The Machines of Theda Read online

  The Monster Of Selkirk

  Book III: The Machines Of Theda

  C.E. Clayton

  Copyright © 2018 by C.E. Clayton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For Megan, as always, and Rob. Tallis wouldn’t be the woman she is without your guiding hand, patience, love, and belief in my abilities. Thank you.

  Acknowledgments

  First and always foremost, thank YOU for reading and enjoying my stories. Without you, Tallis and her adventures would still be locked away in a computer file on my laptop. Thank you for your continuing support, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride so far!

  I can honestly never thank my parents, brothers, sister, sibling-in-laws, and parent-in-laws enough for their support. You have all been my biggest fans, even when I wasn’t doing anything but making you smile at the dinner table. Thank you to my husband for encouraging me to keep going, even when I’m ready to flip a desk in frustration (my desk thanks you for this, too). My incredible friends Colleen, Sophie, Kim, Andy, Frank, Karla, Brie, Erin, Kendal, Michael, Jamie and everyone else who I would need another page to name (you better know who you are, or this is just embarrassing), whose friendship and support means everything and then some to me.

  Thank you to everyone who has read and given feedback on my work, especially my editor Rob, who constantly highlights my love of sighing, and encourages me to maybe not do that so much. And thanks to my dog, Dobby, my constant writing companion, who has taught me the sheer magnitude of ways dogs and people can actually sigh. Sorry Rob, it’s the dog’s fault.

  Remember dear friends, writing is often a solo endeavor, and Dobby was instrumental in keeping me sane with belly rubs (for him, not me), and long walks in all kinds of weather, which mostly meant intense humidity, but he doesn’t mind and therefore I try to ignore it as well. If you are ever in need of a fury friend please visit your local shelter!

  Again, thank you, for following Tallis along as she grows and discovers who she is and what she wants to be. I hope her strength and loyalty to her friends and family have given you entertainment and comfort in our crazy world. If you would like a soundtrack to go along with your experience, check out the “Theda” playlist I created on Spotify:https://spoti.fi/2QK6z9r. If you enjoy my work, please consider leaving a review, and if you’d like to hear more from me personally, please be sure to sign up for my newsletter: http://www.ceclayton.com/newsletter.html or follow me on social media, especially Instagram where I sometimes post pictures of my fur-babies.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Enjoy this sample from the first chapter of:

  The Monster Of Selkirk Series

  About the Author

  Also From DevilDog Press

  Chapter 1

  ADRIFT ON SEA AND LAND

  “We haven’t gotten one of ‘em big crates in a long time, Felix. What you reckon happened to make ‘em stop?” the young man asked, shielding his eyes with his good hand.

  It was a hot day, like most in Theda, with the sun beating relentlessly down upon the port. Otho wondered if Theda, and the port city of Aelius in particular, would have been a cooler place without the factories and the machinery that always ran hot no matter what you did to try and shield them from the sun. Otho idly glanced down at his mechanical hand at the thought, but decided it was better to have two functioning appendages rather than one. He would just have to suffer through the heat as usual.

  “Now what crates would those be, Otho? If you haven’t noticed, we ship a lot of cargo for the captain,” Felix said, handing the ledger he had been reading over to one of the urchins always hanging around the ship.

  Otho fidgeted as he glanced over the various crates littering the dock. The captain shipped a lot of cargo all over Theda; some crates were more innocuous than others, but then, all the crates had questionable shipping manifests. But the big crates never had shipping manifests, not even fabricated ones. Otho had the feeling there was more than just something illicit in those crates, but he never knew what. Weeks, months even, would go by without one of the big crates, and then they would get one without warning. But it had been over a year since they had moved that kind of cargo.

  After a bit more shuffling and scratching at his poorly-shaved stubble with his one remaining real hand, he mumbled, “You know…them crates that came from the monasteries and went to the factories. The ones the captain got paid extra for?”

  Otho could see Felix’s broad shoulders stiffen slightly, but other than that, the big, tattooed boatswain remained silent. Just when Otho believed the comment would be ignored, Felix turned. “You aren’t supposed to know about those, Otho. Who’s been telling stories about the boss’s shipping practices? Used to be only me and the first mate, Wodan—guard his rotten soul–knew about those crates.” Felix hadn’t even raised his voice, but all the same, he still made Otho cower against the ship’s moorings.

  Felix had known the captain almost as long as the man had been a captain, and certainly longer than any of those in Aelius had known him by his current reputation. Only Felix and Emilio, the captain’s late first mate, knew how the captain had acquired his reputation. Rumor had it that after Emilio’s suspicious death, the captain had terminated certain aspects of his operation out of reverence for the dead. Otho could understand and respect this, but he still missed the coin moving such cargo brought him and the other lowly workers.

