The Liberation

by Ian Tregillis

  There, you fools. Let the machines guide you back. Safety in numbers.

  The medical servitor swiveled on one talon toe and vaulted the canal. Wind ruffled Anastasia’s hair, smelling faintly of cinnamon from a nearby bakery. She watched the group with the canalmaster. The trio of escort machines comprised two servitors and a larger military-class Clakker. The servitors leapt upon the canalmaster’s mechanicals, a pair of Clakkers that had probably hauled the towboat up and down the Spui every day for the past century or more. The military mechanical blurred into the group of humans faster than they could react. While the servitors fought, the soldier unsheathed its forearm blades. Anastasia imagined she could hear the weapons’ quiet snick-snick cutting through the pandemonium. And then—

  —and then—

  —and then—

  Anastasia vomited.

  The wind of their passage pushed the stinking yellow spume into her face, up her nose. It splattered against the metal body of her carrier.

  “Mistress! Are you ill? I will attend to your health as soon as we arrive.”

  Acid puke stung her eyes, but she didn’t need to see anything else. Because the military Clakker had just spun through the humans like a razor-edged dervish, butchering the canalmaster and his would-be clients. It killed seven people in half as many seconds. The Spui turned crimson with blood pulsing from severed arms, legs, necks.

  Oh, dear God.

  The world turned upside down. Anastasia’s bladder went slack when she looked again at the swarm of mechanicals racing along the rooftops. Warm dampness trickled down her legs to soil her new stockings. This wasn’t a protective cordon escorting human masters from danger. No. The mechanicals were the crisis. The crowd was fleeing the machines.

  Dozens of malfunctioning mechanicals. Feral.

  It was an unprecedented—impossible—number of rogues. And they were chasing their human masters. Chasing and butchering them.

  She’d failed to comprehend the events unfolding around her because they were unthinkable. The machines swarmed over brick and timber like vermin, a horde of clockwork cockroaches. They scurried over clock towers and across shop fronts, gouging masonry and crushing iron in their wild scramble to keep abreast of the exodus. The Segbroek District drowned beneath an implacable metal tide.

  That explained the latency of the Rogue Clakker Alarm, too. The alarm momentarily immobilized the machines when it forced them to heap additional decibels upon the chorus. But the human-safety metageas wouldn’t allow them to stand idly by while a horde of rogues massacred half the Empire. In the worst-case scenario, it was acceptable to permit a handful of undistinguished citizens to die, if that’s what it took to capture a rogue—Anastasia knew this because she’d personally overseen the most recent review of the alchemical grammars pertaining to the handling of rogues—but not hundreds. What point was there in warning people of a rogue mechanical if it meant depopulating half the city to do so?

  The medical servitor accelerated, whisking her away from the carnage. Winter air snaked through her sodden clothing. She shivered. Behind them, a clockwork mob surged into the streets.

  Dear God, how many are there?

  The metal horde tore through helpless humans. The machines sundered fragile flesh and bone with alchemically augmented strength. Anastasia looked away, gagging. She might not have believed a human throat could produce such screams, if her professional responsibilities hadn’t occasionally required visits to the Ridderzaal’s very deepest tunnels.

  True rogues were rare. Rarer than a five-leaf clover; rarer than an honest banker. Never in all her years with the Guild had she even heard of two rogues present at the same time and place.

  They neared the Binnenhof, the nerve center of the Empire. The carriages here became more official. Crests of the great families adorned some, the Universal Cog others. The machine vaulted the Hofvijver pond. The ticktocking cymbal crash of the pursuing rogues foamed the still waters. The servitor turned for the Stadtholder’s Gate.

  Anastasia spied the rosy cross upon a carriage swerving through the gate. She pointed with her bandaged hand. “There! Take me there!”

  The machine spoke as though they were on a leisurely stroll and not fleeing for her life. “Mistress, I humbly beg your forbearance, but I am geas-bound above all other obligations to see you brought safely inside the Ridderzaal. We shall arrive in twenty-four seconds.”

  “They’re heading to the Ridderzaal as well. Join them!” she cried, jabbing a finger toward the Clockmakers’ emblem. Safety in numbers.

