Steamlust (15 page)

“Oh, velvet, Hannah.”

She lay her head back against the warm metal and shifted her hips, clenching down hard, making him gasp.

“Oh, easy, girl, easy.

Might as well go easy
, she thought.
We’ve nowhere to go for the moment, and Will says there’s plenty of hot water
. Darien lifted a hank of her wet hair in his hand and leaned his face into it.

“You’re my mermaid in the water, Hannah. I’m sorry, Hannie, I’m so sorry, I’m a fool, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry I let you go alone. Angel girl.”

He rubbed her harder, thrust faster, and she leaned in and bit his nipple as the shudders broke though her.

“Augh, I love you,” he coughed out, and came, leaning down to bury his head in her shoulder.

“I like it in here,” Hannah said, when their breathing had cooled, and Darien had slipped out of her. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell them we’re okay.” She laughed, lifting her wrinkled fingertips to his mouth to kiss. “Though we must consider your whirligigs.”

With a clank, the ladder splashed back into the tank and Elana’s smiling face peered over.

“I hope your rapprochement is complete in there, there’s something you need to see.”

They climbed out, gingerly. Before the ship stood a beaming Doc, clad in a new dress and a smear of grease and holding a multi-tool. A
whum
and a whir emanated from the ship. Will was looking stunned.

“It seems to be working. Doc, did you work with the professor?”

“Yeah, I was his ’prentice. He said I had raw potential.”

Darien frowned.

“He never made
me
his apprentice.”

“I think your raw potential was in a different area, old man,” said Will calmly. “Here, put some clothes on.”

“Told you I could fix it.”

Some nights later, in the small hours, a ship rose into the night sky, hoisted by a glowing green and gold balloon. At the helm stood Hannah and Darien, airborne again, united once more, hands entwined and steering for the moon.

I
would have been the first to concede how much better things were for me back when I behaved myself. Back when I rarely went out, when I only saw friends whose politics my father had approved beforehand; we were only allowed to sit in the salon and drink the hibiscus and rose-hip tea that made me so drowsy I no longer parted the curtains to catch a glimpse of the outside world. Back when my parents spoke of betrothing me to men whose company I could comfortably stand, and when I wasn’t in love with a twenty-one-year-old boy who always had crescent moons of soot and ash under his fingernails.

Back when the clockwork corsos didn’t stalk me like a pasture rabbit.

I had only moments until their brass teeth would tear into me. My thoughts, which I knew might be my last, strayed to Ezra; instead of longing for the neat linens of the bedroom where I had slept until I was eighteen, I wanted nothing more than the touch of the boy who had first led me away from the safety of my parents’ walled gardens. The boy who had first
taught me the landscape of the black market liquor trade that had flourished since the Ban. I wanted his hands up under my skirt, tearing my slip in his haste to reach the warmth and wetness beneath my crinoline.

But he wasn’t there, and knowing I would never again feel the heat of his breath against the hollow of my neck filled me with more dread than my approaching hunters.

I had none of the liqueur on me. But I had three-dozen autumn damask roses and two pounds of Parma violets under my coat. They were tucked neatly inside the red satin of the lining, but the corsos could still smell them, so I ran, holding my coat shut and trying not to let my heels call out my steps on the wet cobblestone.

Thanks in no small part to Ezra and me, roses and violets had been banned, and gardeners grudgingly filled their flowerbeds with clove-pink carnations and peonies, whose fluffy frills I loved, but the more reserved groundskeepers found garish.

Each of the clockwork corsos had a large, sturdy shape and a dark gleam, distinctive of the dog breed that was their namesake. As a child, I had once seen a month-old canine corso—a real one of course, since the clockwork corsos were always built full size. The puppy had a sad but determined face and a coat so shiny it looked like damp coffee grounds. It had belonged to the daughter of an Italian businessman who visited my father whenever he was in the country. The puppy’s little body had been so warm on my lap; now I could find no resemblance to the brass and wrought iron creatures policing the streets and country roads, searching out contraband blooms.

