Venturess Page 3

He had obviously heard the false rumors of Fin’s and my engagement. If only I had the power he believed I had, to arrange a peace talk that could end this war . . . Fin would be the perfect person, the only person, to do it. He’d campaigned tirelessly for Faerie’s independence this year. He would leap at a chance like this—​wouldn’t he?

  I folded the letter and slid it into one of the hidden pockets in my skirts. I wasn’t engaged to Fin, but I did have his love and respect; he would listen to me. Could I convince him that he’d do more good in Faerie than he would making speeches to unfriendly crowds here in Esting?

  A meeting that could end the war, a journey to a magical land . . . I shivered, fearful and enraptured all at once.

  I brushed my hands over my face one more time, straightened my skirts, and stepped back into the ballroom. I began to walk toward the dais, but I saw that Fin’s throne was empty.

  Fin and Caro were on the dance floor, twirling through a fast-paced waltz. They smiled at each other, happy and relaxed. I was so relieved to see they’d made up that I knew Mr. Candery’s message could wait until tomorrow. We were hardly going to commission a ship for the journey tonight, and I knew Fin would need some persuading—​if going to Faerie was even the right course of action.

  We would decide together, the three of us, what to do. That was always the way.

  I looked at my pocket watch; it was nearly eleven. I smiled a little, remembering my dramatic midnight exit from last year’s ball. Like Lord Alming, I wanted to make the most of tomorrow’s Exposition. This year I’d leave the ball even earlier.

  THE morning of the second annual Royal Exposition of Arts and Sciences dawned gray and cold, metallic shafts of light ringing the edges of the sky. I didn’t need to take Jules through the forest this year, or set up a Market booth. I merely had to open my workshop’s doors.

  Still, I’d spent the past few weeks preparing an extra-​spectacular display. I was wary of using my buzzers, imbued as they were with Fey magic. Instead, I’d made wind-up automated versions. They had no Ashes, no spark of their own life, but with their intricate clockwork parts, the insects crawled and skittered and fluttered more than convincingly. Long lines of them waited on the table in my shop.

  I had been up since two hours before dawn, taking time to drink a cup of my favorite clary-bush tea before I started preparing for the day. I wrapped a cleanish muslin apron around one of my work dresses and set about polishing the butterflies’ crystal wings and the caterpillars’ jointed sections, made of real pearls that the Night Market trader told me a mermaid had sold to him.

  I’d laughed at the idea, but pearls were still a daring choice of material, even for me. They came from the sea, which separated Esting and other civilized countries from Faerie. Their otherworldly sheen seemed to suggest, if not magic, at least sin. The Brethren certainly disapproved of pearls, but that only made me—​and a few other not-so-pious Estingers—​love them more. In fact, I was counting on the pearls’ scandalous appeal to fetch an equally scandalous price.

  Finally I was done polishing. I went into Jules’s stable to get dressed.

  “You won’t find clothes like these in most stables,” I told him with a laugh, admiring the sage-green striped skirt with its gathered bustle, matching jacket with silk braid trim, and elegant white neckcloth, all waiting on an adjustable dress form. A metallic rustle behind me signaled that the buzzers were ready and waiting to help me dress.

  I raised my arms above my head and closed my eyes. I felt dozens of little tickling brushes and pressures, the weight of my work skirts and bodice coming away, my long hair rolled loosely at the back of my neck; I hated wearing it pulled up tight. The new dress settled over my fine cotton chemise and drawers, and the buzzers pulled the jacket over my arms.

  I opened my eyes to see my two biggest spiders tying the snowy neckcloth expertly into place while a butterfly swooped in below them to straighten my lapels. I was eager to see myself in the mirror I kept in the front of the shop, but I already knew from the proud, pleased expression in Jules’s glass eyes that I looked perfect.

  I wondered for the millionth time what the Ashes that had brought life to Jules and the buzzers truly were, but not even Jules would tell me. I didn’t press for an answer because it was obvious the first time I’d asked that the question hurt him.

