Steampunk Carnival (Steam World Book 1) (5 page)

Katya escorted the last of the patrons past the ticket booth and waved to them as they meandered through the gates. The plainly dressed security had already disappeared from the grounds. Katya busied herself until Magdalene finished cleaning up the food stall. She rounded the entire carnival, offering her services to every employee she saw except the bearded game runner. Katya ended up in the other food stall, scrubbing browned and blackened sausage bits from the bottom of a cast iron skillet. She kept an eye on the game runner while he closed up his stall, arranging the toys and souvenirs so they sat straight and welcoming on the shelves.

The game runner exited his stall, pausing to look over his work. Katya’s panicked heart shook her ribs with its pounding. If he left the carnival, she and Magdalene would have to wait even longer to talk to him. She wiped the skillet dry and set it on the counter. She hurried out of the stall and approached the game runner before he could disappear.

“Excuse me,” she said breathlessly.

The game runner tipped his hat, lowering his eyes with self-consciousness. “What can I do for you, Miss Romanova?”

Katya started. “How do you know my name?”

“Everyone knows who you are, miss.”

By the game runner’s tone, Katya assumed he meant this as a casual compliment more than a jab at her reputation. “I’m afraid I don’t know yours.”

The game runner offered a small, wry smile. “You don’t need to.”

Katya gestured to the game stall. “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind showing me the way the game works. Do you have time?”

“Of course.” The game runner walked over to the stall. He did not sound as accommodating as he was trying to be, but Katya could not let it bother her.

Katya glanced at the far food stall. Magdalene was still there beside Irina and the Englishman.

The game runner lifted several glass bottles from underneath the counter and arranged them on the table below the prize shelves. “You’re sure you haven’t played this before?”

“Never.”

The game runner held out several painted wooden rings. “It’s simple. You stand behind that counter there and try to toss the rings so they land around the tops of the bottles.”

Katya leaned toward him. “No, how does it really work? I know the games are rigged. I’m just not sure how.”

The game runner pursed his lips ruefully and lifted three more wooden rings from underneath the counter. “Some of the rings are a little smaller.” He held the second set out near the ones in Katya’s hand. She might not have noticed the difference if she did not see them side by side. “These are sized to barely fit over the mouths of the bottles. Even a direct hit would be hard to catch around them.”

The game runner ducked down and rose with a third set of rings. “The ones I gave you are the normal ones. These are sized a little bigger so it’s easier for certain people to win a prize.”

“What sorts of people?”

“I can’t give them to children very often. If they all start winning prizes, people will get suspicious. Mr. Warden’s very strict about that.”

The rule seemed to pain him to say it, but Katya could not tell if it was the name or the restriction that stuck in his throat.

The game runner flipped the rings over in his hands. “I usually give them to a parent or sometimes the man in a young couple so he can win a prize for his lady.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

The game runner shrugged. “More suggestions from Mr. Warden.”

Katya studied the game runner. She had never stood this close to him before or paid him this much attention. He was younger than his beard and the unruly hair escaping his hat made him look from a distance. Katya realized she had mistaken him for five or ten years older. Whether he was younger or older than Mr. Warden, she could not guess.

“Do you want to play?” he asked.

Katya nodded. The game runner stepped aside, and Katya bought Magdalene’s plan a few more minutes. She edged up as close to the counter as she could.

The game runner smirked good-naturedly. “I can’t let you lean over the counter.”

Katya inched back. “What’s the point in rules if the whole game is rigged?” She tossed the rings one at a time, each ring bouncing off the bottles before she tried the next one with no success. “I’m a horrible aim, aren’t I?”

“Try these.” The game runner offered her the larger set of rings.

“Do these really work?” Katya made sure she was not bowing over the counter and tossed the first ring. It danced around one of the bottles’ lips before diving to the side. Katya whooped with delight and steadied herself before she tried again. The ring landed around one of the bottles on the right. “It only took me five tries.”

“Some people never get it.”

Katya handed the final ring to the game runner. “How do you keep all the rings straight?”

