‘Spout,’ Cam said, his attention returning to me. ‘Drink all of it.’
I tried harder, but the water still tasted brackish and thick, and every gulp was painful. As I regained full consciousness, I realized I was in a storage room, and that I’d been nestled on top of a pile of soft sheets.
A candle came closer to my face, making me cringe away. I still couldn’t make out the face behind it, and the light hurt my eyes.
‘Will it fix him?’ Cam asked, hopeful. ‘Can you fix him?’
A feeble laugh. ‘He’ll be up and getting tortured again in no time.’
‘He can help you, Leroi,’ Cam said. ‘He can do what you do.’
‘I hope that’s not true.’ The voice paused and I heard gulping sounds. ‘Because that’d make him just as useless.’
‘Drink, Spout.’
I choked down the last sip of my water, which burned my throat. My body began tingling, numbness rising through my feet, and things began to go dark again, the candle dimming right in front of my eyes. I smacked my lips and realized it wasn’t water I’d been drinking, and that everything about me was starting to sag. My lips felt the need to babble. ‘I have the Idea. The Crier said. The gold light. I know what I have to—’
‘Don’t try to talk, Spout,’ Cam said soothingly. ‘It’s one of Leroi’s tonics, to help you sleep. And to heal. We brought a wheelbarrow and a blanket to get you to the tinkershop so no one sees. Leroi is going to—’
‘Who says I’m going to do anything?’ the voice protested. ‘You said the Vicaress was after him.’
‘He’s smart, Leroi. You should have seen the music box, he—’
But I was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Do you hate me?’
I don’t know how the man knew I was awake before I did, but I opened my eyes, and slowly sat up from the cot. I expected pain from my wounds, but all I felt was an intense hunger stretching down to my core.
My hand went to my stomach, the gurgling loud.
A small number of wax candles burned in the room. Considering one of the last things I remembered Cam mentioning was the tinkershop, I hadn’t expected to wake up in a dark, plain room with nothing but two padded chairs, a single table, and a small bed sitting flush against the back wall.
A man was hovering over the table, his silvered hair peeking out in all directions and a goatee surrounding his mouth. His lips were thin and thoughtful, and he had what was undoubtedly the palest complexion of any Noble I’d ever seen. The clothes hung loose on his frame, and it looked as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
Without a word, he unfolded his arms and pointed at the side of the cot. My eyes followed his fingers and I found half a dozen orangefruits sitting nearby. I dug in without further invitation, the hunger all-consuming, and bit straight into the rinds.
‘Camlish said you like those,’ the man said. ‘He brought them yesterday. The tonic works, but it burns up all your reserves.’
‘Yesterday?’ I asked between furious bites.
The man nodded, sitting down in his chair and pouring himself a drink from a decanter and then fitting the cork back on top. I could smell the tang of alcohol all the way from across the room.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ the man asked, swirling the drink, the candlelight revealing a disturbed look that could have rivalled the Domestics’ in the garden. ‘Do you hate me?’
Needless to say, I was taken aback. Not only had I only just met the man, but if this was who I thought it was, he was in a position to teach me everything I wanted to know.
‘Are you Leroi?’ I asked, chewing the last bit of pulp from the first orangefruit.
He sucked his teeth. ‘Would it change your answer if I were?’
I nodded, diving into the next fruit. ‘I couldn’t hate a real Inventor.’
Leroi slammed his fist on the table. ‘I’m a High Noble. I’m your enemy. I’ll never be in line for the throne, but I’m a High blasted Noble.’ He spilled some of his drink to the floor, but didn’t seem to notice. ‘Descended from the first Khat’s bloodline. Whoop-a-dee-doo. Praise be to the bastard.’
I kept quiet, wondering whether this was all some sort of test.
The rest of his drink was gone in one gulp. His eyes fell upon the candle on the table and he went quiet for some time, staring into the flame.
‘Sir,’ I said carefully. ‘I—’
‘Jadan bodies tell stories.’ Leroi picked up the decanter, not letting his glass stay empty for long. ‘You’ve been whipped more times than I could count; cut; burned; tortured. Your arm’s been broken twice. You have no fat on you, so I know you’ve been starved most of your life. And even now, in my very Cold study, you’re sweating. Most slaves don’t do that. I’m guessing that’s where “Spout” comes from. Am I wrong?’
