The Guild Conspiracy (10 page)

Steadily getting to her feet, she crept silently to the door and withdrew her mother's screwdriver from her pocket, twirling the familiar tool between her fingers. The bolt was locked from the other side, but it would take far more than a simple lock to keep her contained.

Using the point of her screwdriver, she carefully jimmied the lock, and a moment later, the deadbolt slid open with a loud click, the sound like a hammer in the drowning silence. Petra closed her eyes and waited, listening for any sign of Braith, but the seconds passed in silence. Nothing.

It was now or never.

Holding her breath, she turned the knob and edged the door open, silently praying for the hinges not to creak. When she had space enough to squeeze through, she slipped into the hall, eased the door shut behind her, and set off down the hallway, her stocking-­clad feet padding silently across the hard floor. Behind her, the sound of a latch clicked softly, the gentle creak of unused hinges lighting a fire under her feet. She hurried around the corner and gripped the handle to the stairwell door and pushed inside, careful to ease the door shut behind her. Perhaps she had only imagined the sound. Perhaps it was nothing. But she did not dare slow down. She sped down the flight of stairs, skirting past floor after floor.

As she neared the fourth-­floor landing, a door opened a few floors above her, and the sound of heavy boot steps drawing down the stairs was unmistakable. She quickened her pace, reaching the ground floor with sweat on her brow, the footsteps treading nearer and nearer. Swallowing against her rapidly beating pulse, she grasped the handle and swung the door open, the taste of freedom just beyond.

But then a slender hand forced the door shut.

Petra didn't need to turn around to see who it was.

“What do you think you're doing?” he hissed.

“Nothing to do with you,” she said, not releasing her hold on the handle. “Now let me pass.”

“No,” he said, positioning himself between her and the door. Officer Cartwright pushed her back a step, no longer wearing his red military uniform, just a plain shirt and trousers. “I have my orders. Now, where were you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“If that's true, then I'm sure you won't mind if I report this to the minister in the morning. Since you clearly have nothing to hide.”

She glared at him. “If you report me, he'll think I was trying to sabotage the quadruped project.”

“But you're not.”

It wasn't a question.

“No,” she said slowly. “I'm not.”

The tension left his shoulders, and he leaned his back against the door, crossing his arms over his chest. “Then why not tell me what it is you're really doing?”

“Because I don't trust you.”

“And if I promise not to report you?”

“Isn't that going against your orders?”

He shrugged. “That depends on what you were planning to do.”

Petra stared at him, this peculiar officer with his blasé manner and suspicious familiarity. Any other soldier would have dragged her back to her room and reported her to Julian in an instant. But not him.

“What's your game?” she asked.

“Game?”

“Why not report me to the minister and be done with it? Go back to whatever it was you were doing before they assigned you to me. You must have more important things to do than follow me around for the next few months.”

“Do you
want
me to report you?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she snapped. “You know what will happen to me if you do. What I want to know is why you haven't yet.”

He held her gaze a moment longer. “My orders are to prevent you from sabotaging the quadruped project—­and I plan to follow those orders
—­
but since the quadruped isn't in production yet, the probability of you doing anything to sabotage it is unlikely. If you can assure me that this has nothing to do with the quadruped, then I see no reason to report you.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He considered it. “I could give you my word as a British soldier.”

“Not good enough.”

Cartwright shifted against the wall and studied her, his steely gaze unyielding. “It's clear you have enemies here, Petra. Why, I don't really know. But I don't have to be one of them, not if you don't want me to be.” He unfolded his arms and offered his hand. “Let me prove it to you.”

She drew back a step, regarding him warily. He seemed sincere enough now, but that didn't change the fact he was a soldier under Julian's direct authority. She couldn't trust him. Even if she did tell him the truth, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't report her mech and her subcity office to the Guild—­and then that would be taken from her too.

“And if I refuse?” she asked.

He lowered his hand. “I'm not going to threaten you, Petra,” he said, the familiarity in which he kept using her name irksome. “But if you
don't
tell me . . . if you insist on sneaking around and hiding things from me, I'll have no choice but to report your actions to the Guild. My orders are clear. If I don't know for certain what you're up to, how can I tell my superiors that you aren't doing exactly what they fear? Agreeing to keep quiet about something unrelated to the quadruped is one thing, but if you're caught out of bounds, it will be more than just you who gets in trouble. Now, I'm willing to risk that. But I need to know what I'm risking it for.”

“You would be so willing to trust me?” she asked. “After everything you've been told?”

“You said you weren't what they claimed.”

“I'm not.”

“Then prove it.”

There was a hint of a smile at the edge of his mouth, and she was reminded painfully of a warm summer day, when a dark-­haired engineer had challenged her with those same words, daring her to prove her skill, to trust him when she had no reason to believe that he was telling the truth.

“We don't have to be enemies,” he went on, offering his hand again. “You can trust me, Petra. At least give me the chance.”

She stared at his outstretched hand. Could she? Could she trust him? This soldier, who was so willing to disregard his orders to keep a secret, not even knowing what it was? If she trusted him, and he betrayed her . . . it wasn't only her freedom she would lose. He could condemn her to death.

But if he was sincere, if he was willing to trust her, to keep her secrets as long as they had nothing to do with the quadruped, perhaps she could give him this chance. Perhaps she could even gain his loyalty, prove to him that she wasn't a traitor, that she wasn't an anti-­imperialist allied against the Guild. It couldn't hurt to have an ally in the Royal Forces, not when everyone else in the world was against her.

“All right, Officer Cartwright,” she said uneasily, stepping forward and taking his hand with a firm shake. “It's a deal.”

He smiled. “Please . . . call me Braith.”

