“Yes, Your Highness,” the prince replied, not very surprised. “Your work is well spoken of within the palace.”
“I doubt that. When they speak of me, it is with despair.” She stepped into the light, dressed in a smith’s leathers with thick denim and canvas beneath. He could not help noticing that one hand held a hammer, rock-steady and ready to swing. “You are that prince, from Bourgoigne.”
“Prince Puissant, at your service.” He bowed.
She snorted. “Your parents really named you that?”
Another bow, this time with a smile he could not keep from his face. “My mother is…ambitious. Most people do not seem to get the joke.”
“My parents are desperate,” she said flatly. “And the joke here has grown very old. Are you commissioned to somehow free me from the curse?”
“Alas, no,” Puissant said. “I merely stopped to attend awhile on my way home from a journey of years.”
Her free hand strayed to the brow of the brass man on the table. “It must have been quite a journey, for you to be away for years.”
“An ambitious mother can be an inspiration.”
“So can a fae curse.”
The prince nodded at the man on the table. “You are creating your own true love?”
Her lips grew tight. “Perhaps. It seems one way to avoid the curse.”
“Is brass exempted from the failures of flesh?”
“In many ways, yes.” She glanced down at the exposed gears and circuits behind the missing face. “And perhaps more obedient.”
“Somehow I do not think it is obedience that concerns you most,” he said.
“I have been taught to love forge fires and tools and machines.” Her voice grew distant. “For fear of what a young man might do to me.”
There are places in this world where you might have loved a young woman, Puissant thought, but he did not see it as a helpful thing to say. “Your loves are your own business,” he replied quietly. “I confess to curiosity, but this is not my affair.”
“I will build him, and I will kiss him.”
“And sleep the centuries until a brass man has walked his last step upon this Earth?”
Her face grew fierce. “He is brass. This will be different.”
“Luck and love to you, Princess,” Puissant said with sadness.
He bade his farewells the next morning, and took his horse down into Talos City. Prince Puissant had had enough of the gloom of the Royal Palace, and his heart was pierced by the idea of love. In the years of his wanderings, he had known the flesh of both women and men when time and interest permitted. Those had been pleasant pastimes, but they were not love.
Here was a woman denied to love almost from her birth, but she was still trying to find a way past that sentence. He should possess such fortitude.
So Puissant made his way to a middling sort of traveler’s inn, ordered himself copious wine and a small feast and two whores, and set about some serious effort at forgetting himself for a while.
On the third day of his dissolution, he woke amid a tangle of limbs and a reek of alcohol to hear bells ringing throughout the town, and the muttering of a crowd in the street. Or possibly a mob. The prince extracted himself from Maisie and Daisy—which might just possibly be their real names, though he was doubtful—and cracked open the shutters.
People were gathering in uneasy groups, with much pointing and shouting. He leaned out to look in the direction many fingers were indicating to see a gray pall just west of town, where the Royal Palace of Talos stood atop its long, sloping hill.
“She has done something,” whispered the prince. He quickly donned his riding leathers and the lightest of armor, took up his sword and pistols, and leaving the women asleep in his room, made his way back down to the stables where he’d left Lightning. Puissant had ridden a brass horse for the seasons he’d been in Venice, and much preferred the fleshly versions.
He quickly checked his horse’s hooves and hocks, then saddled without the help of the stable boys, who’d run off to gawk like everyone else. Then he was up and heading for the Royal Palace, pushing his way through the uneasy streets where the townsfolk were still working up their courage.
The grounds were a mess as he approached. Not that this had been the best-kept estate he’d ever visited, but overnight every growing thing seemed to have bolted and become leggy, woody and strange. The walls were unguarded, but the main gate was a tangle of fresh vines and tiny, wild roses everywhere.
Puissant dismounted and hacked his way through the entrance. Leading Lightning, he walked up the moss-covered stones of the paved drive to the formal entrance of the Royal Palace. Not even a bird twittered in the trees. The place was eerily silent. The great lacquered doors were ajar, draped again with vines and roses. A brass man was collapsed on the generous portico, resembling nothing so much as an abandoned suit of armor.
