The next morning, Mercia’s arteries were crawling with wagons and cabriolets. Open army lorries contained soldiers crated like chickens to market. Masses of people walked the sidewalks and high catwalks overhead. A fetid perfume of sweat, coal coke, burning exhaust, and manure weighed down the air. Quiet didn’t exist. Steam horns blared, tramway cars chimed, and beneath it all lay the constant buzz of thousands of engines, like a dull toothache, ever present and impossible to ignore.
Then there were the songs.
Always, Octavia had heard the soft notes of infection, the staccato of old war wounds, the emptiness of lost limbs. She knew from an early age to despise cities and the way they overwhelmed her senses. Now the vivid, intrusive strains stacked atop each other like a hundred battling symphonies, so many of the instruments off-key and off rhythm.
Many people across the realms were ill, but for some reason the misery rang more profoundly in Mercia, as if the city itself amplified illness. It very well could, judging by the foulness created by so many factories.
She stood in the gateway to Mrs. Garret’s building and breathed through her Al Cala meditation. She pictured the Tree, its branches battered by some distant storm. That’s how I feel. The headband helped, but it was cheesecloth straining a flooded river.
Lady, I must do this. Help me. Please. I don’t understand why I feel such a compulsion to get inside the vault, but I know the task must be done before Alonzo arrives in Mercia.
Last night’s buzzer message to Mrs. Garret had been easy enough to interpret:
Parcel sent in error. Sending man to retrieve. ~Tatiana
Mrs. Garret had been delighted that her son was on the way to Mercia, and delighted by life overall. Octavia’s healing of her had been a slow, deliberate procedure, akin to plucking dispersed dandelion seeds from a grassy field. But the task was done, and Mrs. Garret would live.
Octavia should have been relieved that Alonzo was rushing her way. If he smuggled himself aboard an airship—hopefully in more comfortable confines than Octavia experienced—the journey was two or three days. He could be in Mercia as soon as tomorrow.
It will be safer for him if I infiltrate the palace myself, with the aid of Mrs. Stout’s son. Please, Lady, since you are guiding me that way, let there be something of use in the vault. Books, scrolls, tablets—something about your nature, something that will help me understand. I can meet Alonzo afterward and we can journey to the Tree.
Her legs propelled her into the flow of pedestrians. Diagnoses bombarded her. She bit her cheek to force back a scream and walked on, bullish. Mrs. Garret had provided her with directions to the palace quarter about a half mile away. Beyond that, Octavia had told Mrs. Garret nothing of her destination or intentions. The less Mrs. Garret knew, the safer she would be.
After all, her house received a medician in a crate from Tamarania. The servants’ gossip has already spread over town. Spending the night was all I dared, and even that was foolish.
Her arms hugged her torso as if she were freezing. She wore the green coat from Mr. Cody again. Mrs. Garret’s servant girls had murmured in delight over it. Octavia found it odd to be considered fashionable for the first time in her life, and under such horrid circumstances.
Another pox case walked by, the telltale sweet odor clear to her trained nose. Caskentia has been exterminating full villages to prevent pox from getting into Mercia. Fools. It’s here. It has been here all along.
Block after block, she walked, foul factory smoke billowing from somewhere upwind. Many other walkers wore face masks of black or faded gray cloth. Tamarania’s buildings had towered high and yet there had still been a sense of roominess; in Mercia, skyscrapers crowded like vultures to feed on carrion. The windows were fewer or boarded up, streets narrower. A tram rumbled overhead, the trestle rattling as if it’d fall apart.
The spires of the palace emerged from between buildings. The elegant caps of the towers reminded her of spun sugar, though overcooked to an ugly black. Signs designated the palace quarter ahead. Gates and guards marked the boundary. She spied a plant at last—dead vines clung to the wall.
The buildings here were somewhat statelier—columns and porticos and wrought-iron fences. Pedestrians wore more colorful and elegant clothes, a relief to Octavia; her swank coat helped her to blend in. She walked along the periphery street, eyes desperate for any bakeries. Signs, many bleached gray by time, covered the sides of buildings. Royal-Tea advertised again and again—oh, how the Wasters must laugh, knowing Queen Evandia likely looked out her window to see their ads each day.
She walked a full half mile and saw nothing. Turning around, she asked a newspaper vendor for assistance and paid him a copper for the help. The shop still proved difficult to see, tucked away on a third floor and only accessible by a rusted metal staircase on the outside of a building. Gaps in the steps were almost as large as her foot. By the time she reached the third floor, she felt an odd strain in her lungs. It’s the air here. No wonder I’m hearing so many breathing problems.
A handwritten sign in the doorway read CLOSSED. A common Frengian misspelling of the word.
Octavia stood on the landing for a minute. It was quieter with the street far below, the bodies farther away. She jiggled the cold doorknob. It fell off in her hand and the door swung open.
“Hello?” she called, stepping inside. No happy smell of fresh bread welcomed her, though a yeasty scent lingered nevertheless.
