by Gwynn White
“It was a knife fight?” Eli asked. “A deep gut shot would lay open a man.”
“I didn’t witness the killing blow.”
“Let me guess. You heard the commotion and snuck closer for a better look.”
She decided not to tell him about the light. “I thought it was just an argument.”
Eli fell silent, and when she glanced up, she could see the hardening of his jaw. He wasn’t happy with her.
“I don’t need a lecture,” she said, hoping to cut him off before he got started. “What are you doing here, anyway?” She tried to turn the focus on him. “You came looking for me, didn’t you?”
“You’re a magnet for trouble, Miss Briar.”
“Admit it. Your life would be boring without me.”
“True.” A smile broke through his stony expression, but he quickly sobered. “Shouldn’t we report this murder?”
Briar frowned. “I didn’t actually witness it. I heard voices, and saw a body and a man in a cloak. That wouldn’t be much help.” It certainly wouldn’t be worth the trouble Andrew would give her for drawing such unsavory attention to the family.
“The murderer is still at large,” Eli pointed out.
“Those men knew each other. It was an argument gone wrong. I doubt the cloaked guy is out seeking another victim.”
“Unless he saw you.”
Briar sighed. “He didn’t. Stop worrying about it.” She might as well be talking to Big Red, the most stubborn mule on her boat; telling Eli not to worry was wasted breath. He excelled at seeing mountains where there were only molehills.
They walked in silence, moving away from the banks of the Ohio River, climbing the town’s rolling hills. The streets were now cobblestone, and the houses larger. They turned down Andrew’s street, and Briar could see the oil lamps glowing to either side of his front door, as well as every window in the house.
A carriage had stopped before the house, and Briar watched a well-dressed man and woman exit the carriage and start up the walk toward the house. This was going to be a miserable evening.
“I guess I’d better use the back door,” Briar muttered. Andrew would have a fit if she showed up in her everyday clothes, even though this pair of pants bore no holes.
“I reckon so,” Eli agreed and started down the alley between Andrew’s house and the one next door.
The stable yard behind the house was a busy place. Briar stepped up on the back stoop, eyeing the commotion. What she wouldn’t give for a quiet evening on her boat. A smooth glass of whiskey and her fiddle would have been all the company she needed.
“I’ll wait for you here,” Eli said, taking a seat on the stone steps.
“This has the look of a long wait.”
“You were almost murdered this evening.”
“I was not. No one even saw me.”
“Are you certain?”
She wasn’t, but she didn’t want to admit it. “Fine. Suit yourself.” She pushed open the door and stepped into the back hall. Eli’s sigh followed her inside, making her want to sigh in exasperation. She was already over her brush with death, why wasn’t he?
Shaking her head, she toed off her boots and went in search of Molly. Unfortunately, the toe of one sock had a hole large enough to show one big toe, but there was nothing to be done for that now.
She found Molly in the kitchen, deep in conversation with her housekeeper. But the conversation came to an abrupt end the moment Molly saw her.
“Bridget! Where have you been?” Molly grasped her arm and immediately steered her into the hall. “Mr. Rose has been beside himself with worry.”
Briar’s annoyance at Molly’s use of her given name was momentarily overridden by her amusement at the woman’s insistence on calling her husband by his sire name. But then, Molly had a very different upbringing from Briar’s. The vexation on her face made their differences clear.
“You haven’t bathed or—”
“I bathed this morning,” Briar said.
“There’s a smear of mud on your cheek.”
“It’ll wipe off.” Briar rubbed her cheek.
“This is a disaster,” Molly moaned the words, her smooth forehead wrinkling with dismay. “Dinner will be served in half an hour and you’re not dressed.” Judging by Molly’s elegant gown and how elaborately her light brown hair was styled, Briar knew this would be more than just a matter of changing clothes.
Molly pulled her to the back stairs. “Come on. Time slips past while you argue.”
“I can change in minutes.”
“This is a very important evening for Mr. Rose,” Molly said over her shoulder as she guided Briar up the stairs. “His prospective business partner arrived last night, and will join us shortly.”
“What exactly is this new business?”
Molly opened the door to Briar’s room. “If you had gotten here sooner, Mr. Rose could have explained it to you. I have no head for such things.” She walked to the closet and dug through the sparse collection of dresses hanging inside. Briar tried to spend as little time as possible here. Unfortunately, the canal froze in the winter, forcing her to spend several long months beneath Andrew’s roof.
“You must have some idea,” Briar said, following her.
“It’s a manufacturing job, I understand.” Molly selected a gown and turned to face her. “This one, I think.” She laid the emerald green gown on the bed. “It goes well with your eyes.”
Briar ignored that, her attention on the travel trunk pushed against the far wall. She stepped closer, eyeing the odd silver lock hanging from the hasp. “What’s this?” She prayed it wasn’t more dresses.
“Oh dear. I forgot to have that sent downstairs. Mr. Martel got in late last night, and Mr. Rose had him installed in this room. He’s supposed to take a room downtown tonight.”
“Mr. Martel?” Briar asked. No, it couldn’t be. “Mr. Martel, the railroad engineer?”
“Yes.” Molly’s face brightened. “You know him?”
