Curio (47 page)
Haimon pulled his hand from his pocket and signaled Whit to continue on to the alley.
“She's still inside,” Whit breathed. He shook so hard his vision blurred.
He got the truck moving again and pulled it behind the storefronts. After shoving the satchel back beneath the seat, he swung out of the cab. Shouts and the hum of chug boats carried from the street beyond. A hollow feeling in his gut told him the commotion came from Reinbar, but he pounded up the alley toward the Haward's back door. He slid to a stop, his throat prickling as he grabbed the knob. He wiped his palms on his trousers and stole into the quiet shop.
After he checked the front portion of the store and made sure Haimon and Adante no longer stood on the sidewalk just outside the front door, he eased the trapdoor open.
“Marina?”
No answer.
He ducked down the stairs. Daylight crept into the secret cellar. Maybe she'd fallen asleep waiting for him to return.
He dashed around the corner. “Marina?”
She wasn't on the couch or in the alcove under the stairs.
“No. No. No.” He dug his fingers into his hair.
The prickle in his throat spread to his chest, joining with the knot in his stomach. His nerves fired hot. The dispensary raid, today?
He dashed back up the stairs, his footsteps too loud on the wooden steps. It didn't matter. In the shop above, he paced, jerking toward the front door, then the back.
“Think. Think.”
He couldn't. He flung the front door wide and took off down the sidewalk. Haimon and the Chemist were nowhere in sight, and the noise from one street over had died down. Whit's steps, ringing against the concrete, echoed in the quiet.
He rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. Citizens stood like petrified tree trunks, dark, gnarled, frozen. Two black chug boats formed a V in the street, and figures in dusters moved between them while others went in and out of the dispensary. Whit's brain took in the whole scene, although he couldn't look away from the strip of pavement before the ration facility. Bodies lay in a line on the street, stretched out in orderly horror. They were stunned. That was all. They'd been stunned.
He studied the shapes. He didn't want to see, but he couldn't close his lids. There at the end, a mass of dark hair. The morning breeze picked at the strands, whipping them about the small, still form of Marina.
Whit clutched at his chest. He couldn't breathe. Not Marina. First he'd lost Grey, and now Marina? How could he live on the fringes without her? Selling illegal ration, stealing from stores like Haward's. He'd end up with more secrets than Haimon. A crazy husk of a man hoping for a miracle out of a dusty curio cabinet.
A shadow fell on the sidewalk before Whit. Two black, pointed shoes appeared in his narrow vision. He looked up into Adante's angular face. Poison-green eyes flashed into his.
W
ind slipped around Blaise in buffeting streams, slowing his progress. Each beat of his patched wings strained his relocated joint but no longer sent agony coursing through him. He grit his teeth not in pain but in desperation to reach Grey.
He'd outdistanced Weatherton's troop of walking carriages, each concealing a handful of Valor Society tocks. Weatherton planned to engage Lord Blueboy in an extended debate about what to do with the crew of the Clang while Blaise rescued Grey, Callis, and Seree. If the diversion failed, Weatherton was prepared to fight, but he and his followers didn't stand a chance.
Weatherton's steady gaze haunted Blaise. After the porcie had maneuvered his shoulder back into place and done a hasty patch job on his steam pack, he'd drawn Blaise aside. Tocks rushed about them, preparing for the mission, but Weatherton rested his hand on Blaise's good shoulder.
“Keep your promise. If not to me, then to Clara.”
Blaise had agreed.
Now, with all of downtown Curio City buzzing with the day's events, soldiers swarming the streets, and Blueboy's mansion as locked down as Harrowstone, the chances of any of them making it back to Weatherton's plantation seemed remote.
Blaise circled Blueboy's estate, giving the busy courtyard and stables a wide berth. The gardens at the back of the house lay quiet under the night sky, tinged brown due to the smoke from Gagnon's demolished airship hanging low over the city. Blaise kept to the acrid clouds as long as he could. When he heard the thuds of Weatherton's carriages marching up the street to Blueboy's gate, he dropped altitude and surveyed the rear of the house. Two soldiers were positioned at the back door, but they didn't see him swoop to land on the high roof.
With the slate tiles beneath his feet and the ground far below, he might as well be standing on top of a fortress. Where was Grey in the enormous house? Where were Callis and Seree?
He trotted along the apex of the roof toward the east wing. With his left shoulder bound to his body by strips of canvas, he struggled to maintain balance. His foot slipped, and he nearly tumbled down the roof before righting himself again. He reached the edge and peered down at the little balcony outside Grey's room. No light shone through the thin curtains.
His gut clenched. The mark on his skin pulsed a warning just as a new sound carried above the bustle in the courtyard. Screaming.
He ran back to the center of the roof, but growing noise from the front gate drowned out what had surely been porcie screeches. Weatherton's arrival had thrown the ranks into upheaval. Shouting rang in the courtyard. Taking advantage of the distraction, Blaise crept to the front edge of the roof.
Tall windows stretching nearly the height of a story marked the very center of the mansion. Benedict's quarters, no doubt.
Light seeped through the panes, but Blaise couldn't see anything else from his position. Below, Weatherton made a fuss of climbing down from his carriage and arguing with the commanding officers. Soldiers ringed the six other carriages loitering in the courtyard.
Blaise hunkered down, the knuckles of his right fist tapping an impatient beat on the roof. Where was that tin can of a butler? He got to his feet and made a round on the rooftop, checking over the sides. A door at the base of the tower opened and two tocks slipped out. The shorter of the two wore a butler's distinctive tailcoat.
Flattening himself on the slate, Blaise hung his head over the eave to hear their conversation. He picked out the words
glueman
and
leaking
before the taller tock turned and loped toward the back wall. He didn't break stride for a moment but stretched on expandable legs until he vaulted over the brick barrier. His head disappeared as he sank out of sight.
