CASSANDRA ROSE CLARKE

THE AUTOMATON’S TREASURE

I sat on the deck of the Ocean's Rose with the only book I'd managed to shove in my trunk before I had to leave my homeland forever: an illustrated history of the Qilari swamps. It was an old book, a gift from some visiting dignitary or other who had heard about my love of the swamps. When I was a little girl, I'd been mad about them. I thought I'd outgrown the obsession, but banishment will send you wheeling back to your childhood, apparently.

I was sitting in one of the rickety wooden chairs left out for passengers, alone except for the handful of sailors scrambling in the ropes overhead. The book lay open in my lap, but I couldn't concentrate on the words. I'd read it twice on this trip already, and there was still another two months before we landed in Lisirra, the city that would serve as my prison.

A family came up on deck, shattering the peaceful, windy silence. They looked Empire, like most of the people on this ship, and they had a tottering little boy who ran up to the railing and peered over the edge, shouting about sharks. His mother joined him, saying something I couldn't make out over the wind. They were speaking the Empire tongue, which was my entire reason for eavesdropping. I'd certainly need to be fluent soon enough.

The wind picked up and turned the pages of my book, landing on a dog-eared illustration of the Qilari crocodile, mean-faced and spiky-tailed. I shut the book and settled back in my chair. The masts were silhouetted in the sun. Two sailors scurried along the tops of the sails, shouting to each other. Empire again, although a dialect I wasn't familiar with. I caught every three or four words—ship, sight, direction. Cannons.

Cannons? My Empire was rustier than I thought. The Ocean's Rose was a passenger ship, and decidedly not one for aristocrats or the wealthy. I doubted they had cannons on board.

The two sailors were joined by a third, a woman who swung in on a rope. She landed lightly on her feet, balancing herself against the top of the mast. I couldn't see her face, but she nodded her head vigorously and then swooped away again, dropping to the deck a few paces away from me and rushing off toward the captain's quarters.

The family was still standing by the railing. They'd been looking down at the sea, not up at the sky, and missed that bit of excitement.

And then an officer came on deck.

He walked over to the family first and spoke to them in a slow, hushed tone. I tilted my head toward them, trying to be inconspicuous, but I couldn't hear. The mother and father exchanged brief, worried glances; the son was still clinging to the railing. A pause. Then the mother wrapped her arm around her son's shoulders and led him away, speaking to him as she did so. I caught, “a bit of time down below—” before the officer appeared next to my chair, the chain draped around his shoulder glittering in the sun.

“Good afternoon, Lady Anaja-tu,” he said.

“That's not my name,” I snapped, more harshly than I’d intended.

He faltered. I'd confused him. “Excuse me,” he said. “My, ah, lady—”

I scowled, but I didn't correct him a second time.

“I'm afraid we'll be sailing into a storm soon. We're asking that all passengers retire belowdeck. I'll send a porter around when it's safe for you to come back up.”

“A storm?” The sky was a blank curve of blue, like the side of a flawless Saelini glass vase. “Are there even any clouds out?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice firm. “We have a soothsayer on board, my lady, and these storms can form without warning, this far out.”

I'd studied enough science at university to know that storms don't materialize out of an empty sky, but I didn't say anything. Perhaps magic was involved. If that was the case, then I didn't think going belowdeck would do much good, but—

I remembered the sailors shouting the word cannon.

“It's not a storm, is it?”

The officer gazed at me with a polite and quietly desperate expression. “I really must insist you go down below, my lady.”

I hadn't felt anything since I’d left the port at Arkuz, watching Father disappear into a point as we sailed away, and I didn't feel anything now. I stood up and tucked my book under my arm. The wind smelled of the ocean, not of rain, but I was aware of a flurry of activity in the masts overhead. Shouts of profanity and fear and protection charms.

“Fine,” I said.

I went down below. Father had arranged for a private cabin, the last gift he ever gave me. It was large enough that if I lay flat on my back my feet would touch one end and the top of my head the other, but right now it felt claustrophobic and dark despite the magic-cast lantern swinging in the corner. I pulled out my trunk and rifled through its belongings, looking for something that might work as a weapon. The closest I found was a decorative hairpin, a long silver spike topped with jeweled flowers. She had given it to me, a sign that she knew who I really was, a sign that she was officially in on the joke. Some joke, that got me kicked out of my homeland.

I shoved my trunk back into place, pulled down my cot, and stretched out on my back, holding the hairpin to my chest.

And waited.

The ship rocked along, as calm as always. Occasionally feet pounded overhead, and the lantern would flare and then sputter—magic working its way through the walls.

I wrapped my fingers more tightly around the hairpin, the jewels digging into my palm. I closed my eyes, whispered her name.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

And then:

A loud, cracking boom.

I sat up as the boat jerked and tilted. My head slammed against the wall. Spots of light flared everywhere. The hairpin clattered to the ground, and I cried out and launched myself at the floor, feeling around for it in the murky shadows. The lantern was almost completely depleted.

Another round of cannon fire. The ship didn't move this time. My fingers closed in on the pin, and I brought it up just as the lantern failed.

Footsteps: pounding, frantic. Men screaming. Pistol shots. I sat hyperventilating in the dark, holding onto the hairpin as if it were her hand.

Cannon fire reverberated up from the floorboards. But the boat didn't jerk and shudder. We weren't hit.

The door to my cabin flew open.

I screamed, cowered back on my cot. A man stood in the doorway, a magic-cast lantern in one hand and a sword in the other.

“Oh, shut up.” He stepped inside and kicked the door closed. With his sword, he knocked down the original lantern and hung his in its place. The light was different, greenish-blue instead of white.

I shoved myself up into the corner. “Take what you want!” I shouted, kicking at my trunk. “You can have it all!” That wasn't entirely true; I'd claw his eyes out before I let him have the hairpin.

