With that, the cook pivoted and stomped off, each footfall resounding with a heavy thud.
Rage welled up in Nat greater than he’d ever felt. It was not enough for the engineer to take credit for the quality of the goods Nat had won them, but to poison the crew against him was an action without excuse. To accuse him of theft, and of food even. On a different ship than this, that would be a flogging offense. Even here, the crew would never trust someone who would deprive others to act the glutton.
He shoved one of the gawkers out of the way as he marched toward the hatch of the engine room. All thought of currying Mister Garth’s favor had been wiped out with this action. Nat didn’t care if he never saw the engine in a lifetime of service. He could not let this stand.
“Slow down there, Mister Bowden.” Mister Trupt caught Nat by the back of the shirt. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’ll do you no good, boy. Don’t go causing trouble.”
Nat jerked against the hold. “Did you hear what he said? What Mister Garth told him?” He spat the name.
Mister Trupt had the audacity to laugh. “Aye. I heard and so did all of the ship. I doubt a one of them believed it though.”
“Jenson did.” Nat couldn’t keep the petulance from his tone.
The first mate shook his head. “Maybe he did right now with Garth’s accusations ringing in his ears, but if you give the man some time to cool, he’ll realize your actions have shown often enough that you think of others many times before yourself. But if you make a war of this tussle, it’ll never fade away.”
“He can’t say that about me. I don’t care what you want. I’ll not have the crew thinking I’d let such a slight stand.”
Mister Trupt shook Nat hard by the shoulders. “Think, boy. Has all your book learning taught you nothing?”
Nat stilled, caught more by the first mate’s tone than his actual words.
“That’s better. I knew there was more than wool between your ears.” Trupt allowed himself a slight smile. “Who do you think the captain needs more? A cabin boy, or the engineer?”
“Professor Paderwatch would never—”
“The professor might not, considering your family connections and all, but he’s more than a professor now. Do you think he would jeopardize all of us just to protect a prideful boy who couldn’t recognize when best to back down? You think we could manage another engineer? I don’t know what Mister Garth did to anger the Company, but we’re lucky to have someone who knows one end of a hammer from another to nurse the teakettle. You think you could do as good a job? Because I sure as the sea is wet can’t.”
What was left of Nat’s anger melted away as he considered his chances even before a family friend if the choice came down to him or the engineer. His shoulders slumped, and he stared at the scarred deck, a further testament to their status. No matter how much the crew scrubbed, these old boards would never shine like some of the newer ships did.
He kicked at a particularly dark spot, where dirt had embedded itself into a crack so deep it had become part of the decking and resistant to any efforts to clean it up. “I didn’t eat his food.” The mutter came out despite Nat’s efforts to push all that away.
“I never said you did. I don’t know what Mister Garth has against you, but I wouldn’t have thought him sunk so deep as to make this charge. More likely he forgot it long enough for rats to polish off what they could.”
“Rats.”
Before the first mate could restrain him, Nat ran off to find Jenson and explain. No way would he let the cook keep thinking such lies about him, even if he accepted the truth that no good would come of a confrontation with Mister Garth.
22
Guilt as much as fear kept Sam still for a long while after the engineer, cursing the boy who’d delivered the food roundly, had stomped up the stairs and out the hatch. The ship’s rocking seemed to even out, and the sounds in the room had quieted to dripping water and the creak of old wood.
She hadn’t thought further than filling her belly. She hadn’t meant for others to get in trouble, not when she’d left enough for him to eat. How could she have known he would question the portions? She’d even left the roll.
The food in her stomach churned in protest. Leaving the roll didn’t change her decision to take the man’s porridge. Just because he’d been too busy to eat and she’d been hungry wasn’t reason enough to go against everything Lily had taught her.
Sam stared through the pipes at the main section, now empty of both man and food.
Everything she’d done to reach this point had caused harm, harm she’d never intended but which wouldn’t have happened without her actions.
First she transformed the steam carriage though she knew she should not have. Someone could have been injured in the crash, and what the coachman would do about the damages, she had no idea. He could lose his job, or at least owe more than he could afford. Sam could hope Henry would help him, knowing the true cause, but then Henry would be the one to suffer from her actions.
Even the little boy on the dock suffered. She’d only wanted to help him find his beloved toy. Instead, she’d changed it into something monstrous in the boy’s eyes—or at least his father’s—costing both the train and the boy a close friend.
She remembered the look on the boy’s face, but what came to mind had little to do with the train and everything to do with the mechanicals she’d imprisoned in her workshop. She’d done so for their safety, and for that of her family, but how they must be suffering. Trapped much like she’d become here in the engine room. They drew their strength from the aether so would not go hungry as she had, but to never be free, to never see her again, seemed too great a punishment. She would have been kinder to dismantle them and scatter the pieces far enough that they could not bring together enough aether to dream of their previous state.
