Engn

XVI

XVIFinn strode through the postern door, refusing to look backwards. The door closed behind him with a gentle click. Thick, solid darkness consumed him. He stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He would be able to see soon. But, after a minute, two minutes, he still could not. The darkness remained complete, except for faint lines of light around the edges of the door behind him. He experimented with closing and opening his eyes to see if there was a difference. Nothing. He thought about pounding on the postern door, asking to be let out again.

No. He wouldn't do that.

He felt around with his outstretched fingertips. A rough, stone wall on either side of him, nothing ahead but cold, empty air. He stood in a passageway of some sort. His arms held out in case he walked into something solid, he shuffled forwards on the dusty floor, feeling for each step with an outstretched foot.

The passageway twisted left and right so he soon had no idea in which direction he was walking. The air smelled muggy, as if he were being smothered by old blankets. The faintest humming noise sang from the stone walls around him, but otherwise the only sounds were the tapping of his outstretched toe and the rush of breath in his own chest. Occasionally his fingers found one of the glass orbs set into the walls. If they were lights, he could find no way of switching them on.

As he crept along, he thought about Tanner's stories of the mines and the furnaces. He began to imagine that, at any moment, he would step onto nothing and plummet into a pit, tipped into the flames or onto the sharp rocks of some deep cavern. On three occasions he came across an iron grill in the floor. Welcome cold air breathed up at him, clearing his head a little. He had no choice but to step onto them. Each rocked and boomed as he crossed but remained solid. Once he thought he heard distant voices from down below, calls or screams. He told himself it was just his own mind inventing things.

He walked for a long time – hours it seemed – but found nothing. He had to be going around in circles; eventually he'd find himself back at the postern gate. Still there were only rough stone walls on either side of him, nothing ahead but cold, empty air.

Weary, he lowered himself to the floor, his back against the wall. He longed for water. His mouth was dry, his lips cracked and sore. Why hadn't he smuggled food and drink out from breakfast? He could die of thirst and no one would know. He thought about all the others who'd been sent through the door. Were they all still in there, fumbling about in the darkness, or else reduced to clumps of bones? He tried to still his breathing and listen for a sound, any sound.

Nothing.

He thought about the name Tanner had whispered. Lud. Who was he? More importantly, where was he? Somehow, Finn had to find him. Or be found by him. Was that the plan? Had Connor deliberately arranged for Finn to sit next to Tanner so the other boy could pass on the name? Or did Lud already know about him? Perhaps it had even been Lud waving from the dome.

How could he know? How could he possibly know?

The questions whirled around in Finn's head, each chased by a further question rather than an answer. After a while, he fell into a fitful slumber, his tired brain full of confused voices calling to him, telling him to come quickly.

Sometime later he jerked awake, thinking someone had shouted his name. But he'd dreamed it; the darkness enfolding him was as still as ever. He couldn't tell if he'd slept for moments or hours.

Heaving himself to his feet he trudged on. He began to walk with his eyes closed. His mind repeatedly drifted into brief dreams where he walked along a precarious mountain path, or else was back inside the moving engine trundling across the great grass plain. So, it took him a few moments to understand what it meant when his foot clanged against something iron blocking his way.

It was another spiral staircase, this one leading both up and down. By feeling his way around the walls, he discovered that the passageway ended there. He had to go one way or another on the staircase. Was he allowed to go up? Or should he just accept his fate and descend? Was this one of the tests or had he already failed? He debated for long moments, then stepped onto the staircase to wind his way upwards. He had nothing to lose.

The iron spiral boomed like a cracked bell with each footstep. It also swayed, as if it only lightly anchored to the walls. Finn climbed step by step, his mind full of visions of the staircase collapsing, of his own body crushed within tons of buckled metal. He scraped off flakes of rust from the handrail as he climbed. How old were these stairs? Who maintained them, repainted them?

He grew more anxious and more weary as he ascended. He could no longer allow himself to sleep for fear of tumbling all the way back to the ground. Instead, several times, he sat on one of the steps, head in his hands, and waited for his breathing to calm.

Once when he was young, feverish with illness, he'd had nightmares of being on such a staircase. But it was unending, with an infinite gulf of space all around him, and in his confused state he lurched between being tiny and immense. He was pinned to the vast staircase, insignificant, unable to move.

