Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) (32 page)

Wintermourn smelled phantom smoke. An image flashed in his mind’s eye, of flames and dead hands reaching for him. “Goddess of the Realms Above,” he yelled in sudden panic. “Fire! Fire, damn you!”

His marines obeyed instantly. They cut loose in a hasty volley, and musket balls slammed into rotting shoulders, sunken chests, and oozing cheeks. Splinters from the wood of the warehouse joined flying offal to fill the air with foul confetti.

The Revenants did not fall. They groaned, arms coming up, talons out and seeking. The living dead surged forth from the warehouse in a wave.

Horror washed over Admiral Wintermourn. He drew his saber and backed farther away. “Fire! Fire again! Fire everything! Kill those damnable monstrosities!”

Discipline held the Bluecoats in front, who dropped to one knee and tried to reload with shaking  hands. The second rank stepped up, took aim, and unleashed another volley. Again the air filled with lead shot, and again it failed to stop the oncoming horde. The Revenants groaned angrily, their voices mixing with the panicked shouts of marines to fill the street with unholy song.

More shots rang out. Smallswords were drawn. Wintermourn shouted commands and dire curses. The dead ignored him, however. They came on, unstoppable, until their rotting claws fell on living men, punctuated by the desperate flash of bright Perinese steel.

Chapter Fifteen

Picking a lock was never quite as easy as everyone seemed to think.

Fengel sat back in his crouch, taking a breath and shifting his grip on the screwdriver. The door before him was massive, an armored portal in a bulwark of steel that stretched across the tunnel from one rough-hewn rock wall to the other. A bundle of wires poked out from the keyhole, his impromptu picks. Beside him stood young Imogen with a Mechanist’s galvanic lantern. The light it shed was stark and overbright in the close space.

“Two doors!” he exclaimed. “Two doors
behind
your secret, hidden mine entrance. Really, now. Who does that?”

“The machinery down here is quite dangerous,” said Imogen, voice muffled behind her gas mask. She stepped warily aside as Cubbins trotted over from the wall he had spent the last few minutes staring at. “And it was deemed prudent by the Brotherhood, since the most important element for aerial flight happened to be discovered beneath a town full of
pirates
.”

Cubbins butted up against Fengel’s leg, purring loudly. Fengel sighed. The cat had apparently followed them down to the Waterdocks, having appeared just as they slipped inside this tunnel. “Whatever. Time is wasting. Don’t you have a key?”

“I’m only a Mechanist-Aspirant!” replied Imogen. “The Cabal must have forgotten about that. I told you this not ten minutes ago, at the last door. Really, if you’re that forgetful, then it isn’t any wonder that you have to share your airship with Captain Blackheart. You should carry a journal around and keep notes.”

Fengel glared at her witheringly. “Look. Just use that other bomb of yours and blast this thing open.”

Imogen stared at him like he was an uneducated simpleton. “You really have no idea of the basic principles behind physics and mineralogy, do you?”

“Of course not,” said Fengel, his voice frosty. “I’m a pirate, as you pointed out. Which means I
do
have a grasp on aether-science and flight dynamics.”

“It’s not just because this is Haventown!” Imogen gesticulated, the light from her lantern whirling wildly. “These bulwarks are here because light-air gas is insanely flammable! An explosion down here would collapse the tunnel, at the least, and could possibly blow up the whole town!”

Fengel glared at her a moment. Then he turned pointedly back to the door. “Light, if you please, Miss Imogen.” He bent back to the lock with his makeshift picks. “Though we’re wasting precious time while good men and women—”

Tumblers twisted within the door. Something screeched like bending metal, then clicked loudly. “Oh,” said Fengel. “Never mind. Got it now.”

“You didn’t break this lock too, did you?”

“Of course not,” Fengel lied. “And anyway, we’re in a hurry.”

He reached up and pulled at the handle, which twisted satisfyingly. The door didn’t budge at first, and Fengel stood to get a proper grip. Imogen leaned over to help him, and together they swung the portal slowly open. It was a foot of solid steel all the way through.

Darkness reigned in the chamber beyond. Through the gloom came the rumbling, hissing, thumping rhythm of great mechanisms hard at work. Imogen aimed her galvanic lantern and strode ahead into the gloom, with reflected light glinting from shining brass and steel. An orange blur rushed past her feet: Cubbins, giving a short trill as he went.

