Mechanica (23 page)

I strapped on Mother’s goggles and stoked the furnace, telling myself that if I worked quickly enough, I still might get some sleep that night.

The Steps began preparing for the ball at dawn, and of course they needed me to dress them, make them breakfast, and otherwise coddle them before they finally left.

They were a sorry sight indeed that morning, and all from wanting to look their best. Chastity had been starving herself for weeks, and it showed: her skin was dry and pallid, her joints knobby. Dark shadows had taken up residence under her eyes. She was fashionably slender, but her vanished curves had suited her better.

“Try an egg,” I pleaded, knowing I’d never hear the end of it if she actually passed out. I just wanted them to leave, so I could start my own preparations for the Exposition. “I hear they’re good for the complexion.”

She shot me a disgruntled look. “And what’s wrong with my complexion, Mechanica?”

“Nothing, I—” I looked away; I didn’t want to start anything today. “I just wanted to help.”

Piety rolled her eyes. “Little enough help you are,” she sneered.

Of course, just minutes later, she had me sew a third layer of padding into the bust of her gown. She swore me to secrecy, just as she had with every gown I’d padded over the last few years.

Personally, I thought Piety’s false chest looked as strange as Chastity’s strained thinness—but I knew better than to say as much, especially when they were as high-strung and snappish as they were today. So I remained silent and smiling as I curled their hair, powdered their faces, and straightened their bustles.

“You’re cheerful today,” murmured Stepmother, pursing her lips as I did up the many buttons on her cream-colored gloves, humming Caro’s music-box tune as I worked. “I suppose you think you’re getting out of today’s chores, what with our going to the ball.”

Actually, I had thought as much. When Stepmother smirked at me, my visions of getting ready for the Exposition all evening faded away. I thanked my own blind luck that I’d stayed up so late preparing for it last night.

“The fireplaces have been awfully dingy lately, don’t you think, girls?”

Her daughters nodded wanly, and that cold half smile never left Stepmother’s face. “They will all be clean by our return.”

She spoke as if I weren’t even there, as if the simple fact of her saying the words would make the fireplaces clean themselves (and in fact, that was close to the truth, though she didn’t know how; Mr. Candery’s jar of chimney powder was still far from depleted).

In the past, Stepmother’s methods had worked: I had never dared to find out exactly how much I could neglect my chores before I’d be thrown out in the street, and as I had told Fin and Caro, I couldn’t see the point in leaving Father’s house only to become a scullery maid again somewhere else.

But after the Exposition, everything would be different. I hoped to gain a commission from Lord Alming, my first knitting machine customer, or another rich patron—enough to rent a studio of my own, perhaps—and then I would start saving. Eventually—I didn’t like to think of how many years and years it might take—I might have enough money to buy back Father’s estate from the Steps. They would never call me Mechanica again.

I was surprised by how fond I’d become of the name. It had a certain cadence, a clicking rhythm that reminded me of gears turning. I wondered when I’d come to like it so, and recalled my dream of Jules. It had ceased to be the Steps’ nickname for me and had become his. Even the Steps’ “Nick” had lost much of its sting—after all, Fin called me that too, and smiled when he said it. Thinking of him was getting more and more confusing, and I couldn’t tell anymore whether seeing him at the Exposition, as he’d told me I would, was something I looked forward to or dreaded.

I hadn’t seen him since our kiss, so I was left to speculate about his feelings and my own. But my work—building Jules and his carriage—had helped distract me, and even making beads reminded me that there were other things in life besides handsome young men with kind smiles and soft lips.

The Steps finally left just after tea, as they hoped to be among the first to add the Heir to their dance cards—never mind that the ball didn’t start until nine. I was thankful for their eagerness, however, because it meant I had all the more time to prepare for the Exposition.

First, I went to the cellar to check on my shoes. The glass had been cooling for hours now, but I still wasn’t sure if they’d be ready in time.

When I took them from their place on my drafting table, however, they were as cold, hard, and shiny as ice. I slipped them on, and then came the real test: I wiggled my toes and flexed my feet, waiting to hear a crack.

