“Your cousin Peter the Great?” Thad finished.
The general laughed. “Everything here was built by my cousin Peter. We only build higher on his mighty shoulders.”
They finished crossing to Petrogradsky Island and took another, smaller, pontoon bridge to the Peter and Paul Fortress. An arched stone gate within the walls stood open, admitting quite a lot of foot and carriage traffic to a cobblestoned courtyard. A second gate let them into the fortress proper. The general wouldn’t explain anything to Thad about what was going on, which made him tense and frustrated. He wanted to make demands, but of course he couldn’t, not a general related to a tsar.
The fortress was more like a small, wealthy city than a military encampment. Stone streets wound among elaborate building scattered about a cathedral with a golden spire that poked high into the cloudy sky. People were everywhere-richly robed priests and plainly dressed acolytes and ladies in their bell-shaped dresses and men on horses and soldiers on foot. And the automatons! So many, they nearly outnumbered the people-clicking spiders and spindly horses and automatic carriages and automaton servants. Thad hadn’t seen so many automatons in the open since he had come to Russia, though he couldn’t help but notice that none of them moved with the ease and lifelike grace of Nikolai. The general didn’t seem to notice.
“Every tsar in Russia is buried beneath that cathedral over there,” he said proudly. “My family visits Peter’s tomb every year. The cannon that goes off every day at noon fires from the fortress walls, you know.”
At that, Thad noticed the heavy cannons and armaments lining the fortress walls. Huge energy weapons and cannons that could fire halfway to London and crouching automatons that, when they stood, could probably hurl boulders. It looked like enough firepower to level a major city. Thad was impressed. The Russian flag flew at three of the four corners of the fortress walls. At the fourth, a blank green flag was just going up. Parkarov nodded at it.
“That means I’m here,” he said. “When the tsar or his family visits, the flag is red. You can see the arms up on the walls. This place was originally built to defend Saint Petersburg from invasion by the Swedes, though in the end, the cowards never arrived. Best for them in the end, I suppose.”
A trio of dog-sized spiders scampered past, looking tiny after all the enormous war machines. “Why are so many automatons on the street here?” Thad asked.
“That is part of where we are going,” the general answered as they pulled up in front of a blocky, two-story building of stone. “Here we are: the Trubetskoy Bastion, the best prison in all Russia. No one has ever escaped.”
A penny dropped in Thad’s head. “You keep your clockworkers here. And that’s why so many automatons run about on this island.”
“Exactly. Most of Russia’s automatons serve the military, as is proper.” He brought Thad up the steps, through a series of hallways past guards and checkpoints, and down an electric lift that left them in what Thad could only describe as a dungeon. The walls, floors, and ceiling were constructed of solid stone blocks. The ceiling was low. Damp hallways lit by electric lanterns snaked in a dozen directions, and they were faced with small, narrow doors, each with a tiny barred window up top and a hinged food slot below. Human cries and pleas echoed up and down the corridors. The place stank of urine, excrement, and fear. It was horrifying to think that human beings were housed here. Thad cringed inside his own skin. Bile bit the back of his throat, and he forced himself not to vomit.
“What is this place for?” Thad asked faintly.
“I told you-clockworkers. We leave them in the cells where they cannot hurt anyone and give them materials so they can invent for us until they go mad and must be executed.”
An automaton shaped like a low cart trundled past. A spindly arm opened the slot at the bottom of a door and shoved a single bowl of what looked like gray porridge through, though Thad could hear multiple voices within the cell. The automaton moved on to the next door.
“How do they invent anything in here?”
“Well, we keep them under strict observation, of course. You know that clockworkers can build nearly anything, it seems, given the proper materials, and we limit what they have and how much time they can build.”
Which explained why Russian automatons were so clumsy compared to those in the West and in China, Thad added to himself. That Russian clockworkers produced anything at all under such conditions was a miracle. Thad didn’t see clockworkers as victims, despite anything Sofiya said, but there was no reason to torture them, either.
