Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  “I’ll kill the beast,” the assassin rasped. “I’d cut his throat right now, but I don’t think I can get off if he falls down.”

  “It’s a her,” said Caliban.

  “You think that’ll stop me, god-boy?”

  “Horses are expensive,” said Slate, who knew to the penny how much it cost to house and feed a horse, although she had only a vague notion of what they actually ate.

  “Oh. Hmm. Damn.”

  The knight got both sets of reins together, and led the horses to a rail, where he tied them up. He turned back, hands on hips. Brenner and Slate stared down at him glumly.

  “When did you two learn to ride?” he asked.

  “Nineteen years ago.”

  “This morning.”

  Caliban put his hands over his face. “We’re going to die.” His voice was surprisingly calm, but it had a hysterical edge to it.

  “I’ve been telling you,” said Slate, much aggrieved.

  He raked his hands through his hair and muttered something under his breath. Slate wouldn’t swear that it hadn’t been, “Ngha, ha, ngha…”

  “Okay. Neither of you can get down?”

  “No.”

  “Not if I don’t get to kill the horse.”

  Caliban stared upward and uttered a particularly vile curse to no one in particular.

  “I didn’t think they knew words like that in the temple,” said Brenner, sounding rather pleased despite it all.

  The paladin ignored him, squared his shoulders, and walked to the side of Slate’s horse. He reached up and caught her around the waist. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  She obeyed, and he dragged her off the horse and set her on her feet. Her knees buckled immediately, but he’d apparently expected that, and held her up by main force.

  Slate found her face pressed into his chest, which smelled very strongly of dust and metal and horse. Chain clinked. She got a powerful whiff of rosemary and sneezed wretchedly.

  He sighed—she felt it more than heard it—held her up with one hand, and dug out a handkerchief with the other.

  Her knees grudgingly admitted that they could probably hold up on their own now, and she stepped away, clutching the handkerchief. “Thangkks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Do I get to do that?” asked Brenner snidely from horseback.

  “Yes, actually,” said Caliban, coming around the side of Brenner’s horse.

  Slate found that she still had the strength to snicker.

  “Aww,” said Brenner, putting his arms around the knight’s neck. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I really don’t.”

  The assassin’s knees also buckled when he hit the ground. The knight also held him upright. Slate wondered if he’d worn the same expression of stoic martyrdom when she’d been clinging to him.

  Oh, probably.

  He herded them both into the inn, like a sheepdog with a pair of bitter, bow-legged sheep. Twelve hours in the saddle and he’s not even limping. That bastard.

  Brenner, fortunately, looked as if he might be permanently damaged. Slate approved of that. If she was miserable, someone else ought to be, too. She felt as if she’d been…no, the only metaphors that came to mind were mostly sexual and too disgusting to contemplate. Still.

  They passed through the common room. Slate didn’t really see it. The sheepdog was still herding.

  He stopped at last at the foot of the stairs, and gestured to his sheep. “Go up to your rooms, you two. I’ll have them send up trays.”

  Slate looked up the stairs. There were quite a lot of them.

  I could ask him to carry me. No, that’d be humiliating, and then he’d have to carry Brenner, too.

  Actually, that’d almost be worth it. I wonder if he’d do it.

  Behind her, the assassin turned away from the stairs and locked his fingers on the edges of the knight’s tabard. Caliban stared down at him, lip curled in something between pity and disgust.

  “Send…beer…” Brenner rasped.

  The knight pried his fingers loose. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  They ascended the stairs like a pair of mountaineers tackling a cliff face.

  “My legs will never close again,” she muttered.

  “That would be music to my ears if I wasn’t dying,” said Brenner, a step below her.

  “Do you think we’ll make it to Anuket City?”

  “I don’t think I’ll make it to my room.”

  Eventually, of course, they did make it. They got halfway down the hallway, realized they didn’t know which rooms were theirs, and sagged together against the wall. Slate’s ankles, heretofore numb, started to make their presence known. She didn’t dare sit down, or she’d never stand up again.

