Suicide Run (Engines of Liberty Book 2) Page 10

For a long moment after she awoke, Amelia could almost see

  the bird flying along the course of a river at dusk, a massive male with a small human figure astride its back. His clothes were rags, and the wind pulled at his shaggy blond hair. There was a familiarity to his posture, a profile she’d seen half a dozen times while secretly watching the last class of recruits . . .

  Calvin! She’d definitely been dreaming, then. She sighed and resigned herself to a prolonged spell of attempted sleep, and had just begun to doze again when the muted exhaust of a dragonling mimic reached her ears.

  Stirring, Amelia slid out of bed and went to the window. Icy black night covered the view and clouds concealed most of the light from the moon, so the dim amber glow of a lantern in the stables stood out to her. A messenger?

  The light in the stables went out, and she could barely see three silhouettes crossing the lawn to the house: Peter, Brian, and a technomancer pilot. They’d be headed for Dad’s study where they’d receive news from the other outposts.

  Maybe there would be something about Calvin. Maybe.

  Amelia hitched up her nightgown and dashed over to the closet on the balls of her feet, stepping only on the floorboards she knew wouldn’t make a sound. She tied up the excess length of her gown with a sash—it was practically impossible to crawl in a dress—and retrieved a key from her jewelry box. In the back of the closet there was a short, square door which she unlocked and pulled aside. A musty breeze issued forth out of the dark space beyond. She plunged into it.

  According to the stories, George Washington had commissioned Mount Vernon’s architect to build a network of secret corridors in the house for purposes of smuggling and espionage.

  The only places the network didn’t lead were the brig and the front foyer, neither of which were her destination. Crawling the whole way, she turned left at a junction, shimmied around a tight corner and gently crept to an open grate that serviced Dad’s

  quarters. Slowing her breathing, Amelia froze and listened.

  The door opened. Peter and Brian escorted the messenger into the old bedroom—history noted that it had belonged to Nelly Custis, the step granddaughter of George Washington. Now it served as Dad’s office, with two windows on one side and a well-tended fireplace in the corner. The walls were bare, and the only piece of furniture was a large oak desk in the middle of the room, covered with papers and books and maps of the continent.

  “Technomancer Contessa Delinois reporting, Commodore,” the pilot said, pulling Dad’s attention away from his work. Amelia repositioned herself to get a better look at Contessa; she was a lovely dark-skinned woman, probably from the island nation of Haiti, given her name and accent.

  “Intel updates?” Dad asked.

  “Oui, Commodore.”

  “What’s the short version?”

  “It’s bad. Lord Crutchley has taken the threat seriously—there’s some political posturing behind it, trying to earn favor from the King and all that, so—”

  Dad cut her off. “What are their numbers?”

  Contessa fished through her pockets. Amelia tried to get a look at the papers she produced, but couldn’t do so without exposing too much of her face behind the grate. Of what she could see, the writing was intentionally garbled. Chicken scratch to the untrained eye.

  “Two thousand additional combat mages of standard rank,”

  she began.

  “That’s not too bad,” Brian said. Dad silenced him.

  “Sixteen hundred Redcloak Elites,” Contessa continued.

  “That’s bad,” said Peter.

  “Four hundred staff-men from the Scottish Highlands, and an equal count of mercenaries out of Hesse, Germany.” Contessa passed her notes to Dad. “And the spies say Crutchley is floating the idea of commissioning the Draconic Trifecta when they learn the location of the Saint George.”

  “You mean if they find it, TechMan,” Dad corrected her. “Don’t underestimate Major Tyler. She’s shrewd and resolute; she’ll find a way to keep it hidden until we call for her. Even I don’t know where it is right now.”

  Contessa shifted nervously. “Bien sûr, Commodore.”

  Amelia searched her memory. She’d heard of something called the Saint George, but whatever it was, Dad had guarded the secret well. What could it do, that it scared the Brits bad enough to bring in the descendants of the three dragons that had executed Washington himself?

