The Wonder Engine_Book Two of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  “Brenner?” she said. Her voice sounded small and uncertain in her own ears. “Are you…are you really…”

  He turned his head. There was something wrong with his eyes, and yet he moved toward her and his voice sounded more like Brenner’s. “Darlin’. Of course not.”

  Slate felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

  She couldn’t seem to move, but she could shake her head.

  “You’re not him.”

  “Slate, listen to me. Of course I am.”

  “Don’t listen,” warned Caliban. “Their voices are tricky. If I can get it bound, it’ll stop talking.”

  “Don’t listen to him, darlin’.” Brenner was still moving toward Slate, inch by inch. Slate watched this, feeling as if she was a very great distance away. “He’s half-mad. You heard what he did to those people at the temple and blamed it on demons.”

  “Brenner—”

  The assassin moved. He tossed his offhand knife at Caliban and lunged for Slate, clearly planning to grab her.

  But Caliban did not falter. He swung the sword around, dropped low, and came up inside Brenner’s guard.

  The pommel cracked across the side of Brenner’s head with a crunching sound. The assassin collapsed.

  “No!” Slate felt her paralysis break and she lunged forward. Demon or not, it was Brenner. “Caliban, stop!”

  “Get back,” said the paladin. He shoved in between them, pushing her away from danger. “It isn’t finished.”

  She wanted to scream that of course it was finished, Brenner was unconscious and possibly worse—and then, impossibly, the assassin began to rise.

  Brenner got up awkwardly, as if he did not how his joints were supposed to work, setting his weight all wrong. If Slate had only seen him from the back, she would have though he was a stranger. The lethal assassin’s grace was gone. Brenner swayed on his feet, looking less like a killer than like a dead man walking. Blood poured down the side of his head, but he was moving.

  “I told you,” said Caliban grimly. “They don’t go down that easy.”

  * * *

  Caliban lifted his sword.

  “That’s enough! Can’t you see he’s injured?”

  Slate grabbed for Caliban’s sword arm, trying to slow him down, to give Brenner the chance to get out of the way. The newly clumsy assassin shuffled sideways, away from the strike.

  Caliban turned his head and looked down at Slate. His face was expressionless. He might as well have been carved in marble.

  She expected him to say something. Probably to apologize. It’s Caliban, he’s always apologizing for something…

  He tossed the hilt of his sword from one hand to the other, picked her up by the scruff of the neck, and dropped her on the ground behind him as if she were a kitten.

  He did not apologize. He did not look angry or regretful or even contemptuous. She had been in his way so he had moved her, that was all.

  “What the hell?” she said, so astonished that she wasn’t even angry…at least not at first.

  Brenner slashed at him with the knife. He was fast but clumsy, his aim terrible. All Caliban had to do was lean back to avoid the blow.

  Caliban began to chant.

  Whatever words he was saying seemed to infuriate Brenner—or whatever was inside Brenner now. The assassin shrieked and swung his knives, so badly coordinated that Slate could have disarmed him. Caliban did not even bother with the sword, just grabbed the assassin’s wrist with his gauntleted hand and squeezed.

  A knife clattered to the catwalk. Caliban’s voice never faltered.

  Slate stood up. She had to do something. Brenner might be possessed, but this wasn’t a fight, this was a slaughter. The assassin was moving like he was dead drunk. No, worse. She’d seen Brenner dead drunk, and he could still put a knife in a man’s eye across the room.

  Brenner screamed. It didn’t sound like him. It reminded Slate of the rune somehow, a high-pitched sound like a bird.

  He began to rise into the air.

  “Holy shit,” said Slate, watching the assassin hanging several inches off the catwalk.

  Yep, he’s possessed all right. No question.

  She’d been so blithe about levitating cows. She’d made jokes about it. And here was Brenner actually doing it and if Slate hadn’t already seen a hundred horrors today, she’d have been violently ill. It was wrong.

  Caliban sighed. That was what struck Slate. He actually sighed, as if this was exasperating but not unexpected, and swung his sword up in front of him.

