The Golden Peacemaker in the Mist

Could sixty pounds of hand-pumped steam and an unpolished river crystal convince two frightened armies that an ancient god had climbed out of the canal before that smoldering match cord hit the touchhole? I had ninety seconds to find out, and my hands were already slippery with tallow and ditch mud.

Behind me in the sunken wash, Kishi snorted softly, her gray ears twitching toward the cliffs. Pipu hopped onto the projector bench with a flurry of brass clicks, his tiny feet gripping the toolbox rim. His spring hummed with the three fresh key turns from dawn, steady and rhythmic.

"Hold the bracket, Pipu," I whispered, kneeling before the boiler housing. "Keep your tail clear of the spindle."

The mechanical terrier planted his tarnished feet against the floorboards and clamped his tail against the lower lens carriage. I struck flint against the wheel. A crisp spark caught the wick, and blue flame flared beneath the copper coils. Clean spirit heat pushed through the pre-heater tubes, hissing against the damp morning air.

The brass needle crept off its peg, passing one atmosphere, then two. Beside the boiler, the main projection barrel pointed through the wagon's canvas roof flap, aimed directly at the mist eddy rotating eighty feet above the canyon floor.

From the bridge fifty yards downstream, Captain Danladi's voice drifted through the culvert, stretched tight with dread.

"Clear the breech vents! If their iron engine rolls one pace forward, drop the match!"

A heavy clank of chains answered from the western pier, followed by Captain Boma's megaphone barking through the fog. "Prime the bypass valve! Blow them off the timbers if they twitch!"

I had heard enough in the stone culvert to know neither man wanted a slaughter, but fear was a clumsy finger on a short trigger. The boy with the slow match was trembling; if his spark kissed black powder, the brass tubes would speak, and nobody would remember who had threatened whom.

I lifted the river-silt crystal from its velvet pouch. Its milky, uncut facets caught the blue pilot flame, cloudy with trapped mineral grain. With steady fingers, I slotted the stone into the primary carriage, locking the brass pins until they seated. Ahead of it, I set the repaired amber scatter-prism into its cradle. The seam of melted pine resin held firm across the glass, aligned with the widened fifteen-degree baffle I had filed into the nozzle.

"Two and a half atmospheres," I murmured, watching the needle tremble against the brass line. "Not a grain more, or the glue melts."

I gripped the side crank and spun the projector spindle into a whistling blur, aligning the multi-faceted crystal train before seizing the primary steam valve and wrenching the brass handle hard to the left.

The wagon shuddered on its leaf springs.

Superheated vapor roared through the copper coils, whistling through the expansion chamber and hitting the river-silt crystal with a muffled thunder. The stone drank the heat, its milky core igniting into a blazing, honey-colored luminescence. Through the mended amber prism, the light fractured into a fan of blinding gold, funneling through the wide baffle and shooting upward through the roof flap in a column of incandescent steam.

The beam struck the gorge's circulating mist.

Trapped between the limestone cliffs, the river vapor was already turning in a massive, slow whirlpool. As superheated steam merged with the cold canal fog, the crystalline dust bound directly to the droplets, just as it had outside Omu-Adu. But spread by the widened baffle, the projection did not paint a flat wall. It blossomed three-dimensionally, expanding into the dawn air until it filled the chasm between the cliffs.

A hundred-foot colossus rose from the river.

It took the shape of an archaic imperial peacemaker, towering over the willow tops in faceted bronze plates and internal amber fire. Two massive clockwork arms spanned forty yards from knuckle to knuckle, their joints turning in majestic, grinding circles. Its helm was a radiant crown of refracted sunlight, with two hollow, blazing eyes looking down directly upon the border bridge.

Down at the timber span, the shouting died instantly into stunned silence.

Through the drainage ditch, the acoustic conduit carried the hollow clatter of Danladi's brass megaphone tumbling across the oak deck planks. A breathless gasp rippled through the canal vanguard, followed by the faint hiss of a dropped match cord hitting wet gravel and dying out.

From the western bank came the heavy iron clang of an engine shovel striking a coal tender, then the frantic scuffle of boots skidding on wet ties. No orders followed. Across the span, both crews fell totally silent beneath the glowing titan suspended in the morning sky.

Now came the theater.

