Curio (28 page)

Grey bumped about her new prison cell, her eyes slow to adjust to the darkness. Her hands and shins detected a table and chair in the center. The walls were empty and square save for an alcove by the door.

She slumped into the chair. Blaise had tricked her. From the sound of it, kidnapping her had been the plan all along.

Tears formed in her eyes, but she smacked them away. He was a lunatic. Of course he was a lunatic. A hundred years in this place, how could he not be? But when he spoke of his friends and their cause, well, maybe it was the low timbre of his voice that made him sound so rational.

Grey stared around the empty room. Would she be trapped here with hard creatures and one insane human boy for a hundred years? What about her father, her mother, Granddad? Whit?

Stars blinked in her eyes and she scrubbed them. Her palms came away wet.

Another circuit around the room helped to even out her breathing. She found the chair again and sat, placed her arms on the desk, and lowered her head. Weariness crept through her limbs. At least the threat of Blueboy's examination was lifted for the time being. Her lids lowered.

When the door opened, Grey jumped and wiped the corner of her mouth.

Blaise stood in the doorway, outlined by the light behind him.

Grey got to her feet. Then she threw the chair at him. It crashed to the floor a couple feet from where he stood.

He stared down at it then back at her. “I'm sorry.”

“You let them lock me up.”

He stepped in and closed the door behind him, blocking the light source. Grey disobeyed the pulling of her mark and moved away from him, putting the table between them.

He stood for a moment as if uncertain. She couldn't read his expression in the dark.

“You're just going to give me back to Lord Blueboy?”

“No, I mean, that was the plan, but that was before—”

“Before you knew his intentions for me?”

He shuffled to the table and set a bundle on top of it. His right hand found the base of his neck and rubbed. He'd cleaned up and changed. He wore what she guessed was a borrowed vest, buttoned up over bare skin. Even in the dark, the contour of muscle was unmistakable. After a moment he turned and headed for the door.

Grey opened her mouth to say something to keep him from leaving, but he bent to retrieve the chair. Placing it back in the center of the room, he motioned for her to sit. Then he lifted himself up to the table, his long legs dangling. He was barefoot.

Somehow the sight of his toes eased the clench in Grey's lungs. She moved to the chair and lowered herself, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, what's the plan now?”

His eyes found hers, whites gleaming in the dark. “I won't let Blueboy hurt you, Grey. But I have to get Seree back. She's . . . one of us.”

“A renegade?”

“A liberator. A water warrior.” He barked a laugh, then his tone grew serious again. “You've only seen the mansion
and the center of the city. They go through pure water as though it belongs only to them, while the rest of Curio suffers depravation and the effects of tainted water.”

“All right, I'd gathered as much. And you and this Seree, and the tocks out there, are trying to do something about it?”

“Yes.” He shifted on the table, his hands smoothing his trousers as if he couldn't stay still. “I have to. My nature forces me into the middle of Callis's cause. He thinks my involvement is due to his leadership skills, or”—Blaise rolled his eyes—“whatever's left of his porcie charm.” His voice lowered. “But it's not that. I can't stand by and watch others suffer.”

Grey loosened her pose, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I don't understand. They feel pain like we do, feel . . . other things . . . like we do, even the tocks. They're metal and yet they feel. They're alive. How?”

“It was the Chemist who sent me here, I think. He cast a spell on the cabinet to keep me in and keep me alive.”

“Why?”

His tone flattened. “I can only assume it was because he hated me more than any other Defender alive.”

“You're a Defender?” Grey scooted forward in her seat. “Until a few days ago I thought the Chemists killed them all.”

“Not all.” Blaise lifted the edge of his vest, exposing the skin at his belt line. A pattern circling his navel glowed with blue-white light.

Grey gasped. She slipped off her seat and stood before him. With one finger she rucked the fabric of her shirt up. Her own mark gleamed with the same hue. Blaise reached a hand out then stopped, his fingers hovering over the pattern on her skin. He met her eyes, a question in his. Grey nodded and held her stance, her skin quivering when his finger brushed it. He traced a line curling away from her navel.

“A Defender's mark,” he whispered into the darkness.

The emblem tingled beneath his touch. Grey expected the whorls to spin and dance. She lowered her shirt and took a steadying breath. Blaise dropped his hand as though he'd been caught playing with a potion bottle.

“It just appeared one morning after I . . .” She flattened her palm over her mark. Whit's face as he'd looked climbing into the chug boat flared through her mind.

“After you sacrificed for someone else?” Blaise nodded. “That's what kindles the Defender state. Didn't they explain when they gave you the wellspring water?”

“Water? What water? No one explained anything. Granddad said I was different,
we
were different, that's all.”

“Wait.” Blaise held up one long finger. “In the air, you said your grandfather sent you to his store. Olan? Olan Havardsson is your grandfather? Then you're a Defender by blood.”

“You knew my granddad?” The conversation Grey'd overheard in the store came back. “I don't understand how he and my father escaped the Cleanse. The Council knows they're different. Adante knew I was different.”

“Steinar.” Blaise's voice sliced through her musing. “You're Steinar's daughter?”

“Yes.”

He jumped off the table. Grey's mark flamed as they stood facing each other. Blaise's chest heaved, and his fists curled at his sides. Before she collected her wits, he spun around and marched for the door.

