by India Arden
An intelligent person would turn right back around and head up to her rooms. But my curiosity got the best of me, because if Blake had something to laugh about—after he’d been passed over for the Arcanum—I couldn’t just bury my head in the sand. I backed into the shadows, hugging the wall, and crept closer. Close enough to peek into the small courtyard.
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to find him holding court with those other creeps, Chad and Gus. Okay, maybe I was a little bit shocked to see Gus there when he could’ve been mashing on some visiting dignitary’s daughter. Who’s to say if either of those other two guys had actually expected to receive the Arcanum today? Logically, probably not. But now that Blake was just another passed-over Aspirant, he was doing exactly what our father would have done: forging allies and gathering an audience to his cause.
His cause was no big shocker. The three of them who’d been skipped that morning?
They’d been robbed.
I could tell by the way they all huddled together, with mean, conspiratorial smiles on their faces as they spoke, low and intense, punctuated by the occasional joyless laugh.
How Blake had managed to maneuver the situation into three-against-one was beyond me. It wasn’t as if Flood’s Transfiguration had knocked the three of them, as a group, out of the running. But boys will be boys, and all of them were dick-slapped and angry. Not to mention, judging by the empty bottles clanking around their feet, blind drunk.
“You know how Floyd was,” Blake announced. “Always pretending to defer to that senile bag of bones. While the rest of us thought he was working on that theorem of his, he was off ingratiating himself to the old man.” He pitched his voice stiff and robotic and said, “Yes, Fathom. Very wise.”
It wasn’t actually a bad imitation of Flood, though my gut told me this whole situation was anything but funny.
In the courtyard, Chad and Gus laughed. Mean laughs. Like my brother’s.
Pervy Gus lined up three shot glasses on the edge of a concrete bench and sloshed something into them, getting more booze on the bench than in the glasses, and declared in a mocking imitation of my father, “Then take up the Arcanum, young man, and let your past be consumed.”
I’m hardly an Arcane traditionalist. Truth be told, if half of what I did got out, my father would probably disown me. But to see these three losers mocking the ceremony filled me with loathing and dread. Twenty years from now, maybe ten, unless a promising Aspirant came up in the ranks, the precious Arcanum would be wasted on one of these bitter young jerks.
Chad and Gus downed their shots. Blake stared into his liquor. Gus refilled the empty glasses, and as if he could read my mind, said, “And here’s to the next Transfiguration. May it occur while we’re still young enough to enjoy it.”
He and Chad knocked back their shots. Blake picked his up, but didn’t drink it, and I realized he wasn’t drinking, just pretending to play along as he stared down into the surface of the glass, wrestling with something…something big.
“What would you say if I told you…” his voice was dropping perilously low, and I crept closer to the doorway to hear him better, “that we didn’t have to wait.”
Gus laughed. “I’d be surprised that after all these years we’ve had Arcane studies crammed into our heads, you’ve somehow managed to overlook the way The Great Machine actually works!”
Hardly. My brother’s not stupid. I inched closer still…and then I froze. Chad wasn’t watching the other two guys banter. He was staring at the garden wall, which showed the faint pattern of the kitchen windows cast by the dim utility lights.
And right there, in the center of a window pane…was my silhouette.
I very nearly jerked away, but somehow managed to catch myself and keep still. If I didn’t move, maybe I wouldn’t call attention to my presence. Though the chances of him missing a person-shaped shadow, however faint, seemed phenomenally slim.
Chad, the financial genius, was an expert in pattern-spotting. How else had he analyzed the trends that made him into the money-cannon he is today? Surely, he noted the figure breaking up the regular panes of bullet-proof glass. Surely. I held by breath, worried that a movement as small as an inhalation would cause my shadow to move just enough to draw Stan’s attention…and for him to turn around and spot me standing there in the kitchen.
And my brother angry enough to accuse me of…what? Spying on him? Sabotaging him?
No doubt Gus would think up some creative ways to punish me.
