Gavin didn’t respond to this. Any number of things could go wrong. The worst was that Ma or Gramps might be dead. Or Ma might be angry with him for not writing in so long, or for not sending money. Or worse, she might just be disappointed.
They reached the fourth floor, and Gavin automatically turned right, just as he had done every day when he was a child, though the hallway was narrower than he remembered. The only light came from a high paper-covered window at the end of the hall. The place was scorching in summer and freezing in winter. Right now, in early autumn, it was tolerable, at least. He went to the first door, and for a moment he was six. He even had his fiddle with him.
“I haven’t been here in years,” he whispered. “Do I knock or just go in?”
“Oh good heavens.” Alice reached around him and rapped smartly on the wood.
“Who is it?” came a voice from inside. The familiarity of it stung Gavin’s eyes.
“Ma?” he said hoarsely. “I’m home.”
The door banged open. Carrie Ennock, a short, thin woman with work-reddened hands and graying brown hair pulled into a bun, popped into the hall. “Good God! My Gavin! It’s Gavin!”
She reached up with both hands to pull him down for a kiss, then hugged him hard. The top of her head barely came up to his chin.
“I knew you were coming. I knew it!” Her low voice was filled with emotion. “After that long note that everyone heard. It was you. I heard you. Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!”
“I’m here, Ma.” Gavin’s own eyes were wet. “I’m sorry I didn’t write. It got complicated.”
“You’re here. You’re safe. That’s all I care about.” She hugged him again. “You’re so tall now. A man.”
“I never noticed you were so short, Ma,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.
She tapped his chest with her hand. “That’s enough from you, young man. And who’s this?”
He stepped aside. “Ma, this is Alice, my fiancée. Alice, my mother, Carrie Ennock.”
“How do you do?” Alice extended her hand.
“Well, that’s wonderful!” Carrie shook Alice’s hand, then embraced her, too. “Alice. I have a daughter named Alice. But I’m being stupid. Come in! Come in! This is your home, after all.”
The little two-room flat was just as Gavin remembered it—cramped and bare and cold. Carrie kept it clean, but sewing was spread out everywhere. Clearly she was still doing piecework for seamstresses and tailors, and Gavin wondered about her eyesight.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
Carrie rushed about, clearing cloth off two ancient ladder-back chairs and offering one to Alice, who took it as if it were an easy chair in a high-class tearoom. She seemed not to notice the lack of light or heat or the cracks in the floorboards or the smoke streaks on the plaster, and for that Gavin was grateful.
“Well, let’s see,” Carrie said. “Jenny is with her Elmer, of course. They have two little ones now—Benjamin and Louise. You’re an uncle! Harry is . . . well, he’s out looking for work, I imagine.”
Drinking, Gavin mentally filled in.
“Patrick found work down at the docks, which is helpful, but he hasn’t found a girl yet.” Carrie picked up needle and thread and started sewing again, an automatic gesture. She had to sew, Gavin knew, until the sun went down. Even her wayward son’s return wasn’t reason to stop, since she was paid by the piece. “And Violet’s at the factory. She’ll be off in a few hours. We can all have dinner together!”
Gavin could see she was calculating how to feed two more people on whatever was—or wasn’t—in the little cupboards. He reached out and stilled her hands with his own.
“Ma,” he said, “you don’t have to do this anymore.”
“What do you mean, honey?” She pulled away and went back to sewing. “I’m nearly done with this piece, and I can just get in another before dark. And what have you been doing? Talk to me while I work.”
“I mean, Ma, that you don’t have to sew anymore. Or work. Or live here.”
Her needle never stopped moving. “How’s that?”
From his pocket, Gavin took a thick stack of bank notes. He laid it on the table where Carrie could see it. She glanced at it but kept sewing.
“What is it?”
“It’s yours, Ma,” he said.
“Just like your father,” she replied, still sewing.
At one time, that remark would have made him angry. Now he was just curious. “How so, Ma?”
“You vanish, and you think money makes it all right.”
“Did Dad ever send money?” Gavin asked, surprised.
