A Study in Silks (36 page)

“Most storerooms or warehouses have them. Go down near the docks and they’re all over the place.”

Imogen, who had never been anywhere so exciting, gave her a look brimming with curiosity. “Are thieves that much of a problem?”

Evelina nodded. “The bigger the machine, the more important the merchant.” She couldn’t help thinking of Lord Bancroft’s stolen automatons, and wondering one more time what was so important about them.

Imogen looked impressed. “This one is plenty big. I wonder who owns it?”

“Someone who’s putting it there simply for show. It’s rusty.”

“Does that mean it will leave stains on my skirts while it mashes me into the dust?”

“Only if it catches you.”

“How sporting.”

“You stay here.”

Evelina marched toward the huge metal figure, stopping a few feet away. With a great groaning of metal, it shifted one leg so that it could face her—rather pointless, since it didn’t have eyes to see or a head to put them in if it did. As a result,
Evelina wasn’t sure where to look, and had a disconcerting sense that she was somehow being rude.

A good five seconds and a lot of noise later, it completed its change of direction. The huge, dull gray foot made an enormous
clump
and sent up a puff of dust. Things clunked inside as the internal logic engine churned away, cycling through a complex wheel of punch cards for an emergency marked “impertinent young women.”

Then it gave a puff of steam—a signal that the boiler was ramping up for action, and also that the unit was in need of repair. The coal-fired boilers inside these units were small but highly efficient as long as the housing was tight. If the system was losing pressure, it was no wonder the unit was slow.

Evelina tapped one foot. The thing was obviously just a warning. The real guardian was whatever magic she sensed inside the warehouse. “Pardon me? Mr. Automaton?”

It ignored her salutation and ponderously lifted one fist high above its head. Metal creaked, flakes of rust raining down as it strained to move. She supposed if she stood very still and didn’t bob about, it might have been able to deliver a mighty blow.

Meanwhile, the automaton had become stuck. The arm had reached its highest point and couldn’t seem to reverse course, the joint sticking at the zenith. The thing shuddered with the robotic equivalent of dry heaves. Calmly, she reached up to examine its chest. There was the usual plate that could be removed to expose the workings inside. She touched the metal skin and found it hot and slippery from the escaping steam. The fingers of her gloves came away soaked.

“Evelina!” Imogen cried.

She darted aside as the automaton finally unstuck and thumped its fist into the ground where she had been standing a moment before. Then she waited patiently as it creaked to an upright position again.

“I’ll be done in just a tick,” Evelina replied.

As it raised its arm for another attack, she unlatched the chest panel—standing on her toes and cursing as she burned
her thumb—and disconnected the main pneumatic line. The automaton froze, arm raised. She squinted up to read the date of manufacture on the back of the panel: 1856. No wonder the thing was so slow. It was ancient. The maintenance label read
Fitzgerald’s Gravel Works
.

“I think this fellow was designed for breaking up rocks,” Evelina announced when Imogen reached her side.

“It’s not much of a guard.”

“It looks impressive. That’s probably good enough for casual passersby. One look at this and your common bully-boy would stay away—at least until he figured out he could run circles around this thing.”
That means the real antitheft protection is inside with the magic
.

Evelina’s palms were sweating.

“Well,” Imogen said brightly. “That wasn’t so hard. Now what?”

“Now I have a look around.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Evelina stepped away from the machine, dread crawling up her scalp. The sunshine seemed suddenly thin as watered soup. “No, there’s no telling what’s in there.”

“I’m not going back to the carriage to sit there like an obedient spaniel.”

Evelina gave her a baleful look, but Imogen didn’t budge. Evelina relented, imploring the gods that she wasn’t putting her friend in danger. “Then stay close.”

The warehouse door wasn’t locked, but came open with a creak of hinges. Sunlight fell in filmy banners from windows set high in the unfinished walls. Evelina felt a prickling against her face, as if she’d walked into a swarm of biting insects. Whatever caused that was the real guardian. She swallowed, but there was nothing to ease her dry throat.

She held up a warning hand, listening for movement, hearing nothing.

“Go slowly,” she spoke in a whisper. “There’s definitely magic in here.”

Imogen stopped. “What kind did you say it was?”

“I don’t know yet.” Evelina tugged her close. “Just stay with me. We might have to leave in a hurry.”

Crates were stacked at one end of the space, some with the lids pried off to reveal tufts of packing straw and sawdust. A crowbar leaned against the wall.

“This doesn’t look like the draper’s stock,” Imogen said. “I don’t see any cloth. I actually don’t see anything that looks like merchandise for a store. What is this?”

“An importer’s wares, perhaps? There are all kinds of languages on the labels of these crates. I think that one is Greek.”

They stuck close together as they moved quietly between the rows of wooden boxes. The loudest sound was the hem of their skirts dragging through the old sawdust that littered the floor. As Imogen said, there were no stacks of dishes or furniture or other household goods. It was as if whatever had been unpacked had already been removed.

“What’s all that?” Imogen asked, indicating a workbench and racks of carpentry tools at the other end of the building.

“It looks like a workshop, maybe? Perhaps some items are sent in parts, and they assemble them here?” There was a fascinating pile of old gears and wheels, as if someone had disemboweled an entire showroom of clocks. “I wonder if the Gold King knows about all this machinery. You could build half a factory from these scraps.”

“He knows about everything, doesn’t he?” Imogen said dryly. “I checked the list, you know. He was never invited to Mama’s party.”

Evelina drew closer, wanting a better look. Some of the parts were shiny and new, others old and misshapen with time. Corrosion reduced what might have been gears to jagged skeletons. Images of shipwrecks and treasure hunters played in her imagination.

