The Inevitable Award Post

I’ve been writing a lot in a steampunk world lately; this is the fourth story set in this world. The passengers are headed to Seattle, but a version much grimier and war-ridden than our own. The Civil War is three years over; another war, over a substance called phlogiston, has arisen.

Jemina noticed the Very Small Person the moment she entered the train.The child paused in the doorway to survey the car before glancing down at her ticket and then at the other half of the hard wooden bench, high-backed, its shellac peeling, that Jemina sat on. Jemina tucked the macrame bag beside her in with her elbow.

The child was one of the last on, which was why Jemina had been hoping against hope to have the bench to herself, at least all the two day trip to Kansas city. The train began to roll forward, a hoot of steam from the engine, a bell clang from the caboose at the back of the train, the rumble underfoot making the little girl pick her way with extra caution, balancing the small black suitcase in one hand against the pillowy cloth bag in the other.

She arrived mid-car beside Jemina and nodded at her as she struggled briefly to hoist her suitcase up before the elderly man across the man did it for her. She plumped the cloth bag in the corner between sidearm and back and sat down with a little noise of delight as she looked around. Catching herself at the noise, she blushed, fixed her gaze sternly forward as she folded her hands in her lap, and peeped at Jemina sidelong.

Jemina tried to imagine how she might appear. She knew herself thin but nicely dressed and pale-skinned. The lace at her throat was Bruges, the cross around her neck gold. She looked like a school-teacher, she imagined, and not a particularly nice one. She felt her lips thin further at the thought.

The child, interpreting the flattening of Jemina’s mouth for disapproval, fished in her bag and took out a small blackbound Bible. She began to read.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Jemina said. Her boldness surprised her, but this was a child, after all. “I’m Jemina Iarainn and I’m a scientist, headed to work at the War Institute in Seattle. Who are you are where are you going?”

The smile bestowed on her could have lit a room. The Bible slid back into the bag. “Oh thank goodness! I’m Laurel Finch and this is my very first train ride ever, up to Seattle too, and I was hoping I’d have an agreeable companion on my voyage.”

She stumbled a little over the solemnity in the last words. Jemina said, “Trips are much, much nicer with someone to talk to. Where are you going in Seattle? To visit relatives?”

“To the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home there,” Laurel said, and her mouth drooped before she summoned her smile again. “I’ve been staying with my uncle for the last three years but he is traveling to China as an ambassador. It’s all right, he’ll come back for me, but in the meantime I’m to live there for a few years.”

“Seattle is very nice,” Jemina said. Her mind raced along the years before this child, living among orphans with no chance of adoption herself. Bleak, as bleak as any of Jemina’s childhood years. “You will meet Princess Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter. She lives down near the market and is a real Indian princess.”
“Do you know Seattle well?”

Jemina shook her head, then nodded. “My twin sister is out there already and she has been writing me long letters.”

“Is she also a scientist?”

“She writes for the newspaper.”

“Oh! Like Nellie Bly!” Laurel clapped her hands and Jemina sighed internally. A daredevil reporter was more exciting than a scientist, but she was the one constructing giant killing war machines, after all, even though she was not at liberty to talk about any of that.

I am grimly determined to finish Hearts of Tabat before the end of this year: I have my list of scenes and will get them finished by November 15, then crunch through a quick and hasty polish and get that to beta readers. At the same time I’m working on a couple of bespoke stories, several collaborations, and a few stories for Patreon.

Here’s a piece from this morning’s work on a Tabat story that is somewhat connected to the events in Hoofsore and Weary, which appeared in Shattered Shields.

This is how I first saw the Red Paladin.

She must have just entered the city, because her scarlet armor was dulled with dust, and her horse’s head drooped.

Mother had elbowed and fought her way to getting us a booth near the market’s entrance that day, and she was battling to sell every brick of spice we had before going home, despite the fact she could have summoned a servant to do it. She was doing it as some small battle in the endless war between my parents and when I paused to watch the paladin pass, my mother’s hand clipped me across the ear, hard enough to rock my head and feel the snap of blood rising to meet the place she’d struck.

“Stop gawping and bring me more sacks,” she snapped, and sent me racing on her errand, running under the beat of the hot sun and knowing I’d be hard-pressed to get back in time to satisfy her, but even so my soul rocketed out as I dashed through a crowd of tea-pigeons and sent them startled upwards, feeling the press of her attention lessened for a little while.

The image of the paladin, her head upright underneath the masking helmet, the slight curves of her armor the only thing marking her female, stayed with me.

She looked so calm for a knight sworn to Anger.

***

The second time I saw the paladin, I was pretending I was someone else while I walked through the gardens. I pretended I was a noble’s daughter, raised only to think of her own pleasure, not worrying about obligation or responsibility. I could do that because my little brothers were playing tag on the long grass and I could watch them from a distance but pretend that I wasn’t in any way connected with them. I sat on a bench made out of iron spirals and coils and flowers, one of the old-fashioned kind, in the shade and tried to make pieces of myself loosen out.

I tried to do this every few days because otherwise ““ and sometimes even with ““ I would wake up aching as though I’d been beaten, my jaw clenched tight, chased by nightmares through endless passageway toward waiting red rooms, doors mawed with teeth and fleshy silence eating any protest I might make.

But pushing to relax is something you cannot do and finally I just sat and appreciated the sunlight, hoping I’d feel all those pieces of me unclench. It had gotten so much worse lately, with both parents worrying about marriage-brokering (my mother’s thought) or apprenticeship (my father’s) or both, but never my thought of neither.

In other news, this weekend’s classes are the Reading Aloud Workshop, Literary Techniques for Genre Writers II, and the First Pages Workshop. If my live classes are inconvenient due to schedule or price, check out the on-demand versions.

My most recent publication is “Marvelous Contrivances of the Heart”, which appears in Recycled Pulp, edited by John Helfers. It’s a story where I tried to hearken back to an old, twilight-zoneish theme while refurbishing some bits to update it some. I’ll be curious to hear what people think.

If you’ve read Beasts of Tabat and liked it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or LibraryThing.