Mission: Nutcracker

Chapter 10

10

Terminus, 18 December 1871

Fiona stepped in a puddle of something and cursed in words her mother would not have approved of as she extracted herself. When she looked up, she found she’d gone off the sidewalk and stood on a corner that at first seemed unfamiliar. She hadn’t been that lost in thought, had she? She looked around to get her bearings and realized she’d wandered into the airfield warehouse district, and with it being after lunch, the afternoon ships were flying in. She looked around, her senses prickling. Someone was watching her.

Fiona searched as best she could, but the edges of the bonnet kept her from being able to see as far as she would like, and she didn’t want to be obvious about her being lost. Coils. She shouldn’t have followed the mysterious figure, but she needed to find out where her father was. And it would make sense for the kidnappers to be somewhere near the airfields since the airship had taken them away.

The hiss of a blade being drawn made her whirl around, and there he was, his face under the hood of the cloak a rictus of a grin. No, a nutcracker mask. A face that could be removed and stowed in the pocket of his cloak after he committed whatever violence he wanted against her.

She backed away, wishing she’d stuck to the crowded streets. Now she recognized her stupidity—she’d been drawn into a trap. And soon she would join the many young women who had died in Terminus’s back alleys, her life and reputation lost.

But she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She pulled out her electric zap gun—named because of the sound—and flicked on the switch, which ignited a small coal and a simple battery of a wire between two magnets. It would take a few moments to charge—again, she should have thought better—but at least it was something. If nothing else, she could hold the wires and sling it.

“You think your little toy is going to help you?” The voice growled and grated along through the air between them. Curiosity nudged at the sharp edges of Fiona’s panic. Could the automatons talk? Or was this a man speaking through some sort of device to disguise his voice?

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Fiona said in her bravest tone. She lifted her chin and stood as straight as she could to give herself more strength behind her throw.

The creature—man?—machine?—laughed. “But I want to hurt you. Put dark bruises all over your pretty skin. Stick my—”

He flew backward. Fiona had discharged the zap gun, its wires stretched out ahead of her. But they were slack. She’d missed.

“There are some things no young lady needs to hear.”

Fiona wheeled around to see a young dark-haired woman armed with a pistol, from which she unscrewed a silencing tube.

“Well, he’s dead. If you don’t mind getting your pretty shoes dirty, you can search him to see if he’s carrying anything that will tell you why he targeted you specifically. Well, other than you wandering into somewhere you shouldn’t.”

Fiona had no intention to stand there and be insulted. But she also didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get a closer look at the automaton.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll stand guard and make sure no one bothers you. And if someone comes close, I’ll warn you.”

Fiona wanted to ask why she should trust the woman, but then again, the strange person had saved her life, or at least kept her from being raped.

“Are you sure it’s dead?” she asked.

The woman sighed, rolled her eyes, and walked over to the prone body on the ground. She gave it a hard kick. Fiona covered her mouth so she wouldn’t cry out, but the thing didn’t move or react.

“I think you’re safe. Now come on, you don’t have all day.”

Fiona nodded and tried not to stare at the woman’s trousers. She didn’t want to approach the dead body—she’d never seen a dead body before—but she didn’t want this strange and brave rescuer to think less of her.

Careful to step over and around the rivulets of blood on the ground, Fiona found a spot where her skirts and cloak wouldn’t trail in the muck, or at least not more than they already had, and, with hands trembling so hard she could barely grasp the edges of the mask, lifted it from the thing’s face. Was it a thing? No, the dead eyes of a young man stared up at her. He had a sneer, and she almost reeled back at the lascivious expression on his face. Instead, she dropped the mask back on his face, where it lay crooked and mocking her.

She had to sternly tell herself to pretend it was an automaton before she could force herself to touch it again. A quick search of his pockets didn’t reveal anything, but she noticed the buttons on his uniform. She couldn’t place why they looked odd.

“So they weren’t automatons,” Fiona murmured and stood. “But where did he come from?”