A whimper escaped her lips though she should keep silent even now with the engineer gone to stir up trouble. If she could just learn restraint, if she could only hold back when she wanted something, or when a mechanical called out to her, then none of this would have happened. She’d still be safe back home with Lily and Henry. Lily wouldn’t be so sick from worrying, and Kate might not have hated her so.
The dim interior of the engine room seemed to darken, to seep into her very being as she dwelled on all the bad choices she’d made, the myriad ways in which she’d brought trouble down on others, which only brought her back to the sailor boy.
She’d known of the engineer’s vindictive nature. She’d heard enough this morning even without the sour words to the carry boy when she’d first reached for the hatch. How could she have thought taking from his bowl would pass unnoticed?
Memories of the engineer’s behavior broke through her misery and made her wonder. From what she’d seen with her own eyes, the engineer would have found something wrong even had she taken none. Lily would have given her a tongue lashing if she’d ever treated one of the servants as the engineer did the sailor boy, and all when the boy had been trying to do the man a good turn. She wouldn’t have put it past him to spill some of the porridge out and let it go to waste only so he could charge the boy with something.
Righteous anger drained away as she recognized this as no more than another attempt to push aside the blame. The engineer might be all she thought of him and more, but that didn’t change how she’d done him a disservice as great if not greater than what he’d done to the sailor boy.
Stowing away seemed so much simpler when she’d come up with the idea—not that she’d planned for this to happen in advance. She knew too little about ships and their ways to think she could hide out safely. The best source of information she had before now was the books in Henry’s library, many of which told tales as fantastical as the events that had beset her since her sister declared the time had come to cross to the Continent.
Had she any choice in the matter, she would have snuck off the same way she’d come on and gone about finding Henry’s man, if for no other reas
on than her disappearance from the coachman’s care would cause more of the very worry she’d tried to ease by leaving. Her failure only added to the many faults she had, a burden her sister had borne for too long.
Guilt and the reasons that led Sam to this place overwhelmed her until she felt them as a weight pressing her down, filling her lungs with hot, cloying air. Though her thoughts spun round and round in her head, condemning her with every turn, soon she became aware of an all-too-familiar tickle in the back of her head that grew louder than her fear.
Sam ignored it.
She couldn’t let a bout take her over, not here. What would she do, what would any of them do, if she managed to transform the copper coating on the hull into something wonderful? Such a change would leave the wood to the healthy appetites of whatever insects had found their way aboard or creatures that roamed the seas in the hopes of an unprotected ship.
No matter what arguments she put forward, whether of her own making or remembered from Lily’s schooling, the engine kept pressing at the back of her mind. She clung to the memories of how she had harmed others, of the suffering she left in her wake, but tendrils of desire wound through the darkest moments and shoved them aside.
At first it asked for grand changes, but she held strong.
Then it sent out feelers of aether to limn the scattered collection of gears and springs until they glowed to her eyesight. The engineer had left them to skitter across the floor as the ship moved, and some even found their way under the pipes as though to seek her out.
Sam held fast through it all, proud of her strength, until the engine begged for her help not to make it different, but to soothe the hurts brought on by a hard pounding. She’d seen the engineer’s anger herself, heard the ring of his blows, and felt through the aether tendrils how his faulty efforts worsened the problem.
Surely Lily wouldn’t condemn her for helping. Surely no harm could come of it.
The engine seized hold of that slight weakening and encouraged it until Sam could no longer tell which thoughts were her own and which had been inserted by the aether-driven desires.
A man like the engineer seemed the type to claim his efforts the cause rather than looking further, or at least he’d been quick enough to assign the blame to any but himself. If she fixed his fixes, why would he question?
She’d lost what shred of control had kept her back.
Sam crawled through the pipes to lay claim to the right gears and even some tools the aether highlighted for its purposes. Holding the thought that she would do repairs alone in the front of her head—no transformations, no improvements, and no wish fulfillment—she crossed the room to where the engine stood.
Her will faltered when faced with the full force of the engine’s demands, but Sam whispered under her breath to remind herself. “Repair. I will only repair.”
The state of the section recently worked on brought tears to Sam’s eyes. She ran a finger along a particularly battered part before removing the freshly bent gear. The desire to soothe its hurts by replacing damage with something stronger, faster, swept over Sam, but she sped her whisper, her voice fierce and determined as she replaced first one gear and then the next. A spring required only shifting for its coils to smooth out, but in other areas, the tools the engineer had left proved inadequate and she bent aether to the task.
Her whole focus remained on the engine, moving over section after section, repairing the parts that had failed and others just waiting for their chance. She forgot everything else: the ship, the engineer, the risk of discovery. Nothing existed beyond the pains of this particular machine.
The only thought she clung to in the depths of her bout was the need to repair rather than change, and that with a fragile grasp.
At last, though, her supply of pilfered gears and what little energy she’d drawn from the porridge that morning ran dry.
