Ticker

by Lisa Mantchev

  The unexpected blast of a black-powder shot interrupted our progress. Papa hunched over with a groan, blood oozing from a bullet wound in his shoulder. With a wordless cry, Mama grabbed him by one lolling wrist and tried to pull him to the upper floor.

  I shoved at Sebastian. “Go! Get them out.”

  He obeyed, vaulting up the last few stairs to help my mother. Two more bullets tore through the spot where Sebastian had just been. I ducked down behind the iron railing with Nic and Violet just behind me. Peering through the bars, I saw Calvin Warwick aiming a revolver at us.

  “You can’t leave,” he said flatly, firing once more. “It isn’t safe for you out there until I take care of the Edoceon and the city council. Once the Spiders are in place, the officials and the protestors will be more amenable to my methods. Nothing will impede my good work, helping others like you. Like Dimitria.”

  Afraid he might take another shot at us, I reached out and jammed the Pixii into the nearest light switch. The energy transferred with a hiss and zing, mercifully into the outlet and not up my arm. A series of fireworks cascaded from the light fixtures before every incandescent bulb in the hall exploded.

  “This has to end!” I shouted at the shadows pooling in the hallway.

  “I agree.” Warwick’s voice twined about us like a specter. Hollow footsteps signaled his approach. “Don’t be unreasonable, Penny.”

  “Unreasonable?! You shot my father!”

  One plus two plus one . . .

  I counted four bullets fired; he had only two left.

  “I’ve killed before to save you, and I’ll do it again,” was his chilling response. “Dimitria wanted it that way.”

  Nic shifted behind me. “My sister never would have wanted any of this.”

  “Don’t tell me what I do and do not know. I was the one who heard her breath stop. I was the one holding her when the light left her eyes.” Something cracked open, and all of Warwick’s grief poured out of him. “Dimitria’s last words weren’t for me—they were for Penny! And then she was gone!”

  “My mother’s building a machine at the Flying Fortress,” I said, hoping such news could shine a bit of light to his heart. “The Grand Design. It lifts the veil between this world and the next. You can speak with Dimitria. She’ll tell you . . .”

  His slow footsteps resumed. “Don’t try to trick me. I’m a man of science. A man of logic.”

  “Then listen to yourself!” I shouted, more angry now than frightened. “You’re the one about to unleash mind-controlling devices on thousands of innocent people. You’re the one terrorizing the city and plotting to overthrow the government. It would be a mistake to call you mad. A mistake and a kindness both.”

  “Stop,” he warned me, but I couldn’t.

  “You might be able to correct the weaknesses of the flesh, but you can never mend a heart that’s broken the way yours is!”

  To silence me, he fired off another shot. The bullet embedded itself in the plaster just over my head.

  One bullet left.

  Violet squeaked, shoving me up the last three stairs and into the lobby. There was nowhere to hide in the cavernous space. Sebastian had unlocked the revolving door and helped my parents out to the terrace. I could see Papa leaning against a marble column with my mother bent over him. Nic grasped Violet’s hand and made a run for it. The parquet floor spread out before us, dark wood against light like a chessboard. No time for subtleness, strategy, Knight’s Maneuvers, or trying to spare the Queen.

  We reached the exit, and I ducked into the compartment behind Nic and Violet, momentum carrying us forward until Warwick grasped the back of my borrowed jacket. The fabric caught between the revolving panels and the wall; the door ceased to turn. I was trapped, with only a pane of glass between us.

  “Hold on!” Nic tugged at the metal frame, forcing it to yield by inches.

  “Stay with me, Penny,” Warwick pleaded, jerking the jacket and the door back toward him. “You’re not like them. You understand . . .”

  Full up with loathing, I rounded on him. “I understand this: It’s over, Warwick. We know how to deactivate the Spiders. If we want to fight the Edoceon, we’ll do it in a courtroom. You kept your promise to Dimitria, and now you have to stop! What would she say, if she could see you now?”

  Warwick looked past me to my father bleeding on the terrace, Sebastian in the street waving at the rapidly approaching Ferrum Viriae, then down at the gun in his hand.

