The Nightmare Garden ic-2

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “It doesn’t change the fact,” he said, “that your brother consorted with slipstreamers, smugglers who weaken our borders by bringing your kind through. And I will not let that go unanswered. I can’t. My people rely on me to keep them safe, just as you rely on Nails.”

  “I keep myself safe,” I said, steel creeping into my tone. “I’ve been doing it for a long time.” How dare he imply I was some helpless, sappy girl, cowering in fear unless she had a boyfriend to protect her? The more time I spent with the Wytch King, the more his unpleasantness reminded me of Grey Draven’s. The former Head of Lovecraft, the man who’d tried to use me to lure my father into a trap, had the same single-minded coldness as the Wytch King. I didn’t know if that made the Wytch King more human or Grey Draven less so.

  “You welcome some humans,” I challenged the king, spurred by the memory of Draven and his cold-blooded threat to find and exterminate my father, Conrad and anyone else of the Grayson line he could get his hands on when I wouldn’t cooperate with him. “You helped my father.” Maybe if I could convince the Wytch King I wasn’t his enemy, I could wheedle my father’s location out of him. The thought made me stand a little straighter and try to act as if I weren’t a knock-kneed mess. During my life at the Academy, I’d gotten good at pretending such things.

  “I did,” the Wytch King agreed. “I helped Archie Grayson, because the enemy of my enemy is my ally, and Archie has never crossed an Erlkin widdershins, which is more than I can say for most of your kind.” He took his seat again, leather and springs creaking under surprising weight. “But you’re not your father, little miss. And if the Fae and that human-shaped stain on the world who calls himself Grey Draven have their say, you’re never going to follow his footsteps through the Gates either.”

  This time, the chill I felt had nothing to do with his stare. “How do you know him?” I demanded. Were we in even worse trouble than I thought? Had Draven somehow snowed the Erlkin into an alliance to bring me in, use me as the bait he needed to lure my father?

  “We do not voluntarily shut ourselves in a cocoon of superstition like the Fae, Aoife,” said the Wytch King. “Don’t look so alarmed. I’ve heard of what happened in that iron city, the one called Lovecraft. Draven’s made sure your face is plastered across every newsreel there is, and your name spoken hourly on the aether waves. Your disappearing act has become something of an embarrassment to him now that he’s used the disaster to rise through the ranks, according to my spies.”

  I had never imagined that Draven would use the destruction of his own city, the city he’d been responsible for, to leverage a promotion with the Proctors, but in retrospect I felt stupid for being so naive. Of course Draven would seize the chance—a supposedly mad terrorist attacks his city, and he, stalwart, picks up the pieces and puts on the brave face. Of course the Proctors would promote him, give him all the power he needed to hunt down the person responsible: me. It fell into place like the worst sort of war machine, efficient, sleek and deadly.

  “Draven’s in charge of the Proctors now?” I whispered.

  The Wytch King chuckled. “The director, from what I hear. Head of the whole business, making sweeping changes. There’s chatter that he’ll be president someday.”

  I felt numb, dizzy, as if I were plummeting. Draven had the ear of the current president of the War Council. Only Inquisitor Hoover, who’d founded the Bureau of Proctors, stood above him.

  If I’d thought getting back to Lovecraft would be hard before now, it had just taken on a whole new dimension of impossibility. Never mind the city—I wouldn’t be safe anywhere in the Iron Land where the Proctors had eyes.

  Dean squeezed my hand gently, and I could tell by the lines between his eyes that his thoughts had followed the same track. I just felt worse—not only had I destroyed Lovecraft, I’d catapulted Draven into a position of even more power.

  Somewhere, that ugly Fae Tremaine was laughing himself sick, I just knew it.

  “So, my dear,” said the Wytch King. He raised his fingers and licked my blood delicately from his nails. “I wouldn’t be so anxious to escape Windhaven just yet. Once your brother has had his day in court, you’ll be free to go. Until then, well …” He tilted his head. “Silver-tinged Fae blood or no, it will be very interesting to have humans aboard. Very, very interesting.”

  He gestured us out, and with prodding from Skip, we exited the king’s chamber.

