Valentine Ashworth's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Valentine Ashworth had built a mechanical leading man, and in six days a paying audience would sit close enough to see it was a machine. He stood in the empty amphitheater and looked up at his creation on the stage. The automaton's face was handsome, almost human. But brass seams ran along its arms. Its knees showed joints. Its neck had a visible ring where metal met metal. Valentine's whole plan was to fool every critic in the city into thinking a man was performing. The front rows would spot the seams in the first minute. He opened his prompt book and wrote one line: hide the joints or cancel. A property developer wanted this building. A dead show would hand it over. Valentine had converted this warehouse himself, twelve years ago, and he would not lose it because a knee squeaked and gleamed. He needed a costume that hid every seam and still let the machine move. He knew one person who could do it. Arabella Ellowyn ran the finest clothier's shop in the city. She was his friend, and something more he had never named aloud. She arrived that evening with a case of pins and a measuring tape. She looked at the automaton for a long moment. "You want me to dress a thing with no shame," she said. She smiled, but her eyes stayed on the exposed gears in its chest. "Ordinary cloth will pull at those joints, Valentine. It will bind when he lifts an arm. The audience will see the shape of the metal underneath." "Then I've asked the wrong person," he said. "You've asked the only right one." She set down her case. "I won't buy fabric for this. I'll design it. A cut that moves with the joints instead of fighting them. Panels over every seam. Loose where he bends, close where he doesn't." They worked through the night. Arabella pinned muslin over the automaton's arms and marked each joint. Valentine held the machine steady and read her the range of every limb from his notes. She built a coat with hidden pleats at the elbows and knees. She sewed a high collar to swallow the neck ring. By dawn the seams had vanished under dark green cloth. Valentine wound the automaton and stepped back. It raised an arm. The coat moved with it. No metal showed. It turned its head. The collar hid the joint. He walked to the front row and sat where the harshest critic would sit. He saw a man in a coat. He saw no machine. "You've saved the show," he said. Arabella did not smile. She pressed the automaton's chest, over the coat. Something ticked wrong beneath her hand. "Valentine," she said. "It moves like a man now. But it can't speak a single line. A silent leading man will empty this house faster than any seam."