Shadow Conspiracy (17 page)

Joseph furiously chased Nathaniel round the ring, shoes flopping, clothes flapping. Eventually, he caught his servant, trounced him soundly, and sent him away for another mirror amid laughter and scattered applause.

“They’re good,” murmured William Myrtle. I jumped—I hadn’t noticed the strongman sidle up to me. “I’ve never seen an act like this one. Did they invent it? Where’ve they worked a ring before?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said distractedly.

Joseph returned to his preening. A moment later, there was the sound of breaking glass behind the ring curtain, and Nathaniel slunk back into the ring with a horrified expression on his face. He was carrying a full-length, empty mirror frame. Nathaniel bit his nails and shot fearful glances at Joseph, who hadn’t yet noticed what was going on. My heart filled with pity for him, and I had to remind myself it was only a clown spot.

An idea seemed to strike Nathaniel. He set the frame down and hurried out of the ring. A moment later, he reappeared—wearing a duplicate of Joseph’s jacket. Once again, the clowns looked exactly alike.

Nathaniel picked up the frame and set it down with a thump behind Joseph, who jumped and spun round. In a flash, Nathaniel let go the mirror frame and duplicated his brother’s pose, as if
he
were the reflection. Laughter rippled through the audience, and I joined in.

Joseph narrowed his eyes, seeming to notice something was wrong. He leaned forward to get a better look at the mirror, but Nathaniel was ready for that and he copied the gesture perfectly. Joseph—and Nathaniel—shrugged and turned his back, whereupon Nathaniel stuck out his tongue over his shoulder. The audience roared. William guffawed and slapped me on the back with a heavy hand.

Joseph whirled round and pointed accusingly at the mirror, but Nathaniel was ready for him and pointed accusingly back. Still suspicious, Joseph wiggled his left hand while making a silly face. Again, Nathaniel simultaneously duplicated each move. As the spot continued, Joseph’s movements grew more absurd and more complicated, but Nathaniel copied him so well that I found myself wondering if there really were glass in the mirror after all. Abruptly, both clowns picked up the frame and, holding it between them, whirled round, faster and faster until I completely lost track of which twin was which. Finally, in disgust, the pair thumped the mirror down, straightened their respective collars, and stalked off in opposite directions. At the last moment, both looked back, waved to the mirror, and exited to thunderous applause.

“I’ve seen my share of good joeys,” William said over the noise, “and these two are fantastic. The mirror work is brilliant. First new bit I’ve seen in ages.”

I stared after the brothers without answering, then ran backstage to find them. Joseph was already towing Nathaniel back to Kalakos’s railcar, and my own spot was coming up soon. In that moment, my talent opened up, and I saw that chasing after them would only end in humiliation. However, I did have another choice that would be less frustrating—at least for the moment.

I scrawled,
Plans changed. Meet bhnd main tent aft show re: automtc fnctns
on a calling card, handed the card to my littlest spider, and pointed out the young man with the coal-black hair. My spider scuttled away on its errand, and the other choices vanished. Some time later, a very intense discussion began behind the main tent. We were quite discreet, of course—Irish law was harsh on men of a certain sort, and neither of us wanted to see twenty years at hard labour.

The discussion ended in my wagon, as I knew it would. In the morning, the young man was gone.

I knew that would happen, too.

“Ferrous,” I said, “wake up.” Then I smashed him on the head with a sledgehammer.

The blow rang with the clang of a church bell. The great iron dragon’s eyes cranked open. He sucked in air and expelled soft steam through the horns on the top of his head. His boiler fires were banked, which always made him sleepy, and the blow I had dealt him was barely powerful enough to get his attention.

Ferrous was a huge black beast, a combination of dragon and locomotive, with wheels instead of claws and iron skin instead of scales. His strength was powerful enough to pull the massive circus train, and his codex complex enough to negotiate the maze of railways that snaked through the British Isles and the Continent. Kalakos had coded his cards, but I had modified them several times.

“Yes, Dodd?” Ferrous hissed. His mouth was fashioned just above the cowcatcher, giving him the appearance of possessing a beard.

It was two days later, a Monday, and the Emporium was closed. The Storm brothers had performed four more times—matinees and evenings—to great success, but they always vanished afterward to the ringmaster’s railcar. Today, however, things had changed. Kalakos remained closeted in his railcar with Joseph, but I’d caught Nathan strolling toward the wagon he shared with his brother. On impulse, I had asked if he wanted a tour of the Emporium. To my relief and pleasure, he most certainly did. Since the day was fine, both of us were wearing flannel trousers and pullovers, with the fisherman’s caps so common here in Dublin.

The headlamps that made up Ferrous’s eyes were now staring down at us as we stood on the track before him. Nathan—he preferred that name over Nathaniel—stepped back. I took him by the shoulder and gently brought him forward again. He took off his cap.

“Ferrous,” I said, “allow me to present Nathaniel August Storm. He’s just joined the Emporium and will be riding with us. With your kind permission.”

The eyes swivelled down in Nathan’s direction. Nathan swallowed but remained still. Ferrous stared at him, then swung his gaze back to me. “He is trustworthy to ride?”

It was his standard question. One quirk of Ferrous’s Babbage engine was that he never allowed strangers to ride with him, so all new employees of the Emporium needed to be introduced before their first transport. “He is,” I said.

“And you are close to him, Dodd?”

That question startled me. Ferrous had never asked it before. “I...I feel he is worthy of—”

“Very well.” Ferrous yawned. “I will go back to sleep now.” And he did so.

“That was...quite amazing,” Nathan said in a quiet voice.

