The Curse of the Brimstone Contract

by Corrina Lawson

  “Say, rather, that you have been wrapped up in your own pain,” she answered. “I know how that feels.”

  Sir August nodded. Joan turned and followed Gregor down the hall. If these moments were part of her last hour of lucidity, she wanted to spend it in his company, even if he was not speaking to her.

  Gregor lit the boiler with matches kept near for that purpose. His movements were sharp, short and full of anger. She stood at the wall quietly while the mage coal caught fire.

  “Will that little last through the duel?”

  “That little will last through the week.” He slammed the door of the boiler shut, checked the water level and added more to the tank.

  “How long will the boiler take to provide the proper amount of steam?” How long did she have left to live?

  “It should be creating steam by the time your mother is done cutting the pattern, Joan.”

  His words no longer slapped and the way he said her name felt like a caress. Hold me, she thought, so I can feel one more time before this begins.

  He put a hand against the wall, effectively trapping her between him and the wall.

  “You are deducing my thoughts again,” she said, her voice weaker than when she’d accepted the duel.

  “No.” He laid his palm against her cheek. “Only following my own inclination.”

  “You were so angry with me. It was hard to tell if you were so inclined.”

  His breath warmed her neck. But he drew back. “Perhaps the promise of my, ah, inclinations will be incentive for you to win.”

  She pushed him away with the flat of her hand. “What do you mean by that? I already have plenty of incentive to win.”

  His stare felt like she’d been cornered by a hawk. “Do you? It seems to me the risks you have taken in the last day indicate a serious lack of concern toward your future.”

  “The future offered was not the life I wanted.”

  He trapped her head between his hands. “What I want to know is if you have any future in mind at all.”

  “You are an insulting man.” She was not suicidal. She only rejected what was easy.

  He kissed her lips, a soft touch, and then he stepped back. “You smell of almonds,” he whispered.

  She swallowed hard. “If I have a future, then I hope that you are in it.”

  “If you do not have one, then neither do I.” He turned away from her as her mother arrived in the room with two sets of material for the jacket.

  “I want to use my own machine,” Joan said.

  “That’s not the deal,” Roylott said, arriving with Sir August in tow.

  “You specified sewing machines. You did not specify which one. I want my own.”

  “I will fetch it.” Gregor swept out of the room. She was grateful for the chance to collect herself. Thinking of him and the future was distracting. She could not afford that now. She must empty her mind and go back to her first love, creating clothing with needle, thread and sweat.

  “Is there anything I can do, Joan?” Sir August asked.

  She decided to take his offer seriously. “I need a promise from you, sir.”

  “Name it.”

  “I want you to promise me that if Roylott wins you will see that my mother is cared for.”

  “I so swear.”

  “If Roylott wins, I won’t care what happens to me,” her mother said.

  “You should have done something about this sooner. At the least, you should have told me the full truth.”

  Her mother hung her head and looked away.

  Gregor reentered in a clatter of machine and thread. He set it on an empty desk, and she sat down to attach her machine to the foot pedals and thus connect it to the steam lines that would provide power.

  He waved her away from that task.

  “I’ll do it for you.” He lingered some time over the connections. Taking extra care, she thought. He could not speak of emotions but he could show them. She must remember that in the future. If they had one.

  “No tricks, Sherringford,” Roylott said.

  “I am ensuring this is a fair fight. Be sure to check your own connections.”

  “Just how do you have knowledge of sewing machines, Gregor?”

  “How not?”

  Of course. How not.

  She rested her fingertips on the rear wheel of her machine. This was an extension of herself, the best ally she could have. Unlike other things in her life, this had never let her down.

  She turned to Gregor again. “Will you see that somehow people know the truth if I lose?”

  “I cannot promise what I may not be able to accomplish.” He tightened his lips. “If Roylott wins, the energy from you will make him far more powerful. He will far outstrip me, a fact he no doubt realizes. But if he walks out of here, it will only be past my lifeless corpse.”

  Her mouth grew dry. She put her hand over his. “You are saying that your life is also at stake in this duel.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Our futures are bound as one.”

  “I did not intend that,” she whispered.

  He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand and smiled. “You will simply have to win.”

  “So I will.” She touched her hand to where he had just caressed her cheek.

  Her mother held up Krieger & Sims’s design sketchpad and flipped to the page with the jacket they would both make. “This is Joan’s design for a short woman’s jacket to be worn when traveling in the new open steam carriages. It’s similar to a man’s jacket and so will not be difficult for your skills, Roylott. It’s a shorter, updated version of what Lady Grey wanted.”

  Her mother abruptly set the precut leather torso and sleeves next to Roylott’s chosen machine.

  Without a word, her mother set more leather pieces next to Joan. Leather was an unforgiving material. Once a hole was poked in it, the damage remained forever. A single mistake and the entire jacket would be ruined. That was why there had been two sets of material already available. One for the first try as practice, one to correct any mistakes.

  She would have to be perfect on the first try, now. And, in a sense, she was lucky. Years ago, a much larger sewing machine with a larger needle would have been necessary to sew leather properly. Thanks to steam power, she could use her personal machine.

