The Blushing Bounder (An Iron Seas Short Novella) by Meljean Brook Read Free Book Online

thigh. “Edward, look.”
    Beyond his shoulder, walking down one of the twisting side paths through the stalls, a man was wearing a huffing machine suit. Temperance’s heart began to pound, and she saw now why the legs seemed deeply jointed—they were like stilts with springs and hydraulics, with his natural feet standing on pegs at the suit’s upper thighs. The boiler had been strapped to his back and rose high over his own head, yet shaped at the top like a face with eyes—glowing orange from the reflected light in the furnace.
    Newberry let go of her hand, climbed out. “Go quickly, and find the inspector. I’ll keep near him, and wait for her. Find the Horde woman who was just hit!” he called to the driver.
    “All right,” she said, but the man in the suit had already stopped, was peering down the path toward her. “Oh. Oh, he recognizes me.”
    “I didn’t mean to!” came a desperate shout. “Let me be! I didn’t mean to!”
    “Go!” Newberry turned, just as the machine suit spun and the man began to run. “Go!”
    She watched Newberry sprint down the twisting path after the man, and then the rickshaw lurched into motion, a rapid clickity-clack darting through the crowd, and this time Newberry wasn’t there to keep her from bouncing around. She gripped the side of the cart, her heart fluttering painfully, and this was not exhilarating at all, but simply terrifying.
    Just as she was about to be sick all over her feet, the rickshaw stopped. Temperance shouted out, “Inspector Wentworth! Newberry is after him!” and the woman took off at a run, brothers close behind, but Temperance was already coughing, coughing, and could not run at all.
    “Follow them, please!” she managed to tell the driver, who gave her a wild grin and pumped his legs, and they had almost caught up to the inspector when she darted down a side path, and the cart tilted wildly as the spidery legs all seemed to shift about in one great heave, and Temperance was suddenly facing the same way, tasting bark beer in her mouth.
    Ahead of them, she saw the springing machine, bounding, bounding, bounding beneath the roof of the striped tent. The crowd grew heavier as everyone came into the middle of the path to see, and soon even the driver’s honks and shouts wouldn’t move them ahead any farther.
    It was not that far. Not that far. Temperance couldn’t speak for coughing, but she gave the driver a heavy coin and gestured for him to wait.
    He nodded, and she began to weave her way through the crowd, pain stabbing her lungs with every cough, and blood in drops on her handkerchief. The machine had stopped bounding, but people in the crowd ahead had begun pushing back, as if trying to get away. Temperance clung to a stall post, legs almost too weak to keep her upright, and she would stay here, she decided, so that she wouldn’t be trampled and because Newberry could find her on his way.
    Rising above the shouts came another noise, a high-pitched whistling. Oh, and she knew that sound. A boiler with its vents blocked and its pressure rising to the point of explosion. And as the crowd cleared, she saw it: the man trapped in his suit, with Newberry and the inspector frantically working to get him out. The inspector seemed to be shouting at him, and Newberry shook his head, and Temperance wanted to scream at him to run! run! but she couldn’t even breathe. And finally, the man came away, Newberry staggering back as a buckle suddenly broke free, and then the inspector was running, and Newberry running and carrying a murderer.
    The explosion knocked Temperance down, knocked almost everyone else down—and those left standing ducked to escape the flying shrapnel. Shaking the ringing from her ears, she looked up. The inspector was standing, her brothers were standing…and Newberry was not getting up.
    She couldn’t hear the inspector over the shouts, but as she staggered to her feet the brothers were lifting Newberry between them, carrying