Curio (31 page)

Blaise studied Grey as she bent over the table in Gagnon's sitting room. Callis stood next to her, pointing out Curio's landmarks on a map. The modified porcie had accepted that she'd joined their cause and taken her into his confidence. She glanced up during a political digression and caught Blaise staring at her. Pink stained her cheeks. He fought the pull deep inside. His fingers itched to touch her hair, her cheeks, her throat. His arms ached to hold her. Even his blood called out for her. If Callis weren't there . . . He turned away, blocking the images scorching his thoughts.

All his talk of justice and compassion had found its target in Grey's heart, but she'd call him a liar before they were done. She'd pull away, and he'd be trapped forever in this prison, hated by the only other human in his world. Or worse, remain in Curio without her.

A hand tugged on his arm. When he turned and caught her eyes, the memory of an immense blue dome flashed. The sky outside this prison. He let himself absorb the soft aqua so different from the hard gem eyes of the porcies. But Grey was tugging him toward the table. Her arm slipped around his waist and he stiffened. The more contact they had now, the deeper the betrayal when she discovered the truth about him.

“Callis says I can choose which mission I want to be a part of.”

Blaise forced his eyes away from the girl at his side and down to the map he knew as well as his own Defender mark. She pointed to the Weatherton estate, perched on top of the Shelf to the east of the factory district.

“The airship is going to explode the hydro hub. Gagnon's diggers have been tunneling up from Lower.” She traced a line up the cliff face beneath the industrial baron's home. “By the time we hit the hub, the water will be drained into underground pipes and heading for Gagnon's new purification locus.”

She looked up at him. “No flood. If everything goes according to plan, no one will get damaged.”

Blaise crossed his arms. “You're forgetting the airship strike is a diversionary tactic
meant
to draw the soldiers guarding Harrowstone.” He jabbed his finger at the prison located to the west of the factories, opposite the Weatherton estate.

On the other side of the table, Callis shifted his weight. Blaise directed his next words at the modified. “Who's to say the Clang can even take a musket hit, let alone cannon fire?”

“The mission to save Seree will be no safer.” Callis waved his porcelain hand over the map. “Blueboy's estate is nearby. Word will reach him fast and more troops will be ordered to defend Harrowstone.”

“Where will you go tomorrow?” Grey asked.

With her gaze on him, he strained to form words into an answer. “I will go where my abilities are most needed,” he managed.

A battle waged on Grey's face. After a moment she angled her chin out. “The strike on Weatherton is all for show. The real work is already being done underground. You should help Callis.”

The mended porcie slammed his metal fist on the table. “I don't need his help.”

“What?”

Callis's jewel eye glittered and the mechanical eyeball—still glitchy after the flood—vibrated in its socket. He rounded the table, and Blaise squared his feet for a hit. Maybe the tainted water had reached the modified's mind. The rebuilt face thrust into his.

“Let me be the one to rescue Seree,” Callis said through clenched teeth. “Give her gaze a chance to land on me for once. You don't love her. You never did.”

Callis held Blaise's eyes a moment then turned and stomped out of Gagnon's house. Heat climbed up Blaise's neck.

When Grey spoke her voice was even, careful. “What did he mean by that?”

“Exactly what he said, I imagine.”

“You and Seree are . . .?”

“Not anymore. Not for a while now. He's right. I didn't love her.”

Blaise leaned on the table as if studying the map. A rigid hush fell over the room. If only he could dash out after Callis. Maybe root him out in the hangar and make jokes about the Clang until his friend loosened up . . . A hand covered his. Grey stood at his elbow.

“You must have been very lonely all these years, stuck in here.”

He forced a bravado he didn't feel. “Oh, Curio City is quite charming once you learn to blend in.”

She hesitated at his retort. The hand that had begun to move to his forearm stopped when he added another jab.

“At least the women are beautiful.” He hated each word as it left his lips.

“B-but you don't belong here.” She fell silent, her fingers trembling against his skin. Minutes passed before she spoke. “Blaise, do you have any idea how we can get out?”

He could say no. Her hand moved again, gliding up his arm, fingertips skimming the bruise on his shoulder.

His secrets could remain hidden, and they could stay in Curio. So what if the food was paint? He'd have Grey to hide with. Grey to explore with. Grey to kiss until she moaned.

“We have to go back,” she said. Her forehead grazed his upper arm. “The Council has my father. He may already be dead.”

The reality of that world, Grey's world, roiled in his gut. He straightened and turned to her. “Your father is a Defender. It's in his nature to take punishment for others. He would want you to be free. Stay here with me, Grey.”

Her mouth quivered. “I can't. If there's a way I can get back to my family, I need to find it. Will you help me?”

He didn't look away as she searched his face. He could say no. “Yes.”

She sucked in a breath and stepped closer. “Then you do know how to get out?”

“There's a keyhole set in a tree trunk deep in the glass forest. I think it might be the exit.”

Grey's brows rose and a smile played over her tender lips.

“But it doesn't work the same as the lock on the curio cabinet.” He swallowed and forced the next words out. “You need an actual key.”

The smile vanished, but the blue eyes held his. “Will you take me there after the mission?”

He nodded.

