Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order)

by Kristin Bailey

  “Like you? A profiteer and murderer?”

  She raised her bony hand again, but I didn’t flinch. Instead I stared her down. She pursed her lips, then smiled again, the cold expression falling dead in the calculating look in her eyes.

  “I have done remarkable things,” she said. “I brought my son back from the brink of death. I built my own fortune. I survived, and now I will save the world from war. If I should profit from it, so be it.” She circled again. “It was unfair to lay the burdens of my father’s shame upon me. I was not to blame.”

  At one point I might have felt sorry for her, alone and expecting a child. “You’re quite right. You should not have paid for the sins of your father. You made your own account long ago.”

  Just then Honoré arrived, prodding my grandfather forward with the pike. Papa saw me and struggled against his chains. “What did they do to you?”

  “Move, or I’ll stab her again,” Honoré growled.

  Boucher pushed me toward the back chamber, and I walked, feeling kinship with those who had faced the guillotine. Papa shifted, placing himself between me and the sharp end of the pike.

  “Where is that worthless whelp of yours?” Boucher complained. Honoré didn’t answer, but Papa stiffened at the mention of Josephine.

  We came beneath the blades at the mouth of the horrible machine. I could see my reflection in the blades, softened by the layer of dust and the rust dotting the sharpened edges. Cobwebs hung between the twisting scythes. The webs waved ominously as we passed by.

  I pulled myself up the spokes of the heavy studded wheel, then continued up a rung ladder to reach the top. The rungs felt cold and rough in my hands, and my legs and grip still felt weak. I kept myself focused on the top of the turret. I had never seen such heavy metal plating. It covered the innards of the machine, save several small holes at intervals, ports for more weapons. Every rivet in this machine seemed to radiate death.

  And here we were with no escape from it.

  At the top we crawled onto a wide platform.

  I took in everything as quickly as I could. A short rail surrounded the platform, rising higher in the front, where a panel of controls stood behind a guarded shield. At the back of the juggernaut a sinister-looking device had been attached to the edge of the rail and stood as tall as the towering vent stacks of the juggernaut’s boiler. Two large gear wheels disappeared into the turret on either side of the device’s base. It reminded me a bit of an enormous bird, like a great stork or a crane, folded over and sleeping as it clung to the back of the juggernaut.

  “Shackle the girl to the rail. She’s caused enough trouble.” Boucher turned a wheel as my bastard uncle locked a heavy manacle around my wrist and latched the other end to a pipe railing, leaving the long heavy chain pooling at my feet. “And lock Henry over there.” She pointed across the platform to the rail on the other side.

  Boucher took Papa’s key from around her neck and walked to a panel near the controls. She removed the plate, and beneath I caught a glimpse of a less refined version of the locking mechanism Papa had invented.

  “Now then,” Boucher began. “Who is willing to unlock this machine for me?” She turned to me. “How about you?”

  “Never.” I glared at her.

  Honoré climbed up into the bird-like structure at the back of the juggernaut and took a set of controls in hand. The giant crane came to life, rising up and twisting to the side. The gears at the base spun as it moved and pointed directly at Papa. The head of the evil crane-like device began to glow with a hot white light. Papa rose to his full height and stared it down.

  “Never is a long time,” Boucher said, staying close to the controls of the juggernaut at the front, “especially when you are watching your dear grandfather die a slow and painful death as his flesh melts from his bones.” She ran her hand over Papa’s back, and he violently pulled his shoulder from her clutches.

  “What demon has possessed you, Cressida?” Papa demanded. “You used to have a shred of humanity once.”

  “And what did it do for me? I was a naïve and silly girl. Now I know how the world works. It is driven by fear. Control fear, and you control man.” She stroked the controls of the juggernaut lovingly. All the innocence and sweetness was still there in every wrinkle and soft wisp of white hair on her head. “Now, tell me, my darling love. Are you afraid?”

