Angel of Brass (20 page)

“That shouldn’t be necessary. If it becomes
so, I’ll call down,” the doctor replied, sticking a thermometer in
Liam’s mouth.

Jin brewed more tea while they waited on the
doctor’s diagnosis; after slurping down two previous pots while
thrashing him at chess, Molly felt as though her eyeballs would
start to float if she drank much more. Eventually, the doctor’s
footsteps sounded on the stair.

“Your friend should be fine,” Dr. Aldebrand
said as they approached him anxiously. “The wound appears to be
healing nicely, without sign of infection. I’ve given him medicine
for the fever; make certain he takes a tablespoon every eight hours
or so.” He handed Jin a bottle filled with green syrup, which Jin
eyed dubiously. “If the fever has not subsided by tomorrow morning,
contact me.” Molly took the neat card that he held out, and almost
choked when she saw the address.

“Thank you for coming all this way, Dr.
Aldebrand,” she said.

“Of course, of course,” he replied with a
benevolent smile. He doffed his top hat to her, shook Jin’s hand,
and departed.

Jin took the card from her numb fingers.
“What does this mean?” he asked, baffled.

“The address is on the palace grounds,” Molly
replied, shaking her head in surprise. “If Dr. Aldebrand isn’t
Queen Rowena’s personal physician, then he certainly tends to some
very important people.”

Jin frowned slightly. “I’m going to guess
that he doesn’t usually make house calls.”

“Not to students in Chartown, anyway.
I
wonder what favor Gibson called in.” And why. Not to suggest that
Gibson isn’t genuinely interested in Liam’s health, but sending the
queen’s personal physician is a bit much. Is it because of the
anti-shambler device we’re working on?

Jin suggested they get dinner, which sounded
like an excellent idea to Molly. At the least, it was vastly
preferable to more tea. She went up to say good-bye to Liam, but he
was sound asleep, so she settled for leaving him a note wishing him
a speedy recovery and promising to come back the next day.

The weather had turned foul during the
afternoon, with a leaden gray sky spitting snow and sleet. Although
it was uncommon for the temperature in Chartown to remain below
freezing for long, today it was cold enough for a scum of ice to
form on the sidewalks and roofs. They hurried through nearly
deserted streets, Molly shivering in her coat, Jin in his normal
outfit. He looked very nice, she thought: tall and slender in his
shirt and waistcoat, and no overcoat to hide the shape of his body.
The feathers in his hair were slightly bedraggled; he must have
washed the brick dust out of them.

They found a small café serving spicy Ragani
food and lingered at the table, talking as night fell outside.
Their conversation was of nothing in particular: the weather,
Molly’s classes, music. After their plates were cleared, Molly
ordered feni for both of them, and they sipped the potent liquor as
the conversation continued. The mellow light of the café limned
Jin’s face in gold, and sparked off his goggles. Absently, she
wondered why he always wore them, as she’d never seen him actually
use them for anything, except to protect his eyes from soot the
night of the fire. No doubt they had been handy on the windy deck
of an airship, but he never went anywhere without them even in the
city.

When they finally emerged back onto the
street, the sleet had stopped, although the sidewalks and roadways
were still treacherously slick. “Would you like to walk me back to
the boarding house?” Molly asked uncertainly. It would be more
sensible for her to take a cab and let him get back to Liam’s flat,
but she couldn’t quite bring herself to end the evening just
yet.

“Of course,” he said, and offered her his arm
with a smile that warmed her all the way to her toes.

As they walked, stepping carefully on the icy
sidewalks, Molly found that her thoughts kept returning to the
conversation with Gibson earlier in the day. “So, the automata last
night were activated by aetherwave signal,” she mused aloud. “They
were more sophisticated than the shamblers, obviously, but I can’t
help but wonder if there is a connection. Do you think they could
be creations of Dr. Malachi?”

The corners of Jin’s lips turned down in a
thoughtful frown. “It’s possible,” he said slowly. “I don’t see
what the conspirators would get from it...but that might not matter
to Dr. Malachi. He’d do anything just for the sake of
curiosity.”

