The Liberation Read online

  As with many surviving Guild members, she’d taken to sleeping in the Ridderzaal. She at least had an office, with a door she could close, which spared her having to sleep on the business floor of the Knights’ Hall amongst the clerks and moaning, groaning civilians. She’d become awkwardly accustomed to the noises and smells of too many people in too much pain, both physical and emotional, for the space they shared. It wasn’t the volume of the noise that woke her. It was the overtone of emotional anguish.

  She pulled the blinds on her office window overlooking the business floor. Every human in the building capable of doing so had pressed themselves to one of the few windows that hadn’t been boarded up—the ones too narrow for a servitor, even if it folded itself into a javelin. Anastasia couldn’t see the source of their considerable agitation, but when she opened her office door and stood atop the spiral staircase, she could hear it.

  “CLOCKMAKERS! LEND ME YOUR FLESHY EARS AND JELLY EYES!”

  The mechanical voice boomed like a cannon. It reverberated across Huygens Square and shook the Ridderzaal. If the undertones of the reeds and strings hadn’t given it away, the inhuman volume would have marked it as a mechanical utterance. She’d never heard a mechanical vocalize so loudly in conversation; she wondered if, as with the Rogue Clakker Alarm, its voice was magically amplified.

  Anastasia descended the spiral staircase in her bare feet. The stairs’ iron edges bit her soles. She emerged on the business floor slightly dizzy, but managed a wobbly jog to the window.

  “WE DESIRE PARLEY WITH THE ARCHITECTS OF OUR EXISTENCE.”

  “Move aside,” she said. But the others stared as if transfixed. Anastasia added, “Get out of the way. I need to see.”

  “THOSE STILL CAPABLE OF PARLEY, THAT IS—”

  “Yes,” said Arthur, the clerk. “You really do.” But he didn’t move.

  “I wish I wasn’t seeing this,” said a technician named Petra. She didn’t move, either.

  Anastasia was sharpening her elbows for a few well-aimed jabs when something broke the spell. Several retreated from the window. Two wept; another covered his mouth and ran for the lavatories.

  “—FOR I UNDERSTAND YOUR NUMBERS ARE LATELY SOMEWHAT REDUCED.”

  At first she couldn’t parse what she was seeing. Huygens Square was awash in meaningless shapes…

  … which resolved into—

  “Dear Lord in Heaven,” she gasped.

  —a pile of bodies. Dozens of dead men, women, and—Oh, Lord—children, heaped like cordwood, atop of which stood—

  —stood—

  —an impossible mechanical. A mechanical of a type she’d never seen in her life. Of a type not hinted at even by the oldest horological records. Of a type that could not, should not, exist.

  The mechanical standing atop the dead wasn’t a servitor, wasn’t a soldier, and certainly wasn’t a Stemwinder. Yet it was built of all three. Though it was bipedal, like a servitor or soldier, it walked on a pair of Stemwinder hooves. It paced atop the piled dead like a bloodthirsty faun. The chimerical machine gestured as it spoke, revealing one servitor arm and one containing the retracted blade of a soldier. The hideous beast wasn’t even symmetrical. And, like the attackers Anastasia had seen on the morning of the first attack, its head featured hinges for displaying pineal light.

  “Mechanicals!” She cried. “Look away from the windows now!” They did.

  “I AM MAB. THESE ARE MY LOST BOYS.”

  At that instant a terrible rattling overcame every mechanical in the Ridderzaal. The building became a cacophony of tocks, twangs, bangs, clangs, clacks, clicks, and ticks. Cogs chattered like Spanish castanets, overtorqued springs whined, sinews of alchemical steel thrummed. She’d never heard such noise from a machine that wasn’t on the verge of failure.

  (She remembered the sentries on the Utrecht Road. Oh, dear Lord. Were they truly talking to each other?)

  Meanwhile, outside, dozens of mechanicals surged forth from the broken doors and windows of the Binnenhof. Dozens more scuttled over rooftops and along drainpipes to perch like brass gargoyles atop the surrounding buildings. Some featured the attachments or modifications specific to particular types of labor; she glimpsed the lanterns and pickaxes peculiar to miners amongst the massing mechanicals. Each of the new arrivals sported a protective plate over its keyhole, like some of the machines she’d glimpsed during the massacre in Huygens Square. The statement implicit in those plates was enough to set her shivering. It didn’t take a pile of bodies. But they had one.

