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- Herausgeber: Titan Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
In this brilliant sequel to The Clockwork Boys, old foes resurface, and Slate and Caliban are forced to deal with the echoes of their past choices. Slate and her crew have arrived in Anuket City, the city of artificial marvels where Clockwork Boys are created. But the secret of their existence is as mysterious as ever. Slate has a history in Anuket City, history which just won't leave her alone. And her increasing attraction to Caliban is driving her up the wall. Caliban is, of course, too noble to do anything about it. As Slate's history in the city grows more entangled with their mission, the group's chances of survival seem to be getting ever slimmer. If they're to stand a chance of destroying the Clockwork Boys, Slate must confront her past, and find a way to stop it from killing them all.
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Seitenzahl: 449
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026
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Contents
Cover
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
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Acknowledgments AKA: I Can’t Believe That’s Finally Over
About the Author
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
Snake-Eater
Nine Goblins
THE SWORN SOLDIER SERIES
What Moves the Dead
What Feasts at Night
What Stalks the Deep
THE CLOCKTAUR WAR DUOLOGY
Clockwork Boys
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The Wonder Engine
Hardback edition ISBN: 9781835413678
Broken Binding edition ISBN: 9781835418666
E-book edition ISBN: 9781835413685
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First Titan edition: March 2026
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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 2018
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.
EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], +3375690241
Designed and typeset in Brioso Pro by Richard Mason.
For Andrea and her long-sufferingcanine compatriot, Nemo
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST THING THEY SAW when they got into Anuket City was a corpse.
The body of a gnole swung ghoulishly from a lamppost, head cocked at an impossible angle, paws dangling limply. A crowd had gathered beneath the unfortunate creature, but they were already starting to disperse when the five of them and the string of mules rode through the city gates.
“My god!” said Learned Edmund, his fingers flicking in a benediction.
Its coat of rags had been ripped off, and somehow that seemed the saddest thing to Slate. The body underneath was scrawny and hunched, the ribs straining visibly against the skin. It had a stub of a tail, and the thick badger stripes along its head ran down its back, clear to the base of the spine.
“Why would they do this?” asked Caliban. He looked around. “Why didn’t the Watch stop this?”
“Maybe it was a criminal,” said Brenner.
Strangely it was Grimehug who seemed the least bothered by the sight. “It happens. Some gnole gets in the wrong place, wrong time, humans get crazy, string some gnole up, you know?” He shrugged.
“This happens frequently?” asked Caliban.
“Often enough, big man.”
“And you stay here anyway?”
“Where else is a gnole gonna go?” He spread his hands, rags flapping. “Humans here, wild boars over there. Maybe a clocktaur steps on a gnole. Maybe a gnole starves. Something bad everywhere a gnole goes.”
“Something should be done,” insisted Caliban.
“One crusade at a time, paladin,” said Brenner. “Let’s find somewhere to stay.”
It rapidly became obvious that Anuket City was different from the Dowager’s capitol, and not just because it was a city-state instead of merely a city.
No one tried to stop them from entering the city. The guards looked bored.
“I expected it to be harder to get in,” murmured Caliban.
“Why would it?” asked Slate. “They want you to come in and spend as much money as possible.”
“They’re at war.”
“Which means the other city needs to worry about keeping them out. The war’s happening miles away and there are no human soldiers from this side. Most of the citizens probably don’t even notice it’s happening.”
“Still,” said Caliban.
They were less than twenty feet from the entrance to the city when a woman walked by, her eyes vague and distant, surrounded by a cloud of hummingbirds on tiny jeweled leashes. They darted around her in bright, erratic zig-zags, occasionally hovering to sip nectar from flowers in her hair. Her face was beautiful, but as she passed them, they saw her pupils vastly dilated and her mouth slack.
“You see why no one noticed us,” said Slate.
“This place is weird,” said Brenner, as he watched the hummingbird woman leave.
Slate glanced over at her companions. In another city, they might indeed look strange, if not individually then certainly as a group.
Brenner was wiry and slouched a lot, which made him look shorter than he actually was. He had long, ragged dark hair and shaggy eyebrows. You could easily overlook Brenner in a crowd, which was useful for someone who killed people for a living.
There was no overlooking former Knight-Champion Caliban. He did not slouch. He was tall, blond, and had the sort of face that people stamped on coins and immortalized in marble. He wore leather and chain armor and an undyed tabard that was, it had to be said, much the worse for wear. (It had been pelted with owl pellets approximately an hour earlier.) The massive sword on his back was made for killing demons. It looked very impressive, since hardly anyone realized that most demons possessed farm animals.
Caliban caught her look and gave her a quizzical smile. Slate shrugged at him and looked away. That smile haunted her, at least during the brief periods of time when she didn’t want to bash his head in with a brick for being so relentlessly knightly.
Slate herself would have been overlooked even if she weren’t standing next to Caliban. Dark brown hair, medium brown skin, colorless clothes. She had worked for thirty years to become invisible and most days she managed it very well indeed. In her line of work, it did not pay to stand out.
All three of them shared one physical trait in common. On their left arms, painted teeth sunk into the skin, was a crude tattoo of a scowling face.
Slate scratched absently at hers. The tattoo had had very strong opinions about her rescue of the other night. It had torn a jagged line across her bicep that had scabbed over now, but Slate knew that it would leave a scar.
Which hardly matters, does it? None of us expect to survive this experience. Well, no one but Learned Edmund…
The designated survivor was a slender, pleasant-faced young scholar. He wore the ink-stained robes of a dedicate of the Many-Armed God, which would attract respect and dread in equal measure. Respect, because the Many-Armed God only took the most brilliant scholars in His temples. Dread because they were also notoriously difficult to work with.
