The Wooden Prince (10 page)

Captain Toro sputtered, and Pinocchio shot to his feet. Then, with another sputter, a fountain of water spewed from Toro's mouth. The captain coughed brutally, rolling onto his side.

Pinocchio fell back, drained. His head felt as if it were filling with thick mist. “Captain?” he whispered. “Are you alive?”

Captain Toro opened his dark-rimmed eyes. His helmet was gone, and strings of wet hair were plastered to his face. “You drowned me,” he gasped.

“I didn't mean to,” Pinocchio said.

“But…” He breathed heavily. “You…saved me.”

“I suppose I did mean to do that.”

“Why?” Captain Toro said weakly.

Pinocchio's thoughts weren't so clear anymore. The mist that seemed to fill his head was making it hard to think. “My master told me human life is valuable,” he said. “You will live, then?”

The captain nodded.

“Good.” Pinocchio ran into the trees, scrambling up the embankment to get away. His thoughts were so muddled by whatever he'd just done to Captain Toro, he forgot why he was even out here in this forest. His automa impulses, however, were working better than ever. He was an automa who had lost his master. He simply had to find him again.

After he had run some distance, he noticed something in his field of view. He touched the long nose sticking from his face. He couldn't remember now why his nose had grown long. What had he done? It didn't matter. He just had to find his master. Master could fix it.

“Master!” he shouted.

But where was his master? He vaguely remembered his master had been on a sort of bridge that carried water. Yes, an aqueduct.

He continued up the gorge, running into the base of a cliff, where he simply kept going by pulling himself hand over hand up the sheer face. When he reached the top, he scanned the ravine. No aqueduct.

“Which way is it?” he said to himself.

A voice answered behind him. “Which way is what?”

Pinocchio turned to see five swords pointed at his chest. Five swords floating in the air.

Even this didn't surprise Pinocchio. He stared blankly until he realized that the swords were being held by five nearly invisible figures. They wore cloaks covered in leaves and bark that perfectly camouflaged them.

“Look what we've got here, Rampino,” one called.

A bush rustled, becoming a sixth cloaked figure. Rampino chuckled and drew a sword. “You lost, automa?”

“Yes,” Pinocchio said. “I am lost and looking for my master.”

“Are you now?” Rampino smiled, showing crooked yellow teeth. “Looking for your master, or run off from him?”

Pinocchio tried to understand why the men were holding swords on him. “I assure you, I am no danger to you. You can put away your swords.”

A round of laughter burst from the men.

“Hear that, boys?” Rampino chuckled. “We can put away our swords.”

For some reason none of the men put away their swords.

Pinocchio's fealty lock was buzzing at him to get back to his master as soon as possible. He was a good automa. A loyal automa. He should not be wandering around the woods on his own.

“Can you help me find my master? He was—”

“That's what we're here for, automa,” Rampino interrupted. “We're going to help you find your master.”

“That is good,” Pinocchio said.

“A
new
master, that is,” Rampino clarified. “Get him in the cart.”

New master? He did not want a new master. He had to get back to his.

A man came forward, and as he reached for Pinocchio, his hand came too close to Pinocchio's chest. With a flash of movement, Pinocchio grabbed the man's wrist. He yowled in pain.

“Let go of him, you blasted puppet!” Rampino growled, swinging his sword.

Pinocchio held up an arm to block the blow. The sword gave a
thunk
as it stuck in his forearm. The effects of the sword's iron were instantaneous. His knees buckled, and he collapsed, motionless, to the ground.

“Get him in the cage, boys,” Rampino said.

The men had an automa donkey cart hidden over behind some trees. Like the mechanipillar, it walked on metal legs, but it had only four, one at each corner of the wagon. The wooden donkey's head, sprouting from the wagon front, peered around to look placidly at Pinocchio. Fixed atop the donkey cart's wagon was a large metal cage.

Pinocchio was hoisted inside. He struggled to sit up before the barred door was locked, but he was too slow. “
Signori
, you do not understand. I must return to my master. He is nearby. He will be looking for me.”

“Hear that?” Rampino called. “Better hurry.”

The donkey brayed like a warped piston. The wagon jerked forward and began to sway as it walked over roots and stones through the forest. The men marched beside the donkey cart.

Rampino sheathed his sword with a laugh. “A fine catch! Did you see that fight in him? He'll earn us a nice bag of gold. Just you see.”

The one man was whimpering, clutching his arm tight to his chest, but the others smiled at their leader, hardly a mouthful of teeth between them.

“And I know just who'll pay nicely for an automa like this,” Rampino said.

“Al Mi'raj?” another replied.

Rampino chuckled. “That's just the fire-eating djinni I was thinking of.”

L
azuli was hiding in a tree. She'd been hiding a lot lately, and, as a princess of Abaton, this was not something she was used to. It seemed that ever since she'd arrived in this cursed Venetian Empire, it had been one near escape after another. And now…

A musket blast echoed up from the ravine.

It had to be imperial airmen. She'd seen her share of them, although fortunately, so far, from a safe distance.

Something was happening over in the ravine, but from her hiding spot up in the tree, she hadn't been able to tell what was going on. Clearly the airmen were pursuing someone. Maybe it was some poor enslaved chimera—or “half-beast,” as they were called here in the empire. She'd heard that the slaves who ran away from their human masters were hunted down. Who knew what horrible things they did to them? These Venetians really were savages.

While the calls of airmen seemed to remain down in the ravine, someone was coming her way. Hurried footsteps were crunching on leaves on the forest floor below. Lazuli came out a little farther on the branch to see who it was.

