Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order)

by Bailey, Kristin

  I kicked the broken remains of the crate, but it was empty.

  The clockwork key was gone.

  What was I going to do?

  My palm stung. I inspected the wound and concentrated on pulling out a large splinter. Once free of the wood, I stanched the blood and inspected the lock on the door.

  I heard a scratching on the other side.

  He had returned.

  Shaking, I leapt across the room and tried to conceal myself behind the whisky barrel. I heard the unmistakable click of a bolt sliding back, and the door creaked open.

  I tried to peek around the barrel.

  The man in the clockwork mask stepped through the door with my key hanging like a trophy around his neck. The brim of his hat and his high collar obscured his face.

  Just then he looked up.

  The human side of his face was as familiar to me as my own. From his salt-and-pepper hair to the thick eyebrow, the curve of his shoulders, and his long arms—everything was familiar to me. Especially the single dark gray eye locked on me. All the wind left my lungs in a sudden burst as I stood up, dumbfounded. “Father?”

  I shook all over, hardly able to stand upright as I stared at his face.

  The man’s resemblance was uncanny, but his face was slightly wider, with more of a hook to the nose, and large sideburns over a pockmarked cheek. On the other side of his face, the gears turned slowly in the intricate mask as the lifeless metal eye watched me.

  He laughed—a cold, cruel sound. “Your father? Hardly. I’ve never had the pleasure of being called a Whitlock.”

  His voice was not the voice I knew. His voice was higher-pitched than my father’s and gravelly, with an accent I couldn’t place. He may have borne a resemblance to my father, but this man was a stranger. Any resemblance was just an illusion.

  “Where is my grandfather?” I shouted at the doppelgänger even as I drove my hand into my pocket to retrieve the bottle of chloroform.

  “Don’t worry.” There was a harsh and mocking quality in his voice. “I’ll take you to him.” He lunged for me, and I saw the gleam of a knife in his hand.

  With all my strength I threw the bottle of chloroform. It shattered against his metal mask.

  Quickly I tucked an arm over my face and breathed into my sleeve. The knife clattered to the ground.

  The man in the clockwork mask clutched at his face. He staggered, smashing into the barrel, and reached for me.

  I screamed as he charged forward and nearly pinned me to the wall. Even through my sleeve I could smell the cloying sweetness of the chloroform. Ducking to the side, he crashed, his shoulder and head hitting the stone wall hard. Then he collapsed.

  Keeping my breath shallow, I reached out with shaking fingers and tugged on the chain to my grandfather’s key. As soon as I’d pulled it free of him, I grabbed the knife and scrambled for the door.

  I charged through and ran down a long tunnel, fearing I’d run straight into a wall with every step. It was pitch-black.

  Having lost my bearings, I hadn’t a notion which way to run. I had to get back to the monastery as quickly as possible before the man in the clockwork mask woke. I needed Headmaster Lawrence. Any water that came through the catacombs drained to the river, so I turned my feet in the direction that felt uphill. I pulled the goggles off my head and turned them on, though I didn’t wear them. Using the eerie green light emanating from them, I could only see the path directly before my feet.

  Holding them aloft like a strange candle, I tried to find my way out of the maze.

  I had just about given up hope, when I saw a dark figure holding a torch at the far end of one of the tunnels. No, he couldn’t have woken already. I tucked myself back into a dark corner and hid the light from the goggles in my skirt.

  I was out of tricks, and I knew I couldn’t overpower a full-grown man. I grasped the knife in my hand.

  “Meg?” a familiar voice called into the darkness.

  David.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I RAN TO HIM, AND David caught me, holding on to my wrist to direct the knife away from his side. It felt so good to have his hand on my arm and to know I wasn’t alone. Tears streamed down my face, and I tasted blood on my lip.

  David reached for my cheek, but his hand lingered a hairsbreadth away, as if fearful. Whatever mask of confidence and swagger he’d had had been stripped and replaced by an expression of utter horror. “Meg, what happened to you? You’ve been gone for hours. Your driver is beside himself.”

