Rise of the Arcane Fire

by Kristin Bailey

  “No, she’s in the position she’s in because she has outmatched you on every single exam and has proven her capability both with her designs and with her ingenuity,” Headmaster Lawrence answered. “Perhaps if you stopped relying on David’s work as a crutch for your own, you could produce something of worth.”

  “I wouldn’t have to rely on David if I felt I could rely on you,” Samuel snapped back. “It’s not fair. Everyone else has a father invested in his success. The only thing you ever do is criticize.”

  “With good reason!” I took a step back. I’d never heard the headmaster shout. I knew I shouldn’t keep standing there, but I couldn’t seem to move my feet. It felt as if my legs were made of lead. “I can’t begin to express my disappointment when I took Miss Whitlock’s plans from you. For one moment I had thought you had drawn them and actually produced something of worth, but that’s too much to hope for.” The words seemed to hang in the air of the empty corridor. The sunlight slanting through the ancient window dimmed as a cloud passed over, marking the lengthy silence. The look of disgust when the headmaster had looked at my plan had had nothing to do with me at all.

  “I don’t know what you want of me,” Samuel said. I had never heard such a tone in his voice, and the pain that resounded there almost made me forgive a portion of his former nastiness. Almost.

  “I want a son who actually deserves the legacy I’m passing on to him,” the headmaster answered, and I felt the blow of the words in my own chest.

  It was awful, and I was well past the point where I should have left.

  As I turned on my heel to leave, the door flew open. As fast as I could, I tucked myself behind it. I held my breath as I prayed to become invisible. The door slowly swung away from me, and I stood frozen and exposed.

  Thankfully the headmaster had turned the opposite way and was already rounding the corner and disappearing from sight.

  I let out a slow breath. That had been too close.

  I was gathering my skirts when a sound coming from inside the office stopped me.

  Sobs—heavy, heartbreaking sobs. I peeked into the headmaster’s office through the crack where the door hinges met the frame. Samuel sat in his father’s chair with his face in his hands, his soul bleeding out onto the enormous desk.

  I fought my urge to go in and offer him comfort. I was the last person he’d wish to witness such a heartbreak.

  To be honest, I wished I hadn’t. I wanted to hate Samuel. I really did, but seeing him so broken, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I took a quick breath and hurried down the corridor back toward the main hall, trying my hardest to refrain from breaking into a run.

  The skin on the back of my neck and arms tingled with the sensation that someone was following me.

  Now, I may be counted as a hasty sort, but nothing has ever driven me to move so quickly. I admit, I skipped the last few steps to the assembly hall and shut the door firmly behind me.

  The boom echoed through the cavernous chamber of the hall, adding a low accompaniment to the frantic beating of my heart. I felt as unsteady as a newborn foal as I stumbled over to the top seats of the gallery and perched on the bench.

  Whatever lurked between father and son went much deeper than scores on exams, and it was no business of mine.

  Needing a steadying breath, I tapped my foot anxiously to alleviate some of the wobbly feeling in my knees. I certainly didn’t wish to speak with the headmaster when he was already in such a foul mood and clearly disappointed in his son.

  I got to my feet, descended the steps, and stood before my automaton, thinking. There had to be a way.

  A door closed and a set of footsteps descended the stairs, only to stop behind me. I turned around, unsure of whether to feel fear or hope.

  It was Peter.

  Holding my hands steady before me, I dropped my gaze to my boots.

  Peter turned his hat over in his hands. “Tell me why.” His grip crushed the brim. “When have I failed you?”

  I took his hat to keep him from ruining it. “You haven’t failed me. You’ve been my only friend.” My doubt came to the fore. I wanted to trust him so badly, it hurt inside. “I want for you to help me, but I can’t let you, and I can’t say why.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” He seemed genuinely perplexed.

  This was madness. Peter was not the saboteur. The thought of it was preposterous. He had absolutely no reason to be. I trusted him, the headmaster’s suspicions be damned.

