Arcadian Snips and the Steamwork Consortium

Sent away! In case anyone else is interested, I'm going to post a little snippet here so you can read and see if it's your shindig.

~*~

The trains were on time.

The trains were always on time. Through sleet and hail, through rain and snow, through fire, ice, and all that lay between; the trains should not and would not be late.

The burden of assuring that this remained so had been placed upon the shoulders of a shrewd man with peerless ambition and a mind that made steel traps seem like the awkward and rusty playthings of impoverished orphans. He had once been described by a colleague as possessing the patience of a spider, the genius of a fiend, and the heart of a lizard.

This had not been taken as an insult.

Count Olek watched through a window of smoked quartz and brass as the trains outside plunged through tunnels and emerged across bridges, forming a tangled knot of tracks complex enough to give Alexander's sword pause. Powerful locomotives weaved their way through the web, their conductors following Olek's calculated directions--directions so divorced from common sense that calamity seemed inevitable. Yet like a magician pouring over archaic mathematical formulas, he snatched perfect results from the jaws of chaos again and again.

His office was extravagant yet tasteful. Sets of exquisitely crafted quilt maple chairs inlaid with floral patterns and padded with matching damask cushions gathered thickly about marble-topped tables. Ornate brass fixtures capped with glass spheres provided lighting from their perches along the walls, with coils of gas burning brilliantly within. From the very moment that Snips was escorted into the room, he felt the gnawing need to steal something and hide in a corner until the heat blew over.

"Your third escape from the Morgrim Penitentiary," Count Olek said, turning to the seated thief. "Quite clever work."

"I felt that the facility no longer had anything to offer me," Snips explained. He tugged at his handcuffs. Count Olek's men had slapped them on when they had shoved him into one of the obscenely comfortable chairs. The cuffs consisted of no more than two solid chunks of iron that fit neatly over the hands, fused together at the wrists. He wasn't sure how they came off. He wasn't sure they were supposed to. "So what's all this about? Overdue library books?"

Count Olek smiled. It was a vicious thing, full of malice and sharp edges with nary a friendly flat-topped tooth in sight. "I have pulled several considerable favors. You have been placed in my custody."

"Wonderful. But just so you know, I don't do windows. It's a phobia I've had since childhood. A wild pack of 'em killed my parents." Snips narrowed his eyes, glaring at the window behind Olek. "Horrible things, windows."

Olek took a seat at his desk. His fingers steepled together into an edge sharp enough to cleave through meat and bone. "Do you know who I am, Mr. Snips?"

"Hm. Are you Susan? You look kind of like a Susan. Do you mind if I call you Susan, Susan?"

"I am the man responsible for making the trains run on time."