A Clockwork Fairytale (24 page)

She gave him a questioning look, but he shook his head and pointed at the curtain. They had run out of time. If she didn’t climb out soon, Vittorio would rip the curtain aside. Her chest tightened with frustration and sadness. Turk gripped her hands tightly and put his mouth close to her ear. “Do
not
marry him,” he breathed. “Promise me.” He pulled back and gazed at her, waiting for her reply.

“I promise,” she mouthed. How could he think she would marry Vittorio? “When will I see you again?”

“I’ll send a note.” He lifted her hands, closed his eyes, and pressed kisses to her knuckles.

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong, ma’am?” Vittorio asked, his tone now formal and curt.

Turk pressed back against the inside wall of the sedan chair. Melba grazed her fingertips across his cheek, her breath tight and achy. Then she pulled on her gloves and gathered her voluminous skirts in her arm before sliding the curtain open and closing it quickly as she scrambled out.

“Are you well, Melba? Your eyes are red.” Vittorio frowned at her as she smoothed down her hopelessly crumpled dress, while her heart thundered with a wild mix of emotions. He glanced at the sedan chair and then back to her. If he found Turk inside, he would arrest him, and maybe even have him tossed down The Well. She must make him believe nothing was wrong.

“I’m fine and dandy now I’ve had me rest.” She linked her arm through Vittorio’s and turned him to face the marketplace. “I ain’t never had a toffee apple bought for me,” she said, deciding that the time she’d thieved one didn’t count. “Can you get me one?”

He glanced back at the sedan chair again and Melba held her breath, praying Turk waited a few moments before making his escape. “Of course.” He gave her a perfunctory smile and beckoned a guard, giving instructions to purchase a toffee apple.

While Vittorio was talking, Melba glanced over her shoulder in time to see Turk slip out of the opposite side of the sedan chair. Her heart leaped as he paused beside the wall to smile at her. Unfortunately, Vittorio chose that moment to look around.

***

“Stop that man!” Vittorio shouted.

Turk risked a quick glance over his shoulder as he sprinted toward the canal. Vittorio was pointing at him and some of the Royal Guards were already hot on his heels. Turk darted between the knots of people, leaping handcarts, sacks, and boxes. Luckily, he had planned for a hasty retreat and had worn his suede skyways boots, which also made excellent running footwear.

Ahead of him, punts were still disgorging passengers onto the busy market quay. The waiting punts nearly spanned the width of the canal. Turk leaped from the quay and raced across the canal, using the crafts as stepping-stones. Punters cursed him, and ladies screamed, but his light tread and excellent balance meant he reached the far side of the waterway without missing his step or upsetting a craft.

When he gained dry land, he swiveled around to check his pursuers. The guardsmen who had tried to follow him were not so lucky. Splashing and swearing, three bluejackets floundered in the canal, their hats bobbing free like small boats. They had tipped over one of the punts and two ladies were thrashing around, their colorful dresses billowing in the water like huge jellyfish.

Melba stood on top of her sedan chair, waving her arms at him while Vittorio was striding toward the canal with a sword in his hand. “I’ll see you broken at the bottom of The Well for this,” he bellowed.

“You’ll have to catch me first!” Turk whooped and punched the air. His blood sang and his muscles tingled as though he could run all day and the guards would never catch him. Melba had forgiven him and life was good.

One of the guards who had fallen into the canal swam toward Turk and many others headed for the bridge across to the second circle to pursue him. It was time for him to disappear.

He raised his hand in farewell to Melba, then sprinted along the path beside the canal and cut between two palaces onto the service track behind them. He couldn’t return to Waterberry House, and the Royal Guards would doubtless try to cut him off from the monastery. He couldn’t risk leading them to the bunkhouse and involving Steptoe and the lads. That left him with only his bolt-hole in the third circle.

He headed straight into the second circle, darted behind a cobbler's, and vaulted onto a wall from a trash barrel. He leaped across an alley onto the roof of a florist’s shop and then dashed along a valley gutter between two rows of shops. The guard who had swum across the canal had followed him and managed to scramble up onto the skyways.

