The Clockwork Dynasty

  A demonic scream fills the cathedral as Talus rips the mask away, flinging it into the shadowy heights. Faceless, Talus sets his eyes on me, wide and evil in skinless sockets, bits of pink skin stuck to the bluish carbon-fiber planes of his skull. The sculpted flakes of material are arranged like bones, delicate curves that manifest as a corpse’s grin. Now the machine is on all fours, crawling quick like an insect, still vomiting threads of shining liquid. He roars incoherently, lower jaw askew, a sluglike lump of tongue nestled between sculpted teeth.

  Letting my scream join his, I bring the gladius down.

  Talus jerks as if he’s been electrocuted, tearing the hilt from my hands. The blade slices through armor and flesh, sticking fast in the machine’s shoulder. Not slowing, the skeletal monster snarls and leaps at me, knocking me onto my back and clawing at my face.

  “Whurm.” He coughs, tongue lolling over a lipless mouth. “Whuuurm—”

  A woman’s arm closes around Talus’s neck, dragging him back.

  “The spear,” says a familiar voice, grunting with exertion.

  Smearing a forearm over my eyes, I see a flash of Batuo’s smiling face. The monk is grappling with Talus, hips off-kilter, a flayed piece of robe tied around his midsection to hold his guts inside. His right leg is completely naked, a different skin tone from his left arm. It might be a woman’s leg, a bit shorter and more slender than the other. The sockets where the limbs fit are visible. His right arm is also brand-new, harvested from the butcher’s shop of spare parts.

  Half of Batuo’s broken spear lies near me. Snatching it up, I scramble back to Talus. The half-blind machine writhes under Batuo’s patchwork body, oblivious to me as I approach. With both hands, I drive the leaf-shaped blade into his armpit. Ribs crunch as the tip pierces, hitting the cradle housed deep inside his chest, connecting with the relic.

  Talus finally goes still, pinned down by Batuo’s mismatched arms.

  Eyes blank, the faceless man stares at nothing. The body is smeared with dried metal, shoulder sheared nearly in half, jacket ripped open in a dozen places. The red-tasseled spear juts out from under his armpit.

  It would be pathetic if it weren’t so terrifying.

  Batuo crawls away from the corpse. He tries to stand and can’t.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Oh no, June,” he says. “Not even close.”

  34

  LONDON SUBURBS, 1758

  It is near dusk when the carriage stops at the end of a cobblestoned pathway leading to the estate I purchased sight unseen for Elena nearly a decade ago. The superstitious coachman refuses to go farther, has no business here, and advises me to turn around and return to London immediately. I ignore him, stepping out of the carriage and stretching my legs as he unstraps and unceremoniously tosses my luggage to the ground.

  Without another word, he climbs onto the carriage and nudges his horses forward, wheeling away back to town at top speed.

  Trudging over the muddy stones, I see the lawn is littered with water-stained crates I have sent back from India. They’re untouched. Each sagging crate contains treasures and precious materials, statues and furniture, and countless silver rupees.

  The stone mansion looms out of overgrown gardens, flanks wreathed in mist, shutters hanging askew, and a rash of moss growing over its face like a port-wine stain birthmark. Hemmed in a neat circle of stone, the fountain before our door is clotted with dead leaves, a sculpture of the sea nymph Galatea sprouting from it, her features slick and shining with a scum of algae.

  Stopping, I scan the discolored facade.

  She is still here. She must be.

  “Elena,” I call, hastening to the front door. It hangs open, the ornate wood bloated and blistered with rain. Peering inside, I see only a trash-strewn hall.

  I was away for too long.

  Entering, I feel the utter isolation of the place. The long road back to London that represented safety to me must have been claustrophobic to her. She saw all possibility of contact dwindling from this distance. Around me, the rooms seem to belong to a museum, shelves teeming with many of the artifacts I collected from India. Pieces of some opened wooden crates are scattered about. The dining room table is heaped with laboratory equipment and the remains of half-finished projects.

  She must have grown so tired, I think.

