Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) (15 page)

“I do not know if Henry was ever at Pensée. I do know that for years the house was quiet but still open to visitors. Then suddenly it became a fortress. It is not wise to enter the gate.” Gabrielle carelessly tossed a log on top of the fire, and a shower of dangerous sparks burst out, rolling over the stone toward the wood floor.

“Please, we don’t have much time, and this is our only chance to save him. Can you lead us to Pensée?”

Gabrielle glanced down. Her brow creased. Then she looked back up, resigned.

“I cannot. There are too many letters coming over the channel,” she said. I felt the sting of her words even as she said them. She stood and glanced out the window. “But my birds can.”

GABRIELLE TURNED AND WALKED TO
the fire. She stoked it with several hard jabs. “There is nothing to be done for the night. You will need the light to track the bird, and it is a long journey to Pensée.” She smacked her hands together, then came to stand by me. “You men sleep on the floor here and be grateful. Meg, come with me.” She ushered me into the small bedroom, then turned back to the men. “And, John, if I wake and all my cheese is suddenly missing, I blame you.”

“It was the mice, I swear.” John held his hand to his heart.

“Mice, my boot,” Gabrielle grumbled before she shut the door to the bedroom and locked it.

The next morning we packed provisions and met
Gabrielle out behind the loft. She held a small silver bird in one hand, and a large compass in the other. The bird had a fat little body that held a complicated set of gears in its breast. With a short copper beak and dark beady eyes, it was a cute little machine, but its long silver wings were delicate, and while the tenacity of a mechanical bird much like this one had saved my life once, it was still a fallible object. We had a long way to go, and if the bird failed, Will and I would be lost.

“The compass will show you the position of the bird. He will land at the gate. I cannot help you from there. I have many people to contact if we are to recover the engine. Good luck.” She reached out and placed the compass in my hand. It felt heavy, and I could feel it ticking like a watch against my palm. Outwardly it looked much the same as any maritime compass, but the needle wasn’t pointing north. It pointed at the bird without wavering.

Gabrielle wound the silver bird, then threw it high into the air. It flapped its wings, letting out a squealing noise with each stroke against the air.

It turned south, and Will and I were on the chase. At first we ran, trying to keep the tiny bird in sight as it winged its way through the clear winter sky. Our breath turned to tendrils of fog around our faces.

Will slowed to a stop ahead of me and placed his hands on his knees as he laughed while trying to catch his breath. “Must it always be like this?”

My boots crunched through a thin patch of frost as I joined him. It was wonderful to feel both dizzy from my exertion and free. There was nothing around us save fallow fields and thick stands of barren trees. No one to judge. No one to assume. No one at all. “I hope so.”

I turned the compass over in my hands, feeling the seams and inspecting the gears under the face of the needle.

“Don’t you dare pull that thing apart to see how it works,” Will said.

“I would do no such thing,” I protested.

Will smiled at me. “You were thinking about it.”

I bowed my head and grinned, then stepped up next to him as we continued on. He was right, as always. The troll.

The day wore on while we talked as we crossed the frozen fields and wandered along the desolate country lanes. We conversed about nothing and everything at once. It was like we were speaking our letters aloud and letting our minds wander together.

The sun began to settle, low on the horizon, but we followed the compass toward the bird and Pensée.

Finally, after walking all day, I could see a large mansion atop a tall hill. Small pockets of forest tucked around the base of the hill, but even the loftiest branches didn’t reach as high as the house itself. Light from the setting sun caught in the many windows. From the distinct peaked roof with its rows of gables, to the high arched windows with balconies, it was a house built for the sky. Everything about it seemed to reach toward the heavens, especially the central dome that towered over the rest of the house.

“Do you think that is Pensée?” I was stunned. “It’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful like a grave,” Will muttered. “Come. We’ve a ways to go yet.”

Before long we reached a high and smooth wall that surrounded the base of the hill. The forest had grown around it and had concealed it from a distance. Though both Will and I looked, there was no clear way over.

