Underneath the branches of the forest tree.
The moon picked you from all the rest
For I loved you best.
Alice closed her eyes at the beauty that surrounded her but still couldn’t respond.
“Most people think,” Gavin said, “that if the melody of a song is written in a minor key, the accompaniment or counterpoint has to be played in a minor key, too. But that’s not right. The counterpoint can be the major fifth chord, if you leave out the mediant, the one note that clashes.”
She made a small, noncommittal noise. Ahead of them, the tracks stretched through the city, turning neither right nor left, taking the airship down its predetermined path.
“I’ve never been in love before, Alice,” he continued. “And I’ve never been a clockworker. So I don’t know what all this means. I can only play the music fate hands me. When I sing, all my songs tell me that I want to be with you. If you don’t want to be with me, just say so.”
Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any longer. She sat up and grabbed his hand. His fingers were strong. The nightingale hopped back to his shoulder. “I hate the plague. I hate what it’s doing to you. To us. I don’t want to let you go. I can’t let you go. But I’m frightened of what the plague might do.”
“So am I,” he said quietly. “It steals memory from me, and it steals time from us. We have to get to China and find a cure.”
“What if there is no cure, Gavin?” she asked suddenly. “What if the Dragon Men can’t do anything, or they just won’t, or we can’t find a cure in time?”
He squeezed her hand. “Alice, the plague might be able to steal my sanity, but it can’t steal love. No matter how insane I go, there will always be a part of me that loves you.”
And she still didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t. That didn’t seem to bother Gavin. They sat on the deck in simple silence together until the airship pulled onto the spur that led to the park Dodd had rented for the circus. When the ship came to a halt behind the dark circus train, Alice headed for the ladder.
“Get your fiddle,” she said. “We aren’t done yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain below.”
Nathan was already unhitching the horses with Dr. Clef’s help. Alice explained how she had met the woman. “She said there were more who need me at the Church of Our Lady.”
“I know where that is,” Gavin said.
“So do I,” Nathan put in. “Dodd and I have gone there for confession once or twice.”
Gavin blinked innocently. “What did you confess?”
“That you were an arse.”
“She said to ask for Monsignor Adames,” Alice said. “I need to—”
“There you are!” Dodd ran up and caught Nathan in a hard embrace. One of the horses snorted. “Jesus, you scared me out of my wits.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Nathan gasped. “What’s wrong?”
“Mingers.” Dodd let him go. “Gendarmes. They turned the whole circus upside down looking for Gavin and Alice and demanding to know if we were hiding you. No one said anything, of course, but thank God you weren’t here.”
“Are they still looking?” Dr. Clef asked.
“I should think so. They seemed pretty intent. They called you criminals, and Dr. Clef a danger to society.”
“Was a woman with them? Tall? Dark hair? Metal arm?” Gavin said.
Dodd shook his head. “You mean your Lieutenant Phipps. She wasn’t there, but I heard them mention her name.”
“What about Feng?” Alice said.
“He was easy to hide.” Dodd waved a dismissive hand. “We have two families of Chinese. She didn’t even ask about him.”
“That’s a relief, then.” Alice tugged at Gavin’s elbow. “We need to go.”
“You can’t go now,” Dodd said. “Didn’t you just hear? Phipps has patrols looking for you all over the city. You’ll be safe here—they’ve already looked—but you can’t go out.”
“I promised, Ringmaster,” Alice said. “Those people need my help. Every moment’s delay means another plague victim might die. So unless you intend to lock me in a lion’s cage, get out of my way before I knock you down.”
“She will,” Gavin told him.
“Fine.” Dodd made the same dismissive gesture. “But you aren’t going alone.”
“Certainly not!” Alice said, and Dodd looked surprised that she was agreeing. “Only a fool would do that. And a number of people who aren’t coming should know where I’m going so they can mount a rescue if I don’t return in a reasonable amount of time. Gavin’s coming, of course.”
“Am I?” Gavin was grinning.
