Valves & Vixens, Volume 2 Read online

  I straightened my shoulders, willing my mouth to keep from twitching into a grin. “Hot and waiting, sir. Understood.”

  Axton rapped his knuckles against the helmet sat almost forgotten on the nearby table. The clang was sharp and broke the moment. “Then seal me in. The sooner I’m gone the sooner I’m back.”

  And with a tight breath, I got to work.

  I stood in the yard, the shadow of the vast airship mooring tower falling across me. The air was cool and smoke and soot swirled around me, the cries from the docks clear over the high brick walls enclosing the workshop buildings.

  Axton, his distinctive suit disguised by a lead-weighted tweed cloak, rode the lift to the small, silver-skinned airship that would take him high into the hazy summer sky. From there, he’d launch himself out beyond the safety of the Earth to the orbiting garrison. And from there, to the moon.

  I touched my lips. I didn’t have the mysterious metal to keep him with me. But my fingers curled around the key to his town-house, warming my pocket.

  A fortnight. Fourteen days. I would be hot and waiting.

  Mender Cotton’s Daughter

  Thomas Gregory

  Chapter One

  “Mender!” the blond rider shouted. He was just tall enough that he had to duck beneath the cog and hammer sign marking the mender’s trade above the door. Inside, the little room was lined with tools, meticulously organized by type and size and stained canvas dust cloths shrouded larger pieces of machinery keeping the wind blow grit outside from getting into their gears. “Mender!” he shouted again.

  “I’m crippled, boy, not deaf,” the old man replied, his wheeled chair gliding from behind the curtain that divided one room from the next. Twin tufts of grey hair stuck out from either side of his otherwise bald pate. “Now, what can Mender Cotton do for you?”

  The rider stepped fully into the room now, his broken gait awkward, but not pained. “I need brass work done.” He pulled his right pant leg up to show the metal and dark wood of the replacement limb beneath. “I need quick work. Can you do it?”

  Cotton fished a pair of glasses from the pocket of his thick workman’s apron, cleaning them on an empty pant leg in the place where his limb should have been. “Quick work is usually careless work.”

  The rider drew two silver coins from his coat pocket and placed them on the mender’s work bench.

  “Feh. Put that away and let me look first. No sense figuring price till I know it’s a thing that can be fixed.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose and leaned in close, squinting at the leg’s clockwork pieces as if he were mapping the workings of the thing in his head before coming to the stamped C.S.A. Mark. “You boys should’ve stuck to buying originals from the Schwarzwald factories instead of trying to build copies after you got a good look at them. Rare to see one of these in working order.”

  “Field menders taught me to take care of it,” the rider replied.

  “Taught that to everybody. Not many that listened, your side or ours. Girl, bring a chair and some light.”

  He hadn’t heard the woman come in, not that it was hard to sneak about the place, divided up by curtains as it was. She dressed not unlike the mender himself in workman’s apron and multi-pocketed pants filled with small tools. Her black hair was pulled out of the way in a tight braid and there was a certain olive skinned resemblance between her and the grey haired Cotton. A leather strap ran across her shoulder to a small box at her side covered with tiny black keys. On one end of the box was a small bellows, like a concertina. A brass ratchet handle protruded from the other.

  “What’s your name?” the mender asked as the girl busied herself with an electric lantern. It buzzed as she played with the knob at its base and came to life a moment later bathing the room in an orange glow from the tiny bulb inside.

  “Donnegan,” replied the rider. The girl left through the rear curtain, returning a moment later with a wooden stool.

  “Sit. Leg up here.” Cotton knocked on the lower shelf of the work bench. Donnegan sat, the clockwork appendage remaining stiffly extended. He laced his fingers behind his knee and, grimacing as he pulled, brought the artificial limb up to the shelf so Cotton could examine it more closely. The mender made a sucking sound on his teeth as he looked over the intricacies of the gear driven prosthetic, bringing the light closer, readjusting the wick again, and squinting through his glasses.

