Fall of Sky City (A Steampunk Fantasy Sci-Fi Adventure Novel) (Devices of War) (10 page)

TO ESCAPE SKY CITY

Nix
didn’t just accept the kiss as payment. She also doubled my class load, including three courses on using magicks.

I didn’t mind. I was eager to figure out how to use my “most powerful” abilities. There had to be some benefit to having the greatest Mark in history.

Somehow, I was going to find a way to use it against her.

As the weeks passed, she spent less and less time in my quarters, leaving me to my own devices. Granted, in order to keep up with the demanding schedule she’d set up for me, I spent nearly all of my free time on homework.

In magick studies, however, I wasn’t learning a lot I could actually use. I was still in theory, not practical application. A part of me wondered if she was holding back because she didn’t yet trust me. That was entirely possible. She liked to test people and I had absolutely no doubt that she was testing me.

When I was alone in my quarters, I turned the theory into practical application.

I found I could heat the temperature of my body to the point where rolls of steam poured off of me. It made me dehydrated, but if I drank plenty of water, I found I could keep my body at a high temperature for days and weeks on end.

The practical application for that, of course, was easy. When you live your life on an airship where it’s always cold no matter the season, having an internal radiator is a good thing. There were days when even the gold-ringed ice-eating slugs couldn’t keep the ice off the rigging. Frozen rigging could be disastrous.

That thought led to the next question. If I could do that, why couldn’t I heat an entire vessel?

Water was an easy thing to conduct heat through, and I practiced this often in the bath. The metal the city was built out of was also an excellent conductor though it had a lot of resistance, and bricks were good for storing heat.

Joshua and I had other ideas and concepts for what could be done with my “incredible gifts.” He’d developed a metal combining the source metal of the city with cadmium and copernicium. We were looking for something with less resistance. At one point, we’d attempted to add gold to the mixture since it was a softer metal, but we’d nearly blown up the laboratory.

The device we were working on was a pistol I could use to conduct my magickal energies through. I held our latest version in my hands, a pair of mirrored goggles covering my eyes. I looked over at the tall red-headed man. “Ready?”

He nodded once, snapping his goggles into place.

There was a commotion behind me. We were supposed to be alone in the laboratory when conducting our experiments, a ruling that had been set down after we’d nearly killed everyone in a two decametre radius. I turned to see Keeley and her friend Yvette.

I adjusted the setting to hide my blush. I don’t know what it was about Keeley, but whenever she was in the room, I felt happy. Warm, like I belonged. A part of me said it was just the fact that Nix had stripped away all my friends and family. I was used to
being
close to others. Here, I was isolated. I’d never been so alone in my entire life.

Yvette, however, didn’t belong, and to hear her complain, you’d think she’d find someone else a little more fashion forward and shallow to converse with, but no. She liked spending her time with us. She was taller than Keeley, but only because of those ridiculous heels she insisted on wearing. She wore the blue and silver of the House of Swords. She looked absurd with her frills and her frocks and those—I shook my head and turned away. Those hats. What was the point of a hat that covered so little space of your head? I had no idea. And why one needed a feather on one’s ludicrously small hat was simply beyond me.

Joshua handed both of the girls goggles.

I didn’t expect Yvette to get them over her head. Her brown hair was piled high with curls and pins and that silly hat, but she managed to do so without disturbing a single feather or bead.

Keeley wore her normal green and gold, her dress simple, her red hair in a long braid. She put her glasses on, nodding to whatever it was that Yvette was saying, and grabbed a stained apron.

“Are we ready, ladies?” I asked.

Yvette turned to me, one hand on her hip. “I don’t know how anyone can understand a single word you say.”

Yeah. She was one to speak. Her Handish was so garbled by her accent, I think Keeley was the only one who truly knew what she said.

I looked at Joshua. “I’m taking that as a yes.”

“As long as you’re not going to blow us up again.” She handed Keeley a glass jar of the fertilizer they were both working on. “
T’es prêt?
” You ready?

Keeley nodded absently, studying the jar.

Yvette clicked her tongue. “
Ouais.
”

I let out a long breath, shook out my arms, raised the pistol, sighted down the short barrel and pulled the trigger.

