Clockwork Secrets

by Dru Pagliassotti

  Taya squeezed his hand, frightened.

  * * *

  The evacuation alarm brought down eight programmers and nineteen engineers. As soon as Skip explained the situation, the programmers shut down the Great Engine. Kyle, Lars, and two other dedicates emerged from the archives carrying metal boxes filled with large tin master cards, and several other programmers dashed from office to office gathering the latest data reports.

  As soon as the Great Engine’s pistons slowed, enveloped in a cloud of steam, the engineers swarmed over the machine. Thick cables were locked around major components and anchored to the mountain walls. The engineers’ goal was to try to secure as much of the Engine as possible— they knew they wouldn’t be able to keep the entire Engine intact, but anything that might reduce the final loss was worth trying.

  In the meantime, Cristof, Victor, and two other engineers interrogated Lady Mazzoletti, who’d regained consciousness. She said she knew nothing about disarming the bomb, and Taya didn’t have any reason to doubt her. Cristof removed the bomb’s brass backplate and studied its interior.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he confessed, sitting back on his heels. “I can’t even read the labels.”

  “Taya?” Victor looked at her, but she shook her head.

  “I can speak Cabisi, but I can’t read it. It uses an entirely different alphabet. If Jinian were here….”

  “I’m going to guess that the detonator will set off some kind of chemical reaction,” Cristof speculated, “but I don’t see any way to pull the cylinders out without triggering the mechanism.”

  “Can you stop the clock?”

  “Most bombs have some kind of failsafe built in.” He checked the clockface. “Taya, you need to go.”

  “Then you need to get to the maintenance tunnels.” Taya looked at Victor. “Where are they?”

  He pointed.

  “About seven minutes in that direction. She’s right, Exalted; it’s time to call people off the Engine.”

  “How do I get to the tunnels from outside?”

  “They open onto Primus through one of the Economics and Finance vaults,” one of the engineers said. “You’ll have to get through building security….”

  “I’ll meet you there, then.” Taya stood. “Victor, keep my husband safe.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the programmer said, grinning. Cristof shot him a cool look, then turned to her.

  “I’ll keep them safe,” he corrected.

  “Just be there when I get to the vault.” She kissed him and he held her tight, ignoring the cleared throats and uncomfortable shifting around them.

  “Fly safely,” he said, at last. She mustered a brave smile as she turned away and slid her arms into her wings.

  Chapter Twenty

  Taya landed on the top catwalk and locked her wings close in order to run through the security corridors to the Council chamber.

  “Dautry! Isobel! Somebody!” she bellowed, racing through the empty chamber and into the Tower halls. “Is anyone here? We need to evacuate!”

  “Here!”

  She spun and saw an icarus descending the stairs. He was wearing the bright red armband of a search-and-rescue team.

  “There’s a bomb in the Great Engine!” she said. “We need to get everyone out of the Tower, now!”

  “Hey, you’re Taya, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, and Exalted Forlore is below, and he says everyone has to get out before the Oporphyr Tower is destroyed!”

  The icarus’s eyes widened.

  “Got it. There’s five of us in the S&R team. We’re evacuating the wounded, but there’s a group in the signal room that won’t go. They told me you were down here—”

  “Where’s the signal room?”

  “Down the hall and to the left, but one of them—”

  “I’ll get them. Get everyone else off the peak and as far away as possible. Don’t come back.”

  “But one of them—”

  “Shut up!” Taya shouted. “And go!”

  He turned and ran in one direction while she took the other.

  “Time to go!” Taya shouted, throwing open the signal room door. Dautry was supporting Captain Amcathra while Isobel ran a card through the control panel. Colonel Agosti was scribbling a message on a piece of paper while Liliana looked over her shoulder. “We’re taking the wireferry down!”

  Isobel grabbed Agosti’s message and another card and thrust it into a punch machine.

  “Go ahead; I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  “Isobel, we have to leave now— the bomb’s going off in ten minutes!”

  “Go, go— take the lictor, he can barely move.”

  “We’re leaving,” Dautry said firmly, sliding her shoulder under Amcathra’s arm. Taya rushed in and took his other arm. The rescue harness made moving him easier, but no amount of ondium could make a broken rib and leg less painful— the lictor’s face was pallored and covered with sweat.

  Colonel Agosti stood, hesitated, and turned toward Isobel.

  “Thank you,” she said. The blond woman nodded, still punching.

  “Which way to the wireferry?” Taya demanded. “We’re taking the emergency route.”

  “Usual station,” Amcathra said faintly. “There’s a lever over the door.”

  “This way, then.” Taya guided them out the door. She and Dautry began to jog, the captain stumbling between them with his teeth clenched against the pain. Liliana and her sister followed, the colonel keeping her arm pressed against her side.

  “Strap in,” Taya commanded as soon as they reached the wireferry. She threw open the metal door and helped Dautry maneuver Amcathra into a seat. She yanked out her watch. Five minutes left. Dautry fastened the captain’s safety straps as Liliana and Agosti found seats for themselves.

  As the professor buckled herself in, Taya turned back to the building. She was debating whether to leave the ferry car or not when Isobel burst through the doorway.

