The Clockwork Crown

by Beth Cato

  “Answer me this, though,” continued Lanskay. “I know my friend Mr. Drury must be dead. Which one of you committed the deed?”

  Octavia and Alonzo looked at each other. Alonzo opened his lips, but she spoke first. “I did, in my own defense.” She met Lanskay’s gaze and waited in dread for his reaction. Alonzo’s song ticked faster as he readied himself to react.

  No anger drummed in Lanskay’s already rapid heartbeat. “I’m not surprised. He respected you a great deal, Miss Leander. If he was going to die, he would have preferred it to be at your hand.”

  She was wordless with revulsion. Octavia stared to one side as if she could see out the window. Lanskay’s tone was strangely reverential. He hadn’t treated her like this before; with a twisted sort of respect, yes, but not this . . . worship.

  Even though the vines I created almost killed him, it’s as if the whole incident has caused him to favor the Lady.

  The cabriolet’s wheels struggled as they began a slow, steady incline with switchbacks that sent her sliding between the door and Alonzo.

  Suddenly light seeped around the outline of the door. Light. She touched a sunbeam, amazed at the sight after so long underground. We walked the full night through.

  The terrain evened beneath their wheels. Just as Octavia was certain she could have closed her eyes and slept, the songs of bodies flared beyond the walls of the car. Hundreds, thousands. A town’s worth. Out of habit, she reached to check her headband, belatedly remembering that it was lost somewhere in the pass. Whimpering, she covered her ears with her hands, but that did nothing. The cacophony blared, louder than it had ever been before, even in Tamarania and Mercia. Men. Soldiers, their bodies bearing the evidence of battles between Caskentia and the Dallows. Amputations, deafness, burns, syphilis, headaches, a thousand other ailments, dozens together in some bodies.

  “Is she sick?” asked Lanskay, leaning toward her. The magic of him boiled on her skin, his song like a trumpet played inches from her ear.

  “The Tree. I must be so close that . . .” Her voice trailed off into a whimper.

  “Miss Leander.” Alonzo leaned closer. His music soothed her, as always, even as it threatened to drown her.

  “I need to get indoors. Away from ­people. In my circle.” Each utterance of her name was a jab.

  “This, we can do.” Lanskay opened the door.

  Noise poured in like a tidal wave, her name floating throughout like flotsam. “Miss Leander. “The medician.” “The one who made the tree . . .” “Her, the one who . . .” “She’s a trained Percival?” Octavia’s vision dwindled to fuzzy colors.

  It’s not simply their bodies. It’s their attention. Is this what it’s like when the Lady is deluged with prayers? She suddenly understood what it truly meant to use holy names in vain.

  “No. Let me. Separate us after, if you must, but permit me this.” Alonzo’s voice sounded as if it echoed down a tunnel. A tunnel . . . I thought we escaped it.

  Alonzo’s presence wrapped around her. His song, his very heartbeat, pressed against her ear. She wanted to argue at the indignity of being carried like a babe but could not. It was all she could do to stay conscious beneath the barrage.

  “I have you,” Alonzo murmured.

  “This way!” Lanskay called across a great distance, his tone almost panicked.

  There was more brightness than in the tunnel, but she still had a sense of being beneath deep cloud cover and shade. Bodies blurred around her, as did walls made of logs weathered to a cozy brown. The noise dimmed but lingered close, her name, her identity, flicked across a hundred tongues. Something soft against her back—­was she in Mrs. Garret’s house again, in Mercia? Just pulled from that crate? No—­that place was painted in crisp white, not made of logs.

  “I am taking your satchel off your shoulder,” Alonzo said, bending her enough to lift the strap over her head.

  “What else can I do?” Lanskay’s words were a rush. “Water? Food? Anything?”

  “I do not know. Miss Leander, I am going to set you in the circle.”

