The guard below must have heard me. His gaze yanked upward just as I plunged off the wall, my fingers stretching to wingtips.
Chapter 4 — Tarik
Black smoke blanketed me, choking me, blinding me. And Griff…Griff was somewhere at the heart of all the fire and chaos, somewhere I couldn’t reach. The wind battered us and I heard myself scream, thrashing against Zagger’s iron grip. But I couldn’t move my arms so I kicked out at him, wincing as my shoe slammed against bone. Zagger hissed in pain but didn’t even flinch.
“Mr. Zagger, do something!” Samyr screamed.
“Get your hands off me!” I shouted, shoving his arm. “Zagger! That’s an order!”
His eyes met mine, dark and hard. “Sorry, Your Highness. Doesn’t mean a thing right now.”
The plane twisted on the tarmacadam, drifting into a slow slide as the two aviators and the mechanics raced after it. I caught my breath and stopped fighting, because suddenly Griff appeared, hauling himself over the lip of the cockpit. For a moment he hung there, motionless, then he tumbled out onto the wing and finally to the landing strip in an awkward somersault.
The aviators rushed to pull him up by the armpits, dragging him away as the plane’s carcass ground to a flaming stop. Finally Zagger released me, and we all took off running.
I could hear Griff cursing everything from the devils to the sky long before we reached him. When he caught sight of us he managed to straighten up, his face red and streaked with soot and rain. One of the aviators helped him pull off his helmet and goggles, and handed him a handkerchief to wipe the grime from his cheeks.
“What the hell happened?” the other aviator asked, ignoring us entirely.
“How the devil should I know!” Griff cried, tugging open the neck of his aviator’s jacket. A raw cough convulsed him. “Damn thing isn’t supposed to explode.”
“So how did it explode?”
“I don’t bloody know!”
He cursed again and bent over his knees. Samyr pushed her way into their circle and threw her arms around him.
“Oh, stars, Griff! Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he said, twitching his head aside. “Just give me a moment.”
That broke the spell; the aviators turned to salute me.
“So sorry you had to see this, Your Highness,” the older one said.
I recognized him, finally—he’d been the first man to pilot an aeroplane. Or rather, he’d been the first to pilot one and survive. He commanded the Air Patrol now, as all the multicolored ribbons on the breast of his black uniform jacket could attest.
“That’s all right, Major Ves,” I said. “What did you mean, it wasn’t supposed to explode?”
“Just so. It’s all a bit technical, but the way the steam engine is designed, and the fuel we use…this is supposed to be impossible.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Apparently not.”
“Something must have mucked up the coils,” Griff said.
He had his arm thrown around Samyr’s shoulders now, but the terror hadn’t left his eyes. The way he wouldn’t look at me, I knew he hated for me to see him so unnerved. We’d known each other our whole lives but Griff had the Farro pride, and even our friendship wasn’t a match for that. So instead I stared at the corpse of the plane flaming in a heap too close for comfort, its airscrew still wobbling in an unsteady and slowly faltering spin.
“Are you hurt, Mr. Farro?” Ves asked, gripping Griff’s arm.
“Just a bit topsy,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Can’t say the same thing for the old girl though.”
“Soon as the flames die down, we’ll open her up and see what she has to tell us,” the younger aviator said.
Griff rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“Do you think my father will care about that?” His voice hitched a little. “All he’ll see is that I crashed the bird.”
He turned and kicked viciously at the ground, fumbling for pockets until he remembered his breeks didn’t have any.
“Go on home, Mr. Farro. We’ll get this cleaned up.”
“She’s my—”
Major Ves held up his hand. “If you ever hope to serve a day under my command, you’ll take this as your first order. Go home. And go before that damned newshawk gets over here asking for a story.”
We all turned and saw the boxy with his awful camera, shooting shot after shot of us. I stepped toward Griff and sent a glare at the boxy, because I knew the last thing Griff would want was his look of defeat on the front page of the Herald. Samyr must have had the same notion because she grabbed Griff’s arm and dragged him off toward the fence where we’d left the motorcar and her bicycle. I turned to follow, but Zagger had fixated on the hangar with his wary watchdog look. Long training kept me close behind him.
