Sarah ran as quickly as she could, but the rough cobblestones seemed to be attacking the heels of her boots, and her fashionable clothes constricted her legs so badly that she could barely go at any rate faster than a limping trot.
The yard outside was empty, although there were two fresh ruts dug into the dirt to the right of her. The tracks were massive, and they were heading toward the southern wing of the house.
The main entrance was already engulfed with flames, and Sarah stepped off the cobblestones and onto the lawn. The ground was sodden with melting snow, and her boots sank deep into the mud. The ruffled edges of her petticoats hung down limply as they became sodden with water.
As she followed the tracks to the side of the house she was shocked to see that a large section of the wall was simply gone. Paper, glass, wood, and tools were strewn out across the yard. There was a large wound in the grass where something had landed roughly in the snow. The parallel gashes continued on around to the back. They had torn up the ground as if a madman had decided to attack it with a plow, but images of a more likely scenario were beginning to appear in her head, and she didn't like what her imagination had to show her.
As she rounded the back of the house she let out a sigh of relief. Tom was standing a few yards away from her. He looked a mess, and all his clothes had been stripped away except for a belt hanging loosely around his waist. She had never seen his unclothed form in motion before, and was fascinated by the movement of the steel plates that covered his body as they slid over one another. It was as if she were seeing a new kind of painting by da Vinci….
Sarah turned her eyes away for a moment, feeling an involuntary flush of embarrassment when she realized she had been staring at a “nude” mechanical man.
When she looked back Tom was facing something that was still hidden from her view, and he lifted his right arm and pointed it straight out in front of him. The limb was completely mismatched to the rest of his body—a thick tube of iron with a hand that had a single long finger at the end of it.
She stepped closer, moving past the trunk of the large willow tree that had sat in the backyard for more years than she had been alive. Sarah had spent a great deal of time in its branches during her youth, and with a tinge of fear and regret she wondered if it would survive the fire. But the fate of a single tree was hardly worth considering now that she could finally see what it was that Tom was pointing toward. Nathaniel was dressed in his Turbine costume, although it was a version of it that she had never seen before.
Both of the young man's arms were outstretched. The turbines locked onto the end of each wrist faced threateningly toward Tom, although knowing what she did about his abilities, she doubted that the small fans could really be any threat to a machine that weighed as much as the mechanical man.
The breeze shifted unexpectedly, blowing acrid smoke directly into her face. It blinded her and filled her lungs, and Sarah began to cough violently. She stepped back from the increasing heat that radiated out from the house. It was growing more intense every second, and she felt an unladylike prickle of sweat breaking out underneath her hat.
The roaring of the flames was accompanied by a crash and a tinkle of glass as a section of the library roof collapsed inward, taking down another section of the wall after it. When a wave of smoke rolled out in all directions Sarah buried her face into her arm.
She heard Tom's voice first. “If I had intended to kill you, or…Mr. Hughes, why would I have let you live while you were unconscious?”
Nathaniel seemed to genuinely consider the point for a moment, then shook his head. “I don't know. You're an inhuman monster. Perhaps you had darker plans for me later.” Then he started to shout. “Anyway, I don't need to know what your motivations are! I just want you to stay here long enough for—”
When he saw her a look of shock crossed Nathaniel's face. “Sarah! Run!” She didn't move.
“You need to run! The Automaton tried to kill me and the Iron-Clad, and he burned down the mansion. Run! Run and get help!”
Sarah had almost forgotten the corollary to the “women must never move rule,” and that is that when ordered to by a man, they were then supposed to run as fast as they possibly could, which wasn't actually very fast at all.
She frowned and walked toward them, although the intensity of the heat and smoke made her skin prickle as if it were covered with a horde of tiny insects.
“Didn't you hear me, Sarah? The Automaton's gone mad!”
“Are you still drunk, or have you finally gone totally round the bend? That's the biggest load of nonsense I've heard come out of your mouth in the ten years I've known you.”
