They took several moments to gather equipment. Alice wanted to get the firefly jar from Feng, and Gavin wanted weapons. He couldn’t bring himself to use actual pistols, however. A lifetime of training had instilled a healthy fear of anything that created flame, a deadly threat on an airship. Even after several weeks on the Lady, which used newfangled helium, Gavin still shunned gunpowder for the cutlass of shatterproof glass favored by airmen. Unfortunately, he no longer had a flechette pistol, which used compressed air to fire glass needles. The circus, meanwhile, had gone back to sleep, recovered from its encounter with the gendarmes Phipps had commandeered, but Gavin wondered how long before they returned-and how many they’d encounter on the way to the church, which was why he wanted weapons. He looked at Dr. Clef’s power canon where it lay on the Lady’s deck, and sighed with regret.
“It’s too heavy,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t get twenty yards.”
“Perhaps you could make modifications with this.” Dr. Clef held up a spool of alloy wire, the same stuff as the endoskeleton rolled up and lying on the port side of the deck. “Can you do it alone? I have fear that we shall fight if I assist.”
Gavin looked at the wire and at the power cannon. His brain leaped ahead, and he saw wires and pulsing power and batteries. He ran his hands over the cannon, able to feel how it all fit together, every bolt, every shard, every pathway, right down to the tiny pieces so small they couldn’t hold a name. He saw a number of fascinating ways to reshape them, gently move matter and energy along a number of different venues. He was only vaguely aware that Dr. Clef, that annoying Dr. Clef, had withdrawn, and the vibrations of his receding footsteps on the deck came out as long, distorted strings that vibrated against the air and kicked it about. Gavin’s fingers flew, snatching up tools and setting them down again, braiding wire, snipping metal, connecting pieces of the universe in new ways.
“Gavin?”
The high-pitched voice intruded, interrupted, interjected. He turned to snarl at the interruption-
— and saw that it was a woman. He knew her. He… had feelings for her. He struggled for a moment. She had broken his concentration, which made him angry, but she was also someone to be trusted, someone he didn’t want to be angry at. The contradictory feelings warred for a split second, equally matched.
Alice. Her name was Alice. The new fact tipped the balance, and in a flash he remembered that she wasn’t someone who deserved disdain. He twisted inside like a cat changing its mind in midleap and yanked back the retort.
“Alice?” he gasped, and realized he was panting. A trickle of sweat slid down his cheek. “What’s going on?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She had changed into trousers, which Gavin found strangely attractive on a woman. They accentuated her hips and showed her legs. She was wearing a tighter-fitting blouse as well, and it clung to her neck and breasts. Her braided hair caught the moon and held it. The silvery light shifted, moving in a shower of particles, then splashing as a wave, but doing both at the same time, just as the Impossible Cube had twisted and changed before his eyes. It was beautiful and terrible all at once, and Gavin couldn’t look away if he wanted to. For a moment it was hard to breathe.
“What is that?” she asked. “Did you make it?”
Gavin held up the object in question. An eight-foot braided lash trailed to the deck from a heavy brass handle, and the handle connected to a cord that ran to a backpack with a battery in it. Dr. Clef’s power cannon lay dead on the deck, its brass entrails scattered across the wood.
“It looks like a whip,” said Feng, who had also climbed up. He was dressed in what looked to Gavin like soft black pajamas from head to foot. “Show us, please.”
Gavin shook off the last of the clockwork daze. He shrugged into the backpack and flicked a switch on the handle. A low thrum-D-flat, he automatically noted-throbbed across his ears and pulsed against his palm. The metal lash glowed incandescent blue. The weight eased in his hand as the power pushed Dr. Clef’s alloy away from gravity. Gavin swung. The whip flicked through the air, quick as a demon’s tongue, and slashed at the barrel of the power cannon. The barrel didn’t move. For a moment, neither did anyone else. Then the barrel fell neatly into two halves that thudded to the deck.
There was a long, long pause.
“I watched someone called the Great Mordovo cut his assistant in half this afternoon,” Feng said at last. “I do not believe you should show this to him.”
Alice swallowed visibly and shifted her pack. “That took you all of half an hour to make?”
“I didn’t keep track of the time.” Gavin flicked the switch off. The glow vanished, and the whip grew heavy in his hand again. He coiled it and hung it on the right side of his belt, opposite his glass cutlass.
“You must be careful,” Dr. Clef admonished, approaching from his previously safe distance. “Every slash takes power, you know, and the battery does not last forever.”
“Then let’s go now,” Gavin said.
“I’ll carry your fiddle,” Alice said.
The three of them slipped away from the circus and hurried down the city streets. Gavin led the way, since he knew where they were going, and Feng brought up the rear, with Alice in the middle. The air that stole over Gavin was growing chilly and damp, with an early breath of autumn to it. In the distance, a church bell repeated a dark F that pressed lonely against his ears. A scattering of lights glowed in houses or shops, but most windows were dark, and the moon coasted through a field of stars like a bright airship through a cloud of fireflies. Even the public houses were closed at this time of night, and the trio had no good reason to be on the street, which meant any gendarme would stop them for questioning. Gavin slid into another shadow, trying to control his nervousness. The cutlass and whip lent him a whiff of power, but one pistol shot could bring him down, or worse, bring down Alice. Gavin didn’t know if Phipps intended to capture or kill at this point, but capture would mean transport back to England for hanging, so it didn’t make much difference. He kept one hand on the smooth whip handle.
