Of Steel and Steam: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  Turning my back on him, I bunched my curls up into a sagged bun somewhere at the back of my head, then ran my rough hands over my face.

  A stray piece of straw-blond hair tangled around my finger but I whacked it back, out of the way. I had half a mind and enough frustration to chop my hair off.

  Boy, Marybelle would have a fit if I ever did.

  Lock tried to coax a better energy from me but it wasn’t much use. I’d been foul the whole day and I didn’t think my mood would lighten until after the chaos around me was done and over.

  “The more royals in Crooked Grove the better,” he reasoned. “It’s when we sell the most products. All those who want to compete will want weapons, won’t they? After the registry tomorrow morn, the chosen ones—” he choked on his own haughty tone. “—will flock to this stall, mark my wise words. Fish in a barrel, Rose.”

  “I never liked fish much.”

  Defeated, Lock huffed and slumped on the workbench. Then his eyes found the stall and his brows lifted.

  I followed his gaze to … a customer.

  The breath was hit out of me at the sight of him.

  He was a traveller, of that I was certain. Because Crooked Grove had nobody as beautiful in the muddy lanes or dipped houses.

  No, he came from somewhere else, where all were pretty and draped in riches.

  The fine suit he wore told of the fancier towns in Western Hearts—maybe even close to the heart of Hearts, where the gentry and royals and wealthy lived behind glass walls.

  The customer stood at the stall, violet irises shining beneath lashes so thick that they gave shadowy smears around his eyes. And even from beneath the bowler hat he wore, I saw the dangerous gleam of his pale skin, so white that I thought of marble. The cut of his cheekbones drew my thoughts to the burn of hot metal, freshly fashioned into a blade.

  He tipped back his hat, lifting the veil of shadows from his pale face. “I hope you can offer better products than cooking pots and hammers,” he said.

  My gaze was glued straight to the dark burn of his eyes; deep pools of purple. My thoughts turned to the sky, but not the morn of swirls and brightness—the darkness of twilight.

  In the pocket of my belt-apron, my fingers twisted together like tangled twine. At least I took the other one off—this one only hung from the hips, but the other wasn’t terribly unlike wearing a stained and charred sheet.

  I asked, “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  He ran his slender, gloved fingers over the handle of a recently made kettle. “Daggers. I’m not so fond of swords. Their weight is more inconvenient than their worth.”

  “Hang on a moment,” I said and ducked under the stall to my boxes and bags of weapons.

  As I fumbled with the leather case, Lock ducked down to join me. His warm chocolate eyes were all-knowing as he studied my pink face.

  “Well, I never thought I’d see the day, Rose.”

  Even though he whispered, I shushed him with a flourish of the hand, cheeks hotter than flames. His taunts only made my flushing worse.

  Lock sniggered and pinched my cheek.

  “A blushing rose,” he teased. “Tell me, is it those eyes of his? Do they make you want to write poetry? Oh, lavenders in the garden, how dry and crumbly you are—ow!”

  A cruel smile twisted my lips and I gripped the blade case in my hands. The same one I’d used to whack him with.

  I sprung to my feet and touched my gaze back to the shopper. From the twinkle of amusement in his eyes, I suspected he might have overheard.

  I fumbled with the case. “So—uh … a dagger.”

  Lock popped up beside me and unfastened the leather strap with expert fingers. I thanked him with an elbow to his side.

  Lock took the hint and busied himself with the kettle that whistled a sharp song behind us.

  “Any preference?” I whipped the leather case open.

  Silvery rays shone up at us from a row of carefully crafted blades with hilts wearing painted spirals and glinting shapes. Not to gloat, but I was the best blacksmith in all of Eastern Hearts.

  “Those are very fine blades. Precisely the sort I’ll need for the tournament.” He reached out to touch the steel dagger with a blue gem winking from the hilt. But he stopped himself and glanced up at me. “May I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Pride tugged at my insides and stiffened my spine. The way he inspected the daggers wasn’t so unlike how I had when I’d first made them. Each touch was a caress, every turn was gentle and delicate, and the gaze he gave them was filled with admiration.