“Zagger?”
“Something doesn’t seem right.”
I smiled. “The best pilot in Cavnal just crashed his aeroplane. Of course something doesn’t seem right.”
“That’s not all, though. What Ves was saying about the engine… Dr. Alokin told me the same thing about the motorcar. The steam engine isn’t supposed to be able to ignite like that. The flames inside the boiler are so controlled, and the fuel takes such high heat—”
“Zagger,” I said, waving him off. “Not interested.”
He turned to face me, hands clenched at his sides—his tell that he was about to contradict me.
“Your Highness, someone could have sabotaged his plane.”
“Why would anyone do that?” I asked. “And who’d even have the opportunity? It’s probably just what Griff said. One of the…coils cracked or something.”
He gave me a rather cross glare and dropped his hand on my shoulder, propelling me after Samyr and Griff. When we caught them up, Griff grinned and gave me a mock bow, as if we’d just met. As if he hadn’t just cheated death.
“Your Highness! Welcome to the aerodrome.” He noticed Zagger scowling and asked, “Everything all right, Mr. Zagger?”
“I should be asking you that,” Zagger said. “All in one piece?”
“Walking and talking. Say.” Griff grabbed my arm and hauled me a few steps away from Zagger. “Say, I don’t suppose you could send Zagger off for a bit, could you?”
“I don’t think he’d stand for that. Especially not after all this.”
“Bah.” He waved a hand. “I could use a bit of an unwind. What do you say? South Brinmark, you and me, for a little celebration.”
“Celebration?” I gave him a strange look. “You just—”
“Survived a deadly crash,” he said, tossing his head. “And did a smart job landing that beast, given the circumstances, I’d say. I wager even old Ves couldn’t have done it as well as I did. And besides!” He smacked my arm with the back of his hand. “It’s your birthday tomorrow. A celebration is in order, your Rrrrroyal Highness.”
I was about to remind him of tomorrow’s rrrroyal birthday gala hanging over my head like a bad idea, but he held up his hand before I could get a word out.
“Gad, that’s not what I mean. I mean a celebration. You’re turning seventeen! You could study law or join the army if you actually had to get a job. You could even run for office if you actually had to get elected! Isn’t that something to celebrate in a manly fashion?”
I shoved my hands in my trouser pockets, waiting until he shut up.
Then I asked, the words poison on my tongue, “South Brinmark?”
Samyr caught the words and slipped over to join us. “Did you say you’re going to South Brinmark?” she asked, wide-eyed.
Griff smirked. “That’s the idea.”
“Griff!” she gasped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
I knew she wanted to seem scandalized, but she only looked cute and indignant in her schoolgirl mittens and my black cap. Griff gave her a roguish grin and elbowed me, hard, in the ribs.
“Well, Your Highness, what d’you say?”<
br />
“It won’t happen.”
Griff flung his hands in the air. “What? Why do you say that? I’d have thought it would be your idea, anyway. Isn’t that just the kind of madness you’re always hunting for? Y’know, I heard of this swell joint…”
“Farro,” I said, “you know children aren’t allowed in those sorts of places.”
He turned a few shades redder at that. He was younger than me by a mere four months—but what an eternity when I was about to be a man and he was still a boy. Even Samyr outranked him, which never failed to annoy him.
“You’re not taking Tarik down ‘round South Brinmark,” Samyr said, stomping her foot and narrowly missing a puddle.
“Look who’s so upset!”
“He’s the Crown Prince! He can’t be seen in places like that. Besides, he doesn’t even want to go.”
“That’s what you think?” he asked, grinning when he caught me glaring at him. “Listen, Tarik, you could slip me in, right? Come on, you know you want to. One little jaunt of fun before you have to start acting responsible and royal and all of that muckery.”
