Snow (23 page)

Five dark shadows and one bright bard spread out over London seeking a cure for Snow.

Alan caught Cat fixing her hair in the little pocket mirror that Snow used to carry when she was Jessica. As the girl surreptitiously pouted her lips, Alan made the connection.

“Don’t!” he cried, swiping it out of her hands. He dashed it to the floor, smashing it into a thousand bright shards.

Cat hissed in dismay.

“Why’d you do that?” Sparrow asked curiously.

“The … mirror …,” Alan whispered, tugging at the golden chain round his neck.

Chauncey nodded thoughtfully. “You said you
saw
Cat…. It was the mirror you saw her through, somehow. But can you not tell these things, direct-like?”

Alan shrugged helplessly.

Months passed. Then a year.

Then two.

And still they searched.

And still Snow slept.

T
hey read, they talked to people, they learned. They learned about metal, electricity, and chemicals; they learned about cantrips, drugs, and incantations. These were difficult things to research in this age; sometimes even Alan’s charm and human features failed to get anything more than a door slammed in their faces—these were scientific times, didn’t they know that?
There’s no such thing as magic….

They searched libraries and questioned doctors, arcane bookstores and gypsies, curiosity shops, and practitioners of the black arts. No one had any answers for them. But one name kept coming up over and over again when they talked to the darker inhabitants of the city streets, the beggars, the fortune tellers, and the women who walked the night: the Clockwork Man.

“That’s just a ssstory,” Cat hissed.

“Like the one about the girl who slept forever without aging or waking up, and the five strange creatures who cared for her?” Chauncey asked archly. “We haven’t found anything else; we might as well try to find him. They say he lives in the sewers and tinkers with things better left alone—sounds like our man, really.”

“I’ll go,” Raven said. “The sewers don’t frighten me.”

“No, let me,” Alan suggested. “You might scare him, or he might try to capture you.”

“And
you
could by no means defend yourself down there!”

They glared at each other.

Although Alan saw how much the Lonely Ones cared for Snow, well,
he
had known her
longer
. And though Raven was determined to save her, he was disconcerted when he saw how handsome and cheerful the fiddler turned out to be.

“Ah, ye can
both
go,” Chauncey suggested mildly, but there was iron at the bottom of his words.

The two young men descended into the sewers with a map stolen off a city worker, and hints and clues bought from shifty-eyed people. They walked for hours through large pipes and narrow tunnels, crossed incredible wide-open stone spaces and unbelievably foul-smelling streams of sewage. They argued over directions.

Things skittered around them in the darkness; once Raven thought he saw a human-sized form that moved with a rat’s grace in the shadows.

“Maybe we’ve been living in the wrong part of town,” he said ironically, indicating the parting figure.

“If you like the stink of sewers,” Alan answered, wrinkling his nose. “Though I dinna think these are
necessarily
of your kith and kin.” He pointed at a mouse scurrying past. Raven started as he realized it
was made of metal—a toy mouse, with cogs for eyes that moved as realistically as the real thing.

It even squeaked.

“I think we’re getting closer,” Alan said.

Not long after discovering the clockwork mouse, Alan and Raven came to what looked like a dead end on the map, just a big, empty blank space that seemed to be nothing, surrounded by smaller tunnels and pipes.

“Look at that valve,” Raven pointed out. “It’s dead, and none of the pipes around it seem to be carrying steam.” Alan turned the ancient wheel; instead of hot air hissing through, low chimes rang softly.

“A doorbell?” Alan raised his eyebrow.

A panel in the wall in front of them slid aside, and they walked in.

They entered a strange octagonal room fashioned from piecemeal metal and bolts. Shelves and dark corners were filled with skulls and stuffed birds, test tubes and copper pipes, strange clocks that each told a different time, and books … hundreds of books—dusty, leathery tomes on everything from electricity to the dark arts. Nothing was in any order. Packets of herbs from foreign places lay next to piles of feathers from all over England. There were strange devices that whirred and clicked when shook, and did nothing more. Marionettes and tiny bottles of poison….

“I welcome you,” came a voice from the gloom.

