The Piper Revolution Boxset: An Urban Fantasy Trilogy Read online

  The Piper Revolution Boxset

  An Urban Fantasy Trilogy

  By Giselle Ava

  Copyright © 2020 Giselle Ava All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

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  The revolution has fallen. Its leader is dead. There’s a voice in your head saying it’s all your fault. These are the things Arthur knows as he lies in a ruined street, covered in blood.

  1923 London, a city of steam and copper, is in the grips of war. On one side, the vicious regime led by the enigmatic Charles Fortescue; and on the other, a scattered revolution made up of deadly individuals called mechanicals, harnessing power so devastating their bodies have been reconstructed with metal parts.

  Arthur is one of these mechanicals, tortured forever by the power in his blood. They turned his own family against him. They made him fight in their last war. They stripped him of his humanity. And now London burns. But Arthur is alive, and for as long as he lives, he will fight. For Arthur, the real war has just begun.

  Contents

  London 1923

  Meeting Cecelia Craxton

  The Gresham Club

  Secret Mission

  Interrogation

  Alan Piper

  The Place Under Room 203

  Communication Trouble

  Three Ghosts

  Disorder Rises

  Those Who Fight

  Montgomery Captured

  Reach

  The Room Where It Happened

  Fortescue Thinks

  Craxton in the Storm

  A Belated Confrontation

  Unite Them

  The Siege of Fortescue Plaza

  Unkindly Attack

  The Tower of Fortescue

  Fortescue Falls

  What Redemption Means

  London 1924

  Epilogue

  Introducing: The Killing Night Series

  Thank you

  London 1923

  The sound of literal gears clinking in your brain becomes monotone after a while. The sound of them grinding and snapping into place when you move your elbow or your fingers. The smell when your skin rips and hot blood drools over them, reflecting the red sunlight. You look from the sight of your horribly messed-up arm, split in two with gears dusting the gravel around it like a rich man’s purse, and then you glance upwards to the heights of London. And there amidst the brick buildings and blood haze you spot a red sun.

  This is where the story ends.

  The sun turned red three days ago due to the fires caused by several calculated and devastating bombings all happening simultaneously in the early hours of morning. The haze became opaque, almost. Thousands of innocent people died.

  You should know that I wasn’t there.

  I didn’t set off those bombs.

  A silhouette eclipses the sun and it’s the face of a man. Gears twist and turn as I raise the hand at the end of my split-open arm and say something like, “Wait—”

  The man swings his metal baton across my cheekbone, smashing it into pieces. Chips of skin and copper fly out my other cheek in the same arc as my body, which crashes to the ground. And I’m lying on my back staring at the eclipsed red sun and a streetlamp and the buildings and a multitude of spinning stars which I’m certain are imagined.

  The man’s gold badge glints across his breast. Police.

  “Goddamn revolutionary,” the police officer spits.

  I’m not a revolutionary.

  Then why are you wearing their uniform? says a voice inside my head, which isn’t my own—no, it can’t possibly be my own—and it doesn’t even sound like me, whiny and devious.

  I’m watching other people dressed like me fall in the streets. I’m watching the police officer swing blood off his metal baton and then take me by the scruff of my neck, peeling my blood-soaked body off the ground. There are tiny gears clattering to the ground and bouncing away. He’s dragging me to the awaiting car, steam surging from its three exhausts. It burns red.

  I had nothing to do with this.

  “Mildred Piper is dead,” the police officer snarls.

  Mildred Piper built this revolution from the ground up. If she’s dead, then the revolution is dead as well, but I tell myself that I had nothing to do with this.

  “You shoulda just stayed home,” the police officer says.

  They like us better when we’re silent.

  You’re just angry because you did this, says the voice inside my head, like the shrill whine you hear when somebody shoots a gun right against your ear, but if that whine could speak.

  I didn’t do anything, I think as I stare into the guy’s face.

  Arthur. The voice speaks my name. This is your fault.

  You killed the revolution, it says.

  “I hope it’s true what they say about you mechanicals,” the police guy says with a macabre tone, shoving me against the black hull of the vehicle, “that you don’t feel pain.”

  “No—” is the only syllable that scrapes my cracked lips before the police baton transforms into a hot-as-hell rifle with a rotating ammunition cylinder and flashes at me. I imagine one thousand lightning bolts ripping apart the sky but it’s just a single bullet. There’s only so far you can be flung when your back’s up against a heavy, triple-engine car manufactured in the year of our own, 1923, and that’s roughly where I stay, except now I’m in a lot more pain.

  The police officer walks off without saying another word, but I don’t blame him for not emptying his rifle on me—bullets aren’t cheap anymore, not after the war.

  We fought in the war.

  I allow myself the decency to touch my chest and am not-so-thrilled to find a hole there, one that you could comfortably fit a wrench or two through.

  Shit, is what I think.