  All I knew was that I couldn’t keep the Ashes in the same room as Jules and my insects. I’d tried to store them in the stable when I first moved to my new workshop, but the buzzers grew restless and anxious and crowded to the opposite side of the room against their leader, who stiffened his legs and stared at the bureau the Ashes were in with his ears flattened back against his head and his eyes wide and white like a frightened colt’s.

  I’d moved them to my back room after that and never said another word about it.

  “Thank you, Jules,” I said now, stroking his warm copper nose. “It’s perfect, as ever.” I looked at the buzzers, hovering expectantly in the air or waiting on the hems of my skirt and jacket. “And thank you, little tailors.”

  They whirred and clicked out a soothing purr; Jules whickered and nuzzled my shoulder. I put my arms around his neck and allowed myself the luxury of a long hug before I resumed my work.

  Light was only just beginning to streak the sky when I returned to my storefront, so I lit the gas lamps on the walls to admire myself in the mirror.

  As usual, Jules had outdone himself. The whole outfit was marvelous; it fit me like a glove, and everything from its colors to its cut said that I was a brilliant young inventor to be taken seriously.

  I twirled slowly before the mirror—​and saw a pale face in the window, looking in.

  I gasped and lunged toward the door. Whoever had been spying on my work, I wasn’t about to let them get away.

  The face vanished, but as I dashed outside, my shop door’s bell clanging in my wake, I saw a pale scrap of, well, someone running away into the predawn darkness, dodging a quick right turn at the end of the block.

  I took off in pursuit. I didn’t have to carry cords of wood or scrub floors for Stepmother anymore, but I was still fairly fit and more than fairly fast.

  I caught up with the spy before the next block. Thank goodness for the ragged long-tailed jacket streaming behind her, which I grabbed with both hands, or she would have gotten away from me again.

  The girl was no more than a child, but she was stronger than I’d guessed she would be. I stumbled after her and we both tripped and landed in a heap on the dirty sidewalk.

  I sat up and looked myself over. I wasn’t hurt, but I saw a long rent in the front of my skirt where my knees had hit the ground. I felt terrible for Jules’s and the insects’ sake.

  But I couldn’t dwell on my clothes; my new captive was twisting her jacket out of my hands. Her own hands were small and grubby; the much-darned mitts that covered her palms were grubbier still. I looked down at a face framed by a flannel kerchief: a scowling little mouth, a wide chin bleeding with fresh scrapes, and frightened brown eyes.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I said. “Don’t be scared of me.” I took a deep breath, wondering what to do next. I had no reason to trust that she’d stick around if I let go of her jacket.

  “Here,” I said, making my voice as gentle as I could while I used one hand to rummage for my handkerchief, keeping the other clenched tightly around her ragged coat. I didn’t know for whom this girl was spying, or why, but I thought kindness was a better way to find out than force—​and I had used more than enough of that to chase her down.

  The girl looked at the clean handkerchief, then up at me with an expression that was at once worried and skeptical. She pressed the cloth hard to her swelling chin.

  “Right,” I said. “I am sorry I, um . . . I’m sorry I hurt you. I honestly didn’t mean any harm. Would you please tell me your name?”

  The girl shook her head quickly. A few wisps of dark hair fell across her forehead. Her scowl tightened.

  “Wel
l,” I said, “come back to the shop with me, and we’ll have a chat. That’s what you wanted to see, isn’t it?”

  She looked down, and I thought we might be at an impasse; I didn’t think I had it in me to force a young girl to go anywhere against her will, however dangerous she (or whomever she worked for) might be.

  But after a long moment of stillness, she plunged her grubby hand into mine and squeezed. I released her jacket, and she began to lead me back toward my own shop.

  The sky was growing lighter as we approached, and a few other windows along the street were starting to glow with gaslight or candles. I smiled at my own storefront; every time I came home to it, the sight warmed my heart.

  The sign read simply Lampton’s, but it was done in an elaborate golden script, inlaid with glass and a few working gears that moved with the wind. It was shaped just like the glass slippers that had made me my fortune.

