A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (Dark Matters)

by Claire Robyns

  He pushed his hand through his hair. “I can’t time-run again so soon.”

  “I don’t care about any stupid laws of nature.” She stopped toe to toe with him, her head tilted so she could glower up into his eyes. “You have to try.”

  “You think I haven’t?” he ground out. “I need to grab hold of the memory I want to go back to, but they’re slipping through my fingers when I reach for them. It’s like trying to catch a ripple of water in a pond. My memories are useless for at least another twelve hours and by then it’ll be far too late to undo anything. I can’t step back further than thirty minutes.”

  “Oh.” She shrank from him, against the wall, the glower draining visibly as her shoulders bunched. Then her hazel eyes sharpened on him. “What about me? You said your memories are useless, but maybe mine aren’t.”

  “Your memories?” He shook his head. “I can’t use someone else’s—”

  “No, not that,” she cut in. “Kelan McAllister indicated we might both have some ability Duncan was interested in. What if I can also time-run? What if those laws only restrict an individual’s memories?”

  Dismissing her bizarre suggestion was on the tip of his tongue, but Greyston kept his mouth clamped. It wasn’t as if they had anything to lose.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Close your eyes and blank out everything around you. Concentrate on a memory, something recent…maybe just before we turned from the river to sail in for William and Ana.” He watched her do as he’d instructed, her forehead furrowed as she squeezed her eyes tight. “Now reach for yourself in that memory, grab hold of an arm, a shoulder, anything you can anchor yourself to, and pull yourself in. You want to be in that moment, you need to be there more than life itself…” His voice trailed off as her eyes opened.

  She glanced around her and saw nothing had magically transported them anywhere. “Perhaps I’m doing it wrong.”

  “I’ve never tried to show another person how to do this. I can tell how it first happened for me. That might help.” He moved to the staircase, sitting himself down on the lower rung.

  He’d never shared this with anyone, but if the emotion that had strangled him was the key, he had to do it now. He owed Jean that much.

  One elbow on his knee, he pushed his fingers through his hair, his every breath filled with lead. He was about to bare himself to the rotten core. “It was a couple of weeks after the gas explosion. Neco and I had made our way to the dockside at Leith.”

  He’d gone home first, to Forleough, but he hadn’t even made it past the front entrance. His father had met him halfway across the courtyard, eyes sunken deep into a haggard face. “Ye canna be here. Ye canna be real.” He hit out, a striking glance off Greyston’s shoulder.

  Neco stepped forward, but Greyston quickly stopped him. “I’ve come to see Aragon. I want to talk to my brother.”

  “Yer nigh impossible ta kill,” his da went on, spitting fury with each word. “I shouldha known. From vermin ta vermin and ye’ll take us all with ye. Get from here, do ye hear me? Be gone with ye and yer evil.”

  Greyston took a slow, steadying breath, his gaze on the meshed floor.

  “We were living on the streets, taking shelter in the alleys between the warehouses, earning an odd shilling here and there.” He heard her little gasp, still didn’t look up. “When the lad came at me, the alley was so dark, all I could see was the glint of steel in the moonlight. He must have been watching, waiting for Neco to leave.”

  Neco had taken to ruffling down the occasional unsuspecting sailor on his way to or from one of the many taverns that thrived along the docks. It wasn’t noble, and the poor bastards never had more than a couple of shillings on them, but most days that was all that stood between survival and starvation.

  “He demanded I empty my pockets, which I did, but then he wanted to know where we’d stashed our money. Said he’d seen what the big fellow could do, that he’d been watching us work the docks for weeks and he wanted his cut. I had nothing to give him, of course, and that’s when he jumped me.”

  Three weeks living it rough hadn’t toughened him at all, not with Neco looking out for him. Greyston had flung himself aside, somehow tripped the lad by pure luck and then he was straddling his attacker, trying to restrain the hand that grasped the hilt of a dagger.

  The lad had bucked him easily and next thing Greyston was the one in the dirt, kicking and hitting and squirming long after the boy had stopped. He’d collapsed beside Greyston, the point of the blade stuck into his throat, his eyes glassy and blood spurting like a fountain.

