Hearts of Smoke and Steam (The Society of Steam, Book Two) Page 2

  “I can fight with my fists if that's a problem.” He had directed the answer at Hughes, but it was Stanton who responded.

  “It's not a problem, Chadwick. And yes, a man needs more than fancy gadgets to win a fight. But it isn't his fists that turn the tide—it takes bravery and nerves of steel.”

  He could see the man's brows knitting underneath his mask. “Are you accusing me of something, sir?” His nervousness has been replaced by an air of indignation.

  “No need to get angry.” Alexander gave him a quick smile. “And it's good to see that you're capable of defending yourself when challenged. I think you have great potential.” He paused for a moment before continuing. He actually liked the man on some level, but the Paragons were supposed to be the best of the best. They couldn't take just anyone, and this man seemed only half baked…

  “I think we've seen enough for today, Mister Prescott. You've given us a great deal to think about.” Alexander nodded at the door. “Thank you very much for showing us what you can do. We'll let you know our decision as soon as possible.”

  The Hydraulic-man nodded his head. “Thank you all very much,” he said as he left, but the tone in his voice wasn't a happy one.

  As soon as the door had closed, Nathaniel spoke. “I'm not sure, but I'm getting the sense that William didn't like him.”

  Alexander grimaced. “Is that what it was, Bill?”

  Hughes clanked his way back over to the table, then lifted his head. “I think we're learning that the game is changing.” The look in his eyes was terrifying, as if he was holding back an avalanche with sheer force of will. “Since the death of Darby, this has become a war. You've fought in a war, Stanton, you know what that means.” Again he started to suck on his teeth, and then let out a click. It was an annoying habit that seemed to have come with his new persona.

  “I do, Bill. But our goal has always been to prevent destruction. Even if we are at war, it's still our duty to protect the innocent.”

  “First you have to protect your own.” He turned to face Nathaniel. “Isn't that right, Turbine?”

  The young Paragon reached up to touch the back of his head where the battle with the Automaton had left a permanent scar, but said nothing.

  Instead, Grüsser broke the silence in his usual clumsy way. “Vell, if anyone cares to know vat I zink, I liked him.”

  “I like him as well, Grüsser, but this isn't a popularity contest.” Alexander turned to the other men at the table. “The man clearly needs more time to come into his own. We can put it to a vote once we've seen all the candidates…Let's take a moment to gather our thoughts and then we'll see King Jupiter.”

  He turned and pointed to the still-burning shrubbery. “And can we get someone to please put that out?”

  When she had first undertaken to run away from her life as a young lady of society, Sarah had steeled herself to the fact that however challenging she imagined the world outside of the Stanton mansion might be, the reality would be worse. And yet no amount of preparation had managed to stop Sarah from still finding herself regularly driven to the verge of tears by the random cruelties that the world seemed determined to inflict on her.

  It wasn't that anything in particular was more difficult than she had expected. In the case of work, for instance, Sarah had never been one to shy away from hard labor. It was that simply everything seemed to be more complicated than she could have ever imagined: cooking, cleaning, shopping, working, and even simply getting around town, were an endless cycle of effort and time—made all the more difficult by the fact that every penny needed to be counted before it was spent.

  But this morning she had made a vow to stop the tears, and today it seemed something had changed; from the glorious sunrise to the golden hue of the early evening, this fine spring day had conspired to show her that life could occasionally offer possibilities beyond toil and failure. Perhaps the world wasn't always as full of doom, gloom, and strife as she had begun to fear.

  Her father had often scolded Sarah that she was clueless when it came to money, but as she walked up the street toward her house with her salary in her purse and a smile on her face, she was sure that she had gained a much deeper understanding of finance now that she was forced to earn every penny, rather than simply having had them placed into her hands by a servant.

