Take Back the Skies (28 page)

‘Stop arguing, both of you!' James cut in desperately, standing beside Cat. He reached out to grab her hand, but she yanked her arm away, sending him stumbling into his surprised mother.

‘This is none of your business!' Fox roared. ‘So stay out of it! Gods, I don't need to deal with this right now.' He turned on his heel, storming off into James's bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Cat felt as if she was a puppet with her strings cut, falling back on to the sofa limply.

‘Well, that's just made everything ten times worse,' she muttered into her hands. ‘You two need to pack. We're evacuating as soon as we've got something to show Nathaniel is in charge,' she told them. ‘Pack only what you need – we can't be weighed down. I … I'm going to go talk to Fox.'

She stood, and Mary briefly laid a hand on her arm, urging James to follow her into her bedroom. Cat took a deep breath, steeling her nerves, and strode across to James's bedroom.

Not bothering to knock, Cat slipped inside and shut the door softly behind her. Fox was sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of the bed.

‘I'm sorry,' she began somewhat awkwardly. ‘I shouldn't have run off, I know that. I was just … upset. I know I'd be just as angry if it had been you, so I'm sorry.'

‘Is that it?' he asked flatly, making her flinch.

‘No.' She took a deep breath, trying to calm her emotions. She'd done enough crying today. ‘I'm sorry I argued so much about my father. But … you have to understand where I was coming from. I hate him, but he's my father, and no one wants to think their father capable of something so … so inhumane.' She shuddered, Andrew's pain-filled blue-green eyes drifting through her mind. Her father had been responsible for that. ‘I was just so angry, but I … I don't want to fight with you any more, Fox,' she told him earnestly, eyes wide in apology. ‘I can't stand having you angry with me.'

Fox was silent for a long moment, and Cat was about to leave when he held out an arm expectantly. She stared at him, uncertain of what to do. He rolled his eyes, curling his
fingers in a beckoning gesture. Hesitantly, she moved closer, dropping to the floor beside him. When he didn't lash out at her, she scooted under his arm, allowing him to pull her into a half-hug by his side.

‘I forgive you,' he said softly. ‘It can't have been easy for you to find out something like that. And I'm sorry for all the horrible things I said earlier,' he added. ‘I think we've both said things today that we regret.'

Cat nodded.

‘Yeah, we have,' she agreed quietly. Suddenly, a small grin flickered across her face, and she rested her hand on his knee just above where his trouser leg tucked into his boot, her middle and index finger outstretched. ‘Start over?'

He smiled slightly, crossing his index and middle finger over hers, curling them around each other. She hadn't done that since she was a young child; the instant forgiveness technique often used in the school playground. As soon as fingers were linked, the argument was forgotten.

‘Start over,' he promised, before releasing her fingers. Her hand stayed on his outstretched knee, though, and his hand rested over it.

‘I feel a bit of an idiot,' he mused, and she raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘I can't believe I didn't connect the dots sooner, when I first met you. I'd seen him on newscasts … you have that same sort of look about your face. I suppose your false gender threw me off – I knew Hunter didn't have a son.'

‘He did raise me,' she pointed out. ‘He hated that he didn't have a son, and brought me up as both son and daughter. It backfired on him though – by learning to be
the perfect son I became far more opinionated than any well-behaved lady of society.'

Fox laughed quietly.

‘Isn't that the truth?' he agreed. ‘So where did you go when you ran off?'

Cat shrugged, letting her head drop to lean against his shoulder.

‘I don't really know – I wasn't paying attention to where I was going,' she admitted. ‘I … I met a boy, though.' She didn't need to look to know Fox was gazing inquisitively at her. ‘His name was Andrew. He … he's been here for two years already, and they've taken both his legs. He said he was getting an arm today.'

Fox let out a long breath. Cat squeezed his knee gently.

‘He was so brave. He could barely talk, but he still told me about himself. I told him that we were going to stop it, and he just asked me to tell his mother he's sorry. He said he always knew he would die here, and … he didn't seem to mind that he was dying. He called me pretty,' she added with a smile.

