The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (5 page)

Her touch made him feel better, despite the spider. Even though he was barely nineteen and she was twenty-three, he felt no difference in their ages. Alice had been initially put off by it. The gap had been one of the reasons she had resisted admitting she loved him.

Gavin touched Alice’s hand, letting himself drink in her steady presence. And she was so beautiful. Her deep brown eyes set off her honey-brown hair, and her triangle face and little nose and rounded curves all came together like the parts of an intricate fugue, compelling and hypnotic. He still found it hard to believe she was with him—and that it had taken her so long to break society’s rules and leave her horrible fiancé. She leaned down. Her scent wafted over him, and he kissed her softly in the free and open sky. The kiss intensified, and a thrill went through him. He could do this. He could conquer the whole damned world, as long as Alice Michaels stood beside him.

“Very sweet,” Feng said, breaking the moment. “But I have no idea where I am going.”

They broke away and Alice coughed, a bit flushed. “I’d help, but I never learned how to read a navigation chart.”

“Right.” Gavin got up and took the charts away from Dr. Clef, who was now staring into the distance.

“My Impossible Cube had time,” he muttered. “All of it. At once. But you destroyed it, my boy. My lovely, lovely Impossible Cube.”

“Not this again.” Alice sighed. “Click!”

Click jumped down from his vantage point on the gunwale and strolled over to rub against Dr. Clef’s shins. A mechanical purr drifted across the deck. Dr. Clef glanced down.

“Ah, you send me the clicky kitty as a distraction. It will not work. I am so very forlorn.” Still, he picked the cat up and stroked the metal ears. “It won’t work at all, will it, clicky kitty? It will not. It will
not
.”

“Germans are so good at despondent,” Gavin observed. He pored over the charts. “If we keep our current course, we’ll reach Luxembourg by tomorrow. I know the place—it gets a lot of airship traffic, and the
Juniper
stopped there several times.”

“Do you think the other airships will give us camouflage?” Alice asked.

“Honestly? No.” Gavin gestured at the softly glowing envelope. “She stands out, even among airships, and the envelope isn’t big enough to lift her without turning on the generator.”

“Then why did you build your ship this way?” Feng asked.

“You’re such a clicky kitty,” Dr. Clef cooed. “You
are
.”

Gavin’s stomach turned over. “Because I could. You don’t think about consequences when you’re in a… a clockwork fugue. You just build. I didn’t even know I
was a clockworker when I built the
Lady.
I thought I just had insomnia.”

“Whatever the reason, we have a conspicuous ship,” Alice said, “and the Third Ward is spreading word of a generous reward for our capture.”

“Is the clicky kitty hungry? Would he like a saucer of arsenic?”

Gavin sighed and leaned over the gunwale, the fresh breeze on his face, solid wood beneath his bare feet. Forests and fields stretched to the horizon, emerald meeting azure, broken only by a railroad that ribboned through the green.

Alice joined him. “What are you thinking?”

“That you’re right. The ship is too conspicuous,” he said. “
We’re
too conspicuous. You have that gauntlet that won’t come off. Feng is Chinese. Dr. Clef is… Dr. Clef. And we have all these automatons. I mean, you can order Kemp to stay hidden—”

“We have to for at least a while,” Alice interrupted. “Human-seeming automatons are illegal on most of the Continent.”

“Only in the western part,” Gavin said, “where the Catholic Church is powerful. Once you get past the four French Kingdoms and the ten Prussian Kingdoms into Poland and the Ukrainian Empire, no one cares.”

“Oh.” Alice looked miffed that she hadn’t known this. “Kemp will be glad to hear that.”

“But I was saying that Click has a way of showing up wherever he wants,” Gavin continued. “We’re a very distinctive group, and you know Phipps has described us carefully.”

“Come, clicky kitty,” Dr. Clef said. “We will go
below and you will watch me while I work. Would you like that? You
would.
”

“If I took such a tone with Click,” Feng said to no one in particular, “he would disembowel me. Why does he allow Dr. Clef the privilege?”

