Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  He waited a moment for Sarah to deny the reality of it. When she made no attempt to, Emilio continued, “I know we can’t make it stop, but when these things come . . . these very bad things, you have to have a reason why you are fighting. Because you may lose all the things you love, and when you make hard choices, you should be making them for the things you love.” Emilio tried to not think of his wife and children, but their faces flickered in front of him, and he could feel the loss again.

  Sarah sat quietly for a moment, and then her eyes hardened. She turned her gaze away from his and pulled back her hand, using it to pick up her glass and take another long sip. “Thank you, Emilio.” Sarah contemplated her glass, swirling the liquor that remained at the bottom. Then she placed the glass onto the table and stood up. “I’ll think about what you’re saying.”

  She swayed slightly as she rose. He was glad to see that there had been some visible effect on her from the alcohol.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I care for you.”

  “I know you do, Emilio.” Sarah turned to him and stared for a moment, as if she were making a decision. Then she grabbed his hand and pulled him up from his seat. “I have a suggestion. Let’s get out of this ridiculous room.”

  Emilio, surprised by her sudden burst of energy, let himself be dragged forward.

  Emilio unlatched the large door on the side of the car. Just outside the door was the concrete terrace that he and Tom had poured out over the last few days. As soon as it had finished curing they would drag the machines onto it and construct a tarp to protect them from the rain, at least temporarily.

  Looking up at the sky, he could see the first long tendrils of daylight already beginning to reach across the sky. “I have an idea!”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his plans—as exciting as they were—drain out of his head. He was a fool around women, he knew, but not so much of one that he didn’t know enough to remember that the key to success with them was to pay genuine attention from time to time.

  He jumped down from the open door onto the bare slab, holding out his hand to help Sarah down, although she barely needed it. She no longer wore anything like traditional women’s clothes. In the last few weeks, Sarah had completely changed her wardrobe, choosing simple skirts and blouses that she found around the house.

  It was odd to see her wearing some of the same simple clothes as his sister, although somehow she wore them with far more modesty.

  “What do you have in mind, Emilio?” Her mood had shifted with the location, and the smile on her face was warm and inviting—so much so that he felt tempted to kiss her right then. It would not, he remembered with a warm thrill, be the first time—or even the second. But it could be the first in quite a while.

  But he had other plans, and instead he pointed up at the iron rungs that ran up the side of the rail car. “Are you okay to climb?”

  Sarah nodded eagerly and hopped up onto the ladder. Her shoes, although not as fancy as the boots she had worn when she arrived, were still made more for showing off than for climbing, and Emilio couldn’t help but laugh to himself as she awkwardly made her way up to the roof, each iron rail ringing as she jammed the leather sole of her boot against it.

  He jumped up behind her, trying not to notice (too much, at least) the view of her exposed legs as she hoisted herself up onto the top of the car.

  “It’s dirty up here.” Sarah yelled. A moment later she peered back down at him. “And a bit cool.”

  Emilio frowned. Growing up in a circus seemed to have left him poorly equipped for anticipating the needs of a New York society girl. “I go back down and get a blanket.”

  She laughed and waved her hand in an upward motion. “I’m not that delicate—not anymore, anyway. And it’s beautiful up here.”

  Emilio took her at her word and bounded up the ladder. As he reached the top, he stood and turned to face Brooklyn.

  There was still some time left before the sun rose, but the rolling hills and tall buildings of the growing city were outlined in the rising light.

  Turning around, he looked out at Manhattan, but in the dim glow of earliest morning the details were lost. He could make out only the hazy outlines of the high roofs and the flickering pinpoints of the street lamps. The river, on the other hand, was glowing beautifully, appearing far more serene and beautiful in the morning light than it would under a harsh daytime sun.

  Emilio sat down next to Sarah, testing that the pitch was dry before he committed to resting his bottom on it. The gravel bit into him, and he realized that upper-class or not, he should have brought a blanket with him.

  He could practically hear Viola mocking him for being such a fool—but the gentler loving sister was gone now, replaced by the mad, bitter creature she had become. He was beginning to doubt that the kind-hearted Viola would ever return.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sarah asked him.

  He blushed, realizing that despite his best intentions he had been ignoring her, lost in his own thoughts. He stretched out a hand at the view. “Is beautiful, no?”

  Sarah turned her head and smiled. “It will be a lovely place to watch the dawn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the city quite like this before. Do you come up here often?”

  Emilio nodded. “I used to come up often. But lately, not so much.”

  “It’s been a busy few months.” The look on her face was still serious, but he thought that perhaps it was not as sad, lost, or angry as it had been back in the living room.

  “Yes.” He nodded again, but when he tried to find more words to follow the first, it seemed he had nothing to say. In the past when the two of them had been alone together, there was always something else happening at the same time. Villains, dirigibles, mechanical men . . . “It seems as if there is only romance for us when something terrible is over our heads,” he said. Perhaps what they needed now was a large cloud of black smoke to appear in the sky.

