Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy)

by Pagliassotti Dru

  Taya had changed into a station worker’s spare uniform. The physician’s assistant had checked her over, bandaging and plastering her cuts. He’d warned her that she’d strained her muscles and wouldn’t feel much like moving once her stress levels decreased. She already ached, and she was afraid that if she laid down, she might not be able to get back up again. Nobody would let her lie down, though, because the assistant had also diagnosed her as mildly concussed.

  She preferred to stay awake and watch over her husband, anyway.

  “Taya?”

  She looked up. Jayce walked in, holding a flask, and handed it to her. His broken arm had been splinted and bound, and a fresh sling secured it close to his chest.

  “Whiskey. Belongs to one of the men here. The doctor said you could have some.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t like whiskey, but she took a sip anyway, flinching as the alcohol stung her cut and chapped lips.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I want him to wake up. Really wake up.”

  “I know. He will. How are you doing?”

  She looked up and saw concern in his dark eyes. She mustered a weak smile that quickly collapsed.

  “Rikard… Rikard died protecting me.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jayce lowered his voice to a whisper. “They put the bodies in the warehouse, but the lieutenant hasn’t gone down yet. He won’t talk to anybody, either. He just sits outside like a statue.”

  She nodded. She couldn’t imagine that Lieutenant Amcathra would willingly reveal his grief to strangers.

  Her heart ached to think about what Rikard’s mother would say when she heard the news. And what about his little sister? The one Rikard had been saving up his money to help?

  They would do something for her, she decided, touching Cristof’s bandaged arm. As soon as they were back in the capital.

  “What do you know about Petre?” she asked, at last.

  “I didn’t know him before this trip, but we got along fine. He seemed normal.” Jayce looked unhappy. “It’s hard to believe he was behind all this.”

  “I know,” Taya whispered. “You’d think the lieutenant would have noticed something, if one of his men was a turncoat.”

  “Maybe that’s why he’s so upset.”

  “Excuse me? Icarus?”

  They looked up. Doctor Marchand, the station physician, stood in the doorway. Jayce excused himself and the doctor took his place.

  “I’m told you’re the exalted’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized that. You are also the head of the delegation in his absence?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” She glanced at the small table by the bed. Cristof’s pocket watch was there, next to her own. Their twin ticking reassured her. She realized it was a groundless superstition, but somehow she couldn’t believe that Cristof would die as long as his watch was working.

  “Very good. We plan to retrieve everyone’s goods from the wreckage tomorrow.” The physician rubbed the spiral castemark on his right cheekbone. “There’s nothing that needs to be retrieved sooner than that, is there?”

  “Not that I know of.” She’d found Alister’s punch cards tucked behind Cristof’s identification papers in the coat they’d cut off his body, and she had her armature. “I’ll need my box of counterweights tomorrow, and my dispatch case contains confidential material.”

  “We’ll prioritize them, then.”

  Her husband groaned and she looked back down at him.

  “Will he be all right?”

  “He lost a lot of blood, but none of his lacerations were life-threatening….”

  “But…?” Taya bit her lip. Marchand shook his head.

  “The fact that he’s regained consciousness a few times is a good sign.”

  “When can we leave, then?”

  “That depends on what the signalers have to say.” He gestured toward the door. “Do you want to come with me? We can ask if they’ve received orders from Ondinium yet.”

  Taya hesitated.

  “Walk with me,” the doctor urged. “It will do you good.”

  She reluctantly stood, leaning over to kiss Cristof’s forehead before following the physician out. Walking hurt. She rotated her aching arms and neck, and rubbed her trembling legs. Her skinned and bruised knees were on fire.

  “We’re going up to the station,” the doctor announced to the room in general. Nods and grunts arose from those who were still awake. Taya pulled on the heavy coat and gloves Marchand handed her and followed him out the door and up a steep flight of stairs cut out of the cold mountain stone. The snow wasn’t as bad now, though the wind was still bitterly cold.

  Taya had never been this close to a signaling station before. Several were near the capital, but they weren’t on her courier route. The steam engine chugged and giant mirrors clattered around metal tracks while a metal hood snapped back and forth in front of the bright signal light.

  A small door at the base of the mechanism led to a spartan operator’s room. Long windows ran across the room’s walls, revealing distant flashes through the swirling snowflakes. On the far side of the room was a metal panel in which were set levers and cranks.

  The famulate at the desk raised her hand in a stalling gesture as she scribbled on a sheet of paper. A stack of blank punch cards and a punch machine sat on the desk by her right hand.

  “Are the signals run by difference engines?” Taya asked Marchand in a low voice.

  “No— it’s a much simpler system,” he replied. “More like a mechanical loom, or a wireferry.”

  The signaler finished writing and walked over to the control panel, making adjustments. She removed a card and replaced it with another, hanging the used card on a labeled board. When she was done, she turned.

  “Doctor?” Her face darkened. “Is it the exalted?”

  “No, no, he’s well. This is Taya Icarus, Exalted Forlore’s wife.”

  “Er, how do you do, Icarus?” the famulate said, taken aback. “I’m sorry about the accident.”