He laughed. “That ain't why we're here.” The light in the lantern brightened momentarily, and I got my first good look at him: He was tall, bony, and Jokjani, although he wore a ragged Empire jacket. He paced around the cabin as he talked, his sword out, his hand on the butt of his pistol. “Just looking to take the boat. Old one don't meet with the captain's needs.”

The cannon fire had stopped.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“What?” The pirate stopped. “Kill you? No, not unless you do something stupid. Captain don't like killing non-Confederates. That's you, sweetheart.”

I'd read enough pirate stories to know what the Confederation was. I glared at him, which just made him laugh again.

“We'll drop you off first port we come to. Starlight Rock, most like. “

“Is that in the Empire?”

The pirate looked at me for a moment and then burst into laughter. “No, girl, it ain't in the Empire. Pirates' island, and not much there but starlight and rocks. Hence the name.” He gave a little flourish as he said that last part, but my body felt like it'd been emptied out. Some abandoned pirates' island was even worse than landing in Lisirra. It was a true prison.

“You'll stay locked up in your cabin till then. Sailors got a choice of joining up or not, course. Now, if one of 'em says no—” The pirate drew a line across his throat. “Well, we drown 'em, usually, but—”

“Why are you in my room?” I didn't want to hear any more about murdering sailors.

The pirate grinned. “To keep you secure till things get settled. Ain't gonna touch you, if that's what you're worried about.”

I shuddered and drew my knees up to my chest. I didn't let go of the hairpin. The pirate tapped his sword against the side of my trunk. He looked bored.

“How long's that going to take?” I said.

“Don't go planning anything.” He looked at me. “I told you, we're gonna let you go.”

“On a pirates' island.”

“Better than the middle of the ocean.”

He was right, of course. I couldn't imagine them just letting us go, but it also seemed like if this pirate was to kill me, he would have done it already.

“Couple hours,” he said.

“What?”

“How long it's gonna take.” He shrugged. “Till we got the new crew sorted. And then we'll be on our way.”

He looked up at me and grinned, his face splitting into two, and the green light carved his face into shadows.

I spent the next few days locked in my cabin, just as the pirate promised. Someone brought food twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Decent stuff: thin stews and hard little scones. I supposed they were feeding us from the ship's stores.

Different pirates would drop off the food, and I recognized most as sailors from when the ship had been a passenger liner. One of them even handed me a tin cup full of sugar-wine one evening. “Drink up, sister,” he said, lounging in the doorway, lips curled in a mocking smile. “Got another month before we get to Starlight Rock.”

Another month, and cabin fever was already crawling over my skin. They let us out once a day, in groups of three or four, to go up on deck and empty our chamber pots into the ocean. A pirate would keep his pistol trained on us the whole time, and we never got to stay out for long. But it was long enough for me to remember what the sun felt like.

Because I couldn't keep track of sunrise and sunset, I marked off meals and time spent up above in the flyleaf of my illustrated history of the swamp. Eight meals. Four times allowed on deck. Four days.

In those long stretches of time between meals and being out on deck, I lay on my cot and watched patterns of light and shadow form across the ceiling. I thought of her, the person I loved, the person I'd left behind, the person who'd cost me my homeland. I took all of my belongings out of my trunk and arranged them on the floor and stared at them like they were tealeaves and could tell me what the future held.

Nothing. The future held nothing.

During this fruitless exercise, I found a thin sheet of paper tucked into the bottom of the trunk. I hadn't put it there. When I unfolded it I found a list of names written in Father's neat hand. These men can help you, he’d written across the bottom. Contact them when you arrive in Lisirra.

I stared at the list of names for a long time. My eyes felt heavy but I didn't cry. For the last month I'd been dreading my arrival in the hot, dry city of Lisirra. I couldn't imagine my life beyond the days spent aboard the Ocean's Rose. But then the pirates came, and now I could hardly picture my life at all.

Rage flashed through me: at myself, at the pirates, at Father. I crumbled the list of names into a ball and hurled it at the wall. It bounced off and tumbled across the floor. I picked up the illustrated history of Qilar and flung it open to a random page, trying to distract myself. It opened on an image of a cypress tree, roots disappearing beneath the calm, smooth surface of the swamp.

Father put me on a boat to Lisirra when he should have put me on a boat here, to the swamps. Jokja is often called a Free Country because it's not part of the Empire, but the swamps are true free places, belonging to no king or queen or lord. Just like me.

I slammed the book shut and slid it away. Then I curled up on my cot and stared into the gloomy darkness.

I waited to die.

A week passed, according to my notes in the illustrated history. I ate twice a day; I visited topside once a day. I thought I might go mad from boredom.

And then one night I had a visitor.

I was sleeping when it happened; whether it was actually night or not, I have no way of knowing. I woke suddenly in the green darkness, gasping for breath. I'd heard something. A clatter.

I lay in the darkness, breathing hard, listening.

It happened again. A click click click like tumbling stones. I sucked in all my breath and held it, fingers curling around the thin woolen blanket that came with my room.

Click click click.

And then something scuttled across the floor.

“Who the hell's there?” I shouted, sitting up. The scuttling stopped. I wished I had some control over the lantern, but it always cast the same murky light. “Show yourself!”

A long pause. I stared into the darkness and slipped my hand under my pillow, where I kept the hairpin.

“Come on, then!”

A figure emerged out of the shadows. Small and low to the ground like a weasel. I watched it move in wide ambling steps across the floor. Then it crawled on top of my trunk.

I shrieked and dropped my hairpin.

It looked exactly like a Qilari crocodile, only it was much too small and crafted out of gold and shining jewels. When it moved, its scales parted, revealing flashes of the clockwork underneath.

It stared at me for some time.

“What are you?” I whispered in Jokjani.

A pause. Then it opened it opened its mouth with a steaming hiss.

“Are you magic?”

It worked its jaw up and down, but I heard only a rumbling, unintelligible clatter. It stopped, shook out its head, tiny clawed hands pressing against its cheeks. Then it looked at me again, and spoke: “You—not-thief—”

I couldn't understand the rest. It spoke in the southern dialect of Qilari, the language spoken in the swamps, and half its words were garbled by that horrible clacking.

