“No, Alix.” Karis steps up to me. “That isn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it is, it’s all my fault!” I cry and see the surprise in her eyes, the flash of fear she isn’t quick enough to hide. “He built me to be a key, raised me like his child, but when it mattered, I wasn’t able to do what he wanted, and he died.”
“You did do it,” Zara says. “You locked the Script ink down. You took its power from the Scriptorium. Thanks to you it’s been gone for two centuries.”
“That wasn’t all my father wanted me to do.” Something else is coming back to me, something I’ve forgotten all this time. He taught me how to lock the Scrivolia, yes, but he also taught me something more. “He wanted me to destroy it.” That’s the secret that’s been hovering around my edges. “He said that as long as the Script ink in the Heart was unlocked, the Scrivolia was indestructible. If the Script ink was locked, though, the actual vessel could be destroyed. I managed to lock the Script ink, but the magistrate’s men found us too soon. The Automaton Heart still exists. While my father...” My father doesn’t. When it really mattered, I failed him. I failed what I was meant to be.
There is quiet for a long moment until Karis asks softly. “Do you still remember how to destroy the Heart?”
No, I don’t. That part of my memory is still locked deep inside of me. I shake my head. “It must have something to do with the runes, though, and with the Script inscribed on the Heart.” Not that it matters now. It’s too late.
I look around at the workshop, at the automatons whose master...whose father...is long dead because I left him.
In the end, child or tool, I was no more use to him than any of them.
29
* * *
ALIX
I don’t speak the entire way back through the city, ignoring the concerned looks the others are giving me. I stare down at the books in my arms, my father’s notebook hidden among them. My father, who built all of those other automatons. Who lied to me. A seed of coldness has been planted in my chest and I can already feel it growing.
We reach the villa and I retreat to my room, even though I know that’s running away. I catch a glimpse of Karis’s face, her mouth opening, as I shut the door. I throw the books on my bed, then sag back against the door. Whatever Karis was about to say, I don’t want to hear. Because, in the end, she doesn’t—can’t—understand.
My uncovered runes emit pale light in the dark. Script ink. Runes. The Heart. Is that truly all I am? When I decided to go back to the villa, I was so sure I’d find something that would prove I’m more than an automaton. Only I didn’t.
I wearily lift my head and see my father’s notebook, fallen open on the bed.
The fools. Don’t they know that any key can lock as easily as it can unlock?
I can’t stand this, being here alone in the dark. All of these emotions are creeping over me, biting away at my edges. There are no voices outside the door anymore. I leave, slipping through the sitting room and pacing down the hallway. I head out the first side door I find, away from this villa holding so many people who are nothing like me. Anger and confusion pulse inside me and I walk faster, as if I can outpace everything I’m feeling. I shove between two bushes, branches splintering beneath my hands, and then I stop.
The automaton. The one I saw on the way in. It crouches in the garden, frozen in mid-movement. Plants twine up its arms and legs, leaves scattered over its skin, as the garden slowly claims it. It has no eyes, but it still seems to stare into me.
Seeing it saps every bit of anger from my body, even though what’s left behind is far more frightening. This feeling of breaking. Of drowning. My knees give, sending me into the grass.
What am I supposed to do now?
“Alix?” Karis’s voice sounds behind me. Her footsteps come closer. “Are you all right?”
I choke out a laugh. No. I am not all right.
I look up at the automaton. At this thing that, in the end, is exactly like me. “You know, my father used to tell me that he thought automatons might not have always been used as weapons.” My voice sounds strange in the garden. Too distant. That should bother me. Why doesn’t it? “He looked at the designs of the oldest ones, and thought that many centuries ago, they might have served different purposes. That someone later decided automatons could only be one thing. There was always a part of me that desperately hoped it was true.” I shake my head. “Only now I realize it doesn’t matter. In the end, is being built as a key any better than being built as a weapon? I’m still a thing.”
“Alix.” She kneels down beside me in the grass. “You are not a thing. None of us think that.”
“I was built for a purpose, Karis. I am bound to a tome and I have no idea if one day something will take away everything I am. All this time I thought maybe I could come back here and find something that will make me feel normal. Only I won’t ever be normal. I won’t ever be like you or Dane or anyone else because my will is bound up in paper and what I was meant to do is etched in my skin. I exist to do one thing, and I couldn’t even do that.”
The words burn off my tongue. I hang my head. I journeyed all this way for nothing.
Karis takes my hand, but for once I find no comfort in it. “Alix, you are not just some key, some thing. Look at everything you’ve done. You got us off of Tallis. You fixed the Streak. You have come so far since I found you in that cave.”
I can feel those words trying to reach me. Only they don’t. I’m tired of pretending I’m something I’m not.
I get up, my hand slipping from hers. I pad forward, until I’m standing right before the automaton. “All those things that I’ve done, I only did because of my runes. They allowed it. What if this is just what I am?”
I reach out, brushing some of the plant matter away, my fingers skimming the giant seal on the automaton’s chest.
