by Eric Vall
“We made sure there was nothing,” I reiterated. “But even then, why would she be riding me so hard if they hadn’t found anything?”
“Maybe we have to wait it out and see what she has on you,” Daisy offered. “Like everyone else before her, once she has something, she’ll come directly to you.”
“You’re right,” I nodded. “It’s just the waiting; it’s the worst part of it all. If it’s going to happen, I’d prefer it to happen now when we’re already on edge than later on when we’ve relaxed for a moment.”
“Don’t worry, Charles, it’s just life keeping you on your toes,” the bear-girl giggled, pointed to a fork in the road, and then turned. “There, turn left there. The mines will be just ahead of us.”
“Alright, Valerie,” I smirked. “You know what to do. We don’t want anyone to see you while we’re here.”
Chapter Ten
The overhanging tree limbs that created a perfect canopy over our heads opened up right as we reached the end of the road, and we were given an ideal view of the sloping mountains just outside of Edenhart. Our wagon rested on a small crest right above the valley, and all three of us stared down at the city-like maze below us.
To the west was a large clustering of brown tarp tents, and from this distance away, we could make out small, smoldering fires from breakfast early this morning. Ramshackle belongings, crates, and other objects were scattered outside of each tent, and we assumed these were the possessions of miners. Beyond the tents was a gravel road cut through the sparse, sickly looking trees, and at the end of it were hastily built wooden shacks where I guessed they stored all of their work tools. Farther to the east were the actual mountains, and pressed into the sides of them were darkened entrances into the mines, and men covered in black soot moved in and out, some of them pushing wheelbarrows, some of them with large, block shovels and pickaxes in their hands.
I moved my eyes over the sad, gray area, glanced over my shoulder at the lush forest behind us, and then pressed my lips into a hard line. Even the sky over this area looked bleak and darker than the sky we’d just been under, and I hated to imagine what it would be like to work here permanently, like the men below. There was only one stark contrast of color below as a single woman moved through the droves of blackened men, and we knew it could only be one person.
“Is that Josephine?” Valerie asked.
I peeked over at her, and the feline-woman was completely undetectable against the piles of our bags.
“Yes,” I nodded. “She must be here to show us the elevator that isn’t working.”
“I knew she was pretty,” the cat-girl giggled. “I’d seen her through the front window at the auction, but I didn’t know she was that pretty! Maybe we should forget about Edony and use Josephine instead!”
“Josephine isn’t a problem for us yet,” I chuckled. “But maybe, in the future, she will be.”
“In all honesty, Charles,” Daisy uttered. “I doubt she will be, her temperament isn’t like the other aristocrats.”
“That’s true,” I breathed, slapped the reins against the horses’ backs, and forced them down the small hill. “But we’re not concerned about that right now… right, ladies? We’re here to fix the elevator and not find a new woman for a monster-girl.”
“We knoooow,” Valerie whined. “But it’d just be so, so nice to have Josephine--”
“Val,” I echoed.
“Fiiiiine.” The feline-woman grumbled.
Right as we reached the work area, the blonde aristocrat raised her head, grinned, waved excitedly, gripped her skirts in both hands, and raced forward.
“Charles!” Josephine called. “Ms. Browning! I’m so glad that you made it!”
“Good Afternoon, Ms. Josephine,” I bowed my head, pulled back the reins, stopped the horses, hopped from the driver’s seat, and tied them off. “It’s lovely to see you again.”
“Yes, yes!” Josephine giggled. “And Ms. Browning! Don’t you look stunning! I always admire how you wear clothes that went out of style so well! Maybe you’ll start a new trend! Seeing them makes me want to rummage through my closest and wear my old clothes!”
“Is that an insult?” Daisy crooked a single eyebrow. “That I wear things out of style? Do you think it’s embarrassing? I can assure you these clothes are all the rage back where I come from.”
The blonde’s expression immediately fell, her orange-colored eyes widened, and her plump lips parted in a loud gasp.
