Clockwork Heart: Clockwork Love, Book 1 (9 page)

The leader shouted out garbled German, which probably sounded threatening to the room but came out clearly as
wet breakfast
to Johann.

He smiled a mirthless smile. “Breakfast is better warm and dry. You will never have him, and I will kill every man who tries.”

After swiping the pistol from the man’s belt beside him, he cocked it, aimed and shot the leader in the center of his chest.

In the chaos, he ran, but not directly for the back door. He took a long, winding route, overturning tables and chairs along the way, at one point stumbling onto a pot of oil, which he tossed on a table. After stealing a man’s lit cigarette from his mouth, Johann threw it into the oil, which erupted in a fine blaze. This finished the job of sending the tavern fully into an uproar, and as he slipped along the wall toward the kitchen, Johann heard the frustrated shouts in bad German morphing occasionally into French as he made his way out of the tavern.

To his shock, however, as he exited, he saw Cornelius and Valentin hovering in a corner of the back room, not fleeing at all.

“He wouldn’t leave you.” Valentin’s tone was both humble and frustrated.

Swearing in German, Johann grabbed them both and dragged them into the inn yard. They had mere seconds to escape before the men sought them here. Spying a horse loose in the chaos, he caught it and nodded to Valentin.

“Get on.” He held out his good hand as a step. Valentin went, and Johann settled the satchel behind him. But when Johann tried to boost up Cornelius, he wouldn’t go.

“I won’t leave without you.”

“
Conny,
” Valentin cried in despair.

Familiar shouts spurred Johann into action. “Hangman’s Landing. Go, now,” he told Valentin, and slapped the horse hard on the rump.

Then he picked up Cornelius, swung him around to his back and started to run.

He was a little unsteady at first, with his clockwork legs and the redistributed weight, but he adapted much quicker than he thought he would. Except for the extra strain on his human arm and his legs settling harder into the clockwork, carrying Cornelius didn’t affect him at all. In fact, he found himself surprised at how fast he was moving. When he realized he’d just passed a carriage with horses trotting at a decent clip, he nearly stumbled in surprise.

“It’s your legs,” Cornelius said into his ear. “Clockwork works better than flesh and bone.”

“But I’m not even the slightest bit winded. I’ve run over a half kilo at top speed, up and down hills and with extra weight on my back.”

Cornelius clutched him tighter. “This might be the time to explain that you have more clockwork than simply your arm and legs and eye.”

Johann slowed so he could glance over his shoulder at Cornelius. “What else is mechanical?”

“Some cogs and bellows to help a punctured lung. A bit of internal machinery that helps keep your metal limbs in better harmony with your flesh.” He nuzzled Johann’s ear sadly. “And…you have a clockwork heart. But you must never tell anyone about that.”

The anxiety in Cornelius’s tone made a shiver run down Johann’s spine, one that resonated even more than the shock at finding out how mechanical he truly was. “Wh-why?”

“Because your heart is the weapon your army was trying to destroy. The one I think my father is trying to steal.”

The world spun around Johann. He fought to make it stay right. “But…why did you save me at all?”
Why did you put a weapon inside me?

“You were dying. I didn’t want you to.”

“
Why not?
You didn’t know me.”

“I don’t know. Only that I couldn’t bear to watch you die when I knew I could save you.”

A thousand questions and fears rattled inside Johann. But he realized, no, he didn’t feel any of this in his
heart
. A tightness in his chest, his throat—but as it had since he’d woken in Cornelius’s bed, the left of center portion of his chest felt numb and strange. He’d thought the scar was Cornelius removing shrapnel, but now he knew better. If he concentrated, he could feel it pumping without fail, a powerful machine.

A weapon.

“Will it explode?”

“No.” Cornelius brushed a kiss on his neck. “It is only a heart. An engine. But it will do whatever you ask of it. You may run as fast and hard as your legs can take you. It will power your every step without fail. And the bellows in your lung will give you all the air you require.”

I am a monster. A terrible machine
. “Can—can I die?”

“Oh yes. If your clockwork heart ceases to beat, you will live no more.”