  “I think I hate him,” said Brenner, leaning against the wall next to her.

  No need to ask who he was talking about. “I’m gettin’ there,” said Slate.

  “I could kill him. He’s got to sleep sometime.”

  “Then who’d get us off the horses tomorrow?”

  “Good point.”

  Someone came up the hall. It was Learned Edmund, carrying a pack. He stared at them both down his nose.

  “Are you two drunk?”

  “Not yet,” said Brenner, “but soon enough.”

  “Do you know which rooms are ours?” asked Slate.

  He pointed his thumbs at two opposite doors. Slate pushed herself away from the wall and picked one.

  It was tiny. The tradehouse knew they had the monopoly on people waiting overnight for the ferry, and apparently had decided to capitalize on the fact. It held a bed big enough for one person, assuming they slept in fetal position. It also had a basin, a window the size of an arrow slit, and a strip of floor. The bed was ancient, sagging, and would have required a team of skilled carpenters to achieve “decrepit.”

  It looked wonderful.

  Slate stepped inside, shut the door behind her—whatever Learned Edmund had to say, she didn’t want to hear it—and crawled onto the bed. Then she arranged her legs by picking her thighs up with her hands and dropping them into position. Then she leaned back against the headboard and whimpered for a few minutes.

  A few minutes later, the door opened. Caliban dropped her bags on the floor, said “I hope you realize I’m a knight, not a valet,” and left. She made an obscene gesture at his back.

  Give the man a high horse and he thinks he can ride around on it. I should’ve left him in the cell.

  The door opened again. It was Learned Edmund, who was trying not to look at her.

  “The innkeeper wants money.”

  Slate located her moneypurse and flung it at the scholar’s head. “Give him whatever he wants.”

  “Your…friend…wants beer.”

  “Give him whatever he wants, too.”

  “Quite.” The scholar curled his lip and took himself off. The door shut.

  A quarter of an hour later, someone knocked. Ah. They’re polite. That lets out anyone in our little band. “Come in,” Slate called.

  A serving girl came in, dipped a little curtsy without disturbing anything on her tray, and handed her a wooden bowl of stew and a spoon.

  Slate gabbled out something about undying love and large tips, and barely restrained herself from planting her face directly into the stew.

  The serving girl smiled, curtsied again, and slipped out.

  Slate applied herself to the stew. A minute later the door banged open again, and she set the spoon aside and sighed.

  It was Caliban again. He was carrying a single glass of wine. Slate’s eyes locked on it like a vulture spotting a carcass.

  “With Brenner’s compliments,” he said dryly, handing it into the room. “He put something into it.”

  “Was it poison?” she asked hopefully.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Damn.”

  She took a sip, detected the faint machine-oil-and-flowers taste of poppy milk, and took a mu
ch larger sip. “Tell Brenner he can have my firstborn.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.” The door shut again.

  Slate applied herself to wine and the stew. By the time she’d finished, the poppy milk and the alcohol were starting to take effect. Her legs still hurt, but she just didn’t give a damn. They were miles away, clear down at the other end of her body. Who needed ’em, anyway?

  Bless Brenner’s black little heart.

  Maybe she wouldn’t bother to undress. Maybe she wouldn’t bother with her shoes. Maybe she’d go to sleep, right here…

  The door crashed open again. “Just leave it open, for god’s sake,” she groused, glaring at the ceiling. “I don’t know why I even have a door.”

  It was Caliban, yet again. He dropped a bedroll on the floor.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked, sitting up. She was pleased to see that her hip joints worked again, although not without complaint.

  “I’m sleeping in here.”

  “What?”