And then, of course, there was Grimehug, the gnole. She’d pulled him out of a village of murderous deer-people and he had adopted her in turn. Slate wondered if the odd little badger-creature would stick around, or if he would vanish into the city now that they had returned.
She rather hoped he’d stay. She’d gotten used to having him asleep at the foot of her bedroll. He was warm and solid and didn’t wake up when she had an allergy attack in the middle of the night, which gave him points over her ex-husband.
Still, Anuket City is where Grimehug lives. He’s coming home.
I suppose, when you think about it, so am I.
For Slate, the memories coming back were a strange mixture. She was oddly proud of the strangeness of the city—she had lived here for seven years, she had survived—but under that was a gnawing sense of fear.
They were all still here.
Boss Horsehead, still here. The Shadow Market, still here.
All the old chickens, looking for a place to roost.
“Well,” she said. “Well.” She adjusted her hat, pulling it low over her eyes. No sense being obvious. No sense being too obviously disguised, either. Her greatest asset was that nobody in their right mind had ever expected her to come back. “Welcome to Anuket City.”
CHAPTER 2
THEY LEFT THE HORSES at a stable just outside of town. Slate was in no way sad to see hers go. It seemed unlikely that she would see the horse again.
Hopefully it’ll find someone who doesn’t sit on it like a sack of wet bricks.
“Good riddance,” muttered Brenner. “Never getting on one of those beasts again.”
“How do you propose to leave the city, then?” asked Caliban, amused. “Assuming we do?”
“On a sedan chair carried by voluptuous maidens.”
“Voluptuous maidens with very strong backs,” said Slate.
“Best kind, darlin’.”
Learned Edmund made a small sound of moral pain.
Finding an inn proved more problematic than the stable. There were plenty of inns and plenty of vacancies, but one of their number wasn’t welcome.
“No gnoles,” said the innkeeper.
“He’s with us.”
“No gnoles.”
Slate dropped another coin on the counter. “I said, he’s with us.”
“I said, no gnoles.”
Three more coins hit the counter.
“Look, lady,” said the innkeeper, sounding tired rather than annoyed, “you can stack coins to the rafters, and the answer is still no. It’s a health issue. No lepers, no public privies, and no gnoles!”
“What? Why not?” Slate’s hand went out to rest on Grimehug’s head.
“They carry werkblight.” He frowned over the counter. “I hope you wash your hands after you touch that one.”
“Werkblight? What’s werkblight?”
“Goddamn, you’re not from around here.” The innkeeper made shooing gestures. “It’s a disease. You’ll know it when you see it, believe me.”
“Sorry,” said Slate. “I did live here once, but that was five, six years ago.”
“Just missed them, then,” said the innkeeper. “Lucky you. Little blighters were everywhere one day, and the werkblight broke out not long after. Now get out of here, and take your gnole with you.”
“Jerk,” muttered Slate.
“Do you carry werkblight?” asked Brenner, once they were back out on the street.
“Brenner!”
“What? You’d rather I didn’t ask?”
Grimehug grinned. “Good question, dark man. Don’t think so. Don’t know. Gnoles don’t get sick from it. Never touch werkblight though, leave that for grave-gnoles.”
“What does it look like, this werkblight?” asked Learned Edmund. “Is it anything like the blight back in the capitol?”
“Don’t know. Never seen your blight.” Grimehug shrugged. “Stay in Anuket City, you’ll see werkblight soon enough. Don’t be touching it.”
They tried three more inns. None of them would take gnoles for any amount of money, and one threw her out for even suggesting it.
After that, she stopped asking. Instead she called a halt on the street, in a square lined with statues. She and Brenner stood under a battered statue of a winged lion, and put their heads together. Their fingers flickered in small, descriptive gestures that Caliban couldn’t even begin to follow.
“Backdoor?”
“Too much traffic.”
“Balcony?”
“Garden.”
“With drainpipes.”
“Doable.”
The two separated, nodded to each other, and Slate turned to the other three.
“Wait here.” She spun on her heel.
“But—”
He was too late. Brenner had already melted into the crowd. Caliban tried to keep his eyes on Slate and lost her within a dozen heartbeats. The square was fairly crowded at this time of day, but it was still uncanny.
Priest and paladin were left standing under the lion statue. The gnole plopped down at their feet.
“Well,” said Learned Edmund. “I suppose we wait.”
“I suppose we do.” Caliban had an intense desire for a hot bath. This did not mean anything in and of itself, because Caliban had wanted a hot bath for weeks now. It was just that there was a chance he might actually get one.
“Big city,” said Learned Edmund.
“Very.”
The lion statue sat up on its haunches and lifted a paw with a creak. Caliban jerked back, startled.
“Twelve…oh….clock…” rasped the lion, in a deep, mechanical voice. “And…all’s…all’s…all’s…”
Grimehug reached out and smacked it upside the head.
“All’s well!” said the lion, and flapped its wings twice. It settled back on the pedestal with a grinding sound.
“They do it regular, every hour,” said the gnole. “You get used to it.”
All over the square, the other statues were repeating variations on this statement, with various mechanical movements. A griffin raised and lowered its crest, a horse pawed at the air, and something went badly wrong with a statue of a mermaid, causing her to slap herself across the face with her own tail. Clunking noises and a badly chipped nose indicated that this probably wasn’t the first time.
“I wonder what they do if all’s not well,” murmured Learned Edmund.
“They don’t do nothing.” Grimehug yawned. “Seen ‘em shout “All’s well!” when the square’s on fire.”
“What an odd city.”
The crowd parted briefly to let a rider through. His steed was horse-shaped and horse-sized, but appeared to be made of wrought iron. Elegant curlicues defined the shape of cheek and eye and the flow of mane, while complicated shafts and gears moved inside the iron frame. It crossed the square, walking sedately, sparks flashing under its hooves.