“You are. You know where the church is. Feng must come, too. That leaves Mr. Storm, who also knows where the church is, on rescue duty with Dr. Clef and the ringmaster.”
“As long as you’re running my circus,” that man sighed, “you might as well just call me Dodd.”
Chapter Six
They took several moments to gather equipment. Alice wanted to get the firefly jar from Feng, and Gavin wanted weapons. He couldn’t bring himself to use actual pistols, however. A lifetime of training had instilled a healthy fear of anything that created flame, a deadly threat on an airship. Even after several weeks on the Lady, which used newfangled helium, Gavin still shunned gunpowder for the cutlass of shatterproof glass favored by airmen. Unfortunately, he no longer had a fléchette pistol, which used compressed air to fire glass needles. The circus, meanwhile, had gone back to sleep, recovered from its encounter with the gendarmes Phipps had commandeered, but Gavin wondered how long before they returned—and how many they’d encounter on the way to the church, which was why he wanted weapons. He looked at Dr. Clef’s power canon where it lay on the Lady’s deck, and sighed with regret.
“It’s too heavy,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t get twenty yards.”
“Perhaps you could make modifications with this.” Dr. Clef held up a spool of alloy wire, the same stuff as the endoskeleton rolled up and lying on the port side of the deck. “Can you do it alone? I have fear that we shall fight if I assist.”
Gavin looked at the wire and at the power cannon. His brain leaped ahead, and he saw wires and pulsing power and batteries. He ran his hands over the cannon, able to feel how it all fit together, every bolt, every shard, every pathway, right down to the tiny pieces so small they couldn’t hold a name. He saw a number of fascinating ways to reshape them, gently move matter and energy along a number of different venues. He was only vaguely aware that Dr. Clef, that annoying Dr. Clef, had withdrawn, and the vibrations of his receding footsteps on the deck came out as long, distorted strings that vibrated against the air and kicked it about. Gavin’s fingers flew, snatching up tools and setting them down again, braiding wire, snipping metal, connecting pieces of the universe in new ways.
“Gavin?”
The high-pitched voice intruded, interrupted, interjected. He turned to snarl at the interruption—
—and saw that it was a woman. He knew her. He… had feelings for her. He struggled for a moment. She had broken his concentration, which made him angry, but she was also someone to be trusted, someone he didn’t want to be angry at. The contradictory feelings warred for a split second, equally matched.
Alice. Her name was Alice. The new fact tipped the balance, and in a flash he remembered that she wasn’t someone who deserved disdain. He twisted inside like a cat changing its mind in midleap and yanked back the retort.
“Alice?” he gasped, and realized he was panting. A trickle of sweat slid down his cheek. “What’s going on?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She had changed into trousers, which Gavin found strangely attractive on a woman. They accentuated her hips and showed her legs. She was wearing a tighter-fitting blouse as well, and it clung to her neck and breasts. Her braided hair caught the moon and held it. The silvery light shifted, moving in a shower of particles, then splashing as a wave, but doing both a
t the same time, just as the Impossible Cube had twisted and changed before his eyes. It was beautiful and terrible all at once, and Gavin couldn’t look away if he wanted to. For a moment it was hard to breathe.
“What is that?” she asked. “Did you make it?”
Gavin held up the object in question. An eight-foot braided lash trailed to the deck from a heavy brass handle, and the handle connected to a cord that ran to a backpack with a battery in it. Dr. Clef’s power cannon lay dead on the deck, its brass entrails scattered across the wood.
“It looks like a whip,” said Feng, who had also climbed up. He was dressed in what looked to Gavin like soft black pajamas from head to foot. “Show us, please.”
Gavin shook off the last of the clockwork daze. He shrugged into the backpack and flicked a switch on the handle. A low thrum—D-flat, he automatically noted—throbbed across his ears and pulsed against his palm. The metal lash glowed incandescent blue. The weight eased in his hand as the power pushed Dr. Clef’s alloy away from gravity. Gavin swung. The whip flicked through the air, quick as a demon’s tongue, and slashed at the barrel of the power cannon. The barrel didn’t move. For a moment, neither did anyone else. Then the barrel fell neatly into two halves that thudded to the deck.
