Fall of Sky City (A Steampunk Fantasy Sci-Fi Adventure Novel) (Devices of War) by SM Blooding Page B

understood. I kept my hands steady as I continued to work on soldering the rivers of wire between the trigger and the barrel.
    Joshua picked up his head. “I’ve got it.”
    Yvette held up her hands. “I do too. I think we should go to that lovely café by the Librarium. You know the one I’m talking about. The one with those lovely little sandwiches.”
    “No.” He grimaced in her direction and then pointed his pen at me from where he was stooped over his drawings. “The solution.”
    I set down my soldering iron, pushed it aside, and leaned in. “What?”
    “A powder.”
    I narrowed my eyes at him. “How is a powder going to help anything?”
    “Ye don’t see?” He pushed himself up. “Yer pistol has no ruddy ammunition.”
    “That’s what I’ve been tellin’ you boys for weeks now,” Keeley said to her microtoscope. When she wasn’t around her brother, her accent was nearly invisible, but when she spent any time at all with him, her words gained a slight lilt. “But what would a girl know about a silly gun?”
    “No,” I said for the thousandth time. “ I am the ammunition. I just need something to funnel it through.”
    Joshua was vigorously shaking his head. “Listen, ye daft man. You,” he pointed his hand at me, “are the catalyst and tha’s the reason the copernicium worked. Well, kind of. It didn’t—”
    “Ah-ha.” He rarely ever said I was right. “You admit it.”
    His face twisted in a derisive frown as he shook his head, charging forward. “Only kind of. Withou’ a form of ammunition, though, this thin’ will never truly work because we’re lookin’ at it all wrong.”
    I shook my head, trying to see where he was taking it, but failed.
    “Sandwiches?” Yvette asked with a pained smile.
    “You’re the catalyst,” Joshua repeated.
    Keeley looked up from her notes. “As I’ve been tryin’ to tell ye all along now, you’re the powder. You’re lacking bullets.”
    “Ah,” I said, pointing a finger at her. “But that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t need bullets. I just need it to work like my electrostatic array pistol or my plasma—”
    “Holy words of Tarot,” Joshua exclaimed, stepping around the table to clap me on the back. “Those were yers?”
    I pulled back to look him in the face. “You know about them?”
    “Who do ye think the queens set to takin’ ‘em apart so we could study ‘em?”
    My mouth opened, but it took a moment for words come out. “You took them apart?”
    “Well, yeah. But if’n it makes ye feel any better, I put ‘em both back together.”
    I stared at him aghast. They were my prize inventions.
    “But,” he said, backing away quickly, “I think you’ll find that mine work much better.”
    Color drained from my face. “Yours?”
    He shrugged with a chuckle. “Yeah. Mine. My very own.”
    “ He, les gars, ” Yvette yelled. “I will pay. But let us go eat.” She gestured us to the door. “Now.”
    Keeley hopped off her stool, left her apron, and followed Yvette out of the laboratory.
    I raised my eyebrows at Joshua. “When was the last time she offered to pay?”
    “Has she ever?” He pulled his apron over his head and draped it on his table.
    “No.” I met him stride for stride. “I want to see my pistols.”
    He chuckled. “Ye want to see mine too, eh?”
    I grunted, but refrained from saying anything further. I wanted to see what he’d done to my designs, and I wanted to see if he had possibly improved them. Maybe. Possibly. Well, definitely with the plasma pistol because everything I’d done to date had been a semi success, but in a pinch, I never really knew if it was going to work or…not.
    We continued to banter back and forth, the girls occasionally glancing back at us and shaking their heads, Yvette’s ridiculous shoes clip-clopping down the sidewalks. They disappeared into the café. I held the door open for Joshua, intent to follow.
    I was stopped by a hand on my arm. “ maadhaa waqa’a?”
    My