Of Steel and Steam

by Pauline Creeden et al.

  The golem set his load down and departed silently without ever looking at Aurelia.

  Helena lit the lamps she had brought and set them down, one by the window and one by the bed, and the room was suddenly much brighter. “The mattresses can be aired tomorrow, if the storm does not leave everything too wet. I’m afraid they’ll be musty, tonight, but there’s nothing to be done about it, now.”

  “It won’t bother me. I spend few of my nights in a bed at all.”

  Helena stopped midway through fitting a fresh sheet to the bed and looked up. “You really aren’t a lady.”

  Aurelia felt her smile turn wicked as she gestured to her trousers and boots. “Less a lady than you. An itinerant scholar. Have you ever slept under the stars, Helena?”

  The young woman’s blush was lovely, tinting her creamy cheeks. She tugged at her dark braid and glanced at the open door. “My master has a telescope. I once heard him say it cost more than a dozen horses. War horses, not draft horses. And once, after I had just come here, there was one of those winter nights so clear you could see all the way to Wrocław, if not for the mountains. I… I took it. The telescope. I took it up to the roof of the north tower and watched the moon all night. Just before morning, the trapdoor opened again, and I thought I’d be given over to the magistrate. But he sat with me and told me the names of all the spots on the moon. He says there are oceans there.”

  That sounded more like the Magnus Aurelia knew. “How old were you?”

  “Twelve.” She smiled in fond memory, her hands smoothing the sheets. “On my next name day, he took me further up the mountain and showed me Jupiter. Do you know it has its own moons?”

  She loved him. But to Aurelia’s ear, it sounded as though she was trying just a little too hard to justify her loyalty. Now, to keep pressing, or let it rest until morning? Nothing would have changed by morning.

  Helena straightened, brushing at her apron and skirts. “In my opinion, he has lost everything but his mind. You were his friend, I think. But in the twelve years I’ve been here, this is the first time I’ve seen you. Things are different.”

  “I’ve seen,” Aurelia replied, lifting a hand to gesture at the walls around her.

  “More than that. After Lady Alicja died…”

  Aurelia froze. “Wait a moment,” she interrupted. There had been no more letters after the one begging her to come, one that must have been at least twelve years old. But the Countess she had known was named Marcela. “When did he marry Alicja?”

  Helena pursed her lips. “I don’t know. She died soon after he had saved my mother and sisters. It wasn’t the same illness. I think they were married a year.”

  The numbers flew through Aurelia’s head. Helena had lived at the castle for twelve years. He had been married to another woman for a year before that, and there must have been years before that, because he had adored Marcela and would not have forgotten her quickly. “Do you remember the first Countess?”

  “She died when I was small. I saw her, but I never met her. I’ve heard it was the same illness that took Lady Alicja.” She tugged again at her braid and crossed the room hurriedly to shut the door. “There was another, Julia. They didn’t marry. Perhaps he couldn’t bear it a third time. He wanted everyone to believe she was only a guest. He called her Cousin. But there was no resemblance at all between them. And…” She broke off, her hands balling into distressed fists. “Are you really here to help?”

  “I will do everything in my power,” Aurelia vowed.

  Helena took a deep, steadying breath and continued in a rush. “I did her mending. She was having her clothes let out. And I washed her linens. When she died, she had not bled in six months. She was with child.” A flicker of pain tightened her face. “That was when the rest of the staff left.”

  They had not left out of disapproval. No one could have been shocked by a nobleman’s illegitimate child. “Something broke, didn’t it?”

  The maid swallowed hard. “He has not lost his mind. But… perhaps it was temporarily misplaced.”

  Chapter 4

  Aurelia did not sleep well, and it had nothing to do with the unearthly noises of the wind howling across the castle’s stones. Even before sunrise, when the wind shifted and the sound seemed to be coming from within the castle itself, she could not pay it much mind.

