Iron and Blood (11 page)

“How do we know it’s not a trick?” The Greek glowered at Veles. “Perhaps your mechanical man was filled with dynamite. The stone might not have had anything to do with the explosion.”

Veles shrugged. “A reasonable question,” he said magnanimously. “And I will set your concern to rest in just a moment. But I’d like to direct your attention to the rear of the car.” The shades on the windows in the last third of the railcar were drawn, making it fairly dark. Veles walked a few paces to pull down a white screen, and returned to where he had been standing. A Théâtre Optique praxinoscope sat on a rolling cart in the middle of the car. Veles lit the lantern and spun the wheel.

Images appeared on the screen, and Veles’s guests leaned forward to watch them unfold. A man held up a piece of tourmaquartz not much larger than the one Veles had displayed. He set it on a wooden crate and connected two wires to the crystal, then spooled out the wire and took shelter behind a thick stone wall. When the crystal detonated, the explosion hurled rock and bits of crate high into the air and left a crater several feet deep.

“Think of the possibilities,” Veles urged. He turned off the lantern and moved the cart aside. “And now, if you’ll follow me to the engine of this train, I have something else to show you.”

The guests murmured among themselves as they followed Veles forward. He opened the door of the coal car, nearest the engine, to reveal an empty shell. As they exclaimed in surprise, Veles led them to the engine itself. Where there should have been a furnace filled with coal, a sliver of tourmaquartz glowed incandescently behind a mica glass window, and the heat radiating from the customized chamber was clearly enough to power the boilers that drove the train.

“You’ll note the locomotive engine emits a cloud of steam, but no coal smoke,” Veles said, gesturing skyward as his potential investors craned their necks to see. Everyone began to talk at once.

“Gentlemen, please,” Veles said. “Let’s discuss this in a more comfortable setting.”

When they returned to the passenger car, a kingly repast of delicacies had been set out on a dining cart, complete with fine liquor. Another
werkman
, dressed as a waiter, made certain everyone was served before withdrawing discreetly to the back of the car. Richard Thwaites had taken a seat at the front, and now that Veles had made the presentation, Thwaites was at home pouring drinks and talking about money.

“Quantities of tourmaquartz are naturally limited,” Thwaites said, leaning back in his chair. “In fact, the vein we’ve discovered is the only known source in the world not under the control of the government. We’re prospecting for more, but as it stands, the production of our mine is all the tourmaquartz available to investors such as yourselves.”

“We’ve already committed to several orders,” Veles added nonchalantly, “so some of the production is spoken for. But there is some tourmaquartz still remaining, and it can be yours—if you have the cash to pay for it.”

“The bidding starts at a million dollars a pound,” Thwaites said with a smile.

D
ROGO
V
ELES WAS
in a foul mood as his carriage jostled back and forth. Two days had passed since the railway excursion with investors, and he had returned to New Pittsburgh tired and out of sorts. His carriage had left the comparatively better roads of New Pittsburgh proper a while back, and the roadways leading to the Vesta Nine mine were as shoddy and patched together as the run-down little company houses that lined them. His conversation with Thwaites had not helped his mood, but then again, it seldom did.

I doubt Thwaites likes my company any better than I like his,
Veles thought.
But we are valuable to each other, and it’s far too late to turn back now.

The carriage was expensive, a handbuilt chariot d’Orsay with the Thwaites’s family crest painted in an emblem on its side and back. It was ostentatious for a visit to a coal mine, but Thwaites insisted he take it, and Veles preferred using one of Thwaites’s carriages to one of his own.
If it goes badly, let them remember seeing him and not me,
Veles thought, leaning back against the tufted velvet cushions.

“Wait here.” Veles did not bother looking up at the coachman as he stepped out of the carriage, and he had the impression that the driver was glad to comply.
Nothing like a reputation as a dark witch to keep conversation to a minimum
.

He looked out over the sprawling Vesta Nine complex. Everything in New Pittsburgh seemed to be built on a scale the Old World only glimpsed with the pyramids and the Louvre, or perhaps Russia’s Winter Palace. Steel mills rose like the tarnished palaces of sooty gods, taking up vast swaths of the riverbanks, belching smoke and spewing fire. The mines, with their tipples and myriad larger-than-life buildings, looted the treasuries of the Underworld and turned coal into gold.

Here, Veles’s penchant for dark clothing served him well. He had no intention of being seen and remembered. The coachman would be easy enough to take care of, once he returned to the city. A bit of magic, and memory became unreliable. But magicking the memories of hundreds—thousands—of miners was another matter entirely. And despite Thwaites’s blithe dismissal, Veles was certain that even the wretched brutes who worked in the depths of the Vesta Nine knew something was gravely wrong.

He had survived uprisings on the Continent. Unlike Thwaites, Veles understood that peasants could only be pushed so far before they rebelled, even against impossible odds.
Enough peasants with pitchforks—or miners with pickaxes—can overcome any hired army or Pinkerton strongmen,
Veles thought.
Bought loyalty only goes so far.
The situation was even more of a powder keg than Veles acknowledged to his partner. If the miners got balky, some kind of investigation was sure to follow, and Thwaites’s payroll was unlikely to cover everyone likely to be poking noses into the affair.

He did not fear the night’s work, not exactly, although an ancient, powerful supernatural hive could never be approached lightly. Yet over the long years, Veles had learned to focus, and had trained himself to discipline his fears with preparation. He had rested and made ready, gathered his amulets and talismans to protect himself and amplify his power. The time and day, even the phase of the moon, were auspicious. Without the Russian stones supposedly in that damned crate from Poland, it was the best he could do.

Despite himself, his heartbeat picked up its pace. The night air was cool, and the sky overhead obscured by the ubiquitous Pittsburgh smoke. He moved quickly, in the shadows. Well-timed flickers of magic distracted guards or gave them something else to remember. This part was easy.

