Piig Birthday 08

The Omg-really-late Piig Birthday Present '08. I'm sorry it's so long overdue D: But it is here at last and full of love ♥.

Sfw, 7k.
Title: The Last Gears of Winter





A gentleman ought never to be seen in public with his throat bare, nor his shoulders, but the workroom of the Flagg family manor-house was a great sprawling thing, a mausoleum of wood and bronze and leather, and not public at all. Flagg worked bare-chested to spare himself Micah's swearing over the grease-marks, burns, and tears in the clothing he had to repair. With the Flagg family finances what they were Micah was the only servant left.

Once a ballroom, once a dream of glossy marbled floors and soaring glass windows and engraved buttresses, the workroom was now a cluttered thing, buckets of connectors shoved under tables, and in the winter-time white waves of cold billowed off the glass and formed puddles when it met the coal-flecked steam from the boilers. Flagg's inventions moved with pistons and fire, and if he cared to leave the property he'd know how folk thought him mad. But Micah said nothing, protecting Flagg with his silence, and Flagg's sister was too much a lady to mention anything so crass and unverifiable as gossip.

**

Micah woke at cock-crow, an hour before dawn, and suppressed the urge to cough the last of the previous day's coal-dust out. He shuffled his feet against the age-softened linens. Sometimes he caught a toe in one of the worn-away holes and tugged to hear the fabric rip. It wasn't that he didn't sew, but Tuesdays were for sewing, in the afternoons, and Flagg was abusive enough to his clothing that Micah seldom made it this far down the list of repairs. Flagg slept down the hall, in the master bedroom; the room Micah had chosen for himself had been the nursery where Flagg and his sister spent their tender years. The servants' quarters were arranged like a barracks and were on one of the closed-off floors. Two people simply weren't enough to fill a manor this size, even without Micah's less-than-impressive stature and Flagg's gaunt frame, and the converted nursery-room suited Micah well enough, though should Flagg ever come in he'd be compelled to stoop or to lay his ear on his shoulder. Not that he ever would.

Micah had released the livestock within the property's high walls and let the gardens run wild, except for the kitchen garden in its little nook. One servant simply couldn't maintain such a gargantuan property, though Micah did his best to keep the imps of rot and age at bay, dusting things, washing linen, beating carpets almost too heavy for him to move on his own. Laying out horse-chestnuts to ward off spiders and making sure the workroom's fire-buckets had fresh sand. A damp cloth on a long pole to clean the windows, bare feet in the yard, a set of canvas clothing to wear when hauling coal. The only thing he regretted was the cockrels. Noisy, wretched things. Now he could never be sure if the eggs he fetched from the henboxes were fresh, or if he'd crack them only to find a mote of spreading crimson on the yolk or a thumb-length and grotesque creature that bore no resemblance to the little yellow chickens that followed the hens in peeping eddies. And this morning the hoarse-voiced gaudy birds waited and started together as they did sometimes when the weather was disagreeable. Micah's room was a quiet darkness for the crowing to tear to ribbons. He fumbled by his bedside for the little sulpher matches; lit the lopsided tallow candle-end, waved away the greasy twist of acrid smoke.

The narrow hallways of dark-stained wood swallowed the gleam of his candle and Micah moved through the empty house in a little bubble of wavering light, the hem of his housecoat rasping on the rugs. Most of the house was bare-floored; he'd long since rolled up the rugs and carpets of the unused areas and stored them away in the attic, packed with mothballs and arsenic pellets to discourage squirrels and other vermin.

A weak orange light emanated from the banked coals when he scraped the ashes from them, sending a waft of warm dry air into the kitchen and a curl of smoke up the chimney flue. It wasn't that Flagg hadn't turned his quick and often contrary mind to the business of the kitchen—-one invention in particular stood out, a device for twisting the limbs off cattle for roasting. Micah couldn't prevent the images of how well such a thing would work on a man. He quickly dismantled the springs and interlocking cranks, and slipped the resulting anonymous metal bits back into the workbins. No fear that Flagg would notice—-his mind left the work of his sketches and tools only to yearn for some distant and glorious future only he could bring about. He couldn't see past the own-sake of science to its consequences.

