The Inventor's Secret by Andrea Cremer
Jack smiled grimly. “I owe you.”
“I think you’ve already made it up to me,” Ash said.
“Let’s get you patched up, friend.” Jack levered Ash against him and the two of them started for the tunnels.
Charlotte stared after them, boiling with outrage. She thought she would go mad from not knowing what they were up to.
“That wasn’t a spectacular surprise,” Pip complained. “That was just Jack.”
“But Ash was bleeding,” Scoff offered. “That’s something.”
“I suppose so,” Pip mused with a glance at Charlotte. “He’s a daring fellow, your brother.”
“Ugh.” Charlotte stamped her foot. “I hate him.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Pip told her. “Especially when the rats tried to eat him.”
Charlotte ignored her, stewing in her own frustration.
“Come on, then.” Scoff waved for them to follow him off the platform. “We still need to offload and sort through the loot.”
Sulking, Charlotte shuffled her way along the passage. She wished she could go to her room and wait for Ash to find her and apologize like he should. He wouldn’t, of course. She’d wait, and he’d come and scold her for acting like a child.
Grave fell into step beside her.
“It sounds terrifying,” he said. “You must be very brave.”
She straightened up, surprised by his words. “I don’t think I’m that brave. I’d rather be out on a run than cooped up here.”
Grave glanced around the tunnel, eyes lingering on the soft blue light cast by the fungi. “I don’t mind it here. I feel safe.”
“It is safe,” Charlotte said. “But it can get a bit dull. Going out makes me feel alive. In here it’s as though the world outside doesn’t exist. And I don’t like that—though keeping away from the world is exactly the point of this place.”
“Why is that?” Grave asked. “The world sounds bad. Yesterday that thing chased me. Today I learned there are rats bred to kill and eat people. Who would do that?”
Charlotte laughed. “Britannia. The Empire.”
“Are they monsters?” he whispered.
“No, they’re people like us. Only they make the rules,” she said. “They just act like monsters when someone tries to go against them.”
“And you’re hiding from them?”
“We are.” Charlotte nodded. “Because we come from families who don’t want to live the way the Empire says they should. They’ve been fighting since the Revolution failed—at least those who weren’t captured have been.”
Grave asked, “Where are your families?”
“The Resistance has pockets all over,” Charlotte said. “I’m not exactly sure where my parents are. They move a lot, and they don’t contact us that often. It’s safer that way.”
“Do you miss your mother and father?”
She was surprised by the sudden lump in her throat. “Always.”
He nodded. “Will you see them again?”
“Yes,” she told him. “We only stay here when we’re too young to help with the Resistance. Ash turns eighteen soon, so he’ll go.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” she said with a sigh. “But I’d like to go when Ash does.”
“You’re very brave,” he said. “You want to go fight an empire.”
Charlotte fell silent. Talk of the Resistance and her supposed bravery made being angry with Ash seem silly.
She looked at Grave. “Do you remember anything today?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know my name. Or if I have parents. I don’t know why I was in the woods.”
Charlotte took his hand. “We’ll figure it out.”
8.
BIRCH SHOUTED INSTRUCTIONS as they rifled through the sacks. Sorting loot never failed to require both tenacity and endurance. Charlotte forced herself to be patient as she murmured instructions to Grave, explaining how to differentiate scrap metal from potentially working parts.
A whoop brought all of their heads up and sent Moses spiraling from Birch’s shoulder into the air.
Doing a little jig, Birch held up a small object.
“I think this will prove a good run indeed!”
“What’s that?” Grave whispered.
“A mouse,” Charlotte answered. “That’s what saved our lives yesterday.”
Grave spared her a glance. “You had one of those in your pocket?”
She nodded. “It’s a magnet mouse. They’re explosive devices. Once they’re wound, they’ll chase the most metallic object in the vicinity. And for us that’s usually Rotpots.”
“The thing that was chasing us?” he asked.