  “The other room’s the same size as this one. We couldn’t fit two people on the floor unless we stacked them. The stables are full, Brenner’s threatening to put a dagger in the eye of anyone who tries to get him off the bed—and I believe him—and Learned Edmund is apparently afraid that if he sleeps on your floor, your feminine exhalations will cause his genitals to wither and his bowels to turn to water. That’s a direct quote, by the way.”

  Slate discovered that she was giggling helplessly into her hands and stopped immediately. It had to be the poppy milk.

  “That leaves me. If you need to get up in the middle of the night, try not to step on my head.”

  “I suppose we could flip a coin for the bed,” she said, trying to be fair.

  He gave her a withering look. “I realize, madam, that you do not think much of my knighthood, but chivalry is not that dead.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, annoyed.

  Back to “madam” again. Swear to god, the man’s pricklier than a cactus with a rash.

  In the time it took him to strip off his armor, she managed to get a boot off. One boot. The act of bending knee and hip joints to get her foot within range was torture, even with the poppy standing between her and the pain. She pulled the boot off, panted, and dropped it on the floor.

  Her other foot was impossibly far away. Possibly this was a task better carried out by homing pigeons.

  Caliban dumped his armor in the corner. He reached out, grabbed her foot and yanked.

  Hard.

  The other boot came off. She yelped.

  “Ahhhbugger!”

  “I’d like to get to bed sometime tonight,” he said testily. Her toes felt skinned.

  “I thought you said temple paladins weren’t total bastards.”

  “I said most of us weren’t.”

  “I see.”

  Slate shrugged out of her coat, decided to leave the rest of her clothes on—hell if he was getting any thrills if he was going to be like that—and got under the covers. He dropped out of sight below the foot of the bed. A minute later, the candle went out.

  “You better not snore,” she grumbled into the dark.

  “I don’t snore.”

  “Good.”

  “I gibber in demonic tongues.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “Shit.”

  About an hour later, some night-blooming weed opened up and she woke herself up sneezing.

  She checked her pockets under the blankets. She knew for a fact that Caliban had handed her a handkerchief earlier. She couldn’t find it. Maybe it was in her coat, which was…somewhere in a pile of armor and saddlebags. Bugger.

  In her bleaker moments, Slate wondered if her talent for smelling rosemary had been balanced out by a curse that prevented her from staying in possession of anything to blow her nose on.

  “Ah…ah…ACHOOAAAUGH!”

  There are many sensations worse than waking up in the night with your nose overflowing and your sinuses walled up like brick, but she couldn’t think of any at the moment. Slate clutched at her traitorous nose and moaned.

  There was a rustle at the foot of the bed.

  “Sneerrggghhhk!”

  Something hit her in the face.

  It was lightweight, and bounced off her hands. Slate flailed, dropped it, found it again, unfolded it, and discovered it was a small square of cotton fabric.

  He’d thrown a handkerchief at her head.

  “Thangghks,” she muttered. He grunted.

  Well, it’s an odd sort of chivalry, I suppose, but maybe it’s not completely dead at that.

  At some point a few hours after that, when the night was bleakest and blackest, Slate woke up because something by her feet was gibbering in demonic tongues.

  * * *

  I’m dead, she thought, staring at the ceiling. I’m dead and in hell.

  “Ngha, ha, ngh’aa, halikalihali, kalaak-ngha…”

  Oh my god, he really wasn’t kidding.

  She sat up, feeling her hip bones grate in their sockets, and crawled to the edge of the bed.

  It was Caliban, all right, or his decaying demon. She didn’t know why she was surprised.

  He was lying on his side, head pillowed on his arm, muttering into his elbow. His voice was low and guttural and had a nasty bite to it.

  “Nghaa…Kai! Kai! Kalaak-ghaa…”

  “Hey. Err. Wake up, man.”

  “Nghaaaa?”

  “You’re speaking in tongues in your sleep.”

  “Gha, kamama…”

  “It’s really creepy.”

  He didn’t stop. She looked around for something to poke him with.