There was a long, long pause.
“I watched someone called the Great Mordovo cut his assistant in half this afternoon,” Feng said at last. “I do not believe you should show this to him.”
Alice swallowed visibly and shifted her pack. “That took you all of half an hour to make?”
“I didn’t keep track of the time.” Gavin flicked the switch off. The glow vanished, and the whip grew heavy in his hand again. He coiled it and hung it on the right side of his belt, opposite his glass cutlass.
“You must be careful,” Dr. Clef admonished, approaching from his previously safe distance. “Every slash takes power, you know, and the battery does not last forever.”
“Then let’s go now,” Gavin said.
“I’ll carry your fiddle,” Alice said.
The three of them slipped away from the circus and hurried down the city streets. Gavin led the way, since he knew where they were going, and Feng brought up the rear, with Alice in the middle. The air that stole over Gavin was growing chilly and damp, with an early breath of autumn to it. In the distance, a church bell repeated a dark F that pressed lonely against his ears. A scattering of lights glowed in houses or shops, but most windows were dark, and the moon coasted through a field of stars like a bright airship through a cloud of fireflies. Even the public houses were closed at this time of night, and the trio had no good reason to be on the street, which meant any gendarme would stop them for questioning. Gavin slid into another shadow, trying to control his nervousness. The cutlass and whip lent him a whiff of power, but one pistol shot could bring him down, or worse, bring down Alice. Gavin didn’t know if Phipps intended to capture or kill at this point, but capture would mean transport back to England for hanging, so it didn’t make much difference. He kept one hand on the smooth whip handle.
A pair of horses clip-clopped from around the corner ahead of them. Gavin grabbed Alice’s hand and pulled her into an alleyway. Her backpack clinked slightly, and the noise made Gavin’s heart jerk. Feng seemed to have disappeared. The riders rounded the corner and trotted down their street. Gavin pressed himself face-first against the rough alley wall, leaving the pack’s uneven shape sticking out. He could hear Alice’s butterfly breathing next to him, feel her body heat mingling with his. She clutched his fiddle case, and he felt oddly comforted that she held it. When the pirate captain had threatened to throw it off the Juniper, it had felt like the man’s filthy fingers were running over Gavin’s soul, but Alice’s touch made him feel that the fiddle was safe, even with danger only a few steps away.
The horses clopped past the mouth of the alley, and moonlight gleamed off pistols holstered at the riders’ belts. Gavin held his breath. He had turned his face away from the street so his fair skin wouldn’t catch a stray beam of light, and he was looking right into Alice’s eyes, just visible in the scattered wave of photons. They were wide and brown and beautiful, even when filled with unease.
One of the riders paused at the alley mouth and said something in French to his companion, who also paused. Fear made blood pulse in Gavin’s ears. Alice’s lips parted, and her breath came in short gasps, but she didn’t move. The man spoke again, every word as harsh as a drop of melted lead.
And then they were gone, their horses trotting away to fade in the distance. The weight of fear vanished so quickly, Gavin thought he might float away. The tension went out of Alice’s body as well. Gavin surprised himself by leaning in and kissing her. She stiffened again, then kissed back, her mouth warm on his. When they parted, he pressed his forehead against hers.
“Why were we scared?” Alice murmured. “You could have torn them in half with that whip.”
“I could have,” Gavin replied. “That’s exactly why I was scared.”
The street was still empty, no sign of Feng. A cough over Gavin’s head made him grab for the whip, but Alice put her hand on his arm. Feng was perched on a windowsill two stories above them. His dark clothing made him look like the shadow of a spider. Carefully but steadily, using rough bricks and other windowsills for footholds, he descended to the sidewalk.
“I’m impressed,” Alice asked.
“I have climbed in and out of a number of windows in my life,” Feng said. “More than once with a husband in hot pursuit. It is interesting how well one can climb with the correct motivation.”
