by Cam Baity
Copyright © 2016 by Cam Baity and Benny Zelkowicz
Cover design by Marci Senders
Cover illustration © 2016 by Michael Heath
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
ISBN 978-1-4231-9038-7
Map illustration by Kayley LeFaiver
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: The Spark
Part I
Chapter 1: Wanted
Chapter 2: Downpour
Chapter 3: Rusting Rites
Chapter 4: Raw
Chapter 5: Focus
Chapter 6: Under the Surface
Chapter 7: Glimmers
Chapter 8: Dead of Night
Part II
Chapter 9: New Light
Chapter 10: Numb
Chapter 11: Resistance
Chapter 12: Jaws of Death
Chapter 13: Reformation
Chapter 14: Blood Rush
Chapter 15: The Way Down
Chapter 16: Done For
Chapter 17: His Splendor
Chapter 18: Off the Mark
Part III
Chapter 19: Lost Souls
Chapter 20: Full Throttle
Chapter 21: Sunk
Chapter 22: Cast Off
Chapter 23: Missing Pieces
Chapter 24: Adrift
Chapter 25: Beginnings without End
Chapter 26: Raising Voices
Chapter 27: Hammered
Chapter 28: One
Chapter 29: Rhom
Chapter 30: Farewell
Chapter 31: Darkness Made Flesh
Part IV
Chapter 32: Picking Up the Pieces
Chapter 33: United
Chapter 34: The Broken
Chapter 35: Charge
Chapter 36: Conquering Rust
Chapter 37: Driven
Chapter 38: Surrounded by Wings
Chapter 39: Surprise
Chapter 40: End of the Road
Chapter 41: Aglow
Chapter 42: Payback
Chapter 43: Loaii
Chapter 44: Promises
Chapter 45: Finished
Glossary
About the Authors
For Minky and Binky
—CB
For my parents, who have always blazed the way
—BZ
In the time before, nothing was all.
It stretched vast and fathomless, a den of infinity.
Alone in the void dreamed Makina. Everseer was She, Divine Dynamo brooding in the dark of absence. Yet lo—within the Forge of Her mind flickered a spark of life. The first light of the Way.
The Everseer looked upon this nothingness and was not content. Thus She spake, calling into the void the first word.
“BE.”
And Makina set about Her work.
She laid out Her infinite and infallible plan as a foundation for all things, seen and unseen, known and unknown. Across this, She stretched the Expanse, which was the course of all-time. And to drive existence forward, Makina crafted the gears of fate. Then smiled the Great Engineer upon this, Her sacred machine.
Yet Her creation had no function. And She was not content.
So Makina did take of Her own flesh, tearing out a piece of Her heart of Ore. And from this did She form Mehk, from its grandest peak to its lowest crevasse. And from the rent in Her body poured forth Her lifeblood, glistening silver flux, and it pooled upon the world to become the mighty seas.
Lo, the Everseer did weep, for She loved Her creation.
And Her tears were embers, scattering across the world. From Her mouth a sweet breath did blow, stoking the embers with life. And from the living Ore did sprout the first mehkans, embers bright, and they went forth to see Her work.
Thus, with a spark of life, Her sacred machine engaged.
Praise be to Makina, Divine Dynamo, beloved Mother of Ore.
Accord I: Edicts 01–09
Hieromylous T.R. Pynch was snoring on the patchwork floor, puddled like a deflated tire, when the building around him shifted with a weary groan. He snorted awake and found himself surrounded by gray, decomposing walls. It took him a groggy moment to remember where he was.
Right. He and the Marquis were in Sen Ta’rine. Imprisoned.
Mr. Pynch scratched at his bushel of spiny hair, which matched the scraggly mess of his muttonchops and brows. The fat nozzle in the middle of his lumpy face rotated like the cylinder of a revolver, and his mouth crumpled into a scowl.
