Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy) Read online

  The queen laid a hand on Taya’s arm. “I assure you that there’s nothing to—”

  At last Taya spotted the wisp of smoke rising from the box on the gondola floor. “Fire!”

  Professor Dautry swore, glancing away from her instruments. The queen gasped and tried to move as a thin line of flame licked around the lid of the box. She bumped into the professor.

  Taya darted forward and grabbed the box. Metal bands around its sides scorched her palms. She yelped, yanking her hands away.

  The box tumbled, its lid falling off. Flames licked the gondola’s painted wicker floor. Taya started forward as the queen exclaimed about her skirts. Taya looked down. The lace trim on her petticoats was on fire.

  Then Amcathra elbowed her aside, grabbing the box with his silk-gloved hands. He turned and heaved it overboard, heedless of his robe’s hem dragging through the flames.

  Another gust of wind rocked the dirigible, carrying a spray of drizzling rain. Taya crouched and beat on the edges of her skirts with her blistering hands.

  “Make sure the fire is out!” Dautry shouted, struggling to control the aerostat.

  “I beg your pardon, Exalted,” the queen muttered, stamping the hem of Amcathra’s robe with one finely tooled leather shoe.

  Taya swept the hem aside to make sure the rest of the fire had been put out. Then, with a glance at the queen, she carefully rearranged the layers of fabric to hide Amcathra’s heavy boots. They weren’t exactly the jeweled silk slippers of an exalted; Amcathra’s feet were larger than Cristof’s.

  “What happened?” she asked, trying to stand and losing her footing. Both Queen Iancais and Lieutenant Amcathra reached out to steady her as the dirigible lurched again in the strengthening winds. Raindrops pelted her face as she glared at Amcathra.

  “I don’t know,” the queen said, sounding angry, “but I promise to find out.”

  The other aerostats were out of sight behind them. The queen’s dirigible made its descent alone in the darkness, pelted by rain. At last Dautry warned them to brace themselves. The gondola scraped and bounced across the ground. Something struck it, and the cylindrical envelope slowly, regally, toppled over, dragging them all through the mud and brambles.

  * * *

  A wet half-hour passed before the queen’s soldiers found them trudging wearily out of the muddy orchard. Consternation followed when it became clear that neither Taya nor “the exalted” knew how to ride a horse.

  “We don’t use horses much at home,” Taya said, embarrassed. Almost all of the countries around Ondinium prided themselves on their cavalry, but Ondinium had long since replaced horse transportation with wireferries, trains, and icarii. A few horses were still used to pull carriages, carts, and plows, but riding in a saddle was all but a lost art.

  After some discussion, the queen was escorted back to the palace while a nearby farmer’s wagon was retrieved for the ambassador and Taya, who asked to be taken back to the festival field.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go straight to the palace?” the soldier driving them asked. “We can send a rider to your people to let them know you’re safe.”

  Taya shook her head. Cristof would be waiting in the pavilion; the plan had been that he’d put on his robes again as soon as the flight was over, in case protocol required him to unmask during the feast. Even if it had been canceled, her husband could hardly ride back to the palace with a naked face. Even with a fake lictor’s castemark, he might be recognized by one of the other ambassadors.

  “Please, if you don’t mind,” she insisted.

  The soldier shrugged, rolling his eyes at his companion as he turned back to the wagon. There were some advantages to having a national reputation for strange behavior, Taya thought.

  They reached the airfield an hour and a half after their flight had departed. The other dirigibles had already landed and were in various states of being dismantled. A swarm of laborers descended upon them, filling the wagon with cargo as soon as Taya and the false ambassador slid off. Taya held on to Lieutenant Amcathra’s arm, assuring everyone that the exalted was well, until their lictors found them and marched them across muddy carpets to Ondinium’s dripping silk pavilion.

  As soon as its draperies were drawn shut, Cristof threw his arms around her, lifting her off her feet in his worried embrace.

  “What happened? Are you all right?” His gray eyes fastened on her bandaged hands. “Did you get cut?”

