Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (25 page)

“Can I have a go?” Beth asked, freshly wound, bright as the morning around them. Jack gave her two bits he thought were meant to go together to form the back, where the wings would attach.

“Will you be sorry to leave?” she asked.

He blinked at her, surprised she’d ask this sort of question. “A little, I think,” he said.

“It’s been a grand adventure, having you here.” She tilted her head to one side, the turnscrew still in her hand. “It’s been . . . very nice. And p’raps you’re not that ugly.”

Jack felt himself go slightly pink.

The sky was light by the time Jack realized he’d made a mistake, a wing crooked and wrong. The wrench sailed halfway across the ship, taking a good-sized chunk of a mast with it. Eyes burning with shame and tiredness, he ran down into the belly of the ship and curled himself next to the gently humming engine. Footfalls sounded on the stairs, but he tucked his head to his knees and didn’t look up.

“I had a daughter, once,” said the doctor. “She took the fever and died, and her mother with her. I wasn’t a doctor in those days.”

Jack blinked. Waited.

“Didn’t think I’d lost my hand messing about with medicine, did you? And I didn’t lose it like yours, neither. Nay, I ran a factory back then, making all the bits that
make up other bits. Everything, all the gears and widgets and sprockets and whatnot, having to be exactly the right size to fit together. Not so very different, I suppose.”

No, not so very different. “But you’re a doctor now,” said Jack.

“Indeed. But too late to save my own girl, or my wife. I help others nowadays, and made Beth’s sisters, then Beth herself. And she’s my daughter now, you might say, though very much her own person, despite her shortcomings. Which, truth be told, are
my
shortcomings.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Jack asked. He didn’t mean to be rude, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t understand.

“Because, lad, there’s naught I wouldn’t give, or do, to spend one more day with my family. And here you are, a stripling of a boy who has already survived the worst this land can throw at a body, but suddenly ready to give up after one mistake?” Dr. Snailwater’s voice grew fierce. “You should be grateful some things can be fixed.”

“What if I can’t?” Jack asked in a small voice.

“Then you try again!” The doctor took a deep breath. “Come on, now. Goodness knows it’s been a long day, and we’re maybe all a bit fractious, but you’ve come this far.”

Stiff, sore, Jack got to his feet. The doctor patted him on the head.

On the deck, Beth and Xeno were hard at work. The shell of the Gearwing stood at the prow, missing its innards but the shape of the thing was there, beakless head to neck, spine to legs. Talons curled into the floor. A ladder leaned against the railing. Wires snarled in Xeno’s hands, and someone had fixed the broken wing.

Jack knelt, searching. This piece and this one and this one. Cogs and gears to spin, thick copper bands. He rummaged in the tools for what he needed. Both the doctor and Beth stopped what they were doing to watch the heart begin to form. Jack concentrated; it had to be perfect, parts placed just so. Only when he was sure did he stand and walk slowly to hang it inside the creature’s chest.

“Good chap,” said Xeno quietly, holding the ladder for Jack, who held it in turn as Xeno put its stomach below and threaded the thin pipes that would carry oil. “Close it up and feathers next.” They covered the body with big copper plates from the clock, caught its eyes before they rolled away across the deck.

And now for the feathers. Straining, sweating, climbing the ladder to reach the highest bits, they worked until the deck was clear of every scrap of metal. “I believe you should do the honors,” said the doctor, proffering the assembled beak, awe etched into the lines of his face. Xeno’s eyes glowed with the light of belief confirmed, not
dulled even a little by the crack, but Jack couldn’t shake the sense that it looked like a statue of a thing, rather than the thing itself. There was no life to it, no spark. Hope and fear warred within him.

It had all been real. The story couldn’t fail him now. He looked up at the Gearwing, a magnificent phoenix just like in his books, no less alive for being made of metal.

“I’ll hold the ladder,” said Beth. “Oh, this is exciting, isn’t it?”

Jack climbed. Ever so carefully, he affixed the beak to the bird’s face, the hinges closed but ready to open in song. His hand trembled as he reached for the key—at its neck, just like Beth—and began to turn.

And turn.

And turn again.

Finally, it would go no farther. Everything was a held breath; the breeze stilled in the trees, the birds silenced.

An eye moved. Then both. Slowly, the beak opened.

And the Gearwing began to scream. Oh, it was not a pretty song at all, as the story said, but an awful screeching that made Jack turn loose the ladder to cover his ears. It pierced right to the very center of his brain as he fell to the deck with a bone-jarring
thump
.

But still it did not stop.

“What’s the matter with it?” Jack shouted, but nobody
answered, whether because they couldn’t hear him over the screaming or because their own ears were covered, he didn’t know. The enormous wings spread and flapped, gears turning slowly, then fast and faster. Its feet left the deck and it flew in panicked, dizzy circles, still making that horrendous noise, crashing into the masts and the trees beyond the ship.

Just when Jack thought he would rather die than listen for another second, something happened, something that had left him alone since the night he put a stop to the hangings.

The voice came. But it was not Lorcan’s this time. It was loud in his head, somehow louder than the scream.

Help me
, the Gearwing begged, raspy, metallic, a deep sound with sharp edges.
Please, help me.

W
HEN LORCAN AWOKE
in the grip of fever, it took him several long minutes to remember where he was. Ah, yes. The mountains, for the Lady no longer loved him. But she would again; she would. He had all the time he could ever desire in which to wait for her forgiveness. This was nothing more than the blink of an eye, the quick flutter of a wing.

