Ticker

by Lisa Mantchev

  A loud and wrenching shudder rippled through the floorboards, and the ship slowly, inexorably tilted to one side, throwing everyone off-balance. I fell against the wall as the lights flickered. Back in the gaming room, shouts broke out.

  Unperturbed, Marcus grasped me by the elbow and towed me down the hall in the opposite direction. “Step lively, Tesseraria. We’re on contingency plan H already.”

  A second shudder was accompanied by the scream of iron against rock, and I winced. “What’s happening?”

  “Backup finally arrived, and they’re running this ship aground,” he answered.

  “When we lost sight of you, Marcus messaged for reinforcements,” Violet added.

  By now, the Palmipède listed horribly to starboard, making it even more difficult to walk through the water pouring down the hall and swirling about our ankles.

  “It seems the good Mister Stirling played merry havoc with our plans this evening,” Marcus said as he hurried us along. “My soldiers didn’t make it aboard until I called them in. They’ll clear everyone out of the vessel, and I just sent a secondary unit out to the river to search for Sebastian.” Striding through knee-deep currents now, he led us to a passageway that sloped unnaturally downward. At the bottom, he opened another door; beyond that was only gently sloshing darkness.

  “Can you see him?” I asked, peering under Marcus’s arm.

  “Visibility is at zero, and perhaps that’s for the best. If we can’t see Sebastian, he can’t see us.” Marcus pulled a handheld water-surface propulsion vehicle off the wall. “Take one of these and swim for shore.”

  “Swim?” I repeated, wondering if the Quick-Heal had clouded my brain.

  “With help.” By the light of the lamp hanging on the wall, he gestured to a switch on the handlebars. “I’ve used these Skimmers in training exercises. This button activates the motor. Point it toward the opposite bank, keep your head above water, and stay close to each other.”

  “I’ll go first.” With a grim expression, Violet silently pulled off her petticoats, and I followed her example. There was only time enough for me to give her elbow a quick squeeze before she jumped.

  Looping my purse over my wrist, I clutched the Skimmer’s handlebars. Hitting the water was like falling chest-first onto a sheet of ice. My Ticker seized in shock.

  Don’t you dare, you piece of junk!

  After a long moment, the Ticker righted itself, leaving me free to activate the Skimmer. Vibrating with barely restrained power, the apparatus slowly but surely towed me forward, the weight of my sodden skirts dragging at me all the while. Filtered by the fog, the warm blur of a streetlight gradually appeared. The dripping smudge under the post coalesced into Violet. By the time I felt the shore under my shoes, Marcus caught up with me and we exited the river together, leaving the Skimmers in the shallows.

  Behind us, the Palmipède rested sadly on its side. The area around it was bedlam, with soldiers rounding up fleeing patrons and loading them into waiting boats. Marcus’s RiPA sputtered, relaying half a message before it shorted out. He swore as he removed the frizzled device from his wrist, but a thunderous crackle interrupted the oath. I might have wanted flash trays and shooting stars, but this was no fireworks display. Sparks hissed and sizzled as flames erupted from the side of the steamboat. The surprising heat of it pushed us back several feet, and Violet drew nearer to me, shivering. I looped my arm about her waist and looked to Marcus.

  “We need to clear out of here. Have you any idea where we are?”

  Struggling to regain his trademark composure, Marcus nodded. “Stay close and keep quiet.”

  We crept down the dockside alleys until we arrived at a tavern. A cracked wooden sign declared it to be “The Second Buttonhole,” but it certainly didn’t rate above the fifth or sixth. The three of us crammed ourselves into a booth in the farthest recesses of the common room, and a dour man with a face like a bowl of risen bread appeared.

  “Bit late to be out and about, isn’t it?” he remarked. “What will you have?”

  “A bottle of whiskey,” Marcus said firmly and pressed a coin into his hand.