  “Just some blisters.” She stood on her toes to kiss him, feeling a ridiculous sense of relief. Her husband was wearing a borrowed, ill-fitting lictor’s uniform and looked every inch an Ondinium exalted pretending to be something he wasn’t. “Somebody sabotaged the aerostat. Lieutenant Amcathra saved us.”

  “Sabotage?” Cristof turned, one hand resting on her back. “Janos, what happened?”

  The lictor frowned as his two men lifted away the ivory mask and unpinned the wig. He shook his long sleeves back and ran his hands briskly over his face and crew-cut blond hair.

  “I am grateful you were born to wear such garments, and not me, Exalted.”

  “That makes one of us.” Cristof slid his hand off Taya’s back and stepped forward. “Here, let me help.”

  “If you expect me to object to the impropriety, you are mistaken.” The lieutenant held out his arms, allowing his men, Taya, and Cristof to begin the lengthy process of releasing him from his sodden layers.

  “Jayce isn’t going to be happy about this,” Taya predicted, draping one of the muddy robes over a chair next to the brazier. Jayce could work miracles with a needle and thread, but saving these garments would take the Lady’s own help.

  “Jayce isn’t happy about anything,” Cristof countered, helping the lieutenant out of his second under-robe and handing it over. “Are those scorch marks?”

  “Somebody put an incendiary device on the dirigible,” Amcathra said. “I smelled vitriol while I was throwing it overboard.”

  “An incendiary—” Cristof turned to Taya, grabbing her wrist and turning it over. “These are burn blisters?”

  “I grabbed it with my bare hands,” she admitted. “The metal was hotter than I expected.”

  “Let me see.” He started to unknot the bandages, and she pulled her hand away.

  “You can look at my hands when we’re back in the palace.”

  “How bad is it?” he demanded, his grey eyes shadowed with concern.

  “They’re just blisters.” She changed the subject. “Come on, you need to get dressed. The queen will want to talk to you about the sabotage.”

  “The exalted should appear shaken and outraged,” Amcathra instructed, slipping out of his third and final robe and standing in nothing but his uniform trousers and boots. Taya wondered how he could stand the chill. Maybe all that blond hair on his chest and arms kept him warm. The snarling bear’s head tattooed on his upper arm seemed an appropriate symbol for the hirsute Demican.

  “I am shaken and outraged. If I’d known the flight was going to be dangerous, I wouldn’t have asked you two to go.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Taya reassured him. “How are you feeling? You look better.”

  “Well, I’m no longer using two chamberpots at the same time. I suppose that’s an improvement.”

  “I don’t understand how you can get so sick eating the same food as the rest of us.”

  “The exalted possesses the refined constitution that accompanies a thousand fortuitous rebirths,” Amcathra observed.

  “Don’t be snide, Janos,” Cristof countered. “Impersonating an exalted is an executable offense.”

  “As is impersonating a lictor, Exalted.”

  “Both of you, be quiet,” Taya interrupted. “Lieutenant, would you please brief my husband before he talks to the queen? I’ll get him dressed.”

  “In wet, muddy robes,” Cristof mutte
red, tucking his glasses into a pocket and holding out his arms. “I can hardly wait.”

  “Yes, it is pleasant to put on a dry uniform.” Amcathra reached for the white shirt and black uniform jacket waiting for him as Cristof gave him a dark look.

  By the time the exalted was covered by robes, mask, and wig, the rain was dripping through the pavilion roof so thoroughly that the fabric’s presence hardly seemed to make any difference. The queen had sent two carriages for them. Amcathra, Taya, and Cristof took the first, and their two lictors followed in the second.

  Cristof reached forward to close the curtains, but Taya stopped him.

  “Let yourself be seen,” she suggested. “To show you’re still alive.”

  “Yes, it will be much easier for a frustrated assassin to shoot you if he can see where you’re sitting,” Amcathra added, agreeably.

  Taya scowled, then leaned forward and yanked the carriage curtains shut.

  “You’re awful,” she accused. Next to her, Cristof fumbled off his ivory mask.

