by Taven Moore
Please, let this work.
Alchemy was the difference between pure engineering and cogsmithing. The Thumper was just a dumb device until she added the source and the focus. She unscrewed the vial from the Thumper’s underbelly, checking its contents carefully. The sun shone through the red liquid, sparking odd highlights from the fragment of starshard already in the phial.
“Is that blood?” asked Bones.
She nodded. “Mine, actually.” Every cogwork apparatus needed a liquid to bind its pieces. Saltwater and pure water were the most common liquids, but those wouldn’t do for this purpose. She was seeking something far more specific, and for that, she needed to considerably narrow the scope.
This was another reason she hadn’t wanted Serena or Montgomery here. Bones simply looked uncomfortable, but either of the other two cogsmithers would have been aghast at her use of blood for the source’s suspension liquid. Additionally, they might have wondered why she thought human blood would assist in her goal—and she most certainly did not want to explain that her blood wasn’t precisely human.
Remora knew she was right in using her blood, though. Cogsmithing was one of the few things she was actually good at, and this felt right to her. It wasn’t as if there was an established formula for the Thumper that she could follow. She had to trust her instincts, and her instincts said that she could choose no better suspension for this source.
She took a deep breath and dropped the purple crystal into the vial. Exhaling, she watched the shard sink slowly through the blood until it fell to the bottom, nudging against the starshard fragment already inside.
“Are you sure about this?” Bones asked.
“Yes. And no.” Remora screwed the vial back into the Thumper’s belly, giving it a final pat before she straightened and gave Bones a smile. “This is the fun part.”
Bones looked less than convinced. She turned away from him to hide the nervous biting of her lip.
Please, please let this work.
She flicked aside the safety catch from the Thumper’s activator, thumb hovering over the wide red button for a fraction of an instant before she pressed it.
The Thumper hummed and the ground beneath her feet vibrated. Pebbles kicked up and skittered down the side of the hill. The Thumper’s head lifted and began to spin in a counterclockwise circle. The humming deepened and she felt her chest tighten.
A soft click announced the Thumper’s eye clicking on. A beam of violet light shot into the distance, striking a cloud to the southwest. The cloud swirled and vanished.
It’s working! It’s working!
Remora couldn’t breathe for the excitement. From the moment she had acquired the purple crystal, she had done nothing except plan for this day.
The Thumper’s head continued to rotate. Twice more the purple beam was released. Once to the west. Again, almost due north. When it faced her, the eye flickered to life. The light caught her in the ribs and drew its way across her waist, the smell of burning cloth reaching her nose an instant too late.
Too much. The power was too much! She lunged forward to turn off the Thumper, the beam traveling up between her breasts to trace a jagged and uneven line across her shoulder before she managed to push the button.
She fell backward as the humming stopped, vision spinning. She could smell burnt flesh now, along with the cloth.
Her last thought before passing out was that she had to come up with some way to make sure Hank never found out about this. She’d never live it down.
Remora woke with the sun in her eyes and a breeze tickling her cheek.
Something was wrong.
Her hands clutched at the blanket thrown over her and she sat up, gasping in pain as her shoulder protested.
She glanced down. That was no blanket. That was a jacket. Bones’s trench coat.
Her breath rattled through her chest, full and unencumbered.
Her eyes widened. One hand dropped below the trench coat and traced her ribcage.
Her corset was gone.
Alarm froze her heart and for a moment her vision spun dizzily. Her corset. She had to find her corset, before someone saw her.
“Remora, be calm. You are safe here. I had to remove your corset to survey the damage.” Bones. That was Bones’s voice. The panic clutching at her throat barely dimmed. It was impossible that he would have missed them, that he might not have seen.
Remora froze and stared at Bones, feeling very much a mouse facing a housecat.
For the first time since she had known him, his ticker body was completely bare before her, thin metallic rods bound together in a parody of the human form. Solid bars mimicked a ribcage to protect his cogsmithing source.
Normally, she would have been fascinated. Normally, she would have asked to look closer, asked him a thousand questions. Right now, her body trembled with the need to run.
He must have noticed the panic in her face. “You are safe,” he repeated.
One of his hands lifted, fingers curled around something. Dozens of tiny gears in his joints spun as he extended his arm toward her. She leaned away, shaking her head, as if she could deny the thing he held in his hand.
The fingers unfurled, revealing her worst fear.
A feather.
The wind tugged at the treacherous thing, but Bones snatched it back before it could fly away. The vane of the feather caught the light, shimmering red against maroon. The soft fluff of after-feather at the base of the shaft was a dull black.
“You know,” she said, her voice hollow.
He nodded.
She pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her forehead into her thighs, not caring that her burned shoulder screamed in pain at the motion. She pressed her closed eyelids against the smooth fabric of his coat until she no longer felt the need to cry.
Freed from their normal prison beneath the constricting boning of her corset, a tiny pair of cherub wings, no longer than her arm, lifted and arched over her back.
She didn’t have to look back to know what Bones saw. One wing was completely black. The other was only half black, the sooty base of the wing giving way to sleek red and black feathers like the one that Bones held in his hand.
