Skylark (39 page)

I pleaded illness and barred myself in Tansy’s house while she and her parents were outside. While the others thought I was sleeping, I searched for the blue bottle from the night before. I passed the next hour opening bottles of cider and adding the thick syrup in the vial. I stopped them back up and stuffed them under the stove, near my pallet.

Dorian summoned me into his house at sunset, and for a few panicked moments I thought he might have guessed what I planned. Perhaps I ought to have protested more, kept fighting for Oren—perhaps my acquiescence gave me away? But he only asked me questions about every machine I could remember from my city, their uses and their weaknesses, whether magic could disable them. I had little to offer—most of the machines operated inside the Institute or outside the Wall, not among the citizens. I told him how I had disabled Nix with magic, but even that now was suspect, given Kris’s subterfuge and the fact that Nix was meant to travel with me and keep track of me.

Unable to bear too long in his company since he’d asked me to murder the incoming army of architects, I was inching for the door when he took a deep breath and let it out in a noisy sigh. “Lark, I want to see something.”

I froze by the door, waiting, knowing it would be something I didn’t want. I heard him moving around the house, opening boxes until he found the one he wanted. Then he took my hand, and I looked down as he dropped something small and cool into my palm.

It was a tiny crystal, an oblong diamond shape only a fraction of an inch long. I stared at it, familiarity nagging at the back of my mind.

“It belonged to your brother,” Dorian explained. “He always had it with him, fiddling with it. He called it a reminder. He left it behind when he moved on from this place.”

I turned it over between my fingertips and a spark shot down my arm, buzzing as it passed from my skin to the crystal. I nearly dropped it in surprise. Watching the magic flutter and pulse within the crystal, I suddenly remembered.

Nix’s heart
. When I’d all but destroyed Nix and it lay in pieces in front of me, only its heart kept beating—the little core of magic that kept its clockwork running.

Kris’s voice came back to me, as clear as if he were standing next to me speaking.

Your brother destroyed his pixie. . . .

Dorian watched me and the sparks of magic that kept leaping down my arm and through my fingers to the little crystal. “It’s never once lit up for me,” he said quietly. “You’re different. I don’t know what you are.”

I could feel the thing draining away the tiny reserves of power that I had left, the way Nix absorbed my magic to keep running. With an effort, I pulled back at it, watching the flow of power down my arm slow, and then finally, stop. Beads of sweat trickled down my temples as I stared at the fluttering, leaping spark in the heart of the crystal. I tugged harder, and a tiny glimmer of power came inching reluctantly back into my fingers.

My whole hand throbbed as I drained the crystal of its stolen energy, a painstaking, aching process. When I was finished, the crystal was lifeless again, a dead translucent object sitting in the palm of my hand.

When I looked up, Dorian was staring at me, his face unreadable. I started to offer him the crystal back, and he flinched, taking a step back. Just for an instant, I saw something like fear flash across his features.

“Keep it,” he whispered, swallowing. “Keep it.”

He didn’t want me to touch him. With a jolt, I realized he half-expected me to do to him what I’d just done with the crystal. I slid the pixie’s heart into my pocket, where it would nestle against the paper bird.

Dorian had recovered some of his composure and stood watching me, lips tight. I understood now what he’d sensed in me when he shook my hand. If that core of magic had been inside a living, moving pixie, it would’ve died the second I took its magic away. I tried to imagine the harvester I’d encountered my first day outside the Wall—it would have had a similar core inside it, somewhere.

I had the power to stop a machine’s heart. To stop any heart?

I thought Dorian might repeat what he’d asked of me that morning. I braced for it, and he watched me for a few moments, his gaze grim and fixed on mine. He didn’t need to ask me again—the words were already out there. I could see the desperation in his eyes. But in the end he only thanked me for my help and sent me back out to rejoin the others.

As the people of the village were finishing their evening meals in the barricaded square, Dorian came out to speak to them. I tried to close my ears to his speech, for I couldn’t quite bear it knowing what I was about to do, but he was the group’s leader for a reason. He was passionate and confident, so much so that by the time he finished speaking I almost believed that the folk in the Iron Wood could hold out the coming day.

“The scouts tell me they’ll be here in a day’s time,” said Dorian, palms flat against an iron railing. “So get some sleep. The scouts will be taking turns to keep watch—we’re safe for now, and soon we’re going to need all our strength.” His eyes found mine, where I watched him from the window of Tansy’s house. This time I met his gaze, and after a few moments he turned away.

I watched as the folk drifted back to their houses, most solemn but some confident enough to smile and joke. I thought of the harvester machine, its many hands and what damage they could do if reprogrammed to seek human prey. The memory of the delicate, needlelike fingers scrabbling over my ankle still made me shudder.

I had brought this upon them. It was my fault the machines were coming to capture each Renewable in the village, just as it was my fault Oren faced execution. I’d spent my life until now as a cog in one people’s machine—could I turn around and become the instrument of another?

If I couldn’t save the Iron Wood, at least I could save someone. Oren overcame more than I could know to come find me, and I had repaid that by allowing him to be captured by people who meant to kill him. They had done a lot for me here—but Oren had done more.

•  •  •

Tansy sat up with me that night, talking about the trivial little nothings of her life. She was as anxious as I, though for different reasons. She wasn’t much older than I, but had been trained as a fighter since she was a child—and still she was frightened. Her parents slept deeply out of necessity, but she sat with me in the corner by the stove talking in a low voice.