The room was shallow, some five feet from door to counter. White shelves were almost empty of bread and pastries. Cheap glowstone lights had been mounted in the ceiling and walls. A crooked light socket gaped as if missing an eye.
“Hello!” she called again.
“We’re shut!” The voice was feminine and high.
Octavia closed the door behind her and set the knob on a sill. More of the fog in her brain dissipated. “I’m here looking for someone.”
“They’re not here!”
She followed the voice. Behind the counter and a doorway almost naked of paint, the kitchen floor was a dismantled mess of metal parts. Two legs kicked beneath a hollowed-out stove. “I said we’re shut.” The words echoed.
A young woman, no older than fourteen. Drums, flutes, a cello—the melody familiar.
“I need to find Devin Stout. His mother sent messages through this shop.”
“There’s no one here by that name.” Heartbeat accelerated.
“You know the name. If he’s not here, tell me where to find him. The rest of his family is in danger and so is he.”
“That’s living, isn’t it? Ow! Damn it!” She slurred her words. Slender hands grabbed the lower lip of the stove and shoved the rest of her body out. “Sorry. Hit my head.” The girl sat up with her legs crossed. She wore robes in the Frengian style, a rope securing the folded cloth at the waist. The bell-shaped sleeves looked stained and frayed. White-blond hair reminded Octavia of Mrs. Stout’s daughter, Mathilda, but this girl’s skin was a deeper tan that spoke of a definite northern heritage. A cleft divided her upper lip, but by the girl’s song, it didn’t extend to cleave the palate. Large red acne spotted her cheeks.
At a glance, Octavia surmised the girl was an orphan. She knew that look in her eyes. Octavia had seen it in the mirror herself at that age, and in far too many other children to count. The loss of one’s family was akin to an amputation. It left emptiness, uneasiness. This girl, at least, ate and had a roof overhead. She was luckier than many. Octavia shuddered to think of what would have happened in her own life if Miss Percival hadn’t found her.
“What’s your name?” asked Octavia.
“Rivka.” The girl appraised Octavia in turn. “If you know how to write, you can leave a message on the counter, or give me a few minutes and I’ll write it.”
Octavia took a deep breath, actually surprised that the girl was literate. “I can’t. I need to speak to him myself.”
A man’s song strained by constant agony. Burns. Skin pulled taut. “Tell me, then.”
The gravelly voice caused her to spin around to face a man who was over six feet in height, his black suit slack as if dangling from a rack. A black mask covered the lower half of his face, and above that the skin was mottled and tight.
An infernal magus laid hands on each cheek and wiggled his fingers, as if molding clay. Rare, for a Waster to count coup in such a severe way. What sort of soldier was this man, to earn that peculiar honor? The infernal scar on Octavia’s wrist was a gnat’s kiss compared to this.
“I can relay the message to him,” said the man.
“No. I need to speak to him myself.”
The man stared at her, intending to intimidate. She wasn’t cowed. She glared back, listening beneath the pain. The melody was familiar. She would have known Mrs. Garret after being near Tatiana and Alonzo; there was no way this man would fool her after she had spent so much time with Mrs. Stout, Mathilda, and the babe—and in the clarity of a circle, no less. Rivka’s song revealed her clear connection as well.
“You’re Devin Stout.”
The songs shifted around her. The man’s in anger. The girl’s in anxiety, fear.
“You realize I’ll have to kill you,” he said lightly.
Whatever she had expected of Mrs. Stout’s son, it wasn’t this. “That would make your mother quite cross.”
“That doesn’t take very much. Give her a copper novel and a gin and tonic, and she’ll be better soon enough.”
“She left you notes last week.”
“Ah yes. That she was moving to the southern nations and hauling my sister along. That I should do the same. Never explained why.” The tautness of his skin strained the words.
“I have a message to give you directly from her. It’s in my—” As she shifted to reach into her satchel, he moved as well, fast and sinuous as a snake. Behind her, the girl whimpered.
“I don’t trust easily. Pull it out slowly.” He motioned with a copper-toned Vera .45. Octavia pulled out the cipher and extended it to him between two fingers. He plucked it away and nodded.
“This is from Mother, all right. Girl, put that stove back together. You’re supposed to be running a bakery, not dismantling more damned contraptions.”
“I needed to open it up. There was a clog, and then I found—”
“Clean it up,” he snapped. He held the note to the dim light and squinted, and then he began to laugh. Deep, wheezing laughs. His lungs, seared, scarred.
“So, it all comes out now.” He lowered the note. “You’re Octavia Leander, a medician. That explains the satchel. Packed with goodies, I’m sure.” Octavia hugged it a little tighter. “I’m supposed to help you break into the palace.”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m King Kethan’s grandson.”
“Yes.”
“This is supposed to be a surprise.”
She hesitated. “Yes?”
