The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (10 page)

“Anywhere. You know that.”

The father returned, dressed, and led Alice and Gavin outside to another house, where two adult brothers were down with the plague. Alice, the quilt still pulled around her, cured both of them while Gavin played, and one of them begged Alice to go to his niece’s house. Along the way, they encountered a pair of plague zombies rooting through a rubbish heap, and Alice swiped at them as well. At the niece’s house, Gavin stopped Alice and demanded that she be given food and drink, which the newly cured niece was happy to give before asking Alice to visit yet another house. And so it continued. As the night wore on, Alice hurried from home to home under cover of darkness, her quilt drawn around her like a cloak while she cured a number of people with the clockwork plague, and each one seemed to know someone else who was sick. The chain of people took them all through Luxembourg, to homes rich and poor, lonely and crowded, wood and stone. Gavin made sure Alice was given a bite to eat and a sip to drink in every household. Alice cured priests and drunkards, bankers and thieves, doctors and patients. Some offered money, always hesitantly,
as if they might offend. Alice tried to turn them down, but Gavin stepped in and accepted.

“If they can spare it, we can take it,” he said, fiddle in hand.

“I won’t turn down someone who can’t—”

“Of course not,” Gavin said. “But even saints have to eat. And get to China.”

When dawn checkered the eastern sky, they left the final house. The air was crisp and clean and bright. Morning noises—horse traffic, food sellers, factory whistles, doors opening and closing, people shouting and talking—filled the street. Housewives and storekeepers swept the cobblestones in front of their homes and shops. Gavin noticed with a start that Alice was pale and shaky from the slow but steady blood loss, and she kept the quilt wrapped tightly around her body and head. Gavin himself didn’t feel tired in the least—clockworkers entering the later stage of the plague often went days without sleep—and he mentally kicked himself for not remembering earlier that Alice did need rest, especially after everything she’d been doing.

He flagged down a cab and gave directions back to the pub where he’d been drinking the night before. Alice leaned against him and dozed off, and he was surprised at how light she felt.

The pub was closed, but Gavin found the cheap hotel where Feng had gotten a room and used the money Alice had earned to get them a room while Alice collapsed into a lobby chair. At the last second he remembered not to give his real name and signed them
in as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Danforth, in honor of his late friend. He had no intention of actually sharing a room with Alice—Feng’s room would have to do when Gavin finally felt a need for sleep and he would have to hope Feng didn’t have a woman with him—but it was easier to fabricate a married relationship than explain to the clerk, who only spoke a few words of English.

They met Feng, alone, on the way up the dark and creaking stairs, which saved Gavin the trouble of tracking him down. Explanations followed, and Alice went into her room without further discussion.

“You will not follow her?” Feng said. He was wearing his scarf and goggles and on his back he wore the pack with the precious jar of fireflies in it. “My lady friend last night enjoyed herself immensely, and I can give you advice, if you need it.”

Gavin sighed as they squeaked back downstairs on threadbare carpet. Although he was getting used to Feng’s forthrightness and his interest in… romance, it was still a little unsettling, and he could understand why Feng’s father had despaired of him ever becoming a diplomat. Feng’s undeniably exotic good looks doubtless made matters worse—Gavin imagined he found it easy to sweet talk his way into any number of beds. Fortunately, he did seem to understand that showing even the slightest interest in Alice would result in a personal and rather brief experiment with the force of gravity from the deck of the
Lady of Liberty
, either at Gavin’s hands or Alice’s.

“I won’t share… quarters with her,” Gavin said. “Not until I can make an honest woman of her.”

“And when will that be?”

They reached the little lobby again and a glimmer of brass caught Gavin’s eye. His blood went cold and he nearly dropped his fiddle case. Susan Phipps and Simon d’Arco were talking to the clerk.

“Run,” he whispered hoarsely, and bolted back up the steps.

They both smashed straight into Alice’s door. It splintered open. She lay on the bed and she was still dressed, a fact for which Gavin felt grateful. He scooped Alice up while Feng grabbed the bedspread from underneath her. Alice squawked as footsteps pounded on the stairs leading up to their floor. Gavin glanced at the window, but they were three stories up. No escape that way. They would have to fight their way out. He frantically assessed the room. Bed. Bare wood floor. Window. Thin curtains. Chamber pot. Washstand. Mirror. Light. Feng. Bedspread. Sheets. Fiddle case.

“Put me down!” Alice barked.

