Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

“How many are there left to do?” Bancroft asked in an unfriendly voice.

Penner fitted another piece into the device without looking up. “This is going to take me hours, my lord, and watching me isn’t making it go any faster.”

Bancroft narrowed his eyes at the comment. Penner was finishing the handheld switches that would seize control of the Gold King’s massive machines. There were dozens of them, each attuned to a different unit, and all required the last few components to be inserted and the housing assembled. Tobias had originally created the design as a safeguard in case the weapons were seized by the enemy. Now—if Penner finished his work in time—the Gold King’s machines could be turned against their commanders. “We don’t have hours.”

Wordlessly, the man picked up a plate and began screwing it onto the back of the device, his movements swift and dexterous. Bancroft had to admit that Penner had talent. He’d seen it in him when he’d still been a lad in short pants, getting into scrapes with Tobias. Bancroft encouraged the friendship, even though the Penners were nothing more than newly rich social upstarts. Bucky had seemed a steadying influence on his highly strung boy. A good lad all around—until he’d forgotten his place and started making eyes at Imogen.

But as much as he disapproved of Penner, it was difficult to stand and watch with nothing to do. “Wouldn’t the Alldevice Number Two have better grip?”

Penner straightened, pushing the magnifying goggles he’d been wearing to the top of his head, where they looked like stumpy horns. “Respectfully, my lord, would you like to help? We might actually make it in time if two people worked on this.”

The toymaker’s tone was even, but the words still hit him like a slap. Lords don’t do, they supervise . But it was far more than that. His will to create had been wrapped up with Anna’s death and Magnus’s black magic, and he’d mentally hidden the whole tangle from the rational part of his mind. I made a mechanical doll and let Magnus trap my daughter’s soul inside . And when Tobias had tried to tell him Anna had escaped to terrorize the East End, he’d refused to listen. There was only so much a man should be expected to take. But long ago, he’d sworn never to touch a rack of tools again, and he’d held to that promise.

Bucky Penner was standing there, a questioning look on his face. “I can’t do this alone, and Tobias is counting on us to get these to the prince.”

Tobias . It would have been nice to believe that he could reclaim his love of building again. After all, it was something he could share with his son. But he would never hold a tool without thinking of the screams of his dead daughter. And soon the scent of a workshop—bitter with oil and sharp with the smell of hot metal—would remind him of his dead son, too.

Grief—more real and deep than he ever thought possible—tore him in its claws, ripping right through his breastbone. I’m sorry, my boy . And yet his eyes stayed dry. Lord Bancroft had banished tears right along with any joy he took in working with his hands—and filled those rents in his soul with ambition.

Wordlessly, he took the screwdriver from Penner’s hand. It felt clumsy and unfamiliar, but he knew his skill would quickly revive. A furtive happiness stirred, but he stepped on it. This deviation from his personal rules was for the good of the Empire, not for him. “Move over,” he snarled.

Penner had the gall to smile. “I hear you were quite a talent as a maker, my lord.”

Bancroft braced his hands on the workbench, for the first time risking a mental glance backward. “I was. I used to live for the time I spent away from my daily work. No one bothered me when I had a tool in my hands.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d spoken—perhaps it was simply an acknowledgment to himself that he would be forced to work beside Penner, not just to finish the damned devices but to cross enemy lines and put them in the hands of the prince. And they had to do it within hours.

“I understand,” Penner replied, clearing a second spot at the workbench. “I do my best thinking here.”

Bancroft stepped up to the bench, picked out a few tools, and remembered those hours of quiet self-reflection he’d enjoyed so long ago. A queasy sense of unease assailed him. The past is quicksand .

And then he picked up one of the devices Tobias had begun, and his breath hitched at the sight of his son’s elegant handiwork. I’m so sorry, my boy . However bad the past was, the future looked even more strewn with regrets.

He picked up a component and began screwing it on, because he didn’t know what else to do. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t start to think.

South of London, October 16, 1889

ABOARD THE ATHENA

11:10 a.m. Wednesday

EVELINA STOOD ON THE BRIDGE, PEERING DOWN THROUGH Nick’s spyglass at the land below. Nick was on the other side of the room, talking to a crewman she didn’t know. She’d overheard that something was going on with the ash rooks, but she hadn’t caught the specifics.

She was tired, her senses flattened from doing too much magic. The Athena had visited two other of the maker’s armies before joining the column moving toward London from the south, and in both places Evelina had called on the devas to mobilize the machines. As before, they had taken care of the manufactories first, tearing them brick from brick with the relentless drive of nature itself, returning all to earth and stream.

The forces in the south would not require the same kind of help. Prince Edmond’s march from Bath had begun as a relatively small force, but many had joined along the way. Above sailed those pirates—including Captain Roberts—who had not dispersed to watch the coasts for foreign invasion. Below marched makers and their creations, some with steam-driven wagons and others riding whatever invention they contributed to the cause. There were many men who had trained in secret for this uprising, and there were folk who had simply shown up, weapon in hand. This was truly the people’s army.

The swelling numbers were heartening, but they slowed the column down. The group would have fragmented—some speeding ahead and leaving the rest behind—had not the makers brought several of those steam trains that Evelina had seen earlier with the self-laying tracks. Those now trundled in the middle of the pack, sandwiched between those trained to march.

The Athena hovered over the long tail of humanity, Evelina sweeping the circle of the spyglass along its length. The prince stood a few feet away, doing his own reconnaissance through the telescope mounted at the foremost point of the bridge. He had been down with the troops most of the morning, but had returned to the ship with its superior vantage point to plan their next move.

“What is that at the back of the column?” she asked. “It looks like a frisky cow.”

“It’s not,” he replied. “I’m not sure what it is, but the men are frightened to death of it.”

Evelina squinted, but Nick’s spyglass had its limits. All she could see was a black shape loping twenty yards behind the last clump of men. “How long has it been there? Since Bath?”

“Since Dartmoor.” The Schoolmaster—she still hadn’t grown used to thinking of him as anything else—lifted his face from the eyepiece of the telescope. “It first appeared the morning after the destruction of the laboratories.”

She thought of the monstrous animal she’d seen bound from the flames and reflexively drew back from the windows. “If that is the case, beware of it.”

He shrugged. “So far it has done nothing but follow us.”