SEVEN
In Which Midnight Feasts Do Not Go Unpunished
Nic and I had only Dreadnaught to contact, Sebastian no one at all, given that his parents were out of the country at the moment. But Violet had to send almost twenty messages before she could get her siblings to calm down and agree to cover her work shifts. It took the rest of the afternoon to inventory and catalog the Eidolachometer cards, but eventually all were accounted for, and none contained the information we needed to ransom my parents. Over supper, little was eaten and even less was said. With Nic and Violet refusing to converse with each other, it was a relief to retreat to a hot bath in the most new-fashioned lavatory this side of the Exhibition Hall of Modern Conveniences. Only the chill of the water could have driven me from the tub to dry off and accept my military-issued flannel nightgown.
Perhaps if everyone had been on good speaking terms, we would have found the accommodations in the guest barracks something of a pleasant surprise. Spare without being sparse, the narrow beds boasted thick gray-and-white striped coverlets and down pillows. The rug was a splash of crimson against the stone floor, and the fire in the hearth radiated enough heat to make a palatable piece of toast. Indeed, the best amenity by far was the tray of thick-sliced bread, accompanied by jam, butter, and chocolate nut spread.
Violet marched past the offering as though it, too, had offended her. Taking one of the top bunks, she curled up like a Meridian shrimp and turned her back to us. Sebastian quickly gave up being charming and fell asleep in a chair, head lolling and mouth hanging ajar. The occasional snore punctuated the half-dark as I turned down the gas globes and joined Nic.
Agitation had driven him to fiddling, so he’d extracted the Pixii from my messenger bag and neatly disemboweled it upon the rug. Adjustments made to his satisfaction, he returned each switch and screw to its proper place.
“Our destiny has altered over the course of this day,” he said, careful to keep his voice low as he snapped one of the brass faceplates back on, “but our guiding star still points to breadstuffs and jam pots.”
After all that had happened, it was incredibly surreal to sit there with him, fed, warm, and safe. Hard to have a normal conversation, though, with Mama and Papa missing. I forced myself to breathe, to remember the trick of a toasting fork, to hold another piece of bread over the flames. “This is like being back in the nursery.”
“That seems like a very long time ago.” With a wayward lock of hair hanging in his eyes, Nic reminded me of the boy who’d played romp and tussle games upon the hearth rug despite our nanny’s strictest orders, the brother who’d walked three miles to the nearest shop to fetch me a bag of sweets when I was confined to bed.
“Remember smuggling the bread upstairs?” I said after taking a sip of tea. “I hid it under my pinafore while you carried off a pot of marmalade in your trouser pocket.”
“We thought we were so stealthy.” He shook his head at the memory of our exploits, and his hand slid into mine, just like when we were little and scared of something. Thunderstorms, the imagined creatures under the beds . . .
Death.
Because it was the best way to distract him, I switched the subject to science. “What do you remember from our lessons about Malachi Baynard?”
Nic squinted at me. “One of Industria’s founding scientists Malachi Baynard?”
“No, random passerby Malachi Baynard. Yes, dummy, him.”
“He was the one obsessed with the occult. He thought that life and death were merely multiple planes of the same existence.” A suspicious note crept into Nic’s voice. “Why?”
That left me to explain about Mama’s work with Marcus and the Grand Design. By the end of it, Nic had taken off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his handkerchief at least twice.
“Malachi was brilliant but had enough near-death engineering experiences to turn every hair on his head white,” he said. “He was actually pronounced dead twice and resuscitated. He designed and built that machine to try to communicate with the Great Beyond.”
“A place he actually thought he’d been,” I said. “What did he say it was like? Stars and comets and fluffy white clouds?”
“That was the really odd part,” Nic admitted. “All he wrote about it in a journal entry was that it was like ‘going home.’?” When I opened my mouth to ask another question, he shook his hand at me. “Seriously, Penny, that’s all I remember.”
“Allow me to change the subject then.” I jerked my thumb at the bunk where Violet was a lump under the coverlet. “Don’t you think you should apologize?”
Nic flushed up to the tips of his ears, pulled away from me, and sent a furtive glance in Violet’s direction. “It takes two to argue,” he said, “and I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of that particular book.”
I thought about all the times this past year that he’d spoken his mind or expressed his concern for me. Now was the time to return the favor. “You can’t try to control the people you care about, not even to keep them safe. You’ll only push her away.”
“Like I’ve pushed you.” Worry filled his eyes, and the barely healed scratches on his face looked somehow worse by firelight: darker, deeper, with the promise of blood and bone beneath them. “How are you feeling?”
I left the toast upon my fork to scorch as I contemplated the pattern on the rug, pretending to find it very interesting. “Fine. Why do you ask?”
“Don’t play that game with me, Penny,” he cautioned. “Your Ticker stopped today and you nearly died. Again.”
“I’m still here,” I said, trying to reassure both of us. “Still breathing. That’s enough for now, isn’t it?”
“It’s not, no.” Though his voice was low, urgency roughened up the words. “You know what needs to be done, don’t you?”
Pulling the charred bit of bread off the fork, I flung it to the flames and reached for another slice. “I won’t lie abed like some invalid.”
“That’s what our parents would have you do,” Nic said with impatience. “You need to see Warwick.”
The very idea was preposterous. “The man is a criminal. A murderer.”
