The Automaton's Treasure (2 page)

I stared at the list of names for a long time. My eyes felt heavy but I didn't cry. For the last month I'd been dreading my arrival in the hot, dry city of Lisirra. I couldn't imagine my life beyond the days spent aboard the
Ocean's Rose
. But then the pirates came, and now I could hardly picture my life at all.

Rage flashed through me: at myself, at the pirates, at Father. I crumbled the list of names into a ball and hurled it at the wall. It bounced off and tumbled across the floor. I picked up the illustrated history of Qilar and flung it open to a random page, trying to distract myself. It opened on an image of a cypress tree, roots disappearing beneath the calm, smooth surface of the swamp.

Father put me on a boat to Lisirra when he should have put me on a boat here, to the swamps. Jokja is often called a Free Country because it's not part of the Empire, but the swamps are true free places, belonging to no king or queen or lord. Just like me.

I slammed the book shut and slid it away. Then I curled up on my cot and stared into the gloomy darkness.

I waited to die.

A week passed, according to my notes in the illustrated history. I ate twice a day; I visited topside once a day. I thought I might go mad from boredom.

And then one night I had a visitor.

I was sleeping when it happened; whether it was actually night or not, I have no way of knowing. I woke suddenly in the green darkness, gasping for breath. I'd heard something. A clatter.

I lay in the darkness, breathing hard, listening.

It happened again. A
click click click
like tumbling stones. I sucked in all my breath and held it, fingers curling around the thin woolen blanket that came with my room.

Click click click.
 

And then something scuttled across the floor.

“Who the hell's there?” I shouted, sitting up. The scuttling stopped. I wished I had some control over the lantern, but it always cast the same murky light. “Show yourself!”

A long pause. I stared into the darkness and slipped my hand under my pillow, where I kept the hairpin.

“Come on, then!”

A figure emerged out of the shadows. Small and low to the ground like a weasel. I watched it move in wide ambling steps across the floor. Then it crawled on top of my trunk.

I shrieked and dropped my hairpin.

It looked exactly like a Qilari crocodile, only it was much too small and crafted out of gold and shining jewels. When it moved, its scales parted, revealing flashes of the clockwork underneath.

It stared at me for some time.

“What are you?” I whispered in Jokjani.

A pause. Then it opened it opened its mouth with a steaming hiss.

“Are you
magic?”
 

It worked its jaw up and down, but I heard only a rumbling, unintelligible clatter. It stopped, shook out its head, tiny clawed hands pressing against its cheeks. Then it looked at me again, and spoke: “You—not-thief—”

I couldn't understand the rest. It spoke in the southern dialect of Qilari, the language spoken in the swamps, and half its words were garbled by that horrible clacking.

“Forgive—hurt—bad man—” The creature jumped off the trunk and scurried across the floor toward my cot, startling me with its quickness. It stood up on its hind legs and peered at me. Its eyes were star sapphires, and they possessed a brightness that made me think of living things.

“You—not-thief—”

“No, I'm not a thief,” I said in my own halting Qilari. The creature seemed to understand me. It crawled onto the cot beside me and leaned in close to my face. I was afraid to look away.

Then it let out a stream of clattering Qilari I could hardly follow.

“Slow down!” I said. “I can't understand you.”

“Yes,” it said. “Broke me.”

“Broke you? Someone broke you?”

“Yes. The thief.” The creature dropped away from me, down to all fours. “I am Safin.” It seemed to gesture at itself. I was beginning to understand it better.

“Safin? Is that your name?”

“Yes. Your name?”

I hesitated, but the creature—Safin—kept staring at me, and I thought maybe I was dreaming anyway. “Marjani.”

Safin nodded, satisfied, and dropped down to the floor.

“Nice to—converse—” he said. His voice garbled again. “Come back again?”

I nodded, dumbly, and Safin slid away into the shadows.

Safin returned two nights later, once again waking me from a fitful sleep. I rolled over on my side and found him sitting underneath the magic-cast lantern, the light oxidizing his golden scales.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was clearer now, less garbled.

“Hello.” I sat up and drew the blanket around me. Safin watched me with his crocodile's grin.

“I'm not dreaming, am I?” I asked.

Safin tilted his head. “Dream? No, this is not a dream.”

We stared at each other.

“What
are
you?” I finally blurted, and then cringed for a moment, expecting a reprimand for my rudeness. But I was a prisoner aboard a pirate ship, talking with a magical artifact. Rudeness was the least of my concerns.

“I am an automaton.” He waddled up to my cot and reared up on his hind legs, his eyes appearing over the cot's edge. “I was stolen and brought onboard this ship.”

“Oh.” An automaton. I'd heard about them, when I studied at university—they were magician's business, a specialty of metal-magic. Artifacts infused with sorcery. “I can understand you better tonight.”

“Yes. I was able to do some repairs.”

Silence fell over us. The ship rocked back and forth, wood creaking. I could hear the ocean on the other side of my wall, but it seemed lost to me. All I knew was this little room.

“I was taken from my great treasure,” Safin said. “By a thief. But the thief is dead now.”

I shivered. “One of the pirates?”

“He tried to escape during the battle, to barter his way onto the other ship. Such terror! Guns firing and the smoke from the cannons. I did not have the words at the time, but I've learned them since. He was shot. He threatened to kill some important man.”

