The Clockwork Dynasty

Now Peter and I are walking together under a stone archway, husband and wife, my heels echoing off the flagstones. It’s a long, wide tunnel, ending in a crescent of sunlight ahead, serving as the entrance to some kind of elite, girls-only preparatory school, though there is no signage of any kind. We entered on a quiet, leafy street, with a nondescript man in a black suit watching us, speaking into a collar microphone.

  Beside me, Peter is dapper and somehow not terrifying despite his size. He wears a charcoal suit prepared by a little old man who claimed to be his personal tailor.

  “How do you hide all this money?”

  Peter keeps facing forward, answering in a low voice. “Art, mostly,” he says. “Humanity is remarkably narcissistic. You have always valued your own creations above all else.”

  Peter takes a few more steps, then glances at me.

  “Of course, I collect plenty of precious metals, too.”

  “Of course,” I parrot.

  But Peter is already breaking into a winning smile and striding forward with one hand out. A portly silhouette has appeared in the archway before us—a small, pinch-faced woman wearing a neat blazer with a small silver phoenix on the lapel. She is compact in size but intimidating, clutching a clipboard like a shield. Smiling at Peter, she shows no teeth, just a slight rise of her strawberry blonde eyebrows.

  “Welcome to Whybourne College,” the woman says, shaking hands with Peter. “I’m headmistress Timms.”

  Gesturing, she directs us to follow her toward an open, grassy quad that must occupy a city block, hemmed in by the slate walls of school buildings. We continue along the gleaming flagstone walkway, ambling around the perimeter of the quad, passing walls lined with class photos. Each image is mounted in an elaborate wooden frame, displaying a class of thirty or forty girls wearing matching uniforms, posed but never smiling.

  The first photo is dated 1848.

  The headmistress walks ahead of us, her voice booming off the walls, heels clicking on polished stone. I scan the faces of every adult I see, but I don’t even know who I’m looking for.

  I tune back into the headmistress when she stops and turns to us.

  “Despite regularly achieving superior test scores,” she says, “Whybourne is not driven by a one-dimensional hunt for academic glory. We are focused instead on developing the spirit, values, and logical thinking of our pupils. As they leave us and enter the world, our young ladies will continue to represent the college for the rest of their lives. Many of our Whybourne families go back generations. My own family has been employed here for more than two hundred years, starting with my ancestor Georgie Timms.”

  At that, she turns and continues walking. Giving her a few feet, I jab Peter in the ribs with an elbow.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  Peter is walking slowly, hands clasped behind his back with his eyes trained on the photos. I jab him again and he turns to me.

  “Near,” he whispers.

  Quietly, he plants a finger on a class photo, next to the round face of a little girl with curly black hair. “Here, for instance,” he says.

  The photo is from 1898.

  Continuing to walk, he taps his finger on more pictures. “Here,” he says. “And here. Her appearance changes a little. She has made herself a bit older.”

  1902. 1928. 1951.

  Each face he points to is slightly different, but across the photos she is clearly the same dark-eyed girl.

  “She’s a kid?” I whisper.

  “Sorry?” asks the headmistress, turning and stopping her informative monologue.

  “Nothing,” I say. “How charming.”

  “Yes, well,” she says. “Follow me, please.”

  The headmistress guides us out across the grassy courtyard, still damp from a recent rain. It’s a vast expanse, green and flat, and I hear the sharp calls of girls playing field hockey in the distance. Wearing helmets and brightly colored uniforms, the players chase one another on a rectangular field, fighting for the ball.

  “As you can see,” says the headmistress, “we instill quite a competitive spirit in our girls.”

  She looks at us expectantly.

  “Uh, yeah,” I say. “Wonderful.”

  “Yes,” she continues. “It’s our tradition, passed down as a founding principle since our inception in the mid-seventeen-hundreds. Look there.”

  The headmistress points to a pathetically small two-story wooden building. Made of rough timber and crumbling stucco, crawling with ivy, it has nonetheless been perfectly restored, squatting near a meandering cobblestoned pathway. Even the stones look several hundred years old, meticulously maintained.

