Noir (18 page)

“Your sister?” I wince, my head a growing ball of drug-soaked cotton.

I was right. I knew I’d seen those eyes before.

“Guards take her away.”

“What about ’er cellmate?”

“Drag that dolt back to their cell, we’ll deal with her tomorrow. Take this one straight to the operating theatre and call Dr. Melnick. Tell him the procedure can’t wait.”

Th
irty-One

Urlick

“All right, so what’s the plan?” Sadar rubs his hands together. His eyes indicate he’s eager to get moving. And fearless. Completely fearless.

I like that in a fellow
crazed-about-to-bust-into-an-asylum
comrade.

“I’m not sure we ’ave a plan.” C.L. turns to me, forlorn looking. He seems nervous, completely thrown.
This
worries me.

I snap the Dyechrometer shut. I’ve been measuring heartbeats. Happy with the reading, I tuck it in my pocket. No one out here but us. “Tell me about the moving walls,” I say to C.L., not caring if I’ve exposed his secret. We haven’t time for that now, anyway. “How much do you know about them? Do they ever cease?”

“Not as far as I know.” C.L. hangs his head. His cheeks turn red.

“Is there a pattern? Do they shift in a certain sequence?”

“Yes.” Martin steps up. “They do.” He pulls out a small notebook and pencil and shows me some figurings. “I’ve been watching them, tirelessly, as we’ve sat up here waiting for your arrival. Near as I can figure, it’s a six-sequence movement, repeated half-hourly. See, I’ve recorded it here.”

“How? How are they doing that?”

“Well, of that part, I’m not sure.” Martin scratches his head. “You see, the walls appear to shift from this side, here”—he points at the building through the murky fog—“clean over to there.” He points to the other side. “Then they switch back, alternating forward and backward the entire way. The movement gives the illusion that the building is in constant movement—”

“But you think it isn’t.”

“That’s right. I think it’s a trick. Some sort of moving picture.”

My suspicions are confirmed. I’ve thought, since I first noticed them moving across the horizon line, that it all seems too perfect. There is no possible way a foundation could shift, especially under a building of that magnitude. I thought it had to be some sort of grand sleight of hand. Some magical illusion.

“I think they’re moving, sir,” C.L. interjects. “In fact, I know they’re moving.”

I wave him away with my hand.

“What’s most interesting about this,” Martin continues, “is that the fence moves opposite the building, in exactly the reverse pattern.”

“Let me see that.” I take his book and study the drawing. I break loose from the group and parade toward the structure, squinting, a thought burning in my mind. The dancing fence line that surrounds Gears operates on heat sensors, as did the gates at the Academy. Perhaps this one does, too. I swing around and stare at Martin. “You’re sure this is an illusion.”

“Yes, sir. The walls seem to be responding to the lights.”

“What lights?”

“Watch closely”—Martin places his hand on my shoulder—“and you’ll see them pass over the moving parts of the building, and back again, the lens always trolling, the movement always occurring after a puff of steam. Try to concentrate only on the light shadows, not the actual image of the building, and you’ll see what I mean.”

I squint, observing the building closely—as closely as I can through rents in the thick, black, rolling fog. Sadar and Reeke step up with us, also squinting. At first I don’t see it; then I keep my eyes focused, and it is as Martin says. The trolling light creeps ever slowly across the front façade of the stones, followed by a rippling shift in the building after a giant pulse of steam. When I concentrate hard enough, I think I even detect the split in the frames of the photos they’ve used to create the images. But where are they coming from? I whirl around, tracking the lens’s haze. “It’s smoke and mirrors,” I say, flying off toward the bushes. “Literally smoke and mirrors!” I pick up a stick and start to beat the bushes. “The projector must be up here somewhere.”

“No, it’s not, sir.” C.L. bolts forward. “Trust me, that building is moving! The walls, they do shift.”

Iris stares at us, bewildered.

I ignore them both, pick up a bigger limb, and move deeper into the woods.

“Where are you going?” C.L. shouts after me.

“To find the mirrors and smash them!” I say.

“Wait!” Martin chases after me. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“It’ll be much easier to ambush a stationary building.”

“Yes, but it will also spark a lot of attention, don’t you think?” Martin narrows his gaze.

