Curio (21 page)

Apprehension tugged Blaise into frantic flight and warred with the urge to track a certain blonde head through the chaos below. But if Callis and Seree were here—he glanced at the smashed hub—if they were involved, then he needed to find them now. He heard no calls of “Mad Tock, Mad Tock!” But it wouldn't be long before he took the blame.

Why hadn't they told him of their plan? Callis had hinted at such a demonstration, but when it came down to it, he'd left Blaise in the dark.

He'd happily crack their heads together.

Blaise flew toward what remained of the purification locus. The closer he got the more he fought the urge to vomit. The pipes inside were visible, the incoming water still poured into the bottom of the basin, slowly refilling the sabotaged hub. An elaborate structure of girders and beams supported the sphere. In the center stood a large concrete cylinder containing pipes running up from Lower and back down again. He searched for a figure or two shimmying down the metal supports but saw none. The street at the base of the hub was submerged.

The brackish water below him showed no signs of life. A cold arrow shot through his heart. He pictured the worst: Callis and Seree blown to bits by whatever explosive they used to strike the hydro hub. Maybe they kept this plan from him knowing it was a suicide mission.

He flew lower, peering in windows. Most of the porcie upper class had likely been attending the play. Their tock staffs probably hid on the top floors, terrified of the polluted water invading the elegant homes and shops of downtown.

No sign of his mended friend or Seree. Blaise flew to the intersection and on down the next street. He doubled
around, zipping back and forth over buildings. He bore to the south. Where else would they go but to the outskirts of town?

There. Two figures hobbled down a row of cheap boutiques. As he watched, a cloak slipped from the taller of the two. Dirt crusted Callis's blond hair. The modified porcie moved slowly.

Blaise hovered above them, dropping to the street just as Callis turned his head. He pushed his goggles up to his forehead and rushed toward his friends.

Muck smeared the porcelain half of Callis's face. The modified's jewel eye darted about in its socket. His mechanical eye rolled out of synchronization but slowed as recognition overtook his features.

“Blaise, what are you doing here?”

Relief, sharp in his chest, made his voice harsh. “What have you done?”

The other cloaked figure turned. Seree held a handkerchief over the lower half of her face. Frenzy danced in her amber eyes.

He spread his arms. “What have you two done? You might've been smashed to bits.”

She lowered the scrap of material, and Blaise smothered an oath.

Delicate brown lines etched Seree's face. The sludge from the hydro hub had stained the fine cracks invisible until now. He'd seen it before when he'd visited Lower, and in the slums of Cog Valley. And he'd cleaned out enough corroded gears and springs to know the tocks weren't safe from the untreated water either.

She smiled, dark lines spidering across her cheeks, but her voice sank. “Don't look at me like that, Mad Tock. Don't
you
look at me that way.”

He schooled his face. “You're as beautiful as ever, Madam Seree.”

She chuckled softly.

Beside her Callis emitted strange grinding sounds. He'd raised his mechanical arm to cover his roving eye. Greenish-brown buildup covered the outer sheaths of his tock limb. No doubt it crept through the inner workings as well.

“I suppose you're congratulating yourselves.” Blaise hooked a thumb toward the center of the city. “They'll all look like you two now. That was the goal?”

Seree's disfigured face hardened. “The goal was for them to know how it feels to have filthy water running through their jitter pumps. Maybe now they won't dismiss our pleas for more hydro hubs and access to purified water.”

Blaise crossed his arms. “You couldn't have told me?”

“You'd have argued, old boy.” Callis quirked a smile.

“Of course I would have.” He flung his arm toward the disaster. “There were children, innocent people—”

“They're not innocent.” Seree pounded her palm with her fist.

Blaise tore his grid away, fixing Seree with a glare. “Grey was there. She could've drowned, you know. I told you she's like me. That much water could've
killed
her.”

She took a step back from him. “I never thought of that. Blaise, I'm sorry. Did she . . . Did she . . . Is she well?”

He lowered his voice, aware of a few merchants poking their heads out of their shops. “She's fine. I picked her up just before the flood reached her.”

“You met Blueboy's new prize then? You spoke to her?” Callis was shaking his head to one side. A trickle of dirty water ran out of the hammered copper ear Blaise had designed for his first patient.

“Yes.”

The porcie and the modified exchanged glances.

Seree cracked a smile. “Maybe now you can woo her properly instead of tailing her like the great spectacle you are.”

“Not likely! She thinks I blew up the hydro hub and maimed her friends.”

A little crowd that included a few shabbily dressed porcies and gearish tocks had assembled up the street and were whispering amongst themselves. Blaise put his hand on Callis's shoulder and turned him toward the factory, motioning for Seree to come along. “Never mind the other human. Let's get you both cleaned up.”

Callis's mechanized eye bounced in Blaise's direction. “Did you find out where she came from?”

“No.”

“Why she's here?”

“No.”

The modified porcie returned his attention to his malfunctioning parts, and the three made their way toward the factory district.

Blaise tried to watch his surroundings in case he needed to take flight, but the moments he'd spent on the rooftop with Grey replayed. The memory slowed and deepened. He felt her in his arms again, the curve of her body against his. Even when she'd stiffened as he situated her for their second flight, her limbs were pliable, her skin so soft compared to the porcelains. Curio's humid air clung to him, recalling the sensation of Grey stretched against him. He tingled from head to toe, his Defender mark pulsing with exhilaration. Forcing his thoughts from that sweet, almost painful path took immeasurable effort. He filled his brain with questions to keep the longing at bay.

Had the Chemists sent her here? What crime earned her imprisonment in Curio City? Did she have any knowledge of the key he sought?

