A Clockwork Fairytale (15 page)

Why was she on his bed? Why was she even in his room? How would he ever be able to sleep here again without thinking of her? He should leave now. Never mention that he’d seen her here. He didn’t move. Sensible thoughts fluttered out of his grasp like naughty Flower Jinns.

The scent of roses filled his nose while the music of the sacred bells filled his ears as if the two parts of his world vied for his attention. Gregorio had taught him that women were a temptation of the flesh that tarnished the spirit. But Melba’s shining Earth Star filled him with light and happiness and made his spirit sing. How could she ever tarnish him?

She stirred and her eyelids opened. “Turk, I don’t want to go away. I want to stay with you,” she said sleepily. She reached her arm across the coverlet toward him. He fell to his knees beside the bed and pressed his lips to the back of her hand. With a rustle of silk on silk, she moved closer, curled her fingers around his neck, and stroked his hair. “I’ve been longing to touch your secret curls,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, sensing the shining light of the Star in her heart. He didn’t intend to break his vows. He only wanted to be near her. Yet that simple wish was impossible. Melba’s destiny did not include him. One day she would be queen and she would marry a prince from the mainland. But it was difficult to give her up when she had become so very precious to him.

With a trembling breath, he set her hand down on the coverlet and sat back on his heels. “You belong in the Royal Palace, Melba.”

She sat up on the bed and hugged her knees, the tiny butterflies dancing around her golden head like a rainbow halo. “I don’t want to be a spy if it means I have to leave you.”

“Oh, Melba.”
Why has the Great Earth Jinn chosen to test me so harshly?
Turk pressed his forehead on the edge of the bed in an attitude of prayer.

“I
will
spy sometimes if you want me to,” she said in a pleading voice. “Just don’t make me go away.”

Every word spiked through his heart. He forced up his head and met her watery blue gaze. “You’re the king’s lost daughter, Melba. The princess everyone’s been looking for these fourteen years past. Your destiny lies in the Royal Palace.”

She blinked at him. “I ain’t no princess.”

“You are. The royal Ferilli family has six toes on each foot.”

Melba looked down at her bare feet and curled her toes under. “Cut off me extra toes, then nobody will find out.”

“It’s too late for that. People know you’re here.”

“No. You’ve gone and told on me!” she shouted.

She made it sound as though he’d turned her in for a crime. “You’ll have a life of privilege, Melba.” He reached for her hand. “Everything you ever wanted. You’ll marry a prince and become queen.”

“I don’t want no prince. I want you!”

She pushed away his attempt at comfort and wriggled off the opposite side of the bed. With a reproachful look, she dashed out of the door.

Turk pressed his face into the bed, wishing he could go to sleep and wake to discover this had all been a dream.

Chapter Eleven

If you take yourself too seriously other people will think you are a joke
.

—Dante, the Trash King

Vittorio leaned back against the cushions in the punt, enjoying the evening atmosphere. An oil lamp at the front of the craft gilded the ripples of the wake. Soft strains of music and murmured voices drifted across the water from a lamp-lit balcony overlooking the canal. Opposite him, Madam Cecile gazed seductively from beneath the scarlet lace trimming the tiny fascinator set on the side of her head, while her plump gold-dusted bosom promised pleasure after their trip to the theatre.

Someone darted through the shadows on the bank to the right, catching his eye. He turned his head in time to see a missile arc through the air to land with a thud in the footwell by his boots.

Madam Cecile squeaked and recoiled, making the punt rock. Vittorio stared at the murk between the palaces, trying to see who had thrown the missile, but the culprit had fled. He turned and snatched up the object as his companion was about to do the same thing. “Let me, Madam.”

It was naught but a beach pebble wrapped in paper. Vittorio unfolded the note and flattened it over his knee before angling the surface toward the lamp.

