BreadCrumb Trail (The Yellow Hoods, #2): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale (3 page)

The man stared blankly at Maxwell and gently offered the letter again.

Realizing it was late at night, and devilishly cold, Maxwell quickly found a silver coin to give to the man. The man smiled respectfully, gave Maxwell a tip of his hat, and left.

Maxwell hurried back to the warmth of the fire and his comfortable chair.

“Who was that, father?” asked a teenage male voice from upstairs.

“Just a messenger,” said Maxwell, putting his spectacles back on. “Go back to sleep.”

Hearing the thump, thump, thump of feet coming down the stairs, Maxwell put the letter in his lap and waited.

“Franklin Charles David, I told you to go back to bed,” he said sternly, though not convincingly. Maxwell wasn’t a strong parent—instead he thought of his son more like a special friend.

The messy, dark blond-haired fifteen-year-old plunked himself down on the ottoman and warmed his hands by the fire. “Actually, father, you told me to go back to
sleep
. I wasn’t asleep yet. So given that your directive was invalid, I thought I’d come see what the bother was about.”

Maxwell tried to hide his smile. Franklin was certainly his son, much to the disdain of his ex-wife.

Franklin turned, peeking over his shoulder at the letter in his father’s lap. “Who’s it from? Costs extra to have it delivered at night, on a Saturday so close to Solstice. Must be important.”

“I haven’t yet had a second to look. Shall we?” said Maxwell, waving his son in. He hated to think that he played favorites with his kids, but he did, and he knew it. Franklin Charles David was the eldest by five years, and had shown signs of scientific genius at an early age. His daughter, Emily, was a wonderful girl, but Maxwell just thought of her as a pleasant child. Emily seemed to be very much his ex-wife’s child, and Franklin his.

Maxwell leaned forward and held up the envelope. “It’s from my friend, Mister Nikolas Klaus.” He paused. “Hmm, that’s odd.”

Franklin yawned. “You get letters from him all the time, father. Why’s that odd?”

Maxwell hesitated before opening the letter. “It’s just that Nikolas replies to my letters, but he doesn’t initiate—at least, that’s been the pattern since we started corresponding two years ago. I send him one, and then he responds, without fail. Now… this. It’s out of pattern. Why do you think he’d do that?”

Franklin rubbed his tired face. “I don’t know, father. Just open it.” He hated it when his dad needlessly tried to solve a puzzle when the answer was right there.

“Come on! Let’s have a guess,” said Maxwell, insisting they try to figure it out.

“I’m only doing this to speed up to the part where we actually open the letter, okay?” said Franklin, tired and now annoyed. “Maybe he wrote to tell you he invented something to make your steam engine look archaic? That he was just patting you on the head like a child?”

Maxwell seemed a bit hurt and glanced at the letter, now half expecting it to say exactly that.

“Maybe he has a new recipe for cookies that he just had to share? I don’t know. Just
open the letter
. The answer is right in front of you. Look at it.”

Maxwell made strange lip movements as he thought about what could be in the letter. “He rushed this the entire way. That costs a small fortune, like you said. What’s so important to warrant that, I wonder?”

“Maybe he’s daft like you and figured out a simplified solution to an equation that no one cares about,” Franklin said, stretching. “Okay, that’s it. I’m not waiting anymore. I’m off to bed.”

Franklin made his way toward the stairs. He heard his dad tear open the letter, and when he got to the first step his father said, “
Stop
. Franklin Charles David, come here, please.”

Sighing heavily and a bit more annoyed at having to turn back, Franklin returned to the ottoman and glared at his dad. “What could your letter possibly have to do with me?” He then noticed his dad had turned a shade of gray. “What’s wrong, father?”

With a slightly trembling hand, Maxwell removed his spectacles. “It seems that we’ve been betrayed. Mister Klaus was attacked by someone named Andre LeLoup, sent by Simon St. Malo.”

Franklin tried to place where he’d heard the name
Simon St. Malo
before. He remembered enough to know St. Malo wasn’t a good person.

Maxwell continued, “He was attacked for the steam engine plans.
My
steam engine plans. That means—”

Standing up, Franklin scratched his head and continued his father’s thought. “That means that someone knows you two are corresponding, but doesn’t know who is helping whom. Or, at least, they didn’t. Maybe they do now.”