‘They hadn't taken his eyes, then,' remarked Fox, making her blush. She didn't know what to make of Fox when he made comments like that. ‘He sounds like an amazing lad. I'm sure his mother, when we find her, will be very proud of her son.'

Cat looked up at him hopefully.

‘You'll help me find her? He gave me her name, and said she lived in Friar's Way, but … it's an awfully big place.'

Fox squeezed her shoulders.

‘Of course I will.'

She couldn't help smiling to herself. Despite where they were, and what was going on around them, she couldn't regret her part in it all. She had met Fox, after all.

‘I think James has his eye on you, you know,' he told her.

‘What makes you think that?' she asked, amused.

‘The way he looks at you. He was awfully happy, having you in his arms and comforting you, when I walked in. And the way he looks at me whenever I touch you – he's jealous! Don't tell me you haven't noticed?'

Cat flushed at the implication that there was something between her and Fox to be jealous of.

‘Maybe you should give him a chance,' continued Fox. ‘Of course he's a prat, but then he's spent his whole life in solitude. He'll improve – I hope – in time. And he's your age, and he'll be king one day if we sort all this out. You could be Queen of Anglya.'

Cat grimaced, shaking her head rapidly.

‘I don't want to be a queen. I just want to stay on the
Stormdancer
,' she insisted.

‘Yes, but the country will need a queen after all this is over. And I can't think of anyone better than the girl who started the revolution in the first place.'

Cat's heart twisted painfully. It was clear Fox didn't have any feelings for her; he sounded far too at ease with the idea of her marrying James.

‘I won't marry for duty,' she told him fiercely. ‘If I wanted that, I'd have stayed with my father and married Marcus Gale. I'll marry for love, and I don't think I could ever love James.'

She didn't think – she
knew
she would never love James. Not now she'd met Fox.

‘Hmm, well,' Fox murmured doubtfully. ‘There's marrying for love, and then there's realising who would be best for you.'

‘The man I love would be best for me,' she pointed out. ‘Who could be better?'

Fox shrugged, sighing.

‘We need to go back out there,' she declared softly. ‘I told Mary and James to pack and be ready to leave, but we need to get more proof of who's involved and start getting the kids out. Ben will be getting impatient with those canisters of his.' Fox snorted, getting to his feet and helping her up.

‘Ben can wait – we'll only have one chance at this. Come on, let's get back out there.'

Wiping the few stray tears from her cheeks, Cat followed Fox, suddenly very aware of how much time she had wasted by running away.

Mary and James looked up when the two entered the room, two satchels on the sofa between them.

‘All better now?' Mary asked with a smile, and Cat nodded.

‘Yes, thank you. We're ready to get going again. Stay prepared – we don't know how long before we'll be back. We still have some work to do here, but as soon as we're done we'll come and get you, and we'll need to be quick about it.'

Fox started for the door while Cat slung her bag over her shoulder and let Fox get the lock. When they were outside, he turned to her abruptly.

‘I've just realised – you must have unlocked this door on your own!'

Cat rolled her eyes at him.

‘Yes, because believe it or not, I'm actually
not
completely incompetent.'

He shrugged apologetically, giving her a lopsided smile.

‘I know that, but I didn't think you paid all that much attention when I hacked it.'

Cat didn't respond, not wanting to sound like a soppy fool by telling him she paid attention to
everything
he did.

They retraced their steps back to the corridor that led to Nathaniel's office, and Cat was just about to walk towards the door when she saw the handle turn. Grabbing Fox's sleeve she yanked him around a corner as the door opened and an all too familiar man walked out.

Cat wasn't sure what she was meant to feel upon seeing her father again. He hadn't changed much since she'd last seen him; there were no bags under his eyes or extra grey hairs at his temples from worrying about his missing daughter. He strolled purposefully down the corridor, and Cat saw Fox reach into his waistcoat to turn on his recorders. She did the same, feeling some measure of guilt at spying on her father. But she shoved it away; he wasn't her father any more, he was a power-hungry bastard who was slaughtering and maiming innocent children.