  She hadn’t even touched the blanket when the heat of the Lady’s awareness flared across her skin. Alonzo jerked back with a cry—­not of pain, but of surprise. Octavia caught herself on her hands. The boundaries of the circle crackled and drowned out the noise from beyond. The flood withdrew. She suddenly became aware of her loud, desperate breaths, as if she really had almost drowned. Sweat soaked her robes through, even as the cloth absorbed it.

  “I’m going to get help.” Lanskay’s radiant heat faded.

  “Octavia.” Her head jerked up at her name. Alonzo crouched at the edge of her maimed blanket. The concern on his face made her want to cry. “What is happening?”

  Something I can stop. That I must stop. “I have to get to the Tree as soon as possible. You . . . you can’t come. You’ll be safer here.”

  “Safer? That makes no sense.”

  “Whatever happens, Alonzo, know that I love you, and I love Caskentia, too.”

  “Mr. Garret.” A Waster stood in the doorway, his song new and so very young. “Please come with me. The women will need privacy.” Women?

  Alonzo stared at her, agony in his blue eyes. Octavia reached across the barrier. His hand clenched hers as if they were about to be pulled into a tornado. I’d kiss him, but if my head goes beyond the circle, I’ll go senseless again.

  He let go, reluctantly, but his gaze stayed on her as he backed up to the door.

  “When all this is done, I will find you a cottage with an atelier and garden, just as you hoped for in Delford. I promise.” With that, he left.

  Oh, Alonzo.

  Octavia closed her eyes as she folded into a meditative Al Cala position, just as she had done a decade ago beneath Miss Percival’s desk. Those days when the nightmares of fire were too much, the isolation of the other girls a burn of a whole different kind. Such comfort there, simply being in the presence of Miss Percival as she scribbled away on her desk above.

  Even at age twelve, she had heard the soft notes of Miss Percival’s song. It always reminded her of being in the quiet of the woods—­flutes like birdsong, the rhythmic rattle of branches, the light whistle of a breeze. However, in recent months it had been racked by anxiety; the birds had sounded as if their hatchlings had fallen from the nest, and the trees rattled as if broken by storms.

  Tears squeezed from her eyes. Tired as she was, it took her a moment to realize the song was not solely in her memory.

  Octavia raised her head. “Miss Percival.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Until the recent financial duress of the academy, Miss Percival had always been one of those women who aged with particular grace, her hair silver and straight, her face endowed with gentle creases. Now the only gentleness resided in her tear-­filled eyes. Hard lines traced her mouth, while heavy bags lay like pillows beneath her eyes. She knelt a few feet outside of the medician blanket. Octavia knew by Miss Percival’s song that she was physically unhurt, though exhausted and strained. Not like those traits were anything new.

  “Miss Leander.”

  “You sold me!” Rage flushed Octavia’s face. “You sold both me and Mrs. Stout to the Waste. The Waste!”

  Miss Percival flinched as if she’d been slapped. “I had no choice.”

  “Yes, because you had to save the academy.” Octavia rocked back on her folded legs, trying to contain the urge to scream senselessly. “I understand that. I wouldn’t want the other girls to be homeless or without herbs. But how you did it . . . and to Mrs. Stout . . .”

  “I was told you both escaped?”

  “Does that disappoint you?”

  “No. No. I’m glad. Viola . . . She was always resilient.”

  “Resilience only goes so far when you’re handed over to men who want to use you to undermine and destroy both Mercia and Caskentia, and likel
y kill you if you don’t cooperate. Not to mention what Caskentia would do if they knew certain privy details.”

  “So you know who she is.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Yes. I know. I know far too much.”

  “The Wasters were going to kidnap you regardless of whether or not I helped. By cooperating, I gained enough to make the academy solvent, buy herbs, and establish savings.”

  “I’m sure you negotiated for a good sale. Maybe you even clipped a coupon from an advert.”

  “Oh, Miss Leander. You have no idea how hard it was to say farewell to you, knowing what I did.”

  Octavia’s throat felt so tight she could scarcely breathe. “Hard for you? What about these past few months, ever since the zyme poisoning? Since then, when you’ve looked at me at all, it’s been with coldness, your tongue sharp about whatever I did. Even the other girls were surprised and wondering, and they didn’t even like me before . . . before I heard the zymes.”