Chad cocked his head, then began to turn—please, no. Please—when Blake planted his hands importantly on his hips and said, “What if I found another way to distill the Arcana…and the process was practically instantaneous?”
Gus gave a drunken burble. “And what if my dick was two feet long and could vibrate on command? Cool to think about, but unlikely to happen.”
Gus might’ve scoffed, but Chad didn’t. He’d turned his scrutiny from the shadows on the wall to contemplate my brother, instead. He stifled a hiccup and said, “You’re serious.”
“Absolutely. Why settle for the process of distilling Arcanum from our surroundings when there’s a more potent source?”
Chad furrowed his brow. “You found a new Font?”
Blake sneered at the idea as if Chad had just asked if the moon was really made of cheese. “That well ran dry a long time ago. There is no Font—it’s gone. Used up. And no amount of searching will change that fact.”
“From the source derived,” Chad murmured, only half-mockingly, now. He’d spent his whole life training to receive the Arcanum. That much instruction wasn’t so easy to forget.
“And since you can’t get something from nothing,” Blake said, “my new distiller needs a source.”
His new distiller? Since when was he building a new distiller? He said we were working to improve the efficiency of The Great Machine. It felt like the world had just dropped out from under my feet. I was so shocked, it was a miracle I was still standing.
“Okay,” Gus said, “I’ll bite. What do you point the thing at, another drop of Arcanum? That might take months to fall.”
“Not Arcanum,” Blake said, preening now that he had a rapt audience. “A Master.”
Gus laughed, a stilted thing that died as soon as he realized Blake was dead serious. Gus said, “I’d love nothing more than to knock that asswipe Flood off his high horse. And if this puppy can suck the Arcanum right out of his marrow, make sure I have a front row seat when it happens. But there’s no way to get to him now. He’s surrounded by a circle of sycophants three rows deep.”
“You’re right,” Blake answered calmly. “But I wasn’t talking about tapping Flood. Now that he’s in the game…” he paused for dramatic effect, and said, “it’s not as if the Tetrad will be making any demands from Fathom.”
When the full import of what he’d said sank in, I turned and ran. A shot glass dropped as Chad scrambled to follow, and then Blake and Gus. I had the advantage of being sober. They had the advantage of sensible shoes. The estate had been full of people. Where were they now when I needed to lose myself in a crowd?
I careened down the hall, searching for the sound of a party. All I found was an empty hallway. I ran. My heels made delicate ticks on the marble. Behind me, three sets of running footfalls grew closer. I swung around a corner. The hallway beyond was a long stretch. Surely, they would catch me there…and then I noticed a smaller, more subtle door. I slipped inside. The servants’ passage was narrow and overly bright, lit with no-nonsense fluorescent tubes. I tried my best not to think about what would happen if my brother spotted the door, and just ran. The sound of my stupid heels was louder in the enclosed space. I longed to kick off the shoes and run barefoot, but I couldn’t afford to pause, even for a moment.
Yes, I was tempted. I was still the only one in the narrow hallway. At least for now. But I spotted a turn-off, a branch that led to another outlet. And, if I had my bearings right, that would lead to the main colonnade. I grit my teeth
against the pain in my feet, and I forged ahead. Because the colonnade would be full of people. And my brother couldn’t hurt me there.
Unless he simply called it an accident.
No time to think about that now. I thrust myself into the crowd, but who was I kidding? Even with people milling all around me, I’d be nothing but a target in my bright red dress. Nearly blind with panic, I forged ahead, looking for what, I didn’t know.
Across the Great Hall, I spotted my dad holding court among a cluster of visiting dignitaries. Relief—all I had to do was get to him. But it felt as though the crowds of visitors were conspiring to keep us apart. Every time I made headway in his general direction, a surge of oblivious people threw me off-course.
