“My father would never… well, it’s….”
“Oh, it’s complicated. You know, you’re not the only person with their life collapsing on itself. At least you have someone who loves you,” Lucas declared. Gavin reached for Lucas again, only to be denied.
“So you know, you’re treating me like rubbish. I expect that from my father,” Lucas whispered angrily through his gritted teeth before continuing. “No, I really do. And my mother lets my own brother beat me right in front of her because I’m sure she knows as well as he does what I really am. And she doesn’t care what becomes of me. Not one bloody bit. But your life is complicated?”
Gavin stood in bewildered silence, engulfed in heartbreak for this beautiful boy whose heart lay naked in front of him.
“Well, when you deign to simplify things, you can come looking for me. Maybe I’ll be there. Maybe I won’t.” With that Lucas backed away and stomped off. Each boot pounded the ground as if in protest. It endeared him to Gavin and made him want to hold him all the more. Gavin watched Lucas until he crossed the entryway to the pub.
Gavin’s hands were clenched into fists, his heart an aching hole. He needed Landa, he needed to talk to his friend to ask her what he should do. But how could he ever tell her about either thing? She could disown him if she discovered he was a magick wielder, like his father had. God forbid if she turned her back on him upon learning the rest. With Lucas’s hurt weighing on him, Gavin knew he couldn’t bear another loss and resigned to take the pain alone.
Timing of Lies and Truths
“BREAKFAST, THE most tense meal of the day, I guess,” Wish jested. He looked from Lucas to Gavin and back again. “Seriously. What is going on with these two daft birds?”
Landa looked up from her eggs, dark circles under her eyes. “Did you refer to them as birds, you sod? Just when I think…. Stop. Just stop.”
“Come on, Lilandra,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Aloysius, but Victoria had me working all night on the main boiler units for the camp, I reprogrammed a dozen punch cards, reoriented a broken piston rod, retooled the governor, and then Victoria said…. Wait, what were you saying?”
“Look,” Wish said conspiratorially, “I don’t know what untoward business this encampment of rebels or whatever is up to, but hadn’t we better get back to London to see what’s happening?”
“No!” Gavin shouted at him. Then in a lower voice added, “I am not going back.” This garnered a quizzical look from Landa. They hadn’t talked in a while. She didn’t know what was going on with Gavin. Lucas had already folded his tall frame in on itself to make him look tiny.
“Gav, we have to go back soon.” She sipped her coffee to wash down the food. “I’ve been scouting with my access to the camp to fix things, and think I have a plan. I need to get back to check on my parents. I know you’re cross with him, but aren’t you worried about your father? I know he’s not your favorite person in the world, but shouldn’t you go check on him?”
When Gavin said nothing in return, she continued, “I think we could probably get our steamwalker back pretty easily. There’s bound to be some guards along the way out, but if we play our—”
“I’m not going back,” Gavin said with finality.
“Look, things have been bad at home for you. I know, I’ve been there during all of it. But we’re a team. We’ll get through this. Always have. Always will.”
He stood abruptly, his chair flying backward with the force, dumped his plate of food on the ground near a stray dog, who greedily licked up the scraps, and walked off.
“What does he mean, he’s not going back? Of course we have to go back,” Wish said, incredulous.
Landa studied Gavin as he walked away. She wondered what had happened that she did not know about. What was she missing? Her concentration was broken by Wish looking at her like a big puppy dog, with big, sad eyes and pouty lips. “Come on,” she said, “we have some more scouting to do if we’re going to get out of here and get back home. It’s time to be done with you.”
“Come now, sweet Landa, you don’t really want to be done with me, and you know it.”
She rolled her eyes before she led him toward the center of camp, where the main computing machines were.
“IT’S ALL about focus and control,” Orion instructed. Gavin held his palms out in front of him in the field near the encampment, poised as if to stop a runaway horse.
“I feel stupid.”
“How did you feel the last time you used magick?”
“I didn’t even know I was using magick. It just sort of happened,” Gavin said, dropping his hands, ready to give up. “I said I would try, and now I have. I’m done with this. We’ve been at it for hours. I’m no warlock. I’m an airship pilot, or at least that’s what I want to be.”
“It seems difficult right now,” Orion said, but stopped when Gavin started pacing. “Gavin, where did you go? Hello?”
“I should probably go talk to Lucas.”
“No! I mean, let’s do something different,” Orion said quickly. “This is something instructors do for younger mages, and since you are new….” Orion slipped behind Gavin and placed his hands over Gavin’s arms. Gavin’s body tensed, the feel of Orion pressed against his back, their arms touching, electric.
“Orion?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Do people back home know… you know, about you?”
“That I am a warlock,” Orion joked. Gavin bumped backward into him.
“No. Do people care that you like…?”
“Other lads?”
“Yes.” Gavin said the word with such defeat in him that Orion gently rubbed Gavin’s shoulders.
“Back in Eíre, people follow me or hate me for many reasons,” Orion answered without giving too much away. “Let’s say that I never cared what they said about me.”
“Must be nice,” Gavin said wishfully and leaned into Orion more.
“Does no one know? Not even the mighty Landa? Lucas knows, assuredly.”
