This Monstrous Thing (5 page)

“He said he’d be pleased to have you, if I could spare you.”

“Can you? I thought you needed my help here.”

“We could manage. It would be good for you to get out of Geneva for a while.” He was watching me with the same tight scrutiny he used on mechanical limbs, but I just shrugged. Father blew out a taut sigh and pushed his spectacles back onto the top of his head. “Well, what do you want, Alasdair? We can’t seem to interest you in anything lately.”

“Bronson,” Mum said, his name a verbal step between us.

Father swiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, eyes still on me. “You’re nearly eighteen,” he said. “Time to start making a life for yourself.”

“Alasdair,” Mum said from my other side, “why don’t you want to go?”

I tossed my napkin on the table. “I just don’t,” I said, and my chair clattered against the floor as I stood. “I’m going to start packing things up for the market,” I added,
then headed for the door before either of them could protest.

Downstairs in the shop, I sat on the counter and shifted doll furniture from the back shelf into the straw-lined crates Father had prepared, and I thought about the offer from Morand. Father had seemed so keen on me taking it that I didn’t dare tell him how suffocated I felt when I imagined working at a boardinghouse in a tiny French town. I didn’t want to be a shop boy forever, not to him or to Morand. I thought of Ingolstadt again and the spot it held inside me, a spot hollowed out and smooth from running my fingers over it again and again. That stupid dream I just couldn’t let go.

But any of that—even moving twelve miles up the road to France—was hopeless so long as Oliver was locked up in the foothills. There’d be nowhere to hide him in a town as small as Ornex, and there was no chance of letting him out on his own. The rest of my life seemed firmly shackled to Geneva and my resurrected brother, too wild and rough for the world.

With the strict regulations on clockwork men and the Shadow Boys who made them, Geneva had always felt like a prison, even before Oliver kept me here. Geisler had encouraged my father to claim home in places where clockworks most needed allies—there was always more work for us there. We’d skipped from Edinburgh to Bergen when I was a child, then to Bruges, Utrecht, and
Amsterdam in such quick procession that they started to blend together. All the timbered houses and canals, and the running and the fear and the never having enough to eat. It was hard to separate them anymore—everything was just seasons and years and the ages Oliver and I had been when we’d arrived and fled.

But it was always Oliver and me, together, everywhere we went. I did remember that.

I had better memories of Paris, where Father had started pressing Oliver harder and harder to start studying mechanics, and Oliver had pushed back with just as much strength. He horrified our parents by falling in with a group of boxers and coming home past dawn with his knuckles bleeding. Started smoking like a chimney. Never once showed up to the job Father had gotten him fixing clocks.

Then he’d taken up with a dancer and told her about our work. She’d threatened to turn us in to the police unless we paid her off. Father had been ready to throttle Oliver, but our only choices seemed to be complying and hoping she died soon of consumption, or fleeing. At the same time, Geisler had been commissioned to do repairs on Geneva’s new clock tower and he suggested we join him. He’d had his eye on Oliver for years, and when he offered an apprenticeship, Father had snatched it up in yet another hopeless attempt to mold Oliver into the Shadow Boy and older son that he so badly wanted.

And so we had left Paris for Geneva, and spent an
uneventful year with Oliver and Father on the cusp of murdering each other, Oliver moaning to me about working with Geisler, and me pretending I wasn’t sick with envy over it.

Then Geisler had been arrested, and Mary Godwin had arrived, and Oliver had died, and a piece of me had died with him, and unlike Oliver, it never came back.

The bell above the shop door jingled and Father entered. I slid off the counter, because he hated it when I sat up there—mostly, I knew, because Oliver used to. With his arms crossed, he gave the packing I had done a critical inspection. “Don’t stack them too deep or the paint will chip,” he said. Then he slid his spectacles down onto his nose and took his place on the other side of the counter, and I stood across from him, crammed in a shop, in a city, in a life that was far too small.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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F
ather was up earlier than usual the next morning, mucking about in the kitchen and clattering the teakettle to rouse me. I’d been awake for a while but I stayed curled on my pallet with my head all the way under my quilt, delaying actually getting up as long as possible. Sunlight was worming its way through the stitching, but when I pressed my hand against the bare floorboards the cold snapped at me, and I retreated. Too cold to be anywhere but under blankets, and I was about to spend all day standing outside.

By the time I dressed and dragged myself into the kitchen, the tea was lukewarm, but Father was putting his coat on and I knew I didn’t have time to heat it. I choked down a cup as Mum, still in her dressing gown,
watched from the table, with her hands wrapped around a mug. “Will you come down to the market?” I asked her as I laced my boots.

She shook her head. “It’s always so crowded the first day. Next week, maybe.” She smiled at me as she took a sip of tea. “Take a walk around for me and see if you can find the best-priced marzipan.”

“There won’t be any walking around, we’ll be working,” Father snapped from the doorway. He flipped his pocket watch open and frowned. “You’ve made us late, Alasdair.”

I swooped in to kiss Mum on the cheek.

