“Back off, Kiril.” Riley rounded the bed, his gaze flitted to Lilah and Jack. “You know this is wrong.”
“Let it happen, Sheriff,” Percy piped up, his lip curling when he glanced at me. “She’s not one of us, and she’s certainly not worth all our lives. Think of Lilah…think of Jack.”
“Have you not been paying attention the past few days?” Riley shouted at them. “Charlotte saved your hides on more than one occasion—”
“We wouldn’t’ve needed saving in the first place if it wasn’t for her,” Cara shouted back, her lip trembling. “She brought it all down on us. The sickness and t-the monsters are here because of her! Don’t you find it strange that ship full of Tremblers arrived around the same time she did?”
I stared at her. Her face twisted with such vehemence it physically hurt to look at her. Lilah’s battered body and the image of Mara’s pale face in the snow twisted my gut. All that pain. All that fear. From one man. The thought of Arecibo and what he might have done to those missing made my blood boil. He needed to be stopped. To be held accountable. “I will go,” I said evenly. “Hand me over.”
“You what?” Ashton’s gaze narrowed and he shook his head. “This is not the way to do this, Charlie.”
“Charlotte, what is going on?” Riley asked as his gaze shifted from Ashton to me. “What is he talking about?”
“Nothing,” I said and stepped around Ashton. I turned to Riley, “Put your gun away. No one else is getting killed over me tonight.”
“Stop.” Ashton tried to grab for me, but I leaned away.
Kiril grabbed me by the arm, using me as shield.
Ashton’s body tensed, his hand sliding beneath his chest armor.
Riley’s gun hand dropped to his side. “What are you doin’?”
“The right thing,” I said, glancing at Ashton. I backed up with Kiril toward the door.
Outside, the crowd split, making way for us.
“Well, I’m not,” Ashton growled and lunged. Metal spheres left his hand before I knew what was happening. They flew across the walkway, clattering in different directions.
I gasped, bracing for the blast of my own design.
A Shrieking Violet.
The bomb let out an ear-piercing screech as the now mixed iodine and magnesium spewed a ten-foot wall of violet, noxious gas that tore across the crowd and pushed them back. The cloying cloud spewed into the night sky, sending everyone running for cover. Ashton’s arm snaked through the haze, grabbing my hand.
“Run, Charlie!” He shouted and pulled me with him.
The last thing I saw of Riley was his body shielding Lilah and Jack inside the room.
14
We leapt across the expanse from walkway to walkway, my legs pumping as the revolver fire cracked behind us. The sear of a bullet grazed past my shoulder and I veered, dodging Kiril’s shots as I fought to keep from falling between the gaps at my feet. I slipped on the snowy planks, catching myself on a pile of crates. Up ahead, Ashton’s white shirt billowed, his hair flying. He pointed, glancing back in the moonlight.
“East slips. Can you make it?”
“Yes,” I shouted back, following after him. All the power in my body suddenly gone, I struggled to keep up with him. My legs shook, chest tight, pulse racing painfully in my head; something was terribly wrong.
The vapor and dark of night helped to hide our movements, and we snaked between a set of burned out stalls. I stumbled again, going down on my hands and knees and knocking into Ashton. A wracking tremor tore through my middle shaking me from head to foot in a painful spasm. I cried out, the low moan of my Trembling Sickness gurgling out of my throat before I could stop it. Ashton held onto me, clutching me in his arms as I rode out the attack.
What was happening? I held out my hands and in a shaft light from the lantern, the blue of my hand and wrists sent a wave of panic piercing my heart. No… “I-Its starting again,” I gasped. “Ash, my hands.”
“It will be all right.” His grim expression flashed in and out of shadow as we hurried behind the stalls. Melted snow plastered his hair to his jaw, and his breaths billowed in ghostly clouds between us. “Just a little bit further.”
“Has this happened before?” I asked through gasps that came with increasing difficulty. My eyes adjusted to the dark. We were back where I had first seen Ashton after the galleon crash. We crept aboard the wreckage of the transport frigate. A fine dusting of frost clung to the broken railings. Snow piled against the cracked windows of the helm, and the smell of charred bodies assaulted me. I hesitated, unwilling to go down in the bowels of the vessel once again.
