Curio (44 page)

I'm not unbreakable
. This time she didn't say it aloud. He rose up to his knees, reaching behind with one hand to the rope around her ankles. A lazy smile etched his face.

“Answer the question, and I'll untie your legs.” His fingers already worked at the knot.

Grey shuddered. Maybe she didn't want him to untie her legs. She squeezed her thighs together, her mind full of steam and pain and violation. But with her legs free maybe she could manage a kick.

Benedict's hand paused. Ice seeped into his tone. “What makes you and the caretaker different? Where does your power come from?”

“Blood.” The word slipped out before she could think. Energy skittered over the mark on her belly.

“I remember.” Benedict pulled a section of the rope free, his fingers working while he watched Grey. “You told me about your blood during our conversation in the jewel grove.” He paused, a distant expression snagging his features. “And Fantine mentioned something about warm red water on your palm.”

The rope slipped off her legs and Benedict crawled back up her body, eyes raking over her skin. “Show me.”

“My hand.” Grey looked up at her roped wrist. “Untie my hand, and I'll show you my blood.”

A low laugh sent steam curling through her hair. His breath scalded her ear. “I think not.”

“Ask me more questions then.”

“Maybe I'll find my own answers.” His weight settled on her hips.

“Cut me.” Grey's chest heaved. The words had come out of her lips completely without permission.

He veered back to meet her gaze.

“Cut you?”

“Like a crack, only different.”

“Why would I crack my new masterpiece?”

The glimmer of an idea took hold. “Because I'll heal. Go on, look at the palm of my hand.”

Benedict rolled off of her and stood. Grey gulped in air as he bent over her secured hand.

“See the pinkish lines? When I came here I had scratches. Cuts. They're gone now.”

“The glueman came. He repaired you.”

“My skin repaired itself.”

His eyes snapped to her face, his features wide with shock. “Then you are indeed unbreakable.”

Grey squeezed her eyes shut. Once he saw her blood flow, she would appear damaged. No longer a masterpiece. When she didn't heal immediately, maybe his fascination would fade. It was a gamble, but she'd take it.

“Get something sharp and drag it over my skin.”

He examined her wrist, drawing the edge of his fingernail over her flesh. The action recalled a similar scene. Fine lines on metallic skin flashed in Grey's memory—the tock maid Benedict drank from.

She whipped her eyes to his face and caught the moment his expression changed, the moment he remembered the same scene in the grand hallway or countless others like it.

Darkness gathered deep behind Grey's Defender mark, crawling through her body until it landed in her soul. She tried to look away, but her mind played a scene—a sequence of events that began with Benedict's mouth on her wrist and ended with her drained, scorched inside, and lifeless.

Blaise sucked in a breath when he stepped out of the chamber into Weatherton's laboratory. Surrounded by clockwork, equipment, and the accoutrements of steam power, he focused on the otherness of it all. Machinery and parts didn't tug on the buried energy like the sight of Clara Weatherton's de-animated form. A step sounded behind him. Weatherton shut the door to the bedroom.

“So you cannot help her?”

Blaise didn't face him. “I wish I could.”

The porcie was silent a moment. “Then you've never repaired one such as her?”

He stuffed back a vision of Callis's fragmented head and torso and said, “No.”

After another stretch of silence, Weatherton's boots clipped against the tiled floor. Blaise tensed. Would the porcie hand him over now that he knew Blaise had no answers for him?

A hand rested on his left shoulder. “Let me have a look at the damage,” Weatherton said.

Blaise turned. “You don't understand. You can't glue me back together or replace my gears. I don't work that way.”

The society leader paused in his search through drawers and cabinets. He glanced about the room before his gaze landed on Blaise. “I didn't get this far without exploring every mechanism, every principle, every mystery I could. Perhaps helping you will get me closer to the answers I seek for Clara.”

Fingers of guilt closed around Blaise's heart, but he sat on the stool Weatherton rolled under one of the green-white tubes of light running the length of the lab ceiling.

“Let's see it then.” Weatherton pointed to his shoulder.

Blaise shrugged out of his shirt, wincing. Discoloration spread over his skin from his encounter with the soldiers at the warehouse, but the pain was a hundred times worse.

Weatherton circled him, his black eyes keen. First he prodded Blaise's right shoulder, his firm fingers following the shapes of bones. Then he shifted his focus to the left shoulder. Blaise grit his teeth as the porcie probed his injured joint.

“This shoulder has a different shape.” Weatherton pointed to Blaise's upper arm. The bone beneath his skin looked square instead of rounded like the surface of his right shoulder.

“It's dislocated.”

Weatherton's brows lifted.

Blaise gave him a brief description of the human skeletal system. The porcie stared at Blaise's bare torso as if trying to see through his skin.

“How fortunate your skin is so pliant. We never would've seen the internal damage had you porcelain skin.”

“Oh, I don't need to see it to know it's there.” Sweat beaded on Blaise's forehead. Without the distraction of battle or Weatherton's lifeless wife, the pain beat at his senses.

Weatherton went back to his probing, this time digging his fingers into Blaise's right shoulder joint.

“I think I could—”

Footsteps in the hall interrupted his words. Brahman appeared in the doorway.

