Ticker Read online

  “I’ll be fine,” I repeated, this time trying to convince myself. The morning seemed devoid of color now, and even the prospect of sticky buns had lost its sweet appeal. There was no doubt in my mind that Warwick would be found guilty. If he went to jail, the entire country would breathe a sigh of relief; if he hanged, I’d carry that guilt with me for the rest of my days. Somewhere deep inside him still dwelled the caring surgeon and gentle man I’d known, but the blood of more than twenty people stained his hands, people he’d kidnapped off the streets of Bazalgate and experimented upon, testing different clockwork ventriculators . . .

  All to save me.

  Just ahead, the wrought iron gates of the Gears & Rivets Factory stood open, with half a dozen delivery wagons queued up to enter the courtyard. One of the streetcars paused just before me and disgorged a dozen workers, each wearing our distinctive emerald-and-black uniform. Beyond them, the smokestacks emitted lazy plumes now that the boilers were stoked for the morning. Gaslight shone out of a single window. Ambrose Farnsworth, the supervisor, must already be noting the day’s goals in his ledger with a series of numbers and hieroglyphs worthy of an Aígyptian burial chamber.

  The Gears & Rivets Factory was a family enterprise. Mama and Papa were both mechanical engineers. Nic had a talent for small machinery, so he headed Research and Development. That left the bookkeeping to me. Since my operation a year ago, we’d shifted all the machinery over to produce the tiny fittings, gears, mainsprings, and brass plates our Augmentation team needed to build prosthetics and implants. We skated on thin financial ice because of public disapproval, more so now than ever with the trial coming to its messy and sensational climax, but we were steadfast in our resolve that the technology could be used for the good of all. Development also proceeded slowly because none of the surgeons in our employ had Warwick’s spark of genius.

  Perhaps that’s a good thing.

  Interrupting my train of thought, the RiPA fired off yet another message from my twin.

  THREE MINUTES HAVE PASSED - STOP - ONE MINUTE MORE AND I AM GOING TO CATCH THE STREETCAR - STOP

  I didn’t bother to answer. If he exited the building, I could head him off.

  Or run him over.

  I could well imagine the lecture he was composing. Nic would be furious when I told him about the protestors. And there was still the verdict on Warwick’s trial yet to be announced.

  This day will surely get worse before it gets better—

  In the second between one tick of my Ticker and the next, the front wall of the factory exploded outward. Brick and glass and bits of iron flew through the air and rained down on the courtyard. The shock wave threw me from the Vitesse, and I hit the cobblestones with a bone-jarring thud. Once the enormous and terrible noise of the blast passed and the ringing in my ears faded a little, I could make out the screams from the workers fleeing the building. Everything was chaos. Madness.

  And Nic was waiting for me in his office.

  TWO

  In Which a Stream of Trouble Flows into a River of Mayhem

  Scrambling to my feet, I ran for the door. Ambrose Farnsworth intercepted me as he stumbled out of the building.

  “Miss Farthing!” he said between coughs, eyes streaming.

  “Is Nic still inside?”

  The supervisor shook his head and coughed before answering, “I’ve messaged for the Emergency Rescue Squadrons. I think the factory floor might be on fire.”

  “Is my brother still inside?!”

  Farnsworth sagged under the weight of my question. “Yes.” When I moved to pass him, he tried to hold me back. “You can’t go in. There might be structural damage!”

  I shook him off as though he were no more than one of my mechanical Butterflies and ran into the factory. Smoke filled the hall. Dust billowed out every broken window. Coughing, I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and held it over my nose.

  Two bodies lay prone in the rubble. I scrambled over, uncertain if I felt relief or despair when I saw that neither one was my brother. Floor supervisors, both limp and pale, but each had a strong pulse and neither appeared to be bleeding. Just beyond them, the door to Nic’s office dangled from one hinge, its glass scattered across the floor. I kicked the remaining wood until it gave way, then peered inside. Everything familiar was obliterated, but the room appeared otherwise empty.

  Ambrose must have been mistaken. Nic couldn’t have been inside when the blast happened.

  Except a faint moan from under the collapsed bookcase proved the supervisor had been right. I climbed over splintered wood that ripped my stockings and cut my legs.

