by Beth Cato
All of their skins were paler, too, like her own. “Where am I?” she whispered. She managed to lift the satchel strap over her head, the bag wedged to one side of her thighs.
“Mercia,” answered the woman in ill health. “You have had a terrible injustice done to you.” She sat in a chair, hands folded on her lap. She moved with deliberation. Pain. Fatigue. Her eyes were glints of blue ice, beautiful and cold at once. “Your name is Octavia Leander?”
Octavia nodded, taking in the formal Mercian accent, the eyes. “You’re Alonzo’s mother.”
“You must be very familiar with my son to call him by his first name.”
“How do you know my name, Mrs. Garret?”
“My daughter included a letter in the shipping manifest.” Her lips were a thin line.
Oh, Alonzo. Please be alive and well. You and Chi both. Octavia closed her eyes briefly to compose herself. “Can we speak in private?” At Mrs. Garret’s nod, the servants exited, the door closing behind them. “I’m aware of the employment you helped Alonzo acquire.” She worded things delicately, knowing that many ears likely pressed against the door.
Mrs. Garret’s eyebrows rose. “Are you, now?” The shrewd expression reminded Octavia greatly of Alonzo.
“His supervisors . . . they did not respect him. Alonzo in turned risked a great deal to go against orders and keep me alive.”
“You’re a Percival-trained medician.”
“Yes. It’s all terribly complicated, but needless to say, circumstances required that we go to the southern nations. We took refuge with Tatiana. She did not . . . take kindly to me, the danger I brought upon her brother.”
“In Tatiana’s eyes, Alonzo hung the moon and stars in the sky.” Mrs. Garret sighed. The conversation was exhausting her, even as her carriage remained straight and noble. Alonzo said before that his mother had an intimidating presence. She still does. Most people would be bed-bound and whimpering in her condition. This woman’s will is made of iron. “My daughter is spoiled. Her staff is indulgent. I suppose you think me a terrible mother.”
Octavia bit her lip. She had thought that very thing in Tamarania.
“My health has been worse in recent years. I have tried to hide it from Tatiana, with her in Tamarania as much as possible, but she is a smart girl. I have been on a waiting list to see a medician here in Mercia, but with the war and so many in need and the lack of herbs . . .” She shrugged, palms upturned.
Octavia nodded as everything became clear. Tatiana wasn’t simply getting rid of me. “She sent me here to heal you. Alonzo doesn’t know about your condition, does he?” She took another long guzzle of water.
“I have not seen my son since he was fitted for his new leg. We have only spoken by letter and telegram.” She sighed. “Oh, Miss Leander. I am sorry you came to be here like this. Tatiana is precocious. I have encouraged her to be an adult at too young an age, because in my heart, I was readying her to carry on when I am gone.”
“Have you had any messages from Alonzo in the past two days?”
“No.” Mrs. Garret had a curious spark in her eyes; she obviously wondered at this first-name relationship Octavia had with her son. “Was a threat that imminent?”
“If anything terrible had happened, I’m sure Tatiana would have sent word.” Lady forgive her for the vagueness, but she didn’t want to vex Mrs. Garret with news of the Arena; the woman had quite enough to concern her. The terrible mass had already sprouted polyps in her neck and lungs. “The most potent danger right now is to you, Mrs. Garret. This cancer that started in your breast will kill you within a span of weeks if it’s left untreated. If you can grant me a few hours to recover, I’ll gladly tend to it for you.”
Mrs. Garret pressed a hand to her chest. Instead of gratitude, her eyes flared with suspicion. “How did you . . . ?”
“I’m an unusual medician.” The words didn’t make her flinch anymore.
Mrs. Garret stood, her spine straight and dignified. “You are leaving much unsaid, though likely with good reason. I wish I could ask my son about you.”
“I wish I could talk to him, too,” Octavia said softly.
Mrs. Garret’s expression mellowed. “You have suffered and need your rest. I will have dinner brought to you shortly. If you need anything else, simply ask.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Garret,” Octavia murmured. The woman needs to leave or she’ll collapse. She would never show weakness in front of a stranger, not even a medician.
