Ticker Read online

  “You will not,” Dreadnaught said. Only two degrees removed from a garment district stitch-counter, she was beyond horrified by the very suggestion. “Surely you have something more suitable.”

  I unfastened the hooks on my skirt and stepped out of my bustle without tripping and killing myself. Only that morning, I’d read that one in ten young ladies become entrapped in the wire cages. The claim was made by the founder of the Center for Fashionable Reform, but I didn’t feel compelled to desert my own “dress-enhancing death trap” until official documentation linked it to fatality or dismemberment. “Define ‘suitable.’ ”

  “There’s only one outfit fit to be seen right now.” Dreadnaught crossed to the wardrobe and extracted a walking dress of dove foulard. I raised an eyebrow at the elaborately draped overskirt, the rosettes, and the broad box pleats of navy silk. From Kashenkerry’s Atelier (Fine Garments & Ready To Wear) and a gift from my Grandmother Pendleton, it had hung in the wardrobe for a month like the shy miss at a cotillion. “Scrub everything from the waist up or you’ll leave smudge marks,” the chatelaine added.

  Under her keen-eyed supervision, I washed the grit and grime of the factory explosion from my arms and face, scrubbing at my skin with a washcloth until I was the color of a boiled Meridian lobster. Aided by the chatelaine, both Violet and I were dressed, coiffed, and sensibly accessorized in due time.

  Just not hastily enough for my taste. With every passing moment, my anxiety about my parents grew. It was one thing to watch them retreat into their own worlds after the deaths of my sisters and quite another to think that I might never see them again. “Everything that’s happened has been my fault, Vi.”

  “Piffle,” she retorted, adjusting her borrowed skirts. “It’s not your fault you were born with a heart defect, or that your parents care enough for you to move the stars to see you healed and well.”

  “Maybe. But it’s my fault they are goodness-knows-where. That Warwick tried to develop a better Ticker.”

  That he went mad and killed people in the attempt.

  I wouldn’t think about that just now. Defiant in the face of my fears, I marched from the room and made my way downstairs via a slide down the banister. Difficult to do when wearing a bustle skirt.

  Difficult, but not impossible.

  “Never mind waiting for your Ticker to give out, Penny. You’re going to break your neck,” Violet said for the second time that morning, following me down the more customary way. The ends of her ribbons flapped to match the cadence of her feet on the stairs. With lace mitts covering her tattoos and her gearring removed, she looked every inch the demure lass, save for her amethyst hair and her great stompy boots peeping out from under my skirts.

  While we waited for Nic and Sebastian to finish refreshing their linen, I ducked briefly into the study to close the wall safe and retrieve my father’s watch. Violet passed the time striding up and down the hall. After a particularly loud about-face, she caught sight of the chatelaine and tilted her head to one side.

  “Perhaps you ought to come with us, Miss Dreadnaught. You shouldn’t remain here alone. What if the thieves come back?”

  “They wouldn’t catch me unaware,” was the chatelaine’s grim response. “I shall stay here to protect the house from further attack. There’s also a great deal of work to be done.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” I said, closing the study door behind me and reaching for my bag, “I’d think you’re almost looking forward to a cleanup of this magnitude.”

  “It will be quite satisfying to set everything to rights,” she admitted, seeing us to the door.

  Just outside, a messenger boy stood on the stoop, one finger outstretched toward the doorbell. He had a pack slung over his shoulder and a winning, gap-toothed smile at the ready.

  “Delivery for Miss Farthing,” he said with a tip of his cap.

  Dreadnaught traded a handful of coppers for the letter, then passed it to me. The card stock was produced locally by the Featherweight Mill, watermarked with the Ferrum Viriae’s crest, and needlessly expensive, but then Marcus probably scribbled his grocery list on fine linen when it suited him.

  “A bit soon for a summons from the good Mister Kingsley, isn’t it?” I murmured, not bothering with a letter opener.

  But the paper within didn’t remind me of the stern Legatus. It reeked of sandalwood, and for an instant, I was transported to a silken tent on a Bhaskarian desert. I unfolded it with a frown and squinted at the spider-thin handwriting.

