Noir (25 page)

Fo
rty-Four

Eyelet

We land aboard Clementine under the cover of the clouds, near the edge of the woods, just outside the walls of the Piglingham Square. Abandoning her, we scramble the last thirty metres and take refuge behind some taller shrubbery to the left of the stage. The Ruler stands in the centre of it.

I look around. The whole of the Commonwealth is here. Man. Woman. Child.

“Burn the heretic!” The crowd shouts.

“Dip her first!” a lone woman screams.

My heart kicks at my throat.

The woman launches onto her toes above the rest of the heads in the crowd to get a better look. Others stir and push toward the front.

“We’ve got to get closer,” Urlick says, looking out of the collar of his overcoat. He’s stood the collar on end and pinned it up high around his face, donned the freakmaster’s top hat and pulled it down as far as he can, and tied his ascot like a scarf around the bottom half of his chin to hide his face.

I, too, have done my best to conceal my identity, pinning my hair high up under Livinea’s borrowed top hat, tilting it at a severe angle down over my eyes. I swapped her clothing for my own, in the hope of better disguising myself—but so far, her flashy fashion is proving to do just the opposite. It seems the bold navy-and-ivory-striped fabric, and the unusual cut of the sleeves of her jacket, are drawing unwanted attention from the women in the crowd. Eyes track and stare at me.

A woman reaches out and touches my arm as we pass. “Did you see that?” she whispers to her friend. “That woman wears real silk.”

A sick feeling invades my stomach.

I lower my head and stumble after Urlick. He yanks me through the hating crowd. We tuck in behind a couple of overgrown boxwood evergreens at the far side of the stage, where we can hear but we can’t be seen. Rain threatens overhead.

I raise my chin, daring to take a peek. “Oh, good Lord in Heaven,” I gasp, seeing a squirming, screaming Iris, gagged and bound, tied to a post atop a mound of kindling, behind centre stage, big enough to torch the entire city.

Urlick stares up at her, speechless. A tear rolls down his cheek.

Her darting eyes lock onto mine.

Oh, Iris, I love you so . . . Hold on, please.

Hot, angry rocks burn in the pit of my stomach. I feel so helpless.

To the right of Iris stands Penelope Rapture, all dressed in black, her vengeful eyes scanning the crowd.

I avert my gaze, gasping as my eyes register a second horror. Something I never thought I’d see again.

A second woman appears, also dressed in black. She moves in swiftly next to Penelope. Her face is the most unnatural shade of peach. She wears a matching mourning gown, as if in a show of sympathy. A sheer black veil covers her beady grey eyes.

“Flossie,” I breathe.

“What?” Urlick’s head whips around.

“It’s Flossie. Look,” I say.

His eyes are like moons. “How can that be?” he hisses. “I thought you said she was dead? I thought you said you killed her.”

“As good as, when I left her!” I gasp. “I don’t understand this, either.”

Behind the two women, Iris struggles against her gags and ties. The haunted look in her eyes stops and starts my heart. “This can’t be happening.” I blink away tears. “It can’t be real.”

It’s then I note that Flossie doesn’t seem to be quite riveted to the floorboards of the stage. Rather, she keeps levitating, just slightly, each time she raises her elbows at her sides. She flaps her arms to combat the movement, grounding herself again, her gloved hands clasped in front of her. “She’s floating,” I say. “It must be an illusion.”

Urlick turns.

“Flossie.” I point. “She’s floating.”

Urlick jerks his head around and stares through narrowed eyes.

Flossie floats up again. There are no feet under the hem of her dress. Instead, I swear I see the glimpse of tentacles. “She’s been infected by the Infirmed,” I say. “She must have been. When I left her, she was about to be eaten.”

“Why on earth would Penelope risk being near her, then?” Urlick cranks around, surveying the huge fields of rubber-screened filtration devices that line the boundaries of Brethren, designed to suck up all Vapourous entities that attempt to breach the city’s borders. “How did Flossie circumvent the scrubbers and screens?”

“Penelope must have let her in.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know,” I say, my eyes still fixed on the stage where Penelope and Flossie stand, holding hands. “Something is very wrong.”