  “No. No, no, no.” Popped Hydrostatical Bubbles scraped my palms as I flung aside shards of laboratory glass. I tried to move the bookcase off Nic, but the weight of it was simply too much. When he groaned again, desperation poured through my veins, hot and bright. With my Ticker thudding like a reciprocating engine, I heaved again and sent the wreckage flying. My vision blurred, then cleared, like a slide in a stereoscope coming into focus.

  Nic’s face was scratched and bloody, his spectacles broken and hanging off one ear. “What happened?” he said, blinking hard.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.” Circling behind him, I gathered his head onto my lap, trying to avoid touching the silver fléchettes that riddled his skin. Blood trickled into my skirts. “Hold still. Don’t be an idiot.”

  “Get out, Penny.” With the jerky motions of a half-wound automaton, he pulled off his glasses and cast them aside. Practically blind without them, he peered around us with a squinting sort of frown. “Before the roof falls in.”

  Even felled by an explosion, he was still trying to take care of me. He’d been doing it since we were little, holding my hand as we teetered about the house, crossed the streets, ran through the park.

  I looked into his eyes, hazel mirrors of my own, and gently reminded him, “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “That’s always been the problem,” he said with another groan. Trailing his fingers over the fléchettes protruding from his chest, he pulled them out, one by one. “You’ve no respect for anyone or anything.”

  And just like that, any closeness I’d felt between us evaporated like water hitting a hot boiler. Broken and bleeding, he still couldn’t forgive me.

  “I give respect only where it’s due.” I heard a door slam open somewhere in the corridor and raised my voice, the words ragged and smoke-stained. “We’re down the hall! We have three men injured, and we need stretchers!”

  The rescue crew appeared seconds later. “Sir, don’t get up!” one shouted as they pushed past me. “You could have internal bleeding.”

  “You hear that, Nic?” All the panic that had incited me to action receded, leaving me cold and trembling. “Hold still.”

  “You need to get to safety,” the second crewman advised me.

  “I’m staying until you get my brother out,” I said. “And I’m riding in the ambulance to the hospital.”

  “I don’t need a hospital, Penny,” Nic said with a cough. “Just a new pair of glasses. I can’t see a bloody thing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. Just to spite me, Nic rose under his own power and stood, albeit shakily. “Don’t be a hero, then,” I amended.

  “Take me home, Penny,” he said, voice faint but sure.

  Putting my arm about him, I did my best not to jostle anything as we picked our way outside. Half carrying my twin out into the autumn sunlight, I couldn’t help but wonder if the explosion was what the Edoceon protestor meant by “the tables are about to be turned.”

  There’s no such thing as a coincidence. Not in science, anyway.

  I tapped out a message to my parents, who were most likely en route to the courthouse by now.

  WE ARE ALL RIGHT - STOP - INCIDENT AT FACTORY - STOP - MEET US BACK AT GLASSHOUSE - STOP

  Mama was always slow to answer her RiPA, but when no answer came back after two full minutes, I repeated the message.

&nbs
p; “They might already be inside the courtroom,” Nic said, peering at the Vitesse with another one of his farsighted frowns. “You have to turn off all communications devices in there.”

  “Then let’s hope she doesn’t hear about the explosion from someone else.” One swift yank at the leather straps removed the Carry-Away Box from the back of the cycle; I tossed it aside to make room for my brother. “Hang on tight.”

  With Nic tucked in behind me, I roared out of the courtyard and past the Ferrum Viriae Emergency Rescue vehicles hurrying to the scene. In the rush to get home, I spared no appreciation for the city’s towering buildings, the turning leaves. The gears in my mind whirled at an extraordinary pace. In response, my Ticker thudded and then paused as though sorting through the possible list of suspects. Though I tried to keep my breathing even and my mind steady, my fingers gripped the handlebars until my bones begged for mercy.

  Was it the Edoceon?

  Because it wasn’t just letters to the editor and protests in the street. Some of the extremists sent threatening notes to the house via the PaperTape machine and the regular post. One member turned up on the doorstep a few weeks back and tried to shoulder her way into the house to speak with me. Every day, the Edoceon were getting bolder and more vehement about their cause.

