The Brass Giant

by Brooke Johnson

  “I did not ask to build a war machine!” she said, jumping to her feet. “You can’t lay this responsibility on my shoulders, Emmerich.”

  “I understand if you’re scared, but—­”

  “I am not scared,” she said, glaring at him with a fierce determination to hide the lie. She was deathly afraid—­afraid of being caught, afraid of dying, afraid of losing Emmerich. “Just for the sake of argument, say we succeed. Say we destroy all traces of the automaton. What will happen then? If the Guild wants war, they’ll have war. Someone else will build another automaton, a greater, more devastating war machine, and then what? Will we be responsible for those too?” She stepped toward him, gently laying her hand on his arm. “Emmerich, be realistic. What can we possibly hope to accomplish?”

  He narrowed his eyes and stared into the empty fireplace, his gaze calculating—­the same look he got when he was in deep concentration, trying to figure out some mathematical hurdle in a design. “You’re right,” he said finally, glancing up at her. “If we want to end this—­truly end it—­we have to do more than destroy the automaton and its designs. We have to strike at the heart of the operation. We have to bring down the Guild.”

  Petra laughed—­a cold, hollow laugh. “Because that will be easier.”

  He stared at her seriously. “Of course it won’t be easy. Nothing worth doing ever is.”

  “You’re mad.”

  Emmerich shrugged. “Maybe I am, but Petra . . .” He grabbed her by the shoulders and stared deep into her eyes, his own eyes afire with a feverish ambition. “If we succeed, if we root out the corruption within the Guild, we could rebuild. You could take your rightful place as chancellor of the University and the Guild, claim your name, your mother’s legacy, the legacy of her father and grandfather—­the legacy of your family. Don’t you understand? You could change everything, Petra. You could change the world.”

  Petra blinked at him, her heart racing. “You truly believe that?”

  “I do,” he said more softly, lifting his hands to her face. “More than anything.”

  “But if we failed . . .”

  “Then we fail. But if we succeed, we could make a difference, Petra. We could prevent a war. We could build a new city—­together.”

  She searched his eyes, the sincerity of his voice ringing through every word. “You really think we could do it? You think we could stop a war, stop the Guild, just the two of us?”

  He clasped her hands in his. “It’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

  What was the worst that could happen? They would fail. Nothing would change. But if they succeeded, maybe they could make a difference. Maybe they could prevent a war. If Emmerich thought they could take down the Guild, then maybe it was possible; he didn’t believe in impossible things.

  She felt a smile lift the corners of her mouth. “All right,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

  He squeezed her hands. “Wait here.”

  “But—­”

  “Petra, it’s too dangerous for you to be out. If you left here again, if you were caught—­”

  “I can’t just stay holed up in this house, waiting for you to come back. If you want me to help you overthrow the Guild, then let me come with you.”

  Emmerich shook his head. “The entire police force—­blue coats and coppers alike—­are out scouring the city, looking for you. I won’t risk you getting caught again. I won’t risk them shipping you off to London for high treason. Stay,” he said gently, cupping her face in his hands. “Give me time to arrange something, a way for us to be together. Trust me, Petra. I don’t want to be apart any more than you do.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “Please.”

  She closed her eyes, breathing him in. “All right,” she whispered.

  Emmerich pulled her into a kiss, leaving a fire dancing on her lips as he wrapped his arms around her and held her close to his chest. She felt his heart beat against her cheek, a steady rhythm of life. She didn’t want to let go. She curled her fingers into his hair, breathing in his rich, metallic scent, trying not to cry.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he whispered, smoothing her hair. He kissed her forehead and rested his lips there, his breath tickling her hair. When finally he stepped back, he caressed the line of her jaw with his fingers, his eyes soft. “Everything will turn out fine. I promise.”

  Petra raised her hand to his and pressed it against her cheek. “I trust you.”

  He focused on the curvature of her mouth as his thumb traced the edge of her lips. “Be safe, Petra Wade.” His hand dropped away from her face and he stepped back toward the door, his gaze lingering on her as if he feared he would never see her again. Too soon he reached the front door, stepped outside, and was gone.

  PETRA SLEPT FITFULLY, thoughts of conspiracies and nooses circling through her dreams. She woke in the late morning, more exhausted than when she went to sleep. Someone knocked loudly on the door.

  She heard Norris pad to the door and open it. “You?” he said.

  Petra had nearly forgotten—­Emmerich was supposed to meet her. She combed her hair and quickly braided it over her shoulder, but when she walked into the living room, she didn’t see Emmerich at the door. Instead, a tall gangly man stood outside, wearing shabby clothes and sporting a short, dirty beard—­her mysterious stalker.

  Norris leaned against the doorway. “Are you sure?”

  “Aye. I’d say you got five minutes, maybe ten.” The man tipped his hat. “Best be off.”

  Norris cursed and eased the door shut, running both hands through his pale blond hair as he turned around. He spotted Petra standing in the doorway to the bedroom and dropped his hands to his sides, a pained look on his face.

  She stepped forward. “Norris, what’s going on?”

