“But she said she was seeking vengeance on him, remember?” Vespa said. “Somehow the way she boasted so freely made me feel she wasn’t lying.”
“Oh, she wasn’t telling us everything. We got out of her lair far too easily, especially if Syrus’s uncle was trying to sway him to her service, as Syrus said.”
Vespa frowned. “Are you sure? I don’t think—”
“We couldn’t have left without her allowing it. Remember how hard it was just to get in there? She was laughing when we left, Vee. Laughing. I don’t think she would laugh if we hadn’t stepped straight into her web by leaving.”
Vespa remembered that terrible laugh echoing behind them in the void. “Well, what do you propose we do?”
“Be vigilant. Conserve our strength. Learn all we can. Charles is making a big show of how accommodating he is. Let us take advantage of that.”
It was true that Charles was definitely trying to win them to his side. Vespa considered that it might be profitable to let him think he was winning her over. Perhaps he’d reveal more of his plans that way. What had Syrus’s granny said? You caught more flies with honey than vinegar?
She considered telling Bayne but knew that he’d never agree to it. If she was going to try this, she’d have to do it on her own.
“All right, then,” she heard herself saying. “But when you have more information, you will tell me, won’t you?”
“Count on it.” He smiled, but the smile was forced. He had other things on his mind right now.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said.
She looked down at the stack of books near him. One was about the history of the old palace, and she picked it up. “May I take this one if you’re through?”
He nodded.
“Good night, Pedant.”
“Good night, my Lord,” she said. He glanced at her so that she blushed and dropped her gaze.
She went out with Truffler into the hall, carefully closing the doors. She felt the neverlock snick back into place behind her.
Truffler helped her find her room again. She opened the door and then stopped.
“Moving on to the next plan,” she said.
She flopped down into a cozy chair by the writing desk and put her head in her hands. “Whatever that is.”
CHAPTER 21
Ximu comes for me in the morning, just as I’m on the verge of waking.
“I see you survived the airship accident. Well done.” She has me again, so tightly bound in her silk, I can barely breathe.
“Ill done,” I say. “That was ill done of you.”
“You always were a saucy little lad.” Lucy’s face looms out of the dark—all her once-praised features distorted by her union with Ximu. “Though I hadn’t planned on it happening, it was ultimately a good test. I needed to see how Vespa’s power is progressing, since I really didn’t get enough chance to test it in the Museum.”
“What if it hadn’t been as good as you’d hoped?”
She smiles and pats me on the cheek. The stiff hairs on her spider-feet hurt. “Then I suppose our conversations would have been cut really short.”
“Seems like an awful risk to take, considering.”
“Well,” Ximu snaps, “it would have been easier if you all hadn’t run away with the one thing I need.”
“Vespa?”
“No, nitwit. Not Vespa. Though I will use her power if it comes to it, and thus I must know if she’s capable of the challenge. It’s Olivia I want.”
“Olivia? Why?”
“Because she is the key.”
“To what?”
“My army.”
I think I stop breathing. Gen had said something about an army, but I’d been unable to get more out of him. “I thought you already had an army.”
“What, those minions? It takes nearly all of them to farm our food and take care of the youngling replacements. Even the xiren are kept busy with their duties. No, many, many more are needed. And I know just where to find them.” She is almost gleeful; there’s a lilt to the normal harshness of her voice that I don’t understand.
“Where?”
“Under the hill. Beneath the graves and bones of Scientia. Far beneath the haunted halls of my beautiful palace there waits an army of clockwork. The very same army that drove us out, immune to our poisons or magic. We will awake them and use them against the humans just as the Tinker King did against us. I find the irony of that poetic.”
I’m sure she does. “But what does that have to do with Olivia?”
Her face is so close, I can smell her spidery breath. “You’re concerned for her, are you?”
I can’t think of anything clever to say, so I keep silent.
Her grin grows wider until I see her fangs. “Ah. I thought so. You’d best let go those feelings, my little spy. They will not serve you.”
Still I say nothing. I fear I know all too well what she’s speaking of, and I fear to know even more. I wish there were a way to free my arms and plug my ears. I wish even more there were a way to wake up.
“How does she fare, your Empress?”
I don’t want to tell that, either, but I find myself offering the truth. “Not well. She has some sort of illness left from the xiren bite.”
“That is because she is not what you suppose her to be.”
“What do you mean?” The words are dragged out of me with reluctance. I have dreamed of her so often. I held her cool hand after the destruction of the Harpy. I wanted . . . the clan mothers only know what I must have wanted, but it makes my face flame, even here in this nightmare.
“Shall I give you a history lesson?” Ximu asks. “It’s a tale perhaps no one in the world knows these days, except for me. I hear all.”
I’m filled with dread as a scene opens in my mind. A room forms, a dark laboratory with surgical tables and restraints, bubbling beakers, and a tall cylinder filled with glowing blue liquid that must be magic. It reminds me of Vespa and Bayne’s workroom back in New London, a place I definitely did not enter without invitation.
“In the Tower,” Ximu says. “This was John Vaunt’s workshop.”
