LEGACY LOST Page 15

  He’d had a feeling. He couldn’t explain it. Kaizen had had a feeling that it wasn’t over yet. Even after burying the two – no, God, it was three – three women, and after cleaning up the gore and collapsing into unconsciousness with that damn Trimpot at the wheel . . . He’d known the murders hadn’t been the end of it. He’d seen the cracks in Sophie’s mind deepening for so long, but what could he do? She was the invisible duchess. It would literally cost his family all they had to confess her mere existence.

  And now she had stabbed a woman to death with a key.

  The night before they were to arrive in Celestine and seek harbor of a duke who probably didn’t encourage such philanderings on his property.

  Kaizen had the Hermetic device in hand, unaddressed but preparing to be sent. He would record his message on the dock, maybe. The incident in the throne room had taught him to be particularly tight-lipped when holding a Hermetic device. But when he’d stepped from the grand hall, he dropped the tiny silver ball onto the path.

  The dock was thronged in automata.

  They were lunging over the railing as if commanded to kill themselves, and with them . . .

  It couldn’t be.

  With them was Sophie.

  She dove and disappeared along with the others, and Kaizen leapt forward two feet, staggered a third, and drew to a halt. He had to know, in his heart of hearts, that there was no fall of this distance she could survive. Still he sprinted down the path, as if his eyes might be playing tricks on him, as if the luminous Thursday morning sky wasn’t all around, as high as heaven. Still he sprinted down the path, screaming the nonsense phrase of “Balderdash gas!” and fantasizing that they were somehow within fifteen feet of solid ground.

  Kaizen wrenched open the door to the dock and flung himself against the railing.

  Directly below was that funny little ship. That funny little ship that the rebels drove, all patchwork and so hilariously shaped . . . but there was nothing hilarious now.

  Now, his sister lay face-down, haloed in gore on their deck.

  Now, more than a half dozen automata had clambered to their feet, skin shattered away, and were proceeding to scour the crowd with violent gestures as if searching for someone. Someone to kill.

  And there . . . there was the lone bright spot in this moment . . . and the spot became all the more intense for the way the shadows crowded round, threatening to have it.

  Legacy.

  She crawled over the madhouse of a deck, not gazing up at the dock above. He was somehow certain that it was she the automata sought. It would just be . . . typical. He called to her, to all of them, but the wind stole his voice before even he could hear it.

  Suddenly his feet shifted beneath him and he was forced to grip the railing and pin against it lest he, too, topple to his death.

  The island was sinking.

  Its movement was slow, almost measured, but perceptible.

  Kaizen turned back to glare at the castle keep, seeking to discern the source of this terrible maneuvering. Of course, the distance was too great to differentiate anything such as facial features . . . but he could spot that speck of hot pink easily enough. “Trimpot!” he howled. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”

  But of course that psychopath couldn’t hear him. And even if he could, he wouldn’t care. Such was the nature of the psychopath. If anything, he was sure Trimpot would find the flare-up to be amusing, especially considering the threat likely came in the same moment that he intended to kill its speaker. If the course remained uncorrected and the Albatropus below continued its aimless drift on the winds – and who could get to the stern, littered in homicidal automata as it was? – the dock and the ship itself would collide.

  The dock was reasonably sturdy, but against an airship? It would probably tear free and send him hurtling to his death.

  He couldn’t say that he was too surprised, though.

  If he’d had to guess how he was going to die, “Trimpot” would’ve been in the top three.

  Watching the black parachute flutter away beneath their portside, a sudden burst of clarity imbued her eyes, as if the loss of her best friend and first love was a smelling salt rousing her from an altered state of consciousness. This dream that had been the past forty-eight hours, from the moment the monarch’s voice on the radio called her back down from an orgasmic haven to this moment: the moment that it was really all over. In spite of this clarity, still, the sense of vacancy persisted. Maybe she wasn’t the new, molted spider, afraid to touch anything lest she be damaged, creeping on the perimeters of a world which held her constantly at bay. Perhaps she inhabited the husk, and the new, molted spider was the part of her which had the will to fight and cry as much as it had the will to laugh and love. That part of her had walked away and left this part behind. Empty. Numb. Yet curiously conscious. Curiously attuned to the world around her.

