Chapter Text
The velvet curtain helped to dampen the voices coming from the stage, but it also made it harder to hear the footsteps of the servants walking the corridor behind it. Carmilla had thought she’d heard the girl’s footsteps twice, convincing herself the tick of a watch or a cane was the clicking of the girl’s hand, before she actually came. Then, she was carrying a tray, tea and delicate little biscuits to refresh Maman after all the stress of her speech, and she couldn’t grab her or she’d make a mess of everything and give everything away before she’d even begun.
But when the girl finally returned - a matter of minutes, probably, although Carmilla felt she’d been waiting an hour or more - her hands were finally empty, the white silk of her one white glove glowing bright even in the low light of the hallway. She waited, listening to the even pace of her light footsteps, and closed her eyes to get the timing exactly right. When the girl passed her tiny alcove, Carmilla shot out her arm, grabbing the girl’s wrist and pulling her bodily behind the curtain.
She didn’t resist, not until she turned and saw Carmilla’s face. Who exactly had she been expecting to be pulling her into dark corners, Carmilla wondered, even as she dodged a well-thrown if inexpert punch and wrapped an arm around the girl’s torso, pinning her against the wall even as she put a hand - thankfully still wrapped in her leather artificer’s glove - over her mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” was the first thing she said, and the girl’s tense posture relaxed, her bright eyes calming, right before she brought her knee up between Carmilla’s legs.
If she’d been a man, it would have put her on the floor. Then again, if she’d been a man, she would never have been there, yanking the young clockwork girl behind curtains to have a better look at her hand, and if she had been she would have absolutely deserved the kick in the groin she’d just come to close to receiving. As it was, the angles were off, and while the glancing blow was more than enough to bring tears to her eyes, it didn’t incapacitate her. She shoved the girl back into the wall, narrowly avoiding cracking her head on the hard stone, and leaned in close again.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said again, hissing it close to the girl’s ear now, “But if you do that again, I will make sure that someone hears us, and I rather doubt you want questions about what you were doing fooling around behind a curtain with Lilith’s daughter.”
The girl’s eyes went wide with rage, then recognition. She spluttered a response against Carmilla’s glove, no longer fighting, and Carmilla considered and then let go of her.
She stumbled from the wall on uneasy feet, catching her balance right before she would have fallen straight into Carmilla. And she was undeniably lovely, Carmilla thought, no matter that they called her the clockwork girl; her hair falling thick and deep golden around her shoulders, her bow of a mouth deep pink even in the poor light, the heavy weight of the servant’s skirts falling softly from her slight hips and offsetting the white of that one glove. She flexed that hand now, the movement unconscious and considering, and Carmilla thought of what she’d come to do.
“What do you want?” the girl demanded, her eyes on Carmilla’s face, and she knew her reputation had once again preceded her. Well, that was what she’d intended when she’d thrown her name at the girl, so she couldn’t complain if her plan was working out.
“Let me see your hand,” she requested, and the girl’s eyes narrowed, went hard and angry and cruel.
“Oh, is that what this is? The great Carmilla Karnstein just wants a look at my hand? You want to see your father’s handiwork, do you?” she jeered. She unbuttoned the glove with her other hand, the one that was quick and light and pink-skinned, edging the glove down until Carmilla could see the beginning of the silver clasp that hooked into her flesh. “You must be dreadfully bored of Lords’ daughters, if you want to see my hand so badly. You’re just another creep with a clockwork fantasy!”
She’d yanked the glove off as she spoke, bunching it between her fingers with a practiced grip that knew better than to lose it. She’d need it, after all, to cover the silver contraption she now waved in Carmilla’s face, the facsimile that looked like a hand but lacked a fourth finger, ticked as she moved and wouldn’t bend from the wrist.
“Well now you’ve seen it, and I hope you’re happy,” the girl sneered again. “Your father may have built it but you won’t have any more luck than the others if you want me to put it between your legs. I suppose you could make me, but,” and she snapped the fingers together, a horrible metallic click coming from their joining, “it doesn’t have any feeling, you know. It’d be terrible if I accidentally damaged something.”
