A Clockwork Fairytale (17 page)

The flutterbys settled in a row on a chair back, glowing softly in the darkness. She walked across to Turk and halted just close enough to touch him. “Melba, your dress is unfastened,” he said.

“I know. Gwinnie had to do it now ’cause she wanted to go to bed, but I ain’t ready for bed yet. I’ve something to ask you.” She swallowed, gathering her courage. She reached for his hand, lifted it, and kissed his knuckles, breathing in the lemon-spice smell of his skin. Then she pressed the back of his hand against her cheek. “I want to be with you, Turk. And I’ve had a really good idea how we can be together and me still go to the Palace. Marry me, Turk.”

He gulped, pulled back his hand, and turned away. Her stomach lurched sickly as though she’d missed her step on the skyways. This wasn’t how she’d expected him to react.

For long moments she stood helplessly listening to the sound of his ragged breathing, not sure what to say. Then he turned partway toward her and scrubbed a hand across his face. “I’m honored you’ve asked me, but I’m not the husband the king will want for you. I’m a nobody.”

Was that all he was worried about? With a sigh of relief, she stepped forward and ran her fingers lightly up and down his back, needing to touch him and instinctively reassuring him. “Turk, I don’t want to marry a prince. I want you. If we marry
before
I go to the Palace there ain’t nothing me pa can do about it ’cause it’ll be a done deal.”

He dropped his head forward with a soft groan, and she let her hand fall back to her side. “I thought it were a good idea,” she offered tentatively.

“It is,” he said in a strange choked voice as if his neck cloth was too tight. “A very good idea. It just isn’t possible.”

Frustration welled inside her. He was dismissing the idea without even considering it. Why did he have to be so defeatist? “I don’t see why not. If you cared about me you’d want to come with me.”

“I do care about you, Melba, but it’s not that simple.”

“Yes it is! You either want to be with me or you don’t.”

“You don’t understand my situation, Melba.”

“Tell me then!”

He pressed his fingers to his temples and grunted with frustration. “Not now. Not like this.”

“Don’t bother then.” She understood. The nice things he’d said to her had been empty words. She’d made a fool of herself. She turned and tore up the stairs, hardly able to breathe through the tears of humiliation clogging her nose and throat. She couldn’t stay here now. And she didn’t want to go to the Palace alone. What should she do? The only person who always had an answer to everything was Master Maddox. He would help her.

With tears running down her cheeks, she shucked off her dress at the top of the stairs, leaving the pool of blue silk on the carpet. Then she dashed down the hall to Turk’s bedroom in her underwear. His bedroom door crashed back against the wall as she burst through. She stripped out of her underdress and frilly drawers, then yanked open his wardrobe door, grabbed her brown suit, and pulled it on. She stuffed her feet into the suede skyways boots and ran to her own bedroom.

At her dressing table, she emptied out the small crystal bottles from the beautification box, shepherded her three flutterby Flower Jinns inside the box so nobody would see them, and locked it. The starlight stone Turk had given her lay amid the crystal bottles, sparkling in the gaslight, but she left it. She didn’t want to be pledged to Turk any more. Lastly, she pulled on the brown cap in front of the mirror and checked that her hair was tucked out of sight.

Turk had told her Master Maddox was in the infirmary attached to the Chapel of the Great Earth Jinn in the second circle. Melba took the stairs up to Turk’s roof garden and left via the small gate onto the palace roofs. Her tread was light, but jumping over the streets had become more difficult since she put on weight. Holding the box containing the flutterbys hindered her further, but she didn’t know how to make them stay behind and she couldn’t let them fly free and attract unwanted attention.

When she reached the huge stately monastery buildings, she hid behind a chimney on the row houses opposite and peered over the wall into the monastery grounds. Gaslights on tall posts glowed at intervals along the network of paths crossing the extensive gardens. The infirmary was set on the southeastern corner of the compound by the chapel.

