Born of Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 2) Read online

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  © 2015 Jordan Elizabeth

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  ISBN 978-1-62007-698-9 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-695-8 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-696-5 (hardcover)

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  A Treasure Tale: A Short Story

  A Taste of A Clockwork Dollhouse from Gears of Brass

  About the Author

  More Books from Curiosity Quills Press

  Full Table of Contents

  For Anthony, who is my romance.

  lark eased the door open enough to peer into the closet. Scratch that, make it a ballroom. Faded curtains with moth-chewed holes were fastened to the walls to display a stage. Forgotten props leaned against the back, a mixture of painted shrubbery and constructed balconies, as though the musty room couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.

  This would be fun. He’d never come across a rundown, exotic hideout in the desert. Clark tucked his lock-picking kit into his jacket pocket and nudged the door shut behind him. His breath sounded too loud in the still room, but no ghosts appeared to haunt the memories. Dust motes floated in the sunbeams coming through the windows near the ceiling. One window, of stained glass, sent a distorted image of the late king onto the hardwood floor. Clark pictured the theater where he’d grown up back in Tangled Wire, a space in the corner of the saloon where alcohol hadn’t puckered the floorboards too much. Sometimes, the saloon owner had made his mother dance with the younger Tarnished Silvers.

  “Mum would’ve shone on this stage,” Clark whispered. She could’ve worn her favorite green dress, to go along with the emerald shade of the curtains.

  Tables covered what remained of the room, littered with piles of gears and cogs. Broken clocks glared at him through their cracked faces.

  “Check near the stage.” The spirit of Clark’s father appeared beside him. Perfect, the ballroom needed a ghost. Black holes peered out instead of eyes, matching the space in his chest where a bullet had stolen his life. At last, a ghost to match the dismal space.

  “Your inventions show up in the weirdest places.” Clark stepped over a heap of clock keys, but one crunched beneath the heel of his riding boot.

  “Senator Horan never got this one, and he’s looked. Trust me, he’s looked. See, it was stolen right from my jacket! Never trust a girl wearing too much lip paint. She’ll slip her hand in your pocket and you’ll never see your watch or billfold again.”

  This had to be the point where a son grew tired of his father’s rambling and zoned out. He’d seen it enough on ranches, especially when the father wanted the son to follow in reluctant footsteps.

  Clark grinned. He could listen to his father, Eric, all day and never grow weary of his words. His mother must’ve felt like that, getting lost in Eric’s passion.

  “Senator Horan wanted to buy the pocket watch right after I finished it.” Eric waved his hands. “Nope, I told him. You’re too late. A pretty Tarnished Silver made off with it. He didn’t believe me, swore I was lying. He tried to pay me another small fortune in land.”

  Clark lifted the corner of a striped sheet thrown over a table, revealing glass plates for clock faces. “Don’t worry, your time travel device is safe.”

  Eric floated closer. “I told you, son. It’s not time travel.”

  “Right,” Clark teased, drawing out the word. At least if the pocket watch had to have been stolen, it hadn’t been tossed down a privy with other garbage. A clock collector—obsessed fellow, more likely—turned out to be a great alternative. “If I was going to collect something, I would definitely keep it in an old railroad station.” Not that he’d ever had the luxury of collecting anything. If he managed to own a second pair of shoes, he felt like a king.

  “It’s a magnificent workspace,” his father said. “Pity I didn’t think of using an old ballroom. Perfect light from every angle, lots of room to spread-out.”

  Clark studied the table closest to the stage. Pocket watches of various sizes ranged from thumbnail small to fist-size large, most dented. A polishing cloth had been thrown over a triangular-shaped one.

  “This was the first train station in Hedlund,” Eric rambled. “All they had here was a mission and a few shacks. The mountains were just starting to be mined and the king was encouraging farmers to come out here to the land. They wanted this station to be the hubbub of life. A great encouragement to the weaklings back east.”

  “Like you?” Clark lifted an oval pocket watch with diamonds on the front. The spaces of missing stones reminded him of a face scarred by the pox.

  “As the rest of Hedlund built up and the main cities extended to the ocean, this little town became quite little. It’s still a stop on the main railroad, but people don’t want to stay for dancing or a show. Did I tell you I wanted to be a professor?”

  The other gang members might not laugh if they knew Clark’s father was loaded—lots of the wealthy slept around with Tarnished Silvers—but they’d have a good roar over Brass Glass Clark having a professor for an old man. University brats hid behind books in shadowed libraries. They didn’t run around the desert with steamcycles and pistols.

  They didn’t get shot by mercenaries hired by a senator, either.

  Clark spotted a pocket watch with the Grisham family crest on the front: a swan with a key hanging from its beak. “Got it.” A tiny diamond winked from the swan’s eye.

  “Fools never got the bloody thing open.” Eric swung his hand as though to pat Clark’s shoulder, but he passed through his son instead. Clark had to accept his father for what he was, dead and transparent; at least he’d gotten the man into his life.

  Clark tipped the watch to study the edges, a row of buttons with numbers engraved on them. “A push code.”