“Flash bastards. Not supposed to ride them in the square,” said Grimehug, disgusted. “Tear up the street, those hooves.”
They waited.
Learned Edmund leaned back and studied the sky. “Do you think they will find something?”
“It’s what they’re good at. Cities…all this…” Caliban shook his head. He understood cities, but he did not wear them like a skin the way that Slate and Brenner did.
“I will confess that on the journey here, I had begun to worry about their competence.”
“The horses, yes.” Watching Slate and Brenner adapt to riding horses had been an education. “I think they’re very competent, in their own field.”
Learned Edmund nodded. He took a deep breath and said, with the air of a man determined to be fair at all costs, “I misjudged Mistress Slate. I did not realize that a woman would be capable of such heroism.”
Caliban pinched the bridge of his nose and told himself that the scholar was trying his best. The Many-Armed God, who Learned Edmund followed, was known for producing brilliant, sheltered scholars, all of whom were sworn to celibacy and most of whom had not seen a woman since they were dedicated to the temple at the age of five.
“But Mistress Slate is not typical, I expect.”
The paladin barked a laugh. “Typical! I no longer know what is typical of anyone. But I have generally found that women are capable of great heroism. At least as great as men.” He thought of the nuns who had raised him and added, “And they frequently make less fuss over it.”
Learned Edmund was clearly skeptical. “Well,” he said. “I have met very few, of course.”
“You might try meeting more.”
“The Many-Armed God teaches us to avoid distractions.”
Caliban had a brief, vivid memory of one of the older nuns saying: “Maybe their god could use one of those arms to pull his followers’ heads out of their own asses!”
He missed nuns. You always knew where you stood with nuns.
He reminded himself that Learned Edmund had come a long way in a few weeks.
“You might consider how much knowledge you’re missing by avoiding them.”
Learned Edmund’s nostrils flared. “I will think on it,” he said finally. Caliban rubbed his temples and thought uncharitable thoughts.
Grimehug glanced over at him, ears half-cocked. He could not read the gnole’s expressions well, but he thought it was amusement, and something else as well.
He did not quite trust Grimehug, and yet he found himself being grateful.
There had been a moment, in that flight from the rune, when Caliban had almost forgotten himself. When Slate had been limping and he had tried to be her crutch, the way he would have for Learned Edmund or Brenner or anyone else.
He had slid his shoulder under her arm and she had pressed against his side, breast and hip and thigh. And her face had been too close and he could smell her suddenly, under the sweat and the blood and the tang of pine needles. And his stupid body, still dazed by the rune-demon’s attempt at seduction, had roused again.
For a half-dozen heartbeats, he’d imagined taking her right there, up against a tree, and both their wounds be damned. Hard and fast until she cried out his name and he forgot that there had ever been a demon that wore her face.
Then Grimehug had pulled at him and said, “Too tall, big man. Let a gnole try,” and Slate had slipped off his shoulder and braced herself on the little badger-creature instead.
The gnole had given him a look as they traded places. Just a brief one, with his lip curled up over one fang. Not a threatening look, but Caliban had a strange, unsettled feeling that Grimehug had known exactly what he was thinking.
It had been like a splash of cold water. No. Of course not. Even if Brenner and Grimehug hadn’t been standing right there, his hands were still covered in the old shaman’s blood. For the love of the Dreaming God, how could he, even for a moment, have imagined doing that?
“Sorry?” said Learned Edmund. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You said something about Mistress Slate.”
Caliban shook his head. “Sorry. Wool-gathering.”
He glanced at Grimehug, and saw that the gnole was watching him again, thinking gods-knew-what behind those yellow eyes.
Caliban could feel a headache coming on.
Even had they been in private and somewhat less blood-covered, Caliban suspected that he’d blown his chance with Slate sometime earlier. She had rescued him and then he had rescued her, and it should have worked out somehow, but instead he’d opened his damn mouth and started babbling nonsense about the strong protecting the weak.
The memory made him cringe. He couldn’t even blame the demon. That had been purely human stupidity, nothing more.
Frankly, after that little display, it was a miracle Slate had come back to rescue him from the rune at all.
Well, you had Brenner with you. She was probably rescuing him.
Brenner, who was ruthless and sarcastic and killed people for a living and who made no bones of the fact that he didn’t trust Caliban any farther than he could throw the paladin in full armor.
Brenner, who had been Slate’s lover once, and definitely wouldn’t mind filling that position again.
And if I had an ounce of sense, I’d get out of his way. She is my commander and my liege and that is all that I have any right to ask of anyone.
…I do not seem to have much sense.
The way that they had spoken together, almost with their own private language, filled him with gnawing envy. Brenner understood that part of Slate’s life in a way that the paladin never could.
Envy is a terr ible emotion for a paladin. Nearly as bad as pride.
“Twisting your own whiskers, big man,” said Grimehug.
Caliban opened his eyes. “Hmm?”
“You. Thinking. Smells like whisker twisting.”
“I suppose I am.”
“Humans don’t have whiskers,” said Learned Edmund. “Does this denote a painful act?”
Grimehug gave him a dubious look. “Hurts, yeah. But a gnole does it sometimes anyway. Knows a gnole should stop, but keeps twisting. You know?”
“I know,” said Caliban. “Believe me, I know.”
“Thought you might, big man.”
Forty-five minutes and a subjective eternity later, Slate and Brenner returned. “This way,” said Slate.
The inn she had found was expensive and exclusive, and there was no question about them taking gnoles. But it was expensive enough to have a garden courtyard and the rooms had balconies, and that meant that a gnole could scurry up a drainpipe and over the railing into Slate’s room.