Running down a sloping roof, she jumped into an alley behind a milliner’s shop. The streets of the second circle were silent at night, unlike in the outer circles where taverns and brothels stayed open all hours.

She crept across the cobbled road to the front of the chapel. She knew it would be open because Master Maddox had told her that
the Great Earth Jinn never sleeps, so his house is always open
.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sniffed, then turned a black metal handle and cracked open the chapel door to peep inside. When she was sure it was empty, she slipped in and glanced around. The building was circular, the high vaulted ceiling rising to a point above the center. Placed around the walls were small personal altars where devotees could pray. White candles burned on the flat altar stones and golden hemp mats lay on the ground. The central floor area was a detailed mosaic depicting the interlinked circles of an Earth Blessing.

Melba often asked the Great Earth Jinn for help, but she had never prayed at an altar before. She chose the one nearest the door in case she had to scarper quick, and kneeled on the golden hemp mat. She placed the box containing her Flower Jinns on the altar so they could connect with the Great Earth Jinn as well, then she leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the altar stone. Would the Great Earth Jinn be angry that a girl had come inside his chapel, or was the men-only rule just one made up by the Shining Brotherhood?

After a few moments of listening to the deep silence, she lifted her head and whispered the prayer carved into the wall above the altar. “Great Earth Jinn, birther of all life, please hear my plea.” She squeezed her eyes closed, pressed her forehead against the altar stone, and prayed with all her heart for Turk to change his mind and marry her. Then she asked the Great Earth Jinn to help Master Maddox recover and to make her father like her. She finished by reading the end of the prayer from the stone. “With faith, trust, and truth, I thank you, Great Earth Jinn, for hearing my plea.”

Once she finished, the silence hummed in her ears, the air thick and heavy with solemnity. The Flower Jinns had gone completely silent. The tiny hairs on her arms prickled and she shivered. She suddenly wanted to get this over with and get out of the chapel. She clambered to her feet, picked up her box, and went to the back of the room where she could see a shadowy alcove. The word INFIRMARY was painted on the door. She realized she had already started to take reading for granted.

She pushed open the infirmary door carefully. A hall stretched in front of her, lit by a single gaslight at the far end. She walked silently in her suede boots. As she made her way down the corridor past a row of closed doors, she heard a strange low drone interspersed with hissing sounds as though an angry insect was trapped. She crept cautiously as she approached the final door, which stood ajar. The noise was coming from the room, a pumping, hissing drone, along with a disgusting smell like rotten fish. Screwing up her nose, she peeped around the doorframe.

Melba’s whole body jolted in horror at what she saw inside. Master Maddox lay on a narrow bed, naked except for some stained drawers. Leather straps anchored his chest and hips to the bed and his wrists and ankles were tied to the headboard and footboard. He whimpered like a whipped dog, his body tense and trembling as nasty gray goo oozed from his skin. Two monks in golden robes were with him. One was tending a machine that looked like a trash barrel with a large concertina bellows going up and down on top of it, while the other monk wore goggles, a mask, and a leather harness with a pipe attached to it. At the end of the pipe was a shiny brass head he scraped across old Maddox’s skin.

Suddenly, Melba’s Flower Jinns screeched in panic. The shock made her drop their box and the lid burst open, releasing them to skitter madly around her head. At the noise, the two monks wheeled around to face her, the one wearing the harness brandishing his brass sucker at her as if he expected her to attack. Melba jumped back but found her way barred by another monk who gripped her shoulders and held tight.

Chapter Thirteen

A ship with no port will not survive the storm
.

—Bluejackets’ saying

Melba ducked and twisted out of the man’s grip using the thief’s escape move Maddox had taught her. But the man was determined. His hand locked around her arm, jerking her back when she tried to scarper.

She caught a glimpse of a tall gray-haired monk with cold, piercing blue eyes; then her three Flower Jinns dived at his face and he raised an arm to protect himself. While his attention was diverted, Melba wriggled out of his grip and dashed toward the chapel.

