Hearts of Smoke and Steam (10 page)

Alexander put his hand on Nathaniel's back. “I know that since your parents died I've been a poor substitute for your father, and I'm sorry about that. It was always Amelia who I relied on to raise the children, and once she passed away…”

Nathaniel felt overwhelmed. He had grown up with Alexander Stanton, been raised by him, but he had never felt this close to him before. “I think I've turned out all right.”

“Maybe you have, although you still have some growing to do.” It made Nathaniel feel good to hear him say that, and Alexander nodded and brightened. “Where are you living now? I mean, since the Darby mansion burned down?”

“I've taken a small apartment nearby. It's a place that a friend's father owns. The house is modest but comfortable. And honestly, I spend most of my days here at the Hall anyway.”

“In those dark stone rooms? That's nonsense,” Stanton said. He slipped off the edge of the table to stand, swaying a bit. The pain made him hunch over and move stiffly, like an old man.

Nathaniel grabbed his shoulders to help, but Alexander shrugged him off. “Don't baby me, boy!”

“I'm sorry, sir,” he replied, and quickly let go. Alexander Stanton was a proud man, but all the pride in the world wouldn't help him heal any faster.

“No no. It's all right. I'm sorry as well. I lose my temper sometimes, you know that.”

“I do.”

“But that's beside the point,” he said, and began tucking the tail of his shirt down into his pants. “I want you to move back into the house with me.”

Nathaniel was shocked. “Back in the mansion? I thought…”

“It's just me in the house now, and it's ridiculous to waste all that space on one old invalid. Besides, you'd rather be there than some filthy apartment, wouldn't you?”

A million thoughts raced through Nathaniel's head. As much as he disliked his cramped home, there was also a certain freedom that came with being on his own that he quite enjoyed: no one told him what to do, or where to go. And even better, no one tut-tutted about his late-night drinking or the mornings spent sleeping in…

Then he felt a rising sensation of shame. Had he been angry at his step-father for so long that when the hand of friendship was finally being extended, he was too proud to take it? “Of course, sir,” he said, extending his arm, “and gladly.”

“Good, good,” Alexander replied with a slightly hazy tone. Clearly the opium that the doctor had provided him was doing its work. “You can move in on the first of the month. I'll let Mrs. Farrows know. Now, if you could just help me on with my tie, I think I'll spend the rest of the evening back at our home.”

Nathaniel picked up the ribbon of black cloth and began to tie it around his neck. “Of course, Father.”

E
milio had been spent years protecting himself from any emotional complications, and yet it had taken only a single moment of attraction to this blonde-haired woman for the entire dam to collapse, and now he was drowning in her life.

The girl stood there, her face twisted into a mask of rage and frustration. “Not again,” she repeated as she watched the villain rise up into the sky.

“Is okay, Sarah,” he said to her. When he touched her shoulder, the girl wrapped her arms around him tightly, and then crushed herself into him.

He felt her quivering with anger at all the injustice of the world, helpless to express anything but rage. His sister was like this from time to time, but it seemed to fit this girl far more poorly than it did Viola.

“Is okay,” he repeated, rocking her slightly. She was clearly not used to the kind of endless anguish and pain that the world could so easily deal out, even to the most innocent and loving of people. Emilio wondered if this was what he had been like the day that he discovered that his wife and children were gone…

Somehow he doubted it. He had already seen and done so many terrible things by that time…But he hadn't been completely empty at that moment. And yet so much of his heart had been scooped away that when fate came for the last small piece of it, it had barely felt like losing anything at all.

And here he was, being embraced by this beautiful woman, and he found himself feeling grief and sorrow instead of joy and passion. It reminded him of something his grandfather had told him when he was a boy. “Sometimes,” the old man had said, grinning with a mouth full of missing teeth, “life will give you everything you want, just to prove how wrong you are for wanting it.”

There was sharp thump, then a groaning sound nearby. Emilio could feela vibration underneath his feet, and when he looked up and over the girl's shoulder he saw that the harpoon cable had been pulled taut. It was being tugged so hard by the balloon that it would soon rip out of the deck.

“You like me?” he asked her quietly.

Sarah pulled away. There was a puzzled look on her face. Her eyes were red but tearless. “I barely know you, sir!”

