The Clockwork Crown (15 page)

“My mother. My dear mother. The true heir to the throne.” He snorted. “All her stories of growing up as an orphan with the prudish Percivals and how the grit of the field never washed from beneath her nails, and here she was, the missing princess. I figured she was one of King Kethan's bastards, really. It seems more appropriate that she's legitimate. Suits her.”

He looked to a crooked calendar on the wall, squinting, and flipped through several months to find the current page. “What day of the week is it? Ah. Well. Tonight's the night, then. I know the boys on duty.” He walked to the counter and tipped a burlap bag of flour onto a slab of wood.

“You want to do this tonight?” Octavia's heart pounded at the thought, but at the same time she was relieved. Get in, get out. Succeed, fail. Let it all be done before Alonzo arrived.

“What my dear mother doesn't know—­among many, many things—­is that I am intimately familiar with the palace. I had to guard the old doss house when I was first conscripted. I know every crack and cubbyhole. I can get us in.”

“What, were you a Clockwork Dagger at the palace?” Octavia asked. She rubbed her foot against her calf.

“Ha! The first rule among Clockwork Daggers is you never say you're a Clockwork Dagger. You say nothing, make ­people wonder.”

­“People will assume the answer is yes.”

He smoothed the flour with a swipe of his hand. ­“People are idiots. A man can't be defined by what he was, but by what he is. I'm the humble owner of a bakery and engage in various other entrepreneurial pursuits, when the mood suits me. Now look here.” With his fingertip, he drew a square in the brown powder. “The vault is on the far side of the grounds. Guards always mutter that the old side is haunted, cursed. Not like the newer side of the palace is any better. It all burned in the attack.” He shrugged, box coat loose on his shoulders.

“Cursed? Like how the Wasters claim their land is cursed?”

“The whole bloody continent is cursed. You look around Mercia? ­People say there are no trees here because of the factories, but you take a gander at a daguerreotype from forty years ago, the skies are clear and there are still some plants to be found. The Waste is better for growing things these days. At least battles turn over the soil, and blood and flesh make good fertilizer—­girl, don't dent anything!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rivka said. She picked up the part she had dropped.

Mr. Stout gestured over his shoulder. “She might grow up to be a decent mechanic, so long as some buck doesn't get her in the pudding club these next few years. Harder to assemble an engine with a babe strapped to your teat. Now see, this is where the gate is.”

He rambled on, sketching out the map in flour, discussing the locations of guards and going off on a dozen other tangents.

Octavia listened and pressed her arms against her body. She scratched her boot against her calf, shifting from foot to foot, but it did nothing to ease the irritation buried beneath cloth and leather.

Irritation just like the skin of her arms.

The bark was spreading.

 

C
HAPTER
12

Octavia stared out the
small window at the front of the bakery and couldn't see a single star through the quilt of smog. Buildings pressed in, neighbors with no comprehension of personal space. Faint glowstone lights lined the street below. Electric wires crisscrossed in thick tangles though few windows revealed bright glows. Everything felt darker, gloomier, especially after the modern brightness of Tamarania.

“Caskentia is known for two straightforward approaches to life,” said Devin Stout. He sharpened a knife against a whetstone. “If negotiation is possible, use bribery. If negotiations aren't an option, murder is. Unfortunately, murder is the messier of the two, and we have to wear Evandia's white livery to get in.”

I won't think of that possibility. We can get in and out without any deaths. “
A shame I can't just wear my uniform as it is,” said Octavia. Instead, she had layered a palace housekeeper's plain frock over her Percival gear. Considering the chill of the night, she was grateful for the extra warmth.

“It's daft that you insist on wearing that Percival swag at all. You look like a stuffed sausage, though really, a lot of the servant girls at the palace do, so you'll actually blend in.” The man was like a cruder version of his mother—­his mouth constant, his tact thin.

Mr. Stout and Rivka had left the bakery for part of the afternoon and returned with livery for each of them to wear. “I like to pop into the palace every so often, see if there's anything new,” he had said. As if the royal palace were a community garden that might offer new flowers in bloom.

The fact that the palace was so porous, so susceptible to bribery, wasn't a surprise. Octavia wasn't a moppet in a nappy; she knew how Caskentia operated. The shock came in Mr. Stout's attitude. He didn't know fear. His heart rate didn't spike. To him, this request to break into the vault didn't seem like a big fuss.

Rivka felt differently. Mr. Stout had insisted she come along. Octavia had argued against placing the child in danger, but he stated that they were a package deal. Rivka hadn't argued one way or another, but the terror was there, melded too readily with her song.
She's accustomed to constant fear in his presence.

There had been no chance to talk to the girl alone. Mr. Stout kept her in his shadow. Octavia wondered where her mother was, why he had kept the girl's existence hidden from Mrs. Stout. Was it shame over Rivka's harelip? Her obvious Frengian heritage? Octavia couldn't see Mrs. Stout being bothered by those things.

