The lift gate clanged shut and Gavin stopped cranking the strange machine in his hands. Instantly the eerie, nail-biting noise ended, and Alice breathed a sigh of relief. Gavin popped the protectors off his ears and hung them around his neck.
“They’ll stay in that stupor for a few minutes longer,” he said. “We need to hurry.”
The lift was crowded with the ten children, Gavin, Alice, and Feng. Feng, with the dreadful spider sprawled across half his face like a brass scar. It made Alice sick with guilt to see it and the scars that puckered his chest and torso. She felt bad enough after seeing Feng, and the thought of leaving the children behind in those cages… well, that was quite impossible, no matter what the risk to her own safety might be.
Alice spun the crank on the lift control and moved the lever, unable to read the Cyrillic characters but hoping UP and DOWN would be in the same places as an English lift. The lift jerked upward, making the children gasp in fear. They shied away from Feng and clustered around Alice likes chicks around a hen. Two of them clutched her hands, despite the iron spider on her left. This was, strangely, her first prolonged contact with children, and she couldn’t decide whether the odd circumstances of the occasion should make her laugh at the ridiculousness of it or howl with outrage at the injustice.
“Are you all right, Gavin?” she asked instead as the lift continued to rise.
“I’m fine.” He held up the generator. “Danilo Zalizniak offered the earth for this.”
“What in heaven’s name for?”
“So the Zalizniaks could get the upper hand on the Gontas and-I’m guessing-expand their empire.”
“Good heavens,” Alice said. “I hadn’t thought of that. The moment we get the children to safety, we must destroy that thing.” She paused, still holding the slightly sweaty hands of the two children. Gavin was grinning at her, and the wide, handsome smile was still enough to make her breath stop, especially when it was aimed at her. “What is it?”
“Feng is in terrible trouble, we could be chopped into pieces at any moment, and the second we leave this lift, we’re going to be fighting our way through god-knows-what, but you’re thinking about the children.” He continued to smile. “You saved me back there, you know.”
She blinked. “Did I? I thought you were saving me.”
“Not at all,” he said seriously. “You led me into hell, Alice, and now I know you’re going to lead me back out.”
The lift slammed to a halt, and for a horrible moment Alice thought the Cossacks had stopped them, but through the gate she could see the main floor of the great house. “Feng,” she said, “open the lift.”
Feng leaped forward like a puppet on strings and slammed the iron gate aside with the sound of a death bell. Alice felt sick again at the way his scarred body obeyed, but made herself focus. Right now, they had to get out of the Gonta-Zalizniak house intact, and if success required her to bark orders at Feng, she would do it.
Kemp was waiting for them in the marble foyer. The surreal sight of his familiar head on a different body gave Alice a turn, even though she’d been prepared for it. “I see Madam and Sir were successful in their attempt,” he said. “Excellent work, if I may be so bold.”
“Thank you, Kemp,” Alice said. She herded the children out of the lift. They were gaining confidence in her now, seemed to understand that she was there to help, and they were more willing to follow her. They were fearful, innocent, and trusting, children who had lived through things no child should dream of, let alone experience. She felt a deep need to ensure their safety and was quite sure she would die to protect them. For a moment, she wondered if this was what it was like to have children of her own, though she didn’t think that she would want to start off-or even finish-with ten of them. She did a quick head count and led everyone toward the front door, her parasol at the ready. Feng and Kemp took up the rear, with Gavin among the children. He looked like a rather distracted young father on an outing, and Alice pushed the thought away to examine later.
The house seemed to be in confusion. Human servants rushed about or stood uncertainly in corners. A smell of burned food hung in the air. Alice put on the air of a lady and strode confidently, ignoring everyone around her. No one would dare challenge her; it would never occur to her that someone might. Keep moving, keep moving. Check the children, ensure none had wandered away. Push past the handwringing housekeeper who babbled at her in Ukrainian. Thread through the maze of rooms. Nearly at the exit. Keep moving, keep moving.
She found herself in the middle of an enormous two-storied room with red marble floors and pillars. A grand staircase swept up to a balcony that ran around the entire chamber. High arched windows provided light, and ten-foot-high double doors stood opposite her. A patch of floor in front of the doors gleamed like a diamond. Alice glanced around, halted in confusion. It was the wrong room. She had taken a bad turn somewhere.