“He’s the designer of the new smokeless locomotives.”
“Locomotives, that’s right.” Molly smiled. “That’s what Mr. Rose wants to build.”
Briar stared at her cousin’s wife. Didn’t she understand that the railroads could put the canal industry out of business? Especially with these new engines?
“Well, come on.” Molly waved a hand at her. “Disrobe.”
“I can dress myself.”
“Last time I left you to dress for dinner, you climbed out the window.”
“Molly.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving until you change. Mr. Rose gave me explicit instructions.”
Briar was half tempted to tell her what Andrew could do with his instructions, but stopped herself. Molly was all about proper etiquette and being a good wife. She truly got upset when she failed to live up to those expectations. Molly drove Briar a bit crazy, but the truth was, she genuinely liked the woman. Molly was a good person. How she ended up with Andrew was the part Briar would never understand.
“Please don’t make me disappoint him.” Molly’s brow wrinkled.
“Fine.” Briar tried to ignore Molly’s grateful smile as she crossed to the bed, unbuttoning her waistcoat. It would have been so much easier if Andrew had married an ass like himself.
“Will that do, miss?” the maid asked, giving Briar a nervous glance in the mirror. After seeing Briar into her gown, Molly had left her with the maid, instructing them both to hurry.
“Yes, yes, that’s fine.” Briar waved away her concern before she could start back in with her brushes and ribbons. Briar’s red hair was now piled atop her head in some intricate fashion with long tendrils left to curl around her face. Briar would be surprised if she lasted the entire dinner before she was pulling it down.
“Will you be needing anything else?” the maid asked, still looking a bit nervous. She must have also fallen prey to Andrew’s instructions to make Briar presentable. Poor girl.
“You
may go,” Briar told her. “I’ll be right down.”
The girl dropped her an awkward curtsy and hurried from the room, probably to report to Molly that she had finished.
Wasting no time, Briar closed the door behind her. She wanted to nose around inside the travel trunk, but the lock looked daunting. Selecting a couple of hairpins from the vanity table she had just left, she squatted beside the trunk and eyed the lock. This wasn’t going to be easy.
It took a few minutes to bend the hairpins, but she soon formed one into a serviceable pick and the other into a makeshift tension wrench. She slid one hand beneath the lock, surprised by its weight and odd warmth. She had been expecting a heavy iron lock, but this seemed to be made of something different.
Sliding the pick into the narrow hole in the lock’s face, she felt for the tumblers, just to get an idea of what she was up against. Jimmy had taught her to pick locks last fall when an early freeze had stranded them for almost a week just south of Columbus. She hadn’t questioned him on how he had acquired such a skill, and he hadn’t asked her why she wanted to learn it.
Now, that skill was going to come in handy. Maybe.
The pin tapped against something in the bowels of the lock. The lock Jimmy had taught her on hadn’t felt like this. She pushed a little harder. Were the inner workings laid out differently? What if—
The pick slipped free without warning and bit into the heel of her hand.
“Damn it,” she whispered. Blood welled from the minor wound, and she brought it to her mouth, hoping to lick it away before it got on her dress. Molly would have a fit.
She took her hand from her mouth a moment later and was relieved to find the bleeding nearly stopped. A smear of blood marred the pick, and she started to wipe it on her dress, but stopped herself. Life was so much easier on her boat.
She returned her makeshift pick to the lock for another inspection before she inserted the tension wrench. The pick had barely slipped within the hole when the lock suddenly…dissolved.
Briar released the lock with a gasp.
“What the hell,” she whispered, watching the lock morph before her eyes. Four legs emerged from the sphere, followed by a head on a long, slender neck. An equally slim tail appeared, and of all the crazy things, a set of silver wings. The body grew more streamlined, formed from overlapping metal plates that fit together with astonishing intricacy.
Briar pulled away so quickly, she landed on her backside.
The creature hanging from the hasp raised its head, regarding her with curiosity. It blinked a set of gunmetal-blue eyes that looked like gems. No, not a creature. A dragon. A little metal dragon. The workmanship would have been a marvel, but the fact that it was moving spoke of something more.
“Dear Lord,” Briar whispered. “An automaton.” Such creations were the work of a metal mage. A ferromancer. And it was whispered that these mechanical wonders got their animation from a trapped soul.
But how had it come to be here? All the ferromancers and their automatons had been destroyed twenty years ago. Europe’s systematic destruction of not only the metal mages, but also their technology, at the hands of the Scourge—an equally suspect organization, had been the stuff of horror stories since she was a child.
The metal dragon dropped to the floor and took a step toward her, its tiny nails clicking against the hardwood.
Briar tensed, not sure what to expect. It was only slightly bigger than her hand, and it moved with such caution that it seemed more fearful of her than she was of it.
It took another step, then leaned toward her, seeming to sniff at her knee.
Slowly, she held out her hand, offering the creature her palm, much the way she would greet a new dog.
The little dragon pulled back, regarding her hand with suspicion before it leaned forward once more, as if sniffing her hand. Its cool nose bumped against her fingers, and she smiled.
“Aren’t you cute?” She carefully lifted a finger and rubbed it beneath the chin.