Out stepped what at first appeared to be a fairly
normal-looking—though pale—man, young and almost handsome. When he cocked his head to look at them, however, his glasses turned out to be something else entirely—one of the lenses was a thick brass tube that fitted over his entire left eye. The glass was faceted instead of being flat, and a tiny golden gear rested on the top. He adjusted them, spinning the gear, and the lens came out of the tube, as if he was mechanically focusing on them. The hand that moved the gear was also made of metal, like a brass skeleton. It clicked and whirred as it moved, and cloth-covered tubes ran up and down his arm under the sleeve. More gears spun inside his wrist.

“What brings you down to my humble abode, among the sewers?” He grinned as they tried to look away from his abnormalities.

Alan found his voice first.

“We seek a cure for a friend under a—a curse.”

“Oh!” The man’s eyes—his right one, at least—lit up.
“There’s
something new. Sit down.”

Over tea, which Alan sipped and Raven shunned, they told their story. Raven reluctantly filled in the parts about the Lonely Ones; the Clockwork Man seemed particularly interested in that. Raven rolled up his sleeves to show the feathers on his arm.

“Fascinating! An actual fusion of man and beast…. How extraordinary. Someone would have to be mad to even consider such a thing.”

“Then … I am not a magical creature?” Raven asked slowly. “Not demon born, nor of fairy kin?”

“I’m afraid not, my young Sir,” the man smiled. “You would have set off one of my alarms. You are human and animal, and nothing more—though that should be enough for most! As to the cure …” He tapped his tooth, much like Chauncey. “A very complicated thing, but not insurmountable. I should very much like to talk to this duchess; she sounds remarkable, if a little undereducated in the dark arts.”

“She is evil,” Raven hissed.

“So you’ll help us?” Alan asked.

“Of course, for a price. I am almost certain the orb of which you speak is a
Spiritus illuminatus
. She used electricity as a carrier, not just a power source, to open the veins for the
tempotus
. It might take me some time, but I believe I can reconstruct the more technical aspects of the machinery here. I will diagram the rest out for you—if any of you has the slightest ability it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And your price?” Raven asked suspiciously.

“Ah, yes. In return I will take your feathers,”

Raven and Alan exchanged glances.

“I suspect they will give me a clue as to how your origins were—originated, as it were. I should like to study them. I will need them all. And I warn you, I must have them whole—pulled, not clipped.”

“Will they grow back?” Raven asked uneasily.

“I have no idea. It might be they were a one-time phenomenon.” He cocked his head to look at the
Lonely One; light flashed so that not even his normal eye could be seen. “But do you really want them to? You’re a man caught between two worlds. With them gone, you could be fully human. No one could tell the difference.”

He said it matter-of-factly, not like a demon offering a terrible choice, but rather more like a merchant explaining his options. The worst of it was that Raven could not answer his question.

“What if your machine doesn’t work?”

The Clockwork Man sighed at Raven’s distrust. “Young man, you know where I live. Simply come back. Bring her, even. It would be easier if I could work on her directly, as well as being a most instructive venture for myself.”

Alan and Raven looked at each other and found themselves in agreement on one point: that would
not
be the best of ideas.

T
hey spent the next three days and nights in the sewers with the Clockwork Man, though it was difficult to tell time with no sun and clocks that didn’t work right. Sometimes he sent them aboveground on errands, to buy this or that component, or to pick up something from someone who met them on a street corner at midnight. Most of the time, however, was spent in the perpetual semidarkness of the sewers, talking or reading.

Raven thought a lot about the price of Snow’s cure. He would do anything for her, of course…. But without his feathers, who would he be?
Will I look like a normal person but always dream of flying? Will I still be able to understand the language of the wild ravens?

Will Snow like me more, or is it Raven-with-the-feathers,
the Lonely One,
that she likes?

“Once this is all over,” he asked Alan casually, “will you go back to Kenigh Hall? Or stay in London and continue to play at the tavern?”

“I’ve been thinkin’ a bit about that.” Alan was lying down beside a clean-water aqueduct, hands behind his head, pretending it was a stream and a field. “This wee jaunt to London—and below it—
has been simply amazing. And there’s a whole world beyond this! I don’t know, Raven. I always thought I might like to travel abroad—now I know it. Maybe nae as a young Scottish prodigy with a patron of the arts, but maybe I can find work once I get there.”

