Steamborn (26 page)

Charles crossed his arms and stared at Jacob. “I don’t want to sound cruel, Jacob, but you are one of the best-known pickpockets in the Lowlands.” Charles ran his hand over his beard. “That makes you ideal examples for a public punishment.”

Alice’s family was tied up with Lowland politics in some way, but Jacob had never given it any real thought. Jacob raised his eyes to meet the old man’s gaze.

“I think you understand, yes?”

Jacob nodded. Depending on whom the Butcher knew, he’d know Jacob had been a pickpocket, or still was.

“It’s the perfect excuse to come after you, Jacob.” Charles leaned against the workbench. “Now, go find Alice. Tell her what you heard here.”

Jacob didn’t say anything else. He slipped his leather backpack over his shoulders, unlocked the door, and left the lab to Charles and his awful revelations.

Jacob figured the best place to find Alice would be at her inn. It may have taken him a while to find the inn with the carved dragon above its door the first time, but now he knew right where to go. He didn’t stop at the front, instead heading straight to the third door from the end. Jacob paused for a moment before knocking, looking up and down the street.

He knocked three times. The tiny door within the door squeaked open, and relief flooded Jacob when a pair of blue eyes appeared.

Alice narrowed her gaze and slammed the peephole closed. The door swung inward a moment later. “Come on. No one’s home. We can talk in here.”

As soon as the door closed, Alice’s voice rose. “What did you do?” she asked as she poked Jacob in the chest with her index finger. “Charles has my parents convinced I need to run away from the city all because I know
you.”

“I didn’t—”

“Clearly you did, or I wouldn’t have a backpack and purse filled with so many clothes and so much food I can barely lift them. What in the world happened? Did you get caught stealing?”

“No,” Jacob said. “It’s the city smith; he knows it was us in the catacombs. He recognized Charles’s work.”

Alice seemed downright furious, and scared. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? I’m all packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Do you have any idea where we’re going?”

“No, I don’t.”

“My mom thinks Charles might be overly paranoid.”

Jacob glanced to the side, briefly eying an old vase in the corner while he made up his mind. He stepped forward and gently grabbed Alice’s arm.

“Look, Alice, it’s not Charles being paranoid. The city smith is the Butcher of Gareth Cave.”

“How do you know?” Alice asked as she folded her arms and frowned.

“His full name is Newton Victor Burns.”

She blew out an exasperated breath. “How do we even know the book is true? Archibald could have been a crazy person. Maybe he was just laying blame?” Her words sounded empty to Jacob, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“You don’t believe that.”

Alice sighed and flopped onto the couch by an overstuffed backpack and her leather purse. “No, I don’t.” She leaned over and patted her backpack. “I loved the story of the Butcher when I was a kid. It was all bravery and heroes and good killing evil.”

“Sometimes the history books lie.”

“I know.” She stared at her hands folded in her lap. “I don’t like it when people lie, Jacob.” She glanced up. “Don’t lie to me, okay?”

“I won’t.”

Jacob wasn’t sure what to do when Alice stood up and wrapped her arms around him. He placed his right arm around her gently, and when she squeezed him harder, he hugged her back.

“Why aren’t our parents packing?” she asked, stepping away.

“Charles thinks they’ll be safer here with us gone. Bat said your family can stay with him if the Lowlanders get pushed out too soon. He’ll protect them if war breaks out. I thought my parents were just staying because my dad’s still sick, but maybe not.”

“No,” Alice said. “It would make them look guilty if they left. And what does he even mean by leaving? Where can we go?”

“I don’t know, but I trust Charles.”

Alice sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. “I do too.”

Jacob waited for her to open her eyes and said, “If you have to run, meet us at the underground train station. We can meet there and then follow Charles.”

Alice gave one sharp nod.

Jacob left her at the inn, and his mood was not improved. He started back to Bat’s, wondering what kind of crazy person thought they could help reinforce laws by killing a kid. Oh, sure, maybe they’d only beat him publicly, lash him in the courtyard, but Jacob’s imagination was far too vivid to believe that. He was sure he’d be tied up to a cross and fed to a Red Death or a Widow Maker. That’s how they’d handled criminals in the Deadlands War.