The gate was equally foreboding. Corrosion had turned the gate an eerie green. Two heavy knockers in the shape of wolf heads stared at us with hollowed-out eyes. The silver bird had landed on the top of the wall, and now chirped at us. I wasn’t sure if it was in encouragement or warning.

Will pushed at the gate. “It’s locked.”

I tried the knocker, and it fell with a heavy thud against the perfectly round disk beneath the striker. I winced as the sound echoed off the hill.

There was no answer. The house remained still.

“There has to be some way in.” I smoothed my hands over the door. There was no latch, which meant that the mechanism for locking the gate was either on the inside or within the gate itself.

“Perhaps there is a way we can climb over,” Will suggested as he took a step back and inspected the wall. He ran at the wall and launched himself upward with a push of his boot against the smooth stone, but it was no use. He fell back to the ground like a cat, always on his feet. He turned and looked at me. “I could lift you.”

“I have no way down on the other side, and we don’t know what is behind the gate. Whatever it is, we should face it together.” I took a deep breath.

“A fine point.” Will removed his cap, rubbed his hair, and then pulled it back on. “For all we know, Durant is dead.”

“What a pleasant thought.” There had to be some way through. I just didn’t see it. I took a closer look at the knockers, feeling the edge of the medallion beneath the swinging ring that hung from the wolf ’s mouth. It was the perfect size for my key.

I pushed and prodded at it, but it revealed nothing.

“What are you after?” Will asked, walking back toward me after making a second attempt to scale the wall.

“The strike plate for the knocker is the right size and shape to use my key, but it’s useless. There’s nothing there.”

Will took a step back and cocked his head as he considered the gate. “Have you tried that one?” He pointed toward the knocker on the left.

I hadn’t even thought of it. Usually a left knocker was only ornamental. Most of them weren’t even able to move. Which is why no one would look for anything special there. Brilliant.

Quickly I inspected the knocker, combing over every inch of it.

Sure enough, there was a tiny latch below the strike plate. I placed my thumb on it and slid it as far as I could to the right.

Something inside it clicked, and hope surged through me. Though it was stiff with corrosion, the medallion swung to the side, revealing the cradle for my key.

I snatched the key from around my neck and pulled the cover open. The silver flower with slightly triangular petals rose out of the center of the watch exactly as it had the very first time Will and I had opened it.

I felt a tingle down my back as I fitted the silver flower into the lock. The other knocker slid sideways, revealing a tiny set of keys for a minuscule pianoforte set behind it. This was it, Papa’s lock. All I needed was for the key to reveal the correct phrase from my grandfather’s song, and the door would open. Only, my key didn’t play the tune at all.

I would have to play the entire thing. Papa had definitely been here. No one else knew the entire song. He had locked the gate to everyone but himself.

“Papa set this lock. I have to play the whole song,” I said to Will as he watched over my shoulder.

“Your grandfather was serious about keeping people out. We have to be careful.” Will placed his hand on my shoulder as I played the wandering melody.

With each note, clicks, whirrs, and other mechanical noises emanated from the large gates. Will followed the muffled echoes of sounds along the walls. They couldn’t have only been for a lock. They were too extensive.

“Meg, I think we’re winding something,” he said.

The last time we passed through such a gate, a mechanical Minotaur greeted us on the other side. Papa was both brilliant and determined to keep himself safe from a murderer. He would have no incentive to create something with restraint.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to face the genius of my grandfather when he’d been bent on defending himself, but we had to. “Is there anything we can use as a weapon?”

Will reached up and pulled a pair of thick branches off a fallen limb just as I finished the song. The gates ominously opened before us.

I tried to swallow my fear as the crack between them widened. I waited for something to leap toward me from the other side. The crack grew, but all it revealed was a path through the woods. Everything fell still, even the bird atop the gate.

“Can you spare me a bit of your hem?” Will asked, pulling his knife from his sock and handing it to me. I used it to trim the lower frill of lace from my petticoat. I didn’t wish to trip over it anyway.

