The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (15 page)

Alice tied a handkerchief over her hair in an impromptu head cloth and peered over the side. “I am Lombarda, lion tamer extraordinaire. Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Ovrille of the Grand Ducal Police,” he said. “Come down immediately! We are searching the wagon!”

“If you like,” Alice called back. “But the lion, he will not be happy.”

Ovrille paused. “What lion?”

“The cage, it has broken, you see. That is why we are using this wagon. The lion, he is up top, and I have no leash or cage right now, and it is far past his mealtime. He is quite hungry. Fortunately, he does not feel women are a threat, no?”

The other officer, the one with the torch, looked uncertain. “Sir—,” he said.

“Our orders are clear,” Ovrille said stubbornly. “We are to search everything even remotely suspicious.”

“Yes, yes,” Alice called. “Please come up, then. But make no sudden moves, especially if you ate meat for supper. I do not know how much longer I can keep him quiet.” She changed her tone of voice, as if she were speaking to a child. “Can I, baby? No, I cannot. I just cannot keep ums quiet!”

Ovrille dismounted and reached for the rope ladder hanging over the side of the airship. Alice gestured sharply at Gavin, who fumbled with the nightingale
and finally managed to press its right eye. It opened its beak and the lion’s roar from the previous evening’s parade snarled through the night, a little quiet but realistic enough. Ovrille froze.

“No, no, no,” Alice cooed loudly. “It is all right, little one. The man is not here to hurt you. He is not for you to bite. You must sit quietly and let him—”

Gavin pressed the nightingale again, and it played the roar a second time. Ovrille snatched his hand away from the ladder as if the rungs were hot pokers. The officer with the torch backed his horse away, as did the man who had gone to the opposite side of the airship.

“What are you doing?” Alice said. “I believe I have him under control. Come up now before he again becomes angry.”

Another roar. Ovrille went back to his horse. “Yes, well,” he said. “I think we can let it go this time.”

“Are you sure?” Alice said. “We would not wish for you to get into trouble. If you let him lick your hand first, he probably won’t bite.”

“Just go,” Ovrille ordered.

“Huh. As you wish, then.”

Nathan tapped the horses, which jerked forward, and the airship creaked along the tracks. Once the officers were out of sight, Alice blew out a long breath. Every muscle went limp and she collapsed to the deck.

“I never want to do that again,” she half sobbed, half giggled.

“You thought it was bad for you.” Gavin sank to the deck beside her. “I had no idea what you were saying and had to guess about making the nightingale roar.”

“Good that you’re intelligent, then.”

There was a long pause. Alice wanted to say something more, except words wouldn’t come. The anger curled around her heart like a dozing tiger and held everything in. Alice envied Gavin’s easy way with words, how he could say whatever was on his mind.

After a while, Gavin brought his cupped hands with the nightingale in them to his face. When he brought them down again, he tossed the nightingale into the air. It spread its wings and fluttered about for a moment, then flitted over to settle on Alice’s shoulder. Alice knew that the nightingale, meant to carry recorded messages, would fly back and forth between the last two people who had touched it. The moment it landed, the little bird sang in Gavin’s voice.

Alice closed her eyes at the beauty that surrounded her but still couldn’t respond.

“Most people think,” Gavin said, “that if the melody of a song is written in a minor key, the accompaniment or counterpoint has to be played in a minor key, too. But that’s not right. The counterpoint can be the major fifth chord, if you leave out the mediant, the one note that clashes.”

She made a small, noncommittal noise. Ahead of them, the tracks stretched through the city, turning neither right nor left, taking the airship down its predetermined path.

“I’ve never been in love before, Alice,” he continued. “And I’ve never been a clockworker. So I don’t know what all this means. I can only play the music fate hands me. When I sing, all my songs tell me that I want to be with you. If you don’t want to be with me, just say so.”

Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any longer. She sat up and grabbed his hand. His fingers were strong. The nightingale hopped back to his shoulder. “I hate the plague. I hate what it’s doing to you. To us. I don’t want to let you go. I
can’t
let you go. But I’m frightened of what the plague might do.”

“So am I,” he said quietly. “It steals memory from me, and it steals time from us. We have to get to China and find a cure.”

