The Clockwork Crown

by Beth Cato

  Odd. I’m not supposed to feel their pain, just hear it.

  A little voice whispered from a different memory. If you give in to the pain, it will be over in seconds. Just let the seed grow.

  A strong masculine hand squeezed hers. His life beat was the stuff of parades and floats and waving banners, the sort of celebration—­armistice!—­that could make even a soul in mourning smile again.

  “Octavia. You hear me when I say your name, so I say it now. Fight, Octavia Leander. Fight.”

  Alonzo Garret. Garret. The son of Solomon Garret.

  A roar grew louder above. She tasted heat. The grip on her hand tightened. The other hand on her arm prickled with magic. Infernal. Waster. Don’t trust him. He would have killed your parents. He’s killed many. Burned them.

  But he didn’t burn Alonzo again. He could have.

  “You are doing well, Miss Leander,” said Miss Percival. That voice, those words—­Octavia wanted to preen with pride. She’d do most anything to hear that praise again. Then, in a mutter, “This much blood, if not for that seed . . . even when I doctor, I use a circle to listen. Give me the stick.”

  “Lanskay, here,” said Alonzo. “If you cannot keep up the shield, before it falls, place this beneath your tongue. Do not chew.”

  A leaf? But there are only two. Alonzo, you can’t . . . Octavia tried to speak, to see.

  “A Tree’s leaf! Poison!”

  “Not if you do as I say. Miss Percival, the seed—­”

  Something tore inside Octavia, pulled away with a juicy lurch.

  “I’m extracting it right now, young man.”

  Something splattered on the roof above. Oil. Liquid sloshed down the nearby wall, pattered on the window glass. Yelling. The tingle of Miss Percival’s power, so faint, then—­so different. A roar consumed the world.

  Octavia struggled to make her tongue move, her body shift, to somehow tell Alonzo to save himself, though she knew he would never be that selfish. He’d give the leaf to Miss Percival or to her, and Octavia couldn’t stop him.

  Don’t die, Alonzo. I don’t want to wake up and find your bones at my feet. Please, no. Not that. Anything but that.

  She felt a huge shudder above her head. Even with her eyelids closed, she saw brilliant yellows and reds. Heat breathed down on her.

  The burning began in her legs and then she knew nothing else. Pain crushed every sense in her body.

  Blackness.

  CHAPTER 22

  My feet rooted to the mud of the field. Night sky. The airship a massive flaming meteor. The village. Home. Mother. Father. Red, bursting and bright.

  Then morning. Birds sing. Light pours through the half door to the kitchen.

  Mother hums as she chops carrots on the thick wooden cutting board. Father sits at the table. He has leaned so far over his book that his round glasses have nearly slipped off the tip of his nose. They both turn to look at me as if I’ve slammed the door. They look strangely older, grayer, like grandparents rather than parents.

  “Octavia Louise Leander.” Mother plants her fists on both hips. “You are not supposed to be here. Turn around this instant.”

  Father closes his book; he does not even replace his bookmark, which says a great deal about his urgency. He adjusts his glasses. “This verse Kethan recorded from memory is an absolute joy. I’ll read it to you later, Octavia. Much later. For now, you’d best listen to your mother.” His warm smile crinkles long lines in his face.

  I backstep, chagrined. “But—­”

  Mother shakes her head. “Go, my sweet girl. Go plant tulips. Ride horses. Tend to your patients. Besides, Alonzo is waiting for you.”

  Alonzo is kissing me. Alonzo is alive.

  Awareness returned to Octavia.

  She knew the texture of his lips, the scrape of his skin. Their mouths are open. They’d never kissed like that before. Not that she was averse to the idea. She moved her lips but they didn’t quite work, for some reason. Her eyes weren’t working either. Everything was black, the impenetrable black of that terrible tunnel. His song was as strong as when they first met, no longer plagued by intimate details beyond the absence of his lower leg.

  Something was wedged beneath her tongue.

  She smelled fire—­burned wood.

