Legacy of the Clockwork Key (22 page)

He squealed then bolted toward the estate, racing across
the open grasses of the rolling hills. I swung the bridle upward, sending the straps of leather winging into the branches of a tree. It would buy us some time.

I hurried back to the coach just as Will finished furiously winding it. He turned the tumbler over and pushed the lever as far as it would allow.

The metal horses pushed their heads low, straining forward as their wheels gained traction, and we were off.

We careened at terrifying speed over the road. Will used all his strength and skill to maneuver the coach while I watched out the back for our pursuer.

Night fell, but Will didn’t risk lighting a lantern. Instead I used the goggles to watch the road. Even though they cast everything in glowing green, at least I could see well enough to keep us from falling in another ditch. Will continued to wind and push the coach to the brink of disaster as the jarring ride shook my already battered body, but I didn’t dare heed any discomfort. My terror kept me riveted to the darkness ahead of us.

• • •

We reached Chadwick Hall in the middle of the night. I didn’t wait for the coach to stop completely before I jumped out and pulled the goggles from my eyes. My head
pounded from the strain of wearing them so long. I let the door slam shut behind me as I jogged to the stable doors and pushed them open, throwing my weight against the reluctant wood.

The silver horses tossed their heads in what seemed to be appreciation, but that made no sense. The deep shadows of the empty stables swallowed them whole. It looked as if the amazing coach, and Will within it, had simply dissolved into nothingness.

I couldn’t waste time out in the open worrying for Will. We were in trouble, and I had to warn Oliver and Lucinda. I hurried past the tiny hedges arranged in a pretty patterned knot of paths and knee-high bushes. After what I’d just seen, they seemed rather quaint. I opened the gate to the kitchen gardens and stepped down the stairs.

Digging through the sack at my hip, I felt for the key Oliver had given me, but couldn’t find it. The cold grip of panic took hold. At the slightest sound, I turned, expecting the man in black to step out of the shadows.

My fingers brushed the key, and I grabbed it.
Finally
. I opened the lock and stumbled down the steps, tempted to lock the door behind me.

“Stop,” Lucinda ordered. I halted midstep. “I don’t want
to hear it again.” She was talking to Oliver. I hurried into the kitchen.

Good heavens, she was transformed. Lucinda wore an antique empire-waist gown in pale dove gray with lilac trim and bows. She was breathtaking. Free, soft, and womanly, she glowed with beauty and life in a way she simply hadn’t while oppressed by her mourning dress.

I stepped forward, keenly aware of how awkward I looked in my torn clothing with Oliver’s goggles strapped to my head. I wasn’t a lady. I never would be.

Lucinda turned away from Oliver with a scowl. When she saw me, her face lit up again.

“Meg! Thank heaven.” She gave me a hug, and for a moment my worries eased. “Where’s Will?”

“He’s in the stables. We’ve been pursued.”

The door opened, and Will entered the kitchen. Oliver placed his cup on the table with a
thud
. “Who followed you?”

“The same man that shot at Meg in London. I’m certain. He’s wearing some sort of mask.” Will snapped a lever on Oliver’s rifle then leaned it against a barrel by the door.

“He must know we’re here.” Oliver rubbed the back of his neck.

“We have to leave as soon as possible,” I agreed. “We lost
him in the center of the maze and I scared off his horse, but should he find the beast, it won’t take him long to trace us back here.”

“If he’s riding on horseback, it will take him at least the night and a good portion of the morning to reach us,” Oliver said. “We’re safe for now, though we shouldn’t linger.”

“Did you find the plates?” Lucinda asked.

Will let out a heavy breath. “After the Minotaur nearly skewered us.”

Oliver came out of his chair. “Tom brought the Knossos Amusements back out? Did you have to use the wings?”

Will shook his head. “Meg used them.”

Lucinda gaped at me, horror-struck. “You didn’t.”

“I had to.” I would have done it in any event, to be honest, though I was pleased I hadn’t died. Flying was worth tearing the first few buttons off the top of my dress, especially now that I could appreciate it with my feet back on solid ground.

