Clockwork Firefly

Clockwork Firefly - Chapter Fourteen

Throughout the day, the rain had poured down upon the mansion, clearing in the late evening, the stars not yet out. Almost since they had arrived, the three men named Peter Walter had each been trapped in their own way, the youngest quite literally so. Peter Walter the third sat desolate in a padded cell in the basement of Walter Mansion, his hands free, but his torso still wound tightly by the mechanical bands of the Blue Matter infused plate his father had put upon him. He sat staring at the locked door across the room, his brow furrowed in deep thought, hoping all was going well upstairs. His father had told him there was to be a family meeting, but he could not attend this one. When he asked why, his father's face had fallen and he'd merely reminded him that he was not himself at the moment, and he'd chosen not to press the issue.

The eldest son had been a prisoner of duty. He had a desk piled with all those small-but-vital business decisions that had been pushed off for his father's hope for a return of the halcyon days when the robots had been performers instead of soldiers, guitars slung across their shoulders, not medic bags. To be exposed to the cheers of crowds instead of the screams of the suffering, it was supposed to help both Peter and the band to heal. That it had gone so wrong was unbelievable. Now everything had seemed to fall around him. He threw himself into the work, approving purchases, okaying orders, handling the household budget, and of course speaking with Hatchworth over the destruction of the train car once it was completed, and with the maids over getting Miss Mickleson settled.

At eight in the evening Hatchworth appeared in the doorway of the office, no doubt there to tell him dinner was ready. Frankly, he was far more ready for bed than for food. He had opened his mouth to tell Hatchy he wouldn't be eating but the bowler-hatted robot was quick to cut him off. It was not dinner, but a meeting of the household that Hatchworth had come to fetch him to. With a groan, he rose and made his way to the dining room, wondering what fresh hell had been unleashed now.

He was last to arrive. Even Miss Mickleson was present. Her new dress was quite pretty, he had to admit. A soft gauzy fabric in baby blue that covered her arms. A scarf of the same fluttery fabric had been wound around her throat, hiding the bruises there so that if one did not know the state of her skin, and if they avoided looking into eyes that still wore a haunted look, they would never know she was hurting. She sat, her hands folded in her lap at a seat at the side of the table. Hatchworth had taken a seat between the head of the table and Mary. Upgrade was on his father's other side, her pink face turned with abject adoration toward The Spine, not that he noticed. The Jon was toying with his spinning button, and Rabbit was making a small tower out of cards. At the head of the table, his father sat, reading through papers and making notes. Peter took up a seat at the other end of the table, his hands folding across the polished maple table.

The chatter ended when Peter Walter the first cleared his throat meaningfully and rose from his seat. "It has been a very strange week to say the least. To say our experimental venture back into entertainment was not a success is akin to saying the Pacific is a trifle damp. That said, we have all got questions in need of answering, and this gathering is meant to give answers where we can, and to air those which have no answers yet, in the hopes someone here has the solution which has eluded."

He drew a slow breath. "The first item we must address is to let you all know what I have learned today. When we returned from our journey, there was a woman in the parlor waiting for me. She put forth a fantastic story to me." He reiterated the tale the African woman had told him. Words like bokor and nkondi felt strange on his lips, but after his day's research, they did not seem so far-fetched as he'd begun the day thinking. "I spent the day working on this thorny issue. Interviewing Pete, giving him tests, searching through some old books I retained when the Cavalcadium library was razed, and have come to the following conclusion." He took a sip of water before continuing. "Pete is, to use the closest and most accurate word ... possessed. That is to say that this bokor person, with the aid of the treacherous son of Becilie, has acquired a stash of Green Matter, feeding the necromantic power it possesses through the the focusing agent of this nkondi. They intended to target me, but as we all know, even Blue Matter, which is far more stable, is not always cooperative when it comes to what result you get."