Silver and Stone

By Felicity Banks

Getting into prison is easy. Getting out is hard. Getting away is nearly impossible. Getting the power to control your own destiny might cost everything you have. Emmeline, Matilda, and Patrick are sworn to rescue Patrick's mother from the infamous Female Factory prison, but when a vengeful police officer tracks down their hideout, things get worse fast. Soon they're framed for a double murder and fighting a magical monster in the eerie and unfamiliar island of Tasmania. Patrick's mother hides crucial papers in a tin under her prison smock, and her best friend Fei Fei is dying in the overcrowded prison. More than one woman's life hangs in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odyssey Books
• Release date: Oct 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781925652215

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Published by Odyssey Books in 2017

Copyright © Felicity Banks 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

www.odysseybooks.com.au

A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN: 978-1-925652-20-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-925652-21-5 (ebook)

Cover design by Elijah Toten

Dedication

Writing has been my obsession for a long time.

My chief enablers during the writing of Silver and Stone were my family (who are more pleased than I am that the book is finished now), the University of Canberra Writers’ Group (who took me in when I most needed other writerly types), and Michelle Lovi (who gave me the peculiar experience of writing a novel that I knew would be published).

You have indulged my writing habit, and I am grateful.

Chapter One

I don’t deliberately make things explode.

Patrick O’Connell stomped on the trap door above my head. Bang, bang, bang.

Three bangs was Patrick’s signal for ‘May I come in?’ He was quite well-mannered for a bushranger—or perhaps by now he’d simply walked in on Matilda and I kissing one too many times. I grabbed my six-foot iron poking stick and tapped the three bangs back to him through the ceiling to indicate he was welcome to enter.

The trap door creaked open and Patrick looked down at me, shaking his head like a disappointed parent. ‘How do you expect me to get the grease out of that dress?’

I looked down and noticed that my apron had, as usual, failed to protect my clothing. There were several spots of oil here and there, as well as dust and soot and tiny burn marks from my magically altered and occasionally self-combusting rats.

‘I don’t expect you to get the grease out,’ I said. ‘We’ll buy a new one next time we go to town.’

He grunted in reply and descended the ladder to pass me a tin mug of black tea. I tasted it, noting there was plenty of honey, just the way I liked it. So he wasn’t truly cross after all, just anxious. Patrick had good reason to be tense, given his mother’s location. He cast a glance over my desk, which lined the entire underground room on four sides. I resisted the urge to hide certain diagrams. It wouldn’t have done any good, since I’d already made several models and was experimenting to see whether the effects of magical metal scaled consistently between miniature and life-size machines.

I had to get it right—for Patrick more than anyone. His mother was a suffragette trapped in Tasmania’s ‘Female Factory’ prison, and we were going to get her out. All I had to do was figure out how to extract Mrs O’Connell without getting us all killed.

Patrick moved closer to the largest of my models: a steel train engine featuring twenty segmented metal legs designed to compensate for difficult terrain and/or a lack of railway tracks. The black silk balloon linked to the train’s roof was potentially useful to reduce the train’s weight and perhaps even harvest the heated air from the engine—but that was assuming Patrick let me cannibalise his precious hot air balloon for a radical new method of travel. From what I’d heard, Tasmania was much more inclined to dramatic vistas than was entirely convenient.

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ he asked, rubbing his hands through his hair and making it stick up like straw. He chose not to say aloud what we were both thinking: There was little point in rescuing Shauna O’Connell only to burst into flames immediately afterward.

‘Not yet,’ I said stiffly. ‘I’m pushing the boundaries of what is possible.’

‘Hmm.’ He eyed the largest of the craters in the wall and rubbed the gunpowder burn on his cheek.

‘Would you like to see the train working?’ I asked, popping my goggles over my eyes in preparation.

‘Err … maybe when it’s ready for an open-air display,’ he said, and went back toward the trap door just as someone else stomped on it three times. Bang, bang, bang.

Patrick waited as Matilda descended, then he went back up the ladder into his father’s house.

Matilda examined me with a proprietary air. ‘You look unusually tidy today, but never fear—that’s easily fixed.’

She removed the pins from my hair one by one, and my red curls tumbled over my shoulders and just touched the top of my brass corset. I wore magical brass when I wanted its help to notice the most elusive details of my experiments, but sometimes it just made me notice Matilda more forcefully than ever. Matilda and I had both been working hard, knowing all the while that every delay meant another day of misery for Mrs O’Connell. Now that she was close my corset heated up, making me flush, and then deliberately opened all my senses to the woman I loved. Brass can be impertinent, and I wasn’t strong enough to resist the temptation to be distracted.