“There are bloodstains underneath the sawdust,” Imogen said with disgust, scraping at the floor with her boot.

“One of the workers must have been hurt.”

Evelina barely gave the blood a glance. She’d seen plenty of mishaps at the circus, and even had a few of her own—like the time she’d tried one of Nick’s knife tricks without supervision. She still had a faint scar across the palm of her hand.
I want to see Ploughman’s again
. The truth was, she
wanted to see Nick again. The need burned inside like a fever—consuming everything, leaving nothing but pain and weakness behind.

It was folly. Wanting Nick was selfish, hurtful to her and worse for him. She had gone over it in her mind a thousand times, and she’d decided to take the hard road for both their sakes. She had a future, better than what she’d left, and she should be grateful. Still, sadness lanced through her like a knife.

She bowed her head, slowly forcing away the idea by concentrating on the jumble on the shelf in front of her. And something reached out to her mind. She recoiled as if she’d been shocked with Aragon Jackson’s evil machine.

“What’s wrong?” Imogen demanded.

“There’s something here.”

“Your magic mustard plaster?”

No, it wasn’t the biting, swarming sensation. It was something more. Something very, very old. She drew near once more to the shelf with the clock parts, summoning the courage to tentatively open her awareness a bit further.

There it was again, reaching up like a baby wanting to be held, but oh so ancient. So lonely. It wanted her to find it, amid the wreckage and dross of forgotten machines. It was one of them, but much, much more. It told her all that, not with words, but with an ache in her heart so sharp her eyes stung with sorrow.

She inched nearer still, reaching out her hand.

“Evelina?”

She brushed aside a litter of screws and wheels, sending them bouncing to the floor with a clatter and ping. Her fingertips sought the source of the thoughts, blindly groping to quiet its plea. She felt her hand connect with it. The sensation was odd—a duality of cool metal and warm energy, not unlike the combination of the mechanical bird and its deva. Curiosity vibrated through her as she realized that this was another combination of magic and machine. Someone else had done what she had done, and put a spirit into a mechanical body—but long, long ago.

She brushed away the surrounding bits and gears and
lifted the chunk of metal in both hands. It didn’t look like much, just a brass and iron cube about eight inches across. The surface was lumpy and irregular, as if molten metal had been dripped over a piece of crude clockwork, or else the surface of the cube had corroded away to expose what lay beneath.

Whatever was in the cube reached up to her with a profound and archaic intelligence. Now that she’d found it, was holding it, she could sense more than just its loneliness. There was a feeling of depth, or maybe just vastness. It was like reading an entire library at once. It was like falling into a sky of stars.

“Evelina!”

She started, looking up at Imogen. “Pardon?”

“What is that thing?”

“I’m not sure, but it wants to come with us.”

Imogen looked dubious. “It does?”

“I think someone was about to put it in the scrap bin.”

“Really?” Her friend’s face said that was a reasonable plan.

“But it’s alive,” Evelina explained. “Like my bird, only much more sophisticated than that.”

Imogen blinked. “Sophistication which sadly didn’t extend to wings or wheels. Or much else, for that matter.” She pulled off her shawl. “Knot this around it and it will make a reasonable carrier.”

Evelina took the shawl almost hesitantly. “Thank you. I’m afraid your shawl might be soiled, though.”

Imogen shrugged. “Just hurry. This place is starting to give me the shivers.”

She was right. The warehouse seemed to be growing darker, the shadows creeping in from the corners. It was also growing warmer, as if a boiler had been switched on beneath the floor. Evelina felt a sense of alarm from the cube, and shared it. The stinging, biting presence that must have belonged to the guardian of the place was no longer merely annoying. It had increased from the scrape and poke of crawling ants’ feet to something sharper, like a thousand tiny blades glancing along her skin.

“I think we had better leave,” Evelina said quietly, folding the cube in the shawl and knotting the ends of the soft fabric into a handle. Once again, she was sorry she’d brought her friend.

Imogen opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Evelina spun to see what her friend saw, and froze. Straight ahead, their path had vanished in a haze, as if night had fallen on the far end of the warehouse. It took a moment to figure out why, but when Evelina did, her gut turned icy with alarm. The shadows were moving, rolling end over end to form a long tube of smoky darkness.

“
WHAT IS THAT
?”
IMOGEN ASKED HOARSELY
.

“Remember I told you about the devas?”

“Yes.”

“This is the biggest damned deva I’ve ever seen.”

Imogen didn’t even blink at the curse. There were far greater things to worry about. The rolling shadows were arching up from the floor with serpentine grace, seeming to grow thicker and more solid every moment. The front end wavered in the air like a questing worm. The back end grew a long, snapping tail as she watched.
A fire drake
.

This was no countryside deva of tree or spring, small and formless and more or less harmless, but something ancient. The ability to assume physical form took enormous power, and such creatures were rare. She’d only met an eyewitness once before—an old man who told of the great bear spirit who roamed the north. The rest were just legends—until now. This creature had powers straight out of Gran’s fairy tales.

The touch of its magic grew sharper, scraping along her flesh. Evelina glanced down at her arms, half expecting to see a tracery of blood seeping through the fine sleeves of her gown.

“Back the way we came,” she gasped.

“Sounds good.”

They turned tail and scampered for the door, the rustle of their petticoats loud in the cavernous space. They had gone a half dozen yards when Evelina caught darting movement from the corner of her eye. The roll of shadow slid, gliding along the floor with an undulating slither. Evelina caught
her friend’s arm, stopping her just as the thing reared up, blocking their escape.

She had the impression of vast, whiskered jaws and eyes the color of peridots. Red scales glittered from the darkness like flakes of burning coal, as if the thing were made of a living hide of banked fire.