  The servitor veered toward the Guild carriage. But hers weren’t the only eyes to catch a glimpse of rose quartz. A quartet of malfunctioning machines catapulted themselves from the murderous host. One pair slammed into the pavement just ahead of the carriage; the impact rippled the earth. The other pair flanked the fleeing Guild conveyance. The servitors pulling the carriage couldn’t dodge without abandoning the vehicle or pouring its unprotected occupants into the street. Two rogues tackled them. Meanwhile the others tore through the gleaming glass-and-ironwood carriage as though it were made of rain-sodden crêpe paper.

  The rogues dragged a screaming, thrashing man and woman into the street. Both wore pendants similar to the one currently clutched in Anastasia’s fist. She recognized the woman. Katrina Baxter had only recently returned to work after an exhaustive investigation by Anastasia’s office.

  The humans disappeared beneath a mechanical swarm. Their screams didn’t. Anastasia’s colleagues disintegrated into a pink mist shot through with teeth and bone.

  Oh, God. Oh God oh God oh God.

  Her bladder tried to empty itself again.

  The rogues were targeting Guild members. That’s why Malcolm had arranged to stuff her into an anonymous hansom. And it explained why her flight had kept pace with that of the rogues: They were heading for the Ridderzaal, too.

  This wasn’t a freak accident. It was a coordinated attack. And everybody running for the ancient Knights’ Hall on the east side of Huygens Square was a target. In fact, were these her machines, hunting enemies of the state, she would’ve deployed them—

  Oh, no.

  She would’ve sent servitors ahead, to blend invisibly with the mechanicals ever crisscrossing the Binnenhof on the Empire’s business. She would’ve deployed them ahead of her quarry, ready to spring into violent action when the others herded them into the crowded confines of Huygens Square. She would’ve laid a trap.

  The medical servitor whirled through a dizzying turn toward the ancient Stadtholder’s Gate.

  “Stop! I command you to stop!”

  The machine didn’t slow. “My sincere apology, mistress. I am geas-bound—”

  “We mustn’t enter Huygens Square!” she cried. Too late. They passed beneath an arch onto the immense tile mosaic worked into the earth of the plaza.

  Her throat burned with the remnants of acid gorge. She wrapped the pendant chain around her wrist, and slammed the rosy cross against one of the servitor’s crystalline eyes. “I am Tuinier Anastasia Bell, I outrank the man who requisitioned you, and I ASSERT THE VERDERER’S PREROGATIVE! Now stop, damn you!”

  The pain from her bandaged hand chose that moment to flare again, as though to punctuate her decree.

  The Clakker skidded. Its alloy feet gouged the mosaic, tossing up a rooster tail of dust and shattered tiles. Only a machine could have kept its balance and maintained its grip on her.

  It set her down. For a moment she worried her piss-damp legs wouldn’t hold her. Terrified citizens thronged Huygens Square. The rogues had herded hundreds of citizens, including who knew how many Clockmakers and members of the great families, into the Binnenhof. The swelling crowd of humans, carriages, and mechanicals made for a deafening din.

  A series of tremors wracked the servitor, a sign that it struggled to reconcile conflicting geasa. The general metageasa still demanded her protection.

  “Mistress, please,” it said, the spasms growing more violent by the instant.
“I implore you to let me bring you to safety.” Its tortured voice became an inhuman warble of reeds and strings, giving the lie to mechanical emulation of the human voice box.

  The crowded plaza looked like a stockyard. The rogues would make it an abattoir. She craned her neck, scanning the square for machines that hadn’t arrived pulling carriages or carrying their owners. Heavens above: They were everywhere.

  “This is a trap! Get everybody out of here. Forget me and evacuate Huygens Square now!”

  Cogs squealed and cables twanged inside the machine. The new geas had taken hold. It waded into the throng and physically lifted the first two humans it encountered, one under each arm. It carried them toward the Stadtholder’s Gate…

  … Which slammed shut. Huygens Square reverberated with the clang of mundane alloys. Eight servitors, four at each wrought-iron door, wove a chain through the pickets.

  The trap had sprung.

