Heart of Iron (29 page)

The petite redhead nodded sharply. “I cannot risk insubordination. Not now, when we’re so close. Take him away.” She glanced toward the masked figure leaning against the wall. “Leave us,” she murmured.

His gaze flickered toward Lena.

“She wants to know if she can trust us,” Rosalind replied to the unspoken question. Their gazes met. Held. “Perhaps a show of trust is what she needs.”

With a flamboyant shrug of his shoulders, he stepped toward the door. “On your head, so be it. I’ll go see if I can help Ingrid find out whose tongues have been flapping. And how far it’s gone.”

Two steps and he was through the door, with Ingrid on his heels.

It shut behind them and Lena turned to face the woman. They were much of a height and perhaps even age. Or perhaps not. Rosalind’s pale skin bore the creaminess of youth and her tip-tilted nose gave her a permanently youthful appearance. Yet the command with which she had spoken was not that of someone untried.

You
wished
to
see
Mercury, did you not?

It was only now that Lena realized that the man had never directly referred to himself as such.

“You’re Mercury, aren’t you?”

Those plump lips pursed. “I’m not going to harm you.” Rosalind slid the pistol into a holster at her hip with a dexterity and ease that Lena envied.

“Who was he? The man?”

“My brother, Jack. He is also Mercury. As is Ingrid at times. Mercury has worn many names and faces over the years, the better to hide from the Echelon.” Rosalind smiled slightly, gesturing toward a chair. “Sit. Talk with me. We’ve been very curious about you.”

“As am I.” Lena dragged out a chair, giving herself plenty of room to move if she needed to. This pretty, pouting young woman seemed friendly enough, but she wouldn’t forget the ease with which she’d killed a man. Nor the cool, emotionless look in her eyes as she’d done it.

Rosalind eased into her chair, leaning back with her arms slung across the chair backs next to her. Calculation cooled her brown eyes. “There are very few who know the truth behind Mercury’s secret.”

“I would never reveal it.”

“Even if your sympathies toward the organization are conflicted?”

Lena paused for a moment. “I would not betray you. If I choose to turn my back on this, then I’ll walk away and try to forget everything I ever saw.”

“Walk away?” Rosalind murmured. “To where? Your life at court? To beg a blue blood to take mercy on you and take you as thrall? How long do you imagine that will last, with your inability to allow a blue blood to feed?”

The only person who knew that was Mr. Mandeville. The betrayal raked her with iron claws.

Rosalind tidied the piles of paper in front of her, then pushed them across the table toward her. “This is everything that we know about you. Compiled carefully in the last year. Jack and Ingrid might think this a risk, telling you of Mercury’s secret, but I don’t think you’d dare.”

A charcoal sketch rested on top. Lena stared down into her own face. The rendering was exquisite, but the expression was slightly disdainful, one eyebrow arched in dismissal. A pretty, hardened flirt.

She lifted it carefully, revealing details about her and her life. Charlie’s name. That made her blood boil. Honoria. Even Blade and Will. The detail went further, examining the minutiae of her life. When she came and went from Caine House. A brief question about why Leo had taken her as his ward, that had been circled in red ink, and daily details about her relationship with him that were shockingly intimate.

No sign of her sharing his bed. Or her blood. I cannot quite fathom the relationship as yet, but I will…

Another page.

They joked of her sister, Honoria, this morning as if he knew her well. Does the relationship go deeper?

And further down.

I find it curious that the Duke of Caine has forgone visiting the house since the arrival of the girl. I’ve spoken to the servants, the thralls about it. His Grace came regularly each Sunday afternoon to play chess with his son but does so no longer. They have never been close, but one thrall claims that she heard them arguing about Miss Todd. His Grace insisted quite strongly that his son “remove that two-faced snake” from his house but the son refused. Something about this situation strikes me as out of the ordinary. Why would the duke’s heir take such a no-account girl as his ward? The duke was once her father’s patron, but by all accounts that ended badly, though I don’t know why. I will endeavor to find more.

A traitor in Caine House who’d been watching her every move. Icy fingers ran through her. “Mrs. Wade,” she whispered, suddenly afraid for Leo. If anyone realized precisely what their relationship was he’d be ruined. Or worse.

