“You have tried?”
Riley ground his teeth, pacing as he fought to slow the panic rising in his chest. She would want to do this. It was in Charlotte’s nature to risk her life to save others.
“Yes, once, in the shallows off the coast of Pennsylvania. I lost three good men and we got nothing. Couldn’t even make it to the ship. Were never able to confirm it was a ship and not an up-cropping from the shifting sea floor or a piece of debris from the quakes.”
“How did they die?” She asked so calmly, as if inquiring after his horse, or what was for dinner.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters a great deal, Riley.” Her eerie calm unnerved him. “Was it an unexpected jet of magma, an air hose failure, what?”
“He, uh, the doctor, said he died of exposure.” Riley answered, a sick feeling churning his stomach when he realized why she wanted to know. “Charlotte, no.”
“That would not happen to me,” she said evenly, holding his horrified gaze with her own steady one. “I do not think I would freeze to death.”
“Don’t think? Now you listen to me,” Riley began, “You only just came back to me—”
Pounding down the hallway cut his sentence short. An uneven banging sent his senses afire. He drew his weapon and chased after Charlotte, who was already halfway down the other corridor. Skidding to a halt just behind her, Riley froze at the sight just over her shoulder. A woman, one of the survivors of the galleon wreck, flailed on the bed. Her bandages whipped with the enormous tremors wracking her body. She moaned, a deep sound that tore from her chest.
“She was fine,” Lilah’s voice came from behind him. Her horrified face shone in the lamplight.
“Shoot her,” Charlotte said quietly.
“What?” Riley and Lilah asked together.
Charlotte turned to them, her face a mask of calm. “Take her down,” she whispered while backing up. “Quickly, before it’s too late.”
More people raced up the steps, crowding the hallway and filling the doorway. They jostled, trying to look inside the room. A sea of frightened faces and worried murmurs swelled behind him. Riley shook his head, his hand on his weapon.
“No, please, Sebastian,” Lilah pled. “She could be having fit.” Lilah stepped around him, reaching for the woman.
“Stop,” Charlotte grabbed Lilah, yanking her away just as the woman on the bed reared upright despite her injuries. “Back out slowly.”
The woman groaned, contorting with a tremendous shiver that twisted her limbs unnaturally.
Riley unholstered his weapon, stepping back carefully. “Come here, Lilah,” he murmured, motioning with his other hand. “Listen to Charlotte.”
Lilah stood motionless, her face twisted with fear. “But, the other patients. We cannot leave them.”
“Look…” Mr. Percy said in a shocked whisper. He pointed to the corner of the room. “Look at the others.”
On the four remaining beds in the room, the other patients stirred, their arms and legs twitching beneath the sheets. Charlotte reached underneath her bodice, pulling something out. She gripped it in her small hand and its metal glint in the lamp light paced up Riley’s pulse. Where did she get a weapon?
“Very slowly, very quietly, back up and see if we are able to get the door between us,” Charlotte said to him. The intensity of her gaze took him back. He did not see fear there. It was something else entirely. A heat he’d only seen in battle.
“Back up,” Riley hissed to the people behind him as he kept his gaze on the woman on the bed. She panted, her black eyes roving in their sockets. How had she turned so quickly? Her teeth chattered and dark blue branched its way up her neck and along her cheeks. To Lilah, he extended his hand. “Dr. Bartlet, please do as Charlotte says.”
“She’s turning. She’s a Trembler,” Percy hissed. “Do something.”
Before Riley could act, the woman on the bed let out a keening screech and coiled, ready to spring.
In one powerful motion, Charlotte tossed Lilah into his arms. Turning she whipped her wrist and the weapon extended to a metal baton that twisted, locking into place with a clang as a ribbon of silver energy snapped from the mechanica in Charlotte’s hand and sizzled down the rod.
Riley toppled backward when Lilah hit his chest, tripping on the feet of those behind him, he went down. Percy scrambled over him, grabbing at the door handle.