“Stay warm,” she said.

“Not likely,” I replied, and followed Father out of the flat.

We retrieved the crates from the shop and started up the road toward the Christmas market. With sunrise still blooming along the rooftops, Vieille Ville
was closed and quiet
,
but as we approached Place de l’Horloge, the city began to wake around us. Clockwork carriages chugged past, expelling clouds of steam that sparkled in the sunlight, and merchants unlocking their doors shouted to each other across the walks. Some of the shops already had their Christmas decorations up, evergreen branches and strung cranberries draped between the icicles clinging to the window boxes. Bakeries were advertising Yule log cakes, and the metal mannequins in the dressmaker’s window were wearing exaggerated hats studded with mistletoe and candles. The air smelled like pine and steam.

Place de l’Horloge had been lined with market stalls built to look like miniature chalets, each with a dusting of snow on its beams, and holly garlands threaded the walkways between them. There were already vendors setting up shop, laying out everything from meats and cheeses to fine glasswork to children’s puzzles and marionettes. A giant mechanical Christmas
pyramide
had been erected near the center, the tiered wooden platforms lined with clockwork Nativity figures that rotated slowly. It was as tall as the buildings lining the square, but it looked small in the shadow of the clock tower. The whole market looked smaller beneath it—all the Christmas nonsense was usually held in Place de la Fusterie, nearer to the lakeshore and the financial district, but it had been moved this year in honor of the renovated tower and the clock scheduled to strike on Christmas Eve.

I followed Father up one of the narrow paths between the chalets, trying to ignore his grumblings about being the last ones there, until we found our assigned stall. The wooden sign above the counter was still painted from the previous years—
FINCH AND SONS, TOY MAKERS
.

It took most of the day to lay out the toys in a manner that Father deemed acceptable. The market didn’t open until sundown, and by midafternoon he was making minuscule adjustments to the lines of windup mice and jack-in-the-boxes. I watched him as I chewed idly on
a piece of bread Mum had sent for our lunch, and I tried to ignore the smell of roasting chestnuts and gingerbread from down the row.

As twilight bled navy across the sky, clusters of candlelight began to appear around the square. The tree was lit and braziers smoldered orange against the night. Somewhere amid the stalls, a violin began to play “Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle.”

The shoppers arrived with the darkness, first in solitary groups of twos and threes, then in packs, until our time between customers shrank to nothing. A choir started singing just down the way, and I had to speak over them whenever I addressed someone. My voice went hoarse counting out change, listing prices, explaining how to wind the dancing dogs.

When I felt as though I was swallowing sand, I grabbed Father between customers. “I’m going to get a drink.”

He readjusted his gloves, their tips cut off to better handle the toys. His fingers were red and chapped. “Don’t linger.”

“I won’t. Do you want anything?”

“No,” he said, like it was a daft question, then turned back to a woman weighing a windup mouse in her hand. I took that as permission, vaulted the counter, and set off in a snaking trail through the market. I didn’t linger, but I certainly wasn’t direct about it either, and I kept a sharp eye out for marzipan.

I bought a mug of
glühwein
under the giant
pyramide
and stood at one of the tall tables while I drank it. Above the noise of the shoppers, I could hear the bells of Saint Pierre Cathedral up the hill chiming eight. It was going to be a long night. The market didn’t close until eleven, and after that we’d have to clean up. I leaned over my mug and took a deep breath, letting the cinnamon steam from the
glühwein
dampen my face.

Then, from the other side of the square, I heard shouting. It might have been just a shopper with too much to drink, but then another voice joined, and another, and then a scream rose above the chatter of the market and the bells. I raised my face from my mug and stared in the direction of the noise. It was getting louder. The choir stopped with a squawk. All around me, people were turning to look.

An engine snarled from the street, and I turned to see two policemen on steamcycles plowing down the square. People had to leap into the snowbanks between the stalls to avoid being flattened. My first thought was of the trouble Morand had mentioned the day before, and a tight coil twisted in my chest. I abandoned my
glühwein
and jogged in the same direction the policemen had gone.

A crowd had gathered at the end of one of the rows. People were jeering and shouting, and through the throng I picked out two more navy-blue-uniformed officers on
foot. They had a man on the ground, his face pushed into the snow as they handcuffed him. The policemen on steamcycles were trying to hold back the crush of people, who seemed intent on getting to the man. I joined the edge of the crowd, trying to see over people’s heads and avoid being knocked in the face. Something landed near my feet, and I looked down.

It was a windup mouse, gears in its belly exposed, head attached by a single spring.

Panic filled me suddenly, hotter than the
glühwein.
I shoved through the crowd, ignoring the shouts flung in my direction, until I could see into the center, where the two policemen were dragging my father to his feet. His nose was bleeding down the front of his coat, and patches of mud and snow clung to his hair. The lenses of his spectacles were shattered, the frames dangling off one ear. He didn’t fight as the police forced the crowd apart and dragged him toward the wagon waiting at the edge of the square, but when he looked across the mob, he saw me. His eyes widened and he shook his head, sending his glasses skittering into the snow. Someone spit on him, and it landed, thick and yellow, just above his eye.