“Once in the year and a half we fought together…only at the beginning when your mechanica was new.”
“What does it mean?” My stomach quivered at the thought that something might be going wrong with the strange devices that controlled my body.
“I do not know,” Ashton said, his brows furrowed over a worried gaze. “But we have no time at the moment. Come, Charlie,” Ashton beckoned, holding out his hand as he urged me aboard. “I am docked beneath as before.”
The din of angry voices behind us melded with the tang of chains on masts, the creak of vessels listing in their slips, the snap of flags. Unable to breathe, to focus, everything narrowed into a muffled tunnel closing in on me. Footfalls behind me on the plank walkway spurred me to move, and I pulled myself along the stair railing, fighting the dizziness. Cold crept into my bones and joints making my movements stiff and clumsy.
“You have a ship here,” I panted, the tightness of my bodice almost too much to bear.
“Yes, just below.” Ashton ran back up the steps, scooped me into his arms, and rushed with me toward the back of the vessel. A rope dangling from a pulley slithered down from the ruined hull of the frigate to the glowing firmament drifting just below the port. “The Stygian. We can make it, Charlie, just a little bit further.”
“Its so c-cold.” I shook, my teeth chattering so loud I was afraid the men chasing us might hear.
“Hold on. We’ve a bit of a drop.”
“Drop?” I gasped, the swirling vapors of the firmament below the city appeared ghostly in the moonlight, and their depths churned as Ashton stepped with me to the precipice. “What are you doing?”
“Flinging us off the edge of Outer City,” Ashton said. “Now hold on.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, shaking with fear.
Ashton engaged the arm guard shield and then slipped his hand through a leather loop at the pulley, tugging it tight.
Kiril stumbled down the stairs, a lantern in his hand, gun in the other. He saw us, fired over our heads. “Stop,” he yelled, taking aim at us both.
My gaze snapped to Ashton’s, and I nodded. “Go!”
He leaped from the hull, the cable sparking in the pulley as we plummeted into the abyss. I screamed, hair tangling in my mouth, stomach at my throat. A looming figure raced toward us. The Stygian. Its black, bulbous air sacks appearing out of the haze like giant creatures lunging from the depths. Blue sparks spider-webbed throughout the vapor all around us, snapping from the cable to our skin as we zipped downward. Eerily glowing, the light sizzling through the firmament gave off strange shadows against the hull.
“Hang on!” Ashton’s grip held tight around me like a vice, and I clung to him with all I had. The mechanica in my arms and legs shocked my muscles as I strained. We snapped to a halt and swung in a terrible arc towards the hull.
“Oh, no.” I braced myself, gritting my teeth as we crashed into the side of the train car. My head hit a window, cracking it, and sending bursts of light tearing across my vision. We bounced off, swung away, and then back like a pendulum.
“Grab onto something.” Ashton’s strained voice cut through my shock.
I reached out as we smashed against the vessel. Finding the handle of the train car’s sliding door, my hands locked like a vise as silver sparks flared from my implants. I held on, panting. My pulse raced in my head, arm
s and legs shaking. The cable we clung to jerked, a metal twang vibrating down the length, nearly shaking us off. We lurched again, and I realized they were pulling us back up.
“No, no, no,” I panted, fighting with the door handle. “I cannot open it.”
“Charlie, grab onto something. I am going to let you go.” Ashton turned us on the cable, planting both boots against the hull to stabilize our spin.
“No, you will not.” The latch was stuck, and I fumbled with numb fingers, desperate to open it.
Another jolt upward and Ashton lost his footing. We banged against the window again, cracking it further. I blinked, pulled my hand back, and smashed through the glass.
“What are you doing?” Ashton asked through gritted teeth. His wrist and hand were nearly purple with the weight of the loop holding us to the cable.
