I struggled and fought, flailing against my attacker and digging my heels into the floor. The bastard was too large and strong, and my dress restricted my movement. He muscled me forward, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I kept grabbing for him, pinching and scratching what I could, but I never caught anything more substantial than his thick clothing. The sack smelled like rancid smoke and onions, and my eyes watered as I coughed.
“Really, my dear. It is unbecoming to put up such a fuss. You’ll ruin your dress,” Madame Boucher said.
It had been a trap. All of it. They had worked together to lure my friends from me, then sent the one person I wouldn’t suspect to draw me in like the pied piper. I had fallen for it.
The dampness from my breath caught against my face as my half uncle knocked me against a wall.
He dragged me down a stair. The floor disappeared from beneath my feet. I tried to find purchase again, but my uncle kept me pinned to his side. Only the tips of my toes brushed the stair as he hauled me down. I felt with every step as if I were about to fall.
That idea had merit. I tried to throw my weight so as to tip us off balance and send us crashing down the stair. I didn’t succeed before my uncle lifted me off my feet entirely. I lost the tactile connection to the ground and suddenly felt dizzy as the bastard tucked me under his arm and dragged me down like a wet sack. I tried to bite him in spite of the heavy cloth covering my head. Every jolt, every step sent some part of his body colliding with mine.
I fought as hard as I could, because I knew that if I didn’t escape now, I never would. I had to do whatever it took, but my uncle’s body felt like a machine—cold, hard, and unyielding. I couldn’t break his grip, or even throw him off balance. We descended deeper and deeper into whatever hell the old woman had in store for me.
I felt faint, unable to breathe. Bile rose in my throat, but I couldn’t succumb. I had to be strong.
He threw me to the ground. The side of my head hit hard on the stone, before he ruthlessly grabbed my upper arm and dragged me back to standing.
“Henry, my darling. We have brought you a visitor,” the old woman called, her voice echoing off the walls. Then she ripped the bag from my face.
I found myself in a dank cellar. I could see clearly. My eyes had already primed for the darkness in the sack. The room had been cut in half by the most terrifying wall of prison bars I had ever seen. Gears like spinning saw-blades moved around tracks fixed onto the bars of the cage-like device. No, they weren’t gears. They were saw blades. They moved up and down the bars and over the prison’s door. My heart caught in my throat as I felt alight with the fire of pure panic. Every muscle moved at once, taken with the instinct to fly as quickly as I could away from the monstrosity.
My bastard uncle held me fast, laughing low near my ear as I struggled against him.
A shadowy form emerged from the darkness.
His face appeared thin and wan, but his smooth bald head remained unbowed as he came forward into the light. The sharp angles of his brow made his eyes appear like narrow angry slits in his otherwise calm face, but there was no mistaking the fury in the set of his jaw or his proud shoulders.
“Papa!” I screamed.
He broke his composure. His gray eyes widened as he rushed toward the killing wall. He stopped just shy of the spinning blades. “Margaret?” he shouted. “Can it be?”
I felt the sharp edge of a cold knife press against my throat.
“Back away from the door. If you make one move forward, she dies,” Boucher said. Her hand was firm and I had no doubt she meant it. I didn’t dare breathe for fear that the air passing through my throat would push my skin against the blade and cut me. A tear slipped out from my eye.
I had never seen such a fearful expression on my grandfather’s face before. He backed away with his hands held up in surrender. “I will do whatever you wish, Cressida. Just don’t harm her.”
The old woman handed Honoré the knife. He pressed even harder into my skin. I felt the trickle of something slide down my neck and prayed it was only sweat.
“You will give me anything I wish?” She offered my grandfather a wicked smile. “You shouldn’t make such tempting promises, my love.”
She glided over to a panel in the wall and opened it. I saw a set of dials. She twisted them in a pattern, but out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t make out the combination of turns.
The spinning blades on the prison bars moved off the bars of the door, then slowed and stopped.
“If you move at all, Honoré won’t stay his hand. He’s already killed your son. Don’t think he’d hesitate to kill her, too.”
Honoré ushered me forward. Before we reached the deadly prison bars, Boucher grabbed the clockwork key. “You won’t be needing this anymore.”
She snapped the chain, and I felt the sharp sting across the back of my neck. Then all at once she opened the door to the prison and my bastard uncle threw me into the arms of my grandfather, sending us both tumbling backward.
The door slammed shut with a heavy crash, and then clanked and rattled as the blades whirred once more, resuming their pattern over the bars of the prison cell. My grandfather’s arms held me tight. Then he sat up and hastily unbound my wrists. “Are you harmed at all? Did they hurt you?”
As soon as my hands were free, I flung my arms around his neck and held him so tightly, my shoulders ached with the embrace. I tucked my head against him and shook as he stroked my hair and clung to me.
He pulled me back and inspected my neck, but even that small a distance was too much. “I’m unharmed,” I said, choking on the tears that quickly formed in my throat. He was alive. Thank God, he was alive.
He wrapped me in his arms and held me, pressing his rough cheek against the top of my head. “They told me you were dead. And George? Is he alive as well?”