  “Those storage rooms were part of the original building that housed the very first class of Whybourne students. It was converted from a hat factory where working women once found their financial independence. From those noble origins, our college—”

  Peter snorts, suppressing a laugh. The headmistress turns to him, concerned. Swallowing another laugh, he turns and puts his forearm over his mouth, hiding a wild smile. “Allergies. Excuse me.”

  The headmistress stares at Peter for a long second, not blinking.

  “Our original founder left explicit instructions to preserve this part of our heritage, so every class of girls would know they have joined a tradition older and richer than they could ever fathom. Now, if you will join me.”

  The headmistress moves away, and Peter follows.

  But something catches my eye about the wooden building. It’s so old, so out of place. On a hunch, I fish the cedalion out of my purse. Pressing the cold circle of metal over one eye, I squint at the building.

  Nothing, besides a sheet of thick ivy.

  Disappointed, I lower the cedalion, but not before I catch a wink of fire through wet leaves. I stop, looking again. Fiery letters writhe under a green rash of vines. Though I can’t see details, it looks like the avtomat domain sigil Peter showed me in Seattle. And beyond that, something else glows faintly inside.

  “Excuse me!” I call, hiding the cedalion in my fist. “I’d like to see in there.”

  Already several yards away, the headmistress stops and considers.

  “Not a good idea, ma’am—”

  “Just a peek,” I insist, interrupting. “The tradition is what I love about this place. The long tradition. Without that, why, we ought to just send the children to an American school. Right, honey?”

  The headmistress licks her lips, eyes flicking briefly to the ostentatious diamond necklace slung around my neck. Finally, she takes a step toward the wooden building.

  “Very well,” she says, wrangling a ring of keys from her waist.

  We follow her to the door, where she jams a large iron key into the crude lock. Turning it with both hands, she pauses. “But just a quick glance of the entry. This isn’t on the official parent tour.”

  I’m stepping forward, eager to see, but Peter has stopped on the lawn.

  “Come on, honey,” I say to him, motioning.

  Peter doesn’t move, staring out across the quad.

  I follow his gaze and see only a column of plaid-skirted girls trotting across the grass, wearing heavy backpacks and clutching musical instruments. They are headed from one class to the next, walking in loose knots and chatting with each other.

  Save one.

  The girl stands alone, maybe fourteen years old, her dark eyes turned toward Peter. A small frown creases her delicate features.

  “Elena,” breathes Peter.

  “What did you say?” asks the headmistress, and her affected accent has disappeared. Now her voice sounds rough and low. Her teeth are bared, crooked, her knuckles white on the clipboard. Behind her, the keys still hang from the door.

  “Who are you, sir?” she asks.

  “Elena,” calls Peter, in a louder voice. The girl doesn’t move.

  The headmistress pulls a radio from her hip, lifts it to her mouth without taking her eyes off Peter. She speaks in an urgent whisper.

  “
Sir,” she says, stepping forward and reaching into her pocket. “I’m afraid we don’t have a student here by that—”

  Peter spins, dodging the twin barbed darts of a Taser. He brings his hands down and strips the device from the woman’s hands, slapping it to the ground. She bites down on a shout as he puts his hands on her shoulders, looming over her.

  “Stop it!”

  The girl with curly black hair stands behind us, her voice commanding authority. “Both of you.”

  44

  LONDON, 1758

  Elena follows me outside to the alley beside the brothel, closing the door behind her. It is raining now, the clammy air heavy with smoke from the burned ship. The commotion on the river has thankfully drawn attention away from here. I step to the humped center of the narrow, deserted street, standing on the precipice of a jagged channel that runs down the middle.

  My sister is holding a bundle of yellow silk in her hands.

  The lines of her body are lost in a dark riding coat, too big for her, turning her into a shadow beneath a crimson lamp. Above us, small faces peek through one of the few dimly lit windows of the building. Girls locked inside an abattoir. We slaughtered every man in the building, and yet Elena did not free the children.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her. “They are little girls.”