  “I was drugged and locked in a trunk.” I hastily wiped away my tears. It was not the time to allow myself to be overcome by what had just happened. Tucking the knife into my pocket, I took his torch. The heat of the flame kissed the cheek that still burned from the chloroform, and irritated the sting.

  “How? Who would do such a thing?” What little color had been left in David’s face drained away.

  “It was the man who murdered my parents. He’s here,” I said. “He’s the saboteur. He’s been trying to flush me out into the open since the beginning of summer when he planted the bomb in your sister’s shop. He’s been living here in the catacombs, trying to create enough commotion that he could take me without anyone noticing.”

  I had been too predictable. He’d known I would seek out the steamship after my little display with Will the last time the ship had arrived. He had probably seen us kiss, lurking in the shadows like the rat he was. He knew I would come. I’d run like an unsuspecting rabbit into a well-placed snare.

  “Were you harmed?” David inspected me all over, looking for injury.

  I shook my head. “Just my hand. It’s not bad.”

  “Where is he now?” David asked, peering at my palm.

  “I gave him some of his own medicine. He’s unconscious on the floor of one of the storage rooms. It’s down that way.” I pointed with the torch.

  “Come,” David said, pulling me forward. “We must find the headmaster and alert him.”

  We ran through the catacombs until finally we reached the ramp that led up to the carriage bay. I nearly stumbled in my haste to escape the darkness of the tunnels below.

  “Miss Whitlock!” Bob Brindle ran forward, his round face pale with worry. He swept me up into a protective embrace that nearly caught his shoulder on fire from the torch, and I worried for the knife in my pocket, but the thick folds of my skirt seemed to hold it harmless, for now. “Were you lost?”

  “Taken. It was the man with the bomb.” I didn’t need to give any more explanation than that.

  Bob extracted a pistol from his coat pocket and took the torch from my hand. “Where is he?”

  Even as I was about to explain, David’s man came up beside us with his own pistol in hand. “Follow me,” he said to Bob, and the two descended the ramp.

  David returned to me looking grim. “Don’t worry. They will find him.”

  It didn’t take long to reach the headmaster’s office. Most of the monastery was abandoned even though the sun had not yet set. Only a few torches lit the halls. Their flickering shadows unsettled me, and I wanted to bathe myself in light.

  David pounded on the door to the headmaster’s office. It opened, but to our dismay Instructor Barnabus was inside. He slowly took in my disheveled appearance, then slid his gaze over to David. There was no hiding the suspicion in his eyes. “What is this about? Shouldn’t you both be home by now?”

  He straightened a large pile of drawings and orders from the Foundry and tapped the bottom edge of them against the desk. He placed them neatly down and closed the counting book.

  “Miss Whitlock has been attacked by the saboteur,” David said.

  Instructor Barnabus’s demeanor changed immediately. He took me by the injured hand, led me to the largest chair, and deposited me in it like a fragile doll. “Dear heavens, child. Who is it?”

  “The same man who planted the explosive in my shop. The man in the clockwork mask,” I said, relieved that someone would finally take the threat
seriously.

  Instructor Barnabus turned the shade of a ripe beet. “This is the last I wish to hear of your delusions, young lady. There is no man with a clockwork mask. You have used this ploy to gain attention and wrongfully secure your place at the Academy. Now, I don’t know what your intentions are, but you, David, should beware lest she use her wild deceptions to corner you into marriage.”

  “I believe her,” David said without flinching.

  Barnabus made a series of puffing, blowing noises through his long mustache. “Well, I for one don’t have the time to waste on wild fantasies. I am due for supper with my aunt.”

  “They are not wild fantasies. There is a murderer out there!” I said. He had to listen. The fate of the Academy was at stake. Instead he shuffled us out the door and locked it.

