The Brass Giant (14 page)

“Petra, I—­” He sucked in a deep breath and sighed. “Being without you these last weeks, I—­I realized that I don't want us to be apart. I want us to be together.” He raised his copper eyes, blazing in the darkness. “I want you to come back,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I want you to return to work on the automaton, if you're willing.”

She blinked, her floating heart sinking a fraction of an inch in her chest. “What?”

“I understand why you left, but—­” He pressed his lips together in a firm line. “But I swear I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe from harm. I'd do anything for you. You know that, don't you?”

“Emmerich—­”

“Say you'll come back,” he said. “Say you'll help me finish the automaton, once the University is put to rights. I couldn't bear to finish it without you.”

A latch clicked in the silence as a door closed in the other room, then footsteps treaded across the living room floor, creaking quietly toward the kitchen—­and the bedroom. Petra jumped from the bed and backed toward the opposite wall, her heart pounding. The sound of boots shuffled from the living room to the kitchen table. She cursed whoever it was—­probably Solomon, coming in late from the boilers, or Matron Etta, finally home from the hospital.

She swallowed her leaping pulse and gestured to the door. “I should . . .”

“Petra, I don't want to lose you again,” he said, frowning. “Say you'll come back.”

Looking into his determined eyes, she knew she could never say no to him. She would always come back to him—­always.

She sighed. “Of course I will.”

P
ETRA SH
UT THE
bedroom door behind her, finding her brother Solomon sitting at the kitchen table.

“How is he?” he asked.

“Better,” she said, stepping away from the door and sitting down beside him. “I expect Matron will want him to go home soon and return to his family. She said as much this afternoon.”

“And you?” he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

She started to say that she was fine, but her throat seized up as everything that had happened in the last ­couple of days suddenly stormed up inside her—­the attack on the University, Emmerich's injuries, realizing that she was Lady Chroniker's daughter . . .

And the very real possibility that she was falling in love with Emmerich Goss.

Her eyes watered, burning unexpectedly.

“Petra?”

A weary sigh escaped her lips, and she sank low in her chair, pressing her trembling fingers to her forehead. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, trying not to cry. “I don't know, Sol,” she said quietly. “I just don't know anymore.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She glanced up at him. “Yes?” With a heavy sigh, she shook her head and kneaded her brow. “I don't know.”

Solomon stood up and pulled her up to her feet. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go for a walk. It'll do you good to get some fresh air.”

Quietly, they left the flat and wandered the vacant streets of the fourth quadrant, the streetlights burning low in the wee hours of the morning. Solomon wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Now tell me what's wrong.”

Petra breathed in the familiar coaly scent of the subcity boilers, the heat of the furnaces forever baked into her brother's skin. It had been so long since she had seen him for more than a passing moment, so long since she'd confided in him. He was the one person she trusted with all her secrets, and she had so many to unburden now, so many things she hadn't told him in the last several weeks. The words spilled from her now, escaping her lips in a breathless purge—­her work on the automaton, the intimacy between her and Emmerich in the subcity, the encounter with Tolly, the Guild finding out about her possible involvement with Emmerich, the risk of facing an accusation of treason for helping him, the weeks away from the University, the attack and all that followed. She felt as if she talked for hours, all her worries and uncertainties lifting from her shoulders the more she told him, all leading up to the final confession of the night.

“And she's my mother,” she said, her throat raw and aching. “I am Lady Chroniker's daughter, her heir, and I have no idea what that means, what I am supposed to do now that I know the truth.” She sucked in a deep breath, a weary smile on her lips as the first rays of morning lightened the sky. “But I know who I am now, who my mother was, where I belong. All my life I was told that I couldn't be an engineer, that I didn't belong in the Guild or the University, that it was a man's world, but now I know the truth: they were wrong. I
am
an engineer. I am a Chroniker. And I belong here, more than any man.”

 

Chapter 11

E
MMERICH LEFT THE
flat and returned home the next morning. In the days after, as Petra waited to hear from him again, she spent her afternoons in the University square, watching architects and builders repair the damage left by the terrible destruction. The Guild had closed the University to all persons until repairs were complete, and until then, she and Emmerich would not be able to work on the automaton. The once pristine University stood mangled and broken. Scaffolds climbed up the sides of the metal walls, and scorch marks besmirched the polished brass. Someone had painstakingly scrubbed the gore from the white stone pavers, but no matter how many times they scrubbed and bleached the stone, Petra would never forget the blood.

Finally, after nearly a week since Emmerich returned home, she received a typewritten letter from him, apologizing for his silence and absence and asking her to relay thanks to Matron Etta for her care of him. He mentioned nothing of the automaton or the moments of intimacy shared between them in the days following the attack—­he could admit to neither—­but there was a note attached below his signature, scrawled hastily onto a tiny square of paper:
We need to talk.

Petra stared at the four words. There was no more to the note—­no time or meeting place, no hint of what they needed to discuss—­just those four simple words.

The day after she received the letter, the University reopened, and when her shift at the pawnshop ended, she was delighted to find Emmerich waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. She smiled at the sight of him, hurrying down the steps to meet him.

“The University reopened,” he said, offering his arm.