“What if there
is
no cure, Gavin?” she asked suddenly. “What if the Dragon Men can’t do anything, or they just won’t, or we can’t find a cure in time?”

He squeezed her hand. “Alice, the plague might be able to steal my sanity, but it can’t steal love. No matter how insane I go, there will always be a part of me that loves you.”

And she still didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t. That didn’t seem to bother Gavin. They sat on the deck in simple silence together until the airship pulled onto the spur that led to the park Dodd had rented for the circus. When the ship came to a halt behind the dark circus train, Alice headed for the ladder.

“Get your fiddle,” she said. “We aren’t done yet.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain below.”

Nathan was already unhitching the horses with Dr.
Clef’s help. Alice explained how she had met the woman. “She said there were more who need me at the Church of Our Lady.”

“I know where that is,” Gavin said.

“So do I,” Nathan put in. “Dodd and I have gone there for confession once or twice.”

Gavin blinked innocently. “What did you confess?”

“That you were an arse.”

“She said to ask for Monsignor Adames,” Alice said. “I need to—”

“There you are!” Dodd ran up and caught Nathan in a hard embrace. One of the horses snorted. “Jesus, you scared me out of my wits.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Nathan gasped. “What’s wrong?”

“Mingers.” Dodd let him go. “Gendarmes. They turned the whole circus upside down looking for Gavin and Alice and demanding to know if we were hiding you. No one said anything, of course, but thank God you weren’t here.”

“Are they still looking?” Dr. Clef asked.

“I should think so. They seemed pretty intent. They called you criminals, and Dr. Clef a danger to society.”

“Was a woman with them? Tall? Dark hair? Metal arm?” Gavin said.

Dodd shook his head. “You mean your Lieutenant Phipps. She wasn’t there, but I heard them mention her name.”

“What about Feng?” Alice said.

“He was easy to hide.” Dodd waved a dismissive hand. “We have two families of Chinese. She didn’t even ask about him.”

“That’s a relief, then.” Alice tugged at Gavin’s elbow. “We need to go.”

“You can’t go now,” Dodd said. “Didn’t you just hear? Phipps has patrols looking for you all over the city. You’ll be safe here—they’ve already looked—but you can’t go out.”

“I promised, Ringmaster,” Alice said. “Those people need my help. Every moment’s delay means another plague victim might die. So unless you intend to lock me in a lion’s cage, get out of my way before I knock you down.”

“She will,” Gavin told him.

“Fine.” Dodd made the same dismissive gesture. “But you aren’t going alone.”

“Certainly not!” Alice said, and Dodd looked surprised that she was agreeing. “Only a fool would do that. And a number of people who aren’t coming should know where I’m going so they can mount a rescue if I don’t return in a reasonable amount of time. Gavin’s coming, of course.”

“Am I?” Gavin was grinning.

“You are. You know where the church is. Feng must come, too. That leaves Mr. Storm, who also knows where the church is, on rescue duty with Dr. Clef and the ringmaster.”

“As long as you’re running my circus,” that man sighed, “you might as well just call me Dodd.”

T
hey took several moments to gather equipment. Alice wanted to get the firefly jar from Feng, and Gavin wanted weapons. He couldn’t bring himself to use actual pistols, however. A lifetime of training had instilled a healthy fear of anything that created flame, a deadly threat on an airship. Even after several weeks on the
Lady
, which used newfangled helium, Gavin still shunned gunpowder for the cutlass of shatterproof glass favored by airmen. Unfortunately, he no longer had a fléchette pistol, which used compressed air to fire glass needles. The circus, meanwhile, had gone back to sleep, recovered from its encounter with the gendarmes Phipps had commandeered, but Gavin wondered how long before they returned—and how many they’d encounter on the way to the church, which was why he wanted weapons. He looked at Dr. Clef’s power canon where it lay on the
Lady
’s deck, and sighed with regret.

“It’s too heavy,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t get twenty yards.”

“Perhaps you could make modifications with this.” Dr. Clef held up a spool of alloy wire, the same stuff as the endoskeleton rolled up and lying on the port side of the deck. “Can you do it alone? I have fear that we shall fight if I assist.”

