Timepiece

by Heather Albano

  A fork of lightning leapt with a crash onto the rod, and sizzled all the way down it.

  In the room below, Trevelyan let out a fierce, half-choked sound—what in another man might have been a cheer—plainly audible even through the rain and wind and thunder. William’s less restrained hurrah echoed it. Elizabeth, smiling at the sound, looked down at him through the trapdoor. She could clearly see both men’s faces: exultant, glowing in the red light of the newly charged rail-gun, Trevelyan’s transformed by a grin that Elizabeth would have sworn him incapable of the second before. The Welshman spent a bare instant running eyes and hands over the gun barrel, and then swung for the ladder. “Done!” he shouted up to them. “Done, it’s done—”

  Katarina laughed aloud and applauded, and Maxwell sighed as though setting down a load that strained his back. Elizabeth saw William come up behind Trevelyan, offering his left hand in clumsy congratulations, smiling, saying something inaudible but admiring.

  Thunder crashed again—deafeningly close, again—and lightning lit up the sky. This time, it did not fade.

  Elizabeth looked up in time to be blinded by the sapphire-blue beams of light that swept from the construct’s eyes. It was one of those drawn into a ring around the Tower of London, but it had turned to face them. Its head was tilted up and its eyes trained right on their rooftop, and as she watched, it started a deliberate, ground-eating march toward them.

  Chapter 13

  London, August 27, 1885

  “It couldn’t have seen us,” Trevelyan said, wrenching the winch angrily. “Did you stay behind the duck blind? Then it couldn’t have seen you. We’ll batten down the hatches and stay quiet, and—”

  “That won’t answer,” Katarina said. “We have to leave. It was facing us, Gavin! It saw lightning strike a building no taller than any around it, it saw lightning strike a building and not set it afire, it probably can see the rod as you’re lowering it right now, we can’t stay here! If we leave now—”

  “—and run into the streets so it can spot us easily?” Trevelyan’s mouth twisted.

  Above their heads, the oilcloth slapped into place, and the indistinct light that had been filtering through the roof hole was gone. The air outside crashed with thunder and the advancing construct’s feet. In the laboratory, the rail-gun glowed softly red, but it was no longer a warm light, and Elizabeth no longer found the chilly rain exhilarating. She stood dripping, watching Trevelyan anchor the winch in place.

  “Two more coming,” Maxwell said, dropping through the trapdoor without using the ladder. Despite the water on the floor, he landed as neatly as a boy jumping from a hayloft, with bent knees and no apparent ill effects. “We’re out of here, Trevelyan. Now.”

  Trevelyan cast one look all around the laboratory and cursed.

  Maxwell ignored it, herding Elizabeth and William in front of him toward the laboratory’s back door. “Trevelyan, this was always a possibility, we burned those papers for a reason, now let’s go! We’re headed for London Bridge,” he told William and Elizabeth. “There’s a submersible waiting for us there. Part of the plan from the beginning, just in case this night went badly.”

  “A what?” But Elizabeth was not surprised that no one took the time to answer her question. It was hardly the matter most urgently requiring attention. The walls around her shook, and plaster flaked off the ceiling.

  Maxwell paused with his hand on the door latch and looked back over Elizabeth’s head. Katarina was right behind them, face dark and mouth grim, checking the priming of her tiny pistol. Further back in the laboratory’s darkness, there was a sound of groaning metal, and then a hissing breath of effort, and Trevelyan came to join them, staggering a little under the weight of the rail-gun strapped to his back and shoulder.

  Maxwell stared at him. “Are you insane?”

  “I would be insane to leave it for them to find,” Trevelyan said. His eyes burned hollowly in the dim light, and the barrel of the gun burned too, smoldering red against the darkness.

  Maxwell bit off whatever he had been about to say. He pulled off his overcoat, flung it over Trevelyan’s right arm to hide the red gleam, and plunged out of the door and into the rain.

  It was like walking into a wall of water. Elizabeth found herself instantly blind as rain pounded sideways against her face. Blue light from high above cut through the droplets, turning them into dazzling rainbows. The wind howled down the alleyway, a hair-raising sound like a monster with a dead face. For the second time in two nights, Elizabeth followed Maxwell in a stumbling run down an alleyway.

  Headed the other way, this time. Not into the warren of back streets and alleys, but out into open space, toward the great flat expanse of the docks. The Thames stretched before them, oily rippling freedom. If only they could get there.

  They left the shelter of the alleyway and burst onto the main thoroughfare in time to see the construct take the final shuddering step that brought it beside their warehouse. Elizabeth could have hit it with a tossed stone. But it was looking at the rooftop, Elizabeth thought wildly. It was looking at the rooftop; surely it would miss movement at its feet—

  Its head swung around. A beam of light from its eyes cut through the lashing rain, and the five of them froze under it—instinctive, stupid, the reaction of mice under the eye of a hawk. Cobblestones shook under Elizabeth’s feet as the construct turned away from the building, taking a heavy step and then another toward their huddled group of five. A flash of lightning gave Elizabeth one clear view up the main road: the two other constructs Maxwell had spotted were visible, steadily advancing to the aid of their fellow.