  “I’m here!” The programmer threw herself into the car, grabbing the safety straps. Taya followed her, ducking to get her wings through the entrance, and slammed the door shut.

  “Ready?” Without waiting for an answer, she tore off the safety wire that held the emergency escape lever up and yanked it down.

  A giant piston drove out from the station wall and slammed into the car, hurling it forward with a neck-snapping jar. Taya was thrown into one of the benches, her wings bending behind her. Dautry shouted something profane in Mareaux and Liliana and Isobel screamed.

  Taya fumbled with her safety straps as the car plunged off the edge of the mountain cliff. Gears screeched as it shot down the cable toward the terrace below. She yanked a strap through her armature and buckled it. For an endless moment, she was aware of nothing but the car rattling down the cable toward Primus and her own pounding heart.

  Then the top of Ondinium Mountain burst open with a bone-rattling tremor and a windstorm of fire and metal machine parts shot into the sky.

  Taya barely had time for a scream of her own when the wireferry car slammed into the Primus station and snapped the restraining cable. It tore through the safety nets beyond the cable and smashed into the heavy rubber bumpers on the station’s far wall, bending their metal arms. Its supporting cable went limp as the wireferry tower on top of the mountain was blown off the cliff. The car jerked backward and dropped seven feet to the station’s metal floor, bounced, skidded to the far wall, and came to a shuddering halt in the corner. With a screeching zip, the wireferry cable whipped through its pulley and snapped, whip-cracking against the top of the station before it was yanked down by the wreckage plummeting into the city streets below.

  Taya clung to her safety strap, gagging. She’d been slammed into the car’s sides several times, but her counterweighting had helped her avoid the worst of the damage. Now she
fumbled the strap buckle open and dropped to her knees, heaving.

  Still alive. That was something. She grabbed the wooden bench and pulled herself up, her neck and back protesting. Isobel wasn’t moving. Liliana sobbed as she clung to her sister, and Captain Amcathra and Dautry were both motionless.

  Taya watched Amcathra and Dautry until she saw their chests move, then she pried open the wireferry door. Her head was splitting and her neck was stiff. Every muscle in her body ached and her left knee felt like it had been wrenched off. She wiped blood out of her eyes and limped to the edge of the car platform, looking up toward Oporphyr Tower.

  The Tower was gone. The top of Ondinium mountain was covered in a brown haze, and rocks crashed off the sheer cliffs into the buildings below. Glass from hundreds of broken windows glittered in the streets of Primus, and exalteds and their household staff shrieked for help from inside half-collapsed mansions.

  Taya pushed her arms into her wings and spread them. Everything hurt, but everything moved. She took an unsteady step and dropped off the tower.

  Her survival instincts kicked in and, despite her dazed, incoherent state of mind, she managed to keep herself aloft. Other icarii were in the air, too, but she ignored their calls and wing-tilts as she weaved through the streets toward the civic offices.

  The Economics and Finance building had been built flush against the mountain cliff. Its ornate facade had collapsed when the mountain had shaken, and giant slabs of stone lay scattered and broken on its roof and the streets around it.

  Taya landed badly, staggering and skidding on her knees, then falling over with one wing caught under her. She lay prone in the street, tasting blood and catching her breath.

  “Hey, Icarus! Hey, are you— Forgefire, is that you, Taya?” She felt hands on her face. “Cassi, come here!”

  “Pyke…” Taya groaned as he helped her sit up, easing her arms out of her wings.

  “Is your arm broken? You’re covered in blood! What happened?”

  “Cris.” She tried to get up, collapsed, and tried again.

  “Scrap, wait! Cassi!”

  “Oh, Lady, is that Taya?”

  “I think she’s hurt.”

  “Taya, Taya, sweetie, look at me. Are you all right?”

  Taya blinked and focused, her friends’ faces swimming before her. They were both wearing bright red armbands. Search and rescue.

  “Cris,” she said again, getting her feet underneath her. “The tunnels.”

  “What tunnels?” Cassi slid an arm around her waist. “Pyke, lock her wings up for her.”

  “In the building. Maintenance. From the Engine.” Taya tried to push away. “Cris is down there.”

  “Okay— okay, we’ll get him. Which building?”

  Taya pointed, flinching at the pain in her arm. Cassi led her to it.

  “That building is not safe to enter,” Pyke protested.

  “It’s a search-and-rescue mission, isn’t it? We’re searching for the exalted.” Cassi brushed hair back from Taya’s face. “I’m not letting her go in there alone, Pyke. I thought— I thought I’d lost her and Jayce.”

  Pyke swore and hurried to catch up.

  * * *

  The Economics and Finance building had been evacuated as soon as the enemy armies had been sighted. Taya pulled herself together as they ventured into its dark hallways, summarizing the situation for her two friends.

  “The vaults will be cut directly into the cliff,” Pyke said, “so they must be this way.” They walked deeper into the building before reaching a heavy, steel-reinforced door. Pyke rattled the handle.

  “Locked.” Cassi bit her lip. “We need to find someone who works here.”

