Ticker Read online

  “Where’s the tea?”

  I’d barely finished the request when an arm reached past me and delivered a pot to the table. I twisted about to thank the server and found myself looking up at Marcus Kingsley instead. I instantaneously realized I had half a dozen hairs out of place and shadows under my eyes from staying up too late. Everyone else shot to attention and didn’t relax until he’d taken a seat just to my right.

  “I hope you all slept well,” he said by way of greeting. Sebastian and Violet murmured their thanks for the comfortable beds and clean linen. When they returned their attention to the food, Marcus moved an inch closer to me and lowered his voice. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet this morning, Tesseraria. Are you feeling well?”

  “I’ve a bit of a headache.”

  And that headache is my twin.

  “Rest easy that I will not add to it.” Marcus poured out a cup of tea and passed it to me. “I’ve given myself a strict lecture about what’s important, and my top priority is locating Warwick and your parents.”

  As I tried to find a way to explain that we might need to add Nic to that list, Marcus passed me the cream and sugar bowl.

  “I’d also like to offer an apology,” he continued. “I’m not enormously fond of surprises, and I’m afraid I blamed you for much of the chaos yesterday. I do my best to plan against the worst possible scenario, but you make that a bit difficult.” With a crooked smile, he took a plate and spooned out a heap of scrambled eggs. “Have you eaten yet? Or are you one of those people who can’t stomach food first thing in the morning?”

  Forgetting her grievances with the world, Violet smiled into her teacup. Sebastian outright choked on a mouthful of bacon.

  “You have no idea with whom you are dealing,” he finally said when he’d cleared his airway. “I’ve seen Penny reduce an entire cake to crumbs.”

  I glared at him. “It was a very small cake.”

  “But of course,” Marcus said. “And just what the table is missing. I forget, sometimes, that civilians enjoy more varied fare.” He went to signal a passing waiter, but I caught his hand in mine.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself.” Thinking of the danger my brother might be swimming in by now, my fingers clenched Marcus’s. “Have you seen Nic anywhere about the Fortress this morning?”

  “I was just going to remark upon his absence,” Marcus said, studying my hand before continuing. “We’re not in the habit of pulling guests from their beds in the night, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  I wrestled with my conscience and my sense of family loyalty. If Nic had gone back to the house and found the Augmentation papers, Marcus needed to know about it. There were also the bracelets to consider; I owed him the truth and was honor-bound to share whatever information I had. It was the only way to see the complete puzzle for what it was. “Is there any way he could have gotten back to the city this morning?”

  Though Marcus didn’t move, every line of his body suddenly indicated we were in the presence of the Legatus legionus. “Why would he leave you behind?”

  Softly worded, but still an interrogation. Though I’d never smoked a day in my life, I almost wished for a cigarette to better play the part. “He’s operating under the misguided notion that I need to be rescued from myself. I think he’s gone back to look for the Augmentation papers.”

  “Why didn’t he say something to us first?” Violet set down her spoon with a clatter, her expression quickly shifting from peevish to puzzled to a level of worry that almost matched my own.

  “He wants to turn the papers over to Warwick.” It hurt me to admit such things; I wasn’t accustomed to the role of Vile Betrayer, and there was a desperate edge to my words, an unspoken plea not to judge my brother. “Warwick claims he can upgrade my Ticker if he can only get a look at the original diagrams.”

  The onslaught of information caused Marcus to fumble, putting his teacup down with a clack! on the table. He recovered quickly, though, tapping out several inquiries on his RiPA.

  “One would almost think,” Sebastian murmured into his napkin, “the good Legatus is growing accustomed to the perpetual chaos that surrounds you and yours, Penny.”

  I kicked him under the table. Only a moment later, the answers to Marcus’s inquiries came in, and he relayed them to us.

  “None of the SkyDarts went out, but two larger transports left this morning. He could have slipped aboard one of those.” Marcus was up and moving before I could push away from the table. Violet, Sebastian, and I had to run to catch up.

