This Monstrous Thing

by Mackenzi Lee

  Then, from the other side of the square, I heard shouting. It might have been just a shopper with too much to drink, but then another voice joined, and another, and then a scream rose above the chatter of the market and the bells. I raised my face from my mug and stared in the direction of the noise. It was getting louder. The choir stopped with a squawk. All around me, people were turning to look.

  An engine snarled from the street, and I turned to see two policemen on steamcycles plowing down the square. People had to leap into the snowbanks between the stalls to avoid being flattened. My first thought was of the trouble Morand had mentioned the day before, and a tight coil twisted in my chest. I abandoned my glühwein and jogged in the same direction the policemen had gone.

  A crowd had gathered at the end of one of the rows. People were jeering and shouting, and through the throng I picked out two more navy-blue-uniformed officers on foot. They had a man on the ground, his face pushed into the snow as they handcuffed him. The policemen on steamcycles were trying to hold back the crush of people, who seemed intent on getting to the man. I joined the edge of the crowd, trying to see over people’s heads and avoid being knocked in the face. Something landed near my feet, and I looked down.

  It was a windup mouse, gears in its belly exposed, head attached by a single spring.

  Panic filled me suddenly, hotter than the glühwein. I shoved through the crowd, ignoring the shouts flung in my direction, until I could see into the center, where the two policemen were dragging my father to his feet. His nose was bleeding down the front of his coat, and patches of mud and snow clung to his hair. The lenses of his spectacles were shattered, the frames dangling off one ear. He didn’t fight as the police forced the crowd apart and dragged him toward the wagon waiting at the edge of the square, but when he looked across the mob, he saw me. His eyes widened and he shook his head, sending his glasses skittering into the snow. Someone spit on him, and it landed, thick and yellow, just above his eye.

  I turned and ran.

  We had a plan for this. We always had a plan for this. In every city we had ever lived in, we had mapped our escape routes, agreed where to pick up new identification papers, where to find money for a carriage ticket and who to ask if there wasn’t any. I should go north, across the border into France, and we’d meet up in Ornex at Morand’s.

  But it had never been like this before, never me alone without Mum or Father or even Oliver. We had never been found out—we always fled together before they could catch up with us. And though I knew in my bones what I was meant to do, I found myself doing something else entirely and heading to the one place I knew I shouldn’t: the flat.

  I took the side streets through the financial district and into Vieille Ville at a run, leaping over a pile of blacksmith’s coal and skidding on bloody snow behind the butcher’s. My lungs were burning by the time I reached our shop, but I still sprinted up the stairs and burst into the flat.

  The room had been ransacked. Everything was turned over—the bureau, our trunks, drawers pulled from their places and the contents dumped on the floor. Most of the furniture had been smashed, mattresses cut open, and straw and feathers were strewn amid the wreckage like a fine snow. I took a few steps in, and a shard of my mother’s teacup crunched under my boot. “Mum?” I called softly, though it was clear she wasn’t there.

  I did a quick lap around the flat, checking for any of the provisions we kept ready in case we had to bolt. The roll of bills in a kettle above the fire was gone, along with a gold medallion Father had been given in the Scottish navy. Whoever had been here, they had taken anything that would have made running easier. I checked what was left of my things and found that my papers were missing as well. It had been bleeding stupid not taking them with me that morning, but I hadn’t thought I’d need them at the market. If the police had my name and description, it would be hard to get out of the city and into France undetected.

  I slipped down the stairs and let myself into the shop, hoping for some money left in the cash box, but everything was smashed up and torn apart, same as upstairs. They had found the door to the workshop, forced it open and left it that way, like a gaping mouth stretched wide behind the counter. It bothered me almost more than the mess to see it like that, our secret so exposed, and I stood for a moment with one hand on the frame, looking down the passage.

  Then, from deep in the darkness, I heard something move.

