The Wingsnatchers

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  Fortunately, water faeries were waiting and they sprang into action. They’d flown in through the chimneys after all of the humans fled, braving soot and ash and smoke, and worked their magic on the sprinkler system. Water streamed from the pipes suspended above them, and Carmer was delighted to see that automaton cats hated water just as much as their living, breathing counterparts, if not more.

  The Autocats yowled and tried to run for cover, but the water faeries were faster. With a flick of the faeries’ wrists, the water covering the cats froze as hard as a rock, immobilizing them.

  “Go for their hearts!” Carmer instructed, and the wooden hannya puppets leapt forward, blades flashing. The Autocats’ hearts exploded in blinding clouds of faerie dust; Carmer made sure to cover his eyes and shield the lieutenant, but Madame Euphemia’s marionettes were not so lucky. The instant the faerie dust hit them, its magic seemed to fight Madame Euphemia’s, and they crumpled to the ground in twitching piles of wood and string.

  Carmer knew faerie dust could be unpredictable, but he wasn’t prepared for a reaction like this. While the faerie dust incapacitated Madame Euphemia’s puppets, it had the opposite effect on nearly everything else. Glass bulbs burst at its touch. Model dynamos spun frantically in the wrong direction, sending sparks flying. The machines still running went haywire, smoking and gurgling.

  “Get out of here!” he said to the frightened water faeries still hovering up above. He ran to the black door and shoved Gideon’s wristband at the doorknob; it sprang open with a silver flash. The lieutenant went down the stairs first, sweeping his rifle back and forth.

  The first thing Carmer saw was the remains of a tourmaline-eyed Autocat lying in a heap against the wall. He ran to it and examined the insides; the crystal heart was empty, its faerie dust turned to harmless ash.

  “Grit,” he breathed. He recognized her handiwork. She had to be here.

  Carmer looked up to see the towering Hyperion, this one nearly twice the size of the machine he’d seen only a few days ago at the expo. It was crackling and thundering and making a noise that sounded like a stampede. Carmer could see the spinning rotor from here and knew the enslaved faeries must be inside. In front was a makeshift transmission substation with a box-shaped transformer that connected the whole system to underground conduits spreading out from the dynamo like a spider’s web. It took the electricity up and away to the rest of the compound and, Carmer guessed, any parts of the city now using Hyperiopower.

  Carmer bolted for the Hyperion, but two new Autocats were hot on his trail. The lieutenant fired a few shots, but they merely pinged off the Autocats’ armor. An orange-eyed cat pounced on him, and Carmer left them wrestling by the stairwell. Carmer brandished Gideon’s wristband at the remaining cat and it backed away slightly, but he had little time to waste. Where were the street faeries?

  “Sorry!” called Remus, one of the faeries from the Green Goddess, suddenly fluttering above Carmer’s head. He brandished a lock pick and a razor mounted like an axe in each hand. “The cat flap nearly took our heads off!”

  A dozen street fae streamed down the staircase, screaming war cries, and launched themselves at the Autocats. Some carried hatpin swords and other weapons, like Grit, and all wore armor to protect themselves from the iron in the factory.

  “Get at their insides, if you can!” Carmer said to Remus, who nodded and joined the others. Carmer lowered Gideon’s wristband and ran to the dynamo, dodging around the pipes and wires of the substation with care.

  “Grit!” he called. “Grit, where are you?”

  The machine was so loud he could hardly have heard a normal person shouting above the din, never mind a five-inch-tall faerie. But he heard the trapped faeries calling loud and clear as if they were standing right next to his ear.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Don’t answer, it’s probably just one of his tricks!”

  “Help us, please!”

  “I’m a Friend, I promise!” said Carmer, crouching as close as he dared to the spinning rotor. He looked down into one of the few air vents cut into the cylinder, but all he could see was a rush of silver and the occasional glimpse of a tiny upturned face or a wing tangled in gold wire.

  “How do I get you out?” Carmer asked. “How do I turn this thing off?”