The three men had a suite across the hall, with a sitting room, and they hurried the gnole across while Caliban stood guard in the hall.
“Whoa!” said Grimehug, turning in a circle in the middle of the room. “Swank! Other gnoles gonna be crazy jealous.”
“Well, what do we do now?” asked Brenner, dropping sideways into a chair in front of the fire. “Grab someone and say, ‘Hey, which way to the secret clockwork factory?’”
“Not much of a secret, dark man,” said Grimehug, and grinned. “Go to the Clockwork District, all the clockwork you need.”
“Can we have a bath first?” asked Caliban plaintively.
“And cigarettes,” said Brenner.
“And laundry,” said Learned Edmund.
“Fine, fine.” Slate waved her hands. “God forbid our suicide mission take precedence over clean underwear…”
They regrouped two hours later. Caliban was still slightly damp. Brenner was smoking a post-dinner cigarette with the intense concentration he usually reserved for killing people.
“Everyone’s fed?” said Slate. “Nobody’s starving or filthy or has bugs in their socks?”
“You’re not wearing socks,” Caliban pointed out.
Slate wiggled her bare toes at him. “I have one pair that is not more hole than sock. They are taking a well-deserved rest. They are heroes of the sock world.”
Caliban put his fist over his heart in tribute.
“Furthermore, I did not get to take a bath, because apparently all the hot water was bespoke by someone in the room across the hall from me.”
He had the decency to look embarrassed.
“All right,” said Slate. She sat down on a footstool opposite Grimehug. “Now. Now that we are not in the woods, being chased by demon-deer or savage vegetables—tell me everything you know about the Clockwork Boys.”
“For you, sure, Crazy Slate.” The gnole sat down on her foot and gave her a canine grin. “Not much, maybe. Never heard ‘em called that. Clocktaurs, here.” He wrinkled his nose. “Come out of the big warehouse downtown…”
CHAPTER 3
WHAT THEY MANAGED TO PIECE TOGETHER, through careful questioning, was both less than Slate had hoped and a great deal more than they had known before.
Clocktaurs emerged, fully formed, from a warehouse in the Clockwork District. It was a huge building, the biggest in the city. Bigger than the Senate building. (Anuket City was nominally a representative democracy, in much the same way that Slate was nominally a taxpayer.) Grimehug had never been inside, and could not tell them anything about the contents. Nor could he explain how the clocktaurs were made.
“Nothing going in,” he said. “Not ivory, steel, nothing. Not parts. Just people, going in and out. And garbage.”
They could elicit no details as to the garbage. “Just garbage. Trash, you know. Rag-and-bone. Some gnole takes it out. Grave-gnoles, too.”
“Could you find those gnoles and ask?”
Grimehug wrinkled his nose. “Rag-and-bone gnole, sure, yeah. Not touching grave-gnoles. Not getting in smelling distance of grave-gnoles. You don’t either, if you’re smart, Crazy Slate.”
Once every few days—three and some change, Grimehug wasn’t clear on exact times—a clocktaur ambled out of a door in the warehouse and into the street.
“Big damn door,” said Grimehug. “Little damn street. Gnole has to go along and make sure nothing gets hung up, you know?”
“The…clocktaur…might get hung up?” asked Learned Edmund.
“Street might get hung up on the clocktaur, book man.”
The clocktaur walked to the old parade ground, escorted by gnoles. As far as Slate could tell, the gnoles just hung around waiting for the clocktaurs to come out. Once they reached the old parade ground, someone would give them a few copper coins.
“A guard?” asked Caliban. “The clocktaur’s keeper?”
“Merchants paying for it, not army. Army never pays a gnole anything.” Grimehug made a rude gesture, presumably in the army’s direction. “Merchant, he says ‘Keep people out of clocktaur’s way, keep doors shut so clocktaur doesn’t knock them down, move the trash cans.’ Merchants, they pay a gnole, fetch and carry, keep clocktaurs from knocking down city. Bad for business.”
Apparently you couldn’t steer a clocktaur. You could just get things out of its way. The merchants must have realized that it was better to pay gnoles to clear the way than to pick up after—and they were gnoles, so if a couple got squashed by a clocktaur now and then, who cared?
Slate realized that her nails were pressed into her palms. She stared at them like they didn’t belong to her.
“But nobody questions it?” asked Caliban, baffled. “Those huge, awful things—they don’t ask what’s going on?”
“They wouldn’t,” said Slate slowly. “Not here…”
In this city full of artificial marvels—iron horses and clockwork statues—the clocktaurs, astonishingly, had gone largely unnoticed. People knew that they existed, but assumed that some artificer had made them. They were fighting for Anuket City, after all, and the fighting was furthermore happening a long way away, so other than making sure that the streets were clear when they went by, no one thought much about it.
Slate, who had once left the capitol for Anuket City, could understand that. Artificers here were viewed as basically harmless geniuses. Their creations might explode or trample you, sure, but they were just as likely to fall apart or trip over their own feet.
And the artificers were good for business. People came from hundreds of miles around to buy their creations.
She could understand how, in this city, alone in all the world, you could quietly create an army of clocktaurs, and nobody would pay all that much attention.
“As long as they don’t tear up the street or smash the trash cans, people don’t care,” she said.
“They’re eight feet tall!” said Brenner.
“Ten,” said Grimehug.
“Ten, then. I didn’t take a tape measure to the ones we saw.”
The clocktaurs would stand in the parade ground, unmoving, like statues.
“Dare,” added Grimehug. “Climb a clocktaur. Impress the mates. A clocktaur doesn’t move.” He grinned, showing all his badger-like teeth.