  The clocktaurs smashed a ladder loose from the catwalks and Slate stumbled against the railing.

  The Knight-Champion held the demonslaying blade in front of him, point up. A ritual gesture, not a defensive one. There was hardly any point in defending against Brenner now. His chanting began to sound strained, but whatever he was doing was working. The assassin began to twist in midair as if the words were arrows striking him.

  I should be doing something.

  Yeah, and what can you possibly do here? Your friend’s possessed and your lover’s going to kill him and you are so far out of your depth that the gods themselves couldn’t haul you back to shore.

  Brenner dropped back to the catwalk. Slate closed her eyes in unutterable relief.

  Caliban’s voice cracked on the last word and he fell silent.

  Brenner stood, swaying. He could not seem to take his eyes off Caliban. Slate was reminded of a bird hypnotized by a snake.

  Caliban used the voice then in a language that Slate understood. He said one word, and one word only.

  “Kneel.”

  Brenner—or Brenner’s demon—dropped to his knees. Slate felt her own legs twitch. If she had been standing, she might have gone to her knees as well. This was the paladin’s voice as she’d never heard it, with the full power of a god behind it, a voice that spoke to the nerves and the skin and the soul as much as the ears.

  It no longer said, Trust me.

  It said, Obey.

  Brenner knelt at his feet, neck bared, like a sacrifice. The demon no longer spoke. Caliban controlled the demon and the demon controlled Brenner’s body. Brenner himself was no longer part of the equation.

  How long has the demon been in there? How much of Brenner? No, there was a lot of Brenner, he’d made a joke right before they got wrapped up by the gnoles, he’d called her darlin’, surely no demon would ever call her that…

  “Caliban—” she said, pushing herself up, nearly choking on horror and the gagging scent of rosemary. “Caliban, can’t you—isn’t there any way—”

  He looked at her. His eyes were like chips of marble.

  “No,” said Knight-Champion Caliban, paladin of the Dreaming God, and raised his sword like the headsman’s axe.

  Brenner, or the demon, did not react.

  Slate did.

  Caliban was moving with the heavy weight of ritual while Slate moved with the speed of desperation. She shot across the catwalk and Caliban froze because there was suddenly a knife blade under his left ear.

  “If you kill Brenner,” said Slate thickly, “I’ll cut your throat.”

  He was silent for a moment. His sword was still raised, and if he felt any strain from holding it aloft, she couldn’t tell.

  “Very well,” he said finally. Slate nearly sagged with relief, and then tensed again as he continued. “I will command the demon to jump to me. Kill me immediately, and I will bind it to my death.”

  “No!” Slate wanted to scream and throw the knife across the room. “No killing! Can’t you exorcise the damn thing? Isn’t that what you do?”

  “With no temple, and not even a priest to back me?” Caliban finally lowered his sword. “You might recall how I fared last time I tried that!”

  “So do it right this time!”

  “If I fail, I’ll probably run mad and kill you! No.”

  Slate was ready to sob with frustration and her nose was running so badly that she gave up and wiped it on Caliban
’s tabard. He twitched as the blade dug in.

  “Sorry,” muttered Slate. “Nose.”

  “If you feel a sneeze coming on, I would appreciate it if you moved the knife.”

  “Look, you can’t kill Brenner!” She gritted her teeth. “Order it to jump to me.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Look, I’m not going to make friends with it! And I’m much easier to overpower than Brenner. You two can drag me out and exorcise me.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “That’s an order! As your liege!”

  “I respectfully refuse your order, my liege, and will accept any punishment you choose to mete out.”

  Slate called him names she’d learned growing up in a brothel. He listened politely, the edge of the greatsword still hovering over Brenner’s neck.

  “If you’re quite finished,” he said, when she ran out of breath, “it doesn’t work like that anyway. Yanking the demon out won’t do Brenner any favors, unless you want him to become a mindless husk.”

  Slate swore a bit more.