My twin bent closer in his eagerness to explain. “He’s also the only one who can save you. Papa and I have worked with the surgeons since his arrest, trying to perfect the new implant, but they’re no match for him. And he wants to help.”
“How could you possibly know that?” The words came very slowly, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
The silence spun out between us like cooked sugar from Violet’s fairy-floss machine and then broke. “Because he told me when I went to see him.”
“By all the Bells, Nic, have you lost your mind?” I abandoned the toast completely, dropping the fork on the hearth. Disturbed by the clatter, Violet and Sebastian shifted and resettled, so I lowered my voice. “You went to the prison? When?”
“Months ago.” It seemed Nic didn’t have a look to spare for me now, and perhaps that was just as well. “That weekend you thought I went with Sebastian to Carteblanche.”
“Mama and Papa—”
“Didn’t know. Not until afterward.” My brother scowled with the memory of it. “In this matter, our parents are acting the fools.”
“You really think so? You think them fools to be wary of a man who kidnapped people and experimented on them?” The muscles in my chest tightened like strings on a violin. I’d seen the pictures in the papers, faces that would haunt me for a lifetime. “The last girl, Nic . . . the last victim was only ten years old. What excuse could he give for that?”
“He did it for you, Penny.” Nic kept his voice calm, but an echo of Warwick’s mad passion bled through. “All he ever wanted to do was help you. He told me he just needs the original diagrams and a bit of time to finish your new Ticker.”
Despite sitting so close to the fire, I felt the cold creeping up my legs and arms. A spreading frost reached for my clockwork heart with icy fingers. “Did you know any of this was going to happen? The jailbreak? The kidnapping?”
“No!” Nic’s jaw clenched. “He never said a word to me, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. Or sorry he escaped.”
“Nic, people died in that explosion!”
Now his hands were balled up into fists. “You died in my arms!”
“This morning was just a fainting spell!”
“You know damn well that’s not what I meant!”
Yes, I knew what he meant. The memory of that particular day was stitched into the scars on my chest, relived with each faint ticktock inside me. We’d been picnicking at Sebastian’s country estate. Carteblanche rested its elbows on thousands of acres of rolling lawns, ancient oak trees, and streams. The house itself was the epitome of a country manor: vaguely drafty, enormous, echoing. Thick plaster coated the walls, and the gauze hangings obscured wooden shutters. Nic and I spent a considerable number of our leisure and holiday hours there, perhaps because adult supervision was such a rarity.
On that day, though, my parents had accompanied us. It had been a scant month since Dimitria had died, and we were all clad in a cloud of mourning black. The shadows under Mama’s eyes were the purple-blue of a bruise, and her reddened nose suggested nights of weeping. Papa wore the bleary look of an owl coaxed into the daylight, blinking in surprise at the glowing orb of the sun hanging in a brilliant blue sky. I half expected him to hoot and hurry back to the car; instead he retreated into a bottle of Gentian Amaros.
Warwick had been persuaded to come along with us. He looked ragged about the edges, unkempt and uncared for, as if he’d been sleeping in his suit because it was the last thing Dimitria had touched. Perhaps it was, but I was too afraid to ask. Afraid that if I offered him any words, any comfort, the dam I’d used to shore up my own tears would break.
Hoping to escape the others and my own feelings of guilt, I had gone out into the fields with Sebastian, Violet, and Nic. After reveling in a few moments of freedom and the sun’s warmth on my upturned face, I consulted my pocket copy of Felix Bertram’s Field Guide to Lepidoptera Mechanika, Second Edition. At the ready was a new net of my own devising, one capable of stunning a captured Butterfly with a small electrical discharge.
“The elusive Brimstone shall be mine, by any means fair or foul,” I called to the others, though I would have traded a hundred of the rare and coveted Gonepteryx rhamni—nay, my whole collection of Butterflies—just to have my older sister back.
“I don’t think you ought to be chasing about after mechanical insects,” Mama said, fretting when we returned to the blankets, nets empty, for glasses of lemonade and sandwiches.
Over the previous four weeks, her manner of parenting had shifted from devoted to smothering. When she wasn’t reading tarot cards or dragging me to a séance, she monitored my pulse, my color, every breath drawn, and every mouthful eaten. Nothing was ever good enough to set her mind at ease; her fears were like the lions prowling behind the bars at the Square Park Zoo. She even went so far as to withdraw me from school and had forbidden me from riding cycles and horses both.
Mama’s forehead puckered like the row of pinch pleats in her bustle skirt. “Isn’t her color a bit high, Emery?”
Papa was already snoring, having consumed his bottle, so it was Nic who answered.
“She was walking in the sun for an hour, Mama. Note the freckles on her nose, a sure sign of good health.” With the eye she couldn’t see, my twin winked at me before clapping Warwick on the shoulder. “How much longer are you going to fiddle with that thing?”
Startled, the surgeon peered up from the clockwork innards of the original Ticker prototype. “It’s almost done. Not as refined as I would like, though, and the pumping mechanism sticks every so often. The next one will be more sophisticated. Then . . .”
He paused, inevitably thinking of the surgery I’d need to keep me alive.
I didn’t want to reflect on it any more than he did. “I’m going for another walk. Would anyone else care to join me?”
