Hearts of Smoke and Steam (28 page)

“Is everything all right, my dear?” Vincent asked. “I'm sure that we must be boring you with all our talk of gears and alloys.”

“No, it's fine, really.” She tugged Emilio's arm and glared at him. They were in trouble, and there was no time to lose. “I just realized we're late for another appointment.” She tried to smile. “It's about what's in the box.”

Vincent did not look like he believed her.

Emilio stepped forward. “Sarah and I will talk. Maybe a minute?”

“Well yes, of course.” Vincent rose up from his stool, and took the opportunity for a stretch before reaching into his coveralls and giving his backside a scratch. “Take your time.”

“We need to
go
, Emilio,” Sarah said, “Now.” She was trying to mute the panic in her voice.

“One minute, Vincent,” he said, and took Sarah's arm.

As they walked toward the door, she tried to move faster, but she felt herself being slowed by Emilio's grip.

The moment they were out the door, she pulled herself free, then stumbled down the stairs, barely managing to stop herself from tumbling to the ground.

Regaining her bearings, she walked quickly across the yard until she stood underneath a half-formed mechanical ape, then stopped to wait for Emilio.

“What's wrong with you?” he said as caught up to her.

“That man! Vincent! He's the Steamhammer!”

“Who?”

“A villain! That thing on the wall, it was his costume.”

Emilio smirked. “You crazy.”

Sarah shook her head. “Crazy?” Who was this man she was talking to? “My father
fought
him. He used the chisels on that suit to crack the foundation of the Hall of Paragons.”

“No. He's no villain. I know him,
Sarah.
”

Why was he being so stubborn about this? What did he have to lose? “Emilio, you have to trust me. He was buried alive underneath the Hall!” But then how was it he was still alive? Just thinking about it made her dizzy. “But the costume—and he's the right age. And all these machines…” If only she could call on the Paragons to make sure. “He's one of them, one of the Children of Eschaton!” How could they possibly give him the heart now?

Emilio put a hand on her shoulder. “Breathe, Bella.”

“Don't touch me!” Sarah pulled herself away. “We need to go get that gear back from him!”

Emilio smiled at her. “Sarah, what can he do with one gear?” He held up the lacquered box. “I need his machines to fix this.”

Sarah couldn't believe what she was hearing. The Steamhammer was probably slipping into his suit right now. “And what will we tell him the heart
does
, Emilio? That it's a governor?”

“We think of something. Is okay.”

“No, it's not at all okay.” Sarah laughed derisively and rolled her eyes in a way that was clearly not intended to be flattering. “Emilio, you're brilliant and wonderful in so many ways, but if you think that any man who wears a costume, and then constructs a menagerie of mechanical creatures is harmless, I really don't think you've been paying much attention to the world that you're living in.”

“I try to help you.” He gave her a look that was as sad as it was confused.

“I know you are, Emilio.”

“You don't trust me.”

“That's not it at all, I just…”

Emilio stepped closer. “Maybe he is Steam…man. But I was a villain.”

Sarah looked down at her shoes, trying to avoid his eyes. He clearly wasn't playing fair. “I know. But it's different.”

She felt his finger curling under her chin, and lifting up her head. “I think is not.”

When she looked up into his eyes, there was something like a blush that she felt travel over her whole body. “No, Emilio!” she said, backing away from him. “You won't charm me into trusting him.”

“Trust me.”

“And what if you're wrong?”

Emilio stopped for a second and put his hands to his sides. “I don't have words.”

Sarah was getting tired of this excuse. It seemed too easy, and too handy. “And yet your sister has so many.”

“Okay. Okay.” He took a deep breath and pointed at the box in his hand. “I can't fix, but he can. If we no give him the heart, we have nothing.”

“But if he's one of the Children? What if Eschaton gets the heart?”

“I work with him for months. If he was villain, he is not villain anymore.” Emilio pointed at the animals in the garden. “He make all this for the show. You see? I make all this
with
him.”

Against her better judgment, she was beginning to see Emilio's point. Sarah closed her eyes. “I don't know.”

Emilio pointed at her head. “You think all the time from here.” He moved his hand until it was just over her heart. “You need to think from here some time.” Sarah felt a thrill go up her. Why couldn't he be like this all the time?

“Okay, Emilio,” she said softly.

“Okay?”