  There was a deep, booming crash. The entire building shook, not just the catwalks. Slate looked over and saw that one of the clocktaurs was determinedly hammering away on the wonder-engine and had managed to smash one of its forelegs. The machine listed to one side. The snarling sow-wolf muzzle was aimed up at an angle, teeth gleaming up at them.

  “Slate…” rasped Brenner.

  They both jumped. Slate forgot that she was supposed to be holding a knife on Caliban and went to her knees next to the assassin. “Brenner, you goddamn idiot, why?”

  “Ah, darlin’…” he croaked, as she caught his face in her hands. “You know…never could resist…a trick…”

  “Brenner!”

  “Figured…it’d keep…the rune…from killing me…outright. Heh. Was right…too…” He swallowed thickly.

  “We’ll find a way. We’ll make Caliban exorcise you.”

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly. The stubble on his cheeks rasped against Slate’s fingers. “Know how they do…that…darlin’?”

  “Uh…no?”

  “We drown them,” said Caliban. “And pull them out, as many times as it takes for the demon to decide to leave, or until the victim dies and their death can be used to bind it.”

  Slate, still holding Brenner, turned and stared at him. “What?!”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “No water here. Sword’s…quicker…anyway. Don’t have much…time…” He rolled his eyes up to look at Caliban, still standing over both of them like a carving of a vengeful god. “Hey, Caliban… How many demons can you fit…in one soul…?”

  Caliban frowned. “They’re territorial, but if they’re already bound…?”

  It struck Slate first. “Brenner, no!”

  Below the platform, the clocktaurs smashed into each other and the walls, filling the room with crashing echoes.

  “Think…you can fit…six…in here?”

  Slate stared at him, then looked down at the rampaging clocktaurs. Already they were leaving great holes in the masonry. It was far too easy to imagine them loose in the city, to remember what they had done to villages along the trade road.

  Perhaps the Dowager would have preferred it if they let the clocktaurs destroy Anuket City, but the Dowager’s hold was gone. Now it was simply an ugly tattoo.

  Caliban lowered his sword. In Brenner’s eyes, the demon raged, but it was bound and Brenner was, temporarily, the stronger.

  “I don’t know,” the Knight-Champion admitted. “Let’s find out.”

  Forty-Eight

  He had to walk down on the wonder-engine itself. Slate was extremely unhappy about that.

  “There’s no handholds except the collar,” she said. “And if that clocktaur gets it taken down, you’ll fall.”

  “Then I will bind that one first,” he said, as calm as ever, and slid down the ladder to the platform with the hopper.

  A guard skidded into the room from the door they had entered, face white.

  “Took you long enough,” said Slate acidly. She picked up Brenner’s crossbow and shot him in the head.

  “What was that?” called Caliban.

  “Nothing important.”

  “Not…bad…darlin’…”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll never get the damn thing cocked again, so we better hope he didn’t have friends.”

  “I c’d…cock it…for…no!” He swallowed as if it pained him. “Don’t…listen. Be…stupid to…give me…a weapon.”

  “Damn you, Brenner.”

  “Bit…late…”

  She heard chanting from below. She dragged herself to the rail and looked down.

  Caliban had crawled practically into the wonder-engine’s jaws and hooked his feet around the fangs. His sword was held upright and he was speaking to the clocktaur below him.

  The thing seemed to have gone berserk. It was smashing at the wonder-engine and itself with equal fury. Whatever Caliban was saying, the clocktaur hated it.

  Oh gods, it’s so close… She watched the giant limbs striking barely a foot below the engine’s head. If the wonder-engine settled any farther to the side, it was going to put Caliban in range of its blows.

  “How’s…he doin’….?”

  “Hell if I know. Not dead.”

  Brenner nodded. Sweat was pouring off him now. It had the stale scent of illness to it.

  Even if I got him out of here, that thing is chewing him up inside. Would he even live?

  Caliban’s chant stopped. Slate gripped the railing so tightly that her nails began to split.

  The clocktaur froze with its arms upraised.

