Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “And his injuries have not caused you to pause?”

  “Oh, dear, do you really think so little of me? No, quite the contrary—his bumps have endeared him to me even more.”

  “It was an unkind question, forgive me,” Sabrina said. “Ivan’s medical clockworkings are only temporary, but he is self-conscious about them. I think he fears that this new shyness has made him appear to you to be an uncaring lout, which is the opposite of his true feelings.”

  “Does he not know that I understand? I wish everyone would think more highly of me.”

  Sabrina watched Holly’s reflection as she pulled tightly on the drawstrings of her corset. The tugging moved higher, above her stomach. Sabrina coughed under the squeeze, the tops of her breasts plumping upward with each cinch. She eyed the freckles under the hollow of her throat, leading down into her cleavage in a pitter-patter pattern; the ones on her nose could be considered cute, but she disliked the freckles there.

  “Though, of course, you barely know him,” Sabrina said.

  “That is true, but one can have a sense about a man in the beginning—one must, must one not? Or why would we ever even deign to go on with the entire procedure?”

  Sabrina nodded. She did not doubt Holly’s true feelings, but when it came to Ivan, she felt protective. “He is a bit of an odd bird, though,” Sabrina said.

  “Crazy Ivan, yes, but he is darling. And I have a soft spot for inventors—they fascinate me. And he is, or was, exceptionally persistent. I find persistence to be an underrated quality in a man.”

  “You do make something of an odd pairing, though.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I mean to say, he is of the odd, antisocial engineering sort, and you are a much sought-after town beauty. It is obviously an offbeat pairing.”

  “Oh…beauty and the beast, is it?” Holly laughed when she said the words, but Sabrina caught the tone of indignity playing under it. “And a mangled beast at that? Oh, who could love such an ugly brute, even if he was a daring sky dog?”

  Sabrina gulped—a difficult task inside the corset—and shook her head. “No, I simply mean that you are an odd pairing. But such matches often work out for the best, do they not?”

  “I do not require a swashbuckler, dear friend, nor even a man lacking scars,” Holly said, smiling. “And I do admire your protectiveness concerning your brother. But he has a good heart. I am enamored most by a good heart. The other details are unexplainable, except by love. I fully intend to adore him, if he lets me.”

  With the last word, Holly drew the top drawstrings of Sabrina’s corset with a powerful yank, making Sabrina grunt as her rib cage threatened to crack.

  “Yes,” Sabrina replied, her voice a tight squeak.

  They both laughed.

  YOUNG MEN, SQUARE-RIGGED

  “YES, IVAN, YES—YOU ARE GOING to talk to her,” Buckle said to Ivan, mildly annoyed, as Burgess Sibley, leaning in under Buckle’s chin, attempted for the third time to properly tie his white silk cravat.

  “Please stop moving around, Mister Buckle,” Sibley moaned.

  “I’m not moving, Sibley,” Buckle answered, realizing that he had turned his neck as he was speaking.

  Ivan was at the other end of Buckle’s bedchamber, pacing back and forth in front of an amused Ryder, who was leaning against the wall, wearing his finest traveling clothes, his steamer trunk at the door.

  “You cannot escape Holly Churchill, you know, brother,” Ryder chuckled.

  Flustered, Ivan stopped and repeatedly tried to light a pipe. He was mostly dressed, except for his waistcoat and frock. His hair, his unruly hair, stuck out in spikes from beneath his old, singed ushanka, which he refused to take off. His metal arm and goggle gleamed in the last of the afternoon light coming through the window, and when he turned, they reflected the amber glow of the wall lantern. Ivan had talked profusely for the last few days, unusual for him, about his latest experiment, a chemical analysis of women’s tears—though his progress had been hampered by his inability to get women to cry for him. Buckle knew that Ivan was worried, not about his injuries but about what Holly Churchill might think once she saw him, maimed and patched up with clockwork devices. Ivan had avoided Holly for the near month since their return to the stronghold, even refusing her requests to visit him in the hospital. And once Lee released him, he had dashed into the depths of the Pneumatic Zeppelin in her repair dock, and had barely poked his ghastly head out since then.

  But tonight Ivan was required to attend the ball, and Holly was going to see him, and he had screwed it all up anyway. He was quite nervous about it.

  “I cannot engage with her,” Ivan muttered, still poking a lit match unsuccessfully in his pipe bowl. “I really cannot.”

