The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (2 page)

The sergeant turned on Pranav Erato. “What’s going on here?” he barked. He pulled back his heavy black boot and kicked a limp Verdu in the side. A whoosh of air escaped him along with a weak groan. Relief filled Pranav Erato as his plan suddenly changed. Alone, he could escape in a heartbeat, but with a badly injured Verdu, all bets were off.

The snarling soldier growled again, “Speak up, old man! What’s the meaning of this?” He kicked Verdu again, and Pranav Erato scuttled like a crab to the sergeant’s feet, bowing down and pressing his face to the floor.

“
My good man,” he begged. “I implore you: wait. Not so much for his sake but for yours, as surely the emperor will look upon you unkindly if you continue to pour forth retributions upon his long-lost nephew.”

Professor Candice Mortimer shifted in her sleep. The tangy, metallic smell from the pickle tub in which she was enclosed had crept into her dreams, giving her visions a sharper quality than normal. Or perhaps it was the brine of the sea just a hair’s breadth away from her. She could feel the salt water pressing in from all sides even as she slept. The waters of the Kohlian Sea sealed out the rest of the world so completely that Candice’s entire universe consisted of the innards of Ma-Took’s vat.

At the time, choosing to escape the empire by traveling underwater—past, or more precisely under, the patrol boats—had seemed like a stroke of brilliance, but the reality of this conveyance proved most uncomfortable. Lying with her back against the cold metal of the makeshift ship, she could feel the chill starting to cramp her muscles. The ever-flowing seawater wicked away any heat her slight body could produce. Still, she felt safer than she had in weeks. It was quiet under the waves, and enclosed in the small space—just her, Chenda, and Fenimore—she knew there was no one waiting around the next corner, no ambush in the shadows. Hiding in the blissful depths, chilly as they were, was as good a sleep aid as a firm mattress and a down feather bed. More than anything, Candice wanted to go home: back to her office, back to her studies and students, back to her tiny faculty apartment and back to civilization. Of the Tugrulian Empire, she had had quite enough, thank you
very
much. Just a stinking, broken-down, backward country—that was her firm opinion. Even with the miracles she had witnessed and the friendships she had made, Candice’s greatest joy was simply being alive.

And yet, one wriggling doubt wormed its way through her thoughts: Verdu. It had been a mistake to leave Verdu behind. They should have backtracked, regrouped, and made a clean break—
together
.
Now
, she thought,
we are incomplete—both in our mission and as Companions
. She started to get annoyed and began to work herself up into a fit of righteous indignation. But with no one to vent to in her drowsing state, she began to sink deeper into her dreams, where Verdu kept calling to her and her friends.

Candice slept on as Chenda and Fenimore crouched together farther back in the pickle tub. The little craft plowed through the sea below the waves, water bending to Chenda’s will. The power of the Pramuc, the gods-given gift, itched inside her. Letting it trickle out slowly enough to push the buoyant tub along deeply enough to remain unnoticed took incredible concentration. At the moment, the space inside Chenda’s head felt too small. Her thoughts elbowed one another to make their way to the front of her mind.

Rationally, she understood why she was here, steering the pickle tub away from the Tugrulian coast and, to her way of thinking, running like a coward. The resistance needed her as a symbol, not a martyr. It was better all around for her to be in hiding than to get caught, or worse, killed. She needed time to learn to master her new gifts, to practice controlling water, fire, earth, and air. The Pramuc needed to share the gods’ message with the peoples of the world. Yes, as Pramuc, she felt those things. As Chenda, she wanted to see her friends returned to safety, which meant getting as far from the Tugrulian Empire as possible.

These thoughts fought with others in Chenda’s head. What kind of friend was she to leave Verdu behind? Pranav Erato? Her mother . . .

She had had a mother for almost an hour. After a lifetime of thinking herself orphaned, she had found the one person left to whom she belonged, and she had, unwillingly, let her go. Chenda felt unforgiveable. She wanted her mother. Needed her. She wanted to go back for her, for Verdu, and even more so, for the Tugrulian people. She berated herself,
When they still needed a leader, how dare you go?

The urge to go back warred with her commitment to the escape plan, and her commitment to get Fenimore and Candice to safety. Her desires wrestled: run or stay, live or die. Home. Family. Friends. Mission. There were too many responsibilities working at cross-purposes within her. Keeping the fight within from spilling out of her head was taking a lot of effort, and she wanted to scream. In her heart, she knew that letting a tiny whimper escape would betray her resolve.
Best just to keep moving . . .

Fenimore, his inner thighs resting on each of her hips and his chest pressing against her back, shifted slightly, his hands holding her to him more tightly. The intimacy of the moment pushed down the traffic in her head temporarily. His scent was as reassuring as his touch.

Are you all right?
she asked directly into his mind.

Fenimore shifted again and didn’t answer right away. His thoughts were distant as well. A pain in his left leg had been distracting him, and an ache in the right side of his chest made him wish for a chance to stand up and stretch. He suspected that these twinges weren’t his at all, and that Verdu had been hurt—bad. The connection between himself and Verdu had begun when they met on the
Brofman
years before. After struggling against it in the beginning, the pair gradually began to accept the connection between them, and their tandem movements eventually became just another quirk among many in the
Brofman
’s crew. But lately, the connection between Fenimore and Verdu had become strained. The two had found themselves in conflict over Chenda. Fenimore was not sure how he knew, but he was certain the phantom wounds were echoes of real injuries in his best friend. Fenimore kept his thoughts to himself. If it was true, and Verdu was hurt, there was nothing he could do about it. They had run too far to turn back now. He had to see Chenda and Candice to safety, to the
Brofman
.