As much as I needed her to sleep and be silent, I could not quite bring myself to push her away. It had been a long time since I had had anything approaching a friend, particularly one who did not betray me or turn into a monster or run on magical clockwork. Despite my determination to remain as impassive and steadfast as Oren would, I let her continue far longer than I should have.

Past midnight, a barely audible tap at the door announced Tansy’s turn at the watch. She got to her feet, stooping long enough to seek my hand and give it a squeeze.

“We’ll be all right,” she whispered. “You’ll see.”

She and the scout at the door vanished. I listened for a time to the sounds of her parents sleeping, gathering my courage. Outside the window, Oren’s cage lay in shadow. Though he had reverted to his monstrous self by midmorning, he had been quiet all day, giving little reason to counteract Dorian’s order that he not be killed yet.

With no sun to mark the passage of time, I had no way of knowing what hour it was. I found myself missing the city’s sun disc.

I forced myself to turn away from the window, and retrieved the bottles of cider I’d prepared that day. They were hot from proximity to the stove. By the dim light of the coals in the stove, I wrapped the bottles in a towel to pour the cider into mugs, and placed each on a tray. Each clink of glass and ceramic made me flinch and glance over my shoulder at the dark shapes that were Tansy’s sleeping parents, but they never moved. I was shocked by how they took the looming attack in stride. Perhaps it was not the first time a newcomer had brought trouble to their doorstep.

I took a tiny sip from one of the mugs, enough to hold the liquid on my tongue. I spat the mouthful out and prayed the blue liquid was sufficiently concealed—and that it was enough.

I stood before the door, tray of mugs in hand, the cold metal of Oren’s blade warming to my skin where I’d tucked it in my pants. I took deep breaths, willing the pounding of my heart to slow. No one would accept a mug of cider from someone whose hands were shaking badly enough to rattle the ceramic against the tray.

When I could lift my head without my vision swimming, I lifted the latch of the door and slipped out. As he had been the previous night, the nearest scout was leaning up against the corner of a nearby house, overlooking the square. From what I could see there were fewer of them on guard tonight—Oren’s stillness throughout the day had lulled them, perhaps. Or, more likely, they simply needed more eyes on watch between here and the coming forces from the city.

“Good evening,” I whispered, a few paces back from his elbow. It was the same one as the night before—the one to whom Tomas had handed the key.

He looked around until he saw me. “Don’t worry,” he said, no doubt mistaking the wideness of my eyes and the quickness of my breath. “We’ll have plenty of warning before anything gets this far.”

What harm was it to let him believe it was the coming attack I feared? I swallowed audibly and nodded, trying to summon something of relief. “I couldn’t sleep,” I said, launching myself into the few words I’d rehearsed for this moment. “I feel so awful about everything.”

The scout smiled, teeth flashing briefly. “Don’t worry,” he said again. “No one faults you. Dorian’s made it clear you’re not to blame.”

Nothing could be farther from the truth, but I smiled in return, and if the smile was a little strained and nervous, well, so was his. “Still, I wanted to do
something
. I know it isn’t much,” I quavered, “but I heated up some cider. It’ll at least keep you warm while you’re on watch.”

Was that suspicion in his eyes? The eagerness with which he reached for a mug, though, proved it to be hopeful anticipation. He gave it a sniff and sighed. “Thanks, Lark.” In the city, everyone had known my name, too, even those whose faces I barely recognized. I didn’t fit here either. “You going to take this round to the other guys?”

I nodded. “If you think they’d want some,” I said. “Is it warm enough?” No point in spreading it around if they’d detect the bitterness and spit out the first mouthfuls they took.

He took a cautious sip, and then a second, longer one. “Yep. Thanks.”

I left him cradling the mug in both hands below his face, the steam curling up around his chin. By the time I’d visited each scout around the square I had lost any fear that they would detect the drug I’d added to it. I felt eyes on me as I made my way around the square, and knew without looking that the creature in the cage was tracking each movement I made with the patient, hungry diligence of a hunter.

As I brought the tray and leftover mugs back into the house, the guard I’d spoken to first was already nodding. His head drooped low on his chest, and he was sagging where he was propped up against the corner. I carefully took the mug dangling from his fingertips, retrieving it before he could drop it.

“Thanks, Lark,” he mumbled, and then he slid down the side of the house. A sudden stab of fear coursed through me— had I put in too much? How dangerous was this drug?

I leaned the tray up against Tansy’s house and hurried back to the scout. As I started to feel for his wrist he began to snore. I startled back, relief as palpable as the cold pervading the square.

All around the square I could see that the other scouts were in similar states. I stooped and quickly began going through the guard’s pockets, trying to keep my fingers as light as possible. His snoring continued unabated, a gentle rumble that assured me he wouldn’t wake. It wasn’t until I realized I was checking the same pockets all over again that a stab of fear coursed through me. The key wasn’t there.

I gazed across the square, toward the iron cage.
You can’t magic iron
, I thought. I had failed him. I fought to keep my eyes dry and my throat clear. At least I would not let him see me cry.

With my ears tuned for the slightest sound of someone else coming, I crept out into the dappled moonlight and toward Oren’s cage.

Chapter 29