  When Emilio turned toward Sarah, he could see that she was looking at him. With most women, he would have expected them to be smiling in spite of themselves, but there was an earnest look on her face, as if she was studying him, trying to uncover his secrets. The light gave her face a golden glow, and he had to admit that he found her scrutiny attractive. “You’re smiling at that, Emilio. I suppose you think that’s funny?”

  “No. Not funny.” He moved closer to her. His face was close to hers, and she didn’t pull away, although her expression changed somewhat. “But true.” As he leaned forward her lips parted, and he kissed her.

  Unlike their previous short attempts at intimacy, this was fueled by neither liquor nor adrenaline, and yet neither of them seemed interested in slowing things down.

  Emilio lifted his hand and put it behind her neck. The feel of her skin was soft and smooth. He felt his heart skip a beat as the thrill of it ran through him.

  After a long embrace, Sarah finally pulled away and gasped for breath.

  “Is okay?” Emilio asked, worried that he had once again broken some kind of unwritten rule, although he supposed that in America the rules against men and women kissing were probably written down in any number of places, and then reprinted in all the newspapers every day.

  “It’s very nice,” she replied.

  There was a long pause before she tilted her head and spoke again. “Do you love me, Emilio?”

  The boldness of the question shocked him. The very idea of answering it made him want to jump down from the roof and run away, but Sarah’s eyes were focused on his, and Emilio could tell that she was intent on reading any truth in them that she could find.

  He opened his mouth to answer, but then realized he had no idea what to tell her. Simply saying “yes” would be what most women would have wanted to hear, but Sarah was hardly most women, and things with her were rarely that simple. Hadn’t they just been arguing a few minutes ago?

  It wasn’t the first time someone had asked him that question, but it was only the second time in his life th
at he had genuinely cared for anyone with such intensity.

  And he did love her. She wasn’t simply a conquest to tell the other boys about, although there had been a few of those back in his circus days. He had thought his wife was one of those girls at first, and she had turned out to be anything but.

  Sarah was so completely unlike his wife in a million ways, but somehow he had again found himself with a woman who demanded more of him than he felt comfortable giving.

  “Emilio, are you okay?”

  Emilio reached out and took Sarah’s hand. A few bits of stone had freed themselves from the pitch and were still pressed into her skin. He brushed them away and covered her fingers with his. “Is been a long time since anyone wanted to know the answer to that question.”

  She nodded. “I understand.” Her hand suddenly was gripping his very tightly. “But I need to know, because I think I do love you, Emilio. I’ve certainly never felt the way I feel with you with anyone before. And I’m sorry if I’m being difficult, but you have more experience than I do with these things.” The words were rushing out of her, and he realized just how innocent and lost she was.

  “Is never easy.”

  “I know you think I’ve gone mad, and that I’m taking on the world, but I need to know that I can trust you, and that I can rely on you.”

  “You have Tom.”

  She nodded. “I do, and I love him, but what I need right now is a man made of flesh and blood. Maybe I don’t have to fight against everything.” She took a deep breath. “I may regret it tomorrow, but to be honest,” she said, her face colored red with a deep blush, “I’m ready for some regrets that are my decision, rather than someone else’s.”

  Once again he found himself astounded by her bravery and determination. Her whole world had collapsed, and yet she was still looking to take responsibility for her own actions. It was a rare quality in anyone, and for an instant he felt sad that he would never meet the man who had created this girl and brought her up in the world, although he could only imagine that Alexander Stanton would think an Italian boy was an utterly unworthy match for his daughter.

  Emilio inhaled deeply. “I love you too, Sarah.” If she was willing to take the risk, then so was he.

  Sarah kissed him again, this time with a passion and intensity beyond anything he had thought her capable of. Her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, pulling him closer to her and locking them together.

  And for just an instant, before he allowed himself to become completely lost in his passion, he wondered what he had just gotten himself into.

  Chapter 13: Mistrials and Tribulations

  CHAPTER 13

  MISTRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

  While Eschaton lectured Anubis on the stage, Jack peered around the conference room.

  This Hall of Paragons was essentially his home now, and even after spending a few weeks inside these thick granite walls, he had to admit that he still felt less comfortable inside their cold shelter than he had when he arrived.

  Soon after the events in the theater, Eschaton had called him up to the Hall of Paragons, telling him that his Blades would now be the main security force for the building. It would be their job to keep the peace as more and more would-be heroes (and villains) began to arrive.

  Once he might have argued, but this wasn’t the time for that. He had taken over the Sleuth’s old quarters and turned them into something that approximated a home.

  The old man had seriously eclectic tastes, but Jack could read, and he found himself whiling away the long, boring hours reading a large number of books.

  Some were titles that he was vaguely familiar with, including many translated classics from across the spectrum of history. It had been a long time since he had opened a copy of The Odyssey, and the first time he had ever considered it as an adult. He had also consumed a number of old Wilkie Collins novels, which he was surprised to discover on the dead Englishman’s shelves.

