Tools of the Trade (The Suntosun Chronicles) Read online

  Tools

  of the

  Trade

  © 2021 G.L. Francis

  &

  Reticent Desire Publications

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the author. This includes electronic or mechanical transmission, photocopying, recording, information retrieval systems or storage.

  This book is a work of fiction and is intended for adults only.

  Any names, businesses, places, or events used in this work are fictional, with the exception of historical references. Any similarities to living or dead people, incidents, companies, products, or organizations are purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  April 1899, Kansas City Missouri

  Gaslight lamps illuminated both ends of the bridge, but there were none in the span’s center. Sophie squinted at the railway structure three-hundred yards away. The Hannibal Bridge looked skeletal compared to the one where she stood. She peered down at the swirling fog and listened to the Missouri’s waters running fast with springtime thaws upriver.

  “Please not to jump in river.”

  Startled, she jerked her head around. She hadn’t heard the approach of boots on the bridge’s brickwork, but she recognized the Russian accent of Poppa Tom’s most recent employee. She relaxed. “You don’t know me well enough to say what I can and can’t do, Kazimir.” She watched the man’s outline approach, backlit by the nearest lamp. A silhouette not quite as tall as her father, his dark shape was a hatless head with pointed ears atop a calf-length duster.

  “Your father worries for you, Miss Asher. Your brother looks for you.”

  She bridled at the hint of reproach in his voice. “So, you’re hunting me?”

  “Nyet. I only said I would watch for if I see you.” Kazimir stopped a few feet from her. Although he was younger than her brother, the light gave his ash brown hair the silvery cast of a much older man. “I think to walk with you to your father now.”

  “I can take an evening walk by myself, thank you.”

  “It is not evening,” he responded reasonably. “It is night.”

  “And this is nearly the turn of the century,” she shot back, beginning to enjoy herself. “A modern woman can—”

  “You will tell your father you would not come back with me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then I will say.”

  “If you do, I’ll tell Poppa you tried to take advantage of my purity.”

  “But that is lie!”

  Sophie smiled with exaggerated sweetness, knowing there was just enough light to illuminate her face.

  “Please to forgive me.” He hesitated, then said, “Will you walk as far as your father’s house with me? I am stranger and might lose my way, but I can find way home from there.”

  She smiled, this time in genuine amusement. When he turned and offered his elbow, a faint smile flickered on his lean face. She looped her arm through his. As they walked toward the nearest end of the bridge, she said, “I wasn’t going to jump. Really.”

  “I am glad to hear.” He truly did sound relieved. “When your young man left on Oregon Trail with wagon train today, I worried of your sadness.”

  “If he really was my young man, he wouldn’t have left.” She wouldn’t admit that Clayton’s decision stung, but it didn’t sting enough to make her want to end her life. “Anyway, I . . .”

  As they entered a hazy island of light, two men stepped from the surrounding murk to join them. Sophie felt Kazimir’s posture change just before the shorter of the ill-kempt ruffians grabbed her free arm and yanked her away. The odors of alcohol and the Kansas City stockyards displaced the river’s smell.

  “We’ll take you for a walk,” the shorter one said. At the same time, the other rumbled, “Get lost, pretty boy. She needs—”

  The next instant, she was free. The short man clutched at a dark blotch spreading across his upper arm. Kazimir held something under the man’s chin. With his other hand, he poised the edge of a second weapon against the unshaven throat of the taller ruffian.

  The would-be abductors seemed frozen by the touch of the . . . what was Kazimir holding? Not a pair of knives. Sophie couldn’t make sense of what she saw. The tools, so mundane in her father’s shop, were so very out of place here. In each hand, Kazimir gripped the handle of a bearing scraper. The slender shanks ended with long almond shapes the size of half her hand. The metal tips were pointed and sharp on the flat edges.

  “You will turn please and jump off bridge.” Kazimir’s polite words were at odds with his chilly tone. His grim expression made his turquoise eyes resemble cold shards of dark aquamarine.