  She had failed. Magnus was her student, her responsibility, and he had called on her, and she had not come. If she had only stayed instead of fleeing, could they have saved Marcela together? It would have been a terrible risk. When they were found out, Magnus was allowed to live, provided he abandoned his studies. He was only a student, an outsider, sadly led astray by the dangerous Aurelia, called the Unnatural. They wouldn’t have been as lenient with her, even if she could ever agree to give up her science. So he lived, and she ran. They demanded he prove himself by leading them to her, and he gave up the location of one of her library outposts, a smaller one where she kept only the volumes she had already copied. He could hardly be blamed for not knowing that the perfidious Unnatural kept hundreds of such secret sites.

  Running had been the obvious choice, back then. But could she have hidden, instead? The mountain beneath the castle was honeycombed with passages; even the most diligent searcher could never be certain that every corner had been scoured. If she had just stayed…

  Or if she had been where she could easily receive a letter. She had sent several, sometimes revealing where she had been but never where she was or where she was going. Magnus would be watched, and he could not write back without revealing that he did know some of her addresses. But of course he would think nothing of taking such a risk in a true emergency. She should have anticipated that. If she had stayed at the Archive, she might have received the letter. She might have saved the messenger. She might have left in time to save Marcela. And Magnus.

  The wind changed again, and small hailstones clicked against the window along with the clatter of the raindrops. She rose and drew the curtains closed; the heavy fabric muffled the sound only a little. There would be no sun, not with the clouds so thick.

  What to do, then? Find Magnus and try to talk to him again? Perhaps he would be more forthcoming after a night’s sleep. Fatigue does no one’s temper any favors. Perhaps after some reflection, he would be willing to accept her help.

  But cautiously. She could not seem to know the things Helena had told her behind a closed door.

  She dressed quickly in clean clothes, abandoning the stark and unassuming black she wore on the road. Cream-colored trousers, a saffron waistcoat and cobalt coat brought a little light into the place. She surveyed herself in the mirror beside the wardrobe and approved of what she saw, though few others would.

  The bizarre foreigner was taller than the Europeans liked, at a couple of inches over six feet. She was darker than the Europeans liked, with skin barely lighter than the iron gall ink in her traveling desk. She dressed to attract the wrong sort of attention. But the brilliantly hued men’s clothes distracted from the fact that there was not a hair on her body, not even an eyelash beneath her delicately tattooed eyebrows. And from the fact that her pale amber eyes seemed to have no pupils.

  Helena was certainly a self-possessed young woman. Magnus’s staff had always been tolerant, before. Helena had barely even shown surprise.

  Aurelia approved of her reflection. But she draped her cloak over her shoulders, because the corridors were cold.

  The gray, overcast morning seeped in through the tiny medieval windows, revealing what the darkness of night had concealed. The carpets were unbrushed, hall furniture blanketed with dust. If those old, cold candles were lit, they’d spark a fire. Her footsteps squelched in the fine wool rug as she passed a window with a pane missing.

  Before, she would have come down to breakfast with Magnus and Marcela in the warm little room beside the library, a newer addition with a sweeping view of the valley as it was lit by the rising sun. But that door was nailed shut, and a cold, wet draft slipped i
n around it.

  The library at least was intact, but cold and dark. The antechamber where he had greeted her was likewise abandoned, though a second chair had been added to the table.

  Would he still be abed? He had never used to be a late riser, but a lot had changed, and his night had been disturbed. Aurelia had no intention of seeking him in his room, not when her mere presence in his home was so clearly unexpected and unwelcome. The best course would probably be to stay where she was put until he decided he was ready to talk to her. That could be days. It could be months. But she had time.

  The kitchen, at least, would be warm, and there would be conversation to be had. It was far too late for any servant to be asleep, no matter how unorthodox the household. And perhaps she could volunteer to do something about the dust upstairs. There was nothing healthful about that place.