  “I might be mistaken,” I offered, trying to tamp down my fear that we were already too late.

  “I’m more inclined to trust your instincts.” Despite the brisk clip he maintained all the way out to the landing platform, Marcus continued to send RiPA messages with military precision. “Head for the end of the row.”

  “All of us this time?” Sebastian asked. “Or did you want another moment alone with Miss . . . er, I beg your pardon, Tesseraria Farthing?”

  “Get in the damned SkyDart, Stirling, before I have you charged with war crimes.”

  This time, there was no conversation, no explanation of lap belts or offers of antinausea medication. Marcus went through his preflight checklist with rapid-fire accuracy, settled into his seat, and slipped on a metal earpiece to request clearance for takeoff. He got the answer he wanted within seconds, and the SkyDart rocketed into the sky.

  “We’ll land at the airfield,” he told us. “I don’t dare draw attention to the house by putting down in the street.”

  I leaned forward to shout into his ear. “If Nic’s headed back to Glasshouse, we haven’t time for stealth!”

  “Everyone’s on tenterhooks as it is, Penny!” The winds ripped away all formalities as Marcus banked to the right. Though he was very much in control of the aircraft, his maneuvers were more abrupt than on yesterday’s flight, his style more aggressive. “With Warwick at large, I’ve had to recall every one of my deployments to Bhaskara and Aígyptos for security details. Work has stalled out on the Grand Design with your mother and the blueprints missing. And now I find myself chasing down your brother in the hopes that he hasn’t yet handed sensitive medical information over to a terrorist.”

  That comment rankled as much as it worried me. “It’s our family’s research and information, I’ll kindly remind you. It’s not a crime, what he’s doing.”

  “Aiding and abetting a fugitive?” Our descent became unnecessarily bumpy when Marcus turned toward me. “That most certainly is a crime, by every definition of the word.”

  He was like an Eidolachometer machine: reading the situation like a punch card, making every decision based on plans and patterns with no margin for error. The reaction vexed me greatly, and I sat back in my seat with a sharp “Keep your eyes on the runway, if you please!”

  The SkyDart glided to a halt near a hangar where heavily armed Ferrum Viriae waited with two new-model Combustibles. Frederick Carmichael was among the guards, but not as the jovial traffic officer I knew. Stern jawed and serious eyed, he presented his bracelets for inspection.

  Satisfied, Marcus turned and reached for my arm. “Let’s go, Penny.”

  Equal measures angry and afraid, I clambered into the car under my own power. “Might I remind you that my position in the Ferrum Viriae is an honorary one? I don’t take orders from you or anyone else.”

  “Which is fine, just so long as you understand I’m not about to let your brother conspire against the empire.” He turned over the engine and roared off the airfield at top speed.

  The security team followed us in the second vehicle. I was surprised by the depth of reassurance I felt in their presence as we barreled down the ash-strewn streets toward Glasshouse, but I wouldn’t have admitted it for all the dessert in SugarWerks.

  Sitting in the front seat, Sebastian glanced over his shoulder at me. “You do realize that you’re arguing with one of our few allies.”

  “Mind your own business, sir
.” I tilted my chin toward the window and studied my worried reflection.

  Never one to let a dormant hedgehog alone, the indomitable gentleman nudged Marcus with his elbow. “You know you ought to kiss her and patch things up before the rent cannot be darned, Kingsley.”

  Heat rushed to my face. The myriad of rearview mirrors along the dash reflected Marcus’s similar expression as he glowered at Sebastian.

  “You keep your ridiculous whiskers out of this, Stirling,” he added.

  “Ridiculous you say?” Sebastian traced his thin moustache with a contemplative finger. “If you liked me better clean-shaven, you ought to have said so.”

  Without preamble, Marcus swerved right with a sudden squealing of tires. Glass shards rained over us as swift-flying projectiles shattered the Combustible’s rear window. Silver fléchettes riddled the upholstery and dashboard.