“Her loyalty was easy to buy. She has some outstanding debts,” Rosalind explained. “You were a potential liability from the start. One with access to a great deal of resources. We took a vote on whether you were too dangerous to use. Ingrid wanted to kill you.”

Lena shoved to her feet, the chair squealing on the floor. She couldn’t stop shivering. The sweats from earlier had vanished, her body feeling as though someone had turned a faucet from hot to cold. “What do you intend to do with me?”

“If I wanted you dead, you would be. That was never my intention.” Rosalind gestured to the side. “Would you like some tea? You’ve gone white as a ghost.”

“I don’t want any of your damned tea, thank you very much. And considering recent events I’m not sure I believe you.”

“Mendici? That was nothing.”

“I’m talking about the humanist who held a damned knife to my throat the other day and threatened my brother!” she snapped.

Rosalind stilled. “I know nothing of this.”

Lena licked her lips, uncertain whether to believe her or not. “You want me to break the treaty.”

“You told Mr. Mandeville no, that you wanted to meet with us first.”

“Then someone wasn’t listening,” Lena replied. “I was delivering Mandeville’s message to my contact in the Echelon.” She tipped her chin up. “Someone accosted me and held a knife to my throat. They said I had to destroy the treaty or they’d hurt my brother. They had one of his toys, from his room. A place nobody should be able to get to. And,” she whispered, “they were a blue blood.”

The color washed out of Rosalind’s face. “You’re sure? They didn’t follow you there—”

“They knew the humanist codes,” Lena replied. “Knew things only someone close to the Council could know. About Will’s involvement in the treaty. And where I would be delivering the letter to. It had to be my contact.”

“That had nothing to do with us,” Rosalind said.

“I thought you were in charge?”

A long, drawn-out moment. “Not everything around here is what it seems,” Rosalind murmured. “What if I told you the draining factories were not our doing? That I knew nothing of this threat against you?”

Lena stared her in the eye, forcing herself to be strong. Have courage. Like Will would.
No, don’t think of that
. She balled her fists. Choked the pain down. She could fall apart later. “What if I told you I didn’t believe you?”

Rosalind grimaced and leaned back in her chair. “What I’m about to tell you must never leave this room.” At Lena’s nod she continued. “As I’m certain you’ve realized, there are two factions amongst the humanists. Those that fight for freedom and those that fight for revenge. It wasn’t always so, but a year ago we made a daring attack on one of the enclaves and freed a group of mechs. We needed their skills in working metal. Unfortunately, they’ve not been as cooperative as we’d hoped for. There’s a splinter group within the faction, taking matters into their own hands and using our name and information to wreak havoc.”

“Why not cut your ties with them?”

Another long look as if wondering whether to trust her. “Come,” Rosalind finally said, pushing to her feet. “I have something to show you.”

There was no point resisting. And she was starting to grow curious now. “Where are we going?”

“To the cellars.”

Pushing into the dark corridor, Rosalind grabbed a lantern from the wall and led her along the tunnel until they finally came to a small door. The smell of chemical lingered in the air. Hanging the lantern from a nail in the wall, Rosalind tugged a key from her shirt and opened the door ahead of them.

Dark shadows waited silently, the faint gleam of lantern light shining off cold steel. Rosalind lifted the lantern and stepped through, spilling light into the enormous cavern and chasing away the shadows. Dozens of enormous automatons sat still and silent, the spark of gaslight absent from their eyes. Dozens more of the metal suits that Rollins had been strapped into. Rows of Percys.

“These are the Cyclops.” Pride warmed the other woman’s voice and she handed the lantern to Lena. Stepping forward, she ran a hand over the hydraulic hose of the heavy steel arm. The hollow tube of the flamethrower on its arm gleamed.

Leaning under the arm, Rosalind hit a button. With a hiss, the chest cavity opened and the head slid back revealing a hollow space wide enough to fit a man. Rosalind stepped up on the Cyclops’s bent knee and hopped into the cavity. Turning around, she eased back and slid a leather harness around her chest and waist. Two handles rested at arm height. She gripped them, pressing a number of levers and twisting a dial. The steel carapace of the chest slid back into place, a thrumming sound coming from deep within.