“For a while. Then it stopped. Just like—well, it stopped.”
“I talked to him, Ma. I found him.”
Now she did stop sewing. “Gavin Eric Ennock, don’t you dare come back into my life with wild stories that—”
“It’s true, Ma. He’s alive. I found him. In China. He’s not coming back, but he wrote a letter that explains everything.” From his pocket he took a handkerchief and unwrapped the silver nightingale. “I don’t blame you for being angry at him, or at me. Not all of it was his fault or mine. Part of it was the clockwork plague, though the plague was more our fault—mankind’s fault—than we knew.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Carrie held the nightingale up to the light.
“It’s hard to describe. I’ll try, but after we’ve all had something to eat. At a nice hotel with a fine restaurant.”
“With that?” Carrie said, gesturing at the bank notes. “It’s a little hard to believe. Where did it come from?”
“I’m a baroness, Mrs. Ennock,” Alice put in. “And, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m quite wealthy. Filthy rich, I believe you Americans say, and I’ve given a portion of my fortune over to Gavin. That money is his quite legally, and he has a suite of rooms reserved for you and your family at the Revere House.”
“Oh!” Carrie looked overwhelmed. “I—I wouldn’t know how to behave at such a fancy place.”
“Mrs. Ennock.” Alice leaned forward to touch her hand conspiratorially. “When you have pots of money, no one cares one bit how you behave. It’s a lot of fun, believe me.”
At that, Carrie laughed. “All right, then. Please call me Ma. And I want to know how my son ended up with a baroness.”
“You’ll hear all about it,” Gavin said, relieved. “But Ma—what about Gramps? You didn’t mention him.”
Carrie hesitated, and Gavin’s heart jerked. “Your grandfather . . . isn’t quite the same, honey. He doesn’t eat much, and he sleeps a lot.”
“Where is he?”
“In the sleeping room. Go on, then.”
Gavin took up his fiddle and went into the back room. Alice followed. Just as he remembered, there were no beds, just narrow pallets of threadbare blankets on the floor. A narrow window let in grudging light. His grandfather lay on one of the pallets. His hair was all but gone, his skin deeply wrinkled and mottled, his eyes closed.
“Gramps?” Gavin knelt beside him. “Gramps, it’s me, Gavin. I’m back.”
At first Gramps didn’t move. Then he stirred slightly and his eyes opened. They were the same blue as Gavin’s, though filmy with age.
“Boy?” he said gruffly. “That you?”
Gavin took his hand. “I’m here, Gramps. I’m back.”
“Well, where the hell have you been all this time?”
Alice put a hand to her mouth to smother a laugh, and Gavin smiled. “It’s a long story, Gramps.”
“Don’t tell me now, boy. I don’t have time. Just do one thing for me, will you?”
“Anything, Gramps. You know that.”
“Play.”
Alice gave Gavin his fiddle. Carrie appeared in the doorway, holding the nightingale as Gavin tuned up. He sang:
I see the moon, the moon sees me.
It turns all the forest soft and silvery.
The moon picked you from all the rest,
For I loved you be
st.
Gramps gave Gavin a proud smile, exhaled once, and died.
* * *
They held the wedding a month later on the deck of the Lady of Liberty. Alice wore a white gown, which was still the rage for brides, and her spiders and whirligigs accompanied her down the aisle to the helm. Gavin awaited her in a new set of white leathers of his own, and he couldn’t stop smiling. Click flatly refused to carry the rings, though he did deign to sit on the generator and watch. The priest, hired from a local parish, seemed a bit overwhelmed at marrying a baroness aboard an airship high above the city, but he performed the ceremony without a hitch. Carrie Ennock, her hands no longer reddened with work, looked ready to burst with pride and happiness, and Gavin’s brothers and sisters cheered when Gavin lifted Alice’s veil to give her a long, lingering kiss.
They held a reception directly afterward, with a great deal of drinking and music from hired musicians. Gavin thought it strange to have music played for him instead of by him, but it was his wedding day, so nothing was likely to be normal.
