Bitter Cold: A Steampunk Snow Queen (The Clockwork Republic Series Book 4) (2 page)

"No, no, no." He shook his head in frustration. "No one has passed, and I'm perfectly fine." He waved her hand away, trying to brush the irritation from his voice. In his mind, he'd planned this moment with the same detail as one of his mechanical drawings, and it was not going at all according to the plan. Things rarely did where Greta was concerned.

He started again, struggling to find the right words. Improvising had never been his greatest strength.

"Greta." He reached into his pocket for the ring, toying with it nervously. "We're very good friends, aren't we?"

Behind her back, the formulae darkened from silvery white to dull grey.

~*~

Alarmed at Kit's anxious tone, Greta stepped closer, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Of course! Best friends since we were children." She looked into his warm brown eyes, questions furrowing her brow.

"But we're not children anymore. We've grown up. We have to put childhood behind us. Move into the future." Kit took a deep breath, as if determined to press on while he had her full attention for once. She had utterly forgotten the table of potions behind her.

Greta's quicksilver mind ran a million miles ahead -- in the absolute wrong direction.

Kit was leaving. She was certain of it. Three months ago Kit had seen his greatest triumph as a tinker, creating the mechanicals for the main exhibit at the Great Christmas Exposition. The biggest newspapers in the republics had written about his wonderful devices. Now some industrialist must have offered him an engineering position, probably somewhere far away, fulfilling Greta's most dreaded fear.

Kit had come to bid her farewell, leaving childhood and his oldest friend behind.

"Kit, please don't." She turned away, hiding tears. Greta suddenly saw her friend with new eyes, as a grown man. Of course he wanted to move away and seek his fortune. He couldn't stay in his father's house forever, making her clockwork songbirds and cleaning up her catastrophes. She should have expected it, but it still hurt.

As she wiped at the tear sliding down her cheek, the featherfall formulae darkened, its grey liquid swirling ominously like storm clouds.

~*~

Kit was crushed. He'd expected surprise. He'd feared she might ask for time to think about it, or insist they were too young. He had not expected her to reject him outright. He gathered his nerve, determined to convince her. She had no idea how important it was that she marry him, and soon.

As usual, she'd fallen into danger without realizing it.

~*~

Greta looked up, wiped her eyes and noticed the beaker tittering excitedly over the oil lamp. The featherfall formulae had turned oily black.

Oh dear.

Greta whirled, grabbing Kit's upper arms. She flung her body against his with all her might. Caught off guard, Kit staggered back through the open door. They fell to the ground, Greta landing on top of Kit with a thud. His head smacked against stone pavers, nearly knocking him unconscious.

A resounding "Boom!" from the lab blew the door onto Greta's back, flattening her between heavy oak panels and Kit's chest. The door see-sawed over her back, the upper end hit him in the face and slammed his head against the pavers again. The door did at least protect them as the windows exploded shards of glass.

Thick black smoke poured out the doorless opening and shattered windows. It smelled like scorched maple syrup, with a hint of lemons.

Kit grunted and shoved the door off them. Greta scrambled off him, straightening the wool skirts of her red plaid wrapper. As the smoke cleared, they could see almost every object in the lab was crushed, broken, shattered, or otherwise destroyed. But all the pieces were pressed up against the ceiling. It gave the place the bizarre appearance of a trash heap flipped upside down. Even the broken ends of cracked floorboards seemed to be straining upwards.

The entire shed shuddered. At first, Greta thought it was still shaking from the explosion. Then, with a groan, the shed lurched upwards, its clapboard siding rattling.

Kit regained his feet behind her. He grabbed her around the waist and dragged her backwards. A sudden jerk freed the shed from its foundation, and apparently from the laws of gravity.

It jolted up three feet, tethered for a moment by the water pipe Greta had installed two years before. Another jerk broke that. The shed flew upward like a circus gymnast launched from a trampoline. They watched it disappear into the clouds, narrowly missing a passing airship.

Greta stood agape, staring up at where her laboratory had disappeared. She turned to Kit, as he gazed up at the sky.

"Sweet mercy, Greta. I've always said you'd blow the lab sky high. Never guessed I'd see it happen quite so . . . literally." The absurdity of the situation struck him. He chuckled, then began laughing hysterically, doubled over partly in pain and partly from laughter.

Greta had reached her limit. Kit was going away. She had no proof of her formulae's success. In fact, it had been such a success, all the evidence would soon be in orbit.

She'd lost her lab, and she'd be lucky if Father ever let her near a mortar and pestle again. She looked at Kit in his ruined suit, his broad shoulder visible through a rip in the jacket. A purplish-green lump was forming on his forehead. His crushed spectacles tumbled out of his pocket.

She burst into a sob, turned on her heel and ran through the smoke and spray of water towards her back door. Kit chased her, stammering an apology. It was no good, though. She slammed the door in his face.

~*~

"Greta!" he yelled. "Greta, please, I'm so sorry. Please come back. We need to talk. It's important. I'll help you. . . ." He paused. He had been going to say "clean things up," since that was his usual offer when her experiments took a poor turn. Turning around he could see there was very little mess left that bore removing. The broken pipe spewed a glittering spray of water across the lawn, but most of the debris had ascended with the lab.

It was no use. He could hear her heavy boots stomping up the stairs to her room. Her parents were gone for a week, visiting family and friends in the Republic of Illinois. The last thing either of them needed was the scandal sure to break out if the neighbor ladies, with their predilection for mean-spirited gossip, saw him follow her into the house without a proper chaperone.

Of course, such a scandal might prompt her to accept his proposal, but he was not the sort of man to compromise a lady to get what he wanted. And whether Greta wanted to accept it or not, she was a young lady, not a little girl anymore.