The lanky Marquis was still bustling about on his telescoping limbs, just as he had been when Mr. Pynch passed out. The Marquis scrubbed with a tattered hanky at the array of lenses wreathing his signal lamp head and plucked at his metal-threaded tuxedo. Damnable busybody lumilows barely ever slept, Mr. Pynch noted. No wonder they were so uptight.
A wash of early light bled through the tattered skin of the walls, exposing its shadowy, bat-wing scaffolding. The suns were already up? That would mean they had been confined in this blasted, dilapidated tower for nearly fourteen clicks.
“If yer gonna tromple about like that,” grumbled Mr. Pynch, “at least try and peep us out an escapement.”
The Marquis narrowed the shutters on his opticle eye and flared back an illuminated message: Flick-flick-flash.
“Don’t you go scapegoatin’ me, ya puffed up muteling!” Mr. Pynch blustered. “I forewarned ya. ‘Best lay low after our little transaction with the bleeders,’ I said. And what do you do? Jaunt over to the nearest Sliverytik parlor, lose our hard-won gauge in a single toss, and then make a grandiose spectacle of it!” Mr. Pynch rose and puffed up his belly, causing his spines to nudge out from the flaps of his overcoat. “If it wasn’t for you, we never would have gotten ambushed and incarcified.”
The Marquis pointed at Mr. Pynch with a tainted white glove and blasted back a glaring argument.
“Oh, puddlemudge!” Mr. Pynch retorted. “I didn’t encourage you one smidgeon!”
Flickery-flash. The opticle blasted an even brighter message.
“Well, if I did, it was just the viscollia talking!”
Blinkety-flash-flash!
“Look now, I’ve had just about enough o’ yer—”
FLASHY-FLASH!
“ME? You be the one that’s yelling!”
The partners threw up their hands and stalked away from each other. Mr. Pynch grumbled to himself, irritated.
He thought back to their abduction. At first, he had assumed it was the Foundry, but then his nozzle had detected the distinctive musk of their captors. There was no doubt—they were in the custody of mehkies.
But who? And why?
All they could tell was that they were still somewhere in the slums of the Heap. Mr. Pynch and the Marquis had been blindfolded in transit, but left alone in their cell, they had peeled up the shriveled skin of a wall to find themselves looking down on the city, teetering at the top of a skeletal sendrite skyscraper.
Only two ways out—a barricaded door or a long drop down.
A click came from the nearby hatch, then a dull grind like an axe being sharpened as the door swung open.
Five figures entered. The first was a volmerid, his tremendously oversized right arm barely fitting through the door. Even though they knew his imposing bulk was mostly shaggy brown steel wool, Mr. Pynch and the Marquis couldn’t help
but backpedal. His fist of a face was hard and curled, glaring out from behind his matted coat. Like most simpleminded volmerids, this one was probably nothing more than a grunt and a thug. They would find no ally in him.
Spilling in behind the vol was a trio of identical shapes that melted into the shadows like liquid jets of black. Aios. Mr. Pynch didn’t mind untrustworthy types—in fact, they made up the majority of his clientele—but the aios’ inscrutability and cultish secrecy was something else altogether. Glimpsing an aio’s cloaklike form or its gnarls of stabby limbs usually meant someone had hired the spook to kill you. Three aios, well, that was an unheard of kind of bad.
Then Mr. Pynch saw the last figure enter the room and breathed a hearty sigh of relief. “Jubilations and salutations,” he beamed. “Immoderately pleased to make yer acquaintance.”
The newcomer glided across the floor, the supple belt of her lower half humming through a glinting framework of rollers. Her body was draped in flexible metal bands that wound through her sprocketed figure like a helical gown. A pair of keen coppery eyes perched high on the long mask of her face.
The thiaphysi were regarded for their intellect and eloquence, but Mr. Pynch’s sudden enthusiasm was due to their reputation for sentimentality (and gullibility). As the ribbons of her body whirled through her rollers, the mehkan’s slender fingers danced across the belts, emitting a singsong voice from her hands.
“I apologize for your undignified treatment,” the thiaphysi said, “but immediate action was required, and secrecy is our priority. We know what you have done.”