  “I don’t know how I killed him. One of my kicks must have driven the blade into his throat, but he was dead and I’d done it.” And when he’d looked more closely, he’d seen that the boy was even younger than him, not more than ten or eleven.

  Greyston looked up, expecting to see horror in Lily’s eyes and finding it. “I retched and cried and shook and cursed, but he was still dead.”

  “Greyston, it wasn’t…” Her voice faltered, then came back stronger. “You were defending yourself.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. The boy had come at him, threatening with a dagger, but it was Greyston who’d inadvertently tripped him. Greyston who’d flung himself on top of the boy. Greyston who’d hit and kicked out in terror.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Every bad thing ever said about me, every accusation of evil thrown at me, I was that. I was all of that and more.” He’d killed his mother. He was Lucifer’s runt and only hell awaited. “But I couldn’t be that, Lily. I watched the blood spurt from that boy’s throat and I knew I couldn’t be the one to have done that. If I could just go back a few minutes, even one minute, if I could just change a single action, a word. I reached into my mind, tormenting myself with the deciding moment where I could have crawled to my feet instead of kicking out, wanting to have that moment over again so desperately…”

  Since then, he’d trained his brain to time-run without the emotion. All he needed was a moment of concentration and a memory. But emotion had been the initial trigger, the awakening of his ability. The same might be true for Lily.

  “And?” Lily prompted as he fell silent.

  “And I was there, in the memory of the boy bucking me from him. Instead of kicking out, I scrambled to my hands and knees and shot off down the alley.”

  “He lived?”

  “I sneaked back a short while later and there was no body, no blood.” Greyston rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward. “That’s the place you need to find inside yourself, Lily.”

  She gave him a weak smile. Took a deep breath. And closed her eyes.

  He waited, the seconds ticking by slowly as he watched the intensity play out on her face. Should he be holding her hand, ready to go back in time with her? He didn’t want anything to distract her. He didn’t really have much faith that she’d succeed. She’d tell him everything, anyway, the instant she stepped back into whatever memory she’d chosen. Not that he believed she could.

  Her eyes blinked open.

  His jaw tensed.

  “Did I…?” She cast a slow look around.

  Greyston’s jaw went slack with disappointment. “That’s that, then.” He pushed to his feet.

  Her eyes turned down. “I honestly thought…”

  “It’s okay, Lily.”

  She peered up at him, lashes glistening with tears. “It’s not okay. I thought nothing terrible would truly happen, that we—that you could avert anything too horrid to bear. It’s not okay. Jean won’t be okay and there’s not a thing we can do to change it.”

  “Lily, don’t…” He stepped toward her, his arms reaching to comfort, then dropping heavily to his side. He wasn’t a natural comforter or sympathiser. In his world, it was each man, woman and child for themselves. He didn’t trust this urge she invoked in him, didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.

  She released a shuddering sigh, but her shoulders straightened and her head lif
ted. “Are we still taking Jean to Edinburgh?”

  “The Red Hawk will take Jean and everyone else. You and I are setting down at Cragloden. It’s on the way.”

  “I want to go with Jean. I won’t be able to think straight until I know she’s going to be okay.”

  “Jean’s best odds are without us, especially while I can’t time-run. We’re the death trap, Lily,” he said softly. “The demon’s after us and it will stop at no one and nothing.”

  “The demon’s after us,” she repeated numbly. “That’s straight from a grim fairy tale, usually followed by a sentence containing brimstone and sulphur. I don’t know what scares me more, Greyston, that demons truly exist or that I so easily believe they do.”

  He gave her a reassuring smile. “I tried to resist believing, and that didn’t get me very far. Be scared of the demons, but never of yourself.”

  She tilted her chin, looking into his eyes. Her lips moved, perhaps to form a smile, but never quite made it. “What are we going to do?”

