Somewhere, a door inside of him opened.
Carmer remembered everything. He remembered Titus Archer, and the Autocats, and his deal with Grit. He remembered lying to protect the Amazifier, his Friendship with the fae, and his fateful encounter with Ombrienne.
Grit. Carmer had to find her. But first he had to get out of here.
The magic in the room faded with the shattering of the crystal heart. The mask stopped cackling, the tree stopped growing, and angel wings dropped to the floor, inanimate once more. His eyes still full of faerie dust, Carmer turned on Gideon Sharpe, who crouched down at his ruined bird’s side.
“No,” said Gideon again. The word was a sob in his throat. He stroked the bent metal wing and looked up at Carmer, eyes fearful for the first time. His silver wristband with its curious stone lay a few feet away, the clasp snapped in the struggle. Carmer picked it up and pocketed it.
“I need to get out of here,” Carmer said, mostly to himself. A place this big couldn’t have just one door. How did they get the set pieces up into the theater? There had to be some sort of lift or ramp—he just had to find it.
Carmer’s eyes were still burning from the faerie dust, and he looked at the world through a golden haze, but something told him not to rub it out just yet. One of the pairs of angel wings rose from the floor, flew over to him, and batted itself helpfully.
Carmer shrugged. It was turning out to be that kind of day.
He pulled the straps attached to the wings over his shoulders. They beat once, twice, and his feet were off the floor.
“Maybe your experience was different from mine,” conceded Carmer. “I don’t know what the faeries did to make you feel like this, but you have to trust me. They’re not all bad. And I’m sure when they named you Friend, they didn’t have this in mind.”
“Wait!” cried Gideon. “You don’t—”
But Carmer was already flying away, his wings scraping the ceiling as they carried him through the underbelly of the old theater, up and away through the freight elevator shaft, and back to the friend he’d promised to protect.
Grit couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d called in every favor, summoned every skittering creature that ran on four legs that would pay her heed, even hitched a ride with a surly, smelly garden gnome in a farmer’s cart full of pumpkins—all of it to reach the Orbicle before the night’s performance. All of it for the small chance that she might worm her way into the Mechanist’s domain and see something, anything that might help her stop him. She’d already sabotaged one magic act, after all. How hard could it be to slip in a few well-placed jabs of her sword and ruin another?
As it turned out, she did see something—and as so often happens, it wasn’t what she wanted to see: Carmer, whole and unharmed, walking arm in arm into the Orbicle with Gideon Sharpe.
It was like the first time she fell off Dusten, back when he was no more than a ball of fluff with wings, but still very much a wild thing. Something spooked him while they practiced loops around the frog pond, and before Grit knew it, there was suddenly nothing between her and the ground but open air. Her stomach sank down to her knees while her heart leapt up into her throat. She didn’t even have time to make a sound. One moment, there was something holding her aloft, strong and powerful and alive; the next, nothing. Only rushing air and the futile flapping of her lonely wing that made her twist and tumble as she fell down, down, and down some more.
Fortunately, a sylph—a faerie of the air—happened to be flying by that day, and quickly summoned a stiff wind to slow her fall and nudge her over the pond. She fell facedown into the water, a brutal slap that she was lucky didn’t break her bones, though it left her sore for a week. Sore, but alive.
This felt like that, but there was no one there to break her fall this time. There was only Carmer’s disappearing back and the hideous blinking marquees and the choking smog and the deafening noise of the city. There were only heavy boots to dodge and steam carriage wheels to run out from under before they crushed her. It didn’t matter that she’d once wanted to be a part of it all. It didn’t matter that this was the world where she’d felt the thrill of combining her magic with Carmer’s, where she discovered that just because her fire was different didn’t mean it couldn’t burn just as bright.
What mattered was that, yet again, she was alone. A small part of her had dared to think—no, dared to hope—that something had happened to Carmer. That there was a plausible explanation for his sudden disappearance right after being named Friend of the Fae. The Carmer Grit thought she knew could mess up royally sometimes, it was true, but when he made a promise, he kept it with a stubbornness that rivaled her own (and that was really saying something). Only an army of Autocats could have kept him from seeing this thing through, for both of their sakes.
