The Tremblers

by Raquel Byrnes

  “You are wrong. I wish you could see past the obstacles right in front of us. Look at all that we have made it through despite surety we would not.” He reached up, brushed his thumb across my cheek. “Realize, Charlie the Debutante, what you survived thus far. You braved Outer City, faced off with lawmen, blew an armada from the sky, and survived the poisoned seas. How can you not believe that you can do this?”

  “I—I want to believe--” I offered, completely spent“—but there’s an army out there.”

  “They are nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  “How can you think that?” My voice cracked. “You can barely move. I am so full of terror I cannot think. Just because you will it does not make it so!”

  “You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day...” he said softly, rubbing my hand with his thumb. “You know this, Charlie.”

  “I don’t know it anymore,” I sobbed. An image of my mother’s room flashed behind my eyes. Me on a chair next to her, my feet dangling over the floor, book open on my lap as I read with conviction.

  “…nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,” Ashton continued. “Remember, Charlie, what it felt like not to know doubt.”

  I shook my head, eyes clenched. “Those words aren’t incantations, Ashton. They don’t make things better just by saying them. You have to trust the One who made those promises.”

  “These words are from you; murmured in your sleep.” Ashton moved, wincing as he did and I stilled him with a hand to his chest. He looked at me, his gaze glassy. “Somewhere, deep down, Charlie, you have some hope left.”

  “Ash,” I squeezed his hand, shaking my head as I sniffled. My heart ached, every fiber of my being crying out with overwhelming loss. Frustration boiled in my veins, breaking my voice. “I have nothing left to give.”

  “There is room for both anger and faith in the same breath.” Ashton soothed, his eyes rimmed red. “Screams of ‘why’ are better than a silent turn away.”

  I licked my lips, forcing the long forgotten words from memory. “A thousand may fall at your side…but…but it will not come near you.” I finished, wiping my cheek angrily. “They are just words, Ash.”

  “For now,” he said, his eyes swam as he drifted away.

  My gaze went to his weapon, set against the hearth; something in the turn of his hand as it rested on the stock reminded me of what my father often said.

  Battles are won with bloodshed and brilliance, my child. Always remember, the brighter the mind, the lesser the cost in lives… My father spent hours relaying to me his military stories, but it was not until he thrust the gun in my hand that I realized they were not just stories. They were preparation. Eyes on the enemy, Charlie…

  I thought about what Ashton had said aboard Berkley’s cutter. My father’s actions had made me a soldier in a war I had never known existed. He’d risked his life in defense of innocents threatened with this terrible pestilence. How dare I snivel and cower when there was something in my power to make a difference. My fingers found the chain around my neck and I pulled the pocket watch from beneath my bodice, watching the firelight glint off the polished metal. Think, Charlie. Don’t just sit and despair.

  I glanced around the room. In disrepair, the cracked paint and layers of dust told me the building was at the very least abandoned, but most likely condemned. The sparse amount of furniture and working lights all but assured the absence of an aethergraph as well. Ashton slept, his breaths even. When I tried to move, he stirred.

  “What are you planning, Charlie? Tell me.”

  “I need to speak with Lizzie.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Lizzie helped before, in the rail yard, and again in Outer City.”

  “She wanted the journal,” he said, his voice edged with bitterness. “We were a means to an end. She sent Berkley after us; she just didn’t know The Order sent him first.”

  “Lizzie knows where Collodin is. I’m sure of it. She would not have made a play for the journal otherwise.” I hugged myself, trying to gather my thoughts. “Think about it, Ash. If she didn’t know where he was, she would have waited and let us lead her to Collodin, but she didn’t. She didn’t need us for that.”

  “Fine, so she knows.” Ashton’s gaze went to the journal on the floor by the hearth. “What does it matter? We have no way of contacting her. Even if we waited and tried another mech-fly at night there is no guarantee she will see it. We can’t trust her.”

  “Ashton, we have to strike a bargain with her.”

  “No.” He tried to stand, but staggered, going down hard to his knees, his face pale as he held his palm to the dislocated shoulder. “I can rally. We’ll do this ourselves.”