  With the immense Stadtholder’s Gate closed, the only egress was the much smaller Grenadierspoort, the Grenadiers’ Gate, across Huygens Square to the northeast, behind the Ridderzaal. Otherwise, the crowd would have to find escape through the warren of government buildings that comprised the Binnenhof and girded Huygens Square. But these were locked to keep the hoi polloi from unbalancing the gears of the Empire. The gate was immense; everybody must have seen, heard, felt it. Yet still these fools didn’t understand. They thought their loyal servants had closed the gate to protect them from the rogues.

  The octet of rogues strode toward the unsuspecting throng. Additional lines of servitors, she saw, approached the hemmed-in humans from the north and south.

  Anastasia screamed, her voice hoarse with acid and fear. “It’s a trap! Everybody take cover! Get inside!”

  But it was useless. Her warning was lost in the cacophony.

  I protect the secrets of the Clockmakers’ Guild in order to protect these people. From outside enemies, from themselves. These are the citizens of the Central Provinces. These are my charges.

  She brandished the pendant. The pain in her damaged hand spiked as though the shards burrowed into her bones.

  “Mechanicals! Look at me! I am Tuinier Anastasia Bell and I command you to LOOK AT ME!”

  Those machines not malfunctioning did as she bade them. Of course, it meant the rogues saw her, too. Two peeled off from the others and dodged through the crowd, heading straight for her. She’d revealed herself as a Guildwoman. As a target.

  She repeated the Verderer’s Prerogative, speaking as quickly as she could to force a hard reset of the unbroken Clakkers’ priorities.

  Finding the Stadtholder’s Gate locked, and seeing the rogues’ attention on Anastasia, the medical servitor dropped the man and woman it had tried to carry through the gate. It reverted to its previous priority, her safety. It returned to her side, crouched to defend her: She strove to save everybody, so defending her was defending all.

  “Mechanicals! Your masters are in mortal danger! Take them inside and defend them! THE BINNENHOF IS A TRAP!”

  Now the panic took root. Like a pot of milk left overlong on a stove, the crowd erupted. Anastasia found herself at the epicenter of a riot. Men and women shoved, elbowed, even bit one another in the mad scramble to get away. And, like a tightening noose, a ring of machines converged on the crowd. Unlike a noose, they left screams and shattered skulls in their wake.

  The approaching rogues tackled her defender. One-on-one they would have been evenly matched, having been built and maintained to almost identical standards. Outnumbered, the medical servitor had no chance. As the killer machines pinned their thrashing prisoner to the ground, she glimpsed something unsettling about the rogues: Metal plates obscured the keyholes in their foreheads. Who had installed those? Stranger still, one of the rogues reached up with a free hand and—Had the world truly gone mad?—opened its own skull. A shimmering aquamarine light illuminated the inner surface of its skull plate. While its comrade pinned her erstwhile bodyguard, it aimed the light into its eyes.

  She froze. The only possible source of light within a mechanical’s skull was its pineal glass. But those didn’t glow, didn’t gleam, didn’t shimmer. She’d read vague allusions to very old, very dangerous, and rapidly discontinued experiments—

  The medical servitor stopped thrashing. They released it. The grotesque machine reassembled its head. The medical servitor stood, emitted a burst of ticktock cog chatter, then flung itself into the massacre with the fervor of a religious zealot.

  Anastasia’s breath froze in her chest. Such light couldn’t rewrite the metageasa, could it? And yet—

  This isn’t an invasion. It’s an infection. A plague.

  The unconverted Clakkers strove to defend their owners and masters. Some grabbed the closest humans and attempted to carry them from the square. But the rogues’ trap wasn’t so haphazard. Sentries on the perimeter intercepted any who tried to escape the killing zone on foot. Other machines snatched the nearest human and leaped above the deadly riot. They landed on dormers and cornices, carrying their human charges like sacks of flour. Some wrapped protective metal limbs about their charges and became cannonballs to smash through windows and doors.

  Anastasia saw one servitor attempting to scale a façade with a pair of screaming boys perched on its back. It had just reached the roof and was hauling the children onto the steep tiles when a military mechanical emerged from its ambush position behind a dormer window. It spun, shearing through the servitor’s arms. Dazzling violet embers fountained from ruined alloys and shorn sigils. They didn’t blind her to the boys’ hard impact on bloody mosaic tiles.