  One of my two window displays featured the shoes front and center, with two clockwork mannequins in ball gowns behind them, waltzing together to a silent beat. Although I sold them as my own, the gowns were Jules’s and the buzzers’ work, of course. No one could know the extent of their intelligence; even the Fey sympathizers at the contraband Night Market were afraid of the Ashes.

  The other window displayed creations that were truly mine, though: my knitting and sewing machines, automatic sweeping brush, stocking-darner, linen folder, chimney-​sweeper, spinning mop. All things I’d made from necessity when I slaved for the Steps, inventions that kept house for me so that I could do other work of my own.

  But somewhere along the line, those very inventions had become my work. Now I never had to do a chore I hated, because I could make something to do it for me—​and no other woman had to either, so long as she came to me. I was proud of that.

  I laid my hand flat on the locked door and it opened of its own accord, ratcheting sounds from its inner gears welcoming us into the shop.

  I heard my little captive catch her breath, and too late I berated myself for revealing that small secret to her. I still didn’t know who her employer was.

  The dragonflies hovered in the air to greet me. They flitted curiously around the child, who laughed when their wire feelers brushed her face and arms.

  One landed briefly on my shoulder. “Go to Lord Alming’s and bring him here, please,” I whispered. The dragonfly zipped out the door before it had time to close again, and the girl was too distracted by the other buzzers even to notice.

  I just had to keep her here until Lord Alming arrived. If she was a spy for the Brethren or one of our business rivals, he would surely know.

  “Now,” I said to the girl, “I am going to have my breakfast. Would you like some too?”

  She ducked her head. Her face was too dirty to see a blush, but I suspected one was hiding on her cheeks. She nodded, and there was something desperate and embarrassed in the nod that I recognized. Here was a girl who knew hunger.

  We sat down at the table together and the buzzers served us a lukewarm meal of chocolate toasts and sinnum buns; I’ve always had a sweet tooth in the morning. The clary-bush tea, at least, was piping hot and perfectly brewed, thanks to the automatic kettle I’d perfected soon after I moved in here.

  The girl eyed my kettle. “Why do you always make things like that?” she asked.

  I squinted at her. If she was talking, that meant there was a chance of finding out who’d sent her; still, I couldn’t give too much away about my work, lest she bring it back to her employer.

  Whoever that was could certainly be feeding her a little better, I thought . . . and a plan began to form in my head.

  I gestured to the caterpillars, who hooked themselves to wire harnesses on the edge of my serving tray and pulled it forward on tiny wheels. The array of pastries halted before the little girl. “Please, have some more,” I said, “you’ve hardly eaten—”

  She popped a whole sinnum bun in her mouth before I could finish my sentence, her brown eyes never wavering from my automatic kettle. In fact, she hadn’t glanced once at the food she was eating or at the mug from which she took such long swigs of tea, as if she thought the food and drink would disappear if she admitted it was really there.

  I knew that feeling. My guard against this girl slipped away even further in spite of myself.

  “Things like what?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice if not icy at least cool, so as not to betray the amusement and sympathy I felt.

  “Little things,” she said. “Boot polishers. Kettles.” She waved a toast-clutching hand toward my display window, and I saw a strange combination of longing and scorn on her face. “Sewing machines.” Then she actually had the nerve to roll her eyes.

  “I’m proud of my work, thank you very much!” I said, all worries about concealing my sympathy gone. “What would you suggest I make instead?”

  The grubby face lit up.

  “Cannons!” she said through a mouthful of chocolate toast, the way some children might have said toys or sweets. “Armor! Rifles! Spears! Why, with what you can do . . .” She shook her head, still torn between derision and dreamland. “I don’t know why you’d spend your time on girl things.” She wrinkled her nose.

  Ah. This was an argument I’d already had plenty of times in the past year . . . only it was always with adults, and mostly men.

  “Are you a girl?” I asked.

  Scorn won out when she looked at me this time. “Think so.”

  “Do you think boys are better than girls?”