The general took his arm and towed him down the hall. Faces appeared at the tiny windows, some shy and flinching, other imploring. Thad felt sick. “All these people-they can’t be clockworkers. There aren’t this many clockworkers in all Russia, let alone Saint Petersburg.”
“Of course not,” General Parkarov agreed. “That is why we sent for you.”
Thad halted between a set of doors. “I fail to understand my role in any of this, sir.”
“We know a clockworker attempted to assassinate the tsar,” Parkarov explained patiently. “We cannot allow such a monster to run around loose in Saint Petersburg-he might try again, and succeed.”
“My lords!” cried a man between the bars of his window. “My lords, please! I’m not a clockworker! I’m a simple blacksmith! I’ve never had the plague in my life. I have a wife and four children, my lord. They will starve without me. Please, my lords!”
“My lords!” cried a woman from her cell. “I am no clockworker! I help my father in his tin shop, but I am no clockworker. I can’t even read! I have done nothing!”
“My lord…”
“Please, my lords…”
“Good God,” Thad breathed. “You rounded up everyone.”
“Indeed. All we have to do is wait and see which ones go mad. That will show us the clockworker.”
Revulsion swept over Thad in a black wave. He wanted to run, board a fast train and leave Russia and its lunatic rulers behind forever. Forcibly, he straightened his spine.
“What do you want from me, then?” he asked, though he was certain he knew the answer.
The general relit his pipe as if he were in a comfortable study. “With your help, we might find the clockworker more quickly. You’re an expert, after all. Do you see one here?”
The prisoners continued their piteous wail and cry, and pieces of Thad’s heart broke off every moment he stood in this awful place. It was on the tip of his tongue to say none of them could possibly be a clockworker and that the general should release them all immediately, but he had a strong feeling that this would gain him nothing. The general had made up his mind that a clockworker had tried to kill the tsar and this clockworker was among the prisoners, and he would look until he found one.
“I saw children among the prisoners in those cages,” Thad said.
“That is possible.” Parkarov puffed his pipe, adding to the miasma of the dungeon. “My men had instructions to bring in anyone who might possibly be a clockworker-tinsmiths, blacksmiths, watchmakers, machinists, beggars, gypsies, Jews, men who lie with their own sex-”
Thad thought of Nathan and Dodd. “Why? Beggars and gypsies and…the others? They have nothing to do with machinery.”
“They spread plague. Everyone knows that. They and their children.”
“Children are never clockworkers,” Thad said firmly, though he had no idea if that were true. Still, it seemed right enough to get the children out of this place. “The plague does not work that way.”
“Even when-?”
“Never,” Thad repeated. “I have made extensive studies, and there is no such thing. You can let every prisoner under the age of…” He pulled a number out of the air. “…sixteen leave.”
The general nodded. “As you say, then,” though he made no move. A young officer, meanwhile, brought down a desk and set it up in the hall. “You may examine them each from here.”
“Each?”
“Yes.” He gesture
d. The officer, a lieutenant, opened the first cell and dragged out a middle-aged man in a baker’s apron. “We cannot afford to make a mistake.”
The man fell to his knees before Thad and the general, his eyes filled with terror. “I beg you, sir-” he began.
Parkarov backhanded the man’s face. “Speak when you are spoken to, dog. Examine him, Mr. Sharpe. Is he a clockworker?”
Thad made a show of examining the man. He peered into his eyes and ears and even his mouth. He thumped the man’s chest and straightened his arms. At last, he said, “This man is no clockworker.”
“Are you certain?” asked the general.
“Positive.”
The general turned to the lieutenant. “Process this man and release him.”
“Ser.” The lieutenant returned the relieved-looking baker to his cell and hauled out another man, rather younger. Thad repeated the process and declared the man not a clockworker. And again with a woman, and with a teenaged boy. Each person took considerable time to examine, and the cells down here were filled with people. Through it all, the general puffed his pipe with amused patience. Whenever Thad tried to hurry the process, Parkarov asked questions-was Thad certain? Did all clockworkers fail to present such symptoms? Was it possible Thad was being fooled?
