Steampunk Carnival (Steam World Book 1) (10 page)

Isolde continued to visit the carnival, every outfit more elaborate than the last. Katya watched her from safe distances, Isolde’s rounded curves and neatly cinched waist draped in fine silks of bold purple, ivory, and gold. Katya began designing new costumes for herself in her head, embroidered silk jackets imported from Asia and fitted with metal clasps down the front. She envisioned a sky-blue jacket displaying a working clock face on the back, the thin metal gears turning for the guests’ delight. New gloves could hold small, functioning compasses on the back of each wrist. Lizzie’s employer could cover new dresses in even more complex and colorful embroidery. Katya imagined patterns of gauges and clouds mixing with sheet music and hard candy.

Every time the gilded Isolde strolled past with smugness lighting her bright blue eyes, Katya quenched her jealousy with a new design. Sometimes Katya followed her to the back of the carnival, and sometimes Katya beat her there by crossing the other side of the grounds. Isolde never visited the world’s greatest attraction without visiting Mr. Warden’s office, and Katya never stuck around to see how long Isolde stayed inside. Katya took her sulking to another area, letting the happiness of the other guests boost her spirits.

Katya did not expect to see a woman other than Isolde at the office one night when she glanced at its door. Isolde had not arrived yet if she was going to. This woman did not enter as if she were expected. Her shoulders drooped lower than Isolde’s confident lines, and her blonde hair was faded within a few shades of translucent. She huddled close to the door, knocking in a few brief wraps. The door remained closed, and the woman knocked again in a desperate fury. Katya moved closer to the Warden wheel but not so close that Heinz would shoo her away.

The office door opened, Mr. Warden standing backlit in the doorway, his hand resting on the handle. He did not look surprised to see her but greeted her with a formal tip of his hat and a familiar recognition in his eyes.

The woman erupted in emotion, her mouth moving in quick bursts of speech. Katya could not hear her words for the chug and grind of the wheel looming over her. The woman wiped a handkerchief swiftly under her sagging eyes.

Mr. Warden regained his calm, speaking in slower, calculated motions.

The woman took a step back and swung forward. Clutching her handkerchief in her hand, she pounded her fists on Mr. Warden’s chest, the material flapping and waving with every movement.

Now Mr. Warden changed his response to her. Creases around his eyes gave him a pained expression, but his smooth mouth denoted nothing but patience. When the woman collapsed against him, her mouth gaped open in weeping, Mr. Warden stretched his arms around her. He said something, and she nodded. He led her slowly and carefully inside as one might guide someone sick or injured.

Katya barely noticed the man on her right until he spoke. “That’s Agna Lieber.”

Katya jumped, her heart striking the inner curve of her ribs. She stared at the man next to her, brown eyes sharp above a trimmed beard. He dressed in a simple suit as well made as any carnival goer wore, but as Brady had said, his gaze regarded Katya much too seriously to be there for fun. Katya could not place his accent, something muddled, like a softened German. Katya could only repeat what the man told her, as perplexed as he had been sure of himself. “Agna Lieber?”

“Yes.”

“Is she related to Ernst Lieber?”

The security man took his time to answer. “She’s his widow.”

“I didn’t know he was married.” Katya tried to imagine Mr. Lieber perhaps five years younger, nervous and sweating as he asked Agna to marry him. She tried to picture Mr. Lieber at home, eating dinner with his wife in front of a steady fire. She would pass him a dish of sausages served with sauerkraut, followed by a cup of authentic German mustard. Katya could not dream of him saying thank you or doing much more than slathering the sausages in the yellow sauce and stuffing them into his mouth.

“He had a little girl,” security added.

“A little girl?” Katya knew she must sound stupid, but she could not fathom Ernst Lieber having a family. Not just any family, but a wife upset enough over his passing that she would accost the great William Warden on his own turf. “How old is she?”

“Seven, maybe less.”

“I’ve never seen Mrs. Lieber here before.”

“She had no reason to come before.”

“Did you know she was coming?” Katya watched the door to Mr. Warden’s office, wondering how long it would stay closed this time. The security guard gave no answer, and Katya glanced over. He no longer stood beside her or anywhere else she looked.

“So I was right,” Katya murmured to herself under the great Warden wheel. “They do move and disappear through the crowd like ghosts.”

Katya decided not to wait for the reemergence of Agna Lieber. She drifted back to the patrons and their numerous questions and problems. The sneaking suspicion tickled her brain that she should have known Agna existed, and by the end of the night, Katya remembered where she had first caught wind of a woman in Mr. Lieber’s life.

The original argument Katya heard between Mr. Davies and Mr. Lieber had been about a woman. Katya had assumed she was a girlfriend or hopeful acquaintance of Mr. Lieber’s, but now she realized Mr. Lieber had raged on behalf of Agna. She wondered if Mr. Davies had actually been interested in her or if Mr. Lieber had taken a simple glance as the only trigger he needed to rip Mr. Davies in two.