John Vaunt. We call him the Two-Faced Emperor now because he fooled everyone into thinking he was both man and woman over the centuries in order to extend his reign as long as possible. Vespa had told me the story of how he’d sent his daughter Athena, the first witch, out onto the Waste when he discovered her magic, even though he was using dark magic himself all along. “When—” I start to ask, but she shushes me with another swipe of her foot.
“You’ll see.”
The focus shifts to two tables near the blue cylinder. Two bodies are sprawled on the tables. One shines silver, an automaton of beautiful proportions, pistons, and gears. It lies quite still, its metallic eyes vacant, its silver knuckles loose against the steel surface.
The other is a rumpled thing that I hardly know is a girl but for the banner of her long, golden hair, which is so like Olivia’s that at first I think it is her. Then I see the scarlet W stitched across the breast.
“Athena.”
She’s asleep, so deeply asleep that I can barely tell she’s still alive except that her throat flashes every now and again with her breath.
Then the Emperor appears from the shadows of time, and he is already bent and wizened. He reminds me of the way Charles once was with his dead eyes and grim slash of a mouth, and the dark circle around his lips from eating the raw myth of the Elementals. But I sense no Elemental within him. No Grue has eaten his heart. He simply never had one to begin with.
He stoops and brushes the hair back from Athena’s temples with surprising gentleness. “Oh, my little girl,” he says. “Oh, my little girl. You would not listen to me, even when I warned you. I would have hidden your power away and let you rule by my side. I would have made you my heir if you had shown that you could carry on the Great Work that I have begun. But you would not. And now my plans must be altered. Lucky that Tesla showed me the way.”
Tesla? I wonder. What does he have to do with it?
He holds up an instrument. I’ve never seen it before, but I know that it will be used for cutting, and I do not want to see what. I try to turn my head or shut my eyes, but I cannot get away from what’s going on inside my own mind. He starts at her forehead and draws it across like a wand or a knife. There’s a puff of smoke, a smell of burning bone. I know I’ll vomit everywhere if I have to see more.
“Perhaps that’s too much for you?” Ximu says too sweetly. “I will move us quickly through this part, then.”
Time blurs and shifts. I cannot look at the broken doll that was Athena. I watch the Emperor’s back as he lifts something into the open cranium of the automaton. He feverishly connects things with bloodied hands, as if bent on some maniacal knitting project.
There is a whirring click. The automaton’s metal eyes blink.
She opens her metal lips. “Faaaatherrrrrrr,” she says.
As he reaches to adjust her, I shudder and close my eyes, trying to will the vision away. It shimmers and flashes. I can almost see my little room in Grimgorn. I can almost break free . . .
“No, no—stop! You must see this next part to understand.”
Ximu holds me firmly in place.
Next I see the automaton in the glass cylinder, surrounded by magical liquid. She is fully enfleshed. I gag when I realize just whose flesh she wears.
“Stop!” I say. “Please stop!”
But Ximu is relentless. She can force me to see whatever she wants me to see.
When the cylinder opens and the liquid spills out across the laboratory floor, the automaton steps out, smiling tentatively at the man she calls Father. He takes her hand delicately. He helps dress her. I notice that he does not embrace her or show her much affection in any way. She is his Grand Experiment, much as Vespa was with her father. She is the pinnacle of all his art, the ultimate union of science and magic.
There is training—oration, etiquette, dance—all the things a princess should know. And then I see her no more. The laboratory flickers with Elementals tormented, my people fashioned into wraiths and wights, more attempts to make automatons, none of which are ever as successful as the creation of Olivia.
Finally, the images fade from my mind. I am alone in the dark with Ximu again, feeling my stomach roll with horror. Tears stream down my face. I’ve been weeping a long time without realizing it.
“How . . . how . . . ?” I can’t even make the words.
“Do you mean the bit about executing her on the Creeping Waste?” Ximu asks. “A powerful illusion. A ruse, so that no one would come looking for her and he could do as he wished.”
It is too horrible. All I can think of is the girl’s face as she lay there, before he made the first incision. I’d known her father was evil, but I’d never imagined the depths to which he’d sink. Murdering and resurrecting his own daughter! Forcing her to forget who she’d been to become what he wanted her to be.
I was never able to fully weep for my people, but now I weep and weep and weep. I do not know if I can ever stop weeping.
Ximu laughs. She brushes my tears away, and the pain of that is enough to make me stop. For now.
“So, you see, this girl you care for, she’s nothing more than a machine. And she is the key to awakening the army. She is their General, fashioned by Blackwolf in memory of one of the great female Generals of the Old World. John Vaunt stole her out of the crypt when he explored the Bone Palace and spirited her back to his Tower in New London. There he devised his wretched plot for enslaving his daughter to him forever. If she ever disputed him or attempted to rebel against him, all he had to do was shift her programming. Though at the end, even that wasn’t working so well. Truth will out, so they say.”
“Why?” It’s all I can think of to say.
“Why does anyone do anything? He wanted to live. He wanted his daughter beside him. He was obsessed with keeping all the magic and power of this world for himself. Trapped by his own edicts, he had no choice but to do what he did. He waited until all the courtiers who had known Athena were dead. And then he introduced his beloved daughter, Olivia.”