  I hid a smile by biting down on my sucked in lips.

  As he studied the blades, I studied him. It wasn’t often a man caught my eye, especially not in Crooked Grove where teeth were stained yellow by chewing haccah, and all the men stunk of cheap karvka and dampness.

  But he had teeth whiter than pearls, and a smell of caramel and bitter coffee. Beneath his cheekbones, there were shadows that seemed to be carved there, as though he clenched his jaw too much as a child and now those impressions were forever stuck to his face. Not unsightly. Black silk hair was combed to the side, cropped before even a stray strand could touch the nape of his neck.

  The improper urge to touch his hair was nearly impossible to resist. Never had I seen someone so cuttingly beautiful before. We didn’t look like that in Crooked Grove.

  Not even Holly…

  It was the blue-stone dagger he settled on. “What will it cost me?”

  Your lips.

  I cleared my throat, and said, “Two shillings.”

  “You undercharge.” He fixed the bowler hat back into place, casting the shadow over his strikingly pale face again. “I’ll take it.”

  I wrapped the dagger in brown paper. The rustle of the paper crinkled like a melody, a song of the birds, a siren of the sea. Each time the rustle sounded, it meant someone admired my work, the daggers I poured my days, sometimes weeks, into.

  He dropped two shillings onto the bench and, oddly, a small package. Its pink bow gave it away as a cake-bite from Catherine’s Bakery across the Square.

  “A tip,” he said, his voice distant and cool. “For your fine work.”

  He took the dagger and swept away from the stall.

  For a moment, I watched him go.

  Each step farther away from my stall, the grip on my gut loosened a bit more. When he disappeared into the crowd, I stuffed the shillings into my apron and advanced on Lock.

  He poured teas for us both, but paused to offer me his handkerchief.

  I frowned at it.

  “For your drool,” he explained, a tilt to his grin. “Better mop it up quick before you slip.”

  With a laugh, I swatted his hand away. “And to think I’ll never see his lavender eyes again.” I pushed my glasses back up to the brow of my nose and sighed dramatically. “Oh, Lock, my one true love has abandoned me!”

  Lock’s smile, crooked like the village, flashed up at me.

  He bowed over the stool beside the embers and dipped a biscuit into my tea. He didn’t fancy biscuit crumbs in his own tea. He called them ‘floaties’ and they were to him what pruned fingers were to me—the stuff that made crawling skin and shivers.

  “You confuse love with lust,” he said. “Why are you so sure you won’t see him again?”

  “The queen’s pin on his waistcoat.” I flopped myself down on the rickety stool. “He’s an instructor in the tournament. So he’ll be out of our little village the minute the registers are done with.”

  “Can’t blame him for that,” muttered Lock.

  A silence passed between us.

  All that could be heard was the hullaballoo of the Square.

  A light breeze slithered through the village and brought with it the shout of a Knave and the flavours of the bakery—salted bread, pumpkin cobblers, almond bites.

  I downed the rest of my tea before I snatched the small package from the stall. Beneath all the ribbons and wrappings
was a lemon cheesecake, shrunk to the size of a sugar-cube.

  I popped the cake into my mouth.

  Flavour exploded on my tongue; the zest of lemon, the tang of orange, and the silky smoothness of cream.

  Lock broke the peaceful silence. “You could always follow him to the tournament.”

  The usual bite of his teasing was gone from his tone. Lock, for once, almost sounded serious. He put his teacup down and looked up at me from beneath his short lashes.

  I recognised the swirls in his brown eyes, a stirring pot of hot chocolate.

  The look of scheming.

  I snorted. “Or I could just roll with him before he goes.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. The tickle in my stomach agreed.

  “We could go,” Lock urged. “To the tournament.”

  My eyes narrowed in on him. “What are you babbling on about?”

  We didn’t do the tournaments.

  Every year, we travelled to the nearest village where the Registers settled, we gave them our information so that they knew who was still alive in the small villages plotted around the outskirts of Hearts, and then we went home. The Register coming to us that year changed nothing.

