Gears the size of carriage wheels engaged tooth for tooth with a patient clack—clack—clack, a steady rhythm that seemed to travel through the iron gratings and into her bones. Pistons answered in deep chuffs and hollow whoomps, like some enormous creature breathing in the dark. Steam hissed in sharp, sudden bursts, and cooling metal pinged in bright little notes—tiny bells scattered through the thunder.
Beside her, Silas moved as if he belonged to it, turning his head at a change in pitch, angling his steps as a chain rattled overhead and went taut with a metallic snap. “Mind the vent,” he said, and tugged her gently to the side an instant before a white plume sighed out across the walkway, warm and damp against her sleeve.
Dorothea laughed under her breath—half disbelief, half delight—because for once the world was not asking her to be smaller. It was asking her to pay attention.
And it was perfect in every way.
This moment, this experience, all the sights and sounds, would be engraved in her brain and on her heart forever.
“Thank you,” she leaned into Silas.
“For what?” He glanced at her, curiosity in his eyes.
“For giving me all this...” She spread her hands wide. “For giving me my dreams.”
“Hmm.” He grinned. “Not the sort of thanks I expected to hear from a woman—in the Forge—but I’ll take it. And I’ll add that it’s my pleasure.”
Completely missing his allusion, she grabbed his arm. “What’s that?” She pointed at something that looked like a clock might have married a steamroller and given birth to a mysterious and movable object that was topped by a huge set of wrought iron hour hands.
Obligingly, Silas explained, pointed out various other mechanicals, led her around an assortment of massive and thundering pistons that made her ears ring, and finally drew her onto a small terrace that led up from the main floor and into a smaller section of the Forge.
And there, in the corner, looking quite grubby and forlorn, sat what was obviously the Mistletoe machine.
“Oh dear,” murmured Dorothea. “This has taken quite a beating, hasn’t it?”
“Indeed, yes.” Silas walked up to it, grabbed a nearby rag, and worked off some of the oily dust mixture that dulled the finish. “It functioned so well for so long, I don’t think anyone was expecting it to fail. So when it did at the end of last year’s production run?It came as a shock.”
“I can’t begin to imagine,” she said, shaking her head.
“To be honest? When I took over as Forge-Marshal this year, I was faced with more than a few wide-ranging problems, and so this fellow fell to the bottom of the list. We did order a replacement back at the beginning of the Autumn, knowing it would be a close thing. What we didn’t know, of course, was that the damn ship it was on would sink.”
Dorothea closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh no.”
“Unfortunately, yes.” He sighed, almost groaning. “And here we have our original model, covered with dust, no longer working, and the deadline for Mistletoe looming large.”
“A problem indeed,” she murmured, circling the machine. “You have the manufacturing supplies to feed it, I assume?”
“Yes. We have enough on hand to cover this year at least.”
“And it continued to work until the end of last season?”
“Yes again. I wasn’t on the floor when it stopped, but I heard there was a rather sad cry, a whimper, and then...silence. Nothing anyone did after that could restart it. The crew were clock-sick about it, but then we realised it had been a part of the Forge for so many years that nobody could recall how to service it, let alone open it up and look at the mechanicals inside.”
“No blueprints? Schematics?”
“None.”
“Taken for granted all these years,” Dorothea pursed her lips as she stared at it. “How sad, and yet how proud it must have been to do its job for so long.”
Silas blinked. “Well, um, yes. I suppose so. If machines feel pride, of course.”
She dismissed his comment with a brief flick of her hand. “You, of all people, should understand machines, Silas. Don’t you talk to them as you’re working on them? Touch them carefully, oil them, grease them, polish their housings? Isn’t that caring for them?”
“Yes...”
“Well then. What makes you think they don’t enjoy your attentions?” She turned to him. “Look at our tickerkins. They’re machines. But...they have personalities. Take Nelson.” She grinned. “There’s a classic example.”
Silas grinned back. “Point taken.”
