Bitter Cold: A Steampunk Snow Queen (The Clockwork Republic Series Book 4) (14 page)

She had called to him from the steam carriage, bringing his attention back from whatever he thought he was leaving behind. The feeling you'd forgotten something was a common effect of the powder, but he obeyed too reluctantly, prompting another dose. He slipped into a drowsy stupor as soon as the Eurus had lifted off from the platform.

This particular craft was of middling size, not quite as fast as her day trip craft, but much smaller than the floating fortress they traveled towards. Pineville was an overnight journey even at full speed, and the traveling coach had been moored in Little Rock. It contained a comfortable bedchamber at the stern, the sitting room midship, and the bridge where Guthrie captained the ship at the bow.

She read The Gotham Gazette, a New York paper, which included an interview she had conducted a week before. In the interview, she alluded to an important announcement she'd be making soon concerning a technological advancement to alter the course of human history. She wasn't prone to hyperbole or exaggeration.

The reporter had sputtered in delighted curiosity at her bold pronouncement. It was, of course, entirely true. She simply omitted telling him not all of humanity would be delighted at the ensuing alteration. Nor did she mention many of them might not live to see the future.

She scorned the bourgeois governments of the new world, as much as the stiff royals of the old world, with their quibbling morality which objected to creating artificial life. It meant no one could know of her accomplishments, at least until her greatest experiment gave her the power to disregard them. She had the resources to buy a certain amount of freedom. She'd soon have the power to ensure total liberty to do as she pleased.

But first, she must complete the Eternity Engine. It had become her obsession since she first posited her theory. Soon, even Valentine would be forced to acknowledge the full extent of her genius. She would be the first alchemist to create an invention that offered the same effect as the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. She had already created life, or at least transformed it, with her animatons. Why shouldn't she have the power of a god?

Of course, the journey had been fraught with danger and risk. What worthwhile adventure wasn't? Valentine had shown her the trick for getting around the Guild's notice when creating the animatons, but the blueprints for the Eternity Engine had been solely her design. Six months before, those plans had nearly been stolen. Some sneak thief had broken into her overseer's house in Pineville, and opened the safe which held an older copy of the plans.

Fortunately, the alchemical seals she'd placed on the safe and the house had released her prototype wolf and frightened away the burglar before he'd had a chance to take anything of consequence. The wolf animaton was supposed to eliminate the intruder and return. Evelyn had spent an anxious week, as Gresham tracked the machine into the woods. The plans for the Eternity Engine, thankfully, had been left untouched.

Gresham returned to report that the machine had been destroyed. He found the battered shell of the machine propped up as a scarecrow in an old woman's garden. The crazy old bat had blown it apart with a shotgun blast. She claimed she saw it stalking through her property and fired on it, blowing the "infernal device" to "smithereens."

Evidently, she'd been quite proud of the feat.

More likely, there was a flaw in the machine's fabrication which caused the steam engine to overheat and explode. No mere shotgun shell could have done more than dent the thing's brass and steel hide. Her design of the later models had been more careful, all the same. The somnus formulae had kept the first wolf asleep in its cabinet even after the automaton was destroyed, and she'd been able to bind its animus to one of the new models.

Across the cabin of the Eurus, Merryweather groaned in his sleep. It required a stronger dose of the control powder than she'd anticipated to keep him entranced. She also needed to administer it more frequently than she'd expected. She'd encountered captains of industry whose wills were easier to bend than this simple mechanic's. Not that it mattered. Eventually, the powder would break his will, and the illusion of his infatuation with her would be the only reality which mattered to him.

A noise at the porthole attracted her attention. One of her mechanical ravens had landed on the edge, cocking its black tin head and cawing like a real bird.

It was the one she'd with Halfacre, along with instructions to notify her when the alchemist was unconscious. The tincture she'd put in the cup wouldn't kill the girl, just slow her heart to nearly a stop over the course of a few hours. She'd instructed Gaskon to bury the body, which would finish her off without triggering any alarms for the Alchemists Guild.

It was crucial the widow follow her instructions, and leave the girl's body in the conservatory for Gaskon to handle. After the automaton's strange pause, Evelyn had some concerns about the widow and the 'gen spending much time together. One trip to the basement laboratory, and things could unravel quickly.

The penalty was death for mixing alchemy and mechanics as she'd done to create her butler and her wolves. The evidence in her basement would call the full force of the Guild down on her, at the worst possible moment.

She grasped the bird, activating its recording. She expected to hear Halfacre, reporting her success. Instead, a young girl's voice rang out.

"I know what you are. I know what you have planned. And I'm coming to set Kit free."

The Snow Queen held her breath. A mere girl couldn't have escaped her trap, much less captured and used her own clockwork raven. It was impossible!

The sound of the girl's voice carried across the parlor, and Kit moaned in his sleep. A troubled frown creased his face. He clutched his chest as if a warding off a stabbing sensation in his chest. After a few moments of writhing in pain without fully waking, he relaxed again into exhausted sleep.

Evelyn reached under her settee for the wooden case. She carried it into her cabin, locking the door behind her. She set the case on her mahogany dressing table, jerking it open and shoving the mechanical bird into it with the ferocity of a woman betrayed.

She took a deep breath, pulled out another raven, and set it on the dark wood. She pressed its black wings against its fragile tin form.

The raven cawed twice.

"The girl in this photograph follows me. She travels alone. Send evidence you've taken care of her."

The bird cawed twice more.

This raven's ring was held by Gregory, the Robber Baron of the Tennessee Caravan. They were always somewhere near Pineville this time of year. She pulled a newspaper clipping from the stack on her desk, a picture of Kit with the girl. She had underestimated their attachment, but it didn't matter.

