Iron and Blood (35 page)

Rick moved to stand beside him, as if to see what he was looking at.

“They’re working their way toward the boiler,” Jake said. “Looks like One-Ear and his buddies trashed the place. All right. They’re at the boiler. Not good. I don’t have to hear what they’re saying. Lars can see the gauges. If they can’t bring down the pressure real quick, that boiler’s going to blow.”

“Can they do it?” Rick asked, his voice taut.

“I don’t know,” Jake replied, squinting. One-Ear and his men had added some kind of infernal mechanism to the boiler.

Jake could see Doheimer shouting at Adam as they both bent to the work of undoing the damage the saboteurs had done. “The emergency release valve has been badly damaged, welded shut—they can’t budge it. And there’s a timer mechanism attached to the side.” Jake watched as Doheimer and Adam strained to turn valves and knobs with wrenches. Lars lent his mechanical strength but was also thwarted.

“They can’t turn down the pressure. And the boiler looks like it’s straining at the seams.” Through Lars’s eyes, Jake could read the gauges. Every one of the gauges was in the red zone.

“They’re not going to make it. It’s going up any second. Everyone pull back!” The group moved another block down the street, dragging the saboteurs and unconscious guards with them; still within sight but, with luck, out of the range of flying debris.

Jake’s field of vision changed so quickly it nearly made him lose his balance. Rick put a hand on his shoulder to steady him as the scene blurred, and when the images cleared, Lars was on the other side of the boiler.

“Oh, no,” Jake murmured, knowing what the
werkman
intended an instant before Lars’s metal fist slammed through the emergency release valve.

Caught up in the vision, Jake reeled as scalding water burst from the ruptured valve, dousing the
werkman
and spraying the room behind him. Clouds of super-heated steam billowed from the tank, hot enough to sear skin and lungs. A muted bang rumbled across Smallman Street, and Doheimer’s plumbers cried out in alarm.

“Adam and Doheimer?” Rick pressed.

“I can’t see them,” Jake said. “I can’t see much at all.”

Steam clouded Jake’s vision even as the
werkman
tried to back out of the way. His metal skin and clockwork mechanisms protected him beyond the limits of fragile skin and bone, but Jake knew as the image flickered and faltered that the damage was done. Lars looked down at the fist that had ruptured the damaged release valve, and the metal was melted and misshapen, fingers fused together.

Lights flickered at the edge of Jake’s vision, warning signals from the difference engine in Lars’s mechanical brain alerting him to critical data. Perhaps with forethought, Adam could build a
werkman
especially suited for the conditions of the ruined boiler room, but Lars had been intended as an elevator operator, not meant for extreme conditions.

“He’s dying,” Jake said.

“Who? Adam?” Rick’s worry was clear in his voice.

“No, Lars,” Jake replied. “He’s shutting down.”

The warning lights from the difference engine were dimming. The point of view did not move—perhaps, Jake thought, Lars’ legs were fused, like the fingers of his hand, by the superheated steam. The images in the gadget glasses flickered, obliterated by bursts of static. Colors faded. The lenses went dark.

“He’s gone.” Jake swallowed down the lump in his throat.
He’s mechanical
, Jake told himself.
Adam can fix him, build another one.
Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of loss.

“Jake.” Rick shook his shoulder. “Jake. Take the glasses off. Look. Adam and Doheimer. They’re coming out of the cellar. They’re alive!”

Jake removed the gadget glasses and tucked them into a pocket of his jacket. He saw Adam’s loping figure next to Doheimer’s squat, bustling form. “They made it,” he said, relief flooding him. “It didn’t blow up the building.”

The plumbers sent up a cheer as Doheimer and Adam crossed the street to rejoin them, crowding around and shouting in triumph. Jake left Kovach to mind the prisoners, and went to greet them.

Adam’s glum face was in marked contrast to the celebratory mood of the plumbers gathered around Doheimer. “You saw?” he said, meeting Jake’s gaze.

Jake nodded. “Yeah. What was that thing?”

