Mechanica (15 page)

I spent my first precious hour in the workshop making an inventory of Mother’s supplies. In part, I wanted to reassure myself that the Steps hadn’t ruined everything, that the back room of the workshop was still intact. I also hoped counting the sheeting and gears, the bolts and wires and glass, would lead me to some revelation about what I could build for the Exposition.

At first I imagined a mechanical spindle and spinning wheel—but any large enough to be of interest to businessmen would be far too heavy for me to carry. Then I pictured some sort of loom or an automated glass blower—but again, these would be far too large. This was a problem I hadn’t even thought of until now. Anything that would impress the Exposition judges, I was certain, would be too big for me to transport there in the first place.

I sank down into my chair again, reduced back to depression and hopelessness more quickly than I could have imagined. Jules gone, my foolish thoughts of Fin, and now this—I was simple and stupid, not worthy of showing at the Exposition at all.

If Jules were here with me, I could talk to him, and maybe talk myself through to some solution. But he was gone, and I didn’t have the skill or the knowledge to bring him back.

I remembered Lord Alming’s knitting machine then, and I forced myself to stand. At least I could do that.

Before I started, though, there was one other thing that I had to do. I took the ombrossus that I’d hidden away in my pocket and stood on a chair so that I could reach the workshop’s window.

I looked down a bit reluctantly at the little vial with its tiny pool of brownish oil. If I did this, I would only have enough left for one or maybe two more applications. I would have to choose my days of freedom very, very carefully.

But if I didn’t use it here, the Steps would almost certainly find the workshop again. I couldn’t even be sure that the ombrossus would keep it safe . . . but it was better than nothing, and I had to try.

I tipped a drop onto my finger and smeared it onto the window’s ledge, thinking of the Steps the whole time. The liquid was oily and slick, and the wood absorbed it very slowly. I was able to cover the whole windowsill with one drop.

I repeated the spell at the studio’s front door, the one the Steps had found. Once again, a small drop was all I needed to cover the door frame. It felt thinner and more watery on my skin this time, but when I squinted at the vial, what remained was still thick and viscous. I supposed its structure must change to suit one’s needs; I’d heard of much stranger things.

There wasn’t even enough inside now to make a puddle at the bottom of the vial; a couple of lonely drops clung to its sides. Two more disguises. I would try to wait as long as I could before using it again.

The weight of sadness that had settled over me when the Steps found the workshop, when Jules died, had not yet lifted, even though I was doing my best to make it right.

I dragged myself to the back room and gathered the molds from my knitting prototype, the metals I would need for Lord Alming’s machine.

I strapped on Mother’s goggles and set to work.

The Steps were invited to dine at Fitz’s the next day, so I slipped out my window again—this time to go to the woods. I’d made a list of supplies I would need to build more knitting machines, some other mechanical sundries, and a request for a novel or two, and I wanted to get it to the Forest Queen’s ruins as soon as possible, since I didn’t know when Fin or Caro would next be there.

It was still early in winter, and the snow’s surface had melted during the day and then crusted over at night, so a slick glaze of ice met my boots when I reached the ground. I wobbled and slid across the flat expanse, progressing painfully slowly until I reached the forest. I felt as if I were walking on glass.

Looking back toward the house, I worried about the boot prints Caro and I had left in the snow. There were clearly visible divots tracing our path between the wall and the forest, as well as my return to the workshop’s little cellar window.

But the Steps rarely went outside even in the temperance of spring and autumn, and never at all in the heat of summer or in the cold and snow. They preferred their fireplaces and their fainting sofas and their Scriptures, as they always had; the back of the house had never been their territory. I remembered the games and long walks I’d imagined enjoying with Piety and Chastity when I still thought we would be sisters.

They would never see the prints. I turned into the colder shadows of the forest.

The snow was softer here, shaded by the trees so it hadn’t had a chance to melt and reharden. My feet sank toward the ground, and as I walked, I began to feel it trickle through the cracks in my old boots, numbing my toes where they stuck through the holes in my thin wool stockings.

