The Liberation Page 33
“Looks like neither can be sailed without a complement of Clakkers,” said Nousha.
Anastasia risked another glance. “Oh, my.” Nousha was right; there were two vessels. The icebreaker dwarfed the other so pitilessly that she’d first mistaken the smaller craft for a dinghy or tow-craft attached to the first. The other wasn’t merely a smaller version of the icebreaker, but instead built to a completely different design. It had sails, for one thing, and the oars were much more crude.
She wondered if the corrupted machines had destroyed ports in the New World as they’d done here. If so, perhaps the two plague ships had been amongst the few vessels to avoid the destruction. Perhaps The Hague had been fortunate; the initial invasion might have been far worse. It could have been utterly overwhelming.
Then again, was that luck? Did a condemned man pray for a slow death, or a quick. merciful execution? Anastasia knew, by virtue of the time she’d spent with prisoners of the Verderer’s Office, that nobody begged for a slow death.
“Then what?” Arthur pointed along the overflow channel, where their scuttling had etched evidence of their presence into the smooth contours sculpted by wind and rain. “It took hours to make it this far. But—”
“Jesus, Lord!”
Nousha’s cry startled everybody. Anastasia turned so quickly that the displaced sand was still flying when she saw the mechanicals alight from their buried hiding spots. (Hiding spots, thought a part of Anastasia, or camouflaged hunting blinds?)
A trio of servitors emerged from a dune fifty yards down the beach. Their blurred feet kicked up a high spray of sand as they rushed the Guild explorers.
So this is how I’m to die, then. At least the sun is out.
“Run!” she screamed. And they did.
Salazar, Nousha, and Anastasia fled for the beach. Pointlessly, desperately, toward the water. Arthur, the fool, ran for the culvert, which took him toward the attackers. They intercepted him before he’d cleared the overflow channel. Anastasia flinched away from sight of the killing blow, but metal glinted in the sun for that fraction of a second. Anastasia wondered, even while she ran, if they’d drag their bodies back to the Binnenhof and heave them atop Mab’s charnel wall.
I’ll drown myself in the sea before I let them take my body to rot in the square. If I can get there in time.
Her feet churned the sand, yet it seemed she hardly moved. Her lungs pumped, her breath rasped past her lips, the thrum of blood through her ears was louder than the sea. But it wasn’t enough. No human could have outrun these merciless machines.
One tackled her. She screamed.
I’d always thought I would face death with a brave face. But then, I’d foolishly believed my death would come quietly and comfortably after a lengthy and gradual senescence. I could have remained blissfully ignorant of my cowardice, if not for the curse of living in these extraordinary days.
It clamped an icy hand across her mouth.
“Stay down!” it commanded.
She thrashed, mindless like a terrified caged animal. Her teeth clicked against unyielding metal when the quivering rabbit wearing her skin pointlessly tried to bite her attacker.
It snatched its hand away. It didn’t release her, didn’t loosen its grip. But it said, “Just how is a mouthful of broken teeth going to help you?”
She clenched her eyes, bracing for the impact that would pulverize her skull, jelly her brain. The final instant of her life stretched like the softest caramel, stumbling like Zeno’s arrow toward a target it could never reach.
She heard a dozen voices, shouting. The final flickers of her brain caused her to hallucinate: It sounded like shouting in French. Then there came an equally strange whoosh—a series of them, several at once, like a pneumatic chorus—and then glugging, and splashing, and nothing.
She opened her eyes. The machine still held her pinned to the beach. And yet, she could still open her eyes. She could still experience fear. Confusion.
“It’s safe now,” said the servitor. It released her and stood. It didn’t offer a hand so much as take hers, gently, and pull her to her feet. Sand had infiltrated her waders. It sifted through her toes. She gazed at the simulacrum of a human hand within her own (it had been constructed some time in the 1860s, squeaked a useless corner of her Guildwoman mind).
