Riveted (19 page)

“No, though I loved him in my way. This was a widow I met after my sons had grown.”

Annika slowed. “From the New World?”

“Yes.”

“No one ever said anything of her.”

“Some stories you don’t share with an entire village.”

Oh. Annika wouldn’t either, then. “She didn’t return your feelings?”

“She did.” Valdís paused at the bottom of the stair, looked back. The steel in her gaze had softened. “But she was afraid to act on them. I called her a coward and left, thinking that she would realize how much she needed me and decide that I was worth the risk. It was the most foolish thing I ever did.”

“She decided you weren’t?” Annika didn’t know how anybody could. Valdís would have tripped anyone’s heart.

“I don’t know. When I returned a year later, she was dead.” At Annika’s gasp of denial, she nodded. “A wasting of her lungs.”

A mist seemed to pass over Valdís’s eyes, but with a single blink, there was steel again.

“I came back to die, Annika. Why not? I lived a full life. So I
set up my store and planned to while away the years until I could join her.” A sharp smile pulled at her mouth, and she started up the stairs. “That’s taken longer than I expected it would, too.”

David had never been courted before. All through dinner
, Lorenzo di Fiore spoke of the geological activity to the south and the schemes his father had envisioned to exploit it. More than once, David caught Dooley’s gaze on him, his friend’s amusement at the situation as blatant as the attempt to entice him. The work did sound fascinating, and di Fiore’s determination was flattering, but David wasn’t so hungry now that he couldn’t see the withered husks.

Despite di Fiore’s claim that this was an opportunity for the sons to wipe clean the sins of their fathers, David didn’t believe the man cared about Stone Kentewess’s reputation. He only wanted David because his help would please Paolo.

David couldn’t blame Lorenzo di Fiore for it, but he had no intention of working for him.

When dinner ended, he had some thoughts of escape. Di Fiore suggested a walk to the nearby public house, and Dooley immediately took him up on it—hoping to speak with locals about the legends, David knew. The older man didn’t need him for that.

The temperature had dropped, snow falling in tiny flakes that the wind blew across the rough surface of the street like sand. The public house was a five-minute walk back toward the heart of Smoke Cove, and most of it spent in silence, with their heavy scarves covering their mouths and noses. David walked with his face angled into the wind, so his breath didn’t fog his eyepiece.

The warm glow in the pub’s windows was a welcome sight—and
Phatéon
hovering over the harbor even more welcome—but David’s intention to say his farewells in the street and keep on going waned when he heard the noise coming from inside.

Men shouting—for a pub, nothing unusual. Louder than their
raised voices, though, the repeated strike of metal against metal. CLANG. CLANG.
CLANG!

Curiosity drew him closer. The building had been recently enlarged. New birch planks adjoined weathered boards, clearly marking a tall addition on the side.

The shouts erupted into cheers and groans, the unmistakable sound of a competition’s end, with more losers than winners. The clanging stopped. Dooley glanced back at Komlan.

“Are they hammering rail spikes?”

“A race?” Di Fiore answered with a shake of his head. “We’d rather they expend their energy on the line. This is a different sort of entertainment—an old invention of my father’s, put to new use.”

Hell. David couldn’t walk away now. Inside, the noise and heat were almost unbearable. His eyepiece immediately fogged. He wiped it clear with the end of his scarf, then shed his hat and unbuckled his coat. The main tap room held tables and stools at the bar, most of them full. Di Fiore glanced at Komlan, who nodded and spoke to Dooley. The two men headed into the tap room. Di Fiore gestured for David to join him.

Men crowded the addition, standing shoulder to shoulder. A pair of barkers stood at the entrance, collecting money for cards. The laborers pushed for position around them, most of them shouting in Spanish, but fell back as di Fiore approached. Looking harassed and sweating, one of the barkers managed a smile for di Fiore and handed over two cards.

A stair took them to a second level, open in the center and looking down over the main floor. Two pulleys hung from the peaked ceiling, their cables taut. Though as crowded as the lower level, an empty table stood near the rail. Di Fiore’s regular table, apparently.

