Clockwork Scoundrels 2: An Isle in Mist Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER 1 A Solitary Man

  CHAPTER 2 An Isle in Mist

  CHAPTER 3 Friends Call Me Sil

  CHAPTER 4 Casting into the Gray Sea

  CHAPTER 5 In the Company of Fairie

  CHAPTER 6 The Cogs of His Heart

  CHAPTER 7 The Normal State of Things

  CHAPTER 8 When Cold Winds Blow

  CHAPTER 9 The Stages of Grief

  CHAPTER 10 Contemplating Dark Paths

  CHAPTER 11 The Way of Things

  CHAPTER 12 A Pocket in the Fog

  Join the Crew!

  About the Author

  Engine World

  CLOCKWORK SCOUNDRELS 2

  An Isle in Mist

  E. W. Pierce

  Copyright 2015 E. W. Pierce.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Design by Carolina Fiandri - CirceCorp Design

  CHAPTER 1

  A Solitary Man

  The airship Misty Morning drifted through poisonous skies. The airship’s broad deck was still, the steamwork engine housed below decks hunkered down for the night. Torches were lit to discourage the denizens of the Fog, but the quarterdeck’s lamps were shuttered and the windowed command cabin dark. No one minded the helm. There was hardly a need to bother. The ship was adrift. Lost.

  The Fog pressed in from all sides, restricting visibility to feet. Tendrils curled around banisters and slithered under tarps, incorporeal limbs trying to grapple the ship. Black shadows moved alongside the Misty Morning, pacing it. Shadows with teeth and claw, and a taste for warm blood. The shadows watched and waited. For now.

  Sildrian, the clockwork man, sat on a pair of barrels lashed to the center mast, kicking his boots, his white linen shirt damp from the mist. He was mindful of the heavy press of the Fog but somehow not bothered. Familiarity breeds indifference, he’d discovered. His wrist hinges were flopped open, the dragon pistols tucked inside primed and ready. But it was a quiet night: he’d only needed to repel a dozen of the Fog’s monstrosities since the vague hint of sunlight had drained away, signaling the passage of another day in this gray world.

  It had been twenty-two days since they’d left Alterra. By Sil’s calculations, they would last another twelve before their stores of food gave out. He was morbidly interested to see what would happen then. Would the crew fall upon each other? Would they consume the remains of the first to succumb to hunger? It was an academic sort of wondering. He’d rather come to like these people and wished no harm to come to them. Still, the facts remained.

  They’d been circling uselessly for days. Once into the Fog, really into it, beyond some invisible point of no return, the Misty Morning’s instruments had become strangely unreliable. North became south became east. Then the dials had just started spinning, endless repetitions, like a clock with a loose spring. It was unnatural phenomenon, highly unusual, and yet nobody would talk about it.

  This was curious, this willful ignorance, pretending that things were other than as they are, and just the latest in his ongoing education in the ways of men. Neither was Captain Locke nor any other member of the crew expositive on the subject of the dwindling supplies. Not even Jarvis, who had previously been ever willing to talk long into the night about matters of the mechanical or metaphysical, psychological or sociological. Jarvis enjoyed puzzling over problems, the same as Sil. The talks were Sil’s way of filling in the gaps in his knowledge. Though he was a quick learner—his mind literally a machine—there was much he didn’t yet know of the world. His appetite for Thunderclap was only surpassed by his yearning to know. Everything and anything. No detail was too small to awaken his curiosity. And why not? He was only three months, twelve days, four hours, thirty-one minutes, and six seconds old. Practically a babe.

  But the late-night talks with Jarvis had gone the way of the Thunderclap. He’d been forced to drink some of the stinking brew Ton-Ton cooked up, a thick sludge that only the most courteous could call ale. A poor substitute for the deliciously bubbly Thunderclap, but the ale made his head pleasantly light, and so it served. But there was no substitute for the spirited discussions he and Jarvis had enjoyed. The rest of the crew was fine enough as people went, and interesting in their own mundane sort of way. They just weren’t the type to deliberate difficult questions.