When she stepped closer and lifted her face to his, he knew the gesture for the invitation it was. Her hands rested lightly on his waist despite the tow of their Defender marks.
He longed to drag her to him and make use of the table so conveniently placed behind her back. But he kept a sliver of space between their bodies as he leaned down.

She'd lost the boldness of their encounter in Cog Valley, but he coaxed her lips to follow his. Though the moment her fingers curled at his hip bones, he broke away.

He couldn't meet her eyes, but when she made a noise—a mixture of surprise and desire—he rested his forehead against hers.

“We're not porcies with pumps for hearts and delusions for souls,” he whispered. Then he kissed her forehead and walked out the door into the night.

CHAPTER

19

W
hit closed his hand around the money in his pocket, the last of the stash he kept in an old coffee can on his bedroom shelf. Another spasm gripped his gut, but he walked on down Colfax.

A figure appeared in his path, just steps away from the Haward's store. Winter sun shimmered on the Chemist's suit, and his dark hair jutted in spikes like a midnight mountain range.

Whit scrambled to replace the day's mission with thoughts that wouldn't land him in a facility. Maybe he could pass by unnoticed, just another miner on the way to work. Except he walked against the stream of men heading to Reinbar Station.

He buried the realization and conjured a picture of the draulie he worked alongside, inventing a glitch in Kauffman's hydraulic suit that required a quick errand downtown. He focused on the grinding sound of a faulty gear as the Chemist held up his hand.

The man had a smooth voice, like liquid pouring into a glass. “You're the boy that got striped for Grey Haward, aren't you?”

His fabricated errand evaporated. Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

The Chemist lifted the corner of his mouth. “Friendship with the Hawards is dangerous business.”

Whit studied the sidewalk, his boots, the brick wall of a nearby shop. Anything to banish his striping and the Chemist's probing green eyes.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

Whit shook his head.

A note of irritation edged the Chemist's slick tone. “I'm Adante, the one who ossified Olan Haward and ended his son's defiance.”

And Grey? What happened to her? Whit's head came up as an image of her kneeling by his bed popped into his thoughts.

The flash of green-tinted teeth sent ice down Whit's spine, but the Chemist arranged his features into a cool mask. He raised a bottle-green monocle to one eye and leaned an inch closer.

A dull ache spread from a point on Whit's forehead back over his skull and deep into his brain. He tried not to think about the last time he'd seen Grey, but her worried face flickered in and out of focus as if someone picked at a thread in the tapestry of his thoughts. He couldn't get control of his own mind.

In a flash of green light, Adante's features replaced the memory. Pale eyes, one of them grotesquely magnified, held Whit's, and he could only stare, his mind blank and wandering.

“I suspect we'll be seeing each other again, Whitland Bryacre.” The Chemist stepped to the side and motioned for Whit to continue. “Be sure to watch yourself when you go to the outpost. The mountain folk can be treacherous.”

Whit filled his thoughts with a frozen lake, snow, and silver-scaled fish. He struggled to hold the image as he lurched
down the walkway, but the day's task broke through and his spine went rigid. He didn't dare stop, though he threw a glance back toward Haward's. Adante stood just outside the shop, watching him walk toward downtown Mercury.

Station Four, South Quarter—the end of the line for the Mercury North-South passenger train. Whit waited till the last woman in faded red clothes stepped down onto the platform before he followed. The ladies moved in clusters—easily spotted and avoided—through an open-air waiting area with weathered metal benches and a high, narrow strip of roof. Though out of the way, this station crawled with deputies stationed at the edge of the city. In the distance, the lookout tower jabbed into the horizon, surrounded by the long, low barracks and training grounds. He didn't have a good excuse for any deputy who stopped him, but the flurry of activity around the water tower and gantry as the fireman set about refilling the engine's tank drew the attention of a knot of men in dusters and masks.

Cramming his hat low and tucking his chin into his collar against a shredding wind, Whit left the station behind and ducked between delivery trucks crowding a wide thoroughfare. A wall of factories lined the street, and the women filed through the doors as a piercing whistle signaled the start of the shift. Across town, his mother likely slipped through a similar entrance, intent on reaching her station at the mill before her supervisor reprimanded her for dawdling. He trailed a group moving up an alley between rows of warehouses. A few shot him wary glances, but no one asked his business. When the last two people headed for one of the doors, Whit continued toward the alley opening.

A cramp bit into his gut, and he had to stop and blow out quick puffs of air until it subsided. Would he ever get used to this? Like Marina had. Like his mother had. He pushed on, another step and another. For three days now, he'd watched his mother pour most of her potion into a glass for him before he trudged off to the mine. He'd even considered going back to the hunting outpost to retrieve his bottle, but the thought of showing up empty-handed made him feel like a schoolboy in short pants. No more. He wasn't leaving the South Quarter without a ration bottle.

Whit emerged from the alley between the factories onto another wide dirt street boasting shabby businesses and shops. Tiny square homes and squat buildings with dingy windows dotted the flat ground beyond the business district, with the lookout tower the only grim relief in the monotony. He'd expected crowded neighborhoods constantly patrolled by deputy chug boats. But he saw no one for the first two blocks he trekked.