The Guild Conspiracy

by Brooke Johnson

  No more working with Rupert. No more mech fights.

  No possible chance of sabotaging Julian’s plans.

  At least Braith was willing to bend the rules a little. He had his orders, but at least with him, she had a chance. He trusted her, misplaced though it might be, and while part of her hated the thought of using that trust to her advantage, what else could she do? Julian had to be stopped. This war had to be stopped. And she was getting desperate.

  Keeping an eye on Braith, she edged toward the nearest filing cabinet and eased one of the drawers open behind her, careful not to make a sound as she reached in and withdrew a thick folder. She set it on the table next to her, just out of sight of Braith and the other engineers, and nonchalantly sifted through the file—­a parts order for the second phase of construction, scheduled to go out at the end of the week. She slipped a few pages into her trouser pocket, returned the folder to the cabinet, and slid the drawer shut again.

  Pretending to observe the ongoing construction, she wandered along the edge of the workshop to one of the engineer’s tables nearby, feigning interest as a few of them argued over the correct assembly of the tension supports within the machine’s base. As one of them whipped out a tapeline to measure the cables, she leaned against the desk and rifled through a folder of notes, carefully tearing a few pages loose before stuffing those in her pocket as well.

  She started to walk off, intending to displace the schematics from the drafting tables, when someone grabbed her arm and whirled her around, her blood turning to cold iron as she met with Braith’s steely gray eyes. Before she could utter a word of protest, he dug his fingers into her wrist and dragged her across the workshop floor, pulling her behind a stack of crates, hidden from the rest of the engineers.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, pushing her toward the wall. She stumbled backward, surprised by his forcefulness.

  She held her chin a little higher and glared at him, a fire blazing in her gut. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, opting for ignorance.

  Pressing his mouth into a frown, he stepped closer and reached into her pocket. “And this?” he asked, holding the torn notes and parts orders in front of her face. “This is sabotage, Petra; this is treason.” The papers crumpled in his fist, and he lowered his hand, his face still just inches from her own. “Why?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Why would you do this? You know what will happen if you’re caught.”

  She stared back at him, betraying nothing.

  He drew away with a shake of his head and threw the crumpled pages to the floor at her feet. “You lied to me. You’re exactly what they said you were.”

  “Braith—­”

  “You know my orders,” he said. “I should report you for this.”

  Her pulse slowed. “Will you?”

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”

  She pressed her lips together, a thousand excuses crawling up her throat. But the seconds ticked by in silence, all her lies failing to form into words. “Because I’m not a traitor,” she said finally.

  “Your actions prove otherwise.”

  “If you turn me in, they’ll have me hanged,” she said, her heart beating faster. “Is that what you want?”

  He held her gaze a moment longer and then glanced away, a frown pinching his brow. “Damn it, Petra. This isn’t a game.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she asked, her voice rising. “I know the risks, Braith. I know what’s at stake.”

  “Then why are you so determined to put a noose around your neck?”

  “Because I’m not ready to let the world go to war for my mistake!”

  Braith faltered. “What are you talking about?”

  She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed hard, the fear of what he might do if he knew the truth of what she had done battling against the urge to tell him everything.

  “Petra . . . what mistake?”

  “The quadruped,” she said abruptly. “I never should have designed it, never should have pitched it to the Guild. And now because of me, the Royal Forces will build an army of them, and it’s only a matter of time before it comes to war.”

  “And you think that sabotaging the project will . . . what? Stop the war?” he asked. “The animosity between France and Great Britain goes back decades. Nothing you do is going to change the outcome. It isn’t your responsibility.”

  She curled her hands into fists.

  But it was.

  Great Britain was on the brink of war because of her. If she had never helped Emmerich with the automaton, if she hadn’t been so stupid, she never would have become the catalyst Julian needed to start this war. Everything since then—­her arrest, the trial, the bargain she and Emmerich had struck to save themselves—­had only brought them closer to war. And now she had given Julian another machine, a better machine, more devastating than the first.

  “I can’t sit by and do nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  She inhaled a deep breath and let it out in a puff, words failing her. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand?” he asked, his voice rising. “This is treason, Petra. Plain and simple.”

  “Nothing about this is simple,” she said, meeting those cold gray eyes. The look he gave her cut her to pieces. “It’s not what you think.”

  He laughed, a hollow sound that sent chills up her spine. “What I think? God! They told me what you were, what you would try to do, and I . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Damn it, Petra, I trusted you! I vouched for you. I lied for you.” He turned away with a snarl, pacing like a caged tiger. “I thought you were better than this.”

  “I’m trying to do the right thing!” she said, taking a step forward. “Can’t you see that? There is so much more to this war, so much more to what’s going on here—­with me, with Julian, with this damned war machine—­more than I could ever make you understand. I’m trying to stop them, Braith, trying to stop this war. If that’s treason, then fine!”