An Earth Blessing had been inscribed by pen, the five interlocking circles adapted to resemble eyes, chubby cheeks, and a mouth with the tongue protruding. Dante! Only his irreverent half brother defaced the Earth Blessing in such a way. What did the blighter want? Vittorio drew in a frustrated breath. Why couldn’t his brother write a coherent note like a normal person? He drummed his fingers on the edge of the punt.

If only he didn’t need Dante to make the tiny mechanoids he used to gain favor at court, he would send him away to the mainland. Dante’s moralistic stance on the use of Foul Magic worried him. Dante knew all his secrets and that was dangerous. Vittorio could not risk ignoring the note.

“What is it?” Madam Cecile asked.

“An urgent correspondence, Madam. I’m afraid I’ll have to return to the Palace.” She gave him an odd look, but she had little influence, so her opinion didn’t matter. “Go back,” Vittorio instructed the punter. The man raised his pole, trod lightly to the other end of the craft, and resumed poling in the opposite direction.

Madam Cecile huffed and tapped her folded fan on the side of the punt in irritation. When the craft arrived at the small dock, she started to rise with Vittorio. “Take Madam Cecile home, man,” he instructed the punter and tossed some coins at him.

“Vittorio,” the woman whined. But he ignored her, jumped out, and strode toward the small external lift that gave access to the Palace from the private dock. The two burly men who turned the crank to raise the lift jumped up when he approached. One of them slid open the door and he stepped into the wooden cubicle. Once the door was closed, the men started turning the handles that operated the complex system of cogs, chains, and pulleys.

As the lift was winched up the outside of the castle, the city spread out before him. The density and brightness of the points of light revealed the affluence of each of the three circles, even though the buildings were hidden by darkness. At the highest point, the glowing silk envelopes of the southern airships tethered in the harbor became visible like bulbous ghosts against the dark mass of the sea. He pulled the brass aeronaut’s goggles off his head and angrily stuffed them into his jacket pocket. He knew some at court laughed behind his back at his aspirations to fly, but when he was king he would show them. He would force the blasted southerners to sell him one of their flying ships, even if it cost him a fortune.

With a last glance over the city that would soon be his domain, Vittorio stepped out at the top and strode along the halls to his private apartment. He shed his dress uniform, strapped a dagger to his wrist, and donned a tatty bluejacket’s uniform. With the addition of a glamour to mask his appearance, his disguise would be complete.

Once he was changed, he used the servants’ route to return to ground level without being seen. From there, he descended the damp stone steps into the bowels of the Palace. When he reached the old cellars, he looked both ways, then fished a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. Checking both ways once more, he slipped through and lit the oil lamp he took from the wall before locking the door behind him.

Water trickled down the walls and a few drips plopped on his hat as he followed the passage past the dark doorways of rooms full of furniture long ago abandoned and forgotten. At the end of the passage beside an old stairway he had bricked up for security, he unlocked another door and entered his laboratory and workshop.

The fetid stink of rotting fruit, Foul Jinns, and dead animals hit him. He pressed his sleeve to his nose as he walked across the room. A crate of fresh apples sat on a scrubbed wooden table against the wall. The Earth Stars inside apples were small but served his purpose admirably. Apple Jinns were easy to raise and adapt into a glamour that lasted for up to a day. He ran his fingers across the produce, sensing the strength of the Stars in them, and selected a healthy fruit.

He had no idea why Dante had contacted him, but much as it irritated him, he depended on his brother to make the metal doodads he used, so he could not ignore him. Vittorio might be skilled at Earth Magic, but he did not have the time or patience to spend hours hunched over a magnifying eyeglass fashioning tiny mechanical insects.

He turned to survey the arrangement of glass vessels and tubes set on a table in the center of the room where he made his Foul Jinns. A low flame burned beneath a glass retort, reducing the liquid dripping in from another vessel connected by a tube.

The problem with Foul Jinns was that they faded after a few days like normal Jinns, but unlike normal Jinns, they could not be raised quickly. So Vittorio had devised a method to keep a continuous supply of the entities on hand. He extracted the Stars from fruit and vegetables, then tortured them with fire or acid to produce the Foul Jinn before concentrating the essence of the entity into a form that could be stored and transported.

