The Wonder Engine_Book Two of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  “Bad for business,” he said. “But I tell you what’s good for business, hey?”

  Slate felt her stomach sink.

  “Showing people what happens when they cross me.”

  Well, I didn’t think he was going to let bygones be bygones…

  “I’m going to put you in the crow cage,” said Horsehead. He grinned at her, and his teeth were immaculate, made of ivory by the finest artificers. “I’m going to give you one night to see the entire Shadow Market staring at you.”

  He leaned forward then and put his hands on the back of her chair, on either side of her neck. Slate wanted to be the sort of person who spit in his face. She discovered, somewhat gloomily, that she was not.

  Let him rant. Let him rave. As long as I’m in the cage and not dead, there’s still a chance.

  “And then,” Boss Horsehead said, “I’m going to cut out your eyes.”

  * * *

  “We have to make sure she isn’t dead,” said Caliban. “If she’s in a crow cage, we’ll know right away.”

  “At the moment, I don’t trust you not to run berserk,” said Brenner.

  Caliban found the wretched cloak that he’d worn before and threw it over his armor. “I am going to the Grey Church with or without you.”

  Brenner swore under his breath. “You are going to make me old before my time, paladin.”

  “As Slate is fond of telling us, we’re probably not going to live that long.”

  “Speak for yourself,” muttered Brenner, and followed him out the door into the street.

  * * *

  Slate sat in the bottom of the crow cage with metal digging into her skin. The cages weren’t made for comfort. The rivets were heavy, the edges unfiled, and they tore threads out of her clothes when she moved.

  She was unbound. That was funny. Hilarious, even. Boss Horsehead wasn’t worried about her getting out. They’d left her most of her clothes, minus the veil—and after checking for knives, they’d left her the damnable boots.

  That was arguably a form of torture, but presumably Horsehead didn’t know that.

  Horsehead knew that she wasn’t going anywhere. If she somehow picked the lock and climbed up the chain holding the crow cage, she would hit a baffle, and then she would be clinging to the chain until her arms tired. Possibly someone would shoot at her, but possibly not. It might be more amusing to them if she fell.

  A prisoner had managed to get out of the cage once, which was why the baffles were in place. The man had opened the door with a concealed lockpick and climbed and clung and looked around.

  A roar had gone up from the floor then, and everyone had stopped and turned and watched.

  The prisoner nodded once, to himself, and then he took two steps and dove headfirst at the ground, like a swimmer entering deep water. He died instantly, which no doubt he had intended, rather than rot in the crow cage until thirst and hopelessness claimed him.

  Slate wondered if she would have that kind of courage.

  She knew that the denizens of the Shadow Market were staring at her. They had watched with interest as she had been hauled aloft. She could catch a few words up here, and her name had gone out through the crowd like ripples in water.

  Slate. Slate. Mistress Slate. Horsehead caught her. He said he would. Slate. It’s Slate. She’ll rot in that cage until the crows eat her. It’s Mistress Slate…

  And then it had stopped and everyone had gone back about their business. A five-minute wonder, that’s what her life was worth.

  She sat with her back to one of the bars and the rivets jabbing her, watching the crowd swirl beneath her.

  Every few hours someone else would come in and look up and she would hear her name again, spreading through the new crowd, like an echo.

  She was going to die. She had managed to have hope right up until they slammed the crow cage door, and then it had run out of her like water from a broken cup. Despair had rushed in instead—hello old friend, I’d forgotten you for a little while, so nice to see you again.

  In a way, she was grateful that she had spent so long waiting to die. It gave her a kind of bleak strength. She could sit and look down on the Market and she did not cry or scream or sob. She simply sat.

  Pride, Caliban said. Pride was his sin.

  Was this pride, then? Not wanting to break down in full view of people who remembered her name?

  She thought briefly of Caliban—not her friend, but Lord Caliban, Knight-Champion of the Dreaming God. They said that he had asked for nothing at his trial, that he had stood silently while the charges were read and the names recited. That he had asked neither for mercy or forgiveness, that he knew he deserved neither.