  Although the curved blade followed his throat as he turned, the taller man snickered. “We swam in rougher seas than this little squirt of water. We’ll find you.”

  “You may certainly try.” Kazimir nodded toward the river. “Now to jump.”

  Sophie heard the twin splashes and peeked over the railing. The fog’s density had thickened. She couldn’t detect sounds of swimming, but the river would easily mask such noise. She looked at Kazimir. “We’d better go before they—”

  The river made an odd chuckling as water encountered something obstructing the flow. Almost like a woman’s laughter. Sophie’s skin prickled with gooseflesh.

  Kazimir moved next to her and peered intently at the fog over the river. The bearing scrapers were no longer in his hands. “Please to not be afraid. They will never leave river.”

  Although she never laced her corset tightly, Sophie suddenly felt like it wasn’t allowing enough air into her lungs. Her heart pounded against the rigid stays. “You don’t know that.”

  Kazimir did not look at her. “I am certain of it, Miss Asher. We will go now.” Gently, he took her hand and folded her arm in his again. He sounded subdued, almost mournful. “Two men lost lives for your foolish. I do not wish to be third.”

  Sophie remained silent as they left the bridge and followed Elm Street to Delaware. The farther from the riverfront they walked, the more buggies and carriages passed them on the cobbled streets. Occasional steam cars with lit carbide headlamps chugged and hissed.

  “Kazimir, how do you know those men are dead?”

  He turned his head away, his gaze on a passing steam car.

  “Kazimir?”

  “I will find your brother and say to him of your safety.” He glanced sideways at her. “After you are home with your father.”

  “You didn’t answer me.” Sophie strove to keep irritation out of her voice.

  “You will maybe think Kazimir Anastov is not in right thinking,” he replied carefully. “I do not wish you to think bad of me.”

  Sophie considered this for a moment. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Is that why you left your country?”

  “Nyet, but . . .” He paused for what seemed too long. “It is hard for me to say.” Another pause lasted the length of the block. “I am hard worker,” he said at last. “Good worker.”

  Sophie nodded. In the six months since hiring Kazimir, Poppa Tom had been impressed with the Russian’s skill and diligence. He’d transferred Kazimir from the main shop where boilers and engines were made to the smaller, adjoining shop dedicated to various mechanized devices including a line of clockwork toys for the wealthy. The men of the boiler shop had teased the young man relentlessly about his ears, calling him a big elf, although he’d explained it was simply how some in his native village were born. Sophie had supposed it was similar to the way some people were born club-footed or hare-lipped.

  But there’d been acci
dents and a death. Certainly nothing involving Kazimir, but the men began muttering among themselves of a land Jonah. They said the big elf brought sorrow.

  “I do many works,” he went on, “not only making things of metal. I was sent to America, to Kansas City, to drive away or destroy . . .” This pause seemed to be a search for the word he wanted. “Please to forgive. I do not know the name here. In my country, it is rusalka.”

  Sophie turned the word over in her mind, but it meant nothing to her. “I don’t understand.”

  “It is said rusalka is . . . spirit of dead woman killed by another or by her own self. Drowned. Sometimes also child too, but mostly woman. Kind I am hunting is really very bad spirit of water using dead woman’s shape. Or maybe perhaps sometimes alive woman’s shape.”

  Sophie stopped so suddenly Kazimir stumbled, his arm still linked with hers. “You fight demons?” She could not keep incredulity from her voice or her expression.

  “Da, demons. That is word.” He looked at her steadily. “You heard laughter?”

  Sophie recalled the strange chuckling of the river and shivered. She’d heard the priest at church speak of demons only a couple of times. She thought of such creatures as tales to frighten children. Nothing to take seriously except as an intellectual exercise. Nothing real enough to kill. “Let’s say I accept your explanation. Is that how you know those men died?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s why you were at the bridge?”

  Another nod.

