Magical Mechanications (19 page)

The princess threw the two sacks over her shoulder with a grunt and then stepped out into foreign territory. The dock-master came bustling over to her, wearing a brown coat bearing the eagle crest. “Two ducats a day,” he snapped, not meeting her eyes, but instead scribbling down notes on the ferry.

“Actually,” Eleanor interrupted him, “I am looking to sell it and take up lodgings in the city.”

The dock-master’s sharp blue eyes darted up to meet hers. “Lot of that these days. You should find Master Pettingren on the lower docks. He’s been buying up airships of all sizes. People appear to think war is coming. We’ve had to lash in three dozen new ships this month at least.”

Eleanor shuddered. The Cities grew a little, but that many new arrivals seeking the perceived safety of the Eagle meant that the free travelers of the skies were also getting nervous.

She had to hurry. She sold the stolen ferry to the thin, but remarkably cheery Master Pettingren very easily, and earned a healthy sack of ducats; even in a time of approaching war a ship was still an expensive object. Then she found herself a small workshop in the lower hull of an airship hulk.

It was full of desperate people, packed into tiny rooms in the lumbering ship. The place ran with gossip and contagion in equal amounts. Again, Eleanor forced herself to ignore all that. Instead she set herself to the calculations of what she would need. Then the princess went into the city and bought the strands of silver that Stella had said were required for the cloaks. She bought all she could find, but by her calculations she knew that it would only be enough for six cloaks. She would have to venture out later and find more.

Still it was surprisingly cheap. That she had not expected.

Once she said thank you to the shop owner and gathered up her materials, she knew that had to be the last time she spoke. It was too important a task that she couldn’t leave anything to chance. Stella had told her the magic and the crafting would requite everything she had. She would have to give it that.

As she returned to her little cell, she weighed the remaining coins in her pocket. She hoped they would be enough to not only buy the remaining silver she would need, but also to purchase the things a human body needed as well. Silver might be cheap in the City of Eagles, but food was not.

She would just have to do the best she could. In her cell she laid out all the tools from the two canvas bags. There were various sizes of little saw, some with diamond blades, a set of gleaming screwdrivers that tingled in her fingertips. And then there were the starlight opals.

Eleanor sat back on her heels. She had been thinking what might be required to interfere with the workings of the swan machines, and though she had many ideas it was the use of the opals that she was really guessing at. Their function was something Stella had not had time to explain. That was the sticking point, and the one thing she was least confident about.

However doubts had to be left behind. First, Eleanor laid out and measured the silver tape, and hoped her calculations were correct. She had only the glimpses of the swan machines she’s managed to catch from the prison window, and so was forced to rely on her own sense of size to go by.

The clockwork underneath of the cloaks was the easiest part for her to do. She designed spikes that would drive into the workings of the mechanical swans, locking the skins on them tight—this was just in case Madame Escrew had set some defenses on her devices. The skins that would hold these mechanics were by far the harder to construct. The silver tape was flexible, but reluctant to give itself up to her. She knew that she had to weave the skin in just the right way. It had to be strong and yet conform to a shape.

The solution she settled on was one that drew inspiration from ancient armor—the kind that she had seen on display in paintings in her father’s palace. It was called fish armor, though no one in any city had seen a fish for ten generations.

First she fixed the silver tape into a tiny loop of no greater circumference than she could make with her index finger and thumb. The next loop she threaded through the first and welded it shut. It was long, tiresome work that made her head, her eyes and her fingers ache. It would have been nice to spare a curse word now and then; but she was careful never to do that. Always in her mind was the witch’s reminder that she needed to put everything into it.

She ate little with her stinging fingers, but still ventured out to buy what silver she could find. A princess had no experience at thievery, and dare not risk being caught—that would mean an end to her project. So instead she bought what little cheap food could be found. Though in times of war there was little enough of that.

So as the days and weeks went past, Eleanor’s figure began to dwindle, and her mind grew foggy with hunger. Now the cloak making was going on by shear habit.

The role of the starlight opals was something that still eluded her, until she was passing—or rather staggering—through the market and saw an aristocratic lady with a cloak wrapped around her against the chill. Eleanor’s head jerked up, and her gaze followed the woman. Her garment was festooned with glimmering beads. Despite her weariness and hunger, she knew this would be the best way to add the opals to her own project.

She wobbled her way back to her dim rooms, and set to work immediately.

However, a strange young woman, who communicated with gestures alone, had made an impression in a city on the verge of all out war. Gossip was not something that Eleanor had calculated in her plans.

She was working at the inner cage of the fourth cloak, when the flimsy door was kicked in. She hadn’t eaten in three days, but somehow she managed to hold back a scream, or any other sound.

“There she is—the witch!” The voice seemed to fill the tiny room, and Eleanor staggered a little as she rose to her feet. Her tools scattered on the floor, and she thought how in the sky she was going to find them again.

Guardsmen struggled to enter such a small space, but all of them were pointing and shouting. None of them used the word ‘Swan’ for which she was very grateful. Still ‘witch’ was not that much better. In a world constructed on floating airships bound together, the punishment was to see if the witch could fly. If she plummeted to her death then she was obviously innocent, if she did not then she would be weighed with stones until she did.

Eleanor stood tall and for a second almost spoke. Her mouth dropped open, but then she shut it with a snap. Her brothers’ fate and that of all the cities that flew the skies depended on her strength of will. It would be weak of her to falter now.

“It is as they say,” one burly guardsman rumbled. “She does not speak…even in her own defense.”