  “Four-nine-one-six-three-one-five-seven-nine-two-five-three-two-six.” Eric slowed down to repeat it as Clark worked the code. The watch beeped, faint as a bird’s chirp, and the lid lifted. A miniature painting of a woman decorated the inner cover.

  “Who is that?” She wore her yellow hair in a bun with curls around her face, blue eyes and a pink smile.

  “My mother.”

  Clark sucked a breath through his teeth. His grandmother, with his hair and eyes. She looked as if she laughed a lot, with wrinkles around her mouth and a twinkle in those eyes. Would she have been the loving kind, who insisted they go to a café every weekend, or the type who drilled him with manners? He’d seen all kinds at the ranches he’d worked.

  “If you lift the watch face, there’s another code. Press on the lower rim.”

  Clark obeyed, and the ivory face lifted to reveal more buttons.

  “You can use that to forecast the weather. Type in the numbers for today’s date and close the face.”

  Clark pushed the buttons and lowered the front. The black hands whirled before they stopped at nine and four. Beyond the numbers were tiny pictures. The long hand pointed to the nine, with the image of a droplet, and the smaller hand indicated the four, with a sunset.

  “It will rain tonight,” Eric explained. “The pocket watch will foretell up to two
weeks.”

  Clark whistled as he closed the watch and hung it by its gold chain around his neck, tucking it into the collar of his white button-up shirt. “Weather forecasting is never that accurate.”

  “Mine is. I used science! No one ever learned how to replicate my findings.”

  Clark couldn’t see how that could be used for evil like the other inventions Senator Horan desired, but it had been stolen from Eric. It deserved better than a dirty shop of clock collecting.

  The ballroom door squealed on its one-hundred-year-old hinges.

  “Brass glass.” Clark rolled onto the stage and ducked behind the curtain. Eric flashed into appearance beside him. Amethyst should’ve warned them if the man left the café in the first floor of the station. Had something happened to her? She should’ve been safe at the table near the kitchen where Clark had left her fawning over a new parasol.

  “You told me the clock smith wouldn’t be back for hours,” Clark hissed. “You said he was eating lunch with his sweetie.”

  “They must’ve had an argument.”

  His heart thudding, Clark bent his knees to peer through a hole in the curtain. A stout man with gray hair bushing around his scalp stepped into the ballroom, peeling a blue jacket off his arms. He scowled as he tossed it onto a grandfather clock with a missing pendulum.

  The brass cuff around the top of Clark’s right ear beeped and Amethyst’s voice sounded: “I lost track of the clock smith. He’s not in the café.”

  Clark pinched the cuff to turn it off, but the man near the door stiffened. He turned his head as he studied the room. Despite the ticking clocks, stillness settled. Clark could almost taste the age in the air.

  Good job, Am. Thanks for warning me after he came in.

  The man strode around the tables, stepping over piles without looking down. He unbuttoned his vest as he walked, his gaze on the props on the stage. Clark held his breath as dust lifted off the curtains to tickle his nose. He would not sneeze.

  Amethyst would know enough to wait at the café or on one of the benches, if the café closed before Clark could find an escape route. He swung his gaze around the ballroom, but the main door seemed to be the only one. There might be a back one behind some of the props, but that would mean moving them to find out. A click snared his attention back to the clock smith.

  The man pulled a handgun from his holster across his chest, bared by the open vest, and snapped the barrel back in place. He aimed it toward the floor, his arms stiff; he’d checked for bullets and must’ve found he had the weapon loaded.

  “Come on out,” he rasped. “I know I ain’t alone in here. Git out and face me, you sniveling crook.”

  So much for waiting for the man to leave so he could dash out.

  Clark breathed through his nose to calm himself. He couldn’t pretend he’d gotten lost. No one who was lost wound up in a locked clock shop. He couldn’t get out of the situation by explaining who he was, like he’d done at Douglas’s ranch. This man wouldn’t care his father was Eric Grisham, and he wouldn’t give his timepiece to Eric’s son just because he was Eric’s son. This man had somehow gotten the pocket watch from a Tarnished Silver. The original owner wouldn’t matter.

  Clark shouldn’t kill the clock smith, either. He was stealing from the man, who’d done nothing wrong other than love timepieces.

  “Trap door in the ceiling,” Eric said.

  Clark rocked back on his heels to squint up. In the corner, hidden by the curtain and shadowed from lack of sunlight, he spotted the rectangular outline of a trapdoor. A metal ladder had been nailed to the wall leading up to it.

  The clock smith crouched to look under the tables. “I ain’t fooling, you idiot.”

  Clark held his breath to keep his chest still as he eased away from the curtain, careful to keep the thick velvet from moving. He stepped to the ladder on his tiptoes, dreading a creak, but the ancient boards remained steady.

  “We’ll just talk,” the clock smith sneered.

  Talk. Right, with a handgun barrel pressed to his skull.

  Clark grasped a rung and swung up.

  The floorboard creaked.

  “Aha,” the man called.

  “Brass glass.” Clark scrambled upward. The metal bit into his gloved palm and his soles thumped against the rungs. The trap door had better not be locked. He didn’t have time to pick it.

