The Guild Conspiracy (21 page)

“If we had more time, perhaps,” she said, passing him another screw. “But with the deadline moved up, this is the best fix we have.”

Even if they could reconfigure the drive trains, the repair would take days to complete on the prototype, possibly even weeks, and with the army of quadrupeds sitting in a hangar at Hasguard, they didn't have the time or the manpower to implement such a complicated repair to over twelve hundred machines. Removing the axle plate was the simplest option. The only option.

She wiped a trickle of sweat from her brow, the cabin swelteringly hot this close to the freshly welded underbelly.

Three more screws.

And then maybe she and Braith could get out of here.

She hadn't twisted the next screw more than a few turns when she heard a shout at the far side of the workshop, someone banging on the supply door, then footsteps treading nearer. The ladder beside the prototype creaked, rattling against the quadruped's shell with each step, and Petra froze as she looked up at the open hatch door, wondering whose face she would see.

Braith appeared overhead. “He's here,” he said with a frown, his voice tense. “I barred the supply door and cut the wires for the mechanical lock upstairs, but it's only a matter of time before they break in. You need to hurry.”

Petra clenched her jaw and stared at the exposed floor. She had no
time
. “Yancy? I need you to do something else for me,” she said, leaning back into the machine's base. She removed the final two screws and yanked the faulty axle plate free, tossing it to Yancy before wiping her greasy hands on her trousers. She fetched the schematics from her pocket and pressed the crumpled pages into his hands, hardly breathing as she heard the slam of the supply door banging against the wall and the sound of boot steps echoing off the workshop floor. “I need you to take these to your father,” she said. “Don't wait. Go straight there. File an official repair order with his signature and have it delivered it to the Royal Forces at once.”

“What are you going to do?”

Braith dropped into the quadruped. “We're going to run.”

“Wait,” she said, Braith already hauling her to her feet. “There's something else . . . Yancy, there's an army of faulty quadrupeds at the Hasguard Airfield, built according to the prototype's flawed design,” she said, resisting Braith's grasp. “Rupert knows where they are. If the report isn't filed, they'll fail—­all of them. You have to tell your father. You have to make sure—­”

“Damn it, Petra . . .” Braith shoved her to the ladder. “We have to
go
.”

“You have to fix them,” she said, stumbling up the ladder. “Yancy—­”

“I'll take care of it,” he said, pocketing the schematics. “Just go.”

She nodded in gratitude and let Braith push her up the rest of the narrow access ladder, clambering out of the quadruped and down the other side.

The coppers were already on them.

She landed hard on the floor, barely evading the first copper as Braith landed next to her. He grappled with one of the black-­uniformed men as she kicked another in the shin. Then she scrambled back and ducked beneath the machine's massive frame, hoping to slip between the quadruped's legs to escape, but there were too many of them.

Someone struck her in the back and drove her to her knees, twisting her arms behind her. She tried to jerk free, but then a pair of manacles bit hard into her wrists, and she was unceremoniously hauled to her feet, dragged away from the quadruped by two grim-­faced coppers, their grip on her arms unbreakable.

“Bring her here.”

The tone of satisfaction in that familiar melodic voice set her teeth on edge, and she looked up to see Julian Goss standing among the black-­uniformed officers, triumph in his eyes. Beside him stood Calligaris and the rest of her engineering team, not one of them stepping forward in her defense.

“I demand to know what this is about,” said Braith, struggling against two of Julian's men. “You have no right to come in here and—­”

“I have every right,” said Julian, stepping forward. “Miss Wade is under arrest by the authority of the Guild council.”

“On what charges?” he demanded.

Julian smiled handsomely. “For conspiring against the Guild and the Royal Forces. She is a prime suspect in the anti-­imperialist attack on the Hasguard Airfield and accused of—­”

“I had nothing to do with that attack on the airfield,” she spat, twisting in her captors' grasp. “And you know it.”

“Unfortunately, Miss Wade, you have no one to corroborate such a claim. According to key witnesses, you were seen trespassing on military property just moments before the first explosion.”

She clenched her jaw, her heartbeat quickening. If that was true, if someone had seen her . . . “I didn't do it.”

