A Steampunk Story of Triumph, Disaster, Inventors, Insane-asylum escapees, and American Frontiersmen with guns. They are not thieves, merely lady and gentlemen members of the Acquisitions Bureau.
Theodore Thaddeus Thatch the Third...
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Branwen Asylum used to be a grand old manor, almost a palace in truth. The grounds were expansive, the architecture impressive, though now it was overgrown with ivy and osier. It had once been part of Upper Chester, but had long since broken away and drifted. Most of the main building lay over the fault line that resulted from extensive londinium mining, and so when the grounds came away entirely, only half of the residence found itself separated from the town. Cut off from society, the place was abandoned by the family, and re-fitted to house England's insane. With the half-rooms made into ramshackle balconies, it seemed the structure, like it's inmates, was not all there. It had been said that the longest a body could stand the place without losing themselves to raving and fits was 140 days. Miss Elizabeth Aideen DeLacy had been a resident at Branwen for 139, and the better portion of a morning; make of that what you will.
Her cell stank of sweat, dried blood, stale urine, and old sick. The stains on the wall bore further evidence. She was infrequently visited, as she had proven herself a danger to all staff that attended her. She was confined in the room that had dingy cushions strapped to the walls and she had, until recently been clad in a straitjacket. She sat there and schemed, having long ago grown bored of chatting with her shadow; it hadn't anything interesting to say.
Her sharp little ears twitched and caught the crisp sound of new boots on the tiled hall a tap-tap-tapping their way toward her locked and bolted iron door –also padded and lacking a latch on the inside. The rumble of conversation outside picked itself out thus: the matron nurse was talking sternly with a younger one,
"Now," she said "you will aid me in the taking of this hysteric to meet a caller, you will keep your grip tight and your fingers far from her teeth. Do not engage in conversation, and do not look her in the eye."
The younger nurse quibbled indistinctly for a spell before Miss DeLacy heard the jingle and clink of keys in the locks and the creak of the heavy door, as it swung open.
By then she had slipped back into her restraints.
The door opened slowly, and the Matron peered sternly down her sharp little nose at the filthy Irish harridan that she was saddled with.
"Matron Lovelace!" Miss DeLacy lilted "Come fer a visit have ye?" She smiled up at the Matron from her low position on the floor, and stretched her lips into a thin sneer that visibly unnerved the young nurse, who was quite pretty in a girlish sort of way, and clung to her papers as if they were her ticket home. They likely were, for scatterbrained nurses often found themselves assigned the night shift.
The Matron kept her pinched lips tight shut and moved to lift Miss DeLacy by her left arm, the nurse mirroring her with the right.
DeLacy gnashed her teeth in jest, but she startled the nurse so gravely that the poor child jumped back a yard at least, dropping her quite completely. "What?" DeLacy cackled from the floor "Are ye afeared I'll nip ye?" She jumped to her feet without any of their assistance, and stood by the door. "Come, come! I've got all day, but I dinnae care te stay any longer!"
