The Sunken (16 page)

“That’s where you come in.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The men listen to you, Aaron. I need you to get them to see the brilliance of the Boilers. You will oversee the construction of the King’s new railway. It must be kept secret from everyone — our men, Quartz, the priests, the Royal Society.
Everyone.
Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“You need to handpick ten Stokers to work on the project and learn the mechanics of the Boilers. Choose the most intelligent and trustworthy men you know. They don’t have to be strong — the Boilers will do most of the work.”

“But the Stokers can’t work outside the Ward. How will we—”

“The King has granted special permission in this instance.” Brunel grinned. “Our fortunes are already changing, Aaron.”

“I lead men, Isambard, not machines—”

Something tore Nicholas’ attention away from the conversation. In the darkness of Nicholas’ mind, a voice prickled at the edge of his consciousness, weak and in pain. It was a compie — the tiny mind barely a whisper within Nicholas’ jumbled thoughts. He wouldn’t have noticed it at all, except that the voices never came to him down here. The workshop was too deep, too well fortified.
What’s happened to you, little fella?
Somehow, it must have found its way into Brunel’s workshop and got itself trapped beneath some equipment.

He tried to push aside the little voice and concentrate on his two friends. Isambard was explaining the particulars of the railway to a stony-faced Aaron.

“We’re creating a secret branch of the railway line, stretching through the old sewer tunnels below Buckingham Palace. You’ll be laying the track in those tunnels, widening them when necessary, and constructing a platform in the specially prepared room under the palace.”

“All within four months? I must learn the secrets of these machines and instruct them to build an underground railway all within
four months
? I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“There’s always a choice, Aaron.” Brunel held out his hand. Nicholas watched Aaron take it, feeling odd, as though he were witnessing something private. “You choose our friendship, or you choose to shun me, a Presbyter, which is heresy. You decide.”

He said it with lightness, but Aaron’s face contorted in anger. Nicholas was stunned by the thinly veiled threat. A feeling of dread settled in his stomach. Brunel continued to talk, his voice rising with excitement as he discussed the Boilers, the new railway, his plans for the Wall. He stroked the barrel of the Boiler again, his eyes betraying a tenderness Nicholas had never seen before.

He seems as I’ve always remembered him: driven, intelligent, excitable. But these Boilers … I don’t trust them
—

Help me,
the tiny mind called, forcing out his own thoughts. Nicholas felt it trying to voice the thought, to scream out to its brothers, but it couldn’t. Nicholas’ chest clenched as he felt what the compie felt — the terror of dying alone.

Nicholas tried to send a comforting thought back, but it was as if his sense met a wall of iron — he could not push the thought out. Inside his head, the compie screamed.

He watched Isambard tinker with the mechanisms on the back of the Boiler’s neck, leaning his whole body over as if embracing the metal worker. Nicholas felt like screaming, too.

After their meeting with Brunel ended, Nicholas and Aaron took the elevator together. Nicholas patted the faded notebook under his arm. “I was hoping to find you tonight. I’ve made a draft of our code for you to look at, but Oswald does not want me to see you—”

“So he’s been at you, too? I wouldn’t worry about him. He won’t risk his comfortable life enacting any threats — not that he can do much from the swamps, anyway,” said Aaron, his tone dark. “Chloe won’t expect me home for many hours yet. Not with all this grog and merrymaking in the streets. I’ll take you to a workshop, and we’ll look at it together.”

“I met her tonight. I went to look for you in the Stoker quarter, which turned out to be a mistake. She saved me from being decapitated by a pig.”

Aaron sighed. “She’s a good woman. She tolerates my drinking and my temper, and that’s no easy task sometimes. She does not know about the voices, but she suspects … something. This is why she worries so. Isambard asks so much of me, and I wish—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

Oswald was waiting in the Nave when they stepped out of the elevator. Neither man said a word to him, but as they crossed the Nave together, Nicholas could feel Oswald’s eyes boring into his back. Aaron pretended not to see him, joking with Nicholas as he pulled open the door and stepped out into the night.

