Hearts of Smoke and Steam (The Society of Steam, Book Two)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  He would purify the planet, and when a refined and enhanced humanity was all that was left, he would build a monument to his vision on this place. An edifice so great that no one would ever forget the sacrifices he made to help the world escape its sad fate.

  “Damn it, Eschaton!” said Hughes impatiently next to him, piercing through his introspection and destroying his rising sense of elation.

  “What is it?” he asked angrily, frustrated that he had been so rudely torn out of his vision of a better tomorrow. But he did seem to feel much better…

  “I've lost the line.” They were standing outside the door to the meeting room now. “I need you to use your charge on the wall again. And if you want me to use your alias, you can at least do me the courtesy of responding to it.”

  Lord Eschaton grimaced and shook his head. Grabbing Hughes's metal frame, he gave it a hard shove. The machine tilted backwards, the metal feet clanking as they tried to find some purchase against the polished floor.

  The look of terror on Hughes's face as he stumbled was priceless. His hands scrabbled for the controls as the frame began to fall, the device almost tipping over completely before it bounced against the walls and stopped. Some combination of Hughes's panic and the innate ability of the device to keep itself upright managed to allow him to find balance.

  Eschaton walked up to Hughes. His face was red, the bushy gray brows above his eyes knitted together in obvious anger. “Damn you, Eschaton!” he hissed at him.

  “Damn me?” Without thinking he gave the man a hard slap across his face, only remembering at the last instant to soften the blow so as not to rip his head from his shoulders.

  The frame was immobile, but the blow was still hard enough that Hughes rocked in it. “And I told you not to use my real name.”

  The crippled man's mouth hung open in an obvious expression of pure surprise. His face was still red, but the flesh where he had been struck was a darker shade of crimson.

  Eschaton watched in amusement as Hughes's lips begin to twitch, stopped, and then twitched again. He was clearly on the verge of saying something, teetering on the brink of rebellion, with the lesson of a fresh sting from Eschaton's hand on his flesh holding him back.

  He'd faced this breaking point with so many men—Eli, Jack, Murphy. The moment came often when you worked with poor souls who simply wished that they were more than they really were. In every relationship came the time where a true leader needed to exert his will over others to prove to them that his position was no accident, but something as irrevocable and undeniable as nature itself.

  And now that moment was here with Hughes. Before the man could finally spit out his angry words, Eschaton grabbed his frame by an exposed bar and flung it through the entrance.

  This time Hughes was ready for the assault and managed to pilot the machine with some grace as it stumbled along the floor.

  Eschaton followed quickly, taking just a moment to throw the doors to the conference room closed behind him. Hughes had only begun to turn around when he pushed him again, shoving the frame with enough power that he crashed into the meeting table. “Do you really think that you have the right to challenge me?” he said with a shout. There was still a chance that someone outside might hear, but in a perfect moment of crisis there were always risks that need to be taken.

  “I, I, I…” Hughes said.

  “It's a simple question, Mr. Hughes. Do you think you have the right to challenge Lord Eschaton? Yes or no?”

  “N-n-no.” The half-man's hands were balled into fists now, his eyes closed tight.

  “Look at me when I'm talking to you!” He smacked his hand hard against the frame, rattling it and sending a mild electric jolt through the metal. “I want to know what I did that gave you the impression that you are my equal. I want to know because I want us both to be very clear on where we stand going forward.”

  “Y-y-yes.” His stutter was more pronounced now. Hughes had been successfully pushed to the edge. Now there was just one more step.

  “But since you're so eager to use my name, I want to hear it.”

  Eschaton leaned down over the crippled man. Now that they were face to face, he realized that Hughes was weaker than he'd thought. The frame he wore would have been more than capable of fighting back if the man wearing it had the will to use it. “Es-Eschaton,” Hughes said feebly.

  This man had once been the most powerful Paragon, and now he was a whimpering child. Eschaton let the rage flow through him, feeling the current rising inside of him. He grabbed the frame with his hands and felt the charge flowing out through the metal. Hughes's muscles went rigid as the current cascaded through him. “Say all of it.”

  “L-l-l-l-l-l…”

  “Lord Eschaton! Say it!”

  “L-l-lord Eschaton!”

  He released the frame, stepped back, and smiled. “Good.” Now was the moment of truth. It was in this next instant that he would find out if he had actually broken the man, or had only just begun the process.

  He lifted Hughes out of his frame. With the absence of his legs, it was almost too easy—like plucking a worm from an apple.

  Without their pilot to guide them, the metal legs seemed to sag down, as if they had somehow lost something from having Hughes's consciousness removed from them. “Now say it again!” He dropped him onto the table. The living energy flowed directly from his arms into Hughes, making the legless man twitch.

  “Lord Eschaton!” Hughes screamed back at him.

  “Again!” He jabbed at him with his fingers, reminding him of his power.

  “Lord Eschaton!”

  “Very good,” he said, letting the words slip out in a soft purr. “Now we understand each other.” But his attention was already slipping away. When he had sent out that last shock, he had seen something strange happen on the table beneath him.

  Hughes sagged down against the granite tabletop and breathed heavily. “I'm sorry.”

  Eschaton nodded solemnly and placed his now inert hand against the other man's chest like a priest giving a benediction to a lost believer. “I forgive you.” In the world he was building, the purified humans would be made of stronger stuff.

  He picked up Hughes and dropped him back into the frame. The response was almost imperceptible, but the machine definitely did respond. There was something different about the way it stood now that a man inhabited it. He'd need to look into that—later.

  “Look!” Eschaton said, nodding at the table.

  “What is it?” Hughes replied, his voice a dreamy slur. His eyes were wide and unfocused, as if he were staring at an invisible monster in the distance.

  Eschaton leaned down and placed his hands against the metal inlay in the granite. Good mood or not, he would pay for the amount of energy he was putting out today. But if they succeeded in entering the laboratory, it would be well worth the cost.

  He sent another bolt out through his skin. It circled around the metal inlay on the table, and then vanished. “Now look at that chair,” Eschaton said, pointing to the wrought iron throne sitting up above the rest of the room. A moment later, he could see the power crackling in the golden wreath that stood above them.

  Hughes shook his head and tried to concentrate. “You did that?”

  Eschaton nodded and smiled. “There's something else going on here. What plan did Darby have in mind?”

  Hughes's hands shook as they moved across the frame's controls. “What should we do?”

  He grinned widely as he stared at Hughes's metal body, letting his white teeth appear between the dark grey of his lips. Darby may have been a genius, but he was also predictable. “I think you should go sit in that chair.”

  Sarah woke to the familiar feeling of crisp linen sheets. A warm slash of bright morning sun cut across the fabric and warmed her toes.

  It seemed like it had been ages since she had woken up in her own bed, and even longer since Jenny Farrows had let her sleep in, but she was finally safely home.

  As she sta
rted to roll over, her dreamy sense of satisfaction was quickly overwhelmed by the burning sensation that prickled across her skin. Had she been in some sort of accident?

  Giving up her attempt at sitting, she instead tried to lean back down and was rewarded with a fierce pain in her right arm.

  The veil of sleep was lifting quickly now, and stray thoughts began to invade her dream: if she was back home, when exactly had her father forgiven her?

  And then the memories came flooding back, “The balloon over the East River, the mad Frenchman!” She gasped. “We crashed!” she shouted out as her eyes opened wide.

  This time Sarah ignored the pain and bolted upright. She tried to take in her strange surroundings, but wherever it was she had landed, it wasn't the Stanton mansion.

  The room she sat in was a large space, roughly constructed from wooden frames and fabric walls. It was, she realized, like she had woken up inside a junk shop: the floor was covered in what seemed to be a maze of chairs, tables, and rugs. On every flat surface someone had placed lamps, statuary, and other bits of colorful bric-a-brac. Most of the objects were chipped and broken, with some of the statues so badly battered they would have been envious of the Venus de Milo.

  Sunlight was streaming down through a circular glass skylight that had been built in the ceiling. It had clearly been cobbled together from numerous bits of stained glass, with a large, clouded bull's-eye at the center that gave the viewer a warped and shattered vista of the clouds above.

  Sarah leaned back and looked up at the riot of colors until they seemed almost to swim and swirl around her. As she closed her eyes, Sarah could feel a painful throbbing in her head—and when she reached up to touch her aching brow, she discovered that it had been bandaged. “What's happened to me?” she said out loud.

  “You almost died,” a woman's voice replied from just out of sight. “But your head isn't broken.”

  Sarah turned her head slightly, and could see that Emilio's sister was standing nearby.

  She held a tray in her hands, and on the top of it were a bowl of soup and a cup of tea, both giving long strings of steam in the chilly morning air. Normally Sarah would have been anxious for her morning tea, but today it was the cool glass of water that stood next to the other items that Sarah had her eye on.

  “That stupid brother of mine, he almost got you killed,” she said, setting the tray down on the bed next to her. The settee was like something that she might have seen at her father's home; a slab of Italian marble chased with patterned silver around the edges.

  The whole object was dreadfully old-fashioned—a faded piece of tableware from another time and place. It was something that her grandparents might have used, although no tray in the Stanton mansion would last long with a dirty crack running straight through the middle of it.

  Remembering her savage thirst, Sarah picked up the water glass and gulped the contents down, consuming almost the entire thing in a series of noisy gulps. The sounds made her feel guilty, and she set the glass back down onto the tray even though she still wanted more—it was the ladylike thing to do.

  “Your brother saved my life,” Sarah said, trying to continue the conversation.

  Viola turned her head and mimed as if she were spitting at something. “Pfhh.”

  “Up in the balloon.”

  “In the balloon, yes.” She waved her hands and rolled her eyes. “He told me all about it. Fighting and shooting, and kissing and falling.”

  “This smells delicious,” Sarah said, as the scent of whatever it was in the bowl reached her nose.

  “I saw you jump onto that thing with my brother. Why would you go up there, anyway?”

  Sarah picked up the spoon and took a closer look at it. It was pure silver, and huge—clearly something intended for serving and not eating with. “That man, the one with the harpoons,” Sarah said as she dipped the massive implement into the thick red liquid, “killed my friends and attacked my father.”

  The woman frowned at her with a look of disapproval so deep that it was almost motherly. “That seems like a reason to stay away from him.”

  “I've fought him before.” Sarah said as she brought the spoon up to her mouth, once again dispensing with etiquette in the face of need. “And last time I managed to…Oh!” Sarah found herself overwhelmed by the flavor that unfolded on her tongue. She'd had Italian food before, of course. There had been a period during her childhood where she had been obsessed with spaghetti, although her father described the noodles as “food for commoners.”

  But the soup was something else entirely. She could taste the tomatoes, the spices, the beef broth—everything together and separate at the same time. And there were potatoes, carrots, garlic, along with something mysterious and slightly spicy—her mouth felt like it might explode. “This is amazing!”

  “Just minestrone. But I'm glad you like it.”

  “I love it.”

  “My sister, good cook, no?” Emilio peered through one of the curtains, revealing that a doorway was hidden behind it.

  Sarah felt her cheeks blush deeply, and her eyes darted away from the handsome man who had just entered her room.

  Viola shook one hand at her brother as she spoke. “La hai bel imbarazzato, Fratello.”

  “I am sorry.” He spoke slowly, clearly trying to concentrate on the words. “But,” he said as he stepped in and came closer, “I want to make sure you're okay.”

  She could see now that Emilio hadn't managed to make it through their adventures entirely unscathed, and two jagged stitches held together a small cut on his face. Sarah felt stupid and childish as she clutched the covers tightly (but not too tightly) around herself and averted her eyes. She was only wearing—what was she wearing? Some kind of white nightdress…And who had dressed her, or undressed her?

  And her hair! She had only just begun to overcome the damage from the fire, and now her head was wrapped in a bandage…Her head began to swim again and she lay back into the sheets.

  Reacting to Sarah's distress, Viola jumped up and walked over to her brother, her hands moving in a sweeping motion. “La fai sentire piu male! Parta!”

  “She's awake. I just want to make sure.”

  “You saw, now go away. You've already done enough damage.”

  Emilio retreated back through the curtains as his sister gave him a series of sharp shoves in the chest and shoulder to direct him more rapidly out the door.

  Sarah felt a pang of guilt for forcing him out of his own room in his own house, even more so for the sense of relief it brought when he was gone.

  She had always thought of herself as forward-thinking, but there was no doubt that whatever desires she had toward being a more modern woman, her mother's lessons on what it meant to be a lady had a deeper hold on her.

  Sarah propped herself up and took another sip of the soup. The huge spoon she had been given forced her to make a loud slurping sound as she tried to suck in a large chunk of potato. It was a noise that she was sure any one of a number of her family and friends would have found quite shocking. She smiled to herself and then did it again, on purpose, suddenly feeling most unladylike.

  Viola smiled back. The grin looked mostly sweet, but there was something behind it that appeared calculating, as well. “You're a lady, aren't you?”

  Sarah supposed that she must be, despite her occasional dalliances with rude behavior. Then she remembered how she had tried to knock over the Bomb Lance by throwing herself into him and shook her head. “I'm not sure I'd go that far…but I do have manners.”

  Viola nodded. “You're a rich girl.” She pointed to her hand. “You need the right spoon, the right bowl.”

  Sarah felt like she had turned transparent as glass. How had the woman read her thoughts? “I'm just not comfortable having strangers in my bedroom,” she said, trying to turn the conversation in another direction.

  “Strange men,” she said. “You don't mind me.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. This girl was infuriating! “Str
ange men, then—yes.”

  “And it's not your room, it's ours.”

  “That's true.” Sarah felt her impatience growing. “I don't like boys seeing me when I'm not at my best.” There was no doubt that this woman was a handful, but she needed to keep her temper. And she reminded her of Jenny Farrows in a way—a child of the streets, but also something more.

  “You think it's yours because you can always choose who comes and goes, and when they come and go.” It sounded like an accusation.

  “Certainly I don't think that strange boys should be able to barge into my bedroom whenever they like. Don't you agree?”

  “I don't spend time with boys,” she replied. “I like men.” She said it in a lusty tone that spoke to volumes of experience with the opposite sex that Sarah hadn't even read the forewords to. “And the men I know go wherever they want.”

  Viola stood up and walked a few feet away from her. She picked up one of the chipped statues off a wobbly oak cabinet. It was a bust of a woman looking dreamily off into the distance. She stared at it while she ran her finger back and forth over the rough surface where the nose had once been. “You live in a big fancy house?”

  For a moment she considered lying, but the idea of denying her past made it feel like she was wiping it away. “I used to.”

  “And why did you run away from your big fancy house?”

  Sarah tried to think of an answer. It was a question she had asked herself every day since that night in the park, and every time the answer she gave herself was a bit different. The answers were all equally unsatisfying. “I wanted to see the world.”

  “So, how is it?” she said with a low tone in her voice. The girl seemed sad now, as if she remembered something upsetting, and her thumb continued to work over the broken plaster face she held in her hands. “You like the world that you've seen?”

  “I haven't seen it all yet.”

  “Maybe that's lucky for you.”

  “I'm not as innocent as you seem to think I am,” Sarah said with a touch of resentment in her voice.