  Octavia opened her eyes.

  Alonzo’s lips were locked over hers. She wiggled her tongue. His tongue jabbed hers in return, and not in a particularly romantic way—­more like don’t move. Not a difficult request, as her extremities tingled as if they’d fallen asleep. Alonzo’s arms were underneath her and hoisted her up. She glimpsed an overcast sky through thick billows of smoke. For some reason, she had no urge to cough. She breathed through her nose, the air fresh and pure. Debris crunched beneath Alonzo’s feet as he walked. Something bumped against her legs. Alonzo stopped.

  “You’re safe here,” said Miss Percival. “Don’t fear the fire.”

  How many times over the years had Miss Percival said similar words to her? Those late nights when Octavia couldn’t sleep, when she had taken shelter beneath Miss Percival’s desk and sketched herbs within her cavelike refuge.

  Alonzo’s lips withdrew. The leaf protruded from his lips like a ridiculous tongue. That’s what had been in her mouth—­they had shared the leaf. He shifted her to grab the leaf, and as he did, it evaporated to nothingness. Fire illuminated the side of his face with a golden halo and showed his brilliant white grin.

  “Octavia. How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Peculiar. It’s been a rather dreadful day, hasn’t it?” Her mouth felt strange and sticky, her tongue somewhat thick.

  His laugh boomed out and he held her closer. Her hands clutched at his fully exposed back.

  “Alonzo? Do you realize you’re half naked?” His flesh was clean, his song perfect. Strangely perfect, all things considered. His mechanical leg proved the quality of Kellar Dryn’s workmanship again and was intact.

  “Yes. I fear the protective powers of the leaf do not extend beyond flesh.”

  Logic began to function in her brain. The Lady, the pain, the attack . . .

  “What happened? Set me down please. Miss Percival? Where are you?”

  “Easy, easy.” Alonzo set her down. Her soles met springy grass. Grass? “One question at a time. As for Miss Percival, she is behind you.” He said this gently, as if bracing her for bad news.

  “I’m here, Miss Leander. I don’t think I’ll be able to talk for much longer.”

  Octavia turned and faced a tree. Miss Percival’s body was still visible within the trunk—­the swell of her hips, the nubs of her breasts. The trunk extended past her body, twenty, thirty feet, with branches beginning just above her head. From her extended arms sprouted leaves in a dozen colors and shapes, from five-­pointed maple to the red of pampria. The leaves above looked green like the ones Octavia had carried with her these past few weeks. Shreds of shimmering white cloth adorned the grass at her roots.

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? More beautiful than I even imagined,” said Lanskay. He sat a few feet away, naked as a babe on bath day, staring up in awe.

  “Lanskay! You’re well?” Octavia had to ask it, even if the strength in his song already told her this. She was surprised at how relieved she was to see him.

  “That leaf kept me alive, as promised. I owe you my life again, but I vow to you, this time I will not burn you.”

  “You had best not,” growled Alonzo.

  Tears filled Octavia’s eyes. Miss Percival was beautiful, but then, she always had been. “Miss Percival, I . . . your song is so different now, I can’t read it. Are you hurting? Did it . . . ?”

  “I swallowed the seed and didn’t fight. The change was instantaneous. I never hurt, not as you did.”

  Octavia drily swallowed. “I . . . I’m glad.”

  “It’s amazing
, Miss Leander, all the life here, but oh, there’s so much suffering. The Lady did her best, but she was tired. I see so many things to do!”

  “That sounds like you, Miss Percival, always with your lists. Staying up late to grind herbs, do your paperwork, and a thousand other things.”

  “I feel more alive than I have since I was a girl. The war—­it took so much out of me, out of all of us, and then the debt . . . I can never apologize enough for what I put you through.”

  “I think you’ve more than made up for that.” Octavia felt Alonzo’s hand on her shoulder. She leaned so her cheek pressed against his knuckles.