  Was this what sadness felt like? The thickening of his insides, the heaviness in his stomach, the way his mind continually turned away from productive questions and instead troubled itself with ones he couldn’t answer?

  He had a bomb wired to his nervous system, so closely intertwined that it was difficult to discern where Sildrian the thinking man left off and where the dumb machine took over. On his abdomen, red numbers on a black display marked the time until the bomb would finally awaken from its slumber. Up here in the frigid air, the clock slowed. Swabbing the decks of the Fog’s demons seemed a fair exchange.

  It dawned on him that he would not die of the bomb but from simple starvation. After everything he and Jarvis had gone through to find a climate sufficient to extend his life, he would die from simple malnutrition.

  The crew had been making dark jokes of late, a way of acknowledging their circumstances and letting off some pressure. He wondered if he would feel better if he told such a joke now, but he knew none that exactly fit his parameters.

  The Misty Morning rocked slightly, the bow rising and falling as it rode an invisible current. The Fog ahead was bright, a curtain of silver mist in a landscape painted gray. Sil leapt to the deck, the clockwork gears of his heart spinning faster. While adrift had they discovered the other side?

  He raced forward as the bow sliced through the curtain. The Fog parted reluctantly, clinging to the ship’s sides before being thrown off by some invisible force. Lit by a full moon high above, the Misty Morning emerged into clean air.

  Sil’s joy was short-lived; they had not escaped. The soft barrier of the Fog stood ahead of them, some five hundred feet distant. They’d found a clearing, a pocket mysteriously scrubbed clean of the Fog. Blue lights twinkled on the ground, and in the shadows Sil could make out the shape of buildings. Many buildings.

  They’d discovered not a pocket, but an isle in the mist, upon which stood a village. Interesting.

  Of further interest: his internal compass was working again, the needle steadily pointing northwest.

  These were not problems he’d encountered before, or ones he’d previously thought to ponder. So he did the only sensible thing he could think of. He went to wake the captain.

  CHAPTER 2

  An Isle in Mist

  The Misty Morning hovered more-or-less quietly, an unaccustomed moment of peace in the nightmarish realm known as the Fog. Captain Melanie Locke leaned on the railing, curls tucked into a wool cap, leather duster cinched tight. Steam drifted off the top of her dented mug of rapidly-cooling cafei, fading to nothingness before it could join the Fog just outside this little oasis of blue and green. Sunlight played off the mirrored lenses of her goggles, a brief flash of gold as she surveyed the island in the Fog. A perfect circle of green and brown, parted by a thin, sparkling blue ribbon. Tiny wooden huts arranged neatly like the toys of a precise child, gray smoke curling from chimneys.

  Dots of color congregated on a wide bridge at the island’s center. The dots had been moving when they’d first emerged from the cabins. Moving, until they’d discovered the ship’s shadow laying across the town. Moving, until they’d looked up. Now they just stood there. Staring. Mel wondered just how many people were down there, and if there were more yet to emerge.

  Yesterday, the Misty Morning was adrift, chasing her tail, caught in an unending lim
bo of smoke and shadow. Doomed, all hands lost at sky. And now? The sudden appearance of this tiny isle in the mist represented hope, a chance to not die, which wasn’t to be looked sideways at. But it troubled her, too. There should be no pockets in the Fog. Probably it was a trap—call it bad luck, karma, or the Crown’s will, but rarely did her skies happen upon naked fortune.

  It was by her doing that they were in this predicament in the first place, a fact not lost on any of the crew. They’d kept their silence, leastwise around her, raising grievances indirectly via Taul Kemmel, first mate. That was good and proper, but it somehow bothered her more that they were sticking to natural order than if they were up in arms and threatening mutiny. Anger, she understood, and was properly outfitted to handle. But doubt had ever been a slippery problem. She’d respond with bluster and bravado and see if she could fool them into following her. Again. She wondered what she’d do when that trick stopped working.

  Taul cleared his throat. “Shall we be off then, sir?” The words were muffled by his striped scarf.

