Even before she was sure that the aluman was dead, Shae was crawling through the trampled grass to the heap where Kayden and his horse had gone down under its massive bulk. She hurt in ways she hadn’t in a long time. She ignored it.
“Kayden? Kayden?”
He didn’t respond. Through the wet grass, she could see the flank of the fallen horse. It wasn’t moving.
“Mother, please,” she whispered.
It looked like Kayden had tried to jump off the horse after he’d entangled it with the aluman’s legs. But he hadn’t made it all the way off. When the horse went down, he went down with it. And then the metal man had fallen atop them both. The horse was crushed. Dead.
Beneath it, Kayden was still breathing. The rain was smearing the blood and dirt on his face.
“He’s alive?”
Shae looked up. The lumicker was standing behind her. He’d picked up his weapon from where it had fallen in the grass.
Shae nodded. “He’s hurt bad.”
The lumicker frowned, then scanned the scene around them. “Both your horses are dead.”
“You killed mine.”
He didn’t respond. He was looking back at the aluman, which was frozen against the lit lumickline. “Homilden’s a ways off,” he said. His voice sounded absent.
“You have to help us!”
The man turned around. “Reckon I don’t have to do anything,” he said. “But I will.” He put his weapon into the holster at his hip. “Let’s get him free of the horse first.”
He squatted down beside her, put his hands under its bulk and his shoulder to the saddle. “Grab his arms and pull,” he said.
They heaved—him upward on the horse’s dead weight, her outward on Kayden’s limp body. The lumicker was an older man, but he was surprisingly strong. Even so, it took three goes to get Kayden pulled out. His right leg was clearly broken. His breathing was ragged. He didn’t open his eyes.
“Kayden!” Shae wiped grime off his face. “Kayden, can you hear me?”
“He’s out surer than a fish in hay,” the lumicker said. He looked back toward the road and sighed. “Help me get him to my wagon.”
They tried to carry him together, but Shae’s pains were beginning to get the best of her. One of her legs felt nearly immobile; her sprained knee had swollen like a grapefruit. So in the end, she could only help hoist Kayden onto the lumicker’s back, then hobble ahead to open the wagon’s door.
The inside of the lumicker’s wagon reminded her of nothing so much as the Bone Pirate’s cabin aboard the Pale Dawn; it was both a house and a work space, packed with things, yet somehow well organized. And like a ship’s cabin, everything was locked or strapped down. The shaking of the road was like the shaking of the sea, it seemed. On the left side of the interior was a small iron stove for cooking and heating, surrounded by pots and pans, pokers and plates, all hanging or contained in one space or another. Beside that, below a window, was a workbench.
Tools were set in slots upon its surface. Rope-secured shelves all around the window held various metal parts, a few of which she was certain came from alumen. On the right side, below a window, was a long couch with storage beneath it. And at the far end was a bed, waist-high, with cabinets below it. Above the bed, there was a hatch against the wall, leading, Shae assumed, to the driving bench up front. Running the whole length of the ceiling was a kind of indentation, only a couple of inches deep, whose sides were made of glass. She’d not seen it in the moments she’d been on the roof before, but she could see from inside how it cleverly let in the sunlight in two long strips. The walls, where they weren’t covered with shelves—there were metal parts everywhere, it seemed—were a richly polished oak, ornamented with delicate designs of silver wire.
With Shae helping as best she could with one good leg, they lifted Kayden onto a red rug just inside the door. Then they slid and hefted him into the bed at the far end. The lumicker checked him over quickly. “If he lives, he’s gonna be sore the likes of which he’s never been, I think.” He looked at Shae. “Go strip your horses. Pile things up outside here while I figure out what to do.”
Shae, tired and hurting, didn’t argue. She limped out of the cabin and went first to her own horse. The rain had mercifully stopped, and the air was filled with the sweet scents of the wet grasses. She would’ve enjoyed it, she thought, if she wasn’t so worried about Kayden.
The fact that she was worried about him worried her too. What did it mean that she cared?
Shaking such questions away, she focused on the tasks at hand. She unstrapped the saddlebags first. They were easy enough to get to the wagon, but the unwieldy weight of the saddle was harder on her sore body. By the time she’d dragged it to the foot of the wagon’s ladder, the lumicker was already hopping down out of the interior.
