The Brass Giant

by Brooke Johnson

  “Stand back, Petra.”

  Her mother kicked at the blazing timbers blocking her in, but as she moved the burning boards, the pyre shifted, raining cinders and coals and kindling onto the floor. She managed to move the fiery wreckage just enough to slip her arm through unharmed.

  “Darling, come here.” Her sleeve smoked from the heat, her lace cuffs charred and hands reddened with burns. She wore a gold ring on her middle finger—­a great clunky thing that glinted in the firelight.

  Petra moved closer and touched the shaking hand, and her mother gripped her fingers.

  “I need you to be brave now,” she said, her voice trembling. “You must get to safety.” She let go of her hand and placed a screwdriver and pocket watch into Petra’s jumper pocket. “I need you to go outside, sweetheart. Go to the square, to the café, the one with the apple pastries you love so much.” The fire spread across the ceiling, and the timbers creaked and groaned. Her mother closed her eyes and tears slid down her cheeks. “Can you do that for Mommy?”

  A man shouted over the roar of the fire, bellowing their names. “Adelaide! Petra!”

  Her mother’s eyes widened. “Friedrich . . .” She inhaled a deep breath and shouted his name. “We’re here!” She then reached forward and grabbed Petra’s hand. “Go find Friedrich,” she said quickly. “And go to the café. I’ll meet you there, at our favorite table.” She forced a smile. “But you need to go now, darling.”

  A man stumbled toward them, coughing into his sleeve. “Addy!”

  “Friedrich, get her out of here.”

  His strong arms wrapped around Petra, lifting her away from the fire. She cried, tears streaming down her cheeks as she gripped her mother’s shaking hand, not wanting to let go.

  “Addy,” he said, his voice strained, “I can—­”

  “Go,” said her mother, letting go of Petra’s hand. “Go! Take care of her, Friedrich. Keep her safe.”

  Another beam fell from the ceiling, dragging paneling and shingles down from above. The fire whooshed upward, smoke and heat reaching for the fresh air. A blazing rafter fell in front of the desk, obscuring the woman’s face with cinders and smoke.

  “I love you, darling,” she said, her voice choked by ash and tears. “Just remember Mommy loves you.”

  Friedrich pulled Petra away, wrapping her in the warmth of his jacket. She struggled against him, trying to escape his arms, trying to reach for her mother’s hand, but he held her tight, hugging her close. “I’ll come back for you, Addy.”

  “Go,” she whispered, her voice barely heard over the roaring flames.

  With one final glance at the fire, he tightened his hold on Petra and ran.

  PETRA AWOKE TO darkness.

  The room was cold, empty. Though surrounded by her family, all her siblings sleeping nearby, she had never felt so alone.

  She stared at the ceiling as the memory of the fire burned across her thoughts. Whatever Matron Etta had been told, Petra was not the niece of Lady Chroniker, the most brilliant woman that engineering had ever known.

  She was her daughter.

  She sat up, running her hands through her rumpled hair, her exhaustion forgotten. How could she have forgotten that? How could she forget the last moments of her own mother’s life? The scene was as vivid as if it had only just happened, wrestled out of some dark part of her memory, long forgotten until now. She had been inside the University that day, carried from the flames and her mother by a man named Friedrich, the one who must have given her to Etta Wade and changed the course of her life.

  She kneaded her forehead, replaying the memory over and over in her head. Why didn’t he try to save her mother too? And afterward, why didn’t he stay with her and keep his promise to look after her? How different would her life be if her mother had survived, if Friedrich had disobeyed her request and dragged her out of the fire, if the ceiling hadn’t collapsed and buried them both in the rubble? A moment more, and he could have saved them both.

  Petra stood up from her bed, stretching her arms overhead with a yawn. The gray light through the kitchen window told her the sun had not yet risen. She had no desire to sleep, her mind buzzing with the realization of who she was and what it might mean. She strode across the living room and tapped on the bedroom door, careful not to wake one of the younger boys who slept nearby.

  She cracked the door open. “You awake?”

  “Petra?”

  She sidled into the room, carefully shutting the door so the latch wouldn’t click. She fumbled for the matches on the table at the foot of the bed, struck one, and lit the lantern. The lamp cast an orange glow across the room, revealing Emmerich sitting up on the bed.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  She sat down on the mattress, folding her knees against her chest. She hadn’t thought of what to say to him, only that she needed to talk. While she sat, she realized how utterly improper it was to be sitting on a bed with a boy, wearing nothing more than her nightshift. She had forgotten how it felt to be so near him, the memory of their embrace in the subcity suddenly coming to mind. How she wished for him to hold her like that again. After being away from him for so long, she wanted to feel his arms around her, to assure herself that he really was here, that they really were together again.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked, gingerly leaning against the wall behind the bed. If he was bothered by her presence on the mattress, he didn’t show it.

