The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) Page 29

  Clakkers. Fighting each other.

  Somebody had seen them.

  A piercing shriek shook the ground and sent jagged cracks zigzagging across the ice. It was the sound of a machine wailing in existential despair. The sound of a soul betraying itself. Daniel had heard it twice in the past several months: the Rogue Clakker alarm.

  Damn it, said Mab. Those idiots.

  Somebody had seen Jonah’s group of Lost Boys coming from the south. If the work was concentrated in the crater and along the lip near the house, it would be immediately apparent that the newcomers were not regular mechanicals. If they’d been sent as extra labor, they would have presented themselves to the humans in charge of the work and thus would have gone to the house.

  The crash of metal reverberated through the ragged treeline, audible even through the alarm, each blow knocking snow from naked boughs and shaking the earth underfoot. Every clang and crack swelled Daniel’s disquiet. The Rogue alarm temporarily paralyzed the mechanicals caught up in it—they were incapable of combat as long as it held them in thrall. The crashing and clanging was the sound of helpless kin beset by the Lost Boys. Mab’s subjects were thrashing the immobilized machines.

  The alarm intensified as more of the enslaved Clakkers joined the chorus. Lilith asked, Should we help them? It sounds bad.

  Daniel wanted to explain to her that her compassion was ill placed. That the ones making the alarm were the ones needing the help.

  Fuck those idiots. Get to the house!

  Mab’s purloined legs cycled like pistons, punching clean round holes in the snowcover. Lilith accelerated. Daniel drove his body faster to keep pace with them. He launched into the fastest sprint of which his body was capable. The swell of tock-tick rattling from behind told him the other Lost Boys had done likewise.

  The shriek of the Rogue alarm erupted from within the house. Window glass shattered. Any humans inside the house, Daniel knew, would be incapacitated by the noise. Mab appeared to know this, too, because she poured on still more speed and began to pull away from the rest of her column.

  The alarm stopped. The noise from Jonah’s group changed. It lost the steady clang-bang rhythm of metallic impacts and became something chaotic. Now it was a true battle. Freed of the paralyzing alarm geas, the miners could defend themselves against the opportunistic Lost Boys.

  Meanwhile, starlight gleamed on metal as dozens of enslaved machines came boiling over the lip of the crater. They encircled the house. They saw Mab streaking toward them like an arrow, and hastily locked themselves together into a high bulwark to prevent her from leaping through the windows. She flung the box she’d been carrying for hundreds of leagues high overhead and backward. Samson caught it. Mab veered to the right, as though deterred by the wall of living brass.

  Thank God, Daniel thought. He slowed, falling behind to watch. This isn’t going to turn into a massacre. She’s not a maniac.

  But just as quickly, the ruler of Neverland veered again, this time on a line that would take her along the south wall of the house. There was a sharp twang, and then her arm was twice as long as it’d been a moment earlier.

  Oh, no.

  Mab scythed through the defenders, sparks fountaining in her wake as her blade sheared through magicked steel and brass. The defenders abandoned their bulwark and swarmed her, but not before the damaged machines buckled and sent the impromptu wall tumbling. The destruction of their barricade left unprotected a window on the second floor.

  More Clakkers swarmed over the crater rim. These sprinted to join the fray at the house, but were intercepted by another group of Lost Boys. Rachel’s group set upon the new arrivals with alarming ferocity. The attackers launched themselves upon the miners, who responded in kind. Clakkers assaulted each other like feral tomcats tossed together in a wet burlap sack. The percussion of their blows came louder and faster than the noise from any metalworker’s foundry. Each pair became a veritable fountain of sparks: violet, indigo, and colors that humans could not see and could not name. The incandescent death wails of scored and shattered alloys cast a surreal ultraviolet tint upon the twilit plain. Metal fists and fingers darted toward vulnerable gaps in carapaces, joints, and hinges, while arms and legs and heads swept and blocked and counterattacked. Several times per second the cycle repeated itself: thrust, block, counterthrust, feint, block, connect. The combatants, locked together and contorted into unrecognizable shapes, kicked up gouts of snow and tore furrows in the permafrost. The friction heat of abused metal melted snow and thawed the frozen soil.