  Dear Miss Farthing,

  Your sister sent word this morning through my otherworldly envoy that you are in grave danger. She wishes you to proceed with utmost caution, though she also added that you are (and I hope you’ll forgive the direct quote) “more likely to run headlong into danger with bells on.” In any case, I wished to pass the message to you.

  Yours in light and love,

  Philomena de Mesmer

  Professional Clairaudience and Trance, by appointment only

  P.S. Dimitria also cautions you to mind the third step from the bottom. According to her, “it’s a bit tricky.”

  Feeling ill-used and grimy again, I handed the letter over to Violet without comment. My older sister’s passing had changed all of us and not for the better. While Papa often fell asleep in his chair after imbibing a full bottle of Gentian Amaros, Mama sought solace from every charlatan psychic in town. Encouraged by crystal-gazing swindlers from here to Helvetica, she spent a small fortune trying to contact Cygna and Dimitria “beyond the veil.” Dragged to countless séances, I witnessed enough table rapping, crystal gazing, and phantom manifestations to last me through this life and the next. Mama might have been desperate enough to believe in it, but I had no use at all for that sort of sideshow.

  “What a load of rubbish,” Violet said, crumpling the paper in her fist, “claiming to have spoken with Dimitria!”

  “It doesn’t take a psychic to understand that there’s money to be harvested from grieving families,” I said. “Still, it does beg the question as to why a professional charlatan is writing to me on Ferrum Viriae stationery, doesn’t it?”

  “Or not,” Violet suggested as the boys joined us. “Do you feel well enough to go?”

  “I do,” I said firmly, opening the front door and leading the way down the stairs. The morning’s clouds had called in reinforcements, and thick fog crept toward us with an assassin’s stealth. Though it was only early afternoon, the sky was completely blotted out. The cold that snaked down my spine, however, wasn’t a reaction to the change in the weather.

  “We’ll take my car,” Sebastian said. Pulling out his driving goggles, he cut in front of me and indicated the Combustible at the curb. “Unless Penny thinks she can balance us all on her handlebars.”

  “Not in this outfit, I can’t.” Remembering my forsaken steed, I rushed to retrieve the Vitesse and move it out of the street. By the time I reached the car, Nic had claimed the spot next to Sebastian, leaving me to the backseat with Violet. I crammed my skirts in next to hers as best I could and adjusted the lap belt as we took off down the street.

  “Still no news from the courthouse,” my brother said after a short RiPA message clacked in on his wrist.

  “We have more pressing concerns at the moment.” I never thought something would eclipse the verdict, but right now there was nothing more important than locating those Augmentation papers. Fiddling about with Papa’s watch, I clicked open the case and snapped it shut until Violet covered my hand with her own. We stayed like that in silence for the rest of the drive across town.

  Leaving the Combustible parked at the curb, we climbed the stone staircase leading up to the Bibliothèca. A large and noisy group was gathered outside the doors, and I faltered, uncertain if I ought to take another step.

  “It’s the Edoceon.”

  “They’re protesting here as well,” Nic murmured. With a subtle shift of his body, he screened me from their view with his shoulders.

  “Vult
ures,” Violet said, closing in on my other side. Though I could usually see clear over the top of her head, the purple feathered hat she wore served as a brilliantly plumed shield.

  “That’s not the same group that threw a bottle at me this morning,” I noted, peeking between her borrowed frills and bows.

  “Let’s not give them an opportunity to change that,” Sebastian said. With debonair grace, he strolled forth, cane swinging, and began making inquiries about their “good cause, in which I am most passionately interested.”

  The rest of us hastened inside. The Bibliothèca structure was the oldest in Bazalgate, dating back almost five hundred years. Mammoth marble columns supported an arched ceiling. Enormous windows set high into the wall normally amplified the incoming sunshine. Today, colossal iron chandeliers compensated for the lack of natural illumination.