P
etra led Braith across the first floor, keeping to her usual paths as she navigated from the dormitories to the main workshop and down the stairs to the storage wing on the far side of the building. No one saw them. It was well after hours and no one was working or wandering the halls this late at night.

Neither of them spoke until they came to the end of the storage hall, where she found the panel to the dumbwaiter chute left slightly ajar. Rupert must already be in the subcity office, waiting for her. Not wanting to risk being caught by a stray engineer, she reached forward and swung the door open wide, the hinges creaking loudly.

Braith joined her at the open hatch and peered into the cavernous chute. “What's this?”

Petra couldn't help but smile, remembering Rupert's answer the first time he brought her here. “Our ride.”

“To where?”

“You'll see.” She pulled the lever and brought the dumbwaiter platform to their level, the gears and pulleys whirring loudly until the lift stopped with a loud clunk. Grabbing the edge of the opening, she hauled herself onto the platform and sat with her skirts tucked under her knees. She glanced up at Braith, still standing in the hall. “Well? Are you coming or not?”

He grinned briefly and climbed onto the platform next to her, admiring the exposed gears, wheels, and cables running up the length of the chute. “Up or down?”

She pulled the door shut and pressed the control lever forward. The drive motor hummed, the gear trains spinning into motion as the pulley cords whirred beside them. “Down.”

The lift rumbled downward, sinking deeper into the subcity with each passing second. Braith raised his eyes to the shrinking square of darkness far above them, and Petra caught herself staring at him, trying to puzzle him out. He wasn't just another soldier in a red uniform, another of Julian's pawns. But what did that make him instead?

Electric light spilled into the dumbwaiter chute as the lift reached the bottom of the shaft, and Petra braced herself for the jerky stop. The platform clanged against the landing, and Braith knocked his head against the wall, the same as she had done the first time she rode down with Rupert. She bit back a smile and climbed out. Her damaged mech sat in the middle of the floor, the plating on its right arm snarled and twisted from the fight with Bellamy.

Rupert sat at her desk, slowly twirling a spanner in his hands. “About time,” he said, jumping to his feet. “I was starting to think—­” He spotted Braith and turned toward her with a frown.

“I know,” she said, cutting him off before he could say anything. “I'm sorry. I didn't have much of a choice.” She crossed the office and sank against the desk, folding her arms across her chest. “He caught me trying to sneak down here and it was either tell him what I was up to or give up on the fights, and I've worked too hard for this to quit now.”

“You could have
lied
to him.”

“Maybe . . .” she said, eyeing the soldier doubtfully.

Braith surveyed the cramped office, his gaze sweeping over the desk, the jumble of subcity equipment stacked against the other side of the door, the crates filled with mechanical parts, and finally the mech. “So this is what you snuck out for?” he asked, glancing up at her and Rupert.

She nodded.

“What is it?” he asked, circling the machine. “I don't recall you pitching anything like this to the Guild.”

“That's because I didn't pitch it to the Guild,” she said.

Rupert leaned close. “It's a risk getting him involved,” he said, keeping his voice low. “What if he tells someone?”

“He won't,” she said, hoping it was the truth. “He'll be in as much trouble as us if his superiors find out he was here. You're just going to have to trust me on this. I'll take full responsibility if it turns out I'm an idiot.”

“Is it a prototype of some sort?” asked Braith.

Rupert shook his head warningly, but she ignored him. She pushed away from the desk and joined the soldier in front of the machine, resting her hands on her hips. “It's a battle mech.”

Braith frowned. “A battle mech?”

She faced him, the truth sticking in her throat. Rupert was right. It was a risk telling him, but if she wanted to keep fighting in the tournament, she didn't have much of a choice. She needed Braith on her side.

“If I tell you . . .” she said slowly, “you can't tell anyone else, all right? You can't mention it to any of the other soldiers, not the colonel, not the Guild council or the minister—­especially not the minister. Not a word.
No one
can know about this.”

He regarded her with a frown. “But what's it for?”

“The other students . . .” she started, nervously wringing her hands. “They've formed a sort of fight ring in the recreation hall, kept secret from the professors and the Guild.”

“A fight ring?
Here?
” A slow smile broke across his face, but then he narrowed his eyes, his gaze skeptical. “But what does that have to do with you? And this?” he asked, gesturing to the mech.

“Well,” she said, a little hesitantly. “This is my fighter.”

“Your
. . .
fighter?” He glanced from her to the machine, a frown inching across his brow. “Wait,
you
fight? With
this
?”

“How else?” she asked, trying not to laugh as she crossed the room to her supply of spare parts.

Rupert joined her, fetching a rod of welding metal, goggles, and a portable blowlamp from the toolbox as she collected several small squares of plating from one of the open crates.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” he muttered. “If he tells anyone—­”

“I know,” she whispered.

They exchanged frowns, and he dug through one of the drawers, fetching two pairs of gloves, a set of pliers, and a spanner. “I don't like it,” he said, handing her the smaller pair of gloves.

“I didn't expect you to.”

She set the fresh sheets of metal on the floor next to the mech, donned her gloves, and sat down to get to work. Rupert offered her the pliers, casting a suspicious glance toward Braith as she started peeling the plating away from the mech's arm.

Braith watched her pry the metal apart, exposing the hidden weapons and contraptions beneath the plating. “And you built it?”

She shrugged. “Rupert helped.”

“Don't be modest,” said Rupert. “I barely touched the thing. She's the mechanical genius here. Not me.”

“So you fight against other machines?” Braith went on, pacing a circle around the mech. “Other engineers?”

“That's the gist of it,” she said, assessing the damage to the inner mechanisms. There was a bolt loose in the mech's frame where she had taken the brunt of Bellamy's final attack against her. She held out her hand and gestured toward one of the spanners next to Rupert.