I was mapping out my best route through the shifting riptide of guests when I felt vodka-tinged breath play across my cheek, followed by the clutch of a hand at my elbow. I turned and found Gus leering down at me, shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, pale eyes glittering with lust. By now, I was accustomed to his pervy closeness, but this felt different. There was a ring of confidence to his smugness now that had been lacking. I’d found him obtrusive before. With promise of more Arcanum, he was especially bold. But he was no Master yet, and if I could help it, he never would be. I yanked my arm from his grasp and snarled, “Don’t touch me.”
“Is that any way to talk to an old friend?” he asked, mockingly affronted. “I was just coming to offer an official invitation to our after-party. You know. The one you already crashed.”
I tried to back away, but a group of oblivious visitors hemmed me in. And when I attempted to sidestep, Gus blocked me. He leaned in way too close, and breathed in my ear, “Ever since we were kids, you’ve acted like you’re better than me. But you’ll find out soon enough who’s in charge. I can’t wait to make you beg. And it makes no difference if it’s begging me to fuck you…or begging me to stop.”
The crowd shifted, and I took the opening, leaving Gus leering at me from across a sea of clueless partygoers. I felt no relief. The thought of him with a glowing sigil peeking through that half-unbuttoned shirt was too horrific.
Fighting my way over to my father was like wading through quicksand, but finally, I pushed through a cluster of bleary guests, and got to him.
“Aurora,” he said brightly, then turned to one of the random suited guys he’d been conversing at. “You’ve met my daughter Aurora, haven’t you? She was just a child at the last Transfiguration.”
“Dad,” I said breathlessly. “We need to talk.”
He frowned at me—deeply, as if my refusal to engage in social niceties was a personal affront to everything he stood for.
“It’s really important,” I added, careful not to use the word “emergency” and cause too much of a stir among the guests.
“Apparently,” he said acidly, “she’s still got some growing up to do.” He dismissed the cluster of earnest cronies around him with a flap of his hand. “If you fellows wouldn’t mind….”
Reluctantly, the guests departed. “Can’t we go somewhere alone?” I whispered.
Voice pitched low to carry no farther than me, he said, “Young lady, I’m profoundly disappointed in you.”
“You…what?”
“I trusted you with the matter of my foot, and now you’d have me cause a spectacle of myself, limping through this crowd?”
“You really don’t want me to say this in public,” I told him.
He opened his mouth to continue berating me, and someone pushed through the throng and rushed over to him, a foreign guy in a suit, all ingratiating smiles and handshakes as he elbowed me out of the way. “Master Torch, so good to see you again.”
I turned to brush him off. “We were right in the middle of—”
“Aurora,” my father snapped. “This is the Ambassador of Montenegro. Show a modicum of respect.”
“Dad,” I begged helplessly, “It’s Blake, he’s—” In the fraction of a heartbeat in which I paused to carefully choose my next word, my father turned away from me and put all his attention on the ambassador. When I broke the news about Blake’s invention, I’d be in as much trouble as he would. Maybe more. After all, if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have the components to build a power-distiller. But whether or not I was stripped of my job, even punished, it was imperative that I tell him about Blake. Immediately. Before anyone got hurt. But before I could wedge myself between my father and the ambassador, someone grabbed me. Not just a chilly touch at the elbow this time, either.
I turned and found it was Chad the wunderkind gripping my arm. “What was that, Aurora? You had something to say about your brother?” His grasp tightened painfully as his cruel, dark eyes glittered. “Let’s take this conversation somewhere private, and you can tell me all about it.”
I drew breath to scream—anything to draw attention to Chad before he dragged me off—but realized my father was already looking directly at us. He’d never let someone get away with manhandling me like that. Not his daughter.
But relief turned to a cold, ugly dismay when I saw that my father not only wasn’t alarmed to see Chad dragging me off. He was pleased. Betrayal rocked me, followed by the numbing wash of despair. Chad plowed through the crowd—everyone made way for an Aspirant—and hauled me away from the gathering with quiet efficiency.
“Let me go. There’s security everywhere—I’ll scream.”
“And I’ll say you’ve had too much to drink, and you’re having a melodramatic fit about your brother being passed over at the Transfiguration. Half the security guards are in my pocket. Care to wager which ones?”