  But does that mean they attacked the factory?

  Craning my neck, I could just make out Nic’s ashen features. Gray smudged the sky once again, and the haze was like the glass in my glacier goggles. “Are you all right?”

  “I might not be able to see, but I can tell you’re driving too fast!” His arms constricted about me when I took the next corner at an impossible speed and angle. “I don’t fancy almost dying a second time today, if you don’t mind!” The wind frayed the edges of his words, threatening to unravel them.

  A lump the size of a croquet ball rose in my throat at the memory of Nic lying prone in the rubble. If he felt the same horrible sense of responsibility mingled with fear day in and day out, then I could almost forgive his shortness of temper, his lectures and snarls. “No one is dying today. Not if I can help it.”

  “Not dying is good. Not rattling the bones from my body would place a close second. You really have no business driving this thing with your condition.” He shuddered, a small vibration I doubted had been caused by the Vitesse.

  “I should take you to Currey! You need someone to look at you!”

  “Just get me home!” The last word left him with a gasp, and my Ticker thudded again. The moment I felt his grip tighten, I opened up the Vitesse and gave her everything she had. Bypassing the Heart of the Star, I ran the cycle full tilt down a nearby alley, through ruts and puddles that splashed their questionable contents over my skirts. My RiPA sputtered with competing incoming messages. Though I was still expecting an answer from Mama, the first to make it through was from Violet.

  HEARD WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FACTORY - STOP - WHERE SHALL I MEET YOU - QUERY MARK

  And the second was from Sebastian Stirling.

  RECEIVED YOUR SOS - STOP - YOU NEED NOT HAVE SENT UP SUCH A LARGE SMOKE SIGNAL - STOP

  Sebastian and Nic had become best of friends the first day of primary school, a union that hadn’t pleased any of their teachers or anyone else forced to endure their countless shenanigans.

  Few people know the secret to answering multiple RiPA messages at once, let alone have the talent to do so when traveling at the Vitesse’s uppermost speed, but I managed it.

  GOING TO GLASSHOUSE - STOP - YOU CAN MEET US THERE - STOP

  Turning onto our street caused a flower of relief to bloom in my chest. Overnight, it seemed, the trees that lined Trinovantes Avenue had burst into flaming color, vivid against the white brick facades and black wrought iron gates. Ahead, Glasshouse beckoned, sunlight glinting off the famous Rose Windows that spanned the upper story. The Artisans’ Omnibus Tour never failed to point out that series to the occupants of the streetcars, noting the repeating floral patterns in sets of six, three, six.

  “The number of letters in the phrase Tempus est clavis,” they trumpeted through bullhorns. “‘Time is key,’ the Farthing family motto.”

  Perhaps realizing I was distracted, the Vitesse’s motor chose that moment to hiccup and die. The contrary conveyance glided to a halt in the gutter, right between the neighboring Twin Spires and Pinkerton Manor.

  “Hold on,” I told Nic. For an answer, my twin toppled off the back of the cycle. Trying to catch him before he hit the ground, I bungled the dismount. A vicious rip emanated from the vicinity of my backside, but just now I had concerns beyond my wardrobe.

  “No need to fuss,” he tried to reassure me from the ground.

  “Sorry, but I’m not buying what you’re selling.” Looping an arm around him, I heaved my brother to his feet and helped him to our stoop. Only when I went to insert my key did I notice that the front door stood ajar.

  At another house, this might be construed as happenstance, the downstairs maid forgetting to close it after sweeping the stairs, perhaps. But not at Glasshouse. Such things would not be tolerated on Miss Evangeline Dreadnaught’s vigilant watch. Above all else, our chatelaine subscribed to the motto “thou shalt not leave any detail unattended,” and that certainly included front doors left open.

  Reaching into my messenger bag, I pulled out my Pixii. Nic invented the personal safety device for me as soon as I was old enough to take the streetcar alone. Thumb to the resistance switch, I charged it with repeated depressions until I could make out its telltale whine. “Get behind me.”

  Nic squinted at me in puzzlement. “Whatever is the matter?”

