“Who knows how people perceive such things? To some, such a loss might be reason indeed,” he retorted, pacing the small laboratory.
“If one of the Echelon cost her the hand, then someone helped her get a mech replacement,” Byrnes said. “I’m thinking a blue blood again. Master smiths don’t come cheaply and the only merchant’s who might be able to afford one wouldn’t have contact with them.”
“Maybe they weren’t
“Again, that brings me back to a blue blood,” Byrnes frowned. “And it would have had to be done quietly or some rumor of it would have reached our ears. The master smiths don’t create mech parts, not for mere humans anyway.”
“No missing or kidnapped master smiths in the past twenty years?”
“I’ll look,” Byrnes promised.
A knock started at the door. All four of them turned.
Perry bumped the door open with her hip and dragged a wheeled chair into the room. Garrett slumped in the seat, looking completely indignant with the contraption.
“Here we are, sir. It took me a little longer than anticipated to fetch him,” Perry said.
“She practically wrestled me into it,” Garrett snapped. “I
“Not until Doc says you can,” Doyle replied bluntly. “How’s your breathin’ been?”
“I’m fine.” Black heat swam through Garrett’s eyes. After such a grievous injury, his craving virus levels had increased dramatically, as if his body hadn’t been able to fight the virus off while it tried to heal.
Lynch exchanged a glance with Doyle. He’d have to keep a close eye on his second. Garrett’s CV levels were now around the sixty percent margin, but such an increase in a short amount of time might lead to brief losses of control. Garrett wasn’t used to fighting off such increased hungers.
“And your stitches?” Doyle asked.
“Itching like a sailor with the pox.”
“I cut them out this morning,” Perry replied, ignoring his glare as she wheeled him into place beside Lynch. “Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?”
“I’m going to bury you in the garden if you don’t leave off.” Garrett clapped a hand to his forehead in frustration, scraping his hair out of the way.
Perry snorted. “As if you could. Even when you’re at your best, I can have you facedown in the dirt nine times out of ten.”
“I only need once—”
“That’s enough,” Lynch said quietly.
Both of them fell silent.
“I need you on your feet,” he told Garrett. “If that means suffering through Perry’s ministrations, then so be it.”
“Besides…” A slow smile crept over Byrnes’s mouth. “She can’t help fussing, its part of her nature.”
“Was that an oblique reference to my gender?” Perry asked, her eyes narrowing to thin slits.
If he left them at this, they’d be at each other’s throats within a minute. Lynch held up a hand, staring them all down. “Concentrate,” he said, stabbing a finger toward the book. “Fitz, what’s the difference between enclave work and the master smiths?”
“Enclave work doesn’t have synthetic flesh,” the young scientist frowned. “It tends to tear in their line of employment.”
“She didn’t bother with it.”
“However the addition of the Carillion blade argues for master smith work. We all know a blue blood’s saliva has chemical components in it that can heal a cut—or the slash of a blood-letting knife—without transmitting the virus,” Fitz said. “That’s what they use to create bio-mech limbs. They can meld steel tendons or muscle sheeting with flesh by using a blue blood’s saliva. The interior of the bio-mech limb is grafted to a man’s body as if it belongs, each contraction of muscle creating flex in the steel hand. It’s truly an extension of the body.”
“And enclave work?” he asked.
“Far rougher. They don’t have access to a blue blood’s saliva. A hand relies on clockwork pieces inside it to drive the mechanism and hydraulic hoses in the arm to lift it. Mech—not bio-mech. Far less accurate.”
Lynch scratched at his mouth. “Its master smith work, I’m sure of it. She had full use of her fingers and hand.”
“Looks like we’ve got some smiths to question,” Byrnes said with a heated smile.
“You and Perry work together on that,” Lynch directed.
Perry shot him a look. She and Garrett always worked as partners; Byrnes preferred to work alone.
“You’re entering Echelon territory,” he said, though he rarely bothered to explain his orders. “You need someone to watch your backs. Keep it quiet—but I want to know if any master smith created something like this within…the last ten or fifteen years. The hand’s fully sized, so she had to be an adult by the time it was melded to her flesh.”
And keeping Perry away from Garrett would stop them being at each other’s throats. His head was pounding as it was. Lynch nodded sharply. “Dismissed.”
Later that afternoon, Lynch stripped his coat off and tossed it on the armchair in his study, which was now free of debris. Pausing, he looked around the room. Evidence of Mrs. Marberry’s meddling existed everywhere. Ever since he’d found her in here two days prior, she’d been making her presence known in myriad, subtle ways.
He’d been too busy to take her to task for it, but now he paused, taking a good hard look around the room.
The bookshelves were spotless and dust free, the orchid on the windowsill shifted to a warmer location. By the fireplace, all of the translations of an old Tibetan document he’d been making were gone and the desk was entirely clear of paperwork.
He turned on his heel and strode back through the door into her cheery, sunlit study. Steam drifted off the teapot on her desk and her head was bent as she carefully wrote something. Sunlight gilded the burning copper of her hair, tracing the fine downy hairs at her nape.
“Mrs. Marberry.” He leaned on the desk, looming over her.
The pen stilled. Rosa looked up slowly, as if she’d heard the very controlled way in which he spoke. Those solemn brown eyes locked on his. “Sir Jasper,” she replied in that composed manner that drove him beyond endurance. “What may I do for you?”
Shoving away from the desk—before he strangled her—he stabbed a finger toward his study. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“Everything. My papers, my treatises, that bloody Tibetan document that is worth more than your life! All of it!”
She put the pen down. “The filing cabinet behind you is empty. I put all of your papers in there. If you look, you’ll find them all in order. As for the Tibetan document, I have no idea what you speak of.”
“The papers in front of the fireplace.”
“That pile of chicken scratchings that was spread all over the settee, two armchairs and the rug?”
“Yes.” The words came out between clenched teeth.
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think it was important.”
The blood pumped through his veins. He shut his eyes and pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, silently counting to ten. “That document was written in blood,” he said, “by an ancient Tibetan scholar. It is
When he opened his eyes, hers were as wide as saucers. Her lips trembled and a sharp stab of guilt threatened him, before the slight twitching at the corners of her mouth made him realize she wasn’t scared. She was trying not to laugh.
“Mrs. Marberry!”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so wicked. I placed them very carefully on one of the remaining bookshelves, out
