A few crows sit on an old telephone wire that sags across the weedy lot. Nothing out of the ordinary. Peter registers my annoyed look as I pack the tools back into his roll.
“The grouping,” he says quietly. “One bird, then three, one, three. Thirteen. This is a sign.”
“Okay,” I say with a frown, glancing at the birds. They seem perfectly normal, sitting clustered into little groups. I count them, double-checking Peter’s math. “Fine. But how is that a code? What’s it supposed to mean?”
“This is the domain of an old avtomat called Batuo.”
“Your friend, right?” I ask.
I trail off as a fat black crow flaps its wings, lobbing itself toward us. It lands on the roof of the car in a flurry of feathers and scrabbling talons. In jerky movements, the yellow-eyed bird cocks its head at me.
Peter regards the bird seriously for a long moment. Finally, he speaks to it.
“Batuo,” he says.
The bird hops closer, to within a foot of where Peter leans against the warm hood of the car. Peering up at him with bright eyes, it goes still. Now that it isn’t moving, I notice a metallic gleam to its feathers. Its black legs and beak look like rugged plastic. The glow of its yellow eyes take on the sheen of an LED.
“No way,” I murmur. And yet I have read accounts of the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum building a wooden dove capable of flight around 350 BC. A lot of progress could have been made in two thousand years.
Peter speaks to the bird, using oddly stilted language. “I ask peaceful entry into your domain. You know my Word and my nature. I will do you no harm. My companion is under my aegis. Grant us entry, Batuo. Together, we can fulfill my first quest, and the last.”
After another pause, the bird seems to reanimate. It hops backward, head cocked again. Then it caws loudly and bobs its head at Peter.
Peter nods back.
“Wait,” I say, walking around the car. “Did it talk to you? Is that even a real bird?”
The bird rears back and flaps its wings. There is something off-putting in the way the wings connect to the body. Like the work of a taxidermist.
“Clockwork birds?” I ask. “Surely there’s an easier way.”
“Our methods span centuries, June,” says Peter. “The world has changed, but these emissaries and their ancestors have never lost their usefulness.”
Moving slow, I reach for the bird.
It flaps its wings, talons scraping the hood as it flies away from my outstretched fingers. A hundred yards away, seven other crows lift off the power line at the same time, cawing.
The small flock wings away from the lot, headed toward downtown Seattle. As they disappear, I notice a lone feather lying on the hood of the car. Exchanging a glance with Peter, I pick it up. Putting it under my nose, I inhale.
The feather smells like plastic.
22
LONDON, 1731
“Be careful,” I say to Elena. “Our faces look better, but they are far from perfect.”
In a black silk gown embroidered with silver thread, the girl looks up at me innocently, trying and failing to suppress a smile. With quick movements, she picks a few pieces of lint off my long overcoat. I purchased a coach-load of fine garments from a tailor’s shop on Charing Cross, fashionable enough to allow us to travel anywhere we wish to go in the city.
I push a lock of powdered gray hair over one shoulder, uncertain.
“Don’t worry,” says Elena, giggling. “You really are quite convincing, Peter.”
Though we move only at night, our new faces have allowed an unprecedented level of interaction with the people of London. This has included the ability to spend some of the wealth accumulated from ransoming debtors.
As is her habit, Elena is standing at the window of our new flat, shielding her eyes from the dull morning light. Her impish grin is lost in curls of lustrous black hair. The new room we are renting is an entire floor on a much more respectable street, above a haberdashery, wall-papered in blue florals, furnished, and boasting a substantial fireplace embedded in the wall, unlit.
We have made a flurry of small forays into the city at dusk, exercising the lessons Favorini gave us on blending in with humanity. And though we are accustomed to behaving as people, pretending to breathe and eat and drink, Elena and I have never walked in the daylight.
“Ooh,” Elena breathes, face pressed to the glass. “I can’t wait.”
The girl darts across the room to the doorway, her shoes silent on the thick rugs. She opens the door and leans around the corner, peeking out like a child.
