“Yes,” Charlotte added. “Thank you, Grave.”
Grave smiled at her, seemingly satisfied by this exchange, which only perplexed Charlotte further.
“You’ll have your chance to go above deck now,” Charlotte told him. “Lachance wants to see us in his cabin.”
Meg lifted an eyebrow. “Do you have any idea of what he’ll say?”
Charlotte tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a nervous hiccup. “Anything he says that doesn’t involve throwing us off the ship will be good news to me.”
“Mmmm.” Meg pursed her lips. “It’s that kind of meeting.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Jack piped up. “At least he’s in love with Linnet, so he probably won’t do anything that terrible to us.”
Charlotte cast a sidelong glance at him.
“What?” He spread his hands, showing his innocence. “That’s a good thing.”
“I hope you’re right,” Meg said to Jack.
3.
LACHANCE LEANED BACK in his chair, his feet resting on the massive desk in his quarters. He surveyed their small party, his face giving nothing of his mood away.
“An explanation,” he said. His gaze rested on Linnet, but Charlotte stepped forward to address the pirate.
“I’m sorry that taking us on as passengers put you and your ship in such terrible danger. I hope you’ll believe me when I assure you that the attack on the Perseus came as a surprise. We believed our escape route to be secret.”
“But when the Empire has knowledge of your whereabouts, an attack wouldn’t be surprising?” Lachance asked. He looked at Linnet. “It’s unlike you to play at politics, ma sirène.”
“Far more than politics is at work here, Lachance,” Linnet replied.
“We have something the Empire wants,” Charlotte told him.
Lachance scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “And yet you were within the heart of the Resistance. It could be said that the City of Masks is the safest place for someone hunted by the Empire.”
“What we’re protecting,” Charlotte said carefully, “is something that doesn’t belong to the Empire. But neither does it belong with the Resistance.”
Sang d’Acier’s eyes narrowed. “And what is it that needs such safekeeping?”
Charlotte balked at the question. She didn’t think it wise to lie to the captain, but she was equally reluctant to reveal too much of their story.
“It’s me.” Apparently Grave didn’t share Charlotte’s misgivings. He came to stand next to Charlotte.
“You?” Lachance stood up, rounding his desk to take a closer look at Grave. After eyeing the boy for a few moments, Lachance appeared unimpressed. “Why?”
“I’m not like other people,” Grave answered plainly. “The Empire and the Resistance want to know how I am and why I am.”
“How you are and why you are?” Lachance looked to Charlotte. “Does he always speak this way?”
Charlotte nodded.
“And the Order of Arachne wants to kill me,” Grave added.
“What?!” Lachance glared at Linnet.
Then Grave was addressing Charlotte instead of the pirate. “I understand now that I’m the one who is putting you in danger. I don’t want that.”
“It’s not your fault, Grave,” Charlotte said.
“But if I left, you would be safe, wouldn’t you?” Grave asked.
“That would be a simple solution,” Lachance quipped. “Perhaps there is a reward for turning him in?”
“Be quiet.” Linnet’s voice had the snap of a whip.
Charlotte considered Grave’s words, uncomfortable with the weight of their implication. His eyes were on her, their strange amber tone holding her attention. Within his gaze she saw something she didn’t understand. A depth of feeling. A promise. Not love—at least not of the romantic sort—but a profound truth.
Grave spoke again. “I will leave if it will protect you.”
With a shake of her head, Charlotte told him, “I don’t want you to leave for my sake. Truthfully, Grave, I don’t think we’d be safe even without you. The Empire knows we’re part of the Resistance, and the Resistance believes we’ve betrayed them.”
“Haven’t we?” Jack asked quietly.
Charlotte wasn’t ready to answer that question. Her mother’s plan to use Grave as a tool of war had prompted Charlotte to flee the city, but Charlotte didn’t know that her choice constituted a complete betrayal of the Resistance. She still believed that the Empire should fall. She wanted to fight for that cause, just not the way Coe and her mother envisioned that fight.
