Gears of Mischief (The Valhalla Mechanism Book 1) Read online

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ottilie,” he said, and it sounded like he tried to purr the words, but they only came out rough with age. “Your exotic beauty is far greater than even I expected.”

  I smiled demurely, even if I wanted to scowl at the word ‘exotic’ and did as the old man expected of me. I bowed my head slightly, playing at being submissive. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. . .”

  “Jeffrey Worthington, Duke of Devonshire.”

  Another duke, I thought, holding my smile in place. “Pleasure, Sir Jeffrey. Why, may I ask, have you chosen to call on me?”

  “Your beauty is known by many, the exotic slant to your eyes. I’m a man of many desires, even consider myself a bit of a collector.” I nearly tensed at his words. I was not an item to be collected and if the wanker called me ‘exotic’ one more time, I was going to murder him. “And when I heard of the unmarried young Lady Kingsford, I had a mighty need to call on you and hope to impress you.”

  Fat chance of that.

  Sir Jeffrey moved closer, too close to be proper, and cupped my elbow. In my mind, I slipped the knife free I kept beneath the edge of my corset, and sliced his arm clean off for daring to touch me, but outwardly, I kept the demure smile in place, kept the mask down, if only for appearance’s sake.

  “How delightful,” I said softly, the epitome of a timid woman. “Would you like to take tea with me?”

  “I had hoped you would ask.” Sir Jeffrey moved closer and the smell of old cheese reached me, making a twitch tick around my nose as I fought the need to wrinkle it.

  “Right this way.”

  I couldn’t believe I was missing valuable sleep for this man, especially when he reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, his gnarled fingers touching my slim neck. He probably thought he was being charming and seductive, and perhaps, once upon a time, he had been exactly that in his youth. Now, he was just a weathered old man who thought himself a collector.

  “Pray tell, Sir Jeffrey,” I began as I ducked away from his wandering hands. “What sorts of items do you collect?”

  “Besides women?” he joked and shrugged his shoulders. “I collect rare artifacts from all around the world. In fact—”

  I perked up. “Do you travel around the world to retrieve them?”

  “Heavens, no,” he laughed, and I pushed aside my brief excitement. “I have a curator who does such things for me. I get to stay in the comfort of my home—”

  I took a seat and settled into a long hour of holding a smile on my face, careful not to reveal my true distaste of the man.

  “Tell me more,” I murmured, tuning him out while I stared out at the sunshine. At least, the day was not all lost, I thought. The sun was nice and warm on my skin.

  Chapter Four

  I locked eyes on the circle before me, on the pinprick of a dot in the center, and took a deep breath. I tuned out the world, the sound of horses clapping on the cobblestones outside and the sound of steam-powered engines and tucked my elbow in, close to my waist. Mother sat off to the side, engrossed in the evening newspaper while Thodeoric Hedgecock watched closely to what I did. I knew what Thod was thinking, wondering if I would ever move, but I paid him no mind. Part of being a spy meant honing skills as well as knowing when the proper time to act was. The Raven Wing Guild was primarily intelligence, but they also served as the silent forces when needed.

  And if a certain spy had aspirations for other Guilds, such as myself, I had to know enough skills for that.

  With shoulders straight, I flung my hand forward quickly, mindful of how my fingers moved as I released the blade. It sailed through the air, far faster than should have been expected, and slammed into the target right over the smallest dot, slicing it in two with honed accuracy.

  Thod nodded his head. “Now, do it again, and throw it faster, until you’re throwing one after the other.”

  It was a common practice, one we had gone over constantly in my lessons, so I knew to pick up the next blade and throw, letting my muscles remember exactly the movements I had done the first time.

  The second knife slammed beside the first, splitting the center with two knives. I continued to throw, until the newer knives knocked the first ones from their place, until the hole was made deeper and deeper inside the wood, all over the same small pinprick of a dot. I knew if I missed even once, Thod would make me start all over again, and I hated those days. They dragged and dragged, and I became haunted by the tiny bullseye.

