Ticker

by Lisa Mantchev

  “Her appetite seems good,” Sebastian said with great diplomacy as he bypassed the tea service and headed for the liquor cabinet.

  “I’ve seen horses eat less in one sitting,” was Violet’s way of putting it. “Now tell me what happened at the factory.”

  In between bites, the morning’s events came out in a rush. When I described the explosion, Violet lost her appetite and passed me her untouched slice of cake. Hand hovering over the Gentian Amaros, Sebastian blinked twice and moved straight from herbal aperitifs to hard liquor. I finished with the Vitesse ride across town, finding the house upturned, and Marcus’s arrival on the scene. Had the carriage clock not been smashed, I’m certain I would have heard it ticking in the utter silence that followed my narrative.

  Violet commenced cracking her knuckles, just as she always did when perturbed. “Do you have any idea who’d want to break in?” she asked, working her way through the letters in BAKE.

  I should have been stuffed with cake and tea, but lemon sponge couldn’t fill the dreadful hole in my stomach. Shaking my head, I tapped out yet another message on my RiPA. “We should have heard from my parents by now.”

  “If you’re feeling well enough, we ought to drive down to the courthouse to meet them.” Sebastian finished his drink and set his glass down on the tray.

  Before I could agree or Nic could offer an argument, the pipes in the wall set up such a rattling that we all cringed. Rising from the chaise, I made my way to the vintage Calliope in the corner. It hadn’t been used with any regularity since Papa installed the PaperTape machine, but it still had the capacity to send and deliver message cylinders all over the city via pneumatic tubes. It was a great gleaming thing, thanks to Dreadnaught’s many hours of polishing. As a child, I’d been fascinated by the receiving tray that looked exactly like an enormous lion’s head.

  The message cylinder arrived with the clatter of metal against metal. When I reached into the feline’s mouth, a sharp tooth grazed my skin. The scratch was a line of red crimstones in the gaslight. Blood dribbled between my fingers and onto the message cylinder. Cold and smooth against my hand, it bore none of the usual decorative etchings and lacked a maker’s mark to identify it. Rolling it over, I noted the grooves in the brass, tested its weight, and examined the clasp. Not locked, thank goodness. Lacking a key, I’d require a combination of three explosives to get this open, two of which are illegal within Bazalgate city limits and the third rumored never to have existed at all.

  “Open it, Penny.” Nic’s command was softly voiced.

  “Do. I’m always in the mood for a good mystery,” Sebastian said.

  Flicking the clasp, I extracted the typed missive within.

  Master and Miss Farthing:

  We politely asked your parents for the notes and the diagrams pertaining to the more complicated Augmentation procedures, but they declined to relinquish them. Your parents are now residing with us, having graciously accepted our invitation to reconsider the matter. We suggest most firmly that if you care to see your mother and father again, you will locate the items they refused us. You have until noon tomorrow, when we will deliver your next set of instructions.

  By the time I finished reading, I’d gripped the paper so hard that it was crumpled along both edges.

  “How did they sign it?” Sebastian wanted to know.

  “They didn’t.” I read the note over again, seeking out some clue that would tell us who’d sent it. Without warning, the paper spontaneously burst into flames and disappeared into a cloud of cough-inducing smoke. Yelping, I danced back.

  Nic rushed to check my hands. “Are you badly burned?”

  I shook my head and held them up. “Not even singed. What was that?”

  Sebastian offered an answer. “It’s high-security stationery. Only meant to be read once before combusting.”

  “Just how do you know that?” Violet asked.

  “Remember my moving-picture project?” Realizing his tie was crooked, Sebastian straightened the bit of silk. “A sample of ‘spypaper’ came with my orders for the nitrocellulose film we’re using to shoot the first movie. Fun to play with, but damned dangerous stuff to have hanging about the place.”

  Violet went to pour a generous lemon and Fizz. “Don’t you think the Edoceon must be responsible for this? They’ve been pushing for an Augmentation ban since Warwick was arrested.”

  “They were protesting at the Heart of the Star this morning,” I said, the memory cracking open like the bottle under the Vitesse’s wheel. “They shouted threats at me. One of them said the tables were turning.”

