by Beth Cato
“It is a curious cluster of events! If these things are indeed connected, we’ll figure it out,” said Mrs. Stout, a devious gleam in her eyes. The woman seemed to regard their recent history as if it was a chapter in one of those pulp novels she kept close at hand. “I’ll be staying here today to do a spot of reading, taking things easy as I recover. But! Perhaps tomorrow we can walk around. Leffen is a lovely little town, truly.”
The view from the ritzy window made it seem so, but the perspective from the mooring mast had shown Octavia a skyline cramped with narrow buildings, with tall smokestacks belching soot.
Another blighted city of refugees and day laborers. Nothing on the scale of Mercia, but bad enough.
“I would like that,” she said in a small voice. “I must visit the bank to withdraw money from Miss Percival’s account.” Five silvers—not even enough to cover two nights in a room like this, but it’d get her to Delford.
If she was still alive then, or Delford even an option. Stop thinking like that.
“If you’re going to wear that into town”—Mrs. Stout nodded toward her outfit—“be prepared to get some attention!”
Octavia looked down at herself. “It’s only for today. We’ll be headed straight to the swamp. At least these clothes won’t be ruined out there.”
The white cloth of her Percival uniform glimmered from its underlying enchantments as it covered her from neck to wrist to ankle, yet not in the stodgy fashion sported by Mrs. Stout. A medician needed to move and breathe freely. A high slit in the skirt extended past each knee to reveal a flash of trousers beneath. The dress showed curves but not too much, the femininity blunted by a deep-pocketed apron that obscured the breasts and widened the hips. Beneath the basic gown, she didn’t wear a corset—those things disrupted a body’s song in a terrible way—but a modern brassiere for basic support. Knee-high boots completed the garb. Like the layers of cloth, the leather had been blessed with endurance and resistance to harmful zymes.
Then there was the headband. Octavia had no great love for hats, not like some girls, but she did love how the three inches of crisp white lace adorned her coiled-up hair. It fit from just past her bangs to tie at her nape. She had embroidered the front of the headband with the image of a small tree in brown and green threads.
She checked herself in the mirror. Crazed ringlets of brown dangled in front of her ears. No matter how she wet and coaxed her hair, the strands stayed unruly.
“Now, now, that won’t do much good. It’s the moisture,” Mrs. Stout said, noting her labors. “It’s even worse in the thick of summer! Just let it be, child. Weren’t you supposed to be downstairs about now?”
Octavia looked at Mrs. Stout in the mirror. “You’re practically pushing me out the door!”
“Yes, well, you may as well fulfill your obligation to the man.” She waggled a thick finger. “But only that! And if he tries anything . . . !” Mrs. Stout can nag him to death.
“Yes, Mother,” Octavia muttered.
She reached the lobby as a massive grandfather clock boomed out the hour. The notes reverberated through her feet, reminding her of the airship rumbles to which she had become so accustomed. The lobby was even more ornate than her room. A white marble floor, scuffed by constant use, still gleamed in an austere manner. Wooden wall panels held polished whorls and waves. A candelabra featured rows of lights, alternating between dull yellow glowstones and gleaming electric bulbs.
Mr. Garret motioned her toward the door. He wore common workman’s garb and leaned on a crutch. The sight of him caused Octavia to feel a small twinge of regret. Her anger at his revelation had faded—after all, he only meant to keep her alive—but she still had no desire to linger in his company longer than necessary.
“I did not expect you to be in the full Percival attire,” he said.
“It’ll clean well, that’s why. At the rate this week has gone, I would soon be out of dresses.” She realized the improper implication of her words and added a little shrug.
Mr. Garret chuckled. “Yes. Until your arrival on ship, I never realized how handy it was that the Argus has crimson jackets. They hide blood all too well.”
Whereas my uniform drinks it in, just as the Lady accepts my bloodletting from the ground.
“I should tell you, there was some consternation on the ship this morning,” he continued. “Someone rifled through Mr. Grinn’s luggage last night before any stewards could secure his belongings.”