  Elena steps out into the rain.

  “Circumstances have changed, Peter,” she says. “I need to regroup, find a place where I can blend in. A girl’s school will provide me with both opportunities. You know that I am a quick thinker, and this is the best idea I’ve got.”

  “This is insane,” I say to her. “Come with me back to the estate.”

  Elena pulls back her hood, a dark mass of curls spilling out. Her eyes are wide and searching, lips trembling as she asks.

  “Hypatia…”

  “Gone. You saw.”

  “Yes, but her anima?”

  “Leizu kept it,” I say. “To add to her collection.”

  “And what of Hypatia’s vessel—”

  “Sunk to the bottom of the Thames, darling, please—”

  “We could find her—”

  “Come with me, Elena. Now.”

  Hands curled into tiny fists, the girl stands in the middle of the broken street and throws her head back. Tensing her whole body, she screams, channeling the piercing shout into the rain-filled sky with inhuman force.

  The scream lasts for a long time.

  “Come,” I say, extending a hand. “Please.”

  The rain is driving now, lamps guttering, drops sliding in watery veins across the leather of my face and backs of my hands. Beads of the misty rain perch like pearls in Elena’s hair. Each drop is washing away part of the horror of what just happened, but not enough.

  The puddles around me are dark as blood.

  “She was my only friend,” says Elena. “And she is gone because of you. Because you refused your duty.”

  “I chose you,” I say.

  “You were not made to serve me,” says Elena. Her voice has gone flat and emotionless in a way that I find frightening. “We each serve our own Word, Peter. Being true to that is the only path to happiness.”

  She drops the silken bundle onto muddy stone. The yellow handkerchief and its precious contents lie in filth, soaking wet and stained with soot.

  “There’s your destiny,” she says, nodding. “There’s who you were meant to protect. Your old master.”

  “Elena, no,” I say, but I can’t take my eyes away from the handkerchief. A rivulet of rainwater tugs a corner of fabric away to reveal the anima. The glittering crescent calls to me. To hold it in my hands would feel right.

  “You…I promised to protect you.”

  “No, my dear Peter,” Elena urges. “There is no magic in our origin. We were simply repaired at the same time by a foolish old man who served an ambitious tsar. That does not make us brother and sister.”

  I remember a grassy clearing atop a broad plateau at dusk. A little girl lighting a candle placed within a paper sky lantern, her smile lit from below. As the first stars hardened in the sky, my sister and I added our own constellations to the cosmos—

  “I do not believe that,” I say.

  Elena plants both hands on my thighs, pushing me back. Her clockwork voice echoes sharply in the empty alley, under the thrum of rain.

  “I am not your master. I am not your sister. I’m not anything to you.”

  I blink, stumbling back. It should destroy me, what she has said. But I only feel pinpricks of rain on my skin. Each needle bite is building into a crescendo of realization.

  I will always be alone. I was always alone.

  Could the feelings I have for Elena be an illusion? Do they exist in a false world, constructed by a blank, newborn mind? Have I made meaning out of coincidence?

  We are nothing to each other.

  Elena slowly draws a stiletto.

  “Take the anima and go,” she says, threatening.

  “Elena—”

  Without hesitation, she steps forward and slides the blade into my chest. I catch her slight body in both my hands and lift her and hug her to me. My chest shudders at the bite of steel, but I am breathing in the scent of her hair and perfume, squeezing my eyes closed. For this one second I can pretend things are simple again. Perfect and safe, like when we were in Favorini’s lab, before Elena studied the world, before she—

  Twisting out of my grasp, she drives the blade deeper. The steel separates my ribs and punctures the bellow of my lungs, my breath dying in my throat. Elena steps back and watches me as I crumple to my knees on rough cobblestones.

  Elena grabs the cloth of my jacket and pulls me close to her.

