I reached out my hand to touch it but pulled back at the last second. “What is that?” I peered at Sebastian.
“This,” he lifted it gently from the rack, “is a weapon of some kind.”
“‘Of some kind?’” I repeated. “What does that mean?”
“It means, I don’t know exactly what it does.”
Across the room, Dinga slid off his stool and hopped towards us. “Looks powerful, master.”.
“Well, does it shoot bullets, or what?”
“You see these?” Sebastian tapped the empty test tubes plugged into the top. “You can fill these with liquids that cause a flame, and then it shoots, although I haven’t figured out how that happens.”
“You invented it, but don’t know how to fire it?”
“I had an idea to make it, I’m sorry if I don’t know how to operate the blasted thing.”
“It looks like a ray gun,” I blurted.
Sebastian and Dinga both looked at me.
“Maybe it’s powered by electricity,” I looked directly at Sebastian.
“But we don’t have any—” Sebastian trailed off. Without another word, he cradled the butt into his shoulder, raised it to his eye, and took careful aim into the center of the room.
I heard the familiar crackle of his spark, as his right hand spun the wheel on the outside of the wide barrel. The metal wheel sparked and spun wildly. A pair of cogs attached with a piece of rubber began to turn at a rapid pace as the electricity wrapped around the side of the gun, twisting down the barrel until it reached the web at the end.
I covered my head and Dinga ducked behind the partition behind me as a bolt of lightning shot from the end, narrowly missing the wide workbench, and striking the stool Dinga had previously occupied. The stool exploded. A shower of metal, scorched cotton padding, and wood bits went flying in every direction.
Sebastian lowered the gun and grinned at me. “Now we know what it does!”
Dinga hopped on one foot. “Amazing, but deadly, that is.”
I patted Sebastian on his good shoulder. “I’m glad you have a weapon, but what in the world would we need it for?”
Sebastian put the gun back on its posts. He looked me up and down, and his hand went to his wounded shoulder. “I can think of one person in particular that deserves it.”
“Do any of them really deserve it?” I piped up, not happy with the somber tone this had taken. “Sebastian, you weren’t there with Edwin... Victor...”
“You’re right, but we have this,” he touched the dagger at my side.
“We have to get to the clock face.”
Sebastian wrapped his hands around both of my upper arms. “Good thing I know how to get there.” I snapped my fingers. “That’s right! Thank God for Edwin,” I said without thinking, then hastily added, “I mean, RIP Edwin.”
Sebastian eyed me again, but I just shook my head.
“Well, let us hasten there!” Dinga interrupted.
Sebastian held up a hand. “Wait, there’s something else.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“At the top of the winding tower stairs, there’s a barrier Edwin and I could not penetrate. We could see the massive clock face, with arms that never moved, and hear it thrumming. But there was no way to get close to it.”
I picked up the dagger and key. Holding the key up, I announced, “We have this. Victor told us it was for something important.”
“Let’s not waste time, then,” Sebastian admitted, and Dinga nodded. “We have to find out what is behind that clock face.”
“And kill it,” I said, but while Sebastian and Dinga looked a little shocked, I was firm in my resolve. “If that’s the seat of the Keeper’s power, we have to destroy it, no matter what it takes.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Power
DESPITE SEBASTIAN’S urging that we needed to hurry, he made us wait literal days before we made our move. Twice he went out to the street level, shielding himself with his power.
“The guards are on double patrol, it’s not safe,” he would tell Dinga and I.
“But can’t we just sneak past—”
“No,” he insisted, “not all of us.”
“Even on Delilah?”
“Especially not.”
Sighing, I had stopped back to the bedroom and turned on the Star Chart. At least looking at the moving constellations gave me something to do.
“I’m tired of waiting,” I whined on the third — or fourth? — day. Time had passed so slowly since Sebastian had offered to take us back into the palace. There was no way to know how long it had been.
