Hearts of Smoke and Steam (The Society of Steam, Book Two) Page 15

  “I think you're like this girl,” she said gesturing to the bust in her hands. “Once she was very pretty, then someone was not careful. And once she got broken, the rich people didn't want her anymore, so she ends up here, with Viola and Emilio.”

  There was a sinking feeling in Sarah's stomach, and her head began pounding a bit harder than it had been before.

  “And one day…” Viola said as she turned over her hand, sending the bust tumbling to the floor. It exploded on contact with the ground, shattering into a thousand pieces. “That, I think, is what happens to the porcelain girls who run away from home.”

  Sarah gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes. If this woman had been like Jenny once was, she also had never learned to be more.

  The Italian woman lifted her head and returned her gaze. “My brother is a fool, but I think this is a game for you. Many men died on that boat, and then you put on your costume, and get my brother to fight your little wars for you.”

  Sarah swallowed, the aftertaste of the soup suddenly bitter in her mouth. “I think you underestimate him. He's a brave and clever man.”

  “No, he's a fool!” she shouted back at her. “He wants to make toys for people like the Paragons—silly weapons for fake wars.” There were tears shining in her eyes. “He played those games back home, and we lost everything!” The woman put her hand up to her face, hiding her eyes, clearly ashamed of her tears.

  Sarah felt her guilt rising again. How was it she managed to end up in over her head time and time again? “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put him in danger. He wanted to help…”

  To Sarah's surprise, when Viola pulled her hands away from her face, not a single drop of moisture had escaped from her eyes. They looked at her with a hardness that Sarah had only seen in women twice her age. “I think you used him, rich girl!”

  There was something about this woman that Sarah found both incredibly noble and utterly terrifying. Part of her wished that she could pull Viola out of her pocket the next time she was having an argument with Nathaniel. “I found you both on the beach, in that crashed balloon. I thought Emilio was dead!”

  “I'm sorry, I didn't…” A blinding spike of pain shot through her head from front to back. She groaned and lay back.

  “You're not sorry enough.” She took a step closer, and squinted with one eye shut. If it was a gesture meant to menace her, it was working. “If he had been dead, I would have left you out there to rot on the sand as food for the birds.”

  The words penetrated the pain and left her breathless to respond. She remembered what her mother said to her father a thousand times after he had revealed his identity to them: “What happens to us when you die out there?”

  Another memory flashed by: her tiny hands clinging to the edge of the Industrialist's leather coat, pleading with him not to leave, sure that this would be the time he never came back. The richest irony was that it had ultimately been Sarah's mother who had paid the price for her father's adventures as a Paragon.

  And now, here she was—battered and bruised, sitting in a stranger's bed, slowly realizing that she had been so wrapped up in seeking revenge that she had never bothered to think of the consequences of her vendetta: it had almost cost a man his life, and a sister her brother. “I'm truly sorry, Viola.”

  But somewhere out there the families of the men that the Bomb Lance had killed on that boat were also mourning. Wives, sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, all of them innocent and devastated by the news that the person they loved the most in the world was never coming back.

  Sarah had been one of them the day Darby died—a victim. And when she had put on a mask, she had made a choice. “Sometimes you have to fight back.”

  Viola stared into her eyes. “Then don't be sorry, rich girl.”

  “What?”

  “Don't be sorry.” Something inside the other woman had changed so quickly it seemed like the clouds had parted from above her head. “My idiot brother—I can tell he will do anything for you.”

  Sarah could feel the heat of another blush rising up from her chest to her cheeks. “I'm sure you're mistaken. He was just helping out a lady in distress.”

  “If you believe that, then you know nothing about men.” Viola's laugh was loud and scornful, and she followed it by pursing her lips and making a kissing noise.

  Sarah was about to respond, and then she realized that she was entirely unsure of what she should say next. It seemed like every way she went with this woman, somehow it was the wrong direction. “A lady always opts for discretion.” It was one of her mother's sayings—a useful one in this case. Sarah turned her eyes away and slurped up another spoonful of the soup.

