Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century 1)

She said, “He swore it was an accident. He said there was a problem with the steering and the propulsion, that the whole thing was out of his control. But you can see with your own two eyes how he put it right back in the basement when he was finished with it. ”

Zeke nodded. He got down on his knees and brushed away what dust his hands could move, revealing more of the steel plating with its fist-sized dents.

“He swore that he didn’t know what became of the money because he didn’t take it, and he swore that he hadn’t ever meant to hurt a soul. And believe it or not, for a few days he was able to hide here. No one knew exactly where the machine had gone off to. At first, no one knew he’d driven it right back home, easy as turning a cart.

“But then your grandfather came around looking for him. I mean, everyone was looking for him, but if anyone knew where Levi’d gone off to, it’d be me, so this is where he came.

“I hadn’t talked to him since I’d run off to get married. My daddy never liked Levi. He thought Levi was too old for me, and I guess he was right. But more than that, he thought Levi wasn’t any good, and I guess he was right about that, too. So the last time I ever spoke to your grandfather, I called him a liar for saying my husband was a crook; and I lied through my teeth and said I didn’t know where my husband was. But he was right down here, in this laboratory. ”

Zeke said, “I wish I’d got to meet him. Your pa, I mean. ”

She didn’t know how respond to that, and a reply choked her until she could say, “I wish you had, too. He wasn’t always a real warm man, but I think he would’ve liked you. I think he would’ve been proud of you. ”

Then she cleared her throat and said, “But I was awful to him, the last time I saw him. I threw him out, and I never saw him alive again. ” She added, more to herself than to him, “And to think it was Cly who brought him back home. It’s a smaller world than you know. ”

“Captain Cly?”

“Oh, yes. It was Captain Cly, though he was a younger man at the time, and nobody’s captain, I don’t suppose. Maybe he’ll tell you about it when we get back on the ship. He’ll tell you how the jailbreak really happened, since you’ve always wanted to know so badly. If anyone can set the facts straight, it’s him, since he was there.

“But later that same night, when my daddy came here looking for Levi, I went down into the laboratory like I knew I wasn’t supposed to. Your father’d made a big stink about it, how I shouldn’t go there without his permission. But I came on down and let myself inside while he wasn’t looking. He was under that dome, working with some wrenches or some bolts, with his backside hanging out and his head buried down deep in the Boneshaker’s workings. So he didn’t see me. ”

Zeke was creeping up toward the driver’s panel, up toward that glass bubble that was thicker than his own palm. He hoisted his lantern as high over his head as he could hold it and peered through the scraped-up surface. “There’s something inside it. ”

Briar spoke more quickly. “I opened the laboratory door, and right over there was a stack of bags marked FIRST SCANDINAVIAN BANK. Over there, where that table’s all broke up now, there were several sacks, lined up in a row and stuffed to busting with money.

“I froze, but he saw me anyway. He jerked up in that seat and gave me a glare like nothing I’d ever seen before. He started yelling. He told me to get out, but then he saw that I’d already seen the money and he tried a different approach: He admitted he’d stolen it, but told me he didn’t know anything about the gas. He swore it was an accident. ”

Zeke asked, “What happened to the money? Is any of it still here?” His eyes scanned what was left of the room and, seeing nothing, he began to scale the Boneshaker’s resting place.

Briar continued. “He’d already stashed most of it. What I saw was only a little bit that he hadn’t got around to hiding yet. I took some of that with me when I left; and I stretched out every penny. That’s how we ate when you were little, before I went off to work at the water plant. ”

“But what about the rest of it?”

She took a deep breath. “I hid it upstairs. ”

And she said, faster than before, trying to spill the whole thing out before Zeke got a chance to see it himself. “Levi tried to sell me some snake oil about running away together and starting over someplace else, but I didn’t want to go anyplace else. And, anyway, it was plain as day he’d been planning to run off without me. He started shouting, and I was angry, and I was scared. And on that table, the one that used to be over here, I saw one of the revolvers he was trying to turn into something bigger and stranger. ”

“Mother!”

She didn’t let his exclamation slow her down. She said, “I picked it up and I held it out at him, and he laughed at me. He told me to go upstairs and get whatever I planned to take with me, because we were leaving town in the Boneshaker, and we were leaving within an hour. Otherwise I could stay there and die like everybody else. And he turned his back on me; he went right back up into the machine and started working again, just like I wasn’t there. He never did think I was worth a damn,” she said, as if it had only just occurred to her. “He thought I was dumb and young, and pretty enough to look nice in his parlor. He thought I was helpless. Well, I wasn’t. ”

Zeke was close enough to the battered glass that when he held his lantern up to it, he could see a sprawled shape beneath it. He said, “Mother. ”

“And I’m not saying he threatened me, or he tried to hit me. It didn’t happen like that at all. How it happened was, he got back into the Boneshaker, and I came up behind him, and I shot him. ”

Zeke’s hand found a latch down by his knee. He reached down to pull it, and hesitated.

She told him, “Go on. Look, or spend the rest of your life wondering if Minnericht was telling you the truth. ”

Zeke took one more glance back at the doorway, where Briar stood motionless with her lantern, then pressed the latch and pulled back the door. The glass dome lid hissed on a pair of hinges and began to rise.

A mummy of a man was seated inside, slumped forward and facedown.

The back of his head was missing, though pieces of it could be seen here and there in chunks—stuck to the inside of the glass, and to the control panel. The stray bits had gone black and gray, glued to wherever they’d splattered and fallen. The dried-out corpse was dressed in a light-colored smock and was wearing leather gloves that came up to its elbows.

Briar said, quieter, and slower, “I can’t even pretend I was protecting you. I didn’t figure out I was going to have you for another few weeks, so I don’t have that excuse. But there you have it. I killed him,” she said. “If it weren’t for you, I don’t suppose it would’ve ever mattered. But you’re here, and you’re mine—and you were his, too, whether he deserved you or not. And whether I like it or not, it matters. ”

She waited, watching to see what her son would do next.