Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City

by Meljean Brook

  Anne’s expression dimmed. “Will she be angry?”

  Not if her reaction was anything like Rhys’s had been.

  “I think she’ll be so glad to see you that nothing else will matter. But even if she is angry, she’ll listen to you. And no matter what you’ve done, if she understands why you’ve done it, her anger will probably pass.” Rhys knew this too well. Drunk, he’d once lost all sense and terrified Mina, forced himself on her. Nothing Anne could do would ever equal that trespass. Mina had forgiven him because he hadn’t meant to hurt her, because he hadn’t realized that he was frightening rather than pleasuring her—and because he’d been horrified when he had realized the truth of it. He hadn’t deserved her pardon, but he thanked God that she’d given it. “She’s an inspector, remember. She always considers motivations, intentions. Did you mean any harm?”

  Eyes filling again, Anne shook her head.

  “So tell her—and don’t lie. If you do, she’ll know, eventually. So even if you’re ashamed of what happened, tell her the truth.”

  “All right.” Her voice was thin, uncertain again. “Will we wait for her at home?”

  Rhys didn’t know. He looked to Mina’s father, who knew how family worked, who knew what little girls needed. Rockingham gave a small nod.

  “We’ll wait at home,” Rhys confirmed. “We’ll send another message and let her know you’ll be there when she comes home tonight. Now, I’ve got an empty seat in my balloon. Will you ride with me?”

  Excitement lit the girl’s face. Her familiar grin broke through. “Can I fly it?”

  Fly it? Anxiety hollowed out his gut. Rhys looked to Rockingham again for advice, but the earl had disappeared back into the Crèche.

  God help him.

  * * *

  As useless as she’d been before Rhys’s message arrived, Mina ought to have just gone to the Crèche, too. But though she still worried and wondered what had kept Anne from home, she finally settled enough to focus on the task at hand: removing the metal bolt embedded deep in Redditch’s chest.

  “Look here, Newberry.” With the tip of her pincers, she pointed to the edges of the entry wound. “What do you see?”

  The constable’s eyes seemed to bulge behind the lenses of his magnifying goggles. His throat worked as he bent over the body. After a year with her, Newberry no longer questioned the necessity of these morbid examinations, but the close inspection still proved difficult for him. He simply didn’t have the stomach for it.

  But at least he was trying, Mina thought. Many inspectors only conducted a cursory exam after bringing a body in, and even those inspectors who took more time often overlooked or misinterpreted physical evidence. She wished that it were mandatory for all of them to spend years assisting a surgeon or physician—as Mina had assisted her father—but the logistics were impossible. She sighed. At least Newberry would have developed a good eye by the time he advanced to inspector, and hopefully learn to keep down his dinner.

  Or breakfast. He straightened again, breathing deep. It was incredible that he could see the worst sorts of injuries and mutilations in the street without this reaction, and yet the moment he magnified a bit of exposed muscle or organs, he was swaying like a seasick urchin.

  Mina pursed her lips. Eventually, she would be promoted from inspector and leave the streets behind; she’d always intended to mimic Hale’s career and take a supervisory role, but lately she’d begun to consider a position where she could perform these morbid exams, instead. Enough bodies came in to keep her fully occupied every day—and the dead deserved more than what many inspectors could give them.

  Perhaps it would be easier on the inspectors, too.

  “Constable?”

  Newberry swallowed hard. “The edges are relatively clean, sir. There’s a small amount of tearing, but they aren’t ragged.”

  “And that means?”

  “That bolt in his chest either has straight edges at the head to match, or more likely, it punched into him with great force—and probably not from very far away.”

  Perfect. “So let’s see, shall we?”

  She pushed the pincers in past broken ribs, gripped the end of the bolt. When she saw Newberry close his eyes and turn his head, as if to avoid hearing the sound, Mina said, “You lived in Manhattan City until last year. Did you know anything of Redditch then?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you hear any gossip?”