  She remembered her way, though she could not remember ever having seen the corridors empty, before. The silence was unnerving. There had always been maids and footmen and guests flowing through the passages like life-blood in veins, giving the castle a pulse of its own. The place had been drained out like a slaughtered sheep.

  A sound caught her attention as she neared the kitchen, and she stopped to see a tapestry shift as the door behind it opened. That one led below, into the mountain. The first chamber had been repurposed as a wine cellar, but one of the racks moved aside to reveal another passage that led deeper, through the family crypts, past the dust of pagan bones, and into a labyrinth of darkness. Their laboratory had been down there, once.

  A form emerged from behind the tapestry, and the door clicked shut. Aurelia caught a glint of silver. The automaton, Boy.

  He paused when he saw her, his head tilted. The sparks in his eye sockets seemed dimmer by daylight, as little as there was.

  Here was another terrible mystery.

  “May I speak with you?” Aurelia asked.

  His eyebrows rose politely.

  “I realize that may be tedious. Please, only if you have time.”

  He blinked, and one corner of his mouth twitched so quickly she was not sure she had seen it, something almost like irony. But after glancing fearfully up and down the corridor, he nodded.

  “How did you come to be?” Aurelia asked. Perhaps too blunt.

  His gaze darted toward the tapestry behind him. Toward the laboratory, no doubt; if Magnus had rebuilt, that would be the place. He held a hand out toward her again.

  That would certainly be tedious. “Wait,” she said. A long sideboard stood against the wall a short distance away. She retreated to it, pulling a folded sheet of paper and a pencil from her pocket. She smoothed the paper across the polished wood and gestured to him. “Come, this will be easier.”

  He did not seem convinced. He glanced toward the tapestry again, body tense, then stared hard at the paper. Then he came to a decision. He snatched the paper and brushed past her with a fleeting look to let her know he intended her to follow. She did. He plunged down the corridor and ducked through another door, toward where the servants’ quarters had used to be, back when there were servants. It was empty, now, and frigid, but she doubted a metal man was even aware of the temperature.

  He led her into one of the rooms and shut the door. There was only one bed, which meant it had been meant for a higher-ranking servant who would not have been expected to share a room. The bed was only a wooden frame and its ropes; the mattress had been packed away to preserve it from mice. There was a bare wooden table, a bare wooden chair, and a bare wooden trunk, illuminated by a small, high window. The fireplace was empty, but a lamp set on the windowsill was full of fresh oil, and the table and chair were clear of dust…

  Aurelia stared, stricken. “Is this your room?” There was nothing. Magnus might not care much for the servant he had built, but even a slave may own a blanket. No ornament broke the monotony of the rough stone walls. Not even rushes covered the floor.

  The automaton snatched the paper from her hand and smoothed it on the table; the stick of graphite slid precariously between his metal fingers before he was able to grasp it.

  He does not know I come here, he scratched out.

  Then it wasn’t even his room. Did he have his own space at all?

  “He will not hear it from me,” Aurelia promised.

  The creature’s shoulders relaxed.

  “He does not know you can write, either, does he?” Why else the secrecy?

  No.

  “But why? He believes you are barely alive. Why would you let him treat you as he does?”

  The pencil trembled indecisively against the paper.

  “He doesn’t know you have anything to say. He doesn’t know you can think at all.”

  He would destroy me.

  “I have known this man from his youth,” Aurelia protested. “I have shaped him from his youth. He would do no such thing.”

  I have read it.

  “Read it…”

  I am his hands, since the accident. I have access to his work, and he does not guard his journals from me, since he thinks I cannot understand them. I am only a trial. A test. A failed one. He believes the ennoea he used in me was corrupted

  “He has discussed ennoea with you?” Aurelia interrupted. The substance of life, the secret for which they were nearly killed.

  The pencil scratched to a halt, then started again on a fresh line.

  I have read everything in his libraries. I understand it. He never wanted a steel son. If I had not pretended to have no mind, he would have taken me apart and taken the ennoea inside me to use in another body. If the ennoea itself is worthless, he has no reason to kill me.