  “Off?”

  Taul waved his free hand vaguely at the Fog. The left arm of his coat hung limp, empty. By Hindral’s orders, Taul would have to wear a sling until his wounded shoulder was adequately healed. “This isn’t the other side, is all.”

  Mel took a drink of cafei. Cold, already. Grimacing, she dumped the dregs over the side, only realizing what she’d done once the drops were spirited away, falling like brown rain toward the tiny village. “They’ll know it’s just cafei, right?”

  “It should hardly matter. If we’re to be off.” Taul took one look at her and sighed. “Somehow I feel like we’re to do the opposite.”

  “Aren’t you at all curious? They shouldn’t be here.” She pointed. “Yet somehow they stand-off the Fog.”

  Taul looked skeptical. “Might be there’s a good reason, is all. Good for them, bad for us.”

  “What if they know why our instruments have started working again?” She looked around, saw that they were alone. “You know how low the stores are, tally-master.”

  “So I do. I’m just saying, it doesn’t seem safe, is all.”

  “Come, Taul—where is your sense of adventure?”

  “Must’ve left it behind, in Alterra. With my wits.”

  Mel hardly heard him. “Who do you suppose they are? Refugees from Alterra, like us?”

  “Outlaws, you mean.”

  “Or folk who’ve gotten lost in the Fog and found their way to shelter?”

  “An airship crew who abandoned their captain and choose a quiet life inside the Fog.”

  “Good point.” Mel squinted. “They might be fairie folk.”

  “Why do I’ve the sudden premonition we’re to find out?”

  Mel slapped him on the shoulder. The injured shoulder, she realized when he started into a colorful diatribe about certain unnamed captains being ill-attentive to the needs of their crew.

  “If you’d wanted a quiet retirement, you’d have stayed behind.” With them. They’d left crew behind in Alterra. Not crew, no sense in putting a mask on it. Kile and Dee and Lula had been family. She didn’t know what she’d have done if Taul had quit her, too. “Your hair is mostly dark yet.”

  “It’s a wonder I’ve any left, is all.”

  “Let’s see about adding more gray to the mix.”

  As it happened, Taul remained aboard the Misty Morning when the raft put ashore. He was under strict orders to flee if they didn’t return by nightfall. He wouldn’t, of course, but they both pretended he would obey her orders.

  The rafts were meant for emergency, abandon ship situations, but in Mel’s experience: 1) no emergency was so great as to abandon a perfectly good ship, and 2) the rafts made for handy—and stealthy—ways to get about. The raft was as slow as an airship with a busted keel though, puttering toward the clearing, burping steam from the pair of fluted brass exhausts. If the villagers intended harm, they’d have plenty of time to deliberate an especially painful ambush.

  For all its lackadaisical speed, the raft was roomy, spacious enough for a dozen large men. Only three figures rode the winds down toward dirt, none of them large and only one of them something of a man: Mel, Sildrian, and Jarvis.

  Standing with one boot on the raft’s prow like some tiny silver god come to pass judgment, Sildrian surveyed the scene below. His pistols were safely tucked within his hollow wrists, and though Mel hoped there they would remain, she was glad for their company. Sildrian’s guns had kept them safe these many weeks as they wandered the Fog, searching for the other side.

  Jarvis, the former Ministry man and the Misty Morning’s new Chief Wrench, sat carefully in the middle of the raft, marveling over the brass gears and steel pistons that ran along the inside walls. She’d told Jarvis she wanted him along to advise on how best to profit from this unexpected situation. Everybody needs something, and she meant to find out what that something was for these people. And, what thing of value they might give in return. Namely, a way through the Fog. And that was true, but she’d specifically picked these two for another, unspoken reason, and probably the biggest: she didn’t trust them enough to leave them behind, in her ship, while she was gone. Taking one’s ship hostage had a way of making trust hard to come by.