“I'm afraid the evidence suggests otherwise.”

“What evidence?” said Braith, coming to her defense. “You have no substantial proof, no grounds for this arrest. She didn't conspire with the anti-­imperialists. She wasn't involved in the attack.”

Julian's smile stretched thinly as he turned his gaze on Braith. “And would you be willing to testify to that, Officer Cartwright?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I would.”

“Yet as I understand it, you were absent from your assigned post around the time of the attack, or is that not so? In fact, you were attending to other military duties with Lieutenant-­General Stokes at the time.” The minister slipped a piece of paper from his pocket and held it up for all to see. “I have here the lieutenant-­general's signed statement that you were with him in the final moments before the attack occurred. Testifying to the contrary would be perjury.”

Braith twisted in his captors' grasp. “You set this up,” he spat. “She was right all along about you.”

Petra faltered, mind racing with Braith's accusation, realizing the truth of his words. Letting her visit the airfield, dragging Braith away from his duties, giving her the opportunity to incriminate herself by sneaking off with Rupert, the timing of the attack . . . every step of it planned, as if she was truly nothing more than a pawn in his plot for world domination.

Julian had manipulated everything.

“As for evidence,” he went on, “I have proof enough to see her hanged by the end of the week. And to find her here, attempting to sabotage the quadruped prototype mere hours after the attack on the airfield—­”

“I wasn't trying to sabotage your bloody machine,” she said through gritted teeth, hot rage welling up in her chest as she realized just how far he had gone to implicate her in all this. “I was
trying
to fix it. There's a fault in the design, an error that—­”

“Any error in the design is of your own making,” he hissed, drawing close. “Admit defeat, Miss Wade. Give up this pointless effort.”

She glared back at him, breathing hard. He might have manipulated her every move, but there was one thing he hadn't planned for. “I know about the quadrupeds at Hasguard,” she said, her voice low. “I know about your army. You want to know where I was when the attack occurred? I was sitting inside one of your machines.”

There was the briefest falter in his triumphant smile, but he soon recovered, leaning close enough that only she could hear him. “Then you see how futile your rebellion has been,” he said, his breath hot on her face. “Whatever sabotage you thought you could achieve, you were mistaken. Now that I have my army, there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

“You don't understand,” she said, struggling against her captors. “They're faulty. All of them. If the error is left unrepaired, every single one of your quadrupeds will fail.” She searched his dark copper eyes, pleading to his sense of humanity. “You have to fix them.”

He held her gaze a moment longer and then gestured to the two coppers holding her. “Take her to one of the third-­level cells. I do not want any chance of her escaping.”

Petra's captors jerked her forward, but she struggled against them. “You can't do this,” she said, a vice tightening around her throat. “You can't—­”

“It has already been done.”

The finality in his voice struck her cold.

“He won't get away with this, Petra,” said Braith. “I'll speak on your behalf to the council, try to clear your name before the trial. I'll testify to your innocence.”

“Oh, but I am afraid there will be no testimony, Officer Cartwright,” said Julian, folding his hands behind his back. “There will be no trial. The evidence against her is insurmountable.”

“What?”

“And because you failed to prevent Miss Wade from committing these crimes, you are hereby stripped of your rank and henceforth transferred to Hasguard for combat training under Lieutenant-­General Stokes, effective immediately.”

Braith faltered. “You don't have the authority.”

“Oh, but this order doesn't come from me,” he said, withdrawing a parcel from his vest pocket. “I have the transfer order right here. Signed by the lieutenant-­general himself.”

Petra paled, her throat dry as she looked from Julian to Braith, the realization of what he intended slowly sinking in. “No . . .” She met Braith's eyes, and her heart crumbled at the defeat, the sudden fear in his ashen gaze. She shook her head. “You can't.”

“Take her away.”

Her guards jerked her forward, leading her away from Julian and the quadruped—­and Braith. She twisted in their grasp, refusing to go willingly, refusing to let Julian dictate their lives as he pleased. Braith didn't deserve to die because of her, because of what she had done.

Tears burned her eyes, streaming down her cheeks as she fought against the two men holding her. But she could not escape, could not change what her treachery had bought them.

