The Brass Giant

by Brooke Johnson

  “Be safe,” she said, brushing a loose thread from his shoulder.

  “I will.” He kissed her again. “See you in about an hour or two.”

  Chapter 19

  PETRA SPENT THE rest of the morning poring over the papers Emmerich had brought, sifting through the stacks of letters, invoices, telegrams, and memorandums. Most of it suggested Emmerich’s father was more involved in the conspiracy than either Lyndon or Mr. Fowler, but they had yet to investigate the other offices. They had enough evidence to show that the three men were up to something, but Petra didn’t think there was enough to convince the rest of the Guild council it was anything dishonest. From what Emmerich had gathered, they could at best prove what the rest of the Guild already knew—­they were building an army of automatons for the British Empire. What she and Emmerich needed was evidence of the men’s involvement with the anti-­imperialists, proof that they had framed Petra and meant to make a profit by dealing mechanized weapons to both sides of the war, fueling the arms race between them.

  By lunchtime, when Emmerich still hadn’t returned to the house from the University, Petra grew worried. She ate lunch with Biddy and Kristiane—­cold chicken and potatoes—­and then bathed, washing away the grime from the day before. She emerged from the bathroom renewed but with no less unease. Sitting at the vanity in her and Josie’s room, she parted her damp hair and twisted a braid over her shoulder, taking her time. As she overlapped each strand of hair, the knots in her stomach tightened.

  Emmerich should have returned home by now.

  After dressing, she asked Kristiane if she had seen him.

  “I haven’t, miss. Neither him nor his father.”

  Disconcerted, she busied herself with chores even though Emmerich had given all the maids the day off. Harriet had her beat the curtains and rugs in the alley. She and Josie swept and mopped the floors, dusted the stair railings, and soaped the furniture. She helped Biddy with dinner preparations, but as the day crept into evening and the girls sat down to eat, Emmerich still hadn’t returned.

  “Where is he?” Petra demanded, throwing her fork down at the kitchen table. She couldn’t eat, not with her stomach so tense with worry.

  “He usually stays at the University late hours,” said Harriet. “For several weeks there were nights when he didn’t return until well after midnight.”

  The nights she had helped him with the automaton.

  “This is different,” said Petra. “He said he would be back soon.”

  Josie arched an eyebrow. “So what if he did? It’s none of our business where he is or what he does.”

  “It matters to me,” she said, jumping up from the table, her pulse thundering in her ears. She was sick of it—­sick of pretending, sick of waiting, sick of worrying. Even in the short moments of distraction she spent with the other girls, listening to their talk or busying herself with cleaning, remaining silent about what was really going on ate away at her. She didn’t want to pretend any longer.

  “Don’t be upset, goose,” said Harriet, patting her arm. “I’m sure everything is all right.”

  Petra bristled. “You don’t have any idea what’s wrong, do you?”

  “Miss Wade,” warned Kristiane.

  “You don’t!” She stormed across the kitchen with her hands clenched at her sides, infuriated that they didn’t realize something was wrong. Emmerich should have been back from the University by now. None of them realized the danger he was in, the danger she was in. “I’m going to find him.”

  Kristiane stood, nearly throwing her chair behind her. “Miss Wade, you can’t.”

  Petra swiveled. “I can, and I will.” She pushed through the door and dashed downstairs.

  In her and Josie’s bedroom, she quickly changed into her trousers and button-­up shirt, the clothes she had borrowed from Norris, hidden away in the back of the wardrobe so no one would throw them out. Once dressed and properly boyish, she ran upstairs to Emmerich’s study and collected the prints of the Guild offices and a few key letters she had found among the assortment of evidence. She stuffed two more screwdrivers and the folded pages in her pockets. Descending the stairs, she passed Kristiane, Josie and Harriet, and Biddy at the bottom, refusing to stop for any of them, though they chided, begged, and demanded she tell them what was going on.

