Steampunk International Read online

  Steampunk

  International

  Edited by Ian Whates

  with

  J.S. Meresmaa (Finnish edition)

  Pedro Cipriano (Portuguese Edition)

  NewCon Press,

  England

  First edition, published in the UK July 2018

  by NewCon Press

  NCP 167 (hardback)

  NCP 168 (softback)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Finnish edition published July 2018 by Osuuskumma

  Portuguese Edition published July 2018 by Editorial Divergência

  Compilation in English copyright © 2018 by Ian Whates

  English Introduction copyright © 2018 by Ian Whates

  Finnish Foreword copyright © 2018 by J.S. Meresmaa

  Portuguese Foreword copyright © 2018 by Pedro Cipriano

  “Seasons of Wither” copyright © 2018 by George Mann

  “Reckless Engineering” copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Green

  “The Athenian Dinner Party” copyright © 2018 by Derry O’Dowd

  “The Winged Man Isaac” copyright © 2013 by Magdalena Hai, originally appeared in the anthology “Steampunk! Höyryä ja helvetinkoneita” (Osuuskumma)

  “The Cylinder Hat” copyright © 2016 by Anne Leinonen, originally appeared in the anthology “Steampunk! Silintereitä ja siipirattaita” (Osuuskumma)

  “Augustine” copyright © 2012 by J.S. Meresmaa, originally appeared in the anthology “Steampunk! Koneita ja korsetteja” (Osuuskumma)

  “Heart of Stone” copyright © 2018 by Diana Pinguicha

  “The Desert Spider” copyright © 2018 by Pedro Cipriano

  “Videri Quam Esse” copyright © 2018 by Anton Stark

  All rights reserved, including the right to produce this book, or portions

  thereof, in any form.

  ISBN: 978-1-910935-91-0 (hardback)

  978-1-910935-92-7 (softback)

  Cover layout by Ian Whates and J.S. Meresmaa

  Internal design by Ian Whates

  Text layout by Storm Constantine

  Steampunk International:

  An Introduction

  Ian Whates

  This anthology has its roots in a meeting that took place during the Barcelona Eurocon, November 2016. Sofia Rhei, a highly regarded Spanish author and friend, had the idea of organising a small press symposium, where independent publishers from across Europe and beyond could meet, introduce themselves and discover what else was happening in the big wide world of publishing.

  I had to leave the event a little early due to its overlapping with the launch of the Barcelona Tales anthology, but not before I had the opportunity to meet several contemporaries, including JS Meresmaa from Finland and Pedro Cipriano from Portugal. There was vague talk along the lines that perhaps we could work together at some point in the future, but nothing definitive.

  It was with considerable surprise, therefore, that I received an email from JS the following July proposing just that sort of collaboration. The problem was that I had NewCon’s publishing schedule mapped out for the next two years: I knew how much work would be required to meet existing commitments. I couldn’t possibly squeeze in another title, could I…?

  JS and Pedro’s plans were already well-advanced, but they were looking for a UK-based partner to join the endeavour. How could I resist?

  Steampunk: I had dabbled with the sub-genre in my own trilogy of fantasy novels, City of 100 Rows (Angry Robot), but had never ventured into the field with NewCon. Now seemed the perfect opportunity.

  The first two authors I approached were obvious choices. George Mann and Jonathan Green are both successful steampunk authors here in the UK. George, in his earlier guise as senior editor at Solaris, had actually bought my story “The Assistant” way back when – the final ‘professional’ sale I needed to qualify for SFWA membership. Subsequently, he has gone on to establish himself as a respected author, particularly known for his Newbury & Hobbes series of novels – steampunk detective stories set in the Victorian age. I was delighted when George offered to write a new Newbury & Hobbes tale for Steampunk International.

