The Inventor's Secret (24 page)

It was mid-afternoon when a bell began to clang. The
Aphrodite
’s paddles slowed as its steam engines were shut
down. Sailors hustled about the deck, dropping anchors at
the fore and stern of the boat.

“There!” Linnet shouted, pointing ahead at what had
been an empty patch of river.
The surface of the water roiled, then parted, as a gleaming, monstrous shape rose from the Hudson’s depths.
“The
Pisces
!” Charlotte spun around and jumped up
and down, unable to contain her excitement.
The massive fish glittered and gleamed under the afternoon sun, and Charlotte judged the submersible lovelier
than any gilded sight of the Floating City. The ship glided
toward the
Aphrodite,
slowing until it was floating alongside the sternwheeler.
When a pair of green pigtails peeked out of the hatch,
Charlotte cried out in delight. “Pip! Pip, here!” She waved
wildly, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, but she couldn’t
stop.
“Prepare to be boarded!” Pip shouted back with a salute. She scrambled out of the
Pisces
’s hatch and shimmied
her way down its metal scales.
One of Ott’s sailors tossed her a line, and Pip tied the
Pisces
onto the merchant vessel. In the distance, thunder
rumbled. Charlotte didn’t take her eyes off Pip and the
shimmering submersible, but in the back of her mind, she
thought the sound odd. It was a clear day with no sign of
rain that she’d noticed.
“What’s that?” Linnet put her hand up to shade her
eyes from the bright sun. “A fire?”
Charlotte followed Linnet’s line of sight to the northwest, where she saw oily plumes of smoke billowing into
the cloudless sky. She gazed at the thick smoke erupting
from a concentrated site like ash spewn from a volcano.
How far off was that spot?
A flurry of approximated calculations of time and
distance and space swept through Charlotte’s mind. She
swayed on her feet, feeling as though a fist had been thrust
beneath her ribs to squeeze the life from her heart.
No. No. No.
Falling forward, Charlotte caught the edge of the deck
rail and vomited over the side.
No. No. No.
“Charlotte!” Linnet rushed to Charlotte’s side, rubbing
her back until the wave of sickness passed. “Are you ill?
Surely you’re not seasick—there’s barely a ripple on this
river.”
Shaking and scarely able to force words from her throat,
Charlotte said, “You don’t understand. The fire . . .”
Linnet’s eyes narrowed, then went wide. “Hephaestus’s
hammer. You think that’s the Catacombs.”
Feeling another wave of nausea rising, Charlotte could
only nod. The smoke was too black, too greasy to be natural. As if to confirm Charlotte’s thought, an explosion
boomed through the air, its force rattling the ship. Grave
came running up from the stern.
“What is that?” He looked as fearful as the first time
Charlotte had seen him running from the Rotpots.
Then Charlotte heard Pip shrieking.
“Get her onboard!” Linnet’s voice cracked like a whip,
and sailors scrambled to follow the order.
Not a minute later, Pip appeared kicking and screaming
as four sailors struggled to drag her aboard the
Aphrodite.
“Athene, no!” Pip screeched. “We have to go back. Let
me go! We have to go back!”
A sailor swore and dropped one of Pip’s legs when
she turned her head and gave his arm a vicious bite. The
sailor pivoted. His fist shot out toward Pip’s jaw, but Grave
caught the man’s wrist mid-strike.
“Don’t.” Grave said, closing his fingers tighter. The
sailor’s eyes went very wide, and his forearm began to
shake. Images of the Enforcers’ steel fists smashing faces
and crushing limbs flashed through Charlotte’s mind.
He’s the perfect weapon,
Coe had said.
Charlotte knew she couldn’t let Grave become that.
Once he crossed that line, if he killed easily and without
remorse while others witnessed it, he would be deemed
a monstrosity. If that happened, Charlotte doubted she’d
be able to shield him from the designs of friend or enemy.
Grave would cease to be a person, he’d simply become a
priceless implement of war for one side or the other.
“Grave, let him go, and, Pip, stop struggling!” Charlotte was on her feet. “These men aren’t your enemies.”
You’re the only one with enough courage and bullheadedness to do it.
Grave immediately released the sailor, who swore,
shaking his bruised fist.
Pip continued to struggle until Charlotte yelled, “Pip,
that’s enough!”
The green-haired girl went still and then began to sob.
“Let her go,” Linnet told the men.
The bitten man stomped away cursing, while the others
set Pip down on the deck. Charlotte went to the crying girl.
I have to be strong. I can’t falter. They are my responsibility now.
She forced herself to ignore the tiny voice that whispered,
Whoever’s left, that is.
“Go to the submersible and get Scoff,” Charlotte told
Grave. “Bring him up here.”
Grave nodded and hurried to the edge of the deck.
“There’s so much smoke.” Pip sniffled. She blinked
at Charlotte through her tears. “Birch’s explosions never
make that much smoke. Never.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “But we can’t be sure what’s
happened.”
“So much smoke.” Pip’s voice trailed away. She drew
her knees up to her chest and curled up into a ball.
Linnet’s mouth set in a thin line as another boom shook
the boards beneath their feet.
Grave reappeared on the deck leading Scoff, who
moved along in a stupor.
“I’m pretty sure that was my laboratory,” Scott muttered to himself. He glanced over his shoulder at the smoke.
“If the smoke starts to change colors, I’ll be sure.”
“Hello, Scoff,” Charlotte said, trying to keep her tone
light. “It’s good to see you.”
Scoff nodded, and dropped into a cross-legged position
next to Pip, who didn’t uncurl from her ball but inched
over until she could lean against him. Grave stood over the
boy and girl with their odd-colored hair, watching them
like a sentinel.