  Hope flexed inside me, and I took a cautious step forward. “Mum?” I called. The shuffling movement stopped, followed by a cold silence. “Mum?” I called again, a little louder.

  There was the scratch of a match, then a small flame appeared, illuminating the pale face I had seen on the omnibus the day before. Inspector Jiroux. The shadows intensified the contours of his face as our eyes met through the darkness. “Finch!” he bellowed.

  I didn’t know if it was me he was after or if he thought I was Father, but I didn’t hang around to find out. I slammed the workshop door in his face. All the mechanisms that kept it from being opened from the inside had been gutted, but it would at least slow him down.

  I scrambled out from behind the counter, stumbling on the ruins of windup toys that decorated the floor like spiked carpet, and burst out of the shop. The night air was sharp against my burning face as I turned down the first alley I came to and plunged deeper into the old town, not caring where I ran so long as I got away. The city here was a labyrinth, steep, decrepit passages without clockwork carriages or industrial torches. The moon was blotted out by icy laundry strung between windows, and most of the snow had been trampled into slick gray mud.

  I sprinted past a rowdy pub where Oliver had once been arrested for brawling. Some men in the doorway shouted drunken nonsense at me, and one threw a glass of ale. I felt the spray on the back of my neck, but I didn’t stop. As I reached the end of the street, I heard them shout again, this time with screechy catcalls. Was Jiroux still following me? I sped up, though my legs ached.

  Two streets farther, I turned down a dead end. I whipped around to go back the way I had come, but a silhouetted figure appeared at the mouth of the alley, blocking my path. I snatched up the nearest weapon I could find—a cheap coal shovel with all the weight of a sheet of paper—and held it before me like a sword, bracing for a fight I knew I’d lose.

  But it wasn’t a policeman. It was a girl.

  A young woman, I realized as she stepped into a chasm of moonlight, though it was only her long, plaited hair that made her look it. She was whip thin, her body a shapeless board like a boy’s, and she was dressed in rough trousers and a heavy gray workman’s coat, unbuttoned and lashed at the waist as though she had thrown on her father’s coat from beside the door as she rushed out.

  I lowered the shovel. Perhaps she hadn’t been chasing me at all. It seemed more likely she had come out of one of the houses to see what the commotion was.

  Then she called, “Alasdair Finch.”

  The shovel shot back up. “What do you want?” I said, and in my panic, the words fell out in English. She took another step toward me, and I shouted, “Stay back!” and whipped the shovel around a few times for good measure.

  She raised her hands, palms forward. “Consider me threatened.” She spoke English too, but with swallowed Parisian vowels that didn’t match her tattered clothes.

  “Are you with the police?” Even as I asked it, the question felt stupid. I could tell she wasn’t just by looking at her.

  She took another step forward, icy snow crunching under her boots. “I’ve come from Geisler.”

  I almost dropped the shovel. “Dr. Geisler? Is he here?”

  “No, but he asked me to find you. I’m to take you to Ingolstadt to see him. You are Alasdair, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” My panic retreated just long enough to allow me a moment of reckless hope. Geisler was a name I could trust, and I needed to trust someone if I was on my own. I didn’t lower the shovel, but I took a step toward her. “How do we get there?”
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br />   “I have a wagon waiting outside the city.”

  “I won’t get through the checkpoints.”

  “We can go along the river. I know a way.” A shout peaked from the men at the pub down the road, and the girl glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “If we go, we go now.”

  Father was in prison. Mum was gone. But Geisler could help us, and I wouldn’t have to run alone.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  “Hurry, then.” The girl turned back to the street, and I abandoned my shovel and followed her. We’d only gone a few steps when she stopped so suddenly that I nearly smashed into her. A light was bobbing toward us from the end of the lane, moving fast and accompanied by heavy footfalls.

  “Damn.” She seized me by the collar and dragged me after her back down the alley. Just before the dead end, she turned, wrenched open a door to one of the decrepit stone houses, and plunged us both inside.

