Legacy of the Claw Page 5

From unwieldy wooden platforms, a team of men heaved on a set of ropes, and brought several more net sacks containing fluttering paper birds up from the workroom floor to the open windows. The men at the windows let go of the ropes, and the net bags burst open; the little mechanical paper birds poured out and briefly circled the ceiling of the factory, an enormous cloud of motion. Thousands of paper wings beat the air to shreds.

  The mechanical giants in their boxes began flapping their heavy wings. They pushed off and out of their crates with sharply clawed feet, and rose steadily to meet their paper companions. As one, the birds flew through the open windows and over the river, casting dark shadows on the gray water, the huge winged gizmos leading the diminutive paper Orsas like soldiers in battle formation. Viviana’s heart rose like those wings, and lifted off to join them.

  She turned to Joan. Her capable assistant had another mission today besides overseeing the flight of a flock of paper birds.

  “Only one more piece of business before you leave.” Viviana spoke in a low voice, so no one else would hear. “One of my informants stationed on the King’s Rigimotive Railway spoke to me this morning about some strange occurrences in the Dark Woods. One of the beasts may still be out there.”

  Joan smiled encouragingly. “Undoubtedly a rumor cooked up by your opposition. Don’t give it another thought.” Her eyes glittered as she rested a hand on Viviana’s arm. “We’ll soon know the full language of the Loon’s prophecy—but no matter what it says, it will never keep you from regaining the throne. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Five

  HAL AND BAILEY’S ROOM was on the second floor of one of six wooden towers in the rambling dormitory. It had dark rafters and whitewashed walls, identical iron beds, and a large window that faced a sloping hillside. Because the Towers housed mostly students with nocturnal kin, the many common rooms were open at all hours, and stocked with board games, books, and plenty of candles for when the unreliable electro-current would flicker in and out at night.

  The first day of classes began with an elaborate ceremony in the meeting hall of the administration building. Row upon row of gleaming wooden benches had been outfitted with blue and gold cushions for the students—and in some cases, their kin—to sit on. Many older students hugged and shouted greetings to their friends. The air echoed with voices, giggles, snorts, and barks. A large flag with the Fairmount crest, a golden lamb and crow on a bright blue background, hung above the stage.

  Hal and Bailey found a spot near the front of the room as the Fairmount Academy choir began an upbeat rendition of an old melody, “Nature Is My Help and Joy.” Afterward, the headmaster, a thin, prim-looking man named Finch, welcomed the new students with a long speech. Bailey dozed off and nearly fell forward onto a second-year’s porcupine. Hal grabbed his shoulders just in time to avoid disaster, and Bailey smiled apologetically at two girls in the next row, who gave him a nasty look before whipping around toward the front of the room.

  At last Finch concluded his speech and the students filed out to find their homerooms. Hal and Bailey had been placed together, in a room on the third floor of the Applied Sciences building. They passed the dining hall and emerged into a vast lawn known as the Circle, where Fairmount students lounged between classes, ate lunch outdoors, and picked up impromptu games of Scavage.

  “That’s Treetop dorm, where the reptile and bird Animae live,” said Hal, pointing to the structures as they crossed the lawn. “And that’s Garrett, with the tunnels. It’s rodent and small farm Animae. And the barn and stables are up the hill a ways, as you get closer to the teachers’ quarters.”

  “You memorized the whole map already?” Bailey joked.

  Hal blushed.

  “I wanted to be sure I was nowhere near Taylor. The Scavage pitch is farther into the forest, past the dorms. You can’t see them from here, but they’re huge! Which reminds me: tryouts are tomorrow afternoon … ”

  Hal trailed off as a group of chattering girls squealed loudly and pointed in his direction.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Hal mumbled, tugging self-consciously on his blazer.

  “Relax,” Bailey said. “They’re not pointing at you.”

  Bailey and Hal turned. Behind them, a girl was striding purposefully across the lawn toward the marble steps of the Applied Sciences building.

  She was very tall and very pale, with long black hair and dark eyes lined with purple. Most of the girls Bailey had seen wore dresses and skirts with their blue Fairmount blazers. But this girl sported a pair of high-waisted tweed pants and a buttoned cotton shirt under her blazer. She carried a slouchy beaded bag over one shoulder.