He blinked up at the sky. The sun was peeking through the clouds to the west. “I’ve set the broken bones. Probably for the best he wasn’t awake for it. You said his name is Kayden?”
Shae nodded. “That’s right.”
“And yours?”
“Shaesara. Shae. We’re from Felcamp.”
“Shae,” he repeated. “From Felcamp.”
Beneath the shade of his wide-brimmed hat, his blue eyes narrowed. Had she said too much? Not enough?
“I suppose that’ll do for now,” he said. He pulled out his pipe from the inside of his coat, and started to fill it from a pouch. “My name is Aro Lanser.”
She nodded and tried to project a comfortable confidence. “From?”
His fingers paused on the bowl. He looked up at her like she had shrimps in her hair. “From this wagon, Shae. You don’t know much about lumick-folk, do you?”
“I … no, not really.”
Aro shook his head, but whether it was in pity of her personally or disappointment at Felcamp generally, she couldn’t tell. “All right, we’ll start simple.” He finished packing the pipe bowl, and pulled out a cylinder lighter like she’d seen Kayden use. “You’ll never tell anyone about what you see in my wagon.”
“Never tell anyone?”
“No. And no questions either. If you want your man to live—if you want yourself to live—you’ll do exactly as I say. And that begins with you never speaking of what you might see in my wagon. Understand?”
The idea of being told what to do instinctively twisted at Shae’s gut. He was a man. His only use ought to be his back for hauling and his cock for breeding. Lumicker or not, he’d have the Mother’s Embrace if she’d seized him aboard a ship at sea.
But she had no ship. She had no sea. And the one person who she could hope to help her in this strange world was—surely to the trickster Ti’nay’s delight—another man. A man who was unconscious and badly hurt.
So she swallowed her pride and nodded. “I understand.”
“Good,” Aro said. “Now get the other horse stripped. Then lie down on the couch inside. You’re not in the best shape yourself.”
“What are you going to do?”
He set fire to his pipe, puffing it to life while he gave her a look that indicated how little business it was of hers. Finally, exhaling a cloud of smoke, he nodded toward the aluman. “I’m going to strip down our friend here.”
“What? Kayden needs help! He needs—”
“There’s no help he can’t get right here,” Aro said, cutting her off. “And even if there weren’t, I’ll not be leaving a prize like this behind. An aluman is worth four Kaydens and Shaes from ass-water Felcamp all put together.”
Shae opened her mouth to object again, but Aro had already turned his back, hopping onto the ladder to the roof to retrieve his tools. “Or you can walk and drag your friend along, if you’d prefer,” he said over his shoulder. “All the same to me.”
Shae peered down the road toward Homilden, where her dead horse was already gathering flies. Dropping her head, she limped her way to strip Kayden’s mount too.
Whatever else she could say about Aro Lanser, the older man was efficient. By the time she’d stripped the second horse, he’d gathered up his own team of horses from where they’d wandered off onto the Greensward. He’d hitched them up and put her saddle on one of them. “No place else to carry it,” he said. “Gonna be tight enough in the wagon as is.”
He put the second saddle she’d brought on his other horse, after which he helped her up onto the couch so she could rest. As she lay down, she felt the slow roll of the wheels beneath her as the lumicker carefully coaxed the wagon into a new position directly beside the tall metal man.
She fell asleep to the sounds of him stripping it down for parts.
*
Night had fallen by the time she awoke. Her head hurt. Everything else did too.
Aro Lanser stood at the stove beside her. He looked to be even older than she’d thought.
He’d untied his long gray hair, and it hung loose—and probably more sparsely than he would like—about his shoulders. His long coat was hanging on the back of the wagon’s door. So was his hat and the leather holster of his remarkable weapon. A small lamp in the upper corner of the interior, right beside the door, was glowing with a soft white light, tinged with the telltale pale blue of lumick at work. Warm scents rolled out from a stew in the pot he was stirring. At a whiff of it, her stomach grumbled loudly.
The lumicker looked back at the noise. His thick mustache lifted in a smile. “Awake,” he said. “And it sounds like you’re hungry.”