My tears finally spilled over my cheeks. I didn’t think I had the strength to say the words, but they came out in spite of it. “They killed him. Father and Mother both. They murdered them.”
Even as I said it, I broke into sobs, racking tears that felt ripped from my soul as I cried in the arms of my grandfather. He was shaking. I could feel his own tears in my hair as he held me, but he didn’t make a sound, and I finally succumbed to all the terrible grief I had been holding deep within my heart.
My mother was gone, taken from me by these evil people. She would never help to sew my wedding dress, or hold my child one day. Whatever children I had would have no grandparents to spoil and dote on them. My father had always been the center of our family, protecting me and teasing me when I became too serious or too full of my own pride.
I needed his guidance. I needed his love. I wanted for him to know Will. I wanted him to know that the reasons I loved Will came from the reasons I had loved him. My father had been steadfast and solid, but he, too, was gone for all time.
When I had been alone, my grief had been a terrible thing, but at the same time, it had felt as if I were the one who was lost, not my family. Now that my Papa was here holding me, the hole in my family seemed all the larger. My parents were never coming back. I could no longer share my life with them. I loved them so much. I needed them. I missed them. They were gone.
Gone.
And there was nothing I could do to ever bring them back. Papa couldn’t either. In that, we had each other. Finally my tears turned to shaking breaths, and I couldn’t cry any longer.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled against my grandfather’s damp shirt. The clean scent of lemon mixed with rosemary that had always lingered on him was gone. His clothes smelled like mold and dust, or a grave. “I tried to find you.”
“My darling girl,” he said, and in his voice I could hear all the love he’d ever held for me. “You succeeded.” He gave me a smile. He stood and helped me to my feet.
He was alive. I had found him alive. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and looked around. I couldn’t see much in the dark. The only light came from a single lamp b
urning near the stair. The room we were in was sparsely furnished with a single bed and a chair in the corner. There was not much else. Nothing we could use to escape. The walls were thick stone, and the cage holding us terrified me. “It would have been better if I hadn’t ended up in here with you.”
“It was much more comfortable initially,” my grandfather explained, “but I used most of the décor to try to escape.”
I took his hands and noticed the scars crossing them. “What does that horrible woman want?”
Papa led me to the bed and helped me to sit, then took his place in the chair. “I would say revenge,” he said, “but I’m afraid the situation is more dire than that.”
“Tell me.”
Papa’s mouth set in a grim line. “She believes she can prevent mankind from ever waging another war if she can give the world a weapon so terrifying, no man would dare fight against it.”
“That’s madness.” I rubbed my sore arm as I struggled with my disbelief. “She wants to use her father’s invention, doesn’t she? What is it?”
He stood and paced only a step away from me, then turned back. “A juggernaut.”
I felt the impact of the word deep inside my chest, as if I had taken a terrible blow.
“What does it do?” I asked as the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
“It’s a vehicle.” Papa ran a hand over the lower part of his face, then turned his tight circle again. “At least it was supposed to be. Haddock corrupted the original design. Originally it was intended to clear land. It could knock over and cut down trees, and rip the ground apart in its wake, leaving a blank canvas for building.”
“You helped to design it?” I watched Papa’s face closely. The corners of his thin mouth were as downcast as his eyes. After my encounter with the wolves, I could see a dark side to my grandfather’s genius. Had he always taken things to a ruthless extreme?
I hated that I knew the answer to that question. He had abandoned his young lover to her fate, turned against his mentor, then allowed his family to believe he was dead while he’d hidden in France. Our family’s downfall had been his making, and I hated it. I hated not being able to look at him the way I always had, as if he were a hero.
I didn’t want to face my disillusion. Not yet. He was alive, and in spite of his faults, I did love him. “Did you know what the juggernaut could do?”
“I did,” he admitted with a note of frustration in his voice. “I was in the midst of my apprenticeship, and at the time, it was common for apprentices to pair with older members of the Order for special instruction. It was often difficult to meet at the Academy during that period, and so, like true apprentices, we lived under the roof of our master. Haddock was like a father to me, much more of a father than my own blood.” He looked toward the spinning blades of the cage holding us prisoner. “I was young and headstrong and never imagined things would come to this.”
“What happened?” I was ready to know the whole truth. I had been dancing around the edge of it for far too long.
Papa sighed and crossed his arms. One hand rubbed his elbow in a contemplative way. “We were in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. Richard became fearful that Napoleon would be successful in his desire to invade England, and then the war of 1812 began. He went rogue on the project. Breaking the most fundamental laws of the Order, he took the design for the land-clearing device and turned it to a weapon for the benefit of the Crown in spite of such things being strictly forbidden.”
“That’s terrible.” I had my own experiences with Amusementists gone rogue. It never turned out well.
