Hearts of Smoke and Steam

by Andrew P. Mayer

  She started up the stairs when she heard the voice of the man behind her. “But you're a lady!”

  Grabbing onto the railing, Sarah swung backward. As she rolled her head back to look at him, she swept out her other arm. “I'm no lady,” she said, and gave him a wink that was probably invisible behind her mask. “I'm the Adventuress!” She pulled herself back around, and bounded up the steps with a wide grin on her face.

  Her sense of self-satisfaction at her performance was short-lived. As she passed by the passenger-cabin windows she could hear the moans and desperate shouts of pain coming from the injured inside. Sarah kept her head down and avoided looking in. She already knew what the Bomb Lance was capable of, and if she stopped to help the wounded she might not be able to stop another attack.

  A hand reached out and grabbed her wrist. Sarah yelped and spun to greet the attacker, her fingers already reaching down into her pocket to grab hold of the gun, although she wasn't sure it would be of much use to her at such close range.

  “Where you think you're going?” said a voice with a heavy Italian accent.

  When Sarah looked up, she saw the exotic witch-girl who had blocked her way previously. “It's you!” Sarah started to say, and then cut herself off before she could finish the first word. If she was going to all the trouble of masking her face, it was probably be a bad idea to start telling the people she had only ever seen while unmasked that she knew who they were. Instead she simply replied, “Upstairs.”

  The woman's dark features pulled down into a look of concern and anger. “My brother is up there.”

  Sarah looked up the stairs and saw that there was blood dripping off the landing.

  She could hear his voice now, drifting down from above. It sounded desperate.

  “Emilio!” The Italian girl tried to run past her, but Sarah grabbed her hand before she could climb the steps.

  “Stop!” Sarah said.

  “My brother!” She said, tugging at her arm. The girl was strong. “He needs help!”

  Sarah nodded. “But if you try, you may just end up dead.”

  There was a loud pinging from up above—the sound of metal against metal.

  “Let me go!” the woman said, twisting in Sarah's grip, but the leather glove held her tight.

  “Just wait.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked the woman.

  Sarah held up her hand. “I'll show you.”

  Sarah pulled off her glove and reached into her pocket. When she pulled it out, she was holding the gun, and it clearly had the intended effect on the girl.

  Even if Sarah doubted whether it would work, at least the weapon looked impressive in the dark eyes of a foreigner, especially one who had never seen Sir Dennis Darby's handiwork before.

  “Are you going to use that as a gun or a hammer?” the girl replied with a sneer.

  Before Sarah could reply, her attention was grabbed by another pinging sound, and they both looked up to see a metal rod spinning off toward the river.

  If she couldn't impress this woman, she had only one option left. “Stay here!” Sarah said, pointing at the woman with her index finger, and mustering up every bit of her father's courage and her mother's stern authority. She held her gaze tightly on the girl's dark eyes until they turned away.

  Sarah started for the stairs and then turned back. “Hold this for me,” she said, and roughly shoved the suitcase in the witch's hands.

  “What is it?” she said, putting her ear to it, and then sliding it back and forth. The metal heart bumped around inside.

  “Everything I have in the world,” Sarah said, stopping her. “Be careful with it, and wait for me here.”

  Sarah turned and climbed the steps carefully, her gloved hand holding the rail tightly as she tried to step around the cooling blood on the steps.

  The sound of a familiar voice sent a chill down her spine. “If that's true, it's going to get very bad for ya very quickly.” The Irish accent's sneering tone brought back a flood of bad memories. How was it this man managed to be at the center of every tragedy in her life, and how could she stop him?

  As she rose up above the landing, the Bomb Lance's ugly face was the first thing she saw. He was still wearing his threadbare and misshapen kepi cap, along with the patchy red and gray beard that grew on his face like Irish moss. The last time she had seen that lopsided grin, it had been celebrating the fact the man behind it had just punctured her father's arm with his harpoon. “Now I'll ask ya one more time,” he said to the figure in front of him, “and if ya tell me no again, I'm going to stick this lance someplace that yer not gonna like.”