Emilio shook his head and rolled his eyes. He'd gotten the words wrong again. “No no,
fidati di me!!”
The words obviously meant nothing to her. English was such a ridiculous language, full of tricks and traps to make you sound like a fool, even when you were only trying to express the simplest things.

He tried to clear his head. If this was going to work, they would only have a moment. “Trust! Trust me, yes?” As he said it, he looked into her eyes. “Please?”

“I still don't…” Emilio took her confusion for consent, and grabbed her hand. As he pulled her toward the teetering harpoon, he saw his shield lying on the deck, dented and spattered with blood. He slowed for an instant to pick it up. If his plan worked, they would need it.

He squeezed the handle and gave it a twist, hoping against hope that it hadn't been damaged too badly to work. The blades attempted to spin closed, the device making a nasty klunk as it stuck on the biggest dent.

At least it was
mostly
closed, and there was no time to fix it now. He used the clip he had placed onto the back of it to hang it off of his belt. There was no doubt that he'd need both hands free, and hopefully the exposed edge wouldn't cut its creator.

Just above where the harpoon had caught in the deck there was a round flange, making a tiny platform around the edge. Emilio decided that it had been placed there to allow the device to punch through something before locking itself down, making it more of an anchor than a weapon.

It seemed small, but perhaps it was big enough…Emilio stepped up onto it, wrapped his arms around the shaft, and held out his hand. “C'mon!” he said just as the whole thing shifted ominously beneath him. He found himself wishing that the surface beneath his feet was bigger, but the fact that he hadn't slipped off was a good sign.

As he thought about the journey he was about to undertake, he felt the old familiar fear rising up in him. And before he even had a chance to try to calm himself, he heard a voice confirming his terror. “Are you mad?” the girl said. “We'll fall to our deaths!”

Somehow hearing his distress mirrored in her voice made it seem smaller. “No, I help!” Emilio nodded his head and shook his hand more forcefully. “Come!” he said. There could be only seconds before the entire thing ripped free.

“I can't!” she replied, but took another step towards him. Then she stopped. “No, I can't!”

Emilio was shocked. He was a commoner, and as far as he knew there wasn't a drop of noble blood in his body. His own failings he could understand, but this was Sarah Stanton, the daughter of the Industrialist—a Paragon! Was she that terrified, or was he truly being insane?

Maybe he could convince her if spoke English better—there must be something he could say. What would his sister do? She was always so good at manipulating people, perhaps he could…“Not again!” he yelled out to her.

“What did you say?”

“Not again!” He shouted her words back at her in a tone so dramatic that it was close to mocking her, and then he held out his hand. “Now come!”

He couldn't help but smile a little bit as he watched the desperation on her face turn to anger. “Damn you, sir!” she said, and flung herself at him.

He had barely wrapped his arms around her when the harpoon tore free.

There was a terrible sensation in the pit of his stomach as they swept up and across the deck like a pendulum, veering towards the pilot's tower. For a moment it seemed as if they would smash straight into it. Emilio clutched Sarah as tightly as he could, crushing the pole in between them. His grip on her felt wrong, and he knew he was relying too much on his feet to hold him steady. If only they had been given a moment more to prepare. Perhaps they could still jump off…

Emilio looked up and saw the horrified face of one of the ferry's crewmen as they swung rapidly toward the window of the bridge. Underneath his white hat, the man's eyes were wide and his mouth was open. Emilio imagined that his own expression must have mirrored his as they careened toward each other.

Just before the inevitable impact, there was a gut-churning lurch as he and Sarah were jerked up into the air. The tip of the spear scraped the roof, tilting them over sideways. And then, the moment before Emilio realized that this might be their last chance to let go, it swung free.

They rose up and away from the boat, hanging above the open water as the damp wind whistled past them. As they rose into the sky and the world beneath them shrank, Emilio could feel the terror inside of him growing. He looked around the shaft of the spear and over at the girl, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring mile. This had all been a huge mistake, and now they were both going to die for it.

“I find myself in your arms a second time,” she said. Her voice was calm, and almost cheerful. It sounded like she had gotten over her own trepidation. “And yet I still don't know your name!” He broke his gaze away from the dark water beneath them and turned to look up at the girl's face. He was shocked to see that Sarah was grinning. Perhaps he'd misjudged her; it seemed she was a genuine Paragon after all.

