The Clockwork Dagger (5 page)

“It's a story that plays wells to patriotic sentiments,” said Mrs. Stout with a dainty sniff.

The neutrality of the answer surprised Octavia.
Does she actually sympathize with the Waste? Or did her husband?
Mrs. Stout had taken care to not mention his employment or home. Actually, she hadn't said outright that he was dead.

The more she spoke to Mrs. Stout, the more curious she became.

Three men and a woman chatted along the windows on the dining room side of the airship. The men wore badges on their heart pockets and sleeves, designating them as members of some academic league. They looked strangely young to Octavia, though she had to be only five or so years older.
The war. It aged me, aged all of us.
Judging by their high giggles and staggered movements, they were well into the drink before they had even boarded. The woman was draped on a man's arm, glittery baubles dangling low from neck to hip and accentuating a waistless dress.

The little steward approached Octavia with a bow. “Ladies, may I get you something to drink? A tonic, perhaps? Aerated water? Royal-Tea?”

The very mention of the tea drink soured her taste buds. “An aerated water, thank you,” said Octavia.

“I'll do without right now, thank you kindly,” said Mrs. Stout.

He bowed again. “If you change your mind, I'll be serving here until supper time. You can also ring me from your room. I'm called Little Daveo.” He hurried away, his short legs agile as he dodged tables and drinking men.

“With my aptitude on the marksmanship test, the old man said I could very well qualify for the rank of Clockwork Dagger soon out of the academy.” The young man spoke loudly, his accent Mercian.

“A Clockwork Dagger!” The woman practically cooed. “Do you think you'll have to kill people?”

Octavia resisted the urge to recoil in disgust.

“If I must, in defense of the Queen,” he said with melodramatic gravitas.

“How long do qualifications take?” asked another man. “I thought they preferred veterans from the war, officers.”

“They do. But exceptions are made for those with certain skills. Quick language acquisition, marksmanship, a knack for poison”—the woman gasped—“anything that will provide an edge over the Waste. Only the best qualify for such an elite guard.” His smug smile included himself as such, of course.

Mrs. Stout looked as if she had swallowed a slug. “Listen to that poppycock,” she muttered, leaning closer to Octavia. “He doesn't have a callus on his hands, and he thinks he can be a spy? He hasn't known a day of work in his life. Footle and hogwash!”

Octavia scrutinized the braggart as best she could at their distance. Mrs. Stout was right—the man's hand on his glass was plush and pink. The woman had an exceptional eye.

“The term ‘Clockwork Dagger' has never made sense to me,” murmured Octavia. “Daggers are antiquated, not clockwork.”

“It's a figurative term, really. A ‘dagger' is an older name for an assassin. Caskentia trains their agents, winds them up like a clockwork toy, and sends them off to do whatever needs doing.”

“Killing people.”

“Not always. Information is the game, these days. Knowing what the Wasters are doing. Knowing what new innovation will emerge from the south. I daresay, they would know the color of the Queen's corset hour by hour.”

Octavia glanced sidelong at her roommate. “You are a fount of knowledge, Mrs. Stout.”

Mrs. Stout's lips pressed together primly as she stared at the other passengers. “You learn a lot, when you've lived as long as I have.”

Little Daveo returned, passing a flute of aerated water to Octavia. The water fizzled against her lips as the bubbles tickled her nose. She stepped closer to the windows. From this side, the rolling green contours of the valley spread out before her. Reinforced irrigation canals looked so straight and smooth they had to be the work of geologica magi. Probably fifty miles away, the forested foothills stood in bold contrast to the gray Pinnacles capped in white. Such deceptive beauty.

From here, there's no trace of the young boys who froze solid during midnight watches, the avalanches that swallowed entire brigades. Those mounds of ash, almost indistinguishable from the snow, that consisted of cremated bodies and amputated limbs.

She gulped down more water, as if to wash the memory away.

By the windows, one of the young men barked in a laugh. “Did you see that?” The others murmured and leaned closer. Curious, Octavia leaned against her own window just as a small, moss-green body thudded against the glass.

