On reaching the palace, Eleanor ignored the throne room, drawing them all up to their study. It was here they learned of the history of the City of Swans, mathematics, geography, and navigation. Here and now, Eleanor would be the teacher, her brothers dutiful students.
Eric, the eldest at nearly thirty, sat himself on the window and peered down into the swirling clouds below. The palace ship was in the center of the city, but gaps between the ships meant that the reality of their existence could still be seen. “That woman—” he began, but his sister held up her hand.
Eleanor pinned up the long curls of dark hair into a far more utilitarian bun than the court fashion she’d worn to the wedding. Then she darted to her desk and withdrew the dragonflies she had spent the last week working on. This had been done out of the sight of Madame Escrew, naturally. While the brothers watched, she carefully wound up the five gleaming machines with the two tiny keys in their abdomens before releasing them. With a flicker of bright green, they leaped into the air and began to circle the room in a cloud.
They darted about from ceiling to floor. They had only been airborne for mere moments when one quickly grabbed something hidden on top of the bookshelf. The brothers all winced as a high-pitched whine echoed through the library, about as enjoyable as fingernails scratched down a blackboard.
The little gleaming predator pulled loose a long whiplike creature not much longer than itself. As the brothers watched wide-eyed, the dragonfly ripped it apart with its gleaming articulated legs. Eleanor smiled, but she waited until her creations had circled the rest of the library.
“We should be safe to speak freely now,” she said, arranging her ridiculous dress as she sat on a stool.
“Eleanor,” Alan whispered, his eyes following the continuing path of the machines as they buzzed around the room, “they are incredible. I didn’t know you could build such marvelous things.”
Their sister shrugged. “Neither did I, truth be known, brother. Something about that woman’s presence in the palace just brings out the inventiveness in me. I remember seeing a plan of them in one of those books that old tinker showed us last summer.”
“Finally that memory of yours is some use.” Roger, who had been her childhood competitor, flicked a balled-up piece of paper on the desk at her.
“Madame Escrew might take you as her apprentice,” Maximilian laughed.
Eleanor felt something like a hard sob form in her belly. Once they had been genuinely merrier. This very room had rung with laughter and learning.
“I blame myself,” she whispered, even as she held out her hand for one of the dragonflies to return to her. “After Mother’s death I should have taken better care of Father. I should have noticed he was so lonely. Madame Escrew would never have—”
“It’s not your fault, Ellie.” Alan grasped her hand. “We were all distraught when it happened. None of us ever thought—”
“No, we did not!” she snapped, yanking her arm free and turning away before they could see her tears. “That is what she counted on. She saw an opportunity and she took it. Now we must deal with the consequences.” Out the window, their flag of a rampant swan fluttered in the always-constant breeze, seeming to challenge her.
“What can we do?” Alan went relentlessly on. “Father is utterly bewitched by her.”
“We must find a way,” she said with determination. “Not just for ourselves, but for the city itself. We must be like her, and find an opportunity.”
The siblings looked on her, the silence as thick as the tension of the day. One by one, they retired to their rooms, choosing to miss out on the revels of the evening and avoid the new queen.
The next morning, Eleanor forwent any assistance by her maid and dressed herself. The princess went down to breakfast on the very edge of being late. The less time she had to spend in her new stepmother’s presence, the better. Apparently her brothers had either been down early or abandoned any thought of food whatsoever, because she was alone with her father and his queen.
The three of them sat at the long table while being served by masked servants. They served grilled flying fish, starling eggs, and expensive grilled bacon to the silent royals.
It was the new queen who broke the stillness, her voice like silk. “You are looking very pale, Eleanor. Are you well?”
“Not at all, thank you,” the princess replied, concentrating on the food before her. She stabbed an egg with a certain misplaced anger.
“It is just that this is the season for insects, and I would hate to think you have been bitten by something…nasty.” Madame Escrew’s hard brown eyes locked with Eleanor’s just-as-determined blue ones. The princess did not need to be told; the new queen had noticed that her listening device in the library had been removed.