After fewer than a dozen people had gone through the process, they heard the faint boom of the noon cannon far above. Thad jerked his head up from the fruit seller he was pretending to examine. “I have to perform soon,” he said in Russian. “I’m sorry, General, but I’ll have to return later.”
“Of course, of course. My carriage is at your disposal. Perhaps tomorrow morning we will find the clockworker.”
Thad glanced down the long corridors of groaning cells, and his heart sank. “I suppose, yes. The tsarina, you know, wanted me to find-”
“Yes!” Parkarov clapped Thad on the back, a gesture of which he seemed overly fond. “The tsarina. And the tsar. We will do our duty to them both, eh?”
“Yes,” Thad said with a weak grin. “And with that in mind, I would be in your debt if I could examine a comprehensive map of the city. One that showed any tunnels and accessible underground areas.”
“Oh well.” The general waved his pipe. “I don’t know if such a map-”
“There’s one in the offices upstairs,” said the lieutenant helpfully. He was very young for his station and had pale blond hair and brown eyes. “We use it to divide up the city and search for miscreants, just like yesterday. Surely the general remembers.”
Parkarov shot the lieutenant a look of pure venom, and in that moment, Thad knew. The realization was a bucket of ice thrown over his skin and he almost staggered. Thad recovered himself quickly and said, “Thank you, Lieutenant…?”
“Markovich, ser.”
“Lead the way, then, Lieutenant Markovich. Thank you, General.”
He almost yanked poor Markovich, who would probably spend the rest of his posting in Siberia for his trouble, toward the lift and out of the dreadful dungeon. Thad didn’t want to believe what he had just deduced, but there was no other solution he could see.
“You must know the general well,” Thad said conversationally as he and Markovich exited the lift.
Markovich took Thad down a labyrinth of hallways to a room with a bank of pigeonholes, each with a roll of paper in it. He pulled down several sets. “As well as anyone can, I suppose. He is my second cousin, twice removed, on my father’s side.”
“Then you’ve been to his family estates.” Thad unrolled a paper on a slanted reading table and set lead weights on either end of it to hold it flat.
“Many times. I nearly grew up there.”
“The general spoke of them in great detail,” Thad lied. “They sound magnificent.”
“Oh yes.” Markovich gave a smile. “Especially in the spring, when the flowers bloom.”
He was young and naive, and Thad felt guilty about what he was going to do next. He leaned over the map, pretending to study it. “It also sounds expensive, running such a place and keeping up appearances here at court. The general complained of it quite a lot on the ride over here, how much this cost and how much that was bleeding him dry.”
Markovich paused for a tiny moment, then said, “It is very expensive. The tsar has expensive tastes, and the court has to keep up with him.” He lowered his voice. “The holdings have been mortgaged-twice, in fact. Even the serfs.”
“That’s terrible,” Thad said sympathetically. With his finger, he traced a line across the map without looking at it. “If the tsar emancipates the serfs, it would be a disaster for the general. He would owe a lot of money to the banks all at once. The family holdings might go to the crown, and you wouldn’t be able to visit any longer.”
“Very much so.” Markovich sighed.
And if the general found out you gave me this information, you would never leave this prison, Thad added silently.
“Could I borrow these maps, do you think?” Thad asked. “I really need to pore over them where I can think.”
“Oh, I don’t-”
Thad reached into his pocket, broke the clasp on the tsarina’s necklace, and slid off a single pearl. He handed it to Markovich. It was worth more than a lieutenant would earn in ten years.
“Keep them with my compliments,” Markovich amended. “Did you need the general’s carriage as well?”
“Back to the Field of Mars,” Thad said.
Chapter Thirteen
Sofiya was pacing in front of the wagon when Thad got back. Kalvis, saddled, stood nearby. Steam curled from his nostrils.
