The Heart

Here’s a steampunk-flavored short story written for the Roses & Thorns Valentine’s Day Writing Challenge: The Dark Side, hosted by Wendy Cockcroft. I’m taking a break next Wednesday, so The Heart will be up as my Weekly Dose of Fiction on the 18th. Let me know what you think of my first—and probably last—steampunk effort.

The Heart

Image by steven underhill from Pixabay

The city of Brasshaven woke to another morning, the spines of its clocktowers cloaked in a smoky sky. Boilers coughed dark plumes, airships dipped and rolled like great brass whales above the soot-smudged streets. Gears chattered out of sync behind walls. Steam sputtered through valves. System indicators blinked—malfunction—but irregularly, so without the force of authority.

Syra longed for the days before the accident, when her world wasn’t all fits and starts, when the air was pure, and the people’s lungs breathed the scent of forests, instead of carbon particles.

She stood on the balcony of the Brasshaven Foundry, dark curls pinned beneath a leather cap, goggles pushed up onto her brow. Below her, the river churned, driven by turbine-wheels the size of houses. The sun, caught in the mist of a new day, sent shards of brightness onto the rooftops.

Beauty, she thought, was not the absence of smoke and veiled window panes—it was how light found a way through them anyway.

Behind her, familiar footsteps sounded: careful, uneven. Ka-el. Since the accident, the metallic cadence of his brass prosthetic had become as intimate to her as his breath.

“One of these days you’re going to fall leaning out like that,” he said, voice warm with the smile he kept for her.

Syra turned. “Then you will have to catch me.”

“Indeed, I will.” His gloved hand settled around her waist. For a moment, the world shrank to the space between them, and his eyes softened when he looked at her as though she were a great beauty in a city known to grind beautiful things down.

They’d grown up among gears and grit, then relished the few short years of a clean world that the Brasshaven Commission had engineered. Ka-el had been a mechanic in those days of blue sky. He was in charge of keeping the cleansing engines running smoothly. Syra had apprenticed in the foundry, learning to coax stubborn materials into obedience.

Like their city, Ka-el and Syra were not delicate. They and their love had been forged in heat, hammered into a beautiful compound of two powerful elements.

The night of the explosion that ground the city to a halt, Ka-el was on duty, his life spared, but his leg destroyed. His near-death and crippling injury only brought the two closer.

When the Reconstruction Guild recruited Ka-el for his knowledge of the city’s Underworks, Syra helped him design and forge new mechanisms that would replace what the explosion had taken and restart the cleansing engine for Brasshaven. Once in place, their home would, again, be free from coal and soot. All they needed was the final piece—a humming crystal core suspended in a lattice of gold wire, fed by lightning harvested from the storm towers.

As they stood overlooking their city that morning, the Guild’s summons arrived stamped in the official vermilion wax seal of the Commission. The final piece was ready for installation. They immediately set out to do the work.

“This nightmare will soon end,” Ka-el said, carefully cradling the core part, as they descended into the Underworks labyrinth, “Soon we’ll have clean air again. Quiet nights. No more children coughing in the alleys.”

Syra imagined sooted windows polished to a shine, the river clear enough to mirror the sky. She imagined a city that breathed without pain. Secretly, she named this central cog they were about to install, The Heart. Beautiful. Essential. Life-giving. She felt pride in having had a part in its creation.

“You will change so many lives for the better,” she whispered as Ka-el set the part into place.

He looked up at her. “Much of this repair happened because of you.”

The love she felt the moment Ka-el switched on the cleansing engine was perfect. They stood in silence as The Heart pulsed in a gentle beat and valves throbbed with energy. Nothing need be said because they both felt the power and completeness of the mechanism and their love.

After the installation, Ka-el reported to the Guild Master, who congratulated him on his work and offered him a promotion—Chief Engineer of Underworks Security. A key to the city’s hidden vaults. Unrestricted access to the arteries of Brasshaven. Stability. Status.

All he had to do was ensure the Guild had one-hundred percent control over the cleansing mechanism, and Ka-el had to swear an oath, one that bound him for life. This was all for a good reason. To keep everything functioning would take money, and the Guild promised to see to it that the money was made available. It would take time to recover from the disaster that had shut down the entire city. Surely he understood that.

Of course he did, and Ka-el saw no problem agreeing to their terms. After all, the Guild worked in the best interest of all of Brasshaven.

But only days later, Syra learned the truth from a whispering gear-monger in the market: the Guild planned to control The Heart’s output, sell clean air in districts that could pay, and let the rest of Brasshaven choke. They would make health a luxury. Build domes to seal off the contaminants and sell the air cleaning services that The Heart provided.

Syra confronted Ka-el in their workshop. “They’re lying to you,” she said.

His jaw tightened. “You don’t know what I know.”

“Then tell me.”

He couldn’t. The life-long oath forbade him to tell anyone about the Guild’s plan, and, he told himself, he was honor-bound to keep it. Besides, he believed—because he needed to believe—that slow change was better than none at all. That compromise was not the same as surrender. That keeping The Heart safe, even in profiting hands, was better than letting everything fall into choking chaos again.

Syra believed differently.

That night, she slipped into the Underworks, and partly remembering the way from her first time through and partly relying on the knowledge Ka-el had shared of the labyrinth beneath the city, she set out to track down The Heart.

Brasshaven’s veins glowed with flickering lamplight, leading her into the depths where The Heart pulsed, but for only the select, the monied. The rest of the system was still, the valves ready to deliver life-sustaining good air. Clean water had been shut down to the poor districts—those that had not paid the fee.

She set to undoing the lattice cradling The Heart. She didn’t want to destroy it, only to still it, to hide it, and then force the Guild to open all the valves.

Before she had time to pluck The Heart from its nest, familiar, halting steps brought her around to face Ka-el, her hands trembling over the stilled engine.

“Don’t,” he said. His voice catching, his eyes filled with fear. “They’ll kill you.”

“They already are,” she said. “Just slowly. Along with so many other innocents.”

Time ceased as they stood on opposite sides of The Heart, love balancing between duty and a life-long oath. Ka-el teetering, but finally stepping forward and pressing the restart button.

The click was small. Final.

Guards poured in like shadows who strode solid and dangerous toward her. Syra did not look at Ka-el as they bound her wrists. She did not look at him while The Heart throttled back to a gentle, obedient throb. She kept her eyes on the engine’s light and tried to remember the rainbows she and Ka-el had once basked in.

In the weeks that followed, the rich quarters of Brasshaven grew cleaner. The alleys and byways grew more gray and silent. Ka-el was promoted. He walked the Underworks with keys that opened every door.

On the morning Syra was exiled beyond the protection of Brasshaven, he stood on the same balcony where she had once leaned into the light. The river churned. The boilers sighed. The city breathed.

He watched her airship become a dot against the pale sky and understood, too late, that love is a machine that runs on trust. You can build it from the toughest human spirit, polish it until it gleams—but betrayal like his would sunder the closest twined hearts forever.

The End

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