The kitchen windows were opaque with frost and Micah had to break a crack-mazed film of ice on the water-barrel to fill the kettle. The blue-tits had been at the milk delivery again, pecking holes in the cheesecloth that covered the little jug the milkman used for single-measures. Micah used it in his tea—-Flagg took his black, with so much honey it resembled treacle. Micah wrapped his palm in a rag and lifted the kettle off of the fireplace and filled the teapot, crumbled tea-leaves swirling as they stained the water. The last heel of bread he warmed on the tines of a toasting-fork and spread with a little orange preserve. A spot of milk in the tea, a curl of lemon-rind. Tray balanced on his palm, candle in the other hand, through the halls to the tiny glass-walled sitting room on the second floor. It faced the wild East garden and was one of the first rooms to catch the warmth of the sun. He ate neatly, quick tiny bites. He sipped his tea and let the fragrant steam warm his face. The frost had fallen like silver dust, and it glittered, beautiful against the shifting blues of a cloudless dawn. Kenneth—-Flagg-—worked late most nights, hunched over his ink-stained parchments, buffing bronze or slicing leather, bending metal to his will with a blacksmith's tools and a conjurer's command. He'd never seen a dawn, to Micah's knowledge, though some mornings Micah came in to draw back the workroom curtains and found the Flagg scion asleep in a sprawl on a bench or spare table. Micah would suggest a pallet in the corner but he didn't want to feed Flagg's obsessions any more than he already did.

The dark and overgrown grass of the lawns lay under a layer of fog that shifted in ripples. Deeper patches of shadow where the trees and bushes had been allowed to spread as they pleased. Micah sipped his tea until the first sunlight brushed the treetops and tea-leaves tangled in the bristles of his tidy moustache. He washed up with rain-barrel water, the cold planting an ache in his bones, and cut a thick slice of yesterday's quiche and carried that and a cozy-wrapped pot of honey-thickened Darjeeling up the steep staircase to the master suite. Flagg seldom woke on his own, or if he woke, he didn’t move.

The deep pile of the carpet gave beneath his steps; the elder Flagg, years dead, had favoured Oriental rugs with complicated and gaudy designs. The room was an elegance of dark wood and mulberry-coloured draperies. Tiny, articulated devices with miniature burners and polished gears crowded the tables and propped on the wash-stand, though after that one curtain-fire Micah had forbidden any coal-burning that didn't occur in the fireplace. The thick scorch-smell had lurked in the corners for months, no matter how diligently Micah aired the room or how laboriously he rinsed and sunned the linens.

Flagg slept like a child, arms above his head, as if slumber were some labour to be met with clenched fists and serious mein. He slept deeply, too, as Micah set the tray on the table and leaned on the high edge of the four-poster bed. Flagg always settled in the precise middle and Micah had a recurring imagining of him wielding a rule-stick in order to find the exact centerline. Flagg's throat was rough with stubble and the bunched linens had made pink creases on his skin.

"Morning again," Micah said. When he shook Flagg's shoulder to wake him he was more aware than he ought to be of the worn-soft translucence of his nightshirt. Yellow light sliced through the gaps in the curtains. "Time to get started."

Flagg didn't respond, but Micah persisted, and in due course Flagg made a dreadful grimace and an incoherent garble of sound. Opening his eyes scrunched his face with effort. Gentlemen wore their hair in a tidy club or a short queu; Flagg's was cut close to his head and if fluffed about his skull like down.

"What a beast you are," Flagg grumbled, and flung one arm across his eyes. His bones lay close beneath the skin. "Tea?"

"I always bring you tea. Sit up." Micah drew on the braided cord that opened the curtain. Behind him, Flagg kicked free of his duvet and muttered imprecations about Micah's family.

"One of these days I'll tell my mother what you think of her," Micah said, smirking. Flagg twitted Micah about his family at every opportunity, though he never spoke of his own. The Flagg family had dwindled over the last few generations, becoming more interested in alchemy and science than in society, and neglecting to propagate themselves until only Kenneth and Julia remained, though she at least had seen to the future by negotiating that every second son she bore should inherit her maiden name. Outside the sun-gilded fog was a gleaming pale sea. Flagg folded his legs and drew the blanket about his shoulders Indian-style, squinting and sleepy. Micah passed him the round-rimmed spectacles from the nightstand and poured a cup of dark and fragrant tea.

"Mmph," Flagg said, and slurped his tea. "What's for today?"

"A visit from your sister and her family in the afternoon."

Flagg grunted. He had a light smattering of freckles on the back of his neck and across the prominent rise of his shoulders. "I'll write you a letter of credit for the market."

Micah scrubbed at his moustache. "About that."

"Hm?"