  I couldn’t fathom how someone who looked so harmless could be so corrupted inside. She turned to me, and it was then that I truly saw the depths of the darkness that had consumed her. She smiled, her dimples appearing in her weathered cheeks. “How about you, Miss Whitlock? Are you afraid? Don’t doubt the power of the death ray. It focuses both heat and light to godlike effect. At this range your grandfather could be dead in a matter of excruciating seconds. But that would ruin the pleasure of watching him die slowly, with the intensity of the beam set to a lingering, torturous heat. I gave the order for your mother and father to burn. Don’t think I’d hesitate.”

  A wave of terror threw my heart into my throat and twisted my innards into such knots, I desperately wished I could sink to the floor and heave until I couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t watch my Papa die. Not now, not after everything we’d done. We were so close to freedom. But the whole of the world weighed on our shoulders. If this horrible machine were ever unleashed, war would turn into a more untenable nightmare than it already was, soldiers burned, sliced to pieces and shot. The blood would flow in rivers, and it would be on my soul.

  I locked gazes with Papa. His face was stoic, but I saw the nearly imperceptible nod. There was peace in his eyes. He was ready to meet the next world.

  Surely I would follow soon after.

  A tear slipped over my cheek. I’d never see Will again. I’d never live the life I had sacrificed so much for. I didn’t want to die. In spite of all I believed, I was afraid this would be the end and there would be nothing left of me.

  I would never get to hold Oliver and Lucinda’s baby.

  I’d never get to see Peter or the rest of my friends again, or David, whom I hoped to still count as a friend. They wouldn’t even know what had happened to me. I would become nothing more than dried-out bones in a dark hole where beautiful things were thrown into the dark and forgotten.

  I looked at Papa. I never would have him back, not truly. There was so much I wanted to say to him, so much of his knowledge I wished to know and pass on to my own children.

  But there would be no children. No legacy. Nothing.

  I would be no more significant than the dust, and my name would fully die.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, and though I was shaking, I fisted my hands and stood my ground. I had a million reasons to wish to live, but they were all personal reasons. I was still only one person, and I held the fate of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people in my hands. I couldn’t fail them. Mine was one life. If I lamented my loss, I would have to rightly lament a thousandfold the loss of those I did not save. If I had to die, I’d die for them and all the potential they carried.

  “I will not unlock this machine,” I said, my voice echoing against the tall mirrors that stood sentinel to this atrocity. “I’m sorry, Papa. I love you. I love you so much.”

  “I love you too, my brave girl,” he said, then closed his eyes.

  “Well, damn it all,” Boucher commented. I turned to her, and even though my thoughts and feelings left me overcome with fear and horror, I stood defiant. She stepped closer to me. “I had hoped to keep you. You have potential. I could have fitted you with modifications like Honoré, and finally given myself the granddaughter I deserve.”

  She snapped her fingers twice, and the head of the death ray swung to the left, then tilted down to point directly at me. I watched the light and the sparks swirling around in the crystal lens of the machine, a ring of gears constricted the lens, focusing it like a glowing eye. I felt a wave of heat come over me, so intense that the hair on my arms curled and withered. M
y skin burned, and sweat poured down my neck as Papa threw himself against his chains.

  “Cressida,” he screamed. “No!”

  Honoré pushed a lever forward, and the machine glowed more brightly. Suddenly I felt as if I were standing on the face of the sun. I cried out and struggled to the side to escape the vicious heat. For as much as I was prepared to die, the pain had turned me into an animal who only wished to escape.

  “The choice is up to you, my darling Henry,” Boucher said as she reached out and touched his face. She placed the key in his hand. “Does she live, or does she die?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I WANTED TO TELL HIM to not give in, but the words stopped in my throat. I had to escape the burning.

  I pulled toward him, and a loop from the chain that bound my wrist unwound, giving me more slack, but there was nowhere I could go to escape the ray. I felt the heat in my blood rushing through my veins so that it roared in my ears. I stepped closer to the machine, hoping I could find safety beneath it.

