Valeria (7 page)

She sighed, lazily kissing his neck. There was faint plink as something dropped to the ground and bounced a few times.

Mache looked down and chuckled. “Butter fingers,” he said, and knelt to pick up the small metal ring which had dropped out of Valeria’s hands.

“It’s an extra piece I was able to parse off,” Valeria said as he held it up to her. “I was keeping it on my finger until I could put it with the scraps.”

“Were you?” he asked, taking her hand. He smiled and slipped the gold onto the finger it looked best to fit. “Hm. Maybe you should keep it there.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, perplexed, as she studied the wire he’d put onto her ring finger. “It might get in the way.”

He stood, laughing and kissing her. “If you keep it there,” he said, “You’d be my wife.”

She started and looked up at him with her lips slightly apart. “I would?” she asked. “Truly?”

“Some people would insist we get the preacher involved,” Mache said. “I like to think as long as we’re both willing to promise, it’s fair enough. We can get the preacher later.”

“You promise?” She pressed, eyes wide. “You promise to be my husband?”

“I do.” he said with a contented smile. Part of him clamored that this was a dumb idea, and it whispered that the airfoil in the hanger was ripe to be stolen and flown away any time, for the sake of his very life. But the way Valeria smiled at him, her hand shaking with emotion in his, the gleam of the golden wire on her finger wiped away the fear. This was what he wanted. He would not run away. “Forever and more. Do you?”

“I do,” she whispered, eyes widening as she grabbed his hands. “I do. Forever and more. Oh, Mache.” She kissed him. “I’ll make better rings,” she whispered. “I know exactly the thing.”

He chuckled. “Sure,” he said. “I guess the wire might catch.”

“I’m going to melt it into the rest of the ring,” she said, kissing his cheek. “The first ring will always be there.”

He wound his arms around her waist, kissing her soundly. “Later,” he said, lifting her from her feet and making a beeline to their room. “Right now I think we should have a brief honeymoon.”

* * * *

She was secretive for several days and when Mache peeked in on her she shooed him away. “You might see them,” she said, “and I’m not done yet.”

With a knowing smile, he always sank back. When he asked at dinner how the prototype was going, she always waved it off as fine.

He was cooking dinner four days later when she rushed into the room. “She’s coming in twenty minutes.” Valeria said, “You’ve got everything ready, right?”

He tipped the dinner he’d been cooking onto a plate. “Food’s ready, just have to make sure everything’s put away in its place.”

She nodded. “You sweep the rooms and I’ll get my projects together.” She paled.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The prototype.” She said, “It’s finished, but I meant to gild it.”

Mache swallowed. “How long?”

“At least an hour,” she said, and shook herself. “No. I can tell her that with the bearings, the gilding would put the functionality in danger.”

“Good girl,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “And offer to do it while she’s here.”

“Exactly,” she said, taking out her hair stick and pulling her tresses into a bun. “Meet me in the ballroom, okay?”

“Shouldn’t be more than five minutes,” he said, already flying around the kitchen to put things away, get them to their proper place and give the impression Valeria was cooking for one. He frowned as he did. The CEO snooped around the ballroom without Valeria sometimes. The habit made him nervous. She would come down and pace, studying the floor, patting the curtains. Once she glanced at the ceiling and nearly gave him a heart attack. She never seemed to have a moment of inspiration, though, because he wasn’t caught. He hadn’t mentioned the incident to Valeria.

Still, she seemed the type to pounce on any variation to a routine. She was never early! He shook his head. There were many reasons to be early. It was possible her radio signal was slow. It was cloudy today, to the point he wouldn’t have flown. On the ground it was probably raining.

Once he finished going over everything he hurried to the ballroom, where Valeria waited for him. She was facing the windows, but turned at the sound of his footfalls, smiling brightly. “I finished the rings,” she said. “I wanted to give you yours before you got shut up.”

He grinned. “How’d you get my size?”

