Gavin doubled over, cackling and howling at the joke. Voices and faces swirled in a twisted rainbow around him. A slight stinging to his face told him he’d been slapped, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest. He laughed and laughed and then the world went black.
Sometime later, Gavin bolted awake. He always bolted awake. The attack by the pirate Madoc Blue and the lashing Gavin had endured afterward had destroyed peaceful sleep and gradual waking. By now, he had forgotten what it was to slip calmly out of slumber and greet the day without sweat on his forehead and his heart in his mouth. He sat up and found he was on the bed with his shoes off.
The sunlight had moved, and the car was dimmer. At the little table sat Nathan Storm, his sunset hair gleaming in the low light. The man was smoking a pipe, and the pungent tobacco smoke floated in a blue cloud near the ceiling. Everyone else was gone.
“Nice to see you among the living.” Nathan puffed gently.
“Where’s Alice?” Gavin asked.
“Exploring the midway. She slept and then wanted some air.” He drew on the pipe again. “That was interesting. You were cackling like…”
Gavin found his shoes on the floor and laced them on. “Like a lunatic? Yeah. Clockworkers are mad. You know that.”
“What’s it like?” Nathan said.
“It’s hard to describe.” Gavin sighed. “The plague shows me things, strange things, true things. I’m not insane. Not really.”
“You sounded pretty mad. You really hurt Dodd.”
Gavin winced. “Shit. Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Nathan.”
His pipe went out, and he tapped it into a bowl on the table. “You’re apologizing to the wrong person.”
“He and Felix aren’t—weren’t—really cousins, were they?”
That earned him a short bark of laughter. “You were young, weren’t you? They met in Hamburg when Felix was working some leaky old airship and Dodd was still winding spiders for Viktor Kalakos. They tried to stay together, meeting up in whatever large cities they could, but it just didn’t work. They did stay close friends. Dodd doesn’t have any other family, so he started calling him Cousin Felix, and it stuck.”
“And now you two…”
“Not ‘now,’ Gavin. For years. Since before Felix started bringing you to visit.”
“Right.” Gavin rubbed his face and remembered Simon, whose romantic tastes ran in the same direction. What were the chances? The corners of his mouth quirked, and he quickly ended that line of thought. “Even clockworkers can be stupid.”
“Damn right. You want something to eat? I’ve got beans and bread here, unless you’d fancy a candyfloss.”
At the mention of food, Gavin’s stomach growled, and he went light-headed. “How long was I… away?”
“All the way through the first show. The second starts in a few minutes.”
Nathan brought him a plate at the bed as if he were an invalid, but Gavin got up and ate at the table. He felt perfectly fine, except for the hunger.
“Where’s Dodd?” he asked around a mouthful.
Nathan looked surprised. “Dodd’s in the ring. The show must go on. If you’re done eating, let’s go find your two friends so you can tell me what you’re really here for. I don’t think you hid in the parade just to have an excuse to deliver bad news.”
Outside, afternoon was fading into evening. The Tilt and the tents cast canted shadows over brightly painted wagons. Gavin knew from his previous visits that the wealthier performers lived in the wagons, which were rolled into the train’s boxcars when circus left town. Poorer performers lived in tents. Other tents housed the sideshow exhibits and the animal cages. Smells of fried food and cooking sugar mingled with calliope music. Men, women, and children wandered about. A few stood in line outside the main entrance of the Tilt, handing over their tickets so they could file inside to find seats as the clock automaton shouted in French that the show would begin in one minute. The performers were out of sight behind the Tilt, awaiting cues and entries.
“There you are!” Alice threw her arms around his neck in a near choke hold and kissed him. “You scared the life out of me. Us.”
“I’m sorry. I need to apologize to Dodd.”
“You must wait,” Feng said. “The performance will begin soon. Mr. Storm, could we go into the main tent? We should not be out in the open in case Phipps has tracked us here.”
Nathan nodded and took them past the ticket taker into the Tilt. Inside, tall rows of bleachers were bent around a wide red ring, and chatting, laughing people filled most of the spaces. Sawdust lay scattered on the ground. Food sellers moved among them with trays of rich-smelling roasted peanuts and pink cotton candy. Off to one side, the automaton played its calliope. Just as the group arrived on one side of the ring, the tent flaps on the opposite side exploded open and Dodd strode into the Tilt. He had his red hat back, and his silver-topped cane waved in time to the music. Behind him came the mechanical elephant, its feet thudding unevenly on the packed earthen floor. The mahout looked a little seasick at the uneven footsteps. Then came a rainbow explosion of clowns and a group of horses, both live and mechanical, accompanied by slender girls in white feathered dresses, and behind them came acrobats in tight red shirts. A trainer led a lion on a leash and made it roar. For the hell of it, Gavin snatched the recording nightingale from his pocket and pressed the left eye just as the trainer made the lion roar a second time. Then he held the nightingale to his ear and pressed the right eye. It opened its beak and roared like a little lion, which made the real lion look around, startled. Alice shot him a hard look. Oops. He hadn’t realized it would be so loud. Gavin stuffed the nightingale into his pocket and looked innocent. The parade, a smaller one than the one in town, stomped round the ring and stormed out to cheers and applause from the audience while Dodd went into the center and leaped onto a small platform with stars on it.
