LEGACY LOST (14 page)

“You!” Sophie howled, her hand flashing up and down over the pirate woman’s face. “Need! To! Be! Fixed!” With each plunge, the brass key came away with more and more gore. Other parts, not of metal or glass, joined those of
Paulette-2
on the floor. When, at last, the shuddering machine fell in a wet thud to the floor, Sophie stepped over it without the usual amount of considerate ceremony she afforded the metallic staff. No; her friends. “I’ll get Master Addler for you,” she told the bleeding lump. It did not respond. “
Paulette, Valkenhayn, Ariela, Belladonna, Maureen.
Come with me.” She sighed as if tired. “I suppose we’d better make sure the program hasn’t spread.”

Hearing the commotion even from the rooftop of the keep, Kaizen came back to himself and started down the spiral of steps. He’d been drifting, he supposed, both literally and mentally. Staring off into space, the wheel shifting idly in his hands, he hadn’t noticed the creak of an opening gate below. He was considering Neon Trimpot. The man would destroy him quickly and efficiently if he had a chance.
I should use my powers as a duke – while I still have them – and imprison him for treason in the tower. I may have pardoned him before, but now I find him undermining my decisions . . . even if those decisions are related to a merciful and possibly compromised handling of the insurgents . . . which may cause the monarch to suddenly . . . decide that I was the weak link. That I’m the scapegoat. I’m the crack in the dam. Mom and Sophie both heard that message from her in the Hermetic device. And Claude would realize that I’d known, all along, that she was alive . . . Even he told me that she was the better prisoner to bring the monarch . . .

That was when the scream resounded from the keep below, and he abandoned the wheel to investigate.

Sprawled in the machinist’s chamber was a slender, aged woman whose clothing and body he didn’t recognize. Her face, though, was mangled beyond recognition.

Seraphim had been born with a shrewd eye for precious metals, and so gravitated naturally toward the royal sitting room. Even in the shadow, its glass cabinets gleamed with jewel-encrusted platework, authentic silver and gold spoons. Deeper within the shadowed parlor glowed self-illuminating and mysteriously shifting landscape paintings imbued with emotions tranquil and nostalgic: a golden savannah that seemed to lilt in an unfelt afternoon breeze, which melted then into a rich navy trench, silhouettes of fish passing in and out of its scope. But all that Seraphim saw were gilded silver frames, embellished with diamond and sapphire.

Tilde followed; as evidenced by Seraphim’s move to save only Tilde on the
Chrysalis
, the two were kindred spirits and almost co-captains. Cookie filtered in as well.

“I’m off to those stairs,” Dot whispered in her harsh, craggy voice. “See what’s up there. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes . . . it must’ve been something really good.” The slender woman crept off in the direction of the castle keep, crouched low to the ground and her electric blue eyes peeking rapidly back and forth along the corridor as she went.

“Oi, do you reckon this is the castle of that young bloke from Icarus?” Cookie wondered loudly, staring in absolute wonderment at the moving paintings. It was now a rainy day on a sandy beach, the waves churning soundlessly and the sky overhead a billowing, textured silver. “The hot one? Every girl’s earl?”

“Yes, I’m nearly positive,” Seraphim replied coolly. She filled her knapsack with a row of candlesticks, moving in total silence save the occasional tinkle. She passed the faceplate of a classic clock, Roman numerals for hours and two stiff, jagged, black hands ticking onward. It too was luminous, as bright as a fluorescent pearl, and took up as much space as the huge portraits.

Otherwise, the room itself was cluttered in stuffed armchairs of rich leather, tables, a piano, and peopled in stiff automata who, though keys twisted in their backs, observed all this without intervention. Such was their way; if an imprint wasn’t present or issuing them an explicit command, they essentially went into idle mode. And, although Seraphim knew this and told herself not to be slowed, she couldn’t help but glance in their direction as she collected a set of goblets, pale liquor becoming gelatinous dregs, from off a table. She gave one goblet a quick sniff. Augh. Honeyed mead. Strong stuff. She glanced again at the automata. They didn’t move.

“I’m going to grab that rug in the hall,” Tilde said, stepping from the room.

Less than a minute later, a high, thin shriek filled the air, and there was a thunder of footfalls. Tilde bolted past the doorway without stopping and Seraphim went stiff.

“Don’t–” she whispered to Cookie. She was going to finish with
move,
and then whoever was chasing Tilde, God rest her soul, would run right past the drawing room and follow the woman outside, leaving them behind to slip out another way.

But Cookie was damn fast, the idiot, and without even checking the coast, she snatched up a tea kettle – not even silver, but some cheap, highly polished pewter, the
idiot
– and dashed after Tilde.

A girl with long blond hair, in a bloodstained white nightgown, flew down the hall, glancing only briefly into the drawing room.

But one moment was all it took, and Seraphim saw that the girl had an eerie face of glossy, white bone.

“
KILL HER!
” she commanded, pointing directly at the figure silhouetted against the glowing faceplate of the clock.

The wall of automata shuddered to life.

Seraphim bolted for the door, abandoning her sack of stolen goods, but a tall male automaton coasted into her path. She kicked hard into the air and his face shattered almost clean away, revealing the plates of brass and twisting gears beneath. A marble tumbled from its socket and rolled. She edged backward, hyperventilating, and wrenched the steel hour hand from the clock behind her. She arced it through the air madly at the approaching automata, their glassy eyes glowing with a faint red, their smooth faces like those of aliens, and the male whose skin she had kicked off snatched her weapon with a dramatic swoop, jerking back to a full stand and driving it efficiently into her sternum.

