Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables by Stephen L. Antczak & James C. Bassett

Author:Stephen L. Antczak & James C. Bassett [Antczak, Stephen L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101614082
Publisher: A Roc Book
Published: 2013-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

Late one evening, the prince slipped through the shadows and into Zellandyne’s workshops. True to his word, he had not approached her, and had in fact gone to some efforts to prevent her from even getting a good look at him. Not that it was so difficult to do—the princess kept mostly to her labors, and associated more with her maids and assistants than anyone else in the palace. In point of fact, he’d dined nightly with the king and queen, and had yet to be sent from the table because the princess had never come to claim her place.

He walked softly among the hanging chains and great racks of the workshops. Banked fires glowered through shuttered grates, while burbling and glooping noises testified to chemical and thermal activities with the tanks that loomed along the outer walls of the workshop. He touched nothing, but observed everything with his trained eye.

In the third of the stone barns, he found what he was looking for. This was where she’d done the fine work of building her automata. Shelves were lined with springs and torsion bars, gyroscopes and bins of close-cut gears, the leathers and gutta-percha that would go to make a skin or covering.

On a great slab of a table in the middle of the workshop lay the mostly complete body of a brass man. He was visible in one of the few pools of lamplight shining in the shuttered night shift. The chest was open and the face was missing, leaving a complex tangle of clockwork and pressure hoses and spark relays. Puissant walked slowly around it, still looking without touching.

“He is beautiful, is he not?” The voice rang out from the shadows, strong, confident. Female.

“Yes, Your Highness,” the prince replied, not very surprised. “Your work is well spoken of within the palace.”

“I doubt that. When they speak of me, it is with despair.” She stepped into the light, dressed in a smith’s leathers with thick denim and canvas beneath. He could not help noticing that one hand held a hammer, rock-steady and ready to swing. “You are that prince, from Bourgoigne.”

“Prince Puissant, at your service.” He bowed.

She snorted. “Your parents really named you that?”

Another bow, this time with a smile he could not keep from his face. “My mother is…ambitious. Most people do not seem to get the joke.”

“My parents are desperate,” she said flatly. “And the joke here has grown very old. Are you commissioned to somehow free me from the curse?”

“Alas, no,” Puissant said. “I merely stopped to attend awhile on my way home from a journey of years.”

Her free hand strayed to the brow of the brass man on the table. “It must have been quite a journey, for you to be away for years.”

“An ambitious mother can be an inspiration.”

“So can a fae curse.”

The prince nodded at the man on the table. “You are creating your own true love?”

Her lips grew tight. “Perhaps. It seems one way to avoid the curse.”

“Is brass exempted from the failures of flesh?”

“In many ways, yes.

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