Steel Dominance (34 page)

Oh God
. She put her head in her hands and rubbed her temples.
Can I trust no one? Be strong—how I need that now. Dankyo is coming, but perhaps as a captive. Tansu…I don’t know what she is up to. And me, I’m the emperor-bey’s next appetizer.

What do I do? Summon a magical demon army?

Later that night, after a meal that Sofia had barely eaten a spoonful of, Tansu latched on to Sofia’s arm, and despite her protests, drew her to the bed, and made her sit. She knelt at Sofia’s feet, then put her hands before her face as if about to pray.

“I’m sorry.” Tansu looked up, worry lines etched on her forehead. “Forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Perplexed, she watched as Tansu held out a vial.

“You were right not to trust me. This is yours. This is what grew from beneath the silver grille.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Sofia held it up to the light. The vial held something brown and bubbly. She uncorked it, sniffed.
I’m supposed to eat…drink this?
Just the thought made her ill.

“Why? Why didn’t you show me this?”

The crease on Tansu’s forehead deepened. “I was worried you might become sick from this. I did.”

She lowered the vial. “That’s all? You ate some, didn’t you? We could have talked.”

“Could we? You would have done it anyway.”

“Yes. I would have.” She searched Tansu’s face, looking for something else, as if there had to be more. Living in the palace had made her suspicious. “You know how important this is.”

“Do I? Do you? This did nothing to me except make me ill. You might kill yourself if you drink it. Then what would Dankyo rescue? Your corpse?” Bitterness oozed from her words, perhaps even anger. “How do you know what you think the book says is true?”

“I know clues, puzzles. I’m right. And look at how the Clockwork Warrior changed without a single thing going wrong, after all these centuries. Whoever did that was a great inventor who knew clockwork back to front.”

“But, Sofia, you are not clockwork, and that”—she pointed at the vial—“is not clockwork either.”

Yet they planned this so well. This must be right.

“Then why did you give this to me?”

“I wanted some…honesty between us. And perhaps, there
is
some secret to be discovered? But I don’t quite believe that. And I’m regretting it now.”

“Really?” Before she could change her mind, Sofia swigged back the contents. The stuff slid over her tongue and down her throat like a putrid oyster. She grimaced. “Yuk.”

The ghastly look on Tansu’s face made her feel even worse.

“Sofia!”

“Shush.” She waved the vial. “Don’t.”

Tansu sat back on her heels. “Well, then. It’s done. It was hours before it made me feel ill. But if you feel anything, tell me.”

Itchy prickles spread inside her throat and down into her stomach.
Cold, so cold
. This was like ice crackling across a lake—stilling the run of the water, the ripples, making everything…wait.

“I have to lie down.” The pillow cradled her head. Blood throbbed.
Thud thud, thud thud.

“Sofia? Sofia!”

She closed her eyes. Blackness rolled in like fog.

Tansu’s voice came softly through the darkness. “Oh, Sofia. What have you done to yourself?”

She smiled and drifted lower, deeper.

“Forgive me, my dearest one. Forgive me for what I’ve done.”

What did she mean? Forgive her?

Words streamed away into nothingness.

Sounds and waves of light fumbled and danced through her mind, flaring louder, trickling gently as a tiptoeing mouse. The click and purr of little wheels and golden springs, of diamond pinheads and brass gyroscopes, rattled about here and there, assembling themselves into monstrous mechanicals that rose and towered above before they abruptly crumbled back to piles of metal and dust. Then the metal dust gathered again and rose to become strange creations and fell.

Something rested on her, and she put her hand up and found a creature sitting on her chest.

“Zigzag,” she murmured, hearing her words echo. He’d come back. The puttering of his clockwork heart ticked away time, cutting it up into little bite-size pieces, reassuring her. All was well.
Tick tick, tock tock.

She floated off again, knowing she was guarded by a friend. Tansu wouldn’t get her now…the traitoress.

The metal creations and the seas of clockwork swelled and receded, again and again. Every time she awakened a little, she listened. Sometimes Zigzag was there and sometimes not. The little devil played games with her, hide and seek, like he loved to.

