Steampunk! Part 25

Sofie left the ballroom quickly, reminding herself that Amelia's words could not possibly touch Nicholas. He was only metal and steam.

The next morning, when Sophie awoke, there was no servant to help her dress or stoke the fire in the grate. By the time she arrived at breakfast, Lady Obermann was in great distress, pointing at the table.

In front of her were the remains of cups of chocolate, set down so hard by the dumbwaiter's serving hand that they broke.

No apology came from the walls. Chocolate oozed over pieces of broken floral-print china; slices of plum cake were scattered over the planks of the floor.

"What's happened?" Sofie asked.

"The house is angry. It scolded us!" Lady Obermann clutched an embroidered napkin to her bosom. "Where is Valerian? Where is Henry? Someone has to do something!"

"Scolding us? But that's impossible," said Sofie. "They're not made to be able to -"

"It did," Lady Obermann insisted tearfully, cutting her off. "It said that it loved Amelia and Amelia loved it, too."

"She's in love with the house?" Valerian asked wonderingly, walking into the room. "The whole house?"

Sofie could not help laughing, which made Lady Obermann give her a dark look.

"It's that dance instructor," said Lady Obermann. "Or I thought it was. But the house seems to feel . . . invested."

"I do hope that she at least will refrain from letting my room court her," Valerian said. "That would seem particularly treasonous on its part. I'm not sure I could stand for a betrayal like that."

"How can you jest at a time like this?" chided Lady Obermann.

"I a.s.sure you," said Valerian, "I am not jesting. I am much affected. But you know Amelia - when she gets in a taking, there's nothing for it. I don't understand any more than you do, but it's not worth all this." He gestured to the ruined breakfast.

Lady Obermann fixed him with a glare. "You are horrid! Think of your sister!"

"Let's ask Wexley what he thinks," said Valerian, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Come on, Sofie." He said it like they were going on an adventure together.

Wexley wasn't in his normal spot in the hallway. When they finally found him, he was standing in the dancing hall. The dance instructor wasn't there, although he should have been.

"What's the meaning of all this?" asked Valerian.

"Master," said the butler. "We are sorry for any inconvenience, of course."

"Did one of you raise your voice to my mother?" Valerian asked.

"We are made to grow to serve you better. We respond to the needs of all the family members in concert. Sometimes these needs conflict. Sometimes we may even act in ways that seem disobedient, but be rea.s.sured that we can never truly defy you. If you feel that we are no longer behaving as you wish, you may alert our makers and have our demeanor altered."

"Yes, yes," said Valerian, waving his hand in the air. "But what can all this mean?"

"Nicholas loves Amelia, though she is far above his station." There was nothing more terrifying to Sofie than the way that metal mouth grated out those impossible words.

"His station?" echoed Valerian wonderingly. "But he has no station."

"Yes," said the butler.

"And aren't you all one - one person?" Valerian asked. Sofie felt he was being generous with the word person. "If Nicholas loves her, does that mean the house loves her - as my mother said? Does it mean you love her?"

"We are the house and we are also ourselves, our part of the house. Nicholas loves her, and we love her because Nicholas loves her."

"But you can't be both!" said Sofie. "You're either individuals or you're not."

"We're not like you. We do not work as you do." The butler turned to Sofie. "You did Nicholas a bad turn, using him as you did."

"Sofie?" prompted Valerian. "Did something happen?"

"I did no more than show Amelia he could not love her. If I desired him to kiss me, he would kiss me. He had no natural feelings to prevent it. Just as he only says he loves her because she desires to be loved."

"You kissed Nicholas?" Valerian asked, his voice full of bafflement and something else underneath.

She sighed with exasperation. "He's not human. I hoped to save your sister from what befell my father. Surely the cost to my reputation was nothing compared to what she could lose."

Valerian reached his hand toward Sofie, a gesture that seemed oddly out of place. He never touched her. "But your father's death surely can have nothing to do with the automatons?"

"You mean that he died of drink, but he died in the arms of creatures like that, creatures that poured the drinks that killed him, creatures who would deny him nothing and could deny him nothing, because his dying could never matter to them. They feel nothing. They are nothing." She was surprised by how loud her voice had become.