  The payment disappeared into a pocket, and the innkeeper backed away from the table. Half of Marcus’s false mustache had peeled away from his upper lip, and he winced as I gently tugged the rest of it off. When he opened his silver cigarette case, a miniature tidal wave streamed out of it. In silence, we set out fans, billfolds, and card holders to dry. The air- and watertight seals on the pocket watches were examined and determined to have done their job. My father’s compass and sundial were no worse for wear after their washing, and my winnings added up to a shocking amount.

  “Now what?” Waterlogged and worried, I rolled the bottle of Quick-Heal to and fro across my palm.

  The innkeeper returned with a large glass bottle, its label yellowed and peeling, and a tray of grimy glasses. He set everything on the table, eyes raking over the miscellaneous items culled from our pockets before pursing his lips and departing.

  “I fear we look like a band of thieves meeting up to pool the night’s take.” Marcus sloshed the liquor into the glasses and lifted one. After a hesitant sip, he grimaced. “Not the best vintage, I grant you, but it’ll warm you up.”

  “A good thing, given the meager fire our host keeps.” Though I didn’t like to say anything, my Ticker hadn’t yet recovered from our impromptu swim. Thumping erratically in my chest, it threatened every few seconds to cease working altogether. Uncorking the Quick-Heal, I downed the contents of the vial. Remembering what Sebastian had said about alcohol aiding in the delivery to the bloodstream, I chased the medication with a shot of whiskey. Instantaneous heat bloomed in my stomach, rushing through every appendage, and I could well imagine what Vinterviken Blasting Oil must taste like.

  “What was in that vial, Penny?” Violet looked at me over her glass, her carefully applied eyeliner running down her cheeks like gothic tears. “And should I have asked for some?”

  I explained about the Quick-Heal and the revelations made in Private Room Seven. My time in the river had numbed me, but no more than the shock of realizing Sebastian was a turncoat.

  “I can hardly believe it,” Violet said, biting the corner of her lip.

  I couldn’t help but remember the mad zeal in his eyes when he tried to convince me to get in the boat. “I certainly never thought he’d get his hands dirty like that.”

  “How long has he been working for Warwick?” Marcus asked.

  “Long enough to help plan his escape from the courthouse,” I said. “And to have arranged for my parents’ kidnapping. I messaged him when Nic and I were driving across town on the Vitesse. He knew precisely when we would arrive.” I wanted to put my head down on the table and cry, but it wouldn’t help anyone. “He could have secreted them away and turned right around to meet us at Glasshouse.”

  Similarly frustrated, Marcus repeatedly bashed at his RiPA to no avail. “Hopefully the secondary unit caught up with him before we ran aground. If not, there’s little chance they found him in the chaos afterward.”

  “True enough,” Violet said, finishing her first glass of whiskey and pouring a second.

  “I need to get back to the waterfront,” Marcus said, gathering his things. “Reporters and more Ferrum Viriae officers should be arriving at the scene.”

  Violet snatched up her purse. “You stay here with Penny. She needs to rest.”

  I started to protest, but Marcus was already nodding.

  “I suppose I do have a slightly better stature for a bodyguard,” he said.

  “You have slightly better stature for a brick wall,” Violet countered, wresting her dripping dress from the booth. “I’m going after Sebastian. He’s going to wish he escaped down a rabbit hole.”

  Someone else might have cautioned her; Marcus only held up a hand to signal a server. “Call the young lady a hansom cab, please.” He turned back to Violet and pressed a stack of coins into her palm. “Go straight to the docks. Find F
rederick Carmichael, and take him as your second.”

  Violet crammed the money in her purse. “How will I find you later?”

  “You won’t,” Marcus said. “We’ll contact you tomorrow.”

  “I hope the two of you behave yourselves,” she admonished with mock solemnity.

  The muscles along Marcus’s jaw jumped before he answered, “I think she’s safe from my advances, at least until morning.”

  “She is sitting right here, and she is perfectly fine, thank you.” I strived to make the lie sound convincing. The Quick-Heal’s other effects now made themselves known, and it was as though I’d wrapped my Ticker in a flannel blanket and lulled it to sleep.

  “You needn’t fib to me,” Violet said, pressing a quick, fierce kiss to my cheek before hustling out the door.