Micah scratched his elbow, fought the urge to pace. "There's barely any left. I've told you before-—I'm sorry to repeat myself-—"

Flagg lifted one shoulder, the knob of bone sharply delineated by the nightshirt. "I'll come with you, we'll borrow more."

Micah slumped onto the edge of the bed a proper distance from Flagg's blanket-wrapped self. He followed the whorls and sickles embroidered in loops on the peacock-hued carpet with a fingertip. "We can't borrow indefinitely."

Flagg had a way of adjusting his spectacles with the tips of his thumb and ring-finger, then shoving at the nose-bridge with a crooked knuckle. He took an appreciative sniff of the steam from his cup, threads of white rising from the dregs, and set the cup aside. He watched the quiche as if it were a new and vexing equation. "Could borrow from Julia," he said slowly.

Micah snorted. "You most certainly shall not!"

Snapping a bite of quiche allowed Flagg to avoid Micah's gaze. He mumbled, "Was a thought. Don't have to shout."

Of course not. Micah lowered his voice. "You are not going to compel your lady sister to choose between your welfare and the future prospects of her children."

"You didn't have to phrase it in such a dreadful manner," Flagg said in a wounded tone.

"I think I did."

Another bite of quiche, fragments of spinach and egg and cheese pattering on the plate. Micah twisted the hem of his shirt, not threadbare yet, but far from pristine. He'd had years to accustom himself to the way frustration and banked anger soured his stomach. Presently Flagg ventured, tentatively, "Is it such a problem? The lightning device is coming along splendidly—-"

Micah pinched the bridge of his nose. "And what, pray tell, would anyone want with tame lightning? Though it's more like a lightning-flea. What use are your uncanny automaton or those things that climb walls? Nobody is going to sponsor an hermetic inventor whose labours bear no useful fruit!"

A long quiet moment. Birds called and the sun burned wisps of fog away. Flagg finished his quiche and held the plate cradled in his palm. "Genius ought not to go beggared," he said at last, and licked the tip of his forefinger to gather crumbs. "They ought to be throwing coin at me and raving over my work."

Micah bit his teeth. "Do you know when last I took my pay?"

Flagg gave him a sideways look and the barest shake of his head.

"Mid-fall," Micah said flatly. "You've brushed the problem aside time and again. I'm not sure how adequately to press on you how very little is left. Soon there won't be funds for bolts and leather, Flagg! For food, not that you eat unless I place something in front of you."

Flagg scrubbed one hand through his hair, sending it into further disarray. "I'm going to the workroom." He wouldn't look at Micah.

"Flagg—-" Micah warned.

"Go get something for us to feed Julia and David and the Nephling." Flagg bent to don his slippers and shrugged into his tartan housecoat, back to Micah--"Flagg."—and twisted at last to face him. "That will do! I'll think on it."

Micah barely controlled the curl of his lip. Flagg swept out, leaving Micah alone in a sunny room with the smell of him, the used tea-things and the rumpled linens and the crumb-scattered plate.

**

The Bicycolator had an enormous front wheel, a smaller back wheel, and a handle made of brass into the shape of a ram's skull, the exuberantly curlicued horns being the mechanism for steering. It also boasted a miniature steam boiler built under the seat. Somewhat hazardous to a gentleman's Jonson, on first glance, but Flagg had spent a great deal of time and insulation in preventing that particular horror. The fluffy stream of white by-product disapparatted quickly, and the mechanism it drove pulled the hefty three-wheeled cart in which Micah intended to tote the day's shopping home.

This year the birth of summer was a protracted, petulant affair, with late and sudden frosts killing the seedlings and sending the farmers to their stores and markets for seed-corn time and again. There were mutterings of a hard year to come, but Flagg lived between his book-cases and his workroom; he neither heard nor cared. Micah simply piled a few extra down-stuffed quilts on Flagg's bed and availed himself of a splendid pair of hot-water bottles shaped like fat hounds. And, on jaunts such as this, wrapped his throat and face in a warm and brightly-coloured scarf of dubious symmetry, the lady Julia being both fond of Micah and indifferent to the traditional ladylike arts, though she nevertheless got the most peculiar urge to knit when she was gravid.

Thick-glassed goggles protected his eyes, and a greatcoat of boiled leather flapped like boneless wings and served to protect him both from precipitation and the graveled road in case of a fall. He felt like a child forced into winter gear on a warm spring morning. The night's frost had mostly burned away and a warm wet-earth smell was rising from the green-furred fields. Small, aggressive birds perched on thistletops and cattails to scream at one another, and magpies preened their pied feathers to a high gloss. The Bicycolator's rhythmic hisses and creaks startled man and beast alike, though Micah secretly enjoyed clearing a path by his very passing.