“Pardon?” Mr. Pynch’s mouth was suddenly dry. The Marquis’s shutters fluttered anxiously.
“The conflict in the Vo-Pykarons,” she continued. “The part you two played in hindering the capture of liodim.”
Mr. Pynch’s nozzle ticked, trying to sniff out a mood on the thiaphysi. He detected the bitter tang of irritation. Was she angry about the Vo-Pyks? Perhaps these mehkies were bleeder collaborators, planning on selling him and the Marquis out.
“We had no intention of tampering with the Foundry’s operations. Me associate and I endeavored to avoid engaging—”
“It was a noble deed,” she interrupted, the words emanating from her hands. “You have our deepest gratitude.”
“—until we could strategize the most effective means of disrupting the cull,” continued Mr. Pynch without missing a beat. “If there be one thing we cannot abide, it be injustice. We felt the urgent need to rescue the liodim posthaste.”
Blinkety-blink-flash, the Marquis strobed with excitement.
The thiaphysi glanced at the Marquis but gave no indication that she understood. Prompted by his partner’s urgent words, Mr. Pynch looked again at the thiaphysi and her cohorts and gasped as he saw the familiar symbol adorning their chests.
Well, rust take him! How could he have missed that?
“To be downright frankly with you,” Mr. Pynch confessed with a grimy golden smile, “we had little choice in the matter. It felt to be our duty. Our function, you might say.”
Their captors exchanged a brief look.
“You are Waybound?” she asked, clutching a delicate fist over her blood-red dynamo.
“Praise the gears!” Mr. Pynch proclaimed. The Marquis emitted a burst of joyous light. “Here we were, cogitating that we were the only pilgrims left in the Lateral Provinces still adhering to the edicts. Well, that be that. I suppose we’ll be on our way then. Gettin’ on with doing Her good work.”
“Of course,” came the thyaphysi’s gestured words. “Perhaps you intend to bring Her message back to the Gauge Pit?”
The Marquis’s opticle faded. The pungent stab of pure loathing curdled in Mr. Pynch’s nozzle.
“Now it not be…” he began, then stopped to collect his racing thoughts. “What precisely did you hear? The facts be obscure, but I most suredly assure you, they do exonerate us.”
“Silence,” snarled the volmerid, shaking his matted mane of steel wool. He retracted the chain-link digits of his grotesquely swollen fist with a snap.
Mr. Pynch and the Marquis saw a ripple of movement in the corner. They turned to face the aios—the ghastly mehkies were closer, now within striking distance, frozen like statues of black ice. They hadn’t made a sound.
“We know all about you,” the thiaphysi said, the movements of her speaking hands choppy across her spiraling ribbons. “Informants and parasites. You vowed to protect the children, then betrayed them.” Her fingers were an agitated blur.
Unconsciously, Mr. Pynch’s hands fluttered to the rough stitches that Phoebe had made on his green silk necktie. “The bleeders?” he asked, confused. “What they be to you?”
“That is not your concern,” she stated harshly. “You are prisoners. Fugitives of the Foundry for your actions in the Vo-Pykarons, reviled by us for deceiving the children.” She lowered her singsong voice. “Your embers are forfeit.”
Mr. Pynch braced himself, tensing his legs to evade the attack he knew must be coming. The Marquis tightened his grip on his dingy umbrella.
“And yet…” she said, the silken belts slowing through her hands. “There is another way. Makina shapes a path even for those who are lost. You must make amends.”
“What way?” queried Mr. Pynch. “What you be wanting?”
“Not what we want. What She wants. We will spare you. In exchange, you will serve Her.”
Flicker-flash-blink.
Mr. Pynch agreed with the Marquis. This did not bode well.
“Aid us in our strike against the Foundry.” The thiaphysi leaned in very close, and her potent hate made Mr. Pynch want to cap his nozzle. “Or we, the Covenant, will send you to meet Her beyond the Shroud.”