I was anxious to get moving, but I quickly realized I also needed rest. I slept for a long time each day and found moving around the workshop was tiresome. But little by little, my strength started to return. Sebastian brought me tea and sandwiches every day, though I surmised Bailia was sneaking them to him, because the workshop appeared to be devoid of anything eatable, save Dinga’s awful living ‘snacks.’
Sebastian was healing, too. His leg had been crushed in the cave in, and the Keeper had healed it only enough to remind me of the pain. The burn on his stomach, however, was another story. I had to make the pain stop, because I could barely walk and my abdomen burned, too.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Sebastian had asked me the day after our escape.
I had put my hand on his bare chest and nodded, trying to send a surge of my healing energy into him. I still wasn’t sure how it worked, though, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will it to burst forth.
“Nothing,” Sebastian started.
“Shh,” I had told him. I felt the edge of the power and touched it, hauling it up my arm and down into my hand. The burn on his chest swirled with magic, the scar sealing and disappearing. I touched his leg, then, and the power came quicker this time, but though I mended and set the bone, he still limped from time to time.
Even Dinga was recovering, the black marks from the chains now just a faint gray memory. He seemed happy and hungry, two good signs, but also slightly repulsive. Well, a demon has got to eat, I kept telling myself.
The workshop had no windows, only a solid steel door, directly across from this small bedroom, and the wide barn doors behind Delilah. Once, I caught a glimpse of the curved stairway when Sebastian quickly ducked out. Since then, he had come and gone a few times, fetching food and drink from Bailia, who met him secretly just upstairs from the workshop. I could hear her tinkling voice from under the crack in the door. Dinga snuck out a few times, insisting he needed to eat, even though I was terrified he might get caught and begged him to stay. I was at least relieved each time he returned, even with those foul bugs tipping on the outside of his pack.
I sat on the bed, swinging my bare legs over the side.
Sebastian was sitting at the desk across from the bed, piles of screws, cogs, and a tiny hammer spread out before him. He was busy taking apart the ray gun, for the third time, and putting it back together. When he wasn’t doing that, he was reorganizing the entire workshop. I helped him move tables and beakers and pants against the wall, and we managed to push Delijah against the other wall. Then he modified the pad where his car had sat into a firing range. Charred remains of everything from furniture to cloth dummies were a reminder of how much he used his new firing range.
“I told you we have to wait until we are both stronger.” Sebastian turned to look at me. His goggles were pulled over his eyes, to protect him from the deadly sparks that sometimes flew from his repairs.
I got off the bed and walked around to the front, pacing. “I feel fine, I told you that.”
“When Dinga gets back, we can discuss—”
“He always gets back and we never leave.”
“This time he’s on a mission.”
“What kind of mission.”
Sebastian pulled the goggles up on his head. “A secret one.”
I stopped pacing. “You didn’t send him into the palace, did you?”
&nb
sp; “Well, he can get around in the corners easier than our wanted faces can.”
“Surely they are missing you by now.”
“Aye, the Keeper seems agitated, from the reports I’ve received.”
“Has he found any sign of the Anual?”
“Not yet,” Sebastian flipped the goggles down and turned back to the piece of barrel in his hand, “but we will find him.”
“And make a plan.”
“Yes.”
At that moment, the door to the bedroom flew open, and Dinga hopped there on one leg. “Master! I’ve found him!”
I rushed to Dinga’s side. “The Anual? Where is he?”
Dinga looked down. “You won’t like it, mistress.”
“Where is he, Dinga?” Sebastian pressed, tossing his goggles on the table.
“He’s in the throne room with the Keeper,” Dinga sat and crossed his thin legs. “In a cage, master, with horrible Biggie locks.”
I gasped a little but sat beside him. “Tell us everything. What’s in the room, how often the Keeper is there, and if there’s any guards.”
Sebastian crossed his legs and pulled out a chalkboard no bigger than a modern-day notebook from my world, which he scribbled notes on with a piece of gray chalk while Dinga talked for what seemed like forever.
