The Clockwork Dagger (2 page)

“Let's go find your owner,” she said, standing with the wiggling puppy cradled against her hip again.

The decomposing body still slouched amidst the trash. She paused to stare. The bustling street was no more than a dozen feet away.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, pressing a fist to her chest. Sorry he had died like this; sorry that the alley vermin would steal away his flesh until there was no more. “Lady, I pray you granted him mercy in those final moments.”

She walked on. If anything, her experience in the war had taught her to acknowledge the dead and not linger, or the countless corpses would consume her days.

Octavia crossed the street at the corner. The merchants along that side of the road looked to be shut down, and the shade of the walkway had become a lane of shanties. Most of the occupants seemed to be women and children, some of them gathered around a horse trough to scrub their threadbare clothes against slatted washing boards.

Ten years ago, I was like them. Orphaned. Hungry. The days a blur of sadness, cold, and the overwhelming discordance of humanity in ill health—until Miss Percival saved me.

A disruptive hum rang in Octavia's ears, though not as loud as the fresh blood of trauma. The notes came as no surprise. Sniffing, she detected the heady sweetness that was the signature of pox, as bodies exuded fluid from countless pores.

I don't have enough herbs to save them all. If I stop, if I try, they will riot. They will tear me apart with their need. Lady, help me.

Tears beaded her lashes. Stiff-legged, she wound through refugees tainted with imminent death, and finally spied the girl who had held the dog's leash.

The child's face was still streaked clean with tears. Her jaw dropped at the sight of the puppy. “You found him!”

The puppy wiggled as Octavia handed him over. Warm coziness filled her chest. She had done the right thing, even with the risk considered.

A rail-thin woman stood behind the girl. “You thank the lady,” she said, her face hawkish and severe. “You thank her for saving you from that beating your pa woulda given once he got back.”

The girl lowered in a clumsy curtsy. “Oh, thank you, ma'am,” she said. “Now we won't go hungry tonight and Pa won't beat me or nothing.” Her eyes shone, bright and happy.

Octavia's smile froze on her face. She thought to reply, and instead bobbed her head and backed away.
I'm a fool.
A puppy that plump couldn't be a pet. The dog probably weighed almost as much as the child. It had undoubtedly been stolen to serve as their dinner.

The wheels of her case thudded on the uneven boards. She then realized the intensity of the gazes on her, her new dress, the bags hauled behind her.

It's not as if Octavia had much in the way of material goods either; she barely had enough coins for her trip. It would be a blessing to arrive in Leffen in several days, where money promised by Miss Percival waited for her in an account. Even so, Octavia had far more to her name than this sorry lot.

She crossed the street again, her pace brisk. The attention of the refugees weighed on her.

At the next street corner, she reached for the watch at her waist and fumbled open the case. It was ten till ten. Her eyes widened. Her airship left at the half hour.

She glanced back a final time. The two sides of the street seemed to exist across a great divide, but she heard the people's songs. Everyone suffered. Too many stomachs groaned, too many agonies went untreated.

Lady, help them. I can't.
She steeled herself and turned away.

Octavia entered the flow of hurried pedestrians, her eyes on the bulge of airship balloons visible between the high-peaked roofs.

T
HE HEAVY, CLOYING ODOR
of enchanted aether hovered over the docks as heavily as the dust. Men were everywhere, yelling, walking, driving lorries. A few scattered women seemed out of place, too colorful against the drabness of sooty work clothes and suited businessmen.

Octavia paused along the walkway, gasping for breath as she stared up at the boarding masts. There had to be at least thirty of them, each resembling a lighthouse made of battered chrome. Few towers hosted airships. No surprise there. The Caskentian government had seized or declared privateer the best airships for use during the war. However, that still left a solid half mile of airships and masts.

The first mast had been altered to resemble a giant clock. She gave it a double take, just to ascertain the time again, and noted thick black bundles attached at each quarter hour. A sign in the center of the clock's face read
WASTE
NOT
in elegant calligraphy. She took in the size of the bundles, and the rough shape. The lowest one, suspended beneath the 6, had been shredded at the bottom, revealing skeletal feet.