  The rogues had anticipated this escape route. Had they stationed mechanicals inside the buildings, too? How long had they been planning this? How many of these demon machines were there?

  If anybody had the resources to repel this attack, it was her colleagues in the Guild. There had to be a hundred uninfected mechanicals within the Ridderzaal, and countless others working the Grand Forge beneath the plaza, not to mention those working the pumps in the warren of secret tunnels beneath The Hague. If the infected machines had already infiltrated the Guild’s innermost sanctum, there was no hope.

  “To the Ridderzaal!” Anastasia scrambled atop a winter-dry fountain. She wielded the pendant again. She pointed across the blood-slick charnel of Huygens Square to the ancient Gothic Knights’ Hall, where a pair of narrow towers raked the sky like needles. “Machines! Bring your masters to the Ridderzaal!”

  Asserting her authority made her a target. But it also drew the butchers’ attention. Maybe, just maybe, a few could get away while the machines turned on her.

  A cold wind ruffled her sodden clothing. She shuddered but not from chill. Infectious machines opened their heads to illuminate the defenders by twos, threes, and fours. The gentle aquamarine shimmer belied its menace, for it corrupted the machines’ interpretation of, and adherence to, the metageasa. This was something unprecedented: a contagious, self-propagating malfunction.

  Some of the infected defenders, like the medical servitor that had carried her here, had joined in the murder of their masters. Just as many simply departed. The ambush machines let them pass, as long as they weren’t carrying humans to safety. And a few seemed unchanged by the touch of the pineal glow: They kept fighting. But those were grossly outnumbered.

  Air whickered through the skeletal frame of a servitor. Anastasia ducked. An explosive impact shattered the marble fountain. It sent her sprawling like a broken mop head, absorbing blood and viscera as she tumbled. The creaking of tortured ribs stole her breath away for the second time that morning. Shattered porcelain tiles shredded her skirt and lacerated her legs. Head spinning, she came to rest facing the crumbled fountain, where a pair of servitors faced off. One sported a covered keyhole. It must have gone for her, but the other machine had tackled it.

  The ground shuddered again. The ceremonial ironwood doors of the Ridderzaal groaned open. The dwindling defenders tried to carry their doomed h
uman masters toward the Clockmakers’ Guildhall.

  Four Stemwinders emerged from the Ridderzaal. They galloped into the fray like the horsemen of Saint John’s Revelation. The clockwork centaurs loomed over the other mechanicals, even the military Clakkers. Three of the Stemwinders leapt upon the murderous rogues with merciless efficiency, reconfiguring their arms into spears to impale lesser Clakkers two at a time, or into blades for scything through them. The din of slaughter—of screams, torn flesh, cracked bone—took on the squeal of tortured metal and the percussive thunder of dented armor. A coruscating light show illuminated the slaughter in Huygens Square: gouts of flame, glints of sunlight from burnished alchemical brass, the incandescent spray of shorn sigils.

  The fourth Stemwinder charged Anastasia.

  Its hooves struck sparks from pulverized mosaic tiles. It bulled through the throng, knocking aside lesser mechanicals as though they were scarecrows. A man fell beneath its hooves; the Stemwinder crushed his skull like an egg and kept coming for her. Reason failed her: She tried to run. But the Stemwinders were faster than anything on land. Of course they were—the Verderers had designed them that way. It charged past Anastasia and scooped her into its four-armed embrace without the slightest hitch in its pace. She screamed, tensing in expectation of a deadly crush.

  But it didn’t kill her. Faster than the fleetest racing carriage, it swerved past the locked Stadtholder’s Gate, decapitated a rogue, and reversed course. It skirted the rapidly contracting ring of death, vaulted a cluster of machines attempting to block its path—blinding one with a kick to the face that shattered its eyes—and galloped back to the Ridderzaal. It knocked aside several battered machines doggedly hauling their human charges to the safe haven. The centaur swerved again, hurled Anastasia through the open doors, and charged back into the fray. An uncompromised servitor caught her and set her gently on her feet. The doors slammed shut before she had caught her breath. Waist-thick alchemical steel bars slammed home; the concussion reverberated through the Ridderzaal.