Papa’s brow furrowed as he watched the spinning saw blades move along the surface of the cage. “I overheard his intention to sell modified plans for the device to a contact he had within the military. If he had succeeded, it would have exposed us, and embroiled us in the wars. I foiled his plot by locking the plans within the inner workings of the machine so that he couldn’t sell them. Fearing he might break my locking mechanism and access the plans, I confessed everything I knew to the head of the Order.” Papa turned his ring around his finger. The seal of the Amusementists flashed between his fingertips. “I only intended to alert the others to Richard’s darker nature so they could talk with him. He could have been saved, if given the chance.”
“You don’t know that,” I murmured. Papa turned to look at me and gave me a weary grin. No wonder he had been so intent on saving Rathford as well.
“There was no evidence at his trial of what he had done. When I tried to lead others to the juggernaut, the chamber was empty. The Order found nothing except for one vague message to his illicit contact. My testimony at the trial marked him. It shattered both his life and that of Cressida, which I’d never intended.” He ran a hand over his face and fell back into the chair. I left the bed to sit at his feet, then laid my hand on his knee.
“You told the Order the truth,” I said as he stroked my hair. “It should be the truth that matters.”
“Truth is a slippery beast. I didn’t know Cressida was with child. Had I known, I might have done things differently.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, pressing his fingers to his eyes, then inhaled quickly as he lifted his head and steeled his expression once more. “I loved her once. Now she has taken everything.”
“What does she intend to do with the juggernaut?” I had to get him off the subject of all we had lost. We were together at last, and together we would find our way out again.
“It’s not the machine she’s after. It’s the modified plans.” Papa stood from the chair and walked toward the deadly cage. “As I said, she intends to use the machine to attempt to stop a war.”
The Méduse was sailing to the United States on the New Year. “She wishes to interfere in the War Between the States? What good would that do? Neither England nor France is closely allied in that war.”
“No, but her business fortunes are dependent on a plentiful supply of cotton. She has some very lucrative contracts with certain plantation owners. Should the South be defeated in their civil war, Cressida would lose a great deal of money, and she won’t stand for that. She intends to sell the plans for the juggernaut to the Confederate army and has deluded herself into believing she’s serving the greater good.”
Greater good? She had to be the most coldly ruthless woman I’d ever met. She’d killed my mother and father to reach her ends, and for what? “All this time, all she wanted was the key so she could retrieve her plans?”
“Not only the key,” Papa stated as he crossed his arms. “She also needs someone who can use it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IF MADAME BOUCHER NEEDED SOMEONE who could use the key, that put us both in terrible danger. “Now she has two of us,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.
Papa’s eyes lit up as if he had seen the fruition of a carefully laid plan. “So, you discovered how to use my key. I knew you would. You always were clever. How did you figure it out?”
I didn’t feel clever as we sat side by side on a thin feather mattress in our dark cell. We were no longer at home in our parlor discussing childish things like how I’d fared on my music lessons. The world had become very dark. My childhood seemed like a dream by comparison. I thought about the song, and all my memories of Papa singing it to me in more carefree times. “I discovered the key when Rathford attempted to use me to unlock his time machine,” I said.
“Rathford? So he was responsible for the murders, then?” Papa asked, his brow furrowing into a disappointed scowl. “I had hoped it wasn’t true.”
“It wasn’t.” I forgot for a moment that he didn’t know anything that had happened in the last few years. I told him how Rathford had taken me in as a housemaid after the fire, in the hopes that I would reveal the key. I told him about Lucinda, and meeting Oliver, flying with the Icarus wings, and battling the Minotaur. He seemed amused at times, and in awe at others, especially when I told him about the battle with the mechanical lake monster.
I told
him about Strompton using Rathford’s madness as a means to deflect suspicion while he committed murder for his political ambitions and his pride. I even confessed the horrible choice I’d had to make in the heart of Rathford’s machine to leave my parents’ deaths in the past.
Through it all, I left Will out of the story. I wasn’t ready to let my grandfather into that part of my life yet. If Papa didn’t accept him, I didn’t know what I would do.
“I’m so proud of you, my girl.” Papa smoothed my hair, and I could see the love shining in his eyes. “You have done far more than I had ever imagined you would.”
His words reached into me and filled me with a deep satisfaction, like gorging myself on all the Christmas feasts of a lifetime. “It doesn’t change our fundamental problem. Since Boucher knows that both of us can use the key, that makes one of us expendable.”
“That is true.” Papa’s brow furrowed over his sharply defined nose. He brought his knuckle near to his mouth and tapped it forward in a contemplative way. “We have to be prepared for the worst and look for any means of escape given the opportunity.” Papa let his hand drop as he looked at me, then placed his arm over my shoulders. “We’re together now, and we’ll find a way out of this.”
“Our hopes seem so bleak.” Really our only hope was Will. I prayed that he discovered my note, that he would find some way to reach us here.
Papa pulled me more tightly to his side. “Nothing will seem bleak to me again. You’re alive. They told me you had died in the fire, and it destroyed me. After that I told Cressida I would gladly die as well before I helped her use the key.”
“Was that during the summer?” I asked.
Papa let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know for certain. I haven’t seen the sky in years, but it was warmer than it is now,” he said.
Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) Page 19