The Brassbound Compassion Engine

Morning in the lane arrived wrapped in wet brass and the thin, familiar smell of coal-sweetened tea. Evie Lark had the shutters latched back before the street vendors could set their trays; she liked the first hour when the world still listened to the hiss of her bench and not to the clatter of passengers climbing gangways or the municipal bell that marked the hour with an agreeable wheeze. Outside, a hawker shouted about steam-baked crumpets glazed with cardamom syrup, a detail of the neighborhood that had nothing to do with the day’s work but made it feel lived-in. A cart in the distance drummed out a jaunty rhythm on a hollow kettle; someone tuned a wind-harmonium on a balcony. The city had manners you could taste.

Her cat, Cog, ignored those manners. Cog preferred brass and small, suspiciously shaped objects. He had learned to unhook a tiny spare diaphragm from the jar on the left while Evie was busy with a delicate regulator for a house nurse. "Cog," she said, sharp and tired, as the cat walked off with the valve like a pirate. He blinked in a way that suggested he had arranged the theft out of a profound sense of aesthetic necessity.

Sprocket, her apprentice, was already at the far bench making a cheerful clang. He measured in heartbeats rather than millimeters, which produced occasional sparks and an abundance of optimism. "I swear I tightened that last screw," he called, head bent over a tea-infuser translator that he insisted would hiss empathy into porcelain. The infuser gasped and then began to purr, which was not the intended effect, but it did produce a deep, very human-sounding rumble. Even Evie smiled despite herself.

"Don't humiliate my teapot," Evie warned, and Sprocket dropped the spanner, which skittered across the plank and knocked a pile of tiny cogs into a pattern that looked startlingly like an invitation. He grinned. "It only empathizes with perfectly brewed tea, mistress." The banter between them was part of a practical ritual: he lightened the bright edges of the morning and she kept the shop from falling into theatrical collapse. It was not sentiment; it was survival.

She returned to the regulator. Her hands moved with the confidence of someone who knew how metal should breathe. She opened the casing, slid a film of oiled silk across a diaphragm, pinched a wafer-thin gasket into place and felt the mechanism settle. Each small adjustment was a conversation with brass: coax here, restrain there, a tiny clockwise persuasion, a patient hold. If machines could talk back they would speak in sighs and squeaks. The nurse's regulator hummed a safe tune under her palm, and she set it aside to cool while she cleaned the bench. The bell over the door sounded with a mannerly chime, and Adele Kearns stepped in carrying a case that had been routed through no fewer than three courier clades for fear of prying eyes.