A pair of horses clip-clopped from around the corner ahead of them. Gavin grabbed Alice’s hand and pulled her into an alleyway. Her backpack clinked slightly, and the noise made Gavin’s heart jerk. Feng seemed to have disappeared. The riders rounded the corner and trotted down their street. Gavin pressed himself face-first against the rough alley wall, leaving the pack’s uneven shape sticking out. He could hear Alice’s butterfly breathing next to him, feel her body heat mingling with his. She clutched his fiddle case, and he felt oddly comforted that she held it. When the pirate captain had threatened to throw it off the Juniper, it had felt like the man’s filthy fingers were running over Gavin’s soul, but Alice’s touch made him feel that the fiddle was safe, even with danger only a few steps away.
The horses clopped past the mouth of the alley, and moonlight gleamed off pistols holstered at the riders’ belts. Gavin held his breath. He had turned his face away from the street so his fair skin wouldn’t catch a stray beam of light, and he was looking right into Alice’s eyes, just visible in the scattered wave of photons. They were wide and brown and beautiful, even when filled with unease.
One of the riders paused at the alley mouth and said something in French to his companion, who also paused. Fear made blood pulse in Gavin’s ears. Alice’s lips parted, and her breath came in short gasps, but she didn’t move. The man spoke again, every word as harsh as a drop of melted lead.
And then they were gone, their horses trotting away to fade in the distance. The weight of fear vanished so quickly, Gavin thought he might float away. The tension went out of Alice’s body as well. Gavin surprised himself by leaning in and kissing her. She stiffened again, then kissed back, her mouth warm on his. When they parted, he pressed his forehead against hers.
“Why were we scared?” Alice murmured. “You could have torn them in half with that whip.”
“I could have,” Gavin replied. “That’s exactly why I was scared.”
The street was still empty, no sign of Feng. A cough over Gavin’s head made him grab for the whip, but Alice put her hand on his arm. Feng was perched on a windowsill two stories above them. His dark clothing made him look like the shadow of a spider. Carefully but steadily, using rough bricks and other windowsills for footholds, he descended to the sidewalk.
“I’m impressed,” Alice asked.
“I have climbed in and out of a number of windows in my life,” Feng said. “More than once with a husband in hot pursuit. It is interesting how well one can climb with the correct motivation.”
They hurried away, dodging the gas lamps. Occasionally, they heard footsteps or horses’ hooves a street or two over, and every time they hid in alleys or doorways or under stoops, though they didn’t have any more close encounters with police. The streets wound steadily uphill, and Gavin’s legs started to ache from the steady climbing, and the battery pack pulled at his shoulder muscles. After a while, he said, “Where are the plague zombies?”
That made Alice pause. “I don’t know. We should have seen at least one or two by now.”
“Perhaps the priest will know,” Feng said.
They finally arrived at the Church of Our Lady. The huge stone building loomed over Gavin, buttressed high and stiff, surrounded by a low wall and a square marked off from the street by a line of stone pillars that stretched between them like an iron lattice. Stained glass windows shut themselves against the night.
“It is… large,” Feng said. “I imagined a small stone church, not an entire cathedral.”
“I think they’ve applied for cathedral status with the Pope,” Gavin said.
“They have to apply to call it a cathedral?” Feng looked doubtfully up at the walls, which seemed half fortress, half heaven. “I would enjoy seeing the paperwork for that.”
“The Papists do have their ideas,” Alice said. “Where do we go in?”
The main doors, half large enough to admit a dirigible, were obviously locked and barred, and the idea of knocking on such enormous timbers felt ridiculous. They followed the wall around until they found a more normal-sized pair of doors in an alcove. Feng knocked hard, then pounded at some length. Gavin nervously dropped his hand to the whip. Time passed, and the door wrenched open to reveal an old woman in a dressing gown and nightcap. A candlestick glimmered in her hand. She demanded something in French, and Alice responded. Gavin caught the words Monsignor Adames. The woman looked doubtful, but finally gestured them inside and shut the door behind them. Gavin found himself in a small room, but he could sense a great echoing space beyond.
“She wants us to wait here,” Alice said as the woman padded away, taking the light with her. Gavin waited in uneasy blackness with Alice and Feng beside him. None of them spoke. The emptiness beyond seemed to eat words, or even the idea of speaking. Time didn’t move. Gavin sensed the weight of the pack on his shoulders, and the heft of the whip handle in his hand, and the pull of the cutlass at his belt. Alice’s and Feng’s breathing beside him pushed about tiny amounts of air that puffed against his face, bounced off and swirled away in chaotic forms that held patterns just beyond his understanding. He reached out and put his hand into one and felt it scatter and flee. Another swirl of breath bounced off him, creating patterned chaos on his skin, and if he just concentrated hard enough, he might be able to understand it, perhaps even control it, even-
“Gavin!” Alice’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Are you coming?”