  For the next half an hour, Contessa brought Dad up to speed on the goings-on elsewhere across the land. Apparently something horrible had happened at a TechMan camp in the Ohio country—the mages had found it and had attacked with a degree of savagery that hadn’t been seen in some time. The TechMan survivors had fled to Pittsburgh where they’d teamed up with Major Glenshaw’s army. Whatever this Saint George was, it had been in Youngstown,

  and thus was the cause of great concern.

  Better news came out of the south, where Major Yahola’s army had successfully armed a band of Spanish technomancers. It didn’t sound like they used mimics, but they did have machinery they’d dubbed “war wagons.” Amelia tried to imagine what those were. And up north in Trenton, Major Aberforth had salvaged more mimics than expected, bolstering the number of battle-ready machines for some large-scale event. She’d heard them talking about it before, but it sounded like the schedule had changed? Why?

  “All accounted for, it’s not as hopeless as I feared,” Dad said, rolling a pen back and forth in his fingers, eyes scanning the documents on his desk. “You did well by bringing this tonight. Boys, fetch refreshments for the lady. Contessa, you’re welcome to stay and get a full sleep.”

  The pilot palmed her tired eyes. “Oh, but that’d be a treat, Commodore. Merci.”

  Peter and Brian led her out. Amelia stayed until Dad had placed all of the documents in a folder, which he then placed in a strong box. He’d take that box out to his mimic sometime the next morning. When it wasn’t in his office, it was in the mimic, and she hadn’t yet discovered its hiding place there.

  When Dad left his desk, Amelia retreated in the crawlspace, taking care to remain as quiet as possible. She exited the network through a different door and escaped into the hallway, intercepting Dad on his way to his room.

  “I know you were there,” he said as soon as he saw her.

  Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “What gave it away?”

  A proud smile pulled at one side of his mouth. “You are your

  mother’s daughter. That, and you’ve soiled your gown.”

  Amelia looked down at her night gown and slapped her forehead; the sash was still in place, and the fabric was dark with dust where it had dragged. She hadn’t cleaned the crawlspace in recent memory.

  “Are you mad?”

  “Not remotely, love. I don’t think it will hurt for you to hear some of the things your brothers know,” Dad said, pulling her into a gentle hug.

  “But why not all of it?” Amelia squeezed him tight and felt him let out a little sigh of frustration. He’d answered her on this before, yet she still hoped that he’d change his mind.

  “Because there are certain things that a nation should hold on to, and protecting the fairer sex is one of them. Your brothers are soldiers, Amelia. It is a man’s duty to go out and fight so that the women in his life don’t have to. I don’t want that future for you.”

  “What if I want it?”

  “You can do better than that. No, don’t look at me that way Amy, I’m serious. You have a great mind and a passionate spirit . . .”

  “And I can put those things to use changing diapers and baking pies?”

  Dad sighed again. “Motherhood is a noble calling, and combat

  is no place for a lady. Leave the fighting to me and your brothers,” he said.

  “You let young girls join all the time. Two of them were in

  Calvin’s group.”

  Dad’s right eye twitched at the mention of his name. Amelia pulled back and furrowed her brow.

&nbs
p; “What? What is it?”

  “It’s nothing, my dear.”

  “No, I saw that. What is it about Calvin? You’ve gotten news, haven’t you?”

  Dad waved her off. “He’s just another soldier. He’s nobody. His name came across my desk on a desertion report last week—we dispatched him to the Ohio country, only to learn that he was brittle at the spine. Now he’s—”

  “Not with the army.” Amelia looked away, deep in thought. If he’d deserted, would he come for her? And wouldn’t he have to do so by some means other than a mimic?

  The thunderbird . . .

  Dad placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned over, his eyes level with hers.

  “Amelia, I know young love is a tender thing. I know that what I am saying is not what you want to hear. But if you believe nothing else that I say, I beg of you to believe that I only want the best life for you. I will keep you out of combat, I will lead this revolution to its rightful conclusion, and I will help you choose a worthy suitor when the time comes.

  “Until then, please, forget about that boy. He is gone.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Dad averted his eyes—the right one twitched again—and

  planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

  Amelia went back to her room and closed the door, unsure of what to do next.