Turk sprinted down a steep roof and jumped over a yard filled with lines of pegged-out laundry. He landed on the brick-built façade of an importer’s office, caught his balance, then stood and darted along the narrow ledge. He leaped, grabbed a milliner’s sign, swung around, and flipped across to the shops on the other side of the street. People below paused to stare up, pointing and shouting as the Royal Guard tried to follow him. The guard chickened out of the jump and tried to halt on the steep roof, but his clodhoppers skidded. He tumbled into the yard with a cry, brought down the lines of laundry, and ended up headfirst in a milliner’s trash barrel.

A company of Royal Guards entered the street below Turk. They climbed onto boxes and barrels, and tried to find handholds on walls to gain access to the skyways. Turk paused with his arms akimbo, and grinned, thoroughly enjoying himself. He gave a mock salute to the crowd below, grateful he had used a glamour to hide his true appearance. Then he took off, sprinting along roofs, leaping streets, and even swinging on the occasional pole and sign to put distance between himself and Vittorio’s men.

He couldn’t enter the third circle dressed like a nob or he would attract attention. As he ran, he shrugged off his jacket and dropped it behind a chimney, hoping to retrieve it later. Then he untied his neck cloth, dragged it through the dirt in a gutter, and knotted it back around his neck. He ripped out his cufflinks, pocketed them, and turned up his cuffs. He rubbed soot into his forearms and over his shirtfront. His trousers were already ripped and dirty from his skylarking.

But as he shed his smart clothes and headed away from the Palace into the outer circles, his euphoria faded. Melba had forgiven him. But what had he really achieved except to anger Vittorio? Melba was a princess and he was a nobody, a trash tyke of unknown parentage. Even if he left the Shining Brotherhood, Melba and he had no future together. Even worse, Vittorio might take out his anger on Melba. By the time he dropped to the ground in the third circle and wandered out from behind a disused forge, his shoulders were slumped. Like a tiny boat set adrift on the vast uncharted ocean, he was at the mercy of powers far greater than he.

***

Vittorio sliced his sword through the air in frustration. The scoundrel who had been cozying up with Melba in the sedan chair was long gone and Vittorio doubted his guardsmen stood a hope of catching him. The man could be none other than Master Turk. It was clear which way the tide was running—the spymaster monk and the princess were conducting a liaison.

Who was this blasted monk called Turk? He had the lean rangy look of a young man not yet grown into his body and was agile as a cat. Vittorio cast his mind back to the younger boys who’d been in the seminary when he left the Shining Brotherhood. The man who’d just run away had nondescript brown hair, but he had likely used a glamour to mask himself. Vittorio remembered Dante’s description of Master Turk’s dark hair and eyes. Despite the warm sun, a chill passed through him. Could this young spymaster be the southern trash tyke whom Gregorio had pledged and treated like a son?

Vittorio kicked over a barrel and watched it roll into the canal. The filthy trash tyke had already taken the place in his father’s affections that should have belonged to him. Now he was stealing the princess. Vittorio would see Master Turk thrown down The Well before he let him steal his throne.

Sheathing his sword, he strode back to the market square. Melba still stood on the roof of her sedan chair grinning as though this were a game. No wonder she wasn’t receptive to
his
advances when her affections were engaged elsewhere. Didn’t the foolish girl understand that the throne and the future of Malverne Isle were at stake here? Vittorio’s temper boiled. He
would
make her his wife and ensure she never saw the blasted monk again.

“Come down from there now,” he snapped.

Melba’s eyes narrowed and she made no attempt to obey. He bit down on his fury. Much as it galled him, she held his future in her hands. “Please,” he added tightly.

She turned around, grabbed the edge of the roof, and, like a monkey on a barrel organ, scrambled down, flashing glimpses of her bare legs. Restraining his outrage, he reminded himself she was no ordinary princess. She’d lived the life of a petty criminal in the third circle until recently. She appeared naïve in some ways, but he wasn’t dealing with a sheltered young lady who knew nothing of life.

The small pink silk bag attached to her wrist sagged with an object it hadn’t contained earlier. “What have you got in there?” he demanded, pointing at the purse. “Show me.”

She hugged the pink silk to her. “No. It ain’t yours.”