“Chaos swirls against my skin,” he said, “but the pattern remains out of reach. How can I touch it?”
“We shouldn’t stay up here,” said a man’s voice in lightly accented English. “Just bring him along.”
And then Gavin was within the great empty place, standing before a half-sized statue of a woman on a pedestal holding an infant-the Virgin Mary. Behind her, windows of stained glass rose above an elaborate altar. She stood on a crescent moon and wore robes of gold and crimson. In her right hand she held a scepter. The baby Jesus cradled a ball in his hand and stretched out the other in benediction. Both mother and child wore tall crowns of gold that sparkled with jewels. Candles flickered around her feet and in the candelabra behind her, lending her an otherworldly glow.
“Consolatrix Afflictorum,” said the man, and Gavin noticed for the first time he wore a long black robe and a white priest’s collar. “Comforter of the afflicted. If you believe the legend, she dropped out of a tree trunk in 1624, right around the time the black plague struck, and she cured a number of people. In 1794, the clockwork plague appeared, and so many people overwhelmed the Jesuit chapel outside the city, we moved her in here.”
“But you take her out and bring her around the city just after Easter,” Gavin said softly. “Eight days afterward. The Octave.”
The priest blinked. He had receding gray hair and a thin build. “You’ve heard of it.”
“No. It’s just obvious.” Gavin flicked a glance at the statue’s pale brown hair and dark brown eyes and rounded beauty and machine-like scepter in her hand, then glanced at Alice. “She looks like-”
“Don’t,” Alice said.
“But she really-”
“I said don’t,” Alice said again, and her voice floated to the high ceiling. She repositioned her backpack. “Monsignor Adames, I have a cure for the clockwork plague, and one of the people I helped told me to come here.”
“A cure?” Adames repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“Her touch cures the clockwork plague,” Feng said.
“Her touch,” he echoed, then gave a small laugh. “I’m sorry if I seem doubtful, but… well, I’m doubtful. I believe in the holy miracles, including the ones that founded this very church, but-”
“I play the fiddle,” Gavin interrupted, “and I sing.”
Monsignor Adames fell silent. Then he said slowly, “There are rumors. I’ve heard of a beautiful woman with a sword and an angel with a golden voice who appear to cure the afflicted at night and who are pursued by brass demons during the day. I thought they were nothing but desperate stories from people who want comfort. But now…”
“How can we help?” Alice asked.
Adames hesitated only a moment. “This way.” He caught up a candle from the statue’s feet and led them to a door behind one of the carved, earth-colored pillars lining the cathedral. A tight spiral staircase twisted downward. Adames pulled back the skirts of his robe with his free hand and held up the candle with the other to light the way as they descended.
“You’re an angel?” Feng said to Gavin on the stairs. “May I be the one to write your family about that? Please?”
At the bottom was a stone passageway, low and cramped. The top of Gavin’s backpack brushed the ceiling. Soot from thousands of ancient candles streaked the walls. Damp darkness pressed in from all sides, hushing Gavin’s footsteps. A number of alcoves and rooms opened at regular intervals, some with doors on them and some without. Adames led them to one alcove, and pressed against the back wall. It turned on an axis, and he ducked through the opening, motioning for them to follow.
The large room beyond was fitted out as a hospital ward. Iron bedsteads lined the walls, and about twenty patients lay in them, some asleep, some twitching or moaning softly. Gavin automatically pulled back from the smell of sickness in the place, then forced himself to enter. One corner was set up with cupboards and tables covered with medical equipment and supplies. Washtubs and buckets held both water and effluvia waiting to be disposed of. Lamps hung on the walls to provide soft light. A woman in a nun’s habit bustled over, and Gavin realized with a start that she was an automaton. The habit hid her body, but her face was metallic, as were her hands.
“Vater,” she said quizzically, “wer sind denn diese Leute?”
“English, Berta, if you please,” he said. “I don’t think our guests speak German. Are there any changes?”
“Some.” Berta’s voice buzzed slightly, and the grill that made up her mouth didn’t move when she spoke. “Clarissa has become worse. I fear she won’t last the night.”
Adames crossed himself. “Perhaps we can help now.”
“Monsignor!” Alice said. “I thought the Catholic Church strictly forbade human automatons.”
“That’s why we keep everyone down here,” he said blandly. “Berta can minister to our patients without catching the disease herself or passing it on to others, and she doesn’t require rest. I’m trusting you and God to keep the secret. We are the only hospital in Luxembourg for those afflicted by the plague.”
“Is it not against priestly vows to disobey your Pope?” Feng asked.
“It wouldn’t look good on our application to be declared a cathedral,” Adames admitted. “And if the Pope learns of it, we will forever remain a church, and I will never become an archbishop.”
“It’s still a sin,” Alice said. “How do you reconcile that?”
“We sin when we miss the mark of perfection,” Adames replied. “None of us can hit that mark, and we can only ask forgiveness from he who managed it. My heart tells me I’m doing the right thing, however imperfect it may be.”