  “If that were the case, I’m sure the proper authorities would have found him by now. I am already late and have no more time for this. Good night.” He walked down the hall, his head bobbing along as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  I released the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Barnabus was a braying ass. He’d been against me from the start, and now that unfounded judgment was going to get someone killed. “What do we do?”

  David looked at me, then the door. “Give me the knife.”

  I handed it to him, and he wedged it into the jam and knocked the hilt with the heel of his palm. The latch released and the door swung open. Honestly, there wasn’t an effective lock in the building. David ushered me inside as he handed the knife back to me. “Stay here. I’ll try to find the headmaster. If he returns, tell him what you told me. I’ll be back soon.”

  I wanted to say “Thank you,” but he was out the door, charging into the fray like a gallant knight. I closed and locked the door behind him, though after David’s demonstration of how easily the lock could be defeated, it hardly seemed necessary.

  In the aftermath of everything that had happened, I now felt exhausted and just wanted to sleep for seventy years, but I couldn’t. We were still in danger.

  I sank into the headmaster’s chair, as it was the biggest and seemed the most comfortable, then drew my feet up beneath me. Time seemed to stretch on forever as I listened to the clock tick behind me. I glanced at the spy glass and thought about using it to try to find the headmaster, but decided against it. The controls were much more complicated than the one in Rathford’s workshop.

  I found an old leather glove with holes in two of the fingers, and a bit of wire, so I used them to make a sheath for the knife and then tucked it back into my pocket.

  As I tied off the wire, I accidentally pushed over some of the drawings and orders that Barnabus had stacked so neatly on the desk. I picked them up to right them, but then curiosity got the better of me. I leafed through them, interested to see what my fellow classmates had created, and also what the full members of the Order had requested from the Foundry.

  It was remarkable how much I had learned in so short a time. I could now glance at a drawing and for the most part picture the final construction clearly in my mind. I turned over another page, and froze.

  Tucked in with various orders for parts for automaton control systems and even whole body parts for automatons themselves was an intricate little drawing. I could picture the final mechanism quite clearly, because I had seen it before.

  A knock sounded at the door, and I startled.

  “Meg, it’s me,” David said from the other side. I snatched the drawing off the table and rushed to the door. I threw open the lock, and he stepped inside. “I’m sorry, Meg. I couldn’t—”

  “David, look at this.” I thrust the drawing in front of him.

  “What is it?” he asked, moving closer to the single burning lamp and tilting the page at a better angle.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat as he inspected it.

  “It looks a bit like a spider, doesn’t it?” He tilted his head, considering the drawing. “Oh, no, look. It’s a striker. There’s a note for a bit of flint here. How clever. With every rotation of the main shaft, it moves down this thread.”

  My heart sank. It was the piece of the bomb that Will and I had destroyed. Only now it had been fortified by a solid casing around the outside. “That’s what I feared.”

  “What is this thing?” David asked, looking concerned.

  “It’s a triggering mechanism for a bomb. I destroyed it. It seems someone had it rebuilt. Is there a completed order for it?”

  David searched through the papers. “Here it is. It was delivered today. It doesn’t say who requested it.”

  Dear God. This was the work of the saboteur. It had to be. He’d used the Foundry orders from the Academy to cover his intention to repair the bomb. We had to find it. The headmaster had been tasked with studying the bomb. He’d know where it was.

  “The workshop,” I whispered. I looked up at David. “I know where the headmaster might be.” I grabbed his hand and the lamp and led him out the door and down into the cellars.

  I went straight to the false cask and unlocked the bung. The front of the cask swung open, and David looked at me in shock. “How did you discover this?”

  “Trust me, you don’t wish to know.” I crept through the narrow hall, but everything within the workshop was dark and still. “Headmaster?” I called. Nothing. I lifted the lantern and looked around.

  David was drawn toward the mind-reading device. “This is the device from the plans the headmaster showed us after the incident in the cellars. Why would he complete a rogue invention?”

