Clockwork Boys: Book One of the Clocktaur War

by T. Kingfisher

  “You don’t need to thank me.”

  “I’m not sure what else I can do.” Since any other offers I might have made seem to be of little interest to you.

  “I…”

  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said.

  “Offended?” He actually looked up at that. “What? Oh! No. No, of course not. Not with—no. But you—when people are frightened—“

  She didn’t know what her face looked like but apparently it was not kind, because his eyes slid away from hers.

  Unfortunately, he also kept talking.

  “I took an oath,” he said, staring back at the ground again. “The strong should not take advantage of the weak.”

  Slate parsed this mentally and came to a conclusion so outrageous that it took her several tries to get the words out. When they came, they were so calm they seemed to belong to someone else, a totally different Slate, who was not nearly dizzy with outrage.

  “Did you just call me weak?”

  “We’re all weak sometimes,” he said gently. “It’s nothing to be—”

  “Ah.”

  She packed enough acid into that syllable to stop him cold.

  Sonofabitch is patronizing me. Sonofabitch thinks I’m weak. Even Learned-bloody-Edmund is at least scared I’ll fry his genitals off.

  I suppose he thinks that I need to be protected from him.

  I pulled you out of a stinking cell where you flinched every time someone moved. I led you blind because you were afraid of the sky. And you dare—you dare—to call me weak?

  She did not say these things. They crashed in her heads like stones, and if she tried to get them out, they’d all fall out together like an avalanche, and god help her, she’d start crying again, because she always cried when she was really furious, and god damn if she was going to give him the satisfaction.

  “I just wanted to keep you from doing anything you’d regret,” Caliban said, a man who had dug six feet down and decided to keep on going.

  “You arrogant jackass,” said Slate, her voice clipped and calm and almost pleasant.

  He took a step back involuntarily. Slate felt a stab of triumph.

  If Brenner had appeared behind him at that moment, and laid a knife across his throat, Slate wouldn’t have sworn that she wouldn’t have nodded. But the assassin was off collecting wood and missed his chance.

  “Slate—”

  “Don’t talk to me,” she growled, and turned on her heel and stalked back to camp.

  Learned Edmund looked up, saw her approach, and retreated to a safe distance.

  It was probably because she was on such a ragged edge, but his alarm was almost soothing. At least here was someone who was afraid of her, and not for her.

  Slate barked a laugh, reached out, and caught at the air a foot from Edmund’s face. He stared at her in alarm.

  “Learned Edmund?”

  “Yes?” he said warily.

  “Thank you.”

  One eyebrow went up. He made half a gesture, possibly part of a benediction, thought better of it, and said “Uh…you’re welcome?”

  Slate pulled her hands through her hair. “Do you need anything?”

  “I could use some water, if you want to go down to the river.”

  She looked around for the bucket. Caliban, who had been walking back into camp, reached down, picked it up, and walked off again, without speaking.

  Slate gritted her teeth at his back.

  I should have left him in the cell.

  * * *

  Well. Excellent job, Caliban congratulated himself. The only way you could have made more of a hash of that was to accidentally run her through with your sword.

  I did what I had to do.

  The empty bucket knocked against his leg. He stepped cautiously down the pine-needle encrusted slope to the river.

  He’d had some kind of thought, when he started talking, of saying, “I wasn’t sure if that was what you really wanted, but if you’re sure…” Of seeing if she was actually interested, not merely high on adrenaline and the body’s animal need not to die.

  And then what?

  He snorted. And then I would have told Learned Edmund to watch the horses and taken her the minute we were out of sight. Up against a tree if I had to.

  Repeatedly.

  She had been growing in his mind for weeks. Her anger and her stubbornness and the way she would grin suddenly when she worked out a problem in her mind. He wanted her to grin like that at him. He wanted to take her in his arms and feel the weight of her breasts in his hands and say things that made her laugh out loud and do things that made her cry out his name.

  He knew better. He should have known better, anyway. He’d resigned himself to physical loneliness. The demon in his head would be an unwelcome third in any bed. But somehow his body didn’t know that and it seemed to be dragging his heart along in its wake.

  He had been wanting to say something for days now, but there was never a chance—not with Brenner like a jealous shadow at her heels.

  And then he’d had a chance…and somehow the words had gotten tangled up and what had come out had been so painfully awkward that he was probably lucky she hadn’t stabbed him on the spot.

  I did the right thing. She would have regretted it. Who wants to bed a possessed murderer?

  Apparently for a moment last night, Slate had. He could still half-feel the path her fingertips had taken across his skin.

  Perhaps he should dump some freezing water over his head.

  The strong do not take advantage of the weak.

  So why do I feel like such an idiot?

  Caliban dipped his bucket in the stream, straightened up, and felt steel lying in a cold kiss across the back of his neck.

  In a way, it was a relief. He’d known it was going to happen, and at least they could get it over with sooner rather than later.

  “Hello, Brenner,” he said.

  “I think I’d like to have a worrrrd with you,” drawled the assassin.

  “I’m sure you would.” He set the bucket down. “You’re not planning on killing me or you’d have done it already, so perhaps you could move the knife?”