As she struggled, she spied Yancy among the other engineers, his arms folded tightly across his chest. He met her eyes briefly and nodded, a resolute frown on his face, and she stilled, one last feeble hope rising in her chest. If he could carry the repair order to his father, convince him to file the report with the Royal Forces, they might still have a chance.

He was their only hope now.

 

CHAPTER 15

D
ays passed in lonesome solitude, reminding Petra of the time she had spent locked away in the first-­quadrant jail the previous summer. Only this time, there would be no trial. There would be no escape. No one had come to visit since Julian's men deposited her in the tiny cell, not even Julian himself. She was starting to go mad from the isolation, left to pace her windowless cell for hours on end, lying awake on the floor night after restless night, wondering what was going on beyond the walls of her prison.

There could be a war raging between Britain and France by now and she wouldn't know. Braith could be piloting a faulty quadruped into battle—­he could
die
—­and she wouldn't know. She had no idea if Yancy had succeeded in delivering the repair to his father, or if the vice-­chancellor was able to convince the Royal Forces to repair the fault in the existing machines—­or if they had even listened. For all she knew, the sabotaged army was deploying at this very moment, minutes away from shutting down and trapping those soldiers on the battlefield.

For a week, she had paced her prison, worrying, waiting, a thousand plans formulating in her mind of how to free herself, repair the quadrupeds, save Braith from the front lines, and somehow stop Julian's war, but she was stuck in this godforsaken cell like a rat in a cage, unable to do anything more than kick and scream and fruitlessly interrogate her guards any time they brought her daily meal or changed her chamber pot. But they would tell her nothing of the war, nothing of Julian, their footsteps heralding nothing but stoic silence.

She heard them now, as familiar to her as the low thrum of the subcity below, and she slammed her fists into the door at their approach.

“Let me out of here, you bastards!”

“Now, now, Miss Wade,” came a smooth, familiar voice from the other side. “There is no need for such hostility.”

Petra scrambled away from the door. “Julian?”

“Open her cell,” he ordered.

There was a jangle of keys, and the door to her cell slid open with a clank. Two Guild coppers swept into the cramped room, cuffing a set of shackles around her wrists before leading her out the door and into the hall.

Julian was there waiting for her.

“You tell me what's going on,” she said, curling her hands into fists. “Tell me right now, or—­”

“You are being transferred,” he said.

She faltered. “Transferred? Where?”

“I would not want to ruin the surprise,” he said, gesturing down the hall with a sinister smile. “Shall we?”

“I don't suppose I have a choice.”

“No. You do not.”

Her guards shoved her forward, and they headed up the stairs from the prison cells, stopping only to unlock the bolted security door to the Guild's police force offices. Stark yellow light glared overhead, the electric bulbs sizzling in their metal housings, unforgivably bright compared to the dim light of the prison hall. Without pause, Julian steered her across the first floor, guiding her down familiar halls and across the main workshop, eerily empty.

Their footsteps echoed harshly across the lobby floor, heading purposefully toward the University entrance. The doors cracked open on their approach, and Petra blinked against the startling brightness of the early-­morning sky, the sun barely rising over the city walls. Clumsily, she staggered down the stairs into the square, driven like a mule in front of her two guards.

Her destination was a steam-­powered vehicle sitting idle in the middle of the square, another handful of Guild coppers flanking either side.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, twisting around to face Julian. She struggled against her captors. “What are you planning to do?”

But Julian said nothing, regarding the waking city with a serene expression, even as she was unceremoniously forced into the back seat of the car, the door slammed behind her. The hard manacles cut into her wrists as she tumbled onto the leather seat, the sting of fresh blood burning her skin. Julian opened the opposite door and slipped inside, leaning forward to rap against the driver's window before settling comfortably in his seat.

The car pulled away from the University with a putter and turned down Chroniker Main. Petra forced herself upright and jiggled the car door handle, but it would not budge. She curled her hands into fists and reared back to strike at the window with the iron manacles, but a hand reached out and gripped her by firmly the wrist.

“I would advise against that,” said Julian.

“Where are we going?” she demanded, jerking her arm away.