  Her entire week's wages were now less than she would have once spent on a single piece of fine French ribbon, but considering how perilously close she had come to being destitute in the first few weeks of life on her own, the paper in Sarah's pocket now seemed like a fortune. And it would be good to finally be spending money without draining away the last few dollars that remained in her bank account.

  Her time at the department store had been no less demanding today than it had been on any other day. Sarah was still constantly at the beck and call of women who seemed to think that she was there to be abused at their pleasure, but she had given a smile to the shy boy who cleaned up in the restaurant on the ground floor, and later he had handed her a good-sized slice of roast chicken wrapped in wax paper. And when she had gone to buy a sugar cookie, the friendly old man at the pastry counter had demanded that she take an éclair as a present for simply “blessing an old man with the pleasure of her company.”

  It all made Sarah blush to think about it, but at least she wasn't an old maid yet…

  As Sarah climbed her front stoop, the sun peeked out from the clouds, bathing her in a sudden feeling of warmth. She stopped to bask in it, and felt a wave of joy wash over her. For an instant she felt so good it made her want to burst into song, but she decided it might be better to simply hum instead. There were still so many tasks to do, but things were finally looking up!

  Reaching the landing, Sarah slipped her key into the lock of the front door. Her building wasn't anything special, but it was clean and relatively bright. Compared to the dark, dingy holes that some of the other girls had told her they lived in, Sarah had begun to think of her little tenement as positively palatial.

  As the door swung open she was greeted by the strong scent of whitewash. A fresh coat had been painted onto the hall just a few days ago, and despite the strong odor the whole place seemed more bright and cheerful for it.

  It seemed that the owners had recently been seized with a fit of pride in the place, and they had been adding a number of improvements, including cleaning up the halls and putting in window boxes under the front-facing eaves. Sarah was already imagining that perhaps she could use hers to grow a few fresh herbs once the weather warmed up a bit, although beyond sticking the seeds into some dirt and pouring water on top of them she had little idea how that would be accomplished.

  Normally after a long day on her feet she felt like the only thing she had the energy left for was collapsing onto her bed, but Sarah seemed to float up the stairs today. When she reached the third floor, she ran down the hallway towards her door as fast as she could, eager to get a chance to eat her dinner before the remaining sunlight vanished behind the rooftops.

  She had already reached a hand into her purse, and had begun to pull out her key when she saw that someone had placed a large iron padlock on the door. The tune she was humming died on her lips as she looked up to make sure that this was indeed her apartment. The painted number nine on the door left no doubt about it; someone had locked her out of her home.

  Trying not to let an obvious mistake ruin her day, Sarah put her shopping bag down in front of her door, took a deep breath to clear her head, and headed back down the stairs to the superintendent's room. Her feet felt decidedly heavier than they had on the way up.

  Arriving back at the ground floor, she rapped lightly on the door to the superintendent's apartment. There was no reply.

  She gave a harder knock, this time using enough force to make the door rattle in its frame. “Mr. Grieves?” she said loudly, “It's Susan from 309!”

  She could hear the sounds of someone stirring in the apartment. She rapped again, still harder, and this time wa
s rewarded with a mumbled shout, “Just a minute!” After a few seconds there was the clank of a bolt being pulled back, and a small crack opened between the door and the frame.

  The man who peered out at her was quite disheveled and was wrapped in a tattered silk robe of red and black. The long whiskers on his face were not only uneven but contained numerous unidentifiable crumbs trapped in the patches of hair. He looked up at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Whatcha want?”

  “I hope you could help me,” she said, trying to retain a bright and positive tone. “I think there's been a mistake.”

  He licked his lips, and then opened his mouth with a terrible, wet smacking sound that made Sarah think of someone kissing a frog. Not content to do it once, he made the noise a few more times before he started to speak. “And what kind of mistake would that be, Miss Standish?”

  “It's my apartment. I'm afraid that someone has put a padlock on the door and I'm locked out.” She gave him the best winsome smile she could muster under the circumstances. “I don't suppose you could get the key and open it up for me?”