Or so Grit had thought. But there Carmer was, running right back to his old life, putting on cheap tricks for money and taking meetings with the Mechanist himself, as if his Friendship meant nothing—or worse, as if he’d been waiting to use it for the Mechanist’s ends all along. Grit felt sick.
She stumbled behind the theater and rubbed at her eyes, fighting back the sob threatening to burst out of her throat. Two fat black rats rummaging through the trash cans paused in their squabble over a rotten apple to stare at her. She almost stuck her tongue out at them, but it hardly seemed worth the effort.
They ran squeaking back under the trash cans and Grit sighed. Not even rats wanted her around.
If she’d been paying better attention, she would have noticed the real reason for the rats’ flight. Luckily, Grit saw the shadow move just in time: a skulking Autocat just about to spring. For half a second, she hesitated, knowing she could never outrun the cat and feeling almost relieved that at least, finally, she could just stop running all the time.
But then Grit remembered Carmer’s observation after their first encounter with an Autocat.
Everything is less scary when you know how it works. The next time we meet the Autocats, we know there’s a good chance of disabling them if we go for the heart. We’ll be ready for them.
The Autocat pounced; Grit skidded under its outstretched claws by a hair’s breadth and vaulted upward, grabbing onto its thigh. The cat’s body flailed this way and that as Grit swung herself around to its more vulnerable underside and climbed quickly toward its crystal heart, just visible under a mess of wiring. The cat rolled onto its back and tried to swat at her, but it couldn’t reach Grit without tearing at itself. The Autocat lurched into the street.
Grit hung on for dear life as the cat rolled again, this time to dodge a speeding carriage that nearly crushed them under its wheels. By the time the Autocat righted itself again, Grit was firmly enmeshed in its metal insides. It shook itself in the shadows of the Orbicle, meowing and growling, but Grit held on tight. The Autocat would have to claw out its own heart to get to her now.
Messing up the Mechanist’s magic show would make him angry, that was certain, but it wouldn’t stop the Hyperion for good. If Grit wanted to find the missing faeries, she needed to go into the real belly of the beast: Theian Foundry.
“Okay, kitty,” Grit said to her unwilling ride, “run along home.”
20.
UNLIKELY ALLIANCES
The first real frost of the season settled over Oldtown Arboretum like a prickly blanket. If the townspeople thought its sudden appearance odd, they soon forgot about it as they turned away from the Arboretum. And turn away they did, forgoing their usual afternoon stroll or shortcut through the gardens because of an inexplicable desire to go the long way around.
Carmer felt the faeries’ magic working against him as his feet crunched over icy grass. He barely noticed the new streetlamp or the freshly laid cobblestones. Thoughts encouraging him to turn back, to go find a nice cup of hot chocolate instead of tramping around in the cold, sprang up in his mind. But he was wise enough to ignore them, and when he approached the North Gate, it swung open before he had so much as raised a finger. He kep
t his head low, well aware that his eyes were still flashing with golden light.
Carmer shouldn’t have kept the magic inside of him this long, but he’d needed to get to the Arboretum as soon as possible. His eyes burned, and it was getting harder to see; red spots dotted his vision, already compromised by the golden haze the faerie dust cast over everything. There was a dull, throbbing pressure in his skull that was only getting worse, and yet he was so full of energy he was practically shaking. He was thankful for the boost, but Friend of the Fae or not, he needed to get this stuff out of his eyes.
For a second time, the path seemed to know where he wanted to go. It wove around a trail of bare tulip trees and lindens that turned slowly into pockmarked corks and a trio of frozen frog ponds, finally spitting him out in the midst of a birdhouse village. Birdhouses of every shape and size dotted the clearing, some mounted on wooden poles, others seeming to grow out of the trees themselves. There were small cottages with thatched roofs, long log cabins, stately colonials—he even spotted a replica of City Hall that he was surprised could stay upright on its own. All of it was rendered in exquisite, miniature detail.
