Together, we reach the top of a ridge overlooking the same dumping site we’d viewed before, only from a different angle. A closer angle. Close enough to make out details on the worker’s faces.
My knees knock together being this close. This exposed. There’s not much to hide behind here.
Several horse-drawn carts sit backed up to the edge of Embers, the same as the last time I was here. The impatient horses flick their tails. Men circle the cargo, cranking levers and lowering bars, which in turn raise the cart beds, dumping the contents—gears, gadgets, sheet metal, parts of cranks and levers, and rudimentary motors, bits of thing and scraps of that—into the frothing, smoking pit below.
This close, the sound is deafening. I clap my hands to my ears to drown out the pinching screech and clank of colliding metal parts as they tumble together on the way down, down, down…to who knows where.
A worker overseeing the closest cart is squinting in our direction. I signal to Urlick and we duck back, but it’s too late.
“Hey, there! Hey, you!”
“What do we do?” I panic. “We’ve got to get out of here.” I long to burst from cover and run.
“No.” Urlick grabs my jittering hand, pulling me in behind a jut in the of rock face. “If we move now the whole lot’ll see us.”
“So what? We just wait like cantationers to be discovered here?”
A branch snaps, and Urlick slaps a tight hand over my mouth again.
The worker approaches quickly, then slows his steps. He nearly tip-toes the last few strides to where we crouch behind the jut in the rock face. His breath is fast and uneven. He seems as afraid of us as we are him.
“You there!” he half-whispers through cupped hands up the rock face. We stand slightly elevated above him on a flat protrusion of rock. He checks twice over his back, then tries again. “Hey, you!”
I cringe.
“Please,” the stranger pleads. “I mean you no ‘arm. I just want to talk to yuhs.”
Talk?
“Quick, before they spots me. Can I come up?”
Urlick’s brows fold. He cocks his head to one side, straining to see around the rock, to look into the stranger’s eyes.
I’m haunted by the voice.
“How do we know we can trust you?” Urlick dares to look.
The stranger checks behind his back again. “Because,” he leans in and around the rock face, and my heart stumbles. “I believe we might be friends.”
I stare down into his eyes, and the memory jolts through me. The girl from school. The missing one.
“Gwen? Gwendolyn Ambrose?” I’d know those eyes anywhere. Clear as ice, yet endlessly burning, as if fuelled by blue aster aether. Gwen was the only girl I’d ever known who hadn’t ostracized me—the only one who’d ever talked to me. Not much, but some. “
“In the flesh.” She dares a smile, looking quickly over her back again. Her eyes glow even brighter now. “Now, can I come up?”
Urlick turns. “You know him—her, I mean?”
“Yes. We were chums in school,” I risk admitting, shyly.
I throw out a hand and assist her up the rock face, hauling her briskly up to the shelf of flat rock where we stand, elevated above the work yard.
Gwendolyn, or Gwen as she liked to be called, sensed, I’m sure, something wasn’t quite right about me, but she’d never said a word. When others picked on me and teased me at school, she encouraged them to move along. I was devastated when she went missing. She was the closest thing I ever had to a friend—though I don’t think we ever shared more than just a few words.
All of Brethren went looking for her when she went missing.
“So this is where you’ve been?” I whisper. “All this time?”
“Not by choice, that’s for sure.” Gwen pulls off her woollen cap and lets her sheared, fiery red locks tumble.
Urlick pulls back, aghast. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story.” She stammers nervously. “You should know, we ‘ave weapons.”
“What kind of weapons?”
“Dangerous ones. Military grade.”
“Military?”
“Yes. Straight from the factories in Gears.”
“The factories in Gears are producing artillery?”
“Loads of it.”
“Under who’s orders?”
“The Ruler’s.”
“Really?” I say, sharing a quick, shocked stare with Urlick.
“Not, anymore, they won’t be,” he snorts.