  The captain had so many people in his pocket from the Distretto, some of the masters at the factories, a few of the brothers at the monastery; he had even been the Seneschal’s lover for a brief time until the affair ended, and badly, at that. Little concerned the captain, but something serious must have happened to convince a fearless and otherwise ruthless man to change his ways.

  “I meant no offense, it’s just…‘em big crates were lucrative, no? I thought what was in them crates weren’t something someone would ever miss.” Otho avoided Felix’s surly gaze. “All I meant was, why aren’t we the ones accommodating the masters in the factories?”

  “You think you know the lay o’ the land, do you now, Otho?” Felix asked. “Think you know what business practices the captain should and shouldn’t be undertaking, hmm? Thinking like that is what got Emilio killed. And his death was no accident, either.”

  “You saying the captain killed the first mate?”

  Felix balked. “What? No, you berk! The captain’s reputation got too big too fast, if you catch my meaning. Made a name for himself shipping the stuff more reputable men wouldn’t touch. Emilio had talked him into moving beyond the normal contraband and into more o’ the…um, live cargo, if you will. Certain friends o’ ours in Andor didn’t take kindly to it. Reminded them too mu
ch o’ their own trafficking, and they put a stop to it real quick. Namely with a knife in Emilio’s thick skull. You remember that next time you think you know what’s best.

  “Now get back to work inspecting those ships from Selkirk. Captain’s looking for specific cargo. I won’t be subject to his temper if we miss something, understood?”

  Otho nodded, and Felix turned away, grumbling something about Emilio’s death at the hand of Andor pirates who had wanted to send their boss a message. Otho was not sure if all of what Felix said was true. The older man had been known to exaggerate the tales surrounding their employer to keep the younger lads in line. Regardless of the story’s legitimacy, it had been enough to end the discussion.

  Otho shrugged and went back to inspecting the shipping manifests and cargo ledgers from the ships coming in from Selkirk. It was all rather dull work, but given Otho’s mechanical hand tended to spasm and spark when the sea breeze wafted over the hull of the captain’s ship, he was not suited for much else.

  He glanced down again at his mechanical hand, more a claw really, as he could not afford the devices with actual fingers. Otho sighed involuntarily as he recalled the unsanctioned duel that had cost him the hand in the first place.

  He tried to convince himself that he had been lucky, that if he had been dueling someone of importance he would have lost more than just the hand. As it was, his drunken duel with one of the captain’s men had impressed the man enough to offer Otho a job, even as he lay whimpering on the cobblestone street, clutching the bloody stump at the end of his arm.

  Otho wanted to believe that losing his hand had opened up more opportunities for him; he was neither bright nor talented enough to go far in a place that valued cleverness above all else. At least with the captain, he could afford a mechanical appendage; he would not have been so lucky had he stuck to tending the vineyards and olive orchards between Aelius and the city of Cato.

  The hand had cost Otho everything he had, plus some. He was still paying off his debts as best he could, but he could not help thinking that if the captain had not stopped taking the big crates from the monasteries to the factories, he would be debt free by now. Though, when he thought about it, he hadn’t seen any other ships trafficking that kind of cargo lately, either.

  He had seen the dag’ears go to the factories, however.

  He wondered if the captain’s cargo changes were due to Emilio’s death, or if the elves had found a way to cut the captain out of the unspoken agreement between the monasteries and factories on where to take some of the more colorful criminals apprehended around Theda.

  “Otho!” Felix barked. “Stop daydreaming! We have a ship from Selkirk due to dock today and we best be ready for it, understood?”

  Otho would have dropped his shipping manifests in surprise if he had not been holding them with his mechanical hand. The hand’s grip was impeccable, even if the device rarely agreed with the sea breeze.

  Otho was not entirely sure why the captain cared about what came in from Selkirk. The country sounded abysmal, and too much behind modern times to be of any great importance. The rumors coming out of the country were more interesting than any of its cargo, which consisted mainly of timid people, ale, and different kinds of game meat.

  Rumor had it that a woman had incited a dag’ear rebellion, or ended one, or had been some sort of demon that enslaved the dag’ears to begin with. The stories were never clear on that point. But the one thing they did all have in common was that the person responsible was definitely female, and she was wanted by the king and queen of Selkirk for an absurdly long list of offenses.

  If the captain wanted to find a woman like that, Otho couldn’t even begin to imagine why. She sounded like a terror, no matter which way you looked at it. As far as he was concerned, a barbarian woman like that didn’t belong in a sophisticated place like Theda. But then again, Otho was not paid to think, something Felix reminded him of quite frequently with thumps to the back of the head.