“I can't fight everybody. I need someone to help us.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Sarah. He will help, you'll see.”

She tried to smile back, but it felt as if someone had frozen her lips in place. For a moment she was lost, and she looked up to the statue next to her.

The rusted, eyeless features of the face of “the rejected” seemed almost lost and mournful. The corroded beast was, in its way, far more expressive than Tom's emotionless mask had ever been. She could see what looked like tearstains where rainwater had dripped down its red face.

“'I will do everything in my power to prove that your faith in me is not misplaced,'” she said in a half whisper.

“What did you say?”

Sarah held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

Emilio looked puzzled. “Give what to you?”

She gestured at the box in his hand. “The heart.”

He lifted it up. “What's wrong, Sarah?”

She reached out and slipped the handle from his hand into hers. “Follow me, and be quiet.”

“I don't…” he said, struggling for the words.

“You don't have to.”

In a quick trot, Sarah marched back across the courtyard to the door of the workshop. Her shoes banged hard on the wooden planks as she walked across the floor.

Vincent was still sitting at his workbench, calmly examining the gear. When she was only a few feet away, he spun around on his stool to greet her. “Miss Standish, I'm glad to see that you've come back.”

The look on Sarah's face was so tight that it was almost expressionless as she stared into Vincent's eyes. After a few seconds of holding his gaze, she placed the case down onto the table in front of him and opened the brass latches with a snap and waited for Emilio to catch up.

By the time he had reached them, the smile had drained from Vincent's face as well.

“You know who I am, don't you?” she asked.

“I don't understand. Are you someone other than who you told me you were?”

Sarah couldn't quite tell if he was mocking her, and she spoke slower and more loudly this time, enunciating each word.
“You know who I really am, don't you?”

“What are you doing?” Emilio asked her. “What should he know?”

Vincent glanced up at Emilio and then let out a chuckle. “It's all right, my boy.” He looked back to her. “Yes, Miss Stanton, I'm well aware of who you really are. It wasn't until Emilio called you Sarah that I was positive that you were the Industrialist's daughter. Your likeness is fairly unique, and striking.”

Sarah wasn't sure whether she should be flattered or insulted. “And you're the Steamhammer?”

His smile broadened. “I was—once upon a time, and long, long ago.”

“How did you survive being crushed underneath the Hall?”

Vincent smiled at that. “My much-exaggerated death, you mean?” His expression was almost the definition of a devilish grin. “Your father, with his usual ruthless efficiency, did indeed collapse a wall onto me. It left me with both legs broken, trapped under the earth. But I still had my jackhammers and a small pocket of air. I tunneled through the wall of the Hall, and tumbled to the floor of Darby's lab. The old man took pity on me. He offered to help me, but only if I never put on the costume again.”

Vincent looked up, and Sarah could see the beginnings of tears forming in his eyes. “He saved my life, and I kept my promise.” He nodded and swept his hand in front of him. “All of this, I owe to that man. When I said the show was a homage to Sir Dennis and his great creations, I wasn't lying.”

Sarah nodded curtly, and then turned to Emilio. “So you see, he did have secrets.”

“We all keep secrets, Miss Stanton.” Vincent said, recapturing her attention. “For instance, I'm sure I'm safe in assuming your father doesn't have any idea of either where you are, or the kind of company you're keeping these days.” He gave her a wink that almost made her blush. “And I'd certainly love to hear the story of how you and this very talented boy met each other.”

“Another time,” she replied, angry at how easily he could manipulate her.

The room was silent for a long moment, and then Vincent continued. “So, Miss Stanton, what's in the box, or do you want me to guess?”

“I have a question first.”

“Please, my dear, ask away.”

“Can I
trust
you, Mr. Smith?”

“I would think so. You already know all my deepest, darkest secrets.”

Sarah stared at the showman for a minute, trying to see if there was any way she could truly decide whether to trust him beyond Emilio's promises.

Bringing Tom back without help was hopeless, and somehow the fact that he had admitted his crimes to her made it feel as if she at least had something to threaten him with. “Yes or no?”

“Yes, my dear, of course. While Vincent Smith continues to live on, the Steamhammer did die that day. I'm not a villain any longer.”

His story certainly sounded plausible; extracting a promise from a villain to repent seemed like the kind of thing Darby
would
do. She wondered what the old man would have done if he had refused, and decided it was better not to know. And if Darby trusted him, then…“All right, Mr. Smith, you can open the box.”

