Bitter Cold: A Steampunk Snow Queen (The Clockwork Republic Series Book 4) (15 page)

Greta held her tongue. First, because the gag had made her jaws tired, and second, because she knew she had one chance to convince this woman to let her go. It seemed a slim chance, given how cavalier the girl had been at her captor's pronouncement that her father intended to kill Greta first thing in the morning.

"Do you get stuck guarding a lot of murder victims for your father?" she snapped.

The girl threw back her head and laughed, slapping her knee. "A few," she said. "None who ever asked fer a head count, though. That's a first!"

"Well, I can guarantee none of them had as good a story as mine." Greta had an idea.

"Well, do tell! I love a good yarn." The girl leaned back against the desk, folding her arms in front of her and kicking her boots out as if settling in.

"My name's Greta Singleton. I'm an alchemist from St. Louis in the republic of Missouri."

"I know where St. Louis is. I'm not a fool."

"Didn't say you were. Are you going to let me tell my tale or not?"

"My apologies, Madam Sheherazade," said the girl with a wink. "Please do continue."

"Since I was five, I've lived next door to the best friend any girl could have. I've singed his arm hair off, gotten him in trouble with the police, and blown up more of his possessions than I can even count thanks to my crazy experiments.

"Two days ago, he watched me blow up my parents' garden shed. If he hadn't pulled me back, it might have carried me into the sky with it. I'm not certain how he's managed to survive being my friend all these years, much less why he's continued to want my friendship--"

"How'd yer garden shed end up airborn?" Lulabelle interrupted with obvious skepticism. Even to her own ears it sounded like a tall tale, but the girl looked curious to hear the rest.

"I was trying to create an anti-gravity formulae. Something to make solid objects float like balloons. It worked. Really well. Too well."

"Is that how you made yer sled contraption fly? One of our scouts spotted ya in it a few miles back, came back on horseback to report to Pa. Said he'd never seen such a thing. They were gonna try to lasso ya and pull ya down if ya hadn't landed anyway."

"Yes," said Greta. "Kit, my friend, made the sleigh for a Christmas exposition. The reindeer can move with clockworks, and it had locomotive tracks and a tiny steam engine. His design was better than any of the horseless carriages I've seen. He's the best tinker in the world. He'll be a great engineer someday, if he survives whatever the Snow Queen has planned. If
any
of us survive what the Snow Queen has planned."

Lulabelle raised a suspicious eyebrow at the last ominous sentence.

"I suppose this is where ya try to convince me I have to let you go," she said drily.

"Does that mean you want me to skip past the part where I found out Evelyn DeWinter kidnapped my best friend, or the part where she hired a woman to drug me in Arkansas, and most likely kill me later? You want me to skip telling you she's planning on using Kit to build some sort of doomsday device that will probably be the death of all of us?"

"We'll be all right," said Lulabelle with a curt nod. "People have been tryin to kill the Caravan for a hundred years, and they tried to get rid of our people back in the old world fer even longer. We're survivors. Whatever Her High and Mighty the Snow Queen has planned, we'll do just fine. Don't you worry 'bout that, none. You best worry about your own self."

There was a smug tone behind Lulabelle's words, but also a tiny bit of something else. Bravado? Uncertainty?

"Maybe you're right, Lulabelle. I don't know much about the Caravan. You certainly seem like a capable group. But I'm also guessing that if the Snow Queen says jump, your father asks 'How high?' From what I've seen the last two days, everyone on earth who has a passing acquaintance with Evelyn DeWinter is terrified of her. She's a murderous witch, and I think you know she's capable of anything, including something your Caravan doesn't expect and just might not be prepared to handle."

"That may be true," said Lulabelle, looking at Greta from under half-lowered eyelids. "But we know what she'll do if we don't do what she asks. I'm not puttin my Pa, nor any of my kin, in a pine box to save your sorry hide!"