  “No mistake there, Miss,” he said and then slipped his left hand down into the pocket on the front of his robe. The pouch lay right over the top of his potbelly, and when he lifted up his fingers, the sound of jingling keys rose up from it as if they were laughing at her. “Mrs. Brooks is planning to sell the building to the church, and she don't want the priests seeing fallen women hanging around, so she's throwing you out.”

  Sarah understood what the words meant, but it took a moment for her to fully comprehend everything that had been implied in Mr. Grieves's sentence. She felt a flush of anger as she realized that her perfect day now had a large crack running straight down the middle of it. “Fallen Woman?” she said, the tone of her voice rising in both volume and pitch as she spoke. “That's my apartment Mr. Grieves, paid for through the middle of this month!”

  “Ain't none of my business, I'm afraid,” he said, shaking his head sadly, as if he was somehow sympathetic to her situation but helpless to take any action to actually improve it. “Me, I just do what I'm told.” He started to shut the door. “You want to argue about it, take it up with Mrs. Brooks.”

  Sarah could see that her window of opportunity was also about to close with the door, and inserted her boot into its path. Wood hit leather with a thump. “Now see here,” she said, her voice taking on the commanding tones that she could remember her mother using when she ordered the servants around, “all the things in the world of any value to me are in that room—in my room—and I won't let you steal them because some old biddy has decided to try and impress the clergy!”

  Grieves gave the door an exploratory pull, determining that he had indeed been effectively stopped from closing it, before responding. “I don't care about your things one way or the other. I was told to lock it up and I did.” He pulled on the door again, harder this time, still looking surprised that it wouldn't simply smash her foot. “If you could please move, Miss.”

  “I won't!” Sarah replied sternly, managing to somehow wedge the boot even a little further in.

  Realizing that the door was going to remain open, he took the opportunity to take a long look at Sarah from top to bottom. “You seem like a nice young lady…pretty, too. And things being what they are, perhaps we could work something out between us.”

  Sarah knitted her brows together, wondering if what he seemed to be implying was what the man was actually trying to say. “Now see here…” she began softly, fully intending to unleash her outrage by the time she reached the end of the sentence.

  Instead, Mr. Grieves cut her off. “Don't matter anyway. Mrs. Brooks was very clear about all of it, and there's nothing I can do no matter what. She said she'd get you your rubbish in due time, so why don't you toddle off and talk to her?”

  Sarah could feel the heat rising up into her cheeks. A little anger might be useful, but she didn't want to unleash the full Stanton temper on the man unless she was given no other choice, as it left little opportunity for retreat. “Clearly sir, you don't know me very well. It may be that you can lock me out, but I know that I have some rights, and if you don't get up there and open the door for me this very minute I shall be forced to call the police!”

  “The police?” The grizzled man chuckled and nodded condescendingly. “You go ahead and give those greedy bastards a call, and then we'll find who has the deeper purse. I'm guessing it isn't a delicate little harlot like yourself!”

  Fantasizing for a moment, Sarah let herself imagine the look on the old lecher's face if she called on her father to throw this giggling simpleton out onto the street. The Industrialist would follow that by breaking down the door to her apartment with a single swift kick. Then, all sins forgiven, they would take her things and go back to the mansion. Sarah would return to a soft, clean bed and a comfortable life…

  She pushed the thoughts out of her head. It was a delicious dream, but still a fantasy. The life she had known was gone for good, and her powerful father with it.

  Her next option was to call Grieves's bluff and actually contact the police, but the truth was, from what little contact she'd had with the constabulary in the last few months, the man was most probably right—in New York, justice was something that seemed inevitably to go the way of the highest bidder.

  Grieves scowled, allowing some of the looser crumbs to escape from his beard. “Are we done here? I'd like to get back to my dinner.”

