A servant girl entered his room quietly and drew the curtains slowly. The light raced in waking the sleep deprived imposter. Groaning unintelligible curses at the intruder he finally managed to sit up and cast a bleary eye at the young dark skinned girl who had woken him. “Sorry for the intrusion sir but you asked me to wake you early. You said you had plans in town.” She was polite, but even in his deprived state he noticed that she seemed almost fearful of him, avoiding eye contact and keeping her posture shrunken and meek. This was going to be problematic. If he was going to find this damned amulet, or failing that, what had happened to it, he was most likely going to need the help of the few servants that were left in the manse and they weren’t going to be offering help to someone they were afraid of. “Time for the charm” he thought to himself. Offering up the warmest smile he could he tried to meet eyes with the girl. “Well thank you sweetheart, but my plans aren’t for a little while and right now I have something I need to take care of. Maybe you could help me with it?” The girl’s eyes grew as wide as any he had ever seen as she gasped and ran from the room. It was then that Nathaniel’s brain finally caught up with him and he realized he had just woken up after sleeping in the nude. “That could have gone better.” he muttered to himself as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. You mean it’s not a good thing when girls run crying from the room as you sit there naked? Came a snark-filled voice from inside his head. “Morning boss.” Nathaniel sighed in exasperation.
I don’t pay you to try and screw the servants you know. “I was just trying to follow a lead.” Is that what you’re calling it these days? “I’m actually just getting ready to head out and check the local pawn shops to see if any of them have it. This Mann character let a bunch of servants go recently, maybe one of them took it?” Well as productive as it sounds for you to check every single pawn shop in a major city days before a major celebration, I have some news you might want to hear. “Of course you do.” Enough of your lip boy, you’re valuable but still replaceable, don’t ever forget that. I’ve been watching the mansion while you slept and found that girl you ran into yesterday, disguised but it’s her. She did something in a room on the east wing and I wasn’t able to watch, but she and the old man look like they found what they need. “So I track them down and find what they took? Any idea where I should look for them?” You never listen I said they found what they need, not that they found the amulet. They probably found a lead themselves, and from a bit of conversation I caught before they got out of range, they seem to have left something behind. Go find whatever it is they left and see if you can beat them to wherever they’re planning to go. You don’t want to fight either of them and as a pair they would destroy you. “Thanks for the tip boss, I’ll get right on it.” Good, now I’m getting a decent night’s sleep for once. You’re on your own for a bit, try not to do anything stupid. “Thanks for the confidence” Nathaniel said aloud, but as soon as he said it he felt that the connection was once again severed.
Having an overbearing boss was one thing. Having a boss who could use astral projection to check up on you from several continents away via a thaumaturgical implant in your skull was quite another. Rolling his neck to work away the dull throb that the implant always gave him Nathaniel finished dressing and went to find breakfast. He may have had a job to do but it could at least wait until after a plate of whatever these Americans called food. Thankfully Nathaniel had stumbled upon a dining room while searching the day before. It would have looked suspicious if he had to ask for directions in his own home. Finding his way back to what he hoped was food he stopped just outside the door and listened in on the conversation inside. “Remind me again why you’re still here and not out fixing my machines?” Asked an obviously irritated Thaddeus Mann. “I’m waiting for your son, sir. I need him to recalibrate the babbage devices on your clockworks so they’ll recognize him properly.” Replied Jon Baker distractedly. Standing up from the table with a grunt Thaddeus began to storm off towards the door Nathaniel was hiding behind. “Just get them fixed before Tuesday, I won’t have them ruining my party dammit!” Nathaniel straightened up and managed to look natural just as the heavy door swung open bringing him face to face with his “Father”. Putting on what he hoped was a convincing smile he greeted him with a bright “G’morning Dad” which only seemed to make his scowl worse. “Go with Baker, he needs your help with something, and for Christ’s sake quit slouching boy!” Thaddeus grunted before stomping off down the hall. Nathaniel gave a brief sigh of relief and stole inside to grab a quick plate of food and hoped that whatever the engineer needed that it wouldn’t take too long. He managed to grab a handful of fruit and a couple of what were apparently unsweetened scones that they insisted on calling biscuits before Baker ushered him off to his workshop.
