The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (28 page)

Alice’s expression darkened and she looked like she wanted to argue. Then she nodded once, hard. “You’re right of course. But we’ll find a way later.”

“We will,” he agreed.

“And I can still do this.” She reached through the bars with her gauntleted hand and scratched one of the sick children before he could shy away. He barely whimpered, though he did shuffle to the rear of his cage, the scratches dripping blood. The others, seeing this, also drew back out of reach.

“Poor things,” Alice said. “I wish I spoke Ukrainian so I could explain what’s going on. At least the first one will infect the others with the cure.”

One of the children began to cry, and Gavin caught something that sounded like “Mama.” In that moment, Gavin nearly violated the good sense he had just quoted to Alice. He had to force himself to avoid tearing at the cages with his bare hands. His rubbed at his
face and realized his cheek was wet with salt water. Damn it. He had been beaten half to death by pirates, locked in a tower by a madwoman, and infected with a disease that was killing him by inches, but
this
brought a tear to his eye?

“Let’s go,” Alice said, “before I pry these bars open myself.”

Gavin nodded around a thick throat and, feeling wretched, forced himself to turn his back and walk away from the children. He swore to himself that the sun wouldn’t set on another day before he came back for them.

“We need to concentrate,” Alice said briskly. “How are we going to find Feng in all this?”

Gavin did his best to push thoughts of the children aside. Alice was right—he needed to concentrate on the mission at hand. “I already know how.”

He took the silver nightingale out of his pocket. Alice reached for it, but Gavin moved it away from her. “Don’t. It returns to the last person who touched it. Feng sent it back to me when the song I recorded for you in Berlin turned out not to help.”

“So he was the last one to touch it,” Alice finished. “Brilliant!” She paused. “Why didn’t you use it when we were looking for him in the city?”

He gave her a strange look. “I didn’t need to.”

Alice pursed her lips, then muttered something that sounded like “Clockworker logic.” “Just toss it, then. Quick!”

Gavin flung the little bird into the air. It sprang to life, fluttered in a circle, and headed for one of the staircases across the main floor. Gavin and Alice hurried to
follow, dodging giant mechanicals and ducking whirligigs, feet thudding on worked stone. They dashed up the staircase with a wall on their left, just barely able to keep the little streak of silver in sight, and hurried down an arched hallway. Electric lights glared down from the ceiling.

The hallway abruptly widened into a large, dark room. Even Gavin’s clockwork-enhanced eyes couldn’t make out details, though he got the sense the space was round. It was certainly large enough to echo. A single beam of light from high up stabbed down to illuminate a small circle in the center of the room. In the center of the circle was a square cage six feet tall, and in the cage huddled Feng Lung. Or, Gavin assumed it was Feng. A blanket wrapped his body and head like a tattered cloak. Between the blanket and bars, Gavin could see only part of his face. It seemed to be Feng, and the nightingale zipped into the cage to land on his shoulder. The figure in the cage didn’t react. Gavin wanted to run over and pull the cage open, but he also felt suspicious.

“Does this seem strange to you?” Alice whispered as they entered the room. The place was cold, almost icy. The duo stopped about twenty feet from the cage. “I mean, stranger than it should be.”

“Very,” Gavin whispered. He raised his voice a little. “Feng? Is that you?”

In response, the figure in the cage raised his head. The blanket fell back, revealing his face. Alice gasped. Gavin’s heart jerked and nausea oozed through his stomach, though he also felt a strange and exciting fascination. Feng’s hair had been shaved off, leaving nicks
and cuts behind. A brass spider the size of a hand sprawled across the right side of Feng’s head, its body covering his ear and its legs framing his eye, nose, and mouth. Four of the legs drilled into his skull and neck. Gavin’s hand went unconsciously to his own skull, and he bit his lip. Scar tissue puckered Feng’s cheek and his right eye drooped. A line of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. He shivered with cold.

“Oh, Feng,” Alice said. “What did she do?”

Feng didn’t answer. He simply stared at them with his good eye. The nightingale perched motionless on his shoulder. Alice sniffled and, with a low cry, ran to the cage.

“Don’t touch!” Gavin cried.

Alice halted mere inches from the icy bars. “Why?”

“It might be a trap.”

Lights exploded to life all about the room. A barred gate crashed down to block the exit. Gavin flung up a hand to shield his eyes against the painful and blinding brightness. Alice cried out again.