  Was this the same kind of pride he had at the end? The very last kind, the pride that where all you had left was that you did not wish a crowd to see you break?

  She should have asked him. Gods, she had wasted so much time when she could have asked the important questions—said the important things—kicked his damn stubborn-ass feet out from under him and showed him that the weak could take down the strong if they had the right bit of leverage.

  Something teased at her nostrils. It smelled almost like rosemary.

  Caliban?

  No, surely not. Probably just the memory. Or magic or danger or the end of the world or any of the useless things her gift tried to warn her about.

  Brenner wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring the paladin back here. Not now.

  Surely not.

  She leaned back in the crow-cage, very carefully, so as not to set it swinging.

  The rosemary struck her hard.

  Dammit, she thought, pinching the bridge of her nose, dammit, dammit. She was too proud to cry, but no amount of pride in the world could stop her allergies.

  Slate sneezed violently into her sleeve and wiped at her watering eyes.

  There was a figure in the crowd below her.

  She knew him instantly. The ridiculous cloak over him was hardly a disguise at all—but maybe she would have known him anywhere.

  Caliban looked up at her and she looked down at him.

  Brenner was right behind him, hand locked on the paladin’s shoulder.

  Good. Good. Keep him from doing anything stupid. You can’t get me out. You can’t. No one gets out and lives. You’ll just get killed, and I’ll still be rotting in this crow-cage, except that I will have had to watch you die.

  She didn’t even dare acknowledge him, in case Boss Horsehead’s men were watching for her associates.

  But she lifted two fingers to her lips, seemingly at random, and hoped like hell he took her meaning.

  Go. Get out of here. Figure out how to kill the Clockwork Boys before that damn tattoo eats you.

  I was probably in love with you, or would have been if any of us had any chance of living.

  He had one hand on the hilt of his sword. He dug with the other in his pocket, then held something up, against his chest, where no one else could see it over the crowd.

  It was a handkerchief.

  Of course.

  She rolled over and put her arm over her head, so that she would not have to see him walk away, and so that the Shadow Market did not see her cry.

  Thirty-Two

  As the hours ticked by, Slate’s fatalism began to desert her. The cold knot in her gut began to widen into a clawing panic.

  I’m going to cut out your eyes.

  She imagined it, all too vividly, Boss Horsehead’s look of concentration and the knife coming at her, the point the last thing she saw, the last thing she would ever see…

  After that, even if she lived, even if Horsehead dropped dead of apoplexy five minutes later, her old life was done.

  I’m a forger. I make my money by my eyes and my hands. What will I do if he takes my eyes?

  There were thieves who could make a living without their eyes. Slate wasn’t one of them.

  What will I have left? Earning my money on my back, while I try to find someone to take a blind appr
entice?

  If she could find a partner to work with, locks weren’t picked with your eyes, but with your fingertips and your ears. There was no great amount of money in it, but it was better than being a whore, particularly when she lacked the beauty or charm to be a courtesan. She could find a fence, maybe, who needed a cracksman…not here in Anuket City, obviously, but perhaps in the capital…

  Caliban would see me home, she thought bleakly, and I wouldn’t be able to see him looking at me with pity. It was the coldest sort of comfort. Slate had been given her life and she had always known that she’d have to give it back someday. But her livelihood—she’d earned that. Skill was the one thing that she’d had that no one could take away.

  Brenner, maybe? Brenner was adequate with locks but not terribly gifted. If she could get him stealing files, and hire a clerk to read them to her, possibly between the two of them they could manage something…

  Oh, it’s all stupid anyway. Here I am worrying how I’ll earn my bread, when I’m going to die of thirst in this cage in the next few days.

  She shifted her position again, trying to get blood back into her feet, and gazed across the Shadow Market as if it were the last thing she would see.