  The paladin leaned far out and placed his hand on the thing’s blunt ivory head. Slate’s nerves screamed.

  It lowered its arms and turned away. She watched it walk over to one of the other clocktaurs and slam into it.

  “Caliban? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” His voice was clipped and raspy.

  The clocktaur he’d bound didn’t waste time hitting its fellow. It just put its chest against the other one and began to push. Slate watched it shove the second clocktaur toward the wonder-engine, leaving great furrows in the dirt floor.

  When it was within range, Caliban began chanting again.

  This one seemed to go faster, or perhaps it only seemed that way because it wasn’t attacking the wonder-engine and Caliban. The first clocktaur took a beating in the process, but Slate didn’t particularly care about it.

  Once bound, the two of them went together, like a pair of sheepdogs, and herded the next clocktaur toward the paladin.

  His voice was definitely suffering now. Slate winced to hear it.

  “What’s happening?” squeaked a voice from the doorway. Slate looked over and saw a young man wearing a stained apron. One of the people feeding the bodies into the hopper. Not a guard.

  Slate stood up and yelled, “They’ve gone berserk! They’re attacking everything! Run!”

  The youngster gaped at her, backed away, and ran.

  “It’s impossible to get good help these days,” she told Brenner.

  His eyes were closed. He gave a weak huff of laughter, but that was all.

  Slate knelt down and reached into the assassin’s shirt. He opened his eyes and managed a smile. “Getting…one last…feel?”

  “Getting you a cigarette, you ass.”

  “…Saint…among women…darlin’….”

  She found the little tin and lit the cigarette with shaking hands. She had to hold it to his lips. Brenner breathed out smoke and shuddered.

  “Damn,” she whispered. “Damn, damn, damn. Brenner, what would you have done?”

  “Made a deal,” he rasped, inhaling. The tobacco seemed to give him strength. “Him for you. She likes to bargain.”

  Boots clattered on the catwalk. Slate looked up, going for her knife. If the guards had come, all she could do was try to slow them up until Caliban finished.
<
br />   It was the paladin.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  When he spoke, she barely recognized his voice. He looked nearly as unhealthy as Brenner.

  “You sound like ten miles of hard road,” she said.

  He laughed hoarsely. He was trembling. She dropped the assassin’s cigarette and leaped to help prop him up.

  “Great god,” she said. “I can’t carry you both out of here.”

  “You won’t have to. It’s keeping them all separate that’s killing me. Once I give them the command to jump to Brenner, it’ll be much easier.”

  Slate winced. “What are you waiting for?”

  He pointed.

  Slate craned her neck, not wanting to drop him. The clocktaurs were hammering on the wonder-engine now, focusing on the underbelly and the mechanisms now.

  As she watched, a huge crack appeared in the ivory. The front half of the wonder-engine calved off and fell.

  The catwalk nearly upended itself. Brenner fell over on his side. Slate kept Caliban upright mostly by force of will. Her bruised leg screamed at her.

  Caliban lifted his head and shouted “Stop,” in a voice that made Slate’s throat ache in sympathy.

  The clocktaurs froze in place, their arms lifted high. Silence fell around them.

  “Get me to the rail,” he ordered. “It’ll be…easier…”

  Nothing about this was easy. She walked him to the edge of the catwalk. She had to pull his sword off his back and push it into his fingers.

  If he knew how much weight he’s putting on me, he’d be mortified. I just hope he stays conscious long enough to deal with these damn things before the guards realize that the banging has stopped and decide to become brave.

  The paladin’s eyes were closed. He croaked out his commands, one by one.

  The clocktaurs began to batter themselves apart.

  One by one, they collapsed into heaps of broken ivory. As each one fell, Caliban spoke a word, and then another, and then he took a deep breath and stood on his own.

  “That’s better,” he said, sounding far more like himself. “Dreaming God have mercy. They were very weak, but six at once…” He shook his head.

  “Where are they now?” asked Slate, although she already knew the answer.