“Wait,” Riley shouted, struggling to help Lilah up and get to the doorway. Through the crack in the door, the other passengers rose from their beds, lurching as they moved toward Charlotte. Raising the baton, she crouched, and a wisp of white vapor streamed from her mouth just as the door slammed shut. “Charlotte!”
7
Panting, I stared down from my position atop the dresser at the Tremblers lying on the floor and shook my head, trying to clear the muffled tone clogging my ears. Minute shocks trailed from the device at the top of my spine, stilling my shaking muscles and sending streaks of glacial energy that crackled along my nerves, numbing me. The aching need of the Tremblers still rang in my mind. Their sudden silence clashed with the furious thoughts still flaring across my consciousness; the height of the dresser to the tallest Trembler, distance of my position to the threshold, thickness of the mirror glass shattered on the rug. How effective of a weapon it would be.
Pounding at the door broke my trance. It was Riley’s frantic voice on the other side.
“Charlotte!”
I heaved a shuddering breath, looking down at my stained hands and skirts. Bile rose in my throat, and I wretched in the corner, panting the panic and horror away. Riley could not see me like this. “I – I’m all right.” I jumped down and retracted the baton’s sections. “It…the door is blocked.”
The motionless bodies of the Tremblers, the broken vases and lamps, the twisted sheets, all of it turned my stomach, and I staggered to the bureau tipped over in front of the bedroom door. “One moment.”
“Open the door,” his muffled voice sounded at the crack of the door and frame. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I…” Searching frantically, I washed my hands in the small amount of water left in an overturned basin and wiped them on a blanket. A traveling cloak was draped over the footboard. I grabbed it, swinging it over my shoulders and gripping it to my chest.
The bureau scraped against the floor as Riley heaved the door open. He wiggled his way into the room.
“Are you…” Palms to the sides of his head, his mouth agape, he turned in a circle. “What happened?”
“I have to go.” I wiped at the feel of wet on my neck. “I have to get out of here.”
Behind him a throng of peopled stared, horrified at the carnage around me.
“Come here,” Riley tucked me against his side as he led me away from the room. “Let’s get you checked out. You might be injured. Can you feel anything?”
Shaking my head, I tried to speak through the knot in my throat. “I didn’t mean—”
Letting out a jagged sigh, the residual temperature drop from my affliction manifested in a white cloud of cold breath. The people in the hallway gasped and backed up.
“She’s one of them,” a woman murmured, her face a mask of revulsion. “She’s an abomination.”
“Abomination?” Riley whipped around to face them. The entire group jumped. His gaze fell on Percy. “You call her that after one of you locked her in there with those Tremblers to save their own skin?”
Percy shrank back, his face red.
Riley shook, his anger palpable as he held me close.
“Riley, don’t—” I tried, but he cut across me.
“She is the only one who stood between your loved ones and a room full of Tremblers. You do well to remember that.” He strode with me through the crowd and they parted, flattening themselves against the walls as we passed them.
Lilah stood at the end of the corridor, wringing her hands.
Riley shook his head. “She can’t stay here. I’m gettin
g her out.”
She nodded, a wary look on her features as I tried to catch her gaze.
“Take her to Mara’s,” she whispered.
Riley nodded, pulling me tight as we left the inn and started down the wood pathway toward the vendor stalls.
“Will they come after me?” I asked, my heart racing with the realization that I was no longer hidden. “Will they give me up?”
“I don’t know, darlin’,” Riley rasped, picking up our pace. “You definitely spooked them. And they saw.”
“My devices.”
“Yes.” Riley glanced over his shoulder, and the tension in his body did little to assuage the fear that the citizens of Port Hayden would come after me with nets and torches as if hunting down some horrific beast.
“I should leave here,” I said.
He looked down at me, a frown marring his face. “You saved them.” He shook his head. “Us. All of us.”