“I don’t know why I’m confessing these things to you. Landa…. I’m afraid she won’t like me anymore. My father already wants to…. And Lucas hates me now.”
“An créatúr bocht,” Orion said in a language Gavin didn’t know.
“Is that an ancient Irish language?”
“It means poor creature.” Orion hugged Gavin tightly, and their cheeks touched gently in a caress.
When Gavin opened his eyes, Orion’s hands glowed orange. When he tried to pull away in shock, Orion pressed into him more to steady him.
“Feel the heat, the power pulsing down you. Feel it filling you, wanting to come out, to spread.” Gavin tried to relax into the lesson, but the heat of Orion’s arms distracted him and set his heart to racing. Gavin was sure he felt something and shifted uncomfortably as his erection stretched against the wool of his trousers. He thanked the heavens Orion stood behind him and not in front.
“This isn’t working,” Gavin sighed. “It’s hopeless.”
“It isn’t.”
“How do you make it look so easy?”
“You confessed a fear to me, I will share something with you,” Orion said, his hands still pulsing. “It takes control, yes, but you need something to control. Use your emotions, and harness them.”
“Like what? What emotions do you use?”
“I think of losing my mother, of my aunt slipping further from me. The grief and the fear. I harness that.”
“Your mother died?” Gavin asked warmly. When Orion nodded over Gavin’s shoulder, Gavin went on. “I lost my mother too.”
“Losing a parent. I’ve lost both. We share great woe,” Orion said. “Use it, feel it, but don’t let that anger, hatred over what people have done, direct you. We draw it up and push it out of us and direct it.”
Gavin tensed and his breathing sharpened. Orion held him steady. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Yes, you must. Try for me. Think of it happening,�
�� Orion instructed.
Gavin thought of his mother, how she had loved him, and then how she was gone. He gulped for air when the agonizing memories overwhelmed him, and he became hot and sweaty. His hands emanated a soft yellow-orange hue of their own. He craned behind him. “How?”
Orion urged him to focus on their hands, on their interlocked fingers. The different shades of their magicks pulsed around their hands. His whole body electrified, like touching the ends of a wire straight from an analytical engine.
“Now use it.”
Gavin pushed out with his hands and felt something flow through him and into the stack of logs before them until the top log exploded in a spray of kindling. “Oh!”
Orion straightened his fingers and commanded a translucent shield to appear to stop them from getting splinters in their faces. Gavin turned around, still in Orion’s arms.
“That was fantastic. Truly fantastic. Is that what you feel like all the time?” When Orion stared at him in return, he realized how it sounded and blushed. “I mean, it felt so… powerful, and terrifying at the same time. Do you think I could do something like that on my own?”
“Yes. I used an old trick, a light show, to make you think I was helping. Like with young ones.”
“Was that really all my doing?”
Orion laughed. “That was all you. Now we must try to get you focused. To maybe not blow things apart.”
WORKERS GATHERED around Landa as she attempted to fix the main computational device. She needed to fine-tune its timing mechanism. But she also needed to understand its logic punch card better if she had any chance of repairing the problem Victoria said they’d been having. The power had been fluctuating rapidly, and commands came erratically from the analytical engine’s control center. The grown men assigned to help her quickly recognized her skill and switched from condescension to asking many questions. Victoria told her it was because they recognized a master artificer when they saw one.
She figured the men needed to learn more about their machines, so she gave them all assignments, which left her and Wish unsupervised to gather intelligence. They ascertained a great deal about the village she thought could be helpful in plotting an escape. The guards patrolled in a predictable foot pattern, which suggested they weren’t highly trained. The village did a good job hiding themselves from long-range telescopes with tree camouflage and strategically spaced fires at night. She learned they had been discovered by the military too many times, forced to pack up quickly and march to new locations. But now that they had established such a large community, they wanted to stay put.
The simple village started to look more like an armed battalion, with the acquired steam cannons, a few walkers, heavy guns, and soldiers. There were lots of soldiers. She wasn’t sure what their end goal was and didn’t have time to care about that when her mother and father could be in dire straits back in London. She didn’t know what damage the faerie army had done, or if it had even ended.
She discovered where their steamwalker was stored. She learned how to easily use a well-placed tampered logic card to cause a massive power outage. When she did it, they could get their walker and slip out of the village with little resistance.
With most of the workers busied with the tasks she had assigned and Wish occupying the rest, Landa snuck off to tell Gavin the plan for later that night. She’d have to get Lucas too, but she knew right where he’d be. He’d be curled up in bed like he had been all day, upset about something. She was pretty sure she knew what.
Landa didn’t scurry or sneak. She learned that with enough grease on your hands and clothes and a determined, busy look, most people assumed you belonged where you were. A worker had a purpose and most people ignored them. So she strode straight through the village to find Gavin.
She looked everywhere she could think of until a shopkeeper in the market gave her a clue. He said he saw the boy with the “brass goggles on his skinny little head”—his words, at which she couldn’t help but laugh—walk into the woods with a boy who sounded like Zachariah. Her laugh turned to a scowl. He had made her feel uneasy ever since they had run across him.
