felt weird to be in a domain that was capable of flight in the mundane world. Especially when it felt like we weren’t moving at all. At least, not forward. We were certainly moving in circles. Constantly. Every time I looked up, the rooms had shifted and the walls had changed, and the clockwork under our feet just kept on ticking forward and around and back. It was enough . . . enough to . . .
“John, you’re not looking so great,” Chesa said.
“Motion sick,” I said, pressing my eyes closed. That only made it worse. “Is there somewhere in this domain that isn’t spinning constantly?”
“The Spindle. But I don’t think you’d like it up there,” Ida said.
“I’m willing to give it a try. Where is it?” I asked, standing up woozily.
“At the top. Overlooking the vast emptiness of Probability Space. Oh, which is spinning around us, so maybe that wouldn’t help,” Ida said. I sat back down. “Don’t worry. We’re almost close enough to connect to reality once again. The part of reality where Evelyn is, that is.”
“And what are we supposed to do once we get there?” Gregory asked. “Last time I checked, you took our amulets to open the door to this place. We’re out of magic.”
“Oh. Forgot about those.” Ida clattered some keys, then threw a lever. Pedestals emerged from the floor beside each of the members of Knight Watch, holding our amulets on crushed velvet cushions. “There you go.”
Gratefully, I looped the cold steel shield around my neck and dropped it down the front of my gambeson. I was about to tap into my domain when alarm bells started going off. Ida glanced over at me.
“Reminder that we’re deep in Gestalt space. Please keep your timelines in the upright and locked position until you’ve disembarked.”
“Right. Sorry,” I said. Chesa glared at me. “We’ll just be in low-power mode when we get there. Hopefully we can distract her while our reserves fill.”
“We still have armor, and our swords are sharp,” Gregory answered. “I’m willing to take that risk.”
“At least you still have a sword. Mine’s sitting on a wall in some game store.” I pressed my hands against my face, fighting down the rising tide of bile in my throat. “I can’t believe we’ve come this far, and now we don’t have the means to fight.”
“It was never about our domains, John. They help, but the will to fight, the reason to get up and get after the darkness when all hope is lost . . . that comes from someplace else.” Greg pulled me to my feet and tapped me on the chest. “That comes from in here.”
“I’m already nauseous,” I said, sitting back down. “Let’s not make it any worse.”
“He’s right, John. You were fighting sword and shield for years before Knight Watch stepped in. And you didn’t have any of your cool magical powers when you faced off against Kracek, did you?” Chesa asked. “I don’t love the idea of going in there without elven magic. But we can’t give up now.”
“Fine. Fine, whatever, you’ve made your point.” I sat up a little straighter. “We’ll go in naked. Well, not naked. Just mundane. I wish I had a sword, that’s all. Any sword.”
“That can be arranged,” Ida said. “I won’t be joining you, obviously. Not in my present condition. But I have a fully functioning workshop here in the Prime. I’m certain I can fabricate a functional blade for Sir John. Do you have a schematic?”
“Sharp thing, about yay long?” I held out my hands and squinted. “The pointier the better.”
“Yes,” Ida said. “I can do pointy.”
X X X
“Okay, that’s too pointy.”
The monstrosity that arose from Ida’s auto-forge was a mandelbrot set of scything blades, centered around a basket hilt the size of my head. The whole thing was five feet in diameter, and must have weighed sixty pounds. I wasn’t sure I could even hold it without skewering myself on one of its many points.
“I put in the parameters you described,” Ida said, frustration in her voice. “It’s not my fault that you ordered something vague. You’ll have to be more precise.”
“He wants a simple arming sword,” Greg said. “Overall length about three feet, two and a half feet of that in the blade, the rest in hilt, guard, and pommel. Double edged, steel, handle wrapped in leather, bone guard, heavy iron or steel in the pommel. Under three pounds in weight. Unless you want something lighter, Rast? How’s your arm strength?”