She screamed, stumbling backward. As she shoved her drink onto the nearest table, her fingers grappled for the capsicum flute.

The body on the window rotated and formed an
X
shape. Long bat wings flared from its arms, its three-fingered hands twitching. The face resembled a pug dog, the snout compressed and flaring. It was beyond hideous. Dark round eyes studied her through the window, one eye encircled by pale scars and what appeared to be stitch marks.

“Is that—is that a gremlin?” Octavia asked. Her heart fluttered like butterfly wings in a windstorm.

“It most certainly is.” Mrs. Stout had shown no alarm at the curiosity, only frowning. “Harmless little creatures, really. Well, unless you're wearing silver.”

Self-conscious, Octavia looked at the others. They all laughed together, but not at her. The woman wore wine down the front of her glittery dress. Little Daveo was already there with rags in hand to clean up the floor.

“There's rarely only one gremlin, though,” said Mrs. Stout. “Most often it means we're flying through a flock—”

A flutter of green filled the windows. More screams came from the other side of the ship. Octavia turned to see the toddler in a mad dash, his face whitened with terror, his mother in quick pursuit.

One of the young men called to a compatriot, “Go down to the smoking room! Tell the others to come up for some fun.”

Fun? What could possibly be fun about these strange little creatures flying around outside?

“Miss Leander, I do believe we should retire to our room for now,” said Mrs. Stout, clutching her arm.

“Why? I don't under—”

Green flashed through the air not five feet away. One of the men laughed as he staggered in pursuit, a chair in his hands. Her gaze went to the open windows. Little green bodies flooded the gap. Those dark eyes studied the room, heads cocked in jerky little movements, like a bird or a construct. More wings filled the air. A woman screamed. Glass shattered. Heavy, metallic thuds drew her attention to the young man with the chair. He was bludgeoning the gremlin. Music of blood crackled in Octavia's ears, the sound inhuman and discordant, and then it quieted. The man dropped the chair and held up the limp body. The thing couldn't have been more than a foot in diameter. It oozed strangely dark blood, its extremities dangling like a slack marionette.

Around her, blood screamed more loudly than laughter and the crunch of chairs and whatever other weapons the drunken gang had grabbed. Little Daveo, his face flushed, rushed to a bell along the wall.

“Just shut the windows and we'll take care of them!” he shouted.

“And you'll end all the fun!” cried a man.

“Damned flying rats,” yelled another man. “Think you can bring Caskentia down more, eh? I'll show you . . .”

The young woman screamed shrilly and then the sound was choked off. A gremlin, no larger than an ottoman, had gripped her necklaces and hoisted her upward with impossible strength. The woman's slippered feet dangled above the ground. The man beside her managed to force her head down, allowing the necklaces to fly freely into the gremlin's grip. Its toothy smile of triumph sent a chill through Octavia.

Everything seemed to take place in a matter of seconds. Mrs. Stout shouted something that was lost in the din. Octavia looked for others in need and only saw gremlins swirling about, clattering on windows. They wanted out. No one else wore silver. A man attacked a gremlin from behind, crushing it with a well-aimed kick.

As horrible and hideous as the creatures might be, they had the clear disadvantage. This was a slaughter.

Octavia dove for a tray left abandoned on a table. Her satchel bounced heavily against her hip. The nearest man was hunched over as he stomped the gremlin to death. She smashed the tray against the side of the man's head. He crashed to the ground, dazed.

Beady black eyes blinked at her from a puddle of blood and crushed green flesh. Before she could even step forward, its shrill music faded.

“Kethan's bastards, what was that for?” snarled the man as he bounded to his feet. His body's song was steady yet sluggish with inebriation.

“You drunken josser! Just let the creature out! That's all it wants. It didn't even steal any silver.” She held up the tray again as a threat.

“Bah. It's just a bit of fun,” he said, rubbing his ear.

“Your concept of fun is like kicking fresh cow patties.” She almost convulsed in rage. He had no sense that these were living beings—even worse, he probably didn't care. His ilk gallivanted off to war, expecting the joy of a fox hunt.