Will cut the strip in half and wound one around each of the tops of the two limbs, then pulled a flask from his coat.

“Will?” He wasn’t one for heavy drink.

“Duncan gave it to me,” he said soberly. “It’s still full.”

The last thing we needed was a reminder of how quickly our adventures could turn deadly. Will poured the liquid onto the strips from my petticoat, then drew a match and lit them. “Hopefully if we find something, we can use these to distract it,” Will said as he handed a torch to me. The Minotaur had
used heat to find and track us, but we had been able to use fire to blind it. Will really was far more clever than many gave him credit for. “Ready?” he asked.

I nodded and held my torch aloft as the sun set in a wave of fire behind us. With my free hand I took his. “Let’s go.”

The gates now seemed eerily still as they stood wide open. We walked through hand in hand. The eyes of the wolves sculpted above the knockers seemed to follow us as we passed.

Once we were on the other side, the gates closed slowly. The rattling echoed off the hill, and the evening seemed much darker in the shadow of the gate. I held my torch high as we followed the path into the woods. With every step, I waited for the ambush. Every muscle in my back and neck felt tense, and Will held my hand tightly.

The gates closed with a heavy
boom
. Then suddenly the only sound in the still cool quiet of the evening was the crunch of our boots on the dried leaves and patches of ice on the path.

I could see my breath curling around my face in the flickering light of the torch. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I heard a twig break.

I turned, searching the shadows for something, anything. “Was that you?” I whispered.

“No.”

My stomach tumbled through my middle. Will lifted his torch, and the light glinted off something in the shadow of the trees. Two points of light glowed red in the darkness. Then two more, then two more.

Oh God.

I lifted my torch and looked around frantically. Ten gleaming eyes, fixed on us. They moved closer, and the light shimmered against the metal faces of five large mechanical wolves.

One of them lifted his long snout, and his mouth fell open, revealing glinting silver teeth as sharp as knives. Metal fur covered his head and neck; it gleamed in deadly blades and spikes. A thick lens had been fixed over his left eye, and the outer ring of it turned, warping the red light of his mechanical iris as he focused on me. He growled, the sound a combination of a mechanical rattle and the grinding of gears.

Moving on instinct, I shifted, turning my back to Will’s as the wolves surrounded us.

One by one the wolves lifted their heads and howled.

IT WAS THE ALARM. THEY
were warning the house we were there. I trembled, holding fast to my torch even though the flame wavered. The howls chilled me as they faded in the cold air. The wolves lowered their heads, and all their eyes fixed on us again.

Will waved his torch, but the wolves didn’t follow the motion of his arm. Their eyes remained on us. These beasts were more sophisticated than the Minotaur had been.

I took a slow step back toward the gate. The wolves watched me, but they didn’t move forward and they didn’t attack.

“What are they waiting for?” I whispered.

All the wolves’ heads shifted to focus on me.

“I think they’re holding us here until someone can call them off,” Will said. He leaned over and picked up a rock. “Brace yourself.”

He threw the rock over the shoulder of one of the wolves. It clattered behind the pack, and their heads turned toward the noise.

“Are they following the sound?” I whispered. The conical curls of metal that made their ears turned back toward me, and they returned to their previous defensive stance. They
were
following sound, at least partly.

Will’s posture had hunched forward, anticipating the attack, his body still and prepared. I shook inside, and he looked as steady as granite. “If they’re anything like real wolves, they won’t attack so long as we’re facing them. But if we move, they’ll run us down. If they can follow sound, they’ll follow our steps. We need a distraction.”

These were not real wolves. They had no fear, no sense of self-preservation. They could afford to be merciless in a way that a living thing could not. They scared me far worse than a real wolf ever could.

I shoved my hand deep into the pocket I had sewn into my skirts. I fumbled around in the thick fabric. It had to still
be there. My numb fingers stung as I searched. Finally my hand closed around a small orb, one of my alarms. It was the one Will had tossed to me so carelessly in the shop. Thank heaven.