The Wonder Engine_Book Two of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  “Still a lower bodycount than Brenner,” she said, swallowing. Was she making a joke? It didn’t sound like a joke to her. Probably not to him either.

  “I tried my best,” he said. “If I could have gone into the water myself, instead of the victims, I would have.” His expression was set, gazing straight ahead. Perhaps only Slate would have noticed that his jaw was tightly clenched.

  She didn’t doubt him. It was exactly the sort of thing that he would say, and do, and be.

  “I thought you knew,” he said finally. “It is not a thing that the temple conceals, although they do not go out of their way to advertise it, either.”

  “I can see why not!”

  They both stared into their tea. Caliban got up and went to the fire, jabbing it with the poker.

  “He chose to work with the demon willingly,” said Caliban at last.

  Slate rounded on him, baring her teeth. “Shut up!”

  “Listen to me. I know you don’t want to hear it—”

  “Stop using that voice!” snarled Slate. “Stop it! I don’t want to talk to—to a paladin right now, do you hear me? Stop sounding like a goddamn knight and sound like somebody who just killed their friend!”

  He blinked at her.

  Slate thought, for a minute, that she’d asked something impossible. Perhaps she had.

  But then his shoulders sagged and he sat down next to her on the bench. Not touching. Touch was too dangerously charged now. Instead he stared at the ground between his feet.

  When he spoke again, he sounded like a man who was tired and strained almost to the breaking point.

  “It’s the only way they can hide what they are,” he said, dragging his hand over his face. “They have to let the person run the body. Otherwise it’s obvious. We’d all have known, if he was fighting the demon. He had to have agreed to it.”

  Slate swallowed. “He could have killed either of us. A bunch of times. And Learned Edmund, too.”

  “I think the demon wanted the clocktaurs destroyed,” said Caliban. “It was very angry about their presence in its territory. Well, there were demons bound inside them, that would explain it. And possibly it was afraid that the tattoo would eat Brenner’s body if he went too far afield. It knew that it could not jump here, without being sucked into the wonder-engine. So it waited until it had all that it wanted, and then it struck.”

  Slate knew that he was right. She did not know if she could forgive him for it.

  “When you said ‘Kneel,’ I almost did,” she said abruptly. “How much can you actually do?”

  He shook his head. “Not that. Unless you’re a demon, which I doubt. It’s reflex. Like ducking when someone yells, ‘Duck!’”

  “I don’t reflexively kneel.”

  He said nothing.

  “If I had ordered you to let him go—” she said, in a high voice.

  “Does it matter what I say now?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “No,” he said. He had slipped back into the voice again, the one that couldn’t lie. The temple paladin’s voice. “I will not let a demon live. Not even for you.”

  The next question was in her throat—what if it had been me the demon took?—and she swallowed it down.

  It was not Brenner she was thinking of. It was the moment when she had grabbed his arm and Caliban had tossed her aside, neither cruel nor kind, simply an obstacle to be moved out of the way so that he could reach his target.

  She got up and walked away and left him sitting on the bench alone, and he did not try to follow her.

  Fifty-One

  Caliban sat on the bench and wondered if Slate would ever forgive him. It seemed unlikely.

  “Stupid,” said Grimehug. Caliban had forgotten that the gnole was there. Well. It only lacked public humiliation to make things complete. “Being stupid, big man.” He grimaced, showing all his fangs. “One of mine, a gnole would wonder if you had worms.”

  “I am fairly certain I don’t have worms,” said Caliban. He considered this. “On the other hand, I’ve been wrong about everything else lately, so I’m probably wrong about this, too.”

  “Should go after her, big man.”

  “Sometimes women want to be left alone.”

  “Yeah. Not this time, probably. Humans can’t smell.” He shook his head.

  Caliban sighed. It was entirely possible that Grimehug was right, but on the other hand, humans didn’t understand other humans most of the time, so how could a gnole be expected to?

  She pitched my belongings out of her room. I don’t think she’s looking for me to come back.

  Even under the best of circumstances, it was rare for a dalliance in the temple to last past one’s lover witnessing an exorcism. It was not a gentle act.

  And it is one thing to know that the one in your bed is fundamentally a machine for killing demons, and another to watch them do that for which they were made.

  Some Knight-Champions limited their liaisons to others of the order, for just such a reason. Caliban could understand why.

  Awfully late for that now, isn’t it? That’s the sort of thought you should have had before you fell in love with a woman and then had to gut her former lover in front of her eyes.

  He put his face in his hands and wondered what the hell to do now.

  “Stupid. Rather twist your own whiskers than bite the back of her neck.”

  “I doubt she’d appreciate that right now,” said Caliban, bleakly amused.

  “Stupid,” said Grimehug, almost affectionately. He patted Caliban’s arm. “Stupid’s a good mate for crazy, though, maybe.”

  “I think stupid blew its chance there,” said Caliban.

  * * *

  Slate slept and woke and wept and slept again. She did not know how many hours it took. Someone left a pitcher of water by her bed, and she chose to believe that it was one of the gnoles.

