by Devon Monk
“Why?” Hink asked from halfway across the car. “Man was offering you tea and comfort.”
“Because you need to see this. And I’m not so sure I’m interested in Wicks’s company.” Rose found the crate with the loose lid, and pulled the lid off. The men must have repacked the crate, setting the copper and broken glass carefully in the straw. She held her breath as a song poured out, copper notes cold across her thoughts speaking of pain, of sorrow, and of power.
Hink strolled up next to her and peered into the box.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked.
Rose shook her head. “I…I don’t know. The glass is broken now. They called it a battery?”
“For what?”
Neither of them was touching it. Rose knew if she did, she’d lose what was left of her wits to its song.
“I don’t know. This is like the crate Margaret was carrying. With the initials of VB,” Rose said. “That coffin over there has the same initials.”
“Bring a lantern.” Hink walked off into the dark, and Rose checked for a lantern.
There was one on the floor, the one she’d held before, tipped over and leaking. She hoped it had enough oil to hold a flame. She picked it up, and dug in her pocket for a striker.
Careful to lift the glass, Rose struck flint to steel and sparked the oil-drenched wick, catching a yellow flame there.
She and Hink stood next to the coffin. “See there?” Rose said, pointing at the side of it. “VB.”
Hink brandished the pry bar. “I see it. Now let’s see what’s inside.”
He set the bar in between the lid and case and pulled. The coffin lid rocked up, locks breaking. Hink pushed the lid full open.
“Hellfire,” he swore. “Rose, don’t look.”
But it was too late. Rose had already seen the contents.
A body. Not whole like a person, but pieces and bits. One leg, an arm, and a torso. There wasn’t even a head.
“Oh, God,” Rose breathed. “Why?”
Hink turned so the bulk of him blocked her view, but it didn’t do much good. She couldn’t unsee what she’d seen.
“Lot of strange folk in the world,” he said. “Or maybe this was all that was left of him to bury and his family wanted it home.”
“There’s no smell,” Rose said, her mind suddenly working on the puzzle of how to fit what she’d just seen into the here and now of the world. “Death has a stink. Death always has a stink.” She tipped her head up, searching Hink’s face.
He nodded. “There are some solutions that can take care of that,” he said. “And those bits aren’t all hooked up, so a more thorough cleaning might have been done. Still…”
He turned back around, but was still positioned so she couldn’t see past his width. He reached into the coffin.
“Huh,” he said.
“What?”
“This isn’t living.”
“You just noticed?” Rose asked.
“I mean it wasn’t ever. Living.” He shifted so she could step up to the coffin again.
He lifted the arm up a bit. “Bring the light closer.”
Rose held the lamp inches away from the severed limb.
“Wrist and elbow move like they’re on a hinge.” Hink once again shifted the arm and it gave a slow, dead wave. “And this skin? It’s animal. Fine tanning, but not human. Not soft enough for meat to be underneath it either. Wood, I think. Maybe metal.”
“It’s pieces of a…a puppet?” Rose asked. The twist in her stomach screwed down to dread. It was very lifelike for a puppet and fully the size of a grown man, or pieces of a man, in any case.
Hink frowned. “Heavy for a puppet.”
Rose looked from the arm in his hand, which was topped off with a fully articulating hand on one end and strands of thin, veinlike wires coming out the stump where the shoulder might be.
Those wires reminded her of something. They reminded her of the copper and glass device. “Is there a, um…hole in the chest or back?” she asked.
Hink set the arm back in the coffin and tugged on the shoulder, leaning the torso forward. No blood, no meat in the severed neck, but if Hink hadn’t told her it was leather and metal or wood, Rose would have sworn it was the upper half of a man sawed in two.
“This is the back,” Hink said, nodding toward the part facing them. “Whoever packed it put it in chest down.”
Rose slid right beside Hink, so close she could feel the slight heat radiating from beneath his coat, could once again smell the tobacco on his breath as he exhaled steam into the cold railcar, and could sense the tension in him.
He had some idea of what this thing was meant for.
And then she saw it. Where the heart should be was a hole. Cut clean on every edge and fitted with a copper band along the inner walls about four inches wide.
“Something’s meant to be set in there,” Rose whispered. Then: “Oh. Oh! I think it’s the copper piece. The copper piece was built to hold something in the glass, like water or a solution. To contain, and to…generate power of some kind to run like a matic?”
“You’re saying you think this puppet runs on steam power?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why it would,” she said. “Do you?”
He held his breath for a moment. “I do. I think I do. Hold this.” He moved just enough that Rose could grab the shoulder and keep the torso propped up.
He headed back to the crate and lifted the broken copper and glass device out of it.
“Cold,” he noted as he carried it over to her. “Even through my gloves.”
“You’re not going to put it in there, are you?” Rose asked.
“Just to see if it fits. Can you prop it up a bit more?”
Rose leaned back and pulled the torso up so that it was balanced on the hips. “Why aren’t all the pieces here?”