The word ‘witch’ was passed from man to angry man, and Eleanor knew there was no way out of this situation. They were blocking her exit from the room, and where could she go without her works anyway?

The four dragonflies buzzed and snapped on her windowsill, but the princess gestured them back. They would only create a worse situation. Brave little insects that they were, she didn’t want them destroyed.

Then a voice from the back snapped, “Make way, make way!”

Suddenly the guardsmen were shifting, jostling, and some of them slipping out of the tiny room. They all hurriedly got out the way to make space for the man who demanded entry.

Eleanor was sure she was hallucinating. Though she did not know the tall young man, with the military uniform who loomed in the doorway, she did recognize the silver badge on the scarlet sash over his shoulder. It was an eagle, with its wings spread. Only one person could wear such a thing. She had seen its like only on her father.

This was the King of the City of Eagles. Eleanor wobbled on her feet, as her stomach growled, and her brain struggled to catch up. This was the last person she wanted to seem weak in front of, but going so long on so little food finally caught up with her.

Eleanor’s vision blurred as her legs buckled. She tried desperately to prop herself up against the wall, but it was treacherous and she ended up sliding to the floor. Throughout it all, she kept her jaw locked shut, refusing to let out even a pained sigh.

Through her greying vision, she saw the King bend down towards her. He had startling eyes; they gleamed gold like a hawk’s. He turned and commented over his shoulder, “She doesn’t much look like a witch to me. And most certainly not a very good one.”

“But sire, you know the temple will…” from her place on the floor she couldn’t tell who spoke.

Darkness was washing over her, but the last thing that Eleanor heard was the King’s word, “We must keep an eye on her, that is for certain.”

*****

When Eleanor returned to consciousness, it was to find herself in a bed as soft as the one she had left back in the Swan City. For a moment, a blissful moment, she believed she had imagined the whole horrible Madame Escrew event, but then as she sat up, she realized that she was not in the city of swans, but one of eagles. It was the decorations that told her that immediately.

Great birds of prey were shown everywhere; in tapestries, paintings, and most disturbingly of all in sculpture, where a spread-winged eagle had a tormented swan in its claws.

That bought her back to reality with a start. So she slid out of bed, and gently to her feet. Immediately, the smell of food on a nearby table drew her over. Eleanor had devoured all of the soup and bread, before she even worked out it was onion broth and good millet bread.

Feeling her brain starting to work, like a furnace finally fed coal, she began to explore. The room was decorated in outrageously rich fashion—even more so than she was used to in her home. It was a two room suite of some kind. Eleanor entered cautiously to find the second room was an observatory. Her father had one very similar in his own palace. This was however even larger, filled with many long benches, and on these were all her tools, the cloaks in progress. Even the starlight opals were there and the four little mechanical dragonflies.

She rushed over and ran her hands over them to make sure she was not imagining it.

“I think you will find everything there,” the prince, standing in the window, overlooking the swirling clouds, had gone all unnoticed by her.

A hundred questions bubbled in her mind, but she managed to hold them back.

“I imagine you are wondering,” the King said, stepping closer, those emerald eyes locked on her, “why I would give you this chance to complete your work, when you might be some kind of witch.”

Eleanor looked away, totally unsure how to deal with a man without her tongue.

“Well,” he said, picking up the jar of starlight opals, “You are a most unusual one, and I think perhaps you are silent by choice.” The look he shot her was direct and probing.

The princess had never felt such a wash of warmness over her body for a man’s sake. Certainly there had been suitors in her time, but as the sole sister in a line of eleven brothers, not many had lingered long. Now she wished most fervently for the freedom to use her voice; show him her wit and intelligence. Instead, all she could do was smile. Even writing was something she dare not attempt.

The King shook his head, as if emerging from a deep pool of water. “But where are my manners? I have not properly introduced myself! I am King Nikolai Swoop, of the City of Eagles.” His fingers tweaked the cravat almost nervously.

A little confused herself, Eleanor picked up an end of the silver metallic tape, and gestured for his permission to begin. The little ticking of the clock in her head reminded her she had little time for embarrassment—or any other emotion come to think of it.

Nikolai tilted his head. “They say I should see if you fly, but I am preparing a city for war from the King of the Swans, and I cannot turn down this chance to see what you are building. None of my tinkers can fathom what this is all about. Maybe it can help my city survive.”

He seated himself on a stool near the window, out of her way, but near enough that he could observe what Eleanor was doing. And thus they proceeded.

He came and watched her every day while the dragonflies circled the observatory. Sometimes he sat silent; departing without a word after no particular length of time. She imagined he had many things to deal with since they were—as he said—on the very edge of war. Part of her—the smallest portion that she allowed freedom in those brief moments she stopped to eat—was flattered at the King’s attention.

For there were times he talked. At first they were words of a ruler; light matters of court, moments of his family history, and the minutiae of ruling that grated on him. However as the days passed he delved deeper, and perhaps emboldened by her silence, told her things about himself. He revealed his fears, his hopes and dreams.

For herself, Eleanor yearned to tell him the same, but the work and the magic held her tongue.

The mechanical delivery system was ready—well as ready as it was ever going to be, but it was the cloaks that would wrap tight around the forms of the swan machines that were the most time consuming.

As she sat on the floor, her fingers worn almost to nubs by the work, Eleanor’s mind contemplated the thousand ways that this could have been made easier. If she had the voice she could have asked Nikolai to get some of his subjects to help—but Stella had asserted that it must be done by the princess alone. Once when her fingers started bleeding, Nikolai tried to take the link work away from her and do it himself. Her frantic dismay had been enough apparently to keep from trying that again. He did however remind her to eat.