“They are frightened of me.” The looks on their faces, how they pulled away. My throat ached, but I stifled a sob. I refused to cry. “There is a price on my head, Riley. From the Peaceful Union as well as the Order.”
“Don’t think about that right now.”
The cold night air hit me as I walked next to Riley with my head down, cloak pulled tight around me. Though the sun had set, many of the stalls and shacks remained open, their owners missing and injured or worse. Silhouettes moved amid torches lit around the wrecked frigates and other ships as the rescue and repair effort continued. People passed us and did not seem to take a second glance, their minds surely on the devastation that had come to their hometown.
My gaze flitted to the rotor tower’s platform. I longed to return to my perch and yet the thought of that high and secluded space did not seem to offer solace anymore. I should leave this floating sky settlement. Far away from those who knew who I had been and who wished I still was that sweet debutante just trying to save her father. Or that lost girl, clinging to the hope of a cure at Tesla’s side. They did not want the cold and ruthless travesty that emerged from that watery cocoon. Even Riley looked at me as if I was someone from ages ago whom he was struggling to place. Someone familiar, yet somehow lost to memory.
We walked silently, passing stalls and shacks tethered to the main walkway. They bobbed in and out of shadows cast by the port’s lanterns, lazy in their movements as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened just now. The smell of brewing tea and boiling stew still filtered through the stalls and shacks. The laugh of a child or the snap of a sail floated on the breeze much like my first visit to Outer City.
We stopped.
Riley put his finger to his lips and then pointed to a stall in the distance. I nodded, indicating I would wait for him. He crept off and I stood, swaying with the rise and fall of the plank pathway and let my gaze flow over the port.
So much had changed since I first ventured up here to search for my father’s salvation. I glanced back at the slips and half expected to see the Stygian floating into port with her vast black sails. I wonder what became of that ship with her captain, Lizzie Frances, now gone. Lizzie…Defiance…Ashton…
The thought of him made me take in a jagged breath. A memory floated to me from back then, of a time when I knew only charity balls and gowns. When my greatest worry before the night Ashton came into my life had been whether or not I should feel butterflies in my stomach when a young man asked me to dance. I thought of the days before he burst into my life just when I had been most afraid. Most lost.
I saw Ashton as I had back then, with awe and rapture at the brave and chivalrous knight of The Order, with his dark hair whipping at his jaw line as he whispered with closed eyes on the deck. I once thought I loved him. Before his betrayal led to my capture. Did his endless dedication to his precious Order still rule his every thought and decision? Was he still sacrificing the few for the many at the whim of his treacherous masters?
Seeing him on the frigate earlier had sent me reeling, especially as I struggled with my feelings toward Riley. More so, his indication that not only did he have the answers to what happened to me during my lost two years of captivity, but that he was involved somehow. My chest tightened with sorrow, and I pushed the thoughts aside. Flexing my fingers, the whir of mechanica hummed with my hand, and I inspected the scratches on my forearm in the lantern glow overhead.
“Psst, Charlie.” Mara stepped into the shaft of light at the door. Her hazel eyes peered up at me from beneath her pale hair. She motioned nervously. “Over here.”
“Mara?”
“Let’s get inside.” She looked around, tugging me with her. Her clothes smelled of grease and vanilla and it was both familiar and soothing. “In case they look for you.”
Her living space was more workshop than abode, but comfortable. The soft glow of lamps, the sight of her cozy quilts and stuffed pillows offset the dozens of machining engines and welding apparatuses of what was essentially a small cabin. Twinkling lights caught my gaze, and I wandered further in. A dozen flickering gears dangled on fine filament, reflecting the light of the lantern over the shop’s door like a flurry of fireflies.
“This is amazing, Mara,” I said as I entered. The proud tilt of her chin and wide grin reminded me that she was most likely only a year or two younger than me, and yet survived up in the wild territory. Not just survived, but thrived. She enveloped me in her thin arms and her hug was genuine and heartfelt. Her warm welcome made my nerves unknot, even if just a little.