  “Thank you.” Taya glanced at Marchand, wondering why they’d come. She’d rather be sitting by Cristof’s side.

  “Has there been any word from Ondinium?” Marchand asked. The signaler nodded, picking up the papers from the table.

  “I’m acknowledging it right now, right?” she replied. “We’re to divert all rail traffic until repairs are made and get the exalted to safety as soon as possible.” She hesitated, looking down at the papers, then folded them and handed them to Marchand. “These coded orders are for the stationmaster, aren’t they? Will you deliver them, as long as you’re here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does that mean we can travel?” Taya asked as they headed back down the icy stairs to the main station.

  “If this is the authorization we’ve been expecting, then yes.” The doctor stopped before they reached the station door. “Icarus, I’d like to show you something down below. Something about one of your dead.”

  She recoiled. “Is it important?”

  “I think it may be, yes. Will you come?”

  She glanced at the station door. She wanted to go back to Cristof, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask Lieutenant Amcathra to do it. He had a twisted knee and a sprained ankle, and he clearly wasn’t ready to confront his nephew’s corpse yet.

  “All right,” she acquiesced without enthusiasm.

  Marchand led her down more stairs to the detached storage shed where the bodies had been taken. Taya stopped when she saw him reach for the oilcloth covering the face.

  “That’s Rikard.”

  “I don’t know his name. But I’m concerned about how he died.”

  “One of our lictors, Petre, shot him.” She didn’t want to see Rikard’s dead face. She didn’t want to see his wounds. Al
l she wanted to do was go back inside to check on Cristof.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Taya forced herself to set one foot in front of the other until she stood by his side.

  “Why not?”

  He pulled down the oilcloth. She made a small, strangled noise at the sight of Rikard’s waxen face. Someone had closed his eyes and set steel washers over them to keep them shut. But the doctor was gesturing to the dead lictor’s chest, where his tattered uniform jacket and shirt had been cut open.

  Rikard’s chest had been blown apart. Frozen blood glittered in the light of the lantern that hung from the shed’s rafters. The bear’s head tattoo on his upper arm, heartwrenchingly identical to his uncle’s, was livid against his colorless skin.

  “This wound is the result of a very high-caliber weapon.”

  “So?” Taya swallowed back a surge of nausea, looking away. Marchand pulled up the oilcloth.

  “The other lictor, Petre, was holding a handgun, not a rifle. The only man we rescued who was carrying a high-caliber weapon is your lieutenant.”

  “Lieutenant Amcathra didn’t shoot his own nephew!”

  “Perhaps not intentionally, but if it was dark, and the two men were shooting at each other… he might have made a mistake.”

  “No. That’s impossible.” Taya felt sick just thinking about it. “Amcathra wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”

  “At night? In the middle of a storm? After crawling out of a train wreck? Anybody could have made that kind of mistake.” Marchand gave her a grave look. “Unless, of course, it wasn’t a mistake. Are you certain the man with the handgun was the saboteur?”

  “I’m not talking about this any more.” Taya jerked around, hugging herself.

  “You trust your lieutenant?”

  “Implicitly!” she snapped. Of course she trusted him. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was… if he’d killed his sister’s son by accident….

  Her stomach churned as she remembered the despair on his face when she’d first opened her eyes.

  How was he ever going to live with himself?

  When they returned to the station, Taya peeled off her parka as Marchand handed the signal message to the stationmaster. He called over a lictor, and the three conferred in low voices. The stationmaster gestured to her as she was about to check on Cristof.

  “Icarus, we’ve been given permission to transport Exalted Forlore to Overlook by restricted rail,” he murmured, standing close to her. “The trip takes about two hours. Your lieutenant has been ordered to escort him. Do you want to accompany him, too, or would you rather stay here to oversee the salvage operation?”

  “I’ll go with him,” Taya said at once. The stationmaster nodded and headed to Lieutenant Amcathra, who was sitting by the door with his arms folded over his chest and his eyes all but closed. He looked up as the stationmaster spoke to him.

  Taya slipped past them to re-enter Cristof’s room, unable to look the lictor in the face. Her heart leaped when she saw her husband’s unbandaged eye open.

  “Cris?” He was still prone, and Dr. Marchand was pulling a needle attached to a syringe out of her husband’s arm. “Cris, are you all right?”

  “Taya.” His voice was weak and strained, but she recognized the relief in his bruised face. It was a reflection of her own. She grabbed his bandaged hand, then tore off her gloves and took it again.

  “Shhh.” She rubbed his bare fingertips, afraid to squeeze too hard. “I’m all right.”

  He nodded, just the slightest twitch.

  “I’ve administered a subcutaneous dose of morphine to help him with the pain,” Marchand said, cleaning the needle with a cloth and setting it aside. “I’ll show you and the lictor how to do it, in case he needs another dose during the journey.”

  Cristof tried to say something, but it came out as a whisper. She leaned closer.

  “…safe?”

  She drew in a deep breath.

  “We lost Rikard,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Petre… Petre shot him,” she said, with a touch of defiance. The doctor was wrong. He had to be wrong. “Petre’s dead, too, and one of Jayce’s tailors, and an engineer. Everyone else is alive.”