“They all have the clockwork plague?” Gavin asked quietly.
Adames nodded. “Most of them die, but we save a few.”
“And the ones who become zombies?” Alice asked.
“It’s hard.” Adames looked away. “I have Berta put them in the catacombs, and she leaves food out until the plague takes them. A number of them come in from the street as well. They seem to understand that we will feed them at least a little.”
“This explains why we saw none on our way over,” Feng put in.
“It’s difficult to come up with enough food for everyone without arousing suspicion,” Adames concluded.
Alice pulled off her glove and put her left hand on Adames’s arm. The spider’s eyes glowed green. “You don’t have the plague,” she said.
He looked down at the spider with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty. “I wouldn’t, no. I caught it as a child and survived.” He pulled back the sleeve on his robe, revealing a scarred, withered arm. Alice’s face tightened, and Gavin knew she was remembering her father, also scarred by the clockwork plague. “My mother said I owed God, so I entered the priesthood.”
One of the patients cried out in pain from her bed. Berta turned, but Alice pushed past her. “Gavin, I want you with me. Please?”
Gavin shrugged out of the heavy backpack, set the whip down, and accepted his fiddle case from Alice. While he was taking the fiddle out, something occurred to him. “Alice, when did you last sleep?”
“I caught a few hours when you were in that fugue state in the train car,” she said absently, bending over the first bed. “Just play for me. It’s all the rest I need.”
He played, and Alice led him around the room. She drew back white sheets and slashed each patient as gently as she could, spraying a bit of her own blood into the wounds while Gavin spilled liquid harmony from the strings. With Adames in the room, he felt nervous, pressured to play without making a mistake, even though he was sure the priest would never notice.
I once had a heart as good as new
But now it’s gone from me to you.
For a moment he was somewhere else. His mother was sitting in a rocking chair, holding a baby in her lap, and the man with pale hair-his father-was teaching Gavin a song. The fingers that pressed against the familiar strings felt tiny, and the gut bit into them. “Keep trying. Once day, you’ll play better than your old man, but only if you do better.”
The moon picked you from all the rest
For I loved you best.
Where had his father gone? Was he dead? Had he run away? But why? He wanted answers, though the questions had only recently come to him. Maybe the plague was awakening old memories, or maybe he just wanted to remember now, painful as it was. Other longings rushed in, filled him like water in cupped hands. He wanted to hear his father’s voice, touch his hand, be a son instead of a grandson, protegee, or cabin boy.
The memory faded, though he continued playing. Once his bow quivered and he made a mistake. A note-F-came out with a squeak, far below proper pitch. Gavin’s face went hot. He corrected and moved on as if nothing had happened. Had Adames noticed? Had Alice? Or even Feng? None of them reacted. Gavin continued to playing, forcing himself to concentrate harder. By the time Alice got to the last patient, the first one was sitting up and speaking. Berta hurried over with a cup of water.
“Incredible,” Adames breathed. “Dear Lord, it is a miracle. The Consolatrix come to life.”
Feng surreptitiously wiped at his eyes. “That was the saddest I have ever heard you play.” Gavin gave him a wan smile. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed the error, then. Still, he felt a little sick. It was stupid, he knew, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching, counting up every mistake, and one day he would be called to account for them.
“Now, take me to the catacombs,” Alice said, but she was weaving.
Gavin put his fiddle in its case. “You can barely stand. How much blood have you given up in the last two days?”
She hesitated. “The jar, then,” she said. “In my pack.”
Feng set a stool behind her, and she sank onto it while Gavin pulled the jar from her pack without bothering to remove it from her back first. The fireflies glowed faintly within the glass.
“You rest,” Gavin said. “Let Berta bring you something to eat. Monsignor Adames can take me to help the zombies.”
Leaving Alice under Feng’s watchful eye, Gavin followed the priest out the pivoting door and down a short flight of steps. “The catacombs are almost directly under the altar,” Adames said, brandishing his candle. “When I conduct Mass, I sometimes wonder how the parishioners would respond if they knew what lies beneath their feet. Prepare yourself, my son.”
He pulled open a thick door. It exhaled air heavy with rot and fear. Gavin let the darkness swallow him as they moved inside, though the fireflies provided pale green light. Niches carved into the walls like short beds held dry skeletons, many with ragged cloth still clinging to them. Some clutched rosaries in yellowed fingers while the skulls stared eyelessly at the ceiling, the leavings of death. Gavin shrank away from them, not wanting to touch. He felt like an intruder, one who would be caught and thrown out by some monstrous gatekeeper at any moment. He followed Adames’s candle down a side passage until he heard shuffling footsteps ahead. Bones clattered with a sound that crawled over Gavin’s skin. Ahead, he saw the passage widen, and a shadowy group of zombies huddled in the dark. They shielded their eyes from the candle with ragged arms and groaned like a choir of uneasy spirits. Two of them lay sprawled on the floor, motionless. Dead. Gavin flinched at the sight. If they had arrived a day ago, an hour ago, a minute ago, could they have been saved? There was never enough time. If only there was a way to make more.