  Sarah lifted up her gun and finished climbing the stairs. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and it sounded like a roar in her ears. She took a deep breath, feeling doubly glad her bodice wasn't laced with its usual constricting tightness.

  Sarah's eyes flickered over to the man on the ground, and she recognized him as the girl's brother. He was holding up some kind of metal shield, and with his Italian features he appeared for all the world like a mythological Roman hero—all he lacked was a sword. Except for that and the mustache, he was a figure so classic that her father would have gladly etched him onto the front door of the Hall of Paragons.

  “So,” the Irishman continued, waving his harpoon menacingly at the man's chest, “if ya know where the girl is, and I think ya do, ya should tell me.”

  Sarah pushed down her fear, and stepped onto the deck. The gun in her hand was pointed directly at the Bomb Lance. “She's right here.”

  The Irishman smiled and sighed. “Ah. There you are, Miss Stanton,” he said as he swung the harpoon up to face her. “We've been lookin' all over for ya.”

  As she took in the carnage all around her, her teeth became too tightly clenched to reply. There was no need for words anyway. You didn't talk to monsters, you slew them. She pressed the trigger on her gun.

  The weapon fired with a loud burp. In her nervousness, she had forgotten to check the weapon's settings, and the force of the blast spun her around. She landed violently against the railing, the steel bars driving the air from her lungs. The pain of the impact spread across her chest.

  Sarah gasped and tried to determine just how much damage she'd managed to do to herself. With the waves of pain and panic, it was quite possible that she could have broken a rib, or worse, and Murphy was a man to take every advantage.

  As she waited for the pain to pass and her wind to return, Sarah felt something like a moment of clarity pass over her. She was, for better or worse, still alive—her goal was to stay that way. And the gun still worked!

  When she could breathe again, it came in gasps. Now that she was drawing air, she touched her chest, but there was no telltale pain of a broken rib. The terrible sensation of that was a story her father had often told his guests when recounting his adventures.

  Although she couldn't begin to imagine the bruises she would have, it seemed as if she was mostly undamaged. Every part of her cried out to simply lie down. But there was no time to rest or to even begin to worry about her wounds—the most murderous man she had ever faced was only a few feet away. She dialed down the power on her gun and whispered a small prayer to herself as she turned to face the Bomb Lance.

  She felt sick when she saw that the gun's blast had blown the bodies of the dead men about the deck. For a moment she couldn't pick out the Irishman from the disturbed corpses, and it wasn't until he stirred that she could discern the living figure among the dead.

  The young Italian man had also been swept up in the weapon's blast, and he lay face down, unmoving. Had she managed to kill him instead of saving him?

  “That's twice, and the last damn time yer going to use that on me, lass.” The Bomb Lance had risen up to his knees, his clothes stained red with the blood of his victims. He swung his left arm directly at her and fired. His weapon shuddered and let out a click, but no deadly metal emerged from the end of it.

  “Damn,” the Irishman swore as he dropp
ed his arm. A metal rod slid out pathetically from the end of the weapon and landed on the deck with a clunk. There was a pleading look in his eyes as he turned towards Sarah.

  She raised her gun, taking care to aim it slightly higher this time, intent on not disturbing the tangle of bodies around his feet—one of them most assuredly the Italian. She pulled the trigger, but this time the gun sighed instead of barking, the force of the blast managing only to knock the hat off the Irishman's head.

  Sarah felt her heart drop. She'd used up too much power with the previous shot. The gun was empty now, and another small piece of Sir Dennis Darby had died with it.

  Murphy opened his eyes and smiled. “Looks like we've both got a bum gun.” He lifted up his other arm, the harpoon at the end of it sharp and gleaming. “Lucky for me, I always carry two.”

  Sarah stared at the tip of the weapon. There seemed to be something awfully unjust about a universe that would let her fall to the same weapon that had killed Sir Dennis, instead of letting her use Darby's weapon to get revenge on the man who had killed him.