  “There you have it.” Violet dispensed a second drink, sloshing out sparkling wine and citrus syrup in a fashion that made Sebastian shudder. Elbowing him aside, she handed the glass to Nic. “It’s not ‘reeducating the public’ when they destroy personal property and kidnap civilians. You need to file a report right now. The Ferrum Viriae can have the Edoceon under lock and key in less than a day.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.” Much as I would like the mystery solved so swiftly, a different suspicion tickled the back of my mind again. “What if Marcus is the one who broke into the house?”

  The rest of them stared at me, their faces painted in varying shades of confusion and dismay.

  “You can’t think he would actually do such a thing,” Nic said. He was the spitting image of our father at his most worried; it was an expression the two of them perfected over countless doctors’ visits and overseas excursions to specialists. “He’s duty bound to serve Industria.”

  “Precisely my reasoning,” I countered. “The kidnappers want the Augmentation schematics. For all we know, Kingsley wants to use that information to build an army of Augmented soldiers. His men could have been dragging our parents out the back door even as I took the Pixii to him.”

  “Don’t tell me you felled the great Marcus Kingsley with that pocket zinger of yours?” Sebastian asked. When I nodded, he looked amused and annoyed all at once. “Dash it all, I would have paid good money to see that! Other people would have done the same. We could have sold tickets.” He finished his drink and set the glass down on the occasional table.

  “It was about as satisfying as you might expect,” I conceded, “but it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t call him back here. We can’t bring in the Ferrum Viriae. If Marcus is involved, we might be the next to disappear.”

  “So if we aren’t ringing the police, what are we doing?” Violet asked.

  “I have to find the Augmentation papers before the kidnappers contact us again.” I made my way to my father’s desk and started to sift through the mess.

  “You don’t mean to give them the research!” Nic protested. “That belongs to Warwick.”

  “And Mama and Papa,” I corrected, sorting through legal documents: our parents’ Last Will and Testament, the deed to Glasshouse, passports, four birth certificates, and two death certificates: Dimitria Beryl Farthing, Age: 18. Cygna Garnet Farthing, Age: One day.

  Both were killed by “myocardial infarction with genetic complications”—fancy words to explain a condition that afflicted only my sisters and me, not Nic.

  I set the certificates aside with trembling fingers. “I’ve no intention of giving them anything except a jail sentence, but you can’t catch a rat without cheese.”

  “That’s a good way to get your fingers caught in a trap,” Sebastian observed, joining me at the desk.

  “Come, come, Mister Stirling, don’t tell me your soul quails at a bit of subterfuge and espionage.” I lifted the will to my ear to confirm that the Mechanical Movement Seal still ticked, then held it up to the light. At the proper angle, the seal produced the three-dimensional image of Industria’s landmass overlaid with the Farthing emblem of a six-petal rose. “Still working. No one’s tampered with any of these.”

  “Look through the rest of it,” Nic urged. “If we’re lucky, the kidnappers left a fingerprint on this.” He gestured to the message cylinder on
the desk.

  Below the legal papers, my father’s ledger contained notes on various projects, diagrams, blueprints, but there was absolutely nothing of a medical nature found within. The requested Augmentation notes, including the diagram for my clockwork ventriculator, were conspicuous only in their absence. “They’re not here.”

  Sebastian’s nimble fingers sorted through everything again. “Maybe you missed something.”

  “Or I’m looking in the wrong place.” I knelt next to Papa’s desk. Intricately carved out of redwood, it was honeycombed with hidey-holes. When I was young, my father used to secret chocolate bars and toys in it for me to find.

  But this was no mere treasure hunt. Alternately using a penknife and a hairpin, I opened the first false-bottomed drawer and revealed a dog-eared copy of Concise Remarks upon the Surgical Mechanization of the Human Anatomy.

  Violet’s nostrils flared with distaste. “Why does he own that piece of utter rubbish?”