  It wasn’t a house, I realized as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, but an abandoned shop with squatters and factory workers huddled together on the floor and against the walls. Glass display cases had been smashed out and small children slept inside them, curled around each other for warmth. A mist seemed to rise from the ground as everyone breathed, slow and steady in sleep. Somewhere amid the sleepers, I could hear clockwork ticking.

  The girl was picking her way across the floor toward a small window that opened onto the opposite alley. I followed, trying not to step on too many people as I went. Someone moaned, and someone else swore at me, but I reached her side as she jimmied open the window and climbed out. She was half my size and fit easily, but it was tight for me. I had one leg through when behind me, the door flew open with a bang. “Wake up! Police!” a voice shouted from the doorway.

  I crammed myself the rest of the way, in spite of the imprint the frame left in my side, and lurched onto the cobblestones. “Police,” I gasped as I steadied myself against the wall.

  “We’re close,” she replied, and I followed her down the street at a run.

  We weren’t as close as I hoped. She led me all the way out of Vieille Ville and back into the financial district, until we finally stopped at a bridge, the Pont du la Machine. A few rough-looking shipmen were there, smoking with their backs against the industrial torches, but none of them looked twice at us as the girl led me to the edge of the bridge. A stone stairway ran down to the riverbank trail people used in the summer, but the Rhone had flooded to its winter height and the path was submerged. The stairs dropped into the waves.

  She stopped on the step above the waterline and turned back to me. “How well do you swim?” she called over the rushing water.

  I laughed, partly from astonishment but mostly refusal. I’d throw myself at the police’s mercy before the Rhone’s. “Are you mad? There’s not a chance in bleeding hell I’m—”

  “God’s wounds, only joking.” She smirked. I glowered. “Come on, follow me.”

  She jumped nimbly from the steps onto a rim of chain that the winter boats used for mooring. It hung in drapes between fat iron pegs, with the lowest links just above the waterline so that it formed a slick track against the stone retaining wall. I followed her, less nimbly. My heavy work boots made me clumsy, and I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the back of her head and not look down at the rusted chain and the Rhone beneath. I could feel the spray on my face.

  We followed the river until the chain began to go taut. I looked up from my feet just in time to see the girl hoist herself up over the edge and disappear from view. I followed, less gracefully. My limbs had gone shaky during our balancing act, and it took three tries before I managed to haul myself back onto solid ground. When I finally got sorted, I realized we were near the base of the foothills, surrounded by the bare vineyards that climbed up from the lakeshore. Behind us, I could see the city walls, Geneva’s slate rooftops peeking out above it. We were out.

  The girl only gave me a moment to catch my breath before she started off again, down along a footpath cutting through the vineyard, and I followed, my feet sliding on the frozen mud.

  There were no industrial torches outside the city, and the only light came from the moon and a smattering of starlight spread like salt across the sky. I looked out, down the hill and across the smooth top of the lake, then up to the pinpricks of firelight that dotted the hillside from cottage windows. I thought of Château de Sang, black windows somewhere against the black sky, and I stopped.

  Oliver.

  It was like waking from a dream. I had been so panicked about getting out of the city I hadn’t even thought about what I was leaving behind, and it all caught up with me as suddenly as if someone had grabbed me by the throat. “I can’t go with you,” I said, louder than I meant to.

  The girl stopped too and turned. “What?”

  “I can’t leave,” I repeated, but the words rang empty. This city had caged me for so long, and here I was on its edge, past the checkpoints and close to free, but I couldn’t leave Oliver alone. His death was my fault, and now his life was too.

  The girl crossed her arms over her chest. “I haven’t got time for this. We need to go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What does that mean, you can’t?”

  “I just can’t!” I said again. “There’s someone who needs me here. So thank you for helping me get out but I can’t . . . I can’t go to Geisler.” I turned and started in the opposite direction, back into the foothills and toward Château de Sang, but her hand clamped down on my elbow and jerked me back around to face her. She was stronger than she looked.