  Someone had been lying in wait for us: more of Warwick’s mercenaries, or I missed my guess. I twisted about to get a better look in time to see them run our secondary unit off the road.

  “Marcus!” I shouted, but he’d seen it in his mirrors.

  “It’s all right,” he said, though that seemed far from the truth. “I planned for a contingency like this. Trade places with me, Stirling.”

  Sebastian blanched. “Not for a million aureii—”

  “Now!”

  “All right, all right!” Somehow, Sebastian slid over while Marcus climbed into the other seat.

  “Drive as fast as you can,” Marcus instructed, fastening his safety belt. “Evasive maneuvers only if necessary. I don’t want us to end up in the gutter with a broken axle.” He reached under the front seat and extracted a long case of polished wood before he turned his attention to Violet and me. “The metal panels of the car are reinforced, so stay low.”

  We obeyed without question. With my cheek pressed to the floor, I could feel the engine strain as Sebastian jammed his foot down on the accelerator.

  “Care to explain what in the Cogs’ names you are doing?” Sebastian swung the car to the right and immediately corrected for the gravel alongside the road. Apparently evasive maneuvers were necessary.

  “Going up and out,” Marcus said, pulling on a pair of tinted goggles and kicking loose the latch on a counterweighted wheel. The roof over his head slid back on brass tracks, and his seat clanked up to fill the open square.

  “Marcus!” I twisted out of Violet’s grasp, flying iron nails be damned.

  Protected by the overlapping metal plates of the turret chair, he already had a very large and ominous-looking weapon braced against his shoulder. “Get down, Penny!”

  Violet caught me by the back of my skirts just as Marcus fired. Muzzle flare, then the deafening thunderclap of the shot reverberated through my bones before I was once more on the floor of the car. There was the whistle of the projectile, and no one could have missed the sudden, groundshaking explosion that followed, nor the screech of tires and the rending of metal.

  The turret chair descended into the car with a shudder and a rattle. Marcus put down the shoulder cannon and pulled off his goggles.

  “What did you do?” I popped up again like a demented jack-in-the-box and saw the enemy’s rear bumper protruding from a large, smoking crater a hundred yards back.

  “I blew a hole in the road,” Marcus replied, calmer now that he’d coped with the worst of the threat. “The first course of action for the Ferrum Viriae is to discourage criminal behavior.”

  “What if they’d swerved around the pit?” I demanded.

  “Step two is disarm.”

  “And step three?”

  “If they’d been foolhardy enough to give me three opportunities to shoot at them, they wouldn’t have lived to see a fourth,” Marcus said, picking up a handset and ringing the Communications Center. “This is the Legatus. The suspects gave pursuit on Second Etoile Road. We’re en route to Glasshouse. Send backup.”

  “The Pixii is no good as a long-distance weapon,” I said the moment he was done. “Do you have another gun in here?”

  “Under your seat,” he answered.

  I stuck my hand under the leather cushion and extracted a metal case. Releasing twin latches and opening the lid, I revealed two service revolvers. Heavily engraved along the barrels, they had polished wooden grips and held six black-powder rounds each. I checked both cylinders to make certain they were loaded before handing one to Violet.

  “What about the men who ended up in the crater?” she asked. “Do you need to double back and arrest them?”

  Pulling out his MAG, Marcus checked the charger and the safety switch before answering her. “Responding units will be on the scene in minutes. They’ll take care of the hostiles. After an impact like that, they won’t be fleeing the scene.”

  Sebastian maintained a near breakneck speed. “In case everyone failed to notice, they’re jumping the deadline. Noon, they said. Something must have spooked them.” He clipped the raised sidewalk when he swung the car onto Trinovantes Avenue.

  Marcus braced himself against the door. “Watch out!”

  Another hail of bullets ricocheted off the car. Slamming on the brakes, Sebastian steered into the turn. By luck or by grace, he swung the Combustible around outside Glasshouse. We collided violently with the curb just before the front stairs, and Violet and I were thrown to the floorboards again.

