Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (44 page)

“We should be safe to speak freely now,” she said, arranging her ridiculous dress as she sat on a stool.

“Eleanor,” Alan whispered, his eyes following the continuing path of the machines as they buzzed around the room, “they are incredible. I didn’t know you could build such marvelous things.”

Their sister shrugged. “Neither did I, truth be known, brother. Something about that woman’s presence in the palace just brings out the inventiveness in me. I remember seeing a plan of them in one of those books that old tinker showed us last summer.”

“Finally that memory of yours is some use.” Roger, who had been her childhood competitor, flicked a balled-up piece of paper on the desk at her.

“Madame Escrew might take you as her apprentice,” Maximilian laughed.

Eleanor felt something like a hard sob form in her belly. Once they had been genuinely merrier. This very room had rung with laughter and learning.

“I blame myself,” she whispered, even as she held out her hand for one of the dragonflies to return to her. “After Mother’s death I should have taken better care of Father. I should have noticed he was so lonely. Madame Escrew would never have—”

“It’s not your fault, Ellie.” Alan grasped her hand. “We were all distraught when it happened. None of us ever thought—”

“No, we did not!” she snapped, yanking her arm free and turning away before they could see her tears. “That is what she counted on. She saw an opportunity and she took it. Now we must deal with the consequences.” Out the window, their flag of a rampant swan fluttered in the always-constant breeze, seeming to challenge her.

“What can we do?” Alan went relentlessly on. “Father is utterly bewitched by her.”

“We must find a way,” she said with determination. “Not just for ourselves, but for the city itself. We must be like her, and find an opportunity.”

The siblings looked on her, the silence as thick as the tension of the day. One by one, they retired to their rooms, choosing to miss out on the revels of the evening and avoid the new queen.

The next morning, Eleanor forwent any assistance by her
maid and dressed herself. The princess went down to breakfast on the very edge of being late. The less time she had to spend in her new stepmother’s presence, the better. Apparently her brothers had either been down early or abandoned any thought of food whatsoever, because she was alone with her father and his queen.

The three of them sat at the long table while being served by masked servants. They served grilled flying fish, starling eggs, and expensive grilled bacon to the silent royals.

It was the new queen who broke the stillness, her voice like silk. “You are looking very pale, Eleanor. Are you well?”

“Not at all, thank you,” the princess replied, concentrating on the food before her. She stabbed an egg with a certain misplaced anger.

“It is just that this is the season for insects, and I would hate to think you have been bitten by something…nasty.” Madame Escrew’s hard brown eyes locked with Eleanor’s just-as-determined blue ones. The princess did not need to be told; the new queen had noticed that her listening device in the library had been removed.

“What could be nasty in our palace?” Eleanor asked mildly. “All is so wonderful here. If any such vermin were to infest our hallowed halls, Your Majesty, I would take action. Have no fear.”

Eleanor’s eyes flicked over to King Ivan, who remained oblivious of their verbal sparring. He was nothing like the man he had been before his real queen’s death.

Madame Escrew tilted her head and smiled a smile like an iron barb. “Indeed, the palace is a wonderful place to grow up, but still…” She paused and placed her hand over the king’s. “Even a princess should have a use. Don’t you think, my love? It does not set a good example for the citizens to have your daughter seen idle around the palace.” Faine leaned over and placed a kiss on the king’s cheek. “Too long have your children frittered away their time without a mother’s touch.”

Eleanor’s cheeks flamed red at the suggestion that she was idle and that Madame was anything like a mother. “Reading is not being idle. It is feeding the mind.”

King Ivan jerked upright as if he’d been struck, and stared at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time; and Eleanor flinched. She had never seen her father look at her in that way.

“Yes,” he rasped, “everything and everyone must have a purpose in the City of Swans.”

Eleanor swallowed hard, feeling tears spring in the corner of her eyes.

She watched her stepmother rise, fighting the urge to pull free of her touch when she snatched up one of her hands, flipping it over as if it were a dead frog. “Look at that, as soft as cheese! By your age, my dear, my hands were scarred and toughened by tightening screws and forging parts for my father’s machines.”

The king nodded mechanically. “It would be good for Eleanor to see the other side of privilege.”

“Yes, not all of your subjects can write with diamond pencils on golden slates,” Faine said, her eyes still fixed on Eleanor as she returned to the king’s side.

Her father grinned like an idiot, and pushed back from the table to stare at Faine. “What do you suggest, then, my darling? How can we make Eleanor aware how truly blessed she is?”

Madame scraped up the last of her bacon and starling eggs, dispatching it with neat efficiency. “My engineer, Stella, would make an excellent teacher for the princess. Some call her a witch, and it is true she has many secrets that should not die with her. She is, after all, old. Quite frail.”

Eleanor’s calm shattered as she leaped to her feet, knocking her chair over in the process. “Father!” she protested. “I refuse to be judged by this woman. Surely you can’t mean to send me away? What have I ever done to deserve being used so ill?”

Thunder clouds gathered in her father’s gaze, a darkness that she had never seen there before. Plenty of grief she’d seen in his eyes, but always lightened by his love for his children. He was a stranger to her in that moment.

“Done?” he growled. “Done, my daughter? You have done nothing! That is precisely the point. You will do as your mother suggests, and be grateful for the chance to improve yourself.”

She knew a pointless fight when she saw one before her. “At least let me say good-bye to my brothers,” she whispered, dropping her head.

“They are busy with their own work,” the king muttered as he slurped down some tea.