Ever willing to play the knight in shining armor to a needful lord or lady, Sebastian volunteered. “I have a new project in development I’d like you to take a look at.”
Before Mama could protest, I had found my feet. With Violet and Nic trailing behind, Sebastian led us to the Carteblanche stables. Inside, the scents of warm metal, saddle soap, and hay tickled my nostrils. Mellow sunshine slanted in through the chinks in the wooden slats and bounced off the gleaming surfaces of a prototype ThoroughBred. Seventeen hands of slender, copper-plated equine rose above us. Its forelock, withers, and hooves already showed signs of blue-green oxidation, but the patina only added to her charm.
“I give you Her Royal Highness, the Princess Andromeda!” Sebastian said with a grand flourish.
“Better to have named her Bucket of Bolts and a Prayer,” Nic said, “because that’s what you’ll need for her to complete one jump, much less an entire course.”
“Never mind him,” I said to the metallic mount, reaching for a bridle and reins. “You’re gorgeous.”
“She’s hot-blooded,” Sebastian said with barely suppressed pride. “I modeled her after the Bhaskarian racers.”
The winding key had stuck at first, but he forced it around. Andromeda’s shuttered eyes slid open, the amber fire in their depths growing brighter as her inner gears picked up speed. Whiiiiir-clang! Whiiiiir-clang! She lifted one dainty foot, then the other, following him out of the barn.
Nic’s professional curiosity soon got the better of him. “I suppose the jumps knock her balance wheels loose?”
“The mechanics spend more time realigning her innards than they do riding her,” Sebastian admitted with a laugh.
I had no idea what came over me in that moment. Perhaps it was the desire to call my fate my own. The need to take control of my life. Or it could have been the thought of Dimitria dropping dead without warning and the knowledge that the very same thing could happen to me at any time.
“There’s no better diagnostic than putting her through her paces,” I announced, abruptly grasping Andromeda’s reins.
“By all the Cogs of the Carillon,” Nic said the moment he regained his wits and his tongue, “you’re going to kill yourself! And then Mama is going to kill me!”
Though I’d always cherished my twin’s good opinion of me, I was beyond tired of being bossed about. “You can weep for me when I’m gone and not a moment sooner!”
The words cut deep; I saw it on Nic’s face.
Conscience already pricking me, I gathered my skirts in my fist. “Give me a hand, Sebastian.”
He looked from his pristine gray gloves to my muddied boots, then, with a long-suffering sigh, helped me to clamber up. “The things I endure for you, my dear Penelope.”
“Your devotion is noted along with your sacrifice.” I stroked Andromeda’s glowing copper coat. Then, squeezing with my knees and holding on for dear life, I shouted, “Tally-ho!”
She had leapt forward, racing down the road. My perch was precarious, but the pace was exhilarating. I lost my hat, shedding hairpins until my curls tangled over my shoulders in wild streamers. It might have been a few weeks since I last rode, but I hadn’t forgotten the way of it. The mechanical steed was a bit tricky to master, with an occasionally hitching gait that necessitated adjustments of balance and posture.
Determined to take at least one jump, I had aimed her for a low stone wall. Behind me, I heard a faint cry from Nic.
“Penny, take care!”
“I’m trying, but there’s only so much care I can manage right now!” I braced myself for the jump.
It had felt like we were airborne forever. The forest blurred into shifting draperies of moss-green velvet. The sun crystallized like a drop of honey on a plate of robin’s-egg blue. Then we landed, and several things happened simultaneously:
I held my breath.
Andromeda’s innards made a terrible noise.
My heart seized up.
With a gasp and a cry, I had let go of the reins and clutched at my chest. My nails scrabbled ineffectually against the black mourning dress, but even if I’d been able to tear the cloth aside, there was nothing I could do to turn back the tide of pain. The world cartwheeled around me as I slid off Andromeda and landed in the mud. Unable to breathe, unable to think, I stared up at the sky as it darkened to midnight taffeta shot through with brilliant silver shooting stars.
Death wears a ball gown.
Nic had reached me first. He scooped me up and carried me back to the house at a flat run, calling for help, for our parents, and, in between gasps, he begged me not to die. My head bounced off his chest with every hasty step, but I hadn’t the breath to protest. It hurt. It hurt, but I clung to the pain with tenacious fingers, welcoming it. As long as I could feel anything at all, I was still alive.
But not for long, I feared.
I heard Violet sobbing, my mother screaming my name, Warwick’s shout of “Get her into the house!”
Then we had entered the kitchen; all cold white tile and shining metal surfaces, it served as an excellent stand-in for a hospital. Nic set me down on the table near the fire, and Warwick turned up his sleeves.
“Compress her chest with your hands,” he ordered my brother. “Keep her blood moving.”
Someone must have fetched his medicine bag from the car. The next thing I knew, gentle hands clamped a cotton rag reeking of ether over my nose and mouth. I tried to pull it away as everything began to fade. Nic leaned over me, and his hazel eyes looked into mine.
That was the moment he broke; I saw it happen as clearly as if he’d cracked in half.
After that, there was nothing. Nothing until I woke with a bit of clockwork machinery lodged in my chest. A piece of technology I was never meant to test. Ticktock was the reminder it gave me with every passing second.
Looking at my brother now, I knew I wasn’t the only one with scars. After a year of shadowboxing, it seemed only willpower and the quiet determination to keep me alive kept him going.
