Magpie's Song

by Allison Pang

  Molly’s mouth opens and then closes again.

  “Even if you were to sneak me into a Tithe somehow,” I continue, “we’d have to make sure the number matched up with whoever they’re expecting. And that would require cooperation with the leader of a Moon Child clan. They’re the ones who determine which one of us is given up for the Tithe.”

  I let my hair drop and shrug. “And since I rather doubt Rory is going to welcome me back into the fold and the other clans will probably try to beat the crap out of me for invading their territories, that’s going to be a bit touchy, aye?” I slump, my mind whirling with more important questions. “Forget even trying to get in . . . How am I supposed to get out?”

  Dr. Barrows frowns, but there’s something thoughtful in the lines crossing his brow. “We’ve certain contacts in BrightStone with very similar interests in this mission. They are currently working on the logistics of the gates to the Pits—namely a way to unlock them. If we can manage that, then once you are below ground, we would have a set time arranged to force the gates open long enough to let you out. Between the fact that they’re heavily guarded and the mechanism can only be accessed by airship, well . . .” He gives me a wry shrug. “We’re still working on the details of that, clearly, but we wouldn’t send you down there until we had a workable plan.”

  “Empty words are like empty pockets,” I retort with a frown. “And about as useful.”

  “Do what you like, then,” Molly says. “It makes no difference to me.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask if doing this will bring Sparrow back, but that’s not even worth voicing. How different would our lives have been if the Rot had never existed? If what I agree to today save others from a similar fate, it will be worth it. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Molly says with a smile, her teeth glinting in the firelight. She drains the last of her glass. “Now, I have a business to run, so I’ll leave you under the doctor’s care.” Her smile grows tighter. “I look forward to seeing what you can do.”

  “Oh, aye.” I sigh. “Me too.”

  Ghost and I crouch beside the fire. The doctor and Molly have left us, and the dragon has taken a perch upon the mantel of the fireplace, its golden scales fiery as it lazily puffs small clouds of steam. If a mechanical dragon can appear smug, this one certainly does, staring at us with half-lidded eyes filled with satisfaction.

  “How long have you been working with them?” I sip sweet tea from a steaming mug, marveling at the flavor as it fills my belly. Dr. Barrows has infused it with some sort of painkiller, numbing my side and making my thoughts whirl in a pleasant fashion.

  Ghost stares at the fireplace, his legs stretched out so his heels bask in the warmth. His feet are clean, but the soles are hard as horn from the looks of it. “Years,” he answers.

  I want to ask him more, but his face is expressionless as he says it. It’s a story for another time, perhaps.

  “Not sure I trust them . . . or you,” I add a moment later, giving him a sideways glance.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. Not yet. But you can trust that they want to succeed. You and I are merely tools to that end, but I’m willing to be used for the cause.” He turns to me, a half smile playing over his lips. “Besides, I don’t want us to merely succeed. I want change.”

  “Bold words,” I say. He snorts, and I lay my now empty mug on the hearth, wiggling my toes at the fire. “So, tell me something. Just how do you intend to make good on your offer to take me to Meridion? And for that matter, how did you even know I wanted to go?”

  His face flushes. “I . . . overheard you and Sparrow talking about it awhile ago.”

  “Overheard, aye?”

  “I wasn’t spying on you,” he mutters. “I was sitting up in that little overhang at Blessing Bridge a few months back when you showed up. You, Sparrow, and Penny. You didn’t notice I was there, but you seemed pretty busy, what with the red paint and all.”

  Now I laugh, but it’s tinged with memories and pain. “Caught us marking up the bridge, did you?” I push the hair from my eyes. “Poor Sparrow. Dumped that whole damn tub of paint down the side by accident. Penny was so angry, I had to pay her off with half my scrap for a week.”

  A hot rush of tears fills my eyes, my breath suddenly shaky. “You seem to have overheard a lot for someone who says he wasn’t spying on us,” I say, when I finally find my voice again.