Matilda smelled of smoke and eucalyptus from her time spent burning off the nearby forest: a delicious mixture of our temporary outback home all tangled up with elemental fire. And she smelled of her own unique spice, making me want to lean forward and inhale until I swooned. Her coppery-brown eyes shone in the lantern-light, ready to laugh. Her lips parted. Her breath quickened …

I kissed her, and forgot I was holding a square of tin. It binged in emphatic delight, and I dropped it, hoping to defuse its magical enthusiasm. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except it landed on one of my rats, who immediately combusted in surprise, burning yet another large hole in the wooden floor. The tin parped in distress and Matilda stepped back. Her heel caught in the new crater.

She fell backward with a shriek, and I instinctively dived forward to catch her. As we both tumbled to the ground, I grabbed for something to hold on to. My hand hit the wooden strut holding up the opposite side of my workbench. The strut snapped in two, and the back half of the bench creaked alarmingly. I rolled off Matilda and crouched under the desk, bracing it with my hands and shoulders.

Matilda sat up, twisting around to face me. ‘Emmeline! Are you all right?’

‘Are you?’

‘Why are you holding up the table?’

‘So it doesn’t fall down.’

‘Ah.’ She stood and hastily moved objects from the collapsing bench onto the sections of the work table that were still secure.

‘It really is quite heavy,’ I said through gritted teeth.

Matilda moved faster, grabbing models and papers and cogs and jars and pliers at top speed. It wasn’t fast enough.

‘Poking stick,’ I said.

‘Now is hardly the time.’

‘Use the big iron stick to hold up the table. It’s strong, but it needs to be cut down to size.’

She grabbed the length of iron and laid it across two of the solid workbenches, making a triangle shape. There was an axe hanging on the wall so she grabbed it and hit the poking stick hard. It was no use. She cast the useless axe aside. Her frantic gaze landed on my rats.

‘Matilda, no!’ Just because the rats recovered quickly from deaths in the family didn’t mean they should be exploded willy- nilly.

She didn’t listen. She grabbed a rat and some string, and tied the innocent creature to the midpoint of the iron rod before grabbing the axe once more and crouching to meet the rat eye to eye. ‘Burn through that metal, or I’ll cut off your tail.’

The rat squeaked in terror and exploded outright, snapping the iron bar and casting a fine spray of blood, fur, and mechanical parts onto the nearby walls and floor. Matilda grabbed the remains of the poking stick and jammed both halves under my bench.

I slid out gratefully and rubbed my aching shoulders. ‘You killed my rat, but you did it in such a timely manner I can’t complain. Are you sure you don’t want to officially become my lovely assistant?’

‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘Although I confess I understand your penchant for explosions a little better now. That was fun.’

‘I don’t deliberately make things explode!’

‘What a shame,’ she said. ‘It’s a very attractive quality.’

‘Oh really?’ So this was flirting. I hadn’t had much practice at such things before I was transported to Australia. The other convicts had all known just what to do—I remembered my friend Lizzie with a sigh—but I hadn’t practised when I had the chance. It was a tragic oversight, but Matilda appeared to like me anyway. I leaned casually on the workbench and tried to raise an eyebrow.

Crash!

The shored-up workbench collapsed, throwing papers, cogs, inkwells, and screwdrivers every which way. One lens of my goggles blackened with ink, and several small cogs landed and then stuck in the brass frame. Through the other lens I saw my match-tin spring open and several phosphorus matches spill out onto the rough floor, igniting at once.

Unfortunately, I had spilled enough grease over the course of several weeks to thoroughly soak the wooden floor, which promptly caught fire. My skirts were well within range of the flames, and I leaped up onto the more solid part of my workbench at once, laying more or less flat so I didn’t collapse another section. I was all too familiar with the flammability of my crinolines.

Matilda was wearing rational dress—a rather distracting set of trousers—by way of a compromise between dressing like her father’s British notions or her mother’s native ones. She kicked off her heels and used her bare feet to stomp out the fire while I lay helplessly on top of several homemade models designed to combine magic, steam, and silk in order to design a better airship. One of them slipped and drifted to the ground. It didn’t smash onto the floor, but floated gracefully. How marvellous. It worked. I resisted the urge to distract Matilda by pointing out my latest success.

The fire was almost out, and I carefully lowered myself to the ground, trying not to damage any more of my laboratory. Matilda stomped out the last of the fire and I just watched her, guiltily delighted at the sight of her black and blond tresses falling loose around her face.

At last we were safe.

She looked at me and laughed. ‘You were saying?’

‘Something about not exploding things,’ I admitted. ‘To be fair, you did specifically say that you enjoy the occasional fireball.’

