Steampunk Story

On the day of the parade, all of Valyrica City funneled onto Main Street as trumpets and pipe organs blared the national anthem across town square. Shopkeepers closed for the day and displayed red and yellow banners in their windows while they clapped and cheered in front of their stores. Children stood on the backs of parents and grandparents and stared mouths agape as regiments of red-clad soldiers and coal-powered war machines strode past them. Some onlookers leaned out second story windows and waved handkerchiefs; others climbed atop roofs to witness the procession below.

I shoved my way along the storefront, following the mayor who rode a moving platform and waved graciously as fanatical townspeople roared. I was to meet the mayor at the end of the parade to speak with him. It was research for my job.

Moving swiftly, I brushed past a mother and two children who watched from behind the crowd. Single mothers had become all too common in Valyrica City, as well as across the whole nation of Tyrennia. Since the war had started, men who should have been raising families, some not much younger than I, had been shipped off to be killed.

The mother whom I passed looked dirty and fatigued; her children’s baggy clothes barely masked their malnourished bodies. The city had changed. On the other side of those clean shops was a slum filled with dozens of families just like this one, making due with very little, hoping that somehow their husbands, fathers, and sons would return safely. They simply wanted life to go back to normal, back to the way it was before the war. Back before the curfew, the martial law, and the nationalist fervor. Back before the media censorship and the sedition laws. Back before turrets were stationed atop every building and parades were held each week. All these things that drove me insane.

Yet for this war I could only blame myself; for I, Stanley Rinker, began it. I was responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children. I was to blame for the terrible conflict that had gripped the world for five years, for the oppressiveness of the Tyrennian government, and for the growth of the slums and decline of the economy. All of it was the direct result of my actions.

Five years ago, I met the Emperor of Hassar in a dark hallway of his palace at midnight. I had planned this meeting for months. My team had made sure we would meet alone. When I entered through a metal door from the courtyard, the emperor faced away from me. He walked down the hall, purple robes swaying with each pompous stride. He didn’t hear me shut the door, nor did he hear as I crept up behind him.

I knew I had started a war the second I plunged my assassin’s knife into his throat.