  “But you’re afraid of them. You said you didn’t want to be the third one.”

  His eyes searched her face, then he nodded again.

  She sighed. The man was a lunatic—skillful, competent, even sweet, but a lunatic all the same. “Kazimir, I like you, but I have to speak to my father about this.”

  “Already I told him,” he said earnestly. “He is giving permission to build weapon for battle.”

  They were now on Admiral Boulevard and within sight of her home. The wet brickwork and ornamental iron reflected the gaslights on either side of the walkway. She studied it, not sure how to feel about Poppa Tom’s secrecy. Should she assume Kazimir was telling the truth?

  “He believed you?”

  “I showed proof of my words. He also wishes you to see proof too.” He escorted her to the wide stairs leading up to the front door. “Tomorrow. At workshop.”

  “I look forward to seeing whatever convinced my father.” She stepped up to the door.

  “I look for your brother now,” Kazimir said. “And Miss Asher.”

  Her hand rested on the leaded glass doorknob. She partially turned and stared down at his upturned face. “Yes, Kazimir?”

  “In truth, I am . . . elf.”

  Chapter 2

  ~*~

  The next morning, Sophie went to her father’s office at Asher Metal Works.

  Poppa Tom sat in the leather swivel chair behind his desk. He closed the cover on his watch and tucked it into the pocket on his vest. “You’re late.”

  Sophie crossed the room to give him a peck on the cheek. “Sorry, Poppa. Bruce brought me in the carriage.”

  Her father sighed. “Never mind, Sugar.” He ran a hand through his iron gray hair, then indicated one of the workbenches where the self-proclaimed elf leaned against the bench next to a backless stool.

  Kazimir’s hair could’ve used some attention from her father's barber, but he appeared otherwise respectably groomed: his white shirt pressed and neatly tucked in his trousers, his work boots polished. He even wore a tie. He regarded her briefly, acknowledging her arrival, then lowered his gaze to the toolbox on the bench.

  “A month ago,” Poppa was saying, “Kazimir told me things I had trouble believing. But I’ve done some studying.” He came around the desk and led her to the bench. “Then Kazimir showed me his toolbox.”

  Sophie eyed the toolbox sitting on the bench. Battered and lined with worm tracks, the toolbox’s wood was dark with oil and ingrained dirt. Attached straps apparently allowed it to be carried like a huge rucksack. It must be like carrying a horse, she thought. How much does this thing weigh?

  “Kazimir.” Poppa Tom gave a go-ahead nod to the elf.

  Kazimir unfastened the latch and swung the doors open. Sophie gasped.

  The interior was a work of both art and craft, intricately carved and fitted like puzzle pieces. The trays contained arrays of tools common in a machinist box—slide rule, vernier calipers, some odd dial gauges, micrometers—but more ornate than any she’d ever seen. The markings and graduation lines didn’t correspond to any measurements she knew.

  Small instruments that looked like they might belong to a navigator or a surveyor captured her attention. A dioptra? An astrolabe? A theodolite? A complex arrangement of plane rings and bands encircled a glass sphere textured like a globe of the earth and mounted on an adjustable armature. The base of it had three bubble levels attached—horizontal, vertical, and circular—but the graduated markings on the clear red glass made no sense. She peered closer.

  Only the circular level showed a centered bubble. The bubble in the vertical level was not at the top where it should be. It was stationary at just above center of its glass tube. The bubble in the horizontal one lingered to the left of center even though the bench was level. Sophie suddenly felt light-headed, as though the displaced bubbles had tilted her entire world much more than the sight of the strange tools. She pulled the stool to her and sat down.

  “Poppa?”

  She felt his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid, Sugar.” Was there a chuckle in his voice? “Bruce fainted when he saw the tools.”

  She snorted at the thought of her brother, a bigger man than Poppa Tom, hitting the floor like someone with the vapors. “I’m not afraid, Poppa. So,” she addressed Kazimir, “is this your proof?”

