The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) Read online

  Huginn stepped around the table. He—it, damn it—flipped through the journal. “This is good work.”

  “It’s a beginning,” said Berenice. There was so much more to understand. They’d uncovered but a sliver of the grammar and its lexicon. It was as though somebody tried to learn French after picking up a handful of pages strewn about in the wake of a tornado through a library. But it was a start.

  The Clakker asked, “What’s the next step?” It didn’t look at her, instead focused on the symbol table. It did, however, sidle closer to Berenice. She pretended not to notice. When it came within an arm’s reach of her, it asked, “What is your plan for building upon this work?”

  Ah, yes. I’ve been living on borrowed time, and now you perceive the clock is winding down. So soon?

  She sighed, as though merely tired and not frightened. As though unaware her life hung on what she said next. She sat again to conceal the trembling of her knees. She affected speaking through a yawn, too, to disguise the quaver in her voice. The machine couldn’t know she’d divined its intent. These are my final heartbeats if it doesn’t like my answer. But this could be my life’s work, my life’s legacy…

  She drew an unsteady breath and forged ahead with Gallic resolve: “It’s crucial we eliminate the possibility that the symbol table carries a different transcription for you rogues than it would for a regular Clakker. Otherwise this effort will have been wasted and we’ll have to start over.”

  A slight syncopation in the click-tock rattle of Huginn’s body suggested… surprise? It hadn’t anticipated this. Good. She’d instilled doubt in its plan to murder her then and there. But only a little. It pushed back, asking, “How can we do that?”

  “We test the transcriptions on a regular servitor. One still beholden to all the sundry geasa, unlike you lucky ravens. It’d be considerably easier if dear Muninn hadn’t flown away.”

  The quaver in her voice became a tickle in her throat. She coughed, both to scratch the itch and, she hoped, conceal her anxiety. The machine had to believe she was blithely ignorant of its ultimate intentions toward her. Otherwise it might decide to move things along.

  Deep silence fell over the room. Deep enough that the incessant ticktocking of the Clakker’s body, tinking and plinking like a coin thrown down a well, never hit bottom.

  Finally, it said, “You intend to subdue an enslaved machine and test the symbol table on it.”

  “Yes,” she lied. “I’ve worn a new groove in my brain trying to think of a less risky path to repeating this experiment.”

  “And it’s for me to subdue the subject.”

  “Subject.” Interesting choice of words, you crafty little raven. Is that how you see your kin?

  “Only if you want our efforts to find success.”

  The tintinnabulation of Huginn’s metal body accelerated, echoed. Berenice had taken down the pages of notes and symbol traceries from where they’d been tacked, so the walls were again bare and hard. “It is best if we do the work here,” it said. “The chambermaid can summon another servitor for us to interrogate.”

  No good. Berenice’s chances of escaping were far better in the open, in the company of others, human and mechanical alike. It wouldn’t slaughter an entire village just to silence her, would it?

  Surely not. Probably not. Probably.

  Berenice shook her head. “We’ve already been here too long. We’ve drawn attention to ourselves with our obsessive need to stay inconspicuous. Nobody who can afford a pair of Clakker servants willingly takes a room in a pissant inn in a pissant fishing village and then stays there for weeks on end without coming out. Not unless she’s hiding.” Huginn tilted its head, staring at her. Bezels spun inside its eye sockets. Could the alchemical magics in its gemstone eyes see her dissemblance? “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve had to work harder and harder to fend off that wretched harridan. She’s not hanging around because she loves her job. She’s hanging around because she’s nosy.”

  That was certainly true. Berenice had resigned herself to a daily go-away payment. It was getting expensive. The Guild cash from Sparks’s trunk wouldn’t last forever.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We buy transport and get out of this village. Go far enough that we’ll be strangers again somewhere else. Then we set up shop and start over again.”

  Again the body noise of the ticktock man settled like a blanket over the conversation. She felt a bead of sweat trickle between her breasts. How had the room become so close all of a sudden? It hadn’t seemed so when she was rapt with the unraveling of secrets and riddles. But that was done, and now the room was musty.