  “Isn’t that the girl whose kin almost swallowed your mouse on the rigi?” said a blond girl, hugging a rabbit protectively to her chest.

  The second girl, who was wearing a headband with a floppy flower sewn on it, nodded. “Freak,” she said viciously. Bailey felt a twinge in his stomach. He hated that word, having heard it often enough.

  As the black-haired girl came closer, seemingly indifferent to the reaction she was causing, Bailey saw a thin, black snake emerge from the top of the beaded bag and wind its way around her wrist.

  “Wow,” said Bailey. “I’ve never seen an Animas Snake before.” He looked at Hal. “What about you?”

  Hal didn’t answer.

  “Hal?” Bailey prompted.

  “Snake,” he murmured. “Wow.”

  Hal was so transfixed that he didn’t notice the whizzing object headed straight for his head.

  “Watch out!” Bailey yelled. He pushed Hal out of the way just as the object was about to hit Hal square in the glasses.

  Bailey looked down at the object as it skittered on the ground. It was long and wooden, like a fat paintbrush, with bristles at one end. He recognized it from pictures of professional Scavage games: a Flick. During Scavage games, camouflage and subterfuge were important, and the Flick was a tool used for marking the opposing players with brightly colored paint so they had no chance to hide.

  Bailey turned around and saw Taylor and his friends laughing at Bailey and Hal. He’d thrown the Flick at them just like a dart.

  “I think you dropped this,” Bailey said casually, and lobbed the Flick back to Taylor. It flew straight and fast, forcing Taylor to dodge it. It stuck firmly a few feet behind where he originally stood, quivering in the ground. Taylor frowned. Bailey felt a rush of satisfaction—for once, Taylor had nothing stupid to say.

  Hal and Bailey’s homeroom looked more like a junk heap than a class. Shelves of papers lined the walls, in no apparent order: stacks of old student essays had been shoved next to a pile of yellowed documents that showed some kind of rigimotive design, with wings instead of a dirigible. Boxes of gears and screws were stacked on top of one another, their contents bursting from their tops. Glass cases over the shelves housed strange plants with spindly leaves that Bailey had never seen before. A dusty clock, missing both hands, hung above a door just behind the desk—Bailey figured it must lead to a private office. The desk itself was a catastrophe—an avalanche of papers and open books that spilled off of the surface and onto the floor. On a corner of the desk stood an empty bottle of red wine.

  “Is this the right room?” Bailey asked Hal.

  Hal squinted at his schedule as he tugged at his tightly starched collar, which was buttoned nearly to his chin. “‘Homeroom. Applied Sciences Building. Room Thirty-eight. Miscellaneous Animae.’ That’s where we are, all right,” Hal answered.

  They chose two desks near the front of the room. There were a half dozen other students in the room, and they fidgeted in nervous silence. From his seat, Bailey could see that the writing utensils on the teacher’s desk were covered with a layer of dust.

  “Oh, no,” breathed Hal softly.

  “What?” Bailey said.

  “She’s here,” whispered Hal, gesturing behind him. “No, don’t look! Don’t look!” Hal said, as Bailey tried to glance over his shoulder. But Bailey had already spotted her:
the mysterious dark-haired girl they’d seen on the way to class. Her pet snake was dozing around her neck, its delicate head nestled against her collarbone.

  “I can hear you, you know,” she said loudly.

  A group of girls sitting on the other side of the room giggled. A small parrot on the shoulder of a girl in the front row squawked. Bailey saw Hal blush bright red. He couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him.

  Several minutes ticked by as they waited for their Homeroom teacher to appear. The other students began to whisper and fidget in their seats. One student, who had been followed to class by a pair of inquisitive newts, tried to engage the other kids into betting which of the creatures could climb the highest—but no one was in the mood. Instead, everyone sat in silence, wondering when—or if—their teacher would make an appearance.

  The snake girl sighed. “In one minute, I’m out of here,” she announced.

  “We can’t just go,” Hal said, turning around in his chair to face her. “It’s the very first class.”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. The snake lifted its head from its nap and flicked its tongue at them. “Nobody said you had to follow me,” the girl said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type to cut class, anyway.”