“This is the entry foyer,” Kemp said helpfully. “The front doors are straight ahead of Madam.”
Alice hesitated and fingered the whistle on its chain around her neck. “I think we should find a side door. I don’t want to walk out onto the front steps and into the middle of that party.”
“Ivana Gonta sent everyone home some time after Madam and Sir took the lift down,” Kemp sniffed. “According to the servants, she was quite rude about it, even by Cossack standards. It is why everyone is in such a panic. The circus left, except for the elephant, which won’t obey orders from anyone. Perhaps it has broken down.”
“So the entire banquet existed only to lure us here,” Alice said.
“Who cares?” Gavin said. “We have a clear sky. Let’s go!”
A door up on the balcony slammed open and a stream of mechanical guards, all dressed in red uniforms, stormed down the stairs. Faster than any human, they lined up in ranks in front of the main doors. The other doors in the great room crashed shut and locks clicked. The children clustered around Gavin and Alice, whimpering in fear. Alice spread her arms to embrace and reassure as many of them as she could, though her own heart was racing.
“Madam!” Kemp cried. “Madam!”
His body marched over to join the automatic army, his arms and legs stiff, his head turning left and right. Alice started to go after him, but Gavin took her shoulder.
“Wait,” he cautioned. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.”
“Good advice,” said all the automatons at the same time, in the same voice. Even Kemp. The absolute unity of the sound made Alice’s skin crawl. “We are masters here. You will not leave.”
“Madam!” Kemp added.
“Who is this?” Alice demanded as she turned the handle of her parasol.
“We are Gonta-Zalizniak,” said the automatons. All of them, including Kemp, drew swords.
“You couldn’t get out of the basement in time to stop us, so you took over your guards. Is one of you controlling all of them,” Alice asked, not really caring but trying to stall so she could think, “or do each of you control one automaton?”
“You will not leave.” The swords vibrated with a sound like a pack of snarling dogs.
“Madam! I am trying to change the memory wheels, but I cannot. Help me, Madam!”
“Where are Phipps and Glenda and Simon?” Alice asked.
The automatons and Kemp took a step forward in unison. “You will not leave.”
“Stop us.” Gavin shoved the ear protectors back over his ears and cranked the generator again. The eerie sound rippled through the red marble room. All the automatons and Kemp jerked their heads in unison, then laughed together. Gavin stopped playing in confusion.
“Siren song is very beautiful,” the automatons said, “but not so enticing when we hear through metallic ears. Alice will exit and go to China. Gavin and pretty Oriental boy will come back downstairs with children. But first we will slice one or two open while you watch.”
“What?” Alice cried. “Why?”
“To punish you and Gavin, little baroness. To show that you are not in charge here. If you behave well after that, we promise to use nitrous oxide on Gavin and children before more experiments, though little baroness will have to take our word on that.”
Feng was trembling and his torso was sheathed in sweat, though his spidery face stayed impassive and he remained where he was at the back of the group of children. Alice glanced at Kemp, then back at the children. Damn it. She twisted her parasol handle again, and the high-pitched whine shrilled. Her hands shook.
“Madam, what are you doing?” Kemp asked. “Madam, please don’t!”
“I’m sorry, Kemp,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” And she fired a bolt of electricity. The children cried out and scrambled backward. The crackling bolt struck the center automaton square on and spread to the others, including Kemp. Alice bit her lip, but held her grip firm. All the hair on the back of her neck stood up, and the smell of ozone tanged the air.
The automatons stood still for a moment. Then they laughed again, even Kemp. One of the automatons extended a hand. Its forearm separated from its upper arm and shot across the room, still connected to the body by a stiff cable. The move caught Alice off guard, and the automaton’s hand was able to snatch the parasol from her hand and haul it back. It snapped the weapon in two and flung it aside. “No, no, no. We know about electric umbrella. We saw it work.”
“They’re standing on glass flooring,” Gavin said. “They aren’t grounded.”
“Good heavens,” Alice whispered, staring at the gleaming patch of floor. Kemp remained silent.
“You have no weapons now,” the automatons said. “You belong to us.”