Hands shaking, Sam backed away from the engine, longing to activate the mechanism but retaining enough sense to know what the engineer might not remember doing in his anger could cover her work, but the engine starting itself would require investigation. She gathered up the gears the engineer had used and dragged a last bit of aether forward to repair the bends from his hammer so they could be reused. Only tiny fractures, visible with aether to highlight them, remained, but she could do nothing about those.
Though exhausted, she had enough presence of mind to return his collection to the pile in case he’d yet to count them the way Cook inventoried her supplies. Besides, he’d search for an answer if she left them next to the repaired engine with the ones he’d removed as if it had ejected his brutal efforts.
Sam stumbled over the first pipe protecting her hiding spot and banged into a second, making such a clatter she expected discovery at any moment, but finally she reached what had become her home.
A pang cramped her stomach, and a groan made its way through her lips before she could stifle it, but no one had come to see what strange occurrences had taken over the engine room. The silence remained, deeper now without piteous cries coming off the engine itself.
Sam huddled around her hunger, satisfied in the thought that she’d succeeded, not just in the repair, but in controlling her bout as never before. She’d limited herself not to what the aether longed to attain but to what the mechanism needed. Though not enough to soothe her body’s demands or ease her guilt at previous failures, at least considering the fact gave her some distraction from her troubles.
23
Nat should have known Mister Garth would go to great lengths to make trouble, but the engineer must have shown Jenson some kind of proof to make the cook light into Nat like that. The problem bugged him through the rest of the day.
No matter what he thought of the engineer, a single burp would have given the man away had he eaten the porridge then complained. The penalties for theft were high enough, but false accusations bore a harsher penalty. Otherwise it would be too easy to use ship law to carry out grudges.
Mister Trupt, and even Phil, took Nat to task about his performance, but he couldn’t bring forth the same focus and enthusiasm with this charge hanging over his head. The rest of the crew seemed to have forgotten, but he knew how easily seeds of doubt could be sown.
The captain had put off one of the rope men not more than six months before when none of the crew would trust him, and that because of a rumor following him from his previous ship rather than anything the men had seen with their own eyes.
A man’s measure was in his actions, or so Jenson had claimed, but the measure could as easily be driven by the words of another, malicious or unintentional.
Nat thought he saw the reflection of that question in the barrel man when he passed the line of sailors waiting for their measure of ale, and again when the holystone for cleaning the deck slapped into his hand with more than necessary force.
All around him, the men questioned whether he had stolen, and stolen food. This soon out of port, the pantry was full, but not a one of them couldn’t remember a voyage where the stores had run thin, where the wind had turned against them and the balking engine refused to carry them forth.
Even Nat, in his mere two years aboard, had experienced a time with his stomach stuck to the back of his spine, and he’d faced the question of whether the stores would give out before they spotted land.
The stories told on cold nights spoke of the worst times, of choices made that could never be mentioned in full daylight. They told of rumors chasing after the survivors as they had that unlucky crewman. Whether he’d done anything so wrong or not mattered little when a crew suspected he might if given the right conditions.
“You’re a fool if you think they take the word of that man Garth over yours, boy.” Mister Trupt crouched at his side as though to check his work on the deck. “Truth is we all see how the engineer treats you. But that doesn’t change the facts. He’s worth ten of you. Ten of almost any other man on this vessel. You keep your hands clean and don’t cross him. Keep acting the w
ay you are now, though, and you’ll turn every living soul on this ship against you. Act the crook, and the crew will start to wonder if it’s Garth they’ve misjudged.”
The first mate didn’t wait for a response, not that Nat could come up with one. His mind ground against the implication. Had he been acting like a thief? The way he checked every man he came across could certainly be taken that way.
He sighed at the realization. He’d done more damage to his reputation than either Jenson or Mister Garth.
Nat scrubbed harder, taking his frustrations out on the dirt ground into the wood grain as he considered his options.
He had none, to be honest.
If he stood up for himself and disputed the charge, then he’d be thrown off the ship at the next port for causing trouble with a valuable member of the crew. And if he swallowed the accusation, despite what the first mate said, he could never be sure who didn’t wonder if Nat had been so selfish as to take a measure of the engineer’s portion.
How could he prove something false when he didn’t even know what the true charge had been? If Garth expected an overflowing plate, one brimming would still speak to some missing. Nat had left the meal as commanded. Rats could have taken their fill without Mister Garth noticing as far as he’d been from the stairs and busy at that. Without seeing the serving himself, he had no way of knowing the reason for the accusation.
He did a better job focusing on his tasks after receiving Mister Trupt’s advice, but the thought of rats being at the root of his problem nibbled at the back of his mind, much as how they must have nibbled away at Mister Garth’s generous serving. Everyone knew rats infested the bilge. The engine room would seem an unlikely place for them to hide. Yes, it was out of the water the pumps never quite managed to clear, but there was no source of food normally. Mister Garth wouldn’t be so foolish as to store extra in there, would he? And if he was, the blame for this would fall firmly on the engineer’s shoulders without Nat having to accuse.
Secrets (The Steamship Chronicles Book 1) Page 11