The street smelled of fresh, salty air. Just down the way, rows of masts tottered with the waves. A buzzer rumbled somewhere overhead.
“Was anything stolen?”
Alonzo stared into the distance, a tweed cap shading his eyes. “Not that we could ascertain, things ransacked as they were.”
Something green fluttered over the street and vanished over a facade on the far side.
She gasped. “Is that . . . ?”
“M’lady?”
“I thought I saw something.” It can’t be Leaf, not here.
A gaggle of women passed by, brilliant plumes in their hats and their parasols aloft. Their bodies rang with the burble of indigestion. Their eyes widened at the sight of Octavia, and they whispered among themselves.
Just past the view offered by their window above, part of the street had been torn apart. Large construction equipment, darkened by grease and abuse, idled there.
Mr. Garret motioned that way. “They are pulling out old tramway rails. The trolleys were smelted during the war. I suppose the city gets along well without them.”
“I see.” Across the way, the broad side of a brick building wore a painted advertisement for Royal-Tea. That horrid drink was everywhere.
“Miss Leander! Oh, Miss Leander!”
Octavia stiffened as she turned. It was that unbearable Mrs. Wexler from the ship, the one who grandly swooned during her husband’s illness.
“Oh, I did hope I would see you again.” Mrs. Wexler panted slightly. A heavy cloud of jasmine perfume assaulted Octavia’s nostrils. “Thank you so much for tending to my husband on the ship. He’s resting now, the poor man. I am out on errands. Can you believe this city? So backward! No rails! Glowstone lights and all.” She tsked beneath her breath. “It’s almost as bad as Vorana, and Vorana was dreadful. Dirt streets, like some Waster village. Not at all like Mercia, mind. There I can take a trolley wherever necessary.”
Octavia opened her lips to speak.
“I wanted to invite you to a symposium tonight,” Mrs. Wexler continued. She plucked a sheet from the velvet satchel she was holding. “My husband was going to argue on how science can eradicate the Wasters quite tidily from afar. I mean, they claim we already did that centuries ago, so why not make the myth into reality? But! We were both inspired by our encounter with you, and he will instead speak on the science of medicians.”
The sheet of paper was shoved into Octavia’s hand. She looked to Mr. Garret for aid, but his eyes were on the passing carriages. His hunched shoulders told her that he didn’t wish to be recognized by Mrs. Wexler.
“The science of medicians?” Octavia echoed.
“Well, yes. How your work is really a manipulation of cellular matter within both the body and plants.”
“What of the Lady?”
Mrs. Wexler tittered behind her hand. “Oh, really. We’re in a modern age. Please, don’t tell me you really believe in the quaint notion that some giant Tree keeps the world alive.”
A hot flush traveled up Octavia’s neck to her cheeks.
“Well, I must be getting along. Such a busy day! I will see you at eight o’clock, Miss Leander! Perhaps we can speak afterward.” The woman flitted off.
Octavia barely resisted the urge to ball up the paper and toss it at the back of Mrs. Wexler’s head.
“You are going to find a lot of people who think like that, especially in Mercia,” said Mr. Garret.
“You mean converse with themselves and order others about like servants?”
He smiled,
shaking his head. “You will have that sort everywhere. I meant her beliefs on the Lady and the Tree. ’Tis considered a rather . . . antiquated notion.”
That wasn’t a surprise, really; Octavia hadn’t known much about the Tree until she was taken in by Miss Percival. “Then how do you explain what I do, Mr. Garret?”
He turned up both palms in supplication. “I know you can work miracles, Miss Leander. You will get no argument from me. On that subject, anyway.” His motioned with his head. “Our wagon is just up the way.”
“Something Mrs. Wexler said . . .” Octavia paused to think as they walked. “Could Caskentia destroy the Waste from afar? I would think that if it were possible, it would have been done back when all this started, after the princess’s kidnapping.”
He frowned down at the sidewalk. “I confess, I have not had dealings with that area of research, but it seems like something Caskentia would consider in order to end the conflict in one fell swoop.”