“Our man is here,” she urges me, already tromping down the stairs. “Come on. Let’s finally see the whole city!”
Outside, two men with calves like cannonballs and elaborately armored shoes stand beside a wooden sedan chair with handles sprouting in front and behind. Slightly more expensive than the carriages known as teeth rattlers, these portable booths are the only sure mode of transport over the broken stone of the city roads. Just a rental, our sedan is made of a simple wooden box with gauzy fabric hanging over the windows.
I drop a few coins into the man’s palm and lift Elena into the sedan.
“Stone’s end, sir,” I say, ducking my tall frame into the perfumed, heavily pillowed interior. The law forbids these contrivances on pedestrian paths, but few chairmen take heed of that, shoving past the wooden stumps buried in the stone to stop carriages and shouting at those on foot to make way.
Not yet settled on the rough leather seat, Elena squeals as we lurch ahead. She is sent flying, suspended in the air, eyes wide and incredulous. As she lands, her small hands find my jacket and clamp on tight, a new round of surprised giggles thumped out of her by the next wobble of the sedan.
Outside, our lead chairman shouts “By your leave!” with monotonous regularity. Every so often, he stops to crane his neck, looking for the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral—the only landmark tall enough to help him through this warren of twisting, close-packed buildings. This area survived the great fire and bears the mind-numbing complexity borne of centuries of frenzied building and demolition.
Inside our compartment, thin drapes flutter, filtering the reddish morning sunlight onto Elena’s smiling face. Peeking between folds of fabric, she watches the bustling streets of London with a queer satisfaction—absorbing every detail.
“Isn’t it incredible, Peter?” she asks. “Look at all the people.”
I do not respond. Leaning to the other side, I have my eye set to scanning the crowded street. I keep my face hidden behind the mud-spattered curtain, remembering her words: We are not alone here.
My gaze stutters across a beautiful woman standing in a doorway, black eyes following us as we pass. A thrill of recognition races through me. Turning back, I find her already gone.
A vague unease settles into my mind.
In the last year, I have seen more of the fiery sigils—all of them near the wharves that line the Thames. The slashing letters are terribly familiar somehow, yet I cannot fathom their meaning. And not from lack of trying. Elena has filled our flat with her reproductions of the signs, and collected thick tomes devoted to translation. Watching the street without blinking, I ensure we do not stray near those marked lanes.
“This is the world,” Elena says. “We are finally a part of it.”
“This is their world—” I begin to correct her.
Our chairmen stumble into a ditch and the sedan tilts, nearly collapses onto its side. I clutch Elena and keep her from spilling out as a hackney carriage plows by just outside. The loudly complaining chairmen yank us back upright, shouting hoarsely at the dusty wake of the carriage. My reflexive embrace is all that has kept Elena from being thrown out of the sedan and trampled.
“Their world,” I urge again, holding her close. “We must be vigilant. Do not fall in love with these people or the false Eden they have made.”
“If we do not belong in their world, then where is our own?” Elena implores, pu
shing my arms away. She grasps a bar bolted beside the door to steady herself and glares at me, her lower lip stuttering with emotion. “We need to seek out our own kind.”
The old familiar argument.
“We did meet another of our kind,” I remind her. “It threatened us. It tried to drag us into a war we have no business fighting. I will not allow—”
“Allow?” she asks, interrupting me angrily. “You will not allow me? I am not your child.”
Elena turns her furrowed brow to the street, shrugging off my touch. We travel in silence for a long while as dawn turns to morning, listening to the chairmen huff and puff. I watch the fabric of the curtains flutter against the morning light, the obscure shadows of men and women playing on the veil as they go about their lives on the other side, oblivious to the clockwork strangers who walk among them.
Abruptly, the sedan chair stops moving. With a thump we are set down.
A throng of people have gathered in the square before us. Our chairmen are shouting and shoving to no effect, having come to a dead standstill.
“What is this?” I ask, pushing my face out the window.