  Petra sucked in a deep breath. She might as well come out and say it. No point in masking the truth. “I think . . .” She swallowed the ache in her throat. “I think I’m Lady Chroniker’s daughter.” An awkward silence followed her words, and she felt the focus of his gaze upon her. When she finally dared to look up at him, he was smiling. Her heart fluttered to see him smile again. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “I hoped.”

  “But how? How did you know when I didn’t?”

  He shifted against the wall and regarded her carefully. “I remembered you.”

  “What?”

  “We used to play together, when my uncle would visit your mother. And when I saw you again outside the shop, some part of me recognized your face, your eyes, the color of your hair. You look very much like your mother, you know—­what I remember of her.” He smiled. “When I saw you that day, I felt as if I knew you, as if I had seen you before, but it didn’t really connect until later—­which was why I came back and asked for your help.” He shifted on the bed. “I couldn’t know for sure, until I spent more time with you, but the way you are with machines, the fact that you had your mother’s pocket watch . . . You couldn’t be anyone else.”

  Petra frowned. “I didn’t remember you,” she said quietly. “I didn’t realize.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. I may have hoped, but you were so young when the fire happened, only four years old. It’s a wonder you remember anything at all.” He regarded her with a slight frown. “How did you come to realize the truth?”

  “I remembered the day of the fire, the day she died.” She exhaled a heavy sigh. “Maybe the fire yesterday, the attack on the University, triggered the memory; I don’t know.”

  “Petra . . .” He moved forward and clasped her hand, his warmth soaking into her skin and warming her to the core. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “I just—­How could I forget? How could I not know who I really was?” Her heartbeat quickened. “All this time, I was a Chroniker, the daughter of the greatest scientist of our age, and I didn’t know.”

  A short silence followed, and Emmerich gently rubbed her hand. “You can’t blame yourself for not knowing, for not remembering,” he said. “No one knew the truth of who you were, even when your mother was alive. Everyone thought that you were her niece, fostered to become her protégé, but my uncle and I knew the truth—­you were her da
ughter, a daughter she could not admit to have, and so she lied.” He squeezed her hand. “But you are her daughter. You are her heir.”

  Petra blinked, realizing the truth of those words. She was the heir to the greatest family of engineers the world had ever known. She was heir to their legacy, heir to the city itself. And yet she felt no different than before; she was still just Petra Wade—­shop girl and clockwork engineer. She didn’t know how to be a Chroniker, what she was supposed to do now that she knew the truth, whether anyone would believe her. She chewed on her lip. “What now?”

  Emmerich shrugged. “I suppose that is up to you.”

  She exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Would you have believed me?” he asked.

  Petra frowned. He had a point.

  “It wasn’t my place to say,” he said, gently stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. “You needed to remember on your own, to figure it out for yourself. It was the only way to be certain of who you really were.”

  “What if I never remembered?”

  He looked at her more seriously then. “But you did.”

  Petra shook her head and pulled her hand away. “But I don’t feel any different than before. I’m still just . . . me.”

  “That’s because you are still the same person, Petra. Just because you know you are a Chroniker does not mean you have to change who you are. Not for me. Not for anyone. The only person you need to be is you.” Leaning forward, he lifted his hand to her face and brushed her untidy hair from her eyes, grazing her cheek with his coarse fingertips. He cupped her face in his hands and lightly traced the outline of her lower lip with his thumb. “Just Petra.”

  “Emmerich,” she whispered, sighing at his touch. It had been so long since he last touched her so intimately, caught in the rhythm of the subcity machineries, the thrum of engines and hearts beating together as one. She closed her eyes, skin tingling as the gentle caress of her lips raised a shiver through her body.

  “I don’t want you to think this changes anything,” he said quietly. “About us.”

  Petra opened her eyes, her heart seizing in her throat. “What do you mean?”

  His hand slipped from her face, and a frown wrinkled his brow as he carefully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, focusing his gaze away from her eyes. An awkward silence filled the room, precious moments of closeness ticking away as he still did not speak.

  Filled with a need to remain close to him, to touch him, Petra shamelessly grabbed his hand, thrilled by her own daring. He glanced down at their joined hands, a crooked smile lifting his lips. Never had she touched him—­always, it had been his boldness, his impulses that had brought them together in intimate closeness, never hers, as much as she had wanted to return his advances.

  Yet even as she held his hand in hers, uncertainty filled her heart, her thoughts ringing with echoes of his voice, echoes of us, wondering what he meant, what words he dared not say. In that silence, her pulse quickened, the truth of what she wanted him to say resounding over and over in her head. How desperately she wanted to admit to him what she felt, to hear him say the same, to admit the attraction between them, the romance. Whether or not it was love, she couldn’t guess, but it felt . . . right. With him, she felt she belonged. And she wondered if he felt the same.

  “Petra, I—­” He sucked in a deep breath and sighed. “Being without you these last weeks, I—­I realized that I don’t want us to be apart. I want us to be together.” He raised his copper eyes, blazing in the darkness. “I want you to come back,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I want you to return to work on the automaton, if you’re willing.”

