by Beth Cato
It was at that moment I realized I loathed Miss Leander.
I could have shattered that window, clawed every shard of glass from its leaden pane. Miss Leander had always been closer to the Lady than anyone I had ever known. A better healer, a more giving person. She was nice, oh so very nice, and pure and righteous. And here she had proven me wrong by simply thinking to ask something of the Lady.
She finished her rounds and returned to her blanket to murmur her thanks to the Lady’s Tree. The circle disengaged. She looked up at me. Her expression mirrored that of the men around us, a mixture of terror and awe.
“The music of the zymes is the same in the vomit and in the river, though the vomit is far more potent. As with many zymes, they multiplied inside the body. This first pail of snow is nearly silent—we grabbed that from over there,” she motioned, “But this one here, from farther down the slope, it bears the same poison. They laced it into the snow itself.”
“Bloody brilliant,” whispered one of the soldiers.
She nodded, clearly assuming he spoke of the Wasters and not her. “They must have tainted a large stretch of snow above the river.”
“Good work, Miss Leander.” I tried to place sincerity behind the words. “Your . . . eccentricity, your closeness with the Lady has likely saved many more soldiers. I’m certain the security of our sanitation efforts will be the highest priority of the command here and elsewhere.”
But as I looked on her, I couldn’t disguise how I felt. My hatred flushed my cheeks, constricted my throat, trembled through my fingertips. My gaze was pure, bullet-eyed envy, and I didn’t care that she knew. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed and turned away. I stood taller in satisfaction. I could still make the girl quail.
“Saving the men is what matters most,” she said hoarsely. “I must speak with the Lieutenant Commander, or the Colonel, if he’s awake.”
“You must speak?”
“Your pardon, Miss Percival. I’m used to being the highest-ranking medician here. That’s your jurisdiction, of course.”
“Yes.” I paced around her, slowly, my boots crunching in the snow. “All of my medicians have toiled this day. I’ll tell them this is an extraordinary discovery in the name of our academy.”
“They’ll know.” Her words were almost indecipherable.
I stepped closer. “What was it you said, Miss Leander?”
She met my eyes. “They’ll know this came from the Lady, not any of us. I was just the vessel.”
My rage could not form words. I paced by her again and again. “Since you’re still laboring under the belief that you’re the lead matron here, you go tell the Colonel how your Lady has graced you. Leave the honeyflower circles here. I will listen to the zymes as well.”
We both knew I would not be able to hear the zymes, that I was her superior in title alone, but I still had to try. She collected her blanket and walked downhill with her cadre of guards.
“Miss Leander!” I called when she was about twenty feet away. She half turned toward me. “I found Officer Wagner, dead of arsenic poisoning. A suicide, complete with a note. The Wasters paid him to remove the rods. Be careful whom you trust. Your naivety might get you killed.”
Grief flashed across her face. She turned away, wordless, and continued her march down the slope.
I walked around the buckets in their circles. My own blanket was in my satchel, right at my hip. I had no immediate urge to pull it out and prove my inadequacies.
“M’lady?” asked one of the men. I recognized him as the one who had made the “bloody brilliant” comment. “Would it be all right if we all had something to drink? I have these tea cans. You’re welcome to one, too.”
From his haversack, he pulled out slender tins of Royal-Tea, one of those newfangled commercial drinks.
“No, thank you, though it’s wise of you to stay hydrated. Such tins should be safe.” Empty words, advice recited from memory.
He smiled, the thick length of his mustache curving. “Do ask if you change your mind, m’lady. It’s an excellent drink. Good for health!”
“Better than poisoned tank water, I’m sure.” I wavered on my feet, suddenly overwhelmed by weariness, by everything. The sick men who lingered. The injured from the battle and the nearby trenches. The dead, and paperwork that came with their demise. The security of our barracks, and the water tanks, and the camp itself. All demanded immediate attention.