It was the middle of the night shift, but even so, Veles avoided the main entrance to Vesta Nine. He had memorized the layout of the massive complex, and that exercise served him well. Even at a distance, he could sense the strain against the wardings he had set in place. His was powerful magic, but not omnipotent.
Gessyan
were well feared by reasonable people back where Veles came from. There were reasons Eastern Europe was thought to be a dark, forbidding place. Wolves were not the only predators long banished from the West that thrived in the East. Other creatures, red of tooth and claw, made the forests and caverns of the less populous Eastern kingdoms their homes.
We understand these things
.

He closed his eyes, opening up his magic. He could see his old wardings like gossamer strands forming a grid all around the mine. He had not been able to contain the most powerful
gessyan
,like the Night Hag, the wraiths and the hell hounds. They had fled the mine as soon as the deep places were violated and the ancient spells broken, screaming out into the night, ready for a harvest of blood.

Even they have learned not to destroy all the miners, at least, not all at once,
Veles thought.
The
Logonje
taught them that lesson the hard way. They’ll hunt farther afield if they can, and the hunting here is likely very good indeed.

It irked him that even with all his power, he had not been able to force the Night Hag and her fellow spirits back into the deep places. He had settled for bottling up the lesser creatures, and forcing those with more strength to leave the mine, avoiding workers on the higher levels. It was a choice with consequences. By keeping certain
gessyan
imprisoned, he reduced the slaughter outside the mine, buying them time to complete the tourmaquartz extraction. But he could not seal the
gessyan
away completely, not without the Russian artifacts, nor could he recall the powerful
gessyan
that had escaped. And now that he knew about the
gessyan
and their power, he was not certain that he wanted to bottle them up, if he might be able to control such potentially useful creatures.

All this for a bit of rock
.
Not even gold.
Yet he, even more than Thwaites, understood the true value of tourmaquartz. Thwaites saw everything in terms of money and social status. Veles had enough of both to last several lifetimes. The real prize was power—power enough to have prime ministers and madmen at his beck and call. Power to change the destiny of nations, unseat kings, nudge history’s course to a path of his own choosing. Dabblers like Thwaites would never grasp that power was far more valuable than money. Money could be seized or destroyed. Power endured. And the power that came from control of a substance that could keep airships flying or energize the weapons of armies was rich indeed. It could be nearly unstoppable. The thought made Veles’s lips quirk in the barest suggestion of a smile.

Few people in New Pittsburgh understood the nexus of power that surrounded them. Three rivers converged, and a fourth, hidden aquifer beneath the ground was the mightiest of all. Seams of rich minerals veined these hills. Countless tunnels ran through them, conduits for magic power. Even now, no one knew exactly how many tunnels there were or where they all ran. New Pittsburgh was like a magical kettle on a hot stove, ready to boil over. Even the original inhabitants, the people settlers ignorantly called ‘Indians’, knew that the swift, deep rivers were places where strong magic ran. It was a most volatile mixture.

Magic springs from the earth and the sky and the stars. Science is a pale competitor, trying to explain away what small minds can’t comprehend. The Gloomy Dane was right; there are far more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of by philosophers—or scientists.

In the shadows, Veles used salt and iron shavings to set a warded circle. He wore protective amulets of tin and aluminum, and carried a polished quartz disk in his pocket. Veles spoke his spells in Romanian, his native language, closest to his heart. The working required a few drops of his blood, shed with an obsidian blade, mixed with iron and lead. All of the clockworks and mechanisms in the mines seemed to resist his magic, as if in even the smallest of ways, the tension between new and old was ever present.

As Veles said the words of invocation, he felt a cold chill run down his spine and he shivered. All around the mine, the shadows came alive, and Veles sensed that he was being watched by beings both hungry and malicious. It was a struggle to raise his magic, even within the warded circle, as if something were pressing back against him. The magic stank of age and death, like an old grave. It was earth magic, the magic of the creatures of caves and hollows, crypts and wells, of stone and dirt, minerals and gems. Veles much preferred the magic of blood and fire: vital, fickle, and alive.

He had the same feeling that he often got walking past a disused cemetery or the ruins of an old house.
As you are now, so once were we. As we are now, so you will be,
the old tombstone rhyme came to mind.
Fire is fleeting. Sooner or later, everything comes under the ground.

Veles gave a muted cry as he harnessed his power. A rush of magic flowed out from him toward the mine, an invisible wave imbued with his intentions. Veles felt drained, as if he had done a hard day’s labor. Even for a witch of his considerable experience and natural strength, such a large, complex working strained his limits.
Thwaites has no idea
, he thought as he climbed back into the carriage. He knocked on the frame, and the driver moved on. Veles collapsed against the seat cushions, utterly spent.

I am going to find Karl Jasinski and get those damned stones from him if I have to move all Hell to do it,
Veles swore to himself.
And since that cretin Thwaites has already opened Pandora’s Box with the Desmets, we’ll have to finish what we started.

T
HE CARRIAGE DREW
up in front of the Desmet home as the bells from the new Shadyside Presbyterian Church rang out the ninth hour. Kovach opened the door for Jake. His face was smudged with soot and pale grit dusted his dark hair. Kovach’s clothing was streaked with dirt and speckled with what might have been blood, though Kovach himself appeared uninjured.

“Yeah, I don’t look too pretty, but that’s not much of a surprise now, is it?” Kovach said with a grin. “I’ve got a security detail all around the house. Henry threw a fit, but the guards are either dressed as house staff or in street clothes, so they don’t stick out too much.” He and Jake headed for the door, and Jake looked around, spotting a number of men ‘working’ around the outside of the house who were not usually present.