Beneath the folds of Flossie’s clothing, something glows an eerie shade of green. As though a light were pulsing rhythmically at her chest. Is that?
The necklace . . .
Could it be?

“Urlick—” I start.

“Your attention, please!” Penelope hollers, gramophone crackling. She lifts her arms, and the crowd instantly quiets. Urlick wrenches me back behind the cover of the trees. “We have gathered you here today,” she continues, “to assist us in ridding our community of a
wretched evil.
”

The crowd goes up as if it’s been lit on fire.

Iris lets out a jagged wail.

“As you know,” Penelope rasps over the amplification, “we here in Brethren have had our first prison break.” The crowd roars, and fists pump in the air. “As well, I’ve received word that a highly dangerous mental patient has escaped from the Brink.” The crowd gasps.

“What?” I falter.

Urlick claps his hand over my mouth, pulling me up tight to his chest.

“We have every reason to believe they are on the run together! And this heretic here”—Penelope swings awkwardly around and points to Iris—“is the one responsible for their FREEDOM!”

The crowd goes wild, shouting, chanting, calling for her death. “Burn the traitor! Make her pay!”

Iris’s eyes pop with panic. A metallic ball of fear chokes my throat. I’ve never been so afraid.

Penelope’s vengeful eyes narrow. She addresses the group again. Flossie stands next to her, scanning the faces of the crowd. “In an attempt to reclaim peace and effect justice for all who dwell in Brethren, I have decided this heretic must be burned at the stake!”

The crowd cheers in loud agreement. Penelope encourages them with a smile.

“It is my hope that, by slow-roasting their accomplice, we will smoke the offenders out. At which time they, too, will be dealt with accordingly! To the fullest extent of our laws!”

The crowd screams. “They cannot hide
forever
!”

“Burn ’er!” an elderly woman shouts.

“Light the torch! Roast the heretic!” others yell.

Penelope signals something to Flossie, who turns her back to the crowd, then whirls her floating self back around, holding a device in her hands.

Penelope flaps her arms, quieting the crowd. “As you all know,” she begins again, “the air here in Brethren has become unbearably thin, the water is disturbed, our resources are dwindling.”

Urlick and I share a quick, confused look.

“It has been my plan for quite some time, as it was Smrt’s before me, God rest his soul”—she bows her head as if in prayer—“to go forth and conquer the East, so that we may secure a more suitable place to raise our future generations!” She throws out her arms, punctuating her sentence, and the crowd lets out a shout of approval.

“The East?” Urlick whispers to me.

“I know nothing of this.” I shake my head. “There’s never been a plan to leave Brethren.”

“It’s heretics like this”—Penelope points to Iris—“who stand in the way of our progress! Like the two fugitives at large, they threaten our plan for success, by undermining my
authority
!”

The crowd ignites again. Fists punch and voices rail.

“Off with their bloody ’eads!” a man behind us shouts.

Urlick looks back at me, wide-eyed. “This is madness.”

Flossie squints her right eye and places it behind the viewer of the device in her hand. She cranks the handle, and a reel begins turning. A beam of purple light shoots out over the heads of the crowd, scanning its members, projecting their likenesses back onto the giant slate screen behind her.

“Duck!” I shout, throwing a hand over Urlick’s head as the beam sweeps past us.

“What is it? What’s happening?” he whispers as I haul him down.

“She’s taking a viteogram.” I suck in a tight breath. “Flossie’s recording all the faces in the crowd. They’ll have a record of every person here.”

The beam sweeps past our heads again. Urlick yanks me toward him. I land with a thud against his chest. He throws his body over me like a shield behind the boxwood tree, pinning us as close as possible to the ground as the beam keeps searching, sweeping our area of the grounds.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” He launches up after it passes, dragging me to my feet.

“But what about Iris?” I pull back. “We can’t just leave her here.”

“We’re not!” Urlick hauls me forward. “We just need a plan.”

I look back over my shoulder. Flossie’s eyes connect with me briefly.

My limbs grow weak.