There’s a tug in the center of my chest, and every rune on my body flares with heat as a wave of light races across the automaton’s skin. The ground heaves beneath me, throwing me onto my back as the automaton twitches, one of its massive arms shifting up out of the ground.
It’s awake.
“Alix,” Karis cries, “shut it off!”
I scramble to my feet, pressing my hands against the automaton’s seal. Nothing happens. Its runes still flare gold, glowing like a beacon in the evening light.
“I don’t know how.”
A door bangs open like a gunshot in the night. I flinch. Calantha hurries into the clearing, Zara on her heels.
Calantha pales at the sight of the automaton. “What have you done?” she demands.
“I just touched it.” I hold my hands out in front of me as if they’re poison.
That’s when we hear shouts echo across the garden. Loud. Authoritarian.
Soldiers. They must be able to see the light. They’ll find me. They’ll find all of us.
Calantha straightens. “Zara. Make sure everyone gets out of the villa and to the tunnel. You three go with her and—”
“My tome,” I say. It’s back in the house. Already I can hear the soldiers getting closer. “I can’t leave it,” I plead.
“I’ll hold them away for as long as I can,” Calantha says. “When you get your tome, take the path that goes between the marble arches at the back of the villa. There’s a tunnel at its end.”
“Wait,” Zara says. “Calantha, you can’t go back in there.”
“Zara...”
Her eyes flash. “You know what the magistrate will do if he catches you. With this automaton woken up, it will give him enough of a reason to bring you in for questioning, and your position won’t be enough to protect you.”
They stare at each other, pirate captain and rebel leader, and I see just how similar they are. So I already know how Calantha will answer.
“Get the others out.” Calantha leaves, striding
back down the path.
Zara stares after her. “Get your tome,” she says tightly. “And get it now.”
I take off.
Through the trees I catch a glimpse of others, all hurrying the other way, and then I’m at the villa, pushing through the side entrance. Outside I could hear the soldiers but inside it’s quiet until a heavy pounding on the front door echoes down the hall. I falter.
Karis comes through the door behind me. She looks down the hallway. “We can make it,” she says.
We slide down the deserted hallways, slipping into the study even as we hear footsteps clattering inside. Karis pulls the door shut as I push aside the tapestry and unlock the box. My tome is still there, and I sag with relief as soon as my fingers close around it.
“Come on,” Karis says. “Let’s—”
Voices sound right outside the door.
We both freeze. Calantha’s voice comes, muted but still sure and steady. She’s distracting them.
“The window,” Karis mouths.
We dash over to it. Karis easily vaults through, back out into the garden. I follow, but my shoulders catch on the window frame. I’m too big.
Behind me, I hear the door creak open.
Bracing my hands on the walls, I shove myself through, feeling the crunch as I take some of the window frame with me.
We don’t stop to see if anyone noticed but run. I see the marble arches at the back of the villa. We follow the path through the garden. It’s wilder here, more snarled, the trees creating a dense canopy over our heads.
I glimpse a figure and hold out an arm, so suddenly Karis runs into it. She bites back a grunt of pain. A soldier stands ahead of us. It’s one of the magistrate’s men, his sash dark against his chiton. He isn’t facing us, but he is in our way.
I slowly step back, into the shadows of a nearby tree.
A hand touches my shoulder. I spin.
It’s Rudy. His face is pale and he clutches a satchel to his chest, papers spilling from its sides. Gesturing silently, he steps away from the path and the soldier.
We plunge into the thick of the garden, branches tearing at my clothes. Then we’re back on the path. We reach its end and I see a trapdoor covered in grass, propped up. Finn and Ava stand beside it.
“Are you the last?” Finn asks.
“I think so,” Rudy pants. He disappears down the steps.
I look over my shoulder, back at the villa and the garden, where the animated automaton must still stand.
I did this.
I turn and follow Rudy down into the dark.
30
* * *
KARIS
We seem to walk forever in the dark tunnel, the only light the lamp clenched in Ava’s fist, the only sounds our footfalls against the stone. The steps, when we reach them, come up into a small shed in the Lower City.
Finn leads us out, toward the bay. I wonder if we’re going to the Streak, to set sail right now and leave the city.
But we don’t. We go to a deserted area of the docks, the planks slick with seawater, the air thick with brine and rotting fish. Dark water swirls through the cracks beneath our feet. Large decaying buildings that look like they might once have housed ships crouch over us in the hastening night.
Finn takes us to one near the back. The windows are dark and there’s no noise but the ocean. They remove a fragment of rotted wood wall and we slip in, and it isn’t empty at all.
The people inside are shadowy blurs in the cavernous space. It’s sparsely furnished, mostly with pallets, worn and unmatched. I don’t recognize many of the people but then I see Zara. She stands in the center of the room, in a small patch of moonlight created by a hole in the roof. She points to some crates, directing others.
“Captain,” I say, wincing when my voice echoes too loudly.
She turns, and I see how different she looks. Her usual jauntiness is gone. There’s a new weight settled onto her grim expression, into the tense set of her shoulders. The others in the boathouse all orient themselves toward her. I never thought to ask who would inherit the responsibility of this rebellion if something happened to Calantha.
