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The Toymaker’s Opera is an alternative-world steampunk  adventure. It is a story about a poor fortuneteller, a living automaton,  a mad Baron, and a city that dreams. It is a story about the price of  friendship and happiness, about legacy and talent, blood and luck. But most of all, it is a story about the things that have no price.

Eerie silence crowded into the factory. The textile mill in the Ream, so usually filled with the thunderous clamor of a thousand looms all shuddering and clacking and weaving at once, seemed to be holding its breath. Soft morning light filtered through the windows that faced the open precipice of the cliff face. It illuminated the neat lines of cast iron looms with their wooden frames, the hard swoop of belts that traveled from each machine to the ceiling and back again on giant rollers. Spare tufts of cotton wafted through the air like snow, hanging almost suspended in the absence of the machines’ ceaseless breath.

The Ream never slept. Unlike Medtown and Wrightsward it refused to rest, calling women and children in for odd shifts from their apartments across the street. On any other day women passed back and forth along the champing lines, keeping both eyes on their work and their hands. Children, thin and spritely, dashed underneath the moving pieces, collecting cotton fluff. They reached with nimble fingers toward the teeth of the weaving frames, hoping to be quick enough. Plenty were. More were not.

Every floor of every mill was the same, churning out blankets and towels and bolts of cloth. At the end of each row sat an automaton, sturdy and heavyset. They were man-shaped torsos made of iron and gears, a leftover gift to the district from the first Baron. Two eyes shone on their work, the yellow light of glowing sunstones, for the open flame of a lantern would have spelled easy disaster in such a place as the Ream. Broad shoulders bore down upon the paddles they held in each hand; each paddle connected to the give and take of the frames by a long iron bar. They were the weavers and they drove the looms.

More automatons lined the opposite wall, spinning the wheels that ran the belts. Together weavers and crank turners worked the Ream.

Jacques knelt in the corner by the overseer. Larger than the other devices, this automaton held its hands out to either side instead of in front. With two separate, but perfectly-timed, motions it controlled both lines of clockwork men. The long bar running along each side from its hands had been placed between the weavers and the wall so it would not disturb the foot traffic of the women.

“Damn escapement,” Jacques muttered, reaching blindly around the toothy mess of the overseer’s inner workings.

The old piece had snapped, rust from some long-ago contact with moisture weakening its integrity until pressure and repetition had their say. That one part, so small, yet so necessary, demanded order. Without it–and with the broken sections catching in the gears–the overseer was free to run at incredible and unpredictable speed.

Fingers used to working a certain pattern snapped between the fast-moving frames. Winches grabbed sleeves and skirt hems, pulling women and children into the gnashing teeth of machinery before they quite knew what was happening.

During Tadeo’s frantic run to Jacques’ shop the night manager had attempted to unhook the bars and thus bring the runaway looms to a grinding halt. He started with the crank turners, whose motion was only slightly less erratic. But old hands long grown used to the slower conscriptions of paper and pen could be no match for the nimble touch of someone who walked the factory floor twelve hours of every day. The night manager unhooked a surprising number of turners–four, to be exact–before his ink-stained sleeve caught in the grabbing tangle of racing leather on the fifth. The belt snatched him from his place upon the floor, dragging him kicking and screaming up towards the counterpoint. Bludgeoned with unrelenting, impressive force, the belt drove his arm against the solid steel of the winch. Bone shattered, crunching under the metal as the belt wound around. Within an instant–and with nothing left to hold him up–the manager fell into the threshing maw of machinery below.

Jacques had come then. He came running with a bedraggled group of young artificers hot on his heels. He came shouting, calling for the room to be cleared. Tadeo hauled on the bell-pull, the lights on the walls changing from green to red as new glass shunted into place. Since not even the toymaker’s cries could be heard above the roar of the looms, a series of amberic lights lined each wall, a visual reminder when one shift ended and another began.

Children and women scattered, the true horror and permission to leave their posts coming all at once. Savoy and Thomasine, artificers in training, worked to drag the women away from the masticated corpses already caught between the frames.

Jacques wasted no time, making a dash for the overseer at the end of the room. Nimble fingers leapt over the jousting machinery. He plunged his hand into the overseer’s chest, feeling by memory around the crunching mass of gears. One pin pulled out and the entirety of the overseer ground to a halt with an iron snarl.

Silence descended on the factory, broken only by the far-away thunderous rumble of the rooms above and below, the sound muffled by the thick oaken floors. Crying and a long wail of grief echoed from the ladies clustered in the doorway.

