Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) (30 page)

With a shout I leapt forward, swinging the pike above me and bringing it down toward the back of his head with a swift strike that landed on the back of his shoulder.

I expected to hear the crack of a bone. Instead the pike clanged loudly, and the shock of the reverberating force nearly knocked it from my hands.

The monster swung his head around, his mechanical eye burning red as it watched me stumble backward. The pike had caught on his shirt and was ripping the fabric as it tangled and fell.

Half of his back had been plated in smooth metal that encompassed his shoulder and flowed over his chest to cover his heart. It was like looking at a suit of armor, but more precisely molded. He turned, and the shifting plates of metal seemed alive as they stretched and revealed the clockwork mechanisms beneath.

Dear God, he was no longer human.

He laughed, a cold, cruel sound with a grinding undertone. Then he lunged forward and grabbed me by the throat.

HONORÉ
’
S MERCILESS GRIP CHOKED ME.
I couldn’t swallow or breathe. He dragged me to him. All the while the gears around his red eye twisted and turned as his gaze swept over my face.

“Should I kill you now?” he asked, squeezing harder. White pinpoints of light dotted my eyes. I scratched at his hand and kicked as hard as I could at his legs. I felt so weak as my toes bounced ineffectively off his shins. “I was given an order.”

“You were ordered to put me into the maze,” I choked out. I didn’t know to what extent the mechanical parts of the man could take over his reasoning. His last orders had been to keep me alive.

He dropped me, and I fell to the ground coughing. I still felt as if I couldn’t swallow. My jaw ached and my head throbbed, but my vision began to clear.

“Move the cart,” he barked at me. He didn’t have to say anything more. “Or you die” was clearly implied. He inspected the point of the pike and lifted it from the ground.

He wouldn’t kill me yet. They needed me alive. If he murdered me, Papa would die before bending to any threat. They had held him for years, and they hadn’t been able to break him before now. But now he was weak, on the verge of collapse. If they tortured him, he would die.

As long as I was still breathing, I had to keep my head. It was the only way I could discover a means to escape.

But “alive” and “unharmed” were two very different things.

I used the handle of the cart to pull myself to standing, then struggled to push it forward. The rusting metal dug into my palms, pulling the tender flesh there until it burned. I threw my weight forward, but the cart weighed more than I did, and it took throwing my hip forward against the cart before it would move over the uneven stone floor.

The tip of the pike dug into my back like a bee stinging below my shoulder. Though it was only the point, one
false move, and the blade could cut into my flesh. It was like standing on the trapdoor of the gallows. Gritting my teeth, I struggled to maintain the momentum of the fuel-laden cart as I pushed it into the elephant graveyard.

My back ached, and the muscles of my arms burned and shook. Pain seared through my legs with each step. The enormous mechanical creations stared down on me, and I felt the heavy judgment in their lifeless gazes, as if I should be fighting. The handle of the cart and the pike at my back boxed me in.

I didn’t know if I could fight anymore. I didn’t know if I was strong enough. I had been struggling against my captivity, and at every turn Boucher managed to get the better of me.

I should have waited for Honoré to pass, then crept down the tunnel. I should have never tried to play the hero.

But it could have cost Papa his life.

I didn’t know what to do. I was trapped and friendless, close enough to home that the stench of the Thames clung to the air, and yet I could see no way out.

The wheel of the cart bumped up against an uneven stone and stopped so suddenly, my own momentum threw me forward into the handle, knocking the wind out of me. My chest fell against the coal.

The pike jabbed into my back, stabbing into my flesh, and I cried out.

Honoré yanked the pike back, but the pain continued as my body shook. The cold air of the dark chamber felt like ice against my sweating skin. I could feel the sticky blood seeping into my corset. Every muscle trembled as I struggled to pull myself up. A cramp seized my leg, and I fell to one knee.

“Enough!” Boucher snapped at Honoré. “Take that cart and tend the firebox. Then bring the old man to me.”

I didn’t bother to look up as the hem of Boucher’s fine dress swung into my view. She reached out with a black-gloved hand and tipped my chin up. She gripped my jaw, forced me to look into her withered face and fierce cold eyes.