And then one day, when there were thirty clocktaurs—enough to form a column three wide and ten deep—guards would throw open the big gates by the parade ground and the column would march out. Not on the trade road, where they’d upset the ox-carts and make a fuss, but the old army road.
“It hooks up to the trade road on the other side of Archenhold,” said Slate. “That’s how they’re getting up as far as we encountered them.” She slumped back in her chair, rolled upside down, and put her feet over the back of the chair.
“Think there’s anything left of Archenhold?” asked Caliban.
“I think they probably saw the first column go by and suddenly realized that Anuket City was their dearest friend in the world.”
The last few columns—most likely including the one they had seen—had been accompanied by several gnoles.
“Too smart for a gnole’s own good,” said Grimehug, sounding annoyed. “Thought maybe there’d be more money at the end. Couple gnoles go out with the columns most times. Go wherever they’re going. Safer. Nothing attacks clocktaurs.”
Brenner gave a humorless laugh.
“Me and some buddies, we went out with them this time. Move more things out of the way, maybe get paid, yeah?” He curled his lip back. “Then a gnole falls down, gets stepped on. Clocktaurs don’t care. So a gnole tries to help. Couldn’t. Clocktaurs kept going. Me, got lost, get found by crazy rune. Know how that ended, yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Slate. She squeezed his shoulder. It hadn’t occurred to her, with everything else, that Grimehug had lost friends recently.
Caliban cleared his throat. “It’s a cheap way to fight a war.”
Slate glanced up at him.
“You send an army of clocktaurs down toward a city and tell them to destroy everything in their path. Then you send a message to the city saying, ‘Surrender, or we do it again.’ And then you do it again.”
“And again,” said Learned Edmund, “and again. And once one city surrenders, you send them out to the next one. Eventually, governments will surrender just to keep from being razed to the ground.”
“I don’t know how they plan to administer their conquered cities, though,” said Caliban, shaking his head. “Unless they set up regional governors and have them send tribute back… It’d be extortion, not empire.”
“That sounds about right,” said Slate. “Extortion and very generous trade deals. As long as they control the clocktaurs, the Senate can pull in tribute hand over fist.”
“It’s a very short-sighted way to govern,” said Caliban sternly. “And it wouldn’t last for long. If everyone rebelled at once—”
“Yeah, but the first city that does gets thirty clocktaurs in their teeth. Who wants to risk that?”
“But once they do risk it…”
Slate nodded at him from her upside-down vantage. “Then they pull the clocktaurs back to the city and cut off trade to their attackers. And bet that they’ve got more money than the other guy does.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“Well. I know the old parade ground,” Slate said finally. “It was right by the edge of the city. There was nothing out there but farmland and the knackers, though. The Clockwork District must be new.”
“Here when I got here, Crazy Slate.”
As near as they could pin down, that had been three years ago, although gnoles had been trickling into the city probably just as Slate was leaving it. Gnoles lived in family bands, which could grow, in a congenial city, into a good-sized warren. They had started in Emmet and seemed to be spreading west and south, leaving whenever overcrowding forced some of them on.
Grimehug himself had been wandering around a town called Grymm’s Hollow when word had come that there was work in Anuket City.
“Never liked Grymm’s Hollow,” he said. “Snakes in all the gutters. Good eating on a snake, but a big one, he thinks good eating on a gnole. So came here, me.”
“Which is sociologically interesting,” said Learned Edmund, leaning back, “but not particularly relevant to the Clockwork Boys. Although it probably means that the capitol will see gnoles soon—”
“Some gnoles gone already,” said Grimehug, yawning. “Not many.”
“I haven’t seen any,” Brenner said.
“If some gnoles don’t want to be seen, dark man, you won’t see them. More going soon, I guess.”
“Assuming it’s not wiped out by clocktaurs first.”
There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that.
“Any idea where to start looking for your scholar friend?” asked Slate.
Learned Edmund sighed. “I’ll make inquiries in the Artificer’s Quarter. There is one Ashes Magnus there, who corresponds with my temple. A truly original thinker. I hope he may know where to begin.”
“What about the codes in the journal?”
“They fall in two parts. The first cipher is easy. All the servants of the Many-Armed God know it. The second one…” He shook his head. “I need the key, and it is not in this journal. He must have written it down somewhere.”
“Must he?” asked Slate.
Learned Edmund looked puzzled, as if she had asked something nonsensical. “Of course. You always write down the key to a cipher, or what if the knowledge is lost?”
“What if you don’t care if it’s lost?”
“Then,” said the dedicate severely, “you are not a servant of the Many-Armed God!”
“…I’m sorry I asked.”
“Our work is cut out for us,” said Caliban, obviously trying to smooth the moment over.
“I’m going to go take my own bath,” said Slate. “And then I’m going to sleep in a real bed. And then—well, I guess if Grimehug here is willing, we’ll go find a clocktaur.”
By the time she finished drying off, the gnole was stretched out full length at the foot of the bed, snoring. The contrast of dirty rags and clean linens was striking.
Oh, well, as long as he’s on top of the sheets… Slate shrugged out of her clothes. Her modesty did not extend to a sleeping gnole.
She slid under the sheets. Grimehug grumbled and made room for her feet. The bed was cool and crisp and soft, and all of Slate’s fears could not keep her from sinking immediately into sleep.
CHAPTER 4
SLATE DREAMED.
Initially it was nothing much, just the fragmented and absurd world of dreams. She was walking through a house with too many rooms, looking for something. The house was made of her mother’s chambers in the brothel and Slate’s first apartment and the academy where she had taken lessons and for some odd reason, the stable of the inn they had stayed at the third or fourth night on the road.
She opened a door at random, and found a closet stuffed with trumpets and rune. She closed it. She opened another door, and found another door behind it. She opened that one.