“Takes a few minutes to heat the boiler packs,” Rosalind explained, her small, heart-shaped face peering over the top of the chest piece. With an expression of concentration, she toyed with something inside and then the hydraulic hoses hissed, the Cyclops straightening to its full height of ten feet. “They’re fully mobile, with more flexibility and control than a metaljacket and run on a liter of water a day.” With a sudden smile, she forced the arm to lift. “We modeled the flamethrowers on the Spitfires. Burns like buggery when you hit something with it.” The fingers on the end of the iron arm gave a wiggle, revealing complete dexterity. “Mech work,” Rosalind explained. “The whole thing is mech work.”

“That’s why you need them.”

Rosalind grimaced and the Cyclops sank back down, its engines fading. She slung the steel chest plate open and hopped down. “Aye. The plans were ours.” A brief look in her direction. “But the work’s theirs.” A rusty laugh. “The Echelon forced them into the enclaves to work steel for them and earn out the repayment of their mech enhancements. Not once did they suspect we’d turn their own technology—the skills they taught the mechs—against them. It’s the one thing we humans have never been able to counter. We might have been able to overwhelm the blue bloods in France and put them to the guillotine, but our blue bloods are smarter and hide behind automaton armies. Human flesh can’t fight metal. So we must even the odds.”

“To fight for freedom,” Lena said, with a slightly sarcastic lilt. “It sounds remarkably like fighting for revenge.”

“Do you think the Echelon are simply going to turn around and give us our rights?” A hint of anger stirred Rosalind’s voice. “Perhaps if we ask nicely?”

“People are going to die.”

“They already do. Four hundred and thirty men and women took to the streets to protest against the latest hike in the blood taxes. The Echelon mowed them down with the Trojan cavalry, leaving barely a hundred alive.”

“They wouldn’t have raised the blood taxes if the draining factories hadn’t exploded. Now there’s a shortage and the Echelon need blood fast. Don’t you see? This becomes a cycle of blood and death!”

Rosalind jerked the lantern out of Lena’s hands. “I’m disappointed. I thought you would understand. Especially considering where the plans for the Cyclops came from.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Your own father. Sir Artemus Todd, with his brilliant, erratic mind. He spent the last year of his life discovering a blue blood’s weaknesses. We use the toxin he created to incapacitate them and his firebolt bullets to kill them. Instead of fleeing from Vickers with you, with his family, he risked his life to place his final plans for the Cyclops in our hands. It cost him everything, but he’ll forever be remembered amongst our ranks.”

Lena could barely remember the night they’d been forced to flee. Being shaken awake early in the morning and bundled into a carriage. Her father demanding that she look after Charlie, and though she’d seen him speaking with Honoria, pressing a coded diary into her hands, she hadn’t caught any of their words.

That night had changed her life forever. Torn from her lessons, her world, her hopes of a future amongst the Echelon, she’d been dragged into the dark, grim confines of the rookeries. All she’d known was that her father’s patron Vickers—the duke for whom he performed his brilliant experiments—wanted them dead.

She’d never known why.

“Father was a humanist?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly.

“To the bone.”

Another shock on a seemingly never-ending series of them. Lena reached out, trying to find the wall as her knees shook.

“That’s why we wanted you,” Rosalind continued. “Your sister had betrayed his memory by marrying a blue blood. She could be of no use to us. You, however, showed some skill with clockwork and cogs. You design things that could be useful—”

Lena’s mind made the leap. “You think I could learn to create the Cyclops?” Then there would be no more need for the mechs. Would Rosalind—or Mercury rather, for she was starting to see the difference between the two—simply have them killed? The way she’d done to Mendici? A shiver ran down her spine. What would Mercury do if Lena said no?

There was nowhere to run. To hide. No allies remaining. Not even—

No, don’t think of him
. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, steadying breath, trying to ignore the nausea.

Think
.

The only way Rosalind could have known of Lena’s skill with clockwork was from Mr. Mandeville. Suddenly the way he’d always watched over her so carefully became something far more sinister.