  The smell of smoke lessened. She looked beyond the new Tree. The immediate buildings of the Waster settlement had been obliterated. Fire lit up the night all around them, and as she watched, the closest flames were squelched. She stared for a second, trying to make sense of it in the dim light.

  A forest—­a jungle—­grew around her as the moments ticked by. Vines crested like waves, silhouetted against an inferno, and then crashed down. Debris crackled, fire hissed, and then only smoke rose from the site. All around, it was the same. Trees, flowers, bushes. Through the stink of burned wood came the perfume of life and fresh greenery. Saplings sprouted steps away. Pampria—­the cinnamon odor so clean and sharp—­tumbled from the ground in an instant embankment of red leaves.

  She couldn’t see the other Lady, but she sensed the Tree’s looming presence. The new forest would soon meld with the old, if it hadn’t already. Good. The other Lady would be hidden. She could die in peace, without having her bark violated, and the creatures in her realm wouldn’t suffer.

  Through the haze and high canopy of branches, stars glittered. A strange serenity blanketed the place. There were no gunshots, no cries, none of the expected cacophony that came with a battle. No roars of airships above.

  “Where’s the Caskentian fleet?” Octavia asked.

  “They retreated as soon as I set roots and made us vanish,” said Miss Percival. “All they could see were blank plains. They will be back, but it’ll do no good. Not for generations. ­People will only find me if I wish them to.” Her voice grew fainter, word by word. “Mr. Infernal?”

  Lanskay stood. “Lady?” His tone was reverent, his voice quavering, his eyes downcast.

  “Tell your countrymen what you’ve seen. Tell them that not even Caskentia will be able to call this place the Waste within a few generations. Work with Caskentia, please. Work together. Caskentia has industry but you’ll have the harvest.”

  “It’s all we’ve wanted, Lady.” Lanskay bowed his head. “Thank you.”

  “The initial bombardment killed many in the tunnels, and as my roots spread, the rest of the earth here will be unstable. Take the survivors away from here as quickly as you can. If you get too close again, the wyrms will warn you. Go.”

  Lanskay saluted her with a fist to his chest and, naked as he was, repeated the gesture to Octavia and Alonzo. He stumbled away. Alonzo cleared his throat.

  Octavia looked at him with an eyebrow arched. “You do realize I’ve seen and treated thousands of naked men? Not very glorious labor, at that. Bedpans and surgery.”

  “My own backside was exposed to the fire. There is a reason I must face you.”

  Noted, with delight. At the thought, she glanced at her own clothing. Her enchanted robes, magicked though they were, had not been proof against fire. Her sleeves were burned to the elbow, her skirts and boots quite scorched. Her hands—­the growth of bark was gone.

  As the minutes had passed, Miss Percival had been further absorbed into the Tree. This is why the previous Lady projected the memory of her body. Her true self had simply become rings in the center of a trunk a mile thick.

  “I’ll miss you, Miss Percival.”

  “And I’ll miss you. Truly I will. But you’re all grown up. If not for our duties in the war, you would have left ages ago to form your own practice. There was—­I never told you about Delford, the place that was your destination when you left—­”

  “I know the truth. I know that Delford’s need was a lie. It’s okay. I wanted a home. I’m going to have one.”

  The academy. A place I always loved, even if the other girls made my life difficult. The barns, the corrals, the fields—­my tulips. The whole North Country, so verdant and green, the air fresh, the industry of the south far away. Home. I’m going home.

  Octavia wrapped her arms around the Tree. Her hands couldn’t touch at the back.

  “Oh, Octavia.” The voice was a whisper through the branches.

  Octavia stiffened. “The Tree’s leaf—­Alonzo and I shared it. What does that mean? Our lives . . . ?”

  “There are so many paths. So many.” The whisper shook the branches. “Live. Live. Every moment you—­”

  The human voice stopped completely. Octavia waited a minute more, the trunk growing in her grasp, before she stepped back. Miss Percival had plenty of other matters to attend to. A shut office door used to be the old warning system that she wasn’t to be bothered. This . . . this was something more.