Jacques turned to Tadeo. “Get them out of here.”

Tadeo nodded mutely, his charcoal-black face soaking up the red light of the shift lanterns. He hurried away, rounding up the other artificers to help.

And now it was morning. Jacques cursed as he swept out the inside of the overseer. It had taken several hours to take the device apart and it would take several more to put it back together again.

Rare were the months he was not called out to fix at least one of the city’s failing automata. Clanking, ancient things of iron and steel and ingenious clockwork these device powered the city, lending their eternal strength to the opening of the water locks, the weaving of the looms, the raising and lowering of the Lifts. Not all the automatons remained bolted in place; plenty walked the streets to fulfill their functions: nutcrackers enforcing the city’s laws–such laws as there were–firecats prowling into the dark places, and copper dancers performing alone on the rooftops of Sunsgate to act as living lightning rods.

All these and more had been built long ago, left over machinations of the first Baron, Alecto Marquette. He had built them with every good intention; to help the city, to provide where the strength of men might fail, to make easier the lives of the poor and working, to breathe a little comfort into a cage of otherwise rigid stone and severity.

But no machine can run forever.

At first the Baron himself would fix them, called out by the firecats at all hours of the day and night. He came no matter the occasion, leaving parties and plays in equal measure, leaving other projects half-finished, and never returning. Then the Baroness, sweet lady of the Reach and an artificer in her own right, began to come with him. They worked together, even if their tasks brought them to opposite ends of the city.

“Sar Augusti?” Thomasine stopped several paces away, her young face already marred by a deep scar across her cheek. She wore her plaited cornsilk hair high on her head, the better to stay out of the way of her work. “The manager insists that he speak to you. I tried to tell him–”

Jacques sighed. He wiped the sweat from his brow and left cotton clinging to it. A few yards behind Thomasine he could see the day manager blustering his way up the aisle.

“What’s the meaning of this?” the man shouted, thrusting his purpled face so close that Jacques could see his mustache bristle. “You’ve had these looms quiet for almost seven hours. This is an outrage! Master artificer or not you’d better be ready with compensation for all the money we’ve lost just letting you prance around in here, wasting my time–”

Outside the mill bell tolled the hour; six am. At seven Jacques’ shop was supposed to open. He thought of Alonzo, all alone with nothing but the hissing gramophone and the storm for company. He thought of his orders and the children who were waiting for them. Their smiles and eager eyes weighed in his mind, as did Alonzo’s current state of enforced solitude; they were the few folk he could not bring himself to disappoint.

Jacques rose slowly on aching knees. “Thomasine, fetch the others.”

“Sar–” she began, a perplexed frown momentarily pulling at the hard flesh of her scar.

“At once.”

Off she went, gathering Tadeo and Savoy as they knelt by the weavers.

The manager spluttered when Jacques began to collect his tools. “You can’t do this! You can’t leave a job half-done.”

“He’s Jacques Augusti,” Savoy spat, her severe face unmitigated by her expression. “He can do as he likes.”

“Any master should know how to finish a job in a timely manner.” The manager spun on Jacques again. “I forbid you to leave. I am your customer; you finish this and you finish it now.”

Jacques tucked his toolbag under his arm and once more mopped the sweat from his brow. The air folded in close and still. It would be easy to leave, easy to let his pride take over. He could already feel it nagging at him.

Over the manager’s shoulder Jacques spied Tadeo. The young man who imagined himself some manner of apprentice to the toymaker shook his head once. Beyond him the mill girls crowded in the doorway, weepy and anxious. They had had less sleep than he, and more hours ahead of them when he finished, no matter their feelings. No matter what friends they had lost last night.

Despite the inner rufflings of hubris Jacques set his toolbag down again. The repair must take first priority.

“And be sure you complete your mechanical nancying before the morning bell,” harrumphed the manager. He smoothed out his neckcloth with fat fingers that did not tremble. “There’ll be a boy down every quarter hour to make note of your progress–”

“Savoy.” Jacques scowled. A customer to satisfy was one thing, a headstrong fool quite another.

Savoy’s thin hand snaked out and grabbed the manager by his bias-cut lapels. When he protested she hauled him bodily toward the door, her wiry frame fully in control of the manager’s rotund figure. “The only thing your ‘boy’ is going to do is distract Sar Augusti. I could say the same for you,” she added venomously. “Be grateful he’s even finishing his work after such an insult.”

