Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
DARBY
“Darby,” Henry repeated. “What is this?”
“He’s not a what, he’s a who. His name is Captain Monstrego, and he’s starting to get a little heavy.” Darby motioned with her head to the door that led to the narrow steps down to her workshop. “Could you get that for me?”
To his credit, Henry did not try to stall her with any more questions but crossed the small space and opened the door. Darby paused at the top stair, suddenly realizing how difficult the steep incline would be with her added burden.
“Let me help.” The captain’s weight was suddenly removed from her shoulders, and Darby spun around to see Henry awkwardly supporting Monstrego’s upper body. She looped an arm under his knee and lower back, and together she and Henry slowly eased him down the stairs.
“Hi! Sorry I’m late.” Raven’s scratchy voice called out as soon as Darby jiggled the door handle open. “Busy night.” The bird flew over and landed on Darby’s shoulder, obstructing her view of the lamp-lit room.
Henry must have come down earlier and turned them on for me. Bless him.
“Not now, Raven.” She shrugged him off her shoulder and gestured with her chin to the narrow cot in the corner. “Let’s put him over there.”
The ruffled crow paced back and forth along the edge of her desk. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Darby ignored him as she worked with Henry to get the captain settled. His leg was too long for the cot, causing his shin to hang over the bottom edge. She looked around the cluttered room.
“Here.” Henry shoved a pile of textbooks at her, and she used them to prop up his leg. She leaned back, finally allowing herself a moment to breathe as she checked her magic. It was still solidly in place; the captain had survived the journey.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Raven punctuated his question with a disgruntled caw.
“Yes, care to explain?” Henry added, crossing his arms in front of his chest, which was now soaking wet and covered with grime. “Why did you bring home half a man?”
She rose, shoving her wet hair out of her face. Her coveralls were still draped over the chair where she had left them that morning. It felt like years had passed, though in reality it had been less than a day. She grabbed them and began shooing Henry towards the door.
“Dr. Fransten doesn’t think he’s worth saving.”
Henry reached the threshold and dug in his heels. “So you brought him here to die?”
“No. I brought him here to save him.” Darby shoved Henry’s arm, and he staggered back a step. “But I can’t do that in these wet clothes. Let me change, and then I’ll explain everything while I get to work. Better yet, go brew some coffee—mocha, if you have it. I think I’ll need the extra sugar.”
“Turnscrew.” Darby held out her palm to Henry and wiggled her fingers impatiently.
She bit her lip in concentration as she held together the intricate contraption of clockwork and thin metal plates that formed a hand with moveable digits.
Once her fingers closed around the tool, she began the delicate process of tightening each of the tiny screws.
It might have seemed counterintuitive to start with a non-essential part of his body, but her frazzled mind needed something familiar to start with to get the wheels of inspiration turning.
She listened with half an ear as Henry voiced his concerns.
“Let me get this straight: you kidnapped a patient from the hospital in order to perform some kind of medical experiment on him? Are you well? Do you feel feverish?” Henry’s beefy palm was suddenly covering her forehead.
She leaned to the side, using her elbow to push him away. The movement caused one of the unsecured gears at the base of the thumb to slip out of place, and she growled in frustration. “I’m not experimenting on him.”
“Oh, so you’ve done something like this before?”
She caught him crossing his arms in her periphery and could well imagine the look of pointed skepticism that he was likely wearing. She pressed her lips together and jiggled the gear back into place. “Of course not.”
“Which is the very definition of an experiment.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” She set the clockwork hand down and looked up at him in exasperation. “Dr. Fransten was going to just let him die. I have to try something.”
“Darby, look at him!” Henry threw one arm out wide as he gestured to the captain’s still form.
“He’s been blown to pieces. He’s likely still going to die, but now it will be under your watch.
If you had left him at the hospital, it would have been death by natural causes.
You start trying to play Deus, and how are you supposed to convince the Guild of Medicine that he didn’t die because of something you did?
They’ll take away your internship, strip you of your certification, and probably ban you from practicing medicine ever again in the future.
You’ll lose everything.” He took a breath, and his tone gentled.
“You worked too hard to just throw it all away like this.”
Darby’s eyes followed his arm to the captain, and Merry’s words echoed again in her ears. Captain Monstrego had willingly sacrificed everything to keep his men alive. What good were all of the skills and knowledge she had gained if she wasn’t willing to do the same?
“I have to try something,” she repeated in a whisper, tearing her eyes away from Monstrego and looking up at Henry with tears welling in the corners. “I can save him; I know I can.”
Her friend let out a long, heavy sigh, scrubbing his hand down the side of his face. “If anyone can, it’s you. Just don’t expect me to help you hide the body if it doesn’t work.”
“It will.” She said the words with more confidence than she felt.
“In that case, I’ll leave you to it.” Henry rested a hand on her shoulder as he passed.