  “So is making me wear this when I don’t have to.” He wiped his face with one wet sleeve, smearing his fake lictor’s stripe. “Do you really think it was an assassination attempt, Janos?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?” Taya pulled a damp handkerchief out of her rain-ruined reticule. “This isn’t an important diplomatic mission.”

  “But it is the first time in nearly two centuries that an exalted in good standing has left Ondinium.”

  “Not that good a standing,” Cristof interjected as Taya rubbed at the black smear on his sleeve.

  “Nevertheless, your presence may be a temptation to political factions who disagree with Ondinium’s policies. That is why I am accompanying this mission.”

  “I asked you to accompany this mission.”

  “Your request was serendipitous, as the Council had already ordered me to go.”

  “I see. If that’s the case, I think you should stand in for me more often. I’d be much safer that way. And more comfortable, too.”

  “Regrettably, impersonating an exalted is an executable offense.”

  “Lieutenant, did the Council warn you that somebody might try to kill Cris?” Taya pressed, giving up on the stained sleeve and wiping the rest of the paint off Cristof’s face, instead.

  “All official envoys from Ondinium are considered to be at risk when they travel to foreign countries. Ondinium has many enemies. An exalted would be an especially attractive victim for an assassin or kidnapper.” Amcathra met Cristof’s eyes. “Fortunately, the Council considers you to be one of the more expendable members of your caste. Your loss would be a political embarrassment, but it would not cripple the nation.”

  “Lieutenant!”

  “It’s all right, Taya. That was my understanding from the very beginning of this ridiculous charade.” Cristof gave her one of his rare, crooked smiles, tugging the handkerchief from her fingers to finish cleaning his face by himself. “If I were a respectable exalted, the Council would never have let me leave the city.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better.” She scowled and leaned back, plucking with annoyance at her soaking skirts and petticoats. Her bandaged palms hurt. “And you don’t have to sound so smug about it, either, Lieutenant.”

  “I have no intention of allowing your husband to be assassinated. I have seen how much trouble you cause when you investigate murders.”

  “But why a fire?” Cristof asked, forestalling her retort. “Why not a bullet to the head or a bomb in a carriage? They would be much more reliable.”

  “But more obvious,” Taya suggested, unwillingly drawn into his speculation. “Apparently aerostats explode all the time.”

  “Not all the time,” he corrected her. “Only nine percent of aerostat excursions have ended in injury or death in the last ten years. Icarii have a much higher accident rate, statistically speaking.”

  “But we seldom explode.”

  “Perhaps the attack was not intended to kill,” Amcathra intervened. “Perhaps it was only a warning.”

  “Which brings us back to this being a relatively unimportant mission,” Taya said. She paused and looked from one to the other with a trace of suspicion. “This is an unimportant mission, isn’t it?”

  Cristof leaned over in a rustle of robes to give her an ameliorating kiss. He’d become much better at it since their marriage.

  “Yes,” he promised. “I’m supposed to report on the status of Mareaux’s dirigibles, but everyone knows that. Janos?”

  “The same. I am also to report on your behavior during this mission.”

  “Naturally. Anything else?”

  “I have no other clandestine mission to accomplish in Mareaux. Icarus?”

  “Me? I’m just here to keep the two of you from starting a war.”

  “It seems your mission has just become more challenging.”

  The carriage rattled to a halt and Taya helped her husband back into his mask.

  “This isn’t going to cause a war, is it?” she asked. Cristof muttered something that was muffled by his mask.

  “That will depend on who started the fire,” Lieutenant Amcathra replied.

  Ambassadors and courtiers milled around the palace’s marble entranceway, turning to watch as they stepped inside. A few nodded and murmured greetings, uncomfortable around a peer whose body and face were kept hidden in public. Lord Gaio and Lady Fosca Mazzoletti, the brother-and-sister ambassadors from Alzana, pushed their way forward. They looked dry and well-groomed, in contrast to most of the other guests who’d been on the aerostats. They must have changed their clothes as soon as they’d returned to the palace, Taya thought, disgruntled.