Nicholas followed Aaron through the dark, labyrinthine streets, littered with scrap and moaning bodies — wallowing in the night’s libations, or rutting together in full sight of their neighbours. Through the tightly packed warren of Stoker shacks, they emerged in front of a row of low warehouses, their windows cracked and lewd graffiti scrawled across every surface. Pushing open the door to the first, Aaron said, “These have been empty since the Navvies moved up north. We won’t be seen in here.”

Aaron lit the Argand lamps along the walls, while Nicholas spread his papers out on the long, low bench occupying the centre of the warehouse. “I went to the British Museum today and saw some Sumerian tablets containing a curious, indecipherable script — each glyph made of straight sections and triangles — easy for the ancients to write with a triangular chisel or reed pen. I thought adopting this idea for our code might provide James enough distinction for each letter.”

Aaron measured each symbol with his finger. “I think this could work,” he said. “Is it a simple substitution cipher or something more complex?”

Nicholas showed him the code sheet. “I’ve based the key to the code on the name of our club, and have included several shorthand symbols for common words and letter combinations.”

Aaron frowned at the page. “Some of these won’t work when I emboss the plate. Hand me a pen.”

They worked for hours by lamplight, engrossed with the intricacies of the code language. Aaron embossed a series of plates using the code, ready to show to James at the next meeting. As the early rays of sunlight danced on the glass shards in the windows, Aaron said: “Did you know he was creating those …
Boilers
?” He spat the word, as though it would poison him.

“I knew he was attempting to devise a solution to the King’s impossible timeline. But I had no idea of the extent … already his priesthood has changed him.”

Aaron shook his head. “He’s the same Isambard, all right. He’s been waiting, Nicholas, storing up all his cunning for the day he was given that first shred of power. He is relentless, and poverty can no longer curb his ambition.”

“Aaron, do you truly wish to leave the city?”

“So you heard my conversation with Isambard.” Aaron’s voice was hard. “It has been my dream since I was a child to be with the animals in the swamps, like my grandfather. I see no reason to stay in a city that will soon replace me with a machine.”

“But why? I grew up in the countryside near Salisbury. The voices beat relentlessly against my skull, and I longed for peace. Every moment I spend in the Engine Ward surrounded by steel is a celebration of clarity.”

“It is funny how men always yearn for that which they do not have. I spent my entire life within these walls, yet desire nothing more than to escape to the countryside, to embrace the voices and hold them to me. I stay only because of Isambard.” He gave a bitter laugh. “He needs me as much as I need him. At least, he used to.”

Something had been bothering Nicholas. “Why have you never told Isambard about the sense?”

“My grandfather told me never to tell a soul, and I honoured his plea. Besides, Isambard would see me differently — I would become a curiosity to him, some natural principle he had to understand. I need his friendship, not his scrutiny. Isambard can see my great affinity for animals, and that is enough. But you did not tell Isambard, either?”

“I was afraid. When I came to London,” Nicholas said, “I was a fugitive. I killed … there was an accident on our estate, and my brother died. If my father found me, he would’ve seen me hanged. I hated myself, hated the power that had caused me so much pain and had cost me my family and my future. I did not want to be anything but a normal boy, and so when Marc Brunel found me and offered to teach me at his school, I saw a chance to forge a new life, one where no one knew what I had done or what I was capable of doing.”

“But Mr. Holman—”

“James found out later, when we were stationed together on the
Cleopatra
. He caught me one night on the prow of the boat, calling up a sea-necker. But that was back when things were different, when things seemed hopeful.” He gulped. “But we can trust James — he knows a thing or two about secrets himself.”

“And so does Isambard,” said Aaron. “But I’m not sure I would trust him with this.”

“Isambard has been nothing but a friend to us.”

