On the third day she spotted the dirigible first, moored on an open plateau near a encampment of tents and cannon large enough to resemble a small city. The Formidable looked unharmed, its giant number nine unscathed. Taya’s chest tightened. There was no reason why it should be damaged — the Firebrand had thrown its cannon overboard — but she’d still harbored a tiny hope that the ship might have been miraculously defeated.
The Alzanans were using the encampment as a staging point; hundreds, maybe even a thousand soldiers were there, both cavalry and infantry, as well as countless drivers and carters and grooms and cooks and other support staff. Long lines of carts and wagons filled with food, supplies, and weapons flanked the camp. Taya kept her head down as her guards passed the checkpoints.
She had never seen an army before. About a hundred lictors lined up each year for the annual Great Examination processional, and whenever new decaturs were inducted into the Oporphyr Council or — as she knew too well — sent into exile. She’d seen several hundred lictors in Glasgar, but they’d been scattered throughout the city, and now they were dead.
Taya stole another furtive glance around her and wondered if there were enough lictors in Ondinium to fight such a force.
Her captors marched her into a larger, cleaner part of the encampment. Taya answered questions as meekly and briefly as possible as she was handed from one Alzanan soldier to the next, until she finally found herself standing inside one of the fanciest tents before a harried-looking captain.
“What part of Mareaux are you from?” he demanded, in Mareaux.
“Echelles,” she said, keeping her eyes cast down. “But I was in Os Cansai when I was taken.”
“That’s in Cabiel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Studying their religion, sir. I’m a university student.”
“Hmm.” The captain frowned, studying her. “Why in the Great Father’s name would Ondinium soldiers abduct a religion student?”
“They needed someone to guide them across the country. There aren’t many other Mareaux in Cabiel.” She had concocted an entire tale of her meeting, abduction, captivity, and escape during the three days’ hike to camp, but she preferred not to say any more than was necessary.
“You escaped during the firefight.”
“Yes, sir.” She finally risked a question. “Did you capture their ship? Its crew could tell you….”
“No.” The captain fished out a watch and glanced at it. “How much of the enemy vessel did you see?”
“Most of it, sir. I was a prisoner on it for more than a week.”
“All right. Good.” He closed the watch and tucked it away. “I’m sorry to treat you so poorly, Miss Gifford, but I’m sure you understand our situation. I’m afraid we’re going to have to inconvenience you for a few more days, but then I think we’ll be able to send you on your way.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The Formidable leaves in an hour, and I’m going to put you on it. Colonel Agosti will want to hear everything you can tell her about the Ondinium ship, but then I’m sure she’ll put you on a train back to Centro. You’ll be able to book passage from there to Echelles.”
Colonel Agosti. Liliana had said that her older sister, Pietra, was a major, but that had been before the royal family had been slaughtered. Maybe the Alzanan army thought that its new commander-in-chief deserved a higher rank.
“Thank you, sir,” she repeated, trying to hide her sudden apprehension.
At the captain’s orders, she was given a scarf and gloves and her hands were tied more comfortably in front of her. She was taken to the Formidable, where she was cuffed to a pole on the second floor of the command gondola. Just like Cristof, she thought sadly, wedging herself between the boxes for warmth. She tried to eavesdrop on the soldiers below, but they seemed more interested in discussing a brawl between two of the crew the night before than analyzing their upcoming mission or the fate of the Firebrand.
Some time later the engines were started. One of the Formidable’s crew members walked up the stairs, a blanket folded over one arm.
“How do you do, Miss Gifford,” he said in stilted Mareaux. “Captain Sciarra conveys his respects. He regrets treating a member of an allied country with such suspicion, but he hopes you will understand the need for caution. He has sent a blanket to help against the cold of flight.”
“Thank you,” Taya said, meaning it. The air was already chilly, and she knew from experience that it would only get colder as the ship rose. The soldier draped the blanket over her shoulders. “How long will the trip take?”
