Steampunk Carnival (Steam World Book 1)

by Cassandra Leuthold

  But just as Dr. Kirby had chosen Lizzy over Katya, Mr. Warden had moved on to Isolde’s perfume and embraces. Even as young, high earning, and beautiful as Katya was, the men she wanted could replace her in their thoughts. Maddox did not represent the worst Katya could do, especially in the name of enjoying herself. If she did not take him up on his offer, he would stop admiring her, too.

  As much as Katya appreciated the chance to champion her guests, she could not deny Maddox was right. She worshipped the carnival, but she had never once spent a night there for her own amusement.

  Katya picked up her skirts, racing to catch up to Maddox. “Mr. O’Sullivan.”

  Maddox turned, bathed under the light of his usual lamppost. His darkened eyes watched her, waiting. He said nothing, and Katya wished he would make the first move. She reminded herself he had approached her multiple times with less than the results he sought.

  Katya sucked up her gusto and superseded her pride. “I’ll ride the carnival with you, Mr. O’Sullivan, if you’re willing.”

  Maddox blinked at her, his expression blank and reserved. Slowly, he raised his elbow to her. Katya slipped her hand around his arm, and only then did his lips curve upward with pleasure.

  “What attraction would you like to ride first?” he asked.

  Katya tilted her head back to take in the full height of the Tower up ahead. “Let’s start here.”

  Maddox guided Katya toward the line of guests at the base of the Tower. “Have you ever been up so high?”

  “I don’t think so. The cars go fifty feet in the air.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  Katya’s eyes lingered at the top of the metal structure. “Yes.”

  “Has there ever been an accident with it?”

  “No. There were the usual concerns with some of the gears, but it never put anyone in danger.”

  Maddox led Katya right up to the Tower operator accepting tickets for the next group to ride toward the stars. “We need to get on,” Maddox told him.

  The man took another ticket from a guest, who walked past him into the fenced-off area for the ride. “Says who?”

  “Mr. Warden,” Katya interjected. “He wants to make sure it’s running smoothly enough.”

  “Do you have to ride it now?”

  “Why not? The car isn’t full yet.”

  The operator grunted and jerked his thumb behind him. Katya and Maddox slipped past him to the wheel-shaped car waiting patiently around the bottom of the Tower’s central post. They sat down in adjacent seats padded more luxuriantly than most hotel and restaurant chairs. A second operator walked around the car, helping the patrons buckle the safety belts across their middles. The car filled up, and the operators offered hand signals to each other. They kept everyone else clear of the ride.

  Katya felt unsure about taking the ride up into the night sky, but not all of her anxiousness was unpleasant. Part of her looked forward to finally experiencing the journey for herself, and the other part of her searched Maddox’s face for a hint that he felt the same. He beamed at her.

  With a gentle lurch, the car rose into the air. Katya grabbed hold of the partitions between the seats, her knuckles bumping the hand of the guest on her left, who had also grabbed for it. Maddox did not reach for a stronghold. His mouth twisted in amusement, watching Katya seek security as everything that held her ascended ten, twenty, thirty feet.

  The climb proved gradual and effortless. Once Katya began to relax, she realized how far she could see. The lamplights of the carnival looked beautiful and elegant below them. The slight flickering of the burning gas gleamed off the metal structures throughout the carnival. It lost itself in the velvet of patron jackets and glimmered off their silks. It flashed across buckles on top hats and shoes. It lit up gold and silver jewelry.

  Katya could barely breathe. She almost forgot how nervous she had been moments before. The car reached the top of the tower and stopped there, offering its occupants a rare view at the world around them. Katya stared down at the carnival, trying to pick out the details of the band playing in the center of it all. The massive Beast behind it still intimidated, but from this height, Katya marveled in the majesty of its design.

  The car shuddered and lowered itself, detaching from its part of the sky. The other occupants chattered to each other excitedly, but Katya could barely form thoughts in her head.

  “What do you think?” Maddox asked her.