The world kept spinning, but Johann would not let anything keep him from taking Cornelius to safety. He wasn’t sure yet what he thought of Cornelius’s meddling, but this was not the moment for dramatics. They had to get to the
Farthing
. Once aboard, dramatics would be entirely appropriate, in many varied ways.

Show me what you can do, my monster heart.

He ran. His goal was more than simple escape now—he wanted to see what he could do. How fast? How hard? How far? The answer, it seemed, was as Cornelius said—as fast as he wanted. It was his legs that showed him the wall of limitation. But of course, so little of his legs were
his
legs. The span of his capability was rather impressively high.

This was amazing. This was a
miracle
. He was a monster, yes, but he was a monster who could move so fast, he felt any second he might begin to fly.

A warmth in his chest made him glance down—and slow. “Cornelius, something is wrong.” There in the place where his heart was, a soft red glow emanated.

Cornelius pulled off Johann’s hat and clapped it over the glow. “It’s only a heat exchange. I have it in a casing. You’ll be fine. But I’ll keep it hidden.”

He did, but Johann couldn’t lose his sense of that heat, that bright red beacon burning inside him.

They moved so quickly, they arrived at the docks moments before Valentin on his horse.

“How—how did you do this?” Valentin slid off as Cornelius did, eyes wide. He pointed at Johann. “You ran! I came straight here, on a clear road, the fastest way, and I did not see you—”

Johann, not even a little bit winded, grabbed Valentin’s shoulder with his clockwork hand and Cornelius with his right. “Come. We have no time to waste. Bring the satchel.”

“But—where are we going? Why—?”

“Berger, what the
blazes
are you doing?” Crawley swung down from the
Farthing
, wearing a jaunty hat, a finer coat than he’d worn before and an outraged expression. “We said nothing of
three
passengers. Certainly there was
no
talk of a simpering French dandy.”

Johann held up a hand at Crawley and turned to Valentin. “We must leave now. Will you go, or stay?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Crawley murmured.

Valentin’s gaze darted between Crawley, Cornelius and Johann like a rabbit’s. “I won’t leave Cornelius.”

Johann turned back to Crawley. “It is three. And we must leave immediately.”

“It will
not
be three. I don’t care how good this tinker is—”

Cornelius stepped in front of Johann, holding tight to his hand. “I am the best in France, save Félix Dubois,” he said in almost perfect English.

Crawley paused. “That’s quite a boast.”

Johann saw a crack in the captain’s resolve and pressed his advantage. “He is Dubois’s apprentice.”

Crawley said nothing.

Shouts from the cliff above the pier told Johann their pursuers had found them. There was no more time for finessing, only barging through. “We must leave now.
Now.
”

“Three years,” Crawley said, still staring at Cornelius.

Johann’s clockwork heart beat as regularly as it ever did, but that tightness in the center of his chest became acute. “
No.
”

“Three years’ contract for the tinker.” Crawley’s tone was impassive and implacable. “That’s the price for taking the three of you on.”

Johann had never wanted to punch Crawley more, and he’d wanted to hit him very hard, many times. “I won’t leave him with you.”

“Then you may have a contract too.” He cast a look of disdain at Valentin. “Not for the French weasel, however. He may ride only until he annoys me.”

“Three years’ contract for all three of us, and we have a deal,” Cornelius said, extending his hand.

Johann pushed it down. “You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.”

“Yes, I do.” Now it was Cornelius who met Crawley’s gaze without blinking. “We agree to stay on this ship for three years, under his command and his protection. For a wage. Mine will be four times whatever he has previously paid a tinker.”

Crawley made a strangled noise, but Valentin outright yelped. “
Ils arrivent! Ils arrivent!
”

The men ran down the hill toward the pier, shouting and aiming their pistols. Swearing, Crawley shoved them toward the ship and called out to the ships—
rats ashore, mates, rats ashore!
—at which point every ship in the bay erupted with men and women, shouting and waving blades while others went about loading cannons.

Crawley hoisted them up the ladder one by one—first Valentin, then Cornelius, then Johann, following them up himself. As soon as Crawley’s boot touched the rope,
The Brass Farthing
’s aether heaved, billowing bright into the dirigible’s balloon, firing the propellers as the first mate unhooked the mooring and they cast away.