  “To think.” Boucher’s voice sounded like treacle pouring from her throat. “She’ll burn exactly the way her mother and father did. How very tragic. Only, this time you’ll get to watch.”

  “Enough,” Papa said, his shoulders sagging. “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t harm her.”

  “Papa, don’t. Please,” I begged, knowing I was begging for my own death. I didn’t want to die, but at least when I met the Maker, I would be able to hold my head proudly. That was what it meant to sacrifice. Pain was temporary. The grief of thousands torn apart by this abomination, would not be.

  Papa looked at me, and for the first time I saw a broken man. “I cannot watch her die.”

  Boucher unlocked the shackle at his wrist, and he stepped up to the controls. I watched in horror as he opened the key. The killing heat ceased.

  I had to stop this. Somehow there had to be a way. Honoré loomed over me with the death ray, holding me in its sights. The gear wheels turned at the base. What did I have that I could use? I had no weapons, my clothing was in tatters, and I couldn’t escape the machine. I was chained to the rail.

  By a ring. A ring that could slide. I scanned the length of chain and did a quick mental calculation. It could work, if my timing were perfect.

  Papa hunched by the controls. The vent stacks for the enormous boiler rose up behind the death ray. I could feel the heat from the fire, but the engine had not been engaged yet. I listened as Papa played a sequence of notes that triggered resonant clicks. He let out a breath, and then his fingers faltered. He hit a wrong note, which slid into the key next to it, giving the song he had so carefully taught me a hiccup.

  Boucher’s gaze turned to ice. “Hurry, or you can say good-bye to your precious granddaughter forever.” The floor beneath us vibrated, and then I heard a hiss and a loud squeal. The chamber under the controls opened as the power from the boiler reached the engines. Like a beast waking from hibernation, the machine shook itself awake. The blades in the front began to turn.

  I had one chance, and only one moment when the old witch would be distracted. Boucher grabbed the plans, lifted them out, and held them before her like a precious treasure.

  Now.

  I dove across the platform, letting my feet slide forward and stretching my arms out so that the slack in the chain caught in the gear wheels at the base of the death ray.

  Honoré shouted as the teeth of the wheels compressed on the chain. The gears strained, and the death ray whipped around on its jointed armature, the bird shaking its terrible head. Honoré lost his balance and fell away from the controls. The manacles pulled tight against my wrist as Boucher dove toward me. Honoré tried to right himself but pulled down on the lever that controlled the ray’s intensity.

  A blinding light erupted from the machine, cutting through the steam and smoke now belching from the boiler. It hit the mirrors surrounding us and reflected at wild angles, nearly catching Boucher in its beam. She leapt away from the killer light, dropping the plans as she did so.

  I pulled at the chain attached to my wrist. The teeth of the death ray’s gears crushed the chain’s link and snapped it in half. I rose and whipped the length of chain attached to my wrist at Boucher. It caught her across the face.

  “Papa! Run!” I screamed as the beam shifted again, slicing across the platform and radiating heat as it drew closer to the vents of the boiler. It glowed with a thousand times the intensity of what I had endured. My skin still burned, but I had no doubt the ray could now melt flesh in a manner of moments.

  Papa grabbed my hand and pulled me toward him, and we both swung over the side of the juggernaut. As we slid down the machine, rivets bruised my hip, and I crashed against a panel jutting outward over the spiked wheels.

  Papa caught a ladder rung above me and clung to it as one of the blades sliced by my head, so close that I felt the push of air in the tendrils of hair around my ears.

  Dear Lord, we’d never survive this.

  The machine hissed, then whistled. I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. The juggernaut shook. I jumped down and landed on the stone platform, then threw myself to the ground, foregoing the ramp and the spinning blades at the front of the terrible machine.

  I landed hard and let myself crumple and roll out of the way. The enormous spiked wheels began to turn. They strained as they gripped the stone platform.

  Papa ran down the steps with agility at odds with his age, but panic did strange things to a person. Together we raced toward the entrance to the elephant graveyard. We had to reach the Academy before it was too late.