“Let's go, then.” Mr. Stout swaggered out. His coat dangled past his buttocks, the trousers showing the chickenlike scrawniness of his legs. Rivka wore a smaller version of Octavia's attire and carried a basket burdened with more white laundry. Her eyes were round and solemn against her darker skin, her chin often tucked as if she could hide her upper lip.

Octavia had folded some of the laundry and half stuffed it into the top of her satchel, as if the entire bag carried more of the same.

Auto and foot traffic had dwindled as the hour neared curfew. Octavia was thankful for fewer bodies about, though the idea of wandering after hours worried her. Criminals would still be about—­the police worst of all.

“Kethan's bastards! Move yer wagon!” roared a lorry driver, laying on the horn. Some young bucks strolled along, hats at jaunty angles, while young women scurried in tight packs like prey animals. The air stank of a peculiar mix of rotting fish and ammonia. They crossed to walk along the outside of the palace walls. Gray bricks extended some ten feet high, the top crested with spikes.

Mr. Stout motioned to a gate as they walked on by. Iron bars reinforced battered wooden planks. Paint layered the wood in myriad colors. It reeked of urine. “Everyone calls this the protest gate, or the bloody gate. Evandia's tower overlooks it, you see. It's a good place to come for a piss, if you're willing to risk a potshot from the guards up top.”

“Everyone hates Evandia,” Octavia murmured. The brick wall was battered and patched, made ancient by abuse.

“I don't hate her, not like some do, though she's done a right job of botching the kingdom, hasn't she? I know many a man who's starved these past few months, all because the army disbanded without providing so much as a copper.”

“How long did you serve?” she asked.

“Too damn long,” he snapped, then shook his head. “See, I was a boy at an academy here in Mercia when my notice came. Fourteen years old. This was back when the Wasters started their firebombing runs—­those fast airships, infernals up top.”

Back when Solomon Garret invented the buzzer. Back when one of those same attacking airships went down atop my village. The fire. The screams and klaxons of blood.
Octavia forced away the scar of memory and focused on Devin Stout.

“I had a week to go home and kiss my mother, sell my horse, and off I went to be a good soldier.” He lifted his face mask enough to spit into the dead weeds along the pitted stone wall. “Good soldier. I was too good. And this is what happened last year.” He pointed to his melted face. The shadows cast deep lines into the visible skin. “I don't blame Evandia for all of that. Her generals? Her Daggers? The Wasters? Yes. Evandia, she has all the mind of a child, anyway.”

“Mrs. Stout has said much the same,” Octavia murmured.

“From their childhood acquaintance? I do wish I could talk to dear old Mum. Get the
real
stories. She used to say she lived in Mercia as a child. An understatement, that.” He looked toward the palace and shook his head.

Octavia found her opportunity. “What about you? Were you raised here in Mercia?” she asked Rivka.

The young woman eyed a passing steam car. “Yes, up in the towers.”

“Rivka here scarcely walked on street level until she came down to the bakery,” Mr. Stout cut in. “Always up on those catwalks and tramways on high.” He gestured toward the built-­up sprawl to the east.

“How did you come to be down here?” Octavia asked.

Rivka looked at Octavia and Mr. Stout and back at the sidewalk.
Something terrible happened.
It carried in the girl's anxiety, in the sorrow that suddenly slowed her heart and created physical constriction in her chest.

“Here.” Mr. Stout motioned them to stop. A metal door led inside the grounds; the surface was dented like the ocean in a storm, with some gunshot holes for good measure. A small window, more of a slit really, showed the movement of a shadow on the other side. Mr. Stout flashed a gilly coin. Octavia had provided him with three for this mission. A few coins from Mrs. Stout remained tucked away in Octavia's brassiere.

“Devin,” growled the shadow on the far side.

“Thom.”

“See you're out walking the rabbit. Who's the new bird? Bit too pretty for you, eh?”

Octavia bristled and opened her mouth to tell the man what was what. A soft elbow jabbed her side. Rivka met her eye with a quick shake of her head.

“Yeah. We're needing to walk in the gardens. Rabbit needs to eat greens.” He flicked the coin through the gap.

“Shiny. Walk is fine, Devin, but don't make any messes now.”

“Never.”

“Well, if you do make a mess, wait a few minutes, at least. My watch's nearly up.” The gate cracked open.

Like that, they were inside the palace. Stone buildings flanked the walkway. They were mere feet from the street, but already it felt quieter. Mr. Stout led the way around outbuildings weathered in gray and black.

Octavia's gloved fingers brushed the crackled stones. “I thought the infernal attack destroyed the entire palace.”

“It did, except the vault.”

“These buildings look five hundred years old.”

“That's Mercia for you. Factory exhaust, most likely. Think on what it does to the lungs. Actually, you probably do. Now hush. Be a good servant girl.”

She bit her lip to contain her annoyance.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed. Other servants shuffled past. Octavia tensed at each passerby but no one paid them any heed. Mr. Stout slipped a coin to another passing guard, the man acknowledging them with a tip of his hat as he walked on. It was fascinating and disturbing, the access this man still had.
But if he was a Dagger, maybe they think he still is one. Maybe he is.

