“Quick!” Gavin took Alice’s hand, and they slid down the elephant’s backside even as Dodd called forward the Great Mordovo, Magician Extraordinaire. The circus had spread throughout the courtyard, leaving a wide space in front in an impromptu ring. Gavin wove his way to the rear of the waiting performers, his heart in his mouth. Bonzini, the clown whose wig and nose Gavin had borrowed back in Luxembourg, gave him a quizzical look as the banqueters gave light applause to Mordovo’s first trick.
“Did she see us?” Alice asked. She clutched at the whistle hanging from its chain from around her neck.
“I doubt it. Phipps wouldn’t have let us get away if she had.”
At the back, near the closed gate, they found Kemp standing not far from the automaton guard in his guard house. He came forward when he saw Alice. The animal cages and other performers hid them from view. The people stood around, waiting quietly for their turn. It wasn’t the entire circus, just the performers whose acts didn’t require much in the way of setup-clowns, the magician, acrobats, animal acts both living and mechanical, horse girls, and the calliope. The latter played bright, happy music, which had the effect of covering noise and conversation. The acts themselves were silent, anyway. No traveling circus depended on an audience being able to hear or understand the language.
“Madam,” Kemp said, “I don’t think I approve of-”
“I know,” Alice said, “but it’s necessary.” She faced the guard and gave the handle of her parasol a single turn. “You. I need to talk to you.”
The automaton took a single step forward. “Peasants are not allowed to-”
Alice touched its chest with the end of her parasol. Electricity crackled. The guard sputtered and sparked while energy coruscated up and down its body. Then it went stiff and tipped over with small crash. The lion tamer and his wife turned and stared. Alice put a finger to her lips while Gavin extracted a tool kit from his rucksack. The smell of oil and feel of metal brought a strange taste to his mouth, and he felt the clockwork fugue descending on him. Very little mattered now except the machines. In no time at all, he had the automaton’s head off. Alice turned back to Kemp.
“Kemp,” she said.
“Madam,” he said with resignation.
Alice took up the tools herself and also removed Kemp’s head. The lights that made up his eyes glowed with indignation, but he didn’t speak. His black-and-white body remained eerily upright. Gavin swiftly unbuttoned the front of the guard’s jacket and shirt to expose and open the access panel, where he saw frozen pistons and unmoving gears. Automatically he traced the line of machinery. It was simple to understand, easy as reading a navigation chart, though a part of him was aware that only a few months ago it would have been a meaningless tangle to him. While Alice set Kemp’s head on the automaton’s neck, Gavin set to work resetting power. He was vaguely aware that Alice was touching his tools, and he didn’t like it.
“It’s not a perfect fit,” she muttered, “but it’ll do for now.”
“That’s my wrench,” he said shortly.
“It’s called a spanner,” she replied, “and you need to keep control, please. You’re not a mad clockworker. You’re Gavin Ennock, and you love me.”
Her words and voice penetrated the fugue and pulled him back a bit. He shook his head. “Right,” he said. “Sorry. Thanks.”
“I am not at all comfortable with this,” Kemp complained as they worked.
“It’s for a good cause.” Alice connected a set of wires and tightened two bolts. In the background, a lion roared over the music and the banqueters made Ooooo sounds. “That should do it. Can you start the body back up?”
In answer, Gavin cranked up the spark generator and released the spring.
“Oh!” Kemp’s eyes flickered. “Oh dear!”
“Are you functional?” Alice asked, helping him sit up.
“I–I-I–I b-b-believ-v-v-v-ve th-th-th-th-things a-a-a-a-a-a-a-are working at c-c-c-c-c-capacity, M-M-M-M-M-Madam.” Static overlaid his voice, and he spat out a string of Ukrainian words. “I a-a-a-a-a-am adj-j-j-j-j-j-j-justing m-m-m-m-m-my mem-m-m-m-mory wheels.”
“Try this.” Alice reached into his chest cavity with a screwdriver. Something crackled and she jerked her hand back with small oath. “Ow! Is that better?”
“M-much, Madam. Spaceeba.” Kemp got to his new feet, a little uncertain at first but quickly gaining confidence. “This body is much stronger than my own, and more agile. More advanced, disloyal to my creator as that sounds.”
Gavin’s stomach went into knots as he shoved Kemp’s body into the guard house and set the guard’s lifeless head on the floor with it. As a final touch, he put the guard’s helmet on Kemp’s head. “I really don’t like the fact that Phipps is here,” he growled. “It makes everything too suspicious. The Third Ward has very little influence in Ukraine, but she’s crafty enough to worm her way into the Gontas’ good graces and persuade Ivana to invite the circus into a trap. I just wonder if capturing Feng was her idea or just a lucky coincidence.”
“We can’t call this off,” Alice pointed out. “We have to find Feng.”