There were few birds about. It was cold, that was true, but there was something else. The whole Arboretum was too quiet, like it was holding its breath.
In the center of the village was a stone fountain. The statue in the middle was a siren with the head of a beautiful woman and the body of a bird of prey, and the talons that gripped the jagged rock she perched on looked deadly. Carmer approached cautiously; he hadn’t had the best luck with beautiful women lately.
But the siren remained as still as stone should be. Water trickled from holes at the end of each carved feather in her outstretched wings, out of her mouth and her eyes. The surface of the pool was half frozen, thin films of ice bumping against one another in the faint ripples.
Carmer’s vision flashed red and gold, blinding him, and pain seared through his head. He leaned against the edge of the fountain for support.
“I’d get it over with, if I were you,” advised the siren.
Carmer was shaking so badly he could hardly muster surprise. He plunged his head into the fountain, eyes open as far as they would go.
The cold was shocking. Carmer gasped in surprise and got a breath full of freezing water in his lungs for his trouble. He came up coughing and sputtering, but his vision and his head were clear again.
“Well, that looked bracing,” commented the siren.
Shivering, Carmer sat down on the edge of the fountain and shook the water out of his ears. He tried not to think about his eyelashes, already freezing into icicles. “Yes, ma’am,” agreed Carmer.
“It’s a bit of an overkill with the frost and the doom and gloom, I know,” said the siren pleasantly.
Carmer wondered if she had anyone but the birds to talk to.
“But I suppose, without a princess, we are all in for it anyway . . .”
“What do you mean, without a princess?” asked Carmer sharply.
“Oh, haven’t you heard?” asked the siren. She looked a little too happy to be the bringer of bad news. “The queen’s daughter’s been taken by the Wingsnatchers. It’s all anyone’s been talking about. Or rather, not talking about. We’d better not let Her Majesty hear us gossiping, she’s in a dreadful mood. Well, obviously—”
“I have to talk to the queen!” interrupted Carmer, already running down the path. “Thanks for your help!”
“Oh! Well,” huffed the siren. “The next time you need another refreshing dip, you know who to call!”
Carmer found the Great Willow within minutes—this Friend of the Fae thing was starting to come in handy—though it wasn’t a willow today, but an ancient yew with a trunk wide enough to fit several Carmers inside. The frost that covered the rest of the Arboretum grew thicker as he approached; every bough of the tree was covered in a layer of ice. Carmer could see his breath in the unseasonably cold air. It felt more like the dead of winter than autumn.
“Your Majesty?”
Queen Ombrienne knelt in a gaping knot in the center of the yew, staring straight ahead. Her dark red hair pooled around her feet and her wings beat listlessly. There was no face in the willow, no glowing woman clothed in leaves this time—just a tiny faerie sitting in a giant tree, utterly alone.
Carmer walked right up to the queen. He didn’t have the time to be afraid.
“They took her,” said Ombrienne dully. “They took my daughter.”
“I heard,” said Carmer.
“Do you know what will happen to this kingdom without a royal heir, when I move on?”
Carmer shook his head.
“Neither do I.”
“Queen Ombrienne . . .” Talking to queens wasn’t something Carmer was accustomed to, and Grit wasn’t here to break the ice for him—literally or figuratively. “Even if you just did it to get me out of the way, you still made me a Friend of the Fae. I made a promise to help—took a vow to help. I think I can get past the Mechanist, but we need to work together.”
The queen stared ahead, barely acknowledging that Carmer had spoken, but then something in her eyes hardened. She took a deep breath.
“I cannot leave the Arboretum myself.”
“I understand that.”
“But . . .” She hesitated, then made a decision. “Consider all of the fae at your disposal.”
Carmer thought for a moment.
“All of the fae?”
“I don’t think I like him,” said Abby Absinthe critically. “He’s got knobby knees. I don’t trust little boys with knobby knees.”