  One shot left. I dragged in a panicked breath, waiting for him to raise the revolver.

  “You lived,” he said.

  “I did.”

  He let go of me and reached for his pocket watch. His thumb traced the gold case, then he wound the intricate braid of Dimitria’s hair about his fingers. “I saved you.”

  “Yes,” I choked out. “You did just as she asked.”

  Warwick’s terrifying anger slipped away, and something akin to peace spread across his face. Whatever else he might have said was drowned out by the wheeze of brakes and the screech of tires. Marcus bailed out of the vehicle like it was on fire, taking the stairs three at a time. When I looked back to Warwick, he gave me a sad smile before opening his pocket watch and disgorging a dozen gold Spiders. He kept his eyes on mine as the mechanical bugs crawled up his sleeve, over his collar, across his face, and into his ears.

  Dimitria.

  His mouth formed the name as his smile faded, exactly the way the light does only moments after the sun sets. I watched the last vestiges of the man I’d known disappear into the darkness, leaving an empty shell behind.

  “Get her out of there,” said Marcus from just outside. When the door yielded with a final desperate jerk, he caught me in his arms.

  “It’s about damn time, Kingsley,” Nic said. “What took you so long?”

  “I got here as fast as I could. There’s a tracking device in Penny’s bracelets, but we couldn’t activate it until after we discovered and dismantled the device blocking all the communications systems at the courthouse.” Marcus peered over my shoulder at the catatonic form of Calvin Warwick. “It seems I missed the exciting bit?”

  As tired as I was, there were explanations to be made about the SugarWerks Boxes and how the Spiders could be neutralized with different levels of electrical current. Sebastian ran through all the information, with Marcus relaying everything he said to the Communications Center. An ambulance arrived, and two soldiers placed Papa inside. Mama climbed in after him and closed the doors herself.

  Watching them go, I finally exhaled. Not even the most brazen of the tabloids would fully believe this story. Oh, they would tell the tale and sell the papers, but they wouldn’t believe it.

  Marcus trailed a gentle hand down my back. “I seem to be forever catching you in your undergarments, Tesseraria. What is this? Three times in as many days?”

  “We do seem to be making a habit of it.” Leaning against him, my ear to his chest, I could hear his heart beating, a rhythm now more familiar than any piece of music. My new Ticker paused for just a moment, and I panicked, wondering if it, too, were faulty. Then it thudded once, twice, in perfect time with the heart of the man standing before me.

  Just as steady. Just as strong.

  “Silver denarii for your thoughts, Tesseraria.”

  “Surely you know me better than that by now, Legatus?” I smiled up at Marcus, welcoming the sunshine on my upturned face and neck. “My thoughts are worth a golden aureii, every one.”

  FOURTEEN

  In Which There Are More Stories Than Those Reported in the Papers

  All of us crammed into Marcus’s motorcar for the ride to Currey Hospital. Papa was in surgery by the time we arrived, and Mama paced the hallway.

  “I want to stay,” Marcus said, watching her wear a groove into the floor. “But seeing as half my forces are under the influence of the Spiders and there are infested Carry-Away Boxes scattered about the city . . .”

  “Go,” I said, only half meaning it. “
Take Sebastian with you.”

  “I suppose I have to leave you at the mercy of the doctors. Or perhaps I got that backward.” One last squeeze and he tucked a finger under my chin. “Permission to call this evening?”

  “Don’t you need to submit your requests in triplicate?” It wasn’t flirting. Not after everything we’d been through.

  For an answer, Marcus lifted my bare hand to his mouth and kissed it thrice. “Will that do?”

  “Quite,” I said, slapping at him. “Now go, before my face bursts into actual flames.”

  After Marcus departed, Violet sat with my mother while Nic and I were hustled into an examination room. The Augmentation specialists took pages of notes, focusing primarily on my new clockwork ventriculator and my brother’s ocular corrections. No doubt a study would be published in the medical journals just as soon as ink could hit paper. We were admonished to get plenty of rest and food, and then excused. Before I rejoined the others, I donned the dress Mama had ordered from a nearby shop. Grateful for my good health and that of my loved ones, I didn’t offer a single complaint that it was the most trying shade of amaranth pink imaginable.

