Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order) (27 page)

With every slow step down the corridors, I felt the presence of someone stalking me. If I looked forward, I felt the urge to turn suddenly and look back, or step more quickly to somehow outrun the shadow I felt lingering behind me.

As I approached my workshop, my fear outweighed my sense. My attacker knew I worked here. He knew I often worked alone. He knew I worked late.

As much as I wanted to prove to the headmaster that I was right, I didn’t wish to do it by getting killed.

The door was open and the room dim as sunlight tried to pierce the overcast sky and break through the old glass. Dammit, I would invent a lock for the door. This was ridiculous. I pushed close to the wall in the hallway, the fabric of my sleeves catching on the stone. Silently I crept toward the door, determined to spy into the room unnoticed to see if my attacker was there.

I peered around the door, gripping the edge of the wood tightly.

A man leaned over the table, peering at my drawings. He had his back to me. My breath caught as my heart hammered. All I could think to do was run, but my feet wouldn’t move. My hand gripped the wood too tight.

That’s when I saw the wrench lying on the floor next to my automaton.

With a shout I rushed forward, snatched it up off the ground, and swung it over my head like a railway worker driving stakes with a mallet.

The man cried out in terror and collapsed in a jumbled heap of awkward limbs. He fell to the side only moments before the heavy head of the wrench would have smashed through his skull. The wrench crashed into the table, and I nearly dropped it as the pain from the blow lanced through my arms.

“Dear Lord, Meg! Are you trying to kill me?” Peter stared up at me, his round face blanched with terror.

“Peter! Oh, I’m so sorry.” I dropped the wrench, which nearly landed on his foot. He scrambled backward, but I offered him a hand. “I thought you were an intruder.”

Once he picked himself up, he dusted off his coat and sent me an incredulous look. “A bit paranoid, aren’t you?”

“Not nearly enough, I’m afraid.” I could feel my relief pounding like a drum in my ears. Thank God, I hadn’t landed that blow. And now I was no longer alone. For that I would be eternally indebted to Peter. I didn’t have to feel afraid so long as he was there. I straightened the things that I had knocked over by hitting the table, including David’s music box. Thankfully, it hadn’t broken. “What are you doing here?”

“Before narrowly avoiding a sudden and painful death, I was looking at your notes and plans.” He picked one of them off the floor. He must have dragged it with him when he’d fallen.

I gathered another. “Why?”

“Because I wish to help you, you ninny. Remember?” He smiled then, a broad smile that I hadn’t seen in ages. My heart swelled, and I took his hands in mine. “That is, unless you still suspect me of sabotage,” he added.

“Of course I don’t, and I’m so glad.” Peter might not have been the best student in the class, but he had always valued my ideas and helped me stay on task.

“My housekeeper asked me to send her best wishes, and my cook wrapped this for you.” He reached over to the corner of the desk and produced a hastily wrapped package. I unfolded the paper and broke into the biggest grin I’d ever had. In my hands rested Agnes’s infamous treacle tart. During the height of Lord Rathford’s madness, when Agnes and I had both slaved in the kitchen, she had been forced to make it every week, and I had been charged with throwing it away, untouched, the next day. It seemed I was finally allowed a piece.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt tears form in my eyes even as I began to laugh. “Would you like some?”

Peter chuckled as well, and he shook his head. “It’s too sticky and sweet for me.”

“Hey, what’s this? You didn’t tell me there’d be dessert.” Michael stepped in through the doorway, followed closely by Noah and Manoj. “Is it tea already? We haven’t begun to work yet.”

I stared, shocked. I hadn’t really expected Peter to come, but at least we had been friends. I wasn’t sure what the others meant by this visit, and I was cautious.

“Noah,” I greeted, though in truth it sounded like a question.

Thankfully, he answered. “After what happened with the automaton in the cellars, we felt it only right to offer our help in your project.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Impressed, were you?” Peter said for me as he cuffed Manoj on the arm.

“Actually, yes,” Manoj answered.

“Well, that, and Samuel would have none of us, so it’s really this or nothing,” Michael confessed. “Are you going to eat that?” He pointed at the tart. I laughed and handed it to him. My insides hopped about like my stomach had been filled with an abundance of overly joyous frogs, and I felt a bit unsteady after nearly hitting Peter with the wrench.

“Thank you,” I said, looking Noah in the eye, then turning to Manoj. Michael looked like a squirrel with his cheek puffed full of tart. “All of you.”

For the first time I felt like I was a part of something.

And it was wonderful.

“So, what have you been working on thus far?” Manoj asked.

I pushed back my sleeves. “Come over here. I’ll show you.”

We worked on the automaton every afternoon for the next three days. For the first time since I’d been nominated, I looked forward to arriving each day. While we didn’t seem to be making much progress, the work was no longer a chore. I was enjoying myself.

Even Noah managed to smile on occasion.

The others had noticed the music box sitting on the table, and taunted me to no end about it. I attempted to defend myself. After all, eventually we’d need music for the automaton to dance to. They only laughed at me. The truth was, I didn’t know what to do with it, and so it sat, waiting.

That afternoon after looking over my notes, I turned my attention to Manoj. He was in the process of trying to plan out a specific series of motions for the automaton to follow, and have it result in a dance. So far, we’d only managed to have the automaton trip over her own feet.

“Perhaps you are not the right one for this task,” Michael suggested to Manoj.

Manoj glared at him. “What exactly are you implying?”

“You don’t dance.” Michael shrugged. “Well, not like us anyway.”

“And you don’t think,” Manoj muttered in response.

“I heard that.” Michael turned to us, while Manoj tried to act innocent.

“Don’t listen to him, Michael. It’s nonsense,” I said, studying some figures Noah had written down. “You have an astounding capacity for thought.” I smiled at him and wondered if this was what it was like to have brothers.

