Venturess Page 5

  They were alive, and the mother I shared with them was dead.

  I shook myself out of my reverie and turned to Fin. Here was someone I loved, still living.

  I dipped the edge of my handkerchief in the water and dripped one drop at a time onto Fin’s chapped lips, and then even more slowly, more carefully, into his mouth. The room was warm and dry, thanks to the spiral chimney that wound around the walls and up into the ceiling; the fires in the vast kitchens heated most of the palace that way. But Fin’s lips were cracking and I hated to see him—​to see anyone—​in discomfort, especially when they could not remedy it themselves.

  “I told everyone we’re getting married, you know,” I said. “The least you could do is wake up.” I squeezed his hand.

  Fin actually squeezed back, so faintly but, oh, it was there. I brought the now weeping goblet to his mouth.

  “Fin!” came a loud cry behind us as the heavy wood-and-iron doors burst open.

  It was Caro, sweeping in when she was most needed, as she always did.

  “Is he all right?” she asked frantically, kneeling beside the bed. Her hands shook, and I saw the huge restraint it took for her not to fling her arms around him, not to do him more injury by accident. Instead, she placed her hands, so carefully, on his arm. “I heard the shot, even from the palace, it’s those damned projectors we made, everyone in Esting City heard that horrible noise, but they wouldn’t let me come into the operating room, and I didn’t know when—​when he would—” She took one great shuddering breath, and then she started to cry.

  “He’ll be all right.” I handed the goblet to my hovering insects and began to stroke Caro’s hair.

  We stayed like that for I don’t know how long, Caro weeping over Fin’s and my clasped hands, my fingers wandering in her curls. It was strange to me how much comfort I took from being the strong one, from being there for both my friends when they could not stand on their own.

  After Caro’s tears were spent, the buzzers offered her a fresh cup of water. She swallowed it quickly, then rose and walked to the table to refill it from the jug.

  “You should have some,” she said. “When did you last eat?”

  It was comforting to be cared for too. As I drank, I felt the cold water wash away a headache I hadn’t let myself notice. “At breakfast, I think,” I said. “With you and that girl, that Runner. Is she all right?”

  “I think so,” Caro said weakly, but clearly grateful to have something else to talk about. “I talked to Lady Harkington and told her, well, what had really happened, and that craven woman wouldn’t believe a word. She says she’ll be loyal to Lord Whiting no matter what, says he’s her true love.” Caro flung the last words out as if they were poison. We shared another look, and I wondered how any mother could be so heartless. I tried to imagine what my mother might have done to someone who hurt me when I was young . . . but then her devastating absence from my life just reared its head again, all that grief I tamped down to get through each day. I took a breath and forced it to retreat once more.

  Caro waved her hand as if to say Lady Harkington wasn’t worth another thought. “I brought Runner to my own mother and explained everything, and I doubt Mum will leave the girl’s side for the next year. It’s a good thing too, because if she didn’t have that tired, hungry child to mind, I imagine she’d be off to the north to have Lord Whiting’s head . . . or off upstairs to have Lady Harkington’s, at least.” Caro grimaced. “Not that I’m particularly concerned about their well-being. But you know how my mother gets with anyone who needs to be cared for.”

  I knew very well; she was exactly like Caro.

  “I do want to tutor her, you know,” I said, “just as soon as she’s ready. Maybe we can convince one of the science academies to admit a girl.”

  Caro smiled. “If a recommendation from the most famous inventor in the country doesn’t convince them, I can’t imagine what will.”

  Fin stirred again, his long-lashed eyes fluttering open. We both snapped our attention to him.

  “Oh,” he muttered. “Oh, I’m awake.” He thought for a long moment, then added, “Good.”

  I laughed weakly, and so did Caro. “It’s more than good,” I said, smoothing back one of his sweaty curls.

  Fin moved his head slightly, then winced. “I wouldn’t have wanted . . .” He cleared his throat, a dry, cracking sound. “You don’t believe them, do you?” His bloodshot eyes flickered from one to the other of us.

  “Believe what, dear heart?” Caro asked, taking his other hand in hers.

