Mechanica (9 page)

I heard Mr. Waters walk up behind me. “Amazing!” he cried, suddenly effusive. He clapped me on the shoulder. “I hate to admit, Miss Lampton, I didn’t think you could do it.” He smiled warmly. “Now, what can I do for you in return?”

I had to laugh—this was going so much better than I’d hoped. “Well,” I said, “the fabric you’ve just cut is for my stepsisters’ ball gowns.”

He nodded.

“Though I don’t care so much for the ball, I would love to attend the Exposition that follows it . . . but I don’t have anything suitable to wear.”

He frowned and would have started in about the Steps’ injustice, as he’d done several times before, but I shook my head at him. I wiped my hand, still holding the wrench, across my hot cheek. Hardly daring to hope, I spoke quickly: “Do you think I might have some fabric of my own?”

He laughed, and for a moment I feared he might be laughing at the absurdity of my question. But he led me back to the front of the shop, sweeping his hand in a grand gesture toward his merchandise.

“Anything you like, Miss Lampton,” he said, his smile nearly as wide as mine. “Anything for the lass who saved my business.”

I took in the rainbow in front of me, and for the first time in years, I was spoiled for choice. The green silk? The gold brocade? I needed something that would look respectable at the daytime Exposition, but that I could perhaps dress up later on. Finally I saw a bolt of sky-bright blue percale, the color of a cloudless spring. My hand reached out of its own accord, but I saw the grease on it from the sewing machine and pulled away before I touched it.

“A fine choice,” said Mr. Waters. “I’d prefer you to your sisters even if I didn’t know you, just on that pick.” He pulled the softly shining fabric from the wall and unfurled it across his cutting board, marking off the yards with a bit of white chalk. He fished a spool of matching thread from a drawer, then opened his cabinets of ribbons and buttons and once more offered me my choice.

Recalling the beauty of his mother’s black lace, I chose small, shiny jet buttons and black grosgrain ribbon. I decided that my next lesson for Jules and Company would be in buttonholes.

Mr. Waters, usually so reserved, folded me in his arms, lightly crushing the paper-wrapped bundles I held. He and his mother thanked me twice more each before they let me leave.

The shadows leaned east as I walked back home, and I knew Stepmother would wonder why I’d dallied. I wiped the grease off my hands onto the dry leaves that covered the grass at the side of the street and carefully inspected my dress. When I deemed myself presentable, I turned onto the drive.

I could hear the three of them at tea inside, their quiet simpering giggles and hushed gossip. A young male voice mixed with theirs: Fitzwilliam Covington, one of Chastity’s more talkative suitors. They’d never know how long I’d been gone.

“I’ve heard rumors of a Fey ship slipping through the quarantine,” Stepmother was saying.

I paused by the door to listen. Piety’s and Chastity’s conversations with their suitors were usually terrifically dull, but if Stepmother was present, she would occasionally talk politics with the young men. I got most of my news by eavesdropping this way, and news of Faerie particularly intrigued me.

When Heir Philip had been killed, King Corsin had said Fey evils and barbarism made their betrayal inevitable. He’d cut off all remaining trade with Faerie, increased Esting’s military presence there threefold, and finally imposed a quarantine on the entire continent. Our coal-powered armada was more than a match for Faerie’s bright-sailed flotillas, and before long, all of Faerie’s borders were locked down. It had been seven years since any Fey ship had left port.

To hear Stepmother tell it, though, the worst effect of the quarantine, of King Corsin’s fear, was that Christopher—the younger prince and now the Heir—was sequestered from public view, quarantined, too. There was no chance of Piety and Chastity meeting him at high teas or garden parties or balls. Fey assassins could lurk anywhere, King Corsin insisted, despite the supposedly airtight seal on Faerie’s borders. So the Heir stayed safe and secret behind the palace walls, and Esting’s eligible maidens pined with curiosity.

