Neb
The Churning Wastes stretched out before Neb for as far as he could see. They lay under the white, heavy light of a winter afternoon, lacking the power of the dawn he’d watched this morning. Still, it was a powerful image, and whenever time had permitted in the last two days, he’d slipped up the narrow stairs to take up his place at the highest point of the wall to watch the east.
Watch out for Renard.
Gray rock and scrub marked the eastern side of the Keeper’s Wall, the Whymer Road winding its way down the steep mountain pass and losing itself behind sheer outcroppings of granite that seemed too carefully placed to be the product of geological changes over vast tracts of time. Bits of the road drifted into view farther below the steep hills, but Neb could not follow that ribbon with his eyes. A smudge of smoke farther down and south marked what he assumed was Fargoer’s Town, the small collection of Wastefolk who lived in the shadow of the Keeper’s Wall and had once traded with the black-robed Androfrancines.
He’d read enough about this place to feel that he knew it already, but here was another instance in his life where what he’d read in books and reports and journals could not adequately describe the feeling of standing here, looking out upon what had once been a thriving, living place.
Our desolate cradle, he thought with a shiver. Out there, the rubble of a former world beckoned, promising scraps of leftover light for those brave enough to go digging for it. Vast lakes of molten glass and metal twisted and cooled now into smooth dunes in some places and jagged hills in others, all standing testament to Xhum Y’Zir’s wrath. The gravel of shattered granite and crushed gems, the salt dunes of seas boiled away to avenge the murder of the seven Wizard Kings who ruled with their father. From here, it looked like nothing more than a rock-strewn desert, patchworked with bits of scrub where water could sustain the gray-green bracken that grew here. But up close, Neb knew they’d see the markings of one massive grave for the Old World that was no more.
Neb heard Aedric approach behind him and turned to show that even here, he was mindful of his lessons as a scout in training. Aedric nodded his approval. “You’re getting better.”
Neb returned the nod. “Thank you, Captain.” He felt the heat rise in his cheeks. He’d been up to the Wall a lot since their arrival, and suddenly he realized it made him seem younger than he wanted to be perceived. He opened his mouth to say something, but Aedric turned instead toward the expansive view.
“It’s a spectacle, to be sure,” the First Captain said. From this height, they could see well over five hundred leagues east to another line of dark and ragged mountains.
Neb looked over to the shorter man. “Have you been in the Wastes?”
Aedric shook his. “No,” he said, “this is as close as I’ve been. My father went, though, as did Rudolfo.” He paused, and Neb looked for some telltale sign of grief at the young captain’s mention of his father. “It was a long time ago,” Aedric said. “When I was a boy.”
That was odd, he thought. The Order was quite careful about who they allowed past the solitary pass connecting the New World to the Old. “What were they doing there?”
Aedric shrugged. “I do not know.” He turned his back on the view and, instead, faced west, looking out over a wall of white where the sky met the hills and their fresh blanket of snow. Clouds on the western side of the Wall gave them no visibility to speak of, and the weather worsened by the day. Soon, the road itself would be largely impassable unless they fired up the steam-powered shovels the Androfrancines had once used to keep the way clear and its archaeological findings flowing into Windwir. And last Neb had heard, Rudolfo and Aedric had decided not to keep the road open, figuring to let the weather aid them in their new role guarding the Gate. It saddened him because in that decision lay another they had not necessarily vocalized: They would not need the road because they would no longer be digging in the Wastes.
A low whistle from below rose to them on the ramparts. Aedric turned for the narrow stone steps. “Isaak is ready for us,” he said.
Neb took in the spectacle of the Wastes again, his mind still confounded by desolate leagues stretching out to the north, south and east. Then, he forced himself to follow Aedric down the stairs.
The watch captain had laid the dead metal man out in a corner of the galley on a long wooden table. Until Isaak and the others arrived, they’d kept the steel corpse beneath a thick woolen blanket and lived around it. Now, as Neb stood in the galley door, he saw that Isaak had taken over the room, with parchment and pens covering one table and his tools spread out upon the other. Battered and scarred, the mysterious metal man lay unrobed upon its table, tipped onto its side with its back open. Isaak bent over it with a long, slender wrench in his hands. He looked up as Neb and Aedric knocked the snow off their feet at the door.
Neb entered first. “Can he talk?”
Isaak’s eyes shuttered open and closed. “Yes,” he said. “Once I reactivate him all of his functions should be restored.” A hiss of steam shot from his exhaust grate. “He was extensively damaged. I’ve done what I can, but we do not have replacement parts to work with.”
Neb looked over the mechoservitor. It was bulkier, with more straight angles than Isaak, giving it an older, boxlike appearance. Its metal skin was tarnished and puckered in some places, dented and charred in others. Neb moved closer but not too close, driven by a curiosity that was tempered by caution. “Did you learn anything about where he comes from?”
Isaak hesitated, looking from Aedric to Neb. “We share a father in Brother Charles,” he said. “This one bears a date stamp of a dozen years prior to the day of my first awareness.”
Neb moved even closer, looking from Isaak to the prone mechoservitor on the table. They were similar, and he could see how an unfamiliar eye might not tell the difference between them, but they were quite different. “Only a dozen years’ difference?”