  “What—what does that mean?” Hal sputtered, once again turning cherry-red.

  Just then, a small red flash bolted in through the classroom doorway and leapt to the teacher’s desk. A fox. She climbed to the top of the pile of papers and sat calmly, looking at the students as if she were about to call roll. Their Homeroom teacher sauntered in after her, picking his teeth with a fingernail and looking for all the world as though he were not a minute late.

  “Uh-oh,” Bailey and Hal whispered in unison.

  It was Tremelo, the soot-covered man in the motorbuggy who’d made such an entrance in front of the station the afternoon before. Still wearing the same dirty driving coat, the professor surveyed the room.

  “Is everyone here?” he asked.

  The students looked at one another cautiously.

  “Good,” said Tremelo, before anyone had a chance to answer. With that, he opened the door behind his desk. Bailey caught a glimpse of more papers, more teetering stacks of junk, more chaos in the adjoining office. “I’ve got more important things to do today than spend half an hour going over the rules with a bunch of kids who are bound to break them anyway,” he continued, “so listen carefully.”

  Bailey and the other students sat still as stones.

  “Welcome to Fairmount. Steer clear of salmon pie Sundays if you value your intestinal health, and always, always be quiet while I think.” Then he disappeared into his office, slamming the door and leaving the students alone again.

  The snake girl snorted. Bailey and Hal exchanged a look.

  “He must be kidding, right?” said Bailey.

  “Taylor told me that last year, he set his own office on fire,” Hal said. “Twice.”

  As if on cue, a small curlicue of smoke rose from the bottom of the office door. Bailey sniffed the air—nothing was burning, though he did smell a sweet, herblike scent that he couldn’t place.

  “What is that?” he asked Hal.

  “It’s myrgwood!” Hal said after one sniff, his eyes wide. “It’s … ” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “My uncle Roger says it makes you very … um … relaxed.”

  Low humming emerged from behind the door, followed by quiet, drowsy singing. “I gave my love a darling stoat / Her badger ate it whole … ”

  “Well, that does it,” said the snake girl, standing up at her desk. “I’m out of here. Who else has Sucrette’s Intro to Latin?”

  “We do!” Hal said quickly, and practically hauled Bailey out of his seat.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “Great. All right, then. Let’s go before we’re smoked out.”

  Together, they stood up and made their way out in the hall. Bailey wasn’t sure how he felt about leaving class early—then again, Tremelo hadn’t exactly seemed eager for them to stick around.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” Hal asked as they made their way out of the building and into the early morning sun.

  “Victoria Colubride,” she said. “Tori.” Then she sped ahead of them.

  “I don’t think she likes us very much,” Bailey whispered to Hal.

  “Tori’s a pretty name, isn’t it?” Hal said, and Bailey knew he hadn’t heard.

  They still had more than twenty minutes until their next class. Tori, Hal, and Bailey found their way to a pleasant set of stone benches in an L-shaped sunken garden by the building for Linguistics and Interspecies Communication. Tori pulled a bag of dried fruit out of her purse and began munching, seemingly uninterested in making conversation.

  “Where are you from?” Hal asked her. “We’re from the Lowlands, Bailey and I.”

  Tori sighed and looked toward the clock tower. Her snake wound its way around her neck again, settling its head underneath her left ear.

  “The Gray,” she said finally.

  “That’s fantastic,” said Hal. “I mean really, wow, the city. So brilliant.”

  “It’s not,” Tori said. “Though at least everyone there dresses like they live in this century. Why do all the teachers here look like they’ve rolled straight out of the Age of Invention? I think my grandfather wore cravats.” She rolled up the bag of fruit and went to put it back in her bag, as Hal tried to close his school blazer quickly over the paisley-patterned cravat that Roger had sent along with him. Bailey swallowed a laugh. As Tori moved her arm, he caught sight of a wide red scar on her wrist. Tori caught Bailey looking, and tugged her blazer’s sleeve forcefully down.

  Hal was blathering on about wanting to see the Parliament, and whether she had ever been to the fish market. Bailey stayed silent until Tori turned her purple-rimmed eyes to him.