“Is Emilio Armando!” His voice was trembling and high, and he barely recognized it. Hoping to salvage some of his manhood, he tried to widen his own smile.

“Hello, Emilio!” she replied with a weak smile. “I can tell by the look on your face that we both think you came up with a spectacularly bad idea!” Neither one of them laughed, but he appreciated her effort to lighten the mood.

Emilio nodded up toward the balloon, although he couldn't bring himself to actually look. Not yet anyway. “We are going to be up there!”

“Yes.” Sarah looked up to their destination and squinted. He could feel her arms underneath his, clenching him tightly. He supposed the thick gloves on her hands might do a poor job of hanging on. “And soon, with a little bit of luck!”

Pulling together all the courage he could muster, Emilio tilted his head upwards. She was right—the balloon wasn't very far away, and the black gas-bag loomed larger with each passing second.

This close, the machine appeared to be far larger than he had originally thought. The gondola was tapered in the front and back like a boat, and it seemed as if the balloon grew straight out of it. The construction of it was mostly metal, with steel plates along the bottom, probably intended as armor—although they wouldn't protect the balloon.

Protruding from either side were a series of long struts. Each had a series of propellers attached to them, with a larger one at the end. The spinning blades pushed the ship through the air.

Sticking out from the back of the gondola was a mad jumble of pipes in all different sizes and shapes—belching out smoke and steam.

Emilio was no stranger to the fear he felt. It was as if someone had stuck pins into the tips of his fingers and traced the pain back through his body with shards of glass. His joints were locked into place as if he were a statue.

He had always been terrified of heights, and his father had spent days working to make his son unafraid of what scared him. In the end, he had been mostly successful. And yet, when the time came to prove his bravery, he had failed to act. He had been a coward and his loved ones had all paid the price for it.

Emilio forced himself to look down. He could see that they were now hundreds of feet above the river and still rising straight up. The balloon wasn't only winding in the cable, but climbing higher as it went, and they were flying well above the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was higher in the sky than he had ever been before. His father would have been proud.

When he looked up again, they were only fifty feet or so away from the bottom of the ship. Emilio could clearly see where the cable was being reeled back in through a hole under the nose. It was impossible to judge the size of it perfectly, but he doubted that both he and the girl would fit.

“I wonder,” Sarah said, speaking his thoughts more clearly than he could ever hope to, “if we shouldn't figure out a plan for what we do when we get up there.”

“Yes, I see,” were the only words he could manage to say.

Sarah tried again, “What do you think we should do, Emilio?”

It seemed more likely that the girl would fit through the hole. She could ride the spear all the way into the ship, although it was impossible to say what waited for her inside. It would be tragic for them to have made it all this way only for her to be mangled by some hidden mechanism. Even so, he envied her compared to the fate that the plan which had just formed inside his head spelled out for him. “You stay, I jump.”

“What? That's ridiculous.”

The end of their ride was coming closer very quickly now. There would be little time before he had to act. “I'm okay!
C'è una scala
…”

“I don't speak Italian!”

Emilio couldn't help but roll his eyes a little bit. Why were women constantly worried about the details of things they couldn't control? “Stairs!” he shouted.

They were only a few yards away now. The hardest part would be flinging himself toward the right direction.

“When it comes to falling, three meters, ten meters, a hundred meters,” his father had used to say, “it will all kill you just the same when you touch the ground.” But it
did
make a difference to the young Emilio—because the higher he went, the longer he would have to ponder his death before the end. And right now they were very, very high.

As he tensed himself to jump, he felt something brush against his lips.

The girl had kissed him…“For luck!” she shouted. “Now go!”

A feeling of pleasant surprise muted his terror, and Emilio felt lighter as he threw himself into the air. Then, an instant after he met the void, the feeling melted away. The rungs, which had been zooming towards him just a moment before, now looked dangerously remote. He felt disconnected from his hands as he watched them claw through air, desperate to find something to grab onto before gravity asserted itself.

Just as he was beginning to fall, he felt his fingers finally wrap around one of the metal bars, but momentum was still on his side, whether he wanted it or not. The ship slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and breaking his grip.

As he began to drop, Emilio realized that his worst fear had come true. Now only empty air lay between him and the dark water far below.