  She hated it when Dad lied.

  CHAPTER 14

  The teleportal network had proved troublesome; Godfrey had almost drawn the attention of a mage officer back in Port Atlantis, so they had to move more slowly for a while. Three agonizingly long days later, they reached another swamp, and Kalfu took Godfrey to another swamp to meet his contact.

  When the man emerged from his moldy, moss-covered house, Godfrey suddenly felt much better about their chances of capturing Calvin Adler.

  The alligator hunter stood nearly six and a half feet tall, and his body was thick with muscles. Calluses armored the palms of his hands, the result of years of tugging on thin cords with violent river monsters hooked at the other end. He had slick black hair, and a small army of exquisite tattoos covered his bronzed skin.

  It was the tattoos that gave it away—the gator slayer was a pictomancer, skilled in the art of, well, art as a form of magic. Most likely those tattoos weren’t permanent, but rather magical constructs that could stand up and walk off of his skin with a single command.

  “Maitre Carrefour! Qu’est-ce que vous faites ici?” the pictomancer asked, speaking French with an outrageously thick accent. He could only be Cajun, an ex-patriot of the French-controlled Quebec region. This was . . . an alarming development. Quebec was where France sent all their undesirables, and Louisiana was where they went when Quebec didn’t want them.

  A criminal too harsh for a land of criminals? This man was not to be trifled with.

  Kalfu responded to the Cajun man in kind, though Godfrey didn’t understand French with any great degree of fluidity. Squeezing Fitz’s badge, he probed it with his magic and found an equation for omnilinguism, which he cast over his own ears. Kalfu’s words switched to English halfway through his introduction.

  “—British kid, trying to make a name for himself. Oh, and he can understand us now.”

  Godfrey rolled his eyes. Did Kalfu know everything that happened around him?

  “His name’s Godfrey Norrington, of the Royal Mage Corps.

  Godfrey, this is Thierry Enjolras,” Kalfu went on.

  Thierry crossed his arms over his huge chest and looked Godfrey up and down, assessing him with a harrumph. He spat on the ground. “Mage? He’s just some kid.”

  Godfrey bristled at that, and tapped Fitz’s badge again, chasing a hunch. Thankfully Fitz had been stationed near the border before, and had known some useful things about French prison culture.

  “That ink on your knuckles; you got it at the Donnacona Institution. It’s the signature marking of Les Diables Blancs, a Cajun prison gang.”

  Thierry cracked a smile. “So you’ve seen some things.”

  Sure, let him think that. “You’ve done time up north.”

  “Well I sure didn’t come this far south for the scenery.”

  “I prefer the scenery in New Britain, personally. Looks a lot better than this hell hole. You can cross the border with help from the right man,” Godfrey suggested.

  “Mais, non.” Thierry shook his head. The dismissal was so clear, Fitz’ badge didn’t see a need to translate it. “There’s no gator trade up in Meryka. That’s what I do.”

  “I can get you gold.”

  “I don’ work for money.”

  Godfrey pointed at a pile of dead gators on a nearby wagon. “What’s this, then?”

  “Trade ‘em for favors. People like the meat or the skin.”

  Thierry hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. His entire

  wardrobe was made of gator leather.

  Godfrey sighed. “Kalfu, I’m a mage. I don’t deal with favors, you know that.” Doing someone a favor was a highly volatile form of currency, and it wouldn’t do for a mage to be beholden to someone for anything, least of all on such a shady deal as this. Leave the favors to the fae; that was one of the principle rules he’d learned at the Ipswich School.

  “And what do you want in all of this?” Thierry asked Kalfu. “What’s so great that you’re running ’round down here with a Brit?”

  “He’s tracking a special quarry, my interest lies there. We need your help to subdue him—I want a sample of his blood, and Godfrey wants the bounty on his head.”

  Folding his arms again, Thierry tapped a finger against his bicep, thinking it over. Godfrey shifted his weight impatiently. Then Thierry spoke.

  “Your badge, then. An object, not a favor.” He stuck his chin out, using it to indicate Fitz’s badge on Godfrey’s robes.

