The Rattle in the Willow Grove

How long can an eighteen-foot theater wagon roll down a muddy canal towpath before its dry rear axle shrieks loud enough to wake an entire cavalry vanguard?

Three miles south of Willow Bridge, forty minutes was all it took. Every turn of the left wheel screeched across the water, and with Duke Oluwaseyi's caissons thrumming behind us, the noise was an open invitation for outriders to track us down.

I needed cover and thirty quiet minutes before the road swallowed us whole.

I hauled on the reins, steering Kishi off the beaten gravel towpath. Ahead, the canal branched into a forgotten silt-feeder choked with silver willows. Their long, weeping fronds swept into the brown water, forming a curtain thick enough to swallow a hay wain. Kishi gave an irritated wheeze, his hooves sinking into the blue clay bank, but I coaxed him through the hanging branches until The Gilded Moth rolled into the damp shadows.

The wagon stopped in a patch of wild water-mint, the sharp scent rising around our boots.

"Good beast," I whispered, hopping down from the buckboard into the calf-deep weeds.

Kishi shook his harness with a jangle of brass rings, pinning his long ears flat. To keep his spirits civil, I dug into Mma-Adu’s basket and broke off a thick strip of smoked catfish. I held it toward the gray muzzle. Kishi sniffed the dried fish, curled his upper lip in pure aristocratic disgust, and shoved his nose hard against my chest, demanding the linen towel behind it.

"Fine, you tyrant," I said, giving in. I produced a cold salted yam cake instead. Kishi clamped his flat yellow teeth onto the crust, inhaling the cake in a single greedy gulp before lowering his head to graze on river sedge.

Beside my boot, a sharp metallic click echoed off the wagon undercarriage.

Pipu hopped down from the tailgate with a clatter of copper plates. His brass ears were cocked at uneven angles, and his tail spring twitched with an erratic, nervous rhythm. The bridge stunt had taken a toll on the little terrier. When he trotted across the weed bed, his left rear paw dragged by half an inch, leaving a thin furrow in the damp mud. He paused at the rear wheel, planting his paws to scrape river silt from the spokes with his copper tongue.

"At ease, soldier," I told him, crouching beside his flank.

I lifted Pipu into my lap. Condensation from the bridge stunt had seeped into his lower gears, and the flint-wheel escapement was sticking. His mainspring buzzed with a tense, dry vibration.

I set him on the wagon bench and turned to the screaming wheel first.

A craftsman who ignores his running gear does not stay a traveling showman for long. I pulled my skinning knife from my belt, knelt by the nearest willow trunk, and shaved four thick wedges of fresh green bark. Willow bark was slick with bitter sap. I scraped a handful of dense, oily blue clay from the water's edge, packed the cool mud into the hub-socket, and hammered the bark wedges into the gaps around the iron linchpin. The sap mingled with the clay, creating a slick paste that sealed the friction.

I grabbed a wooden spoke and spun the wheel with both hands. The heavy ash rim turned in total, dead silence, without a single whisper of iron grind. One major disaster was solved.

Before turning to the optics, I pulled Duke Oluwaseyi's stolen surveyor map from my coat and smoothed the creased oilskin over the wagon bench. Tracing my thumb south from Omu-Adu, I spotted the surveyor's red ink notes along the feeder canal. The engineers had scrawled a clear warning beside our ditch: Impassable silt flats; no transit for heavy ordnance.

I held the map in both hands, absorbing the lesson. The Duke's sixty brass siege guns were chained to the hard gravel of the main towpath; they could not follow a lighter wagon into these muddy back-channels without sinking to their axles. We had found an artillery blind spot.

With that leverage secured, I climbed into the wagon bed to inspect my optics.

I unlatched the mahogany chest lashed behind the bench. Inside, nestled in dyed wool, lay the heart of my trade.

I lifted each crystal into the lantern light, grading the facets against the shielded flame.

First came the ruby quantum crystal, the master stone for my tabletop phoenix and the bridge skirmisher. It was intact, its core glowing warm. Beside it, the sixty-faceted sapphire prism sparkled without a blemish, while the emerald lattice stone sat firm in its brass ring.

