“We did fight. We failed.”
“But there are others who escaped, surely?” I asked. “And others who will want to help. I know where William kept his mechanical armor. We can use that.” I did not know precisely how we could use it; I only knew a rising desperation that somehow we had to free Mátyás and Gábor and the others. As long as they lived, there was still hope.
“If there’s anything left of it,” Pet?fi said, but he followed us out to the wagon.
I stood in the middle of the cavernous room housing William’s workshop, my mind reeling. The room looked as if someone had pummeled it with a giant fist. Nothing remained of William’s mechanical creations but fragments of metal, glinting in the dim light. The metal woman with the medusa hair was smashed into a corner, her face a flattened sheet of metal, her wild hair slivers of silver on the floor.
Beside me, Pet?fi swore.
A cold wind whipped through the shattered windows, pulling at my loose hair. I shivered, glad the others had chosen to wait in the wagon.
This was not random looters or revolutionaries, not the violence that wrecked Grandmama’s house. Nothing of value had been taken. The metal pieces were still here, simply bent beyond recognition and use. The thoroughness of the attack—nothing in the workshop had been left unscathed—suggested deliberate planning.
How had the Circle known that the machines were here? Only a few days earlier, William said he had not shown them to anyone else. William. Mátyás. Gábor. Me. Had one of us betrayed everyone? I could not believe it. William would die first. Gábor too. And though Mátyás had his share of weaknesses, I did not see him betraying his friends.
That left me.
I had not said anything—but the Circle had been following me. Had they followed me here?
The Circle ends.
My ring. Even if the Circle had not sent someone after me, they knew where I had gone. Herr Steinberg himself had told me the ring tracked me. I already knew it did not work precisely as Herr Steinberg had said: it had not kept me from the Binding. But what if it had other functions? If it could read the spells cast in my presence, could it also record what was spoken? I would not put such a spell beyond Herr Steinberg, who had never trusted Lady Berri.
I thought of all the conversations I had heard in the café, of William boasting he had designed these mechanical creatures to withstand the Austrian armies, of Lady Berri’s plans. If the Circle had heard, they would have known everything: when Lady Berri meant to fetch me, where to attack Lady Berri while she waited for me to break the spell, where to find the students as they gathered for revolution.
It was only luck—or perhaps surprise—that the Circle had not caught us before we breached the Binding. But I suspected that was not the case with William and the others. No doubt the Circle and their soldiers had already been in place, watching as William and a roomful of students began to don the mechanical creatures, planning to catch them in the very act of treason. I’d bet Herr Steinberg enjoyed watching the students’ faces turn from exhilaration to horror, when they realized they were betrayed.
I fell to my knees, my stomach twisting like laundry wrung dry. I was the worst kind of fool. I had thought of the ring only in relationship to the Binding—and to me. I had resented it for curtailing my choices. How could I not have seen that my very presence endangered everything, everyone I cared for? I believed I was clever, invincible, important.
I had been important. Only to the wrong people. And for the wrong reasons.
Pet?fi looked at me with some concern. “Are you well?”
No. “I think it was me,” I said. “I think the Circle heard everything through a ring they forced me to wear.” I stared at my now-bare finger, heartsick.
“You!” Pet?fi glowered down at me, the tips of his mustache trembling with his passion. “You betrayed us?”
“Not intentionally.” But I had betrayed them all the same.
He was still for a long moment. Then, “I am sorry about your cousin, and your friends. They are my friends too. I will do what I can for them. But you—you are treacherous. I want nothing to do with you.”
He stalked from the room.
I pushed myself up and stood for a moment on trembling legs. Without the mechanical creatures, we had almost nothing. Even if Grandmama and Noémi were willing to lend their magic to our cause, it would not be enough to free Mátyás and Gábor. What were invisibility and healing against a legion of Circle-trained soldiers? Even if I could break a few spells, it would not be enough.
I swept a despairing glance around the ruined room before turning away, retreating through the accumulated detritus of William’s life and out to the street beyond.
Grandmama was awake. Despite the pallor of her face, her voice was firm when I climbed into the wagon. “Noémi told me what has happened—that Lady Berri is dead, that Mátyás and your friends are imprisoned.”
“There is something else.” I told her what I had surmised of my ring, of the role I had played in this devastation.
“We need Pál,” Grandmama said. “He can open a conduit to Vienna. I have friends there who might help us.”
“I thought he was a Coremancer,” I said. Only Lucifera could open conduits.
“He is many things,” Grandmama said. “As he gained power in the Circle, they granted him greater magic.”
“Will he help us?” I asked. “He works for the Circle.” I thought of his chilling expression when he spelled the Romanies—and then of his flickering contempt as he looked at Herr Steinberg. I shivered. Which of those faces was his true face? Was he the obedient puppet of the Circle—or something more?
“I hope so. I believe there is a part of him that remembers being my son.”
I was not so sanguine. But what other choices did we have?
“Will your friends be able to help in time?” Noémi asked. “The executions begin tomorrow.”
Grandmama’s shoulders sagged. “I do not know. We can only try.”
It was not yet the hour for fashionable visits when we arrived at the modest house where the Circle kept Pál. Ginny waited outside in the traveling carriage Grandmama demanded we hire, after finding the wagon less than satisfactory. Grandmama had also insisted on sending Ginny back to the house to bring us all a change of clothing, for which I was out of measure grateful.
A crow circled overhead as we climbed the stairs to the front door. I chose to see it as a good omen.