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “We call them Rotpots, but they’re really called Imperial Labor Gatherers.”
“Labor Gatherers?”
As she spoke, Charlotte’s skin crawled. “Life in the lower levels of the coastal cities is hard—and that’s a kind way of putting it. Sometimes the workers try to escape. The Gatherers are sent out to catch runaways and return them to the Empire.”
Grave continued his methodic sorting of parts—for it being his first time, he caught on quickly. “Does anyone think the Empire is good?”
“The Brits.” she laughed coldly. “It’s working out beautifully for them.”
“They don’t have to work in the cities?” He picked up a brass gear, turning it over slowly in his hand.
Charlotte cast a sidelong glance at him. “You really don’t know?”
His shoulders hunched in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop asking questions.”
“No,” she said. “It’s just strange . . . and you must feel so lost.”
He didn’t look at her, but nodded.
“The resistance began in 1774,” she told him. “The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776—Patriots who wanted independence for the colonies pitted against Loyalists who supported the British. The Patriots were sure that France would aid them, maybe the Spanish and Dutch as well. But American diplomats failed to convince any other countries to fight with us. Britain was there at every turn with a counteroffer. They made Canada into Indian territory to appease their native allies. They gave Florida back to Spain and promised to leave the southern Mississippi corridor and the French Caribbean untouched. Without naval assistance from the French, the Patriots couldn’t hold the ports. The British navy was too powerful. The colonists surrendered in 1781.”
“What happened to the Patriots?” Grave asked.
“All signers of the Declaration were hung as traitors to the Empire,” she said somberly. “Boston—where much of the Patriot support was concentrated—was razed. It’s a prison now. Whenever members of the Resistance are captured, they’re sent to Boston and are never heard from again.”
Charlotte’s hands paused from their methodical sorting. “British policy toward the colonies after the war was called ‘benevolent reform.’ The colonies were divided into three provinces: Amherst, from New Hampshire to New York; Cornwallis, from Pennsylvania to Virginia; and Arnold, the Carolinas and Georgia.”
“Why did they change the names?” Grave asked.
“The provinces are named after British war heroes,” she said. “But the names weren’t all they changed. The ‘benevolent reforms’ were meant to teach the Patriots a lesson.”
“How?” He was staring at her now, eyes wide.
“They claimed that the Revolution took place because the colonists had grown selfish and corrupt,” she said. “To prevent future dissent, the policy was put in place that all Patriots owed the Empire twenty years of indentured labor. It didn’t stop there. Any children born to Patriots were subject to fifteen years. And their children to ten. And so on.”
“They had to work for the Empire.” Grave resu
Charlotte laughed. “So they said. But once the Resistance formed and continued to fight in the borderlands along the Mississippi, the Empire changed the policy. Now it stands that as long as there is a Resistance, each child born to an American is indentured for twenty years.”
“But are they free after the twenty years?” he asked. When she frowned at him, he said, “Not that it sounds fair, but at least that’s something.”
“No one survives the twenty years,” she told him. “Unless they manage to curry favor with the right authorities and somehow regain Imperial Citizenship. That’s rare. The Empire needs laborers, especially since they abolished slavery.”
“What?” Grave asked, surprised. “Isn’t the term of indenture like slavery?”
“In practice, yes,” Charlotte said. “But until 1807, slavery of Africans was tied to their mother’s status. Anyone born to a slave became a slave. The Empire declared chattel slavery to be immoral because it wasn’t punishment for a crime, whereas the postwar indentures were. Pietas super omnia.”
He scratched his head, brow knit in confusion.
“It’s Latin.” She smiled thinly. “Loyalty above all—the policy of the Brits.”
He was still frowning, and Charlotte said, “Please don’t misunderstand. Slavery was appalling. A horror born of man’s cruelest tendencies. The Empire claimed benevolence by bringing about its end. But they forfeited that role by replacing slavery with punitive indentures. And the indenture system is much more beneficial to them, since they don’t need as many people to work the fields anymore.”
