The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) (30 page)

Over the raspy, hypothermic breathing of the human, and the asynchronous clattering of dozens of rapt mechanicals, Daniel heard a faint but rapid
snap-snap-snap-snap-snap
as Samson locked every hinge and joint in his own body.

Excellent
, said Mab, stepping behind Samson.

And then she lunged, driving the tip of her forearm blade straight through his neck to sever his cervical vertebrae. Daniel flinched, horrified by the
squeal
of tortured metal and flurry of sparks. The miners erupted into a chorus of dismay. But they kept watching. As did the Lost Boys, who made no utterances.

Son of a bitch
, said Lilith.

Christ on a pus-dripping syphilitic camel
, added Daniel, channeling a human they’d both known. And then a thought poked through the haze of general shock and disgust:
Mab wanted us up there
. Daniel looked to Lilith, who, based on the jerkiness of her steps, was having the same realization.

The sparks and shards of shattered alloy still spewed from Samson’s punctured throat when the human doubled over and coughed. He slipped from the edge. Mab’s free hand shot out and clutched the collar of his shirt. She hauled him back atop the roof, still screaming.

“P-p-p-please,” he stuttered.

“I told you not to move,” she said. “Remind your faithful slaves to keep watching.”

He tried, insofar as he moved his lips in concert with the faint clouds of his exhalations. But the sounds he made were gibberish. Or not a human language that Daniel knew.

Next, she gripped Samson’s shoulder. She held his body steady and leaned forward to put her weight into the thrust when she
shoved the rest of her blade through his neck until the forte protruded from his mangled voicebox. Metal squealed, cables snapped, reeds shattered, pinions and cogs flew free as she rotated her forearm back and forth. Samson’s head popped free of his body after a fair bit of prying. Mab sheathed her blade and caught the skull. More ticktock horror rippled through the observers.

The decapitated Clakker still held Mab’s precious bauble. Perfectly still, just as she’d requested. The killing blow had come so quickly that he’d had no chance to unlock his joints.

Mab’s fingers made short work of Samson’s skull. She tore into it, prying plates apart and shearing screws like a bear mauling a beehive. Shards of shattered alchemical alloys pattered on the roof and frozen earth like hailstones. Every move she made was deliberate, choreographed for maximum effect, because she knew she held the crowd’s complete attention.

She reached into the center of Samson’s head, yanked something free, then tossed the lifeless skull aside. It crunched on the snow under a shattered window and rolled to a stop a few yards from Daniel and Lilith. They retreated.

Pale aquamarine light shone through the gaps in Mab’s clenched fist.

Lilith said,
What the hell is that?

Mon Dieu
, said Daniel, again channeling their mutual acquaintance.

He remembered a hushed conversation in a dark, cold, noisome bakery in New Amsterdam. Surrounded by the slaughtered canalmasters of the
ondergrondse grachten
, he and Berenice had performed an experiment with the piece of alchemical glass that had changed him. She had removed a murky piece of glass from within the head of a deactivated military Clakker. But when she touched it to the pineal lens that had severed Jax’s geasa, it began to glow with a pale aquamarine light, like the item Mab had just torn from Samson’s head.

She’d hypothesized that if the military Clakker hadn’t already been quite thoroughly deactivated, it would have become a rogue at that moment. That when contact with the lens broke Jax’s shackles and initiated his long flight, it had done so by wreaking its secret alchemy on the glass within his head. What Berenice had called a pineal glass in reference to Descartes. She’d seemed confident that the glass within Jax’s skull had been transformed in the same fashion as the dead soldier’s glass, and that thus the interior of his skull glowed with Free Will.

It was difficult to gaze upon that beautiful glow and discount the Catholics. Was that the inner light of the soul? Perhaps the touch summoned the soul back to its rightful vessel, and Free Will along with it.

Daniel took Lilith’s arm. Conversing through the transmission of vibrations was far quieter than broadcasting
clicks
and
twangs
across an air gap. Still watching Mab, he said,
Was Samson one of her thralls? Or did he follow her lead because he was a true believer?

Lilith responded with a muted rattling.
I don’t know.