“Every time you die, it breaks something inside me.” Nic let out a harsh breath. “What if I can’t get your Ticker restarted the next time your balance wheels go off-kilter?”
“Cygna was only a day old when she passed. Dimitria made it to eighteen.” I drew my knees up, wrapping my arms about them and resting my chin atop. “The Farthing women tend to leave the party without notice.”
“Don’t say that.” He swallowed so hard that I could see the knot in his throat bob down and up again. “You can’t leave me here by myself. The only Farthing boy. The only one without a death sentence hanging over my heart. Mama and Papa already look through me, trying to see where you are, what you’re doing, how you’re faring. If you die, they’ll never see me properly again.”
I would have argued, but I felt much the same after Dimitria died, like I was the ghost haunting the house. “I won’t go quietly, Nic. To my last breath, I’ll be kicking and screaming and fighting to take another.”
“With Warwick’s help, you wouldn’t have to,” he said softly.
“He took our parents, Nic. How can you trust him?”
“I . . . I guess I can sympathize. Always trying to do the right thing, even when loved ones fight you every step of the way.” Reaching past me, he snagged my messenger bag. A quick rummage produced Papa’s watch. “Mind if I hold onto this for a bit?”
I leaned against his shoulder. “A sundial isn’t going to be of much use by firelight.”
“True.” Nic snapped it open and lifted the metal dial into place. “But maybe it will keep me from wandering too far afield in my dreams.” Pressing the briefest of kisses to my forehead, he made his way to one of the unoccupied beds and climbed in.
I also retired, though I didn’t think I’d sleep at all. Staring at the top bunk, I listened to the soft, even breathing of the others. The fire was mere embers by the time I relaxed enough to drift off. Swirling in my head like fog off the River Aire, the events of the day largely featured the honorable Marcus Kingsley and the expression on his face when he’d placed the iron bracelets on my wrists. Recalling him there, on bended knee and looking up at me so earnestly, did very odd things to my Ticker.
I rolled over and put the pillow atop my head.
“Penny?” A gentle hand on my shoulder roused me.
“I can fetch a bucket of water,” said someone decidedly masculine.
My brain skipped about, leaping to the realization that Sebastian and Violet stood over me, that I wasn’t in my own four-poster bed, that this wasn’t Glasshouse at all, and that my hair must look a fright.
Being a layabout isn’t one of my countless faults, and I can go from asleep to awake faster than Sebastian’s Combustible can charge down a thoroughfare. “What time is it?”
“Rise-and-shine time.” Violet was already dressed in a gown of navy silk twill, expensive for all its lack of frills and fussing. It was strange to see her so somberly dressed, but she’d made it her own with an acid-green sash and a matching ribbon tied about her head.
I squinted at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Did I miss breakfast?”
“Perhaps that’s where he went,” Sebastian said, turning to stir up the fire in the hearth. He wore a suit that was not his. Though it lacked the impeccable tailoring that was his calling card, he looked affably rakish, as usual.
“Where who went?” I stretched to remove the kinks from my spine.
“Nic was gone by the time we woke up,” he clarified.
Violet sniffed to indicate that my brother’s whereabouts were of no interest to her. I, however, sat up and cracked my head on the wooden slats of the bunk above.
“He’s not here?”
“I checked the lavatories already,” Sebastian said, clearly puzzled by my reaction. “But not the dining hall.”
An uncomfortable tingling took up residence in my spine and tickled at the back of my brain, like I needed to sneeze but couldn’t quite manage it.
Damn it, Nic, I was worried enough about Mama and Papa. Now I have to worry about you as well?
I could easily imagine his retort of “Turnabout is fair play.”
Hastening from the bed, I ran my fingers through the snarled mess that was my hair and cast about for something to wear. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
“You still have circles under your eyes from yesterday, and we thought you could use an extra hour.” Violet had approximately four hundred and seventy-three frowns in her repertoire, which ranged from “The Biscuits Went Flat” to “You’re Being Dreadfully Annoying.” Just now, still peeved with my brother, she wore “Don’t You Use That Tone of Voice on Me.”
“There’s an hour, and then there’s an hour,” was my response as I twitched aside the collar of my nightdress. Inserting the key into the Ticker’s faceplate, I turned it for the first of a hundred clicks with a wince; the touch of the cold metal was like splashing ice water over my face. “I assume there’s a dress for me?”
“There is.” When I was done with the winding, Violet handed me a skirt and bodice of bottle green, then flapped her hands at Sebastian. “Turn your back, please.”
“And here I thought I would be allowed to witness that mystery of mysteries, a lady’s toilette,” he said as he obliged.
She slapped his shoulder anyway. “Don’t be pert.”
Fingers flying, I dressed in record time. Dreadnaught would have marveled at the sight of it. “Despite his other shortcomings, Marcus Kingsley has decent taste in clothing.”
“Impressive how he got your measurements so close to perfect,” Sebastian said, peeking over his shoulder with a wicked grin.
Violet forced me to sit long enough for her to plait my hair and coil it at the nape of my neck. “We’ll probably have to take one of those SkyDarts back to the city,” she said, her words muffled by a mouthful of pins. “No need to look a right mess when we arrive.”