She fell out into the Shadow Market, flat on her face, and looked up to find Boss Horsehead staring down at her.
“You crossed me,” said Horsehead, looming over her, impossibly large, the size of a giant. “No one crosses me.” Slate reached for a knife, but she was stuck to the floor, she couldn’t move, and Horsehead was picking her up by the shoulders and she was being swung aloft, with a clank of chains, into one of the crow cages over the Shadow Market.
She was bolted to the bars, weighed down with chains. The crows circled her, shrieking.
One landed on each shoulder, and they spoke to each other over her head, in gabbling gnolespeech. Slate asked them to repeat themselves, very politely, but they buffeted her face with their wings. She opened her mouth to scream, and feathers slid down her throat and filled her chest, and then she could not scream, but only cough…
* * *
“Slate! Slate! For God’s sake, wake up!”
Someone was shaking her. She woke up, sucked in a great ragged breath, and began to cough violently. Whoever had woken her pounded her on the back while she choked and spluttered, saying something, but she was coughing too loudly to hear.
“Breathe,” instructed the person pounding her back. “Breathe. In and out. Easy.”
After a minor eternity, she was able to breathe again. Her chest ached and her throat felt raw. He was holding her chin tilted back at an angle that left her airway clear, the sort of practiced gesture she’d expect from a healer.
She groaned and scrubbed at her face.
When she moved her hands, a handkerchief was dangling in front of her, and that was how she realized who had woken her.
“Caliban?”
The knight sat on the edge of the bed, illuminated by a sliver of gaslight through the window. He was holding her up with an arm around her shoulders and he looked distinctly rumpled, but his voice was as calm as ever.
“Grimehug came for me. He said you were choking, and he couldn’t wake you up.”
She took the handkerchief and wiped at her face. Her cheeks felt hot. “I feel like I’ve been dragged by a horse.”
“Another allergy fit? You’re not sneezing…”
“No, no. More of a night terror, I think.” She smiled weakly. “When you’ve got lungs as overactive as mine, it all gets tied together. Thank you for waking me up.”
“Your enemies are my enemies, remember? Knight, liege lord?”
“Oh, that.”
“What was it?”
“What was what?”
“The night terror.”
“Oh—I—” Slate waved a hand, hoping she hadn’t talked too much in her sleep. “Nothing. Someone I knew once.”
“Are you sure?”
He was using the voice on her. The paladin’s voice, calm and patient and absurdly trustworthy. Slate wasn’t sure if she resented that or not.
She should tell him about the crow cage. If she told him, she would probably feel better.
If she told him, she’d have to think about Horsehead.
And at that point, three things occurred to Slate more or less simultaneously.
The first was that she was naked, except for a sheet that had mostly fallen off while she was coughing. The second was that Caliban was still holding her up. His arm lay across her bare back. His hand was very warm and he was running his thumb across the point of her shoulder without seeming to realize it.
The third, unfortunately, was that with her hair hanging in sweaty strands and her face red and damp and her nose swollen, she was probably about as attractive as an injured mudskipper.
She hadn’t yet worked out whether the third one negated the first two, when Grimehug bounced up on the bed, and that tipped the balance. Caliban jerked his arm away as if stung, and Slate pulled the sheet up to her chin with a faint sigh.
Oh, well, probably for the best. Am I even allowed to nail a knight sworn in my service? Is that fraternizing?
Would he be doing it because he wanted to, or under orders? Does that fall into duty to one’s liege?
Have I even forgiven him for calling me weak? He did apologize, but then he swore fealty to me like an idiot, and I don’t know if I’ve forgiven him for that, either.
No. No. This is too complicated. Entirely too complicated. Stick to the mission. I don’t have time for this.
“You feeling better, Crazy Slate?”
“Yeah.” She reached out a hand and ruffled his fur. “Thanks, Grimehug.”
“Glad to help, crazy lady.” Apparently deciding that the evening’s entertainment had ended, the gnole plopped down at the foot of the bed and stretched out again.
“I should go,” said Caliban.
She nodded. “Sorry to wake you.”
“I owed you a midnight waking,” he said, a bit dryly. “And at least you didn’t try to stab me.”
“You could go out and come in again and I could have a knife ready, if it would make you feel better.”
He rose. He was wearing a pair of trousers and not much else. Slate didn’t know whether to bless Grimehug or boot him out into the hall.
God, the knight was stupidly beautiful. She’d seen him without a shirt on before, but usually only in passing, as he shrugged into different clothes. Not with dim blue moonlight lying across his skin, highlighting the muscles from his shoulders down his arms.
She could see white scars slashed across his chest and she wanted to drag her fingers over each one and feel the way the texture changed from skin to scar and back again.
“If you need me again—” he began.
No, no. Being weak again. Paladins don’t take advantage of the weak, even if the weak bloody well wish they would.
Shoulders like a goddamn ox and a brain to match.
“I know where you sleep,” said Slate ominously.
“Yes, and don’t think that doesn’t scare me.” He nodded to the gnole. “Come get me again, Grimehug, if you need to.”
The door closed.
Slate dropped back to the mattress with a groan. Four months in a jail cell. No one should look that good after four months in a jail cell. The Dreaming God has impeccable standards.
Why couldn’t he look like…like Brenner, say? I’d have jumped his bones weeks ago if he looked like a human and not a damn piece of statuary.
“Grimehug?”
“Yeah, Crazy Slate?”
“Why’d you get Caliban?”
“Couldn’t wake you up. You were choking bad.”
“No, I know, but—why him? Why not one of the others?”
There was a long silence from the foot of the bed.
“Think maybe a gnole won’t answer that, Crazy Slate.”