A stain on the man’s white trousers caught her attention. It shone green along the right cuff. “That looks like grass, but where is it still green this time of year?” All the lawns she knew of were brown, including the one surrounding the Tinkerer Hall.

“Got what you needed?” the strange woman asked. She leaned out of the alleyway and looked back and forth.

“Vinni!” The word made Fiona’s protector jump back into the alley. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Damn and triple damn,” the woman, who must be named Vinni, muttered. She turned to Fiona with a look of stark despair. “You owe me big, Girlie. Now get back out to the street and get yourself home.”

“Wait! Will you be all right?” Fiona walked over to the woman, who squeezed Fiona’s hand.

“I will be soon. Now shoo.” She stepped out into the street. “Cat, what do you mean, where have I been? I’ve been right here all along.”

Fiona pulled her bonnet tight around her head and slipped into the street, where she allowed the foot traffic to pull her along. Who was that strange woman? Worse—or curiouser—who was the young man, and why had he lured her into a trap? He’d definitely meant her harm.

Once she’d gone a few blocks, Fiona pressed her still-shaking hand to the pocket where she’d placed the zap gun, but she experienced her own jolt of nasty surprise when she found it missing. It must have tipped out while she’d been examining the body. But she couldn’t return. By the time she got there, the sheriff’s men would have found the man, or someone else would have. She had to hope that no one would be able to associate it to her, but she also knew she had a reputation for inventing and assembling such things.

She’d managed to escape from the erstwhile rapist—murderer, her mind added with a twist to her stomach—but what would Sheriff Blair do to her if he connected her to him? The chill along her spine had nothing to do with the breeze that flowed along the edge of the airfield and teased the small hairs on her neck.

Vinni watched the girl slip into the crowds and didn’t look away until she’d disappeared.

“Found a new toy?” Cat growled.

Vinni sighed. “No, just someone toying with something she shouldn’t. Did you pick up the signal again?”

Cat half-lidded her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Yes and no. It’s faint, like whatever it was is moving away.”

“Damn,” Vinni swore on the exhale of another sigh. “I suspect our attacker in the alley may have been the source.”

Cat glanced behind them and moved slightly closer to the alley until she nodded. “He practically reeks of aether residue.”

How Cat could tell, Vinni didn’t know, only that her peculiar talent had manifested in the neo-Pythagoreans. Vinni had thought for a few thrilling moments that Cat had gone on to follow a different trail. Something had told Vinni that there was trouble in the alley, and Vinni had the possible chance to escape. No such luck. Cat had found her again.

They walked back to their flat in silence, agreeing without saying to halt the search for the source of the spike in aether energy. They’d only arrived that morning, after all. Vinni loved flying by the stars, but she was ready for some sleep.

Once they’d returned, Cat went into another room to meditate while Vinni assembled a simple soup on the stove. Someone had been kind enough to leave supplies for them including vegetables that had long since been frozen out or buried by the winter weather in New England.

She’d just set the vegetable stew to simmer on the gas stove when a hand cupped her waist, and someone’s presence warmed her back. Acid rose to her mouth along with the fear that Uncle Dross had come down to finish what he’d tried to start.

“How long does the soup have?” Cat asked into Vinni’s hair.

Vinni spoke around the heartbeat that fluttered in her throat. “About half an hour of simmering.” She turned and found herself pinned to the counter. Don’t panic, don’t panic.

Cat brought her face closer to Vinni’s, and the air supply around her thinned.

The words Vinni wanted to hear didn’t come. She wanted Cat to beg forgiveness, but Cat simply closed the kiss.

Vinni’s lips tightened as the contents of her stomach—not much, admittedly—rose, and she lunged to the side, holding a hand over her mouth and trying not to retch.

Cat stepped back and folded her arms. “Is that how you feel about me now?”

Vinni straightened and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Not that anything had come up, but she couldn’t help the motion, or wanting to wipe the kiss away.

“You set me up. You sent me in there to Uncle Dross knowing what he wanted to do to me.” The time since they’d first had the conversation had only made her anger grow.