“You can hole up here for a bit, if that’s all right with you, Charlotte. Mara has as quick a mind as I’ve seen in any of these parts. She’s a gifted tinkerer. Though I do have to warn you again, Mara, that you need to lighten some of your supplies here. Your workshop is sinking lower everyday with all this weight.”
“But I need all of this,” she argued with a smile.
“Well, think about it. I’d hate for you to drop out of the sky on account of all this scrap metal and books.” Riley favored her with his crooked smile and a pang of sadness stabbed me. I remembered melting when he’d turned his charms toward me. Now he seemed only to eye me warily or with worry. He stood by her small hearth, his hat in his hand, the tension in his shoulders and face almost palpable as his gaze fell back to me.
“Its fine,” I said, and to Mara I managed a smile. “Thank you, for your hospitality.”
She nodded and Riley cleared his throat, donned his hat, and squeezed past us to the door. He held my gaze at the threshold. “Don’t go making any rash decisions. Everything looks better in the light of day.”
“Riley, I am a danger to you all. And with the price on my head and what they all saw just now—”
“Charlotte, just promise me that you will talk with me. Promise I won’t wake up tomorrow and find you gone again. I don’t think,” his gaze flitted to Mara and then back to me. “I do not think I could weather losing you again.”
Completely taken aback by his words, I nodded, my throat tight.
“I will be here in the morning.”
He held my gaze for a moment too long, his gaze pleading, and then he turned and left quietly.
Riley was simply delaying the inevitable. And, putting himself and others in jeopardy in the meantime. He knew that. I knew that. He just needed to come to terms with it before something terrible happened.
8
Mara shut her door and bolted it. Turning to me, she dusted off her hands and smiled. Her pale blonde hair looked angelic in the lamp glow, and her intelligent eyes bored into me quizzically.
“I can…uh,” she motioned at my stained skirts. “I have something you can wear.”
Surprised at her calm, I nodded and followed her to a small screen near a washbasin. Undressing with shaking hands, I inspected the blouse and skirts. Both were ruined. My dark leather bodice had a few ragged scrapes, but was otherwise intact. Mara handed me a dark gray, short-sleeved peasant blouse and thick black skirts ruched at the shins. She moved back and forth outside of the scree
n as I dressed.
“So…what’d you do?” she asked, her gaze wary. “Sheriff seemed spooked.”
My stomach tumbled. “I really prefer not to talk about it right now, if that’s all right with you. Nothing that would put you in danger though,” I added quickly. Cinching the final strap of my bodice across my collarbones I stepped out.
Hands on her hips, Mara nodded. “Dark suits your coloring. You look like a right proper rebel,” Mara said. “Like the stories.”
The legend surrounding my alter ego, Lady Blackburn, told of a dangerous traitor to the government. The Peaceful Union’s governors still offered silver for my capture. I smoothed the skirts and tried to smile my thanks. Appearing at all like the criminal everyone believed me to be was the last thing that I wanted.
Mara showed me around, chattering as she explained what machine did what. I took in the wall-mounted tools, gear work contrivances, and steam powered bellows, and recognized the laboratory of a tinkerer. My thoughts went to Tesla, but the image of his final moments twisted my heart, and I pushed them away.
Her counter held polished driftwood branches set into the surface. The twigs of the wood held necklaces and bracelets done in all color of metal links. I caught one in my fingers and inspected the polished cameos and metal work lockets with carved flowers. I flicked a small lever along the locket’s seam and a single blade shot out from its center. So strange to notice something so delicate and beautiful when, not a hundred yards away, blood stained the planks. “This is beautiful.”
“Aw, they’re not as fine as those throwing discs you showed me, but…” she shrugged, her cheeks pinking. “People seem to like them. They buy them as gifts.”
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