“So I heard. How is your back?”

“Better,” he said, turning south, away from the University. “The doctor finally cleared me to the leave the house, much to my mother's displeasure. She worries there will be another attack.”

Petra sobered at the thought. “You don't think there will be, do you?”

Emmerich frowned. “Not from the Luddites.”

They continued down Medlock, walking in solemn silence until Petra found the words to speak. “You said we needed to talk.” The words felt heavy on her tongue, and her heartbeat quickened with anticipation. “In your note. What did you—­”

“Later,” he said, forcing an unsteady smile onto his lips, a smile that did not reach his eyes.

Her heart stuttered, panic sinking deep into her chest. “Emmerich, what's wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, coming to a stop. “The only thing you need to concern yourself with now is getting properly dressed.” This time, when he smiled, it was genuine, lifting the whole of his face as he looked into her eyes.

“Dressed?”

He gestured toward the nearest building, and Petra saw that he had led her to her home.

“You can't very well work on the automaton wearing that, can you?”

He waited in the street while she ran upstairs to change into Solomon's clothes. No one seemed to pay her any mind as she darted in and out of the apartment, but she did hear a faint whisper of “odd” from one of her siblings. They could think her odd. She did not care. She joined Emmerich downstairs, newly outfitted, and they made for the University.

The lobby bustled with students and Guild members, many of them arguing over missed deadlines and late term papers, others dithering over the conditions of their projects and work spaces in light of the attack.

Petra and Emmerich navigated through the dense crowd, bumping shoulders with students and Guild men alike. Petra held her hat firmly to her head as they headed up the stairs and across the upper workshop floor, afraid someone might recognize her from her blunder at the University all that time ago. It seemed ages since that day, far longer than a ­couple of months. Had she guessed then that she would soon be working on a top-­secret Guild project, she wouldn't have believed it.

She couldn't help but grin at the thought of working on the automaton again. It had been dull working on nothing but ordinary machines—­pocket watches and desk clocks, nothing more challenging than a grandfather clock to occupy her. The automaton was a feat of clockwork engineering—­and
she
had designed it. She doubted she'd ever be happy repairing simple machines again, not after creating such a technological marvel.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn't watch where she was going and collided with someone. She glanced up, an apology working its way up her throat, but the words died on her lips. Hugh Lyndon glared back at her—­his graying, dark blond hair parted strictly down the side, frameless spectacles glinting in the electric light, the permanent frown line wrinkling his forehead. Petra's mouth went dry.

If he recognized her, he made no show of it. She quickly averted her eyes, muttered a hasty apology, and scurried after Emmerich. As they climbed the stairs at the back of the workshop, she glanced toward the crowd of men, certain that a certain pair of glasses glinted in her direction.

The moment Emmerich opened the door to the Guild offices, she shoved through, terrified that Lyndon and the Guild coppers would follow, that they would find her. She hurried down the hall to Emmerich's office, expecting men to throw open the door and arrest her at any moment, but the hallway remained quiet and empty.

Emmerich pressed his key into the office lock, and she immediately squeezed through the open door and pressed herself against the wall, grateful to be out of plain view. She exhaled a relieved sigh, the familiar smells of the workshop—­the metallic tang of polished brass, the robust scents of grease and oil—­relaxing her. She'd forgotten how it felt to stand here, enveloped in the resonant hum of the University walls, surrounded by whirring gears and groaning linkages hidden behind the walls. She breathed it all in, the sense of rightness driving all thoughts of Lyndon and the Guild from her mind.

Stepping away from the wall, she strode across the office and examined the automaton. In her absence, Emmerich had finished the arm mechanisms and fitted the joint transmissions in the automaton's rib cage, but nothing else. The plating lay in a heap at the base of the crane, and the pieces for the double mainspring lay on the worktable, ready to be assembled.

“I wanted to wait until you came back to finish it,” he said, joining her in front of the half-­completed automaton.

“What if I never came back?”

“This is
our
project, Petra. I would have left it unfinished.”

She couldn't help but smile.

Working in comfortable silence, they sat at the table, fitting the mainsprings for assembly. Emmerich concentrated on winding the mainspring around the arbor while Petra carefully fed him the weighty ribbon of metal. He worked slowly and deliberately, clamping the coiled spring at careful intervals to contain the residual tension. At even the slightest slip, the mainspring could snap out and strike one of them, causing serious injury.

Each mainspring for the automaton was over one hundred feet long and needed to be tightly wound into a two-­foot-­diameter barrel. No one had ever built a mainspring so large. At such a size, the residual tension should provide enough energy to power all the automaton's mechanical systems—­in theory. She and Emmerich had only their calculations to go by, and though the numbers seemed sound, there was the very real possibility that the mainsprings might not deliver enough energy to the machine's main systems. If the mainsprings failed, they would have to forge new ones and try again until they got it right.

Emmerich finally latched the end of the mainspring to the arbor, and Petra held the wound spring firmly in the barrel as he left the worktable and prepared the crane that would lift the devices to their proper place on the automaton's back. Two massive gears sat below the crane, each one over two feet in diameter and weighing two hundred pounds apiece. Carefully, they rolled the first loaded barrel to one of the gears, and Emmerich clamped the two pieces together while Petra quickly spun bolts into place with the power spanner.