“We’ve been friends for ten years now, long enough for me to realise he doesn’t see friendship the same way you or I do. Isambard sees people — friends, enemies, associates — as parts of a great machine, one he can re-forge and bend to his will. When his face lights up, like it did over the Boilers tonight, that’s when he’s at his most remarkable, and his most dangerous. We’re part of his plan, Nicholas, and our own hopes and dreams matter not. He’s sending Quartz away to the swamps — along with Oswald and Peter and some of the other Stokers. Quartz is the old man you met in the tunnels.” Aaron paused. “He’s looked after me ever since my parents died. Isambard knows how important he is to me, how old and frail he’s getting, but he’s still sending him away. And Quartz says the Atmospheric Railway is a cover — Isambard wants him to figure out what’s made the dragons leave the swamp.”

Nicholas leaned forward. “That explains his sudden interest in Buckland’s theories.”

Aaron nodded. “And these Boilers … they’re only the beginning. He’s planning something big, and I can’t fathom what.”

Nicholas shuddered, remembering something. “I heard a
voice
down there.”

“In Isambard’s workshop? No animal could find its way down there. Not without us seeing it. Besides, I didn’t hear anything.”

“I know what I heard,” Nicholas said, remembering the suffering that had washed over him. “It was a compie, and it was in great pain. But it was faint, as though I were hearing it through water. I could not return thoughts to it. I could not calm it—” His voice cracked. “It was dying, Aaron. And I know we both hear animals die all the time, but it was in so much pain, terrible pain, and just hearing the one voice, isolated like that—”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Aaron, pulling the door shut behind them.

“No,” said Nicholas. “It doesn’t. Since Isambard was made Presbyter, nothing makes any sense at all.”

The train chugged through green hills, rolling across the countryside and through green woods. Here, apart from the heathen priests in their bright robes pushing engineering tracts into grubby hands, and the shrines to Great Conductor overlooking every station, the north of England seemed barely affected by the country’s Industrian fanaticism. At times, the locomotive pulled them into forests so dense and wild Jacques could swear they were back in the foothills of Mount Canigou, where he’d been hiding for the past four years.

For most of the day, he was the only person in the first-class cabin. This pleased him, for he didn’t much care to converse with the uncouth English and give his origin away. A Frenchman outside of Meliora would find few friends in England. He passed his time by staring out the window and imagining how he might like to kill Nicholas when he finally found him.

At the tenth stop, a large man, his jacket buttons stretched tightly across his belly, clambered on board, lifted his nose at the four empty benches and settled himself in the bench opposite Jacques, placing his satchel down on the cushion beside him. He tugged a tin from his pocket and popped several mints into his mouth, smacking them against his cheeks in an undignified fashion.

He leaned over and offered the sticky tin to Jacques, who declined with the shake of his head, hoping the rotund man would get the hint.

But the man seemed anxious to talk. “Do you come by train often?” he asked, his accent betraying his northern roots.

Jacques shook his head. “This is my first time,” he said in English, hoping the man wouldn’t question him about his obvious French accent.

But the man seemed more interested in talking about the train. “She’s a beauty, yes? She is my
Rocket
— every piston and rivet is of my design. She’ll have you in Liverpool before suppertime, for she’s the fastest way to travel in all the Empire. Not that we have much of an empire, anymore.”

“You made this train? We had no such transportation in France.”

“Nothing like this in all the world, my friend.” The man extended a hand. “But soon there will be. I see no reason why France, or Spain or even Norway can’t have their own locomotives, just as soon as our blasted King gets over his rudding religious bollocks and allows us to trade with Europe again. But forgive me — I’ve not introduced myself. Robert Stephenson, at your service. I run the only railway company in England, servicing the mills at Manchester, the northern mines, right down to the Liverpool port, and we’re hoping to get a line in all the way to London by the end of next year.”

“Pity. I’m travelling to London. I would have liked to go all the way by train.”

“I’m going to London also. I could share a coach with you, if you wish, after we disembark. Not that either of us look like men who need to share, but I could do with the company.” He paused. “Do you pay much attention to church politics?”

“Not I,” replied Jacques, who had long since given up hope of a silent journey, but wasn’t about to reveal his identity to this portly stranger. “Too many churches, too many gods and Messiahs and priests — I can’t wrap my head around it. I’d rather admire the machines without worshipping the men, if you don’t mind my saying.”