The Clocktaur War Duology - Clockwork Boys E-Book

T. Kingfisher

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 353

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In the first book of this touching and darkly comic duology, a paladin, a forger, an assassin and a scholar ride out of town on an espionage mission with deadly serious stakes. When forger Slate is convicted of treason, she faces a death sentence. But her unique gift for sniffing out magic (literally) earns her a reprieve—of sorts. Along with a formerly demon-possessed paladin named Caliban, her murderous ex-lover, and an irritating sexist scholar, Slate sets off on a mission to learn about the Clockwork Boys, deadly mechanical soldiers from a neighboring kingdom who have been terrorising their lands. If they succeed, rewards and pardons await, but they must survive a long journey through enemy territory to reach Anuket City. And Slate has her own reasons to dread returning to her former home. Slate and her crew aren't the first to be sent on this mission. None of their predecessors have returned, and Slate can't help but feel they've exchanged one death sentence for another. Her increasing closeness to Caliban isn't helping matters: for the first time in a long while, Slate might actually care about surviving.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by T. Kingfisher and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

“The Single Most Embarrassing Acknowledgement Section I Have Ever Written”

About the Author

CLOCKWORK BOYS

ALSO BY T. KINGFISHERAND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

The Twisted Ones

The Hollow Places

Nettle & Bone

A House with Good Bones

Thornhedge

A Sorceress Comes to Call

THE SWORN SOLDIER SERIES

What Moves the Dead

What Feasts at Night

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Clockwork Boys

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781835413647

Paperback edition: 9781835413654

Broken Binding edition ISBN: 9781835414378

Dryad edition ISBN: 9781835414552

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835413661

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: March 2025

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© T. Kingfisher 2017

T. Kingfisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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CHAPTER 1

THERE ARE A NUMBER OF SMELLS one expects to encounter in a dungeon. Fresh rosemary generally isn’t one of them.

Slate grimaced and blotted her nose on her sleeve. It wasn’t that the herbal scent wasn’t a vast improvement—the ancient stone keep had been meant to hold prisoners in, not let odors out. The entire lower level stank of centuries of unwashed bodies, tallow candles, and despair.

The problem was that there was no earthly reason for the rosemary to be there. She knew already that there were no guards with a fondness for scented aftershaves, no potted herbs on the warder’s desk, and if she asked anyone else, they’d stare at her like she was crazy. The rosemary was all in her head.

Slate sighed.

It happened occasionally. Sometimes it meant “danger!” and sometimes it meant “here, look more closely, this is important!” As near as she could tell, the scent of rosemary flooded her nostrils when it was very important that she pay attention to…something.

Her grandmother had been a minor wonderworker. Slate figured the rosemary warning was probably inherited, and that she’d gotten the short end of the family stick.

Still, of all the magical odors one could be afflicted with, it could have been a lot worse. Goat. Skunk. Old cheese.

The rosemary hit her again, a direct blast, as if the crushed leaves were directly under her nostrils. Slate put a hand over her nose and wrinkled her eyes shut.

Fine, fine, you’ve got my attention…

“Sorry,” said the warder, “smells pretty rank down here. You get used to it. I hardly smell it myself.”

Slate nodded. It had been pretty thick before the rosemary choked her, although she’d smelled worse.

“Who’s left?” she asked, dropping her hand.

“Six in for assault, three murderers.”

“Lovely. All right, let’s see the ones up for assault.”

The warder opened a door and went inside. She heard shouting and muffled grumblings while he prodded the prisoners up to the bars. Slate tried to clear her head, got another whiff of rosemary, and pinched the bridge of her nose to steady herself.

Okay, okay, I know it’s important! I realize my life’s on the line here! Back off!

The phantom herb didn’t pay attention, but then, it never did. Slate turned in place, trying to get a better fix on it.

She was grateful that this sort of thing didn’t generally happen more than once or twice a year. It was always dreadfully annoying when it did, as if she were some kind of botanical bloodhound, following a scent that wasn’t really there.

It was hard to get a fix on any particular direction without wandering around with her nose in the air. She’d learned not to do that. People tended to look at you funny.

She sighed again. Maybe she’d be lucky, and it’d be one of the murderers. Then she could take him and get out of here, without any complications.

Beyond the current complications, which are already complicated enough, thank you.

“They’re ready, ma’am,” said the warder, leaning past the heavy wooden door.