Adam shook his head. “I didn’t have time to study it. Some kind of detonator that would have magnified the blast, I’d guess. They’d welded the knobs. The only thing I could think to do was release the pressure, and Lars was the only way to do it in a hurry.” He looked haggard. “Doheimer and I barely had a chance to find cover before I had to give Lars the order. I didn’t go in there intending to destroy him.”

“I’m sorry,” Jake replied. “Can you fix him?”

Adam let out a long breath. “I can build a new body, but each
werkman
has his own quirks, little design flaws that make them individual. Once he’s fixed, he’ll function, but I don’t know if he’ll still be Lars.”

“Someone meant to do you a world of harm.” Doheimer stood in front of Jake, backed by his men. “Never thought I’d say it, but I’m mighty glad those guys were scabs. No Union man would do such a thing.”

“Thank you,” Jake said, extending his hand. Doheimer’s roughened fingers closed around his in a bone-crushing shake. “You took a big risk.”

“Sorry about your man,” Doheimer said. “Don’t know how he managed to do it, welded solid it was, but if he hadn’t, we’d have all gone up along with the building.”

Jake nodded. “We’ll see to him.” He looked up at the crowd of plumbers. “We’re all right, then—misunderstanding straightened out, no boycott?”

Doheimer grinned. “Right as rain, son. Got no patience with anarchists. You want my boys to work them over, find out what they know?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Rick said. “But thank you.”

“You sure?” Doheimer said, giving One-Eye a look that made the three saboteurs shrink back against the wall. “Stuff like this makes my guys real mad. Leaving those three in a bloody heap might send their bosses a message.”

“Thanks, but no,” Jake said. “We’ll handle them.”

“All right then, let’s clear out!” Doheimer shouted to his plumbers. “‘I’ll be back first thing Monday morning and see what it’ll take to replace that boiler and get things set right. I’ll get you a good price.” And with that, Doheimer and his men strode off down Smallman Street.

“What do you intend to do with them?” Kovach asked, raking the prisoners with a glare that made it clear he would not have minded taking Doheimer up on his offer.

“A slightly more elegant version of the same thing,” Jake said, feeling all the night’s danger, tension and loss turning into cold resolve. “I thought we’d take them to Andreas, let him find out what they know and make them forget it all.”

Kovach turned back to the prisoners. “You might want to beg those plumbers to come back and work you over,” he said with a nasty smile. “Because he’s going to turn you over to a vampire-witch.”

“And then what?” Rick asked quietly.

“Then we take what we find out, and figure out if the same people trying to kill Adam—and me—are the ones who killed my father,” Jake replied. “It’s time to settle the score.”

“F
OR SOMEONE WHO’S
supposed to be in mourning, you get around,” Cady McDaniel said as Nicki slipped into the carriage a few blocks from the Desmet home.

“Extraordinary circumstances require a little rule bending, and besides, except for church, we spent all of yesterday cooped up,” Nicki said offhandedly. While she was not wearing black or gray, her navy blue dress was suitably dark, and a conservative hat was strategically positioned to partially shadow her face.

“There are worse things than offending the guardians of fashion,” Renate Thalberg observed, and knocked on the glass panel at the front of the carriage, signaling the driver to go.

“If he’s gone missing, surely the police have been to Jasinski’s apartment,” Cady said.

“Doubtful,” Renate said. “Folks on Polish Hill don’t trust the cops much. And even if they did, why would the police bother? Karl was no one important to them.”

The carriage jostled along the streets of New Pittsburgh, winding from the broad boulevards of Shadyside toward the more modest accommodations of Polish Hill. At Catherine’s behest, the driver and his assistant were two of Miska Kovach’s security men. Both were armed, as were the passengers in the carriage. Nicki had her derringer, Cady had a Colt Peacemaker tucked into her large purse, and Renate’s protections were of an entirely different and magical sort.

“You still haven’t explained how Cady and I are going to be able to recognize anything witchy on our own.” Nicki tucked her hat pin back into place, trying to keep the large hat from listing as the carriage bumped over the cobblestone road.

