Page 37 of Heart of Iron
The streets were full and progress was slow.Lena twitched aside the curtains, glancing at the crowds and the omnibus ahead.Passing under Bishopsgate, one of the massive gates that guarded the city proper, she toyed impatiently with her reticule.“Whatever is the crush?”
Mrs.Wade leaned out the window and conferred with the driver.When she sat back down, she was breathless.“A protest.In Langbourn and Lime Street.Those mechanists are at it again.”
Lena peered out curiously.She’d heard all about the mechanists—those who bartered years of service to the Echelon in exchange for bio-mech limbs or clockwork organs.Quartered in their steamy enclaves in the city, they were treated as little better than animals.One couldn’t trust a man who was half metal.Indeed, many in the Echelon argued that by taking on the metal limbs, they were making themselves less human and therefore did not have the rights of a whole man.
“They should herd them back to their enclaves and lock them in,” Mrs.Wade sniffed.
“I don’t see what the difference is.Just because someone has a metal arm, it doesn’t make him any less a man,” Lena replied.Two of Blade’s men, Tin Man and Rip, had mech limbs.By rights, both of them should have been imprisoned in the enclaves, but no one dared mention it to Blade.
“You can’t trust them,” Mrs.Wade replied.
“Why not?The metal does not affect the mind.They are still the same as they were before they received the enhancements.”
“It’s unnatural, is what it is.”
There was no point arguing with someone who had no rational rebuttals.Lena bit her tongue and tried to catch a closer look at the rally.
“Hopefully they’ll send the metaljackets in and clear them out,” Mrs.Wade added.“Get this traffic moving again.”
It wasn’t very far to the emporium.She’d walked ten times this distance when she lived in the rookery.“Why don’t we walk?”
The suggestion was met with a look of great horror.“With all those mechs running around?”
“We’ll take one of the footmen.The carriage can meet us there once this congested traffic starts moving again.”Lena reached for the door.
“Wait!Your parasol!”Mrs.Wade huffed after her, bringing her hat, parasol, and the basket of crochet she always carried as Lena hopped down from the carriage.Her eyes darted as if expecting a mech to leap out and attack at any moment.
The crowd thinned the closer they got to Mandeville’s.Most people were poor, waving placards and fists, as though the Echelon would even notice.Still, Lena could understand the need to dosomething.
Several streets over, the sound was rather more intense.Lena steered them in the other direction, even though it took them streets out of their way.She had no intentions of getting caught in the mob.
A burly man with a metal plate curving across his skull staggered into her, reeking of spirits.His hand was mech too, fitted roughly to the flesh of his wrist.From the scarred edges of skin, the work had been done in a hurry, and poorly too.He caught sight of her red skirts and looked up, his gaze raking over the pearls at her throat and the feathers in her bonnet.They were the only adornments she wore and in most circumstances she wouldn’t have felt uneasy walking the streets like this.
“’Ere now,” he sneered, grabbing her wrist.“A little blue blood whore, all alone.”
“I would let me go if I were you,” she suggested in her firmest tone.“And I wouldn’t assume that I was alone.”
Mrs.Wade leveled her parasol at him as though it were a weapon.“Unhand her, you mech brute!”
Lena shot her a glare and shook her head.Precisely the wrong tone and words for the situation.She held up a placating hand.“We have no interest in your—”
“Brute?”he snarled.“A mech brute like me?What, you think you’re better ’an us?”
Around them, people were starting to take an interest.
“Let her go or you’ll feel the wrath of the Duke of Caine!”Mrs.Wade snapped back, as though that name would hold any weight here.
Lena hastened to diffuse the situation.“We don’t think we’re any better, or different or—”
“’Ere now, lads!”he roared.“This bit o’ fluff’s turnin’ her nose up at us!”
Mutters and grumbling sprang up.Lena looked around desperately.“No, I don’t!I never said that.”
“You in the city, you turn your noses up at us.Well, just you wait.Your time’s comin’.”He leered at her.“We got ways of dealin’ with your sort now.”
“Unhand her!”the footman insisted, taking the man by the arm.“Miss Lena, are you all right?”
Whistles suddenly screamed through the air and as one the crowd turned with a gasp.