  A door shut at the top of the gallery. I ignored it. It wasn’t more important than what I was about to say.

  “I’m sorry, Peter. You’re right. I have no reason not to trust you,” I began.

  I heard a cruel laugh behind me, and I felt a stab of fear. I turned and looked up at the walkway along the top of the seats. Samuel stood there.

  “How precious.” Samuel clasped his hands beneath his chin and pitched his voice high. “‘Oh, Peter, I trust you so!’ You don’t even know his name.”

  “What?” I turned to Peter. “What is he talking about?”

  Peter didn’t answer.

  “Why won’t you tell her, Peter?” Samuel crossed his arms, and I found myself looking back and forth between them, searching their faces for answers. Peter looked stricken . . . and guilty. Samuel flashed a cruel smile as he continued. “Or should I call you Rathford.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Peter was Rathford’s heir. Dear Lord, Peter was Rathford’s heir. After the fire, Rathford had taken me in under the guise of hiring me as a maid. In truth he’d been trying to force me to use my grandfather’s key to help him gain access to the time machine he had invented and hidden in the ruins of an old castle in Yorkshire. All he had wanted was to go back and prevent a terrible tragedy, but he hadn’t been considering the impact his time travel would have had on the world as we knew it. My grandfather and a handful of others locked away the time machine so only my grandfather’s key could reveal it.

  I had had to stop Rathford by any means possible. It was my hand that had shattered the heart of the time machine. I’d played no small part in Lord Rathford’s destruction.

  I was responsible for the death of a member of Peter’s family, and worse—I knew Rathford had been given the Black Mark even though it was Lord Strompton who had truly deserved it. I didn’t understand. By rights, Peter shouldn’t have been part of the Order.

  This was what the headmaster had meant when he’d said that Peter had a motive for sabotage.

  Revenge.

  I was hardly aware of movement. I couldn’t even look at Peter, too overcome by my shock and horror.

  “Leave, Samuel,” Peter demanded, his boots sounding heavy as he ascended the stairs along the gallery benches. I couldn’t help watching the confrontation from my position at the center of the hall.

  “Why should I?” Samuel pulled a timepiece out of his waistcoat and wound it with casual disinterest. “I have as much a right to be here as any.” He tucked the watch back into his pocket and crossed his arms.

  “Because if you don’t leave now, I cannot guarantee you’ll pass through that door with all your teeth,” Peter responded.

  Even from my vantage at the bottom of the stair, Peter seemed larger, more powerful than I’d ever seen him. Samuel still towered over him by half a head. He sized Peter up, then straightened his cuffs as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Enjoy your evening,” he said as he bowed his head at me in a condescending way.

  With that, he left, going along the walkway behind the top row of gallery seats and heading toward the corridor that led to the courtyard.

  Peter looked pale as he descended once more to the floor of the gallery. “Meg,” he began, but I didn’t wish to hear it.

  “You lied to me.” I looked him dead in the eye. It was true. I couldn’t trust him.

  Peter recoiled. “I did no such thing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were Rathford’s heir?” My voice sounded breat
hy. I tried to pull myself together.

  “Our names aren’t supposed to matter.” He shifted.

  I looked at him in disbelief. “We had an entire conversation that first day about who you were, and where you came from, and you didn’t see fit to tell me you were Rathford’s heir?” My voice echoed off the high ceiling, and I bit my tongue. After a hasty breath I continued. “How can you say it doesn’t matter?”

  A dreadful feeling clawed at me.

  He has something to hide. . . .

  Peter’s eyes narrowed as his normally sweet face hardened. I recognized the look in his eyes. I’d seen it before, a dark and calculating desperation. “My name changes nothing.” Peter flexed his hand, the one that had been injured.

  “Doesn’t it?” My dark thoughts led me down a twisted path full of shadow and doubt.

  Peter had reached out to befriend me within minutes of my climbing the ramp that first day. He was the one who’d sought me out to comfort me and offer me his friendship when no one else had.