  He clenched his jaw and exhaled a sharp breath. “Tolly snitched on us. The coppers know where you are.” He grabbed his coat. “Get dressed. We need to leave. Now.”

  NORRIS PEERED OUT of the alleyway and waved Petra forward. “It’s clear. No bobbies, love.”

  Yet.

  She would give almost anything to have rain. The clouds above the city were murky, gray, and swirling, but not a drop of rain fell from the sky, not even a light sprinkle. She looked up and down the street and then turned to Norris. “Who was that man that came to the door?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. No one knows his name or where he’s from. He just appears and disappears, knows everything going on at any given time. Eyes and ears of the fourth quadrant, he likes to say.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he said, checking around the next corner. “But if he was going to betray us, he already would have, if that’s what you mean.”

  They crept toward Medlock, sticking to the alleys and side streets, eventually coming to the alley just opposite the pawnshop. It was hard to see beyond the front glass, but the shop appeared to be empty, no bobbies or coppers lurking about. She and Norris stole across the street and slipped into the back alley behind the shop, trying to stay out of sight. She felt like a regular criminal, sneaking about, hiding from the law and passersby.

  When she came to the back door, she found it locked.

  Norris slipped up to the door. “Move over, love,” he said, pulling two pins out of his sleeve cuffs. He quickly dispatched the lock, and Petra turned the handle and crept inside.

  Before Norris could follow, she held her hand out to stop him. “I need you to go to 119 Farringdon Crescent. Speak with Emmerich Goss—­or Kristiane, the housekeeper. Let one of them know that I’m here at the shop.”

  Norris arched an eyebrow. “Is he that ‘friend’ of yours?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Do this for me, please.”

  He sighed. “All right. But you owe me. Remember that.” He tipped his hat with a charism
atic grin and turned down the alley. “See you in a bit, love.”

  Chapter 16

  THE BACK ROOM of the pawnshop looked like it always had, littered with boxes of tickers that needed to be repaired, shelves stuffed full of documentation, and pawned items that had gone unclaimed. The shop smelled the same—­dusty and metallic. But it didn’t feel the same. Petra once felt as if she belonged there, as if it was her home, but now she was a stranger, an intruder.

  She crept toward the door that separated the back room and the main shop, where she found Mr. Stricket sitting behind the desk, humming to himself as he pored over pawn stubs and receipts. Beyond her sight, she heard the familiar sound of broom bristles scratching against the floor. He had hired someone else to do her work since her arrest. She wondered if the person had taken her place as his apprentice as well.

  Petra softly cleared her throat, and Mr. Stricket started, dropping a stack of receipts to the floor.

  “What is it, sir?” said his helper, a boy by the sound of his voice.

  “Nothing, Colin. Finish sweeping up, if you will.”

  Mr. Stricket bent down on his old creaky knees and picked up the receipts. Petra knelt next to the doorway. She would have helped him, but she didn’t want to attract attention from the boy. He might not take so kindly to a criminal in the shop. As Mr. Stricket gathered the receipts and stood, he gestured for the shop boy to come up to the desk. “Colin, my boy, would you run a correspondence to post for me?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The broom handle clattered against the wall, and the boy’s footsteps neared the counter. Petra shrank into the shadow of a tower of boxes.

  “I haven’t any stamps, so you will have to purchase a set.” Mr. Stricket fished out a few shillings from his pocket. He took a parts order and slipped it into a marked envelope. “Afterward, go on and head home. You’ve worked enough today.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stricket.”

  The boy exited the shop, the little doorbell tinkling long after the door had closed.

  Mr. Stricket lowered his glasses and let them hang by the chain around his neck, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You can come out now, my dear.”

  Petra stepped out from the back room, wringing her hands. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I don’t have anywhere else to go. Is it all right if I hide out here for a bit? I’ll be out of your way soon enough.”

  “Of course you can stay,” he said. “But why are you here? Has something happened?”

  “Tolly has gone to the police, and I couldn’t stay where I was.”

  Mr. Stricket clicked his tongue. “Foolish boy.” He sighed. “I heard why they arrested you. What nonsense.” He shook his head, frowning. “Well, you’ll be safe here for now. The police came around a few days ago, but when there was no sign of you, they went back to their usual business. If they come looking again, I’ll put them off.” He gestured toward the back room. “In fact, since you’re here, I have something I need your help with, an old cuckoo clock I can’t seem to fix. You have better eyes than I do, and poor Colin holds a screwdriver like he’s going to kill the machine, not fix it.”

  Petra followed Mr. Stricket into the back room, not feeling so misplaced anymore. She could almost believe nothing had changed, that she was merely spending another evening repairing tickers with Mr. Stricket. She would give almost anything for it to be true, to be concerned with nothing more important than fixing a clock. Now, she felt as if the future of the world was on her shoulders.

  She sat down at the worktable and began repairing the clock. In minutes, she had replaced the two warped gears and reassembled the movement. As Mr. Stricket returned the box of gears and springs to the clock case, a pang of regret twisted her heart. She wished she could stay here the rest of the night and come back every night after, as she had done for so many years, just forget about the problems of the world and fix clocks for the rest of her life.