Tying off his horse, Prince Puissant pushed his way within. He came across a maid in the front hall, curled on her side and sleeping deeply. He tried to rouse her, but nothing he could do, not even pricking the back of her hand with the tip of his dagger, provoked the slightest reaction other than a slow, carmine bead of blood. He walked on to the throne room, which he found empty except for two more servants, then to the main dining room. The king and queen were slumped over their golden plates, servants and members of the court scattered around them on the floor.
With a sigh, Puissant headed for Zellandyne’s workshop. Surely that was the center of all this. The exits from the Royal Palace were blocked with more vines and roses, and his hand was torn by thorns on the way out. Likewise the entrances to the workshops. He apologized silently to his sword for the abuse, and hacked his way within.
Zellandyne lay on the floor next to her slab table. Of the brass man, there was no sign. The princess was accompanied in unconsciousness by several assistants, all strapping young women with arms as mighty as hers.
“You had to do it,” the prince said. “And sadly, you were wrong about the brass man.” He looked at her face and wondered if he was supposed to kiss her. Since the most likely outcome of that seemed to be him joining the princess and everyone else in the palace in the sleep of years, he decided against it. Besides, there was no spark between them.
He went looking for the brass man instead.
Puissant found Zellandyne’s true love in the stables, fumbling to light the fires of a steam cart. All the horses were asleep, of course. “Must you leave?”
The brass man turned to face him. “There is nothing for me here.”
“A hundred people or more sleep at the touch of your lips,” the prince said. “Surely you have some responsibilities.”
“She made me as she was made, she quickened me as she was quickened, she kissed me as her mother had once kissed her.” The brass man’s voice was dull. “Then they all just…folded away.”
“Did Zellandyne give you a name before she was lost?”
“Morpheus.”
The prince had to laugh at that. “Well, Morpheus, what do you plan for yourself now?”
“To go into the world and find a purpose.” The brass man glanced at the prince’s sword, now sheathed again at his side. “What are your plans?”
“To free the princess, then be about my business,” he said. “She will never forgive me for slaying her true love.” He drew one of his pistols and in one swift movement shot the brass man in his left knee.
Morpheus collapsed with a piteous hissing whine. “I did nothing to you,” he complained.
“I have warred around the edges of the Mediterranean these past fifteen years,” the prince told him. “I have personally killed dozens who did nothing to me, caused the deaths of hundreds or even thousands more who did nothing to me, slain at the hands of men I led. Innocence is no badge of protection.” He aimed the other pistol at Morpheus’s face. “Besides, there is some sin here to expiate, or I am no judge of people. They all suffer from a curse, and it’s not just this silly busi
ness with the witch. You, my poor newborn friend, are the lamb to be sacrificed on their altar.”
He fired the other pistol into the brass man’s face with only a single shudder of self-disgust. Then he went to find a hammer and a pry bar to tear Morpheus apart, until Zellandyne’s first love was no more.
Puissant thought about attending until the sleeping beauty awoke, but the palace stirred slowly in the aftermath of the murder. He’d broken the curse, and the king and queen had lost not even a day of their lives. They could not have done the same to free themselves, because of course what use to slay the true love before their daughter’s heart was grasped? He knew he should congratulate himself on his cleverness, but the prince felt no pride, and likewise no desire to claim any reward.
It wasn’t his fault. He did what any sensible person would have done, given the terms of the curse. And what was one confused, newborn life compared to a hundred sleeping royalty and servants, and the damage that would come to a kingdom left bereft of rule, defense, or direction?
Such an easy calculus to make, that only one man had to die. Puissant just wished it hadn’t been him who’d done the killing.
Now, if he could ever find that stupid little fae witch who’d laid the curse, he might have a purpose in violence. But he was done with ambition, and wanted to see his father before the old man died.
Somewhere far behind the prince, a woman sobbed.
Mose and the
Automatic Fireman
by Nancy A. Collins
(BASED ON TALL TALES ABOUT AMERICAN
FOLK HERO MOSE THE FIREBOY)
“Let me get a good look at you,” Sykesky said, eyeing his friend like a housewife judging the freshness of a side of beef.