  His hand stilled, and he looked up at her with eyes void of hope or trust. She was the friend of his tormentor, and he spoke to her only because, in trying to save her, he had already revealed himself.

  “He has written this?” she said slowly. “You have read this in his own words? It is not something you have assumed, a terrible extrapolation?”

  Neither his hand nor his face moved.

  “He will not learn this from me. I swear to you, he will not learn any of this from me.”

  “You came here for him,” said the horrible voice of metal on metal. It tore into Aurelia’s ears.

  “I came for the man who wrote to me,” she whispered. “And I am not sure he lives here, now.”

  They regarded one another in uneasy silence. Outside the window, the storm raged on. Rain and hail tried to bash their way into the little room.

  Slowly, Aurelia turned to go. She knew she should have said something more, should have offered another promise, some sympathy, but no words would form in her churning mind. None but one more question.

  “Boy,” she said, her hand on the door handle. “It’s not a real name, is it? But you’re a thinking thing, whether he knows that or not. What do you call yourself?”

  The pencil scratched at the paper, and she had to turn back to see what he wrote.

  Henryk.

  Chapter 5

  Aurelia took herself to the kitchen. The air grew warmer as she approached, until she had reached the door, and it was almost pleasant. She relaxed her grip on the cloak she had been clutching around herself, realizing only then how tight her fists had been.

  Iron rumbled against iron inside, and the corridor was scented with woodsmoke and spices.

  But Aurelia paused. She had liked Helena when they’d spoken the previous night. She had thought her sensible and sensitive, not the kind of person who could ignore a fellow-creature in pain like Henryk’s. He must have been concealing himself around her, as well. But how could she fail to notice?

  There was no way to ask without revealing him, and she would not do that.

  She pushed into the kitchen.

  Helena reached a long wooden peel into the old stone oven and withdrew two perfect loaves of golden-brown bread. She set them on the table, where the crust began to crackle pleasantly as it cooled. Her face was red with the heat, and she had rolled
her sleeves above her elbows. A white cloth tied around her head kept her hair out of her eyes, but her dark braid swung over her shoulder as she bent to slide another piece of wood into an expensive iron stove. Fragrant sausages sizzled in a pan on top.

  “My master rarely eats more than dinner,” she said without turning, “and never breakfast. But I thought you would want something. I was going to bring it up.”

  “Thank you.” Aurelia stepped further in, leaving her cloak by the door. The kitchen windows were gray and rain-streaked, but they kept out the cold. Lamps burned on the table and the windowsill, adding their golden cast to the ruddy glow of the oven and stove. “You’re right. I’ve been traveling a long time, and I can rarely eat more than dinner, myself. And it smells wonderful.”

  Helena shot a smile over her shoulder and slid the sausages onto a plate. There were four of them. A slab of soft, steaming bread joined them, slathered in a thick, red preserve, then two boiled eggs. She set all of it down on the table, then dragged a stool over. “If you were a different sort of guest, it wouldn’t be my place to say, but you look like you’ve been wanting good food.”

  Aurelia twitched a curious smile in return. It had been some time since anybody had attempted to mother her. She took the stool. “I’m sure I’ll be restored in no time.” She picked up the bread and took a huge bite. The fruit was cherries. “I missed Polish bread.”

  Helena wrapped a rag around her hand and picked up a kettle, pouring boiling water into a tall copper pot, and another scent began to drift through the kitchen. “Where did you come from?”

  “It isn’t on any map. I traveled from Africa, beyond the desert.” Perhaps she would answer more thoroughly, someday. She inhaled deeply. “Is that coffee?”

  “He lives on the stuff. Every March and September, I drive to Wrocław and buy it by the barrel. I’ve never been further from home than that.” She brought the pot and two cups and a muslin strainer.

  “Alone?”

  “I take care of myself well enough,” Helena replied. “But the rest of my family never left the valley. Do you travel to places other than Poland?”