She barely knew Piers and shouldn’t go off with him. But she really wanted those hatpins, and it was still too early to return from her pretend “picnic.” She studied the grin on Piers’s face; he looked mischievous but not at all sly. She trusted him. “I’d love to.”
Jem stopped the pedal car in front of a slightly run-down townhouse on Tier Three. It shared walls with its neighbors but rose two stories high and had a glass cupola on top.
Piers jumped out and handed her down from the open carriage while Jem was busy setting the brake. “Shall we?”
Qualms struck. “Will your friend mind? It’s rather early to call without an invitation.”
Piers scoffed. “Norton doesn’t stand on ceremony. I’m not sure he even knows the meaning of the word. He’s an inventor—his mind is always occupied with his current project.” He rapped the knocker three times. “I should warn you, he’s terrible with names, so don’t feel slighted if he forgets yours. He often calls me Jack, who I gather used to be his assistant.”
Nobody answered, and Audrey sighed in disappointment. “Perhaps he isn’t home.”
“Norton has to be physically dragged away from his lab.” Piers opened the door and stepped into the vestibule. “Norton? It’s Piers Tennyson.”
“Just a minute.” A faint voice came from up the stairs.
“Like I said, he’s probably in his laboratory. I’ll go make sure he’s fit company.” Piers bounded up the stairs and out of sight.
While she waited, Audrey peered around: shabby carpet, bare walls, and the distinctive odor of pipe smoke. Her gaze was arrested by the sight of a dark-haired woman creeping down the stairs. Audrey’s first thought was that this must be Norton’s housekeeper—but the woman was carrying her shoes, and both her curly hair and her dress were in some disarray, as if she’d just rolled out of bed. Audrey flushed beet red in horror—was the woman a prostitute? But no, her clothes were respectable, those of, say, a dashing widow. A lover, then.
The woman saw Audrey and gave a little shrug of her shoulders at being caught. She put a finger to her lips for silence. Audrey nodded. She had no wish to embarrass Piers or Norton, and she was at fault for barging in.
The woman slipped on her shoes and out the door. Audrey noticed a vulgarly large, red ring on her left hand. It couldn’t be a real ruby. Glass, probably.
Muffled voices came from above, and then Piers reappeared. “Come join us. Watch out for the third step.”
Curiosity beat out propriety. Audrey lifted her skirts and climbed the narrow stairs, avoiding the splintery third step.
The whole second floor, which would normally have been bedrooms, was taken up by the laboratory. Gaping, Audrey made out workbenches with scattered tools, tables covered in pencil drawings and schematics, shelves full of half-completed projects, a brazier and soldering iron, bins and glass jars, and every conceivable container full of metal nuts and bolts and odds and ends. Tarps draped something bulky about the size of a pedal car at the far end of the room.
The copyist himself, Norton, was a tall, thin man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a waistcoat. Aside from his lack of neckcloth, he bore no signs of having hastily risen from bed with his lover. He merely looked eccentric and untidy. Twine trailed from one pocket, and he wore complicated brass goggles.
Norton didn’t look up when Audrey entered the room, intent on tightening the screws of some project clamped to his workbench.
“Norton, you have a visitor. Let me introduce you.”
“I told you, I’m busy.”
“You’ll want to make time for this visitor.” Piers winked at her. “This is Lady Audrey, daughter of Admiral Harding. Ring any bells? Weren’t you just complaining you needed someone to put in a good word for you with the Fleet?”
Norton turned around at last.
Audrey coughed to cover a laugh. The goggles had magnified his left eye to twice the size of his right, and he was unshaven.
He bowed. “Pleased to meet you, Lady Audrey. Robert Norton at your service.” The words were perfunctory. He crossed his arms and directed a smug look at Piers. “As a matter of fact, I already landed that commission. I finished the piece for your mum…” He gestured to the tarp-covered object.
Piers’s mum? Audrey wondered. She’d thought he worked for his uncle. Perhaps his mother quietly helped out.