  “I know you’re hot to follow Muninn’s trail. But this,” she said, tapping the journal, “is pointless if it doesn’t apply to regular mechanicals.”

  That swayed him. (It, damn it.) “Let us depart, then.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  She’d arrived with little more than the clothes on her back, so packing to leave was a matter of bundling up her notes and replacing the contents of van Breugel’s satchel. In less than a minute they were gone. The chambermaid started when they entered the dining room. She dropped the bundle of table linens she carried.

  “Taking the air, madam? Will you be out long? Shall I attend to your room?”

  Berenice’s stomach growled. Outside the funk of her own room, the rest of the inn smelled of apple cider steeped in cloves and cinnamon.

  “No need to hurry on my part,” said Berenice. “I won’t be back. Where is Mr. Henry? I wish to settle my account.”

  The chambermaid scratched her head. “You’re sure, ma’am?”

  “Quite. Now be a dear and fetch your employer.”

  The maid took the linens and set off toward the kitchen at a fast walk. The other men and women scattered through the room alone or in twos and threes ignored both the maid and Berenice and continued their discussions. Most had congregated at trestles near the fireplace. A window had been cracked open to admit late-winter air, but the coals in the hearth glowed marigold yellow.

  Berenice walked to the sideboard, where the innkeeper had placed a keg of cider and a stack of bowls. Huginn attended her, as naturally a servitor would. “While she’s doing that, go to the stable and procure my transportation.” What relief to be in public again, where Huginn had to adhere to the fiction of subservience.

  “Humbly begging your pardon, Mistress.” It could be so polite when need be. Obsequiousness was literally built into the Clakkers by dint of the hierarchical metageasa; Berenice’s journal contained tentative transcriptions of several such clauses. “Your safety is my highest priority. I cannot protect you if you send me away.”

  Translation: I’m not letting you out of my sight. Well, it was worth a try.

  “Very well. Stand over there until I summon you.”

  Huginn took a spot adjacent to the door that opened on the street. From the kitchen came a crash and raised voices. Then silence again.

  Berenice ladled cider into a wooden bowl. This she did with her back to the mechanical, in hopes that that would conceal the trembling of her arm and the slopping of cider. She seated herself at a round table in the corner whence she could watch Huginn as well as eavesdrop on the various conversations of French-tinted Dutch. The murmur of inconsequential conversation and crackling of a cozy fire put her in mind of home. The cider left a trail of apple-scented steam, and this, too, snared her heart in a skein of homesickness. She blew on the bowl before sipping, hoping to hell her trembling wouldn’t send cider down the front of her dress. The cider was refreshingly tart. Better than any food that had appeared on a tray outside her door these past weeks. She wondered who had made it.

  The innkeeper emerged from the kitchen, wringing a dish towel in his ropy fingers. Its mate, slung over his shoulder, had received a similar treatment. He moved quickly, with shoulders slightly hunched, like a dog that had just soiled its masters’ favorite rug. Berenice caught his eye and waved hi
m over. He ignored her. He joined a group of fishermen by the hearth, leaned into their conversation, and—after his gaze darted from Berenice in the corner to Huginn by the door—cupped his hands around one man’s ear.

  The fisherman straightened. He set down his bowl and stood. His fellows (perhaps the crew of a small fishing boat?) looked content to keep eating, but he barked at them. They followed him outside.

  Was it her imagination, or did he flinch ever so slightly when he passed Huginn on his way outside?

  The innkeeper moved to another group. These breakfasters soon vacated the room, too. Berenice listened to the floorboards as they returned to their rooms, the scuff of warped doors, the clunk of locks thrown in haste.

  Oh, you bastard. You know, don’t you? You’re evacuating the inn because you’re afraid of what’s about to happen. And you’re blabbing it all over creation.

  That’s what she got for trusting her salvation to a bunch of yokels.

  Berenice half raised herself out of her seat. “Sir! Come here a moment, won’t you? I would settle my expenses.”