“No more than an hour, ma’am. I should warn you that we will be flying over contested area, and you may hear sounds of combat. We will be perfectly safe, however.”
“You’re fighting the Ondiniums?”
“We have taken Terminal,” he said proudly, “and we are pushing the Ondies deeper into the mountains, despite all their tricks and clever machines.”
“Tricks? Do they have more flying ships?” If there were others, maybe—
“So far we have only seen the one, and it crashed.” He shrugged. “Their other machines seem just as easy to break. Ondinium technology is not as impressive as we had been led to believe.”
“Other machines?” Taya was mystified.
“More of their ancient weapons,” he said with disapproval. “But they are all old and slow. Ondinium technology may have been impressive a thousand years ago, but our weapons have moved on and their weapons haven’t.”
Taya nodded, afraid to say anything, and pulled the blanket closer. The ship jerked as it began to rise.
“You do not need to worry,” the soldier said. “We will keep you safe.” He gave her a reassuring smile and headed back down the stairs.
Once he was gone, Taya stood and shoved the crates aside. She had to stretch her chained arm out to full length and crane her neck, but she was able to watch through one of the gondola’s tiny portholes as the military camp slid out of sight.
As the ship traveled onward, Taya spotted military forces moving on well-beaten trails and, at times, saw flashes of metal that could have been the train tracks to A-O Terminal. Her muscles began to ache from holding the awkward position, but just as she was thinking about giving up and sitting down, she saw a deep black gash in the earth. She stood on her toes, wishing for a better angle as it drew closer. It was a long, gaping hole in the ground, the earth and trees thrown to either side as though something had exploded. Had the Firebrand crashed there? Wouldn’t there be some non-ondium-plated wreckage left behind if it had? Taya’s stomach churned. If the Firebrand had crashed there, the Alzanans would have taken the crew prisoner, she told herself, fiercely. It must have crashed farther away.
The Formidable continued implacably onward. As they drew closer to Terminal, the signs of combat grew more obvious— torn-up earth and fire-scorched lines of trees. Taya saw another deep gash in one of the mountainsides, but this time she could tell that the explosion had come from within, blowing earth and rocks outward and away. A twisted, fire-blackened machine lay half-buried in the scattered rubble. She squirmed, trying to get a closer look, but the object was too mangled to be identified. She didn’t think it was part of the Firebrand, but she couldn’t be certain.
“They’re all right,” she whispered, frustrated and frightened. Captain Amcathra would have done everything he could to bring the Firebrand down safely, and he would have thrown Cristof overboard in his rescue harness if a safe landing had been impossible. And as for her husband, as long as he had his wits and a gun, he’d be fine. He might be socially awkward and physically gawky, but he was an exalted at heart— determined and resourceful and far more ruthless in the pursuit of his goals than she liked to admit. She was sure that as long as there was a breath in his body, he’d get a warning to Ondinium.
She backed away from the window to roll her aching shoulder and adjust her blanket. Then she slid her fingers into her boot top to touch the heavy golden watch he’d made for her, reassured by its steady, rhythmic ticking.
He would be all right. She had to have as much faith in him as he had in her.
After she’d shaken the kinks out of her arm, she looked out the window again. They were traveling parallel to the train tracks now. Camps sat at regular intervals along the tracks, perhaps protecting them from vandalism. Taya had heard that Ondinium had buried explosives at key points along its own tracks so that it could blow them up if it were ever invaded. Hidden mine fields were one of the rumors her conspiracist friends Pyke and Victor liked to bruit about, along with stories of secret Council weapons-research labs, lictor assassins, hypnotically programmed sleeper agents, and deep-mining death camps. Of course, the more she learned about the Council’s secrets, the more reasonable some of those conspiracy theories started to sound. Underground pneumatic railroads, ancient imperial ornithopters, and now these new imperial weapons, whatever they were— maybe the idea of mined railroad tracks wasn’t so far-fetched.