“When you were sleeping of course,” she said, teasing as she dug a polished silver ring from a leather bag on her belt. A golden line wound through the middle of the band, which severed at the top to seat a magnificent golden stone Mache felt looked familiar.

She took out a second ring, much smaller and matching the first in every other way. “These are the left over stones from when I made my eye,” she said. “They’re precious in that way.”

“I’d take a part of you over some diamond any day,” Mache murmured, and pulled her in to kiss. “They’re lovely, Valeria. Is the gold made of the wire?”

She beamed. “Yes. Just enough for both rings.”

He kissed her again, filled with love. “Perfect.”

“You should get in,” she whispered, though she continued to kiss him lightly, gently, as if sipping at a sweet drink. “Ah, love, I wish you didn’t have to.”

“Some day.” he murmured. “You’re my wife. There’s nothing that can keep us apart now.”

She smiled, kissed him once more, and helped him into the vent. He kissed the ring on her hand, she kissed the ring on his, and the door was shut.

He lay back, sighing. There was no use in worrying about what might happen. He’d done it before and accomplished nothing but an upset stomach. As he watched for the rest of the day, though, something seemed off. Normally Valeria came in the evening to work on her projects in the ballroom but this week she was strangely absent.

He fiddled with the ring, frowning. Perhaps she was busy. He’d watched her gild things before, through a chemical reaction which bound tiny portions of gold onto other substances. It was fascinating to watch and Valeria needed to be present for every moment of it to be sure everything was coated evenly. It was possible the CEO had asked for her to gild everything that night.

Yes. That was what was going on. There was no need to worry. He pulled the spare blanket he’d packed into the vent over his shoulders, turned over and went to sleep.

She didn’t come the next day either, though. He began to worry. The CEO was absent too, and he wondered if they could have gone to the ground for some reason. It seemed quiet.

Still, until food ran out and he hadn’t eaten for an additional day, it was best to stay here. Valeria would let down her hair when it was appropriate. It was five and a half days, his longest stint in the vent. When he saw Valeria’s soft blond hair come down the stairs, he was so relieved that her odd attire–a long cloak and kerchief around her head–didn’t give him pause. He knew that hair, golden and wavy, with honey, amber, and sunlight-colored streaks combining into something hers and hers alone. There could be no doubt it was Valeria. It was her hair.

He smiled broadly as she walked along the window’s edge, watching for a moment as usual, and reached up, tugging the slim silver stick out of her hair to let the golden waves tumble to her shoulders.

Mache didn’t hesitate, whooping and pushing the vent door open. He jumped out and took a flying leap off the steps, laughing. “You had me worried, Val–” He caught his breath as he saw what he could not have looking down from the ceiling. She was tall. She was towering.

It wasn’t Valeria.

Before, he guessed the CEO topped Valeria by a foot. The truth was more like a foot and a half. She was a full hand taller than Mache. She didn’t speak. Her crimson lips drew into a smirk as she nodded once, almost to herself. She pushed aside the cloak she’d used to hide her attire, a split skirt with an array of belts and packs, layered over a corset and tailored jacket. From the belts hung several metal pins, scalpels and other sharp wares. Mache’s stomach turned as he saw one of the scalpels was edged in blood.

“Valeria,” he whispered, eyes wide, frozen in terror. “Where is she?”

“The princess of engineers is lost to you now,” the CEO said, still smiling. She took a step toward him, reaching out. He saw a glove of golden claws gracing her fingers. He took a step back. “The empress has scalped her, and you will now pay for her loss.”

Mache’s breath caught. “No,” he whispered. “No, you couldn’t have.”

“Of course I could,” she hissed and lunged at him, her hidden hand lashing out. Mache yelped as she slashed his shoulder with the golden claws. They clicked with terrible intent as she pulled back and flexed her hand. “She was mine! Do you know where she came from, little pilot? Do you know?”

“You bought her,” he snarled, backing towards the stairs. “When she was young you bought her because of her intelligence.”