“You are as slippery as an eel. Get up.” She shoved my face to the side. I didn’t move. “I said, get up.”

I let all my hatred radiate outward until it felt like an aura of fire surrounding me. In it I found my strength. My entire body hurt, but I knew the cause of the pain, and so I could let it flow through me without succumbing to it. So long as I felt it, I knew I was alive. I rose.

“Dear me, whatever happened to your dress?” Boucher asked as she circled me.

“I improved it.” I couldn’t run. Honoré would catch me
too quickly, and I couldn’t afford another gouge in my back.

Boucher clucked in disapproval. “Frankly, my dear, it’s an affront to decency.” Her voice bounced off the walls.

“It’s such a shame that we are at odds, you and I,” she said. “I would have loved to have a granddaughter like you—clever, resourceful, strong.”

“You have a granddaughter,” I said as she came back around to my front.

She slapped me hard. My ear rang, my teeth clattered, and my skin caught fire. I raised my head, lifting my posture until I could look down at the smaller woman.

She looked as if she could have been playing cards over tea. Not a strand of her snowy hair was out of place, while damp tendrils of mine clung to my forehead and touched my nose and eyes. “As I was saying, it’s a pity you hold such loyalty to your dear grandfather. A girl with such potential should have the guidance of someone worthy of her.” Boucher cocked her head to the side.

“Like you? A profiteer and murderer?”

She raised her bony hand again, but I didn’t flinch. Instead I stared her down. She pursed her lips, then smiled again, the cold expression falling dead in the calculating look in her eyes.

“I have done remarkable things,” she said. “I brought my son back from the brink of death. I built my own fortune. I survived, and now I will save the world from war. If I should profit from it, so be it.” She circled again. “It was unfair to lay the burdens of my father’s shame upon me. I was not to blame.”

At one point I might have felt sorry for her, alone and expecting a child. “You’re quite right. You should not have paid for the sins of your father. You made your own account long ago.”

Just then Honoré arrived, prodding my grandfather forward with the pike. Papa saw me and struggled against his chains. “What did they do to you?”

“Move, or I’ll stab her again,” Honoré growled.

Boucher pushed me toward the back chamber, and I walked, feeling kinship with those who had faced the guillotine. Papa shifted, placing himself between me and the sharp end of the pike.

“Where is that worthless whelp of yours?” Boucher complained. Honoré didn’t answer, but Papa stiffened at the mention of Josephine.

We came beneath the blades at the mouth of the horrible machine. I could see my reflection in the blades, softened by
the layer of dust and the rust dotting the sharpened edges. Cobwebs hung between the twisting scythes. The webs waved ominously as we passed by.

I pulled myself up the spokes of the heavy studded wheel, then continued up a rung ladder to reach the top. The rungs felt cold and rough in my hands, and my legs and grip still felt weak. I kept myself focused on the top of the turret. I had never seen such heavy metal plating. It covered the innards of the machine, save several small holes at intervals, ports for more weapons. Every rivet in this machine seemed to radiate death.

And here we were with no escape from it.

At the top we crawled onto a wide platform.

I took in everything as quickly as I could. A short rail surrounded the platform, rising higher in the front, where a panel of controls stood behind a guarded shield. At the back of the juggernaut a sinister-looking device had been attached to the edge of the rail and stood as tall as the towering vent stacks of the juggernaut’s boiler. Two large gear wheels disappeared into the turret on either side of the device’s base. It reminded me a bit of an enormous bird, like a great stork or a crane, folded over and sleeping as it clung to the back of the juggernaut.

“Shackle the girl to the rail. She’s caused enough trouble.”
Boucher turned a wheel as my bastard uncle locked a heavy manacle around my wrist and latched the other end to a pipe railing, leaving the long heavy chain pooling at my feet. “And lock Henry over there.” She pointed across the platform to the rail on the other side.

Boucher took Papa’s key from around her neck and walked to a panel near the controls. She removed the plate, and beneath I caught a glimpse of a less refined version of the locking mechanism Papa had invented.

“Now then,” Boucher began. “Who is willing to unlock this machine for me?” She turned to me. “How about you?”