“It takes a practiced eye for slight variations in diameter.” The game runner collected the rings from the ground, the table, and the bottle’s neck. He put them away under the counter. “There are several sets down here. Sometimes a customer asks for another set if he thinks the ones he has are rigged. I have to give him another identical set, or he’ll know they are.” The game runner stored the bottles away.

“You haven’t worked here the whole time the carnival’s been open, have you?” Katya asked, trying to remember.

“No, miss. It was open a few months before I came here.”

“Do you know what happened to the man you replaced?”

The game runner adjusted the fit of his hat. “I don’t know exactly. I offered to work dirt cheap because I needed the job, and within a few days, there was this opening for me.”

Katya stopped herself from asking more questions. She sighed gratefully as Magdalene breezed up to her side.

“Good evening, Miss Harvey,” the game runner greeted her.

“Good evening.” Magdalene brushed sweaty curls back from her forehead. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, miss. And you?”

“Fine, thank you. I’m glad you’re still here. We wanted to talk to you.”

The game runner raised his eyebrows, but he did not look completely surprised. “Oh? What about?”

“We found something we think might belong to you. We found a notebook full of plans for the carnival.”

The game runner’s mouth dropped open, his composed facade breaking quickly. He wiped his sleeve at his forehead. “You found the journal.”

“So it’s yours?”

The game runner motioned with his hand for her to keep her voice down. “We can’t talk about this here. Would you be willing to meet with me?”

Magdalene nodded.

“Do you know the church St. John the Evangelist? They’ve been leaving their doors open to the homeless at night. We can talk in there.”

“Yes. Mr. Davies will take us.”

“Thank you.” In a desperate whisper, the game runner added, “You don’t have it with you, do you?”

“No, I’m sorry. We’ve kept it hidden. It’s safe with us.”

“It’s better that way, at least for now.” The game runner stepped out of his stall. “I’ll take the streetcar. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“We’ll wait for you.”

Katya and Magdalene walked away. When they passed the Beast and saw the carnival carriage waiting for them outside the gates, they moved a little faster. Magdalene sidled up alongside Mr. Davies and gestured for him to lean down to her. Katya climbed up into the carriage with Irina and the charwoman. Irina looked her over sharply, and Katya pretended not to mind.

Mr. Davies uttered a quiet, “Yes, miss,” and Magdalene claimed the empty seat next to Katya.

Mr. Davies drove them into town, straight up Madison Avenue toward the city’s circular heart. Katya tapped her foot impatiently to the striking of the horse’s hooves. Mr. Davies stopped to let Irina and the charwoman off at their homes in the western neighborhoods before changing his route and turning east down Washington Street. The carriage turned again when it reached Circle Park and slowed to resting outside the twin towers flanking the gothic facade of St. John’s Church.

Katya and Magdalene descended to the sidewalk.

Mr. Davies slid to the near end of his seat. “Are you sure you want to be here at this time of the morning?”

Magdalene considered the church, her expression pensive. Katya could see the concern in her eyes. “We’re waiting for someone. We won’t be alone very long.”

“You’re meeting a man, Miss Harvey?”

“Not for the reason you think. Do you think I would?”

Mr. Davies’ bunched shoulders relaxed. “No. Please be careful, ladies.”

“We will,” they chimed in together.

Reluctantly, Mr. Davies returned to the center of his seat and flipped the horse’s reins. He rode away down Tennessee Street.

Katya listened to the retreating carriage and night sounds of animals prowling the maze of nearby allies. “Do you think we’re safe?”

“We have no choice.” Magdalene studied the church’s architecture, a large round window high in the center above an impressive, peaked doorway. “I’m sure we’re fine. Just be quiet until the game runner gets here.”

Katya nodded. “I wish I wasn’t dressed so well.”

“You could take your jacket off.”

“Not at this hour.”

Magdalene walked up to the church and reached for the door handle. Katya stayed close behind her, and they slipped into the front hall. Except for occasional rustling in the next room, the church sat still and silent. Katya and Magdalene crept forward toward the sanctuary, the largest room Katya had ever seen. Even in the dim light of a few lamps, she could see the ceiling arching up two or three stories to curve over their heads. At least two dozen rows of pews stretched out in front of them before the dais. The rustling continued from some of the pews as people shifted positions, their heads, elbows, and feet occasionally knocking against the wood.

