Free Steamborn by Eric R. Asher Page B

woman ran beside the cart. Her dress was emerald green where it wasn’t doused in blood. She looked like royalty. The man reached out and touched her hand before he went limp.
    Jacob didn’t think the man could possibly survive. There was so much blood, and then, as the cart moved a little farther, Jacob could see the mass of wounded knights laid out before the gatehouse. Some of them moved, some were tended by doctors or friends, but the rest were covered in stained white sheets.
    “Alice,” Jacob said, turning away from that awful scene. “Did Alice make it?” He swallowed, trying to get the tremor out of his voice. “I left her … I told her to run.”
    “You told her right,” Samuel said.
    Something outside the walls screeched, and everyone around Jacob cringed.
    “You told her right.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Jacob and Charles waited by the steambike while Samuel reported in to his commander. Their escape had been a very near thing. Jacob leaned against a polished stone wall once the tremors from adrenaline finally stopped. The building was small for the city, only two and a half stories, but shops didn’t need to be large near the gates. They received more traffic than they could handle on most days, and today saw the stores swollen with wide-eyed citizens, unsure of what to do with themselves.
    Children screamed, dragged into alleys and makeshift hospitals by wounded parents. Some people only stood, staring at nothing, as though they could see right through the crowds around them. Several Lowlanders gathered in clusters around the courtyard with nothing on their backs but the Festival clothes they’d worn, slowly getting ushered away by knights and the Highland police force.
    Amid all the chaos, a Highlander stopped to ask Charles about the steambike.
    “And it stays upright?” he asked. “With only two wheels?”
    Charles nodded and ran a hand over his beard. “Same principle as a kid’s bicycle, only bigger, and faster.”
    “Amazing,” the man said, leaning down to look at the brass and copper piping around the boiler. He studied it for another minute or so in silence before extending his hand to Charles. “I do appreciate the distraction, my friend. You do good works.”
    Charles smiled and bowed his head slightly. “Appreciate it.”
    The man wandered away. Jacob’s gaze followed him until his eyes caught the glint of Samuel’s dented breastplate in the city streetlamps. The lights here were more like magic than fire. Not entirely unlike the small lightbulb Charles had been working on, but much larger and much brighter.
    “They’re impressive,” Charles said while Jacob glanced between Samuel and the nearest light. “They’re a terrible waste, though.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The power it takes to light one of those lamps for a night?” Charles said as he pointed at the soft golden glow. “You could power the water pumps in the Lowlands for an entire month.”
    Jacob raised an eyebrow and looked at Charles.
    “Don’t believe me?”
    “Well …” Jacob started to say he didn't, but then he remembered some of the stories he’d heard. “My dad always said it was different here, in the Highlands. I haven’t been since I was a little kid, but I’ve always wanted to come back. He used to tell me how life inside the walls is a different world from the Lowlands.”
    “He’s not wrong,” Charles said. “You’ll find softer people here, and more cunning people.” He kept his focus on the street. “Here’s Samuel.”
    “I’m to stay armored,” Samuel said, stepping up beside them as he adjusted the sheath belted at his waist, “but I can escort you to my uncle’s.”
    “What about Bessie?” Jacob asked.
    “She’s staying at the stables tonight in case the watch needs her, and she’s getting patched up. One of the Walkers managed to crack the armor under Bessie’s saddle.”
    “You mean, where you sit?” Jacob asked.
    Samuel nodded as they began walking down the