  * * *

  “For the love of god, will you stop pacing?” snapped Brenner.

  “I can pace or I can begin knocking down walls. Your choice.”

  “This won’t help our Slate.”

  “Then bring me something to kill that will help.”

  Grimehug planted himself in Caliban’s way. “Gnoles looking,” he said. “Gnoles working as fast as they can.”

  “I know.” Caliban turned on his heel and did another tight circuit of the room, feeling as if he were in a crow-cage himself.

  Brenner had had to half-drag him out of the Church. Every moment of thirty years of training was screaming to do something—climb to a higher point and get to the chain somehow, or kill the guards, or maybe just kill everyone.

  “Come on,” hissed Brenner in his ear. The assassin’s fingers dug into his upper arm. “We’ve got to leave. This isn’t helping anyone.”

  Caliban shook his head. Leave? How was he supposed to leave?

  “You’re very close to making a scene. They will notice. And they will take it out on her.”

  A shard of ice slid into his heart, as Brenner had no doubt intended.

  “We have to do something,” he said to Brenner, as much a plea as an order.

  “We will,” said the assassin, as if to a very small child. “I promise. Now come with me.”

  Caliban cast a last, anguished glance over his shoulder and followed.

  “What is our plan?” he asked, when they were safely away from the Shadow Market.

  “Horsehead has special plans for our Slate,” said Brenner. “He’ll take her down from the cage, and take her somewhere that he can cut out her eyes in peace.”

  Caliban’s fingers closed convulsively on the hilt of his sword.

  “Will. You. Calm. Down?” snarled the assassin. “I’m not supposed to be the reliable one here! I’m supposed to be the one who stabs people for money, and this lovesick bullshit of yours is seriously cramping my style!”

  Caliban turned his head away, not trusting himself to answer.

  “The plan is still good. The gnoles will know where they take her. Then we’ll go there. Wherever that is.”

  “What if we can’t get in?”

  “They won’t keep me out,” said Brenner simply.

  “You said we couldn’t storm a mansion.”

  “We can’t, and we won’t have to. You don’t shit where you eat. Horsehead will take her someplace that he can torture her. Places like that, nobody watches who goes in and out, and nobody pays attention to the screaming.” He jerked his chin to the demon-killing sword. “And that’s where you and I go to work.”

  Caliban nodded.

  He didn’t want to say it. The thought made his chest ache as if the demon were clawing through it. But he had been a Knight-Champion and he had done terrible things with his eyes open, so he said it anyway.

  “What if we don’t succeed?”

  Brenner met his eyes and squared his shoulders. “Then I have a crossbow. And if I’m still alive, I will go to the Grey Church and shoot her out of the crow cage when they put her back.”

  Learned Edmund inhaled sharply. “Surely that won’t be necessary!”

  Assassin and paladin both ignored him.

  “Thank you,” said Caliban, almost inaudibly.

  And then, because he could do nothing else, he began to pace.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes ago word had come from the gnoles that Slate had been taken down from the cage. Caliban was so keyed up that, when someone tapped at the window, he nearly put his fist through the wall.

  Brenner gave him a disgusted look and opened the window. Another gnole, so small and ragged that it looked to be all eyes and stripes, slipped inside.

  It spoke to Grimehug in a rapid gabble of gnolespeech. Grimehug answered, and nodded to the humans. The newcomer peered shyly up at them, wringing its paws together.

  “This gnole knows,” said Grimehug.

  Caliban went down to one knee in front of the newcomer. “Tell me where they took Slate.”

  The little gnole shot Grimehug a worried look. Even kneeling, the paladin loomed over the newcomer. Its nostrils worked, and its ears were flat against its head.

  What does it smell on me? Does it smell the demon or only human desperation?

  It doesn’t have to smell anything, it can probably see that I’m a wreck. Collect yourself. You were a Knight-Champion once, act like it!