Urlick tugs at my arm, and I duck my head and race forward amid Iris’s screaming, my heart pulling from my chest. A lightning-like shiver pulls like rope through my veins. I gasp.
No. Not the silver. Not now . . . please . . . NO!

“This way!” Urlick hurls me to one side, out of the path of the oncoming beam. I slip in the muck and I ditch in behind the trolling curls of cloud cover, slinking along inside them after Urlick, toward the forest at the park’s end. The thoughts in my mind are growing progressively muddy.

I reach into my pocket as I run, feeling myself slipping, the silver rising, and grab for the last leaf from the plant room at the Compound. Stuffing it into my mouth, I chew wildly—thankful when its venom spreads quickly. The bolt of silver lightning inside me softens. The fog that threatens my mind dissipates.

“You may have heard a rumour that a prince has been found,” Penelope’s voice blares out over the gramophone speakers above our heads. I turn to see her shaking a fist in the air. “Well, I am here to tell you,
there is no truth to it
!
There is no such prince! There never has been. I am your rightful ruler!”

“Long live our RULER!” The crowd bellows.

“Now we’ve really got to go.” Urlick reaches out to me, his brow wet with sweat.

“What? Why?” He yanks me forward.

“Eyelet.” He races on, his breath heaving. “There’s something I really need to tell you.” He looks back at me, his lips twitching. “And I will, I promise . . . just not now.”

Spying a break in the cloud cover, he dashes through it. I stumble, falling after him.

The viteogram beam scurries again over our heads, tracking us like an autoscope on a sniper’s steamrifle.

“I am your
ruler
!” Penelope’s voice rings out. “There is no other! I, and I alone, will lead you to the promised land!”

“Rapture! Rapture! Rapture!”
The crowd chants.

Thunder claps. My chin shoots up as the skies split open.

Rain falls, bouncing off the backs of the people, who shriek and moan and race for cover. They swell from the park like a school of frightened fish. Urlick and I race among them, hands over our heads, slipping on the wet ground. The viteogram beam of light falls away.

I look back over my shoulder. Flossie stands centre stage—the rain-doused candle of the viteogram smouldering in her hand. Her black dress is dissolving, draining down the front of her like washed-away ink, along with her overly peachy complexion. The colour seeps through the slats in the floorboards as if it were paint, leaving behind a hauntingly translucent-looking Flossie.

Fo
rty-Five

Urlick

“We can’t just leave her there,” Eyelet sobs as we run.

“We can’t go back for her now.” I clear a stump. “Thankfully, the rain has bought us a little time. We’ll have to figure something else out.” I pant, tracking Pan in the air, making sure we’re on course, headed back to the freak train.

“Like what?” Eyelet stumbles to keep upright beside me.

“I don’t know,” I say, squeezing her hand. “All I know is”—I look back—“this isn’t going to be your
run-of-the-mill
rescue mission, that’s for sure!”

“Because all of them have been up until now!”

We pull to a stop in the clearing. I drop my hands to my knees, sucking in big gulps of air. Eyelet does the same, pinching the stitch in her side and pacing in a circle, then she falls into another horrid fit of coughing.

“You all right?” I rush to her.

“Fine,” she coughs, waving me away. “I’ll be fine. I will.”

But she’s not, and I hold her hand as she gasps to catch her breath.

“What did you mean when you said you had something you really needed to tell me back there?” She looks up at me, changing the subject.

I hang my head, swallowing air.
No time like the present, I suppose.
I let go of her hand and tighten the grip on my knees. I speak without looking at her. “It seems,” I start, a little shaky—but then again, who wouldn’t be with what I have to divulge—“there’s been a bit of a mix-up regarding my identity.”

“Your what?”

I raise my head. “It appears I’m not who I thought I was.”

She scowls.

“I mean . . . I am who I am . . . It’s just”—I bite my lip—“it appears I’m a bit more than I thought I once was.”

“More what?” She looks afraid to even pose the question.

I let out a laboured breath. “What would you say if I were to tell you . . .” I squirrel up an eye and hesitate, biting my lip. “I’m royalty.” I rush out the rest of the sentence. I keep my eyes pinched, bracing, as if expecting to be hit.