“Why is that?”
“Mr. Whitney’s Harvestman,” Charlotte said. “One of the Empire’s innovations. It looks a little like a Rotpot, but instead of a cage, it has a storage compartment and more arms. It can harvest five times as fast as a man and works for any crop—cotton, tobacco, indigo. It’s all picked by Harvestmen now, and each machine only needs one operator where the fields used to be full of slaves.”
Grave was quiet, sorting parts but not asking further questions. Charlotte returned to her task as well, mood soured by the conversation.
“Do you really think the Resistance has a chance?” Grave’s question was so quiet that Charlotte almost didn’t hear it.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Since the French and Spanish have started helping, it’s more likely.”
He dropped a cog. “But why would they help now? You said they wouldn’t help in the Revolution.”
“There were more wars after the Revolution,” she said. “Wars in Europe. France and Britain had tinkers creating more machines. Huge war machines. Napoleon sent up the first fleet of airships, but Britain’s built their own fleet. Each time, one side or the other unleashed some fearsome new invention that wreaked destruction across Europe. When Spain began building a Doomsday machine, they negotiated peace.”
“A Doomsday machine?”
“They claim it’s a device that can break apart the earth itself,” Charlotte said. “Spain threatened that if their borders were violated, they would use the machine to sever the Iberian peninsula from Europe and let it float away from the continent.”
“Can they do that?” Grave gasped.
“They say so,” she told him. “No one has ever actually used a Doomsday device. Rumors have it that they’re building one in Florida too.”
They both looked up when Birch gave a joyful shout.
“Whatcha got?” Pip asked the tinker.
“A heap of parts to build us dozens of mice! I’ve already put two together,” he told her, lifting his hand. In his grasp was a second fully assembled magnet mouse. “Let’s test out this one’s motion, shall we?”
He turned the key several times and set the mouse on the ground. It whirred to life and zoomed across the floor. As everyone watched, it raced toward Grave.
“What the—” Birch gaped as the mouse bumped into Grave’s foot and climbed onto his ankle.
Pip screamed. Grave began to flail, beating at the critter that had whirred up his leg and now latched on to his chest. Moses swooped around Grave, nearly crashing into the boy with each dive.
Birch tugged off his goggles, which retracted from their telescoped position when he tossed them on the workbench, and his eyes bulged.
“Keep calm, Pip! I haven’t armed them yet.”
Birch dashed to Grave, grasping the mouse and tugging hard. The magnetic creature wouldn’t budge. “Holy Hephaestus . . .”
Grave began to shout. “Get it off! Get it off!”
“I’m trying,” Birch cried. “Hold still, man.”
The mouse still clung to Grave’s chest as if it had been welded to his flesh. Despite Birch’s assurances, Pip was still screaming.
Ash appeared in the mouth of the tunnel that led to the infirmary with Jack at his side. His leg freshly bandaged, Ash was using his cane to aid his steps.
“What in Athene’s name is going on out here?”
He looked at Birch trying to pry the mouse off of Grave, and his face went chalky. Beside him, Jack drew a sharp breath. Ash gave him a pointed stare and handed Jack his cane.
Jack strode across the room, shoving Birch aside. Moses flew to the tinker, landing on top of his head and clinging to his mad thatch of hair.
“What are you?” Jack hissed into Grave’s face.
Grave stared at him, shaking and speechless.
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, mate.”
He brought Ash’s cane up in a swift arc. It cracked into Grave’s temple, and though the force of the blow made Charlotte cry out, Grave stood still, unfazed. He watched as Jack took a step back. When he swung the cane again, Grave grabbed the handle and jerked it out of Jack’s hand. He didn’t attack but simply gazed at the long ebony cane in his hand. All eyes in the room were locked on him, some filled with fear, others disbelief.
“What are you?” Jack asked again.