Magdalene ushered Katya into the first pew on the right, and they sat huddled, looking around the room. Katya did not know how many homeless had crawled into the church pews for a secure place to rest. She hoped the game runner knew what he was doing meeting them there. Their voices could carry anywhere in the cavernous room, waking the sleeping and feeding them the unfortunate business of the country’s most interesting attraction.

Katya remembered Mrs. Weeks following the newspapers closely for months while the inventor Thomas Edison struggled with his experiments on electricity and light. Katya had paid the most attention to the articles that mentioned how his work, if successful, could be applied for purposes of entertainment. Unlike Mr. Warden’s carnival, the visionaries speculated, rides and coasters could be run on electricity rather than steam. Instead of so many gas lamps creating heat and fire hazards, light bulbs would more efficiently illuminate the night. Some said the bulbs would stand on posts as the gas flames did already, and others ruminated the bulbs could be hung in strands strung over the grounds. Light bulbs could brighten the top of the Tower, the spokes of the Warden wheel, and the tracks of all three coasters.

At the time, seated comfortably in the Weekly Boarder’s dining room, and even now, occupying the solid wooden pew waiting to find out if the carnival could indeed be referred to as Mr. Warden’s, Katya denied the idea that the carnival could be improved through such an innovation. Whoever had created it put the best technology of the times to new uses, and Katya respected that. The withering heat of the gas lamps, exploding valves, and chugging machines were small prices to pay to work there or enjoy it as a patron. Katya had fallen in love with the carnival’s grandeur the first time she saw it advertised on a poster:
Management seeks qualified workers for all positions!
She had lost her breath when she saw it in person and entered its hallowed grounds. It still struck her with its ingenuity and gleaming presence every night she worked there. Electricity could no more improve it than a phonograph could replace the musicians in the band.

Katya glanced toward the door, but no one had moved much in the time she and Magdalene had been waiting. The more she thought about the carnival, the more she wanted to know the truth. Was it Mr. Warden’s success, or did it belong to this man whose name no one knew?

The front door of the church creaked open. Katya exhaled with relief and patted Magdalene’s hand.

The game runner stole into the room, and Magdalene waved to catch his attention. He sat down beside her in the pew, lowering his hat to rest on his thighs. Katya leaned forward to see him past Magdalene.

“What’s your name, sir?” Magdalene whispered.

“Brady Kelly.”

Katya spoke up with insistence. “How come you’ll tell her and not me?”

Brady’s apologetic eyes flicked to Katya’s face. “It’s nothing against you, Miss Romanova. I didn’t want to speak my name at the carnival. Mr. Warden knows that name, or at least he should. He stole that notebook from me. I’ve spent three years trying to get it back.”

“You invented the carnival?”

“Yes.”

Magdalene picked up the conversation again. “That’s what we don’t understand, Mr. Kelly. How did Mr. Warden use your ideas to do what he did?”

Katya interrupted. “More importantly, how did you ever think of the carnival? What inspired you to draw such fabulous things?”

Magdalene glanced at Katya, not so much condemning as wondering how creative brilliance rivaled the underhanded nature of Mr. Warden’s accomplishments for what they needed to discuss.

Brady moved his hat to the empty space beside him, his fingers clutching the brim. “I’m not sure I can answer all your questions, ladies, but I’ll try.” He fiddled with his hat, rotating it one way and then the other. “I had a family once, in Illinois. My wife, Sarah, cleaned houses so we could afford our own to raise our little boy, Nathaniel. They made me so happy, I would’ve lived with them anywhere. I was already working with engines and machinery, fixing and designing them. I thought, what would be more perfect than a place for families to go where they could enjoy themselves and see something they couldn’t see anywhere else?”

