Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (34 page)

He smiles.

“You see, I’m playing a little game of hide-and-seek with the guards, and so far I’m winning. You don’t want me to lose, do you?”

The boy shakes his head.

“Good, ’cause I don’t want to lose either. But I’m going to lose if they find me in here. I need to find another way out. Do you know another way for me to escape without using the door?”

The boy frowns.

“Come now, surely a curious little boy like you knows some secret passageway. Another door, maybe? A hole in the wall?”

The boy bursts into a smile. He scrambles to the backside of the closet, revealing a dumbwaiter inside the wall, behind a cupboard door.

“Well done!” I ruffle his hair as I climb in. “Now,” I whisper, the sound of boots approaching. “I want you to count to ten, then open the door
very slowly
. Do you hear me?”

The boy nods.

“You can count to three, can’t you?”

He nods again.

“Good, here you are.” I drop the peeler into his hand and his eyes light up. Boots scuffle outside the door.

“Now don’t forget,” I lower my voice, “a full count of ten then, step out with your hands raised. That’s very important. Don’t forget that bit. The guards don’t like it if you don’t play by the rules.”

Shoulders crash against the door.

“Ready?” I crawl in on the shelf and cross my legs. “One—” I pull on the rope.

“Two—” I launch myself up inside the brick-lined chimney inside the wall.

“Steamrifles ready!”

“Three…”

“Come out or we’re coming in!”

“Four…”

The boy throws open the door.

“Don’t shoot!” one of the guards shouts as I ascend the chimney as quickly as I can.

“What do you have in your hand, boy?”

“A peeler,” he says.

“Where did you get it?”

The boy hesitates. “From the nice monster, getting away in the closet,” he says.

I spill from the dumbwaiter on the third floor, literally tumbling out of it. Dashing over the turquoise tiles in the room, I sail out into the hallway, clambering up the hardwood to the balcony at its end. Throwing open the garrison windows, I step out onto the ledge, greeted by a massive tree. I can barely see through it to the ground, its leaves are so thick.
Perfect.
Likewise, the guardsmen patrolling the grounds won’t be able to see me.

Just beyond the tree the mechanical ravens lurk, presiding over the gates through which we entered. Just a few meters separate me from the end of the nearest branch. Though flimsy, it’ll have to do.

My head cranks around at the sound of voices barreling up the stairs. The snouts of steamrifles flash. “I’ll check the second floor, you head up to the third!”

I swallow. Here’s hoping the branch holds me. I turn back, sink my hand into my pack, and search for my rod, pulling it out by the telescope end. Steadying the wheel on the side, I hurl the rod up and over my shoulder, then fling it forward out the window like a fishing pole toward the tree, just as I did out over the table that day with the bacon, in the biggest cast I’ve ever attempted.

The fingers at the other end clamp down around a branch, and I jump, hanging off the end of the rod. My knees pulled tight to my chest, I swing ape-like out over the yard, skimming the heads of the guards, and disappear into the leaves.

T
hirty nine

Eyelet

I weave through the city, lost, my mind consumed with Urlick. Did he get out of the Academy safely, or have Smrt’s men captured him?

Will they capture me?

I struggle to remember the way back to the quarry, Brigsmen following close behind. I’ve no idea which way to go, what roads to take. Nothing looks familiar. The first time Urlick lead the way.

Reaching up, I touch my face, startled by the feel of skin. The mask of Ida lies on the floor at the Academy. No time to retrieve it. Only time to run. My eyes fix on the wanted poster nailed to a pole on the opposite side of the street. My stomach curls. The face on the poster is mine. I suck in a sharp breath, realizing they’ll be others posted all over town. If I’m discovered I’ll be jailed, or worse, locked up in the asylum. I cannot risk being seen.

I flip my hood up over my head and duck off the main street into an alley. “Pan!” I call to the sky when I think it’s safe. “Pan, where are you! I need your help! Pan! Where are you, please!”

A steamplough whistle shrieks in the distance, jerking my spine to its full length. I clutch my chest. A steamplough. I must be close. There was a steam yard right next to the quarry. Urlick stashed the cycle among the boulders. The whistle sounds again.

I pick up my skirts and dash toward it, hurdling a hedge, landing stiff-legged in a farmer’s garden. I trip through a tangle of carrot tops and shabbily-kept peas, clear a goat, and springboard over the arse of a mule before I’m through, darting in and out of fruit trees and around the corner of the barn, only to end up where I’ve already been.

“Blast!”
I swear, for the first time ever. A filthy habit I’ve picked up from Urlick. “Oh, Urlick, where are you?” I spin in circles, pinching the stitch from my side. “Pan! Urlick! Someone!
Please…
”

A steamrifle shot rings through the trees. I scramble for cover behind a hedge, crouching low and silent, cupping my pendant in my hand to hide its pulsing light, terrified it’ll give me away.

“Over there,” I hear a voice say. Boots rush forward, then off in the opposite direction. I breathe a sigh of relief. After a count of ten I step out from the hedge, only to be sent scuttling back as a streak of black clips the back of my bustle, then rises up into the clouds. It descends again moments later, cawing.

“Pan?” I squint at the blur in the sky.

She wings back around, appearing through the cloud cover, her red beak shining like a beacon of hope through the grey. “Oh, thank God it’s you! The quarry, Pan, I have to get to the quarry.”