It was a little like that now. Dizziness wheeled inside his mind. He hadn't eaten for a long time. Hours? Days? He could only go on. He hauled himself back to his feet and continued the climb. He began to think he wasn't moving; that the staircase wound downwards into the ground as he ascended, leaving him stationary. That he would ascend forever until he dropped dead from exhaustion and rattled all the way down to the mines or the furnaces at the foot of the stairs.

The third time he stopped, looking up, he made out a lattice-work of light filtering through the treads of the steps above him. He was finally getting somewhere. He stood up and hurried on before his strength failed.

The staircase finally delivered him onto a circular landing. An alcove in one wall revealed a small round window, glassless, from which the light shone. Finn peered through and could just make out, far, far below, the naphtha lamps and the great table where the artificers assembled the valves. He could discern one of the masters – impossible to say which – creeping around the edge of the table down there.

If he'd had paper, he'd write a note and throw it down to those left behind. If it didn't catch fire on the lamps, he could tell Tanner and the others he was safe, that he hadn't been cast into the furnace or condemned to the mines. But he wouldn't want the message to reach Graves or one of the others. It was only their ignorance that prevented them coming up the stairs after him. And in any case, he had neither paper nor pen.

He wondered if he was near the high walkway. Pushing his cheek against the cold stone and peering upwards he could see he was only about halfway to the top. The underside of the high balcony running around the walls of the hall was far above him. Still no way to get up there.

He turned. Opposite the alcove were three doors. The nearest was wooden, its ancient timbers lime green with rot. Finn hesitated for a moment, then knocked on it. There was no reply. He could feel a keen draught blowing around its edges. He rapped again, hard enough to make his knuckles hurt. When there was still no reply, he lifted the rusty iron catch of the door and pushed.

The rush of air took his breath away. He stood on a narrow shelf halfway up one of the towering walls. Three or four pigeons clattered away in alarm. The drop to the ground yawned open in front of him. He grasped hold of the door handle. The wind made his eyes water.

Machinery stretched into a distant haze, the pipes and pistons and wheels of Engn. Down below him he could just see a corner of the Octagon, crossed by insect figures. He watched as four of them, ironclads he thought, moved in a line over the flints. One stopped and Finn felt suddenly very exposed. It was too far to tell if the ironclad was looking up at him, but Finn stood very still, afraid any movement might give him away. After a few moments the ironclad resumed marching.

Peering to his left, not daring to lean out too far, he could just make out the edge of a dome, most of it obscured by the tower wall. He was higher than it but he was sure it was the same one he'd seen from the skylight. Did it look a little closer than it had? Perhaps he was going the right way after all.

Directly in front of him a vast beam engine nodded to and fro, like a giant's seesaw or a titanic set of scales, one end powered by a steaming, huffing cylinder the size of a large building, the other end turning a wheel, half-buried in the ground. A wide belt, driven by the wheel, ran through the air some way below him to power some other part of the machine. The belt was as wide as the lane back home and sandy brown in colour. He thought, briefly, about trying to jump down and land on it, in the hope of getting nearer the dome. Of riding the belt across Engn. But he knew he wouldn't dare.

As he had on the day he'd arrived, he tried to spot signs of wrecker activity. Burned-out towers or broken wheels. There was nothing. The machinery hummed and roared away in all directions.

He looked into the sky, up the tall wall of stone reaching away from him. He realized where he was. Set back into the wall was the face of a huge clock, its lowest curve just level with his own head. The long hand pointed down at him, accusingly. A tiny number, 72, was etched onto the face below the vast number eighteen. It was the clock, or at least another face of the clock, that he'd used every day to time his ringing of the Sixth bell. The little attic room had to be on the opposite side of the tower and farther down. He hadn't really come a great distance after all.

Leaning out as far as he dared, one hand clutching the handle of the rotting door, he tried to see what time it was. Halfway to the twenty-seventh bell. Assuming it was still the same day, he'd been walking for nearly twenty hours. He wondered what people were saying about him. He imagined Graves and the others laughing at the thought of him down in the mines. Back in the darkness he'd almost begun to wish someone had taken him there. At least he'd have known where he was. At least there would have been something to drink. Wandering around alone was terrible. Where was he supposed to go? What was he supposed to do?