Brady pulled his hat into his lap, his fingertips tapping a jittery dance against the band. “Nathaniel caught diphtheria when he was three. I’d already started the journal – my notebook, as you call it. I had some basic ideas of how to connect the steam engines to the gears that would make the rides move. He died never seeing more than that, just my drawings.” Brady tore at his hat brim, pulling it and folding it. “Have you ever listened to someone dying from diphtheria?”

Katya and Magdalene shook their heads.

“He couldn’t breathe. He coughed and coughed, but he couldn’t breathe. He could barely swallow, his throat hurt so bad. Sarah sat with him as long as she could. She wiped the drool from his lips and the blood from his nose. He shook from the chills but burned with fever. We buried him.” Brady nodded slowly, his eyes unfocused as he remembered it. “They shouldn’t build coffins so small, but there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”

Katya nodded. One of her sisters had not lived past her first few weeks.

“My wife,” Brady continued, “Sarah. She caught consumption the year after. I gave up my job to care for her, but nothing helped. We sold the house, and she passed much the way Nathaniel did, coughing and fighting for breath. She sweated all night, no matter how much I fanned her. When she died, I took whatever jobs I could, and I threw myself into that journal. I dreamed of a place where families – anybody – could go and enjoy themselves and be together.”

Katya interjected gently. “Did you know how you were going to build it?”

“No. I got lost in those drawings. I didn’t know if it would ever really happen. Then the notebook disappeared, and I had no idea what to do.” Brady raised his hand, resting it over his face for a moment.

Magdalene’s voice fell soothing and quiet. “Did you know William Warden?”

Brady composed himself with several blinks. “Loosely. He stayed at the same boarding house for a while. We worked together at a factory. He was a friend of the foreman, so he didn’t spend very long fixing machines before he was simply supervising the rest of us. He didn’t really have the technical knowledge needed for the job, but he could discipline.”

“Did you tell anyone what you were working on?”

“No. I always figured Warden was a petty thief. He must’ve stolen bigger, more expensive things than my journal, although the journal did pay off.”

“Do you have any idea how he turned your journal into the Steampunk Carnival?”

“Not exactly. He’s a smooth talker, Warden. People like him. People who don’t know much about him, that is. It’s easy to picture him in a boardroom of some city skyscraper with a cigar between his teeth, selling my inventions to a group of builders and investors.”

Katya recalled multiple headlines and articles about the carnival. She could not resist sharing its colorful history with Brady. “It wasn’t called the Steampunk Carnival in the beginning. People weren’t sure what to think of it when the workers were building it. I think they were excited, but they were also quick to condemn it. The night we opened, reporters from the
News
and the
Journal
and the
Mirror
were all there taking photographs and interviewing people. Everything was so disorganized, only the children seemed to enjoy themselves. The newspapers called us the steam-run carnival for punks, writing us off, thinking we wouldn’t last long.” Katya felt proud to reveal the change in public opinion. “The carnival caught on like wildfire, and there wasn’t enough room in the papers to keep calling us that, so they shortened it. Mr. Warden liked the phrase so much and so many people repeated it, he had it printed on that sign put up outside the gates even bigger than the original name.”

Magdalene adjusted her position on the edge of the hard bench. Her next question came almost inaudibly. “Mr. Kelly, did you send those death threats to Mr. Warden?”

Brady lowered his gaze. “Yes. I got the job at the carnival to see it for myself and be a part of what I dreamed about for so long. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s close. I wasn’t sure what to do then.” Brady’s eyes widened as he focused on Magdalene’s face. “I’d never kill Warden. I only meant to scare him.”

“You might have scared him into throwing out the journal. He might’ve been trying to get rid of the evidence against him.”

Katya leaned closer to Magdalene and Brady. “Why doesn’t Mr. Warden recognize you?”

Brady sighed a dry, short sound. “My appearance isn’t what it used to be. I used to keep my hair trimmed, my beard trimmed. It’s amazing what losing your family and everything that means something to you will do to you. He’s never recognized me by voice or any other way. I never gave him my real name when I approached him about the job.”

“And that was good enough for Mr. Warden?” Magdalene guessed, her sad tone revealing her lack of surprise.