Maxwell stood up and threw the letter into the fire. He wiped his sweaty forehead with his robe’s sleeve. After a deep breath, he smoothed his already flat, thin, light brown hair with both hands.

“Did you read the whole letter?” asked Franklin, watching it curl up into ash in the fire. Evidently, there were several pages, and he hadn’t seen his father leaf through more than two.

“I have to get rid of everything. They’ll come for me next,” said Maxwell as he started pacing. 

“Did you finish reading it? It looked thick. Maybe he knew who the traitor was?”

Maxwell nervously rubbed his cheeks with his hands. “I skimmed what I needed. I’m pretty sure I know what he was going to say. It’s… it’s obvious, really. I need to think.”

Franklin glared at his father. “It’s
not
obvious. You didn’t know when you started reading it that there was a traitor! You have to stop doing
this
whenever you get scared. You always jump to conclusions! You really—”

“Franklin Charles David, please! I’m trying to
think
.” Maxwell paced about the room, drumming his fingers on his pointy chin, and then said to himself, “Yes, I see it now. There’s only one thing we can do. I need to send him in the morning.” He sighed deeply. “Well, that’s sorted then.”

Franklin knew his father was a genius, as was he, but he’d seen his father in panic situations and knew how terribly his brain seemed to work at those times. His mother’s announcement that she was leaving his father had been one such occasion. His father had been so distracted that he’d accidentally put the laundry on the fire, and put his sister outside instead of the cat.

Another time, when his father had an inventors’ meeting coming up, he’d refused to listen to Franklin’s advice about the amount of pressure a prototype steam engine could take. He nearly blew up the house.

With a scowl on his face, Franklin crossed his arms. “Send
me
in the morning? What are you on about? I’m not going anywhere.”

Maxwell walked over to a writing desk in the corner of the room, sat down on the ribbed chair, and pulled out a piece of paper. With a distracted tone, he replied, “Yes, you are. You have to. They can’t get their hands on it.”

Franklin rubbed his face in frustration. “On
what
, father? On your never-going-to-be-finished steam engine? I haven’t had the heart to say it, but it’s never going to work. Let them have it. Maybe it can consume their fortune, as it has ours.”

Putting his quill down, Maxwell turned and looked at his son. He could see that Franklin was right on the cliff of losing faith in him. He motioned his son closer.

Franklin hesitated, hating being treated like a child, but he could see something in his father’s eyes that he hadn’t seen in a while. Rolling his eyes and giving in, he dragged his feet to stand beside his seated dad.

Glancing about as if a spy could be hiding in the room, Maxwell whispered, “It
does
work. It’s been working for the past month. I didn’t want anyone to know, so I kept messing around, purposely blowing things up every now and then. Nikolas’ last letter helped—I had it working within days.”

Franklin folded his arms and curled his face in disbelief. “I don’t believe it. It’s working?”

“Yes,” replied his father, nodding.

“For real?” said Franklin, putting his hands on his hips.

“Yes,” replied his father, smiling.

“Really?” asked Franklin. He was starting to feel that his father had been more devious than he’d thought possible.

Maxwell smiled a rarely seen devilish smile. “
Yes
, Franklin. This will change the world, but we can’t let St. Malo get his hands on it. I’m sure the only reason he’s still around is that he’s in league with others, and they’d tear the world apart with my invention.” He returned to the letter he’d started writing.

Franklin was stunned. “You got it working,” he repeated several times, quietly. Finally, he came out of that loop and said, “You got it
working
… and I didn’t even notice. You cheeky monkey.”

His father looked at him quizzically. “Cheeky monkey? Is that any way to talk to your father?” he said, trying to sound firm.

Franklin chuckled. “My father? No. A sneak who has been making me think that he’s only half the genius I hoped he was? A cheat who made me believe that my father was an old codger? That man is one cheeky monkey indeed.”

Maxwell changed to a serious look, and his eyes locked on those of his son. “You’ll need to take my plans to Mister Klaus himself. He’s the only one I can trust with them.”

Franklin blinked, surprised. “Me? By myself? Why me? Wouldn’t the journey take weeks?”