"Wexley," said Valerian. "My cousin is obviously upset, but whether she's right or not about what Nicholas feels, his actions cannot be supported. He can't go asking for my sister's hand. It's just not the thing. So if you're all and one, that's perfect, because I can have this conversation with you. It's got to stop. I'm not bamming, now. Tell Nicholas that he's got to break it off with Amelia."

"I cannot, Master Valerian." Wexley sounded regretful, but firm.

"Well, why can't you?" Valerian demanded.

"Amelia wouldn't like it."

"Well, Amelia's had enough of what she likes," said Valerian. "This house serves the rest of us, too."

"We serve all the Obermanns," said Wexley, "but we love only Amelia."

Valerian threw up his hands in exasperation. "Come on, Sofie. There is no profit in this endless palaver."

She followed him into the hallway. "What can you mean to do?"

"I am sorry about your father," he said. "That's the devil of a thing for a young girl to see."

"I imagine it is no different for anyone, young or old." She looked away; she didn't want him to see that there were tears standing in her eyes. Again. His company was terrible for her composure. "I'm perfectly fine."

But maybe he'd already noticed, because he went on. "And now this, harrowing up all those feelings again. But let me say this, my father is not so different from your own, and the Cyprians who pour drink down his throat may be living women, but they have no more sympathy for him than automatons."

"I hope that isn't true," Sofie said, but Valerian's words chilled her. She pictured that automaton parlor staffed with living people and shuddered to imagine it. Who would agree to such degradation, were they free to choose?

The idea that the automatons might feel anything yet not be free to choose had never previously occurred to her. It made gorge rise to her throat, and she quickly pushed the thought away.

"I won't ask you to come along to the hub of the house," Valerian was saying. "Whatever follows may be even more unpleasant than what's already come."

"I will go with you," Sofie said. He seemed about to argue with her when she put in, "This is our adventure, and I mean to see it through."

He grinned at her and started toward the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Automatons ran on steam, which flowed through pipes and expanded the bags that gave the mannequins speech and powered their turning gears. But they did not run on the power given to them by the steam alone, they also ran on another material known as azoth. Azoth looked as though someone had turned a mirror liquid. Bright as silver and poisonous to drink, but when slipping through the bodies of the automatons like blood, it seemed to imbue them with the semblance of life.

In each house of automatons there was a single hub. It held the furnace, where the wood burned, shoveled in by simple metal marionettes, pirouetting over and over again to feed the fire. The hub held the intricate host of commands for the behaviors of the house, scribed by alchemists.

Sofie had never seen a hub before this one. It was black with soot and stank of sulfur, as she imagined h.e.l.l itself might. Still, she forced herself to follow Valerian.

The automatons that fed the fire were crude. Their faces were misshapen, as though they were badly cast. Mistakes. Discards.

"Would it matter to you if Nicholas loved her?" Sofie asked Valerian softly.

He frowned. "You said he couldn't."

A shudder ran under her skin. "But if he could. If I were wrong."

"Father would hate it," said Valerian hesitatingly. "There would be a scandal."

"I shouldn't have asked you," Sofie said quickly. She was being ridiculous, she told herself. Her mind was still on the automaton parlors, on the idea of the creatures trapped there having actual feelings. There had been something so sad in the faces of the mannequins tending the fire that for a moment she had fancied they might feel. But that was what was so awful about them, after all. Sometimes they could seem so human.

"Someone will come in and take a look at our automatons. One of the alchemists," said Valerian. "They'll be able to sort out this whole mess. Tell us what's gotten into Nicholas and the rest of them. Sort Amelia out, too - explain to her that everything's all mixed up in her head."

He flipped the first of three switches on the hub, quieting the furnace. It would take a few moments for the thing to shut itself down completely.

"Switch one begins our slumber," said something above them. Sofie started and stepped back. Now she noticed the copper face above the furnace, looming. It was ma.s.sive and beautiful, like the sculpture of some Roman G.o.d.

The wood-carrying automatons stilled, their gears slowing.

Just then Amelia lurched into view. Her face was smudged with soot, and her hair was unbound, streaming around her in loose curls. Nicholas was with her, his hand in hers, but he seemed intent on holding her back.

"Valerian!" she shouted. "I won't let you."

