Clockwork Heart (28 page)

At last her arms slid between the struts. She threw her wings out. All three of them jerked, then began to fall again.

She wouldn't be able to carry them, she knew that. She was in the same position Pyke had been during the wireferry rescue. The best she could do was slow and guide their fall. She let the line run taut, then angled all three of them toward the Great Engine.

It grew larger and larger as they drew closer. She searched for an opening. At last she found a landing spot, a makeshift platform created by two huge, flat, ponderously grinding ondium gears. She steered them toward it as they dropped, hoping Cristof and Alister knew enough to brace for impact.

The gears grew larger, each one as wide as Viera's ballroom floor, slowly rotating.

Cristof dropped Alister, who tumbled on the gear and lay motionless. Taya yelped as the two of them bobbed upward with the released weight. Then Cristof snapped the hook off his belt and fell, landing about ten feet away from his brother. One foot slid perilously close to the gear teeth before he yanked it back, scrambling to safety.

Taya braced herself, backbeat, and dropped onto the second gear on her knees.

This time the pain was too much to bear.

Chapter Fourteen

“Taya? Taya?”

She groaned and opened her eyes. She was surrounded by noise and motion.

“Don't move.” She felt the hard leather of a harness shift under her cheek and realized she was propped against Cristof's shoulder. Her arms were still encased in wings and spread out in front of her. “Are you all right?”

“We should get her out of that armature.” Alister's voice, a little farther away.

“Does anything hurt?” Cristof sounded worried. Fingers stroked her cheek. “Don't move. You may have broken something.”

“I'm all right.” Taya tried to push herself up, swinging an arm around. Metal feathers scraped against metal, and she realized they were still on a megagear. The Engine loomed above and below them, its clattering and chugging forcing them all to raise their voices to be heard. She glanced at Cristof and saw the pallor in his cheeks as he studied her. The cut on his jaw was still bleeding. The fall had made the blood streak up the side of his cheek.

She hadn't been unconscious for more than a few seconds, then.

She tried to pull her leg under her and a fresh streak of pain ran through her calf. Involuntary tears sprang to her eyes.

“What?” Cristof's hand tightened on her shoulder. “What hurts?”

“My leg.”

“Where you were shot? Or someplace new?”

She pushed herself up again. “Shot.”

“Give her room, Cris,” Alister said, sounding annoyed. “She doesn't need you hovering over her.”

“Move slowly,” Cristof directed her, ignoring his brother. Still, he backed away.

Her primaries were bent. She looked at them with dismay, flexing her arm and rolling her shoulders, testing to see how much damage her body had sustained.

“Be careful. You rolled when you fell.” Cristof frowned. “Nothing's sprained? Broken?”

“No.” But her arms and shoulders ached, and she gasped as she stretched them over her head to lock the wings upright. Both Cristof and Alister grabbed a wing to help. Taya grimaced as she twisted her arms out of the struts. “I think I pulled some muscles.”

“You're lucky it wasn't any worse.” Alister flexed the crooked feathers. “I don't think these are going to work anymore, Cris.”

“Don't touch my wings!” Taya said sharply. Alister dropped his hands.

“We're going to have to cooperate to get off this gear,” he pointed out, mildly.

Taya gave him a hard look.

“You should tie him up,” she said to Cristof.

“I should, but he won't sit still for it.”

“And chasing me across the gears would be dangerous,” Alister pointed out. “This time we wouldn't have our brave icarus to save us.”

“Then I'll—” Taya started to stand, but both brothers protested. Cristof dropped back to his knees and pressed his hands against her shoulders.

“Wait,” he insisted. “You can't fly anywhere with bent feathers, and you need to rest and let us bandage that bullet wound before it gets any worse.”

“You two are obsessed about wounds, aren't you?” she griped, but she settled back down again. Part of her was glad that she didn't have to prove herself yet. She felt weak and nauseous, although she didn't want to let Alister see her vulnerability.

“We still have a few things in common,” Alister said. “Cris, hand me your knife.”

“No.” Cristof pulled the utility knife off his harness and shifted his weight. “I'm sorry, Taya, but either you need to take off the suit, or I'll have to cut the leg open.”

“Cut it open. But one of you owes me a new flight suit.”

“I'll see you get it, my swan,” Alister promised. Taya didn't miss the annoyance that crossed Cristof's face.

“Stop calling me yours,” she snapped, as Cristof lifted the leather by the bloodstained bullet hole and slit it open.