  “You’ll be killed if you go out there like this.” I eased him back against the wall. “You cannot even hold a weapon.”

  “I will manage. I got us here, didn’t I?”

  “And where is ‘here’ actually?” I smoothed his hair, attempting a smile to distract.

  “We are in The Boroughs.”

  “Oh…” I stammered. “I—I have never been to the Boroughs before.”

  The Boroughs, a collection of cracked and steaming remnants of old New York counties, rivaled Outer City in unsavory characters and crime. Unlike the tradesmen and artisans who lived and worked near Manhattan, those in The Boroughs who survived the quakes cobbled together an existence by serving in the Fire Crews. They worked just outside the protection of the Tesla Dome, fighting back the ever erupting flames that ignited along the quake seams or tarring over sink holes before they crawled underneath the grid. It was choking, back-breaking work that was still preferable to toiling in the coal mines miles away.

  Those who could do neither, subsisted off of begging and thievery. As close to the edge of the dome as possible without crossing its border, The Boroughs housed the electro-rail station’s last stop before the tunnels that spanned the wasteland.

  “I am sorry, Charlie,” Ashton said softly. “I promised to keep you safe and I did not.”

  “You said I’d be fine. Two very different things, remember?”

  The dirty room seemed stuffy, small, like an attic. Peeling wallpaper made strange shadows on the floor.

  “You are the bravest, most brilliant woman I have ever encountered,” Ashton whispered.

  “No,” I argued, brushing a lock from his eyelids. “I have been a child, a frightened girl making things difficult and dangerous for you. I did not see past my own needs, my own fears. Berkley was right. I would have sacrificed hundreds just to have my father back.”

  “There is nothing wrong with the way you love, Charlie,” Ashton murmured, his lids falling closed.

  “Ashton, look at me.” I knelt next to him.

  His eyes swam, and a sheen of sweat plastered his hair to his jaw and temples. I pulled back his collar and winced. The burns from Riley’s interrogation flared bright red. Toxins from the sea worsened the wounds. Fever scorched through him.

  “All those Tremblers in the sea and in the steam works…there were so many more than we realized. It must be stopped. That is why I have to risk an alliance with Lizzie.”

  “But your father…”

  I bit back the sob in my throat. Shaking my head, I met his gaze. “I—I have to try. Before it is too late. It is what my father wants. I have to obey him this last time or all he’s been through will be for naught.”

  A low horn sounded from far away. Familiar somehow, I tilted my head. Steam carriages and the thud-thud of the electro-rail station hovered just below the din outside the window. A thought occurred to me. A tendril of hope that I clutched to my heart.

  “What?” Ashton asked.

  “If there is a way to contact Defiance, a way to work with Lizzie, I have to do it.” I stood, pacing the area, my stomach woozy as I walked to a wardrobe. A single jacket, moth-eaten and filthy, hung there. Pulling open a drawer, a musty smell wafted up as I rifled through the contents. Wool stockings, gloves
with holes in the fingers, and a blue work dress. The other drawer held more clothes. An outdated miner’s uniform and a shawl. Under the clothes, a medical kit caught my eye. I opened it, inspecting the contents. Bandages, clotting powder, packets of medical tinctures, all faded with age. I turned to Ashton. “You understand that, right?”

  “Please, just, trust me,” he breathed. He laced his fingers through mine, urging me to settle next to him. “We can do this on our own, Charlie.”

  “If you drink,” I conceded. I pulled a bottle from the medical kit and pouring a dose into the cap, I held it out.

  “Drink what?” He took the cap, wincing at the smell.

  “It’s laudanum,” I explained, hiding my other hand behind my back. “It’s a small dose. Just enough to take the edge off.”

  “Just a bit,” he said, his gaze dropping back to the medicine. “Not too much.”

  “It’s just a little.” I soothed his forehead with the back of my other hand. He felt clammy.

  “Thank you.” He swallowed the dose and handed me back the cap with his good hand. I took the moment, grabbing his arm and plunging the syringe into his bicep as I depressed the plunger. The pain medication, meant for wounded soldiers in the field, hit him immediately.