  “You don’t believe them about who did this to me . . .”

  “No one knows who shot you,” Caro said. “It’s only been a few hours.” She looked at me.

  “I was there almost as soon as it happened,” I agreed, trying to comfort him. “I was there in the chirurgie with you . . . Don’t worry, Fin. No one’s said anything yet.” I didn’t know that for sure, of course, but he was starting to look so agitated that I would have said anything to keep him from aggravating his injuries.

  Fin frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.” He tried to look down at himself but couldn’t manage to lift his head more than an inch off the pillow. “In the shoulder,” he said. “Anywhere else? I can’t feel my arm . . .”

  “Just the one shot,” I told him. “Just the shoulder. The chirurgienne said the bullet broke up inside of you, but she’s from that women’s medical academy in Soleil, she’s very good, she got it all out . . . They used some Fey painkiller on you, that must be why you can’t feel your arm.”

  Fin nodded, as if everything we’d told him was just what he’d expected. “They didn’t mean to kill me, then.”

  Caro tutted. “Kill you,” she said, trying to sound as if she found the very notion ridiculous. She could barely get the words out.

  “If they’d wanted to kill me, they’d have done it.” Fin was growing more alert by the moment, and now he tried to pull himself up in the bed, but he still didn’t have the strength. “It was a warning.” He licked his dry lips. “Lord, it’s hot in here. Nick, would you mind opening a window?”

  I stood up. Fin’s rooms were spacious, and it took me more than a few long strides to reach the nearest tall window. I fiddled with the multiple latches, then put my weight into pulling the heavy sash upward. Once I got it going, it rolled up smoothly, with the satisfying sound of hidden, well-oiled wheels. Fresh winter air swept into the room, and we all breathed deep.

  Noise came in too. It took me a moment to realize what I was hearing, and another to understand just why I found it so disconcerting.

  There was another speech being made in the square, amplified through the network of tubes and horns that Caro had helped design. “My fellow Estingers, forgive me,” the speaker was saying. “I have been punished for my blindness.”

  I realized suddenly why I found the voice frightening. It was Fin’s.

  I looked at Fin and Caro, wide-eyed. Caro stared back at me with equal bafflement, but Fin was trembling on the bed, trying even harder to prop himself up. His face was set with rage.

  “We must take back the safety of our lands from those who have betrayed us,” Fin’s sweet and husky voice was saying from the square. “We must show Faerie once and for all who rules this world that I once claimed we shared.”

  Then I heard it, that tiny difference in the tone that only someone who’d spent a lot of time with both young men would know. This voice was sweet and husky, yes, but it was lighter and smoother than Fin’s. As smooth as treacle.

  Fitz.

  “I’ll go, Fin,” I said. “I’ll find out what’s happening. Don’t worry, don’t strain yourself—” I had to physically push him back down onto the bed. He looked as though he could have killed Fitz if given the chance, grave injury or no. “You’ll only hurt yourself worse, can’t you see? Stay here with Caro, and I’ll go down to the square and find out . . . all that I can. They’ll have to let me, you know. I told them I’m your fiancée, and the whole c
ity heard it.”

  That last bit of information, at least, distracted Fin enough that he stopped struggling against me. “Did you?” he said, with a trace of his old good humor coming back into his eyes. “I thought I must’ve hallucinated that.”

  “Seems more likely,” I replied, catching Caro’s eye. She smiled at me fondly, then down at Fin. “Just don’t go getting any notions that it’s true, my charming prince.”

  “Right,” Fin muttered. “Why would I want to marry anybody I love?”

  But none of us wanted to dredge up that particular debate, and all of us did want to find out exactly what Fitz was attempting with his superlative Fin imitation down in the square—​although I already had an idea.

  “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” I said, and I fled.

  ✷

  I took the hidden servants’ door just outside Fin’s suite. After a frantic dash down seven flights of stairs and through the basement kitchens, I was back in the stables, where I knew Jules would be waiting for me.

  “What in the Lord’s name’s happening, Nick?” Bex called as I ran past her to the stall reserved especially for Jules.