“Never.” I glared at her.

Honoré climbed up into the bird-like structure at the back of the juggernaut and took a set of controls in hand. The giant crane came to life, rising up and twisting to the side. The gears at the base spun as it moved and pointed directly at Papa. The head of the evil crane-like device began to glow with a hot white light. Papa rose to his full height and stared it down.

“Never is a long time,” Boucher said, staying close to the controls of the juggernaut at the front, “especially when you are watching your dear grandfather die a slow and painful death as his flesh melts from his bones.” She ran her hand
over Papa’s back, and he violently pulled his shoulder from her clutches.

“What demon has possessed you, Cressida?” Papa demanded. “You used to have a shred of humanity once.”

“And what did it do for me? I was a naïve and silly girl. Now I know how the world works. It is driven by fear. Control fear, and you control man.” She stroked the controls of the juggernaut lovingly. All the innocence and sweetness was still there in every wrinkle and soft wisp of white hair on her head. “Now, tell me, my darling love. Are you afraid?”

I couldn’t fathom how someone who looked so harmless could be so corrupted inside. She turned to me, and it was then that I truly saw the depths of the darkness that had consumed her. She smiled, her dimples appearing in her weathered cheeks. “How about you, Miss Whitlock? Are you afraid? Don’t doubt the power of the death ray. It focuses both heat and light to godlike effect. At this range your grandfather could be dead in a matter of excruciating seconds. But that would ruin the pleasure of watching him die slowly, with the intensity of the beam set to a lingering, torturous heat. I gave the order for your mother and father to burn. Don’t think I’d hesitate.”

A wave of terror threw my heart into my throat and twisted my innards into such knots, I desperately wished I
could sink to the floor and heave until I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t watch my Papa die. Not now, not after everything we’d done. We were so close to freedom. But the whole of the world weighed on our shoulders. If this horrible machine were ever unleashed, war would turn into a more untenable nightmare than it already was, soldiers burned, sliced to pieces and shot. The blood would flow in rivers, and it would be on my soul.

I locked gazes with Papa. His face was stoic, but I saw the nearly imperceptible nod. There was peace in his eyes. He was ready to meet the next world.

Surely I would follow soon after.

A tear slipped over my cheek. I’d never see Will again. I’d never live the life I had sacrificed so much for. I didn’t want to die. In spite of all I believed, I was afraid this would be the end and there would be nothing left of me.

I would never get to hold Oliver and Lucinda’s baby.

I’d never get to see Peter or the rest of my friends again, or David, whom I hoped to still count as a friend. They wouldn’t even know what had happened to me. I would become nothing more than dried-out bones in a dark hole where beautiful things were thrown into the dark and forgotten.

I looked at Papa. I never would have him back, not truly.
There was so much I wanted to say to him, so much of his knowledge I wished to know and pass on to my own children.

But there would be no children. No legacy. Nothing.

I would be no more significant than the dust, and my name would fully die.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and though I was shaking, I fisted my hands and stood my ground. I had a million reasons to wish to live, but they were all personal reasons. I was still only one person, and I held the fate of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people in my hands. I couldn’t fail them. Mine was one life. If I lamented my loss, I would have to rightly lament a thousandfold the loss of those I did not save. If I had to die, I’d die for them and all the potential they carried.

“I will not unlock this machine,” I said, my voice echoing against the tall mirrors that stood sentinel to this atrocity. “I’m sorry, Papa. I love you. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, my brave girl,” he said, then closed his eyes.

“Well, damn it all,” Boucher commented. I turned to her, and even though my thoughts and feelings left me overcome with fear and horror, I stood defiant. She stepped closer to me. “I had hoped to keep you. You have potential. I could
have fitted you with modifications like Honoré, and finally given myself the granddaughter I deserve.”

She snapped her fingers twice, and the head of the death ray swung to the left, then tilted down to point directly at me. I watched the light and the sparks swirling around in the crystal lens of the machine, a ring of gears constricted the lens, focusing it like a glowing eye. I felt a wave of heat come over me, so intense that the hair on my arms curled and withered. My skin burned, and sweat poured down my neck as Papa threw himself against his chains.