“One fell swoop indeed,” she said darkly. “War. I’m so sick of it. I’m so sick of needless death. Ours, theirs.”
She felt the pressure of gazes around her, heard the whispers. She walked faster.
“We save the ones we can,” Mr. Garret said, his voice husky and soft. Octavia nodded, thinking of Leaf. She spared a glance at the sky and didn’t even see birds—just smoke, exhaust, and glistening dirigibles on high. Live, little one. Please.
They walked a block off the main thoroughfare, to a buggy parked in front of a Frengian baker. The sweetness of hot sugar lingered in the air. Mr. Garret untied the reins from the hitching post. A slim bay horse was in the shafts.
“As we are venturing beyond civilization today, would it be forward of me to call you Octavia?” He didn’t look at her, focusing the harness instead.
The cultured lilt of his words seemed to meld with the sugariness in the air, and she shivered at the sound of her first name on his lips. From him, it sounded like music. Music that tasted like confectionary delights. Strange heat filled her chest, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.
“I . . . I suppose you could. Wouldn’t be too forward, I mean. Should I call you Alonzo as well?” This all would be easier if I hated him outright the way Mrs. Stout does.
“ ’Tis up to you,” he said, holding out a hand. His gaze was shy, as it had been after the kiss.
Don’t think on that.
“Chivalry’s all well and good, but you possess one leg. I’m helping you up first.”
“That might be easiest, true.” He grimaced as he set the crutch against the wagon. She stepped close, angling her shoulder. He placed his good foot on the single step and used her shoulder to pull himself up the rest of the way. His jacket flared out. His belt held a gun within a holster.
“Oh. That’s a Gadsden .45,” she said.
“Indeed ’tis. You are quite astute to recognize it that fast.”
“I’m most familiar with the consequences of the weaponry, though my mother did teach me to hunt when I was young. Don’t look so surprised. I’m not averse to eating meat.” Though I used to be, for different reasons.
“My pardon. ’Tis good that you can shoot, just in case.”
“Just in case,” she echoed.
She slipped off her satchel and passed it up to Mr. Garret and then climbed into the seat. She edged around his legs, noting his gaze politely turned away from her skirts, and then sat down next to him. Her left arm ached, just slightly, and she frowned. The need for bloodletting was upon her already. She’d need to tend to that later, before it became bothersome.
“I assume you have your tracking device?” she asked.
“Yes. And lunch is packed in the back.”
The paper from Mrs. Wexler rustled in her hand. “Well, whenever we need to make a privy stop, at least this paper will come in handy,” she said pleasantly as she tucked it into a pocket of her satchel. Mr. Garret chuckled softly.
OUTSIDE THE CONFINES OF the city, Octavia encouraged the bay steed to proceed at a steady clip. Despite the gloom of the sky some hours before, the clouds fled as the morning progressed, revealing bright blue heavens. The landscape was as flat as the palm of a hand, composed of marshes, tall grasses, and waving reeds. Infrequent trees offered variety to the eye. The smell could best be described as a middle ground between carrion and ripe mud. Still, to Octavia, the terrain was far pleasanter than that in the city.
Alonzo pulled a small, silver cube from the pocket of his jacket and cradled it in his palm.
“That’s the tracking device?” she asked. “How does it work?”
“The crystal within is aligned with the one inside my mechanical leg. I turn it on, like so.” He pushed a small grate on the top open to reveal cross-hatching and darkness. “This will emit a noise when we are within a few miles, the volume increasing with proximity. Even if the mechanism of the leg is destroyed, the crystal should be well nigh invincible.”
She gave him a baleful look. “My concern is finding it at all in such a wide area.” Debt, debt, debt nagged in the back of her head.
“ ’Tis not as dire as that. We are on the northern road between Leffen and the monastery at the Saint’s Road. This is the route airships trace. Had I the funds, I would have rented a buzzer for us and we could have flown this way.”
“Pardon me if I’m prying, but your father invented the buzzer. Doesn’t that grant you certain . . . prerogatives?”
Alonzo’s smile thinned. “He invented it for the Caskentian military. They own it, not him. Besides, my father’s name does not earn me any favors.”