After the sun went down and Alice’s whirligigs shuttled the guests back to the ground, they abruptly found themselves on an empty deck. The lights of Boston spread out below them like snowflakes scattered across velvet.
“Alone at last with my wife,” Gavin said, trying out the phrase.
“Alone at last with my husband,” she replied, doing the same.
“So why are we up here instead of in our stateroom?” He held out his arm to her. “Madam?”
She took it. “Sir.”
He paused to kiss her one more time. “I love you—”
“Always,” she finished. “Yes. Yes, indeed.”
They strolled below, and Gavin couldn’t stop himself singing. Alice joined in.
The moon picked you from all the rest,
For I loved you best.
AFTERWORD
Empress Dowager Cixi is one of the most enigmatic people in recent history. Strangely little is known about the woman who ruled China from behind a silk curtain in her son’s throne room. Historical accounts tend to portray her as either a scheming, murderous vixen out to rule an empire or as an intelligent, capable woman who rose to a difficult occasion. I rather think she was a little of both.
Most of the characters in my fictional China did exist, and they play fictional roles quite similar to the ones they played in history. General Su Shun did trot the young Emperor Xianfeng out to brothels and opium dens as part of a long-term scheme to take the throne for himself, and Cixi did have him beheaded for his trouble. Prince Kung advocated for a more open relationship with the West, though historically he completely failed. Bu Yeh was a dreadfully overweight man who was supposed to be a gatekeeper between China and the West but who actually hated foreigners. The Qilin is a powerful force in Chinese mythology. However, Lieutenant Li lives only in these pages, and the Passage of Silken Footsteps is, as far as I know, completely my own invention.
—Steven Harper
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Harper Piziks was born in Saginaw, Michigan, but he moved around a lot and has lived in Wisconsin, in Germany, and briefly in the Ukraine. Currently he lives with his three sons in southeast Michigan.
His novels include In the Company of Mind and Corporate Mentality, both science fiction published by Baen Books. He has produced the Silent Empire series for Roc and Writing the Paranormal Novel for Writer’s Digest. He’s also written novels based on Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and The Ghost Whisperer.
Mr. Piziks currently teaches high school English in southeast Michigan. His students think he’s hysterical, which isn’t the same as thinking he’s hilarious. When not writing, he plays the folk harp, dabbles in oral storytelling, and spends more time online than is probably good for him. Visit his Web page at www.theclockworkempire.com, and his Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/stevenpiziks.
Read on for an exciting excerpt from
Steven Harper’s next Clockwork Empire novel,
THE HAVOC MACHINE
Coming in May 2013 from Roc
Thaddeus Sharpe loosened his brown leather jacket and shoved his way into the low-beamed tavern. A fire glowed like a captured demon in the long ceramic stove, and the smoky air wrapped itself around him in a stifling blanket. At long tables, men in long shirts and blousy trousers clanked glasses of vodka and thumped mugs of gira, the fermented drink made from rye bread and favored by Lithuanian peasants. A heavy smell of sweat mixed with the sharp tint of vodka and the earthy slop of gira. The autumn evening was already well under way, and the red-faced men shouted more than they talked. Candles in cracked saucers stood upright on the tables to provide light. Dante cocked his good eye at the room and clacked his brass beak from his perch on Thad’s shoulder. Several of the men turned to stare at Thad when he blew in. He tensed and automatically felt for the long knife in his sleeve.
“Shut the damn door!” one of them barked in what Thad assumed was Lithuanian. Thanks to his mother, Thad spoke a number of Eastern European languages, and his father had liked to joke that once you learned three of them, the fourth came free. Thad slammed the door, and most of the men went back to their drinking. Two, however, continued to stare at him.
“Dummy, dummy, dummy,” Dante muttered in Thad’s ear. “Stare and stare, here and there.” He squawked.
“Shut it.” Thad’s jaw was set in a line. His dark hair curled beneath a workman’s cap and his face was free of facial hair, but there his resemblance to the men in the tavern ended. His lean build, long leather jacket, and stout boots made him stand out among the plain Lithuanian homespun. The ratty brass parrot on his shoulder didn’t help. Maybe he should duck out and look for a way in through the back.