  When I finally ran out of knives, my arm ached just the tiniest amount, proof that I had thrown—I glanced down at the table, remembering—at least sixty knives. The number always varied, a test by Thod to see if I dwindled quicker or grew less accurate with each throw, but it was always the same. No matter the number he placed, my knives hit the center. Our record was eighty-three.

  “Good.” Thod walked up to the target and plucked out the last knife embedded in the wall, the final one that had knocked all the others loose. It was wedged inside so deep, Thod had to jerk it out. “You’re getting more accurate than you were, and that’s saying something.”

  I didn’t argue with him, didn’t tell him that I was the best knife thrower in the Guild regardless. I never needed to. Thod bragged to the others about me regularly, whether they wanted to hear it or not. I was his pride and joy, both his legacy and my mother’s.

  “Please tell me the next lesson is the battle axe.” It was one of my favorite weapons, unconventional and nearly impossible to carry around London without being detected, but Thod had gifted me with a small battle axe that I was capable of strapping to my thigh when on assignment. It was one of my greatest possessions.

  Thod grinned. “Unfortunately, the next lesson is one you’ll hate.”

  My mother grabbed the loom beside her and held it out, pulling a groan from my lips. “Embroidery?”

  “You’re a lady,” Thod shrugged. “And so part of your training includes those activities that are befitting such a role.” He grinned. “I remind you of this every time.”

  “And I never enjoy it.” Wrinkling my nose, I snatched the loom from my mother’s fingers and took a seat. The only activity I hated more than embroidery was allowing eligible men to court me. I was an expert knife thrower, one of the best marksmen in the Guild, but I was a shit embroiderer. My mother constantly picked my threads loose for me to start again, something she never allowed me to forget. “And pray tell, what should I attempt to embroider today?”

  Mother glanced at me out of the side of her eyes, the brilliant green twinkling. “Since you were so keen to practice with that gruesome weapon, I expect a clean and proper battle axe stitched on there in the next thirty minutes.”

  Huffing under my breath, I settled onto the settee and threaded my already prepared needle through the back of the cloth, pricking my thumb with barely more than a single movement.

  “Posture straight,” Thod chided as he took a seat beside me. “A lady never slouches.”

  “How would you know?” I grumbled. In all actuality, I knew exactly how Thod knew everything; it was his job, after all. Thodeoric Hedgecock was a master of disguise, a master of most things that came with being a spy, but instead of constantly being in the field, he had taken it upon himself to train those that came after him. At forty years old, he had aged out most of the spies in the Guild, all because the dainty woman he married had asked him to. Though he had taken the position as Master Teacher, he was still sent out on missions when necessary. The Guild reserved him for when big items needed taken care of, things that were above my clearance. Rumor had it that Thod used to be in the Beast Guild, the elite group that not only protected the Queen, but also served as assassins at times. It was the Guild I aimed for, the one I trained for, but Thod had reached it and chosen to leave it all behind for his wife. They were a cute couple, one I likened to my mother and her late husband, and I considered it strength to walk away from the top for happiness.

  I only hoped that one day I’d have something worth
walking away for. I doubted that would ever happen, however, judging by how things were going. I was a twenty-five-year-old spinster, and the only reason I still had so many bachelors calling on me was because of my looks.

  Thod never discussed the things he did, never ventured into his missions, but every now and then, stories got out. The last one I had heard was that Thod had been asked to assassinate a scientist who had begun building a massive weapon, something that could make war an entirely different animal. The scientist had been paranoid against most people, so there was no way in through the normal methods, but the scientist supposedly used the services of working girls he regularly paid to show up at his home. He paid handsomely for the women to show up on time, but the Guild paid better. Thod had easily strutted into the scientist’s home dressed as a woman, and not a single person would have been able to tell who he was underneath, or even that he was a man at all. That was how good Thod was, because he was broad shouldered and muscular, his body speaking of long hours spent honing those muscles. How he did it, I would never know, and Thod never told.