It took longer to get to the ruins than I’d expected, though I didn’t get lost, because I had our footprints to follow. They were less visible here, but they were not completely gone. I remembered the bent trees and sharp rocks I’d used to mark my path last night too.

The snow-covered ruins looked like clouds caught in the branches, or snowdrifts that had simply forgotten about gravity. I marveled that they had stayed up for so many years. Mother had told me the story of the Forest Queen, but because there was not much science in it, I’d only heard it a few times. I wished I knew more, and then thought of Fin’s sculpture. I decided I would ask the next time I saw him.

Then I heard, in the closest ground-level shed, a creak. And another. Footsteps.

I darted behind the nearest tree, startled by the intensity of my fear. But a territorial anger soon took me over. No one was going to take away my hiding place before I’d even had a chance to put it to use.

I stepped forward. “Who’s there?” I called, grateful my voice sounded as fierce as I felt.

I was greeted not with a cowardly scurrying away as I’d hoped but with a warm, easy laugh.

“It’s only me, Nick.” Fin appeared in the doorway. “No need to sound so fearsome.”

He walked outside in the smooth, loping motion I’d so quickly learned was his signature. It seemed so natural to him that, had I not seen the clumsiness of some of Piety’s and Chastity’s suitors, I would have been tempted to assume such fluid and self-assured grace was simply part of being male.

“I was just checking for your Market orders,” he said, nodding back toward the shed. His dark curls caught the sun. “And Caro wrote you a letter that I wanted to leave for you.” He waved a thick brown envelope.

He glanced at the paper I held, and a grin began to suggest itself around the edges of his mouth. “That’s quite the list you have there. You must be planning on some serious inventing.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer him—I had the sense that he was being sincere and teasing at the same time.

“I take my work seriously,” I replied, and when the grin broke out full on his face, I felt my blush all the way to my eyebrows. I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“Only teasing, Nick,” he said, his smile softening.

I tried to smile too. “I know,” I said, very quietly. I felt I should be able to tease him back, but I wasn’t sure how to do it.

Silence stretched out between us. I looked at Fin, and I longed for something clever to say, but all I could think of was how foolish I must look, my skin pink and flushed, wearing old, worn skirts and a man’s coat, disheveled from my climb down the wall and my walk to the woods.

Fin, on the other hand, looked just as at ease and—I reddened again as I thought the word—handsome as he had at Market, and as he had in the moonlight when he and Caro had come to find me. He wore a white shirt, the top loose around the brown slope of his neck, a gray wool buttoned vest and black winter coat and breeches, all tailored to his broad frame, and black, new-looking leather boots. He must not be so poorly off as Caro, then, I thought. I wondered if that was the source of the tension between them over the booth’s rental fee—did Fin want to help Caro’s family? I knew well that she wouldn’t take charity.

At that moment, though, I thought it would be hard to refuse anything Fin might have to offer.

All this passed through my mind in the moment or two we stood looking at each other, during that painful silence.

If I couldn’t think of anything to say to him, at least I ought to leave, instead of staring at him like an imbecile.

“Here’s the list,” I said, offering him my paper.

Fin quirked his thick eyebrows. Another smile. “Thanks,” he said, and took it from me. “Here’s the letter.”

He kept smiling through another moment of silence I didn’t know how to fill.

“Come now, Nick,” he said. “Don’t you want to talk to me?”

“I . . .” Of course I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to talk to him too much, which was precisely why I couldn’t think of anything to say.

He smiled more gently now, and the absurd thought that perhaps he understood how I felt passed through my mind. “Back up in the trees, shall we?” he asked.

I still felt as if I should be able to think of something witty to say. Instead, I nodded. “All right.”

I followed him up another tree, where there was only a platform, so well shielded by the branches above it that it was hardly dusted with snow. He kicked what little there was away, then took off his overcoat and spread it on the wood. He sat down on one side of the coat, his legs dangling over the platform’s edge, and gestured to the space next to him, the motions of his hand elegant and almost formal. I wondered if he and his family worked in the palace.