He fetched a tin beetle-shaped doodad from a shelf and unclipped the removable carapace, exposing the small compartment inside. After removing the stopper from a container, he used a glass scraper to extract a dollop of the hot, tarry substance of the reduced Jinn, then dropped it into the beetle. He used the tip of a knife to scratch a curse mark on the inside of the beetle’s cover, then snapped it back into place, saying, “Great Earth Jinn, birther of all life, thank you for your offering.” The Foul Jinn would be trapped inside the metal insect until he activated it, and set it to attack someone.

He still followed the devotions he’d learned in the Shining Brotherhood, even though his father Gregorio had told him he was beyond redemption when he’d thrown him out of the order. Things might have been different if his father had accepted his pledge when his mother sent him to the seminary. Instead, he paired him up with a useless old monk who was afraid of his own shadow. Then as a final insult, his father accepted the pledge of a filthy foreign trash tyke. At that point, Vittorio gave up all hope of winning the man’s favor and left to find his fortune in the Royal Fleet.

He put the beetle in a small box and placed it on the bench beside the apple. Cupping the fruit in his hand, he summoned the Apple Jinn with a whisper of thought. He instructed it to form a thin hazy layer around him to mask his appearance.

When he picked up the tin box, the Foul Jinn inside had already cooled enough to form tiny beads of condensation on the metal. In a short while, they would freeze into droplets of ice. Vittorio dropped it in his pocket and headed back to the main Palace, carefully locking the doors behind him. It was unlikely that anyone who stumbled upon his laboratory would recognize the purpose of his equipment, but people talked. He didn’t want someone to hear of his experiments and guess he was responsible for the king’s sickness.

Vittorio headed out through the back entrance of the Palace into Sugar Street Market and crossed the bridge used by the merchants and servants to reach the second circle. He strode confidently into the third circle, keen to convey the impression he belonged there. He didn’t want to attract the attention of ruffians waiting to prey on the foreign sailors and foolish gentlefolk who strayed this way in the dark.

He left the city on the trash track heading toward South Spit Marshes. Stumbling along the rutted muddy road in the dark, he cursed. He hadn’t thought to bring a lantern, and the half-slice moon gave barely enough light to see his way. Water leaked into his boots as he wandered off the track and sank in the marshy ground. If Dante didn’t have a good reason for calling him at this time of night, Vittorio was going to be furious.

His breath hissed out with relief as he neared the lights of Dante’s barge. Before he cut across the shingle to the water’s edge, he stopped to take stock of the surroundings. Pebbles jangled together as the sea swished in and out. Figures lurked in the shadows, and the waste heaped in the barges rustled eerily as though full of burrowing rats. “Dante,” he shouted.

His half brother appeared from beneath the ragged canopy over his chair and wandered to the edge of the barge. “Well, well. I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

“You could have given me some indication of how urgent the matter is that you wish to discuss,” Vittorio replied.

“Who says there is a ‘matter I wish to discuss’?”

“There had
better
be, Dante. Coming out here tonight has greatly inconvenienced me. Why can’t you just send a letter?”

“And miss the chance of a visit from my favorite brother.”

Vittorio put his foot on the bottom of the steps and Dante raised a hand. “No Foul Jinns on board,” he said, his playful tone gone. “Leave your abomination down there.”

“Great Earth Jinn, Dante, I’m not going to activate it here. I brought it for protection in the outer circles.” Vittorio snatched the small icy tin containing the beetle out of his pocket and brandished it as if to show how insignificant it was.

“I’ve told you not to use my mechanoids for Foul Jinns,” Dante said, his voice hardening.

Vittorio suppressed an irritated sigh and left the beetle’s box on top of a wooden mooring post. He would have to tread carefully. He couldn’t afford to alienate Dante altogether. His brother’s skills were too valuable.