Ticker (24 page)

Up to my elbows in a basket of mending, I nodded. “Or she needed to keep ready cash on hand for something. Perhaps she owed money to someone.”

A soft knock drew our attention. Quite unnecessarily, Marcus signaled for me to stay quiet as he went to check the door. Three plainclothes Ferrum Viriae entered, carrying crates of equipment. Philomena de Mesmer strode in at the end of the unusual procession.

She took in her surroundings with a sweeping glance and headed straight for the corpse. “Another of Warwick’s victims. At least this one isn’t a child.” Without sparing either Marcus or me a second look, she set down a leather valise that strongly reminded me of a surgical travel kit. “How long has she been dead?”

“Guessing by the body temperature, a few hours, maybe a bit more,” Marcus replied.

The two of them knelt near the corpse, heads close together. Unwilling to waste precious time on parlor tricks, I returned to rummaging. The group made a circle of golden light with lamps. The largest and most scarred of the wooden crates held what appeared to be a portable Cylindrella machine, complete with hand crank and brass trumpet.

Baynard’s device for speaking to the dead, I realized. The original Grand Design.

Philomena pulled out a set of wires that ended in circular cotton pads and placed them upon Lucy Reilly’s body at various pulse points. The clockwork ventriculator gave them pause.

“Her biological heart was removed,” Marcus explained. “Will that impede the reading?”

Sorting through the contents of the photographer’s satchel a second time, I noted, “Her lack of pulse should prove more of an impediment.”

“Tesseraria . . .” It was all Marcus said, but there was a warning note that I heeded with reluctance.

“Fine. I’ll be over here, conducting a proper investigation.” I went back to the hastily packed clothes, scrutinizing every piece. Pursued by an unknown madman, Lucy thought them important enough to pack. Faded, worn soft with a thousand washings, some of the shirts and smocks were far too small to fit her.

I turned to tell Marcus, but he wore a Long Ear listening device and a frown of concentration. Philomena had the photographer’s limp hand cradled in her own, and it was all I could do to repress a shudder.

One of the aides slowly turned the Cylindrella crank ten precise rotations. I counted off the seconds on my Ticker. After exactly one minute, he turned the crank again. Ten rotations. Another minute of excruciating silence. In the third pause, I thought I heard something. The scrabble of a rodent in the walls, maybe, but it was enough to set my teeth on edge.

“I’m here,” Philomena said in a voice not quite her own. My skin rippled with a sudden chill, and I couldn’t help but turn to look at the group. It was like staring at a daguerreotype: Marcus and the other technicians holding impossibly still, the light from the lamps glinting as though off glass, Philomena’s eyes, open and staring.

Ten more rotations of the hand crank. A minute in near silence. A scrabble from the walls, this one followed by a muffled noise that no rodent would make . . .

A tiny sob.

I stepped toward the sound, running my hands over the plaster, seeking out what was hidden.

“I’m here,” Philomena repeated, a bit stronger this time before adding, “Please. You must help.”

“Tell us what happened here,” Marcus said.

My fingertips located a nodule, and I instinctively pressed it, feeling the panel shudder and start to swing out.

“My heart . . . My own.”

“We see what was done to your heart,” Marcus murmured, trying to encourage the spirit of Lucy Reilly—if that’s who or what it really was—to stay with them.

“My heart, my own.” The words were a needle stuck in the groove of a ghostly recording.

“Tell us who did this to you,” Marcus said in a hoarse whisper.

A door was hidden behind the panel. Locked, of course, not that such a thing had ever stopped me before. Removing a hairpin, I knelt next to the keyhole and set to work with trembling fingers. It was hard to concentrate, what with the refrain of “my heart, my own” echoing in the background. Then Philomena began to croon a lullaby, so softly at first that I almost missed it.

“Come to me, child of mine, rest your weary head . . .” Filtered by the psychic, the dead woman’s voice strengthened, slowly filling the room with the song. “No harm will come to you, child of mine, so long as I watch over you.”