  She blinked, her floating heart sinking a fraction of an inch in her chest. “What?”

  “I understand why you left, but—­” He pressed his lips together in a firm line. “But I swear I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe from harm. I’d do anything for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Emmerich—­”

  “Say you’ll come back,” he said. “Say you’ll help me finish the automaton, once the University is put to rights. I couldn’t bear to finish it without you.”

  A latch clicked in the silence as a door closed in the other room, then footsteps treaded across the living room floor, creaking quietly toward the kitchen—­and the bedroom. Petra jumped from the bed and backed toward the opposite wall, her heart pounding. The sound of boots shuffled from the living room to the kitchen table. She cursed whoever it was—­probably Solomon, coming in late from the boilers, or Matron Etta, finally home from the hospital.

  She swallowed her leaping pulse and gestured to the door. “I should . . .”

  “Petra, I don’t want to lose you again,” he said, frowning. “Say you’ll come back.”

  Looking into his determined eyes, she knew she could never say no to him. She would always come back to him—­always.

  She sighed. “Of course I will.”

  PETRA SHUT THE bedroom door behind her, finding her brother Solomon sitting at the kitchen table.

  “How is he?” he asked.

  “Better,” she said, stepping away from the door and sitting down beside him. “I expect Matron will want him to go home soon and return to his family. She said as much this afternoon.”

  “And you?” he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

  She started to say that she was fine, but her throat seized up as everything that had happened in the last ­couple of days suddenly stormed up inside her—­the attack on the University, Emmerich’s injuries, realizing that she was Lady Chroniker’s daughter . . .

  And the very real possibility that she was falling in love with Emmerich Goss.

  Her eyes watered, burning unexpectedly.

  “Petra?”

  A weary sigh escaped her lips, and she sank low in her chair, pressing her trembling fingers to her forehead. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, trying not to cry. “I don’t know, Sol,” she said quietly. “I just don’t know anymore.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” She glanced up at him. “Yes?” With a heavy sigh, she shook her head and kneaded her brow. “I don’t know.”

  Solomon stood up and pulled her up to her feet. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk. It’ll do you good to get some fresh air.”

  Quietly, they left the flat and wandered the vacant streets of the fourth quadrant, the streetlights burning low in the wee hours of the morning. Solomon wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

  Petra breathed in the familiar coaly scent of the subcity boilers, the heat of the furnaces forever baked into her brother’s skin. It had been so long since she had seen him for more than a passing moment, so long since she’d confided in him. He was the one person she trusted with all her secrets, and she had so many to unburden now, so many things she hadn’t told him in the last several weeks. The words spilled from her now, escaping her lips in a breathless purge—­her work on the automaton, the intimacy between her and Emmerich in the subcity, the encounter with Tolly, the Guild finding out about her possible involvement with Emmerich, the risk of facing an accusation of treason for helping him, the weeks away from the University, the attack and all that followed. She felt as if she talked for hours, all her worries and uncertainties lifting from her shoulders the more she told him, all leading up to the final confession of the night.

  “And she’s my mother,” she said, her throat raw and aching. “I am Lady Chroniker’s daughter, her heir, and I have no idea what that means, what I am supposed to do now that I know the truth.” She sucked in a deep breath, a weary smile on her lips as the first rays of morning lightened the sky. “But I know who I am now, who my mother
was, where I belong. All my life I was told that I couldn’t be an engineer, that I didn’t belong in the Guild or the University, that it was a man’s world, but now I know the truth: they were wrong. I am an engineer. I am a Chroniker. And I belong here, more than any man.”

  Chapter 11

  EMMERICH LEFT THE flat and returned home the next morning. In the days after, as Petra waited to hear from him again, she spent her afternoons in the University square, watching architects and builders repair the damage left by the terrible destruction. The Guild had closed the University to all persons until repairs were complete, and until then, she and Emmerich would not be able to work on the automaton. The once pristine University stood mangled and broken. Scaffolds climbed up the sides of the metal walls, and scorch marks besmirched the polished brass. Someone had painstakingly scrubbed the gore from the white stone pavers, but no matter how many times they scrubbed and bleached the stone, Petra would never forget the blood.

  Finally, after nearly a week since Emmerich returned home, she received a typewritten letter from him, apologizing for his silence and absence and asking her to relay thanks to Matron Etta for her care of him. He mentioned nothing of the automaton or the moments of intimacy shared between them in the days following the attack—­he could admit to neither—­but there was a note attached below his signature, scrawled hastily onto a tiny square of paper: We need to talk.

  Petra stared at the four words. There was no more to the note—­no time or meeting place, no hint of what they needed to discuss—­just those four simple words.

  The day after she received the letter, the University reopened, and when her shift at the pawnshop ended, she was delighted to find Emmerich waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. She smiled at the sight of him, hurrying down the steps to meet him.

  “The University reopened,” he said, offering his arm.