“But what are you doing here?” I ask. “I thought you were—We all thought you were—”
“Don’t say it.” She shivers and straightens her work frock. Her face is grimy, and she smells of urine. She has a small tear on her lip. Despite it all, she’s as mesmerizing as I remember her to be back at the Academy. She was easily the prettiest girl at the Academy. I’d been jealous of her—of her beauty, and her ease with the boys.
“Is that what they told people?” Gwen swallows. Tears glisten in her eyes. “They told them I was dead? Even my mum?”
I nod my head slowly. “Even had a big service for you. We had a full day off school.”
The day after she went missing from the dorms of the Academy, terrible rumours surfaced: first that she’d been caught sneaking around the private laboratories, planning to meet a boy, just the week before, and then that she’d been kidnapped. The rumours were perpetuated by Smrt and Rapture, of course, and they’d spread like wildfire, as did the later news that she’d been killed—left in the woods by her captors and eaten by criminals. What was left of her remains were supposedly dredged up out of a nearby stream, and the bones put on display as a lesson to the rest of us not to question authority.
I’d always wondered though, because the bones looked too white, too picked clean of meat for criminals, as if plucked out a museum display. And I’d thought they looked more like the bones of a big dog than a human… but I’d dared not question.
No one questioned the story, least of all her grieving parents, who Rapture and Smrt supported wholeheartedly.
Gwen’s bottom lip wobbles. “No wonder no one’s been looking for me.” Her voice cracks. She stares at the ground.
“How did this happen?” I take her by her hunched shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
She checks again over her shoulder, then slicks back her hair to hides it under her cap. “I was brought here the night I was abducted. Taken right out of my window from sleep, thrown in the back of a lorry, and dropped out here in the woods. She’s lost her cockney accent, clearly a cover. “They drove me out here and left me for dead. I fought and screamed, but it didn’t matter. All they said to me was, ‘Maybe this way you’ll learn to shut your mouth.’ The thing is, I hadn’t said anything. I never reported what I saw.”
“What did you see?”
She ignores me. “They left me out here anyway…in the middle of the woods with the hungry criminals. To be eaten.” She trembles.
I fight the urge to ask her again. What had she stumbled upon at the Academy that Smrt and Rapture didn’t want anyone to know about? It couldn’t have been the Illuminator, because that was still in a warehouse in Gears at the time. What other dark secret were they keeping?
“I had to fight to survive. I killed a man with a rock.” Her glistening eyes nearly let go their tears. “Smashed his head right open. Then I stole his clothing.”
“A man?”
“A criminal. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what I did.” She shudders, her voice growing soft. “I had to. He was going to eat me.”
“No one’s blaming you.” Urlick reaches for her shoulder.
She breaks down into a soft sob, and I pull her to my chest and pet her head.
“I put on the man’s clothing, then I hitched a ride on a passing cart, thinking they must be travelling to Brethren and would take me home. But I wound up here instead. I’ve been their slave-worker ever since. The fact that I was dressed as a m
an was the only thing that saved me.”
She turns her tear-filled eyes up to me. “I was to meet John Wiggins the night I disappeared.” Her bottom lip trembles. “We were going to run away together. But Smrt got there first. It was him.” Gwen sobs, returning her face to my shoulder. “It was Smrt who left me here.”
“Smrt?” Urlick’s brows cross.
“I couldn’t see, but I know it was his doing.”
“How?” Urlick says.
Gwen draws in a sharp breath and pulls back from me. “Because I saw something he didn’t want me to see.” Her eyes narrow to slits, her voice becomes wire-thin. “I saw what he was up to…with Miss Rapture and the chemicals. The ones they use to sow the clouds with, then load on these trucks, and send out here to dispose of. Sometimes they dump the excess chemical waste into the streams deep in the woods, and the chemicals find their way here.” She jerks her head to the left at the patch of bubbling fumaroles. “I didn’t mean to, but I caught Smrt robbing the coffers of the Academy. He was loading the poison pellets from the Academy’s private laboratory into his trucks. I swore to him I wouldn’t tell anybody, but he didn’t care. He sent a thug to steal me out of my bed that same night anyway. A real wild-looking thing, with a tattoo of a skull on the back of his neck and a brown leather—”
“Eye patch,” I complete her sob-filled sentence.