Slate stepped over the threshold and into the hallway leading past the cells. Someone put his hands through the bars, then jerked them back when the warder made a move in his direction. Another prisoner laughed at him.

The men behind the bars were a sorry lot. The prison was progressive as such things went—they changed the straw regularly and gave everyone meals and fresh water—but there wasn’t much anyone could do about the lice or the smell or the despair.

Slate swept her eyes over the half-dozen men, frowning.

None of them were anything she’d want to take back to her partner. Most of them had the dull, sullen look of men who had fallen into violence for lack of any other option.

There was one near the end who had shoulders like an ox. He didn’t look very bright, but maybe he’d be good at hitting things.

At this point, that may be the best you can hope for. Who knew prison scum were so…unpromising?

The smart ones had talked or bought their way out, the truly dangerous ones had been hanged already—what was left were the dregs. She couldn’t see trusting any of these men, even on a suicide mission.

And none of them smelled of rosemary.

Women were rare enough down here that some of the prisoners watched her avidly, crowding against the bars, even as nondescript a little thing as she was. She tried hard to be nondescript; it was one of her great assets. Short, drab, brown hair, brown skin, eyes of no particular color set in a face of no particular beauty—these were tools as useful in their way as grappling hooks and forger’s pens.

Still, even a nondescript woman was more than they usually saw in the dungeons. There were one or two catcalls and much grabbing of crotches, but no scent of rosemary.

The warder made as if to stop the men’s behavior, but something—probably Slate’s total indifference—dissuaded him. “Ma’am?”

“No,” she said. “None of these will do, I don’t think.” She sighed, glanced over the big one—I suppose if there’s no one else, he’ll have to do—then grimaced again. “I suppose we’d better look at the murderers, god help us all.”

“Are you sure? One of ‘em’s in for arson too, and he’s a bad one.”

She touched the courier pouch slung at her waist, with its papers. “I’m given my pick of the prisons, by the Dowager’s orders.”

And it’s only by her grace—and this mad notion of hers—that I’m not in a cell myself. I don’t think you know that. I don’t think you need to know that.

“I know, but…”

The warder, Slate suspected, was a decent man, and would obey orders without question, but his sensibilities were deeply offended by the notion of a woman coming in and possibly releasing a murderer. Slate wasn’t exactly keen on the idea herself. She didn’t mind traveling with murderers—she’d slit a throat or two in her time, and Brenner’s entire career was founded on other people’s corpses—but arsonists were something else again, and did not make for comfortable traveling companions.

Then again, the gods knew, she and Brenner couldn’t undertake this mad venture entirely on their own.

She patted the warder absently on the shoulder. “I don’t much like it either, but orders are orders. Let’s see them.”

The warder sighed and went to go roust the murderers.

It wasn’t impossible that there was something in the keep itself that was setting off Slate’s rosemary sense. People said that the Dowager’s keep was built on the ruins of an older building. People said that there were rooms no one had opened in a thousand years, filled with old wonders from civilizations dead and gone.

People said a lot of stupid things.

Slate had, in her line of work, fenced several objects supposedly from that distant past. At least two had been fakes, but an artificer she trusted had sworn that one was real. None of them had smelled of rosemary and none of them had done anything particularly magical. She’d forged the certificates of authenticity and sent it on its way and that was that.

The warder opened the door and beckoned her down to the line of murderers.

Perhaps fortunately, none of them smelt of rosemary either. Two were vague, silent creatures, and the third was a ratty young man whose eyes moved over her body like insect feet. She met his gaze and he looked away immediately, then back at her, then at the warder. No question which one was in here for starting lethal fires.

Definitely not. This one was a mad dog—he wouldn’t fear her, and fear of Brenner’s knives wouldn’t hold him for long. They’d have to kill him within hours, and what good would that do anybody?

I don’t mind if he kills me, but I’d as soon skip the preliminaries…

“No.” Slate left the cell block and went back out into the main room. The rosemary had to be coming from somewhere. One of the wardens? God, how will I explain that?

The rosemary flooded her nostrils again.

Slate glanced at the door. The warder was still inside, settling the prisoners, and couldn’t see her doing anything…odd.

She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and sniffed.

By turning her head and taking several blind steps, she got a brief sense of direction from the smell. Assuming she wasn’t deluding herself, it seemed stronger from one side of the room. She navigated that way with eyes closed, took a step, then another—definitely getting stronger—took a third step and banged her thigh on the warden’s corner desk.

“Bugger!” She glanced around, rubbing her leg, didn’t see the warden, and went back to sniffing. Ah—almost—no—there!