  The only thing close at hand was his sword, which he’d hung over the foot of the bed, in easy reach. Slate grabbed the scabbard in both hands and nudged him with it awkwardly.

  He twitched a bit. “Nghaa! Kalikalikaliha!”

  Oh god, I hope I’m not making it mad.

  “Come on, wake up!” She gave him a good whack in the elbow with the side of the scabbard.

  He opened his eyes, caught the sword in both hands and shoved upward, hard. Only the fact that she was marginally more awake than he was, and already jumpy from the demon’s voice, let her jerk back out of the way. The pommel shot past her chin.

  As it was, her hands stung from the leather ripping through them. She yelped, fell backward, and blew on them.

  “What? What is it? Nghaah!” He cursed, jumped up, and knocked over the candle. She heard steel being drawn, followed by a thud and another yelp, and the clatter of said steel hitting the floor.

  You really can’t draw a sword that size in a room this size, m’boy.

  Slate rolled quietly off the bed on the other side—there was about a handsbreadth between the bed and the wall, and she slid down into it—and dug around on the floor until she found the candle.

  There was another thud from somewhere overhead and a curse.

  She dug in her pocket for matches. Matches she always had, even if she usually didn’t have a handkerchief.

  Light flared under her hands. She was half under the bed, but that seemed to be the safest spot at the moment.

  Caliban was standing, looking down at her. His sword gleamed on the floor between them. There was a large dent in the plaster where he’d hit it with the pommel, trying to draw in the miniscule room.

  “So I guess I shouldn’t poke you when you’re speaking in tongues,” she said.

  “Apparently not,” he said, pulling her to her feet.

  “Shall we try to get back to sleep again?”

  “They say third time’s the charm.”

  Whoever ‘they’ were, they were right, because there were no more allergies, no more demonic voices, and Slate slept clear on through morning.

  Chapter Eight

  The next few days passed in much the same fashion.

  The second day was worse than the first, even though they stopped much more frequently a
nd went much more slowly. The inn had bigger rooms, however, and Slate got to sleep in a bed without a paladin sulking on the floor.

  They did not ride for so long each day as they did the first. Learned Edmund chafed at the delay. Slate and Brenner merely chafed.

  Caliban found them some kind of herbal gunk. It was full of comfrey, and stank to high heaven, but supposedly it healed saddle sores.

  This was a difficult bit of self-medication, but Slate would have cut her own throat before asking Caliban for help—chivalry be drawn and quartered, there were limits—and Brenner would get entirely the wrong idea. She had to barricade herself in her room and engage in a series of unfortunate pantless contortions to get the stuff on.

  She never asked Brenner how he managed. She was afraid he’d tell her.

  The third day was really bad. Slate and Brenner took to slugging poppy milk straight out of the bottle, which meant that they alternated giggling and whimpering. After about an hour of this, Caliban took the reins away from them and tied them in a string to his saddlebow. They found this amusing.

  “If you keep drinking that stuff, you’re going to wind up addicted to it,” he warned them, as he watched the small glass bottle make the rounds again.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m real worried,” said Brenner. “Remind me again, what were we on? Some kind of suicide mission, was it?” Slate snickered.

  He stopped talking to them.

  The scenery was not interesting enough to be distracting. It was all farm fields. Slate’s mother had come from farming stock and had been determined never to go back.

  Once or twice, Slate had missed having a larger extended family to belong to, but looking at the fields and the people working them with hoes and spades, she offered up silent thanks. I’ll light a candle for you, Mother. Two candles. Ten candles. I bet these people have to deal with horses constantly.

  Slate and Brenner sang rounds of dirty songs together. Brenner had a surprisingly good voice. Slate didn’t. She did get to enjoy watching Learned Edmund twitch when she went for the high notes.

  Caliban was trying to pretend he didn’t know them, which was tricky when he was the one leading their horses.

  At the inn that night, they sat propped up against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, while Caliban looked at them with irritation and Learned Edmund didn’t look at them at all.