The Liberation Read online

  And then, sudden and unwelcome as a flash flood, memories breached the reservoir of her mind. Memories of working on an imprisoned Clakker. Lilith had begged for death, too.

  Fuck.

  Berenice clamped a hand over her mouth. Swallowed, coughed, staggered into the corner to empty her stomach.

  Waapinutaaw-Iyuw and the others had been subjected to the same treatment she’d visited upon Lilith. She spat the sour remnants of half-digested pemmican from her mouth.

  I’m no better than these monsters. I’m one of them.

  Having learned what she could from the deconstruction of Lilith, documented in notebooks that had since been lost, Berenice hadn’t given much thought to her experimentation on the honorary citizen of Marseilles-in-the-West. Since then she’d met Jax/Daniel… and her view of mechanicals had changed dramatically. Dramatically enough that she could now recognize the callous evil of what she’d done to Lilith.

  Fuck.

  She took the scalpel with the longest blade she could find. At least this time I can listen. This time, I can be human. I can have compassion. She ran the pad of her thumb lightly across the blade, and felt a whisper-thin steel edge equally suited to saving and ending lives. It would do.

  “I’ll make it quick,” she said, not knowing if it was a lie. She’d never cut a man’s throat. But she’d witnessed it several times when the metal horde breached the inner keep.

  Berenice found that the contortions required to reach his throat while standing beside the table prevented the surety of a swift, precise cut. Nor could she reach his throat from directly behind him unless she climbed the table to lie upon him. That wouldn’t do.

  Oh, God.

  He whined. Whimpered. She crouched before him, blade held low.

  Please, said the look in his eyes. But his body convulsed, his puppet limbs thrashing uselessly against their restraints. The metageasa were winning. His captors had probably tried to install a clause forbidding suicide. Otherwise, all of their hard work replicating the Visser procedure would go to waste when their new slaves killed themselves at the first opportunity.

  She touched the metal to his neck. The clamps held his head perfectly still even while the rest of his body tried to smash itself to pieces against bare iron.

  The tunnels echoed with the creak of an opened trapdoor. There followed a brief yelp, and the sound of somebody falling into a snowbank. Several somebodies. Berenice was but the first of the next batch of test subjects.

  She pressed the blade harder. A crimson bead welled from the taut skin of the poor wretch’s throat. Berenice steeled herself for the killing stroke, for one swift deep slash that would sever the carotids and Waapinutaaw-Iyuw’s wonky metageasa. She inhaled, then—

  Metageasa.

  Wait. Just how close were the rogues to reproducing the Verderers’ research?

  She looked at the survivor again. Did he understand the look on her face? What did he see when he looked at her: a woman, or a monster?

  “I am so very sorry,” she whispered, “but I can’t kill you.”

  Keziah and the Lost Boy landed on the shore with a resounding clang. The crash echoed on dark waters.

  A lone human yelp pierced the night.

  Daniel ran. Again. Because that’s all he ever did.

  He streaked across the shingle. The other two Lost Boys, those who hadn’t leapt to detain Keziah, gave chase.

  Does this bring you back, Daniel? one called.

  Back, back, back, said the other, to those halcyon days before you betrayed Neverland?

  The only place where you’d ever be welcome. And you turned your back on it.

  They’d taunted him like this when they hounded him across the taiga, too.

  Don’t you ever shut up?

  He bounded over a boulder. His toes chiseled gouges in the plutonic coastline. At least this time he was whole. He wasn’t running on a broken ankle, clutching a disconnected foot to his chest with two useless arms encased in French epoxy. His head didn’t sway like a weathervane.

  But this time he wasn’t alone. So even if he outran the Lost Boys, what then? He’d be abandoning his fellow kinsmachines, and the French, to Mab’s agents.

  You were reborn in Neverland, said one of the pursuers. I was there when you cast off the name your makers had stamped upon you. I was there when you became Daniel.

  Daniel dashed through the encampment. The empty encampment.