The closer they got to their factory hideout, the more a certain balcony, back at Blueboy's mansion, called to Blaise. He had to find a way to visit Grey again. No, not just a visit. She belonged with him, the only two humans in a world of porcelain and tick-tock people. Even if it meant having to steal her away from Blueboy, he'd bring her home with him to the abandoned warehouse.

CHAPTER

14

W
hit's cheek stung. A thud corresponded with the pain. He tried to make sense of the noise, but his attention narrowed to the slice on his cheek as his skin folded open. The sensation flipped his gut inside out. Warm liquid trailed down his jaw. Cuts and blood. Cuts and blood. Screaming. The darkness took it all.

He awoke to the sensation of something pressed against his lips.

“Come on, Ration Boy, drink up.”

The voice snapped like an electric shock, but the way it teased over “Ration Boy” made him want to hear it again. Whit opened his eyes.

A mass of dark hair hung above him, filling his vision. Orange light picked out individual strands, turning them to distinct black lines. Whispered conversation and the scent of soap-masked urine invaded his awareness. He moved a hand to clutch his stomach as pain gnawed deep within.

The hair whisked away, replaced by a face with light brown eyes, a wide mouth, and sharp nose and chin. “He's awake,” she hollered without taking her eyes off him.

“Holy Chemist elbows, man, I thought you were a doe or a baby deer or something, collapsing like that when my arrow scratched you. Then I saw your stripes and the potion, and I said to myself, ‘Marina, you gotta think before you shoot.' ”

Whit blinked. Before he raised his eyelids she was talking again. Her voice stopped just short of scratchy.

“Niko fixed you up. It's too bad about your pretty face.” She leaned closer, touching the skin beneath the cut on his cheek with her fingertips. “Don't worry, though. When this heals, you're gonna look wicked, man. Wicked.” She said the word like it tasted good.

He shrank away from her fingers, but he was flat on his back with nowhere to go.

Her eyes sparkled at his movement, and a smile took over her face. “Don't worry, Ration Boy. Nobody here gonna turn you in to the deputies.”

Whit searched his narrow field of vision. “Where is ‘here'?”

Marina followed his gaze. She looked back at him and shrugged. “This is our hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“It's where sick people go in cities that don't have Chemists.”

“I know what a hospital is.” Whit heard the bite in his tone, but couldn't take it back now. His stomach roiled, and he clamped down on his lips to keep the vomit down.

She jerked and lifted the bottle she held. “Oh, you need to take this. It's not the potion you brought. This stuff's already been processed. Sorry, but it's not gonna help much.”

Marina bent closer, sliding one hand behind his head to lift him toward the bottle she held. A mixture of shock, humiliation, and misery nearly dragged yesterday's food out of his stomach.

“Come on, open up.” Marina pressed the bottle to his lips.

Whit swallowed the watery mixture and let his head sink down. He compressed his mouth again and breathed through his nose, nostrils flaring. He squeezed his eyes shut
and opened them again to find the sharp-featured face still hovering above him. She stowed the bottle and dropped her chin into her hand.

“What'd you do to get all those stripes? You can't be much older than me. Niko said he thought it was your first. He said, ‘That was no warning stripe.' Niko got striped a lot before he left.”

“I helped a friend,” Whit said through clenched teeth. He raised his hand to prod at the throbbing line on his cheek. His fingers touched knots of coarse thread.

“Niko had to stitch you up. We can't always get ointment up here. They'll have to come out in a couple days.”

Tremendous. Just what he needed, another scar to call attention.

As the burning in his stomach faded to an ache, he raised himself on his elbows. He lay on one of two narrow beds in what had once been an inn room. The faded floorboards sagged and creaked with every movement. Draped material blocked the only window, and a lantern on a stool emitted light that barely reached the corners.

Across the room, a slight man with a mustache studied his pocket watch as he pressed his fingers to the other patient's wrist. All Whit could make out of the person in the bed was mussed hair at the back of the head and a frame that suggested a man's height.

“That's Niko,” Marina said, nodding toward the dark-haired man. “He helps when people get sick. Steinar used to help too.”

The way her voice lowered when she said
Steinar
brought Whit's mission crashing down on him. He sat up and swung his legs to the floor, his knees almost brushing Marina's trousers. Not a stitch of red was visible in her clothes, which were clearly assembled for warmth and necessity. “Listen,
Marina, Steinar was arrested for ration dealing. I came up here to see if I could help.”

She tilted back in the chair positioned at the side of the bed. “But you're not like him. You need the potion.” Her eyes darted to the pocket of her oversized coat where Whit suspected she'd hidden the ration bottle. When they returned to his face, they were hard and narrowed. “So are you looking to deal? We can trade meat—deer, elk, rabbit—”

He held a hand up to stop her. “No, I'm not aiming to be a ration dealer. I want to help like Steinar. No payment required.”

Whit cleared his throat and pushed back the lurking weight of the Hawards' sacrifice.

Marina's expression lost its wary edge. She held a hand out to him. When Whit simply studied her grimy palm, she whisked it back to her knee. “Sorry, City Boy, I forget how tight you all are down the mountain.”

“My name is Whit.”

Her wide mouth slid into a quick grin. “All right then. If you want to help, I'll show you how you can. You up for it?”

He stood. The room whirled around his head for a moment, but settled. He pressed a hand to his empty gut.

Marina's quick eyes followed the action. She stood as well, and Whit found himself looking down. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder.

She tilted her face up to look at him. “I think we better get some food into you first. You ought to be able to keep it down, but I gotta tell you, it's not gonna be pretty when it comes out. But a little bit is better than none.”