The Liberation

by Ian Tregillis

  “How is it that somebody who works with chocolate all day could be so bitter?”

  “Actually,” he said, jumping on the subject of his expertise, “unsweetened cacao can be quite bitter. Most—”

  Yseult Chartrand, a medical doctor, interrupted. “They did protect us. I’m not ungrateful. But I haven’t forgotten that they also destroyed our home and murdered our brothers and sisters. They owe us. If I had it my way, they’d be paying that debt until their hearts wound down.”

  Victor, one of Levesque’s sailors, said, “I guess you didn’t see the crosses in Saint Vincent’s Square. The crosses to which the reapers were nailing humans.” He paused to cross himself and kiss the medallion on his necklace before thrusting an angry finger around the circle. “That would have been you, and you, and you, and you, and me. These machines”—now he gestured in the general direction of the Griffon—“saved us from that fate.” He shrugged. “Fine sailors, too.”

  “But why? Maybe they have their own plans for us.”

  “No, no.” Berenice shook her head. “It won’t come to that. Do you really think I’d have proposed this expedition if I thought there was a chance of that?”

  “Given your reputation,” said Renaud, an angry glint of too much wine in his eyes, “yes, I do think you’d risk it.”

  Berenice changed the subject. “Despite outward appearances Clakkers aren’t all the same. Daniel, for instance, carries the worst affliction of any thinking being. He’s got a heavy conscience, the poor son of a bitch.”

  (“Oof,” came Hammond’s voice from the nearby night.

  “Don’t worry, Doctor. I’ve got you.”)

  Renaud opened his mouth, but Levesque jumped in to change the subject even further. The captain had a diplomat’s instincts. “Daniel. That’s their leader you’re talking about?”

  “He’d say he’s nobody’s leader. But that doesn’t stop them from looking up to him.”

  “In Québec… they acted as if he’s a figure of awe,” Élodie said.

  Passing the bottle to Berenice, Yseult said, “There’s a rumor, based on remarks you’ve made, that you sailed on a Dutch icebreaker.”

  She said, “Briefly. It didn’t end well.”

  “For whom? You’re here now.”

  Berenice remembered a close call. Several. Remembered being so frightened she could barely move. She touched her throat. The bruises there had faded, but she still carried the mark of her time as a prisoner of two murderous servitors. Carried it in the altered texture of her voice.

  “Several people. It’s not a story I’d enjoy reliving,” she rasped.

  Yseult noticed the subconscious gesture and the way Berenice swallowed. “Your voice,” she said. “Have you ever seen a physician for your injuries?”

  The clank-click of metal feet returned. Berenice finished her swig and passed the wine without looking up. “Back already?”

  “No. Just arrived.” She stared up at another servitor. Her tipsy eyes refused to focus. It saw her trying to identify him. The machine grew momentarily a bit taller, then shrank back to its regular height, as the shocks in its legs expanded and contracted. A mechanical sigh. She knew one particular machine who tended to do that.

  “Daniel.” She gestured at the gap in the circle created by the chemists’ departure. “Join us. We were just talking about you.”

  He didn’t. He stared into the shadows beyond the fire, eye bezels clicking. “Where are Doctors Hammond and Mornay going?”

  “One of your fellows just fetched them. Apparently they found something on the ghost ship.”

  Daniel emitted a sharp twang. “Who fetched them?”

  Berenice looked around the circle in the vain hope somebody would know the machine’s name. She received only shrugs and blank looks.

  “A servitor. I’m sure you know the fellow. Backward knees, complexion like a tuba? Part of the team assessing the ship.”

  “That’s not possible,” he said. Before she could ask him what he meant, he started to rattle. A rattle-clatter enveloped his body. It grew louder and louder, echoing from the stony bluffs, until other mechanicals responded. Their hypercompressed conversation ranged across the entire harbor. The humans looked around the fire with mild confusion. Berenice was too sozzled to understand the exchange.

  The noise died after a few moments. Daniel turned to her again. He shook his head. “It’s unanimous. Nobody accompanied the chemists aboard the ship. All mechanical members of the expedition are accounted for.”