  “Please, little one,” said Caliban, dredging up the paladin’s voice from somewhere. Low, that was it, low and calm and kind. “She is our friend. Please help us find her.”

  “This gnole is named Sweet Lily,” said Grimehug.

  “Of course it is,” muttered Brenner.

  “This gnole spoke to book-man and Crazy Slate before. This gnole remembered.”

  Caliban took a deep breath. “Sweet Lily—if you know…”

  The gnole’s ears came up, but her nostrils still twitched. “Warehouse,” she said softly. “Warehouse to the south. Lots of roads. Lots of guards. Gnoles still watching it, sent a gnole back.”

  “Can you show us where it is?” asked Caliban. Calm, calm…

  “Show you, yes.” Another look at Grimehug. “A gnole not going inside, though.”

  “You don’t have to go inside. Just show us where it is. Thank you.” The paladin rose. “We’ll leave immediately.”

  “You understand—” said Brenner, reaching out grabbing Caliban’s wrist. “If we do this, it’s over. No help from the Grey Church. We’re putting ourselves completely in the hands of Magnus and the gnoles.”

  “Get out of my way, Brenner.”

  “We’ll have a hard time even going out to get food without getting killed on the street.”

  Caliban’s hand closed on the hilt of his sword. “And if you don’t shut up and come with me, you’ll get killed in this room, right now.”

  “Whoa, now.” Brenner lifted his hands. “I’m not saying we leave our Slate. I just wanna make sure we’re clear on this.”

  “We’re clear. Stop talking.”

  “I want to come too,” said Learned Edmund from the doorway.

  Caliban stiffened. “Learned Edmund—this is no task for a scholar—”

  “You have two men and a handful of gnoles to storm some gutter citadel. If I come, maybe I can help.”

  Sweet Lily scooted over to Learned Edmund, apparently remembering him.

  “If you come, maybe the whole mission ends right here.” The knight felt a sudden jab as his tattoo bit down. “I can’t let you.”

  Learned Edmund ignored him, and went down on his knee in front of Sweet Lily. “Lily?”

  “Yeah, book man?”

  “These are all my notes on the Clockwork Boys. Will you remember th
at?”

  “Yeah!”

  “If anything happens, will you take them to Ashes Magnus, in the Artificer’s Quarter? Do you know where that is? They will reward you for it.”

  Lily worried at her lower lip with her fangs. “Some gnole knows. A gnole can do that.”

  “What good will that do?” Brenner demanded.

  Learned Edmund had already pulled out a sheet of parchment and a pen. “She will send them on to my Temple. They do not get involved in wars, but they will not deny the request of a dead brother. They’ll get my notes to the Dowager’s people, somehow or other.”

  It took less than five minutes to write the note. Caliban paced like a caged tiger, chafing at the delay. Their guide hid behind Grimehug, chattering in unhappy gnolespeech.

  “What’s she saying?” Caliban asked.

  “Saying you smell like someone’s death, big man. Hoping it’s not ours.”

  “It won’t be,” said Caliban. “Someone’s, though.”

  Thirty-Three

  Slate was taken down from the cage and reintroduced to her old friend, the sack.

  As little as she liked the crow cage, the grind of chains as her cage was lowered shattered what was left of her nerve. She was almost grateful for the sack on her head. At least she didn’t have to worry that people could see she was terrified.

  She knew on some level that people who kept cool in the face of death still ultimately ended up dead. She just would have liked to think of herself as cool and calm and sardonic to the end, instead of sobbing and wetting herself in terror.

  Oh well. My self-respect wasn’t worth much to begin with. I suppose it’ll be worth even less by the time they’re done with me.

  The guards carried her outside. She could tell by the sudden wash of cool, humid air and the sounds. Then into a carriage and then, a few minutes later, when the carriage had stopped, into a building.

  The room she found herself in, when they had tied her to yet another chair and removed the sack, was larger than the last one. It was also clean, but in the fashion of a room that can be easily sluiced down to get the bloodstains off the walls.