Vashon had arranged a surprise, David realized. His aunt hadn’t
been expecting him—at least, not at this moment. The remains of an afternoon tea still lay on her small table, a thick physician’s volume open beside them. Her overcoat was slung across her bed. Sitting at her desk, Lucia glanced up at Dubois with an expression of polite inquiry. When her gaze moved past the boy and into the passageway, she suddenly stilled, staring.
David waited, his throat unexpectedly tight. Her face had softened a bit over the years, and a few new lines had formed, but everything else was so familiar. She still rolled her blond hair at her nape. She still kept a watch pinned to her breast. Her neckline was higher, but the flower-sprigged cotton of her dress was just as simply cut, just as pretty. The black streak at the top of her right ear might have been the same mark from ten years ago, when she’d absently tucked a loosened curl away with ink-stained fingers. No, her appearance hadn’t changed much at all.
His had.
“David?” Now her hand lifted to her mouth, eyes filling with tears. “Oh, David.
Look
at you.”
He came into the cabin, and those small steps seemed to push her over, the tears spilling. She rose from her chair, hands extended. Behind them, Dubois quietly closed the door.
She caught his face between her palms, greeted him with a kiss to both cheeks before stepping back, her hands clasped in front of her chest. Joy shone through the tears, lighting her face with a wide smile. “Oh, I cannot believe it. Captain Vashon told me that you were delayed—that you wouldn’t board until later this evening.”
“No.” The lump in his throat had grown, making it difficult to manage even that. The warmth of any touch was so rare that David never noticed the absence until he felt it again—and his aunt touched him so freely, without reservation.
“Well, you are here, and I am not about to let you escape quickly. Give me your hat and coat, and let me see you.”
Obediently, he removed them both. She hung the coat in her
wardrobe and turned to look at him again, her gaze openly curious as she studied his eyepiece.
“It is not at all like you described in your letters,” she said. “I had imagined something more…bulbous, perhaps, similar to a magnifying goggle.”
A giant eye, staring at her. “I probably exaggerated the details. It seemed enormous when they first grafted it on.”
All of the prosthetics had seemed enormous, alien. Heavy legs that he couldn’t walk on for months, a cold hand that crushed anything he tried to grasp, and the strange views through lenses that the nanoagents altered at random, until he’d learned to control them with subtle motions of his jaw and cheek.
“You did make it sound rather bulging and grotesque. But I must say, David, the effect is actually rather dashing.”
He had to laugh. No doubt she was sincere, but her love for him obviously impaired her vision as much as an exploding window had damaged his. He had seen too many strangers recoil upon seeing his face to believe it.
Truth or not, however, her opinion mattered more to him than any stranger’s ever could. “Thank you, Aunt. I will have to practice my heroic leer to complete the effect.”
“Go on.” Laughing, she looked to his hand. “May I?”
“Of course.”
He sensed her touch there, too—the warm slide of her skin over steel, the soft pressure of her palm against his. She gasped softly when he interlaced his fingers with hers.
“It’s so marvelous,” she breathed. “Can you feel anything?”
“Temperature, pressure, some textures.” All dull, compared to his other hand, yet a miracle that he could feel anything at all. “It’s not the same. The sensation is clear, but less intense. Muffled.”
“I have always wondered. None of the crew is infected, and although we have had a few passengers, I could never ask. But I
wondered what they felt, and if it was the same for you. And your legs, too? Oh, but you are
so
tall. Would you have been so tall?”
“The Blacksmith took measurements and compared them to men of similar size,” he said. “Perhaps I might have been an inch shorter or taller, but this is near to my natural height.”
“And both your father and mother were tall. Your mother in particular. I always felt quite the little girl next to her.” With a sigh, she squeezed his hand. “Well, let us sit. There’s a biscuit left, if you’d like to have it, though we’ll eat dinner within the hour. I’ve drank all the coffee, but I can put on more. Or, I have a lovely bottle of—Oh, where is it?”
David pulled out a chair, that sense of familiarity descending again as she began opening cupboards at random, muttering as she searched. Dinner notwithstanding, he helped himself to the biscuit, a sugary confection that crumbled down the front of his jacket. He hastily brushed the wool clean before she turned around.
