On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (20 page)

“Bas,” he rasped. “Bas, stop!”

Bastiano did not hear him, but choked on the wine, gasping for air and reaching for another bottle, uncorking it quickly.

“Bas, stop it, listen to me!” Torsione dropped the turkey leg and lurched forward, groping his way down the table on weak knees and wobbly hands. Pain seared through his left leg, worse than before, and he threw himself forward, knocking the wine from Bastiano’s hands. Bas roared in frustration, startling some birds out of the trees nearby.

“I am so bloody thirsty!” he bellowed, tears welling in his eyes.

“It’s not real, it’s not real,” slurred Torsione, desperation pitching his voice higher as he grappled with Bastiano, trying to force him away from the table.

“Let me go!”

“No, Bas—”

“Let me go, I say!”

“Stop it!”

A loud growl caught them both by surprise, resonating in their bones. Torsione craned his head around at the noise and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as a prickling fear spread throughout his body. He squeezed Bas’ arms. The growling faded, but left utter silence in its wake. No cicadas buzzed, no birds chattered. Just silence.

“What was that?” Bastiano’s voice was fragile as a glass ornament.

Sounded like a tiger if I ever heard one,
Torsione thought. He looked nervously at Bas. “We should go,” he muttered, his pulse racing.

“Go? Go where?” Bas breathed.

“Back. To the beach? I don’t know. Just . . . quietly.”

They managed a few steps toward the way they’d come, but then there was a buzzing, hissing sound somewhere just ahead of them, and they stopped short.

“Rattlesnakes?”“ Bas sobbed softly.

“I don’t see anything!” Torsione turned this way and that. “I hear something, too, but I don’t see it.”

“What do we do?”

“That way,” Tor pointed to the far edge of the clearing. “Go that way!”

They both turned and began to run, legs jelly-like in disoriented fear, and they had almost reached the forest when the sky went black and the beating of mighty wings stirred a cold whirlwind all around them. Bas cried out and recoiled as tree branches whipped at him in the gusty air, and Tor felt the wind pushing him back into the clearing, away from the tree line. He lost his footing, falling onto his back, and saw it above him. He profoundly wished he hadn’t.

The sky above the clearing had filled with black fog, as dense and dark as the deepest ocean trench, with sizzling crackles of electric white and green that illuminated the churning clouds. Enormous talons uncurled from the blackness. Lightning flashed to reveal impossibly hideous teeth spread wide in a predatory smile, and Torsione felt his insides go completely slack. It was enormous, larger even than the elephants at the wedding in Tunitz.

Its face and head were human in shape, but its body was more like that of a massive bird of prey, whose wingspan was too large to see all at once, and whose plumage looked more like bronze and silver knives made dark with time and dried blood. Its eyes were as dark as its claws, terrifying and shiny when the lightning shone, but otherwise so black they appeared missing entirely. It was as though the deepest, most hideous and impossible nightmare had been plucked from the farthest reaches of his imagination and brought to life before him.

Torsione couldn’t breathe. Then Bastiano screamed, and the horror descended from the fog to land on the table in the middle of the feast. A stench like that of a spoiled corpse in the desert rolled over them, and Torsione felt his stomach heave sharply as he scrambled to get up.

“Angels and ministers of grace, defend us,” he choked, covering his mouth and nose with a sleeve. It didn’t help much. The thing perched on the feast table smiled wider, and Torsione watched as the food began to rot before his very eyes, blackening and crumbling, fouled by the very presence of the monster.

YOUR PRAYERS ARE AS WEAK AS YOUR BODIES,
said the hideous creature, without moving its mouth. Both Torsione and Bastiano clapped their hands over their ears and cried out. The words scraped the inside of their minds, invasive, scratching their eardrums and grinding noisily in the hollow places of their bones.
YOU DARED TO TASTE OF THE FEAST LAID OUT FOR ME? POOR HUNGRY MEN. WERE I A WILLING SORT, I WOULD LET YOU FEED BEFORE I KILL YOU, BUT IT IS NOT MY WAY. I MUCH PREFER TO PLAY WITH MY FOOD BEFORE I DINE.

