The Liberation Read online

  He followed the nun down a hallway past rooms where orphans took mathematics lessons, practiced their handwriting, read the Bible. Inevitably they looked up at the sound of his metal feet, gaping as though he were a mythological creature.

  Visser had been given a garret under a dormer of the three-story building. The space was still used mostly for storage, but the nuns had managed to fit a cot inside, and the ex-priest had created a simple privacy screen from three blankets and a laundry line. The garret smelled of dusty books and an unwashed body. The window was boarded; during the siege, an explosion had broken every pane of glass in the citadel. It would be terribly stuffy come summer, though Daniel doubted Visser would notice. Compared to the torment inflicted by the geasa, all else was luxury.

  Sister Marie knocked on the open door. “Monsieur Visser?”

  From behind moth-eaten flannel came a grunt and a splash. A moment later the smell of a well-used bedpan filled the garret.

  “I evacuate with vigor,” said the ex-priest to nobody in particular, “yet my sins remain.” Visser tended to speak his native French during moments of lucidity. But when in the throes of madness, like now, he usually spoke Dutch, as he had every day for decades. He grunted again. “More purgatives!” he cried. “How much mercury must I ingest, Lord, before the scouring of my innards scrapes the sin from my soul?”

  Daniel whispered to the nun. “Is he really eating mercury? That probably isn’t good for him.”

  She shrugged. He couldn’t tell if the gesture meant, “I don’t know,” or, “I don’t understand.” Such was their Babel problem.

  Visser emerged from behind the blanket, pulling up his trousers. The nun blushed and turned away. The ex-priest was almost unrecognizable compared to the compassionate pastor who’d sent Daniel on the errand that serendipitously bestowed him with Free Will. His jaw had sprouted a beard, a scraggly thing more salt than pepper. As if in deference to a hirsute conservation law, his scalp was now bare in places. He’d balded himself through incessant nervous plucking, and in those spots the skin was mottled and pink where it wasn’t scabbed over.

  “Quicksilver for a quicksilver loosening of the sin-bowels, you see. That’s not in the catechism, no mention there, but the apocrypha, yes, the apocrypha, it was all lost in the fall of Rome. When the cardinals flew away, so few of the archives came across the sea, you see.” He teetered in the sway of an emotional gale perceptible only to madmen. To the nun he said, “A man’s sin-bowels hold shit and sin in equal measure. Meditate on that, damn you!”

  Sister Marie pointed at Daniel before walking away.

  “Hello, Father,” he said.

  Visser came forward, squinting. “I remember you,” he said. “Nicolet Schoonraad’s naughty Clakker.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I used to serve the Schoonraad family.”

  “Did they make it to New Amsterdam safely?”

  “Yes. Eventually.”

  “That is unfortunate. You ought to have thrown their loathsome daughter overboard.”

  Oh, dear. Visser was having one of those days. How was this the same man who had once risked unwelcome attention by openly questioning Guild doctrine just to give Nicolet a lesson in compassion?

  “Oh, well. No matter. She’d probably float, as many a turd has been known to do.”

  Daniel changed the subject. “May I sit with you? I would like to hear of your week. Do the sisters continue to treat you well?”

  There were stubborn bastards, and then there was Captain Hugo Longchamp.

  Berenice had seen, in the very final seconds of the siege, the captain take an injury that ought to have killed him outright. Though he had never been a lover, he’d always been a trustworthy if grumpy friend, one who’d saved her life on more than one occasion. To see him run through by a mechanical like the one that murdered her husband… The sight of that blade sticking from the captain’s chest was one of the worst things she’d ever witnessed. It haunted her, like Louis’s severed arms.

  Today Hugo clung to a feverish semi-life. A true warrior for New France: He fought even death to stalemate. But the tulips would claim one final victim if Berenice’s scouts didn’t return with alchemical bandages soon. Even Hugo couldn’t fight forever.