  “Flex,” Cotton ordered. Donnegan tensed the muscles in his calf and the clockwork leg suddenly sprang to life. As he shifted, the leg and foot moved, subtly, mimicking the natural movement of their flesh and blood counterparts with an uneven series of syncopated ratchets and ticks. Donnegan tightened and the foot turned first one way, then the other. Suddenly a grinding sound came from inside the mechanical limb, capped with a twisting groan of metal against metal as the foot went silent and dead. Cotton held up his hand and Donnegan relaxed as the Mender gently turned his artificial foot back into the correct, forward facing position.

  “There’s a room in back,” the mender said, finally. “Three days, I’ll get it ticking right again. Give me four and I can make it better than new.”

  “Three will have to do,” Donnegan answered, “It’s all the time I’ve got.” The old man frowned.

  “Help him off with it, girl.”

  The woman reached for the leather straps that kept the mechanical appendage secured to what remained of his leg before Donnegan’s hand closed over hers.

  “I can do it myself, thank you.” She blinked at him before withdrawing her hand.

  “Miranda doesn’t speak,” Cotton said, from the work bench where he was already selecting his tools, “not without the box.” The girl tapped the bellows device at her side. Her fingers moved over the keys in quick, practised succession before cranking the ratchet handle.

  “I’ll bring a cane, then,” came a thin, airy voice from the box, “and a replacement.” The haunting sound of the machine left him with a sudden chill as it gave breathy, musical life to those disembodied words. She left again once the box was finished and Donnegan returned to the job of removing the prosthetic.

  “One thing,” the mender stipulated, “that stays here.” Cotton pointed to the wood handled revolver with the tiny bronze wren resting at Donnegan’s hip. “Unusual name, Donnegan. Used to be a Wren Donnegan, fought with Hauser’s Bastard Sons during the war.” Donnegan reached, slowly, for the revolver, releasing the thin strip of leather that held the hammer in place while it was holstered. “This was back when they spent most of their time raiding border towns between north and south you understand. Put more than a few of them to the torch.”

  “Can’t say he’s any kin to me,” Donnegan answered, drawing the pistol but leaving it pointed towards the floor. The two men looked at one another in silence for a moment before Donnegan turned the gun around, handing it to Cotton butt first.

  “Well that’s good. That’s very good.” Cotton took the revolver and turned back to the work bench. From beneath his apron he drew a set of keys, tied with a cord around his neck. “A fair lot of Hauser’s men took to the wild life after the war. Robbing. Raiding. All manner of behaviour. You wouldn’t be a man who’d walk that kind of road, would you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then we can do business.”

  Miranda chose that moment to return as Cotton locked the gun in one of the workbench drawers. She began fitting Donnegan for the simple wooden prosthetic she’d brought back. This time he let her deft fingers wrap the leather straps around his thigh, tighten and buckle them.

  “Saloon’s down the way, you can get fed there, livery too where you can leave your horse.” Cotton said over his shoulder, already at work on Donnegan’s leg.

  “He’s a mule,” Donnegan replied.

  Miranda pressed the crank on the bellows box.

  “Be careful, it’s
like your first time being on one.” She made to help him up but he waved her hand away, lurching to his feet. Immediately he reeled, losing his balance and nearly crashing to the floor before Miranda caught him. Steadying him with a sigh and a little glare, she handed him the cane she’d brought on returning with the wooden leg.

  The near fall put Donnegan at the door and face to face with the new body who entered the room. The boy barely came up to Donnegan’s chin and the taller man was forced to tilt his head to look him in the eyes as close as they stood.

  “Mender, Job says the phonograph’s gone out again, wants to know if you’d have a look.”

  “I’ll see to it, Caleb.”

  Donnegan hadn’t noticed that Miranda’s small hand had remained on his back, steadying him until she removed it to push the box’s crank handle. Now he felt a sudden, warm absence.

  “Thank you, miss. Sir.” The boy nodded up at him before retreating, backwards through the door. Miranda, in turn, left Donnegan’s side to retrieve a stiff leather sided tool bag from beneath the workbench.