Alister looked offended, but Cristof's lips quirked in a small smile as he worked. Blood seeped through the cut on his face.

“You're still bleeding,” she said. He dabbed his face with his flight suit sleeve, wincing.

“It won't kill me. There.” He stood. “Let Alister look at it. I want to see if I can repair your armature. I don't think he'll hurt you.”

“Of course I won't!” Alister took his brother's place. Taya gave him a dark look as Cristof pulled out his small repair kit and stood behind her. She could feel the vibrations through her armature as he shifted her wing feathers.

Alister shrugged off his two outer robes. “This may hurt,” he cautioned, taking her leg in one hand and wiping away the blood with one of his robes. Taya tensed.

“When Cris and I were boys,” he said as he worked, “one of the estates in Primus was being remodeled, and the family had moved out while the work was being done. We decided to explore it. Of course it was dangerous, and of course I got hurt. I was climbing over a pile of scrap wood and fell. I gashed my arm. We bandaged it up and left and didn't tell anyone because we were afraid we'd get into trouble for trespassing.”

Taya flinched as Alister probed the wound, his fingers around her calf.

“Unfortunately, the cut began to fester and I grew feverish, and it wasn't long before our servants noticed the blood on my sheets and found the torn robe hidden under my bed. Our parents called in the family physician, who did everything but scour the wound out with a bristle brush. He lectured us about dirt and infection and amputation and basically put the fear of the Forge into us. And after he left, our parents lectured us all over again. We were both in tears by the end of the day. We honestly thought my arm was going to be cut off.”

Cristof laughed once, startling her. Taya glanced up. Had she ever heard him laugh with real amusement before? This seemed like a strange time for it.

“The wound healed, of course, but it left a scar, and neither of us ever forgot the lesson.” Alister lifted his arm and pulled up his sleeve. The scar was old and pale against his dark copper skin, but long and uneven.

“I'm afraid this is going to leave a scar, too,” he said.

“How bad is it?” Cristof asked, removing one of the intact primaries from his own broken wings.

“Not as bad as it could have been,” Alister replied. “It looks like the bullet went straight through the muscle. You were lucky, my swan.”

“I told you to stop that. I wouldn't have been shot, if it weren't for you.”

Alister's jaw twitched.

“You'll need a physician's attention. Cris, if you'll give me your knife, I can cut up one of my robes for bandages.”

“I don't trust you with a knife, so stop asking.”

“You don't think I'd attack you, do you?”

“Yes,” Cristof said. “Right now, I think you're capable of anything.”

Alister rocked back on his heels. “You're going to have to trust me eventually. Taya shouldn't fly with a hurt leg, and you'll only get yourself killed if you try it in her armature. I'm the only one here who can get help now.”

“More likely you'll get one of the lictors' rifles and come back to finish us off,” Taya retorted. “I can fly well enough to get out of here. Flying's mostly arms and hips, anyway.”

“Landing isn't. And what will you do when you get to the top of the Engine Room? Do you plan to limp all the way upstairs to the Tower, and then even farther up to the signal flags?” Alister's voice was gentle. “Neither of us wants you to suffer. It has to be Cristof or me, and you know how hopeless my brother is in the air.”

“Cris, can't you hit him or something?” Taya asked, irritated.

“I
am
hopeless in the air,” Cristof pointed out. He looked down at her, holding a metal feather. “But I'll hit him, if that's what you want. I'm reasonably talented at fisticuffs.”

“You can barely see,” Alister scoffed. “And that's another thing. Without your glasses, you'd never be able to maneuver past all the cables running to the Engine.”

“Stop it, Alister.” Taya felt one of the feathers slide out of her wing, and then Cristof handed it to her as he replaced it. “Neither of us trusts you, and neither of us is going to let you go free.”

“So you'll go get help and leave us down here, alone together?” Alister raised an eyebrow. “Blind as a bat, light as a feather— I could throw Cris between those gears and watch him get crushed to death.”

“Don't believe him.” Cristof was tightening the screws against her back.

“I don't,” she said. A flash of annoyance crossed Alister's face and he stood, walking to the edge of the gear and looking out at the chasm as they rotated.

“Here.” Cristof took the feather from her, sliding it into his bundle of broken feathers, and then picked up one of the robes Alister had left behind. With effort, he hacked out a chunk of the heavy silk with his utility knife and packed it between her suit and her wound. “Do you really think you can fly?” he asked in a low voice.