“Bienvenue,” he said, “au le Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles!”
The audience, pleased that Dodd spoke their language, burst into more applause just as a troupe of clowns somersaulted into the ring. Dodd got out of the way, and the show began in earnest. He caught sight of Nathan and his entourage lurking at the edge of the bleachers and trotted over.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said before he could speak. “We clockworkers do stupid things sometimes. It’s not an excuse, just an explanation. I’m sorry.”
Dodd nodded. “You’re my last link to Felix, Gavin. I can’t be angry with you.”
“I need help, Dodd,” Gavin told him. The audience laughed. “And only you can give it.”
The ringmaster looked wary. “How?”
In the ring, a clown pedaled around on a unicycle with a bucket of whitewash, which he threatened to toss over the audience. Gavin swallowed, suddenly nervous. Dodd was part of the idea he’d gotten earlier, when Glenda was chasing them with the mechanical. He hadn’t had time to think about it further since the chase had started, and now that everything had slowed down, the day’s events were catching up with him. He glanced at Alice. She and Feng were counting on him. If Dodd refused to help, they’d be in serious trouble.
“We found out that plague cures have been invented or discovered more than once,” Gavin said, “but England and China have suppressed them. English cures were never able to cure clockworkers, only regular victims, but the Chinese ambassador told us the Dragon Men—Chinese clockworkers—might have a full cure.”
The clown flung his bucket, but turned it aside at the last moment. The audience whooped at him, half laughing, half fearful.
“So you need to get to China,” Dodd said. “I’m sorry, Gavin. We aren’t going to China.”
Gavin shook his head. “We don’t need to go that far. I have an airship, but she’s easy to spot and track. It’s how Phipps and the others followed us to Luxembourg. We need to lose them and earn enough money to fuel the ship for a flight to Peking.”
“What’s that to do with me?”
“The circus is a perfect cover,” Gavin blurted out. “You’re heading east. I can hide the ship on the train, and we can hide among you, do some work to earn money. Once we get far enough along, we’ll leave.”
“Oh, Gavin—I don’t know,” Dodd said. “I like you. Hell, you’re almost like a little brother to me. But the coppers already give us the hairy eye when we come to town.”
Feng muttered something in Chinese that sounded like a swear word, and Gavin’s heart sank. The clown drew his bucket back one more time. “Phipps has no real jurisdiction outside England,” Gavin said, still trying.
“Doesn’t seem to stop her. And I don’t know that I have any paying work for you. Look, I want to help, but—”
“How long has that elephant been lurching like that?” Alice interrupted. The clown threw the bucket’s contents, but all that came out was confetti. The audience laughed and cheered.
“What?” Dodd said. “Uh… two months, perhaps three. We bought it from a clockworker several years ago, but it seems to be breaking down. No one knows how to fix it.”
“Is that so?” Alice said.
Interlude
“I was that close, Lieutenant,” Glenda fretted. “I practically had them in my hands.”
“So did I,” Phipps reminded her. “And I am not worried. There are only so many places they can run to, and Alice is on a mission.”
“What do you mean?” Simon asked. Once again, they were in a hotel room, though this one was rather better than the previous one. Clean, airy, with fresh linens on the beds and flowers on the nightstand, and a water closet on every floor. Once again, Glenda perched on a chair, Simon sprawled on the bed, and Phipps paced the floor.
“Haven’t you been listening to the talk on the street? She’s curing people, one by one, with that gauntlet of hers.” Phipps unconsciously flexed her own brass hand. “They break local laws about entering houses of plague, Gavin Ennock sings, Alice Michaels scratches people with that ‘sword’ of hers, and people call them angels for breaking the law.”
“They managed to hide the airship,” Glenda growled. “There’s been no sign of the thing.”
“There’s also been no sign of Dr. Clef since the affair at the greenhouse,” Simon put in. “That worries me a little.”
“It worries me, too,” Phipps admitted. “Though it may mean he has died.”
Glenda muttered, “Life is never so easy.”
“You do have a point.” Phipps sighed. “We must operate on the assumption that Dr. Clef is still alive and very dangerous. The trouble is, we’ve been underestimating them. All of them. Gavin is a clockworker, with all a clockworker’s requisite cunning.”
“And madness.” Glenda poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher on the table. “I’ll wager Alice is enjoying herself. At any rate, we’ll never find them at hotels now. They’re going to be wary of public houses. Unfortunately, they could hide any number of other places, including the homes of grateful plague victims.”
Already the pieces were falling together. Strategy and planning, three and four steps ahead. If this happens, then that. If that happens, then this. Though it was difficult to think through the anger—and the fear. She wasn’t afraid of what Gavin and Dr. Clef might do—not really. She was afraid of failing and earning that tiny shake of her father’s head, the one that tormented her every night when she went to bed.