  I’d thought he was as outcast and alone as I.

  I was a fool.

  He’d needed to get close to me.

  Peter rubbed his brow, as if his thoughts pained him. “Meg, listen to me,” he insisted. “It has never mattered to me.”

  “It matters to the Order.” I took a step, this time closing the distance to my automaton. I couldn’t let him touch it. “I exposed your family to scandal. Your family prospects hang upon a thread because of me. How can that not matter to you?”

  “Because I am your friend.” He looked up at the ceiling, then back down, holding his hands out to his sides. “This is precisely why I kept silent about all this. There are some secrets that aren’t worth the bother of telling.”

  I fisted my hands at my sides. “You truly are Rathford’s heir. He liked secrets as well.”

  “I barely knew my father’s cousin!” Peter shouted, his face turning red. “He ruined us. We had an honorable name until he did what he did. Now we are nothing.” He seemed to choke on his words as he dropped his head. He rounded on me again. “Our only hope for redemption lies in me and my reputation here at the Academy.”

  He looked at me as if expecting me to say something, but I had no words for him.

  With a disgusted shake of his head, he turned away. “Fine. Be unreasonable. I only offered my help. I know when I’m not wanted.” He straightened his coat with a stiff jerk. “Good luck to you. The assignment is impossible.”

  “I’ll find a way.” I clasped my hands together in front of me. I could feel the presence of the automaton staring over my shoulder. She was mine. I wouldn’t let anyone ruin her. “Goodbye, Rathford.”

  Peter snatched up his hat, and with a furious anger burning in his once kind eyes, he marched up the stairs and out of the hall, slamming the door behind him.

  The sound echoed through the chamber like the crash of a great tree succumbing to a battering storm. Then stillness settled on the air once more, heavy and stifling.

  In the chilling silence I turned to my automaton. Naked and faceless, she stared back at me as if waiting for the chance to come alive. I didn’t know how I would help her to walk, let alone make her dance.

  I didn’t even know how I would move her from the room.

  Holding my hands as if in prayer, I touched them to my lips and closed my eyes until the quaking in my body subsided and I could breathe again.

  “I am in a fine mess,” I whispered to myself as I took the automaton’s hand and gently lifted it. When I let go, it swung back to her side with a ratcheting series of clicks.

  I turned a slow circle, but I was entirely alone. The rising benches seemed to loom over me, while the empty podium whispered, You have no place here.

  And through all of it, I still had trouble believing Peter could be the saboteur.

  I just couldn’t be certain who was friend and who was foe.

  During the next week the automaton consumed my life. The headmaster had it moved to a spare room in the monastery where I could work on it in peace, but the empty room felt like a prison cell.

  To aid us, our lessons turned to the finer points of automaton construction and direction, but I couldn’t see how any of it would help me in my task. There were two main methods of control for the mechanical beings: Either they ran on tracks, like the ones I had encountered on the clockwork ship during the Rathford incident, or they had a complicated switch system. I needed to create a control system that made my automaton move with the ability to react to whatever David’s automaton was doing.

  In this I had the more difficult challenge. David could make his automaton lumber around the room like a plodding ox and it would be suitable, but if my automaton couldn’t follow that movement, mine would be the one in the wrong.

  What I needed to know was how a complicated automaton, like the Minotaur from the labyrinth at Tavingshall, functioned. That mechanical beast had had absolutely no difficulty tracking the motion of Will and me as we’d run for our lives while it had tried to gore us. I had survived one round with that monster. I was not keen on trying it again just to study how the bloody thing worked.

  By the end of the week, I had achieved nothing. My automaton still stood, motionless and silent, in our dim little room.

  Frustrated, I left her and sought out one of the instructors so I could search the archives. Perhaps some early drawings of the Minotaur from the Tavingshall labyrinth could be found there. That was a much safer prospect than visiting the beast again. I started with the headmaster’s quarters, but he wasn’t there, so I checked our main classroom.