The little clockwork army, including Kemp, spread out into a semicircle and stormed forward, their terrible growling swords at the ready. Before Alice could react, a bolt of red energy slashed through the air and punched through the chest of one of the automatons. It keeled over backward. Its sword went still. Alice spun. On the balcony behind and above them all stood Susan Phipps in her scarlet uniform with a large rifle in her hands and a battery pack on her back. Her brass monocle stared coldly down into the stone foyer. Beside her, also armed, were Simon d’Arco in black and Glenda Teasdale in yellow.
“Sorry it took so long to get here,” Phipps said. “We had to raid the Gonta armory first.”
“Oh God,” Gavin muttered.
“Fire!” Phipps ordered. Glenda and Simon obeyed. The air crackled with energies Alice couldn’t name. Gavin dropped the paradox generator, and they pushed the children to the floor while terrible thunder boomed overhead. The smell of hot metal filled Alice’s nose. It went on and on. Several of the children began to cry. Heat pressed on Alice’s back.
And then it stopped. Alice raised her head and slowly got to her feet. Smoke choked the air and it took some time to make out the warped figures of the automatons scattered about the floor, arms and legs skewed at odd angles, bodies and heads half melted. The marble floor was pitted and scorched, and the glass plate in front of the door had shattered into a thousand pieces. The children coughed and continued to cry. The sound wrenched Alice’s heart, but she forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.
“Madam,” said Kemp’s voice from among the wreckage. “Madam. Madam. Madam.”
Alice gasped upon hearing this, heartened at this small bit of mechanical life among the strange carnage. Beside her, Gavin got to his feet. Feng remained upright. No one had told him to duck.
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
Phipps came down the stairs, followed by Glenda and Simon. The brass barrel of the energy rifle glowed a soft red. “That was satisfying,” she said. “I imagine the Cossacks themselves will come upstairs eventually, but we should have time. And my shackles are rather more effective than the ones those disgusting clockworkers used.”
Glenda put a hand to her ear, which had a metal cup over it. “I have access to the memory engines that run the house, Lieutenant. The Gontas have abandoned the automaton controls and are coming now.”
The smoke caught in Alice’s throat, and she had to cough before she could speak. “Susan-Lieutenant-I can’t go back with you.”
“I’m not offering a choice.”
In that moment, all the frustration and anger and fear she’d been keeping under control got away from her. “Why are you doing this?” she burst out. “What do you have to gain? The plague in England is dead. There are no more clockworkers. The Third Ward’s purpose is no more!”
Phipps strode forward and grabbed Alice by the front of her blouse in a metal fist. Her breath smelled of stale bread and long-forgotten wine. Alice grabbed Phipps’s wrist with her own metal gauntlet, but Phipps was stronger by far. “You endanger the world. You diminish me. You destroyed my reason to exist.”
“Let her go, Phipps!” Gavin barked, but Simon pointed his rifle at him, and he went still. The paradox generator sat uselessly at his feet like a half-dead flower.
“So now you’ve replaced your purpose with an obsession to destroy me?” Alice countered. “Is it worth the cost? You’ve dragged Simon and Glenda into hell, and these children are paying the price as well. Let us go to China, Susan, and we’ll restore balance to the world. It won’t be the balance you remember, but it’ll be balance nonetheless.”
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
Phipps’s six-fingered hand tightened on the white cloth at Alice’s throat, and Alice found it a bit hard to breathe. “Balance is restored only through justice. I will have justice.”
“The Gontas will be here in two minutes, Lieutenant,” said Glenda from behind her rifle.
“Susan,” Gavin said evenly, “we shouldn’t be talking about this here. These children need our help, our assistance, our aid. Isn’t that also your duty, your responsibility, your obligation?”
“A fine try, Ennock,” Phipps said. “But I’m not a clockworker.”
“Listen to me, Lieutenant.” The words came out half-choked, and Alice could barely draw breath through the iron grip at her throat. She fumbled for the whistle on its chain, but couldn’t get to it. “You have a chance here to build instead of destroy. You can save these children and thousands like them. Just let us go.”