  When she reached the front door, she paused, guilt crashing down on top of her. None of them deserved such rudeness. With a sigh, she turned away from the door and faced them. “I can’t really tell you much of what’s going on, but trust me when I say that this is important, that Emmerich needs me right now and I have to go to him.”

  “Miss Wade—­” said Kristiane, coming forward.

  “No, I can’t stay any longer,” she said, curling her fingers around the door handle. “I’m sorry, Kristiane. I know you mean well, but I won’t sit here and do nothing when I know he’s in trouble. Goodbye.”

  Pushing through the door, she burst into the street and sprinted for the University, hoping against hope she might stumble upon Emmerich on his way home but knowing she wouldn’t. Deep down, she knew the conspirators on the Guild council had captured him.

  And right now, she was the only one who could help him.

  THE UNIVERSITY TOWERED ahead, a gleaming brass beacon of intellect and progress, a symbol of Petra’s highest aspirations. Now, when she ascended the steps, facing the very real possibility of being captured and imprisoned again, the building loomed like a treacherous, towering prison. But she could not turn back. Emmerich needed her.

  Her skin quivered as she passed over the threshold, filling her heart with dread instead of delight. The rich scent of paraffin permeated the entrance hall, and the steady hum of gears and ticking wheels sang to her. She strode to the lift, feeling the vibrations of the subcity with each step. Goose bumps erupted across her arms. Her senses sharpened. She felt more alive than she had in weeks. She was finally doing something.

  Once inside the lift, she whipped out her screwdriver and pulled the control panel apart. Emmerich had drawn a diagram of the panel and explained to her how to operate the lift without a key. She stripped the plating from the podium and plunged her hands inside.

  She fiddled with a few wires, quickly manipulating the circuit to falsely detect a key, and as the drive motor spun to life, she nearly laughed. She pressed the button that led to the upper Guild offices and yanked the knob at the bottom of the panel. The gearbox shifted, and the bulb above the podium flared. With her foot pressed against the back of the lift, she placed both hands on the lever and pulled. The lever resisted, but she managed to move it. The whirring of the drive motor slowed, the driveshaft locked, and the lift began to rise.

  Releasing the lever, she grabbed hold of the lift railing and felt her heartbeat quicken. When she had first ridden the lift with Emmerich on their trip to the observatory, she had been thrilled, a bundle of nervous excitement. Now, with each floor she passed, the dread in the pit of her stomach doubled, a mass of fear and worry. As the gearbox shifted to a slower speed, the anxiety climbed into her chest, her whole body tense. She had no idea where Emmerich might be—­if he was even still in the University—­but if she could find enough evidence against Lyndon or the other conspirators, she might be able use it to barter him back.

  The lift clattered to a stop, the glass door swiveled open, and Petra stepped out onto the Guild office floor.

  Electric candelabras lined the walls, flickering with the rolling power surges of the University machines. The layout of the offices was similar to that of the offices where Emmerich worked; the main hall ran the full length of the floor, with the second lift chute at the end. The air smelled of metal mixed with a dusty, cigar-­smoke musk.

  Petra examined the rows of doors. Emmerich could be behind any of them.

  Stealthily, she crept down the hall, reading the plaques mounted on the doors until she found Lyndon’
s office. Further evidence might be inside, perhaps enough to trade for Emmerich, whether he was somewhere in the University or in the prison cells beneath the first quadrant. Petra quietly removed the door handle with her screwdriver and popped the lock open by pressing the tumbler pins. The door creaked open and she slipped inside.

  Searching for a light switch, she ran her hand across the wall next to the door, quickly finding a tiny lever set into the paneling. She switched it on. The electricity popped behind the switch plate, and a tuft of smoke filtered out around the edges as bright yellow light flooded the room. She stood in a handsome office, equipped with a large wooden desk, several bookshelves, tables, and a display cabinet. A second door stood at the far wall, slightly ajar.

