“I’d feel like it came just in the nick of time. Because if I have to spend one more day in this prison I might swallow my own tongue just to relieve the tedium.”
“That won’t do,” he said. Rebecca stifled a chuckle. The effort shook loose the errant lock. Anastasia wondered how it would feel between her teeth. Riordan nodded at the nurse—sparing a moment to frown at her dishevelment—and took a pen from her tray.
“Machine. Come here,” he said. A servitor crossed the room quickly enough to flutter the curtains. Its carapace had the bruise-purple sheen of Corinthian bronze. Rebecca plucked a small semicircular cutting tool from her cart and held it toward the machine. This Clakker had been modified for surgical work; the tool clicked into place, mating with the port in the center of its palm. Its forearm echoed with a series of clicks and pings as internal mechanisms ratcheted into place. Meanwhile, with still more exasperating deliberation, Riordan drew threads of cobalt ink along the casts. Up and down her left arm, then around her right arm, which had taken twin compound fractures above and below the elbow, then along her legs, which had been crackled like shattered porcelain when the hunters found her.
Finally, he capped the pen, set it back on the tray, and rubbed his hands. A bead of sweat took root at the hollow of his temple. She could read his concerns easily as a newspaper: What would come of him if this went awry? Would his retirement be as abrupt as Doctor Huysman’s?
She hoped Rebecca wouldn’t notice his anxiety. Partially to distract the nurse, but mostly because she couldn’t stand it any longer, Anastasia said, “Please cut these accursed things off now. I intend to spend a week scratching itches.”
“Machine,” said the doctor, “remove those casts.”
A low whine enveloped the blade affixed to the Clakker’s hand. Rebecca and Riordan stood aside. The serrations vibrated into transparency. The medical servitor leaned over Anastasia and pressed the whirring blade to the ink at her ankle. The whine jumped several octaves. Fine white dust spewed from the contact point, smelling faintly of dry plaster. The blade tickled the hairs on her leg, touching but not cutting her flesh. But she didn’t flinch, and the Clakker worked with the rapid inhuman precision of its kind. It completed an incision up and down the length of her limb before friction had a chance to warm the blade.
Riordan and Rebecca gripped the bisected cast with a pair of spreaders, separated the plaster shells, and gently laid her unsuspended leg upon the bed. For the first time in weeks, Anastasia saw her own skin. It had never been so hairy. It was deathly pale, too, though mostly from a sifting of plaster dust.
And then the smell hit her.
The odor of unwashed skin billowed from her body. It wasn’t something easily overlooked. The miasma watered Anastasia’s eyes. So did the humiliation. Why must Rebecca be here? Why must she smell my shame?
She flicked a sidelong glance at the nurse and doctor. Both wore a stony expression. They’d smelled worse, no doubt, and had known what to expect. Knowing this didn’t lessen the indignity.
Anastasia closed her eyes. The machine leaned over her again, the blade whined, a creak and crack, and then fresh cool air touched her naked arm. The stench worsened. She kept her eyes closed to keep from crying while the Clakker removed the casts on her other arm and leg.
She’d fantasized about this moment. Now it had arrived, but she was disgusting and she reeked. She’d never want anybody to see her like this, much less Rebecca. No amount of charm, no flirting, could overcome the mental image surely burned into the nurse’s mind now.
Doctor Riordan stepped out to preserve Anastasia’s modesty while Rebecca and the medical Clakker unwrapped the bandages around her torso. The smell didn’t get any worse, but it also didn’t improve. But at least her ribs no longer crackled like a bonfire, and she could breathe easily without blinding pain piercing her through.
Riordan returned. He said, “How do you feel?”
She forced herself to meet their eyes.
“I want to take a bath,” she said, in a voice that couldn’t possibly have been her own. Her voice hadn’t been so small since she was a girl poling punts along the rustic canals of Giethoorn.
“Don’t take too long,” said the nurse. “I have plans for a walk in the gardens this afternoon.”
She smiled again. Somehow this, too, was genuine.
The Clakker returned bearing a pair of canes. Riordan said, “You’re weaker than you think. Let’s make certain you won’t re-break your arms and legs, eh?”
Physical therapy, Anastasia decided, was a mild form of torture. And she knew a thing or two about torture.