Phipps stared at Alice, her ice-blue eyes meeting Alice’s brown ones. She wavered. The grip at Alice’s throat relaxed and she could breathe freely again. Relief made Alice relax. Everything was going to be fine. The children continued to huddle around Gavin, and she wanted to tell them it would be all right now, but she had no way to-
“No!” Phipps snarled. Her grip tightened again. “No! No! No! I will have justice! Glenda, chain them both. Simon, keep them covered. If they move wrong, shoot to kill. Alice first. That’ll keep Gavin in line.”
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
“We have barely sixty seconds,” Glenda reported, setting her rifle aside and producing a set of heavy handcuffs.
“Feng!” Alice cried in desperation. “Attack Phipps!”
Feng instantly launched himself at Phipps. The move caught Phipps off guard and he slammed into her, knocking her down. Alice went down, too, but Phipps released her grip and she was able to roll free. Gavin’s wristbands snapped a cog at Glenda, who ducked by reflex. Gavin shoved through the crying group of children and swept the rifle from Glenda’s hands with a hook kick. It hit the floor and slid away. Simon spun and aimed his weapon straight at Gavin. The tip glowed red.
Feng and Phipps rolled across the floor, trading and blocking blows faster than Alice could track. “No!” Phipps chanted. “No! No! No! No!” Feng was getting tired, and Phipps landed several choice hits on him. Alice struggled to her feet, fumbling for the whistle.
Gavin faced Simon across the glowing rifle barrel. Simon’s eyes were sunken, his hair disheveled, his black coat torn. “Are you going to shoot me, Simon?” Gavin said. “Simon Peter d’Arco, the man who killed his friend and partner?”
“I have my orders,” he said hoarsely.
“What orders come from your soul?” Gavin asked. “You once gave up happiness to give me Alice. I can’t imagine that someone so unselfish would kill for shallow reasons.”
“You never wanted me,” Simon said. “So I found someone else, and Phipps ripped me away from him to follow you. It always comes back to you, Gavin. You!”
“I’m sorry,” Gavin admitted. “I know you’re angry. But is anger worth my life, or the lives of these children?”
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
Glenda was moving toward her lost rifle. Simon twisted a lever, and the red barrel glowed scarlet. Alice froze, the whistle at her mouth, as Simon fired. The energy beam shot past Gavin and hit Glenda’s rifle. It leaped away, a molten mass. Glenda swore and jumped back.
“You traitorous bastard!” Phipps leaped to her feet, dark hair wild. Feng staggered upright, still trying to attack but not possessing the coordination. “I’ll see you court-martialed, d’Arco!”
The door at the top of the balcony burst open, and clockworker Cossacks boiled into the room. Ivana was at the forefront. She waved a sword that would have looked ridiculous with her pink tea gown if the vibrating blade hadn’t sheared a marble bust in half as she passed. The other Gontas bore similar weapons, including a number of projectile arms.
“Shit,” said Simon and Gavin together.
Alice blew the whistle. It shrilled high and loud, like a baby chick crying for its mother. There was a small moment of silence when everyone in the giant room paused, as if startled that Alice would do something so ridiculous. Alice stood in the middle of the frozen chaos. The children huddled together, frightened and without a protector. Feng staggered about, still trying to obey orders and attack Phipps, but betrayed by his battered body. Kemp’s head droned sorrowfully to itself. Gavin and Simon remained side by side, dark and light, newly become brothers. Even the Gontas and Zalizniaks paused momentarily in their charge.
And then an angry trumpeting answered the whistle. A faint rumble grew stronger, and the front doors smashed open. They wrenched off their hinges, and Alice ducked as one door flew over her head and crashed at the foot the stairs just as Ivana and two of her siblings arrived there. Ivana’s dying scream was buried under six inches of solid oak. The mechanical elephant stampeded over the remains of the automaton army, trumpeted again, and came to a halt near Alice. It made a formidable wall of brass between her and Phipps.
“Get aboard!” Alice barked. “Feng, get the children on the elephant!”
But Gavin and Simon were now halfway across the room from Alice and the mechanical animal. Gavin snatched up the paradox generator and the two of them ran for the elephant, but one of the Gontas on the staircase lobbed a small device that landed in the space between Gavin and the elephant. It exploded with a strange pop that only rocked Alice but knocked both Gavin and Simon sprawling. Gavin slid backward across the smooth floor, away from the elephant and toward the staircase. Alice shouted his name.
