But then she understood that his face harboured only scorn, and he told her. “You? This is about you now? Moppet, this business gets me out of bloody Fountains Parish and into the Palace. Somehow, you got me a shot at a promotion, you worthless runt. Whatever the hell you’re doing for the Archmagister, a whole load of his friends are pricking up their wizardly ears right now, and look who gets a pat on the head for keeping his eyes open.”
And then the time for talk was done and he was hauling her back in the direction of the workshop, through all the buried ways beneath the palace, and when she demanded to know what had happened, he just yanked her arm harder, digging his fingers in to give her a bruise to remember him by.
* * *
She expected to be bundled into the workshop or its antechamber, that immaculate bedroom. Instead, she ended up somewhere else entirely, a small room set out as though two polite aristocrats were due to have tea there any moment, with a little lace-covered table and some chairs, a wall clock and a sideboard with some elegant porcelain figures that brought a stab of grief to Coppelia. Auntie Countless would have loved them.
The room was crowded beyond the dreams of decorum, though. The first her eyes lit on were a brace of magicians, one lord, one lady. Enough of a look passed between the man and Maulhands that Coppelia guessed this was the Catchpole’s new patron. The wheels of her mind, that had been spinning all the way there, abruptly began to get some purchase on her situation.
Behind the pair of them, standing as though manacled to the wall despite the absence of actual chains, were some familiar faces. Shabby, Doctor Losef and Kernel Jointmaker, looking respectively surly, fearful and furious, but all of them at the mercy of their captors.
“Oh, she knows them,” the mage-lord declared, smirking at Coppelia’s look. “Do you, Catchpole?”
“The froggy one’s an alchemist, pox doctor to half the Barrio. The big fellow was bully boy to the thief-lord who went up in smoke. The woman”—Maulhands gave Shabby a once-over—“no idea. Some thief.”
“Fucker,” Shabby spat at him, but Maulhands made a big show of not caring what gutter trash said to him.
“And no doubt in league with the little tinker brat here,” the mage-lord observed.
“You never said she was so young, Firmin,” his companion said, sounding bored and resentful. “I thought she’d be something more like this specimen.” She waved a hand near enough Shabby’s face to get a finger bitten, though the thief prudently did no such thing.
“A villain, ma’am,” Maulhands certified. “They grow them young in the Barrio, villainy from their very mother’s teat.”
Coppelia opened her mouth to point out the facts of her parents and their fate, and Lynx cuffed her almost absently, ramming her forwards until she almost broke a tooth against Jointmaker’s chest. Reeling backwards, she caught a glimpse of something: movement about the big man’s shoulders.
She made herself quiet, seeming very cowed even though her heart was racing. They didn’t come alone, the three thieves. The grander implications of that were still rolling out in her head like a carpet, even as the captive rogues were hauled off by the mage-lord, and she herself by the Catchpole, all of them off to see the Archmagister. She saw this Firmin frown slightly, perhaps sensing a weakening of the bonds he’d set. He must have thought nothing of it, though, or guessed that the thieves themselves had some charms or tricks to aid escape, certainly not that a certain animate lump of wax had been diligently weakening the wards.
And then it was the bedchamber and the workshop, with Firmin striding self-importantly ahead, already smiling because he was about to score some points off his leader, and Coppelia could see that was meat and drink to the magi.
The golem wasn’t sleeping, because sleep was something that living things did. It lay in the bed like a corpse at its own wake, though, sitting up smoothly as Firmin knocked and then entered.
“What is this?” its melodious voice demanded.
“Archmagister, there has been another incursion from the rabble,” Firmin told him. “Your favourite pet has some new friends. I’m rather concerned that the freedom you’ve given her has allowed her to coordinate her larcenous efforts with the outside world, or how would they even have got in? It was only fortunate that Lucrece and myself happened to be in their way, or who knows what they might have made off with.”
