A Clockwork Fairytale

by Helen Scott Taylor

  Having failed to talk her out of this madness, Vittorio had even appealed to the king to put a stop to the trip. But Melba had claimed she wanted to learn more about the Island, and the king had agreed. At least the king had backed Vittorio when he recommended she ride in the sedan chair. She had wanted to walk and even suggested she could wear a disguise—no doubt the influence of the blasted spymaster Turk. The sooner the jumped-up trash tyke was out of the way, the better.

  “How far now?” she asked for the umpteenth time.

  Vittorio ungritted his teeth and forced a smile that felt like a grimace. “We’re nearly there.” He had sent a note to Dante to warn him of the visit and threaten him with dire consequences if he did or said anything embarrassing. Not that Vittorio held out much hope that Dante would behave himself. Threats had never worked on him in the past.

  Curious trash men pulled their handcarts aside and doffed their caps as the royal sedan chair passed them. “Hey there, mate,” Melba said, giving a mock salute to a trash man who executed a parody of a courtly bow.

  Vittorio rubbed at the tension in his neck. It unnerved him that he had no idea what Melba would say or do next. Her foibles were amusing when they were alone in the Palace but she must learn to behave with more decorum in public.

  When they reached Dante’s barge, the four guards carrying the sedan chair set it down on the path while the other six guards accompanying them took up positions around the conveyance. In her haste, Melba half tumbled out of the chair before Vittorio had time to extend a hand to help her.

  In the heat of late morning, this close to the barges, both the stink and the clouds of flies were intolerable. Vittorio kept swallowing the burn of bile in the back of his throat. “Don’t you find the smell disturbing, Melba?” he asked, batting away nasty buzzing insects.

  “Aye, it pongs worse than a fishmonger’s trash barrel,” she said, grinning up at him.

  She halted at the edge of the shingle beach and looked down at her feet. “I don’t want to ruin me smart shoes on the stones.”

  Hope flashed through Vittorio. If she stayed here and Dante came to her, he might still maintain some control over her meeting with his brother. “Why don’t you wait here? I’ll ask the Trash King to come to see you.”

  “No. I wanna go on the barge.” She slipped off her shoes and placed them carefully side by side in the sedan chair. Then she proceeded to cross the pebbly beach barefoot.

  “Sweet Earth Jinn,” Vittorio whispered, hurrying after her. “Give me strength to survive this visit.”

  Dante sauntered to the side of his barge, togged out in his usual tat and sparkle. Melba paused, staring up at him openmouthed as though he were some sort of god. He leaped down, landing elegantly, and executed a deep bow, sweeping his hat through the air.

  Melba curtsied to him. “You don’t have to do that,” Vittorio snapped.

  “He’s a king, ain’t he?”

  “Not a real king,” Vittorio said. But one look at Melba’s entranced smile and he knew he was wasting his breath.

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Royal Highness,” Dante said. Melba held out her hand and Dante made a performance of kissing her knuckles as though he were a courtier. Melba giggled and Vittorio could almost hear the click as the woman he hoped to marry and his brother bonded like twins parted at birth.

  Vittorio should have known better than to bring Melba here. Even stinking and dressed in tat, Dante still had a natural gift for charming the ladies.

  “I ain’t never seen the trash barges before,” Melba said as though she had been treated to an exotic spectacle.

  “We’re honored to have you here, ma’am.”

  “Call me Melba,” she said. “Can I call you Dante?”

  “You can call me anything you want, beautiful Melba. Would you like to see my barge?”

  “She’s barefoot! She does not want to climb up on the trash, Dante,” Vittorio cut in before the visit got out of hand. “You can speak with her down here on the beach.”

  “I want to get on the barge,” Melba retorted. “What’s the point of coming all the way out here if I ain’t gonna have a proper look around?”

  Dante flashed Vittorio a triumphant grin. A wide boarding plank had been run down from the side of his barge so Melba could climb up without using the ladder. Dante ran halfway up, then reached back a hand to steady her as she followed him. She scampered up and jumped onto the barge in a flurry of lace and gold silk skirts. She bounced up and down on the trash. “It ain’t as squashy as I thought it would be.”