  Sarah felt her frustration rising. Maybe she couldn't call her father, but she could at least summon the Stanton spirit. Leaning backwards, she raised her hand up to her brow, as if she were feeling faint. It was hardly uncommon for a woman under stress to become woozy, and as she expected, the superintendent relaxed the pressure to allow her foot escape, and to perhaps prepare to assist a damsel in distress.

  Taking advantage of the moment, she leaned forward and rushed the door, bursting it open and throwing the man off his feet.

  As he tumbled backwards, his hand came up from his pocket in an attempt to steady himself. Looped around the index finger of his left hand were the keys that he had been mocking her with a minute before.

  Sarah grabbed his wrist, managing to steady him just before he tipped so far over that he would have crashed to the ground, then plucked the key ring off of him. It made a jingle as she slipped the metal circle over her wrist.

  The superintendent's red eyes were wide open now, clearly in shock that this tiny, unassuming girl not only had managed to steal away his keys, but had also become the only thing keeping him suspended above the ground. “Leave me alone!” he howled.

  “You mean, let you go?” she responded with a satisfied smile. Her perfect day had been ruined by this man, and Sarah was fighting off an urge to punish him not only for his own sins, but for all the other slights she had been forced to endure over the last few weeks. But she recognized that would not only be unladylike, it would be un-Paragon-like. With a grimace, she hauled him back to his feet.

  His balance restored, Mr. Grieves hunched over and stared at her out of the corner of his eye. “You've gone mad!” He looked like a whipped dog, trying to play for sympathy now that the tables had turned. “Don't kill me!”

  “What a pathetic bully you are, Mr. Grieves. I won't hurt you.”

  “Mrs. Brooks was right! You're a whore and a monster!”

  The name-calling made the anger rise up in her, and for a moment Sarah's vision seemed to disappear behind a curtain of red. When it cleared an instant later, her hand was already up in the air, only a moment away from slapping the rudeness out of him. Grieves responded by cowering, letting out a rabbitlike shriek as he wrinkled up his nose with fear.

  For a moment Sarah stood there frozen, her mind split in two. One half of her was angry and out of control, the other half stood watching in terror and disbelief at what she was about to do. For an instant the darker forces won, and she raised her hand up higher. Grieves dropped down to his knees, placing his arms over hi
s head to protect himself from the rain of blows that was sure to come.

  “No,” she said out loud, and lowered her hand. Sarah had stopped herself, but only barely.

  But if she couldn't beat this little tyrant who had stolen away her perfect day, at least she'd put the fear of God into him. “You said it yourself, Mr. Grieves—the police only care about money. And while I'm sure you'd be happy to pay them to haul away the brute who beat you, once they saw it was a tiny little thing like me that had terrified you so, they'd be far too busy laughing to take your money.”

  Realizing that the expected blows weren't going to come, Grieves put down his arms and peered up at Sarah. His eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth wide, screaming at her through rotting yellow teeth. “Harpy! Demon! Trollop!” He balled his hands up into fists. “Get your things and get out!”

  Sarah lifted her arm again and the old man flinched, but it was clearly less of a threat than it had been a moment ago. She backed through his door. “I won't be long.”

  As she walked up the first flight of stairs, the keys jangling in her hand, Sarah wondered how many other lone women there were in the building who might come to face the same unfair circumstance, but without the spine to stand up to the troll downstairs.

  As she reached the first-floor landing, she walked down the corridor, using the stolen keys to unlock two padlocks she found there. On the second floor there were another two, and three on the fourth. Finally she undid the lock on her own door.

  Picking up the sagging bag of groceries, she opened the door and looked inside her apartment. The space was the same as she had left it this morning —small, simple, tidy, and clean. The two rooms were sparsely furnished, with a large stove taking up most of the main room. The only furnishings she owned were a battered wardrobe that she had found on the street, a wobbly wooden table with a single chair, and a decent (if lumpy) straw-filled mattress that she had purchased the same day she had gotten the apartment, and so far seemed to have remained free of insects.