“She’s an amazing medician, isn’t she?” asked the soldier, his gaze turned to follow her downhill. “That Miss Leander?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice hollow. “She’s the best.”
And I was not.
Wings of Sorrow and Bone
CHAPTER 1
The wrench wasn’t Rivka’s, but the heft and fit were perfect in her hand. Her tongue jabbed over her lip as she leveraged her weight through her arm. The obstinate bolt finally twisted free. She held up a small washer to her audience.
“This was the biggest problem, the one that caused so many other issues. See? One side is almost worn through.”
The engineers in their coveralls stood around her, arms folded, expressions uncertain. One of the men finally held out a hand to accept the washer. With a grunt, he passed it along. “Well, I’ll be. Er. Thank you, miss.”
Rivka knew they had tolerated her meddling because she was an invitee to Balthazar Cody’s party. His guests came from wealth and stature. They obviously weren’t quite sure what to make of a young woman like her. She wasn’t sure anymore, either.
The one-man band dismantled around her was the sort of advanced technology the southern nations were known for. A cylinder in the chest played tunes while the figure’s sets of arms held a trumpet, chimes, flute, drum, and other instruments, all programmed to play on cue. It had created quite the impression at the party when its first song consisted of a sputtering, flatulent trumpet blast that continued a minute without ceasing. The appalled crew of engineers had hauled it down the corridor for repairs. Like a cat tempted by string, Rivka had followed.
She held up one of the articulated hands and flexed a metal pinky finger. The artistry on the construct was extraordinary, the movement almost liquid. A shame she didn’t have her workbook along to sketch the schematics, but she could scribble her memories the instant she arrived home.
Across the room, a grandfather clock began to chime. She glanced up. Little airships adorned the clock’s hands and hovered against a backdrop of gray-marble clouds. Nine o’clock? She had been working on the mecha for almost an hour? Beyond the carefully staged metal parts, her gloves and silk cardigan had been discarded in a wrinkled pile. Her fingertips appeared ink-dipped, her carefully done manicure ridged in black. Her dress . . .
“Damnation,” she muttered. Two months of refined southern education couldn’t eradicate a lifetime of Caskentian slang and blasphemy. “Grandmother is going to kill me.”
Grandmother Stout regarded this as something of a societal debut for Rivka. Rivka regarded it as a form of torture that stole away time better spent on the machinery she used to pay the rent; it was important to her that she support herself as much as possible, even as she lived with Grandmother in this strange new city. Rivka had shown up on her doorstep as a refugee, a letter of introduction from Miss Leander in her hand. Days before that, Rivka hadn’t known she had any living family at all. Grandmother had welcomed her wholeheartedly.
As a show of sacrifice and gratitude, Rivka even let Grandmother choose her dress for this evening. It was a ghastly, fashionable thing, and probably worth more than Rivka would have made in a month at the little bakery she had run in Caskentia.
She scrambled to her bare feet. The stiff leather flats hadn’t proven suitable for mechanist labor best done at a squat or on her knees. Rivka touched her hopelessly stained dress and was relieved she didn’t leave a new fingerprint. She gathered up h
er unsoiled things and shoved her feet inside her shoes.
“I wish I had time to put the automaton together again, but—”
“We can do it,” a man said, his voice tight.
Conversation and the chimes of crystal echoed down the hallway, and out of the babble she recognized Grandmother’s high laugh. Rivka grimaced. Grandmother was someone here. She might not be as rich as many present, but she had a commanding way about her that made her seem like more. She was more, though very few others knew that truth.
And Rivka . . . well. She was supposed to engage in small talk and not portray any of her crude upbringing in the high towers and catwalks of neighboring Caskentia’s capital of Mercia. Nor was she supposed to acknowledge reactions to her cleft lip. The polite glances, the pity, the way some people couldn’t quite look at her at all. Grandmother wouldn’t let Rivka wear her hair loose to hide her face, either. “Raise your chin!” Grandmother kept saying. It drove Rivka batty and made her all the more anxious to return home, to her workshop, where five projects-in-progress awaited. Dismantled engines made far better conversation companions than hoity-toity Tamarans.