He'd turned out not to need the letter of credit to-day; the bankers all knew Micah, and the notes were merest formality. He had a few coins tucked into his money-pouch, and a single folded two-pound note. Market Row was in full bustle, the midmorning crowd a lackadaisical waltz of activity, a thrum of noise and bustling. Mrs. Chandler sold him wilted frost-killed carrotlings, the spotty Higgins boy sold him some mould-touched cheese-—he'd shave the fuzz off, nobody would notice-—and he purchased some irregularly shaped cucumber, a vegetable he'd never been able to grow, though he could keep most plants alive well enough. Certainly the little kitchen garden provided peas, potatoes and the like. His last stop was to collect the latest batch of brass widgets Flagg had ordered.

The trip home was pleasant enough. Quiet, but for the birds and the wind in the grasses, and of course the boiler, though boiler-sounds were so familiar Micah scarcely heard them. Hisses and burblings and a climbing whine when the water ran out. There were days when Micah donned his driving-gear and went for a spin, loops and swirls left in the dust or lines flattened in the grass and Flagg in exactly the same spot whenever the boiler ran empty and he returned. Flagg had never remarked or, as far as Micah knew, even noted these periodic absences.

There was work to be done back at the manor-house. There was always work to be done. Micah had noose-traps concealed in the wilds of the pleasure gardens which he checked daily. The poultry he kept for the kitchen and the vermin he left for the carrion-crows and foxes. The grounds had once been home to a fine pack of liver-spotted hounds, which lady Julia had taken with her. Micah missed them, he supposed, the feathery tails that set up a metronome swing on the sight of him, though they'd have become a bit much, with him on his own minding Flagg as he was.

The hanging-shed was built half-deep into the shaded earth along the south wall of the empty stable. After Micah settled his purchases into their various places he headed there to fetch a bird for the evening's casserole. He left the brass widgets in the kitchen—-let Flagg come for what he wanted for once.

**

The afternoon was overcast and still, the air cool enough that the carriage-horses blew steam from their nostrils. They were stout, blocky creatures with clear eyes and thick legs. They arched their necks and nickered at Micah. He bribed animals and children shamelessly, as it made them more bidabble, and it was more the pity such tactics didn't work on Flagg; they certainly worked on his little nephew. The boy attached himself to Micah's leg as soon as David had reigned the team to a halt. Micah scruffled Samuel's fine, sandy hair.

"Micah!" the boy said, and Micah patted his back absently. Samuel took after his father in a liking for silence-—the man merely nodded a greeting-—though one couldn't discount the Flaggishness. Samuel possessed the family knack for picking things apart, and for winkling secrets out.

Lady Julia burst from the carriage like a brigadier despite the visible hinderance of her second pregnancy. She straightened her son's collar and patted Micah's cheek. "Any luck with my brother, dear?" she said.

"Same as always," Micah said, as if his face hadn't just flushed up like a mulberry. Julia was a tall and handsome woman and her hands and forearms were a maze of chemical burns and thin white scars. Most women mellowed and softened with motherhood-—Julia had become more hawklike than ever.

"Shall I help?" David said, and nodded towards the horses.

"I couldn't hear of it," Micah said, relieved to feel his blush subsiding, "Though you must be quite way-worn—-forgive me that I ask you to show yourselves in."

"Not at all," Julia said. "We know the way. Samuel, dear, don't be such a limpet." She took his little wrist in one hand and drew him along behind her. David crinkled his eyes at Micah with typical good humour, scratched each horse on its broad forehead, and trailed behind his wife and son, hands clasped at the small of his back.

"Alright, you wretched things," Micah crooned, and Ostentatious, the bay, described a circle in the air with its nose. Paramecium—-the grizzled roan—-lipped at Micah's sleeve as he passed. He checked that the carriage wheel-stops were set then unhitched the horses and led them the long way out to the barn. Swallows and pigeons had quite taken the place over; Micah periodically shoveled the birds' leavings into a wheelbarrow and spread them about the kitchen garden and the exuberant rose-tangles in the wilds of the grounds.

Only three of the stalls were in any sort of decent repair-—Micah set Paramecium and Ostentatious into the two nearest the door and gave each a brief tending-to with a wadded rag before blanketing them. He left each a measure of lukewarm water and slightly dusty hay.