  Katya recited the first thing that came to mind. “The ride lasts for three cycles.” She admonished herself for relying on the only words she knew about the carnival and gave in to sharing Maddox’s enthusiasm. “It’s thrilling.”

  The car paused briefly at the bottom before lifting again. Each time it rose, Katya focused on a different part of the carnival. She looked across to the other side, where the Kaleidoscope competed against the game stalls and the Cannon for popularity. It really did shift like a kaleidoscope from this height, the colors of the booths smearing in her vision as they rotated. She looked past Maddox to the El and the food stall beyond it. Magdalene would be handing out cinnamon-sugar desserts and sausages on buns, but Katya was riding the carnival they had staked their lives on. She was riding the dream Brady had worked on years ago. She doubted even he had been able to enjoy it.

  The car rested on the ground and stayed there. The operator made his rounds again, helping the patrons get unbuckled and return to their feet. He directed them to an exit gate in the fence. Katya and Maddox filed out with the others to the common grounds of the carnival.

  “Where to next?” Maddox prompted.

  Katya’s heart pounded with the possibilities. “The coaster.”

  “The big one?”

  “No, I don’t think I’ll ever be brave enough for that.” Katya watched the Beast’s cars roar high above them. “The smaller one here.”

  Katya linked her hand around Maddox’s arm, and they walked to the nearby El. Maddox repeated Katya’s lie to the ticket taker. “Mr. Warden wants us to make sure the coaster’s operating properly.”

  The man hurried them past, offering a more courteous front to the waiting customers. “You’ll all have a turn, I assure you. Just a routine inspection.”

  Another operator stood a few feet inside the fence, and he motioned for Katya and Maddox to stop where they were. They watched the coaster cars slide and weave their way along the track. A minute later, they slowed into loading position on the platform. The operator stepped over to help the guests out, and once they left the platform, his flexing fingers invited Katya and Maddox toward him. He buckled them into the front seat of the first car.

  “Are you nervous now?” Maddox whispered into Katya’s ear.

  Katya nodded, but she felt the rush of anticipation filling her chest. “It’s not too fast, is it?”

  “You should know.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything except how fun this is.”

  The operator filled the remaining seats in the connected cars. With a signal to the ticket taker and the man Katya could not see who ran the switches, the cars jerked forward. This time, Katya and Maddox both reached for the metal grab bar in front of them. A mechanism in the track pulled the train of cars up the initial slope. The passengers behind Katya and Maddox murmured with apprehension and breathed audibly, awaiting the first of many drops.

  The train rose steadily, taking its passengers up to a short plateau. Within seconds, the cars slid down, lifting Katya’s stomach into the top of her chest. She let out a shriek amidst the screams and shouts behind her. The train twisted to the left, curving to parallel the outer fence of the carnival. It rose a short distance and fell again, racing its passengers lower toward the ground. A second mechanism pulled the cars even higher than before.

  In one graceful motion, the cars slipped down the next slope of track, curving away from the back of the grounds. They dipped down beside the side stage, where Katya could not tell what contest was taking place. The cars sped along, turni
ng left only to bend back to the right. The track led them down beneath the iron structure and returned them safely to the platform.

  Katya barely had time to catch her breath before the ride operator unbuckled her belt. She walked with Maddox to the exit gate, where a small wooden sign bore the words Thank You in painted, curling letters.

  Katya leaned against Maddox for support, her equilibrium struggling to right itself even though her heart soared with excitement. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Let’s try something a little less intense.” Maddox wrapped his arm around Katya, propping her up as they walked deeper into the carnival.

  “What do you suggest?”

  Maddox nodded to the attraction they were headed towards. The great Warden wheel turned slowly against the sky, the stars twinkling in competition with the lamplights of the city beyond the carnival fence.

  “We get three turns around the wheel, too,” Katya said.

  “How tall’s the wheel?”

  “Twice the tower. One hundred feet. You’re supposed to be able to see the whole city from the top.”