“Really, Gavin,” came the voice of Susan Phipps. “I’ll have to have a word with Simon. He should have trained you better.”

Gavin’s heart sank. When his vision cleared, he saw the room was actually an operating theater, with Feng’s cage in the bottom and high, circular walls all around. Above and out of reach, a circle of chairs ringed the room, set so anyone sitting in them could observe the events on the floor. Perhaps a dozen people in lab coats, work clothes, and formal dress occupied the chairs, including Ivana Gonta in her pink tea gown. All of them wore copper collars with buttons on them.
Among them sat Susan Phipps, flanked by Simon d’Arco and Glenda Teasdale.

“Shit,” Gavin said, and not even Alice admonished him.

“Indeed.” Phipps still wore the scarlet dress uniform and gold sash, though now she had added a matching hat with gold braid on the brim. “I’m actually disappointed in you both. You should have known it would be child’s play to connect you with the circus and follow you here. The Countess Ivana was pleased to be involved. She has a new experimental subject, and I have you.”

“You’re traitors, Susan,” Alice said. “All three of you. You don’t even see it, do you? You’re traitors to every human alive, and you live in hell.”

“You’re imprisoned in the circle,” Glenda pointed out. Her blouse was a deep yellow. “Not us.”

“Simon,” Gavin said, “you were my best friend. Help me, instead of stabbing me in the back!”

Simon looked at Gavin and swallowed. His fingers clenched and unclenched. Then he looked at Phipps, set his mouth, and straightened his black jacket without saying a word. Gavin’s heart dropped.

“What did you monsters do to Feng?” Alice demanded.

“Very important experiment,” Ivana called down. She was sitting behind a console similar to the one Gavin had seen on her bird the night before, her hand on one of the levers. “You should be proud that he has become part of Gonta heritage.”

“And Zalizniak,” put in a man sitting near her.

“How did you do anything at all?” Alice continued
in the same demanding voice. She shook her parasol angrily up at them, drawing every eye to her. Gavin slowly slid his rucksack off, his eye on the lever in Ivana’s hand. “You didn’t even have him for a full day.”

“That is Gonta-Zalizniak way,” said the man who had spoken earlier. He wore a lab coat with red-brown stains that Gavin didn’t want to think too closely about and a whirligig with spikes on its tiny feet sat on his shoulder near his copper collar. He pointed to himself. “Danilo Zalizniak. Our sister was not the only one to work on him. We all worked on him together.”

“That’s what you tell everyone,” Alice huffed theatrically. “But we know clockworkers don’t work together. They all want their own way and eventually tear each other to pieces. Quite literally, in some cases.”

For a moment, Gavin flashed on the conflicts between himself and Dr. Clef. How long before one of them tried to kill the other? Assuming Gavin survived the next few minutes.

“Ah, that is for normal clockworkers,” Danilo said. “We are not like them. We serve the family.”

And Gavin saw the pattern. “That’s what the collection is,” he said. “You don’t think of yourselves as individuals. You don’t even call yourself
I.
It’s always
we.
I’ll bet you weren’t born with the names Danilo and Ivana, either.”

Danilo grinned a demon’s grin. “You have good brain. We would like to see it.”

“He and the baroness are mine,” Phipps said. “You have the Oriental boy. As we agreed.”

“So, so.” Ivana removed her hand from the lever
and waved it negligently. “Perhaps we wish to change the terms of our agreement.”

“What do you mean?” Glenda demanded. Simon remained silent.

“Do you think that you are the only ones who know of this cure your Alice carries?” said another woman. Her voice echoed about the chamber. “It interests us very, very much. This cure is already destabilizing Europe, and we approve. We predict that within five years, all European clockworkers will be gone because cure will destroy plague. China’s machinery will continue to grow, and she will easily take all of India and Africa and possibly west coast of America before cure reaches her empire and stops creation of more dragon men. By then it will be too late. China will reign supreme.”

“No,” Phipps said flatly.

“Feng,” Alice whispered. “Can you stand up?”

The young man stared blankly, and Gavin couldn’t tell if he had understood her or not.

“Feng,” Alice whispered again, “you have to stand up. Stand up!”

Feng instantly got to his feet. The blanket fell away. He was shirtless. Corded muscle moved under ivory skin recently scored with a series of terrible scars that ran across his chest and abdomen. Tiny, neat stitches held the edges together. Gavin’s nausea returned. Hadn’t the spider on his face been enough? What else had they done?