Ivy climbed the sides of the manor, and the green leaves and red brick walls were radiant in sunlight—-dignified, now, in the gray overcast. Micah made a note to trim the vines away from the windows soon, and slipped through the neat rows of frost-browned herbs in the kitchen garden. At least the frost killed significant numbers of the slugs and butterfly-worms. The plants were sheltered by the bulk of the house and the lingering warmth from the boilers, enough to escape the killing cold of more open areas, but there was damage nonetheless, inescapable and vexing. In the kitchen he rinsed the horsehair from his hands and set the tea-tray together with a plate of bitty cucumber sandwiches and milk with a little cocoa for Samuel.

The dining-room was an airy space done pleasantly in rich greens and dark wood. It shared a wall with Flagg's workroom and was comfortably warm even with the windows open. Flagg and his sister's family clustered at one end of the great table. Micah laid the sandwiches out and poured tea for everyone ('Thanks dear', 'Mmph', 'Where were you? Sleeping?'), gave Samuel his milk (a big smile, soon ringed with cocoa), and went back to the kitchen for the casserole.

It wasn't that Micah wasn't welcome at the table, simply that there was work to be done and his the only hands to do it. He'd left the casserole in the oven to keep warm, and if the crust wasn't quite as dry as he'd like, the contents were cooked through and the sauce was a fail-proof gravy of his mother's devising, savoury and thick. Flagg had never troubled himself to comment, but he ate without complaint, so Micah thought he must like it. Thick wedges dished out and a smaller slice for Samuel on account of his stature and avain appetite. Everyone set-to with healthy enthusiasm.

"Scrumptious as always, Micah," Julia said warmly, and her husband and son nodded in unison. Julia gave her brother a significant look over her narrow wire-rimmed opticals. Flagg was deeply engaged with his casserole, chasing a sauce-slicked wedge of turnip about the plate with his fork, and missed seeing it, though his head came up sharply a moment later; lady Julia had kicked his ankle.

"Ouch!" Flagg snapped in affront.

"Your manners are reprehensible, dear sibling. I daresay there are parasites with better grasp of social niceties."

"What's a nicety compared to the necessity of fuelling one's mortal coil?"

"Coils are springs!" Samuel offered, "And springs store kinetic energy!"

"Quite right," David said, and leaned across the table to engulf his son's shoulder in one hand. Julia gave them both a quick fond glance, before bringing a more forbidding countenance to bear on Flagg. "It's quite a wonder you've kept Micah's warm regard, in light of how little you've done to encourage or preserve it."

Flagg raised one eyebrow, chewing slowly. Micah concentrated on his food and tried to ignore the warming of his face and ears. He kept silent in hopes that the conversation would shift topic. He glanced at David, to see if any help was forthcoming from that quarter, and found him regarding a fork-skewered tiny carrot with unabashed sorrow. At Micah's casserole-muffled interrogative, David said, "These frosts are becoming a bit of a bother."

"Bit of a bother!" Julia echoed, distracted, and slapped the tabletop. "Dear, you could fall into the ocean fully-dressed and say no more than that it was a trifle damp!"

"We're not having trifle," Micah said. "We're having jammy biscuits." For his pains he received a doubled portion of over-the-glasses Flagg disdain, a raised eyebrow from David, and the sound of Samuel blowing bubbles in his milk.

"Use a straw, dear," lady Julia told him. "The bubbles come up and make a better splash."

"Ooh," said Samuel. "But mummy, I haven't a straw."

"Best save the bubbles for now, then."

"Frosts?" Flagg inquired of David. Son of a well-to-do family, old blood, David leased farmland to a large number of farmers and share-croppers in the province, and he kept track of every one, keeping a cache of seeds for common use and maintaining a clinic for his farmers and their families. He'd been prone to fretful silences of late, a contrast to his usual amiable silences.

"Dear?" Julia said smoothly, "Why don't you take Sammy and Kenneth to the attic for that little magnifying kit."

Flagg raised both eyebrows and dusted his stubbled chin free of crumbs. He'd neglected to request a shave and Micah had been too busy to insist. "What's this?"

"Mm," David said, and pushed his chair back. He swept Samuel up and dangled him upside-down by the waist. The boy squealed and kicked.

"Your girth is hardly sufficient to bar your climbing the stairs to the attic yourself," Flagg said, and rolled his eyes at Julia. "Do it yourself."

She gave him a thin smile. "Nor would it prevent me from tearing your hair from your scalp and replacing it with a series of rivets."

