Free Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories by Kelly Link

precise on the splintery tables.
    Each table had three hard loaves on it, charity bread donated from Muddy York's bakeries to us poor crippled kiddies, day old and more than a day old, and as tough as stone. Before each loaf was a knife as sharp as a butcher's, and as long as a man's forearm, and the head child at each table was responsible for slicing the bread using that knife each day (children who were shy an arm or two were exempted from this duty, for which I was thankful, since those children were always accused of favoring some child with a thicker slice, and fights were common).
    Monty was leaning heavily on Grinder, his head down and his steps like those of an old, old man, first a click of his steel foot, then a dragging from his remaining leg. But as they passed the head of the farthest table, Monty sprang from Grinder's side, took up the knife, and with a sure, steady hand — a movement so spry that I knew he'd been shamming from the moment Grinder opened up the cellar door —he plunged the knife into Grinder's barrel chest, just over his heart, and shoved it home, giving it a hard twist.
    He stepped back to consider his handiwork. Grinder was standing perfectly still, his face pale beneath his whiskers, and his mouth was working, and I could almost hear the words he was trying to get out, words I'd heard so many times before: Oh, my lovely, you are a naughty one, but Grinder will beat the devil out of you, purify you with rod and fire, have no fear.
    But no sound escaped Grinder's furious lips. Monty put his hands on his hips and watched him with the critical eye of a bricklayer or a machinist surveying his work. Then, calmly, he put his good right hand on Grinder's chest, just to one side of the knife handle. He said, "Oh, no, Mr. Grindersworth, this is how we take our punishment in Montreal." Then he gave the smallest of pushes, and Grinder went over like a chimney that's been hit by a wrecking ball.
    He turned then and regarded me full on, the good side of his face alive with mischief, the mess on the other side a wreck of burned skin. He winked his good eye at me and said, "Now, he was a proper pile of filth and muck, wasn't he? World's a better place now, I daresay." He wiped his hand on his filthy trousers — grimed with the brown dirt of the cellar—and held it out to me. "Montague Goldfarb, machinist's boy and prentice artificer, late of old Montreal. Montreal Monty, if you please," he said.
    I tried to say something—anything—and realized that I'd bitten the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste the blood. I was so discombobulated that I held out my abbreviated right arm to him, hook and cutlery basket and all, something I hadn't done since I'd first lost the limb. Truth told, I was a little tender and shy about my mutilation and didn't like to think about it, and I especially couldn't bear to see whole people shying back from me as though I were some kind of monster. But Monty just reached out, calm as you like, and took my hook with his cunning fingers — fingers so long they seemed to have an extra joint—and shook my hook as though it were a whole hand.
    "Sorry, mate, I didn't catch your name."
    I tried to speak again, and this time I found my voice. "Sian O'Leary," I said. "Antrim Town, then Hamilton, and then here." I wondered what else to say. "Third-grade computerman's boy, once upon a time."
    "Oh, that's fine," he said. "Skilled tradesmen's helpers are what we want around here. You know the lads and lasses round here, Sian. Are there more like you? Children who can make things, should they be called upon?"
    I nodded. It was queer to be holding this calm conversation over the cooling body of Grinder, who now smelled of the ordure his slack bowels had loosed into his fine trousers. But it was also natural, somehow, caught in the burning gaze of Monty Goldfarb, who had the attitude of a master in his shop, running the place with utter confidence.
    "Capital." He nudged Grinder with his