Secrets (The Steamship Chronicles Book 1)

by Margaret McGaffey Fisk

  Nat hadn’t noticed the engineer’s approach despite the hard-soled boots the man wore when most others went barefoot. He jerked, startled by the outburst, but it gave him enough time to swallow his own protest and left him looking the better man of the two.

  “Now Kyle, don’t be so quick to dismiss the value of a little book learning. I’m sure you’ll find Mister Bowden of great help today. I want my coin to stretch as far as it can and our engine to function as best as possible. This young sailor has proved himself useful in many things, not the least of them how he convinced every man here to teach him what he needs to know.”

  “Every man but this one,” Garth muttered into his beard, just loud enough for Nat to hear, but not the captain, who had already strolled away to organize the cargo offload, his posture revealing him to be confident that not only were his decisions final, but the engineer would soon realize the value in Nat’s company.

  Nat doubted the last, faced as he was with the engineer’s glowers. Even if he made a difference, Garth would swallow his own tongue before admitting as much.

  “Captain might be taken in by your letters, but don’t you expect any favors from me. That engine, no matter how cranky, she’s mine to deal with and mine alone. While you were sitting in some book room with a cup of tea, I spent my childhood apprenticed to a boat much like this one, well before steam drove more than the teakettle the crew thinks I don’t know they call my engine. Why, I’ve been on a rocking deck since I could plant both feet beneath me, and no cursed ‘educated’ man’s going to teach me nothing, you hear, boy?”

  Forcing down the craving to correct his “book room” for “library,” Nat kept his mouth firmly shut. Despite his worries, a trip down to the shipyard offered the chance to see not one but many steam engines, most newer and better made than the mysterious contraption that lived in the belly of this ship.

  10

  The tumult of the morning, both embarking on the journey and seeing for herself just how sick Lily had become, overwhelmed the hum from the carriage engine. She couldn’t hear how it spoke of dreams and hopes formed from aether. In the beginning, Sam was able to do nothing more than hold onto the strap with both hands as the steam carriage lurched and rumbled its way to a steady gait, but after a while, she found her head nodding in beat with the wheels.

  Round and round the wheels went. Every flaw in the blacksmithing translated into a different note against a road that varied from cobblestone to gravel to dirt and back again as they passed through inn yards and small townships on their way. Sam fought the need for sleep as long as she could then slipped into a doze, half-believing herself awake.

  Her head slammed against the carriage wall as they jerked to a halt to the sound of cursing and many raised voices.

  She shook herself awake, blinked the sleep from her eyes, and leaned out the window, straining to see what had happened. “Did something break? Is someone hurt?”

  The coachman appeared beside her, having jumped down from his seat. “Nothing’s broken, miss, at least none that I can tell. It’s the curse of rural roads, begging your pardon. Sheep.”

  No sooner had he identified the problem than Sam’s dazed brain correctly translated the sounds she heard from voices into a chorus of high-pitched ‘baa’s, an effort assisted by the sight of more than one curly white-and-gray coat bustling around the coachman’s trousers.

  Sam leaned further to see the road filled with the creatures, milling about in a chaos that lacked only a wolf to become true pandemonium.

  From the other side of the coach came a different sound, one distinctly human.

  She raced across, the springs bouncing with every step, to discover a young man seated not far from her window, his hand rubbing a visible lump on the side of his head.

  “Oh dear me,” said the coachman, having completed his circuit to discover the same thing she had. “Are you all right, my good fellow?”

  The young man pushed to his feet with the aid of a shepherd’s staff and stood there for a moment without speaking, as though getting his bearings.

  Just when she thought him steady, a sheep came along behind and butted him with enough force to throw him forward.

  Sam stretched both arms out the window to catch him, but the coachman got in the way first.

  “Steady on there. Can’t have you any more battered than you already are. I swear I never caught sight of you before now.” What the coachman’s words lacked in sincerity, his tone made up for, the apology clear if only the young shepherd had been listening.

  “Oh no. Just look at this mess. Pa will tan my hide if I don’t get the flock back together and up to the field before the sun crests the sky. He swore I’d be mucking out pig stalls for the rest of my sorry life if this happened again.”

  At first his words made little sense, but he’d turned to stare at the mob of sheep, making a bruise on the side of his face visible even as the red died down to form the clear imprint of a hoof.

  Sam tsked under her breath, realizing exactly what the shepherd meant by his mutterings. He’d been asleep in the reeds when they’d come storming by. No wonder the sheep had panicked with no hand to guide them or keep them off the road.

  “It would serve you right if your Pa did just that,” she declared, shocking both men. “Sleeping on the job. Why any number of accidents could have befallen your charges.”

  He flushed bright red until the bruise vanished under the onslaught and his freckles stood out prominently, revealing him much younger than she’d first thought and younger even than she was.

  She shook her head, enjoying the sense of being older when she’d always been the one in trouble before, but she could see nothing would suffice except to help the boy regain his flock.

