Clockwork Angels: The Novel (23 page)

But on the second day, as the winds picked up outside, Owen became so ferociously seasick that he was incapable of performing any task more challenging than emptying his own vomit bucket.

None of the other sailors seemed affected in the least, but Owen curled up and felt more miserable than he had ever been. The cargo vessel bounced across choppy seas like a steamliner with a broken wheel, rising up to the crest of a wave and plunging down into the trough again and again.

Captain Lochs and his crew strolled about in the bridge house or out on the open deck, nonchalant about the turmoil of the water. Two men had set up a chessboard on a crate and moved their pieces from square to square, catching them each time they threatened to tip over.

Meanwhile, Owen stayed in his own small cabin. Though it was no larger than a closet, Owen had felt guilty when Captain Lochs assigned him the cramped quarters. As an uninvited passenger, he had expected to bunk with the crew. But Captain Lochs had insisted that Owen was a guest sent by the Watchmaker and

must therefore accept at least the minimal hospitality of the tiny cabin. Especially now that he was experiencing the full effects of seasickness, Owen was thankful for the privacy.

He clutched his stomach and his pounding head, rolled from his bunk to the deck, threw up in the bucket, and crawled back into the bunk. He felt so sick, he couldn’t even think of Francesca. He was not quite the dashing heroic figure he had imagined himself to be.

By now, his preconceptions had been shattered many times. He couldn’t believe that he was a fugitive, wanted by the Watchmaker himself, that the Regulators considered
him
to be the murderous Anarchist—when, in fact, he had prevented the explosion in Chronos Square! He had saved the Clockwork Angels, the Watchmaker, the carnival, and everyone there.

When the seas finally calmed, at least for a few hours, he went out on deck at night to look for the stars. Taking deep breaths of the chill, salty air, he distracted himself by picking out constellations; he was surprised to see that the star patterns looked different here, far from Crown City. But clouds scudded across the sky, obscuring the constellations. He glimpsed a bright light off in the distance at the waterline . . . some other ship perhaps or a mysterious fire out at sea. The cargo steamer voyaged on.

Though weak and pallid, he climbed up to the bridge deck and asked Captain Lochs for a few sheets of paper and a lead pencil. Clutching his writing materials like a lifeline, he crept back to his cabin and in between bouts of nausea and misery, he wrote a letter to his father, detailing his adventures, explaining where he had been, what he had seen. He hoped Anton Hardy had received his other newsgraph letters, which he’d written among the carnies. Owen didn’t know what his father would think of him, what Lavinia was doing, or how the rest of Barrel Arbor would react to his fall from grace. Maybe Barrel Arbor had already forgotten him, quietly sweeping the embarrassment under a rug.

Finished with the letter, and exhausted from the effort, he gath ered his strength and struck out to the bridge deck again. Captain Lochs promised to forward the letter to Barrel Arbor as soon as the cargo steamer returned to Albion.

On the fifth day of the voyage, knowing they would soon be in sight of land, Owen worked his way out onto the deck, hoping that the sunshine and fresh air would revive him.

The steam curling up from the great stacks looked like celebration streamers. The two men continued to play their game of chess, moving wobbly pawns and bishops.

As waves crashed against the bow and sent up a diamond sparkle of spindrift, the beautiful sight captivated him . . . until he rushed to clutch the deck rail like a strangler with a reluctant victim and tried to re-empty his already-empty stomach over the side.

Captain Lochs looked at him with sympathy. “Maybe for this secret mission, the Watchmaker should have chosen someone less inclined to seasickness, eh?”

“All is for the best.” Owen choked out the words and wiped his mouth.

“We’ll reach Poseidon by late afternoon, don’t you worry,” Captain Lochs said. “You’ll have your feet on solid ground soon.”

Owen felt relieved and then nauseated again. He looked at his pocketwatch ticking down the hours. He couldn’t wait until they reached the marvelous city of Poseidon, so that he could be off this hellish ship.

But when Owen arrived, Poseidon City was even worse.

He walked down the gangplank in port—he had intended to
bound
down and set foot on a new continent, but with his weak legs, he managed little more than swaying and staggering—and entered a city he had imagined since he was a boy.

Worried about him, Captain Lochs called down from the deck, “Will you be all right, lad?”

Although Owen was nervous about the dramatic changes in his life, he straightened his shoulders, shored up his confidence, and maintained the fiction that he had genuine business here. This was a new land and a new hope for him—what he deserved. And the Angels had granted him his wish.

He was not under any illusions about how difficult it was going to be to establish a new life, though. “I could, however, use a small loan to tide me over until I get settled. I will pay you back next time I see you.”

Without objection, nor expectation of repayment, the captain gave him enough money for a few days’ worth of expenses, provided he was frugal. Owen knew how to be frugal. He was struck by an unpleasant thought: the Anarchist had given him a few coins to help him out for the first few days in Crown City, saying, “Maybe I just like the idea that you’ll owe me.” Owen had not felt comfortable with that.

Now, as he waved goodbye to Captain Lochs, he vowed that he would not forget to repay his debt. He pushed all thoughts of the Anarchist from his mind.