  “You need the key!” one faerie’s voice cried, carrying above the others. “It’s a faerie heart. He wears them around his wrists.”

  Carmer looked down at the silver wristband with a new sense of revulsion. Sure enough, when he crouched down low enough, he saw a small indentation the exact size of the stone at the very bottom of the outer shell. He pressed the stone into the hole and cursed when a jolt of electricity ran through it, strong enough to nearly knock him off his feet. The wristband jolted from his grasp. His skin crackled with static and his hair stood on end.

  “What the—” Carmer bent down and poked at the wristband with the edge of his coat. A thin tendril of smoke rose from the blackened, cracked surface of the stone; it no longer glowed.

  It had been foolish to think Gideon’s band would work as a key for the most sensitive part of the Hyperion. Of course, Titus Archer would never trust a mere apprentice with access to the machine itself.

  “I’ll get you out,” Carmer said with more certainty than he felt. “I will.”

  “ . . . Carmer?” The voice was faint, so quiet he almost missed it underneath the thundering of the dynamo.

  “Grit! Where are you?”

  “Carmer . . . I thought . . .” Her voice echoed in his head, fading in and out. He looked around wildly—he didn’t think she was with the other faeries—until his eyes came to rest on the transformer. Of course.

  He knew better than to touch the live box without thinking it through, but he couldn’t stand to do nothing. Yowls, hisses, and scratching sounds came from the stairwell where the Free Folk still battled the Autocats. They were trying to get inside the beasts, but the cats were warier now and kept the faeries at a distance with swipes of their sharp claws. Carmer wasn’t sure how long the faeries could hold them off.

  He navigated through the substation as cautiously and quickly as he could until he faced the grilled front of the transformer. Through all the glowing sparks, he could just make out Grit’s silhouette on the inside. He slipped on the pair of safety gloves he’d had the sense to pack and reached out a hand to test how tightly it was sealed—

  “No!” Grit said.

  Carmer froze.

  Her voice was taut with pain. “If you try to tamper with it, the iron will crush them all.”

  “There’s got to be a way,” insisted Carmer. He examined every inch of the box, but it was sealed tight. “What’s he done to you?”

  “Th-thought . . . you would know . . .”

  “Wait, what?” asked Carmer. “How would I know? Oh, no. Did I forget something else?” Carmer paced back and forth in front of the transformer. “I thought I remembered everything I forgot!” he exclaimed. “But then again, I wouldn’t remember it if I’d forgotten it, would I?”

  “Carmer, stop. Stop,” ordered Grit.

  He stopped.

  “What . . . what are you talking about?”

  Behind them, Carmer heard glass breaking and faeries yelling. “Your mother,” he said, leaning as close as he could without getting burned. Grit groaned, whether from pain or realization of what he was about to say, he wasn’t sure. “She made me forget, and—”

  “Honestly,” she said, “ ‘your mother’ was all you had to—argh.” Grit’s body arched as another wave of energy tore through her.

  “We’ll worry about it later,” said Carmer firmly. “What’s happening here?”

  “I . . . I have to amplify the dynamo’s power,” explained Grit. “He said only my magic can channel it. But Carmer . . . the magic competition . . . with all this power, I don’t know what he could do.”

  Neither did Carmer, and that was what worried him most of all.

  22.


  HOW THINGS WORK

  Gideon Sharpe didn’t often venture too close to nature these days. He preferred the ordered sterility of his master’s lab, the crowded but purposeful city streets, or even the dusty grandeur of the Orbicle. He kept his horses and his birds close, lest they get any ideas from . . . outside influences. He took the long way around the Arboretum, if he could, or only cut through it in daylight. There had been a time when a place like the Arboretum would have been his sole refuge, but those days were long gone.

  There were things waiting for Gideon in the wilder parts of the city, things that were very unhappy about how he had used and abused his connection to them. It was in his best interest to avoid them. How long he could do so, Gideon didn’t know, but as long as he stayed well within the realm of the Mechanist’s protection, he was safe.