  “You want me to say I was jealous?” That now-­familiar hardness returned to Miss Percival’s voice. “Very well. I was jealous. But that’s not why I sold you, that was all—­”

  “To save the academy? That justifies things nicely. Never mind that the Wasters wanted me to keep their infernals alive past the wards on the Giant, all so they could awaken the volcano and obliterate Mercia. Yes, all good and well to save and clothe ten girls by killing half a million ­people.”

  Miss Percival’s caramel skin blanched. “Awaken the Giant to destroy Mercia?”

  “What, you thought they would simply resume the war again, kill ­people the slow and inefficient way? You’re here. They probably intended for you to go to the Giant in my stead.”

  Miss Percival stared at her knotted hands in her lap as her mouth opened and closed several times without uttering a sound. She wore full Percival medician gear, her robe and apron sparkling. No headband, though—­Miss Percival had always preferred to wear a full cap to cover the bun atop her head. As her satchel was missing, Octavia imagined that the Wasters had it in their possession. Miss Percival wouldn’t have relinquished it willingly.

  “They returned to the academy a week and a half ago.” Words finally emerged in a murmur. “I feared that they had come to take back their money, but they said no. I had upheld my part of the bargain with honor. However, they said they still needed a medician, with you gone. I . . . I left the academy in Sasha’s care.” Sasha, being twenty and most senior now that Octavia was gone.

  They took you because you were next best. Octavia didn’t need to say the cruel words out loud. Miss Percival knew.

  “We arrived in Mercia and discovered the Caskentian military was assembling. The Tree was visible. This changed whatever plan they intended.” She swallowed. “We couldn’t take the passes, so it took us a week to get here.”

  “You arrived this morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen the Tree?”

  Tears filled Miss Percival’s eyes. “Yes. It’s . . . how did you not? Are you blind?”

  The latter was said with the concern of a medician for a patient. Octavia didn’t want Miss Percival’s sympathy. It made it harder to stay angry. Right now, though, there were matters more important than wounded feelings. “Have you ever heard of a medician’s abilities getting stronger in a short amount of time?”

  Miss Percival looked strangely composed. “Stronger, how?”

  “Body songs getting louder. More specific, more intimate. The medician doing more . . . things a medician shouldn’t be able to do.”

  “Yes.”

  Octavia’s gaze jerked up. “You have?”

  “Has your skin changed as well?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “How—­”

  Miss Percival was quiet for a minute. “When I was a girl, my headmistress went through something similar. If a body was in a circle, the sound was overwhelming for her. Her circles themselves became more solid and binding. Mind you, she was never as strong as you, but it was still a notable difference. At the same time, a strange, rippled growth appeared on her arms, like the bark of a tree.”

  Octavia leaned forward. The electric essence of the circle sparked against the tip of her nose. “What happened? Wasn’t she headmistress for some thirty years?”

  “Yes. This was early on. I was only ten. She had strange dreams and visions of the Tree that pointed her toward Mercia. They persisted for several weeks along with the other symptoms, so eventually she listened. I traveled with her.”

  The age of ten. Mercia. The visit King Kethan spoke of. Octavia bit her lip and nodded for Miss Percival to continue.

  “We had an audience with King Kethan. To be in the presence of that man . . .” Awe softened her voice. “My headmistress told him of her dreams, that we had been guided to the palace for some purpose, some need at the palace. He politely told us he had no idea what that might be. We stayed a few more days but couldn’t get another audience. Finally, we gave up. We didn’t know we left the city at the same time as the Waster kidnappers.”

  “You found the princess.”

  “Yes. Dying. I was so young. Such a child, but I fought to save her. We didn’t realize who she was for several days. Viola . . . Allendia . . . she was so terrified. She knew there were traitors in the palace. We had no safe way to get word to the King, and Viola was fragile, so we waited.”

  “What about the visions? The growth of bark?”