Mose did as he was told, straightening his narrow shoulders and throwing out his birdlike chest as best he could. As an afterthought, he spat in his hand and used it to slick back his bushy, bright red hair. He was about to polish the tops of his brogans against the back of his pants legs, only to stop for fear of the boots disintegrating. Sykesky circled Mose, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze traveling up and down the smaller youth’s slender frame as he stood at attention. Mose had always been a slight child, even in the best of times, but eating out of garbage cans had reduced him even further.
Mose was sixteen and had been living on his own ever since his mother succumbed to the white death, nearly two years before, leaving him an orphan. He made a living, such as it was, picking rags and hawking the Herald when he could scrape up the pennies to buy papers, as well as the occasional thievery. But he was getting too old to be a newsie, and had little chance of landing an apprenticeship. There was only one real option for a young man such as himself, without education or patronage, if he wanted to survive to adulthood: he had to get himself ganged up.
Of the various gangs on the Lower East Side of New York City, the Bowery Boys were the natural choice, as they were easily the largest and most powerful, with connections to nearby City Hall that the Dead Rabbits and the Roach Guard did not share. Most important, the Boys enjoyed a great deal of social status as volunteer firefighters and owned their very own pumper engine. Thanks to their speedy response time and willingness to rush into burning tenements, the gang made a nice bit of money from the fire insurance companies, often winning sizable bonuses for being the first engine to arrive. Because of this steady, and relatively respectable, means of income, many a young fellow in dire circumstances had found his fortunes reversed after becoming one of the fabled Bowery Boys. Indeed, Sykesky was living proof. Where once his friend had been dressed in rags, now he wore the red shirt, black flared trousers, and black vest that served as the Bowery Boys’ uniform, with the traditional black stovepipe hat perched rakishly atop his well-oiled hair.
Mose had known William Sykes since they were both three years old, having grown up together in Mulberry Bend. Upon seeing Sykesky’s transformation from street urchin to flashy tough, Mose had asked his old chum to recommend him for membership. Sykesky had first tried to dissuade the smaller boy, but Mose had persisted, reminding him of the time he’d saved his life by yanking him out of the way of a teamster’s wagon when they were eight years old. Sykesky finally relented and agreed to introduce him to Horseshoe Harry, the leader of the Bowery Boys.
The Green Dragon Saloon, located on Broome Street, just west of the Bowery, was the gang’s favorite haunt and de facto clubhouse. Sykesky pushed open the double doors of the saloon, revealing a long, pitch-black hallway. As Mose trailed behind his friend, he had the uneasy certainty that his passage was being watched by others hidden in the surrounding darkness. At the end of the corridor was another pair of swinging doors that opened onto a room with a sawdust-strewn floor, on one side of which was a lengthy, polished wooden bar fitted with a brass foot rail. Behind the bar was hung a large mirror, and above that was a painting of a nude woman sprawled across a tiger skin rug. In the musician’s alcove, near the back of the room, a sodden pianist was muddling his way through “Buffalo Gals,” accompanied by an equally inebriated fiddle player. The walls of the Green Dragon were lined by wooden booths filled with boisterous young men dressed identically to Sykesky, drinking foaming tankards of beer, smoking pipes and cigars, and playing at dice or cards. And the loudest and tallest was none other than Horseshoe Harry, the leader.
Sykesky announced himself to his boss by loudly coughing into his fist. Horseshoe Harry, who got his name for his ability to unbend said item with his bare hands, stood over six feet tall, his stovepipe hat drawn down over one eye, his trousers tucked into his boot-tops, the smoldering stub of a cigar pointing from his lips toward the ceiling, his jaw jutting forward contemptuously, as if inviting the world to take a swing, if it dare.
“What d’ya want—Sykes, is it?” he growled.
“Yes, sir,” Sykesky said, clearly pleased that the gang leader had remembered his surname. “I got that kid I told you about—the one that’s looking to join.” He turned and motioned to Mose, who stepped forward.
