The Puppetmaster's Apprentice

by Lisa DeSelm

  Part of me wonders if I should turn and follow the soldiers, to see where they might be going, but I’m so mesmerized by the saboteur it’s impossible to leave her. I squat down beside her, sitting back on my haunches, just as she does.

  Logically, I know she is without a beating heart and a brain and all the other encumbrances that make a creature human and whole. But here she is. Functioning on magic I can’t begin to understand.

  “What did he do to you?” I ask softly, so as not to startle her. My voice sounds fragile, like it might shatter when it touches the air. “What did he make you do?” I assess the blood-stained gloves.

  Her head inclines toward me, curious. Her expression remains unchanged: intense, sharp, and self-assured. At the time I was carving it, the wood gave me no other choice. Hers is not a beautiful face, but it is one you cannot look away from.

  Lost in my own spell of wonderment, I lift my hand in greeting, splaying my five fingers wide. She regards this gesture and lifts the hand that has been communing with the dirt to mirror my own. I make a fist and open it again. Fluently, she matches me move for move. Taking the game even further, I press my sweaty palm to her wooden one. A shiver races down my neck to feel the pressure returned. Her gloved hand is cool and hard and pushes back with a strength that far outweighs my own. Unprepared, I tumble back into the dirt.

  Taking a handkerchief from my pocket, I reach out cautiously to wipe the blood and dirt from her open hand. She observes my fingers, the way I utilize the scrap of fabric and pat her gently when done, the way a mother would, cleaning a child’s scrape. Once I’ve finished, I find her reaching to take the handkerchief for herself. My cheeks burn as she turns it toward me, gently dabbing the still-visible wound on my nose.

  “A splinter,” I explain. “Apparently, where we come from,” I point to the trees, “splinters are somewhat inescapable.”

  She nods, seeming to think me daft for not knowing that before.

  “Come,” I reach for her hand, sensing the mounting danger of being out in the woods, in the open, with her. “Come with me.”

  “Danger among us!” her voice reverberates in my skin. “The shadows are loosed.”

  “You will be safe. You needn’t go where Laszlo has bade you. You don’t have to do what he says. He is not your master,” I insist. “I made you.”

  Bearing an undeniable guardianship for the saboteur, I long to protect her from him. My mind cannot conceive what the young duke intends for this dark creature, but I understand now her true purpose is a hostile rather than decorative one. That he would take something so beautiful and use it for violent ends!

  The power of her animated form almost makes me feel ashamed of the naive exuberance with which I built her, of those exhausting days at Curio when her construction consumed me, of the joy carving her gave to me. Building her was a relief, especially after the rigid limitations of a year spent laboring over wooden soldiers, a distraction from the pain of watching Papa grow weaker. I poured the full extent of my skill and imagination into the saboteur, not holding anything back, ultimately delivering to Wolfspire Hall a marionette the duke wished to wield like a freshly forged blade.

  This is all my fault—our fault. We presented the weapons right into his waiting hands. The soldiers. The uniforms and broadswords. The saboteur.

  I wonder how to smuggle her back to Curio. Perhaps I could persuade her to go limp, and drag her down the back alleys to the rear workshop door? I could hide her in my attic room, keep her locked away if necessary, somewhere she could do no more damage. Where I wouldn’t have to watch my best workmanship ruined by Laszlo’s abuses. Or perhaps I should take her away from here, high into the mountains. If we ran far enough from his reach, maybe the magical ties binding her would be broken.

  “I made you,” I repeat, hoping to appeal to whatever loyalty she might possess. “You belong with me. Let’s go now, it isn’t safe here.” I pull at her hand, but her fingers slip through my own like water. Her head darts, watching the surrounding fog.

  She hears something again, something I cannot. Connected to the forest in a deep and primal way, she motions for me to retreat back to the safety of the pines.

  Soldiers again?

  I obey as she deftly reaches for something in her vest pocket. Then, the saboteur leaves me behind in the trees, her dark head drifting away like a departing ship on a sea of fog. I wait and watch for a few tense moments. Then, in the distance, a sharp zing meets my ears, the sound of an arrowhead striking true.

