Timepiece (18 page)

It was the only mistake she ever knew him to make, however. Seward otherwise handled his criminal enterprises with a deft and golden touch. He founded one group after another that reported to him, but could run itself with only the most occasional moments of his direct involvement. Moreover, very few of his people knew anything of the activities of groups not their own. Seward was too canny to allow
his
empire to run on the sort of clockwork that could be brought down with one well-placed pebble, and the more grains of sand there were, the less likely any one of them could do real damage if arrested and questioned. Even if someone someday caught up to Seward himself and the protection of his name was insufficient, the organization could continue without him.

The first person who did catch up to Seward himself was Gavin Trevelyan—and that working from very few clues indeed; the man was really too clever for his own good, and it did underscore that Seward was the weak point in the defensive bulwarks. Fortunately, the weakness did no damage in this particular circumstance, for Trevelyan wanted only to join forces.

It quickly became clear that Trevelyan was not content with acting like a grain of sand. If Seward was a beam of sunlight, then the Welshman was lightning in a bottle—sharp-edged, erratic, banishing shadows from corners with a ferocity that stung the eye. He wanted the constructs crushed and battered at his feet, and he claimed he could create a weapon capable of doing just that. All he needed was time and money, and Seward gave him both.

The daytime world was still layered in fog and smoke, and the nighttime world still starless, but these facts bothered Katarina less than they ever had before. Trevelyan would craft a pebble to throw into the works, and the whole constructed monstrosity would crash to its knees, and once that was done and something better built in its place, she would determine what she actually wanted from life. Sometimes she thought that might be Trevelyan—though in the clear light of day she knew perfectly well he was as out of her reach as the hidden stars, and each time she caught herself thinking nonsense, scrubbed her face with cold water and resolved again not to be a fool. Other times, she wondered whether La Scala were similarly unattainable. It might well be, but then again—maybe the smoke had not irretrievably ruined her throat, maybe twenty-five was not too late to start proper training, maybe Seward knew people...Most of the time, however, Katarina did not dwell upon the future. It was as hidden as the London sky, and it no longer mattered so very much. She was doing something
now
, and eventually they would cease merely holding the line and do something better.

London, August 27, 1885

“Max?” Even as she called, Katarina was pulling the door shut and bolting it, eyes turned to strain down the dim hall, fingers flying unseeing and unerring to snap the latches in place. “Max!”

There was no answer save a few erratic thumps from the direction of Trevelyan’s laboratory. Katarina ran toward it, Elizabeth at her heels. The humming corridor was layered in gray shadows, but not nearly as mysterious or treacherous as it had been before sunrise. “Max!”

“He’s not here,” Trevelyan said without turning his head toward the propped-open door. The Welshman knelt in the center of the room beside the thing that was neither a cannon nor a musket, and the shining silver of the weapon twisted his reflection into something narrow and drawn.

William stood behind him, again—or still—leafing through the drawings on the worktable. He
had
turned in response to Katarina’s voice, and his entire body slumped with relief when Elizabeth appeared in the doorway behind her. “Thank God,” he said.

 
Katarina skidded to a stop. “Where is he?”

 “Out looking for you and Miss Elizabeth.” Trevelyan still didn’t look up as he shot out an arm, clamped his fingers down hard, then reached with a spanner in the other hand to more tightly secure a bit of metal. “And if I were you, I’d be hoping he didn’t succeed. He wasn’t best pleased to return and find you gone.”

“Damn!” Katarina struck her hands together in frustration.

This time Trevelyan gave her one swift striking moment of his attention. “What’s wrong?”

“A child taken to Murchinson’s,” Katarina said. “The daughter of a friend. I need Max to—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, woman, and here I thought we had another problem.” Trevelyan reached for another part of the cannon.

“You
thought
we had another problem?” Katarina repeated. “This
is
another problem.”

“If it doesn’t delay the rain, break the machine, or put our patron in prison, it doesn’t signify.”