Escape, yes, I thought. Escape to South Brinmark? Never.
“Have you ever even been down there?” Samyr asked him, wrinkling her nose.
“Sure have, doll.”
“Don’t call me that. It’s obscene.”
Griff gave her a wink and a lazy grin, and she balled her hands up in fists. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she punched him; he deserved it, and she’d done it before.
“He means he got driven to the Station once,” I said, before the bearcat came out of her. “With his father and three armed guards.”
“There were only two guards,” Griff muttered.
“I would’ve taken three,” Samyr said. “All the Jixies live down there.”
I hid a flinch in a shiver. She was right, and I hated that she was right. I would never venture down there among them, not if I could avoid it. I’d seen people standing in the job lines to trade their time for money, but there were plenty of Jixies down south-side who bartered themselves to the highest bidder like some kind of perverse slave trade. Mercenaries, assassins, thieves-for-hire. Everyone knew that if you needed a dirty job done quietly, you went to South Brinmark.
“Jixies,” Griff echoed, with a mad kind of grin.
She tossed her head. “And Rivano.”
“What?” I cried, startled. “What do you know about him?”
“Oh, just his name, I swear. It’s all my father and your father ever talk about these days.”
I shrugged. Apparently she only knew as much as I did. Most high-society people outside the government circle never mentioned Rivano’s name, if they knew it at all. And those inside the circle spoke it in undertones, when unprivileged ears weren’t listening.
“Who’s Rivano?” Griff asked, jostling me.
“Just some self-righteous Jixy claiming to be his god’s spokesman or something, I don’t know.”
Griff snorted. “And people listen to him?”
“Apparently. He’s got a whole cult hidden somewhere in the city.”
“A cult!” Samyr echoed. “You mean a cult with sacrifices and secret codes and the like?”
Griff gave a mock wail and grabbed her around the neck. She shoved him, punching him in the arm for good measure.
“What do they want?” she asked, ignoring Griff as he feigned injury. “What do they stand for?”
I shrugged. “Never tried to find out. I suppose they stand for Wake and the rights of Jixies or some such nonsense.”
“Wake?” Griff asked.
“He’s…their patron god? Not really sure.”
Samyr bent her head, fiddling with the clasps on her coat. “Do you think they’ve got it right, that business about Wake and the thayoi and all that? We’ve got nothing at all and pretend that we’re fine without it, but what if they’re right?”
“Don’t say that too loud,” Zagger said, quietly.
“Oh, really,” she laughed, then frowned at him, paling a little. “You wouldn’t turn me over to the Committee, would you?”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” I said, glaring at Zagger. “Or he can turn me over to them too.”
The Intelligence Committee, my father’s band of political police and investigators, were the ones responsible for making sure everyone believed what they were supposed to believe—about the State, about justice and the law, about society. I’d dragged Griff into plenty of run-ins with the ordinary city police, but even I wasn’t stupid enough to cross the IC.
“I think those Jixies are rather smashing, really,” Griff said.
We all looked at him.
“Anyway,” he said, hasty. “Most of them can’t even do anything interesting. ‘Look at me! I can whistle two notes at once!’”
“They have power,” I said quietly. “That frightens people.”
“Says the Crown Prince,” Griff muttered, just loud enough for me to hear.
I shrugged. The mages had been ostracized for over a century now, because the Ministry believed that keeping them on the fringes of society would render them powerless. First they’d been barred from the nobility, then from the high-class jobs. Then they’d been turned out from the high streets and pushed into the south streets with the criminal underground. And now they were mocked for their poverty and their crimes.
I hated magic as much as anyone, but I’d always wondered why the mages didn’t just rise up and use their powers to reclaim their rights. Some people said it was because they’d made a truce with the State—life in exchange for cooperation. To me that seemed little better than slavery, because what the State considered “life” wasn’t fit for any human, but that was the sort of dangerous opinion that could get a man brought before the IC, so I kept it to myself.
