Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium Part 3

"All right, dear. Will you come and see me in a few days? It will be Mr. Wanewright's birthday soon, and he so wants to meet you again."

"Is he the one with-" William twitched. "-the cats?"

"Yes, he quite fancies cats," Mrs. Daffodil agreed.

"That man is terrifying."

"Please, William? I promise not to bring up the subject of science at all," Mrs. Daffodil said.

"Of course. But I'm keeping the potato."

"You are quite lucky to be alive," Count Orwick said from across his desk. "How fortunate that Mr. Cheek broke your fall."

"He could have been softer," Snips replied. She was seated in an obscenely comfortable chair in the middle of Orwick's rather expensive office, trying to wriggle her way out of a pair of manacles. They consisted of no more than two solid chunks of iron fused together at the wrists; she wasn't sure how they came off.

She wasn't sure they were supposed to. "Why am I here?"

Count Orwick smiled. "I have pulled several considerable favors. You have been placed in my custody."

"Wonderful. But just so you know, I don't do windows. It's a phobia I've had since childhood. A wild pack of 'em killed my mother." Snips narrowed her eyes, glaring at the window behind Orwick. "Horrible things, windows."

Orwick's fingers steepled together. "Do you know who I am, Miss Snips?"

"Hm. Are you Susan? You look kind of like a Susan. Do you mind if I call you Susan, Susan?"

"I am the man responsible for making the trains run on time."

"Fascinating," Snips said. "Hey. Listen, Susan. This is fun and all, but why don't you take these cuffs off me and send me back to Morgrim? Better yet, just cut me loose. I'm sure I can find my way back."

"In addition to the trains, some problem of general governance that has defied conventional solutions will occasionally find its way to my desk. I solve these problems."

"See, they've got these rocks there, and if I want to be reformed, they tell me that it's critical that I move these rocks from one side of the prison yard to the other." Snips switched from trying to wriggle out of the manacles to gnawing on them.

"In my search for 'unconventional' solutions, I sometimes employ men and women of 'unconventional' qualities. You are such a woman, Miss Snips. In exchange for your services, I offer reasonable pay. Quite likely the easiest money you'll ever earn."

Snips paused in mid-chomp. "This is cutting into my rock-moving time. I could have moved a rock in all the time it took for you to tell me this. That'd bring me one rock closer to legitimacy."

"It will also be the perfect opportunity for you to lay low until this other matter comes to a close."

Snips paused, lifting her head. "What 'other' matter?"

"Oh, you know," Orwick said, as if distracted. "The pardon."

"Pardon?"

"Oh, you mean you haven't heard? You're scheduled to receive a full pardon for your various excesses. Signed by Her Majesty herself."

Snips sprang to her feet. "What?"

"Why yes." He slid the notice across the desk for Snips to inspect. "See for yourself."

Snips' eyes scurried down the doc.u.ment. Her? Pardoned? It was too good to be true; in an instant, all of her indiscretions were forgiven and forgotten. It meant a perfectly clean slate-it meant she was out of prison. It meant she could tell the Count to build a set of rails straight up to his posterior and send the trains down the line at full steam. It was a public notice; everyone could see- Near the end was the list of crimes Snips was being pardoned of.

Snips stammered. "You-y-you-"

"You'll be free as a bird, Miss Snips."

"You p-published-"

"You've made it crystal clear that our prison system isn't for you. And we've heard you, Miss Snips. We wouldn't dream of putting you back behind bars. Even if you begged."

"You put down their names!" Snips' voice rose to quivering yelp. "The people I've been stealing from! Do you have any idea what they'll do to me?!"

Orwick's expression resembled a smile in the same way that the light of an oncoming locomotive resembled a tunnel's exit.

" Especially if you begged."

Snips slumped back to her seat, head spinning. The Count could have held anything over her head-execution, jail-time, the wanton slaughter of puppies-and Snips would have wriggled free.

Escaping was her specialty. But with a stroke of the pen, Orwick could turn Aberwick itself into her prison. Except this one had no locks to foil and no doors to open. And it would be filled to the brim with all the two-bit murderers, thieves, and ne'er-do-wells, who-until now-had been unaware that Arcadia Snips had been cheerfully robbing them blind.

Morgrim was suddenly looking extraordinarily comfortable.

"At least you don't know about the duck," Snips said.

"Check the back side."

Snips flipped the doc.u.ment over. "Oh."

"I hear Jake 'The Beak' Montgomery still shrieks like a little girl when he hears a quack."

Snips relented. "What do you want from me?"

"For you to solve a murder."

For a while, Snips let silence speak for her.

"I'm sorry. Come again?"

"Are you familiar with the Steamwork?"