Gavin thought about what Adames had said as they entered the catacomb. He saw wealthy ladies in silk skirts and gentlemen in fine coats, their stomachs filled with a good breakfast prepared by paid servants. They spoke in hushed voices and smiled quietly to one another, their soft faces scrubbed pink, while below them moaned hungry, sick people.
“What can you do for them?” Adames asked.
The priest’s voice pulled Gavin back-he had nearly fallen into another fugue. With an embarrassed cough, he stepped farther into the bone room, opened the gleaming jar, and waved a dozen of the fireflies out of it. They streaked through the darkness and landed on some of the zombies.
“What are they?” the priest asked.
“I’m not completely sure,” Gavin said. “Alice’s aunt made them. They spread the cure, and anyone they bite spreads the cure as well. Alice’s cure works faster, but she’s not strong enough to help everyone. How will they get out once they’re better?”
One of the zombies reached a tentative hand toward Adames, who handed it a chunk of bread from his pocket. The creature fumbled to accept it and eat. “The same way they get in-through the graveyard. There’s an entrance in one of the mausoleums. Are you sure this will. ?”
“Yes.” He looked around, feeling suddenly uneasy. “I think we should get back to-”
A crash thundered through the catacomb and vibrated the very stones. The candle danced in Adames’s hand. Gavin swore.
“They found us!” he said.
Adames was already heading for the door. “Who?”
“The brass demons. We have to run!”
They met Feng and Berta at the spiral staircase. Berta had Gavin’s backpack, and a worried-looking Feng was half carrying Alice. Gavin cursed himself for letting her push herself so hard. Another crash thundered overhead. Wordlessly Gavin yanked on the battery backpack, slapped the whip onto his belt, and snatched Alice out of Feng’s arms. The clockwork plague roared through him, and he barely noticed her weight as he bundled her up the stairs. She clutched the firefly jar to her chest.
At the top, he burst out of the transept and into the crossing of the cathedral, the enormous open space just in front of the altar where the Consolatrix stood on her crescent moon. Two of the priceless stained glass windows, one on each of the long walls of the nave, had been shattered, and the confessional booths standing beneath them were smashed to flinders, crushed beneath stomping metal feet. Standing in the nave, the echoing pillared hall where the congregation gathered for services, were the two mechanicals, their glass bubbles gleaming like captured moons. In front of them was Lieutenant Phipps. Her brass monocle stared coldly about the pale brown chamber.
“How did you find us?” Alice gasped.
“The good father’s secret hospital isn’t as secret as he likes to think,” Phipps said in a scornful tone. “The Ward has known of it for quite some time. It was just a matter of watching until you showed up with your cure-as you did.”
“This is a house of God!” Adames roared, and before Gavin could stop him, he rushed forward to confront Phipps. One of the mechanicals-Glenda-leaned forward and almost casually knocked him aside. Adames slammed into a pillar and slid moaning to the stony floor.
“Nshi shenme dngxi!” Feng exclaimed.
A chill rage fell over Gavin, burning away all other emotion. “Why?”
“You are criminals,” Phipps said through tight teeth. “You released a doomsday weapon and broke a dangerous clockworker out of custody. You are a menace to society, and I will bring you to justice.”
“We don’t want to hurt you, Gavin,” Simon said. “Just… just come, all right? You’ll get a fair trial.”
“Why did you hurt the priest?” Gavin’s voice was level and deadly. “He helped more people in one day than your Empire has in a hundred years.”
“I’m not here to debate, Ennock. You’re under arrest.”
The lieutenant dipped into her pockets and came up with the tuning forks. Time slowed. Gavin saw the length of the metal forks, heard the creak of the mechanicals’ joints, felt the weight of the cathedral ceiling high above. His hand moved smoothly down-impulses contracted muscle, shortened tendons, curled fingers-and came up with the whip. He stepped forward and swung. The lash sliced through the air. He saw the individual currents split and eddy away as the braid hissed them to pieces. At precisely the right moment, Gavin flicked his arm and the lash changed direction. Air swirled like water, and the tip of the lash broke an invisible barrier. Sound cracked as the tip flicked across the fork in Phipps’s right hand. The fork shattered. Phipps cried out and jumped back.
“Get Alice out of here,” Gavin barked over his shoulder at Feng.
“What are you waiting for?” Phipps snarled at Simon and Glenda. “Grab them! Grab her!”
“No.” With one hand, Gavin drew his glass cutlass. With the other, he pressed the whip’s power switch. Blue energy flowed along the lash. He slashed the air, leaving a sizzling azure trail. “You won’t get past me.”
Glenda’s mechanical lunged for him, but Gavin heard the pistons hiss, saw the machine’s posture change, felt the tiny shift of air, and he was already moving. He whirled the lash and struck the mechanical’s arm. Sparks flew where the braided alloy touched brass, sending a small jolt up Gavin’s arm, but the cut was clean. The arm thudded to the stone floor. Before Glenda could react, Gavin swung again, catching the mechanical at the shin. The mechanical, caught in midstep, lurched forward, leaving the lower part of one leg behind. She stumbled, fell sideways, and crashed into a pillar. It cracked, and bits of it crumbled. Glenda crashed face-first to the ground. Her glass bubble shattered, and Gavin caught the tail end of her scream. The cold anger, however, let him feel no mercy or remorse. Behind Gavin, Feng was hauling Alice toward one of the side alcoves and an exit, the firefly jar still in her hands.