Gavin flung her back on the bed along with his fiddle case. He ripped the curtains off the wall with one hand and snatched up the room’s paraffin oil lamp in the other. Then he dug into his pockets for a match. Simon burst into the room, and Feng, who was standing beside the door, flung the bedspread over him like a net and kicked his legs out from under him. Simon went down with a muffled yelp. Phipps appeared in the doorway, more cautious. She held a pair of tuning forks in her hands.

“You!” Alice cried from the bed.

“Caught you,” Phipps said, “you son of a—”

Gavin threw the lamp at her. She automatically parried
it with her metal arm, and the cheap glass shattered, covering both her and the bedspread with lamp oil. Gavin popped the match alight with his thumbnail and applied it to the sheer curtain he was holding. Fear clenched his every nerve as it began to burn. Fire was the enemy of every airship, and to die in flame was the secret nightmare of every airman. He remembered Captain Naismith aiming a blazing crossbow bolt at the envelope of the
Juniper
, and how close he had come to dying in an inferno. His hands shook, making the fire dance.

“You won’t,” Phipps said flatly, and moved to strike the forks.

Gavin ran straight for her, trailing flame. Phipps leaped backward, her eyes wide with fear, an expression Gavin had never seen on her before. Alice recovered herself and bolted after him with Feng right behind her. A bit of blazing curtain flapped behind them, preventing the oil-soaked Phipps from pursuing right away if she wanted to avoid bursting into flame. Smoke and heat scorched Gavin’s face and heated his hands. The clerk stared at the trio from behind his desk as they fled outdoors.

The sun shone on the bright, cobblestoned street. In the distance, calliope music played and people applauded. Traffic and pedestrians were currently giving the hotel a wide berth, though, because Glenda was standing on the sidewalk in one of the big mechanicals.

“Wotcha,” she said, and reached for Gavin and Alice with big metal hands.

“Shit!” Gavin flung the flaming ball of cloth at Glenda’s
head. It bounced off the clear bubble encasing her, but the woman jerked out of reflex, which gave Gavin, Alice, and Feng a chance to dodge around the machine.

“This way!” Gavin grabbed Alice’s hand and ran.

Glenda recovered quickly and spun to face them. Gavin jumped into a nearby cab, pulling Alice with him. The startled driver didn’t even have time to protest before Gavin shoved him out with a “Sorry!” and snapped the reins. The horses, already nervous about the mechanical, leaped forward. Feng managed to leap aboard as well, despite the rucksack that weighed him down.

The cab jolted down the street with the mechanical in pursuit. Brass footsteps thundered behind them. Alice shouted at people to get out of the way, and Gavin grimly steered the frantic horses. Glenda swiped at the cab, missed, and gouged a chunk out of the street. People and horses screamed and scattered. Other automatons skittered out of the way. Fear gripped Gavin’s heart. Even if they got away now, their situation remained dire. Phipps was a bulldog, willing and able to track them, and Gavin’s conspicuous airship made the situation worse. They had to escape, not only now but in the long term.

“Where should we go?” Alice cried, echoing his thoughts. “How do we get away?”

And then he knew. It came to him in a flash of inspiration, and he had no idea whether it was inspired by the clockwork plague or his own imagination, but either way, it might work. Hope replaced some of the fear.

“I have an idea,” he said. “But we left my fiddle.”

“I have it,” Alice said, brandishing it. “Didn’t you notice?”

“God, I love you.”

“Faster!” Feng shouted behind them.

Glenda swiped at the cab again, and this time she clipped it. The cab yawed sideways, and Alice clung grimly with her free hand. Gavin hauled on the reins, turning the yaw into a full-out left turn around a corner. The cab tipped on two wheels, then righted itself with a crash that slammed Gavin’s teeth together. The move caught Glenda by surprise, and she had to back up to make the turn, which bought Gavin a bit of lead. He shouted at the horses, but they were already going flat out.

“Glenda!” Alice called over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this! The Third Ward is dead!”

But Glenda either didn’t hear or didn’t care. The mechanical came after them with implacable determination. The horses were slowing, tired, allowing Glenda to make up the lost time. Gavin listened. The streets here were nearly empty and the calliope music was growing louder. He pulled the horses to a stop and jumped out of the cab.

“Jump!” he said as Glenda brought both mechanical hands down. Feng and Alice leaped free as the mechanical smashed the cab to pieces. The panicked horses galloped away, dragging the remains with them. Glenda turned to face the trio, her expression stony.

“What are you doing?” Feng demanded, but Gavin was already moving.

“Come on!” He dashed down a side street, giving Alice and Feng no choice but to follow. There were still no people in evidence, but the narrow street was cluttered with front stoops, carts, piles of coal, and other street detritus. The trio leaped and twisted around it all, but Glenda was forced to slow a little.