“Twelve years,” Nathaniel replied, correcting her.
Sarah stepped in between the man and the machine, her feet disappearing into a growing mud puddle. She could feel the ice-cold water seeping in through the leather of her boots. “Now both of you, it's time to put a stop to this nonsense.”
Nathaniel lowered his arms an inch and then shuffled a few steps sideways, clearly looking to find a line of sight to his opponent that didn't have a girl standing in the middle of it. “Sarah, this isn't a good time for another one of your hysterical tirades.” He pointed to the side of the nearby willow tree. “Look what he's done to Mr. Hughes.”
Sarah turned to see what Nathaniel was pointing at and let out an embarrassing shriek. Somehow she had missed it before, but William Hughes, wearing nothing more than a body stocking, was trussed up to a padded metal pole sticking straight up out of the ground. Blood stained the canvas sling holding his legs, and the whole contraption had been thrust into the earth deeply enough to allow it to stand upright next to the tree trunk. He was completely limp, his eyes closed, either unconscious or dead.
“Tom,” she said sharply, “what is going on here?”
“I was attempting to bring…Mr. Hughes to safety when…Mr. Winthorp appeared in his…costume and told me to put him down. I tried to do so in a way that would not cause him to freeze to death before we had finished our…confrontation.”
“Af-af-af,” Nathaniel spluttered. “After you almost killed me in the Aereodrome!”
“Mr.Winthorp attempted to attack me using the very same…pneumatic weapon that is now attached to my arm, and managed to knock himself…unconscious in the process.”
“He's lying to you, Sarah. Tom killed the Sleuth.” He lifted up his gauntlets and aimed them back at the Automaton.
Sarah needed a moment to fully understand the words that had just been said to her. “Wickham is dead?” she said in a tone so calm it almost surprised her.
Tom gave her a quick mechanical nod. “I found his body in the…parlor when I returned to the…mansion this morning. I was attempting to examine his…corpse for clues when…Mr. Winthorp found me.”
Despite all her attempts to avoid the clichés that came along with being the weaker sex, the sheer volume and impact of the information that had just been given to her, along with the growing heat of the fire, made her feel as if she was going to swoon. And truth be told, the thought of falling into the icy waters of the puddle seemed like it would come as a relief. Instead she summoned her Stanton wherewithal and mopped her brow with the sleeve of her overcoat.
“Are you all right, Sarah?” Nathaniel said with alarm. “I need you to move out of the way so I can take care of this menace to humanity.”
Wickham was dead? How could that even be possible? She had seen the old man hale and hearty just a few hours before.
Sarah took a breath to rally herself and grimaced as the smoke bit into her lungs. Perhaps she would have been better off taking the Frenchman's advice and waiting for the fire brigade in the street. But there was no time for that now. “Clearly you've both had a traumatic—”
Nathaniel rose up into the air in front of her, the turbines on his back spitting out a plume of white steam as he rose toward the sky. He let out an almost-comical yelp as the improperly tightened harness dragged him up by his arms and crotch.
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With Sarah no longer in his way he aimed both hands out in front of him and activated the turbines on his wrists. Streams of compressed air and steam shot out toward the empty space where Tom had been a moment before. The focused pulse of pressure smashed through the fire-weakened walls of the house so perfectly it left two holes behind.
Nathaniel, unable to exert any genuine control over his new suit, found himself at the merciless hands of the immutable laws of physics. He was flung backward, trying to regain control before he crashed into the ground.
There was a sucking sound as the fire inhaled the fresh air through the new holes. And from somewhere inside the mansion there was a heavy vibration, followed a moment later by a dull thump.
The nearby wall and window disintegrated completely as a fireball ripped through them and enveloped Tom and Sarah. She shrieked as it hit her. From somewhere far way she heard Nathaniel scream out her name.