  “We can’t be on our way until you get your sheep off the road.” Sam stripped her cloak, unhooked the door, and swung down without waiting for the coachman to complete his hasty effort to lower the step. Her freshly polished boots lost some of their shine as a spatter of mud doused them, churned up by the sheep after the morning saw a small rain shower.

  She brushed at the edge of her skirt, only succeeding in smearing the mud further. “Well, what are you two gawking at,” she said, giving up the effort to gather the cloth in her fists. “Let’s get the flock moved over.”

  Though Sam had watched the farmhands on Henry’s estate, she’d never had much to do with sheep directly. They proved the most rascally of beasts.

  She spread her skirt and charged them in an effort to drive them off the road, but they scattered every which way, as many startled from the sides back onto the road as she chased off.

  After her third try, Sam glanced over to see how the other two were doing, only to find them doubled with laughter.

  Sam dropped the edges of her skirt and planted both fists firmly on her hips. Channeling her best imitation of Lily, she scolded them with, “It’s all very well to be laughing, but I don’t see you succeeding any better at this. And isn’t it your hide at risk?” She directed the last at the shepherd, a reminder that produced amazing effects as he gathered himself to the task of collecting his charges.

  The coachman joined them, a contrite look cast in her direction and heightened color along his cheekbones.

  With the three of them working together, they managed to move every last member of the flock off the road and a safe distance away.

  The shepherd thanked them both graciously and promised to keep the sheep away as they started back on their journey.

  Sam let the coachman both lower the step and boost her in, unaware until that moment how much the exertion had taken out of her.

  “Catch hold,” the coachman said only a short time later, and then the carriage started forward once again with the awkward lurching that had signified their first departure.

  TRYING TO COUNTER THE JERK and roll of the carriage as it gathered speed kept Sam distracted for a good long while. However, once they gained the velocity where their conveyance smoothed its gait, sh
e heard muttered curses again.

  The lack of imminent danger made Sam aware of her untidy state, the mud having risen well past the hemline, her hair fallen from its plait, and a distinct musk rising from her skin. She doubted, though, that the coachman cared much about the impression she might make upon their arrival, so his cursing couldn’t be for that.

  She tapped on the roof of the carriage to catch his attention then leaned out the window to call up, “Is there another problem?”

  “It’s not one you can solve with a few flaps of your skirt, miss. I’m doing my best.”

  She began a protest, both of his dismissal and the dodging of her question, when the realization hit her. Sam sank back onto the seat, staring at the dirt under her nails and wool-reddened skin for inspiration.

  None came.

  They’d been on a tight schedule when they’d started.

  With the time wasted getting the sheep off the road, not to mention a second period of building up speed from a dead standstill, they chanced her missing the ship Henry had arranged to take her to the Continent.

  Sam stared and stared, but no answer came to her.

  If she missed the ship, what then? She couldn’t very well go back to Henry’s estate, not now. It had taken all her strength to leave the first time, especially with Lily doing so poorly. She wouldn’t last another farewell.

  Daunted by the task in front of her, Sam pulled out the coin purse Henry had given her and hefted its weight. He’d said it would buy a meal. She had no idea how much a room would cost, or even how to go about getting one.

  Her other gift, the letter to Henry’s man, came out next.

  Sam laid them on the bench beside her, contemplating all she had left to hang her hopes on.

  If Henry’s man continued to wait even when the ship had sailed, he might be able to help her navigate the streets of Dover, which might be smaller than London, but Sam had never been on her own. He might help her find a room and might even be able to arrange a different ship.

  The list held more might’s than surety, and the biggest doubt of all lingered. How could she keep her true nature hidden long enough for those events to occur when she’d be surrounded by the latest in all things mechanical, most crying out as much as the engine still did?

  As though to mock her, the landscape beyond the curtain changed into what could only signal the farming outskirts of the port town. So close, but the coachman would have told her if they had made up the lost time. Instead, he’d fallen into glum silence, his efforts to show off the amazing powers of the steam carriage crushed by a dozen or more sheep.

  Her thoughts had run full circle, leaving her with nowhere to go. She tucked the purse into her skirt pocket as much to have something to do as a need to secure it. A shiver brought on less by the cold than by her prospects took over, but she lacked the energy to pull on the cloak.

  Into that blank moment came a desire, a craving from outside of herself that she’d been doing her best to ignore.

  The aether-enhanced engine cried out that it could do so much better, could go so much faster, if she’d only shape the aether and the underlying structure along with it.

  Hours before, with the prospect of a hot meal as she embarked on a new, brighter future, Sam had been able to resist the appeals from the engine. She’d held herself back in favor of the chance never to hold back again. But with the coachman’s defeat, all those hopes and chances had vanished.

  The bout settled over her, a tingling in her fingertips that spread higher and wider until it covered her torso and scalp, and her ears rang with the siren song of transformation waiting to occur.

  She did not consciously let it happen, but at the same time she didn’t resist very hard either. The risk should have been too great, especially now that they’d reached a more populated area, but the engine’s aether-driven promises offered the hope nothing else could.