It was over. The moment anyone found out about this, she was ruined. Magnus Price did not have wings. Nor did her mother. Remora hadn’t even needed to do much research into genetics to learn what that meant. Her mother was unquestionably her mother, which meant that Magnus Price was not her father. Therefore, the final heir to the Price fortune not truly a Price.
She would be ruined. Cast out and penniless, a bastard half-breed child.
If only that were the worst of it.
Moments passed in silence, a slight breeze tickling her wings. Sensitive after so many years of being tightly bound beneath her corset, her wings twitched involuntarily at each tiny wind eddy.
Bones said nothing.
She lifted her head. Bones wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he inspected the feather in his hand, staring at it intently.
“I’m a half-breed Seraph bastard,” she said. A knot in her chest tightened. She’d never actually said the words out loud before. The wind ripped them from her lips and danced away with them before she could call them back.
“This feather,” he said quietly, “was not from today. I found it in the Westmouth prison cell.” His eyebeams shifted from the feather to her face. He showed no sign of judgment or derision. He was just . . . Bones.
The tightness in her chest loosened slightly. She swallowed past it.
She felt bold, reckless. Bones already knew her secret. The thought that anyone knew, she could say these words to anyone at all, made her throw caution to the wind. “Every Seraph half-breed in recorded history has died suddenly on their twentieth birthday, assuming they did not die before that.” She said. Another thing she’d never said out loud.
“You . . . you are going to die?” asked Bones, eyes flashing a vivid yellow. She’d startled him.
“My birth
day is in seven months,” she said. She took a deep breath, her fists knotting in the fabric of his trench coat. “I am going to die in seven months.”
8. Trust
“Seven months?” Bones’s eyebeams whirled. “Is there nothing that can be done to prolong your life?”
Remora’s lips twisted. “It would be safe to assume that, as the highly motivated heir to the Price fortune, I have done more research on the subject of Seraph half-breed mortality than anyone.”
Bones digested her announcement. After a long moment, he finally spoke. “This . . . displeases me.”
His honesty surprised her into a smile. “It displeases me, as well, though I will admit that I took a bit longer to arrive at such a succinct reaction.”
Remora squared her shoulders. “Part of coming to terms with it means that I had to decide what I would do with the rest of my life. I could spend what little time I have left moping about things I cannot change, or I can do something important. Something that matters.” She gestured to the quietly waiting Thumper, its metal chassis gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight.
“Starbirth was real, Bones. I’m convinced the Seraph had something to do with it. Furthermore, I can prove it. I know I can.” Her shoulder throbbed, reminding her of the Thumper’s trial run. She leaned back to pull Bones’s coat away from her chest, grimacing at the blood-darkened makeshift bandage he’d used to wrap her left shoulder. She wiggled the fingers on that hand, pleased when they all responded despite the resulting thrill of pain along her collarbone. Nothing broken, nothing severed, nothing torn. Easily mended, given time and her alchemy set on the Miraj.
“But,” she said, giving Bones a hesitant look, “I cannot do any of this if people know about . . . this. About these wings. Lady Remora Windgates Price has the money and resources to unveil the truth behind Starbirth. A penniless half-breed bastard is powerless.”
“I understand.” His outstretched hand flattened, the feather no longer pinched between his fingers. The barest flicker of wind lifted the tail end of the feather, causing it to skitter toward the edge of his palm.
Remora leaned forward just before it flew away, closing his hand back over the feather that he’d had since the very first night she met him. His metal fingers curled around the black and red feather, forming a cage around it. Her hand felt warm against his fingers. “I trust you to keep my secret safe, Bones. Thank you.”
She met and held his eyes for a moment, hoping he realized just how important it was to her that someone else knew—that not only did he know, he cared more that she was going to die than that she had wings. It made her feel less alone.
He broke the look first, and she pulled her hand away. Clearing her throat, she leaned back and looked to the device. “Now, to fix the Thumper and try again.”
Bones’s eyegleam flickered. “Again? Would it not be wiser to wait? Hackwrench seems a competent cogsmith. He could assist you. Even Serena would be a better choice than I.”
Remora scoffed, finding her discarded corset on the ground behind her. The whalebone clattered against the metal inserts and she turned away from Bones before dropping his trench coat and deftly fitting the contraption around her torso. Bones may have disrobed her out of necessity earlier, but that was hardly an excuse for not maintaining her modesty now that she was awake.
“I am convinced that it is just a power issue. I can tweak the feedback loop to shunt more of the energy to the grounding rod and it’ll be fine.” She paused, allowing her wings to stretch once more before binding them against her back. “Probably.”
Bones hesitated. “I . . . am uncomfortable with this course of action.”
She laughed, affixing the right shoulder strap carefully across her back and tucking the wing beneath the stiff leather backing. The left strap was completely useless, split by the Thumper’s beam, but thankfully the reinforced metal plates sewn into the corset’s body had shielded much of the initial blast.
“You worry too much, Bones. What is the worst that could happen?”
Bones gave a metallic sigh. “I have compiled a list of catastrophic outcomes, but I believe your question was ill-advisedly rhetorical in nature.”
