Timepiece

by Heather Albano

  She did, in fact, find employment singing. She discovered the advantages of introducing herself as Katarina Rasmirovna, exchanged her gown and corset for a blouse and bodice, and wore both as far tugged down as possible. She learned the art of male impersonation acts, wearing tight-fitted breeches and building each performance to the moment when she let loose her hair and watched appreciative eyes go from slim legs to cascading dark waves and back. She was well aware that her popularity among the Shoreditch’s regular patrons had nothing whatsoever to do with her voice, but it was still singing work of a sort. And even if it had become clear that La Scala was as far out of her reach as the stars so seldom seen in the London sky, the Shoreditch was still better than the Tavisford factory.

  London as a whole, however, was more cramped than she had expected it to be. Though the constructs that had brought down the monsters were now off seeing to British interests overseas, more came off the assembly lines of various factories all the time. Once off the assembly line, they were there to stay; it was nearly impossible to destroy the things, save by something like a cannon blast at close range, and it was not as though they ever became ill from the strains of battle. The men who piloted them also tended to enjoy a healthier life, freer from injury, than the Army had ever before been able to provide its soldiers, and so the job of construct pilot became as popular among the middle class as that of factory laborer became among the lower class. More constructs patrolled London’s streets every month, and the world seemed to mold itself around their presence rather than vice versa. Katarina’s skin had already started to feel as though it was once more behind the Tavisford stockade, and her voice had already begun to roughen from the constant London smoke, when her first lover told her about Murchinson’s.

  She was well aware that no one would believe Jacob was only the first man she had taken to her bed, but her role off the Shoreditch stage was as carefully constructed as the ones she played upon it, and though she flirted with all comers with the grace of a worldly woman, she had heretofore stopped at flirtation. It was a small hillock of moral high ground, to be sure, but she found something comforting in the fact that she crossed the Rubicon with Jacob from desire rather than financial necessity. There was tenderness between them as well as passion; they slept together in her bed as well as using it for sport; and he woke crying out from nightmares on a not-infrequent basis, from which she learned about the practices of Murchinson and Sons. Steam built up under her skin again, glowing helplessly red-hot against a London that had proven to be somehow smaller than it had appeared to her imagination back in Devonshire. The night she learned enough of the details to put the whole story together, she found herself trembling with a rage that had no outlet. She slipped out from under the blanket very carefully, lest she wake the man she had only just managed to soothe back to sleep. Then she stood for a long while with her forehead resting on the cracked panes of the tiny window of her tiny boarding-house bedroom. The street below was too narrow for the constructs to patrol, but she watched the tops of their heads as they made their stolid rounds up and down neighboring streets, and wondered when exactly living behind these new bars had come to seem normal.

  Despite the bars—despite the construct patrols, and the factory whistles, and all the other various constraints—crime was still rampant in London. Small, desperate crimes, of course, theft and the like, in every back alley of Spitalfields—but larger crimes too, the burgling of important papers from government safes, convenient accidents befalling important men, sabotage of factories and railway lines and telegraphs. There was no reason to suspect a connection between any of the incidents, except that each time one occurred, government officials spoke of enemies of the state and their mail gloves tightened once more—and the incidents kept happening anyway. Sometimes malefactors were arrested, but they were rarely brought to trial, and once there, never convicted. Katarina followed stories in the newspaper, occasionally sat in public galleries, and wondered if she were growing mad or if there really was an underlying pattern. And if so, who could possibly be so powerful as to be able to orchestrate it all?

  She had been long convinced of the existence of a spider at the web’s center when her third lover introduced her to Lord Seward. Not by name, of course; the man was introduced to her as “Robert Locksley.” But he met her in a well-lit room with only a black silk mask over his eyes, he took no trouble to disguise his voice, and between that and the structure of his face and the clue in the name, she would have no difficulty eventually working out who he was. She was astonished by all this implied.

  “How can you trust me?” she wondered.

  “Because Thomas trusts you,” Seward said, “and I trust Thomas.” As if it were that simple, and maybe it was. He gave her a slight smile, head to one side, eyes steady on hers. “You would not be in this room if I did not believe you could be trusted to either join us or to keep quiet.” He leaned back, still holding her gaze. “There were some questions you wished to ask me?”

  She breathed a laugh. That was the year’s most flagrant understatement. “Why?”

  The eyes flickered. “Now that’s interesting. Not ‘what’?”

  “I think,” she said, “I’ve already figured out ‘what.’ But you’re right, I should start there. You were behind the burning of the Ingleham Warehouses?”

  The strong chin beneath the mask tilted down once, a nod.

  “And the theft of the plans, the ones that turned up in France?”

  Another nod.

  “And when Jonathan Claybourne was acquitted—and everyone was so surprised—did you arrange that?”