“Ma’am?” said the warden, behind her.

The elusive rosemary fled. Slate opened her eyes, and found her nose inches from another door.

“Who’s behind here?”

“Oh,” said the warden. “Oh—ma’am, you don’t want that one. He’s bad. I mean, they’re all bad, but he’s—you really don’t want that one.”

“Unfortunately, I think I might,” she said with a sigh. “Open the door, please.”

The warder gave her a long look, but the Dowager’s orders were stronger than his sense of propriety. He fumbled a key out of his key ring and opened the door.

The walkway was shorter than the one through the murderer’s row, the cells smaller. All of them were empty. Slate stepped into the hall, feeling the flagstones cold and slippery underfoot.

She walked to the end, to the single occupied cell, and turned to look at the prisoner.

Rosemary hit her so strongly that she nearly choked. Slate had to throw her sleeve across her suddenly dripping nose. If it had smelled like crushed leaves before, now it was as if someone had poured purest rosemary oil directly into her nasal passages.

She choked on a sneeze. Bad things happened in the back of her throat.

Fine. Fine. I get it.

It was a very small cell with no windows.

The prisoner was a tall, dark-haired man with a shaggy growth of beard. His age was indeterminate, but she wouldn’t put him over forty, probably less. The beard didn’t help, and he was far back in the shadows.

He was sitting with his back against the wall, watching her with unreadable eyes.

Slate tried to say, “Excuse me,” snuffled, and sneezed twice.

An eyebrow went up, but he didn’t say anything.

I suppose “Bless you,” is a little much to ask under the circumstances.

“Are you—damn—urrrggghhkk—” Her tongue pressed itself to the roof of her mouth as rosemary stormed the castle of her sinuses. There were no survivors.

She sneezed until she could sneeze no more. Her eyelids ached. She put her hands over her face.

“I’d offer you a handkerchief, but I’m fresh out,” the prisoner said. He had a dry, abrasive voice. “I’m sorry if the smell offends you.”

“It’s not—” she waved a hand, still scrubbing at her traitorous nose and watering eyes. “It’s—snorgggk—allergies. Sorry.”

The other eyebrow went up, whether at the allergies or the apology. Slate wondered if it mattered which one. He didn’t say anything.

She got herself under control, sniffled a few times, and put one hand on the bars. “What are you in for?”

The prisoner looked away contemptuously.

“He killed eight nuns and two guards,” said the warden behind her. She could hear the glower without turning around.

“In fairness,” said the prisoner, holding up a finger, “it was three nuns and five novices. And I was possessed at the time.”

“Possessed?” she repeated, barely registering the word. He looked intelligent enough, at least compared to the alternatives, and the odds of their success hinging on his ability to, say, do long division in his head seemed unlikely. I’ve got that bit covered anyway. There was muscle enough on his frame for her purposes, but there was a slight hunch to his shoulders that worried her.

She moved suddenly, experimentally, and he flinched. Only a fraction, barely noticeable, but she’d been watching for it.

He’s not broken, but he’s got something. Shock, maybe. Definitely damaged goods. Could just be from being locked in here for a while, though. Hmm.

Still, I’m only asking him to die, not reintegrate with society, so maybe that won’t matter. I suppose being possessed could be problematic.

Unless it helps.

The rosemary smacked her again. She turned away from the cell, groping for a handkerchief that, at this point, provided only emotional support.

“Snerrrghghk…”

“Generally, the gawkers actually know who they’re looking at,” the prisoner said. “If the temple is sending women to minister to me in my hour of need, they might consider screening them better.”

The warden grunted. Slate flapped a hand at the prisoner irritably, face buried in the damp handkerchief.

Eight nuns and novices and two guards. Would you do that if the bars weren’t there?

Oh, probably.

“Wait—” she said, as it finally dawned on her. Possibly the sneezing had knocked some stray memory loose. “Possessed? Eight nuns?” She turned to look at the warder, who nodded glumly. “Lord Caliban?”

It had been a nine-day wonder through the capitol—the madness of Lord Caliban, the Dreaming God’s knight-champion, paladin and demonslayer, who had been taken by a demon himself and run mad, killing half the priestesses in his god’s temple in one single bloody morning.

She stared at him.

He inclined his head. “Sir Caliban, actually. They stripped me of my title, although they were forced to leave me the knighthood. At your service, I’m sure.”

“I thought they’d hung you!”