“Forgive—hurt—bad man—” The creature jumped off the trunk and scurried across the floor toward my cot, startling me with its quickness. It stood up on its hind legs and peered at me. Its eyes were star sapphires, and they possessed a brightness that made me think of living things.

“You—not-thief—”

“No, I'm not a thief,” I said in my own halting Qilari. The creature seemed to understand me. It crawled onto the cot beside me and leaned in close to my face. I was afraid to look away.

Then it let out a stream of clattering Qilari I could hardly follow.

“Slow down!” I said. “I can't understand you.”

“Yes,” it said. “Broke me.”

“Broke you? Someone broke you?”

“Yes. The thief.” The creature dropped away from me, down to all fours. “I am Safin.” It seemed to gesture at itself. I was beginning to understand it better.

“Safin? Is that your name?”

“Yes. Your name?”

I hesitated, but the creature—Safin—kept staring at me, and I thought maybe I was dreaming anyway. “Marjani.”

Safin nodded, satisfied, and dropped down to the floor.

“Nice to—converse—” he said. His voice garbled again. “Come back again?”

I nodded, dumbly, and Safin slid away into the shadows.

Safin returned two nights later, once again waking me from a fitful sleep. I rolled over on my side and found him sitting underneath the magic-cast lantern, the light oxidizing his golden scales.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was clearer now, less garbled.

“Hello.” I sat up and drew the blanket around me. Safin watched me with his crocodile's grin.

“I'm not dreaming, am I?” I asked.

Safin tilted his head. “Dream? No, this is not a dream.”

We stared at each other.

“What are you?” I finally blurted, and then cringed for a moment, expecting a reprimand for my rudeness. But I was a prisoner aboard a pirate ship, talking with a magical artifact. Rudeness was the least of my concerns.

“I am an automaton.” He waddled up to my cot and reared up on his hind legs, his eyes appearing over the cot's edge. “I was stolen and brought onboard this ship.”

“Oh.” An automaton. I'd heard about them, when I studied at university—they were magician's business, a specialty of metal-magic. Artifacts infused with sorcery. “I can understand you better tonight.”

“Yes. I was able to do some repairs.”

Silence fell over us. The ship rocked back and forth, wood creaking. I could hear the ocean on the other side of my wall, but it seemed lost to me. All I knew was this little room.

“I was taken from my great treasure,” Safin said. “By a thief. But the thief is dead now.”

I shivered. “One of the pirates?”

“He tried to escape during the battle, to barter his way onto the other ship. Such terror! Guns firing and the smoke from the cannons. I did not have the words at the time, but I've learned them since. He was shot. He threatened to kill some important man.”

Safin reported this all in a clicking, mechanical voice, as calm as if he were reporting the weather. I'll admit I found it reassuring that this thief wasn't killed on a whim. I'd taken for granted, naively, that the pirates really did plan to drop us at Starlight Rock.

“I escaped during the madness, but I am still trapped. I long to return to my great treasure.” Safin dropped down on all fours and crawled away from the cot, pacing in circles around my cabin. “My great treasure! You would not be able to help me, would you?”

I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. It wasn't cold in the cabin, only damp and dark, but I was shivering anyway. “I'm as trapped as you are, I'm afraid. Worse, because I can't leave here unless they let me.”

But Safin didn't seem to hear me. He stopped pacing and stood facing the door, one foot lifted up, his tail sticking straight out.

“Safin?” I asked hesitantly.

He opened his mouth and hissed, a long, low, steaming sound. My heartbeat raced, my mouth went dry.

The lantern flickered.

“Must hide!” he shrieked. “Keep me secret!”

“What do you—?”

He scurried up the wall, squeezing through a narrow gap in the corner of the ceiling and disappearing.

I was alone again.

I sighed and slumped back against the wall. The lantern swung back and forth, growing dimmer and dimmer. Stupid, worthless thing.

And then lines appeared on my floor.

They glowed with magic-light—a bright white-blue, not murky green. They crisscrossed over my floor, forming lopsided loops around the cabin, tracing over the wall, to the gap where Safin had disappeared.

Someone banged on my door.

I jolted and sat up, disoriented by the noise and the veins of white light crossing over my cabin.

A jingle of keys in the lock. The door swung open.

“Dinner already?” I said.

A pirate stepped into my cabin—a woman. I recognized her as the sailor I’d seen swinging through the ropes the day the ship was attacked.

“I'll be damned, he has been in here.” The woman stomped into my cabin, pistol drawn.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

The woman stopped and looked at me for the first time. She was Empire, black hair hanging in a single thick braid down her spine, and she looked nothing like the aristocratic women I was used to.

“You see all this?” She gestured at the lines with her pistol. “This means the little shit has been in your cabin. Where is he?”

“The little shit?”

She sighed. I kept my eye on her pistol, although she didn't seem to have an inclination to point it at me.

“It's a machine,” she said. “Runs on magic. Looks like a crocodile.”

“I haven't seen anything like that.” I’d had plenty of experience with lying, and I knew to look her straight in the eye, to steady my breathing.

“It's been in here.”

“I've been asleep,” I said. “It might've been in here, but I haven't seen it.”

She stood with her weight on one foot and studied me, eyes flicking over my face. I didn't flinch away.

“You aren't going to find anyone who could break it down on Starlight Rock, so no use hiding him,” she said. “Have to undo the magic first, and there aren't many there who can work that sophisticated a magic.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” But as I spoke I thought about Safin's golden scales, his inlaid jewels. He'd fetch quite the price if he were in pieces.

He must have felt the tracking spell. No wonder he fled.

The woman gave me another hard look. “You sure about that?”

“I swear it. I've never seen a magical crocodile in my life.”

The boat rocked, the lantern swung, the lines of Safin's footsteps glowed.

“We'll see,” she said, and then she left my cabin, slamming the door shut behind her.

