Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order)

by Kristin Bailey

  He stepped out of the shadows, and I brought my gaze up to his face.

  The face was blank, a smooth shield of polished metal with only the faintest contours of what a human face should be.

  Gracious. It was an automaton. One of the finest I had ever seen.

  He placed both his hands behind his back. Dust had settled on his black livery, and the powdered wig perched on his metal head had faded with dust and age.

  “Good evening,” the automaton stated in French. His voice sounded tinny as he gave me a stiff bow and said, “Welcome to Pensée, Monsieur Whitlock.”

  He had assumed I was my grandfather. There was no doubt. We were in the right place.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WILL SUPPORTED ME AS I cradled my injured arm and stepped inside. The heavy door eased shut behind us, throwing us into darkness.

  The only light came from our torches. Will snatched a bouquet of dead flowers out of a heavy tarnished urn and set the torches in it. “Let me see your arm.”

  I held it out to him. The lower half of my coat sleeve had been badly torn and soaked in blood. He gently squeezed down my forearm. “Do you think it’s broken?”

  I winced. “No. The bones are fine.” I gasped as he squeezed the wound.

  He raised one eyebrow as he helped me pull my arm from my coat. My dress beneath was soaked in blood. He drew his knife, then swiftly slit what was left of my sleeve, from wrist to elbow. There were three slashes cut deep into my forearm.

  A new fear took hold as I watched my blood pooling out of them and trickling down to drip into Will’s hands. If any piece of the cloth from my sleeve remained within the wound, it could fester and I would die of infection. “Do they need to be stitched?” My stomach knotted at the thought. We didn’t have anything to sew them shut, and I didn’t know if I had the fortitude not to faint as Will did it. I already felt light-headed.

  “We need to make sure they’re clean. They’re going to scar.” Will looked around desperately as my arm dripped with blood. I had nothing to staunch the bleeding. “You there!” he shouted at the automaton. Will seemed as surprised as I was when the mechanical man turned to him. “Fetch clean linens,” he ordered.

  “Will, that will never . . .”

  The automaton gave us a bow, then walked down the pitch-black hall with a rigid and clanking gait.

  Will touched a knuckle to his forehead, then looked desperate as he inspected the gashes again.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

  “We may need to cauterize.”

  “Oh God,” I whispered.

  I felt cold all of a sudden and sat on the smooth marble floor. I had to fight to keep from spilling my stomach. Our footsteps had left a scramble of smears in the fine dust. As soon as I began to shiver, the heavy weight of Will’s coat enveloped my shoulders. He pulled out a handkerchief and soaked it in the whisky from his flask as he knelt next to me. “This is going to burn.”

  “It’s only pain.” I attempted to smile at him even though I dreaded what was to come. “It won’t kill me.” He pressed the cloth to the largest wound on my arm, and I hissed as every muscle in my side and stomach tensed, but I held still. “Or perhaps it will.”

  We both watched as he continued to dab the blood away with the soaked handkerchief, but it was no use. The blood kept pooling.

  I caught Will’s gaze. “Do it,” I urged.

  The color drained from his face. He let out a shaky breath, then cleaned his knife with the whisky. “It’s okay if you faint.”

  I nodded, already feeling dizzy as the wounds dripped along my arm. Will grabbed one of the torches and held his knife in the heat of the fire until the blade grew red hot.

  “Close your eyes. I’ll be quick,” he said, and I felt his broad palm cradle my wounded arm. “Do you want some of the whisky?”

  “I’ll be fine. Just do it,” I said through gritted teeth.

  The knife touched my arm, and I stifled a scream. I could feel the fire shooting up through my arm and shoulder. I swore my heart stopped beating with the shock and pain. Will’s grip clamped down on my arm as he seared the other two wounds, and like that, it was done.

  He dropped his knife onto the floor and gathered me in his arms, careful to cradle my wounded hand. “Breathe,” he whispered to me.

  I took a shaking gasp as tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t help them; I didn’t try.