  “Yes, Felix…sorry, Felix. Won’t happen again,” Otho said sheepishly as he went back to scanning the original manifest from Captain Pol and his soon-to-be-arriving ship from Selkirk.

  Chapter 2

  After two days on the open sea, Tallis decided she did not like being out on the ocean.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to swim, or that she was battling a fear of drowning. Donovan had taught her how to swim well enough to avoid anything approaching that kind of fate. But being on a ship so far from the comforting embrace of her antediluvian trees and the boisterous laughter of Rosslyn were taking their toll.

  A kind of homesickness that Tallis would never have thought possible, considering the pain and loss left behind in Selkirk, settled on her heart like a heavy stone. It weighed her down, while at the same time making her feel completely lost and aimless in a suddenly unfamiliar world.

  Tallis hadn’t even considered that the absence of the trees could affect her like this. She had only recently been awakened to their presence and didn’t think she would greatly miss their company. But she was discovering they had been a constant fixture in her life, just as her loved ones had been. They had rooted her to the ground, whether she liked it, or was even aware of it, or not. Out on the open water without their subtle and barely detectable presence, Tallis felt even more adrift, as if a stiff breeze could carry her into the sky to be forever lost amongst the clouds.

  Despite how often Tomas told her they would soon reach Theda, and no matter how hard he tried to distract her by teaching her all the miraculous things tucked away in his mind, those tactics never worked for long. Her thoughts would drift back to her home country and the mess she had left it in and, not for the first time, Tallis would wonder if she had made a mistake.

  In the pit of her heart, Tallis knew the truth—she had not. It had been for the best that she unfurl herself from the hurt and heartbreak that followed in the wake of the tremps’ freedom from the monster that plagued Selkirk. She needed to be away from images of Donovan’s discarded body lying in the Guldar Forest, away from her father's heart full of hate, even as he hunted her.

  She needed to heal as much as her homeland did.

  Tomas was more at home on the ship than Tallis was, especially with her hiding most of the time, keeping her distinctive features shrouded in shadows and her body tucked away inside overly-large clothing. Her armor and weapons were safely stashed in the cargo hold. Being without her blades didn’t make her feel safe, but there was a certain degree of security in anonymity.

  Not pleased with their stowaways, the sailors whispered among themselves to toss the pair overboard. However, when Tomas began helping them repair things on the ship, making the journey all the smoother for his contraptions, they soon forgave the two and asked no questions as to why they were fleeing Selkirk. Tallis imagined their reception would have been very different if they had found her completely armed.

  However, the positive attention Tomas received from the sailors instilled in him a confidence Tallis had not seen before. She knew that back with the brothers in the monastery he had never felt appreciated, but among the rakish crewmen and merchants, his brilliance was finally being valued the way Tallis always knew it should be.

  As the days passed, Tomas’s relaxed confidence caused Tallis’s heart to flutter. The way his deep green eyes glowed with the reflected light of the ocean, the easy manner of his smile and laugh, and the comfort with which he held himself had Tallis watching him as if he were unknown to her. He was growing accustomed to the man he could have been outside of the monastery, and Tallis found this newly-awakened side to be astonishingly alluring.

  Both Tomas and Tallis were unsure as to where they stood with one another. They had left Selkirk in such a hurry after the elves’ minds were restored and her punctured lung had healed enough for travel, that Tallis had barely been able to properly process her feelings for Tomas, let alone discuss their relationship. And that was on top of her persistent heartache over her cousin’s
death, her best friend staying behind to find her family, and her own brush with death after she had stabbed herself to prevent the demon from possessing her. All of this added a layer of confusion over Tallis which had not been present before. All her conflicting emotions left both Tallis and Tomas unsure and unwilling to talk about what was happening between them.

  “Has the crew been to Theda before?” Tallis asked Tomas as she failed to distract herself from her thoughts and the pitching of the ship.

  “Most have been at least once,” Tomas responded as he stood stiffly next to her. “The merchants didn’t wait long to rekindle their trade agreements once the elves seemed free of their madness.”

  “They still don't know how that happened?”

  “No, and most don’t care. They smell gold across the sea and that’s enough. The…particulars of the situation don’t interest them. You should be safe, Tallis.”

  “Should is no guarantee. But that doesn’t matter now. What do they think of Theda?”

  “They seem to like it,” Tomas said with an easy shrug. “It’s much hotter than Selkirk. They say the fashion is odd, but they won’t tell me how. They make bets about what my reaction will be when we dock.

  “They talk about such strange things, Tallis. They say they have made machines that can replace missing limbs or make a blind eye see again. They have machines that power factories; machines made from metal, steel, and glass. It sounds like madness, but can you imagine such a place? Without the threat of mad tremps, they must have been able to accomplish wonders.”