Flagg met her steady gaze for a long moment, drumming his fingertips on his placemat. Micah looked elsewhere out of habit. Samuel's puff of pale hair fluffed about his head under the pull of gravity, his face flushed with laughter. Even David was smiling. A scrape along the floor, and Flagg thumped Micah's shoulder as he passed. "No poaching, now, Julia. I know how you'd love to steal him away to manage your estate. I won't have it."

An arch look. "Wouldn't dream of it, sibling."

After David had carried Samuel out, with Flagg meandering along in their wake, Julia braced her elbows to either side of her plate and rested her chin on her folded hands. "Micah, dear, I can't help but notice the state of the garden. And the house, though I know you work yourself far more than you're paid."

Micah hadn't advertized the state of his pocket, nor did he raise the matter now. He picked a flake of dry dead skin from his palm and met Julia's gaze. "And I'll wager the killing frosts must have your lord husband in a sore worry for him to raise the matter at all."

She wrinkles her long and princely nose at him. "A valid point, yes, and entirely irrelevant since that is not the current topic of conversation. I worry for you, dear; I know you take excellent care of my brother, so I needn't concern myself overmuch over his well-being. But you're looking worn."

Micah stroked his moustache to cover his lack of conversation. After a moment of this Julia plucked her fork and jabbed the tabletop with it in an aimless pattern. "It's a matter of poor finances, dear, isn't it," Julia said gently. "He's got a fine head for figures but no practicality. If it were anyone but you here I'd raise Cain over fraud or theft or somesuch—-Kenneth can't have spent it all, he doesn't drink or gamble."

Micah raised one shoulder. "We're expecting an influx of funds," he lied. "An investor. Flagg's got high hopes for his lightning machine." That last was true, at least, and enabled Micah to look at her face with something approaching steadiness. She narrowed her eyes. "Is he keeping things from me?" she demanded.

"It's certainly possible," Micah said.

"I'll have it out of him, never fear." She held the fork by the middle and pattered the two ends on the tabletop, then dropped it on her plate. "In fact, I'll go now."

"I'll go fetch the biscuits, shall I," Micah said, and withdrew with all suitable haste.

**

The after-dinner tea-things included a cunning little steam-boiler attached to a teapot, enabling Micah to return to the dining room immediately. He laid a plate with three jam-biscuits at each setting, and sat stroking the engraved pewter of the little pot to feel it grow steadily warm. A single coal in what amounted to a miniature oven, all done in pewter, something Julie had given Micah years ago. Familiar hot-dry-acrid smell of burning; coal-dust frost-sprinkled on everything, always, however often Micah cleaned. Coal-dust packed under his short nails, so his hands looked like Flagg's.

The others returned presently, Samuel squeaking with delight over having his very own lab equipment, sized for tiny hands. Tea and jammy biscuits were every bit as welcome as one would expect. Conversation was relaxed and other, less weighty topics came and went. Samuel began yawning shortly after six and lady Julia packed her family into the carriage for the drive home, wrapping her son warmly against the rising unseasonal evening chill. The horses flicked their tails and moved off to David's coaxing, and Micah stood for a moment to watch the carriage pull away. The wind bent the unkempt grasses in billowing waves and the low grey clouds were stained orange and yellow in places as the sun withdrew.

Flagg had vacated the dining room by the time Micah returned; for the workroom, no doubt. Clearing away, putting leftovers into the larder and washing the crockery-—these familiar actions were space for thinking, time to let the hands follow their habits while the mind worked whatever problems Micah was fretting over that day. Not that the state of his employer's finances was a new worry, but the day's conversations had brought forward something he'd done a good job of avoiding. His years of service here, begun when he was 13, when Flagg had been wildly enthusiastic instead of obsessed—-at some point in that time Micah had been taken by something he couldn't name, whatever it was that made a man's sense of self-preservation die and be supplanted with concern over another's well-being. Surely it was something perverse, surely in another age Micah could have accused Flagg of witchcraft and won free with his death. Because things could stay as they were or grow worse until they both were fit only for the knacker-man and clad in dishtowels and weeds, Flagg could even disown Micah entirely and refuse any contact and none of it would matter—-surely there was once a time when Micah would have been capable of leaving, but it was gone now. If Micah's hands hurt it was from the cold dishwater, if his stomach hurt, it was from dinner. The frost-killed carrots, perhaps. Surely his face was wet from steam.

He dried everything on one of the bits of kitchen-rag and went to the workroom. London had burned more than once, his mother said; Micah checked the doors and the fires every night before he retired.