This was perhaps not the most tactful thing that Slate had ever said. Judging by the angle of his eyebrows, it was not the most tactful thing he’d ever heard, either.

He rose to his feet. He moved well enough, for a tall man in a box barely six paces wide. He lacked Brenner’s dangerous grace, but knights were in a different line of work than assassins, at least technically.

Same line of work, different approach, I suppose.

“Indeed,” said Sir Caliban. “It was judged that since I was possessed, I was not exactly responsible for my actions, and so I was given…mercy.” He sketched the lines of the small cell with one hand.

“Did they exorcise your demon?”

“The demon is dead.”

“But if you were possessed, why did they lock you up at all?”

He exhaled, a sound a little short of a sigh but rather longer than a snort. “Must I go into it?”

“Do you have anything else to do today?”

“Fair enough.” He gave her a small, mocking salute, perhaps in acknowledgement. “Well. Questions of guilt have always been difficult with demons. It was determined that a soul such as mine must have been guilty of…something…to allow the demon entrance. And so…” Again, that quick sketching gesture, marking the boundaries of a severely limited world.

“Were you guilty?”

His eyes glittered, but he didn’t say anything. Slate hadn’t really expected an answer.

She leaned against the bars, moving more slowly. The warder started to say something, and she waved him off.

Moving equally slowly, like a strange cat meeting another in an alley, Caliban approached the bars.

“You’re not from the temple. For a gawker, you’re singularly ill-informed. And you’re standing much too close to the bars for anyone with sense.”

If he expected her to recoil in horror, he was disappointed. He stopped a foot or two away. Slate was fairly sure that he could get an arm through the bars and around her throat if he chose, and equally sure that she could get out of the way if he tried, as long as the warden didn’t do anything stupid, like rush to her defense.

She wondered briefly if she’d even try to get out of the way. It seemed a matter of academic interest only.

He’d have to make it a quick death, he’ll hardly have time for a long one…

Her hands were wrapped around two of the iron bars. He looked down and very deliberately gripped the bars to either side.

Her fingers were small and scarred and nimble, darkened with ink and spattered with the pale marks of engraver’s acid. Her fingernails were somewhat chewed—a vile habit, but she didn’t expect to live with it much longer.

His hands were much larger but also scarred, old cuts forming a raised and random pattern across the backs. The sleeves of the prisoner’s tunic were too short for him, and when she followed his wrists upward, she could see the thick band of muscle across each forearm.

Swordsman, then. God’s teeth and toenails, I believe it actually is Lord Caliban.

She could smell unwashed flesh and old straw and rankness, but over that, pungently, hung the scent of rosemary.

Great. I’m paying attention. Now what? Do I offer him the job, or am I supposed to stay as far away from him as possible?

As usual, her erratic gift offered no advice.

She squared her shoulders and met the man’s eyes. They were dark and brown and held hers. One eyebrow had an ironic tilt, but behind his eyes, Slate could smell despair.

There were a great many things she had prepared to say—vague explanations, stripped of any facts that could be dangerous, mentions of the Dowager’s name, promises of amnesty in the unlikely event any of them survived. She considered them all and rejected them one by one.

“Would you like to go on a suicide mission?” she asked instead.

He smiled. It was the first genuine smile she’d seen all day.

“I would be honored,” he said.

CHAPTER 2

THE WARDEN WAS NOT THRILLED by the notion of letting a mass murderer go, particularly not a famous one. Slate wasn’t sure if he was making money by taking visitors to gawk at the prisoner, or if he actually expected Sir Caliban to fall on her like a starving wolf the minute he was out of the cell.

He hadn’t looked much like a wolf when the warden had herded her back to the guard room. The way he’d looked down the hallway after them, face schooled to immobility, had reminded her more of a dog lost and wondering where its home had gone.

Let’s not get sappy. Your puppy made chew toys out of ten people.

“I don’t like this, missy,” said the warden. He leaned forward in his chair, his fingers splayed over her documents.

Slate wondered if going from “ma’am” to “missy” was a bad sign. Probably. “Look, I have signed orders from the Dowager allowing me take any of the prisoners that I feel will be useful. I have the authority to do this.”

Please, god, I hope I have the authority to do this.

The Dowager Queen’s exact words had been, “Take anyone from the prisons you feel will be useful. They may have a pardon, in the event any of them survive.” And then she’d gestured with a hand covered in rings, and Slate had been hustled out of the audience chamber, feeling like a mule had kicked her in the gut.