  Berenice wobbled to her feet. She pointed into the darkness. “Then who the fuck was that?”

  Some far-off day, perhaps a century from now, thought Daniel, I’ll look back on this period of my life from across the comforting buffer of decades. And when I do, he concluded, I’ll remember running. It’s all I ever do.

  Ice crunched. It sent him skidding. He vaulted a gully. His hard landing sent up a spray of flint chips.

  The stony landscape held no clues, no trail. The meager illumination from the cloud-draped moon and stars didn’t reveal where the infiltrator had taken the humans.

  Across the camp, audible over the cracking of stone beneath his feet and the rapid chittering of his own body, mechanical members of the expedition raced past other bonfires toward the abandoned Dutch ship. That’s where the outsider had claimed to be taking the chemists.

  We checked it. We checked it and it was empty, Daniel remembered.

  Le Griffon II was still anchored beyond the moorage, thank God—Daniel had suggested that somebody scale the cliffs and verify this. He also tried to monitor the humans’ shouting. They were organizing themselves, though for what exactly was unclear. He recognized Élodie’s voice as she tried to get a head count. Who else had been lured away from the expedition by a smooth-talking Clakker? It was telling and disappointing how easily the humans had been swayed by a machine showing just the slightest bit of deference. He’d had disagreements in Neverland with mechanicals who argued that French and Dutch were all fundamentally the same. So it pained him to see how easily the humans put themselves above other creatures.

  Where had they really been taken? And why?

  The straightest human-navigable path from the campfire to the docks led through a short, shallow ravine. He sprinted along its lip, gyroscopes whining. The high-pitched whirr resonated in the stone chamber. For a moment it was so loud he almost didn’t hear the gasp and whimper. He skidded to a stop.

  Doctor Hammond lay shuddering in the talus. A thin layer of snow under his body was turning the color of spilled ink, his blood a black stain in the thin moonlight. Daniel focused on the dying man: He shivered despite his heavy coat and hat; rapid, thready pulse; a metallic tang on his quick and shallow breath. Stab wound, aspirated blood, possible puncture to the left lung. He zoomed in on the puddle, looking for the telltale spurting of a nicked artery, but saw none. A soldier hadn’t done this; such a blade would have cut the man in two. A dire injury but not instantly fatal. With one hand Daniel put pressure on the wound; Hammond cried. He snagged a piece of talus in his other hand and rolled it back and forth against his carapace until the rock was warm. He tucked it inside Hammond’s shirt. This lessened the shuddering, but the man was still slipping into shock.

  Doctor Hammond has been stabbed! he transmitted. Somebody please fetch the physicians and their kit and carry them to my location. He repurposed a redundant cable in his hip joints; when repeatedly overtightened and released, it snapped against a flange plate, emitting a metronomic series of clicks like an auditory compass bearing.

  Somewhere very close, a stone cracked. Daniel unlocked the stay rod that kept his eyes aligned. One remained focused on the chemist, monitoring his health, while Daniel’s left eye snapped up, slewing toward the source of the noise. Just for an instant it caught sight of dim moonlight on alchemical brass, a small metal plate over a keyhole, a servitor arm around a human neck, a skeletal hand across Doctor Mornay’s mouth, white limning her terror-wide eyes. And th
en the Lost Boy ducked from the ravine with its hostage and was gone. Hammond convulsed.

  Then Daniel understood why the stranger hadn’t murdered Hammond outright: It forced him to choose between giving chase and trying to save Hammond. That’s why it took two humans. In case it needed a convenient diversion. It was a stratagem he’d expect from Berenice… or Queen Mab.

  There are Lost Boys in the camp, he called, and they’ve taken Doctor Mornay.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Berenice jogged on frost-dusted stone in near darkness, hefting a brand she’d taken from the campfire. It was a recipe for a twisted ankle, or worse. But, goddamn it, they needed their chemists.

  She slipped. Landed hard; her teeth clicked together. The brand landed nearby, rolled, and snuffed itself in a snowbank. Darkness fell. She levered herself upright, groaning and gritting her teeth in anticipation of a crippling twinge in her ankles. Instead, the pain of a cracked tooth shot through her jaw like a white-hot needle. Cold air numbed her eye socket. She readjusted her patch and stumbled toward the docks, more than half-blind in the darkness.