He stepped backwards into the alcove and shut the door. He turned to the next door along. This one was heavier, metal, tarnished with a patina of rust. He pulled on the handle but it didn't budge. A catch mechanism was built into the handle. He lifted this with a finger and heaved hard. The door swung open easily, despite its thickness and obvious weight. He peered inside, wary of another great drop on the other side, but a passage led away, lit by flickering incandescent lights set in regular sconces all the way along. More silvery orbs were set into the walls, all dark. He stepped over the raised lip of the door and into the passage.

He was a few steps inside when he heard running footsteps and the familiar rhythmic clank of metal. He stepped backwards, wary of tripping over the frame of the heavy door. An ironclad ran around the bend up ahead, with another following close behind. They both shouted at Finn, muffled words he couldn't make out.

The ironclad in the front unslung a g*n from his back and held it up to fire at Finn. It wasn't one of the muskets he'd seen them carrying previously. This was a more complicated contraption that looked like it fired a grapple about the size of Finn's hand. Twenty yards away, the ironclad stopped running to steady his aim. Finn stumbled backwards over the doorframe in his desperation to get away. He heard the c***k of a shot and raised his arms to cover his face as he fell.

He heard a whirring, whistling sound coming at him very quickly. Something heavy and hard thudded off the side of his head, knocking him sideways. At the same moment he felt cold metal grip his arm, very tight, pinching his hairs painfully. A steel chain wound itself around his arm. He couldn't understand what was happening, the blow to his head blurring his senses. The weighted grapple had latched onto the chain wrapped around his arm with barbed teeth, locking itself into place. Another grapple on the other end of the cable revolved faster and faster around his arm as the chain wound up to his elbow. He held it away from his head so that the grapple didn't bash him again. It thumped into the muscle of his upper arm like a blow from a hammer. Once again, serrated teeth snapped out, gripping the chain, the links designed to interlock with the teeth. Some dug directly into his arm, punching a line of red holes in his soft skin. He shouted out in pain and alarm. The chain was locked fast to him. The device must have been intended for his legs, to bring him down like one of the cows on the Baron's farm, but it made little difference. They had him.

He felt his arm being tugged. A thin line attached to the steel cable led back to the ironclad who was hauling him in, back through the steel door. Frantically Finn tried to scrabble to his feet, but the ironclads kept him off-balance, jerking him forwards. The other ironclad began to haul on the cable, too. He had no chance of pulling against them. They hauled and strode forwards at the same time, lessening the distance to him rapidly.

Finn managed to catch one of his legs behind the half-open door. It was his only chance. With a roar he yanked his arm backwards, hoping to give himself a few inches of slack to play with. He felt the barbs embedded in his arm rip out of his skin. He screamed with the pain of it. He had just enough play in the cable to take a scrambled step backwards and get his other foot behind the door. He braced his feet against the door and, with a shout of effort, kicked it shut, slamming it in the faces of the approaching ironclads. It rang with a booming clang. Finn fell backwards, the thin-line attached to his arm severed by the heavy metal door.

He scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could. The ironclads would open the door again and be upon him at any moment. He couldn't face going back down the stairs again. He thought, briefly, about lunging back through the balcony door. At least the drop would mean a quick end. No. His only option was the third door. He ran for it, hearing the catch mechanism on the ironclads' door rattling at the same instant. If the third door was locked, he was trapped.

The door budged a little as he pushed it, stiff in its frame rather than locked. Frantic, he barged through shoulder first. Once inside he slammed the door shut behind him. Iron bolts were set into the top and bottom of the door. He worked them shut, skinning his knuckles on the stone doorframe as he did so.

He turned to look around, expecting to see more ironclads coming for him. There were none. He stood inside the clock. The cogs and weights and axles of it filled the great square room he found himself in. Wheels with sharp teeth whirred near his head.

In the centre of the room stood an old man with a shock of straggly grey hair, a familiar bushy beard. The old man, the clock-winder, looked up from the workings to peer at Finn through small, round glasses. Beside him on the floor stood the oblong bulk of his regulator clock.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “It's about time.”