  She was reminded again of the feeling she’d had, ignoring – deaf to – the pedantic Doctor Summat, rambling on and on overhead about going back to the ship, about his peridotite, about whatever else he’d said, she couldn’t be sure. There was a Zen-like liberation in her mind without . . . desire to hold it back. Without even pain now. She had gone beyond both, perforating onto whatever was the other side. Nothingness. And that nothingness enabled her to consider reality solely by its concrete dimensions and forget the abstract cache attached.

  The scent of smoke singed into her brain, and the earth below clicked into place, sharp and bright, and Legacy’s eyes panned up.

  They touched on Coal-Radia, her twin sister, the one who had preferred to sequester herself in the very walls and avoid her at every opportunity rather than thank Legacy for the risk of her own life – but these thoughts no longer occurred in her mind. Instead, they touched Coal-Radia blankly and turned past her. They touched Rain and turned past her as well. Everyone except Legacy seemed to have joined in conversation and left the would-be widow to her tragedy. Or maybe someone did try to talk to her, and she just didn’t hear it. That was equally possible. As inhumanly sharp as sight, and touch, and smell had become . . . she appeared to have gone spontaneously, willingly deaf as well.

  So Saul nodded and gestured, rubbing at his mouth, while Vector shook his head and frowned . . . Gustav busied himself with securing the small, cloud-harvesting sail to its mast . . . Izzy stared at Legacy, but when their eyes connected, she hurried to reconstruct her expression as if she were deep in conversation with Ray . . . Coal-Radia appeared to be ranting at a fellow Old Earth refugee, both of them in their haggard old tunics . . . Claire Addler patted Rain on the shoulder, who was speaking animatedly while sobbing like a damn, well, leaky dam . . . I mean, what is the point, Legacy wondered.

  Her eyes then ticked to the shadow which was eclipsing their balloon. The lumpy, cumbersome dirigible’s gas bag hovering overhead blocked much of the morning sky from view, though it still sprawled before them horizontally in its luminous, textured silver.

  A deep shudder rocked the stern of the Albatropus, and several passengers cried out and murmured, rushing to investigate its source, while others burrowed into the berth or clung to the deck’s rail. Legacy went to investigate the source, and although what she felt was too distant and passionless to be construed as “fear,” it was a kind of stillness. A trepidation that instilled itself automatically in her hands and feet.

  Bodies were crashing into the dirty floorboards and sending up plumes of rust with the force of the impact, driving deep dents into the infrastructure. With each body came the distinct shatter of glass – and Legacy realized what these were. They were not bodies. They were automata. Shards of white glass flew into the air, and everyone advancing instinctively threw their hands up and twisted their faces away. Stray gears, screws, and marbles popped and skittered.

  Legacy lacked the instinct toward flight, however. She tucked Mudflower into the breast pocket of the dress to free her hands and dove closer, guarding herself from shrapnel by the border of the helm, wher
e the creatures drove themselves down one by one. She peered up to see that the aerial dock of the Taliko island overhead was thronged in the things, leaping like lemmings.

  The bodies – three in total . . . four, now – shuddered up from where they had sprawled, haloed by a powder of glass. Most of them had completely lost their porcelain coat, although one or two had a shard here or there still clinging to an eye or cheek.

  “Exa . . .” It had to have been her imagination that they were calling her name, didn’t it? It had to have been!

  Yet, even more consuming than this particular development was the Taliko island maybe twenty yards overhead, just beginning to move over their airship. Or had it come to a complete stop now? It was hard to tell which one was moving, how their angles related, in all the commotion and panic on the deck. Another twenty feet and the automata would have all bounced and slid from the balloon – or torn into its fabric and sent the airship hurtling to the earth below.