Hink shrugged. “Lots of crates. Might be the rest is packed away. Might be this is just a test sort of thing.” He took a moment to glance between the hole in the torso and the device in his hand and then turned the device so that what was left of the shattered glass globe was facing outward.
“Like this, I’d say.” Hink placed the copper and glass device into the torso, then twisted. It fit into place with a snick.
Nothing else happened. No lights, no movement, nothing but a disembodied torso with a contraption of copper filling the hole in the chest.
“That’s disappointing,” Hink said.
“What did you think it’d do?” Rose asked.
“It should have…” He glanced at her, then shut his mouth. “I don’t know.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “I think you do.”
“All right, yes. I think I do too. There have been rumors about a new kind of matic being built. A thing that can labor in factories or in the fields. There’s also been rumors of a weapon coming out of Chicago. Could be this is part of it. Or none of it.”
“Do these rumors give it a name?”
“Homunculus.”
Hink twisted the copper piece and it fell out into his hand. “Set that back down,” he said. He slid the copper piece into the inside pocket of his coat, then helped Rose get all the body parts arranged and the lid fit back into place.
“But you think it is part of…part of something dangerous?” she asked. “The copper device? The, um, homunculus? The coffin?”
“Not a good place to talk it over. Best we button this up and get moving.”
Rose helped put the crates in order, then extinguished the lantern. By the time Hink opened the door to the passage between the train cars, Rose’s stomach was in a knot. She didn’t like the idea of Hink keeping that copper device. They didn’t know what it could do, even if it was broken.
They crossed between the railcars in silence, since talking would mean shouting over the wind and rain. By the time they finally reached second class, Rose was soaked, cold, and tired.
Hink paused by their seat and gave a couple of the young boys lounging there
a hard stare. They scuttled away, back to their families down the car a bit.
Hink removed his hat, brushed his fingers through his hair to get it in place, and then stood aside so Rose could take the seat.
Rose thought about the Pullman car and Thomas waiting for her with tea and a book. It would mean getting wet again, more than once, to reach first class. And it would mean sussing out that sudden anger he had showed.
Maybe she would just sit here for a bit and dry out.
She ducked under Hink’s arm and settled onto the bench.
Hink dropped down next to her. “Thought you were headed up to luxury seating.”
“I look like a drowned rat: my skirts are dripping, my shoes are covered in straw. They’d turn me away.”
“They’d be fools,” Hink said, pulling his hat back on and down over his eyes and stretching his long legs out as far as he could. “You’re a beautiful woman, wet or dry.”
Rose felt the heat of a blush brush her cheeks. Man could charm when he wanted to.
“Are you going to sleep?” she asked.
“Might as well. Next stop’s still an hour or more off.”
“What happens at the next stop?”
He didn’t reply, so Rose poked him in the shoulder with her finger.
“Ow,” he grunted. He pushed his hat out of the way and looked over at her.
“Well?” she asked.
“Next stop is where I get off and see to some business.”
“What about me?”
“What about you, Rose Small?” he asked with that soft drawl that made her want to kiss him. “Aren’t you going on to whatever destination that horizon of yours has painted for you? For you and your greenhorn?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. But what if I don’t?”
“You’re sweet on him. Why wouldn’t you go with him?”
“I’m not…”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“No matter what you think, Captain, I’ve just met Mr. Wicks. I’m not looking to…to fall in with someone. My horizon is my own.”
He grunted. “You are a changeable thing lately.”
“I’m not changeable,” she said. “I’m just full of surprises.”
That got a smile out of him. “Aren’t you just?” Then, quieter: “Wouldn’t want you to be any other way.” He settled back, tipping his hat down again. “Get some rest, Rose Small. Your horizon’s coming up quick.”
Rose shifted until she found a fairly comfortable position cradling her head against the wall. She didn’t mean to sleep, just to rest and think for a while.
The train swayed hard to one side and she jerked awake.
Hink was awake too, looked like he had been for some time, sitting forward and keeping an eye on the other passengers and the door at the end of the car.
“Are we there?”
“Kansas City?” he said quietly. “No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re not moving.”
That must have been what woke Rose up.
“See that man up there?” He nodded just slightly.
Rose leaned to the side so she could see around the woman seated in front of her.
At the head of the train car stood a man. He wore black from hat to boot, including the heavy duster that hung open to reveal the black of his shirt, tie, and suit beneath, with only the shine of his silver gun at his hip and the other gun in his hand to draw any light.
He wore a black kerchief over the lower half of his face.
“A bandit?” Rose asked, her heart pounding.
“Appears so.”
“Appears?” His shoes most caught her eyes. Shiny and familiar. He was one of the men from first class.
“Ladies and gents,” the bandit said in a voice that would carry to the North Pole even without the windows open. “You are being robbed. Do not get any ideas about drawing on me. My friend there at the end of the car is a crack shot.”
Rose twisted to see another man, also in all black and with covered face, aiming a triple-barreled gun rigged for bullets and also emanating that ear-pinching whine of an electric coil shot. He had shiny shoes too.
If he was any good with that gun, he could pick off a dozen people before anyone could get a shot off.