Energy rushed out of my arm in long runs of burning heat. The pistol transferred it from my hand and…

Melted.

That hurt!

I took the metal scraper from the table and quickly rubbed the melted pistol from the palm of my hand, some of my skin going with it. With a thought, however, the skin grew back.

Yes. That was a side effect of my powers that we discovered when we nearly blew…
me…
up.

Yvette tsked and pulled her goggles from her eyes, setting them on her forehead. “That was disappointing.”

I sent her a quick glare, throwing my goggles on the table. “We’re making progress.”

“How?” Joshua demanded. “Wha’ever we did melted the bloody thin’.”

“Ah, yes,” I said with a cheeky grin, “but that’s a definite improvement over doing nothing.”

He growled something under his breath and pulled out the schematics for the pistol. “I tried tellin’ ye that addin’ the copernicium was a bad idea. But would ye listen? Noooo. An’ why no’?” His lips flattened and his freckled nose flared. “Because yer the great new Primus with all this fantastical power tha’ ye can’t ruddy use, but ye know more’n the rest o’ us do.”

“Joshua.” I tipped my head and looked at him with a playful grin. “The copernicium was the thing that triggered the reaction.”

“It’s too bloody unstable,” he argued, scribbling over his diagrams. “I told ye and told ye and—”

“Yes.” I rolled my eyes and stared at my notes. “However, we’re succeeding in outwitting its volatility.”

“Oh, yes, Master of the Elements, we’ve succeeded in not blowin’ ourselves up. Hooray for us.”

“Indeed.” Sometimes, the man’s sarcasm far outreached his mind’s capacity. “So if we just add—”

We spent the next hour working on the metal composition of our next test version while the girls occupied the far edge or our large table, and worked with something that looked like dirt but smelled much worse.

People filed in, reclaiming their benches and work areas. A group on the far end of the room was working on a floating disc. Who knew what they were going to do with that? The possibilities seemed endless. Another group was working on one of the two-winged flying machines. I wished, not for the first time, that I could fly one.

The large laboratory filled with a loud buzz as people collaborated and experimented and occasionally blew things up. I had no idea why the Heads of the Collegium were so upset with us when it was a weekly occurrence.

Finally, Yvette put her fingers to her temple, and let out a long sigh of frustration. “I’m done and famished.”

That was a language I understood. I kept my hands steady as I continued to work on soldering the rivers of wire between the trigger and the barrel.

Joshua picked up his head. “I’ve got it.”

Yvette held up her hands. “I do too. I think we should go to that lovely café by the Librarium. You know the one I’m talking about. The one with those lovely little sandwiches.”

“No.” He grimaced in her direction and then pointed his pen at me from where he was stooped over his drawings. “The solution.”

I set down my soldering iron, pushed it aside, and leaned in. “What?”

“A powder.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How is a powder going to help anything?”

“Ye don’t see?” He pushed himself up. “Yer pistol has no ruddy ammunition.”

“That’s what I’ve been tellin’ you boys for weeks now,” Keeley said to her microtoscope. When she wasn’t around her brother, her accent was nearly invisible, but when she spent any time at all with him, her words gained a slight lilt. “But what would a girl know about a silly gun?”

“No,” I said for the thousandth time. “
I
am the ammunition. I just need something to funnel it through.”

Joshua was vigorously shaking his head. “Listen, ye daft man. You,” he pointed his hand at me, “are the catalyst and tha’s the reason the copernicium worked. Well, kind of. It didn’t—”

“Ah-ha.” He rarely ever said I was right. “You admit it.”

His face twisted in a derisive frown as he shook his head, charging forward. “Only kind of. Withou’ a form of ammunition, though, this thin’ will never truly work because we’re lookin’ at it all wrong.”

I shook my head, trying to see where he was taking it, but failed.

“Sandwiches?” Yvette asked with a pained smile.

“You’re the catalyst,” Joshua repeated.

Keeley looked up from her notes. “As I’ve been tryin’ to tell ye all along now, you’re the powder. You’re lacking bullets.”

