Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy)

by Pagliassotti Dru

  Cristof touched her arm. She followed him to the next building, stumbling as she left the wall’s protection and felt the full force of the wind. It yanked on her metal wings and threatened to toss her into the air. She wrapped her fingers around the straps on Cristof’s leather pack. He turned and grasped her arm, pulling her close. Huddling together, they ran across the open space and pressed against the wall of the next building.

  “Around the side,” Cristof whispered, still gripping her arm. Taya let him lead while she focused on keeping the erratic gusts from catching her wings and pulling her away.

  They reached the lee of the building. Taya crouched, glad to be out of the icy, dangerous blast. Voices and laughter sounded from inside.

  Cristof pointed to the next building over. They struggled through the storm to it, ducking out of the wind again.

  “Where are we?” Taya asked. With the exception of the tall hangar, all the buildings looked alike— wooden-framed boxes with corrugated metal sides and narrow slits of windows that were clearly there to let in the light rather than offer a view.

  “That last building was a mess hall, I think. It must be lunchtime.”

  “Lunch might be worth surrendering for.” Taya’s stomach clenched at the thought of hot food.

  “We’ll eat as soon as we find someplace to hide.”

  “How about in here?” She looked hopefully at the building beside them.

  “I’ll look.” He slipped around the side. Taya shivered, hopping from foot to foot until he returned.

  “Barracks. Latrines beyond. We’ll have to look on the other side of the hangar.”

  “Give me your pack. I need some extra weight.”

  She wrapped one of the straps around her left arm and clutched the pack close to her chest with her right.

  They dashed across the open space, pausing long enough in the lee of the train shed to catch their breath before following the tracks around the front of the hangar. Taya barely had a chance to register its astounding height before they ducked around a smaller, shorter attached building. Its human-sized door was painted with warnings in Alzanan and Demican:

  Inflammable Gas Processing Station. Danger.

  Cristof yanked the door open and pulled her inside. Taya winced, half-expecting something to blow up, as he closed the door behind them.

  Narrow windows let in thin rays of light that revealed machinery that didn’t look at all like the buoyant gas generator Taya had seen in Mareaux. The assembly was larger, for one thing, and more industrial-looking, a confusing labyrinth of metal cylinders, pipes, boxes, valves, and levers that loomed over their heads. A large coal hopper and several crates filled the rest of the space.

  Taya edged around the machines, moving as quietly as she could. The room was empty.

  “Nobody here,” she reported. “There’s a door that leads to the hangar. I hope nobody comes in.”

  “They’re not going to launch a dirigible in this weather.”

  “What is all of this?” Taya asked, gesturing to the equipment around them. Cristof took off his glasses, cleared them with his scarf, and put them back on again to peer around. He indicated the tallest cylinder.

  “That’s probably a fuel tank. It pipes something over there,” he pointed to a large metal box, “but that’s all I can tell you. Professor Dautry would know.”

  “Maybe. Those aerostats are years ahead of the ones we saw in Mareaux.”

  “That doesn’t mean they didn’t originate in Mareaux. Alzanans are good at industrial espionage.”

  “I don’t think you give them enough credit,” Taya objected, picking up the backpacks they’d left on the floor.

  “They’re good at criminology and behavioral studies, and they’re reasonably clever at metallurgy and chemical experimentation, but they fight among themselves far too much to develop the kind of large-scale industry they’d need to challenge Ondinium.” Cristof frowned, his eyes drifting to the equipment around them. “And they’re usually no good at keeping secrets, either. How in the world could they have built this so close to our borders without somebody turning coat and selling us the information?”

  “It must be a military operation.”

  “Yes, but it still would have involved hundreds of people….”

  “Maybe they hired Demicans?” She dug through his pack and unearthed two hard rolls, one dry sausage, and a canteen of half-frozen water.

  “Maybe.” Cristof frowned. “Janos said something about a nationalist movement. Those bear people.”