  I worked my arms through the air, using my entire body to propel me forward as fast as it would take me. I ran toward sanctuary like a panicked horse in a fire, uncaring that my muscles screamed in protest and I could barely breathe.

  The whistling turned into a strident scream as it echoed against the stone walls of the cavern.

  Boom.

  I fell forward, scraping my cheek against the stone as a rush of air pushed over the top of me. My ears felt like they were bleeding as I heard the tinkling of glass mirrors breaking against stone.

  A wall of smoke and steam obscured my vision.

  “Papa?” I pulled myself back to my feet and gave him a hand. He too stared at the billowing smoke curling against the ceiling.

  He shouted something at me, but it sounded as if we were underwater. I couldn’t understand him through the ringing in my ears. Whatever he had said, only one thing mattered. We had to escape. We ran from the juggernaut as quickly as we could. I hoped the death ray had managed to destroy the juggernaut, like a snake that swallowed its own tail.

  My aching body screamed in protest, but I ran toward the archway and into the shadowy chamber beyond. We raced through the entire length of the chamber, stumbling, unable to catch our breaths. I could still hear the hiss of steam behind us, and the groan of metal.

  Blood lingered on my tongue, and my lungs burned. Finally we reached the tunnel that led to the Academy.

  “Meg!” My name sounded strange through my injured ears. It gave me a jolt of shock. I looked up to see Will running toward me through the shadows. He looked haggard and ill with worry, his cheeks sunken in as he ran as fast as I had ever seen a man run. He was glorious.

  I couldn’t speak. My legs gave out as he reached me. He caught me and held me, and I shook in his arms.

  “I’ve got you,” he said against my hair. He wrapped his arms around me like a man desperate to hold me to him forever. One arm wound around my body, supporting me, as the other found my hair and pressed my head into the warm strength of his shoulder. Both of us panted as we fought for our breath. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Help us.” The ringing in my ears turned to a high irritating buzz. “Boucher has the juggernaut.”

  Will looked me in the eye, once again my rock. “Help is coming.”

  “How did you find me?” I choked out.

  Just then a light bobbed out of the shadows
, carried by a girl with short, thickly curling black hair.

  Josephine.

  “Thank God my father didn’t kill you,” she said.

  “He nearly did,” I said. “You brought them here?” I pulled away from Will enough to find my feet and face my cousin.

  She shrugged. “I’m tired of death.”

  “Several of the Amusementists had already begun to gather for the Oath. I rallied those I could,” Will explained.

  I took Josephine’s hand. “Bless you.”

  “This is Josephine?” Papa came up beside me.

  Josephine took a step back, but I grabbed her hand again and nodded. Papa reached out and quickly pulled her into an encompassing hug, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her curling hair. Her arms wound around him, and the tension she always held in her shoulders eased, if only for a moment.

  Suddenly I realized the tunnel was filled with hurried footsteps and bobbing lights.

  “Damn it all, I hate running.” David emerged from the blackness and bent over so he could brace his hands against his knees. “Whatever trouble you’ve gotten into this time, it had better be spectacular,” he complained as Michael, Noah, and Peter joined him. To my surprise, Samuel joined the group of boys, followed by Manoj and Oliver.

  “David?” I held a hand out to him and helped him stand straight.

  His hand squeezed mine tightly. “For the Order.”

  I nodded.

  John Frank led a party of Amusementists and Guildsmen, all jogging down the tunnel. Gabrielle kept pace beside him, holding her lantern aloft.

  Suddenly there was a loud crash that felt as if it shook the whole of the hill above us.

  The crowd stilled and looked back at the eerie glowing smoke in the deep chamber. Two balls of fire erupted out of the haze. They billowed upward until they hit the stone ceiling. Another roar echoed through the chamber and the juggernaut emerged through the smoke and steam.

  The blades at the front of the deadly contraption flashed. They sliced through the smoke, twisting and turning as the monstrosity sought to reap a harvest of souls.