Noir (28 page)

Fifty

Eyelet

Penelope’s gaze lopes around the room, questioning the possibility of such a motley crew of ambushers. She gropes for the whistle hanging on a cord next to her bed and blows it—three short, one long.

“Dammit!” Parthena curses and lunges for the whistle, missing.

Jackboots stamp the floor below us, flooding toward the corridor stairs.

“Call them off!” I snap at Penelope. “Call them off, or else!” I pull the knife from the top of my boot and hold it to her throat.

“Eyelet?” Urlick’s eyes pop as Penelope gasps.

“Call. Them. Off!” I press the knife against her skin, ignoring Urlick.

Penelope swallows hard, groping the air for the whistle again. She brings it shakily to her mouth. She blows the signal in reverse—one long and three short.

The jackboots below us slow to a staggered stop.

“There,” she says. “Now, don’t harm me.”

“You’d better hope they all turn around.”

“Everything all right in there, mum?” a guard calls from the outer door. Penelope lets out a cowardly whimper. “Shall we enter?”

“No!”
Her voice cracks. “Everything’s fine! I’m fine! I called you in error! I just woke from a nightmare, that’s all.”

“You’re sure?” the guard persists. I press the knife a little tighter to her throat.

“Yes! Now, get on your way!”

“Very well then, mum,” the guard says, hesitating a long moment before clomping away, boots crashing loud against the treads of the stairwell as he calls off the others and descends.

Breath escapes from all of us. I wait until I’m sure the floor is clear of guards before I remove the knife from Penelope’s throat.

“You’re going to pay for this,” she spits, rubbing her grazed neck. “Every last one of you.”

“I believe some of us have been paying for a long time already.” Parthena moves in.

“What do you want?” Penelope snaps, turning on her sister with contempt.

“Where shall we start?” Parthena leans, clenching her fists at her sides. “How about we start with my dead child? Or perhaps with your affections for my lover? Or how you lied about my absinthe abuse to have me locked away!”

“I did no such thing.”

“Liar!”

Urlick steps between the two women.

“You have no proof of anything!” Penelope rakes her sister up and down.

“Oh, don’t I?”

Urlick reaches into the vest of his waistcoat, produces the church register, and tosses it onto her lap on the bed. Penelope’s pupils quicken. Her breath races.

She dives at the book. “Ah ah ah, not so fast.” Urlick swipes the register away. “First, you’re going to answer a few of your sister’s questions.” He tips his head toward Parthena to take the stage.

“Why?” Parthena says, jutting her neck forward. “Why did you do it?”

“Why do you think? You were always the perfect one, the smarter one, the
better-looking
. . . Oh, don’t look at me like that, you did this to yourself, opening your legs to that cheat! You
knew
he had a wife! Yet still you couldn’t control yourself!”

Parthena slaps her.

“Aaaah!” Penelope gasps, and rubs her cheek. “How dare you, you ill-tempered tart!”

“No wonder Father never loved you,” Parthena says under her breath.

“Love
me
?” Penelope chuckles. “You actually think he was capable of love?” She snaps forward. “Who do you think signed Smrt’s request to have you thrown away in the Brink?”

Parthena falls back, hand to her chest, gasping.

“That’s right,” Penelope continues. “Our father would do just about anything for money. And he
did
. At least
I
had the heart to modify his decision and give you a fighting chance—”

“A chance to what? Become warden of that
hellhole
? You expect me to be thankful for that?”

“If Father had his way, you’d have hanged.”

Parthena draws in a breath and clenches her teeth. “Tell me, what happened to my child?”

“She died—”

“The
truth
! I want to hear the truth!”

“She’s dead! Or she may as well be.”

“What are you saying?”

“When Smrt first sent me to murder his bastard child, I thought I could do it, I could kill her. But when I got her out into the woods, I couldn’t bring myself to wring her neck. So I knocked on the door of a cabin instead. A woman with very little sight appeared, and I struck up a deal with her. She would care for and raise the child, posing as her aunt, for which she would be compensated handsomely, and no one would ever be the wiser. Over the years, I wrote to the girl a daily letter, through which I became very fond of her.”

“You stole my daughter from me. You stole my life away.”