Katya did not think it mattered. Mr. Lieber was dead and buried. She did not expect to see Agna again, and she did not mention Agna’s visit to Mr. Davies when she left the carnival for the night.

Three days later, Katya passed Agna in the crowd and almost did not recognize the widowed Mrs. Lieber. Katya stopped in her tracks and studied the woman. Agna’s hunched figure continued toward the water closets, clad in the pale, muddy colors the charwoman always wore. Against the wood and metal backdrop of the carnival, Agna labored nearly invisibly. She carried a bucket in each hand, one arm straining longer than the other. She set them down outside one of the water closets and eased the door open before she carried the buckets inside.

That night in the carriage, the charwoman’s silence seemed more purposeful than usual. She pursed her lips as she stared out the window, her eyes focused on something Katya could never see.

In the morning, Mr. Davies made his usual stop after picking up Katya and Magdalene from the Weekly Boarder. Irina’s form shifted the weight of the carriage as she stepped inside. She settled in across from Katya in her dark brown jacket and lighter brown dress. The carriage did not stop for the charwoman.

“Is she sick?” Magdalene asked.

Katya felt a pit deepen in her stomach. “I think she’s been replaced,” she said.

Irina looked up from brushing at the fabric of her skirt. “Because of the security? Did they find something out?”

Katya thought back to the scene Agna had played out with Mr. Warden. “It’s because Mr. Lieber was murdered. I think she’s been replaced by Mrs. Lieber.”

Irina’s dark eyebrows shot up under her parted bangs. “There’s a
Mrs.
Lieber?”

“Yes. She paid a visit to Mr. Warden the other night. I saw her again last night. She was cleaning out the water closets.”

Irina nodded slowly, her eyelids heavy for thinking. “Any one of us could be next.”

“No, I think she just needs a way to support herself. She has a little girl to look after.”

Irina’s eyes widened again. “Mr. Lieber had a little
girl
?”

“I was as surprised as you are. It’s hard to imagine him being a father, isn’t it?”

“It’s hard to imagine a monster like him at all.”

Magdalene spoke up. “He must’ve had a softer side we never saw.”

Irina guffawed with gusto and raised her hand to cover her mouth. “Excuse me, dear, but there was nothing soft about Ernst Lieber. I’m sure his widow was well acquainted with the back of his hand.”

Katya wondered if Mr. Davies could hear them from his high seat behind her. She hoped, if he did care anything for Agna Lieber, that the wind was drowning in his ears.

“I feel sorry for the woman,” Irina admitted. “Marriage to Ernst Lieber couldn’t have been kind to her. She must’ve felt freer than a jay bird when he went to meet his maker.”

“I’m not sure,” Katya said. “She seemed pretty upset.”

“Well...” Irina trailed off. “Sometimes the more they bruise, the more used to it they become.”

Mr. Davies stopped the carriage at the carnival gates. It pained Katya to see Mr. Warden’s name in huge letters near the opening. Mr. Kelly’s name deserved to be there, not someone who used the carnival to lure every eligible woman to him within fifty miles.

“I wonder if Mrs. Lieber will be riding with us,” Katya said as she stepped down from the carriage.

The next morning, only Katya, Magdalene, and Irina were dropped off.

That evening, Mr. Davies made a new third stop, and Mrs. Agna Lieber climbed into the carriage.

Agna settled into the back corner of the carriage, keeping her head down and her mouth shut. Katya felt too uncomfortable at her unexpected appearance to greet her.

Magdalene attempted a polite “Good evening,” but Agna gave only the slightest nod in return.

Irina, like Katya, sat without speaking.

Maybe because Katya felt so aware of Agna’s presence, she saw Agna much more during her nights at the carnival than she had ever noticed the previous charwoman. The usual woman had proven no slacker. Katya knew from glimpses of her bare hands that the woman’s palms and fingers were worn into rough, peeling patches of what could loosely be called skin.

Agna worked every bit as hard if not harder. Katya observed her time and time again carrying buckets weighing her hands down to her knees. Agna did not just clean and tidy the water closets, making sure they smelled fresh and kept a full supply of toilet paper. She ducked in and out of Mr. Warden’s office quite often with a bucket of cleaning supplies. Katya learned from listening in on the maintenance men that Agna had even organized their storage room for them without being asked.

If Katya had heard about Mrs. Lieber before meeting her in such a peculiar way, she would have prepared herself to dislike her. But as the nights wore on, Katya realized that Agna never enjoyed herself. The charwoman she replaced had not been a bundle of mirth, but Agna’s frown sank deeper. Her movements were not simply purposeful and efficient. They were labored, desperate to please, and hurried to complete each task.