Linnet went to the pirate captain’s side. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Grave, but later. Right now I need to know if you can—no, if you’re willing—to keep us safe.”
“Safe from the Empire, the Resistance, and the Order of Arachne?” Lachance laughed. “Is that all?”
“At least take us to a haven,” Linnet pressed. “Then be on your way and rid of us for good.”
Lachance looked at Linnet, a sadness creeping over his features. “I would give you anything you ask, ma sirène, but you must understand. I have to consider my men. Their safety.”
Meg scoffed at him, entering the fray. “Aren’t they pirates? Every day in that life is risk. You’re Sang d’Acier—already a wanted man.”
“Living as a wanted man is easy,” Lachance told her. “Being a hunted man is another thing entirely.”
“It’s not you they’re hunting,” Meg said.
“It is now.” The captain went back to his chair. “The Perseus will be a target. I have no choice but to hide my ship and disperse my men until we are no longer considered desirable prey.”
Charlotte said quickly, “Then for now we need the same thing. To be hidden.”
“We’ll find a safe haven,” Lachance replied. “But the larger problem remains. You’ve said you could not have anticipated the Empire’s attack, non?”
“Of course not,” Charlotte said. “We would have warned you.”
“Then someone else made it known to the Imperial Navy that you’d be fleeing New Orleans by sea.” Lachance smoothed the corners of a map on his desk.
Linnet cursed under her breath.
“I am quite surprised this truth eluded you,” Lachance said to Linnet.
“I was careful,” Linnet snapped. “You know I’m always careful.”
Lachance sat back, folding his arms across his chest. “I have no doubt. That makes the question all the more troubling: who revealed your secret? And why?”
Unbidden, a chill spread over Charlotte’s skin. “Obviously some agent of the Empire.”
“Perhaps,” Lachance replied. “No. My apologies, mademoiselle. Undoubtedly, the Empire is at work here, but that answer alone is too simple.”
“He’s right.” Linnet paced in front of the desk. “I hate that he’s right, but he is. There’s no lack of Imperial spies in New Orleans, but Ott knows who they are. Whoever tracked us has managed to evade Lord Ott’s detection, and that’s no mean feat.”
“Someone new, then?” Jack asked.
“Possibly . . .” Linnet went quiet for a moment, then said, “But a new face in certain circles often draws the most attention.”
The cabin grew tense with a silence that Meg at last broke. “What about an old face?” she said. “A face so familiar no one would dare suspect treachery.”
“Who?” Charlotte asked.
Meg glanced at Charlotte but spoke to Linnet. “Have you ever questioned Ott’s loyalties? If anyone is in the position to operate as a double agent, it’s him.”
“No.” Linnet stabbed an accusing finger at Meg. “I won’t argue that Ott’s greatest allegiance is to profit, not the Resistance, but he is not working for the Empire.”
“How can you
be sure?” Meg asked.
Lachance rose from his chair and walked to Linnet’s side. He slid his arm around her waist, and it surprised Charlotte when Linnet didn’t push him away.
“Happily, I can affirm the truth ma belle speaks,” Lachance told Meg. “I claim no great wisdom when it comes to the power of the Empire and those who fight against it. But I do know well the world of shadows that chases beneath these Goliaths. Ott is trusted by pirates, swindlers, speculators, and bandits. This lot will not truck with spies, at least not the official sort of which we now speak. Ott is one of us.”
By us, Charlotte understood Lachance to mean himself and Linnet. The rest of them he counted among the Resistance, and that was fair enough. But it left Charlotte wondering where she wanted to be counted. To which world would it be best to belong? And did Linnet consider herself allegiant to the underworld Lachance described? Linnet had crossed Ott in order to give aid to Charlotte, but in doing so, Linnet had also crossed the Resistance. What did that mean? Did that make her a treacherous employee, but a loyal friend? Did it matter? Where should one’s loyalty lie?