  “By God, you are a brave woman,” he said as I wiped my face. I still trembled, and my arm stung from the burns, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

  “What is our plan now?” I asked, my voice broken and shaking. I didn’t feel brave. I was on the verge of falling apart.

  “We find Durant,” Will stated as he continued to tenderly touch my arm. We heard the rattle of metal in the distance, and to my surprise the butler returned with a large folded sheet without a trace of dust on it. Will took it and used his knife to slice a long strip from the linen.

  “Will, you can’t understand French,” I said, still shaking. “I’m the only one who can speak with Durant.”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said. I noticed his hands were shaking as well.

  “If Durant is angry at our intrusion, we may need to leave here quickly.” Those wolves would be waiting for us. I shuddered at the thought. “You must find a way for us to escape while I speak with Durant. I don’t want to linger a moment longer than we must.”

  Will considered this a moment. “Are you certain you’ll be safe?”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. “No, but what choice do we have?”

  Will shook his head slowly as a look of resignation passed over his features. “What of your grandfather?”

  “I don’t believe he’s here.” The house felt too empty. “He would have heard the commotion we made.”

  “Look for clues,” he said. “I’ll do the same. We can search more of the house if we are apart.”

  I nodded. “We know Papa was here. We need to know why he may have left, and when, and where he could have—”

  Will placed a finger on my lips. “Go speak with Durant. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “I don’t want to face those wolves again.” We’d barely made it into the house. If they’d been on us a moment longer, or if those jaws had found my neck—or worse, Will’s . . . No. “There has to be a way around them, or some way to call them off. I know you will find it.”

  Will finished cleaning the wounds and bathing my arm in whisky before he wrapped it tightly in the strip of linen. As he tied off the bandage, the pain eased. The skimming touch of his fingers as he smoothed the linen, then cradled my small wrist in his hands, made my head feel light and floating.

  Or perhaps it was the loss of blood. Will helped me to my feet, and I almost swooned. He held me, close and protected, against his chest until the world stopped spinning.

  I needed my wits. “I’ll be fine,” I said as I found my feet. “I’ll meet you back here.” I took one of the torches. They had nearly burned out. I used it to light a small and dusty lamp.

  Will shifted on his feet, seemingly uncomfortable, and his face held more color than usual.

  He wouldn’t meet my gaze as he looked around, but the harsh set of his lips gave away how distressed he really was. He pulled a thick candle out of a holder with a jerk. “I promise I’ll find a way around those wolves. I don’t want to see you hurt like that again.”

  I took his hand and brought it to my cheek. “Good luck,” I said. “And be careful.”

  He gathered my hand and kissed the back of it like a gentleman. “You too.” Then he disappeared into the shadows down a long and empty corridor.

  I turned to the butler.

  “Take me to Maurice Durant,” I commanded in my clearest voice. “Please,” I added, because I couldn’t help myself.

  The automaton bowed to me, then turned on his heel and started walking the opposite way from the direction Will had gone down the long hall. I turne
d back to glance at the dark hall, where Will had disappeared. I prayed Will would remain safe, even as I walked into the unknown.

  I followed the butler with my flickering lamp. It was strangely unsettling inside the house. Everything looked as it should have, but there was a very lifeless air in the halls. Like walking through a house populated by nothing but ghosts. It didn’t help that I was following an automaton, who by his very nature was neither living nor dead.

  I stifled a cough against the fine dust that hung in the air. My wounded arm throbbed and ached, but I held the lamp fast. Papa had been right to hide here. No one in their right mind would come to this place, and with the house perched on the top of the hill, he would have been able to see anyone approaching the mansion. Between the view and those wolves, no one could enter the house without being noticed.

  But if this place made the perfect fortress, why would he have left?

  The butler moved through the darkness without much mind to it, since he didn’t have eyes. The creaking and clanking of his stiffening joints rattled down the empty halls.