  Vittorio thought he might be sick.

  “I only allow solid trash that won’t decompose on this barge,” Dante explained. “That way it doesn’t stink as much.”

  “Still pongs something rotten though,” Melba said.

  Dante laughed and there was a definite glint of male interest in his eyes when he looked at her. Vittorio ran up the boarding plank and put a supportive hand beneath her elbow to make sure his brother did not forget that she belonged to him.

  “You must take my throne while you’re here,” Dante said. Ignoring propriety, he grabbed her hand and led her toward his throne. Once she was seated, he perched on an upturned bottle crate at her feet.

  As he hurried after them, Vittorio pressed his sleeve over his nose but it did not help block the stink. The bitter burn of bile ran up his throat. He wasn’t sure how long he could tolerate the smell.

  “You talk like a nob,” Melba said, grinning down at Dante.

  “Very perceptive of you, Melba. I used to be on the fringes of Court.”

  “Why did you come out here then?”

  “I wanted to be my own master.”

  “You look like a nob as well. Actually,” she glanced up at Vittorio thoughtfully. “You look like Vitto, only with dark hair.”

  Vittorio froze as Dante glanced at him, mischief clear on his face. Warning bells clanged inside Vittorio’s head and a cold sweat coated his skin. If it got out that Vittorio had a brother who lived on a trash barge, he would become a laughing stock.

  “That would be because we’re brothers,” Dante said.

  “Brothers!” Melba’s puzzled gaze jumped to Vittorio and he tried to smile but he just couldn’t make his face obey. “Why didn’t you tell me, Vitto?”

  “We are half brothers,” Vittorio corrected. “My mother is of noble blood. Dante’s is not. I would prefer you to keep this to yourself, Melba, please,” he added.

  “So who’s your pa?” she asked eagerly.

  “No one you know,” Vittorio shot back. If Dante told her that she was their cousin, he would personally wring his brother’s neck.

  “Our father isn’t interested in us,” Dante said. “Not like your father. I hear he was so pleased to have you back he handed out a huge reward to the man who took you home.”

  “That was Master Turk. Pa really liked him,” Melba said.

  Vittorio prayed that Master Turk was already aboard a ship leaving Malverne Isle and that the ship sank and the blasted spymaster got eaten by a shark.

  ***

  Melba stared at the colorful strands of silk woven through Dante’s long dark hair. She had never seen anyone dressed like him before. The front of his jacket glittered with jewel-backed doodads in all shapes and sizes, and his blue eyes sparkled with humor. Although he was filthy and he ponged, she had instantly liked him. He felt like a long lost brother. “I wish you was still at Court,” she said. “You could have been me friend.” She would like to have some friends nearer her own age. She was getting bored having to spend all her time with Vittorio. “Will you come to the Great Earth Day Celebration?”

  “That would be fun,” Dante said.

  “You’ll have to clean up. The Royal Guards won’t let you in if you stink and wear tat.”

  “I can smarten up,” he agreed.

  “I’ll send you an invitation.” Melba glanced at Vittorio, wishing he would leave her to speak with Dante alone. She had come to the t
rash barges only to find out more about Turk. Although she would have to be careful what she said to Dante now she knew he was Vittorio’s brother. She needed to get him talking. “Vitto can raise Apple Jinns. Can you do any magic?”

  Dante cut Vittorio a startled sideways glance. “He showed you his magic, did he?”

  Melba called her Apple Jinn out from her sleeve and let the small diaphanous spirit dance on her lap. “He helped me summon one.”

  Dante’s serious expression gave way to a grin. “My creations are far more impressive than Vitto’s.” He stood and offered her his arm. “Come into my workshop, Princess Melbaline, and prepare to be amazed.”

  “Her Royal Highness is not interested in seeing inside your grubby little shack,” Vittorio snapped.