  Oliver was inside setting up a miniature rail system across the front table. My heart jumped. I hadn’t spoken to him since the accident, but he was one of the few people I could trust completely.

  He looked up at me, the patch still over the one eye, though his skin now appeared quite normal. “Hello, Meg. I was just setting out our next lesson.” He gave me a friendly smile. His words felt like a warm blanket wrapped around me on a very bitter day. It was good to know he wasn’t angry with me for the aviary disaster.

  “I see you intend to put us through our paces. How is your eye healing?” I asked, feeling terrible that he was still injured.

  He frowned just slightly. “It could be faring better, to be honest. Lucinda claims the patch has made me a better shot.” I tried not to smile as he carefully fixed a miniature figure onto the track. Oliver had no talent for firearms.

  “I’m so sorry you were injured.”

  “I’ve seen worse.” He gave me a grin that made me think back on our adventures together. He had come out of them badly gougedand nearly drowned, and he had broken his arm. In context I supposed this wasn’t so bad.

  “Could I beg a question?” It felt good to speak to Oliver.

  “Of course.” He gave me his full attention.

  “I can’t help wondering why it is that so many of the Order seem prone to madness.” As I looked at Oliver I couldn’t help remembering how mad he had seemed when I had met him. “Rathford, Strompton—and others.” I knew I shouldn’t mention Haddock or the saboteur.

  Oliver seemed thoughtful. “I suppose it’s part of the nature of who we are and what we do. Give a man the power of God in heaven and it becomes too easy to believe he has the right to use that power how he will.” Oliver looked as if he’d swallowed something distasteful. “It’s good for us to have some humility.”

  I nodded. “Is that why you nominated me? To humiliate them?”

  “Now, Meg, that’s unfair. I’d hoped you’d give us all some perspective.” He grinned and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe how well his scheme had played out. “And you have.” He clapped his hands together. “Now, how are you faring with your project?” he asked.

  “Not so well as I would have hoped.” I didn’t know if he knew about the saboteur. I decided not to mention it, just in case the headmaster didn’t wish me to. “I was hoping for permission to access the archives.”r />
  I bent down to inspect the track he’d laid out. It was complicated. I didn’t see how we could create something that elaborate in the ballroom. No one would be able to move without being forced to step over the rails and wheels every few feet. While it might work, it certainly wouldn’t be either functional or particularly elegant.

  “Permission granted,” Oliver stated without looking up. He squinted his good eye as he turned a crank on one of the control wheels, and the figure jerked along the track. “This needs some work. That will be a good task to set the class on tomorrow.”

  “Oliver?” My heart fluttered a bit with my nervousness. I had one advantage over my classmates. While I didn’t have my family to aid me, I did have good friends. “Would you help me with my automaton?”

  Oliver stood to his full height, then let out a heavy sigh as he placed his palms on the table. “I’m sorry, Meg. I wish I could, truly, but I cannot. As a full instructor here, I’m unable to aid you. It would be seen as favoritism, and I would lose standing in the Order. I’m afraid I’m already suspect due to our close association.”

  I swallowed a bitter knot in my throat. “I understand.” Letting my gaze fall to my feet, I turned to leave the room. “Thank you, Oliver.”

  He didn’t say anything as I slowly shut the door and returned to my cell. I retreated to the corner and inspected the drawings of control systems that had been provided to me by Headmaster Lawrence. I let my elbows rest on the smooth wood of the table as I stared at the incomprehensible maze of lines and annotations scrawled across the paper.

  As I drew in a shaky breath, a heavy tear splattered on the parchment and soaked in, blurring the ink lines as it spread slowly outward.

  A soft rap sounded on the open door. I quickly swiped a hand across my eyes as I drew myself up and wrested my composure back into order. I didn’t know who would be bothering me so late. It was well past the time for the others to return home. I had arranged for Bob to come to collect me well after nightfall so I would have extra time for work.

  “I don’t wish to . . . ,” I began as I turned, but my voice caught.