  “Reconsider, Joan,” her mother said.

  “Will you wish me good fortune in this?”

  Her mother closed her eyes and sighed. “Yes, but…”

  “You believe I will lose.”

  “Roylott is very skilled.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Mother.”

  “I will pray for you.” Her mother shook her head and stepped back.

  A typical reaction. Her mother had never much liked confrontation, the earlier hug notwithstanding. Look at the way she’d vanished when Moran came to arrest her husband and daughter. Though, at least she had sent word to Sir August and precipitated her removal from Moran’s custody.

  “You, Milverton. You start us off,” Roylott said.

  Sir August cleared his throat. He raised his cane. “Prepare to begin.”

  Joan lost herself in the familiar task of spinning the hand-wheel of the machine to fill her bobbin. Leather required a stronger thread than she normally used. Once the bobbin was full, she popped open a compartment just below the needle’s foot, replaced the old one with the stronger thread and pulled a strand to thread the needle.

  She took a deep breath, licked the edge of the thread—more from nerves than any need—and threaded the needle. She drew the thread far enough to make sure she had enough tension. She felt along the needle to make certain it was secure. It would never do to have it break during the duel.

  Still, just in case, she took a spare needle and set it within easy reach. If she had to take time to replace it, she might lose. If she had no replacement quickly available, she would most certainly lose.

  She glanced over and saw that Roylott had not only mirrored her actions but
he had the two pieces of the body of the jacket placed and ready to begin.

  They were more evenly matched than she wanted to admit.

  She pressed the treadle with her foot, testing the power. She reminded herself, as she always did, that the use of the pedal was counterintuitive. Open equaled power, closed equaled stop. So went the chant her mother had taught her.

  She set the edges of the shoulder seams together and slid the beginning of the material under the needle’s foot.

  Gregor knelt down next to her. “Whatever happens, Joan, keep working. Stop for nothing. Promise me that.”

  “I promise.” He was the only one in this room that she could trust fully, even if he had not told her everything. “I should have consulted you sooner. Perhaps there would have been another solution then.”

  He looked over at Roylott. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He smiled and straightened. “Remember, do not stop.”

  Sir August cleared his throat. “Ready?”

  Joan and Roylott nodded.

  “Begin!”

  She loosened her foot pressure on the pedal and fed the shoulder seams to the needle. A voice screamed at the back of her head that she was going far too slow but she ignored it. She would do this right.

  She no longer saw Gregor, Sir August or her mother. She no longer heard Roylott’s machine working furiously on the other side of the room. Her focus was solely on sewing.

  For the first time, she was aware that she was pouring mage energy into the task. It flowed from her hands into the cloth as she fed it through the machine. It was a feeling she’d experienced many times but now she knew what it was. She let the mage energy spin out from her, and the world narrowed only to her and the machine.

  Such was her intense focus that she was almost surprised when the first shoulder seam was finished. She clipped the thread and reset the material to do the other shoulder.

  Loosen pressure on the treadle, feed the leather to the hungry needle, keep the seam even, watch the fingers, watch the tension in the thread…

  The second shoulder seam was done quicker than the first. She moved on to the side seams, forcing herself not to glance at Roylott to check his progress.

  Sewing the sleeve together was next. Careful, careful, she needed to feed that even slower or she would get an uneven sleeve with too much material pulled at the top.

  Her leg ached from keeping the pressure steady. Sweat gathered on her forehead and she hoped it did not drip onto her arms. Her fingers grew numb from holding the leather in place.

  She bit back a cry of triumph as she finished the second sleeve. One more task, fit the sleeves to the front and back, and she was done. Of course, fitting the sleeves was the trickiest part of the project.

  Roylott had not cried out in triumph. He had not won yet, then.

  She readjusted the foot to compensate for the bulk of two pieces of leather. Then she reset the needle for a gathering stitch and began sewing again. She finished and started to backstitch.

  But the needle moved too fast and began gobbling up the leather. She pressed down all the way on the treadle, attempting to stop the machine before an irrevocable mistake was made.

  But the machine did not slow, dragging her fingers closer and closer to the needle as she refused to let go, intent on salvaging the leather.

  The machine’s speed surged even faster. She cursed. I am going to lose…

  The needle caught, jammed and shattered.

  She threw her hand up to protect her face just in time. A shard stabbed into her palm. She was too shocked to cry out. That was almost my eye!

  Her machine fell silent. Behind her, she heard Roylott’s machine, still running, still churning.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Joan!” Her mother rushed forward.

  Joan waved her away with the uninjured hand. What had Gregor said? Do not stop. She looked down at the metal shard protruding from the fleshy part of her palm, took a deep breath, clasped the shard and pulled it out of her hand.

  Argh.

  Blood spurted all over her palm. She snagged a cloth from a desk drawer and wrapped the scrap tight around the puncture. She used her other hand, with an assist from her teeth, to tie it off.

  “Give up, girl. You’re losing,” Roylott said from behind her.

  She ignored him and the throbbing in her hand and fumbled for the spare needle on the desk. She grasped it and inspected the machine for damage.