I run my eyes over the skeptical crew before me: Martin, C.L., Iris, Masheck, the rest of the freaks—it seems they all agree. C.L.’s quivering bottom lip gives me pause, but I turn and continue the quest anyway, chopping at underbrush with the branch as I go. We’re running out of time to save Eyelet. I have to find out.

A sharp, short whistle draws my head up. I turn to see Cordelia pulling her fingers from the corners of her mouth. Iris stands beside her. By the looks on their faces I can tell they’ve found something. I drop the branch in my hand and gallop through the mist. “What is it?” I say, bounding. “Did you find the”—I stop short, my mouth dangling open—“
mirrors
.” The word lingers on my steamy breath as I raise my chin, my mind drinking in the sight of them.

As tall as the trees, protected by a rolling hillside of bramble bushes, perched in a semicircle on the highest point of the ridge, sit six massive, six-paneled, horizontal mirrors, each clamped into a metal stand. Below them, the nozzles of six giant guns poke out from the earth, purging great wafts of steam. They alternate every few minutes in a pattern from left to right. Martin was correct.

Each suspended segment of mirror is positioned on a slightly different tilt, covering an array of angles up to 180 degrees. A cog-and-wheel assembly built behind the mirrors controls their movement, constantly switching their angles. The whole contraption runs on steam, the force of which twists and tilts the mirrors, causing an illusion of movement. Much like the old game I played as a kid, rendering etchings on the edges of the paper of a book, each one slightly different from the last, so that the image appeared to move when you riffled the pages quickly. Only this projection is on the grandest scale.

C.L. stumbles up beside me. “Blustering blimey.” He lets out a breath. His eyes bug from his head.

What do we do now?
Iris signals.

“We smash them, that’s what.” I pick up a stout branch.

“No, no, no!” Sadar shouts, grabbing me by the arm. “You can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because of these.” Martin pokes a stick through the thorny protection of the brambles, revealing a blinking light under mossy cover at the base of each mirror. “They’re equipped with alarms. You smash one and you’ll give the whole mission away. Then we’ll never get to Eyelet.”

I stare at the blinking light he’s exposed, not unlike that of our own Guardian system. He’s right, we can’t risk triggering them off. “Blast it!” I pull a hand through my hair.

I lower my head, defeated. How will we get to Eyelet now? By morning, they’ll be searching for us. We only have tonight to get in there. My mind spins through a jumble of clocks and Brigsmen and ticking time—and Eyelet trapped in an asylum with God knows what going on. “What do we do?” I turn back to Martin. “How do we leave the mirrors alone and still find the building?”

“We could try to disable the alarm,” he says.

“But that’ll take time.” Reeke steps up.

“Time we don’t have,” I say.

“What if we only damage them enough to disrupt the pattern, without actually settin’ off the alarms?” C.L. says.

“What are you thinking?” I say as he ducks behind the mirrors.

“Once, when I was a kid, I accidently scraped the silverin’ off the back of me muvver’s mirror, and wrecked it. She was mad as a wet hen at me. Perhaps if we did the same thing, only on a larger scale—not touch ’em, but just scratch ’em enough to disrupt the sequence, send the ’ole thing ’aywire, without triggerin’ the alarm.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” I shake my head.

“Mirrors need a clean slate of silvering in order to project an image,” Martin explains. He scurries up the hillside, joining C.L., stone tip in his hand. “Smashing the mirrors will draw too much attention. But if we were just to carve some the silvering off the back . . .” He raises the stone, pantomiming the action in the air.

“Then the full image won’t project,” I say. “I’ve got it.” I clap my hands together.
I’ve finally got it.
“It’s a brilliant plan. We’ll scrape just enough to disrupt the process and let us find the real building, buying us time before the authorities clue in.” I turn. “Iris, do you have a hairpin?”

“I think it’s gonna take more than an ’airpin, sir,” C.L. says. “Them’s big mirrors.”

Iris jumps into action, hauling up her modest skirts, pulling a needle-nose knife with a serrated edge from out of her high-topped boots.

“Iris!” I avert my eyes, shocked by her behaviour. “Learn that from Eyelet, did you?” I say. Iris grins maniacally.
Among other things
, she signs.

“Here, give me that.” I swipe away the knife. “Before someone’s missing an eye.”

Iris laughs as I trudge up the hillside, joining C.L. and Martin in the brambles. “Now.” I stare up at the massive mirrors towering over our heads. “How are we going get up there?”