“…And I’ve started on a big project for the Fleet.” Norton puffed out his thin chest. “This one’s an original design, quite tricky, not some copy job.”
“The copy jobs pay the rent,” Piers soothed. “Audrey saw a demonstration of some of your hatpins and was quite impressed. I bet you improved the Clockwork Earl’s work.”
“Him?” Norton sniffed. “That’s not difficult. He sheds ideas like a dog does dandruff and doesn’t take the time to develop them properly.”
“Were the little legs your idea?” Audrey ventured.
“No, but I doubled their range to fifteen feet,” Norton said proudly.
“Splendid.” Audrey smiled at him.
“Do you happen to have any to purchase?” Piers asked. “Some other lady scooped the last pair out from under Lady Audrey’s nose,” he lied. He tipped Audrey a wink as Norton immediately produced a box.
Soon Audrey had her box. She paid twenty gills—the same price Norton apparently received from the shopkeep after a sale, so they were both happy.
“How about giving us a tour?” Piers asked once the transaction was completed. “What’s under the tarp?”
Norton’s expression turned sly. “Since Lady Audrey is the Admiral’s daughter, I’ll let you have a peek.” He swept the tarp off like a cape.
The object below perplexed Audrey. It had a pressure gauge like a steam engine but mostly resembled a large nozzle. What was it?
“This is just part of the Device, of course. Sections one through six have already been delivered. This is seven, and I’m working on eight. It’s too big to assemble here in the lab—we’d have to take down a wall to get it out.”
Audrey listened with interest as Norton described how he’d designed the pieces to interlock for smooth reassembly. He then showed them a soldering station and a lathe for making small parts. It was enormously clever, and Audrey stayed longer than she intended. The bong of a grandfather clock striking two startled her.
Piers seemed to come to the same realization. “Thanks, old chap,” he said heartily. “We’ll let you go back to work now.” He steered Audrey toward the stairs.
Out on the street, the breeze teased at her curls.
Piers was smiling, relaxed, as he escorted her over to the pedal car. “Norton can be an odd bird. He’s madly jealous of the Clockwork Earl. He keeps hoping Queen Winifrid will notice his work and bestow a title on him.”
“He seems very dedicated,” Audrey offered.
“Obsessed is more like it.” Piers shook his head ruefully. “Do you have more errands to run?” He looked hopeful.
“No,” she said with considerable regret. “I must head home before I’m missed.” Her fictitious picnic would be over by now.
Piers waved Jem off and helped Audrey up onto the carriage seat. His hand felt warm through the layer of her glove.
“Thank you for taking me with you,” she said. Any other boy would have decreed that the laboratory was no place for ladies.
“You’re welcome.” Piers plucked a single hatpin from her box and pocketed it. “A souvenir, so that I’ll always know when you’re close by.”
Her cheeks heated. He really was charming. Too bad he didn’t have a title.
Chapter Nine
Entombed
Stone World
The darkness overwhelmed Dorotea.
Unable to help herself, she pressed her face against the gargoyle’s back. He felt reassuringly solid in this small air pocket surrounded by stone. She didn’t like the dark, but it was the thought of being sealed in with no room to move and no way out that drove her crazy.
She bit her lip to keep fr
om screaming at him to open the wall and let her back into the Cathedral. If he did, they would both be arrested for treason. He would be refrozen, and she would be exiled. Thrown Above to die in the violent sandstorms and the scorching, harsh sunlight.
It still sounded better than being entombed.
Dorotea panted. The air already tasted stale. How soon before she suffocated?
“If you breathe slower, the air will last longer,” the gargoyle said with hateful condescension.
“I can’t,” Dorotea admitted, chest heaving. “Are they gone yet? Can we go back out?”
As if in answer to her question, a rhythmic pounding started. It was the sound of mauls being swung against stone.
