“We’ll have no whining here,” Frederick said, laughing.
“Then include in our toast ale for what ails you…?” Rowen returned with a grin.
Jonathan shook his head and, raising his cup, tapped it to the others. “A toast to adventures that end happily and authors who write their characters with kindness!”
“Hear, hear!” they agreed, and for a brief while it seemed they were men starting a grand adventure, not men on the run from the law. In that way it was far easier to settle in for the night—imagining what lay ahead rather than all that had been left behind.
Holgate
The whirring of gears woke him as much as the feel of something tightening around his neck like a noose. Breath burning in his throat, Bran clawed at his attacker, fingers slipping past its grasp. He got a grip on it, prying at fingers so strong they felt like this midnight marauder had a skeleton of steel. His tongue managed a curse when his hand started to bleed, cut. Fabric ripped and he heard a creak and snap of metal. Finally freed, he threw his attacker—much lighter than he imagined!—threw him so far he heard the body slam against the far wall and slip down to land limp on the floor, the humming of parts louder, a gear grinding against another. He flipped the switch on the nearest stormlight and held it before him partly for the sake of illumination and partly because it had enough weight to serve as a defensive weapon.
From the other room a small voice sounded, still thick with sleep.
“Go back to sleep, Meggie,” Bran urged.
“Papá?” she whispered. “Somebunny?” The ropes supporting her mattress creaked and Bran recognized the sound of small feet approaching.
He swung the lantern, letting the light cascade across her form briefly before, as she rubbed her eyes clear of sleep, he raised the light to illuminate the thing that had attacked him as he slept.
The thing that was always with his daughter and a gift from his ex-lover.
“Somebunny?” Meggie whispered.
They stared at the broken doll, its movements jerky and faltering as its voice growled out the most haunting rendition of the country’s motto that Bran had ever heard.
“A place for all, a place for all, a plaaaa—”
“What did you do to her?” Meggie cried, reaching for the doll.
But Bran snatched it up first, turned his back to his sobbing daughter, and ripped the mechanical spine from its soft fabric body, knocking free the glowing soul stone wedged in its grinding, cog-encircled heart. Dropping the doll to the floor, Bran ignored the gasp of his daughter and stomped his way to the horn that hung on the wall by the crank, crystal, and flywheel.
A sleep-deprived Maude was talking to him soon over the contraption and she was at his apartment door shortly thereafter, a look of horror on her face.
But, instead of coddling him and the cut on his hand that he had hastily bandaged, she went first to Meggie, and, pulling her into her lap, freed the limp doll from her arms. “Hush now, princess, hush,” she soothed. “We’ll fix her up all right and good—never you fear.” She wrapped the child and doll in her arms, giving both a reassuring squeeze. Maude spared Bran a look that softened immediately.
The metal skeleton was still on the floor where he’d dropped it and their gazes both fell to it.
“I didn’t realize it was an automaton,” Bran murmured.
“It was just a toy. A doll. Harmless.”
“Powered by a soul stone.” Bran flexed his bandaged hand. “The trader you got it from, the one who gave you such a good deal, did he ask who the doll was for?”
Her mouth moved, the single word working its way out slowly. “Yes.”
“Did you not think that odd?” He stared at the doll, avoiding the troubled eyes of his daughter.
“I thought he was being curious. Friendly.”
“Who did you say the doll was for?”
“The Maker’s daughter.”
Bran nodded. “I’ll need his name, of course.”
“Of course,” she agreed.
He crouched before Meggie, but she twisted away, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of looking in her face. He groaned and glanced at Maude for help. She simply nodded encouragement.
“We’ll have Somebunny fixed up with proper springs and gears, fine mechanics, a right good windup toy for my child. Or no mechanics at all. Either choice is safer than a doll powered by a soul stone.”
Meggie wiped her nose with her sleeve and looked up at her father. She held Somebunny tighter, bits of flax stuffing falling to the floor. There was fire in Meggie’s eyes, balanced with a touch of fear.
“Come now, my sweet,” Maude coaxed, scooting the child off her lap so she could stand up. “In we go. I’ll get Somebunny fixed up right as rain.”
Bran stopped her. “Right as rain? Try again, please.”
Maude swallowed. “Good as new,” she corrected herself, her voice soft.
“Much better.”
Even inside her new prison cell amidst the Making Tanks, Jordan’s world remained dark, dank, dripping, and grim, the sun only slowly crawling its way over the eastern hills. The tower’s stones bit into her back now that she’d discarded her boned corset, but still she leaned against the wall, pressed into it to feel something as she watched a swatch of sky change colors between the bars on her small single window. The stars slowly winked out as the black of night was infused with colors that reminded her of a bruise lightening as it healed.
She tugged at the leather manacle on her wrist, running a finger along its edge and wiggling it partway under the itching thing. She shifted and her tether’s chain rustled in the straw. How recently had she been offended by having straw for sitting and sleeping? And yet now she was thankful the straw here was cleaner than that in the Reckoning Tanks. Grabbing a piece of straw from the bedding that littered her floor, she slipped it between the flesh of her wrist and the bulk of the cuff and wiggled it around, finally sighing, her head rolling back on her neck when its tip connected with whatever itched her. A look of fierce focus crossed her face as she dug the straw underneath the cuff, moving it back and forth frantically, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in a most unladylike fashion.
She froze, realizing, and, slipping her tongue back to its proper place behind her teeth, slowly withdrew the straw and set it aside. She patted the cuff with her right hand, rubbing it like she might polish a very large and unsightly bracelet. Flaring her fingers out, she noted the tiny notches in her previously perfect nails. And the dirt beneath them. She set to work, slipping a nail from one hand beneath a nail on the other and working with fierce determination to worry each finger clean again. The itching of the straw was relentless, bits of the stuff getting caught in her stockings so she finally tugged them off, leaving them by her shoes. Satisfied, she smoothed her skirt over her legs, tugging its hem down so that it almost covered her ankles as it should, even with her knees drawn up nearly to her chin.
And where was Rowen, she wondered. Was he sleeping off a headache from another party she’d missed? Was he readying for a hunt with his friends? Or was today a day he would find his way to the gentleman’s club and talk politics and sip wine? Could she even see Philadelphia from her spot in the tower?
She sighed. Did it really matter where Rowen was anymore? Surely if her whereabouts didn’t matter to him, his shouldn’t matter to her. Besides, now she’d been accused of witchery he outranked her. She was untouchable, utterly unwanted. It should not surprise her that Rowen would not ride to her rescue—he had better things to do now that she was out of play. He was a highly eligible bachelor in search of a rank-raising woman and she no longer fit that description.