The Brass Giant

by Brooke Johnson

  Emmerich frowned. “Petra—­”

  “Don’t you dare, Emmerich Goss,” she said, glaring at him. “Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do. You started this. You made me believe that we could make a difference, that we could stop this war—­together. So I plan to, in any way that I can.”

  Julian Goss laughed, a gleam in his eye. “If you had half her spirit, Emmerich, you might have been a son I could be proud of,” he scoffed. “Instead, I have a son without ambition, dithering about with petty machinery and impudent shop girls.”

  Petra raised her chin, leveling a stare at him as she sucked in a deep breath, her heart pounding in her ears. “Emmerich is twice the man you are, with ambitions far more worthy than the greedy desires of a man who would put the world to war for his own financial gain.”

  “Money?” said Mr. Goss, a smile lifting his lips. “Is that what you think this is about?”

  Petra faltered and glanced at Emmerich, who merely shook his head.

  “It is true, Miss Wade—­I have the backing of hundreds of engineers, dozens of politicians, and some of the most prolific manufacturers in both Britain and Europe, and I own dozens of factories across the world. There is no doubt that war will make me a rich man. But more important than the money, this war will be the fuel behind the greatest age of scientific advancement the world has ever known.” He gathered himself to his full height and squared his shoulders, a sinister smile on his lips. “When this war buries the world in ashes, science will be the foundation of a new age, advancing faster than we can now imagine. We will rise from the war stronger than ever, with the technology to change the very nature of the world. We will break down society, break down the rigid traditions of a bygone era, and rebuild. We will come to peace and establish a new world order, a regime of scientific greatness, with the Guild and the might of the British Empire at its center.” He grinned, his eyes alive with a manic fury. “Don’t you see? We will create a better world.”

  Petra stared at Emmerich’s father, her heart pounding in her throat. “This is madness.”

  “No, madness is an affliction of the fallen,” he said, drawing away. “I am on the rise.”

  “You would destroy the world to claim your power over it,” she said quietly.

  “It has already begun, Miss Wade. You and my son may have thought you had a chance of sabotaging this vision of mine, but you have failed.” He leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. “However, I am a forgiving man. I am willing to overlook the actions you have taken against the Guild—­in exchange for your ser­vices. You can be a part of this new world. All you have to do is agree to my terms.”

  Petra scoffed. “Forget it.”

  “Do not be so quick to reject my offer, Miss Wade. My son has already agreed.”

  She glanced at Emmerich. “You didn’t.”

  Emmerich refused to look at her.

  “Yes,” said his father. “I offered him the chance to work for the Guild as a liaison between us and our foreign allies who also wish to profit from this endeavor. He refused at first, of course, but I persuaded him in the end. My son will go on to work for the future Continental Edison Company in Paris, and there, he will serve as a Guild informant and engineer on the cusp of the next generation of science. It’s what he’s always wanted.”

  Petra’s heart sank, a trembling cold stealing over her. She shook her head, unwilling to believe that Emmerich would agree to work for the Guild knowing what they planned to do. She stared at him, her chest aching. “Tell me it’s not true,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

  “Petra, I’m sorry,” he said, finally stepping toward her. “I had no choice.”

  She pushed herself to her feet and shoved him hard in the chest, tears burning in her eyes. “Of course you have a choice!” She curled her fingers into fists, wanting nothing more than to hit him. “Why would you agree? What possible reason could you have—­”

  “You, Petra,” he said quietly, exhaling a heavy sigh. “For your life.”

  She faltered. “What?”

  Emmerich took her hands into his. “Petra, if I refuse, you die. Those are his terms. That is why I agreed.” He pulled her close and held her there, less than a breath apart. Her body tensed as she searched his face, not willing to believe him. “I love you,” he whispered. “And I would do anything to keep you safe, to keep you alive, even if it meant watching the rest of the world burn.”

  She stared into his blazing eyes. “You can’t mean that.”

