Hearts of Smoke and Steam (The Society of Steam, Book Two)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Sarah wondered to herself how the pygmies would know where to tell Vincent to go if they couldn't get there themselves, then she chided herself for being so particular.

  She knew that if she could let herself relax and enjoy the show, time would go more quickly. It reminded her of Christmas mornings before the adults were awake, except with an underlying sense of dread.

  It wasn't the show itself, of course. Since the moment that she had placed Tom's heart into Vincent's hands, she had discovered an uncomfortable tightness in her chest that refused to go away.

  And it was obvious that Emilio wasn't completely unaware of her nervousness. His solution was to tell her to stop worrying, which only served to make her even more concerned.

  She looked up at the stage and stared at Vincent Smith. No matter what he was now, the man had been a villain. No matter how hard she tried to believe his claims of repentance, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the last hope for Tom was now entirely in the hands of a man who had once fought against the Paragons—and had tried to bring the entire Hall down on top of her father!

  Trying to alleviate her fears, they had arrived to the show early, but that had only made things worse. Vincent had greeted Viola with a lusty hug (which she returned). Then he handed them three tickets and told them that they should enjoy the show.

  When Sarah demanded that Emilio tell her about his progress on the heart, he smiled and told her that after the performance was over, they would retire to the workshop. “Don't worry Sarah! Is good!”

  She had considered demanding that he show it to her immediately. But like it or not, things were clearly out of her hands, and Emilio trusted Vincent totally.

  Sarah caught herself clutching nervously at her blouse, her fingers tracing the outline of the key around her neck. Not wanting to appear like a nervous child, she folded her hands together into her lap and frowned.

  Ever since she had picked up Tom's broken heart from the remains of his body, she had allowed herself to hope that if she restored that single part to working order, they would be able to rebuild the rest of him. And if anyone had bothered to ask her, she would have told them that she believed it with every fiber of her body—although she would not have been able to articulate why she thought it was true.

  Now that she was on the verge of that being a reality, doubt had begun to creep into Sarah's own heart. Truth be told, she understood almost nothing about what it was that had animated the mechanical man beyond the marvel of the Alpha Element. Even Darby had often remarked that he was never fully able to comprehend what had brought Tom to life, nor had he ever been able to replicate it.

  “And so I began to climb the mountains of mechanical mystery,” Vincent said from the side of the stage. The curtains parted to reveal a craggy cliff face constructed from steel and brass. The handsome actor was already climbing up it, hand over hand.

  With each step he took, the wall slid underneath him, allowing him to stay in place while he continued to ascend upwards. It was an impressive effect, and Sarah could tell it was something Emilio hadn't seen before. His lips were pursed in a grim line that Sarah had come to realize meant he was in a deep state of concentration, trying to unravel a mechanical secret.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah noticed movement along the far aisles. When she turned to take a better look, she saw two men. Both wore scruffy jackets of brown worsted wool, with cloth caps pulled down tightly over their heads. One was tall and thin, the other no taller than a child, although he clearly had a man's bearing. They were both hunched over as if they had something to hide, trying so hard not to be noticed that for a moment Sarah thought they were actors preparing to surprise the audience.

  When they disappeared through a curtain at the left side of the stage, an uneasy feeling started in the pit of Sarah's stomach. It began to grow until she could no longer remain in her seat.

  “Emilio!” she said, poking the rapt Italian in his shoulder.

  “Sì!” he replied without turning to look at her, and then lifted a hand to point at the stage. “They slide up from below—like a puzzle.”

  Sarah frowned and shook her head. He was clearly going to be of no use unless she had something to show him. “I'm going to the water closet.” Emilio's only response was an absentminded nod.

  Sarah pulled herself out of her seat, remembering at the last moment to take her bag. It contained something that Emilio had made for her, and even if the purse was too large to be genuinely ladylike, just holding it made her feel a little safer.