“I cleaned up your mistake! Did you really think a professor was going to marry a commoner, whilst he had an upper-class wife in the Brink, you
dolt
? If only you’d gone on with the plan and not fallen in love with him—”

“What plan?”

“The one Smrt and I concocted!” Penelope gasps, drawing a shaky hand to her mouth, as if trying to take back what she hadn’t meant to say.

“So it’s true, what they say about the business deal.” Parthena shakes.

“I know nothing of it—”

“Really?” Urlick cuts in. He pulls a handful of register pages from his vest pocket, holding them out in the air over Penelope’s head. “You thought you could bury it, didn’t you? Along with the truth about me. In the filthy crypt of the church, in a locked box, where no one would ever find it. You thought you could end the lineage forever,
snuff out
my royal heritage, and erase her child, all so you could improve your own destiny. Only trouble was, you didn’t have the guts to make her child go away . . . and I wouldn’t die either, would I?” He leans in.

Penelope shrieks and lunges at the papers. Urlick pulls back, handing them off to me. “I thought you might try to destroy the evidence, that’s why I did this.” He produces a long, slim, silver metal device that looks like a cross between a wizard’s wand and a train’s silver whistle. He waves the wand-whistle in the air. “I’ve already photocrank-copied all the pages we need to prove our case and sent them up into the cloud.” His eyes flick toward the ceiling.

“The cloud? What cloud?” I whisper to him, turning my back to Penelope.

“It’s a new device I was working on before we left the Compound,” he whispers. “I’ve discovered I’m able to break images up into the smallest particles through a means of photocrank-static-electricity, and move those particles to another location for reassembly, like a transportable jigsaw puzzle.” He tips the device in his hand. “It works rather well, actually, I’m shocked . . . I mean, I’m
confident
.” He tugs on the points of his waistcoat.

“And this cloud thing.” Penelope looks at him sceptically. “Where is it?” Her eyes dart all over the ceiling mockingly as she waves her hands in the air.

“That’s the beauty of it!” Urlick turns, breaking away from me, poking his nose out at her. “It could be anywhere.” He lowers his voice and makes it sound like a ghoul’s, throwing his lanky arms out at his sides. Penelope is driven back, a scowl of fright on her face.

“You don’t really know where it is, do you?” I whisper to Urlick when he straightens up again.

“No,” he whispers back. “But don’t worry, the images are all etched right here in the memory of this device.” He taps the wand-whistle, and it topples from his hands. He swoops to catch it.

“How about I look after that.”

“None of this means anything without the proof of birth!” Penelope rails from the bed, craning her neck out over the covers. “Anyone could enter anything in a church register!”

“Perhaps,” I say, unfolding one of the pages. “But not many would have access to a royal seal.”

Her brows vex. She’s quiet a moment, then stretches her gaze to me. “Do you really think the people are going to award you a kingdom over a piece of pressed wax?”

I lean down, pushing my face closer to hers. “They’ve awarded
you
more on far less.”

A crooked smile comes to Penelope’s lips. Her eyes rake over each of us. “Look at you. A more disgruntled band of ex-cons and mental misfits there’s never been. Do you really think anyone in their right mind is going to believe any of you?”

“It doesn’t matter who believes them, they have me.” The door behind us swings open. “A witness who can corroborate all the facts.”

The Matriarch appears, tottering on the bent handle of her cane. She teeters forward on aged but nimble knees, bending at the waist when she reaches the head of the bed. “You thought because I’m blind I serve no purpose.” She grins. “Well, my son, the Ruler, thought otherwise. In fact, I was not only his mother but his most trusted
confidante
, present at both the dirty business dealings of another high-ranked controversial birth, and the conception of his secret heir.” She reaches back, patting Urlick’s chest. “Welcome to the family, by the way.” She flashes her blind eyes in Penelope’s direction. “Now, where were we?”

“But that’s not possible.” Penelope heaves a nervous breath. Her eyes dart frantically side to side. “No one was present at the birth of my sister’s child, not even the Clergy! There wasn’t even a doctor present! I saw to that myself. Not even Smrt really knew the truth of what became of her! I lied to everyone about it!”

“Weeeeell
.
”
The Matriarch stretches back. “Even better.” She smiles, folding accomplished arms across her chest. “Can’t argue with self-admitted guilt, now can we?”

I laugh into my hand.