  “The sheytatangri,” Taya supplied. She pulled out her utility knife and divided the food. “Let’s eat while we talk.”

  They pulled off their gloves. The bread was dry and cold, and even though Taya chewed each bite until it turned to mush to make it last longer, it vanished too quickly.

  Cristof’s eyes were turned toward the generator, but his gaze was a million miles away.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Those ships use explosive gas.”

  “It’s cheaper than the alternative, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and easier to manufacture. But it’s much more dangerous.”

  “Professor Dautry said the Alzanans have developed a new engine. Maybe that makes it safer.”

  “What kind of engine?”

  “Something eclectic. Eletric?”

  “Electromagnetic?”

  “That’s it. She said they were working on… aeronave?”

  “Nobody’s ever managed to build an electromagnetic engine powerful enough to propel a dirigible. The engines add more weight than buoyant gas can lift.”

  “Well, Professor Dautry said she was looking forward to trying one of the new Alzanan engines on her dirigible in Echelles.”

  Her husband’s frown grew.

  “Then why didn’t the Council know about them?”

  Taya took a bite out of the sausage and forced herself to chew it thoroughly. Make it last longer than the roll, she counseled herself.

  “Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why it suddenly got so interested in Mareaux’s aerostat experiments,” she ventured. “Mareaux would let us in and show us around; Alzana wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe. But still….”

  Taya sucked the last bit of grease off her fingers. Cristof must have eaten his sausage as quickly as she’d eaten her roll; it was already gone.

  “So, what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I’d like to take another look at those aerostats,” he said. “The more information you can take to Kovolo, the better. We’ll do it tonight. For now, we should try to get some rest. The Alzanans can’t take their dirigibles out in these winds, and there’s no reason for them to come in here until they do.”

  “I feel like all we’ve done for the last two days is sit and wait,” she muttered.

  Cristof leaned over and kissed her cold cheek.

  “Take off your armature and get some sleep, love. You’re going to need all your strength to fly back to Kovolo.”

  “I don’t like the idea of leaving you here, either,” she added as he sat by the door with his back to the wall and his gun on his lap.

  “Just bring me some hot tea when you return,” he said, smiling up at her.

  She sighed and pulled off her armature, tucking a strap under the backpack to keep it in place. Then she curled up with her head in her husband’s lap and waited for nightfall.

  Chapter Twenty

  The six giant dirigibles were lined up in two rows of three each. One floated almost directly in front of them, the long, sleek horizontal ridges on its silver envelope a marked contrast to the bulging, bulbous envelope of Professor Dautry’s ungainly aerostat. Two gondolas were fastened beneath the gargantuan envelope. The closest looked like a ship’s cabin, while the farthest contained the ship’s engines, each connected to
a giant steel propeller.

  On this side of the dirigibles, the sky-blue Alzanan gryphons had been replaced by a snarling white bear’s head.

  The Alzanans were allied with the Demican sheytatangri. That was bad news for Ondinium, which had blithely trusted its “backwards” northern neighbors for centuries.

  Her husband was considering the guard sitting between the two rows of aerostats. The guard wore a blue-and-red military uniform and was engrossed in a book. He was alone, his rifle slung carelessly over the back of his chair.

  Cristof looked up, and Taya followed his gaze to a second guard leaning on the catwalk, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

  She touched his arm and gestured to the door behind them. He shook his head, put a finger against his lips, and began sneaking up to the nearest aerostat’s gondola.

  Silently cursing his insatiable curiosity, Taya followed, ducking the thick ropes that tethered the giant ship to metal rings bolted to the wooden floor.

  The vehicle’s painted envelope loomed over her like an exalted’s mansion, putting Taya’s little metal wings to shame. She wondered how fast the engines could propel the gargantuan vehicle. When the wind was right, icarii could reach a horizontal speed of about 40 miles an hour, but they couldn’t maintain it for very long. She didn’t think that such a massive vehicle could move that quickly, but it would have the advantage of never tiring.