  “Ah. Well, my name’s Ghost for a reason,” he says dryly. “Not belonging to a clan has its own issues. Having to sneak my way through three different territories requires a fair bit of stealth.”

  “Do tell,” I drawl. “So what was your real intention with finding a buyer for the dragon? Feels a bit too convenient, given everything else that’s happened.”

  “I saw what happened with the Inquestors when you ran from them after finding the architect,” he admits. “Though I didn’t actually know what was in the bag until you opened it. The offer of the buyer was genuine, though truthfully it was more of an excuse to talk to you.”

  “Talk?” I raise a brow at him.

  “Perhaps recruit is a better word.” He shrugs. “We knew we were going to need additional help from Moon Children if we were going to set our plans in motion. Initially, I’d hoped an insider like you might be able to look at uniting all the clans as part of a way to overthrow the Inquestors, but Dr. Barrows feels we need the backing of the Chancellor if we are to convince the rest of BrightStone to support us. So here we are.”

  “I’m not sure any of us could ever get the clans to stop fighting long enough to talk.” A snort escapes me. “You might as well try to insist dogs and cats keep house together.”

  “There is that. It’s why the Inquestors separate you all, you know. Keeps you focused on your own issues instead of the larger picture. At least, that’s my theory. Divide and conquer, as they say.” He turns toward me, his head cocked. “So why do you want to go to Meridion so bad?”

  “Why do any of us want anything?” I shrug. “I don’t know. To find out who I am, I guess. It sounds mad . . . like a fairy tale. But we’re half-breeds, right? Sparrow and I would talk about it all the time. What we’d do once we got to the floating city—find our real families, escape all this . . . bullshit.”

  The words are hard to say aloud, but the drugs have made me chatty and they slip out. I give him a pained smile. “Or at least, that’s what I would have told you a few hours ago. Now though . . .”

  He nudges me gently with his knee. “No, I get it. I was just curious.”

  “I don’t think you do. If what Dr. Barrows said is true—about the Rot being unleashed by them . . .” I lock gazes with him, deadly serious. “Well, I might just be inclined to bring the whole thing down.”

  “And you thought I was bold,” he mutters, surprise flickering over his face. But in the end whatever he might have said drifts into silence. For a time, the crackling of the fire is the only real sound, and after a little while longer, even that fades.

  I yawn, the medicated tea making me sleepy. “Are you staying?” I mumble the question at him, shaking my head to clear it.

  It seems to amuse him greatly, his mouth pursing. “With you, here? My, my, what will people think?”

  “Not with me, stupid,” I say, struggling to keep my eyes open. “I meant here in the brothel.”

  “Yes.” He tucks his hair beneath his cap. “Stay here and get better. We need you, Mags. You have no idea how much.”

  And then he’s gone, the door closing behind him with a click that only sounds like weeping.

  Jack Sprat’s wife grows fat

  For Jack is nimble but not so quick.

  He trips and stumbles in the dark

  And she eats all but his candlestick.

  CHAPTER 7

  I’m sitting on the floor of what I’m beginning to consider my room. It’s a dangerous thought to have because Moon Children don’t own anything. If I’m not careful I’ll start thinking
I’m an actual person. And yet, here I am, hunched over a book and pretending the squiggles make sense.

  “Mags?” Dr. Barrows taps me gently on the shoulder to bring me back from my reverie.

  Frustrated, I turn the book around so it’s upside down, but the words aren’t any clearer. “We’ve been at this for hours.”

  He turns his mild gaze to his cup of chai. “It’s been thirty-five minutes, Mags.”

  I scowl. “Well it feels like days.” My stitches itch, and I slap at them. “It’s been nearly a week as it is. When will you take these out, anyway?”

  He sips his tea and scratches something out in his moleskin notebook. “When you’ve made some progress.”

  “How can I make progress when I’m itching all the time?”

  He peers at me from behind his glasses, his golden eyes gleaming with humor or anger. I’m not sure which. I’m not sure it really matters. He doesn’t say anything, though. Just stares at me until heat rushes over my face.