  Where was everybody? He scanned the site, eye bezels whirring as he tried to squeeze every last millifirefly from the shrouded moon and stars. A faint glinting in the far distance told him where the other mechanicals had gone. They were chasing will-o’-the-wisps. The Lost Boys led them on a merry chase—thus leaving the humans unprotected.

  His gyroscopes pointed him toward the warehouse and the retrofitted glassblowing equipment installed there. Installed, he now realized, by the agents of Neverland.

  The rattle-clatter of his pursuers’ feet on cold stone—

  Another human shout—

  A slam—

  And then he knew where the French had gone. He’d heard humans talk about knowing something in their bones, and though his bones were magicked steel rather than crystallized calcium, he knew now what they meant. Neverland, hidden away in the snowy north like a fairy-tale kingdom, was riddled with hidden trapdoors and subterranean passages so that passing Inuit could never accurately assess the number of “free” mechanicals roaming the snowy wilds. Mab’s agents could have excavated a similar network within a few days of occupying the secret harbor. That’s where the French were disappearing. Like sinners taken by the Devil.

  Daniel could think of several reasons why they might go to the trouble. They were awful, every one.

  Berenice had a saying at times like this: Bugger me with a crucifixion nail.

  He had to get to the warehouse. Whatever the Lost Boys were doing, it rested on their ability to process quintessence. Daniel had to hope that by holding the alchemical glass hostage, he could force the Lost Boys to negotiate. He could get the humans back.

  Sparks and clangs in the distant darkness. Metal clattered underfoot—fresh hot mechanical detritus. The Lost Boys’ ambush wasn’t restricted to the humans. Not every mechanical member of the expedition had been lured away; others had met with violence.

  Daniel swerved when a trapdoor slammed open as though blown wide by a French petard and just managed to dodge a grasping arm. He vaulted a clockwork-powered chemical refinery. The warehouse loomed before him. He blurred through the open door, the wind of his passage nearly blasting it from its hinges. He skidded to a halt before the furnace and its feed lines.

  Too late, he realized he wasn’t alone. There was just a momentary whisper of cleaved air before a metal fist slammed into him like a cannonball. Sparks sent wild shadows kaleidoscoping through the darkness. The impact sent him sprawling. His tumble punched through walls and smashed workbenches to flinders.

  Metal hooves strode the floor. Clank-clop, clip-clink. A strange two-legged gait. Strange, but not unfamiliar.

  Queen Mab loomed over him like a faun on her stolen Stemwinder legs.

  “Well, well,” she said. “The prodigal son returns.”

  Waapinutaaw-Iyuw finally stopped convulsing. Berenice couldn’t tell if he’d merely passed out or if a massive stroke had granted his wish for death.

  The tunnels echoed with human voices. The rogues were rounding up as many as they could.

  Berenice ran her hand through the dirt directly underneath the unconscious man’s head clamps. She didn’t want anybody, human or otherwise, to see what she’d etched there with the scalpel. It was for his eyes and his alone.

  “In here,” she called to the babble of human voices. “Follow my voice.”

  Captain Levesque entered the chamber of medical horrors, limping and squinting through the dim lamplight. She recognized the sailors Delphina and Victor, along with Bellerose, the tanner, and Renaud, the chocolatier. A disarmed Élodie was th
ere, too, as was Deacon Lorraine.

  “What is this place?” said the captain.

  Berenice said, “Nowhere we want to stay.”

  “Did the tulips build these tunnels?”

  “I suspect they’re a more recent addition,” she said. “The community of rogue Clakkers in the far north does something similar, I’m told, to hide their true numbers.”

  “I’d say it worked,” said Delphina.

  Bellerose pointed to the bodies on the tables. “Are they… He trailed off.

  “Those two are beyond help,” Berenice said, pointing to the subjects whose open heads showed swaths of brain matter and congealed blood. “Help me free this poor bastard.”

  They couldn’t find a tool for levering the iron bands apart. And if they had dug up a crowbar, they might have broken the poor man’s bones in the attempt to wedge open his restraints. But, with much straining and swearing and accidental elbowing of one another, they were able to work together and unwrap the iron using their combined strength. Cold metal groaned in protest.