Grave sighed and dropped the cane. “I swear to you, I don’t know.”
In the center of his chest, the mouse still whirred and chirped, unwilling to release its target.
9.
PLEASE DON’T PUT him in a cage.” Charlotte tugged on the sleeve of Ash’s waistcoat.
Ash didn’t look at her, continuing down the hall with rigid steps, his spine stiff as he did his best to hide the slight limp in his gait.
Walking before Ash was Grave, flanked by Jack and Birch. Jack held Grave’s right arm in a firm grip, guiding his prisoner through the narrow corridor. Though Grave had done nothing that Charlotte considered hostile, Jack had unholstered his revolver, which he carried in a deceptively casual manner. Charlotte knew that if Grave so much as twitched in a way Jack didn’t like, Jack would put a bullet in Grave’s head before any of them had a chance to blink. Then it occurred to Charlotte that a bullet might have as little effect on Grave as Ash’s cane. The thought made her skin prickle.
Birch walked apart from Jack and Grave. The tinker’s gaze roved over Grave’s form, apprehensive but equally curious. Dipping down one minute and then straining to his tiptoes the next to observe Grave from as many different angles as he could manage, Birch looked not unlike an exotic bird in the throes of its mating dance.
“Something metal is inside,” Birch commented to no one in particular. “How can that be?”
“Promise me you won’t let Birch cut him open.” Charlotte leaned closer to her brother. “He hasn’t done anything to threaten us. If he were here to cause harm, wouldn’t he have already done so?”
“Charlotte.” Ash stopped mid-stride. He turned, grasping Charlotte’s arms and speaking in a low, dangerous voice as he stared hard into her eyes. “We know nothing about this boy—or whatever he is. Not all weapons are guns or blades; the most dangerous are subtle, hidden.”
“You think he’s a spy.” Cha
Recognizing the stubborn lift of his sister’s chin, Ash sighed and released her arms. When he closed his eyes, Charlotte winced. Her brother looked so tired, so much older than his seventeen years. She didn’t want to cause him more strain, but she was unwilling to condemn Grave before she understood who the boy was.
“Ash, I’m just worried—”
He cut her off. “Charlotte, have I ever acted rashly since I took charge of the Catacombs? Have I given you cause to doubt my choices?”
“No, but—”
“Then trust me to act wisely now,” Ashley interrupted again. “I have to consider what’s in the best interest of everyone who lives here. I don’t know whether Grave is a spy, or a weapon, or a fool boy with an impossibly thick, or rather unbreakable, skull. But until I’m certain of who he is, he will be locked up . . . but not cut open. We’re not monsters here. Not like our enemies out there.”
Charlotte knew she was beaten, but she blurted out, “I’ll stay with him. Sit by his cage to make sure he knows that he has a friend here.”
“As long as you get your work done, Lottie, you can do whatever you please with your free time.” With those words, Ashley turned to continue down the corridor, leaving Charlotte to taste the stale desperation in her lame outburst. What did it matter if she kept Grave company? Ash had declared her stray a serious threat to them, and that was that.
Trying to pretend it wasn’t a childish thing to do, Charlotte huffed at her brother’s back and spun on her heel. She took off in the opposite direction, unwilling to watch as Jack and Ash muscled Grave into a cage while Birch took notes. Still hoping for a sympathetic ear, Charlotte went in search of Pip and Scoff.
Pip wasn’t in Birch’s workshop where she’d been standing, white-faced, after the incident with Grave and the mouse, so Charlotte headed for Scoff’s laboratory. As soon as he was old enough to leave the children’s quarters, Scoff had announced his plans to build a live-in laboratory. Given the volatility of Scoff’s experiments, it had been concluded that the best—nay, only—place for the laboratory was adjacent to the river, where there was an endless supply of water to extinguish inevitable flames. Charlotte thought Ash really should have insisted that Birch move his workshop down to the river’s edge as well.