  In case you’re wondering, I am Human.

  Are you though? says the whine.

  Yes, and there’s a wrench-sized hole in my chest.

  Interesting, says the whine.

  With great pain, I detach myself from the car door and climb to my feet. I’m sucking in those breaths like they need to be collected from the other side of thick glug.

  The gears inside my cheek grind loudly, broken and miserable. The first thing I do is I tear off what’s left of my jacket and toss it to the ground. They can’t know who I am. They can’t know that I was part of this. That I aided the revolution.

  The revolution knows you’re the one who destroyed them.

  No they don’t. And no I didn’t.

  My jacket falls to the ground and so does my entire arm.

  Oof. Rough.

  Shut up. I debate picking it up but quickly decide against it. I am Human. I wear human skin and I’m covered in blood, even though there are tiny gears in the blood. I was repaired like this, not built, if that makes things any clearer. The second thing I do after taking off my jacket is I don’t look at anyone and I take off down the street towards the uneven stairs that point haphazardly in the direction of the Gresham Club, because I know if I can get to the Gresham Club I can get to Frederick Hardy—assuming he’s still alive.

  My left hand takes the swirling rails and I descend the
stairs, down past tenements and trees which are caked in ash. My right foot kicks a newspaper, which flips up and tears apart, a single page flopping through the air maladroitly, then violating a tree branch. Meanwhile, another man ascends in the opposite direction. All of his features are unfamiliar to me except for the sewn badge he wears loosely on his shoulder. The Piper Revolution. That’s what they called what we were doing. Pawns of Mildred Piper, who they said came to London to liberate us from the anti-mechanical regime of Charles Fortescue. Only the second thing was true, because she had in fact been born here. But then again, nobody really knew much about her.

  You knew enough, says the whine.

  Fact: I have never met Mildred Piper.

  Fact: My name is Arthur.

  Fact: I am Human.

  Fact: I joined the Piper Revolution.

  Lie: I destroyed the Piper Revolution.

  I do not make eye contact with the man who passes me on the stairwell. He does not even notice me pass. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, everything around me seems much larger. The stark brick buildings of London cast gigantic, warped shadows on everything. Ash soaks the streets in massive, breathing clumps. Some have body parts sticking out of them.

  Fact: The police officers are Charles Fortescue’s bitches.

  One of them is here now, shoving a pistol into the face of a woman who is wearing a red coat. She’s on the ground with her singed mechanical hand shielding her face and tears streaming down her thin, almost sickly cheeks. I can see her tears because the yellow glow from the fires we started across London illuminate them. When I say “we” I mean the revolution as a whole, not me in particular. I didn’t start those fires.

  Fact: We are not criminals.

  Fact: We offered them peace.

  Fact: They gave us another war.

  The police officer removes the woman’s hopeless, frightened expression by shooting her in the face with such ferocity I’m pretty sure there’s a direct copy of her on the brick wall fifteen feet away now. I’m staring at the blood splatter when a voice hits the back of my head.

  “Arthur!”

  I’m now staring at a face I know but for some reason I can’t remember his name. He is a young man like me, we were both twenty-five until yesterday when I turned twenty-six, and he’s on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. The look he gives me makes me want to vomit. He’s looking at me like I’m the last thing he has in the entire world.

  You’re kinda the last thing he has in the entire world, confirms the whine.

  “Shut up!” I hiss back at it.

  The man’s expression shifts to confusion.

  Shit. I can’t help you. Stop saying my name.

  I assure you, I don’t make this decision lightly, I just make it quickly. My body turns the other way and my brain pretends the man who’s looking at me doesn’t exist. If you look away from something long enough, you can pretend it doesn’t exist.

  I’m crossing the district and avoiding every set of eyes that find me. The police officer who’s stepping over the body of the woman he killed looks at me. I know this because he makes a loud sniffing sound and then hurtles a glob of spit in my direction. This is not because he knows I’m part of the Piper Revolution. It’s because he can see the gears dripping out of me and generally people in London don’t like seeing gears coming out of people. First they feared us because of what we could do, so they used us as pawns in their war, and then they became afraid of what that turned us into. Would you hate me, too, if I told you what we could do?

  Just admit you made a mistake.

  But I didn’t make a mistake.

  Admit you made a mistake.

  I didn’t make a mistake.

  You did it intentionally.

  Stop saying that!

  Where am I? A littered street before me. A bar to my left with a single step out the front and a woman sitting on it solemnly. Tenements to my right with their windows clamped shut to keep out the drooling smoke. On every street corner a loudspeaker and Fortescue’s annoying voice screaming things that are true. Mildred Piper is dead. The revolution is ended. All dissidents will be captured or shot on sight. Do not resist. It is already over.

  The street leads to a square, and on the corner of this square is the Gresham Club, where Frederick Hardy is hiding. I know this because I’ve been there many times. I know he’ll be there now because he sent me a voice message through the copper wires we built.

