Fantastic Metropolis

I could see Merimee examining the construct in front of me. From my hiding place, I could see that he was gripped by a fascination for it. His fingers fidgeted, stroking one another nervously. I wondered what he saw in those crystal eyes. What possibilities was he dreaming of and what bold new future did he now scheme? Then I realised that he could see nothing but his own black-tinted lenses reflected back at him. What else was there?

I willed my arm upwards. Slowly, ages later it seemed, it reacted. I forced it to reach out and, with an effort of will I didn’t know I had, I made my hand grip the handle of Mercury’s blade. It took me two attempts. My grip was feeble, that of an old woman, but I pulled with all my strength, forced my body to sink further into the floor, bringing its own weight to bear on the knife.

It slowly slid out. The construct buzzed like a thousand angry wasps trapped in a jar and it hurled itself forward into the protesting arms of Merimee, knocking him backwards and out of my sight. I could hardly move. His attendants rushed to help him. I still couldn’t stand up. They were coughing, unable to direct each other. I closed my eyes and I waited for Mercury.

There was a flash that I saw through my eyelids, a thunderclap as if heaven had opened its gates and my ears popped. I felt blistering heat surround me for a second. Glass shattered and someone screamed and was suddenly silenced.

Moments later, I felt myself lifted. I tried to stand, ignoring the pain. I opened my eyes—half of Mercury’s face was singed, his quartermasters’ haircut ruined. He smiled at me and took my arm. By the light of the flames jetting from the shattered lamp fittings and the dozen fires taking hold, I saw the devastation we had wrought. The acolytes lay in a bloody pile next to the shattered construct that lay over Merimee. Asquinol stared sightlessly at the ceiling, whilst Ruberic lay next to him with a metal rod protruding from the back of his head. I turned away as we edged down the stairs, no longer able to pretend that this was happening to someone else.

Outside, we managed to mingle with the crowds now gathering, defying the winter weather to gawp at the spectacle. I sat down in the street and buried my head in my hands. With each sob that shook my body I felt as though I was ruptured by some terrible force. Mercury took my hand, but I shook him off. Pain was all I wanted to feel: all the hate and fear and envy of those men in my cuts and bruises, in my cracked bones. But it was all lost. The metal men following ticker-tape instructions—as if tape could ever describe how to be in the world—never got the chance to make a choice of their own. All the plans and schemes of the alchemists, all their desires and needs, were now no more than fiery heat and soot rushing up into the chill winter sky whilst the pleasure-seekers laughed and trilled at the burning building, unaware of the human fuel driving the pyre.

And that’s when the words of my sage came back to me. When I finally understood what he had been getting at all those years ago.

Colin Brush lives in London where he earns a crust, not to mention the contempt of authors and the public at large, by writing words for the covers of books. He is one of the founders of Territories magazine (an illustrated London ‘quarterly’) and edited the first three issues between 1999 and 2000.