“Tyburn hangings, sir,” says the lead chairman. “Can’t push through until they’re over.”
I lean back inside in time to see Elena slipping between the curtains and out the door. Her small hard feet clap to the cobblestones and she disappears instantly into the crowd of spectators.
“Elena!” I shout.
I emerge, shoving people away from the sedan chair. Pushing another few coins into the sweating driver’s hand, I stride away into the crowd, heads taller than anyone else, scanning for Elena. I catch a streak of black velvet weaving between the waistcoats and gowns of gentlemen and commoners alike.
The sense of unease from before has flowered into a full panic.
On a wooden scaffold across the square, a condemned man stands in his best clothes, a rope binding his elbows to his waist, leaving his hands free to clasp in prayer. A hairy rope is wrapped around his neck in a hangman’s noose. The executioner stands to the side, waiting patiently as his prisoner makes a final speech. He holds a white nightcap to pull over the prisoner’s face just before he is turned off.
I stop, blinking.
On the brick building behind the scaffold, a fiery mark glows. And along the roofline, a series of birds sit in a row, peculiar and still. Something about their precise arrangement puts a sudden fear in my throat. Abruptly, I recall seeing a similar pattern of birds in Moscow during our midnight walks.
I sense this is the domain of another avtomat.
The birds on the roofline take flight, wings moving in irregular lurches. Something is wrong about them, something artificial. I begin to trot through the crowd, ignoring the complaints of jostled pedestrians.
I cannot hear what the prisoner is saying, over the jeering of the hundreds of spectators. He barely flinches as they spit and curse and throw rotten fruit at the scaffold. Swiveling my head, I stalk through the crowd for agonizing minutes. Finally, I spot Elena, only a few yards away. She sees me and tries to run, but I am too fast, diving forward and sweeping her up in my arms.
“My daughter,” I say, holding her tight to me as she struggles to escape. “So that’s where you’ve got to.”
Posing as a father, I move away quickly, cradling Elena’s head against my shoulder. I hiss into her ear, “I was wrong. You are not mine, but you are precious to me. Never run from me again.”
Pausing to look at Elena, I notice her eyes have gone wide with fear. Her lips are moving, mumbling, trying to make a sound. Her arms tighten around my neck.
Spinning, I see the woman who disappeared from the doorway a few minutes ago coming from across the courtyard. I know instantly that she is avtomat.
The thing is female, a lock of straight black hair hanging long over her sharp cheekbones, the rest of it gathered in a bunch on top of her head. Her face is smooth, eyes wide set and black and narrowed. She gives the vague impression of being Eastern. Dressed impeccably, she carries a parasol and wears white gloves. When she knifes a hand out to thread through the crowd, grown men are pushed to the side like rag dolls.
My mind flashes with a vision of this woman—she is riding a fantastical horse with tiger stripes across a lush jungle clearing. She is laughing, hair flowing, looking back at me and flashing her teeth, sharp and white. Then a primeval forest swallows her, wet and dark, and from deep within it, I hear a roaring…
I shake my head to clear it.
“Go, Peter,” gasps Elena. “Take me away from her.”
The jeering crowd is facing the scaffold as the sentence is about to be carried out. No one seems to notice the woman slicing through, tossing people to the ground, closing her parasol and tucking it under her elbow.
“Peter,” Elena begs.
Wrapping one arm under Elena, I put the other around her shoulders and hold her to me as I launch away through the crowd. Pushing blindly, I soon reach the edge of the courtyard where carriages are parked.
Turning, I don’t see the woman.
“Who is she?” asks Elena, face pressed against my chest.
“Avtomat,” I say.
Then the lady appears in a gap between onlookers, her eyes narrowed.
“I am Leizu, little one. The mother of silkworms, who brought silk to China in the age before ages,” she says. “Do you not recognize me anymore?”
Holding Elena tight to me, I back away slowly.
“We do not know you,” I say.
The woman advances, her parasol held tight under her arm. She twists the umbrella with her right hand and the handle loosens.