“It’s fine,” I snapped. “And the guard needs to be steel. I know that’s atypical, but I catch a lot of blades with the hilt, and I don’t want that breaking off.”
“Better. Thank you. Not everything needs to be a poem.” Ida punched the numbers into the auto-forge’s console and stood back. After a few moments, a gleaming splinter of bright steel emerged from the device. “Acceptable?” Ida asked.
I took it in hand and gave a few practice swings. “Yeah, this is good. Good balance.” We had set up a series of target dummies on the far side of the room. I went over and sliced the arm and head off one of the quintains, then stepped back. “Nice and sharp. I like it!”
“Does anyone else need anything?” Ida asked. She looked pointedly at me. “A toothbrush, for example?”
“About a thousand arrows, and the quivers to carry them,” Chesa said. “Not literally!” she added, when Ida started punching in the numbers. “I’m just used to an endless magical supply. How about . . . sixty? Does that seem right?”
“I’m good to go,” Gregory answered. “Steel and courage. That’s all I need.”
“The Saint and I are nothing without our magic. We’ll hang back until we can establish a solid connection with our domains,” Tembo said. “And I believe Lady Bethany carries enough knives for a handful of Scotsmen.”
“Three and a half Scotsmen,” Bee said, balancing a spinning dagger on her fingertip.
“One more thing,” I said. “Can I have the scarab?”
“I was hoping to add it to my collection,” Ida said reluctantly. “Why do you want it?”
“If Evelyn is using them to power her cursed contraption, I want to study it. Maybe I can figure out a way to stop them.”
“That feels unlikely,” Ida said. But she produced the brass beetle from a compartment and handed it over. “Just . . . try to not break it.”
“Then let’s get to it.” Addie stepped onto the elevator.
The metal coffin tube ride was no more enjoyable on the way out than it had been on the way in. If anything, it was worse, because Ida insisted that we start the journey upside down, so that we came out right side up. I didn’t argue. Anything to get off this constantly spinning carousel of gears and pistons.
We emerged in the middle of a spinning carousel of gears and pistons. I thought I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and arrived where I had started, but as I stepped out of the vacuum tube, I spied Adelaide crouching behind a crudely painted horse. Mechanical organ music clamored overhead, and flashing bulbs blinked overhead. Everything was painted in gaudy reds and yellows and golds. I smelled the strong scent of saltwater in the air. The movement of the platform put me off my balance, and I stumbled to one side, ramming shoulder-first into the side of a wooden sleigh painted the color of sea-foam.
Chesa came out of the tube right behind me. She squinted at the lights distastefully. The look on her face reminded me of our first date, down at the . . .
“Amusement park?” I said out loud. “Why are we in an amusement park?”
“It’s just the one carousel, on a boardwalk. I think Ida’s portal kicked it into overdrive. Contact with the Gestalt will do that to machines sometimes,” Addie said. “Just hang on. It’ll pass.”
The rest of the team joined us a second later. The vacuum tube was somehow connected to the center pole and crown bearing of the carousel. As soon as the portal closed and lifted out of view, the lights on the carousel snapped off, and the music dwindled into eerie silence. Slowly, the carousel creaked to a halt. In the relative darkness and quiet, the painted horses and jumping gazelles looked haunted. With Tesla and Adelaide in tow, Knight Watch was up to eight members. Way more than was customary. We were in a warehouse full of abandoned carnival rides. Dusty sheets covered most of them, but every so often a painted clown’s head or rusted dragon boat stuck out of the canvas. Our carousel sat at the center of the operation, its covering torn and twisted by the machine’s sudden and unexpected activation. Now that the machine had fallen silent, I could hear seagulls in the distance, and the crash of waves against a shore.
“This feels really Mundane,” I said. “Or straight-up haunted. Take your pick.”
“Ida did the best she could. Evelyn has to be around here somewhere, sneaking through the Gestalt,” Addie said. She brought her shotgun to her shoulder, sweeping the warehouse floor. “But I don’t think she’s right here.”