  Then I hear a cry. A very human cry. The trees fall silent.

  I stay a moment more, hoping she’ll reappear. But the saboteur never comes back. With my throat burning and fear supplying the last of my strength, I decide to leave, with or without her. I must return to Curio, to make sure the only family I have left will be kept safe from the havoc of wooden soldiers set loose on the territory. A havoc I helped unleash. I must warn the Maker’s Guild.

  Shivering, I creep slowly from the evergreen hollow. Wading warily from tree to tree, more fearful than ever of what lurks behind them, I nearly trip over the startled body of a Wolfspire Hall guard. My foot tentatively prods his side, but the man doesn’t stir. This soldier is fully human, dressed in the Margrave’s livery, just like his wooden counterparts. Bending down to examine him, I see his skin is still warm to the touch, the look on his face one of frozen shock. With fresh dread, I spot the cause of his demise: a finely notched brass clock gear planted between the eyes, embedded deep in his skull.

  Unable to suspend my terror, I retch beside him into a wide spray of leatherleaf ferns, my empty gullet heaving without respite. Stumbling blindly around the body, I tear into a run through the trees, straining for the edges in the distance where thicket meets the meadow.

  As I gallop away like a wounded animal, the weight of the matching clock gear in my pocket nearly buckles my knees. I cannot catch my breath. Where I fled to the wood days ago seeking a place to hide and lick my wounds, now I crave air and light. The trees feel too close, too towering. I am too small in their accusing shadows, their branches casting pointed blame directly on my head.

  The saboteur is lost to me now, untethered and out of my control. My hopes for returning home to start anew after Papa and Emmitt’s deaths are soundly crushed. How can I pick up my chisel and hammer again, knowing a creature made by my own hand has stolen life—more than once? As though a pack of wolves bite at my heels, I run for home, dragging my own millstone around my neck.

  CHAPTER 16

  I RUN LIKE FURY, SPRINGING THROUGH THE CROOKED LANES toward Curio. My eyes scarcely see anything but the soldier with the clock gear struck between blood-filled eyes and Emmitt’s body draped on the glockenspiel. I’m so distracted, it isn’t until I’m several streets past the marktplatz that I realize everything around me feels … wrong.

  It’s morning, a Tuesday, though it feels like an eternity has passed since I first ventured to the wood, running away from my problems. Instead of the normal bustle and slosh of hawkers and busy housewives, there’s entirely too much stillness.

  Many shops and homes look dark inside, despite cold sunshine grazing the rooftops as the fog flees. Windows aren’t flung open; they remain shut. The usual rag-tag assortment of laundry flutters stiffly from lines strung across the upper windows of each home, like so many flags of surrender. I spy the milkmaid carrying full pails into the cheesemonger’s, but she scurries past with her eyes downcast.

  Through my tears, I see Erundle the chromatist tossing a bucket of water across her back steps, leaving a puddle of murky rainbows on the cobbles. No doubt the remainder of the morning’s grindings of powders and herbs.

  “Erundle!” I call, waving and gulping great breaths of air, relieved to see a familiar face.

  She hesitates, looking pained to see me. She nods roughly and turns around to go back into her home, quickly slamming the door shut behind her. Strange. We’ve always been on excellent terms.

  No lights emanate from Cu
rio’s windows. I enter through the back, flinging open the door to Burl’s stable. The horse nickers in surprise. I left him plenty of fresh hay and water, but it’s evident his stall needs immediate attention.

  “I know, Burly,” I apologize, scratching his nose. “Papa left us. Then I left you, too. I’m so sorry. Everything is slipping away from me and I can’t stop it or slow it down.”

  As I fumble around in my room after bathing and changing clothes, there is no way to escape the persistent knocking coming from the cupboard door.

  “Piro?” Bran calls from the other side.

  There is so much to tell him—to tell them all. I just don’t know if I have the strength to do it. To tell them what I’ve just seen. Or if I even should.