“I'll do what I have to do. We can't let him go up there on his own.”

Cris combed his dark hair with his fingers, leaving it standing on end. “We
could
. I don't trust him not to escape, but he'd probably send out a distress flag before abandoning us. He has that much honor.”

“Do you want him to get away?” Taya searched Cristof's angular face. His eyes narrowed, but she knew his irritation wasn't directed at her. He was irritated with himself.

“If he hadn't killed anyone… if he hadn't killed Caster…” His jaw tightened. “I can put on your armature. It doesn't matter if it's not a good fit or if I can't see well. All I have to do is get up to the nearest catwalk, and then I can find stairs, or a lift. You don't need to go.”

Taya's leg hurt too much for her to muster a smile, but she gripped his hand briefly.

“I know. But I'll be all right, and flying will be faster.” She glanced over his shoulder at Alister. “You know, before all this, he kept pestering me to bring him a pair of wings. I bet if I had, he would have kept them and gotten here a lot sooner after the accident.”

Cristof nodded and straightened, walking around her to begin working on her wings again. Each bent feather he removed was bundled with his armature, the whole thing kept from floating away by the safety line tied to his harness.

“What happened when you fell?” she asked. “I was afraid you were going to float to the bottom of the mountain.”

“I hit a crosswire and hung on for dear life.”

Taya's lips curved at his sour, self-deprecating tone. It was reassuringly familiar.

“Then what happened?”

“I sat there and panicked for a while. It seems I
do
panic, under the right circumstances. Then I screwed up enough courage to start moving. I was closer to the Engine than to the catwalks, so that's the way I went. The Engine wasn't too hard to climb. All that ondium you put into my suit helped. When I got to the next crosswalk, I bundled up my wings and began unscrewing every counterweight attached to the crosswalk floor that I could find. At first I thought I could make myself light enough to float back up to you and Alister, but then I realized that if I did that, I wouldn't be able to control my ascent, so I just counterweighted myself enough for an easy climb.”

“That was smart.”

“I have moments of lucidity,” he said, dryly. “When I'm not falling to my death.”

“I wanted to go after you, but Alister wouldn't let me.”

“I know.”

“I feel bad about it. You came after me when you heard shooting.”

“That was
not
one of my moments of lucidity.”

She laughed, remembering his awkward plummet.

“It was brave, Cristof. It was really brave.”

He made an impatient sound and stepped back. “All right, I think we're done. Unless the mechanism itself took damage, you should be able to fly.”

Taya lifted a hand, and Cristof helped her to her feet. She stood, favoring her injured leg, and brushed his blood-smeared face. She wanted to kiss him again, but not here, not with Alister so close. Instead she looked into his eyes, hoping he could read the impulse. “Thank you.”

He shrugged, looking down at his suit and pulling open a pocket. “We'd better give you more counterweight. It'll make walking up the stairs easier, and I need to be heavier so Alister can't throw me around.”

“You don't really think he'll attack you when I'm gone, do you?” Taya took the metal bars and slid them into her suit pockets and harness slots.

“He might, but—”

“Ready to fly?” Alister interrupted, striding back. He picked up his discarded robes, looking unperturbed by the missing fabric, and slid them over his shoulders. “I still think this is unwise, Cris.”

Cristof waited until Taya signaled that she was light enough, then turned to his brother. “You have less faith in Taya than I do.”

“Maybe I just care more.”

“Are you really going to be all right with him?” Taya looked from one to the other.

“If you leave, there will be nobody to stop me from killing him and calling you a traitor,” Alister warned her.

“He's not going to kill me, Taya. Go.”

She had no choice. She had to trust that Cristof knew what he was doing, just as he trusted her. Pushing back her misgivings, she limped to the edge of the gear. Alister started to move toward her, but Cristof stepped between them, brandishing his utility knife.

Strained muscles and her wounded leg made her flight awkward and slow. She caught thermals and glided as often as she could. She worried about what Alister and Cristof were doing, but she didn't dare push herself into a faster flight.

She had almost reached the top of the Engine Room when she saw two other icarii sweeping back and forth across the face of the Engine.

She tilted her wings to acknowledge them and made an effort to fly up to the topmost catwalk. There she let herself collide with the rail, sliding one arm loose to grab it and clamber over. She fell to the floor, whimpering. Tears of pain streaked her face and she shrugged out of her wings to wipe them away.