David took a seat, got his first look over the rail—and into a battered steel face. Twice as tall as a man, an automaton stood off-center in the main floor. An identical opponent was squared off against it, broken in half. The thick torso had folded over backward
at the waist, still attached to the legs by thin cables. From above, the clockworks inside the abdominal cavity were visible, a complicated arrangement of gears and rods.

A slow chant began building on the first level. A group of men, four to each side, pushed against a long capstan bar, winching cable around a cylinder. David’s gaze followed the length of the cable up to the pulley on the ceiling, and down to where a heavy hook attached it to the defeated automaton’s skull.

With a shriek of steel, the automaton lifted its head. Metal groaned as the torso followed. Like a puppet pulled by one string, the upper half rose disjointedly, arms dangling, its head at an angle no human could survive. Finally upright, the abdomen settled onto the legs. A thin man pushed a ladder forward and climbed—apparently locking it into place. A moment later, the laborers at the winch backed up. The cable loosened and the hook slipped out.

The automaton remained standing. Both machines had obviously been through the routine before. Dents and gashes covered the steel housings. Their fists had been pounded into blunt hammers.

Di Fiore slid a paper clamp and a card marked with a grid of circles across the table. “Push out a sequence!” he called over the noise. “It gives the fighter an instruction—the type of punch to throw. Right, left, uppercut, roundhouse, and so on. If the fighter knocks over the other on your card, you win. You can also bet on the time it’ll take before one falls.”

There were no descriptions of what each sequence would do, no guides. Perhaps that was part of the game—figuring out what each pattern did. David clamped it three times at random.

“Just the card, I think.”

The other man nodded. “The odds don’t favor anyone.”

Di Fiore glanced over the rail, gestured to someone below. Only seconds passed before a boy arrived at the table to collect the cards.

The crowd quieted. Anticipation rose through the noise that
remained. The two barkers approached the fighters. Each carried a stack of cards and inserted them into a slot cut out of the automatons’ right legs. A bell rang. The barkers each pulled a lever on the knees and raced out of the arena.

The first right hook landed with a deafening crack. The floor shuddered beneath David’s chair, his feet. The second machine flew backward, the cables at its waist exposed. Its roundhouse missed the other automaton completely. Laughter and jeers rose from the crowd. A sharp winding click rose over the noise, and the automaton snapped back into place. The impact of the blow it smashed into the first machine reverberated through David’s own chest.

Di Fiore leaned back in his chair, lighting his pipe and studying David through the curl of smoke. “Impressive, yes?”

David had never seen anything like it. His prosthetics were more sophisticated, the sentinels that guarded the American coastline were bigger, more powerful, and he’d seen clockwork machines that were just as intricate—but those clockworks all operated in a predetermined sequence. Even those with variant sequences, such as playing different songs or performing different tricks, operated in a predictable pattern.

It was incredibly impressive. Not as astonishing as nanoagents, perhaps, but well worth the praise. “Are these the only two?”

Di Fiore nodded. “For now, at least. I’ll manufacture more soon, but the cards are a sticking point. Everyone is willing to pay for the machines, but no one wants to keep paying for cards after they’ve used up their first shipment—and of course, we’ll make most of our profit on the cards.”

Given the number of cards used up in one fight, David believed it. “You said this was an old invention? This card system was developed then, too?”

“Yes. And buried for almost forty years.”

“By your father? Why?”

“They were never designed for entertainment—the machines
were supposed to fight the Horde’s metal men that they’d heard rumors about. Then the Lusitanians discovered that the metal men were actually soldiers in steam-powered suits, not automatons, and so they asked inventors to create similar technology instead.” He smiled faintly. “My father was in the business of war long before he tried to stop it. Do you know what changed his mind?”

David didn’t. He shook his head.

“He visited Horde territory.”

A thunderous cheer erupted around them. David glanced over, saw the first automaton had taken a blow that tipped it backward…and slowly over. Its shoulders
thunk
ed against its legs, guts exposed. Di Fiore tugged out his pocket watch.