A finger went to my forehead. I was only nervous because I didn’t want to say something that might have all of this taken away. I was so close. If this was his study, then real inventions waited on the other side of the door.
‘He was just as Jadan as everyone else,’ Leroi said quietly. ‘The first Khat. Us High Nobles don’t like to talk about that too much, but he was.’
My body jerked at the declaration, especially coming from someone like him. I touched my face and then pointed to Leroi’s milky skin, bringing attention to the stark difference. ‘He had to be different in some way.’
Leroi waved a flippant hand. ‘Bah. That’s just eight hundred years of your people slaving under a scorching Sun. And breeding control. But in a way you are right.’ Leroi snorted, rolling the cork around in his palm. ‘The first Khat was less than Jadan.’
I sucked in a breath. I’d never heard any Nobles talk like this before. Let alone High Nobles. The Priests and Gospels told us that the first Khat was pure, immune to sin, and that’s why he was chosen.
‘They why’d the Crier choose him?’ I asked, feeling him out, my chest rattling on top of a frantic heartbeat. ‘There had to be some reason.’
‘Why, indeed?’ Leroi said, stroking his goatee. ‘Why do High Nobles have shorter natural lifespans? Why do High Nobles get diseases that Jadans are immune to? Like firepox. Sunspots. Achemede’s shakes. Fang-rash. Hmm?’
My whole body went tense, the dizziness in my head not just from the tonic. These were questions I’d often thought about asking, but never found the right time or person. Abb only knew about Jadan diseases, which were few and often mild.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ I said, swallowing hard, the citrus from the orangefruit burning the cuts on my lips.
‘Are these not important questions?’
‘They are! I just—’
‘He enslaved his own people,’ Leroi said, flushed with anger, squeezing the cork till it sqeaked. ‘How does that make my kind “Noble”?’
I paused, finally starting to understand what he wanted to hear. Perhaps it was the haze, but I felt bolder than normal. ‘I guess we’re going to have to even things out.’
Leroi’s eyes narrowed, and then he snorted, as if what I’d said was quite funny. ‘Is that right? And what are you proposing?’
‘We create something new.’
Leroi sat back in his chair, licking his lips. ‘Create, huh?’
‘Cam told me you’re an Inventor,’ I said, fingers itching to get out into the main chamber and just touch everything there. ‘You make things that didn’t exist before. You make the World Cried better.’
‘You already know me so well.’ Leroi gave a series of quick nods, eyebrows raised in a sarcastic manner. ‘You’re referring to the anklets of course.’
I went quiet.
‘Camlish told you about my special anklets, right?’ Leroi asked, the corners of his lips turned up in a wry smile. ‘What I’ve been commanded to do? How I’m making the World Cried better.’
I shook my head.
Leroi sucked down another drink, his eyes lighting up with glazed delight. ‘Lord Tavor didn’t tell me the plan e
xactly. But it’s obvious.’
‘What are the anklets, sir?’ I asked. His words were beginning to slur, and I didn’t know how much longer we had until the last of his sobriety was washed away.
Leroi bit his lip, holding back a laugh. ‘If you stay here long enough, you’ll get one too. Crier knows how long I’ll be able to keep you secret.’ His eyes filled with humour. ‘With the Vicaress after you, I can’t get you proper papers. You’ll have to hide under the floor like a beetle if anyone comes.’
‘Does that mean you’ll take me in?’ I asked, heart thumping. I couldn’t believe my body felt so healed already. The man’s tonic had worked wonders, and it was obvious he knew the kind of secrets that might help me realize my Idea. I felt invincible. ‘Because I know what I need to build.’
‘What you need to build? You’re the Head Tinkerer here already?’ Leroi chuckled. ‘That was fast.’
‘No, sir.’ I shook my head, life flooding my chest. ‘But Cam told me you’ve stopped Inventing. I figure at least one of us should put this place to use.’