He was so lost in imagining his own death, he didn’t notice that the women in front of him had stopped walking. He smacked into one and she almost fell over.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Are you okay?”

She straightened her hat and turned to look at him. “Mind your manners, you filthy steamborn wretch. I don't know why they still allow that filth here.”

“Please, he can hear you, miss.” Jacob didn’t see who was speaking.

“We don't need their diseases.” The woman's parasol caught the light of the streetlamp as she looked back at him once and frowned slightly.

Jacob was speechless. He felt like he should apologize for breathing her air, and nothing had ever made him feel so small.

“Your carriage, madam,” a man dressed in a black leather suit said. He wore a hat, and silver-lined goggles were mounted on his head.

Jacob watched the lady climb into the carriage before he realized it didn’t have legs. No bugs were at the front to draw it down the cobblestones.

The man closed the door behind the women and stepped closer to Jacob. He leaned down close to him and whispered. “Ignore the lady, son. She has quite the temper.” He patted Jacob’s shoulder and turned around.

“Sir?” Jacob said.

He looked over his shoulder with one hand on the carriage door.

“Is that a puffing demon?”

He laughed and pulled his goggles down before running his eyes over the length of the metal beast. “It is indeed, son. It is indeed.”

Jacob stared at the contraption. He’d never seen one working before. He walked up to the side of the demon. It almost seemed a piece of art, the way the paint gleamed in the streetlamps, glinting off the curves of metal above the wheels. Jacob could hear the hiss of steam and flames as he got near the front of the demon, and he knew the engine must be beneath the curved metal sheet. He took a step back, so he could see into the driver’s compartment, and watched the man push a lever to the floor and then turn a wheel. A burst of steam billowed out the back of the contraption and the carriage lurched forward.

Jacob couldn’t stop a smile while he watched the legless carriage—a real puffing demon that ran on steam and pistons and gears—send bursts of vapor into the air as it motored down the street.

He spent the rest of walk back to the lab torn between wondering why so many Highlanders seemed to despise everything about the Lowlands, and being awed by seeing an actual puffing demon.

“You okay?” Charles asked when Jacob returned to the lab.

He nodded and flopped onto his wooden stool. “I saw a puffing demon, and it was amazing.”

“So what’s the problem, then? Afraid you’ll never be able to invent something so grand?”

Jacob shook his head. “Some lady called me a ‘filthy steamborn wretch.’”

Charles laughed and patted Jacob's back gently. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in many years. Wear it with pride.”

“Why?”

The old man smiled. “Back in the war, some of the Highborn folks called us tinkers steamborn. Of course, it's ‘steamborn filth’ that gives them their greatest inventions. Don’t judge them too harshly. Some progress improves humanity, and some progress improves only war. It only slips their mind that we gave them their running water
and
their puffing demons.”

Jacob glanced over at the shelf where they’d been stacking all the gloves up. There were only a couple left.

“Did Ambrose come by?”

Charles nodded. “He wasn’t going to come until tomorrow, but I think that man may be more paranoid than I am.” Charles pulled out a leather satchel, much like the one Ambrose had given them before, and tossed it to Jacob.

It knocked his hand back into his chest like he’d caught a heavy rock. “What’s
in
this?”

“Five hundred gold.”

Jacob almost choked. He carefully passed the satchel back to Charles.

“It won’t bite.”

“That’s like ten years of my parent’s wages, Charles.
I
wouldn’t trust me around it.” Jacob glanced at the floor and then back up to the old man. “Neither should you.”

“Jacob, my boy, I’m trusting you with my life. One word could be the end of me. Five hundred gold is nothing.”

“You’re my friend.”

“I am, and you are mine. I do hope you remember that when we have to flee the city.

“Where will we go?”

“I have a place in mind. Don’t you worry about that.”

“When will we have to leave?”

“Well, Ambrose is taking those gloves into the field tomorrow.” Charles frowned. “The city smith never was a very patient man.”

Jacob pulled an empty cartridge off the stack on the corner of the bench and dragged a can of nails closer. He started loading them in, one at a time. His fingers were still sore, but it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been earlier in the day.

“I think Alice is mad at me,” Jacob said. “She wouldn’t be in this if it weren’t for me.”