“No, no, no!” Josephine shook her head. “That’s not what I meant at all, I’m so sorry if it came off that way! I just know that Adelia mentioned something about you wearing clothes that went out of style, and I told her that I quite liked it. It’s such a waste that all of us have clothes in that style, and none of us wear them because some other rich woman decided they were ‘out of style.’ I want to assure you I meant it as a compliment.”
I glanced over at Daisy. The brunette’s expression cleared, the corners of her lips curled up into a small smile, and she bowed her head to Josephine. The blonde perked up, giggled, and then stepped forward to grab my hand.
“I hope you don’t mind my forwardness,” the aristocrat bubbled. “I’m just so excited that the two of you are here. Please, follow me this way, Charles, I want you to look at my elevator as soon as possible.”
“Hold on a minute,” I chuckled. “I just have to grab my supplies from the wagon.”
“No, no,” Josephine shook her head, held onto my hand even tighter, and pulled me toward the mine entrance. “We’ve already got brand new supplies for you to use, I made sure they were bought, and then placed in a special place so no one else would use them. There’s no need for you to get anything from the wagon, my men will set up your tents and make sure you have everything that you need.”
“Your servants will set everything up?” I asked.
“Yes!” the blonde vigorously nodded. “I want you to get started as soon as possible! The faster you get down there, the faster it’ll be finished, and I won’t have to worry about the elevator anymore! Then, once you start working, I’ll come back up here with Ms. Browning, and I can show her around the camps, or we can sit in my private tent and enjoy some tea together.”
Josephine brought me to the entrance of the mine. The workers crowded around, and I glanced over my shoulder at their faces. They were streaked with soot, but surprisingly, unlike the workers or other aristocrats, they didn’t look miserable. A few of them smiled in my direction, glanced over at Josephine, and then smiled even wider. I’d never witnessed this before. Workers that actually liked their employers.
“This way, Charles,” the blonde woman smiled. “My overseer, Mr. Bronson, will show us the way down.”
A tall, lanky man stepped out of the shadows, pulled off his soot-stained cap, nodded his head, and then bowed low to the aristocrat. He gestured with his arm toward the wooden entrance into the mine, turned on his heels, and Daisy, Josephine, and I followed after him into the darkness.
“We have six elevators in this complex,” Mr. Bronson explained to me. “But first, you have to enter into the largest one to reach the five below. With the largest one out of commission, we can’t work in this mine, which is the largest out of all of them in the valley.”
“I have a few more,” Josephine interjected. “But they bring in nothing compared to this one. That’s why I was so desperate for you to come and fix it, I need to get it up and running.”
“Are you running out of funds?” Daisy asked.
“Yes, very quickly,” the blonde exhaled. “My mother is very sick: tuberculosis, and I had to send her away to a long-term care hospital in the west. The doctors there say that the air is clear, and it’s better for those ailing from the sickness to breathe. I can only trust what they say, and hope that the treatments will somehow cure her.”
“Tuberculosis?” I echoed. “I heard that they were working on a cure for it, though I’m sure if you wanted me to look into it, I could try to form
ulate something for it?”
“Could you?” the blonde cried. “That… that would be fantastic, Charles.”
“I would have to spend a few days in the laboratory,” I uttered. “But I think I could do it.”
“Once we get the elevator fixed,” Josephine breathed. “Would you do that for me? I can pay you double, even triple what I’m paying you now, it just means so much to me. Once my mother fell sick, all of the financial responsibility fell on me, and I will have to admit, it’s been very hard. I don’t have the same sense for it that my mother has, so I’m doing my best by just pinching every coin.”
“I’m very sorry,” the brunette whispered. “I’d heard rumors about your spending habits, but I hadn’t heard that your mother was sick.”
“Oh, that must have come from Adelia and Lilliana,” Josephine giggled, but the sound didn’t have the usual happiness in it. “They may spend frivolously, and I was about to do that before my mother got sick, but I can’t anymore, money is too tight now.”
“I find you very respectable, Josephine,” Daisy admitted. “It takes courage to keep going forward and fight while going through so much. I am sorry if the other aristocrats or I have treated you unkindly.”