  The captain had his own room in the infirmary—the king had insisted on this. At present it reeked of sweat and illness. Despite the hundreds of flowers blanketing the walls and overflowing from vases perched on every available surface, there was no cloy, no perfume. Each paper blossom had been cut, folded, and hand painted by the grateful schoolchildren of Marseilles-in-the-West. There were no other flowers in New France this time of year. The riot of colors evidenced petunias, marigolds, violets, snapdragons, orchids, snowdrops, lilies, roses, pink lady’s slippers, white trilliums, purple saxifrage, and other flora Berenice couldn’t identify. (No tulips, naturally.) Some of the handmade flowers sported messages of encouragement and thanks scrawled across their petals, leaves, and stems.

  A wizened nun knelt at Hugo’s bedside on creaky knees, silently working a rosary cycle. She had to be in her eighties. A member of the city guard knelt opposite the nun, head down, eyes closed, hands clasped together at the edge of Hugo’s blanket. Judging from the whitening of his knuckles, the furrowed brow, and the dents in his armor, he’d seen combat against the clockwork tide, and probably had Hugo to thank for his life. As did so many.

  Berenice waited around the corner until the God-botherers finished. She gave the nun a respectful tip of the head, wondering if the old lady caught a whiff of brimstone as she shuffled past. Then Berenice caught the guard’s eye.

  “How is he?”

  The guard shook his head, then shrugged. “They say they’ve done what they can. It’s up to him now.” He nodded at the sunken, sallow figure who had frightened and inspired so many. “But the wound… there’s a taint in his blood.”

  Berenice sighed. Blood poisoning was almost inevitably fatal. Could the tulips’ magical bandages fix such a thing? She didn’t know.

  She asked, “Will you add my prayers to your own when you pray for Hugo? I’m not very good at it myself.”

  The guard looked puzzled. “You might try anyway. He needs it, and it can’t hurt him.”

  “Perhaps I will. But God and I haven’t been on speaking terms of late.” Not since Louis died in my lap. “But I’ll light a candle for Hugo anyway.”

  Berenice lingered after the guard departed. She laid a hand on the captain’s forehead. The heat of his skin made her gasp. It was like touching a cast-iron skillet that had hung in a sunny kitchen window all day. Though he lay pale beneath the covers, a papery husk of the man she’d known, he still fought the infection with vigor.

  He stirred at her touch. His lips moved. Her heart shifted, buoyed on a bubble of hope.

  “Hugo? It’s Berenice. Can I get you anything?”

  Again his lips moved, his voice but a breath. She leaned over the bed until his beard brushed her earlobe.

  “Madamoiselle Lafayette… you dirty girl, you…

  She kissed Longchamp’s damp brow. Tasting salt, she whispered, “Have fun, you two. You’ve earned it.”

  Her glass eye made a soft sucking sound when she eased it from the socket. Berenice dried it on her cuff, then placed it within the furnace of his palm. A passing nurse saw this and frowned. Berenice shrugged.

  “Lucky talisman,” she said.

  Standing on a sliver of what used to be Nieuw Nederland, Daniel gazed across the Saint Lawrence to a crowd gathering on the docks of Marseilles-in-the-West. A ship had arrived from the Great Lakes. The barque was the first vessel from the western waterways of New France to reach Marseilles since before the siege. Its arrival had created quite a stir.

  Meanwhile, fishing boats came and went, and the siege survivors queued for food. The attackers hadn’t killed the livestock; they’d been geas-bound to go after the humans. But the pens didn’t hold an inexhaustible supply of bison. Daniel didn’t know exactly what pemmican was, onl
y that it wouldn’t last forever. But he did know, by virtue of his long treks, that vast herds of caribou roamed the continent. He wondered how far they’d have to go to find the nearest herd. A trio of mechanicals could haul back a ton of meat. A few dozen mechanicals could substantially ease the French survivors’ food problem. It was the moral thing to do.

  It wouldn’t bring back the man he’d killed, much less any of the other humans who’d died in the siege. But if it could save a few lives… He turned his attention from the river to mention this idea to his companions.