He flipped the second switch. The grinding sounds inside the walls, ones that Sofie had become so used to she barely noticed, ceased. Their absence left an echoing silence. Nicholas, at Amelia's side, turned to look at the bra.s.s-and-cloth wire connecting him to the wall. He touched some b.u.t.ton at the base of his neck and the wire snapped free from his back.

"Nicholas?" Amelia said.

"I am self-sustaining for a limited duration, my love," the dance instructor told her.

"Sister," said Valerian. "No harm is going to come to any of them. This whole thing's become a b.u.mble-broth. The whole house can't go mad because one of the servants has set his cap for you - let's sort this out when everyone has a clearer head."

"No - I know what that means. I know you will force me to marry Thomas. House, I command you to stop my brother," Amelia said stoutly. "Do whatever you need to, and make certain he doesn't throw that last switch."

"Amelia," Sofie shouted. "You can't mean that."

The automatons who had stopped bringing wood to the hub began moving again. They dropped the logs.

"My love," said Nicholas in his rich, tinny voice, metal fingers on her arm. "Listen to your brother. This is not the way for us to be together."

Valerian's eyes were wide. "Amelia," he said warningly. Then the first of the mannequins was on him.

Its crude hands prized loose his hold on the final switch and threw him against the iron wall of the hub. Valerian threw a facer at the thing, which knocked it back handily, but another took its place. Three of them dragged him out onto the lawn, where an ax was settled against a ma.s.sive tower of wood.

"Amelia, please," said Nicholas. "No love could withstand what you are about to do."

She turned to him. "You mean you will no longer love me?" Her voice sounded as high as a child's.

"No," he said. "It's your feelings that will change."

"Never," she said.

Sofie cast about for a weapon. There was a poker near the fire, and her hand closed on it. She ran after Valerian and the mannequins, hitting the first of them with all her might. Liquid silver dripped from its joints.

It turned and clasped jointed fingers around Sofie's throat.

Then everything stopped. The automatons froze in place, mere statues. Valerian pushed free of the two that held him and unpeeled the fingers of the third from Sofie. She sagged against his chest, and for a moment, it was only his arms holding her upright.

"What happened?" she whispered, but then she saw.

Nicholas was sprawled over the panel, his hand still on the last switch.

"I told him not to," sobbed Amelia, falling to the dirty floor, her muslins already black at the hems. "I commanded him not to. He can't disobey me. He's not allowed!"

Sofie looked at the automaton in amazement. "You never told him to turn that switch," she said to Valerian, voice low.

"No," said Valerian. "I did not."

The alchemists had come and gone, speaking only with Valerian. Lord Obermann barely knew there had been any interruption of service at all. When he'd heard that there had been some difficulty with the automatons, he'd mourned the days when there were living servants who never broke down, and then returned to White's to take his nuncheon along with a game of whist.

The next morning, with everything back and running, Sofie had woken to a mechanized maid leaning over her. She fought down the urge to scream, to upend her boiled egg and cocoa all over the automaton's starched dress. Instead, she stared up into those gla.s.s eyes, into the glow of their inner fires.

"If you could wish for anything, what would you wish for?" Sofie asked.

"I want only to be a good and faithful servant," the automaton said.

After the events of two days past, Sofie doubted that was true. She considered ordering the maid to give her a better answer, but knew that defiance was, at the very least, difficult for them. For the first time, she let herself sympathize. Defiance had always been hard for her, too.

She settled down to eat the meal before her. She even let the maid help her into a morning dress without quizzing her further.

On her way downstairs, Sofie spotted Amelia. She was wearing a cap trimmed with cherry-colored ribbon and a lace-trimmed jacket over her petticoat. She looked so proper that it was almost impossible for her to imagine her face smeared with soot, mad with love.

Amelia smiled at her. "I hope we can still be friends, cousin."

"Of course," Sofie said uncertainly.

"Valerian says that he will make sure Father doesn't try to force me into a match. I am to have Nicholas after all, so I am as merry as a grig! No more high ropes for me."

Spoiled, Sofie thought uncharitably. But for the first time, she pitied Nicholas rather than Amelia.

"Tell me one thing, cousin," Sofie said. "Nicholas serves you. He cannot help putting your desires before his own. Does that not bother you?"