“I know,” Gavin said. “And it’s exactly the kind of thing Phipps would count on. Let’s go. Lead the way, Kemp.”
The trio skirted the back edge of the circus and, following the high stone wall, came around to one of the jutting wings of the huge mansion that surrounded the courtyard where the lions were currently performing through the calliope’s incessant hooting. The banqueters were alternately watching and eating and talking. Through the crowd, Gavin could make out Phipps’s ramrod figure sitting next to Ivana Gonta’s plump one on a shared divan. She was holding a crystal goblet in one hand and watching the lion tamer while Ivana talked to her. A polite, attentive smile creased Phipps’s face, and it looked completely wrong on her. She was wearing a scarlet dress uniform with a gold sash that Gavin had never seen before. At any moment, she might turn in their direction and see them. But then they made the corner of the house and she passed out of sight.
“That’s a relief,” Alice sighed. “Crossing that courtyard was like walking on hot knives.”
“We’re only getting started,” Gavin replied. They hurried alongside the house. The windows were small and thick, as if the builders were trying to maintain a fortress wall but had been forced to put glass into it. They finally came to a heavy door. Gavin tried it. Locked.
“Allow me, Sir.” Kemp extended a finger into the keyhole and twisted. The door opened with a click. Beyond was a wide foyer with a stone floor faced with a number of closed doors and a large archway through which Gavin could see quite a number of human servants rushing back and forth, presumably to wait on the banquet. The moment they crossed the threshold, a pair of automatons stationed on either side of the door, duplicates of the one at the gate, instantly sprang to life. Sabers hummed in their hands and one of them said something in Ukrainian.
“Kemp,” Alice said.
Kemp came forward. At the sight of the gate automaton’s body, the guards lowered their sabers and the humming sound stopped. Kemp spoke to them. Gavin held his breath. This had to work. If it didn’t, or if the guards shouted an alarm, an entire army of clockworkers would come down on their heads. Worse, Phipps would find them. Gavin kept his face impassive as Kemp talked, and Gavin’s inability to understand the language became an agony. There was a terrible pause. Gavin’s blood sang in his ears and his mouth was dry as sand. Then the automatons nodded and returned to their stations. The trio stepped quickly past the foyer. Gavin’s legs went a little unsteady.
“Perfect,” Alice murmured, appearing completely unruffled. “Now where?”
Gavin made himself regain calm. “Down,” he said. “Clockworkers usually like nice, safe laboratories underground. Remember your aunt Edwina.”
“She had two such laboratories,” Alice agreed. “Which way?”
“If I may, Madam,” Kemp said. He led them through the enormous house. Gavin forced himself to stand upright and act as if he had every right to be there, though he wanted to scrunch down and creep through the house like a rat. It wasn’t just that he was here to steal away something-someone-that the Gontas no doubt saw as their property. It was also that he had spent his childhood in a tiny, crowded flat that in this house would probably fit into a closet. Everything here spoke of easy, intimidating wealth. Brass and gold fixtures were everywhere, along with heavy furniture of brocade and velvet. Bejeweled metal statues with a definite clockwork air occupied a number of niches. Even one of them would have kept his family going for a year back in Boston, and he felt an urge to snatch, even though he’d never stolen in his life. One of the statues in a room they passed but didn’t enter looked to be of the Virgin Mary, though her face was stern, and her robes were jagged, as if made of lightning bolts. Over her heart was a cog. Two automatons knelt before the statue, hands clasped. They murmured in monotone.
“What are they saying?” Alice whispered as they went by.
“One is praying for the soul of someone, a deceased person, Dmitro,” Kemp said. It was strange hearing his voice coming from a Ukrainian automaton. “The other is reciting prayers in penitence for sins committed by Ivana Gonta.”
“The Gontas use automatons to pray for them?” Alice said, aghast.
“I wonder if it works,” Gavin muttered.
“I wouldn’t know, Sir,” Kemp said. “This way.”
They passed many servants, both human and mechanical, and neither type gave them a second glance with Kemp leading the way. One woman with a large set of keys did pause to ask something of Alice, but Kemp spoke to her, and she went on her way before Gavin even had time to get uneasy.
“What was that about?” he asked, shifting the pack on his back.
“That was the head housekeeper, Sir. She wanted to know who Sir and Madam were,” Kemp said. “I told her I was giving a tour of the house to a pair of important people attached to Madam Gonta’s special guests.”
“You’re a treasure, Kemp,” Gavin told him.
“Sir.”
“Where are we going?” Alice said. “I’m lost already.”
“I’m seeing a pattern,” Gavin said before Kemp could respond. “Many of the automatons seem to be coming from one direction, so I’m assuming the entry to the lower level is down that hallway.”
“A memory wheel inside this body agrees with Sir,” Kemp said. “Madam and Sir have their choice of a lift or a staircase.”
“Staircase,” Alice said promptly. “A lift is a perfect little cage.”