“I see.” Octavia pursed her lips. “At times you seem rather bitter toward Caskentia, yet you work for them as a Clockwork Dagger. Why?”
The grind of the wagon’s wheels filled the silence as Alonzo stared into the marshes. “You do not mince around, do you?”
“You needn’t—”
“I can answer, once I find the words. I have battled and embraced my father’s legacy my entire life. He was a brilliant man, and brilliance does not often fit with a military that wishes one to conform. I always assumed I would follow in his footsteps and rise through the ranks. Then I found myself without a foot at all.” He stared at the folded pant leg over his stump. “I am little more than an apprentice as a Dagger. My Tamaran heritage makes my appearance too memorable to work undercover. If not for the sway of my mother, I likely would not have this job at all.”
“And what is this job exactly?”
Something shifted in the song of his body. The tempo of his heartbeat increased. His posture stiffened. “Clockwork Daggers are the defenders of the realm, the guardians of the royal family. By preserving the Queen—”
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to say that I was . . . like her. That would be ridiculous. I’m just not sure why I’m important enough to warrant this attention at all.” She clicked her tongue and the horse began to trot.
Silence stretched out between them. “Octavia. You have no idea how dangerous you are, do you?”
“Dangerous?”
“You’re the most powerful medician in recorded history. You use a minimal amount of herbs. You ask the Lady for aid, and she answers with swiftness. Your fatality rate at the front was three percent, compared to a forty-four percent average for the other Percivals—”
“Wait, there are statistics on us? I never . . .”
“The only other person we know of with such gifts, such blessedness, was the Lady herself—and in Mercia, she is largely regarded as a mythological figure. There is no one like you in Frengia, the southern nations, or across the sea. Caskentia has Daggers abroad. They have searched. They know. There is no one who can do what you do, Octavia. No one.”
“Oh.” She folded her arms against her stomach. Was she supposed to be proud, pleased? Instead, she blinked back tears.
“Yes, you are dangerous. What is Caskentia supposed to do with someone of your skill? You are a conduit to God, Octavia. How can the government control that?”
> Control. With Caskentia, things always came back to control. Rage flickered in her chest. “Then it’ll certainly be to your benefit when you bring in a rogue like myself, alive and well,” she said, and immediately regretted the words. She took a few long breaths. “Pardon my tone. It’s the lack of sleep.”
And Mrs. Stout’s nagging, and the itchiness of the life debt, and the fact that people are trying to kill me, and that Caskentia regards me with the same fear as the other Percival girls. “But I’ve no desire to stay in Mercia. That kind of life . . . isn’t living.”
That line between his brows persisted. “If you think the people of Delford have suffered already, how much more will they endure because of your presence and the danger it brings? I am sorry, I know these words pain you. If anything, Wasters are stubborn. In Mercia there are safe houses and guards aplenty. It may not be ideal, but you will live. You will live.”
Locked in a city of endless cobblestones and smokestacks and crushing humanity and disease in every song. “And how long will I be expected to live like that? How many years? I . . .”
A red-leafed bush caught her eye and she abruptly pulled up. Her fears of Mercia slipped from her mind in an instant. “Is that . . . ?” she asked breathily. She slid off the seat, reins still in hand, and her feet impacted on the ground with a cloud of dust.
“What?” asked Alonzo as she looped the reins over a gnarled, cutoff trunk.
“Pampria.” Pampria! She wanted to whirl and dance as she had as a child. “Do you mind if . . .”
“Not at all, though it goes without saying we should not tarry.”
Octavia nodded and half slid down the embankment. The bush stood as high as her shoulder, its red brilliant as blood. She leaned over to breathe in the faint odor of cinnamon. Her arm throbbed again, as if the proximity to pampria intensified the need to bloodlet.
She passed a hand over the wand. Keeping her satchel on her shoulder, she opened it to dig out a treated leather bag. With her clean hand, she plucked the waxy leaves from the bush. It would take them days to dry, but a full bag would be enough, once it was ground down, to replenish her jar.