“Breakfast first.” Sebastian checked his pocket watch as he led the way to the door. “I warn you, I’ll start nibbling the draperies if I have to wait much longer.”
The commissary was a shifting sea of gray wool, so Nic would be easy to pick out. Indeed, the dresses Violet and I wore, plain as they were in contrast to our usual attire, drew a bit of attention. In his midnight black three-piece suit, Sebastian enjoyed himself thoroughly, strolling like a gentleman taking the air, greeting every enlisted man and woman, officer and private alike, with his dimples on full display.
“Stop that,” Violet hissed at him as she slid into a chair. “You’re making an utter ass of yourself.”
“I can’t seem to help myself,” Sebastian said without taking his eyes off the group sitting adjacent us. “Life is short, so I’m going to have dessert whenever possible.”
The morning papers were stacked on the sturdy oak tables. Although filled with coverage of the courthouse blast, they contained precious little information beyond the ugliest of details: “The damage to the structure is worse than originally reported.” “Twenty-seven people were rushed to Currey Hospital.” “Eleven Dead!”
More people had died as a result of their injuries, then. I glanced over the worst of the headlines, my stomach sinking further with each typeset word. By the time I finished, I had no appetite, though I had to eat or suffer the consequences later. The military’s idea of a simple repast meant that the rolls were plain instead of braided and the butter wasn’t carved into rosettes. Brawn and galantines quivered alongside fish kedgeree and crinkled strips of bacon. Homely stewed prunes occupied the space next to a platter of fresh apricots and strawberries. I studiously avoided the foods that wobbled, making my way through a plate of bread and fruit.
“Where’s the tea?”
I’d barely finished the request when an arm reached past me and delivered a pot to the table. I twisted about to thank the server and found myself looking up at Marcus Kingsley instead. I instantaneously realized I had half a dozen hairs out of place and shadows under my eyes from staying up too late. Everyone else shot to attention and didn’t relax until he’d taken a seat just to my right.
“I hope you all slept well,” he said by way of greeting. Sebastian and Violet murmured their thanks for the comfortable beds and clean linen. When they returned their attention to the food, Marcus moved an inch closer to me and lowered his voice. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet this morning, Tesseraria. Are you feeling well?”
“I’ve a bit of a headache.”
And that headache is my twin.
“Rest easy that I will not add to it.” Marcus poured out a cup of tea and passed it to me. “I’ve given myself a strict lecture about what’s important, and my top priority is locating Warwick and your parents.”
As I tried to find a way to explain that we might need to add Nic to that list, Marcus passed me the cream and sugar bowl.
“I’d also like to offer an apology,” he continued. “I’m not enormously fond of surprises, and I’m afraid I blamed you for much of the chaos yesterday. I do my best to plan against the worst possible scenario, but you make that a bit difficult.” With a crooked smile, he took a plate and spooned out a heap of scrambled eggs. “Have you eaten yet? Or are you one of those people who can’t stomach food first thing in the morning?”
Forgetting her grievances with the world, Violet smiled into her teacup. Sebastian outright choked on a mouthful of bacon.
“You have no idea with whom you are dealing,” he finally said when he’d cleared his airway. “I’ve seen Penny reduce an entire cake to crumbs.”
I glared at him. “It was a very small cake.”
“But of course,” Marcus said. “And just what the table is missing. I forget, sometimes, that civilians enjoy more varied fare.” He went to signal a passing waiter, but I caught his hand in mine.
“Please don’t trouble yourself.” Thinking of the danger my brother might be swimming in by now, my fingers clenched Marcus’s. “Have you seen Nic anywhere about the Fortress this morning?”
“I was just going to remark upon his absence,” Marcus said, studying my hand before continuing. “We’re not in the habit of pulling guests from their beds in the night, if that’s what you’re implying.”
I wrestled with my conscience and my sense of family loyalty. If Nic had gone back to the house and found the Augmentation papers, Marcus needed to know about it. There were also the bracelets to consider; I owed him the truth and was honor-bound to share whatever information I had. It was the only way to see the complete puzzle for what it was. “Is there any way he could have gotten back to the city this morning?”
Though Marcus didn’t move, every line of his body suddenly indicated we were in the presence of the Legatus legionus. “Why would he leave you behind?”
Softly worded, but still an interrogation. Though I’d never smoked a day in my life, I almost wished for a cigarette to better play the part. “He’s operating under the misguided notion that I need to be rescued from myself. I think he’s gone back to look for the Augmentation papers.”
“Why didn’t he say something to us first?” Violet set down her spoon with a clatter, her expression quickly shifting from peevish to puzzled to a level of worry that almost matched my own.
“He wants to turn the papers over to Warwick.” It hurt me to admit such things; I wasn’t accustomed to the role of Vile Betrayer, and there was a desperate edge to my words, an unspoken plea not to judge my brother. “Warwick claims he can upgrade my Ticker if he can only get a look at the original diagrams.”
The onslaught of information caused Marcus to fumble, putting his teacup down with a clack! on the table. He recovered quickly, though, tapping out several inquiries on his RiPA.
“One would almost think,” Sebastian murmured into his napkin, “the good Legatus is growing accustomed to the perpetual chaos that surrounds you and yours, Penny.”
I kicked him under the table. Only a moment later, the answers to Marcus’s inquiries came in, and he relayed them to us.
