Clockwork Twist : Dreamer (14 page)

“I hate this room,” Twist declared, staring down at the floor of the chamber where their guide had left them.

It was a perfectly circular room, the size of a small town square, with four doors set into the walls like points on a compass.  There were curving bookshelves set against the walls here and there, full to bursting with volumes in many different languages.  There were desks and chairs of curious design—all made of metal and glass, and padded with gold-embroidered fabrics in patterns that reminded Twist of India.  There were scattered notes and pages on almost every surface, along with ink pens and metal devices that could have been navigational guides in previous centuries.  The ceiling was smooth and black, painted with silver stars like the night sky.  But it was only the floor that bothered Twist.

The floor of the room was a single, circular, piece of crystal-clear glass.  It was reinforced with thin bars of golden metal that stretched out like a spider web beneath it, but there was still plenty of open glass to look through, down to the earth nearly a mile below them.  There was only a thin strip of metal along the edge of the room—a mere four inches deep—that was not transparent.  Twist was currently braced beside a bookcase, trying desperately not to stand on the glass.

“I think it's safe,” Jonas called, crouching near the middle of the room to stare down into the abyss.

“You think everything's safe!” Twist yelled back. “You're insane.”

“Who the hell builds a room like this, anyway?” Steve asked, also staying to the sides of the glass, and standing only over the metal seams. “I mean, I don't have any problem with heights or anything, but this is just weird.”

“A Cypher builds a room like this,” Tasha said softly.  She had seated herself in a chair that had wide, crab-like golden legs reaching out on either side of it. “They like to watch others.”

“I don't like Cyphers,” Myra said bitterly.  She bit at her lip as she stood on the glass near Twist.

“Myra, it's all right,” Twist said, happy to focus on her fear rather than his own for a moment. “They can't keep you.”  She looked up to him hopefully. “If they try to take you away, if anything happens to separate us, you can always leave your body and come back to me, remember?”

“Of course!” she said, smiling brightly.  A moment later, her smile darkened. “But, then they'd have my puppet.”

“It's only a part of you,” Twist said as calmly as he could with his toes hanging out over the glass. “Besides, you know a djinn who will grant any wish for you.  We can work it out later.  The important thing is that we stay together.”

“I swear, these conversations are getting stranger by the minute,” Ted said.

“You weren't awake last night when the Indians first showed up in the moon,” Steve said back to him.

“Look,” Niko said to them, rubbing at an eyebrow in irritation, “just keep quiet and stay out of the way.  We will handle this, and we'll get you two home safely as well.  All right?”

“Sure, kid,” Ted said flatly. “Whatever you say.”

Niko turned to Tasha. “Would it really be all that wrong if I just shot them with my bow and left them unconscious for the rest of the day?”

“Yes, it would,” she responded softly, not looking up. “Please don't let your temper take you now, my dear.”  Niko grumbled something to himself and crossed his arms.

“Well,” Jonas said, standing up and walking closer to the others, “I've got a question before we meet this Loki guy.”  Tasha looked up to him expectantly. “Who the hell is this Loki guy?”

“The Norse god of mischief,” Twist supplied.

“Knew that,” Jonas said, pointing to him. “But that Cypher talked about him as a leader.  So, are we about to meet the top Cypher, or just a general?”

“He's one of the five Cypher leaders,” Tasha said with a resigned tone to her smooth voice. “We only escaped Lord Set in Egypt because we took his men by surprise.  But this is Loki's airship.  Loki is infamous as being the most ruthless of all the Cypher leaders.  He's just about as powerful as Aden is to the Rooks, within Cypher society.  But, of course, Aden is bound to at least pretend to use his resources for good, or he would lose respectability.  Cypher politics are quite the opposite.”

“I see,” Jonas said. “So, basically, he's seriously bad news and we would be squashed flat if we did anything to oppose him in any way.”

“Basically, yes,” Niko said, nodding.

“But he thinks Myra is some kind of princess,” Jonas pointed out.

“I
am
a princess,” Myra said with a pout.

“Of course, love.  I'm just getting our facts together here.”

“I don't have any idea why they're treating Myra the way they are,” Tasha said with a sigh. “All I can guess is that they know the legends of her.  They find all their power in legends and myths, so they should at least know about her.  But I can't imagine why any of them would bow to her or why they kidnapped her back in Suez.”

“In Egypt, they said they wanted to make me
their
princess,” Myra said with a shrug. “They said they wanted to worship me or something.  Give me everything I've ever wanted, and all that.”

“And you refused them?” Twist asked quietly.

“Of course I did,” she said, looking at him as if he were being silly. “I want to be with you, not those people.”

“Someday, you're really going to have to explain that to me,” he said, edging himself just a hair farther into the wall, and off of the glass.  Myra looked at him as if he wasn't making any sense at all.

“Twist...” Jonas said with a sigh, drawing Twist's attention.  Jonas was rubbing at his neck. “Can you calm down and get off the wall for a minute?  The floor is perfectly safe.”

“I like the wall,” Twist snapped back. “What's wrong with the wall?”

Jonas glanced down between his feet, into the soft glow of daylight that rose to fill the room. “Just don't look down,” he offered, looking back up to Twist.

“You're far too calm about all of this, you know that?” Twist grumbled at him, not moving.

“You're just being a little fraidy Twist.”

Twist gaped at him in dismay. “You're a madman!  A pathologically unfrightenable madman!”

“Wow, you're actually so scared that you can't come up with a good insult?” Jonas asked, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

“Oh, I'll insult you, you damn, danger-obsessed, brigand of a pirate cur!”