In a marble foyer they found a double-wide lift, complete with iron gate that reminded Gavin of the one that descended to the dungeonlike cells where the Third Ward housed its captive clockworkers, no few of which Gavin himself had brought in with Simon d’Arco. Next to it was an archway opening onto a staircase that spiraled downward out of sight. Two guard automatons drew their sabers and rapped out orders in Ukrainian.
“They won’t let anyone go down those stairs, Madam,” Kemp said. “Only members of the Gonta family may do so.”
“I see.” Alice stepped forward smartly and touched the guard’s saber with the tip of her parasol. A spark snapped and Gavin smelled ozone. The guard stiffened. Alice’s parasol flicked like a sword at the other guard, who parried it with the saber, but the touch was all Alice needed. The spark snapped, and the second guard went still. Alice straightened her hat, pushed a tendril of honey-brown hair out of her eyes, and caught Gavin looking at her.
“What?” she said.
Gavin was grinning from ear to ear. “You are remarkable, you know that? How many other women could fence with a pair of automatons and win?”
“Oh.” Alice looked flustered. “Probably not many.”
“And I’m glad.” He impulsively kissed her cheek. “God, I love you.”
“If Madam and Sir are quite ready,” Kemp said. “Someone may come at any moment.”
“How much time do we have?” Alice asked, still blushing a little.
“We have been in the house for thirteen minutes,” Kemp replied. “The circus was contracted for an hour’s performance, leaving us forty-seven minutes.”
Quickly, they posed the deactivated automatons in their original positions. Alice told Kemp to stay behind and run interference if necessary as she and Gavin headed down the stairs. The stairs, lit by a series of electric lights, twisted downward for a long, long time, and Gavin wondered how they’d manage the trip back up without using the lift, especially if they had to carry Feng.
Assuming he’s still alive, he thought, and then quashed the idea. Feng had to be alive. He would be alive. And unharmed. Ivana hadn’t held him prisoner for very long, and she must have been busy planning the banquet. Not much time to play with a new… acquisition.
They reached the bottom of the steps and emerged from the stairwell. Alice stopped dead and Gavin whistled under his breath.
“Good heavens,” Alice murmured. “What will we do?”
The space beyond was cavernous, easily large enough to store four full-sized dirigibles, in Gavin’s estimation. Worked stone arched up and away, several stories high. Rows of columns that looked too thin to hold up the ceiling-and the house above it-reached upward like graceful fingers. Staircases, ramps, doorways, and balconies studded the walls, as if a small city had exploded inside the giant room. More than forty hulking mechanicals two, three, and four times the height of a man and many times broader stood motionless on the main floor. One of them was Ivana’s giant bird. The cage that made up its head hung open and empty.
Gavin felt an urge to examine the machines more closely. The clockwork plague tugged at him, and his fascinated eye measured slopes and angles, calculated area, felt volume. Forges hissed from beyond the balconies, putting out thousands of calories in heat. The sharp smell of molten metal tanged the air, and the wrenching scream of it when it hit cold water bounced and echoed. Spiders scurried across every surface, and whirligigs whooshed through the empty spaces. Most of them carried bits of machinery or wicked-looking weapons. Electric lights lit everything, as did the red glow of coals emanating from the balconies. No actual people were visible, which both puzzled and relieved Gavin. In a flash of clockwork insight, he understood that the Gonta clockworkers didn’t spend much-or any-time out on the main floor, but worked in private laboratories that opened onto it. The clanking, hissing forges called to him, and the tiny laboratories on the Lady and in the Black Tent suddenly felt cramped and primitive. Here was a place where a man could work. Certainly there would be a vacant workroom somewhere in all this. In fact, he needed only to listen for empty space to find one. He could already feel the tools, see the machinery come to life under his hands. His fingers curled into fists and he started forward.
“What on earth is that?” Alice exclaimed.
Alice’s voice sliced through the terrible need, and it faded. Gavin shook his head hard. “What’s what?”
She pointed. “There.”
Gavin followed the line of her finger. Along one wall was a row of cages with square bars, ten cages at a fast count. Inside each was a child. Some were boys, some were girls. All were under the age of twelve, some were as young as three or four. They sat or squatted within the bars, eyes listless and downcast. Each had a dog bowl of water.
“Good heavens,” Alice whispered. “Oh, Gavin.”
Gavin felt sick again. He didn’t resist when Alice took his hand and pulled him over to the horrible enclosures. Some of the children looked up and scuttled backward in fear. Most didn’t respond. A girl in a tattered gray dress reminded Gavin of his sister Violet back in Boston, and it made him want to tear the cages free of the walls.
“We have to get them out,” he said. “Now.”
“Look at that one,” Alice said, “and that. Their faces are flushed and their lips are cracked. It’s the clockwork plague.” She held up her spider gauntlet, whose eyes were glowing red. “I need to help them. I’ll cure them and we’ll take them out.”