Oliver stepped beside me. “I commend you, Meg.” He thumped a hand on my shoulder. He was proud of me. A fire in my heart roared to life. It felt good to have someone be proud of me again. “Not many men had the audacity to fly. I can count them on one hand.” He held up only four of his fingers.
“Jean-Phillipe lost his nerve just before they turned the fan.”

“Were you one?” I asked, the conspiratorial nature of our conversation eased my fear for the briefest moment.

Oliver grinned.

“Some boys I might have known were a bit foolhardy in their youth.” He gave me a sly wink. “I promised someone I wouldn’t.”

Oh, he may have promised
someone
that he wouldn’t, but he’d done the exact opposite. I’d wager my last penny on it. He put a finger to his lips and mouthed, “Don’t tell Lucinda.”

I smiled for the first time in ages. Lucinda huffed at him while he tried his best to look innocent.

“Now is not the time to be reminiscing about your misspent youth. We don’t have much time.” She shuffled us to the table. We sat, and the smell of roast rabbit brought out my hunger. She offered us some of the fire-cooked game and simple flat bread. “Tell us everything.”

I tried to recount what had happened but found myself unable to start. I simply couldn’t speak about it for fear I’d lay all my heart bare before the three of them. I didn’t want Will to know how much he had affected me, and I didn’t want the others to discern what happened between us.

I poked at a bit of roasted meat and shrugged.

Will came to my rescue. “We went into the maze, managed to turn the levers on the Minotaur’s horns, then Meg used the wings to get us out. As we turned back to replace the wings, we ran into the man. I shot at him, but missed. Then we trapped him on the other side of the door to the place where Meg landed.”

I turned to Lucinda. “What about you? Did you find the plans to Rathford’s invention?”

She coughed, and her cheeks flushed. It seemed I wasn’t the only one with a secret.

Oliver cut in. “We poured through all of my father’s old records and correspondences.” Oliver pushed the edge of his empty plate. “My father seemed to be in charge of the controls. Thanks to Lucinda, and her knack for hidden passageways, we discovered Charles’s plans as well.” Oliver twisted a ring on his finger engraved with his family crest. “Charles was a master at harnessing and redirecting energy.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wished to know.

“If what I suspect is true, Rathford’s machine had the potential to generate power on a scale I’ve never seen.”

“And here I thought I’d seen everything,” Will mumbled between bites of bread.

“Not by half.” Lucinda delicately folded a bit of linen and placed it beside her plate. “Whatever this invention was, it had awesome power.”

“Dangerous power,” Oliver added. “Power equivalent to a massive lightning storm at the very least.”

I speared another piece of meat but let my hand linger at the table. I found I couldn’t eat. “But we still don’t know what it did, or where it is.”

“Ah, where it is, we might be able to answer.” Oliver retreated from the kitchen. He returned carrying the two plates from Gearhenge the way one carries delicate china. “Look here.” He placed one carefully on the table, then flipped the other and ran his hand over the smooth brass. “The back of the plate was coated with a thin seal. I was able to peel it off, and look what I found.”

Swirling lines meandered over the surface in seemingly random paths. Some curved, some straight, they intersected in a nest of careful etchings that covered nearly the entire surface. Oliver held up one finger, then lifted the second plate. He inspected it, turned it. Turned it again, then placed it next to the first.

The lines flowed together through the edge, matching perfectly.

I inhaled and touched the key at my breast.

“It looks like a map,” I mused.

Will took the satchel and pulled out the two plates we’d found in the labyrinth. Oliver held one up to the light, squinting through his spectacles, while Will ran his fingertips over the other. He found the edge of the coating and slowly peeled it off.

We crowded around. Will turned the plate over and over, a deep furrow etched in his forehead as his glance shifted from the plates on the table to the one in his hands.

Oliver approached the puzzle by trial and error. He picked the new plate up, set it down, picked it up again, working his way systematically around the outer edge of the two plates on the table.

“Mine goes here.” Will aligned his plate beside the one closest to me. The lines fit perfectly. I smiled at him, but Oliver scowled. The placement of the plates in an L shape left him two extra sides to test.

After working around the entire shape, he found a match with Will’s plate, turning the L on the table to a blocky zed. He ran his hand over what we had uncovered. “We’re missing two of the corners.”