  Even more intimidating than the architecture, thousands of mechanical Xestobium rufovillosum perched on the walls. The Death Watch Beetles monitored noise levels, and if an unlucky patron progressed beyond a whisper, the twitches of their mica wings summoned the Unseen librarians. Once charged with safeguarding the thousands of paper documents and illuminated manuscripts, the Unseen now tended the city’s Eidolachometer Information Storage System. No one knew exactly where the librarians were trained or how they were recruited, but at least once or twice a month, a researcher’s limp body was removed from the building and transferred to Currey Hospital for observation. It took anywhere from three days to a week for the patient to wake up, another month or more to recover his or her powers of speech.

  Accordingly, I dropped my voice below a whisper when Sebastian caught up with us at the first intersection. “This way.”

  Private Eidolachometer cards were separated from the publicly accessible ones by a series of corridors and locking gates. The others followed me down the hall marked “Personal Archives.” Numbered doors opened off either side of the hall.

  “Six three six,” I murmured. “Tempus est clavis. Time is key.”

  But an unexpected swarm of people barricaded the hallway. Each of the men and women wore the charcoal wool and iron bracelets of the Ferrum Viriae. Towering over them, Marcus Kingsley supervised the removal of brass and gold Eidolachometer cards from one of the vaults. With very little effort, I could guess which one it was.

  I hadn’t prepared myself to see him again so soon, hadn’t braced myself against who he was and how I was drawn to him, yet I bounded the last few steps that separated us without hesitation. Employing my considerable bustle, I blocked the entrance to the Farthing family alcove, though it was a bit like closing the stable door after all the mechanical horses have rusted. “Stop! That’s private property!”

  Marcus’s hand clamped down over my mouth before I could say another word, and just like that, he was touching me again. Overhead, a hundred waiting Beetles stirred, dislodging dust and glitter-flecks of stone; no doubt they could hear the beating of the Ticker in my chest.

  Fingers still pressed to my lips, Marcus waited a long moment before whispering, “Indeed it is your property, but half the vault’s contents were stolen just a few minutes ago. There’s been another break-in. I advise you to go home at once.”

  I stared at him, trying to process everything without focusing too much on the fact that I was essentially kissing his palm. Reaching up, I pried his hand from my mouth. “Counting Glasshouse, that makes two in one day, with you arriving on the scene mere seconds afterward. Quite the coincidence, is it not?”

  “And just what are you implying?” he asked, gaze narrowing.

  It was all I could do not to lunge at the same soldiers who’d helped clear Glasshouse. One by one, they sidled past us carrying boxes of hastily gathered Eidolachometer cards.

  “I object to the confiscation of our property,” I hissed.

  Marcus glanced up at the Beetles before speaking again. “We’re not confiscating it, Miss Farthing; we’re following procedure. We need to catalog it against an inventory list.”

  Struggling to keep my voice down, I eyeballed the sheaf of papers in his hands, each bearing one of the Bibliothèca’s Official Mechanical Seals. “And just why do you care about my parents’ paperwork, Mister Kingsley?”

  The pause before he answered set off every one of my internal alarms. “I don’t, but whoever pulled this heist somehow stole a sizable amount of property and vacated the premises in less than three minutes, all without alerting the Unseen. Their only mistake was to trip one of the silent alarms in passing. Whatever’s missing might give us some indication as to who these people are and what they want.”

  That might be the truth, but I doubted it was the whole truth. “I don’t care about your lists or your timeline right now,” I said, reaching for the last of the boxes. “I demand you release the remainder of my property to me at once.”

  “Here now,” the soldier responded, trying to shake my hand off. “Leave off of that!”

  Trying to evade me, he lost his grip on the wooden crate, and it fell to the floor with a terrific crash. The Beetles on the ceiling and walls began to dance, creating a living tapestry on the stones. A mighty rush of air surrounded us, gathering all the loosened bits of stone and dirt and flinging them at us. I kept my eyes tightly shut, trying to prepare myself for whatever the Unseen might do to me as punishment.

  And what will the kidnappers do with Mama and Papa in the meantime?

  As suddenly as it had arrived, the wind evaporated. The soldier who’d dropped the crate lay prone upon the floor, eyes rolling into the back of his head and mouth hanging slack. My breath caught in my throat as the ruffles of my overskirts settled back into place, and I pressed my own gloved hand to my mouth this time.