The shoes held. I took a slow, careful step, trying not to think about glass splinters slicing through my skin.

The gears that connected the three sections of the shoe—toe, instep, and heel—rotated smoothly and silently, and I found I could flex my feet almost as much as I could have in leather slippers.

I laughed with pleasure and took a bigger step. But the shoes’ soles were slick, and my feet slid out from under me. I fell, bruising my hip on the stone floor.

It hurt, but I stood up and stretched to pull out some of the pain. I decided I’d have to add grooves to the soles before the Exposition, and even then, I’d need to tread carefully—advice, I reminded myself, that I should take figuratively as well as literally. I’d managed to convince myself that no one would recognize that I’d used Ashes for Jules; hadn’t the merchant said that hardly anyone even knew what they were? Still, I had to be careful.

I put on my old boots again and tromped out to the woods. The sky was dark and gray, full of forming snow. I thought of the Steps, on their way to the ball, and how glad I was that they would be the ones driving through a blizzard tonight.

There was a note pinned to the door of Jules’s shed. The handwriting was more angular than Caro’s, and somehow it looked more formal, even from a distance. I tried to ignore the way my pulse sped at the sight.

There was only one line, but it made my heart ache.

Please come to the ball. I’ll look for you. Fin

I suddenly wished with all the power in my being that I could go. But I’d been so busy preparing for the Exposition the following day that I hadn’t even considered it. Besides, I had no gown, and I had to spend tonight making sure Jules and the carriage were in perfect order . . . and cleaning the fireplaces. It was a much quicker chore than Stepmother knew, with my indefatigable supply of chimney powder, but I still resented it. I scowled, more determined than ever that the next few days would see me out of the Steps’ power and on the road to independence.

But Fin wanted me to come! The tension between hope and dread that I’d felt when I imagined meeting him again vanished, and I knew that I wanted to see him—soon, and at the ball—more than almost anything I’d ever wanted before.

I trudged into the shed. I knew I should let Jules rest until morning, but I needed a friend just now. I stroked three spirals between his shoulders, and he whirred slowly awake. He lifted his head.

“Oh, Jules—” I sank down beside him. “Why couldn’t I have made a ball gown too?”

I slapped the note onto the floor, and Jules leaned down and nudged it.

“Made . . . gown.”

I turned and gaped at him. “What?”

The Jules in my dream could speak, and I’d made his voice box to Mother’s instructions . . . and hadn’t I thought, as soon as he’d woken, that he seemed somehow
more
than he’d been before? Still, hearing him actually talk was almost beyond belief.

“We made . . . a gown.” His voice was rough and creaky—less a voice, really, than a metallic groan, rusty bits of steel scraping together.

I remembered something Stepmother had said on the day she’d discovered the workshop and locked me in my bedroom, something that had replayed itself in my dream. She’d found a dress, a ball gown, in my room—just before Chastity killed little Jules. But she’d taken it.

“Thank you, Jules,” I said, trying to hold back the catch in my voice, “but I think it’s gone.”

He shook his head; glass and metal clinked. “Bugs . . . will know,” he grumbled. “I will take you . . . the ball.”

My eyes widened.

I sprang up from my seat on the ground and reached for the door. “I’ll be right back, Jules,” I said. “Thank you—thank you so much.”

The insects led me to Stepmother’s bedroom. It had been my parents’ once, and while I entered it every day to make Stepmother’s bed, I never lingered there.

I hadn’t realized Jules and his minions knew the house so well. I’d always assumed they stayed in the workshop, wound down when I was gone.

But then I remembered a copperwork butterfly I’d found in a corner cupboard years ago, and how Jules had found his way to my room. They clearly knew far more about the house, and were far more mobile, than I had thought.

I liked to believe I understood Mother’s work by now, but it seemed that was still far from true. I thought of the little conveniences I’d found over the years, the small gadgets and magics that had made my life as a servant slightly easier.

The idea that more magic protected me than I could see, than I could know, shimmered through my mind again. Mother was still watching over me.

I felt a sudden, brief chill, not entirely unpleasant.