The two men, both large and callused, got up from their long benches and strode across the sticky tavern floor before Thad could retreat. One of them loomed over Thad, his breath heavy with vodka.
“I have heard of your parrot,” he said in thick Lithuanian. “You are the man who kills clockworkers. Many, many clockworkers.”
The knife was already in Thad’s hand. “What of it?” he replied, his own accent heavy with British vowels. The blade gleamed silver in the candlelight, though neither man seemed to notice. Thad was already calculating—one slash at the throat to incapacitate the first man, shove him backward into the second man, flee into the street. Dante’s forged feathers creaked in his ear as the parrot tensed.
The man clapped Thad on the shoulder. “I will buy your first drink,” he boomed. “And my brother will buy your second. Bartender! Vodka and gira for our new friend!”
Moments later, Thaddeus found himself wedged in at one of the splintery trestle tables with a clay mug by his left hand and a shot glass at his right. A dish of salt and a loaf of dark rye bread sat in front of him. The men at the table raised their own mugs and glasses to Thad, drained them, and wiped their mustaches with their sleeves in one smooth motion.
“So. How many clockworkers have you killed?” asked the first man. His name was Arturas and his brother was Mykolas.
“I keep no count.” Thad raised his gira mug, tried a gulp, and suppressed a grimace. It was like drinking sour rye bread.
“Liar, liar, liar,” Dante croaked in his ear.
“Shut it,” Thad said, glad none of the men seemed to speak English.
“Who is this man, Arturas?” asked one of the other drinkers.
“This,” Arturas boomed in reply, “is the man who killed Erek the Terror outside Krakow and Vile Basia in the sewers of Prague. This is the man who killed countless monsters and saved a thousand lives. They say he walks the streets with a brass parrot on his shoulder and a cannon in his trousers.”
The men roared at that, and Thad, laughing but uncomfortable at the attention, raised his mug with an ironic grin.
“This man,” Mykolas added in conclusion, “is a hero!”
Arturas threw his free arm around Thad and clashed his glass against his brother’s. The other men, all ha
lf drunk, joined in, slopping gira and vodka onto the bread plate. Thad glanced about uneasily and pulled a small card from his coat pocket.
“What brings the mighty clockwork killer into a piss-hole like Bûsi Treèias?” Arturas demanded.
“Hey!” the bartender snapped.
Dante cocked his head and Thad glanced down at the card in his hand. In graceful script on one side was engraved:
On the back in black ink was scribbled 7.45 sharp, Bûsi Treèias. A ragged boy had handed him the card on the streets of Vilnius earlier this afternoon and fled before Thad could even react. Bûsi Treèias was the name of the tavern. It meant “You’ll be third,” and it was the name that made Thad uneasy, though not so uneasy that he avoided the meeting.
The name on the card was Sofiya Ivanova Ekk, a Russian woman’s name, and Russian women did not frequent taverns in the Polish-Lithuanian Union. Neither did Polish-Lithuanian women, for that matter. He thought about asking the men at the table if they knew Sofiya Ekk, but had the feeling that they might think he was inquiring after a prostitute or, worse, someone’s sister.
“I thought I might have business here,” he said in his heavy Lithuanian. “But I seem to have made new friends instead.”
That brought on another smashing together of mugs and more knocking back of vodka. Thad tried the latter this time, and it burned a fiery trail down to his stomach. Tears streamed from his eyes. He hastily snatched up some bread, dipped it in salt, and wolfed it down.
A glass of honest-to-god beer landed in front of him. Startled, Thad looked up. The balding bartender withdrew his hand and jerked his head toward a corner of the bar. A figure wrapped in scarlet sat in a shadow far away from the red-hot stove. Thad clapped Arturas on the shoulder and picked up his beer. “I seem to have business after all.”
Arturas and the other men didn’t seem to mind, though they watched him curiously as he picked his way across the crowded room with his beer.
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