  “I kept your suitcase,” Viola said, shifting the conversation.

  The suitcase! Clearly the blow had rattled her brains more than she realized. How could she have forgotten?

  The Children of Eschaton had gone to all that effort just to retrieve Tom's heart, and whatever these madmen wanted with it, it was surely for a plan of great evil. There was more than just their own lives at stake here, there were the lives of all those that Lord Eschaton would kill once he got what he desired. “Did you open it?”

  “My brother did.” Viola grabbed one of the nearby chairs and sat down on the badly faded velvet. Sarah almost expected a cloud of dust to rise up from it as the red-haired girl dropped down onto it, but even if the things in the house were old and broken, they were also well cared for. “All I saw inside was girl's clothes and old junk.”

  Sarah felt her stomach shift. “You didn't get rid of it?”

  “I said I saw junk. My idiot brother, he said he saw a masterpiece.”

  If Sarah was woozy before, she was waking up now. “What did he do with it?”

  “He wanted it, so I let him have it.”

  Visions of the Automaton's heart dissected into a thousand pieces danced in Sarah's head. “Tom!” she shouted, and threw back the covers.

  Sarah began to lift herself out of bed, but felt Viola's hands grip her arm. “You need to stay in bed, rich girl. You're not better yet.”

  Sarah yanked herself free, rocking the bed. A bright red dollop of soup leapt over the side of the bowl and began to run toward the edge of the tray.

  “Aiee!” Viola let go of Sarah to dive for the spill before it could reach the sheets. She almost made it.

  Sarah used the confusion to try to dash for the curtains, but the instant that she stood up, her head began to revolt, descending into pain and dizziness. She put her hand to her brow and tried to steady herself.

  There was no doubt that Viola was right—she should have stayed in bed. But the decision had already been made. Emilio was clearly technically gifted, possibly a genius. He was exactly the kind of person who could do something irrevocable to what remained of Tom. If he had taken the heart, then she needed to talk to him as soon as she could.

  “Here, rich girl,” Viola said, throwing a ratty pile of faded silk at her, “put this on.”

  Sarah unfolded it and realized that it was some kind of Oriental robe. The intricate Asian threads and dyes were mostly faded and worn away, but it had once been covered in exotic flowers and brightly colored birds.

  She slipped it on, and wrapped the red belt tightly around her waist. She weaved her way across the room, avoiding tables and chairs until she reached the curtains. She passed through a short hallway, and then wandered through a second set of burlap curtains. When she pushed them back and passed through, Sarah entered into another world.

  If the bedroom was a junkyard, then this was the scrap heap. There were bits of machinery everywhere: metal and porcelain lined the walls, hanging down from the ceiling were bales of wire, and strewn across the floor were bits of steel, sheets of leather, and all kinds of brass objects, from hinges to cogs.

  The space itself was narrow and dark—like a train compartment. Light came in from a series of casement windows at regular intervals near the top of the wall, along with some gas lamps beneat
h them, their bright reflectors doing their best to bring light back down into the room. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the familiar sound of a boiler building pressure. Nearby, an old Franklin stove, heavily modified with baffles and pipes, blazed merrily away.

  She could see Emilio at the other end, facing away from her and bent over a worktable, clearly engrossed in his project. “Emilio!” Sarah shouted out as she entered. She yelped as something bit into her foot. When Sarah lifted it up, there was a screw pressed sideways into the flesh of her heel.

  She brushed it away, sending it bouncing across the floor to finally disappear underneath a pile of brass scraps and wire.

  Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see that the floor was littered with shards of metal—this was clearly no place for bare feet. Nearby a pair of badly beaten work-boots stood on a slumped pyramid of metal ingots. Keeping an eye out for any other dangerous bits, and there were several, she tiptoed over to the shoes and pulled them off the pile. She stepped back from the small avalanche she had started and slipped them on. They were huge, and her feet rattled around inside of them as she walked, forcing her to take odd, unladylike steps.