  I was equally delighted when Jonathan Green proposed writing a new Pax Britannia tale for the book. Jon is a frighteningly prolific author who has written and edited in a bewildering number of contexts, from Fighting Fantasy to Warhammer to Doctor Who and beyond, but he is perhaps best known for founding the steampunk realm of Pax Britannia for Abbadon Books. A new story featuring that dashing agent of the throne Ulysses Lucian Quicksilver seemed a perfect match for the project.

  For the third component story I wanted somebody perhaps a little less obvious, a newer voice who is on the rise, with every chance of becoming as well-known as their fellow contributors. I approached Katy O’Dowd to ask if she would be interested. It turned out that she had recently finished a steampunk-tinged story co-written with her father under the pen name ‘Derry O’Dowd’. Katy sent the story over and I loved it at once: a short piece that carries a punch at its moral core.

  There we have it; a trio of stories that provide one leg of a tripod straddling a good portion of Europe – from the UK to Finland, to Portugal and back again. Steampunk with a truly international flavour.

  I can only hope that you, the reader, enjoy the result as much as I have.

  Ian Whates

  Cambridgeshire, UK

  April 2018.

  STEAMPUNK

  UK

  Jonathan Green

  George Mann

  Derry O’Dowd

  NewCon Press:

  NewCon Press was founded in 2006 by accident. Intended to facilitate the publication of just one book, a fundraising anthology, NewCon now has more than 100 titles to its credit and has won multiple awards. Running NewCon Press has enabled Ian Whates, its founder, to work with many of the authors he has read and admired throughout his life but has also given him the opportunity to promote many new and exciting voices in the genre field. To some extent, Ian still sees the imprint as his personal hobby and continues to be baffled by all that it has achieved. To find out more about NewCon Press, please visit: www.newconpress.co.uk

  Seasons of Wither

  A Newbury & Hobbes Story

  George Mann

  Autumn

  It wasn’t much of a turnout. But then, Newbury considered, Alfred Wither hadn’t been much of a man.

  He eyed the members of the paltry gathering and willed himself to be elsewhere. It had been a mistake to come here. He ran his finger around the inside of his starched collar and adjusted his cravat. His skin was crawling, and the back of his head was damp with perspiration. His morning dose of laudanum was beginning to wear thin, and now the tainted cigarettes in his jacket pocket seemed to be taunting him with the promise of relief. He supposed he might have the opportunity to indulge himself once the small gathering had dispersed. He could find a quiet spot over by the far side of the graveyard, shelter beneath one of the trees. He’d need to, if he were to go before the Queen that afternoon. He’d need to quell his jangling nerves.

  He sighed, and glanced up towards the slate grey sky. As if someone up there was working hard to ensure his morning was utterly ruined, it had now begun to rain. Fat droplets burst on the brim of his hat, and turned the listing headstones into slick, glistening fingers that reached up through the sodden earth, grasping at the sky. He reached for his umbrella. At least, he supposed, the inclement weather conjured the appropriate atmosphere for a funeral. In fact, the entire scene was draped in an aura of oppression. Fallen leaves formed a springy carpet beneath the soles of his boots, and a low mist still clung to the boughs of the nearby trees, imparting everything with a soft, dream-like quality; the perfect reflection of hi
s dour mood.

  Close by, the vicar was droning on about judgment and reconciliation – about love, and hope and redemption. Newbury wondered if the man were wasting his time. He wasn’t sure a killer such as Wither could ever be forgiven, by God or man.

  Wither had been a liar, a thief and, as it transpired, a self-proclaimed occultist of dubious merit; Newbury had encountered him on a number of occasions during the course of his investigations with Scotland Yard, and had been present during the man’s unfortunate act of self-immolation the previous week, as Wither had attempted to summon some undisclosed entity of his own imagining, and had consequently set himself alight with a brazier.

  Newbury had done his best to smother the sudden conflagration, but had been unable to save the man, and had been forced to watch while the flesh of Wither’s face had blistered, and his outstretched hand had charred. He wondered if he’d ever be free of the sound of the man’s screams, the stench of burning meat, the ferocity of the heat that had forced him back, his face buried in the crook of his arm for protection.