Vincent turned around and put his hands on either side of the front of the wooden case. “Ladies and gentlemen…” he said in a mocking whisper. The box split in half along the hinge at the back, revealing the heart sitting on a velvet cushion. “This…” he paused for a moment, clearly unable to believe what he was seeing, “this is from the Automaton, isn't it?” he said in hushed tones.

Sarah nodded. She felt nauseous. The fact that he had recognized it so quickly only made her more unsure whether she had done the right thing.

“May I?” he asked, reaching out a hand.

“I suppose so,” Sarah replied. It was too late to go back now.

“Darby's handiwork.” He slowly caressed the heart with his fingertips in an almost lewd way. “How does it work?”

“We don't know,” Emilio said, finally deciding to join the conversation. “We need to fix first,
then
we know.”

“I see.” Vincent stared at it like it was something he could eat, his eyes narrowing. Sarah only wished there was some way of uncovering what thoughts were
truly
going through the man's head.

She supposed that the Sleuth might have been able to tell. There were more than a few people who had referred to Wickham as the “mind reader,” although Sarah knew it was more of a matter of expert observation than clairvoyance. Neither was a skill she possessed.

“Emilio will stay with you until tomorrow, and if you can't fix the heart by then, I'll find someone else.” She grabbed the Italian's hand. “That will be okay, won't it, Emilio?”

“Okay.” He held her hand loosely, but at least he was going along with it. Emilio was clearly unhappy about having been volunteered to work with Vincent, but she couldn't think of any other way to protect the heart.

“Tomorrow?” Vincent turned away from the heart and looked up at her.

“If that's too soon…”

“No, no, my dear.” Vincent grabbed Emilio by the other arm. “You and me, working together again! What do you think of
that
, my boy!”

Emilio nodded. “Is good.” But he didn't sound excited.

He turned to Sarah. “We'll get it done, and then you'll come to the show and see
my
Colossus in action! You can tell me how it compares to the real thing. And you can bring his beautiful firebrand of a sister along as well. What was her name?”

“Viola,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Viola, yes. She almost gutted me the last time I met her. Very exciting! And the tickets will, of course, be free for the both of you.” Sarah saw his eyes wander back to the heart. “I promise you a most incredible show.”

M
easured from end to end, Manhattan was small—three miles wide from the Hudson to the East River, and eleven miles long, as measured from the Bronx down to the Upper Bay. But the hard numbers denied a fundamental truth about the island. The lower half was packed with construction. It formed a capricious maze of tenements, mansions, feed lots, factories, warehouses, and a thousand other structures crushed together so tightly that there was nowhere to go but up. From block to block, street to street, and day to day, it rose higher and higher into the sky, packing more and more humanity onto the same few square miles of ground.

Anubis saw this city mostly from the rooftops. As he leapt the gap from one to the next, he could be leaping from wealth to crushing poverty in a single bound. And as he flew, suspended hundreds of feet above the ground only by his strength and speed, the black-clad man reminded himself for the thousandth time that the greatest differences were often separated by the smallest distances. He had witnessed socialites gorging themselves in heated dining rooms while just on the other side of a brick wall, starving children were freezing to death. He'd stopped men beating their wives while wedding bells rang in a nearby church, and avenged murders with babies being born in apartments above and below. Good and evil lived side by side in the city, ignored by the innocent until it was their turn.

As a man, it had been his inability to turn a blind eye to those injustices that had driven him to become Anubis in the first place. But once he had put on a costume and began travelling across the rooftops, he had discovered that no single man could end all the suffering. If he was going to change the world, he would need to figure out how, and that was what had led him to Eschaton…

“Too much time on my hands,” he grunted to himself as he sprinted across the rooftop.

And the fool he was tracking was making his work so easy that Anubis caught himself resisting the urge to let the man wander out of his sight just to see how long it would take to find him again.

His target's name was Chadwick Prescott, and the fool seemed to be under the impression that his whereabouts were unknown to his enemies simply because he had spent three days hiding out in a building on the East Side. Sitting on the fringe of a poor neighborhood, it appeared from the outside to be a run-down tenement, but the inside was well-appointed, and was used by numerous young gentlemen of means as a secret meeting place where a man with a reputation could carry out his illicit activities unseen.