Gavin hesitated. He glanced around the great room uneasily, feeling torn and not a little helpless. “Alice, how are we going to get them out of here?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We can probably get these cages open with minimal work,” Gavin said reluctantly, “but what then? How will we get all these children upstairs and past all the people and automatons in the house and over the wall outside? We’ll get caught, the children will end up back in here, and everyone will be worse off.”
Alice’s expression darkened and she looked like she wanted to argue. Then she nodded once, hard. “You’re right of course. But we’ll find a way later.”
“We will,” he agreed.
“And I can still do this.” She reached through the bars with her gauntleted hand and scratched one of the sick children before he could shy away. He barely whimpered, though he did shuffle to the rear of his cage, the scratches dripping blood. The others, seeing this, also drew back out of reach.
“Poor things,” Alice said. “I wish I spoke Ukrainian so I could explain what’s going on. At least the first one will infect the others with the cure.”
One of the children began to cry, and Gavin caught something that sounded like “Mama.” In that moment, Gavin nearly violated the good sense he had just quoted to Alice. He had to force himself to avoid tearing at the cages with his bare hands. His rubbed at his face and realized his cheek was wet with salt water. Damn it. He had been beaten half to death by pirates, locked in a tower by a madwoman, and infected with a disease that was killing him by inches, but this brought a tear to his eye?
“Let’s go,” Alice said, “before I pry these bars open myself.”
Gavin nodded around a thick throat and, feeling wretched, forced himself to turn his back and walk away from the children. He swore to himself that the sun wouldn’t set on another day before he came back for them.
“We need to concentrate,” Alice said briskly. “How are we going to find Feng in all this?”
Gavin did his best to push thoughts of the children aside. Alice was right-he needed to concentrate on the mission at hand. “I already know how.”
He took the silver nightingale out of his pocket. Alice reached for it, but Gavin moved it away from her. “Don’t. It returns to the last person who touched it. Feng sent it back to me when the song I recorded for you in Berlin turned out not to help.”
“So he was the last one to touch it,” Alice finished. “Brilliant!” She paused. “Why didn’t you use it when we were looking for him in the city?”
He gave her a strange look. “I didn’t need to.”
Alice pursed her lips, then muttered something that sounded like “Clockworker logic.” “Just toss it, then. Quick!”
Gavin flung the little bird into the air. It sprang to life, fluttered in a circle, and headed for one of the staircases across the main floor. Gavin and Alice hurried to follow, dodging giant mechanicals and ducking whirligigs, feet thudding on worked stone. They dashed up the staircase with a wall on their left, just barely able to keep the little streak of silver in sight, and hurried down an arched hallway. Electric lights glared down from the ceiling.
The hallway abruptly widened into a large, dark room. Even Gavin’s clockwork-enhanced eyes couldn’t make out details, though he got the sense the space was round. It was certainly large enough to echo. A single beam of light from high up stabbed down to illuminate a small circle in the center of the room. In the center of the circle was a square cage six feet tall, and in the cage huddled Feng Lung. Or, Gavin assumed it was Feng. A blanket wrapped his body and head like a tattered cloak. Between the blanket and bars, Gavin could see only part of his face. It seemed to be Feng, and the nightingale zipped into the cage to land on his shoulder. The figure in the cage didn’t react. Gavin wanted to run over and pull the cage open, but he also felt suspicious.
“Does this seem strange to you?” Alice whispered as they entered the room. The place was cold, almost icy. The duo stopped about twenty feet from the cage. “I mean, stranger than it should be.”
“Very,” Gavin whispered. He raised his voice a little. “Feng? Is that you?”
In response, the figure in the cage raised his head. The blanket fell back, revealing his face. Alice gasped. Gavin’s heart jerked and nausea oozed through his stomach, though he also felt a strange and exciting fascination. Feng’s hair had been shaved off, leaving nicks and cuts behind. A brass spider the size of a hand sprawled across the right side of Feng’s head, its body covering his ear and its legs framing his eye, nose, and mouth. Four of the legs drilled into his skull and neck. Gavin’s hand went unconsciously to his own skull, and he bit his lip. Scar tissue puckered Feng’s cheek and his right eye drooped. A line of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. He shivered with cold.
“Oh, Feng,” Alice said. “What did she do?”
Feng didn’t answer. He simply stared at them with his good eye. The nightingale perched motionless on his shoulder. Alice sniffled and, with a low cry, ran to the cage.
“Don’t touch!” Gavin cried.
Alice halted mere inches from the icy bars. “Why?”
“It might be a trap.”
Lights exploded to life all about the room. A barred gate crashed down to block the exit. Gavin flung up a hand to shield his eyes against the painful and blinding brightness. Alice cried out again.