  “Mistress Slate!” said Learned Edmund, when she finally came back to the kitchen. “I am so glad—I must tell someone—”

  She looked at him blearily. Her skull pounded, probably from hunger. She poured out some tea into a mug and tore off a chunk of bread from the loaf.

  Let’s see if I can get this down and if I feel any better afterward…

  “Mistress Slate?”

  Even half dead and sick with grief, the dedicate’s hopefully expression cut through her haze. Slate raised her eyebrows. “Mmm?”

  “I think—I believe—I’ve found the cause of werkblight! And it was your doing!”

  Slate frowned at him. The words all made sense, but not in the order he was using them. “What? Say that again, slowly.”

  He said it again, slowly.

  “You know what causes werkblight?”

  “Yes!”

  “…I gotta sit down.”

  She sat. She ate the bread while Learned Edmund vibrated like a hummingbird in front of her.

  “All right,” she said. “Talk.”

  “It’s an allergy!” he said. “To gnoles!”

  Slate attempted to arrange the words in a way that made sense and failed.

  “I read up on allergic reactions,” said the dedicate. “In severe cases, it causes skin reactions—hives, itching, even lesions, correct?”

  “Yeah,” said Slate.

  “If an allergic reaction were severe enough, it would be fatal, yes?”

  “Oh gods, yes,” said Slate, remembering a few times when she had nearly coughed herself to death. “Easy.”

  “There you go!” Learned Edmund sat back, beaming. “The skin lesions associated with werkblight are much like those that develop when one handles the leaves of certain plants. Yet others can handle those same plants without fear, because they do not react. We are all walking around here unharmed, but for a few, the presence of the gnoles provokes a fatal reaction.”

  Slate rubbed her face. “It’s an interesting theory. But what does it have to do with me?”

  “You said it!” said Learned Edmund, practical
ly bouncing in his chair. “When Mistress Magnus was wrapping you in the shroud. You said that the gnoles were about the only thing you weren’t allergic to!”

  Had she said that? Slate honestly couldn’t remember. “It does sound like the sort of thing I’d say,” she admitted. “But okay, assuming it’s true, then…err…what now?”

  Learned Edmund considered. “There are palliatives that healers can make for allergies,” he said. “Have you not found this?”

  “I guess,” said Slate. “I mean, they make up a couple concoctions for spring that keeps me from choking myself to death. One makes me want to sleep all day, so I don’t use it much, and the other one makes my heart hammer and that’s really unpleasant so I don’t use it at all.”

  “Compared to the werkblight, though?”

  Slate thought of the corpses covered in their huge sores. “Well, it’d be better than that, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t know which one would work,” said Learned Edmund. “But if we could get this information in the hands of healers, they could try that as a treatment.”

  Slate frowned, running her finger over the rim of her mug. “What about that town we passed? The blighted one? The villager said they all had it.”

  Learned Edmund nodded. “The body in the well,” he said. “That man said that it wasn’t human. What if it was a gnole?”

  “Some kind of animal…” said Slate slowly. “If you didn’t know what a gnole was…yes, all right, I can see that. But they all caught blight.”

  “They drank water that was effective infused with…well…gnole,” said Learned Edmund. “A concentrated dose delivered internally. I suspect many perished from throat lesions, and even those who would not normally react would do so when faced with such concentrations.”

  Slate rubbed her forehead. “Learned Edmund, you can’t just tell the healers it’s gnoles.”

  “Why not?” He looked puzzled. “We could save lives.”

  “And end them. People already kill gnoles because they think they carry werkblight. If they know they’re the actual cause? They’ll kill every gnole they see. They’ll torch the Quarter.” She gestured aimlessly at the walls around them.

  Learned Edmund gaped at her. She watched the color drain out of his face.

  “But it’s not their fault! Surely…surely no one would…”

  “Ask Grimehug,” said Slate. “Ask Sweet Lily what she thinks would happen.”

  The dedicate put his head in his hands.

  “I don’t have to ask,” he said. “Although I will, because there are things that a human will not have thought of. But…no…”

  Nineteen, thought Slate wearily. Nineteen and realizing that you don’t have all the answers and sometimes there aren’t any good answers at all.

  Nineteen, and given a choice to save lives or end them.

  She wondered how old Caliban had been, when the temple had taught him the only way they knew to save the damned.

  Slate stared into her mug.

  “I can tell no one, then,” said Learned Edmund. “Not at the cost of the gnoles. The werkblight will go on. I will destroy my notes.”

  “You will do no such thing!” snapped Slate.

  From under the table, Grimehug said, “God’s scat. Humans can’t smell.”

  Slate crouched down and looked at her gnole friend. “Are we being stupid again, Grimehug?”

  He sat up and flicked his ears at her. “Crazy Slate. Book man.” He took a deep breath, and Slate had the impression that the gnole was picking his words very carefully. “You tell a human what werkblight is. You don’t tell a human why.”

  “You mean we shouldn’t tell them the cause?” said Learned Edmund.

  “Humans can’t smell,” said Grimehug. “Won’t know unless you tell them. Maybe a human figures it out. Maybe a human doesn’t. Human gets treated. Gnole gets blamed, well, gnole already gets blamed sometimes.”