  I shift my body so my back is to him. Let him stare at my bony shoulders, then.

  The dragon coils about my neck. I flick it a piece of coal from the bin, letting it munch until its metal body grows uncomfortably warm and I dump it in front of the fireplace. I shove the sweaty tangle of hair from my face and try again.

  Yesterday was spent practicing the alphabet, and my fingers are still cramping from the awkward way I held the pencil. After hours of repetition, I’d finally managed to scrawl a reasonable suggestion of my name, though the piles of wasted scrap parchment threaten to overtake the bin beside the fireplace.

  Today it’s all symbols—the tattoo calling cards of Meridian medical practitioners. Dr. Barrows still hasn’t tattooed me yet, which I find a tad suspect, but maybe he’ll do it when he takes the stitches out. The symbols on the pages themselves are brilliant works of art, a riot of fancy colors and intricate line work: trees, leaves, flowers, fantastical beasts. Some of them are so small and fine it seems nearly impossible to imagine them being tattoos at all.

  Only a Meridian would flaunt their injuries in such a way. Only they would have the time to etch such memories into their skin. All the BrightStone bonewitches have simple marks. A cluster of dots or wavy lines. Certainly not more than one color. They are meant for patients who cannot read and don’t have time to learn. As systems go, it works. Even the bonewitches themselves don’t mind it. Circumstances being what they are, maybe going by names like Three-Line Sally or Half-Cross Jimmy makes it easier to hide from whoever they had been.

  Once I established with Dr. Barrows that I was already quite familiar with such mundane BrightStone marks, we moved on to the Meridian designs. The one I’m studying now is surprisingly simple: three black dots, so small and close together that they are barely separate shapes. It’s out of place among the others with their extravagant flourishes and rich colors.

  I frown. “Whose is this? I’ve seen it before.”

  He peers over my shoulder. “Ah. I doubt that.”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “I think you believe you have seen it, but that particular mark hasn’t been used on Meridion for nearly twenty years.” He picks up the pencil to begin sketching something in the margin of the book. “Undoubtedly, there are those who would have attempted to fool their patients, but the woman who used it actually hid an additional pattern in the ink that can only be seen beneath a special light.”

  He shows me the page where he’s drawn a series of lines around the dots so that it has become a circle, or maybe a cog. “This is the mark of Madeline d’Arc.”

  My ears prick up, remembering the overheard conversation between him and Molly from the other evening. I shift away from him, fighting the urge to cover my chest with my arms. “The original Meridion architect? But she’s—”

  “Gone. Yes,” he interrupts. “You’ve heard of her, then?”

  Of course I have. Most Moon Children may not be literate, but we know that much of our history, or at least whatever bits and pieces we were able to pick up on the streets. Rumors had a way of changing almost hourly, but some things remained consistent.

  “Aye,” I say. “She created Meridion.”

  He nods. “In a manner of speaking. She created many of the mechanisms that allow it to fly, it’s true, but she also made many advances in surgical techniques, most of which have never been able to be repeated. But the day Meridion’s engines stopped, she disappeared without a trace.”

  “Stopped, aye?” I flick my gaze out the window. “Seems to float up there well enough to me.”

  “Floating isn’t flying,” he points out. “Without the anchors keeping the city in place, Meridion would drift away. I’m not sure there’s even a proper way to steer it at this point. At any rate, we have no idea what happened to d’Arc.” He glances up at me. “I don’t suppose you do?”

  I scrunch up my face. “Why would you expect me to? She disappeared before I was born.”

  “Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it?” He cups my chin for a moment. “Why do you wear her work upon your chest?”

  “The tattoo, you mean? I don’t have that.”

  “Don’t play dumb. I took a close look at it when I stitched you up. The panel on your chest? It’s a clockwork heart, Mags, and it’s one of the main reasons you didn’t die the other night. It kept beating far longer than any regular heart would have.” He shakes his head at me. “The Meridians create many mechanical wonders, but there is not a one of them able to make working metal organs.”