  “I’m tired of letting life pass me by.” Lock couldn’t look at me. He stared at the throngs of strangers shoving their ways through the Square. “I’m enlisting.”

  “You’re lying,” I said, because I couldn’t find any other words within me.

  Gaze distant, he shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

  It took me a moment to scramble my thoughts together. And I went from staring at him, to gawking at a stranger in Lock’s body.

  “You’re a fool,” I spat, anger rising up in me.

  Lock smiled tightly. “The best of us are.”

  I turned my back on him, hands shaking at my sides. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t talk another word about it.

  Most of all, I couldn’t lose another sibling.

  Chapter 2

  For the rest of the day, I only spoke a handful of words to Lock.

  It was silly to think that my silent treatment would change his mind, but I didn’t know how else to do it. If luck was on my side, he would wake up in the morning and laugh at his own foolishness.

  Though I wanted Lock to declare himself a fool, I couldn’t betray him. So that evening, after we packed up the stall and went back to White Cottage, I uttered not a word about his plan to my parents.

  My mum, Marybelle, would lock him up in the basement if she even caught a whiff of his plan to enlist.

  We ate near the fireplace at the round table.

  Holly’s seat sat empty between Lock and I, blanketed in a thick layer of dust. None of us looked at the hollow chair.

  Marybelle stirred sugar-cubes into her soup. “What time does the registry open tomorrow?”

  With a mouthful of boiled cabbage, I looked up at her. Secrets burned my tongue. I swallowed them down with a gulp.

  Lock lounged in his wobbly wooden chair and prodded at his dinner plate. “At first light. We’d best leave before that. I don’t fancy getting caught in the hullaballoo all day. The sooner we arrive, the quicker we’ll be back.”

  I glared at him.

  He lied so effortlessly to them. The deceit rolled from his tongue the way only truth should have.

  A shadow passed through his eyes as he met my gaze—a silent plea. Biting my tongue, I ran my fingers through my rough curls and wrestled them into a hair string.

  My dad, Augustus, pointed his fork at me in warning. “Don’t play with your hair at the table, Shoshanna.”

  Shoshanna.

  When my parents use my first name, I know they’re in a testy mood. And though a simmering pit of anger was brewing in my belly, I wasn’t keen on a battle with my parents on the eve of Holly’s death anniversary …

  A thought tugged my lips into a slant. I side-eyed Lock. Was the anniversary of Holly’s suicide the reason he was so quick to run off into the dangerous tournament? On the same day, no less. What could soon become both the anniversary of Holly’s death and Lock’s betrayal.

  Augustus turned his fork on Lock. “Run the stall until the Knaves roll out of the village tomorrow. We’ll sell a good number of blades until then.”

  “No.” Marybelle let her spoon clang to the bowl. “Come straight home after midday. Sell what you can in the morning, but tomorrow is about Holly. We spend the day together as a family.”

  Silence rolled over the table.

  It hadn’t been long since Holly’s suicide but we’d already formed a tradition. On the anniversary, we made her favourite foods and drank cinnamon milk in the herb garden.

  Sometimes, Marybelle would cut the tradition short when the tears came. One thing we never did together was visit the Forbidden Well. Neither of my parents had been to the well since it happened. Lock and I were usually sent in their place with flowers and prayers.

  Before they could ask me to do it, I pushed from my chair and gathered the empty plates. Lock stood and helped.

  But Marybelle was onto me.

  “While you’re down in the Square tomorrow, would you mind taking some flowers to the Forbidden Well?” she said. “I would do it myself, but I have meetings all morning with traders, and the auditor with the Royal Guard has asked to run over some of our taxes.”

  I cast my eyes down at the plates. “Sure, mum.”

  Marybelle patted my hand. “And be mindful in the village tomorrow. Reports of the Heart-Breakers have spread to the Upside-Down Forest up shore. One can never be too careful with the Knaves in the village.”