  “Kelan said Cragloden is a safe haven. Considering how well informed the McAllisters appear to be on all things demonic, I hope to high hell he meant Cragloden is a refuge of sorts. Failing that, at least he claims he knows how to fight the damn beasts.” He made his way to the Pilot Cabin, issuing, “Go back to the others. I’ll join you in a moment.”

  Jamie wasn’t happy about the change in plan. “I don’t like leaving you stranded without the Red Hawk, Grey, not after what I’ve seen today.”

  “She needs to be repaired.” Greyston stood behind his chair, his gaze on the ragged cliffs battered by roiling white-created waves below. The ocean was on their left, which meant they were already on the stretch down the coastline with a good south-easterly wind on their tail. “Ferdie will want to get spare parts in Edinburgh anyway. I need you to wait there, to bring Paisley and Jean back.”

  “We should make for Es Vedra and be done with this godforsaken land.”

  Greyston couldn’t fault the sentiment, so he said nothing. He released the hatch that provided emergency access to the captain’s cabin directly above and caught the ladder as it unfolded.

  Jamie raised a shaggy orange brow at him. “Avoiding someone?”

  “Just in a hurry,” Greyston shot over his shoulder as he climbed the rungs.

  At the top, he flipped the hatch down and started packing some essentials and a change of clothes into a cloth sack he dug up from the storage units beneath his bunk. The carpetbag he used for travelling, as well as his pair of Foggles, had been incinerated along with Forleough. He tied a knot in the cloth and slung the bag over his shoulder, making his way along the narrow passage and then down the steel rung steps to the Galley Grid, entering the boarding cabin through the stern-side doorway.

  He found Evelyn and William bent over Jean.

  “I want you to go along to Edinburgh,” Evelyn was telling him, “and stay with her.”

  “Yes, Lady Eve.”

  Which sounded very much as if Evelyn was coming with them. When he’d said everyone but him and Lily were going to Edinburgh, he’d meant everyone.

  He grimaced, was about to reject her assumption flatly, but hesitated. He’d made the decision for Jean, and look at her now. He didn’t know what was best. He didn’t know if whatever protection Cragloden had to offer outweighed the threat he and Lily posed. He didn’t know a bloody thing.

  “She must have the finest surgeons, you tell them that,” Evelyn told William.

  The poor lad blanched. “I’ll try, Lady Eve, but I don’t—”

  “Yes, you do.” She removed her ring, her wedding ring, and slipped it on Jean’s finger. “That ring has the ducal crest on it and the inside is engraved. I’ve heard some horrendous stories about neglect and carelessness in the general hospitals, but they wouldn’t dare give a duchess second-rate care.”

  “I must pretend that she is…” William’s frown intensified. “You?”

  Evelyn nodded. “Make sure they understand. The wrath of England will come down on their heads if the Duke of Harchings’ beloved wife dies in their care.”

  Greyston didn’t intervene. Her ruse would get Jean exemplary treatment, save her life if at all possible, and maybe it was. He walked around them—noting that William had strapped the puppy’s mouth with part of the material leash, muting its uncontrollable yap—and over to where Neco and Lily were crouched over Ana. “Where’s Paisley?”

  Neco rose to his full height. “Ian took her to the galley for a dram of whiskey.”

  “He’s a good man, he’ll keep her there for as long as possible.” He indicated at Ana, still slumped against the wall. “How bad is it?”

  “A shard of aluminium pierced her chest,” Neco said.

  No small feat, considering the celludrone’s chest was a solid cage of steel. Then again, a shard of anodised aluminium was the equivalent of a diamond spear.

  “I don’t understand why she’s deteriorating.” Lily glanced up at him. “First she stopped talking, and now she isn’t moving.”

  “We’re programmed to shut down systematically when our energy source is compromised,” Neco said. “The progressive deterioration indicates a slow leak, a ninety-eight percent probability her life cell has been fractured, although not completely shattered.”

  Lily jumped to her feet. “How does steel fracture?”

  “Glass,” Neco corrected.

  “Are you saying the heart of her mechanics is that fragile?” Lily exclaimed. “Why would anyone design anything that stupid?”

