The Mammoth Book Of Steampunk Part 16

With each sway of her hems at wrist and knee, Tilodah Tu felt fabric-covered coins brush over her skin.

Viu was smiling. "May I visit your house?"

Naranh the Sole King In honour of his first anniversary of rule, King Naranh began issuing coins with his profile on the obverse face. His long hair curled like steam. On the reverse face, the eagle dropped towards the s.h.i.+ning Sea, and contemporary numismatists murmured quietly among themselves, unsure whether this signified the eagle diving at prey or plummeting in death.

King Naranh sent his coins across the growing network of train tracks that linked the cities and towns of a region that officially belonged to many monarchs and governmental bodies. Over the thirty years prior to his rule, the coins issued in the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea had largely replaced local currencies and become the standard unit in trade. The new issue was readily adopted and, in sanctioned mints, reproduced locally.

The trains powered by hearts of steam remained solely the property of the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea.

The City Exile Era II The coins that issued from Tilodah Tu's small mint were privately considered masterpieces. In public, the wise bowed their heads to King Naranh's command that all such coins be collected and melted down, and any person reluctant to hand over even a single one would lose a hand along with the offending item.

Each of the seven coins told part of the story of how Naranh tried to kill Viu for whispering to him in the darkness of their room, that first night they ruled together.

Viu, still raw from the abrupt, almost violent end to her relations.h.i.+p with Naranh, devoted much of that s.p.a.ce to doc.u.menting her disgust at him: at his hands, touching her body, even though she loved him genuinely at the time, in the poeticized tradition of the ancient sibling-monarchs who founded the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea; at his narrow-mindedness, sending knives to her throat instead of embracing the new power she discovered; at his inability to find and kill her in the city he called his own.

The coin that so many thousands of people retold had the following words in minute, careful letters, spiralling out from the centre of the obverse face: Lost in the Royal Steamworks, in clouds of steam, I followed the great bird. At first I saw nothing. Then it raised its wings around me, it set its taloned feet on the ground, it stood as tall in the body as me, formed like a man except for its head, wings and feet, and we stared eye to eye. It spoke to me. It tilted back my head and breathed steam into my body, filling me so that I thought I would be consumed. I was not. I knew, afterwards, that steam is a power to control, and that the G.o.d gave it to me.

On the reverse face: a small image of Viu, in profile, with her chin tilted higher than in the hand-chiselled issue. The attention to detail in her nose, slightly dented from a childhood break, confirmed that Viu was personally overseeing the production of these coins.

With their careful distribution, Viu gained many of her most devoted early allies.

"I want to be your only mint," Tilodah Tu said. "I want to be the only source of your coins. I want to feel every one."

If she plunged her hands into a bag of the seven-part issue, she felt Viu's hopes: for the people of the city to love her, to understand her, to forgive her for sharing the knowledge that made them so rich and other cities so beholden to them. To follow her. She felt her own desires: to craft coins that would s.h.i.+ne from the historical record like small suns, to be remembered well in the libraries of the future.

She felt, faintly, the Steam G.o.d's longing to be known and honoured.

She could no longer imagine a day without feeling so intensely.

"You will always mint coins for me." Viu leaned against the machinery, where recently she had breathed steam into its heart, and smiled fondly. "Why wouldn't you, when each one is so perfect?"

From each one that was flawed, Tilodah Tu knew Viu's desires for that coin, and honed it in private before holding out the perfect handful: an offering, a request for permission to fill bag after bag with bronze and tin.

Sometimes she felt that she would burn under her coins, like Sitor who tried to summon the sun in myth.

Yet when Viu proposed a new coin, a new step in her plans, Tilodah Tu only said, "What do you need me to do first?"

"There is a theft."

On a night when the moon garlanded itself in cloud, they slipped through the city as quiet as a coin being turned over and over between two fingers.

Naranh the Copied King In the mints of the other cities, a concerted effort was made to ensure that every issue of King Naranh's siluhs and lesser denominations mirrored exactly those produced in the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea. Yet irregularities occurred. An entire issue missing King Naranh's ear. Individual coins poorly stamped: the design half on and half off the metal circle, the design rendered unclear by an inferior or over-used stamp, the design restyled to give the king a bigger crown, a sign of honour among the people of one city.

King Naranh tolerated this, because the tributes not formally given this term, but it hung on the edge of everyone's tongue like a shadow reached him on time and the visiting dignitaries bowed their heads accordingly.

Gradually he became aware of another issue.

To anyone incapable of reading the written script used in the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea, it appeared only a careless error by whoever had crafted the stamp. Yet every other detail was perfect in a way few foreign issues were. King Naranh had heard of the theft, shortly after the second anniversary of his coronation, of three stamps from the royal mint.

The error crossed out the final letter of the word 'king': the silent letter, the ancient mark, the sceptre-straight line that signified the presence of a deity. All mints were instructed on the necessity of this letter.

Viu's seven-part issue had ceased only a month before the first mutilated coins reached the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea from across the plains.