“I think I’ve got it.” Sebastian joined us on the floor and sat cross legged. He put the parchment between us, and pointed to the layout he had drawn, based on Dinga’s description.
“It should be easy to get into the palace.”
I stopped him. “Wait, how exactly are we going to get to the palace? It’s not like we can just walk right in or anything.”
“We can’t walk in, but we can fly in.”
I think Dinga was more shocked than I was.
“Master?” he said, sitting next to me on the bed.
“Oh, I forgot to show you Irene, didn’t I?”
I groaned. “Another contraption, Sebastian? With a silly girl name?”
Sebastian sat up, scoffing. “Irene isn’t some silly girl, she’s my pride and joy. With wings, a stasis field, and some panels—”
“You,” I couldn’t find the words at first, “have a flying contraption, and didn’t tell anyone?”
He shrugged. “Forgot.”
Dinga hopped off the bed and clapped his claws.
“Oh boy,” I said, joining him. “Let’s go see Irene.”
“Grab the gun.” Before I could protest, Sebastian and Dinga were out the door.
OF COURSE, SEBASTIAN had to store Irene on the roof. As we wound up the tiny circular stairs, I whispered, “Aren’t we close to the palace? Won’t they see us?”
“Invisible building, remember?” Sebastian murmured. Close to the top step, he spun a ball of light in a circle around us, shielding us from sight as we stepped onto the flat, open roof. The edges were studded with blocks, like the trim of a miniature castle, and in the dead center sat a large bulk covered with a canvas tent. Beyond it, I could see the palace close by, with four metal dragons turned in opposite directions.
I gasped as one of their heads cranked, clearly turned directly at us. Sebastian held his hand above his head, the prisms sparkling. I held my breath. After a few minutes, the head cranked back around to the west.
“Can they hear us?”
“They didn’t before, in the village, mistress,” Dinga answered. “I think they can only be the Keeper’s eyes.”
“Aye,” said Sebastian.
We pressed in closer to stay under Sebastian’s shield. He drew off the canvas with one hand, like a magnificent magician, and revealed his Irene.
It was hard to keep an eye on the dragons without taking in the flying machine Sebastian had built. It had an elliptical-shaped floor board, with a variety of different square tiles cut to fit. Around the tiles was a steel latticework, bolted to the frame. Most of the tiles were steel, except for the three rows that surrounded a giant copper tube rising from the center.
Those tiles were translucent, like frosted glass. And all the way around it, steel wings with canvas centers were welded and bolted to the side. At one end of the ship, there were two copper tubes, much smaller than the large one in the center, with a wooden handle sticking out of one of them. A rudder, of some kind, I imagined.
I ran my hand down the bronze side. “Irene is beautiful, but how does she work?” The helm was where the steering was, I thought, but other than that, it was simply a flat oval with a pipe in the middle, and six vertical wings around the edges. Another new invention for me.
“Like this,” Sebastian waved a hand to one of the tiles, which sat about waist high from us. I heard the electricity crackle under his fingertips. Tendrils of electric beams spit from the bottom of the ship to the concrete roof, and the ship began to float.
“Stasis fields. I’ve been charging them for the last week. They’ll give us enough buoyancy to make it over to the palace.” Sebastian must have seen my nervous glance at the metal dragons, still unaware of our presence, “Don’t worry about them, I have a plan.”
Sebastian jumped on, holding out a hand, his shield still spread over us, and hoisted me up to stand by him. He took the ray gun and tucked it under his arm. I helped Dinga up, and we crowded around the copper tube, which I saw had railings welded in a circle around it. “Hang on to your hat,” Sebastian stood by the hooked rudder and pushed up on it. We floated a dozen feet into the air.