Yes, some things never changed.
“Here we are! On your left, those glasses on the shelf? Ah, yes.” Lucia grinned as he set the two goblets on the table. “I know nothing of good wine, but after I lanced a boil that was giving one of our passengers—a French count, no less—horrible fits every time he tightened his corset, Captain Vashon gave this to me. It must be worth something; for months, our chief engineer sent envious glares and made hints to share it. Oh, it’s quite dusty, isn’t it? I should find a rag—”
“We don’t plan to lick the bottle,” David said.
“No, we don’t.” She poured the deep burgundy liquid almost to the rim. “We shall see how distinguished our palates are.”
Not very. David rolled the wine around on his tongue, and wished he had another biscuit, instead. Pure sugar would have been less sweet.
“Oh, my.” Lucia set her glass aside. “I should find a funnel and pour it back in before giving it to the chief. If I don’t tell Leroux, he will enjoy it just as well. And you?”
“He can have mine, too.”
“It’s a pity. Oh, but—I have heard, David, that the infected are more susceptible to drink. Will you be all right?”
“Some are more susceptible than others. I need more than one sip for it to affect me…but I also save money in the taverns.”
She smiled at him, resting her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her palms. “It is simply all so incredible. You heal more quickly, is that true?” At his nod, she wondered, “Did it heal your eye, then?”
“No. That damage is permanent.” Just as the nanoagents couldn’t regrow his arm or his legs or erase his scars, the bugs couldn’t repair an eye that had been mutilated years before the infection. “But where I could only see light and dark on that side, the nanoagents use different lenses and focus for me. There
is
a bulging lens behind the shield, in fact. I use it like a microscope.”
“And your hand is so intricate, like an anatomical sculpture. Is it better than the hook?”
No question of that. “Yes.”
“And worth selling your father’s shop to pay for them?”
That wasn’t so easy to answer. David hadn’t just sold the velocipedal shop and the house where he and his father had lived in the years following the Inoka Mountain disaster; by infecting himself, he’d also made it impossible to ever live among his father’s people. There were days when David was absolutely sure he’d done the right thing—and he thought that Lucia hoped this was one of those days. But the unequivocal “yes” wouldn’t come.
“Oh, David.” Her voice gentled. “Was there anything for you in that town?”
That was easier to answer. “No.”
No job. He couldn’t have continued his father’s work. No status, no future, and no desire to stay.
“Then you’ve done what your father would have wanted.”
“And what he told me to do.” His father’s last wish. David had fulfilled that, but not his mother’s.
Soon, though.
“And it was the first time you obeyed without adding an impertinent remark, I imagine.” She smiled again when he laughed. “I’m sorry that I’ve never made certain our paths crossed before. How can ten years pass so quickly? And yet, here we are.”
“Whenever I came back from an expedition, I always anticipated your letters.” The only personal correspondence that David received. “They were the best part of my return.”
“As were receiving yours. But there was no mention of a wife?”
With a chuckle, he shook his head. “No.”
“You cannot let that girl stop you.”
His former fiancée, Emily. David hadn’t thought of her in a few years. “She won’t,” he said. “I’ve had no time to court a woman.”
And hadn’t met any women who wanted to be courted.
“You’ve said Dooley is married.”
“And met his wife while he recuperated from bullneck fever. Will you wish that on me?”
“Lesions aren’t as dashing as prosthetic eyepieces, but if it was successful for Dooley…” She trailed off when he laughed. As she watched him, her eyes softened, and her smile seemed to tremble. “I’m sorry. Seeing you now, like this…Oh, you were such a joy to us—to your father and me, after the disaster. You were so fearless, so unstoppable. Some of my very best memories are of you driving your little cart around town.”
He cupped her hands between his. “Those are some of my best memories, too.”
“You were so happy.”
Yes. “But only you and my father believed it.”
Everyone else believed he must be miserable and had simply worn a brave face. They must have also thought him a brilliant actor; David knew he wasn’t.