Mr. Stout shook his head. “Oh, my mother. She’s so bright with her ciphers and mysteries, her desperate need for intrigue, that she misses the most obvious details. All my life, people stopping me in the street. ‘Oh, you look like the old king. Best not let Evandia see you.’ In the army all the crusty old swaddies say, ‘You look far too young to be another of Kethan’s bastards.’ My nose, my cheekbones, my hair. By all accounts, I was something of a throwback. I wonder if the infernal who did this”—he motioned to his face—“thought the same. Maybe he did me a favor.”
Metal chimed and dinged as the girl resumed her work.
“Are you going to help me?” asked Octavia. The vault. The vault. I must get inside the vault. The urgency itched in her mind, along the lengths of her arms.
“Ah, you’re that sort of woman. Full of sass. War did that to a lot of you, unfortunately. Rivka’s like that sometimes, aren’t you, girl?”
Rivka recoiled. Bits of metal dropped from her hand. She snatched up a washer as it spun like a Mendalian dervish.
Octavia felt a wave of nausea and disgust as she looked between Mr. Stout and the girl. Dogs are usually treated better. Even dogs that are about to be eaten. No daughter should be treated this way.
His daughter . . . Mrs. Stout doesn’t know she already has a grandchild. Devin Stout has kept this child a secret since he was scarcely more than a child himself.
He fanned himself with the note. “The surprise here is the vault.” She could tell he grinned beneath the mask. “I like the idea of taking the most valuable treasures of the realm from Evandia. I like it immensely.”
“Hold on. Take? I want inside for very specific—”
“Then lay your claim. You’ve obviously helped my mother. I can give you first dibs.”
Lady, what am I getting myself into? “Books and anything related to the Lady. Mrs. Stout said there are . . . pieces of the Tree in there.” He doesn’t need to know that King Kethan believed they were the most powerful things in the vault.
“Pieces of the Tree. What are those worth, with everyone marching off to see the full thing? Well, that’s your choice. I’ll get whatever else I want, then. Maybe it’ll finally be enough to leave this damned kingdom.”
“Where do you want to go? The southern nations?”
He shook his head. His pale blond hair, cut crude and short as if by handfuls and a razor, bobbed at the movement. “Ah, the southern nations. Everyone talks up the city-states like they are so grand. No. I want to cross the sea, and without indenturing myself. I want to leave this wretched place and never look back.”
“Your mother would worry for you.”
“My mother. My dear mother. The true heir to the throne.” He snorted. “All her stories of growing up as an orphan with the prudish Percivals and how the grit of the field never washed from beneath her nails, and here she was, the missing princess. I figured she was one of King Kethan’s bastards, really. It seems more appropriate that she’s legitimate. Suits her.”
He looked to a crooked calendar on the wall, squinting, and flipped through several months to find the current page. “What day of the week is it? Ah. Well. Tonight’s the night, then. I know the boys on duty.” He walked to the counter and tipped a burlap bag of flour onto a slab of wood.
“You want to do this tonight?” Octavia’s heart pounded at the thought, but at the same time she was relieved. Get in, get out. Succeed, fail. Let it all be done before Alonzo arrived.
“What my dear mother doesn’t know—among many, many things—is that I am intimately familiar with the palace. I had to guard the old doss house when I was first conscripted. I know every crack and cubbyhole. I can get us in.”
“What, were you a Clockwork Dagger at the palace?” Octavia asked. She rubbed her foot against her calf.
“Ha! The first rule among Clockwork Daggers is you never say you’re a Clockwork Dagger. You say nothing, make people wonder.”
“People will assume the answer is yes.”
He smoothed the flour with a swipe of his hand. “People are idiots. A man can’t be defined by what he was, but by what he is. I’m the humble owner of a bakery and engage in various other entrepreneurial pursuits, when the mood suits me. Now look here.” With his fingertip, he drew a square in the brown powder. “The vault is on the far side of the grounds. Guards always mutter that the old side is haunted, cursed. Not like the newer side of the palace is any better. It all burned in the attack.” He shrugged, box coat loose on his shoulders.
“Cursed? Like how the Wasters claim their land is cursed?”
“The whole bloody continent is cursed. You look around Mercia? People say there are no trees here because of the factories, but you take a gander at a daguerreotype from forty years ago, the skies are clear and there are still some plants to be found. The Waste is better for growing things these days. At least battles turn over the soil, and blood and flesh make good fertilizer—girl, don’t dent anything!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Rivka said. She picked up the part she had dropped.
Mr. Stout gestured over his shoulder. “She might grow up to be a decent mechanic, so long as some buck doesn’t get her in the pudding club these next few years. Harder to assemble an engine with a babe strapped to your teat. Now see, this is where the gate is.”
He rambled on, sketching out the map in flour, discussing the locations of guards and going off on a dozen other tangents.
Octavia listened and pressed her arms against her body. She scratched her boot against her calf, shifting from foot to foot, but it did nothing to ease the irritation buried beneath cloth and leather.
Irritation just like the skin of her arms.
The bark was spreading.