  “No, sir. Gossiping was punishable by a fine, so no one was likely to do it with a constable of the law.”

  Mina paused, looked up at him. To her knowledge, he’d never lied or exaggerated when giving details about life in Manhattan City, but some were so absurd that she automatically took them for a joke. Yet he wasn’t joking at all, she realized. “A fine?”

  “Yes, sir. Wagging tongues make idle hands.” His cheeks reddened. “Of course I have heard gossiping, but none of it was about Lord Redditch. I was nowhere near the same society as he was.”

  No, of course not. Even under the Horde, the classes in England had remained distinct, but those distinctions did not begin to approach the level of stratification in Manhattan City.

  “Don’t they have newssheets?” she wondered. Without gossip, there would be hardly anything for the journalists to report.

  “We had pamphlets.” He cleared his throat. “I also spoke to my wife last night.”

  “Did you? You must make a very fine husband, constable.”

  His color deepened to a lovely shade of beet. “About the murder, sir.”

  Mina grinned and focused on the bolt again. “What did she have to say? I recall that she’s a viscount’s granddaughter, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, sir, with marriages between her relations and Redditch’s. His wife is a cousin several times removed.”

  And not likely to invite Temperance to tea. Newberry’s wife had been ruined before she’d married him, and though she’d been dying of consumption, her family had not been able to ship her off to England fast enough and wash their hands of her. Mina didn’t like to think that the amiable Lord Redditch wouldn’t have allowed Temperance Newberry to step foot in his home, but she knew it was probably true.

  Yes, there were many things about Manhattan City that she wished were a joke.

  Mouth set, she slowly worked the bolt from his chest. “Continue, constable.”

  “There’s not much to tell. Both families are of the Good Works sort.”

  “I have no idea what that means, Newberry.”

  A short silence fell. Mina glanced up. The constable’s eyes appeared huge behind his goggles, and for a moment, he seemed taken aback—or at a loss to explain.

  “But it’s . . . Everyone is—” He shook his head, started again. “There are those who are saved, and there are those who aren’t. We don’t know who. But for those who work hard, who live frugally, you can see from the fruits of their labor whether they are one of those who have attained grace.”

  Ah. The old churches in England were mostly used for business and sleeping now, but the New Worlders kept their pews well-filled. “So what are the Good Works sort?”

  “Well, they say the same, sir, and they make certain everyone else lives by it. But they’re born with wealth, and don’t labor for a bit of it—and they don’t live frugally. They run a lot of charities, instead.”

  “Charities are worthwhile.”

  “I have no argument with that, sir. I do have an argument with anyone who has never labored a day in his life telling someone who has worked her fingers to the bone that if she just worked harder she wouldn’t need charity.”

  The flush on his cheeks now wasn’t embarrassment, but anger or resentment. A surprising man, her Newberry. Mina wouldn’t pry, wouldn’t ask if that woman had been his mother or a friend, or simply someone he’d once seen.

  “And so this is partially why Redditch was so adamant that the factories do not lose their workers. He wasn’t just saving them from going hungry; he’s saving their soul
s.”

  Newberry seemed to cringe at her phrasing, but he nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”

  She pursed her lips, considered that. “If a man can be judged by the fruits of his labor, my husband ought to be lounging on a gold throne in Heaven right now.”

  Newberry seemed to choke. After a few odd noises, he managed, “His Grace isn’t all that frugal, sir. Or pious.”

  “I suppose not. And here is our bolt, constable.” Made of steel, an inch and a half wide at the head, three inches long. “It has a mushroomed head, so it must have taken a great deal of force to penetrate as it did. Shot by a pneumatic launcher, maybe, since no one heard a gun.”

  “What of a rail gun?”

  Mina considered that. Accelerated by electromagnetic forces, the bullets achieved high speeds and the guns made no sound when fired. “Perhaps. It would require electricity, but maybe there was a generator inside that wheel. Damn it. We need to find that blasted wheel.”