She’d catch him and tie him down and turn him into springs if he wasn’t very, very careful.
Springs and cogwheels. Yes. Springs…and cogwheels.

* * * *

“Sofia. Sofia.”

Someone rocked her, shaking her by the shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw a blurred face.
Tansu
. “You. What did you do?”

“You must get up and get bathed and dressed. They are taking us to the Garden of Audiences.”

The bleak set-in-concrete look on Tansu’s face made Sofia lick her lips and swallow.

“Why?”

“They are bringing in Dankyo, as a prisoner of the Ottoman.”

The journey through the harem and to the garden went by in a stumbling sea of dizziness. The surroundings shimmered in and out. All her senses seemed jumbled, and she felt pain when she heard sounds, smelled lemons when the sun blinded her. Spots danced across the pathway they walked on. And somewhere, in the back of her mind, things ticked and clicked and spun. The nausea in her stomach surged back and forth.

Dankyo is here
. She clung to the notion that he knew what he was doing, that some devious plan had been set in motion.

Zigzag is out there too. I’m sure of it. And…how do I know that? Am I going mad?

By the time they reached the Garden of Audiences, her thoughts were settling. She knelt beside the throne in a line with Tansu and two other women. All of them wore little more than silver flower chains wrapped around their breasts and upper bodies. Their wisp-fine skirts flooded onto the flagstones in a circle about their legs like small lakes of cloth.

“For you.” Grinning, a guard stalked over with gold chains and collars hanging from his hand.

He clicked a collar onto each woman, then hooked the key to a collection on his belt. The keys danced and clinked against each other.

The chains connected the collars. Sofia put her hand to her neck.

“Uh-uh.” The guard crouched and slapped her once on the cheek, stinging her, making her gasp, rocking her head to the side. “Behave.”

She lowered her hand. The pain radiated. He went back to his position as if he’d done nothing more significant than pick some food from his teeth.

I’m a piece of nothing to these men
. She’d never felt so trampled on as she did now.
I had the world at my feet, and now I’ve been spit out and made into a thing.

Tansu was to her right.

Deceit seemed to exude from the woman, like the trail of a slug. Why did she think Tansu had betrayed her? Odd. Had something had happened while she slept?

Everything hazed.

The locks…the locks were clockwork. She cocked her head and listened to the ratchets on the cogs whirring. Such a pretty sound.

Even her hands and fingers seemed to hold little bloodred clockwork spheres. She saw them tumbling in the tubes inside her body, all red.
Spin
and they’d go one way…then reverse and
spin
the other way. Little clocks. She stared at the tendons on the backs of her hands where they rested on her thighs. Where were these weird images coming from?

“Sanjakbey Zagan of the Ottoman!” The cry carried from a man at the head of the steps leading to the lower garden.

At first she could only see their heads as a party of three men walked up the steps. But one of them was Dankyo—collared and bound with his hands before him. His broad chest was naked, but he wore simple dark trousers. His thick, muscled shoulders were etched with shadows and light. Red lines crisscrossed his torso. Only one line showed the brightness of blood. These must be the scars of Xiang’s punishment—almost healed after only a few days.

Sofia shivered. He was here, and a prisoner. Whatever secrets the Clockwork Warrior’s potion might reveal, they were too late. Already Xiang advanced toward him, with four guards flanking her. Their bared sabers seemed to have drunk of the sun for it ran in liquid shimmers up and down the blades.

“You will not escape this time.” Xiang’s threat was as hard and certain as a nail in a coffin. “You will lie before me and beg for your life so that I may laugh. Or maybe I’ll just kick you a lot after I cut off your balls and hamstring you. Either will make me happy.”

The emperor-bey chuckled. “This should be amusing.”

Tears overflowed and wet Sofia’s cheeks.
What can I do? I’m fastened here.

Then she saw the set defiance on Dankyo’s face flicker. He’d glanced at her through the gaps between the guards. And his hand shifted.
Be ready.

Hope rippled in.