Chapter Seven

So
briety came to Cornelius in dark, painful rushes—when he fled the tavern, when he realized Valentin meant to take him away from Johann, when he had to explain to Johann about his clockwork heart. When it was clear his choice was between death or indenture. Sadly, sobriety didn’t feel swinging from a rope ladder on an airship rising into the night sky was a moment when clarity should descend. Or perhaps it was more that he could force a bit of sharpness to his mouth and mind, but too much alcohol in the blood would never make his fingers work properly.

Johann helped him, murmuring gentle words of encouragement in English and sometimes German as he moved Cornelius’s hands up the ladder and used his knees as braces for Cornelius’s fumbling feet. It was a noble effort, especially as Cornelius could tell Johann had significant trouble getting his mechanical feet into the rungs, but they managed, and by achingly marginal inches, they made their way onto the ship. When they came close enough to the edge, hands hoisted Cornelius into the gondola.

“
Non,
” Conny cried when they reached for Johann. “Not his left arm.” He batted them away, his absinthe-soaked imagination all too able to visualize Johann and his separated appendage spiraling down into the water below. When Johann came close enough, Conny stabilized him above his left elbow as Johann hoisted himself aboard.

The English captain came up swiftly after, grumbling about inept, drunken landlubbers and stinking Frenchmen.

Cornelius swayed on his feet until Johann caught him up, murmuring reassurances into his ear, and Cornelius drank them in as he looked around the room. This was a gondola different than any he’d been in before, almost more as if a wooden ship had been grafted onto a balloon—which sometimes was exactly how privateer ships were built. They stood in the rear, in the enclosed portion of the carriage, with a mess and officer’s cabin on one side, the grand captain’s cabin on the other. A small storage area was visible on the right, probably for weapons, but then the wall of glass gave way to a small open deck, where two figures rushed about and another manned the wheel below the balloon. A second wheel was inside the glass-enclosed gondola, beside a narrow stair leading to the hold below. None of it was overly impressive.

“Who is this other one? I thought there were only meant to be two.” This came from a man who appeared to be from a northern Asian country, most likely China by Conny’s guess. He didn’t look pleased to have new arrivals, and neither did the two women standing with arms folded beside him.

Like the captain, they were decked in leather armor and buckles greatly excessive beyond practical use, though the Asian man had a more Eastern flair to his style. The women continued in the theme of airship pirate decoration, but they were hugely distinct in their presentation. One woman, taller and darker of complexion, had cropped her hair shorter than most men and wore piercings in both ears, her nose and an eyebrow. Tattoos covered every available surface of her exposed skin below her neck, and her clothing was highly masculine. The other woman wore trousers as well, but her hair was longer, braided and tucked to one side. She’d gone out of her way to look feminine and slightly pretty whereas her companion used everything about her to telegraph aggression and rejection of the feminine ideal.

The captain mopped the back of his neck with the tail of his scarf. “Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce you to your three new crew members. Johann Berger, whom I’ve flown with before, his friend the master tinker, whose name I don’t know, and their awkward French friend who will be of no use whatsoever.”

Conny did his best to look grand and imposing. “My name is Cornelius. And my friend is Valentin.”

“Capital.” The captain pointed to himself, then the others. “I am Captain Crawley, and you may call me Captain, or Sir, or Your Worship. This is Heng, your quartermaster. You will call him Sir.” He gestured to the short-haired woman. “Beside him is Olivia, our sailing master, and beside her is Molly,
The
Brass Farthing
’s engineer.” Crawley put his hands on his hips. “The three of you aren’t simply getting a ride out of town. You’ll be working every minute you’re on this ship. Johann, you’ll be a mate, same as you were before.” He gestured to Cornelius. “You’re obviously the tinker-surgeon.” Crawley grinned nastily at Valentin. “You, sweet fop, will be our new jape.”

Val, barely holding himself together, glanced at Conny and spoke in a tremulous voice in French. “What is he saying? Why is he looking at me like that?”

Heng shut his eyes and shook his head. He murmured something in Chinese, which made the rest of the pirates laugh.

Crawley switched to French as he addressed Val. “You’re the jape, Frenchie. You’re our odd-jobs man. You do the work no one else wants to do. You answer to everyone else. If someone has something they need doing, you do the job. You don’t argue, you don’t complain. You say
yes, sir
and
yes, ma’am
and work like a dog. If you last long enough for us to take on more crew, you’ll be promoted to mate and someone else will be the jape.”