  “From the top? About halfway up, I’d think.”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  Katya and Maddox walked up to the ticket taker. “We’re here to ride the wheel for Mr. Warden,” Maddox said. “Routine quality control.”

  The ticket taker eyed him as he accepted another pair of tickets from a couple of guests. “That’s hardly routine.”

  “It’s a new routine,” Katya informed him.

  “Why are you two doing it?”

  Maddox leaned closer. “Do you have boating experience, sir? On the ocean?”

  “In the middle of this state?” The ticket taker snorted. “No.”

  “Well, I do, and the motion of the rides should be as smooth as a relaxing boat ride on even water. I’m more than qualified to judge.”

  The ticket taker turned his sharp grey eyes on Katya.

  “How can I be expected to tell the guests what it’s like if I don’t ride it?” she asked. “Mr. Warden knows what he’s doing and knows what he wants. If you’re going to take up a car with Mr. O’Sullivan, you might as well send me up, too.”

  The ticket taker grunted. “Fine. Go on through.” Under his breath, he said, “If I catch any trouble for this, it’s on your heads.”

  Katya refused to drop her ruse. “We’ll see who gets in trouble for doing their job.”

  Maddox guided Katya through the low iron gate to the base of the wheel. The operator on the platform let a young, well-dressed couple off the lowest car in front of him. He motioned Katya and Maddox to step up to replace them. Heinz swiftly buckled them in, and with a brief hand signal, the wheel rotated them slowly into the air.

  Katya was accustomed to riding backwards in carriages but not backwards as well as upward. She balanced the strange sensation by looking out over the familiar sights of the carnival. Maddox tapped the back of her hand, and Katya turned her attention the other way.

  The southern neighborhoods of the city stretched out beneath them in a maze of streets and houses. Plotted among them, slightly larger, spread a boxy school, a rising church, and a sprawling park. The higher Katya turned on the wheel, the more of the city presented itself. Shadows darkened and muffled most of it, making it hazy. Katya squinted to make out the taller buildings amongst the lower-lying landscape: the towers flanking the edifice of St. John’s Church and the broad, impressive swath of the English Hotel and Opera House.

  The wheel stopped every so often to let old patrons off and new guests on. They mostly sat quietly, but if they had been screaming their lungs out, Katya would not have noticed. She stared out over the city, its many lampposts like a vast network of earthbound stars. The wheel began to let Katya down very slowly, and even when she could not see for miles, the magic vibrated in her body.

  She turned her attention to Maddox, whose persistence was the only reason she had experienced the carnival from the other side. He had gotten his date, and Katya had learned the true meaning of the carnival deep into her bones.

  Maddox spoke first. “I admit it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I did hear things about you, about your reputation when I started here.”

  Katya had nowhere to hide. Even as their car neared the ground and stopped there to let a couple disembark, there was nothing to shield her from Maddox. “Is that why you asked me about Mr. Davies?”

  “No. I just wanted to know if you liked him.” Maddox fell silent as they glided past Heinz on another round of the wheel’s gradual course. “I didn’t want you to think that was the reason I was talking to you. It has nothing to do with that.”

  “Not even a little?” Katya teased him, hoping to cover up her embarrassment.

  “Not really. How reliable are rumors like that, anyway? Do you think I’m going to believe a bunch of filthy-faced men who never saw anything for themselves?”

  “What, exactly, were the rumors about?”

  “You and... someone else.”

  “Mr. Warden?”

  “Maybe.”

  Katya folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve done a lot of forward things in my life but never anything that stupid before. I didn’t think it through. I panicked because I wanted to work at the carnival more than anything else, and he said there wasn’t a job for me. I moved here by train to work at the carnival.”

  Katya paused, but Maddox continued to watch her, listening. “I asked him if he had anyone to care for his guests, anyone to answer their questions and guide them around. He said he didn’t. I said I was obviously a talker and I’d be more than happy to serve them.”