“We saw her on a boardwalk. Let’s see what we can see.” I stepped off the carousel and through the graveyard of forgotten amusements. “Chesa, do your elven ears hear anything?”
“Still working on filling my magic, would rather not tap it yet,” she said.
“Right. Magic.” I opened the tap in my amulet, letting magical energy trickle into my soul. It would be a while before I could do anything tricky, but it felt good to be more than mundane. I saw the same relief on the faces of the rest of Knight Watch.
The sliding door at the end of the warehouse was cracked open. Now that the carousel was off, it was our only source of light.
“Did anyone bring a torch?” Chesa asked.
“Left it in my bag,” I said. “Along with fifty pounds of jerky and three hundred feet of rope. So I guess that was a mistake.” We stumbled through the warehouse, occasionally bumping into covered rides and sending plumes of dust into the air. By the time we reached the door, we were coughing, bruised in shin and pride, and generally ready to be outside. I put my shoulder into the sliding door and shoved. The door rumbled open on rusting casters and rattling chains. Muted gray light poured inside, along with a stiff breeze, heavy with salt. “At least the door wasn’t locked.”
We stepped outside into a light drizzle that was falling from a low sky. The boardwalk extended in both directions, one side lined with weather-beaten warehouses locked tight with rusting chains, the other side looking out onto a short span of filthy beach, and the ocean beyond. Waves crashed every few seconds off the pebbled shore, sending salt spray over the warped planks of the boardwalk, mingling with the cold rain. Two seconds in the open, and I was already soaked to the core. In the fog and rain, it was impossible to see more than a dozen yards in either direction. The only sounds were the waves, and the lonely song of seagulls, pinwheeling through the clouds overhead.
“Well, this is dreary as cold mud,” I said. “Where are we? New Jersey?”
“I think this is Atlantis,” Adelaide said quietly. “I thought it sank long ago.”
“Atlantis? Like, the mystical island nation from Odysseus?” I asked.
“It was Plato,” Tembo said. “But this does not feel like the Republic to me.”
“It was a failed attempt at consolidating the Gestalt into a single, stable entity. Kind of a permanent delusion,” Tesla said. “It was Claude’s greatest ambition. It would have attracted people from all over the world, and let them dream out loud.”
“So like Disneyland, or Harajuku,” I said. “What happened?”
“The Lumieres were the driving force behind it. After what happened to them, the project faltered,” Tesla said sadly. “Evelyn claimed it sank into the ocean.”
“If her father was planning something greater, this is where he would have hidden it,” Adelaide said, grimacing. “Hidden from the world, yours and ours, tucked deep into the Gestalt like a bomb waiting to go off.”
“I thought Claude simply wanted to build a permanent steampunk Utopia,” Tesla said. “It seems his ambitions were more diabolical than I imagined.”
“Kind of weird that they made it look like a giant boardwalk,” Chesa said. “Are you sure this isn’t Atlantic City or something?”
Just then, the clouds parted long enough for us to catch a glimpse of the farther ocean. There was something large and metal among the waves, its spine ridged like a boar, with a glass eye the size of a city block. The waves crashed against it, but it didn’t move. I only had a second’s view of it, but I got the impression of immense size and weight. Gregory gave a low whistle.
“Definitely not Atlantic City,” he said.
“Yeah. That’s the Kraken, the Lumieres’ personal submersible. Which means Evelyn is definitely around here somewhere,” Addie said. “The question is, where?”
“I think I know.” I pointed to the left, along the length of the boardwalk.
Even through the fog and rain, the lights shone bright as lightning. Whatever they were illuminating was cloaked by the murk, but it was tall. At the base of the tower, a whole village’s worth of blinking lights and flashing pillars spread out into the ocean. In the silence that hung between crashing waves, we could hear music.
Carnival music, slightly dissonant, twisted by distance and echo into a cruel mockery of circus laughter and amusement park levity.
“Haunted amusement park!” Bethany said enthusiastically, pulling her hood over her head to shield against the rain. “Let’s go!”