The Peregrination Era I Of Tilodah Tu's issue of fake Naranh siluhs, little is said. One does not need to read the surviving chapters of her History to imagine her disinterest in the coins, besides their monetary value in a world that did not yet accept Viu's face. She scored a single line in the stolen stamps and set her machine to work, driven by Viu's steam, and barely ran any over her palms.

They were a small group: a wagon for the mint, two horses and five women.

When she was not minting small quant.i.ties of coins to use in markets across the world, Tilodah Tu recorded their story in her journals, using the same minute hand that had become so famous on the seven-part issue.

"You'll be my historian too," Viu said, the day she realized quite what Tilodah Tu was writing.

"Your original source. Although I'm sure my work will be lost, with only fragments from a pseudo-Tilodah Tu remaining to taunt future historians. But before these pages and their duplicates are swallowed by fires and mould and insects and the eventual fragmentation of almost all paper, a later historian will write another history of you, drawing on my work, and he or she will be renowned for reaching the closest to accuracy."

Viu couldn't help smiling. "You have the strangest fantasies."

"It's more of a prophecy although perhaps I'll be one of the fortunate ones. Perhaps we should start scribing this on stone. And there'll be the coins, of course. Many of them will undoubtedly survive."

If Viu had witnessed Tilodah Tu burying small h.o.a.rds in the desert sands, carefully held in ceramic jars bought at one of the markets, she chose not to speak of it.

Other work occupied Viu's mind.

At first Viu entered settlements carefully, whether they were small villages or cities almost as large as the one she had left behind. In the plains her group was free to talk and mint and plan. In places where her brother's allies might live, she took no risks. She watched. She and Tilodah Tu and the other three women dispersed into the markets, temples, sparring grounds and meagre baths for in these places, the water did not lap at the sides of streets, and required careful use among sizeable populations and collected information far more valuable than any saffron or gold.

Gradually she learned what she had expected: most leaders resented King Naranh's refusal to share the methodologies and the full benefits of his steamworks.

In a town where custom dictated the adornment of the body with turquoise beads, Viu contacted the leader and requested an audience. In the chamber, which was so blindingly blue that she struggled not to dip her gaze, she said, "I am Viu, formerly Queen in the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea. I come to you with a proposal."

A tall, broad-shouldered woman with beads in lines like scars across her cheeks translated between the two languages.

"I did not know that there was ever a Queen Viu," replied the leader. So much turquoise covered his body that Viu struggled to discern his face.

Tilodah Tu held out the coin that she had acquired long ago, when she still hurt from the recent discrediting of her research. The bead-cheeked woman took it and pa.s.sed it to the leader.

"My brother did not wish me to rule," Viu said as he examined it. "I told him that I was visited by a G.o.d of steam, who gave me the gift of creating steam without needing to first heat water. I told him that I intended to share this gift with people in cities and towns such as yours, where water is in limited supply. So he tried to kill me and I fled."

The leader cared little for the coin. "I would see this ability."

Viu waved her hands through the air. Delicate wisps of steam trailed from her fingers. "I a.s.sure you that I can produce far more than this. Only, I do not wish to damage your property."

"And what do you want in return?"

"The G.o.d gave this to me a gift. I do the same. I ask that you give me and my people safe haven, but I do not require it. We can flee your walls if my brother brings an army. You cannot."

Even through the turquoise, Viu saw the disbelief on his face.

"I am not in the business of building an empire," Viu said.

"Then what manner of queen are you?"

The bead-cheeked woman watched her as intently as the leader, and Viu wondered if her role was greater than that of a valued translator.

"A new one."

After a long silence, the woman said, "We would see your abilities in a different environment to this."

When Viu stood on the plain outside the town and directed jets of steam ten times higher than the Turquoise Palace into the air, she won her first allies. She breathed steam into Gyan, as the G.o.d had instructed, and told the woman to practise away from the town at first. Afterwards, she gave Tseri and Gyan the schematics she had acquired before leaving the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea.

Steamworks began to grow in every town, city, village, nomadic group, caravanserai and monastery through which Viu's group pa.s.sed.

Naranh the Steam King A new issue of coins was used to finance the armies of Emperor Naranh in their extensive campaigns.

It no longer depicted the falcon. A plume of steam burst from the edge of the coin, almost entirely covering the reverse face. King Naranh declared this the city's new emblem, and displayed it on many thousands of banners and garlands and chest plates.

On the obverse, Naranh was enthroned with every indication of deification, although there is no record in the histories of the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea that Naranh ever pet.i.tioned the temples for this honour. Nonetheless, he sat on a throne with a back that only reached his shoulders, and the deity letter was especially emphasized, being twice as large as the others.

The Peregrination Era II From Viu's journeys there began to pour a confusion of coins: her likeness in elephant tusk, narwhal horn, turquoise, gold, electrum, cowries, honeycomb-crusted soap, mahogany, green gla.s.s, glazed and unglazed ceramics, oxidized copper that crumbled in King Naranh's palm, palimpsests upon ancient h.o.a.rd-finds, horse leather, compressed feathers, peach pits, paper, salt impossibly hard.

