Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) (28 page)

I couldn’t say anything in return. I had desperately hoped that Papa wouldn’t force me to leave the Academy. Even if I didn’t make it back for the oath, even if I were forced to leave it all behind and marry Will, my struggles would have been worth it to know I’d made my grandfather proud.

“So, tell me all you have done,” he said.

And I did. I whispered the entire story of the bomb, and my nomination, Headmaster Lawrence’s betrayal, and how David and I saved the Foundry.

Papa asked questions and was eager to offer advice from his own experiences as I told him about my struggles with the automatons. In the silent dark, with my hands shackled, unable to see or touch, I connected with my grandfather and for the first time truly felt as if I had a family once more.

Something banged against the hull, and the ship we were on shuddered.

I propped myself up on my elbow to peer into the dark.

“Pretend you’re asleep,” Papa whispered, and I eased
myself back down onto the floor. “Wait for the right moment, and then run. Your legs are free.”

I nodded even though it would have been impossible for him to see me.

Run.

I could feel the sharp jolt of anticipation as a crack of light opened up from the hatch.

THAT LITTLE BIT OF LIGHT
taunted me. At the same time it terrified me. While I could see an opening, a means of escape, I knew our captors would be coming down the stairs any moment.

Each second that they did not descend felt simultaneously like relief and torture. I lay as still as I could on the floor, counting my breaths and hoping I wasn’t counting the last of them.

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand pretending to be asleep any longer, the sharp heels of Madame Boucher’s boots clanked on the metal floor near my head.

“Get up,” she snapped, but I didn’t move or twitch.

She kicked me hard in the middle. “I said wake!” White light flashed behind my eyes as the blow punched the air from my lungs, then turned to a deep and throbbing ache that made me wish my entire inside could be expelled, simply to make the pain go away.

I coughed and curled into as tight a ball as I could with my hands still bound to the pipe behind my back. Honoré knelt behind me and unlocked the chain. I tried to struggle away from him but I didn’t have the breath or the strength. He yanked my arms back hard, and a new pain blossomed in my shoulders.

He latched the chain to a metal ring attached to his belt. He locked Papa to his belt as well, then pushed us both in front of him. I heard the ominous click of a flintlock setting behind me.

“If they try to escape, shoot them. Preferably someplace painful, but do try to keep at least one of them alive,” Boucher said. I turned and watched the gears revolving in Honoré’s face. His head trembled as he grimaced and winced. He looked as if he were trying to fight. The mechanical eye glowed red, then he stilled and nodded. I had been terrified by the man in the mask for a long time, but I had never been as terrified as this. I had just watched a man’s will stolen.

Boucher cocked her head, satisfied as she addressed us. “It would take very little effort for Honoré to throw your dead body into the river. I suggest you don’t try my patience. Now walk.”

Papa and I stumbled after Boucher, climbing up the stair onto the modest deck of a small, mechanically altered steamship. I glanced around as surreptitiously as I could, keenly aware of the gun pointed at my back. We were at the London docks. It was late, and my vision was still blurry from the lingering effects of the chloroform.

We crossed a narrow gangplank. Then Honoré pulled up a hatch and pushed us down a spiral stair. I slipped, only staying on my feet when my chains pulled taut against Honoré. I stumbled on the heavy skirts as they caught under my boots. They were too long now that they weren’t held aloft by the hoops, and they tangled hopelessly around my ankles.

The rotting wooden stairs creaked and moaned beneath us as Josephine went ahead dressed as a boy. Papa froze, and nearly caused us to fall when he saw her. He glanced at me with a question in his eyes, but I shook my head. The hope in his eyes died. I hated deceiving him, but now was not the time. Boucher already had the upper hand, and while she was reluctant to kill me outright, I had no doubt she’d kill Josephine if Papa showed any bond to her—to spite them both.

The light from Josephine’s lantern swayed against the curved walls of the tightly spiraled stair. When we reached the bottom, we came up against a small landing and a heavy wooden door. Honoré produced a ring of keys and unlocked it. He pushed us through, and I found myself suddenly in someplace very familiar.