“All those damn fools.” Lucia shook her head. “And now, are you still happy?”
“I get along.” Whether in a cart or on mechanical legs, nothing had been the same after his father had gone. He’d once been filled with laughter, bursting with possibility. Much of that had seemed to leave with his father’s last breath.
Perhaps that exuberance had simply been youth. David enjoyed his work, was continually excited by it. He had fine friends to share meals and conversations with. Still, he sensed that something was missing…or unfulfilled.
Such as his promise to his mother. Was he only lacking that? He hoped so. When he spoke with the woman whose accent so closely matched hers, maybe he’d be closer to fulfilling that promise, and he’d discover whether anything else was absent in his life.
The silence between them had gone on for too long. He saw Lucia’s concerned gaze, and smiled in response.
“I’m well,” he reassured her.
She nodded, and seemed to hesitate before saying in a rush, “One of Paolo di Fiore’s men is aboard
Phatéon
.”
David’s chest tightened. Paolo di Fiore—the man who’d attempted to build a machine inside the heart of an artificial mountain. In a land devastated by territorial disputes, the great device would filter the soot-laden air and clean the polluted river waters, and bring the warring peoples together in a common goal. He’d intended to bring renewed life to an entire region but had instead destroyed the mountain and half a city. His mother and his uncle had both died in the disaster, along with thousands of others. David had always counted himself fortunate that he’d only lost his legs, an arm, and part of an eye. Others hadn’t been as lucky.
Di Fiore had survived, but David had never thought the man was fortunate. He’d read the newssheets following the trial; by all accounts, grief and horror had broken the man.
“I didn’t realize that he’d been released from the insanitarium.”
“About five years ago. Of course the newssheets reported on it, but I believe you were in Aztlán. You heard nothing of it?”
“No.”
But he wouldn’t have. He’d been away for almost a year during that time. Who would have mentioned it to him when he returned? His colleagues would have either assumed he already knew, or refrained from talking about it out of courtesy. Knowing now, how did he feel about the man’s release?
Nothing.
He’d thought anger would fill him, but there was none. Only mild curiosity. “Di Fiore’s man…is he on the crew?”
“A passenger. I only know because Captain Vashon asked whether the reminder would be too painful. She would have arranged passage for him and his laborers aboard another ship.”
Ah. So Komlan was di Fiore’s man—and they were apparently building a locomotive railway in Iceland. Perhaps the man hadn’t fully regained his sanity, after all.
He squeezed her hands. “I won’t think anything of it. And you?”
“No.” She exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “It
is
painful. Not to have him aboard, but to see…to
know
how it all changes with hardly more than a blink. Oh, David. Do you know I have not stepped foot off this airship in three years? Because every time I go down, I see less and less of the world I shared with your uncle, and feel everything from that time slipping away.”
Then David had arrived at her door and brought the change to her. He couldn’t be sorry for coming—and knew she wasn’t, either—but he could be sorry that it hurt her.
“Oh, I’m a foolish old woman.” She laughed through her tears when he shook his head. “Yes.”
He held on to her trembling hands. “You’re not.”
Almost everything from that time
had
slipped away—and they were left to cling to what they could…or hunt down the remains.
When she nodded and smiled at him again, he gave her fingers another squeeze and leaned back. She wiped her cheeks, then lifted the watch at her breast.
“Oh, now look. You’ll barely have an extra moment to ready for dinner.”
David glanced down at his jacket and trousers. They were rough, but the best he had with him. “I’m ready.”
“No, my dear. That was my polite way of shoving you through the door so that I can repair the damage that all of this weeping has done to my face.”
Laughing, he stood. “You’re still beautiful.”
“And you’re forgiven for lying.”
She turned her cheek for his kiss, which he happily bestowed. At the door, however, he couldn’t help himself. Hat in hand, he faced her.
“I spoke with another passenger on the docks, but I forgot to ask her name. Have you met any of the others aboard?”
“A woman, David?”
He heard the laugh in her voice. “Yes. Young, vibrant.”
“Beautiful?”
Rather pretty, but with such lively expressions that her features appealed to him far more than any beauty’s. “Yes.”