I had chosen tonight because I had heard that the worst of the clockwork corsos were in the shop for repairs. But I recognized the growl of their gears from blocks away, the sound echoing off the brick buildings. They had been fixed and released from the
shop early. If they cornered me, they would tear me to pieces. I had seen it happen to a man who had tried to smuggle a dozen bottles of juniper-berry gin into the city. Ezra and I had been walking home when we saw a crowd gathered, and he pulled me into him and whispered, “Don’t look.” Before Ezra shielded my gaze, I saw that a corso’s tooth had come loose in the struggle, the triangle of brass glinting in the dead man’s neck.

Whenever the corsos killed a man, the authorities termed it a mechanical failure, an accident. They recalled the involved dogs for inspection only to release them hours later. But they knew what their hounds were doing; they had designed them for it.

I ran toward darkness, down the alley between E. P. Logan’s Clothier and the hat shop that always smelled like chamomile. There was no use calling for help. Even if the businesses hadn’t been shut for the night, no one would have helped me for fear of looking guilty. I pressed my back against the damp brick, willing myself to disappear into the wall. But the corsos weren’t searching for me by sight. Even I could smell the violets and roses. My clothes and hair were soaked in their perfume.

The corsos paused at the corner, the metal of their bodies creaking as they sniffed the air. In no hurry, they turned their heads toward the dark where I hid. The gas-flame blue of their eyes grew brighter as their iron joints creaked, readying their bodies to lunge.

They would make no sound as they tore my throat open. They had not been built to bark or snarl like living dogs. Only my screams and the grating of metal on metal would cut through the silence on the empty street.

A few more points of light joined the glow of their eyes. At first I thought more had come. But the new lights were too low to the ground, and instead of gas blue, they were tinged with violet, like iolite. Even the corsos stopped to watch them glide over the
cobblestones. The biggest among them lowered his head to sniff one. Electricity arced through the iron and brass of his frame, lighting it up pale purple, and he clattered to the ground. The others drew back, skittering away from the remaining little lights. But one by one, they too glowed with the same violet sparks and then fell, eyes vanishing as their brass lids snapped shut.

I couldn’t move. I had lost my night vision to the hounds’ eyes and the little wisteria-colored lights. The corsos blocked my path out of the alley. They had been stunned, but they could shock back into life at any moment.

The last little point of glowing violet rolled toward me. It was nothing but a clear glass marble, with a tiny lavender spark captured inside. But I didn’t have enough breath to run from it, and it came to rest against the side of my boot. Its heat and electricity shimmered through my body. My head fell back against the brick, and my bangs cleared from my eyes, letting me see the blur of the stars and the thumbnail slice of moon.

I saw him running toward me. Though I could only see his silhouette, I knew his shape better than mine, because I had touched his body more than I had touched my own. My hands had learned him in every second they’d spent on his back and thighs. But he couldn’t have been there. He had emerged from my fever dream. If I wanted it enough, he would push me up against the wall and take my weight on his hips.

The warmth in my temples made me dizzy. He held me and put his lips to my ear, whispering my name as the stars and moon went dark.

I dreamed of him in the sweet, damp haze of touch and bayberry candle glow.

Hours later, I surfaced from sleep to the feeling of chambray cotton sheets, worn soft by years of washing. The scent of violets and roses mixed with the soft spice of ashes and cloves.
Cambric and ash: it identified him as well as a fingerprint.

“Ezra?” I said before I was awake enough to open my eyes.

I could feel his weight on the bed as he sat near me and stroked my hair. “It’s all right,” he said, and stood up again. “You’re all right.”

I shut my eyes tighter and then let them relax open. It was still night, but through the space between the shades I found a thin line of pink that traced the hills and
mesas
along the horizon. In an hour or so, it would be morning.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

He shrugged, his back to me. “We still run similar routes.”

“I haven’t seen you.”

