Of Steel and Steam

by Pauline Creeden et al.

  “I might owe you an apology,” he said, pouring two teas out from a chipped teapot, “for not meeting you at the court. Time got away from me.”

  His side-step from talk of his first time in Spades didn’t go unnoticed. But the relief that softened my posture was too great to ignore.

  Night didn’t know I’d stood him up again.

  It was the perfect moment to share fault, to tell him that I’d been distracted too, and that I never made it back to the court. But my lips twisted into a smirk.

  I sighed. “It’s fine, I found my way to that little town anyway.”

  The first thing I should have done at the table was glue myself to a chair and let my tired legs rest. Instead, I hunched over the edge and stuffed three miniature pink cakes into my mouth at once. There was an eruption of taste on my tongue. Flavours exploded. Strawberry. Chocolate. Caramel. And—my nose wrinkled—bacon grease?

  I spat the cakes into a napkin.

  Beside me, Night raised his brows then shook his head.

  With a huff, I threw my bag down on the table and unzipped it. Before I could relax, I had to make sure that everything was still tucked safely inside—all of my new clothes, my new buttons, clues.

  Night pushed a stained teacup across the table towards me, then reached into his shirt pocket.

  “You leave too many breadcrumbs,” he said coolly. “This was on the main path, next to a puddle of blood.” He pulled a flimsy gold chain from his pocket. A tiny pendant glinted beneath the darkening sky—a fingernail-sized ballerina.

  Without thinking, I snatched it from him and drew it into me, running my thumb over the figurine.

  “There were some drops of blood on it,” he said. “I cleaned it as I was tracking you.”

  The clip on the chain was broken. I sighed and tucked the necklace into my bag.

  “Thank you,” I said, and for the first time it was sincere. “You can’t know what that necklace means to me.”

  Night smiled in answer, and it sent cold unease through my veins. His grin spread over his face, and as I studied him, I saw that it was nothing like Lock’s lopsided smiles.

  Lock’s teeth were uneven and natural, one side of his lip was fuller than the other, and his grins crinkled the skin under his eyes.

  Night…

  When he smiled, it darkened his eyes. Wrinkles didn’t crinkle his skin, his lips were plump and symmetrical, and his teeth were perfect. And I had the prickling thought of a Wiley Wolf grinning at me before it struck.

  I shook off my chills and reached for the teacup.

  We were allies. So, it was reasonable that he would care a little about me in the game. But that was just it. It didn’t matter why we looked out for one another, it only mattered that we did.

  Night took my wrist before I could feel the warmth of the teacup.

  I stiffened.

  “You’re hurt,” he said.

  He ran his fingers from my wrist, along my arm, and up to the dip of my shoulder, tracing all sorts of bruises and cuts. A shudder took me, and I instinctively cringed away from his touch. But he pressed his fingertip, hard, between my shoulder blades and my cringe twisted into a hiss of pain.

  “Right here,” he added. “You’re bleeding.”

  I reached around and dabbed my fingers over the sore spot. My fingers came away wet with cool blood.

  “I must’ve cut myself,” I said, “when I was fighting that goon.”

  “I leave you alone for a few hours, and you find yourself in another squabble?”

  “Not so much a squabble as it was murder.”

  Startled, Night swerved his gaze to mine.

  “I killed one of the robbers. They were hunting me,” I added, as though I could somehow explain it away.

  Apparently I could.

  Night lost interest in the shock quickly, and refixed his gaze on the bloody patch of my blouse.

  A spur of bile burned my throat. Night peeled back my blouse to check my wound.

  I looked down at the blood on my hand.

  My eyes shut, as though they could close me off from the thoughts that crept into my mind. Because the darkest pits of my mind, I wished I had killed the other two crooks as well.

  Lock had once said that everyone was capable of killing, it only depended on the circumstance. Self-defence was one of them. But in cold blood? That wasn’t self-defence. That was revenge-fuelled murder. Convenience. And I began to question what the death of the robber said about me.

  There were other ways of defending myself ... but I hadn’t hesitated to take his life. It had been my intent. I’d wanted his blood to spill. That’s what scared me the most.