The halls were close and silent, the workroom a high-roofed chamber, the roof stained with billows of soot and supported by arching grimed buttresses. Micah had dusted them once, but Flagg had screeched so at the profusion of soot that sprinkled down on his experiments and works that Micah had reluctantly ceded the field in terms of cleanliness. Smells of saddle-soap and leather, hot metal, the acrid grit of soot and the silken humidity of steam. Alchemists quested endlessly for gold and scientists for progress—-Flagg's work was a joyous thrash that cared neither for wealth nor progress nor morals, for nothing save that there was motion.

The air was rendolent with chemicals, too, the same ones which had burned the lady Julia, which had scored Flagg's skin and made brittle his hair. Micah turned down the great boilers and shoveled soot to bank the coal-fires, each a bulge-bellied mouth into a tiny hell, the crumbling pebbled coals and their orange hearts.

Flagg didn't merely work with metals and fire—-he was also involved in one of the newer disciplines regarding chemicals, a melding of science and alchemy. He exchanged long letters with brilliant minds, full of scrawled equations and diagrams. Experiments lined the smaller tables near the inner wall, away from the possible confounds of light and the cold that seeped through the large windows. Micah crossed his arms and walked along the row of circuits and beakers, the late-evening sun of summer still bright through the windows. Little burners and dishes of crystal salts. One collection of wires and magnets had a faint burnt patch, corrosion perhaps, but charring, perhaps, also. He shifted the gleaming little wires until they no longer touched—-Flagg would just have to cope. Why wasn't he doing something useful anyway. If he must do the work he loved, and reality be damned, couldn't he at least invent something of some use? The gears of winter would bring famine.

Beside that experiment was another, a row of tiny, deep platinum dishes above which was suspended a slim tube. The tube had a series of tiny holes, each above a dish. Clear fluid dripped slow as spring into the dishes, though to what aim Micah didn't care to guess, and wouldn't have remarked on except that as he watched the clear fluid in one of the dishes was changed by the next drop, a brief curl of colour like a tiny red leaf, a vivid bloom that quickly melted away.

"Hunh," Micah said, and set both palms on the table as he leaned closer, breathing through his mouth to avoid any malodorous vapours. The next drip again caused a wisp of crimson, and it was slower to fade.

Micah studied the little array of tubes until he had it memorized, and then wrote Flagg a note detailing what he'd seen in the one dish, the liquid in which now resembled a fine rose'.

**

Farmers' Market opened early and the frost glittered in the morning twilight, gilded leaves crackling under his feet. His breath throbbed visible in the cold dry air, burned his up-all-night eyes. The collection of tubing and pipes under his arm rattled, the insulated little boiler a warm weight against his side.

A boiler, for heat,pipes to carry the steam, and little holes to let the warm air out onto the little seedlings-—the gears of science to conquer the cold. Flagg could make it workable on that scale, and repair the contraptions as they needed—-all Micah had to do was sell the idea to the famers, show them the plans and the miniature. They'd pay to keep their seedling alive, and if Micah had to pay-—anything-—to secure Flagg's prospects without his knowledge or permission, so be it.

Conveniently, the merchants were gathered in a wool-clad huddle about the tea-woman's stall, slurping and talking and mourning the frosts.

"Gentlemen," Micah said, and jerked his chin at Coombs to make him clear table-space. "I have here the solution to your problems."

**

The sun was well above the trees when Micah returned, crumpled drawings and the bits of his display all jumbled together in his satchel. The day had warmed from 'cold' to 'chilly', and a pair of deer watched him from the mist round the rose-briars. In the strong sunlight the grand old house was like a battered and arthritic veteran. Hoarfrost still glittered in patches where the sun couldn't reach.

Micah toed his spot-cracked shoes off. The bare wood between the rugs was cold beneath his patch-stockinged feet-—the halls shouldn't be this cold at this hour. There should be heat and steam, hissings and clankings and Flagg swearing when he barked his hip on a table-edge. In the kitchen the hearthfire was out and the kettle was empty. "The one morning I'm not here, and I can't even trust him to feed himself. A grown man, I ask you," he told it.

He filled it from the rain-barell and lit the coals with a twist of yesterday's newspaper and a sulpher match. It felt strange to make the first tea of the day in a kitchen brimful of sunlight. Moving quietly was a habit. The hens had been at the vegetable garden again.

Up the stairs, tray in hand, to the master bedroom, but that too was empty, slices of yellow sunlight lighting the floor in strips through the holes in the partially-drawn drapery. His own reflection was a wavering and uncertain thing.

