Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 7 of 24

The skiff dropped Celeste at her landing, but she felt no relief. Mei-Ling wanted the totem now. And the totem lived on her workbench inside her tree-grown cottage, the great candle-crowded table where she carved and bound the dead. If the pirate sent her crew while Celeste slept, they would take it all. She could not guard the bench and still eat, still rest, still breathe. She needed eyes she could trust. She climbed the gear-wrapped roots and pushed inside. Candles flickered over the scattered bones and the spell chalked across the worn table. The totem sat at the center, its ghost-silver dull in the dark. She lit no lamp. She thought instead of the boy who owed her nothing and yet trusted her, the one whose ghosts she had banished. At dawn she sent her clockwork crow across the water. Brass wings beat, gears ticking under black feathers. It returned with Gideon riding a salvage barge behind it. He clanked up the roots, wrench-arm swinging, goggles glowing blue. He stopped when he saw her face. "Your bird looked scared," he said. "Birds don't get scared. So you're scared." "A pirate wants my totem," Celeste said. "Her crew will come for it. I cannot watch this table every hour." Gideon walked to the bench. He touched the ghost-silver with one metal finger, careful, the way he touched broken engines. "You want a lock," he said. "A real one. Not a charm." "I want a trap." He grinned. The gear in his leg clicked as he crouched under the table. "I built worse in the yard. Give me the day." They worked until the candles burned low. Gideon fitted a cradle of brass around the totem, bolted to the table's heart. He wired it to the cottage pipes, to the crow's perch, to a bell. If anyone lifted the totem free, the bell would shriek and the crow would fly straight to Celeste, wherever she stood. She added her own work. She fed a warding thread into the cradle so the spirits inside the totem would bite any hand but hers. They tested it near midnight. Gideon reached for the totem. The bell screamed. Cold light flared and snapped at his wrench-arm. He yanked back, laughing. "Works," he said, shaking sparks off his fingers. Celeste rested her cane against the table. The workbench was no longer bait left open. It was a jaw waiting to close. The pirate could send her crew now. They would find the totem chained, guarded, and hungry. But Gideon frowned as he packed his tools. "A trap holds thieves," he said. "It won't hold Mei-Ling. She won't send crew. She'll come herself, and she'll make you carry it out on your own two feet." Celeste looked at the crow on its perch. She had bought time again, not safety. The pirate would not steal the totem. She would take the woman who made it.