“Wait. You knew my father and grandfather. Tell me—”

“Yes, I knew them.” He stopped, his hand on the doorknob. His voice ground like a rough gear. “Steinar Haward is the reason I'm here.”

Blaise clicked the lock despite Grey's pleas. The flimsy door between them begged for his fist. But he needed her on the other side. Steinar's daughter. His old friend's face wouldn't come into focus. Ah, but Grey's face. Grey's face burned at him through the wood that separated them. Blue eyes and those apple cheeks that made her look both innocent and strong, like she fought lions all day then came home to bake pies.

She had to go and be Steinar's daughter. Blaise turned from the door before the temptation to tear it down got the better of him. He headed out to the main room of Gagnon's house.

His host sat on a stiff chair. The boxing tock, whom he'd learned was named Rusher, had gone, but Callis sat in a sagging armchair.

When the half porcie started to speak, Blaise cut him off. “Gagnon, let's see this hydro hub you're working on.”

Gagnon's metal slit of a mouth spread into a grin. “Oh, it's not just the hub I've been working on.” He jerked his brassy head toward the hallway. “The prisoner secure?”

Blaise nodded once, ignoring Callis's jewel and metal gaze. Grey's presence, her existence, and what it meant to him wasn't something he cared to share with his friend. Not yet.

Gagnon ratcheted out of his seat and retrieved a set of keys from a hook on the wall. Blaise's fingers itched to curl around the dangling keys, but he followed the tock out the door with Callis bringing up the rear. The green light no longer shone in the window, and only the ruddy glow from the nearby mouth lit the machine yard.

They followed the wide, dirt-packed road connecting the huge bays housing the equipment Gagnon rented out. Blaise's shoulder throbbed with every step, and his mind flipped between images of Grey and long-ago events. By the time they reached the second-to-last hangar, his fingernails cut into his palms. He all but ran through the door Gagnon held open.

Pitch-black greeted him, and an imprint of Grey's Defender mark seared his vision until Gagnon flipped a switch, flooding the cavernous space with light.

Blaise drew up, his eyes wide. A bulbous shape as big as a building occupied the center of the room. Like Gagnon's house, patchwork metal comprised its shell. Out of the bottom, segmented pipes extended, stretching out along the floor like great arms. One of the pipes almost reached the group by the doorway. Blaise peered inside, picturing water rushing down from the orb. Gagnon's invention wasn't as elegant as the upper class porcie's water system, but the long appendages could provide water to many neighborhoods at once.

Callis strode forward and trailed his metallic hand up the pipe. “This is a marvel, Gagnon.”

The tock smiled his stripped-down grin. “It's not much to look at. The porcies'll hate the thing. But here in Cog Valley, it'll get the job done. Wait till you see it in operation.”

“I can't wait to see the assembly blow their pumps.” Blaise moved closer to the contraption.

Gagnon creaked. Blaise studied him a moment before the sound translated to laughter.

“That's not all. Come with me.”

They trooped to the last warehouse. Blaise prepared himself for darkness and Grey's form rose like a beacon in
his mind, but the flash of her face rattled him nonetheless. He shook his head as Gagnon raised the lights.

Another pieced-together machine took up most of the space in the huge hangar, but Blaise couldn't make sense of the long shape. He studied the snubbed end nearest them. Were those windows high above the nose-like tip meant for navigation? The cylindrical body extended back like a tubular-shaped fish. Halfway between the front and rear, two huge pipes attached to the hammered metal exterior. The three-blade spinner inside the tubes clued him in. He turned to Gagnon.

“It flies?”

Gagnon croaked again. “Thought you owned the sky did you, Mad Tock?”

Callis laughed as well. “Brilliant, Gagnon, brilliant. Let's get a good look at this masterpiece.”

After they'd circled the flying machine, boarded it via the open stern, and walked around the interior—which resembled the enclosed deck of a ship—they exited and took up positions near the wind chambers.

“You've never tested it?” Callis asked.

Gagnon wagged his head back and forth. “No. There's no hiding her once she's up. Was waiting for the right moment.”

Callis tapped on the hull, his metal fingers clanging against the metal exoskeleton. “Now is the time to reveal your contraption.”

“I nicknamed it the Clang,” Gagnon said.

“Why?” Blaise asked.

Gagnon's bead-like eyes traveled over the machine. “Well, she clangs a bit when we start her up.”

“Definitely no hiding her then,” Blaise said.

“We don't need to.” Callis's gem eye sparkled. “This is perfect. We'll send the Clang to the Weatherton estate.”

Blaise squinted at the contraption. “How can this floating bucket reroute Weatherton's hub?”

“It can't. We must access the pipes to his locus from the tunnels beneath. But the Clang can demolish the hub—and make a lot of noise doing it. It'll draw more than one platoon. If we're lucky, the soldiers stationed at Harrowstone will respond.”

“Seree.”

Callis shot Blaise a conciliatory glance. “We'll try a diversion first. Like you said, I'm not a monster.”

A cord around Blaise's heart loosened. He nodded. “When do we stage our attack?”

“Tomorrow.”

Gagnon's head twisted toward Callis. “We have to haul up enough cinderite to fuel the engines. And we need time to plan.”