by C. R. Grey
“We need to go on foot!” Gwen shouted, leaning on the back of the front seat so Tremelo could hear her.
“Too easy to lose one another that way,” Tremelo shouted back. “Too exposed!”
“But look,” she said, pointing to the stage. “Viviana has Bailey!”
“Ants,” growled Tremelo, peering over the mass of people and their kin. “Speed up!”
Tori sat on a thick book in the driver’s seat; she pressed her hand down on the motorbuggy’s horn and revved forward. In the vehicle’s wake, Eneas and the Velyn marched as one mass.
All around them was a scene of blood and confusion. Gwen felt as though her bond with her kin was evaporating, diluted and sullied by the pain surrounding her. Terror caused her to look away from the stage, from Bailey’s encounter with Viviana to the skies. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of her own kin. A woman began wailing as a snow-white rabbit bit at her neck and face. She flung the rabbit away from her, and it fell to the ground, its body twisted. It righted itself and attacked once more. All around her, Gwen saw humans fighting off their kin, uttering dismayed cries—these were their companions, their family. To hurt them was unconscionable, but they had no choice. Gwen did not feel like the Instrument of Change that the Elder believed her to be. Instead, she just felt helpless.
“We’re too late!” Gwen cried. “We’ll never be able to stop this!”
Tremelo sat in the passenger seat of the motorbuggy, both hands on the machine, aiming the Halcyon’s sound-horn at the stage. Fennel, wearing a metal collar attached to the machine, sat next to him. A soft resonance issued from the machine, but the sound was too low, and not powerful enough to counteract the Reckoning from its position.
“Not too late!” shouted Tremelo, checking the round metal orb at the center of the Halcyon. “Just hasn’t built up enough power to—”
“We have to help Bailey now,” Gwen yelled back.
In the seat next to Gwen sat Phi, watching the skies.
“The Halcyon will work,” Phi said, though her voice shook. “It has to.”
In the driver’s seat, Tori was struggling—her snakes were winding their way up her arms, distracting her from driving.
“Oh, ants—help!” shouted Tori. She took one hand from the wheel and flung a snake off her. The car swerved and nearly knocked over a candied-apple stand. Gwen reached forward and pitched away the other snake. She watched behind them as Tori drove on; the snakes coiled and uncoiled themselves in the muddy grass before slinking after them.
“Nature’s teeth,” Tori cursed. Gwen could hear a breathless fear in Tori’s voice that she’d never heard before.
“Where’s Bert?” Tori asked.
“In my rucksack!” cried Phi. “I know none of us are Animas Iguana, but I didn’t want to take any chances!” On the floor of the motorbuggy, Phi’s pack rustled.
They’d reached the center of the field between the exhibition tents and the stage. The ground below them was nothing but churned mud. The car stalled and lurched across the field.
Four Dominae guards appeared in the crowd, marching toward them. Tremelo rummaged at his feet, coming up with a crossbow.
“We need to get through this mob. Eneas!” He shouldered the crossbow, took aim, and shot at the approaching guards, skewering one’s pant leg to the ground behind him. The guard struggled for a moment, then ripped himself free. Eneas, answering Tremelo’s call, ran between the guards and the motorbuggy with a flank of other warriors, their weapons drawn. At the sight of the fur-clad fighters, the crowd became even more frenzied. Parents screamed and lifted their children out of the way, and many people who had been fighting gawked, and then took off running.
“It can’t be!” Gwen heard someone exclaim. “The Velyn!”
As the motorbuggy sputtered to a start, the Velyn and the Dominae guards came together like colliding storm clouds, emitting lightning flashes of steel against repurposed claws. Two Dominae guards broke through the Velyn’s defenses and lunged at the motorbuggy.
Tremelo grabbed a rusty scimitar from underneath his overcoat, and swung at the first guard. The man jumped back, but not before Tremelo sliced through his uniform, exposing the guard’s skin.
“Tori, drive!” he ordered.
Gwen searched the motorbuggy for something she could use to fight. She would not watch the lost Prince Trent die at the hands of some Dominae underlings. She clasped a wooden staff from the pile of weaponry in the sidecar, and swung it hard toward the second guard. She felt a satisfying thud as the staff connected, hard, with the man’s chest, knocking him backward.