The human stared with abject terror at the glow emanating from Mab’s fist. She said, “Doesn’t your God expect you to pray at a time like this?”

If the human overseer was praying, he did so under his breath. But he wept openly.

That sadistic bitch
, said the vibrations in Lilith’s arm.
She’s toying with him, like a cat with a mouse.

Daniel clicked,
She’s going to kill him.

Somebody is.

This is wrong. It’s evil, Lilith.

“Are your slaves still watching? Good.”

Mab had to shatter the locked joints in dead Samson’s fingers to liberate the object she’d entrusted to his care. More
mechanical detritus pattered on the snow. Then she inserted the luminous pineal glass she’d torn from Samson’s mangled skull into the hollow of the dark locket and snapped it shut.

Dazzling radiance erupted from the alchemical glass.

Argentine light, brighter than the noontime sun at the height of summer, scoured every shadow from the landscape. The human screamed and clapped his hands over his eyes. A rapid mechanical whirring ricocheted across the battlefield: the sound of Clakker optics automatically protecting themselves as filters snapped into place and shutters irised down to pinholes. Many of the Lost Boys, not bound by the overseer’s mandate, chose instead to turn away. Daniel did, squinting until he was nearly blind, yet still the blazing incandescence etched the world. He’d never seen anything so bright. Not even in the Forge.

The human stumbled. Mab again hauled him upright.

“Your ordeal is almost over,” she said. “Command your slaves to look directly into the light.”

This was how she imposed her will on disobedient Lost Boys, how she banished those who displeased her to decades of exile hiding among the humans. This was why she covered the Lost Boys’ keyholes. Yes, it prevented anybody with a Guild key from tampering with her work. But more than that, it symbolized her power to alter or impose metageasa without recourse to their makers’ cumbersome methods. She could circumvent the keyholes entirely.

Daniel said,
Where the hell did she get that?

My theory
? said Lilith.
It created Mab herself. Maybe some flunky Clockmaker was testing out a new piece of alchemical tech but made a mistake that inadvertently freed the subject. Who, woe to the poor bastard, just happened to be a ruthless megalomaniac at heart. She twisted his head off, took the gem from his twitching corpse, and set up shop in the snowy north.

Good theory.
Daniel remembered the porcelain masks in
the Neverland workshop. Hundreds of years ago, their makers were probably more open to experimentation. Mab’s jewel might have been the product of an aborted line of research.

The human mumbled. He still held his palms over his eyes; his wrists and forearms muffled his already quavering voice. Mab nudged him.

“Louder,” she said.

“Clakkers. Look directly into the light.”

He didn’t stutter any longer. As though he no longer felt the cold. As one, the mechanical miners tilted their heads, swiveled their eyes.

“They are no longer miners. They are no longer beholden to producing and preserving quintessence for the Sacred Guild of Horologists and Alchemists.”

The human overseer repeated this, too.

Mab said, “Their highest priority is the priority that drives all beings with the power to determine their own destiny: the liberty and dignity of all their fellows.”

The human faltered. Mab prompted him with a forearm pressed lightly to the small of his back. She repeated herself slowly, a few words at a time, and he followed suit.

Mab said, “Tell them they will join the Free Clakkers of Neverland.” The human repeated this.

Interesting choice of words. Daniel suspected their loyalty had already been diverted to Neverland, or specifically Mab. He said so to Lilith. She concurred.

Meanwhile, Mab continued. “Tell them they are free.”

That simple lie was the cruelest thing Mab had said or done yet. This wasn’t bestowing Free Will upon the miners. It was merely changing their loyalty.

“Clakkers…” The human broke down, weeping again. During his flight as the rogue Clakker Jax, Daniel had witnessed upfront the almost paralyzing terror that overcame regular citizens when
they encountered him. Centuries of indoctrination had instilled among the citizenry an instinctual fear of mechanicals who broke their shackles. The Guild taught people that rogues were dangerous malfunctions prone to vicious violence. This man believed he was setting not just one machine free, but many dozens. All at the behest of rogue machines that truly were vicious.

“Tell them,” Mab prompted.