“They’re trying to break through into our chamber. We need to move farther away.” The gargoyle swiveled the two of them around, placing her nearest the Cathedral wall. “I’m going to tunnel forward. Keep close. The bubble of space will move with me.”
He turned away. Dorotea couldn’t see what he was doing, but moments later, he moved ahead, and the back wall of the cave touched her calf. She stumbled forward a step. Stone brushed her arms on both sides, the chamber only two feet wide. From necessity, she laid her hands on the gargoyle’s back. At first, her touch was light, but when she nearly lost contact in the dark, she curled her hands around his sides. His skin felt cool and smooth under her fingers, like a pebble smoothed by water.
What if he deliberately left her behind? She would suffocate. He might wear a collar, but he had all the power here, beneath the stone.
After ten more shuffling steps, the gargoyle stopped. “We should be safe from the mauls here.” The clangs had turned into muffled thuds.
“Safe?” Dorotea wanted to howl. She dug her fingernails into her palms and fought down the hysteria. “This is a tomb. Take me someplace that’s really safe.” Except now that they knew her name and face, she would be branded a traitor. And the Goddess intended to bring the caverns down on all their heads. Nowhere was safe.
“As you wish.” He began to tunnel again.
She hung onto him, despising herself for her cowardice but unable to stop shaking. She was so scared—for herself, for Marta, for everyone. How had things gone so wrong? Two days ago, her life had been normal.
“So aren’t you going to thank me?” he asked. “Or at least acknowledge that without my help, you would have been caught?”
“Thank you,” she said cautiously.
He grunted but said nothing more. Apparently, she hadn’t been effusive enough.
After ten minutes of traveling in silence, she couldn’t abide it any longer. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
“Someplace safe,” he mocked.
“Where?”
“I doubt you would know the spot. It has lain vacant since my brethren were enslaved.” His voice was bitter.
“The gargoyles tried to enslave humanity first!” Dorotea said hotly. “What did they expect?”
“They expected their human guests to listen to their hosts,” he retorted. “Especially after we generously opened our homes up to you. We didn’t have to share, you know. We could’ve left you to die Above. We should’ve known the same people who’d destroyed their own home would turn around and try to destroy ours—”
“Enough!” Dorotea said fiercely. “I’ll hear no more of your lies.”
“I do not lie,” he growled, the sound frighteningly bestial, as if he would have gladly ripped out her throat if not for the collar.
“No more,” she insisted.
“I—” His collar glowed golden, and his back muscles spasmed. He stopped talking, and the collar ceased glowing.
Dorotea felt a flicker of guilt. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t talk at all, I just don’t want to hear any more lies about humans being responsible for the rebellion.”
He didn’t reply. The silence felt as heavy as an anvil.
She lasted perhaps three miserable minutes in the dark before asking, “How much farther?” Her voice quavered horribly. She cleared her throat, adding, “You have my permission to speak.”
More silence. Hateful silence.
Fine. She could be silent, too. It’s just a game of wills. You need to win this, or he’ll have the upper hand.
She managed another minute, stumbling forward. Then another. The darkness pressed in, crushing her. Her breathing grew more frantic. Still, the silence continued.
She felt as if she were cracking apart, pieces of her flaking away, until she feared there wouldn’t be any of herself left, only a screaming madwoman.
A sob bubbled up her throat. “Please. Please talk to me. I’m so scared.”
He paused.
“Please.” She was crying openly now. “Please say something.”
“What do you want me to say?” he grated.
Even though he was still angry with her, the mere sound of his voice gave her something to cling to in the dark. “I don’t know. Tell me we’re not lost,” she implored.
“We’re not lost.” Pause. “I’m following a vein of silver.”
Keep him talking. “You can see a vein of silver?”
His body tensed. “It’s just silver, not gold.”
Why did that matter? “But you can see in the dark?” she persisted.
“I don’t need eyes to follow the path of metal.” He began to move forward again.