Greta started to retort back, but then shut her mouth. It was no use. She and her own father weren't close, but she loved him and believed he loved her, despite his constant complaints about her behavior. She'd never do anything that would lead to his death. She could do nothing to convince Lulabelle to sign her own father's execution order.

She began to cry. Greta did not cry often, and here she was, crying for the third time in two days. Then again, it had been an especially trying two days.

She'd failed. She couldn't rescue Kit. She couldn't even rescue herself. In the morning, Lulabelle's father would probably pull a knife -- just like the one his daughter carried -- across her throat, and that would be the end of Greta Jane Singleton. If not for the small matter of her being the only person who might be able to stop the Snow Queen from bringing about some sort of pernicious doomsday, the world would probably be a better place.

She would never see Kit again. The trickling tears became a full-blown sob. She wept as she had when she found his tattered coat by the edge of the Mississippi. She slid down the wall until she lay in a crumpled ball on the floor of the wagon.

"Now, there, don't be bawlin girl. I'm sorry, but it ain't no use. We all gotta die sometime. your time is just comin a little earlier than you mighta planned."

Good grief, thought Greta through her sobs. If this was Lulabelle's idea of comfort, thank God she probably had few occasions to try and console someone.

"I'm *hiccup* not *hic* crying because I'm going to die," said Greta miserably. "I'm crying because . . . because. . . ."

She began wailing. It was an awful sound. So awful Lulabelle seemed to consider stuffing the gag back in her mouth. But since that would probably choke her to death in her current state, in the end she must have decided it'd be best to just calm her down.

"Shh! It'll be all right. Now settle down, girl! You'll have my Pa in here in a minute, and he'll have both our skins -- mine for takin the gag off in the first place, and yours for being purely exasperatin!" She leaned down and tried to stroke Greta's back.

Greta stopped wailing after a minute. She felt almost numb.

"So if you're not grievin leavin the mortal coil, what's ailin ya?"

Greta shifted backwards, working herself up into a seated position. "Reach into the pocket of my pinafore. You'll find a small wooden box. Please take it out. You want to know why I'm upset? I'll do more than tell you. I'll show you."

Her voice sounded resigned. She was done fighting the inevitable. She was done fighting her own heart. She would die before she ever got the chance to tell Kit the truth. She might as well tell someone.

Lulabelle reached into her pocket and pulled out the wooden box. She opened it, and stared at the expertly-crafted ring. "I've seen a lotta rings in my time. We pull 'em off travelers first thing, and I don't mind tellin ya, I ain't never seen a thing like this before."

She held it up to the lantern light. She examined the beautiful carving, and noted the inscription, but then she frowned as she turned it in her rough hands. "Hmm . . . what's this?"

"What's what?" Greta sniffled.

"Whenever we commandeer a wagon or carriage, Pa always sends me in to check for hidden trap doors and secret compartments. Got a bit of a sixth sense for secrets, and right now, it's tellin me this here ring's got one." With a practiced touch from years of picking locks, she grasped it with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, pulled apart, and twisted.

A soft tune played like a tiny phonograph. Even with Lulabelle's kinfolk singing and yelling outside, the two young women could still make out the sound.

"Well ain't that a kick in the pants. This might be the most amazing thing I ever seen."

She looked down to see Greta quietly crying again.

"It's Gilbert & Sullivan," she whispered. "My favorite song. He made it for me. He tried to give it to me, the day she took him. He tried to ask me to marry him, and I thought he was there to tell me he was leaving to take a job somewhere else. I slammed the door in his face.

"I've nearly killed both of us, I never listen, and I look like a hurricane blew me in most days. I'd make an awful wife. I probably shouldn't be trusted near small children. But he made that for me, and he wanted to ask me to marry him."

"What about you?" said Lulabelle "Do you love him?"

Greta locked eyes with the robber maiden, and said "More than life. So much I couldn't ever let myself admit it, because I couldn't imagine he felt the same. So much I was going to try to talk him out of marrying me, because I thought he'd be happier with someone else. Someone more normal, I suppose. He deserves a normal life. One without exploding, levitating garden sheds."

