Excerpt:

Alexander vel Danien walked home from the Mary Allen School for Boys every day, crossing the Burse River alongside the dock workers and the rail yard boys. He tended to walk alone, having very little in the way of friends at the school, but he told his father that it didn’t bother him much. In truth, Alex was a lonely sort because of his lack of friends, only being able to share his thoughts, his prospective inventions, and visions of the travels he’d take with his uncle. The journey was a relatively short one, ducking north along Miter Street toward the government district before heading east from there to the housing near Elisa Station, the city’s central train depot.

Alex weaved his way through side streets and alleys, always trying to take a different path in case he came across some new find within the city. There was no such find this time and when he reached home, he threw his satchel on the back lounge and walked into the kitchen.

“Afternoon, Master Alexander,” Lila said. She was a stout woman, broad across the shoulders and plump in the middle. Alexander’s father had hired her to help around the house when Alex’s mother had begun to travel more often. Lila was kind and always generous in handing out sweets she’d procured from Yltys Market down the street.

“Hi, Lila.”

“How was your day, young sir?”

“Same as usual,” Alex replied. “Nothing new to be learned from Fletcher Pierce. I learn more from wandering around the docks than I do from that school.”

“You must value your education, young Alexander,” Lila said. “It’s important, especially to your father.”

“It’s not important,” Alex said. “I’m going to be a great inventor, and that doesn’t require any schooling.”

“Your uncle spent a long time away at school,” Lila said.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Alex said.

He bounded up onto a stool by the counter near the back door and watched as Lila moved about the kitchen preparing the evening meal.

“Do you have any sweets?”

Lila laughed, and her midsection bounced. Alex smiled broadly at her leaned further across the counter. Lila reached into one of the pockets of her apron and pulled out to pieces of craft-wrapped candies and handed them to Alex. He grinned as he unwrapped both of them quickly and stuffed them into his mouth.

“Such gluttony, young master,” Lila said.

Alex reached across the counter and poked Lila in the stomach, and she laughed, shaking her head.

“And too wise for his own good,” she said.

She began to whistle as she worked in the kitchen, stirring pots and kneading dough. Alex finished off the soft candies and slipped off the stool. Before he left the kitchen, he stepped over to Lila and kissed her on the cheek.

“Thanks, Lila,” he said.

Then he ran and grabbed his satchel and bounded up the back stairs. Alex pushed open his bedroom door and just as quickly closed it behind him. Alex’s father hated that Alex had installed a lock on his door, but Alex had agreed to keep it unlocked when his mother and father were home. With only Lila here, he quickly threw the bolt and set his satchel down on the bed and began to rummage through it, pulling a folded packet of paper.

He carried them over to a small workbench stuffed in the corner, an addition that had significantly limited the amount of space in his already-small bedroom. Settling into the stool, he unfolded the papers and laid them out on the wood surface, smoothing them down as best as he could.

There were blue lines drawn neatly across the bleached parchment. Alex had spent most of the morning in his drafting class working on a project that wasn’t any part of his assignment. They were meant to be working on the design of a small, backyard garden. Alex found it boring: he wanted to work on the hand tiller he’d been working on for weeks; it would make a garden ready in an afternoon, rather than a weekend, and one man could do it without help. His uncle had been pleased with his work and had encouraged him to continue with his work. Alex’s father, on the other hand, had been less than happy with Alex’s continued lapses at school and harped on him to cease working on projects when he had other, more important, things to work on.

Alex picked up a screwdriver and began to tinker with the workings of the blade mechanic that would be attached to the bottom of the long, brass pole he’d taken from his uncle’s lab. He worked quietly, humming to himself until he heard the sound of the back door and voices downstairs.

Recognizing the arrival of his father, Alex put down his work and went to the door to unlock it before returning to his bench and clearing it of the work he’d done. He pulled out his required school work and began to work on it slowly, immediately bored with the monotony of it. Alex heard his father’s heavy boots on the stairs and waited for him to come into his room. There was a quiet knock, and the door creaked behind Alex. He turned and smiled at his father and waved.