  Abandoned books litter the hallways, sprawled like corpses. Elena was once so eager to learn. But after years of solitude, perhaps she ran out of ways to amuse herself. Even in the months before I left, her mood had become darker. Those empty eyes of hers fell on me and no longer did I sense love in them. Only a sense of duty and a smoldering anger and always the question: Where are the others?

  “Hello?” I call into the house. “Elena?”

  Boots echoing, I continue down the dark throat of the corridor. The house is in total disrepair, but it has strong bones. Many of the doors and windows are open and have been for some time. Leaves and dirt have blown into the rooms, piling up for what must have been several seasons. The remains of hundreds of letters, stained with water and stiff and damp from the elements, are plastered across the floors and pushed into heaps by the wind. The great hall is as cold as an abandoned hearth in the woods.

  Then, from somewhere deep in the house, the twang of a harpsichord key rings out. Stopping, I strain my ears to listen. I think I hear the faint twitter of small birds.

  Ignoring a sense of dread, I move toward the sound.

  In the conservatory, a ceiling made of glass has been shattered by a fallen tree branch. Heavy shards lie where they fell, glinting on broken black-and-white tile squares. An elbow of remaining branch dips into the room, wreathed in vines and shaggy moss, teeming with brightly colored songbirds.

  Eyes closed, Elena sits in the middle of the room, playing a sagging harpsichord with chipped fingers. In a torn and dirty dress, she looks spectral, like the ghost of a child. She plays mechanically, viciously, head dipping as her fingers flicker across the keys. Dozens of birds watch from their perches with black, curious eyes.

  I recognize the tune. It was written by a composer who visited once to share his music and supplicate himself, decades ago. He was a small man with a high collar and pompous white curls, a double chin, and suspicious eyes. The girl brought him around our old apartment after hearing an opera he wrote about a nymph, an enduring curiosity of hers.

  “Elena,” I say. “I am home.”

  She does not respond, keeps playing.

  “Speak to me,” I urge. “What has happened to you? Where are the servants? Why are half my shipments scattered about the lawn?”

  The beautiful song continues to flow from beneath her fingers, as steady and flawless as the striking of church bells. A slight breeze pushes her stiff black hair away from an innocent, youthful face. But each press of her fingers is becoming more harsh, her shoulders quivering with the impact as she stabs at the keys. Eyes closed, a little frown playing at her face, she could be a nobleman’s child.

  But only a fool would mistake this ancient thing for a child.

  I step forward and put out a hand, begging her. Ignoring me, she continues to play, mechanical and perfect, harder and harder, the keys twanging as if in agony. I sense something has broken inside her. Some hunger she had that I did not feed because I could not feel it for myself.

  “Elena,” I whisper. “Please.”

  As my trembling fingers touch her shoulder, she springs into action. Throwing my hand off with both of hers, she stands, sending the bench flying across the room, her feet thocking into the tile. A confused cloud of squawking songbirds bursts into flight, and a shower of bark and leaves drifts down from above.

  “Please?” she asks. “Please?”

  Startled, I put up my hands.

  “When has please won favors between us? When has please—a human word for a human feeling—ever meant anything to the mighty avtomat?”

  She advances and I take a step back.

  “I left you for too
long,” I say. “I see that now. I am sorry—”

  The sharp tinkle of her laugh cuts me off midsentence.

  “Please. Sorry. Why do you spew these human pretensions at me? Apologies mean nothing. Manners mean nothing. You…you were gone for eight years, Peter. I waited for you, I was loyal to you.”

  “I sent wealth. I thought—”

  “I hate you,” she whispers up at me.

  Enough of this.

  I scoop Elena up in my arms and hold her struggling body tightly against my chest. I breathe in the smell of her perfume and her moldering dress and her black curls. Her fists pummel my back and scratch across my scalp and the sharp toes of her dress shoes dig into my stomach.

  I do not relent.

  “Never again,” I say to her, face buried in the folds of her dress. “I will never leave you again.”