  Or so he liked to tell himself.

  But sometimes Gideon couldn’t help it. Sometimes the old ache came back to him, and he found himself here at the back of the Orbicle, staring toward the North Gate of the Arboretum with a mixture of longing and revulsion.

  “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.”

  No, they certainly didn’t. The faeries of the Unseelie Court hadn’t expected their frail little changeling boy to rebel with a will of his own, to use his Friendship to ensnare enough magic to break free of their hold and turn it against them, to attract the attention of a man with enough power and vision to bring them all to heel.

  Gideon remembered his life before the Mechanist, when he was nothing but a plaything for the amusement of the fae, and thought of how far he’d come since then. Now he was the assistant to the top industrialist and most famous illusionist in the country! Felix Carmer knew nothing. The boy could keep his lousy Friendship and see where it got him. Soon enough, there would be no faeries, Seelie or Unseelie, free of the Mechanist’s grip.

  And Gideon had been the first one to bring the magic to him.

  The North Gate knew his secret. No matter how many lights they installed, how many airships and flashing marquees cluttered the skies, there was only so much one could do to keep the darkness at bay. The wild things were still there, even in the heart of a city like Skemantis, waiting for the sun to go down.

  Perhaps Carmer was right, and the faeries hadn’t always been creatures of darkness. But the iron world outside had changed them, was changing them still—surely the darkened lights of the Arboretum were proof enough of that. Though Gideon knew the Seelie Court held the Arboretum, it gave him no comfort now.

  It was nearly time to get onstage. He should go inside, make sure his master was ready, and check the props one last time. But as he watched the blanket of frost creep closer and closer across the other side of the gate, chilly fingers caressing everything they touched, he could not look away. Like so much of that realm, it was beautiful—beautiful and terrible.

  The back door of the Orbicle slammed open, and Gideon had to jump out of the way. The Mechanist stood in the doorway, his clockwork silver mask already adhered to his skull.

  “There you are,” Titus Archer said. “Where have you been? It’s nearly time.”

  “I was just—”

  “Never mind,” snapped the Mechanist. “Stable your horses. We will have no need of them tonight.”

  “Sir?” Gideon’s trained horses were essential to their final performance—an Indian rope trick variation—especially now that the water tank escapology act hadn’t come to fruition. (Gideon could still feel the bruises from the Mechanist’s displeasure about that.) To change it now . . .

  “Despite your lackluster efforts,” said the Mechanist, and Gideon recalled his encounter with Carmer with embarrassment, “we are now in the presence of royalty.”

  Gideon’s eyes widened. If the Mechanist had gotten his hands on the faerie princess rumored to be roaming the city, his power could increase exponentially. He finally had the amplifier he so desired.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll be powering half the city,” said the Mechanist with a smile. “But tonight, we will perform miracles.” He clapped Gideon on the back, a rare gesture of affection. “Just try not to look too surprised, my boy.” The Mechanist winked, and his silver mask winked with him. With the Mechanist in command of royal faerie magic, there was no telling what he’d do. Gideon just hoped he had the sense to rein in some of his more outlandish impulses for the masses.

  “Yes, sir,” Gideon said.

  That explained the frost. A royal faerie had been taken, and the shadows knew it. They licked at Gideon’s heels as he followed his master inside. The royal faerie’s magic would only make them more powerful, Gideon knew, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that was his constant ball and chain.

  The things in the dark had given Gideon life, and now they wanted it back.

  “I don’t know what to do, Carmer.”

  It was probably the first time Grit had ever said those words in her life, or at least admitted them to another person. But with every part of her hooked up to the Mechanist’s infernal device, with electricity running through her veins and pounding in her skull and racing outward to fuel the Mechanist’s evil magic, it was true. It took nearly every ounce of her strength and concentration to keep the dials level; if she didn’t, she knew the Mechanist would make good on his threat. Somehow, the Hyperion was designed to keep every faerie working at the risk of endangering the others. If they stopped producing faerie dust to power the dynamo, the outer mechanisms of the rotor stopped protecting them from the oppressive iron. It was a perfect prison.