She slipped the photo into an envelope, rolled it tightly and tied it to the bird's leg with a red ribbon. She picked up a tablet of alchemical coal from a box on her desk, dropping it into the bird's mouth.

She carried the raven back to the porthole, and said simply "Go."

It flew off behind them, bouncing in the late winter wind and eventually disappearing into the dark green shadows of the pines.

Chapter 13

The Robber Princess

Greta watched the ground approach. She busted the thin crust of ice in the bucket and poured water over the edges of the sleigh. She'd need to start a fire as soon as she landed; there was one last bottle of featherfall in her work box, but she'd have to activate it with a torch after applying it to the sleigh and reindeer. The Kentucky border had to be close by now.

She aimed for a clearing where the sleigh could land. She'd been flying exposed to the late winter wind for hours. Even though she'd practically buried herself in blankets, shawls and scarves, and Tennessee was a bit warmer than Missouri, she still felt miserable and half-frozen.

The sleigh landed with a thud, pine needles crunching beneath the locomotive tracks. Greta nearly fell over from the jarring impact. Once she'd rescued Kit, they would need to work on a better landing mechanism, perhaps something with coiled metal springs. A glass enclosure wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

She caught a flash of movement from the trees. Before she could reach into her work box for a weapon, colorfully dressed men and women ran out of the pine woods. They rushed towards her, yelling and whooping. She grabbed a wrench and raised it to fend off the robbers. The nearest man leapt onto the sleigh, her caught her wrist and twisted it, prying the wrench from her frozen fingers.

"Now, there, young 'un! There'll be none a that! Ain't no Yankee girl gonna get the jump on a member of the Caravan. Especially not when we been warned you were comin'!"

"Well, I'll be! Have a look at this here sledge. It's damn near all copper, yer Grace. We'll get a fortune for it, once we tear it down. The reindeer, too." A small, wiry man had hopped astride one of them. He patted its metal back as if stroking a living creature. His long, colorful knitted scarf blew in the wind, then got tangled in the reindeer's brass antlers.

"I dunno, Beau." said a grey haired man, stroking his grey beard as he approached. "We might get more for those reindeer if we leave 'em intact. Nice clockwork mechanics. Might be able to sell 'em to some feller who wants it to pull a cart. Might even trot 'em out at our own fairs for a bit, charge folks for a ride on 'em. We can always sell the copper once they break down."

The man who grabbed Greta's wrist had wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her out of the sleigh. In a deft movement, he had both her arms pinned behind her, walking her over to the bearded man.

"Is she the one we're lookin for?"

The man gave her the same look of shrewd appraisal he'd given the reindeer and sleigh.

"I believe she is. I'll want to take her back to camp, look at 'er against the photograph her highness sent, just to be sure. Wouldn't do to slit this pretty thing's throat only to discover she's the wrong girl. We might get a handy ransom out of 'er alive."

The man chuckled and produced a rope from his belt. Greta was bound and gagged, carried over the shoulder of a very large vagabond into the darkening woods. Behind her, she could see a number of their band tearing Kit's sleigh to pieces.

"Bunch a potions in this box here, Gregory!" shouted the small man, Beau, who was looking into her workbox with a suspicious frown. "What d'ya want us to do with it?"

"Set it aside for now. Carefully! That stuff is prone to blowing a fella up, if yer not careful. I'll send Lulabelle out in the mornin to look through it and see what we can salvage. Just leave it near the reindeer for now."

It seemed to Greta as if they would be bouncing through the brambles forever. Branches reached out and scraped across her arms, legs and face. She grunted the few times the man carrying her stumbled in the dark, his shoulder jamming into her empty stomach.

Finally, they came out of the woods into a clearing lit by a huge bonfire. Painted wagons and silk tents circled the clearing. Felled trees made benches all around the fire, and a village of men, women and children filled the space. Some of them played traditional songs on banjos, fiddles and flutes, while others danced. Some were eating, and a small group encircled a young man who was telling an animated story, prompting uproarious laughter.

The man carried her to the largest wagon, a bright red one festooned with gilt decorations. He opened the door at the back of the wagon, and tossed her to the floor inside, calling up to the wagon's single occupant, a young woman no older than Greta.

"Lulabelle! Yer father's asked I drop this bit a' baggage here for the night. Don't get attached to 'er. She's most likely the one 'er Highness wants dead. Yer pa just wants to check the picture again in the mornin to be sure. She's got a box of chemicals out near the road. Yer to look into what we can take safely in the mornin."

The girl nodded and waved him away. "I got 'er, Joseph. You go on now. Getcha a bite to eat."

The man nodded and shut the wagon door. It made a peculiar room. Two hammocks with blankets swung from the roof. A small, rough desk sat at the opposite end. A heavy chest sat in a corner. The girl Lulabelle leaned back on a three legged stool before a dressing table, turning around to look at Greta, who had never seen such a wild-looking young woman.

Instead of a proper dress, she wore buckskin breeches tucked into dark leather boots which came nearly to her knees. A velveteen corset with an oriental pattern held her billowy muslin tunic in place. Her thick brown leather belt held a small holstered revolver on one side, and a wicked sheathed blade at the other. A patterned scarf kept riotous red hair away from her face, while gold hoops hung from her ears.

The girl's pale skin had so many freckles it was nearly tan, and her eyes were such a dark brown they were nearly black. Despite her delicate features, she looked like a wild animal escaped from the circus.

Greta began squirming, attempting to talk through the gag in her mouth.

A wry grin crossed Lulabelle's face.

"I ain't sure what'd be funnier. Listenin to you try to talk through that thing, or hearin whatever tall tale you spin tryin to save yer hide." She unsheathed her knife and cut the gag away. "Well, it ain't like I can't just gag ya again later, if I get tard of yer yappin. So what d'ya have to say fer yerself?"