“None of the SkyDarts went out, but two larger transports left this morning. He could have slipped aboard one of those.” Marcus was up and moving before I could push away from the table. Violet, Sebastian, and I had to run to catch up.
“I might be mistaken,” I offered, trying to tamp down my fear that we were already too late.
“I’m more inclined to trust your instincts.” Despite the brisk clip he maintained all the way out to the landing platform, Marcus continued to send RiPA messages with military precision. “Head for the end of the row.”
“All of us this time?” Sebastian asked. “Or did you want another moment alone with Miss . . . er, I beg your pardon, Tesseraria Farthing?”
“Get in the damned SkyDart, Stirling, before I have you charged with war crimes.”
This time, there was no conversation, no explanation of lap belts or offers of antinausea medication. Marcus went through his preflight checklist with rapid-fire accuracy, settled into his seat, and slipped on a metal earpiece to request clearance for takeoff. He got the answer he wanted within seconds, and the SkyDart rocketed into the sky.
“We’ll land at the airfield,” he told us. “I don’t dare draw attention to the house by putting down in the street.”
I leaned forward to shout into his ear. “If Nic’s headed back to Glasshouse, we haven’t time for stealth!”
“Everyone’s on tenterhooks as it is, Penny!” The winds ripped away all formalities as Marcus banked to the right. Though he was very much in control of the aircraft, his maneuvers were more abrupt than on yesterday’s flight, his style more aggressive. “With Warwick at large, I’ve had to recall every one of my deployments to Bhaskara and Aígyptos for security details. Work has stalled out on the Grand Design with your mother and the blueprints missing. And now I find myself chasing down your brother in the hopes that he hasn’t yet handed sensitive medical information over to a terrorist.”
That comment rankled as much as it worried me. “It’s our family’s research and information, I’ll kindly remind you. It’s not a crime, what he’s doing.”
“Aiding and abetting a fugitive?” Our descent became unnecessarily bumpy when Marcus turned toward me. “That most certainly is a crime, by every definition of the word.”
He was like an Eidolachometer machine: reading the situation like a punch card, making every decision based on plans and patterns with no margin for error. The reaction vexed me greatly, and I sat back in my seat with a sharp “Keep your eyes on the runway, if you please!”
The SkyDart glided to a halt near a hangar where heavily armed Ferrum Viriae waited with two new-model Combustibles. Frederick Carmichael was among the guards, but not as the jovial traffic officer I knew. Stern jawed and serious eyed, he presented his bracelets for inspection.
Satisfied, Marcus turned and reached for my arm. “Let’s go, Penny.”
Equal measures angry and afraid, I clambered into the car under my own power. “Might I remind you that my position in the Ferrum Viriae is an honorary one? I don’t take orders from you or anyone else.”
“Which is fine, just so long as you understand I’m not about to let your brother conspire against the empire.” He turned over the engine and roared off the airfield at top speed.
The security team followed us in the second vehicle. I was surprised by the depth of reassurance I felt in their presence as we barreled down the ash-strewn streets toward Glasshouse, but I wouldn’t have admitted it for all the dessert in SugarWerks.
Sitting in the front seat, Sebastian glanced over his shoulder at me. “You do realize that you’re arguing with one of our few allies.”
“Mind your own business, sir.” I tilted my chin toward the window and studied my worried reflection.
Never one to let a dormant hedgehog alone, the indomitable gentleman nudged Marcus with his elbow. “You know you ought to kiss her and patch things up before the rent cannot be darned, Kingsley.”
Heat rushed to my face. The myriad of rearview mirrors along the dash reflected Marcus’s similar expression as he glowered at Sebastian.
“You keep your ridiculous whiskers out of this, Stirling,” he added.
“Ridiculous you say?” Sebastian traced his thin moustache with a contemplative finger. “If you liked me better clean-shaven, you ought to have said so.”
Without preamble, Marcus swerved right with a sudden squealing of tires. Glass shards rained over us as swift-flying projectiles shattered the Combustible’s rear window. Silver fléchettes riddled the upholstery and dashboard.
Someone had been lying in wait for us: more of Warwick’s mercenaries, or I missed my guess. I twisted about to get a better look in time to see them run our secondary unit off the road.
“Marcus!” I shouted, but he’d seen it in his mirrors.
“It’s all right,” he said, though that seemed far from the truth. “I planned for a contingency like this. Trade places with me, Stirling.”
Sebastian blanched. “Not for a million aureii—”
“Now!”
“All right, all right!” Somehow, Sebastian slid over while Marcus climbed into the other seat.
“Drive as fast as you can,” Marcus instructed, fastening his safety belt. “Evasive maneuvers only if necessary. I don’t want us to end up in the gutter with a broken axle.” He reached under the front seat and extracted a long case of polished wood before he turned his attention to Violet and me. “The metal panels of the car are reinforced, so stay low.”
We obeyed without question. With my cheek pressed to the floor, I could feel the engine strain as Sebastian jammed his foot down on the accelerator.
“Care to explain what in the Cogs’ names you are doing?” Sebastian swung the car to the right and immediately corrected for the gravel alongside the road. Apparently evasive maneuvers were necessary.
“Going up and out,” Marcus said, pulling on a pair of tinted goggles and kicking loose the latch on a counterweighted wheel. The roof over his head slid back on brass tracks, and his seat clanked up to fill the open square.
