Winterspell (10 page)

N
ot half an hour later, minutes before midnight, Clara lay on her bed, restless and uncomfortable in her gown. Desperate thoughts raced through her mind, but none of them held a solution; her world had for so long been precarious, and now it would soon come crashing down around her—unless,
unless
 . . .

But there was no
unless
, and just as the sob that had been building in her throat threatened to burst, Clara heard the sounds of smashing glass.

She sat up, listening to the pounding of her own heart until it came again—a crash from the ballroom.

They don't trust me,
she thought at once.
They've come for Father, for Felicity.

She quickly exchanged her dancing slippers for her boots and slipped out into the hallway, keeping close to the wall, the dagger from her thigh holster in hand. Winter crept around her, through windowpanes and beneath closed bedroom doors, raising gooseflesh on her exposed skin. Her gown rustled, and she cursed it for the hundredth time that night, but there was no time to change.
Become one with the shadows when you sneak. Become one with the cold in winter. Become the shadows. Become the cold.

Something brushed past her feet, and she jumped away, startled.

Half a dozen skinny black rats scurried along the baseboards, toward the window at the end of the hallway, where there was a slight crack in the
plaster. Rats weren't new; she'd frequently seen them about the city. But she had never seen them upstairs like this, and how odd that they seemed so determined to leave, to return to the cold.

At the landing she crouched behind the banister and peered down into the ballroom, up from which came sounds of hammering. In one corner of the room stood the Christmas tree, dark and silent. At the ballroom's main entrance Godfather was nailing boards across the doors.

Clara sighed, light-headed with relief.

“Ah, Clara, good,” Godfather said without looking up. “I was about to come fetch you.”

She hurried down the staircase. “What on earth are you doing? I told you to leave.”

“Reinforcements. They'll give us extra time.”

“Time for what, precisely?”

He turned, his eyes wild. “They're coming, Clara. I can feel the wards giving way. I threw up hasty ones tonight when I arrived, but my work has taken so much out of me.” He spat in disgust, “Can't even craft the simplest tricks, not anymore. . . .”

Clara had stopped listening. Towering above her in the center of the room, surrounded by a queer barricade of furniture and portraits taken down from the walls, was the statue. Its implacable face frowned down at her.

She approached it as she would a wild animal. The strangeness of the moment thrilled her. Yes, the statue was as familiar to her as Godfather; yes, she had projected onto its unmoving facade moods and a voice and an imagined history; but it had never been
here
before, never at her home. The symbols etched into its surface reminded her of her mother's mutilated body, but, horribly, that did not stop her.

“Hello, old friend,” she said shyly, reaching for it.

She pulled her fingers away with a hiss; the faint crack of blue light on its left thigh had burned her. The statue trembled briefly on its pedestal. Something
inside
it screamed, low and in agony.

She backed away, thunderstruck. “Godfather?”

“Ah, you heard him, did you? My breakthrough.” Godfather, gleaming with sweat, came up behind her. “For so many years I've worked, and now . . .”

“Him?”
Fear and wonder rushed through Clara at the fevered look on Godfather's face. Images from the stories he'd told her—dragons and cursed fiddlers, lost lovers and tunnels carved between worlds—nibbled at the edges of her mind and seemed, here in the dark, as alive as Godfather. The statue's unearthly scream lingered against her skin—a pull, a thrum.

“Godfather, what's happening? Tell me.”

“I've done what she hoped I never would. I've broken the curse, deciphered it. And she's sent them for me, of course she has. They're coming, even now. What it would mean for her, if I were to free him . . .”

He laughed, pushing back a lock of dark hair, and Clara saw him then as she did when he told her stories by candlelight, as more than some eccentric old toymaker. He was ancient, magnificent, and
other.

“Who is
her
?”

“Anise.”

He hissed the word, and the statue—
God help me
, Clara thought.
I'm hearing things
—cried out again. The sound seemed somehow enraged.

“Who is Anise? Who's
coming
, Godfather?”