  Thod was a master, and he had made it his personal mission to make sure I could do everything he could and more. I was still far from as talented as he was, but I was learning, and had quickly surpassed all others. What should have taken me decades to learn had taken me only years.

  Unlucky for me, even if I was skilled, there was still a bias within the Guild, and the fact that I was a woman made for constant underestimation, as proven by Calvin getting the promotion in rank I had been gunning for. Of course, he had earned that promotion because he had to throw me under the bus to achieve it, but the fact that it had been believed without question, that it was a reason at all why I could not get the promotion but Calvin still did, said all it needed to. Calvin was talented, sure, but he was not as talented as me, and it grinded my gears that he would get a promotion I should have gotten based on merit alone.

  Thirty minutes later, I had a passable battle axe embroidered on my canvas. I had even added my own little twist to the design, something I was sure my mother would roll her eyes at.

  “What does it say?” Thod asked, tilting his head around the circle of letters I had stitched.

  “The quickest way through a man’s heart is through his rib cage.” I grinned at the answering smile on Thod’s face, but Mother shook her head and snatched the loom from my hands, studying the design.

  “It’s passable,” she admitted, reluctantly I could tell. “But not great work. We will add embroidery to your lessons more often so you can master the skill.”

  I groaned and even though she shot me a scathing look, I did not stop. “Embroidery is the devil’s work!”

  “It’s a lady’s work and you’ll do well to remember that when you have a husband who must never find out who you are.”

  Slumping down in my seat even as Thod stood and started gathering his supplies, I tried my best not to think of such a future, of being relegated to wearing a mask forever more, even in front of someone I should have been able to relax around. Even if I somehow loved whatever husband I was married to, I would never be able to tell him where I went in the evening or why I had weapons stashed in every crevice of our home. It was encouraged to marry someone too dimwitted to even notice, but that only sent me further into depressive thoughts. I did not want to marry at all, let alone to someone who was nothing more than an oblivious tool, even if that was what would be expected of her.

  “See you next week, Tillie,” Thod called as he rolled up his knives in canvas and ticked them away into his bag. “Make sure to work on that cross stitch. It’s a tad shaky.”

  If I would have had a knife in my hand, I would have thrown it at him. He would have avoided it easily, but it would have made me feel better at least.

  Bloody embroidery, I thought, as I picked up the loom again and started to stitch a ring of knives around my design.

  Kicking off my heels into the corner, I breathed a sigh of relief at the feeling. I had been subjected to ballroom attire for all lessons, because a lady ought to never be at a disadvantage simply because she wore a large dress and heels. While I understood the lesson, it did not make me any less relieved when Betty plucked the laces loose at my back, releasing the tight corset inch by agonizing inch. When I felt like I could breathe again, I held up my arms so Betty could help me out of the contraption, the layers of material nearly needing a map to navigate my way out of it.

  With the dress off, I easily hurried along the rest, sliding out of my undergarments and accepting the night dress Betty held out to me.

  “Will that be all, Tillie?” Betty asked, her kind face wrinkled with slight age. She had come to the Kingsford house as a child, another orphan, had served the family long before my mother was ever here. I often thought it unfair that Betty had been given the position of handmaiden while I, myself, had been given the title daughter, but the titles did not reflect on a difference of treatment. Mother treated Betty as family, and even though she grew older and it was customary to have a young handmaiden, Mother refused to cower beneath those expectations and kept Betty on. She was free to leave, of course, if she wished, but Betty had never asked to, not even when she married the man she chose to spend her life with.

  I nodded my head. “That’s all. Thank you, Betty. I couldn’t breathe with that contraption.” Even as I spoke, I studied my skin in the mirror, the indentions where the steel-boning had pushed into my skin and marked me. They would fade by morning, but they looked like angry wounds now.

  “You say that every night,” Betty chided, hanging my dress back in the wardrobe.