  Newberry’s mustache twitched before his mouth suddenly firmed. “Yes, sir.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Oh, but that smile did not interest her as much as his reason for concealing it. “What amuses you, constable?”

  For a moment she wondered if he would feign a misunderstanding. Then he said, “You do, sir.”

  Oh? Mina only had to arch her brows, and either his courage failed him or his good sense returned—as did the heat in his cheeks.

  “Not you, sir!” he hastily amended. “I was simply thinking back to my expectations of you when we were first paired, given what I’d heard about your family from the other constables—and what little I knew of aristocrats.”

  “Gossiping, Newberry?”

  He went from pink to red in the space of a heartbeat. “No, sir. It was research.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “When I was told to whom I’d been assigned, sir, I thought that meant I’d been assigned to mind a woman who’d only been given a position because of her father’s.”

  Ah. So Newberry had believed the earl’s daughter had only become a detective inspector through her father’s name and influence—and that Newberry had been assigned to watch Mina while she bungled her way through the investigations.

  Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong. In the first years after the revolution, the police force couldn’t be particular when hiring their constables or inspectors—they needed people to fill positions immediately. And although a woman like Superintendent Hale would have been acceptable at any time due to her experience in Manhattan City, the earl’s status might very well have tied the superintendent’s hands when Mina had applied her services to the force, and made Hale feel obligated to give Mina the job.

  But the earl’s daughter had remained on the job only because Hale had recognized how very good Mina was at it. And Hale hadn’t given Mina an assistant to watch her bumble about, but so that Mina could work unmolested.

  “And although I once questioned your methods, sir, I cannot question the results. You’re like a dog on a bone.”

  Mina had to laugh. Yes, perhaps she was. “This time, I am a dog chasing after a wheel. So let us finish here, and we’ll begin knocking on doors again . . . and hopefully we’ll sniff something out.”

  * * *

  They didn’t, and by the end of her shift, Mina was hot and irritated. The sweltering days of summer had returned full force. Beneath her heavy hat, sweat plastered her hair to her head. Her chemise seemed a thin bit of nothing between her skin and chafing body armor. Though she had already sat an hour in this rumbling steamcoach, traffic was not moving. Damn it all. On her next spending binge, she would buy herself a two-seater balloon.

  And she needed to shake herself out of this foul mood before she reached home. Anne waited.

  The deep breath she took smelled of dirt and smoke. She glanced out the window as the steamcoach jolted forward a few inches. In the cab beside her, a brown-haired man sat with his face in his hands—

  Oh, sweet heavens. She was saved. “Scarsdale!”

  His head came up. The bleakness of his expression stabbed at her chest before he grinned, tipped his hat to her. “Inspector! How do you—Oh, bloody hell.”

  He suddenly hopped out of the cab into the road, and staggered. A steamcart honked. Mina covered her cry of alarm as a spider rickshaw nearly scuttled over him. She lurched for the carriage door, flung it open. On unsteady legs, he weaved his way toward her, clambered into the coach. Alcohol fumes overwhelmed the smoke and dirt.

  By the starry sky, he was utterly soused.

  “Forgive me.” He plopped down beside her. “I can’t sit facing backward.”

  Mina could, but she didn’t want him to vomit on her feet. “Are you well?”

  “I must be.” He lifted his hands, offered a beatific smile. “I have just signed a marriage contract.”

  Smoking hells. “Before or after you began drinking?”

  “Before.”

  At least there was that. “And so you’re engaged to be married to whom?”

  “Does it matter? It was one of the ladies I courted. I’m certain she was pretty. I will still have to close my eyes.”

  “Did you tell her of your preference for men?”

  His bitter laugh was answer enough. No, of course he hadn’t. Mina didn’t know whether to feel more sympathy for him or the woman. Both of them, perhaps.

  She took his hand, and his fingers shook against hers. “I used to envy you once,” she said softly. “Because you could hide what you were from those who would hate you for it. But I am sorry that you have to hide.”