“Oh, good,” Jonas said, putting a hand to his chest as he took a relieved breath. “You had me worried for a moment there.”

“You two are so very odd,” Myra said, looking at them both sadly.

“See?  You're frightening the princess,” Jonas said with a mockingly serious tone. “Better peel yourself off that wall before she starts to worry about you.”

“I like the bloody wall!” Twist bellowed at him.

“You know, we might be about to die here,” Niko mentioned, staring at Jonas and Twist in disbelief. “How about you two continue insulting each other later, supposing we all survive?”

The soft sound of a door closing silenced the room.  Twist's anger vanished as he looked to the man who had just entered the room.  He was tall, with straight blond hair cut short, and what was visible of his face was the color of pale honey.  Both eyes were covered with white-lensed, golden goggles, and almost the entire left half of his face was wrapped with thin, molded plates of gold that clung like a second skin down past his jaw and under his collar.  His arms were crossed as he leaned casually against the door frame, but while his right hand appeared to be flesh and blood, the left one was only made of open, shining, golden bars of metal in a skeletal design.  He was clothed in the same sand-colored cloak that Cyphers always seemed to favor, with a sharp black suit underneath.

“Loki?” Jonas asked.

“Lord Loki, if you don't mind,” Loki responded cordially.  It took Twist a moment to realize that Loki had a quite upper-class London accent.

“I mind,” Jonas said with a half bow.  Tasha's hand flew up to her lips to cover her shock.

Loki, however, laughed and clapped—a strange sound coming from his quite different hands. “A very funny clown,” he declared happily. “You have good taste in pets, Your Majesty,” he said to Myra.

“Thank you,” Myra said, her tone cautious.

Loki pushed himself off of the doorframe and walked closer to her, holding a pleasant smile all the while.  He stopped before her and held out his human hand to her.  When she offered her own, he bent to lay a gentle kiss on her copper fingers.

“It's a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said smoothly, with all the grace of a gentleman. “I'm sure you will be very happy here with us.”

“Don't get ahead of yourself, sir,” Myra said coldly as she snatched her hand back from him. “I never said anything about staying with you.”

His smile deepened, with a subtle danger lurking at its edges. “You will decide to stay.”  It sounded half like a prophecy, half like a command.

“I have no faith in anyone who is cruel to children,” Myra said, loftily.

“Oh,” Loki said with a dismissive grin. “Don't worry about the little boy with the pink eyes.  He's a freak, you see: one of the Sighted.  It's not like he's a normal child.”

“A freak, you say?” Myra toned, her eyes glancing to his mechanical hand and the metal-covered portions of his face.  It was difficult to guess at the change in his expression, as his eyes were totally covered, but the twitch in his jaw made Twist very nervous.

“Would you like some tea?” Loki asked Myra pleasantly.

“Tea would only make me rust, but thank you,” Myra said back with obviously forced pleasantries.

“My mistake,” Loki said with a nod. “Then name anything you would like.  No matter what it is, whether it exists or not.  I can give you anything.”

Twist couldn't believe that the weight of his last few words didn't crack the glass under his feet.  But he found himself quite unconcerned about the glass floor as he watched Myra seem to consider Loki's offer.  He wasn't totally sure if the pleased smile on her shining, child-like, and painfully beautiful metal face was there because she was genuinely intrigued, or if she was just faking it to buy time.  The others were watching her closely, no one moving yet.

“But, you know, I liked that little freak,” she said with determination. “He was ever so darling.”

If Loki was disappointed, he hid it well. “Very well, then I'll bring him to you as soon as I'm finished using him.”

Myra's smile fell into a glare. “I have to wait?” she asked coldly. “I don't like people who make me wait.  I don't think I like you at all.”

Loki jerked, surprised by her blunt words.  Tasha gasped again.  Twist held his breath, feeling Jonas's alert attention burn in the buzz at his neck.  Loki looked at her for a moment before he seemed to come to a decision.

“All right,” he said. “But he's not in wonderful shape just now.  If you wait a few minutes, I can have him cleaned up...”  His voice drifted off as Myra's expression darkened. “Now.  All right.  I see.  Very well.  You can have him now.”

Loki took a step back from Myra and then snapped his metal fingers.  There was a flash of light, and then Storm was suddenly, inexplicably, sitting on the glass at his feet.  His skin was ashen, his usually pink eyes now gray and colorless, and his hands were tied behind his back.  Everyone in the room moved towards him in their shock, but Myra was the closest.  The fear in her gasp shot through Twist's heart like a needle of ice.  She dropped to her knees beside Storm and wrapped him in her arms.  He didn't respond in any way to her touch, calling her to take the sides of his face in both hands.

“Storm?” she cooed, her voice wavering with fear. “Sweetie, can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can,” Storm said, his voice smooth as ice.  He made no other response.  His eyes remained vacant and unfocused.  Myra stared at him in horror.

“Like I said,” Loki said, watching her with no apparent emotion, “I can have him cleaned up if you want.”

“What have you done to him?” Myra snapped up at Loki, her voice shaking with fear.

“I can fix him,” Loki said calmly.

“Do it,” she said darkly. “This very instant.”

Loki seemed confused by her, but he crouched down near Storm all the same.  He flicked a metal finger, which instantly produced a thin beam of intense light that cut through the ties on Storms wrists.  Turning that off, he pulled a small syringe of clear liquid from his coat pocket and injected the contents into Storm's slender neck.