Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

One day, you'll be pitched into the everlasting nothing."
    "Well, it's good I had so much practice here first, then," I said. "You have a good day now, Mrs. Dungill."
    Once we were clear, I stopped Colleen. "You heard what she said. If'n you want to find yourself another watchmaker, I'll understand."
    Colleen give me an easy smile. "I think we found ourselves the right girl." She put the handkerchief over my mouth, and the ether done its work.
    I woke up in an old wooden house, surrounded by four close faces.
    "We're real sorry about the ether, miss. But you can't be too careful in our line of work." I recognized the speaker as Josephine Folkes. She were taller than the others and wore her hair all braided this way and that. The brand from her slave days were still on her forearm.
    "Wh-what work is that?" I forced myself up on my elbows. My mouth were dry as a drought month.
    Fadwa Shadid stepped out of the shadows and put her pistol to my temple. My stomach got as tight as a churchgoing woman's bootlaces then. "Not yet. First, we must determine if you are who you claim to be. We have no secrets between us," she said. Her voice made words sound like fancy writing on a lady's stationery. She wore a scarf that covered her head, and her eyes was big and ginger-cake brown.
    "I'm from New Canaan. Used to be a Believer. But my mam died of the fever and my pap were out of his mind on Poppy. There weren't nothing for me there cept a life of looking after brats and spinning oat-blossom bread. I weren't cut out for too much woman's work," I said, and my words sounded fast to my ears. "That's all I got to say on it. So if'n you're of a mind to shoot me, I reckon you should just do it now."
    Master Crawford had told me once that time weren't fixed but relative. Right then, I cottoned to what he meant, because those second watching Colleen Feeney's face and wondering if she'd give Fadwa the order to shoot me felt like hours. Finally, Colleen waved Fadwa back, and the cold metal left my skin.
    "I like you, Addie Jones." Colleen said, grinning.
    "I'm a might relieved to hear that," I said, letting out all my air.
    She offered me some water. "I'm going to show you what we brought you here to fix. You can still say no. Understand, now, if you say yes, you'll be one of us. There's no going back."
    "Like I said, got nothin' much to go back to, ma'am."
    They led me to a barn with a small desk and a banker's lamp. Colleen pulled open a drawer and took out a velvet box. Inside were the most unusual timepiece I ever seen. The clock face were twice the size of a regular one. It were set into a silver bracelet shaped a might like a spider. Colleen showed me how it clamped on her arm. I could see a little hinge on the side of the clock face, so I knowed it opened up like a locket.
    "This is the Enigma Temporal Suspension Apparatus," Colleen told me.
    "What's it do?"
    "What it did was suspend time. You aim the Enigma Apparatus at something, say, a train," she said, allowing a smirk. "And an energy field envelops the entire thing, slowing down time inside to a crawl. It doesn't last long, seven minutes at the outside. But it's enough for us to climb aboard and be about our business."
    "What business is that?" I asked, my eyes still on the Enigma.
    Robbing trains and airships," Amanda Harper said, and spat out a plug of tobacco. She were short, with wheat-colored hair that hung straight to her middle back.
    "We're reminders that people shouldn't feel too smug. That what you think you own, you don't. That life can change just like that.
    Fadwa snapped her fingers.
    Colleen opened up the watch face. There were gears upon gears, the most intricate I ever seen, more like metal lacework than parts. They'd been pretty burned and bent up. Tiny flares of light tried to catch but died before they could spark. Right in the center were a teardrop-shaped glass vial. A blue serum dripped inside.
    "Pretty, isn't she?" Colleen purred.
    "How do you know it's a she?" I