Read Chapter 10: The Engineer's Gambit

The hiring hall reeked of coal dust, sweat, and desperation. Two hundred men crowded the yard outside the Grand Union Railway’s district office, hats in hand, eyes hungry for a day’s wage. Jack stood at the back, cap pulled low, turning his father’s pocket watch over in his palm. The engraved initials caught the grey light. *J.M.* Joseph Mullins. Surveyor. A man who’d sold his soul for a scrap of paper.

“You there.”

Jack looked up. A clerk in a green visor jabbed a finger at him from the office doorway. “You’ve got grease under your nails. Mechanic?”

“That’s right.”

“Name?”

Jack’s throat tightened. He’d used his brother’s name in the last town, and the sheriff had nearly hanged him for it. He couldn’t risk that again. But his own name—Mullins—carried its own weight. His father’s name. The name that had once meant something in railway circles before it became a cautionary tale.

“Jack Spanner,” he said. It wasn't his name, not truly—a nickname from the yards that had stuck like tar. But it was enough. No record, no debts, no ghost.

The clerk grunted and waved him inside.

The Grand Union’s district engine shed was a cathedral of iron and steam. Locomotives stood in rows, their brass polished, their boilers cold. Jack’s fingers itched. He could hear engines the way other men heard music—every hiss of a valve, every tick of cooling metal spoke to him.

“You’re the new man?”

The voice was clipped, authoritative. A tall man in a frock coat stood on the inspection platform, chalk dust on his sleeves, a folded set of blueprints tucked under one arm. He had the weathered face of a man who’d spent years in the field and the sharp eyes of one who’d learned to read men the way Jack read machinery.

“Jack Spanner, sir.”

“Mr. Crenshaw. Chief Engineer, North District.” He descended the platform, circling Jack like a buyer examining livestock. “Twenty years in the trade?”

“Twelve.”

“You’ve got the hands of a man who’s been inside a firebox more times than he’s had hot dinners.” Crenshaw stopped in front of him. “Where’d you learn?”

“Everywhere. Workshops, yards, any railway that would have me.” Jack kept his voice steady. “Started as a boy in Manchester, cleaning out ash pans for tuppence a day.”

Crenshaw studied him. “And you’re looking for work now because...?”

“Because I’m good,” Jack said simply. “And good mechanics are hard to find in a district this small.”

The engineer’s mouth twitched near a smile. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped a smear of grease from Jack’s sleeve, and examined the mark. “You’ve been on the ’box already this morning. There’s an inspection pit out back with a seized valve on the No. 7. You’ll look at it for me, and then we’ll talk.”

---

The valve was seized solid—calcified scale, rusted threads, the whole assembly fused into one stubborn lump. Jack stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work. He didn’t think about Eleanor waiting in the boarding house across town. He didn’t think about the stolen survey equipment hidden under the floorboards. He let his hands remember what his mind needed to forget.

An hour later, Crenshaw returned. He took one look at the disassembled valve, the cleaned threads, the precise lay of tools, and nodded slowly.

“You’ll do,” he said. “Fifty shillings a week, plus board. You report to me, and you tell no one what you see or hear. This railway is bidding for the Stoketon valley line, and there are men in this district who’d kill their own mothers to see us fail.”

Jack accepted the handshake, feeling the weight of it settle on him like an iron chain. He had a foothold. Now he needed to climb.

---

“So that’s it, then?” Eleanor’s voice was low, quick, her eyes darting over the crowded taproom while she nursed a half-pint of weak ale. “You’re on the inside of the man who’s bidding against Ashworth’s lot.”

“Better. I’m on the inside of the man who could win it.” Jack slid the pay advancement across the table—three golden sovereigns. “This covers the boarding house for a month. I’ve got work. Legitimate work.”

Eleanor’s hand closed over the coins. “And how long before they catch you out for who you really are?”

“Who I really am is a good mechanic.” He took a long drink of his own ale, bitterness washing down his throat. “The rest is just history.”

Eleanor leaned closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “History has a way of catching up. You said Crenshaw mentioned Ashworth?”

“Not by name. But the Stoketon line—he called it the valley prize. Said the Grand Union’s board would sacrifice their own grandmothers to land the contract.”

“And what about the other side? Who’s bidding against them?”

Before Jack could answer, a shadow fell across their table. A man in a canvas work jacket, scarred hands, a face that had seen the wrong end of too many brawls. He smiled, and the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Spanner, is it? The new grease monkey Crenshaw’s taken a shine to?”

Jack didn’t stand. He kept his hands visible on the table. “Who’s asking?”

“Name’s Nunes. I run a subcontracting outfit—excavation, earthworks, the dirty jobs the gentlemen with clean hands won’t touch.” Nunes pulled out a chair and sat without being invited. “I hear you’re a man who appreciates opportunity.”

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. She started to rise, but Jack put a hand on her arm. “I’m listening,” he said.

Nunes spread his hands on the table. “The Grand Union thinks it has this valley contract locked. But they’re going to come up short. I know it. You know it. Everyone in a position to matter knows it.” He lowered his voice. “There’s a man in this county—wealthy, well connected—who wants to see another company take that line. And he pays generously for men who can make that happen.”

Jack felt ice spread through his chest. *Ashworth.* It had to be. The man reaching through every level of the game, pulling strings Jack couldn’t even see yet.

“What exactly would this man want a mechanic to do?” Jack asked carefully.

Nunes smiled wider. “A simple matter. The Grand Union’s tender documents—survey maps, cost estimates, the whole package—are scheduled for delivery to the railway board by Friday. If something were to happen to those documents. Something that couldn’t be traced back to anyone specific...” He slid a folded paper across the table beneath his palm. “There’s fifty sovereigns in this. Half now. Half when it’s done.”

Eleanor’s hand tightened on her mug. Jack could feel her watching him, waiting for him to refuse, to call Nunes out, to do something honorable.

He looked at the folded paper. Fifty sovereigns. More money than he’d seen in a year. And Nunes was offering it to him to sabotage the company that had just given him honest work.

*Loyalty is everything,* Crenshaw had said.

But loyalty to whom? To the railway that paid his wages? Or to the father whose name had been dragged through the mud by men just like Ashworth?

Jack reached out and took the paper. “I’ll consider the offer,” he said.

Nunes nodded, satisfied. “Don’t consider too long. The tender goes in Friday. You’ve got two days.”

He was gone before Jack could respond. The taproom’s noise seemed to swallow him whole, leaving Eleanor and Jack alone at their table, the piece of paper burning between them.

“What in hell do you think you’re doing?” Eleanor hissed.

Jack unfolded the paper. A bank draft for twenty-five sovereigns, drawn on the account of “Hargreave and Sons.”

*The front company. Ashworth’s money.*

“I’m finding out who’s really behind this,” Jack said. “And I’m going to give him exactly what he deserves.”

He tucked the draft into his pocket, feeling the weight of it like a stone. Crenshaw had warned him about loyalty. So had every man who’d ever crossed Jack Mullins’s path. But loyalty was a luxury for men who could afford it. Jack was a man with a dead father, a stolen name, and a score that needed settling.

He would take Nunes’s gold. He would promise sabotage. And on Friday, when the tender went in, he would make sure Ashworth’s men were the ones left holding an empty bag.

Though first, he needed to understand exactly what kind of fire he was playing with.

“Go back to the boarding house,” he said to Eleanor. “Keep the survey equipment safe. I need to walk.”

“Walk where?”

“To Crenshaw’s office. It’s time I learned what this railway is really offering to the valley.”