  “I’ll be at the saloon, then.”

  “Mind the Engineers while you’re there,” Cotton instructed, already deep into his work. “If they turn up in search of trouble come straight back.” Miranda, or the box, made no reply but squeezed silently through the gap left between Donnegan and the door.

  “Engineers?” Donnegan asked, watching her go.

  “Hmm? Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, can’t say I follow.”

  Cotton sighed, put down his tools, and removed his glasses.

  “Then you’ve been ranging too long. Church of the Holy Engine’s been building outposts in every boom town from here to Deadwood.” Cotton turned his chair around, wheeling closer to Donnegan. “A few years back, a farmer out east said he found something buried while he was digging a new well on his land. Didn’t know what it was at the time, of course, just that it looked like a bunch of punched cards, like the big thinking machines use, only made from sheets of solid silver instead of stiff paper. So, he did what anyone would do.”

  “He found someone to run them,” Donnegan surmised as he sat back down in the chair Miranda had left.

  “Exactly. What was on there was... well, they call it a revelation, like a new kind of bible for the times, telling them how to deal with the new world, dictating the place of men and machines. They’d seen that leg of yours and you might’ve had trouble.”

  “I take it they don’t approve?”

  “Not a little. ‘To bring man and machine into union is to violate the holy nature of both.’ That’s their line anyway and they’ve a harsh way of spreading the faith.”

  “What about the phonograph?”

  “A machine that promotes idleness and sin. If it isn’t feeding them the word of God or helping a man keep at his labours then it’s nothing but a toy of the devil, and if there’s one thing they like more than preaching the new word, it’s smashing the devil’s playthings.”

  “Doesn’t anyone complain to the Sheriff?” Donnegan asked.

  The mender laughed. “The only one more devout than Sheriff Wuhl these days is Preacher Hayes himself. Only difference is, Wuhl’s devotion is to gold, not God.”

  Chapter Two

  The Parched Mermaid was not the largest of the town’s trio of saloons, but it was, by far, the most popular for two reasons. The first was Job Quarrel’s willingness to invest in just about any new form of half baked technological entertainment that came through his door so long as he smelled the faintest hint of a profit in it. Job had already installed three motor-kinetoscopes by the time he’d been convinced to buy the tinny sounding Victrola, barely a prototype. That meant regular trips by either Cotton or Miranda to keep the thing under repair. It also meant regular trouble with the Holy Engine.

  The Parched Mermaid’s other draw was “Crimson” Cait Morrow. Cait had come to the Dakota Territory as a mail order bride, marrying a fur trader named Jonas Eldredge, a man who anyone in town could have told her spelled nothing but misery for any woman unlucky enough to find herself his bride. Violent tempered and of perverse inclinations, it came as no surprise when Cait shot her husband who was in the grip of a particularly powerful drunk. At her trial, one that had been perfunctory at best, the jury voted unanimously for acquittal. Afterwards, though she’d gained her freedom, she found herself destitute and with little to no prospects she finally turned to the oldest of all professions.

  Cait, it turned out had something of a talent for the business, and for self promotion, using both the colourful sobriquet she’d received for the red dress worn at her late husband’s funeral and capitalizing on her fame as a murderess. When Job Quarrel purchased the Mermaid, he saw the necessity for an added brothel but was loathe to operate one himself and so went into partnership with Cait, giving her run of the upstairs rooms and license to bring in the girls of her choosing. Cait quickly built the brothel’s reputation on the cleanliness of the women, her refusal to tolerate opium or morphine habits among her employees, and the terror she instilled in clients who got out of hand.

  The wooden floor creaked under Miranda’s boots as she entered the saloon. A trio of miners congregated at the far end of the bar, not far from Job who stood beneath the shrivelled “Fee-Jee Mermaid” that was the saloon’s namesake. In the back corner, Horace Schefly was dealing a mostly honest game of faro. Otherwise, the saloon was as yet largely empty. By evening, however, the place would be filled with trail hands, labourers, and anyone else in search good times, decent liquor and a woman of negotiable affection.

