Angel of Brass (5 page)

The heavy door was locked with a combination.
Molly turned the dials, and the gears spun, ratcheting back the
heavy bolt. In the dim illumination of the entryway’s only
gaslight, Molly saw that Jin’s face had gone from copper to gray. A
couch stood against the wall, and Molly steered him over to it and
eased him down. “I’m going to get Liam, all right?”

Jin only managed a nod. Molly ignored the
slow lift in favor running up the stairs, the brass chains on her
coat sleeves jangling loudly in the narrow space of the stairwell.
It was dark and rather dank, and the gaslights at each landing
threw her shadow on the wall, making it seem as if she raced an
eerie twin. By the time she reached the third floor, she was
completely spooked and had a stitch in her side.

Wood paneled the hallway leading to the lab,
much of it scarred from fire, hot metal, and acid. Brass fixtures
in the shape of men and women supported gaslights at regular
intervals. A small cleaning automaton puffed along at one end of
the hall, its brushes polishing the floor to a bright shine.

As she approached the lab, she felt a twinge
of worry. What if Liam had decided to take the night off after all,
and gone back to his flat? Or headed out for a night on the town
with one of his innumerable boyfriends? It would be at least a
couple hours if she had to track him down at home, and more if she
had to search the city.

The lab door was unlocked, which was a good
sign. Inside, a row of tables took up most of the available space.
Many of them were strewn with the remnants of student projects:
stray gears, coils of wire, and the odd flask of mercury. Long
counters lined the walls, cluttered with instruments for measuring
voltage, force, and acidity.

Liam sat at his assigned table at the far end
of the room, hunched over some sort of hand-cranked motor. He
looked up when she entered, his eyes distorted through the
magnifying lenses of his goggles.

“Molly?” he said, puzzled. Pushing up the
lenses, he blinked owlishly at her. “What are you doing here? I
thought you were working at the shop tonight.”

Molly sagged against the doorframe, out of
breath from her run. “I was. Remember the boy who fell through the
skylight?”

She gave Liam the abbreviated version of
events on the way back down to the lobby. Jin was still there,
slumped against the arm of the couch. She and Liam dragged Jin’s
arms over their shoulders, all but carrying him to the lift.

Once they got Jin to the lab, Liam cleared
off a table so he could lie down. Jin bit his lip when Liam eased
his boot off, but the student was oblivious, leaning in close to
get a look at the inner workings of the foot through the hole.
“Amazing,” he murmured. “Can I remove the outer plates without
hurting you?”

Jin nodded. “I have sensation in them, but
they’re meant to open for routine maintenance. There’s some pain,
but not too much.” His dark eyes seemed to turn even blacker, as if
remembering something much worse.

Molly shot him a worried look, but he didn’t
meet her gaze. Liam ran his fingers thoughtfully over the
metalwork. “I see how this hinges. Mind taking a look, Molly?”

She leaned over, trying to view the hole as
damage to a machine rather than injury to a person. “I can help
with this, if you need me.”

“Definitely.”

“This might be easier if Jin takes his pants
off. How far up does the machinery go?”

“Not far enough for me to take my pants off
in front of you,” Jin said dryly.

Molly felt her face heat. “Oh. I’ll just, er,
step outside for a moment, then.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you do that.
I’ll steal a towel from the men’s room for the sake of Jin’s
modesty, and call you back in when we’re ready.”

When she returned a few minutes later, Jin
lay sprawled in much the same position as before, only now his
trousers were neatly folded over the back of a chair and a towel
draped over his hips.

“This work...it’s beyond anything I’ve seen,”
Liam murmured as Molly approached the bench. “I’m honestly not sure
we can repair this.”

“Would the notes of the man who did this
help?” Jin asked. He lay on his side, his gaze fastened resolutely
on the wall.

“Absolutely.”

Jin silently withdrew a journal from the
pocket of his waistcoat and passed it to Liam. “Here. I took it
because...I thought it might make it harder for him to do this
again, if he had to start over from scratch.”

Liam opened the journal, and his eyes
widened. “This...oh. Yes, this will help.”