Simon raised his mechanical’s hand. The fingers clicked together into a gun barrel. He fired something over Gavin’s head with a whump that thudded hard against Gavin’s eardrums. The munition smashed into a pair of statues over the alcove and shattered them. Chunks of stone fell in front of the alcove entrance, throwing up a choking cloud of dust and blocking any exit. Alice cried out, and Feng pulled back.
“Don’t touch her, Simon!” Gavin snarled. A skin of black ice encased his heart, and he flicked the lash, but Simon’s mechanical was out of range.
Phipps pointed a metal finger at Gavin. He heard the tiny fft, and barely brought up the glass cutlass in time to catch the dart. It shattered on the tempered glass.
“You’ve lost your edge, Susan,” he said evenly. “I’m not a piece of street trash anymore. I’m a clockworker now, more dangerous than you can understand.”
“And more arrogant,” she said. “I’ve captured dozens of your kind, boy, some who wanted to destroy the world. Mere pirate toys don’t measure up.”
With that, she leaped at him, faster than a human should have moved. It caught Gavin by surprise, and then she was inside the circle of the lash, where the whip couldn’t touch her. Her metal arm batted aside Gavin’s glass cutlass and she gut-punched him with the other hand. The air burst from him, but he didn’t feel pain. Not yet. He grabbed her wrist (ninety-seven pounds of pressure), twisted upward (joint bending at 110 degrees), and planted his foot behind hers. To his left (nine feet, five inches), the cutlass clattered on the floor. With a flick, he brought his foot up to upset Phipps-
— but she was already gone, leaping backward and away. She snapped her metallic left hand open, and a lash of her own snaked out of the palm. Gavin slapped it aside with the lash, and only then-
“Gavin! Look out!”
— did he realize it was a diversion. Simon’s mechanical stepped forward and almost delicately grabbed Gavin’s backpack. With easy strength he hoisted Gavin aloft. Simon’s face looked pale through the glass. Gavin swung the lash as his feet dangled over empty air. The whip wrapped around Simon’s forearm, but the blue glow flickered and died, drained of power.
“No,” he whispered.
“You’re mine, Ennock,” Phipps said from below.
“Actually, he’s mine, Susan,” Alice called from beside the half-conscious Glenda amid the wreckage of the mechanical. With a deft motion, she spun a clockwork gear through the air at Simon. It trailed a pair of wires from Glenda’s machinery. Simon twisted in his chair in time to see, but not to react. The gear clanged against his mechanical’s shoulder. Electricity snapped and sparked. Ladders of it arced up and down the mechanical’s body, and inside it, Simon convulsed and shuddered. Gavin, who wasn’t touching metal, felt nothing. The mechanical’s fist opened, and Gavin dropped to the ground as Simon and his mechanical collapsed noisily to the cathedral floor. The backpack smashed Gavin flat, knocking the breath out of him just as Phipps’s punch had.
“You’ve lost your toys,” Alice panted, “and you’ve lost us. There’s no point in pursuing this, Susan.”
“You haven’t earned the right to call me by my Christian name, girl.” Phipps was standing upright a few paces from the wrecked machinery, cool and unruffled, and for a moment Gavin was getting another dressing-down in her office back at Third Ward headquarters in London. She leaned a little toward Gavin and inhaled deeply, then nodded to herself, as if confirming something. From the floor she plucked a bit of stone from the cracked column and with her metal hand threw it with quiet nonchalance. It shattered a single pane of stained glass above the altar at the other end of the cathedral.
“I wonder,” she said, and threw another piece. It broke the pane next to the first one. “I wonder who your ally is. That man who’s keeping to the shadows so I don’t see his face. It occurs to me that the son of the Chinese ambassador vanished from London at the same time you fled. Is that he? I like his infrared pattern.” She tapped her monocle. “He has a very interesting jar in one hand and a pistol in the other, but he won’t fire, either because he’s too cowardly or because I’m not attacking you right now. Which is it, boy?”
Feng, wherever he was, didn’t answer. Phipps threw two more pieces, shattering two more priceless panes.
“Stop it!” Alice said. “It’s senseless!”
“Let God stop me. If He cares.” She threw more and more pieces, and each one blacked out a piece of glass. “I could hit you easily enough, you know.”
“No,” Gavin said. He had dropped the backpack and snatched up the cutlass again. His hands were steady as icicles. “You couldn’t.”
“You’re probably right. Clockworker reflexes.” Toss. Smash. “Those reflexes and that strength come at a price, you know. The plague burning through your body’s resources.” Toss. Smash. “How does it feel, Ennock, knowing that the plague is devouring your brain from the inside out? How does it feel to know you won’t last the year with your lady love?” Toss, smash. “How does it feel to know that she’ll cry over your grave for a while and move on to someone else? She already left one man.”