Our journey to Starlight Rock progressed as it always had, but now my days were punctuated not only by meals and trips up above, but by visits from Safin, who crept into my room with news about the ship.

“The captain never leaves his quarters unless the moon is out,” he told me. “The crew is bored. The other passengers cry a lot. Hafsa is angry she hasn't caught me yet.”

Hafsa was the woman who had slammed into my cabin that night. Safin talked about her almost as much as he talked about his great treasure back in Qilar.

“She wants to sell me in Lisirra,” he said. “Just like the thief.”

“She can't sell you if she hasn't caught you.”

“But she'll catch me eventually, yes? I can disembark with you at Starlight Rock, and together we can return to my great treasure!”

He was so convinced I could save him that it made my heart ache. “I imagine they'll be looking for you when we leave the ship,” I said. “Or Hafsa will, anyway.”

Safin hung his head. His expression never changed—always the same gleaming eyes, the same toothy grin. But I'd talked with him enough that I could see the other ways he revealed his feelings.

“I can't stay aboard,” he said. “You are the only one who can converse in Qilari. Who else will help me?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away from him. A year ago I had dreams of swooping in and saving her, taking her away from the palace, running off into the Jokja Jungle together. But now I couldn't even save myself. That Safin thought I could save him was laughable. Ridiculous.

“You can try and disembark,” I said. “But unless your great treasure's on Starlight Rock, we won't get to it.”

“It's in Qilar!”

I sighed. “I know that. I'm just saying— “ He was up on his hind legs, pressing his front claws into the side of my cot. “We would need a ship.”

“We have a ship here.”

“We don't have anything.”

Safin looked at me for a moment longer, blinking. Then he dropped down to the floor and paced. I could imagine the lines appearing the next time Hafsa cast a tracking spell.

“Do you want to go to Starlight Rock?” he asked, still moving.

“Of course not. I'm not sure there's even food there. Or anything.” This past month I had done everything in my power not to think about the future. But we were getting close. I knew that. Safin had told me; he'd overhead the crew talking.

“Then don't go.” He stopped and looked at me again.

“I'm a prisoner,” I said, irritated. “I have no choice.” Just like the rest of my life. No choice in leaving Jokja. No choice in who I loved.

Safin didn't answer. I flopped down on my back and stared at the ceiling and listened to the grind of his gears as he walked in circles. Then there was a great bellowing hiss and suddenly Safin pounced on my stomach.

“Hey!” I scrambled to push him off, but he dug his claws into my dress and held on tight. “Let go!”

“You must stay onboard the ship,” he said. “That's the only way. Stay onboard and tell the captain we must go to Qilar. Lie if necessary. The great treasure is waiting, and after I am reunited with it, then you can find your way to Idai City. Yes, yes. What do you say?”

“I say that's impossible,” I told him, and shoved him to the floor. This time, he didn't argue.

The day we arrived at Starlight Rock I woke with dread in my bones. Safin had not come to visit me the night before and I slept soundly, but when I woke to the clamor of bells that morning, I knew: we had found land. And my life was lost.

I didn't know if they would let us take our possessions, but I packed my things anyway, all my worn and filthy clothes, the useless list of names Father had given me, my illustrated history of southern Qilar. The hairpin I wore like armor, sliding it into the coil of braids at the back of my neck.

I sat on my cot and waited. My body was numb; my thoughts were hollow. The bells clanged and clanged.

I didn't have to wait long. A knock came at my door, and the lock jangled.

Hafsa waited on the other side.

She didn't say anything and her gun was put away. But when I saw her, I thought of Safin: you must stay onboard the ship.

A complete impossibility without leverage. And I had no leverage. My title was lost; my most expensive possession was a hairpin I refused to part with.

But maybe I didn't need a possession.

“Come on,” Hafsa said. “We're here. Bring what you can carry. The porter's long gone.”

I didn't move from the cot.

“Did you hear me?” she asked, hand moving toward her pistol.

“Yes.” It came out quiet, almost a whisper. “I—the thing you were looking for. I saw it last night.”

She froze. I forced myself to look away from her pistol and into her face.

“You're right; he had been coming to my room. I couldn't sleep last night and I—I actually saw him.”

She dropped her hand to her side and looked me up and down. “What do you want?”

“What?”

“You want something out of this. Go on and tell me, and I'll see what I can do.”

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that my life was over regardless. “I want passage to Qilar.”

She blinked at me and then threw back her head and laughed. “We don't need the gold that bad, girlie.”

“No, you don't understand.” The words spilled out of me, and I thought of the deception that had gotten me banished, how easy that had been as well. “The automaton—his name is Safin, he told me that—he's part of a great treasure. And he wants to get back to it, more than anything.”

The ship tilted, and Hafsa shot out one hand to steady herself against the doorframe. “Go on.”

“If you told him you were returning him to his great treasure, he'd help you find it, I’m sure. And the treasure's in Qilar, in the swamps, so—” I shrugged. “As payment for helping you find it, you can drop me off at Port Idai.” When she arched an eyebrow, I added, “Or whatever's convenient.”

We stared at each other in the creaking silence.

“Wait here,” she said, and she slammed and locked the door.

I let out a long breath and slumped against the wall. Sweat dripped down my spine.

“Marjani!”

I looked up at the gap in the ceiling. Safin's head appeared.

“Wonderful thinking!” he cried.

“Were you in there the whole time?”

“Oh, yes. I knew you'd devise something.”

“Look,” I said, standing up on the coat so I could lower my voice. “She's probably going to ask me to find you. I don't want to do it here—too suspicious. I'll wander the boat a bit and call your name, and you come out before they hurt me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes!” He disappeared, and I collapsed down on the cot. I didn't think this was going to work. I was acting by rote, an automaton myself.

Hafsa returned. “The other passengers are disembarking now. You have until the last one is off the ship to find the creature.”

My head spun. “How long will that be?”