Here on the fourth floor of a city tower that scraped the clouds, Mr. Cody had decorated his flat in lush gold and dark wood. The carpet was thick like storybook grass. She spied a sink through a doorway and ducked inside the chamber. Ah, hot and cold tap water—that was a luxury she had happily adjusted to here in Tamarania.
She scrubbed her hands until the oil faded to gray and tugged on gloves to cover her blackened nails. The cardigan, however, couldn’t fully hide the damage to her dress. It had looked wretched on her before, and now the cloth appeared as if it had broken out in some god-awful disease.
“No point in trying to make a rabbit like you look pretty. Nothin’ can hide that lip of yours.” The raspy voice of Mr. Stout echoed in her brain. He’d been her benefactor, and her tormentor, when he took her in after Mama died. Rivka didn’t know he was her father by blood, not until right before he’d been killed.
For a dead man, he was still terribly loud in her memory.
Rivka returned to the fringe of the party, her arms folded to hide the worst of the oil. Slipping out early wasn’t an option; Grandmother had only recently dismissed extra guards from the household, certain that the threat of the Waste had abated, and she’d go loony if Rivka was out of sight too long.
If Rivka could temporarily hide from Grandmother, though, that would delay an airship’s payload of nagging.
Some thirty people mingled in the parlor. Balthazar Cody was one of the augusts of the city-state of Tamarania, essentially a councilman over a city of millions. The man wielded tremendous political power, but his Arena was what made him a sensation. The next competitive bout between massive war machines would take place in a matter of weeks.
Rivka spied Grandmother; she was a pasty blot amidst the darker skin tones that dominated the room. The old woman’s high mass of silver curls featured a vivid red streak that coiled into a thick bun at the back. Grandmother gesticulated punctuation to most every word in her conversation. Rivka caught her eye to offer a wave and tepid smile. Grandmother nodded acknowledgment and carried on.
Good. Rivka had been sighted. Now she could retreat again.
Cheers erupted on the other side of the room. Rivka saw the tall head of the assembled one-man band.
“You fixed it! Good-o!” called a fellow.
Rivka swallowed her annoyance. She spied a shadowed space behind two potted trees near the entry doors and stepped within the gap. Her shoulders pressed to the wall behind the trees. From here, she could monitor the room like some Clockwork Dagger engaged in espionage.
The wall quivered against her back as the doors opened to admit someone.
“Well, greetings of the evening to you!” Rivka recognized the rich tones of Balthazar Cody. The man talked like a salesman. She could barely see him through the leaves. He was likely near Grandmother’s age, his skin like mahogany, his short and frizzy hair striped in white. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”
“I wasn’t sure if I would, either.” The voice was teenaged, maybe close to her own age. Rivka peered through the plants to see better. The girl wore a creamy column dress that contrasted with her warm, nutmeg-toned skin. Her black hair was braided and molded into triple buns. She looked like the perfect Tamaran young lady. “Why did you invite me? I doubt you’ve forgiven me.”
Cody laughed. Guffawed, really. “You’re so like your brother.” He sobered. “No, I have not fully forgiven you. Because of you, I lost my grandest creation.”
“I lost my brother then, too.”
“Ah, your Alonzo’s still alive, and I doubt he’s stayed angry with you, even if you did shove his lady-love medician into a box and ship her to Mercia as freight.”
Lady-love medician. They were talking about Octavia Leander. Rivka smothered her gasp with a gloved hand. Miss Leander was the kindest, strongest person Rivka had ever known—and this girl had shipped her as freight?
“I want to know why you invited me to your party tonight.”
“You’re so young to be so—”
“Why?”
“I heard your mother has fully recovered from a dreadful illness. Is it true she’ll be moving here soon?”