  It had taken him a good deal of time to get used to reading fiction again, and the made-up tales interested him even less now than they had when he was a boy. At least back then his head had been full of noble dreams, and the only men he had ever murdered were painted metal soldiers. Now that his experience of dying men was no longer an abstract idea, the battles that Homer described had taken on a very different tone.

  But fiction was not his only area of study. He had also taken to reading the old man’s journals, many of which the Sleuth had put together into edited volumes. They were typeset and bound—clearly intended for eventual publication after a retirement that would now never come.

  They were well written, if obviously embellished (and whitewashed). While Jack had only ever met the Sleuth face-to-face the once, during his time in the underworld he had heard enough stories of the Paragons to know that the Sleuth’s version of events often made the heroes appear far more reserved and honorable than any man actually could have been.

  Still, seeing the events of the man’s life committed to the written word made him wish that Hughes hadn’t done in the old duffer before he’d had a chance to have written about his exploits with Jack and the Blades. He certainly would have liked to have discovered exactly how the old man had escaped through the labyrinth, although in retrospect it was clear that he’d had Anubis’s help.

  He was rather wishing that he could be reading one of those journals now, instead of being forced to watch yet another round of Eschaton’s theatrics.

  Despite the gray man’s attempts, there was no real drama in what was happening on the stage in front of him. The entire event was nothing more than an execution, although one that might yield some mildly amusing results.

  But even with the transformation of the Industrialist’s ward into a man of glass, it was obvious that Eschaton hadn’t quite honed his transformation techniques—although he was clearly getting closer with each trial.

  If it wasn’t for the amount of fortified steam he needed, there would be nothing stopping him from turning any number of the eager idiots in the Hall into any variety of monsters and obscenities. But until they recovered the Automaton’s heart, Eschaton’s ability to start changing people wholesale was going to be limited by the dwindling reserves of steam hidden in the building.

  And that served Jack fine. Truth be told, he wasn’t eager to undergo Eschaton’s process any time soon. He rather liked just being an ordinary person, and with his finely honed marksmanship already giving him a definitive advantage over the average idiot, he couldn’t imagine what being purified would provide for him.

  The audience began to applaud and Jack turned back to look at Clements. The man was standing up and clapping like a giddy child. He had tried to hold back his contempt for the Southerner, but he was vile beyond imagining—motivated purely by fear and anger.

  He thought about the red-bearded boy that Clements had murdered, his body still cooling in the basement. He had been named Dirk, which Jack had enjoyed to no end.

  It had taken a better part of the week for the boy’s spirit to break. Every day, Jack had pulled him out of the little shack they had kept him in at the back of their cul-de-sac, and let Dirk try to attack him. Every day the boy lost.

  Jack proved over and over again that strength wasn’t the only attribute that mattered in a fight.

  Finally, after a week of their one-sided battles, Dirk had relented, and Jack had thrashed him anyway—an object lesson in the unfairness of life, and that he fully expected his men to win instead of playing by the rules.

  Once that was over, he’d trained him to be a Blade: hard, sharp, and deadly. The training he had given the boy was beginning to pay off. As he had expected, not only was Dirk loyal, he was stronger than the Ruffian, and as smart as a whip. If there had ever been a man he might have considered handing the gang over to, it would have been him.

  Now Dirk was gone: another victim of Clements’s uncontrollable nature. Jack didn’t consider himself a man of much sentiment, but he was beginning to think that it would
n’t be long before he’d need to find an excuse to deal with the issue of the White Knight in a more permanent way.

  The Shell . . . now, he was living proof of what worried Jack most. Eschaton constantly told the others that a world of purified men (and hopefully women, as well) would be one where everyone was equal. Jack had more than his fair share of doubts that would actually be the case. And was it even necessary?

  Despite the fact that the world was a mess, Jack had come to like it that way. He even liked his place in the pecking order: high enough on the scale of things to be living in comfort, but not so high that he needed to watch his back at every turn. What he didn’t like was the way Lord Eschaton’s philosophy seemed to be constantly intruding on what was quite a fine deal.

  And whether the plan succeeded or failed, at some point it would all come crashing down. Everything always did—eventually. That was the way of the world. Until then, Jack was more than content to enjoy his position on top of the world without the addition of fortified smoke.

  Jack was suddenly struck by a heavy wave of heat. For a moment he wondered if he was suddenly getting sick, but looking at the men around him, he could see that he wasn’t the only one who felt as if he’d be been placed in front of an open oven door.

  Nearby, the Bomb Lance pulled a threadbare handkerchief from his pocket and held it up against his thinning hair. It was hard not to notice how much Murphy seemed to have aged in the last few months. Perhaps they all had.

  Having descended to the stage, Eschaton had once again begun to pontificate, lecturing Anubis about his grand plans, and doing it in a way that was clearly designed as much for the audience’s understanding as it had been for his victim.

  Since coming to live in the Hall, Jack had more than enough time to hear Eschaton discuss his plans to fix the world in excruciating detail. He’d heard it often enough that by now it was all running together, although there were plenty of men who couldn’t seem to get enough of it.