‘So I do.’

She slipped her shoes back on, apparently unhurt.

‘Did Patrick ask you when we’ll be ready to rescue Shauna?’ she asked, casting a guilty glance upward, where Patrick and his father were stoking the kitchen engine ready to bake bread for lunch.

‘He’s focusing on safety today,’ I said. ‘He seems so calm, but he’s fetched me seven cups of tea already—and not mentioned Mrs O’Connell once.’

She nodded. We both knew how much Patrick wanted to rescue his mother; a passion matched only by his desire to keep Matilda and I safe from similar harm. Too bad he hadn’t made friends with a pair of girls who would gladly wait at home while he faced all the danger.

I picked up the model that had drifted to the ground. It was little more than a hot air balloon with a propeller and a rubber band to represent a steam engine. With enough magical aluminium, we could neutralise the considerable weight of a steam engine and thus solve one of the greatest problems of airship construction.

The issue of how to fill the varnished silk with air had stymied me until now. ‘What if we hurled ourselves off a cliff?’ I said thoughtfully.

‘Sounds good,’ Matilda said with just the tiniest hint of sarcasm. ‘Can I tell Patrick? His face will make quite the picture.’

Bang.

‘Sounds like you’ll get a chance right now,’ I said.

Bang.

Matilda and I waited in silence for the third stomp on the trapdoor. It never came.

‘Uh-oh,’ said Matilda, dropping her frivolity like an old coat. ‘Two bangs. Isn’t that code for—’

I pressed my fingers to her lips and nodded, mouthing, ‘Our time just ran out.’

She took both my hands in hers and squeezed my fingers until I thought they might snap in two.

Chapter Two

Matilda paced around the deceptively small hovel that Mr O’Connell called his home. The fire was still burning in the stone chimney, and the smoke crawled along the slope of the tin roof and made me cough. We’d climbed into the main house when we were sure it was safe to emerge from my laboratory.

I hunched down and poked viciously at the logs, making them hiss and spit. Matilda had made it clear that I was not to speak to her until she was finished ‘looking around’. Since I could clearly see the tracks of two horses coming and then going again, I wasn’t sure what she planned to add to the conversation. Our men were gone—not just Patrick, who had committed enough crimes to warrant attention, but Mr O’Connell as well. He was a convict, certainly, but an emancipated one. I was guilty of more than Mr O’Connell even knew about.

The thought of my friends in police custody made me gag. My mouth tasted of ash and I couldn’t stop clenching and unclenching my hands.

Matilda walked past the open side of the hovel again, muttering to herself, then circled the whole area widely once more in the opposite direction. I poured two mugs of grey-looking tea from the kettle on the hob and tried to take a calming sip. It scalded my tongue, and I gasped at the infernal pain.

‘Ballarat,’ Matilda pronounced.

I emerged from the hovel so I could stand upright. ‘This is no time for making fun.’

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Two horses—that’s police business, especially the way they’re shod with pitted iron instead of quality. Police coming all the way out here means they’re looking for someone or something specific. They took Patrick, so they found what they wanted. It’s possible they wanted you too, but we both know Patrick wouldn’t give you up. Since they took Mr O’Connell, we also know they’re spiteful bastards.’

‘Officer Dry,’ I said dully. We’d stayed too long, relying on Victoria’s post-Eureka reforms to keep us safe from prosecution. I was still an escaped convict, and Patrick was still a horse thief. Worst of all, Officer Dry would soon guess we didn’t intend to let Mrs O’Connell remain in the Female Factory prison. There was no more time for tinkering. We had to get the men and go—to Tasmania. Come what may. Why hadn’t I solved the problem of prison access faster?

‘I should have gone out and faced him,’ Matilda said, stopping me in my tracks. She wasn’t the type to have regrets. ‘He wouldn’t have taken Mr O’Connell if he’d had a prize like me to clap in irons.’

‘He won’t have Mr O’Connell for long,’ I said grimly, heading for the hidden hot air balloon. For someone who insisted Matilda’s half-native parentage made her less than human, Officer Dry was remarkably obsessed with my girlfriend. ‘We’re going to save him. Besides, no one can prove you’ve done anything worse than running away from home in dubious company. Not even Officer Dry.’

Matilda grinned at me. She was unhealthily proud to be associated with Patrick and me. Sometimes it surprised me that she hadn’t committed any real crimes yet.

She put her hands on her hips, looking west. ‘Naturally we’ll have to liberate both men before Dry gets them to Melbourne. I hope that rancid slab of meat has a pistol on him, so I don’t feel sad when I shoot him.’