  “Where are you planning on going?” she demanded.

  “I’ve got somewhere.”

  “Well, you can’t go back to Geneva, not with the whole police force looking for you. Your only choice is to run, and I can help you. Geisler can help you.” I tried to pull my sleeve out of her grip, but she clung on tighter. “I’ll knock you over the head if I have to but I can’t go back to Ingolstadt without you.”

  I yanked my arm free and took a few steps back. She looked too scrappy to throw a good punch, but I didn’t think that would stop her from trying. For a moment we glared at each other, the silence interrupted by the bare grapevines clattering against their trellises as the wind rocked them.

  I took a deep breath. I could to go to Ornex. I should go to Ornex—that had always been the plan, and if Mum had gotten out, she would be there. Morand himself had said to come if I needed somewhere safe. But there would be nowhere to hide Oliver there. I hadn’t left him on his own for more than a few days since his resurrection. If I didn’t show up, perhaps he’d figure we’d been run out of the city, though knowing Oliver and his flair for the dramatic, he’d probably assume I had abandoned him by choice.

  But if I stayed with Oliver, there wasn’t a thing I could do for him. I had no money to go on the run, nowhere to go if we did. We’d sit together in that castle and starve slowly, if we didn’t murder each other first.

  And it was Geisler calling me. Geisler in Ingolstadt. This wasn’t the way I had wanted it to happen, but here it was being handed to me. Wanting it felt sharp and glittering, like broken glass under my skin, but, bleeding hell, did I want it. I wanted to go to Ingolstadt. And I needed someone who could help me and my family better than I could help myself. Geisler could help me. That’s why I would go, I told myself. To help my parents. And Oliver.

  “Fine,” I said, and fought the urge to look backward again. “Let’s go.”

  At the end of the path, a stout wagon was waiting along the lakeshore; it was the old-fashioned sort with a horse hitched to the front instead of a steam pipe. “This is us,” the girl called to me. As we drew level with it, I glanced over the lip and saw that the back was lined with coffins. It was an undertaker’s wagon.

  “Are we riding to Ingolstadt in coffins?” I asked as I hoisted myself up.

  “Not all the way,” she replied. “Just at the checkpoints.”

  I hoped this
was more black humor, like her joke about swimming the Rhone, as I sank down into the narrow gap between coffins. The girl climbed up onto the driver’s seat and tapped the driver on the top of his bald head. He started. “Are you feeling quite awake, Monsieur Depace?” she asked him in French.

  “Awake enough, Mademoiselle Le Brey,” he replied. His voice wheezed like bellows. “I had a good nap while I waited for you.”

  “Well then, we’re ready.”

  “You’ve got him?” Depace twisted backward in his seat for a look at me. His face was so wrinkled that it seemed to be collapsing in on itself. “That?” he said. “That’s him? He’s very small. I thought he would be older.”

  I felt a flush start in my neck, and it deepened when the girl, a smirk playing along her lips, said, “Well, I thought he would be better looking, so we’re both disappointed.”

  “As long as you’re certain he’s the right one.”

  “Fairly certain.”

  “Well then, we’re off.” Depace flicked his reins and the wagon shuddered forward.

  The girl slid down from the seat and settled across from me with her knees drawn up to her chest. I could feel her gaze through the darkness. “You should sleep,” she said. “I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.”

  “I’m not going to sleep,” I said, and my voice came out hoarse. Everything that had happened was starting to catch up with me, and it left me sounding haunted. “I don’t think I could if I tried.”

  “Certainly not with that defeatist attitude.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Clémence Le Brey.” The full flourish of her Parisian accent emerged, and I realized we were still speaking in English.

  “French is fine,” I said. “Je parle français.”

  “That’s good,” she replied, switching casually, “because I don’t care for English.”