“What happened to the Catacombs?” Scoff asked
Charlotte.
“We don’t know,” she answered, watching the black
smoke fill with ribbons of green and violet. She decided
not to tell Scoff. “Not yet.”
Linnet scrutinized the new arrivals. “Did you notice
anything unusual near the Catacombs today? Anything
odd at all?”
“No,” Scoff answered. “Everything was exactly like it
always is when we left. I mean, except that Ash, Meg, Jack,
and Charlotte were gone. But that’s been odd for a while.”
“You didn’t see anything?” Linnet pressed. “Like a
strange bird that stays at its perch too long or a stiff-moving rabbit.”
Pip lifted her head long enough to give Linnet a scornful look. “We know about crowscopes and rabbit moles.
We’re not idiots.”
Linnet let that pass.
“Was Birch going to try anything particularly dangerous in his workshop?” Charlotte asked. It wasn’t hard to
imagine that without Ash around to curb the tinker’s enthusiasm for experiments, he might have taken on some
inadvisable project.
But Scoff frowned. “Not that I know of. I thought he
was just building more mice. Those can blow up, of course,
but not like . . .” He craned his neck to gaze at the smoke.
“Not like that.”
“Do you want me to tell the captain to turn us around?”
Linnet asked Charlotte. “We can take your submersible to
Lord Ott’s dockyard. There’s an underwater entrance you
could use to access the port without being seen.”
“No.” Charlotte already knew where she had to go.
“We have procedures in place. A location we’re to meet
at.”
“We have to go back!” Pip glared at Charlotte.
“We can’t, Pip,” Charlotte told her firmly. “Not until
we know what really happened. The others will go to the
rendezvous point. We’ll meet them there.”
If anyone survived,
the tiny voice whispered, and Charlotte briefly closed her eyes against a sharp sting of pain.
“I should report this to Ott,” Linnet said. “He’ll probably want to pass it along to Jack and your brother.”
“Ask him to wait until he hears from me,” Charlotte
told her. “Ash and Jack wouldn’t have stayed away from
the Catacombs unless this task they’re undertaking is truly
vital. I don’t want them to come running back here until
I’m certain they should.”
“Are you sure?”
Charlotte clenched her teeth, but nodded. This was
what Ash would do.
Reaching into her pocket, Linnet withdrew a wooden
egg and handed it to Charlotte.
“Is this what I think it is?” Charlotte asked, flipping
open the clasp to reveal the hollow case.
“I don’t know.” Linnet half smiled. “Do you think it’s
a homingbird?”
Ignoring Linnet’s grin, Charlotte peered at the tiny
metal bird inside the egg.
“It’s already set to the latitude and longitude where Ott
receives his envoys,” Linnet told her. “When you’re ready
to send us news of what happened, use that bird.” She eyed
Charlotte pointedly. “And if that little flyer doesn’t show
up by tomorrow night, we’re coming out to look for you.”
“Deal.” Charlotte held out her hand. She was somewhat surprised when Linnet suddenly embraced her.
“Keep those claws sharp, kitten. I hope we’ll meet again
soon.”
Hugging the girl tightly, Charlotte felt her throat closing and her eyes pricking with heat. “I hope so too.”
Turning away from Linnet, Charlotte took Pip’s hands
and helped the girl to her feet.
“Come on,” she said to Pip and Scoff. “We need to get
to the rendezvous point.”
Pip looked at Grave, her gaze speculative. “You were
very brave to stop that man from hitting me.  I know I
shouldn’t have bit him, but I still don’t think I would have
liked to be hit.”
“I’m not brave,” Grave told her. He glanced at his hand,
flexing his fingers. “I just know that I’m strong.”
Taking Grave’s hand, Pip said, “I think you can be
both.”
With her other hand, Pip grabbed Scoff’s arm, and the
trio set off toward the
Pisces
together.
“Interesting little troupe you’ve got here,” Linnet said
to Charlotte.
Charlotte smiled at the other girl, who gave a brief nod.
“Safe journey.”
“And you.”
Charlotte went to the fore of the ship, climbed the rope
ladder down the front of the
Aphrodite
and onto the slippery surface of the
Pisces.
When she scrambled into the
submersible, she closed and locked the hatch behind her.
Pip was waiting for Charlotte in the corridor that linked
the cargo bay and the bridge. Charlotte laughed when Pip
handed over the POC.
“Thought you probably missed her,” Pip said wistfully.
“Though I was hoping this would be the kind of trip where
we wouldn’t need guns.”
Nodding regretfully, Charlotte said, “So was I.”
“I’m going to ride in the cargo bay with Grave,” Pip
told her. “You should copilot for Scoff.”
Pip spun and went running off toward the rear of the
Pisces.
Moving in the opposite direction, Charlotte ducked
through the doorway that opened into the bridge. Scoff
was already strapped into his chair.
“I see Pip made sure you and Pocky were reunited,” he
said.
“She did.” Charlotte took the chair beside Scoff. She
buckled her harness and held Pocky on her lap. The weight
of the gun was reassuring.
“We won’t reach the rendezvous point until after dark,”
Scoff told Charlotte, flipping controls. The
Pisces
began to
sink into the river.
“I know,” Charlotte said. “It can’t be helped.”
Scoff steered the ship upstream. Beyond the glass, the
Hudson’s waters were dim and murky.
He fell silent for a few minutes, then asked, “Do you
think anyone else will be there?”
Charlotte hesitated, and Scoff quickly said, “Never
mind. That’s not a question to be asked.”
When they were fully submerged, he reached forward
and pulled a brass lever. The
Pisces
shot forward. Scoff
leaned forward, fully absorbed in piloting the ship. As they
sped along, Charlotte’s temple began to throb with anxiety
and exhaustion. She leaned her head back and let her eyes
close.
In the darkness behind her heavy eyelids, she heard
Meg’s voice.
Storm clouds build on the horizon. Before
long, they’ll be upon us.