  “Whaaa—” He jerked, trying to fight back as complete shock registered on his features before he slumped to the floor. His hand flopped out at me, grasping. “No, Charlie…”

  “Shh.” I stroked his cheek as his body relaxed into unconsciousness. Smoothing the frown lines at his mouth, I felt for steady breath as I took in the bruises and cuts to his arms and neck. “Sleep for me.” I bit back tears, feeling foolish.

  Before all of this, in my privileged haven, I romanticized what it would mean to strive and strain for something with meaning. I had pictured an adventure, exciting like my father’s stories, as if nobility and honor could be found on safari, hiding under a bush. But I realized now, as I looked at Ashton’s broken body, the guilt of his perceived failings still etched under his tired eyes, that passion of purpose is hard and messy and frightening. It has real cost. I thought of Aunt Sadie. I thought of my father, and the tears started. Immeasurable cost.

  “Stop crying,” I chastised myself, wiping at the tears on my cheeks with my sleeve. “You are a Blackburn.” The heat of anger rose in my chest over the situation and my own helplessness. I was tired of running and crying and losing at every turn. “Your father’s blood burns in your veins, Charlotte. Your heart beats for battle. Act like it.”

  Turning, I picked up the tarp, covering Ashton before getting to my feet, and standing on unsteady legs. This might be harder than I anticipated. Panting the dizziness away, I tasted blood and felt along the side of my mouth with my tongue. A ragged gash spanned the inside of my cheek. Jaw aching, I was grinding my teeth again. I steadied my thoughts.

  My father moved with conviction. He acted without hesitation.

  I wiped sweaty hands on my clothes, and searched the room. Digging in a crates and finding only rusted cookware, I fought rising dejection. Another box held cracked and brittle gas masks and air canisters too old to be trusted. “Assess your supplies,” I muttered, eyeing the wardrobe as I recalled my father’s voice.

  I wandered the room in the wan light, running my fingertips along the dusty mantel and over the grimy, cracked mirror, stopping to peer on my tip-toes between the boards blocking the window. The hazy sky, puffing stacks atop factory buildings, and pronounced crackle of the Tesla Dome told me where I was. On the road below, large chasms hastily boarded over with scrap wood signaled the poor, working tenement streets.

  “Scout your location.” I sighed, turning back to face Ashton.

  Grabbing the blue worker dress, I opened the door to the wardrobe, undressing behind it and donning the serving attire as quickly as possible. Finished, I walked to the fireplace, glancing at the cracked mirror as I wrestled my hair into the requisite bun at my nape. Startled at my appearance, I paused. Dark circles shadowed my eyes and bruising discolored my temple. I stopped, staring down at my hands. They trembled.

  How long had it been since either of us had eaten? A rattling shiver tore through me and I grabbed the shawl, throwing it over my hunched shoulders. “Know your assets,” I whispered.

  I leaned over Ashton, the flames from the hearth cast flickering light across his arresting features. I brushed the pads of my fingers over his brow. He would understand. This was the right course. Slipping his revolver into my boot, I stood, taking in a breath to steel my nerves.

  “Do what you must.”

  26

  Lord Rothfair blinked for several seconds before words would come to mind.

  Verne stood motionless in the doorway of the parlor, his hat in his freakishly long fingers.

  “Just…disappeared?” Rothfair repeated. “How is that possible?”

  “Janus told the truth, it seems,” Verne answered. “I’ve returned from speaking to my contacts and his account of the events in Outer City appears accurate. This Ashton Wells, the man the machinist made the foil wings for, blew three Union ships to smithereens and fled with the girl.”

  “Did they pilfer some sort of warship during the fracas?” Rothfair balled his hands at his hips. “I mean, really!”

  “No, it was a supply cutter,” Verne gestured toward the flower arrangement on a mantel over the fireplace. “The ship had vases and the like. The captain was a regular in Port Rodale, elderly fellow with no military training before or after The Great Calamity that I know of. It looks as if he just happened to be on the ship when Mr. Wells and your girl climbed aboard, I suspect.”