Th
irty-Two

Eyelet

“Please.” I struggle. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Honestly. I’m being held here against my will.”

“If I ’ad a jewelet for every inmate told me that in ’ere . . .” The guard’s laugh claps off the walls of the asylum’s basement corridor as he pushes me onward down the hall. It’s cold and dark in the basement, and my legs don’t work quite right yet. Lit by only a single flame above our heads, it resembles a crypt. I half expect to see graves.

“It’s true!” I dig in my heels as he yanks me round another corner. “I’ve done nothing! Absolutely nothing! You have to listen to me! I shouldn’t be here! I’m not even crazy!”

“I dun’ ’ave to listen to nuthin’.” The guard reels me in and barks in my ear. My ribs slam hard against his. “I only ’ave to make sure I deliver yuh to the butcher!”

He slings me forward into a small, whitewashed room. I stumble and fall to the stone floor. “No, please.” I scramble to my knees, but it’s too late, he’s already slammed the door.

“Don’t worry.” The guard sticks his face against a tiny iron screen in the door. “By mornin’ yuh won’t remember nothin’ ’bout nothin’.” He grins. “Yuh won’t even know ’oo you are.”

“What are you saying?” I fling myself toward him.

“You’ll see.” He breaks into a cackling laugh, triggers the lock, and turns his back, and suddenly I’m alone.

An inmate across the hall from me lets out a spine-bending shriek, and I shrink down the back of the door, hands over my ears, my heart trembling.

Oh, Urlick . . . if by the grace of God, C.L.’s somehow managed to save you . . . please find a way to save me.

Th
irty-Three

Urlick

“Over. Over. That’s it . . . that’s
iiiit
. That’s
iiiit.
” I guide C.L. as he yanks on the levers. Gears grind, the giant golden mastodon’s head below my arse, swinging right and left.

“Just a little more,” I urge him.

C.L. shifts gears again, and I claw at the elephant, holding on to his ears, fighting to stay straddling the beast’s rounded head.

“Sorry,” C.L. shouts, trying again, slower this time, raising the elephant’s head up as high as he can and snugging it in close to the back of the mirror.

“Perfect!” I slip down the front of the elephant’s skull onto his trunk and pull the knife from my boot. “Now, as I carve, swing its head and lower it as quickly as possible, all in one motion. That way, the damage will appear erratic and not planned.”

“But won’t you—”

“With any luck I’ll be able to ride it out.” I tug at my waistcoat. “Ye of little faith.” I scowl. “Believe it or not, I’ve wrangled a bull or two in my day.”

“You ’ave, sir?” C.L. pops his head out from the controls inside the elephant’s chest.

“Well, in a dream state, yes.” I blink down at him. “But this can’t be very different, can it?”

C.L. laughs and returns to his perch. “Right, sir.” He grabs hold of the throttle. “Ready?”

“One can only hope.” I cross my chest.

“On three.” C.L. yanks back on the controls. I grab the elephant’s ear. The elephant bobbles. “One. Two.”

“Steady,” I shout, slipping down.

C.L. strips another gear, and I’m flung up in the air a good three metres, leaving the elephant’s trunk altogether. Clinging to his ear as I swing back down, clamping my legs around a tusk.

“Sorry,” C.L. mutters, looking up at my swinging bottom.

I put the knife between my teeth and crawl back up. Standing, I reach out as far as possible, knife poised in the air. “Now!” I shout and lean forward, driving the tip of the knife into the mirror’s backing. C.L. springs into action and the elephant descends, head flopping this way and that down to the ground, snapping and snaking in every direction. My shoes slip and slide over the elephant’s shiny metal-skin trunk, erratically scarring the mirror down to the glass.

Flakes of silvering fall as we drop. I wince, half expecting sirens.

“It worked!” Martin hollers as I tumble off into the brambles. “The lights! They’re shorting out!”

I look up through the thorns, seeing the image of the Brink faltering, my lost knife slicing torpedo-like through the air over my head. I close my eyes, and the knife comes to rest with the
thwack
of a hatchet, point side down, between my legs.

“That was close,” C.L. says.

“Yes, it was.” I sit up, prickled in thorns. “Again.”

C.L. swoops down with the elephant’s trunk and plucks me out of the brambles, dropping me to the ground in front of the others.