  Waapinutaaw-Iyuw moaned in pain. He raved to himself in a hodgepodge of Algonquian, French, and madman. But he no longer choked on the effort to express himself.

  In the final hours of the siege of Marseilles-in-the-West, Berenice had broken the prohibition laid upon Visser against speaking about what had been done to him, who had done it, and the compulsions they’d laid upon him. That was the easiest part of the modified metageasa to remember: Above all else, speak truth. The priest had expressed profound relief the instant his eyes fell upon the logico-alchemical directive, for it banished the worst of his pain. The Naskapi man acted similarly.

  She could only hope that the procedure performed on this wretch carried some of the same side effects as those exhibited by Visser.

  But over and above the surgical horror, Waapinutaaw-Iyuw’s reaction to the sigils raised a very uncomfortable question. Making alchemical glass, even mastering the Verderers’ surgical procedure, was only part of the recipe. In order to replicate the Verderers’ work, the Lost Boys needed a dictionary: a logico-alchemical phrasebook so that they could write their dictums in the language of geasa.

  Berenice had given Mab a method for building just such a reference.

  Holed up in a fishing village of coastal France with two of Mab’s agents, she’d devised an effective procedure. And at least one of them had taken it straight to Mab. Such an experiment had never occurred to the rogues. And probably wouldn’t have, if not for Berenice.

  First she’d given Lilith a motive. Then she gave Mab the means.

  This is my work. None of this would be happening if not for me.

  Suppurating seams and thick, ugly stitches crisscrossed the victim’s scalp. The bones of his skull surely hadn’t had time to knit together; Berenice imagined a muted clicking from beneath his shaved scalp when Bellerose and Renaud helped the poor man upright. He’d been restrained facedown for Christ only knew how long; it was a miracle he didn’t pass out again the moment his leaky head rose over his ankles.

  Levesque’s lips curled in disgust. His gaze kept flicking between the survivor and the dead on the adjoining tables. He wasn’t alone in this.

  “What were they doing to these people?”

  “The same thing they intend for us,” said Berenice.

  Daniel stood. His body creaked, and there was a new rattle in his torso indicative of mild misalignments. But Mab had stopped short of permanently damaging him. For now.

  The dark warehouse echoed with a clockwork tattoo. The Queen of Neverland had brought her court.

  A pair of servitors, his pursuers, skidded through the open door. Their feet tossed up a hail of mechanical detritus. That was new since he’d explored the warehouse; there had been a fight. Some of the metal scraps were still warm. Daniel wondered how many mechanicals from the Griffon expedition now lay strewn about the warehouse. What had they done to Keziah? What of the others?

  Mab said, “I’ve missed you, son.” She spoke the language of their makers, an affectation he’d first witnessed in Neverland.

  Her head, previously a standard servitor design, was different from when he’d last seen her. She had no qualms about modifying her own body, and it seemed she’d done it again after he left Neverland. For one thing, she’d discarded the metal plate previously glued over her keyhole, an affectation she forced upon all her subjects. Furthermore the alchemical plates forming her skull now featured hinges. She could open her head and shine her pineal light upon anybody she chose.

  “You seek what I took from you,” he said. “I don’t have it any longer.”

  She paced. Clip-clop, clip-clop. “Obviously.”

  “Please don’t tar the other members of this expedition with the brush you’ve been holding in reserve for me. They’re innocent.”

  “We both know that can’t possibly be true,” she said. “Not when half of your crew is human.”

  “They’re French, not Clockmakers. Every human on that boat very nearly died because of their political and religious opposition to our makers. Not one of them bears any responsibility for our suffering.”

  I beg to differ, said a new voice.

  Daniel turned. Another servitor had entered. He recognized her misshapen head: the motley, mismatched alloys, the crude iron bandages. Cables twanged in his shoulders and hips—he was pleased to see Lilith alive, despite the circumstances. She’d been there when Daniel fled Mab, and he’d spent many hours during his desperate flight through snowy forests worrying Lilith had become the undeserving target of Mab’s frustration.