  “Don’t know yet,” I said, sorry I couldn’t tell her more but aware that every second Fitz spoke with Fin’s voice presented a grave danger. I had to put a stop to it as soon as I could.

  Jules had me out through the palace gates in a flash, but the streets had grown so crowded that even with people recognizing and making way for us, we had to push through the throng to get close enough to the stage to see anything.

  What I saw stopped my breath.

  It was Fin.

  Not a voice emanating from behind a curtain to hide the Heir’s injuries or protect his safety, not Fitz acting as spokesperson on the Heir’s behalf, not even the metal automaton I’d half expected . . . not anything but Fin himself, looking perhaps more beautiful than ever, even with a large white sling wrapped artfully around his right arm and shoulder. This perfect, radiant Fin was demanding a genocide, an extermination of the people he’d campaigned for so long to keep alive and even independent.

  “Oh, Fin,” I murmured in despair, not knowing whether I spoke to the haggard youth who lay in his bed or the gorgeous false prince who now pounded his fist on the podium in the passion of his speech.

  I was conspicuous in the crowd, I knew, in my famous blue dress from last year’s Exposition, riding my legendary steel-and-glass horse. Everyone who’d heard my quiet exclamation turned to me to see my reaction to my fiancé’s speech. I arranged my face into a carefully neutral expression, and I kept it determinedly set as I edged closer to the stage.

  The impostor’s gaze darted to me. “My beloved!” he said, right into the lip of the tube that projected his speech all over the city. “See her, countrymen? This is a woman who knows what Esting should be: self-made, independent, elegant, ambitious. And, of course, exquisitely beautiful.” The slightly derisive note in his voice when he called me beautiful made me even more certain that it was Fitz who spoke.

  What was happening? I couldn’t understand it.

  “Come up here, my darling,” the prince was saying now. He leaned away from the podium and extended one gloved hand toward me in a stiff, formal gesture that held none of the real Fin’s fluid grace.

  The people that remained between me and the stage backed away. I urged Jules forward. He balked and flattened his long, jointed ears.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered. “I know it’s not really him.”

  Jules whuffled smoke and took a few slow steps. I was relieved to see that the guard who stood at this side of the stage was one we both knew, at least: Ben Walworth, one of my favorites of Caro’s many cousins. “Thank you, Ben,” I murmured, dismounting as the tall man came to us and took Jules’s handles. Jules nudged Ben affectionately but kept both wary glass eyes on me.

  I climbed the steps at the side of the stage and took the false Fin’s proffered hand, which felt almost feverishly hot, even through the kidskin glove. Up close, he was lovelier still. His eyes were so clear, their whites so bright, his dark skin so perfectly smooth . . .

  He pulled me to him and embraced me with his one good arm, there at the podium, before the crowd. I struggled against his grip, but it was incredibly hard and strong—​far more so than the real Fin’s, who was strong enough.

  “What’s going on?” I hissed to whoever this was, this too-perfect Fin with Fitz’s treacle voice.

  I took a breath and caught the scent of warm, deep spice, like whiskey and sinnum . . .

  Ombrossus oil.

  And then I knew.

  It was the strangest sensation. I pulled back from the impostor as he changed before my eyes—​no longer one whole human being, but a conglomeration of moving parts. Porcelain eyes rolled in a molded face, and dark curls made from silk tumbled across his painted forehead. His body was hard and strong and uncomfortably warm because it wasn’t a human body but an automaton after all, unimaginably lifelike, running on coal and clothed in military garb. I could see wisps of smoke, fine and faint, rising above his head like halos—​or horns.

  Where was the furnace? My admiration for such impressive work distracted me for a moment, which was more than enough time for the thing that wasn’t Fin to wrap its arm more tightly around my waist.

  I struggled to get free from its grasp again, but I could not. I felt the framework of its hands under the gloves, just a steel skeleton, not flesh and bone at all. I could have sworn I’d felt the pads of his fingers and his palm before, when I’d thought he was a real person, some clever impersonator Fitz had hired, wearing some brilliant disguise! How could I not have known?