  “Oh, Exalted, I’m so glad to see you safe,” Lady Fosca exclaimed, hurrying forward and laying a slender, well-manicured hand on Cristof’s arm. “We were absolutely horrified when your dirigible broke apart!”

  Taya bristled. Nobody touched an exalted without his or her permission. Cristof’s fingers, hidden by his long sleeve, tapped a message on her arm: Polite.

  “The exalted appreciates your concern,” she said, straining to keep her tone level.

  Lady Fosca undoubtedly knew about the taboo. She simply enjoyed showing her disdain for Ondinium’s traditions.

  “And you, Icarus? What happened to your hands?” Lord Gaio asked with a sympathy that Taya suspected he didn’t feel. Before she could answer, he’d taken her free hand and cradled it in his own. “Were you injured?”

  “Just some blisters, thank you, Your Excellency.” She tugged her hand away. Touching an icarus wasn’t taboo, but she didn’t like Lord Gaio, who was none too subtly courting the queen. If he wanted his suit to succeed, she thought, he should stop flirting with every other woman in the palace.

  “Is it true that somebody set fire to your balloon?” Lady Fosca asked, gazing at Cristof’s blank mask with a show of sympathy. Cristof’s fingers danced on Taya’s arm, spelling out a word: dirigible.

  “There was a fire on the queen’s dirigible,” Taya corrected.

  “Its cause will be investigated,” Lieutenant Amcathra added, his voice flat.

  “I should certainly hope so,” Lord Gaio observed. “And you should punish the negligent pilot. The exalted could have died.”

  “The risk of death was minimal. Perhaps the person who started the fire was under the impression that Mareaux uses the same inflammable gas as Alzana,” Lieutenant Amcathra replied. His blue eyes were cold. The other courtiers fell silent, listening.

  “Or perhaps the fire was a well-contained but pointed warning to Mareaux not to pursue its aerostat research,” Lord Gaio countered.

  “Such as might be given by a nation unsuccessfully competing with Mareaux in aerostat development,” Amcathra suggested.

  “Or a nation that prefers to maintain its ancient monopoly over
flight.”

  “I’m sure the queen’s investigation will provide some answers,” Taya said, alarmed. “If you will excuse us, Your Excellencies, the exalted would like to change out of his wet robes.”

  “Of course.” Lady Fosca patted Cristof’s arm one last time. “I hope we’ll see you at dinner, since the picnic was canceled.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Taya said, stepping forward. The Alzanans reluctantly moved aside, allowing them to continue.

  In the ambassadorial suite, a crackling fire had been lit and an invitation to join the queen for a private lunch sat on the mantelpiece.

  “Thank the Lady!” Taya helped her husband take off his mask. “I’m going to ask the staff to prepare us some baths before lunchtime.”

  Amcathra gave Cristof a smart palm-to-the-forehead bow. “I will be back soon, Exalted.”

  “Where are you going?” Cristof demanded, shaking back his sleeves and pulling on his glasses.

  “I intend to search for the box we threw overboard.”

  “Do you think you’ll find proof that it’s Alzanan?”

  “I doubt we shall be so fortunate.”

  * * *

  Cristof waited in another room until the servants had brought in the copper tubs, hot water, bathing lotions, and towels. At last Taya unpinned his wig with her fingertips and set it on its stand.

  “Ada will have to repair it when we get back,” she said, looking at its sad tangle of hair and jewels. “But maybe Jayce can do something to fix it up in the meantime.”

  “Later.” Cristof hugged her from behind, resting his chin in the crook of her neck. “Let’s get you out of those wet skirts, my love.”

  She grinned, putting a hand over his. He gently took her wrist and turned it, moving around from behind her.

  “But first, I want to see what’s under these bandages. You flinch every time you move your hands.” He guided her to a couch and unwrapped the strips of fabric. “I wish I’d brought more household staff, so you wouldn’t have to do all my robing and disrobing.”

  “As if I’d let anybody else undress you!”