But, after the pain came luxuriating in a steamy lavender-scented bath. She dashed off a few sketches in colored pencil and dispatched a servitor on a shopping mission; it carried a long list of her current measurements (most of the better shops in The Hague had her on file, but weeks of forced indolence had done her body no favors) and detailed descriptions of her new apparel. Next she shaved herself, and scrubbed her skin until it tingled and the gray pallor became a pink glow. Then, after ordering another Clakker to replenish her bath with fresh water, she shampooed her hair twice while steam again filled the washroom. When she stood—unsteadily, with a mechanical hovering just inches away and ready to blur into action should she fall—and wiped the condensation from the mirror, she didn’t recognize herself. Her face was somehow both rounder and yet more gaunt than it had been before she’d sailed to the New World to question the French spy. But she brushed her hair and teeth, and spritzed herself with more lavender oil, and soon the servitor arrived bearing her first new clothes in months.
The haberdasher, milliner, cordwainer, and dressmaker (or, rather, their Clakkers, which had crafted the clothing in less than an hour) had met Anastasia’s every specification. The fit wasn’t ideal, as she hadn’t been present for final fittings, and but it was suitable. The boots squeezed her feet and would have to go to a cobbler, but not today—they were essential. Her sartorial tastes were very particular. She’d devoted days of thought to what she’d wear and how she’d wear it. Every fold.
The bandages swaddling her left hand made it almost impossible to grip things, much less work buttons and hooks. And the shards of glass embedded in her flesh still caused her to wince when she flexed her palm. So she emerged from the steamy bath like a newborn, without shame or self-consciousness, and let the machines dress her.
To the blank canvas of her body they applied crimson silk undergarments; black stockings; a dark gray woolen blouse with burgundy piping; a velvet skirt of matching burgundy that reached just below her knees; low-heeled boots of supple gray leather that reached just below the skirt hem; elbow-length gloves and a belt of the same leather; a black choker ribbon at her throat threaded with silver and adorned with a polished garnet; and matching garnet earrings. Silver buckles on the boot cuffs glinted to match the buckle on her belt and what she hoped would be an impish sparkle in her eyes. She put her hair up, and used an extra handful of pins to keep the milliner’s work in place. A cartwheel hat girded with a burgundy ribbon, it rested on her crown at an angle just on the flirty side of careless. For fending off the damp late-winter chill she donned a long cashmere cape lined with crown sable fur. She didn’t remove the detachable hood because it slouched between her shoulder blades with just the right air of insouciance.
She could have done better had she been able to inspect the fabrics herself, but it wasn’t bad for a woman who’d almost died on the primitive outskirts of a distant colony. In the old days she would have slimmed herself with a corset, but the belt was bad enough. Despite the alchemical bandages, the slightest tug caused her ribs to groan like rusty hinges.
It wasn’t until she was ready to go, and making final adjustments before the mirror, when the collywobbles punched her in the stomach. Anastasia doubled over, gasping at the stab of protest from her ribs, momentarily worried she might sick up. She hadn’t felt such delicious anxiety since her first kiss, and maybe not even the
n. It was the same giddy trepidation she’d felt on her nineteenth birthday, the day Anastasia Bell stepped within the Ridderzaal to formally begin her apprenticeship within the Guild.
Rebecca met her in the south vestibule, a humble tweed cloak slung over her uniform. She’d return to work after their walk. Her eyes widened.
“Goodness,” she said. “I barely recognize you. You’ve cast off your plaster chrysalis and become a butterfly. And what wings you have!”
“What, these old rags?” The effort to suppress a moon-eyed grin made Anastasia’s cheeks ache. “I couldn’t resist treating myself just a little bit.”
“I hadn’t realized a walk in the gardens could be…” The nurse examined herself. “I’m underdressed, I fear.”
“Nonsense. You’re exquisite.”
Rebecca blushed. With a quick glance over her shoulder to ensure none of the doctors or the head nurse would see, she reached under the brim of her cap and pulled loose a single long curl. It bobbed beside her temple. Anastasia’s heart hurried to match its rhythm.
“Shall we?”