  She rushed to the desk, yanking drawers open and spilling the vice-­chancellor’s files onto the floor until hundreds of pages littered the foot of the desk. She brushed files and letters aside, searching for something, anything that might be of use, anything Emmerich might have missed. She scanned letter after letter—­invoice reports, intracompany communications, student applications, and project completion notices—­but came across nothing that might implicate him as a conspirator behind the war, no letters or telegrams like Emmerich had found before. Even then, everything he had found condemned his father, not Lyndon. There wasn’t even a tiny scrap of paper with the vice-­chancellor’s signature on it. Either the vice-­chancellor had been more careful than the other Guild council members, or Emmerich had found all there was to find. She frowned, staring at the scattered letters. Or maybe Lyndon was innocent of the whole thing . . . But how could that be?

  Petra moved from the desk to the cabinets, tossing trinkets, plaques, and machine parts to the floor as she emptied the shelves and drawers—­but still nothing. Then she noticed a single closed drawer in the display case, a lock centered in the bottom panel. She stared at the thin drawer. If she was to find anything of importance, anything Lyndon wanted to hide, it must be there. Crouching on her knees, she fiddled with the lock, poking her screwdrivers into the slot like she had seen Norris do when he had picked the lock to get into the pawnshop. Her knees started to cramp before she managed to open it.

  The lock clicked and the panel popped outward a bit. Petra pocketed the screwdrivers and carefully pulled the slender drawer from the base of the display case. There was an assortment of things—­a book of photographs, a vintage revolver, a dead pocket watch, and a small, charred pocket journal. The burned book drew her eye, bound in good quality leather with the letters A. F. embossed on the cover. The pages within were mostly undamaged, though the smell of smoke still infused the yellowing paper.

  Petra carefully opened to the first page and found that it was a drafting journal. The first few pages showed descriptions for an automatic ticket machine, one of the earliest models she knew about. The handwriting around the diagrams was thin and loopy, feminine. There were other designs in the journal—­a steam rickshaw, the trolley-­lift in the second quadrant, cylindrical lifts similar to those in the University, a steam car, and several clockwork designs—­including a pocket watch on the last few written pages. Several blank pages followed, but Petra’s focus remained on the pocket watch.

  It wasn’t just any pocket watch. It was her pocket watch, the one her mother had given her, the one that held her mother’s love in the casing. Petra knew without having to compare; the drawing was identical to the schematics she had sketched all those weeks ago. The engineer had drawn a perfect representation of the double mainspring, with all the proper measurements and dimensions. She knew, without a hint of doubt, that this journal had been her mother’s, and as confirmation, scrawled beneath the completed design were the words: for Petra.

  A tear splashed on the page, and Petra quickly dabbed it away with the cuff of her sleeve before it smudged the ink. Why did Lyndon have it locked away in his office? How did he come by it? She flipped through the pages again, to see if there was anything else, and tucked within the leather cover found a small photograph.

  The subject had moved before the shutter properly closed, her face a blur across the sepia-­toned paper. She sat before a desk, its surface covered in papers and drafting materials, a half-­constructed mechanism sitting atop it. The woman in the portrait was her mother, leaning forward with a laugh on her lips and a pencil behind her ear, and there was Petra, sitting at her mother’s feet—­a small child playing with a mechanized toy train, the most determined frown of concentration on her face. She could not help but smile, wiping away the tears on her cheeks.

  Petra touched her mother’s smile in the photograph, and her chest tightened with a deep ache, wishing more than ever that her mother had not died, that the University fire had never happened. With a sniffle, she replaced the photograph in the leather sleeve and pocketed the journal.

  She lifted the photograph album out of the drawer next, wondering if perhaps there was another picture of her mother within, but as she brought the album into her lap, she heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.

  Her heart shot into her throat, pulsing in her ears with the drowning rush of blood. Gripping the album to her chest, Petra darted for the door at the back of the room and slipped into the dark closet. Carefully pulling the door closed, she peered into the office, expecting to see Lyndon enter the room and stumble into the mess she had made, but as seconds passed into minutes, the door still did not open.