"Girl, I have never met this man a' yours," said Lulabelle, holding the ring in one hand and peering through the center of it at her. "Probably never will. But I can tell ya this. No man who'd make a ring like this, for someone like you, would ever be satisfied with somebody
normal
."

An outcry raised just outside the wagon. The door burst open, and the grey haired Robber Baron flung a bound and beaten man into the wagon next to Greta. His greasy dark hair was slicked back away from sharp-edged features, and he was nearly swallowed by a charcoal grey greatcoat.

"Our men found
this
skulkin outside camp. There's a telegram in his pocket from Her Highness, tellin him to kill me and set fire to the camp once he makes sure the girl is dead. That dirty double-crossin witch was plannin to do me in no matter what I do!" he shouted. "And I gotta tell ya, it don't make me too terribly inclined to comply with her requests!"

Chapter 14

Cold Hearted

The Boreas, if not the largest airship on earth, was still quite large enough for Kit to find awe-inspiring. As the lift platform swayed beneath his feet, he gaped up at the lines and angles of the massive craft. Like everything which surrounded Evelyn DeWinter, it was luxurious, beautiful, intimidating and remote.

He gripped the case containing the plans for the engine she'd requested he work on. It hadn't taken much more than a cursory look for him to apprehend what she had been trying to build. The designs outlined an engine to halt or even reverse the aging process, indefinitely. Instead of trying to formulate the philosopher's stone in a laboratory, she had built a machine to achieve the same effect.

But it was more than that. The plans and schematics, along with the notes, made it clear the engine was a complete amalgamation of engineering and alchemy. It was difficult to say exactly where one science ended and the other began. The drawings were infinitely complex and the notations were almost inscrutable.

Yet he'd understood them easily. While he knew he was no alchemist, it was clear he'd somehow acquired much more than a passing knowledge of the arcane science. Unfortunately, attempting to remember how he'd come by the knowledge resulted in another splitting headache and a feeling of intense dread. The strange, melodramatic reaction seemed at odds with the pragmatic mechanical man he appeared to be in all other respects. It was peculiar to be such a mystery to himself. But if he had to injure himself, he was grateful to have fallen into the hands of the lovely Miss DeWinter.

As the bow of the great airship loomed closer, he wondered how he could possibly find his sleeping berth in such a flying behemoth. His sleep had been restless since the day he'd awakened on the Aeolus. Perhaps Miss DeWinter had been correct, and he'd struck his head while escaping the mechanical wolves. It would account for the troubled sleep, and the more troubling issue of his lost memories. It was fortunate she'd been seeking his services as a mechanic at the time. He was thankful she hadn't decided to employ someone else. She insisted his reputation as a tinker made him invaluable. He only wished he could remember earning that reputation.

Perhaps it didn't matter who he'd been before. What could he have known in his previous life which could have compared to being near her? Still, the nightmares grew steadily worse, even physically painful. They were always the same. He was trapped in a palace of ice, running towards something which seemed of paramount importance.

He had no more time to consider his dreams, as the lift platform slipped into a rectangular bay opening in the bottom of the Boreas. His eyes adjusted to the comparatively dim light indoors, and he could survey the spacious cargo bay. Crates and barrels, boxes and stacks of supplies all made neat rows and hallways around him. A 'gen painted with the livery of the DeWinter family stood at the edge of the open bay. It threw a large iron switch, turning off the chugging steam winch. The chains creaked as the platform slowed to a stop.

"Master Merryweather. Please follow me to the mistress." The 'gen turned and walked towards a set of doors several yards away. The rote pings of his mechanical voice were jarring. He'd grown accustomed to Gaskon, Evelyn's townhouse butler, who spoke much more naturally.

Kit followed the 'gen through a twisting maze of corridors and up stairs until he rapped on a door. A brass plate hung from it, inscribed with the words "Governor's Suite." Glancing down the corridor, he noticed similar plates on all the doors. Evelyn had purchased a luxury liner airship for personal use.