  Back in the hall, I looked at Dean and asked a question I already half knew the answer to, hoping he’d say something different. “Do we want to be interesting to the Wytch King?”

  “Hell no,” Dean said. “Not one little bit.”

  “I didn’t think so,” I told Dean with a sigh, before we separated, the brush of his fingers on my cheek the last thing I had to remember him by before Skip took me by the arm.

  I let him take me back to my room, playing the part of the good little human girl, even though I was more determined than ever to be anything but. Anything but the Fae spy the Erlkin believed me to be. Anything but the simple, pliant girl Grey Draven wanted to think I was. That wasn’t going to fix anything, wasn’t going to find my father and free Conrad. And it wasn’t going to save my mother.

  After I calculated that enough time had passed for most of Windhaven to be asleep, I tried the hatch of my room again. Using my Weird here was rolling the dice—the madness could find a way in as easily as my gift—but I felt the lock give quickly when I applied the force of my mind to it. My nose didn’t even start bleeding, as it had been wont to do in the past. I felt a brief boil of nausea in my guts, and thankfully, that was all. I was relieved. Knocking myself down would defeat the whole purpose of using my gift in the first place.

  I didn’t know precisely where I was headed, I just knew I couldn’t let the Erlkin treat me like a prisoner any longer. And the more of Windhaven I saw and mapped in my mind, the easier it would be for me to get Conrad and escape when the time came.

  I was sure it would come to that. I had a feeling, heavy in my chest, that arriving under the purview of the Erlkin had irretrievably left me in their web.

  Windhaven’s lower decks appeared to be constructed like those of a seagoing ship, with layers of hulls and corridors stacked next to one another, like a heart with chambers too numerous to count. Brass ladders led from one level to the next, and I began to see repeats in the Erlkin symbols—numbers or levels, in diminishing order as I climbed, fewer and fewer spokes filling in each wheel.

  The highest landing I could reach was blocked by a brass hatch, a skull and crossbones stamped straight into the metal. Not a fool, I pressed my hand and ear to the hatch and heard the howl of the wind from the other side. I wagered if I opened it, I’d be swept off Windhaven and meet the ground quickly enough, so I turned and went back down the stairs to the corridor. A series of arrows marked a symbol shaped like a lotus flower, and I followed them as the corridors narrowed around me, until only one hatch remained straight ahead.

  It opened before I could put a hand on it to test what was on the other side, and I found Shard’s thin, elfin face and burning eyes glaring down at me. I flinched. This was the exact opposite of what I’d had in mind when I snuck out.

  “It took you long enough,” Shard snapped. “How did you get out?”

  I backpedaled a step. Her glare felt like a slap. “You were watching me?”

  Shard pushed the hatch wider. “We can see all of Windhaven from here.”

  I stepped into the room and gasped. Below my feet, the ground fell away, and clouds drifted below the belly of Windhaven. The walls and floors of the room were glass, bulbous petals of glass riveted to the walls along brass veins.

  Rising from the glass in the center of the room like the stamens of this odd frozen flower was a pilot console replete with dozens of dials and four rudders that steered the four great fans. To one side sat a bank of dials and knobs marked with more of the strange symbols, and to the other was a wall filled with screens that twitched and danced
with images.

  Like the lanternreel screens back home in Lovecraft, but writ small. Dozens of them, showing rooms and halls and the exterior hull of Windhaven.

  “The aether feeds images from all over Windhaven,” said Shard, “and sends them to the screens here. So yes, we saw you escape, and yes, I saw you with my son.”

  She turned to me, but I refused to look away. “And?” I asked her, brash as the criminal she believed me to be. “Have you decided that I’m not a Fae spy? Or are you going to toss me off Windhaven without a parachute? Either way, make up your mind soon. I’m bored being locked in a tiny room on this floating lug nut.”

  Shard moved her hand lightning quick and smacked me across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, but my cheek stung where she’d struck. I flinched, feeling all my bravery disappear with the pain. I’d tried to act like Dean, but I didn’t have his nerve. Most of my bravery was like fast-burning aether—a bright flame with a quick flare, and then nothing except ashes.