It was the tunnel that Will and I had taken with John Frank to reach the train. The enormous locked door stood before us, and behind was the passage to the canal that led to the catacombs and the Academy. We had come down the stairs that had been used to smuggle foreign Order members into the Academy.

We were so close to safety, to help, and yet we were trapped. I couldn’t escape yet, but now I felt I had something of an advantage. They had to make a mistake at some point, and when they did, I knew the way home.

I watched as Honoré unlocked the larger door, moving the parts of the door in the right sequence. No wonder he’d been able to sneak into the catacombs of the Academy at will. He had the keys to the kingdom, and no one was the wiser.

Sometimes the insufferable arrogance of the Amusementists really was their Achilles’ heel. They were men, not gods, and they too made mistakes.

The door shut behind us, locking us into the dark. Josephine lifted her lantern, but the small light did little to illuminate the long tunnel. It did reveal the hind ends of several rats as they scurried out of view.

I shuddered. We began the long walk down the corridor that led to the chambers beneath the Royal Observatory. Our footsteps echoed in the corridor as Madame Boucher stepped up beside me with a spring in her step as if she were suddenly a much younger woman.

“To think, no more war. No more death. It will be a perfect world soon.” Boucher turned a wistful smile to Papa.

He glared at her. “Your actions will cause bloodshed on a scale the world has never known.” He softened his expression. “Stop this insanity. You are not this cruel, Cressida. You had a beautiful heart once.”

“And you broke it!” she snapped. “You broke it when you killed my father. You broke it when you abandoned me. And you broke it when I had to hold the body of my son, ripped apart by war. But I used what you taught me. I repaired him. Without me he would have died. He never needed you. And to think, now he’s your only heir.”

Papa’s face was stiff with fury. “I have my heir.” He moved closer to me. Josephine’s light wavered as she glanced
back at me. Her eyes glowed with bitterness, and then she turned ahead again.

I pulled away from my grandfather. If he placed too much value on me, Boucher would have more incentive to kill me. It was likely a moot point. She knew I was all Papa cared for. That was why she had captured me to begin with.

Boucher grinned, watching me the way a spider stares at a fly, waiting for it to weaken. She stroked my hair, and I flinched away from her. “Yes, and what a lovely heiress you have, for now.”

We moved on in silence for a moment or two, but clearly she wasn’t done tormenting us. “You and I are a lot alike, Meg. I, too, spent many hours reading the notes of a mentor and studying what I could copy from the archives. It is quite a peaceful way to learn. Of course, the most useful information that comes through these tunnels is never written down. You can achieve quite a lot if you listen carefully, even mask one’s involvement in murder, if you wish. Such a tragedy, your parents.”

That was the final straw. I threw myself toward her, straining against my chains. “I know that you ordered Honoré to kill them,” I said, jerking the chain that connected me to my bastard uncle.

“Yes, but no one else in the Order figured it out, did they?
They were so quick to assume there was only one murderer on the night the Duke of Chadwick died. With a poisoning to distract them, no one looked into the origins of a fire.” She lifted her head. “In fact, they still don’t believe you. And so we’re free to do what we wish right beneath their feet.”

“You evil witch!” I pulled against my chains, but Honoré yanked me back. I fell against Papa.

She was responsible. It had been her all the time, from the very beginning.

“Keep quiet. Don’t give her a reason to shoot,” Papa whispered, but there was no dousing the burning rage that had taken hold of me.

Madame Boucher reached out and lovingly stroked my cheek. “Say what you will, my dear. You’re at my mercy.” She tapped my cheek in warning, letting her fingernails graze my skin. “Now be a good girl. Keep walking.”

I fell into step beside my grandfather. I didn’t say a thing. Papa and I glanced at one another. In his eyes I could see the same determination I felt. We would defeat her. We had to.

We finally came to the end of the corridor, where it opened up into the elephant graveyard. Once again mechanical eyes stared at me in the dark. Instead of continuing on to the train, we turned and entered the darkness.