Gavin looked at the wire and at the power cannon. His brain leaped ahead, and he saw wires and pulsing power and batteries. He ran his hands over the cannon, able to
feel
how it all fit together, every bolt, every shard, every pathway, right down to the tiny pieces so small they couldn’t hold a name. He saw a number of fascinating ways to reshape them, gently move matter and energy along a number of different venues. He was only vaguely aware that Dr. Clef, that annoying Dr. Clef, had withdrawn, and the vibrations of his receding footsteps on the deck came out as long, distorted strings that vibrated against the air and kicked it about. Gavin’s fingers flew, snatching up tools and setting them down again, braiding wire, snipping metal, connecting pieces of the universe in new ways.

“Gavin?”

The high-pitched voice intruded, interrupted, interjected. He turned to snarl at the interruption—

—and saw that it was a woman. He knew her. He… had feelings for her. He struggled for a moment. She had broken his concentration, which made him angry, but she was also someone to be trusted, someone he didn’t want to be angry at. The contradictory feelings warred for a split second, equally matched.

Alice. Her name was Alice. The new fact tipped the balance, and in a flash he remembered that she wasn’t someone who deserved disdain. He twisted inside like a cat changing its mind in midleap and yanked back the retort.

“Alice?” he gasped, and realized he was panting. A trickle of sweat slid down his cheek. “What’s going on?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She had changed into trousers, which Gavin found strangely attractive on a woman. They accentuated her hips and showed her legs. She was wearing a tighter-fitting blouse as well, and it clung to her neck and breasts. Her braided hair caught the moon and held it. The silvery light shifted, moving in a shower of particles, then splashing as a wave, but doing both at the same time, just as the Impossible Cube had twisted and changed before his eyes. It was beautiful and terrible all at once, and Gavin couldn’t look away if he wanted to. For a moment it was hard to breathe.

“What is that?” she asked. “Did you make it?”

Gavin held up the object in question. An eight-foot braided lash trailed to the deck from a heavy brass handle, and the handle connected to a cord that ran to a backpack with a battery in it. Dr. Clef’s power cannon lay dead on the deck, its brass entrails scattered across the wood.

“It looks like a whip,” said Feng, who had also climbed up. He was dressed in what looked to Gavin like soft black pajamas from head to foot. “Show us, please.”

Gavin shook off the last of the clockwork daze. He
shrugged into the backpack and flicked a switch on the handle. A low thrum—D-flat, he automatically noted—throbbed across his ears and pulsed against his palm. The metal lash glowed incandescent blue. The weight eased in his hand as the power pushed Dr. Clef’s alloy away from gravity. Gavin swung. The whip flicked through the air, quick as a demon’s tongue, and slashed at the barrel of the power cannon. The barrel didn’t move. For a moment, neither did anyone else. Then the barrel fell neatly into two halves that thudded to the deck.

There was a long, long pause.

“I watched someone called the Great Mordovo cut his assistant in half this afternoon,” Feng said at last. “I do not believe you should show this to him.”

Alice swallowed visibly and shifted her pack. “That took you all of half an hour to make?”

“I didn’t keep track of the time.” Gavin flicked the switch off. The glow vanished, and the whip grew heavy in his hand again. He coiled it and hung it on the right side of his belt, opposite his glass cutlass.

“You must be careful,” Dr. Clef admonished, approaching from his previously safe distance. “Every slash takes power, you know, and the battery does not last forever.”

“Then let’s go now,” Gavin said.

“I’ll carry your fiddle,” Alice said.

The three of them slipped away from the circus and hurried down the city streets. Gavin led the way, since he knew where they were going, and Feng brought up the rear, with Alice in the middle. The air that stole
over Gavin was growing chilly and damp, with an early breath of autumn to it. In the distance, a church bell repeated a dark F that pressed lonely against his ears. A scattering of lights glowed in houses or shops, but most windows were dark, and the moon coasted through a field of stars like a bright airship through a cloud of fireflies. Even the public houses were closed at this time of night, and the trio had no good reason to be on the street, which meant any gendarme would stop them for questioning. Gavin slid into another shadow, trying to control his nervousness. The cutlass and whip lent him a whiff of power, but one pistol shot could bring him down, or worse, bring down Alice. Gavin didn’t know if Phipps intended to capture or kill at this point, but capture would mean transport back to England for hanging, so it didn’t make much difference. He kept one hand on the smooth whip handle.