The bundles were bodies, convicted collaborators of the Waste. No one else gave the clock a second glance. A few children played in its shadow.

“Oh Lady,” she murmured. Displays of the executed were common at the front. The bodies of deserters would be strung on poles along an avenue. It was for morale, or so commanders said. Morale. It was for fear, fear to force their unwilling conscripts to stay. The same reason these bodies existed, suspended on time itself.

How many of these dead were truly Wasters? Few or none, likely. True Wasters were survivalists, hunters. They wouldn't be caught so easily, nor would they give up on their war, no matter what the armistice declared.

Wasters wanted independence, and claimed it was Caskentia's fault their land was blighted nothingness. As if Caskentia were to blame for the high peaks of the Pinnacles and the rain shadow on the other side! The Wasters' demands were endless: for their blighted land to officially be known as the Dallows, rights to irrigate from the mountains, etc.—and most ludicrous of all, a cure to the magicked curse on their prairie.

Caskentia couldn't even cure itself. Its currency was worthless, its populace starving. The Queen, her council, and Daggers stayed locked away in the palace, safe and secure, as hunger and disease continued to slaughter the people.

Octavia bent to her satchel and tugged out her boarding pass. Her eyes scanned both sides. A most unfeminine growl escaped her throat and she was half inclined to ball up the pamphlet in frustration. It didn't list a mast number.

Cities. Stinky, confusing, crowded, dead bodies all about. Lady, help me escape this accursed place.

“Oy, you need a porter?” piped up a voice. She smelled the boy before she saw him—he was dust personified, a golem of old in the form of a prepubescent child. She couldn't even discern his hair color under the muck.

“Oh, thank you. I'm looking for the
Argus
. Can you perhaps show the way?”

He thrust out a grubby palm. She stared into it, blinking. Was he supposed to take her by the hand? It seemed strangely intimate.

His hand jerked back. “Hey, what's yer game?” he snarled.

“My game?”

“What, you think I be doin' this for free?” His expression turned outright feral, dark eyes glittering against his browned face.

“Oh,” Octavia said quietly as the boy shoved his way back into the crowds. She had so little money that even if she had known his desire, she might have resisted. Her light breakfast soured in her stomach. So far, her first morning of independence had been one disaster after another.

She continued onward, her case rolling with rhythmic ka-thunks along the wooden boardwalk. Her head craned and eyes narrowed, she could make out some of the craft names high upon their hulls. Some were wooden constructs, like a seafaring vessel, with the balloon suspended above; others had the craft built into the balloon itself. Was “balloon” even the proper term? Octavia didn't know. She knew very little, apparently. Miss Percival had bought the ticket and hadn't told her exactly what sort of ship she would spend the week on.

“I should have asked,” she muttered. She should've asked many things, but Miss Percival likely wouldn't have answered, anyway.

Sadness stabbed at her chest again.

If she missed her flight, what would happen? Could she get a refund? She didn't have enough money for another airship booking. Perhaps barely enough for a hotel.

After a few more days, I won't need to fuss about cities or worry about finances, not for a long time. Delford will be a quiet village, peaceful. They need me. After I aid their recovery from the Waster poisoning, it'll be a place where birdsong is louder than the klaxons of bodies in agony.

“Pardon me, m'lady, but you seem lost.” A musical, deep baritone caused her to turn. A man stood inches away in steward's garb. His crimson jacket was right at her eye level, with double rows of gold buttons fitted across a rather broad chest. It looked reminiscent of an old military uniform, complete with glimmering epaulets. However, the attire had been in use for some years. White threadbare streaks radiated from the buttons, and the epaulets had only haphazard gold fringe. All that, she absorbed in an instant.

Then she looked up at his face.

His skin was the color of nutmeg, unblemished and tight. The skin color denoted him as Tamaran, from that nation of science and logic far to the south. But most of all, his hair drew her eye. Drawn into a leather queue, his thick mane had the texture of a black silk kerchief balled in a fist and set to dry. It lay against his shoulder like a cat's poufy tail. She could imagine the texture of the rippling kinky strands beneath her fingers.

