Curio (24 page)

She looked down and recoiled. Benedict's hand skimmed her thigh, his white fingers gathering her skirt inch by inch. Cool air whisked over her ankles and shins.

She jerked away. “What are you doing?”

He watched the fabric of her dress slip down to cover her ankles. “I want to see all the blue lines. Do you have other marks? Show me.”

Grey crossed her arms to hide her trembling. “No, I won't.”

His eyes widened, the whites gleaming a faint green in the tinted light of the arbor.

“I'm not a sculpture or a painting.” Grey inched away. Her back bumped into the tree trunk. Benedict's lip curved as he noted her predicament.

New strength, that hardening from within, surged from her mark. “I'm not a doll to be dressed or undressed . . . or locked up.”

His face was inches from hers now, and a strange smile lifted his mouth. “Ah, but don't we lock away our most precious belongings?”

“I don't belong to you, Benedict.”

The smile vanished. His hand closed around her upper arm, and Grey let out a yelp as he yanked her across the bower to an opening between the trees. The strength she'd felt vanished. She winced at the vise pressure of his fingers.

Silent, he dragged her to the elevator and tossed her in. Grey crashed into the wall and huddled there as Benedict wrenched the metal gate closed. Her lungs refused to fill, and the words she pushed out sounded thin and small. “What are you doing?”

He pinned her to the wall. Steam hummed deep in his chest, and his eyes burned into hers. “If you ever speak to me like that again, I will have you banished to Lower. You are a guest in my house. A guest who's already betrayed me once.”

The elevator rocketed upward then ground to a stop. Steam rose from the threshold as the doors skated open. Benedict sprang from the lift, towing Grey and rushing past a surprised tock who jumped out of their way. He hauled her across the wide landing toward the north wing. A maid scuttled behind a screen that hid the servants' stairway, and Grey couldn't catch her eye to communicate her panic.

The soft click of the door signaled the beginning of Benedict's next harangue. His voice was low and edged with poison.

“Had you come to me and told me of your association with the Mad Tock, I would have been lenient. As it is, my curiosity is the only thing keeping you from the Dulaig's cages or the crushing pits of Lower.”

Someone had seen her with Blaise.

Benedict burst through the door leading to the gallery and pulled Grey over the thick carpet. She tripped and he dragged her back to her feet, his hard fingers digging into her flesh. She cried out.

He threw her against the door of her room. Her skull cracked against the panel and spikes of light consumed her vision. She scrambled for the handle, nails gouging into the wood. Her fingertips met Benedict's marble-smooth skin as his hand curled around the doorknob. One stone-like forearm crushed her shoulders and collarbone, trapping her against the door.

“As for what I
will
look at and
will
touch, I require no permission. Your body hides as many secrets as your tongue. Secrets I want. And you'll give them up, Grey. By the Designer, you will give them up.”

She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The hard planes of his torso pinned her. The hum in his chest built to a buzz that traveled through her.

A cloud of heat smothered Grey, but cold rage spread beneath her skin. She stretched her neck out, her mouth inches from his. “Touch me, and I'll break you.”

“We shall see who breaks.” Steam seeped from behind his clenched white teeth and stung her face and eyes.

A surge of power traveled from Grey's gut as waves of strength radiated from her mark. She pushed him with all her might, but it wasn't enough. She wrestled a block of marble.

The knob rattled under his hand, and the door at Grey's back gave way. With a growl, Benedict shoved her backward. A faint sound brought him up short. He looked away from Grey and over his shoulder.

Fantine's voice shook. “Benedict? What's going on?”

His hands left her body and Grey dragged in a breath. Over his shoulder she spied Fantine in a lacy dressing gown, her fingers shielding her throat.

Benedict strode across the rug toward Fantine, who clutched her doorframe as though unable to keep herself standing. Grey slammed her own door and fumbled with the handle until reason sliced through her panic. It locked from the outside. She scrambled to the nightstand and hauled it to block the door. Next she wedged a chair beneath the handle. When nothing movable remained for her to pile at the entry to her room, Grey sat on her bed.

Shivers wracked her body, and she scrubbed at the wetness on her cheeks. Where was that surge of strength now? She covered the spot on her stomach where the mark bloomed. Cold permeated her skin, wrapping icy fingers around her heart. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her.

Breathe. Just breathe.

The doorknob rattled and Grey leapt from the bed. A crack appeared at the doorframe, but after a shove Benedict relented. His voice cut through her bedchamber.

“I hope you understand, Grey, that with my city in danger, I don't have the luxury of time. If you know of the Mad Tock's plans, I suggest you confess the knowledge now. As for the mystery of your own workings, my soft one, I will uncover every enigma.”

The sneer in his last words reached inside her, squashing her newly discovered source of strength. The door snapped shut, but his voice penetrated the wood.

“One more thing. I'll be ordering the servants to remove every painting within these walls.”

Blaise slouched lower in his chair, an eye on the door leading to the Wind-Up's common area. Two tock women slipped in and moved to an alcove in the dim back room, settling to the right of him. One, a smooth-surfaced girl in a maid's uniform, turned her back to the other, partially unbuttoned her blouse, and slipped it down over her shoulders. The smaller tock's fingers zipped down the maid's back until she reached the key in the middle. Blaise looked away. Winding required trust, making it an intimate gesture. What would it be like to expose yourself and put your life in the hands of another? Not once, but daily.