“Good time.” He tucked his watch away. “Listen to them. Even those men who don’t win are always more satisfied when the fight lasts a while.”

Long enough to get their money’s worth, anyway. The boy brought two more cards. David punched out five circles. “What did your father find?”

From his own travels, David had an idea. The Horde-occupied territories he’d passed through hadn’t been anything like he’d expected, considering the tales of terror he’d heard growing up. Some of the stories were true—the Horde did possess giant war machines. The Great Khan did have an iron fist that would crush anyone who stood against him.

But people were crushed in the New World, too. In many ways, the Horde citizens he’d encountered were no different than people anywhere else—and the differences that did exist were seemed no greater than the differences between the people of Manhattan City and Lusitania, or the Liberé and the Arabic tribes of the Far Maghreb.

“He found nothing,” Di Fiore confirmed. “And this was twenty years before the tower fell in London. The Horde had no navy—only merchant ships and barges. All these years, we’d been terrified
that they’d arrive on our shores, and the Horde had never been interested in coming. They weren’t breeding animals to women.” He frowned and tilted his head, as if in concession to a point David hadn’t made. “The frenzies were real enough, it’s true. The infected were forced to breed when the tower sent out the right signal. The zombies are real. The laborers’ augmentations were real—though you, of all people, can see the good of that, too.”

No, David couldn’t. There was nothing decent about forcibly amputating a person’s limbs and replacing them with tools, simply to create a more efficient work force. David couldn’t argue that he hadn’t benefited from the technology, but he’d never call the original application
good.

“I don’t think my situation is comparable.”

“Perhaps not. My point is, my father realized that everyone’s fear of the Horde was all a fear of nothing. No one bothered to look beneath the stories—but at the same time, that fear united all those kingdoms and countries for centuries, gave everyone a common purpose.” His voice rose with the fervor of a man at a pulpit. “My father wanted to give everyone something to hope for instead. You saw the mountain builder region before he arrived at Inoka. The hills stripped, the plains lying fallow, all of it barren as a result of their endless disputes. What did your people call it? A locust war?”

They hadn’t been his father’s people, but David didn’t think pointing that out would make any difference. Many people lumped all natives into a single group. “A grasshopper war.”

“Over a small bit of land that they ruined while they fought over it. Coal smoke choking everything, the rivers black. But my father gave them something else to fight for: He brought to them a mountain that reached up to the heavens, and at its heart a machine to clear the air, clean the water.” He paused and drew on his pipe before adding, “And he did stop the disputes. Not the way he planned, of course.”

Not the way he planned?
The disputes ceased because thousands of people were dead, and no one wanted to continue a war while they picked up pieces of their children and wives.

A deafening screech from the fallen automaton prevented immediate reply—perhaps for the best. The metallic groan continued as men hoisted the machine. With a mix of fascination and revulsion, David watched di Fiore observe the proceedings.

Was this what it meant to be Paolo di Fiore’s son? To admire his father, he had to reinterpret and justify his failings, his mistakes?

He turned to David again. “What do you believe is stronger—fear or hope?”

Where the hell would a question like that lead? Almost afraid of the answer, but curious despite himself, David responded honestly. “I want it to be hope. I don’t know if it is.”

“Neither do I. But I want to find out.” He looked over the rail as a new fight began—not watching the automatons, but the men shouting below. “I’m not a naturalist like you, or an inventor like my father. I’m an observationist. I put things together to see what will happen.”

“Things?” That wasn’t what di Fiore was looking at now. “Or people?”

“People, this time. Those crushed beneath the boot of the Castilian court. Those ruled by fear of torture, of hunger, of death.” He glanced over as Komlan joined them, a drink in hand. “We’ll feed them, let them grow strong, tell them they can win—teach them to fight. And we’ll see what happens when the work is done.”

The meaning of that sank in. “You’re sending back an army?”

“We’re sending back
men
,” Komlan said, obviously familiar with di Fiore’s plan. “Men who’ve been taught to get back up when they’re knocked down, to try again.”