Clockwork Captive (7 page)

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CHAPTER ONE

London, December 24, 1892

Linet Fenna shivered in her attic bedroom as she stared out the open window. Downstairs, all was merry and bright with evergreen branches, mistletoe and handmade garlands festooning trees and mantles. Under the eaves here, wind blew through a crack in the undecorated wall and rustled in the chimneys above.

A fever had made the first housemaid take to bed just after breakfast and Linet, the second housemaid, had been run ragged all day by her demanding mistress and her ever-arriving family. Now, finally done with work, she just wanted to stare at the stars and dream.

“Close the window,” Ann-Marie said, coughing from her iron bedstead in the darkest corner of the room.

“In a minute.” Linet took one last breath of chilly air and had her hand on the sill when she heard a metallic chugging in the distance. The sound came from outside, and wasn’t likely to be Father Christmas.

The automen who secured England for Prime Minister Gladstone had yet to master the skies. Linet had once known the world above the streets well, as daughter of the famed smuggler Rhys Fenna. Some had called him a sky pirate, and his neck had been broken on a gibbet three Boxing Days ago. She had become a maid of all work to support herself in the aftermath of his death. This position in a larger home had seemed a blessing at first until she realized she’d moved into a house owned by an automen manufacturer. The factory, only steps away, belched smoke and steam into the air at all hours, and it kept the brass fist of authority ever alive in her mind.

As Ann-Marie coughed behind her, Linet pulled at the tight high collar of her black dress and leaned forward into the open window, looking for the source of the sound. She darted back a step instinctively when something pinged against the glass above her head. A bird? Surely none were about at this late hour.

When she looked up, the astonishing sight took her back three years. No wonder she’d heard chugging. “A ladder?” she whispered.

“What?” Ann-Marie croaked.

“Nothing, go to sleep.” Linet hurried to the washstand by the sick girl’s bed and blew out the candle. “There, that’s better. You need to rest. I can’t manage alone with all these guests.”

“Do you want to go to sleep so soon?”

“Of course. That will make Father Christmas come all the sooner.” She felt the girl’s forehead. Not dangerously hot, thankfully.

“He doesn’t come for the likes of us,” Ann-Marie muttered. A rustling told Linet she had turned over.

Linet dashed back to the window. Yes, a rope ladder, just like the ones she’d climbed thousands of times to her father’s dirigible, the
Christmas
, dangled outside, a little lower now. Ladders had been the staircases of her life until she was seventeen, carrying her from earth to sky, larceny to freedom.

Who had found her? Her father had enemies, to be sure, but no enemy would be visiting her on Christmas Eve. No one from her old life had crossed her path in all this time. Perhaps her sister Terrwyn had finally reappeared?

She reached through the window and grabbed the ladder, then frowned. That knot with a gash on the left side looked familiar. One run was painted red, the next, green. Her gaze rose, unbelieving.