“How could you?” Parthena steps in, touching her chest. “How could you do that to me? All those years, leaving me locked away, letting me believe my child was dead! How could you take her from me and lie about it? We were sisters! Twins, for
God’s sake
!”

“It was a business arrangement—get over it!” Penelope curls up her lip. “A way for me to extort money from Smrt’s overflowing purse, to save Father’s failing business! How else did you think we were going to survive? I never even
loved
that squib.”

Parthena gasps and falls back.

“Truth be known, he never loved you, either! I arranged it all! That’s right. I did! Every last pathetic detail! You were both so easily tricked.
He
, the aging wealth holder desperate for an heir,
you,
the star-struck dreamer, believer in the impossible love affair. In the end, it all came down to a simple exchange of goods—
a fortune for a broodmare
!”

Parthena steps up and slaps her sister’s face again.

The shot rings out across the room.

Parthena drops her face in her hands and starts to weep. I take her by her shoulders and steer her away.

“Get up,”
Urlick says, dragging Penelope by the scruff from her bed. “Reign over!” He launches her hard at the wall.

Penelope bounces off, spilling to the floor with a thump.

“Get dressed, and hurry up about it.” He tosses her clothing at her. “You’ve got a heretic to set free, and a kingdom to hand over. All before lunch!”

Fi
fty-One

Urlick

“Where are you taking me?” Penelope wriggles at the end of the rope to which I have her tethered like a fish destined for the fry pan. Her hands are firmly tied behind her back, though I haven’t gagged her mouth, and I’m seriously regretting that omission. I push her from the castle down the steps.

“Where do you think?” I say, booting her forward over the slick cobblestones of the courtyard, my knee to her backside. “To end the party you invited everyone to yesterday—the one that got rained out.”

“But they’ll be expecting to see the burning of a heretic.” She cranks her neck around to face me.

“Yes, I know. And they
will
. As soon as you’ve appointed me Ruler.”

“What?” Penelope’s eyes pop. “I’ll never do that!”

“You will do what I say.” I clench my teeth. “Now, get moving!” I whirl her around and knee her in the arse again.

The glint of something red catches my eye. My gaze leaps past Penelope’s head to Masheck, standing beside an engine parked to the left of the courtyard, behind a short wall. The engine is mounted on a chassis equipped with hoses and spindles. A giant tank serves as its belly. “What is it?” I shout.

Masheck turns. “It’s the cloudsower.”

Penelope swallows.

“Are you sure?” I say.

“As sure as I breathe air.” Masheck struts alongside it, dragging his hands over the middle of the copper-coloured beast, inspecting the front and then rounding the back. A giant, wide-mouthed spout is corked with a metal plug at one end. At the rear, an array of hoses protrudes like rubbery octopus arms from a silver base. He buckles over, disappearing behind it. “Those are the guns,” he says, swinging back to a stand, pointing to the row of ten trigger nozzles attached to the engine’s hoses in back. “And the chemicals go ’ere.” He rushes to the front, pointing to the neck, patting his hand on the cork.

He takes on a strange look, his gaze drifting off across the courtyard. “And there are the chemicals.” He races off toward a stack of wooden barrels marked with a red flag at the far end of the courtyard. Then he turns back.
“Yuh.”
He points to Penelope. “Yuh were the one! It was yuh ’oo came to the factory. Dressed as a man. Yuh oversaw this death engine. It was yuh ’oo gave the orders to seed!” He rushes toward her, fists balled at his sides.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Penelope cowers behind me.

Masheck leans in, his face tight to hers. “I remember the eyes now, those great big eyes, glaring out through the glass-bubble ’elmet. The ’elmet she wore with the suit to protect ’erself from the chemicals.” Masheck turns to me.

“He’s wrong!” Penelope shouts. “It was Smrt! It was never me!”

“It was
’er
all right. She filled the tank and gave the orders. I saw ’er do it meself. Then she’d slip off to ’ide below the earth in one o’ them old abandoned gem mines out in the forest, where she’d be safe until the toxins cleared. I used to ’ear the workmen complainin’ ’bout ’avin’ to do ’er dirty job for ’er. They was told to dump the fumin’ waste over the side of the ravine, into Embers, somewheres way out in the forest, and to keep their mouths shut about it, or she’d ’ave their ’eads.”

“Lies, all lies!”
Penelope spits.