She lifted her head to get up, but it immediately throbbed her back down.
“Easy now,” he said. “I think you hit your head pretty hard at some point. Not the worst injury, but that kind of thing can catch up with you.”
Shae brought a hand to her forehead, as if she could stabilize it against the pulsing pain. “I guess so.”
“It’s probably from when I shot you off your horse.” Aro’s smile was wide now. “Sorry about that.”
Shae groaned but got herself upright. She looked to the other end of the wagon. “How’s Kayden?”
Aro continued to stir. “Asleep. He’s in worse shape than you, but it looks like he’ll live.”
“Thank the gods,” Shae said.
For a moment, the man hesitated, then the stirring commenced again. The big spoon he was using made slow circles around the bottom of the pot. A smooth, rhythmic sound, like oars moving through water. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Do you work for Rumin Perle?”
“Who?”
“Rumin Perle. King Mark’s lumicker. Stole my gun design.”
Shae shook her head as much as she dared. “No. I don’t know who that is, but I don’t work for anyone.”
Aro nodded. He turned and pulled two bowls from a shelf. He ladled one with broth and handed it to her. The bowl was warm, filled with meat chunks and bits of carrot floating in a hazy soup that smelled of something Kayden had once called sage. “Thank you,” she said. Her stomach rumbled again. “It smells good.”
“My mother’s recipe,” he said, as he ladled another bowl for himself. “Good for sore muscles after a long day.”
Shae sighed. “A long day.”
From a drawer, Aro pulled out two spoons, but when she reached out for one, he held it back. “I’m hungry too,” he said. “But before you eat, I need to tell you that I made one change to my mother’s recipe. What do you know of the gold-flock flower?”
“I’ve never been interested in flowers.”
The lumicker nodded in understanding, then carefully set the spoons down on the edge of the stove, as if they were prizes to be won. “It’s not a terribly common plant. Also not terribly pretty. But those who know how to prepare it correctly call it the truth flower.”
Shae glanced down at the bowl in her hand. “And you know how to prepare it.”
“I very much do,” he said, looking proud. “And to answer your suspicion, yes, it’s in the stew.”
Shae’s eyes narrowed. There was a game being played, she was sure, and she didn’t like it. “Go on.”
He fastidiously used a rag to wipe up the stovetop and its surrounds while he talked. “Gold-flock has two main effects on people. One is that it makes you sleep like a baby. The other is that it makes you tell the truth. Thus its other name, you see.”
Shae wanted to frown. Instead, she tried to seem merely curious. “For how long?”
“Until you sleep like a baby. Which for most people isn’t long.” The lumicker finished cleaning. He hung his rag off a hook over the stove, then leaned back against the wagon door to look at her.
“You want me to take it.” He knew she wasn’t from Felcamp. That much was clear. But what else did he know? What else could he find out?
Aro nodded slowly. “I do, but the choice is yours. If you refuse, I’ll make something else. Shouldn’t take too long.”
Her stomach growled, making its position clear. She pretended to ignore it. “Why would I choose to take such a thing if I don’t need to?”
“For one thing, because you need the sleep. Truly. For another”—he looked pointedly at the other bowl—“well, because I’ll take it too.”
Shae blinked. If he was telling the truth, then she could ask him about the workings of lumick. She could ask him so many things. But what would he learn? What would he do with it? “Why would you take it too? Why even tell me about it? You could have just given it to me.”
He tilted his head at that. “A person could have, I suppose. But I could not have. I’m an honest man, Shaesara.”
Shae grunted, then looked over at Kayden, who was still sleeping peacefully. “He told me that lumickers are distrustful.”
“And he’s absolutely right.”
“Honest but distrustful. Why don’t you trust anyone?”
The lumicker grinned. “That’s a question that Shaesara of Felcamp shouldn’t need to ask. Just like Shaesara of Felcamp would’ve never heard of anyone—living or dead—who could speak of what had been seen in a lumicker’s wagon, because no one but a lumicker is allowed in one.”
Shae swallowed hard, but she looked to the remarkable lumick weapon beside him, and then to the bits and pieces of aluman parts perched and hung around the interior. Mother, she wanted to know how it worked. How any of it worked. “Then you’re taking quite a chance already.”