  He gently raised his hand to her face and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered at her cheek, and he regarded her with a calculating gaze, his brows pulled together in deep concentration. Petra willed herself not to lean into his touch, trying to read the meaning behind his eyes—­it was not the look of a man who had given up.

  “Emmerich—­”

  Without warning he pulled her into a hug and held her close, his arms wrapped tightly around her. “Don’t give up just yet,” he whispered, his voice barely more than a breath. “This isn’t over.”

  Mr. Goss wrenched them apart, glaring at his son, but Emmerich ignored him, his eyes focused entirely on her, a blaze of defiance in his gaze.

  “Petra,” he said, “the Guild council has convicted you of your crimes. If you do not agree to work for my father, you will hang. Do you understand that?” He frowned, pressing his lips firmly together. “Don’t be so quick to throw your life away. You have so much to live for, so much you still can do.” He stepped a bit closer, but his father pushed him back, keeping them apart. She could see the fire in his eyes as he strained not to fight back. “Petra, you always wanted to be a Guild engineer. Now is your chance.”

  Mr. Goss narrowed his eyes and then turned his gaze on Petra. “Listen to my son, Miss Wade. Working for the Guild, you could build unimaginable machines. You could help us change the world through science. If you agree, I promise you a position within the Guild and full tuition paid for the University, to use in whatever study you wish. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Petra bowed her head to hide her racing thoughts. Emmerich still wanted her to fight. He hadn’t given up. Her heart thundered in her ears as her gaze slipped to the open cabinet drawer a few feet away, a pistol glinting in the electric light. She inhaled a deep breath and raised her chin.

  “Yes,” she whispered, eyes wide as she focused on the imposing figure of Julian Goss, her skin tingling as she clenched her hands into fists. “I do want a better future, but not like this.”

  She dropped to the floor and grabbed the pistol from the drawer, cocking the hammer as she came to her feet, the gun aimed at Emmerich’s father.

  “Put that down, you stupid girl,” he growled.

  “I’ll shoot you,” she said, her voice wavering. “I swear it.” The gun trembled in her shaking hands, but she steeled herself against the fear, her heart beating a murderous drum against her ribs. She had to do this. It was the only way.

  “If you kill me, you’ll only be a murderer, as well as a traitor and a spy,” he spat.

  “Maybe, but with you gone, the conspiracy ends. There will be no one to keep me from telling the Guild of your plans. They’ll stop the factories from building the automatons. I can stop this war before it begins.”

  Emmerich slowly inched across the office, reaching toward something on a nearby shelf.

  “You think this ends with me?” Emmerich’s father laughed. “You have no idea how deep this goes, Miss Wade.” He shook his head. “Accept that you are beaten. You’ve lost.”

  She glanced at Emmerich, silently pleading for him to help, to do something, and with her attention shifted, Mr. Goss seized his chance and stepped forward.

  Petra squeezed the trigger.

  The gunshot rang through the room, followed by a clanging echo as the bullet sank into the metal wall behind the wooden paneling.
Emmerich’s father slapped his hand to his chest, but no blood seeped through his shirt. Petra stared at the gun, her fingers shaking as smoke rose from the barrel, her breath catching in her throat.

  Then a flash of metal streaked behind Mr. Goss and collided with his head. The man collapsed to the floor, and his son threw the makeshift cudgel he was holding to the floor—­a gas grips. He clutched his arm below the shoulder and grimaced.

  “Dammit, Petra,” Emmerich hissed. “You didn’t have to shoot. I never would have let him hurt you.” He winced again, and blood seeped through his fingers, soaking his shirtsleeve.

  Petra dropped the gun and rushed to his side. “You’re hurt.”

  “Of course I’m bloody well hurt. You shot me.”

  “I didn’t mean—­”

  “Better me than him,” he said with a grunt of pain. Carefully, he untucked his shirt and ripped a long strip off the bottom, holding the cloth out for Petra. “Tie this around my arm.”