Piles of mush and refuse slopped off the sides of the table as the harpy strutted, rooster-like, back and forth. Torsione retched again, and he could hear Bastiano sobbing softly.
We
’
ve gone mad,
Torsione thought helplessly.
Completely and utterly mad.

YOU ONLY WISH YOU WERE MAD,
sneered the harpy, fixing its black eyes on Torsione.
YOU AREN
’
T MAD YET. BUT YOU WILL BE, FOR A BRIEF AND SHINING MOMENT, YOU WILL BE PERFECTLY MAD, AND THEN I WILL EAT YOU.

Torsione caught his breath, and the metal bird wings unfolded again, vast and gleaming. The harpy chuckled, a sound that made his skin go cold and his gut clench. Then the monstrous creature swooped at them, and he screamed.

“I don’t know,” said Ferran for the fortieth time, as he set down his end of the trunk. “I don’t know what to do with him.”

He and Mira sat down on the spongy moss in a small thicket to examine the metal man in the trunk. Mira had wanted to hide him, take him deep into the forest, away from anywhere her father might accidentally find him. They had dragged the box out of the sun, but now found themselves at a loss for how to proceed.

“What did you call this thing?” Mira prompted him as she lifted the lid.

The metal man lay inside the trunk, for all appearances completely shut down and somewhat battered from his journey. His legs were detached, oddly enough, and he bore several dents in his chest plate, possibly from his own legs jostling about during the wreck of the
Brilliant Albatross
.

“Gonzo,” said Ferran tenderly.

“Gonzo?” Mira shifted the name in her mouth like a sour berry. “It has a strange name.”

“He. He has a strange name,” corrected Ferran a little sharply. “And it’s not that strange, it suits him.” It was good to see the serene, round features of the king’s most primitive mech, even if Gonzo’s round eyelights never regained their startling green glow.

“It is not an animal or a man. Why do you call it by name and assign it a gender?”

“Because he has a mind and a personality of his own,” Ferran said coolly. “Gonzo is the most valuable courtly advisor my father has ever had. He was my tutor when I was a child. I could never win when we played chess, though. He always thought faster than I did.” He smiled a little.

Mira was silent a moment. Then she said, “Are you sure it—he—cannot be repaired?”

“I’m no engineer. I don’t know how I could reattach these, especially without the right tools.” He examined one of the dislocated legs.

Mira bent forward suddenly, placing her cheek against the smooth brass chest plate. Ferran looked at her in bewilderment and opened his mouth to ask what in the world she was doing, but she shushed him before he could speak. After a moment of silence, she gestured at him to lean closer. He stared closely at the weathered metal, but Mira reached across and turned his cheek with one hand, pressing his ear firmly to the brass.

“Hey! Ow!” he exclaimed, more startled than anything.

“
Shh!” Mira commanded.

Ferran frowned, but then he heard it. His eyes widened. A faint whirring came from within the metal casing. Occasionally, there was a solid click that made Gonzo’s chest vibrate a little, buzzing against Ferran’s skin.

“He’s alive!” Ferran exclaimed, sitting upright again, relief flooding through him. “This could change everything!”

Mira made a face. “Alive? It’s made of metal. It can’t be alive. But it is possibly still functional,” she admitted.

“He’s as alive as we are,” argued Ferran. “Trust me on that. We have to find a way to restore him.” He picked up one of the metal legs. It did not seem to have been torn off by the crash of the
Brilliant Albatross
, but rather intentionally separated in order to fit Gonzo into the case.

“If that’s so, why is he in a trunk?” Mira examined the other leg.

Ferran thought about it for a moment. “We heard the ship’s alarms going off, and Gonzo came to my room to fetch me. We went down into the hold and the servants made tea, and we were instructed to wait until the captain gave the order to abandon ship.” He paused, and Mira looked up. “Then someone said that something had gone wrong, that the lifepods had been ejected without us.”