“
I’m fine,” Fenimore whispered, his lips brushing her ear. “It’s just a few aches and pains. Nothing that a good night’s rest on the
Brofman
won’t cure.”

At the mention of Captain Endicott’s airship, Chenda’s heart skipped a beat. It was the only place that had ever felt like a true home to her.
Yes, that will make everything feel better
.

Chenda gave one last glance at the warring thoughts in her head and then pushed them all down, banishing them to the spaces between her cells, where she could choose to ignore them if she really tried.
Enough
.

She pressed herself deeper into Fenimore’s arms and turned all her attention to the water surrounding her. All she really had control of now was getting her remaining friends to safety.

chapter 2

A whole cruel world

Verdu’s eyes itched. The dust from the desert beyond the low mountains surrounding Kotal drifted through his window every night. Verdu damned the window every morning. It let everything in through its intricate yet solid stonework: the most bothersome biting flies he had ever encountered, a desert grit that covered every surface in his tiny room, the predawn chill and the hot breath of the afternoon breeze. The only welcome thing to come through Verdu’s cursed window was the splash of midmorning sun making flame-shaped patterns on the floor just beyond his hard and narrow bed. The sun dapples were imperfect cutouts made by the window’s imprisoning stone diamonds, a beautiful latticework that both concealed and restrained him. The flickering drops of sun were a small kind of pleasure in a mostly hellish world.

From his cage—that was how he thought of his little room—he could see down into the city of Kotal, the place where he was born, the community that took one look at him on that day and rejected him. A minor flaw, so easily repaired in the West, marked him as unworthy among the Tugrulians. Deformed.

He hated them as much as they had hated him. Verdu watched the hypocrisy from his room: the merchants around Palace Square hustling through their daily routines; the extravagantly dressed visitors queuing up to see the emperor, filing through the gates; the thuggish palace guards slipping coins into pockets and repositioning the donors to more advantageous placement in the line. Day after day, the routine went on like clockwork.

When Verdu arrived in the city, he was dazed and fighting a fever. His attempt at escaping to the resistance in Nivarta had not gone according to his plan. After being felled by a guard’s shot slicing through his left leg, Verdu regained consciousness just long enough to watch the chaos of Pranav Erato’s escape.
That is one slippery holy man
,
was all he could think as the skinny old man wriggled free from his shackles as if he were buttered, and disappeared. As for Verdu, the guards knelt on him, making sure he, too, would not run for it. As if that were possible with his blood loss and injuries. He doubted now that he would ever run a step again.

With a reluctant grunt, Verdu heaved himself onto his feet and shuffled the few steps from the cot beneath the window to a rickety chair beside a narrow table. Walking sent agony up his left leg. He had devised
several
ways to escape his cage in the tower of the imperial palace, and he, or at least the old version of him, would have been long gone by now. The butcher job the so-called doctor did to repair his leg, however, made even pacing the room impossible. Verdu’s every action lately was either tainted by the uselessness of his mangled limb, or the constant pain of it. He knew that if he could just get back to the
Brofman
, and the surgeon-turned-cook Kingston, the torn ligaments could be repaired. However, escape in his current state seemed impossible. Some days, the journey from bed to table took all of his effort.

When he had first arrived at the palace, he was weak, and it took some time for him to realize the kind of pickle Pranav Erato had left him in. Verdu wasn’t exactly sure to what extent the pranav had embellished the story of his birth, but, judging by the hours of questions asked by the leaders of the Tugrulian religious hierarchy, his story might just have been different from what Verdu had been taught.

He had been told that his mother had bribed her midwife to take him—and his imperfect face—away, and that his mother told her husband that her baby had died at birth. As a lower imperial princess, she had little status in the royal circle, so she would naturally have wanted to hide an imperfect offspring, one that would have diminished her standing further.

Verdu never blamed her for giving him up. What choice did she have? If she kept him, he would be put to death. So, he was smuggled out as arranged and raised at sea by other Tugrulians living among the Mae-Lyn people. He’d never doubted the story he had been told, and said as much during his interrogation But he guessed something was amiss when a junior adviser from the emperor’s council, Nameer Xa-Ven, had come personally. The imposing form of that high official stood over him and asked him not about Chenda, not about the role he had played in the return of the Pramuc, as the other inquisitor had. No, Nameer Xa-Ven asked only about his birth.

“
Did you really think that a woman’s word on the death of an infant would have been believed without proof?” he asked over and over. Once, the councillor bid the guards strip Verdu of his shirt and he closely examined the prisoner; his face, chest, and back were scrutinized. The finely dressed adviser, lean, long, and angular, reminded Verdu of a praying mantis, especially around the eyes—dark and so very large. Whatever those eyes saw, it seemed to confirm something for Nameer Xa-Ven, and he turned on his heel and swept out the steel reinforced stone door.

The councillor’s question troubled Verdu even more than the humiliating physical inspection. He knew the Tugrulian mind fairly well, so why had he never quibbled over the detail of his absent corpse in his mother’s story? The more he thought about it, he was sure that Nameer Xa-Ven was right: a woman’s word would
not
be believed in a matter such as this. But what could he say? It wasn’t like he could remember his own birth and supply an answer.

Contemplation of his current situation occupied most of Verdu’s time. He was fairly confident that he should have been slaughtered right there on the pier in Nivarta, but something was staying the Tugrulians’ hands—and it was not the prospect of garnering information about the Pramuc. On that matter, he vowed not to say one word, and no amount of blows from his inquisitors’ fists would change that.