Fengel rose from his feet with a frown.
Where’s that flea-bitten thing off to, in such a hurry?

He recovered his makeshift locksmith’s tools—they were Imogen’s, but one never knew when such things would be needed. Then he stood and stretched. A choir of bruises, aches, and pains all sang at him, a legacy of today’s fighting and the long night before. Fengel wanted little more than rest. There was still much to be done, however. Besides which, Imogen was right there.
Never let them see you stumble.
Wearily, Fengel took a step towards the next part of the Mechanist’s mine.

Something echoed down the passage from behind. He paused at the sound, his hand going automatically to the grip of his saber as he glanced back over his shoulder.

The dark at his back deepened as Imogen moved farther away with the lantern. Still Fengel stood, rooted and still as a statue, straining his ears if not his eyes. The sound had been like the clang of metal upon metal, single and sonorous. Or...had it?
Am I just hearing things?
Ahead, the many assembled machines beat to their own stagger-step rhythm. Sound was strange, down here in the mine.

Nothing came screaming out of the gloom at him. Fengel shrugged, then turned to catch up with his young Mechanist guide.

She was waiting a short distance inside, one boot tapping impatiently against diamond-plate metal flooring. Fengel made his way over, staring at the chamber illuminated by her light.

Far from a simple passage of hewn stone roofed by brass pipe, they stood in a great chamber whose borders lay like mist-born phantoms at the edges of the light. Huge iron beams supported the ceiling and the walls, making it seem as if they stood inside the gullet of a great mechanical leviathan. The floor was covered in steel, save great sections bored out of the ground to allow room for fat, riveted pipes to rise up out of them. Egg-shaped rows of metal cylinders sat in between. Steam engines rumbled along beneath them, occasionally venting thick white clouds across the floor.

“Crusty toenails of the Goddess Above,” muttered Fengel. “This place has been under Haventown all this time?”

“Oh yes,” said Imogen. “And none of you ever knew about it.” She frowned. “Until now, that is.”

Fengel nodded. “Well. We’re not going to make the town fly just by standing around. How do we...turn everything on?” He glanced at a row of pressure gauges, all their needles dancing madly behind the glass.

Imogen shook her head. “Not here. Controls are in the last chamber past this one. We need to release the gas there, then all these pumps will push everything up to the Gasworks on the Craftwright’s Terrace. My brothers there will send it on and alert the other teams to unmoor the terraces.”

Fengel sighed in exasperation. “
Another
door.” He shook his head. “Fine. Let’s get—wait.” He glanced around, realizing something was amiss. “Where’s Cubbins?”

Imogen looked left, then right. “What? The cat?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. And aren’t we in a hurry?”

“Yes, but...” Fengel frowned. He found himself mildly surprised. “I just...hope he doesn’t get crushed under all this machinery.” 

“That would be absolutely awful,” agreed Imogen. It was hard to tell beneath her muffling gas mask, but he could swear she sounded pleased.

“Just...” he shook his head. “You’re right. We need to get moving.”

Something echoed faintly behind them—a single loud clang, as of metal on metal. Fengel whirled, hand to his saber. He stared into the dark.

“What—” began Imogen.

“Shh!” He hissed, holding up his free hand. “Shine your lantern back towards the door.”

She obeyed, illuminating the bulwark entryway with harsh white light. The open portal was a black, gaping maw against the polished steel.

Fengel waited. He counted to ten—and then to twenty.
Did I imagine it?
It had been a long night and a longer day. He wasn’t entirely uninjured from the fighting, either.

The rattle and clang of the machines all about them beat on. It echoed about the chamber, down to the open entryway.

Fengel shook his head. “It’s nothing. Let’s move on.”

They continued on through the pump chamber, with Fengel occasionally looking over his shoulder, for what he did not know. The fat orange tabby, Cubbins, did not reappear. Imogen seemed untroubled by this, marching stolidly along as always. She led them on a twisting path through the forest of grinding, twisting, churning machinery.

While the young Mechanist may not have had the keys they needed, she was certainly familiar enough with this place. Even with a lantern, Fengel would have gotten lost in minutes. Imogen led him around a wall of fat, wagon-wheel-sized gears grinding away, to reveal a section of wall dug out to create another passage, twisting away into darkness.