The same song that was on Dimitria’s Cylindrella player. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears. My hands were shaking so
badly that they slipped, jamming the hairpin into the keyhole at an impossible angle.

Impossible, and just what was needed to trip the lock.

“Child of mine, child of mine,” the dead woman sang.

In the hissing silence that followed, the trick door opened, and I found myself looking down at a shivering bundle of humanity.

“Mama?”

ELEVEN

In Which Ideas of the Great Hereafter Require Fine-Tuning

I extended my hand, trying to look reassuring. “It’s all right. You can come out. I won’t hurt you.”

“Mama?” she asked again. No more than three or four years old, the little girl was all unkempt hair and enormous eyes.

I tried to keep my face impassive, encouraging, all the while frantically signaling Marcus to cover up the dead woman’s body. “Your mother isn’t here, little one. Are you hungry?”

No answer, but the glint in the child’s eye answered the question. I pulled the scone from my pocket, thankful it hadn’t gone completely to crumbs, and handed it to her. She fell upon it with a glad cry, taking great bites of it and babbling to me. Occasionally comprehensible words filtered through the sugared biscuit and blueberries.

“Mama’s coming. Steamboat! Big trip.” She left off the food long enough for her lower lip to tremble. “Bad man. Very bad man.”

I dared move forward, near enough to brush the hair out of her eyes. There was no mistaking the resemblance to our dead photographer. “Do you know the very bad man’s name?”

The child nodded yes, shook her head no, then took another bite of scone. By the time I coaxed her out of the closet, Philomena and her team had bundled up the corpse and removed it from the room.

Marcus glanced at the child before murmuring, “The team will see if they can get more using the Grand Design.” He got down on the floor so he could meet the little girl’s solemn gaze. “Hello there! Are you a fairy queen?”

That silliness bought us the faintest of smiles. “No.”

“Are you a mechanical Butterfly in disguise?”

Another shake of her tousled head. “No.”

I heaved a sigh. “I suppose you’ll have to tell us your name, then.”

The child leveled a look at me. “Are you a stranger?”

Taken aback by the force of the inquiry, I could only nod and speak the truth. “Technically, yes. But my name is Penelope Aurelia Farthing, and you can call me Penny. And this,” I indicated Marcus, “is Mister Kingsley, Legatus legionus of the Ferrum Viriae.”

“I’m Cora.” She looked at him, a curious expression on her face. “Are you a clockwork soldier, too?”

Marcus glanced at me before repeating, “A clockwork soldier?”

“Like the boy in Mama’s pictures,” Cora said. “Did you come to pick them up?”

“We did,” Marcus said when he saw I could say nothing. “Does your mum have any more pictures of a man? A clockwork soldier?”

Cora turned and headed back into the hidden closet, beckoning over her shoulder to me and then pointing to a heavy stack of glass slides wrapped in thick twine. I carried them both out of the
closet, handed the little girl off to Marcus, and cut the string on the parcel.

Numbered and dated with silver-slick metallic paint, the new daguerreotypes told us that the photographer wasn’t the only one to have endured multiple Augmentations in a short period of time. Over the last few days, Nic’s elbows, knees, and ankles had been reinforced with plates of dull metal.

I searched through the stack, sweat slicking my palms. “What if they implanted a prototype Ticker in him as well?”

What if he’s already dead?

I didn’t think I could bear it. Some part of me would die with him, and what remained would simply shrivel up, like a plant denied water and sunlight. I remembered the chasm of grief the family had fallen into when Cygna had died, then again when Dimitria passed; that time, we’d crawled out of the sadness on hands and knees over emotions sharp as glass.

If Nic dies, I don’t think I’ll be able to find my way out of that dark place again.

But I was spared that sorrow for the moment. The last daguerreotype in the stack showed him sitting up, grimacing into a bright light, his right hand fully Augmented. The metal spark in his eyes was welcome now, because it meant that my twin was still fighting. “He’s alive—”

A barrage of MAG gunfire interrupted me. Fléchettes broke through the windows, riddling the walls opposite and tearing open the sleeve of Marcus’s coat before he could duck.