  “Go,” she says, her lips an inch from my ear. “Leave me to my studies. Protect the anima of your old master and serve your Word.”

  I am mute, the world spinning away from me, and Elena along with it.

  “Do your duty.”

  In a haze of water and pain, knees soaking wet, shoulders hunched, I wrap my arms tight around my own punctured torso. My voice is stalled, diaphragm contracting as my final breath escapes. The silken bundle lies on the road before me.

  “If you return,” says Elena, pulling her hood over her face, “I will kill you.”

  The harsh words are spoken in a child’s musical voice. Where once her face seemed impish, now her features are hard and unforgiving. Her soft cheeks are beaded with rain like tears, but her eyes are blank.

  It is a mask and I do not truly know the person who hides beneath it.

  Perhaps I never did.

  With shaking hands I pick up the anima and cradle it to my chest, letting the silk handkerchief fall away. Some mechanism fails inside me and I pitch forward onto my elbows, forehead pressing against cold stone. Now that I am not breathing, the world has become quiet and the steady drumming of rain grown to havoc in my ears.

  When I lift my eyes, Elena is walking away.

  For an instant, she is a little girl again. Hopping between puddles, her face is lost under the black velvet riding cloak. Her buckled shoes click over cobblestones that dance and shine under the lamplight and stars and falling rain.

  I try to call her name, but nothing comes out.

  45

  LONDON, PRESENT

  The teenager stands, defiant, her hair pulled into a tight ponytail and her skin smooth and youthful. A light brush of lipstick covers her lips, features chiseled and sharp, eyes wide and dark and intelligent. She is breathing hard, angry, or maybe afraid.

  Hard to believe she isn’t a person.

  “Why are you here?” she asks. “I told you never to come back.”

  Peter stands silently, watching the girl, face soft, his eyes drinking in her presence. The headmistress is forgotten, leaning against the wall a few feet away. Her Taser lies in the grass. The students have all moved on, ushered away by their teachers, leaving the quad empty, wet blades of grass rustling under a chilly afternoon breeze.

&nbs
p; “I honored your wish for two and a half centuries,” says Peter. “Even when I was sure I would die without you. But the end is coming, Elena.”

  “It’s been coming for a long time,” she says.

  Elena nods at the headmistress. The woman stumbles away across the quad, not looking back. Around the perimeter, I see men in dark suits gathering. Elena slides her gaze across me, eyes lingering on the clutch purse tucked under my arm.

  “You found your old master again,” says Elena, talking to Peter. “You shouldn’t have brought him here.”

  “Why not?” I ask, stepping forward. “I read your letters to Batuo. You’ve studied Huangdi. You know he can save the avtomat, and I think you know where he is.”

  Elena throws a look of disbelief at Peter.

  “What happened to protecting the secret?” she asks him.

  “Desperate times,” I interrupt. I’ve had enough of being ignored as a mere human. “Tell us where Huangdi’s vessel is located, and we’ll go.”

  The girl finally decides to speak to me.

  “Do you know what hunts you?” she asks.

  “I know her name,” I say. “I know I killed her general. And I know she’s afraid of an avtomat called Huangdi.”

  Elena steps closer to me as she speaks, menacing.

  “Leizu isn’t like me or Peter or even Talus. The Mother of Worms isn’t good or evil or anything so simple as that. Her anima is a force of nature, like a tidal wave or a flood. She carries a Word of chaos, dusk, autumnal decay. Per ignum, renatus mundi est. Through fire, the world is reborn—”

  “Enough,” says Peter, putting a hand between us.

  My back is pressed against the door, fingers splayed against the wood. The girl is half the size of Peter and twice as menacing. Standing up, my arm brushes against the iron key still hanging from the lock.

  “Get out of here, Peter,” Elena says. “Take your human and pray that you never meet Leizu again.”

  Elena’s eyes flick up to the old wooden building. Beneath her anger, I can tell she is frightened and sad. She won’t give us the information we need, but I’ve got a feeling I know where to find it.

  Behind my back, I close my fingers around the metal key.