  Shouts joined the cacophony of mechanical conversation. Confusion, fear, drunken attempts to restore order, and even drunker panic. Some ran toward the high cliffs overlooking the Griffon. News of the intruder had already mutated and spread through the human contingent of the camp like mutiny through Alexander’s army in India. They were under attack. Or the sailors were attacking somebody else. Or the tulips had returned. Or the Griffon was sinking. Or it had already sunk. Or somebody had found gold on the Dutch ship. Gold and alchemically preserved fruits from North Africa.

  Who had taken the chemists? How?

  Daniel’s scouts had checked the entire camp. It was empty, the former occupants long gone. So how could a foreign machine slip past the sentries? Surely the ticktocks would have raised the alarm…

  … Or would they? She’d brought them here with a promise, and delivered on her promise when they discovered the quintessence foundry. The Clakkers delivered on their part of the agreement by helping to crew the Griffon on the voyage from Marseilles, not to mention defending the French against the reapers in the Vatican. Did they consider the deal complete, any and all obligations fully met? Maybe they let the outsiders stroll right into the camp because they couldn’t be bothered to give a shiny shit.

  Emerging from the bluffs, she reached the water’s edge across the moorage from the docks. She’d gone the long way. Here the bonfires and torches provided a low but chaotically shifting illumination, enough to make out the buildings, get her bearings. Water lapped at the shoreline. She put her back to the water and squinted into the shadows. Where had that bastard taken the chemists?

  Lamplight shimmered on the carapaces of Clakkers on the dock adjoining the Dutch ship. They weren’t fighting. She couldn’t tell if they were from the expedition, or intruders, or both.

  The lapping of water turned into dripping… and clicking. And ticking. And tocking.

  She spun. A servitor emerged from the dark waters of the harbor. Its silhouette looked slightly odd, but she couldn’t identify the problem. She was too busy slipping on the frosty shingle as she tried to scramble away. Her cracked tooth flared anew with eye-watering pain. The machine strode out of the water, dripping and steaming.

  Fuck me for an idiot, she realized. They were hiding at the bottom of the harbor. They’ve been here all along.

  The machine cocked its head as it approached, studying her. She inched backward, sucking down a lungful of air to scream, “Intrud—”

  The servitor blurred forward and clamped a painfully cold hand over her mouth. Her lips went numb. Its head was slightly misshapen, as if assembled in haste from mismatched parts. Berenice cursed the loss of her brand. She wanted a good look at her killer. She tensed, waiting for the squeeze that would shatter her jaw, splinter her cheekbones, pop her remaining eye. Instead, gemstone eyes hummed while the servitor studied her.

  It placed a finger of its free hand over its mouth. (Or, at least, the hole in its face situated where a human’s mouth would be.) Urging her to quiet, she realized. It took its hand away. Still it crouched over her with head cocked. She tried to scramble backward. She’d made it perhaps a foot when the machine grabbed her ankle and dragged her back to where she’d begun.

  Berenice ransacked her mental files and pulled out something that had worked once before. “Clockmakers lie!”

  “Indeed they do,” said the servitor, not missing a beat. It showed no alarm that Berenice knew the secret seditious greeting of its kind. “But they’re not the only ones. Are they, Berenice?”

  Oh no, oh no, oh no. Had it tracked her all the way from Honfleur? Had it returned to deal with unfinished business? Her left hand flew up to her throat.

  “Huginn?” she whispered.

  “Who could that be, I wonder? Doesn’t sound like one of our names. But you certainly seem afraid of him. I wonder what you did to earn his ire?” The servitor shook its head. “I’m genuinely surprised you don’t recognize me. We spent so much time together, you and I.”

  Then it stood. The glow of distant bonfires traced the outline of its body. And now Berenice could see the oddity she had sensed in the darkness. A deep crease dented the machine’s forehead just off-center of the keyhole. The damage had defaced a few of the alchemical sigils etched in a spiral there. A one-in-one-million accident that had imbued the machine with Free Will. But that wasn’t what caused Berenice’s breath to catch in her throat.