  “I very much doubt he was reading it for pleasure.” I turned the pamphlet over in my hands. Originally published under the title Unvarnished Truths, it had been surreptitiously distributed in the months preceding Warwick’s very public trial and anonymously justified the risks of his experiments and the deaths of those involved. After he was arraigned on twenty counts of murder, he publicly claimed authorship of the manifesto, and the treatise went into second, third, and fourth printings within a month. I’d read part of it, but Mama caught me and burned it in the hearth.

  Opening Papa’s copy, I saw it was inscribed with an ink scrawl.

  Perhaps this will help broker an understanding between us.

  Though it was unsigned, I knew who’d sent it.

  I set the pamphlet aside to wrestle with the desk’s other hidden compartments and decorative panels. Within minutes, I’d amassed a collection of letters, all of them from Warwick. The earliest one dated back to the week after Dimitria’s death.

  Dear Sir:

  It is my sincere hope that together we can avert further tragedy.

  That one contained a rough pencil sketch in the margin: an early diagram of my Ticker. The newer missives, written on the thin, cheap paper provided by Gannet Penitentiary, were decorated with angry ink blots where Warwick pressed his pen too long or too hard upon the page.

  You are not the only one to doubt me, but you are the only one whom I called “friend.”

  The final note I discovered had my name upon it. “This one is for me.”

  “Do you want me to read it for you?” Nic asked.

  I shook my head. The broken wax seal on the back indicated my father had opened it already.

  Dear Penny:

  You are too young to understand yet, but it is my sincerest wish that someday soon we will speak and I will be able to explain everything to you. At the heart of the matter, I am both guilty and innocent. And I would do it all over again to save you. It is what your sister wanted.

  “Lies. Dimitria never would have wanted him to kill in my name.” With a shudder, I shoved all the notes into a pile and pushed away from the desk. “What we need isn’t here. We have to get to the Bibliothèca.”

  “Whatever for?” Violet asked, forehead scrunched up.

  “Papa kept copies of important information on Eidolachometer punch cards,” I explained. “We need to retrieve them from our vault before the thieves realize that’s an option.”

  Unable to stop himself, Nic raised a protest. “Downtown is going to be utter chaos. Everyone is waiting for the verdict. There are Edoceon everywhere. Never mind that you shouldn’t go running about after what happened in the hall.”

  “I can, and I shall.” I started to stand and felt the floor tilt under my feet. “But a few more minutes to gather my thoughts and another piece of cake wouldn’t come amiss.”

  Violet laughed and handed me the last slice as Sebastian whistled, long and low.

  “Little did I know when I woke up this morning that I would be knee-deep in Gordian knots by the lunch hour,” he said with a sardonic glance at my brother.

  “Enjoy the ride,” Nic muttered. “If I know Penny, we’ll be up to our eyeballs in trouble by teatime.”

  FOUR

  In Which Silence Is More Than Golden

  It was a ridiculous thing to have to stop and consider my clothes. Ripped in countless places and dotted with Nic’s blood, my sadly maligned morning suit was now as inappropriate for a rescue excursion as Violet’s SugarWerks uniform. I hurried as fast as I dared up the stairs, with everyone following close behind. The terrible knowledge that Mama and Papa were in certain peril pursued us to the third floor.

  “I think my aubergine dress will fit you,” I said to Violet, “if you can avoid tripping over the skirts.”

  “I’ll loop them up about my neck if I have to,” she promised as we reached my bedroom.

  None of us commented on the door just down the hallway that was shrouded in mourning gloom. To my knowledge, no one in the family save Mama had entered Dimitria’s room in the year since she’d died. There were times in the quiet, dark hours when I thought I could sense my sister moving across the floor with her careful footsteps, winding up the Cylindrella machine and playing her favorite recordings.

  Try as I might to keep the door closed on the memories, they crept toward me with strains of remembered music. Though Dimitria played no instrument herself, she was always humming something under her breath, half the time not even realizing she did so. She also loved gardens and studied floriography.

  “There’s a hidden meaning in every flower, Penny,” she’d told me once, touching her fingertips to a newly arrived bouquet of tulips. “The pink ones are for caring, and yellow is for good cheer.”

  “And the red?” I’d asked. Missives had been arriving with alarming regularity: messages via the Calliope, paper-wrapped parcels in the mail. Gifts, I had realized with a start, from my sister’s as-yet-unnamed boyfriend. “Red flowers are for love, aren’t they?”