“I haven’t wanted you to.” He turned up the lamp, the same pressed-lead glass we’d made love by a year earlier. He looked almost as young as the last time I saw him; a faint shadow of stubble along his jawline made him look barely older. Locks of his hair fell in his eyes, and the lamp lit up the red strands that hid within the brown like stray threads. His trousers had the same pinstripes I remembered, and over his collared shirt he wore a waistcoat he had inherited from his father. It used to be big on him, and now it fit; even though he had a little more muscle to him now, he must have had it taken in.

My coat hung on a hook near the bureau, with my crinoline next to it. I had on only the velvet of my dress over the cream-white of my slip. I hadn’t been this naked in front of a man since the last time I saw him.

He’d loosened the lacing on my corset. I could breathe. I sat up, and my hair fell around my shoulders. He’d freed it from its pinned curls.

I combed it with my fingers. “Were you planning to take advantage of me?”

“If I were, I wouldn’t have left your dress on.” He filled with
water two chipped vases that had belonged to his late grandmother. “You wouldn’t have been able to sleep in your coat.”

I recognized things from where he had last lived, where I had lived with him for a few months. The railroad pocket watch his grandfather had given him was on the bureau. The lamp gave off an apricot glow I knew by heart. I remembered the rosewood table where he set the vases. But this was somewhere else. It was far enough out in the country to see the
mesas
, instead of right in the city.

He slipped the Parma violets and damask roses from the lining of my coat into the water. “You’ve got to stop wearing your corset so tight. You’ll crack a rib.”

I wore it that way without thinking. My mother used to tell me, “Better in pain than unkempt.”

“It’s a habit,” I told Ezra.

“It’s a bad one.” He checked the flowers for crushed petals. “Who’s your grower?”

I sat on the edge of the bed, letting the toes of my stockings catch dust from the floor. “I am.”

“Where?” he asked.

“My sister rents me a half acre on her land.”

“Luisa?” He almost laughed. “She never wanted you involved in the first place.”

Luisa, like my mother, had never wanted a Reyes woman like me involved with a
gringo
like Ezra.

“Her new husband is a businessman at heart,” I said. It wasn’t exactly the truth. I had stayed with them for a few weeks after I left Ezra. Within a month of seeing me leave my bed only to help Luisa with the housework, my brother-in-law suggested that starting a garden might help my mood. He turned a blind eye when he realized the flowers I grew helped produce spirits rather than lift them.

Ezra’s mouth was the exact color I remembered it. Once when he was sleeping, I had matched it to the outer petals of a blush moss. I wanted to kiss him so badly it stung between my legs.

We had worked together once, taking flowers to the distillery Samuel Arlings had concealed in his barn, and then smuggling the product away. Ezra had worked in the city as a chimney sweep since he was eight years old, so no one thought anything of his going in and out of houses, where he brought the quarter-liter bottles. Our regular buyers furnished him with keys and allowed him in when they weren’t home; he hid the contraband bottles inside the masonry of their unused chimneys, where they would find them, but the authorities wouldn’t.

Our friends had asked why we never opened our own operation, but there was an art to making violet and rose liqueur. It took more time and skill than the bathtub-faucet alcohol that had come into vogue since the Ban, so dreadful it needed three parts cream or orange juice to salvage it. Parma and rose liqueur, if made well, could be sipped pure, but the flowers were so delicate they had to be distilled with water instead of steam.

Ezra still wouldn’t look at me. He kept his back to me. I slid off the bed and put my hand on his shoulder. How hurt he looked made me unsteady, and I braced my other hand on the rosewood table. I’d always thought he’d fall in love with the next girl who carried roses inside her coat.

“I thought you left me to go back to your parents,” he said, checking the flowers again.

I slid my hand down over his shoulder blade and said nothing.

“If you were going to keep working, why did you leave?” he asked.

“Because I knew you’d get yourself killed,” I said.

“I know how to stay alive.”

“Not with me around.” I took his face in my hands to make him look at me, and I felt the soft bristle that had grown in since he last shaved. “I drew too much attention to you. I thought that whenever we got caught, at least I’d have my family’s reputation behind me. The name Reyes means something. I had that. You didn’t.”