“Curiosity has the best of me,” he admitted.
Shae looked back to Kayden again. Then, shrugging, she reached for the spoon. “Me too,” she said. “Eat up.”
As she dipped her spoon into the broth, he took the other bowl and spoon and began to sip it down hungrily. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m terribly hungry, and I really didn’t want to cook anything else.”
Shae nodded as she, too, attacked it. “Well, it’s good. Whatever gold-flock tastes like, I can’t sense it.”
“That can be the danger of it.” Aro wiped soup off the edge of his mustache. “You did well against the aluman, Shaesara.”
She nodded gratefully. It was true, after all. For a moment, she thought of how it might have been better if she’d had the bone mask for the fight. But she didn’t suppose it would’ve mattered to the metal man, much less anyone else. No one here knew what it would mean.
“Thank you,” she replied. “Just trying to help.”
“Well, it worked. You and your friend held it off just long enough. I owed you a debt over this. It’s the only reason I let you into my wagon.”
“You wouldn’t otherwise?”
“You’re the first people to be in here since—” Aro scrunched up his face. “Well, I think you’re the first.”
“Then thank you. We’re taut at the rope.”
Aro’s face wrinkled. “Taut at the rope?”
“Neither of us pulling the other.”
“Ah. We would say ‘even.’”
“Even.” Shae suddenly yawned. Was it the gold-flock already? Or had the fight taken more out of her than she realized? The stew seemed to be filling her hungry stomach at least. And her head wasn’t throbbing like it had been before. “I’d never seen an aluman moving before today,” she admitted.
“All the more remarkable. Truly.” He nodded to his weapon, hanging in its holster at the door. “You did mighty well with my boltgun too.”
“A boltgun,” Shae repeated, glad to know what it was called. She yawned again. It was getting harder to keep her eyes open. Her body was definitely spent. “I’d never seen one of those either.”
Aro smiled. He’d finished his own bowl. He let her finish up the contents of hers and then took it and stacked them both. “Well, you’re a fair shot,” he said.
Shae shook her head. As she did so, the room moved slowly from side to side, like the world was taking a few moments to catch up to her movements.
“Drunk without drinking,” Aro said. “That’s how I described gold-flock the first time I tried it.”
“A good description.” When the words came out, it was as if they’d come from someone else. They were distant and muted.
“I’ll let you go first,” he said.
Shae’s thoughts were like a drifting cloud, but she pushed and gathered them into something coherent. “How does lumick work?”
Aro Lanser laughed, and for a moment she feared she’d been tricked. “Straight to the greatest secret of all!” He pulled from his pocket a crystal and held it up to the lumick light in the cabin. It glowed with its own pale-blue shimmer, but behind this there was a darkness, like an endless smoke pooled inside of it. He looked at the crystal approvingly. “I took this one from our friend today.”
“Soulglass,” Shae said.
“Very good. You know that, at least. What do you know of it?”
“Kayden told me that on Ealond, a man named Kolum wanted to destroy death. So he used a machine and dark magicks to open a kind of gate. A world behind the world. He used this to pull a person’s soul from their body and into the crystal. Then the crystal would give the person new life in an aluman. But instead, the alumen went mad.”
“Well, that’s the story. I wish I knew more. Especially how the alumen got here from Ealond when they can’t move in deep water. And for that matter, how there have come to be so many of them. Mysteries even to lumickers. Don’t tell anyone, but all we know is how to pull the power of the lumick and use it. Gears. Wires.”
“So tell me about how that—” Shae said, cutting herself off with a yawn.
Aro yawned in response, then shook his head as if to clear it. “Ah, but it’s my turn, I think.”
Shae frowned but nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Your friend there was born in Felcamp. I don’t doubt that. But you weren’t.”
“Is that a question?”
“I have an ear for these things. But you—I’ve not heard someone talk like you. Not anywhere in Aionia.” The lumicker rubbed at his eyes, but when his fingers came away, she could see he was trying hard to study her, his face full of curiosity. “So my question is this: Where are you really from, Shaesara?”
Shae opened her mouth to lie. Instead, she told him everything.