The Brass Giant

by Brooke Johnson

  The bell above the pawnshop door tinkled, and Tolly came out onto the landing. “Pa said you need to clean the display cases. They’re smudged.”

  Petra released a heavy sigh and glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll be in shortly. Just give me a minute.”

  “Is everything all right?” asked Tolly, plopping down beside her. “You’ve been awfully distracted lately.”

  Petra only nodded. A rickshaw rattled down the road, followed by a trail of black smoke puffing from the stack. Several steam vents flew open and cleared the noxious fumes from the street.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. She released a puff of air, blowing her bangs away from her eyes. “Not with you.”

  “Still upset about the University, then?” He leaned back against the stairs and looked up the street toward the gleaming towers on the other side of the city. “I don’t know what you expected, Pet. You’re a girl. You don’t belong there.”

  She just shook her head. It wasn’t even about the University anymore, or the Guild. All she could think about was the automaton—­and its engineer. She wished she could disassemble the machine, discover the secrets of its hidden controls, find out what exactly made it tick, what prompted the Guild to purchase its design for such a large sum of money.

  She needed to know.

  But Tolly wouldn’t understand that. He would never understand.

  He didn’t want to.

  Petra turned on him. “Is there something else you wanted?”

  Tolly shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask how you were.”

  “As if you actually care,” she snapped, suddenly angry. “Don’t pretend, Tolly. I’m not stupid. I know what you think of me, what you think of my tinkering. And I’m tired of hearing it. I’m tired of listening to you tell me over and over that I’m never going to be an engineer, that I’m not one of them, that I don’t belong.” Her throat tightened as anger filled her up inside. “Well I do belong. And one day, I’ll be there,” she said, pointing up the street. “I’ll be the best of them, and then you’ll see.”

  “Right.” He rolled his eyes and stood. “Well until then, you have some counters to clean, so hop to it.” He vanished back into the shop, the door slamming behind him.

  Petra hugged her knees, gritting her teeth as she focused on the University, its brass walls gleaming in the afternoon sun. She meant it. Someday, she would be one of them, and then the whole world would see.

  The shop door banged open, slamming against the brick wall as burly, snarling Mr. Monfore stepped onto the landing, Petra’s broom perched on his shoulder. Swinging the broom around, he smacked her in the side with the bristles.

  “Get up off them steps, girl. You have cleaning to do.”

  Petra clenched her hands into fists as rage boiled in her stomach, rising up her chest and into her throat. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. “I said I’d be in shortly.”

  Monfore pointed through the doorway. “You get in there and clean—­now—­or I’ll have your wages docked for the day. I don’t pay you to dawdle.” He flung the broom down the stairs and stalked back into the shop.

  Petra sucked in a deep breath, held it, counted to five, and slowly exhaled. She ought to break the broom over his balding head. Instead, she descended the stairs and snatched up the fallen broom. She hated the days when Monfore was in charge of the shop instead of Mr. Stricket. He was a filthy lump of slag compared to Mr. Stricket and his golden manner, an overbearing dictator over her during the hours she was there.

  Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her pocket watch and checked the time. Only three hours more and she would be free of him. Three hours and she could go home, where nothing but a bland dinner and unruly siblings awaited her. She kneaded her temples and inhaled deeply again, counted, and exhaled. Somehow, she would survive it all.

  MONFORE SAT BEHIND the counter, flipping through a stack of bank notes. Under his scrutinizing gaze, Petra cleaned the glass display cases, dusted the tops of the shelves, filed receipt copies, polished the items in the window, and swept the entire shop floor twice. Tolly had snuck off—­avoiding her, no doubt. It annoyed her that he could skip out on work and still receive more pay than she did. Benefits of being the shop owner’s son, she supposed.

  “Girl,” growled Monfore. “Find last week’s pawn stubs and bring them here. I need to call on those customers.”

  Petra wedged around the counter and squeezed a path between the paperboard boxes full of tickers Mr. Stricket needed to repair. The stacks seemed to grow every day. She turned the lamp up in the back room and scanned the labels attached to the front of the file cabinet drawers. Pawn stubs were at the top. She dragged a stool from the corner, and as she climbed onto the chair, the doorbell tinkled. Another pair of grimy footprints to sweep from the polished floor.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said Monfore, transforming into the amiable persona he reserved for customers only. “How may I help you?”

  “Ah, yes—­well . . .” The customer trailed off and cleared his throat.

  Petra nearly lost her balance, grabbing the cabinet for stability. That voice. It couldn’t be. She looked over her shoulder. Monfore stood leaning against the counter, but because of the stacks of boxes, she couldn’t see the customer. Holding her breath, she carefully stepped down from the stool and extinguished the gaslight, plunging the back room in semidarkness.

  “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?” asked Monfore. “We have all sorts of trinkets. Perhaps looking to please a lady?”

  Petra crouched behind the stacks of broken tickers, peering out through a space between the boxes and the door frame. The customer shifted his weight, moving his face out of her sight; she could only see him from the waist down now. He was finely dressed, with a tailored waistcoat and trousers, and spats over his shoes. He held a hat at his side, his thumb rhythmically rubbing the brim.