  Miss Percival hugged her arms tight against her torso. “The symptoms slowly grew over the next few months. We planned to return to Mercia with Viola. With her, we could surely find out what the Lady wanted. I . . . I actually knew more than my mentor by that time. Mrs. Stout had told me a secret about the palace, about the Lady.”

  “The vault,” Octavia whispered.

  Miss Percival’s eyes widened. “You . . . how do you know?

  “I told you, I know many things. Go on.”

  “Yes. The royal vault. I was certain we were being pulled to the pieces of the Lady there. Then, one day Miss Percival’s skin began to heal, her circles returned to the way they had once been. A few days after that, we heard news from Mercia about the firebombing.”

  “When you made this deal to sell us to the Waste, you told them the secret about Mrs. Stout’s identity, but nothing about the vault. Why?”

  “All these years, rumors said that the royal vault was impossible to open. Whether that was true or not, it seemed to me that the items inside must have been destroyed. That’s why the symptoms went away. There was no point in telling the Waste about something that no longer existed.”

  In truth, the seed had been used on King Kethan. Maybe the Lady was at a loss about what to do, how to get it back, until now. Until her power began to fail completely.

  King Kethan’s words came back to her—­a world without the Lady’s healing power, of full reliance on the science of doctoring. Octavia shivered. “I need to get to the Tree, but . . . you know how I’ve always heard songs, even without a circle?” At that, Miss Percival nodded, her expression thoughtful. “Now I hear everything as a scream. I know everything. I know the location of every chancre. I had added an enchantment to my headband—­”

  “Wise, since it was already steeped in medician magic,” Miss Percival murmured. As if approving of my performance in a lesson in class.

  “But it’s now lost and the ­people out there . . . I hear them, I know them.” Octavia gulped. “The circle is keeping me sheltered and sane.”

  “There are likely two thousand ­people out there, more arriving as they prepare to make a stand. The Tree must be calling you, as my Miss Percival was once called to Mercia.”

  As I was called to Mercia’s vault, too. “Yes.”

  The two women regarded each other. Octavia wondered what Miss Percival thought would happen at the Tree—­if it was obvious to her what
the skin of bark really meant. If so, she didn’t show any sign.

  “May I look inside your satchel?” Miss Percival asked.

  Octavia frowned. “Yes?”

  The satchel was still on the bed, the top left gaping after Alonzo had rushed to pull out the medician blanket. Miss Percival rummaged a bit, but it was mostly empty with the blanket out and most of their survival supplies depleted. “Here we are.” She unfolded the surgical kit. “Your scissors are missing?”

  “They’re in my pocket.”

  “Hand them here, please, Miss Leander.”

  Scowling yet curious, Octavia pushed her scissors across the woven circle. Miss Percival sat. Pulling up the hem of her dress, she began to cut.

  “What? Miss Percival, you—­”

  “Someone obviously cut your medician blanket—­I recognize your stitch work in the mending. Yet it never occurred to you that you had more magicked fabric of your own, did it? Your mind gets stuck like that sometimes.” It was said gently, words punctuated by the snips of scissors.

  Octavia was of half a mind to refuse the fabric when it was pushed her way along with the scissors. She could cut her own dress, after all. Frustration tightened her throat as she thought of all the petty words she could toss Miss Percival’s way. “This doesn’t mean I forgive you.” “I suppose there’s no point in letting this go to waste.” Or to say nothing at all, just glare.

  None of those would make her feel better or mend the rift between them.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “I know it’s nothing. It doesn’t make me feel any less guilty.”

  For that, Octavia had no words. She took the fabric, put it on her lap, and opened her mind to the Lady as she had in Tamarania. It was no surprise that the Lady was very much there. A minute later, she tied the cloth to cover her ears, the knot at her nape. Taking a steadying breath, she tapped the edge of the circle.

  “Thank you, Lady, for extending your branches.” The heat crackled and faded away.

  “You make it look easy, the way you ask it of her, the way she responds,” whispered Miss Percival. Yearning twisted her voice.