Steamborn (27 page)

A few hours went by while the pair worked at a relentless pace. “So, you found Alice,” Charles said as he wrenched another spring box into place.

Jacob nodded. “I told her everything.”

Charles looked over and watched Jacob for a moment. “I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this.”

“I’m more worried about Alice.”

“Yes, well, boys tend to worry about the girls they like.”

Jacob looked at Charles’s eyes. The old man wasn’t trying to mock him. There was no smile on his face. It was the same look his father got when he apologized for feeding Jacob peas. The image made Jacob laugh, just a little, before the thought of never seeing Alice again weighed him down.

“That girl knows how to look out for herself,” Charles said. “If I’d ever had a daughter, I would have wanted one like her. Clever, idealistic, and kind.”

“I guess,” Jacob said. He started loading another cartridge. His fingers hurt a little, but it was a mindless task, and mindless was what he needed.

“It’s best not to worry about it, Jacob. I won’t leave you or your family to these wolves. We’re prepared to run. We have gold, and supplies. There are a thousand places to hide in this city, and a million more outside the walls.”

“Have you seen my folks?” Jacob asked.

Charles nodded. “They were running down to Market Street. Something about dinner. I wasn’t listening too closely, to be honest.”

“That’s a good sign if Dad went too. He never leaves the house when he’s feeling bad.”

“Don’t worry about them, Jacob.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I don’t mean this to sound horrible, boy, but if the city did anything to your parents, they wouldn’t be able to use them as leverage to get to you.”

“Why does it have to be me?” Jacob asked before he slammed a cartridge onto the workbench. “Is it my fault they fired my dad? My fault we couldn’t afford to eat? You know what happens if you don’t eat, Charles? You
die.
Was I supposed to sit there and watch my family starve? Is that what I should have done instead of stealing?”

“It’s okay, Jacob,” Charles said. He patted Jacob’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

Jacob wasn’t as sure as Charles seemed to be. If Charles had really been so sure, why had they prepared to run? The thought wouldn’t leave his mind while they assembled more cartridges and more nail gloves well into the evening.

The knock on the door came as the streetlamps burst into life, and the shadows of the city came calling.

“Samuel!” Jacob’s heart sank as he watched the knights push his friend onto his knees before slamming Samuel to the floor. The Spider Knight’s arms and legs were bound in leather restraints. Blood leaked from his forehead. “What are you doing? Leave him alone!”

He tried to step toward Samuel, but Charles threw his arm out. “Stay back, Jacob. They’re looking for an excuse.”

“We don’t need an excuse, tinker. This raid is sanctioned.” Cold blue eyes turned back to Jacob beneath a shining silver helmet. There were three lines and a white bird painted onto the side. “Your parents are being interviewed by the police,” the soldier said. “Come with us, and we’ll take you to see them.” He held his hand out and smiled.

It wasn’t a smile Jacob liked.It was the kind of smile he’d seen on a cat’s face after it slaughtered a family of mice.

“Theft has become a problem in the Highlands,” the soldier said, “and we’re here to sort it out.”

“I haven’t stolen anything!” Jacob’s hands curled into fists. How could they accuse him of something he hadn’t done?

The door began sliding closed behind the men, and they didn’t seem to notice. Jacob wasn’t sure why the door was moving until he saw Charles leaning against the bench by the trigger Bat had installed.

“A lying pickpocket,” the second soldier said, moving his halberd from one shoulder to the other. “You’ll make an excellent example to all the other Lowland thieves.”

“What is it you intend?” Charles asked. “What are you doing with Samuel?”

“The Spider Knight is an accomplice,” the soldier closest to Charles said. “Witnesses observed him passing information to known outlaws and he refused to reveal their whereabouts. We’ll clear his name so long as you give us the thief, tinker. It’s time he lost his hands.”

Charles’s expression froze. He looked cold, and it sent a shiver down Jacob’s spine, even more so than the terror that followed the soldier’s words.

The soldier closer to Jacob reached for him, and Jacob screamed. He didn’t want to lose his hands. For what? For helping his father live? For helping feed his family? “No! Get away!”