James Goodwin adjusted his broad frame in the absurdly ornate armchair to keep its stony cushion from cutting off his circulation. It never failed to amaze him how gaudy and outmoded these people’s taste was, with none of the Foundry’s modern, streamlined elegance. Through a circular window trimmed with brocaded curtains, he saw ponderous clouds enveloping the embassy, while the yellow and indigo flag of Trelaine snapped fiercely in the winds from the bay.
Normally, it was good to return to Albright City. Not today.
He had been alone in this oppressive office for an hour, taking care not to glance at the Omnicams, lest it convey impatience. Premier Lavaraud was undoubtedly taking pleasure in keeping him waiting, but Goodwin would not acknowledge the insult. He sat inert, gazing placidly at the patriotic busts and tedious porcelain knickknacks vainly adorning every shelf.
“Be submissive and present the offer as we instructed.”
“You will not return until he agrees to the new terms.”
The voices of the enigmatic Board in Foundry Central were like drips of poison in his mind. As part of Goodwin’s punishment, a silver bud had been grafted to his inner ear, and it was still sore where the device had been affixed. Now there was no way to evade their pestilent words.
In all his years working for the Foundry, he had only met the five representatives, or directors, as they were known. Of course, their faces had changed on occasion as one was demoted or replaced, but their purpose was always the same: to speak for the Board. No one knew a thing about the Foundry’s true masters—not their number, their identities, or their ultimate intentions. Until receiving this detestable earpiece, Goodwin had never even heard their voices. Now he was never free of them. It was just one of many humiliations he had suffered in the long hours since the fall of the Citadel.
“Address him at all times as ‘Your Excellency.’”
“Assume all responsibility.”
One line was repeated over and over, as if he could forget:
“We are listening.”
At last, Lavaraud entered, brushing past Goodwin without a word of greeting. He was dressed in a long, traditional Trelainian topcoat of dark blue silk, secured by ivory fastenings. Though the Premier was a small man, he was whip lean and imposing with a sepulchr
al face capped in a helmet of salt-and-pepper hair. Lavaraud’s eyes were dark, hooded by heavy lids that seemed to blink in slow motion.
“Your Excellency,” Goodwin intoned, forcing a kindly smile. “You have my thanks for meeting on such short notice.”
“I detest your city,” Lavaraud stated, his heavily accented voice hard and inexpressive, as he sat behind a vast mahogany desk. “I arrive in ungodly heat and now this?” He gestured to the overcast sky outside. “I detest all things…unpredictable.”
“Yet we are honored by your presence,” Goodwin replied.
“Your Excellency,” instructed a voice in Goodwin’s earpiece.
“Your Excellency,” he added.
“Praise him for allowing diplomatic relations to resume.”
“Allow me to express our gratitude that Trelaine has chosen to ally with Meridian, Your Excellency. We are fortunate to have such a committed partner for peace. Needless to say, the day your nation leaves the Quorum will be a momentous occasion.”
“Let us be clear,” the Premier declared. “You are buying our conditional loyalty, and we have accepted. Conditionally. A bribe, nothing more. Now come to the point. You are not here to merely ooze flattery.”
Goodwin ran a hand through his snow-white hair, brushing his tender ear where the bud was implanted. “Of course, Your Excellency. As you recall, your shipment of metal substrates, ultra-high-tensile ingots, beams, and components was to arrive in full by the week’s end. Unfortunately, we are experiencing a series of production setbacks that has led to key raw materials being contaminated, thus—”
“You take me for a fool?” bellowed Lavaraud as he sprang to his feet. “You would toy with Trelaine at such a time? How dare you try and scheme your way out of this!”
“Remain contrite.”
“Mollify him. This is the crucial moment.”
“Your Excellency,” pleaded Goodwin, clutching his hands together. “I share your frustration. Which is precisely why I have come to you with a more favorable offer.”
“He will acquiesce. Trelaine’s economy needs this.”
“Favorable for whom?” seethed Lavaraud.
“Trelaine, of course,” Goodwin softly explained. “I believe you will be quite pleased with the generous compensation. All we ask is your continued patience and understanding.”