Besides the manager, an old fellow who kept the place clean and locked it up, the only other visitor since Prescott's arrival had been a young woman (either a mistress or a well-paid whore—he hadn't managed to get a close enough look to find out) who brought him food and gave him companionship on a regular basis.

The building was well protected from the front and sides, but Anubis had found it easy enough to enter from the rooftop.

The private apartments were located on the top floor, and when Anubis had found Prescott, the man had been sleeping soundly with a large, unfinished glass of gin on the bed table nearby.

Anubis had quietly and thoroughly searched the building while the man lay unconscious, but the particular object he was looking for had been nowhere to be found, and it wasn't something that could be easily hidden away.

After that, it had simply become a matter of waiting the man out. To that end, Anubis had constructed a small shelter on the rooftop. The structure did a fair job of keeping out the cold and, more importantly, it kept anyone from noticing that a man clad in black leather was sitting inside of it. As he expected, it had only taken a few days before Prescott's need for stimulation had overcome his desire for safety and he had decided to venture outside.

Anubis had tracked him patiently since then, but Prescott was proving to be far better at being dull than he was at staying hidden.

Once free from the house, Prescott quickly established a routine—not only did he visit exactly the same locations at exactly the same time every day, he put on the same outfit, made the same mumbled greetings to the news vendor when he bought the morning paper, and ate the exact same meal— coffee, eggs, and biscuits—at the same café.

Besides the visits from the girl, he spent the rest of his leisure time reading penny dreadfuls along with an occasional attempt at other texts that, from the locations of the bookmarks, he seemed unable to follow beyond the first chapter. Prescott revealed himself to be a man of spectacularly limited imagination and drive.

And yet, having spent so much of his time peering into the lives of so many inhabitants of the city, Anubis could hardly fault the man for it. With a few spectacular exceptions, it seemed that the inhabitants of New York were content to while away their lives in quiet desperation, claiming they did much more, but only managing to raise their eyes upward just in time to catch a glimpse of whatever hurtling doom would end their existence. Humanity, he had come to understand, was not by and large capable of striving for greatness.

And as a child of privilege, Prescott had the added disability of not needing to actually work to stay alive. But to his credit, and probably to his own surprise as much as anyone else's, when he had been offered an opportunity to don a costume and change the course of his life, he had decided to take it. It had been a plan based on subterfuge and lies, and yet Anubis considered Prescott's decision to embrace it an almost commendable action.

But once it had met with its inevitable failure, the spoiled rich boy returned to form—unwilling to gracefully accept defeat and return to his old life, Prescott had tried to steal another chance.

Anubis imagined that his target was probably very pleased with himself, believing that by managing to remain unmolested by the Children of Eschaton for a week, he had somehow managed to successfully escape altogether. But he was as blindly ignorant to the true nature of the men who were tracking him as he was to his own.

The head of Anubis's staff whistled through the air, landing with a clank on the next rooftop as its spines extended outwards. Pulling it tight, he leapt, swinging between rooftops before climbing up the side of the building to pull himself up and over.

Most of the Children would have immediately resorted to violence in order to expedite the retrieval of the costume from Prescott, but Anubis considered patience to be one of the greatest weapons in his arsenal. And it was a skill that he had improved over time, with the breadth of his knowledge about human behavior growing with every person he tracked.

When Prescott cut through Washington Square Park and into Greenwich Village, Anubis was tempted to try to take the shorter route, dropping to the ground, and following him through the shadows.

If the stakes weren't so high, he might have tried it. But he had already spent far too much time waiting for Prescott to lead him to the costume, and he didn't want to scare the man away now that he finally seemed to be getting closer to his goal.

Besides, there were other considerations; Eschaton had ordered them to retrieve the suit days ago, and Jack Knife had told Anubis that the gray man had asked for him personally. Anubis knew Jack well enough to know that he would have gutted Prescott like a fish the first chance he got. Clearly Eschaton was giving the man a second chance, but even his patience would run out eventually.

Anubis breathed a sigh of relief under his mask when Prescott turned and walked down a small lane. If the man was intentionally walking into a dead end, he must be near his destination.

Unlike the uptown neighborhoods that seemed to be changing day by day, Greenwich Village had remained relatively stable in the configuration of its streets. The crooked maze was familiar enough that Anubis barely had to concern himself about his route as he maneuvered himself to the other side of the block.