“The little beasties will come in here and rob the ship blind,” he said. “They'll jack any piece of silver not bolted down. And they're chimeras. Bloody constructs. They're not
natural
.”

Gremlins were chimeras?
“Even as creatures of science, they still live and breathe and bleed.”

“I doubt you'll make any converts in this lot,” said Mrs. Stout, her breath huffing.

“These bucks don't need conversion. They need common sense,” she said, moving forward, prepared to deliver more sense in the form of a heavy wooden tray.

Airborne gremlins still darted throughout the room. More people had flooded the promenade, but the creatures proved agile enough to dodge most attacks. A harsh, alien scream sounded, the sudden music piercing. Several men in crimson garb dashed by.

Octavia waded into the scrum. She knocked one man away from a gremlin, and in surprise he shoved her back. “You're a woman!” he said, his jaw slack.

“And you're a fool,” she snapped.

Stewards herded people toward the berthing. Mrs. Stout was engaged in an animated conversation with Little Daveo. Glass crunched underfoot, and Octavia studied the wreck of the room. Stains of alcohol and blood spattered the floor, green lumps of flesh strewn about.

One of the stewards had a writhing burlap bag in hand and a thick club in the other.

She advanced on him. “Can't you just let them go free?”

He studied her up and down, his expression more weary than anything. “Can't, m'lady. Have to search them for missing jewelry and items from the ship. Gremlins are sneaky buggers. Worry not, we'll take care of it quiet like. If you're missing anything—”

“No, they stole nothing from me.” She turned away to get her bearings as discordant, terrible notes rang in her ears. It didn't matter that scientists cobbled gremlins together in some laboratory—their death songs sounded the same as any other being under the Lady's care.

A heavy thud and squawk sounded behind her, the steward's bat finding another target. Octavia ached to melt into the floor and cover her ears. She couldn't tolerate this. She still had the tray in hand.

I can attack the steward, get the bag—and then what? These people won't grant me peace to heal the gremlins, and the steward isn't the most guilty party in the room.

As she turned away, she noted a small green lump in a library chair. The gremlin was mostly obscured by an open book, one leathery triangle of wing in contrast to the bright red upholstery. Octavia walked in that direction in a slow and controlled fashion. No one seemed to be looking her way. She sat down on the chair, angling her hips to shelter the creature. She heaved her satchel onto her lap and let that block out the world even more.

Even before lifting the book, she knew this one was uninjured, his song soft as a hum and quickened by anxiety. She set aside the children's book about the missing princess and gasped. This gremlin was half the size of the others.
A mere baby.
He whimpered and looked up at her. His long, tapered ears quivered. As hideous as he was, her spirit was moved.

“Shush, shush, little one. I won't let you come to harm.”

He quieted, as if comforted. She looked toward the windows. Several stewards were close by, already cleaning the carpet. They would order her out at any moment. The men would be on her before she could unlatch a window, of that she had no doubt.

“Miss Leander, are you all right?” Mrs. Stout's face was flushed, her fists trembling at her rounded hips. “I have filed a complaint and will take it to the captain himself. Those ruffians! Making sport like that! Oh. My goodness. That thing is scarcely bigger than a kitten.”

“We can't let them kill him,” Octavia whispered. An older man in crisp red attire was headed their way.

“Surely you're not suggesting . . . oh. You are.”

“Please, Mrs. Stout. You said yourself that these creatures are harmless.”

“Surely you sensed—saw—that girl who was almost choked to death.”

Sensed?
Only Miss Percival and the other girls knew of Octavia's heightened abilities. There was no way for Mrs. Stout to be privy to such knowledge. Adrenaline fluttered through Octavia's veins, but she chose to disregard the slip.

“It wanted her necklace, not to cause harm. The men aboard this ship certainly didn't display such mercy. Please, Mrs. Stout.”

Mrs. Stout sighed and nodded brusquely. “Very well. Take it to our berths. We can sneak it out tonight,” she whispered. She turned on her heel. “Oh, Captain! I must speak with you about this appalling matter.” She practically pounced on the man, her body as formidable as a wall.