‘You won’t really shoot him,’ I said, biting my lip as soon as the words had escaped. I’d learned from experience not to argue with Matilda.

‘Why not?’ she said with a steadiness more frightening than an angry shout. ‘You and I have both killed better men than him.’

‘That was in a battle,’ I said. ‘It was different. They were going to kill us.’

‘I’ll do what I have to,’ she said, and turned away from me.

We didn’t discuss Officer Dry any further. Some people wanted to ‘civilise’ Matilda. Others wanted her to disappear. Dry wanted her dead.

Matilda followed me to the twin winches hidden in thorny bushes on the nearby hill. The bushes were long dead and tied to the ground with string. We moved them aside and drew back the thin layer of dirty plywood covering the large chamber beneath. Without a word, we returned to the winches, kicking away a few dropped spikes. We counted together as we hauled, grateful for the activated steel that added magical strength to our limbs. It was strange how easily we worked together when our world had just fallen apart.

Creaking and groaning, a black-clad carriage rose majestically from the earth. When its platform was level with the ground, we locked the winches into place, hauled back the fabric cover, and pushed Patrick’s modified carriage onto solid ground, coughing at the dust.

My heart skipped a beat at the smell of a large pile of quality coal. Patrick and his luddite father were appalled that my father had replaced my ordinary flesh heart with brass and silver and magic, but it was more useful than they knew. Sometimes my heart knew things—useful things, like where to find gold. I’d never worry about money again.

‘Do you need a top-up?’ Matilda asked me, seeing that I was looking at the driver’s seat where the coal was stored. ‘I don’t know when we’ll next be on steady ground with coal and water a-plenty.’

She knew we’d be going straight to Tasmania. We were out of options as well as out of time.

‘My heart’s full,’ I said, and pointed in a westerly direction. ‘We need to go that way.’

‘I know where Ballarat is,’ she said, giving me an odd look. ‘The fastest way to Melbourne is to catch the new Ballarat train, so of course Dry is heading into town first.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ I said. ‘My directions are exact. Thanks to my heart, I am a living compass. Patrick is that way.’

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘That will be handy. I don’t suppose your rats can inflate the balloon?’

‘Sadly, no,’ I admitted. ‘They can light the coal and heat the air, but we shall have to collect the air ourselves or my little friends will be no use at all.’

She paced back and forth, barefoot as usual and apparently oblivious to the sharp-edged grass and the hard red gravel of the area. ‘We’re dependent on the wind for both speed and direction, while Dry has horses and will shortly be able to take advantage of the new train route.’

I shivered. Ever since I’d worked as a servant in Melbourne, I had lived in fear of the Female Factory. Mrs O’Connell’s constitution was evidently stronger than mine, since her letters made it clear that prison life had not diminished her in the slightest. In fact, she had made it clear she was up to some new form of mischief within the prison. Of course, her letters were monitored so she wasn’t able to tell us any details.

‘Never fear,’ said Matilda, seeing my frown. ‘Let’s put that pretty brain of yours to work saving our boys before we end up in dangerous territory ourselves.’

I focused on the carriage: wheeled like an ordinary vehicle, but lightweight in order to help it lift off when the enormous silk balloon was inflated and the coal burning. It was certainly not going to inflate on its own, despite the precious weight-defying aluminium we’d sewn into the balloon’s varnished black silk for magical assistance. I ran through other magics in my mind: tin for communication, lead for heightened emotion, brass for enhanced senses, iron or steel for strength, silver for healing, gold for attraction.

None of them could help us blow up a balloon.

I looked the other way, surveying the low hills around Mr O’Connell’s home. They weren’t much, but if we could have charged down the hills with enough speed the balloon would have been reasonably well inflated. Unfortunately we had no horses (tin or otherwise), and the ground was heavily lined with loose rocks and unexpected ditches where rainfall had gouged zigzag channels in every direction.

‘We need an airship, not a hot air balloon,’ I said, resisting the urge to panic.

‘Ideally, yes,’ Matilda said with uncharacteristic patience. That, more than anything else, told me how frightened she was. Our boys were in real danger.

‘We lack a frame, a suitable gas, an appropriate engine, and propellers.’

Matilda waited. She forced herself to stillness, refusing to give in to her fury—knowing Patrick needed her and she couldn’t get to him. Her whole body trembled with the effort of remaining civil. Any other day, I might have laughed.

‘Aluminium instead of gas,’ I said. ‘Which means we don’t need an appropriate engine—almost any heavy old engine will do, if the aluminium is feeling cooperative.’

Matilda twitched at that, and I knew she didn’t want to risk Patrick’s