A medical servitor shadowed the pair, ready to leap forward should Anastasia stumble, but per her command it lagged several spring-loaded paces behind. She exaggerated her frailty; it gave her an excuse to take the nurse’s arm, to lean close and catch a whiff of her scent.
The south vestibule opened on the hospital’s own garden, which was small but abutted the Paviljoensgracht, the old Pavilions Canal, directly across from the winter gardens. A persistent sea breeze sent patchy clouds scudding through a sky unusually bright for late winter. A shifting patchwork of shadows mottled the gardens. Gravel crunched underfoot. Sounds of the city enveloped them: the rumble of traffic, the tolling of church bells, the lapping of water in the canals, the creak of oars and oarlocks, the cumulative clatter of ten thousand clockwork men dedicated to their owners’ every whim. It must have been a race day, for the din of raised voices was audible even here, kilometers from the Sheveningen beaches.
The Hague smelled far better than New Amsterdam: there they still relied almost exclusively upon draft animals to pull carts, yet mechanical labor wasn’t plentiful enough to ensure the immediate removal of their leavings. In time that might have changed, but then a French agent and rogue Clakker together infiltrated the New Amsterdam Forge and destroyed it.
They strolled arm-in-arm past low hawthorn hedges and winter-bare rosebushes. The cold damp elicited a throb from Anastasia’s bandaged hand. Each woman kept to herself as if waiting for the other to begin. The silence, broken only by the mechanical rattle of the servitor and the keening of seagulls, stretched like cheap wool. Anastasia ransacked her conversational cupboard but found it bare as the rosebushes. She chewed her lip to stave off a twinge of panic. Such anticipation, only to find herself bashful as a schoolgirl? Had her injuries changed her more than she knew?
Rebecca proved the more courageous. “Did we forget to remove the cast on your tongue?”
Caught off guard, but also relieved, Anastasia laughed like an uncouth fishwife. “I’m filing a malpractice suit this afternoon.”
Ice broken, conversation came easier after that. They turned east, toward the canal.
Rebecca pointed to a hansom weaving through traffic on the Torenstraat. The steel rims on its wheels struck sparks from the paving stones. The servitor pulling it moved so quickly its legs were almost invisible.
She said, “He’s in quite a hurry, isn’t he?”
The taxi fishtailed onto the hospital’s horseshoe drive. It sent a fine spray of gravel pattering like hail against the windows when the servitor brought the carriage skidding to a halt.
“Ambulance chaser,” said Anastasia, worried a medical emergency might cut short their visit. “Probably keen to represent my malpractice suit.”
The driver dashed around the hansom and opened the door. A man leapt from the cab and disappeared inside the hospital. He passed too quickly for Anastasia to be certain, but he looked familiar. She tensed. But Rebecca shrugged at her, and her smile dispelled the unease. They resumed their walk. The din of the city swelled; the races out at Sheveningen Pier must have been quite exciting.
“Have you younger siblings, Rebecca? Taking care of others is a second nature to you, I think.”
“Now who told you that?”
Anastasia told her the truth. “Nobody. But I’m quite good at reading people.”
“I do have—”
Behind them, the door to the south vestibule banged open. “Tuinier! Tuinier Bell!”
Anastasia froze. Oh, no. Please, don’t do this to me.
“Goodness!” Rebecca turned for the source of the commotion. Anastasia did likewise, one eye on the man running toward them and the other on the nurse, hoping beyond all reason that he’d shut up before she realized what he was saying.
“Anastasia Bell!” he called across the gardens. “Wait, please! I must speak with you at once!”
The medical servitor sprang forward. It landed lightly beside them and said, “Please pardon the intrusion, mistress. I believe that gentleman wishes a word with you. It appears to be a matter of some urgency. Shall I convey you to him?”
No. No, no, no, not now!
The man from the taxi jogged closer. She recognized him from her offices in the Ridderzaal: Malcolm, a fellow Verderer. She craned her neck to look at the hansom again, but couldn’t see the door. “Tuinier Bell!” he cried. “Tuinier Bell, wait!”
Anastasia groaned. Shut up, you fool.
The muscles in Rebecca’s forearm tensed. “That man. He’s calling you, ‘Tuinier.’”
Anastasia closed her eyes. Damn it. “Yes. He is.”