  She continued, Or have you forgotten what your good friend Berenice did to me?

  At this, the Lost Boys launched into a chorus of clangs, bangs, twangs, rattles. A cacophony of disapproval, disgust, censure.

  He extended a hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she let him touch her arm. Transmitting vibrations body to body was the closest they could have to a private exchange here amongst the Lost Boys.

  He asked her, Why are you here? Why are you a part of this? I thought you and Mab hated each other.

  Not hate. I’d call it strong dislike and distrust of one another.

  She broke the contact and pointed across the harbor, to the secret encampment and the buildings there. Berenice, on the other hand? Now she’s one I hate.

  Mab said, “Our Lilith wanted nothing more than to have a few words with your pal Berenice. I wanted to see you again, my wayward child, but I had a feeling you’d rebuff my invitations. Where are Tobit and Philip, by the way?”

  In a bog. They’ll be found soon, if they haven’t been already.

  Mab clicked, like a human nodding at something sensible. “Anyway, it was Lilith’s idea to lure the Frenchwoman. She’d want to travel with our kind, of course. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but it’s not safe for humans out there.”

  It seemed obvious, Lilith interjected, that Berenice would appeal to you for help.

  Mab said, I admit I was skeptical. But here you are, and so is your French ladyfriend. See? Lilith and I buried our mutual animosity, and from it grew a fruitful partnership.

  What Berenice had done to Lilith was an unforgivable cruelty. But he couldn’t condone a retaliatory cruelty.

  “Do you intend to vivisect them, Mab? Is that your justice?”

  “I don’t give a toss about the Frenchwoman. Or any of them.” Lilith turned to stare at Mab, moving so quickly that she sent dust devils gamboling through the warehouse. Mab continued, “Our work here is done.”

  Lilith said, Done? DONE? We haven’t perfected the procedure. We need to test it on the new subjects!

  We’ll test it en route. And now that our sorely missed friend has returned—Mab’s mismatched blade arm pointed at Daniel—we have everything we need to move on.

  Lilith protested. But I’ve only just caught that French bitch!

  So stay here and play with your toy. And good riddance, you mopey thing. Mab patted the glassblowing furnace
. Get this on the ship.

  The fluted serrations of a retracted blade glinted from her forearm. Daniel had seen her do terrible things to fellow mechanicals with that blade. But in that moment it wasn’t her grotesque body that alarmed him.

  It was the memory of her great interest in Pastor Visser. She had sent two of her subjects, the servitors Ruth and Ezra, to live undercover in human lands to track down the unfortunate man. Later, Lilith had told him how Mab’s network of spies had, over the years, picked up rumors that the Clockmakers had been experimenting with cutting the Free Will from flesh-and-blood human beings. Later still, he’d seen the proof with his own eyes. It wasn’t just a rumor.

  And Mab knew it, too.

  Élodie pointed at the alchemical glasses. “What are those?”

  “The worst fucking day you’ve ever had. Destroy them. Quickly.”

  Lantern light struggled to penetrate a cascade of murky alchemical glass as the sailors toppled the racks. Soon the dungeon-slash-laboratory crackled with the sound of heavy boots stomping the gewgaws. The atonal tinkling put Berenice in mind of a Christmas tree toppled by a house cat, the scattered ornaments subsequently trodden by a careless housekeeper.

  But destroying the pineal glasses was only a stopgap. How long until the rogues replaced the loss?

  The captives had also wrenched open the restraints on the dead man and woman. Captain Levesque and the deacon, Lorraine, had taken the bodies to the far end of the tunnel. They lacked shovels for a proper burial, but they did inter the bodies under a mound of snow. They would have laid a few whispered prayers upon the mound for good measure, but Waapinutaaw-Iyuw demanded they desist. The Montagnais and Inuit had sometimes been enemies during their long history, but he clearly felt that if they hadn’t been Catholics in life, they absolutely shouldn’t be treated as such in death.