He said nothing, peering out the window as the first-­quadrant shops slipped past the rumbling steam-­car. They drove past the cafés near the square, then through the shadows cast by the Towers Hotel, rolling by the Guild offices and the public police station. They continued on to the greenery of Pemberton Square, where she and Emmerich had once spent their summer afternoons, and further still, the morning stalls and rotund fountain vanishing behind another row of buildings as the car approached the city gates.

With a hiss, the vehicle rolled to a stop, just in sight of the harbor.

“Did you think I would not discover your last pathetic attempt to thwart me?” asked Julian. His voice was light but it cut through her with the deadliness of a knife.

She swallowed thickly. “I don't know what you mean.”

“I do not know how or when you managed it, or what lie you offered the vice-­chancellor to persuade him to your cause, but no matter. War is upon us. Nothing you do will change the outcome. You have failed.”

A chill crawled down Petra's spine, a hard fist crushing her chest as she realized what he meant. She had failed . . . Lyndon had failed.

“Do you realize what you've done?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I wasn't trying to sabotage your army. I was trying to
fix
it. There's a malfunction in the regulator, a rotational disparity that will lead to system-­wide failure within minutes of the machine's activation. If you don't repair them, they
will
fail.”

“So you say. Though I don't suppose you care to explain how such a malfunction slipped past the notice of your engineering team,” he said coolly, turning in his seat to face her. “Because if such a malfunction does exist, that would mean you sabotaged the quadruped project of your own volition, and that, my dear, would make you a traitor.”

Petra glared back at him, breathing hard.

“I offered you the opportunity to cooperate,” he went on, withdrawing back to the window. “Yet you will never give up this misguided rebellion of yours, no matter how many times you are beaten; I see that now.”

The guards at the city gates waved them forward, opening the wrought-­iron gates to let them through. The steam-­car rumbled loudly and then lurched forward with a putter, rolling steadily through the city gates and onward to the harbor docks.

“It seems I must
show
you the futility of your efforts,” he said, the pleasantry now gone from his voice. “Threats, it seems, are not enough.”

The car rolled to a stop at the edge of the furthest pier, and Julian stepped out of the car, graciously holding the door open for her.

She shrank away, her jaw clenched, throat tight.

“Come now, Miss Wade,” he said. “It will do no good to put off the inevitable.”

Hesitating a moment more, she swallowed against her pounding heart and followed him out of the vehicle, her wrists still bound by the thick manacles. The roar of the ocean waves assaulted her ears, crashing against the jetties on either side of the harbor. Wind whipped over the shore, catching her disheveled braid in its early-­morning gust as Julian took her firmly by the arm and dragged her away from the steam-­car and down the pier.

That's when she saw the airship.

It hovered over the harbor waters, the sigil of the Royal Forces painted on its wooden hull, the prow tethered to the end of the pier. And there at the end of the dock, a group of redcoats waited.

There was only one reason he would bring her here.

She planted her feet and tried to twist out of his grasp, fighting against his steady pull, but he was too strong.

“Oh, no, Miss Wade,” he said, dragging her toward her fate. “It is too late for escape now. I warned you what would happen should you defy me again.” He shoved her toward the group of soldiers, and she stumbled to her knees. “I am not a man to tolerate disobedience.”

Petra glanced up, her eyes trailing over the polished boots and crisp uniform of the nearest soldier, standing at attention, his hand poised in salute.

“Deliver her to the lieutenant-­general as soon as you arrive,” Julian ordered.

The soldier nodded. “It will be done, sir.”

Petra climbed to her feet and turned around, the seaward wind spraying her cheeks with mist. “You aren't coming with me?”

Julian smiled handsomely. “I'm afraid I have more important matters to attend to at present,” he said, his voice carrying over the crashing waves. “Though I do regret the necessity of my absence. I would take
such
pleasure in seeing you break.”

She swallowed hard, a shiver crawling up her spine. “Where are you sending me?”

“You will find out soon enough.” He held her gaze a moment more. “Goodbye, Miss Wade.”

Then he turned and left.