  If she could just look at him properly . . .

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. “But, my apologies, I’m not here to purchase anything.”

  She was certain it was his voice, and though she had heard it only once before, it stuck in her mind all the same.

  “Looking to pawn?” asked Monfore.

  “No, sir,” he said. “But you may still be of help to me. I am looking for someone—­a young woman.” Petra’s breath caught in her throat. “She may work here?”

  Monfore sat in his chair behind the counter and rested his hands on his lap, glancing toward Petra’s hiding place. She swallowed hard, knowing he would somehow find a way to punish her for this. The seconds ticked by in silence.

  The customer cleared his throat. “Might you know of such a woman, sir?”

  “This girl,” said Monfore, steepling his fingers over his lap. “Did she wrong you in some way?”

  “No, nothing of the sort.”

  Monfore reclined in his chair. “I doubt my shop girl would be of any interest to you—­nothing more than a penniless orphan with little to no prospects beyond working here in my shop. She doesn’t have the aptitude for much else. Quite dim-­witted and difficult to manage, you see. I doubt she’s the one you’re looking for.”

  “I see.”

  Petra wanted to throw something at Monfore. She closed her eyes, trying to find the nerve to stand up, walk out of that room, and introduce herself properly. She had already missed one opportunity. She couldn’t miss a second.

  “Then, I apologize for wasting your time, sir,” said the customer. “I must have confused the woman’s identity.”

  “I am sorry I could not be of more help,” said Monfore.

  “Yes, I am sure that you are,” he replied, his tone veering from politeness to suspicion. He stood there a moment longer, an uncomfortable silence weighing on the room. “We
ll, then,” he said finally. “Good day, I suppose.”

  Monfore nodded politely, but the glimmer in his eye was anything but friendly. “And to you, sir.”

  Petra held her breath and waited, keeping her eye locked on the empty space between the stack of boxes and the door frame. If he would only move a little farther toward the front of the shop, she might see his face, but as he turned on his heel and strode toward the door, his heavy boots thumping across the wooden floor, his back remained to her. She still couldn’t make out his face from where she sat.

  He reached out for the door handle, but then hesitated, curling his fingers into a fist. “One thing,” he said, turning back around.

  Petra’s heart skipped a beat as she caught sight of his windswept hair, thick eyebrows, and intense copper eyes. The engineer had come looking for her.

  “Your shop girl,” he said. “What’s her name?”

  Monfore shifted in his chair. “I don’t see how that matters.”

  The engineer rubbed his thumb along his jaw, studying Monfore with a calculating stare. “No,” he said, frowning. “Perhaps not.”

  Petra could see his face so clearly now—­the glimmer of his eyes in the gaslight, the line of his jaw, the intensity behind his gaze—­as she silently pleaded for him to glance around the shop. If he turned just slightly and looked toward the back room, he would see a sliver of her face in the doorway; he would know she was there.

  Hiding, like a child.

  Realizing how foolish she must look, sitting there in the dark, she withdrew from the door and flattened herself against the shelves, cursing her cowardice. A moment later the bell over the shop door tinkled, and he was gone—­again.

  Minutes passed before she shakily stepped out from behind the stacks of paperboard boxes and faced Monfore.

  “What the bloody hell was that about?” he demanded.

  Petra winced, his tone piercing through every last shred of her practiced restraint. But instead of showing false shame, as he expected, she let her anger rise, billowing up inside her—­every torment, every insult, every belittling remark she had endured in the years of Monfore’s tyrannical reign over her, all the times he had called her stupid and worthless and inadequate. She gritted her teeth and stared him in the eye, determined not to back down or let him get the better of her, not this time. She was tired of obeying, tired of taking orders, tired of letting others rule her life.

  “It’s none of your damn business,” she said firmly.

  “None of my—­” The vein in his temple bulged, and his eye twitched. He rose to his full height. “Now you listen here, girl. I told you once—­I don’t put up with the same nonsense Stricket allows.” He jabbed a finger toward her. “You come here on time. You work. You go home. You don’t take breaks. You don’t invite loiterers into my shop. And you sure as hell don’t disrespect me.” A spray of spittle rained on her cheek. “Understand?”

  Petra wiped her face with her apron, seething beneath her calm exterior. “Perfectly. Now, if it isn’t too inconvenient for you, sir, I’ll be going.” She turned away and marched toward the front door, holding her chin high.

  “You still have forty minutes left in your shift,” said Monfore. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She stopped in front of the door, tightening her hands into fists. “I have other business to attend to at the moment,” she said quietly, not turning around. “So if you don’t mind—­”

  “If you don’t put in the hours, you don’t get paid, girl. You walk out that door, you won’t see a penny of wages this week. I’ll make certain of that.”

  Petra hesitated. Matron needed that money, even if it was a meager twenty pence. Her eyes drifted to the small square window set into the door. On the other side, standing at the top of the stairs, was the engineer, unaware that she stood just inches away. She gripped the door handle. More than anything, she wanted to talk to him, find out the secret behind his automaton, but she just stood there. She couldn’t give up a week’s worth of wages. It wasn’t worth it.