The others were alive, too, she realized. Even Arthur. They stumbled to their feet in the care of servitors like the one attending Anastasia. These mechanicals were slightly unusual. Seen without the fog of terror distorting everything, their bodies bore the marks of modification. Particularly the carapaces of their torsos, which didn’t exhibit the oily rainbow sheen of alchemical alloys. They were also slightly quieter, as though the natural tockticking of their bodies had been muted. Their torsos had been coated with something to muffle their bodies.
She tried to remember how it felt to assert the natural dominance of a Clockmaker.
“Machines, why did you chase us?” Her voice warbled like a starling. She swallowed, coughed, then continued. “Why did you not reveal yourselves to us sooner? We have dire need of your labor.”
“Well, human,” it said, “we didn’t want them to see us.” It pointed across the beach. “You know, the ones who intended to kill you.”
But there were no machines. Only immense glass flower blossoms where none had been a moment earlier. They had thin, translucent petals, twisted and dynamic like palm fronds frozen in the instant of embracing the wind. They glowed in the sunlight like murky emeralds. The servitor caught her when she stumbled and held her upright.
No, not flowers. These were cocoons. And faintly visible within each: a Clakker, immobile, like an insect in amber. Artificial amber. This was the work of a French weapon.
She’d read the reports but never seen one in person. She walked amongst the frozen machines, like a child through a museum of wonders. The others did, too. But Nousha and Salazar quickly dropped their scrutiny of the chemical ordnance. Instead, they stared past Anastasia, toward the ships.
The chemical cocoons emitted muffled rattles. The muted ticktock cacophony of each machine’s body turned into a high-pitched whine when she approached. The sound of seized gears. The sound of struggle against a renewed geas.
A geas triggered by proximity to Guild personnel. A murder geas, no doubt. But who—
She turned.
The smaller vessel, the one that she’d overlooked, wasn’t empty after all. A dozen humans and machines lined the bow, each holding a double-barreled gun. Wisps of vapor wafted from every weapon.
The woman standing at the very prow wore a scarlet eyepatch. Her bandanna flapped loose in the wind, revealing a shaved head. She resembled the caricature of a pirate from a child’s storybook. Replace the epoxy gun with a blunderbuss and it might have been perfect. The strange woman’s gaze fell on Anastasia. There it rested for a moment, until her single eye widened.
“Well. This is awkward.”
The voice wasn’t familiar, but she’d know that cocksure bearing anywhere, and the eyepatch was a dead giveaway. Anastasia had met this woman once, but only briefly, and that had been an ocean and an apocalypse away.
Berenice Charlotte de Mornay-Périgord.
CHAPTER
20
The bulkheads and hull of the icebreaker had a tendency to conduct the heavily percussive sounds of mechanical conversation. Knowing this, Mab conferred with her lieutenants in frail human language, across an air gap.
But one of Daniel’s countless responsibilities during the century he had served the Schoonraads was to attend various family members, and sometimes even serve as nurse, during physician visits. Frequently, the medical checkups involved the use of a stethoscope. Which, it turned out, was relatively easy to build, and a particularly useful tool for eavesdropping. By cutting two lengths of rubber tubing from the coils the Lost Boys had furnished Doctor Mornay for the construction of her chemical apparatus, he cobbled together a decent tool for monitoring Mab’s deliberations.
From then on, it became much more difficult to eavesdrop on Mab and her lieutenants. The chimerical despot’s sprawling new headquarters in the Summer Palace ensured that Daniel and Doctor Mornay were never in the vicinity when the Lost Boys reported to her.
But sometimes their reports displeased her. And Mab’s displeasure was not a subtle thing. At those times it was impossible not to listen.
What do you mean, NOT YET?
A new set of zigzag cracks joined those already spiderwebbing the solarium’s windowpanes. Doctor Mornay fumbled the pipette from which she’d been dispensing drops of a violet oil that smelled like burnt rubber. Daniel caught the capillary-thin glass tube before it shattered and splashed chemicals into the gas flame. The French chemist dropped into a trembling crouch.
He draped a blanket over her shoulders. He strove to emulate a human whisper, though his construction made it impossible. “Breathe. Breathe. She’s not yelling at you. She doesn’t know.”