  “Why not?” Buckle grumbled, giving Ivan a sharp look as his cravat collapsed in Sibley’s hands. Sibley sighed and started over. Buckle shrugged his shoulders a hair—his clothes fit nicely, the trousers tailored to a proper length over his leather shoes, but the starched shirt chafed under the waistcoat. His red cummerbund flashed its color about his slender waist, the gold chain of his pocket watch looped just so, and his black dress frock hung on a peg at his shoulder, a dark crimson cloudflower tucked into the buttonhole.

  “Obviously, she is furious with me,” Ivan said, jamming the unlit pipe into his shirt pocket and extinguishing the match with a sharp wave of his arm.

  “That is not what I have heard,” Ryder said.

  “It is the truth. It is,” Ivan muttered. “And let us just leave it at that.”

  Buckle laughed. “Holly is no wallflower, lad—she is going to march across that dance floor and claim you as her prize, despite your boorishness.”

  Ryder laughed. Ivan snorted. Sibley quickly finished Buckle’s cravat knot, patting it once with both hands, and backed up to give it a satisfied glance. “Well done, sir,” Sibley said.

  “Very good. Thank you, Sibley,” Buckle replied, turning to Ivan. “Look here—I am all gussied up. And now we need to get you ready.”

  Ivan held up his hands. “What? Polish up my head? It’s no use, brother.”

  Sibley flung his finger at Ivan’s breast pocket, where the pipe tobacco had stained a brown splotch through the white linen. “What is that, sir?” Sibley groaned.

  “Do not worry, Sibley, it shall be obscured,” Buckle said, picking up Ivan’s black waistcoat and holding it open. “Turn around, Ivan. Give me your left arm first.”

  “I said it is pointless,” Ivan grumped.

  “Stop being such a wart!” Ryder said, jumping forward and easing Ivan around. Ivan sighed dutifully as Buckle, Ryder, and Sibley worked the armhole over the bulk of the clockwork machinery and into position on his shoulder.

  “There—not so terrible. Other arm, if you please,” Buckle said.

  “I am sorry to miss the party,” Ryder lamented as he tugged at the cloth. “It is a bit of a lemon if you ask me, with all the hungry young ladies about and me unattached, as I am.”

  “More for the rest of us, then,” Buckle said.

  Ivan, grunting, was able to ram his good arm through the right waistcoat armhole. Buckle yanked the front waistcoat flaps toward each other, but they would not come close enough together to be buttoned.

  “Oh, well,” Buckle said, leaving the waistcoat unbuttoned and patting it smooth on Ivan’s chest. “You are going to look jaunty.”

  “As long as it hides the stain, sir,” Sibley muttered.

  “Does it really matter so much, Sibley?” Ryder asked, returning to his rum. “He will have four more stains on him in the first fifteen minutes—you know he will.”

  Ivan shook his head, despair shimmering in his good eye. “It is no matter. I am a fine mess as it is. The only reason I am attending at all is because Father has ordered me to.”

  “Stop fobbing on about it, Gorky!” Ryder blurted. “Do you forget that we have heard you moon on and on about the girl, over and over? All of your bruises are going to heal. I demand
that you ask her to dance tonight and refrain from breaking her heart any further. She is beautiful. For the Oracle’s sake, boy, wake up.” Ryder handed Ivan a glass of rum. “Right, Sibley?”

  There was an easy, rum-stilled pause as Sibley brushed the shoulders of Buckle’s jacket. Buckle could hear the gentle whir of Ivan’s machinery; it should have been soothing to him, but it wasn’t. Inside, he was anxious. Lieutenant Windermere had yet to arrive, and he was bringing the latest status report from the Pneumatic Zeppelin with him. Buckle eyed Sibley and Ryder, and his unease was suddenly injected with a shot of anger. If they knew—if they knew of the woman whom their father was keeping. “Doctor Lee informed me that Father was stricken last night,” he said.

  Ryder’s eyes widened a bit. “Yes. It was a difficult episode. But he has recovered as he always does. Must we raise such an unpleasant topic in the midst of these pleasant proceedings?”

  “What episode?” Ivan asked.

  “Father experienced a series of convulsions late last night,” Ryder said. “We had to rouse Doctor Lee to look in on him.”

  “He looks fine now,” Ivan muttered, sipping his rum.

  “Yes, he does,” Ryder replied. His eyes stayed on Buckle, warning him not to pursue the matter any further.