“We will spill your blood unless you cooperate. If you want to stay alive all the way to Kansas City, then put your money and jewelry into this bag and pass it on to your neighbor to do the same.” He held up a canvas bag and threw it at the man in the seat nearest him. “Now.”
The man dropped a pocket watch and a few coins into the bag and handed it to the man next to him.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Rose whispered over the frightened muttering of the fifty or so people in the car.
Hink hadn’t moved, his eye still on the bandit ahead. “They’re not the problem,” he said.
Two metal-on-metal impacts rang out through the car twice, as if something had just hit the train. The car jerked.
“That,” Hink said, “is the problem.”
“Did they uncouple the train?” Rose asked.
Hink shook his head. “Not this car. But one of the cars.”
“Why?”
He nodded again, this time toward the window. “For that.”
Rose looked out the window. She didn’t see anything but a snow-covered field.
“What?”
“Listen.”
That’s when she heard the low buzz of an airship drawing near. Not the Swift; this ship had a much deeper roar. At least a four-stack. Maybe six. It must be massive.
“Do you know it?” she asked.
Hink and his crew were good at identifying other vessels by the sound of their fans alone.
He shook his head. “When I tell you, duck.”
Rose pushed at her luggage with her foot, then bent a bit to pick it up and sling the strap over her shoulder. Her heart was hammering, but she couldn’t help but feel a little happy thrill. She’d seen Hink get out of all kinds of life-threatening situations. If he had a plan, it might not be safe, but it might work.
“That’s right,” the bandit bellowed. “All of your valuables. I want to see coins, jewelry, and paper money. If you’ve got a deed in your pocket, it better be in that sack.”
Hink leaned back, pulling something out of his right inside coat pocket as he did so.
The bag was passed, hand to hand, seat to seat, the clink of coins and rattle of contents revealing its passage.
Rose was practically holding her breath.
The airship boilers chugged on, fans growling louder and louder, like a beast snarling down at its prey.
The man in front of Hink twisted around and handed over the sack. Hink took the bag and dropped something inside it. “Duck,” he said quietly.
He stood and hurled the bag at the bandit at the front of the car.
A rapid cacophony of gunshot rattled out; everyone screamed and ducked while blinding flashes of orange light splattered through the air.
The car fell into chaos.
People rushed to run or hide, yelling and pushing, though there was no space to do either.
Hink stayed calm during it all, twisted to face the back of the train car, pulled his gun, and shot the bandit there straight through the head. A second later, he turned back and shot the other bandit right through the heart.
Both men crumpled to the floor.
Then Hink faced Rose and offered his hand.
She took it, and with one smooth, waltzlike step, he exchanged places with her so that he was near the window and she was nearer the aisle.
People were rushing to the doors, crowding and pushing and trying to get out.
“What?” she asked as he held her tight against him with his left arm. With his right, he fired three shots to clear the glass from the window.
He looked down at her. “Stay with the train, Rose,” he said. “Keep your gun ready, and when the train starts moving again, go on up to Wicks i
n first class. Kansas City ain’t far.”
“Where are you going?”
“To stop the real robbery.”
The airship fans added to the chaos, their sound so thunderous and so close above the car that the glass lampshades rattled in their casings.
Hink tugged Rose close for a brief moment. Then he bent and kissed her.
Rose knew there was no time for this sort of thing. But at the touch of his lips, all time seemed to slip, and then the world was filled with him, her senses overwhelmed by him, and she found herself wondering how she could possibly go on without this man in her life.
Right then he pulled away. The sharp whip of winter wind poured in through the window, cold enough to hurt, as he let her go.
Hink bent, shouldered through the window, then dropped down outside.
A handful of heartbeats ticked off the seconds. And then the whole of the world came back.
Rose glanced up and down the car. Passengers pushed and shoved, some yelling for people to calm down, some just yelling. Several men surrounded both bandits. Someone had hold of the robber’s sack and was beginning the process of convincing the crowd that this could all be sorted out amicably.
She could stay here. It would be wise. Hink said they weren’t far off from Kansas City, and once there she could put this kind of nonsense behind her and keep her hands busy building a brighter horizon.
Or she could jump out that window, find out what he meant about “the real robbery,” and get her eyes on that massive airship.
That would be foolish.
And a chance she’d never get again.
Rose stood on the bench and hoisted herself up into the window, kicking the wet, heavy ruffle of her skirts out of the way and pulling her satchel close to her.
The wind was brutal, slashing from above and all around. She sat in the window and squinted skyward.
Only there was no sky. Swallowing the heaven, from end to end, was a monstrous airship as black as coal. Smoke shrouded and parted in random, ragged patterns as at least a dozen fans roared along its side like the oars of a great vessel, each fan set so it could swivel independently.
Genius, she thought.
The roar of the ship made her want to cover her ears, but she needed both hands to slip her feet up under her and then drop down onto the narrow edge of the train car. She might be able to hold on to the outside of the windows and make her way along the train car, but not for long. She looked around for Hink.