“You’re
what
?” Eyelet staggers.

“A prince . . . it appears.” I tug down my waistcoat.

Eyelet’s eyes bloom twice their size. Her expression is of unbridled disbelief.
I think.
Either that or she’s about to laugh.

“The only living heir to the throne of Brethren,” I stammer on quickly, filling the awkward air. “The Ruler’s rightful successor. That’s me.” I poke my chest.

“You’re joking, right?” Eyelet grins sheepishly.

“’Fraid not.”

Eyelet launches backward, holding her own chest. She must think me suffering from madness.

“Apparently, though, I’m not a bastard.” I lilt my voice and flit my eyes playfully. “That’s a good thing, right?” I swoop my brows.

Eyelet stares at me, an O for a mouth. What does one say, when one’s lover announces such a thing? She springs forward and tests my head for fever. “What did they do to you in that jail?”

“Nothing.” I pull away. “It’s all right here in this register from the church.” I produce a wrinkled, folded piece of paper from my pocket.

“You pulled out the page!” She scowls at me. “From the formal church register?”

“Just a couple of them.”

Eyelet gasps.

“See, there’s my name, right there.” I stab at the paper. “My birth date. My birth weight. And above all else, the markings match.” I point to the corresponding line on the ledger. “Can’t argue with that, now, can they?”

“Let me see.” She pulls at the edge of the paper.

“And see what it says after that?” I point to the next line.

Her eyes dash over the explanation of my birth, at the formal script, the words declaring my true heritage . . . certified at the end by the press of the royal wax seal. Eyelet looks up at me, flabbergasted eyes round as dessert plates. Her mouth hangs open, questions teetering on the tip of her tongue.

“So your mother—?”

“Had a child for the Ruler, yes, in exchange for an appointment for my father at the Academy. We were poor and my mother was a great beauty, it says here, which was also confirmed by Smrt.” I shake out the papers in my hand. “Smrt may have even been the one to arrange their meeting, I’m not sure. At any rate, apparently the Ruler took notice of my mother at some event, and a deal was struck between all parties involved.”

“So she was used. Bargained with . . . like chattel.”

“I suppose you could say that.” I squirrel up my mouth. “The Ruler was fearful that his wife—who, at that point, had given birth to three dead sons—would never be able to produce the male heir so badly needed to succeed him, so
he commissioned my mother to produce a spare. Just in case, you know, his real wife could never produce one.”

Eyelet swallows. “And what if she, too, had failed? What if the child had been a girl?”

“I don’t know. I suppose she’d have suffered the consequences.” I drop my gaze to the paper again, feeling a pang of hurt for my mother in my heart. “It says here, no one outside the Royal House knew about the arrangement, except, of course, for Smrt, who was sent to attend and verify my birth. But when I was born . . . as I am”—I trip over the words—“the deal was apparently dashed.” I look Eyelet in the eyes. “The Ruler reneged, and I was to be destroyed, but then . . . apparently, the Ruler—my father—came to view me and couldn’t bring himself to go through with his orders. So he had me stowed away in the woods—his only living heir—never to be seen again unless necessary.” I fold the papers in my hand. “The orders to destroy me were reversed. He may have even paid for my education.”

“How do you know all that?”

“It’s right here in print.” I pull out another rumpled page—a handwritten letter from the Ruler to his son, a sort of plea for forgiveness from the Ruler’s deathbed, left for me. The words explain not only the circumstances, but the Ruler’s regrets—one of which is that he didn’t raise me himself, but rather had me banished. His
only
son.

Eyelet reaches up and strokes my arm, comforting me.

“That’s why the father I knew never loved me,” I say soberly. “How could he? I was an experiment gone terribly wrong. An experiment that took the love of his life from him, after she’d agreed to do something this atrocious to improve his position.” Saying it out loud makes me feel sick. I swallow down the spittle that rises in my throat. “The guilt must have driven him mad,” I say. “Then I showed up on his doorstep. A terrible reminder—”

“You can’t think of it that way.” Eyelet moves in, touching my shoulder. “None of this was your fault—
is
your fault.
You
were not consulted on the matter.
He
should have been man enough to embrace the half of you that was his love’s. You are, after all, also the product of your mother. And a damn good one at that, if I must say.”