“I don't know. But you better look fast. And don't try anything, either.” She pulled out her pistol and made a show of packing in the powder and the shot. “I'll be right there with you.”

“What if it won't come out because you're with me?”

“Then off to the Rock with you.” She grinned, balancing her pistol over one shoulder. I couldn't believe she'd been a run-of-the-mill sailor a month ago.

“Fine.” I stood up, straightening my spine, lifting my chin. Funny how all those years of etiquette lessons became useful.

Hafsa held the door for me, and I stepped out into the corridor. It was as dank as always, but I could hear voices overhead, chattering and fearful.

“Safin!” I called out, winding down the hallway, Hafsa right behind me. “Safin! I've found a way to get you home!”

I didn't know where I was going. I followed the twist of the corridor. We passed clumps of pirates, and they stared at me, leering. “Safin!”

“Here, my lady!” We were in the mostly empty storeroom, and he dropped out of the ceiling and landed on my shoulder. I bit back a scream. “Ready to serve you, Lady Marjani.”

“You can understand that?” Hafsa asked.

“It's southern Qilari.” I turned to her. Safin draped over my shoulders like a stole. “He said he's ready to serve me.”

Hafsa stared at me—at Safin—with a mercenary glint in her eye. “I can't believe it,” she said. “How easy—” She shook her head. “Well, they're still disembarking, so you may have found a ticket to Qilar after all. Ask it if it knows the way to the treasure.”

I did. Safin said, “Of course I know the way! We talked—”

“He knows,” I said to Hafsa.

“Yeah, we'll, it better be able to prove it. Come on.”

We went up above. The sun was high in the sky and bright, and it bounced off Safin's scales and into my eyes. A few of the passengers waiting along the railing turned and looked at me, frowning. We were at a dock, I saw, that led into a shabby little town. Lush green trees rose up behind it.

“The name isn't really accurate,” Hafsa said. “But you'd be better off in Qilar.”

She poked me in the back with her pistol, shoving me toward the captain's quarters. She didn't knock, just walked in and gestured for me to follow. The windows were pinned with thick, dark fabric, blocking out the sun. Magic-cast lanterns glowed in the corners, casting a cleaner version of the green light I'd grown so accustomed to.

No one waited for us in the front room.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing with her gun to a row of chairs. “And don't let the thing escape.”

I slid into one of the chairs, and Safin dropped down into my lap as Hafsa left, closing the door behind her.

“Is it working?” he asked. “I cannot speak Empire.”

“So far,” I said. “They're going to make you show them the way.”

“To the great treasure? Oh, delight! I will be reunited.”

Footsteps. I looked up, one hand resting on Safin's back. Hafsa came into the room and stepped to the side. A man followed her. He was tall and stooped, straggly gray hair falling into his face. When he looked at me I gasped, because his eyes were a pale cold gray I'd never seen before, and I felt them trap me like chains.

“So it looks like you've captured our little friend.” He walked up to me, his movements measured and graceful. Safin trembled against my lap, his gears clicking. “We were going to chop him up, but I hear tell of a great treasure?”

I nodded and tried to keep my voice strong. “Yes. Sir. In southern Qilar.”

The captain dragged a chair and sat down so that he was facing me. “Is this a trick, girl?”

I shook my head, aware that he was staring at me. Studying me. My thoughts felt suddenly cold, and I went still and focused only on those times Safin told me of his treasure.

He nodded, satisfied. The cold in my head dissipated.

“I guess we can make sail for Qilar. Might be a good idea anyway, what with Captain Lao still on our asses.” He glanced at Hafsa. “Ain't that right?”

“It is, sir.”

He turned to me. I tried not to look at his eyes but they seemed to loom in his face, threatening to overwhelm me. “You are now a crew of the pirate ship Ocean's Dagger. You that nobleman's daughter I heard some of the sailors talking about? Lady Anaja-tu?”

I hated hearing that name aloud. “That isn't my name anymore, sir.”

He laughed. “That's the spirit. So what is your name, then?”

“Marjani.”

“Just Marjani. Good enough for me. You ever take a yacht up the royal river, Marjani?”

“Once or twice.” I kept stroking Safin's back like he was a cat, and his tail curled around my wrist. It was the only thing keeping me calm.

“Eh, maybe we can teach you a bit about the ropes. Till then, you'd best learn how to handle a mop and broom. Hafsa here can show you.”

I expected Hafsa to protest, but she didn't.

“We'll leave here in a week's time,” he said, standing up. “You aren't confined to your cabin any longer but you also can't leave the ship, do you understand? You try, I'll shoot you myself.”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

If my fear amused him, he didn't show it. “Same thing holds true if we get to Qilar and there's no treasure.” He pointed at my forehead with his finger. “The bullet will go right there.”

I nodded, tightening my grip on Safin, who snuggled against me.

“Very well.” He shoved his chair back into place and ambled over to the door leading into the back part of his quarters. “Always was a bit of a risk taker.” He nodded at Hafsa and disappeared through the doorway.

Seven days later, we were on our way.

Three months passed.

My time onboard the Ocean's Dagger was markedly different from my time aboard the Ocean's Rose. Although I wasn't condemned to my cabin, I was condemned in other ways—to polishing the wood on the deck until it shone in the sun, or to helping the cook prepare food for the crew. Hafsa, the closest I had to a human friend, spent most of her time up in the masts, but she was kind enough to me in the evenings, when the crew would while the hours away with music and drinking and dancing. Those nights were the only times I ever saw the captain. Safin had been right: he only left his quarters under the cover of moonlight, and he would stand off to the side and watch the carousing with his arms crossed over his chest, never joining in.

He frightened me. But he seemed to frighten everyone except Rafi, the first mate who commanded the ship in his stead.

The day we spotted land was windy and humid and overcast, and the entire crew was in a lazy, indolent mood. I was supposed to be mopping the upper deck, but instead I was looking down at the green-gray ocean, Safin at my side. I hadn't seen much of him during those three months, but the last few days he'd come creeping out of his hiding places, asking if we had arrived yet. Now he was pacing around my feet, chattering to himself about his great treasure.