For a moment Sarah was weightless, then she plunged into darkness. Time and all feeling seemed to slip away into a comforting feeling of floating, as if she had simply been cast out of the world—free of all feeling, lost in a moment of pure nothingness. Everything in her world was now cool, quiet, and peaceful, like a tranquil cave.
Sarah's moment of calm lasted until she tried to take a breath. The dirty water that entered into her lungs threw her out of her reverie and into a reality defined by darkness and terror.
Her hands were icy cold, trapped in a thick ooze. And as she tried to find some kind of purchase to escape from the darkness, her lungs attempted to expel the water, each shuddering convulsion only managing to drag in another drowning breath.
When she finally managed to rise upward, and air flooded back into her, she coughed violently—water expelling itself from her lungs in a series of rasping barks. Her vision was blurry, and she couldn't make out anything but a vague sea of brown and green.
After a few seconds the world began to come back to her, and her first realization was that she was down on all fours, hands sunk deep into the freezing mud. There was also a new sensation: a tingling down her entire left side, as if she had been simultaneously smacked and pulled by hundreds of hands.
As her vision cleared in her right eye, she could see the remains of her winter hat. It slowly disappeared underneath the muddy water in front of her, far too singed and misshapen to ever be fashionable again.
A bony hand grabbed her shoulders and tugged her upward. Sarah turned to look up at Tom, and she realized that she couldn't make out the words he was saying. Something about a fire…
Then the Automaton grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up as if she were nothing more than a child's toy doll. She felt her left boot slide away from her foot as she was pulled out of the mud.
Tom took her and ran away from the house, but she could still feel the heat on her neck and back as a long tongue of fire licked out toward them.
A few yards away Nathaniel sat up. He had landed on his back, and the suit had been badly dented by the impact of what had clearly been a very ungraceful landing.
Tom set her down on a snowy patch of grass, and Sarah coughed again. She encouraged it this time, hoping to clear out the remaining dregs of mud in her lungs. Her throat felt constricted and raw.
The tingling along her left side was now being replaced by genuine pain, with a fresh new area of rawness that seemed mostly centered around her left eye, and a reminder that her hip had only just begun to heal. As she reached up to touch her face Tom's left arm stopped hers. “No…Miss Stanton. You have some…glass in your…face. Let me help.”
The fingers of Tom's left hand reached up and delicately plucked at something just above her sight.
“I…I can't see out of my left eye, Tom.”
“There is no obvious damage to your eyes, but there is a great deal of…blood. I should get you to a…hospital as quickly as possible.”
From the street beyond came the distant sound of clanging bells. The fire brigade was finally on the way, although it was clearly coming too late to save any significant portion of the Darby mansion. The flames burned even more voraciously after the explosion and were clearly blazing through Darby's collection of rare books. She found it hard to care, although she was sure the world would one day miss the secrets hidden in that house. “I'll be fine, but you need to go.”
An angry voice came from up above them. “Get off of her, you monster.”
Sarah looked up and saw Nathaniel through her unblurred right eye. Even to her he didn't seem very much of a threat.
“Don't be—” Her response came out as nothing more than a croak. She swallowed and tried again. “Don't be an idiot, Nathaniel. Tom just saved my life.”
“He's tricked you, Sarah. He's been fooling all of us for a very long time, but he won't fool me anymore.”
From her position on the ground it almost appeared as if there was a jet of steam shooting from Nathaniel's head. His rush to get into this new costume had clearly been one of a string of bad ideas. The body stocking was bunched up underneath the straps of the main harness, and a long shock of his hair was dangling down from underneath the helmet. The turbines that had been attached to the wing along the back were either broken off or hanging loosely at odd angles. He looked simultaneously ridiculous and pathetic, and she couldn't help but laugh at him. “You're right. I'm a fool, Nathaniel. But it isn't because I believed Tom. It was for thinking that you would actually be able to grow up.”
Nathaniel twitched as if he'd been physically struck. “Sarah, you're still in shock.” He held out his hand, as if to comfort her.