“Still.” Griff’s eyes lit up. “You know, I once heard of a Jixy who could light a fire with just his fingers. Tell me that isn’t a useful skill.”
“Disgusting,” Samyr said. “It’s not natural.”
Changing my face might be a useful skill too, I thought, but I rather agreed with Samyr. It was disgusting. Not natural.
So I didn’t comment, and didn’t contradict her. Instead I pulled a slim ferrosteel lighter from my pocket and grated the rod across the rasp. Samyr jumped at the little tongue of flame that flicked out beneath my thumb.
“Useful, maybe,” I said. “But not so impressive.”
“Oh, can I see that?” Samyr breathed, and bit the tip of her mitten to pull it off.
I dropped the lighter into her hand and she flinched as if she expected it to be hot.
“Papa told me Dr. Baisell invented some kind of mechanical tinderbox,” she said. “Is this it, then?”
Griff stared at it too. At least he had the decency not to steal it from her. Dr. Baisell, one of the Science Ministry’s darlings, had given me the thing for a birthday present. I’d already guessed he meant it more for my father’s eyes than my happiness, because getting the lighter under the king’s nose might mean more funding for the scientists’ research lab. Baisell never gave up anything without a reason.
And if the rumors were true, I knew they were inventing more than lighters under the vast grounds of the Science Ministry. What they were working on, though, no one really knew. We hadn’t even known about the aeroplanes until the day they took us out to the palace park and flew one over our heads by way of demonstration.
For a few moments we stood silent, while Samyr tried to make a spark and Griff peered greedily over her shoulder.
“See,” I said. “No need to be a damn Jixy Flint to make fire.”
“Tarik, language!” Samyr chided.
She’d given up on trying to light the thing, and now just ran her pale fingers over the steel the way someone might stroke a snake. Finally she held it out, but Griff moved quicker than me and snatched it from her hand.
“Well, isn’t this something,” he said. “This is real power. Tarik, what d’you s
ay to taking this down south-side and showing that Jixy chizzer a thing or two?”
“No,” I said.
Zagger signaled to me, just a tap to his forehead telling me to stay put. Samyr and Griff kept talking about the lighter, but I didn’t hear a word of it. I waited, anxious, while Zagger climbed resolutely into the cab of the motorcar and turned the engine.
For one agonizing moment nothing happened. Then the car roared to life in a cloud of steam, and I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Zagger took a few minutes to check all the temperature and pressure gauges, then came back around to my door and opened it for me. I slipped under the railing, catching his stone-faced stare briefly before turning back to Griff and Samyr.
“Suppose I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, Tarik,” Samyr said.
She reached up to take off my cap, but I waved her away and climbed into the motorcar. Griff trailed me, leaning his arm on my door to keep it ajar. He still had my lighter; I plucked it from his fingers and shoved it into my coat pocket before he could snatch it back.
“Come on, Tarik. We need to do something. Just you and me.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Don’t tell Samyr. She’ll never stand for South Brinmark.”
“I’ll see you at the gala. I’m sure it’ll be charming.”
“You said that last year.”
“I lied, then.”
“And now?”
“We’ll see.” I rapped my knuckles on the glass. “Afternoon, Farro. Miss Von.”
Samyr waved enthusiastically at me while still trying to pull her mitt back on, but Griff just gave me a long-suffering glance and tipped two fingers to his temple in a mock salute.
The motorcar shuddered and pitched forward, chattering over the cobblestones and splashing in puddled pits with teeth-knocking force. I’d never gotten used to its bumping and jarring, so much harsher than a carriage. But it was the newest, most progressive thing, and of course the royal family had to lead the way into the future for all of Cavnal. Just like my little ferrosteel lighter and the stark electrical lamps that now annoyed the eyes of every person in the palace.
Or maybe I was the only one annoyed by it all. Maybe because, for all I lied and tried to hide it, I really was a Jixy. Backwards, like someone born out of time. Someone that didn’t belong in all this madness.
The Madness Project (The Madness Method) Page 3