The warning bells rang thrice in quick succession. I jumped and grabbed my mop as if it were a weapon, the muscles in my back tense and ready for a fight. Safin stopped his pacing and stood up on his hind legs, head swinging back and forth.

“What do the bells mean?” he asked.

“I'm not sure.” But then I noticed that the crew was scrambling up in the masts, looking to the east, and they seemed in high spirits. Land, I remembered. The bells meant land.

I ran around to the port side, and Safin followed, his claws clicking against the deck.

Off on the horizon, peeking through the wispy gray clouds, was a narrow line of green.

“Land? Oh, great treasure!” The automaton leapt up on the railing in his excitement, and I clapped my hands down on his sides to keep him from falling into the water. The land was far off enough to seem like a dream, but I could not stop staring at it. I'd forgotten what it was to stand on an unmoving surface.

“That's not Qilar proper.” It was Hafsa. She leaned up against the railing beside me, the wind blowing her hair away from her face. “You have to pass a handful of these narrow little islands before you get to the river mouth. And that's how we get to the great treasure, isn't it, little automaton?”

I translated her question, and Safin nodded. “The river will take you to the great treasure, oh yes.”

“It is,” I told her. “How much longer until we get there? To the river's mouth?”

She shrugged. “About half a day, most like. We should be there by nightfall.”

I thought about the captain, hunched over in the moonlight, watching the crew.

“At any rate, the captain wants to see you.” She jerked her chin up at Safin. “Both of you.”

I nodded and told Safin. He let out another cry of “Great treasure!” and scurried up my leg and settled around my neck, in his preferred traveling position. Together Hafsa and I walked to the captain's quarters. The crew's lassitude had worsened since the bells rang, and they called out to Hafsa as she walked past.

“Get some work done!” she shouted back at them, which only made them laugh. I was grateful they mostly ignored me.

Hafsa knocked on the captain's door. Rafi answered and gestured for us to step inside. It was as dimly lit as I remembered, and the air was thick and smelled of burning leaves.

Something shifted on the divan—the captain, stretched out on his back, smoking a pipe.

“I hear we've arrived,” he said, and the smoke curled around him.

Rafi disappeared into the back room.

Safin leapt off my shoulder and landed on the floor with a clank. The captain smiled at the noise, and drew in another breath of smoke. When Safin scurried across the floor, the captain's eyes followed him.

“Great treasure!” Safin cried in Qilari.

“What did it say?”

“'Great treasure,'“ I said.

“Ah, yes, the great treasure.” The captain sat up. “Hafsa, you don't need to stay in here. Go make sure the crew actually steers us into the bay. They've been lazy these last few days.”

“Yes, sir.” Hafsa bowed her head and slipped out, a triangle of sunlight appearing and then disappearing with her.

The captain extinguished his pipe and set it on the table beside the divan. He stood and stretched, unfurling to his full height. Every time I saw him I thought he didn't look human, but I could not say why. All his parts were right, but they didn't come together in the right way.

“I want to know the directions before we disembark,” he said, talking to me. “You will sit at that table there—” He pointed with his pipe “—and write down word for word what the little metal beastie has to say.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, and pointed at the table again. I told Safin what we needed to do. There was one chair set up at the table, and in front of that chair was a stack of parchment, a quill and ink.

“I'm assuming a nobleman's daughter knows how to write,” the captain said.

I nodded, my throat too dried up to speak. I sat down at the table and dipped the quill in the ink. Safin hopped up on the table.

“I'm ready,” I said.

“It's easy,” Safin said, and I wrote that down, just to be sure. “But you will need small boats, not a big one like this. Follow the river away from the sea. Easy, easy!” He turned in an excited circle and blinked at me, eyes refracting in the lamplight.

I finished writing. “He's going to want more detail than that,” I said. “How long do we follow the river?”

“A long time, yes. You will pass the bone trees and the baelfires. The great treasure lives in a house on the water. Most easy to spot.”

I paused when he said great treasure lives. My Qilari had improved vastly over the last three months, and I didn't make the minor translation mistakes I did when I first started speaking with Safin. But it seemed odd to phrase it that way, to say lives instead of is kept. But then, Safin wasn't alive in the way I was. Maybe his understanding was different.

I finished writing out the instructions and handed them to the captain. He didn't say anything about the great treasure lives, only nodded like he was satisfied. He folded up the instructions and slipped them into the pocket of his jacket.

“These better guide us true.” His gray eyes leered at me. “If they don't, I will kill that creature and then I will kill you.”

I couldn't move. My body felt cold.

“You tell it what I just said.” He gestured at Safin and turned away. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and then relayed the message to Safin.

“Kill!” he said. “Oh no.”

“You didn't lie to me, did you?”

“Of course not! I want to see the great treasure!”

“We're fine, then.” I pressed my hand against my forehead. “We're fine.”

But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

We took four boats total, a quarter of the crew. The full moon was a shining silver disk that lit the ocean with streaks of light. I rode in the head boat, with the captain and Rafi and Safin. Hafsa led the second boat, shouting orders as we bounced through the choppy waves.

“We can enter there,” Safin said, and pointed. He was wrapped around my shoulders, close enough that I could hear his gears clicking.

I looked to where he pointed. The river mouth was narrow, flanked on either side by a pair of cypress trees with branches tangled overhead, forming an arch. The ocean was bright in the moonlight, but past that arch everything was dark.

“We can enter there,” I said to the captain.

“I saw.” He held my written instructions in his hand, and they rippled in the wind.

We passed through the cypress arch and the world went dark. No moonlight filtered through the thick vegetation of the swamp. The touched crewman scrambled to ignite lanterns, sending them up to drift alongside our boat. They cast small spheres of greenish light, hardly enough to see by. The air thickened with humidity. I stroked Safin's tail without thinking, and a noise rattled deep inside his chest, like a cat's purr.

