CHAPTER 32I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” Bayne said. “I’m sure he’s hiding something from us.”
“Well,” Vespa said, “that’s understandable. We’ve hidden things from him, too.” She couldn’t believe she was defending Charles. Never in her life would she have imagined that was a possibility. “But he’s agreed to help now. The least we can do is cooperate on our end.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Bayne asked.
“We give him the energy he needs, help him distract Ximu long enough to get Lucy free before we shove the giant spider into our own web.”
“And what of the Tinkers and the xiren? Will they be free when Ximu is trapped? Or will they go on?”
“I don’t know,” Vespa said. “But Syrus has agreed to help us.”
“He has?” Bayne raised a brow. “I’m surprised. It seems as though there are many details missing.”
“But it’s the only choice if he wants to save them! If she dies, they’ll die too.”
“So Charles has said.” Bayne unfolded himself from the battlements and turned to look out over the mist-covered mountains. He was as distant and remote as the heights, it seemed.
“I don’t see what other choice we have. Everything else he’s said has been true.” She couldn’t tell him how much Charles had helped her with her magic. How he had taught her to start small and work up to the bigger things. She knew the scarabeus was helpful too, but Charles also made magic comprehensible in a way that Bayne never quite had. Though she couldn’t bring herself to say so. As ever, though, it seemed as if Bayne picked up on her thoughts.
“What is his hold over you?” He turned back to look at her.
She forced herself to look him in the eye, though it felt like she was being shot full of angry darts.
“Nothing. I just think . . .” Vespa swallowed, hating the words that crowded the back of her throat.
“What?”
“I think we have to trust him. We have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Pedant Nyx,” Bayne said. “The question is whether we’re making the right one.”
“Well, in this case, I think this is both the only choice and the right one. And we really will need your help to make this work.”
“Very well, then. But the moment he diverges from the plan, my compliance will be withdrawn. And I will come prepared for that moment. Understood?” He crossed his arms over his chest, and the ducal signet on his finger winked at her. He made it so difficult to argue with him. And yet so easy all at once.
But this answer was better than she’d been expecting.
They all met in the courtyard of the ancient palace. The autumn sun struck hard on the paving stones, making Vespa want to seek shade behind one of the great statues that lined the square. She wished she’d brought the bonnet the maid had tried to give her.
Tesla was pacing out the dimensions of the trap. “You will need to lure Ximu here,” he said. “If we set up the field in this courtyard, this will be the strongest place. Any other place and she might still be able to pull free.”
“But what will happen to Lucy?” Syrus asked.
“If we’re fortunate,” Charles said, “the division field I set up here will be enough to separate the two. It would help if we could somehow get the potions into her before this, but the ways in which we could offer it seem less than fair.”
“Such as?” Bayne asked.
“Well, a person willing to sacrifice himself for the cause could drink it so that she’d feed off him, for instance. But I doubt anyone here is quite that noble.” Charles smiled darkly.
Vespa tried to offer a solution instead. “How about putting out a goat or a cow laced with it?” She said in an aside to Syrus, “Does she eat goats or cows? Do the legends say anything about that?”
Syrus stepped forward.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “She expects me to give her Olivia anyway. I will go to her and offer myself.”
“But Syrus,” Vespa said, “won’t she kill you when she’s realized you’ve betrayed her?”
“I think the prospect of the key will be enough to satisfy her.”
“But will she still not kill you? If you don’t give her the key . . .” Vespa trailed off.
Syrus held up two keys. “I always carry a spare.” He grinned.
The two keys looked identical; the difference was that one had the patina of age and the other did not. The other difference was that Vespa could feel the magic coming off the old one and nothing from the new. “She’ll sense the difference. There’s magic in the old one,” Vespa said.
“I was hoping you might help me with that.”
“You don’t have to do this, Syrus. Really . . .”
He looked at her, and she could see the resolution in his eyes. “You said this was my decision. Well, now I’m truly making it mine.”
Vespa nodded. She couldn’t smile, though. It was far too deadly a situation for Syrus to put himself in. But he was a man now. No one could make his decisions for him.
“Yes, all well and good. Now that’s decided, can we move on, please?” Charles asked.
Vespa rolled her eyes. Sometimes Charles and Bayne were too alike for her comfort.
“So, we lure her away from the army, and she hits the division field here,” Charles said, standing near a spot that Tesla was sketching onto a tablet.
“And then?” Bayne asked.
“And then we have her, my Lord Duke,” Charles said. “And here she will stay, held for all eternity.”
“You’re certain?”
Bayne looked between him and Tesla.
Tesla answered, “If my understanding of the schematics that are on archive here are correct, this is how the first Elementals were held at the Museum of Unnatural History.”
Piskel began grumping about and settled on Syrus’s shoulder with a thud.
“What’s the matter?” Vespa said. She had been worried that Truffler and Piskel might not want to help them capture Ximu, remembering the old days of the Museum and New London.
“He says that’s the case unless you’re a sylph,” Syrus said, patting the sylph gently.
Vespa could imagine the strain Syrus was feeling. Just thinking about him going alone to face Ximu was terrifying enough for her. She remembered how she had felt when Charles had taken her up to the Machine. She knew that terror of inevitability, that slim hope that what she believed in so desperately would come to pass.
They went back to pacing out the paralytic field. Tesla positioned the thin antennae he and Syrus had developed together. “This will be a perfect way to test the design. If it can withstand holding this kind of power, it should be able to service the entire City,” Tesla said.
Bayne nodded, but Vespa saw how he looked at Charles. She knew that he was still trying to figure out what secret plan Charles might be masking behind this one. He was still sure he would be caught unawares. But he went along with it—they all did—because there was nothing better that could be done.
“It will have to be right,” Vespa muttered under her breath to Truffler. “It will just have to.”
Truffler took her hand in his, and silently they watched the rods being set into place.