“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” he said, touching his forelock in deference.
Horseshoe Harry snorted and hawked a wad of phlegm onto the barroom floor, alongside the boy’s poorly shod feet. “What’s yer name, kid?”
“Mose Humphries.”
“Ya look like a bog hopper t’me,” the gang leader snarled, gesturing to the youth’s shock of ginger-colored hair. “The Boys don’t take no micks. We don’t have no truck with papists, neither. We leave that trash for the Dead Rabbits. We only take native-born, God-fearing Protestants.”
“I ain’t no Catlick,” Mose replied tersely. “My folks was from Wales. But I was born in Mulberry Bend, on Ragpickers Row.”
This seemed to mollify Horseshoe Harry enough for him to take the cigar from his mouth and give Mose a closer look. “So ya wanna join up, eh? Ya gotta be tough to run with the Boys, but it looks to me ya couldn’t wrestle out a turd.”
“I’m tough enough,” Mose said, pulling himself up to his full height of five foot one as he jutted his chin out in imitation of the Bowery Boys’ legendary braggadocio. “And I ain’t scared of nothin’.”
“The boy’s scrappy as a terrier,” Sykesky assured his boss. “I seen him snatch a wharf rat up by the tail and bash its brains out on a paving stone when we was six.”
Horseshoe Harry studied the slender youth dressed in stinking rags for a long moment before he finally spoke. “Seeing how ye’re a native son of our beloved country, and ain’t a bead rattler, I’m gonna be generous and set ya a task. If you can perform it to my satisfaction, you’re in the gang. All y’have to do is man the pumper.” He turned to look at his fellows lounging about the Green Dragon. “Whattaya say, lads?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door at the back of the saloon. “Let’s go see if the kid’s got what it takes!”
There was a roar of agreement and within seconds Mose found himself swept along by the tide of rowdy young men and dragged down the street to the Bowery Boys’ “fireh
ouse,” where their pump engine was kept. Upon arriving, Mose saw that the doors were chained shut and bound by a padlock the size of a baby’s head. Horseshoe Harry fished an equally oversized key from his waistcoat and removed the lock, swinging open the door to reveal the gang’s most prized possession.
It was, indeed, a sight to behold, with a square, flat body the size and shape of a piano box fashioned from pure mahogany, with gilded moldings that gleamed like the brass on a rich man’s coffin. The words AMERICA LIBERTY, draped in Old Glory, were painted on the front, and the accompanying hose cart was red with blue-and-white striping, in keeping with the patriotic theme. Resting atop its large wheels was an air chamber, and a pair of folding wooden pump bars, known as brakes, that ran horizontally and were long enough to accommodate six men on each side. There was no finer pump engine in all the city of Manhattan.
“Show me what ya got, kid,” Horseshoe Harry said, gesturing with his smoldering cigar.
Mose eyed the engine for a moment and then stepped up to the brake that was closest to him, which was tilted upward, like a teeter-totter. Standing on his tiptoes, he wrapped his hands firmly about the heavy wooden pump bar and pulled it downward. Or, at least, he tried to, as the brake barely budged. Mose let go, spat into his palms, shook his arms out, and grabbed the handle a second time, grimacing as he yanked it toward the floor with a mighty grunt. This time the brake obeyed, accompanied by a sound like that of a huge blacksmith’s bellows.
“See?” Mose grinned, turning his head to look at Horseshoe Harry and the others, who stood gathered in the doorway. “I told you I was tough enough—!”
Just as he spoke, the brake began its return journey, yanking Mose free of his rotting boots, much to the amusement of the Bowery Boys and their leader. Mose yelped in alarm as he suddenly found himself dangling a foot or more off the floor, his bare feet kicking the empty air for purchase, while the assembled gang howled like a band of baboons. The embarrassed youth let go of the brake and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, his face an even brighter shade of red than his hair. Snatching up his decrepit footwear, he dashed out of the firehouse into the gathering dusk, his ears ringing with their derisive laughter.
Clockwork Fairy Tales - A Collection Of Steampunk Fables Page 18