Agna’s misery tore Katya’s heart to pieces until she could not stand to ignore the woman anymore. Katya approached her in front of the maintenance office behind the western food stall. Agna let her buckets down with a controlled drop, one full of dirty water and the other brimming with supplies.

“Mrs. Lieber?” Katya said, her voice lilting. “We haven’t met formally. I’m Katya Romanova. I help direct the guests here.”

Agna squinted at Katya with a guarded expression that could have hidden anything from suspicion to physical exhaustion.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” Katya added. She did not clarify that she was only sorry that Agna had lost her husband and not that Ernst Lieber no longer walked among the living.

Agna opened the door to the maintenance office and hoisted the bucket of supplies inside. Katya followed her. She had not ventured into the small building since she toured the carnival before its opening. Like Mr. Warden’s office, a wall and door split it into two rooms. The front room surrounded Katya with shelves and bins of tools and spare parts. A work bench stretched across the right-hand wall. Through the open doorway to the inner room, Katya could see a few chairs around a table where maintenance could sit and relax. Finding no men in the building, Katya closed the door.

“What do you want?” Agna asked in a hoarse voice, her back to Katya. She lowered the bucket of supplies on the workbench.

“I thought you might want a friend at the carnival.”

Agna chuckled ruefully by the time Katya finished her sentence. “I don’t need a friend.”

“What do you need?”

Agna faced Katya, her dim blue eyes dissecting her. “I don’t know you.”

“I saw you talking to Mr. Warden. You have a daughter to take care of, don’t you? You need this job.”

“Yes, and he gave it to me. What do you want from me?”

“I think you deserve better. That’s all.” Suddenly doubting her ability to reach Agna, Katya fumbled for the door handle.

“Wait.” Agna stood as proud as anyone in her position could. Her head was pulled back, even her shoulders lifted, but her face stretched taut with anguish. “I have one question. Nobody can tell me where my husband died. Do you know where he was when it happened?”

As every heartbeat pounded in Katya’s ears, she remembered promising Mr. Warden she would keep the information to herself. Faced with Agna’s grief, she heard her lips break that promise. “He died in Mr. Warden’s office, in the back room.”

Agna’s fingers grasped at her throat. “I was in that room.”

“I’m sorry.”

Katya opened the door and let herself out. Twenty feet away, Isolde Neumann strolled past the corner of the near food stall. She tilted her head back, taking in the sights rising into the sky around her. Katya imagined she had just come from Mr. Warden’s office and was finally convinced to spend some time getting to know the rest of the carnival.

Katya stayed by the maintenance door to give Isolde time to move farther away. Katya did not take more than a few steps to her left when Maddox approached her from the opposite direction.

Maddox beamed in recognition and tipped his hat. “Miss Romanova. I never thought I’d see you over here by the maintenance storage. Don’t tell me one of the customers wanted to borrow a hammer?”

Katya tried to sweep past Maddox. “No, Mr. O’Sullivan, they did not.”

Maddox turned to follow her with his gaze. “Have you been reading the papers? The police arrested the man who shot President Cleveland. He’ll be going to trial soon.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“The maintenance men are putting bets on whether or not he’ll be hanged. I think he will be. The man who shot President Garfield was.”

Katya nodded and tried to slip away.

“I barely remember that,” Maddox rambled on. “I was only fourteen when they hanged him. It was exciting, though.”

Katya huffed. “Mr. O’Sullivan, I have work to do, and I’m sure you do, too.”

Maddox angled his hat back a little, his good mood only brightening. “I heard you’re not above shirking your work every now and again.”

Katya lowered her chin. “You’ve started hearing bad things about me.”

“Nothing that bad, Miss Romanova. I’m sure you’ll hear some interesting things about me.”

“I don’t talk to maintenance very often.”

“Let me fill you in, then. I’ve been roaming half the country most of my life. Never been here before. I just spent over two years on the east coast, like I said.”

Katya sighed and put off her thoughts of running away from him. “Did you like it there?”

“It was all right. There’s excitement to be had everywhere. You don’t have to go west for it.”

“The West is supposed to be one of the most exciting parts of the country.”

Maddox shrugged. “I like it here. They don’t have machines like this out west.”

“No, they don’t.”

Another maintenance man draped in a suit of drab colors called for Maddox, and with his attention diverted, Katya stole away into the crowd. She passed the water closets and the Cannon firing its cars onto the sloping tracks behind them. She did not know how to react to Maddox’s presence at the carnival. Katya felt more like herself when the patrons began asking for help: Which flavor of hard candy tasted the best? Was the Warden wheel safe for rambunctious little boys? Katya was not used to avoiding such a pervasive, moving target. Not even Mr. Warden pursued her that incessantly.