Phipps drummed metal fingers on the windowsill, as was fast becoming her habit. Was she doing the right thing? The just thing? Was she pursuing Gavin and Alice and Dr. Clef out of true justice, or because her father—
No. She couldn’t afford doubt now. Aloud, she said, “The smart thing would be for them to hide, true, but they won’t do the smart thing. I repeat to you: Alice is on a mission, and she can’t accomplish it in hiding. That’s how we’ll get her.”
“You mean to set up an ambush,” Simon said.
“Absolutely. I believe now is also the time to visit the gendarmes and cash in some Crown influence. They can search the city while we set a trap at the appropriate place.”
“What’s the appropriate place?” Glenda asked.
“At the highest concentration of plague victims, of course.” Phipps gave a grim smile. “I want to run a check on the mechanicals first thing in the morning. And then we’re going to shop for bread and wine.”
Chapter Five
Alice shut the huge access panel on the elephant’s left side and set the spanner on the workbench with a clank. Grease stained her face and blouse. The Tilt felt big and empty now, with its rows of vacant bleachers and high canvas roof. All the sawdust was trampled into the ground, and the bleacher rows were littered with dead peanut bags. Dodd stood nearby, watching closely, while Gavin and Feng occupied front-row bleachers.
“That was fascinating,” Alice said. “I even made some improvements on the memory wheels and increased the visual acuity.”
“Meaning what?” Dodd asked.
“It doesn’t necessarily need a rider. Look.” With a sidelong glance at Gavin and a certain amount of pride, she gestured at the big brass elephant, which came smoothly to its feet and plodded steadily around the ring, hissing and puffing steam. Alice gestured again, and it stopped. She felt like a sorceress who had conjured a steaming elemental from the depths of the earth.
Gavin applauded, and Alice turned a little pink. She had to admit that she had done this in no small part to impress him. After everything he had done this morning—rescuing her from Phipps, getting them away from Simon’s mechanical, and ingeniously hiding them in a circus—she felt a need to impress him.
“All right,” Dodd said. “We have a deal.”
“So you’ll take us with you?” Gavin said. Alice made the elephant sit like an enormous dog. This was fun.
“Absolutely,” Dodd said. “We haven’t had anyone who can service the machines in a long time. That’s why we were heading to Kiev.”
“Kiev?” Feng got to his feet, concerned. “Is that wise? The Ukrainian Empire is the source of the clockwork plague.”
“Is it?” Alice straightened. “I’ve never heard that.”
“It’s never been proven,” Gavin said slowly, “and not something everyone discusses. Kiev does seem to have the earliest cases of plague on record.”
“Earliest cases?” Feng said. “That’s an understatement worthy of my father. According to the histories, in 1750 the Dnepro River boiled in the center of Kiev and the plague rose up like a dragon and devoured the city.”
“The river boiled?” Alice repeated. “What on earth does that mean?”
“No doubt some hyperbole found its way into the history,” Feng said.
“Which only goes to show that the stories are unreliable,” Dodd pointed out. “Boiling rivers indeed!”
“Then the plague rose up again ten years later,” Feng continued, undaunted, “and one more time twenty years after that. Kiev seems to attract the plague. No one has more cases of it, and no one has an earlier source of it.”
“Then why go there?” Gavin said.
“The plague is at an ebb right now,” Dodd told him. “Besides, we have Alice, and everyone in the circus is immune by now. The Ukrainians do have world-class automatons. They do have pots of money. And they love a good circus. If we keep our noses clean, we can sell out two shows a day for a month. We’ve played there a dozen times before with no trouble. It’s true they don’t like Jews or Catholics, but we have neither in the circus.”
“I was thinking we would go south, through Turkey,” Feng said, obviously ill at ease.
“That would be out of our way,” Gavin pointed out. “And the Ukrainians have paraffin oil, don’t they?”
“They practically invented the stuff,” Dodd said. “Russia pays them tribute in petroleum, and they’ve done some incredible things with it. I’ve already arranged to rent space and Linda says she saw us in Ukraine, so—”
“Linda?” Alice interrupted.
“She and her husband,
Charlie, tell fortunes in the sideshow,” Dodd answered. “They’re very good, especially since Charlie’s accident.”
“You base this decision on a fortune-teller?” Feng said incredulously.
“And everything else I mentioned,” Dodd said. “Look, I’ve already decided that we’re going. If you want to come along, come. We can use Miss Michaels. The rest of you are dead weight, but—”
“Hey!” Gavin said. “I can play the fiddle!”
“And he sings,” Alice pointed out, feeling defensive.
“I could walk a tightrope, too,” Gavin muttered. “And learn the trapeze. Wouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Stupid clockwork plague gives me stupid extra reflexes. May as well make some extra money out of it before it kills me.”
The Impossible Cube Page 9