“What? Why not?”
Grimehug shrugged. She felt the gesture ripple across her feet. “Humans all crazy, Crazy Slate. You crazier than most. Humans can’t smell. Leave it alone, maybe.”
“Huh,” said Slate. I better not push him—we need his help too bad to bully him over something like this.
Still, she wondered. Despite the limited vocabulary, she suspected Grimehug knew a lot more than he let on, and she wondered what exactly he’d been thinking.
CHAPTER 5
“I DON’T LIKE THIS,” said Caliban. “There ought to be guards.”
Grimehug gave him a look over one ragged shoulder. “Clocktaurs don’t need guards, big man.”
“Yeah,” said Slate, “they’re ten feet tall and made out of… whatever that stuff is. What would they need guards for?”
“To stop people like us,” said Caliban.
Brenner laughed at that.
Slate shook her head. “This is a bad neighborhood. They’d need to guard the guards.”
Learned Edmund looked around worriedly.
They were in the Old City, near the parade grounds. Grimehug assured them that this was the route that the clocktaurs took out of the Clockwork District.
And it was, quite clearly, a bad neighborhood. There were rats in the gutters—not skulking, but strolling around as if they had a right to be there. Garbage piled up in the alleys. The houses were run-down and crammed tightly together. Caliban did not see a single gnole.
Also, Brenner looked more comfortable than he’d been for days.
“Some gnoles here,” said Grimehug, when asked. “Not worth being seen. Some gnole pokes his head up, maybe some gnole gets his throat slit for fun, eh?”
Learned Edmund shuddered.
They crowded into an alley. It was near dusk and the shadows were getting thick. Caliban ran into a garbage bin and cursed.
“I’d tell you to be quiet,” said Brenner, taking a long drag off his cigarette, “but we actually don’t want to startle anyone. So try to clank louder, will you?”
“Ha ha.”
The paladin was flanking Slate, one step behind. It reminded him of the first time they had walked together, in the halls of the palace, with Caliban ragged and battered, in too-loose clothes and a season’s growth of beard.
He expected that few people would recognize him as the same man. Slate looked exactly the same, though, her face still as mobile and expressive.
He couldn’t remember now if she had always been bad at hiding her feelings, or if he had gotten better at reading them.
Last night, it had been blatantly obvious that her night terror was actually about something real and present and probably about to crash on all their heads. Caliban would have found this rather alarming, except that he’d had his arm around her naked shoulders and concentrating on the fact that she was lying to him was the only thing that kept him from making a fool of himself right there.
Well, that and Grimehug.
It was very difficult to seduce a woman in front of a gnole. There was something about them that was the very opposite of romantic. Probably the smell of wet dog.
Which was for the best. The strong do not take advantage of the weak. Or the…err m…the equally strong who happen to be having a moment of weakness. As the case may be.
…and if I’d said any of that out loud, she’d probably have shoved me out a window in full armor. So really, it’s for the best.
The alley opened onto a narrow street. It was dark and the few unbroken windows were not lit. Slate frowned.
“That’s a bad neighborhood,” she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder the way they had come, “but this street used to be the border. It was always pretty lively. There’s even some nice houses on the other side. What happened?”
“Three guesses,” said Brenner, “and they all start with clockwork.”
Caliban sighed.
They waited. The shadows got longer and melted together.
“How long until the clocktaur comes?” asked Slate quietly.
Grimehug shrugged. “Usually come out around now. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.”
“I imagine we’ll hear it coming,” said Learned Edmund.
They did not wait long.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“There’s your clocktaur, Crazy Slate.”
Slate put a handkerchief to her face pre-emptively.
The windows rattled as the thumping grew closer.
Caliban put his hand on his sword. It was a useless gesture and he knew it, but his body felt better for it, even if his mind did not.
The clocktaur came into view at the end of the street.
Two gnoles were jogging along in front of it. Grimehug leaned out of the alley mouth and waved cheerfully. One of the gnoles waved back.
“Eh! Grimehug!”
“Eh! Cobble!”
Brenner made a brief, abortive move forward. Slate put a shoulder in front of him. “It probably knows we’re here,” she hissed. “The point is that right now it doesn’t care.”
“But—”
“I’m not sneezing.”
Brenner subsided.
The clocktaur pulled alongside the alley.
It was one thing to see them marching and know the beasts were tall—it was another to see it pass a dozen feet away. The clocktaur’s blunt head was even with the bottom of the second-story windows. Caliban could see gears on it, turning, all of them the color of old ivory and none of them doing anything he understood. He heard Slate draw a breath and hold it and go very still.
And then it was past them. It stomped on down the street, accompanied by the gnoles. Caliban was amazed that the stones did not shatter under the thing’s feet.
It did not turn its head or acknowledge their existence. It did not acknowledge anything’s existence. When it reached the end of the street and turned, it seemed to be following a pre-ordained path. The gnoles scampered out of its way.
The five of them stood in silence for a moment, broken by the sound of Learned Edmund opening his notebook.
“It can’t work,” he muttered, sounding distressed. “Those gears shouldn’t do that. It moves like a beast, not like a mechanism. How did anyone ever make that?”
No one had an answer. The scholar scribbled a few notes before closing his notebook again. “Too dark to write,” he muttered. “We should go back.”
“I wonder if they heal?” mused Caliban. “Beasts heal. Mechanisms don’t.”
Grimehug shook his head. “Seen one bash into another one once. Walked into each other. One got a chunk knocked off it. Could tell that one by the hole ‘til they all marched out.”
“That’s useful,” said Learned Edmund. “Thank you, Grimehug.”
“How’s the smell?” asked Brenner in an undertone.
Slate wiped her nose. “Not bad. A little rosemary, but that’s all.”