“You know him?” Gwen’s chin lifts.
I look to Urlick. “We’ve met up a time or two.”
Urlick glances back at the fumaroles pools. “It’s all as Masheck said.”
“Of course it is. Did you think he was lying?”
Urlick tenses his brows. “The cloud-sowing, the stream poisoning, all the senseless dumping—”
“The factories—” I add.
“And there’s more,” Gwen says. She draws in closer, then hesitates, trembling, as if afraid to share the horrible secret. “He’s built himself a ship.”
“What kind of ship?”
“An airship. A fighting ship. Stockpiled with guns—”
“What?” Urlick asks.
“The workers here say he plans to fly over and conquer the East.” Gwen shivers. “They say he’s already flown the ship once. Out over the ravine.” She draws a thumb toward Embers. “They say he was looking for some secret passageway, but there were technical difficulties, so he had to turn back.”
I feel a pinch of terror in my chest. “When? When did this happen?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen says. “A while ago, I suspect.” She turned to Urlick. “He’s going to wage a war. He’s going to kill us all.”
I glance back at Embers and my breath hitches. He’s not that stupid. He had no reason to wage war. I squint. What was Smrt really up to?
“I’ve said too much.” Gwen swallows, glancing nervously over her shoulder. Urlick looks with her, back over her shoulder at the workers grunting and swinging their shovels. “They’ll kill me if they find out I told you this.” She lowers her voice to barely a whisper. “They’ll kill you, too, if they find you’re here.”
“On who’s orders?” Urlick scowls.
“Smrt’s, of course.”
Urlick and I exchange a quick glance.
“Gwen.” I take her by the hands and squeeze them tight, looking her directly in the eyes. “You’ve nothing more to fear. Smrt’s dead.”
“What?” The word escapes her in a slow breath. Her gaze swings slowly from me to Urlick. “Then why—”
“You need to come with us.”
“Ambrose!” the boss man yells. He drops his shovel and stalks in our direction. He combs the forest. “Ambrose!? Where in the blazes are yuh now?”
Gwen’s back stiffens. “That’s me. Glenn Ambrose. That’s my cover.”
“Ambrose?” The boss shouts again.
“Gwen.” I tug her hand, desperate to get her to focus. “Gwen, we need a piece of material—something sturdy—in order to get out of here. Something we can repair the wing of a flying machine with. Do you know of something?”
She hesitates, then peels off her tanned-leather jacket and stuffs it at me. “Here. Will this do?”
“Ambrose!”
“I’d better to go.” She pulls away.
“No, wait! Gwen...” I haul her back by the arm.
“You don’t understand.” She stares me in the eyes. “If I don’t go, they’ll kill us all.”
“Ambrose, God damned. Where are yuh!”
Gwen clutches the sides of my face, her eyes darting. “Come back for me? Promise me, please.” She turns and slips away.
“No, Gwen, please…”
“Right here, sir.” She steps out from the jut in the rock face, revealing herself.
Urlick and I hold our breath. We tuck closer to the rock face.
“What the hell are you doin’ up there?” The boss man shouts, his voice right below us.
“Thought I heard somethin’,” Gwen’s voice, shaky, has taken on a cockney accent again. She widens her stance, giving us cover and time to tuck ourselves away better. We press ourselves back against the rock face, and she jumps down, right into the pit with the viper. “Turned out to be nothin’,” she says firmly.
“You’re sure it’s nofin?” The boss man’s cranes his neck, shifting in our direction. I see the edge of filthy face swing out around the rock face, and my breath tethers.
Gwen draws in a breath. “I’m positive. Was just a bobcat.” She swallows.
“You sure there ain’t no other reason yuh was up there?” the boss man growls.
“No, sir.” Gwen glances over her shoulder, and our eyes meet. Her gaze wills me to be quiet.
The boss man leans and stares. “Perhaps, I oughta see for myself.” He raises the steamrifle in his hands and tromps toward our hiding place.