Her words were light as pebbles, but they slammed Gavin with the force of cannonballs. His grip on the cutlass loosened, and he only just remembered to keep it ready. “You’re just… trying to make me feel bad.”
“Of course,” Phipps replied conversationally. Toss. Smash. “I want you to feel bad about what you’re doing, Gavin, because it is bad. You’ve done wrong. You are doing wrong.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Alice gasped from the safety of her mechanical barricade. The rush that had carried her through the fight was wearing off, and it was clear she was struggling to stay conscious.
Phipps flicked a rock in her direction, but Alice ducked into the mechanical, and it pinged off metal. Gavin’s anger started up again. Phipps interrupted it. “You know I’m right, Gavin. It’s bloody scary out here. Chaotic. Difficult. Imperfect. So many choices, so many paths, so many roads, and no resources to help with them. You always miss the mark.”
“Silence!” Feng called from the shadows. “Or I shoot.”
“If you were going to shoot, you would have,” Phipps countered. “You’re a coward, Feng. Otherwise you would have stood up to your father when he said he planned to send you home in disgrace. But you know that, don’t you, Feng? It’s why you’re slinking home like a castrated dog with his tail tucked between his legs. The longer you stay with these people, the worse it will become, you know. They don’t appreciate you. They’re bringing you home to your doom.”
“Quiet!” Alice was trying to shout, but the words came out in a harsh whisper that spun through the room and wrapped themselves around the Consolatrix. Feng didn’t respond, but Gavin thought he heard a choked sound from the shadows.
Toss, smash. Phipps turned back to Gavin. “You can build whatever you want at the Ward, Gavin. It’s calm there. Quiet. Patterned. Perfect. Every day, every room, every meal. No chaos, no confusion, no disorder. Come back to us. You won’t hang for treason, not if you’re a clockworker. We like you, want you, need you.”
Her words, her tone, her ideas were hypnotic as music. He remembered the underground rooms where the clockworkers lived and worked at Third Ward headquarters, their regular stonework walls, the patterns, the perfect schedule. When he was training as an agent, he’d found the required regularity difficult, even stifling, but now it sounded attractive, even alluring. The world would make sense there. Gavin realized he had sheathed the cutlass and taken a step toward Phipps.
“Gavin!” Alice croaked. “Don’t!”
“It’s beautiful down there now,” Phipps cooed. “We’ve already made repairs after what you did, after what you hurt, after what you destroyed. We made it pretty and patterned and perfect. Patterns within patterns, spirals within spirals. No worries, no troubles, no cares. No fear, no dread, no fright. Just the machines. Orderly, mannerly, heavenly machines.”
Her words wrapped him in warm velvet. It would be so fine to have a place where he didn’t have to think and plan all the time, where worries evaporated, where patterns ruled. What had he been thinking, running away from all that in the first place?
He was vaguely aware of someone, another woman, shouting something at him, and the shadowy figure of a man stepping out of the darkness, but Phipps, beautiful, kind Phipps, flipped a stone at the man, and he retreated. Phipps always hit her mark. The shouting woman’s words washed past him like tiny waves, easily ignored. He took another step.
“We can give you a cure, you know,” Phipps said. “I told you before we had more cures than the one Edwina created in the Doomsday Vault. We can cure clockworkers, too.”
This jolted Gavin. The perfection cracked, the velvet vanished, and he realized he was nearly face-to-face with Phipps. “Cure? There is no cure for clockworkers.”
Too late Phipps saw her mistake. Her single eye blinked rapidly. “Of course not, of course not. What I meant was that you can look for a cure. The Ward has resources, anything you need to find one, seek one, look for-”
“You’re very good,” Gavin said quietly. “Distract, pacify, capture, right? That’s the pattern. We do it with Dr. Clef all the time, except we use Click.”
Phipps narrowed her eye. “I’ll take you now, boy.”
“No, you won’t. Without Glenda and Simon, you’re outnumbered and outmatched, and if you touch me, Feng really will shoot. You wanted me to go with you on my own. I won’t, Susan. You’ll put my head in a noose.”
“I want justice, boy,” she hissed. “I want what’s right. You destroyed my empire and even now you hurt Simon and Glenda.”
“Leave, Susan,” Gavin told her. “You let me walk away from the Doomsday Vault, so I’ll let you do the same here. Next time I’ll probably change my mind.”
“Because you’ll be completely mad?”
“Go, Susan. You won’t get your justice today.”
For a long moment, she stared at him. Then she tossed one final bit of column at the stained glass, turned on her heel, and stalked out.
Heart tight with worry, Gavin ran over to Alice. She had slumped over inside the mechanical wreckage, looking pale and delicate as paper with the spider gauntlet weighing her down, but she blinked up at him when he leaned into the machinery. Simon sprawled beside her, unconscious but breathing. Thank God they were all right. The thought of Alice getting hurt made him cold inside and out, and Simon… well, even now he still thought of Simon as a friend.
“Can you walk, Alice?” Gavin said. “We shouldn’t stay.”
“I think I can manage for a bit,” she replied. “Those last few moments took a lot out of me.”
