by Devon Monk
“In what manner does the curse take you?” Kyne asked.
“Like my brother, I gain the beast’s senses and body. Unlike my brother, I lose the man’s mind.”
“I believe I can help.”
“No, that’s fine,” Mae said. “I think it’s best we take care of this. We have done well enough so far.”
“Not help in…restraining him.” He nodded toward Cedar. “Not help in chaining the beast within him. But in breaking the curse. I believe I can break his curse.”
“Gentlemen, if you’re gonna shoot, better do it now,” Captain Hink bellowed as he strode into the freight car. “You ain’t gonna get a second chance.”
Rose couldn’t make out anything in the dark. But Hink, the fool, walked right down the narrow path between stacks of crates as if there weren’t three armed men in the shadows.
“Stop right there,” one of the gunmen said. “And get the hell off our train.”
“Your train?” Hink bulled across the distance like a man storming the deck of a ship, making enough noise for three. “Unless you can show me where you branded its haunches, I don’t think I’m inclined to believe you own this train.”
Hink drew something out of his pocket with his left hand, scraped his thumb over a section of it, and threw it off to one side.
The entire freight car lit up with a blinding orange flash that just as quickly snuffed out. It was one of the flares airship crews used, and in this dark, enclosed place, it was devastating on vision.
Two voices yelled out. Then, gunfire.
Rose ran into the darkness, her flash-ruined eyes no good to her. She found the crates by feel and ducked behind them.
She didn’t have a gun to draw, didn’t have a flare, and now, she didn’t even have clear vision. She wasn’t sure Hink was helping rescue Thomas or just getting into a fight for the sake of fighting.
The loud scuffling was followed by that particularly meaty sound of fists hitting bone; then everything went quiet.
Except for the sound of one man’s breathing.
She knew better than to call out. One against three? What were the chances it was Hink who still stood?
“You’re lucky I don’t throw you and that silly hat of yours behind bars,” Hink said.
He was standing? He’d won?
“For what, Mr. Hink?” Thomas said with a grunt, as if he were getting up on his feet. “Last I knew it wasn’t against the law to be roughed up by men of poor reputation.”
“Thomas?” Rose said. “Are you all right?”
She moved out from behind the boxes, her vision still muddy but clearing up quickly.
“Rose? I am fine, just fine. I would have been out of here in a moment or two. I was just waiting for my opportunity.”
Hink snorted. “You weren’t waiting for an opportunity; you were waiting for rescue. And I’m the one who did the rescuing.”
“I understand how you could see it that way,” Thomas said distractedly. “But I was just holding them here until you came and arrested them.”
“Arrest them?” Hink asked. “I would have pinned a medal on them for keeping you out of my way if they hadn’t shot at me. Seemed a favor keeping you out of my sight.”
“But you are a man of law, aren’t you? Captain Hink? Or is it Marshal Hink?”
“What I am, Mr. Wicks, is all out of patience. Get walking.”
Thomas stepped out from the corner of the car and tugged his jacket better into place. Then he dusted his hat and ran his fingers over the brim before placing it on his head.
“Miss Small,” he said with no small amount of delight. “So wonderful of you to return.”
“I couldn’t leave you here with those roughs,” she said.
He gave her a smile and a nod. “I am in debt to your kindness.”
Hink had stayed behind. He grabbed hold of one of the unconscious men and dragged him across the car. “Step aside,” he said as he passed Rose and Thomas. Hink opened the door, walked out with the man, then, a moment later, walked back in empty-handed.
“What did you just do with that man?” Wicks asked.
“Same thing I’m going to do with the next one.” Hink stormed down the car again, and did indeed drag another man with him to the door, then out the door.
“You’re throwing them off the train!” Mr. Wicks said. “They’re unconscious. Bleeding.”
“Don’t worry,” Hink said. “I left them their guns.” Then he strode over to the remaining gunman and slapped him conscious.
“I’ve just tossed both your friends off this train, and I plan to do the same to you. Unless you tell me who you’re working for.”
The man spit in Hink’s face.
“Wrong answer.” Hink grabbed him up by the coat and dragged him to the door.
“Wait,” Wicks said. “I’d like to know why they nearly killed me.”
Hink opened the door. The man in his grip whimpered. “Last chance. Tell me who you’re working for.”
“I’d rather be tossed in the dirt.”
“Happy to oblige.” Hink stepped outside, the door slamming behind him.
“They were trying to kill you over those crates,” Rose said.
“True,” Thomas said. “Unpleasant business, wasn’t it? I think it’s best we find a more comfortable place to finish our ride.” He offered her his arm.
Just then, Hink strode back into the place. He paused long enough to give Thomas’s extended arm a look, then, shaking his head, walked farther into the car, obviously looking for something.
Rose wondered what it was.
“Rose,” Thomas said again. “I’m sure there is a cup of tea and book waiting for us back in the Pullman car.”
Rose stepped away from Thomas. “You go on ahead, Mr. Wicks. I’ll be right there in a tick.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said. “A gentleman always escorts a lady.”