She took a long draw from her pipe and blew three smoke rings that hit Carmer square in the face. They smelled like rotten eggs. He coughed and would have backed away, but there was nowhere for him to go. He took up most of the room in the tunnel near the Green Goddess, and it was hard enough being careful not to sit on any faeries as it was.
“But, how do you know I’ve got knobby knees?” wondered Carmer. “You’re . . .”
Abby Absinthe cackled. “Blind?” she asked. “You don’t say! No one’s bothered to tell me.”
“This is hardly the time for jokes,” said Ombrienne, and the assembled fae turned to face her—or rather, her image—once more. They were gathered around an underground waterfall created by the meeting of multiple pipes, and a projection of Queen Ombrienne flickered across the falling water. Ombrienne regarded them through her own waterfall from somewhere in the Arboretum. She paced back and forth, warrior hornets shadowing her every step.
“My apologies, my Queen,” corrected Abby with a sarcastic attempt at a curtsy. Carmer thought Ombrienne scowled, but it was difficult to make out her exact expression in the rippling water. “But the Free Folk have already lost many of our kind to this Mechanist, and our pleas for help fell on deaf ears. It’s only now that your own daughter’s been taken you’re singing a different tune, and all you send to help is a boy who knows nothing of the fae.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“You know nothing, Felix Carmer,” said the old faerie.
Carmer snapped his mouth shut.
“If you are unwilling to help, then I will not beg,” sniffed the queen.
Carmer was starting to see where Grit got her stubbornness.
Abby Absinthe snorted and took another puff from her pipe.
“She shouldn’t have to,” said a soft voice from the back of the crowd of Free Folk. A skinny, frail-looking street faerie with a worn felt wrap around her shoulders stepped forward. Carmer could only see the tip of one wing poking out from underneath it. Whispers sprang up around her; this must be Echolaken, the water faerie who survived the Autocats.
“Grit saved my life,” said Echolaken. Her voice shook, and she looked down at her feet. “She’s one of us, too, and we owe her a debt.”
A ripple of unease went through the crowd. (Carmer would later learn that life debts carried strong weight among the fae, and one did not speak of them lightly.) A
debt was power in another person’s (or faerie’s) hands, and it must be repaid when called upon. That was the way of things.
“Echolaken is right,” said a dark-haired faerie Carmer recognized as Ravene. “How many revels has Grit joined us for? How many scavenging missions has she helped complete? She may be of the court, but we are all fae.”
Many of the other faeries nodded in agreement. The corners of Abby Absinthe’s wrinkled lips turned up, and Carmer had a sneaking suspicion the old faerie had planned the course of the discussion from the very start. The street fae began talking among themselves, small groups animatedly debating whether to lend their help or not.
After a few moments, Abby raised her dandelion staff and the tunnel fell silent.
“We of the stone streets of this city—tamers of the iron world—are beholden to no one,” Abby Absinthe said, addressing the crowd. “We answer to no queen. I cannot and will not command any of these folk to fight these Wingsnatchers.”
Ombrienne’s face fell.
“But I also cannot stop anyone who wishes to try,” Abby finished.
Silence filled the hall. Only the rushing sound of the water echoed through the tunnel.
“I will help you, Carmer,” said Ravene. She turned her light on and hovered in front of him. “The Free Folk are no strangers to iron.”
“As will I,” said another faerie, a young man with thick brown hair. He was the first male faerie Carmer had seen. He added his light to Ravene’s.
“And I,” said a fierce-looking fire faerie nearby, flicking her wrist to produce a small torch of flame.
“And I!” said another.
“Me, too!”
“Might as well go down fighting!”
Soon, more lights were shining than not. Determined little faces surrounded Carmer and Abby.
“I think I have a plan,” Carmer said to Ombrienne. “But there’s no telling what will happen when we get inside the foundry.”
“What do you say, Queen Ombrienne? Can the Free and Fair Folk play nicely together for one night?” asked Abby with a sandpapery chuckle.
The Wingsnatchers Page 20