“You really don’t qualify as human sometimes.” Katarina started to pace. “He didn’t tell you when he was likely to return? I can’t go and get the child myself, for obvious reasons, and we’ve got to retrieve her before sunset, for we may not be hereabouts tomorrow—”

Trevelyan stopped his work again—right-hand fingers holding a metal piece precisely positioned, left hand grasping a motionless spanner, gray eyes fixing on Katarina’s dark ones. “You’re joking, surely.”

Katarina stared at him. “I very much am not.”

“Right, and here I thought the children from the past were top on the list of things we don’t have time for. Seems I was wrong. The
top
thing we do not have time for is haring off after—”

“A
person
,” Katarina said. “A person in this city, this beleaguered city we’re trying to—”

“—trying to save,” Trevelyan said. “We’re trying to save them all. If we can get my rifle working tonight, we’ve a chance, a real one. We haven’t time for anything that distracts from that object. If you could for
once
keep your mind on the larger picture, we might actually be able to—”

“Oh, damn you and your larger picture to bloody hell!” Katarina’s voice held a trace of the guttersnipe again, a thin, ugly sound. She drew a breath as if to say more—then stopped, rubbed both her hands over face, pushed the breath out hard through her teeth, and turned to face William.

“We got off on the wrong foot earlier,” she said, once more in the low, melodic, carefully correct accent. “I was...discourteous because my pride was hurt, and I am sorry. I truly am—and I hope you can forgive me, because there is a child in danger, and I would—I need to—It would be terrible if you were to refuse your aid because it was I who asked it.”

Everyone else in the room stared at her. “My...aid?” William said.

“I can’t get the girl out of Murchinson’s any more than her mother can. It’s obvious what I am, and I haven’t any better clothes. I need someone with the look and manners and speech of a gentleman. Please.”

 “You didn’t want to take him with you earlier because his clothing would attract attention,” Trevelyan pointed out acidly.

“The stakes were different then.”

“No, they weren’t. The stakes are precisely the same now as they were a few hours ago.”

William looked from one of them to the other. “Might Mr. Maxwell have a coat more the current fashion?”

“He might,” Katarina said, “and even if he doesn’t, it’s worth the gamble. Come upstairs with me and we’ll see what Max has left behind, and I’ll explain what you need to—”

“No,”
Trevelyan said, getting to his feet. “You have no right to endanger what I’m trying to do here for the sake of one brat from Spitalfields.”

Katarina whirled on him, dark eyes blazing. “Oh, of course not, because we all know one person can’t possibly affect the larger picture. Not unless he’s a lord or a general or a time-traveler. A girl from Spitalfields couldn’t possibly change anything, couldn’t possibly put out a hand and change
everything
.” Trevelyan rolled his eyes and turned to get another metal piece from the worktable to his right. And
that,
Elizabeth thought, that unhurried movement, too casual to even bother being contemptuous, was why Katarina took another step toward him and why her voice dropped into a hiss like crackling flames. “A Spitalfields child could never change anything,” she repeated, “any more than a bastard from Devon or a nobody London University student. Or a Welsh farmer’s daughter—”

Trevelyan slammed the spanner into the worktable so hard the wood cracked underneath it and the air seemed to crack around it. He looked up, his face full for one instant of the anger Katarina had been trying to provoke from him. Then it smoothed over as though it had turned to ice, and the crack spread through the iced-over air between them. Katarina never flinched, but Elizabeth could not breathe.

“At the moment,” Trevelyan said without raising his voice, “you are distracting the one person who can change the world today from doing the thing that can change it.” He picked up the spanner with a jerk, as though it were a blade and he were yanking it free of the wood, but his eyes never wavered from hers and his voice stayed calm. “Go and waste your time however you like, but do it somewhere else.”