  He started. For a moment she thought the idiot was going to flee. He probably considered it. But he did slink toward her table with all the enthusiasm of a pallbearer. His fingers worked the dish towel hard enough to bleach his knuckles the color of old bones; the expression on his face looked like nothing so much as that of a basset hound expecting his master to whip him. Ratchets clicked when Huginn’s head turned to follow him across the room.

  She looked him in the eye. Plastered her best attempt at a congenial if condescending smile on her lips. Said, “I must be off, and wish to settle my tab with you. What does the Guild owe you?”

  “I, uh…” He licked his lips. His eyes darted from Berenice to Huginn and back. “I don’t know. I’d have to check the ledger.” As if every innkeeper didn’t count stuivers, kwartjes, and guilders in his sleep.

  “No need. I’m sure we can come to an agreement. You’ve been most hospitable, and the Guild can be very generous. Furthermore, if you have a livery stable, I would like to see about buying or hiring transport.” Anything to keep the innkeeper from flitting off again. It seemed to work; he licked his lips again. But still his gaze darted to the Clakker. She continued, “Do you have a livery, sir?”

  “My brother-in-law owns the stable here.”

  “Excellent! Perhaps you could introduce me? And while I negotiate with him, I could also settle my tab with you.”

  That did the trick. It offered the promise of getting paid while also getting away from the mechanical. Or, at least, getting the mechanical out of his establishment.

  “YesI’dbequitehappy,” he said, and turned so quickly it seemed a wonder his heel didn’t bore a hole in the floor. Subtlety wasn’t his forté: He hunched his shoulders when he scuttled past Huginn. The innkeeper set off at a fast walk down the street without a backward glance. The door hung open, inviting a wintry gust to warm itself by the fire.

  Berenice sighed, setting aside the bowl of cider to follow him. The anxious idiot was going to get everybody killed. By then the remaining breakfasters had vacated the room, apparently sensing a need to find safety elsewhere.

  She told Huginn, “Come along.”

  But the servitor closed the door, forcing her to step back. Berenice started.

  It said, “These people seem uneasy, mistress. Are you in danger? Is there an imminent threat to your person?” Its voice echoed in the empty room.

  “They’re not uneasy. That’s parochial life in a village. It twists people. There is no threat to me.”

  Huginn grabbed her by the throat. The satchel tumbled from her fingers.

  Oh, she thought. That was probably the wrong answer.

  The chambermaid’s name was Sigrid. Not a particularly French name, alas, and not without the faint scent of tulip clinging to it, but what could one do? Berenice couldn’t pick and choose the people in whom fate forced her to entrust her life.

  Berenice had known long before her mechanical companions sighted the Norman coast that they’d never let her go. The purpose Huginn and Muninn served was too bloodthirsty—as demonstrated by the murders on the Pelikaan—for her to go free. Once their alliance prised as many secrets as possible from the clenched fist of the Clockmakers, she knew, the impetus to work together would evaporate. At which point they’d kill her. Because while such secrets would benefit any enemy of the Guild, these crafty machines knew better than to assume the enemy of an enemy was automatically an ally.

  It had been something of a reprieve, then, when they uncovered the coded references to quintessence. That serendipitous discovery promised many days of fruitful work. Berenice had tried to drag it out as long as she could, but her curiosity and all-encompassing animosity toward the Guild conspired against her. She worked faster, and harder, than a wise woman would have done. But no matter how she impeded the transcription work, she never forgot she lived on borrowed time.

  Muninn’s departure had improved Berenice’s chances of survival, albeit almost infinitesimally. She still had to outmaneuver a murderous rogue before it decided the time had come to twist her head off. But she’d been expecting to deal with a pair of the beasts, and making what meager preparations she could.

  Which is why she’d been passing messages to the chambermaid. The mechanicals kept Berenice on a very short leash, meaning she’d had to pass her notes to Sigrid under their brassy noses. Usually in the guise of a tip to mollify the indignant charwoman. And, wonder of wonders, Sigrid kept up the act. She kept coming back.

