Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order)

by Kristin Bailey

  I turned back toward Will, keeping hold on the frozen bronze. My hands were numb with cold in spite of my gloves. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “I’d call you mad if it weren’t a foregone conclusion. We’re resorting to burglary?” He folded his hands together even as he said it, and allowed me to place my foot in his palms.

  “It’s not burglary if we don’t intend to do any burgling. This is merely a social call at a very inconvenient hour.” I looked back up at the head of the lion as Will lifted his hands, launching me up onto the lion’s neck. I folded over the top of it and struggled to gain a hold before sliding my body around over the mane, and scrabbling for a foothold on the other side.

  I lost grip on the lion’s ear and slid down over the curved back of the beast. I hit my chin and pushed off from the statue out of some sense of self-preservation, the way one throws oneself from a dangerous horse. Though I tried to catch myself, I landed hard, and my momentum carried me backward until I rested on my bum in a pile of snow.

  Will clambered over the lion and jumped effortlessly down on the other side. He offered me a hand.

  Boys.

  “Let’s hope no one notices that dainty impression,” he said to me, chuckling as I took his hand and he lifted me to my feet.

  “That’s not amusing,” I said, brushing the snow from my backside. I removed my bonnet so I could shake it out, and I tucked it into the pocket of my coat. While functional, I didn’t like how the brim limited the range of what I could see. “Now how will we get into the house?”

  “Do you know how to pick a lock?”

  I stared at him. “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s test the doors. We’re going to have to be careful not to wake anyone.”

  I looked around the familiar courtyard. It seemed like only yesterday that I had stood here on a snowy night much like this one and found the courage to enter the carriage house. It rose above us like a quiet sentinel, with icicles dripping from the roof and the dormant ivy.

  Wait, that was it. “We don’t have to go into the house at all.”

  “What are you talking about?” Will said as he rubbed his own arms for warmth.

  “There’s an entrance to Rathford’s workshop in the carriage house.” I immediately headed toward the tall stone building, but Will clasped my hand and held me back.

  “No, there isn’t. I lived in that carriage house, remember?”

  “Neither of us could have imagined a secret society just beneath our feet. Of course you wouldn’t have noticed a hidden entrance. It would be well concealed.

  “When I first discovered Rathford’s workshop, I had to walk down a spiral stair, then through a long narrow passage. That passage must have connected to the foundations of the carriage house. Rathford had pieces of machinery that could never have fit down that stair. There has to be another way in, and I believe we’ll find it in there.” I pointed at the large door.

  Will hesitated, unwilling to yield. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought he was afraid.

  That was when I realized what was wrong. “You’re not trapped there anymore,” I said gently as I stepped closer to his side and squeezed his hand. “You have a new life now.”

  He looked down at me, then lifted our hands to his lips and placed a sweet kiss to the back of my gloved hand. “Thanks to you. We’d better go through the back door. The hinge isn’t as loud.”

  We crossed the snowy courtyard, staying in the mush of the paths that had been well trod through the winter. We reached the back door, and Will tested it. It opened easily, and we quietly slipped inside the stable area of the carriage house.

  Everything within the stable was completely still and shadowed with silvery shards of moonlight slicing through the narrow windows.

  Warmth enveloped me, washing the cold out of the layers of my clothing and waking my frozen hands and feet. I immediately ran toward the old stove in the corner and held my hands as close as I dared to the fat iron belly. They stung as they came awake.

  A piercing neigh broke the silence, and I let out a squeak as I jumped back. Old Nick, the sweet brown gelding that Will used to care for, stretched his neck over the door of his box, reaching out for his former groom.

  Will crossed to the horse in a flash and enveloped the horse’s large face in a loving embrace against his chest. “Quiet, boy. There’s nothing to fuss about,” he whispered to the horse as he scratched Old Nick’s ears and rubbed his face. The horse nickered in loving greeting and let out a heavy sigh.

  The second horse, Little Nancy, had woken and was reaching her head around for affection as well. She squealed in indignation, then tried to nip at Will’s sleeve.

  Something thumped directly above me. The timbers of the ceiling groaned as footsteps from the small groom’s quarters in the loft made their way toward the old wooden stairs to our right.

  “Will, hurry,” I whispered. He backed into me, and together we turned the corner into the large room that had held Lord Rathford’s old landau coach. A more practical calash was standing beside it, but the large landau was still there, only it had been covered with a set of large white sheets that hung nearly to the floor. The horses cried in protest as we left, their voices ringing off the stone with such a sharp pitch, it hurt my ears.

  “Under there.” I ran to the coach and Will scrambled under the cover. I dove down to join him, but my skirts made crawling impossible. Will grabbed my hands and pulled me to him.

  We lay flat on our stomachs beneath the coach, trying to make our bodies as still and small as possible. I didn’t dare move as the heat from Will’s breath curled over my ear and the side of my neck. There was still a gap of a foot between the sheet and the floor. If we weren’t careful, we could be seen.

  “Easy, easy,” a deep rumbling voice called over the cries of the horses. “What has gotten into the two a you? Wakin’ the dead at this hour.”

  The cries of the horses settled somewhat. Meanwhile our hiding place seemed tenuous at best.