  “I need to get you somewhere more secure,” Marcus said, glancing down at me. “Wait here a moment and turn your face toward the wall.” He held a whispered conversation with the innkeeper in which yet more coins exchanged hands, and then he returned with a key that appeared well-oiled with kitchen grease. “Come on.”

  I found my feet but discovered they were much farther away from my head than expected. “I shouldn’t have partaken of that second dose.” My Ticker lurched, and so did I, but Marcus caught me before I fell. As he carried me up the stairs, I hiccupped and wished I hadn’t. “Just leave me here on the carpet.”

  “Like hell I will,” was his grim answer. When we gained the upper landing, he propped me against the wall until he could wrangle the door open.

  I stumbled inside to find that the room’s appointments were better than we’d any right to expect: one narrow bed that would fit an adult, provided he or she didn’t roll over, a wooden chair, several hooks in the crumbling plaster wall, and a blessedly hot radiator that I used to warm my backside.

  “It looks as though we are going to have to spend some time in close quarters,” Marcus said, shucking his coat. Though it was no longer sopping wet, it left a series of drips on the floor. Hanging it from one of the hooks on the wall, he removed his shoes and socks next and tucked them under the radiator.

  “I’m fine with that, given the alternatives.” I was surprised to find that I meant it. The anger and resentment I’d harbored toward him for funding Warwick’s research had been left behind in the river. “Your clothes will dry out faster if you get them off.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he started unbuttoning his shirt. “My dear Miss Farthing, what would your mother say?”

  “You’ve worked with her.” Already without petticoats, I removed Mama’s gown. The silk was ruined, no doubt about it. Standing there in my frilled bloomers, chemise, and corset, I wrapped my arms about me and tried to stop my teeth from chattering. If anyone had told me last week that I would be keeping company with Marcus Kingsley whilst a band of marauding terrorists tried to kidnap me, I wouldn’t have believed it. “I’m pretty sure she’d say ‘Stop standing on ceremony and get out of those wet things.’ ”

  “That does sound like her.” Off came his shirt, and Marcus turned to hang it next to his coat. Scars decorated his arms and chest, ridges and whorls of raised flesh that were the faintest of pinks against his tanned skin.

  Stepping closer to get a better look, I murmured, “Careless with a bread knife, are you?”

  Caught off guard, he looked down. “Training bayonet got me there,” he said, pointing to one of the ridged lines. “The others happened in field practice.”

  The largest of the scars ran from his navel to his left armpit. “And this one?”

  “Combat in Aígyptos.” Marcus looked down at me, unashamed of the marks on his body but terribly troubled by something else. “I got off easy in that fight. Lost two soldiers who happened to be close friends.”

  Sadness bled through the words, and I couldn’t help but shudder. I knew that sort of pain. “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s remorse, Tesseraria, and there’s the resolve to make certain it never happens again.” Reaching past me, he pulled one of the blankets off the bed and draped it over my shoulders. “It’s why I struggle to plan out everything the way I do. Viktor was the one with all the combat instincts. He had trained for it since both of us wore knee pants. I was just the one with the head for schematics. Everything would be different if my brother were still alive.”

  Until this very moment, I hadn’t realized how complicated a cipher Marcus was. “You didn’t want to be in the Ferrum Viriae? What did you want to do instead?”

  “Mechanical engineering, like your parents.” Looking down, he studied his hands. “Tinkering, my father called it, until he realized where my true talents lie.”

  I had an inkling what that might be but wanted to make certain. “And where is that?”

  “Weapons,” he confirmed. “Small ones in the beginning, like the MAG and the Superconductive Slingshot.” Marcus grabbed one of the threadbare towels and rubbed it over his head, the muscles in his back clenching. “I thought I would be able to distance myself from the business later. Viktor and I spoke about it many times, and he knew I didn’t want to spend my life developing that sort of technology. But then he was gone, and there was no one to take his place except me.”

  Thinking of Nic, I put my hand on Marcus’s.