I jerked my head around and took stock of the crowd. There were plenty of powerful people there. Someone would be able to do something. Someone would help me. “You don’t own everyone.”
“Unfortunately not.” He cupped an arm around me as if he was being courtly. “But before you make a scene, you might want to consider poor old Dorothea.”
Even though I was flushed from sprinting, a chill shot through me. “You leave her out of this.”
“Being married to an Arcane Master has its perks, no doubt. But with great reward comes great risk. You, in particular, should sympathize.” The reference to my mother was a punch in the gut. Not just because I missed her, but because this was the first time anyone had alluded to her fall not being accidental. I felt myself slacken in his grasp. Not acquiescence, exactly. More like shock. “Besides, you’ve played such an important part in bringing this invention to fruition. We couldn’t possibly debut it without you.”
8
It was a long walk to the wing designated for the House of Water, but I hardly felt it, even in those heels. I was numb. My thoughts were caught in a loop in which every point led back to me. Blake having the tools to build a new distiller? My fault. Not being able to convince my father to do something about it. My fault, too. And the fact that we were about to be admitted to one of the most secure parts of the estate?
Definitely my fault. “If you don’t sweet-talk these guards into letting us in,” Chad assured me, “you can kiss Dorothea goodbye.”
My brother was waiting in the entry hall, with Gus at his side. They both lit up when they saw Chad dragging me along. Gus with perverted glee, and Blake with a cool satisfaction. He had a case in his hands, something the size of a trombone—or worse.
Chad announced, “She knows everything—I found her trying to warn Torch.”
Blake shook his head in disappointment and told me, “This would’ve been so much easier if you weren’t…you. I always knew you wouldn’t get behind my ideas. Hungry for the omelet? Sure. But never willing to break any eggs.”
“You don’t know that,” I lied. Anything to buy me some time. “I’ve spent years working my tail off on The Great Machine, and Dad won’t even talk to me. Maybe I think it’s time to shake things up.”
“Is that so?” Blake narrowed his whiskey-colored eyes. “Don’t forget, I’ve spent years listening to you whine about how no one
down in that wretched distiller chamber appreciates you—but if you truly were willing to smash through the glass ceiling, you’d do more than just pocket a few spare parts. You’ve never once thought to stop trying to earn that power and simply claim it. But in the end, you’re too used to coloring inside the lines. You’re squeamish and weak. And I’d never endanger years of work and planning by putting all my faith you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said, a very calculated risk. “I was just trying to stop you from hurting yourself. I know Arcanum, and the idea of distilling it instantly is ludicrous. But if you can prove to me this invention of yours really does work, of course I’m on board. You’re my brother.”
Blake wasn’t entirely convinced…but it was true, I did feel unappreciated. Plus, with my knowledge of The Great Machine, I really would be a great addition to his team. And so, he granted me a reprieve. For the time being.
“Let go of her,” he told Chad, with a negligent wave of his hand. “Her arms are covered in bruises. People will talk.”
I hadn’t even realized my arms hurt. The fingermarks were red. They’d turn some vivid shades of purple in the morning. If I lived long enough to see them.
Who knows if Fathom and Dorothea had many visitors anymore? The four of us presented ourselves to their attendants. “I’m so sorry,” I said, silently begging them to turn us away. “I know it’s late, and Master Fathom has had a horribly long day. But we were all concerned with how he looked at the ceremony and we’ve come to pay our respects.” It was a flimsy excuse if ever there was one…and still, they let us in.
Guilt gnawed at my heart. I never seemed to be able to convince anyone of anything. Why would I pick that very moment to suddenly be persuasive? Then again, how could the attendants really say no to Fire’s daughter?
I hadn’t been inside the House of Water since I was a child, but some things never changed. The high-ceilinged rooms with elaborate wainscoting. The polished pewter fittings and mother-of-pearl inlays. The pale blue marble floors veined with white, like the tide coming in. That was all the same. But the medical equipment in the Water Master’s chamber? Definitely new.