  “So, I heard you were playing jump-the-train-car on the way here,” she said.

  Bailey tried to judge whether she was making fun of him, and decided she wasn’t. “I just needed some air,” he said.

  “Hmmm.” Tori narrowed her eyes at both of them. “You must either be really brave or a complete idiot.”

  Bailey laughed. “Let’s go with brave, okay?”

  “It was my idea,” Hal blurted out, and Bailey didn’t bother to correct him.

  The bells in the clock tower rang after a while, and the three of them picked themselves up off the grass and made their way to the Latin classroom.

  Ms. Sucrette was a brand-new teacher, and her classroom was the exact opposite of Tremelo’s mess. On all the brightly painted walls were long, crisp parchments that charted verb conjugations. Ms. Sucrette herself was right on time, dressed in a cheery blue drop-waist dress with a pink carnation pinned to the collar. She had short, wavy blond hair. Her Animas was clearly a bluebird: a small flight of them circled the room endlessly throughout the lesson, occasionally landing on a student’s desk to stare blankly at them as roll was called.

  “Welcome, welcome!” she chirped. “I’m sure you may have heard that this is my first year at Fairmount, so we’ll all be learning together!” Bailey couldn’t see Tori from where he sat, but he thought he could feel her rolling her eyes.

  Ms. Sucrette began to call roll. Used to being called last on any list, Bailey let his mind wander. Clearly Tremelo, the great Animas trainer, would have to be won over—but Bailey wouldn’t give up. He was making friends already, and Hal had promised not to tell anyone about his Absence. As long as he could keep it hidden, he had a chance to feel normal.

  “Quindley, Harold,” Sucrette called.

  Hal cleared his throat.

  “Present,” he responded crisply. Sucrette smiled and made a mark on her list.

  “Walker, Bailey.”

  “Here,” Bailey answered, raising his hand. Ms. Sucrette smiled warmly at him.

  “Welcome, dear,” she said. Bailey felt his ears getting hot as the other students snickered.

  Sucrette finished calling roll, then led
the class in a lesson on conjugating verbs.

  “Amo, amas, and … ” Sucrette trailed off, surveying which student to call on. Though Bailey had taken a Latin class in his old school, he didn’t dare raise his hand. He knew the answer was “amat,” but he couldn’t take another of her strange, sympathetic smiles.

  As the students dutifully repeated the conjugation, the door to the classroom opened and a small, pretty girl with dark skin and bright golden-brown eyes entered. Her pleated maroon dress looked new under her school jacket, but very plain and a little loose, as if her parents had bought a size up so she’d grow into it. Her right shoulder was covered by a scratched leather patch that buckled with thin straps under her arm. Ms. Sucrette looked at her roll call.

  “Ms. Sophia Castling?” she asked.

  “I prefer Phi,” the girl said softly.

  “All the way from the Dust Plains,” Ms. Sucrette announced, accentuating every syllable so that it sounded like a very grand pronouncement. “Do choose a seat.”

  The only empty desk was right under Ms. Sucrette’s nose, just a row in front of where Bailey and Hal were sitting. Phi walked quickly to the desk and sat down gracefully, staring straight ahead, ignoring the fact that everyone was watching her. Bailey had never met anyone from the Dust Plains before, a set of territories so remote that even by rigimotive, the journey to Fairmount took over a week. Student enrollment from the Dust Plains was incredibly rare. Bailey had heard all sorts of stories about life in those territories, mostly about how tough everyone was, with tough kin as well.

  When Phi reached into her bag to pull out her notebook, Bailey heard a rustling behind him. He turned to see a falcon, wings outstretched, perched on the windowsill. For a moment, it was still. Then it swooped into the classroom and shot straight to the highest bookshelf, where one of Sucrette’s bluebirds was preening. Someone in the back row shrieked.

  “Please quiet down, children,” Ms. Sucrette chirped, seemingly oblivious to what was happening.

  The falcon struck out with its sharp beak. The bluebird barely escaped, and the chase was on. Students ducked in their chairs as the birds swooped low over their heads. Chairs scraped against the floor, and more than one student tried to fan the falcon away with their notebooks and papers.