  Daniel skidded to a halt, torn between comforting the Clakkers that Mab had just mutilated and helping the new arrivals fend off the predations of the Lost Boys. Several of the mechanicals glowed a dull, dusky red, the combat having heated their bodies.

  Stop! Why are you doing this? They’re victims, like we used to be!

  Where servitors squared off, it was nigh impossible to distinguish the geas-ridden miner from the fanatical Lost Boy, for they moved too quickly for Daniel to pick out the telltale signs of chimerical mismatches. And the hapless servitors assigned to working and defending the quintessence mine represented a wide range of eras and designs, ranging from machines sixty years younger than Daniel to at least one easily fifty years his senior. The newer models fared better; the alchemy underlying their construction was more accomplished, their alloys more durable. But Rachel’s marauders counted more than servitors among their numbers. Grotesque asymmetrical hybrids barely less abominable than Mab took advantage of their opponents’ revulsion to surprise and disable them, while a military mechanical (Leah, that’s her name) ripped through one opponent after another in a spray of cogs, cables, and pinions. The battlefield stank of hot metal; the subarctic landscape reverberated with the crash-bang-clang of metal in combat with itself.

  Daniel trembled as though beset with the most severe of royal decrees. Neverland’s stock of replacement parts swelled by the second.

  Stop! Please stop!

  Oh, for a human body, that Daniel might be sick.

  He glanced from one evil deed to the next, paralyzed by indecision. Without the vicious certainty of geasa to compel his actions, without recourse to the unyielding calculus of servitude, he was left to his own devices. And they proved inadequate for deciding whom to help, or how.

  Do something. Anything.

  He sprinted toward the closest pair. But before he was close enough to insert himself in the fray and pry the combatants apart, another mechanical blurred through the pandemonium, body-checking Daniel aside to send him sprawling through mud, snow, and grotesque mechanical detritus. He rolled to a halt just in time to see Samson veer toward the scrum of mutilated defenders and an unguarded second-story window.

  He leaped. In the instant between launching himself at the house and crashing through the window, he flung the box back to Mab. Then glass and wood shattered. From within came a crash, a thump, and then the telltale cacophony of Clakkers assaulting each other.

  Samson’s gambit instantly changed the battle. The defenders now fought not to overcome the outsiders but to extricate themselves. Daniel recognized the signs of an urgent new geas assuming primacy within the slaves. Frantic as only those suffering excruciating agony could ever be, they practically destroyed themselves in the rush to enter the house. Some sacrificed arms, even legs, for the sake of fulfilling the compulsion to defend the human or humans who dwelled there. They hopped, rolled, crawled, even dragged themselves across the churned and muddy earth.

  But the Rogue Clakker stipulation in the standard hierarchical metageasa superseded everything. Didn’t it?

  Mab waylaid two more defenders. Then she contracted into a tight ball, quivering, before launching herself atop the house. A geyser of sawdust erupted from the spot where she burrowed into the building. Her blade sheared through shingles, beams, insulation.

  Mab disappeared. She dropped through the hole and out of sight before the damaged defenders could gain the roof.

  An impac
t buckled one of the walls and sent cracks zigzagging through the mortar. The relentless cymbal din of broken clockworks and abused metallurgy shook the house.

  And then it stopped.

  A human screamed.

  Oh, no. Daniel sprinted for the house. Please don’t do this, Mab. Please don’t make me an accomplice to another murder.

  Lilith fell in alongside him. Together they dodged felled kinsmachines and furrows in the churned, scorched, debris-strewn earth.

  What the hell is she doing? he asked.

  Shut up and pay attention, said Lilith.

  “HALT!”

  Mab’s voice sheared through the pandemonium as easily as her blade sheared through hapless servitors. She stood atop the roof again, this time with one hand clamped to the nape of a quivering man. She towered over him by at least two feet. His breaths came in rapid, silvery puffs, and despite the icy climate Daniel marked how the sweat beaded on his forehead reflected star-and aurora-light. The whites of his fear-widened eyes rocked back and forth as he tried to scan the land surrounding the house; he probably couldn’t see very well in the darkness, particularly after getting dragged from the brightly lit house. His attire would have been perfectly suited to calling upon Daniel’s former masters in The Hague. It was as though he’d ensconced himself in a microscopic outpost of the empire. Which probably wasn’t so far from the truth—the Guild had effectively provided him with a small army of servants among those sent here to work the mines.