  As she leaned against the wall to steady herself, she saw a sign attached to it, listing out directions for proper packing. Sarah realized that her initial impression had been totally correct—not only did this space look like a train car, it actually was one.

  Listed in red print at the bottom of the message were some helpful, if menacing, directions on how not to lose a limb while closing the main door, or when coupling the cars together.

  Sarah clomped across the floor. The distance from one end to the other in a straight line would have only been a few yards, but Emilio had done his best to maximize the use of the space, turning it into a maze. Projects in various states of completion had been placed on stands, and Sarah wound her way around any number of works in progress, including what seemed to be earlier versions of the shield he had used on the balloon.

  When she neared the end of the car, she stood and watched Emilio for a second. He was clearly still unaware that she had invaded his sanctum, and was bent over his table, deep in concentration, poring over whatever fantastical object was in front of him.

  Seeing him like this reminded her of time she had spent in Sir Dennis's laboratory, quietly observing the world's greatest inventor as he stared for hours at some mysterious object, intent on solving a tiny portion of an intricate puzzle of creation that was wholly mysterious to anyone locked outside of his mind.

  When she had been a child, she had been trying to discover the old man's secret, thinking that maybe she could become like him if only she knew how. But she soon realized that there was little she could glean from seeing Sir Dennis slowly turning a screw, or shaving the tiniest bit off the edge of a brass casing. But even if the science had remained a mystery, what she had begun to learn from him was focus. That he could continue to patiently turn that same tiny screw back and forth for an entire afternoon was almost beyond belief.

  The man in front of her was different than Sir Dennis in so many ways, but Emilio had some of the old man's intensity.

  Sarah felt a warmth rising up in her chest, and she realized that her heart was taking her into strange and dangerous waters. For the first time, remembering Darby was making her smile. Maybe losing someone didn't mean you had to lose everything about them forever.

  She let out a small cough in an attempt to capture Emilio's attention without upsetting him, but there was no reaction. Perhaps he hadn't heard her over the thrumming of the steam engine…

  She tried again, clearing her throat loudly with an audible “Eh hem,” but once again it seemed to have no effect.

  “Excuse me,” she said, beginning to feel frustrated, and then yelled out his name, “Emilio!”

  “What?” His head rose up as if he had just awoken from a dream.

  As he turned around to face her, Emilio smiled, and she felt her face flush again when he said her name. “Sarah!” Her heart was fluttering in her chest, a potent mix of excitement and fear threatening to wipe away any common sense she had left in her bandaged head.

  She swallowed hard and attempted to push the feeling down to her toes where it wouldn't get in her way. “Viola says that you opened up my suitcase. There's something inside of it that's very valuable to me and I…”

  “This?” Emilio said, holding up his hand to show her what he was working on.

  Sarah gasped. Her worst fears had come true; he held a piece of Tom's heart in his hand. “What have you done? That wasn't yours!” Peering over his shoulder for a closer look only made her more upset.

  The rest of the mechanism was laid out on the table in front of him, and the gears had been placed in tidy rows. The hexagonal frame that had once surrounded it was broken down into a series of small rods and joints. “What have you done?” she asked, but the answer was all there in front of her.

  “I sorry Sarah. Is so beautiful! I had to look.”

  Her head was pounding again, the pain almost blinding.

  Emilio clearly saw what was going on, and his smile vanished. “No, no, Sarah! I sorry. I fix it! I am fixing it!”

  “What?” she said.

  He pointed to a bent gear. “Broken!” He pointed to a metal rod that was cracked in two. “Broken too! Not by me! I fix it. It will be okay.”

  It was devastating to see Tom reduced to tiny pieces. The Automaton had once been a man—mechanical, to be sure—but far more than just the sum of his parts.