Clear enough. Slate had a feeling that “anyone” probably hadn’t included Sir Caliban. Perhaps the Dowager had forgotten he was down here.

Still, the rosemary had been unmistakable.

Unless it was trying to warn me of danger, and he really is going to kill me as soon as he gets out of the cell.

Oh well, now or later, it’s all the same, I suppose…

“Find him some clothes,” said Slate, after the warden had puzzled over her papers long enough. “I’m in a hurry.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some nice murderers instead?” he asked plaintively.

“Quite sure, thanks.”

“We’ve got some likely lads being transferred in for robbery next shift—”

“Just the knight.”

“That one—ma’am—you gotta understand, he’s bad crazy. Demon crazy. It’s not just like he hit somebody a little too hard on accident—he carved up those women like chickens. And he says things at night that aren’t canny.”

Back to ma’am again. I must be winning.

“Then you’ll be glad not to have to listen to him any more.” Slate reached over and plucked her papers off the table.

I suppose we’ll have to get him a sword.

Well, that’s a quick death, too, if he’s any good.

The warden gave her a last look of entreaty. “Ma’am—”

“The Dowager is not to be kept waiting,” she snapped, and turned her back on him.

I am too old for this. Thirty is much too old to be rousting around prisons any more. If I weren’t going to die, I’d think seriously about retiring.

She heard the chair scrape back against the stone, and the sound of grumbling. A door opened, and closed. Slate exhaled.

Now let’s hope he’s getting clothes and not the Captain of the Guard.

The Captain would back her up. Probably. He’d been pleasant enough to her before, if not to Brenner.

The warden’s spare keys were on his desk. Slate put out a hand, thought better of it, and then picked them up anyway. She pushed the door open and walked down the hallway.

Caliban was still standing by the bars. He did not look surprised to see her—it had only been five minutes, after all, and he could undoubtedly hear the arguing from the guard room—but his eyebrows shot up when he saw the keys.

Slate bit her lip, looked at him, had second thoughts and shot them down. She slid the key into the lock.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked. His voice was still light and dry, not as deep as she’d expect from a man his size.

“Nope.” She turned the key, hearing the clunk, and pulled it out again.

They both looked at the cell door for a moment.

What—does he need me to invite him over the threshold like an unquiet ghost? Should I back up? Is he afraid I’ll bite?

He reached out a hand and pushed the door, very lightly. It swung open with a long creak of metal that hung in the air like a crow’s caw.

Slate had made peace with her god several times over in the last few days, but she commended her soul to heaven again just in case.

A tremor went through Caliban, barely there, but Slate’s eye for detail was finer than most. She looked away, because unlike Brenner, she had never liked the sight of pain.

Caliban took several steps, and then a final one over the threshold. He swallowed, and seemed briefly at a loss for something to say.

Slate nodded at nothing in particular. It had been four or five months since Lord Caliban had enjoyed his notoriety as a murderer through the capitol. She didn’t know how long trials for this sort of thing took, but he must have spent at least a season in that cell.

“Well,” he said, rubbing his palms down his thighs. “I suppose I should ask what you want of me, madam.”

“You should probably have asked that first,” said Slate. I wonder where “madam” rates compared to “ma’am” and “missy.” Hmm. “But there’s little enough I can tell you before certain—assurances.”

He raised his eyes from the floor to her face. “Will you require me to swear an oath, then?”

“An oath!” It startled a laugh out of her. God, he really is a knight. Brenner will have a litter of kittens.

“I am told that the oath of a killer of nuns and novices isn’t worth much,” he said, eyes hooded.

“Nobody’s oath is worth much,” Slate said. “It’s nothing personal.” She waved a hand. “Anyway it’s a suicide mission. You—and I, and a…coupla other people…will be going somewhere, and doing…err…something. Which is probably impossible, and we’ll likely all die.”

He gazed at her levelly. She had no idea what he was thinking.

She wracked her brain for some detail she could give, something he could mull over, without giving enough information to be dangerous if he turned her down and gossiped to one of the wardens. “We’re going to Anuket City,” she said finally. That seemed innocuous enough—there were plenty of opportunities to do something suicidal on the way to the city-state of Anuket City, let alone once you actually arrived. And the fact that the Dowager’s kingdom was at war with them was about as far from a state secret as one could get.

“Ah.” Caliban leaned against the stone wall at the end of the hallway.

Slate stared at her feet and wiggled her toes. Caliban’s feet were bare. She hoped the warden would bring sandals.