Gavin managed to regain his feet. By a miracle, he hadn’t lost his hold on the paradox generator. Simon, meanwhile, flew in a different direction entirely and fetched up against one of the walls. He pulled himself upright, rifle in hand. The Cossacks laughed and tried to clamber over the wreckage at the foot of the stairs. One of them gave it up and turned to aim a large, multibarreled rifle in the elephant’s general direction.
“Go, Alice!” Gavin shouted. “Take the kids and go!”
“No!” Alice cried, horrified at the idea. “I can’t leave you!” But the space between them was wide, and the Gontas were already aiming a number of other weapons. The air would turn deadly in seconds. The children were climbing up the elephant and into the brass gondola, using handholds welded onto its hide for just this purpose. Feng urged them along, but they were slow, and there was no way to get them all in before the Gontas started their barrage.
Gavin held up the paradox generator and grabbed the crank. Of course! The Cossacks couldn’t resist it. All he had to do was freeze them in place long enough for-
Alice’s eye fell upon Gavin’s ear protectors lying on the floor some distance away. The bomb had flung them from their place around his neck. Her stomach clenched with terror. In that moment, she knew what he intended to do.
“Gavin, don’t!” she screamed. “You can’t!”
I love you always, he mouthed and gave her that heart-stopping grin. Then he turned the crank. The unearthly sound of the tritone paradox sighed through the room. Most of the Gontas and Zalizniaks, those who hadn’t been crushed by the door, froze. A look of pure bliss descended on their faces. Their weapons thudded to the stairs. Gavin mirrored their expression. His handsome features passed into an ecstasy only he could understand as he mindlessly cranked the handle, transporting himself and his fellow clockworkers into rapture. Alice hated the filthy sound, and tears streamed down her face. She couldn’t reach him, he couldn’t reach her, and he would play until he dropped from exhaustion or a Cossack killed him.
And just as Alice feared, three Gontas had had the foresight to throw together ear protectors of their own, and they shoved past their entranced brethren. Two aimed rifles straight at Gavin.
“No, you don’t!” Simon fired his own weapon. Red energy spat from the tip and shattered part of the stone banister. The Gontas ducked. Alice cried out.
“Gavin’s bought us time!” Simon shouted at her, still firing. “Don’t waste it! Glenda, stay where you are. Alice, get those children aboard!”
At that moment, Phipps dashed around the elephant. She had taken advantage of the confusion to retrieve her rifle, and she aimed it at Alice, but Alice made an infuriated gesture, and the elephant swung its trunk round and slapped Phipps aside like a fly. Phipps went tail-over-teakettle and landed hard. The rifle arced away, far out of reach.
“Leave, Susan!” Alice shouted above the noise of the rifle fire and the paradox generator. “I don’t have time for your pettiness. If you want justice later, run now.”
Simon continued to fire. His expert marksmanship kept the three Cossack clockworkers pinned down, but Alice wondered how long the rifle’s energy would last. The moment Simon stopped his attack, the Cossacks would turn their fire on Gavin, and Alice had no way to save him. Gavin played his perfect tritones, forever beyond her reach. In moments, he would be dead. Alice felt sick and helpless as the final two children climbed aboard the elephant.
“Come on, Lieutenant!” Glenda cried near the gaping front doors.
Phipps looked torn for a moment. Then she dashed outside. Glenda went after her.
Simon fired another volley at the Gontas, but the rifle’s power was already weaker. “Go!” he shouted. “We’re out of time!”
Alice gestured, and the elephant curled its trunk so Alice could step aboard it. “I won’t leave without Gavin!”
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
“There’s no choice!” Simon said. “You have to let him go.”
Ice washed through Alice’s veins at those words. “I… I…”
“Let him go!”
At that moment, Simon’s rifle ran out of power. The room fell silent except for the ghostly sighs of the tritone paradox. The protected Cossacks, who were hiding behind the stone banister, raised their heads above the rail. Their own rifles came up. Something inside Alice snapped. The world went into a blur, and she was only half aware of what she was doing. A scream tore itself from her throat, and the elephant thundered forward with Feng and the children clinging to the gondola on its back. And then the mechanical beast was standing between Gavin and the Gontas. Rifle fire, some of it energy, some of it projectile, pinged and hissed off the elephant’s brass hide. Alice leaped down, yanked the generator out of Gavin’s hands, and slapped him sharply across the face. Weapons fire continued to pock and snarl on the other side of the elephant.