For a tense moment, Conny feared Val would argue, but he only gave a surly nod and wrapped his arms around his belly.

Cornelius made a small bow. “How do you do. We’re happy to be aboard.”

Olivia raised her eyebrows. Molly snorted.

Heng looked dubious. “Master tinker? What’s one of those doing on this piece of junk?”

“Getting his neck saved. And signing a contract.” Crawley rubbed his hands together before gesturing to the officer’s quarters. “If you’d be so kind as to follow me, gentlemen?”

The captain’s office wasn’t any nicer than the rest of the ship, though as he inspected things closer, Cornelius could tell it had once been quite grand. What he’d taken for tarnish on the rails was clearly places where filigree and ornament had been stripped away, likely to be sold. Many dark spots on the walls told stories of art and decoration that had hung long enough to withstand the stain of sun, but were absent now. The table serving as a desk was not grand, and the two chairs seated at it were wobbly and mismatched.

Crawley spread three scrolls across the table and laid out a broken fountain pen. He picked it up, initialed in a few places and wrote in wages. “I’m only giving you double, love.”

Cornelius took the contract from his hands, and after a few lines of reading, he confiscated the pen as well. On his contract and the others’, he crossed out several lines, added a few phrases of his own and adjusted everyone’s percentages. He doubled once more the number Crawley had written for the post of tinker, signed at the bottom and handed it back. When Crawley started to sputter in rage, Cornelius interrupted him.

“Bring me the most complicated, necessary items you have in need of fixing.”

While Crawley stood deciding if he would obey or not, Cornelius stumbled to Valentin, reclaimed his satchel and set it on the table. As he laid out tools he’d need to fix the chairs and the table, he couldn’t stop himself from indexing the countless bits of equipment he’d had to leave behind, many which would be ever so helpful in this moment. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he steadied his hands as best he could and got to work.

He glanced up at Val, who appeared well beyond terrified. Perhaps giving him a task could help calm them both. “
Un café, Val?
”

“I can show him the coffee,” Heng said, and caught Valentin by the elbow. “
Venez
, Frenchie.”

Shortly after they left, Cornelius got the legs off the chair, and Crawley left too. Olivia and Molly stood off to the side, arms folded, but Johann crouched awkwardly on his mechanical legs. “May I help?”

Cornelius shook his head, more to clear it than anything else. “I need coffee.” He bit his lip and added, “And a quarter wrench.”

Johann became his assistant, passing him tools and parts, listening patiently when Cornelius had to explain what they looked like. Several times he had to reroute his plan because he was missing a part or a tool, but by the time Crawley returned with a ratty basket full of things sticking out of the sides, Conny had repaired the table and one of the chairs.

Crawley set the basket down. “I’m not giving you the shirt off my back because you fixed a table.”

“I fixed the table and the chair so I had an adequate place to work.” He plucked a broken spyglass from the basket. “I will require a room of at least this size and this level of brightness as my workshop. This space would be adequate, but I will need a great deal more shelving.”

“I don’t know who you are, lad, but—” He stopped as he watched Conny crack the spyglass open, pull out the lenses and spread them across a handkerchief.

When the coffee appeared beside Conny, he noted it absently, taking a few fortifying sips before diving back into his work. The spyglass was quite boring and not very good, so he improved it. When he finished, he handed it to Crawley without meeting his gaze. “Go and try it on the stars.”

“It doesn’t go that far—”

“
Go,
Captain.” Conny pulled out an electric toaster and huffed. “
Appliances?
” He tossed it on the table and glared at Heng. “Bring me your compass.”

“It isn’t broken,” Heng said.

“It isn’t any good, either, is it?” Conny unscrewed the toaster with pursed lips. “
Toasters.
I could rebuild your engine in an hour, make your ship fly three times as fast in a long evening, if I had the right tools.
Bring me something that matters.
”

They did. They brought him the compass—out of balance, wobbling, which he repaired and improved, adding an aether-detecting sensor. They brought him a broken windlass, a grapnel, a lutchet and a steel length of martingale. Everything dull and unimpressive.