“Yes. She’s selling her house in Mercia and will move in the spring.” Silence dragged out. “You want something from Mother. It’s because she’s in Mercia, isn’t it? She knows everyone there. What, did you lose your spies during the riots?”
“Come now, I’m not permitted to care for the welfare of an old friend?”
“You’ve cared very little up to this point.”
“Your suspicion wounds me. Consider this party invitation a gesture of reconciliation between us.”
“I might as well eat. You do serve good food.”
Mr. Cody laughed as he walked away.
Rivka waited a moment, then leaned out of her hiding place with a rustle of branches. “Hello! I’m Rivka Stout.” The new surname still felt strange to say, but Grandmother said it was for the best, that it would raise fewer questions about their relationship. “I heard you talking to Mr. Cody. I wasn’t trying to, but I was right there, and . . . anyway, you know Octavia Leander? You’re Alonzo Garret’s sister?”
“Oh. Yes. I’m Tatiana Garret.” She quickly recovered from the surprise of someone emerging from behind potted plants. “You’re related to Mrs. Stout, the publisher? Alonzo mentioned her. Why are you back there?”
“It looked cozier than anywhere else in the room.” Rivka stepped out into the open again.
“What’s all over your dress?”
“Just oil.”
“Just oil.” Tatiana arched an eyebrow. “Your accent. You’re from upper Mercia, aren’t you?”
Upper Mercia, meaning the towers, trams, and high catwalks. Not to be confused with the formal accent of the refined street-level denizens, with their lilting syllables and absent contractions.
“Yes. I’ve only been here a few months. I . . .” Rivka froze. Grandmother had worked her way through the crowd. She spoke with someone only ten feet away. If she turned, she’d see Rivka.
“Damn it. I can’t stay here.” She dashed toward a different hallway.
“How did you stain it like that?” Tatiana trailed her.
“The one-man band over there. I fixed it.” A cheery flute carried over the conversations. Tatiana’s incredulous snort made Rivka turn around with a frown. “What?”
“In the middle of Mr. Cody’s party, you fixed a mecha.”
“Why’s that so hard to believe?”
“It seems very . . . Caskentian to dirty yourself like that.”
“Isn’t your brother from Caskentia? Aren’t you?”
“I haven’t lived there in years.” Her tone made it clear tha
t this was a very good thing.
They reached the end of the hallway. Rivka released a huff of breath. This didn’t seem far enough from Grandmother, from everyone. As awful as Caskentia had been, as many horrible memories as she had, Rivka missed it the way a bird misses a cage. It was familiar. It was home. Defective as she was, she didn’t stand out that much. Among soldiers and civilians alike, missing limbs, scars, and burns were common after fifty years of near-constant war.
Rivka tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge. She stooped to stare at the lock.
“It’s locked for a reason,” said Tatiana. “Mr. Cody owns much of this building and the Arena next door. He doesn’t want people stealing things.”
“I don’t intend to steal anything. I just want to get away from the party.”
She pulled her small screwdriver from where she had threaded it beneath her satin belt. Grandmother was fine with her always keeping such tools on hand so long as Rivka was discreet. “One must always be prepared!” Grandmother often said. Considering Grandmother’s own past, she’d know.
It took a matter of seconds to pick the lock; Mr. Stout’s lessons had come in handy. Mr. Cody had obviously intended the mechanism to slow down rather than prevent an intruder. The high-society sorts at the party down the hall wouldn’t be able to pick their own noses, much less a door.
“Then what are you doing?” asked Tatiana.
“I told you, getting away from people for a while. Why are you following me?”
“I thought we were having a conversation.”
This side of the hallway looked much the same, but the feel was quite different. The sounds of the party didn’t carry. Rivka released a deep breath at the welcome quiet. Seconds later, men’s voices echoed down the way. Rivka and Tatiana ducked into the nearest room.
The light was dim, but Rivka could see the sheen of glass and metal. Shelves were lined with display cases of mechanical limbs. Hands, arms, legs, feet. Skin was absent, the artistry of construction bared to the eye.
