Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Curiosity got the better of her. There didn’t seem to be any formality around the rebel heir, so she drifted their way to join the conversation.

“The city was known to the Romans as Aquae Sulis, or the waters sacred to the god Sulis,” Edgerton was saying. “The hot springs have been known for centuries, but rarely exploited for their geothermal power. The steam barons have overlooked it. Nevertheless, we would need time to build facilities with more capacity. As it is, we have neither the power nor the power storage cells to do more.”

“It’s the best answer we have with no coal. Bancroft has worked miracles for us, but getting the coal out of London has proven a challenge,” said the Schoolmaster.

“Where does that leave us?” asked Nick.

“If we get this cargo to our northern makers, we can mobilize our forces there.”

So we’re carrying batteries . Evelina considered it an interesting solution, but a limited one. Not enough to win against the forces of Keating or the Blue King.

“Will this many cells even get them to London?” Nick asked doubtfully.

Edgerton and the Schoolmaster exchanged glances. They’d obviously worked together long enough to read each other well, because a decision was made without words.

“In part,” said the Schoolmaster. “There is a question of which of our northern forces to mobilize. There isn’t enough power for them all.”

“We were counting on them to hold the north flank,” Edgerton said quietly. “To be utterly frank, this presents a problem.”

Nick met Evelina’s eyes and inhaled, as if he were going to take that moment to pull her into the conversation. She turned instead, staring out the window without seeing a thing. She was aware of the tension all around her, the collection of large personalities a power source all their own. But she could also feel her newly bolstered magic simmering inside her. If she’d felt like a peeled egg earlier, now she was just the shell, caught between those inner and outer pressures. She wasn’t ready to deal with this. She wanted a dark room, silence, and solitude.

But she knew the answer to their problem, and she had the means to make it work. She’d wanted to reconcile the two halves of her being for so long—magic and logic, the world of spirit and the world of machines. She’d created Mouse and Bird years ago, solving the riddle of how to harness the power of devas to make living clockwork. She’d gone to the university to understand the dual nature of her heritage, but perhaps that wasn’t something that could be solved by study. Maybe that duality was just something she was , and a union would be forged just by recognizing what she could do. And her newfound power gave her the means to make it happen on a grand scale.

It all flashed through her mind in moments, leaving her with the sensation that her stomach was dropping through the bottom of the Athena ’s hull. The situation reminded her of a card in her Gran Cooper’s fortune-telling deck that showed a man walking off a cliff: the Fool . It was supposed to represent a trust in fate she just didn’t feel. But the prince would lose without her help.

Evelina turned. “Gentlemen, I have a solution.”

Edgerton and the Schoolmaster looked up in surprise. Nick folded his arms, looking like the cat who’d got the cream.

Northern England, October 15, 1889

ABOARD THE ATHENA

Dawn Tuesday

“ARE WE NEARLY THERE?” THE SOFT FEMALE VOICE CAUGHT the Schoolmaster’s attention. He was alone in the mess, drinking a cup of tea thick enough to stand on—in his opinion, the only kind of brew worth drinking.

“I’m not the one to ask,” he replied, eying Miss Cooper. “They let me think I’m in charge, but I’m really the idiot passenger with the upside-down map.”

It was cool on the ship, and she wore an airman’s jacket over her dress, her long, dark hair spilling in waves over her shoulders. The jacket was far too large and the sight of her sleeves drowning her dainty hands was oddly charming. So were the big blue eyes in her heart-shaped face, but he knew better than to act on that attraction—and not just because of his birth or Captain Niccolo’s knives. He could feel the power this young woman commanded like a magnetic charge. She wasn’t to be trifled with—especially when she’d offered him the ability to run machines on magic. That was the power every one of the steam barons coveted as if it were the Grail.

The Schoolmaster was grateful, but he was also a little nervous. Nothing miraculous ever came without a price and, to be utterly frank, there was a fragility to Miss Cooper. All he knew was that she’d been through a great ordeal. He didn’t want to be responsible for her collapse. Overtaxing her wasn’t gentlemanly, and with her powers might be bloody dangerous.

She came to stand beside him at the window. “I’ve only ridden in tiny ships before this, and they didn’t fly nearly so high. The views are mesmerizing.”

“Mm,” he said, telling himself there was no possibility that he was actually afraid of her. He watched as she fingered a figurine on a chain around her neck. It was one of the souvenirs the street hawkers sold in Bath—a tiny pewter owl copied from the remains of the old Roman spa. “Is that a memento from the captain?”

She flushed a delicate shade of rose. “Yes.”

The Schoolmaster hid a smile. That part of her—the girlish part—he had no problems with. “The owls are sacred to Minerva—or Athena, if you prefer the Greek. There are plenty of ancient shrines to her in the old ruins.”

A shy smile followed the blush. “Perhaps then it is a good luck charm, considering our ship.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “How did you get involved in this adventure, Miss Cooper?”

She was silent long enough he assumed she wouldn’t answer, but then she gave a short, low laugh. “I had two grandmothers, my lord. One was a fortune-teller with a circus and the other a tyrant for good behavior and a respectable marriage. I’ve spent my life trying to please them both.”

“So you plunged headlong into a civil war?”

She lifted a shoulder. “With the two sides of my family being so different, I’ve been in one all my life. And I’m hoping for a better empire.”

The Schoolmaster swallowed. He’d heard that note of expectation a thousand times already, and he could feel each hope adding to an ocean of responsibility. “You blew up the Dartmoor laboratories. I think you’ve made your criteria for improvement clear.”

She cast him a wary glance. “I prefer a society that lets me live unmutilated.”

A mild shock passed through him at her words. She is as uneasy about me as I am of her . It didn’t make him feel any better.

Edgerton and Captain Niccolo came into the room. Edgerton spoke first. “Look down, sir.”

The Schoolmaster drew closer to the window, peering through the patchy cloud. Dawn was just breaking, pinking a steely sky. At first all he saw were indeterminate shapes that might have been carts, sheep, or haystacks dotting the fields below. But as he looked longer, the growing light revealed edges of steel and brass. Soon he saw the ground was covered in a procession of wagons, some pulled by heavy draft horses, some powered by steam. In the bed of each were one or two devices. There were various types of guns and cannons, and others that were not so easy to recognize from the air.

“By the coordinates, it’s the lowland army,” Edgerton replied, his face serious. He pointed to the rear of the force, where a particularly heavy vehicle rolled on a kind of movable train track. Smaller vehicles ran alongside the main one, taking up track the larger one had crossed and setting it down in front in a perpetual cycle. “There’s the coal supply.”