“Is that so?” There was nothing sharp or nasty in those musical tones, but Coppelia read them as such and knew she was right. The artificial man swung its metal legs over the side of the bed and stood smoothly, making the motions of shooting its cuffs even though the cuffs were rigid and one hand was still disassembled in the next room. Something it saw people doing, and did not understand. Without a word, it walked into the workshop, forcing the entire cavalcade of others to follow.
It. Him. Must remember to call it “him.” Her frame of reference slipped. It became the man Phenrir when it spoke with its lackeys or when she was hating it. When she worked on it, when she admitted its craftsmanship, it was a made thing, and somehow that was better.
She wasn’t sure why it had retreated to the workshop at first, but once they’d followed, Phenrir turned on his steel heel in the centre of the room, and she felt the strings of power there, all the enchanted tools and machines that had been used to build him, that were attuned to the made far more than they would ever be to a mere maker. This was his place, where he was strongest, and he struck a casual pose there, in the centre of his web. Firmin must have felt it, too, but he was not taking the matter as seriously as he should. He was there to score points, but Coppelia knew that Phenrir was hunting very different game, because she’d put him on its trail.
“The Convocation is concerned,” Firmin went on, utterly self-assured. “These rabble have dared our halls twice now.” He gestured at the three thieves, Lynx and Belly Keach between them to haul them around, and their wrists still sorcerously bound. Coppelia was fighting not to stare, because there was definite movement within Jointmaker’s sleeve. She had to keep her eyes anywhere but there, because Lucas Maulhands was at her own elbow, and he was watching her.
“And what have you done, our leader?” Firmin continued peevishly. “Stayed closeted up with this child-burglar, for reasons beyond our ken. You have it working for you, they say.” He gestured towards the part-assembled hand on the workbench. “We lose confidence in you, Shorj.”
“How fortunate we all were that you were on hand to apprehend them when they came again, Firmin,” Phenrir said pleasantly. “How convenient, in fact. I have only one question for you, in that case.”
Firmin’s eyes narrowed slightly; presumably, he’d anticipated more asking than answering, if questions were to be handed out. Coppelia saw the woman, Lucrece, take one discreet step away from him, and liked her a little more for that.
“Where are the little people?” asked the Archmagister in his voice of glass and water.
“I . . .” Firmin blinked. “What?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” the golem magus enquired, “that when they breached my sanctuary, they were guided by little men?”
“Little . . .” Firmin swallowed. “. . . men?” Coppelia was absolutely sure that his expression was blank puzzlement, but if you looked at it just so, and had a suspicious mind, it could be read as guilt.
“I know you and the others whisper behind my back, Firmin. Envy, that is what it is. I am Shorj Phenrir, the Archmagister of Loretz. And I always will be: eternal and ever-improving. This child has more skill in her fingers than any of you. She is more precious to me than you bloated bags of flesh with your intrigues and your sniggering. Don’t think I haven’t heard.” And the terrible thing was, the voice remained on that wonderfully even keel, nothing in it giving rein to the venom of the words it chose. “She will make me better. She will make me better. And I will go on and on, and that is what you cannot abide.”
“I . . .” Firmin blinked rapidly. “Little men?”
Lucrece was drawing away again, just one more soft step, and Coppelia was abruptly convinced she had a far better eye for magic than her companion.
“Your little men. Your metal magic men,” Phenrir’s golem pronounced perfectly. “You have been busy, Firmin, you and your fellows. You have been working to equal me. But you lack ambition. You started small. Still, small things are best suited to hidden deeds, I suppose. But did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”
“Don’t turn this back on me—” Firmin started, but the golem stamped, actually stamped like a petulant child, metal on stone ringing out like a bell-stroke.
“This is on you, Firmin. These rogues, their ingress which you manufactured, all to undermine me. I am the Archmagister. I will brook no rivals. Live secure in your comfort and your indolence, by all means, but if you turn your eyes to the sun, they shall be burned from your skull!” And it made a grand gesture like an actor reaching for the painted silver paper of a theatre’s fake sky, marred only by the lack of a hand within the sculpted cuff. And yet the socket there was not empty, not quite. Coppelia saw movement within, just for a moment. And so did Firmin, she was sure, for his eyes were huge in his head, like cracked eggs.