Leroi scratched his goatee, and then burst out laughing. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Micah Behn-Abb.’ I sat up straight, trying to make my back like Shilah’s. ‘I’ve tinkered all my life with materials I found in the refuse heaps. I’ve had to work in secret, and in the dark, while friends around me have died. But I’ve created things that make my barracks better. And I’ve spoken to the World Crier. I believe that He led me here so that together we can Invent something to end the Great Drought.’
A heavy silence buzzed about the study.
Then Leroi let out a roar of hilarity. ‘So the Vicaress actually tortured you into madness. I don’t blame you for breaking. I’ve heard stories of what she does to Jadans.’
I got up, my legs no longer wobbly. ‘What can I do to prove to you that I’m supposed to be here?’
Leroi stared at me for a long moment. It was rare that I saw such intelligence in a set of eyes, even through the veil of alcohol. Eventually he reached for the decanter, taking a deep swig right from the bottle.
‘I had an assistant before,’ Leroi said, his eyes glowing with relief as he downed the liquid. ‘It didn’t end well.’
‘And you’ll have one again,’ I said, keeping my voice like stone, ‘and this time it will.’
‘You think you have the mind for it?’ Leroi took another swig, longer this time, and I worried for his safety. ‘The discipline?’
I kept my back straight, trying to look as defiant as my partner. My back ached from the posture. ‘Yes, sir. I do.’
He picked up the decanter again and chugged the rest of the drink. Closing his eyes and making a satisfied face, he settled back into his chair. ‘Then go Invent. And wake me when you’re done.’
I waited for further instruction, but none seemed to be coming.
‘What shall I make?’ I asked.
Leroi spoke with his eyes closed. ‘I don’t care. You’re the one who’s been tinkering all your life, Micah Behn-Abb, Behn-Crier. Go ahead, no one will bother you, I chained the main door.’ He made a shooing motion. ‘The tinkershop is right down there.’
I leaned against the door for support, my eyes flitting around the large room in wild abandon.
It was my own personal promised land.
Now I understood why Leroi would need a bare room to hand, because after one glance I was already overwhelmed.
First and foremost were the lights.
I had no idea what I was looking at. Blazing across the room were little glass domes, but instead of holding normal candles they glowed fuzzy white, so brightly that if Leroi had told me he’d trapped little pieces of Sun inside, I might have believed him.
The domes illuminated a giant room, bigger than my barracks, and every wall contained a nook, an alcove or a side passage. Every available space housed a machine or an invention. Most of them I didn’t recognize. There were things that made sense, like the huge crank-fans, and the shelves of Cold Bellows, but there were also things I’d never seen in all the streets of Paphos: hourglasses filled with metal beads that fell upwards. A pool in the centre of the room, filled with gears instead of water, all interlocked and spinning. And small pyramids made of glass, Wisps floating in their liquid centres and somehow not dissolving.
Most tables were weighed down by large clay pots from which metallic wires snaked out and led to buckets underneath. An army of barrels brimmed with white sand that, knowing the exuberant wealth of the Tavor family, could be salt. A whole section of the room was dedicated to glass vials, filled with everything from slimy green paste, to milky smoke, to what looked like powdered bone.
An anvil waited patiently in front of a desolate fireplace, saddled with water buckets and sets of heavy gloves. On the shelves along the walls I saw a hundred different types of metal parts jumbled with instruments with too many angles and strings to be usable, and buckets of Wisp and Drafts, as if the Cold were as common as sand. There were meticulous piles of rare woods, and stacks of coloured glass. Lining the left wall were bookshelves overflowing with scrolls, flanked by cabinets bursting with mysterious trinkets.
Shutting my eyes, I listened to the few light hums and whirrs spinning through the air, trying to pinpoint which machines were still awake. Leroi might have stopped tinkering, but there was magic here.
I concentrated on breathing as I wandered around the room. Each step brought a hundred new things to touch and spin and ogle, but I kept my hands at my sides, not sure what inventions might unexpectedly bite back and take off a finger, like the boxy metal frame filled with rotating spikes that looked as if it would chomp twice given the chance.