She quivered, fingernails digging into her legs. Her muscles trembled. There would be another command. This was what the message meant. Her gaze locked on him, and she desperately tried to keep him in view. But Xiang blocked her—Xiang and the long sword she’d seen so many times in the clockwork gardens being used to perform the sword katas and kill rats.

To her left, with a
swoosh
of cut air and a creak of metal, Henry’s simulacrum of the Clockwork Warrior began its own katas, signaling the striking of the hour.

What can I do? Snatch up a gun, and shoot them all?

The emperor-bey had his close-in cadre of four heavily armored men in black and olive-green steel. They clutched spears, and sabers were slung at their backs.
Mobile plate armor
. She blinked.
Clockwork armor, how strange. How new
. It shifted to protect where it was needed most.

She shook her head.
I’m definitely mad. How can I know that?

Twenty or thirty more guards lined the path leading to the throne, and out on the edges stood the guards armed with gauss rifles. Too far to go to somehow get a gun, even if a gun was the answer. Even if she could get loose. The cold, sticky fingers of despair clutched at her and squeezed her heart.

No one could shoot all the guards, or not before they killed you deader than dead with a hundred bullets in you.

She tried again to catch a glimpse of Dankyo, but he was hidden. She raised herself up a little from her kneeling position. Eyes narrowed, their guard slid an inch of his blade from the scabbard and growled at her. She froze, her throat tightening, then sank back down.

I’m such a chicken. Could I shoot anyone?
She’d seen people writhe in agony, heard their last gasps as they died, and she was so afraid her hands shook.
I wanted to be rescued! But not like this. Not if he dies.

She scanned the skies, frantically hoping for an army to descend. There must be someone. He wouldn’t come here without some plan. Surely he wouldn’t have?

Have faith. Stop doubting him. Calm down
. She took a deep breath.

At least she could see straight again. Though when she shut her eyes, or blinked slowly, at the periphery of her mind,
things
spun in silvery and golden circles, like a flock of pirouetting diamante. Madness and some prickly clawed terror seemed to wait there. So she kept her eyes open, and she prayed.

Smoke puffed up beyond Xiang, from somewhere near Dankyo, mushrooming rapidly and expanding sideways. A shout rang out, and Xiang broke into a run, along with the guards beside her.

Chapter Thirty-Two

As the smoke spread, Dankyo ripped away the last strand of the rope on his hands and sprinted to his right. His escorts would have dived to the ground after setting off the smoke bombs. A few gauss bullets cracked and whizzed past in spinning blue spirals, splitting the thick smoke.

“Stop shooting!” Xiang’s command—spoken from his left and front about ten yards away and closing. “Approach and capture them! They cannot have weapons. Not unless you give them to them.”

So true. Smuggling in the smoke bombs in the shoe heels had been difficult enough. If he stopped to fight, with this many guards on all sides, he’d lose. Run and run fast.

The creak of the huge clockwork automaton warned him a second before he struck the cage and bounced off the bars.

He hissed as pain sprang up in some resplit wounds. Couldn’t be helped. He swiftly climbed the bars and flipped over the top and dropped into a crouch on the other side. The kata was still being performed. Sound warned him of the next sword strike.
Duck
. The automaton’s sword swooped, and he rolled beneath, then sprinted to the base of the warrior. His eyes watered, and his throat stung. The grassy ground slipped under his bare foot, and he slid to a halt on one knee.

The metal collar dissembled in one jerk of his fist and ripped loose. With a firm shake, the metal links realigned, and the key clattered into shape.

He coughed, bent back his neck, and squinted. The smoke thinned above. He slapped his hand on the clockwork man’s thigh, figured out the holds and how he could ascend, then
went
. Step. Step. Haul himself up. A three-second climb. He anchored a hand on the head spikes, his feet in a niche at the waist.

“There!” Xiang cried. “Now two of you may shoot. But the legs. I want him alive!”

The first bullet thrummed past; another went
spang
on the metal and ricocheted off. No more came. Her command had been stupidly nonspecific. The guards were probably confused as to who should shoot at him.

He focused. Do the job. He’d calculated this position, behind the neck. Most couldn’t see him well.
Where was it?
His scrambling fingers found the cavity at the nape.
Ah!