  Before she agreed to help Emmerich Goss, she had been simple shop girl Petra Wade. Now, she was Petra Chroniker—­war machine builder, traitor, spy, and heiress.

  Things had changed.

  Mr. Stricket fastened the movement to the inside of the clock and adjusted the minute hand to the proper time. “I am grateful for the help, my dear,” he said, setting the clock aside. “These old hands don’t work as well as they used to, and poor Colin just doesn’t have the aptitude for it.”

  “Sorry I haven’t been around much lately.”

  He shook his head. “No, no. Don’t apologize. You’ve been busy.” He stood up from his chair and fetched a small box from the top shelf above the worktable. “Now, there was something else I wanted to show you while I have you here. You recall asking me about the ornamentation on the front of your pocket watch, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said, her heart suddenly racing in her throat.

  “I remember now where I had seen it before. The design of the letter is unique to the Chroniker family crest. It’s been so long since I last saw it, I’d nearly forgotten,” he said, holding the box atop his palm. “It’s interesting that you would have a pocket watch of the same design.”

  Petra gravitated toward the tiny ring box. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  She took the box into her hand and flipped the hinged lid back with a crisp pop. Within gleamed a familiar ring, the same ring her mother had been wearing the day she died. It was a man’s ring, thick-­banded and clunky, and yet it had looked so elegant on her mother’s fingers.

  She removed the ring from its box with trembling fingers and lifted it into the light, noticing hairline cracks in the gold plating, too uniform to be from wear. Where a stone should have been, the ring was ornamented with a two-­headed raven, its wings at rest and an elaborate C engraved into a shield across its chest. A torch rose behind the bird, the flame a marquise garnet, and in place of the raven’s eyes gleamed tiny diamonds.

  Encircling the raven were the words: mit meinen geist erstelle ich das unmögliche.

  “It’s German,” said Mr. Stricket, flipping the magnifying lenses over his spectacles. He leaned over her shoulder and pointed to the words engraved into the gold. “ ‘With my mind, I create the impossible’—­the Chroniker family motto. This here is an heirloom of our founders, and it should have passed on to the next Chroniker after the lady, but instead it ended up here. I’ve kept it all this time. Never tried to sell it,” he said wistfully. “Something like this is too precious to put a price on, a true artifact of this city’s history.”

  To Petra, it was worth more than anything else in the world, the last piece of her mother’s legacy. She cautiously took the ring and slid it onto her right middle finger, the same place where her mother had worn it, but the band was much too large. The ring banged against her knuckle.

  Disappointed, she moved to slide it off her finger and return it to the velvet-­lined box, but as she touched the sides of the band, the raven’s wings twitched. The feathers ruffled, and in tiny increments the wings rose into a position of full flight, the band slowly tightening around Petra’s finger. She raised the ring to her ear, and sure enough, she heard the brassy ticking of a clockwork movement inside. In just a matter of seconds, the ring fit perfectly around her finger. Then the raven’s wings returned to their original position, and the ticking within stopped.

  She couldn’t help but grin, a swell of familial pride rising within her.

  If only she hadn’t lost the pocket watch and the screwdriver to the Guild. She wanted to hold onto the ring, to keep it, but she couldn’t take it from Mr. Stricket, not without telling him the truth. At least she could take comfort in the fact that Mr. Stricket would keep the ring safe. Because of him, some small part of her mother, of her family’s legacy, still survived.

  “And if I’m not mistaken . . .” continued Mr. Stricket, examining the ring through the many magnifying glasses over
his spectacles. “The C upon your watch is identical to this ornamentation, is it not? Shall we have a look to compare?”

  Petra’s heart sank. “I—­I don’t have it with me,” she said. “The Guild—­when I was arrested, they took my things, including the watch.”

  “I see,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Fascinating, isn’t it? That you would have a watch with the Chroniker family crest. Are you sure you don’t know how you came by it?”

  She glanced at him, her mentor and greatest supporter. She could tell him the truth. He might even believe her. “Well,” she said, her heartbeat quickening. “About that . . . I—­”

  There came a knock on the alley door, and Mr. Stricket hurriedly gestured her into the workroom and closed the door behind her, concealing her from view. Petra held her breath and waited, listening as Mr. Stricket crossed the back room and opened the door to the alley.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you Mr. Stricket?” asked a familiar voice.

  Petra relaxed against the door, exhaling a relieved sigh.

  “That would be me, yes,” answered Mr. Stricket.

  “I don’t know if you know of me, sir, but I’m Emmerich Goss, a friend of Petra’s—­of Miss Wade’s. I’ve come to take her somewhere safe. I wasn’t followed.”

  Petra cracked open the workroom door to find Emmerich standing in the doorway. He smiled when he saw her. “It’s all right, Mr. Stricket,” she said. “He’s a friend.”

  “I suppose I do recall seeing him hanging about the shop some weeks ago,” he said, a smile lifting his lips. “Always disappeared at the end of your shift.”

  Petra blushed.

  “I am sorry that we haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting, sir,” said Emmerich. “It is an honor to meet the man who taught such a fine engineer.”

  It was Mr. Stricket’s turn to redden. “She has an innate talent for it. I merely gave her the opportunity to learn.”