  He slid his other arm across the blanket and grasped her hand.

  “Please, Exalted, don’t move.” Marchand looked at Taya. “The morphine will put him to sleep for the journey.”

  Taya leaned over and kissed her husband.

  “I love you, Cris. Don’t worry about anything. Amcathra and I will take care of you.”

  He murmured something she couldn’t make out before his eyes closed and his hands relaxed.

  She waited until his breathing was deep and steady, then straightened his arms and looked at Marchand. The physician took the exalted’s pulse, listened to his breathing, and nodded with satisfaction.

  “He should sleep through the trip, but I’ll give you more morphine in case he awakens.”

  Marchand asked Lieutenant Amcathra to join them and demonstrated how to give Cristof a second injection. Taya put the glass-and-steel syringe and small bottle of morphine into her coat pocket for safekeeping.

  “How are you?” she asked Amcathra after Marchand left.

  “Mobile,” he said, tersely. “Did the stationmaster say how long it will take to reach Overlook?”

  “Two hours.”

  Amcathra scowled and limped out of the room on a makeshift cane someone had made for him from a tree branch. Taya checked on her sleeping husband one more time and followed the lictor out. She found him studying a large schematic map of the rails that hung on one wall.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  Amcathra pointed to a dot.

  “And Overlook?”

  He pointed to another. Taya frowned. The schematic didn’t tell her much about the terrain, but her rough mental map of Ondinium told her that Overlook was on the other side of the mountain, much more than two hours away.

  “Maybe they have a wireferry?” she suggested. Going straight over the peak instead of around it would reduce the travel time.

  “No.”

  “I might be able to fly to Overlook in two hours,” she tried again, puzzled. “But I don’t think they’re going to give you a pair of wings and hang Cris from a sling between us.”

  “That might be preferable.” Amcathra turned, his attention caught by the stationmaster’s return from outside.

  “Icarus. Lieutenant. If you’re ready to depart, we’ll be traveling to the restricted line by rail-cart.”

  * * *

  They bade the rest of their small group good-bye as the lictors fastened Cristof’s stretcher to the rail-cart. Taya, back in her torn flight suit and armature, hugged them all while the stationmaster warmed up the rail-cart’s engine.

  Nobody in the cart tried to speak as they sped along zig-zagging side-rails through the dark, snowy forest. Several times the tracks ran under camouflaged tunnels. Taya held Cristof’s motionless hand, her heart aching. Her husband looked too small under his blanket and bandages. Beside her, Amcathra remained silent. He’d changed into a clean uniform one of the station’s lictors had found for him and held his makeshift cane as he observed their route. She kept expecting to see some sign of grief or guilt in his face, but if he was feeling either emotion, he hid it well.

  At last the stationmaster braked as they approached a locked mine entrance; the tracks ran under the doors. The two station lictors jumped off to unlock the two heavy, iron-banded doors and swing them open. The rail-cart chugged inside a stone tunnel, then braked again. Its front-mounted searchlight snapped on. The stationmaster lit several lamps, hanging them on hooks on the back of the engine, while the lictors closed and locked the doors from the inside.

  “Mines…” Taya breathed, looking at Amcathra. “We’re not going over the mountain; we’re going thro
ugh it.”

  The lictors climbed back aboard, shooting them smug glances.

  The rail-cart carried them into a dark shaft. They descended steadily, passing two more sets of gates that had already been drawn back. Taya squirmed. She’d never been inside a mine before. The close, dark tunnels made her uneasy, and the sound of the engine and wheels clattering on the rails seemed ten times as loud as before.

  She didn’t know how long it was before they slowed and turned. She laid a hand on Cristof’s chest, reassuring herself with his heartbeat. Steam hissed as the cart stopped and the engineer set the brakes. The lictors slid off and grabbed their lanterns.

  The chamber was strangely muggy and warm, trickles of water running down its stone walls. Once the rail-cart’s engine was off, Taya could make out the thundering rumble of a much, much larger steam engine nearby.

  “Where are we?” she asked, looking around. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the noise. “What is this?”

  The chamber was taller and wider than the small tunnel they’d taken down, its walls and square support pillars decorated with great, ornately carved stone slabs. The carvings reminded her of ancient designs she’d seen preserved in the state museum years ago: flowers and animals and mask-wearing figures out of legend.

  The rail-cart tracks circled next to a broad wooden platform, but the vehicle next to the platform was no train Taya had ever seen before. It was slender, cylindrical, and windowless, its sides smooth and lacking any of the decorative panels or paint she was used to seeing on passenger cars. The vehicle’s front end was pointed like an air-rifle cartridge.

  The tunnel it was aimed at was hardly wider than the vehicle itself. The entrance was faced with huge blocks of stone incised with ancient Ondinium script.

  “This,” the stationmaster announced with pride, “is Ondinium’s subterranean atmospheric railway.”

  “It runs through the mountain?”

  “Yes. These tunnels date back to the Imperial days. They’ve been reinforced, of course.”

  “What do the words over the tunnel say?”

  “No idea.”

  Taya dropped her eyes to the vehicle again, confused.