Renate reached into a velvet bag that hung from her belt and withdrew a glass orb the size of an apple. “This is an oculus,” she said, looking from Nicki to Cady. “When I activate it, I will see whatever is in front of the oculus. I’ll see what you see.”

“Great,” said Cady. “But how will we know if we’re looking at something important?”

Renate grinned. “Because I can send a flicker of magic through the oculus to signal you. Yellow means something is important enough to take with you. Red means danger—don’t touch.”

Nicki shrugged. “That seems simple enough.”

Renate replaced the oculus in its pouch and handed the velvet bag to Cady. “Hopefully, it will be that simple.”

“On the other hand, we have no idea who else might have been there ahead of us,” Nicki said. “Including those two government agents.”

“True,” Renate conceded. “But they’re not witches. And a lot of powerful magical items appear quite normal and unimportant to someone without magic.”

“Hiding in plain sight,” Cady said.

“Exactly,” Renate said.

“How do we know Drogo Veles or some of his henchmen haven’t beaten us to it?” Nicki asked.

Renate sighed. “We don’t. But Karl knew Andreas and me. We were part of his coven. I thought he trusted us. I’m betting that if Karl spelled his place against witches, I might be able to bend his wardings a bit to allow you to enter.” She smiled. “I have an amulet he made. It may have enough resonance of his power to do the trick.” She paused. “Or he may have set his wardings so that his landlady’s willing permission will allow a visitor to pass. There are a lot of ways to set a spell like this, if you expect the other side to use force.”

“Mrs. Zukowski gave me a note for Karl Jasinski’s landlady,” Cady said, withdrawing a folded piece of paper. “It’s in Polish. But Mrs. Zukowski says the landlady is a friend of hers, and if she vouches for us, the landlady will let us into Karl’s shop.”

“Let’s hope the note doesn’t say ‘Call the police right now’, in Polish,” Nicki muttered. “You trust people more than I do.”

Cady chuckled. “Not so much. I looked it up one word at a time in a Polish dictionary before I came.”

“Suppose Karl was trying to stop the Night Hag,” Nicki said. “What kind of things would he need? Other than whatever he was trying to ship to Brand and Desmet that never arrived.”

“Notes—very possibly not in English,” Renate replied. “Diagrams. Symbols or runes. Maps. Maybe some type of relic. Eastern Europe is very big on sacred objects of all kinds. Belief invests a lot of power into something like a relic. If you see items you think are odd, hold up the oculus, and I can tell you whether it’s worth taking.”

“You want us to steal things from Jasinski’s shop?” Nicki asked, raising an eyebrow.

Renate met her gaze. “I don’t think Karl abandoned his mission,” she replied. “Either someone took him, or he’s dead. In either case, nothing would please him more than for his work to go on, to succeed.”

“Let’s hope he was on the right track,” Cady said. “Or we’ve got even bigger problems.”

The late afternoon sun cast long shadows from the buildings on Pulawski Way. Rooming houses, homes, and shops with signs in both English and Polish lined the narrow streets. Washing hung from laundry lines and fire escape railings. Boys played marbles in the street and old men lounged on front stoops, talking in Polish and watching people pass by. Old women in head scarves and long black dresses, tired-looking women with babies on their hips, and workmen coming back from their shifts jostled for space on the cracked sidewalks. The smell of sausage and cabbage, tripe, and freshly baked bread wafted from open windows.

The carriage that Renate had acquired was plain, of a kind often hired by the hour; something no one would look twice at. The driver and his assistant were dressed plainly, and all three of the women had taken pains to choose clothing that would not stand out in this neighborhood of mill workers, tradesmen, and recent immigrants. Nicki had somehow acquired a half-mourning gown made of affordable bombazine, and her hat, while it had a veil that partially obscured her features, was far below Nicki’s usual sartorial standards.

Their carriage parked around the corner from the address written on Cady’s scrap of paper. “Time to activate the oculus,” Renate said.

Renate took a silver cup from the small carpetbag on the seat next to her, and handed the cup to Cady. She handed a silver bowl to Nicki. Then Renate took out a silver absinthe spoon, the handle of which was in the shape of a pentacle, and a vial of green absinthe.