“All right, everyone, listen up.” I stagger on my feet. “We have very little time before they figure out they’ve been ambushed.”

“Urlick’s right,” Martin says. “They’ll know something’s gone awry very soon, if not already.” He looks down at my pocket watch. “Within the hour, I assume—”

“How did you get hold of that?”

“Sorry, sir.” He sheepishly hands it over. “Old habits die hard, I’m afraid.”

“Right.” I scowl and snatch it from him. “C.L., you’re coming with me. Martin, Reeke, Wanda, Cordelia, and Sadar, you wait up the road a stretch, hidden in those bushes there”—I point—“and prepare yourselves for our getaway.”

“Yes, sir!” Sadar clacks his heels and salutes me.

“What say you, Masheck?” I turn my eyes to the brawny brute. “You up for a little challenge?”

“Always.” He tightens his fists.

“Good!” I slap him on the back. “Iris, we’ll need you to run interference. In case we run into guards.”

Iris nods and takes her mount on Clementine.

“Not on her, on him.” I turn and point at the elephant. “C.L., give her a quick lesson on how to operate him, will you?”

C.L. scurries over, helping Iris up by way of the elephant’s leg.

“Let me do it, sir.” Martin steps up, standing solider-straight in front of me. “I’ll take the elephant up. Battle’s no place for a woman.”

Iris snaps around, her eyes looking furious.

“I’d never say that again, if I were you.” I pat Martin on the shoulder. “Besides, out of all of you, I’d least like to tangle with Iris.” I smile, swooping down to collect C.L.’s pack off the ground. “Did you bring the Dyechrometer?” I ask him.

“Yes, sir. I brought everything I could think of.”

“That you did,” I say, squinting and looking in the pack. “Ahhh, the candlesnuffer-mace-ejector, wonderful choice . . . with the whip-adapted morning stars. Oh, and the miniature fire-poker serrated
shuriken
—very good. Steam-powered ripsaw. Nail blaster. Can opener.” I take inventory one by one. “Doorstopper. Eggbeater. A set of injectable reed darts.” I look up and wink. “I see Iris has been busy again.” I turn to Martin. “Here. This is for you.” I pull out four miniature cans of what appears to be harmless tinned fish and pass them over. “Should things get out of hand up here on the hill, pull back the tabs.”

Martin stares hard at the tins of fish. He smiles at me warily.

“Ready?” I nod at Masheck.

“I’m already gone,” he says, rubbing his palms together.

“All right, then.” I swing up onto Clementine, feeling the buzz of fearful anticipation in my stomach. My heart brims with hope at the thought of seeing Eyelet again.
Please let me see Eyelet again.
“Let’s get on with this, shall we?” I reach down for C.L., giving him a hoist up. He drops into the saddle seat behind me as I take up the reins. “Until then.” I tip my head at the rest.

Clementine dances around in a circle as Masheck climbs aboard behind us, facing backward on the horse’s bum behind the saddle, steam bow and arrow raised just in case.

“It’s nine now,” I say to Iris. “If you don’t hear from us by ten, you’ll know it’s time for more drastic measures.” I toss her a serious look. “All right, we’re off!” I drag the reins over the side of Clementine’s neck, turning her. “Remember,” I say to Martin before spurring the horse’s sides. “If things go hairy the rest of you just get out of here. Don’t worry about us.”

We circle twice before landing. Clementine settles down on the rooftop as softly as her hooves will allow. Her armour clanks slightly against the slate shingles as she lowers her wings to her sides. “Good girl.” I lean forward and pat her neck.

Masheck kicks up his heels and dismounts off the back. He lands catlike, not even a rustle. It’s clear he’s had experience at this. C.L. pitches off next, landing not-so-gracefully. Slate shingles tremble under his feet.

The air fills with the rickety crank of poorly oiled gears. A searchlight, mounted on the widow’s peak of the roof next to us, swings, scanning the premises. I dive off Clementine’s back and hide behind a nearby chimney, dragging Clem along to cover her as well. If they didn’t hear us before, they know we’re here now.

The other two follow suit, scrambling to hide, their backs pressed up against another chimney. The roof seems to be covered in them. There must be a least five.

Fragmented light sputters across the lawn of the massive stone building, whipping back around and over our heads, taking repeat passes over the property.

“What do we do now?” C.L. calls to me softly.