“Ah,” I said, pointing a finger at her. “But that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t need bullets. I just need it to work like my electrostatic array pistol or my plasma—”

“Holy words of Tarot,” Joshua exclaimed, stepping around the table to clap me on the back. “Those were yers?”

I pulled back to look him in the face. “You know about them?”

“Who do ye think the queens set to takin’ ‘em apart so we could study ‘em?”

My mouth opened, but it took a moment for words come out. “You took them apart?”

“Well, yeah. But if’n it makes ye feel any better, I put ‘em both back together.”

I stared at him aghast. They were my prize inventions.

“But,” he said, backing away quickly, “I think you’ll find that mine work much better.”

Color drained from my face. “Yours?”

He shrugged with a chuckle. “Yeah. Mine. My very own.”

“
He, les gars,
” Yvette yelled. “I will pay. But let us go eat.” She gestured us to the door. “Now.”

Keeley hopped off her stool, left her apron, and followed Yvette out of the laboratory.

I raised my eyebrows at Joshua. “When was the last time she offered to pay?”

“Has she ever?” He pulled his apron over his head and draped it on his table.

“No.” I met him stride for stride. “I want to see my pistols.”

He chuckled. “Ye want to see mine too, eh?”

I grunted, but refrained from saying anything further. I wanted to see what he’d done to my designs, and I wanted to see if he had possibly improved them. Maybe. Possibly. Well, definitely with the plasma pistol because everything I’d done to date had been a semi success, but in a pinch, I never really knew if it was going to work or…not.

We continued to banter back and forth, the girls occasionally glancing back at us and shaking their heads, Yvette’s ridiculous shoes clip-clopping down the sidewalks. They disappeared into the café. I held the door open for Joshua, intent to follow.

I was stopped by a hand on my arm. “
maadhaa waqa’a?”

My breath was lodged in my throat as I scanned the long shadows of the dark side of the building and Sang rose slowly into the sky. It had been so long since I’d heard my own language, much less the voice of my friend. “Haji?” I asked, my hands seeking him. “Is that you?”

He pulled me into the gap between the two smooth buildings. “What happened?” he asked again. “Your father is gone and Isra said that you were captured.”

I gave him a long hug, one that he returned with great vigor. I pulled away and studied his face. He’d grown into a man. The rounded playfulness of his boyish features had been chiseled away. “If you knew I was captured, you must have known I would not be among the living.”

He snorted and chucked his chin at me. “Yes. I did know that, but then I started hearing that a boy was burned and then survived, wearing the Mark of the House of Wands. Tell me this isn’t true.”

I closed my eyes and turned away.

“You’ve become a Hand? They’ve made you their knight?”

I shook my head and smiled at him. “No. I’m studying, trying to find a way to get out of here. I am. But there’s so much technology here, so much knowledge. I want to take as much as I can.”

“Come with me now.”

And leave Joshua and Keeley? “I need more time.”

“I have a way off this city, but we have to leave tonight.”

“Haj.” I shook my head. I needed those pistols, and more importantly, I needed the pistol that Joshua and I were working on for my abilities. “I need more time. What’s the hurry? How did you find me? How’d you get to Sky City? No one knows where it is. It’s hidden.”

“Not so well as you might think.” He took a step back and really looked at me. “Did it even hurt when you watched my Family murdered?”

The memories flashed over my mind, bringing with them emotions I’d learned to hide. “Haj, it’s not like that.”

“Oh, I see. Yeah, you’re the pet now, the chosen one. Did you know that the queen has targeted the rest of the El’Asim Family? That nowhere is safe for them? What did you do?”

I knew exactly what Nix was doing. She was trying to ensure I had no place left to call home, no family but her.

“And the Ino? They nearly lost their
lethara
last month. The Hands targeted it. Can you believe that? And why? Do the Hands know of the alliance?”

I swallowed and ducked my head. “My Mark is fire, Haj, not storm. For all that I look like my father, I am my mother’s son.”

He ran a hand over his stained hat. “Great. So you’re staying?”

“I—” I shook my head and let out a short breath. “I need more time.”

“Will you come or not?”

My mind said no. I needed more time to study, to plan.

My heart told me to get out of there as quickly as I possibly could.