Maxwell stood up, maintaining his look at his son, who was only an inch or two shorter. “You’re the only one I trust to carry my plans there.”

Worried, Franklin thought about all the people his father knew, hoping to think of someone he could mention that would take the burden, but he couldn’t think of one. “Why can’t you take it, father? I can come with you. We could—”

Maxwell sighed and smoothed his thin hair again. He removed his spectacles in order to clean them on his shirt. “You don’t understand, Franklin. They will be looking for me, whoever they are. They won’t be looking for you, at least not yet. I will try to go north, maybe to Eldeshire where we spent the summer a couple of years ago, but I’m certain they’ll catch me before then. I doubt I will evade their clutches for long.”

“Father, we don’t even know who they are—you said so yourself. Now you’re imagining them as having—”

Ignoring his son, Maxwell continued, “The plans have to get to Nikolas. I need you to put them in his hands. He’ll know how to keep them safe.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Tale of the Mountain Man

Many citizens of Minette enjoyed going down to the larger city of Mineau a couple of times per year. As far as cities in the kingdom of Freland went, Mineau was average size, but compared to Minette, it seemed enormous.

The main road from Minette to Mineau wound its way lazily down the mountain, over streams and small bridges, through forest and large, snowy clearings. In summer, the trip was one hour on horseback, but in winter it could take anywhere from one to eight hours, depending on the potentially brutal weather.

When Nikolas’ sleigh arrived at Mineau two hours later, he found Bakon already there, sitting on the back of one of the sail-carts. Bakon was nursing a bruise over his left eye, and a fat lip. The Yellow Hoods were nowhere to be seen.

He glanced over to Egelina-Marie, who gestured that they shouldn’t discuss Bakon’s situation. Nikolas nodded, while the other two Cochon brothers chuckled to themselves.

He wondered what the Yellow Hoods were up to. In a brief couple of months Tee, Elly, and Richy had used the carts in ways he’d never imagined. Nikolas didn’t like being unable to predict the outcome of his decisions—something that rarely happened. Lack of knowing how his inventions might be used in the world was one of the biggest reasons he seldom felt comfortable with sharing them.

He found himself questioning his intent to hand over the plans for his horseless cart to the Tub. The LeLoup incident had inspired him to finally solve the last of the design problems and build it, after wrestling with it for so long. He’d shown the first prototype to Tee and her mother, Jennifer—his daughter. Yet, no one knew just how far he’d been able to push things since. He’d figured the best thing to do in passing the innovation over to the Tub was to give them a design from a month ago and then see what happens.

The Yellow Hoods would typically make the trek down to Mineau with their parents, but now they were masters of their sail-carts. Tee had celebrated her thirteenth birthday mere days ago, and the three were behaving like teenagers, going off to who-knows-where in their sail-carts. Each set of parents had taken a different approach in dealing with this.

For Elly, her parents had witnessed the change firsthand. From their front steps, they’d watched; standing facing backward on a rapidly moving sail-cart, Elly had thrown a shock-stick at one of LeLoup’s horsemen, defeating him. They’d watched as she spun in the air, seated herself perfectly, and brought the sail-cart to a quick stop right in front of them.

Since then, Elly responded to every worry her parents tried to throw at her with her clear, convincing logic, all tied back to what they had witnessed. While they didn’t like the idea of the sail-cart, they believed that if she and Tee stuck together, then they’d come out unscathed together. In the end, Elly’s parents occasionally wondered about the odd cut and bruise, but if Elly seemed happy, they didn’t worry.

As for Tee, almost as soon as she could walk, her parents knew they had trouble on their hands. She loved adventure and had a mind for getting things done, and William and Jennifer each blamed it on the other’s heritage. William’s father, Samuel Baker, was one of the three top leaders of the Tub, while Jennifer’s father, Nikolas Klaus, was a renowned master inventor, also affiliated with the Tub.

Tee’s parents weren’t sure whether she hunted for danger, or if danger just seemed to find her. They were thankful for Tee’s incredible natural luck, and her close, trusting friendship with Elly. Where that wasn’t enough, they’d invented all sorts of devices and mechanisms to try to stop Tee from doing such things, say, as piloting her sail-cart off the edge of the cliff near their home.