  In complete silence, Marcus called back enough men to carry out their fallen comrade. The look he gave me before leaving would have felled a lesser person; I returned it in kind and added one perfectly arched eyebrow. Neither of us, it seemed, would offer the other a “farewell” or a “good day” in parting; at least he wouldn’t be able to lord my lack of manners over me when next we met.

  After he disappeared around the far corner, the space seemed to echo just a bit more. The stone walls and floors exuded a bit more dark and dank. The Beetles hovered overhead, ready to summon the Unseen back from their unknown lair. I shuddered and turned to the others, who looked as troubled as I felt.

  “We needed those cards,” Nic said, careful to keep his voice low. “What will happen to Mama and Papa if we can’t track down the thieves?”

  My brain performed a Knight’s Maneuver. One square on the chessboard to: The Great Mister Kingsley doesn’t think the burglars had much time to escape.

  Another square to: Perhaps they didn’t have time to escape.

  And a final sidestep to: That might mean they’re still in the building somewhere!

  “I think the Legatus might have been right,” I said.

  “About us going home at once?” Nic’s tone indicated he didn’t harbor a single hope that would actually be the plan. Just as he always did when nervous, he pulled his glasses off and checked them for nonexistent spots.

  “Hardly,” I retorted. “You heard what Marcus said. The alarm went off, and the Ferrum Viriae arrived on the scene within minutes. The thieves have to be hiding somewhere nearby.”

  “With the stolen property,” Sebastian said. An accomplished cardsharp, he had no tells that we’d ever discovered, and thus betrayed neither reticence nor enthusiasm when he asked, “But where could they have gone that Marcus’s soldiers would have missed?”

  “That is indeed the question.”

  An unexpected noise that strongly reminded me of a falcon’s cry echoed off the stones. The Beetles overhead twitched in response. My Ticker thudded oddly in my chest as I stepped closer to Violet.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” When I turned to Nic and Sebastian, both shook their heads with matching bewilderment. The mystery noise came a second time
, causing my Ticker to skip a beat. The Beetles began their agitated dance; with the third and loudest of the bird cries, they seized up and began dropping down upon our heads. We ran for the nearest archway to take shelter from the unusual rain, clockwork corpses twitching all around us. To our right, circular stone stairs twisted down into the darkness. Once a repository for the bones of leaders and dignitaries, the area under the Bibliothèca now contained the dead tree files rendered obsolete by the invention of the Eidolachometer. Less interested in paper than my pulse, I wondered if that was where the Unseen cloistered. “We need to go into the catacombs.”

  “That isn’t funny, Penny,” Nic said, dislodging brass carapaces from his jacket with an impatient hitch of his shoulders.

  Even Sebastian looked disconcerted by the idea of venturing downstairs. “Wasn’t that enough dead things to satisfy you?”

  “I’ve no intention of joining them.” Reaching into my messenger bag, I pulled out a Watt’s Handheld Incandescent Lamp and the Pixii. “I’ll go first.”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Violet said.

  Sebastian swung his walking stick so that it whistled slightly, then pulled a previously concealed short sword from its wooden sheath. “Old Reliable didn’t realize she might get to come out and play today. I really ought to spend more time with the three of you. It’s been quite the adventure thus far.”

  Another bird cry traveled up from the bottom of the stairwell and echoed in my chest.

  “Down we go,” I told the others.

  “Remember what I said about teatime?” Nic said to Sebastian.

  “Up to our eyeballs in trouble, didn’t you say?”

  “Indeed.”

  FIVE

  In Which Our Heroine Seizes an Opportunity and Is Left Holding the Bag

  Wall sconces lit the way down the stone stairs and along another cold corridor. Once we reached a twisted iron staircase, modern blue phosphorescence yielded to vintage oil lamps. I could feel Nic’s wary gaze shift from our surroundings to me every so often, though he didn’t give further voice to his worries. Inwardly, I agreed this would be a most inopportune time and place to suffer an attack and issued my Ticker a severe warning.