  Taya staggered to the door and yanked on it, tears burning her eyes. “Cris! Cris, are you there?”

  Nothing.

  “Taya…” Cassi took her arm. Taya shook her off, plunging her hand into her pocket.

  “Get back,” she said.

  “Whoa!” Pyke’s eyes widened. “Is that a bomb?”

  “Taya, no! You are not setting off a bomb to open that door!”

  “Yes, I am.” Taya placed it at the base of the doorframe and pulled out her waxed package of lucifer matches. Her hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped them. She had no idea if the explosive would be strong enough to blow down the door, but she had to do something. “Go hide around the corner.”

  She struck a match, which promptly fizzled out. Clenching her fist, she tried to calm her nerves.

  Cris was in the tunnels. He was safe. She only needed to get to him.

  She pulled out a second match.

  Pyke squatted next to her and took it.

  “Let me do it, Taya. I’ve always wanted to set off a bomb inside a government building.”

  She stared at him, struggling to make sense of his words.

  “You’ll never pass your next loyalty test,” she said at last.

  “It’ll be worth it.” He grinned and gently tugged the packet from her fingers. “Go on, calm Cassi down before she passes out.”

  “You’ll have to run.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.”

  “Promise me you’ll light it.”

  “I promise. Go on.”

  She painfully staggered to her feet and limped down the hall, still trembling. Cassi dragged her around the corner and into an unlocked office, forcing her to kneel.

  Moments later they heard Pyke’s whoop. He raced down the hall and spun around the corner, laughing like a madman. The bomb went off just as he dived through the office door.

  Taya was on her feet before Cassi had even uncovered her ears.

  The bomb hadn’t destroyed the door, but it had blown it far enough off its hinges for Pyke to haul it aside and let all three slip through.

  “Hello?” Taya shouted, looking down a long hall lined with similarly heavy doors. “Cris? Are you there?”

  One of the doors swung open and a red-faced, soot-covered dedicate staggered out, coughing. He looked up with relief.

  “We’re here!” he shouted, turning. “We made it!”

  A ragged cheer rose as more dedicates tumbled out, nursing burns and laughing with a touch of hysteria. Taya threw herself into the crowd of strangers, shouting for her husband, until at last he wrapped his arms around her, armature and all.

  * * *

  The rest of the day was chaos as emergency crews rescued the trapped and injured. The Oporphyr Council had lost four out the six decaturs who had been in the Tower during the Alzanan assault. Three other decaturs had been stationed elsewhere in Ondinium, Constante included, and one had been home sick. Thus only three decaturs were left in Ondinium to sit down with Cristof to figure out what to do next while the Alzanan and Ondinium armies waited tensely for further instructions.

  After being bandaged by emergency workers, Taya had asked Cassi and Pyke to look after Captain Amcathra and Professor Dautry, both of whom had been knocked unconscious in the wireferry crash. Fosca Mazzoletti, who’d escaped the explosion under Cristof’s guard, was taken to prison and Liliana accompanied her sister to the emergency Council meeting that had been set up at the University just an hour after the explosion. Among the many tasks before the remaining three decaturs was deciding what to do about the enemy ships that still circled Ondinium waiting for orders.

  Taya, of course, stood in the meeting next to Cristof. They were both bruised, battered, and bandaged, but so was everyone else in the room.

  “I am willing to maintain a cease-fire while we investigate the possibility of peace,” Colonel Pietra Agosti said to the trio of masked and robed decaturs. “However, I wish to have time to talk in private with Lady Mazzoletti about her actions and to decide the best course of action before we open formal negotiations.”

  An icarus leaned close to his exalted, then nodd
ed.

  “It seems to the Council that you are not in a strong bargaining position, Queen Agosti,” he said on the decatur’s behalf. “Why shouldn’t the Council simply hold you and your sister hostage to your nation’s good behavior?”

  “Because if you do, my enemies will claim the throne for themselves.” Despite her injuries, the colonel remained calm and confident. “I know you do not consider the Agosti Family your allies, but I assure you that if you support my return to the throne, your assistance will not be forgotten. And if you do not support me, some other Family will take command of the armies standing at your doorstep, and you will lose much more than you already have.”

  The icarus waited a long time before looking up. Taya knew that meant he had a difficult message to convey. She crossed her fingers.

  “The decatur is willing to return you to your country if you will sign an armistice agreement with the Council,” he relayed. “However, we would like your sister to stay in Ondinium as the Council’s guest and a guarantee of your good behavior. We will return her when our ambassadors return to Alzana with a new peace treaty.”

  “Unacceptable. I will not allow you to use my sister as a hostage.”

  “You may have our ambassador in exchange.” The icarus inclined his head in Cristof’s direction.

  “Wait a minute!” Taya objected. “Don’t we have any say in this?”

  Cristof laid a hand over hers, frowning at the decaturs, then leaned toward her. “If I go, will you stay here to look after Liliana?” he asked, softly.

  “You aren’t going to agree to this, are you?”

  “I might as well do something right before I retire.”

  “If you go, I go, too.”

  “Is there any chance you’ll listen to reason?”

  “I do not consider leaving you on your own in Alzana to be reasonable!”