Karigan had just enough energy left to rise on her elbow and stick her tongue out at him. Then she fell back into her nest, the endless blackness reclaiming her.
Luke, in his gentlemanly attire, rode just ahead of the mules on the professor’s gray gelding, Gallant. By sheer luck, Luke had been in the city visiting his family when the Inspectors raided the professor’s house. The mill fire, with its explosive component and the pandemonium that followed, had drawn most of the Inspectors away, allowing the servants to disperse, including Luke’s loyal stableboys who delivered Raven and Gallant to him.
Cade had known that, like Mirriam, Luke had long been entrusted with some knowledge of the professor’s secrets. After all, it was Luke who drove the professor’s carriage to most of those parties that were actually opportunities for clandestine meetings. If Luke had not been of like mind in regard to the empire, the professor would never have kept him in his employ. It was natural then that Cade bring Luke into his plan. Cade had intended to play the part of Stanton Mayforte himself, but the others had protested that he might be too recognizable as the professor’s protégé. Besides, Luke had said, he knew something about the wine business after having worked at a winery—in the stables of the winery, yes, but, he claimed, one picked up a thing or two just being around it.
In the good suit, acquired from a member of their group who was a tailor, and with hair and sidewhiskers neatly trimmed, Luke was transformed into the business-minded vintner on his way to the Capital in an attempt to win favor with the Adherents in the emperor’s inner circle, and thus elevate his position in the world. One would not guess he was, in reality, a stablehand. His disguise would be tested very soon as they headed south and out of the city.
Cade guided the mules, Ted and Ned, through the streets, behind him the Old City with Silk’s excavation at its summit. He would not look back. He would not second guess the rebellion he, Jax, and the others were setting in motion. The rebellion would succeed or it would not. The only affair he had settled prior to his departure was to leave enough of his scanty savings with Widow Hettle to cover the mules and wagon. All that mattered now was helping Karigan with whatever she needed to do, and rescuing Arhys. If anyone figured out who that child was, she’d be slain.
• • •
They halted at the south gate of Mill City where Inspectors, with their ever-present mechanical companions, checked the papers and cargo of those entering and leaving the city. Many of the travelers drove freight wagons carrying textiles, or bales of cotton and wool. There were plenty of other goods as well, brought from various parts of the empire.
The Great Harbor, which served the Capital, was the major port for shipping. From there, goods could be moved via river, transportation canal, or wagon. Cade had considered using the canal, but then they’d have to interact more with the authorities to load and unload canal boats, go through locks, declare cargo, and generally face additional scrutiny. It was an unsafe option considering that the false bottom of the wagon concealed weapons and Karigan’s Green Rider garb.
The average citizens of the empire were not encouraged to travel, so there were few non-commercial travelers waiting in line, which kept things moving at the checkpoint. When it was Luke’s turn, he smiled broadly at the Inspectors.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said with a tip of his hat.
“Papers.” The Inspector held out his hand without even an attempt at pleasantries.
“Of course.” Luke produced a leather wallet from an inner pocket of his coat and tugged out the papers for Stanton Mayforte, vintner, Harley Dace, servant, and Tam Ryder, servant.
One Inspector gazed at the papers, while a second and his Enforcer approached the wagon to give it a close look. Cade slouched on the bench, hoping his bruised, unshaven face and work clothes served as a good enough disguise. He really hoped that Karigan remained asleep and quiet in the back.
“Where are you going and what is your business?” asked the first Inspector.
“My business should be quite obvious. I am a vintner, and I am taking samples to Gossham so I may become fully licensed.” Luke lowered his voice confidentially. “I am seeking an audience with Webster Silk himself.”
Was Cade mistaken, or had Luke assumed a very good likeness of the professor’s personal charm? It was almost uncanny.
The Inspector, however, appeared unimpressed by Stanton Mayforte’s aspirations. Out of the corner of his eye, Cade watched the second Inspector tapping the wine casks, each carefully branded with “Mayforte.” The wine had actually come from a tavernkeeper who was one of their own, and the casks re-branded. The Enforcer rose up, extending on its legs to full height, to scan the casks with its eye.
“Where is this other servant of yours?” the first Inspector asked.
“You mean Tam?” Luke glanced over his shoulder. “He got into some of the samples today. He is sleeping it off in the back of the wagon.”
“I see him,” the second Inspector said. “He’s back here. Dead drunk, I’d say.”
“I’m not telling you your business, but he sounds like a poor servant to me,” the first Inspector told Luke. “I’m surprised you’d take one so ill-disciplined with you on so important a trip.”
Luke chuckled. “Not to worry. I’ll skin his hide when he wakes up, though I expect the after-effects of the wine may be its own punishment.”
The Inspector actually cracked a smile.
“I don’t suppose you gentlemen get any fine wine here at your posting,” Luke said. “Harley, grab a cask for our friends here.”
Cade shouldered a cask he’d placed by his feet just for this purpose, and climbed off the wagon. Bribes were common enough, and the Inspectors made no protest. Cade set the cask down on the road and returned to his place on the wagon. The first Inspector handed the papers back to Luke and waved them through the gate. Cade snapped the reins, and Ned and Ted came once more to life and plodded forward. When they were through the gate, Cade almost wilted in relief. They had overcome their first major obstacle. He tried not to think of those that lay ahead.