  “I envy you,” he said. “And the captain.”

  Never the duke, always the captain. “He would change the world for you, too.”

  “You are kind to think so, inspector.” He lifted the back of her hand to his lips. “He might try. But don’t think that even he is capable of that change. Let him change it for his family.”

  “You are his family, you blind idiot.”

  His gaze sharpened. “Do you think he knows that?”

  “I think that he will eventually figure it out.”

  “Ah, so you have discovered what a thick-skulled lackwit your husband is—”

  Mina yanked her hand from his. “Tread carefully, sir.”

  “—when he is trying to sort his emotions.” Scarsdale finished with a grin.

  Oh. Well, he was not all wrong. “So that he cannot put into words the difference between wanting an airship captain for an expedition and wanting me, even though he feels a difference?”

  “Quite so. We are speaking of a man who could only think of you in terms of possession, because he didn’t know the word he needed was love.” Even weaving in his seat, he looked rather smug. “Not until I said it to him.”

  “I am in your debt, then.” And about to go deeper. “He fears for me when I work.”

  “Oh, yes. Terrified.”

  Her heart twisted painfully. “How do I help him?”

  Scarsdale laughed, holding his stomach. “Oh, now who is the blind idiot?”

  Yes, there was one obvious solution. “I don’t want to quit my job.”

  But should she?

  “Dear God. What would quitting do? Then he would be terrified when you went to the milliner’s. When you took the stairs. When you used a fork.” He shook his head. “Use your inspector’s brain. Tell me, do you worry for your brother? He is out on the high seas somewhere, on a ship that has already been taken by airship pirates once this year.”

  Yes, she worried. “But it is not a fear like Rhys’s.”

  “Because you have had years to become accustomed to it. But the captain has never loved before you. He has never had family. Now he does, and all of the little worries that he never felt before are crashing in on him.”

  That made perfect sense. And it meant that he simply needed time. Mina would give him all that he wanted. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Well, do try not to be shot through the heart again. That was bey
ond terror for him. And I almost lost four toes waiting with him in a freezing steamcoach outside your window.”

  Mina’s lips parted. She’d been in bed, stricken with bug fever, with a rusty clockwork heart ticking on her breast. Now she had a heart of mechanical flesh—though she barely noticed the difference. She could run fast and far without tiring, but it still pounded. It still ached with pain or unbearable love.

  And now, that heart made of metal fibers and nanoagents seemed to squeeze tight within her chest. “I was told he never came, that it was too dangerous.”

  “Well, we were not supposed to. You were not to have any excitement at all. So we made certain that no one knew we were there.” He gave her a narrowed look. “Did you truly think he wouldn’t come?”

  “I didn’t know then,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  “And now?”

  “I would climb out the window to find him, certain he was there.”

  “Saving my toes, as well.” He sighed. “They might fall off before his ball, anyway. Ah! Today we received Lady Redditch’s regrets that she will not be able to attend. I’m rather surprised. We have several others coming out of mourning early for it. Hell, there are some crossing an ocean for it.”

  Mina grinned. Rhys had scheduled the ball during the height of summer, when Parliament was in recess and the temperatures drove most of the aristocratic bounders away from London and into the country or back to Manhattan City. He’d hoped that would keep the numbers low and fulfill his social duty for the year.

  “Does he have any idea how many people have accepted his invitation?”

  There was a wicked slant to his smile. “I’ve only showed him a few.”

  “Oh, you’re awful. You are like a brother.”

  “And will you tell him the truth?”

  “Of course not.” Mina laughed, shaking her head. “He’s already been terrified enough.”

  * * *

  Though in truth, Mina didn’t believe a ball would frighten Rhys. He simply did not care much about it, whether one person showed or a thousand. He would not care if people said it was the best ball of the year or the worst. He would only care what Mina, her parents, and Scarsdale thought of it.