  As had somehow become the custom in recent days, a coterie of fellow Clakkers had followed him like ducklings. The group comprised both soldier-class mechanicals and servitors like Daniel. Most everyone who had lingered in the area after the mass unwriting of the metageasa bore the signs of combat. Bloodstains on retracted blades, scored escutcheons, dented carapaces. Judging from their cracked, blackened flange plates and the scritching of their hinges, at least two of these servitors had been within the blast radius when the defenders of New France detonated the booby-trapped outer wall.

  Daniel realized one mechanical chattered at him. He’d been too deep in his own thoughts to listen. That was rude.

  Modulating the rattle of his own body, he said, in the manner of their kind, I’m sorry. What were you saying?

  Our flag, said the soldier. She sported a long, deep scratch across her skull; a French guard had come close to scouring her sigils and unwriting her. Daniel glimpsed rusty blotches on the fluted serrations of her forearm blades. Some of those were probably from a killing stroke that ended the very same guard’s life. She added, We can’t decide on a design. What do you think?

  He suppressed the mechanical equivalent of a sigh. More questions. This had also become the custom in recent days. The freed machines acted as though Daniel had all the answers.

  The self-styled vexillologist carried a roll of birch bark, curled as if it were still wrapped around the tree. She pulled the curls apart; the papery bark sported several monotone sketches. Various fields were labeled with arrows and colors.

  I’ve also been working on a coat of arms, she said. Some say it should feature orange, as an acknowledgment of our origin, but others say our arms should be ours and ours alone and recognize no human device.

  At which point she and the others paused, waiting. Had they been humans, Daniel would have described their anticipation as breathless.

  Who cares what I think? he said. If it really matters, take a vote.

  Everybody cares what you think, said another.

  Some of these mechanicals had been forged decades before him, yet they insisted on deferring to his judgment. As though he were old King Solomon from the Bible.

  Daniel clicked. I doubt it.

  A second servitor said, Of course we do. You gave us Free Will. More than that—

  (Don’t say it, Daniel rattled. Don’t say it.)

  —you gave us back our souls.

  French Catholics maintained the immortal soul was the seat of Free Will, and that their Calvinist enemies therefore committed sacrilege by depriving Clakkers of self-determination. Daniel didn’t know if he believed it. Visser surely did.

  Oh, for crying out loud. Believe what you want, but just how far do you think the Papists will take your conversion? If you can’t eat, you can’t take Holy Communion.

  Daniel immediately regretted the outburst. He understood how chaotic and overwhelming the world had seemed in his first days of freedom. For a being whose entire existence had been rigidly circumscribed by geasa and metageasa dictating every single action for decades on end, it was difficult to find direction and purpose without having the pain of compulsion as a guide.

  Look, he said. I understand how confusing it can be. Give yourselves time. Just don’t latch onto the first thing to come along. He gave the mechanical equivalent of a shrug. That’s my advice, anyway.

  The soldier rolled up the sketches. Another mechanical, a servitor, took the birch-bark scroll from her and tucked it into the gaps of its torso. Soldiers couldn’t store things in that fashion owing to their armor plating.

  She said, We can do as you suggest. We’ll vote on it, if you think that’s best. But if you were to weigh in with an opinion, that would help us know how to vote.

  Deep inside Daniel’s body, a pair of cables twanged and slapped together. After a moment’s effort to tamp down his irritation, he asked, Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?

  His fellow mechanicals swayed on their leaf-spring knees, a gesture of chastened agreement.

  Anyway, he said. Since you’re here, I’ll mention a thought that struck me a moment ago. I think we can help the French with their food problem.

  They listened to his idea, though with a fraction of the enthusiasm they reserved for heraldry and flag design. Most freed Clakkers were more interested in their own pursuits than in the affairs of humans. He didn’t blame them. If they didn’t want to help, that was their choice. He couldn’t make them more compassionate. He couldn’t make them do anything. Otherwise, what was the point?

  The assembled kinsmachines emitted no clicks or clangs of excitement, no ticks or twangs of curiosity. To the former soldier, he said, Field dressing game to help feed hungry refugees would be the first constructive and moral thing those blades have ever done. Still, even after appealing to their morality, his suggestion received a lukewarm response.