  Jarvis hugged his smart top hat against his chest, the ends of his red scarf flapping behind him in the wind of their passage. He’d bought the hat and scarf both when she’d sent crew for the necessaries—food and parts—back in Alterra. He’d returned with some of both, and the fancy clothing besides. She’d have to be more deliberate with instructions next time. The scarf, distractingly bright though it was, at least had a function. She could overlook a man’s habits provided they didn’t compromise running of the ship. The top hat, though… there was just no sense in it. He couldn’t wear it topside without a hand gripping the brim for fear the wind would whisk it away, and the ceilings below decks were too low to accommodate its absurd height when perched atop the spindly man’s head. Mel supposed she’d be happy of it the next time they were invited to a ball or other such formal. The next time being the first time, of course.

  Mostly, the clothing bothered her because the appearance and manners of crew reflected on their captain. Proper crew didn’t dress like dandies, and she didn’t want the reputation of a captain of such a crew. It was hard enough to be taken seriously as a female captain, flying an old ship like the Misty Morning. Commerce would be even tougher to come by now that they were outlaws. Distinctions of law and order might not amount to much out in the Fog, but she’d no real illusions that they might have to turn back for Alterra eventually.

  The village grew as they spiraled toward the ground, the cabins shedding their soft, toy-like appearances and growing hard edges. Constructed of dark logs, the cabins were arranged neatly in four quadrants, split by the river running east and west, and further divided by a rectangle of dark earth stretching from the northern edge of the clearing to the southern border. Green plants grew in the black soil, stretching luxuriously as only those in a well-appointed garden can.

  A stone bridge stood at the middle of the clearing, arching over a sparkling river and connecting the four quadrants in an x-shape. Mel angled the craft toward this junction, where the bridge was widest. The colorful dots she’d seen from above, what she’d taken for people, had shifted off the bridge, thickening in the spaces between cabins and gathering beside gardens. Not people, not exactly. Most were shaped like people, arms and legs and a head, but some were entirely too small, and a few were literal giants, shadowing wide swaths of earth.

  They were humanoids but not human. And though she knew what they were, she had a hard time believing it. It wasn’t every day that creatures of fantasy stepped out of the pages and into life. Hundreds of them watched silently as the raft coasted down. Staring. There were no smiles in the crowd. She wondered if Taul had the right of it.

  “Sildrian.” She tried to keep the strain out of her voice.

  The clock
work man half-turned his head.

  “Keep your steel to hand.”

  “I have other functions, you know. Besides making things dead.”

  “Maybe, but that’s what you are best at.”

  Frowning, Sildrian looked away.

  Jarvis peeked over the raft’s side, gripping it tightly with both hands, like a man judging when best to abandon ship and leap overboard. He’d a penchant for clinging, this one. “You don’t expect trouble?”

  He’d put the top hat on once their decent had slowed enough that losing it became an unlikely outcome. Mel had to resist leaning forward and knocking it off his head. “Expect? No. Plan for it? That’s another thing entirely.”

  Jarvis’ face was half-shadowed by the brim. His eyes looked very white. “It’s not too late to turn back.”

  “And come all this way for nothing? Where’s the sense in that?”

  “The sensible thing would’ve been to remain aboard the Misty Morning. Far out of reach.”

  “Now you sound like Taul.” Mel slowly ratcheted down the leather-wrapped handle. The steam funneling out the raft’s exhaust pipes thinned. As the raft settled on the bridge, the engine coughed a final cloud of steam and fell silent.

  Two figures stood off to the side of the bridge. The taller of the two, a hunched figure in a patchwork gray robe, leaned heavily on a gnarled walking staff. A thin gray-white beard fell to his navel. He wore a queer sort of hat, rumpled and coming to a soft point. Gray, like the robe and beard.

  A dwarf stood beside the hermit. Dressed in an assortment of ill-fitting armor—a round, bowl-like golden helm with a thin chinstrap, a strange horned breastplate of ivory, and mismatched gauntlets—the dwarf was everything the stories suggested he ought to be. He, too, was bearded, though the auburn hair was tidily kept in forked braids. A white standard snapped on the end of the tall spear he carried. Painted on the flag in blue was the many-faceted shape of a crystal.