A train passed beneath them, puffing smoke and spurting steam. The whistle—a G, Gavin noted automatically—sounded high and thin up in the air. The locomotive was painted bright red, and the cars sported bright colors as well. It looked like a child’s toy. Something about it tugged at him, but he couldn’t say what.

“We’ll have to figure something out soon,” Gavin finished. “Luxembourg is the only place nearby where we can stock up on paraffin oil for the generator, and we have to stop there.”

“And the food stores are nearly nonexistent,” Kemp added. “Madam and everyone else were searching for Sir, and I was not allowed to shop.”

“That’s another worry,” Alice said. “Money. We don’t have much left. The Ward won’t be paying our salaries anytime soon, and I rather doubt Norbert would be willing to wire me any money now that I’ve left him.”

Gavin stared across the free sky as tension tightened his muscles again. Even here, on his own ship, problems weighed him down. He wanted—needed—to leap over the side and coast away with nothing but bright and flowing air beneath him. The clouds twisted in the air currents, droplets hovering like trillions of tiny spirits buoyed by—

Alice touched his arm. “You’ve been staring for
a long time. Would you play for me?”

“A long time?” He blinked at her. “How long?”

“Over an hour.” She handed him his bow and fiddle. “Maybe this will focus you.”

Gavin looked around, bewildered. The sun had moved a considerable distance. Dr. Clef, Click, and Alice’s whirligig were nowhere to be seen. Only Feng remained, still at the helm. Gavin looked down at his fiddle. It had been his constant companion ever since he could remember. His inborn perfect pitch let him pick up songs almost instantly, which meant he was able to play street corners in Boston at an early age and bring the pennies home to his mother and siblings. He had secretly fantasized that one day he would play in a music hall or even in an orchestra. But later, on his twelfth birthday, Gramps had brought him down to the Boston shipyards and introduced him to Captain Felix Naismith of the
Juniper
. From that day on, cabin boy Gavin Ennock had barely touched the ground while he played for airmen and ran their errands. Then came the attack. In seconds, both Naismith and Gavin’s best friend were dead and Gavin was forced to perform for pirates. They had stranded him in London. Unable to find work on another airship, he’d gone back to playing the streets for pennies until Alice’s aunt had snatched him away and locked him in her tower. For three weeks, he’d had nothing to do but play the violin until Alice had appeared and rescued him. And then he had rescued her, and then she him, and so it went.

He drew his bow over the strings and was about to begin when Alice abruptly held up a hand. For a dreadful moment, he thought he’d made a mistake and she
was stopping him. It was one of his secret fears—that he’d made a mistake while playing where someone could hear. His playing, like his pitch, needed to be
perfect.
It often felt as if someone were watching over him, waiting to pounce if he played wrong, though he couldn’t say why.

But Alice said only, “A moment. I want to try something first.”

From her pocket, she took a small bird made of gleaming silver. Sapphires made up its eyes and glowed softly at the tips of its claws.

“My nightingale,” Feng said. “Yours now, Gavin. I am glad Antoine did not get it.”

“I found it in the hotel.” Alice set the bird at Gavin’s feet and pressed its left eye. “Now, play.”

Gavin nodded and swung into a song familiar to all airmen. He played a verse, relieved when he got through it with no mistakes, then sang.

“Tom of Bedlam” was the unofficial song of airmen everywhere. The idea that men who lived by the air went naked and didn’t want for drink or money held immense appeal, and the song’s infinite verses were
made for pounding out on wooden decks. Gavin started to sing the second verse when Alice jumped in herself:

Gavin laughed and joined in for the chorus.

The orange sun sank to the horizon and shadows snaked among the trees below. The sputter and hum of the generator continued beneath Gavin’s music as he played and sang his way through “Bedlam” with Alice clapping her hands to the beat beside him. He caught Alice’s eye, letting her know the song was for her. Her face flushed, and he flung her a wide smile. The music cast itself out into the darkening void, sweet as wine, carrying Gavin’s spirit with it.