  “No!” she said as stoutly as any soldier, but then I saw her start to buckle. She looked down at her mug. “Only, there’s lots of people who do.”

  My hostility dissipated. “Well,” I said gently, “do you think boy things are better than girl things?”

  “I like them better,” she said.

  I took a sip of tea. “Ah. If you like them, and you’re a girl, then they’re girl things too, aren’t they?”

  “Humph.” She looked derisively at my sewing machine again, but I saw the flicker of a grudging smile.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever spent a whole day mending seams?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe not.”

  “No, because then you’d know how tedious it is, and you’d know the value of a machine that does it for you. And it’s a rare girl who doesn’t have to do those things, you know—​spend her whole day mending and cleaning and boiling water, with not a moment to herself for a thought of her own . . .” I took a deep breath, pushing away the memories of my own forced labor. “It’s all right if you do like those chores, but so many girls have to do them that they never get the chance to discover what they like, all for themselves. So I make helpmeets that give those girls time to find out. To do whatever the things are—​the girl things—​that they like to do.”

  It was funny; I’d never quite thought about it that way, but I knew as soon as I said the words that they were true.

  Meanwhile the girl had gone back to scowling. “I suppose,” she mumbled.

  I sighed and took a deep drink of my tea, letting the steam settle my breath and clear my head. “What do you do all day, then?” I asked. “Something that someone else tells you to do?”

  Her glance darted to the door. “They call me Runner,” she said, “because I’m fast.”

  “Well, that you are,” I said, chagrined. “I barely caught you myself.”

  “I never thought you’d catch me at all,” she said, a grin stealing across her face, “and that’s how I let you, I think.”

  “Hmm. Where do you run to, Runner?”

  “From.”

  I didn’t understand, which was clear as day to Runner, who rolled her eyes again as she picked up another bun. “I run away from, most times,” she said. “The Miss distracts them, and I steal the purse and run away from the mark back to the Big Lad—​that’s the boss—​and maybe he gives me my dinner, or maybe I sleep on the shelf.”

  “The shelf!”

  “The
best one of us gets the shelf, Miss Mechanica.” She blinked at me as if it were obvious. “Up where there’s no rats.”

  That notion made me cringe, and her use of my nickname did too, the one the Steps had given me, the one Fitz had used when he was parading around the story of Fin’s and my supposed love at first sight last year. The story had shifted and grown since then, until it wasn’t even Lord Alming who had found my slipper but Fin himself. People said that he’d slid it on my foot like an engagement ring and we’d sailed away to the palace atop my mechanical steed, happily-​ever-after-the-end. The whole kingdom had fallen in love with our love story.

  An illustrated book titled Mechanica even came out a few months later. I’d paged through Caro’s copy, trying to crow over it the way she had done—​and I admit to smiling when I saw the unkind caricatures of the Steps—​but I couldn’t quite bring myself to find such untruths amusing.

  What the kingdom thought by now, a year later with no royal wedding in sight, I really had no idea. I’d tried to dispel the myth, to make my living as just Nicolette Lampton, the inventor. But if this girl still called me Mechanica, I hadn’t done nearly enough.

  And right now, at half past seven in the morning on the dawning of the second annual Exposition, I had more pressing matters to deal with than my own image in our nation’s folklore, as I was quickly reminded when someone began to knock determinedly on the door.

  “Ah, Lord Alming,” I said with relief.

  But it wasn’t my tall, mustachioed patron who waited for me there; it was a short, fat, pretty blonde. Caro bustled past me into the shop. “All right, all right, I’m coming, aren’t I?” she told the metal-and-glass dragonfly that plucked at her skirts. “You’ve done your job, you’ve done your job!”

  Once she was inside, the dragonfly made a loud buzzing noise, calling all my other flying creatures, more than three dozen now. Together they pushed the door closed.

  A butterfly flitted back to my kettle and set it on again. Several steel spiders descended from the ceiling on cotton threads and harnessed themselves to the waiting teapot, ready to wheel it over to us.