Winterspell (12 page)

Godfather grunted in answer, opening the greatcoat to the man's waist and examining him clinically. A thousand questions clamored for Clara's attention in the silence that followed, but she didn't know
where to begin. Several options presented themselves, and they each sounded mad:

How did you make those dragons transform the ballroom?

Why did the loks invade the mansion?

Who is this man you're nursing, and why was he once a statue?

Why is your blood silver, Godfather?

She decided upon the least mad-sounding question. “Who is this man?”

Godfather had begun plucking metal pins and sharp-edged plates from the naked man's body with a set of pliers. The sight of it made Clara wince, but she forced herself to watch.

“Everything that happened tonight,” she said. “The ballroom, the loks.” She glanced at the man. “Him. Mother. These things are connected, aren't they?”

Godfather dragged his bloodied fingers through his hair and sighed.

“You've been hiding things from me. You lied about training me. You said it was to keep me safe here in the city, but you were actually training me for this, weren't you? For something else? You said there was something else, after tonight. You said, ‘And then . . .' ”

Godfather didn't look at her, focusing instead on his work. With each wrench of bone and iron, the naked man groaned.

“When I said I wanted you to be able to protect yourself, I was telling the truth,” he muttered. “I just didn't say from what. Besides, the city is dangerous. Loks or no loks, I wanted you to be safe.”

Clara clenched and unclenched her fists, fighting for patience. “Omitting important details is not much better than outright lying, Godfather.”

He ignored her.

“And the rest of it?”

He continued to ignore her.

Frustration nettled angry tears from her eyes. “I deserve answers, Godfather!”

He paused then, and looked up at her. His eye was tender. “Yes, dear heart, you do. You deserve answers and so many other things. And, God willing, I will give them to you. But let me do this first, please, and when we're safe, you may ask me your questions.”

He held her gaze for a long moment, and when she nodded, he returned to his work, using his pliers to pull a long, wire-thin pin from the man's shoulder. The sound rubbed metal against metal, and as Clara recoiled, the man awoke, lurching up with a roar that shook Clara's fragile calm. He clawed at his scalp, covered in shaggy black locks gone damp with sweat and blood, and tore at the seeping wounds marring his body. He began shouting nonsense, angry, throat-rattling words of another time or place. Even as Clara shrank back, reaching for her right boot heel in case he lunged at her, she tried to decipher it. What sort of language was this? For a moment she thought Russian, or German, or perhaps a demon's language. It sent cold feelings skipping down her arms. It was guttural, strident.

The man had torn Godfather's coat from his body and now stood completely naked before them. The remaining metal patchwork and faint tattoos were his only clothing, echoes of what had once been. Clara saw the lines of the familiar armored plates, chiseled muscle, and, of course, the accursed symbols.

She could not stop herself from looking lower than that, eyes sliding down the man's lean white belly—too hungry, too sharp—and down, a bit more . . .

Her eyes flew shut, her cheeks flaming.

“Nicholas, stop,” Godfather shouted. Clara opened her eyes to see Godfather put up his hands, trying in vain to subdue this man, this . . .

Nicholas.
Clara whispered it: “Nicholas.” It sighed off her tongue.

Perhaps she had said it louder than she thought. His head whipped toward her, allowing her a glimpse of sharp, high cheekbones; a strong jaw; full lips chapped gray with cold and ash; and a mess of unruly black hair that fell around his cheeks.

“Now, you listen, boy,” Godfather began.

Nicholas spat at Godfather's feet. His eyes were as dark as pitch, suspicious, searching. Clara looked away. Proper ladies, she was certain, were not meant to ogle strange, naked men. But even after she looked away she could feel Nicholas's eyes traveling her body, feet to face, where they paused.

“You.” His voice was hoarse, unused . . .
other.
How long, Clara wondered, had he been trapped in there? And what was
in there
?

“Oh, help me, it's you,” he whispered again in that Russian-German-demon accent, and Clara looked up to see him approaching her unsteadily. Godfather tried to stop him, but Nicholas shoved him back.

