The Iron Wyrm Affair

Chapter Thirty-One Quarry and Quarry

It was a good thing Miss Bannon had left them a well-filled purse. The price of rented clockhorses to Upper Hardres was ridiculous. Ludovico pointed this out and drove a much harder bargain than Clare thought strictly wise, seeming to enjoy the haggling far more than was prudent. The Neapolitan was called a filthy gipsy, and took pleasure in feeding this impression by ill-timed spitting and insults. Sigmund was, of course, no help – the Bavarian could be cheated from pillar to post, and nearly was before the assassin intervened so auspiciously. It took a great deal of patience Clare was not overly supplied with in order to conclude the bargain in a reasonably diplomatic fashion.

Nevertheless, they were saddled by the time dawn broke over Dover’s cliffs, and a half-hour later had quit the town’s clutching limits.

The ride was a green and grey blur, Clare’s attention turned mostly inward, equations filling his mental cauldron near to bursting. The pattern trembled just out of reach. He did not know Throckmorton’s work, and there were other influences besides – he had read Roderick Smythe’s monograph on logic patterns, but the crop of equations bore as much resemblance to Smythe’s examples as a single fingernail gear did to Brocarde’s Infinitude Audoricon.

The clutching fog tried to follow them, but five miles out of Dover they burst into watery grey sunlight. The waking world was hushed, even the birds forgetting to greet the sunrise.

Their view was for the most part trammelled by high green hedges on either side, and Valentinelli slumped in his saddle as if he wished he were elsewhere. Sigmund clutched at the reins and looked miserable. Clare would have quite enjoyed himself, if not for the incessant mental work. He was no closer to finding a pattern to the equations when they breasted a rise and looked down on the dual villages of Hardres, Upper and Lower. The estate was on the far side of the Lower town, a haze of coal and other smoke riding under the billows of grey cloud, weather sweeping in visible from a long distance away.

Despite his slouching, Valentinelli was a good horseman, and his bay clockhorse picked up the pace as much as was safe. Hoofbeats pounded steady time, jog-trotting, sometimes reaching a bone-rattling canter when the Neapolitan judged it appropriate. Time pressed down on Clare, ticking – there was only a limited amount of it before they reached the estate, and once there time would weigh on them even more heavily.

They passed a weather-beaten sign, proclaiming Hardres Quarry Ltd 3mi, proudly pointing down an overgrown track that had nevertheless seen hard recent use, if the state of the broken and battered herbiage on its floor was any indication. Clare noted this, and his uneasiness mounted. The Sun refused to show His face, and the air was heavy with the fresh greensap scent of rain.

“Mentale.” The Neapolitan glanced over his shoulder. “What we likely to find here?”

It was somewhat of a relief to turn his attention from the equations. The array of mental blackboards had changed into a forest of hideously twisted chalk scribbles. “More mecha, certainly,” he answered, his faculties directed sluggishly at the new question. “Possibly a mentath to deal with the arranging of the fresh capacitors. What troubles me is that almost certainly we will find a few men in the trade of violence. We are not so very far from Londinium, and if Prussians have arrived in Dover, they have arrived elsewhere as well. Brighton and Hardwitch, of course.” The planning involved is tremendous. But they would not need many – just enough to hold the Palace and Whitehall, as well as the Armory at the foot of the Tower. Much will depend on exactly how they plan to incapacitate Britannia or Her vessel.

The thought of Britannia incapacitated, or Queen Victrix somehow under duress, gave him a queer feeling in the region of his stomach. It could not have been his last meal, for that had been Miss Bannon’s excellent dinner.

Well, if it was the last, at least it was a fine one. And in good company.

“Hmm.” Valentinelli grinned, white teeth flashing in his dark face. “I tell you what. I kill mercenaries, you kill the other mentale. Simple.”

“I cannot kill him until I know more of the plan.”

The Neapolitan jerked his head in Sigmund’s direction. “Is he any good at the torture, then?”

Sig piped up. “The bastards who broke my Spinne, yes, I torture them. Baerbarth shall invent new tortures!”

“I should think not, Sig old chap.” Clare suppressed a sigh. “Dear heavens. A mentath does not respond to such things as a mercenary would.”

Valentinelli’s snort was a masterpiece of disdain. “A man feel pain, he answer questions. Especially when Ludo is asking, mentale. Never mind. We see when we arrive.”

“If you would cease speaking like a bad imitation of a Punchinjude puppet, signor, we would deal much more easily with each other.” For a moment Clare regretted saying it. His irritation had mounted to a considerable degree. Neither Sig nor the assassin was logical. Not like Miss Bannon. Of course, she was not logical either, so—

Wait. His attention snagged on the thought, but he was not given leave to follow it.

“So I should speak the Queen’s tongue, should I?” The same clipped, cultured schoolboy tone as before. He sounded thoroughly nettled, and had ceased slumping atop his clockhorse. “If I was not blood-bound, sir, you and I would have an accounting.”

“I am your man, signor,” Clare returned rather stiffly. “As soon as this damnable affair is finished. In the meantime, can you please not insult me by speaking as if you are a dolt? I have rather a sizeable respect for your intelligence, and I wish not to waste time arguing you into acting as if you possess said intelligence.”