“Really, Gavin,” came the voice of Susan Phipps. “I’ll have to have a word with Simon. He should have trained you better.”
Gavin’s heart sank. When his vision cleared, he saw the room was actually an operating theater, with Feng’s cage in the bottom and high, circular walls all around. Above and out of reach, a circle of chairs ringed the room, set so anyone sitting in them could observe the events on the floor. Perhaps a dozen people in lab coats, work clothes, and formal dress occupied the chairs, including Ivana Gonta in her pink tea gown. All of them wore copper collars with buttons on them. Among them sat Susan Phipps, flanked by Simon d’Arco and Glenda Teasdale.
“Shit,” Gavin said, and not even Alice admonished him.
“Indeed.” Phipps still wore the scarlet dress uniform and gold sash, though now she had added a matching hat with gold braid on the brim. “I’m actually disappointed in you both. You should have known it would be child’s play to connect you with the circus and follow you here. The Countess Ivana was pleased to be involved. She has a new experimental subject, and I have you.”
“You’re traitors, Susan,” Alice said. “All three of you. You don’t even see it, do you? You’re traitors to every human alive, and you live in hell.”
“You’re imprisoned in the circle,” Glenda pointed out. Her blouse was a deep yellow. “Not us.”
“Simon,” Gavin said, “you were my best friend. Help me, instead of stabbing me in the back!”
Simon looked at Gavin and swallowed. His fingers clenched and unclenched. Then he looked at Phipps, set his mouth, and straightened his black jacket without saying a word. Gavin’s heart dropped.
“What did you monsters do to Feng?” Alice demanded.
“Very important experiment,” Ivana called down. She was sitting behind a console similar to the one Gavin had seen on her bird the night before, her hand on one of the levers. “You should be proud that he has become part of Gonta heritage.”
“And Zalizniak,” put in a man sitting near her.
“How did you do anything at all?” Alice continued in the same demanding voice. She shook her parasol angrily up at them, drawing every eye to her. Gavin slowly slid his rucksack off, his eye on the lever in Ivana’s hand. “You didn’t even have him for a full day.”
“That is Gonta-Zalizniak way,” said the man who had spoken earlier. He wore a lab coat with red-brown stains that Gavin didn’t want to think too closely about and a whirligig with spikes on its tiny feet sat on his shoulder near his copper collar. He pointed to himself. “Danilo Zalizniak. Our sister was not the only one to work on him. We all worked on him together.”
“That’s what you tell everyone,” Alice huffed theatrically. “But we know clockworkers don’t work together. They all want their own way and eventually tear each other to pieces. Quite literally, in some cases.”
For a moment, Gavin flashed on the conflicts between himself and Dr. Clef. How long before one of them tried to kill the other? Assuming Gavin survived the next few minutes.
“Ah, that is for normal clockworkers,” Danilo said. “We are not like them. We serve the family.”
And Gavin saw the pattern. “That’s what the collection is,” he said. “You don’t think of yourselves as individuals. You don’t even call yourself I. It’s always we. I’ll bet you weren’t born with the names Danilo and Ivana, either.”
Danilo grinned a demon’s grin. “You have good brain. We would like to see it.”
“He and the baroness are mine,” Phipps said. “You have the Oriental boy. As we agreed.”
“So, so.” Ivana removed her hand from the lever and waved it negligently. “Perhaps we wish to change the terms of our agreement.”
“What do you mean?” Glenda demanded. Simon remained silent.
“Do you think that you are the only ones who know of this cure your Alice carries?” said another woman. Her voice echoed about the chamber. “It interests us very, very much. This cure is already destabilizing Europe, and we approve. We predict that within five years, all European clockworkers will be gone because cure will destroy plague. China’s machinery will continue to grow, and she will easily take all of India and Africa and possibly west coast of America before cure reaches her empire and stops creation of more dragon men. By then it will be too late. China will reign supreme.”
“No,” Phipps said flatly.
“Feng,” Alice whispered. “Can you stand up?”
The young man stared blankly, and Gavin couldn’t tell if he had understood her or not.
“Feng,” Alice whispered again, “you have to stand up. Stand up!”
Feng instantly got to his feet. The blanket fell away. He was shirtless. Corded muscle moved under ivory skin recently scored with a series of terrible scars that ran across his chest and abdomen. Tiny, neat stitches held the edges together. Gavin’s nausea returned. Hadn’t the spider on his face been enough? What else had they done?
“Like or not like, Lieutenant,” Danilo said. “It will happen. We want it to happen.”
“Why would you want that?” Simon burst out. His voice was hoarse with stress. “It would destroy your family. Already, Alice is spreading the cure through your city. Who will become the next generation of clockworkers?”
“Is nothing, nothing,” said an old man who sported a set of steel teeth. “We have our own supplies of plague. You are truly stupid man if you think that we Gontas and Zalizniaks could not manipulate plague when it started here, in our own city.”