Nor did he look over his shoulder even now, to see Mill City one last time. It was no longer home, and one way or another, he would not be returning.
• • •
“Wake up, Tam Ryder,” Cade said, shaking Karigan’s shoulder. She slept as one dead, and it was unnerving. He shook her again. This time she mumbled something at him and pulled the blanket over her head.
They were stopped at an inn along the East-West Highway. They’d only traveled for a few hours, since they had started late in the day. Cade had already parked the wagon beside those belonging to other travelers in the secure, walled courtyard of the inn. It would be guarded through the night. If the innkeeper could not ensure the security of his guests’ goods, he would lose custom fast, especially among the long-haulers who would spread word to their brethren. Even worse, the empire would expel him from his position and keep him from any other with like responsibility. The roadside inns were operated by the empire, which governed the management of each one. The empire did not like to lose money.
Cade had also stabled the mules and horses while Luke negotiated for rooms. There had been some question of exactly what they were going to do with Karigan, since servants generally shared bunkhouses with other servants. It was unlikely her disguise would pass for an entire night in a bunkhouse full of men.
Cade watched Luke step into the courtyard and saunter between wagons with his hat cocked at a jaunty angle, his stylish walking cane swinging at his side. He was certainly playing his role to the hilt.
When he reached their wagons, he peered down at Karigan. “Can’t wake up our Tam?”
“Not yet. What of our arrangements?”
“Well, I have a very nicely appointed room in the inn proper—feather bed, plumbing, all the luxuries. You and Tam will retire to bunkhouse three.”
&nb
sp; “But—” Cade began.
“Not to worry. Once I informed the manager of Tam’s fever, he booked the bunkhouse for just you two. He’d rather avoid allowing the contagion to spread to the servants of other guests. I gather it does not make for good advertising for guests to come down sick at one’s inn. Also, he accepted an additional fee, of course, for the inconvenience.”
“Additional fee? How much?”
“Not to worry, dear fellow.” Luke patted Cade’s shoulder. Then whispered, “We are well off. The professor kept an emergency stash of funds behind a wall board in the stable. I snuck back for it.”
Cade shook his head in disbelief—not at the idea of the hidden funds, but at the fact that, to retrieve them, Luke had managed to sneak behind the backs of the Inspectors keeping watch on the house.
“Bunkhouse three,” Luke reminded him. “There’ll be food waiting for you. I shall see you in the morning.”
Still incredulous, Cade watched after Luke, fully immersed in his role, casually strolling between wagons back toward the inn. He sighed and then turned back to the problem at hand.
“Tam, Tam Ryder.” He shook Karigan once more.
She stared at him through squinted eyes. “You’ve only got one face and a half this time,” she said.
“Is that an improvement?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We are stopped for the night, and if you don’t want me to carry you to our lodging, you need to—”
“No, no carrying.” She pushed herself up and paused for a moment with eyes closed. She did allow him to help her off the wagon. She swayed and leaned against it.
“Your cap,” Cade said. “You need to fix it.”
She patted her head, turned the cap around, and stuffed her braid back beneath it. Cade grabbed a duffle and slung it over his shoulder.
“Can you walk?”
It turned out she needed assistance, so he held on to her arm as she staggered beside him. Others on the inn’s grounds gave them a wide berth—Luke’s story about his fevered servant must have circulated to the other guests. It was a clever ploy, really. No one would want to get too close to them and ask questions.
When they reached the bunkhouse, a pair of lamps were already lit for them, and a couple bowls of soup and a hard-crusted loaf of bread sat atop the long table. There were six bunks in the little rough-hewn building. Not luxurious by any means, but adequate.
“Are you hungry?” Cade asked.
Karigan frowned. “Are you kidding? Where’s the privy?”
He steered her toward the door that led to the closetlike room, and she gained momentum as she went, as though the floor were tilted toward it.
“Do you need—?” Cade began, but she was through the door in an instant, and he heard the sound of retching.
He waited anxiously until the door opened and she stood there wiping her mouth with her sleeve. He stepped forward to help her.
“I don’t need help,” she said, but she was sliding to the floor.
“Don’t worry. I won’t carry you.” And he proceeded to do just that, placing her on the closest bunk. She seemed too tired to argue.
“Why did the professor do this to me?” she asked plaintively.
Cade poured water into a cup from a pitcher that sat on a nightstand next to the bunk. He sat beside her and tried to get her to drink. When she pushed it away, he said, “The professor drugged you because you are trouble. Now try some water before you get more sick from the lack of it. It’ll help dilute the morphia.” He did not know if it was true, but his reasoning persuaded her. When she finished that cup, she asked for another.
He could see in her eyes how much she disliked being in a state that required the help of others. He remembered having overheard Mirriam tell the professor what a difficult patient “Miss Goodgrave” was after Karigan had first arrived. He also remembered his first meeting with Karigan on the dark streets of Mill City when he’d helped her fight off the assailants in the alley and then brought her to the professor’s house. He’d been astonished by the amount of fight in her then, and even more so after he’d learned the extent of her injuries.