  Maxwell took a step as though about to risk it all in a sprint toward the river—and then, as the gun that was the creature’s right arm swung to follow his movement, abruptly changed his mind. He caught Elizabeth’s hand and darted back the way they had come, into the rabbit warren of alleyways.

  “Halt!” came from the copper giant’s mouthless head.

  Maxwell paid no attention. He pushed Elizabeth in front of him, and William came right behind. The construct followed with deliberate, ear-splitting steps, and each stride pushed the light from its eyes farther into the darkness of the alleyway. Pound. Pound.

  Maxwell gained the shadows, paused for an instant. Elizabeth stopped when he did, and William nearly tripped over her. Maxwell steadied them both, staggering just a little under the impact, casting an anxious look over their heads. Elizabeth looked too.

  Katarina was still caught in the wash of blue light, running through it, graceful and fluid. Trevelyan came behind her, moving awkwardly, stumbling from the weight of the gun. Above him, the construct loomed, its right arm beginning to take aim.

  Trevelyan swung around, ripping away the coat and tossing it aside, setting his feet and his teeth, hauling the barrel upright to bring the giant into its sights—

  “Gavin, no!” Maxwell shouted.

  —and slamming down a trigger that sent a sharp-tipped javelin hurtling toward the copper torso.

  In the one sense, it was an immensely successful field test, for the javelin did in fact pierce the copper hide. The left knee joint buckled with a horrible squeal of wrenched metal, and the copper giant slid slowly sideways, falling to one knee like a wounded man, pulled still farther into helplessness by the weight of the cannon that was its left arm. Trevelyan, cursing at his aim, shifted the barrel of the gun to the falling chest.

  The construct’s right arm swept down in an arc, shooting as it went, transfixing Trevelyan with a hail of bullets. The impact lifted him off his feet, then flung him aside like a ragdoll. He lost his grip on the rail-gun and it slid from his shoulder, flying wide as he hit the wall and then the ground.

  Katarina had not screamed. The scream that echoed in Elizabeth’s ear was her own. Katarina made no sound as she ran toward the construct, shooting with the little pistol. Useless, Elizabeth thought numbly. The bullets clinked against the copper hide like pebbles. She could accomplish nothing that way—
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  Nothing save the turning of the great blue-eyed head in her direction. The right arm moved as well, jerkily, trying to fix its aim. Suddenly William was gone from Elizabeth’s side. She looked for him wildly, saw Katarina zigzagging through the alleyway, saw Maxwell and William take advantage of the distraction to seize Trevelyan’s body and drag it backward. The construct’s head turned back to them as they scuttled into the shadows, and Katarina darted for the rail-gun.

  She got no closer than a step before the construct’s bullets ran her through. She dropped to the ground all in a heap, a marionette with cut strings, and the shadows seemed to swallow her whole.

  Elizabeth was unsure if Trevelyan knew. He seemed to be focused elsewhere, his glazing eyes studying something over Maxwell’s shoulder as the older man ripped open his soaked red shirt. “Poetic...justice,” Trevelyan said to Maxwell, the words coming clumsily around the blood in his mouth. One corner of his thin lips twitched, turning upward in what might have been a smile. “Quite a...Celtic...” And then, with one last burst of energy and bad temper, “Never mind...me, y’fool...run.”

  Maxwell jumped to his feet, grabbing Elizabeth’s arm with one bloodstained hand and hauling her with him, pushing her in front of him and tugging at William, shoving them down the alleyway and away from the crippled metal giant. Elizabeth ran on numb feet, painful blocks of ice that tripped over her skirt with every step.

  “Water,” Maxwell gasped as they rounded the corner. “River. Quick. This way—”

  The ground shook with thunder that was not thunder. The sky shook with lightning that was not lightning. The streets and buildings seemed to tilt in Elizabeth’s blurred vision, something out of a kaleidoscope or a nightmare. Somewhere far away, Big Ben tolled out the hour with ominous precision: one, two, three.

  They turned left on the next cross-street, heading back toward the docks, toward the river, toward escape. They were more than halfway when an enormous copper body took a sideways stomping step to block the exit. It loomed implacably before them, black against the blue-white sky.

  Maxwell stumbled backward, backing into Elizabeth and almost tripping them both—and then all the alleyway’s shadows blinked out of existence under a bright shaft of blue light. “Halt!” the construct boomed.

  Behind them came the sound of running feet. Not stomping feet, not a construct. Men’s feet, many of them, pounding on the cobblestones. A voice raised in a shout over the pounding, snapping orders. Elizabeth looked over her shoulder in time to see three uniformed and helmeted figures block the other end of the alleyway.

  Maxwell reached over and yanked the pocket watch out of William’s waistcoat.

  “Show your hands!” the construct commanded.

  “Wait—” Elizabeth said.