  Night stilled his fingers over my wound.

  “Shoshanna,” he said, his voice deep and breathy.

  My toes curled in my boots as heat flooded through me. I dismissed it as a reaction to the cold, not the dark way he spoke my name, as if his tongue had caressed it with lies, or his lips had kissed it with poison.

  “I’ll need to remove your blouse at the back. It has to be cleaned.”

  I made to sneer at him, but a sudden puff of smoke lifted from the table and swallowed us up. Wisps of spicy snaked around us in coils. The taste was almost as bad as the mini-cakes.

  Choking on the smoke, I manage to croak, “What is that?”

  “The question is...”

  Another wave of thick smoke punched through the air.

  “... who are you?”

  Chapter 17

  Night cut his hand through the vapour, clearing it enough to reveal a blue caterpillar. Larger than any caterpillar I’d ever seen.

  He touched a hookah to his lips and inhaled.

  “I said—” Caterpillar exhaled, long and slow, firing smoke at us. “—who.” The smoke morphed into the words he spoke. “—are.” Vapour swept up before me and tangled into a new word. “—you?”

  I exchanged a look with Night.

  Caterpillar wasn’t interested in him at all, his hooded gaze was meant only for me.

  Being the sole target of Caterpillar’s thin, glittering eyes sucked me right back into tree school. For a moment, I was standing before my teacher, Ms Lunchpin, explaining how I’d managed to fail my crockery assignment. But I wasn’t back in my lessons, and I wasn’t a child anymore.

  With a glint of pride in my set jaw, I lifted my chin and said, “I’m Shoshanna White. And you are?”

  Caterpillar huffed smoke my way. “If I wanted your name, silly girl, I would have asked for it.”

  “But you did.”

  “I asked who you are.”

  “And I told you.” I flicked my hand in dismissal. “Is this your table?”

  “I am here.”

  “But is it yours?”

  Caterpillar narrowed his eyes as he inhaled the vapour again. When it popped from his lips, the smoke licked together to form ‘No’.

  “Good.” I blew a puff of clean air at the smoke, shoving it away from me. “Then you won’t mind if we stay a while.”

  With an amused twinkle in his otherwise stony eyes, Night wet a napkin and gestured to my back.

  “I need to clean the cut,” he said.

  My lips puckered as he tore the nape of my blouse and a ripple of tension took hold of my every muscle.

  To distract myself from each wipe that seemed to tear my skin apart, I turned my pained scowl on Caterpillar.

  Unfazed, he held my gaze, veiled in wisps of grey, but those beady blue eyes of his were veiled in more than smoke. Secrets clouded them.

  “Do you have a hairpin?” asked Night.

  I reached up to my scraggly hair and plucked one out from a particularly tangled knot. A battle at my village, falling down a well, stewing in murky water, and landing in a twisted tournament hadn’t been kind to my hair. It hung like rope, dirtied from too much time in the woods, dried with specks of blood, and stuck together in dreadlocks at the ends.

  Night took the clasp and snapped a piece off.

  I bra
ced myself as he summoned up a piece of thread from somewhere. Caterpillar stretched out over an upside-down bowl, his eyes alight as he eagerly studied my grim face. Waiting for the impact. The cry of pain. A shout.

  But when Night pierced the pin into my cut to stitch it up, all that escaped me was a hiss.

  Years of swordplay meant years of accidents and cuts. They all hurt. Every single one of them. I’d learned how to contain the pain, how to brace myself against it, and how to pretend I hardly felt a sting, when my eyes burned with tears and my throat trembled with cries.

  Another pierce of the skin. The pin looped again.

  “You’re tough for a village girl,” said Night.

  A surge of fire burned my insides. “I’m a blacksmith,” I gritted out.

  “Now I know what you are,” said the caterpillar. “But the who remains a mystery.”

  “Caterpillar,” said Night, a touch of amusement in his voice. “Meet the rose of Crooked Grove.”

  I frowned over my shoulder at him, flushes of indignation littered across my cheekbones. “You two know each other?”