“But–”

“Out!” She shoved him through the far doorway and onto the landing. “Go home,” she snapped at the girls, “and for the Muse’s sake, get some sleep.”

Jacques shook his head imperceptibly, nothing more than a small ripple of movement. Each of the young hangers-on who followed him to repairs and warned him of them had much to learn before they would be successful artificers.

Several years ago, when Tadeo had first dared to approach the famous toymaker, Jacques outright refused to let the boy become his apprentice. Each time Tadeo asked Jacques gave him the same answer. Yet somehow, quite without permission, every night that Jacques found himself in some rust-ridden part of the Sheer he also found Tadeo shadowing his footsteps. Eventually the boy found like-minded folk who didn’t care about the odd hours or that their chosen master would rather that they didn’t exist. It seemed that Jacques the toymaker would have apprentices whether he wanted them or not.

“Let me.” Thomasine knelt next to him, her calm presence like a radiating coolness. She took his tools in her scarred fingers and looked deep into the bowels of the overseer. “If you would check the weavers for wear and tear, I can reassemble this.” She did not say that he must be tired or that she would learn better by doing; a sure credit in her favor.

Of the three Jacques prefered the quiet Toulene. She didn’t shout or boast his talents or look at him with eager eyes. She only watched and learned and did, no matter the difficulty or the danger, which was partly the reason for her many disfigurements.

He rose again and made his way along the line of weavers. With Savoy cleaning and rehooking the looms and Tadeo hitching the crank turners they four made short work of what would have been impossible for one.

Jacques stumbled home long after the morning shift bell had rung. Cobbles turned to brick under his feet and then to steel grating as he climbed through a myriad different districts on his way back to his home in Wrightsward. His jaw worked on a succession of long yawns, no matter how hard he tried to suppress them.

Nutcrackers marched past him, their mechanical steps and black button eyes a familiar sight on a day that was already proving to be out of the usual routine. Jacques nodded to them as he always did. Almost at the same time the nearest nutcracker jerkily raised its right hand, bumping the brim of its black shako hat.

“Come see me about that shoulder would you?” he called at the battalion’s retreated back.

No response, but then again he hadn’t expected one. The knot of soldiers quickly disappeared into the mist left over from last night’s storm.

Shortly Jacques stepped down into the close from Rue Maitre, the main boulevard of Wrightsward. The streets above him in Medtown, normally quiet at this time of day, rang with the footsteps of a few mediums about their shopping and the discordant clang of a ragman’s cart.

An iron gate, currently standing open, marked the doorway into the close. On either side, at the street level, stood two shops with their lamps burning. Customers came and went, carrying bulging bags and paper-wrapped parcels. Across from the entrance the shoemaker nodded to Jacques through his window.

The road of the close, Rue Assombrir, traveled inside the stone of the central tower. Painted brick paved the way inside, with little channels on either side for water. Once within his eyes adjusted easily to the darkness; a succession of red glass-walled lanterns lined the street above the shops.

Jacques passed the windows of his neighbors, watching as his tired reflection rippled from pane to pane. Lace samplers hung in the window of one store, delicate ivory statues in another. A hat shop marked the beginning of the incline, where the road turned steep. His calves burned, protesting this final abuse after the long climb up from the Ream.

At last Jacques crested the top of the rise, coming face to face with a small crowd.

“Sar Augusti!”

“–been waiting for hours. I must say this is most irregular–”

“We went away and came back, and now this woman is saying she was here first and–”

Jacques bowed low. “My most sincere apologies,” he said, and meant it. Without further delay he crossed to the door and unlocked the shop. “Please feel free to rest yourselves in the chairs provided. I’ll put on some tea.”

Only the quick tread of his steps as he slipped beyond the display counter and the dividing curtain betrayed his worry. “Half a moment, please.” He made his excuses, whipping the curtain closed behind him.

A long sigh escaped his lips. There, unmoved and unmolested sat Alonzo. Now, half-finished as he was, the automaton appeared like any doll during the first stages of its making; bald and wide-eyed and innocent. Jacques knew, however, that that was anything but true.

Before the toymaker had even lifted his foot to stride across the room, the blue curling wisps of magic that always accompanied Alonzo intruded on Jacques’ thoughts. Questions pinged against his skull, a cold sensation of being pricked over and over. Jacques shook his head to clear it.