  The mansion was enormous, and must have been a glory in its prime. Though the house itself was baroque, I didn’t find the décor overbearing or gaudy in the way so many of the palaces of Europe tended to be. I never much cared for overly ornamental papers on the walls, or colorful porcelain tiles. Instead the walls had been painted a pale color I couldn’t see so well in the terribly dim light, but the lower halves of the walls were delineated by elegant wainscoting that had been painted white.

  We entered a smoking room before we crossed a corridor and found ourselves at a large set of double doors toward the back of the mansion.

  The doors opened silently as the automaton approached, without the mechanical man ever reaching out to touch them. It was like magic, even though it seemed such a simple thing.

  I felt as if the gates of heaven had parted before me. A golden light flooded into the hall. We passed through the doors into a gilded conservatory. The glass ceiling glowed with light from hanging lamps that drenched us in warmth.

  I looked around and gasped. Delicate trees and flowers bloomed in profusion within the protection of the glass walls and ceiling. Heavy fruit hung from the branches and vines, and vegetables spilled out from containers and raised beds. The arrangement of them managed to be both productive and decorative at once.

  Onions, tomatoes, potatoes, grapes, oranges, lemons—suddenly I felt starved, like Tantalus beneath the trees. A tendril of hair clung to my cheek in the humidity. I brushed it back as a fat chicken ran across the path and a goat bleated from somewhere in the corner.

  A trio of enormous butterflies, easily the size of dinner plates, stretched their wings on a bush bearing exotic peppers. But no, they were machines. I looked more closely at the foliage and realized there was movement everywhere.

  A mechanical peacock groomed his golden feathers, then spread his tail. Patina on the copper gave it a blue-green sheen, and yet the ornamental swirls set in his rattling feathers shimmered with bright brass.

  A monkey hung from a tree to my left, his jointed tail curled around a fat branch of an orange tree. He swung there, looking at me with lifeless black marble eyes.

  An entire menagerie preened and strutted, moving through the protected garden and shining in the false sunlight, all clockwork, all beautiful, and yet nothing here could give me any answers as to what had happened to my grandfather.

  I heard a growl, and I froze.

  Beneath a bush a clockwork tiger bared his sharp fangs.

  My heart stopped and I couldn’t breathe. The wolf ’s teeth had been sharp and cutting; the tiger’s teeth were three times the size.

  He blinked his orb-like eyes, then prowled forward, keeping his head low.

  I ran to catch up to the butler, desperate to leave the conservatory. Every fiber in my being urged me to flee as another set of doors opened, dragging across the rug on the other side. I slipped past the automaton into the hall and the doors closed again.

  I found myself at the bottom of a twisting staircase. The butler began the ascent, and I darted ahead of him. There were no other passages, no doors. The stair led relentlessly upward until I finally reached a large arched door.

  I passed through the doorway, unprepared for the sight before me.

  Cold air washed over me as I looked up. The dome of the house split, opening to the clear dark winter sky shimmering with a million stars. A telescope easily the size of my toy shop tilted toward the deep night. As it moved, gears ranging in size from monstrous to tiny danced in a finely tuned ballet.

  The entire structure was surrounded by rings the size of the room itself. Each ring held a model of one of the planets, and they spun and swirled around the central telescope, like a model of the cosmos taken to scale.

  My Lord, I didn’t have words. The heavens were there before me.

  A very old man sat, reclined and motionless in a strange gear-laden chair beneath the telescope. He stared into the machine, peering into the depths of whatever lay beyond the stars.

  I hesitated. I shouldn’t have even been in the house. What should I say to him? “Sorry to disturb you, monsieur”? Somehow that seemed like an uncomfortable introduction to someone I had never met, when I had intruded on his person without invitation.

  What if he wished to call the constable? He’d have every right.

  I took a deep breath and calmed my panic. Technically I was family, and Durant hadn’t had any visitors in a very long time. All the same, I hoped Will had discovered a way to escape.

  “Maurice Durant?” I said, as gently as I could so that I wouldn’t startle or disturb him. “Monsieur?”