“I don’t need a gentleman,” she said, surprising herself with that sudden truth. Then, a little kinder, “It’s thoughtful of you, but I need a word yet with Mr. Hink. In private.”
Thomas frowned and, for the barest moment, anger swiped across his face.
Rose held very still, startled by his reaction.
He swallowed and drew his bottom lip beneath his teeth once, as if folding words back into his throat. “Of course,” he said with careful casualness. “I’ll wait for you there.”
He walked out the door and closed it behind him.
“Why?” Hink asked from halfway across the car. “Man was offering you tea and comfort.”
“Because you need to see this. And I’m not so sure I’m interested in Wicks’s company.” Rose found the crate with the loose lid, and pulled the lid off. The men must have repacked the crate, setting the copper and broken glass carefully in the straw. She held her breath as a song poured out, copper notes cold across her thoughts speaking of pain, of sorrow, and of power.
Hink strolled up next to her and peered into the box.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked.
Rose shook her head. “I…I don’t know. The glass is broken now. They called it a battery?”
“For what?”
Neither of them was touching it. Rose knew if she did, she’d lose what was left of her wits to its song.
“I don’t know. This is like the crate Margaret was carrying. With the initials of VB,” Rose said. “That coffin over there has the same initials.”
“Bring a lantern.” Hink walked off into the dark, and Rose checked for a lantern.
There was one on the floor, the one she’d held before, tipped over and leaking. She hoped it had enough oil to hold a flame. She picked it up, and dug in her pocket for a striker.
Careful to lift the glass, Rose struck flint to steel and sparked the oil-drenched wick, catching a yellow flame there.
She and Hink stood next to the coffin. “See there?” Rose said, pointing at the side of it. “VB.”
Hink brandished the pr
y bar. “I see it. Now let’s see what’s inside.”
He set the bar in between the lid and case and pulled. The coffin lid rocked up, locks breaking. Hink pushed the lid full open.
“Hellfire,” he swore. “Rose, don’t look.”
But it was too late. Rose had already seen the contents.
A body. Not whole like a person, but pieces and bits. One leg, an arm, and a torso. There wasn’t even a head.
“Oh, God,” Rose breathed. “Why?”
Hink turned so the bulk of him blocked her view, but it didn’t do much good. She couldn’t unsee what she’d seen.
“Lot of strange folk in the world,” he said. “Or maybe this was all that was left of him to bury and his family wanted it home.”
“There’s no smell,” Rose said, her mind suddenly working on the puzzle of how to fit what she’d just seen into the here and now of the world. “Death has a stink. Death always has a stink.” She tipped her head up, searching Hink’s face.
He nodded. “There are some solutions that can take care of that,” he said. “And those bits aren’t all hooked up, so a more thorough cleaning might have been done. Still…”
He turned back around, but was still positioned so she couldn’t see past his width. He reached into the coffin.
“Huh,” he said.
“What?”
“This isn’t living.”
“You just noticed?” Rose asked.
“I mean it wasn’t ever. Living.” He shifted so she could step up to the coffin again.
He lifted the arm up a bit. “Bring the light closer.”
Rose held the lamp inches away from the severed limb.
“Wrist and elbow move like they’re on a hinge.” Hink once again shifted the arm and it gave a slow, dead wave. “And this skin? It’s animal. Fine tanning, but not human. Not soft enough for meat to be underneath it either. Wood, I think. Maybe metal.”
“It’s pieces of a…a puppet?” Rose asked. The twist in her stomach screwed down to dread. It was very lifelike for a puppet and fully the size of a grown man, or pieces of a man, in any case.
Hink frowned. “Heavy for a puppet.”
Rose looked from the arm in his hand, which was topped off with a fully articulating hand on one end and strands of thin, veinlike wires coming out the stump where the shoulder might be.
Those wires reminded her of something. They reminded her of the copper and glass device. “Is there a, um…hole in the chest or back?” she asked.
Hink set the arm back in the coffin and tugged on the shoulder, leaning the torso forward. No blood, no meat in the severed neck, but if Hink hadn’t told her it was leather and metal or wood, Rose would have sworn it was the upper half of a man sawed in two.
“This is the back,” Hink said, nodding toward the part facing them. “Whoever packed it put it in chest down.”
Rose slid right beside Hink, so close she could feel the slight heat radiating from beneath his coat, could once again smell the tobacco on his breath as he exhaled steam into the cold railcar, and could sense the tension in him.
He had some idea of what this thing was meant for.
And then she saw it. Where the heart should be was a hole. Cut clean on every edge and fitted with a copper band along the inner walls about four inches wide.
“Something’s meant to be set in there,” Rose whispered. Then: “Oh. Oh! I think it’s the copper piece. The copper piece was built to hold something in the glass, like water or a solution. To contain, and to…generate power of some kind to run like a matic?”
“You’re saying you think this puppet runs on steam power?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why it would,” she said. “Do you?”
He held his breath for a moment. “I do. I think I do. Hold this.” He moved just enough that Rose could grab the shoulder and keep the torso propped up.
He headed back to the crate and lifted the broken copper and glass device out of it.
“Cold,” he noted as he carried it over to her. “Even through my gloves.”