“Wait, a side passage?” said Fengel. “Not another bulkhead wall?” He was hopelessly turned around
.

Imogen pointed away with the lantern. “No, that is off to the side. We keep going past.”

Fengel peered into the passage. “Where does this go?”

“The secret path was never meant to be permanent. This excavation leads back out to the Waterdocks, to a place more suitable for a large entrance. Goes right up to the cliff wall behind that old tannery that the Brotherhood keeps trying to move.” Her gauntleted fingers clutched greedily. “There should still be a lot of explosives left there for the final work, if we need them for the Perinese.”

“I’m certain we will,” he said. “But let’s move on to that last chamber.”

“It’s just around these camshafts,” said Imogen, gesturing with her lantern and stepping past a series of rotating metal rods.

Fengel followed and found her at the armored rear wall of the chamber. “I don’t suppose this one’s unlocked?” he asked.

Imogen just looked at him through her goggles. Not for the first time, he wondered how she saw through them in this gloom. “Fine,” he said with a sigh, retrieving his makeshift lockpicks. “But when this is all said and done, you’re going to go demand all the keys in your weird, secret club of—”

A loud, singular clang echoed from the opposite end of the chamber, like metal striking metal.

Fengel dropped the wires and whipped about, drawing his saber in one smooth motion.

“What?” asked Imogen. “What do—”

He held a hand up for quiet. It didn’t help. Even with both of them silent, Fengel couldn’t hear anything over the clangor of the machines filling the chamber.

“We’ve been followed,” he said. “Shine the light back towards the way we came.”

Imogen aimed her lantern past him. Its cone of light reflected from the polished skin of the pumping and whirling machines. Nothing jumped out at him or scurried frantically away. Fengel didn’t need such a confirmation. He
had
heard something. This time he was certain of it.
And it’s not the damned cat, either
.

No, he had it now. Past the mechanical noise lay a rough, dragging clatter punctuated by an irregular thump against the steel flooring. Fengel raised his saber into guard, feeling that old there-not-there feeling, his nerves and senses and instincts all ready and waiting to act. His only warning might be the flash of a pistol—or the hiss of a blowgun.

It was neither. A hulking figure staggered from out behind the wall of large sprockets. Fengel paused at the leather greatcoat and respirator gas mask he wore. It was a Mechanist, leaning heavily on a young girl with long, dirty hair who couldn’t have been more than eight. Her eyes went straight to Fengel, and in her free hand she raised a stiletto with a plush doll’s head for a handle.

Fengel knew her. “Molly Mayhap?” he asked, lowering his blade. “What are you doing down here?”

“Who?” asked Imogen.

“She’s the kitchen-girl over at the Rusty Cutlass,” said Fengel. “Hasn’t ever said much, but she’s got a real talent for knives.”

The Mechanist lifted his head at Fengel’s voice. “Who’s there?” he asked. “Captain Fengel?”

“The very same,” answered Fengel. He sheathed his saber and strode over. Behind him, Imogen lowered her lantern a bit. “And I’ve one of your unbelievably critical brethren-aspirants here with me as well.

The Mechanist looked past him. “Imogen? What are you doing down here?”

“Hello, Brother Barlett,” she said, making a small wave. “If you’re injured, you really shouldn’t be walking around down here. The protocols against injured Brothers here in the mines are very clear.”

Mechanist Barlett gingerly stood on his own, allowing Molly Mayhap to step away. The leather along the right side of his greatcoat was gashed and wet with the slick of his own blood. Fengel eyed it critically, wondering for the hundredth time how the Mechanists could tell each other apart. Barlett might survive if they found a physician soon. He retrieved a handkerchief and passed it to the fellow, who took it gratefully and pressed it to his side. The girl, Molly, turned away from them both, peering back into the dark towards the front of the chamber, her secret stiletto never wavering.

“Don’t quote protocol at me,” said Barlett wearily. “We were driven inside by the fighting. The Perinese have conquered half the Waterdocks now...and they’re on their way to take the rest.”

Fengel cursed. He turned back to Imogen. “We have to hurry.”

Barlett peered at them critically. “A Mechanist-Aspirant and the captain of the
Dawnhawk
. The Cabal want to raise the city, don’t they?”