  A flare of light stretched over the floor and illuminated the sheet. I froze as the swinging glow from a lantern slowly patrolled between the two carriages. “Something spooked you good,” the groom mumbled half to himself as I watched his thick boots pass by the spokes of one of the wheels.

  He rattled the latch of the large door at the front of the carriage house. Satisfied it was secure, he turned back toward us.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. Shifting as silently as I could, I perched up on my elbows and glanced at Will. He had placed a finger to his lips, and now pointed to one of the stones only a foot or two in front of us.

  Amid the rectangular stones that paved the floor of the carriage house was one singular round stone, not much wider than the width of Will’s palm. Three holes had been bored into it. Will placed his fingers in them and lifted up. The stone gave way. It was only perhaps an inch thick. Will placed it to the side without a sound.

  I craned my neck forward as far as I could.

  The light from the lantern shifted, illuminating the shallow round pit.

  The dim light revealed the seal of the Amusementists.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I PLACED MY HAND OVER the seal so I would be able to find it in the dark. Will put an arm over my back and scooted closer as the light from the groom’s lantern disappeared around the corner. We heard him tromp back up the stairs, and then everything went still.

  We waited, motionless for what felt like forever. I could only hope that the groom had returned to his bed and that he was a heavy sleeper.

  The last thing we needed was the housekeeper, Mrs. Pratt, catching me and Will and accusing us of impropriety, again. Only, this time we shouldn’t even have been in the carriage house at all. It would defy explanation, if the old woman’s heart didn’t collapse before we could give one.

  We couldn’t lie under the coach forever. I turned my head to look at Will. I could barely see him in the dim light.

  “What
if this wakes the groom again?” I asked.

  “Well, we did have an invitation.”

  I let out a chuckle, and a little rebellion took hold. I felt the medallion, then took my grandfather’s master key from around my neck and fitted it into the lock. The key was all I had left of my grandfather, and it had the power to unlock any Amusement, so long as one knew the song it played and could complete the musical phrase the key started.

  I listened to the song coming from the key, but I already knew Rathford’s musical code by heart. I turned the thin dial around the edge of the seal, playing the notes to release the lock.

  Immediately the floor beneath us shuddered with a low rumble. Then it dropped with a sudden lurch. I clung to Will’s forearm as the noise reverberated through the carriage house. I could feel the shaking in my bones. We sank deeper and deeper into a pit, taking the large coach with us.

  Once we had lowered at least ten feet, we heard another piercing neigh, then a shout. I rolled to the edge of the sheet and peeked up from beneath it. We were now at least twenty feet beneath the ground, and sinking ever faster. The groom stood at the edge of the pit with his mouth agape and his lantern swinging helplessly in his hand.

  “Oi, oi!” he shouted, turning this way and that, as if he didn’t know where to look for help. A grinding noise of old gears coming to life filled the pit. I had to cover my ears as the hole closed above me. Two dark panels slid together, reforming the floor of the stable and plunging us into darkness.

  I felt Will’s body crawl next to mine as we continued our descent in pitch black. Then I heard a familiar whirring.

  Spinning wheels with flint edges rubbed against strikers, showering sparks in the darkness. It was an eerie sight, like fountains of raining stars.

  Braziers beneath the flint wheels caught fire and lit a large chamber deep beneath the carriage house. We were in a room cluttered with the remains of half-formed inventions and large mechanical parts. One of Rathford’s mechanical lions lay on his side with a panel in his chest open and parts spilling out. Though I knew in my head it was only a machine, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was staring at a dead beast, some poor creature brought low on a safari to prove the manhood of a stuffy blue blood paying to feel the thrill of adventure.

  Dust and cobwebs had settled on everything, giving the room a ghostly quality. The platform we were on lowered five more feet, until it became a seamless part of the floor.

  As soon as it settled, I scrambled out from beneath the coach, with Will close behind. Looking around, I quickly examined the structure of the gears and rails set into the walls on either side of the platform that we had descended upon.

  “It’s going to be difficult to explain away a disappearing coach,” I said.

  “If we put it back, maybe they won’t notice it was missing. It’s the same mechanism as the lift in the Foundry,” Will said, stepping quickly to our left.

  “I think it will be difficult to forget watching it sink through the floor. There!” Just beyond him was a large lever. He grabbed it, and I helped him pull. The lever was stiff from lack of use, but together we managed to break it loose.

  The floor rose once more. Will and I watched the covered coach ascend the shaft, disappearing into the ceiling. It continued its upward progress until the gears in the lift stopped turning and fell silent.

  “Perhaps he’ll think this was all a dream?” Will offered.

  “I sincerely doubt that.” My heart was pounding, and the bubble of laughter began deep in my chest. It felt so naughty to be sneaking around this way, and in this house. I placed my hands over my mouth, trying to hold back my mirth as Will’s eyes crinkled in the corners. Then he too joined me in conspiratorial laughter.

  I tried to take a few deep breaths to compose myself, but it was no use. “That poor man. He must be certain he’s lost his mind.”

  Will shook with his own forbidden laughter. “Good, he’ll fit in with the rest of the servants, then.”