  “There are mercenaries at three, six, and nine o’clock!” Already reloading the shoulder cannon, Marcus passed Sebastian his MAG. “Do your best to hold them off until backup arrives!”

  All the doors hung partially ajar, and Violet was the first to lean out and get off a shot. It was one thing to shoot a handgun in an open meadow at a target pinned to a roll of summer hay, and quite another to pull the trigger in a confined space. All the Carillon bells seemed to swing in the space between my ears, and I shook my head to clear it.

  I shouldn’t have bothered. A second later, Marcus fired the shoulder cannon and Sebastian let loose with a barrage of fléchettes from the MAG. Answering gunfire whistled around us, clipping the mirrors, riddling the seats. Glass shattered and fell out of the windows of nearby houses. Distraught neighbors screamed and incoming sirens wailed. I knew we should wait for backup, but it was possible Nic was inside. I had to stop him from doing something foolhardy. Something we’d all regret.

  “Cover me,” I told Marcus as I ducked out of the car and ran for the stairs.

  “Penny!” His panicked shout was lost in another volley of gunfire, and brickwork around me exploded in puffs of gray and white powder. Moving with lightning speed, Marcus turned and lobbed two Less-Than-Lethal grenades at the enemy—not part of his plan, perhaps, but effective nonetheless. Upon impact with the street, the grenades detonated, and one hundred spherical Bhaskarian-rubber projectiles pelted the mercenaries. They fell with shouted oaths and groans, bruised but not bleeding, as I took the stairs three at a time.

  Though the locks had been changed, the knob still turned under my hand. Out of breath but otherwise unharmed, I peered around the front door. Violet held off an advance of six new men. Two more were creeping in from the left. I shot the first in the shoulder and missed the second when he ducked. Marcus hit him before I could get off another round.

  “Get Nic,” he yelled at me. “Don’t let him leave with the papers!”

  It was an order I didn’t mind obeying. I ran down the hall and into my parents’ study, half hoping I’d been wrong and Nic wouldn’t be there. But my twin knelt on the floor, hurriedly packing leather notebooks into a rough-cloth satchel. At the back of the wall safe, a secondary compartment stood open.

  My Ticker lurched and settled. “You found the Augmentation diagrams.”

  Nic slowly turned to face me. Everything he wore was slightly askew, as though large hands had rumpled him and set him back on his feet. His eyes were hard, his hair the bristled ruff on a brindled cur. “I played hide-and-seek with Papa, too. Took me most of the morning to realize he puzzle-boxed this w
all the same as the desk. The compass flange on his watch matches the tooled metal on the inside of the safe. There’s a slot at the back, so slim as to go almost undetected. Almost.”

  “So the watch unlocked a hidden partition,” I summed up as I sidled into the room, the revolver concealed by the folds in my skirt. “Time is key. That’s a clever bit of clever. What about the blueprints for the Grand Design?”

  “No sign of them. The Legatus will have to look elsewhere.”

  Outside, our friends exchanged another volley of shots and shouts with the mercenaries, but I didn’t flinch. “How are you going to rendezvous with Warwick? You don’t know where he is.”

  Nic held up a message cylinder, silver this time but similarly unmarked. “I have instructions. This arrived the same time I did.”

  “And just what are your instructions?” I stared at it, wishing I could see through the metal.

  “I’m not saying just yet.” He tucked the tube deep into his pocket. “I wanted to persuade you to come with me until all the men with guns showed up. Now I need to meet with Warwick first, to be certain it’s safe. That he really does want to help you. I’ll send word when I’m convinced. Until then, you need to stay with Marcus and the others.”

  Bad enough that he would sneak out this morning, but the idea of him entering the viper’s nest alone chilled me. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “You deserve to live, Penny, don’t you understand that? That’s why you snapped that day at Carteblanche and climbed up on Andromeda. Just existing isn’t enough for you. Shouldn’t be enough for you.” Determination settled over his features, turning them to granite. “I won’t hold you in my arms and watch you die, Penny. Not again.”