  Nic was just outside the examination room when I exited, and we regarded each other with eyes that were no longer twinned mirrors. The memory of his fist connecting with my face and the accusations he’d made in the alley still burned, but I tamped down that fire.

  “Tempus est clavis,” I whispered, reaching out a hand.

  Time will heal all wounds, outside as well as in.

  The moment I touched his arm, Nic relaxed his shoulders. “How are you feeling?”

  “Impossibly energized.” I paused to consider the matter further. “And starving. I don’t know when I last ate. You?”

  “Fit as the proverbial fiddle. We really should speak with Marcus about an Augmentation contract. If a soldier can come out of battle feeling this way, he’d be nearly unstoppable.”

  “Warwick promised him something similar,” I said without thinking.

  Nic looked down at me. “It sounds as though there’s more to that story.”

  “I’ll explain later.” I gazed up at him, uncertain what else to say. “I didn’t want to venture anything in front of the doctors, but we could remove the upgrades . . . all except the ones in your eyes, I think. You could be as you were before.”

  “I don’t think any of us are going to be as we were before.” Nic took my hand in his newly Augmented one, metal fingers sliding alongside mine, the whir of gears and balance wheels like a pulse, new yet familiar. “Don’t fret. I’ll get used to them in time.”

  “They’re a forever sort of souvenir.” I thought about the machine beating away in my chest, of Warwick, of the look upon his face when he whispered Dimitria’s name one last time. “And how long will it be before we sleep without nightmares and walk down the street without looking over our shoulders?”

  “Or see a Spider without jumping out of our skins?” Nic reached up to rub a finger about his ear.

  “That’s not funny,” Violet said, joining us with Mama just behind her. “Your next project is to redesign the Carry-Away Boxes. Otherwise, I won’t be able to load them with cake without wondering first if they’re full of mind-controlling arachnids.”

  “Done.” He drew her into his arms. “But I won’t be able to manage it on an empty stomach. Will anyone join me for a meal?”

  “Your father ought to be out of surgery soon,” Mama said. “They removed the bullet, and thankfully it missed everything vital. I’ll stay here to wait for him to wake up. He’ll be as cranky as anything.”

  “I’ll wait with Mama,” I said. “Bring me something from the canteen?”

  “A piece of pie?” Violet asked as Nic led her toward the stairs.

  “An entire pie,” I said, sitting down alongside Mama. “And a bucket of tea with a dozen lumps of sugar.”

  My mother permitted herself a small laugh as she noted, “I’ll help you drink it. It’s been too long since I had a proper cup.”

  We’d both been through such a lot, and yet there was one more thing to tell her. “I owe you an apology, Mama.”

  “Whatever for, dear heart?” She wrapped an arm about me, her rose water perfume instantly transporting me back to the dining room, into the company of my elder sister, listening to the cradle rock in the corner.

  I should have believed my mother. She knew it was possible all along.

  “I thought you were crazy, consulting all those psychics and mediums, trying to reach Dimitria and Cygna.” I nestled against her. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Grand Design?”

  “I signed papers. Gave Mister Kingsley my word. And I didn’t like to say anything before it was working properly. False hope, and all that.”

  “But it does work.” I explained about reanimating Lucy Reilly’s corpse, about my own near-death moment spent in the in-between place that resembled our dining room.

  “You saw her, then,” Mama said. “You spoke with Dimitria?”

  “Yes. She looked just as she did . . . on her birthday.” I couldn’t bring myself to word it any other way.

  “And Cygna?”

  “I didn’t see her. Just the cradle rocking.”

  “I wish I could have been there with you.” Mama’s eyes filled with tears, but she hugged me hard.

  “We’ll try again,” I surprised myself by saying. “I’ll go with you to see Philomena.”

  “I’d like that,” my mother said. “Very much.”

  My RiPA delivered a message from Marcus.