He opened his mouth but closed it again as if reconsidering his words.
“Be careful,” was all he said before slipping through the door.
His heavy footsteps creaked up the wooden stairs before fading into silence.
Darby blew out a short breath and picked up her tools again.
“Alright, Raven. We can do this.”
He hopped over from the corner of the desk, swiping a shiny screw as he did so. “Make it work.”
“Hey! I need that!” Darby tried to retrieve the screw, but Raven flew across the room and perched on the windowsill. He cocked his head sideways, looking at her with one beady black eye.
“It’s mine. Make it work.”
His antics distracted her for a moment from the enormity of the task before her, and her shoulders lost a fraction of their tension. She nodded purposefully. “That’s the plan.”
Darby poured herself into her work, barely noticing as the shadows in her room lifted and then lengthened once again.
Her mug of coffee emptied and refilled more times than she could count as the piles of scribbled notes and bent and broken metal bits grew taller.
The limbs were the easiest part—thanks to her previous interest, she already had nearly working prototypes.
They had to be adjusted, of course, for Monstrego’s height and build, but the basics were already in place.
It was his heart that worried her the most.
Finally peeling off his tattered, bloody jacket had revealed that the explosion that had ripped him apart had also left him with the left side of his ribcage exposed.
Most of the bones were broken, with sharp edges jutting out at unnatural angles or sections of rib that were missing entirely.
His heart was weak and just as damaged, and, at the moment, it kept beating only by force of her magic.
Fixing his arm and leg won’t matter if he’s reliant on my magic to live. I can’t sustain it forever.
Even now, she was feeling the strain of keeping him alive after a long, busy shift at the hospital.
A headache was forming behind her eyes, and it took more effort than usual to keep the magic flowing.
She reached for her coffee mug, for the artificial energy that the caffeine would provide, then wrinkled her nose in disappointment at finding it empty. She looked up at Raven.
“I don’t suppose you would be interested in acting as a carrier pigeon, would you?”
The crow let out an offended caw and bobbed his head down and back.
“I’m not saying you’re actually a pigeon, of course; you’re a very handsome crow. What I am saying is do you think you could carry down another cup of coffee?” She rubbed circles into her tired, gritty eyes. “I need more energy if I’m going to keep up this level of magic.”
“You could always sleep, you know.”
Henry’s wry remark from the door behind her caused her to yelp and jump out of her chair. Darby held a hand over her hammering heart as she turned. “Don’t scare me like that!”
“Sorry.” His tone sounded anything but. He held up a steaming mug and a plate with a muffin. “You need to eat. Or sleep. Or both.”
Darby shook her head as she gratefully accepted the food and drink.
She held the warm muffin to her nose, inhaling the sweet scent of vanilla and dried blueberries before taking a bite.
The soft, buttery crumbs nearly caused her to cry tears of joy as she suddenly realized just how hungry she was.
“I can’t sleep,” she answered around mouthfuls.
“If I relax enough to sleep, I’ll lose the link that’s keeping him alive.
I just need a little more energy to get through this, and then once he’s out of danger, I’ll sleep.
I promise,” she added, noting the hard, dissatisfied line of Henry’s mouth.
“If you don’t, I’m going to drug your coffee with a sleeping tonic.”
She chuckled as she wrapped her fingers around the hot ceramic mug and held it up to her aching head, hoping the heat would calm the tiny hammers that were trying to pound their way out. “Now I’ll be paranoid every time you bring me a drink.”
“Sleep like a normal person and take care of your health, and you won’t have to be.” He paused for a moment. “Any progress?”
Darby sipped her drink. “Everything would be ready, but I don’t know what to do with his heart. It’s too weak to sustain him, even with healing magic.”
“Everyone’s hours are numbered. Maybe this is just your sign that his time is up.”
Hours. Time.
She straightened, freezing as his words sparked an idea.
“That’s it! Henry, you’re brilliant!” She set her coffee to the side and grabbed for a pen and paper and began quickly sketching out a design.
The ideas were forming so rapidly that she could spare little more than a wave of her fingers as Henry gathered her dirty dishes and left the room, muttering under his breath about “stubborn, crazy geniuses.”
With her medical texts spread open in front of her for reference, Darby’s fingers fairly flew as they assembled the gears and coiled springs inside the metal casing.
Piece by piece, the clockwork heart took shape, until, as the shadows were lengthening and the corner of the room were growing darker, it was finally finished.
Darby leaned back in her chair. “I did it,” she whispered, somewhat in disbelief. She picked up the heart and turned it over in her hands, examining the seams and mechanisms one last time.
“Make it work.” Raven fluttered his wings and landed on her shoulder, knocking his pointed beak into the side of her head.
She exhaled a shaky laugh as she looked at Captain Monstrego. “That’s what we do now. We have all the pieces—now we have to put him together.”