In answer something clattered across the roof. A large weight fell onto the second-floor terrace.

Godfather took from the statue's side a long, slender sword with a hilt of black stones. “Here, Clara. You'll need this. I made it myself in one of my first experiments with their magic.”

This elegant weapon was no wooden play sword of the sort she and Godfather had practiced with. As her hand curled around its hilt, the part of her that came alive in the safety of Godfather's shop thrilled at the weight of the sword; it felt as though she was meant to hold such power in her hand. Etchings along the blade echoed the markings carved into
the statue, repulsing and fascinating her simultaneously.
How
were these elements connected, and what did it mean?

An inhuman scream sounded from the direction of the stables, followed by another, and then eerie silence. Godfather cursed.

“The horses,” Clara whispered, the sword forgotten, replaced by dread. “Was that the horses?”

Godfather moved her toward the statue. “They're here.”

“Who?”

Scratching sounded against the doors; a blunt force impacted the boarded-up windows.

“Loks,” Godfather spat.

“Loks? What is that?”

“You'll see soon enough. I'm sorry, Clara, to request such a thing of you.” He pressed a fierce kiss to her hand. “But you will be glorious, ferocious. This is what we've been working for, you and I. To fight whatever comes our way, and then . . .”

He paused, put his forehead against hers, chuckling under his breath.

She held his cheeks, forcing his gaze to hers. “And then what?”

“Stay still. Don't move.” He withdrew three clockwork dragons from his coat and sliced open his palm with a serving knife.

Clara grabbed for his hand. “Godfather, you're—”

“Bleeding” was the word, but it would not come, for the liquid now coating his hand was not red.

It was silver.

“What is that?” She pointed at it stupidly. Things were clawing at the windows, smashing the glass, shredding the wood, but she could look only at his hand. “Godfather, your blood, it's—”

He ignored her, smearing his bloodied hand across the dragons and then throwing them across the ballroom floor. One went straight, the other two to the sides; they skittered along the floor with flapping clockwork wings and whirring jaws, chomping up the wooden slats beneath them. Each of them spit out behind them another, identical dragon, and
another and another, until a black sea of them roiled across the entire room.

They scattered like crazed spiders, wings and talons snapping with a familiar whir of gears.
It sounds like the back room,
Clara realized. She had never been allowed there, and now she understood why.

In the wake of this dragon sea, the ballroom metamorphosed into a forest of black metal, iron, and glass. Staircases became jagged mountains, shining in the dim, wintry moonlight; strategically placed chairs became mazes of spindly towers. Godfather's toys, scattered across the room, grew into enormous versions of themselves—skeletal, winged horses; a squadron of clockwork soldiers, gears turning inside their gaping chests. Garishly painted bats and monstrous raptors darted up from the floor to perch on the chandeliers that now filled the entire room with drooping tangles of wire. Godfather's electric lights sizzled white. The grandfather clock in the corner tolled midnight, each chime lower and deeper than the last as the entire mechanism swelled to five times its normal size.

Likewise the Christmas tree grew until it reached the ceiling, where it erupted into a forest of iron needles. Oversize ornaments spun, throwing moonlight across the ceiling. The barricade surrounding the statue transformed into a maze of black mirrors until Clara was surrounded by a hundred versions of herself, peering out from behind a hundred laughing Godfathers, their bloody hands outstretched.

“It's working!” he cried. “I've done it—Clara, at last I've done it!”

The dragons, their work complete, settled silently at the edges of the room. Thousands of red eyes watched from the shadows and the ceiling; thousands of whirring metal wings glistened with silver blood. The air stung of salt and nearly choked her with its acridity.

“What have you done?” Clara turned to Godfather, torn between terror and awe. He was sweating, his cheeks pinched and gray; she hurried to him and held him up as he caught his breath.

“Godfather, can you hear me?” She slapped him lightly. The relentless clawing noises at the windows magnified tenfold. Fear swelled within her
as she watched the boards over the windows bow under the pressure. They were everywhere, these phantom creatures, these loks, whatever that meant. “Are you hurt?”