  But she instinctively trusted Dante and couldn’t wait to see the magical things he wanted to show her. She let him lead her to the door of the wooden shed behind his throne. “Ta da!” Dante raised an arm, presenting the inside of his home. Her mouth dropped open in wonder. The place was a mechanical treasure trove. There were shelves full of doodads and gadgets like the ones she’d seen for sale in Sugar Street Market, all set with polished beach pebbles, shells, or pieces of colored glass. Parts of mechanical devices hung on the walls while sheets of tin were propped beside the door. Tools hung neatly on wooden pegs over a workbench beneath a window. On the bench were a magnifying eyepiece on a stand and numerous old chipped pottery bowls full of nuts, bolts, springs, screws, and cogs of various sizes.

  “Great Earth Jinn, you’re a gadgeteer.” She looked at Dante with new admiration. Since gadgeteers had been outlawed by the clockmakers guild, they had become folk heroes in the outer circles.

  He grinned at her and moved forward to uncover a shallow wooden box covered with a piece of cloth. “These are my best ones.”

  The box was full of doodads, but not the simple clockwork beetles on sale in the market that the nobs liked to pin to their belts and purses. These were intricately fashioned tin replicas of flying insects, made with exquisite detail. She reached out a finger and touched a tiny metal wing in wonder. Vittorio came to the doorway and clapped listlessly. “Bravo. Dante can make trinkets. Can we go now?”

  Ignoring Vittorio as if he hadn’t spoken, Dante carefully picked up a tin dragonfly with a tiny chip of blue glass set in its body and held it out to Melba. “For you if you’d like it, beautiful princess. The blue glass matches your eyes.”

  Vittorio sighed loudly. “I can’t tolerate the stench in here any longer. I shall be waiting on the beach for you Melba.”

  Dante glanced after his brother. “I’m pleased he’s gone. I want to show you something. Everyone wonders how the southerners make their ships sail so fast. I’ve watched them when they sail past here and I’m sure they use the air and sea to push them along. I reckon the southerners have sorcerers riding in the airships that accompany the seagoing vessels. I tried some experiments and look what I discovered. He stirred his finger in the air and whispered under his breath, “Great Earth Jinn, birther of all life, let the air serve me.” A tiny whirlwind appeared at the tip of his finger. She sensed the spinning wind had a presence of its own, much like the Stars in the roses.

  Dante picked up a fly from his box of doodads and fed the small vortex of air inside the metal body. He closed his eyes briefly; then the fly flapped its tiny metal wings and buzzed around the workshop.

  “Sweet Earth Jinn!” Melba ducked as the flying doodad whizzed over her head. “Do mine.” She held her dragonfly out on her palm and Dante summoned another tiny whirlwind and touched it to her insect’s metal body. Without being told, she understood that she needed to bind it to the dragonfly. She opened her mind and connected with the tiny air spirit.

  “Now make it fly,” Dante said, stepping back to give her more room. After a few failed attempts where Melba’s dragonfly crashed to the workbench, she got the hang of the wing motion and instructed her Jinn what to do. She and Dante set their doodads racing around, dive-bombing each other, both laughing until her stomach hurt. When she needed a rest, she set her dragonfly down on the workbench, perched up on the stool, and examined it under the magnifying eyepiece. “Your workmanship is top-notch, Dante. I ain’t never seen anything so clever. How do you put all the tiny pieces together?”

  “With exceptional skill and a lot of patience.” He leaned an elbow on the bench grinning hugely, obviously pleased with himself. “I’d say this is far better than an Apple Jinn, wouldn’t you?”

  “Definitely.” Melba cradled her tiny dragonfly in her palm, wishing she could show it to Turk. Suddenly she missed him with an intense stab of longing that brought tears to her eyes. “Do you know Master Turk?” she asked Dante.

  His playful grin faded and his gaze sharpened, his expression telling her that he did indeed know Turk. “Why do you ask?”

  “He used to be a trash tyke, didn’t he?”

  “Did he tell you that?” Dante asked.

  She nodded.

  “That was before my time here when Gwinnie was Trash Queen.”

  “Gwinnie! Sweet Earth Jinn, I never knew that about her.” Gwinnie made such a fuss about everything being clean. Melba couldn’t imagine her on the trash barge, although she could easily imagine her as a queen bossing everyone around.

  “I heard she was the one who looked after Turk when he was washed up here,” Dante said. “But it’s gossip. I was only a nipper then.”

