Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) (31 page)

“Cressida,” he screamed. “No!”

Honoré pushed a lever forward, and the machine glowed more brightly. Suddenly I felt as if I were standing on the face of the sun. I cried out and struggled to the side to escape the vicious heat. For as much as I was prepared to die, the pain had turned me into an animal who only wished to escape.

“The choice is up to you, my darling Henry,” Boucher said as she reached out and touched his face. She placed the key in his hand. “Does she live, or does she die?”

I WANTED TO TELL HIM
to not give in, but the words stopped in my throat. I had to escape the burning.

I pulled toward him, and a loop from the chain that bound my wrist unwound, giving me more slack, but there was nowhere I could go to escape the ray. I felt the heat in my blood rushing through my veins so that it roared in my ears. I stepped closer to the machine, hoping I could find safety beneath it.

“To think.” Boucher’s voice sounded like treacle pouring from her throat. “She’ll burn exactly the way her mother and father did. How very tragic. Only, this time you’ll get to watch.”

“Enough,” Papa said, his shoulders sagging. “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t harm her.”

“Papa, don’t. Please,” I begged, knowing I was begging for my own death. I didn’t want to die, but at least when I met the Maker, I would be able to hold my head proudly. That was what it meant to sacrifice. Pain was temporary. The grief of thousands torn apart by this abomination, would not be.

Papa looked at me, and for the first time I saw a broken man. “I cannot watch her die.”

Boucher unlocked the shackle at his wrist, and he stepped up to the controls. I watched in horror as he opened the key. The killing heat ceased.

I had to stop this. Somehow there had to be a way. Honoré loomed over me with the death ray, holding me in its sights. The gear wheels turned at the base. What did I have that I could use? I had no weapons, my clothing was in tatters, and I couldn’t escape the machine. I was chained to the rail.

By a ring. A ring that could slide. I scanned the length of chain and did a quick mental calculation. It could work, if my timing were perfect.

Papa hunched by the controls. The vent stacks for the enormous boiler rose up behind the death ray. I could feel the heat from the fire, but the engine had not been engaged
yet. I listened as Papa played a sequence of notes that triggered resonant clicks. He let out a breath, and then his fingers faltered. He hit a wrong note, which slid into the key next to it, giving the song he had so carefully taught me a hiccup.

Boucher’s gaze turned to ice. “Hurry, or you can say good-bye to your precious granddaughter forever.” The floor beneath us vibrated, and then I heard a hiss and a loud squeal. The chamber under the controls opened as the power from the boiler reached the engines. Like a beast waking from hibernation, the machine shook itself awake. The blades in the front began to turn.

I had one chance, and only one moment when the old witch would be distracted. Boucher grabbed the plans, lifted them out, and held them before her like a precious treasure.

Now.

I dove across the platform, letting my feet slide forward and stretching my arms out so that the slack in the chain caught in the gear wheels at the base of the death ray.

Honoré shouted as the teeth of the wheels compressed on the chain. The gears strained, and the death ray whipped around on its jointed armature, the bird shaking its terrible head. Honoré lost his balance and fell away from the controls.
The manacles pulled tight against my wrist as Boucher dove toward me. Honoré tried to right himself but pulled down on the lever that controlled the ray’s intensity.

A blinding light erupted from the machine, cutting through the steam and smoke now belching from the boiler. It hit the mirrors surrounding us and reflected at wild angles, nearly catching Boucher in its beam. She leapt away from the killer light, dropping the plans as she did so.

I pulled at the chain attached to my wrist. The teeth of the death ray’s gears crushed the chain’s link and snapped it in half. I rose and whipped the length of chain attached to my wrist at Boucher. It caught her across the face.

“Papa! Run!” I screamed as the beam shifted again, slicing across the platform and radiating heat as it drew closer to the vents of the boiler. It glowed with a thousand times the intensity of what I had endured. My skin still burned, but I had no doubt the ray could now melt flesh in a manner of moments.

Papa grabbed my hand and pulled me toward him, and we both swung over the side of the juggernaut. As we slid down the machine, rivets bruised my hip, and I crashed against a panel jutting outward over the spiked wheels.