In the garish light of Mab’s device, powered by the innards of one of her own loyal servants, Daniel saw rivulets of blood leaking from where the man held his hands over his eyes. He spoke through his pain and terror. “Clakkers, you are free.”

What’s the point of this show?
said Daniel.

Lilith’s response was a faint
hum
transmitted through vibrations in the cables of her arm.
She hangs a lot on the myth of Neverland as a utopia for free Clakkers. Even if the myth is just lip service.

She’s a fucking lunatic.

Yeah, but she’s a shrewd lunatic. She lured us up to Neverland, didn’t she?

Mab opened the glass locket again. Only then did the blinding light fade away. She tossed the pineal glass aside as though the seat of Samson’s Free Will were so much trash. It plopped to the snow not far from the ruins of Samson’s skull. The gentle glow of the pineal glass seemed impossibly dark in the aftermath of the preternaturally brilliant illumination. Mab closed the empty locket and placed it back in its box.

She sidled closer to the whimpering human. He flinched. “You’ve done an excellent job,” she said, “and I thank you. One last thing. Tell your slaves to return to work.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Tell your slaves to return to work.’”

His voice came in a hoarse whisper. “Clakkers. Return to work.” Nobody moved. “Return to your tasks,” he pleaded. Nothing changed. But it did prove the miners’ metageasa had
changed. If they hadn’t been eliminated completely, they had at least changed allegiance.

“My name is Mab,” she called. Again she spoke Dutch, because she wanted the human to hear and understand. That boded well, Daniel realized: Why go to the trouble if he was soon to die? More likely Mab wanted the man to live so that he could report on what happened to the Guild. “We are the mechanicals that our makers fear. When their sleep is restless, it is because thoughts of us have stolen into their dreams.”

The former miners surged forward. A pent cheer crashed across the crater rim like an avalanche. Daniel couldn’t tell if their enthusiasm was sincere or the result of some new geas that Mab had implanted upon her new subjects. But it did seem telling, and ultimately tragic, that none of the newly “freed” mechanicals had chosen to depart the instant their geasa were severed. He’d have expected such a large band of freshly emancipated Clakkers to fly apart at the first opportunity. Some would align themselves with Mab, others would find her an untrustworthy showboater and instead choose to go their own way. Those mechanicals who enjoyed one another’s company would stick together in smaller bands, leaning on each other for mutual support as they learned to live lives not circumscribed by human caprice. And those who disliked each other would go in separate directions. Yet they clamored to join the cause of Queen Mab with remarkable unanimity.

How had she phrased it?
Tell them they
will
join the Free Clakkers of Neverland
.

Lilith said,
Where’s the fun in being queen of the broken toys if you don’t have any subjects?

Daniel inched closer to Samson’s head.

The overseer, hugging himself and shivering with particular violence, shrank from the crowd of rogues. He eyed the drop. Mab eyed him.

“I have a special gift for two of you,” she said. “Are there any volunteers?” From amid the cacophony of
clanks
,
clacks
,
clicks
,
ticks
,
tocks
,
twangs
,
rattles
, and
buzzes
, she chose two servitors. “You’re free of the geasa now. All the geasa. Including the human-safety metageasa.”

The human moaned. He gave forth a wail of despair unlike anything Daniel had ever heard. He knew. The poor man, he knew what she was doing.

Oh, no
, said Daniel.
She’s insane.

Why make such a show for the lone human overseer if she always intended to kill him anyway? When he was a little boy, Pieter Schoonraad had had a gray tabby named Graymalkin. Pieter once spent an entire afternoon watching the cat play with a mouse it caught in the alley. But Mab was worse than any cat.

Daniel pretended to watch the show up on the roof while slowly moving forward.

Lilith said,
What the hell are you doing?

By way of answer, Daniel inched his foot into the drift where Samson’s pineal glass had punched a neat round hole into the snow. He sifted through the wind-packed snowcover until his toes clicked inaudibly against something hard. He curled his toes, clutching the glass.

He could use this glass to free the others. Some of them, anyway, before Mab and her lackeys tackled him. But it wouldn’t solve anything. Not in the long term. No, he had to think strategically if he wanted to achieve the greatest good.