  She softly begged forgiveness from the other theater-goers as she shimmied past them towards the aisle, her dress managing to get in everyone's way as she went.

  When she finally escaped her row, Sarah realized that in order to access the curtain she had seen the two men disappear through, she would first need to walk all the way to the back of the theater and cross over to the far aisle.

  She moved as fast as she could, reaching the back of the theater and rounding the turn before the blare of heavenly trumpets and a collective gasp from the audience drew her attention back to the stage: young Vincent had finally reached the top of the mountain, and the mechanical wall was vanishing downward as a gleaming metal city rose into view.

  Men in white stood at the top of the cliff, their faces covered with silver masks that were clearly meant to be reminiscent of the face of the pneumatic man himself. Tom's visage was everywhere tonight, it seemed.

  Sarah turned her gaze back to the floor and stomped along, following the red carpet until she finally reached the heavy red curtains that framed the doorway. Pulling them apart, she stepped inside.

  The little chamber beyond was quieter, and when the thick curtains fell back into place, they muffled the sounds of the show. There was a door in front of her. Sarah opened it and began climbing up a small set of stairs.

  At the top was the backstage area she had visited when she had been here last. The theater was alive now, buzzing with actors and stagehands moving as they prepared the different mechanical animals for their appearance on the main stage.

  A few of the stagehands looked at her as she walked in, but most of them seemed too busy to take any real interest in her, and no one came to question her sudden appearance.

  Sitting in the back was the pneumatic man. He was unfolded now, his arms and legs attached to the wires that would give him the illusion of life, almost prepared for his moment of glory on the main stage.

  There was literal fire in his eyes now, along with a trail of steam that rose up from the stovepipe on his head. It truly did remind Sarah of the Industrialist's hat—she wondered what her father would think of that.

  Sarah looked around to see if she could find the men she had followed, but they were nowhere to be seen. She took a deep breath and plunged into the mayhem, dodging and weaving through the organized chaos all around her until she reached the door to the garden. Like the previous entrance, this one had also been left ajar. These were men clearly without manners…

  Sarah's eyes went wide when she saw what was on the other side—as beautiful as the courtyard had been during the day, at night it was even more so. The rusting machines that had seemed so sad and neglected in the daylight were now given new life by flames inside of them that made them glow yellow and red.

  Sarah was so entranced by the flickering creatures that she was startled when she heard a voice from nearby. “Let me try, Cutter!” It wasn't until she heard one of them speaking that Sarah even realized that the men she had been following were now standing directly in front of the workshop door, the short one attempting to break in.

  “You know as much about picking locks as you do about pulling off a girl's garters,” said the man working on the lock.

  Sarah crept behind a glowing statue in the shape of a large grasshopper, the tips of its antennae giving off a cheerful yellow light.

  The heat radiating from it kept her from getting too close, but it was a welcome relief from the cold night air. “
I alwayth find a poke ith as good ath a grope,” the taller man replied.

  “Donny, you've got a lot to learn about women,” the other said with a nasty chuckle.

  The taller of the two men was squatting in front of the door handle, fiddling with the lock while the shorter one looked on. “I'll get it, Cutter, jutht give me a chanthe!”

  “You're useless, but go ahead,” the short one replied and moved out of the way.

  The tall one continued to lisp while he worked. “Anubith said we weren't thuppothed to cauth a futh, and you had uth walk thtraight through the theater.”

  “How often do you get to a see a show like that, Donny? ‘Specially with all them fancy machines like that?”

  “It wath thomething, all right.”

  “I would have liked to have seen more…”

  A loud clack came from the lock. “Got it!” the tall one said as the door swung open.

  The lisping man tried to barrel straight into the room, but his partner's hand snapped out and grabbed his coat. “Take it easy, Donny. Who knows what traps he has in there.”

  “But Vinthent told uth the girl would be here…He told uth about the heart.”