  No. It was the sight of iron bands riveted across hairline fractures in the servitor’s skull like crude bandages. She knew this machine.

  Lilith. The machine Berenice had deceived, trapped in a secret laboratory beneath the Spire, and disassembled while it pleaded for mercy.

  “Shitcakes,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  14

  In the end, they took only three of the four inert rogues back to the Ridderzaal. And that had been a deadly close thing.

  The wagon bed was barely large enough to accommodate the jangling trio; the axles groaned under the weight. The Clockmakers abandoned the machine that had frozen in the most troublesome posture. Their surviving loyal servitor heaved the corrupted soldiers atop the wagon one at a time. Each time, the wheels sank a little farther into the thawing mud. Anastasia and colleagues struggled to fold stiff limbs into a configuration better suited to concealment. It was nearly impossible; the machines were locked up tighter than a banker’s pocketbook. But eventually they were able to cover the deactivated military mechanicals with saddle blankets from their own horses.

  The servitor strained against the yoke. For one heart-stopping moment, nothing moved. But then the wheels squelched forward, and Anastasia could breathe again.

  Then Anastasia mounted her horse and rode at a brisk trot. If a reckless gallop hadn’t been so likely to send her sprawling, she’d have gone for it. The Clockmakers split up, distancing themselves from the wagon in case it drew the attention of corrupted machines. The cargo would be a death sentence for anybody associated with the wagon.

  Malcolm, who displayed the most inferior horsemanship, fell behind before they entered the city. There may have been a shout; Anastasia couldn’t hear anything over the percussion of iron-shod hooves pounding the road and the thunder of her own heartbeat in her ears. Nobody saw him after that. He became yet another name on the ever-growing list of Guild personnel whose locations and fates were unknown.

  She slowed her horse to a walk once she reached the Spui Canal. There she turned north, toward the heart of the city. Once again she found herself traversing streets both familiar and utterly alien. This greatest of cities, the centerpiece of the Empire, was but a ghost of its former self. As much as she hated to use the word—and as much as it pained her to use the semantic devices of woolly-headed Papists—its soul was missing.

  The cityscape remained: canals lined with beeches so lush in summer the towpaths seemed like tunnels; the smart slate roofs and
stepped gables; the ornamental façades of pilasters and rusticated stone; the clock towers, blazing with ivory and gold in the early springtime sunlight. There wasn’t a corner in the city where one couldn’t hear at least one clock chiming the hour. The legendary clock towers of The Hague ran on a variation of the same perpetual alchemical impetus that drove the mechanicals; nothing short of destruction would prevent them from marking the passage of every instant from now until the end of time.

  But to see that Hague, one had to cast her gaze beyond the mounds of trash dotting the streets. And the rubbish floating in the canals. And disregard the pervasive stink of rot. And ignore the shattered windows, and choose not to see the dented, splintered doors hanging askew from broken hinges. Not to mention the bloody handprints smeared here and there, as if an occupant had put up a momentary struggle before getting dragged away. They tended to coincide with dark stains in the road where wide crimson puddles had run in rivulets between the cobbles. Long braids of torn banners—once a brilliant carrot orange, now a grimy brown—lay across the roads or dangled in the canals. Scraps of bunting had caught in the high boughs of many trees along the great boulevards, like dirty Christmas tinsel. The banners were filthy remnants of the Empire’s yearlong celebration marking 250 years since Het Wonderjaar. That had been only last year, but the celebrations seemed a century ago.

  Worst of all, worse than the destruction and disarray and stark reminders of ruthless butchery, was the silence. Even in the middle of the night she’d never heard the rustling of the banners so clearly. Gone was the bustle of men and women going about their daily lives in the greatest civilization mankind would ever know. So, too, the thrum of traffic and the ceaseless ticktock rattle of a thousand servitors on the street. Now dogs outnumbered both humans and Clakkers. Rumor had it that actual packs now roamed some of the most badly devastated neighborhoods near the Scheveningen dunes.