  “Think you can make off with my stuff, eh?” The man scrambled onto the stage.

  Clark slammed his fist into the trapdoor and it lifted with a moan, dust falling around Clark like snow. He coughed, blinking to clear his stinging eyes.

  “He’s aiming at you,” Eric exclaimed.

  Who cared what lay above? He’d had to have spent a night before in worse squalor than whatever waited for him up there. Clark grabbed the edge of the opening and pulled himself up. A bullet pinged against the ladder as the boom of the handgun echoed through the ballroom.

  “Ain’t getting away from me,” the clock smith hollered.

  Clark rolled from the opening and yanked a linen handkerchief from his jacket to wipe dirt from his eyes. Light entered from a grimy window to illuminate more props and trunks. An old dress hung over a dressing screen in the corner… near a door.

  “I’ll getcha!” The metal ladder clanked as the clock smith grabbed it.

  Clark bolted across the space, leaping over a carved tree prop fallen on its side, and grabbed the door. Locked. “Brass glass it all.” No time to pick it. He yanked his pistol from his belt holster, aimed it at the lock, and fired. It snapped open and he shoved through, his boots pounding the floor, into a hallway somewhere in the bowels of the train station.

  “Next time, Pa, I’m studying blueprints.” He ran down the hallway as another bullet ricocheted off the doorway

  The hallway headed to stairs leading up. He took them two at a time. It would be better to go down, but as long as he got away, he’d be good. There had to be a space to hide; a closet, maybe. If he had to, he’d fire back, but he’d rather leave the innocent man alive.

  Another hallway. With a gaping doorway. Clark barreled through it and slammed the door behind him. He needed something to lock it with—there, a chair. He propped the high back against the doorknob. That would stall the clock smith.

  Great, another hallway.

  With a heating grate as tall as his waist. Clark kicked the metal and dug his pocketknife into the corner. The old nails pinged as they sprang free.

  “They use that to get behind the walls and fix the clocks,” Eric said.

  “More clocks,” Clark muttered. “Wonderful.” At least the passageway curved a few feet in so the man couldn’t shoot him without entering. Clark crouched as he dashed through, the muscles in his back and knees protesting at the awkward position. Cobwebs clung to the corners of the tunnel. A black spider as large as a silver dollar scrambled away from his feet. Next would be rats. Rats always followed spiders.

  He turned the corner again and boots sounded behind him.

  Around the next bend, Clark spotted another grate. Voices drifted through it, a jumbled mix. He dropped to his butt to kick it out. The first contact of his boot against metal sent a jolt up his leg. The next kick sent the grate spinning out. He rolled through just as the clock smith fired again.

  He stood on the balcony of the second floor overlooking the waiting area below, mahogany benches sprinkled with passengers. The ceiling above consisted of a glass dome. The late morning sunlight streamed through, warming the air. A couple stood on the other side of the balcony, gaping at him.

  Clark dashed for the stairs, tucking his pistol into its holster. As he reached the steps, the clock smith shouted, “Stop, you!”

  The man might remember Clark’s unbound blond hair, long enough to brush his shoulders, and his tanned skin, but if he ripped off his black jacket, Clark might be able to mesh with the crowd below. He’d blanched at the price when Amethyst bought it—for that money, he could have fed a whole ranch of hired hands for
a year—but he could afford another, and a pauper might find it for covering. He jumped the last steps as he jerked off the leather and tossed it over the banister.

  “Thief,” the man bellowed.

  The crowd yelped as Clark shoved through them toward the café. He jumped over a valise and skidded onto the nearest bench. The man next to him glanced up from his newspaper, a top hat shadowing his eyes.

  Clark drew a deep breath to sound clearer. “Do you know when the next train to Hedlund City leaves?”

  “Check the board.” The man’s thick mustache twitched.

  The clock smith pummeled by and tripped over the valise Clark had hopped. He sprawled on the floor and his pistol rolled away. An elderly woman screamed.

  “He’s going to shoot us,” another female shouted.

  “I’m not,” the clock smith sputtered. “A thief in my office.” If he wanted to call his jumbled mess of timepieces an office, good for him.

  As people scrambled away from the fallen man, Clark blended in with them, steering toward the café. He pulled a leather thong from his pants pocket to fasten his hair back; it might make him a bit less conspicuous.

  He ducked through the glass door into a world where waitresses in black dresses glided by carrying silver trays of food. Couples and friends laughed at the small tables.

  A girl in a bright yellow dress sat at a center table, a pillbox hat resting crooked atop her pale ringlets. Young men and women crowded around her, some turning their chairs from other tables, and more standing in the background.

  Clark bit back a groan as he sauntered toward her, her laughter rising amongst the chatter.

  “Yes,” she sang. “Indeed I do know the Amethyst Treasure. She’s a total doll. The best person you’ll ever meet.” She flicked her wrist, her hand garbed in a white silk glove trimmed in pink lace. “The first time I met her, I told her my name was Amethyst Grisham and she nearly died. We both have the same name, you know. It tickles her near to death!”

  A gentleman in a suit caught her hand and kissed her clothed knuckles. “I can tell why she’s delighted by you.”