  Night tied the thread and did his best to cover my back with the scraps of blouse left clinging to me. He sank back in his chair like a bored snake and wiped his blood-stained hands on a damp napkin.

  “Do you often have trouble keeping up?” He gestured to the giant bug on the table. “I met Caterpillar during my first visit to Spades.”

  A flash of nostalgia passed over Caterpillar’s peculiar face. For a moment, he looked almost human.

  “Ah, my beloved toadstools in the Wood of Lost Children,” drawled Caterpillar. “They made quite a home for a time.”

  I downed my tea, then peered into the closest teapot. It was empty.

  I slumped in my chair. “Why did you move?”

  Caterpillar sighed. “Did I?” His boredom of me showed, and I wondered if his blasé attitude had influenced a younger Night. “You’re too early for tea,” Caterpillar said to Night. “If there’s anything Hatter hates more than tardiness it’s punctuality.”

  “I prefer not to argue with Hatter over time,” Night replied smoothly.

  I cut him a perplexed glare.

  “Hatter argues with time often,” he explained. “And he wins every time.”

  Wearily, I looked up at the sky. Nonsense had a way of climbing into my finger bones to curl them, not unlike the effect Holly had sometimes had on me when she stole my clothes and used my secret stash of books to trade in the village for hooch.

  Night studied me as though I’d sprouted a third eye on the bridge of my nose.

  Out the corner of my eye, I cut him a glare and asked, “What are you staring at?”

  Night pondered me a beat. “You won your glasses back.”

  “You just noticed?”

  He gave a lazy shrug.

  I frowned at him.

  Shadows danced over the violet flecks of his irises. It brought a poem stashed under my floorboards to mind—‘shadows veiled over eyes, hiding truths unspoken by tongues, by lips that lure with rose and kill with nightshade.’

  Too many secrets surrounded me.

  “Shadows can’t hide the rot behind the sugar,” I said. “Light moves over the earth to reveal all monsters.”

  A smirk took his lips.

  Caterpillar choked on his hookah, an impressed, beady sheen in his gaze. “You know Meta’s poetry?”

  I kept my gaze on Night, telling him with my eyes that I saw the swarm of secrets behind the colours that enchanted me—and deceived me.

  “I read sometimes,” was all I said.

  After a pause, Night reached into his shirt pocket, then withdrew an ocean-blue phial the size of his thumb.

  Behind the crystal blues swirled white wisps. It brought to mind the silvery wisps of the watch-globes.

  “Memories?” I guessed, the frown still knitting my brows together like patchwork. “The ones stolen from you?”

  For the first time, I witnessed sincere surprise shutter his face. “Yes.” His surprise melted away as he tucked the phial into his trouser pocket. “I’ll drink it when I get back to the court. Regaining memories takes a toll. So I’ve heard.”

  “What about your clue? I got a mirror shard. And a letter congratulating me on my progress.”

  Night drummed his neat fingernails on the table. “Seems the game wants to keep us together.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  Caterpillar scoffed. Even a crude noise sounded haughty from him. “He obviously hints to a similar clue leading to a similar spot in the playground.”

  I slitted my eyes at him. “No one asked you, Giant Bug.”

  “Now, how dare you—”

  Night held up his hand.

  Caterpillar silenced instantly and took a sulky puff of his hookah.

  Night looked at me. “My clue was a little more gruesome, but it leads to the castle of death all the same.”

  “What was your clue?”

  “A bloody tooth.” Night patted his shirt pocket. “And after thorough inspection, I’ve decided it’s very real. At least, the cavities are real.”

  “Yuck.”

  “Indeed.”

  Caterpillar stretched out and flexed his spidery legs. “Your proclivity for the written word simply shines through your extensive vocabulary.”

  My glare settled on Caterpillar.

  Irritation started to itch the inside of my skin, like the early scrapes of boiling blood.

  Through clenched teeth, I said to Night, “We should make our way back. If we stay here too long, there mightn’t be any more clues left for us at the castle. Also, I wouldn’t mind a bath and change of clothes before we go any further.”