  Knaves were to Heart-Breakers what blood was to sharks. Royal guards and rebels, destined for an eternity of war.

  In answer, I gave a disinterested hum and swept out of the living room, arms cradling a pile of plates and dirty cutlery.

  Lock shadowed me into the kitchen, pots and bowls balanced on his arms. He curved his neck and tried to snatch the last smoked-carrot with his teeth.

  When the rickety door swung shut with a creak, he dumped the dishes on the bench and stretched out his arms.

  “Do you think the reports are true this time?” he asked through a yawn.

  I dropped the plates into the basin. Soap spuds splashed back at me. “Are they ever true?”

  “Maybe sometimes,” he offered. “Loads of people get lost in the Upside-Down Forest. It would make a great hideout for a bunch of wanted rebels.”

  I didn’t care about the Heart-Breakers or whether or not they still existed, or even if they were hiding in nearby forests.

  They had already tried their hand at overthrowing the Queen of Hearts, they had failed on the very soil of Crooked Grove decades ago, and now they were mere ghost stories that flittered through bored villages.

  What I cared about was Lock and his deceit.

  “You lied to them,” I said. “And you’ve made a liar out of me.”

  “I didn’t force your hand, Rose. It was your choice to stay silent.”

  I advanced on the bench between us and slammed my hands down.

  My voice shivered with the same fury that twisted my face into a sneer. “Maybe I misheard you, Lock. Maybe I have a build-up of earwax, or an earwig has made its home in my head, but it sounded—just for a moment—that you might be putting some of your blame on me.”

  Lock chewed the last of the carrots for a moment, his brow crinkling, until he swallowed with a hard gulp.

  “You’re right,” he said. “An earwig has definitely invaded your ear canals. You should have that seen to at once.”

  My lashes lowered dangerously, fringing my ashen eyes.

  “Forgive me for wanting more out of life,” said Lock with a shrug. “Do you want to be a blacksmith for the rest of your life? Marry someone because you rolled a few times and wound up with a cake in the oven? Wilt in an old cold cottage that always smells of sea-salt and cattle?”

  No. I didn’t want that at all. I wanted more out of life.

  Not
as much as Lock craved, but I wanted to read a book without fear of being discovered by one of the queen’s moles and having my head lopped off for hoarding banned literature.

  I wanted to meet men like the customer from the stall, the kind of men who stole your breath and heart in one look, and danced with you like they wanted nothing more. Not the drunken men who passed out in the lanes near the tavern, didn’t come home to their families until dawn, and tried to roll with any girl in the village within eyesight.

  But what I wanted stopped mattering the day Holly threw herself down the Forbidden Well.

  Lock reached across the bench and took my hand.

  “I know the service your parents have done for me,” he said gently. “After my parents died, yours took me in. They’ve raised me like I’m their own son, taught me skills that will carry me through the burden of an almost-life. But, however selfish, I want more.” His brows bunched in the middle, offering me his best pleading face. “When I win this tournament, my new duties will take me beyond the glass walls. And I’m taking all of you with me. My family.”

  That is what we were—family. Lock and I might not have been born of the same blood, but he was my brother in his own right. Since I was a child, he was in our family. I only ever knew him as that. Family.

  With a tight pull to my lips, I shake my head. “They won’t go with you. Not to beyond the glass walls, where she lives in all her ugliness. Why move closer to the heart of her queendom?”

  “The Queen of Hearts is only cruel to those in the villages, not to those who live within the walls. If we move beyond the glass, we’ll be champions. We can live in a grand house with servants and be invited to court events and—” His face lit up, startled and excited. “You can make swords for the gentry!”

  I peeled my hand from his. “The stuff of dreams.”

  “Holly’s dreams, you mean.”

  I cringed.

  Shimmers of excitement danced in his chestnut eyes. “Isn’t that the right way to mourn her? To bring to life what she always dreamt of doing? This is what she wanted for all of us. Let’s complete her final dream, her dying wish. Let’s enlist together.”

  Using Holly against me was a low trick. Low, but effective.