Of Silk and Steam
Page 74

“Kincaid rules the enclaves and he’s our man, through and through. Any Echelon inspections are always carried out with advance notice. They’re not looking for revolutionaries. Not in the enclaves. They think the mechs nothing but brutes, too stupid to overthrow them and less even than human. Besides, Mercury kept the prince consort’s spies busy.”
“If Rosalind Lynch finds out she was only a decoy for you, she’s going to be furious.”
“The Duchess of Bleight is far more practical than that,” she countered. “She’ll see the purpose behind it.”
“Are you so certain of that?”
No. Rosalind had been a practical, utterly ruthless woman. Until Lynch came along and somehow swayed her into giving up her work. Now, as the Duchess of Bleight, Rosalind was proving to be a political thorn in the prince consort’s side with him none the wiser about her previous identity, but Mina hadn’t forgotten the lesson. Even a ruthless woman could have her head turned by a man, with disastrous consequences.
A part of her could understand the temptation.
“The Duchess of Bleight would have to discover such a truth first, and I’m hardly about to reveal my hand to her,” Mina replied. “Here. This tunnel. We’re getting closer.”
Wispy tendrils of steam filled the tunnel as they turned down it, Blade’s men sloshing along behind. Another couple of hundred feet and the hellish red glow of the enclaves began seeping through the grates above them. Mina began to relax. Almost there. A ladder appeared and she reached on her tiptoes to grasp it.
“Do you know the one thing that still makes me curious?” Leo’s hard body framed her own as he reached up and unlatched the ladder.
“What?”
“Why you give a damn about restoring human rights and setting the queen in power. Or even how you two came to be involved.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It always is.” He held out his cupped hands, gesturing for her to use them to climb up.
Not one token protest about how perhaps he should go first. As she stepped into his cupped palms and used them to haul herself up to the lower rungs of the iron ladder, she frowned. Perhaps she feared her intolerances, not his. She was always waiting for him to protest her abilities, when he’d shown not the slightest indication of doing so.
With a deep breath, she relented, telling him about her first meeting with the princess. Leo listened as he climbed, following at her heels so that his hard body almost caged her in.
Turning the sewer cover at the top, Mina gritted her teeth and gave it an almighty shove. The metal cover shifted sideways, a spill of orange light blinding her. Strategically placed behind a row of boilers, the cover hid anyone trying to sneak in, but she could see hazy figures shoveling coal into the boilers and men lurching past with wheelbarrows.
Easing herself through the hole brought her into a world of heat, the kind that shimmered in the air and rained sweat down every brow she could see. Staying low, she kept watch as she gestured for Leo and several of the others to follow.
“Stay here,” she murmured to the scarred brute they’d called Tin Man. “I need to find Kincaid first. Make sure none of the men are seen.”
The mute man nodded and Leo fell into step beside her as she scurried through the shadows behind the row of boilers, darting through hissing steam and along the wall to the end of the massive foundry.
“Devil take it, it’s like hell in here,” Leo murmured.
One of the many reasons the mechs were so bound to the humanist cause. If humans had few rights, mechs had even less. They were forced to work in the enclaves until their mech debt—the cost of their mechanical enhancements—was paid off, working steel to create the Echelon’s dreadnought ships and automaton armies, or crafting even finer works in the smaller foundries closer to the edge of the enclave walls, where clockwork organs and mechanical hands fetched top dollar.
“Must be second shift,” she said, catching a glimpse of a slim shape moving through the overseer’s offices above them. “That looks like Maggie Doyle, Kincaid’s assistant.”
“Will she know you?”
“She’ll know me,” Mina replied grimly. Whether Maggie would send for Kincaid was another matter.
Time to find out. Mina rose out of the darkness and set off purposefully toward the metal stairs leading to the overseer’s office. Nobody even glanced at them as they climbed, the workers too busy trying to make their quota.
The door opened and Maggie shut it behind her, glaring through narrowed eyes. “What do you want?”
“A word with Kincaid,” Mina replied coolly.
“He’s busy.”
“He’ll want to hear me out.”
“Busy,” Maggie repeated, but this time her sloe-shaped eyes slid over Leo, as if in curiosity. “He’s got two girls in there with him. I ain’t interruptin’.”
Indeed, now that she concentrated, Mina could just make out a hint of giggling coming from the inner offices. “Allow me,” she said, stepping past Maggie and reaching for the door.
“You can’t just—” The words cut off as Leo no doubt dealt with her.
Striding across the office, Mina didn’t bother to knock. “Kincaid?” Jerking the other door open, she found him immediately. Naked as the day he’d been born, with one girl splayed beneath him on an old sofa and the other wrapped over his broad back like a blanket.
A set of evil blue eyes locked on her, and he raked his thick black hair out of his face as he straightened to his knees, cock rampant in front of him and some strange steel contraption seemingly wrapped around his waist, prongs like little steel spider legs caressing his hips. “My mysterious Madame M.,” he said. “Come to join the fun?”
“Come to extend an invitation to you,” Mina replied. There was some kind of mechanical device running down the back of his thighs, bolts sticking out of the skin. As he shifted, she saw them embedded in his calves too, pistons hissing in the support frame as he moved. An exoskeleton? “I’ve got something much more enjoyable in mind.”
Kincaid glanced at the girl beneath him. “Really? You wouldn’t believe what Clara can do with—”
“It’s time,” Mina interrupted.
That caught his attention. A ripple of something hard and mercenary danced over his features. He snapped his fingers at the two girls. “Leave us.”