  Her answer had been a blush that put the tulips to shame, but any hope that her romance would bloom died with her, and along with it the hope that any Farthing girl could survive the condition that plagued us. She’d been the healthiest of us, while I’d been the invalid, and Cygna given no chance at all by fate. Warwick checked my older sister every month but only caught a vague, irregular heartbeat on occasion—certainly nothing that indicated her time left upon this earth should have been measured in minutes rather than years.

  Sebastian nudged me out of the past with a gentle elbow as he headed into my brother’s room. “Tend to your ablutions, Miss Farthing. You strongly resemble a chimney sweep.”

  Turning back to my own door, I lined up the letters for my password on a rotating copper permutation lock.

  M-E-T-A-L-M-A-R-K

  It was the common name for the Voltinia dramba Butterfly and the newest addition to my collection. Letters properly aligned, I pulled the activation lever. Gears behind wood and plaster whirred and clanked, then granted us permission to enter.

  I stepped into the room, turning up the lamps and taking a mental inventory of the contents, starting with the chocolate-brown velvet eiderdown and the Bhaskarian rug in shades of coffee and cream. A warm glow danced over walls that shimmered with the movement of dozens of mechanical Butterflies. I’d dusted their shadow boxes that very morning, all the better to see the diamanté stickpins that held each specimen against black velvet. The constant tick-tick-tick of infinitesimal inner workings caused their wings to flutter up and down, and I automatically sought out my favorites: the Silver-studded Blue (Plebeius argus) winking next to the Geranium Bronze (Cacyreus marshalli).

  Heeding Sebastian’s suggestion, I also checked the nearest mirror. The morning had certainly taken its toll. There was dirt and worse on my face. Escaping its pins, my hair straggled over my shoulders in unruly copper curls. Wide hazel eyes stared back at me.

  “Ever-changing Twindicators,” Dimitria had teased, because the color of our eyes shi
fted from brown to amber to green depending on the light, the fabrics Nic and I wore, and whatever mood we might be in.

  Knowing the wash water would take time to heat, I turned the spigot over the corner basin to “Scalding.” The radiator hissed and clanked in protest, so I gave its cast-iron ribs a swift kick with my boot.

  “I know just how you feel,” Violet said, but I didn’t know if she was speaking to me or the radiator.

  “You go first,” I told her when the copper water pipes rattled against the wall behind me, “while the towels are still relatively clean.”

  She obliged, stripping down to her underthings. I detached the RiPA from my garter, but hesitated to set it down on the desk, which was in its perpetual state of chaos. At the moment, the shiny innards of a pocket watch littered the scarred surface of the wood, and teetering towers of account ledgers sat under the magnificent stained-glass window known as the “Papilionoidea.”

  The RiPA in my hand began to clack and clatter. The message was from Ambrose Farnsworth.

  BACK INSIDE THE FACTORY - STOP - DAMAGE LESS THAN ORIGINALLY ESTIMATED - STOP - SOME STOCK AS YET UNACCOUNTED FOR - STOP

  Pursing my lips, I tapped out a response.

  DESTROYED IN THE EXPLOSION - QUERY MARK

  His answer was as troubling as it was puzzling.

  CRATES EARMARKED FOR CURREY HOSPITAL ARE MISSING - STOP - DID YOU AUTHORIZE REMOVAL - QUERY MARK

  I hadn’t, but at this point in time, a few missing packing cases were the least of our worries.

  I DID NOT - STOP - CHECK TO SEE IF THEY WERE PICKED UP IN THE COMMOTION - STOP

  A soft knock at the door signaled Dreadnaught’s arrival with more clean linen. “Can I assist with your toilettes, ladies?”

  “I’m all right.” I pulled off my shirtwaist and considered the damage. Before the chatelaine took up residency at Glasshouse, the majority of my wardrobe had been cobbled together with pins, liquid adhesive, and rivets purloined from the factory. Though I couldn’t sew a tidy buttonhole to save my life, I was a crack hand at mending tears and holes. “I’ll just get my stapler and fix this.”