  “I hear you managed to impress the Wytch King,” she said. “So you’re probably not a Fae spy, I’ll give you that much. But what you are is a rude, impetuous little girl who can still bring the Fae to us, and for that alone, we’re not letting you leave.”

  “ ‘We’?” I said. “You speak for all of the Erlkin?” I wasn’t sure exactly how much power Shard wielded aboard Windhaven, and she certainly didn’t seem to agree with the Wytch King’s assessment of me. This could go either way.

  “You’re important to my son,” Shard said, her voice softer. She looked out the front of the bubbled glass, at the fog drifting back from the prow of Windhaven. “And Nails is important to me. I already lost him once when he chose his father over me.” Her eyes drifted back to my face, and I could tell by the coldness in them I was no more substantial to her than the fog outside. “I won’t let it happen again. Not now.”

  “I—” I started, but Shard waved her hand.

  “Go back to your room, Aoife. Nobody but Windhaven crew is supposed to be up here.”

  “I care about Dean,” I blurted. That was a truth I didn’t have to question, ever. Dean, aside from Nerissa and Conrad, was always first in my thoughts. “Just as much as you do. He saved my life. I’m not trying to lead him astray or get him in trouble, but he should be able to have his own life in the Iron Land if he wants it.”

  “No, he should not,” Shard said shortly. “Saying that just proves how young and unsuited for Nails you are.” She gestured at one of the Erlkin arrayed around the deck, checking gauges or watching the rudders and the aether screens. “Take Ms. Grayson back to her room. If she won’t stay in it, move her to a holding cell.”

  “Yes, Commander,” said the Erlkin, and moved for me. Before she could close her hands around my arm, an alarm began to whoop from the flight console.

  “Commander!” the pilot shouted. “Contact on the aether waves! Bearing one-zero-two!”

  “Show me,” Shard said tensely. The Erlkin she’d snapped at darted back to her station.

  “This ping,” said the pilot, pointing to a radio screen. A large, wavering blob appeared and disappeared under the stroke of the aether detector. “Huge.” She flipped another switch. “And closing in fast.”

  I felt the fear return, smooth and cold as an iron ball in my stomach. Whatever was out there in the fog, I knew from the prickles all over my exposed skin that it wasn’t going to be a friendly encounter.

  “We’re being hailed!” another Erlkin at the side console shouted.

  “Put it through the aethervox,” said Shard. A moment of static blanketed all other sound, and then a voice I thought I’d only hear again in my nightmares barked out of the cloth-covered speakers mounted at the apex of the glass bubble.

  “This is Grey Draven, Director of the Bureau of Proctors. You are an enemy vessel, carrying fugitives. You are ordered to heave to and surrender any wanted criminals on board.”

  I froze. I couldn’t have moved for anything in the world, no longer able to pretend that Draven wouldn’t find me. Before I’d spoken to the Wytch King, I’d fervently hoped that Draven had died, like so many in Lovecraft, when the Engine was destroyed. Failing that, I’d simply hoped to run forever and never have to look at his face again. But he was out there, in the fog, inexorable, and I was never going to escape.

  Draven, while he was alive, was never going to leave me be.

  Shard cut her gaze to me, then shoved the radio operator out of the way and depressed the return switch, a finely wrought ebony knob. “You’re out of your depth, Mr. Draven. The Proctors don’t rule here, and no humans are wanted by the likes of you once you cross the borders of the Mists. Go home.”

  “I know you have her.” Draven’s voice was precise and flat as a scalpel blade. “Don’t play games with me, you goblin bitch.”

  I watched Shard’s back stiffen, but she was all calm as she responded. “Go home, Mr. Draven. I don’t know how you got to the Mists, but leave. There’s nothing for you here.”

  Draven laughed. “I came through the Gates, of course. The gates Miss Grayson so kindly ripped asunder when she destroyed the Engine in my city.” A pause, while Shard turned to stare at me. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t tell you that,” Draven purred. “That she’s the reason for all of this misery. That with her unnatural talents, she sent a pulse of power from the Engine to the Gates so great that it shattered the very fabric between our worlds and all the others, that she destroyed countless innocent lives, that she’s a traitor to her kind, prey to the honeyed words of the Fae.”