Even so, it had still taken him a long time to accept what she, a mere female, was capable of. If he’d known at their first meeting, he would have been far more careful. As it was, he’d only gotten the better of her because of the chloroform he’d used to knock her out. Likewise the professor must have realized that the only way to control her was to dose her with morphia. Unfortunately, he’d used a rather large dose.
“More water?” Cade asked when she drained her second cup.
“A little.”
This time he handed her the pitcher. If it was difficult for her to accept help, he’d let her try to help herself. He grimaced at how her hands shook, the water slopping over the cup. When she thrust the pitcher back at him, he was almost splashed, too. When he looked at her, though, there was some of that old fire in her eyes and less despair.
The cup clunked on the nightstand as she set it aside. Then she flung herself at him, throwing her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping.”
With her embrace clamping his arms to his sides, and her cheek pressed against his chest, he didn’t quite know what to do or what to say. Here he had just decided that she was averse to help, and now she was thanking him for it? Maybe it was the morphia confusing her.
“For helping?” he asked.
She pushed away back into her pillow. “For—for not being like the professor. For helping me go after Lhean.”
Then Cade understood, and he nodded to himself. That was the sort of problem for which she could accept help, because it was coming to the aid of someone else. The rest, he thought, was the same. She would not thank him for helping her. He wondered if the people who knew her in her own time had to often grapple with her stubborn nature.
He smiled at the thought that he might be able to ask them himself.
SILK
Ezra Stirling Silk turned up the light of the lamp beside his armchair and enlarged the image he was gazing at with a magnifying glass. Was it his imagination, or were Miss Goodgrave’s features beginning to define themselves? With his poor sight, it was difficult to say, but her head looked less transparent, and he could almost make out her features. Had something happened with the image trapping process that her face was only now quickening?
The rest of the picture remained as before, her body well defined in its dress, the backdrop, too. He gazed hard at her shoulder, but the ghostly hand resting on it seemed to have faded into almost nothing.
He turned the lamp down to lowest glow which left his sitting room dark. He removed his specs and rubbed his eyes. Night time was so much easier on them. Day time and intense light left them aching.
It was relatively quiet in the cabin of this, his private packet boat, on the Imperial Canal. He heard the chug up ahead with its pulsing steam engines and the rhythmic plash of its paddle wheels. Attached directly behind the chug was a packet boat for servants and personnel. Next in line was his packet, which housed a couple of his body servants, with a cabin set aside for the child and her governess in the forward section. In the middle, between his quarters and those of the servants, lay the kitchen and dining room.
It was an extraordinary luxury having his own private packet boat. Public boats squeezed up to a hundred ordinary citizens per load, and they were nowhere as graciously outfitted with mahogany and teak and gleaming brass embellishments. Velvet drapes crumpled from ceiling to floor over portholes, rich carpeting underfoot. The furnishings, art, and details were as fine as any room in his house in Gossham, just on a smaller scale.
The chug did not pull just two packets, however, but a third, as well, a freight barge coupled to the stern of his own boat. The barge carried his horses and carriage, luggage, the exhibits he’d
displayed at his dinner party, various pieces of equipment, and most importantly, a circus wagon garishly painted with lions. It contained the Eletian.
Canal travel was very easy going, and Silk did not even feel the motion of his boat gliding through the mirror-still water. Much more soothing than by carriage, even on the empire’s well-maintained roads. That was not to say he felt nothing, did not sense the water beneath the boat’s hull, not so very far from his feet. Only some layers of wood and carpet separated them. The closer they drew to Gossham, the stronger the sensation would grow, like a tingling beneath his feet. A feather touch on his flesh. Before the accident that had injured his eyes, he had never sensed the etherea, even in the heart of Gossham, but ever since, he could. Even this far out. Most of the etherea remained locked up in Gossham, less so in the outer regions of the Capital. A small amount leaked out so he felt it even here. He wondered if the Eletian could, too.
They had gotten nothing out of the Eletian, nothing about how he’d come to be here, or why. He ate little of the food they gave him and looked unwell. Silk hoped the creature stayed alive long enough to be presented to the emperor. He’d hated to leave his drilling project in the Old City when it was making such good progress, but he didn’t want the Eletian to die on him before he reached Gossham. He hoped the emperor would be fully awake by the time they arrived at the palace, but Silk had not had any updates from his father stating what stage the emperor was in.
In an effort to preserve the Eletian, he’d chosen not to use more forceful means to make the creature speak. He needed his gift to be as whole as possible. Plus, the most skilled torturers were in Gossham, his father among them. Except for one. After the opposition blasted the road to the drill site, the elder Silk had assigned Mr. Starling to Mill City to interrogate suspects, and it turned out to have been a wise decision, for he was on hand to contend with the city’s latest excitement.
The shrill steam whistle broke into the meditative silence. They were heading under a bridge. Silk gazed at the gently arched ceiling until he heard the tell-tale thunk on the roof. Good, a messenger from Mill City. It was an easy jump from any canal bridge to a packet boat’s roof. He put his specs back on and waited.
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