The soldier grabbed Jacob’s arm so tight Jacob thought his arm might break. “Let go!”

Charles swore, and before Jacob fully registered what had happened, the old man punched the soldier in his helmet. The crack of the rivet tearing through metal and smashing into the skull beneath was like someone had stepped on a giant Pill-Bug.

Jacob hopped away when the soldier’s grip loosened, just before the man hit the ground, dead. Jacob could only watch as Charles whirled around to face the other man.

The second soldier scrambled to bring his halberd around, but it slammed against the rafters instead of finding its target.

“Always it ends in blood,” Charles snarled. The whine of a spring and recoil of metal on metal echoed through the room as the next rivet found its home in the soldier’s chest.

He tried to speak as the halberd clanged against the vise on the workbench and clattered to the ground, but the rivet had punctured something important. A red trail leaked from the edge of the man’s mouth as he fell to his knees, and something like confusion washed over his face.

“I was not always a tinker,” Charles said as he stepped behind the soldier. He placed a hand on either side of the man’s head and twisted. A gristly crack filled the lab. The soldier’s armor rang as it hit the stone floor. Only silence remained.

Jacob wanted to scream, but no sound came out. He stared at the blood on the floor. Charles had killed a man. He’d killed
two
men. To save Jacob?

“Why did you have to do that?” Jacob asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Charles squatted down beside Samuel and started slicing through the leather restraints. Jacob thought he could have used a key, but then realized the keys were probably under the soldiers. He didn’t think Charles would want to touch the dead men any more than he did.

“I promised your mother I’d look after you. Bringing you home without hands wasn’t part of the deal. You have a mind for machines, Jacob. I’ve always said it. I can’t have an apprentice without hands.” When Jacob didn’t respond, Charles looked up. “There are casualties in every battle. We got lucky with these two fools, but sometimes the casualties will be on your own side.”

Charles lifted the leather bands off Samuel, and the gag fell away. The Spider Knight gasped and sat up, rubbing his wrists.

“Thank you,” Samuel said.

“We’re going to have to leave the city. They’ll be out for blood now.”

Something boomed against the heavy oak door and men began yelling.

“Open the door! The city guard commands it!”

Three deafening knocks shook the door.

“I hope you can run,” Charles said, looking over Samuel’s leg.

Jacob followed his gaze to Samuel’s calf. Blood seeped through the fabric and slowly dripped down his silver armor.

“I’ve had worse,” Samuel said. “The most important thing is that we get away. I can worry about my leg later.”

“Break it down.”

Jacob heard the words, and a moment later, the door shook in its frame. The wood began to splinter around the iron bands and braces, and his heart leapt as he realized they weren’t at all safe in the lab.

Charles cursed and threw a backpack over his shoulder. “I’d hoped to take the steambike, but I’ve no desire to kill those men.”

“I doubt we could,” Samuel said as he hefted a pack of his own.

“What about Bessie?” Jacob asked.

Samuel cinched a belt around his waist and adjusted the shoulder straps before testing his movement. “She’s in the stables. No way we can get to her in the middle of all the city guards.”

A jagged crack appeared in the door when something slammed into it again.

“Alice!” Jacob almost yelled her name.

“She already knows what to do,” Charles said. “We’ll get to the rendezvous and wait for her. She may already be there.”

“So long as they didn’t catch her,” Samuel said.

Charles frowned, but he didn’t object to Samuel’s words as a webwork of yellow light appeared in the cracked door.

“Goddamned fools taking orders like the gods themselves ran this city.” Charles cursed as he scooted an angled piece of metal into the doorway. “Anyone with enough sense to breathe should have enough sense not to cut off a kid’s hands.”

Jacob looked at the heavy springs and the spear-like spikes loaded into the holes across the front. “You’re going to kill them.”

“Shouldn’t kill them,” Charles said as he slammed a heavy nail glove against the metal and stone to anchor it, “but they won’t be on their feet for a while, that’s for sure.”

The door cracked again, and Jacob screamed when a crossbow bolt shattered a glass jar beside his head.

“Run!” Charles yelled. “Now!”

Jacob struggled to get his backpack secured as they flung open the door to the house and ran, past the kitchen and through Bat’s living room.