A soft whirring noise came from the creature, the sound not unlike a purr.
“You like that?” she asked.
It rubbed the side of its head against her finger, then climbed over her knee and into her lap. It sought out her other hand and nudged her until she petted it once more.
Briar laughed. “You must have been made from a gentle soul.”
The little dragon made another whirring noise, then abruptly leapt to her shoulder.
Briar gasped at the suddenness of the move, but the creature slid around behind her neck to her other shoulder where it dropped to its belly. Its scales were surprisingly warm against the side of her throat.
“Don’t mess my hair,” she admonished, “or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
The creature gave her a whirr of agreement, and she wondered how much it understood. If it had truly been made from a human soul, it might understand her very well. Goosebumps rose on her arms at the notion. To distract herself, she returned to her knees and opened the trunk.
“Let’s see what your master has in here,” she said to the dragon.
It didn’t seem to have a problem with that, so she pushed back the lid.
The trunk did contain clothing—well-made men’s apparel from what she could see—but that wasn’t all. There were also several books and half a dozen large scrolls of paper. Curious, Briar lifted out the scroll on top and began to unroll it. She soon found herself staring at a mechanical drawing of some sort. The schematic had been drawn by someone who wielded a pen with great skill. There were no marked out lines or retraces. The ink was unsmudged, and each line flowed without waver. The composer had known exactly what he was doing.
Various components and dimensions were labeled in the same elegant hand, but Briar couldn’t make sense of most of it. She unrolled the scroll a little more to read the caption. Life Circuit. What exactly did that mean?
The little dragon shifted against her neck, perhaps sensing her unease.
Briar’s attention dropped back to the drawing. It was a box-like structure, labeled with nothing more sinister than input and output, and a tangle of lines in the center. The lines were broken up with odd symbols she didn’t recognize. A few more moments’ study offered no more insight, so she rolled the scroll and reached for another.
She didn’t need to read the title of this drawing to understand what it was. The intricately drawn schematic was clearly a railroad locomotive. The title, written in the same elegant hand as the other drawing, declared it The Martel Automatic Locomotive.
“Automatic?” Briar whispered. As in, it did things on its own? Like an automaton?
She studied the schematic closer. Like the other, this drawing was densely labeled with dimensions and terminology she didn’t recognize. She saw no mention of anything to do with electric power—as the railroad worker had suggested—but unless it was spelled out, she doubted she would recognize it.
She was about to roll up the scroll when she found something truly disturbing. Near the conductor’s compartment was a smallish box labeled Soul Chamber.
“My Lord.” Briar stared at the schematic. Mr. Martel was a ferromancer.
3
Briar stared at the schematic, unable to believe what she held in her hands. If anyone else saw what the railroad’s prize engineer was designing—
A loud knock at her door made her jump.
“Bridget?” Andrew’s demanding tone carried easily through the door.
Something fell from her shoulder and landed with surprising weight in her lap. She looked down to see the silver lock lying against the fabric of her gown. Andrew had frightened the little dragon back into its other shape.
“Just a moment.” She hastily rolled the scroll and returned it to the trunk. Closing the lid, she considered the lock for just a moment before snapping it in place.
She pushed herself to her feet and hurried to the door, pulling it open to reveal Andrew’s frowning face.
His green eyes swept over h
er, but his sour expression didn’t change. “Late as always, but at least you no longer look like a man.”
Briar crossed her arms. “What’s this Molly tells me about your new business venture? You want to build locomotives for the railroad?”
“Yes. It’s an amazing opportunity for us.”
“Us?” Briar demanded. “The railroad is our competitor.”
“No, the railroad is our future. The canals are an antiquated mode of transportation that has served its purpose.”
“Antiquated? The canals are what keep your warehouses stocked.”
“I’m selling the dock warehouses. And the boat.”
Briar stilled. “What?” She must not have heard him right. “You’re selling my boat? Your father’s boat?”
“I do not make business decisions based on sentiment.”
“You can’t do this.”
“I own the boat; I can. Now come downstairs. I want to introduce you to Mr. Martel.” Andrew turned toward the door.
“I don’t want to meet him.”
Andrew stopped and slowly turned to face her. “Do not test me in this. I am your guardian—”
“I’m an adult.”
“And as such,” he continued, ignoring her, “it falls to me to provide for your future. I humored your captaining stint because it provided the funds to expand my business. Now that I have the money and the connections, it is time to move into the next phase.”
Dread clenched Briar’s stomach. “What is the next phase?”
“Expanding the train yards and building a manufacturing plant.”
“And how do I factor in?”
“You might be nearly a spinster, but you are not unattractive. A wealthy older man might find you charming, provided you don’t speak.”
Briar glared at him.
“Or a nice young man who knows no better,” Andrew continued. “Come now. If he’s returned, I will introduce you to Mr. Martel.”
“And which is he, the old man or the young?” Briar asked.
Andrew didn’t answer. He left the room, expecting her to follow.
Briar glanced back at the trunk. Did Andrew know his precious Mr. Martel was a ferromancer? Would he even care? As long as Andrew turned a profit, he’d work with a necromancer—if such a talent existed.