“Ha! That is the story she was fed by my careful rumor mongering,” The CEO spit at his feet, voice lowering so it twisted and wrapped through the grates of the gigantic room. “Her father came to me in the night, begging for help. ‘Please!’ he said, ‘I need your help! My wife is with child and she is weak and sick.’

“I asked him, ‘Do I not pay you? Do I not provide you with doctors with the correct petitioning?’ and he said ‘It is not enough. She is to give birth tonight and the doctor has told me to administer her a medication too expensive for me to buy!’”

The CEO paused, then threw back her head and laughed. “He thought I was nothing but a soft, simpering woman. The truth is I saw the lie in his eyes.” She scoffed. “And so I gave him the money and followed him. Can you guess where her father wound up?” She pointed at him with a gilded claw. “Guess, boy!”

“I don’t know,” he growled. “Home?”

“No. The opium dens,” she snarled. “Tell me boy, Mache, was it? Tell me–a mother abed and dying, a child struggling for life, and where is the father? Snoring in an opium den, covered in his spilled wine! What would you do?”

“You stole her from her mother,” Mache snarled. “That’s much better.”

“Death stole her mother before I even had the chance to steal the child,” the CEO spat. “Even as I slit the deceitful wretch’s throat, she breathed her last to give Valeria life. Valeria is more my daughter than the children I birthed with my own sweat and tears.”

“And locking her in a dirigible for her entire life?” Mache snapped. If he could keep her talking as they ascended the staircase he stood a chance of making a jump kick and getting back into the still-open vent. Once there, he could crawl up to the next level, out, and grab the airfoil. She was too tall to follow him easily; he could beat her to the hanger, and then look for Valeria. She had to be alive. He couldn’t believe she was dead.

“For her own protection.” The CEO said. “She is too valuable, too precious. Her mind needed time to expand.”

“She’s a human being. She needed people.”

“She’s a genius,” the CEO scoffed. “As am I. We are beyond humans.”

Mache’s foot finally found the next step as her weight began to shift up to follow him. With a shout, Mache pushed off and leapt into the air, extending the heels of his boots toward her face, arms out to brace once he connected.

Only he didn’t. In one smooth move the CEO dipped, arms extending out and claws of her left hand raking his legs. Her fingers grappled, grasped and held, swinging Mache around her body with a grunt and slamming him into the wall beside them and then into the floor chest first.

Mache lost his breath, stars bursting through his vision. Survival instinct kicked in. He kicked, burying fingers into the grating in front of him for purchase and scrabbling to get away from the finely tuned death machine at his back.

She didn’t allow him to get far, grabbing his legs and twisting harshly. His fingers cracked. Mache gasped and shouted, writhing with greater desperation. She dropped him again, this time on his back, and stepped on his chest. He struggled, but with his fingers still tangled hopelessly in the grating, his arms were effectively bound. He could only kick at her.

The CEO leaned down, grinning at him. “Ah, boy,” she said, and reached out, caressing his face with her golden claws. “She loved you, you know.”

Mache groaned as she ground her heel into his chest. “Shut up.”

“I was amazed,” she said, and drew one of the scalpels off of her belt, kneeling on his shoulder as she inspected his hands for a moment. Once content, she busied herself cutting strips from his shirt. “She actually begged for you. Her life for yours, her eternal servitude for your life, a never-ending stream of fabulous inventions in return for your shelter with her.” She chuckled and slashed off a long strip, using it to tie down his hands.

“It was working,” he growled, “You could have taken it. She was happy!”

The CEO chuckled and rose. “Oh, she was. She wouldn’t have been for long though. A man softens a woman, tenderizes her with love and offers of comfort.” She stepped on his hand. Mache gasped as bone cracked and shattered further.

“Besides. Her work wasn’t the point. I admit she was useful. However, in the end it was I who built this company, and it is I whom this company relies on.” She stepped on the other hand. Mache couldn’t hold back a scream. “The point was she lied to me.”