  Maxwell caught hold of her reaching arm with his left hand, eyes fixed on the pocket watch in his right. He pressed the top stem twice and the side stem once—a warning shot from one of the helmeted men sailed past them—and he pushed her away from him, hard. She collided with William and they both fell toward the wall, the pocket watch sailing out of Maxwell’s hand and swinging from its fob at William’s waist.

  “Keep her safe!” Maxwell said. The world flickered around them. The helmeted men brought their rifles to bear and Maxwell snatched his own watch from his waistcoat pocket.

  Elizabeth’s last sight of 1885 was Maxwell fumbling with the dials as men rushed him from one direction and the construct leveled its right arm from the other. Then the world went rainbowy and dark and bright, and she and William landed in a tangle of limbs at the base of a serenely blossoming apple tree in the orderly orchard of his father’s estate.

  Chapter 14

  Hartwich, Kent, June 17, 1815

  He had been falling into a crate. He had felt the sharp corner of it against his leg, felt his knee strike it and buckle even as he tried to support Elizabeth’s weight and keep her upright. Then the splintery prickle was gone, and he landed sprawled flat on his back on soft earth, and the air all around him was warm and calm and sweet with the scent of apple blossoms.

  His left hand still gripped her arm, and his collapse brought her falling with him, on top of him. For one moment she was all he could see—his entire universe was made up of her dilated eyes and wild brown curls. Some of the water on her face might have been tears. He wasn’t sure which of them was gasping. Both, he decided after a moment.

  Water droplets bunched on the ends of her curls and fell onto his face, and he would have reeled back from the icy shock of it if he had not already been prone. He was desperately cold, he realized suddenly, fingers numb and teeth chattering, and he could feel shivers running through the length of Elizabeth’s body.

  Because she was still on top of him. And although propriety was far from foremost on William’s mind at the moment, there still seemed like a number of good reasons why he ought to correct that situation before doing anything else. He shifted his grip so that he was holding her off rather than pulling her close, and eased them both into a sitting position. She went with him, pliant and shuddering. The blue sky above the apple tree tilted around them for a moment, and he didn’t let go until it steadied itself and he was sure they would both stay upright.

  “Elizabeth?” he started to say, taking his hand from her shoulder so that he could use it for something else—bracing himself, or possibly touching her face, he hadn’t quite decided—but her name died in his throat when he saw the red smudges he had left on her white gown.

  Because his palm was slick with Gavin Trevelyan’s blood.

  There was no reason for him to want to vomit. He had been a soldier; he’d had blood on his hands before. He turned his head sharply to one side, closing his eyes against the renewed dizziness, swallowing so hard he thought he would choke. He had to break off the swallow to breathe, but none of the rising bile escaped his throat.

  The darkness behind his eyelids seemed full of lashing blue lightning and pumping red blood. He wrenched his eyes open, to the sight of white blossoms, and made himself turn back to her. Made himself look at her face, not at her shoulder or at his own hand. “Elizabeth?” he said again, and counted himself lucky it came out in a croak rather than a gasp.

  She looked at him, but her eyes had an unfocused quality. She was shivering as though she had been drenched in ice water, and so was he—and that wasn’t right, he thought. Yes, they were both soaked to the skin, but the air around them was mild, there should be no reason for such desperate, convulsive shuddering—What was it you were supposed to do? Brandy and warm blankets? He didn’t have either. He unbuttoned his coat and tried to shrug it off one-handed. It was as soaked as her gown, but it was of a heavier material, so perhaps it would help a little. He couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  He got the thing off finally, and reached to put it around her shoulders. She put a shaking hand to her throat, holding the collar closed. He couldn’t tell where his shivers left off and hers began.

  “Did he get out?” she whispered. “Did you see?”

  William hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “We left before he did.”

  “They killed him.”

  “Elizabeth...”

  “They must have. They were all around him—how could he have possibly—” She shuddered hard. “Because of me. Because I was in his way.”

  “No,” William said. “Because they were fighting a war, because they were doing something dangerous, because their plan went awry. It wasn’t a different plan because we were there. We didn’t draw the construct’s attention or choose the route to the river or tell Trevelyan to fire—”

  “He sent us home before he escaped himself,” she said. “He told you to keep me safe. It was because of me. Not Madam Katherine or Mr. Trevelyan, but Mr. Maxwell—” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  William could see Katarina as clearly as if she had been there in the orchard—freezing in her scramble for the rail-gun, dropping in a heap of limbs. He could see Trevelyan, ey
es glazing over as his blood pumped between Maxwell’s fingers. He could see Maxwell, looking every way at once at the men who surrounded him as he—

  William cut off the unhelpful sequence of thoughts right there.

  “Come,” he said to Elizabeth, “come with me, come to the brook. A drink of water will help.” Hot tea and some blankets would help more, but he didn’t want to risk going home or to Westerfield yet. He got very awkwardly to his feet, barely managing minimal assistance as she got to hers. Once they were both upright, he offered her his arm, and she took it. He drew her down the path.

  “Did it hurt terribly, when you were wounded?” she asked.