Brady shrugged. “He didn’t want to know the workers he managed before. This is the way I wanted it, Miss Harvey. I kept to myself as much as possible. I didn’t start calling myself the Mick to gain friends. Everybody has kept their distance except the two of you.”

“I saw you with the boy,” Katya admitted. “The one who stole a stuffed bear from your game stall. You were so pleasant to him. Even if you did threaten Mr. Warden, I didn’t think you’d hurt us.”

The trio fell silent. The homeless lay still in their pews, either straining to listen or dead asleep.

Magdalene’s voice cut into the silence. “What are we going to do now?”

Brady shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve thought of every possible plan.”

Katya broached the crux of the problem. “We can’t even go to the police. They’d never believe us. Mr. Warden has too much influence over every corner of the city.”

“I know. If I accused him of anything, they’d pin the death threats on me, and I’d never see the light of day again except on a chain gang.”

Magdalene peeled her gloves off and laid them in her lap. “We have the journal as proof. There’s enough of your handwriting in it that experts would be able to link it to you. Mr. Warden obviously hasn’t looked at it in a long time, or he might have recognized your handwriting in the letters.”

“It’s not enough,” Brady insisted. “Unless I get a public confession out of Warden, the police will never believe me. People have to see him for what he is, a cheat who got lucky off other people’s work.”

“Is that what you want us to strive for, Mr. Kelly?” Magdalene asked.

Brady rubbed a smudge on his hat brim with his thumb. “I don’t want to drag you ladies into it. Lieber’s as dangerous as they come, and Warden would do anything to hold onto the carnival.”

Katya revolted against the idea of leaving Brady to take care of things himself. She struggled to keep her voice low. “We’ve worked at the carnival longer than you have. We’ve been in the city longer. We know everybody better. I might not have much pull with Mr. Warden, but I do have some. Where do you think you’d get by yourself? It’s too important to tell us to go on our way. It’s all we’re going to be thinking about anyway.”

Brady hesitated, pressing his thin lips together.

“Mr. Kelly,” Katya tried again. “Let us help you. Please. The carnival means everything to me. It’s the only job I ever wanted, the only place I’ve ever loved with every bit of my soul. You designed it that way. If the carnival is a lie, how can I feel good about helping the patrons spend their money when it all goes into Mr. Warden’s pockets?”

Brady nodded reluctantly, his grey eyes preoccupied and darkly shaded. “All right. You can help me. We just need to figure out what to do.” He ran his fingers through his thick, unkempt hair.

Magdalene rested her hand on his arm. “We’ll think of something, Mr. Kelly. I don’t think we should threaten Mr. Warden anymore. Any additional security might make it harder for us to take action.”

“I won’t do anything unless we decide on it.”

Magdalene stood up. “It’s been a long night. We should all get some sleep.”

Katya and Brady rose to their feet.

Brady met their eyes intensely. “I appreciate this. I do. I never thought I’d see that journal again. I wasn’t sure how I was going to expose Warden’s fraud.”

“We’ll find out what we can about Mr. Warden’s schedule. We’ll let you know what we discover.”

“But we have to be careful.”

“We will. It’ll be easy for Katya to stop by your stall long enough to ask you to meet with us.”

“Should we have a code phrase?”

Magdalene nodded. She thought for a moment.

Katya remembered what Mr. Warden had said about the great wheel. “‘The wheel is very popular tonight.’ It’s true every night, but the patrons won’t know that.”

“I look forward to hearing that phrase,” Brady said.

Brady turned and led the two women out of the sanctuary. They crossed the front hall, and Brady eased one of the double doors open into the slow summer wind.

“Can you get home all right?” he asked.

Magdalene looked up the street for the streetcar. Horses’ hooves struck the road several blocks away. “We’ll be fine. How are you getting home, Mr. Kelly?”

“I’ll walk this way and see if I can’t find another horsecar.” Brady set his hat on his head, adjusting it briefly. “Thank you again, ladies. Good day.”

“Good day, Mr. Kelly,” Katya and Magdalene replied.

Brady walked away down Tennessee Street, and the two women started in the opposite direction. They soon spotted the horse-drawn streetcar and waved for it to stop.