Because the last thing she needed right now was a free and frank exchange of information between them, she decided to drop the other shoe of her plan. “You’re not the Archmagister, though.”
Maulhands cuffed her almost absently and then found himself too close to the centre of attention because all eyes were on Coppelia. Phenrir’s face was tilted, immaculate and expressionless, as though he listened only to birdsong from a further room.
“Shorj Phenrir worked well here,” she whispered, and the golem nodded and said, “I did, I did,” as though her previous words simply didn’t exist in its memory.
Lucas shook her, but then the mage-woman, Lucrece, was there, driving him back with a look. “What is this?” she demanded quietly.
“He had the lore of Arcantel, probably. He made a body to outlast the ages so he could cheat time. He was old, so old he’d countenance that kind of trick to give Death the slip,” Coppelia said. She was almost whispering it, horrified at her own daring, incredulous that she hadn’t been blasted to dust or bludgeoned like Auntie. “And he ran magic through that body, to Arcantel’s design, I reckon. And then the body sat up, and he must have sat down and died, and it knew, somehow, what he’d been about. Maybe he’d told it what was in store for it when he made it. Maybe he gave it ears too soon. Maybe it even killed him when he gave it life, to prevent him playing cuckoo with its mind. But what sat up in this room was not Phenrir. It was a made thing, a thing of power but no more the Archmagister than a magic sword or dancing boots.”
She heard a pin drop, in the silence that followed, or some other small metal part.
“What?” Firmin asked, and he hadn’t taken it in, not really, because to do so would be to admit he’d been fooled all this time. Lucrece grasped it, though. Coppelia heard her whisper, “A made thing?” but most likely, she wasn’t about to run out and trumpet the news all over the Siderea.
Most of all, she expected a curt denial from the golem, a wave of its absent hand to have her hauled off to a cell she’d never leave again, save for her own execution. She wasn’t even sure it was true, just that the course of the magic within its body was simply that of the homunculi writ large, and where, then, was there room to encapsulate something as grand as the mind and being of a mage-lord? And of course, the hand she had made, which moved so inhumanly, yet Phenrir had not cared. It was her only shot, though, to sow more dissent between Phenrir and his underlings. But the false Archmagister just stood there, still as the statue it resembled, and when its voice came, it was halting.
“Is that how it happened?” it asked almost plaintively, and she had a belated rush of sympathy for it. It had killed Doublet and maimed Rosso, after all. It had cast itself as the grand villain, exploiter-in-chief of all Loretz. She’d never stopped to consider if it had been given a choice then, at the start, or how else it might have turned out in happier circumstances. She, of all people, should have thought about it.
“Archmagister . . . ?” Firmin asked, and the seeds were planted at last. His slack-jawed look had become something sharper and more suspicious. “Do you have anything to say?”
“I . . .” As though their positions were reversed, and one or the other of them had to be mumbling incomprehension at any given time.
Which was when the homunculi magicians within Jointmaker’s sleeves finished breaking the magic that clamped his wrists together. Everyone else’s attention was fixed on the golem, but Coppelia saw the moment, just a shift of the man’s hands. She tensed, because surely Kernel would just explode into violence and focus everyone’s ire on him and, by extension, his confederates including herself. He was an old rogue, though, as rogues went. His one move was to extend an elbow leftwards to dig into Shabby’s ribs, an exaggerated mummery of a shared joke, save that Coppelia saw the rat-like flicker of movement as little bodies abandoned one ship for another.
“Oh, this is rare,” Firmin said, and all doubt was gone from him. “Not the Archmagister but just some leftover thing, is it?” In his broad smile Coppelia could read a sunny future where he wore the fine robes and the big hat, or whatever made a mere mage-lord steeped in wealth and privilege into an Archmagister. “Well, we shall doubtless learn much from you in the laboratories. Catchpole, clap hands on the thing.”