  Sarah felt her stomach flip despite the tightness of her corset. She hadn't trusted the old villain and she'd been right all along. “But he's not one of us,” the short one replied. “Lord Eschaton got him over a barrel, and he's just tryin' to save his skin. Never trust a desperate man, Donny.”

  Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps it wasn't too late for her to get the heart back.

  “Jack alwayth thayth never trutht anyone.”

  “Well I say follow me, and keep your dirty paws off anything you see in there until I say so.”

  “Of courthe, Cutter…”

  The two men crept inside, once again leaving the door open behind them. At least they were consistently bad-mannered.

  Sarah waited for a moment to be sure they weren't coming back, and then she crept out from her hiding place and up the stone stairs to the doorway.

  It was mostly dark inside the shop, and before she entered, Sarah reached into her oversized black purse, drawing out a pistol that Emilio had given her after her last trip to the city.

  The weapon had been fashioned after her description of the pneumatic gun from Tom. But without the power of fortified steam, this weapon was nowhere near as powerful, and instead of the devastating puffs of air that her previous weapon had used, it simply fired wooden bullets. The pistol was spring-powered, and was capable of firing up to twelve shots before it needed to be rewound and reloaded. Emilio had promised her that it could take down a man without killing him, but unlike her previous weapon, she would need to aim it.

  As she walked up the steps and looked through the door into the darkness beyond, Sarah prayed that no one noticed her looming shadow as it rose to cover the soft wedge of light that stretched into the workshop from outside. If the men inside saw her…She ignored her nerves and plunged in, the door rotating open quietly on well-oiled hinges.

  In the darkness, the workshop seemed larger than she remembered, with the gloom managing to give the machines inside a sense of sharp menace that they had lacked in the daylight.

  She could see the two men standing in front of something along the left wall, still completely oblivious to the fact that they were no longer alone. “Ith that it, Cutter?”

  “A little patience, Donny…”

  Slipping through the door, Sarah snuck behind the center row of tables, then ducked down and began to creep along as silently as she could manage.

  Almost immediately, her corset began to rise up, clutching her chest and constricting her simultaneously. Unable to slide up to her neck due to Viola's tight lashing, the bottom of the garment instead dug down into her thighs. Sarah shook her head as she recognized the familiar feeling of being victimized by fashion.

  She reached up and grabbed at the top of a table with her left hand to help steady her as she moved painfully along. She could feel her right palm getting damp where it gripped the weapon.

  “What ith that, Cutter?”

  “Not our problem. Let's keep moving.”

  Sarah peered under the table. She could see the legs of the men as they headed from one table to the next, looking for the heart.

  “Not here,” Donny said.

  “Nor here,” replied Cutter.

  Sarah prayed that they would find something interesting to look at before they reached the end of the row. Perhaps she could grab it before they did…

  When she had left the heart with Vincent, it had been laying on his workbench, and even if he had moved it around to work on it, she couldn't imagine that it had gotten very far. Moving as quickly as she could, she reached the last table in the row and peered around the edge of it. Sarah stifled a yelp: the heart was on the large bench at the far wall, suspended in some kind of vice.

  Just as she prepared to make a grab for the device, the two men rounded the corner.

  “Found it!” Donny yelled gleefully. Catching a glimpse of him before pulling her head back, Sarah realized that the tall one wasn't much more than a boy—sixteen at the most.

  “Yes you did, Donny, you did indeed.”

  Sarah took a deep breath and looked down at the weapon in her hand.

  “How do we get it out?” Donnny asked.

  “Unscrew those bolts and it should fall right into our hands.”

  The opportunity to grab it and run was now long gone. If she was going to get Tom's heart away from these two, it would need to be through direct action.

  She clutched the weapon tightly as she tried to work up the courage needed to jump up and shoot at the two men.

  “I'll do it!” Donny said enthusiastically as he started reaching out for the elaborate frame that Vincent had fitted around the object.

  Cutter batted his hand away. “Slow down, boy! We don't want to tear it apart.”