In the port of Crown City, every docking slip had been organized and numbered, the cargo ships laid out like merchandise on a warehouse shelf. Poseidon was exactly the opposite: disordered, loud, and smelly, beset with rough-looking people who had no interest in keeping a schedule or feeling the joy of a job well done. After Crown City’s neat street grid and the ordered assembly of buildings, Poseidon looked as if some giant had picked up armloads of buildings from a stockpile and simply dumped them, letting them rest where they fell. Ramshackle structures leaned together on the steep hills, and narrow streets wound up from the harbor.

Owen walked into the city, eyes open, ready for anything. He saw no emblems of bright, perfect honeybees; no hexagonal windows; no efficient bustle of busy workers in newsgraph offices. This was a different sort of city altogether.

As he walked along a seemingly endless promenade of taverns, two unshaven men jostled him, then apologized by patting him as if they were old friends. Their breath smelled of pickled cabbage and fish, two aromas that did not blend well together. Owen was friendly to the men, since he had no acquaintances here, but he didn’t see the two as likely comrades. They were gone down the street before he could ask their names.

Not long afterward, Owen found an inn. After so many days vomiting up anything he tried to eat, he was hungry and weak. Only when he tried to buy food did he discover that the two overly friendly men had robbed him of the coins Captain Lochs had loaned him.

When he told his pitiable story to the innkeeper, hoping for just a few scraps of bread or maybe a soupbone, the man chased him away with a broomstick.

Owen huddled on a crate outside of a smoking house where rumpled-looking businessmen paid the doorman to let them in; later, they staggered out, reeking of acrid smoke. He put his head in his hands, wondering what was to become of him now. The doorman let him loiter for half an hour before telling him to be on his way.

It seemed like a lifetime ago that Owen had jumped aboard a night steamliner to leave his village and start his adventure. “On my way at last!” Now he had arrived at a new part of his journey, but he didn’t see the point of all his tribulations. Where was he supposed to go?

He faced up to his situation and went from door to door, offering to work if the proprietor would give him food and shelter. At the docks in Crown City, the porters and laborers had been happy to accept a willingly offered hand, but these suspicious business owners chased him away. One threw a sloshing chamberpot at him, but he dodged the mess.

A café owner told him he could help himself to the fine banquet out back, but when he went behind the building, he found only a garbage heap with vegetable peelings, rotten fruit, and a great many flies.

As full night closed in, the inns and drinking establishments grew louder. Lanterns were lit with hot-burning red coal from veins in the foothills; fights broke out, and Owen huddled in the street shadows, afraid. He found an alley and curled up there to sleep, drawing his knees to his chest, leaning against a brick wall. Though he now had the freedom to sleep wherever he wanted, with no Regulators to harass him, he took no comfort in his supposed peace. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was under an apple tree on top of orchard hill. The memory didn’t help much, but he dozed off nevertheless.

By the following morning, he was so hungry that he did venture back to the garbage heap behind the café. He sorted through the scraps to find a few bites that would fill his rumbling stomach; he barely managed to keep the food down, but it was food.

He went back to the docks, thinking maybe he could get help from Captain Lochs again, but the cargo steamer had already set sail, loaded with a hold full of alchemical supplies, obsidian, agate, jasper, redfire opals, and even rarer minerals from outposts in the mountains. The dockworkers jealously guarded their own wages against interlopers, and they chased him away when he volunteered to lend a hand.

The next day, he encountered a group of feral young boys, the oldest of whom couldn’t have been more than twelve. They surrounded him, jeered at him, and tried to rob him. When he emptied his pockets to show that he had nothing of value other than his pocketwatch, they stole his watch out of spite and beat him up. But they had little heart for the wasted effort and left him bruised and aching on the ground.

He no longer knew what time it was, and the city seemed indifferent to clocktowers.

This was a far cry from the picture of Poseidon City painted by the legends. He wanted to weep for the loss of the wondrous place from his mother’s books. He was glad she had never been able to see the real Poseidon for herself; better that she had died of a fever with her dreams intact.

T
hough the days in Poseidon City were without order and without a routine, they had a bleak sameness. Owen had no goal beyond finding food, scrabbling for money, and keeping himself safe.

Never before had he lived in the shadows. He searched for a

warm place to sleep, like a rabbit desperate for a cozy warren. More often than he could count, he escaped into the memory of that one night in Francesca’s warm and welcoming tent, and the memory was sweeter and more golden than the Watchmaker’s finest honey.

Each time he found even a marginally comfortable spot, though, someone else found it soon after, usually someone stronger than he was. Three of those times, Owen fought to protect his meager scrap of normalcy, but each time he failed and found himself bruised and bloody, thrown out to search for something else. The others living on the streets of Poseidon did not fight according to the rules that Golson had taught him. Confidence alone did not serve Owen well, and his confidence soon waned.

One day in the back of a crooked alley where he hoped to find a sheltered stoop, perhaps some piled old crates and shadows for a blanket, he discovered a storefront with a grime-streaked window and a hanging wooden placard.
Underworld Books
. The entrance was set down two steps into the ground as if the shop itself were sinking into a new subterranean location.