An old guilt rose to constrict Blaise's lungs, but his eyes returned to the key between the tock woman's shoulders. The metal was plain, the design functional. It was not the key he sought.

Across the table Callis shifted, a question lifting the fine line of his remaining eyebrow. Blaise shook his head and let Callis continue murmuring treason in the back of Seree's establishment.

“We've made them lift their foolish heads.” The modified addressed his congregation of a liveried footman, a gearish tock with cogs rotating in his cheeks, and two porcies in cheap suits.

“We've made it harder to get pure water is what we've done. Or what
you've
done, Callis.” The porcie's amethyst eyes glinted in the low light. One finger tapped the tabletop in time with his complaints. “More restrictions, more paperwork, more money. How does that help those of us trying to run a business? How can we prove ourselves brave if we're forced to cower for the battalions and our clientele?”

Callis lifted his porcelain hand toward the door. His mechanical arm rested motionless in his lap. “Seree is making do.”

“Her prices have jumped,” the other porcie grumbled.

Callis turned the full force of his half-porcelain, half-tock gaze on the slender man. “Don't you dare wheeze on Seree.”

The door opened and Blaise lifted his mouthpiece, but at the sight of Seree he dropped it again, letting it hang to one side of his face. A buzz of tock speech punctuated by the clink of porcie sipping glasses carried into the quiet back room. The two tock women darted out to join the gaming in the common area.

Seree approached their table with a tray in her hand. Tonight she wore the expected garb of a female tavern owner. Her low-cut dress further revealed the damage done by the untreated water. Brown fissures crawled down her once milk-white neck, over her collarbones, and across her chest.

The porcies at the table nodded and the gearish tock cranked an arm up in salute. Callis kept track of every move Seree made as she circled the table.

Blaise refused the glass of pure water she tried to set in front of him. He nodded toward the door. “Give it to one of them.”

She returned the glass to the tray and leaned in. “The soldiers were here earlier today. They're looking for the Mad Tock.” She caught his eyes with her topaz ones. “Be careful. Promise me?”

He quirked his mouth into a casual smile. “Madam Seree, you know I always am.”

“Don't tease now, Blaise. If they send you to Lower, you'll starve.”

“You and Callis wouldn't let that happen.”

She glanced to Callis, whose eyes were on her despite the continued conversation around him. “And if we're imprisoned? Or worse?”

She touched his cheek and Blaise let his lids lower. He shouldn't let her caress him. No matter how his body responded to her touch, his heart never followed. He opened his eyes and hardened his features.

“I promise I'll be careful. Perhaps you should say the same to Callis.” He let the cool smile return. “And to yourself.”

She withdrew her hand, a flicker of something rash in her eyes. She should be locked up for her own good. Maybe he'd find her a quiet farm in the country and a handsome shepherd with nothing better to do than keep her warm. But she'd find her way back to trouble like a porcie child found sharp edges.

Continuing around the table, Seree delivered drinks with the grace of an upper-class lady. Callis smiled at her when she slid his mug of steaming water on the table in front of him. At least the accident that shattered half his friend's body left his mouth intact.

When Seree returned to her customers in the front, Callis leaned in, wrapping his hands around his mug. “Sirs, I understand your concerns. We anticipated this crackdown before we triggered Gagnon's device.” He nodded to the tock with the exposed gears. “That's why the next step of our plan is to divert the water supply from Ames Weatherton's estate to Cog Valley. Think of it . . . all the water coursing through that property, pouring into our own hub.”

“You're building your own purification locus?” The purple-eyed porcie jerked his lapels twice in quick succession. “How? How can you keep such a thing hidden?”

Callis pointed to his inventor friend. “Gagnon here has been working on it in his factory.”

The rugged tock spoke, his voice rough and grating. “There are advantages to working at the mouth of Lower. Even the soldiers avoid it.”

Talk at the table took on an excited edge, but Blaise returned to Seree's warning. They searched for him. They had from the beginning, when Blueboy's power structure was nothing more than a collection of empty-headed individuals paying homage to the most handsome among them. Even then the citizens of Curio City whispered of one who was different. When Blaise became the Mad Tock, his actions drew more attention even as his disguise provided anonymity. Hadn't the hundred years he'd spent locked away in this enchanted prison been leading to this? Rebellion. Revelation. Then what? They could kill him if they knew how.

And Grey. Every nerve came to attention at the thought of her. What had she told Blueboy of their meeting? Probably everything. His hands clenched into fists. How he'd like to smash that porcie's pretty face to pieces.

“Are you with us?”

Blaise came out of his musing to find every face directed at him. So it was time for swearing allegiance. He put his hand flat on the table and leaned in.

“I'm with you. Let's take them down.”

Blaise and Callis's footsteps echoed along the cramped streets of the Shelf. A darkness blacker than the city night spread across the horizon beyond the factory district—the only sign of the sharp descent into Cog Valley. The porcies and most of the tocks hated Cog Valley by day. By night even the soldiers avoided it, relying on a few crooked tocks to keep the denizens of Lower where they belonged.