  The threat to Tom gave Sarah the extra surge of courage that she needed. Standing up, Sarah saw that both men had their backs to her.

  She took aim at the short man first, figuring he was clearly the more intelligent and dangerous of the two. “It always pays to be careful.” The moment he touched the frame, he began to shake violently, and then collapsed to the floor.

  “Cutter!” his friend shouted.

  “Oh!” Sarah gasped.

  Donny spun around to face her. “Who the hell are you?” he asked through a mouth full of missing teeth.

  Sarah gave no reply. The fight in the balloon had taught her the importance of acting instead of talking, and she fired off four shots as quickly as her finger could pull the trigger.

  Her nervousness made it difficult to aim, but two of the bullets struck Donny in the chest. Each one knocked him back slightly, but none of them had the effectiveness that a single shot from the pneumatic gun might have had. “That hurt!” he said, and began to close the gap between them. On his face was a look of anger and menace that made her think that perhaps it would have been better to face Cutter instead.

  His arm shot out and grabbed her roughly. “I athked who you are, lady. Have you come here to thow Donny a good time?” The smile on his face would have been grotesque even without any missing teeth. As it was, it was terrifying.

  Sarah was trying her best to overcome her fear so that she could escape, but the fingers digging into her wrist were fighting for her attention.

  Raising up her right arm, Sarah put the gun up to her attacker's temple and fired again. This bullet hit him straight on, walloping against his skull with enough force that even she could hear the echo.

  For a moment, Sarah wasn't sure what was going to happen, and then Donny let out a curse. “Dammit, that hurt!”

  She shot him in the head a second time.

  This time the man released her arm, and the only noise he made was a groan as he dropped to the floor.

  “Was that a good enough time for you, Donny?” Sarah said, giving the fallen man a good kick to
the ribs before she stepped past him and over Cutter to reach the heart.

  The device was suspended in a frame of steel rods. The ends were padded with velvet and had been designed to hold the heart in place for repair without scratching the surface. Sarah thought that detail was probably Emilio's handiwork.

  She looked carefully around the edge of the frame until she found a wire. Sarah grabbed it and pulled, and when the cord tore away from the wall, it spat out a small shower of sparks that bounced across the table and lit up the dark room like a tiny bolt of lightning. Once again, her skills at being stealthy were proving to be poor, but she had already managed to win the fight.

  Reaching out gingerly, she touched a finger to the metal heart. She sighed with relief when there was no effect.

  Wrapping her hands around the heart, Sarah gave it a tug, but it refused to budge. She pulled harder, but it resisted, held solidly in place by the clamps. Letting out a frustrated huff, she began to undo the remaining thumbscrews that held the metal sphere in place, grunting as she strained to loosen them.

  After three of them had been undone, the heart tipped forward. Sarah cupped her hands underneath it, and it rolled down into her palms. It was cool and heavy against her skin, and holding it gave her a feeling of calm that she hadn't had in days.

  Sarah opened her purse and tried to place it inside, but there wasn't enough room to fit it in. As oversized as the purse had seemed when she had chosen it, it was too small to contain everything she needed. “Silly girl,” she muttered to herself.

  Shaking her head with frustration, she put the heart back on the table along with the pistol, pulled out her father's metal-lined gloves, and then slipped the heart inside the bag.

  Sarah knew she would look ridiculous wearing the Industrialist's gloves without the rest of her costume, but she had no other choice unless she wanted to leave them behind. As she slipped them on, a smile crept across her face—she couldn't help feeling like a bit of a bandit with her gun in one hand and the bag in the other.

  She was halfway to the studio exit when the door swung open wide, revealing a figure in black standing in the doorway. For a moment, she thought it might be Emilio come to her rescue, but even in the darkness it only took her a moment to realize that the startling profile couldn't be him. His face had the features of a wolf, a snarling mouth hanging over a glimmering golden ankh on his chest.