We continued on. I relieved Rafi from rowing duty, and the rhythmic thump of the oars against the water soothed my nerves. No one spoke. We all seemed to be holding our breaths.

We came to a knot of white trees, twisting out of the swampy muck.

“The bone trees,” Safin said.

I'd seen pictures of them in my illustrated history, but I'd always thought the pictures were an exaggeration. Here in the darkness I saw they weren't. The bone trees looked like hands, with long thin fingers grasping the air. I knew from my book that if you cut them, they do not bleed sap, but dry white dust.

The captain's shoulders tensed as we slid past, and he kept his eyes on the bone trees, his hand on his pistol. Rafi laid a hand on the captain's upper arm, and for a moment the captain seemed to calm. Rafi dropped his hand, but I still saw it, that flicker of intimacy.

We passed the trees without incident.

“Now for the baelfires,” the captain said.

“And then the treasure,” I added.

“For your sake I certainly hope so.”

I'd read about the baelfires too, and I knew they were spots of light that lured weary travelers into the darkness. We rowed along, and the air shifted. My skin prickled, and Safin pressed closer to me.

A light blinked out in the trees.

“Concentrate,” the captain said sharply. “Stay in the boat.”

“Stay in the boats!” Rafi shouted, cupping his hand around his mouth. “Pass word along, Hafsa! Stay in the boats!”

Hafsa's voice echoed through the swamp, and then the next boat leader's, and the next. There were more baelfires now, bobbing out of the woods and over the water. They were lights, no different from our lanterns, but I wanted nothing more than to leap out of the boat and chase after one. I wanted to capture it and hold it in my hand. It would lead me to her, I knew it—it would lead me away from Qilar, away from the Ocean's Dagger, back to my home.

“Stay strong,” Safin whispered. “They lie.”

“They don't talk,” I snapped.

“They still lie.”

I plunged the oar into the water. The captain gazed after the baelfires, his face full of longing. It mirrored my own feelings, my own desire to leap into the water, to chase them through the darkness.

Rafi grabbed the captain's hand and squeezed it tight.

“Look,” Safin said. “Look at their hands.” His voice was urgent. I looked and it wasn't the captain and the first mate holding hands, but me and her. The baelfires might have claimed that they could take me to her, but she was the one who held me in place, the one who kept me safe.

I didn't think our trip through the baelfires would ever end. They flooded the swamp with light, but I rowed forward, sweat pouring down my back.

And then they blinked out and were gone.

“Is that the house?” the captain asked.

I jerked my head up. A house had formed in the sudden darkness, with white-washed walls and lights in the windows. It perched on the edge of the water, and lanterns—true lanterns and not baelfires—lit a path from the river to the door.

“The great treasure!” cried Safin.

“It's the house,” I said, weariness dragging down the edges of my voice.

Safin slithered down my leg and rushed to the edge of the boat, curling his claws around the side. His eyes glowed.

“Yes!” he clattered. “Yes, yes, yes!”

The captain nodded at Rafi, who stood up and shouted for the boats’ leaders to tie off at the rickety pier jutting over the river.

The captain climbed ashore and turned to face his men. “Rafi, Marjani, Hafsa, come with me. The rest of you wait for Hafsa's signal.”

Hafsa nodded.

I crawled out of the boat, aware of a wary intelligence passing through the trees, watching us, waiting. It was the first time I'd been on land for almost half a year, and my legs wobbled and shook. Hafsa caught me, and said in a strained voice, “You'll adjust.”

“This way!” Safin shouted. “The great treasure will be delighted to see me!”

Another mistranslation. I was tired, and frightened, and I missed my life back in Jokja. But on shaking legs I followed the captain as he made his way up the house's front steps. The lanterns bobbed alongside us, winking like the baelfires. I trembled.

We came to the front door. Safin stood up on his hind legs, twisted the doorknob with his little clawed hands, and scurried inside.

“Great treasure!” he shouted.

Magic seeped out of the house, strong enough that I could feel it wrapping around me, thick and warm and heavier than the air. I was wary of crossing the threshold, and the others held back too, even the captain. Through the doorway I saw no great treasure, only a small room with a lit hearth, shelves of books and trinkets, and an old woman sitting in a rocking chair.

“My life's light,” she gasped in Qilari, rising to her feet. I don't think she even saw us as Safin scrambled up her skirts and wrapped around her neck as he'd done with me so many times before.

“The hell is this?” the captain roared, shoving us aside. “Where's the treasure?”

The woman glared at him. “A long way from the Empire,” she said, not in Qilari but Empire, in the dialect of the aristocrats.

“I'm from no country,” the captain said.

The woman glared at him for a moment longer. Then she gasped. “You're from the Mists,” she said, and the magic intensified. I could smell it now, a scent like rotting flower petals.

The captain drew back and pulled out his pistol. “Not anymore. Where's the great treasure the automaton promised us?”

The woman curled her hands into fists. She didn't look away. Safin tightened around her shoulders, his eyes wide.

The great treasure lives.

The great treasure will be happy to see me.

I bent over and vomited. Hafsa shouted and jumped back. She asked me what was wrong. I ignored her, only wiping my mouth and looking up at Safin.

“Great treasure,” I said in Qilari.”That's what you call her, isn't it? Great treasure.”

“She is my great treasure, yes.” Safin nodded his head. “She created me.”

I thought I might faint.

“What the hell is going on!” the captain shouted. “What are you saying?”

The woman began to laugh. I could only stare at her, terror eating me from the inside. “Oh, you poor thing,” she said in Qilari. “You told a man from the Mists you had a great treasure, and then you brought him to me.” She laughed again. Her magic rippled, and the captain cursed and rubbed at his head.

They were going to kill me. I didn't know what the Mists was, but I knew they were pirates, and they were going to kill me.

The captain swung his pistol over to me. “What did she just say?”

“I'm the great treasure,” the woman said, speaking Empire. “My name's Talia of the swamp, and I'm the only treasure you'll find here.”