I stood there in the hallway, concealed behind the closed sitting room door, lost in my thoughts of Faerie and then of the royal family. The Steps’ conversation had wandered in the same direction—little wonder, given their obsession with the Heir’s every move and with the upcoming Exposition and ball.

“Mrs. Hellifer tells me the festivities will last a week at the very minimum,” Stepmother said. “She is sure the Heir himself will even be present to help judge the Exposition and to dance at the ball.”

There was a rustling of silk skirts, Piety and Chastity fidgeting with excitement. “Just think,” I heard Piety sigh, “actually to see the Heir, to dance with him. Do you think he’ll be handsome, Chas?”

“Of course,” Chastity replied, her tone almost offended, as if she thought Piety might be insulting her future husband. “Mother always says how beautiful Queen Nerali was.”

“Painfully beautiful,” Stepmother added, as if the Queen’s loveliness had been a personal affront.

Chastity continued, “Well, how could her son be anything but beautiful, too? Besides, princes are always handsome, and charming, and brave, and romantic—”

“Oh, don’t talk of the sodding Heir so,” Fitz groaned, and I could practically hear his eyes rolling. “Here you’ve got such a strapping specimen just before you, living and breathing and eating biscuits in your parlor, ready to serve your every whim. Who needs some pasty, shriveled prince stuck behind palace walls?”

Chastity simpered, mollified. Piety sighed—none of her suitors were present today, so she was free to swoon over the Heir as much as she wished.

Honestly, I agreed with Fitz. What use would it do any girl to marry the Heir if it meant she’d be stuck in hiding with him for who knew how long? The palace was a lovely prison, certainly, but never to be able to leave . . . It was all too familiar a situation to me. I had just started to imagine a kind of life for myself: making a living of my own, having a home and a workshop—even buying back Lampton from the Steps, if I was extraordinarily lucky. Maybe even traveling, once I had my business established. Nothing could make me give up the freedom I longed for, not even the heir to a kingdom. Why marry someone if that marriage is only another trap?

“You know, Mr. Covington,” Stepmother began, in an even tone that indicated she planned on showcasing her intelligence, “I hear tell from Brother Lane that the Heir differs quite spectacularly from his father on several important issues. He is apparently opposed to the quarantine and has been campaigning for some time now for a different relationship with Faerie altogether—perhaps even a withdrawal.”

“Yes,” Fitz said, his voice turning tight and cold. “Lord knows where he got the idea—the board always appoints the royal tutors so carefully. Heir Christopher thinks we should treat the Fey as we do our fellow men. If he has his way, there could be tariffs, trade regulations, even a Fey ambassador. And we all know where that would lead.”

It was easy to picture the Steps’ shudders. King Corsin had decreed that anything less than a total quarantine and a complete lockdown on Faerie would mean allowing the Fey’s worst natures to take over. Eventually, he insisted, such leniency would lead directly to an open war.

I decided I’d listened long enough, and I made my way past the parlor door, ready to start on my machines again. I couldn’t go back to the workshop until the Steps were sleeping or gone, but there were still plenty of chores to finish upstairs.

Just before I reached the kitchen, the parlor door swung open. I almost didn’t notice, as it no longer creaked the way it used to—thanks once again to the supplies I’d found in Mother’s workshop.

Fitz appeared in the hallway. Tall and slim, with auburn hair and creamy skin, he was a handsome young man, and he smiled and winked at me as he closed the door behind him. Fitz was a jovial presence at Lampton, and his quick wit often made me wonder why he bothered to tolerate Chastity’s simpering idiocy. But she was beautiful, and I knew well enough from Father that beauty can make a lover tolerate any number of shortcomings.

Still, Fitz was nearly always civil to me, so his regard for Chastity didn’t lose him quite all of my respect. I greeted him with a demure nod and a bob at my ankles, the way Stepmother had taught me to acknowledge my betters.

“Ah, come off it, Miss Nick,” he said, grinning, sliding his hands into kidskin gloves.

Fitz always called me Miss Nick, and my pulse always gave a quick flutter when he did. I wouldn’t have said I fancied Fitz . . . precisely, but he was indefatigably charming, and I was not immune.