Weatherton took a sharp step forward. “Is there a problem?”

“You mean in addition to the burning airship, the flood, and Lord Blueboy's army?”

“I assume you've not sought me out to make jokes, Brahman.”

“Indeed not, sir. The army is camped on the road, awaiting your
release
of the prisoners. We've relocated the ship's crew to the dormitory. They await your attention.”

“And?”

“Our network has learned of an attempted break at Harrowstone.”

Blaise straightened, the pain shifting to the back of his mind. Weatherton caught the movement and shot him a questioning glance before returning his attention to the serving tock.

“A prison break? That is valorous! It seems we have more than one group desiring change in our stuffy city.” Weatherton glanced back at Blaise. “Friends of yours?”

Was there any point in denying it? Blaise nodded.

Weatherton addressed Brahman again. “Was the break successful?”

“I'm told one prisoner was removed from Harrowstone, but she and two other individuals were marched to Blueboy's estate in a procession of soldiers led by Blueboy himself. Rumors are spreading that Lord Blueboy will use this incident and these captives to send a message.”

The stool clattered as Blaise jumped to his feet. “I have to go.”

Weatherton turned to him. “You won't get far like that. I think I can help if you'll let me try.” He motioned for Blaise to sit again.

“You don't understand.” Blaise's hands shook, though not with pain. “Blueboy wants Grey. He wants . . . I have to get there before he hurts her.”

Weatherton's eyes narrowed. “Brahman,” he called over his shoulder, “get the Mad Tock's flying apparatus and bring it here immediately.”

The tock dashed off.

Blaise started toward the door, but Weatherton planted porcelain fingers on his chest.

“Wait one moment. I can help you. I
will
help you despite the damage you and your friends have caused. I'll risk exposure before I'm ready because I sense we believe in the same thing, and, of course, because it's the valorous thing to do. But”—the porcie's eyes locked on Blaise—“if I do this, you must promise to tell me everything you know about reanimation. I know there's more to it than water coursing through a jitter pump.”

The spark of that hideous knowledge leapt in Blaise's core. Entertaining it even for a moment meant admitting what he really was. But Weatherton didn't know of Defenders and
Chemists. He didn't know about blood and magic. And if Blaise could reach Grey in time . . . Images of Blueboy touching her, hurting her, nearly sent him tearing for the door. He grabbed the base of his skull where pain and torment threatened to explode, then he dropped his hand and met Weatherton's stare.

“I'll help you.”

“Good. Now sit down. I think I can maneuver these bones of yours back into proper place.”

Benedict studied her bound wrist a second longer, then his gaze traveled to her face. Blue fire burned beneath coal lashes. His lips parted as though he were thirsty.

He turned his back and moved into the shadows. Grey braced her feet and pushed herself toward the headboard, pulling against the ropes with all her strength. She craned her neck, trying to reach the cords on her wrist with her teeth. The bed creaked with her efforts.

Benedict's voice carried from across the room. “If I knew you wouldn't run, I'd untie you.”

“I won't run.”

His low laugh dragged her heart into her stomach. “Yes, you will.”

He stood at a waist-high bureau set against the far wall, his hands busy with an arrangement of deep blue roses. When he faced her again, his fingers curved around something she couldn't see.

He sauntered back toward her, and Grey drew her knees up, compacting her body into as little space as possible.

“This game we're playing, Grey, I'm indulging it. I'm enjoying it.”

He sat on the bed and circled her ankle with his heated fingers. For a moment, the veins in her foot distracted him. He traced the blue lines, then the cold eyes met hers again. “But you must understand, having you is the next step. You are like the gray one. The gray one put me in power.” His hand slid beneath his shirt, snagging the key and holding it out. Grey couldn't keep her eyes from the little glass prize.

Benedict continued. “The gray one is the only being I know of, besides the Designer, who has more power than I. Though unlike you, he seems more accustomed to using it.” He stroked her leg from knee to ankle. “When I possess the same power, I can challenge him. Get answers. Perhaps . . . perhaps even leave Curio City without fear of breaking, without fear of losing the beauty that keeps me in power here.”

He lowered his lips to her knee. Keeping his gaze on her face, he murmured against her skin. “You're my key, Grey. Much more useful than the trinket around my neck.”

She winced as steam burns bloomed wherever his breath touched.

“If you cooperate, I'll forgive your treason. I'll pardon your conspirators' deeds. I'll make you my mistress, and you'll have more power in Curio City than any other save myself. I won't hurt you.”

Tears tracked down Grey's cheek. Her voice shook. “You
are
hurting me.”

“I know, beautiful one.” He glanced to her ropes. “It's a necessary step. You're too strong. You need a few cracks to hide. A reason to duck your head in my presence.”

Blood drained from Grey's face. Deep inside a voice screamed for help, for strength, for Blaise. She neared an edge, a cliff that echoed with hopelessness. But there was a place beneath the pain and the terror that Benedict could not reach—a part of her that no one could touch or take.
She pulled courage from that secret well, lifted her chin, and stared into Benedict's ice-blue eyes. She put every ounce of remaining strength into her voice.

“I will never duck my head for you.”