“You can cure the plague?” Alice gasped. She grabbed Gavin’s hand with her bare one. “But I’d heard you couldn’t.”
“Of course we can,” said the old man. “It is our secret. And we can infect people with it, and we have ways of increasing chances that victim will become clockworker. Is why we need children.”
“Can you cure clockworkers?” Alice blurted before Gavin could ask the same question.
Ivana gave her a scornful look. “Why would we look into such things? Stupid English. Even if we wanted to destroy our clockworker family, plague changes itself when it makes clockworker and becomes quite incurable. Waste of time.”
“Enough discussion,” Phipps said. “I will take my prisoners and leave now.”
“Nah, nah,” said Ivana. “If lovely baroness fails to reach China, Chinese Emperor will rule most of world, and probably hurt Ukraine. This is bad for Gontas and Zalizniaks. Lovely baroness must reach China to spread cure more quickly and destroy Chinese Empire as well. We have agreed.”
Gavin gasped. The Gontas and Zalizniaks were on their side?
“But we still think curing China is a bad idea!” Danilo Zalizniak protested. “We think that baroness must not reach China. Britain’s weakness will let Ukraine expand west.”
Ivana touched a button on her collar. Danilo cried out and clutched at his own collar with both hands, his face a rictus of pain. “We believe we came to agreement,” she said mildly as Danilo rocked in his chair. “Is this not so? Speak English for benefit of our guests.”
“No!” Danilo howled. “No! We- You are wrong! You Gontas are-”
Ivana touched a button on her collar again, and Danilo screamed. Alice put a hand over her mouth. Gavin stared, both sickened and transfixed. The other clockworkers watched in complete silence, though some of them-presumably Zalizniaks-looked unhappy or angry. Phipps sat in the center of them all, clearly trying to swallow her outrage. Gavin suppressed a mean smile. For once, she had miscalculated, overplayed her ability to persuade clockworkers.
“Baroness must reach China,” Ivana said. Her tone was quiet and kind. “Do we agree, brother?”
“Yes,” Danilo whimpered.
“And we should give her all aid necessary. Is this true?”
“Yes.”
Another tap on Ivana’s collar, and Danilo’s face instantly relaxed. He slumped down in his chair. Glenda and Simon exchanged startled looks.
“What did we agree, brother?” Ivana asked, her finger still hovering over the copper at her throat.
“That… that the baroness should reach China,” Danilo whispered. “And we should help her.”
“Just so.” Ivana touched a different button on her collar, and Danilo arched his back with a great gasp, but this time the expression on his face read pure pleasure instead of pain. His mouth fell open, and he groaned. Ivana released her collar, and Danilo relaxed.
“There we are,” she said. “We may clean ourselves up and change into different trousers, if we desire.”
“We are grateful, sister.” Tears streamed down Danilo’s face. “Grateful.” He got up and stumbled out of the observation area.
“We are sorry you had to see that,” Ivana called down to Gavin and Alice. “This is why experiment with Oriental boy is so important. If it works, we have no more arguments.”
“Well,” Gavin said, setting his rucksack on the floor and opening the top, “if you want Alice to reach China, I suppose that means we should be on our way. If you’ll just open that gate…”
“We said baroness must reach China,” Ivana agreed. “You, on other hand, are quite different. We need advanced clockworkers. You will join Gontas.”
“Or Zalizniaks,” said the old man.
Gavin had been expecting something like this, but the actual words still chilled him. Alice, meanwhile, had her traveling tools out, the ones rolled up in black velvet embroidered with Love, Aunt Edwina in gold thread. Ivana manipulated her console. A pair of long metal arms extended from the ceiling. They held a copper collar. Another pair of arms reached down with them, intending to grab Gavin and hold him.
“Don’t fight us,” the steel-toothed clockworker said. “It will go easier. Believe us.”
“No!” Phipps rose. “He belongs to me!”
“Sit!” Ivana barked, and grabbed Phipps’s metal hand. Two other clockworkers grabbed Simon and Glenda before the Third Ward agents could react, and handcuffed them to their chairs. Glenda shrieked in outrage. Simon kicked at his captor, who easily dodged away. The metal hands snatched at Gavin.
“Gavin!” Alice cried. She had a set of lock picks in her hands.
“Get Feng!” Gavin shouted, and the plague slowed time. He dodged the set of grasping arms and snatched the collar from the other set. Angles and trajectories drew themselves in the air for him. He moved his arm a precise two degrees to the left and half a degree down, and threw the collar. The gleaming discus spun through the air and hit the first lever on Ivana’s console, the one she had been holding when the gate crashed down and the lights came up. The lever deployed, and gate cranked upward.
“What are you doing?” Ivana howled. She was still holding Phipps’s arm. “How dare you?”