“Wha-?” Gavin said.
“Move!” she shouted.
He moved. In seconds, he was in the gondola. Alice hurled herself back onto the elephant’s trunk and ordered the beast to turn and run. It obeyed with a lurch as the Cossacks continued to fire, though the elephant still provided protection as it picked up speed. The smell of scorched brass filled the room and a chunk of metal peeled off the mechanical’s side, exposing mesh and gears like muscle and bone. Machinery squealed as if it were in actual pain. The other Cossacks remained in their trance, but that wouldn’t last long. Above Alice, children cried and screamed. The elephant was limping badly, and Alice could hear the pistons labor. More than one was bent or misaligned, though it was still able to speed along faster than a man could run. Alice clung grimly to its trunk, praying it wouldn’t break down. Simon ran lightly along the wall, heading for the door as well, but the Cossacks were concentrating their fire on the elephant instead of him. He arrived at the door and bent down to scoop up Kemp’s head just as the elephant reached him. With a quick move, he tossed the head up to Gavin in the gondola, then grabbed a handhold as the elephant thundered past and swung himself up.
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
The elephant bolted onto the portico outside and down the front steps to the deserted courtyard. The banquet tables, still bearing the remains of the feast, stood between the elephant and the gate, which by a miracle stood open, no doubt from when the rest of the circus left. The elephant smashed the tables to flinders and charged into the street. The rifle fire died away.
A number of emotions tried to push their way into Alice’s head and heart-fear, relief, pride, anger-but she forced herself to stay focused on the task at hand. Reach safe distance from the Gontas. Guide the elephant safely through the street. Bring the children back to the circus. Would the Gontas pursue? Alice had no idea. Right now, she had to get back to the circus, where there was help.
“Alice!” Gavin called from above. “Alice!”
His voice brought back the wave of sentiment. She ignored it, and him. Now that he was safe, she needed to deal with practical matters. Once they were back at the circus, they could talk. The elephant ran.
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
“Alice!” Gavin shouted again.
The journey was its own version of hell. Alice was terrified the Gontas were following, and she didn’t dare slow down, but neither did she want to trample anyone, and the dirty, narrow streets were difficult to navigate. Thank God she knew where she was going. People and traffic leaped out of the elephant’s way, some meekly, others with angry shouts. The elephant’s feet thudded unevenly on the cobblestones. Alice turned it one way, then another, always heading for the Dnepro River and the circus. The circus became a goal unto itself, a haven she had to reach at all costs.
The elephant slowed, lurching more and more. A loud hissing started in one of the little boilers inside its chest. But Alice could see the Tilt between the buildings.
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
And then they were there. The circus was in something of a mess. People dashed in a number of directions, working and shouting and unhitching horses from wagons. Animals bellowed and screeched in their cages. And then Alice remembered that they had been rudely dismissed from the Gonta-Zalizniak house and must have only just returned.
“Alice!” Gavin called again. “God, Alice. Get up here!”
This time Alice listened. She quickly climbed up to the gondola, cursing the difficulty of doing so in a skirt. Simon helped her in. Feng stood in one corner of the gondola, his scarred face impassive, Kemp’s head at his feet. Nine of the children lay or sat on the floor, some of them crying softly, most of them numb. Gavin knelt, cradling the tenth, the little girl in the ragged gray dress. It was the girl Alice had first cured. Gavin’s jaw was trembling, and then Alice saw that the front of the girl’s dress was stained with blood. All the strength went out of her and she dropped to the floor of the gondola beside the child.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no. Is she-?”
“Dead,” Simon said. “Rifle fire hit her when you went back.”
Guilt and horror crushed Alice to the gondola floor. Tears welled in her eyes and her throat closed. She took the little body from Simon and cradled it. The little girl’s body lay in her arms like a warm rag doll. Her mouth lolled open. Alice wept. This child would never see her parents or play house or bite a slice of bread or kiss a boy or breathe spring air. All her hopes and memories had vanished like fog in sunlight, as if they had never existed. A month ago, when she had eaten breakfast with her family, she’d had no idea that one day her corpse would lay in the arms of a stranger on the back of a mechanical monster. And it was Alice’s doing. Alice wished desperately that she could change places with her, but God was never so kind.
