Kyle didn’t chant for Wellen. I got better. Doing well now. Kyle got mad. Left then.

Could have stayed. Could have waited til I knew the rocks, but gotta jump feet first. All hop like. Down the gutter goes, sluce. Swinging free. Could have been lost. Dangerous, like. No one know old Oz then, look over him like a heap o’ trash.

Didn’t have time. No rest. No sleep. Gotta find a rock. Gotta keep moving. You stay, you dust. Left Kyle’s circle that night.

Took weeks. I talked. I listened. I heard about Horse, who was a real rock. I heard about Linds, who was real nice, likable, soft and gentle. Not a real rock, but didn’t let no one stray. Like a sheepdog. Heard about all the rocks in Upper West, but Binny’s digs were only a street away from where I was, so I head over to the street corner where they say he hung out.

It took Edmund almost the entire rest of the day to sort out what he needed to do next.

Edmund did not think slowly; rather, when he put all his efforts into plotting and planning, he thought about so many things at once that it merely appeared that he thought slowly. This is akin to how a train powerful enough to carry a hundred cars full of diamonds may move slower than a rather small dog pulling a roller skate.

Edmund’s plan, such as it was, had not fundamentally changed. In traveling to Princebridge, he had hoped to ascertain whether the inventor of Chrome was someone he could work with, or someone he had to circumvent. The fact that the inventors were the Wickes did not make the answer obsolete, merely obvious.

It was almost six in the afternoon by the time Edmund had finished typing out his report to the Brigadier and made his way up the stairs to McNaymare’s office.

At first, Edmund was not certain precisely why he volunteered to travel to Princebridge, but by the time he had finished arranging his travel itinerary, he had rationalized his behavior quite easily.

First of all was his curiosity. What was this new metal? How was it made? How exactly was it better than steel? Where had it been invented? Who had done so? Why had its existance not been known in the scientific community? If Edmund could find a piece of it, could he reverse engineer it, and make it even better? Could he, in fact, salvage his threatened plan?

In fact, a part of Edmund felt a quiet pride. Whomever had invented Chrome had lucked into the ready-prepared setup that Edmund had originally created for himself. Without his efforts, the rumors of superior-steel would have remained just that. The intractable tradition of the military would have carried on, rationing would have eventually been implemented, and the war would have continued. After all, everything was going according to plan. The only error Edmund had made was in assuming he was the only person who saw opportunity in war.

However, it was not immediately wrong.

Scholars hypothesize that Edmund had a good three months of perfect invisibility before anything hindered his plans. For three months, Edmund did precisely what he was best at: he stayed unobtrusive, he did his job with unassuming skill, and he manipulated world events with a deft and subtle hand.

In his spare time, Edmund studied the Military. He found it fascinating.

It speaks much to Edmund’s character that one of the primary things he found interesting was the boredom. After Edmund’s first day as an ABC clerk, the next day passed much the same as the first, as did the next day, and the next. Military routine is a redundant term.

Tension, Edmund realized, degraded naturally. Pull a string taught and eventually the fibers will lengthen until they are able to be at rest while still being pulled. More force must be applied until the desired tension is reached again. He had needed to do this to Aoide’s strings many times.

That was my circle. Binny, Darla, Leon, Ribber, Cindy, Me, and JJ. Circles are the families you make. We see the system for what it is, and the system hates us. Circles protect you. Strengthen you. They make you strong. If you don’t have a circle, you’re alonely. On your own. One voice shouting in the darkness, echoes of your own voice in the static.

Many voices together, all chanting the same. That’s real power. A hundred hands on the hammer. Without a circle, you horde. You keep. You don’t share. Dark magic. Being alonely is selfish, really. Some people deserve it, but most don’t. Without a circle, you’re not a part of the chant. Not like you could be.

The Moulde Family carriage, jet black and topped with black plumed feathers, wound its way out of the Squatling district thorough the smog-roofed streets of Brackenburg towards City Hall, temporary home of the Board of Generals among several other official war offices. It was also one of several recruitment stations in the city.

The carriage was slowed to an unsteady crawl as they neared the City Hall. The streets of Brackenburg were filled with citizenry, far more than Edmund had ever seen. Granted, he could count the number of times he had gone into Brackenburg on one hand, but while the streets had been busy on those previous occasions, movement had been possible. Now, the carriage hobbled through the throngs as young men and women teamed like a rolling ocean.

Edmund’s nose pressed to the glass window as he scanned the sea of laborer’s caps, servant’s bonnets, and the rare silk bowler or top hat to mark the magnanimous few who were there by duty or choice, rather than necessity. Here and there in the throngs, men and women with large bull-horns shouted beneath the flag of Britannia, decrying the latest crime the Spanish people had wrought on the land. Cheers and fists were thrown into the air with every patriotic proclamation.

Edmund watched and learned.

Outside the door, the man in the white coat was waiting.

“Hallo, Master Edmund,” he stepped forward, hand held out in front of him to shake. “A pleasure to finally meet you, really, a pleasure. I have read so much about you.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” he shook the doctor’s hand.

“Of course, forgive me,” the man blushed and gave an awkward bow. “Doctor Leginald Hamfish, physician and phlebotomist. I’m the head of Advanced Medical Practices at the Lady of Infinite Jest.”

Edmund nodded. The Lady of Infinite Jest was one of the Moulde’s better renowned hospitals, capable of serving the majority of extreme cases in Brackenburg while maintaining a respectable rate of legal conflict and perfectly reasonable numbers of skeletons in the closet.

Edmund was an orphan from birth, as was fashionable at the time.

Sir Limmingsbald Wonthorpe III, noted writer of the age, wrote a dissertation on the rise of the pennies dreadful, the pulps, and the un-noteables. He documented the professional language of pen-pushers and ink-sots, who were desperate to wring the price of another evening’s spirits out of the downtrodden and destitute. He ascertained the pinnacle of their craft, and called it the Hero Delusion.

“Someone will come to save us all,” the pulps proclaimed. “The horrors of the world are beyond our ken, and new sciences and technologies give us only more mysteries to face. Only someone as mysterious as these new challenges, someone from the same world of intrigue, could possibly hold the answers to all of life’s threats.”

After Sir Wonthorpe’s subsequent dismissal from the Calligraphic Institute of Cliffside, his theories and musings over this depressing sentiment in society were forgotten by everyone.

By everyone, that is, except for Edmund Moulde.

The Chant. The Chant. The Chant.

Chant freed me. Chant showed me the real world. Chant sang to me. Chant carried me. Chant gave me everything. Chant brought me home. Chant gave me home. Chant was life. Chant was real. Chant was clear and crisp in a world of fuzzy moldy brown. Chant helped me talk. Chant gave me a direction, and that direction was every direction. Chant gave me the world. Chant opened doors. Chant closed windows. Chant tore down the curtains. Chant gave me me. Gave me them. Gave me. Gave.

Chant is everything.

And with that, we finish the second book of the Edmund Moulde Quadrilogy. On Monday, I will start posting the third book: Edmund Moulde and the Battle of Harmingsdown. Among other things, Edmund’s story has always been about transition, either from orphan to heir, from shame to pride, or from peace to war. From a Meta persepctive, I myself was always interested about what the transition from Steampunk to Dieselpunk might look like.