  His fingers turned over to cling to mine, though he kept his face averted. “My father pulled me out of the College of Engineering and sent me to the Ferrum Viriae Academy. It’s been trial by fire, literally, these last six months. So much to catch up on: maneuvers, strategies, history of combat . . .”

  “Could you speak with him about it?” Thinking of my own parents, I couldn’t imagine them asking me to dedicate my life to someone else’s pursuits. “Or your mother?”

  Marcus shook his head and gave me a rueful smile. “My mother is a third-generation munitions manufacturer. Her marriage to my father was as much a business arrangement as it was a personal one. I’ve never brought it up with her, and I never will.”

  “She might understand.”

  “A tigress doesn’t change her stripes,” he said.

  I thought of another tigress, one who loved me and my siblings beyond reason, who protected us with tooth and claw. And I thought of what my mother wouldn’t give to speak one more time with her eldest child. “What is it that you want to ask Viktor?”

  Marcus stiffened but didn’t pull away from me. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s why you’re building the Grand Design, isn’t it? There’s something specific you want to ask him?”

  I thought that Marcus might not answer at all. As it was, his next words didn’t address my question. “I doubt you’ve ever seen combat up close, Penny, but it’s a terrifying thing. The first time I was on the field, I nearly turned and ran.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Can you?” The words were tight, his throat working as he swallowed. “Can you imagine a thousand guns firing off at once? Searing hot metal screaming past your head only to fell the soldier just behind you? The cries of the wounded? The blood mixed with the dirt? Death all around you?”

  “Yes, I can. I do more than imagine it every day.” The blanket slid from my shoulder, taking the strap of my chemise with it. Now the top of my own scar was visible, the one from the Augmentation surgery set alongside the Ticker’s faceplate. “You’re not the only one who’s looked death in the face.”

  Marcus didn’t blanch or shrink away from the sight of it, though his was not the detached gaze of a clinician. “Did it hurt?”

  “Almost dying hurt a lot more.” I pulled the blanket back up and sat upon the bed.

  He joined me, the furniture creaking under his weight. “That’s what I wanted to ask my brother . . . Isn’t there someone else? Someone else better suited to this job?”

  Though I’d been cold before, the words were like ice on my skin. “You’re doing the best you can.”

  “That’s just the problem,” he said softly. “I don’t think my best is
ever going to be enough.”

  “Despite my best efforts to the contrary, despite Calvin Warwick trying to kidnap me and fléchettes flying in my general direction, Legatus, you’ve kept me alive. You saw me safely off the ship tonight—”

  “And straight into the river!”

  “A prime example of how you’re learning to think on your feet,” I countered. “I might be able to look after myself, but I’m safer when I’m with you.”

  Marcus reached out, sliding slow fingers through my curls, untangling the knots one at a time until he could run his very capable hand through my hair from the soft spot on the back of my neck down to my waist. In return, I sat very, very still until he wrapped an arm about me and leaned back against the wall.

  “Not to frighten you,” he said at long last, “but Warwick is just the beginning. There are others who won’t be content to watch you Augment factory workers and repair minor injuries when there’s potential for so much more. They’re going to steal the technology, develop it, exploit it, and destroy everything we hold dear.”

  I resisted the urge to set my head upon his shoulder, worried what might happen to my already off-balance Ticker if he were to kiss me right now. But Marcus’s eyes were closed, purple-black shadows smudging the skin under his thick, dark lashes. If this was a seduction, it was the laziest one on record, so I allowed myself to relax against him. “It must get tiresome, carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders like that.”

  His answering laugh was a low rumble in his chest. “It does, indeed.”

  Under the scent of river water and wet wool, there was something about his skin that reminded me of lemon soap and sunshine. “So many burdens weighing you down. Can’t you leave off a few?”

  “My burdens are the dead who’ve served under my command and the lives of Industria’s citizens,” he answered. “So, no, Tesseraria, I’ll not set down a single one.”

  I won’t let her fall, Mama.

  The broken memento mori on the floor of my parents’ study. For a split second, it was as though I held it in my hands again. Then I broke out in gooseflesh. “I know where I’ve seen the daguerreotype glass before.”