“Eyelet?” I gasp, shocked that she’s sworn.

She smiles and takes my hand. “That must have been why Smrt had your specimen card.” She looks past me, off into the trees. “Obviously he must have been ordered to destroy you, then do away with it, but didn’t do either.” She returns her eyes to me. “Perhaps he was planning a coup on the Ruler way back then?”

“I wonder what else he didn’t destroy?” I look down at the explanation in the letter, wondering if, somewhere, there’s more.

Eyelet chews her nail. “I knew you cut your meat too well.”

“What?”

Her eyes flash as she snuggles up to my arm. “At the Compound, with the quail. The way you held your silver. You manoeuvred your fork and knife around your plate in such a refined way. It was all too graceful for a commoner, I knew it.”

I stare down at her, perplexed.

“Never mind.” She flips me a flirty grin. “Your Highness.” She curtsies, and I swat at her playfully. “Where did you find all this, anyway?” She pokes at the papers in my hands.

“I didn’t. A friend found them for me.” I look up, feeling the press of hot tears at the backs of my eyes. “God rest his battered soul. He found the register hidden in the crypt of the church, so he stole it for me and left it under the porch of the manse next door. Along with these.” I pull out a pair of royal footprints: a baby’s feet pressed into ink and then to a page.

Eyelet touches them and a smile comes to her face. “No two prints in the world are alike, you know. Do you know what this means?” She takes them from me. “Above all else, this is your ticket. Your solid proof. No one else in the world can match these footprints. Only you.” Eyelet’s gaze falls to the letter in my hand. “Your poor mother,” she sighs. “She was used as a pawn.”

“Like mother, like son,” I snap rather harshly.

Eyelet looks up at me longingly. “You are going to claim it, aren’t you? Your rightful throne, I mean. You’re going to do your mother that honour.”

“Yes.” I tug a hand through my hair. “But I have no idea how.”

“You’ll figure something out.” Eyelet smiles. She takes my hand, then flits away, sort of skipping, and then she turns around. “You realize what this means, don’t you?” She scowls at me rather provocatively, slinking slowly back my way. “You are an outlaw”—she walks her fingers up my chest—“a prince on the run, and I’m your latest conquest.” She punches me in the arm and lowers her voice. “Rather debonair of us, don’t you think?”

“
Only
conquest,” I correct her, blushing.

“Really?” She giggles. “Sounds so much more mysterious the way I put it.” She links my arm.

I grow serious. A lump of emotion balls in my throat. Taking her chin in my hands, I look deep into her eyes, stammering before I say, “We shall be married. Properly. I promise. As soon as I take the throne. That is”—I swallow—“if you’ll have me.”

“Hmmmm . . .”
Eyelet taps her chin and tilts her head. Pursing her lips, she ponders the question, her eyes at the top of her lids. My heart leap-pounds.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Of course I’m kidding.” She throws her arms out and reels me into the biggest hug she’s ever given me. “Your Royal Highness.” Her breath in my ear. “I would love nothing more than to be your queen.”

Her face is a radiant ball of light. Closing her eyes, she engages me in the most fiery, blood-rushing kiss that ever existed—
I’m quite convinced
—and then closes it off with three short, lip-nibbling, darting, swallow-like kisses that leave me wanton.

I swear this woman can undo me in an instant.

“We’d better go,” I say breathlessly, pulling away. “We’ve got an awful lot to accomplish all of a sudden. First we free Iris, then overthrow the Ruler and dispose of Flossie once and for all, then perhaps before sundown we can take back the Commonwealth. What do you say?”

Eyelet laughs.

“It’s really too bad we don’t have any connections on the inside.” I stroke my chin, look dreamily past her head. “It would be so much easier if only we had some sort of in.”

“Wait a minute!” Eyelet draws back.

“What is it?” I scowl.

“Come with me!” She grabs me by the arm and breaks into a run.

“Where are we going?” I stumble to catch up with her.

“To see another banished princess about a dethroning.”