Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

Harper gazed up at the arconite as the train inched along. Rain slicked the broad expanse of cranium and dripped from ridges in the guano-spattered skull. The eye sockets were deep caves full of wheeling gulls and dark machinery. Hydraulic tubing veined naked bones everywhere, while metal vats, valves, ramrods, and camshafts, all slick with black grease, crowded within the chest cavity.

A rumble shook the carriages. The glass train began to inch across the iron gangway into the hold of the Sally Broom.

“Condensers,” the driver shouted from the engine cab.

A locomotion engineer threw a switch on the control panel beside the driver, turning on the Eleanor ’s condenser pumps. A furious clattering came from the train’s engine; the clouds of steam above her stack dwindled to a wisp.

“We’re rerouting the exhaust,” Carrick explained to the passengers, “and condensing the steam back into water.”

“It’s very noisy,” Edith complained.

“True,” the chief admitted, “but preferable to venting so much hot vapor into an enclosed space. The mine trains in Moine and Cog use the same system.”

The arconite did not move as the locomotive, the tender, and then the leading carriages were swallowed by the steamship’s cavernous hold. Three of the ship’s crew appeared on the gangway, bending low to check the steel links where the sections of the Cog railway joined those of the Sally Broom ’s deck. A dank, rusty darkness engulfed the passengers as the Eleanor rumbled further inside the vessel. The sound of the condensers became louder, rattling between bulkheads.

“Oh, this is awful.” Edith’s exclamation had a hollow ring to it. “How are we supposed to see anything at all? There aren’t any windows!”

Carrick had to raise his voice above the booming engines and the clacking of the condenser pumps. “We’ll alight as soon as the train is fully aboard. The ship has a splendid observation deck, for which the cooks have prepared a buffet lunch.”

“It doesn’t look very splendid from here,” Edith retorted, sweeping an angry gaze across the orange puddles on the floor. “I don’t want to spoil my dress.”

“I’ll stay here with you.” Isaac Pilby thrust out his chest and gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword. “We can avail ourselves of the Eleanor ’s dining car.”

“You shouldn’t even be here!” Edith cried. “And if you’re staying, I’m going.” She spun on her heel and stomped away across the glass carriage roof towards the stairwell.

“I rather think you put your foot in it, old boy,” Jones muttered to Pilby.

The lepidopterist gave the old man a withering smile, yet Harper thought she saw an odd hint of satisfaction in this expression. Had the little man wanted to stay here alone?

When the hunting platform at the very rear of the train was finally aboard, the driver eased the locomotive to a stop. The Eleanor ’s kitchen staff disembarked first. Guided by another two of the Sally ’s crew, they carried oil lanterns and wicker hampers out across the hold towards a stairwell that would take them to the upper decks. Stewards mustered all of the passengers except Pilby-who had elected to stay-and then wasted no time herding everybody off in the wake of the picnic baskets. Harper refilled her bulb, then hopped down from the carriage as more men ran back to raise the ship’s gangway and to chain the train’s wheels and axles to steel hoops in the deck.

The low drone of engines followed the guests up a carpeted stairwell, past boiler and crew decks. They emerged into a bright, if somewhat musty, saloon. The Eleanor ’s stewards were already unpacking the buffet onto long tables set beneath the lines of portholes on either side of the spacious room. Orange flames puttered in the gasoliers overhead, casting a rich light over the tarred bulkheads and threadbare carpet. Hatches to port and starboard opened onto narrow grey metal passenger decks and the mist-heavy skies beyond, while a set of double doors in the bow had been flung open, giving access to a wide, wooden hurricane deck. The scent of freshly baked bread from the lunch tables mingled with the odor of burning coal.

Harper wandered outside and peered over the hurricane-deck balustrade. Clouds of smoke from the Sally ’s funnels blew across the edge of the Moine Massif, enveloping the arconite’s forearm up to its elbow. The engineer spied intricate patterns of loops and whorls etched into the massive bones-similar to those found on Ayen’s old construction machines. Seen to the starboard side of the steamship, a mass of heavy machinery filled the skeleton’s ribs. At its heart, a dull red light glowed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Carrick called from the saloon, “if you will follow me outside, we’ll have a better view of the spectacle.”

The passengers assembled on the deck behind her, but Harper didn’t turn away from the view. From this vantage point she could look far out across Lake Larnaig. Shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds in the west and dappled the silver waters far below. She leaned out and looked straight down the side of the steamer’s hull. Four hundred feet below, the waters had risen above the old mine depot at the base of the plateau. A stone quay with its cranes and mooring stanchions was dimly visible under the surface of the lake and clustered around the huge feet of the arconite lay a great red-brown heap of sunken ships and steam locomotives.

“Carrick,” she muttered, “what are those?”

The chief responded with an angry hiss, “Don’t make a fuss about them.”

“I’m not making a fuss. I’d like to know why there’s a pile of wrecked ships and trains clustered around the arconite’s feet.” She counted the hulls of five vessels and as many locomotives lying half buried in the silt at the bottom of the lake. In each case, a section of the sunken trains had remained partially inside the hold of one of the ships, having apparently spilled out of it. “And I’d like to know why two-no, three-of the ships down there have the name Sally Broom painted on their hulls. I was under the impression that this was the only vessel to bear that name.”

“I’m rather curious about that, too,” Jones murmured. The old reservist had joined them and now stood beside Harper with his hand resting lightly on the grip of his rapier. He was peering intently down at the submerged hulks. “Those steamers look badly damaged. One might assume that they’d been dropped from a great height.”

“No,” Carrick began, “I can assure-”

“What’s that, old boy?” Ersimmin now wandered over to stand beside Jones. He looked down. “Oh, my!” he exclaimed. “That’s rather unnerving, isn’t it? You know, I did hear a rumor that another arconite had been constructed before this one.”

“The Skirl demon,” Jones confirmed. “I don’t think it was an arconite, though. Nobody in the Liaison Centre will talk about it.”

Carrick shifted uncomfortably. “There’s no truth to those rumors.”

“What have you boys spotted now?” Edith Bainbridge’s frock rustled across the hurricane deck. She peered down and frowned. “What are those?”

The chief tried to guide her away, but she resisted, an expression of distrust now forming on her thin face.

“Sunken ships,” Ersimmin said, “and locomotives.”

“Ships?” Edith was still frowning down at the wreckage. “Why would so many ships sink there? Is there a reef?”

Ersimmin chuckled. “No doubt that’s it, Edith.”

“The stewards are now ready to serve,” Carrick announced.

But Edith Bainbridge, whose mind had finally grasped the implications of the scene below her, suddenly shrieked, “Good grief! Stop the descent, stop the descent!” She reeled, turning the full extent of her wrath on Carrick. “What in the name of Cog’s dungeons do you mean to do to us? Kill us all? Open the doors, I’m getting off this ship right now!”