"...Flagg?" Micah called. A magpie feather fluttered past the window. Micah's stomach twisted in on itself. He always knew where Flagg was. The rumpled bed-linens were cold to the touch. Fragrant steam wreathed his face as he carried the tray back downstairs to the workroom. The silence held dust-motes that drifted in the light.

A shadowy cave, all the great windows veiled and the boilers cold. The lightning machine-—a conglomeration of metal and leather and wool the size of a carriage-—took the center of the room hostage. It threw not bolts but white sparks with martyring bites worse than horseflies. Flagg was slumped near the chemical drip on a three-legged stool in an attitude of despair, the fingers of one hand kneading absently at the nape of his neck. He wore his robe and nightshirt, with his pale and hair-sketched calves showing above his woolen socks. He raised his head when Micah set the tray on the counter beside the experiment he'd found so useful the night before. Flagg indicated the platinum dish filled with bright crimson fluid. "That was the result I was trying to avoid," Flagg said.

"Ah," Micah said. He dragged another stool over and perched on it.

"Can you not disappear again? I feel quite wretched."

"Can't you even make tea for yourself?" Micah told him gruffly. "Here, toast and tea and biscuits."

"I mean it, you barbarous thing. Did you see how I haven't gotten any work done today? It's like you took all the life in the house with you. You must let me know when you leave and when you plan to return."

"I think you're confusing me with the wife you never bothered to seek," Micah said after a long moment. He fussed with his teacup, re-arranged Flagg's toast. Flagg immediately held out his hands for it. Micah handed the chipped plate over, and said, "You must eat quickly, and dress formally. Half the farmers in the area are coming to see you, and they'll all want you to start immediately."

Flagg paused in the act of cropping the marmalade-smeared crust off his toast and raised both shaggy brows. "To see me?" he said. "But I've not finished the lightning machine."

"That's not what they're after." Micah handed the crumpled plans to him. Flagg swallowed and clamped the toast between his teeth, dusted his palms on his thighs, and took them. He shook open the crumpled paper and squinted at it, his spectacles lost in the tangled riot of his uncombed hair. "Why, this is-—" he pointed at the tubes and dishes before them. "What've you gone and put a boiler in it for?"

"We'll have a famine if these frosts continue. Not that I expect you to exhibit the slightest interest in current affairs or the welfare of your fellow man. But the farmers will pay through the nose for you to save their seedlings."

Flagg made an eloquent grimace. "You can't expect me to go playing in the mud like a peasant. And at the expense of my research! You'll have to send them away, I won't do it."

Micah rested his elbows on his knees and let his hands hang limp. He exhaled hard and met Flagg's gaze levelly. "I didn't ask your opinion on the matter. I told you what you're going to do."

Flagg's banked and infrequent madness narrowed his pupils and lit the backs of his eyes. "Oh?" he said. "I see you've lost sight of our proper dynamics."

"Our dynamics are rubbish. You can't pretend otherwise." Micah rocked forward and put his face close to Flagg's. "I've learned I can't ask you for anything, as you'd always rather further your own aims. I've learned that all you respect are results, and not the acts that brought them about."

Flagg pushed his chin out. "So act then. You know where the doors are."

Micah fisted one hand in Flagg's hair and dragged him into a kiss that tasted surprisingly unlike knives. Flagg jerked back and blinked quickly. "Can we do this?"

A one-shouldered shrug. "I'm yours if you want me."

Flagg stared at Micah as if he'd just found the recipe for gold, gold. "So that's the way of it."

"Yes," Micah said, rather more out of breath than so brief a kiss should account for. "And you'll have to write orders for the big pipes and boiler-parts, as I don't know how much you'll need."

"So I'm a glorified gardener." Flagg's voice lacked disdain; in fact it seemed absent. He watched Micah's mouth with the focus he usually reserved for fire chemicals and charged wires.

"You're an inventor, same as always, you'll just have a decent amount of coin with which to finance your sciency nonsense. Assuming you don't arse this up."

"'T isn't nonsense, damn your inconsiderate and knavish mmph."

This time Flagg's hands tunneled into his hair, thin arms creeping around his shoulders, and the thrill of this may kill him. When Micah withdrew at last Flagg's narrow mouth was ruddier than before, the hollow cheeks pinked up with colour. Micah said, "I, suppose you'd best go prepare."

Flagg poked the corner of Micah's mouth. "Not yet. My heart's quite unsteady. Need to see if that happens every time."

It did.