  Regardless, the automata were pelting the ship and coming to a stand, little more than brass skeletons with crimson pinpricks deep in their eye sockets. Without their china coats, the robots lost all sense of gender and became sexless monstrosities.

  Legacy would have wondered who had sent them, and why, exactly; if Kaizen had any hand in this, and if it had anything to do with her – but then, Kaizen and herself were the farthest things from her mind. She was doing math. If everyone fought, they could take minimal damage.

  Another automaton pelted the deck, shattering.

  One lunged for Gustav with the shrill grate of dry hinges, and was promptly swiped across the face. “Ah!” Gustav cried, holding his certainly broken hand. “Fuck!”

  The deck shook as another landed. And another!

  Legacy crawled backward, a trickle of self-doubt infiltrating this strange new emotional barrier that had formed its own chrysalis around her. There were too many of them. The odds continued to tilt away from Chance for Choice. What could she do? What would be the wisest course, the rational conclusion? Legacy crawled almost on top of Claire Addler before she saw the woman, gazing at the automata with such large, comprehending gray eyes. As if she’d seen the end of the world.

  “You know, my father designed these,” she noted limply, as if she was merely saying, “You know, I don’t care for these cloudy days.”

  “Well, is there any fucking way to stop them?” Legacy yelled back to her, though the women were practically hugging.

  Behind them, Liam’s voice sounded in a strangled, animalistic caterwaul. She glanced just in time to see him smash an automata in the face with a legitimate anchor, sending it soaring over the rail in a shower of dislodged parts. For a moment, there came a wordless glimmer of pride that the difference engines had paired them together after all.

  An eighth body landed on the deck with a strange crunch, and Legacy turned again, not waiting for Claire’s answer. Through the hedges of runners and crawlers and shouters and whisperers, Legacy observed that this eighth body did not spew glass or gears. This eighth body fell into a puddle of oil and cracked, opening, her blood joining the puddle in a sudden plume of red among the iridescent brown, its rainbows of green and purple. A human – a human woman – had leapt from the dock.

  “Balderdash gas,” Claire murmured.

  “What?” Legacy yelled, turning back to her.

  “Before he started to work for the castle . . . he had built some things for the house. Perhaps he has reused the old passcode. They say that, as you get older, you know . . . you can’t remember anything else but the past. It was their reset trigger, in the event of a . . .” Claire’s wide eyes followed the track of an automaton that had caught fire thundering past them. It careened into the forecastle, where Izzy, up above, dumped a pail of water onto its head. The thing jittered and went still.

  “It’s worth a try!” Legacy shouted.

  “There’s an amplifier on the forecastle,” Claire told her. “I’ll go first.”

  The two girls had only just begun their crawl toward the forecastle, during which Legacy’s hand was already crushed and Claire tripped twice, when the other girl gazed up with an uncharacteristic shriek, falling to her side and gesturing upward with a shaking index finger. “The island is lowering!”

  Legacy followed Claire’s pointed finger to the royal castle and saw that it was, indeed, descending toward them . . . The thing couldn’t move quickly, the descent was slow, but the helm was riddled in homicidal automata and impossible to reach without a dangerous amount of hubris. The airship had been stilled for the funeral and now only nudged forward gently on the wind. Within seconds, the island would settle over top of them, pushing into their balloon and their cables, snapping, puncturing, sending them tumbling . . .

  “We’ve got to get lower!” Legacy called, a vivid memory of Vector’s voice on their first night aboard flooding back to her. If you need to lower Alba in the event of another thunderhead, climb into the crow’s nest and you can open the balloon and let out some air from there.

  “Exa . . .” one of the automata rattled, having found the two girls amid the commotion.

  “You go!” Claire called, pushing Legacy forward. The two girls scurried and scrambled up the forecastle’s ladder. “I’ll get the amplifier!”

  “Fuck!” Vector bellowed, smashing the automaton behind them with a cannon rammer. Its jaw flew off and the machine froze. All three paused, as if to take a mere breath of relief, but then the automaton began its advance again, jawless. Vector jammed the rammer into its chest, where it became stuck, and the thing continued walking, Vector sliding along three feet in front of it. “It’s cool! I’ve got this!” he called raggedly. “What’s up guys!”