“If you please, miss,” he said, and I smiled. If his father wasn’t a butler, or some other kind of high-class house servant, I’d have been shocked. That would have accounted for his nicer clothes, too.

“Thank you, kind sir,” I replied, proper as I could, and sat down next to him.

“Well,” he said. “Good.”

I looked over at his profile. Half his smile, as it turned out, was just as disarming as all of it.

“So I suppose you’ll have to go back to those idiots soon, but I thought we should talk a bit, being friends and all.” His last word rose a little in a half question.

“Being friends.” I nodded to encourage him.

“Why do you stay with them?”

“I . . .” I sighed. “They’re still my family, I suppose. But that’s not—” My lip trembled; I touched my palm to my chin, and it stilled. “If I left now, it would only be to seek the same work somewhere else. At least this way, I’m still living in my father’s house. I can still work with what my mother left me. I am—there are things I love about my life there, in spite of everything. I couldn’t give them up to be a maid in some other house that I’d never loved. When I leave, it will be to move to a workshop I’ve bought with my own money, earned from my inventions. I want leaving the Steps to be a triumph, not an escape. I want to feel like I’m not running away from anything, not hiding. I want to feel as if I never have to hide again.”

I stopped. How had I managed to talk so much? And how would Fin possibly understand how I felt? He worked in some grand house he didn’t care for, I was certain of it. Had I just insulted him?

I looked down at my moth-eaten mittens. I couldn’t look him in the face.

“Not hiding.” That was all he said, but it was enough that I could glance up from my hands and over to him again. I was caught immediately in the liquid darkness of his eyes, rimmed with those thick lashes, creased as always with good nature at the corners. But the creases faded now, and his face was serious. “That sounds well, Nick, not hiding. I think I know what you mean.”

He did, I could tell. I didn’t have space left in my mind to think about how, not while I took in his face, the shape of his eyes and lips, his mouth that looked so kind, even unsmiling—and most of all, the knowledge that he understood.

“I’ve been hiding too,” he said, “or I feel as if I have.”

Suddenly it wasn’t hard to look at him. I was astonished. “What do you mean? What are you hiding from, Fin?”

He looked at me searchingly for a moment, and then looked down. Was it hard for him to look at me as well?

“There are things I—secrets I have to keep too.” His hands, covered in thin black deerskin gloves—a high-level servant undoubtedly, I thought—dusted over his face in a gesture I could only call self-conscious, even from this beautiful, confident boy.

I considered his face again. His dark and shining hair and eyes, his brown skin, his thick lashes—they were all Su, physical traits from the Sudlands that set him apart from Estinger commoners. I took in his plain but well-crafted clothes, and I thought of the way he spoke, a bit more formally than Caro did, a bit like what I’d learned to expect from the minor nobles I knew, like Fitz or the Steps, or well-bred commoners as I myself had been, before Mother and Father died.

Of course. I understood then what I must have known, in some way, all along.

“Oh, Fin—your father is a noble, isn’t he?”

I wondered if my question would offend him. A noble father who did not recognize his child could only mean that child was illegitimate. The Brethren frowned on any union outside marriage, and illegitimate children were barely people in their eyes. It was incredibly poor form to mention such a shameful notion out loud.

But there was no shame in it, I thought. It would only be Fin’s father’s shame, if he refused to recognize such a son.

Fin simply nodded. “Yes,” he said, “my father’s in the court. I work at the palace; I suppose that’s clear enough. Caro works there too, and her family; we grew up playing together.”

“So you’re a servant.” Something else we had in common, besides working with our hands, besides our ability to climb trees quickly. Besides hiding.

“Yes,” he said. “I go to the stables too, whenever I get the chance. I love horses, and the ones in the palace are the finest anywhere.”

“I love horses too.” Something else. “I have one of my own—”

“You do?” Fin’s eyes sparked in delight before I could explain that my horse was about the size of my two hands, made of steel and glass, and ran on coal. “Don’t you love riding? Isn’t it just—” He laughed. “Isn’t it better than anything?”