Mainspring by Jay Lake Page A

finally realized what he was holding. They were the tops of skulls, round as his own head and no bigger. Hethor shrieked and nearly dropped it.
    The candleman to his right, who had not spoken before, said in a soft voice, “If you don’t like sausage, please just pass it on.”
    â€œThe bowl …”
    â€œWe share everything here in the pit,” said the spokesman. “Even ourselves, once we are gone.”
    â€œWhat is this place?” Hethor asked desperately.

    â€œIn eighteen hundred and seventy-one, Viceroy Earl Cornwallis caused engineers from London’s Metropolitan Railway to come to Boston and create a tube train here. He built a line from the harbor to the viceregal offices at Massachusetts House. From here it ran onward to the west end of Boston Common.”
    That was not the answer Hethor had expected. “What?”
    â€œThe candlemen’s pit is the Massachusetts House Station.”
    â€œWe even have a locomotive here,” croaked another voice out of the flickering shadows. Pride still echoed within the reedy weakness of age.
    An underground railroad? In a prison? They are all crazed . What had William of Ghent done to him? “And you are the engineers?”
    â€œSome of the oldest of us,” said the spokesman. “Some of us were laborers or draughtsmen. Others were placed here to wait for … whatever.”
    â€œAs I am—”
    â€œObserve the rule!” the spokesman interrupted sharply. “Our stories are old, and may be freely told. Your story is new, and more precious than gold.”
    â€œWhat happened to the rail line?” Hethor was trying to find a semblance of sanity among these half-mad, half-blind old men.
    â€œNever opened,” said the spokesman. He sounded sad. “Viceroy Earl Cornwallis lost a son under the wheels of our test locomotive before the line was ever opened. In his grief, he had us all shut in here with the murdering machine. I believe they eventually shipped him home wrapped in madness.”
    Surely Viceroy Lord Courtenay did not mean him to rot here for decades? Hethor thought. He would be mad as these candlemen, and no more useful to himself or the world.
    If the world indeed kept turning. He thought back to the fault in the noises he had heard as he had fallen
asleep. Something was going wrong in the heart of the world. The Key Perilous would be part of whatever was needed to set it to right. Whatever and wherever the Key was.
    â€œI don’t want to be here,” Hethor whispered.
    â€œNone do,” a voice responded from around the circle. “We are lost to life. You will no more escape this place than you will fly across the great Wall at the waist of the world. Not till you are born once more into the light.”
    â€œKennard ‘as flown over’t,” cackled another. “Ain’t’ch’a, Kenn? Magic and hoody-men walkin’ on corpse-legs beyond, na?”
    There was a mumbled response. The circle began to rustle as men shifted their weight.
    â€œPlease,” said Hethor. “There must be appeal. Some escape.”
    â€œâ€™Tis not so bad,” said his neighbor to the right. A ragged hand touched his arm.
    â€œWe all keep nearby,” said another.
    Around him, the candlemen began to shuffle closer together, closer to Hethor, their bodies one by one blocking the candlelight as their hands reached out for him. Rough-scarred fingers stroked his face, his hair, his body, tugging at his pants, touching him, touching, touching.
    With a scream he leapt to his feet, only to crack his head on a stone arch. Hethor collapsed into the heap of candlemen, terrified for his life. They reached once more for him when a bright light stabbed into them all.
    The candlemen screeched, shouted, scuttled away from the brilliant beam. A group of men walked through distant doors carrying bull’s-eye lanterns and waving staves.
    â€œLine ’em up,”