“What could be nasty in our palace?” Eleanor asked mildly. “All is so wonderful here. If any such vermin were to infest our hallowed halls, Your Majesty, I would take action. Have no fear.”
Eleanor’s eyes flicked over to King Ivan, who remained oblivious of their verbal sparring. He was nothing like the man he had been before his real queen’s death.
Madame Escrew tilted her head and smiled a smile like an iron barb. “Indeed, the palace is a wonderful place to grow up, but still…” She paused and placed her hand over the king’s. “Even a princess should have a use. Don’t you think, my love? It does not set a good example for the citizens to have your daughter seen idle around the palace.” Faine leaned over and placed a kiss on the king’s cheek. “Too long have your children frittered away their time without a mother’s touch.”
Eleanor’s cheeks flamed red at the suggestion that she was idle and that Madame was anything like a mother. “Reading is not being idle. It is feeding the mind.”
King Ivan jerked upright as if he’d been struck, and stared at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time; and Eleanor flinched. She had never seen her father look at her in that way.
“Yes,” he rasped, “everything and everyone must have a purpose in the City of Swans.”
Eleanor swallowed hard, feeling tears spring in the corner of her eyes.
She watched her stepmother rise, fighting the urge to pull free of her touch when she snatched up one of her hands, flipping it over as if it were a dead frog. “Look at that, as soft as cheese! By your age, my dear, my hands were scarred and toughened by tightening screws and forging parts for my father’s machines.”
The king nodded mechanically. “It would be good for Eleanor to see the other side of privilege.”
“Yes, not all of your subjects can write with diamond pencils on golden slates,” Faine said, her eyes still fixed on Eleanor as she returned to the king’s side.
Her father grinned like an idiot, and pushed back from the table to stare at Faine. “What do you suggest, then, my darling? How can we make Eleanor aware how truly blessed she is?”
Madame scraped up the last of her bacon and starling eggs, dispatching it with neat efficiency. “My engineer, Stella, would make an excellent teacher for the princess. Some call her a witch, and it is true she has many secrets that should not die with her. She is, after all, old. Quite frail.”
Eleanor’s calm shattered as she leaped to her feet, knocking her chair over in the process. “Father!” she protested. “I refuse to be judged by this woman. Surely you can’t mean to send me away? What have I ever done to deserve being used so ill?”
Thunder clouds gathered in her father’s gaze, a darkness that she had never seen there before. Plenty of grief she’d seen in his eyes, but always lightened by his love for his children. He was a stranger to her in that moment.
“Done?” he growled. “Done, my daughter? You have done nothing! That is precisely the point. You will do as your mother suggests, and be grateful for the chance to improve yourself.”
She knew a pointless fight when she saw one before her. “At least let me say good-bye to my brothers,” she whispered, dropping her head.
“They are busy with their
own work,” the king muttered as he slurped down some tea.
Eleanor clenched her jaw shut hard. As she had grown older, her father had become a benevolent, if distant, figure. She had always been able to dream that he loved her in some kind of way. All through the brief courtship of Madame Escrew and the king, Eleanor had felt even that tenuous connection disappearing. In this particular moment, hard and brutal as it was, she realized that it was completely gone.
Now there only remained to think of salvaging the remains of her family and the rest of the city.
So she smiled in what she hoped was the manner of an obedient child and tilted her head. “Then I look forward to being of some use to you, Father. And will attend Miss Stella and learn what I can.”
A bitter bile welled in her throat. Anyone remotely connected with Madame Escrew was not someone she wanted to meet.
Eleanor barely had a chance to wipe her mouth on the linen napkin before Madame was leading her to the door. A footman was waiting under the arch of the Great Hall, a small traveling case and an abashed expression across his face.
“Please do give sweet Stella my regards,” Madame said, her voice full of false delight. The feeling of her hand pressed into the small of the princess’s back was like a hovering knife. It made Eleanor think of her own desires the previous day and wish again for a blade of her own.