Vittorio made a grab for her arm and she ducked and twisted out of his grasp. “Leave off. You ain’t having it,” she shouted. Vittorio glanced around at the shocked and curious faces of the crowd. By fighting with the princess in public, he was sailing dangerously close to the wind. He risked destroying his carefully cultivated reputation.

“It’s time for us to return to the Palace,” he said. He drew aside the curtain on her sedan chair and noticed a black top hat and cane on the floor as she jumped in and covered them with her skirt. Vittorio ground his teeth and yanked the curtain closed on Melba. Four members of the Royal Guard picked her up and trotted off toward the Palace.

Vittorio instructed two of his men to finish handing out the alms to the poor before he climbed into his own sedan chair. He would rather have walked off some of his anger, but the crowd had to see him behaving normally. He mentally linked with the Jinn he had bound to the machine and made it propel his sedan chair back to the Palace. As they crept up the hill, he slapped his hands on his knees restlessly.

By the time he arrived at the small private gate, Melba had already gone inside. A guard presented him with a note. He unfolded the paper, expecting a message from Melba, but the few lines were from Madam Cecile inviting him to an intimate dinner.

With a flash of disappointment, Vittorio balled up the note and tossed it away. He didn’t want to canoodle with Madam Cecile. Against all the odds, he found Princess Melbaline amusing and likeable as well as beautiful. He had started to hope that when they married it could be more than a convenient arrangement. Although she had reacted badly to his flirting on the ladder, he’d thought she was forming an attachment to him. Now he knew he was wasting his time by trying to win her favor in the traditional way.

She had left him no choice but to use unorthodox measures to win her cooperation. He headed through the corridors inhabited by the domestic staff. After checking that he wasn’t being observed, he descended the worn stone steps into the old part of the Palace. Unlocking a door, he retrieved his oil lamp, which this time hung where he had left it. A maintenance man or nosy servant had moved it a few weeks ago. After that incident, he had added another lock to the door of his laboratory.

When Vittorio entered his laboratory, he paused and pressed his sleeve to his nose, giving himself a moment to adjust to the smell. The two dogs he was experimenting on barked and whined but he ignored them. He went straight to the gold Earth Blessing he had recovered from Melba’s room after she had tossed it away. He had pocketed the sacred token on a whim. Now he was grateful for his quick thinking. He turned the five linked gold rings over in his hand, his lip curling with distaste. This was likely a gift from Master Turk. What a delicious irony that Vittorio would use the keepsake from her lover to poison her.

Gold and silver were excellent metals for absorbing and holding Jinns. According to the magical texts, the Stars in gold and silver could be summoned as powerful, intelligent Jinns known as the Golden Dragon and the Silver Serpent. Vittorio had read up extensively on summoning Jinns. But the precious metals that arrived on the merchant brigs from the south were always dead, their Stars already removed.

Vittorio didn’t want to seriously harm Melba; he just wanted to make her sick, and dependent on him. He lowered the gold Earth Blessing into a glass flask and stoppered the neck. Then he placed an apple into a glass container connected to the others by tubes. He lit a flame beneath a retort in the middle of the setup and summoned the Apple Jinn in its raw form as a small colorless twister that whirled in the glass vessel. He instructed the tiny spirit to pass along the tube and then sealed it into the heated retort. It spun faster, the transparent Jinn first clouding, then taking on a gray, smoky appearance. Apple Jinns were normally silent but the tiny spirit screamed in his mind as it burned.

When the twister was dark and tormented, Vittorio removed a clamp from a pipe and directed the Foul Jinn into the vessel containing the gold Earth Blessing. The tortured spirit sank into the metal, leaving a smoky residue on the surface. The noxious emanations that would seep out of the cursed gold should weaken and tire Melba without making her too sick.

But he didn’t want to risk the Foul Jinn itself escaping from the gold and entering her body. That would be a more serious contamination and difficult to cleanse. “Great Earth Jinn, birther of all life, bind this Apple Jinn to the gold.” Vittorio focused his attention on the gold Earth Blessing and inscribed a curse mark in the air over it with his fingertip. “With faith, trust, and truth, I thank you, Great Earth Jinn, for the gift of this Apple Jinn.”