  “And every night, it’s true.”

  Betty patted me on the shoulder in amusement and clinched her tongue. “Poor Tillie, worrying about breathing in a world like this. Don’t you know how to take demure sips of air so you don’t pass out?”

  Her jest slammed into me and my smile fell but Betty didn’t notice. She was already turning away, already calling goodbye over her shoulder as she left the room and closed the door behind her. Taking a deep breath, I studied the marks one more time before I slipped into my night dress.

  I absolutely detested having to wear ballgowns and skirts as often as I was subjected to. I was a lady, so it was expected, but that didn’t make it any less annoying. I would have been much happier in a pair of trousers and a corset, but the life of a spy required her to be able to blend in, and in this decade, and probably many more, a woman in trousers called far more attention than a dress; at least, for a lady it did. Sometimes, I envied the women on airships. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I would get to wear shorter skirts or ones with splits in them, but those jobs usually took me inside brothels and gentleman’s clubs.

  Moving to my writing desk, I stared down at the schedule before me, the one where all the parties I was required to attend were listed in elegant ink. There was a never-ending supply of parties and events that I was invited to; even during the slow season of winter, I received at least two invites a week.

  Also on the schedule were a series of dots, appearing as nothing more than places where I rested my pen, but the days with such dots were workdays, times I knew I had to plan to go into the Guild. There was no dot today, and I was looking forward to making up the sleep I had been lacking. Sometimes, a lady truly did need her beauty sleep.

  Just as I turned to climb into the bed, a soft tapping filled the room. I had my pistol out from its holster beneath the writing desk and pointed at my window before I even knew what the threat was. Heart rate in my ears, my eats fell on the small pigeon at my window, but not just any pigeon.

  This one was made of gears and metal.

  That was how I knew it was serious. The message department always sent a beetle to me when they could, because of how much I hated them. If they sent a pigeon, that meant it was urgent, and they could not waste time with such games.

  Quickly rushing to the window, I threw it open and the small machine fluttered inside, hopping over to my desk and
waiting for me to lean down to hear the message. Where the beetles carried coded messages on paper, the pigeons carried whispers of voices unlocked by individual codes each Guild member was assigned. I reached forward and pressed the small keypad, typing in zero-three-eleven, the date I first arrived in London, and leaned down to hear the whisper.

  “Get to the main square,” the speaker whispered. “Near the base of Big Ben. Unnatural disturbance reported. Stealth is required.”

  My blood thinned. An unnatural disturbance? What did that even mean?

  Quickly pushing the accept button, I hardly paid any attention to the pigeon as it hopped away and opened intricate wings, flying back into the skies back towards the Guild. The message it carried would have been gone the moment it reached my ears, and that was part of the beauty of the pigeons. As long as you heard the message the first time, you would be okay, because they didn’t repeat the message. Once spoken, it was erased completely, and the pigeons became nothing more than a blank slate. Some of the younger spies had trouble hearing the pigeons, and I once saw a spy misinterpret the words. Instead of hearing “Get to the car”, she had heard, “Take out the guard”. That had been a logistical nightmare.

  If stealth was required, it meant the mission was not only serious, but I was expected to act as intelligence and nothing more. There would be no interactions, no reveal, nothing except for watchful eyes and silent feet.

  Pulling the nightdress over my head yet again, I instead reached for the black leather I kept for such missions, the outfit more my style than anything else. The leather was soft as butter as I pulled the trousers up my legs, as I pulled on the simple black blouse before hooking myself into my favorite corset. It was an outfit made for a spy, easy to move in, black to avoid detection, and comfortable. Once the outfit was in place, I began to strap the harnesses and weapons I typically carry beneath a dress to my hips instead. I even grabbed the small battle axe Thod had gifted me with and strapped it to my thigh, easily within reach should I need it. Once all the weapons were in their places, I checked over myself one more time, making sure everything blended in as needed. No one ever noticed me, but it was always good to be prepared.