  So I’m running as fast as I can up the street to the Gresham Club.

  Admittedly, this is not very fast.

  Everything is there amidst the haze when I stop to catch my breath. I am Human. I know this because if I don’t breathe, I die. If my heart is shot and I bleed out, I die. I am Human. Remember this. Outside the Gresham Club are a lot of thrift stores and “special” clubs that sell flesh to sad people. It is currently being engulfed by the smoke from fires.

  Did we bomb this place without me knowing?

  I don’t know, Arthur, did you bomb this place without you knowing?

  Stop talking to me, I tell the voice while trying to catch my breath. Everything is very sore. For example, becoming paraplegic would be remarkably less-painful.

  Then my left leg buckles with the sound of collapsing clockwork.

  I am Human and I have a consciousness. This begins to fail.

  I’m lying on my back staring at the red sun, the haze from our fires. Occasionally there’s a break in the clouds and you spot an airship, sailing serenely thousands of feet above.

  I realise I must paint quite the sight. A man with one arm and bleeding equal parts blood and copper onto the road, his cheek impounded and jaw shattered. Wrench-sized hole in him. The expression of a man who has just heard the funniest joke in his life, but who can’t properly emote it because roughly five minutes ago a police officer smashed his face in with a baton which was also a rifle which was also a sod-off-with-your-transforming-weaponry.

  When I close my eyes, all that’s left is the sound of literal gears clinking in my brain, a monotonous sound that’s been there ever since we got out of the war.

  I am Human.

  You were human, says the whine.

  I am still Human.

  You don’t get to decide that, says the whine.

  I’m the only who can decide that, you asshole.

  There’s a red sun. London is on fire. Mildred Piper is dead. Her revolution is ended. The man known only as Arthur lies on his back on a street somewhere between Charles Fortescue and Frederick Hardy. There’s a voice in his head saying he did this. He didn’t.

  I did not do this.

  Believe what you will, Arthur.

  None of this is my fault.

  You believe many things which are false.

  When I open my eyes again, there’s a woman staring down at me.

  And that’s how I meet Cecelia Craxton.

  Meeting Cecelia Craxton

  What you need to know about Cecelia Craxton is she lives in a small but comfortable hovel underneath a dress shop, she has long blonde hair which is borderline yellow, she wears long fashionable skirts and handmade coats, and there are rings on all of her fingers. She also has a kind and gentle voice, which is soft but flows with ease across the room. This is despite the steaming of stew in the hearth. This is despite the electric buzz from a frayed cable.

  This is all I know about Cecelia Craxton when I meet her.

  I’m lying on a rough mattress on the ground with the white sheets tugged to the side, draped half underneath my leg and half on the floorboards. A ceiling fan swirls above me, tossing about the heat, which doesn’t really have anywhere to go.

  I can suddenly hear Charles Fortescue’s voice through a radio.

  Mildred Piper is dead. The revolution is ended.

  “Turn that off,” I say, my voice hoarse.

  Cecelia turns off the radio and the room is silent except for the several things mentioned previously, but also Cecelia’s slow breath
ing, wheezing and difficult. She crosses the room and kneels beside me, pushing a cup of tea into my only hand and helping me to sit.

  She smiles softly and I notice her blue eyes. Blue is an odd colour to see in London, especially now. Not many things were ever blue except the sky.

  Cecelia Craxton has blue eyes.

  “It’s just tea,” she says with kindness.

  I drink the tea and it makes things better for the few seconds that I feel it travelling through my body. I don’t look back at Cecelia; instead, I gaze around the room. The walls are stark except in one corner there’s a mannequin, probably from the store above, and there’s a small couch with an inexpensive TV facing it, currently switched off. Normal things you expect to see in a hideout where only one person lives, and a general absence of mess.

  Her hand searches my collapsed cheek.

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  She pulls back. “Your face is broken. Your arm is gone. What happened to you?”

  I debate telling her the truth and then decide to tell her only the vague truth. “Got caught up in it all.” It’s short but accurate. There was the rifle blast, preceded by getting my face beaten in by a police officer’s baton, preceded by whatever it was that ended the revolution.

  She can see the gears inside me but she doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Thank you,” I say through the steam of the tea.

  “I’ve done what I can but you will need proper repairs,” Cecelia tells me in a stern voice as she lithely touches the spot where my arm was torn. I begin to regret not taking it with me because now I’m going to have to pay for a new one. Good news is I have money. There was the whole “guilt thing” following the war. Those of us who survived, we received payment plans. Somewhere there’s an account receiving thirty dollars per fortnight.

  Cecelia stares me in the eye. “Do you know Alan Piper?”

  Fact: Alan Piper is the uncle of Mildred Piper.

  Fact: I know I have met Alan Piper.

  I nod to her question.