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to do. I took a tentative step forward, then another.

  “Monsieur Durant?” I called again.

  “What do you want?” he shouted in a voice that crackled and wheezed with age. “Can’t you see I’m busy? Always bothering,” he muttered.

  This situation was the height of impropriety, and John Frank had already warned me that Durant’s mind was half-gone. “Monsieur Durant, I beg your pardon for our intrusion, but I am searching for Henry Whitlock.” He moved his chair, and the large gears and wheels above me turned, swinging the various planets in a coordinated dance around the main telescope. I took a step back, then ducked as the model of Mercury swooped overhead. “I am his granddaughter, Margaret.”

  Maurice Durant pulled back from his gazing, and the chair righted itself until it seemed like a throne set at the center of a shifting universe. He looked down at me. His eyes were rheumy and clouded with age, but I could have sworn there was something in them, some spark of a genius that used to be.

  “Henri is not here, and so I have no use for his granddaughter. Be gone,” he said, even as his gaze drifted back toward his telescope.

  “Please, monsieur. I need to know where he went if he left of his own accord, or if he was taken from this place.” I wouldn’t leave, not without answers.

  Durant’s chair swung back around and lowered him beneath his telescope. “Thirty-seven degrees. Mark on the twenty-sixth of December at nine forty . . . seven.”

  “Please, monsieur!” I shouted.

  Durant’s chair made a grinding sound as he tilted it to look at me once more. “You’re still here?”

  I lifted my chin as I stared up at him. “I will not leave until you tell me what I need to know.”

  “Where is Henri?” Durant said with a frown. “He said he would be gone three days, but it is now two years, six weeks, eight hours—” He peered at a pocket watch.

  “Monsieur, if you will. The time is not important to me,” I said.

  His weathered face turned red. “Not important!”

  “All I wish to know is what drove him from this place.” I fisted my hands at my sides.

  Durant made a chewing motion, as if playing with the spaces where his teeth had once been. “Henri was chasing ghosts. No good will come of it,” h
e muttered under his breath.

  I stood straight and stared the old codger down. “Do you know where he went when he left here?”

  Durant acted as if he hadn’t heard my question. I didn’t move from my spot, though I had to duck Mercury a second time. Durant gave me a sour look.

  “He went looking for a truth that should have remained dark.” Durant turned a large wheel next to him, and the entire mechanism shifted, lifting the telescope to a steeper pitch, and he peered back into it. “There are dark places, you know. A spiraling vortex that sweeps all light into it.”

  I didn’t know what the old man was talking about. He had lost all sense. Now I knew what John Frank had meant by his not being able to hold a conversation.

  “Old flames burn the hottest,” he continued as he stared at his precious stars. “Yet even that light cannot escape. It’s the deadly spiral. It drew him in.”

  I climbed higher on the contraption in spite of the pain in my arm. “Get down from there. You’ll damage the balance,” he said.

  “Do you know where Henry is now?” I asked again. If I had to ask it a thousand times, I would. Durant seemed to surmise this as he glared at me.

  “He took a train.” Durant turned the wheel again, then pulled a lever. “Vile contraptions. We never should have let some of their development leak to the masses. Now the rails are everywhere. The countryside gone. Locomotives belching smoke and blowing whistles. No more stars. Filthy skies.”

  I did my best to hold my patience.

  “What city?” I asked.

  Durant didn’t bother to look at me. Instead he continued to stare into his telescope. “I never much cared for cities. Too many people. Too much light. Paris, bah. How could it compare to this?” Durant waved above him.

  Paris.

  “He went to Paris?”

  “Get out of my house. You bother me.” Durant glared down from his nest at the heart of the machine.

  “Did he go to Paris?” I shouted.

  “That’s what he said. He also said he’d be back in three days. He lied.” He tipped the pitch of the machine until it was nearly vertical. “The stars are constant. They never lie.” His chair disappeared into the gears, leaving me staring up through the model of the swiftly tilting planets.