A runner sent for the glueman in the middle of the night. A porcie was damaged. It didn't matter how, for now Weatherton's distraction would fail.
When the butler closed the door once again, Blaise glided down to the side yard. The plainness of the entrance marked it as a servants' access. If he were lucky, whatever accident required the glueman's presence had everyone's attention focused elsewhere.
His Defender mark burned and stone spread beneath his skin. The reaction took less than a second and left Blaise reeling from the intensity. He folded his wings in and wrenched the door open. The hinges creaked and the door swung free of the frame. So much for stealth. He clenched his fist, trying to rein in the Defender strength before his noise raised the whole household.
But no tocks waited in the tower to capture him.
Rounded walls closed in on him, and a tight staircase twisted upward into darkness. Another door on his left led to the ground floor, but instinct tugged him to the steps. His wings clattered against the iron frame of the coiled stairway, but he couldn't stop long enough to shrug out of the steam
pack harness. His mark tugged him higher and higher, and he ricocheted off the narrow tower walls and spiraling metal.
At the top of the staircase, Blaise pressed his ear to a low door. High-pitched steam whimpers drifted to his hiding place along with mechanical speech and clattering footsteps. He strained to pick up Grey's husky tone. Nothing betrayed her presence, but his mark sucked his torso forward. Before he could comprehend his actions, he'd pulled the sling off his left arm and dropped it to the floor. He yanked the door open and stepped onto the top floor of Lord Blueboy's mansion.
A few servants bustled in and out of a door in the middle of the cavernous chamber, carrying steaming pitchers, brooms, and other cleaning supplies. Between the backs of two male tocks, Blaise glimpsed Fantine huddled on a couch, both hands clutched to her throat. Her mouth opened and a faint wail escaped, although her eyes darted around the room, never landing or focusing.
A tock with a mop moved in front of the open bedroom, his attention on the floor he cleaned. Blaise followed his action as he lifted the mop and prepared to plunge it in a bucket. Dark-pink water dripped from the gray fibers. Blood.
His eyes were everywhere, tearing up the elegant apartment. Where was she?
And then he saw.
In an alcove on the opposite side of the floor, a tock maid hunched over a still form. As he watched, the maid pulled away, revealing a prone figure with a tangle of blonde hair. The tock reached to the floor, never taking her gaze away from the head cradled in her lap. She snagged a pitcher and brought it to Grey's lips. The water ran down Grey's cheeks and chin, but the maid kept pouring.
Blaise forged past the tocks guarding Blueboy's mistress, pushing his goggles up and yanking his mouth grid off as
he went. Drakon emerged from the open door and buzzed an exclamation, but Blaise planted one hand on the butler's chest and shoved him aside.
A red stain beneath Grey's body stole the air from his lungs. The maid poured more water over her still mouth as his mind took in snippets of the scene. The pieces wouldn't come into focus.
Two big tocks in uniforms flanked him, but he walked forward, eyes moving over Grey's form.
Her arm lay in a pool of blood. Her hand . . .
He covered his mouth.
Crashing to his knees next to Grey's body, he searched for something to stop the bleeding. She wore only a flimsy blue gown. He tugged at his shirt but the straps of his harness interfered.
“We have to stop the blood.” He barely recognized his voice.
He tore his eyes from the wound and looked at the maid's face.
“We have to stop the blood,” he said again.
She tilted the water pitcher again, but Blaise gripped her arm.
“That won't help. I need . . .” His voice cracked. What did he need? “I need a scarf or a cravat. I need cloth to wrap around her . . . her arm. I needâ”
But the maid was moving. She slid from beneath Grey, pulled off her blood-soaked apron, and ripped one of the strings off. She handed it to Blaise then whipped her cap off and handed it to him as well.
He tied the apron string around Grey's upper arm, but the blood drenched the maid's cap in seconds.
“I need something more.” Blaise looked around, but a voice lashed through his concentration.
“So you're the Mad Tock.”
Ice replaced the granite beneath Blaise's skin. He met the maid's gaze, grabbed a fistful of her skirt, and held it to Grey's stump. “Stop the blood,” he said.
He rose and whirled to face Benedict.
The porcie leaned on his butler, a steaming cup in one hand and . . . Blaise met the cold blue stare.
“She took your hand so you had to take hers?”
A faint smile etched Benedict's features. “Only seems fair, doesn't it?”
“I will grind you into sand.” Blaise lunged.
The tocks at his sides grabbed him, and he tore away only to collide with a solid object. Drakon. The butler's metal frame registered in Blaise's mind, but his Defender sense blocked all sensation save strength. He wrestled the tock to the wall, maneuvering one hand to the side of the automaton's face. With a snap, the butler's head hung at a broken angle.
Blueboy had retreated to the door of his chamber. Blaise dashed across the floor, ice in his veins and rock in his fists. Benedict went down beneath him, and the sound of porcelain meeting marble echoed through the apartment.
Metal hands clawed at Blaise. He shook them off but more snagged his limbs, lifting him off the ruler of Curio City. The tock servants hauled him backward, locking his arms behind his back. From her couch, Fantine shrieked as Benedict struggled to rise.
Blaise flexed against the tocks securing him. He could send them flying, he knew it. The Defender state engulfed him.
The door of the lift ratcheted open, and a knot of redcoats jumped out. One of the soldiers rushed to hoist Benedict off the floor, though the tock nearly dropped the ruler when he got a good look. Dark cracks snaked all over Benedict's
face, neck, and collarbones, but he stood, throwing back his shoulders. He lowered his lids, leaving an arrogant slice of blue still visible.