  It was a fate no man deserved. Wither had committed the most heinous of crimes, and the newspapers had declared that justice had been served – but those reporters hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen it. To die like that… It was a diabolic fate. He’d seen similar bodies before, aboard the wreckage of the airship known as The Lady Armitage, and the images of their screaming, blackened faces still visited him from time-to-time in his opium-fuelled nightmares.

  Wither had been a lonely, desperate, damaged man, and he’d died a miserable death. If he’d hoped to leave his mark on the world, he’d failed; the homeless people whose lives he’d taken would not be mourned or recorded, other than as entries in the ledgers at the Yard. Their stories would not be told. The newspapers had already moved on to other things, and soon Wither himself would be forgotten – another grim footnote in the history of a city already too awash with blood to notice.

  Still, had he been alive to consider his final audience, Wither might have expected more of a showing than the vicar and two burly-looking men who reeked of gin, and had no doubt been former ‘business associates’. And Newbury, of course, although he wasn’t sure Wither would have entirely appreciated that.

  Newbury was only present out of a sense of obligation – to bear witness to the burial, to put a capstone on the man’s sorry career. If he were honest, he was there more for himself than Wither. He felt the need to draw a line beneath the whole affair. Something about the matter still didn’t sit well with him.

  He supposed the man had been a victim in many ways – his upbringing in the backstreets of Limehouse had served him badly, his only education his indoctrination into the ways of the pick pocketing gangs that plagued the capital’s streets. He’d been a minor criminal for his entire adult life – a thorn in the side of the local constabulary, but nothing more. Yet his recent diversification into more unsavoury pursuits had drawn the attention of both Newbury and Scotland Yard, and there had been a string of suspicious deaths; corpses found in alleyways, drained of blood and marked with indecipherable symbols. It eventually transpired that Wither had been concocting his own, twisted mythos, and had been abducting and sacrificing homeless people on the altar of his imaginary god.

  In turning over what remained of his home after the fire, Newbury and Bainbridge had discovered a plethora of charts and records, grisly trophies and notebooks filled with Wither’s scratchy scrawl. In them, he’d detailed his ravings – accounts of supposed ‘visions’ granted by a divine entity, demanding Wither’s allegiance. It had taken Newbury no more than a few minutes to establish that the man’s entire belief system was the concoction of a fractured mind, bearing little relation to the arcane works he had studied – and continued to study – in such depth. This had come as no surprise.

  What had come as something of a shock were the contents of Wither’s spare bedroom, which had been given over to become a studio, bristling with paint pots, discarded brushes, easels and, adorning every inch of wall, the most marvellous, vividly painted canvases.

  Wither, it transpired, had been an artist of the very finest quality. His work depicted moving scenes of heartbreak and loss, of men and women caught in the very moment of breaking. In many instances the work had a romantic theme, depicting characters derived from British folklore and myth. Their faces were so incredibly lifelike, and they seemed to implore him as he slowly circled the room, seeking a solace he could not offer.

  In at least half of the paintings, the female subject – a blonde, pretty woman in her early twenties – bore the same features, and had clearly been modelled from life.

  Bainbridge had seized the paintings as evidence, and they had been carted away with all the other paraphernalia to be examined by the police, in the hope that, somehow, their contents or subject matter might help them to decipher Wither’s true motives. Yet the haunting image of that woman’s face had stayed with Newbury, and he found himself wishing he’d been able to converse with Wither, to ask him who she was, what she’d meant to him, and whether she had somehow played a role in what had eventually become of him.

  He heard someone give a polite cough, and turned to discover that the vicar had finished his sermon. The man’s thick, greying hair was now plastered down the side of his face, and he’d removed his spectacles in order to see through the driving rain. Four men in black suits stepped forward and, hunching low over the wooden coffin, each took the end of a rope, hoisting it up off the ground. They edged towards the hole and lowered the coffin slowly into the slick, sodden grave.

  Newbury stood for a moment longer, and then turned his back as the men began to shovel heaps of soil atop the coffin lid.