From the way those fingers came together, delicate and ladylike and utterly brutal in their strength, Carmilla didn’t think she’d meant to imply bruising. No, that was the kind of movement that suggested something coming off, and she suppressed her shudder at the thought of the brutes who had harassed the girl, chased her and pressed her until this was her automatic assumption, that her interest was purely sexual and perverse. This was not the way she’d intended this encounter to go, not when she’d promised her mother she could carry it off.
“Let me see,” she said again, reaching to take the other girl’s wrist.
For whatever reason, the girl let her. Perhaps it was her apparent lack of fear, or perhaps the better part of her reputation was better known than she tended to assume. It might simply have been her apparent lack of a sexual interest, even if - now she thought of it - the combination of those honey brown eyes over the gleaming metal was enough to make her swallow. She thrust that thought aside, examining the hand.
It was silver, after all. She’d wondered, from time to time, if that was simply part of the stories they told about the girl and her father, a way of glamorising the accident, but it appeared to be true. That was good, it meant the movement spells would hold better, embedding themselves more deeply in the machinery and affixing them to what remained of her wrist. That reminded her, and she turned her attention to the socket.
They’d done a good job of it, avoiding sentimentality and cutting back into healthy skin to construct a strong joint, rather than try and save as much of the wrist as they could. That was good; having the join in a damaged limb made it more difficult to build a working replacement, something she considered more important than saving an extra few inches of skin. In this girl, though, it meant she’d lost most of the smaller bones in her wrist, the ones that were so hard to replicate - that was why the wrist wouldn’t bend as freely as the other. It was a good job, the thumb and three fingers elegantly made and strong, silver wire replicating the tendons that should have been in the back of her hand, and with the glove on and the last finger stuffed, it could almost pass for flesh. But she could do better.
That was what she said now, when she looked up over the hand and found the servant girl’s eyes fixed on hers, suspicious but curious in the pale light.
“I can do better this - more flexible, more functional - if you want.” She said. The girl didn’t respond, and she went on. “The work is good, but the spells in the metal are fading. You probably have to wind it more often now, right? And you can’t bend your wrist. I can fix that, add some more parts and give you back that dexterity, if you want.”
The girl only stared at her. “Why would you do that?” she asked finally, doubt in her voice. She glanced down, saw the way that Carmilla still held her wrist with both hands, binding her as close as a lover’s embrace, and immediately began to flush.
Carmilla let go of her wrist, and the girl immediately pulled it back, tugging the glove back into place with practiced haste. She watched her do the buttons up, left handed and quick, before she answered.
“Because it was his fault. My father’s,” she clarified. “And he built you that, but now it’s fading, and…” she trailed off, shrugging. “I can do better.”
The girl studied her, glancing from her face to her artificer’s gloves, the leather worn so soft and thin it let her feel every joint and seam in a clockwork piece, and back to her face.
“And it would make your mother look good,” she surmised. Carmilla glanced up, surprised, and the girl jerked her head to indicate the speeches still going on in the other room. “I’m sure charity to a servant girl would make your mother look more appealing to the worker’s groups. In touch with the common people, kind to the less fortunate.”
“Actually, I think she’d hate it,” Carmilla answered her. The girl raised her eyebrows, and she scoffed. “Don’t give me that. If you’ve seen the papers, you know we don’t get along. It isn’t exactly happy families, since - ”
Since my father died, she completed silently, but she didn’t need to say it. The girl’s eyes widened in recognition, but she was skeptical still. Carmilla sighed, frustrated now.
“Look, you don’t have to say yes. It doesn’t matter, really, I only thought it would be interesting and that maybe you’d like better functionality in that hand, or at least have one that will continue to work. If not, well.” She shrugged. “No skin off my nose.”
She slid past the girl in the narrow alcove, reaching for the gap in the curtains. “I suggest you wait five minutes, since you’re so worried about your reputation,” she shot over her shoulder. “If you change your mind, come to the top floor of the third building on Moonpearl street tomorrow night. I’ll be home from eight, so come before ten or I’ll have started drinking.”