The doll held him immobile, face-to-face, its fixed ivory smile promising a kiss.
Tiny holes opened in the pupils of its eyes, and its lips parted into a straight slit. A curved blade like a bird’s tongue began to slide from its mouth. Needles as thick as boil lances extruded from its eyes.
Terrified, Daniel jabbed a knuckle into the crook of the doll’s elbow. The Brotherhood’s knowledge of pressure points and grips was useless against metal. He grabbed the doll’s throat with both hands and twisted. The automaton was immeasurably stronger than any man was. Daniel’s resistance turned its whirring to a whine, but did nothing to slow the pull of its embrace. The muscles in his arms burnt. The points of the needles blurred in closeness.
His flailing hand grasped for anything with which to block the blades, found a mouth and a nose – a spare mask hanging from the back of the chair. He grabbed it and jammed it between his face and the extruding metal. The lacquer pressed into his face, the relentless pressure of the blades scratching its surface. He heard it crack.
He stood with a yell, lifting himself, the doll and the chair in one piece and flung himself backwards, twisting his body as he fell. They tumbled together down the stairs to Bolb’s bedroom in a bewildering jumble of limbs. Wigs, masks, gears and bolts scattered as they went.
The doll took most of the impact, crashing into the side of Bolb’s bed and splitting from the chair. Daniel heard a rib crack as he slid across the floor, bounced into one of Bolb’s bedsteads and came to rest against a wall. He saw the room sideways and in great pain. The doll lay frozen like a dead insect, its limbs curled inwards.
There was a muffled cry from the corridor. Someone had heard. The bolts and plates of the armoured door, only a few feet away, began to spin. Daniel shook metal fragments from his body. He grabbed Bolb’s diary and ran for the workshop window, swung himself into the cold air outside. A tearing pain seared through his chest. His vision darkened and he clutched at the surround, teetering on the edge of consciousness.
“My love!” A roar of outrage filled Bolb’s chambers. Daniel could not afford to wait for the pain to pass. He swung onto the slippery surface of the Verge’s exterior and edged away with frantic, nauseous movements. In his haste he missed his footing and his vision blurred again as he took the whole of his weight in his arms.
Pendolous Bolb’s head emerged into the night air only yards away from where Daniel hung. He shone a light out to sea, then down towards the shore. Daniel held his breath but it did not help. Bolb turned towards him, saw him.
This time there was no way to hide his face.
“You!” Bolb shouted, and ducked back inside his room. Daniel, half blinded by the light and the pain, scrabbled recklessly towards the turret. If Bolb summoned help, there would be a guard at every window before he could make it back inside, or maybe the master would simply prise him from the wall with a broomstick.
A long metal finger reached out of Bolb’s window, then four more, as if the skeletal hand of a giant were reaching around its sill. The bulbous black body of a spider emerged, its abdomen throbbing with gas, its glass eyes and fangs swirling with a yellow liquid that could only be poison. It scuttled towards him, unhindered by fear or gravity.
Why didn’t I bring that bloody pistol?
The spider paused, refocused it lenses, adjusted its footing and leapt a yard horizontally across the sheer wall. Daniel tried to do the same with a swing of his arms. His fingers slipped. He dangled from the wall by one hand. The spider jumped again, landed with a clatter of springs and regarded him without mercy.
He saw the reflection of his terrified face repeated a thousand times in its senseless eyes. There was no point in trying to run; the turret window was too far. Daniel listened to the clicking of the spider’s metal brain as it calculated his demise. He cleared his mind as Brother Hernandez had taught him.
Bolb hissed in triumph from his window.
The monster made a murderous leap, fangs bared. With perfect timing, Daniel flung Bolb’s bronze-bound diary hard into its face. The two creations collided, mid-air. Daniel and Bolb watched them plummet, legs flailing, pages flapping. They shattered upon the rocks three hundred feet below and disappeared into the surf.
Bolb’s moon-like face gnarled with rage and disgust and disappeared from view. Daniel scaled the last few feet to the turret window, and slipped through to the safety of the corridor inside. Bolb emerged from his chambers and waddled towards him, bells jangling furiously.
“Who are you? What do you want?” the master screamed, and then stopped, as if suddenly afraid. “You cannot escape. I will call for the guards. Seal off the Masters’ Quarters.”
Not if you’re as guilty as I know you are, Daniel thought.
“Guards!” Bolb shouted.
