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    Clockwork Tangerine
    Clockwork Tangerine
    Clockwork Tangerine
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    Clockwork Tangerine

    By Rhys Ford

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The British Empire reigns supreme, and its young Queen Victoria has expanded her realm to St. Francisco, a bustling city of English lords and Chinese ghettos. St. Francisco is a jewel in the Empire’s crown and as deeply embroiled in the conflict between the Arcane and Science as its sister city, London—a very dark and dangerous battle.

    Marcus Stenhill, Viscount of Westwood, stumbles upon that darkness when he encounters a pack of young bloods beating a man senseless. Westwood’s duty and honor demand he save the man, but he’s taken aback to discover the man is Robin Harris, a handsome young inventor indirectly responsible for the death of Marcus’s father.

    Living in the shadows following a failed coup, Robin devotes his life to easing others’ pain, even though his creations are considered mechanical abominations of magicks and science. Branded a deviant and a murderer, Robin expects the viscount to run as far as he can—and is amazed when Marcus reaches for him instead.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateFeb 19, 2014
    ISBN9781627984195
    Clockwork Tangerine
    Author

    Rhys Ford

     Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and is a two-time LAMBDA finalist with her Murder and Mayhem novels. She is also a 2017 Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Florida Authors and Publishers President’s Book Awards for her novels Ink and Shadows and Hanging the Stars. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications. She shares the house with Harley, a gray tuxedo with a flower on her face, Badger, a disgruntled alley cat who isn’t sure living inside is a step up the social ladder, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep of a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people. Rhys can be found at the following locations: Blog: www.rhysford.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/rhys.ford.author Twitter: @Rhys_Ford  

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      Book preview

      Clockwork Tangerine - Rhys Ford

      Dedication

      To my beloved didi, Reetoditee, who has claimed this book as hers. You deserve this and oh so much more.

      And to my sister bunneh, Lisa, who loves steampunk, coffee and shoes… definitely not in that order.

      Acknowledgments

      As always, anything I write first goes to the Five; Tamm, Penn, Lea and Jenn as well as Ren, Ree and Lisa. Always.

      I cannot ever get from there to here without the Dreamspinner crew. Grace and everyone else who touches anything dreadful I toss their way, Julili and Lyric who meander me through PR and most of all, Elizabeth, Anne and the rest of the peeps. Thank you. I need to make a list of names to thank there but it pretty much is the whole kit and kaboodle.

      And love to my guinea pigs… all of them. You are so very precious. And a glorious shout-out to my betas who put up with me. A special nod to the San Diego Crewe of Andrea, Felix and Steve. Smooches all.

      Lastly, to Alan Turing, may you have found joy in the stars and great amounts of thank-yous from those of us you left on this rock. We definitely would not have a world where we can reach out to one another as easily as we do without your efforts and life. Thank you.

      One

      THE STINK of St. Francisco crept into Marcus’s nose and stayed there, an unwelcome sensory vermin plaguing him at every step. Fog hung in the alleyways, catching on the corners of buildings and shrouding Little Orient’s arcane-fueled street lamps. The faint orange glow they cast was barely enough to see by on a clear night, and once a heavy soup rolled in off the bay’s murky water, the ill-maintained orbs were dimmed to a pale-tangerine wash.

      Definitely not enough light to see anything other than dark, slinky shapes at the edge of his vision but certainly bright enough to warn off any cutpurses lurking in the pea-soup thick shadows beyond. He’d been a fool to come down to Little Orient near dusk, but his grandmother had begged, something she rarely did.

      Well, unless she thought she could get away with it.

      I thought I had enough. Her soft, round face sported few wrinkles, and her cotton-floss hair was suspiciously bright gold, but the elderly woman wore her age well. Please, Marcus. It would be such a disappointment if it wasn’t served.

      She’d been his only maternal influence after his own mother fled the Commonwealth to head back to London, and Marcus hated disappointing her. Hosting afternoon breakfasts for the West Commonwealth’s society were the highlight of his grandmother’s week, and if she needed a particular jasmine tea for it, he would damn well get it for her.

      Now in the misty shadows of the district’s spice and sewer-perfumed air, Marcus wondered if he’d not made a mistake, and he would have been better off popping down to Woolworth’s Tea Emporium for a more mundane leaf.

      She would know, he reminded himself, hefting his sword cane up and checking the fill of his pocket where his pistol hung heavy in his overcoat. She always knows.

      The package of tea was light enough in his other pocket, not enough of a weight to trouble him, but it seemed to weigh him down with every step. Obligations. Family obligations. That was what the tea represented. The need to produce… to succeed in order to further the family line. Even if he was only the third son and a poor representation of the dukedom.

      A chance quirk of filial bloodlines gifted him with a title, a viscount to put in front of his name, but it felt awkward hanging on his shoulders. He felt more at home in the boxing ring, schooling lesser men on the proper ways to defend themselves, or even riding with the hounds, chasing after a metallic gewgaw covered in rabbit fur rather than the traditional Reynard.

      The industrialists made their mark in odd ways, filling the skies with bloated tick-like balloons strong enough to carry a man across oceans or steam-driven contraptions loud enough to frighten a sensible horse on the roads, but strangely enough, it was the faux fox that angered arcanists the most.

      It’s a violation of the natural order! They’ll be the death of us. The death of the British Empire! His father harrumphed more than once as he read the Post at the breakfast table. He’d been a walrus of a man, bristling with a thick mustache and even thicker eyebrows, his ever-increasing belly popping more than a few buttons on his waistcoat when he blustered his opinions at the Commonwealth’s House of Lords.

      In the end, the duke was right in his own way. It’d been a skitter that killed his father, a hand-sized mechanical leftover from the Society’s attempted coup against the newly crowned Queen. Hidden in the Lords’ Hall voting chambers, the spindly-legged mechanism somehow activated and attacked the man nearest to its hiding place, his blustering but large-hearted father. The Duke’s last words as he lay dying on the House floor were of his family and to curse the industrialists who brought doom to the British Empire.

      His older brother Brent shared the old Duke’s feelings, having the smashed remains of the skitter cast into a glass paperweight so he could have a continuing reminder of the industrialists’ role in his father’s death. Marcus was kinder in his thoughts, although he’d be the first to admit, the mechanical simulacrums jerking their way through repetitive chores made his skin crawl and his belly clench.

      If anything, he was as much of a violation of the natural order as any metallic thing the industrialists created in the name of progress. Knowing about his youngest son’s perversions would have killed the old man far quicker than any bronze, razor-edged spider, but the knowledge of his father’s ignorance was of little comfort to Marcus. He missed his gruff and affectionate father and treasured any reminder of him—including the old Duke’s elderly mother. So if tramping down to the dangerous climes of Little Orient for his gently raised paternal grandmother would make her happy, Marcus was more than willing to take on the task.

      Still, he’d come armed. And a lucky thing that was when he turned down Grant Street and heard the sounds of something hard smacking flesh.

      It was a sound Marcus knew intimately. And not just from the boxing ring.

      Despite the early hour, there were few people on the street, and those he saw were Asian, keen on ignoring the

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