“Getting us inside.” I used my elbow to knock out the rest of the shards and pulled us closer. Leaning in, I gripped the window frame with my free hand and let go of Ashton with the other. I pulled myself inside on my belly. The jagged shards in the frame scraped against the chainmail of my bodice as I worked my way in. Once on my feet, I turned, reaching out the window for Ashton, but they yanked on the cable and jerked him from my grasp. He swung away, inching higher by the moment. “Ashton!”
“Your baton,” he shouted as he struggled to swing back toward me. Flailing on the line, he pointed up with one gloved finger. “Use the baton on the cable!”
“But you—”
A round pinged off his arm shield inches from his face.
“Now, Charlie!” His gritted teeth told me he knew the risk.
Reaching into my bodice, I grabbed the handle, ratcheting out the sections with one fluid motion. The silvery sparks crawled down the shaft from my hand, lighting up the interior of the train car like lightning. I locked on Ashton’s trajectory, holding onto the frame of the window. I leaned out, my arm already moving in an arc. He swung toward me, and I hit the cable above the loop. A furious spark of energy blazed in both directions from the baton—upward in a wave toward Kiril, and then flashing down Ashton’s arm. He quivered as dozens of light threads sizzled down his body, crawled along his jaw, sparked at his buckles. The cable went slack as the shock hit those above us. Tossing the baton back inside, I reached out.
“Don’t let go,” I pled, barely registering the snaps of energy jumping to my skin as I wrapped my arms around his legs.
“Hurry,” he groaned. His hair steamed, the smell of ozone thick on him as I strained to keep him from swinging back out. I unhooked his hand from the loop, pulling him the final way into the train car, letting the cable whip away.
“You…you’re smoking, I think.” I patted down his hair and grabbed his face with both palms. Heart racing at nearly having lost him, I furrowed my brows as if scolding. “That was extremely ill advised.”
“I am inside, am I not?” Ashton groaned, with a hint of a smirk. He struggled to his feet, wavered a little, and then straightened his vest with a tug. He collapsed the arm shield and nodded. “It is not a dumb idea if it works.”
A peculiar sound erupted above us. A strange, muffled thud that pulled a yelp from me. Another and then another. Gunfire.
“They’ll collapse the ballast,” I said.
“Not if I can help it. Hold on.” Ashton hurried to the helm of the vessel, his hands flying over the controls.
The low thrum of the engines engaging vibrated throughout the train car, and I held onto the handle riveted to the wall next to him. The sound of bullets firing faded, and I let myself take in a steadying breath. “Where are we going?”
His expression changed, a shadow passing behind his eyes.
“There is a change of plans, love,” Ashton kept his gaze on the windows as he steered, his knuckles going white on the helm. “The safe house may not have what you need.”
“Something is wrong, isn’t it?” I bent over, my stomach muscles quivering. “Am I dying, Ash?”
Ashton’s jaw worked. He shook his head. “I will not let that happen.”
Working the stiff muscles of my fingers, I frowned at the blue tint of my skin. A tremor gripped my core, and I gritted against it. “Ashton, this sickness, it is fatal. We both know that.”
“It has not been so far,” he snapped, squaring his shoulders. “Not for you. And there is someone who may know how to keep it that way.”
“Not Arecibo. I cannot believe—”
“No, but someone who worked for him.” Ashton yanked out a drawer at his elbow and pulled out a leather-bound journal. He flipped it open and handed it to me.
The equations and sketches in the journal read like a diary of my own pain. Running my fingers along the page, I read with growing interest. A scientist. And from the looks of it, a mad one.
“She is our last hope, Charlie. If we can get to her.”
“If?”
“She is, I believe, in the last place anyone might look for her.”
“And where might that be?”
“The water.”
My gaze snapped to his, expecting humor. What I found in his expression made my heart stutter. “You are serious? The ocean is sure death to anyone who attempts to sail. You know that. Our own iron-clad ships hug the coast, and we still regularly lose them to violent upcroppings of rock and lava geysers.”
“Oh, it’s worse than that, my love,” Ashton said, his face grim as he caressed my cheek.
“How can the idea of traversing the churning, poisonous waters get worse?”
“Not on the waves,” he said and shook his head as if he did not believe his own words. “Beneath them.”