As I wandered through the mechanical wonders and the rivers of material shelves, I felt nervous beads of sweat on my forehead, trying to conjure an Idea that could prove my worth. Shilah was wrong. This was where I needed to be, and I pitied her. I wished she’d made the right decision to come here with me instead of wandering through the empty sands alone.
I stepped over a tub filled with pulped boilweed and found my answer stacked in neat sheets.
How fitting to start this new journey where the last big one had begun, especially considering the implications of the invention itself.
Piled high and precisely cut, the waxy paper called out to me with a smile.
I returned the expression.
I’d created the original with rusty tools and bent metal in darkness. Recreating it in a real tinkershop would be easy. My hands already knew what to do, and in no time the needles and gears and other pieces needed had leapt into my fingers. I grabbed a few sheets of fabric from the top and found a clean table on which to work.
It was time to make another Cold Wrap.
Three loud knocks echoed through the shop and my eyes jumped to the door.
The chain rattled, a nose peeking through the gap. ‘Spout? Can you let me in?’
My stomach uncurled at Cam’s voice. I stuffed my quill back in the bottle of ink, only a few strokes away from the final touches.
I hopped around the machine that dripped waste into a grate in the floor, and the wheelless cart loaded with huge fan blades. I raced up the staircase leading to the main door of the tinkershop, undid the chain, and let Cam in.
The door swung open. Cam was holding a tray laden with meat, cheese, fruit, and doughy bread. I’d only ever eaten stale crusts, baked with leftover, thrown-out grease, and this loaf looked wonderfully pillowy and soft.
‘Spout! You look like a new Jadan.’ Cam thrust the tray at me. ‘Leroi said the tonic would make you hungry.’
I was indeed famished, and I plucked off the first piece of fruit I could find, a little red thing with seeds on the sides, and popped it in my mouth. It was sweet, and juicy, and tasted so good I thought I might never eat anything better.
‘Thank you for the orangefruits,’ I said, licking the roof of my mouth, trying to taste everything about the fruit that I could. ‘And this.’
‘Orangefruit is the plural. And with strawberries you don’t eat the leaf on top,’ Cam said with a grin, pointing to my mouth.
I tilted my head, swallowing everything whole. ‘Why not? It’s green.’
‘You sh—’ Cam shook his head, peeking back over his shoulder. ‘Never mind. I’m glad you’re awake. But let me in, because as far as the rest of the Manor is concerned, Leroi doesn’t have any assistants.’
I moved aside so he could lock us back in. He lowered the tray to me, and I snatched the rest of the strawberries with a sheepish grin.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you snore really loudly?’
‘I do?’
Cam nodded, tucking into the cheese, which looked to me like it might have gone bad. I wanted to point out the specks of blue on it, but he ate it so quickly that I didn’t have time.
‘It’s like,’ Cam tapped his lip, lost in thought, ‘if a camel was rolling down a hill, but having fun.’
I smirked, wondering why Abb had never brought this to my attention.
And then fear and realization slammed together in my mind like two slabs of heavy stone, crushing the dreamy mood in which I’d been idiotically awash.
Abb.
I’d been so enamoured with the tinkershop that I hadn’t even thought about the danger my father would be in. Leroi’s tonic had left me sluggish and unconcerned, and like a fool I’d been flitting about the tinkershop puffed up with a false sense of pride and security, buzzing with purpose. I couldn’t believe that worry over my father was only hitting me now, and I’d never felt so selfish in my life. The first place the Vicaress would check for me was my barracks, and she would do everything she could to get my family to talk.
And Moussa. Poor Moussa. Was he even still alive after her interrogation?
I coughed, spitting out some of the seeds.
Cam dodged the projectiles with a chuckle, somehow managing not to drop the food tray. ‘You can eat those.’
‘My father!’ I said, nearly falling to my knees. ‘She’s going to go after him!’
‘Abb?’ Cam gave me a sceptical look, his glasses now sitting at the end of his nose. ‘Shivers and Frosts, Spout! What kind of friend do you think I am? First thing I did was send out word to Mama Jana. She’s been keeping her ear to the ground about your barracks and we’ve been sending notes back and forth every few hours.’ He patted his shirt pocket, which was bulging at the moment. ‘You’re worth quite a bit of information.’
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