Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium Part 14

"I think that you may weigh a little more than a hundred and ten pounds, Miss Snips."

Snips realized that she had her eyes shut. Despite her brain warning against it, she opened them.

She was not dead.

She was soaring.

"Funny," Snips said with a dry and breathless rasp. "I don't recall having ever possessed the power of flight."

"We are not flying, Miss Snips."

"I mean, that seems like something you'd remember," she continued, licking her dry lips. "'Oh yes, I can fly, silly me'. Or something like that."

"I must repeat: We are not flying."

"At the very least, it seems like something you'd tell mum about. 'Oh hey mum, by the way, I can fly.' And I know for a fact that I never told my mum any such thing."

"Miss Snips!" William's voice was strained to the point of snapping. "We are not flying!

Below Snips' feet was the smoldering carca.s.s of the burning apartment; all around her was the night sky. William, his face filthy with soot, was holding her firmly about the waist, their arms linked together. Above them was his umbrella.

It had opened and unfolded, exposing a heavily reinforced iron frame that served as an anchor for the ma.s.sive canopy that extended above and around them. The st.u.r.dy weave was catching the air, dragging across the sky like a cat's claw slowly ripping down a curtain.

William Daffodil reveals his father's invention to Arcadia Snips.

"Neat," Snips said, scarcely able to produce any other sound.

"A simple matter of air resistance and velocity," he said. "A draft of heat drew us high into the air-far higher than I intended.

But we should remain safe until we touch down."

"I didn't know they could do that."

"Yes, it's a rather curious design feature my father added long after the initial design," William said. "By the way, how did you know that the umbrella is fire r.e.t.a.r.dant?"

Snips squirmed in William's grip. "I, uh. Well, you know.

Lucky guess."

"You guessed."

"Heh, yeah. Good guesser, huh?" Snips said, grinning.

They floated over the Rookery in silence. Below them were the maze-like streets, the crooks, the tricks, the anguish, the laughter-but from here it all looked like nothing more than a bawdy theater play. Gas-lanterns glimmered like pin-p.r.i.c.ks of light in a vast and dark blanket, shining over the unfolding tapestry of city drama. Shouts and cries rose up, distorted by distance and rock until they became nothing more than a collectively mumbled complaint.

But it was William that Snips was watching from the corner of her eye. For a moment, the mathematician's nervous tension had slipped away beneath the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. He was watching the cityscape unfold beneath them with bright and curious eyes.

"Have we met before?" The question escaped Snips before she had a chance to think about it; she wasn't sure why she asked it, but some distant familiarity nagged at the back of her brain.

"I don't know," William confessed, and then added: "I thought so at first myself, but I do not think so. I doubt I would fail to remember a woman such as yourself, Miss Snips."

"Fair enough," she said. She was about to say something else, but William suddenly interrupted her.

"Miss Snips, look! The fire department has arrived."

At last, the pair was coming close to the ground; they were descending within sight of the burning apartment. As they came closer, they caught sight of a ma.s.sive wagon pulled by a team of horses rushing toward the scene. A giant iron pump was mounted on the center of the carriage. Men in long orange coats and steepled metal hats held on for dear life as the contraption swerved through the narrow alleyways, accompanied by a screeching siren.

"Bah," Snips said. "They're here already."

"So they'll put out the blaze," William said.

"Not before they get their cut."

"Pardon?"

They landed within a block of the apartment. Unbuckling Snips' arm, William gave the belt back and ran off in a swirl of smoke to view the situation for himself. Snips sighed and followed after. As they rounded the last bend, they could see the engine had reached its destination. One of the firemen-a grizzled one-eyed goat of a man who resembled a brigand more than a firefighter- was involved in a heated exchange with a soot-covered woman they soon recognized as Marge.

"-h.e.l.l we will!" Marge snarled to him just as Snips and William came within earshot.

"If you act now, we'll throw in a Gold membership for half our usual rate," the fireman said. "A quarter off all your gas bills!"

"We'll put the b.l.o.o.d.y thing out ourselves!" Marge roared, turning back to the throng of tenants who were struggling with buckets and shovels against the fire. "Back to the front lines, you lazy gits! Someone fetch more buckets!"

People darted off to carry out her orders. The firefighter shook his head and tsked. "Wasting precious collateral," he said.

"What on earth is going on?" William asked.

"Business as usual in the Rookery," Snips replied. "Gas company's trying to buy the apartment off her."

"While it's burning?!"

"Yes," Snips said, addressing William much like a parent might speak to a child. "While it's burning."

"But that's-that's-"

"He'll keep dropping his offering price as the fire gets worse," Snips spoke as she found herself a seat on a nearby wall.

The blaze gave off a bright light, giving everything it touched a metallic orange glow. The color sparkled off her silver-toothed smile, adding a demonic mien to the thief's expression. "If they can't put it out themselves, they'll have to sell it to get anything back."

"We can't let them do that!"

Snips shrugged. "It's legal."

"But it's wrong!"

"Wrong, right, up, down, back, forward-doesn't change a thing."

They were interrupted by the sound of another siren. A clockwork nightmare stumbled out of a nearby alleyway, awkwardly clambering over the street by means of long, clumsy pincers; it was the very same mess of plates and skillfully crafted spider legs that Snips had ridden earlier that day in the Rookery. Its pilots crawled over it, stoking the flames of the furnace while attaching hoses to valves located along the pump attached to its backend.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," the fire chief swore, turning to face the machine while shaking his fist. "McMulligan!"