  She tried to will her eyes closed, but they refused. Instead, her gaze remained utterly transfixed on the tip of the sharp metal shaft pointed directly at her.

  “Cazzi!” yelled the Italian boy, throwing his arms around the villain's legs.

  Sarah watched breathless as the harpoon flew by her head, missing her by inches. It seemed to travel in slow motion as it passed, and she could clearly see that it had been modified from the version the Bomb Lance had used earlier, a ribbon of steel wire trailing behind it. The barb sunk into the main smokestack of the boat, easily piercing the thin metal tube.

  She approached the Irishman, almost but not quite completely ignoring the man who had saved her as he pulled himself up to his feet. He seemed to be basically unhurt, although it was hard to tell the true state of someone covered in blood.

  As she closed the last few feet between them, the Bomb Lance started laughing. “Seems like everyone's out of luck today.”

  Transferring the gun to her left hand, she curled her right into a fist and used her momentum to drive it into the Bomb Lance's face. She felt something a great deal like satisfaction as she watched his look of shock crumple underneath the metal-lined glove.

  He stood dazed for a moment, weaving slightly. “You're a fiend and a murderer,” Sarah proclaimed, and then struck him again. This time he collapsed to the ground, pulling taut the wire that trailed from his right arm.

  Surprisingly, instead of her rage dissipating, she felt it continue to grow. Sarah put the gun back into her hand. “Are you going to use that as a gun or a hammer?” the Italian girl had asked her. Now she knew it would have to work as both.

  She raised the weapon up high over her head. “You killed Darby, shot my father, and have stolen the lives of God knows how many others.” Her father would have yelled the words, but Sarah spoke them softly, almost like a prayer, just making sure she was loud enough for the old Irishman to hear. Her tone was flat and bitter, and she barely recognized the sound of her own voice. “Now I'm going to make you taste their pain.”

  She took a deep breath and heaved back, tensing her muscles so that she could put all of her strength into the blow. A voice cried out, and a hand gripped the lower half of her arm. “No, no, no!”

  She turned to see what fool had interfered, and stared straight into the Italian man's blue eyes. This time she did yell, letting her fury pour out on him. “How dare you!”

  “No, bella donna. You don't want this.”

  With a sense of alarm, frustration, and shame, she felt traitorous tears welling up in her eyes. “You don't know what he did to me!” she shouted, using her anger to hold back the flood. There would be no crying.

  She slowly lowered the weapon down and handed Emilio the gun, too exhausted to trust herself to hold it any longer.

  “Such a weapon!” He said, looking at the gun in his hands. “You make this?”

  Sarah shook her head and stared down at her feet. “Darby.”

  “Dennis Darby?” he replied. There was genuine awe in his voice.

  He stepped towards her. “And who are you?” He reached out toward her, and as his hand brushed against her face, Sarah gasped and closed her eyes. She could feel that he was gently lifting the mask away from her face.

  “No!” she said, turning away, but it was too late.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, letting his fingers trace down her cheeks. They felt cool against her skin, leaving a trail of sensation as his hand settled under her chin. He lifted up her face to gaze back into her eyes. “I know you. You are that girl! He called you Sarah! S-s-s-Stander!” He said the wrong name proudly, as if he'd won a contest.

  Sarah twitched free from his gentle grasp and stared out over the water. “Stanton,” she sighed as she glanced back up at him—so much for her masterful disguise. It was stupid to have removed the veil. Clearly the mask alone was useless. She should have covered her entire face like the women of the East. “Now you know my name. What's yours?”

  The Italian boy (man!) opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say another word, there was a stirring at their feet—the Bomb Lance had begun to recover, and something would have to be done about him.

  He had activated something in his harness, and the wire that connected to the harpoon to his arm began to retract, rapidly dragging him across the deck towards the smokestack.