  Sigrid might have had a questionable name, but her heart was pure French. The blood of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans, coursed through that woman’s veins.

  Huginn lifted Berenice from her feet. The one-handed grip squeezed her windpipe as though the cartilage were nothing but limp macaroni. She hadn’t felt such pain since she’d lost her eye. But she couldn’t scream. The trickle of air in her throat made the faintest squeak, like the mewling of a newborn kitten. Berenice spasmed, trying to inhale, her thrashing toes barely brushing the deadly machine. Her fingers scrabbled at its brassy arm, seeking the metal digits clamped on her throat, but she may as well have been a kitten fighting a mountain.

  The edges of existence bled away to shadow, and the world—her tiny world, consisting of her murderer’s arm and little else—retreated down a long tunnel.

  The collapse of her windpipe sounded oddly like an explosion of timbers and the shattering of window glass.

  Help. These mechanicals are severely damaged, the thrall of dark forces, and acknowledge no human master. I, amanuensis to an Archmaster, am their prisoner, kidnapped and forced to share Guild secrets. They will kill me soon.

  The world lurched sideways. The resounding clang of a brutal metallic impact loosened her teeth, and then she was tumbling across the dining room floor, wheezing while her skirts kicked up dust bunnies and mouse shit. Her inhalations made the tuneless tootling of a child’s broken recorder.

  Through a teary eye Berenice glimpsed meteoric flashes of firelight on swift metal. Shards of splintered wood and fractured glass pelted her. Hands to her throat as though she might pump it like a bellows, she writhed on the floor. Slowly, agonizingly, her lungs took in air. The shadows ebbed away, and color returned to the world.

  The very loud world. The world that sounded like two brass bands had converged for hand-to-hand, cymbal-to-cymbal combat.

  A dusting of snowflakes rode a cold wind through the dining room. Flames flickered in the hearth. Wind? Berenice grabbed a trestle and pulled herself upright. Oh. Through a hole in the wall Berenice glimpsed a pair of servitors brawling in the street.

  Once, when she was a girl traveling with her father, the vicomte de Laval, on his regular rounds of the tenant farms, she’d seen a pair of tomcats fighting behind a barn. It was mesmerizing. She remembered how the animals had merged into an almost indistinct blur, a hissing ball of fur and fangs and claws moving too fast for her to follow but for the erran
t tufts of hair wafting incongruously from the yowling maelstrom. She’d long ago relegated that memory to some dusty corner of her mind, but it came back to her now: The brawl in the street was like that catfight, but sped up twentyfold, with mechanical cacophony in place of the noise of raw animal aggression.

  A time will come when I declare a desire to settle my account. Then you’ll know my time is shortly to end. Go quickly to rouse the mechanicals of Honfleur and waken them to the evil in our midst.

  Outside, men and women scattered like windblown dandelions. They yelled in panic, fear, and confusion while a tumbling boulder of alchemical alloys rolled in the street.

  Sigrid must have found a machine on the street. The rarity of rogues meant that this one couldn’t believe her tale outright, but it also had no choice but to investigate. And upon peering through the window and seeing Berenice’s life in dire danger, the fires of compulsion launched it through the wall.

  Berenice stumbled through the ruins of the inn. Shattered glass crunched under the soles of her boots. She grabbed the satchel and tossed the strap over her shoulder. Then she dashed through the kitchen to the bar, where she emptied the register. A pitiful take, just a handful of guilders. Then it was back to the dining room and the new hole in the wall. She scanned the street. Past the brawling mechanicals she saw what must have been the livery stable. Cold air made her wince; her throat ached as though she’d tried to swallow a pétanque ball. Her voice had been permanently damaged, she feared. She’d have to find a scarf to hide the bruises. She staggered through the demolished wall to the snow-slick cobbles.

  Two strides later, she doubled over, hands clamped to her ears. As did every human watching the incomprehensible war on the street: The mechanical men of Honfleur had sounded the Rogue Clakker alarm. Ah, there it was.