  Buckle pursued the matter.

  “Who was with him?” Buckle asked. Ryder did not flinch, but Sibley, the weaker of the two, glanced furtively at Ryder.

  “Who was with him?” Ryder repeated, a barely perceptible surliness in his tone. Buckle knew he was stalling, figuring out his answer. “We were all with him.” Sibley’s jaw quivered.

  “A woman was in his bedchamber with him last night,” Buckle pressed. “Was there not?”

  Ryder’s eyes flashed. “Yes.”

  “What?” Ivan gasped, smiling. “The old fox is back in the saddle? Good for him.”

  “Who is this woman?” Buckle asked. He felt like punching Ivan.

  “That is Father’s private affair,” Ryder replied.

  “You will not tell me?” Buckle asked. His response was a silent glare from Ryder. Buckle was suddenly certain that the woman in question was the governess, Catherine Flick, a young-looking woman of forty-six, with dirty-blond hair pinned back under a white kerchief and the ampleness of bosom expected of her trade. She was pretty, in a domestic sort of way, and it would be easy for her to find her way into Balthazar’s bed.

  “Who cares, the old fox,” Ivan laughed, draining his rum glass.

  Buckle wanted to toss Ivan out the window. He turned to Sibley, who looked like a dog knowing it was about to be hit. “Sibley, old fellow, name the woman.”

  “Sir, I would rather not say, please,” Sibley replied, his tone a hair more defiant than Buckle would have expected. “It is a privacy matter, sir.”

  Anger surged through Buckle and he allowed it to pass. “I am his son. Is it Catherine?”

  Knuckles rapped on the open door, bludgeoning the tension aside. Sedgwick Watts, a young diplomatic aide-de-camp, peered in at Ryder. “Ambassador Crankshaft, the Tinskins are ready to depart.”

  It was time for Ryder to go.

  “One moment,” Buckle said, grabbing the rum bottle. “One snort before your journey, then.”

  “Of course,” Ryder said.

  Buckle quickly poured five glasses full, handing them around to Ivan, Ryder, Sedgwick, and Sibley, who did not seem to know what to do with his. Buckle raised his shot. “To Ryder. He shall do our clan proud.” Buckle swallowed his rum with the others, but it was a tad bitter going down for some reason.

  “I shall win the Steamweavers to our side,” Ryder said. “I shall follow Father’s advice. Offer no concessions. Impress upon them the advantages of a mutual defense.”

  Buckle grinned. “You are one of the young lions, my brother. Our future is secure with you.”

  Ryder plunked his glass on the windowsill. “I shall see you soon. And good luck with Spartak, brother,” he said to Buckle with a wink.

  “And do not dally with Alhambra Cortez,” Buckle said. Ryder could never resist a pretty face, Tinskin or not, and the woman surely had wiles.

  “Worry not,” Ryder said as he strode toward the door. “Old Sedgwick here will keep me out of trouble. Right, Sedgwick?”

  “Yes, sir. Is this all you have as far as traps, sir?” Sedgwick asked, grunting as he lifted the heavy steamer trunk in the doorway.

  “That’s the lot,” Ryder chuckled. “We travel light!”

  Ryder and Sedgwick strode out into the corridor, followed by Sibley. Buckle felt sorry for Sibley. As much as he wanted answers regarding his father’s new mistress, he would not press the loyal old servant—for now.

  Another worry assailed Buckle. He had sensed some honor in Alhambra Cortez, but as a whole he did not trust the Tinskins at all. Then he noticed that Sedgwick had left his rum glass sitting on the bedside table; though Sedgwick had raised it in the toast, he had left the alcohol untouched, and it annoyed Buckle in some obscure way.

  “I do not trust a man who won’t drink his rum,” Ivan grumbled. “It’s bad luck.”

  A tall figure appeared in the doorway. “Lieutenant Windermere reporting as ordered, Captain,” he announced with a handsome grin.

  “Ah, grand, Windermere!” Buckle said, jumping forward to shake his hand. “Please come in. Help me cheer up sourpuss Ivan here.”

  “With gusto, aye! I am most honored to be invited,” Windermere replied. His dark-gray coat and tails hung from his tall frame with the perfect drape of a tailor’s mannequin, and his milk-and-coffee-colored skin set off his white smile and green eyes. His black top hat, resplendent with a red feather planted in the band, was tucked under his arm.