“I’ll catch you eventually,” she shouted. “You can’t keep running!”

Gavin burst out onto a main street and into a crowd lining it. The calliope music leaped into full volume. Coming up the street was a man in a red top hat and a red-and-white striped shirt with garters just above the elbows. He wore a cloak flung back over his shoulders and he carried a silver-topped cane. Behind him lurched a great brass elephant, puffing steam from its tusks. Its gait was oddly uneven. Scarlet signs on the animal’s sides spelled out
Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles
in graceful, garish letters. Behind that came a horse wagon with an calliope on it played by an automaton, followed by the rest of the circus—clowns and acrobats and lion cages and girls on mechanical horses, all waving and smiling. The crowd that had gathered to watch stared, unsure if Gavin’s actions might be part of the show.

Without a pause, Gavin shoved through the crowd and made for the ringmaster at the front of the parade. He snatched the man’s hat off, revealing sandy hair.

“What the hell?” the ringmaster said, then blinked.
“Gavin?”

“Great to see you, Dodd.” Gavin flicked the cloak free. “Just go with this and I’ll explain later.”

“Gavin, what are you—?” Alice began, but he
shoved the top hat on her head, tossed the cloak around her shoulders, and ran around the other side of the lurching elephant without looking to see if Feng and Alice followed him. They did, however, and that was fortunate. Glenda reached the mouth of the side street, but her view of her quarry was blocked by the elephant, who bumbled along as if the people didn’t exist. Up top, the mahout looked down at them warily.

“Take off your goggles and scarf and your shirt,” Gavin whispered to Feng, keeping pace with the elephant. “The circus has Chinese. You’ll look like an acrobat. Give me the rucksack.”

“What about you?” Alice buttoned the cloak and drew it around herself, hiding her body and Gavin’s fiddle case. “And how do you know these people?”

Feng handed Gavin the rucksack, pulled off his shirt, and wrapped it around his head in a crude turban. He had a build that could pass for acrobatic, at a distance. Several people in the crowd had noticed Glenda’s mechanical, but they seemed to think it was part of the parade. They pointed and gasped with amazement. Glenda was momentarily stymied. She couldn’t move forward without crushing people or sweeping them aside and hurting them, which Gavin didn’t think she’d be willing to do.

A clown in white makeup, orange wig, and blue nose hurried up with a broom and a bucket. “What are you three doing? Do you speak English?”

“Bonzini!” Gavin said. “Remember me?”

“Gavin?” the clown gasped. “What in—?”

“I’m looking for two men and a woman!”
Glenda
boomed from the mechanical.
“They just came this way. There’s a reward!”

“That’s torn it,” Alice said.

“No,” Feng said. “The crowd speaks French and German.”

“Thanks, Bonzini.” Gavin plucked the wig and nose from the clown, jammed them onto his own head and face, and grabbed Bonzini’s broom and bucket. The pack with the firefly cure in it went on Gavin’s back.

“Hey!” Bonzini protested.

But Gavin was already moving farther back, now using the calliope wagon and then a lion cage for cover. Alice and Feng came with. Glenda gave up on the crowd and was now nudging people aside so she could move onto the street. The calliope continued to hoot out something in D-major.

“Split up,” Gavin said.

“Why can’t we just keep hiding behind the calliope?” Alice hissed.

“The wagon’s high enough for her to see our feet.” Gavin brandished the broom. “Hide in plain sight. Smile and wave and tell anyone who asks that Dodd said it was all right.”

Gavin followed the lion cage with the broom over his shoulder, taking care that the bristles blocked Glenda’s view of his face. Behind Gavin, a pair of jugglers tossed clubs and balls. Alice and Feng dropped farther back into the parade, smiling and waving as they went. The parade moved ahead with aching slowness. The horse drawing the lion cage dropped manure onto the street right in front of the spot where Glenda had
finally worked her way through the parade audience to the curb. Gavin swallowed hard and kept his head down as he paused and swept the smelly stuff into the bucket. Glenda scanned the street with flat, hard eyes. Gavin felt her gaze rest on him for a moment, and he forced himself to put a jaunty spring into his step, though tension dried his mouth and tightened his knuckles on the bucket. He was just a lowly sweeper clown. Not worth examining closely. Glenda narrowed her eyes and her mechanical took a step forward. Gavin held his breath. Then Glenda turned and stomped away. The crowd cheered and pointed at her, still sure she was part of the parade. Gavin let out his breath and stole a glance over his shoulder. Alice and Feng smiled and waved near a troop of acrobats. The automaton on the calliope finished its song and swung into another one. Gavin continued on his way with the bucket full of manure.