  Very well. He turned his attention back to the river, the barque, and the French tent village beyond. If you feel like spreading the word, I’d appreciate it. But only if you feel like it.

  The ticktock body noise faded as the gathering dispersed. Two servitors, the badly damaged ones, stayed behind. They pretended to contemplate the river as Daniel himself was doing. They probably had follow-up questions about Holy Communion now. This was getting ridiculous.

  I understand you’re brimming with questions. You yearn to pry apart every existential and theological issue raised by your new power of self-determination, he said. I know that drive, really, I do. But I can’t answer your questions. I don’t know any more than you do. You didn’t have Free Will, and now you do. I can’t tell you any more than that. I’m not a seminarian, he concluded.

  One servitor said, We’d never suggest otherwise.

  No, not a seminarian, said the other. Just a thief.

  Daniel turned. Having closed ranks, the other Clakkers now stood shoulder to shoulder before him. Sunlight illuminated a network of faint scratches around the keyholes on each of their foreheads. But these weren’t deep enough to deface the sigils. They weren’t battle wounds, Daniel realized. They were the evidence of protective plates having been pried from the keyholes. Protective plates such as worn by the subjects of Queen Mab: the supposedly free Clakkers of Neverland.

  The Lost Boys said, in unison, Hello, Daniel.

  Or have you gone back to calling yourself Jax? asked the one on the right.

  Daniel crouched for a leap that would send him backflipping and plunging into the Saint Lawrence. Mab’s agents tackled him. The cacophonous impact sounded like a pair of church bells smashed together. The scraping of alchemical alloys tossed blazing sparks of violet and deeper colors humans couldn’t see. His talon toes churned mud and ice as they dragged him away from the water.

  You took something from the queen, said one.

  She’s very displeased, said the other.

  Daniel kicked and thrashed, but despite their superficial damage, they easily overpowered him.

  I don’t have it! he said, still fighting.

  Neverland, Daniel had discovered, was a lie. Free Clakkers who followed the legends to the snowy north sooner or later met Mab. And sooner or later she overrode the poor bastard’s keyhole using a unique piece of alchemical glass that enabled her to install her own personal metageasa. Most of the Lost Boys were Mab’s thralls. Except for the true believers.

  Daniel had stolen Mab’s locket and fled. Later, it proved crucial to the mass freeing of
his kin. The self-propagating process had begun on the battlefield of Marseilles-in-the-West.

  Of course you don’t. We’ve seen your handiwork.

  Daniel flailed. He planted a kick on one servitor’s shoulder. More sparks fountained from the cymbal-crash impact. It broke the machine’s grip on him, but Daniel couldn’t shake the other machine before its partner recovered. They wrestled him to the muddy ground. The friction heat of their struggle baked little wisps of steam from the earth.

  Then why—

  As I said, the queen is very displeased. She wishes to express that displeasure in person.

  One servitor wrapped itself around his thrashing legs. Daniel writhed. The other leapt upon his torso and tried to grab his windmilling arms. Daniel heaved, physically lifting the machine pinning his legs, but it wasn’t enough. He was outmatched. He had to hope the noise would draw attention.

  It was a long trek to Neverland across hundreds of leagues of trackless forests, prairies, mountains. Some terrain would be turning marshy, too, in the spring thaws.

  You’ll never get me back to Neverland. I’ll thrash and kick and fight you every single step of the way.

  No, you won’t, said the Lost Boy at his legs.

  The one crouched on Daniel’s chest produced a small metal object from within his torso. It had jagged teeth splayed around a cylindrical core.

  A key. For turning the lock in Daniel’s forehead.

  Which would render him inert. Unconscious. And easily transportable.

  No! NO!

  He thrashed anew. Flopping like a fish caught in a French seiner, he used all the tension in his steel sinews, all the potential energy in his springs. But nothing shook them loose. The Lost Boy bearing the key grabbed Daniel from behind. He wrapped one arm under Daniel’s shoulder and clamped the other around his neck.