They repeated the process with the second mainspring, both of them covered in grease and sweat by the time they finished attaching the gear and barrel. A streak of black oil smudged Emmerich's cheek and greased his hairline, both their clothes marred with dark stains where they'd wiped their hands clean.

“And now the hard part,” he said, eyeing the exposed automaton.

The automaton's innards gleamed in the electric light—­gears, rods, bearings, cams, sliders, and pulleys fitted together in a masterpiece of mechanized art. Petra noticed several cylindrical mechanisms that she hadn't designed, built into spring-­loaded hinges around the arms and in the chest—­probably last minute additions to the design changes requested by the Guild. Had she been helping Emmerich instead of hiding away in her apartment, she might know what they were for.

“Help me with the winch,” said Emmerich from the other side of the automaton. At the base of the crane, he turned the winch lever down and slowly fed a length of cable onto the floor. He then carried the hooked end of the cable up the fifteen-­foot ladder standing next to the automaton and threaded the winch cable through a secondary pulley system built into the crane. “All right. Turn it off,” he said, letting the weight of the hook pull the length of cable to the floor. “And attach the cable to the first barrel.”

Petra shut off the mechanism and carefully hooked the cable onto the mainspring barrel as Emmerich positioned himself on the ladder. Once he was ready, she returned to the winch and pushed the lever up. The gears behind the wall grated as the cable pulled taut, the crane groaning and creaking as it took on the full weight of the mainspring barrel.

“Slowly,” said Emmerich. He carefully guided the barrel to the automaton's back, and when it came to the proper height, Petra released the winch lever and brought the crane to a halt. Emmerich held out his hand, keeping the barrel steady against the automaton frame. “Power screwdriver.”

Petra removed the spanner head from the electric power tool and fastened the screwdriver piece to the gear base, locking the screwdriver shaft into place. She pressed the clockwise switch and the tool spun musically.

Emmerich carefully pushed the barrel into the first empty chamber in the automaton's back, and Petra passed the screwdriver up to him, steadying the base of the ladder as he fastened the mainspring barrel to the frame. They repeated the process with the second mainspring, more quickly than the first. Their measurements had been perfect. The barrel gears lined up seamlessly with the winding gear, locking into place without any difficulties.

Emmerich exhaled forcefully and stepped down from the ladder, wiping his forehead with his shirtsleeve. “Well,” he said, placing his hands on his hips. “Let's see if this thing works.”

He fetched the winding stem, a large bar with a square peg end, and jammed it into the center of the winding gear between the two mainspring barrels.

Petra handed him the winding rod. “What if it doesn't work?”

He sighed. “Then we figure out what we did wrong and try again.” He took the winding rod from her grasp and slipped it through the stem, where it locked into place, forming the complete key. He pressed his palms against the underside of the left rod. “Ready?”

Petra reached her hands over her head and grasped the metal rod, her palms tingling. A few dozen turns and the automaton would have enough power to run idle for a week. For their current purpose, they only needed about three full windings to test the automaton's capabilities.

Slowly, they turned the winding key, the clicking of the pawl against the barrel gear sending shivers down Petra's spine. Again they turned the key, and again, until the winding gear had turned three revolutions. Together they removed the key and set it aside. The gears inside the automaton shifted, and a steady, deep hum reverberated outward from the primary gearbox.

“So far so good.” Emmerich pushed his hair out of his face.

Petra could hardly contain herself, as if the dizzying elation spreading through her body would bubble out of her mouth in fits of giggles at any moment. Her heart thumped hard against her ribs, beating in rhythm to the automaton's balance wheel.

“Petra,” said Emmerich softly. “Come here,”

She turned away from the automaton and joined him at the crane, and he carefully lowered the machine to the floor. The jointed plates of its feet spread outward for stability as its knees buckled under the full weight of all the moving metal, the automatic gear systems whirring into action. Gears grated and knocked as the automaton balanced itself, the primary gearbox reacting to the electrically transmitted signals assigned to the gyroscope in its pelvis—­another of Emmerich's brilliant designs.

He climbed the ladder again and detached the automaton from the support frame still connected to the crane. When he returned to the table, he slipped his hand around Petra's waist and brought the wireless control apparatus in front of them. “If you would do the honors, my lady.”

Petra's fingers twitched toward the control switches. “Are you sure?”

“This is as much your automaton as it is mine.”

He squeezed her tightly to his side, and she breathed in the saltiness of his sweat, the engine grease on his skin. She touched her fingers to the walking control, and a tingle ran up her arms. Slowly, she pressed the walk switch forward.

The automaton responded with a grating of gears, a clanking shift, a shudder, and its right foot lifted from the ground. Utterly ecstatic that the automaton
moved
, Petra released the controls, and the automaton's foot, hovering a mere two inches off the ground, stomped down. The floor beneath them shuddered.

Emmerich, grinning broadly, wrapped his arm around Petra and hugged her against his chest as he took hold of the control apparatus, twiddling his fingers across the control switches as if the movements came instinctively.