Molly went to peer over Liam’s shoulder, but
her attention was on Jin rather than the notes. “Who do you mean
when you say ‘him’?”

Jin glanced at her briefly, then away again.
“I suppose you have a right to know. Both of you. Especially since
helping me might put you in danger.”

Liam was too engrossed in the notebook to
even look up. “For this...it’s worth it,” he murmured, flipping
another page.

Liam was brilliant, Molly reflected, but he
wasn’t exactly the most practical person she knew. “How much danger
are we talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Jin admitted. “Maybe none.
But if the smiling men find out that I came to you, or manage to
track us here...it could be bad.”

Wonderful. I don’t need this. Liam doesn’t
need this. But it’s not as if we can turn Jin away.

Well...we could, I guess. He needs help,
though, and if we don’t give it to him, who will?

“So tell me,” she said to Jin. “Us.”

He took in a long breath, as if steeling
himself. “His name is Dr. Edward Malachi. He...adopted my sister
and I, and took us to live on his big estate on the coast.”

Molly frowned. “I thought my sister knew
everyone with money in this part of Eroe. I’ve never heard of
him.”

“He’s a recluse. No one comes or goes from
the estate, except for a weekly supply run. Fath—Malachi, I mean,
is brilliant. But he isn’t...the things he does...no one decent
would approve. He made the smiling men, after all.”

Molly gaped. “He
made
them?”

Jin nodded, the feathers in his hair rustling
gently against the table. “Yes. Their teeth aren’t the only things
that are metal.”

“But—they’re flesh and blood! Or at least
their faces were.”

“So am I.” Jin silently indicated his legs.
“Malachi didn’t adopt us because he wanted children so badly. He
did it so that he’d have a pair of experimental subjects.”

“You had been injured, though, right?” Molly
asked. “That’s why he chose you? To replace what you’d lost?”

Jin shook his head. “No. That wasn’t it at
all.”

“Saints above and below,” Molly whispered,
sinking down unsteadily onto the bench.
No wonder this Malachi
kept them prisoners on a manor in the countryside. If anyone ever
found out what he was doing...he’d go to the bell jar, if the
crowds didn’t lynch him first.

Jin had flung an arm over his face, hiding
his eyes. Not certain what else to do, Molly reached out and took
his other hand. His fingers curled around hers convulsively, as if
afraid she would pull away. “But you escaped, right?” she
asked.

“Eventually. I know it sounds mad, but he’s
all that Delilah and I knew. Sometimes, he was even kind to us. He
gave us anything we wanted—violin lessons, good food, nice clothes,
toys, games, anything. If he’d only been cruel to us...but he
wasn’t.”

“So what changed?”

He dropped his arm enough to look at her, as
if surprised she’d guessed. “People started coming to the house.
Strangers. I never knew their names, but some of them were
resurrectionists.”

“Lovely company,” Liam said from where he
sat, seemingly absorbed in the notes. The golden gears dangling
from his ears shimmered in the light as he turned another page.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jin said.
“Saints, I don’t know the half of it, but from what I overheard,
they’re involved in some sort of conspiracy against the government.
Queen Rowena’s name came up more than once.”

That
got Liam’s full attention.
“What?”

“I don’t know if they’re anarchists, or
revolutionaries, or what. I don’t care, either. Malachi threw his
lot in with them, and that’s when I knew we had to get out of
there. If things go wrong and the conspirators get caught...well,
we’re legally Malachi’s son and daughter. No one is going to
believe that we weren’t up to our necks in the plot. I’d been
thinking about running for a while already, but that made me
desperate to flee. When I saw my chance, I took it.”

“And the smiling men are here to keep you
from telling anyone,” Molly guessed. “Have you gone to the police
yet?”

“No. Do you really think they’d believe me?
They probably get lunatics raving about conspiracies all the
time.”

“But you have to tell
someone!
You
can’t just keep this to yourself!”

Jin’s gloved hands curled into fists. “I
don’t care about the cursed conspiracy! I just want to get Del out
before anything else goes wrong, then leave Eroe.”

“But—”

“If I tell anyone,
if
they believe me,
they’ll go in pistols blazing, and Del might get killed. I’m not
risking my sister’s life!”