15
Château Le Nôtre, Near Paris
Viceroy Arecibo
Arecibo strode along the covered parapet walk, his cloak flapping in the frigid wind as he ascended the rise to the corner tower of the chateau. Eyes on the subtle shadows of the trees in the orangery, he stole through the south ward to the battle gallery, careful to keep his cane from tapping on the walkway stones. The wall there was shared by the assembly hall, and Arecibo stopped to listen to the muffled voices of the Coalition of Khent members vibrating out of the stained glass windows and into the cool night.
A muted whistle to his right caught his attention. Dr. Dewar stood in the corner waving frantically. He’d been with Arecibo since the beginning, was integral in the research into Charlotte’s abilities, but ultimately Dewar was unsuited for this level of intrigue.
“My Lord,” Dewar whispered as he glanced over his shoulder nervously. “This way.”
Arecibo sighed, ripping at the green band of material wrapped around his sleeve as he went. He crumbled the wax stamp in his fingers, dropping it into the lawn. His cane dug into the soft grass, slowing his progress.
“Stop flailing about, Dewar,” Arecibo sighed. “You look like a deranged scarecrow.”
“Sir, I feared you met with an untimely end.” Dewar pulled on his suit jacket, adjusted his bow tie, and cleared his throat. “They said your convoy was detained.”
“We were searched and examined,” Arecibo snapped. “As if I were a common worker suspected of the Trembling Sickness. A refugee, Dewar, they behaved as if I were one of those wretched souls who have no right to be here.”
“Who would dare search a vessel of the Order?” Dewar shook his head, his face registering disdain.
“Baumton would, it seems,” His gaze traveled the colorful glass arches lining the wall. The chandeliers lit up the structure from within, and Arecibo thought of how satisfying it would be to destroy every one of the maudlin depictions of religious fervor depicted in those windows. “The Minister Secretariat should enjoy his slights towards the Order, for he will not be able to elude our wrath for much longer.”
“Sir, I have been inside the chambers, searched the crowd. No one from the Order is present that I can recognize.”
“So Baumton thinks he has surpassed us,” Arecibo rapped his cane on a gargoyle snarling from a bed of roses.
“His arrogance is astounding.”
“There is a way in, past the guards, via the viewing gallery on the second floor.” Dewar motioned behind them.
“Lead.” Arecibo retrieved a small mechanical device from his inner cloak. As he followed Dewar, he wound the tension coil, keeping the release in the locked position. Slipping it into an outer pocket of his trousers, he patted it, a wicked grin pulling at his taut mouth.
Dewar led them along a high fence toward the inner ward. Their steps, muffled by soft ground, hid their approach. The doctor glanced back at him several times before Arecibo lost his patience.
“What is it?”
“There are rumors, my Lord,” Dewar said. “That the girl has surfaced. Was she in the sky settlement?”
“She was,” Arecibo nodded. “My informants were correct.”
Dewar looked at him, confused. “I still do not understand how they located her. We hid her so well. Moved her constantly.”
“I have my suspicions,” Arecibo said with a snarl. Wells.
“Did you not send the knights to retrieve her?”
“I did.” Arecibo smoothed a palm along his silvery hair and tugged on the ribbon securing it at his nape. He frowned. “And it proved much more difficult than anticipated. We nearly had her in our sights. Our plan was working when that errant knight appeared out of nowhere.”
Dewar’s face registered shock. “Ashton Wells is alive, my Lord? How is that possible? The blood at White Cliff alone was telling. We were sure the sea took his body when we found his armor in the rocks below.”
“He is more resilient than I gave him credit for,” Arecibo said. “And his hold on Blackburn is intact, after all.”
“She did not go with him. She returned to you, and the truth was extracted in debriefing,” Dewar offered.
“But she did not kill him,” Arecibo sighed. “Blackburn must be wiped completely. So there is nothing of him left to taint her loyalty.”
“Perhaps you should summon the other knights?” Dewar asked as he pushed through the doorway leading into the assembly chambers. “Not the creatures, but a standard battalion. Surely they can be trusted with knowing about your program—”
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