It was stupid, this staring at her feet. There was a murderer an armslength away.

Strangling wasn’t as quick a death as she’d like, but it still only took a few minutes. I’ll probably thrash rather embarrassingly. Still, could be worse. I do hope he doesn’t try to bludgeon me to death.

“The Dowager knows something about the Clockwork Boys,” said Caliban.

Sonofabitch…

Slate threw her hands in the air, turning away. “God’s teeth! Why do we even bother with secrecy, if men in goddamn solitary confinement can figure that out!?”

Damn. I should have kept my mouth shut. I forgot he was a knight—he might even have encountered the Clockwork Boys at somepoint. I suppose it doesn’t take a genius to put “Anuket City” and “Dowager” and “suicide” all together.

“Answer the question,” he said, directly behind her.

“You didn’t ask one,” she snapped, turning around.

He was closer than she’d expected. He loomed quite effectively in the narrow corridor, particularly since he had nearly a foot of height on her. He reached out and caught her arm in his scarred fingers.

She considered flinching and didn’t. A snapped neck would probably be the best to hope for, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. I wonder if he takes requests?

“She knows something,” the former knight said again. “Doesn’t she?”

“Not nearly enough,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Not how they’re made, or where they come from. That’s half our job. The other half is to try and stop them.”

“That is a suicide mission,” he said.

“Mmm, quite.” She dropped her gaze to his hand. His skin was very white against hers. Probably he had always been pale, but months of captivity had turned his skin the color of wax.

He was holding her wrist. Why did men always grab your wrist? There were any number of ways to break that grip, of course, but it was mildly infuriating nonetheless.

He released her, looking oddly embarrassed. Was he trying to scare me? Poor man. “Did you think I was exaggerating?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Assuming you live through it, there’s a full pardon offered. I don’t know if that would include reinstating your title or not.”

“We won’t live through it.”

“No, I shouldn’t expect we will.”

“Even getting to Anuket City right now is a fool’s errand.”

“Good thing we’re fools, huh?”

“And what—” he began, but the door at the end of the hall banged open, and the warden gasped.

“You shouldn’t have let him out, ma’am!” He hurried down the hall and shouldered past Slate to stand between them, bristling like a paunchy bulldog.

“Why not? You were going to.” Slate reached out and plucked the folded clothes from his arms. She shook them out. Tunic and trousers, neither of them new, but clean enough and neatly patched. “Hmm. It’ll do, I suppose, and—yes, excellent, sandals.” She passed them both to Caliban.

There was a brief, awkward silence.

“Come on,” said Slate irritably. “Our inevitable deaths aren’t going to happen by themselves.”

Caliban rolled his eyes up at the ceiling.

Damn, he’s having second thoughts. But he guessed too much, and I told him too much, I can’t let him stay here. Damn.

“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts—” she began.

It was the warden who touched her shoulder and said “Should leave a man privacy to change, missy.”

“Oh. Oh. Right. I’ll…err…be in the guard room.”

She and the warden retired to the central room. Slate returned his keys. He glared. She pretended not to notice.

The silence got uncomfortable. The muffled sounds of prisoners talking and moving around in the other rooms didn’t help. Slate dug for another handkerchief, didn’t find one, and tried to locate an unobtrusive patch of sleeve.

The warden cleared his throat. “It’s not too late to put him back.”

The door opened, and Caliban came through. He looked considerably better in the clean clothes, which were too large rather than too small. He was still dirty and bedraggled and his beard was truly unfortunate, but now he only looked very bad instead of like death warmed over.

A decent bath and a shave, and we might aspire to “human.” Or, err, demon. Something.

He can’t still be possessed. They wouldn’t put him in a regular prison if he had a demon in him. He’d be so loaded down with spells and irons that he couldn’t sneeze without banishing himself.

Well, assuming he was even possessed in the first place. He might just be mad, after all.

He seems sane enough at the moment, except for the twitchiness. ‘Course, if I was in a cell for a season, I’d likely be twitchy myself.

Slate was probably the only one who noticed the way Caliban paused before stepping through the doorway, as if he still could not quite believe that there were such things as open doors before him.

“Right!” said Slate brightly, turning to the warden. “I assume you have something for me to sign?”

“What? Err…yes…” The warden rummaged through a stack of papers on his desk, then in a desk drawer. Slate read a few, upside down, and picked one out.

“This it?”