“Oh.” With a start, she realized she was gawking as if she hadn't seen a man before. She had seen plenty, and naked at that. Albeit the copious amounts of blood and gore were a sufficient turnoff. “Oh, um, I'm looking for the
Argus
. If you can help, I do have a copper.”

Oh, you ninny.
She would have withheld her coin from a beggar child yet volunteered it to the first man who smiled her way.

Such a pleasant smile it was, too—brilliant white against his darker skin. He even had all his front teeth. “Do not trouble yourself. I am going that way as well.” He jutted out an elbow.

Now this was a proper gentleman, complete with a lilting Mercian accent. Octavia hooked her arm around his.

“Shall I take your bags?” he asked.

Her smile froze on her face. “Oh, no. I'm quite fine, thank you.”
Too many lives depend on that satchel. Touch it, and you'll get a faceful of capsicum.

He bowed his head in acknowledgment as they began to walk. She had the urge to close her eyes and listen to the soft music of the man beside her. He was healthy, his body fairly quiet. And yet . . . something was missing.

All medicians—even Miss Percival—required a circle to hear the music of a body in need. At the academy, it hadn't taken Octavia long to realize how profoundly different she was, and how others responded to those differences.

This man was different from most of the others around, too. Half of his right leg was gone.

His knee was intact, but below that, his body was silent. There were physical signs as well—the mechanical extension was heavier than flesh, and he compensated with the slightest tilt of his torso and drag of his leg. The fact that he didn't limp was noteworthy. Whoever designed the leg had the light hand of a master.

“Have you been in the city long?” asked her cicerone.

“No. Only a half hour or so, and I'm quite ready to leave. I much prefer the country.”

He glanced both ways and led her into the avenue. “This is nothing compared to Mercia. Have you been there, m'lady?”

“No, sir. I'll visit there by airship this week.”
A night in Mercia will be enough. I can say I've been there and never return.

He grunted. “ 'Tis a beautiful place in many ways, especially along the bay and the palace quarter, but the quagmire of exhaust and humanity corrodes the spirit with utter swiftness.”

She cast curious eyes on him. “That's quite poetic.”
And exactly how I feel.

“Is that such a surprise, for a man in my position to manage a few pretty words?” A gap in his coat revealed itself along a shoulder seam, showing a flash of a lighter red satin lining. He regarded her solemnly, head tilted to one side. “Forgive my forwardness, but 'tis dangerous for a lady to travel alone, especially to Mercia. You truly intend to travel by airship, by yourself?”

Oh, no. He did not go there.

Octavia stopped in her tracks, finger pointed toward his chest. “Please, don't tell me you are one of those men who believes women should be treated like porcelain roses, brought down for an occasional dusting and public display.” She'd had enough of that pompous attitude from men at the front. If she could patch a ruptured bowel, she could walk across a street by herself, thank you very much. “I may need help navigating this strange city, but I am quite capable of making this journey on my own.”

He raised both hands in supplication. “If you are a rose, m'lady, 'tis to your advantage to have thorns.” She had expected more bluster, or chagrin. Instead, his words were sober and his gaze even. “Some lives attract more danger than others. This North Country around Vorana—I confess, I have visited here only for port calls, but it strikes me as a pleasant place, one worth staying in.”

Oh Lady, if only I could
. “If you're not willing to help me, sir, then I'll continue on my own.”

“No. Forgive me for speaking out of turn. I will escort you, and gladly. I am simply—I am simply weary of people being hurt by Mercia and its ways.”

She inclined her head to indicate agreement, but didn't hold his arm quite so close.

They approached a mooring tower, its sides bearing a painted ad for Royal-Tea with its mimicry of the crown logo as depicted on coins. Swirling calligraphy boasted
FOR
VITALITY
!
FOR
HEALTH
!
FOR
CROWN
! along with the smiling face of a towheaded girl, a can of the tea held at her cheek.