“Whhhhtttt!”
Masheck whistles. Slivers of him slink in and out of view around the searchlight’s beam. His head bobs up and down out of the mouth of the biggest chimney in the centre of the roof, avoiding the light’s sweep. “I think I may have solved it.” He pats the side of the bricks. “Come on. This chute leads to the laundry, I think.”

I glare over at Masheck. “You’re not serious?”

“You got a better idea?” Masheck squints.

“But what if it doesn’t?”

“Well then, I guess we end up in the soup.”

“But—” I don’t know how I imagined us getting in, but whatever it was, it didn’t involve tumbling freely down a chimney.

“You comin’ or not?” Masheck says, ducking the next pass of the light.

I do the same, my heart squeezing in my chest. Time’s running out.

“All right,” I say and slap Clementine on the rear, sending her flying off the side of the roof, then I leap into action, shinnying up to the top of the chimney’s stack. “What now?” I ask Masheck, teetering on its edge.

“Follow me,” he says, unfastening the belt on his trousers.

My eyes grow wide. “We’ve got to do this in the buff?”

“No.” Masheck shakes his head, laughing. “We need to use our belts as leverage.”

“Oh.”

He makes a loop round his shoulder, then lowers himself into the chimney’s hole, just his bottom, bicep muscles straining to hold the rest of him up. “Like this.” He grins, and I feel every bit of my manhood being challenged as he lowers himself gracefully below the brick. Back to one wall, feet pressed tight to the other, quick as lightning he begins his controlled descent, walking his feet down one side of the bricks, his backside sliding down the other, travelling the inside of the chimney to the hearth like a pro.

Clearly it isn’t the first time he’s done this. Or so I convince myself. I imagine him dropping into rich people’s houses all over Brethren, pinching their expensives, though no one mentioned he was a thief.

Elsewise, how would someone gain such a skill? He’s not Saint Nicholas, for blimey’s sake.

I follow, much less gracefully, crumpling at the neck when my feet get behind my bottom, my head clapping hard off the brick. Growing fearful I may fold completely over and fall headfirst, I stop the progression by throwing my hands out to the chimney’s greasy sides, giving my feet time to catch up and try again, still sliding. C.L. snickers overhead.

“Wait till it’s your turn!” I whisper-shout back at him.

He only laughs and pulls away.

I make it to the bottom with a bit of a crash, my arse significantly higher upon landing than it should have been, my head ringing off the prongs of the iron cradle in the hearth. I buckle and roll out onto the carpet, stung, a slick, gasping, creosote-coated ball. “First time?” Masheck kids, giving me a hand up.

I smirk at him, then cough, sputter, wipe the soot from my eyes, and take in the surroundings—a true laundress’s haven. Masheck was right. The room is filled with wash buckets and fold tables; a coal bin and shovels stand next to the giant hot-water stove. Bicycle-powered drying racks shunt and swing with train-wheel precision through the centre of the room, over a furrow dug into the floor, teeming with hot coals.

C.L. lands with a bit of a boom, his legs tangled in the grate. Extricating himself, he bangs his head on the metal prongs and whacks his backbone.

“Better make ourselves scarce, fast.” He jumps up, surprisingly agile after such a crash. “Laundry duty starts at ten.”

“How do you know that?” Masheck says.

“Long story.” I slap him in the chest as I pass.

C.L. leads the way, springing out the doors at the north end of the room.

Masheck and I follow.

C.L. tiptoes out into the main hall, first checking right and left. He flattens his back to the wall, motioning for us to do the same, drawing a nervous toe up over his lips to shush us.

Voices fill the corridor a short distance away—giggling voices, one high, one low.

C.L. moves quickly, slipping in between two juts of wall, down a narrow—
too narrow for humans
—hallway. I dart after him, then signal for Masheck. He barely makes it before the voices start up again.

“What is that?” A voice comes from the end of the hallway.

I press back against the stone wall and suck in my stomach.

“This way,” C.L. whispers, racing to the end of the passageway. There, he activates a turnstile of bricks that throws us into a sort of alternate dimension. We spin inside a fugue of steam, and a seam in the bricks mysteriously parts. C.L. yanks us through the cranny.

“Where are we?” I say, waving away the trolling black mist that engulfs us, baffled by the nothingness that appears. No floor. No walls. Just dark nothingness.