She sucked in a breath and pushed the lower button on the corset’s side seam. With a hiss of escaping air and the whir of moving gears, the side-stays spun and tightened, fitting the undergarment to her form. Her wounded shoulder protested again, but she ignored it for now. Keeping her secret was far more important than any superficial wound. Besides. She’d been without the corset so rarely that she felt exposed in an entirely un-physical way without its familiar embrace.
She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her dress, lifting the bodice to its proper placement. The dress itself was ruined, of course. A jagged burn line scored across the torso and over the shoulder, bordered with an unattractive bloodstain. A regrettable loss, but she could find a replacement in Bespin.
She stood, lifting Bones’s trench coat. When she turned to give it to him, she saw that he’d spun so that he was not facing her while she dressed. Her cheeks warmed. Surely he had seen anything worth seeing when he’d gone through such effort to bind her wound. “Thank you Bones. Your gentlemanly behavior is much appreciated.”
Bones turned and accepted his coat, slipping it over his thin metal frame. He slipped the feather into one of his pockets, buttoning it shut after.
Remora picked up her pack, removing a few rolled up sheets of paper, a sharpened stick of graphite, and her travel toolkit. A moment’s work, and the power parameters of the feedback loop were adjusted.
She paused a moment, then adjusted it again, slightly lower. Just to be safe.
Standing, finger over the power switch for the Thumper, she couldn’t help but feel a slight twinge of concern. The device would work, of course.
Bones walked closer and handed her a large leaf from a nearby tree. “If you insist upon this unsafe course of action, at least test on this first.”
She took the leaf from him with a smile. “Thank you, Bones, that is a wonderful idea!”
He did not release his grip on the leaf. “Do not take my assistance as concurrence.”
Her smile widened into a grin. “I would not dream of it.”
He released the leaf, but remained standing next to her. She smiled to herself as she reached over to the Thumper.
A button press and the Thumper thrummed to eager life. The ground shook even more noticeably this time, but the Thumper’s head lifted and rotated without a problem. The first purple beam shot from the Thumper’s eye into the distance, much paler than the first beam had been. Remora dangled the leaf into the path of the next beam, which struck the thin surface without even a sizzle.
Remora clasped her hands together.
It worked!
When the beam reached her, it struck against her ribcage, harmless as any beam of light.
It really, truly worked!
The rumbling beneath her feet grew more pronounced and she flung out her hands to keep her balance.
As the Thumper’s head began its third rotation, she saw the grounding rod begin to glow faintly red. It was overheating.
Immediately, she leaned forward and turned off the machine. The rumbling stopped.
“Is it supposed to do that?” asked Bones, eyes on the smoking grounding rod.
“Probably,” she answered, seating herself and unrolling one of the papers. A detailed map of the known world spilled across her lap. She picked up a tool from her toolkit and began measuring against the horizon.
“You are plotting a course?” Bones asked.
She nodded, peering down the arm of a tool. “Triangulation,” she explained. “If I take readings at several different places, marking the precise angle and direction of the beams at each one on this map, I should be able to find all of the pieces.”
“All of the pieces of what?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she answered, biting her lip as she traced the first angle across the map. “But w
hatever it is, it’s important, and that purple crystal is a part of it.”
9. Sprinkles
Never a dainty eater, the taste of the pastry didn’t actually hit Hank until after he’d already swallowed the first bite.
Remora’s face shone. “How is it? Do you like it? I’m terribly afraid that I might have used too much cinnamon.”
The striking flavor invading his gullet wasn’t cinnamon. Hank suppressed a rebellious heave. Not cinnamon at all.
Sardines, perhaps, or possibly even onion.
The frosting was most definitely orange, though. He’d have testified in a court of law that the frosting was orange.
If she hadn’t told him it was supposed to be a muffin, he would have thought it was an assassination attempt.
“Well?” she prompted, eyes glistening with hope. “What do you think?”
Hank swallowed again. The taste did not improve upon a second encounter.
“It’s . . . . well, I’ve never tasted anything like it,” he offered weakly.
She clapped her hands joyously. “Oh, marvelous! Here! Have another.” She reached to the plate and lifted another lumpy pastry, this one adorned with vibrant red sprinkles. She paused. “Which batch was this one, I wonder?” She tapped her lips pensively with her free hand while Hank stared at the cupcake in her hand as if it were a coiled viper. “Ah, now I remember! I ran out of protein sources before I could make this one. This was part of the sweet potatoes and pickles batch.”
She dropped the thing into his hand. Hank stared at it, horrified. She couldn’t possibly expect him to eat another.
“Remora,” Jinn’s deep voice rescued him by drawing away her attention. “Pardon my saying so, but would it be accurate to surmise that you did not follow the recipe in the book when you made these?”
Jinn never appeared in public without full face and body wraps, making it difficult to be certain, but his red eyes looked pinched and the gray skin of his cheeks seemed a shade or two lighter than usual. The half-eaten pastry in front of the warrior fairly bristled with ominous red sprinkles. Hank looked at the red-sprinkled pastry in his own hand and hastily dropped it to the floor and kicked it under the table. Anything so terrible it caused a Shinra’ere to blanch was not something Hank wanted to eat.