Petra took a few steps after him, but two soldiers grabbed her and pulled her back, their hands strong and firm. She struggled, but they dragged her away, toward the airship and up the swaying gangway, the plank tethered precariously between the ship and the dock.

“Make ready for takeoff,” shouted one of the soldiers, handing her off to another red uniform. “We leave as soon as the passenger is secure.”

“This way, miss,” said the soldier.

She jerked away from her captor and ran to the deck rail. “Julian, you bastard! Where are you sending me?” she shouted, clinging to the rail as another soldier restrained her. “You can't do this!”

Two soldiers peeled her away from the railing, dragging her backward.

“Julian!”

But her voice was ripped away by the wind and crashing waves.

He did not look back.

Julian returned to the steam-­car and climbed inside, pulling away from the docks in a skitter of gravel as she struggled against her captors. Then she stumbled through an open door and the bright morning sky disappeared behind paneled hallways as the soldiers dragged her belowdecks. They threw her into a small cabin, shut the door, and slid the bolt behind them, locking her inside. She banged against the door, but no one answered.

Less than a minute later, the ship creaked around her, bobbing gently as it untethered from the dock and rose into the sky, snapped up by the wind.

They were airborne now, any hope of escape gone.

Tears stung her eyes, and she dashed them away with a closed fist, bitterness roiling up her throat as her failure ate through her chest. The quadrupeds would fail. Julian would have his war. And she was trapped on a Royal Forces airship, heading God knew where, and there was absolutely nothing she could do. She had failed. Utterly.

She pressed her fists into the door until her knuckles cracked and then shoved away, her chest burning as she found a seat in the corner of the cabin. She slid to the floor and tightly hugged her knees to her chest while the airship creaked and groaned around her, steadily carrying her to her fate.

T
heir destination was Hasguard.

The airfield was in a frenzy when they arrived—­a chaos of Royal Forces soldiers scrambling from airship to airship, supply lorries zipping across the muddy pasture, hangar doors thrown wide open. Petra stared at the churning field from the edge of the airship deck, held fast between two soldiers as the ship prepared for landing. There were no civilians milling about the airfield now—­no lace fans or feathered hats, no satin skirts or long coattails—­just the red and navy colors of the Imperial Royal Forces, a swarm of ships and soldiers, all preparing for one thing . . .

War.

The ship shuddered to a halt as it landed on the soft grass, and her military guards led her down the gangway to the landing dock, where an omnibus awaited them. They boarded quickly and sped across the bustling airfield, eventually rolling to a stop in the shadow of a colossal airship. Her heart sank as she stepped out of the vehicle and recognized Rupert's design—­its scarlet hull and brass ornamentation at its prow. Another seven of the massive warships sat alongside the first, identical from bow to stern, each equipped with an army of her faulty quadrupeds.

She clenched her jaw as she climbed the steps to the landing and boarded the deadly ship, led between two Royal Forces soldiers. She stumbled ahead of them, the narrow halls familiar. She had walked this passage just a week ago, with Rupert at her side and no idea of what lurked in the cargo hold beneath her feet.

She had no such illusions now.

The soldiers pushed her up a flight of stairs and down another hallway, and she winced at the ache in her wrists, stinging from the scrapes and bruises wrought by the heavy iron manacles. A fire brewed in the pit of her stomach, arcing through her every nerve. Julian would pay for this. He might have his war, and there might be nothing she could do to stop him now, but she'd be damned if she went down without a fight.

If she survived this, she would find a way to make him answer for what he had done—­for the automaton, for Emmerich, for every threat he had given her, for the quadruped and the army now sitting belowdecks, for every life lost because of his greedy machinations . . . for Braith.

She would make him pay.

At last, they came to the bridge, and Petra was ushered inside the low-­ceilinged room, the curved walls lined with windows from port to starboard, overlooking the whole of the airfield—­still busy with activity. The late-­morning sun beamed through the glass, highlighting dust motes in the air. An array of gauges and instruments stood at either side of the wide deck, a display of lights, wires, switches, and tickertape manned by a small team of military engineers. Near the front of the ship stood the captain's wheel. A handful of men in red uniforms were standing at the forward windows, a few of them in deep conversation over a thick stack of paper.