A few inches of hidden blade emerge, shining copper.
It is the divine blade—
“Your sister does not concern me,” she says. “Only you, Pyotr.”
I stop, my back pressing against the front quarter of a hackney coach.
“What do you want?”
Stepping closer, she smiles.
“I want the pain to stop,” she says, and I feel a madness radiating from her. She exudes the intensity of a trapped animal, pushed beyond exhaustion and consuming unknown reserves of energy. “You are the only one strong enough to give me satisfaction. We will break against each other like waves on the shore—”
From his perch, the coachman shouts at me to move off and plants a boot on my shoulder. I lean harder against the carriage, hearing the wheels creak. I do not flinch as the sting of a horsewhip crosses the side of my face.
Elena wriggles out of my arms and drops to the ground.
“Horses,” she says, diving between my legs and under the carriage.
Leizu steps back and sweeps her hidden sword from its sheath, dazzling light spraying from the bright copper blade. With startling speed, she locks fingers onto my forearm. Her strength is impossible, the force of a mountain in her grasp.
I have never felt anything like it—never imagined such power.
“Come with me,” she says.
Shoving backward, I dig my boot heels into muddy cobblestones, rocking the lumbering, square carriage up onto two wheels. The coachman shouts shrilly in alarm. I hear wood splintering and horses neighing frantically.
Without looking away from the woman’s rising blade, I clamp a hand blindly up onto the coachman’s calf. Hauling him off the platform, I throw his body at the dark-haired woman. Buttons fly from his uniform as the overweight man hits the ground and rolls screaming into her legs. She sidesteps to avoid him, letting go of my arm, swallowed again into the shouting crowd.
“Peter!” Elena shouts.
The girl has thrown the traces from the horses. Now, she sits on a white mare, bareback, fingers wrapped in its mane, beckoning to me.
With a final push, I send the teetering carriage over on its side. It crashes to the ground, wood splitting apart, and the remaining horse rears and charges. People scatter in panic, shoving in all directions.
I am already taking Elena’s hand, leaping onto the w
hite mare’s narrow back. Frantically, we spur our mount through the crowd, away from the spectacle. The lady is lost in the horde behind us as people surge away from the fallen wagon.
At the edge of the square, I dare to look over my shoulder.
The lady is standing upright on the overturned carriage like a knife blade, scanning for us. Silhouetted against the sun, her long hair ripples over her shoulders, a black pennant. In her right hand she brandishes the flashing, copper-colored sword.
As we meet eyes, a solid thunk comes from the scaffold and the crowd roars in the guttural language of blood. The condemned man goes swinging by his neck from a short noose, legs kicking. I lose sight of Leizu as spectators close in around her, screaming and cheering, urging the prisoner on to a slow death as his relatives swarm around his feet, pulling at his body to try and hurry him along to the next world.
23
SEATTLE, PRESENT
The blank face of the skyscraper looms over us, beads of condensation scabbing its black glass surface, leaving it sparkling in the growing dawn like something frozen and abandoned centuries ago. Peter parks right across the street from it, illegally.
He leans over and pops open the glove compartment, pulls out a laminated badge, and hangs it on the rearview mirror. Glancing at it, I see police credentials. I don’t even bother to ask whether or not they are real.
“My friend is here,” Peter says, gazing up at the building through the windshield. He looks tired, shoulders slumped and an arm tucked over his chest.
“What is this place?” I ask, looking out.
Peter sighs, sounding distinctly human. “A kind of…hospital. Avtomat come here for repairs. If that fails, sometimes to sleep forever. Because of this, there is a sign written fifty feet high on the side of the building.”
“I don’t see anything—” I say, turning back to Peter.
His hand is out, palm flat. A small brass ring rests on it, like a monocle without any glass.
“This is a cedalion, June,” he says. “Keep it. It may become useful to you.”
“Cedalion?” I ask. “Who stood on the shoulders of Orion and granted him sight?”
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