Papa caught a ladder rung above me and clung to it as one
of the blades sliced by my head, so close that I felt the push of air in the tendrils of hair around my ears.

Dear Lord, we’d never survive this.

The machine hissed, then whistled. I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. The juggernaut shook. I jumped down and landed on the stone platform, then threw myself to the ground, foregoing the ramp and the spinning blades at the front of the terrible machine.

I landed hard and let myself crumple and roll out of the way. The enormous spiked wheels began to turn. They strained as they gripped the stone platform.

Papa ran down the steps with agility at odds with his age, but panic did strange things to a person. Together we raced toward the entrance to the elephant graveyard. We had to reach the Academy before it was too late.

I worked my arms through the air, using my entire body to propel me forward as fast as it would take me. I ran toward sanctuary like a panicked horse in a fire, uncaring that my muscles screamed in protest and I could barely breathe.

The whistling turned into a strident scream as it echoed against the stone walls of the cavern.

Boom.

I fell forward, scraping my cheek against the stone as a rush of air pushed over the top of me. My ears felt like they were bleeding as I heard the tinkling of glass mirrors breaking against stone.

A wall of smoke and steam obscured my vision.

“Papa?” I pulled myself back to my feet and gave him a hand. He too stared at the billowing smoke curling against the ceiling.

He shouted something at me, but it sounded as if we were underwater. I couldn’t understand him through the ringing in my ears. Whatever he had said, only one thing mattered. We had to escape. We ran from the juggernaut as quickly as we could. I hoped the death ray had managed to destroy the juggernaut, like a snake that swallowed its own tail.

My aching body screamed in protest, but I ran toward the archway and into the shadowy chamber beyond. We raced through the entire length of the chamber, stumbling, unable to catch our breaths. I could still hear the hiss of steam behind us, and the groan of metal.

Blood lingered on my tongue, and my lungs burned. Finally we reached the tunnel that led to the Academy.

“Meg!” My name sounded strange through my injured ears. It gave me a jolt of shock. I looked up to see Will running
toward me through the shadows. He looked haggard and ill with worry, his cheeks sunken in as he ran as fast as I had ever seen a man run. He was glorious.

I couldn’t speak. My legs gave out as he reached me. He caught me and held me, and I shook in his arms.

“I’ve got you,” he said against my hair. He wrapped his arms around me like a man desperate to hold me to him forever. One arm wound around my body, supporting me, as the other found my hair and pressed my head into the warm strength of his shoulder. Both of us panted as we fought for our breath. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Help us.” The ringing in my ears turned to a high irritating buzz. “Boucher has the juggernaut.”

Will looked me in the eye, once again my rock. “Help is coming.”

“How did you find me?” I choked out.

Just then a light bobbed out of the shadows, carried by a girl with short, thickly curling black hair.

Josephine.

“Thank God my father didn’t kill you,” she said.

“He nearly did,” I said. “You brought them here?” I pulled away from Will enough to find my feet and face my cousin.

She shrugged. “I’m tired of death.”

“Several of the Amusementists had already begun to gather for the Oath. I rallied those I could,” Will explained.

I took Josephine’s hand. “Bless you.”

“This is Josephine?” Papa came up beside me.

Josephine took a step back, but I grabbed her hand again and nodded. Papa reached out and quickly pulled her into an encompassing hug, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her curling hair. Her arms wound around him, and the tension she always held in her shoulders eased, if only for a moment.

Suddenly I realized the tunnel was filled with hurried footsteps and bobbing lights.

“Damn it all, I hate running.” David emerged from the blackness and bent over so he could brace his hands against his knees. “Whatever trouble you’ve gotten into this time, it had better be spectacular,” he complained as Michael, Noah, and Peter joined him. To my surprise, Samuel joined the group of boys, followed by Manoj and Oliver.

“David?” I held a hand out to him and helped him stand straight.

His hand squeezed mine tightly. “For the Order.”

I nodded.

John Frank led a party of Amusementists and Guildsmen,
all jogging down the tunnel. Gabrielle kept pace beside him, holding her lantern aloft.

Suddenly there was a loud crash that felt as if it shook the whole of the hill above us.