“Where have you been?” Sofiya demanded.
“In clockwork hell. I think I’m hungry, but after this-”
“Do you have any idea what is happening? Have you not heard?”
Dread, one of the more common among Thad’s emotions lately, started up again. “I’ve heard a lot. What have you heard?”
“The damaged wall in the Winter Palace did not come down, but it is irrevocably damaged, and so is the courtyard beyond it. The tsar has declared everything must be fully repaired within thirty days.”
“Thirty days!” Thad gasped. “That’s-”
“Impossible? Not when one is the tsar. Serfs will be shipped in from all over the country to work, though they will be paid little or nothing, and given no place to live, and that matters not a bit, for when they die, more serfs will be brought in to replace them. This is how Saint Petersburg was built.”
“I thought the tsar wanted to emancipate the serfs,” Thad said.
“Not until the palace is repaired. It’s terrible, Thad. Already, they are bringing people in with cages.”
“That’s not all the cages are for,” Thad said. “I just came from the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
Sofiya stopped pacing, and her face went pale. “The clockwork prison. Why were you there? Are they coming for…?”
“You?” That actually hadn’t occurred to Thad. “No. If they thought you were a clockworker, you’d be in a cell already. But I know what’s going on, and I know who set the bomb.”
“You do?” She sank down to the wagon steps. “Who? Tell me!”
“General Parkarov.”
Sofiya stared into space for a moment. “I see where you are going. He said that he personally inspected the throne room before the tsar entered and that there was no bomb, which was why he blamed the spiders. But if Mr. Griffin’s spiders did not put it there, perhaps the general did during his inspection.”
“I know he did,” Thad said. “His lands and his serfs are double mortgaged, and if Alexander frees the serfs, Parkarov will have to pay that mortgage off all at once. He doesn’t have the money.”
“That’s not proof.”
“No, but he also kept me at the fortress on a waste of time.” And he described the prison. “Parkarov doesn’t believe a clockworker is running amok in Saint Petersburg. He created all of it-the arrests, the long, careful inspection-as a delaying tactic. The tsarina ordere
d me to find the clockworker, and Parkarov is afraid I’ll find out there isn’t one, so he created this…decimation to keep me busy. It’s brilliant, really, considering he must have cooked it up only a few minutes after his bomb failed to kill the tsar.”
“And meanwhile, all those innocent people are jailed,” Sofiya said.
“Yes,” Thad said grimly. “We need to prove it was Parkarov and we need to end this clockworker problem.”
“How will we do that?”
“First, I think we need to find Mr. Griffin, the real clockworker, and learn why his spiders were there in the first place.”
“Thad, no.” Sofiya held up her hands. “If we move against Mr. Griffin, his spiders will tear the circus to shreds, and he’ll…you know what he’ll do to my sister.”
“No,” Thad said. “He won’t. Not now. That’s why we have to move right now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sofiya, haven’t you ever wondered why clockworkers don’t rule the world? They’re far more intelligent than normal men, and they can build machines that give them tremendous power.”
She spread her hands. “They go mad in the end and die. No one can rule with that.”
“They could conquer and rule during the period before they go insane. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it could be done. So why hasn’t it been done?” He went on before she could respond. “I’ll tell you-it’s because humans outnumber them, hundreds of thousands to one. Even with death rays or an army of spiders or hypnotic gases, clockworkers can’t defeat enough determined men. It’s why they hide. At this moment, the tsar’s army is actively looking for Mr. Griffin-or for a clockworker, anyway-and if they find him, they will kill him. He doesn’t dare come out of hiding now. That makes this the perfect time to hunt for him ourselves. Once we deal with him, your sister will be free. And so will you.”
Sofiya looked torn. Thad knew exactly how she felt. After a long moment, she nodded. “How do we find him, then?”
He brandished the rolled-up map. “I know clockworkers. Where are Nikolai and Dante?”
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