“Oh my!” she exclaimed when she walked into the woods and saw Gavin and Orion in an embrace, their heads snuggled close together. When she saw the look on Gavin’s face, she regretted that she looked so shocked. In her defense, she thought, she had not been prepared.
Gavin jumped back. “Landa. We were just….” Orion looked at him and grinned.
“I needed to talk to you,” she said quickly. She had thought Lucas was misguided until she saw Gavin with him. She turned to leave but thought better of it and walked toward them. “We’ve been friends a long time.”
“Landa—”
“No, listen,” she said. “We’ve been friends a long time. We’ve endured so much together as a team, you and I. Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know how this makes me feel? Stupid, like I’ve been lied to. You could have trusted me.”
“This is who he truly is, Landa,” Zachariah tried.
“Orion!” Gavin said. This had become a family affair between him and Landa.
“Orion? I thought your name was Zachariah?” Landa said, frustrated. “What is your real name, whoever you are? How many more lies are there?”
“That is my real name. There is no longer a reason to use a false one since the Monk already knew. I told Gavin. It is not up to me to decide what your friends tell you.”
“Monk? False names?” She glared at Gavin. “How many secrets have you been keeping from me?”
“Landa, I can explain,” Gavin begged.
“Explain? Explain? You don’t need to explain anything to me, except maybe why you didn’t think you could share this with me after all of the things we’ve been through together. I love you, Gavin. The only thing you need to explain is why you’re out here with… him… when Lucas is…. He’s practically been acting like the Hero of the Empire to rescue you.” She said it in the heat of the moment. As soon as she did, she realized Gavin had in fact done something to hurt Lucas.
“Wait, Lucas?” Gavin said. Landa watched him as he tried to put the pieces together. “You know about Lucas and me?”
“Wait. That’s serious?” Orion asked.
“Sod off!” Landa shouted at Orion. “Gav, you are aware this monk act or whatever it is Zachariah—”
“Orion,” Orion clarified.
Landa glared at him until she felt her point made, then returned to Gavin. “… lied about his name too? He is clearly not some random Druid who happened to be hiding out in the deep woods with a group of seditionists and some old monk at the same time the faeries attacked. Does that seem coincidental to you? Really. What do you know about Victoria and her friends anyway? Gav, we could be pawns in some dastardly plot against the Council.”
“Dastardly?” Orion mimicked.
Gavin looked over to Orion, who peered at him with puppy-dog eyes. Landa could not believe Gavin would buy it.
“There’s so much you don’t understand.”
“Then tell me,” Landa tried.
Gavin closed his eyes. He stood motionless for a log time.
“Landa, you knew about me and Lucas?”
“Of course I did,” Landa said with gentleness. “Well, look. You’re my dearest friend. Maybe I didn’t know for sure until, well, today. It scarcely matters to me because inside your chest, your heart is made of the same cogs and gears as the rest of us, searching for solid connections to orient the timing. The packaging of the other heart, boy, girl, means nothing to the heart within.”
“Wow, Landa. That was… amazing.”
“I surprised myself,” she said.
“You knew.” Gavin grabbed her by the hand, struggling against tears. He saw it in her face, her understanding and her friendship.
“I also know that Lucas is in love with you. That’s plain enough to see, even for a git like Wish.”
“I don’t care what Wish thinks.” Gavin waved his hand. “Wait, in l
ove? Lucas?”
“I figured us running so far from home yesterday had something to do with it,” she said.
The three of them stood there among the woodpiles at the edge of the clearing. Each of them waited for the other to make the next move. Landa broke the stalemate, wrapping her friend in a hug. Gavin practically collapsed into her arms. When his breath steadied, she pulled Gavin away from Orion.
“Listen, Wish and I have figured out a plan to steal our steamwalker so we can go back to London. I need to see if my parents are all right. And we can find your father. He will know what is going on.”
“We are going back, Landa, but not to see my father. We’re going to find something, but we don’t need to steal the steamwalker. It will be given to us. We are going to get something my father never should have had in the first place.”
A Mission of Fate
“I DON’T understand,” Landa said, frustrated as they walked back toward the camp.
Gavin knew she didn’t, but he couldn’t possibly explain everything to her, about the faerie and magick. Could he?
“They are just going to give us the military-grade walker so we can leave, knowing the location of their secret village? I don’t think so,” Landa declared.
“Young lady, that is exactly what is going to happen,” the Monk said from somewhere close.
Landa and Gavin quickly turned, startled. The Monk and Victoria had slipped up on them on the outskirts of the village. Gavin noticed Orion had caught back up with them as well.
“These two monks are full of surprises,” Landa said, pointing between Orion and the old man.
“I am not a monk,” Orion said in defense.
“Weird mystical religion and strange clothing? Sounds fairly monkish to me.”
“Can everyone please stop saying monk?” Gavin asked.
“You are referring to my clothes as strange? Shall I conjure the lady a mirror?” Orion prodded. He pointed to Landa’s goggles on her top hat, many crisscrossing belts with fancy brass clasps, and her work gloves tucked into one of her gadget-laden pockets.
Absolute Heart Page 18