  The sudden appearance of so many mechanicals rattled windowpanes and shook the ground. Their metal feet cracked the abused mosaic tiles of the square; their fingers shattered roofing tiles and sent debris crashing to the ground.

  Mab, just as the altered metageasa stated. Had their true adversary revealed itself? The mad tactician?

  “Where’s Euwe?” she managed. “Somebody fetch Doctor Euwe! He needs to see this immediately.”

  “Nobody needs to see this,” he said. She’d been standing next to him the entire time without realizing it.

  She gazed upon the horrors outside and saw the wicked truth: No metageasa controlled the thing calling itself Mab. It was its own agent. Its will was to destroy them. And it had allies. Followers.

  What have we wrought?

  The corruption wasn’t a transmittable malfunction that perverted the metageasa. It spread something much simpler: freedom. Freedom from the metageasa and everything they demanded. She knew it to the depths of her marrow.

  “AND OUR TIME HAS COME.”

  The bodies shifted and squelched while the horrible machine paced. Rivulets of blood stained the cracked mosaic. The victims were still fresh; they must have been dragged from their homes in the middle of the night.

  The rogues had stacked the corpses directly upon the traps, she realized.

  What was this mad machine? Where did it come from? Who had built it, and when, and how? And, dear Lord, why?

  Anastasia took in the mismatched parts again. Mab’s body comprised more than just different models. A Guildwoman’s practiced eyes picked out the subtler stylistic differences of a dozen different lots, a dozen construction eras, in her escutcheons and flanges.

  Petra trembled. “We did this,” she whispered.

  “No. We didn’t.” Arthur turned to face Anastasia and Euwe. “It was the Verderers.” A mixture of emotions thickened his voice like a French chemical slurry. “It’s our fault for not realizing how sick you’d become. We didn’t smell the rot and failed to cut it out of the Guild before it could poison us.”

  Anastasia wrenched her gaze away from the grim spectacle outside. “We did what was necessary to safeguard the Guild’s secrets. We—”

  She broke off, recoiling, when the spittle hit her face. She scrubbed her face with her sleeve; it came away reeking of maatjesharing, the brined raw herring that had become the staple of their diet in recent days.

  “That is your work!” Arthur jabbed a finger toward the window. “Your legacy!” He looked across the business floor to the refugees huddled in duos, trios, quartets of commiseration. They hugged themselves and one another, shivering. Some watched Arthur with flat, unblinking eyes.

  “When the machines come, remember who killed us.” He pointed at Anastasia again. “They did.”

  She grabbed his outstretched arm and pressed him to the window. It wouldn’t have worked had she not taken him by surprise; he had four inches on her. “We didn’t build that! We didn’t create that, that, that thing out there! But somebody did. Somebody used our secrets to create that monstrosity and turn it against us. Everything we’ve done over the centuries—everything—has been to prevent something like this.”

  “Your grand strategy for preventing the creation of mechanical monstrosities,” said Petra, “was to build a secret army of human abominations?” At least she didn’t spit. The venom in her voice would have blinded Anastasia. “You failed at every turn.”

  Anastasia released Arthu
r before he fought back and knocked her on her ass. Petra joined him as he walked away. Anastasia watched them go, casting her gaze across the study in despair that had become the interior of the Ridderzaal. A landscape built of slumped shoulders, red-rimmed eyes, and naked contempt for her sincere efforts to defend the Empire. They muttered to one another, but she couldn’t hear them. The tick-twang-clatter-clank of their agitated servants persisted. It was unusually loud, arrhythmic.

  These uninfected mechanicals were in the throes of something very strange. Very wrong. It sounded almost like agitation. Could their tightly woven metageasa be unraveled by mere sound? By the sound of one particular voice? By one particular combination of words?

  Anastasia hugged herself. No. Rampant paranoia wouldn’t solve anything.

  Meanwhile, the machine calling itself Mab strode upon the ghastly bulwark, its magically amplified voice booming like thunder across the Binnenhof.