“That may be true, but I’d guess she’s more scared than angry. No one wants to leave their family and home behind, Jacob.” He paused, reconsidering. “Well, most of us don’t, anyway.”

Jacob hoped Charles was right. He didn’t want Alice mad at him. “Is Ambrose coming back for the rest of the gloves tomorrow?”

“That’s the intention,” Charles said. We’ll need to get a few more made. I just about have the heavy gauge glove done.” Charles grunted as he slowly released the tensioner. “A few of the heavy springs were bad, so it’s taken a bit longer than I’d hoped.”

He held the spring box up and turned it over a few times, changing out the lenses on his glasses before nodding. “I think it’s ready.” He leaned forward and picked up a larger cartridge and a case of bolts that Jacob hadn’t seen before.

“What are those?”

“Ambrose calls them stone bolts. Used to call them anchors in the military.” Charles held up one of the inch-thick bolts and the cartridge. “You be very careful with these. The nail gloves are dangerous, yes, but this could tear your hand off.”

Jacob slid the case of bolts closer. They were heavy and a bit hard to drag across the wooden workbench. The metal case squeaked against the surface of the bench. Charles handed him a cartridge, and it was almost identical to the nail glove cartridge, only larger. Jacob leaned the first bolt against the spring and pushed it home.

“They’re heavy. What’s Ambrose going to use them for?”

“You’ve seen the plates the repairmen use to prop up their wooden walls, yes?”

Jacob nodded. He remembered seeing a wide metal plate on the ground behind the temporary barrier in the Lowlands. That already seemed so long ago. He felt like he was home in Bat’s house with Charles and his parents.

“Good, good.” Charles pulled out a long timber. It looked like someone had started carving it before the end had broken off. It was at least six inches by six inches and a good three feet long. Charles set it in the middle of the floor on its side, adjusted it a bit and then crouched down beside the bench.

He rooted through some scrap iron under the bottom shelf until he came up with a length of gray metal. It wasn’t rusty like the iron. Charles rapped it with his knuckles and said, “Steel.” He laid it over the carved post, lining up the edges as best he could before starting to pull the heavy nail glove over his fingers. He curled his hand into a fist and gave the spring box a couple tugs before nodding.

“Pass me a cartridge.”

Jacob handed him his current cartridge. It had four bolts loaded, and he wasn’t sure if he could cram so much as one more onto the spring. “What are you doing?”

Charles slid the cartridge into the receiver and pulled the locking lever across the entire base of the spring box until it clicked. “I’m showing you why you don’t keep this heavy glove loaded.” He took his time making a show out of moving his stool to the side and crouching down to line up the steel and the glove.

Jacob jumped when Charles slammed his fist into the steel sheet. He cringed at the squeal of metal as the spring box fired and the first bolt burst through steel and wood alike. Charles’s hand barely moved at all as almost all of the force was absorbed by the buffer in the spring box. “I’m showing you how a little ingenuity and some common sense can build wonders.”

Charles picked up the length of wood and steel and laid it on the workbench, steel side down. He pulled out a hammer and chisel and began chipping the wood away from the bolt. The wood smelled hot and charred as it fell to the floor.

Jacob leaned over and watched the end of the bolt come into view. “It’s three times the size it was.”

“Exactly. Best of all, it doesn’t matter what’s beneath the steel. The bolts hit with enough force to punch through steel, and the tips expand to lock them into wood, or metal, or stone.”

Jacob reached out and ran his fingers over the deformed tip. He hissed. “It’s a little hot.” He stared at the deformed bolt. “If that were stone …”

“It would make a hell of an anchor, Jacob. With enough bolts, I imagine you could mount a catapult on a watchtower. Not saying the watchtower could handle the force, mind you, but it could be done.”

“Should we try to finish all the gloves tonight?”

“Ambrose already paid us in full. I’d like to finish them, but I don’t think we have the time. Let’s just see how many we can get into working order.”

Jacob pulled out one of the pre-stitched mesh gloves and started snapping brass fasteners onto it. He counted out a perfect square, twenty by twenty, and snapped another fastener on. Charles would mount the spring box after Jacob finished. Then he’d be back to loading cartridges. Jacob frowned at the thought. He was almost as tired of loading cartridges as his fingers were.