Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium Read Free

with a swiftly growing smile, "we are in the market for a partner."
    ~*~

    Nigel Arcanum and Jeremiah Daffodil propose a grand partnership.

CHAPTER 2: IN WHICH TWENTY YEARS HAVE SINCE PASSED, WE DISCOVER MUCH CLAMOR IS AFOOT, AND OUR TITULAR PROTAGONIST IS AT LAST INTRODUCED
    ~*~
    A river of gold flowed through a steam-powered city.
    It was carried upon the greased rails of human ingenuity, ferried from one civilization to the next along a massive trumbling track that speared its way through air and soil. Every day, its trains pumped prosperity and corruption in equal parts through the city's brass-lined veins. And every day, its trains ran on time.
    The city of Aberwick was a topographical nightmare wrested from the laudanum-fueled fever dreams of half-mad cartographers. It was cradled in a yawning canyon of volcanic rock, with communities swelling up into massive heaps of brick and timber; the trains flowed aside, above, and even through these mounds.
    If the train rails were Aberwick's veins, then under Aberwick was its steam-powered heart. Beneath the crusty topsoil and the jigsaw puzzle of slums was a maze of tunnels and caverns where ancient boilers harvested the burning expulsions of geothermal vents, providing heat and power to the urban sprawl above. A tangle of pipes tied in mad knots of right and wrong angles slurped the volcanic gas like a thousand straws, drawing it up to the slums and the extravagant villas that lay high above. But despite all of this, it was the trains that had become the symbol of Aberwick: ceaseless, endless, and punctual.
    Count Orwick watched the city through his office window as the trains outside plunged into tunnels and emerged across bridges, forming a tangled knot complex enough to give even Alexander's sword pause. Powerful locomotives weaved their way through the web, their conductors following Orwick's calculated directions—directions so divorced from common sense that calamity seemed inevitable. Yet like a magician poring over archaic alchemical formulae, he snatched success from the jaws of failure again and again.
    His office was extravagant yet tasteful. Sets of exquisitely crafted maple chairs inlaid with floral patterns and padded with matching damask cushions gathered around his marble-topped desk. Ornate brass fixtures capped with glass spheres provided light along the walls, with coils of gas burning brilliantly within.
    The elegance was lost upon Mr. Eddington as he marched in; for him, it was all the useless trimmings of a noble busy-body.
    The rail-thin administrator of the Steamwork was the sort of man whose face had been designed explicitly for the purpose of expressing outrage. There was never a moment when he lacked either a cause for indignation or the indiscretion necessary to express it.
    He was accompanied by a gentleman who clutched a pile of documents to his chest as if it were a crucifix and he had just blundered into a den of nosferatu after wading through a pool of blood mixed with steak sauce. Mr. Tweedle was the chief administrator of all six of Aberwick's banks, and yet he was so boring in appearance that we shall waste no more words to describe him, save to note that he sometimes wore a very uninteresting hat.
    "Count Orwick!" Mr. Eddington cried, the force of his voice causing Mr. Tweedle to cower. "I demand an explanation!"
    Count Orwick tore himself away from the window with great reluctance. He observed the gentlemen as an alley cat might observe a pair of exotic birds kept safe in a cage; interesting, but ultimately inconsequential.
    "For what do you demand an explanation?" Count Orwick asked.
    "For this!" Mr. Eddington slapped the newspaper down onto the desk.
    "That," Orwick said, "is a newspaper. I believe it may, on occasion, contain news."
    "Sometimes crossword puzzles," Mr. Tweedle said, before sinking under Mr. Eddington's withering glare.
    "Not the paper, Count Orwick. The article on the front page." Mr. Eddington's finger stabbed at the