  “You could ask God the same thing of our human hearts,” Greyston muttered.

  “Glass has unique properties required to maintain a perpetual polar current in the life cell after its initial charge, m’lady,” Neco said. “The cell is firmly attached to the inner casing of the steel chest with special brackets to buffer motion. The design is considered sufficiently robust.”

  “Not by my reckoning,” Lily challenged.

  “A life cell is replaceable,” Greyston told her. “We’ll get help for Ana at Cragloden. Duncan created her and from what we saw, his laboratory is intact.”

  Jamie popped his head in through the doorway. “We’ve just turned inland at the Tay. The tide is out and there’s a sand bank at the mouth wide enough for us to dock.”

  Greyston shook his head at Jamie. “Take us over Cragloden and hover above the courtyard. We’ll use the inter-ship docking platform to disembark.”

  The platform operated on steam hydraulics, tediously lowered from the stern of the ship on four mechanical arms attached to the ship’s main steam pump. Precious minutes wasted, but Greyston preferred to keep the ship airborne just in case. Lady Ostrich had a knack for arriving unexpectedly with devastating consequences.

  He took a moment at Jean’s side on the way out. She was still breathing, he could hear the faint rattle of each laboured breath.

  “I’ll send Ian back in here,” he told William. If she woke from the opium induced sleep, her heart might well give out from pain and shock.

  Hob was stoking the boiler fire in the pump room. Ferdie, the ship’s engineer and the man who’d invented the unique accelerated steam circuit, was in front of a control map similar to the one in the Pilot Cabin, but far more complex.

  He turned as Greyston stepped inside. “The power system wasn’t designed to operate without continuous flow throughout the entire circuit. We have pressure building in the elevated piping.”

  “More ruptures?” he asked.

  “If we maintain the current output, yes. I’m redirecting flow as it builds, but we need to reduce power.”

  “Do it,” Greyston said. “There’s a good wind channelling down the coastline that’ll carry her all the way to Edinburgh once she’s caught the Aether stream.” He quickly informed Hob and Ferdie of the plan, to which Ferdie added, “It’s just as well we’re not docking. To re-launch requires a burst of power that I wouldn’t recommend.”

  The others filed in behind him, Neco
with Ana slung over his shoulder, Evelyn with the puppy tucked under her arm and Lily bringing up the rear. He directed everyone onto the platform at the rear of the pump room, a square sectioned off by railing that was low enough to step over.

  “Sit flat and hold onto the rail,” he instructed the ladies. As soon as he heard the engines change gear to the oscillatory rotators used for hovering, he joined them on the platform and depressed the lever to engage the hydraulic arms.

  The platform dropped from the hull of the ship, descending slow inches with each lurch. Lily gasped at the first lurch and Evelyn made a dry comment about disembarking in style, but neither of them could muster up much of a complaint.

  By the orange and pink horizon over the ocean and the depth of grey to which the day had darkened, Greyston judged it to be only somewhere between half six and seven o’clock. This day felt like the longest in his life and there was no end in sight.

  Below them, Kelan McAllister stood at the top of the steps beneath the portico, legs braced and arms folded, his face turned up to watch their descent. Beside him was that other man. “What’s the butler’s name again?” he asked Lily.

  “Armand,” she replied, peering over the rail. “He’s absolutely demented.”

  “He has a rather elegant appearance about him,” Evelyn remarked.

  “The Italian?” Lily snorted. “Do you know, he had the gumption to serve me tea while Kelan McAllister had a vicious blade drawn across Greyston’s throat.”

  Evelyn’s eyes flickered to him. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d allow such a thing.”

  Pride dictated more than the shrug he gave her, but after the losses he’d taken today, he wasn’t in the mood to deny McAllister could teach him a move or two.

  Once again, even here from above, there was an odd moment where it felt as if he were passing through thick air, the resistance dragging on his body so much so that his feet briefly floated above the surface of the platform. He looked at Lily, to see her come down on her backside hard at the same time as his boots thudded back onto the platform. The force field was a dome over the entire estate.