Safin reported this all in a clicking, mechanical voice, as calm as if he were reporting the weather. I'll admit I found it reassuring that this thief wasn't killed on a whim. I'd taken for granted, naively, that the pirates really did plan to drop us at Starlight Rock.

“I escaped during the madness, but I am still trapped. I long to return to my great treasure.” Safin dropped down on all fours and crawled away from the cot, pacing in circles around my cabin. “My great treasure! You would not be able to help me, would you?”

I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. It wasn't cold in the cabin, only damp and dark, but I was shivering anyway. “I'm as trapped as you are, I'm afraid. Worse, because I can't leave here unless they let me.”

But Safin didn't seem to hear me. He stopped pacing and stood facing the door, one foot lifted up, his tail sticking straight out.

“Safin?” I asked hesitantly.

He opened his mouth and hissed, a long, low, steaming sound. My heartbeat raced, my mouth went dry.

The lantern flickered.

“Must hide!” he shrieked. “Keep me secret!”

“What do you—?”

He scurried up the wall, squeezing through a narrow gap in the corner of the ceiling and disappearing.

I was alone again.

I sighed and slumped back against the wall. The lantern swung back and forth, growing dimmer and dimmer. Stupid, worthless thing.

And then lines appeared on my floor.

They glowed with magic-light—a bright white-blue, not murky green. They crisscrossed over my floor, forming lopsided loops around the cabin, tracing over the wall, to the gap where Safin had disappeared.

Someone banged on my door.

I jolted and sat up, disoriented by the noise and the veins of white light crossing over my cabin.

A jingle of keys in the lock. The door swung open.

“Dinner already?” I said.

A pirate stepped into my cabin—a woman. I recognized her as the sailor I’d seen swinging through the ropes the day the ship was attacked.

“I'll be damned, he has been in here.” The woman stomped into my cabin, pistol drawn.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

The woman stopped and looked at me for the first time. She was Empire, black hair hanging in a single thick braid down her spine, and she looked nothing like the aristocratic women I was used to.

“You see all this?” She gestured at the lines with her pistol. “This means the little shit has been in your cabin. Where is he?”

“The little shit?”

She sighed. I kept my eye on her pistol, although she didn't seem to have an inclination to point it at me.

“It's a machine,” she said. “Runs on magic. Looks like a crocodile.”

“I haven't seen anything like that.” I’d had plenty of experience with lying, and I knew to look her straight in the eye, to steady my breathing.

“It's been in here.”

“I've been asleep,” I said. “It might've been in here, but I haven't seen it.”

She stood with her weight on one foot and studied me, eyes flicking over my face. I didn't flinch away.

“You aren't going to find anyone who could break it down on Starlight Rock, so no use hiding him,” she said. “Have to undo the magic first, and there aren't many there who can work that sophisticated a magic.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” But as I spoke I thought about Safin's golden scales, his inlaid jewels. He'd fetch quite the price if he were in pieces.

He must have felt the tracking spell. No wonder he fled.

The woman gave me another hard look. “You sure about that?”

“I swear it. I've never seen a magical crocodile in my life.”

The boat rocked, the lantern swung, the lines of Safin's footsteps glowed.

“We'll see,” she said, and then she left my cabin, slamming the door shut behind her.

Our journey to Starlight Rock progressed as it always had, but now my days were punctuated not only by meals and trips up above, but by visits from Safin, who crept into my room with news about the ship.

“The captain never leaves his quarters unless the moon is out,” he told me. “The crew is bored. The other passengers cry a lot. Hafsa is angry she hasn't caught me yet.”

Hafsa was the woman who had slammed into my cabin that night. Safin talked about her almost as much as he talked about his great treasure back in Qilar.

“She wants to sell me in Lisirra,” he said. “Just like the thief.”

“She can't sell you if she hasn't caught you.”

“But she'll catch me eventually, yes? I can disembark with you at Starlight Rock, and together we can return to my great treasure!”

He was so convinced I could save him that it made my heart ache. “I imagine they'll be looking for you when we leave the ship,” I said. “Or Hafsa will, anyway.”

Safin hung his head. His expression never changed—always the same gleaming eyes, the same toothy grin. But I'd talked with him enough that I could see the other ways he revealed his feelings.

“I can't stay aboard,” he said. “You are the only one who can converse in Qilari. Who else will help me?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away from him. A year ago I had dreams of swooping in and saving
her
, taking her away from the palace, running off into the Jokja Jungle together. But now I couldn't even save myself. That Safin thought I could save him was laughable. Ridiculous.

“You can try and disembark,” I said. “But unless your great treasure's on Starlight Rock, we won't get to it.”

“It's in Qilar!”

I sighed. “I
know
that. I'm just saying— “ He was up on his hind legs, pressing his front claws into the side of my cot. “We would need a ship.”

“We have a ship here.”

“
We
don't have anything.”

Safin looked at me for a moment longer, blinking. Then he dropped down to the floor and paced. I could imagine the lines appearing the next time Hafsa cast a tracking spell.

“Do you want to go to Starlight Rock?” he asked, still moving.

“Of course not. I'm not sure there's even food there. Or anything.” This past month I had done everything in my power not to think about the future. But we were getting close. I knew that. Safin had told me; he'd overhead the crew talking.

“Then don't go.” He stopped and looked at me again.

“I'm a prisoner,” I said, irritated. “I have no choice.” Just like the rest of my life. No choice in leaving Jokja. No choice in who I loved.