The Thousand Emperors

The mechant hummed and ticked as it swivelled this way and that, apparently waiting to see whether he might come out of hiding. He guessed Vasili had programmed it to protect the books, placing the machine at an impasse.

Luc drew on whatever reserves of energy he still had left and again kicked and pushed at the bookcase, yelling and cursing. It rocked away from him, and then back, yet more volumes crashing to the floor.

He kept pushing. This time, the bookcase kept going the other way, finally overbalancing and sending a torrent of books falling to the floor as it toppled against its nearest neighbour. That one, in turn, crashed into the next, and so on, until the mechant was caught in an avalanche of paper and wood.

Clouds of dust rose into the air. Luc pulled himself up from where he’d slid to the floor and heard the mechant buzzing as it tried to fight its way out. It was, however, clearly trapped.

He turned towards the patio doors in time to see another mechant come crashing through them, sending splinters of glass flying everywhere. It aimed its weapons at him and Luc froze, expecting to die at any moment.

There was a sound like a muffled grunt and the mechant spun, apparently out of control. A second grunt slammed the mechant against the ceiling. It fired wildly, a beam of energy cutting a burning swathe across one wall, nearly blinding Luc with its intensity. He dropped to the floor, heard a third grunt, and when he looked back up, bright spots obscured his vision.

By the time he could see again, he found that the mechant had fallen to the floor, smoke trailing from several holes in its shell. One of Zelia’s monstrosities stood at the entrance to the hall, the weapon it had used to down the mechant gripped in both hands.

The creature looked over at him, its head twitching from side to side as if it had difficulty focusing on him. A brief burst of static issued from its mouth-grille, and it returned its attention to the fallen mechant.

Luc staggered to his feet, only slightly less afraid of Zelia’s machine-man than he had been of the mechant. He could hear the asthmatic rattle of its breath.

The library was a wreck, half of its bookcases collapsed and innumerable volumes scattered everywhere. Luc stared around himself, again feeling a fool for thinking he stood any chance of finding Maxwell’s missing book. Surely the house mechants would have alerted someone that Vasili’s home had been invaded?

But he still had to try.

Think. Heading for the couches close by the patio doors, he tried hard to picture Vasili’s body just as it had been when he had first encountered it. The scorch marks on the floor of the library made that act of visualization a great deal easier than it might otherwise have been.

He squatted down where Vasili’s body had been, staring around himself until his gaze alighted on a still-upright bookcase within easy reach. When he had suffered the seizure that had seen him spirited away by Zelia, he had leaned against it for support. He noticed for the first time that the bookcase, like all the rest of them, stood on legs, meaning a narrow gap of a few centimetres separated the lowest of its shelves from the floor.

It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?

Dropping down until his cheek was pressed against the cold flagstones, Luc peered into the darkened space beneath the bookcase.

He could see something, wedged underneath. A book.

His fingers soon worked their way into the gap beneath the bookcase, seeking out the nearest edge of the trapped volume, but in his desperation to get hold of it, he wound up pushing it slightly further out of reach.

Pausing, he took a deep breath and tried again, working much more carefully this time. Teasing the book around until he could just about grasp the edge of the book’s cover between two fingers, it took him another minute or so to gradually slide it back out from where it had become wedged.

Clutching the book to his chest, he was almost giddy with joy. Despite the scorch marks blackening the spine, he could still read the title: A History of the Tian Di, by Javier Maxwell. It must have slid out of sight, or been accidentally pushed beneath the bookcase when Vasili’s mechants had removed his body.

A shadow loomed over Luc; he rolled onto his back in a panic, thinking he was about to come under attack from another mechant. But instead he saw Zelia’s creature standing over him, its rifle gripped in both hands like a club and held high over its head.

Luc rolled out of the way just as the creature swung the rifle down in a long arc, the breath rattling from its grille mingled with static that almost sounded like words.

Scrambling to his feet, he tried to rip the rifle from the creature’s grip before it could either take another swing or, worse, try and shoot him. They struggled, rapid bursts of static emerging from the creature’s throat. But its movements were slow and ponderous, and it took relatively little effort to tear the rifle from its grasp.

Luc staggered back and fell onto one of the couches, then aimed the rifle at the machine-man, pulling the trigger. The creature clattered back against a bookcase before sliding to the floor, half its head sheared away, the buzzing from its mouth-grille diminishing into silence.

For a few seconds all he could do was lie there on the couch, panting. Zelia had tried to double-cross him, letting him find what he was looking for so she could then steal it from him.

The rifle’s readout told him it still had several slugs remaining. Standing back up, he slung it over his shoulder by a strap before making his way through the hall adjoining the library to the courtyard. There he found several more of Zelia’s monstrosities waiting, and they moved towards him as soon as they saw him.