  It was the ombrossus oil, of course; the Fey disguising potion that Mr. Candery had left me a tiny precious vial of. I’d used it only a few times, but I’d know its alluring deep, spicy scent anywhere. It had been prohibitively expensive even when it was legal, and since it had been banned with all other magic, very few Estingers would remember it—​and none of them would be close enough to catch its scent. Only recognizing ombrossus could break its spell.

  “What on earth!” I whispered, louder now, speaking not to the automaton but to Fitz, who I was certain could hear me. “Fitz, what do you—”

  “My fiancée is clearly distraught by the recent attempt on my life,” the automaton said. “Who could blame her? If a Fey assassin had threatened my darling Mechanica’s life, why . . .” The automaton trailed off, shaking its perfect head. “No punishment can be too harsh for these savages,” it went on. “I will speak with my father this evening, and we will announce our course of action as soon as possible. In the meantime, I beg of you, continue with the Exposition festivities. Let us show these monsters what civilization truly means.”

  The automaton made a respectful nod as the crowd burst into wild, adoring applause. Gray curtains swirled around the stage, cutting us off from public view.

  I had to act quickly and choose my move well. I grabbed both sides of the automaton’s head and pulled with all my strength. My hands started to blister where they touched its scalding-hot ears. Then, finally, with a horrid metallic whine, Fin’s face broke free from the mechanical prince’s smoking head. I stumbled backward with my prize.

  Once I recovered my balance and tucked the face inside my jacket, I began to look around for Fitz.

  He rushed forward from a shadowed corner, dropping a small metal mouthpiece as he did. He fretted over the faceless automaton, which was slumped against the podium like a corpse.

  “For the Lord’s sake, Miss Nick, there was no possible reason for you to do that,” Fitz snapped, speaking in his own voice now and cold as ice. “If you had any idea how long it has taken to craft this—​this—​why, I’d think an inventor such as yourself would respect another’s masterpiece! I mean, honestly—”

  “Masterpiece.” I had regained enough composure to match the ice in his voice. “That’s an apt description for this puppet, isn’t it? You’re its master, aren’
t you?”

  Fitz shot me a look that would have soured wine. “You always did lack imagination, Miss Nick. You who might have been Heiress.” He eyed me up and down slowly. “Of course, it may not be too late. You may keep the face if it pleases you—​and if you’ll have supper with me tonight. Clearly your involvement is inevitable now.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I have to return to the real Heir. The one who’s lying abed with a bullet wound that could well have been fatal.” A horrible idea began to blossom and twist across my mind. “Lord, that’s what this thing is for, isn’t it? So that you can use Fin even if he’s dead?”

  “Certainly not,” Fitz hissed, quickly stepping closer to me. “It’s entirely for his safety, as I explained to him just last night. And one paltry shoulder shot wouldn’t kill Fin, Nick, for the Lord’s sake.”

  The idea had grown into a whole sickening garden. “You know, Fitz, I wouldn’t put it past you to shoot him yourself to get the opportunity to use this little toy.” I was shaking all over with rage.

  Fitz pursed his lips, completely composed. It was obvious I hadn’t struck the nerve I’d aimed for. “Come to supper in my quarters tonight, Miss Nick, and I shall reveal all. Then you can decide if I am in fact the pantomime villain you’ve made me out to be.”

  I stormed away without replying. The automaton would need repairs before it could do any more damage, and I needed to get back to Fin.

  ✷

  “Well, are you going?” Caro asked.

  Fin frowned. “Don’t be absurd. Of course she is.”

  I glared at him. “I am doing no such thing,” I said. “To go into that . . . that villain’s lair—”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” said Caro. “People aren’t heroes or villains, all bad or all good, you know. I have to agree with Fin. You should go, Nick.”

  “You two are,” I said quietly.

  “We are what?”

  “All good.” I had felt as rigid as an automaton myself ever since the false Fin had pulled me up onto that stage. But now the iron rod through my spine started to soften, to turn into something as fragile and mutable as human bone, after all.