  Grit could just make out Carmer’s worried face through the metal grille in front of her. She wanted to tell him to run, to take the remaining faeries and find somewhere, anywhere to hide, but a great pull from the outer edges of the Hyperion’s web left her gasping for breath. Cold crept into her bones, despite the immense heat she was generating. The Mechanist’s performance had begun.

  “Grit!”

  But Grit was far away. Parts of her were soaring over the city; she watched it from above and from below, from the miraculous wires that carried her from Theian Foundry to the heart of the theater district, around the North Gate and into the Orbicle itself—into the outstretched palm of the Mechanist.

  So this is what it’s like to fly, thought Grit deliriously. The irony wasn’t lost on her. A hysterical giggle rose up out of her throat, but the sound of applause drowned it out. People were clapping . . .

  “GRIT!” Carmer rapped the side of the transformer with something.

  The pinging rang in her ears and brought Grit crashing back to the present—or rather, her own present. “Stop!” she yelled. “I said not to touch anything! Are you crazy?!”

  Carmer sighed in relief. “There you are.”

  Grit didn’t have the energy to be annoyed at him. Although, strictly speaking, she had too much energy . . . another strangled giggle nearly escaped her, but she caught Carmer’s gaze, and it died on her lips.

  “Look at me,” he said firmly. “You don’t need to look at the dials. Your output’s been steady since I got here, except for the surge just now.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he insisted. “Stay right here with me.”

  “The show started,” Grit murmured. “There’s nothing . . .”

  “There’s always something,” said Carmer. He reached up to adjust his top hat, frowned when it wasn’t there, and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Remember the night we first talked, really talked, about the Autocats? I told you that . . . that things are only scary if we don’t know how they work. Or at least, a lot scarier than they have to be. Do you remember?”

  Grit wanted to nod, but she was so tired . . .

  “Answer me!” demanded Carmer.

  “I remember, I remember!” she said. Why did he have to keep bothering her, when it was getting harder and harder to believe there
was a her to bother?

  “You told me yourself,” said Carmer. “Fire is the purest form of energy there is. There’s fire in you, Grit, and it’s what makes you part of this machine. It’s a part of you, and you’re a part of it. I’ve seen you drive a steam engine, make fountains out of flames . . . You blew that Autocat’s heart to smithereens! And . . . and if you can learn that much about your own power in such a short time, then you can figure out how this machine works. You took the cat down from the inside, Grit. I saw what’s left of it. Now do the same to the Hyperion.”

  “Wh-what?” stammered Grit. “I can’t, I . . . Carmer, there are too many . . . oh, what do you call them . . . variables! There’s too much that can change, Carmer, too much that can go wrong.”

  “And what will happen if you don’t even try?” asked Carmer.

  They both knew the answer, and it wasn’t good. Grit wondered how much time had passed, how much time they even had left until someone discovered them. If they were going to try anything, it would have to be now.

  “I wish I’d never met you,” groused Grit. She just managed to meet his eyes through the grate.

  “I’m afraid I can’t say the same,” said Carmer. He ducked his head and looked down at his toes, turning once more into the shuffling, shy boy she’d saved only a few days ago. And it was enough.

  Grit closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and became the Hyperion. She reached out with her magic, tentatively at first, sending little sparks like messenger birds down the wires and tubes around her, reading the pulsing energy and taking in everything they saw along the way. It was a great, thrumming energy, this was true, but every wave was different. The currents that tore through her weren’t singular, powerful jolts, but multiple smaller ones that ebbed and flowed like the tides. She saw them, their apartness, a spidery web of red across her eyelids, and separated them even more. She took some—just enough—for herself.

  Carmer watched the golden sparks spread outward, crawling and buzzing over the machinery like curious bees, inspecting every corner of the machine. He followed their path, though the light was so bright it hurt to keep his eyes on them. The sparks halted at the last of the interconnected tubes.