  For the first time I could see the workshop in its entirety. At the table there were several pictures of Samuel at different ages, Headmaster Lawrence, and a woman I assumed was Headmaster Lawrence’s wife.

  “David, look at this. These pictures are strange.” I picked up one to show him. Lines had been drawn all over the faces, with notes on shapes and proportions in reference to the other pictures. I glanced down and noticed the wood of the table I had exposed when I had picked up the picture. It had been gouged with a knife.

  Handing the picture to David, I swept the others away, and gasped.

  Lies, lies, lies, lies . . .

  The word had been carved deep into the wood in angry gouges hundreds of times.

  Suddenly all the pieces fell into place. I could hear the echoes of conversation.

  Mary’s tinny voice, You take after the headmaster’s wife. . . .

  A woman in love. Mary was taunting me for being in love. The headmaster’s wife must have been as well.

  Lucinda’s calm explanation, Mary was dredging up long-dead gossip. The rumors about Emma died down at least fifteen years ago, perhaps more. I don’t even know why Mary brought it up, other than that she wanted to evoke a sense of scandal. . . .

  She was involved in a scandal. Something terrible had happened.

  All you need know is that you should never feel ashamed for how you feel about Will. . . .

  Will, a man from the Foundry.

  She loved a man from the Foundry. The headmaster’s wife loved a man from the Foundry.

  I remembered the way MacTavish had stared when I had entered the assembly hall for the unveiling of the automatons. He’d looked so sad. Samuel had been standing directly behind me.

  MacTavish.

  “Dear Lord,” I whispered, recalling the vision I had seen in the mind-reading device.

  “Meg, what is it?” David asked. For the briefest moment I had forgotten he was there.

  “Headmaster Lawrence is the saboteur. And now he intends to destroy the Foundry.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I THOUGHT THE MAN WHO abducted you is the saboteur.” David placed the picture back down on the table. “This doesn’t make any sense. What does the man in the clockwork mask have to do with the headmaster?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Other than providing the headmaster with a bomb. That’s why the headmaster was so quick to dismiss my warnings about the man in th
e mask. He knew he was the one who was guilty.”

  “This doesn’t make sense.” David turned to take a step away, then turned back just as quickly. “The headmaster would never do such a thing. Someone could have died in that last attack.”

  “And notice, he was practically the first person out of the room. It all fits now, all of it.” Goodness, why hadn’t I seen it before? I had been so blinded by my quest to discover the identity of the man in the mask and so certain he was the one behind the attacks. “The man who attacked me never sabotaged anything. He’s been lingering in the shadows hoping to take me when no one would come looking for me. He’s only acted when he’s had a clear opportunity. It was Headmaster Lawrence who gave him the chance to strike. It was Headmaster Lawrence who had his own agenda all along.”

  “I fail to see why a man would seek to destroy something he’s clearly passionate about and loves.” David turned around, as if looking for something in the room that might make the headmaster less guilty.

  “The Academy is not the only thing he has loved. Several years ago there were rumors surrounding his wife. Namely, that she had been having an illicit affair with a man from the Foundry.” I picked up a picture of the headmaster’s wife. The eyes had been roughly scratched out, as if the hand that had done it had been driven by malice. “This all happened at a time that would have made Samuel’s parentage suspect.”

  “Are you calling my friend a bastard?” David’s voice rose, but I held my ground. “We grew up together. I know him better than anyone. He used to be a fun chap when we were young. He was kind—”

  “Then why is he so angry now?” I asked. David’s demeanor changed, as if he were holding back a secret. I pressed on, “There’s not much love lost between him and his father, is there?”

  David’s expression turned tight and grim, his eyes as hard and cold as ice. “You have no idea what it is like to never live up to the expectations of a father who is determined to demean and belittle you at every given opportunity.” He turned away from me, giving his head a shake, as if trying to free his mind from his own thoughts. “You don’t know how it breaks you.”