They hurried away, dodging the gas lamps. Occasionally, they heard footsteps or horses’ hooves a street or two over, and every time they hid in alleys or doorways or under stoops, though they didn’t have any more close encounters with police. The streets wound steadily uphill, and Gavin’s legs started to ache from the steady climbing, and the battery pack pulled at his shoulder muscles. After a while, he said, “Where are the plague zombies?”
That made Alice pause. “I don’t know. We should have seen at least one or two by now.”
“Perhaps the priest will know,” Feng said.
They finally arrived at the Church of Our Lady. The huge stone building loomed over Gavin, buttressed high and stiff, surrounded by a low wall and a square marked off from the street by a line of stone pillars that stretched between them like an iron lattice. Stained glass windows shut themselves against the night.
“It is… large,” Feng said. “I imagined a small stone church, not an entire cathedral.”
“I think they’ve applied for cathedral status with the Pope,” Gavin said.
“They have to apply to call it a cathedral?” Feng looked doubtfully up at the walls, which seemed half fortress, half heaven. “I would enjoy seeing the paperwork for that.”
“The Papists do have their ideas,” Alice said. “Where do we go in?”
The main doors, half large enough to admit a dirigible, were obviously locked and barred, and the idea of knocking on such enormous timbers felt ridiculous. They followed the wall around until they found a more normal-sized pair of doors in an alcove. Feng knocked hard, then pounded at some length. Gavin nervously dropped his hand to the whip. Time passed, and the door wrenched open to reveal an old woman in a dressing gown and nightcap. A candlestick glimmered in her hand. She demanded something in French, and Alice responded. Gavin caught the words Monsignor Adames. The woman looked doubtful, but finally gestured them inside and shut the door behind them. Gavin found himself in a small room, but he could sense a great echoing space beyond.
“She wants us to wait here,” Alice said as the woman padded away, taking the light with her. Gavin waited in uneasy blackness with Alice and Feng beside him. None of them spoke. The emptiness beyond seemed to eat words, or even the idea of speaking. Time didn’t move. Gavin sensed the weight of the pack on his shoulders, and the heft of the whip handle in his hand, and the pull of the cutlass at his belt. Alice’s and Fen
g’s breathing beside him pushed about tiny amounts of air that puffed against his face, bounced off and swirled away in chaotic forms that held patterns just beyond his understanding. He reached out and put his hand into one and felt it scatter and flee. Another swirl of breath bounced off him, creating patterned chaos on his skin, and if he just concentrated hard enough, he might be able to understand it, perhaps even control it, even—
“Gavin!” Alice’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Are you coming?”
“Chaos swirls against my skin,” he said, “but the pattern remains out of reach. How can I touch it?”
“We shouldn’t stay up here,” said a man’s voice in lightly accented English. “Just bring him along.”
And then Gavin was within the great empty place, standing before a half-sized statue of a woman on a pedestal holding an infant—the Virgin Mary. Behind her, windows of stained glass rose above an elaborate altar. She stood on a crescent moon and wore robes of gold and crimson. In her right hand she held a scepter. The baby Jesus cradled a ball in his hand and stretched out the other in benediction. Both mother and child wore tall crowns of gold that sparkled with jewels. Candles flickered around her feet and in the candelabra behind her, lending her an otherworldly glow.
“Consolatrix Afflictorum,” said the man, and Gavin noticed for the first time he wore a long black robe and a white priest’s collar. “Comforter of the afflicted. If you believe the legend, she dropped out of a tree trunk in 1624, right around the time the black plague struck, and she cured a number of people. In 1794, the clockwork plague appeared, and so many people overwhelmed the Jesuit chapel outside the city, we moved her in here.”
“But you take her out and bring her around the city just after Easter,” Gavin said softly. “Eight days afterward. The Octave.”
The priest blinked. He had receding gray hair and a thin build. “You’ve heard of it.”
“No. It’s just obvious.” Gavin flicked a glance at the statue’s pale brown hair and dark brown eyes and rounded beauty and machine-like scepter in her hand, then glanced at Alice. “She looks like—”
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