“Marcus!” I twisted out of Violet’s grasp, flying iron nails be damned.
Protected by the overlapping metal plates of the turret chair, he already had a very large and ominous-looking weapon braced against his shoulder. “Get down, Penny!”
Violet caught me by the back of my skirts just as Marcus fired. Muzzle flare, then the deafening thunderclap of the shot reverberated through my bones before I was once more on the floor of the car. There was the whistle of the projectile, and no one could have missed the sudden, groundshaking explosion that followed, nor the screech of tires and the rending of metal.
The turret chair descended into the car with a shudder and a rattle. Marcus put down the shoulder cannon and pulled off his goggles.
“What did you do?” I popped up again like a demented jack-in-the-box and saw the enemy’s rear bumper protruding from a large, smoking crater a hundred yards back.
“I blew a hole in the road,” Marcus replied, calmer now that he’d coped with the worst of the threat. “The first course of action for the Ferrum Viriae is to discourage criminal behavior.”
“What if they’d swerved around the pit?” I demanded.
“Step two is disarm.”
“And step three?”
“If they’d been foolhardy enough to give me three opportunities to shoot at them, they wouldn’t have lived to see a fourth,” Marcus said, picking up a handset and ringing the Communications Center. “This is the Legatus. The suspects gave pursuit on Second Etoile Road. We’re en route to Glasshouse. Send backup.”
“The Pixii is no good as a long-distance weapon,” I said the moment he was done. “Do you have another gun in here?”
“Under your seat,” he answered.
I stuck my hand under the leather cushion and extracted a metal case. Releasing twin latches and opening the lid, I revealed two service revolvers. Heavily engraved along the barrels, they had polished wooden grips and held six black-powder rounds each. I checked both cylinders to make certain they were loaded before handing one to Violet.
“What about the men who ended up in the crater?” she asked. “Do you need to double back and arrest them?”
Pulling out his MAG, Marcus checked the charger and the safety switch before answering her. “Responding units will be on the scene in minutes. They’ll take care of the hostiles. After an impact like that, they won’t be fleeing the scene.”
Sebastian maintained a near breakneck speed. “In case everyone failed to notice, they’re jumping the deadline. Noon, they said. Something must have spooked them.” He clipped the raised sidewalk when he swung the car onto Trinovantes Avenue.
Marcus braced himself against the door. “Watch out!”
Another hail of bullets ricocheted off the car. Slamming on the brakes, Sebastian steered into the turn. By luck or by grace, he swung the Combustible around outside Glasshouse. We collided violently with the curb just before the front stairs, and Violet and I were thrown to the floorboards again.
“There are mercenaries at three, six, and nine o’clock!” Already reloading the shoulder cannon, Marcus passed Sebastian his MAG. “Do your best to hold them off until backup arrives!”
All the doors hung partially ajar, and Violet was the first to lean out and get off a shot. It was one thing to shoot a handgun in an open meadow at a target pinned to a roll of summer hay, and quite another to pull the trigger in a confined space. All the Carillon bells seemed to swing in the space between my ears, and I shook my head to clear it.
I shouldn’t have bothered. A second later, Marcus fired the shoulder cannon and Sebastian let loose with a barrage of fléchettes from the MAG. Answering gunfire whistled around us, clipping the mirrors, riddling the seats. Glass shattered and fell out of the windows of nearby houses. Distraught neighbors screamed and incoming sirens wailed. I knew we should wait for backup, but it was possible Nic was inside. I had to stop him from doing something foolhardy. Something we’d all regret.
“Cover me,” I told Marcus as I ducked out of the car and ran for the stairs.
“Penny!” His panicked shout was lost in another volley of gunfire, and brickwork around me exploded in puffs of gray and white powder. Moving with lightning speed, Marcus turned and lobbed two Less-Than-Lethal grenades at the enemy—not part of his plan, perhaps, but effective nonetheless. Upon impact with the street, the grenades detonated, and one hundred spherical Bhaskarian-rubber projectiles pelted the mercenaries. They fell with shouted oaths and groans, bruised but not bleeding, as I took the stairs three at a time.
Though the locks had been changed, the knob still turned under my hand. Out of breath but otherwise unharmed, I peered around the front door. Violet held off an advance of six new men. Two more were creeping in from the left. I shot the first in the shoulder and missed the second when he ducked. Marcus hit him before I could get off another round.
“Get Nic,” he yelled at me. “Don’t let him leave with the papers!”
It was an order I didn’t mind obeying. I ran down the hall and into my parents’ study, half hoping I’d been wrong and Nic wouldn’t be there. But my twin knelt on the floor, hurriedly packing leather notebooks into a rough-cloth satchel. At the back of the wall safe, a secondary compartment stood open.
My Ticker lurched and settled. “You found the Augmentation diagrams.”
Nic slowly turned to face me. Everything he wore was slightly askew, as though large hands had rumpled him and set him back on his feet. His eyes were hard, his hair the bristled ruff on a brindled cur. “I played hide-and-seek with Papa, too. Took me most of the morning to realize he puzzle-boxed this wall the same as the desk. The compass flange on his watch matches the tooled metal on the inside of the safe. There’s a slot at the back, so slim as to go almost undetected. Almost.”