  The engineer vanished from the window, gone forever. Petra released the door handle and bowed her head, defeated.

  “Pawn stubs,” growled Monfore.

  Petra shuffled to the back room and climbed onto the stool again. She rested her head on the filing cabinet, wishing she had the nerve to tell Monfore to shove off, wanting nothing more than to march out of the store, face the engineer again, and demand to know how the automaton worked. But she didn’t. She was a coward.

  Monfore cleared his throat, and she yanked open the drawer. As she searched through the collection of pawn stubs, her thoughts drifted to the engineer. Why had he come to the shop? Why was he looking for her? She snatched the correct file and slammed the drawer shut. Why did she care?

  “Here.” She tossed the file onto the counter and picked up her broom, spending the last thirty-­five minutes of her shift listlessly sweeping dirt from one side of the shop to the other.

  When her pocket watch finally ticked past four o’clock, Petra filled the dustpan and carried it to the front door to dump it off the side of the stairs into the bin. Then she could go home and curse herself a thousand times more for not meeting the engineer face-­to-­face when she had the chance.

  Turning the handle, she pressed herself against the door and pushed it open, abruptly knocking into something at the top of the steps. There was a hiss of pain, and Petra realized that there was a man sitting on the landing. She dropped the dustpan and edged around the door, wringing her hands.

  “So sorry, sir. I didn’t—­” She stopped, her eyes widening as the man stood to face her, unable to utter anything more than a startled gasp.

  He rubbed his shoulder. “No, don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have . . .” He finally looked up and saw her. His copper-­brown eyes met hers, and a slow smile lifted his lips. “It’s you.”

  Petra felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Anything she thought to say in reply sounded absolutely daft. She hadn’t expected him to be there—­to be here—­and he stared at her so intensely that she could not find the sounds to put into words.

  “Would you like to take a stroll?” he asked, appraising her with a crooked smile.

  The warmth in his voice broke the tension that had coiled up inside her. She swallowed the dry feeling in her throat and released the breath she had been holding. “All right,” she said hoarsely.

  She placed the broom against the railing and took his offered arm as if she were some finely dressed lady, not a shop girl in a soot-­stained work dress and dusty apron. He led her down the front steps and turned up the street, heading toward the center of the city. He smelled of metal polish and oil, and the familiarity of the scent calmed her.

  Petra glanced up at his striking profile. He was much taller than she remembered, and he had shaved recently. He casually regarded her inquisitive stare, and she caught the faint hint of a smile before she turned away, the heat rising in her face. They passed several shops and apartment buildings before either of them broke the awkward silence.

  The engineer spoke first. “You lied, didn’t you?”

  “Sorry?” It wasn’t the conversation starter she expected.

  “That day, when I came down the street with my automaton. You criticized my work, and when I asked what you would have done differently in the machine’s design, you said you did not know. You lied to me.”

  He slowed to a stop and looked into her eyes, shocking her into silence with the full force of his copper stare. “The others might have been convinced that you were nothing more than a foolish girl who knew nothing beyond how to push a broom, but the way you looked at my machine . . .” He inhaled a deep breath. “When you placed your hands on the automaton, your eyes lit up like a thousand electric lights, and I knew you were more than just a shop girl, more than what you seemed to be,” he said, a breathless excitement to his voic
e. “The way you focused on the sounds within the machine, the way you examined its structure, its manufacture, assessing, judging, calculating, rearranging it all in your mind—­I saw it all. I saw the truth.” He smiled. “Only an engineer could look upon a hunk of moving metal with such enthusiasm.”

  Petra frowned. “What are you getting at?”

  He regarded her carefully, seeming to weigh his next words in his mind before he spoke. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I need your help.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “You were right,” he said, his voice suddenly heavy. “The automaton is flawed.” He turned his gaze up the street toward the University and sighed, running his fingers through his dark hair, tousling the neatly combed tresses. “I’m supposed to redesign the machine for some future use by the Guild, but I need help doing it. The prototype you saw was nothing more than an experiment, to see if I could manufacture a theoretical control I’d been thinking of, but then my father . . .” He trailed off. “Never mind that. Needless to say, when the council saw my design, they wanted to own it, to reproduce it—­an innovation for the new age.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “But it isn’t ready. It needs more work.” He sighed and then mumbled, “I should have never put it forward in the first place.”

  Petra stared at him, a paid engineer of the Guild, complaining to her about having everything she had ever wanted—­a University education, Guild recognition, a future career in engineering, and most importantly, the work space and funds to create the next great innovations of the world. She gritted her teeth, trying not to let the irritation slowly building up inside her show. It wasn’t fair.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

  He regarded her carefully. “You saw the automaton for what it was—­a haphazard prototype, a flawed machine not fit for the Guild.” His eyes blazed with intensity, the wheels of his mind seeming to whir into a frenzy. “You could help me change that.”

  Petra frowned. “How?”