  They were down in the lower field, away from the graves of the more fortunate, where only the villains and destitute were laid to rest – those undeserving of a place amongst the holy. Newbury set out, boots squelching in the mud, keeping the church on his right, and instead heading towards the small cluster of trees in the far corner of the graveyard, close to the iron railings that separated the church grounds from the back lane.

  The vicar called after him as he walked, asking if he wouldn’t rather take shelter in the church, urging him to dry off and wait out the squall. Newbury simply raised a hand in polite acknowledgement and didn’t turn around.

  He waded through the mist for a few more yards, and then found a spot beneath an overhanging branch. He lowered his umbrella, withdrew his cigarette case, and struck a vespa, cupping his hand around the flame to stave off the rain. Within moments he was enjoying the familiar perfumed smoke, allowing it to trickle indolently from his nostrils. Almost immediately, he felt a flood of relief, and his shoulders sagged, tension draining. He closed his eyes and took another long draw. At least it was over now. He’d done what he came here to do. He could head back to his rooms, take a hot bath, and prepare for his visit to the Palace.

  “It’s a sorry state of affairs, isn’t it?”

  Startled, Newbury turned on the spot to see an elderly man standing a few feet to his left. He was wearing a heavy woollen coat, fingerless gloves, and a battered old cap. His cheeks were ruddy and sprouted white, wiry hair, and he was peering at Newbury from beneath bushy white eyebrows. He was holding a rake.

  “I’m sorry?” said Newbury.

  The man offered Newbury a sad, crooked smile. “Being buried like that, with barely anyone to mark your passing.” He paused. “Friend of yours?”

  “Not exactly,” said Newbury. “Just someone I happened upon in the course of my work”

  “Ahhh, now that makes sense,” said the man, as if Newbury had explained one of the mysteries of the universe. “I’m Fred, by the way. Fred Ford. I’m the gardener hereabouts.”

  Newbury nodded, and extended his hand. “Gardening on a day like today?”

  Ford shrugged. “I was out raking leaves when the rain started up. Had the same idea as you, I suppose. Thought I’d see out the worst of it here, beneath the trees.” He gave
a spluttering cough. “Sorry,” he said, banging his chest with the side of his fist. “Lungs aren’t what they used to be.”

  “You should go inside. Get out of the wet.”

  Ford shrugged. “I know. But there’s another service this afternoon. And I don’t like to think about the families, you know, worrying about the state of the place. It should look nice for ‘em, when they’re laying someone to rest. Like a well-tended garden.”

  Newbury smiled. “Here, then. Take this.” He balanced the cigarette between his lips, and handed his umbrella to the other man.

  Ford took it, his brows knitted in confusion. “But…you’ll get soaked out there without this.”

  Newbury shook his head. He turned up the collar of his coat. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  “Well…I…” stammered the gardener.

  But Newbury had already turned to leave, trailing sweet smelling smoke behind him in the rain.

  Winter

  “Where the devil have you brought me now?”

  Bainbridge had huffed all the way across town aboard the ground train, and now, on the corner of Lexington Street – having left the soot-belching engine behind them – he looked fit to burst. He’d never been a man who enjoyed surprises.

  “You’ll see in a moment,” said Newbury, chuckling.

  “You were supposed to be helping me pick out a present for Miss Hobbes,” said Bainbridge, with an accusatory jab of his cane. He looked bear-like in his enormous fur-lined coat, wrapped up against the wintery chill. “It’ll be Christmas soon, and I refuse to suffer the same embarrassment as last year.” The previous year, they had all gathered at Newbury’s home on Cleveland Avenue for the festivities, and Bainbridge had made the faux pas of presenting Veronica with a beautiful, engraved silver cigarette case, forgetting entirely that she had never drawn a single puff of smoke from a cigarette in her life. Veronica had taken it all in good grace, but had ribbed Bainbridge mercilessly for weeks afterwards, and he clearly had no wish to repeat the offence this year.