“I hope you’re right,” Meg said to Lachance. “But the question remains. If not Lord Ott, then who? Who is this double agent?”
Meg cast her gaze about, searching each face in the room. But no one had an answer.
4.
BIRCH STARED AT his workbench, searching for an explanation for his current conundrum. Or rather, conundrums. He’d hoped to resolve the first problem through work. Fixing his mind upon the intricacies of metal, combustibles, gears, and wheels had always served to untangle whatever other mental knots plagued his mind. Once his hands became occupied and his brain focused on the building or dismantling of this or that device, Birch found that some secret part of his consciousness was independently able to work out other troubling issues—sometimes resolving questions or worries he hadn’t even realized were straining him.
This particular day, however, Birch had no trouble identifying the source of his consternation. Charlotte was gone, and Grave gone with her. Jack was also missing, though it was unclear whether he’d conspired with Charlotte and they’d departed New Orleans together, or if Charlotte had fled the city, and Jack—being Jack—was chasing after her. The futility of such an action on Jack’s part was up for debate. In Birch’s estimation, Jack didn’t believe in futility.
Whenever Birch sought answers or explanations, he received only silence or evasion.
Ash’s mood had been stormy since his sister disappeared, though Birch suspected that Ash’s discontent had as much to do with Meg’s miraculous arrival and just as sudden departure as with Charlotte. Birch had hoped that since they’d been reunited in New Orleans, Ash would resume his leadership role. Displaced from the Catacombs, their little group was at loose ends. Yes, they were safe and among allies, but the Daedalus Tower and the Resistance itself presented a strange new environment. Ash had been in the city longer than any of the rest of them. He had the ability to provide guidance, reassurance. Instead, he’d melted into the walls—meeting with his mother, Coe, and other high-ranking figures of the Resistance. That left Birch, Pip, and Scoff to find their own way.
At least Birch had the workshop.
He sighed. Pip, who sat on the stool alongside his, sighed as well. The little sound tugged a smile onto Birch’s lips for the first time that day. Pip, after officially declaring herself his apprentice now that they had a proper workshop in which he could teach her, had taken to imitating his every move. And apparently his every gesture and sound as well.
Pip had been a buoy for Birch’s spirit in recent days. She remained cheerful and earnest, despite it being obvious that Charlotte’s departure had left the young girl as confused and sad as anyone else. Whatever project Birch elected to work on, Pip threw herself into the role of his assistant with enthusiasm. She had a natural affinity for the machinery, and Birch was impressed by the speed with which she learned and her ability to solve complex mechanical problems. Pip often spotted potential crises before they manifested.
She’ll be a fine tinker, Birch thought. Much less likely to blow things up than I am.
Birch had never been reluctant to admit that particular shortcoming of his.
“Hello, hello!” Aunt Io bustled up to Birch’s assigned worktable. “What wondrous mechanisms are we creating today?”
Pip spun around on her stool and beamed at Aunt Io. “Good morning!”
“Good morning to you, Pip,” Aunt Io said.
“We haven’t gotten much of a start,” Birch said as Aunt Io leaned down to give him a peck on the cheek.
“But I’m sure we’ll think of something,” Pip said.
Io’s cascade of blue hair shimmered when she nodded. “Very good. Very good. There are numerous mundane tasks I could set you to: weapons building and repair, transport maintenance, this and that. But young minds should be encouraged to innovate, I say. I’ll keep the taskmasters off you as much as I can.”
“Thank you, Aunt Io.” Birch was as grateful to have Aunt Io back in his life as he was for Pip’s dogged loyalty. The world of late, which had always been dangerous and unpredictable, had tilted violently toward confusion and chaos. These two women, one very old and one quite young, kept him from feeling that he would fall right off the rapidly approaching edge of the universe into oblivion. Birch knew these were rather grand and stark terms in which to consider one’s existence. But as a tinker, he could envision no way of summing up his life: order and disorder, creation and destruction.