“Like or not like, Lieutenant,” Danilo said. “It will happen. We
want
it to happen.”

“Why would you want that?” Simon burst out. His voice was hoarse with stress. “It would destroy your family. Already, Alice is spreading the cure through your city. Who will become the next generation of clockworkers?”

“Is nothing, nothing,” said an old man who sported a set of steel teeth. “We have our own supplies of plague. You are truly stupid man if you think that we Gontas and Zalizniaks could not manipulate plague when it started here, in our own city.”

“You can cure the plague?” Alice gasped. She grabbed Gavin’s hand with her bare one. “But I’d heard you couldn’t.”

“Of course we can,” said the old man. “It is our secret. And we can infect people with it, and we have ways of increasing chances that victim will become clockworker. Is why we need children.”

“Can you cure clockworkers?” Alice blurted before Gavin could ask the same question.

Ivana gave her a scornful look. “Why would we look into such things? Stupid English. Even if we wanted to destroy our clockworker family, plague changes itself when it makes clockworker and becomes quite incurable. Waste of time.”

“Enough discussion,” Phipps said. “I will take my prisoners and leave now.”

“Nah, nah,” said Ivana. “If lovely baroness fails to reach China, Chinese Emperor will rule most of world, and probably hurt Ukraine. This is bad for Gontas and Zalizniaks. Lovely baroness must reach China to spread cure more quickly and destroy Chinese Empire as well. We have agreed.”

Gavin gasped. The Gontas and Zalizniaks were on their side?

“But we still think curing China is a bad idea!” Danilo Zalizniak protested. “We think that baroness must
not
reach China. Britain’s weakness will let Ukraine expand west.”

Ivana touched a button on her collar. Danilo cried out and clutched at his own collar with both hands, his face a rictus of pain. “We believe we came to agreement,” she said mildly as Danilo rocked in his chair. “Is this not so? Speak English for benefit of our guests.”

“No!” Danilo howled. “No! We— You are wrong! You Gontas are—”

Ivana touched a button on her collar again, and Danilo screamed. Alice put a hand over her mouth. Gavin stared, both sickened and transfixed. The other clockworkers watched in complete silence, though some of them—presumably Zalizniaks—looked unhappy or angry. Phipps sat in the center of them all, clearly trying to swallow her outrage. Gavin suppressed a mean smile. For once,
she
had miscalculated, overplayed her ability to persuade clockworkers.

“Baroness must reach China,” Ivana said. Her tone was quiet and kind. “Do we agree, brother?”

“Yes,” Danilo whimpered.

“And we should give her all aid necessary. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

Another tap on Ivana’s collar, and Danilo’s face instantly relaxed. He slumped down in his chair. Glenda and Simon exchanged startled looks.

“What did we agree, brother?” Ivana asked, her finger still hovering over the copper at her throat.

“That… that the baroness should reach China,” Danilo whispered. “And we should help her.”

“Just so.” Ivana touched a different button on her collar, and Danilo arched his back with a great gasp, but this time the expression on his face read pure pleasure instead of pain. His mouth fell open, and he groaned. Ivana released her collar, and Danilo relaxed.

“There we are,” she said. “We may clean ourselves up and change into different trousers, if we desire.”

“We are grateful, sister.” Tears streamed down Danilo’s face. “Grateful.” He got up and stumbled out of the observation area.

“We are sorry you had to see that,” Ivana called down to Gavin and Alice. “This is why experiment with Oriental boy is so important. If it works, we have no more arguments.”

“Well,” Gavin said, setting his rucksack on the floor and opening the top, “if you want Alice to reach China, I suppose that means we should be on our way. If you’ll just open that gate…”

“We said baroness must reach China,” Ivana agreed. “You, on other hand, are quite different. We need advanced clockworkers. You will join Gontas.”

“Or Zalizniaks,” said the old man.

Gavin had been expecting something like this, but the actual words still chilled him. Alice, meanwhile, had her traveling tools out, the ones rolled up in black velvet embroidered with
Love, Aunt Edwina
in gold thread. Ivana manipulated her console. A pair of long metal arms extended from the ceiling. They held a copper
collar. Another pair of arms reached down with them, intending to grab Gavin and hold him.