Tori slammed on the clutch, and the motorbuggy jolted into action once more.
“Wait! Gwen, Phi, Tori!”
Gwen searched the crowd for the source of the familiar voice. At first, all she could see in the direction of the sound was a cloud of leathery black wings. A boy ran a few paces behind the motorbuggy, flailing his arms to fight away the colony of bats.
“It’s Hal!” Gwen yelled to Tori.
Tori slammed on the brakes, causing them all to lurch forward. Then she spun around in her seat and tore off her driving goggles. “Hal!”
Gwen and Tori leapt out of the motorbuggy. Gwen took off her cloak and threw it over him to protect him from the bats.
“Come on!” shouted Tremelo, as he kicked a Dominae attacker off the sidecar. “Hurry!”
“How did you escape?” Tori asked. She put an arm around Hal so he could lean on her as they ran to the motorbuggy. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” said Hal, though his face and hands showed numerous bright red scratches.
They piled back into the motorbuggy, where Tremelo made room for Hal next to the Halcyon.
“Let’s go!” said Tremelo. “Thank Nature one of you boys is safe.”
Gwen and Phi squeezed into the sidecar as Tori jumped into the driver’s seat, and they took off once more. The bats peeled away, flying higher above the field.
“I was held by two of the Jackal’s men,” Hal said. “But one of them had this.” He opened his jacket, and took out Bailey’s claw. “They’d taken it from us when we were captured. The bats came on fast, and attacked all of us. When neither of them was looking, I grabbed it and cut myself free. I ran as fast as I could.”
He put his weight on Tori, clearly exhausted. He kept looking up, as if expecting the bats to appear again at any moment. Gwen followed his gaze, and her jaw dropped.
A small parliament of owls, Melem among them, circled closer and closer to the motorbuggy. Gwen screamed and covered her head. Hal swirled Gwen’s cloak over her, doing his best to keep the owls at bay. But Gwen’s vision was lost in a tangle of feathers as she felt talons tear at the skin of her arm—one owl had swooped out of the sky.
“No, no!” Gwen cried. Rattling at her feet, on the floor of the motorbuggy, was her walnut bow. No, please, she thought. I can’t hurt my own kin. Melem’s talons gripped the coat over Gwen’s head, uncovering her. The others were shouting and trying to fight the owls off with stick and swords. Gwen reached down and grabbed the bow, along with one slim arrow. She turned and took aim.
Before she let the arrow slip from between her fingers, the owls surrounding her disappeared. She heard gasps of surprise from Tori and Phi, and the sound of flapping wings quickly quieted. She lowered her arms, bracing herself against the side of the moving car, and saw the owls struggling, on the ground, inside a tangled net. The motorbuggy lurched to a halt as several people ran in front of it and put up their hands.
“Come on now, girl,” said a familiar voice, which was deep and comforting. Gwen looked up and met the eyes of Digby Barnes. He wore a makeshift piece of armor made from a metal keg, with the image of a mole hand-painted on it in white. Behind Digby stood a ragtag group of hundreds of men and women. They wore whatever protection they’d been able to make for themselves, and were armed with whatever weapons they could get their sly hands on. Many of them held nets that contained their squi
rming, possessed kin, while others had blood smeared across their armor. Gwen let the arrow fall from the bow; it clattered onto the floor of the motorbuggy. She began to cry at the thought of what she’d almost done.
“No time for tears,” said Digby. “The RATS are here now. Come on—we’ve got a queen to stop.”
Gwen gripped the bow tightly and nodded.
“RATS, move out!” Digby called. The RATS surrounded the motorbuggy and marched ahead of it, cutting a clear path to the stage through the swarming citizens.
Ahead, Bailey stood captive by Viviana’s guards, and Taleth fought the automaton. The motorbuggy sputtered to a halt only a few yards from the platform. Gwen leapt out as Tremelo struggled to adjust the position of the orb in the Halcyon.
As she ran closer to the stage, Gwen could make out a pulse issuing from it—the drumbeat from her vision. Just as it had then, it pounded in her ears like the very blood in her veins. She repeated Ama’s words to her, for guidance.