  “Were you a monk as well?”

  Dante laughed. “Not blooming likely. I don’t need the golden robes telling me what to think.”

  “Is that what they’ve done to Turk?”

  Dante looked down and threaded a tiny nut onto a bolt. “You need to ask him that.”

  Melba stared out of the window at the trash. “I ain’t gonna get to see him much now I’m stuck in the Palace.” She turned to study Dante. Although she had only just met him, she felt she could talk to him about stuff she wouldn’t tell anyone else. “I asked him to marry me and come to the Palace but he wouldn’t.”

  Dante whistled between his teeth then glanced over his shoulder at the door. “Have you told Vitto that?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “He wants to marry me, don’t he?”

  “He does.” Dante stared at her his eyebrows drawn down. “I sense… Do you feel well, Melba?”

  “Aye.” Although she did have the start of a headache.

  “Has Vitto given you any gold or silver jewelry?”

  “He gave me earrings and a necklace to wear at the Great Earth Day celebrations.”

  “Have you worn them yet?”

  She shook her head. “Why all the questions?”

  “It’s nothing. Forgive me.” Dante turned away to stare out of the shack door and released a long anguished sigh; then his gaze returned to her. “Look, I don’t like to say this because I love my brother. Despite our differences, he has been good to me over the years. But please do not eat or drink anything he gives you or wear any jewelry he offers you. And if you start to feel unwell, I implore you to send me a message immediately.”

  ***

  Turk stood on the wharf at the docks, hands on hips, and stared at the long sweeping curve of the coast that formed a natural harbor. In the distance, a rocky headland protruded far into the sea, shielding the bay from the north winds while the man-made breakwater at the other end divided the docks from South Spit Marshes.

  Above the Royal Victualler’s office at the northern end of the port, the blue and gold flag of Royal Malverne Isle flapped in the wind. Beyond the office, a wall enclosed a twenty-foot drop onto jagged rocks. This was The Well where those condemned to death were thrown to be finished off by the sea.

  The barges of the Royal Fleet, which plied back and forth across the channel bringing supplies from the mainland, occupied berths near the Royal Victualler’s office. In front of Turk were independent barges from the mainland and two merchant brigs up from the south with
their colorful airships floating above them.

  Turk had risked leaving the protection of the monastery grounds that morning without a glamour to disguise himself. He thought he would be more likely to get passage on a southern ship if they recognized him as one of them. He was dressed in tatty black dress trousers, but he had found a clean shirt. He’d turned up the sleeves and gone without a neck cloth so he blended in better with the folk on the docks.

  As Turk approached the nearest southern brig, a stream of Malverne dockworkers were going up and down the gangplank, unloading the cargo while the crew supervised. “Hey,” Turk waved a hand to signal to the sailor at the head of the gangplank, checking off what was unloaded. The man raised his head and scrutinized Turk, before trotting down the gangplank to meet him on the quay.

  “What is it you are wanting?” the man asked in a lilting foreign accent.

  “I’m looking for passage south.”

  The man looked Turk up and down, a frown creasing his forehead. “We do not take passengers.”

  “Can I speak with your captain?” Turk wasn’t going to argue with a crewman. He was sure the captain would find a berth for him if he offered enough coin.

  The sailor shrugged. “You can find our captain in the Royal Victualler’s office. We are here for longer than usual as your dockers will not work tomorrow because of your Great Earth Day celebration. ”

  Turk glanced at the offices at the far end of the harbor and sighed. He wasn’t going to invite trouble by wandering among the bluejackets thronging the quay near the Royal Barges. “I’ll wait here for him,” he said turning back to the man. But the sailor had already lost interest and was halfway up the gangplank to the ship.

  As Turk started toward the other southern ship a filthy, ragged tyke dashed up. “Master Turk, sir?” he asked.

  Turk squinted at the boy’s grimy face, trying to make out his features. He was certain he didn’t recognize him. “Who’s asking?”

  “I’ve a note, sir.” The boy pushed a small folded piece of paper into Turk’s hand, then dashed off, leaving the sour stink of trash on the air.