  Seward’s lips twitched that time. “You have already figured out ‘what.’ It seems Thomas did not exaggerate in his estimation of your abilities.”

  “Then why?”

  He studied her for a long moment. She thought he was unused to having this question asked by his operatives, and it must be even more surprising to hear it from a woman than a man. She saw him consider and reject various responses, and she saw the moment when he decided to tell her the simple truth.

  “The balance tipped for me,” he said at last, “when Gladstone brought the constructs to London in the spring of ’80. There was no reason for it. There was absolutely no bloody reason—” She had never heard that word spoken in so refined an accent. “—to bring constructs to protect citizens from a Whitechapel killer. Ridiculous. We needed them in the countryside in ’76 to sort the monster problem, I’ll grant you that. Then they were useful abroad, protecting the Empire’s interests from the Russians and the French. No quarrel using them there either, quite effective, really. But with our interests so—ahem—so firmly protected as they were by 1880, the sensible response would have been to decrease production, use the funds for something else. Instead Parliament voted to increase it, though there was no good reason. Then they voted to bring the constructs home, to London, to counter the threat of the Kukri Killer in Whitechapel—and the idea of protecting residents of Whitechapel from a serial killer by using constructs was errant nonsense, good Lord, I presume you’ve seen the width of the streets? Nor are they a police force. Or I should say, they were not intended to be, because it seems that now they are.”

  Katarina nodded slowly.

  “And then the Pilot Bill passed,” Seward said, “—I don’t know how carefully you keep up with political news, but the one that made it impossible to try construct pilots in civilian court?—yes, I see, you do know what I’m speaking of. There is nothing holding them in check. They work for Gladstone alone. His government will never be voted out of power, and even if it could be, I’m not sure it would matter. If it were possible to construct a perpetual motion machine—then God help us, I think we’ve done it.”

  She didn’t understand him that time. He saw it, and adjusted himself in the chair, thinking for a moment before explaining.

  “In the jungles of South America and Africa,” he said, “our army of constructs stands guard over mines and fields of raw
material, dug from the ground by the hands of colonial workers and shipped back home in order that more constructs may be made. In order that that the guard over our colonial possessions may be rendered still more effective. In order that no other power can even contemplate taking us on. It’s one big gear turning, and now it turns itself. Every year the factories by the Thames are built higher. Every year more people work them. Every year more wealth is turned into creating more constructs. It can’t be stopped. No one has the leverage, even if we knew where the switch might be. It was sometime in ’82 that I realized I could never stop this by direct methods. And that therefore—” He looked into her eyes again. “—therefore I had to stop it. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  He smiled, and it was as though sunlight had flooded the room. “Are you with me?”

  She was. The knot in the center of her chest loosened and slipped away. She had not noticed until that moment how tight it had become.

  “Can we stop them?” she asked, taking the chair he pointed her toward.

  “No,” Seward said. “Not today, at least. Not this month or this year. But we can slow them down. Do you know why the constructs were so unexpectedly ineffective in prying Afghanistan away from Russia? Why the Battle of Maiwand turned into a rout and a disaster?”

  Katarina shook her head.

  “They were built here,” Seward said. “In England. They were built to withstand damp and cold. They do both very well indeed, and heat as such doesn’t bother them much either. But they were never designed to work in a desert. No one can bring one of those things down with a frontal attack unless he fires cannon at close range, and sometimes not even then—the Russians couldn’t stand against them, and the Afghani natives certainly never could—but the desert undid them. Once sand blows into the internal gearworks, they no longer turn so smoothly. It’s a little thing at first, but over a period of time, the gears slip and scuff and wear down, and sometimes break altogether. Do you see?”

  She did.

  “I have no way of fighting them directly,” Seward said. “I don’t have anything even so large as a pebble to toss into the gearworks. Not yet. Perhaps one day. Between now and then, I’m doing what I can with sand.”

  Katarina gladly became one of the grains of sand in the gearworks. She learned how to charm information out of office clerks and how to steal it from offices, how to fire a revolver and how to disrupt a shipment of goods. No one explicitly taught her how to coordinate the disruption of a shipment of goods; the talent for organization was something she discovered within herself, and if it wasn’t a natural talent exactly, if she sometimes paused to listen for her mother’s voice or Sir Charles’ and said what they would say, no one ever had to know that.

  Once Seward saw her ability, he put her in charge of larger efforts. He also brought her into the secret of who he really was, but she had worked it out by then. “Robert Locksley” was really a terrible pseudonym, all things considered. It amused her as it had no doubt amused him, but it also prompted anyone who heard it to look for his real identity in the pages of Debrett’s. Or, well, perhaps not anyone—not his usual foot-soldiers, at least, who were recruited from a class that would have never heard of the versions of the Robin Hood legend in which the outlaw is a peer of the very realm he seeks to undermine—but anyone with sufficient education to catch the reference, and that was most of the people who wanted to bring Robert Locksley down in the name of law and order.