I gripped the railing around the pipe, which was hot to the touch. Dinga stood by me, his arms looped around the bars as well. His eyes were wide, and he looked worried. “I hope your light bending is still in effect!” I shouted over the roar of the stasis fields and flapping wings beside us.
Sebastian shifted the rudder to the right, and the machine started to shudder, then slowly propelled us toward the palace. “It doesn’t matter,” he shouted back. “They won’t see this coming.”
The metal dragons grew bigger on the horizon, their bronze plated scales becoming larger, closer. We were headed straight for them. The empty black eye sockets began to glow red, all fixed on us, as all four turned at once, the crank of their mechanic necks craning. Gears turned at the nape of their necks, their wings began to flap, charging for their lift off.
“Master!” Dinga squealed. “They have spotted us!”
Sebastian smiled, reached up, and pulled his new pair of goggles over his eyes. He hoisted the gun butt into his shoulder, hooked his arm around, and began to spin the wheel-trigger.
Two of the dragons lifted off, their mouths craning open slowly. The crick and sputter of gears filled the air.
I watched the familiar electricity spin around the barrel, and fan out to the web at the end.
The last two dragons followed the first, staying close behind. They were closing fast, despite all their heavy mechanical parts.
“Sebastian!” I screamed, as the ray gun went off.
He sprayed it from left to right, catching the first two dragons, who froze in mid-flight, their wings splayed. Their mouths closed, and the eyes stopped glowing, and they began to spiral to the ground. I dared to glance at the open ground beneath us, where a few citizens were screaming and running for cover. The dragons ended with a loud crash about twenty feet below us, sending up a huge dust plume that covered Irene.
I coughed and reached out for Dinga. He was still holding on. The dust was so thick, I couldn’t see Sebastian. I could hear the crank of the other two dragons growing closer and knew they would be on us at any moment. I could barely make out his form when the ray gun went off again, and I heard the screech as it erupted against the metal lizards.
More dust. I pulled my shirt over my face to block it out and gasped for air. I couldn’t see Sebastian, but the ship was still moving under us, which meant he was still at the helm.
As the dust cleared, I could barely see the outline of his figure at the top of the ship. He was hollering something I couldn’t understand over the chaos below us and waving his arms.
“Mistress, he says we are almost there.” Dinga blinked his inner eye lid rapidly, then his outer eyelid.
“You can hear him?” I shouted, not sure if Dinga even knew what I was saying. Below us, the screaming had ceased, and the city was eerily quiet.
“Dinga hears everything, Zespar have good ears,” Dinga smiled then coughed. “But I certainly don’t like this dust.”
I could hear the engines spinning slower, and we began descending. We cleared the dust and bits of debris in the air, coming to a stop on the roof of the palace.
Sebastian jumped off first, landing on his feet and stumbling, and then eased the ship the rest of the way down with a small jolt of electricity. He grabbed the gun from the helm and helped me down. “Told you I had it taken care of,” he tried to keep his voice low.
Dinga hopped down on his own, rolling as he landed. “Wilder than a trip on a log down the Transcent fast-waters!”
Sebastian and I shushed him.
I looked around, the dust settling at our feet from the dragon’s crashes. “Now what?” I told Sebastian. “Surely the Keeper heard all that commotion.”
He grabbed my hand. “This way.”
At the far edge of the roof was a hatch with a hinge. Flush with the concrete, I don’t think I would have ever noticed it until I was literally on top of it. Sebastian blasted the hinge off with his power and threw the hatch open.
“It drops right into the throne room,” said Sebastian. “Alayna, can you go first with the gun, then Dinga, and I’ll follow. I can try to conceal us, but my power won’t last long. Once I blast the guards, we won’t have a lot of time to rescue the Anual, so Dinga, you have to be fast.”
It was then I noticed his eyes were lined and his lips drooped. Was using his power tiring him? I’d never noticed before.
Gun in one hand, I threw a foot onto the ladder rung. “I hope this works,” I whispered to him.
Clock City Page 25