We weren’t merely missing the corners. The most crucial
element of any map was nowhere to be found. There was no compass rose to tell us which way was north.

It was impossible to make sense of these lines without some sort of orientation. There were no words, only tangled lines that may have been rivers or roads, or both. Speckled over the surface were small etchings of the three-petal flower, but none of the petals indicated which way was north. The compass rose had to be on one of the missing plates.

Unless it was somewhere else entirely.

A tingle raced down my arms.

When I’d first polished the key, I’d uncovered the etchings on either side of the silver casing. One side might just come in handy now.

Drawing the key from around my neck, I turned it over in my hand and inspected the starlike design on the smooth silver cover. Four long points like rays of sunlight reached toward the silver edge of the key. Four short arrows flared out from the spaces in between. One arrow reached longer than the others.

It had to be the north spire of a compass rose. I drew my finger over the fine etching, feeling the slight grooves so carefully cut into the metal. This had to be it. I believed in the key, in the cleverness of my grandfather. If I placed it on this plate, it would somehow show us the direction to go.

I laid the key on the plate nearest me and held my breath.

It remained motionless.

No, it couldn’t. This had to be it. I knew it the way I knew my grandfather was out there, waiting for me.

I nudged it with my finger, but nothing. I sighed.

“What are you thinking?” Oliver gathered close, the cuff of his shirt brushing the gleaming plates as his fingertips touched the edge of the key.

I didn’t know what I’d expected. Half of me was waiting for the key to start spinning or to twitch. Sometimes I took for granted that the Amusements weren’t magic.

I smoothed my hand over my hair and pulled one of my frazzled braids forward. “I thought perhaps somehow this design on the key could show us which way is north.” I leaned my elbow on the table, finally feeling my exhaustion. I didn’t want the journey to lead to a dead end.

If it did, I feared I’d never find my grandfather.

My heart stumbled.

Oliver squinted at the delicate pattern on the cover of the key. “Meg, you’re brilliant.” His fingers closed over the edge. “May I?”

I let go of the key, trusting it to Oliver. He gingerly slid the key over the plates, holding it between his thumb and
first finger. As he reached the upper bend in the zed, the chain twitched.

Lucinda gasped. “My word.”

I leaned forward on my palms. The chain clung to the plate as if by magic.

No, not magic, magnets!

Oliver placed the key in that spot and it snapped into a quick half turn, the magnets pulling it into perfect alignment in the blink of an eye. The longest arrow pointed toward me. The lamplight caught in Oliver’s spectacles as his eyes met mine. “That must be north.”

We all jostled to the side of the table so we could see the map from the right angle. Suddenly the lines made more sense.

“If this is a map of England, the shape is all wrong.” Will leaned so close to the map his breath fogged a bit of it. He rubbed it clear then tapped part of the etching. “What is this gash?”

“It must be a bay for a river.” Lucinda traced her finger over the curved line emanating from the lower right-hand plate. “The Trent looks a bit like that.”

The lines pulled together into a picture I could understand. The land just to the north of the River Trent. “It’s Yorkshire.”

“Of course,” Oliver exclaimed. “These straight lines must be the railways.” He pushed his finger over them, almost as if it were a locomotive, stopping at each junction. “But if that’s true, Leeds should be here. Yet there’s no flower mark.”

“Perhaps the flowers don’t mark cities.” Will furrowed his brow. “Most seem to be off the roads, but near rivers.”

“Then what should they mark?” Oliver ran a hand over his head. “Bridges?”

“Castles,” I breathed. “They mark the castles. Look, here would be Bolton and here Skipton. This one is probably Conisbrough. They must have hidden the machine in the ruins of some old castle.”

Lucinda clapped her hands together as if she couldn’t contain them, and I caught her excitement. I would have jumped if the bench had let me. Lucinda leaned over the map and inspected the flowers. “But which one is it?”

If the key showed us north, maybe it could reveal this as well. I flipped the key over, rubbing my thumb over the swirling lines and the Amusementists’ symbol carefully etched on the small button in the center. The lines didn’t seem to mimic any of the parts of the map. Just in case, I touched the key to each of the flower marks, turning it, trying to make it fit.