They didn't have to follow him far; he went down one flight of stairs, turned a corner and entered a lab that neither Cat nor Fox had yet been in. Cat peered through the window, gasping at what she saw inside. A pair of mechanics were working on an unconscious young girl who lay on a table; a girl who looked disturbingly like Cat. Fox opened the door a crack, enough to hear what was going on inside.

Like many of the other labs, there were crates full of mechanical attachments in various stages of completion lining the walls, with enough of a gap between them and the walls for Cat and Fox to hide. When both mechanics and Nathaniel were absorbed in studying the girl on the table, Cat and Fox slipped through the door and scrambled behind a pile of crates. Finding a narrow space between two crates that she could peer through, Cat unhooked both her recorders to set them in the gap, resting on the crate below. Her father was looking closely at the girl.

‘We just wanted to check, m'lord, that it wasn't her. Before we did anything irreversible, y'see,' one of the mechanics stuttered nervously. ‘Only she looks awfully similar, and we didn't want to harm your lordship's daughter.'

Cat could feel Fox's eyes on her, but ignored them, watching her father.

‘Very well,' he murmured, his hand reaching out to roll the girl over, examining her lower back. Cat's hand went almost instinctively to her own lower back, lifting up the tail of her shirt and feeling across the three twisted lines of scar tissue running down the line of her spine. She had been six years old, and her father had been
very
angry.

‘This is not my daughter,' Nathaniel confirmed, letting the girl fall limply to the table. ‘Do what you will with her.'

The mechanics nodded, relieved, and one of them scurried across the room to pick up a thick bronze chest plate with several thin chains and wires dangling from the underside. The other picked a scalpel up from a tray, lowering it on to the girl's ribs. Cat looked away, nauseous. It disgusted her that, despite the similarities, her father didn't flinch. She
wondered what he would have done if it
had
been her on that table; would he let them continue with the experiment? She shuddered, unable to answer her own question.

‘The Hale boy accepted the third enhancement, m'lord,' the mechanic with the chest plate told Nathaniel, and Cat perked up. Andrew was still alive? ‘He'll be ready to send skywards by tomorrow morning, if he survives the night. One of the strong ones, he is.'

A smile tugged at Nathaniel's lips, and he nodded curtly.

‘Good. Was that all you needed from me? To check the girl wasn't Catherine?'

Cat couldn't believe he was completely ignoring the girl on the table.

‘Yes, m'lord. If you'll excuse us, we've got to get over to Lab Seven to help with a rather difficult arm addition. The subject's a little small, you see …' the mechanic trailed off, and Nathaniel chuckled.

‘Small test subjects don't survive – you know that. But all practice is good, so if you must, then leave,' he dismissed them.

Cat watched as the mechanics drew a blanket over the girl on the table, not bothering to clear away their dirty surgical tools as they left. Nathaniel didn't follow, staying by the girl's side. She was surprised to see him put a hand on the girl's forehead, brushing her dark brown fringe from her closed eyes. Cat glanced sideways at Fox, who looked both disturbed and frustrated, his blue eyes darting between Nathaniel and the door.

‘You don't think I didn't notice you sneak in, do you?' Nathaniel called out.

Cat's heart stopped. Fox turned to her, an expression of wide-eyed horror on his face.

‘Yes, I know you're there,' Nathaniel called, his voice smooth and dark, amusement clear in his tone. ‘You might as well show yourselves.'

Cat exchanged another frightened look with Fox, then stood on shaking legs, keeping her head held high as she met her father's gaze.

‘Well, well, the prodigal daughter returns,' Nathaniel murmured, failing to hide his shock, turning his head as Fox stood as well. ‘And you've brought a friend. How sweet! I must say, when you ran off, I wasn't expecting to see you again, especially not here. Marcus was terribly disappointed when I told him his little bride was no more.'

Heart pounding, Cat walked out into the centre of the room. Her audio and video recorders were sitting in the gap between two crates, but the glint of metal on Fox's waistcoat told her that his were still attached.