I stare into her eyes.

The ravine. Those trucks. The dumping. The rancid steam . . .

That must have been what those workmen were doing, that day Eyelet and I saw them dumping refuse in the pit.

Masheck jerks toward her again, his temper running high. “Yuh knew what yuh was doin’ all along, didn’t yuh?” He stabs her chest. “And yuh didn’t care what ’appened to any of us because of
it
!”

“How else was I going to get them to follow me to the
promised land
?” Penelope’s eyes dart between us. “How else was I to get them to take up arms and fight the East? Smrt had already ruined our world when he detonated the—”

She sucks in a breath. The end of her sentence hangs frozen in the air, but my mind fills in the gap.
He
was there . . . in the Core . . . the day of the catastrophe.
Smrt
was responsible. . . not my father.

“So yuh’d ’of killed us all just to get yer way!”

“All who were expendable, yes!”

Masheck lunges at her, his eyes flashing like burning torches in a winter sky, his fist lined up with her jaw. I stop him short of knocking her head clean off her shoulders. “Hold up,” I shout, yanking him back by the arms. “We still need her, sadly. But when we don’t, trust me”—I breathe, patting his shoulder—“you’ll be the first I call when we don’t.”

Masheck jerks away from me, pulling a frustrated hand through his hair as he stalks off.

Penelope sucks in a deep breath. “That’s right, you don’t
dare
kill me!” She juts out a mocking chin.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” I fling her around and shove her forward.

“You’ll never find it, if you do.”

“Find what?”

“The promised land, of course. The utopian world that exists above the clouds.” She stops and stares up at the sky. “Oh, come on now, don’t act like you don’t know about it.” Her brows thicken as she studies my face. “It was your little sweetheart’s magic that produced the hole in the cloud cover, revealing its existence. Or so the ghoul in the forest said.”

I stare at her, perplexed.

“Limpidious. The floating world beyond our own.”

“Limpidious?”

My mind riffles back to Eyelet standing in the parlour at the Compound, steam map hanging at her back. The broken glass on the hearth. Her questions at dinner. The missing section of the map.

The rumours about a utopian world lingering just above the clouds.

The steam jar.

Its mystery.

The warnings from my father.

Eyelet’s refusal to stay out of the room . . .

“You really don’t know, do you?” Penelope laughs. “How precious. Your sweetheart’s kept it a secret from you. And yet, I bet you’ve trusted her with all of
your
secrets, haven’t you?”

“Shut up!”

“Perhaps her plans don’t include you after all—”

“I said to
shut up
!”

She lowers her voice. “You won’t last a year down here alone. This world is too far gone.”

It’s all I can do not to strike her. I whirl her around and push her away.

“We found them!” Eyelet’s voice breaks on the horizon. She and Parthena materialize out of the mist, waving papers in their hands. “They were exactly where she said they’d be.” They stagger to a breathless stop beside me, pinching stitches from their sides. Eyelet shoots Penelope a contemptuous look. “Two weathered but legible birth certificates, craftily hidden.” She hands them over then notes my frown. “What is it? What’s the matter?” Her eyes dash from me to Penelope and back.

I say nothing, a bubble of anger and confusion.

“Oh, nothing.” Penelope takes the stage. “I was just telling your sweetheart, here, about your little secret.”

“What secret?” Eyelet winces, looking dismayed.

“About your plans to flee to the utopian world floating just beyond the cloud cover.”

Eyelet’s cheeks turn red.

“You knew about this?” I snap.

“Yes—
I mean
, no . . . I mean . . .”

“You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?” My heart pulls.

“I planned to. Honestly, I did. There just wasn’t time.” The look in Eyelet’s eyes tells me she’s breaking apart inside. “I didn’t know what it was, exactly.” She shakes her head. “There are no secrets between us, Urlick, you know that.”

I turn on Penelope. “How do you know about all this?”

“A little birdie told me,” she smirks. “One I believe she tried to clip the wings of,
but failed.
” She glowers at Eyelet.

“Flossie,” Eyelet breathes. She turns to me. “She must have seen it. She was there . . . in the forest, when it happened . . .”

“What are you saying?”

“That day, at the Core. In the middle of the explosion, I saw it, through a tear in the cloud cover, as I fell from the hydrocycle. A whole new world, floating above ours. Flossie must have seen it, too.” She swallows. “I would have told you, but there’s been so much going on.”