All I could see were the captain's horrible gray eyes. “I swear I didn't know!” I cried. “Safin never specified. I—” Tears formed in my lashes. The day I’d learned I was banished I'd felt like dying, but I didn't know what death was.

Hafsa rested her hand on my back. She looked at the captain. I was aware of her hand hovering over her own pistol.

But the captain didn't shoot me. He stalked up to Talia and yanked Safin off her shoulder by the tail. Safin shrieked in protest and swung his tiny clawed hands at the captain's face. Talia shouted something in a language I didn’t recognize, and the captain doubled over, dropping Safin to the floor. Safin landed on his feet and scrambled back to Talia.

The captain peered up at Talia. His face was pale and drawn. “So you’re telling me you have the gold and the jewels to create that thing but there's no treasure in your home?”

“I used it all up.” Talia smiled. “And besides, I said no treasure for you. I'm not in the habit of helping monsters.”

“I'm not a monster.” The captain straightened, although his steps were wobbling and uncertain. “I was cursed away from sunlight because I once helped you people. I'm never allowed back home. Don't talk to me about monsters.”

Talia didn't seem like she believed him. I was still weeping, tears streaming silently over my face. Hafsa was the only one who noticed.

“If you want treasure so badly,” Talia taunted, “you could always take Safin.”

The captain glared at her. Safin coiled around her feet, but he didn’t seem frightened. If the thought of absconding with Safin had crossed the captain’s mind earlier, I doubted he would attempt it now, not with Talia’s magic moving so thick and clammy though the little room.

“So that's it, then,” the captain said. “You've got nothing.” He turned to me. “Nothing,” he spat. He pointed his pistol at me again.

I didn't want to die. Not yet.

“Wait!” I shouted through my tears. Everyone looked at me, and my thoughts churned to keep up. “What about—what about a reward?”

“Excuse me?” Talia said.

I rubbed my sleeve over my face to dry my eyes. I drew myself up like I was still my father's daughter. “A reward. For bringing back Safin.”

The captain lowered his pistol.

“He clearly wanted to come back. I'm not sure why he was on the Ocean's Rose—”

“He was stolen.” Talia lifted her chin. “By pirates like you.”

“The Ocean's Rose was a passenger liner,” I said. “It was overtaken by pirates later. Whoever stole him wasn't a pirate.”

Talia didn't say anything.

“So, yes, he was stolen.” I took a deep breath, trying to steady my heartbeat. “But not by us. We brought him back to you. How many people, pirate or otherwise, would have done that? It would have been easy to sail on to Lisirra and have him smashed to pieces for the gold.”

Safin blinked up at me.

“But we didn't. We returned him.”

“Because you thought there was a real treasure.”

“We still returned him.”

I was desperate, but Talia looked at me for a long time, like she was sizing me up. Then Safin slid up her skirts and whispered something in her ear. She looked at him, looked back to me.

“Fine,” she finally said. “Pick something off the shelves. Bottom ones only.”

I felt dizzy. Maybe I wouldn't die today after all.

I crouched down in front of the bottom shelves. It was crowded with charms and spells and potions. Magic. I didn't recognize what sort, whether earth magic or water magic or wind magic, because I'd never really had the capacity for enchantment. But I did recognize that these charms were simple. Basic. The touched crewman could put them together without even trying.

I glanced over at the captain. His gun was still out, and he was glaring at me through his stringy hair.

I decided to take a chance.

“These are worth nothing.” I rose to my feet. “We sailed three months to bring Safin back to you, and he's not even injured. Not missing a single scale. Surely you can part with something a little more powerful than a half-day protection charm.”

Talia grinned. “So you aren't as stupid as you look. Fine. Choose from any shelf.”

I turned back to the shelves. Most of the other items were too advanced for me, so I gestured Hafsa over.

“Those bags there,” she said. “They're excellent for navigation and evading enemies. Most of this wouldn't do us any good, but those—those will do nicely.”

I grabbed the bags off the shelf. They were sewn out of worn velvet and felt empty.

Talia scoffed at our choice. “Sailors,” she muttered. “Pirates.”

“Thank you,” I told her. “For the reward.”

I didn't expect her to respond, but instead she spoke in Qilari: “You watch out for that captain. He's not human.”

I didn't know what to say to that. Rafi and Hafsa and the captain had already stepped outside. A few more days and I'd be in Idai City. Maybe the captain wasn't human. I don't think it mattered to his crew, not one bit.

“Goodbye, Safin,” I said, “I'm glad you found your great treasure.”

And then I stepped back out into the thick night. The boats were waiting.

Jokja was gone. She was gone. But I was ready to find my way to a new home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cassandra Clarke is a speculative fiction writer and occasional teacher living amongst the beige stucco of Houston, Texas.

She graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a bachelor’s degree in English, and in 2008 she completed her master’s degree in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin. Both of these degrees have served her surprisingly well.

During the summer of 2010, she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, where she enjoyed sixty-degree summer days. Having been born and raised in Texas, this was something of a big deal. She was also a recipient of the 2010 Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.

Unlike many authors, Cassandra does not have a resume of peculiar careers. She worked at a Barnes and Noble once – that’s about as exciting as it gets. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, painting, crocheting, cooking, and quilting, because she is secretly an old lady. She will see literally any movie as long as it’s in a theatre. She watches television. She doesn’t play many video games, though.

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A Strange Chemistry paperback original 2013

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Copyright © Cassandra Rose Clarke 2013

Cassandra Rose Clarke asserts the moral right to be

identified as the author of this work.

Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

All rights reserved.

Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon a

trademark of Angry Robot Ltd.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the

products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance

to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely

coincidental.

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eBook ISBN: 978 1 90884 485 9

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Contents

1. The Automaton's Treasure

2. Story

3. About the Author

4. Copyright

Table of Contents

- The Automaton's Treasure

- Story

- About the Author

- Copyright

Table of Contents

The Automaton's Treasure

Story

About the Author

Copyright