“Ah . . .” Lucas Maulhands had more - than - my - pay - grade written all over him. The golem was very still, though, head canted slightly downwards as though the revelation had robbed it of motion and speech. One hand still pincering Coppelia’s arm, the Catchpole inched cautiously forward.
It seemed that insubordinate ambition grew like a mushroom at all strata of the Siderea, though. Seeing his chief hesitate, Lynx Soriffo took one long stride and had the golem’s metal sleeve under his fingers, already grinning at Firmin for approval.
“No!” The golem’s bell-voice sounded cracked. When it ripped its arm from the Broadcap’s grip, Coppelia saw a handful of tiny pieces—fastenings, washers—glint as they parted company from its joints. They were lost in the crack of Lynx’s neck breaking as the golem backhanded him. All hell broke loose.
Firmin went for his magic immediately, so swift that Coppelia realised the man’s superficiality had led her to seriously underestimate the threat he posed. His instinct was to shield himself first, attack later, though, dragging power from his rings and amulets to throw up a shimmering barrier between him and the golem rather than finishing the matter there and then.
“You can none of you live,” decided the thing that wasn’t Shorj Phenrir, and it sent a blast of power at Firmin just as it had half-incinerated Doublet. The human mage-lord was pushed backwards, soles leaving three-foot scuffs across the workshop floor, but his wall held, and his face twisted: not with fear but with outrage, that this imposter had inserted itself into the Convocation’s select company. It was a thing, just as all lesser beings were things to the mage-lords. It had no right.
Shabby chose that moment to demonstrate that her hands were free by elbowing Belly Keach in the face, then lunging across Jointmaker to give Doctor Losef a shove. The baffled alchemist ended up on his back like a beetle, looking aggrieved until he realised he’d just inherited her cargo of homunculi. Shabby herself was trying to put space or workbenches between her fragile flesh and the magic that Firmin and the golem were throwing at each other.
Which left Lucas Maulhands. For a moment, he was frozen; she thought he’d go for the golem, or maybe just go. Instead, his vicelike grip on her arm doubled its pressure and he dragged his cudgel from his belt.
“You” was all he said. Meaning, in that language of oppressor and oppressed that they’d shared ever since she bit his hand and fled the orphanage, that it was all her fault, all of it. And, like so many of his suspicions about her, it was true.
“Yes,” she agreed, and tried to k
nee him in the maritals, on the basis that any damage there was saving the women of Loretz future disappointment. Maulhands was an old hand at street fighting, though, taking the blow on the outside of his thigh and then just shaking her, a whipcrack of motion passing from his arm through her entire body, so that she bit her tongue and lost track of what she was about for a moment, long enough for him to slam her down onto a bench, spilling gold shavings and callipers and a fountain of brass screws onto the floor. The cudgel came up with the clear aim of having her brains join them.
She saw a flicker of motion reflected in the club’s polished head. Maulhands must have had more of an eye out, because he was already turning to catch Jointmaker’s charge and throw the man past him. Kernel was slightly on fire, and Coppelia realised the enforcer had just lunged past the magi, too heedless or ignorant to care about the power there. He hooked the Catchpole’s collar as his own balance was swiped from him, so that the pair of them ended up on the ground, fighting furiously to get on top. Maulhands gave Kernel a glancing blow across the temple with his club, but the enforcer took it in order to secure the hilt of Lucas’s knife. The Catchpole got one hand on his wrist, preventing him from drawing it out, but Jointmaker had done a similar service with Maulhand’s cudgel arm, leaving the pair of them grunting and straining, rolling back and forth and trying to get a knee or a forehead somewhere useful to break the stalemate.
Which left Coppelia.
She looked around frantically. Shabby was on the far side of the room, in a corner with Belly Keach on one side and far too much magic on the other to get out of the man’s reach. Behind the big Broadcap, though, Doctor Losef was on his feet and fumbling for his bandolier. That little skirmish was hopefully going to resolve itself, therefore, but it didn’t help Jointmaker, and Maulhands was living up to his name now. The Catchpole was steadily bending his enemy back against the floor, getting a knee up to pin Kernel’s chest down.
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