Life in the Catacombs had been about creating and protecting. He’d crafted gadgets and machines to keep his fellow exiles safe and secure (though admittedly many of the devices, when operated, had a primary objective of blowing things up—ergo, destruction). Even though the Catacombs were so named, Birch had always thought of the hideout as a cocoon. Mysterious layers that shielded children of the Resistance until they’d grown enough to burst forth into the world, ready to fight for freedom that had been denied to the generations before. When those of age left the Catacombs, others would arrive to be cocooned in safety. The cycle repeated again and again.
Only now the Catacombs were rubble. Its secret corridors and honeycombed walls had been blown apart, never to stand again. And that had been Birch’s doing.
Pip alone knew how heavy the decision to destroy the Catacombs weighed on Birch. In daily conversations as they worked side by side, he’d confessed to her that nightmares often jarred him from sleep. Dark dreams in which he overloaded the engines powering the Catacombs, but without enough time to allow for escape. The walls fell around him, on top of him, crushing him for the treachery of sabotaging the haven he’d called home.
The strains of their flight into the wilderness in search of a new haven—New Orleans, hub of the Resistance—had distracted him from too much pondering of his choices at first. And the oddness of new surroundings had held Birch’s attention for a bit longer. Now, though, that Charlotte, Grave, Meg, and Jack had escaped again for reasons that eluded Birch and now that he’d fallen into a routine of sleep, meals, and work in the Daedalus Tower, he could feel doubts hovering over his shoulder, poking at him, demanding answers and explanations.
Most exasperating of all the questions: why had he been left behind?
Birch couldn’t help but worry that he’d failed Charlotte in some way in the course of the overland journey to this new city. Had his annihilation of the Catacombs signaled to her that he was too impulsive to trust? Were his inventions lacking in originality and purpose?
He sighed again.
This time Pip didn’t echo, mesmerized as she was by the flurry of Aunt Io’s hands gathering and discarding parts.
“Now, what have we here?” Io held up a whirligig crafted of brass and copper. “Surely we can compose something quite interesting if we begin with this.”
She flicked one of the blades of the whi
rligig, making it spin wildly. Aunt Io held up the spinning object. “Oh, I could just watch this all day. Couldn’t you?”
Pip nodded enthusiastically.
Catching the girl’s affirmation in her peripheral vision, Io continued, “But a tinker’s place is not to watch nor to observe. We are Makers of Things. We are Inventors of Ideas and Masters of Their Execution.”
Pip nodded with so much force Birch worried she might tip forward off her stool.
Aunt Io lightly closed her fingers around the whirling bits of metal.
“What purpose could this serve other than to entertain our eyes?” Io asked. “Not just this object as it is, but we must always consider what it could be.”
Now that the whirligig was still, its blurred parts could be examined as separate pieces, components of the whole. Birch’s mind began to rearrange those pieces, reassembling them, attaching them to other parts, detaching them. His melancholy had all but vanished, and his hands twitched with eagerness to snatch up tools and get to work. Pip’s eyes lit with curiosity as she grinned at Birch’s aunt.
Aunt Io set the whirligig on the bench and clapped her hands with pleasure. “Excellent, excellent! I see that hunger in your eyes. This is where Greatness begins.”
“Ahem.”
Their mechanical communing disrupted, Birch, Pip, and Io turned their backs on the workbench.
Coe, dressed smartly in the navy and red uniform of a Resistance officer, offered Aunt Io a short, crisp bow. “Pardon the interruption, madam. I’m afraid I have need of your nephew.”
Io clucked her tongue. “More Resistance business, I suppose. Ah well, what the leadership deems important I must defer to. Away with you, Birch. I’ll focus my teaching on your wee apprentice today.”
“Really?” Pip grinned, making it clear she’d expected Io would depart if Birch was no longer in the workshop.
“Of course, my dear!” Io tugged one of Pip’s green pigtails. “We women must band together whenever men start huffing about their important business. That’s usually when they get themselves into trouble and we have to save them.”