A column of smoke punctuated her first sight of A-O Terminal. As the ship drew nearer, Taya covered her mouth.
Glasgar must have looked like this, after the attack— full of broken or blackened buildings, torn up streets, and upended and twisted train cars and loading equipment. She couldn’t tell what was being burned in one of the trainyards, sending up a long plume of smoke, but she was afraid it might be corpses.
The Formidable began maneuvering lower for a landing. Taya moved the crates back into place and sat, her stomach clenching. What was she going to say to Major — Colonel — Agosti?
After the ship docked, a soldier escorted her outside. Taya rubbed her wrists as she looked around, not needing to hide her dismay. She’d never visited Alzana-Ondinium Terminal before, but she’d seen its sister on the Mareaux-Ondinium border. This ruin was nothing like that lively border city and, as far as she could tell, it had never been so. What remained of the shelled-out buildings suggested a sterile, fortresslike architecture, with no sign of the friendly little shopfronts and welcoming hotels that existed on Mareaux’s border. The high but shattered wall that ran down the center of the city suggested that the Alzanans and Ondiniums who’d lived in Terminal had enjoyed very little interaction.
“If you will follow me, Miss Gifford?”
Taya nodded, glad that the aviator made no attempt to tie her up again as he led her through the occupied city. He didn’t need to; the streets were filled with Alzanan soldiers.
The abrupt, staccato sound of gunfire made her freeze.
“It’s outside of town,” her escort said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“The Ondiniums are that close?” She tried to hide her leap of hope behind what she hoped was a suitably fretful expression.
“They’re just harrying our scouts. Terminal is well-guarded, and we’ll have another sentry watching from the Formidable now that we’re in dock.”
Taya hoped the Ondiniums knew that.
Colonel Agosti had set up office in one of the buildings that was still more or less intact; a few windows were broken and boarded up and its walls were pocked with bullet holes. An Alzanan flag hung from a pole in the wall, and a regimental banner had been pinned over the doorway. The Formidable’s crew member handed Taya and a letter over to the guards, then nodded amiably to her and left. Taya shivered in the cold as the letter was taken inside, her nervousness growing. At last she was ushered inside and led through several rooms of busy-looking soldiers to the colonel’s office in the back. A knock, a shout, and she was allowed in.
The office was dim and filled with bluish smoke. Colonel Agosti pushed back her chair and gave Taya a cool, assessing once-over that reminded her of the colonel’s dead grandfather. Pietra’s Agosti heritage showed in her dark, well-arched brows, curling black hair, and strong features. She was a slender woman in her mid to late thirties, her uniform elaborate and well-tailored with fresh-looking creases and golden braid. A slender cigarillo burned between her fingers. Taya coughed. Smoking was uncommon in Ondinium.
“I understand you’re here to spy on me,” Agosti said in fluent Ondinan.
Taya blinked, realized she’d betrayed her understanding of the language, and shook her head.
“They gave this to me,” she said, touching her jacket as she sought to inflect her Ondinan with a Mareaux accent. “I am not a lictor.”
Agosti gestured to a basin and pitcher in one corner of the room.
“Perhaps you would care to wash your face to refresh yourself.”
Careful, Taya thought as she nodded and pulled off her scarf and gloves. This one’s no fool. She walked to the basin and scrubbed her hands and face. It felt good to clean up, and she fleetingly wished for a bath. She hadn’t been really clean since she’d left Os Cansai. She made a point of vigorously drying her face before turning back to the colonel.
“Take a seat,” Agosti said, still speaking Ondinan. Taya wondered if the Alzanan knew Mareaux or was simply playing some sort of game. “What’s your name?”
Taya perched on the hard chair by the desk and glanced down. Yes, the letter laid there, open.
“Tatienne Gifford.”
“What do you do?”
“I am a religion student studying the Cabisi Dancer.”