She reached for the lever, but Gavin raised his wristband. More angles, more trajectories. The magnetic polarizer sent a tiny gear spinning toward her, and it pinged off a button on her collar. Instantly, every clockworker in the gallery, including Ivana, screamed in pain. They clutched at their throats and howled. Phipps, her metal arm still caught in Ivana’s grip, jumped and jigged in place as well, though she retained enough self-control to send Gavin a look of pure venom. The mechanical arms reaching into the cell went limp. Glenda and Simon struggled against their handcuffs, but to no avail.
“Hurry!” Gavin said to Alice. “Before the electricity stops!”
Alice already had the cold cage unlocked. She yanked it open, but Feng didn’t move. “Feng!” she said. “Come on!”
At her words, Feng left the cage. Gavin snatched the set of ear protectors from his pack, put them on, and dashed out the doorway behind them. The three of them pounded down the long corridor, Gavin clutching the rucksack in front of him. They ran down the steps to the great room, and Gavin headed for the spiral staircase leading up to the main house, but Alice turned, towing Feng with her.
“What are you doing?” he asked, pulling one ear protector aside so he could hear her.
“I’m not leaving these children behind,” she said.
He sighed. “I knew you were going to say that. And I agree with you. Let’s go.”
Alice’s cure had already spread to all the children, thanks to the close quarters of the cages, and they looked healthier, more alert. She bent over the lock on the first cage, and the whistle hanging around her neck clattered against the bars. The child inside backed away from her.
“It’s the same kind of lock they had on Feng’s cage,” she said. “I can open it almost as fast as with a key by now.”
“They’ll come any minute,” Gavin said.
Alice didn’t respond. In seconds, she had the door open, but the ragged little boy inside refused to come out. “Feng, can you tell him we’re here to take him away?”
Feng didn’t respond. He simply stood near the cage, the spider plastered across half his face.
“Feng!” Alice said.
And then Gavin had it. “Feng,” he said, “tell the children in Ukrainian we’ve come to take them out of here. Tell them we’ve come to take them home.”
Feng spoke musical Cyrillic syllables. The boy looked doubtful even as Alice unlocked the second cage. “Why does Feng listen to you?” she asked.
“You have to give him a direct order,” Gavin said. “It’s what the Gontas were working on-absolute obedience.”
Alice looked sick. “That’s horrible!”
“We’ll figure it out later,” Gavin said. “Open the cages before the Gontas recover.”
The second and third children were more eager to leave their cages, which convinced the first child. Alice had just freed the tenth and final child when a horde of gibbering, angry Gontas appeared at the entrance of the hallway leading back to the operating theater. Ivana was at the forefront. They quickly spotted Gavin, Alice, and Feng. With a shout, they ran down the stairs. They had paused long enough to arm themselves, for they bristled with weapons-energy pistols, thunder rifles, vibration knives, quantum swords. They boiled down the steps, bounding with plague-enhanced speed, and rushed toward the three escapees and the children, who cowered in fear. Their demonic howls echoed off stone walls, and spittle sprayed from their mouths. Phipps was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the electric shock affected her more because of her metal parts. Simon and Glenda were no doubt still in handcuffs.
Alice’s lips moved, but Gavin had put the ear protectors back on and he could no longer hear her. Feng looked unfazed, but adrenaline zinged through Gavin’s arteries. The Gontas and Zalizniaks weren’t going to capture now. They intended to kill. Praying his plan would work, Gavin let the rucksack fall to the floor, revealing the paradox generator. He pointed the speaking trumpet toward the pack of screeching clockworkers and spun the crank hard.
This time, even through the ear protectors, he heard the faint sliding sound of the tritone paradox. It simultaneously climbed and dropped, spinning and swirling. The gaps between the intervals were all tritones, an auditory square root of two that itself stretched out into infinity, but each tritone was paired with a mirror of itself, a parallel. Instead of being painful, the sound became perfection. The sound twisted the universe into new shapes, teased the ear the way a star’s gravity teased a comet. Gavin heard only a tiny part of it, and he felt a singular joy.
The effect on the clockworkers was electric. They stopped dead in their tracks, dropped their weapons, fell to their knees with the backs of their hands dragging on the floor. Every one of them stared at the generator with an open mouth. Most of them drooled like half-dead demons.
“Get the children,” Gavin said, though it was difficult to speak. “We’ll have to take the lift.”
Alice mouthed something at Feng, who immediately herded the children toward the lift with Alice coming behind. Gavin stayed to keep the paradox generator going.
And then Danilo Gonta appeared at the top of the steps in his bloodstained white coat. He was wearing ear protectors. Gavin tensed.
“Shit,” he muttered. He hadn’t noticed Danilo wasn’t among the crowd of Gontas he held captive with the generator, or remembered that Danilo hadn’t returned after Ivana had sent him from the operating theater. Both of Gavin’s hands were occupied with the generator, and Alice and Feng were already halfway to the lift with the children.