“Oh, yes, err…”

She signed it with a flourish. Paperwork, at least, Slate understood. “And a copy for me, and one for you, and…excellent!” She folded hers up, saluted with the corner, and strolled out of the guardroom.

Her heart was pounding. It usually pounded when she offered people documents, but generally that was because she had forged them and was waiting to see if she’d get caught. It was interesting to learn that being on the correct side of legality didn’t help much.

The warden didn’t stop them. Slate hadn’t expected him to. Once papers were signed, people seemed to give up. It was a strange sort of magic.

The door led to a hallway, which led to another hallway, and then to a flight of stairs with a pair of guards. Sir Caliban fell into step behind her, a pace back and to her left, a practiced distance. He’s probably been an honor guard more times than I can count. Slate’s lips twitched.

What the guards might have thought of the small, drab woman and her grim escort was anyone’s guess. She wondered if they even recognized that he was a famous mass murderer. Guards tended to rotate regularly—prison duty was a punishment, not a reward—and many of them might not even recognize him on this side of the bars.

Of course, anyone with an ounce of sense ought to recognize that a grimy man in ill-fitted clothes, who paced like a bodyguard, was not in the normal run of events. But that was bureaucracy for you. Get past the first layer of guards, present official-looking paperwork, and nobody asked questions.

They swept by the guards unchallenged. Slate felt a small bubble of triumph, or possibly hysteria.

There were more corridors and more halls and more guards. None of them challenged her, even when they left the prison and entered a corridor more suited to a palace.

“This really is foolishness,” said Caliban in an undertone behind her. “The warden should have given you guards—an escort—something. Letting a woman walk out of here with a murderer—I’d have his skin if he were serving under me.”

He sounded genuinely outraged. Slate had to laugh.

“Relax, mister murderer, you’re not getting off that lightly.”

She turned her head as she spoke, in time to catch his grimace.

“Sorry. Sir Murderer, should I say?”

“Whatever you like, madam,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

Still raw. He can say it, but he doesn’t like it when I do. Interesting. Not surprising, but the way he speaks, you’d think he’d hide it better. Ah, well.

“Here we are.” She turned down another, narrower hallway, and knocked on a door at the bottom of a shallow step. Caliban stood behind her, feet apart, his hands folded behind him.

Good lord, is that parade rest? I think it is.

Brenner is going to have a field day.

She knocked on the door again, a bit louder.

“Enter,” said a voice from inside.

The room was small and cluttered and full of papers. The Captain of the Guard, an iron-haired, iron-eyed man, looked up when she entered.

“I beg your—oh, it’s you. Do you have a report, Mistress Slate?”

“Sir. Uh.” What was the proper military form for this sort of report?

To hell with it, I’m a civilian, even if they’ve drafted me into this lunacy. They can bloody well deal with it. “I…err…found one.”

The Captain nodded. “Very well, then.”

Caliban hung back at the doorway for just a moment, then stepped into the room as hesitantly as if it were cold water.

“God’s balls!”

“A pleasure to see you as well, Captain,” said Caliban, inclining his head. One hand went to his side, as if to touch a non-existent sword-hilt, then dropped.

Slate was pretty sure that no one in the room missed that. She waited for the captain to turn to her and demand an explanation, or demand that Caliban be sent back to his cell or—well, something.

After a minute, while the two men continued to stare at each other like two tigers in a very small cage, Slate stopped holding her breath.

Can’t they yell at each other or have a manly hug or something and get it over with?

She read some of the papers upside down on the Captain’s desk while she waited. Most of them had to do with duty rosters. There was an interesting one about a sweep of the gutterside slums. Apparently unlicensed prostitution was up. She hadn’t known that.

“My god, Caliban, you look like hell.”

Slate glanced up, and saw the Captain staring at the former knight with an expression less of horror than chagrin.

Hmm, they really do know each other. I suppose there’s no reason a Captain of the Guard wouldn’t know a famous temple knight. Maybe they worked together doing…knight…stuff…

“I’ve been possessed, arrested, exorcised, and locked in a cell for four months. There’s a dead demon rotting somewhere in the back of my soul. What do you expect?”

That does sound unpleasant. Hmm, I wonder what a rotting demon’s like? Maybe he smells it the way I smell rosemary.

God, that’d be awful. Poor bastard.

Slate went back to reading. It looked like the Stone Bitches were about to get arrested. That was a shame, really: they’d hired her a time or two to produce false bills of sale. Decent people. Understood craftsmanship.