The dragonflies caught at my skirts and apron, tugging me toward Stepmother’s closet. Its door opened as soon as I touched it, welcoming me. I thought of the way the workshop door had opened on my birthday. It seemed so long ago, now.

There was Stepmother’s usual selection of plain, puritanical housedresses and aprons, and a few more formal options. She had worn a long-sleeved, dove gray evening gown for the ball, and had looked as austere and beautiful as ever.

But at the back of the closet, nearly lost in the shadows, was something else—something rich and dark, another species of dress entirely.

I reached out for it, reverent, and pulled it into the light.

Its skirts were an orchestrated tumble of gathers and pleats, drawn together with black ribbon and trimmed all over with fine, spiky black lace—I knew the pattern immediately; it had been made on one of my own machines. The overskirt and bodice were mostly midnight blue silk, though I could see many shades within it, the scraps of my dye experiments sewn together with such subtlety that no one else could have guessed the skirt was not made from a single bolt of fabric. Bits of indigo and violet flashed through as well, at the underskirt and petticoats, the bodice, and the short, off-shoulder sleeves. The bustle cascaded in layers, festooned with more black lace, tumbling into an elegant train.

It was so much lovelier than even the loveliest gown I’d ever seen. It was luxurious, darkly bold, almost daring—and, I could see from its shape as I held it against myself, smoothing a hand over the bodice, it had been made precisely for me.

“Oh, Jules,” I whispered.

A beetle clinging to my elbow buzzed excitedly; the others joined in.

“Thank you. All of you,” I said.

A metallic insect chorus responded, as if they understood my words after all. I shook my head. So many mysteries, still.

The dragonflies’ wings glinted in the gaslight. They pulled and prodded me out of Stepmother’s room and into Piety and Chastity’s boudoir. Its huge vanity was laid with creams and perfumes, kohl and rouge, brushes and combs. A huge, gilt-edged mirror lurked nearby, waiting.

I started to say I didn’t dare use their things, but I stopped myself. I’d dared plenty in the last few months, and now was hardly the time to stop. Besides, after all the Steps had taken from me—this very room, to start with—I supposed I could enjoy the contents of their vanity without guilt.

I had performed all the little rituals of beauty on Piety and Chastity hundreds of times, but never on myself; I had hardly bothered to look in a mirror since Mother’s funeral. It was strange to watch my face in one now. The roundness of my childhood features had vanished, and I looked almost like a grown woman. She was a stranger, not myself—but as I watched her and she regarded me with equal doubt, she began to seem familiar.

My hair was a darker brown than it had been when I was younger, and it hung straight down my back. My eyes were still the same steady blue as my father’s; I had forgotten how Mother used to comment on the resemblance. Most of my face, though, was hers: her snub nose and strong chin, her cheekbones, her wide forehead and pointed brows.

I stared at myself another moment—it was my mother I almost recognized in the mirror, as much as myself. That was both a frightening and a comforting thought.

I pinned my hair up first since I thought that would take the longest, drawing from the styles I’d practiced on my stepsisters for so long. I dusted my shoulders with rose-scented powder, then examined my face more closely. There were shadows beneath my eyes from lack of sleep, but I didn’t mind them so much; they were badges of my hard work, my sleepless nights. Instead of using the bright vanishing cream that had hidden Chastity’s under-eye shadows that morning, I leaned in toward the mirror to gently line my eyes with kohl. It was easier to do on myself than on the Steps, who were always twitching. I used the rouge only on my lips. The color in my cheeks was high as it was, just from the excitement I’d already had that evening; I supposed at the ball it would only be worse—especially if Fin was there. I wondered about the note he’d left. Would he attend as a servant or as a guest? His sculptures certainly qualified him as one of Esting’s finest artisans, as the invitation had specified, but he also worked at the palace. Would he be standing in the shadows or dancing in the light? And whom would he ask to dance?

Thinking of Fin was more than I could bear just then. I pushed him from my mind, ignored my skittering heartbeat, and checked my reflection once more. Pleased, I turned toward the insects.

“I think I’ll need help with the corset.”