“Bring me something
more.
”

“That’s all we have,” they confessed.

With a Gallic sigh, Conny pulled open his satchel, grabbed a handful of parts and began to build.

He wasn’t sure what it was meant to be at first, but when his weary, sodden mind seized on the animal he’d once seen in a traveling show, he couldn’t help himself. He smiled as the monkey appeared out of the bits of wire and brass, and he gave it a golden set of gears for eyes. When it was finished, he wound it up and fitted an aether battery to its back, then sat back and watched it dance across the table.

The crew stared at him, open-mouthed.

“You are worth more for one day,” Crawley croaked at last, “than the value of my entire ship.”

Cornelius finished off the last of his coffee. “And yet I am grateful for your help. Twenty percent of the profits, plus eight for each of my companions, is all that I ask. At the end of the year, we can see if you still wish to retain me, at which point I might ask for a higher percentage again. As per the terms of the revised contracts.”

He passed them over to Crawley, who fell over himself to sign.

* * * * *

A
s Johann led the others to the crew’s quarters, his mind finally had quiet enough to panic.

The Brass Farthing
had two sleeping chambers, one on the upper deck for the captain and quartermaster, and the smaller, darker one on the gun deck for the lesser officers’ mates. Johann led Cornelius and Valentin down the narrow, open-slat stairs, past the aether cannons to the rack of bunks near the stern. At full capacity the ship had four officers and six mates, but even with the addition of the three of them they were at best a skeleton crew. Johann and his companions took up the center row of bunks with plenty of room on either side.

He could tell Cornelius wanted to talk to him, but Johann couldn’t bear to. It had been one thing while they were convincing Crawley to let them stay aboard, but now that he had time to think about what had happened, there was too much to process. Being on the
Farthing
again. The soldiers pretending to be Austrian. The threat to Cornelius. Being with Cornelius as a lover. Running away with Cornelius—and Valentin.

Having a clockwork heart sewed into his chest, a heart the whole world wanted to use as a weapon.

It was too much. He couldn’t speak of anything out loud. Not now. So when Cornelius put a hand on his arm and said his name with that sweet, worried voice, Johann didn’t let himself give in to the urge to sink into his tinker’s arms. “It’s been a big day. We should sleep.”

“We should
talk
. You seem upset.”

Johann
was
upset. Which was why he didn’t want to talk. “Tomorrow,” he said to Cornelius, though he doubted morning would bring a different frame of mind.

He thought he’d lie awake, plagued by his thoughts, but the next thing he knew Heng was shouting down the hatch for them to wake. Johann rose with the rest of the crew, but Cornelius moaned in complaint and Valentin simply pulled his covers over his head. Johann felt a bit guilty not staying to help them out, but he knew Heng would make it worse for them if he did, so he simply went to mess with the others. He choked down gruel and coffee only slightly better than the army’s, and rose to report to Olivia on the open deck as a bleary Cornelius and complaining Valentin stumbled to the table.

“You’re leaving?” Cornelius frowned at Johann. “But I wanted to speak with you.”

“I need to work.” He tried to go, but Conny stepped into his way.

“I understand you’re upset with me, but there are a few things we need to go over regardless.”

Johann was trying to form a lie about how he wasn’t upset with Conny when Olivia stepped between them, arms folded over her chest and a sneer of disdain on her face. “You can have your lover’s quarrel later. Right now I need a mate on deck.”

She grabbed Johann’s left arm and tugged hard—and Johann doubled over as he cried out in pain, clutching the stub of his arm as Olivia stared in horror at the clockwork appendage in her hand.

Cornelius sprang to life, swearing in French as he reclaimed the clockwork and helped Johann to the floor. “Breathe, darling. You’re not actually injured, but your nerve endings don’t know that. Your brain is aware your arm was ripped off, but it can’t understand that’s simply a matter of circuitry, not blood and gore. It will throb until I can get you some aether, but once I reset the circuit it will all be well.” After a kiss on Johann’s forehead, Conny spoke harshly to Olivia. “As I was
trying
to explain, I hadn’t engineered Johann’s clockwork for hard labor or casual abuse. Normal people don’t have their shoulders ripped out of their socket when going about their day, you see.”