Josephine’s light stretched upward, growing weaker as it attempted to fight the gloom of the enormous room. The light caught on the dusty metal of the machines around us, then found gaps in the joints and gears, projecting enormous moving shadows onto the arched ceiling.

I stared in awe at the machines looming over us. The ones in front were mechanical replicas of several animals, including two enormous bears. Within their metal chests there was a gap with controls, just large enough to hold a man.

Towering above them was a war elephant with an articulated trunk. It was beautiful and haunting, with intricate Indian designs. The howdah on its back glittered with gold. I had never seen anything quite so beautiful and terrifying all at once.

As we continued, the machines turned to the fantastic. A Chinese dragon slept with its orb-like eyes closed near the feet of a manticore. In the dragon’s paws was an enormous golden egg.

There were others as well, animals large and small, random engines and mechanisms, all languishing forever in the darkness.

At the back of the chamber we came to a third door, larger than the one at the end of the corridor.

Honoré opened this one as well, but he did it quickly, as if he had done it a thousand times before. Perhaps he had. The rat had been living in the sewers long enough. I glanced at Josephine. She was watching her father’s hands.

She was learning the locks.

Perhaps she already knew them. Our gazes met for the briefest moment, and I wished I knew what she was thinking.

The door opened. If this chamber was the place where Amusements went to die, what were we passing into?

Honoré pushed me forward, and we entered a second chamber, deeper and darker than the first.

Madame Boucher seemed to forget we were there as she stepped into the room. But it was empty. There was a large raised platform deep in the back, much like a stage made of stone, and some pillars, but other than that, there was nothing.

Josephine lit a torch with her lamp, then went around the room quickly lighting more. The light didn’t miraculously reveal the room’s secrets. There was nothing there.

A ramp led up to the platform, and Boucher walked up beside it. She removed a loose brick from the side of the ramp, then reached inside. A rumble sounded beneath the platform.

I gasped as what had been empty space twisted and
flashed. Mirrors—enormous mirrors—had formed a magician’s veil reflecting the wall behind us, as if it were the wall behind the platform. I had never seen such a large and convincing illusion. What had been emptiness became a curtain of moving glass slowly pulling back to reveal a monstrosity.

The machine hidden behind the curtain of mirrors was easily the size of a house, a smooth metal building with a round armored turret set staunchly atop it. Great blades protruded from the front. Each one had a diameter of easily fifteen to twenty feet. They had been attached to large gear structures that reminded me of the blades of our prison cage. When in motion they would spin, rotating around like the mouth of a giant mechanical crab that pulled everything into the blades.

The entire machine rested on giant wheels, the treads studded with sharp metal spikes.

It was a machine that looked like it could both crush and slice through an army of men. There would be no stopping it. No musket, no cannon would break the armor. It was death in mechanical form.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Boucher said as she climbed the ramp and patted one of the terrible wheels as if the machine were her favorite horse.

“No,” I said. “It’s rather juvenile, actually. Shoddy design, and it lacks finesse. No wonder your family influence waned, if this is the finest the Haddock line could produce.”

Boucher marched back to me and grabbed me by the throat. Papa called out and tried to throw his shoulder into her, but Honoré blocked him.

I looked Boucher in the eye without blinking, even though I couldn’t breathe.

“Let her go,” Papa demanded.

“You have a lot of cheek,” Boucher said. “Throw them into the maze until I have the boiler ready.”

Honoré pulled us away. We stumbled through the door and back into the first chamber that was filled with mechanical monsters. Honoré dragged us into a large alcove off the main chamber. Filling the alcove were mirrored panels much like the ones that had hidden the juggernaut. The mirrors were oppressively tall, easily ten feet or more.

Honoré pushed us down a long corridor where the mirrors were perfectly aligned to create a long hall, with a tightly sealed polyhedron room at the end.

The mirrors reflected our small party as we passed along them. Our images appeared smoky in the dust that had settled on the glass. Honoré unlatched our hands and pushed
us forward toward the room at the end of the long hall.

I landed hard on the metal floor that was set with deep channels and grooves. The edge of one groove dug into my hand as I pulled myself to my feet.