The workshop was a constant mess of clicking, whirring, steaming activity. Sprawled on nearly every surface of the shop were half assembled pieces of brass coated clockwork devices, many of which remained in motion and were twitching in a vaguely disturbing fashion as they tried, and failed, to function. Cages lined the walls where smaller things were locked up that were able to move but needed to be kept out of the way. In one of them a brass hummingbird beat frantically at the bars of its cage until it gave up and perched with its beady eyes locked on something that didn’t seem to exist. A larger cage was devoted to some form of skeletal attack dog that was horrifying enough to look at on its own, but had managed to become even more disturbing after it had apparently chewed off one of its own hind legs and torn off half its jaw in the process. Jon seemed oblivious to all this as he wandered through the carnage to a massive guardian that had been chained to the wall for safety. Nathaniel didn’t exactly feel safe as he had seen these things rip through doors like paper and there was no doubt that it would break free if given the motivation. Nevertheless he did as he was told and sat in the chair across from it. As the inactive machine sat staring at him with Nathaniel staring right back, not daring to blink, Jon climbed up behind it and fiddled around with something in its head. “Try not to move, would you? It needs to recognize you again, so just act normally.” He instructed adding “…Sir” as an afterthought. Several excruciating minutes passed as Nathaniel sat as still as he could, acutely aware that at least half a dozen machines in the room were capable of turning him into a fine paste and as far as he knew, they all thought he was an intruder. “Just about done,” Jon said activating the massive machine. “Just need to give him a voice recognition” “Do what now?” “Tell him your name… ‘Sir’.” Nathaniel stared into the cold mechanical eyes of the machine and for a moment felt compelled to use his real name. “Nathaniel Mann” he finally squeaked out.
The giant stood straining against his chains as an ominous clicking started in its head. Nathaniel dove for cover beneath a bench as the clockwork guardian unfolded to its full height. “Oh get up you ninny, you’re fine” Jon sighed in exasperation. Nathaniel crawled out from under the bench in time to see the engineer release the guardian from its binding. He managed to only flinch slightly as the machine stomped out the room past him. Clearing his throat Nathaniel tried to regain a little dignity and asked “Good, so are you going to bring in the next one of those things? I don’t want to have to guess which ones are trying to kill me.” Jon, who was already distracted with some notes he was making on a sheet of paper brought his attention back to the irritated young man. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep you any longer, that one will go talk to the others and tell them the new parameters. Once they’ve all learned to recognize you they’ll be set out of storage to resume duty.” Jon returned to his work seeming to have already forgotten Nathaniel was still there. “So I can go?” he asked the distracted man. “YES!” Jon yelled waving him off and appending it again with a muttered “…Sir.” A very relieved Nathaniel practically ran from the room and headed to the east wing.
Having found the gallery of magical relics the day before Nathaniel knew that’s where the strange pair must have gone. Avoiding the occasional servant in case his “father” needed him for something else he found his way to the room again and snuck inside. At first nothing seemed out of place, except that the floor had a strange dust he hadn’t noticed the day before. Kneeling down to examine a small pile of the white dust that had gathered at the base of one of the displays he dipped his fingers in it and rubbed them together before bringing them to his nose to smell it. “Chalk?” he muttered to himself. It was then that the silence of the room was broken by a false wall sliding open mere feet away. Standing quickly Nathaniel found himself face to face with a pair of servants who had emerged from the hidden passage. Nathaniel, in his life as a thief and imposter had acquired a talent for reading people. It was an absolute necessity to be able to tall what someone was thinking if you were going to bluff your way out of (or into) a situation. Right now that talent was telling him by the way the pair tried to compose themselves, as though they were trying to hide something even though they had nothing in their hands to hide, that he was looking at the people who had stolen the amulet out from under him. “You’re not supposed to be here.” He said with an air of authority. The younger girl looked at the older girl who had composed herself faster. “Of course we are sir,” Stealing a quick glance around the room she came back with “we came to clean the floors.” Nathaniel grinned slightly. “Not a bad lie, but you don’t have anything to clean with. Now I’m busy and not in the mood to deal with you two so I’m not even going to ask your names. I just want to know where this is.” He held up a drawing of the amulet. “You two tell me where I can find it and don’t ask why I need it back and I won’t tell my father that you’ve been stealing his stuff, deal?” The younger girl again looked to the older girl, as tense as a cornered cat as the older one tried to stare down Nathaniel. She lost. “There’s a buyer for these kinds of things in town. I don’t know if she still has it but she did a week ago.” She wrote down the name and address of the buyer on the back of the picture. As he took the address Nathaniel noticed a glint of brass on her shoulder and reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder covertly grabbing the clockwork bug. “Thieving doesn’t really suit you, you’re not pretty enough to get away with it if you’re caught.” He said smugly before turning on his heel and walking to the door. “Thank you” the younger girl started to say before the older girl jabbed her with an elbow. “My name is-” she began “Don’t care!” He finished.
Nathaniel left the house in high spirits and found a taxi. He had a lead on the amulet, he was ahead of the girl and her dad, and if he played his cards right he would be out of town before anyone noticed he wasn’t who he was pretending to be. He stared at the small clockwork beetle in his hand still whirring away, he had no clue what it was supposed to do, but as long as he had it then it meant that he could keep it away from the other two. For the first time since the train he felt back in control and it felt good.
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