She should move. Proper ladies did not stand and stare when naked men walked toward them with eyes like that—full of wonder and amusement and curiosity, as if she were some miraculous thing.

She did not move.

His hands reached for her face and cupped it. As if searching for something, his thumbs traced her cheeks. The touch of his skin burned; Clara wondered if he would melt, and take her with him.

“I . . . I'm Godfather's friend. I'm sure you've seen me from—” It felt stupid to say “in there,” so Clara didn't. “I mean, I go to his shop often. To visit him.”

Nicholas was close enough for her to feel his breath on her face, to see the slender metal web hugging his right cheek. The blood spotting him was red, not silver, Clara was glad to see. He smelled of the seaside, of salt and brine. He was tall, with the sick paleness of no sun; his limbs were long and lean.

He would not stop searching her face—for what, Clara didn't know, nor did she care. The echoes of the statue sat upon him—
her
statue, which she had cherished and whispered to and pressed up against in the dark. And yet it was so different now, this nearness, this
real
ness. How embarrassing now to think she had pretended the statue were
alive; and how frightening, to have such childhood familiarity ripped away, replaced with skin and muscle, and . . . Oh, if she had thought the statue's gaze piercing, it was nothing compared to the one inspecting her now.

He breathed her name: “Clara.”

She would burst if she didn't break away from the dark eyes boring into hers, from the fingers caressing her skin—but she could not look away; she
would
not. “Yes.”

He smiled crookedly, as if he were remembering how. “I know you.”

The brokenness of his voice, the age of it, made Clara shudder. She leaned closer without thinking; her wrist brushed against his bare stomach.

“You do?”

Nicholas nodded, and beneath the wildness of his brow and the soft amusement in his eyes was something deeper, something hot and knowing. “I don't remember everything, but I remember you. I've seen you so many times. I've heard you speak to me. I've
felt
you.”

“That's quite enough.” Godfather pulled Nicholas away. “Cover yourself.”

Even after Nicholas stepped away from her, Clara could feel the ghost of his touch on her skin. She wished she could capture the feeling before it faded—the fullness inside her, the sense of careful celebration. Her mind flooded with memories of countless stolen moments, when she had tiptoed to the statue and pressed her lips to its arm, traced her fingers down the chiseled slopes of its belly. Was it
truly
him? And if so, had he felt her do those things? Had he been aware of her all this time?

The look in his eyes, half in shadow as Godfather draped the coat over his body once more, seemed to answer
Yes.

Clara looked away, heat flooding her.

As though Godfather knew the thoughts racing through her mind, he tugged at the metal embedded in Nicholas with a carelessness
Clara knew did not come naturally. When he withdrew another of the long pins, pulling it from Nicholas's spine as one would pull a thread through a needle, Nicholas screamed in pain, pounding his fist against the wall. The harsh words pouring from his mouth could not have been anything but curses.

Clara grabbed Godfather's arm. “You're hurting him.”

The fury in his eye frightened her. “I have to get these filthy
drekk
's tricks out of him.”

Nicholas muttered something, his glare mutinous.

“So sorry, Your Highness.” Godfather gave a mockery of a bow. “I did not mean to offend your exalted ears.”

Drekk?
Clara wondered.
Your Highness?

“I want to clean him a bit more before we go.” Godfather twisted his pliers hard and withdrew a metal shard from Nicholas's neck, prompting fresh blood and another scream. Godfather swiftly took a cloth from his pocket and pressed it to the wound. He smacked Nicholas's cheek, earning yet another glare. The resentment between them seemed practiced, surer than anything else on this uncertain night. “I need him to be able to keep up. You hear me, boy? I don't suffer stragglers.”

A tiny fear deep inside Clara turned over and grew. “Go? Go where? What do you mean?”

“We can't stay in the city.” Godfather's expression was incredulous. “Surely you realize that. We must leave, recover our strength. A Door would be the safest, swiftest way, but I can't possibly open one in my current condition.”