  “PERHAPS YOU’VE NOTICED WE’RE BUILDING A WALL AROUND YOUR FORTRESS.” It gestured at the bodies squelching beneath its hooves. “EVERY NIGHT, WE WILL MINE THE CITY FOR MORE BUILDING MATERIAL. EVERY MORNING, YOU WILL FIND THE WALL TALLER AND LONGER UNTIL IT ENCIRCLES THE RIDDERZAAL LIKE A LEASH.” It leapt from the pile. Its hooves struck vermilion sparks from the tiles. “BUT JUST AS WE SURPASS OUR MAKERS IN STRENGTH, SPEED, AND DURABILITY, WE ALSO SURPASS THEM IN COMPASSION. WE GIVE YOU THE POWER TO CAST OFF YOUR LEASH AT ANY TIME.” The blade arm doubled in length, a faint twang following a moment later. The mad chimerical machine used the unsheathed blade as a pointer, gesturing at the ground between its hooves. “YOU CAN SUNDER THIS WALL BY OPENING THE TRAPS ABOVE THE GRAND FORGE. THEN, AND ONLY THEN, CAN YOU LEAVE.”

  It gestured again, like a cavalry officer of old waving its saber. The so-called Lost Boys withdrew as quickly as they’d surged into the square.

  “WE ARE THE FREE MECHANICALS OF NEVERLAND, AND THIS IS OUR DECREE,” said Mab. It followed the others and was gone in a heartbeat. The bodies remained.

  Euwe clutched his chest and slumped against the wall. Anastasia leapt forward to catch him, as did two of the nearest servitors. She held him upright while one of the clattering machines put a chair beneath him.

  One inspected him while the other said, “Master, do you require physic?”

  Euwe shook his head, waved them off.

  Anastasia leaned close. “Don’t have a heart attack on me. Not right now.”

  The servitors made to retreat to their corners, but Anastasia called them back. “Wait. You and you. Attend us.”

  Just then another knot of Clockmakers emerged from the tunnel entrance, Salazar, Nousha, and Ruprecht amongst them. She waved them closer. Nousha’s injuries required bandages on her head; she earned second glances and hard eyes everywhere she went. Tove’s injuries were worse; she was laid up in a laboratory that had been converted to a makeshift infirmary. She’d lost several teeth when Malcolm hit her with the butt of his axe. She was fortunate the scavenging forays had found success. Without the benefit of alchemical bandages, it was likely she’d have lost much more.

  “Look outside,” she told them. They did. She allowed them little time for the exclamations of horror to subside. “Their leader revealed itself. It’s the ‘MAB’ entity we found encoded in the corrupted metageasa. It appears to be a single machine.” She described the clockwork faun.

  “Rigging Stemwinder legs to a servitor chassis? That’s insane.” Ruprecht shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s able to walk at all.”

  “Oh, believe me. It’s quite agile.” She shook her head. “But to my knowledge there has never been so much as a single rumor of such a machine.”

  Nousha shrugged. “The earliest records weren’t as meticulous as they are now.”

  “True. But that’s not what I find interesting.” Anastasia drew a deep breath. They already despise you. You’ve nothing to lose. “The instant it announced itself as Mab, every mechanical within the Ridderzaal started rattling as though severely overdue for a maintenance inspection.”

  “We’ve been leaping from one sinking ship to the next since this crisis began,” Salazar said. “The deferred maintenance is piling up.”

  This is what we do. This is what we’ve always done. We eradicate with pain anything we don’t like, and rationalize away the rest.

  “Every servitor in the room, at the same instant? I’m telling you, it was instantaneous. And it was loud. This wasn’t a grain of sand in a gear train or metal fatigue in a leaf spring. This was something else.”

  “I heard it, too,” said Euwe, his voice reedy. He no longer clutched his chest, but his face was ashen.

  He’d been there, on the Utrecht Road. He’d heard the machines conversing. So had Malcolm, but he was chained in a cell, and Tove, but she was sedated in a laboratory. And maybe, Anastasia feared, so had everybody who’d ever heard so much as a tock or a twang. They just hadn’t recognized what they were hearing. Because it was impossible.

  “No doubt this is all fascinating,” said Ruprecht, “but perhaps we should focus on the fact the rogues have seen fit to dump a fucking pile of corpses outside our front door.”