Raven spoke carefully. “You would not wish to stay here, with Snow?”

“What, you mean Jess?” Raven flinched—he hated that name, the familiarity with which Alan spoke it. “She’s like one o’ my little sisters. I love her dearly, but I have to find my own way, yeah? Just like she does.”

Raven felt a gigantic weight lifted off his stomach; his head went dizzy. “You love her … like a …
sister
….”

“Aye, of course, Raven.” Alan grinned at him, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “How else?”

Two evenings later the Clockwork Man had the device ready.

“As my old grandmum used to say, good things come in threes,” Alan said, winking at Raven and slapping the half-mechanical man on the back, perhaps a little too hard.

“What’s the third one, then?” Raven asked. One was finding the cure, the second was his relief that Alan wasn’t interested in Snow the way he was.

“That we sod out of this stinking hole!” Alan smiled.

Raven grinned.

“This ‘stinking hole’ is my
home,
gentlemen,” the Clockwork Man reminded them. “Will you please sit down that I may explain this to you?”

It took a couple of hours and many drawings and notes, but Alan and Raven finally understood it.

“And now,
my
end of the bargain.”

Raven refused the opium he offered; he refused a drink of whiskey. He rolled up his sleeve and gritted his teeth under the bright lantern. The Clockwork Man worked delicately, with a pair of silver tweezers. Each feather he pulled went into its own test tube.

Raven screamed twice, once each as two major pinions were pulled out of his arms. Tears of pain streamed down his face. He looked down at his arms in dismay: they were raw and pocked with holes; the larger ones leaked blood that streamed down to his hands.

When he was done, the Clockwork Man very carefully dressed the wounds, cleaning and bandaging them.

“Excellent.” He held a bottle up to the light, admiring the iridescence of the feathers.

Alan had a thought. “Say … as long as you’re in the fix-it business, maybe ye could try ridding me of this?” He pointed at the chain around his neck, unable to say the words.

The Clockwork Man looked at it over his glasses. “It’s rather handsome on you,” he pointed out.

Alan tried to say something, but couldn’t.

“It has a spell on it,” the Clockwork Man realized. “A charm. A coercion spell, I’ll bet?”

Alan tried to nod.

“No trouble.” The Clockwork Man shuffled around until he found a pair of iron shears and carefully sliced through the chain, holding Alan’s neck so he wouldn’t cut the skin. One quick slash and it was off.

Alan took a gulp and realized he could speak.

“I saw Cat in the mirror which is a device the duchess used to spy on you it projected images on a screen that’s how I saw you all and how I saw Snow and I couldn’t tell you that because she forbade me and the necklace made me listen and I had to do whatever she wanted and I ran away from the estate by playing my fiddle because I love it passionately and true love breaks a spell and I hate the bloody duchess she is such a bloody
bitch!”

“Good heavens,” said the Clockwork Man.

“Are those magic shears?” Raven asked, pointing at them.

“What, these? No. Just some cheap farmers shears.” He picked up the necklace and looked at it interestedly. “They’re made of iron, which often breaks certain kinds of spells…. But the charm wasn’t that strong to begin with, really. Not enough even to trigger my alarms. I’ll just keep this if you don’t mind—unless you want it as a souvenir?”

Alan shook his head decisively.

“Well, what a fascinating week it has been.” The
Clockwork Man sighed in contentment. “Now, Gentlemen. If you wish to leave my ‘stinking hole’ as quickly as possible, there’s a ladder in the tunnel just north of here. It emerges outside of London, at the edge of a small wood. The road nearby will take you back to the city. Or you could just follow the stench.”

Suddenly, Raven cocked his head, listening. “What’s that?”

The Clockwork Man started to ask him what he meant, but Alan shushed him, used to Raven’s superior hearing. A tapping and banging could definitely be heard, like someone was trying to find a false wall, or the door. The Clockwork Man turned to one of his machines and cranked it; an image flickered on a glass—like the duchess’s mirror, Alan noted—but black and white and flickering. Two shadowy images, warped out of proportion, bobbed back and forth. Whispery voices rasped: