Hearts of Smoke and Steam

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Jack had first met the man when he had tried to relieve Jack of his purse. But the instant Cutter saw Jack's skills with a knife, he had dropped his own blade and offered his services instead. He'd proved to be a valuable soldier, if not always so good at restraining himself…

  Finishing his survey, Jack turned his attention to Anubis. “Hello jackal-man,” he said, finally acknowledging the presence of his black-clad rescuer. “How are you today?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Nice of you to finally show up,” he said.

  “I must have dropped my staff saving your neck.”

  “Donny, get the man's staff for him.”

  “We haven't seen you around here much lately,” Jack said, staring directly into the jackal's mask.

  “I haven't been around.”

  “So, how goes the mission?”

  Anubis shifted with obvious discomfort. “The Hydraulic-man is dead.”

  “Really?” he said, drawing out the word. “I thought you were going to let him live.”

  “I didn't kill him.”

  “'Didn't kill him' as in ‘I didn't kill him,' or ‘didn't kill him' as in ‘all I did was stick out my foot and the horses did the rest'?”

  Donny reappeared with the staff, and handed it back to him. Jack noticed that the weapon looked a bit damaged since the last time he had seen it. “Or maybe as in ‘I threw my staff at him.'”

  Anubis stared at him, unmoving and quiet. “Something like that.”

  “So you did have something to do with it.”

  “He burned to death.”

  “And the suit?”

  “Burned with him.”

  “You were supposed to bring it back to me.”

  “The whole building burned down.”

  Jack shook his head. There was no doubt Anubis was talented, but there was a moral streak in the man a mile wide that made him close to useless. It also put him at odds with the rest of the Children as often as not, but Lord Eschaton continued to have faith in the jackal long after it had become obvious to everyone else that he was as likely to undermine their plans as he was to support them. “And I don't suppose you have any proof of that? I mean, considering how resistant you were to actually take this mission, and how it would suit your bleeding heart to let your quarry escape, and then say he died in a fire, with no trace left of the man or his suit.”

  Anubis nodded and reached into his armored vest. Jack tried not to visibly stiffen as he did so. It always paid to be on his guard, but he didn't want to appear as if he were afraid of the jackal, even if he was. But if Anubis had been planning to attack him directly, he would have made his play long ago.

  When he pulled out his arm, it held one of the silver snake heads that had been part of the Hydraulic-man's suit. “Here's my proof.”

  Jack took it from his hands and gave it a closer look. The object was melted and burned from a heat that had been intense enough to fuse bits of ash and coal directly into the metal. “And what if you faked this, with Prescott's help?”

  “Then I did a very good job.”

  Jack squeezed his hand around the metal chunk and pondered his options. “You're more trouble than you're worth.” It was hard dealing with men of conscience when you didn't have much of one yourself. “I don't know why Eschaton doesn't let me kill you.”

  Anubis stepped forward. “I can think of two reasons.”

  Donny and Cutter had finished rolling his barrel back into place, and Jack was tempted to lean against it as they talked, but there was a long, dark stain on the side, along with an odd smell that made him think the wood would need a good scrubbing before he touched it again. “All right,” Jack said, clapping his hands together, and speaking loudly enough to let his voice reverberate around the square. “I want everything back the way it was by tomorrow—just in case any of those idiots show up again.” He actually hoped that some of them would show up. By then they'd either have the burly one with the red beard eating out of their hand or strung up like a Christmas turkey. Either way, the big fellow would stand as a warning to the rest of them…

  Feeling satisfied that the work was proceeding properly, he turned back to Anubis. “Now, what were we talking about?”

  “The two reasons you don't want to kill me.”

  “And those were?”

  “First,” Anubis said after a pause, “even if you don't like my methods, I get the job done.”

  Jack chuckled at that. Anubis had started out as an excellent partner, and both of them had been equals in the ranks of the Children, but as Eschaton's plans had progressed, Jack had, more than once, found himself cleaning up after Anubis's tendency to leave any job that required a bit of violence half-finished and call it done. “Your ‘methods' were the reason we had to abandon this hideout in the first place.” He stuck out his finger and poked against the golden ankh in the middle of Anubis's leather chestplate. “And that's why you ended up having to save me from being scalped by a man with a wooden hat!”

  “I didn't let the Sleuth go.”

  “So you keep saying, but somehow I find it less believable every time you do. And whether you let the man go or he escaped, you were supposed stop him by any means necessary. Instead, you stopped me!”

  “I'm not a murderer.”

  “No, I understand.” Jack held up the silver snake's head. “You're just an enabler to murder.”

  “I tried to save him.”

  Jack smiled. “Really? That's a pathetic excuse. But it really didn't happen all by itself, did it?”

  Anubis tilted his head toward the ground. “No.”

  Jack held open his jacket. “You know, if I ever was put on the stand, I could tell the jury it was my beautiful little knives that did all the killing, but somehow I don't think that would keep my neck out of the noose.”

  Jack could hear the sound of Anubis breathing heavily under his mask. “I watched him burn. He died in agony.”

  At least he was getting to the jackal. He wished he could see the man's eyes and know just how deeply he'd wounded him. It was Jack's experience that men died more easily than expected. Every living creature tried desperately to cling to life, but when the end finally came, it always came in an instant.

  When Jack had been younger, he had found it difficult to watch people die, but with age he began to realize that no matter what the form a man's death took, they all went to the same place. Sooner or later, he reasoned, Anubis would recognize that as well, even if it was Jack's hand that showed him. “But you said there were two reasons. What was the second one?”

  “Eschaton doesn't trust you, either.”

  Jack frowned. “Who trusts anyone? You think I trust you?”

  “No. But it might make us allies.”

  Jack laughed. He was about to call the man a fool, but the words didn't leave his mouth. It wasn't, he had to admit, completely wrong. “What are you getting at, Anubis?”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “Lord Eschaton isn't my enemy.”

  “He isn't your friend, either.”

  Jack thought about that for a second. “Neither are you…” But the gray man was still the closest thing he had to any kind of friend at all. Before Eschaton had appeared, Jack's life hadn't really amounted to all that much.

  Jack had been born in London, and his parents had been royalty of some sort, but not royal enough that it mattered when the money ran out. Looking for a second chance, they had decided to try their luck in the United States. It had turned out to be the worst kind of luck, with both his mother and his father killed by a runaway horse-cart.

  The wagon had careened onto the sidewalk, and passed less than an inch above the young boy's head as it smashed into the midday crowd, tearing his mother's hand from his with the blow that killed her.

  After that, Jack's modest inheritance had been slowly embezzled away by a string of so-called aunts and uncles who had handed him off from one relative to the next, showing him the barest minimum of
love and affection until the money had run out.

  By the time he turned fourteen, there were no more relatives and no more money, and he had become a ward of the state. Jack had quickly rebelled against the cold care of the orphanage, and when he decided to run away, no one bothered to come after him.

  Living on the street forced him to rely on his meager skills to get by. But for all his naïveté, when it came to survival, there was one skill that had served him well: ever since he had been a boy, Jack was a dead shot. As a child, he had often knocked sparrows out of trees with nothing more than a rock, and his father, while he was alive, had encouraged his son's skills in marksmanship, giving him access to a variety of weapons, including bows and slingshots.

  Throwing rocks was good enough to keep him alive, for a while at least. But as he grew bigger, so did his enemies, and simply being able to distract or wound his targets was no longer enough. The only way to be safe was to make sure that if he put someone down, they would never get up again. Soon after that, he discovered that a blade was better than a stone.

  But even after he had mastered a throwing knife, Jack had learned that there were limits to what a blade could do to get you out of trouble. For every man you killed, it turned out, there was another who would come looking to avenge his death.

  Jack was on the run when the gray man had caught him. He had been hired to take revenge on one of Lord Eschaton's costumed clients. The murder itself hadn't been of interest, but when he saw what Jack could do with a knife, he had pulled him out of danger and into the Children. He'd called the boy his “wild dog,” and he told him that if he could learn just a bit of cunning to go with his skills, Jack could become a wolf. If, Eschaton had once explained, he could let go of his anger and simply hate everyone with an equal passion, Jack might become a leader of men. The gray man had offered him a chance to become more than just a thug on the run, and Jack had taken it.

  Eschaton had cleaned him up and given him the jacket filled with perfectly balanced knives, along with his new name.

  And for a while, it had been enough.

  But soon he was being passed by for advancement by men like Rapid Fire, Bomb Lance, and Doc Dynamite. And while those men had worked by Lord Eschaton's side, Jack was still out on the streets. Not that he couldn't understand why he was there—but he wanted more.

  So maybe Anubis could help him. The man was a wild card—too honest to be trustworthy—but it wouldn't hurt to humor him. “I don't need any friends,” he told the jackal.

  “Everyone needs a friend, sooner or later.”

  “I don't see you having any.” Sooner or later, the jackal would make a mistake and give Jack a good reason to kill him. Or maybe he really did have something to offer. Either way, there was no reason to antagonize him. And the two of them were alike in some ways. “And you need to stop getting in my way.”

  “And you need to stop sticking a knife into everyone who makes you angry.”

  Jack chuckled at that. Now Anubis was sounding like Eschaton. “We'll see. Meanwhile, we have other work to do.”

  “New orders?”

  “You're just in time.”

  Anubis didn't move or respond. He just continued to breathe at him through his leather mask. The sound of it was incredibly annoying, but he declined to comment on it in the name of their newfound alliance. “You need to lead Donny and Cutter over to a theater in Union Square tomorrow.”

  “Not you?”

  “Not me.” He smiled. “I've got a gang to rebuild, no thanks to you.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Eschaton has tracked down the Stanton girl, after Bomb Lance and le Voyageur failed.”

  “And he wants us to get her.”

  “Exactly. And she has the mechanical man's heart, as well.” He looked the jackal up and down. “Think you'll be up for it?”

  Anubis nodded slightly. “I won't kill her.”

  “Always the bleeding heart.” He nodded in the direction of Cutter. “The dwarf only knifes women who try to hurt him first.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  Jack shook his head. “It's a fact. So,” he said, accenting the last word hard enough to make it sound like a threat, “can I trust you to get this done?”

  Anubis nodded. “I'll be here tomorrow.”

  “Before dark, if you'd be so kind. And,” he said, holding up the snake's head, “no excuses.”

  “As you say.” Anubis turned and began to walk away. Jack saw that there was something wrong with his suit, a gap where a hole had been burned through the leather. What it revealed made him smile.

  Vincent had clearly put in a great deal of effort to make sure that from every corner of the theater, and on either side of the stage, the faces of the pneumatic man stared down at the crowd from the walls. Sarah tried to ignore how similar the likenesses were to Tom's long-shattered porcelain features.

  From her seat near the front of the auditorium, Sarah had to admit that the show was visually impressive, even if the story was nonsense, and served mostly to introduce a menagerie of mechanical creatures.

  The show focused on a safari through the “lost clockwork world of darkest Africa,” led by the heroic Vincent Smith. The young adventurer was hot on the trail of the legendary pneumatic man, a giant living machine that was also the ruler of all the mechanical creatures.

  Vincent himself acted as narrator to the supposedly “true adventures” of his younger self. Dressed in an immaculate costume of white breeches and a red jacket with long tails, he stood at a podium at the edge of the stage, explaining both the origins and the dangers of the different creatures he faced during his journey, while occasionally manipulating the controls that brought them to life.

  Within the play there was an actor who portrayed the younger version of Vincent. He was dashing and debonair, and (Sarah guessed) far more handsome than the actual man had been at that age. He was also clearly a trained acrobat who had spent the last half hour dodging and weaving the horns, hooves, claws, and talons of the different mechanical monsters that he faced on his journey.

  Currently he was madly running away from a rampaging metal hippopotamus that had been terrorizing a tribe of mechanical Pygmies known as the “iron men.” Portrayed by little actors in metal costumes, they were throwing spears at the creature, and so many had pierced its tin hide that it had begun to take on the appearance of a giant angry porcupine.

  Sarah looked over to see how Emilio and Viola were enjoying the show. The Italian girl was obviously enraptured, hollering and clapping, shouting to urge the Pygmies on.

  Emilio seemed less animated but equally engrossed by the show. He was holding his sharp face firmly in his hands, and was obviously entranced by seeing his machines on the stage. Clearly his time back at the theater had rekindled his interest.

  Sarah stared at him, watching the show reflected in his eyes. For a moment, it almost seemed as if she could see the wheels actually turning inside of his head.

  Sarah kept looking, wondering if he would even notice her attention. And at the moment she was about to give up on him, his eyes flicked in her direction. Having seen her, he turned toward her and smiled.

  Sarah smiled back, but her expression felt disconnected and false. It was as if someone else had taken over her face and was smiling for her. It was, in a word, mechanical.

  Accepting her wan grin, Emilio nodded and turned back to watch the show. Sarah sighed. What did it mean that he couldn't see into her heart?

  Or maybe he just didn't want to see any deeper…The Armandos were as happy as they'd been since she met them, and she supposed that there was no reason they shouldn't be enjoying themselves. But try as she might, Sarah couldn't let herself relax.

  Instead, she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It wasn't entirely nerves: it had been a while since she had been in a bodice, but she had wanted to look a little more dressed-up for the occasion.

  She had hoped it would help her feel a bit more comfortable—embraced
by a taste of the life that she had left behind. There was even a decently fashionable hat on her head that Viola had magically produced from her wardrobe, although with the mood of the Italian girl subject to sudden shifts, Sarah hadn't dared to ask how she managed to come by it.

  Viola had also dressed up, although her dress was far more revealing than any proper lady would wear. When she had asked Sarah's opinion, Sarah had simply replied that it was “flattering,” although she had bitten back the word scandalous in order to say it.

  Viola had told Sarah that she was, under no circumstances, allowed to bring her costume along with her, although there were a few things in her bag, if the need arose for her to defend herself.

  Turning her attention back to the stage, she watched as the mechanical hippo swayed woozily, dripping copious amounts of black gore. The Pygmies had surrounded it and were poking at the dying creature repeatedly with their spears. She found herself feeling sorry for it, and then reminded herself that it wasn't alive, or even a living machine like Tom. It was simply a puppet—expertly manipulated, but lifeless.

  But emotion won out, and Sarah found herself relieved when a moment later it collapsed with a groan, jetting out a large spout of pink steam from its back that was a clear signal that the beast had been vanquished. At least she would no longer have to watch it suffer.

  The curtains swung closed, and the limelight swung back onto Vincent. “Having worked together to slay the beast, we had forged a bond of trust. The iron Pygmies, so keen to butcher me only a few hours before, were now eager to point me in the direction of the pneumatic man. I had proven that I might be able to free them from his tyrannical rule.

  “But they would be unable to accompany me on my journey. The tiny metal men were too small and heavy to try to climb the sheer cliff face that separated me from my goal.”

  Sarah wondered to herself how the pygmies would know where to tell Vincent to go if they couldn't get there themselves, then she chided herself for being so particular.