Octavia stared at the closed door for a few minutes, gathering her strength and her bearings. She pushed herself from the chair to stand erect for the first time in two days. Water sloshed in her belly. I was parched like a tree after a drought. With baby steps, she walked to the window.
Mercia. Two weeks before, Alonzo had intended to bring her to the capital to keep her safe against the Wasters, unaware that the greatest threat had come from his own Dagger peers. She had resisted coming here. Everything she had ever heard of Mercia spoke of its endless sprawl, of skies choked with constant pollution, of toxic factories, of thousands of wretched refugees.
Everything was true.
She looked upon a steel-gray sky stabbed by thousands of dark pipes that puffed out even more gray. Soot caked buildings in black. From her second-story vantage point, she watched four lanes of traffic teem with cabriolets, cycles, and lorries. On the sidewalk, women bowed beneath shawls and pushed prams hooded by oilcloth. Men wore black hats, shoulders bowed by unseen burdens. A peculiarly large number of soldiers passed by in Caskentian regimental green. No trees. No birds. No signs of life beyond pedestrians who shuffled with the vigor of automatons.
Oh Lady. Octavia clutched the curtain to stay upright. Mercia. She had been terrified to come here with Alonzo, and now she was here alone. Panicked, she touched the top of her head and then recalled that she had stuffed her headband in her satchel.
How was she to brave those streets, even with her headband? Wasters spied here—they had already followed Mrs. Stout. If Clockwork Daggers knew she was in the city . . .
Children ran along waving white flags fringed with gold—Evandia’s colors. She frowned. Such banners had been popular during the recent wars, but she hadn’t seen such a flag waved since armistice was signed several months ago.
A light knock echoed through the door. “Come in,” she called.
One of the servant girls carried in a silver tray. She cast Octavia a shy smile as she set it on a table. “M’lady said medicians need extra meat, so Cook included an extra portion.”
“Thank you kindly, and thank the cook as well. I’m hungry enough to eat the tray itself.” She nodded toward the street. “Why are flags out?”
“Oh, the white flags? That’s right, you couldn’t have heard, sealed away like that. Armistice broke.”
“We’re at war with the Waste again?” Octavia stilled. Everyone knew the armistice was a mere pause in the conflict, but she wondered how Caskentia stood a chance. The army had largely disbanded since soldiers and civilians in its employ had been left unpaid.
The servant rested her hands on her hips. “It’s a peculiar thing. Well, maybe not so peculiar to you, since you’re a medician. That Lady’s Tree from the old stories? It’s been sighted, just plain popped into existence overnight. Airship brought word two days ago, and yesterday we went back to war. We certainly can’t let anything like that be in filthy Waster hands.” She shuddered.
“The Lady’s Tree. Visible?”
“Yes. You worship her, don’t you? As a medician?”
Octavia nodded numbly. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Maybe once our boys have it, you can do a pilgrimage there.” The girl’s smile was bright. “It’s supposed to cure most anything, they say. Might make your job easier! Oh, dear. I’d best get back to the kitchen.”
“Yes. Thank you.” The door shut behind
her.
Octavia collapsed into the chair, wrapping herself in a hug. Miss Percival’s training flared in her mind. Breathe. Exhale your troubles to the Lady.
“What if the Lady is the source of your troubles? What then?” The whisper made her cringe, blasphemous as it was. She swallowed, mouth parched already, but she didn’t move toward the pitcher.
Why had the Tree become fully visible at last? What had changed? Well, now she and Alonzo didn’t have to fuss about finding it. They could simply follow the trail of blood and carnage.
She tugged off the fancy gloves she had worn to the arena. Her fingers fumbled at her cuffs, though she could already see a brown crackle pattern stretch all the way to her knuckles. I’ll need to wear gloves constantly. Like she could hide this for much longer as it continued to spread. She peeled back the cloth. Both forearms had darkened. Her skin ached as if she were recovering from a sunburn.
The old gremlin had said she smelled like a tree, that she was a chimera. Octavia shivered and buttoned her sleeves again.
The Tree was changing. Octavia was changing, too, and quickly. She needed answers before she lost her humanity entirely.
She needed to get inside the royal vault.
CHAPTER 11
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. Sl
ender 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.