WHERE ELSE could they have gone? Interesting. Had somebody escaped the Lost Boys’ cordon around the Ridderzaal? The response was, again, too faint to decipher. But not Mab’s response: Then go down there and tell them to SQUEEZE HARDER. The clomping of hooves on Italian marble accompanied her pacing, every step a cannon’s report.
She switched to Dutch and a more reasoned tone of voice, as she had a tendency to do at random. “These are the labors of Hercules. We must behead the Hydra if we’re to see the end of this. Hundreds of years, my friends. Hundreds of years to get to where we are today. We can finish this in days if you’ll just do what I ask. Haven’t we waited long enough?”
The imminent fulfillment of her centuries-long goal had left Mab dangerously impatient. Her veneer of magnanimity, of wise leadership, of selfless and reasoned stewardship of the aspirations of all Clakker-kind—in short, Mab’s veneer of sanity, already onionskin-thin at the best of times—dwindled daily.
Mornay’s grand-mal trembling tapered into a persistent but mild shiver. Daniel helped her to her feet.
“She’s coming,” he whispered as quietly as his body would allow.
Mornay swallowed. Nodded. She went to the workbench the Lost Boys had constructed to her specifications. There she’d synthesized the deadly compounds Mab demanded of her. But she’d also gone to considerable lengths to complicate and obfuscate the synthesis process. Extraneous glassware, tubing, coils, and chemical circuits slowed the procedure in ways none of the Lost Boys could identify or refute. It also enabled Mornay to divert a trickle of chemicals—a few drops of precursor here, a dram of catalyst there—into a completely separate synthesis circuit. She’d braided the two labyrinths of glasswork in such a way that only the most methodical scrutiny could unravel the knot.
Daniel wondered just how brilliant she could be when not wracked with terror every waking moment. She shared part of Berenice’s full name, he knew; he wondered if they were related, and whether their shared cunning sprouted from that familial link.
He crossed the solarium to stand in the doorway. Doctor Mornay would need a few moments to prepare. Doing his best to block her from view, he leaned out to address his approaching captor.
Mab. May I speak with you?
You’ve always had such fine manners, Daniel. You really are a sycophant at heart, aren’t you? Mab’s eyes whirred; mismatched irises expanded, contracted. She cocked her head. Perhaps that’s why people fall over themselves to follow you?
I don’t believe they do. I’ve never encouraged it.
Standing just outside the solarium now, she said with a shruglike twang, “Yes, I will speak with you.” Mornay cleared her throat; Daniel stepped aside to let Mab into the solarium. Mab clopped past him, continuing, “But you and your quivering accomplice should know that I’ve taken some precautions. Should something unexpected occur—an explosion, say, or a fire—the Lost Boys will take a jaunt into the city and drag an extra hundred people from their homes. So, by all means, proceed with your childish plan if you can live with that on your consciences.”
They couldn’t, of course.
“You look better than when last I saw you,” the Frenchwoman said, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a transparent attempt to stifle a laugh, “though not markedly so. I admit to both surprise and disappointment.”
Puppet to a sudden fit of vanity, Anastasia looked herself over. Wearing threadbare, mismatched secondhand clothing under shit-smeared waders, her face and hair stippled with filth, wide-eyed and jittery in the wake of her narrow escape from murder… this was not how she’d ever want a rival to see her. Especially not this woman. Knowing Berenice had seen Anastasia at her sartorial best only heightened the sting of this reunion. To be delivered by this cunning hag, of all people; the humiliation cut deeply. If indeed this was a deliverance.
The French and their mechanical allies disembarked. The mechanicals leapt straight into the sea and jogged up to shore, whence they carried the entombed machines across the broken esplanade, gently into the surf, and laid them below the tideline of the heaving ocean. The humans who came ashore immediately set to redistributing the sand to hide evidence of the chemical cocoons. The quiet cooperation was wholly unlike anything Anastasia had ever seen.
Each time a servitor from the French vessel hefted an epoxy prison and its entombed payload, cogs chattered, flywheels whirred, and cables twanged. Anastasia squinted, listening. The lie had grown too weathered, too rickety, to support the weight of everything she’d seen. They were communicating again.