Then I lifted the amber scatter-prism.

My stomach dropped. A hairline fracture ran straight across the lower bevel. The heavy rumbling across the bridge's timber planks had pinched the mount. If I fired a focused steam beam through that crack, the refracted light would splinter into useless, shimmering rings instead of a solid figure.

"One lens down," I muttered to Pipu.

The little terrier whirred in sympathy, resting his chin on my knee.

At the bottom of the chest lay the fifth stone, wrapped in heavy oilskin: the river-silt crystal. It was an unpolished, cloudy lump of mineral I had traded for in the delta marshes two seasons ago. Unlike the faceted gems, this stone did not project clean images. Its inner grain was smoky and layered like compressed shale. Theoretical treatises called it an anomalous diffuser, capable of bending ambient light into dense, disorienting fog-banks and phantom river bends, but I had never dared fire it through the main boiler. In a crowded taproom, a misfire would fill the rafters with stinging steam; out here, it was an unknown gamble.

A heavy splash echoed from the canal towpath.

I froze, my hand hovering over the chest.

Through the curtain of willow branches, three gray-coated horsemen trotted down the towpath. They rode high-stepping marsh chargers with brass-banded bridles, their river-gray cloaks pinned at the shoulder with Oluwaseyi’s coiled-serpent insignia. Carbines rested across their pommels, matches smoldering in brass spark-cups.

They were moving south at an easy canter, scanning the canal reeds for the phantom skirmisher Pipu had conjured at the bridge.

I eased down behind the wagon side-rail, pinning Kishi’s halter. The mule held still, willow fronds shielding the yellow panels from the road.

Thirty paces away, the lead rider hauled back on his reins.

"Hold up," the sergeant called, his deep voice carrying clear across the water.

The horses stopped. Iron shoes clinked against canal stones. Water lapped against the bank as the patrol looked toward the feeder ditch.

"See anything in the cut?" another trooper asked, squinting into the mist.

"Mud is fresh," the sergeant said, pointing his gloved hand toward the feeder mouth where Kishi’s hooves had gouged the bank. "Something heavy turned off the road."

Inside the wagon, Pipu suddenly twitched.

His strained mainspring, jarred by the drop in temperature, slipped a gear. A sharp metallic ping resonated from his chest.

I whipped around, my heart leaping into my throat.

Pipu's little brass legs locked straight. The internal escapement began to wind down in a frantic, unspooling whir. Tck-tck-tck-whirrrrr. The gears gathered speed, the loose teeth clicking against his casing like dry corn rattled in a skillet.

On the road, the sergeant’s horse snorted and took two steps toward our ditch.

"Hear that?" the sergeant called, raising a gloved hand to halt his men. "In the willows. Sounds like a clockwork fuse."

"Could be an incendiary trap from the bridge," the second trooper said, backing his charger away from the muddy lip. "If Chukwuebuka's skirmishers laid charges, wading into that ditch is suicide."

"Cover the mouth of the cut," the sergeant ordered, unlimbering his carbine across his saddlebow. "No one enters the swamp. If whatever is ticking in that ditch tries to reach the gravel road, shoot the legs out from under it. We give them five minutes, then we signal the lock patrol to bring fire."

Behind the curtain of silver leaves, the choice sat heavy in the palm of my hand.

I looked down at Pipu. The terrier’s casing shuddered against my knee, the runaway spring chattering through his ribs. I could clamp my fists over his flank and choke the gears still, but the violent torque would shear the brass teeth from the spindle, ending him where he sat. Surrender meant the Duke's gallows and handing over the stolen artillery map.

I pulled my hands away from his clockwork ribs. Instead, I lifted the unpolished river-silt crystal from its wool bed and set the smoky mineral firmly into the projector's cold vent carriage. The brass latch clicked shut beneath my thumb.

An untested stone could foul the boiler, blow the pressure seals, or cast nothing more than a shroud of warm river vapor. It was a blind gamble against three loaded carbines.

"Five minutes is plenty of time to stage a proper lie," I whispered, resting my hand against the cold release valve.