  “The game brought us here. We might as well stay the night. After all, you were invited.”

  Caterpillar hissed, “You found a key?”

  I ignored the grub and asked Night, “Sleep on the grass?”

  My nose scrunched up as I eyed the suspiciously bright blades of grass that surrounded us.

  “I’m not one to sleep on the ground,” he said, his voice like arctic sheets. “These chairs will do better.”

  “Fine,” I begrudgingly relented. “But only for an hour or so. I don’t like it out here.” My gaze cut to Caterpillar. “It’s creepy.”

  Any retort Caterpillar had for me, he said it in smoke, which I ignored.

  I turned on my side, scooted my feet up to rest against the ruffles cushioning my bottom, and tried to find a comfortable position on the plush chair. Great for sitting, not so much for sleeping.

  Still, sleep took me quickly.

  I woke to the clang of shattered cups.

  I jerked up in the chair, rubbing my eyes, and peered around at the dimly lit table.

  Caterpillar was gone, and beside me, Night stirred as gently as one would when woken by the whispers of servants. Utterly relaxed.

  As I tried to see through the darkness of the night, I wiped drool from my chin.

  The sky hadn’t lightened since I’d fallen asleep, and as I glanced up at it, I noticed that it hadn’t darkened either. Twilight still swept across the sky, winking down at us with mischievous intentions.

  “How long were we asleep?” I croaked, fixing my crooked glasses. “What time is it?”

  In his wrinkled and clean shirt, Night slumped in his chair then spread out his legs. Laziness washed over him, but his danger lingered in the sharpness of his eyes and the tick of his jaw.

  All his gentlemanly manners must’ve been left behind in his dreams.

  Running his fingers through his dishevelled inky hair, his hooded gaze slid to the side of my face. “It’s tea time.”

  His words echoed throughout the glade.

  Tea time, tea time, tea time.

  Whispers parroted the words so quietly that I first thought the noise was a trick of the breeze.

  But as I frowned from one side of the glade to the other, my ears honed in on the sounds and where they were coming from
.

  Under the messy table.

  Tea time.

  Tea time.

  Tea time!

  I bent to peer under the table cloth but stilled when everything on top of the table suddenly rattled.

  The table shook so hard that cups and saucers flew off it.

  I threw myself back to my chair just in time to dodge a fork that stabbed right between my thighs.

  Blood draining from my face, I yanked out the fork and watched the earthquake of cutlery and crockery before me. I dropped the fork to throw my hands above my head as a platter shot overhead.

  I swerved my gaze around the table.

  A pitcher of curdled milk toppled over and spilled down the other side. Night easily hit a rock-cake out of the way before it could smash his nose inwards.

  Then the table stilled.

  Nothing moved.

  I blinked at the spilled teas and milk.

  Night’s gaze was fixed on the end of the table, a ghost of a smile on his lips. I followed his gaze to the head chair—the most extravagantly decorated chair, with the plushest velvet upholstery, and the highest back.

  But it wasn’t empty anymore.

  A man sat there. A man who hadn’t been there before.

  He sat up straight, an air of self-importance in the way he rested his gloved hands on the edge of the table, a velvet top-hat tilted on his head, covering much of his brown face.

  Choppy hair poked out from beneath the hat in deep purple spikes, and a silk jacket—the shade of blueberries and Night’s eyes at night—clung to his bony figure.

  Night tipped his head, the small smile still dancing on his mouth. “Hatter.”

  Chapter 18

  Hatter’s grin gleamed like a crescent moon.

  The hat was tipped so far forward that all I could see was that manic grin. It was bizarre, how looking at those rows of teeth could soften me, as if soothing away the tension in my muscles.

  And that’s what it did. My shoulders slumped and a dreamy smile tugged at my lips.

  “Roses in the night,” said Hatter.

  Dreamy smile intact, I just gazed at Hatter. A serene blanket of warmth draped over me as he captured my whole being.

  Night sensed my sudden serenity and leaned closer, his hand resting upon mine.