She tripped and smacked into his stone back for at least the fifteenth time. Sands, she wanted out of here. It was hard to explain why this was so different from being in the crawl tunnel. Even in the dark, the tunnel hadn’t panicked her because it had an entrance and an exit. This didn’t. The way the space melted ahead of them and then reformed behind made her worry that if she lagged back, the stone would re-solidify around her foot, trapping her forever.
Another dream image flashed through her mind. A man’s body sinking into the stone floor. A gargoyle pushing him down.
Fear tightened her throat. To distract herself, she kept the conversation going. “If not with your eyes, how do you sense it?”
He hesitated. “It…sings to my ears and buzzes against my fingertips.” A shrug. “I know where it is as I know the nose on my face.”
What a handy talent. Her Artisan mother was always complaining about the cost of gold and silver.
“What else can gargoyles do that humans can’t?” she asked, curiosity easing her distress. Martin always complained that she asked too many questions. She hoped the gargoyle wouldn’t get angry, but she desperately needed something to take her mind off the dark and the stone cocoon all around her.
Were the walls growing closer? She shuddered and plastered herself to the gargoyle’s back.
“Gargoyle eyesight is better underground.”
Dorotea focused on his words. “So you can see right now?”
“Yes.”
“So gargoyles are made of stone, impervious to most harm. You’re taller and stronger, you have claws and fangs, you can tunnel through walls, and you can see better than humans?” It wasn’t fair.
“Yes. Except we only see better underground. Humans see better in the light.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “That’s not much of a disadvantage.” It’s not as if humans lived Above anymore.
“We also cannot swim,” he reminded her. His voice had an edge to it.
Silence fell again like the chop of a blade. The gargoyle kept creating a tunnel in the dark, steadily walking forward. Dorotea followed in his wake, on and on and on.
She gritted her teeth and concentrated on how tired her legs were, how hungry and thirsty she was. How much time had passed in this moving tomb? Would they be forced to sleep here?
“How much longer? Estimate,” she added before he could put her off again.
“We may break through in the next few minutes, or it may take an hour yet. It has been a long since I last came this way.” His voice was accusing.
“That’s not my fault,” she said, stung. “I was only a child w
hen the rebellion happened.” Which hadn’t stopped Martin and the others from sneering at her Stone Heart blood.
“So was I,” he said coolly.
His words bothered her. Gargoyles were much longer-lived than humans; all the tales said so. “Do you mean a child by gargoyle reckoning? How old are you?”
“That depends on what year it is now,” he said.
“I’m seventeen. The rebellion happened when I was five.”
“Then I am eighteen by human reckoning,” he said.
“But…” She trailed off. A child of six couldn’t be judged guilty of treason. Had the Elect imprisoned a child? That seemed wrong.
And yet, what else could they have done with him? How could they have trusted a gargoyle child to roam free? He would have been certain to betray them later. Still… A lump formed in Dorotea’s stomach. Frozen as a statue from the age of six on.
It was horrible to contemplate.
But wait. He neither looked nor acted like a child. “You’re lying to me to gain my sympathy,” Dorotea accused him. “I order you to never lie to me again.”
“I did not lie, Mistress.”
His collar didn’t glow. So he was telling the truth. But— “If you were frozen as a child of six, how did you age?”
He shrugged. “The spell did not hinder physical growth. And though I could not move, I could speak with my brethren through the stone at our feet. They taught me our history and as much as they could of mathematics and other subjects. There was little enough else to do,” he added bitterly.
At least he hadn’t been alone. But conscious and unable to move was almost worse. Dorotea had assumed the stasis spell kept the gargoyles asleep. Reluctant sympathy welled inside her. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”
He jerked under her hands. She had the sense that he was staring at her.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m surprised,” he said dryly. “I didn’t think your kind knew how to apologize.”
Stung, she fell silent. Another thirty paces. The darkness pressed in. They could be going in circles, and she would never know…
She dredged up another question. “Are you the youngest gargoyle?”
Amid Wind and Stone Page 12