“So the watch unlocked a hidden partition,” I summed up as I sidled into the room, the revolver concealed by the folds in my skirt. “Time is key. That’s a clever bit of clever. What about the blueprints for the Grand Design?”
“No sign of them. The Legatus will have to look elsewhere.”
Outside, our friends exchanged another volley of shots and shouts with the mercenaries, but I didn’t flinch. “How are you going to rendezvous with Warwick? You don’t know where he is.”
Nic held up a message cylinder, silver this time but similarly unmarked. “I have instructions. This arrived the same time I did.”
“And just what are your instructions?” I stared at it, wishing I could see through the metal.
“I’m not saying just yet.” He tucked the tube deep into his pocket. “I wanted to persuade you to come with me until all the men with guns showed up. Now I need to meet with Warwick first, to be certain it’s safe. That he really does want to help you. I’ll send word when I’m convinced. Until then, you need to stay with Marcus and the others.”
Bad enough that he would sneak out this morning, but the idea of him entering the viper’s nest alone chilled me. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You deserve to live, Penny, don’t you understand that? That’s why you snapped that day at Carteblanche and climbed up on Andromeda. Just existing isn’t enough for you. Shouldn’t be enough for you.” Determination settled over his features, turning them to granite. “I won’t hold you in my arms and watch you die, Penny. Not again.”
I stood in the doorway, blocking his exit. “And I won’t let you give those papers to that monster.”
Nic didn’t so much as flicker an eyelid before he charged. I had no time to raise the gun, not that I could have brought myself to use it, and it flew from my hand when he collided with me. Crashing through the set of doors, we stumbled across the hallway and into a storage alcove under the stairs. I landed on a pile of winter boots, and before I could regain my footing, Nic exited and slammed the door shut. As I struggled to right myself and the crazy tangle of skirts billowing about me, I heard the key twist in the lock.
“You’re going to do as you’re told for once, and stay out of harm’s way!” he shouted. “Do nothing unless I message you otherwise. And tell Violet that I’m sorry.”
The finality in his voice raised every one of the hairs on my arms. I crawled forward on hands and knees. “Nic, don’t!”
“Good-bye, Penny.” My brother’s voice went flat, all emotion ironed out of it as though by hot steel plates. Footsteps confirmed his retreat.
I pounded my fists against the sturdy wood until the key fell out of the lock and pinged against the floor. Putting an eye to the keyhole, I could only watch, helpless, as Nic grasped the satchel with all the medical documents and climbed nimbly out the window.
“Come back here,” I shouted with impotent rage, “and open this—”
Without warning, the door obeyed. I fell into the hallway and at the feet of a startled Dreadnaught. The chatelaine brandished the key in one hand and a cast-iron poker in the other.
“Penny!” she gasped, putting a hand to her chest. “Whatever are you doing in the boot cupboard?”
Pulse thudding in my ears, I vaulted past her. In the study, I paused at the safe long enough to reach inside and pull out my father’s pocket watch from the false door. Snapping it shut, I stuffed it down my bodice. “Nic’s found the Augmentation files. He’s taking them to Warwick.”
Dreadnaught used a very naughty word that was altogether out of character for her. “And the gunfight in the street?”
“Mercenaries after Nic and the papers. Stay inside and away from the windows.” Contradicting my own advice, I scrambled onto the ledge and slid down to the driveway. Nic was nowhere in sight.
Dreadnaught appeared overhead. “The Vitesse is in the coach house!”
I dashed to the outbuilding. There was no covert way to turn over the engine, so I gave it a flying start by running the bike down the length of the driveway and jumping on as it shot into the road. The sudden noise startled both the mercenaries and the Ferrum Viriae soldiers who had arrived in the interim. Marcus and the others called to me and signaled I should stop, but there was no time to make explanations or apologies as I rocketed through the worst of the fighting.
Besides which, I wasn’t sorry. I was petrified. I had to catch up with Nic before anyone else did. Weaving between cars and buggies, I paid scant regard to their mirrors or my limbs in my haste to find my twin. To get just about anywhere in Bazalgate, he’d have to head for the Heart of the Star. As I scanned the crowded avenues for him, cinders from the secondary fires triggered by the courthouse explosion drifted down on me.
Almost at the roundabout, I caught a lucky glimpse of him hunched inside an open-air cab.
“Nic!” With one arm raised to wave at him, I was unprepared for the jolt of something slamming into the back of the Vitesse.
A dilapidated vehicle sped up alongside me, the occupants’ faces contorted as the driver veered at me again. I didn’t know if their plan was to run me off the road or pull me from the seat, and I didn’t care. I swung abruptly into the roundabout behind Nic’s cab and promptly lost control of my cycle.
My brother yelled something as the Vitesse crossed all eight lanes of traffic. I crashed into the raised stone pavers that encircled the Heart of the Star and took a header over the handlebars. For a split second, everything moved slowly and silently. Then I noted the crack of my elbow and the scrape of my cheek against the rough ground. The shrill blare of a police whistle. My brother shouting at me from a very great distance.
It was that day at Carteblanche all over again, except when Nic ran toward me, three blurry figures grabbed him. Tossing a sack over his head, they threw him into the back of the Combustible that ran me off the road.
I clung to consciousness as everything around me softened like ice custard melting in the sun. A scream built up inside me, but “Nic” was all I managed before darkness swallowed the word.