  Sarah glanced up and saw that the balloon had positioned itself directly above the ship. Something toppled down from it, and an instant later a large weight slammed into the top of the ship's bridge, denting the roof. It was an anchor at the end of a thick rope that led back up to the balloon.

  Sarah tried to grab the Irishman as he slid away, but her gloves made her clumsy, and she only managed to snag the edge of his coat. The cloth pulled free from her hands almost as soon as she caught it.

  Murphy twisted himself around and brought his feet in front of him as he struck the wall of the wheelhouse. Using his momentum along with the power of the retracting cable, he walked straight up the side of the wooden shack, then grabbed onto the waiting rope.

  She ran after him, but he was out of reach.

  “Damn it! He's getting away!” she shouted.

  The Italian boy stood ran up next to her. “Is okay. We're okay.”

  Sarah shook her head, trying to clear the anger that was flooding her thoughts. “It's not okay. We have to stop him!” She desperately tried to think of something, anything she could do to prevent the villain from escaping.

  In frustration she reached down and grabbed at one of the metal rods sticking out of the roof nearby. The shaft was stuck deep in the pitch and wood, and by the time she had worked it free, the Irishman had already managed to steady himself on the anchor.

  “Not again!” Sarah shrieked as she ran toward the end of the deck. She threw the metal stick at him with all her might, but it was only enough to send it spinning through the air for a few yards.

  But it was too late—the villain was already rising rapidly into the sky, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

  By the time the doctor's assistant told Nathaniel that he could see Alexander, almost three hours had passed. For most of that time he had been sitting with Grüsser.

  The Prussian had seemed desperate for company, and had asked Nathaniel question after question about why he thought Stanton had been so eager to get into a fight with the Southerner.

  Nathaniel had suggested that perhaps it was the man's murderous attitude towards negroes that had been the final straw, but Grüsser seemed unconvinced. He believed that the Industrialist's temper alone had been the cause of it.

  “Something set him off,” he had replied. “I've never seen him hit a man without a reason.”

  “Zen I very much hope zat Herr Stanton never finds a reason to hit me, Ja?”

  Later on they had taken dinner in the dining room. As disgusting as he found Grüsser's noisy eating habits, he found th
e slurping to be a definite improvement over his incessant chatter.

  Truth be told, Nathaniel had little or no idea what Clements had done that could make Stanton so angry. The White Knight's costume made it obvious that he had some strong feelings when it came to the negroes, no matter how much he protested that he wasn't involved with the Klan “in any official capacity,” as he had so politically managed to describe it.

  But that would have hardly been reason enough to set him off. And even if the Stanton temper was something of a legend, he had never seen him resort to goading and needling his enemies the way he had with Clements. He had lost both decorum and control.

  It left the most likely reason as the most obvious: that between his taking on responsibilities as the new head of the Paragons along with the disappearance of Sarah, Stanton had been under too much pressure and had finally cracked.

  Nathaniel had tried to talk to his step-father about his step-sister's fate, but the old man had refused to discuss her with him. The Industrialist hadn't searched for her, or even spoken her name since the night she had run away.

  For his own part, Nathaniel wanted to believe that she was still well—that Sarah had left the city and carved out a life for herself someplace where she might escape the responsibilities of modern life that she seemed to detest so much.

  The only thing that his step-father had revealed was that she had been wearing a costume when she had tried to save the Automaton.

  It made Nathaniel laugh to think of her battling criminals and villains. The whole concept was completely ludicrous, and yet according to Stanton not only had it happened, but Sarah had succeeded in driving off the two attackers, even if it had been too late to save the mechanical man. And in retrospect, it did seem like the kind of ridiculous enterprise that she would attempt.

  Ever since the events at the Darby house, Nathaniel had been coming to the realization that she had never been the girl he had imagined her to be. And, to her credit, Sarah had tried to tell him as much.

  Things had not gone well between them since Darby's death, but siding with the machine over him during their battle had been unforgivable. Luckily the burns and cuts had mostly healed, but he still felt wounded by the betrayal.