  She obeyed, her shaking fingers wrapping the torn fabric around his wound. As she tied the ends of the cloth into a knot, he winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—­”

  “Petra,” he said, his voice tense. “I know. It’s all right.” Releasing a heavy sigh, he gently brushed her hair from her face and kissed her on the cheek. “Now come on. We need to go before he wakes up.”

  “Where?”

  “Just trust me.”

  SHE AND EMMERICH left his father unconscious in the floor of Lyndon’s office and made for the lift at the end of the hall, the only one still working properly. But instead of taking the lift, Emmerich veered right, taking her down the stairs.

  “I tried to send word for you this morning,” he said, gripping her hand as they descended the stairs. “But my father intercepted the message, locking me up in that closet when I confronted him. I think he knew we were in touch. He knew you’d come for me.” He exhaled sharply. “I played right into his hands.”

  “Did you really agree to work for the Guild, after everything that’s happened?”

  Emmerich stopped midway down the second flight of stairs, his shoulders tense. “I did.”

  “But why?”

  He glanced up at her. “I meant what I said, Petra—­all of it. You may not like it, but I did what I did to protect you. Can’t you understand that?”

  “I don’t need you to protect me.”

  He started to say something but stopped himself, shaking his head.

  “What?” she asked. “What were you going to say?”

  Still shaking his head, he chuckled, a small smile spreading across his lips. “Only that you are the most stubborn, most infuriating, most impossible person I have ever met, and if you had any sense, you might realize that you don’t have to do everything by yourself.” He looked into her eyes, his smile fading. “Petra, there are ­people who love you, ­people who want to keep you safe. Don’t you understand that? I know you don’t need protecting, I know you don’t need me, but you don’t have to reject me every time I try to help you. My father would have had you killed if I didn’t agree. You think I want to help him? I just want to do my part to keep you safe.”

  Petra blinked, not knowing what to say.

  He slipped his hands into her hair, wincing as he moved his injured arm. “Petra, I love you, and I couldn’t bear it if I lost you. Let me be selfish and pretend that I can protect you from the dangers of the world. At least let me try. All right?”

  She nodded, and before she could say anything in reply, he kissed her.

  When their lips parted, he rested his forehead against hers and entwined his hands through hers. “Just let me love you. That’s all I ask.”

  They descended the rest of the stairs in silence, Emmerich’s hand tightly gripping hers. They emerged from the stairwell on the second floor, in the first upper workshop. The room was dark, the lights off. Emmerich silently guided her between the desks, toward the stairs that led into the lobby. The shadowy skeletons of incomplete machines flanked their path like sentinels, long metallic fingers reaching toward them. The golden glow of the lobby beckoned them forward, but as they neared the top of the staircase, a shadow rose to meet them, eyes flashing.

  Emmerich stopped and let go of Petra’s hand, dipping into a respectable bow. “Vice-­Chancellor.”

  The shadowy figure turned, and Petra saw that it was indeed Vice-­Chancellor Lyndon. The light from the lobby reflected off his glasses and gave his dark blond hair a gilded sheen. He reached out and shook Emmerich’s hand.

  “What happened to you?” asked Lyndon, a hint of concern in his gravelly voice. His gaze wandered from Petra’s busted lip to the bloody cloth wrapped around Emmerich’s left arm.

  “My father,” said Emmerich.

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the floor of your office. We don’t have much time. Petra—­” He glanced back at her and grimaced. “—­she pulled a gun on him, and I may have hit him with a gas grips.”

  Lyndon blinked. “He’s not . . .”

  “No, but he’s not going to be pleased with either of us when he wakes.”

  Petra backed away from the two of them, her eyes narrowed. “Emmerich . . . why are we meeting Lyndon? What’s going on?”