  Octavia walked a slow circuit around the Tree, trailing her fingers on the thick ridges of bark. She glanced up. “What’s that?” She pointed to something about seven feet up in the lowest full branches.

  “I am not sure.” Alonzo stood just behind her. “Miss Percival? Might we have your assistance?”

  The branch shook on its own and the object dropped straight into Alonzo’s arms: Octavia’s satchel. Singed to a deep brown, the strap severed at long last, but otherwise intact. She glanced inside. The jars looked sound, packed securely as always.

  Octavia pressed her fist to her mouth but she couldn’t contain the giggles. “All the things this poor bag has endured, and here we are.”

  “Here we are indeed. You even permit me to hold your satchel now.”

  “Yes. I won’t even threaten you with capsicum.”

  “Such generosity, Miss Leander.”

  It was so good to hear her name without any accompanying pain. “I have my moments. I doubt it’s any accident that I still have my bag. Here. We need to follow Lanskay.” From her bag, she pulled out Rivka’s gown, the one she’d brought along in case her robes disintegrated. At the look on Alonzo’s face, she burst out in laughter again.

  “It will help your dignity. Somewhat. We’ll need to get you proper clothes before we leave the Lady’s shadow and find true winter.” She would not think of the sources of those clothes. Not yet.

  “Somewhat. Yes.”

  She bit her lip as he pulled the shift overhead. It was as basic as a gown could be, not even adorned by lace. Tall as he was, the skirt ended just above the knee. As Alonzo moved, bits of his old clothes floated to the ground. His boots creaked ominously. He stood straight and affected his regal demeanor.

  “Well then,” he said.

  “Well then.” She cleared her throat. “Lanskay went this way.” She started walking.

  “The tunnels.”

  “Yes. There will be injured ­people. We must help them get away from here.” Which makes our current levity all the more vital. Somber work awaits.

  “I’d still prefer that you lead the way, Miss Leander.”

  She glanced back at him. “You could borrow my medician blanket, for an extra layer of dignity, but I will need it back soon.”

  “My lack of functional trousers is a small inconvenience compared to everything else. I should hope that my current attire will not distract you too much.” A pause. “I am not sure if anything could distract you from your duties, truly.”

  She laughed, full of absolute joy for being alive, at the life ahead. “You’re right. Not when ­people are in need. But later . . .”

  Octavia didn’t need to look at his face to know Alonzo had arched his eyebrow as he gave her one of his looks. “Later, Miss Leander?”

 
“I could use more distraction later.” She walked faster, as if she could make later come a little sooner.

  CHAPTER 23

  Octavia breathed in the dankness of the purple dawn. The North Country had emerged from winter with humidity so thick she could taste it like fine wine. She loved it. She loved how the tip of her nose turned red and numb, how her breath created dragon puffs, how the mud squished beneath the overly large boots she used for barn labor. From the corral, a horse whickered a greeting. The songs of small bodies drifted in her wake. The cats knew it neared milking time.

  “You’ll get your oats soon enough,” she called to the horse. The cats meowed in protest. “Yes, I know you are starving, you poor things.” The glowstone lamp swayed in her grip.

  The entire yard was fragrant with the scent of jasmine. The vines grew in thick tumbles beside the house and along the entry gates, the white flowers mere specks in the thin light. The blooms had opened only the day before. Miss Percival knows they are one of my favorites.

  Yellow outlined the doors of the academy’s second barn, so recently converted into a mechanist’s shop. Octavia smiled to herself and slipped through the gaping doors. Alonzo’s legs jutted from beneath an old tank he was attempting to alter into a plow. The guts of it were bared and gleaming in recycled copper and steel.

  “How long have you been up?” Octavia asked as she fixed the lamp onto a hook.

  “An hour. Sleep evaded me, like a sparrow with a cat.”

  “I hope you’re not too tired later.”

  Alonzo emerged to grant her the full weight of his stare, one eyebrow raised. “I assure you, I am quite prepared for the challenge of the day.”