  Legacy didn’t stop to talk. She vaulted onto the mast and shimmied toward the crow’s nest, a legitimate barrel which appeared to be strapped to the top with belts, directly below the far end of the balloon. She focused solely on this climb, though distantly registered Claire’s unique voice as it yelled that bizarre phrase again, and Vector yelled back that the amplifier was in the . . . something . . . they were too far away now, swallowed in the chaos of the entire ship. One steely glance upward told her she was almost there, but so was the island–

  And it wasn’t just an island anymore.

  It was Kaizen.

  Kaizen was on the aerial dock, yelling to her as the wind rampaged around him, robbing his voice of any distance it could have had.

  Maybe it would have been harder for her to ignore him before all this had happened. Maybe a part of her would have been happy that he was there, a part of her would have hoped he did come, to save her, or even to imprison her. But that part of her had been stifled by the horrors of this voyage, and now her sole desire was to prevent still more death from occurring onboard. Now she turned easily from her former lover’s outstretched hand, his frantic calls, and focused on the copper-colored plug at the tail-end of this gaseous balloon. She’d never opened it before, and wasn’t exactly sure how . . .

  She gripped the protrusion of the plug, and then felt the world shift beneath her feet – how many times now? – as the island’s external aerial dock collided with the balloon of the Albatropus. She scrambled to cling to the barrel and secure herself. If she could just open this plug . . .

  “Legacy!” Kaizen’s voice was much closer now, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She had a task. She had to do it. She repositioned herself, bracing her legs firmly on either side of the barrel, and attempted to wrench the plug loose. It wouldn’t come. “I can’t stop!” Well, neither can I! she thought, thinking that perhaps Kaizen was referencing some kind of obsession with her while she tried to unhinge this plug . . . and then realized with a jolt that he had meant literally. The plug loosened in her hands and a blast of hot air hissed from within as the grate of the external dock shoved into the crow’s nest and could have cut her in half if not for the arms that bound around and lifted her onto the aerial dock.

  Still, she lashed away from him and
attempted to reach the plug, to help the others as the dock pushed deeper into the balloon. His arms were steel binding her waist and she kicked and stretched for the railing. The Albatropus began immediately to lower, lower, and fall out of range of the slowly descending island . . . with Legacy left behind, on the dock, with the duke, at the castle.

  “No!” she shrieked, twisting in his embrace and struggling against him by pushing and kicking at his body against hers. “No, I can’t go! I don’t want to go! Stop! They’re my people!” She got enough space to snatch at the railing and drag herself forward, Kaizen still on her hips, kicked loose and flung a leg over the rail, then the other. The only thing now between wide open sky and a long fall were her two hands holding the rail, dress and hair whipping, heart pounding as she observed the airship of her companions far below. It had begun a swift descent with the rip of the plug, and she feared they might spiral, might crash into the earth hard enough to do more damage, and they would be stranded, stranded at least two hundred miles outside of Celestine . . .

  The boat appeared to steady itself, though she could no longer make out the masts, the destroyed crow’s nest, anything below the balloon. And then it drifted far enough behind them that it was lost. She frantically scanned, leaning as far over as she could, but it was gone, gone, gone.

  Kaizen’s arms came up around her waist tightly, as if she might fall, as if she’d lost her balance. It would’ve been easy, actually, but she’d been too focused to realize.

  “Don’t, Legacy,” he said, and she wasn’t sure quite what he meant. Don’t fight? Don’t worry? Don’t jump? He lifted her easily from the ledge and dragged her back onto the dock itself, burrowing his face in her neck as he did so.

  “I didn’t want you to!” Legacy shrieked nonsensically, whirling and shoving his chest hard. Her fragile hold on reality now cracked and shattered, someone entirely imbalanced stepped out. Her wet paint part? The core which could be so easily damaged now, and preferred to stay away and touch nothing?