Gavin touched her shoulder and Alice wanted to bury herself in his arms, but she wouldn’t let herself. What solace did this girl have? Her family?
“You couldn’t let go,” Simon said in a flat voice. “She died because you went back for Gavin.”
“Madam. Madam. Madam.”
“Simon,” Gavin said dangerously, “be-”
The words landed on her like stones. “No. He’s right. I’m so sorry. She died because of me.”
“You’re not being fair to yourself, Alice,” Gavin told her quietly. “The Cossacks gave her the clockwork plague, and if you hadn’t stepped in-”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.” Alice wiped her eyes. “Damn it. There’s too much to do. We need to take care of the other children and we need to destroy that generator.”
“Alice-,” Gavin began.
“Not now, Gavin.” She got up, still holding the girl’s body. The other children stared, both fearful and uncertain. “Feng, get the children down to the ground, please. Simon, help him.”
When the surviving children were safe on the ground, Alice climbed down herself, the girl’s body slung over her shoulder. She refused to let Gavin take it down for her. Blood smeared Alice’s blouse. Disorder continued to simmer through the circus and a curious crowd had gathered to watch, though as before they stayed outside the marked boundaries. Just as Alice reached the ground, Dodd trotted up to them, his collar undone and his hat askew. He was so agitated, he didn’t even notice Simon and Feng.
“What the hell did you do?” he demanded. “Jesus and God and Mary. Everything was fine until you got involved.”
“What do you mean?” Gavin asked.
“Ivana threw us out, and without paying me the rest of what she promised,” Dodd growled. “And what the bloody hell happened to the elephant? What happened to you?”
“It’s complicated,” Gavin said. He shot a glance over his shoulder at the streets leading back to the Gonta-Zalizniak house. “The short version of the story is that Ivana Gonta captured Feng and all these children. We had to rescue them, but we found out it was all a trick to… Well, never mind.”
He wet his lips. Alice understood his nervousness. Even as they spoke, the Gonta-Zalizniaks were pouring paraffin oil into their deadly mechanicals and moving them up from underground.
“Look,” he finished, “we have to get out of here. All of us. You, too. The whole circus.”
“I don’t understand.” Dodd looked puzzled.
Gavin looked ready to shake him. “Weren’t you listening? The whole thing-the invitation to perform, Ivana pretending to want you there-was just a trick to get me and Alice into that house. Except we escaped, and now they’re angry. They’re going to destroy the circus in revenge, and they’re on the way right now.”
Dodd stared, then turned and bellowed, “Scarper! Now, now, now! Scarper! Scarper!”
The word rippled through the circus. At first there was a sense of disbelief. The Kalakos Circus was enormous and well respected, not some gypsy sideshow, and most of the performers hadn’t been run out of a town in a dozen years or more. The idea that it could happen now caught them off guard. Once it sank in that the order was real, the general disorder from before blew into full-blown chaos as people tried to gather family, snatch belongings, and decide whether or not to leave beloved animals-both living and mechanical-behind.
Dodd started to run off, but Gavin caught his arm. “We need to find Harry. He speaks Ukrainian, and he can help us find the children’s-”
“I don’t know where Harry is,” Dodd snapped. “I’m glad you got these children out of the Gontas’ house, really I am, but right now I’m more worried that my own people will end up in it.”
“Why don’t you put everyone on the train? It’s faster,” Gavin asked.
“The boilers are stone cold,” Dodd snapped. “We’d never get everything heated up in time. Though I’m going to try, for the sake of the animals. Everyone else will have to run on foot or horseback and hope for the best. Maybe if we scatter in different directions, the Cossacks won’t catch many of us. Oh!” He put his hands to his head. “Charlie! He can’t run! Linda will have to hitch up her wagon. I have to find Nathan. Perhaps he can help her.”
“Good heavens.” Alice’s knees felt weak and she leaned against the elephant’s pitted side with the dead girl in her arms. The elephant felt uncomfortably warm, and it sighed steam. This was too much to take in. “I’m sorry, Dodd. I didn’t know this would happen.”