“Thank you, Meg—” Michael began, but I cut him off.

“About food,” I added.

Manoj laughed deep from his belly, and Michael threw a rag at me.

Peter shook his head at us as he leaned back in a chair with his boot braced up against the edge of the table. He watched Noah pace by the window. Peter’s eyes narrowed as he touched a finger to his chin. He rocked himself on the back legs of the chair. “We need an interactive system, so that when the automaton hears a certain strain of music, she turns right. When she hears another, she turns left.” He paused. “You know, the Minotaur system is the most reactionary—”

“No!” all the rest of us shouted at once.

“Honestly, Peter, the last thing we need is another automaton that thinks,” I said. “The last two I’ve met haven’t exactly proven themselves trustworthy.”

“Unless you trust they’re going to kill you,” Michael added.

There was too much truth to that. “What we really need is a system with a rigid set of commands,” I said. “We need something that can tell the automaton precisely how to move, and when. Then we only need to concern ourselves with starting her at the right moment, so she dances to the music.” My gaze fell on the music box.

I felt something, a stirring in me, both in my mind and in my body, as if something great were about to happen. I rushed to the music box and lifted it into my hands. “It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of it before?” I turned the dancing couple at the top of the box, and they slowly twisted back as a tiny comb within the box played notes that had been precisely recorded on a tumbler.

A tumbler.

“What do you know of the Chadwick coach?” My voice sounded breathy as I pulled a chair next to Peter and faced the others.

“Is that the one that records how it gets from place to place, so it can drive itself?” Peter asked.

“Ah, yes. Instructor Oliver explained how it functioned just the other day,” Michael said, drawing nearer and sitting down on the stool next to me. “It works off a tumbler, I think.”

“It does. I’ve seen it myself.” I grabbed for a spare bit of paper to start sketching what I could remember from the controls of the coach. “The motion of the coach records itself on a tumbler. If you place the correct tumbler in the coach and start it from the correct location, the coach knows how to go from place to place. It follows the turns recorded on the tumbler.”

Noah stopped pacing. “We can avoid an automaton control system entirely. It could work.”

“It’s brilliant,” Peter said. “And much less likely to run rampant through a ballroom filled with our instructors.”

“If we must record this tumbler,” Manoj said as he walked slowly around the automaton, stroking the beginnings of his beard, “that puts us in a difficult position if we can’t make the automaton move to begin with.”

That was the tricky part. I joined him, facing the automaton. With the coach you could drive it, and so record the directions as you drove. We couldn’t do the same for the automaton.

As I stared, my face reflected back at me from the smooth golden visage.

That was it.

I turned to the others. “I have an idea.”

I COULDN’T BELIEVE I WAS
about to rely on what David had taught me. “I can dance.”

“That’s lovely, Meg,” Michael said. “I can play the fiddle. That doesn’t exactly help us, now, does it?”

“Don’t be an ass.” Peter threw a bolt at him.

I ignored them, turning instead to the automaton and lifting her arm out to her side. “All we need is some kind of machine to record my motions onto a tumbler. Then we can transfer the tumbler into the automaton and she will repeat my motions exactly.”

“That could work,” Noah said, stepping closer to inspect the automaton. “How well do you dance?”

My gaze drifted over to the music box on the table. I could hear the song playing sweetly through my memory as I recalled the feel of David’s palm pressing into my back, and my hand firmly enveloped in his.

I touched my lip, remembering how close I’d come to disaster. “I can dance well enough for David.”

“I won’t ask how you know that. It’s irrelevant in any case. Even if you were a prima ballerina, it wouldn’t solve the problem of David’s automaton moving completely independently of ours.” Peter leaned his elbows on his knees and let his hands fall between them.

“David and I already have a pact. Whichever one of us designs the best control system, the other will use it as well. This will work.” I felt my ears go hot, and everyone’s gaze landed very suddenly on me.

“You made a pact with David?” Peter asked, though it didn’t sound much like a question.

“I didn’t think it worth mentioning until now.” Perhaps once or twice I had felt I should say something. After all, they were putting a lot of effort into the automaton, and if David’s design functioned better than ours, all that work would have been for waste. But I was confident in us, and so I’d held my tongue.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to consort with the enemy,” Manoj said.

“He’s not our enemy. He’s our classmate,” I said, but Michael arched his eyebrow in a skeptical way.

“What did you have to do to convince him of this arrangement?” Noah looked suspicious, then slid his gaze to the music box.

Now, that had gone quite far enough. I didn’t like what he was implying. “Yes, David and I have a pact. We both realized, just as you did, that it would be impossible to succeed unless we agreed to work together. Nothing more. Since you lot decided to wait so long to grace me with your presence, I had little choice but to accept.” I crossed my arms. “Now with this plan we can go to him and force him to admit we have the superior idea.”

“Samuel will love that,” Michael said.

Peter tried to hide a smile. “Knowing David and how he thinks, he will likely overcomplicate things.”

David, complicated? I never would have imagined. I had to stop thinking of him. “So, how do we keep things simple?”

Manoj took a step back, then spread out his arms and legs. He moved them slowly, pondering his own limbs as he swept them elegantly around him. “We need to create something that can move with you, joint for joint. The body bends in many ways.”

“Yes, but thankfully, in a waltz none of the upper body has to move at all,” Noah said, joining Manoj and observing Manoj’s feet as he turned.

I turned to stare at the window. A spider crawled along the edge of the panes. His eight spindly legs rose and fell, moving gracefully through the air as he climbed. “Could we create another set of arms and legs? They would have to be something I could wear outside my clothing on my back, connected to my hands and feet.” Spindles and gears began to link themselves together in my mind.