  Her hand pressed against the panel, its latches posing no barrier when faced with her determination. The covering sprang open for her just as it had the proud coachman, releasing a gust of wasted steam. The bright, flashing metal gears spun around as their teeth bit and pushed the carriage wheels down the road.

  She could see the answers laid out before her with the glimmer of aether.

  Little changes, just tiny adjustments, straightening here, redirecting there. Tangling with the gears while they were turning took all her concentration. Her fingers grew slick with castoff grease, and some of her blood almost joined the lubricant when the teeth came too close and tried to slice into her palm.

  Sam did not pull away. She did not stop. She could not.

  The transformation held her captive, trapped as securely as she’d locked up the mechanisms she’d created.

  A shiver of delight ran down her spine when she realized this mechanism would not be trapped. This one would roam free, seeking her, protecting her if she failed to make the ship. No one would be able to catch her, to seal her away in an asylum where they stashed Naturals for the protection of the wealthy and their toys. No, with this carriage, she’d run ahead of all of them, laughing at their efforts.

  The blood pounded through her veins. Her sight grew distinct until she could detect the slightest anomaly, the slightest place where the gears had been thrown off balance or sealed in at an angle no normal craftsman could detect.

  One flaw after another, she corrected, she changed, she enhanced, she transformed. This carriage wanted to fly with the winds, and the aether now running between her and the contraption agreed to make it happen. She had only to complete the final adjustment and it would be done.

  “There.”

  Exhausted, Sam slumped back onto the seat, her ears serenaded with the flawless hum of a perfectly tuned engine gathering speed.

  11

  The trip to the shipyard offered little of the enjoyment Nat had hoped to find on the docks. He followed Mister Garth’s path because the stiff-legged engineer would not let him walk abreast, staying close because he did not know the way.

  All that changed, though, when they passed through the gate that separated those who rode the decks from those who built them.

  Instead of grumbling at having to keep to a subservient place as he had been, now Nat struggled to keep up as distractions abounded. He lingered to watch a hull being built, its bare ribs standing up like the remains of a beached whale. A master carpenter turning planks into the built-in furniture Nat had become so familiar with caught his gaze next. The many other arts being performed all around him proved equally fascinating.

  “Wet behind the ears,” grumbled Garth.

  Nat felt the heat of a flush rise at the truth of the engineer’s statement. Still, he’d grown used to Mister Garth’s grumbles, and who knew when he’d get the chance to come within the gates again.

  “I’ve got work to do here, boy, and the captain said not to let you out of my sight.”

  Nat hadn’t realized how far the engineer had gone until Garth shouted across the yard to where Nat watched a man using a simple spring-turning machine to wind ropes much faster than even the sailors on his ship could manage.

  Though he’d promised himself not to let Garth undermine his enjoyment, he had a hard time letting that comment pass.

  “True enough. The captain thought my eye would make sure you returned with the right pieces,” he called back, smarting from the public humiliation.

  Nat knew he should have clamped his lips shut instead, but the words had already burst out and crossed the open space between them. Where Garth’s shout had drawn little attention, carry boys common enough in the yard, Nat’s response spoke of the engineer’s standing in the eyes of the captain, something every man and boy within hearing would find compelling.

  Garth stormed across the space and grabbed Nat by the ear, dragging him toward the back section where metal gleamed before Nat’s tear-filled eyes. He knew enough to keep silent this time, though. He’d crossed a line and would take his punishment without protest.
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  If not, he wouldn’t put it past Garth to beat him to a pulp right then and there from the look in the man’s face and the way a blood vessel on his high forehead pounded. Without any hair to cover his scalp beyond short tufts, the engineer’s state was visible to any who bothered to look. And so many did after Nat’s outburst that the least reaction would seem to set the engineer into a rage.

  Whether tired of dragging Nat, angry that his efforts produced no result, or aware his behavior drew as much attention as Nat’s ill-thought-out call, Garth dropped his hold just before they crossed into the engine area.

  Nat swallowed a gasp of relief and straightened to his full height, an inch or more above the engineer’s short, broad body. His carefully indrawn breath brought with it scents and even tastes much different from the fresh sawdust and tar sealants of the front shipyard.

  Here, the tang of metal filled the air, along with grease so thick his skin felt slimed with it.

  Judging rightly that Garth would not appreciate his close proximity, Nat slowed down to peer at a half-assembled engine. He guessed what would have to happen next from engineering diagrams he’d found in the captain’s papers, but even so he couldn’t visualize the piece or pieces capable of turning this collection of pneumatic gears into something powerful enough to drive a ship across storm-tossed waters.

  “Sure is something to look at, isn’t it, boy?” The craftsman must have approached while Nat was absorbed in the engine.

  “Absolutely. Amazing what this will be capable of once it’s all in one piece.”

  The man gave him an appraising look. “That the way of it then? You one of them autocratic boys turned out to do real work?”

  Nat stepped back, aware his tones had given him away. “Something like that,” he muttered.

  With a nod toward the other section, the craftsman said, “I heard what happened out there, though I don’t suppose any of us could very well miss it. Arrogance don’t sit well with us.”