“Ah. Yes.” The Captain actually seemed to be at a bit of a loss. He glanced over at Slate, cleared his throat, and gathered up his papers. “I didn’t expect—are you sure you want—?”

“Yes,” said Slate.

“Yes,” said Caliban.

There was an awkward silence. Slate wondered which one of them he’d actually been talking to.

Deprived of other people’s mail to read, she studied her feet again.

“Well.” The Captain dropped his papers and ran a hand through his hair. “You realize, Lord—Sir Caliban, you would be answering to Mistress Slate here. She is nominally in charge of your mission, by the Dowager’s order. You’d—ah—support and render aid. And so forth.”

Caliban made a small, ironic bow in her direction. “Madam.”

Slate glanced at the Captain, wondering if he’d hoped that would be a deal breaker. Apparently it wasn’t. The Captain sighed.

“Sit down. I’ll call for the…ah… hell.”

With this fragmentary statement, the Captain swept out of the room. Caliban looked after him. Slate wondered if he’d noticed himself flinching back from the man’s movement.

“Hmm,” the paladin said.

“If you make a run for it, you could probably get out of the palace,” she said by way of conversation. “I don’t know if you can kill the front guards barehanded, but it’s probably worth a shot. I’d leave the city right away, mind you.”

He looked at her, his eyes widening.

“Just a thought.” She sat down on the edge of the desk and began reading the warrants for the Stone Bitches again.

“You’re a very odd woman,” he said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

The door opened again. The Captain ushered a heavyset man inside. He was bald, with the variegated pattern of shine indicating that he was probably shaving his head to avoid showing how badly his hair was thinning. His thick fingers were wrapped around the handle of a large leather case.

“Sit,” the Captain ordered Caliban. And: “Stop reading my mail.”

Caliban quirked an eyebrow and sat. The bald man knelt next to the chair and rolled up the sleeve of the knight’s tunic. Slate stopped reading the Captain’s mail, put one heel up on the desk and hugged her knee to her chest.

The bald man opened his case, and took out a set of needles and a jar of black ink. A wave of rosemary welled up and smacked Slate across the nose.

Gods, I go months without this happening, and now this. Dammit, Grandma, if they hadn’t burned you at the stake, I’d light you myself.

“I’m getting a tattoo,” said Caliban evenly. “Why?”

The Captain pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Let me start at the beginning. You know that we’re losing the war with Anuket City, I assume?”

Caliban smiled sourly. “They weren’t admitting that when I got locked up, but most of us suspected.”

“We’re still not admitting it, but yes, we are. The problem is the Anuket troops—the Clockwork Boys, as they call ‘em. As fast as the army cuts them down—which frankly isn’t very fast—more show up. They’re not human. We don’t know how to stop them except sheer brute dismemberment.”

Slate could feel her eyes watering. She snuffled.

“Here.” The Captain dug through papers and came up with a hunk of debris. It looked like a cross between the inside of a clock and a piece of drift wood. Tiny gears and cogwheels encrusted the sides like barnacles.

The knight took the object and turned it over in his fingers. “What is this?”

“Part of a Clockwork Boy. It used to move, but we boiled it for a few hours and it finally stopped.”

“Are these made of bone?”

“We don’t know. The alchemists are still fighting over it. Half of them think it’s organic, and the other half think someone carved each little piece. They use a lot of words that I don’t think even they understand.”

“Hmm.” Caliban handed the piece back to the Captain, and wiped his hand on his pant leg.

“Anyway.” The Captain set it down on his desk. “They’ve got to be making them somewhere—or building them, or breeding them, or summoning them, or the Dreaming God knows what.”

Caliban might have said something, but the tattoo artist sank a needle into his bicep, and he winced.

“Anyway. Your—ah—group will be traveling to Anuket City to attempt to infiltrate and learn how this is happening. And if possible, to stop it.”

“Snrrrgghghk…” Slate pinched the bridge of her nose and tilted her head back miserably.

“You don’t have spies there already?” asked Caliban.

The Captain shook his head. “Not any more. All the ones we did have wound up going missing.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which he dropped in Slate’s lap without comment. “Our spies in Anuket had been largely diplomatic corps, frankly—they’re supposed to watch the politics, not break in and steal state secrets. And now they’re presumed dead anyway. So we’re trying a more brute force solution.”

The bald man’s fingers moved with surprising deftness over the pale skin of Caliban’s upper arm, leaving dark lines behind. Slate retired to a corner and blew her nose.