He laughed, weak. “A bit. That magic's not meant for me, but I had no choice. I
have
no choice, not until things are as they should be once more. It wounds me every time.” He straightened, glaring at the statue and swinging his fist through the air. “And yet still I triumph!”

Clara drew him back to her. “Godfather, pay attention. Something is breaking in. What are they? What shall we do?”

“We shall do as I've taught you,” he said, turning her away and withdrawing his own sword, slender and unadorned, from where it leaned against the statue. “We shall fight.”

The energy vibrating off Godfather was cold, as taut as silver wire. It frightened and energized her. She wondered if this was what being struck by lightning felt like, and she wondered why this was happening, and if it had something to do with the statue, which trembled furiously on its base.

At that moment several . . .
things
, hulking and black, burst through the windows on the mezzanine and crashed into the forest Godfather had made. Hellish screams filled the air, and against the backdrop of a broken window, Clara saw the silhouette of a long, fanged snout, a knotted back, a hulking, bearlike body covered in armor, and three naked tails.

Rats,
Clara thought. The similarity was unmistakable.

But, no, not rats. What had Godfather called them?
Loks.

Behind the loks, against the shattered window, a tall, lean figure stood, pale and clothed in ragged garments. The figure was decidedly male, and a light at his temple blinked mechanically, attached to some sort of wired apparatus. He called out a guttural command in an unfamiliar language, and the loks screamed in answer. They were approaching fast, crashing toward Clara through Godfather's wild maze.

“Keep them away from me,” Godfather said, turning to the statue. “I'll help you as I can, but I must concentrate. Do you understand?”

He withdrew more dragons from his pocket, tinier ones, and sliced his unmarred palm above them. Silver dripped onto the dragon's serpentine necks. They came alive at the contact and scattered across the statue's surface, ripping at the metal, peeling it back bit by bit. They swarmed over the statue, biting and tearing, their spiderweb wings writhing. They seemed to follow Godfather's directions across the statue's body; he was coaxing them to life as a puppet master would, murmuring things under his breath and occasionally slicing open his forearm for fresh drops of blood. As the dragons moved, the statue began jerking violently, screaming something too inhuman to interpret. Blue light flashed along the seams of its metal plates, illuminating the etched symbols from within.

“Keep them away from you?” Clara backed away from the sight, sword in hand. Sounds of battle came from throughout the ballroom—shrieks and slashing claws, the clash of swords, and far too much of it to know where to train her attention. Memories of her sparring with Godfather, their evenings laughing over punches and swordplay, overwhelmed her with new significance. “You've been training me to fight not for me but for
you
.”

“Clara, we haven't time for this. Please just—”

On the other side of the protective barricade, a gigantic weight crashed to the floor. Inside the statue something pounded furiously.

A massive clawed arm burst through the wall of mirrors behind Clara and yanked her through.

Choking on her own scream, Clara landed hard against a bristly body hot with blood. Black claws slashed across her arm and thigh. She saw yellow eyes, two sets of long black teeth in a mouth crusted with pus, and a distinctively ratlike snout. The beast smelled of sewage and grime. Around its head it wore an assemblage of gears and lenses that unfolded over its right eye. Clara struggled to break free, kicking and biting, but the lok's grip was iron. Angered, it reared back onto its hind legs.

Spots swam before her eyes as the lok's grip tightened. The creature roared unintelligible words, its stink washing over Clara's face. She had
the impression that it had won a game and she was the prize. But she still had a sword somewhere. She had lost much of the feeling in her arms, but it was still in her hand—she had not dropped it. Desperation spurred her on past the frantic, impossible fear of being trapped in the arms of a monster. Any thoughts but those of survival fell away, leaving her mind sharp. She needed room to maneuver the blade into the lok's belly, but she could hardly breathe for the pain. The lens over the creature's eye flashed, catching her attention, and this seemed significant. The man at the window sported a similar light. Could he be controlling them? Were they somehow linked?