It was a human, and given his attire, not an imperial soldier. He bent over, his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Lazuli guessed he was the one the airmen were looking for. So they hunted their own kind as well. Did their savagery have no end?

“Are we safe?”

The voice was so chirping and light, Lazuli couldn't imagine that it belonged to the man. But there didn't seem to be anyone else with him.

“Not in the slightest,” the man said. “Give me a moment and we'll keep going.”

“But where?” the chirping voice asked. “We don't know where Pinocchio's gone.”

“The lad can't drown. And automa are too heavy to float. He could be stuck on the river bottom. Ten to one he's already managed to drag himself ashore. But where's he hiding?”

The man stood and gave a great stretch of his arms. Lazuli glimpsed his face now. That pointy mustache, that mane of silver-black hair. She knew this man! He was the only human she'd ever seen, at least before she'd arrived here with her father in this vile humanland empire.

He was Geppetto, the high alchemist of Venice. Or least he had been the high alchemist. Her father's spies had said that Geppetto had barely escaped with his life from the doge's fortress after returning from his visit to Abaton.

And now she could see that a cricket was clinging to his shoulder. Could that be Maestro?

Lazuli cupped a hand to her mouth and called lightly, “Are you Master Geppetto?”

Geppetto spun this way and that, peering around at the forest but not looking up. “Who's there?” he hissed.

“I don't like this,” Maestro chirped anxiously.

“I'm up here,” Lazuli said.

Geppetto looked up and gave a start when he spied her. “Great Vesuvius, girl! How did you get stuck in that tree?”

“I'm not stuck,” Lazuli said, stepping easily along the branch back to the trunk.

Geppetto waved his hands in alarm. “Stop!” he cried. “You're going to fall!”

Lazuli walked down the trunk, her feet flat against the bark and her body perfectly horizontal to the earth. When she landed without a sound on the forest floor, she pulled back her hood to reveal her bright blue hair.

“You're a sylph,” Geppetto gasped.

“That's not just any sylph!” Maestro piped. “That's Princess Lazuli, Prester John's daughter!”

“And you, Master Cricket, are Maestro, the renowned musician of the Moonlit Court,” Lazuli said, flourishing a hand.

“Why…yes, Your Highness,” Maestro said, bowing his antennae repeatedly. “I'm…I'm honored you remember me.”

Geppetto frowned. “But what are you doing here?”

“Searching for my father,” Lazuli said. “He's been captured.”

“Yes, I know,” Geppetto said. “But you shouldn't be here, child. You're in terrible danger!”

“I'm no child, Master Geppetto.” Lazuli cocked a hand to her hip. She resented being seen as a little girl. She might have been the youngest of her father's children—and the only one still living—but she would be old enough to marry in a few years, although that was a dreadful thought.

“I accompanied my father on his voyage to Venice,” Lazuli said. “We had just reached the lagoon near the city when our ship was attacked….” Her throat went tight at the memory of that terrible night, of the fiery missiles that rained down from the doge's floating warships, of her father hurling her from the side of their ship just before the explosion, of having to run across the surface of the water to get away.

Tears of bitter shame threatened to form. She had run away and left her father to be captured. But what else was there to do? She'd only have been caught as well, or worse.

Geppetto's expression softened. “You don't have to—”

Lazuli cleared her throat and jutted her chin. “I was able to get away in time. I hid under a piece of wreckage. My mother is a sylph, so I can't sink on water. And my father, being who he is, wasn't harmed by the explosion, although the others…”

She closed her eyes to compose herself. It wasn't proper to show this sort of emotion. Geppetto put his hand gently to her shoulder.

Lazuli opened her eyes and continued. “Father was carried away by some sort of alchemy contraptions in the form of winged cats.”

“Flying Lions,” Geppetto said.

“Be glad they didn't find you, Your Highness,” Maestro assured her.

“I wish they had,” Lazuli said fiercely. “I'd tear every single one of them into a million pieces.”

Geppetto blinked with surprise.

Lazuli composed herself. “You're an alchemist, Master Geppetto. What I don't understand is how the doge could capture my father. What terrible alchemy devices could do that?”

“Your father might be immortal,” Geppetto said, “but he's not omnipotent. He could survive that attack, but there's a weakness all Abatonians share, a weakness that I now realize even your father has. It's no device or alchemical creation. It's a simple substance. Lead.”

“Lead?” Lazuli said. “What's lead?”

“A metal found in the humanlands, but not in Abaton. Lead—like iron, or any other base metal—disrupts anything magical. It would only take a simple touch of lead for any Abatonian—or automa for that matter, since alchemical technology operates on Abatonian magic—to become completely helpless.”

“So the doge is using lead to hold my father—” Lazuli began.

At that moment, a trio of airmen came soaring over the treetops.

“Get back!” Geppetto growled, pushing Lazuli behind a tree. They flattened themselves against the trunk. Lazuli drew a sword from under her cloak.

“Do you know how to use that, Princess?” Geppetto said.

“Most certainly,” she said. “The master of ceremonies in my father's court gave me lessons—”

“It won't do us any good against them,” Geppetto said, pointing up. He shook his head and mumbled, “I can barely take care of myself. And now I have the daughter of Prester John to worry about.”

“You don't have to worry about me, Master Geppetto,” Lazuli said, scowling before she could stop herself. “I'm quite capable, I'll have you know.”

Geppetto gave an apologetic look. “I'm sure you are, Your Highness. It's just that your being here multiplies our danger.”

“Danger from those airmen?” she said. “Are they pursuing you?”

“One of them, Captain Toro, nearly captured us before he fell into the ravine with my automa,” Geppetto said. “If they fished Toro out, he'll have told them we're nearby.”