He decided the best course of action was to give her an hour or so to calm down. She'd be out soon enough, trying to figure out how to minimize the damage before her parents came home.

At the thought of her parents, his face flushed with anger. He took a deep breath. Returning home to his workshop would be the best thing right now. Otherwise, he'd be too tempted to tell Greta the troubling things he'd overheard last week. Once they'd both calmed down a bit, he could try again to get her to hear him out. Hopefully, he wouldn't have to warn her what might happen if she didn't.

Through all the uproar and distraction, Kit failed to take much note of a slim, pale man with dark brown, slicked-back hair and facial features sharp enough to etch glass who observed them from the edges of the alley. Even with his dark grey coat and charcoal bowler hat, he seemed to blend a little too well into the background, shimmering in and out of Kit's peripheral vision. As Kit flung open the back door of his own home, the man pulled a black tin raven from within his great coat, whispered to it, and released it before disappearing entirely into the shadows.

Chapter 2

Damage Control

Kit stormed through into the kitchen of his parents' home. He yanked off his tie and ruined suit jacket before the door had fully shut behind him. It only took a few minutes before he was cleaned up from the disaster of Greta's laboratory, and dressed in his usual attire. Clad in sturdy work boots, brown breeches, suspenders and a clean shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his first thought was to return to his workshop. Donning a spare pair of spectacles, he began sorting through the neat stacks of metal and gears, in hopes that organizing the parts and materials might help him order his chaotic thoughts.

The workshop was emptier than usual. He'd been doing his level best to sell every device and mechanism as soon as he was finished with it. His stall in the Mechanical Marketplace grew more popular with each passing week. The press he'd received from The Great Christmas Exposition had been a huge blessing. He'd built up a steady stream of regular customers for repair work, and more lucrative commissions were beginning to trickle in as well. It wouldn't be long before he had enough business, and enough savings, to consider moving from the Marketplace stall to a shop of his own.

Which was a very good thing. Greta's freedom was in jeopardy, and he was determined to save her. The loss of the laboratory was going to be the least of their concerns if he couldn't figure out a way around Greta's childish refusal to even listen to his proposal.

She never listened. Especially to something she didn't want to hear. He sighed in exasperation, picking up a wrench and tightening the bolts on a mechanical tea trolley. There were so many things she didn't want to hear these days.

The real world and their impending adulthood was encroaching on Greta's fantasy world with increasing frequency. He'd watched as she fought it with the enthusiasm she'd once applied to fighting their mechanical dragon. He didn't suppose he could blame her. For a man, growing up meant independence and self-determination. For a young woman, it usually meant the exact opposite.

He'd watched with an odd mix of annoyance and amusement as her parents had tried unsuccessfully to make a match for her with eligible young men in the neighborhood. Although they'd tolerated his friendship with their daughter, his status as a tradesman's son placed him a little below their aims for a son-in-law. Greta had never made an issue of the difference in their social stations, but then again, she and her parents rarely saw things the same way. Up until a week ago, he had believed that once his prospects were more established and he had a shop of his own, he could sway them to his cause.

Annoyance had turned to outrage just a week ago, when he'd overheard her father grousing about the cost of supporting her. Greta's father always assiduously avoided mentioning her alchemical antics in polite company. Evidently, he found the cost of raising a daughter was a more fitting subject for conversation.

Unaware of Kit's presence nearby, Jonah Singleton had told his companion he was considering advertising his troublesome child as a mail-order bride in the territories. Having exhausted the heirs of old money in Missouri Republic, he now found himself weighing the merits of
nouveau riche
gold miners and speculators out West.

It had taken every ounce of Kit's self-control not to run out from behind his Marketplace stall and beat the man to a bloody pulp. Instead, he'd crushed the small clockwork device he'd been holding into a wadded ball of copper and tin. The idea of Greta being shipped off as some stranger's wife had felt like a shard of ice stabbing his heart. A bitter cold chill had settled on him as he realized Singleton seemed to be really considering it in earnest.

Although he'd loved her since the day they met, he'd intended to wait until he'd managed to open a tinker shop of his own before asking for Greta's hand. That day in the marketplace, he'd grimly realized what he had would have to be enough. He had found a small shop in the Craftsman's Quarter with a few rooms above it which they could afford, assuming the commissions and repair work continued to pour in.

He just hoped Singleton hadn't already firmly decided to sell her out West. He hoped the man would count his daughter's happiness worth something. Hoped, but feared otherwise. As Kit got older, he stopped expecting people to be guided by kindness, especially when greed pointed to a different course of action.

Greta still had a childlike trust in others' good intentions. Kit was keenly aware of how the world worked, and the casual cruelty around him. He observed others with the same quiet intensity he devoted to tinkering. Most people took an instant dislike to anyone different.

The world didn't make room for people like Greta, who didn't fit the typical mold. She was like one of his devices; clever, unique and beautiful. If he didn't step in, society would keep squeezing Greta in its relentless grip until she conformed into a bland, boring factory-made doll. It was a tragedy he was determined to prevent.

The bolt he'd been tightening broke off in his hands as he remembered how angry he'd been that day. Sighing with exasperation, he looked around the workshop for some other task. There was the box of clockwork angels, left over from the Exposition. He and Greta had been working together, attempting to find a more practical use for them. The ornate carving work on the pieces had been particularly well done, but few people had use for decorations which flew around singing Christmas carols during the rest of the year.

Greta had suggested they might make a reasonably good burglar alarm. They'd look like perfectly harmless lawn ornaments, but with the proper punch card, they could react to unexpected movement. Even if all they did was make a huge racket and beat upon the intruder with their harps, they could probably prevent many robberies.