  “It is start of proof,” Kazimir replied. From a small paper sack, he spilled out a cluster of raisins still attached to the vine. A single dry leaf clung near the cut end of the stem. He plucked a raisin from the cluster and set it aside. After pricking his index finger with a lancet, he kneaded the fleshy pad until a drop of blood appeared. This he touched delicately to the end of the stem. Taking an oddly marked micrometer from its drawer, he smeared the remainder on the spindle and anvil. He made adjustments on the handle’s five thimbles, then placed the instrument so the C-shaped frame encircled the raisin cluster.

  Before Sophie’s eyes, the leaf trembled, straightened. Its brittle brown color suffused with green. The raisins plumped, rapidly changing from dark burgundy-brown to the vibrant red of fresh Catawba grapes. The grapes glistened as though freshly harvested on a dewy morning.

  Suddenly suspicious, she glared at Kazimir. “It’s a trick.”

  Rather than reply, he plucked a grape. He offered it and the raisin he’d set aside to her.

  “No trick,” Poppa Tom assured her. “Go ahead. Eat them.”

  The stickiness of the raisin, the juicy firmness of the grape conveyed their reality. She didn’t need to taste the fruit. She set them on the bench, certain if she ate them she would vomit. She eyed the Russian. “Who are you?”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Miss Asher, I am Kazimir Anastov—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she interrupted, trying to keep testiness out of her voice.

  “—that people call elf. Aleksei.” He looked at Poppa Tom. “Please to forgive. I do not remember word for it.”

  “It roughly translates as defender. Maybe guardian or sentinel.” Poppa Tom moved closer to the bench and placed a hand on the toolbox. “You could say these are tools of his trades.”

  “Da. And you have problem here. Your father and your brother caused rusalka to notice them.”

  “How did that happen?” Sophie asked levelly.

  Poppa Tom responded with a question. “Do you recall the club’s fall regatta last year?”

  Sophie nodded. The Kansas City Yacht Club’s fall regatta nearly ended in tragedy when th
ree steam launches encountered odd turbulence on the river. Poppa Tom and Bruce had pulled four people from the water while other boaters rescued the occupants clinging to the hulls of the remaining two launches. “What about it?”

  “Your father and brother deprived rusalka of victims,” Kazimir said. “Every man who did rescue is target of rusalka.”

  “So, if your job is to fight these things, why aren’t you doing it?” She waved a hand toward the shop on the other side of the office door. “Why are you wasting time here?”

  “No one can fight rusalka all by alone. I was with my brother Pyotr and his wife Ilyana at Booneville last year,” Kazimir said stiffly. “They died in explosion on barge there. Instrument—” he pointed to the globe with the rings around it, “did not yet tell me where I must go next. It was not built to read with my blood. I had to make change for to do so.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Kazimir.” Sophie sensed he did not want to discuss his bereavement. Then, “Read with your blood? What does that mean? And what is that thing?”

  “There is iron in blood, da? I had to change liquid in levels for it to say location where I must fight.” Again, he appealed to Poppa Tom for aid. “I do not know your word for instrument.”

  “It’s an armillary,” he responded. “Like your astrolabe, but spherical.” Poppa Tom regarded the instrument. “And, of course, there are modifications in this one’s construction. I suspect the set of levels is only one special feature.” To Sophie, he said, “The globe evidently shows the general area where the elf needs to go. The levels—” He frowned. “I suppose they show the fine tuning of the location. If I understand it right, the marks on the vertical and horizontal levels are latitude and longitude, but they don’t operate until the armillary is quite near the given site.”

  “How does it work?” she asked.

  Poppa Tom shrugged. “Like Kazimir said, blood contains iron. These defender elves, the aleksei, have some kind of science to make instruments to help them locate and battle demons entering our world. The iron in their blood tunes their tools to magnetic fields. Maybe other kinds of fields, too. Evidently, demonic presence disrupts these fields.”