No, Eleanor decided, I will have to wait a little while. Find out her secrets and a way behind all her defenses.
Eleanor looked to her father one last time, but saw there was nothing to be had there. His eyes were elsewhere. He did not even bother to wave her off.
As she was escorted down the stairs, out the door of the palace, and toward the city dock, Eleanor’s throat tightened. Maybe she hadn’t expected to be allowed to see her brothers, but she had hoped one might come down the stairs by chance. With eleven of them, there was a decent statistical possibility….
Nothing.
She shot a glance back at the gleaming spires of the palace, and a fear grew in her. Had Madame done something to them? Were they already dead?
No, the princess reminded herself, Madame might be able to bend Father’s will on me, but his sons—my brothers—are another matter.
The ferry that waited for her was manned by a gray-faced old man, with one eye replaced by a battered onyx eye. She did not know him by sight but saw immediately by his expression that he would be no friend to her. Madame’s minions had been infiltrating all levels of the kingdom for quite some time now.
Silently, Eleanor took up a place at the prow of the airship, setting her eyes to the horizon of gleaming silver clouds. The ferry pulled away from the City of Swans, and she swallowed hard on the realization that this was the first time she’d been away from the place of her birth. She’d previously dreamed of adventure beyond the safety of her father’s kingdom; it was cruel irony that she was achieving her dreams at the hands of her enemy.
The ferry was old but not as slow as she wished it was. With the engines chugging and guided by the morose captain, they pulled quickly away from the city and found a fair current. It was as if Nature herself was against the princess. By the evening Eleanor no longer had the comfort of ignorance in her destination.
They were turning toward the distant crags where Madame held sway, and with every mile Eleanor could feel her stomach clench in an unhappy knot. The surface was a place no city dweller wanted to think of: contaminated, dangerous, a place your body was consigned to when you died, and a place no sensible citizen would ever travel to. However, it did provide some resources that were necessary to their lives.
The princess walked reluctantly to the prow of the ferry and watched the destination resolve itself before her. Ahead, the gray tips of the mountains were now becoming visible, rising out of the clouds like thick knuckles. As they drew even nearer, she could make out square buildings dotted over their surface, accompanied by chimney stacks billowing smoke out into the winds.
It was not a scene to inspire confidence. By the time the ferry pulled next to the dock and tied up, Eleanor’s nostrils were filled with the choking sulfurous odor Madame’s industry created. The bleak gray rock harbored no life, and the buildings had few windows to greet her. It was as far removed from the City of Swans as it was possible to get. It felt as though she had traveled for days to get here, and she was cut off from everything—including the love of her brothers.
It would be exactly what Madame Escrew had planned from the beginning. At that thought Eleanor straightened her back. She had to remember her royal heritage. She had to remember every detail of her trials so she could draw on them for strength in the battle yet to come. That memory of hers would be useful once more.
A tall, burly man, dressed in dusty gray clothing and covered by a leather apron, stood waiting for her. His eyes were as welcoming as the stone beneath their feet. The effect was only enhanced by the fact that he wore a filtering mask that completely covered the lower half of his face. He could have been grinning or leering beneath it, and she would never know. “Come,” he muttered, jerking his head and turning away.
Eleanor contemplated what might happen should she refuse his curt command but decided this was a fight not quite worth fighting. Instead, she followed in his wake, past rumbling factories and ranks of dead-eyed men filing in and out of them. As she went she held her sleeve over her mouth and tried not to choke.
Finally they reached a building with a large door with a mechanical wheel attached to it that stood nearly as tall as Eleanor herself. Her nameless guide spun the wheel with some little effort and pulled the door open. The shriek it gave would have made the dead flinch. Without waiting to be asked, Eleanor stepped inside.
