Chapter One #2
I was capable. I’d passed my exams and practicals. And tomorrow, I’d leave the House of Industry and work alongside someone who never needed to know that I’d set a few sleeves on fire and burned a few nightgowns and knocked out one particularly mouthy classmate who had entirely deserved it.
“Gertrude Faircove,” Master Hayes intoned, reading from a scroll at the podium, “shall apprentice at the Copper Hills Mission.”
A series of cheers erupted from the girls around me and the boys across the aisle in the great hall.
I sat straight as an iron rod, every muscle in my body clenched so tight, I trembled.
She was sitting right beside me, close enough that the black fabric of our skirts pooled together.
I watched her fingers twist into the folds at her lap. Her breath made a soft whistling sound.
“It’s what you wanted,” I muttered under my breath.
Gertude spoke in a hissing whisper. “I realize that.”
“Then what are you scared of?”
“I am not scared,” she bit out.
I rolled my eyes and took her small hand in my own too quickly for her to yank it away.
Copper Hills was as big as Sterling City, but it was deep inland and far north.
Farther than either of us had ever been.
I held her cold hand for only a moment, long enough to feel a prickle of discomfort.
Long enough for my eyes to sting. “You’ll be fine,” I managed to say before letting go.
She made a show of drying her hand on her skirt. “Says the girl sweating through her dress.”
“It’s hot in here.”
It was actually cold and drafty—early-spring air seeping through the open windows above the stained glass that illuminated the room in shades of cobalt and sky blue.
Incense curled from two braziers on each side of the master, lending the air a hazy quality, like the edges of a dream.
Intricate chandeliers lit with radiance flickered beneath the polished rafters, a signal of the staggering wealth the House of Industry had amassed by developing Missions in every major city.
Access to Progress came at a price, but it added considerable value to people’s lives: automating tasks that used to take sweat and hard labor; lighting the night and extending the time people could work.
We were changing the world one Mission at a time.
And now I was about to find out exactly where I’d fit into the march of Progress. My empty stomach curled in on itself. I was so busy trying not to vomit with nerves that the sound of my own name startled a small squeak out of me.
“Josephine Haven,” the master was saying, “shall apprentice at the Frostbrook Mission.”
Silence followed his announcement. I blinked senselessly, trying to understand the words he’d spoken. The room tilted as I finally recognized the name.
Gertrude whispered my realization aloud. “But that Mission isn’t even close to operational.”
Someone laughed in the row behind us. I swallowed a sour taste at the back of my throat and squeezed my eyes shut briefly to quell the dizziness.
Frostbrook was the farthest Mission from Sterling City—little more than an experiment in rural development.
So remote that it took nearly a week by train to get materials out to the workers constructing it.
So rural that it would only serve a mill and a winch and a few scattered buildings until the trade outpost finally began to thrive.
This wasn’t an apprenticeship. It was a punishment. The culmination of too many disappointments.
This was what I’d earned for myself.
I refused to cry.
Master Hayes continued, finishing the list of girls and moving on to the boys. Reading the names of students and places, futures blossoming, talent and Industry spreading across the land, transforming the world.
Gertrude said nothing. But this time, she reached for my hand—and she didn’t let go.
We rode to the train station six to a carriage, crammed so close together that I could smell the onions on Tabitha Flint’s breath from the tarts she’d snuck from the kitchen. Our bags rattled on the roof, covered by a tarp as rain fell in gray sheets.
“You should have had your skirt tailored to trousers,” Tabitha said, twisting on the bench to try to show me hers, which mostly resulted in her sitting on Grace’s lap.
Grace shoved her, somehow managing to be forceful and delicate all at once. “Quit that. There’s no sense in giving her grief about her skirts. They’re lovely skirts, Josephine, really. You can always get them fixed up when you get to Frostland.”
“Frostbrook,” Tabitha corrected. She’d gotten top marks in every class thanks to encyclopedic knowledge of everything she’d ever heard or read and perhaps even dreamed. And she was not shy about imparting her knowledge on others whether they wanted to hear it or not.
A quality I’d taken advantage of on more than one occasion to better prepare for an exam after letting my mind drift in class.