The thought of Jin at the hands of such a
monster made her heart tighten with a mixture of anger and grief.
“We’ve been assuming that Malachi fled to a safe house somewhere,”
she said, not wanting to upset him but seeing no way around it.
“What if we were wrong? What if he’s here, in the city?”

She felt rather than heard Jin’s sigh. “That
makes sense.”

Another thought occurred to her, this one
much more pleasant. “So, if he came here, he would have sent Del
somewhere else, somewhere secure, especially after your escape.
Which means that he’s had to divide his forces. This might be our
best chance at rescuing her. If only we knew where she is!”

To her surprise, Jin didn’t look at all
encouraged by this line of thought. Indeed, his expression grew
even grimmer. “Jin?” she asked tentatively. “Is everything all
right?”

“No. It isn’t.” He stopped walking and turned
to face her. They stood in the dark space between two street lamps,
near enough that she could make out his expression, but far enough
away to give them the illusion of privacy. “If you’re right, if
Father—Malachi, damn it—is in the city...then so is Del.”

Molly felt as though she had missed some
important bit of information along the way. “Why would he bring her
to Chartown? The very size of the city allowed you to escape,
didn’t it? After that, wouldn’t he want to keep Del isolated on a
small estate, where it would be harder to disappear? Unless you
think he’d rather keep a close eye on her, which makes a certain
amount of sense, I suppose.”

Jin looked away and ran one hand distractedly
through his hair. “Molly, I...I care about you a great deal.”

At any other time, the admission would have
thrilled her. Now, though, the seeming non sequitur struck her as
ominous. “I care about you, too, Jin. So tell me what’s bothering
you. Please.”

He turned his gaze on her for a long moment,
and she saw the struggle in his black eyes. Then, he seemed to come
to some decision. “I trust you, Molly. You might not understand
what that means to me, exactly, but there haven’t been many people
in this world that I could trust. You’re special. Special to
me.”

“I would never betray your trust, Jin.”

“I know you wouldn’t. Which is why you have
to swear to me that you won’t breathe a word to anyone about this.
Not Gibson, not Liam, not Winifred—no one.”

Now seriously worried, she took his hands.
“Of course I won’t.”

“Del will be in Chartown, because she’s meant
to kill the queen.”

Molly stared at him, thunderstruck. “Wh-what?
How did you find this out?”

“I always knew it.” His fingers tightened on
hers, when she would have pulled away. “Father always said he
created us to be stronger and faster and...and other things. And he
also trained us to kill people. To be assassins.”

“A-assassins?” she repeated, feeling stupid
but unable to think of anything else to say.

“I don’t know if he’d always intended for us
to be living weapons, or if we just happened to come in handy, the
way the shamblers did.” Jin’s eyes darkened, as if he stared into
memory rather than at her face. “He started training us a year or
so back. And, when he thought we were good enough...there was a
man, you see. A boy, really, not much older than me. Father had
made a mistake, for once, and hired a maid who did have family.
When she disappeared, her cousin came looking for her. The smiling
men caught him and brought him to the manor. Father armed him, and
told me to...to kill him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Yes. I did.”

She stared at his gloved hands, gripping hers
in a hold that was impossible for mere flesh to break. “But he
didn’t do anything wrong. He was trying to find his cousin. How-how
could you?”

“I didn’t want to, I swear! They’d given him
a cudgel to fight back with, to make it more of a challenge for me.
He would have killed me! I had no choice but to defend myself!” His
voice cracked, and he closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them.
“That was when I knew I had to get out of there. I’d killed one
innocent person. I wasn’t going to kill any more.”

“And Del?” Molly asked numbly. “Will she
murder the queen?”

“You don’t know what it’s like, living with
someone like Dr. Malachi. He always made us feel as though
everything, no matter how wonderful or despicable, was done for us.
Every intruder who died at the jaws of the smiling men, every tutor
he disposed of when they had nothing left to teach us, it was all
for us. Even when he tinkered with us, and made changes that hurt,
it was for our own good. And it was horrible, it was terrible, but
at the same time it all felt like it was our fault, like
we
were the cause of our suffering, and the suffering of others. So
when he asked us to kill with our own hands, it didn’t...it didn’t
seem so outrageous. It was just another point on the same
spectrum.”