“Oh, my stars,” Josephine paused, turned, and held her delicate, gloved hands to her chest. “Thank you so very much, you don’t understand how much that means to me. For someone of your standing to--”
“If I may?” Mr. Bronson interrupted.
“Oh, of course, David,” Josephine nodded. “Speak if you like.”
“Ms. Josephine is the kindest, most generous woman I’ve ever worked for,” Mr. Bronson smiled over his shoulder. “I worked for many years in other parts of the country, even in the heart of Edenhart, and I’ve never found an employer who is as good to us as Ms. Josephine is. Yes, she works us hard, and expects results when each day ends, but when the elevator broke down, she never blamed us or even laid a hand on my workers or me. We appreciate her and her kindness very much, and all of us have stayed under her patronage for many years.”
“T-Thank you, Mr. Bronson,” the blonde chuckled. “What most aristocrats don’t know is if you treat those within your employ with the same respect and understanding that you want from them, they will flourish under your hand. I heard from Edony that you treat Charles in the same way, and it angered her, but I respect you for it. He may be your consort, but he still has needs and feelings.”
“You heard that from Edony?” I asked.
“Yes,” the stunning aristocrat nodded. “She said something about Daisy treating you differently than most Mistress’ do. I know for a fact that Edony doesn’t keep consorts, but if she did… I’d hate to see what type of state they would be in. I visited Delphine Vallantine a few times… and I always felt so sorry for her men, she treated them so horribly, a few of them were beaten so severely they were sent to the hospital, and I know… three of them died under her care. We never found out the reasoning behind their ‘illnesses,’ but I’m sure it had something to do with her atrocious ‘playroom’ as she called it.”
“I’ve heard of that place,” I whispered. “I never had the chance to see it since she rejected me, but during my visit, she mentioned it a few times.”
“Did you ever see the playroom?” Daisy asked. “We’ve heard of it, but no one will speak of it.”
“Once or twice…” the blonde admitted. “Right when she was starting on its construction, and once after, when it was finally finished, and she was moving in all of the… objects. I never went back after that, and if I did, I would never set foot in that horrible room, it made me feel dirty.”
“Do you keep consorts?” the bear-girl probed. “I’ve heard that most of the women in the city do, but you’ve never mentioned them.”
“Only one,” the blonde smiled. “But for breeding purposes only. He lives in a small cottage on the outskirts of my property, and he only visits me once a month when it’s time for our… uhm… appointment, and then he leaves right after. He comes to our monthly appointment, and then in return, I pay him handsomely and allow him to live on the property of my manor undisturbed.”
“Oh, I would’ve assumed you to have a breeding program,” Daisy breathed. “Something like the Duchess and Delphine have in place.”
“No,” Josephine shook her head. “I don’t approve of such things, they’re too forced. If you want so badly to have a baby, you’re more likely to get pregnant and continue on your lineage if you’re relaxed about it. Or at least, that’s what my mother told me, I’ve had no such luck with my consort… but I’d hate to let him go, find another suitable one, and then have the very same thing happen again. The other ladies are all so desperate to continue on their family line, but their desperation is only making it harder for them to conceive. I also partly believe it's because they’re not active participants in the… ‘appointments,’ they merely lay there and wait for their consort to pleasure them.”
“Here, Ms. Josephine,” Mr. Bronson pointed.
“Ah, yes, sorry, David,” the blonde chuckled. “I got distracted by our conversation. This way, Charles, this is the largest elevator that we’re having problems with.”
I followed after Mr. Bronson and Josephine as they brought me closer to the closed shaft. The elevator the both of them gestured toward was huge, towering over twenty feet into the solid rock, and large enough to fit twenty men in comfortably at once. Yellow tape covered the closed metal gates, I stepped forward, peered inside, and then glanced back at Josephine.
“It works until you go down about two levels, malfunctions, and stops,” the blonde aristocrat stated. “We’re unsure if it’s faulty wiring or what, but if you could look at it and possibly fix it, that’d be wonderful.”