  “What could you possibly hope to accomplish?” he asked. “Sabotaging the quadruped won’t stop the war. It will only get men killed. What do you think will happen when France attacks and the British are left unarmed because of your sabotage? Soldiers will die because of you. British soldiers. My friends . . .” he said, his voice cracking. “Your war machine is the only thing standing between us and the French. Don’t you see that? Why do you think the Royal Forces is so desperate to get their hands on it? Why the deadline was advanced? The French are building an army, a legion of war machines not unlike your failed automaton. Without your quadruped, we cannot hope to stand against them.”

  Petra clenched her jaw, a knot forming in her chest. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “The war . . . it’s not—­you’re wrong. Julian—­”

  “Julian? It’s always the bloody minister with you,” he said, cutting her off. “At least he understands the severity of the situation. You, on the other hand . . . I see now why they wanted you under military supervision. You’re a risk to everything—­to the war effort, to the Empire, to me—­and for what? War is coming, Petra. Nothing you do is going to change that.”

  “But you don’t understand,” she said. “If this war happens—­”

  “If this conflict does turn to war—­and I pray every day that it doesn’t—­but if the worst does happen . . . men’s lives will be at risk because of you, because of this misguided notion that you and you alone can stop a war. I won’t stand by and let you jeopardize their lives. This has to stop. You have to stop. You have to accept that this is not your fight.”

  “But it is my fight,” she said weakly. How could she make him see the truth? It burned within her—­to tell him everything—­but how could she tell him now, when he suspected her of treason and sabotage and worse?

  “This has to
end, Petra,” he said. “Now, before you do something that cannot be undone. I will not be responsible for their deaths, not because of you. Do you hear me? Do anything like this again, and I will report you. I’ll have to. Do you understand?”

  Petra met his commanding gaze, any challenge bullied into silence by the look in his eyes. He meant it, every word. “I understand.”

  He stepped away from her then, roughly kneading the center of his brow. “Damn it, Petra, I don’t want to see you hang,” he muttered, the line of his shoulders tense. “I couldn’t live with myself if . . .” He dropped his hand. “Please, just . . . don’t do anything like this again. Don’t force me into that position. I couldn’t—­I couldn’t bear it.”

  Her heart ached at the sight of him like this, the guilt of her betrayal sharp in her chest.

  And if what Braith said was true, if the French were building an army of their own war machines, what hope did she have of stopping this war? Sabotaging the quadruped would never be enough. Julian had planted the seeds of war and those seeds were now bearing fruit, spawning armies of war machines to carry out his deception. A battle between mechanical armies would be all the technological spark he needed to fuel this war, to burn the modern world to ash and build anew, securing a position of power out of the chaos and industrial advancements of war.

  How had she failed so utterly?

  This war would happen no matter what she tried to do.

  Panic climbed up her throat as she stared at the torn and crumpled notes at her feet. How had she failed to see the truth right in front of her? Sabotaging the quadruped wouldn’t solve her problems; it would only make things worse. But she could not stop what had been set in motion. She could not take back what she had done.

  The quadruped prototype would fail, and when her engineering team uncovered her sabotage, she would pay for her hubris, for thinking she could stop this war on her own. She would be charged a traitor, and Braith would discover just how right the Guild had been about her.

  Was that the justice she deserved? For putting lives at risk?

  She glanced up to find Braith studying her, his gaze filled with some inner torment. She deserved his anger, his resentment. And maybe she deserved to stand trial before the Guild for crimes of sabotage. She certainly didn’t deserve his loyalty, or his trust.

  But perhaps she could come to earn it.

  If there was a way to make this right . . . If she could find a way to settle the war before it began, before her mistakes manifested into outright sabotage . . . She had to try, didn’t she?

  Braith was right: delaying the quadruped was not going to stop the war. She had stupidly focused all her efforts on the idea that slowing the production of the war machine would somehow change the course of a conflict that had been brewing for decades, long before she had become involved with the Guild, before Emmerich and the automaton, before she had become the catalyst to Julian’s schemes. If she was going to stop this war, she had to root out the direct cause—­Julian Goss. If she could find a way to expose his hand in the conflict, reveal the conspiracy that had been building for far longer than she had been involved, perhaps she could convince the Royal Forces of the folly of this war and put an end to it before it ever began.

  Not that she expected it to be easy.

  Emmerich had told her as much before, the first time they had devised their ridiculous plan to expose the Guild conspiracy, his eyes alight with a feverish excitement, infecting her with the naïve hope that the two of them alone could root out the corruption within the Guild. How foolish they had been. Yet they had tried. Even knowing the unlikelihood of their pursuit, still, they had tried.

  “Of course it won’t be easy. Nothing worth doing ever is.”

  Petra sat on the floor of her subcity office, slowly tightening the bolts around the mech’s fuel tank—­newly repaired and no longer leaking after the damage it had taken in the match against Darrow. In just the last week, she and Rupert had reequipped the machine with freshly sharpened blades and new plating, every wire and linkage retightened and examined for even the slightest damage. Just a few final touches, and it would be done. She twisted the final bolt into place and withdrew her hands from the mech’s innards, wiping the sweat from her brow with the edge of her sleeve.