  It was the only mistake she ever knew him to make, however. Seward otherwise handled his criminal enterprises with a deft and golden touch. He founded one group after another that reported to him, but could run itself with only the most occasional moments of his direct involvement. Moreover, very few of his people knew anything of the activities of groups not their own. Seward was too canny to allow his empire to run on the sort of clockwork that could be brought down with one well-placed pebble, and the more grains of sand there were, the less likely any one of them could do real damage if arrested and questioned. Even if someone someday caught up to Seward himself and the protection of his name was insufficient, the organization could continue without him.

  The first person who did catch up to Seward himself was Gavin Trevelyan—and that working from very few clues indeed; the man was really too clever for his own good, and it did underscore that Seward was the weak point in the defensive bulwarks. Fortunately, the weakness did no damage in this particular circumstance, for Trevelyan wanted only to join forces.

  It quickly became clear that Trevelyan was not content with acting like a grain of sand. If Seward was a beam of sunlight, then the Welshman was lightning in a bottle—sharp-edged, erratic, banishing shadows from corners with a ferocity that stung the eye. He wanted the constructs crushed and battered at his feet, and he claimed he could create a weapon capable of doing just that. All he needed was time and money, and Seward gave him both.

  The daytime world was still layered in fog and smoke, and the nighttime world still starless, but these facts bothered Katarina less than they ever had before. Trevelyan would craft a pebble to throw into the works, and the whole constructed monstrosity would crash to its knees, and once that was done and something better built in its place, she would determine what she actually wanted from life. Sometimes she thought that might be Trevelyan—though in the clear light of day she knew perfectly well he was as out of her reach as the hidden stars, and each time she caught herself thinking nonsense, scrubbed her face with cold water and resolved again not to be a fool. Other times, she wondered whether La Scala were similarly unattainable. It might well be, but then again—maybe the smoke had not irretrievably ruined her throat, maybe twenty-five was not too late to start proper training, maybe Seward knew people...Most of the time, however, Katarina did not dwell upon the future. It was as hidden as the London sky, and it no longer mattered so very much. She was doing something now, and eventually they would cease merely holding the line and do something better.

  Chapter 10

  London, August 27, 1885

  “Max?” Even as she called, Katarina was pulling the door shut and bolting it, eyes turned to strain down the dim hall, fingers flying unseeing and unerring to snap the latches in place. “Max!”

  There was no answer save a few erratic thumps from the direction of Trevelyan’s laboratory. Katarina ran toward it, Elizabeth at her heels. The humming corridor was layered in gray shadows, but not nearly as mysterious or treacherous as it had been before sunrise. “Max!”

  “He’s not here,” Trevelyan said without turning his head toward the propped-open door. The Welshman knelt in the center of the room beside the thing that was neither a cannon nor a musket, and the shining silver of the weapon twisted his reflection into something narrow and drawn.

  William stood behind him, again—or still—leafing through the drawings on the worktable. He had turned in response to Katarina’s voice, and his entire body slumped with relief when Elizabeth appeared in the doorway behind her. “Thank God,” he said.

  Katarina skidded to a stop. “Where is he?”

  “Out looking for you and Miss Elizabeth.” Trevelyan still didn’t look up as he shot out an arm, clamped his fingers down hard, then reached with a spanner in the other hand to more tightly secure a bit of metal. “And if I were you, I’d be hoping he didn’t succeed. He wasn’t best pleased to return and find you gone.”

  “Damn!” Katarina struck her hands together in frustration.

  This time Trevelyan gave her one swift striking moment of his attention. “What’s wrong?”

  “A child taken to Murchinson’s,” Katarina said. “The daughter of a friend. I need Max to—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, woman, and here I thought we had another problem.” Trevelyan reached for another part of the cannon.

  “You thought we had another problem?” Katarina repeated. “This is another problem.”

  “If it doesn’t delay the rain, break the machine, or put our patron in prison
, it doesn’t signify.”

  “You really don’t qualify as human sometimes.” Katarina started to pace. “He didn’t tell you when he was likely to return? I can’t go and get the child myself, for obvious reasons, and we’ve got to retrieve her before sunset, for we may not be hereabouts tomorrow—”

  Trevelyan stopped his work again—right-hand fingers holding a metal piece precisely positioned, left hand grasping a motionless spanner, gray eyes fixing on Katarina’s dark ones. “You’re joking, surely.”

  Katarina stared at him. “I very much am not.”

  “Right, and here I thought the children from the past were top on the list of things we don’t have time for. Seems I was wrong. The top thing we do not have time for is haring off after—”

  “A person,” Katarina said. “A person in this city, this beleaguered city we’re trying to—”