  Emmerich turned toward her. “That’s what I was trying to tell you—­Vice-­Chancellor Lyndon is on our side. We were wrong about him. He didn’t know of my father’s plot, not until it was too late to stop him, and once he realized what was going on, he did all he could to sabotage my father’s plans. There is a reason we did not find any evidence against him. I began to suspect as much when I found most of the orders signed in my father’s name, but it wasn’t until this morning that I truly understood that my father was the one leading the conspiracy, not Lyndon. The vice-­chancellor has been helping us ever since the trial.”

  “But he tried to have me killed. He told you to accuse me of being a spy.”

  “I know what it must look like, Petra, but he saved you. If not for him, the council would have had your head. He delayed your sentence so that Solomon and I could help you escape.”

  Petra frowned, suddenly making the connection, and she glanced at Lyndon. “That man, the one who’s been watching me all these months—­he’s yours, isn’t he?”

  Lyndon nodded. “After we arrested you and I realized the truth, I made it my goal to help you in any way that I could, but I could not assist you directly, not if I wanted to keep my involvement in your life secret from Julian. I only hope that you can forgive me for not seeing what he was planning. I was a fool for believing his lies.”

  “Tell her how you figured out the truth,” said Emmerich, his voice soft.

  Lyndon released a heavy sigh and frowned, his forehead creasing with the effort. “It was your pocket watch,” he said, raising his gaze on Petra, and she felt her heart seize up in her chest. “The moment I saw it, after you were arrested, I realized who you really were.” The vice-­chancellor’s eyes seemed to shimmer in the light cast from the lobby. “You’re Adelaide’s daughter.”

  Petra inhaled a shaky breath. “You know?”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod, a warm smile spreading across his face. “You look like her, you know. I should have seen it sooner.”

  She blinked, revising her understanding of everything that had happened, of Lyndon, of everything he and Emmerich were saying. She frowned at him. “But you saw the watch before that . . . the day I tried to apply for the University. You picked up my watch and stared at it like you had seen it before. Why did you not realize then?”

  “You must understand,” he said. “It’s been well over thirteen years since I last saw that watch, and in that moment, when I saw you in the lobby, with your eyes so like hers, and a watch that seemed to appear out of memory, suddenly sitting in my hand—­I hardly believed it to be true.” He sighed. “And then you were gone, and it was n
othing more than a daydream. But when I saw it again and held it in my hand, I remembered.” Lyndon clasped his hands over his round belly. “When I realized the truth, I knew Julian had lied to me about you being a spy, about everything, and I did what I could to help you. I am only sorry that I could not do more.” He frowned then, regarding her carefully. “And I am sorry that we are only now meeting properly.” Lyndon held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Chroniker.”

  Petra felt tears burning at her eyes, but she dared not cry, not in front of the vice-­chancellor of the University. She inhaled a deep breath and shook his hand. “Likewise, sir.”

  She stepped away then, her heart racing, and Emmerich came to her side.

  “Petra, we have a plan—­a plan to stop my father and this meaningless war.”

  “How? You said that the orders have already gone through, that the Empire is building an army of our automatons. What can we do?”

  Lyndon answered. “I suggest we accept Julian’s demands and wait until we have the evidence we need to bring him down.”

  “But if we wait—­”

  “Petra, it’s the only option we have.”

  “Emmerich is right,” said Lyndon. “His father will have you both imprisoned should you refuse. Miss Wade, he will have you executed, and I cannot say he would not do the same to his son. Our best chance at stopping this war from happening is by accepting his terms and working against him from within the Guild.”

  Emmerich took her by the hand. “Petra, agree to do this. We can stop my father—­together. If Lyndon is willing to help us, we have a chance.”

  “I leave the choice to you, Miss Wade,” said Lyndon. “I can get you into the University, perhaps even into the Guild, but until we have the resources to do what is necessary to end this conspiracy, to end this war, we will have to wait. We have time. Wars don’t happen overnight, despite common belief.”

  “And in the meantime?” she asked.

  Emmerich pressed his lips together. “Until we see an opportunity to act, we must pretend to follow my father’s plans.”