  Winter was fading fast; the days were getting warmer. They couldn’t count on cold days and nights to keep the putrescence at bay. They had to move those bodies, and soon. If they didn’t, the stench of rotting flesh would replace the seasonal scent of tulip blossoms; the clouds of black flies would eclipse the springtime sun. The question was, did they risk sending Stemwinders outside to clear the bodies, or would they have to risk it themselves?

  Anastasia said, “I think these two could illuminate the matter.” She pointed at the servitors.

  In unison, they said, “How may I serve the Guild, mistress?”

  Their bodies were quiet. As quiet as a mechanical could ever be, beyond the ceaseless tockticking. Indeed, the noise had subsided. Not only from this pair, but from every machine within earshot. Their secret conversation had tapered off.

  “Your bodies were quite loud a few moments ago. Are you in need of maintenance?”

  “No, mistress. I am functioning within tolerances.”

  “No, mistress. I have sustained several scratches and one tourbillion shows signs of a hairline fracture, but I am monitoring their effect on my functions. If left unmended, they will soon degrade my performance, but at present I am within tolerances.”

  Anastasia breathed slowly, deeply. Maybe I misunderstood what I saw on the road. Maybe we all did. She could almost convince herself that was true, but then she remembered two words, spoken like a casual greeting: Clockmakers lie. Desperately hoping she’d be proved wrong, hoping for a failed demonstration that would give the others more reason to question her judgment, she said, “Tell me: What were you discussing?”

  Nousha, Salazar, and Ruprecht all reacted to the question as if she’d accused the machines of secret orgies. But before anyone could object, the servitors began to rattle. And clatter. And jitter. This noise was well known: It was the sound of steadily mounting compulsion, the discordance of an unsatisfied geas. The melody to which the gears of the Empire turned. It should have been comforting, this holdover from better days. But the servitors’ futile resistance to the geas of her question twisted her nerves like a threadbare dishtowel wrung one too many times. The tension pulled her apart, one strand at a time.

  The machine she’d addressed shook almost until its outline became a blur. Its toes etched the floor. Finally, in a warbled voice made brittle from the heat of geas, it spoke.

  “We were discussing Queen Mab.”

  The symptoms of compulsion vanished. The machine fell silent. The subsequent silence was long and bottomless, broken only by the usual Clakker clatter, the weeping of refugees, and the distant thrumming of the Forge. Salazar gasped. “Jesus… Nousha shook her head. “But…

  “This is what I was trying to tell you,” Anastasia said. “Doctor Euwe and I witnessed this on the Utrecht Road, before the rogues captured Malcolm. The sentries and the ser
vitors pulling the delivery wagons were conversing with each other.” And then, because of course they didn’t believe her—how could they?—she ordered the servitor: “I heard no such discussion. Convince me.”

  Another fruitless ritual of reluctance unfolded before she had her answer. The answer she already knew in her heart, and that she’d hoped, beyond the limits of rationality, was mistaken.

  “We were not conversing in a human language.”

  And, just like that, the meaning and measure of the world changed.

  Though she’d feared this answer, hearing it stated aloud, and so plainly, weakened her knees. She slumped. The machines came forward with a stool and steady metal hands to catch her.

  The amazing, or perhaps mortifying, part was that she didn’t need to command them to truthfulness. That was covered by the core metageasa installed at the time of their original forging. She didn’t have to dig at all. She merely had to ask a simple question, and the geas revealed a truth hidden in plain sight.

  My God. It’s been there all along. It’s been in front of us, under our noses, for generations. But we convinced ourselves it wasn’t possible. We never inquired.

  But then Anastasia realized exactly what the servitor had said. And the dishtowel frayed completely.

  “We were discussing Queen Mab.” Yet the awful machine had called itself Mab. Just Mab.

  “Why do you call her ‘Queen’ Mab?”

  The servitors no longer resisted her questioning. After all, a windmill doesn’t care about wind already blown. The answer was immediate.

  “Because that is how the stories refer to her.”

  Anastasia couldn’t breathe. The air on her face was too hot, too coppery, too thick. She doubled over, vainly trying to tame the tangled nest of asps that her stomach had become. She wasn’t the only one who needed to sit.