True sight is a light that grows—your sight is strengthened and made clear by true bonds. You see what lives unseen in the heart.
Onstage, Taleth and the mechanical tiger circled each other. With a hollow roar, the automaton rose on its haunches and prepared to swipe at Bailey’s kin. The metal plates of the automaton’s exposed chest seemed to glow.
“‘What lives unseen in the heart,’” she repeated. Ama had added those words to the Elder’s mantra—had she known?
“Bailey!” she yelled, as loudly as she could over the chaos around her. “It’s in the tiger! Viviana’s machine—it’s the tiger’s heart!”
BAILEY, AS WELL AS the two Dominae guards holding him, whirled toward the crowd at the sound of clinking weaponry rushing toward the stage. Bailey’s eyes grew wide—he saw Eneas Fourclaw running in his direction, and the wide, friendly frame of Digby Barnes, leading a horde of fighters. Viviana’s guards loosened their grip on him in surprise. Bailey lunged away. In the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen, shouting something at him with one hand cupped around her mouth, but the words were swallowed up by the fighting around him, and the rhythmic thudding. He thought he heard her say “cart” or “part,” but he had no time to decipher her words—the automaton was upon him. He dashed across the stage, dropping into a crouch. Around him, heavy footsteps pounded the wooden boards. He looked up to see a dozen Dominae guards rushing past him to meet an advancing flank of fighters just offstage. Viviana stood at the back of the platform. Her hands were rigid, fingers outstretched. The sound of wings and claws grew louder as almost every animal on the fairgrounds surged toward the oncoming fighters.
The incessant, mechanical pounding that Bailey had heard since returning to the platform grew louder as well—it vibrated directly behind him now. He scrambled around and came face-to-face with the mechanical tiger. It lunged; Bailey ducked and rolled away. As the automaton pivoted to leap again, Taleth appeared at Bailey’s side. Bailey scrambled to get away from her, but he couldn’t move quickly enough. With one step, she stood over him, her colossal paws on either side of him. Bailey put his arms over his head and squeezed his eyes shut.
He heard her roar, and then he felt her whiskers tickling the back of his neck. He opened his eyes—she stood between him and the automaton, protecting him from her false double. From somewhere close by, just offstage, Bailey heard faint echoes of music—long, sustained notes like choral chanting or the slow draw of a bow across a violin. The Halcyon. He looked out onto the field below the stage. In the midst of fighting among the Dominae and the Velyn and RATS, Tremelo was in his motorbuggy. He leaned over the passenger seat with Fennel the fox, directing the gramophone horn at the stage. Tori was with him, cranking a lever on the machine’s side. At the sound of the haunting music the Halcyon created, Bailey felt a quivering in his chest, and he knew that Taleth felt it too.
The sound echoed over the fairgrounds, and Bailey could see that the kin of the Velyn and RATS were helping to fight the Dominae, not attacking like the other animals. The Halcyon was helping them resist Viviana’s Dominance. Several animals on the outskirts stopped attacking their human kin as well—they paused, ears twitching, as though wondering where they were. The more wounded of the kin simply dropped to the ground, their bodies still at last. Viviana’s hold on them had broken.
“Yes!” Bailey cried, but there was no time to celebrate. The rest of the fairgrounds was still in turmoil—the Halcyon wasn’t strong enough to stop the Reckoning, not against Viviana’s machine.
Suddenly, a roar and the shriek of claws on metal—the automaton leapt on Taleth, biting at her neck and shoulder. Bailey cried out as he felt the pain on his own body, just as two guards rushed at him, tackling him to the ground. He landed a hard kick to one’s chest, but the other held him down, pinning him to the stage. Viviana appeared over him, her hands now clenched into fists.
“You feel her pain, her injuries—and look how pathetic you are because of it,” she sneered. “You represent the old ways. Empathy is weakness! Dominance is progress. I can form an army at will. I can make animals serve humans for the betterment of the kingdom! And”—she beamed at him, as though she was sharing a wonderful secret—“I can control whatever I wish: animals, energy, perhaps one day even life itself.”
“But you can’t control it,” said Bailey. “Just look at what’s happening!”