It was then that I noticed my arm still lay round his shoulders. Nathan hadn’t drawn away, either. My face grew hot with embarrassment and I quickly pulled back. Nathan continued to stare at Ferrous’s sleeping form as if the little affair between us had been perfectly unremarkable. My eyes stayed on Nathan. His hair, red as an autumn leaf, was slightly tousled from removing his cap, and a few freckles sprinkled his nose.

“Well,” I said with a slight cough, “now that you’ve seen—”

“Does he have a soul?” Nathan asked, his eyes still on the iron dragon.

An image of a strong man strapped to a table flashed through my head. Metal helmet. Electric wires. Leyden jars. My mouth dried up.

“What makes you ask?” I said.

“There are stories. Rumours that an automaton can become complex enough to house a soul, one stolen from a human being. Or that they even create their own, spontaneously.”

I laughed, but it sounded forced. “The church doesn’t like that sort of talk.”

“I’ve seen automatic locomotives before, but never one complicated enough to speak,” Nathan said. “Does he really think?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “John Locke claimed that any living creature that is aware of its own thinking must have a soul, but that was long before the first Babbage engine. Ferrous’s codex is very limited. It doesn’t go much beyond timetables and the type of coal he’s given.”

Nathan put out a cautious hand and touched the sleeping dragon. No reaction. “So this isn’t magic.”

It had been a statement, not a question, but I answered it anyway. “No,” I said, on safer ground now. “It’s science. All automata are animated through a combination of electricity, mechanics, and a bit of chemistry.”

“I’ve seen real magic, you know.”

Another image flickered. Cold thin fingers caressed my cheek and a soft voice whispered icy words in my ear.

“It’s rare and difficult,” I said woodenly, “but it’s out there. Where did you encounter it?”

“China, Borneo, Japan.” He glanced at me with a small smile that made me hunger to see more of it.

“I’ve never been that far East. What’s it like?”

“People are much the same, though customs are very different. In many cases, certain ideas that make people angry here are ignored or accepted there.”

He looked at me with guileless blue eyes, and I couldn’t break away. Was Nathan thinking the same way as the young man with coal black hair? I wasn’t quite sure, and there were so many risks in finding out. If I made a mistake with a total stranger, a fistfight might erupt, but we would ultimately part company. Nathan I would see every day. And rejection from a stranger meant little, while rejection from Nathan would destroy a billion branching universes.

At that moment I wanted very badly for my talent to open up, but the wretched thing had abandoned me completely.

“I see,” was all I could say. I felt stupid and foolish. “Um...you’ve seen the rest of the Emporium. Do you want to see the Black Tent?”

Nathan looked a little disappointed, or perhaps it was only my wilful imagination, and I was seized with an overwhelming desire to grab him by both shoulders and ask obvious and powerful questions. But I didn’t.

“Yes,” Nathan said. “Very much.”

We threaded our way through the complex of tents and wagons that made up the Emporium. Cooking smells mingled with scents of animal manure and sawdust. Monday might have been a day off from performing, but that only created a day of maintenance and rehearsal. Ida and Mary Edgewood tried new additions to their wirewalking routine on a low rope they had set up. Carl Greene, a.k.a. the Great Sabatini, stood near his wagon, talking to an invisible audience as he pulled brightly-coloured handkerchiefs out of nothing. Aleksandr and Maksim Danylchuk coaxed Natasha, the World’s Biggest Automatic Elephant, onto a tiny iron platform. Barbara Bellington Jones sat beside her tent with a plate of food, tossing titbits to the dozen poodles sitting in her ample shadow. Henry Wells supervised his two sons as they scrubbed and polished the six automatic horses that cantered in perfect circles for every show. All the performers except the children looked rather older than they were, and all of them except the children had a faintly mechanical air to their movements, a vague listlessness that only vanished when they entered the ring. Outsiders simply assumed the circus life was a draining one. I knew better.

Our progress through the Emporium was slow—several people stopped Nathan to praise his performances. Nathan accepted their words with an embarrassed flush. They all smiled at me but instinctively avoided engaging me in conversation because of my connection with Kalakos. I was long used to this and barely noticed.

“Where did you learn to clown like that?” I asked after William Myrtle stopped Nathan for congratulations, the fifth person to do so. “I’ve never seen anyone perform the mirror spot so well.”

“Joseph and I are very close. He’s been obsessed with that spot his entire life, so we do it.”

The thick, sugary scent of caramel wafted by, mixing with the smell of soap as we passed old Margery Mays, who was kneeling behind a tub of water and indifferently scrubbing a bright blue shirt against a washboard.

“What are you obsessed with?” I asked, a little playfully. “What do
you
like to do?”

Nathan halted and looked at me.

I stopped, too. “What’s wrong?”

“No one’s ever asked me that before,” he said. “I like it.”

I felt discomforted, but in a way I enjoyed. His eyes were so blue. Cloth continued to slap against water as Margery did her washing. “So what’s the answer?”

“You should know,” he replied. “You see the future.”

Now it was my turn to stare, but in shock. “Who told you that?”

“My brother. Or perhaps it was Mr. Kalakos.”

I couldn’t respond. Nathan noticed my distress, and his expression became instantly contrite.

“I’m sorry, Dodd. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Really.” He put a brief hand on my shoulder. His touch, light as it was, seared my skin through the cloth like a branding iron fresh from the forge.

Henry, the ring groom, led the two newly-scrubbed mechanical horses around one of the tents. They snorted steam and smoke as they passed. I tried to keep the memories back, but Nathan’s touch and the smell of coal smoke broke barriers. Sudden loneliness washed over me, even though Nathan stood not a foot away, and I didn’t want to keep anything from him.