“For the longest time I couldn't understand why you act the way you do. Every time someone says something you don't want to be true you tell them that they're sadly mistaken. But I'm not. The world isn't always black and white, Nathaniel.” She could feel blood trickling down into her collar. “And there are more flavors to people than just good and evil.” At that moment she realized she must have looked something like a harpy from hell, but she wasn't going to be afraid to use it to her advantage. “You're not a Paragon. Not really. You're just a little boy playing dress-up, thinking you can make the world be the way you want it to be by acting like the pathetic old men you've watched play at being heroes for your entire life.”
“Please Sarah, I…” He stopped and took a step back, holding up his one working gauntlet. “You need to step away from Tom now.”
“No, Nathaniel, I don't. I'm not going to do what you say. I trust Tom, and I don't trust you.” Sarah turned around and faced the Automaton. “Take me to the hospital, Tom.” The bells of the fire carts were getting closer.
“Yes…Miss Stanton.” She felt herself being lifted up. Tom's metal arms were still warm from the fire.
Nathaniel still stood ready to fire, but the look on his face made it plain that he was clearly at a loss for what to do next. “Don't do this, Sarah. You'll regret it.”
She smiled at him, then winced from the pain in her face. Whatever it was that had kept that pain from overwhelming her was starting to fade. “Somehow you've managed to let Darby and Wickham die, burn down this house, and almost kill me, Mr. Hughes, and yourself in the process. I can't imagine what you'd do to the poor woman foolish enough to love you.”
She pointed toward the wall. “Let's go, Tom.”
It took Tom a dozen strides to reach the high stone wall that surrounded the house. Moving at speed, he launched himself into the air, reaching the ramparts of the stone fence in a single bound, stepping onto the top of it as if he were walking up a flight of stairs.
Outside the park the streets weren't busy, but a number of residents had come out of their houses to watch as one of the last grand mansions in the neighborhood burned to the ground.
The onlookers reacted with shock when Tom and Sarah appeared, smashing onto the sidewalk. “It's the Automaton!” one man yelled out, and the rest cheered. The people of New York still remembered Tom as a hero.
Sarah had expected t
o feel a shuddering jolt as she landed, but somehow Tom absorbed most of the shock. As he began to run down the street the buildings turned to a blur even in her good eye. Sarah felt as if she were floating down the street. If not for the growing awareness that she was wet, cold, and blind in one eye, it would have seemed like a magical ride. Then she felt an unpleasant shock of realization. “Stop!”
Tom tried to respond, but his feet struck a patch of ice and started to skid. They spun around, careening across the road, until Tom slammed up against a brick wall. “Miss…Stanton. What's the matter? Are you hurt?”
She looked up at his metal face. “You're taking me to the Hall of Paragons?”
“You said you needed…medical help. That is the closest place to receive it.”
She shook her head violently. “No! They confined you to the house. If you go there now, looking like this…They won't let you leave, and after Nathaniel tells his version of the story they'll destroy you.”
His face turned toward hers. She had never seen him wearing his “human” eyes before. The effect of it was far more unsettling than she could imagine. There was something about them being not-quite human that made them even more monstrous than his artfully painted features ever had been. “You're hurt. Getting you some…help is my first priority.”
“But not at the cost of your life, Tom.”
“Then where should I take you?”
She pointed southward. “Our family doctor. He has his office on Thirty-fifth and Seventh.”
“That is quite a bit…farther away.”
“I won't have you disassembled on my account. Nothing is worth that. Anyway, I don't think I'm hurt that badly.” The actual sensations of pain seemed to be growing more intense, and appearing in more places. “Some scratches, mostly. I'm guessing that Nathaniel's pride was wounded more than I was.” But her sight was starting to return in the left eye. Perhaps it had been more shock than anything else. She just hoped that the frost creeping up her dress didn't mean her exposed foot would be frostbitten before they arrived.
Falling Machine, The (The Society of Steam, Book One) Page 24