“Down the spiral,” Charles said. “We can get into the catacombs through the basement.”

“The third level?” Samuel asked. “That’s too dangerous.”

Jacob followed the pair into the darker depths of the spiral staircase.

“We don’t have a choice,” Charles said. Something clicked three times, and a small lantern burst to life in his hands.

Something thundered upstairs. Jacob could just barely hear it, but the screams that followed were unmistakable.

“Sounds like it worked,” Samuel said.

“It’ll slow them down.” Charles slid a brick out of the cracked foundation and reached inside. “They’ll think there are more traps, and do I ever wish there were.”

Jacob heard a clang and a hum before stone ground against stone as a hidden door opened in the basement wall. Stones fell away from them and then slowly rolled to reveal a round, dark path.

“Go, quickly.”

Samuel braved the darkness first. He had a short sword in his hand, and Jacob had no idea where it had come from. He saw Charles reach into the hole again before working the brick back into the wall. The doorway started closing, and the shadows felt like they were around his throat. Jacob’s heart skipped a beat, thinking Charles was locking them into the catacombs, before the old man followed them into the narrow hallway with his lantern.

Jacob’s breathing was still shallow, but at least he could see once Charles passed the lantern up to Samuel.

“Which way?”

“There’s only one path. Once we’re in the rotunda, go right. I pray Alice has found her way underground.”

Samuel nodded. Jacob tried to get his breathing to even out, but his panic alternated between his parents, Alice, and the men who had threatened to cut off his hands.

Jacob fought back tears as they vanished into the darkness of the forgotten city.

Jacob’s eyes adjusted to the dimly lit corridor as they followed it up its gradual climb. “Is this the third level?”

“It’s attached to it,” Samuel said. “The gate we passed leads to the old tunnels the miners abandoned.”

“I think that was only ten years after the war,” Charles said. “Who would have thought your uncle had an escape route under his house so close to it?”

The floor broke into a brief series of steep stairs. No one spoke, balancing on the balls of their feet as they traveled higher. At the top of the stairs lay a shattered grate. Jagged splinters of iron caught the lantern light, and the path beyond seemed an endless chasm.

Jacob watched the pieces at his feet as he walked past, glancing backwards until the gate vanished into the darkness behind them. “What could have done that?”

“Hopefully nothing we’ll see today,” Charles said.

“What the hell happened, Charles?” Samuel asked as he ducked through the third cracked support column they’d seen in the pitch-black tunnel.

“I’m not sure. A stampede of some sort could have done it, I suppose, but I’d expect to see piles of dead chitin left behind.”

“No,” Samuel said, taking a deep breath when the path’s incline leveled off. “Why are they after Jacob?”

“I’m afraid it all comes back to the city smith,” Charles said.

“He doesn’t deserve that title,” Samuel said before he spat on the ground. “The Butcher is far more fitting.”

“Nonetheless, it is a story that started a very long time ago. I’ve stayed close to him, here in Ancora, watching for some sign of the monster I knew in the Deadlands War. I’m afraid I may have failed.”

 “Watch your step,” Samuel said as the corridor opened into a wider tunnel. “We’re at the old tracks.”

Jacob stepped over the iron tracks as Samuel shined his light at the ground. The metal was old and rusted and looked ready to crumble. He wondered why the tracks here were in such terrible shape, when by the old station they almost looked new. Something fell and clanged in the darkness, echoing through the tunnel.

“Quiet,” Charles said.

Jacob froze, the pounding of his heartbeat almost loud enough to drown out the distant footfalls of something scurrying through the tunnels. He grew more anxious as the rapid tapping of something large grew louder, vibrating through the tracks at his feet.

“Move,” Charles said. “Through the gate up ahead. We lock it behind us. Go.”

They broke into a jog, as fast as they dared without raising too much noise. The gate wasn’t far, but even that short jog felt like the stuff of nightmares. Jacob knew at any moment something would drop from the ceiling, and that would be the end of him.

Charles fumbled with the lock on the gate for a moment before it squealed open. Something in the shadows echoed the scream of metal and then they were through.