“You’re not going to put it in there, are you?” Rose asked.
“Just to see if it fits. Can you prop it up a bit more?”
Rose leaned back and pulled the torso up so that it was balanced on the hips. “Why aren’t all the pieces here?”
Hink shrugged. “Lots of crates. Might be the rest is packed away. Might be this is just a test sort of thing.” He took a moment to glance between the hole in the torso and the device in his hand and then turned the device so that what was left of the shattered glass globe was facing outward.
“Like this, I’d say.” Hink placed the copper and glass device into the torso, then twisted. It fit into place with a snick.
Nothing else happened. No lights, no movement, nothing but a disembodied torso with a contraption of copper filling the hole in the chest.
“That’s disappointing,” Hink said.
“What did you think it’d do?” Rose asked.
“It should have…” He glanced at her, then shut his mouth. “I don’t know.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “I think you do.”
“All right, yes. I think I do too. There have been rumors about a new kind of matic being built. A thing that can labor in factories or in the fields. There’s also been rumors of a weapon coming out of Chicago. Could be this is part of it. Or none of it.”
“Do these rumors give it a name?”
“Homunculus.”
Hink twisted the copper piece and it fell out into his hand. “Set that back down,” he said. He slid the copper piece into the inside pocket of his coat, then helped Rose get all the body parts arranged and the lid fit back into place.
“But you think it is part of…part of something dangerous?” she asked. “The copper device? The, um, homunculus? The coffin?”
“Not a good place to talk it over. Best we button this up and get moving.”
Rose helped put the crates in order, then extinguished the lantern. By the time Hink opened the door to the passage between the train cars, Rose’s stomach was in a knot. She didn’t like the idea of Hink keeping that copper device. They didn’t know what it could do, even if it was broken.
They crossed between the railcars in silence, since talking would mean shouting over the wind and rain. By the time they finally reached second class, Rose was soaked, cold, and tired.
Hink paused by their seat and gave a couple of the young boys lounging there a hard stare. They scuttled away, back to their families down the car a bit.
Hink removed his hat, brushed his fingers through his hair to get it in place, and then stood aside so Rose could take the seat.
Rose thought about the Pullman car and Thomas waiting for her with tea and a book. It would mean getting wet again, more than once, to reach first class. And it would mean sussing out that sudden anger he had showed.
Maybe she would just sit here for a bit and dry out.
She ducked under Hink’s arm and settled onto the bench.
Hink dropped down next to her. “Thought you were headed up to luxury seating.”
“I look like a drowned rat: my skirts are dripping, my shoes are covered in straw. They’d turn me away.”
“They’d be fools,” Hink said, pulling his hat back on and down over his eyes and stretching his long legs out as far as he could. “You’re a beautiful woman, wet or dry.”
Rose felt the heat of a blush brush her cheeks. Man could charm when he wanted to.
“Are you going to sleep?” she asked.
“Might as well. Next stop’s still an hour or more off.”
“What happens at the next stop?”
He didn’t reply, so Rose poked him in the shoulder with her finger.
“Ow,” he grunted. He pushed his hat out of the way and looked over at her.
“Well?” she asked.
“Next stop is where I get off and see to some business.”
“What about me?”
“What
about you, Rose Small?” he asked with that soft drawl that made her want to kiss him. “Aren’t you going on to whatever destination that horizon of yours has painted for you? For you and your greenhorn?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. But what if I don’t?”
“You’re sweet on him. Why wouldn’t you go with him?”
“I’m not…”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“No matter what you think, Captain, I’ve just met Mr. Wicks. I’m not looking to…to fall in with someone. My horizon is my own.”
He grunted. “You are a changeable thing lately.”
“I’m not changeable,” she said. “I’m just full of surprises.”
That got a smile out of him. “Aren’t you just?” Then, quieter: “Wouldn’t want you to be any other way.” He settled back, tipping his hat down again. “Get some rest, Rose Small. Your horizon’s coming up quick.”
Rose shifted until she found a fairly comfortable position cradling her head against the wall. She didn’t mean to sleep, just to rest and think for a while.
The train swayed hard to one side and she jerked awake.
Hink was awake too, looked like he had been for some time, sitting forward and keeping an eye on the other passengers and the door at the end of the car.
“Are we there?”
“Kansas City?” he said quietly. “No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re not moving.”
That must have been what woke Rose up.
“See that man up there?” He nodded just slightly.
Rose leaned to the side so she could see around the woman seated in front of her.
At the head of the train car stood a man. He wore black from hat to boot, including the heavy duster that hung open to reveal the black of his shirt, tie, and suit beneath, with only the shine of his silver gun at his hip and the other gun in his hand to draw any light.
He wore a black kerchief over the lower half of his face.
“A bandit?” Rose asked, her heart pounding.
“Appears so.”
“Appears?” His shoes most caught her eyes. Shiny and familiar. He was one of the men from first class.
“Ladies and gents,” the bandit said in a voice that would carry to the North Pole even without the windows open. “You are being robbed. Do not get any ideas about drawing on me. My friend there at the end of the car is a crack shot.”