I turned and ran.

We had a plan for this. We always had a plan for this. In every city we had ever lived in, we had mapped our escape routes, agreed where to pick up new identification
papers, where to find money for a carriage ticket and who to ask if there wasn’t any. I should go north, across the border into France, and we’d meet up in Ornex at Morand’s.

But it had never been like this before, never me alone without Mum or Father or even Oliver. We had never been found out—we always fled together before they could catch up with us. And though I knew in my bones what I was meant to do, I found myself doing something else entirely and heading to the one place I knew I shouldn’t: the flat.

I took the side streets through the financial district and into Vieille Ville
at a run
,
leaping over a pile of blacksmith’s coal and skidding on bloody snow behind the butcher’s. My lungs were burning by the time I reached our shop, but I still sprinted up the stairs and burst into the flat.

The room had been ransacked. Everything was turned over—the bureau, our trunks, drawers pulled from their places and the contents dumped on the floor. Most of the furniture had been smashed, mattresses cut open, and straw and feathers were strewn amid the wreckage like a fine snow. I took a few steps in, and a shard of my mother’s teacup crunched under my boot. “Mum?” I called softly, though it was clear she wasn’t there.

I did a quick lap around the flat, checking for any of the provisions we kept ready in case we had to bolt. The roll of bills in a kettle above the fire was gone, along with
a gold medallion Father had been given in the Scottish navy. Whoever had been here, they had taken anything that would have made running easier. I checked what was left of my things and found that my papers were missing as well. It had been bleeding stupid not taking them with me that morning, but I hadn’t thought I’d need them at the market. If the police had my name and description, it would be hard to get out of the city and into France undetected.

I slipped down the stairs and let myself into the shop, hoping for some money left in the cash box, but everything was smashed up and torn apart, same as upstairs. They had found the door to the workshop, forced it open and left it that way, like a gaping mouth stretched wide behind the counter. It bothered me almost more than the mess to see it like that, our secret so exposed, and I stood for a moment with one hand on the frame, looking down the passage.

Then, from deep in the darkness, I heard something move.

Hope flexed inside me, and I took a cautious step forward. “Mum?” I called. The shuffling movement stopped, followed by a cold silence. “Mum?” I called again, a little louder.

There was the scratch of a match, then a small flame appeared, illuminating the pale face I had seen on the omnibus the day before. Inspector Jiroux. The shadows
intensified the contours of his face as our eyes met through the darkness. “Finch!” he bellowed.

I didn’t know if it was me he was after or if he thought I was Father, but I didn’t hang around to find out. I slammed the workshop door in his face. All the mechanisms that kept it from being opened from the inside had been gutted, but it would at least slow him down.

I scrambled out from behind the counter, stumbling on the ruins of windup toys that decorated the floor like spiked carpet, and burst out of the shop. The night air was sharp against my burning face as I turned down the first alley I came to and plunged deeper into the old town, not caring where I ran so long as I got away. The city here was a labyrinth, steep, decrepit passages without clockwork carriages or industrial torches. The moon was blotted out by icy laundry strung between windows, and most of the snow had been trampled into slick gray mud.

I sprinted past a rowdy pub where Oliver had once been arrested for brawling. Some men in the doorway shouted drunken nonsense at me, and one threw a glass of ale. I felt the spray on the back of my neck, but I didn’t stop. As I reached the end of the street, I heard them shout again, this time with screechy catcalls. Was Jiroux still following me? I sped up, though my legs ached.

Two streets farther, I turned down a dead end. I whipped around to go back the way I had come, but a
silhouetted figure appeared at the mouth of the alley, blocking my path. I snatched up the nearest weapon I could find—a cheap coal shovel with all the weight of a sheet of paper—and held it before me like a sword, bracing for a fight I knew I’d lose.

But it wasn’t a policeman. It was a girl.

A young woman, I realized as she stepped into a chasm of moonlight, though it was only her long, plaited hair that made her look it. She was whip thin, her body a shapeless board like a boy’s, and she was dressed in rough trousers and a heavy gray workman’s coat, unbuttoned and lashed at the waist as though she had thrown on her father’s coat from beside the door as she rushed out.

I lowered the shovel. Perhaps she hadn’t been chasing me at all. It seemed more likely she had come out of one of the houses to see what the commotion was.

Then she called, “Alasdair Finch.”

The shovel shot back up. “What do you want?” I said, and in my panic, the words fell out in English.
She took another step toward me, and I shouted, “Stay back!” and whipped the shovel around a few times for good measure.

She raised her hands, palms forward. “Consider me threatened.” She spoke English too, but with swallowed Parisian vowels that didn’t match her tattered clothes.

“Are you with the police?” Even as I asked it, the question felt stupid. I could tell she wasn’t just by looking at her.

She took another step forward, icy snow crunching under her boots. “I’ve come from Geisler.”