The silk has me wrapped so tight, I can’t even clench my fists. “And you want to use her to awaken the army so that you can take control.”
Ximu nods. “But of course. The army cannot be awakened or used without her. You will help me achieve this. And when I come to the gates and speak the words Omni fatalis, you will give her to me.”
“No. I will not do this.” I am surprised at how calm my voice is.
“You will not?” Ximu says.
Pain clamps my body with delicate pincers. I am wracked with it. I struggle like a worm in my cocoon.
“You will not?”
“No,” I say, clenching my jaw.
Light streams through the dark caverns in my mind. She shows me a huddle of Tinkers in cages. She shows me other Tinkers stored in cocoons of silk. I see a girl’s face sweet as a rosebud, wrapped in scarlet. I see Uncle Gen leading her xiren. The ache I feel inside is deeper than any residual pain from her poison.
“Unless you do exactly as I say, they will all die. Your people have always been excellent building stock—their bones are filled with just enough magic to make many things possible. I have held them against a time of need. But I will not hold them longer if you do not do as I say.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’ll leave you to think on it, then. I am at Euclidea. I will be at the gates in a few days. You know the consequences should you disobey. But have you thought of the rewards if you submit to my design?”
I fall into a dream of such wonder that it exhausts me. Me and my people in the Bone Palace, building objects of such utility and beauty as I’ve only dreamed. Things that fly without mythgas. Instruments to capture the light of the sun and convert it to light and heat. Ways of harnessing the power of wind and water to broadcast sound. And at the heart of it all, Olivia by my side, Olivia with fingers of silver and jeweled eyes.
“You are a king, Syrus. You are meant to be a king.”
CHAPTER 22
Vespa was in the chamber again, looking for the thing she couldn’t remember. This time was different, though. There was someone with her. Or rather, there was someone already there. It was as if she was invisible, watching.
A man dressed in rich robes came down the stairs. Torchlight sparkled along the embroidered scales of dragons like Tianlong on his sleeves. Vespa sensed that he was a great lord or king. He was carrying something. Vespa went closer, and gasped when she saw what he held.
A young boy, perhaps Arlen’s age. He was just as richly dressed as the king, but he wasn’t breathing.
The king carried him to a great sarcophagus, which was painted with Tinker letters and symbols. Vespa couldn’t read most of them, though she was intrigued by a prominent symbol at the very center of it. It looked much like the emblem of the Ineffable Watchmaker, a winged clockface. But the clock formed the abdomen of a scarab beetle.
The king set the boy’s body into the tomb. He was weeping.
“Sleep well, my son. I entrust my army to you, that they may fight better for you in the next life than they did in this. And when my time is done, then we shall be together again.”
He took a key-shaped pendant from around his neck and placed it around the boy’s. He took a cuff from his wrist and slid it over the boy’s as well. All Vespa could see of it was a flash of gold and brass.
The king kissed the boy on his forehead and slid the sarcophagus lid over him.
Then she watched his form shimmer as he took the shape of a black wolf. He circled the tomb three times before lying down in front of it. He looked out over what Vespa now realized must be a burial chamber, and it was as though he saw her, for his gaze pierced her heart.
She gasped and heard herself cry out. The last thing she saw before her eyes flew open was those amber eyes boring into her own.
The dream disturb
ed Vespa so deeply that all she wanted was to get out of the palace. She wanted to be in the sun and wind for a while, even if the weather was growing increasingly cold.
She took two books with her—the dream book and the palace history—and decided to scout out a spot. She walked briskly through the halls, marveling at their architecture. It was hard to believe Ximu had built this herself. How the great beast must have labored (or had her servants labor)! She caught herself almost admiring her.
At last she found a small sunken courtyard with a pleasant fountain. The day had progressed sufficiently enough that the stones were warm, and they held in the heat so that it almost felt like the end of summer rather than mid-autumn.
Vespa had hoped to find a spot like this where she could study and practice her magic, and especially after such a vivid dream, it seemed she needed badly to do both. The dream book was again less than helpful. It suggested that those who dreamed of a scarabeus were on the verge of a new life. It said nothing about the Ineffable Watchmaker, of course, or a king mourning a dead prince.
The history book was a bit dense. There were long passages loosely translated from the Tinker language that, based on her lessons with Syrus, she wasn’t sure were correct. She’d need to see if he could help her understand it; she knew she wasn’t very gifted at the Tinker language.
The sadness of the dream still filled Vespa’s mind. She decided to try magic instead. A proposition no less frustrating than trying to understand her dreams, she was sure, but certainly something in the here and now.
She wished she could figure out why her magic was so unreliable. Why one day did it seem to serve well and then another not at all? Why did it do that sometimes even from moment to moment?
Vespa had no idea, but perhaps working at what was hardest would be best. She felt she was weakest at illusion, so she started there.
Water was malleable, much more than stone, of course, so she tried shaping something from it. Perhaps a mermaid. She stared hard at it, pulling and stretching at the shape like it was putty. Eyes, nose, fish tail . . .
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