“But you ran, Jin,” Molly said, tugging
fruitlessly to get her hands free. “You made a choice; you ran
away! Del has that same choice!”

“No!” A wild look came into Jin’s eyes.
“Don’t you understand? Father twists everything around, makes
everything sound normal, sound reasonable. He’s probably told Del
that I abandoned her, probably convinced her that he’s all she’ll
ever have, and that the only way to keep even that much is to
assassinate the queen!”

“It’s still wrong! You have to tell Gibson.
Right now; tonight.”

“No, we can’t! I’m trying to save Del, not
get her killed! If Gibson finds out she’s on her way to assassinate
the queen, his men will shoot her on sight!”

“We’ll convince Gibson. We’ll explain the
situation to him, so if they find her, they can subdue her
instead.”

“If strangers attack her, she’ll fight back.
Things will escalate, and Del will be the one who ends up paying
the price! That’s why we have to try to find her first. So that she
can escape with us, before anything happens.”

“And what if we don’t find her, Jin?” Molly
demanded. “Do you have any idea where to look? If we don’t tell
anyone, if Del isn’t stopped, Queen Rowena will die!”

“I don’t give a damn about Queen Rowena!”

The cold in her deepened to fury. “What
do
you care about then, Jin? You didn’t care enough about me
to tell me—to tell anyone—this from the start! You’ve been keeping
secrets, and you don’t care if innocent people die! You only care
about your precious sister.”

“I
do
care about you! That’s why I
told you. I thought I could trust you.”

“Let go—you’re hurting me!”

Jin released her hands immediately. She
snatched them back, rubbing her fingers to get the circulation
going again, glaring at him all the while.

An expression of horror crept over his face
as he stared at her hands. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.
And I don’t want anyone to die, whatever you think. But how can I
sacrifice my own sister? She’s my only family, the only friend I
ever had in this world, before you. What would you do if it was
Winifred?”

“I wouldn’t go around lying to people. I
wouldn’t leave out information that might save lives.” Molly shook
her head in disgust. “You have until the fȇte to either find your
sister and get her away from Malachi, or confess to Gibson. If you
don’t, then I’m going to tell him everything.”

He gasped, as though she had slapped him.
“You promised that you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“That was before I knew the queen might die
if I keep my word. If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t ask
me to make a choice like that.”

He folded his arms over his chest, his
expression growing cold. “And if you really cared about me, you
wouldn’t break your word. I trusted you, when I’ve never trusted
anyone besides Del. It seems I was wrong to do that.”

“Yes, well, I trusted you, too.” Molly turned
and began to walk in the direction of the boarding house. “Don’t
worry—I won’t make that mistake twice.”

She half-expected him to come after her, but
the night remained silent except for her footsteps. A mixture of
anger and hurt boiled in her chest, and she walked faster and
faster, her feet sliding on the slippery slush.

I can’t believe he didn’t tell me before now.
I can’t believe he still wants to keep it a secret.

He killed a man. He murdered someone because
Malachi wanted to test him. How could he do that?

Did I ever know him at all?

By the time she reached the boarding house,
she was as close to a run as the ice would allow. She took the
stairs two at a time to her room and flung herself across the bed.
Hot tears burned her eyes, and she yanked the blanket over her head
to muffle the wrenching sound of her sobs.

* * *

Despite the glaze of ice slicking everything,
Jin climbed to the highest point he could easily find, which proved
to be a sainthouse steeple. The structure was old, its soaring
spires built of sculpted stone rather than brick. Scenes of the
saints’ lives were carved into the exterior, and their fierce
spirit dogs leered from cornices and downspouts, guarding against
evil. The uneven surface would have made the climb easy under
normal conditions, but it now offered plenty places for water and
sleet to collect and freeze. Even so, Jin didn’t stop until he had
reached the base of the uppermost spire.