  I still. “I’ve always had it. For as long as I can remember.”

  “Your mother never told you?” His eyes narrow sharply at me. “I find that a bit hard to believe.”

  “She died giving birth to me,” I grind out. “I already told you I don’t know. What else would you have me say?”

  The truth of it is that I don’t know. Mad Brianna half raised me with all the other orphans she’d kept and never enlightened me as to its appearance except to tell me not to show it to anyone. Getting a straight answer from her these days is an impossibility, too. I can get better counsel from a cat.

  I pull the collar of my shirt down, inviting him to take a closer look. My fingers trace the outline of the heart-shaped panel. “I tried taking this off once, but it hurt something awful. I think it will stop functioning if it’s opened, but I mean, there’s curiosity and there’s cats, aye?” I shrug. “Tell you what, though . . . If I expire before this little excursion to the Pits takes place, you’ve my permission to slice me open and figure out how it works.”

  Frustration flashes in his eyes at my jest, but he retreats to his chair with a sigh. “Forgive me. It’s been so long since we’ve seen any evidence of her existence. And to find it on a Moon Child doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

  “No doubt. Why waste such technology on someone like me, right?” I stare at the dragon. My dragon. A roll of satisfaction thrums through me at the thought, though I can’t truly claim ownership. Whatever mechanics drive it to motion, it’s become more than clear that it does so on its own power.

  Dr. Barrows shakes his head, his face stricken. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, it is.” I give him a hard smile, all too familiar with this sort of bias. I tap on the design on the page in front of me, determined to pull the conversation from the morbid turn it’s taken. “I mean, if you need special light for this, what’s the use? I’ve seen three dots like this before on injuries.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are many who have attempted to use that mark to bilk people into paying more than they should,” he agrees. He sips his chai again, but he’s stalling now. I set the book down and stare at him until he’s forced to look at me, his mouth compressing.

  “D’Arc,” he says finally. “She was a brilliant doctor, and I have no doubts she was working on some way to unravel the secrets of this plague. None. Things were very . . . chaotic, before she disappeared. It is my personal hope that you might find traces of her work in the Pits.
Or of any of these doctors, for that matter. Something to give us clues as to how all this came about. I don’t know where else they would have disappeared to.”

  His words linger like a fever dream, nearly tangible in their temptation. And it’s all the worse because I want to believe him. That secret sorrow of his seems to deepen the lines on his face, and whatever he thinks he’s trying to do, I can tell that somewhere along the way his past is tangled with this disease. Perhaps a family member got it when he was a child. Maybe a wife.

  Not that it’s any of my concern anyway.

  He gives me a wry half smile. “It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really, no.” I scowl.

  He laughs despite his apparent distress. I’m wavering on his words, but I haven’t lived this long on the streets to not recognize a shill when I see one. I open my mouth to snarl something rude at him, but the sudden peal of bells from outside stops me cold, my blood freezing in my veins.

  A Tithe procession.

  Dr. Barrows says nothing as I stand. I don’t want to look. Not really. And yet my feet pull me toward the little window beside the fireplace as I bite down on my lower lip. Below is the alley behind the Conundrum, but the street beyond that is the main thoroughfare through Market Square. I can’t see the square, but I know it will be empty. The bells herald a warning, and only the very desperate or stupid would remain to watch the Tithe.

  I stare at the open spot at the end of the alley. Inquestors flank the procession to ensure no one runs, but even from this distance I can see no one is attempting to escape. A Moon Child leads the way, her head bowed as she rings the bells hanging on a leather strap at her waist.

  I clench my jaw against my fury. I can’t tell who it is from here, but her pale hair blows freely in the breeze. She’s dressed in a simple gown. Behind her trail those unfortunates who recently contracted the Rot, their white masks covering their faces. And yet for all that, it robs them of their dignity. Cowards, all of us, unable to look upon the fates of others, and only because we have some misguided hope that we might avoid the same.