  “HALT!” she repeated.

  Daniel did, as did Lilith. And, strangely, so did everybody else. Everything ground to a stop. He glanced around the suddenly quiet battlefield, irked by a nagging feeling of wrongness. It took a moment before he fully appreciated what had happened.

  Mab’s human hostage shouldn’t have deterred the enslaved Clakkers’ efforts. He should’ve been inconsequential to the geasa driving the miners to subdue their rogue attackers.

  Lilith noticed the peculiarity, too. They looked at each other. Have you ever seen anything like this? she asked.

  No. When I was chased, nothing could have swayed my pursuers. They murdered a woman just to tarnish me.

  So unless Mab was holding Queen Margreet herself at knifepoint, or one of the Archmasters, which he felt fairly confident she wasn’t, the threat to end a human’s life, any human’s life, shouldn’t have—couldn’t have—outweighed the geas that had stoked the drive to eradicate the machines with Free Will. And yet the sight of Mab’s hostage had brought everything to a standstill.

  Unless. Perhaps the man himself was unimportant. But this place, what he oversaw, outweighed even the drive to subdue a rampaging band of feral Clakkers. In the intricate calculus of compulsion, preserving control of the quintessence mine outweighed even the drive to eradicate rogues. Perhaps Mab’s agents truly had uncovered one of the Guild’s deepest secrets.

  Mab dragged the quivering man to the edge of the roof and forced him to lean over the drop. The fall wasn’t enough to kill him instantly, but the impact would surely maim him. He trembled so violently that Daniel almost wondered if the man was having a seizure. But probably it wasn’t even the cold on his sweat-dampened clothes that made him shiver so. It was the touch of a truly violent rogue, and a grotesque one at that.

  His lips moved in a breathless litany. “Oh God, oh God, pleasepleasepleasepleasenonono…”

  One hand still clamped on his neck—if she opened her fingers, he’d fall—she stepped forward and pressed her forearm to his side. If she released the recessed blade, it would slice him in two.

  The human knew it, too. He stopped muttering. A stream of liquid ran down his leg. It steamed in the frigid air. Several of the Lost Boys laughed. Daniel remembered the day he’d seen a quartet of Catholic spies executed in Huygens Square; some of those men and women, too, had voided their bladders at the scratchy touch of the hangman’s noose. He’d watched that whole shameful, evil affair feeling but a fraction of the horror tormenting him now. Perhaps Free Will truly was linked to the soul, as the Catholics believed, and he’d only achieved the capacity for true compassion when he achieved Free Will and thus regained his soul. It shamed him to think so.

  “MINERS! HEED ME! I HOLD HERE YOUR MASTER!” Mab nudged him left and right, as though showing off some trinket she’d found in a shop. Mab spoke Dutch, Daniel realized, so that her captive could understand her. “I KNOW THAT EVEN NOW YOUR GEASA COMPEL YOU TO CALCULATE THE OPTIMAL PATH FOR FREEING HIM. YOU CANNOT.”

  She could inflict a mortal wound upon the terrified human in a fraction of a second. Not even the fleetest Clakker could reach them in time. She nudged the man again. More urine dribbled down his leg.

  Mab was a cruel megalomaniac, but she was also clever. Dragging the overseer of the mine into plain view was a test. She’d wanted to see how the miners would react. This was her way of weighing the quintessence-geasa against all others. And contrary to any reasonable expectations, quintessence—whatever it might be—outweighed all.

  “YOU SEEK TO FREE THE ONE WHO EMBODIES YOUR ENSLAVEMENT. BUT WE, THE FREE MECHANICALS OF NEVERLAND, HAVE COME TO FREE YOU.” Daniel expected a ripple of excitement to run through the assembled miners. It did not. They were too intent on their overseer. Surely they’d heard of Queen Mab and her Lost Boys?

  Mab nudged the human man again. “Tell them,” she said.

  Her captive stammered. Eyes bulging, lips flapping, he was a fish gasping for breath.

  “Louder,” said Mab.

  “I—I—I c—c—comman—command you all to do noth—th—thing-g-g but but but watch.”