It was as she expected. Her guide slammed the door and spun the wheel behind her back. With a concentration of will, the princess did not flinch, but instead carefully examined her surroundings. Since the interior of the building was illuminated only by half a dozen dim lanterns attached to the walls, it was made that much harder.
However, she was able to make out ten long benches laid out at the far end of the cavernous space, a forge with all the tools necessary for casting metals. She and her brother Brian had shared an interest in metalwork, and, curious despite the situation, Eleanor stepped farther into the workroom. She ran her fingers lightly over the items she could now make out laid out on the benches.
Automatons in various shapes and forms were easy to identify. They covered half the workspace, while the other benches had cogs, gears, pistons, and pieces of boilers laid out in patterns she could not comprehend. She paused to examine them, her brow furrowed.
Automatons were becoming popular in the City of Swans, but they were still restricted to simple tasks: pouring tea, answering doorbells, and perhaps walking the dog. As her fingers traced over the inner workings, she began to perceive that whoever the maker of this was, they had managed to miniaturize so many of the parts that these figures when finished could take on far more varied activities.
“Interesting way of saying hello you have—rummaging around in my work!” The voice that came out of the shadows was so sharp and unexpected that Eleanor dropped with a clatter the flywheel she’d been examining. The figure that emerged from the rear of the workspace was as incredible as the works in progress on the benches.
Eleanor quite forgot her manners and stared. The woman was small and old, her gray hair tangled and matted as if she had little care for it. It was, however, only on one half of her head. The other portion was a construction of naked gears and cogs that approximated the remaining part of her skull. Her right eye was a bleary cataract-covered blue mortal eye, while the other was a gleaming gem that must have been the largest diamond Eleanor had ever seen. The strangeness was not, however, limited to her head, for whatever traumatic event had stolen this woman’s face had also taken much of her body, too. The whole right side of her was a collection of gleaming brass. An articulated hand was wrapped around a wrench, and when the woman moved forward
it was with a pronounced limp. Beneath the leather metalworker’s apron, Eleanor knew there would be more wonders to behold. This, then, was the witch Madame had spoken of.
The princess swallowed hard and waved her arm to take in the work laid out. “I couldn’t help myself, this is so fascinating. I do a little tinkering myself, but this…”
The woman’s snort was an odd concoction of human and mechanical sounds, the wheezing of lungs along with the sound of air striking metal.
Eleanor cleared her throat and dared to venture, “Stella?”
Eyes, both flesh and jeweled, focused on her. “Indeed. I am guessing She sent you.”
Eleanor had no way of knowing how deep were the clouds she was stepping out into, so the princess kept her tone moderate. “Yes, the new queen. She told me you were a friend of hers….”
Stella lurched forward, throwing her weight unexpectedly toward the princess. Eleanor managed not to yell in shock, or to move—but it wouldn’t have made any difference. A long chain, gleaming in the faint light, pulled the woman up short. It was attached to the good human leg she still had.
“Made it myself,” she said with a bleak grin. “She challenged me to make a device even I could not break. And I—in my arrogance did.” She rattled it once more. “Forged the steel with my own blood. Hard magic to break, that. I suppose I could saw my damn leg off, but…” She paused and shook her head. “I haven’t quite reached that point. Haven’t got much humanity left as it is.”
The princess nodded, not quite knowing how to reply to that. In the end, she said nothing. It must have been the right thing to do, as Stella, once the greatest tinker to be found in any city, took Eleanor Princess of the Swans into her apprenticeship.
Unlike the older woman, she was not chained, but the door was locked securely, and only the faceless guard came to deliver food twice a day. They were a pair of prisoners.
However, soon enough Eleanor forgot all about that. In her father’s palace she had toyed with mechanics and engineering, but under Stella’s tutelage she was given total focus. Her new teacher would tolerate no idle moments, not even thinking of anything else. Nor was she shy about punishment. She would leave tools’ hot or sharp edges bared so that the princess would burn or cut herself.
Clockwork Fairy Tales - A Collection Of Steampunk Fables Page 31