She caws, signaling for me to follow. I bolt after her, eyes fixed on the sky. “Lower!” I shout, following glimpses of her black feathers through the cloud-choked sky. “You have to fly lower! I’m losing you!”

She lowers herself, twisting through the streets. I burst after her, my heart thundering, my boots crashing against the cobblestones. Before I know it, we’ve reached the dancing mechanical fence line that separates Gears from Brethren. The one I passed through the first time, when I entered Gears alone.

“The hole!” I shout to Pan in the sky. “You’ve got to help me find the hole!” I gulp as she dives, winging her way through it, soaring into the sky on the other side.

“Well done!” I shout, racing after her, stopping to toss Father’s journals through the hole ahead of me. I lunge headfirst, my chin scraping the dirt, collect the books on the other side and run, following Pan’s lead through the backstreets of Gears, as Brigsmen pour through the formal gates.

“This way,” Pan calls, her voice strained and gravelly.

“You spoke!” I gasp, stumbling forward. “Your voice! It’s returned!”

“So it has,” Pan nods her head. The surprise in her eyes is as big as in mine.

Another steam whistle sounds, this time very close.

Pan’s wings catch on a stream and tip her to the side. She almost falls from the sky. Regaining her balance, she veers sharply left, swooping low between two buildings. I follow. She wings out over the city’s square and I panic. “What are you doing?” I slow. “You’re going the wrong way!”

Pan loops around and swoops down in front of my face. “Follow me,” she orders, staring at me firmly, like she’s my
mother
, her eyes flecked blue and green.

“I can’t!” I shake my head. “There are too many people. If I enter the market someone will recognize me.”

Pan hovers in place, holding her gaze. “How much do you trust me?” she says, then wings away.

I gasp, hearing my father’s words, my mother’s voice in hers. Perhaps Urlick was right. Perhaps she is nothing but a common household parrot, picking up on words and phrases my parents have said. No. I shake my head. Pan is much more than that. Look at all the things she’s done for me. Her loyalty alone proves she’s more than a dimwitted mimicking parrot.

I stumble on, following Pan through the low rolling fog around a corner, into the center the bustling Market Square of Gears. My likeness hangs on every signpost, at every corner. The terror of that reality worms through my head. A flash of me dangling from the gallows haunts me, followed by another of me caged in an asylum with Smrt holding the key.

I’ll die before I let that happen. I swear I will. I shake off the images and push forward, flipping my hood up over my head.

“Posies?” I slam into an old peasant woman, not looking where I’m going. She stuffs a half-dead bouquet under my nose.

“No thank you,” I say, pushing them away.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Her pupil's dance. Her prying eyes linger dangerously on my face.

“No,” I breathe, rushing past her, my knees knocking beneath me.

Her eyes dart to a poster and back. She sprouts a toothless gin. “I have seen you. You’re the girl!” she calls after me. “The one on the poster!”

Heads twist in my direction.

Pan shrieks, diving down from the sky at the woman. “You nasty lot, get outta ‘ere!” The woman shoos her off. People scatter on the street.

I run ahead, blind to where I’m going, veering off the main street, into a corridor. Pan joins me and I breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

“I told you that wasn’t a good idea.”

We weave through the back streets. Four tight turns later the fog lifts just enough for me to make out the skeleton of a station. Loading docks loom to the left; steamploughs rest on the tracks to the right. The quarry falls over the edge behind.

“We’ve made it!” I cry, smiling up at Pan. “Now to get to the cycle!”

I race forward—under the disguise of the cloud cover—falling back up against the side of the steamplough engine, hiding myself inside its waft of steam.

“Brigsmen,” I breathe.

Men in black leather boots and steely suits patrol not only the sleamplough yard, but the rim and the basin of the quarry as well. They swarm like flies over a withering corpse, steamrifles at the ready. Every inch of the quadrant has been staked out, not a rock left unturned.

“How did they know we’d be coming here?” I whisper to Pan as she lands on my shoulder.

“I don’t know,” she shrugs.

“What are we going to do now?”

I lean out around the front of the engine, searching the premises for signs of Urlick. “Do you see him?” I whisper to Pan. “I don’t see Urlick anywhere.”

The steamplough sounds its horn, giving my heart a start. Steam chugs from between the boxcar’s wheels. My eyes catch on a Brigsman standing next to the boulders where Urlick stashed the cycle earlier. My heart thrashes wildly inside my chest. He jams his billy club in and out of the rock crevice, peering between the boulders.

“Don’t move, Bertie,” I whisper to the air. “We need you. Don’t reveal yourself.”

At last the Brigsman gives up and I let out my breath, relieved as I watch him stalk away.

“Pan,” I say. “Will you take a look?”

She nods, lifting off of my shoulder. I hold my breath as she slowly circles the entire yard, scanning the ground from left to right. She dips into the basin, flying in low lines up and down the belly of the quarry before returning to me, a look of despair on her face.

“Nothing,” I say.

She shakes her head.

“Do you suppose he’s been caught?”

“Could be.”

I twist my hands together.
If I’m not there within the half hour, leave without me,
I hear Urlick say. I check my chrono-cuff. It’s been over three quarters of an hour. Something must be wrong. I wasted time, lost. But Urlick knows the way.