Sabine slipped her wand back into her pocket and whichever form of carrying case she wore beneath her skirts. “The cause is more important than one cog.”
The Clockwork Brigade was a machine that ran on the backs of people working to provide freedom to others who no longer had it, but also against the encroaching reach of power the Daijal court sought. Melvin and Ezra were rarely required to be present in New Haven. Others in the Khaur bloodline had that responsibility.
King Bernard was a man who didn’t rule on a whim, unlike some of the past kings. Reunification with Ashion was closer than it ever had been before, despite what the puppet prime minister and parliament in Ashion espoused. Melvin knew the eventual erasure of the countries’ shared border wouldn’t fix the rot in Daijal. It would only make everything worse across a broad swath of the continent.
The rest of the drive to Sabine’s mansion was made in silence. No one would think anything amiss of her being escorted home by a pair of married friends or that she’d invite them inside for a late-night drink. Sabine was known to be devoted to her husband and had never been followed by social-ruining rumors. That veneer of properness helped hide her actions as a cog.
Melvin and Ezra, for their part, were known to both be upstanding citizens of a prominent Daijalan noble family. It would have been rude of them to decline Sabine’s offer.
“This way,” Sabine said as she led them to the front door of her cliffside home.
City walls didn’t extend along the white stone cliffs, where homes owned by the rich sat on tiers carved into the land. Sabine’s had been built behind an iron fence, overlooking the Gulf of Helia. Space was a premium on the tiers, which meant the mansion was on the small side. What it lacked in space, it made up for in décor.
Sabine’s taste was expensive, and it showed in the thoughtful design of each hallway and room they passed through after sending the only servant up off to sleep. She led them to her private parlor, curtains drawn over the windows that overlooked the small rear garden.
Melvin locked the door behind them and waited with Ezra as Sabine went to one of the bookcases built into a wall. She pulled a statue off a shelf and pressed a hidden button underneath it.
The bookcase swung inward with a soft click of gears. The hidden space behind it couldn’t be called a room as it was barely large enough to be called a closet. A man was curled up on the floor in a nest of blankets. He squinted at them, clutching at a leather-wrapped cylindrical case of the sort used to transport architectural blueprints or paintings.
“Wyatt Lehan, these are some of my associates. They’re here to help,” Sabine said.
Ezra made a startled noise in the back of his throat, causing Melvin to glance at his husband. Ezra caught his eye and grimaced. “I’d heard he was a promising inventor before he basically fell off the map some years ago.”
Ezra was still a toymaker who excelled at creating new devices to entertain the masses. The Toy Trunk in Istal provided a nice cover for the Clockwork Brigade, and Ezra still oversaw it plus the rest of the stores in the company he’d built up. Ezra kept a finger on the pulse of the talent coming out of the Inventor’s Guild, both for their business and the Clockwork Brigade.
The inventor in question slowly got to his feet and stepped into the parlor proper. He was younger than them by quite a few years, with a haunted look to his eyes that Melvin had seen on far too many people throughout his lifetime. Wyatt clutched the travel case close to his chest, gaze flicking from Melvin to Ezra.
“You put yourselves in danger helping me,” Wyatt said.
Ezra shrugged. “We’re used to it. Sabine said what you carry is important. May I see the blueprints?”
Wyatt hesitated and only offered up the case after an encouraging nod from Sabine. He unslung the case from his shoulder and passed it over. Ezra took it, and Melvin followed him over to the writing desk tucked against the other wall, where he spread out the blueprints and began to peruse them.
“They’re copies which I made here. I couldn’t risk taking the originals.”
“Copies are still useful so long as they are accurate.”
“I have an eidetic memory.”
Ezra’s attention never strayed from the intricately drawn blueprints. “I can see that.”
“There’s a bounty on your head, Mr. Lehan. Quite an expensive one. Do you have any idea who might have authorized it?” Melvin asked.
Wyatt grimaced, pressing a fist against his stomach. “Samuel Fletcher.”
Melvin managed to hide his wince, but it was a near thing. “He’s noble through a distaff branch of that family, but not a lord.”
“It wouldn’t matter. That whole family is trouble,” Ezra muttered.
Melvin had been briefly acquainted with Claudius Fletcher during the time he’d first met Ezra. He’d long since rectified that societal mistake and hadn’t had anything to do with the Fletcher bloodline outside attending the same parties during the high-society season.
“Have you checked Wyatt’s memories?” Melvin asked Sabine.
She nodded, mouth twisting. “There’s been no tampering. His mind is his own.”
Ezra’s sharply inhaled breath had Melvin stepping closer to his husband. “What is it?”
The wide-eyed look Ezra shot him was filled with so much horror that Melvin had an instinctual desire to grab his husband andrun. Ezra’s gaze flicked past Melvin to Wyatt, hands pressed flat to the blueprints. “Does it work? Does this death-defying machine of yourswork?”