“You were magnificent,” he blurted. “Incredible!”
“Funny,” she said softly, “I was going to say the same, Mr. Ennock.”
“Your little friend will live,” Feng called from Glenda’s mechanical. “But she will have a dragon’s headache when she wakes up. Should we tie them up?”
“With what?” Gavin helped Alice out of the mechanical. “How’s the priest?”
But Berta had already arrived and was helping Monsignor Adames to his feet. He held his side and his face was pinched with pain.
“Two of your ribs are cracked and it is possible a third is broken,” Berta said, and her mechanized voice managed to sound concerned. “You must come downstairs so I can wrap them.”
Adames waved her off. “Not yet.” His breath came in gasps. “Alice and Gavin have to know. I saw… I saw… the world coming to an end in flood and plague.” He panted with the effort of speaking. “Dear God, the pain.”
“Your ribs,” Berta began.
“Not my pain,” he gasped. “The world’s. So many people will die if you fail, Alice. Millions upon millions.”
Alice struggled to more alertness. “Me?”
“You must not fail,” Adames said. “God has shown me. Oh, He has. I’m so sorry.”
Something in his tone made Gavin uneasy. “Sorry?”
“Your trials aren’t over, my children.” He was leaning heavily on Berta now. “Flood and plague will destroy us if you don’t cure the world.”
“That’s my intent,” Alice said, holding up her gauntleted hand.
Adames shook his head. “Not you. Gavin.”
“Me?” Gavin started. “But Alice has the spider, and her aunt made the fireflies.”
“That’s not what God showed me,” Adames repeated stubbornly. “You will cure the world, and Alice… Alice must let go.”
“Let go?” Alice asked. “Let go of what?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. It’s not… it’s not like looking in a picture. It’s a dream that I know is real. Oh, Alice. Your love destroyed an empire. Now it will destroy the world as well.”
Gavin’s mouth went dry. Alice froze. “No,” she whispered.
“You have to let him go, Alice,” Adames gasped out. “You have to release him or the world will die.”
A crowd was gathering outside the enormous church, summoned by the noise. They pointed and stared at the shattered windows, but seemed unsure whether they should go inside or not. Gavin carried Alice, who was too weak to stand, and tried to blend in. He’d been forced to leave the depowered backpack behind, but he kept the lash and his cutlass and had stuffed his fiddle into Alice’s pack. Feng had the firefly jar. Alice felt disturbingly light in Gavin’s arms as he worked his way toward the back of the crowd around the church, and the spider gauntlet lay inert in her lap, though its eyes glowed red when it brushed against Gavin’s chest.
Flood and plague will destroy us if you don’t cure the world. What the hell did that mean? Gavin had never been particularly religious, and minister and priest were really no different than musician, really. Their words spun people into other worlds just like music did. Priests has no more power than Gavin himself. Yet Monsignor Adames’s words chased after him.
Your love has destroyed an empire. Now it will destroy the world.
He looked down at her in the near darkness as they moved through the bewildered people with Feng close by him. Those last words chilled him. Neither Gavin nor Alice had mentioned the Doomsday Vault or how the cure would eventually destroy the British Empire to Adames, and Phipps had said something only after Glenda had knocked Adames unconscious. He couldn’t have known, but he did know. What did that mean for the rest of his words? The crowd pressed tighter around them, pointing and staring.
“We must bring her back to the circus,” Feng said in his ear.
“It’s all about destruction,” Gavin muttered, pulling Alice tighter to him. It was getting harder to move. “Never creation. Even when we create, we destroy.”
“Gavin,” Feng said.
He shook his head. “I know, I know. I’m not… fugueing. Just thinking out-”
“No.” Feng pointed. “Look.”
Feng, and most of the other people in the heavy crowd, were pointing at the stained glass windows at the back of the nave, the panes Phipps had flung casual stones at. The broken panes formed a pattern, one Gavin hadn’t noticed backward, inside the church. Outside, the broken glass formed a clear symbol: v2.
“The signature of the Third Ward,” Gavin said.
“What is the significance?” Feng asked. He was still clutching the firefly jar.
“It’s a message. Phipps isn’t giving up, and she has the power to touch even the church.”
“Gavin!” Phipps’s voice carried through the churchyard loud and clear. Alarm speared Gavin’s chest and he held Alice tight. “One last gift for you and your friends.”
At the last moment he spotted her on a shadowy window ledge above the crowd’s head. She had a pebble in her mechanical hand, and she threw. Fearful for Alice, Gavin spun, shielding her with his body. But instead of feeling the bite of stone on flesh, he only heard one more note of shattered glass. Feng stood next to him, the pieces of destroyed jar in his hands. Blood ran from a cut on his arm. A chill ran over Gavin.
“No!” he whispered.
The cloud of fireflies hovered in place for a moment, keeping the shape of the jar. Then they scattered, swarming over the crowd, streaking green starlight in a thousand different directions. The people scattered, yipping and slapping. Hundreds of dead fireflies dropped to the ground, crushed by hands and stomped by feet.
“Damn you!” Gavin cried at the church. But Phipps was already gone.