  Cristof opened the gondola door and waved to her. She slid her arms into her wings to pull them close to her body — her husband had left his backpack in the gas processing room, but she’d refused to leave her armature — and stepped inside.

  The gondola’s interior was deeply shadowed, although one of the hangar’s lamps cast a dim beam of light through a window. A narrow passage ran down the center, lined with long metal lockers. Metal platforms by the windows held large swivel-mounted guns. The barrels were the same size as the parts they’d found on the train.

  Allied Metals & Extraction had been betraying its country.

  Taya walked down the middle of the gondola, counting the big, swivel-mounted cannon. Two on each side, staggered. When she reached the front of the gondola, she paused. The front opened onto a curved bay of glass windows and steel wheels, levers, and dials. If Taya craned her neck, she could see the Alzanan guard through the window. He turned a page, oblivious to their presence. She backed up, feeling nervous.

  Cristof, on the other hand, was caressing the instrument board. He adjusted his silver-rimmed glasses as he examined the shadowed dials. His long, dark hair tumbled around his shoulders, and his expression was rapt.

  Taya spotted a rolled-up map in a rack. Locking her wings over her head with the greatest of care — the struts supporting the cabin roof were low — she picked it up and opened it.

  The map depicted Ondinium, with the names of each major city neatly labeled in Alzanan. She searched for their location and found it marked in red in the middle of the mountains, a few hours from the Demicus-Ondinium border and far from any clan settlements. An Ondinium signal station was indicated along the border almost directly south of them.

  It would be faster for her to fly to that station than to follow the railway tracks back to Kovolo. If the wind was with her — and judging from what she’d felt in her brief walk outside earlier that day, it was blowing north to south — she would have little trouble getting there. The lictors at the station could send an emergency signal back to the capital at once, giving her more time to return and make sure Cristof was safe.

  Satisfied, she rolled up the map and tucked it beneath one of her armature struts. Cristof abandoned the controls to rejoin her, carrying a firearm that he’d picked up from a cabinet in the front.

  “Flare gun,” he whispered, tucking it into the courier’s pouch on her leg. She recoiled, but he caught her hand before she could pluck it out again. “Just in case.”

  Taya squirmed. It was against the law and every code of behavior she’d grown up with for an icarus to carry a weapon. Maybe, just maybe, a flare gun wasn’t the same thing as a pistol, but it looked the same.

  He tilted his head toward the door. She followed him out of the control room and back through the gondola. Instead of going out, though, he climbed up the stairs in back. Taya waited, certain that her wings would never fit through the tight passageway without making noise.

  “Storage,” he whispered when he returned. Taya opened the gondola door, looked out, and crept to the shadowed hangar wall.

  She turned around to discover that Cristof wasn’t with her. He had stopped next to the gondola, leaning back to study its connection to the dirigible’s taut envelope. Then he stepped back to examine the separate engine gondola.

  This is no time to be a gearhead! she raged silently, glaring at him.

  One of the small hangar doors opened and two new guards strolled inside, laughing and shaking snow off their coats. Taya shrank back against the wall, and Cristof froze in the dirigible’s shadow.

  “Reading on duty, Tazio?” one of the newcomers bellowed in Alzanan. The guard on the chair closed his book. “Haven’t you been reprimanded often enough?”

  “I have to do something useful with my time. Even the Demicans are smart enough to stay home in this weather.” Tazio jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the guard on the catwalk. “And Durante’s still brooding.”

  “Up yours,” Durante shouted across the hangar. “Just wait until your fiancée breaks up with you because you’ve been sent out to some damn icy wasteland.”

  “Lucco doesn’t have to worry about that,” said the guard who’d been silent so far. “His girls don’t even wait until he’s out the door before they call in their next customer.”

  Lucco’s amiable retort was cut off by Durante’s cold voice.

  “Did you just call Marianna a whore?” He swung his rifle around.