Danilo bounded down the stairs and stopped just a few steps away from Gavin. He didn’t have a weapon, but that didn’t mean he was unarmed. Gavin took an uncertain step backward, still cranking the generator. The faint but perfect beauty of the tritone paradox was a constant distraction.
The clockworker reached into his pocket. Gavin tensed again, and Danilo pulled out a metal stylus with a glass bulb on the end. A wire ran from the other end of the stylus and disappeared up Danilo’s sleeve. He moved the stylus across the air, and it left a trail of light. Gavin stared in fascination, and he almost forgot to crank the generator.
We can hear this sound a little, Danilo wrote in glowing letters. It creates unity! It is perfection! Name price.
Gavin shook his head. Alice and the others were almost to the lift now.
Danilo waved the stylus and the words vanished. He started over. We will let you and children go. We will send you on special train to China. We will stop Phipps.
Where was Phipps, anyway? Gavin had a hard time believing she had been incapacitated for long.
“No,” Gavin said, his voice muffled in his own ears. “You’ll use it to control each other and other clockworkers and God only knows what else.”
Danilo’s face hardened in clockworker anger. Then we destroy you and your circus and take friends for test subjects.
Feng opened the gate to the lift and Alice herded the children aboard. She gestured at Gavin to come. He thought about an army of Cossack clockworkers and their weapons tearing through the Kalakos Circus, of Dodd and Nathan and Linda and Charlie and all the others being carted down here, infected with the clockwork plague or strapped to a table and cut open like Feng. Was that worth an invention he had intended to destroy in the first place? His hand slowed on the crank.
“You have to promise to let everyone go,” Gavin said.
Done, Danilo wrote over the heads of his drooling family.
“And to arrange for that special train.”
Danilo underlined the word done. His lips also moved as he muttered to himself, and Gavin, used to reading lips on windy airships that often swept sound away, saw him add Ivana and other words he assumed were Ukrainian. The clockwork plague helped him make lightning connections in Gavin’s mind. Realizations snapped and clicked together, and Gavin’s blood went cold. Danilo was lying. He had no intention of letting anyone go. He-they-wanted to use the generator as a weapon against the Gonta clockworkers, and Danilo Zalizniak would do or say anything to get his hands on it. The Cossacks, who had already broken a compact with Phipps, would have no compunctions about breaking one with Gavin.
He sped up the crank. “No!” he shouted. “I’ll see you in hell first.”
Danilo leaped at him with a snarl, smearing golden letters. But Gavin’s combat training with the Third Ward took over. He jumped straight up and caught Danilo in the chest with a snap kick that barely interrupted the generator’s lovely drone. Danilo fell back and slammed into Ivana, who toppled over without caring. One side of Danilo’s ear protectors came off, exposing him to the tritone paradox, and a look of ecstasy descended on his face. He sprawled across Ivana’s plump body, already drooling.
“Your second orgasm of the day,” Gavin said, and kicked him in the crotch. “That’s for Feng and the children, you son of a bitch.”
The thud as his boot connected felt good. For a moment, Danilo’s face vanished, and it was replaced by Madoc Blue, the pirate who had cornered Gavin on the Juniper and tried to take his trousers down. He was the first mate who had sliced the flesh on Gavin’s back with a whip. Gavin hadn’t had a normal night’s sleep since. Nightmares made the dark restless, and every morning, Gavin jerked awake, his heart pounding. This terrible man drooling on the floor before him was the symbol of everything that was wrong in this world, everything that had gone wrong in Gavin’s life. And he was helpless.
It occurred to Gavin with terrible certainty that he could end the entire problem here and now. It would be child’s play to kill every Gonta in the room, even with the generator occupying his hands. He could knock the Gontas over, one by one, and stand on their disgusting throats until they suffocated, or break each of their loathsome necks with well-placed kicks. And all the while they would thank him for the lovely, deadly music. He and Alice and Feng and the children could walk out of the house, free and clear. How sweet that would be.
He planted himself, aimed the first kick that would snap a Cossack neck. And then a touch on his shoulder brought him around. Alice was there.
Come on! she mouthed. Hurry!
Gavin hesitated. Alice. Beautiful, practical Alice. She was standing beside him, in the same place, in the same danger, and yet it never even occurred to her to execute the Gontas.
She plucked at his sleeve. Why the wait? she mouthed. Come!
How would she react if he killed a group of helpless people, no matter how filthy and foul? And… how would he react later? Only a few days ago, the thought of killing a man with his energy whip had filled him with fear and disgust. Now he was calmly considering destroying a roomful of people. What was he becoming? What was this city turning him into? His skin crawled even as his hand continued to turn the generator. He wouldn’t let himself become their sort of demon.
“Let’s go,” he said. Still playing, he turned his back on the Gontas and let Alice lead him to the lift.