My Lady Quicksilver

stray from your course.”

“Is it the right thing to do?” she whispered, thinking of the silent Cyclops army sitting in the dark in Undertown.

Jack stiffened. “Don’t doubt it. We made this pact eight years ago, after Nathaniel was murdered. Anything to bring them down—to destroy them.”

“Is it worth Jeremy’s life?” she snapped, turning on him. “Is it? Because if that is what is has cost me, then I cannot do this.”

“Are you certain it’s only Jeremy you’re worried about?”

She groaned under her breath. The truth. If she continued as she was, one day she would have to go up against Lynch. Was it worth it? Could she truly strike him down for her cause?

No. The answer was a sickly whisper in her mind. A betrayal of everything she had stood for over the last eight years. But how could she avoid him? He stood between her and the Echelon and she knew that his sense of duty and honor would force him to move against her.

“I’ll deal with it.” How?

“See that you do,” Jack said. “Don’t forget where your loyalties lie. With your family, with your own people —with the humans who live in this wretched city and look to us for the only cursed hope they have.”

“I know where my damned loyalties lie,” she snapped.

“Devil take it, I can hear you two all the way to Limey,” someone cursed. Ingrid materialized out of the fog, dragging a young lad with a missing eye and three iron fingers.

The tightness in Rosalind’s chest eased. She stepped forward as Ingrid shoved the lad to his knees in front of her. “Found ’im in the Pits, betting on the blood sport,” Ingrid said. “Couldn’t take him there so I had to wait till he’d blown his quid.”

Rosalind knelt down, resting her elbows on her knees. “Hello, Harry.”

The mech grimaced, dragging himself up into a sitting position. Blood dripped from a slash in his forehead. Ingrid hadn’t been gentle, then.

The youth was of an age with Jeremy and the pair had always gotten along smashingly well, even if Harry’d looked to Mordecai for leadership, rather than herself. His lips thinned as he scanned Jack’s menacing form behind her. “Don’t know nothin’.”

“Yes, you do.” Rosalind smiled, then held up a finger to stall his protests. “Let’s not pretend that you won’t tell us everything you know. The question is, whether you will do it now and be sent on your way unharmed, or whether Ingrid must break every bone in your body first.”

His blue eye rolled to Ingrid and he swallowed.

“Firstly, I want to know if you’ve seen Jeremy. Or gotten word from him at all.”

Harry’s shoulders relaxed, as if realizing he wouldn’t be asked to betray his fellow mechs. “Ain’t seen ’im since the tower,” he admitted. “Thought ’e were dead—or taken by the Nighthawks.”

Her eyelashes lowered as she fought to control her emotions. Her last hopes were drying up. If none of the mechs had seen him… “Why would you think the Nighthawks took him?”

Harry shrugged. “I were kinda ’opin’, you know? They were all over the tower after the bomb went off.”

He knew nothing then. Rosalind sat back on her heels, her throat dry and tight. Jack’s hand slid over her shoulder and she clutched it, squeezing his gloves gently as the world dissolved around her. The last hope she had lay with Lynch, and she wasn’t sure if he would recover from his bloodlust.

Ingrid sighed. “Be off with you then—”

“Wait.” Rosalind looked up. “Wait,” she added softly, forcing her thoughts to focus. “Tell me about the clockwork balls. The ones you use to drive a blue blood mad.”

Harry’s face paled under his mop of dark hair. “I don’t know nothin’.”

“Ingrid,” she said. “Cut his thumb off.”

“No!” Harry squealed, scrambling back on the cobbles—directly into Ingrid’s legs.

Ingrid grabbed his hand and dragged an enormous knife from her belt. “Which one?” she asked Rosalind. They’d played this game many times.

Rosalind shrugged. “It doesn’t particularly matter. Your choice.”

“This one then,” Ingrid said, yanking the lad’s hand back.

“No!” he screamed. “No, stop! I’ll tell! I’ll tell you anythin’ you wanna know about the Doeppler Orbs!”

Rosalind gestured Ingrid away and leaned closer. “Then tell me,” she said. “What is in the orbs that drives a blue blood mad? Is there a cure?”

“There’s a Dr. Henrik Doeppler in the East End,” he blurted, staring at Ingrid’s knife. “Some kind of nutter but ’e was tryin’ to come up with a cure for the cravin’, and found this formula instead. Don’t know if there’s a cure. We don’t let ’em live long enough after…”

“After the tests,” she encouraged.

He looked at her.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Be careful that you tell the truth, Harry. You don’t know how much I know.”

“We done tests,” he said quickly. “Just a few down below. It were ’ard to get our ’ands on a blue blood, you see?”

She nodded.

“So Mordecai thought we oughta try it on the Echelon. Get ’em runnin’ scared and see ’ow well it works before we attack.”

Her instincts had been right. This was bigger than it had seemed. “And where’s the final attack going to happen?”

Harry stared at her helplessly. “I don’t rightly know.” He jerked his hands up in front of him as she frowned. “I don’t! I swear it! Mordecai only tells me what I need to know.”

Rosalind frowned. “I saw crates filled with the orbs. There were enough there to drive half the Echelon into a frenzy. He has to be planning an attack on something big, somewhere a lot of the Echelon will be trapped together.”

“Only thing I know is its ’appenin’ in two days’ time,” Harry added helpfully. “Started shipping the crates out to the gangs tonight.”

Two days time. None of her spies in the Echelon had mentioned anything important.

“Let him go,” Rosalind murmured, then narrowed her eyes on Harry. “If I were you, I wouldn’t breathe a word of this meeting to Mordecai.”

“Believe me”—he gave a shaky laugh—“I won’t.”

* * *

The next morning found Rosalind on the guild steps after slipping out without waking Jack or Ingrid. Yesterday morning they hadn’t let her in. “Please,” she whispered under her breath. “Please let him be himself again.” Whether the plea was to a God she’d never prayed to before, she didn’t know.

Rapping sharply at the main door, she waited with bated breath. The minutes dragged by and she was just about to rap again when Doyle jerked it open.

His glare faded when he saw her, a soft sigh in his throat. “Ain’t no change, Mrs. Marberry. Garrett dosed ’im with ’emlock again. You’d best be on your way, its may’em round ’ere.”

She shoved a hand against the door as he sought to close it. “Do we know what the long-term effects of hemlock will do to him?”

“Mrs. Marberry, we don’t even know if ’e’ll be ’imself again. ’E’s been wild this mornin’.” Again he moved to shut the door.

“Can I sit with him?” she blurted, shoving herself between the narrowing crack. “Just for a half hour. Please?”

“I don’t ’old as that’s such a good idea.”

At the top of the stairs a dark figure distinguished itself from the shadows and Garrett leaned on the railing. “Let her through.”

Doyle scowled. “You know what’s ’e’s been like. Ain’t the done thing to let a lady in there with ’im like that.”