  That did me in. To keep my balance I had to place my hand against a large gear wheel protruding from a half-constructed engine. “Can you imagine the look on Mrs. Pratt’s face when he tells her the coach is gone?”

  “It won’t be half as good as her reaction when she comes to the carriage house and sees the coach right there.” Will took a deep breath and wiped the corners of his eyes. “I don’t envy that poor groom.”

  I did my best impression of the stiff-lipped old housekeeper. “My dear man, do you expect me to believe that a coach could sink through the floor? It’s preposterous. Now get back to your bed.”

  “Uncanny. That’s exactly what she said.”

  I jumped at the third voice in the room and spun on my heel. Peter stood in the gap of a large sliding partition.

  “Peter!” He was still in a nightshirt and dressing gown. His round and youthful face smiled back at me even though his expression was a mix of relief and exasperation.

  “I’m glad you both think this is humorous,” he said. “It’s going to be nearly impossible to get you out of here without suspicion.” He crossed the room to Will and offered his hand. “MacDonald, good to see you again.”

  “I’m sure between the three of us, we’ll think of something,” Will said. They shook hands, and Will patted Peter on the back. “What took you so long?”

  “I swear Mrs. Pratt never sleeps. It’s unnerving. She found me sneaking out to meet you,” Peter said as he walked back to the partition. We joined him and passed through into the part of the workshop I had explored once before.

  “What did you tell her?” Peter wasn’t a very good liar. When he was caught in a lie, it showed all over his face.

  “I didn’t say anything. I started flushing, and Mrs. Pratt thought I was coming down with a fever. She fussed over me for an hour at least. I couldn’t get away. She was brewing me some sort of curative when the groom burst into the kitchen in a panic. That’s how I knew you were down here.” Peter brushed away a veil of hanging webs.

  The workshop looked as if no one had set foot in it since the day I had, a year before. The same mechanical clutter filled the shelves behind a large worktable. And the haunting empty bassinet still sat next to the faded armchair in the corner by the tall bookshelves. Spiderwebs had created a new blanket of chilling lace across the top of the small bed.

  The thin coat of dust from before had turned to a thick gray blanket coating everything. The smudge from where I had accidentally placed my hand remained on the table next to the machine Rathford had used to spy on everyone in his house. The letter from my grandfather that Rathford had left out for me to read was now missing.

  It was disturbing. In some respects Rathford’s workshop seemed as if it had frozen in time exactly as he had wished. In other respects, time had eaten away at the space.

  “Have you been down here at all since you inherited?” I asked Peter.

  “Only once,” he admitted. “To be honest, this place unsettles me.”

  “You should straighten it up and make it yours,” Will suggested.

  “I would, but the only servant I have who is sworn to the Guild is Tibbs, and he doesn’t have the strength left for this kind of work. I couldn’t ask it of him,” Peter said, drawing his finger through the thick dust on the table. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

  “If you need help, let me know. If the ship is down from the Foundry, I can get some of the men together. We can take most of this mess back to the storage vaults under the Academy.” Will fiddled with a knob on the spying machine.

  “I’d appreciate that.” Peter leafed through a pile of drawings and diagrams that had been left on the table. “Now, what are we looking for?”

  “Rathford left a letter for me to find here on this table. It was from my grandfather and it said something about Rathford being the only one who knew my grandfather was alive. There must have been more correspondence between the two of them. Perhaps another letter has a clue to where my grandfather might have gone.” I knew it
was foolish, but I continued to search around the spying machine in the hopes that the letter was still near it, even though logically I knew it was no use to search there. Rathford would have collected it and placed it back where it belonged.

  Peter nodded thoughtfully, then used a candle to light another lamp before fixing the candle in a holder and turning toward the shelves. “Our task is simple enough, then. I’ll search through these papers here. Meg, you have a very discerning mechanical eye. Why don’t you look for hidden compartments where Rathford might have tucked something away, and, Will, you can take the bookshelves.”

  While Peter and Will both jumped immediately to their tasks, I needed a moment to think. From what I knew of Rathford, he was the kind of man who’d kept everything locked away. Yes, this workshop was hidden, but nearly all the Amusementists had secret workshops that weren’t really secret at all.

  Rathford didn’t trust easily. If I were him, where would I hide things?

  I inspected the partition we had come through into the main room of the workshop. I hadn’t even noticed it the first time I’d been in this room. It created the illusion of a solid wall.

  The backs of my ears tingled. That was it.

  I leaned through the partition and gazed into the room beyond, then back into the main workshop. The two rooms together were at a right angle to one another, forming a sharp corner. We were beneath the carriage house. One would expect the rooms below to follow the footprint of the building above, which was a stout rectangle.

  There had to be a third hidden room.

  “Boys,” I said, taking several quick steps over to the wall and pressing my bare hand to it. “Look at this. There’s another secret room here.” The wall had been covered with wood paneling in a pattern of squares carved with intricate molding. I leaned my weight against the table, pushing it back from the wall.

  The others joined me and helped to clear away the cobwebs and pieces of machinery leaning up against the wall.

  “Do you see anything that could mark a covering for one of the locks?” Will asked.