Nicholas looked at him sharply.

Clara stepped away. Could he mean what she thought? “Are you actually suggesting—”

“I'm not
suggesting
anything. I'm saying it outright: we cannot stay here. We have to leave, tonight.”

“Leave,” Clara repeated. She could not understand what he meant
by leaving through a door, but that was hardly the point. He wanted to
leave
?

Godfather nodded, rooting through a burlap sack hidden against a wall in the shadows; he must have left it there earlier that evening. “Don't worry, Clara. I've prepared everything.” He pulled out wrapped packages of food; a leather purse stuffed with money, books, and papers; and one of the pocket-size electric lanterns he so loved. A tiny clockwork dragon skittered loose from his sleeve and fell into the open bag. “Here you are.” He tossed a bundle of clothing at Nicholas. “Put them on, put them on. It's cold out, and getting colder.”

As Clara watched him, it seemed as though she were stepping outside herself. A numbness enveloped her. Could it be as easy as this? Was this the escape she had been so desperately hoping for? It seemed too perfect to be trusted, naked Nicholas and nightmarish loks aside. Doubt sat uneasily in her belly.

“I can't leave my city,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. And yet, why
wouldn't
she leave this miserable place, the sight of which poisoned her entire body with anxiety?

Godfather scoffed. “Your city. And why would you stay, Clara? For the shopping? For the theaters? For the coffin houses and poppy princes, the bodies in the streets? No, there's nothing for you here. How many times have you told me that you hate it, that you long for something better? I can give you that, if you'll let me. What, would you stay and bring death upon yourself?”

It was tempting, though a part of her protested—the part, she suspected, cultivated by her mother, who had, true to her name, never given up hope for this city, even with its many problems.

Godfather smiled, and the sudden shyness of it, the vulnerability, embarrassed her. It was too sweet a look on his face, too intimate. He took her hand. “We can leave this city behind, you and I, and leave Concordia, too. We have better things, grander things, in store for us now. And I'll keep you safe. I swear it.”

Nicholas laughed, derision plain on his face. “Safe? You?”

Safe.
The word sank into Clara's mind and settled there softly. What would it feel like to be safe?

“And Father and Felicity?” she said. “You'll keep them safe as well? You have enough supplies?” She turned toward the stable doors. “Perhaps I should gather some things before anyone else arrives. We should wake them now. How powerful was your drug? Will they be able to . . .”

She trailed off at the look on Godfather's face, a twisting, sour expression. He turned away, his voice bitter. “Your father is lost to his own empire, and has been for years. Why would you care about a man who, when his family most needed him, vanished? A man who leaves his daughter to fend for herself in a den of lions of his own creation—”

“
Daughters.
And it's been hard since Mother died. You know that. He's grieving.”

“He's a coward, and it's time to leave. Help me sort through my bag. We can't forget anything.”

“And Felicity?”

Godfather paused, turned away from her. “She isn't you. She would slow us down.”

“Of course she isn't me. She's
Felicity
—”

“And when I look at her, I see your father in her face, and when I look at yours, I see your mother's.” Godfather's eye glinted hotly at her. “We've always been close, Clara. We've understood each other, you and I.”

Ah. There it was—the reason for the strange unease in her gut. It had been some kind of prescient instinct, trying to warn her. Clara backed away, shaking her head. Godfather had become someone else right in front of her eyes, telling her to leave her family behind, that her sister didn't deserve escape because she did not remind him of her mother.

Her mother.

The realization had been building throughout the entire conversation, and now it hit her with physical force. She stepped away from him, one hand on her chest.

“They came after you,” she whispered. “They've been looking for you, for
him
”—she pointed at Nicholas—“for years now. Haven't they?”

Godfather was silent, still. Suddenly afraid?

“But they couldn't find you. You were hiding yourself, you said. Protecting him. So they went elsewhere to kill, found other victims. The killings by the water, the
beasts
 . . .”