He swallowed, remembering. “The ship dropped out of the sky, and I blacked out. I’ve never been good with heights. Or speed. When I came to, it was starting to get light out. The water was cold, and I was alone. I kept smashing into bits of the ship. The water was trying to pull me back down. I found that piece of hull and held on, hoping it would stay afloat. After that, I must have passed out again, and the next I knew, you had pulled me to shore.”

Mira stared at him, an odd mixture of emotions on her face. “But the trunk?” she said finally.

Ferran shrugged. “I don’t remember him being there in the hold with us. He came down with me, but he must have left. I don’t know who put him in the trunk.” He looked down again at the metal man, laying a hand on the smooth brass arm. “Poor Gonzo.”

Mira stood up suddenly. “This is foolish. You’re mourning a machine.”

“He’s not—he’s not just a machine.” Ferran furrowed his brow, frustrated at her inability to adjust to the concept. “I know that’s hard for you to understand. But he was like a family member.”

“It is just a machine.” Mira narrowed her eyes. “We should open it up and use its parts. We could build countless other things from it, depending on what’s in working order.” She looked down at the prone metal body. “If those eyes still work, we could use them for lights at night—head lamps! I can finally study the night-walking animals. And the night-blooming flowers. And diving! Diving at night!” Mira’s eyes widened excitedly, and she leaned over to examine the dull green optical orbs.

“We can’t scrap him!” Ferran was mortified and swatted her hand away from Gonzo’s face. “No! I won’t let you!”

“You’re being foolish and sentimental,” exclaimed Mira, incredulous. “It has many parts that would be very useful, perhaps the difference between living and dying here. You haven’t even spent an entire day here. You don’t know what the elements can do. Or the animals. Just because you haven’t seen the tiger yet doesn’t mean it isn’t out there. There is so much good that could come of these parts, if put to other uses. This place, this island is wild. There is no one here to shelter you. There is no palace. Do you understand that, prince?”

Her eyes were fixed on him, and for a second, Ferran felt swept away by their unusual blue-green color; but the way she emphasized his title made Ferran’s skin crawl uncomfortably. “He’s mine. You can’t use him for scrap,” he growled defensively, grasping one of the legs tightly.

“What are you going to do, drag it around all day? What about when night falls and you’re asleep? Why shouldn’t I just pick it apart then?” She laughed then, and it was a strange, airy sound, as though she did not do so often.

Ferran stood up, too. He felt his cheeks hot with sun and anger. “You will do no such thing. I am your prince and that is an order
.
”

There was a pause, a hesitation in the argument. Mira’s expression was as stunned as if he’d raised a hand to her. Then her brow darkened.

“I,” she said fiercely, “am not your subject.”

Her gaze flashed with an unnatural brightness that hurt Ferran’s own eyes, and before he could stop her, she hauled off and slammed the leg she was holding into the metal man’s chest with a resounding clang. A bright flash of blue-white light exploded on the impact, sending Ferran staggering backward, shielding his eyes. The clang shuddered and buzzed in his ears, fading slowly, and he lowered his arm.

Mira looked surprised, but not as shocked as Ferran felt. Their eyes met, her blue-green stare devoid of the white light now. Then there was a noisy clicking sound, and they both looked down.

“System reloading,” announced the nonchalant voice of the mechanized man. His eyes, round and faintly green, began to glow from within, slowly becoming the familiar bold beacons they always had been to Ferran.

“Oh, my gods,” breathed Ferran, his heart leaping into his throat. “What did you do?”

Mira did not speak, but took a calm moment to drop the metal leg and examine her hands, back and front alike.

“Gonzo,” Ferran muttered, dropping the leg he held. He leaned closer, crouching down. “Gonzo, are you in there? Gonzo!”

The brass face tilted to the side to look at him as though he were a poorly sighted person without glasses on. “One moment please. Your patience is indispensable.” The whirring picked up speed from within the metal torso, and Gonzo’s eye-lights flickered and brightened.

“What was that?” demanded Ferran. He stared up at Mira, his feelings rapidly shifting from awe to joy to anger, and back again. “What was that light? How did you do that?”