Viviana did not answer him—instead, she raised her hand and gestured toward the automaton. It stopped, midlunge, in its fight with Taleth, and swung around to face Bailey. Its tail of metal lashed as it crouched. It was about to pounce.
The automaton opened its mouth, and Bailey stared up into the gleaming cavern of metal joints and wires within. It was a machine, an uncaring killer. Bailey regarded the subtle carvings in the metal plates that formed its face, and the painted copper made to appear like luminous fur. He could feel the waves of energy pouring out of its metal mouth and joints—Viviana’s energy projected through it. Bailey concentrated on Taleth, and on the music emanating from the Halcyon. He could feel his own bond growing stronger. Bailey pushed back against Viviana’s energy, focusing on his own. As though Viviana’s Dominance was a tangible force, Bailey confronted it, his hands outstretched in front of him and his entire skin alive with sparks that only he could feel. He could feel Viviana’s Dominance begin to fall back, its resistance wavering. The mechanical tiger stalled, its movements jerky and weak.
“What are you doing?” Bailey heard Viviana shout. “What have you done?”
The tiger stopped, as though it was jammed. It twisted its head to one side and lifted a paw, which remained frozen in midair like a statue. Its tail lashed in one direction, then the next, and grew still. The intense pounding that had echoed throughout the fairgrounds ceased, as though the tiger’s heart had stopped. In its place, Bailey heard the battle behind him, and the shouts of familiar voices. His friends were coming, fighting their way to him through the Dominae.
Bailey looked back to the mechanical tiger standing over him. Viviana’s own words echoed in Bailey’s mind: I can control whatever I wish: animals, energy…life itself. But why control the tiger with the bond, and not the Catalyst? he wondered. Unless—
The realization came quickly, like an electro-current shock: the Catalyst was inside the tiger.
“It’s the heart,” he said aloud, understanding what Gwen had shouted earlier.
Viviana rushed toward him. Quickly, Bailey searched the tiger’s body for weak points, wishing that he still had his claw, or even the Jackal’s cane—anything that he could use to penetrate a seam in the machine’s immaculate hide. He focused on Taleth. She paced around the automaton, growling. Bailey thought of the moment he’d first Awakened, imagining the crisp air of the mountains in her nostrils, the soft snow that had fallen around them as they looked at each other for the very first time. Then he pictured her heart, in its cage of bone and blood. He could feel it beating in rhythm with his own. Through Taleth’s eyes, he pictured the automaton standing before
her, and its rib cage of copper and steel. That’s how we end this, he thought. The heart—that’s what we need to destroy.
Taleth lifted her head in a victorious roar, and brought her claws down on the seam of the automaton’s ribs. They wrenched open with a metallic screech. With her teeth, Taleth tore the wires holding the heart in place, lifted the Catalyst out of the automaton’s chest, and spat it out. It bounced onstage, landing only a few feet away from Bailey. The orb throbbed, almost like a real heart, and the pounding that Bailey had heard before—which he now knew had been coming from the orb—had weakened to a low pulse.
Viviana shrieked.
Bailey reached for the orb, but it was too far. Viviana lunged at him and clutched at his leg—he could hear her calling to her guards to take him, to rescue the orb. He felt himself being pulled back, in the grip of the Dominae. Taleth, however, would not let him be taken. She leapt at the guards, forcing them away from Bailey.
At the edge of the stage, a thin figure appeared. Bailey’s breath caught in his throat.
“Hal!” he cried. “Hal, you’re all right!”
Hal waved, and Bailey saw that he had the claw in his hand. Bailey pointed to the orb.
“Help—it’s the tiger’s heart!” He wasn’t sure whether he’d made any sense at all—but Hal seemed to know what needed to be done. With one powerful swing, Hal pierced the orb’s metal shell with Bailey’s own tiger claw.
The pulse died, and Bailey heard a pop as the last strains of energy left the orb. He stood, with Taleth positioned between himself and the Dominae, and watched as the Halcyon’s soaring music reached not only the battlefield by the stage, but also the entire fairgrounds. The fighting stopped. Like a ripple radiating outward, Bailey could see the effect growing, reaching more and more animals and their human kin, as though each strengthened bond helped to fortify the next, until the entire field had attained a stunned, haunted peace.