Lazarus Machine, The (A Tweed & Nightingale Adventure): 1 Read Online Free Page B

stitching.”
    “Why don't you just use the Babbage?”
    Octavia looked at the wall opposite where a huge, intricately decorated machine made from mahogany and brass stood. It looked morelike a church organ than what it was meant to be—a machine that would do your sewing for you. Octavia had tried to use it once, but it had taken her longer to program the stupid thing with the punchcards than it would to actually sew the material by hand.
    But she didn't say that to her father. Ever since her mother's disappearance, her father had been getting more and more absentminded. More and more distant. She didn't want to do anything that would push him farther away.
    Instead she smiled and said, “I wanted to do it myself. I'm afraid I need the practice.”
    Her father smiled. “Good girl. Your mother would have approved.”
    No she wouldn't, thought Octavia bitterly, glaring at the door as her father retreated from the room. Her mother would have thought Octavia was wasting her time.
    It had been a year since her mother's disappearance. A year of watching her father grow more and more withdrawn, retreating into his work until it was all that kept him going.
    He thought her mother was dead, but Octavia didn't believe it. Her mother had been researching a story, looking into rumors that Professor Moriarty had returned from the dead to claim his rightful place as the king of London's underworld. Octavia used to go into work with her mother, something she actively encouraged. Octavia would help with the filing, help with the research, make tea—anything, really, as long as she got to watch how the newspaper worked.
    Then one day Octavia's mother was taken. Octavia had witnessed it, seen the strangely dressed gang who swept out of the sky in an unmarked zeppelin, whisking her kicking and screaming mother away into the night.
    Ever since, she had done everything she could to try to track her mother down, following rumors, leads, anything to do with Moriarty.Trying to find out what he was after, why he had returned after he and Sherlock Holmes supposedly perished at Reichenbach Falls.
    But the answers had remained elusively out of reach. She was no closer to tracking down Moriarty or her mother.
    Octavia broke the end of the thread with a vicious tug. She looked around for her needle but couldn't find it anywhere. She was always doing that. She would find it later. Probably when she sat on it.
    Octavia climbed the thickly-carpeted stairs to her bedroom. As she opened the door, a small metallic dog bounded across the carpet and banged painfully into her ankle. Octavia winced, leaning down to rub the sore spot.
    What had her father been thinking? Her pet dog Phileas had died and he'd actually gone out and paid someone to put the poor thing's spirit into this…this… shell . Octavia honestly didn't know what to do about it. The construct seemed to recognize her and act similarly to Phileas, but she didn't know if that was just the programming of the automaton or the essence of the dog coming through.
    Octavia hesitated, then reached down and tentatively patted the thing's brass head. “Good…dog,” she said. This seemed to please the construct. It trotted over to its basket and lay down as if going to sleep.
    Octavia's room was a fairly typical example of its kind: a large bed; a roll-top desk that she kept locked, with a few modifications of her own to make sure no one came snooping; and a dressing table.
    However, she did have something that was not typical for a girl her age: shelves of books by the likes of Verne, Wells, Flammarion, and Lord Dunsany. Her father had once disapproved of her collection, but she had refused to back down on it, and her mother screamed at him when she found out he wanted to stop Octavia reading them. Octavia remembered feeling sorry for him at the time. You didn't want mother angry at you. She could make your life a living hell.
    Octavia was about to ready herself for bed and a re-reading of The King