Molly glared at him. “If you don’t do
anything, innocent people might get killed, not to mention Queen
Rowena. I have a sister myself, I understand that you’re worried
about her, but—”

Jin sat up abruptly, then was forced to grab
at the towel as it nearly slid off his narrow hips. “You don’t
understand! Del is all I have in this world. You have friends, and
a home, and a job. Del and I only have each other.”

Molly opened her mouth to argue further, but
Liam interrupted. “Drop it, Molly. We’ll take it up again in the
morning. Right now, we’ve got to do the repairs, while we can count
on not being interrupted. I’m going to guess that Jin doesn’t want
to be inspected by the entire Advanced Automaton Studies
class.”

“I’d rather not,” Jin said, lying back down
and putting his arm over his eyes again. “Do you think you can do
it?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest, but the notes
help. We’ll have to see what needs fixing when we get in there.”
Liam went to one of the tool cabinets and started taking out
supplies. “Will this hurt?”

Jin shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

His bleak tone softened Molly’s heart and
took the edge off her anger. It was hard to imagine what he must
have gone through, and surely leaving his sister in the hands of
the man who had hurt them both must have been incredibly difficult
for him. She put her hand over his, where it lay on the table. He
shifted his other arm enough to give her a surprised look.

“I’m not torturing you,” she said firmly.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have access to any medical supplies, such
as ether or laughing gas. So we’re going to have to do this the
old-fashioned way. I happen to know that Professor Whitehart keeps
a bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer of his desk.”

“Won’t he notice if it’s missing?” Jin
asked.

Liam chuckled. “You’re in an institute full
of teenagers. Molly and I will be far from the only suspects, trust
me.”

“Wouldn’t he keep his office locked,
then?”

Molly paused on her way to the door and threw
a grin back over her shoulder. “Fortunately, some of us know how to
pick locks. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

* * *

Molly and Liam spent the rest of the night
working on Jin’s foot. Jin proved to be a lightweight and passed
out before much of the bottle was gone. Although he moaned and
twitched once or twice, they’d clamped his foot in a vice to keep
it still, and he didn’t fully regain consciousness until they were
screwing the cover plates back into place.

His artificial leg was a marvel such as she’d
never seen: minute gears, hydraulics, and some sort of electrical
components that even Liam didn’t understand, but which somehow
hooked into Jin’s nervous system. She had to remind herself that a
madman had mutilated him to perform the work that she found so
fascinating. Gushing over Dr. Malachi’s brilliance would be
tactless even for her.

It wasn’t easy to tell how well the work had
gone, given that poor Jin was still drunk enough to have trouble
walking in a straight line. When Molly excused herself into the
hall so he could put his trousers back on, she had a much longer
wait than before, and heard a great deal of stumbling and cursing
through the door. When she came back in, he was unsteadily tying
his shoes. Liam had donated a sock, so that at least Jin’s metal
foot wouldn’t be visible through the holes in his boot.

By that time, the sun was coming up, and
students had begun to trickle in through the gates. “He needs
somewhere to sleep it off,” Liam said, watching as Jin sat down on
a bench and put his head in his hands. “Looks like the world is
still spinning pretty bad.”

“I could climb to the roof,” Jin mumbled.

“I’m not letting you do that,” Molly said.
“We didn’t stay up all night fixing you, just to have you wreck all
our hard work by falling to your death.”

Jin looked up at her, and she thought his
copper skin had taken on a greenish tinge. “I don’t have anywhere
else to go.”

“Of course you do. Students are always
staying up all night, either partying or studying. It’s not strange
to find them sleeping wherever they can find the space. If it
wasn’t so cold, I’d suggest a bench outside. That way, if you have
to throw up, you can just go behind a tree.”

“Oh, saints,” Jin moaned, putting a hand over
his mouth. A moment later, he bolted for the nearest trash can.

“You just had to put the thought in his head,
didn’t you?” Liam asked, wrinkling his nose.

Jin sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth
with the towel that had covered him earlier. “Next time, just let
me suffer,” he moaned. “The bench outside sounds good.”