  “You’re saying a single man and a girl barely of age, kidnapped an old man for his ship, and then took on three Aero Squad ships in battle…and won?”

  “And disappeared.”

  “Into the sea?”

  “No, just into thin air.” Verne shrugged. “They kept disappearing from the sky and then reappearing out of the darkness only to launch what was described by those present as ‘a rain of fire like none other,’ is what they said.”

  “Is that so?” Rothfair crossed his arms, the fingers of his right hand worrying the tip of his moustache. “Anything else?”

  “Before Outer City nearly went down, a lady was seen shooting a revolver, of all things, into a crowd, running with Mr. Wells from lawmen, and…” Verne said as he put his hand up. “This is purely rumor I’m sure, but she leapt from a dangling prison, from which she escaped, by dropping onto a passing airship below.”

  “Well, that can’t be right,” Rothfair snorted. “Charlotte Blackburn could barely tolerate society without breaking into hives, let alone survive Outer City. She hid behind potted plants in my ballroom! Are you sure this woman with Ashton was not some sort of fellow member of The Order?”

  Verne sighed, pulling a rolled piece of aethergraph paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Here is a sketch one of the witnesses gave the Union Security Soldiers. He is a lawman up there and said she attacked him with a lightning stick for no reason.”

  Rothfair pulled a monocle from the pocket of his vest, maneuvered the secondary lens into place over the first, and adjusted the focus knobs.

  He stared at raven hair in wild disarray, piercing eyes, and the defiant jut to her chin that called to mind her father. He eyed the image for some time, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Blackburn’s daughter, indeed.”

  “Mind you, this witness was a trained interrogator and she took him out with one swipe,” Verne said.

  Rothfair looked up at the almost impressed tone to his voice. “You like her.”

  “I like to know when I’m wrong about someone,” Verne murmured with a shrug. “The soldiers who broke into her home and took the colonel said he gave her something.”

  “Yes, and they also said she leapt from the building and flew over their heads.”

  “Well, that seems like not such an outrageous thing given what she’s done since.”

&
nbsp; “Perhaps she is not running scared, but on a mission after all,” Rothfair mused. “She never returned home or contacted friends. She fled to Outer City instead with this Ashton Wells. A man whom The Order claims has gone rogue. Why there? Were they meeting someone?”

  “You think she was looking for someone specific?” Verne bit at his inner cheek. “A contact of her father’s?”

  “I think it is possible Colonel Blackburn betrayed The Order and aligned himself with Defiance some time ago. It would explain a lot of his actions of late. And if that is true, it is not a terrible leap to believe he sent her to meet with them.”

  “Miss Blackburn is secretly a part of Defiance?” Verne narrowed his gaze and gave a slight nod. “Perhaps.”

  Rothfair closed his eyes, imagining a few nights ago. “I saw her face at the ball when we caught that sympathizer delivering messages for Defiance. Later, I heard of whispers among the staff of her secretly speaking with that very servant minutes before the girl disappeared. I believed at first Miss Blackburn was simply misplacing womanly sympathies, but now…”

  “Is it possible the note was meant for her and she has been with the group for some time?” Verne gripped his hat, his face lighting up. “What a naughty lady, Miss Blackburn.”

  “If she is with them, then her father may have told her what he suspected.” Rothfair swallowed hard. “Do you think what he gave her is proof I’ve been framing Defiance for the factory explosions?” Countless moments flashed in Rothfair’s mind. Scenes he’d dismissed earlier now made sense.

  Charlotte’s opera glasses whirring, her unwavering stare over her fan as a guest acted as if he’d been shot with a…

  Rothfair steadied himself against the back of the upholstered chair near the fireplace. Had he underestimated a foe so completely as to not even know they were in his midst?

  “Blackburn was a scientist, not an investigator,” Verne said, pulling Rothfair back. “More likely, he discovered something about why you were blowing up your own properties.”

  “That cannot get out,” Rothfair said a little too loudly. He cleared his throat. “People would not understand. They would panic.”