“It’s reassurances, mostly.”
She whirled. The former French noble stood with arms crossed, looking past her to the machines hauling their trapped fellows into the surf. She’d dispensed with the bandanna. The bristles of her scalp reminded Anastasia of an autumn field, the tatty remains of scythed wheat. She wondered why on earth the woman had shaved her head. It made her look absurd, even ugly. Yes. Ugly.
“What?”
“The servitors.” The other woman nodded at one of the cocoons. “They’re reassuring their fellow machines that the move into the sea is only temporary. They’ll be fished out and freed soon. They won’t be forgotten. They’ll be cured.”
“You can’t know that.”
Berenice chewed her lip, regarding Anastasia through one half-lidded eye. “You know, I’d really savored the opportunity to shock you with a revelation about your creations. You can imagine my disappointment right now.” She shrugged. “Anyway, ask them, if you doubt me.”
Anastasia scoffed. “Are you saying you speak their language?”
“Don’t be stupid. Do I look like I’m made of metal?”
“But you understand it.”
“Parts of it, sometimes.” Then Berenice stepped forward with a crooked smile that didn’t touch her eyes. She patted Anastasia on the cheek. “Oh, sweetheart. I know your creations so much better than you do.”
The condescension ignited a scorching fury. It melted the sheath of numb despair that had claimed Anastasia’s heart. She hadn’t appreciated just how far she’d dissociated from anything resembling genuine emotion until that flare of anger burned through her like an explosion in a flour mill. She was a sleepwalker, rudely awakened. Her hand tingled. Anastasia reached up to knock away the offending touch, but the Frenchwoman dodged.
“Are you angry because you know it’s true,” said Berenice, “or because a half-dozen servitors didn’t leap forward just now to punish me for violating your personal space?”
Anastasia swung the open palm of her undamaged hand at the other woman’s face. The Frenchwoman caught Anastasia’s wrist, pulled her off balance until she stumbled face-first in the sand, and wrenched her arm behind her back. A knee landed on her back. It knocked the wind from her.
Berenice’s
breath was hot against Anastasia’s ear. “I could snap your spindly arm right here in broad daylight,” she whispered, “and nobody would stop me.” With her free hand she pointed toward the surf. “The machines won’t stop me. They don’t care what we do to each other. They have their own concerns.”
Helpless. Humiliated. Anastasia wanted to scream. But she had no breath. It was all she could do not to cry.
A spasm in her chest sucked dust into her burning lungs. Her voice was a feral growl. She wished she didn’t sound so desperate. So petty. “We still have loyal machines. They’d tear you apart for this.”
“Would they? Because by now, if you were smart, you would have restructured the hierarchical metageasa on every ticktock you can. You don’t need protection from spooky Papists lurking in the shadows. You need them to protect you from wild mechanicals doing to you what you did to Visser, what you meant to do to me. If you understood the big picture, your loyal machines would care only about preserving control of the Forge.” Berenice released Anastasia’s arm and stood. “I’ll bet that we French are so low on your loyal machines’ priorities right now that we could march up and down the Spui Canal singing ‘Vive Louis Quatorze’ and they’d barely give us a second glance.” She hauled Anastasia to her feet. Anastasia tried to shrug off the help, but was too shaky to stand on her own.
She tried to steal Berenice’s conversational initiative. “It was our impression you’d run out of ammunition for your weapons. So said the last report from the siege of Marseilles-in-the-West before everything went dark.”
“We did. But not forever.” Berenice hesitated as if debating whether to say more. Then she added, “We obtained raw ingredients for manufacturing more. In a rather roundabout way, in fact, from your very good friend Henri, the former duc de Montmorency.”
“And then in revenge you allied yourselves with the Mab entity.” The horrified realization roughened Anastasia’s voice like sandpaper. “You obviously couldn’t have created it yourselves. So instead, you joined forces. My God, you maniacs. You allied yourselves with that… that monstrosity.”