“We’ve known each other long enough that you needn’t curtsy every time we meet.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “We might be close to family soon enough, you and I. Step-in-laws, you know.” He tapped the side of his nose with a gloved finger. “Trade secret, though. Don’t go telling Goldie on me yet.”

“I won’t tell, Fitz.” My fancy vanished. I wondered if I was doing an adequate job of hiding my disgust.
Goldie.

He smiled, whether condescendingly or kindly I could never quite tell. “I knew I could count on you to keep secrets from them,” he said.

He retrieved his hat from the stand, doffed it at me glibly, and was out the door.

I frowned. What did he mean, he knew I could keep secrets? I told myself it was only idle banter—such banter was Fitz’s stock in trade, after all. His father was a very minor noble, and I knew Fitz hoped his quick mind and quicker tongue would help him push through the ranks at court.

Still, for the first time in my life, I had secrets that were precious. His comment shook me enough that it took an hour of dull cleaning in the kitchen and a long time talking to Jules that night to stop the gears of my mind from spinning with worry.

T
HE
spiders took to buttonholes like naturals. Jules and the minions’ work was improving and refining even faster than my own. That very night, as I was laying out the pattern for Piety’s ball gown, I felt Jules’s muzzle nudge against my wrist. He pranced over the design, pawing at it, snorting steam.

“You don’t like it? Neither do I. It’s a bit stodgy, I think.” I chuckled. “At least it suits her.” I used to love drawing up gowns when I was a child. They were their own kind of blueprints, their own kind of architecture and construction. But Piety and Chastity were uninspiring subjects.

Jules trotted to my inkwell and dipped one copper hoof inside. Walking carefully backwards on three legs, he returned to my sketch and dragged new lines into the pattern.

I stepped back to see what he’d done. I laughed again, but in amazement this time, almost in disbelief. He’d drawn the neckline lower and the sleeves fuller, with an elegant ruching at the shoulders. My boorish, matronly design suddenly gained life, youth, and even a certain flirtatious decadence.

“You do know,” I informed him, “you’ve just assigned yourself the task of designing every single one of the Steps’ dresses.” I stroked his glass back. His gears turned in pleasure, and their tiny movements vibrated under my hand.

I looked at him more carefully then; I stared, really, until he looked quizzically back at me and pressed against my hand, as if to ask what was wrong.

I patted him gently, then scooped him up and carried him to the sewing machine. With a whistling neigh, he called over two of the dragonflies to pull him into his harness.

Through the door into the furnace room, I could just glimpse the sky-blue fabric of my Exposition outfit draped over my adjustable dress form. I knew I’d have to start on the Steps’ new wardrobes soon—or rather, Jules and the minions would have to start—but every time I saw that blue percale, I could see myself at the Exposition so clearly, a successful inventor, admired by all. Never mind that I didn’t yet know what my great invention would
be;
in my mind, my dream had already come true.

I turned back to the cluttered comfort of the designer’s studio. Standing underneath the gray-curtained window, I could look upward and see the almost-full moon in the clear, cold night sky above me. I stared at it determinedly. I would never have let it show on my face, not in the workshop with Jules there . . . but he’d frightened me.

I’d known that Jules was affectionate and dutiful, and I’d thought he was intelligent. Yet those were traits that would describe any good carriage or hunting horse. And I’d grown fond of him, much fonder than even the silly court ladies were of Mother’s insects. I knew Mother would probably laugh at me if she knew how affectionate I’d become.

But a horse who could think both spatially and artistically—a horse who could understand the structure in the lines of a gown, who could
draw?
It was laughably absurd. Only humans had such power. Logical design, incorporating geometry and engineering, was a human kind of magic even the Fey didn’t possess; Mother’s and Father’s books agreed on that much, and it was what King Corsin wanted to celebrate at the upcoming Exhibition. It was part of what made some people—Stepmother, the Brethren, even Father—believe that humans were better than Fey.