  A sudden sound behind her made her jump, and pushing the door open to let more light in, she saw Emmerich lying bound on the floor, a gag in his mouth. Her heart ached at the sight of him, his hair lank and sweaty across his forehead, a bruise purpling his cheek.

  She crawled to him and gingerly touched the welt on his face. “Emmerich . . .”

  He looked up at her, sorrow and defeat in his eyes.

  Setting the photo album aside, she untied his binds and slipped the cloth from his face. “What happened?”

  “We’re too late,” he said hoarsely, rubbing his chaffed wrists. “The automatons are already in production. The designs were delivered days ago.” He frowned. “We failed.”

  “Who did this to you?” she asked. “Was it Lyndon?”

  He shook his head. “We were wrong, Petra. It wasn’t Lyndon behind the conspiracy. It was—­” Light spilled in from the door behind her, and Emmerich blanched, his voice breaking. “—­my father.”

  “Hello, Miss Wade,” said a deep voice.

  Petra’s chest constricted into a knot. She hadn’t heard the footsteps.

  The closet door opened fully, and above them stood a tall figure, his face stern. His eyes glanced from Petra to Emmerich with triumph, and Petra blinked, her heart failing to beat. She recognized those eyes—­the same copper color as his son’s.

  Chapter 20

  EMMERICH’S FATHER SEIZED Petra beneath the arm and forced her to stand, his fingers painfully pinching her skin. She twisted in his grasp, stomping her heel down on his foot as she tried to wrench her arm free. “Let me go!”

  Mr. Goss struck her with the back of his hand. The sting of the blow stunned her into momentary silence, and she pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek, tasting the acrid tang of blood as she glared daggers at him. The bastard.

  “Emmerich, help me,” she grunted, struggling against his father.

  He was on his feet now. “Father, you have no right to treat her this way. Let her go.” He laid a hand on her arm, his touch gentle but firm. “Petra,” he said quietly. “It’s no use fighting. He’s already won.”

  His words cut through her heart and knocked the breath from her lungs. “What?”

  Mr. Goss’s grip on her arm tightened and he dragged her from the closet, away from Emmerich, away from the defeat in his eyes. “Give up, Miss Wade,” he said, throwing her into the desk chair. “My son knows when he is beaten. You would be wise to cooperate as well.”

  She shook her head. Emmeri
ch wouldn’t give up, not so easily. He was too stubborn for that, too willful. They could still fight. They still had a chance.

  Petra tried to stand, but Mr. Goss shoved her back into the chair. “Emmerich,” she pleaded, glancing toward him. “What is he talking about?”

  Emmerich sighed. “Listen to him, Petra. Please.”

  She blinked, unable to speak, not willing to believe that he had given up, that just like that it was all over.

  “So, at last we meet, Miss Wade,” said Mr. Goss, stepping between her and his son. “Might I formally introduce myself? Julian Goss, minister to the vice-­chancellor, and Emmerich’s father.” He gave a short bow.

  Petra glared at him, gripping the arms of the desk chair as heat flushed through her body. “I know who you are, and I know what you’re up to. We know of the conspiracy. We have evidence to prove it.”

  Mr. Goss laughed grimly. “Is that so? And to whom, pray tell, do you plan to voice your paltry opinion of this matter? The Guild council? The Royal Court? Her Imperial Majesty, the queen?” He chuckled. “Tell me—­who will believe the word of an insignificant, poverty-­stricken shop girl over that of a member of the Guild council and minister to the vice-­chancellor? Your ‘evidence’ is of no value.” He strode across the office to the door and latched the dead bolt, the other lock having been rendered useless by her break-­in. “Miss Wade, you have been a pain in my side since my son first laid eyes on you. It would be my absolute pleasure to finally put your insular rebellion to rest. You are playing at a game you have no business being a part of. Give up, Miss Wade. It’s over. You’ve lost.”

  “No,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Your son may have given up, but I refuse to sit back and let you start a war for your own gain. I won’t give up. I’ll fight you, and I’ll keep fighting you until I can’t anymore.”