Page 6 of A Slipper in the Smoke
“You’re a rebel, aren’t you?”
“What gave it away?”
A knock at the door cut through the conversation. Snowdrop stiffened, but Elena held up her hand. There was no urgency to the knock, as one might expect from the guards. It was someone more nervous and unsteady.
Snowdrop slid around the side of her workbench as Elena moved to the garage door, carefully rolling it upwards. A slight young man in green livery stood in the street, baring the bronze boar crest of the Marchioness. His eyes shifted from side to side as he held out a package, fingers trembling, and muttered a few words before scurrying off.
Elena placed the package on the worktop and closed the door again. “Quite the stir you caused today.”
“Good,” said Snowdrop, dragging herself back out, her leg still a pulsing mess. She propped herself back up against the wall and continued to sew. Elena averted her eyes again. “Nothing was ever accomplished without causing a stir.”
“And what’s that?”
“What?”
“I mean,” said Elena, struggling with her words, “what do you hope to accomplish?”
Snowdrop stopped sewing. “Me, or the rebellion?”
“Either. Both. I don’t know.”
“Most of the rebels would be happy if we just had more resources and freedoms for everyone. If things were a bit more equal.”
“And you?”
Snowdrop’s eyes—a startling blue—went as dark as storm clouds. “I want Mira’s head on a spike.”
Elena recoiled at the coldness in her tongue. She was no fan of Queen Mira’s, but Elena had never wished death on anyone in her life, let alone the head of state. She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask why Snowdrop felt this way, wasn’t sure if she wanted to invite more poisonous words. Instead, she focused on the practicalities of such an act. “There’s no heir. Who would rule instead?”
Snowdrop looked back at her leg. “No one, maybe. Or the people could elect someone. Anyone’s better than Mira.”
“We’ve elected people in the past,” Elena recalled from history class. “They’ve been awful too.”
“A bad choice is better than no choice at all.”
Royalty had been obliterated in the time before; elected officials had been the norm. But many became corrupted by power. Elena couldn’t quite remember when someone came up with the idea of reinstating royalty, raising someone for the role from birth in the hopes they’d do a better job, but it had been that way across the Mechanical Kingdoms for centuries now.
Frankly Elena wasn’t sure there was much of a difference. Those in power would always misuse it.
She turned back to the package the servant had delivered and unwrapped it. It was a small cleaning automaton, useful for simple tasks only; dusting and sweeping. At a quick glance, it looked like something had got stuck in between the gears, choking several and forcing several others free of the mechanism entirely. A few loose cogs rattled around the bottom of the paper.
She sighed, and set to work unscrewing.
Snowdrop looked up. “You’re a mechanic?”
“An engineer.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I invent things.”
She plucked a small metal object from a nearby shelf, crudely fashioned in the shape of a ballerina, with a tutu made of leftover springs. She wound the mechanism at the back and set it down on the floor, where it twirled and wheeled through the dust.
“Impressive,” Snowdrop remarked.
Elena shrugged, plucking the dancer back and returning it to its place on the shelf. “It’s just a trinket, a silly thing. There’s not much I can do with what I have here—”
“What would you do?” Snowdrop raised a curious brow. “If you had all the resources?”