The darkness of her vision gave way to a blue sky where
greasy smoke boiled above the treetops.
They’re already
here.

Charlotte slipped her hand into her pocket, fingers
tracing the outline of Jack’s letter. The storm had come,
but Charlotte wouldn’t cower at its force. She would keep
fighting. For Ash and Meg, for Grave, for the Resistance.
Charlotte silently swore a pledge to all of them, and most
of all to herself—she’d keep fighting.

N THE MIDDLE of an eye exam, when my
optometrist was peering at me from behind a mask
of glass, gears, levers, and dials, I realized I wanted
to write a steampunk series. While visits to the

doctor and dentist seem to reflect advances in medical
technology, the tools of an optometrist remain decidedly
nineteenth century–esque. The idea of inventing a world
filled with fantastic and frightening devices, machines,
and weapons proved irresistible.

The allure of steampunk lay not only in its abundance
of mad scientists and quirky gadgets, but also in the
opportunity to create an alternate historical narrative.
While most steampunk novels are set in the late nineteenth
to early twentieth centuries and, more often than not, in
Europe, the history I wanted to reinvent was much earlier,
exploring a period of American history very near and
dear to my heart. Prior to becoming a full-time novelist, I
was a history professor at Macalester College in St. Paul,
Minnesota. My research specialization focused on the
intersection of religion, gender, and violence in the British
colonies, and I’ve long held an interest in the transition
from colonial rule to republic in early America.

The Inventor’s Secret
posits the question: What would
North American society have looked like if the American
Revolution failed? As a nation and society, the United
States locates the beginnings of our highest values—
freedom, equality, the pursuit of happiness—as a result
of a successful eighteenth-century revolution. What, then,
would be the fate of those values and that society if the
Revolutionary War had been won by the British?