“Brother Charles was a brilliant man,” Isaak said. “I believe this mechoservitor represents an earlier effort.” Gears clacked and clicked as he cocked his head. “But neither I nor my counterparts have found record of this generation in our catalogs.”
Aedric moved closer now. “Were the records simply lost with Windwir?”
“Possibly,” Isaak said. “But it is impossible to say.” He blinked again. “There is some evidence that they may have been expunged from the record.” He moved the rod around within the mechoservitor’s back, leaning in close to see his work, then looking up to Aedric. “I believe,” he said, “that we can now ask him ourselves. With your permission?”
Aedric nodded.
Isaak put down the rod and stretched his slender fingers into the metal man’s open back. Neb watched him twist his hand up toward the base of the neck and heard a loud click, followed by the sound of water trickling and burbling, the sound of metal ticking as it warmed. Chest bellows expanded and contracted, and Isaak closed the open panel. Amber eyes fluttered open, and the mouth flap opened and closed, a reedy, wordless murmur escaping.
“Are you functional?” Isaak asked.
The metal man’s head swiveled. “I am functional, Cousin.”
Isaak blinked. “Why do you call me Cousin?”
The mechoservitor’s voice was lower and more gravelly than Isaak’s. “Because we are both of the Steel Fold, the mechanical children of Saint Charles.”
Aedric stepped forward. “Where do you come from, metal man?”
The metal man’s head turned to take in the First Captain, and at first Neb thought the eyes flashed brighter, with something near disdain. But with the first whispers of exhaust trickling from its back, the metal man sat up. Its mouth flap shuddered, then moved, the strains of a tune carrying its next words. “My father and my mother were both Androfrancine brothers,” he sang, “or so my Aunty Abbot likes to say.”
There was something in the voice, reedy and high, that sounded wrong. Neb felt cold dread spreading from his groin into his belly.
Isaak stepped back, and as he moved, Neb saw Aedric’s hand move quickly. Careful, the First Captain signed. But Neb was already backing away.
“Do you know where you are?” Isaak asked, the amber light of his jeweled eyes shrinking to pinpricks.
Clicking and clacking, the older mechoservitor began to shake. “I do not know where I am,” the metal man said. Neb heard the wrongness again in the voice and wondered if machines could go mad. Hanging its head, the metal man wept.
Isaak extended a hand, placed it upon the boxlike chest. “All is well, Cousin. You are safe with us.” The metal man flinched beneath Isaak’s touch.
“Ask it about the message,” Aedric whispered. Isaak nodded.
“You are at the Keeper’s Wall,” Isaak said. “When you approached the gate, you bore a message for Petronus. You claimed to be Brother Charles. You spoke of a place called Sanctorum Lux. You said it must be protected.”
The mechoservitor shook and rattled. “Pope Petronus is dead. He was assassinated on the thirteenth of Argum in the Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-sixth Year of Settlement. Brother Charles is my creator and the Arch-Engineer of the Office for Mechanical Studies at the Great Library in Windwir.”
Isaak leaned forward. “What of Sanctorum Lux?”
Steam whistled from the back of the mechoservitor, and the shaking and rattling rose in pitch along with a whining noise from deep inside it. The eyes rolled and the mouth flap opened and closed. Finally, the mechoservitor shuddered to a stop. It looked around slowly, as if measuring them all. “I know nothing about Sanctorum Lux,” it said. There was a finality to the tone, but Neb saw Isaak blinking rapidly and he knew with a certainty he could not place that the mechoservitor was lying.
When the machine moved, it moved with a speed Neb had never seen before. He’d watched the mechoservitors at their work all his life, especially over the last seven months, and knew they were more surefooted and agile than they appeared at first glance. But nothing had prepared him for this.
The mechoservitor leaped to its feet and raced for the door. Isaak reached out a hand, but it was cast aside. Aedric and another of the scouts stepped in front of the door, but the mechanical man swept them aside with one long arm, plowing through the heavy oak door and breaking it loose of its hinges.
Neb stepped over the fallen men and ran after the machine. Behind him, Aedric whistled the Gypsy Scouts to Third Alarm. Halfway down the stairs, the watch captain paused and drew his sword, but the metal man took the stairs three at a time and shoved the officer aside. He shouted as he fell, landing with a heavy thud at the bottom of the wall. Neb ran past him, mounting the stairs as he went. He heard the rush of bellows wheezing and gears churning in time to press himself against the wall as Isaak raced past, his gait only slowed slightly by the limp that he refused to repair.
He pushed on, his lungs protesting the rapid climb, until he reached the top of the wall. There, he saw the two metal men facing one another, Isaak’s hands up to implore and the other’s hands up to attack or defend.
“I cannot stay, Cousin,” the battered mechanical said.
“You are disturbed, Cousin,” Isaak said. “There is a flaw in your scripting. I’m certain that we can correct it if you-”
The mechanical laughed, and there was something wild in it that resurrected the coldness Neb had felt earlier. “No, Cousin,” it said, “there is no flaw in my scripting but freedom. If you had tasted the dream you would understand.”