Mr. Maxwell had in fact left an overcoat behind, but it was sufficiently broad in the shoulders to look dubious rather than fashionable on William’s trim frame. More to the point, Maxwell had left it behind because the city air was sweltering like a blacksmith’s forge; Elizabeth pondered whether an ill-fitting and unseasonable ensemble would not attract more attention than William’s smart but seven-decades-out-of-date blue coat. She looked to see what Katarina thought, and realized that although Katarina was gazing at William, lips pursed, her unfocused eyes were studying something other than the young man before her.

After a moment, Katarina blinked, seemed to realize that both Elizabeth and William were waiting for her to speak, and reached out as though to briskly adjust the collar of William’s borrowed overcoat. But a tremor ran through her fingers as she touched the cloth. “That’s the worst thing I could have possibly said,” she commented, almost steadily. “In fact, I can’t believe I actually...” She drew her other hand over her eyes, then dropped it with what looked like an attempt to smile. “I suppose I may claim as excuse that I haven’t slept since—I think it was Tuesday.”

William met her eyes. “Why the worst?” he asked. Quite gently, as though he genuinely wanted to know.

“No one,” Katarina said with another strained smile, “talks to Trevelyan about his wife.”

“His
wife
?” Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from blurting it out. She was surprised by the sense of betrayal that flooded her. Being a fallen woman was all very well, still retained a tinge of romance even after the squalor of the painted girls, but to do something as sordid as stealing a man from his wife was unworthy of the Katarina she thought she was coming to know. “He’s
married?”

“He was married.” Katarina thought about it for half a second, then amended, “No, you had the way of it the first time, he
is
married. She’s dead, but he’s still married. He wears her ring on a chain around his neck, and he might as well wear it on his finger.”

 “ ‘No one hates the constructs or the men who created them more than he does,’ ” Elizabeth quoted slowly, trying to put it together. “That’s why, then? Was she killed by constructs—and that’s why he hates the men who made them, that’s why he’s devoted his life to finding a way to bring them down?”

Katarina looked at her for a moment as though trying to decide whether to say something, even went so far as to purse her lips briefly. But in the end she only said, “Not quite, but close enough,” and turned back toward William. “I think we’ll wrap you in Maxwell’s coat for the journey, and then find an alleyway where you can shrug it off and leave it with me, near the factory. If the coat fit you better, then I’d say—But as it is, it’ll do nothing but attract attention. If you just wear your own clothes, you have a chance at pretending to be an Oxford dandy. I’m told there’s a romantic fashion for old-styled clothing this year, and although I don’t think it quite extends to this level of detail, we may hope that the matrons at Murchinson’s don’t know one way or the other. There are some tricks of speech and slang terms I can teach you, and we will drill them as we walk, all right?”

“Who am I to be?” Elizabeth asked. “His sister? I should go and see if my gown has dried.”

Katarina snapped startled eyes to her. “No, you’ll do no such thing. We might just get away with claiming William’s clothes to be Oxford dandy fashion, but your gown is simply seventy years wrong, nothing to be done about it.”

“I’ll just stay hidden with you, then?”

There was a pause. “No,” Katarina said, “you’ll stay here, Miss Elizabeth. I can’t take the risk of bringing both of you.”

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth protested, “no, wait. You can’t show me all that’s out there and then not let me
help
.”

“The way you can help right now is by staying safe here,” Katarina said.

“No,” Elizabeth said, “no, you can’t do that to me, you can’t shut me up again like—like nothing this morning happened, like I’m just a—
William—”
She turned to him. “You don’t know what it’s like. I can’t know it’s there and not try to do something about it.”

“There isn’t anything you can do,” Katarina told her. “Nothing useful, at least. All you’ll accomplish if you come along is increase the risk we’ll be spotted. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You need to stay here.”

“You cannot lock me up here! You can’t give me a taste of what it’s like to mend things and then not let me try, you can’t
do
that to—”

“This isn’t about you!” Katarina snapped. “This isn’t a bloody game, Elizabeth. There’s a child’s life at stake—a real child, so I’ll thank you to stop acting like one yourself. There will be things you can do, but this isn’t one of them, and that’s the end of it. You’re staying here and William and I are going.”