Five
MELERI
Meleri wasn’t prone to losing her temper, but when faced with the dangerous exploits of her soon-to-be former ward, she found she misplaced her manners quite entirely.
“What were youthinking?” Meleri demanded, unable to keep her voice from rising. “Stealing a veil from the stores, attaching yourself to a mission you had no part of, and putting yourself in danger?”
In the gas lamplight of her personal study, Caris looked less repentant than she first had when she and Blaine had returned to the Auclair estate an hour or so ago by way of the catacombs. The package was currently hidden away in a safe house and scheduled to be smuggled out of the city in two days after the required interrogation. Blaine had returned with a travel tube of blueprints that Lore had immediately taken control of. Which left Blaine the sole audience of Meleri’s temper, because her children were either abed asleep or handling the fallout of a disastrous mission.
Admittedly, Caris didn’t seem cowed in the least. If anything, the young woman was just as angry as Meleri but for a vastly different reason.
“I wanted tohelp,” Caris snapped back, her own voice rising.
“This wasn’t the way to do it.”
“Then, pray tell, what way should I have gone about it? You took one of my cogs when I had offered to go in the first place.”
“I have told you before that you aren’t meant for missions like this. They’re too dangerous. It puts you too much at risk. Just look what happened! Automatons attacked, and you were caught in the crossfire. You very nearly died.”
Which was in itself a massive problem. Peacekeepers had met the train at the railway yard to investigate the theft of cargo that wasn’t on any manifest. But the more insidious problem was no one should have known the package was on that train in the first place.
Yet someone had.
The implications were enough for Meleri to want to drink an entire potion bottle from the nearest apothecary to get rid of the headache pounding right behind her left eye. The Clementine Trading Company now had the glaring attention of Daijal-backed government officials trained on it. Which meant every route out of Daijal the Clockwork Brigade relied on with that company was most likely compromised.
“You are too much like your mother,” Meleri said, thinking not of Portia but of a woman long since burned and her ashes dancing amongst the stars.
Caris glared at her, wavy brown hair still a mess from the flight. In the trousers and work shirt she wore, Caris didn’t resemble the noblewoman Meleri had tried so hard to shape her into being. Her own daughters knew the worth of their bloodline, but Caris didn’t know hers, and if she kept putting herself in danger, she never would.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Caris demanded.
Belatedly, Meleri realized she’d misjudged her words. Portia was never one to make waves; that had always been Ophelia. “Nothing meant as an insult, so do not take it as such.”
“You should hope so, because you arenotmy mother.”
“Your mother would be appalled at the way you put yourself and everyone else in danger if she knew.”
Portia never would be told, though. For all the Dhemlans were cogs within the Clockwork Brigade, their chains did not overlap. Caris was mostly outside everyone, placed nearer to where Meleri and her children were in the workings of the rebellion. They’d tasked her with cogs who attended her university, all of whom were screened by Meleri herself.
It was for Caris’ own safety, the same way Portia and Emmitt had been kept separate from their daughter in terms of clandestine work. All the secrecy was done to insulate Caris from any fallout.
She’d been chafing more and more the last year at the restrictions placed upon her. For all that Meleri had tried to instill in her the pride of a noblewoman, Caris more often resembled the world her parents had come from: merchants and inventors, people who built things rather than governed or ruled. Ones who called the far-flung borders home and not the beating heart of Ashion.
Oh, Aaralyn. You should have left her with me.
Meleri snuffed out that regretful prayer, hoping the North Star didn’t hear it. She pulled the edges of her fur-lined dressing gown closer together. Despite the summer weather, Meleri was old enough to take a chill in the morning. Being woken from her sleep and needing to immediately deal with the fallout from last night’s raid hadn’t given her time to call her lady’s maid and dress for the day.
Meleri huffed out an angry sigh before carefully sitting down behind her desk. What she wouldn’t do for some tea at the moment, but until this whole mess was addressed to her satisfaction, breakfast would have to wait.
“Your antics put everyone sent out last night at risk—yourself included. When I made you a cog, I impressed upon you the need to keep the chains intact. Haring off on your own risks breaking every chain present on the airship last night,” Meleri said.
“I never meant—”
Meleri held up her hand, cutting Caris off. “You are not to oversee any Clockwork Brigade mission until I say otherwise. Until I know you’ll put the country first over your need for adventure, I cannot rely on you right now.”
Caris jerked back a step, something like shame flashing across her face before her shoulders stiffened and she raised her chin. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll visit my parents for the remainder of the day.”
Without waiting for permission, Caris left, shutting the door loudly behind her. From the corner where he’d watched the argument play out, Blaine said, “You do realize that will only drive her to action you will not like.”