  “Mmmm.” The knife pressed a little harder, the point creasing the skin just under his left ear, then moved away.

  Caliban turned around, letting his hand drop to the hilt of his sword.

  “Getting a bit comfortable with our Slate, are we?”

  Dreaming God’s bones. We’re on a suicide mission, we’ve got carnivorous tattoos, we’re supposed to stop monsters that are like nothing I’ve ever seen…and now we’re going to have a fight because we’re both interested in the same woman.

  On the one hand, it probably said something inspiring about the human spirit that it could rise above such things in pursuit of love.

  On the other hand, it was pure bleeding idiocy.

  “I’m sorry, would you have preferred I let her freeze to death in the rain? Or perhaps just let the horse carry her off to a broken neck?”

  Brenner frowned. It was a different expression from his habitual scowl, and Caliban liked it a lot less. Dark hair fell into his face like a curtain.

  Is this jealousy, or something else? How close are they, anyway?

  “If you’re getting any ideas,” said Brenner softly, “I would keep them to myself, if I were you.”

  Caliban put up an eyebrow. “Why do you care, anyway? You’re sleeping as cold at night as the rest of us.” He shifted his feet, and heard pine needles crunch underfoot.

  Why am I baiting him? This is stupid. I should just say, “No, no, I’m not interested, all yours.” Do not bait the assassin. Did I take a blow to the head when I wasn’t looking?

  Brenner tilted his head. His eyes flickered, but the point of the knife never wavered. “Oh, I won’t deny I wouldn’t like another chance at our Slate. She’s a dear thing when she’s not waiting to die.”

  Caliban wasn’t surprised. He’d been more than half sure they’d been lovers
once—there were too many intimacies between them that friends never achieved. This was only confirmation after all.

  What did surprise him was the sudden knot in his stomach, and the hot, dizzy feeling inside his head.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  What a stupid question. You’d need quite a list.

  Nha, ghaa, ngh’aa…

  The demon’s voice alone should have stopped him, but he could still taste the knot of—yes, fine, it was jealousy, or maybe only envy, that the assassin had done what he could not.

  How had she looked at him when they were together? You could read every emotion on Slate’s face, usually from a mile off. What expressions had crossed it when the assassin had been in her bed?

  Oh Dreaming God, we’re being fools and she’d kill us both if she knew.

  “Fine,” he rasped. “Plead your case to her, not me. She won’t be best pleased if we stab each other.”

  “Oh no. That’s not my point,” said Brenner, smiling now, which was even more ghastly than the frown.

  “It isn’t?”

  “It’s an odd thing,” he continued in a light, conversational tone, “but every killer I’ve ever known who killed for pleasure rather than money—and I’ve known a few—had the same thing going on in their heads. They got sex and death all tangled up, and if they couldn’t get the one, they’d have the other.”

  Caliban had expected anything from a brotherly threat of bodily harm to a former lover’s outrage, and had thought he was prepared to weather it.

  He hadn’t expected this.

  “What?”

  “Now if there was ever a repressed lot in life, it’s temple paladins, and frankly, I don’t care what you may have done. But if you start getting all tangled up about our Slate, and I come back one fine evening and discover that you chopped her into little pieces, I am going to be pissed.”

  The knight raked a hand through his hair. “Are you—my god, you’re not serious!”

  Can’t he just wave his knife around and say, “I saw her first!” like normal men?

  “I’m very serious,” said Brenner, in a voice that was low and almost friendly, the paladin’s voice through a black mirror. “Killing I know very well. And believe me, my fine knight-champion, I can make you die slow.”

  “I would never—” He groped for a phrase, found “randomly dismember Slate” on his tongue, and couldn’t get it out.

  Well, I wouldn’t.

  “Never? Seems to me you did it once already.” The assassin was circling him now, still with the knife out. Caliban realized that he was no longer sure that Brenner wasn’t just going to kill him. “Oh, excuse me. Eight times.”

  “I was possessed!” the knight shouted.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Brenner.

  Caliban drew steel. Brenner came up on his toes with a wild smile on his face.

  They circled each other, once, twice.

  “It’s a neat trick,” said Brenner. “The demonic voice thing almost had me fooled. But I don’t buy it. Probably you got a taste for killing people you claimed were possessed. You killed those people, and you enjoyed it and you found an excuse that kept your neck out of the noose—”

  “Burning,” rasped Caliban. “The punishment for apostate paladins is burning at the stake.”

  “Then I don’t blame you for trying to avoid it,” said Brenner, grinning, “but you’re not trying it on our Slate.”

  He made a sudden dash forward. Caliban fended him off with a sweep of the sword.

  A net dropped over both of them.

  Caliban’s first thought was that this was some trick of Brenner’s. Then he saw the assassin was also struggling under a net.

  His second, wilder thought was: Couldn’t Slate find a bucket of water to throw on us?

  He tried to get his sword the rest of the way out of the sheath. A foot stepped on his hand—no, it was a hoof?—and someone kicked him in the ribs. A few feet away, Brenner was being relieved of his knife in a similar fashion.

  Someone green stepped into his field of vision. Caliban looked up into a face that wasn’t human, and the sharp end of a sword.