  “Finished?”

  Petra glanced up from her work to find Braith sitting astride her desk chair, his arms folded over the back.

  “Almost,” she said distractedly, averting her gaze as she wiped her hands on a stained grease rag. “I just need to replace the plating.”

  She stood up and went to the toolbox to fetch her welding supplies, turning her back to him. She let out a sigh, a steady headache gnawing at her brow. Things had been uneasy between them in the last week, ever since their argument in the workshop. She couldn’t even look at him for more than half a second, waiting for the moment he decided to turn her over to the Guild for trying to sabotage production. But for whatever reason, he hadn’t yet. And it was like a constant storm brewing between them, just waiting to let loose. At any moment, it would break, and she would drown in the torrent.

  Some days she wondered if she deserved it.

  She donned her welding gloves and lowered a pair of goggles over her eyes, turning back toward the mech. She had doubts now, about what she was doing—­about what she had already done—­but there was no taking it back, no stopping it. All she could do now was try to find a way to stop the war before anyone found out.

  Sitting down in front of the mech, she fired up the portable blowlamp, and began welding the last square of metal into place, focusing on the bright flare of fire against metal. She hadn’t tried to sabotage production again, not since the argument with Braith, though it pained her to see the prototype coming together so quickly. Already, some of the engineers had begun constructing the piloting controls, and the gyroscopic sensors were scheduled to arrive with the next shipment of parts. There were still months of work ahead—­weeks of testing each system and ensuring everything worked in perfect synchronization—­but the quadruped was slowly beginning to take shape.

  She was running out of time.

  Finishing the weld on the mech’s plating, she switched the portable blowlamp off and slid the goggles off her face, reveling in the sore muscles earned from another night’s hard labor. She stretched her arms overhead with a satisfied sigh. She had missed this.

  The rattle of the dumbwaiter chute made her jump, and she slipped off her gloves, swallowing hard to smother her rapid heartbeat. Probably just Rupert again. He had left a ­couple of hours ago to finish up some last-­minute homework in the library, but said he might be back later, if she and Braith were still here when he finished.

  The dumbwaiter clattered to a halt at the bottom of the chute, and Rupert climbed out, the sight of his sandy-­blond hair and familiar smile putting Petra at ease.

  He joined her beside the mech and looked it over. “Nice work.”

  Petra wrinkled her nose. “It’s passable,” she replied, scrutinizing the irregular edges of her amateur welds. “But it’ll have to do. The fight’s tomorrow.”

  “Nervous?”

  She shook her head. “Not this time.”

  “Fletcher’s certain to put up a fight.”

  “Well, so am I.”

  She turned toward her battered little machine, broken and repaired three times over now, and fought hard not to smile. Already, her metal fighter had won her the respect of her fellow engineers, more than she ever could have dared to hope for at the beginning of the semester. She had shown them what she could do, what she could build. Now all she had to do was win the tournament and prove herself to the few who still doubted her.

  “Before I forget . . . I brought you something,” said Rupert, producing an envelope from his pocket. He held it out to her with a genteel bow. “For you, milady.”

  She snatched the enve
lope from his hand with a playful shove. “What’s this?” she asked, glancing at the writing scrawled across the outside of the thick paper: For Miss Petra Wade.

  “Just open it.”

  Arching her brow, she flipped the letter over and broke the seal—­the Guild signet imprinted in the metallic wax—­then unfolded the paper and read:

  To Miss P. Wade,

  Regarding your request to visit Hasguard Airfield under the supervision of your assigned military escort, Officer Cadet Braith Cartwright, and student engineer Rupert Larson for purposes of recreation, the Guild council has agreed to temporarily alleviate the restrictions placed upon your person, in consideration of your continued cooperation in matters concerning both the Guild and the Royal Forces.

  Providing that your cooperation continues, you are hereby permitted to travel to the Hasguard Airfield as requested, via the Chroniker City–Milford Haven ferry and by carriage to the airfield, on the date of May 27th, 1882, to return that same evening. Some limitations will remain in place while you are abroad, and upon returning to the University, you will revert to your prior restrictions. If you have any additional concerns or questions regarding your upcoming trip, please bring them to my attention.

  Sincerely yours,

  Vice-­Chancellor Hugh Lyndon

  Petra glanced up at Rupert. “What’s this for?”

  “You didn’t think I forgot, did you?” he asked, a huge grin on his face. “Your birthday is next month.”

  She blinked at him and ran the dates through her head, realizing that he was right; her eighteenth birthday was only a few weeks away. She had almost forgotten. She glanced down at the letter again. “They’re letting me go to the mainland?”

  “By special request,” said Rupert, nodding toward Braith. “Courtesy of our resident officer cadet. It wouldn’t have been possible if not for Braith.”

  She glanced away from Rupert and turned toward Braith. “You did this?”