              Advancing down into the grand hall, Kaizen’s attention was first drawn to the door at its very end, which hung open onto the castle grounds themselves, and the rug, which had been rolled halfway up the corridor, exposing wooden board beneath. He frowned and stepped closer, wary of this scenario, but found nothing. Nothing in the hall, nothing out the door. He glanced into the dining hall, and then into the throne room, but found both utterly still and quiet.

              In the drawing room, however, he vomited just inside the door.

              A dark-skinned woman with no hair was pinned by her abdomen to the faceplate of his father’s favorite clock, the one which doubled as a screen for the keep cameras installed into the eye of every sentry. The hands had been torn from the clock and one used to impale her; a trail of bright blood crept down toward the numeral VI.

“How may I serve you, sir?”
an almond-eyed, coal-haired automaton asked, coasting to him and bowing deeply.

Kaizen flinched and looked back again. Several of the automata in the room were spattered in blood, and still stood at odd positions throughout the room rather than lining the wall as they normally did, as if they awaited further command. One of them had no glass on his face anymore, and was missing an eye.

“Y-you can tell me who t-told you to do this,” he stammered. It had to have been a member of the royal family or staff.

“Imprint 03, sir.”
This was the system to prioritize commands in the ‘small group’ imprint setting, so automata could not become confused by conflicting orders. Kaizen was imprint 01, followed by his mother, Olympia. Followed by his sister, Sophie.

He might throw up again.

“And where did she go?” he asked, using the cup of his palm as a mask to defend from that queer scent filling the room. The smell of raw meat. Fresh blood.

“I do not know, sir,”
the automaton replied, and Kaizen, gone blank with horror, remembered the still-open door at the end of the hallway. He fell from the room and bolted out into the deceptively peaceful night, pounding along the path which would lead around the castle if one turned, or into the garden at a straight shot. He didn’t need to go far before he saw her, though.

              “
Newton
, no! Sophie! Baldergas dash! Baldergash dass!” Kaizen cried, sprinting toward the scene of horror playing out in the garden. But it was too late. He was so far away from the carnage that it reminded him of a shadow play. There was the silhouette of Sophie, her back and shoulders narrow, arm pointing, the familiar hem of that chemise falling to her ankles. And there, on the stone path between the trimming of lilies and poppies, stood
Newton-3
in profile
,
the curls a pale fringe in the diffuse lamplight of the castle, struggling with his hands bound around the throat of another profile, this evidently slender and female, driven to her knees. “Balderdash gas! Balderdash gas!” Kaizen called again, but even now, if
Newton-3
registered the cease code, it would only prolong the poor girl’s suffering, whoever she was . . . whatever she was doing here.

              Kaizen broke past the hedge border of the garden and saw the murder in grim detail. The girl collapsed onto her side, no longer fighting for breath. The automaton footman had either completed his task or registered the cease code; it was impossible to tell which. From his left hand dangled the thin white rag with which he had been washing the dome. The girl had long hair, a sunny shade of yellow, and wore a short skirt and boots. Into her garter was thrust, of all things, a slingshot. It was tragically cute.

              Sophie turned and beheld Kaizen. That porcelain mask remained on her face, and her white chemise bore its greatest stain of all. A thick swath of blood from the very first button to its lace fringe.

              “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” she asked, tilting her head. Kaizen’s stomach rolled. “I would most love to be of assistance.”

              There was a long pause in which the duke considered how to best handle the shattered psyche of his little sister. “Yes,” he finally answered, careful to keep his tone and mannerism neutral. It wasn’t only for the mask that he was afraid of her. “Yes. Can you tell me, who are these intruders?”

              “Enemies of the castle, sir,” she replied with a pipe of pride to her voice. Kaizen’s eyebrows settled, a line forming on his forehead. She sounded so disturbingly happy. The happiest he’d heard her voice since she was a child, before playing pretend had become a discouraged activity for such a pretty young lady. “They have been thoroughly dismissed, you’ll be happy to know.”

              “Yes,” Kaizen agreed. “Very happy. Did you sustain any . . . damages to your system?”

              “No, sir!”

              But Kaizen persisted. The sole benefit of this rift in her sanity was that she believed she was a member of the staff. “I would like you to accompany me to the castle dungeon until a doctor can be reached to review your condition.”

“Automata are not serviced in the castle dungeon, sir!” she responded. A hint of annoyance filtered into her practiced, mechanical tone.

“Oh, yes. Yes. My mistake. Please report to the castle keep immediately and await Master Addler for diagnostic maintenance. He will be with you shortly.”

“And Newton?” she persisted.

“Newton . . . must finish his task of polishing the dome. Please report to the castle keep immediately and await Master Addler, Sophie. Thank you.”

Sophie trundled past with a jolting, dramatically robotic gait, disappearing into the shadows along the side of the castle. He could only pray that she was truly as mad as she seemed and would obey his request at the cost even of her own limbs, as any automaton would. He knew he ran the risk that she was only playing with him, and would slip away and hide, a genuine psychopathic serial killer.

But he didn’t think she was that kind of psychopath.

He feared he should have seen this coming long before it arrived.

“
Newton-3
?”

The automaton swiveled at his request, red pinpricks glowing. “
Yes, sir. How may I be of service?
”

Kaizen took a deep breath. “Bury this woman you have killed,” he instructed the bot. “Bury her, and bury the woman who lies in the drawing room. Clean the faceplate of the clock for its blood.”

“Yes, sir.”
The automaton grasped a shovel from the small gardening shed behind the castle and returned.
“Where shall I dig, sir?”

Kaizen could hardly summon the urge to care. He simply couldn’t think of what else to possibly do. They couldn’t just dock in Celestine with dead bodies everywhere. “I don’t care,” he muttered. “Right there is fine.”
We’ll plant some nice roses or something. Maybe the girls liked roses.
“I will return to check your progress in thirty minutes. I expect for the task to be completed in that time. You will stand ready for further instruction.”