A galvanized bullhorn atop of the machine activated with a metallic whine, flooding the burning street with a crackling hiss.

"Attention! Sign nothing! The gas company's fire department is running a scam! We're here to help!"

"Finally," William said, sighing with relief.

"Step forward to mortgage your property and qualify for platinum membership!"

"Platinum?! You're stealin' our schtick!" The fireman said, drawing his axe. "Get out of here, McMulligan! I saw 'em first!"

He charged across the cobbled street, joined by the majority of his men. Soon, they were swarming atop of the machine, beating away at the iron carapace that enclosed it and struggling with the pilots who remained on its exterior. Meanwhile, the tenants continued to engage in a futile struggle against the rapidly growing blaze.

William stared at the scene, awestruck by the absurdity of it all. When he turned to Snips for answers, the thief just smiled and shrugged. "Probably decided they wanted a piece of the action,"

she told him.

Turning back to the tableau of chaos before him, William put his umbrella aside, rolled up his sleeves, and marched toward the fire carriage. He seized one side of the wagon, dragged himself up to the pump, and began turning valves.

Snips watched with all the curiosity of an alien monitoring the peculiar mating habits of humans. When William moved to heft up a wrench, it was enough to coax the thief off the wall for a closer look. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Something," William replied, seizing a nearby wrench and fitting it to a valve. With a great heave of his shoulders, he turned it; the engine creaked and shuddered. Pressure rumbled in the belly of the pump as he worked to rouse it from its slumber.

"Don't be silly," Snips said, and now she was scowling.

"You won't make an ounce of difference."

"I can't sit by and do nothing," William said, struggling to turn another valve. "People are in danger."

The other firefighters remained distracted with their battle.

Snips looked their way, sighed, and climbed up on the carriage.

"Fine," she said. "What do I do?"

"Press that valve down," William directed her to a bra.s.s fitting, wiping at a layer of perspiration that had gathered at his brow. "Hold it while I release this pressure."

A few of the tenants fighting the blaze had noticed what Snips and William were up to, and were now running over to help.

Snips glared at them, but William was quick to pick up on the momentum and started politely issuing orders. It wasn't long before Marge herself-covered from head to toe in ash and burns -arrived at the pump only to take direction from William without batting an eye.

"Hold onto the hoses," William said, turning one last crank.

The pump shuddered as an immense pressure started to churn.

The streams of chemically treated water gushed out in long threads of foam, lashing out at the fire. The pump sprayed out steam and moisture, soaking everyone nearby; as they struggled to control the device, the fire started to writhe and wither beneath the smothering a.s.sault.

Mopping the sweat and foam from her face, Snips watched the scene unfold. Children ran about in oversized fire-proofed coats, carrying sloshing buckets of water in their hands. Stern-faced men and women clutched at the hoses, directing an endless stream towards the struggling flame.

The thief hmphed and turned back to the valves.

Meanwhile, several of the firemen had seen what was happening. Abandoning their reckless a.s.sault on the armored compet.i.tor, they began to run toward their hijacked carriage.

"Private property!" The chief yelled, pointing his finger at them.

"Private property! That's private property!"

Marge turned. Flanking the landlord were some of the finest thugs that Dead Beat Alley had to offer. As the firemen began to regroup, they realized that the crowd-which had started to swell as more inhabitants of Dead Beat Alley joined in the effort -had grown considerably large.

"There a problem?" Marge asked over the thunderous sound of the hoses.

The fire chief, only now realizing the precarious nature of his situation, cleared his throat and pointed at the pump. "That's mine."

Marge looked over her shoulder, spat out a wad of tar, then locked gazes with the one-eyed fire-fighter. "You don't say."

Several of Dead Beat Alley's denizens were now stepping forward, enclosing the nervous firemen in a loose circle. "Uh, yeah. It's against the law to use it without my permission, and-"

"Law?" Marge asked. "Wha.s.sat?"

"Think it's somethin' rich people have," a thug offered helpfully. "You know, to keep out riffraff."

"Huh. Sounds expensive," Marge said. "Don't think I can afford it."

The fire chief swallowed. Nasty sorts of men with nastier knives now loomed on every side. "Well, yes, but-"

"Tell you what," Marge said. "Seein' how it's a nice, warm night-and it looks like I might only be losin' half my apartment- I'm gonna do you a big favor."

"You are?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna let you have the pump back when I'm through with it. How does that sound? Pretty fair, huh?"

"That's ridiculous," is what the fire chief would have said, but somewhere between the sight of Marge's dead eye stare and those long and wicked knives, the message became garbled and ended up sounding remarkably like "Yes, quite fair, ma'am, thank you very much!".

CHAPTER 16: IN WHICH MISTAKES, PIGEONS, AND CALCULATION ENGINES ARE THOROUGHLY DISCUSSED.

Nigel Arcanum relished the whimsies of a long dead author, his bandage sheathed hand sc.r.a.ping beneath the book's words as he read. But as he reached the end of the page, he paused; the sound of something tapping against bare gla.s.s drew him away from his pleasant reverie.