“Oh, well,” said Learned Edmund, sounding a bit more cheerful. “If I may venture a hypothesis?”
“Venture at will.”
“It would seem that your—mmm—talent is perhaps a form of weak precognition? It is warning you about things that may be dangerous. Since this clocktaur is not dangerous to you, the effects are significantly weakened.”
“Could be,” Slate admitted. “Though it’s not always about danger.” She shot Caliban a look he couldn’t read. “Still, I’m not complaining…”
She leaned out of the alley mouth and looked in the direction that the clocktaur had gone. “Well, at least we know why that street’s empty now. Can’t imagine you’d want that walking by every—”
“‘scuse me, darlin’,” said Brenner quietly, “but we’ve got friends.”
They all turned.
There were men in the alley. They did not look friendly. Caliban could see at least four, and one of them had a rather large knife out.
“See, I knew this was a bad neighborhood,” said Slate, to no one in particular.
“This is a poor idea, gentlemen,” said Caliban. “You should leave.”
The footpads did not look impressed.
“We are capable of defending ourselves,” he added.
If possible, they looked even less impressed. Brenner snickered.
“You want to try?” asked Caliban over his shoulder.
“Sure.” Brenner raised his voice. “Sod off, you bastards, and we won’t kill you.”
One of the footpads spat.
Caliban felt mildly gratified by Brenner’s failure, right up until the first man charged.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
There were too many of them. His sword was absolutely useless in an alley this narrow and he didn’t have a shield. On the other hand, he was wearing chainmail and a rather thick cloak. Cloth bound up knives remarkably well. And it didn’t look like a very good knife to begin with.
For lack of anything better to do, Caliban pushed Slate behind him and punched the footpad in the face with a mailed fist.
The man staggered back. Either he hadn’t been expecting resistance, or he hadn’t been expecting quite so much of it.
Caliban darted a glance behind him. I have to stay between them and the others…
“Can we talk about this, gentlemen?” asked Slate, from somewhere in the vicinity of Caliban’s left elbow. “I’m sure no one wants this to turn ugly—”
The first footpad pulled his hands away from his nose, which was streaming blood. “Ob show you ubly!” His compatriot made short stabbing motions with his knife.
Slate sighed.
“Now?” asked Brenner quietly.
“Fine.”
And then Brenner moved.
Caliban didn’t even see it happen. It didn’t look like he was doing anything. Brenner just walked forward, very calmly, and lifted both hands.
Both footpads clutched their throats and fell against the walls of the alley.
The cause of this appeared to be a pair of knives stuck into their necks.
One made a valiant effort to stab Brenner on the way down. Brenner leaned to one side and looked at the next pair of footpads in the alley.
“Well?” he said.
The sounds of running footsteps died away. Grimehug sat down and scratched.
“Amateurs,” muttered Brenner.
“I will admit it. I am impressed,” said Caliban.
The assassin shrugged. “It’s easier when they stand close together like that. They get in each other’s way more than yours.”
Learned Edmund sketched signs in the air—blessings or requests for mercy, Caliban couldn’t say. His skin looked gray.
“Well,” said Caliban. “This has been…educational. I suppose we should report this attack to the—Slate!”
“What?”
“Are you going through their pockets?”
“I’ll wash my hands.” She held up a single coin and scowled. “They must have been hard up. Hardly worth rolling.”
“We could sell their boots,” said Brenner.
“A gnole knows a good place for boots,” offered Grimehug.
“We are not selling anyone’s boots,” said Caliban. “We are informing the guards—”
“Oh, the hell we are,” said Slate. “Have you forgotten what we’re doing here?”
There was a brief pause.
“…yes,” said Caliban. “I had, actually. All right.” He hastily signed benedictions over the men’s bodies. “Let’s go home, shall we? Unless there’s something else you think we can learn?”
He inclined his head toward Slate.
She’s in charge. Don’t take command just because you’re used to it. This is her world, not yours.
“I think we’ve learned quite enough,” said Slate. She wrinkled her nose. “Good job, Brenner.”
The assassin shrugged, but there was a glint of pleasure in his eyes.
“I suppose now that we’ve seen one, we need to figure out how they’re made.” Slate glanced over her shoulder, in the direction the clocktaur had gone.
“All come out of the Clockwork District,” said Grimehug. “You want a clocktaur, that’s where you go.”
CHAPTER 6
AS THEY WALKED BACK TOWARD THE INN, Slate fell back a few steps. Caliban immediately dropped back to flank her.
“Is this how you treat your liege?” she murmured.
He was silent for a moment. Then, “No, I forget myself. But you should probably be used to that by now.”
She glanced back at him, amused. He was smiling and it sent a familiar jolt through her.
Dammit. No. Down, girl. This is not the time.
“Do you plan to walk behind me like this forever?”
“Would that be a problem?”
“Frankly, yes.” She scowled. “I have worked very hard to be invisible. You are very visible.”
“I could attempt to disguise myself.”
He said it entirely earnestly. Slate remembered his suggestion of a disguise in the capitol. Had it only been a few weeks ago? She looked at him again. Still six feet tall, almost obnoxiously beautiful, armed to the teeth, wearing a white cloak, for the love of the gods…okay, they could maybe fix the cloak, but as to the rest…
She pinched the bridge of her nose. It would be like disguising a war-horse as a donkey. Theoretically possible, but…
“Caliban, there is no earthly reason for someone like me to have a bodyguard that looks like you.”
He looked at her with total non-comprehension. “Like me?”
“Militant,” Slate said. Why couldn’t you look a little less like a damn statue?
“I could try to look less militant.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “Uh-huh. Caliban, I am not a priestess. I am not a nun. I most definitely