  “Piro, please? If you don’t want to see me, just listen through the door. Just knock back—do something, anything—so I know that you’re safe. You’ve been gone for days,” his muffled voice pleads worriedly. “I know you’re there, I can hear you. At least, I hear someone over there, and if you’re not Pirouette, I’m going to beat this cupboard down and—”

  Reluctantly, I knock against my side of the door in our secret pattern.

  I hear his breath catch, relief flooding his voice. “Thank you. Are you all right?”

  I tap again for “yes.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  The longing in his voice is a balm to my wounded pride and sore heart. I yank open the door of the cupboard. His door flies open, the space immediately filling with his face.

  “Hi.”

  “Hello.”

  This moment suddenly feels reminiscent of the experience I had years ago, of opening the cupboard to see his face for the first time, realizing there was an actual person on the other side.

  “Bran—” I begin to explain myself and where I’ve been. As I search for the words, Bran intently clears away the shelves, sweeping everything onto his side of the cupboard with the arc of his arm. Our odds and ends instantly tumble down onto his rug.

  “Wait. What are you doing?”

  “Something I should’ve done long ago,” he mutters, biting his lip as he wrenches each wooden shelf from its moorings. Quicker than I thought possible, there is nothing between us, no more doors or treasures to separate my room from his.

  There’s just us.

  “Piro?”

  “Yes, Bran?”

  “Would you like to come in?”

  I nod, startled; I would.

  I’ve only ever seen Bran’s room, the mirror image of my own, in bits and pieces, but for once nothing stands between me and the warmth of it. I crawl through the cupboard on my hands and knees, and find myself in a place I’ve only been able to see slices of, never the whole.

  His bed and wardrobe look the same, but on the side where I have nothing but empty wall he has a full worktable, with clock parts and pieces filling the shelves mounted behind. A finished mantlepiece clock ticks soundly with a crisp, regular rhythm. Shelves of books occupy another corner and below the window sits a wooden bench, the perfect place for watching life go by on Tavia’s streets.

  And then, there’s him. After I catch myself staring open-mouthed at his room, the lamp by the bedside bathing everything in golden light, I find I can’t look away from his eyes. He perches on his heels, back against the wall, as if he’s been here forever, waiting an age for me to come through the cupboard. I crouch awkwardly on my knees.

  “Bran, I couldn’t—”

  Again I attempt to explain where I’ve been, but I am cut off by his hands on my cheeks, by his mouth kissing my battered nose gently on the tip. His lips move from my nose to my forehead and then make their way down in a cascade across cheeks and chin, until one kiss, the most tender and insistent of all, lands squarely on my lips.

  He is knee to knee with me, and I reach for his shoulders to steady myself. The heat of his breath against my skin sends a flutter down to my core, warming me through in a way the golden light in his room never could. Bran himself is made of light and warmth. The tightly wound knot of fear and shame I’ve been holding begins to loosen in my chest. His kisses send me reeling and I want nothing more than to just exist here beyond the cupboard door, with Bran, forever.

  Until I remember all the sorrows that have befallen us both—and that I am the cause for most of them.

  I pull away from his lips, but am unable to fully escape him; he pulls me into the welcoming space beneath his arm. Sitting this way, we fit against each other as neatly as two layers in my father’s puzzle boxes.

  “You missed Emmitt’s wake yesterday,” he says softly, disappointment thick in his voice. “Same day the Margrave was interred.”

  “Oh!” Regret twists deeper in my chest.

  I should have been there to say goodbye. To help Anke bury her son, just as she had helped bury my father. To help Bran mourn the loss of our friend. The Maker’s Guild needed me and I fled.

  “I’m sorry. How is Anke?”

  “Not good.”

  I know the feeling.

  “Where’d you go, Pirouette?”

  “To see Papa.”

  He sighs, the strain about his eyes making him seem older. Suddenly, I clam up, unable to speak about how I ran to get away from my own sadness, only to meet the truth face to face in the woods. I cannot burden Bran with the old tree woman or the saboteur. Certainly not with how I fled from the dead soldier with the clock gear buried in his skull, just like Emmitt. I can’t fully grasp it all, myself.