  She had watched helplessly as he had been brutally shattered by Lord Eschaton, torn to pieces until only his heart remained. Now even that was gone.

  Could she even begin to hope that the bits and pieces on the table in front of her might be reassembled back into the Tom she once knew? Which one of these gears and rods was the part that gave him his soul?

  Sarah felt the pain in her head growing stronger, and Emilio was looming closer and closer. For an instant she thought he might be trying to kiss her again, until she realized that she was falling toward him.

  “Bella!” He leaped up and grabbed her, and she sank into him, every muscle in her body seemingly incapable of assisting her. “You are still sick!”

  “No.” But she hoped that she was, because the alternative was that Sarah had just transformed into some silly character from one of her novels; the kind of girl who would tremble at the knees, and then “unintentionally” tumble into the men they desired, in hopes they would finally notice them and then take them to the ball.

  Emilio softly guided her down until she was sitting on his stool and he was standing over her. Somewhere along the way he had also used his foot to pull the seat a safe distance away from the desk. “Four days, and still you need more sleep.”

  Every bit of her was aching now. Whatever had happened to her in the crash, it clearly needed more time to heal…Her eyes widened, “Four days?”

  “A very bad crash for you. Viola found us and she save you.”

  “Then what day is today?”

  “Is Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday?” Sarah felt sick and faint all over again. At least this time there was no chance anyone could claim that it was anything but nerves. “Mr. Grieves!”

  She stood up woozily, one hand locked around Emilio's arm, trying to ignore the fact that the muscles underneath his shirt were pleasantly firm…“I have to go!”

  “Go? You go to bed.” She noticed the scent of alcohol on his breath. She looked down and saw a chipped mug sitting on the workbench, half full with a clear brown liquid. It was still the morning, surely too early for a temperate man to be imbibing. But she also knew that foreigners could have very different ways. “You too sick to go out right now.”

  He was right of course, but if Tom could be brought back to life, it would take more than just his heart…“I have to get something, and there's no time to wait.” She pointed at the pieces on the table.

  “Is a cuore, yes?” He place
d a hand on the center of his chest, and then began to lift it up and down, rhythmically (and adorably) thumping out a beat.

  “A heart,” she replied with sudden comprehension, “yes.”

  “So very beautiful.”

  She couldn't imagine how he had begun to puzzle out the object's purpose with so little to go on. “How did you know?”

  He pointed excitedly at the pieces laid out on the table as he spoke, “Valve, timer, pump…You see? For L'Automa, I think?”

  Sarah was amazed. Everyone else she had shown it to had reacted only with curiosity and confusion, but Emilio had seen it for what it was.

  She supposed it helped that he knew whom it had belonged to, but his skills clearly lent themselves to more than just weapons and shields.

  Her father had always told her that you could take the measure of a man by staring straight into his eyes and seeing how he reacted. She looked at Emilio straight on, and wondered why no one had had ever mentioned to her that there were blue-eyed Italian men.

  As she held his gaze, his smile softened. He seemed uncomfortable, as if she had invaded some hidden, private part of him. “I sorry, Bella,” he said turning away. “You didn't want me to help…”

  Sarah felt a pang of guilt rise up in her stomach. Perhaps she shouldn't be using her father's advice for matters of the heart. He had always been ready to judge anyone and everyone, and he mostly found them deficient. The world of Alexander Stanton was, on the surface, always very simple: up or down, good or evil, black or white.

  Not only did the Industrialist view the world in simple terms, but it seemed to her that he had spent his life making sure that it stayed that way, no matter how much more convoluted the reality often was.

  But Sarah couldn't accept such a negative view of the world, let alone defend it. It seemed to her that even if there were shadows lurking in every corner, there was also a ray of hope to be found in all but the darkest despair. It was that common belief that had drawn her to Darby as a girl, and it seemed to be drawing her to this man now. “Emilio,” she sputtered out, “I do want your help.” She pointed down to the table. “If you think you can do it.”