  I put my finger to his lips and nudged at the heavy front door. It swung inward without so much as a whisper—bless Dreadnaught for her conscientious oiling!—revealing another scene of wreckage. Rugs had been tugged from their proper places and left in woolen wrinkles along the hall. Occasional tables were overturned. Broken crystal and bruised flowers decorated the floor.

  A few steps more and we stood in our parents’ study. The damage inflicted here was precise. Methodical. Someone upended the room, turned out the drawers of the desks, rifled through the filing cabinets, removed the art from the walls, slashed open pillows and chaise cushions and even the leather armchairs. Feathers and cotton were scattered among the various oddities our parents collected over years of travel: petrified wood from the blood forests of Portola, the wired skeleton of a wolpertinger, souvenir spoons from at least thirty cities. Worst of all, the intruders smashed the hunk of volcanic glass carried back from the underwater dome city of Halcyon. Recruited to the developer’s engineering team, my parents fell in love while funneling salt water near enough the volcanic activity to heat it for the medicinal spas. They shared a Submersible to the surface and were inseparable ever since.

  “What’s happened?” Nic gave the back of my jacket a shake.

  “Someone broke in.” I towed him farther into the room. Surprisingly, the perpetrators spared the stained glass Aquaria that spanned the length of the far wall, with its pale green depths and coral-colored goldfish. However, one of the panels had been shifted to the side, revealing the inner workings of the gas lamps that gave the glass waterweeds the illusion of movement. Beyond that were several large and well-greased gears, two pulley systems, and a small rectangular wall safe. The latter was open, its papers scattered over the floor and the desks. “They’ve turned the room upside down and broken into the wall safe.”

  Nic pulled me back half a step with a hissed, “They could still be in the house.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said with a slow glance about to take in every detail. “They smashed the face of the carriage clock when they were here. Happened about an hour ago.”

  “About the same time as the explosion at the factory,” he said, unwilling to let go of me. “I somehow doubt that was a coincidence.”

  Gently prying my clothing from his grasp, I knelt in the debris and retrieved a glass daguerreotype. It was from the day Cygna was bor
n and the only picture of the four Farthing children together: Nic and I at age eight, holding the baby between us, and eleven-year-old Dimitria standing behind. The glass was cracked down the middle, so I was quite literally picking up the pieces of our family. “I need to message Mama and Papa again. All of this is going to come as a nasty shock.”

  Nic tried to pick a path between the marble chess figurines and promptly fell over the remnants of the mirror that should have been hanging over the fireplace. Behind the desk, he squinted and reached for something.

  “You might want to call in the police now.” He held up our father’s pocket watch by its long gold chain. “I think Mama and Papa were here when it happened.”

  Most men and women in Bazalgate society carry a watch that requires regular winding, one composed of balance wheels and screws and gears, but our father’s elaborately engraved case held instead a miniature sundial set over a compass. Given the fact that my parents would rather crash through a jungle atop an elephant than bask in wooden deck chairs, the gift served its purpose more than once. It was a unique timepiece, commissioned by my mother for a wedding gift, and my father was never without it.

  My Ticker responded before I could, accelerating until I could hear my pulse in my ears. “Do you think the burglars hurt them?”

  Peering ineffectually around the room, Nic shook his head. “I think they took them.”

  The pit in my stomach widened until I was afraid I might fall into it, never to climb back out. I walked over to Nic and took the pocket watch, wanting to believe that it somehow wasn’t my father’s. When I opened the case, though, there was the metal dial folded down over the compass. “But why—”

  The sound of a boot snapping a bit of broken glass came from the hallway. I whirled about and raised the charged Pixii.

  “Penny, don’t,” Nic warned, trying to catch hold of me.

  Skirting an overturned table, I evaded his reaching hands. “Shut up and get down.”

  It was only a few steps back to the study doors, and I eased through the gap between them. Clouds wrapped sulky arms about the sun; in the resultant gloom, everything in the hallway was the enemy, from the broken furniture to the grandfather clock. The low whine of the Pixii in my ears settled alongside the rapid staccato of my Ticker. With the next step, I cursed the silk whisper of my skirts, but it didn’t muffle the sound of a footfall behind me, another tinkle of disturbed glass before an arm about my waist lifted me from the ground. The strong hand over my mouth prevented me from calling out for help.