  “Hey, hey.” Tazio set down his book. “Easy, now. Foscatti was talking about Lucco, not you!”

  “Marianna’s an angel,” Foscatti hastened to add. “Come on, Durante, don’t be so upset. She just wants to hear that you love her. If you send a letter out with the train tomorrow, she’ll forgive you in no time.”

  “That’s right,” Lucco chimed in. “And when you go home a hero, she’ll wish she’d never doubted you.”

  The guard slowly lowered his rifle.

  “It’s just… she imagines these crazy things….”

  “So write her back, tell her how much you love her, and ask her to give you a month before she makes any decisions,” Tazio urged. “Look, let’s go get dinner and write the letter together.”

  “That’s right, Tazi will help you,” Foscatti agreed. “He’s good with words.”

  “Well…” Durante lowered his head to gaze at his boots, then nodded and looked up. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just—” He broke off his sentence with an oath and yanked his rifle back to his shoulder. “Tazi! To your right!”

  Tazio spun. Taya gasped and started forward.

  “Don’t move!” Cristof snapped, aiming his pistol at Tazio’s face.

  Taya froze.

  Ondinan. Her husband had shouted in Ondinan.

  Tazio, who had left his rifle slung over the back of his chair, raised his hands.

  “Wait! Don’t shoot!” he pleaded, speaking Ondinan with a heavy accent.

  “Back up!” Cristof shouted, still in the same language.

  Taya knew her husband read and spoke Alzanan. He wasn’t talking to the soldiers. He was talking to her.

  She clenched her fists. Two against four, and her without anything more threatening than a flare gun? Would they believe it was a real weapon if she kept it close when she threatened them?

  “Drop your gun or I’ll shoot!” Durante shouted from the catwalk. “Drop it!”

  “Drop it!” Lucco echoed, swinging his own rifle around. Next to him,
Foscatti had his firearm up and against his shoulder, as well.

  “Are those percussion rifles?” Cristof asked, switching to Alzanan. “Do you really want to start shooting around envelopes filled with inflammable gas?”

  Taya stepped deeper into the shadows as the guards’ eyes flickered to the inflated envelope that loomed over Cristof’s head. He was right— she couldn’t use a flare gun here. There’d be nothing left of any of them except cinders.

  “Foscatti, raise the alarm,” Lucco snapped. The young soldier turned and shoved open the door, shouting for help.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Durante blustered, squinting down the barrel of his rifle. “Surrender and we won’t shoot you.”

  “Shooting me would be a very bad idea,” Cristof said. He took several steps to his left, moving away from Taya and closer to the middle of the hangar. The barrel of his needle gun was centered on Tazio’s face. “I am much more valuable to you alive.”

  Taya knew what he was doing, and she hated him for it. He was distracting them, leading their eyes away from her. He was sacrificing himself to give her time to escape and warn Ondinium.

  “Who are you?” Tazio demanded. His hands were still up and his voice quavered, but he faced Cristof squarely. “That castemark— that can’t be real.”

  “It’s real,” Cristof said, taking a few more steps away from the dirigible. “Trust me, Tazio. Your commanders will want me alive.”

  The soldier started at the use of his name. “But… but you can’t be an exalted. You aren’t blind.”

  Up on the catwalk, Durante exclaimed with surprise at the word “exalted,” and by the door, Lucco let the barrel of his rifle sag as he stared at Cristof’s face.

  Before either could say anything, more soldiers began pouring inside, barking at Cristof to drop his weapon.

  Hating herself, Taya crept back. Step by step, while everyone’s attention was focused on her husband, she narrowed the distance between herself and the door to the gas processing plant.

  In the middle of the hangar, Cristof raised his hands, his needle gun held high. Tazio lunged forward and snatched the weapon from him. At the door, Lucco spoke rapidly to the newcomers, warning them not to shoot. The soldiers included Alzanans in uniform and Demicans in traditional felt coats and fur boots.