“He does it to all the women. And some of the boys. It’s part of the initiation into the full mysteries.” Again, a longer than usual string of words from Cat. “How do you think I can find the aether?”

“Because you were raped?” Vinni shook her head. “No gift is worth that.” And she’d also heard the self-justification in Cat’s tone. “How do you know that’s what did it? Would you have come into your talent anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Cat’s shoulders slumped. “But you haven’t come into any power, only the basics that they teach.”

What was Cat getting at? “What if I don’t want power?”

“As a foundling, you need to have some. Else the Goddess will destroy you.”

“She had her chance.” And had destroyed an evil man instead. Vinni wondered why the Goddess hadn’t done anything to punish Dross for what he did, had tried to do. But then, she didn’t understand divine logic or plans.

Again, she questioned why she’d been left in the countryside near the compound and who her parents really were. The curiosity around where she came from never sank out of her mind for long, especially not in Terminus. Being in the Southern States had brought little tickles of memory, but nothing she could put words to, only the preverbal impressions that a very young child or infant might have.

“You got lucky.” Cat poked a finger into Vinni’s chest and brought her back to the conversation. Vinni backed up.

“Or the Goddess decided I wasn’t worthy of her notice. And that’s how I like it. Lying low and not allowing trouble to find me.”

“Trouble certainly found you this afternoon with that young redhead.”

“We found her. She was following that man like we were.” Vinni admired the girl’s pluck, as stupid as it had been for her to follow him into that alley. She had met others who had that single-minded focus. Like Henry Davidson. She still felt badly about helping Paul Farrell escape. It would have been the prize to define Davidson’s career. But she’d had her orders, and she dared not oppose the neo-Pythagoreans and the Clockwork Guild.

Cat seemed to want to say more, but then shook her head. “The landlord brought a paper by while you were in here. You might want to see this.”

She grabbed a newspaper off the kitchen counter where she’d left it—how focused had Vinni been on her soup preparation?—and handed it over. The headline on the front page blared, “Tinkerers Kidnapped from Ball. Mysterious Airship Observed. Automatons Run Amok.”

Vinni raised her eyebrows. “Automatons?” She scanned the article. “Nutcracker automatons? Who would have come up with those?”

Cat shrugged. “Prussians?”

“They’re too busy torturing the French with reparations. Perhaps they’re trying to gain some sort of influence here. But why tinkerers?” All that inventiveness and brainpower in one place would be a good asset for someone, but tinkerers were notoriously secretive, at least with others outside their little circles. The ones she’d known, like Paul Farrell, preferred to work alone on their devices and inventions, only talking to others when they had something to show off. An active Guild like the one in Terminus seemed to be the exception rather than the rule.

“And the man you killed was dressed like one of the automatons in the article.” Vinni tapped a finger against her lips. “Perhaps they weren’t automatons after all, but someone wants to build an army of them. Hence why they’d want the tinkerers—they need their brains.”

Cat nodded. “And their technical skills.” She wiggled her fingers.

Vinni almost smiled. Cat had never excelled with delicate work, like that required for clockworks or other mechanical inventions. She preferred to smash things, not put them together.

“So now we have another mystery. Maybe. I bet if we find the source of the aether spikes, we’ll find the tinkerers.”

“Assuming no one interferes,” Cat growled.

“Right. Well, the girl left her little toy at the scene, and I didn’t grab it, so the authorities should be focused on her.”

“You think they’ll connect it to her?”

Vinni nodded. “Devices like that aren’t commonplace. She also had the curiosity of a tinkerer. I’m guessing that she has a reputation for delicate little inventions like that.”

“Good point.”

A delicious smell filled the air, and Vinni turned to the soup. “Dinner’s ready.”

But when she approached the stove, her shoulders stiffened. For a few moments, it had seemed like before—the two of them discussing their missions. But nothing would ever be as it was before. She needed to get out of there, but would she get another opportunity?

If fate didn’t give her one, she’d make it. Meanwhile, she wished she’d thought to ask the girl why she’d gotten herself in the predicament in the alley. Were they investigating the same case?