  Slowly, she stops struggling, stops shouting and crying and murmuring vicious cruel things. Her arms settle around my neck and her forehead presses against my chest and I realize how badly I missed the feeling of them there. The pressure of her body is like a balm over an ache that has been growing in my heart for a decade.

  I can tell she feels it, too.

  “Peter,” she says, her lips inches from mine. “What happened to your face?”

  “The war,” I say.

  She traces a finger over an irregular seam that’s been holding my right ear and jawline in place since three mujahideen brought me down and tried to chop me into pieces in an alley. “You’ve become a hero. They’re calling you the Butcher of Plassey Plains. The newspaper even had a rough drawing of you.”

  “Accurate?”

  “Someone could notice.”

  Elena wriggles out of my arms and her shoes clack onto the broken tile floor. She is small and tentative now, like a bird about to take flight.

  “Will you have me back?” I ask. “Please.”

  Elena looks me up and down, hands on her waist. She is measuring me with her eyes. Under the anger and fear, I sense relief.

  “For the time being,” she says finally.

  I try to smile and the leather of my cheek buckles at a split seam.

  Elena shakes her head. “What have you been into?”

  “You know why I fight.”

  “Your precious sovereign,” she says quietly, a hiss of anger under her voice.

  “It has grown more complicated than that,” I say.

  “I know,” she says, taking a deep breath and listening to the birds chirp.

  “Sit,” she continues, gesturing to an ornate padded lounge, bathed in greenish light filtering through the remaining lichen-coated conservatory windows. “I’ll fetch my kit.”

  Elena’s skills have grown while I was away. Her tiny fingers tickle like insects as she pries away the skin of my face. She cleans and files and repairs the gear work beneath, eyes intent on the task. Beyond her head, small, interested birds watch.

  Slowly, she erases the damage from my years spent on the battlefield, sleeping under stars wreathed in gun smoke, marching through driving sand and rain. Elena tuts at me like an old woman, uncovering the damage of old battles, gently but firmly ripping seams of skin apart so they can be redone.

  The room is quiet as she sews, save for the chirping of birds and the far-off bark of a wild dog. Wind sways through the garden outside; and I hear abandoned chimes somewhere in the distance, singing their mechanical melodies, mindless clockwork operated by the ghostly touch of wind.

  “I grew lonely, Peter,” Elena says.

  “Your tutors?” I ask.

  “The humans? They are poor company and more trouble than they are worth. None can see past my form. I must always pretend to be an ignorant child. And to think I was watching Saint Petersburg being built while these old men were in their diapers.”

  “But it is necessary, you are learning—”

  “Nothing, Peter. The humans have little left to teach. I know their languages and their history and their religious superstitions. The experiments I conduct on my own far exceed the capabilities of their best watchmakers. They are an inferior lot, I’m afraid, always shivering the instant the fire goes out, complaining of hunger and fatigue. I couldn’t abide them any longer. I sent them away.”

  Sitting up, I gently push Elena back. The half-attached skin of my face peels off and flaps against my neck in an undignified way. But my words are urgent.

  “Do not speak of them that way. Without them, I cannot fulfill my Word. If they were gone there would be no justice, no injustice—”

  “Good,” she says, shoving me back against the damp cushion of the chaise. “They are of no use to us anymore. We are superior.”

  “Elena—”

  “Imagine,” she says into my ear. “Imagine if we could communicate directly with the wisest of our own kind. Our makers. The things we might learn from an elder race—”

  “Not this.”

  “All we could learn, our purpose—”

  “We do not need others.”

  “So much that is hidden could be revealed—”

  “We are in danger.”

  “We don’t know what we are, Peter,” she shouts.

  I wait until the echo of her words has faded.

  “What of the estate?”

  Elena watches me, not blinking.

  “What happened to the estate?”

  Ignoring my question, she pulls a final stitch through my face. Inspecting her handiwork, she leans back. Standing, she packs her tools into a leather kit, slapping each implement into its place without looking at me.