  “The belt again?” sighed the box. Job shook his head.

  “No rattling. It’s the gears, they keep grinding and seizing.”

  “Going around today.” Miranda unfurled the small rug in front of the Victrola and sat, cross-legged upon it. Unpacking her tools, she began dismantling the machine, organizing parts one by one at her side, laying them out in tiny ordered regiments of gears and springs and sprockets.

  It was well into the evening when Donnegan entered the saloon. Either he did not notice or did not care to notice Miranda, sitting on the floor in the far corner, parts and tools spread out around her, grease smeared across one cheek. Instead, he made a path directly to the bar. He had, in the intervening period, shaven and cleaned himself as much as the small room at Cotton’s would allow, giving his features a certain wounded softness that his ranging had somehow buried. Job brought him a drink and he retreated to a back table to sit alone.

  For her part, Miranda returned, wordlessly to her work, ignoring Donnegan across the room as he had ignored her. A short while later, he returned to the bar for another drink, and then for another. He was well on his way to the fourth when the three engineers entered the saloon. The first, a local boy Miranda recognized had a hatchet tucked into his belt and a tin covered bible in one hand. The remaining pair each carried a long hickory ax handle. The room grew suddenly quiet as the lead engineer, the one with the hatchet dragged a chair out from the table next to Donnegan’s and climbed atop it to address the room while the other two made their way through the saloon, one towards the three motor-kinetoscopes and the other towards Miranda, or more likely towards the Victrola currently in pieces on the floor.

  “Brothers!” shouted the engineer, “Oh my sinful brothers. Are you so blind as cannot see these playthings of that great adversary, that fallen one who’d lead you astray for what they truly are?” The men in the saloon looked around at one another as if one of them was about to jump up with an answer. “They are tools of the devil, brothers, here to take you down that leftward path most sinister, straight into darkness!” The engineer looked around the room, eyes full of fervour, not settling on any one of the men there. “But do not fear, brothers, do not fear, for we are here to show you the way and we will deliver his new commandments that come straight through from that most holy en
gine itself.”

  On cue, one of the engineer’s companions began to assault the first of the kinetoscopes with his ax handle, first knocking the eye piece from the top then proceeding to smash his way through the thin panelled sides with such violence that Horace Schefly, still at his faro table flinched with each successive blow to the machine.

  “He has in his grace inspired us towards a great revolution and in accordance with the first commandment of his new world let no man make light of the gift we have been given by turning its use towards frivolity or lewdness.” At this, the third engineer grabbed for the open casing of the Victrola, attempting to tip the machine over whether Miranda was in his path or not. Miranda, however, was on her feet before he could, a heavy wrench in one hand, the other pressing buttons on the bellows box at her side.

  “Nobody wants to hear your talk, Grayson Wynn.” Miranda could see Job Quarrel close his eyes, afraid to watch was was about to come next as the engineer turned his attention towards her. Grabbing her by the leather strap of the bellows box, he dragged her across the room to Grayson Wynn’s makeshift pulpit.

  “The second of his commandments for the age,” the engineer shouted, mirroring Wynn’s own fervour, “make no man like unto machine, likewise make no machine like unto a man for to do so is abomination and makes profane the sacred nature of both!” Grayson sneered down at her as the engineer released her at his feet.

  “God’d wanted you to have a voice, he’d have given you one, girl.” Miranda looked up at him with a spark of defiance in her eyes. Reaching down to the table beside her, she grabbed Donnegan’s glass and took a long draught, then, pursing her lips, she spit the bitter beer in a long, slow stream directly at Grayson Wynn’s crotch.

  Before Wynn or the rest of the room could react, Donnegan had thrust the crooked head of his cane upward, catching the engineer who’d dragged Miranda to Wynn’s feet by the neck and yanking him face first into the table, a sudden gout of blood spraying from his broken nose. Not finished, he grabbed the wide bladed hunting knife at his belt in one smooth motion and drove it into the table beside the engineer’s head, grazing his ear and setting that to bleeding as well.