Now her deep, musical voice only made the tightness in my chest worse.
I’d tried so hard not to care, but each one of the girls felt like a splinter in my palm.
I wasn’t ready to dig them out from under my skin.
“You know,” she was saying, “it’s right at the base of the mountains where the last of the Animators ran off to. No one knows how many bodies are up there in the snow. They had to have died of exposure. Anyone would.”
“We get it, you aced the House’s legacy,” Gertrude said with a sigh that heaved her chest. She carried a fan and fluttered it toward Tabitha, likely on account of the onions. “We don’t need a history lesson now.”
I might as well have been one of the Animators who’d tried to break from the House of Industry to practice their wild magic without regulation.
Once they’d showed the House how dangerous they were, they’d been hunted down and exterminated.
That had been nearly two decades ago, with a few stragglers rumored to have made it to the treacherous mountain range that served as a nearly impassable border between the plains and the far sea.
Frostbrook was nearly as far as those mountains—snowcapped peaks I’d seen only in paintings and drawings.
A desolate place that was likely years behind anything reasonably close to modern life.
Suddenly claustrophobic in the crowded carriage, I opened the waxed curtain beside me and let the rain mist my face. I sucked in great gulps of Sterling City air, tasting the grease and smoke and piss and occasional wafts of rot that characterized the metropolis I’d spent most of my life in.
“She’s lost it,” Grace announced mournfully.
I drew the curtain shut and directed my gaze toward her until she flinched. Abruptly, I felt heavy and tired. Something must have crossed my face, because her expression softened and she leaned forward, our knees knocking together.
“I’ll miss this place, too,” Grace said. “I’m off to Quinley Mission, you know. It’s not even half the size of Sterling City. They don’t even have a proper symphony orchestra.”
Tabitha cringed. “Frostbrook lacks running water, Grace.”
“All the more chance for me to make a tremendous name for myself,” I snapped, hearing the childish tone to my voice—but unable to stop it. “Think of the way they’ll admire me and my Senior. We’ll be changing lives, you know. Changing the whole world.”
Grace patted my hand. “Of course you will, dear.”
My hands, uncommonly clean, were as pale as bone against her tan skin.
I’d scrubbed with lemon and rough salt and a sharp boar-bristle brush until my nails shone and my cuticles bled.
I felt naked without grease in the folds of my knuckles.
This cleanliness was nothing but absurd pageantry.
It wouldn’t take long for my black dress to smell like machine grease and the comforting cling of ozone.
“It’s a shame we won’t be here for the Continental Exposition,” Grace said, straightening her scarf. “The House’s exhibit will be the grandest of all.”
“The Hall of Radiance is nothing but a replica of the House of Industry,” I said irritably. “It’s not even to scale.”
In truth, I felt sick over missing it. The House had been constructing the Hall of Radiance for nearly a year in anticipation of the exposition. The people of Sterling City would gather to learn about our great work, and we wouldn’t be there.
“It’s not about the exhibit,” Grace said, scoffing. “It’s about being seen and admired. Every notable figure in Sterling City will be there celebrating Progress.”
“I suppose you’ll have to settle for being seen and admired at the Quinley Mission,” I told her, taking satisfaction in her offended huff.
Tabitha spoke up with an anxious waver. “Do you imagine we’ll encounter resistors at the station?”
Gertrude met my gaze, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
The notion of encountering a resistor made my pulse quicken.
It was a Transistor’s duty to fight those who sought to harm Children of Industry and halt the march of Progress.
But if I had no other choice, surely I would not be faulted for defending myself and my classmates.
“I doubt it,” I said, unable to mask my disappointment. I would never be called on to fight. The station was likely crawling with Transistors in plain clothes tasked with making sure each of us made it into our trains safely.
“Incredible,” Gertrude muttered, shaking her head.
How did she manage to know me so keenly?
Who would I be without her?
A train whistle screeched in the distance, and I tilted my head back with an impotent snarl, wishing I could be that loud—that unbridled. One of those trains was going to take me away from here. From Gertrude. From everything we’d ever known.
I was supposed to be happy about that.
But all I felt was sick.