"Big, noisy place. They build things there," Snips said.

"Like, uh, I don't know. Steam-powered b.u.t.ter knives or some such nonsense."

"I have reason to believe that their level of technological sophistication is far greater than what they have been reporting on their tax forms," Orwick said, leaning forward. "A gentleman under their employment sent word recently that he wished to speak to me about a very important matter."

"Breakthrough in steam-powered b.u.t.ter? To go with the knives," Snips said.

Orwick ignored the thief's speculations. "But before I could schedule a meeting, he met with his untimely demise."

"Oh, that's a shame. Let me guess-died in a horrible automated cutlery accident."

"He was killed in an explosion," Orwick explained. "His burning corpse was propelled out of his workshop and into the ocean."

Snips grimaced. "Ouch."

"And you will be aiding in the investigation of his death."

"Uh, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly the investigator type."

"You do not need to be. The Steamwork has hired a detective agency to look into the matter. You will be accompanying them as a government consultant. It will be their task to provide the cover of an investigation into Basil Copper's demise, allowing you an opportunity to-"

"-be a sneaky little fink and find out what he wanted to tell you and why someone decided to put a stop to it?"

"Exactly."

"I don't understand. I'm no government agent," Snips said.

"I'm not even government material. I'm a con artist. Why me?"

"Precisely because you are a con artist, Miss Snips, and precisely because you are not a government agent. As I have stated: your methods are unconventional. They may work where other methods have failed."

Snips snorted. "You're a nut. A salty, roasted nut."

"All I ask is that you take your position seriously. Through hook or crook, Miss Snips, get to the heart of the matter. In exchange for your services, I will see to the disposal of this-"

Orwick gestured to the pardon notice, as if its mere presence offended him. "-odious doc.u.ment."

Snips' eyebrow twitched. "And what happens if I don't?"

"Then, Miss Snips, I think it would be wise for you to consider another profession. Before your colleagues decide to consult with you."

Shortly after Snips left, Mr. Peabody entered with a bundle of paperwork.

"If I may, sir," Mr. Peabody began, setting the pile down on top of Orwick's desk. "I would like to inquire as to what you are hoping to accomplish by a.s.signing Miss Snips to this affair."

Count Orwick looked amused. "Are you questioning my judgment, Peabody?"

The a.s.sistant immediately grew pale, stepping back. "Ah, not at all, sir."

"Calm yourself." Orwick turned to stare through the window, watching the railway. "I a.s.signed Miss Snips to this matter for two reasons."

"The first, sir?"

"An adequate solution that fails to accommodate for the unknown is neither adequate nor a solution. Miss Snips may solve the matter; she may not. She may serve to do nothing more than provide a useful clue-a clue without which those better trained than herself could never succeed. But any solution that constrains itself to the boundaries of merely that which we predict will happen is a solution doomed to stagnation and failure."

"She's a mongrel, sir, and self-destructive," Mr. Peabody noted. "It is likely that she'll die."

"Yes," Orwick said. "In which case, we come to my second reason. Should she die in her service as a government agent, I will have every right to investigate the Steamwork at my leisure-for suspicion in the murder of an official operative."

Mr. Peabody smiled. "She succeeds, you win. She fails, you win. Very good, sir."

"The only way I can lose is if she manages to do nothing.

And considering Miss Snips' history, I find that possibility to be the least likely of them all."

CHAPTER 5: IN WHICH WE RETURN TO THE PAST IN ORDER TO INVESTIGATE GOINGS-ON CONCERNING RAINSTORMS, SECRET SOCIETIES, AND b.u.t.tERFLY WINGS.

An engine growled beneath Aberwick's streets.

The machine occupied a hundred feet of s.p.a.ce; it was a geometric puzzle of precisely arranged gears and cogs, gnawing at mathematical enigmas presented to it by means of a series of levers. It was powered by a crank, which Jeremiah now turned; each revolution brought it one step closer to a problem's inevitable solution.

"Incredible," Abigail said.

"Jeremiah called the original design a 'calculation engine',"

Nigel explained. "A machine capable of performing all manner of mathematical formulae, removing any element of human error."

"And it works?"

"It does."

"I hope to replace this portion with a steam engine,"

Jeremiah commented, panting. He finished with the crank, stepping away and wiping his sweat-soaked palms off on his trousers.

"It is a fascinating machine, and surely deserving of attention," Abigail said. "But it does not explain how you predicted the rain."

"When Jeremiah finished the machine, he showed it to me.

I realized at once that its applications extended far beyond matters of simple maths," Nigel said. "With modification, it could perform incredibly complex calculations-processes that could predict nature itself. A sort of 'probability engine'."