On shaking legs, he rose. “Trinket!” he tried to call, but no sound came from his throat. Water, that was it. Cool, fresh water and he would be perfectly fine. But this was the fever, affecting his mind, and as he drank from the jug Trinket had filled from a stream, the water evaporated to
steam on his lips. Desperate, nearly blind, he felt his way back to his bed.

Hours later, he awoke again. The ship rocked gently to and fro in the breeze, tilting his stomach with each movement. He put a hand to his chest to feel the heat there, the fire that raged within.

But something was wrong. Something more than the nonsensical sickness. Illness never took him; that was for common people. Mortal people.

His heart was not beating, and this could mean only one thing.

“Trinket!” he called, and this time, blessedly, his voice worked enough.

“Master?”

He required . . . He required . . . “My things, Trinket. A hair.”

“But there are no more, sir,” said Trinket. Of course, there hadn’t been for many days, he remembered now. None of the Lady’s long, dark, beautiful ones, none of the short locks snipped from the boy at the palace. But he did not need to see in order to know.

The clock was broken. It did not tick, minute by minute, and so his heart was still, as still as it was when he ventured through the doorway, to the London where the clock’s magic did not work. He touched his burning cheek,
imagining that he could feel the flesh there rotting beneath his fingers. How much older would he look were he to glance in a mirror?

He didn’t care to find out.

“We must go back,” he said to the imp. “Ready the ship.”

“But, sir, you are—”

Lorcan grabbed the thing, threw it with all his might against the wall. Its own crude repairs to itself did not hold; it fell to pieces on the floor.

No matter. There were always more where it came from. The Empire was overrun with the things. He must return to fix it. Perhaps get a glimpse of the Lady, simply to assure himself that she was perfection as ever. And then he would retreat again, just as she wished, to wait.

Shaking, stumbling, Lorcan dressed. Suit, a necktie of crimson silk, his topper. Nothing must seem out of place, should he be seen. No one must suspect that anything was the matter.

Daylight blinded him on the deck, with no clouds this far north to dull it. He withdrew his dark glasses. Ah, better. His pocket watch infuriated him with its ordinariness, its stubborn determination simply to tell the time.

But it was all right. Within hours, he would be back in Londinium.

A
LL RIGHT!” JACK
screamed, unable to hear his own voice. “All right, we’ll help you!” They already
had
helped it, in point of fact, but he didn’t think now was the time for quibbling.

The noise stopped. Jack’s ears rang. The fantastic Gearwing returned to the deck, its feathers whining against one another as it settled its wings.

“It can’t summon its soul,” growled Xeno. “He’s trapped it somewhere. I’m sure of it. As if turning the creature into a bleeding clock wasn’t bad enough.”

Beth frowned. “It’s not inside him, like mine?”

“No.” Xeno’s hands curled to fists. “No. A mere body wouldn’t be enough to stop the call. Too many holes, y’see.
He had to make certain that if someone ever reassembled it, it still wouldn’t be itself.”

Hatred blazed to life again inside Jack. “Can it
find
its soul? I mean, if we tell it to fly away?”

“Likely not. Perhaps if we get right up close, but it’s confused. Being without a soul is an extremely disorienting thing. Surprised it managed enough to ask for help, frankly.”

So they had heard it, too. The Gearwing stood statue-still again, as if it’d never moved at all. Xeno paced the deck, muttering to himself. “’Course he did. ’Course. Dunno why I didn’t think of it. Keep it close enough that he can use its power, but not so close it fights with ’is own. Keeps it safer, yes.”

Jack’s heart sank. He’d been so clever to discover the clock’s secret, but that was a bloody great tower in the middle of Londinium, right where he could see it. The soul could be anywhere the length and breadth of the island or beyond. He didn’t know how close it would have to be, and he doubted Xeno knew, either. The Gearwing was unique, special, not a ten-a-penny faery giggling its way around the Londinium slums. He pictured a swirling soul in a corked brandy bottle, buried a half-dozen feet in the dirt, or hidden in a cave, or weighted down at the bottom of a river.

He’d come so close to going home; it had never seemed quite so far away as it did now. His normal hand was callused, cracked, crusted with blood from unnoticed scratches, and his head ached from lack of sleep.

“How large would it be?” the doctor asked Xeno, who rubbed his chin in thought, leaving a strip shinier than the rest. Absurdly, Jack wondered if he polished it every day.

“About as big as a sheep, I reckon,” said Xeno, quite serious. “A youngish one, mind. Not your full-grown ram.”

The doctor raised his bushy eyebrows, but nodded.

“He’d want it somewhere he could see it,” said Beth decisively. The other three looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. “The clock was, even if it was still a bit hidden at the same time. So he’s hardly going to pack the soul in the back of a broom cupboard, now, is he? It’d make him feel all clever-like, to have it right out there in the open, not looking like what it is.”

She was right, of course. Jack grinned at her, and Dr. Snailwater patted her absently, but a leaden darkness descended upon them as, together, it occurred to them that even this narrowing down didn’t help a great deal. “Somewhere he could see it” meant Londinium, presumably, but Londinium was full of nooks and crannies, rooftops and tunnels through which the trains chugged.
Though underground didn’t seem likely, anything was possible. He remembered Xeno’s insistence that he believe that, the first time they met.