  “Windy is far too cheery a soul for me,” Ivan groused, drawing his pipe out of his pocket again in a tumble of loose tobacco.

  “I have the most current report, Captain,” Windermere offered. “All goes well. We are on schedule, and we should be under way just after dawn.”

  Dawn. The word raised a fount of sadness in Buckle’s heart. At dawn he would oversee the funerals of his lost crew in the citadel courtyard, with the empty pyres lit and burning, the mothers’ faces streaming with tears. Snap out of it. Buckle forced his cares away. The funerals were at dawn. He could not be aboard his airship until after the Seasonal ball. He determined that he would enjoy himself at the dance despite it all.

  Buckle winked at Windermere. “Now, my dear Windermere, please help me get that rat-chewed Russian beaver off the top of our chief mechanic’s head.”

  “I swear by the ass hairs of the very devil himself,” Ivan howled, backing up as Buckle and Windermere advanced upon him, “I shall geld the first blaggart who dares touch my topper!”

  THE SEASONAL

  BUCKLE STOOD ON THE UPPER balcony of the great timber-and-stone ballroom, between two scarlet banners draped over the porticoes, and the swell of music rising up from the dance floor seemed to want to lift him off his feet. Eight massive chandeliers hung in spiraling wheels of metal and paraffin candles above the dance floor, along with sixteen smaller oil-lantern chandeliers, stacked squares, dispersed lower and between, while rows of buglights lined the walls—a nod to the airship tradition of the Crankshaft clan—their pulsing light imparting a living glow to the borders of the chamber.

  On the western wall loomed a gigantic clock, its face the centerpiece of the room, above the gigantic stone fireplace, where cords of wood burned in multileveled andirons behind a chain-link screen. The clock was a complicated construction of mahogany, brass, copper, whale ivory, and porcelain, with quicksilver Roman numerals and two brass hands that swung quite visibly when the minutes and hours clicked. The frontispiece was illuminated with white boil—the glass tubes smoked with a chemical that made the emerald bioluminescence appear white—and the clock glowed with an unearthly, streaming light.

  On the dance floor below, their paired forms illuminated in ebbing turns by chandelier, lantern, fire, and firefly, near one hundre
d couples waltzed, looking like the pied cogs of a fantastical machine from above, turning in unison, every man dressed in black, brown, or gray, every woman a splash of jeweled earrings, feathers, and bright, swirling-skirted color. The faces of the waltzers, glimpsed as they spun, were smiling, eyes bright in the ecstasies of dance and expectation. The bedchambers would be busy tonight. It was widely reported by the midwives that there was a flurry of births exactly nine months after the Seasonal gala.

  The music of the waltz surged from the seventy-two valves of the pipe organ built into the northern wall of the room, its towering fan of polished brass pipes sweeping up to the ceiling. The organist, Percival Boyd, his hands pounding the ivory keys and pressure wheels, refused to sit as he played, his big back partially obscured by the jets of steam issuing from his behemoth instrument; the thirty-piece orchestra played with gusto from their podiums on the flanks, sawing the rosin off their bows.

  The Crankshaft clan notables and their guest ambassadors, all glorious in their finery, collected at the fringes of the dance floor below, nursing glasses of gin. Horatio and his wife, Miranda, were there, accompanied by four of their daughters, including their youngest, Elektra, one of the debutantes. Horatio was the official chaperone of all the year’s new ladies—Elektra and a dozen more fifteen-year-old females dressed up like glittering faeries—and the young men had to obtain his permission before they could scribble their names on one of the girls’ dance cards.

  Rutherford Washington and Orlando Churchill were both in attendance, along with the sprawling branches of their families, and so was Swordmistress Gweneviere Gray—her whiplike figure dressed in gray, of course, laced with white ermine and brilliant-green silk.

  “The pastries are damned capital!” Ivan yelled at Buckle’s shoulder, jamming a napkin-wrapped lemon tart into Buckle’s hand. Ivan, as usual, had charged straight to the food. The banquet tables, buried under warming pans and steaming kettles, were a glorious confusion of pies, scones with clotted cream, fastmilk in ice, blood pudding, kidney pies, sliced roast beef and cuts of pork, endless boiled, roasted, peppered, and cheesed potatoes, punch bowls, beer kegs, coffee urns and teapots, black bread, soft butter, and, most exotically of all, cold tins of sliced greenhouse apples, oranges, whole cherries, and chilled asparagus.