“Sorry? Sorry?” Dodd was nearly shouting. “You destroyed this circus. You destroyed our lives. Thank you, Baroness, for bringing my people into all this.”
He whirled and stomped away.
Gabriel Stark, called Dr. Clef, stood on the deck of The Lady of Liberty and stared through a spyglass at the mechanical elephant. Time jerked and jumped. Some moments rushed ahead so quickly that his limbs moved like glaciers. Other moments slowed, froze even the daylight into clear, sweet ice. In those slow moments, he could see the entire world, perhaps the entire universe, caught in a single painting. When nothing moved, Dr. Clef saw every secret of the physical world, of time and matter and energy, as plain as an artist’s brush stroke. Then the universe jerked back into motion, and an ocean of paint splashed over what he saw, obliterating it. Even his memory of it vanished. He only knew that he had known. Some flotsam did stay with him, however. Stray numbers, unified concepts, vibrating strings, the final piece of an irrational number. Concepts no sane mind could grasp. Fortunately, his mind was falling apart, and this allowed him to hold a few secrets together.
Another thing he held on to was the mission. The boy needed more time. That became plainer with every passing, precious moment. The boy’s movements as he climbed down from the elephant betrayed this need. The clockwork plague altered his gait, his gestures. Only someone as brilliant as Dr. Clef could see the pattern of the plague’s progression toward madness, dissolution, and death. Although Dr. Clef calculated a decent 62.438 percent chance that China’s Dragon Men could cure a clockworker, he gave the boy only a 19.672 percent chance of living long enough to see it, and the largest problem came from the fact that he wouldn’t have enough time.
Steam curled from the elephant’s tusks, and Dr. Clef simultaneously saw the droplets both condense and evaporate. He hadn’t yet gotten around to naming the minuscule particles that made up matter. He himself hadn’t had the time, and he was running out. The plague was eating at his body even as it sharpened his mind. But there was a remedy to his problem and to the boy’s.
A wave of affection swept over him. The dear, dear boy. The son he’d never had. Or perhaps he did have a son, or even a dozen. He didn’t know for certain. Dr. Clef’s memories of his own past grew more and more hazy every hour. He had vague recollections of fishing in a blue river with another boy while it rained, and another of kissing a pretty girl in a blue dress, and both colors were the same electric blue as his beautiful Impossible Cube. He remembered working in his stone laboratory in the Third Ward, but couldn’t recall how he’d come to be there in the first place. He recalled the boy, whose eyes were the same electric blue as Dr. Clef’s beautiful Impossible Cube, and how the boy had held the Cube and sung his way through solid stone. But then the Cube had vanished. Every day when Dr. Clef rose, he felt the pain of its loss, like a man who loses a leg might still feel pain in his missing foot. It was impossible to re-create the Cube’s perfection. There was only one in all the universes and all the time they contained.
And then the dear, dear boy with the electric-blue eyes had handed him that lovely paradox generator, with its audible, irrational, and intoxicating double square root of two. Paired with his own alloy, which cycled the thrilling new power of electricity back and forth between the square root of two, the generator would give him his Cube back, and once he had both Cube and generator, he could give the boy all the time he needed. Dr. Clef needed only an enormous amount of electricity at the right frequency. And for that…
Dr. Clef turned the spyglass upriver. The dam strained against the current, tamed it, forced uncounted trillions of droplets around turbines and rotors. He could feel the magnets moving within their coils, changing the flow of water to a flow of electricity. Exciting! Thrilling! The key to the universe lay within the grasp of these little people, and instead of taking advantage, they scurried about gathering up foolish possessions, clumps of matter that mattered not at all. Their current existence had no point, and only Dr. Clef could change it. He would change it. If only…
He swung the spyglass back to the elephant. The girl seemed upset by the dead child in her arms, and the boy seemed upset that the girl was upset. He made the connection easily enough. The child had died because of something the girl had done, most likely save the boy, and now she was upset. Foolish. The boy offered the world quite a lot more than a stray child. But the fact that both of them were upset meant that they had probably…
Yes. The paradox generator was still on board the elephant, forgotten by everyone.
Except Dr. Clef.