  It had automatically shut down when the needle broke. She cleared out the remaining bits of the broken needle and popped the new one into place.

  Please, please, please, let there not be any holes in the leather.

  A quick inspection revealed only a hole that she could use to sew the seam. She reset the leather, put her fingers on it and flipped on the switch of her machine.

  Pain seared through her puncture with each movement. Instead of ignoring it, she rode with it, using it to focus on her task. Gregor said most people relaxed to find their mage focus. Now she knew she focused on her gift during sewing. But she would use anger and pain to focus on the task as well.

  Dimly, she heard Roylott curse. That was not her concern. Through a haze of pain, she used a gathering stitch on the second sleeve.

  Almost done!

  Her vision narrowed and blurred at the edges. This was not the time to faint. She bit her tongue. The dim sounds of voices echoed around her. It did not matter.

  The second sleeve was done.

  With trembling fingers, she evened up the trailing tread and jumped up.

  “Done!”

  “Cheater!” Roylott leapt at her. “False win!”

  Gregor tackled Roylott and wrestled him to the ground before her opponent could even come close to her.

  “False?” She held up her throbbing hand. “This was a win built on blood and pain. There was nothing false about it. Now, you will honor your contract. You will return what you stole from my father.”

  Roylott stopped struggling. “You are the thief. You sabotaged my machine. You altered the steam pressure! I should have won!”

  “Even after you caused the steam pressure going to Miss Krieger’s machine to surge and made the needle break?” Gregor said, holding Roylott on the floor.

  “I did nothing,” Roylott said, his face against the floor.

  “You cheated,” Gregor said. “If your pressure had similar problems, I can only see that as karmic justice.”

  “Get off me!” With a heave, Roylott shoved Gregor off. The force of it tossed Gregor into the wall, and he hit with a nasty thud.

  “No!” Joan rushed to Gregor but was shoved aside by an unseen force. Roylott’s magic. She fell sideways, into one of the vacant desks.

  She raised her injured hand at him again. “You challenged me to a duel. You lost.”

  Roylott backed up, closer to the boiler. His eyes were wild, and his face again appeared misshapen, as it had earlier. In fact, his cheeks seemed to be melting.

  “Our contract specified I give back your father’s energy. It doesn’t prevent me from attacking others first.”

  “You foul thing,” her mother yelled. “You cannot wiggle out of this. I forbid it.”

  Joan ran to Gregor’s side while their enemy was distracted.

  “Mistress.” Roylott spat out the word at her mother. “I have grown too powerful for you. For anyone.”

  Sir August fired his magical pistol. The shot hit Roylott in the chest, and he staggered sideways into the boiler. Yet only a moment later, he stood and smiled, all teeth amidst the misshapen face.

  “What are you?” Joan could see no blood on him, yet the bullet had hit him point blank.

  Sir August fired again. This time, Roylott didn’t even flinch when the bullet hit.

  “No man should survive those bullets,” Sir August said, staring in disbelief at his weapon.

  “I’m no man, I’m a creation, and now I have outstripped my creator.” Roylott grinned, his voice a hoarse whisper, his mouth hardly
visible now. “If I must honor the contract, I will ensure others suffer as I release the soul.”

  “Distract him,” Gregor whispered to Joan. “You have the power!”

  She stood, her knees nearly knocking together. “Take this, demon!” As she had the night before when the dark thing had climbed up her arm, she struck out blindly. As she felt the energy leave her fingers, the room began to glow.

  But her attack had the opposite effect of what she’d intended. Roylott’s face took full form again. “More mage power for me. You have a tasty soul, Joan.”

  “Are you a demon in truth?” she gasped. Her mother had collapsed to the floor. Sir August looked as unsteady on his feet as she felt.

  “Demon of a sort, a—”

  Roylott had no chance to finish the sentence. Gregor appeared out of the shadows behind the boiler and shoved a burning piece of paper in Roylott’s mouth.

  Roylott collapsed to his knees, his hands tearing at his mouth.

  Gregor sliced off a portion of his howling opponent’s forehead with a knife. Roylott melted further. His howls turned into gurgles.

  Glowing letters appeared on the remains of Roylott’s forehead.

  M. E. T.

  Met. The Hebrew word for death. Joan gasped. Roylott was no demon, but a legend come to life.

  “You’re a golem!”

  Roylott looked up at her. His eyes were trapped in a face of clay slowly collapsing around him.

  “You lost the duel, golem. Restore my husband,” her mother said.

  “As you wish, mistress. Let it be on your head.”

  Mistress? He’d said it before but she thought he was giving her mother a title as his employer. But this seemed something more. “Mother, what does he mean?” Joan braced herself against the desk to stay upright. Her body was heavy, and it was an effort to focus her vision. She had drained herself, just as she had when opening the safe.

  “Do not listen to it! It lies!” Mother said.

  Roylott raised his arms. Light flashed from the golem’s melted figure and filled the room. Joan put up her hand to shield her face. Gregor scrambled to her, pulled her against his chest and held the back of her head tight against him.