The crowd stilled and looked back at the eerie glowing smoke in the deep chamber. Two balls of fire erupted out of the haze. They billowed upward until they hit the stone ceiling. Another roar echoed through the chamber and the juggernaut emerged through the smoke and steam.

The blades at the front of the deadly contraption flashed. They sliced through the smoke, twisting and turning as the monstrosity sought to reap a harvest of souls.

“Dear God, what is that thing?” Oliver asked, stepping forward.

I could see now how powerful a weapon of intimidation it was. All I wanted to do was run. “It’s Haddock’s juggernaut.”

I felt poised on the head of a pin. The Amusementists watched the juggernaut rolling through the far chamber, the blades whirling through the air as it belched flame and smoke. It was as though they all had been blinded by the Amusementist motto about science and beauty and had never considered that something truly ugly could come from the mind of one of their own.

Papa turned around to face it, and became the undaunted captain once more.

“To the Amusements! We must destroy this monstrosity at all cost,” he shouted, still holding Josephine’s hand.

As if in answer, the juggernaut released another ball of flame, and the light caught on the spinning blades. The death machine reached the archway supporting the chamber’s ceiling, then suddenly veered to the right.

The juggernaut smashed into the side of the archway, sending bricks flying and crashing against the stone floor. If the juggernaut ran into enough pillars, the chamber could collapse, bringing the Royal Observatory down on top of us.

If we didn’t stop it, none of us would leave this chamber alive.

MY FRIENDS SCRAMBLED TOWARD THE
machines scattered around the room while the juggernaut worked to back out of the ruins of the damaged wall. I headed for the elephant, with Will and Papa at my heels. It was the only Amusement that could match the size of the juggernaut, but it lacked any weapons.

Somehow we had to stop Boucher, which meant we had to get her away from the controls. A beam of light cut through the chamber above our heads. We also had to stop that death ray.

Papa came up and opened a hatch in the belly of the elephant. “Quick, get in.”

Will linked his fingers together, and I stepped into his palms, balancing against his shoulders as he lifted me up through the hole. I had to duck to keep from hitting my head on a large pendulum in the stomach of the beast. It was shadowy inside, and I felt as if spiders were crawling all over my skin.

I moved toward the beast’s flank, the chain on my wrist rattling against the metal interior of the elephant. Papa appeared through the hatch with a lantern. It was no wonder I thought spiders were crawling on me. Thick cobwebs draped over the gears and cogs, surrounding us like death shrouds. Papa and I reached down and pulled Will up.

He closed the hatch, and Papa nudged me toward a ladder leading up through a second hatch above us.

Papa tested the pendulum, frowned, and then said, “It isn’t locked but it needs to be wound.” He jumped up and pulled on a loop of chain, raising a large weight to the top of the elephant. Then he repeated the process for another weight. “We have to get that pendulum swinging. The motion of the swinging arm will wind that spring above us like a ratchet, and then we’ll have power.”

Papa banged his fist on a gear, adjusting the angle where the teeth interlocked with another. “Our only hope
of stopping the juggernaut is to ram it head-on and destroy those blades.”

“This has to be the most inefficient, terrible design I’ve ever seen. It’s fatally flawed.” I commented. Honestly, who put a pendulum in a moving vehicle?

“That’s why it’s down here in the graveyard,” Papa said as he climbed toward the roof. “Don’t complain to me. It’s not one of mine. It only needs to go far enough to ram that thing.”

Papa disappeared above us, and I could hear his footsteps clanging against the back of the beast.

I climbed atop the pendulum’s weight and grasped the long arm attached to the pivot point above, then held my hand out for Will. The juggernaut moved slowly and was caught in the rubble from the wall, but I felt as if the beast of a machine were bearing down on us like a charging bull. We had to hurry. It was only a matter of time before the juggernaut shook itself loose from the brick.

Will climbed up opposite me and nodded. Standing on the weight and holding on to the pole, I threw my hips back and held on as the pendulum shifted forward by inches. That was it? I had expected it to swing more freely. This would take all our force, and we didn’t have the luxury to wait for physics and poor design to catch up to us.