“Wait, girl,” he shouted. Ignoring the old codger, she crashed open the door and belted through the silent chapel, her suede boots slapping on the mosaic tiles. By the time she reached the street, her flutterbys had caught up with her. Instinct took over and she headed for the nearest drain into the flood defense system. She slid aside the metal grating over the hole, jumped down into the dark pipe, and reached up to replace the cover.

The flood defense network was designed like a huge wheel with the hub under the Royal Palace and six spokes radiating out across the island to the sea. Numerous smaller pipes, like the one she was in now, linked the main spokes. She crawled along the pipe by the faint light through the gratings, heading toward the nearest of the six main conduits. As it was summer, no rain had fallen recently, so the pipe was dry. Instead of getting wet hands and knees, she stirred up the dusty debris, making herself sneeze.

The sound of trickling water warned her she was nearing one of the main drains. They always carried a little leakage from the canal in the inner circle. In darkness, she clambered out of the narrow pipe and stood with her back pressed against the curved brickwork of the big drain. Her three Jinns settled on her shoulders, emitting a faint luminous glow. Gradually her frantic breathing calmed. None of the golden robes would follow her through the pipes. She was safe.

What had the monks been doing to Master Maddox with their strange machine? Just the memory of the awful smell and the horrible gray stuff oozing out of him made her feel sick. It could only be some sort of bad magic, maybe even a Foul Jinn. Poor old Maddox had been terrified of Foul Jinns.

Without consciously deciding where to go, her feet carried her toward the bakery in the third circle. She recognized the broken grating high on the wall and the familiar sound of the organ grinder’s warbling music outside the tavern on the corner of Jangle Alley. She turned off the main drain into a smaller pipe and emerged from the first grating, bringing her out behind the row of shops and houses where the bakery was. Still in a shocked daze, she fished the spare key for the bakery back door out from under a rock and let herself in.

A faint whiff of the horrible bad-fish smell from the infirmary hung in the main shop. Melba’s breath hitched. She ached inside from all the distressing things that had happened to her and she could hardly think straight. She grabbed Maddox’s oil lamp off the counter and lit it before going to the storeroom behind the oven. But the room wasn’t snug and warm as she remembered. She flattened her hand on the back of the chimney breast to find it cold.

Poor old Maddox never let the bakery oven go out, because it took three days to reach an even temperature to bake the loaves. She dropped onto the small cot in the corner by the flour sacks and snuggled under the ragged blankets, missing the other lads.

Her eyelids drooped. All she wanted was sleep, but she had to decide what to do next. She could stay here for a while, but surviving would be difficult as she couldn’t pass for a boy anymore. That meant she had two choices: she could go to the Royal Palace like Turk wanted her to, or she could try to get a job and probably end up in a brothel. She didn’t want to go to the Palace, but the other choice was unthinkable.

She curled up in the thin blankets, shivering. The comfy warm bed at Turk’s palace had started to make her soft. Her flutterbys settled on top of her, humming soothingly inside her head. She must have dozed, because she had arrived in the middle of the night but now she heard the chatter of domestic servants on their way to market and the rattle of handcarts on the rutted alley outside.

A sound in the other room made her huddle behind the flour sacks. She peeped through a gap at the storeroom door, dreading the sight of a golden robe come after her. Turk appeared in the doorway and her breath hissed out in relief. He looked tired and rumpled, still in the tatty bluejacket’s uniform he’d had on the night before.

Despite her effort to hide, he came straight toward her. “Oh, Melba, what are you doing here? You’ve had me worried out of my mind.” He crouched and pulled her into his arms, hugging so tightly he squeezed the breath from her. He wore no neck cloth and she pressed her face into the warm hollow of his throat, breathing in the reassuring scent of him. For a moment, she clutched at him, comforted by the feel of his arms around her. Then the memory of his rejection of her marriage proposal crashed over her. Her few seconds of pleasure shriveled. She turned her face away from him and stared at the furry spots of moldy flour on the wall.