  Shard took a step toward me, another. Her eyes weren’t flat now. She’d been proven right. I was nothing but a criminal, something foul that had contaminated her little flying world. I was in deep trouble, and began to consider where I could run to. Nowhere good.

  “Commander,” said the pilot. “We have visual contact.”

  Shard let her gaze wander from me, and we both stared as a dirigible hove out of the mists. It was the largest I had ever seen, a zeppelin with its rigid balloon painted matte black and embossed with the gold seal of the Proctors, raven’s wings stamped just underneath the gear and sickle, the symbol of the Master Builder, the false god Draven and his kind had created to replace magic and religion.

  The dirigible was running red lanterns, a color aether took on when it was treated with other chemicals to burn brighter or hotter or longer. The hull was silver and looked like the body of a beast that lived deep under the ocean and only surfaced in legend, when it feasted on what floated above.

  Gatling guns swiveled toward Windhaven from the hull, their cylinders turning slowly, and the dirigible was so close I swore I could count the individual bullets waiting to stream forth and puncture the glass bubble we stood in.

  Shard swore, a coarse, barking word I didn’t understand but recognized instantly as a curse. “Evasive action,” she snapped. “Get us out of their fire zone!”

  “Headwind, Commander,” the pilot said. “We can’t.”

  “Do it!” Shard screamed.

  “You have a choice, Erlkin,” Draven’s voice purred. “It’s an easy one. Give me Aoife Grayson or I blow that floating scrap heap out of the sky.”

  I backed toward the door, desperate to get away from Draven’s voice and the view of his great dark shadow of an airship. If I couldn’t see or hear him, I could pretend this wasn’t happening. Shard wasn’t paying attention to me now. She was screaming orders, and her crew was scrambling to obey.

  “I guess you’ve made your choice,” Draven said. “Too bad.” With that, tracers of orange fire streaked across the distance between the zeppelin and Windhaven. One shell shot through the glass of the pilothouse and embedded itself in the far wall. Wind screamed through the opening, and cracks like spiderwebs spread from the hole. Windhaven appeared to be well armored, but Draven’s gunners had been lucky, and the glass fell away in jagged slices as the negative pressure fought with the bullet holes.

  “Return fire!” Shard bell
owed. “Don’t let them get another shot like that!”

  I bumped into the hatch and reached behind me to spin the wheel. My heart was hammering in time with the rounds from the Gatling guns on Draven’s airship. I couldn’t think beyond the cold fact that we had to get off Windhaven before Draven boarded it and found us. If he’d already tracked us here, there was nowhere I could truly hide from him. Draven was relentless. Eventually he’d board Windhaven, and then we’d be, as Cal would put it, screwed up like sugar in the gearbox.

  I’d known Draven was depraved and possibly insane, but obsessive enough to track me into a foreign land full of hostile Erlkin? I shuddered to think what he’d do if he actually caught me again.

  I slipped out through the hatch, unnoticed by any of the crew, and fled down the corridor, back the way I’d come. Windhaven jolted and swayed under round after round of fire, and there was a shriek followed by a thump that rocked me off my feet, sending vibrations through the entire hull.

  Some kind of antiaircraft projectile. Windhaven righted, but I felt a change in the tenor of the turbines. We’d been hit, and a dip in my stomach told me the craft was losing altitude.

  Hands took me by the arm and tried to right me, and I swatted at them reflexively.

  “Relax!” Dean shouted over the whooping alarms and thudding of projectiles as Windhaven and the dirigible exchanged fire. “It’s me. Just me.”

  “Thanks be for small favors,” I said, slumping. “We have to go, Dean. Now.”

  His face was grim, and his jaw twitched when he nodded. “Yeah. Figure no good’s going to come of me staying here. My mother can take care of herself.”

  I let him pull me to my feet. “Where are Conrad and the others?” I said.

  “Cal and Bethina are in the regular cabins like you,” Dean told me. “My mother put Conrad in a holding cell down near the engine room.”

  “Of course she did,” I muttered. Nothing could ever be easy on me and my family. “Is there a way we can tell Cal and Bethina how to meet us at the balloon bay?”