He dove to the floor, still holding Cora. “Get down!”

I obeyed without question, clutching the daguerreotypes. Marcus overturned the shabby chaise, put his back against it, and neatly tucked Cora into his lap. Her brown eyes were huge, and she clapped her hands over her ears.

Mama.
Her lips moved but no sound came out.

“Send out the girl!” shouted a rough voice from the street. “That’s all we want.”

I crawled over to Marcus, pushing the pictures in front of me. “They’re coming for her?”

“Or you.” With his free hand, he flicked off his MAG’s safety. “Might I remind you, Tesseraria, that you are also of the feminine persuasion?”

He had a point, curse him. “Give me that.”

“The child?”

“The gun.”

He shoved it into my hand, and I loaded a round into the chamber just before someone breached the door. Taking a deep breath, I emerged from behind the couch far enough to shoot the intruder high in his dominant shoulder, then low in his left kneecap. He dropped, groaning, and the man behind him fell back with a shout.

“She’s armed!”

Behind me came the hissing crackle of Marcus’s RiPA firing to life. With a muttered oath, he conveyed to the departing Ferrum Viriae and the ones manning the Communications Center that we were under attack.

“Come out, come out,” the attacker outside singsonged before a smoke canister landed on the floor.

Marcus enveloped Cora in his wool coat while I pulled my shawl up over my nose and mouth. Eyes streaming, I used the choking blue fog as cover and crossed to the fallen mercenary. He lay on the floor, still groaning. When I jammed the Pixii under his chin and discharged the full blast, he jerked once and then went slack. Hardly able to see for the smoke, I divested him of his gun and short knife.

“The Araneae will be here in thirty seconds,” Marcus relayed to me. “Be prepared to evacuate.”

“Two steps ahead of you.” And I was. When another mercenary tried to rush the door, I shot him with both MAGs. Fléchettes riddled his chest even as his answering bullets whizzed past me; he succumbed to my better aim. The whine of incoming SkyDarts and the shouts of soldiers in the street told me our backup had arrived. “Let’s go!”

With Marcus and Cora right behind me, I edged into the street. Armed Araneae soldiers surrounded us.

The squadron leader shouted through his visor, “Are you all right? Is anyone injured?”

“No one on our side,” Marcus said.

The scene beyond the human wall was one of pandemonium, with Ferrum Viriae engaged in hand-to-hand combat and pursuing the attackers who’d fled the scene. Passersby hastened into nearby buildings even as we hustled to the nearest SkyDart. I handed Marcus his weapon without a word, exchanging it for the child. Cora clung to me like a baby possum.

I murmured in the little girl’s ear to cover up the shouts of the dead and the dying. “Have you ever been to the Square Park Zoo? They’ve a Bhaskarian Tiger Exhibit.”

After a moment, she answered against my shoulder, “I like the Butterflies.”

“Yes! I like visiting the Mechanical Butterfly Enclosure, too.” We clambered inside the SkyDart, and Marcus took the controls, launching us like a projectile fired from a Superconductive Slingshot. Fumbling with the lap belt, I somehow strapped it over Cora. “There’s the new Glacia Crystal Castle with white maritime bears that walk on the ice. Have you seen that?”

Cora mumbled something into my bodice, and I put my ear down next to her mouth. “What is it, flitter-mouse?”

“He’s a bad man,” she said, the tremble of her limbs shaking me to the core. “A very bad man.”

I patted her, awkwardly at first, then with growing ease. The weight and warmth of her fragile body against mine roused every protective instinct in me, and I could have cheerfully torn apart any threat to her with my bare hands. “He
is
a very bad man, and he’s going back to prison.”

This flight seemed to take far longer than the last one, perhaps because I counted every shuddering breath of the small creature in my arms. Cora was like a sparrow fallen out of the nest too soon, with bones so light they might as well have been hollow. I had no idea what I would tell her about where we were going, or about the death of her mother. There was little I could say by way of comfort, and the truth was certainly not something I would willingly share with someone so young.