Now she’s standing in front of me.
“You made it,” Zara says, relieved.
I look around for Dane. I haven’t seen him since we got back.
Zara must read the question on my face because she says, “Dane asked to go back out to help the others, so I let him.”
He went back out. I know better than anyone what that request must have meant to him. He’ll be fighting other soldiers, who represent what he once wanted. And he still did it.
“What can we do to help?” Alix asks, a catch in his voice.
“There are blankets in those crates,” Zara says. “Hand them out and show people to the pallets. There’ll be more coming from the other villas as soon as word spreads about what happened.”
Alix nods. He goes to leave and I take his arm. “Alix, this isn’t your fault.”
Guilt clearly eats into him. “Yes, it is.” He pulls his arm away.
I open my mouth, but whatever I might have said comes too late. Alix strides between the pallets. Exhaustion weighs me down as I stare after him. Ever since we saw his father’s workshop, it’s like a part of him shut down. And I hate that. I don’t want to see him lose his softness, his hope.
I don’t want to have to watch him become like me.
More and more people filter in through the hole in the wall, dressed in Scriptorium wear and peasant wear and noble wear—and those terrible runes on so many of them.
It must be near dawn when a piece of wall moves and two lone people stumble in. One I don’t recognize. The other is Dane.
“Dane.” I run to him as he sags to his knees. He’s dirty and bloodied, one of his eyes swelling shut, a long cut tracing down his left arm.
I uncap the water skin in my hand and pour some on a rag, pressing it against his hurt eye. He winces, his free hand coming up to cover mine.
“Archius, soldier boy.” Zara trots over. “What’s happened?”
Dane shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely. “We tried to get the last group out, but they were caught at the corner of the market.”
Zara’s face falls, and I see her incredible exhaustion. But only for a moment. She gathers herself up. Slips back into the role of commander. “You did everything you could. That’s all I ask.”
“There’s more,” the other man—Archius—says. He swallows. “The Scriptmasters, we overheard them talking. Master Calantha has been taken into custody.”
* * *
The boathouse has turned into a gathering of ghosts. From the moment the news spread that Calantha was taken, whatever flame we’d managed to salvage went out. I skirt through the pallets, offering the last of the blankets, some food I found, and only get listless stares back. That same emotion sinks through my own skin and wraps around my heart. There was such passion in Calantha’s voice when she talked about the new Scriptorium she wanted to make. Now she may very well be in the Magistrate’s Library, alongside my brother and everyone else who was just taken.
I look around the boathouse at all these people who have suffered so much. Who will suffer again if the magistrate unlocks the Heart and reanimates the automatons. At their grieving and scared faces.
This isn’t right. None of it.
I abandon the pile of blankets I’m carrying and go to find the others. They’re all together—Zara, Dane, Alix, and Rudy—in a small room that must have been an office once, sitting on some crates that have been dragged together. There’s a window, half-boarded up, but I can still catch glimpses of the black ocean, of the night sky through it. It’s a world that goes on like it always has, even though so much has changed for us in here.
It’s dark, but I can just make out the exhausted faces around me, the c
reases in their skin and the bags beneath their eyes. Even Zara. There’s a defeat in her expression I’ve never seen there before.
Dane sits next to her. Their hands rest on the crate between them, their fingers brushing one another, and they both lean into that touch. For the briefest moment I wish I could have something like that, a relationship that’s as close as that, where I don’t need words to explain what I’m feeling. Because I feel tired and alone and I could use it right about now.
Alix looks up. Offers me a shaking smile. It’s a shadow of his usual one, but it’s still there. I manage a smile back. I might not have what Dane and Zara do, but that doesn’t mean what I have is weaker. Standing here, it feels as strong as stone.
I go over to Alix and perch on the crate beside him. The heat wicking off his skin helps to banish the numbness sunk into my bones.
“I’m sorry about Calantha,” I say to Zara.
She rubs a hand across her eyes. “We all knew the risks. The most we can do right now is keep everyone safe for her. There are other villas on other islands. We’ll ferry everyone to them.”
Rudy, who’d been staring at his satchel, lifts his head. “But what about what’s happening here? The rumors are only growing. The magistrate could be days away from whatever he’s planning. And what about the people we’re leaving behind?”
I hear in his voice the heartbreak of the name he doesn’t say. If we leave, we abandon Matthias to whatever is being done to him here. We abandon Calantha and all the others. However she phrases it, Zara’s plan amounts to running away. That wasn’t something I ever expected to hear from her. She’s always been so quick to rush in, to fight for what she believed in.
“We don’t have a choice,” Zara says, and at least now there’s a flash in her eyes. “So many of our people have been taken. Calantha won’t talk, but the others...” She cuts off, shaking her head. “After all they’ve suffered at the hands of the magistrate, they might break, and I can’t blame them for that. Most of them have seen Alix. Once the Scriptorium knows he’s here, they won’t stop until they find him. Calantha is gone now. All these people are my responsibility, mine alone, and I won’t risk their lives for nothing.”
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