He reached the rooftop across the alley from Prescott in time to see the man standing by a door to a large brick building. The man nervously looked to his left and then to his right, clearly trying to discover if anyone had followed him.

Anubis shook his head and smiled grimly under his mask. Taller and taller buildings were being built every day, to the point where people had begun to refer to them as “skyscrapers,” and yet New Yorkers seemed to have made it a point of pride to never look up.

From the outside, the building was utterly nondescript—a faceless storehouse—exactly the kind of place that uptown gentlemen like Mr. Prescott would never be expected to frequent.

His target disappeared from sight, pulling the door closed behind him with a slam loud enough to be heard from Anubis's third-story perch.

Anubis paused for a second and pulled out the jackal mask from a pouch at his waist, slipping it down over his cowl.

Since the events with the Sleuth a few months ago, he had decided to streamline the outfit in a way that would give his head a little more mobility, enabling him to remove the animal face entirely when he needed to travel light and lean.

That hadn't been the only lesson from that incident, of course. Ultimately his attempt to spare the old man's life had been a futile gesture—Wickham had died in the Darby house only a few days later. And even if the information he had given to the old man had managed to set back Eschaton's plans a bit, it had led to the death of the old man, the destruction of the Automaton, and had placed all the Children under greater suspicion.

Suitably masked for confrontation, he hooked the top of his staff to the edge of the roof and lowered himself down on the spring-loaded mechanism.

Reaching the ground, he scampered across the alley and came to the door. The sign was weather-beaten, but the words “H&R Lott Import & Export” could still be read under the chipped paint. He shook his head at the poorly hidden pun.

Right after the war, the moneyed classes of New York had practiced their depravities almost entirely in the open, but a wave of moral temperance had descended over the city, forcing the gentry to put on a show of piety while their peccadilloes and perversions were driven underground. It was one way the masses could strike back at the powerful, and when one of them was caught by the papers, the wealthy would quickly sacrifice their closest friends to save their own skins. It kept the papers running, and the secrets of the powerful were now deeply buried.

Shame was an emotion that ran deep, and Anubis had noticed that people often felt bitter suffering was often more deserved than outrageous success. Hubris, however, was easy to come by, and even easier to sell. Even a man who took it upon himself to protect the downtrodden might find that he was considered a villain by both the oppressor and the oppressed he tried to save.

Anubis collapsed his staff and stored it away, unscrewing it into three equal sections before fitting it snugly into a set of leather loops on the back of his harness.

Both hands now freed, he pulled out a skeleton key from the pocket underneath his loincloth, and slid it into the door lock.

In sharp contrast to the rest of the door, the bolt was clearly expensive and new, intended to be the best money could buy. He studied the device for only a moment before attacking it. After determining that the imposing appearance of the brass lock was far more for the peace of mind of the purchaser than to actually vex an attacker, it took only a few jiggles of the instrument before the lock gave up its feeble attempt to deny him entrance. It fell open as smoothly and quietly as it would have for someone with a genuine key.

Having seen the well-appointed bolt-hole where Prescott had spent his last few days, Anubis was surprised to discover that the offices of H&R Lott were, at least on the ground floor, those of a legitimate business. A secretary's desk and blotter stood next to the front door, out in front of a number of other desks. On each one was a spindle bursting with stacks of impaled papers, waiting for their accounting.

Closing the front door quietly behind him, Anubis crossed the room quickly and silently, taking care to avoid knocking anything over.

The door at the far end of the office had been left wide open, and Anubis walked through it into the main area of a large warehouse. Piles of wooden boxes were stacked everywhere, straw packing strewn across the floor. The boxes had been clearly labeled both “Fragile” and “China.”

A few large pieces of art were standing out in the open, including a number of vases, some of them taller than he was. “Someone has quite a passion for curios from the Orient,” he mumbled to himself under his mask.

Seeing no sign of where Prescott had gone, he crouched down and sat quietly for a second, gathering his concentration. The silence was broken by a loud, regular creaking reverberating from the ceiling high above.

Looking for a way up, Anubis saw a steep wooden staircase at the end of the dock. He began to climb it, carefully placing a single foot on the first step. As he slowly transferred his weight onto it, the wood groaned in response. Anubis stepped onto the next highest stair and tried again. This one seemed less alarmed by his presence, and he was able to put his full weight onto it.