“It’s all right.” I grab her hand.

Behind us, a distant crowd rises into chants. Voices demand a burning.

I jerk around to see smoke billowing above the west end of the building. They’ve relit the fire.

“Iris!” Eyelet gasps.

“We’ve got to go!” I say.

“It’s too late,” Penelope sneers in a low, gloating voice. “I left orders to restart the fire at twilight dawn. Dawn has passed. By the time you make it up the hill, your little freak friend will be engulfed in
flames
.”

“Can I smack her now?” Masheck flies forward.

“Not yet,” I say. “But soon!”

“Move!” I throw Penelope forward, roped and tied and kicking. “Help me with her, will you?” Masheck single-handedly launches Penelope up and over the backside of Clementine, fastening her tight to the saddle. I step into the stirrup and turn around. “Eyelet, you and Parthena take the wagon and meet me on the hill. Masheck, bring the elephant. C.L. should be there with the freak train by now. We’ll all meet up in the square.”

“Will do,” Eyelet says. The rest nod their heads.

I dig my heels into Clementine’s sides and whirl around, stopping short of taking off, seeing Masheck tear across the courtyard.

“Where are you going?” I shout after him.

“I think it’s ’igh time the people found out what their Ruler’s really all about, don’t yuh?” He stops and steps up onto the engine. “Besides”—he pumps the hand crank on the start panel, and the engine whirs to life—“according to this”—he taps a meter on the dashboard—“there should be enough water stored in the belly of this ’ere beast to put out the flames of that fire.”

“Good idea,” I say. “We’ll see you all there, then!”

I whirl Clementine around. She prances, hesitating as if she senses something, her hooves clomping jittery over the cobblestones. Eyelet starts to cough. I wrench around, seeing her clutch her chest. “Eyelet?” She falls to her knees, gagging and gasping.

“Eyelet?”
Parthena races to her side. “Something’s wrong.” Parthena looks up at me. “She can’t breathe.”

I sit back hard on the saddle and yank on the reins, forcing Clementine to a sliding stop, and scramble down from the saddle.

“Eyelet?
Eyelet
, what is it?” I fall to my knees. She coughs and gags and retches. Her face has turned an eerie shade of grey. She’s not breathing in. “Eyelet?” I pound at her back. She strains, then gasps for breath. This is the worst coughing fit I’ve ever seen her have.

“I’m all right!” She finally waves a hand. She looks up at me, her eyes desperate.

“You’re not all right,” I say.

Eyelet’s coughing turns to a spasm. Her back heaves and falls, her lungs crackle. A bolt of panic swells throughout me. I grab for breath myself.

“What do we do?” I turn to Parthena.

“I don’t know.” She rubs Eyelet’s back.

“I’m fine,” Eyelet insists. “I’ll be fine.” She fights for air. “You’ve got to go.” Her eyes plead with me.

At last she recovers a small amount, heaving in a noisy breath, then chokes again before breathing steadily.

My mind leaps back to the time in the balloon, when she went out on me. But when that happened, she wasn’t struggling to breathe . . . This is completely different—isn’t it?

“Please,” she says, looking at the sky. “I’ll be fine, honestly. Go.”

I turn around, following her eyes. Smoke pours up behind the building, thick.

Eyelet wheezes, clutching her heart. “I’ll be all right! Go! Go to Iris,
please
!”

The look in her eyes is pushing me away, but something inside me won’t let me go.

Please
, she mouths.
I’ll never forgive myself if she dies . . . Go save Iris . . . please.

“I’ll stay back with her!” Parthena shouts.

“No!”
Eyelet rasps. “He needs all the help he can get. Parthena, take the elephant. I promise, I’ll be fine. Please, Urlick.” She turns to me. “How much do you trust me?”

Her words sink into my heart. I search her face for an excuse to stay, to fold her into my arms. Iris’s screams rise at my back. Reluctantly I pull my gaze from Eyelet’s, facing the smoke on the horizon, jam my heels into Clementine’s sides, and gallop away, a burning void in my chest.

Looking back over my shoulder as I lift off, I see Eyelet’s head bobbing, hear her coughing, her whole body heaving as she retches into her handkerchief.