Whether round or square or knife-shaped, whether large or minute, unbordered or part of an ornate whole, the coins showed Viu looking directly out, crowned and lash-less, faintly smiling.

No other coin showed a monarch's face from such an angle.

They arrived from every part of the world-map's rim, sometimes simultaneously from far-apart regions, so that Naranh could not follow or predict his sister's route. He screamed and raged, and his allies began to dry up like a nightmare of the s.h.i.+ning Sea's demise.

Their group of people and wagons and animals grew exponentially.

Stories travelled: of a city on wheels and hooves where anyone who sought peace was welcomed like family, of a leader who spread steamworks and magic to those who wanted freedom from the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea's monopoly, of unending supplies of steam that cooled into clean water. No one in the mobile city thirsted. And Naranh's army never drew near. A G.o.d's protection, people whispered. Blessed city.

Viu continued to spread her gift and her schematics. Months pa.s.sed. A year. Two. Gradually cities met Naranh on battlefields with their own weapons of steam and clanking, slicing, shooting metal.

Tilodah Tu modified her machine with parts from inventors she met along the way some of whom joined the group, and for the first time she welcomed a.s.sistants into her caravan, and let them sink their hands up to the wrists in piles of the strangest issues.

Cardamom pods, vanilla pods, fox bone, snakeskin, the tin maps of the Morro tribe.

At night, Tilodah Tu would whisper a litany of the substances not yet tried in her mint.

"Hush, love," Viu would whisper back. "Sleeping."

She slept rarely.

Even with the help of the unseen G.o.d, she struggled to keep her city clear of the war raging and fragmenting across the plains and hills. So many people relied on her for safety. Though Tilodah Tu thought only of the substances she might turn into coins, Viu knew that they needed a different future.

She made new plans.

Naranh the Emperor The final issue of Naranh amended the previous one to t.i.tle him Emperor instead of King. Every other detail remained the same.

No mints besides the one in the City of the s.h.i.+ning Sea produced the coin.

The City in the Ice The most famous of the coins Viu sent to her brother were the fifty struck in ice, delivered in a large stone chest insulated with furs and cloth. Even so, they were stuck together when Naranh opened the chest, their features half gone. They melted within hours, although not before Naranh could put them to use cooling his drinks and laugh loudly with his few remaining courtiers.

The lid of the chest read: I have built my own city of steam, brother, too high in the mountains for you to reach.

No further coins arrived.

In the Temple of the Steam G.o.d, supplicants offered minor denominations of a more conventional issue, un-melting.

The coins of the City in the Ice were small and simple in motif, with Viu's face on the obverse and a mountain on the reverse.

No longer minting fun, functionally valueless coins, Tilodah Tu controlled her work far more carefully. She struggled. Treasurer was not an easy t.i.tle to bear, and she could not afford to discard it as she had Professor of Numismatics. She dreamed of inflation guised as a succession of wild monsters. She spent hours of each day making entirely different records to those she had kept in the plains.

Some issues she never got around to burying too much else took her time, day after day.

They would survive.

In her free time, she occasionally made limited runs of curio-coins: seven from a yak's hoof, ten from glistening black rock, three from a rare fungus that mummified subterranean caterpillars and grew from their foreheads. Most of the time, she wandered the city with Viu and other friends.

"We made this," she murmured to Viu, on a night when the first snow drifted down from the mountains. The animal shelters were ready for winter. The food stores were full and secure from the elements. Soon the rivers would freeze. The city's temples one for each G.o.d would hold festivals.

"We did." Pride and happiness flowed from Viu like steam.

"My life has developed in so many different ways."

"Do you think I planned all this from the beginning?"

The City in the Ice was famed for many things, but above all else were its schools. Knowing her role in the war that had torn parts of her old map to shreds, Viu established her city's schools explicitly as forums of learning and discussion. Above all else, they posed the question: how do we fairly and usefully use this technology we have all shared? There were many answers.

Zeppelin City.

Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick.

Radio Jones came dancing down the slidewalks. She jumped from the express to a local, then spun about and raced backwards, dumping speed so she could cut across the slower lanes two and three at a time. She hopped off at the mouth of an alley, glanced up in time to see a Zeppelin disappear behind a gla.s.s-domed skysc.r.a.per, and stepped through a metal door left open to vent the heat from the furnaces within.

The gla.s.s-blowers looked up from their work as she entered the hot shop. They greeted her cheerily: "Hey, Radio!"

"Jonesy!"

"You invented a robot girlfriend for me yet?"

The shop foreman lumbered forward, smiling. "Got a box of off-spec tubes for you, under the bench there."

"Thanks, Mackie." Radio dug through the pockets of her patched leather greatcoat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "Hey, listen, I want you to do me up an estimate for these here vacuum tubes."

Mack studied the list. "Looks to be pretty straightforward. None of your usual experimental trash. How many do you need one of each?"