  Katya pictured the same scene she had tumbled over in her head since it happened, but now she saw it for what it was: ill advised and reckless. She summarized it modestly. “We did have a romantic moment, you might call it, and I got the job. I’m not proud of it. Maybe I was for a while, but I didn’t realize how truly scheming Mr. Warden is. I may have gotten what I wanted, but he always gets what he wants, too.”

  Katya waited for Maddox to answer. The silence made her worry he thought the worst of her. The car rocked gently as it stopped, and Katya spoke up again. “Mr. Warden must’ve told Mr. Lieber, and Mr. Lieber probably told some of the other security. I’m sure it was only a matter of time until it reached most of the men who work here.”

  The car rose into motion once more.

  Maddox laid his hand over Katya’s. “I don’t care. I didn’t care when I heard the rumors, and I don’t care now. Mr. Warden might have all the power at the carnival, but you have the most passion for it. You glow. You don’t walk here. You float. You know so much, and I know so little.”

  “That can’t be true. You’ve lived in places I’ve only heard of and probably places I haven’t. If you’re good enough to fix the rides, you know more than you give yourself credit for.”

  Maddox’s eyes sparkled. “If you lived on the coast, Miss Romanova, you’d be the kind of woman men name their boats after.”

  The compliment warmed Katya from the inside, imagining him working on the beaches of the ocean. “What was it like on the coast?”

  Maddox shrugged. “Fresh ocean air. Smell of fresh and rotting fish.”

  “Did you take a lot of relaxing boat rides out there?”

  A sly smirk stole across Maddox’s lips. “That was a lie to get us on board. There’s a lot to be done during fishing season, even on the shore. I came to America in a boat, although I barely remember it. I guess I’ve had my share of them.”

  Katya hesitated in case her inquiry was too personal. “Your accent,” she mentioned. “It’s Irish but softer.”

  Maddox paused, his roguishness easing into appreciation and honest pleasure. “My mother was born in England. My father met her when he moved there after the famine in Ireland. He always meant to come here, but he didn’t think he’d have a wife and kid with him when he came over. If I don’t sound exactly like him, it’s because
I grew up listening to her.”

  Katya searched Maddox’s smooth features, finding evidence of his family’s journeys and hardships. The same twinkle of determination glowing in his eyes might have fueled his father’s moves across two water-separated borders. Despite Maddox’s youth and high spirits, his eyes studied her with worldly observation. He set his jaw firmly for whatever came his way. Katya realized how much she wanted to hear him compliment her again. “Would you name a boat after me, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

  “I would buy a boat to name it after you.”

  The car carried Katya and Maddox up over the top of the wheel. It stopped with the southern neighborhoods laid out far beneath them. Katya leaned over and kissed him. The back of the car stood high enough to block the view from the couple riding behind them. They loomed too high above the ground for Heinz to see.

  Maddox set his bare hand against Katya’s neck. Any fear she had suffered that Maddox would rebuff her fell away. His mouth felt natural against hers. His breath tasted like the stinging spice of strong liquor, the smooth coolness of cigarettes, and the warm saltiness of popped corn. The brims of their hats bumped against one other as they bent closer together in the middle of the car.

  Katya did not want the moment to end, hanging eighty to ninety feet in the air with Maddox’s arms pressing reassuringly around her. As the wheel lowered them toward the rest of the world, she pulled away and simply gazed back at him, her golden-gloved hand holding his face. She lowered it into her lap before the car glided past Heinz and the line of customers waiting beyond the short fence.

  Neither of them spoke until the wheel had returned them to the greatest heights of its structure.

  “Do I have permission to see you again?” Maddox asked, his voice warmed by hope.

  “Yes, Mr. O’Sullivan, you do.”

  “May I call on you at home and talk to you properly?”

  Katya hesitated. Lizzie was famous for hiding around corners and listening in on any conversation held in the shared rooms of the house. Katya decided she would rather brave Lizzie’s sharp ears and big mouth than let Maddox think she was too ashamed to invite him there. “Yes. I have a room at the Weekly Boarder on Plum Street.”