  “To deliberately conceal knowledge goes against the teachings of the Many-Armed God,” said Learned Edmund.

  “So does genocide, I’m guessing,” said Slate. “You’ll save a lot of lives. Just…keep your notes.”

  He bowed his head.

  She felt a smile tug unwillingly at her lips. “You might even consider putting them in code.”

  Fifty-Two

  The better part of a week passed, and Slate had to acknowledge that she was spending most of her time conscious. Her body had apparently decided that her brain was not a reliable ally and had begun feeling things like hunger and thirst again.

  As for grief…well. She had run through all of her coping skills and had finally taken refuge in drinking heavily. It didn’t help, but Brenner wasn’t going to get a funeral. A one-woman wake, that’s me…

  Caliban came up the hallway. She knew it was him, even though her back was to the door. She could feel his presence like heat on her skin.

  He stood in the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back. “Madam,” he said.

  Madam. Well. Here we are, back where we started.

  Slate wanted to throw something at his head, but there was nothing within arm’s reach except her mug. The alcohol inside was fairly terrible, the sort of thing an artificer would make if they had a lot of time on their hands and no guidelines beyond shouldn’t make the drinker go blind.

  Still, waste not, want not.

  “What?” she growled.

  “Learned Edmund has requested immediate escort to the Temple of the Many-Armed God,” he said. “I believe that it might be for the best. The knowledge of the werkblight’s source should be spread as widely and as quickly as possible.”

  “Good,” she said. He was leaving. That was what she wanted. There was no reason why she should feel as if her stomach had dropped through the floor. “Have fun.”

  “Of course, this is dependent on you being willing to make the detour,” said Caliban.

  “It’s got nothing to do with me,” Slate said, not looking at him. “Go wherever you want.”

  “You’re still my liege,” said Caliban.

  “The hell I am!” she snapped. Goddammit, he was not going to let anything lie, was he? “You don’t need me anymore. I was a convenient substitute for your god, apparently, since you can’t go five minutes without being told what to do—which is pretty damn funny, since it’s not like you listen to me anyway. What use is all this fealty garbage, if you’re going to do whatever you damn well please?”

  “Very little, I expect,” he said. He sounded so damn calm about it. She started to reconsider throwing things at his head. “But I will see you back to the capitol, at least. If you do not wish to go with Learned Edmund, then so be it.”

  She turned and glared at him. “I don’t need you to get home.”

  “You are the most wanted woman in the city,” he said. “You can barely ride a horse. How do you propose to make your way to the capitol alone?”

  “I did it once without your help. Horsehead wanted me dead back then, too. I can do it again.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Then if you will not think of yourself, think of your gnole friends, and Ashes Magnus. Anyone who aids you on the road will be putting themselves in grave danger.”

  Her breath hissed between her teeth.

  “If we travel together, then the only other life you will be risking will be mine.” His tone was so dry that Slate thought she might choke on it. “And as my life is of little value to you at the moment, that should not trouble you over much.”

  Slate bared her teeth at him. “If Brenner was alive—”

  “Then I would let you go.”

  There were whole layers of meaning wrapped up in that sentence. Slate hated them all.

  “It gives me no pleasure to continue to inflict my presence on you,” Caliban said, sounding as cold and distant as a star. “If I could hire a bodyguard and trust they weren’t working for Horsehead, I would. But the city is in turmoil and people are fleeing in droves now that word has come that the clocktau
rs have stopped working. They expect reprisals from the Dowager’s City. We must go soon. Let me travel with you.”

  “Ha!” Slate laughed, because otherwise she was going to swear. “Let you. What if I don’t let you?”

  “Then I will follow behind you to the capitol to see that you arrive safely. And then I shall take myself out of your life and trouble you no more.”

  Slate rubbed her forehead. “I hate you,” she said conversationally.

  “I’m aware.” He shrugged. “It will be easier if we travel together. You do not need to speak to me on the road, beyond the bare minimum. And you need not fear my advances. I am aware that that part of our relationship is over.”

  “So long as we are clear,” said Slate, and drained the mug dry.

  * * *

  It was harder to part from Grimehug than she expected. Slate would have sworn that she had no tears left in her, but she shed a few anyway, down on her knees with her arms around the gnole.

  “Crazy Slate,” he said affectionately, and licked her forehead. “Crazy Slate. Twisting your whiskers again.”

  “Everything’s terrible,” she said. “I’ll miss you, Grimehug.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe a gnole comes to the capitol some time, eh? Maybe a human and a gnole meet somewhere else. Maybe a gnole goes to a temple to read what book man writes about gnoles.”

  She pressed her forehead against his. “Maybe. Yes. If a gnole ever needs a crazy human…”

  “Dangerous promise, Crazy Slate. A gnole might take a human up on that.”

  She wiped at her tears. “Please do. We owe you everything.”

  Grimehug looked over her shoulder at Caliban.

  “Anything,” said the paladin. “Anything the gnoles need, you have only to ask.”

  “God’s scat,” muttered Grimehug. “Humans and dangerous promises. Go on. Dead humans no use to any gnole.”