That thought chilled her. What if this was a trap? He could have spoken to anyone when he was out this afternoon. She cast a glance at Rivka. The girl was no tenser than before. If she knew something was going to happen, surely she'd give Octavia some warning.

Oh, Alonzo. You were so right to warn me against this. I have no idea what I've become enmeshed in.

Octavia smelled the moisture of the palace garden as they rounded a bend. She smiled, relieved to be in the presence of greenery, and then she stopped cold. “What is this, Lady?” she whispered.

The garden was alive, but not. Common trees she knew from the country looked like twisted, stunted things, like ­people constricted with lockjaw. Pine needles and leaves dangled, green yet limp. Lower plants fared no better. Flowers had no energy to bloom—­petals slumped partially open as if asleep. She stooped to touch the soil. It was appropriately moist. Was this caused by a lack of sun? Factory toxins?

“It's been like this as long as I've been coming here,” Mr. Stout hissed. “Now come.”

She scurried to catch up with him. Foot stones flaked and crackled underfoot, as if heavy machinery had driven along this way, which was quite impossible due to the narrowness of the path. Intermittent glowstone lamps cast spooky light and showed that bushes were trimmed, leaves were raked, and other basic care was attended to. The garden's condition wasn't for lack of love and effort.
I'd certainly want to dig into this needy plot of land.
That longing for the academy's gardens, for her own cottage, swept over her again and she forced it away.

“Something feels very wrong here,” Rivka whispered.

“There's a reason ­people say it's haunted.” Mr. Stout shrugged.

Octavia's skin prickled with sudden heat. She quickly backstepped, tugging on Rivka as she did. “Magus,” she hissed.
At least it won't be a Caskentian infernal. The city's wards are a blessing in that regard.

Mr. Stout immediately stepped behind a tree. She caught a glimpse of the Vera concealed against his wrist.

Octavia breathed in, willing her senses to extend. The smell struck her then, that particular ozone scent. “An aether magus.” She had to get out of range before the newcomer sensed her own magic. She turned down a side path, hugging her satchel a little closer. Rivka's footsteps followed right behind. Through the bushes, she saw a tall shape.

“Who's there? Pally?” a woman's voice called.

She already sensed me. Blast it!
Octavia walked faster, trying to lose the magus. Up ahead was a gray building, but a different sort of gray than the rest. Its stones contained the iridescent shimmer of heavy enchantment, same as her medician robes.

The hue and cry of blood caused her to stop in her tracks. Rivka bumped into her. The laundry basket dropped with a thud. Octavia turned. Blood wailed, its agony pouring, protesting as it spilled onto the ground.

“No, no, no,” Octavia whispered, breaking into a run.

Mr. Stout was wiping his knife clean on the aether magus's skirt. The woman was folded over on the side of the path, throat slit. The blood was black in the absence of light. Octavia lifted her satchel strap over her head.

“No,” he said. “She was going for that.” He motioned to an alarm bell about ten feet away.

“I can heal her and the Lady will keep her unconscious—­”

“You bring her back, I'll kill her again. We don't have time to waste.”

Oh Lady, what have I done by coming here?
Behind her, Rivka made an odd crooning sound in her throat.

“You don't know how long I've wanted to do this.” Mr. Stout spun the knife in his grip. “Now I can. Now I won't be coming back here again. You two get along to the vault. I get to resume my old guard duties.” He grinned.
Heart slightly accelerated, not panicked at all. He's . . . enjoying this.
“Don't dawdle now.”

She should hurt him. Stop him. Her fists clenched with the yearning for her capsicum flute. Oh Lady, they hadn't even gotten inside the vault yet—­as far as she knew, it could all be books or the items of the Tree, nothing with the kind of value he anticipated.
The war broke his mind. He's the gambler, betting it all because a lucky pink-­nosed cat crossed his path.

Mr. Stout's grin widened. “Let's be honest now. You told me how I can get into the vault. Do I really need you along?” He didn't aim the gun but she knew the tension in his muscles.

“Your mother wouldn't appreciate that.”

“My mother. My mother has never really appreciated anything I've accomplished, so this would be nothing new. Now go, you two. Get in the vault, find me something good. I'll be having more fun out here.”

She stared him down a moment more and then turned away, brisk steps taking her back toward the vault. Tears blinded her. “Lady,” she whispered. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Another innocent like the soldier in the buzzer. Be with her. Ease her passing.” Rage burned in her lungs.

Rivka panted beside her. “How are we going to get inside if he's back there?”

Octavia almost stumbled. “You don't know?”

“Know what?”

“He's your father.” As soon as the words emerged, she regretted them.
He intended her to find out now, like this. Why?

“No.” It was almost a yell. “He can't be. I knew my father. I . . . thought I knew him. He . . . he died at the northern pass. The zyme poisoning.”