“Run!” Gwen shouts, and pulls a blade from the top of her boot, her eyes like a wild animal’s. She takes the boss man by surprise, swiping his neck clean through.
Urlick grabs my hand, yanking me out from behind the rocks as the boss man gags and crumples to his knees. The steamrifle in his hand lets off a blast off. The bullet hits the rock face below us, ricochets, and tears straight through Gwen’s abdomen.
“No!” I shout as she falls.
I rip away from Urlick and scramble to her side. “Gwen?” I scoop her up in my arms. “Gwen, no!”
Her eyes flutter back. Blood covers her belly and seeps through her teeth. “Tell my mother,” she says, her chest heaving, “I love her.” Her eyes go blank. Her head drops over the side of my arm.
“No!”
“What the ’ell was that?” A heavily armed workman races through the woods toward me. The sound of his tromping feet pound inside my heart.
“Come on!” Urlick shouts. He yanks me up, forcing me to abandon Gwen. “We’ve got to get out of here!” I attempt to run, but my legs won’t move.
Urlick scoops me up and throws me over his back and bolts back into the forest, dashing through the cloud cover under heavy steamgun fire, toward the cycle. He reaches it, tosses me aboard and we peel away. Gwen’s leather vest is clutched tight to my heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
C.L.
“It’s as though somethin’s been chewin’ at these,” I declare to Masheck, who’s perched high up on a platform, on the mill next to me. I ‘old up a badly shredded piece of scrubber. It’s about the twentieth one we’ve found today.
The winds batter our backsides, slammin’ us with their blistering gusts. I don’t understand where it’s all comin’ from. Brethren’s not supposed to get storms like this.
Masheck and I ‘ave been workin’ madly all day, cobbling the ailing windmill system on the outskirts of the city back together, just as Urlick implored us to do upon ‘is leavin’. It’s in deplorable shape; it really is.
“Just age.” Masheck dismisses my theory without even looking me way.
“Or somethin’ far more sinister.” I take a closer look. I swear I see teeth marks in it.
Masheck mutters something inaudible and rolls his eyes.
I get back to work, inserting a new strap of rubber, twice the length of me arm, and tack it securely in place. I stretch it out quickly and fasten it down before it has time to snap back and sting me good, like four others have today. “Ornery little buggers,” I announce, struggling to sink the new pins.
Masheck turns and grins, watching me fight the strap with my toes.
Yeah, funny, isn’t it.
“What’s that smell?” He stops tinkering with a nut on the blade, stands up, and sniffs the air.
I lift my head and breathe deeply, then think better of it. “That, my friend, is the smell of death.”
Masheck’s shocked face swings my direction.
“Don’t tell me you’ve not smelled Vapours before?”
Masheck shakes his shaved head. “If I did, I don’t remember it.”
I scowl. It ain’t possible, a young boy like ‘im from the outskirts, not knowin’.
“Spent most me life chained up to that wall,” he says. “In the factory where you found me. There was a purification boom perched just outside the factory. I suppose that kept the Vapours from curlin’ in.”
“I suppose likely.” I agree, thinkin’ his theory sensible. A safeguard put in place to protect Smrt, no doubt, and the precious Professor P and ‘er cronies—not the likes of Masheck. “Hmm,” I scratch me dirty ‘ead. “Guess we’ve been living with the Vapours for so long out in the Follies, me brain can’t wrap itself ‘round the idea of someone not knowing what they’s like.”
I grin and Masheck still looks a might concerned.
“Nothin’ to worry about, me friend.” I grab for another strap. “Them nasty Vapours ain’t getting’ through this ‘ere force field again, not after we’s done fixin’ it.” I slap the blade of the windmill I’ve just finished. “Idn’t that right?”
“Yeah, well, let’s ‘ope so.” He turns and strips another nut clean, trying to loosen the blade on his mill. “Can’t say that I want to test that theory.”
He finishes adjusting that section of the boom, then leans and hauls another massive length of rolled rubber up onto the platform from the ground, looping it over his shoulder as he goes, then hops to the girder, an agile cat, this boy is. A regular mountain lion.
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