  * * *

  There was a loud and unmistakable shiing! of steel being drawn and someone shouted.

  Aw, shit. Brenner really did try to kill him.

  Slate snatched up her knife and ran for the river, Learned Edmund hot on her heels.

  Hell if I know what I’ll do once I get there. Help whoever’s losing, maybe. Shit, shit, shit…

  She dodged around trees, skidding through the mat of pine needles. Goddamn, how far away did they go?

  A minute later she slowed. “This is crazy. Where are they? No one would go this far for water.” The sounds of a struggle had ended almost as soon as they’d begun, and now only silence greeted them.

  “Brenner! Caliban! Where are you?”

  No reply.

  “Brennerrrrr! Helloooo!”

  The stream gurgled by. Leaves hissed softly in the wind. There were no shouts, no moans, no sounds of two people cutting each other to pieces.

  They can’t be fighting somewhere. Fights aren’t quiet things.

  She turned and looked at Learned Edmund, who spread his hands helplessly. “I have no idea.”

  “They have to be here somewhere!”

  “Could one have killed the other?”

  “We’d still find one of them, and a body.”

  “Could one have stabbed the other and run? And the other gave chase?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  Slate stopped.

  The discarded water bucket lay at the edge of the water. The ground was trampled and scuffled, pine needles kicked up in great gouts, which could have meant something or nothing at all.

  “I’m no kind of tracker, but they were here and…something happened.”

  “Brenner seemed angry with Sir Caliban,” observed Learned Edmund.

  “Yeah, but if he killed him he wouldn’t try to hide it, and if Caliban killed him, he wouldn’t try to hide it either.”

  “What’s that?” asked Edmund, pointing.

  She turned.

  Something lay on the ground, a bit of gaudy green twine laced with small black and white feathers. The white quills gleamed, even in the failing light.

  “Woodpecker feathers,” said Edmund, picking it up.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m guessing that they didn’t leave under their own power.”

  “Hmm.”

  She stared at the twine. It looked like some kind of bracelet, but it had been ripped off.

  “Well,” she said. “At least there’s no blood. They took them alive, I think.”

  “Should we go after them?” asked Learned Edmund.

  “I’d love to. Pick a direction.”

  “You can’t tell which way they’ve gone?”

  “Can you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  They looked for signs, in a broadening circle around the river clearing. There weren’t any or there might have been dozens. The wood was full of things that looked like trails and weren’t. Any one of them might have been real, if they’d only known how to look.

  They slogged back to camp. It was too dark to see, even if they knew what they were looking for. Slate dropped down next to the fire and put her face in her hands.

  What do I do now? I can’t rescue them if I don’t know where they are!

  She waited for Learned Edmund to say something snide, but instead he handed her a roasted potato. “No good will come of us starving ourselves, Mistress Slate.”

  “No, I suppose not. Thanks.” It was indeed an excellent potato. She choked it down through a throat gone thick.

  What do I do? I can’t leave them!

  What if they’re already dead?

  Caliban has to be alive. He has to be alive so I can think of something really cutting to say to him, the metal-plated ass.

&n
bsp; She gnawed on a fingernail. She wouldn’t cry, because that would be useless, and it would also confirm all of Learned Edmund’s worst fears about her.

  Slate glanced at him, a slim, miserable-looking figure hunched inside his robes. Something about his posture, and the way he kept blinking, made her think that he might be worried about crying too.

  Somehow that was cheering. Not because she wished him ill, but because there are few things in life as steadying as someone you have to be brave for.

  “Well, a fine pair we are,” she said. “And we thought the hard part would be in Anuket City.”

  He smiled weakly. “I suppose—”

  The horses lifted their heads. Even the mules pricked up their ears.

  “They hear something,” said Learned Edmund.

  A breeze rippled through the trees, and after a moment, over the crackling of the fire, Slate heard it too.

  It was music.

  There were drums in there, and pipes, a low beat and a high skirling whine threaded through it. It wasn’t a pleasant music—every now and then the beat would skip, which jolted the listener as if their heart had skipped—but the fact that it was music at all, in the middle of the woods, fired Slate with relief.

  “Come on.” She got up and kicked dirt over the fire.

  “Where are we going?”

  “After the music.”

  “You think the musicians took the other two?”

  “I think it’s the best lead we’re going to get.”

  They left the horses tied up and picked their way down to the river. Slate wasn’t sure if the music was coming from there, or if the sound just carried better over water, but they had to start somewhere.

  They got partway down the slope and the trees opened up. Learned Edmund reached out and caught her arm.

  There go your bowels and your genitals, m’boy.

  “Look!” he hissed. “Something’s moving!”

  Something was indeed moving, a regular undulation that seemed to slither down the slope a dozen yards to their left, and move out across the rocks that spanned the river. Slate squinted. The starlight wasn’t very bright, but it looked like a thing of parts, like a column of ants, rather than a single snakelike body.

  They were much bigger than ants, but still not very big. They didn’t look like anything that could overpower a man, although there were a great many of them. More streamed past, every moment, moving out of the woods and crossing the stream.