Heart of Brass

Chapter Three

Chapter Three‘What do you need?’ Arabella yelled down the stairs in a decidedly unladylike manner.

‘Fuel!’ I shouted back. The ‘if you please, dear’ was implied.

In three more steps I hit the damp cellar floor. My vision blurred around the edges, but it wasn’t gone yet. I saw three desks overloaded with jars of metallic powder, loops of copper wire, Arabella’s hairbrush (so that’s where it was), and the broken cogs of at least three homemade rodent hearts.

One of my semi-mechanical rats scuttled out from under my feet, squeaking in annoyance. The others woke up all in a pile and immediately scattered under the benches, chittering frantically. They needed winding. I needed winding. No, that wasn’t right. I wasn’t thinking straight. Needed to fix one of my silver valves. Yes, that was it.

I stared at the rats’ beady eyes and very nearly swore at myself in horror. All their hearts had silver valves. Given a little time, I could have cannibalised their engines to save mine. Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier?

Jem tumbled into the laboratory bearing a bottle of my best glycerol. ‘Arabella’s in the kitchen getting backup coal, but I thought potassium would be faster—with this to bribe it into burning longer.’

‘Good, Jem. We’ll need all the magic we can get.’ I handed him the necklace, and cleared my main workbench by shoving everything onto the floor with a crash of pipes and the tinkle of breaking glass. Fortunately Jem had already grabbed our jar of potassium, and it didn’t smash with the rest.

He poured one individually-sealed section of the jar into the large crucible in the middle of the mouldy floor and added a puddle of glycerin, pulling back his bare fingers quickly. As it began to smoke he added our three remaining pieces of anthracite coal. He put the necklace into a second, cleaner crucible on top of the coal just as the potassium exploded into a brilliant tongue of fire.

I lay back on my workbench and positioned my operational periscope over my chest, ripping away lace and silk with my other hand. My fingers fumbled badly with the front and side ties of my steel corset, but at last the two leather-lined front pieces fell away and clanged onto the floor. I pulled up my chemise, exposing my bare chest, and hooked open my sternum access panel with one finger, staring straight up into the periscope mirror for the clearest view.

‘It’s melting already,’ said Jem, buckling a leather apron around his chest and strapping on brass goggles with difficulty as he lay on the fetid floor to blow madly at the anthracite so the fire didn’t fail.

‘Please don’t crack,’ he said to the necklace, showing an unexpected sentimental side. ‘Please please please just melt perfectly—and quickly. My sister needs you.’

The activated potassium knew its job, and was proving very helpful in lighting the reluctant coal. It would do all kinds of improbable things for a bit of glycerol. Potassium was easy to please, like an over-eager street urchin. I didn’t trust it for a minute.

‘What exactly am I making today?’ Jem asked, dropping the emotions from his voice like so much scrap. ‘Tubing, endothelium, or valves?’

Through the periscope mirror I saw my upside-down front boiler and tubing all intact. I pressed the emergency seals into place and lifted my entire secondary steam engine out of the way, hissing in pain as my fingers burnt. ‘I have a feeling I need a new intake valve, maybe two.’

‘Bigger ones, if you please,’ said Arabella, appearing over me in goggles and a brass mesh-mask for seeing and breathing through my engine’s jetting steam. ‘She outgrew her arteries again. It wasn’t completely that boy’s fault after all.’

I handed her my front engine and she put it down somewhere beyond my periscope’s field of vision. She grew taller before my eyes, and I thought I was hallucinating until I realised she’d utilised her Superior-Inferior Heels to get a better viewing angle on the failed valve. ‘We’re in luck—it’s the right PA that’s baked,’ she said, her childish voice trembling in contrast to her steady hands as they took measurements of my metallic innards. ‘It’ll be easier to install than the left. Point one-two-five inches diameter, hinge drills at one-zero-one and one-two-two.’ As she spoke she pulled on the gloves I’d made for her. Each finger had a blade, or tiny pincers, or a clockwork rotating saw. She hit her palm against the bench to turn on the glove’s second and third fingers with a symphony of clicks and whirring.

‘One-zero-one?’ I said. ‘So you’re saying the silver bonded with my flesh well enough to alter its features, but not enough to grow in total area?’

‘So it would seem,’ said Arabella.

‘Fascinating!’

I heard a clank and then sharp metallic plinks as Jem hammered and sliced and drilled the silver faster than he’d ever worked metal before. He muttered measurements and prayers in equal proportions as he worked, and I hoped the silver was in a malleable mood. Silver wasn’t as easily impressed as potassium. I respected silver, and I hoped it understood. More than that, I hoped it cared whether I lived or died. Perhaps there was a way to test silver’s potential for sentimentality without actually risking death. I made a mental note to do so at my earliest convenience.

The air stank of mould, coal, and burning sugar. ‘Arabella?’ I said, no longer able to see anything at all. If my vision was going, that meant time was running out. I had so many more theories to test! Oh yes, and I was meant to be getting married.

‘What is it?’ Arabella asked me.

‘Some tepid water to cool the silver before it’s installed would be terribly helpful, when you have a moment.’

I heard her gasp, and then nothing.

‘Arabella?’ I said. ‘Jem? Are you still there?’

Something pressed down hard on my chest, and I fell helplessly into a swoon.