  “But Bran, the soldiers.” I steel myself to explain at least this much. “We have to warn everyone. The wooden soldiers are … well, they are marching around. Like real men, but …”

  “I know, I heard. Word has already spread. The innkeeper’s boy was out getting water, and the poor lad came back screaming his gullet out with an empty bucket in his hands, saying there’s a full lot of ’em on the move. Said they were heading into the wood before the sun was even up.”

  “Oh.” My pulse thunders like it might burst from my ears.

  “The boy said there was something not right about the soldiers … that they were more like figurines than men.” Bran gives me a long, worried look. “I don’t know how to explain it. Could someone be resurrecting those old spells, Piro? But how? Everyone’s keeping inside until we have to venture out for the proclamation.”

  Others had seen the soldiers marching, too. And the chromatist and almost every other maker in Tavia knew my father and I made them.

  How had the duke wrought that magic out? And what of the saboteur—what if she were seen, with fresh blood on her hands?

  It’s horrible to think of what she might do, or what might be done to her if she were seized and attacked.

  “When’s the proclamation?” I gulp.

  “Announced yesterday. Every man, woman and child, be they from the farms or the village, is requested to present themself to the rathaus on the morrow at noon,” he says, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Until then, we’re all to be doing nothing but mourning Erling von Eidle. Even the market was canceled today in honor of the late Margrave.”

  “Canceled? Well, we have to warn the others, Bran. The duke is certainly planning something. Though I’m afraid I don’t know what.”

  “I went to see him, about Emmitt, you know,” he says, anger creeping into his voice.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “It isn’t right! Our friend was murdered, practically right in front of us! And beyond whispering fearfully, no one was doing anything. My father wouldn’t go, Fonso and Tiffin were too spooked and Anke was too grieved. And you weren’t here, so I went. I went to see the steward. I asked to see the duke himself, but they wouldn’t let me. Someone had to!

  “I know the duke had something to do with his death. I just know it! I’m convinced Laszlo used a paid mercenary to kill Emmitt before the Margrave’s will could be read. Perhaps even just to silence the rest of us. His father might have made allowances for a maker to rule in Tavia, but the duke�
��the real bastard, in my opinion—could never stand the thought of playing second fiddle.”

  “What did the steward say?”

  He laughs bitterly. “He pretended to listen to my complaint and then said, ‘We’re already looking into the matter of the clockmaker’s unfortunate death. The duke is most concerned, especially since the glockenspiel wasn’t completed before the fall proclamation, per his father’s orders.’ So, in other words, they’re doing nothing and couldn’t care less about what really happened to Emmitt. They’re upset about the blasted glockenspiel not being complete! And soon, we all have to go hear the duke’s proclamation, which, no doubt, puts that conniving usurper exactly where he wants to be.”

  “It’s his right, he’s the Margrave’s only legitimate heir,” I say sadly.

  “Yes, and he took that right, like a greedy child stealing a biscuit from his father’s plate. Emmitt didn’t even want to be Margrave! He didn’t want anything to do with it and look at the price he paid. Some of us are meant to be makers,” he says, the pressure of his fingers squeezing my hand, “and some are takers. I’m under no illusions about which sort the duke is.”

  “Yes,” I agree. My own illusions of safety and happiness are long gone.

  “I am so sorry about Gep,” Bran says sincerely. “We’ve not even had any time to talk about it, just you and I. Everything has happened so quickly.”

  Even hearing my father’s name aloud still hurts, a hammer striking a fresh bruise. As an offering, Bran presses something round and warm into my fingers. It’s a pocket watch, trimmed in brass.

  “Pretty.” I admire the elegant hands, marking time without any concern for the past, only inching us forward. A bit of blue velvet ribbon is strung through the loop at the top. “One of yours?”

  “Yes, finally finished it. This is the first I’ve built completely on my own.”

  I turn it over in my hands, noting the scrolling pattern of leaves and flowers engraved on the back, embellishing an ornate “P.” I look up at him.