“Alonzo,” he hissed, trying to keep his voice low. Jacques paused, but it didn’t seem as though the babble on the other side of the curtain had diminished. He continued, filling the teapot with water; and hoped that the scraping would disguise his whispered conversation. “That isn’t anyway for a young gentleman to behave, pestering me before I’ve had a chance to see to my guests.”

The automaton–no, the young man–shrank back. His blue thoughts receded, folding in upon themselves as if bruised.

Jacques cursed himself for being so short with the boy. Afterall, hadn’t he, himself been as curious as a cat when he was young? He’d known what he was getting into, too, the moment that raw leystone came into his hand.

The stone itself had come from one of the gypsy sailors who plied the skies in their wooden airships, with only sails and no propellers or wings to speak of. Captain Coleed had bargained for a high price, a sum they both knew Jacques would eventually pay. Jacques had bought the thing on half a lark; during his own apprenticeship he had learned that most of the city’s oldest devices ran on such crystals.

They were gems that formed along the natural magical leylines of the earth, the raw power condensing and crystallizing into precious stones that gave off their own, nearly-limitless supply of energy. He figured it would come in use one day if he was ever called out to repair one of the larger machines.

What he hadn’t counted on was the stone talking to him. Day and night the nipping questions came, without malice surely but also without cease. At first the stone had only asked “What?”, its thoughts–for they could be called nothing else–all bent on discovering every single detail of its surroundings. “Who?” and “You?” quickly followed, succeeded finally by “Me?”.

Jacques knew then he could not force the stone into the body of some other metal creature, allowing it to harry and nag passersby until it was pulled out and destroyed by the superstitious city folk. He must give it a body of its own; a body to house the soul it already had, though how a soul had gotten into the stone in the first place he had no idea. The body also had had to fit the personality of the soul.

For many weeks Jacques had lain up at night, passing over the framework of every type of person imaginable. At first he thought of a child’s body, aptly suited to housing the stone’s incessant curiosity. That would not do, however. The stone learned quickly–too quickly–and to trap an adult’s fully-formed consciousness inside the framework of youth would be nothing less than cruel.

A young gentleman, then; someone who could go abroad under his own name and power to see the great sights that the world had to offer. Jacques had begun his project, finally, when sheafs of sketches covered the floor; when he could no longer put off the nipping questions, when they became too complex for him to answer without giving the boy the gift of speech. But not for that reason only, not simply to rid himself of an annoyance.

Never in a thousand years would he admit to loneliness. In as equal measure as he denied himself an apprentice so also did Jacques Augusti refuse himself a companion. He had his work; his dolls and toys and of course the city, who depended on him. Many years ago he had recognized himself as a solitary creature; preferring the quiet ticking of clockwork over any real human conversation.

It all ended the moment Alonzo’s construction began; for the stern-faced toymaker suddenly found that, after all this time spent in silence, that he had something to say.

Jacques ran his eyes once more over Alonzo’s partly-finished bust. His fingers ached to attach the cams, to bring to life the waiting eyes. Despite that urge he turned away, laying another scroll into the gramophone for the boy’s comfort. He spared not a glance for those brilliant, motionless blue eyes, instead bustling out through the curtain and into the shop. There was work to be done, customers that could not be ignored even if he did sway on his feet.

“Lady Siria, Lord Belstowe, Sa Nansee; please forgive me–” Jacques began as he stepped out.

The day passed in a delirium broken only by small smiles as he handled his toys off to their new owners and a growing pinch of pain right at the base of his neck. Orders came and went under fingers that he forced to obey him; repairs, new paint, polishing, combing out the tangled hair of dolls under the watchful eye of their young caretakers.

Jacques finally stumbled back behind the curtain sometime after the clock had struck seven. The depth of the night outside seeped in through the windows, turning the normally cosy apartment into a long gauntlet of shadow.

“Now? Now?” he felt Alonzo asking, no doubt wondering when the next step of his construction would be completed.

“Not now, my dear,” Jacques said, though kindly. He crossed to his workbench and the timepiece above, one hand holding a lamp by its iron base. “Great Goddess!”

Though he had tried to–politely–hurry his customers out the door it seemed the hours had run away with him. Even as he watched the clock struck once; half past ten.

Jacques locked the shop front and set aside his tools, pausing a moment to lean on the counter and rub sleep from his eyes. “To bed with me,” he chided outloud, as much for his sake as Alonzo’s. “Or I shall be less than useless in the morning. Tomorrow, my dear one, I promise.”

He made his way through the workshop and up the stairs beyond the kiln, ignoring the sullen, silent reproach that followed.