Eleanor clenched her jaw shut hard. As she had grown older, her father had become a benevolent, if distant, figure. She had always been able to dream that he loved her in some kind of way. All through the brief courtship of Madame Escrew and the king, Eleanor had felt even that tenuous connection disappearing. In this particular moment, hard and brutal as it was, she realized that it was completely gone.

Now there only remained to think of salvaging the remains of her family and the rest of the city.

So she smiled in what she hoped was the manner of an obedient child and tilted her head. “Then I look forward to being of some use to you, Father. And will attend Miss Stella and learn what I can.”

A bitter bile welled in her throat. Anyone remotely connected with Madame Escrew was not someone she wanted to meet.

E
leanor barely had a chance to wipe her mouth on the linen napkin before Madame was leading her to the door. A footman was waiting under the arch of the Great Hall, a small traveling case and an abashed expression across his face.

“Please do give sweet Stella my regards,” Madame said, her voice full of false delight. The feeling of her hand pressed into the small of the princess’s back was like a hovering knife. It made Eleanor think of her own desires the previous day and wish again for a blade of her own.

No,
Eleanor decided,
I will have to wait a little while. Find out her secrets and a way behind all her defenses.

Eleanor looked to her father one last time, but saw there was nothing to be had there. His eyes were elsewhere. He did not even bother to wave her off.

As she was escorted down the stairs, out the door of the palace, and toward the city dock, Eleanor’s throat tightened. Maybe she hadn’t expected to be allowed to see her brothers, but she had hoped one might come down the stairs by chance. With eleven of them, there was a decent statistical possibility….

Nothing.

She shot a glance back at the gleaming spires of the palace, and a fear grew in her. Had Madame done something to them? Were they already dead?

No,
the princess reminded herself,
Madame might be able to bend Father’s will on me, but his sons—my brothers—are another matter.

The ferry that waited for her was manned by a gray-faced old man, with one eye replaced by a battered onyx eye. She did not know him by sight but saw immediately by his expression that he would be no friend to her. Madame’s minions had been infiltrating all levels of the kingdom for quite some time now.

Silently, Eleanor took up a place at the prow of the airship, setting her eyes to the horizon of gleaming silver clouds. The ferry pulled away from the City of Swans, and she swallowed hard on the realization that this was the first time she’d been away from the place of her birth. She’d previously dreamed of adventure beyond the safety of her father’s kingdom; it was cruel irony that she was achieving her dreams at the hands of her enemy.

The ferry was old but not as slow as she wished it was. With the engines chugging and guided by the morose captain, they pulled quickly away from the city and found a fair current. It was as if Nature herself was against the princess. By the evening Eleanor no longer had the comfort of ignorance in her destination.

They were turning toward the distant crags where Madame held sway, and with every mile Eleanor could feel her stomach clench in an unhappy knot. The surface was a place no city dweller wanted to think of: contaminated, dangerous, a place your body was consigned to when you died, and a place no sensible citizen would ever travel to. However, it did provide some resources that were necessary to their lives.

The princess walked reluctantly to the prow of the ferry and watched the destination resolve itself before her. Ahead, the gray tips of the mountains were now becoming visible, rising out of the clouds like thick knuckles. As they drew even nearer, she could make out square buildings dotted over their surface, accompanied by chimney stacks billowing smoke out into the winds.

It was not a scene to inspire confidence. By the time the ferry pulled next to the dock and tied up, Eleanor’s nostrils were filled with the choking sulfurous odor Madame’s industry created. The bleak gray rock harbored no life, and the buildings had few windows to greet her. It was as far removed from the City of Swans as it was possible to get. It felt as though she had traveled for days to get here, and she was cut off from everything—including the love of her brothers.

It would be exactly what Madame Escrew had planned from the beginning. At that thought Eleanor straightened her back. She had to remember her royal heritage. She had to remember every detail of her trials so she could draw on them for strength in the battle yet to come. That memory of hers would be useful once more.

A tall, burly man, dressed in dusty gray clothing and covered by a leather apron, stood waiting for her. His eyes were as welcoming as the stone beneath their feet. The effect was only enhanced by the fact that he wore a filtering mask that completely covered the lower half of his face. He could have been grinning or leering beneath it, and she would never know. “Come,” he muttered, jerking his head and turning away.

Eleanor contemplated what might happen should she refuse his curt command but decided this was a fight not quite worth fighting. Instead, she followed in his wake, past rumbling factories and ranks of dead-eyed men filing in and out of them. As she went she held her sleeve over her mouth and tried not to choke.

Finally they reached a building with a large door with a mechanical wheel attached to it that stood nearly as tall as Eleanor herself. Her nameless guide spun the wheel with some little effort and pulled the door open. The shriek it gave would have made the dead flinch. Without waiting to be asked, Eleanor stepped inside.

It was as she expected. Her guide slammed the door and spun the wheel behind her back. With a concentration of will, the princess did not flinch, but instead carefully examined her surroundings. Since the interior of the building was illuminated only by half a dozen dim lanterns attached to the walls, it was made that much harder.

However, she was able to make out ten long benches laid out at the far end of the cavernous space, a forge with all the tools necessary for casting metals. She and her brother Brian had shared an interest in metalwork, and, curious despite the situation, Eleanor stepped farther into the workroom. She ran her fingers lightly over the items she could now make out laid out on the benches.

Automatons in various shapes and forms were easy to identify. They covered half the workspace, while the other benches had cogs, gears, pistons, and pieces of boilers laid out in patterns she could not comprehend. She paused to examine them, her brow furrowed.