Silence, broken only by the thumping of hooves. Clare blinked.

I am very uncomfortable with the idea of Miss Bannon in peril. It is not logical, but … oh, good heavens, she is a sorceress! You are becoming ridiculous, Archibald!

Valentinelli finally spoke. “It is a habit, sir. I wish everyone, without exception, to underestimate me. It makes my life much easier.”

“Everyone? Including Miss Bannon?”

“I think she is the only one who never has.” The soft, cultured tone was chilling. “And I hate her for it.”

Well. “Ah.” What could one say in response? “I should think it would be a comfort.”

“A man does not like a woman he cannot surprise, mentale.”

Much about you becomes clearer. “I see.”

Valentinelli kneed his horse into a canter, and Clare hastened to follow suit. Sigmund groaned, and their destination grew ever closer.

And Clare still had no pattern for the equations.

“There is no one here,” Sigmund announced. He was flushed and sweating, his broad face shiny.

Clare hushed him, gazing at the crumbling manor from the shelter of an overgrown hedge.

It was of the flat chateau style, a box with a sadly punctured clay-tile roof, the gardens crumbling and overgrown, its windows lackadaisically boarded with worm-eaten wood. Weeds had forced their way up between flagstones, and the whole place had such an obvious aura of disrepair that he was half tempted to agree with Sig’s assessment.

But only half.

Valentinelli merely pointed. The weeds were crushed where heavy cart wheels had rolled over them. The trail pointed directly to the three stairs leading to the chateau’s fire-scarred front door.

The fire was recent. And chemical in origin, from what I can observe. Which does not bode well.

The Neapolitan cocked his head, his dark eyes taking on a peculiar flat shine.

Clare was suddenly cold, and very glad they had left the horses in a small copse outside the estate’s fallen gates. The greenery hiding them seemed a very thin screen indeed.

For there was the sound of scraping metal, gears catching, and fizzing sparks. The manor house shuddered, its stone façade zigzagging with cracks. The earth rumbled, vibrating as if a gigantic beast slumbering in its depths turned over in its sleep.

In a blinding flash, Clare thought of the quarry down the road. Yes. They would not need to dig far to stay hidden; and no wonder there were cart tracks. Building underground; now why did I not account for such a notion?

The manor shuddered again, and masonry fell. A cavern tore itself in the front wall, belching steam, smoke, and blue-white arcing electricity. Clare’s faculties supplied him with an observation he did not fancy or trust. He questioned it from every angle, and it became indisputable. He was not going mad.

A gigantic mechanisterum homunculus had been built into the house.

Sigmund’s disbelieving laugh was lost in the thundering noise. “Spinne!” he yelled. “Bastards! Schweine!”

The mecha rose out of the manse, shedding bits of masonry like rainwater from a duck’s back. Clare’s busy faculties swallowed every detail they could reach while the thing’s legs unfolded, a mad dream of a mechanical spider taking shape before him on a lovely sunny afternoon. The appendages thudded down one at a time, while the cephalothorax and abdomen lifted, gleaming. Prussian capacitors winked in orderly rows along the bottom of its body, a constant whining hum rattling every tooth in Clare’s head. The pattern behind the deadlights trembled on the edge of his comprehension. Steel-banded glass jars bubbled with green fluid atop the mecha’s back, and in each one floated—

So that is what they needed the brains and spinal cords for. His limbs refused to move, his busy brain straining. A mentath attempting some form of Alterative sorcery? But how? How is it possible?

The ground would not cease its rumbling, and Clare’s imagination served him a picture of other mecha, built in the depths of an abandoned quarry, golden discs on their chests sparking into life as the workers who built them – and he was suddenly quite sure they had been assembled by things very like the metal scarecrows in the Blackwerks’ depths – capered with furious mechanical glee, their eyes glowing crimson with mad intelligence.

If a dragon could run the stink and clamour and hellish heat of the Blackwerks, one could easily induce its unsleeping metal minions to build in the dank darkness underground. Another thought turned Clare even colder: perhaps there was more than one of the beasts cooperating in this terrible mockery of the mechanisterum’s art.

“Get down!” Ludovico yelled, shoving him into Sigmund. They fell in a rattling heap, Clare’s hat disappearing into the overgrown shrubbery. The juicy green stink of broken sap-filled branches rose, struggling with the odours of ozone, heated machine oil, scorched metal, and stone dust.

The mecha was immense. No wonder the equations are so complex. This rather changes things.

Valentinelli crouched, his hip knocking Sig’s shoulder. The Bavarian was pressed into the dirt, and Clare thought perhaps the Neapolitan enjoyed the chance to do so … but it did not work. For the gigantic mecha lifting its way up out of the ruins of the manse had some means of detecting them. The eyes on its arachnoid head dripped with diseased golden electricity, and the thing squatted over smoking ruins. Massive clicking noises assaulted the shivering air, and apertures slid open where a living arachnid would have spinnarets. Cannon shapes whirred down into place, and Clare’s stomach gave a decidedly uneasy message to the rest of him.

The cannons swivelled, pointing unerringly at Clare and his companions. The Neapolitan cursed –

– and there was a booming so immense it robbed every other sound of consequence as the mecha fired.