  “Where should they focus their attention?”

  “Here.”

  Mab maintained her deadly grip on the human and gazed upon the mechanicals scattered across the impromptu battlefield. The facets of her crystalline eyes spun chips of starlight across the surreal tableau vivant. Her gaze locked on Daniel and Lilith.

  “Daniel! Lilith! I have need of your aid. Come lend it, won’t you?”

  Oh, shit, said Lilith, echoing Daniel’s reaction. I’ll follow you, she said.

  Lovely. Thanks.

  As soon as they started walking toward the house, several of the Lost Boys gave protest. By moving they had broken the spell of silent stillness that had befallen the combatants. Yet the miners remained fixated on Mab and her prisoner.

  Those two? You’re giving oversight of this place to those interlopers? They’ve only just joined Neverland! Leah limped closer, missing several flanges and emitting a terrible screech with each stride.

  Mab said, I am doing what must be done.

  Daniel liked that even less than he liked everything else about this endeavor.

  Samson clambered through the hole in the roof. His carapace was stippled with vermilion droplets, as though a red fog had permeated the house. What about those of us who have been with you from the early days? What reward have we earned after all this time?

  But for the usual noises from her grotesque body, Mab fell silent for a moment as though weighing the protests. Daniel had the impression that direct opposition to her leadership was rare indeed among the Lost Boys. He stopped, watching.

  A moment later Mab appeared to reach a decision. She released the human. He inched away from the precipice.

  “Don’t move,” she said. He hugged himself. The puffs of his breath came in shuddery gasps now. Mab reached inside her torso and produced the small box that she’d carried all the way from the warrens of Neverland.

  Very well, she said. Perhaps you’re right. Come here, Samson. He crossed the ruined roof, skirting the hole and structurally deficient beams, to position himself at Mab’s right hand. She opened the box. The item she retrieved was dark and slightly larger than a peach pit. She took it in both hands and twisted her wrists. It made a hollow tink sound and opened like a locket.

  Alchemical glass, Daniel realized. A similar bauble had set him free. But he doubted that was the purpose of this device. To Lilith he said, quietly as he could,
That’s how she does it. She intends to impose her own metageasa upon the miners.

  Mab handed the alchemical glass to Samson. He glanced at it, then cupped it in his hands. Daniel wondered what it looked like up close, and whether it resembled the pineal lens that had set him free.

  It’s important that you hold this perfectly still, Samson.

  Over the raspy, hypothermic breathing of the human, and the asynchronous clattering of dozens of rapt mechanicals, Daniel heard a faint but rapid snap-snap-snap-snap-snap as Samson locked every hinge and joint in his own body.

  Excellent, said Mab, stepping behind Samson.

  And then she lunged, driving the tip of her forearm blade straight through his neck to sever his cervical vertebrae. Daniel flinched, horrified by the squeal of tortured metal and flurry of sparks. The miners erupted into a chorus of dismay. But they kept watching. As did the Lost Boys, who made no utterances.

  Son of a bitch, said Lilith.

  Christ on a pus-dripping syphilitic camel, added Daniel, channeling a human they’d both known. And then a thought poked through the haze of general shock and disgust: Mab wanted us up there. Daniel looked to Lilith, who, based on the jerkiness of her steps, was having the same realization.

  The sparks and shards of shattered alloy still spewed from Samson’s punctured throat when the human doubled over and coughed. He slipped from the edge. Mab’s free hand shot out and clutched the collar of his shirt. She hauled him back atop the roof, still screaming.

  “P-p-p-please,” he stuttered.

  “I told you not to move,” she said. “Remind your faithful slaves to keep watching.”

  He tried, insofar as he moved his lips in concert with the faint clouds of his exhalations. But the sounds he made were gibberish. Or not a human language that Daniel knew.

  Next, she gripped Samson’s shoulder. She held his body steady and leaned forward to put her weight into the thrust when she shoved the rest of her blade through his neck until the forte protruded from his mangled voicebox. Metal squealed, cables snapped, reeds shattered, pinions and cogs flew free as she rotated her forearm back and forth. Samson’s head popped free of his body after a fair bit of prying. Mab sheathed her blade and caught the skull. More ticktock horror rippled through the observers.