“That was wonderful,” Alice said softly. She picked up the nightingale and pressed its left eye again. Then she pressed the right eye. Instantly, the little bird opened its beak and the sound of Gavin’s fiddle trilled forth. It was a smaller sound, with a tinny undertone, but otherwise a perfect replica, a recording. Then Gavin’s voice joined the music, and “Tom of Bedlam”
again floated across the deck. The sound struck Gavin. He had never heard his own voice before. It sounded different than it did in his own head, but also vaguely familiar. It made him uncomfortable. He tapped the nightingale to stop the music.

“I like the real thing better,” he said.

“I do, too.” Alice kissed him on the cheek, and he smiled again. “Where did you learn to play? You’ve never said.”

“Gramps—my grandfather—started me on the fiddle when I was five or six,” Gavin said. The strangeness of the nightingale’s reproduction stayed with him. “I mostly taught myself. It’s easier when you have perfect pitch like I do, and when you never forget a song after you’ve heard it, like I don’t.”

“So the fiddle was your grandfather’s?”

Gavin was all set to say
yes
, when something stopped him. For a moment, a tiny moment, he remembered something else. A man was handing him the fiddle, but it wasn’t Gramps. A much younger man, tall, broad-shouldered, with white-blond hair. The memory hovered in front of him like a reflection in a soap bubble, shiny and distorted.

“You can play just like Daddy. Would you like that?”

Gavin realized Alice was waiting for an answer. “I’m… I’m not sure,” he said. “Gramps used to have it, but…”

“Was Gramps your father’s mother or your mother’s father?”

“Hold the fiddle like this and the bow like this. They’re big now, but you’ll grow. Do it right.”

“My father’s.” Gavin’s voice grew distant. He felt
strange, mixed up. “He lived with us, even though Dad… didn’t.”

“Didn’t? What happened to him?”

“This one is D, this one is G, this is A, and this is E.”

Gavin shook his head. “I don’t know. He left when I was very small. Ma refused to talk about him, and she became angry if anyone asked. After a while, I stopped wondering.”

“Good! Keep that up, and you’ll play ‘I See the Moon’ for your ma just like me.”

He raised the bow again. The horsehair was new, but the wood was old, burnished from hours of skin and sweat. He waved it, and the bubble burst, taking the memory with it.

“I’m sorry, darling.” Alice put an arm around his waist. “I didn’t mean to awaken painful memories.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “It was a long time ago, and I don’t really remember. Though,” he added wistfully, “I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have a dad. Gramps was there for me, of course, and Captain Naismith was kind of like a father, but… you know.”

“I know,” Alice said. “I find myself wondering what it would be like to have a mother. Mine died when I was so young.”

“Well, between us we had a full set of parents,” Gavin said with a small laugh to break the heavy mood, and Alice smiled. He buried his face in her hair and smelled her soft scent. “All I really need is you.”

Feng spoke up. “The romantic moment unfortunately will not keep me awake all night. We have to anchor ourselves.”

“I’ll take over.” Gavin took back the nightingale,
stowed the fiddle in its case, and accepted the helm from Feng. “I don’t sleep much these days.”

Feng disappeared belowdecks. Alice stood beside Gavin for a moment, her presence warm and solid. Gavin steered with one hand so he could put an arm around her. “We’re alone for the first time in ages,” she said.

“Unless you count the
Lady
,” Gavin replied with a smile.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “I want more time with you, Gavin. I feel like we never have enough.”

“No one ever has enough time.” Gavin checked his heading on the compass set into the helm, visible thanks to the soft blue glow of the envelope, and corrected his course. “Especially not clockworkers.”

Eventually, Alice kissed him good night and went below herself, leaving Gavin alone on the deck. He felt her absence, even though she was only a few yards away.

In the morning, everything changed.

L
ieutenant Susan Phipps threw her hat onto the rickety table. She had intended to drop into the ladder-back chair next to it, but found she couldn’t, and paced the tiny room instead, her hands clasped behind her. Her brass left hand felt cool and heavy in her fleshy right one, though the sensation was so familiar to her now she barely noticed it.