“Getting work done,” Alex’s father asked.

“Yes, Sir,” Alex replied.

“School work?”

“Yes, Sir.”

His father nodded in approval. Then his head disappeared through the crack in the door, and it closed behind him. Alex could hear him rustling about in the room next door, changing into his evening attire before returning to the kitchen to speak with Lila while he read the evening paper.

Alex assumed his mother would not be home again tonight. His father had said she was traveling north along the rail to visit her own mother in Tressel. Alex knew that those trips tended to last at least a few days, if not longer than a week. She had already been gone for four days. He would enjoy the day that she would return, because he loved the trains coming into Elisa Station at night. The smoke from the train’s stack silhouetted against the city’s fledgling gas and kerosene lamps was brilliant. Alex loved the sight, and the ingenuity of it all.

“Alex,” he heard his father call from downstairs.

Alex rose from his work bench and made his way downstairs. His father was sitting in the front room in one of the two overstuffed chairs stuck into the tiny room with the fireplace. He looked at Lila, who just smiled politely, shrugged as an indication that she didn’t know what was going on with his father.

Alex walked slowly into the sitting room and sat in the chair opposite his father. The Elder vel Danien was quiet, settled into the back of the tall chair, with a pipe clamped firmly between his lips. In Alex’s seventeen years, he had only seen his father smoke on a handful of occasions. The news could not be good.

“I have always been fair to you, Alexander,” his father began. “Your mother and I have been keenly aware of the influences around you, and we have done our very best to allow you the freedom to explore your goals.”

Something terrible has happened, Alex thought.

“I know that I have been hard on you because of your performance at school,” Alex’s father said.

“I’ve been working –”

“I’m not here to chastise you, son,” his father interrupted. “Your inventions are important to you; I know that, and your mother knows that. I feel as though you need focus in such matters, though.”

Alex looked at his father intently. The room seemed small, constricting them inside its walls. Alex wanted the conversation to be over, so he could go outside and get some air.

“Alex,” his father said then stopped.

Alex reached across the short distance between him and his father and placed his hand on his father’s knee. Since he was a young boy, he’d not been affectionate with his father – boys were not meant to be that way – and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done more than shake his father’s hand.

“Thaddeus is dead,” his father said.

It was so blunt, so crass; Alex thought it was his father’s way of lessening the pain by trivializing his brother’s death. He pulled his hand from his father’s knee and leaned back in the chair. Great puffs of smoke rose from the deep crevice of the chair, and Alex didn’t know what he had to say.

There was a silence that settled between the two. Alex thought to stand and leave but stayed, feeling like his father would appreciate the company, if only to have someone else in his presence.

“How did he die?”

“There was an accident in his laboratory,” Alex’s father replied. “No doubt he had an unfortunate incident with one of his machines.”

Thaddeus Garrett vel Danien did not have accidents. Alex knew his uncle’s lab inside and out: it was clean, organized, well laid out. His inventions were humble and useful tools for the men and women of the city. There were never the grandiose golems or automata that the men of Lockside put together. Alex couldn’t imagine how any of his inventions would have led to his death.

“I don’t understand,” Alex said.

His father leaned forward, his piped still clenched firmly in his teeth, and looked at Alex. His face was haggard, his eyes crisscrossed with the thin red lines of his blood; Alex had never seen him so worn. He took another long drag of the pipe and exhaled before reaching up and removing it from his mouth.

“These things happen, Alexander. We cannot prevent them.”

Alex did not want to argue further with his father. He knew that there was something his father wasn’t telling him, but it wasn’t his place to force his father to tell him. “A man is allowed his secrets,” his uncle had told him once when Alex had inquired about a locked cabinet in his laboratory. “There are some things that should not be let loose upon the world, even if one’s world is small.” This was his father’s secret, and Alex would let him keep it.

He would not, however, believe that his uncle had merely died in an accident.