  “What?” The idea of a mage’s badge in the hands of a delinquent was unpleasant.

  “That’s my price.”

  Godfrey considered it. The badge had been useful thus far, and while he was loathe to part with it, he wouldn’t need it once he had Calvin Adler in custody. He knew the way back to Vauxhaul Outpost by heart.

  “Fine,” he said. “But only after we have captured my quarry.

  This badge and nothing else will be your payment.”

  Thierry clucked his tongue. “Très bien.” They shook on it.

  Leaning on his staff, Kalfu worked his magic on what little amount remained of Calvin’s blood. He stood there for a minute, his white eyes glassy and unfocused, lips moving silently as he spoke to himself.

  “By Merlin,” Godfrey moaned. “How’d he move so far in a week? He must be on a machine again.”

  “He is moving slowly now, though. Has been for a while.” Kalfu knitted his brow. “He is very badly injured, near death, even. Strange things are happening to his heart. I have never seen this before.”

  “Well yeah. You blind,” Thierry grunted.

  “You stick to your scribbles,” Kalfu said. “Get me a map.”

  “Got better than a map.” Thierry disappeared into his swamp house and returned a moment later with a heavy atlas, hand drawn on sheets of high-quality vellum. Kalfu muttered some magic words under his breath, and the reading of his spell translated into marks on the map. The three magicians huddled over the open atlas and considered the new information.

  “There’s a teleportal not far from here. It’s been long enough, we should risk it.” Godfrey tapped a space on the map, wishing he had his wand. Thierry leered at Fitz’s badge again, smiling.

  “Good. You take care a’ that thing now, yeah?”

  “You just worry about your part, convict. I’ll do mine.”

  “Let us hurry.” Kalfu said, shifting his staff to his other hand.

  He sounded worried. “He’s no good to us dead.”

  *

  John Penn actually had the nerve to doze off in the wagon. Calvin could do no such thing; Hamilton’s dial throbbed with every bump i
n the road, keeping him awake.

  Thoughts of Amelia, of their fate, and of the hopelessness of his situation didn’t help much either. Frustrated and with no other outlet, he shifted his weight to the right and kicked John hard in the ribs.

  “Ow!” John snapped awake, trying to cradle his side with a limp hand.

  “Whoops. Must’ve twitched in my sleep,” Calvin said.

  Griff and Daniel stirred and woke as well, struggling with their restraints. John told them to relax.

  “You think kicking me is going to improve our situation, Adler?”

  Calvin shrugged. “Feels good.”

  “You got no right to be upset, kid. You wanted to fight mages, and we made it happen.”

  “Great work, John. That’s why I’m here with you three jackasses.”

  “You’re here because you messed up. Yeah, I know all about Youngstown. The Majors keep us in the loop while we move. Don’t take your sins out on us,” John said.

  “How can you sleep, knowing that you use people to fight a

  war that won’t change anything?” Calvin demanded.

  “Your delusion isn’t my problem. We needed an army, so we made one. We didn’t have time to wait for you to be okay with that.”

  “Guess not, King Charles,” Calvin said.

  John Penn actually chuckled. “Throw fits all you like, but our system worked, until you broke it. Now everything is wrecked. They’re rounding up anyone they suspect of technomancy, and they’re taking us to who-knows-where for magical interrogation. None of us is going to survive that, just so you know.”

  “It wasn’t enough for you to be a deserter, Calvin?” Griff added.

  “You know how many decades of hard labor you undid? How many sacrifices you wasted?” said Daniel.

  “Deserter? You think I’m walking around out here ’cause I wanted to?” It took a few tries, but Calvin hooked a lame thumb through the V-collar of his stolen shirt and pushed it aside to show them the device. The recruiters’ eyes widened in a mix of horror and recognition.

  “That thing’s gonna kill you,” Daniel said, dumbfounded.

  “Thanks, genius. Compliments of Captain Hamilton, on Major Tyler’s orders.” Calvin let his hand fall free, concealing his plight again. “This isn’t desertion, it’s a suicide run. Don’t waste time thinking I feel bad for any of you.”