“Oh. I…” Rebecca’s gaze flicked back and forth, never meeting Anastasia’s eyes, as though she were a cornered rabbit and Anastasia a fox. “I knew you’re a Guildwoman, of course. Because of your injuries. I mean the glass—I mean, I haven’t seen it, but your hand, I haven’t pried, honestly, but after Doctor Huysman went away… But you didn’t seem—Oh! I mean, I didn’t realize… the Verderers…”
The Verderer’s Office: that special arm of the Sacred Guild of Horologists and Alchemists charged with protecting the Clockmakers’ secrets, and thus by extension the de facto secret police for the Dutch Empire. True or not, everybody had heard dread tales of the Verderers’ clockwork centaurs, the Stemwinders, and their human masters. The tales never emphasized the Verderers’ role in perpetuating the Dutch Golden Age; only dark rumors of what that entailed. The Verderers safeguarded the walled garden of Guild secrets, ensuring nothing entered that didn’t belong—not the tiniest aphid—as well as eradicating any shoots that might poke past the walls. The Tuinier was the chief gardener.
Anastasia sighed. Searching Rebecca’s face, she confessed. “Yes. I command the Stemwinders.”
And… there it went. Like a feat of emotional alchemy, that four-word incantation transmuted flirtatious attraction to quiet fear. It extinguished the coquettish sparkle in the nurse’s eyes. In its stead came the flat, fragile glassiness that always materialized when somebody took a tight rein on her thoughts and words. Anastasia had seen it a hundred times.
“I’m still your patient. I’m still the Anastasia Bell you’ve come to know. And, I hope, like,” she said, loathing the desperation in her voice.
“Of course. And I’m still dedicated to your full recovery,” said the nurse. She didn’t shrug off Anastasia’s hand, but the shift in her posture turned their contact from something intimate to something professional. “I’m sure you have extremely important duties. You’ll be able to resume them soon.”
Malcolm slipped in the gravel on his wild flight to join them. The medical servitor streaked forward to catch him before he went sprawling. The gravel kicked up by his shoes pattered against the Clakker’s carapace with a clatter like sleet against a tile roof. Anastasia shook her head.
“I’ll be resuming them imminently, I fear.”
Rebecca stiffened. She tried to suppress it,
but Anastasia could feel the tremble in her arm. She stroked the nurse’s hand as though trying to calm a frightened horse. “Don’t fret. This is nothing to do with you.”
She smiled, too, but the other woman wouldn’t look at her. Anastasia stooped—ignoring the twinge from her ribs—to intercept the gaze Rebecca now cast at her own feet. No help there; she reacted as though Anastasia had bared her teeth. Sighing again, she released the nurse’s arm and turned to the approaching Malcolm.
Well, I’m sleeping alone tonight no matter what. The calf has already drowned; no point filling the well. No point any longer in trying to convince her I’m a nice person.
Such was the price a woman paid for the privilege of defending the Empire. It was a crucial post, but lonely.
Malcolm joined them, panting. He propped his hands on his knees to catch his breath. His Guild insignia, an onyx pendant inlaid with a cross of rose quartz flanked by a small golden ‘V’, swung from his neck like a pendulum. Rebecca wrestled with the urge to flee the impromptu gathering of secret police. Her shoes etched furrows in the garden path.
The newcomer said, “Tun—”
“I don’t care how urgent you think your business is. You’ve already destroyed what had promised to be a very special day for me. One I’d anticipated with no small amount of excitement. So I assure you that if the next words out of your mouth are anything other than, ‘Tuinier, it’s the end of the world,’ I’ll have the Stemwinders twist your fucking head off and toss it in the Spui for fish food.”
Rebecca gave a mousy squeak. She’d excavated all the gravel underfoot; the muddy furrow smelled faintly of shit.
Anastasia said to her, “I’m so sorry you had to hear that. I apologize for my language. I’m usually not so coarse. Truly, I’m not. Please don’t think less of me.”
Why do I still plead for her affection? She thinks I’m the devil incarnate.
Malcolm blinked. His lips moved, like a goldfish blowing bubbles. Anastasia gave him a closer look. The dash across the gardens had left him flushed, his fading pink cheeks at odds with the rest of him, which had gone pale. His pupils were dilated.
The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) Page 42