“The Dancer is a goddess?”
“Goddess and god.”
“Sounds confusing. How can it be both?”
Taya hesitated.
“Because it represents the entire universe at once.”
“Do you think that makes the Dancer more powerful than the Mother of Earth and the Father of Sky?”
“I think… it is easier to love and respect a mother and a father than a deity as strange and remote as the Dancer.”
“Yes, you’re probably right.” A pained expression crossed the colonel’s face, and Taya was abruptly reminded that the soldier had recently lost most of her family. “Maybe that’s why Alzana and Mareaux care more about people and the Cabisi and Ondiniums care more about things. We venerate the divine creators as our parents, whereas they have turned the divine creators into strangers— the Ondies’ masculine Lady of the Forge and the Cabisi’s two-sexed Dancer. What kind of twisted societies could misinterpret nature’s essential truth so profoundly?”
“You are a philosopher,” Taya ventured. She disagreed with the colonel — there was nothing masculine about the Lady of the Forge — but she was impressed that a soldier, a king’s granddaughter, had considered such matters at all.
“War turns soldiers into philosophers or butchers. I think we have enough butchers already.” Agosti contemplatively nursed her cigarillo. “The lictors on the Ondinium ship; were they philosophers or butchers?”
Taya wasn’t sure how to answer. What did Agosti want to hear? What would a Mareaux prisoner say?
“They were not cruel to me,” she said at last. “They forced me to come, but they were not abusive.”
“Yet you leaped off the ship, anyway.”
“I was afraid. The rudder was gone, the engine was damaged, and they were throwing their cannon overboard.” She swallowed. “Many of the crew were dead.”
“Was there an exalted on board? A man in a mask?”
Her heart stuttered and she forced herself to nod.
“He did not wear a mask,” she said, unsteadily. “But they called him exalted.”
“No mask?” The colonel looked surprised. “What was his castemark?”
Taya touched her cheekbone.
“A wave on both cheekbones.”
“Hmm. I was told that exalteds always wore masks, but I suppose
it’s too ridiculous to be true.” Agosti fixed her with a steely gaze. “That man killed my grandfather, the king.”
Taya shivered.
“I heard him say he was framed,” she said, quietly. “He said an Alzanan woman did it.”
“Who— my sister? Liliana?”
“No. The principessa was on the ship with him.”
The colonel straightened, setting her cigarillo on the edge of a metal ashtray.
“She was? How did she look?”
“She was well,” Taya said, quickly. “She looks like you, with long curling black hair and dark eyes. She had a necklace that she said her brother had given to her— a yellow stone, a birthstone, maybe?”
“Was she a prisoner?”
“No. She seemed to be friends with the Ondiniums.”
“Sweet Mother of Earth.” Agosti slowly sat back into her chair. “The ship crashed behind Ondinium lines, so we left it alone. If I’d known she was on board….”
Taya remained silent. She wanted to tell the colonel that Liliana had bravely torn off her rescue harness and thrown it to Taya, saving her life, but it wouldn’t fit her story, and it would provide cold comfort if the principessa had died as a result of her sacrifice.
Someone knocked on the door. Agosti sighed, shaking her head slightly.
“Who is it?”
“Lady Mazzoletti is here to see you, sir.”
“No!” With a burst of fear, Taya lunged forward, grabbing the colonel’s arm. “No— she’s the one who killed the king!”
“What?” Agosti shook her off. “Who?”
“Fosca Mazzoletti shot the king— well, she ordered another man to do it, but—”
Pietra Agosti seized Taya’s shoulder, dragging her up out of the chair.
“Send her in,” the colonel barked.
Taya tried to escape, but the Alzanan officer held her fast as the door opened and Lady Mazzoletti swept in, looking as beautiful and well-groomed as ever. Her eyes landed on Taya and widened. Then she threw back her head with a trill of delighted laughter.
Clockwork Secrets Page 23