  “The estate ceased to interest me,” she says, walking to the door. “But it is no matter. I shall dispatch a team of workers to conduct repairs. It will only require a few months. Your time in the war will provide all the necessary explanation for the state of this place. It will mean more humans, but I do not require the seclusion I once did.”

  “And why did you require seclusion?”

  Elena is silent for a long moment, considering me from the doorway. Her form is that of a little girl, but her posture that of a woman. Her face is brave, but there is a tremor in her lip.

  “I met someone, Peter,” she says, softly. “Someone like us.”

  35

  SEATTLE, PRESENT

  Batuo leans his back against the surgical station, sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, face framed by smears of my dried blood. Clothed loosely in a shredded robe, his scavenged limbs are an amalgam of different genders and races. And beside him, the twisted, faceless body of Talus sprawls, a spear jutting rudely from its ribs.

  “Peter is going to die, isn’t he?” I ask Batuo. “If his relic lost all its power…”

  My voice trails off as Batuo opens his eyes. Part of his forehead over the left temple has been crushed in. Seeing my reaction to the damage to his face, he smiles gently, gaze flickering up to where Peter’s body lies on the table.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I ask, my voice ragged.

  “You should have seen us,” says Batuo, gesturing to the mausoleum wall across the room. “In our heyday. Before these crypts were full of sleepers and the rest of our kind scattered like scared rabbits. In our day, we reveled in crystalline ballrooms. We made war with the wrath of gods. Our libraries and monuments were beacons to humanity. And now look at us.”

  “Batuo—”

  “We fall through the years,” he continues, “like dust motes through a shaft of sunlight. We dance, each of us reflecting the same brilliance. And though we spiral into darkness, the light remains.”

  “Is he dead?” I ask.

  Batuo focuses on me again, blinking.

  “We will see,” he says, groaning as he sits up. “In my study, behind my rather ostentatious desk, you will find a roll of tools. Every avtomat carries such implements, though each of us hopes never to have to use them. But they do come in handy more often than we like. I want you to keep mine, for a little while.

  “Go on,” he adds. “I’l
l wait.”

  By the time I return, carrying a round leather tube packed tightly with bits of metal and plastic, Batuo is sitting up taller. He has removed the cloth that was tied around his waist and cleared space in the wreckage around himself. I stop short, seeing the insides of his body revealed through the wound in his torso.

  “This is utter sacrilege, you know,” he says. “In any other age we’d both be killed for a transgression like this. But, I’ll confess…I rather like having a human in my laboratory. You’re so inquisitive, June. So eager to understand. So easily shocked. Being around avtomat for so long, I suppose I’d forgotten what youth is like.”

  I let out a surprised laugh, blood caked on my collarbones and matted hair hanging in my face.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask.

  “Not we,” he says. “You.”

  Smiling apologetically, Batuo pinches the synthetic skin of his torn-open belly. With a tug, he tears the neat slice open wider, peeling the skin back. Like shrugging off a gruesome sweater, the monk rips the flesh away. Underneath, an organic-looking collection of stiff fabric panels combine in skeletal configurations to give him his shape. A blue light pulses deep in his chest.

  I should be revolted, yet every movement he makes is a wonder to me, each layer of plastic sheathing combining to form perfectly lifelike skin and musculature. And the pliable skeleton beneath, not made of metal but carbon fiber, most likely. The ancient math of springs and levers are executed in a perfect simulacrum of life.

  What remains has the face of a man and the body of an automaton.

  “Tell me what to do,” I say, dropping to my knees beside him.

  “You know what we carry in our hearts,” Batuo says, placing a hand over his chest. “Anima. As long as it is safe in its cradle, we avtomat cannot truly die. Our memories may evaporate, our power may run out, but our souls can be revived someday, so long as the original vessel can be made intact.”

  “Why are you saying this?” I ask.

  “I am sad to inform you, June, that my vessel cannot be salvaged at this time. Our bodies can undergo only so much change, and this trauma is too great. Even now, these unfortunate limbs are being rejected. But my anima may still be of some use to you…and to our principled friend. I bequeath to Peter the rest of my life span.”