Mr. Bronson rushed forward, ripped off the yellow tape, balled it up in his hands, and then tossed it aside. He picked up a shiny, brand new toolbox, offered it to me, smiled softly, and then stepped back toward his Mistress.
“Will you be alright by yourself, Charles?” Daisy asked. “I could come down there with you if you like.”
“No, I should be fine,” I chuckled, grabbed the toolbox by the handle, and then stepped inside of the elevator. “But Josephine, I have to ask how old is this elevator?”
“Well, the mines have been in my family for years,” the blonde bubbled. “But this one is fairly new. We mined all of the other shafts until they were dry, and then we built this mine, and the elevator, but we only started having problems with it this past year. We’re unsure what could be the problem… will you try to fix it, Charles? My mother and her care are depending on the gold that’s hidden deep within these mountains.”
“I’ll try my best,” I smiled, turned, and examined the control box on the right side of the wall.
“There is a control room in the space between levels two and three,” Mr. Bronson said. “You should be able to find it before the elevator malfunctions. You’ve gone too far if the elevator shakes violently, drops a few floors… rapidly, a loud hissing can be heard, and then the cart stops.”
“Noted,” I grunted. “Alright, I’ll see you all when I’ve finished.”
“Thank you, Charles,” Josephine bleated. “I appreciate you so much.”
I nodded to her, glanced over at the control panel, lifted my hand, and pushed the illuminated DOWN button. The elevator hummed to life, shook for a second, and then lowered me down into the mines. Lights pressed into the earth walls flickered to life and marked my way down inside of the mountain.
“In between levels two and three,” I breathed.
I glance above me at the turning gears, unfurling coils of metal wire, and rumbling machinery. All the metal pieces were clean and free of oil and grease, and everything here seemed to be working fine. This meant there had to be something wrong eith the electrical or wiring side of things.
“Level two,” I breathed. “Alright, it should be here somewhere.”
I kept my hands poised over the control panel, g
lued my eyes to the edge of the elevator, and waited for the control room’s opening to appear. The dirt wall suddenly broke apart, held together by thick, wooden struts, and I jammed my pointer finger down on the STOP button. The entire elevator shook, groaned, and then eased to a stop a few inches below the crude doorway. I gripped the toolbox a little tighter, pushed open the metal cage door, and stepped out into the small hall.
Thick black wires were secured to the ceiling over my head. They hummed with the sound of electricity, and I stared at them for a moment. They looked relatively new, their surfaces still shiny with no wear and tear over their surfaces. As I moved deeper into the hall, lights flickered on over my head, and a control panel appeared in the distance.
“Hmmm,” I hummed to myself. “Everything appears to be in working order.”
Even the control panel looked brand new, the silver metal of its side panels glowed from the light of the lamps above my head, and even the brightly colored buttons shone with newness. I rested the toolbox beside the panel, reached for a screwdriver, and peeled away one of the side plates.
All the wires, gears, and electrical mechanicals were fine, and I reached into my pocket for my small acid battery flashlight I had designed a year ago. I clicked it on, leaned in closer, peered inside, and then clicked my tongue. Everything looked fine, none of the wiring appeared faulty or burned from a malfunction here.
“What could it be?” I asked.
I glanced over my shoulder toward the end of the hall where the elevator waited. I clicked my tongue, pressed my lips into a hard line, and then leaned even closer to peer inside of the paneling. I angled myself to the left, shined the light up toward the inlaid buttons, sighed, and then pulled back.
“That’s not it, either,” I grunted. “That means I’ll have to go down into the shaft, let the elevator malfunction, and then… climb down into the actual mechanicals below.”
I sighed softly, lifted the discarded plate, screwed it into place, grabbed the toolbox, and then stood. I hurried back toward the elevator, slipped inside, closed the light metal door, and then turned toward the panel of buttons. I glanced down at the darkness below my feet, sighed, and then jammed my thumb down on the DOWN button for the second time. I held tightly to the toolbox as the mechanisms below and above my head thrummed to life and lowered me deeper into the mines.