  HALF THE AFFLICTED SOLDIERS HAVE GONE ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE - STOP - BRACELETS DEACTIVATED - STOP - WARWICK PROGRAMMING PROVING DIFFICULT TO DECODE - STOP

  More news followed, none of it particularly good. The soldiers who’d recovered from the Spider removal—Frederick Carmichael among them—were still in the process of tracking down the Carry-Away Boxes and neutralizing the remaining threat. The broadsheets had picked up the story, and bulletins had been issued to every RiPA and PaperTape machine in the city, warning Bazalgate’s citizens to be wary of unexpected gifts of cake.

  “The Legatus will see things set to rights, never fear,” Mama said when the stream of messages ceased, her mouth quirking a bit. “He’s a very remarkable young man.”

  I didn’t ask what she meant by such a leading comment because a doctor interrupted us.

  “Mister Farthing is out of surgery and recovering nicely. If one of you would like to go in, that ought to be fine.”

  Mama and I exchanged a look, and I gave her a little push. “Go. We’ll meet you back at Glasshouse.”

  But I wasn’t going to head straight home. Life ought to be celebrated at every possible opportunity, and we had a lot of catching up to do.

  After sending Nic ahead to prepare Dreadnaught, Violet and I made our way to Perpetua Marketplace. We had the meat dishes, vegetables, creams, and ices sent back to Glasshouse, but I carried the turtle myself.

  It was an accident; I’d never intended on buying such a thing and had even less intention of eating it, but with the costermonger and the Meridian fishmonger extolling the virtues of their wares in each of my ears, I’d somehow come away from the transaction with several lobsters for pastry vol-au-vents, twenty pounds of fresh peas, sparrow-grass and cowcumbers, and one largish and very much alive Bhaskarian turtle.

  “Every bit of it can be used,” the fishmonger had said as he took my money and ignored my protests. “Boil the belly, roast the back meat, and put the innards in a beyootiful soup. Tell your cook that the shell can be used as a tureen!”

  He had wrapped the poor creature in damp burlap and handed it over as Violet snickered into her gloved hands. The turtle’s significant weight left no doubt in my mind that it would indeed serve eight to ten, as the fishmonger repeatedly assured me.

  “But—”

  He’d already turned to help another customer. “Of course the oysters are fresh, sir! I am appalled you would even ask such a thing!”

>   Ducking the spray as he enthusiastically shucked shellfish, we hastened to exit the marketplace.

  “All we wanted was a bit of light supper,” I muttered as we wended our way through the stalls. “Dreadnaught is going to have a fit when she sees this.”

  “The creature is the very opposite of ‘light’ dining,” Violet said, helping me carry it.

  There was a trick to heaving the turtle into a hansom cab, another to convince the driver that it wouldn’t eat the upholstery. Once we were on our way, I poured my remaining coins into my lap, looking from the copper pence to the impulsively purchased chelonian.

  “Who would have thought you could cost so much?”

  The creature’s head emerged from its shell, and it regarded me with something akin to reproach.

  “I would have helped pay for it!” Violet informed me.

  “You did enough, what with the marzipan and the cream and the pineapples. Whatever possessed you to buy such ugly things?”

  “Wait until you taste what I bake with them—almond soufflés and pineapple tartlets.” Violet clapped her hands together. “And you’re one to speak about buying ugly ingredients.”

  When the turtle snapped at our toes, we squeaked and pulled up our skirts.

  “I don’t much care for the idea of eating something whose face I’ve seen, I can tell you that much,” I said as we pulled up at Glasshouse. The turtle turned its head and nibbled at its burlap wrappings. “You certainly are a useless and nonsensical thing. I’ll call you Brimborion.” I leapt over him and out the door in one mighty bound. “Help me bring him around to the kitchen garden, Violet, and mind your fingers.”

  The second we exited the carriage, the press descended. Violet and I retreated to the sanctity of the kitchen, where Nic and Dreadnaught met us.

  “They won’t leave us in peace until they get their story,” I said, suddenly weary down to my toes. “Take Violet into the back parlor and show the reporters in.”

  Nic donned a new pair of smoked-glass spectacles to hide his eyes before Dreadnaught permitted the representatives from the Bazalgate Pictorial: An Illustrated Weekly, The Gazette, and The Evening Express access to the front parlor. She did not offer them tea or refreshments, not that they cared. They stampeded in, shouting questions.