I grabbed my dented brass megaphone from the tool rack, dropped flat against the floorboards, and thrust the wide horn into the narrow cut of the silt drainage ditch beside the wagon. The ditch ran straight down the bank into the arched stone culvert beneath the bridgehead, a hollow acoustic throat that multiplied every whisper into a roar.

I filled my chest, cleared my throat, and threw my voice into the horn, pitching it down to the rumble of a stone mill.

"Mortals of the lower reaches," I bellowed.

My voice tore through the ditch and into the culvert, rebounding off the masonry and exploding into the gorge with the fury of an earthquake. Before the echo could fade, Kishi poked her gray muzzle through the brambles above the wash, startled by my shout, and let out a full-throated, ear-splitting bray.

The ditch channeled the mule's rattling shriek into the stone pipe below, distorting it into a terrifying metallic screech, the sound of grinding iron gears the size of millstones.

Above the bridge, the golden colossus lifted its right arm, mirroring the lever I shoved forward on the projector carriage. The movement displaced swirling mist, lending the apparition terrifying visual weight.

"The crossing is sealed by the ancient accord," I roared through the megaphone, letting Kishi's second bray trail beneath my words. "Cast down your matches! Quench your boilers! The earth will swallow the bridge and every brass tube upon it before another drop of river blood is spilled!"

For one heartbeat, nobody moved. The hundred-foot guardian hung over them, its faceted amber chest pulsing with golden radiance, steam trailing from its fingers.

Then Captain Danladi found his feet.

"Limber the guns!" Danladi screamed, his voice cracking into a ragged squeak. "Reverse teams! Clear the approach road, reverse!"

His gunners scrambled in blind terror. Drivers threw themselves onto the caisson seats, cracking reins against the draft mules. The heavy brass artillery tubes were yanked backward off their stakes, wheels skidding across gravel as Oluwaseyi's vanguard turned in frantic retreat toward the eastern woods.

Across the timber span, Captain Boma was in no better state.

"Reverse steam!" Boma shrieked, hauling himself onto the locomotive footplate and kicking the valve lever. "Dump the draft! Back her down the siding before it treads on us!"

The iron locomotive gave a coughing whistle and ground into reverse, drive wheels throwing showers of white sparks against the rails as it shoved its flatbeds backward into the western cut. Foot soldiers abandoned their barricade timbers, scrambling up the embankments and piling onto the moving train.

Within three minutes, the bridge was clear. The thunder of retreating wheels and the chugging locomotive faded into the distance, swallowed by the morning silence of the river valley.

Inside the wagon, a sharp crack sounded from the optical carriage.

"Hold, Pipu!" I cried, diving toward the release lever.

The amber scatter-prism had reached its thermal limit. Along the repaired diagonal seam, the pine-resin mastic blistered under the persistent heat. With a clean, glassy ping, the resin gave way.

Up in the gorge, the hundred-foot colossus did not collapse into smoke. Deprived of the scatter-prism's focus, the beam sheared along its crystal axes, and the golden arbiter burst outward into a swirling cascade of tens of thousands of harmless, glittering amber sparks. They floated down through the morning mist, drifting across the willow leaves and settling onto the calm canal water before vanishing entirely.

I threw the primary valve shut, venting the residual steam through the muffler pipe with a long, weary hiss.

The sunken wash was quiet again. The smell of pine resin and scorched tallow hung thick inside The Gilded Moth. Beside me, Pipu sat back on his brass haunches, letting out a satisfied clockwork click as his tail spring relaxed.

Kishi reached down into the wash and calmly took another mouthful of wild clover.

I leaned back against the wagon spokes, wiping sweat and canal mist from my eyelids.

Fifty yards away, the border bridge stood silent and intact beneath the morning sun, not a single timber scorched, not a single drop of blood spilled on its planks.

Within two days, riders on lathered horses would reach the pavilions of Duke Oluwaseyi and Duke Chukwuebuka. Both warlords would receive frantic, sworn dispatches from their most trusted captains, reporting that an ancient golden titan of impossible power had risen from the Ifeoma mist to forbid their war.

I picked up the two separated halves of my amber prism from the carriage tray and blew the melted resin from the seam.

"Well, copper-ears," I whispered to Pipu, sliding the brass key into his winding slot. "We certainly gave them a show."