Shit, Daniel thought, and ran.
“I know your face,” Bolb screamed after him. “I know your face.”
The weight of a tear
Bertrand and Dyer stood outside the bedroom door holding Mother in a stretcher. Anna grabbed armfuls of neatly folded clothes from the wardrobe and rammed them into a laundry bag. The baby hung contentedly from its hook on the wall. It blinked and smiled at Jon. Anna would not look in his direction.
“They made me take their mark,” he said.
Does she think I’m a rebel? A criminal? No better than Peacock Matthew? A storm of excuses gathered in his mind, but he stayed his tongue. Anna and the baby were in danger if they stayed in Turbulence. She was shaking. Seeing her this upset made his skin prickle with guilt, but if her disappointment in him would carry her safely out of town, then he would bear it.
“Barehill promised safe passage. There are tunnels to the countryside,” he said.
Anna shook her head in disbelief and started to cry again, sobbed while she packed.
Does she think I’m a murderer?
“I didn’t kill the censor. I don’t know why they keep saying that. It was Laila. I tried to stop her.”
Anna coughed tears from her throat. “Then why didn’t you turn her in?”
“An inquisition would look bad. The facts would seem against me.”
“I’m sure they would,” she said bitterly.
“If they looked inside my heart they’d know different – but they won’t. You saw what those censors were like, Norbury and Josephus. Real censors aren’t like the ones in Daniel’s storybooks. Their idea of justice is a man on the end of a rope.”
When the packing was done, Anna called for Bert and Dyer and they came for the sacks. She took the baby from the wall. Jon prepared himself for insults and fury. With Anna, it was always best to let her have the last word.
“Come with me,” she said. “We could go to the colonies, to the Far West, start over again. No one would find us there, not even the censors.”
He saw that she meant it and pictured it for a moment, a life without position or property, scraping a living from the mountains alongside convicts, deserters and escaped slaves. There was no need to reply, she had known his answer before she asked. It was sweet of her to talk soft like that though, to give him the chance to walk away.
“I can’t. The gods have a plan for me.”
“You’re not making any sense. The gods don’t care about people like us.”
He shook his head. “They’re going to give me a sign – I just don’t know what it is yet. When matters are settled, you’ll return to Turbulence and see that I was right.”
Anna hugged him and whined her heartbreak.
“Someone’s going to come for you, Jon, and then they’re going to kill you.”
***
Jon waited for the mill to clear. The occasional rattle of the winch chain in the tower told him that Barehill’s men were still lowering flour sacks into barrels to be rolled back to the Holt. That was all right, they wouldn’t bother him. He surveyed his unmade bed, dr
aped with a few duds that Anna had left behind. It had been a long time since he had slept alone. He picked up a pair of her ripped stockings, held them to his face and breathed her in.
Imagine how awful it would be if Anna was right, he thought, if the heavens were empty or indifferent. Then it would just be him alone and against the world.
There was still a bottle of potato wine in the pantry, only a few years old. He could mix in some herbs to ease the pain of his bruised knuckles and bring sleep. He went down into the hall and found the bottle in the place he remembered, wedged behind the pantry, dusty and unopened.
The liquor was a quarter gone by the time Barehill’s men had departed, and Jon’s head had already begun to swim, but it was too soon to call an end to the night’s merry misery.
Some fresh air was called for.
He took a candle and went up to the bagging floor. He tripped on the threshold of the reefing deck and was saved by its hard iron railing. Winded but still alive, he clutched his belly and laughed.
Across town the ruin of the manufactory still smoked. A wreck that big will smoulder for days. All trace of its once mighty sails had gone; not even the poll-heads remained. A sooty breeze stroked Jon’s face. It was strong, unnaturally so. With the manufactory gone, the cunning that had ruined him was now working to his advantage. His own mill’s sails, locked and furled, creaked overhead yearning to be set free.
Buoyed by the night air he soaked in the city. A curfew had been imposed, and when nobody was allowed on the streets, the traffic travelled above ground. A few roof-runners were plying their shadowy trade. Jon drank some more, listened to the nightingale chatter of their young voices, watched as gossip and small packages were exchanged across the narrow gaps between the tenement houses. In Turbulence there was always a way around a rule.
A patrol came marching up Peek Lane, turned into the street called The Froggary and headed towards the mill. They were a mixed bunch – a few of the duchess’s guard and a censor thrown in for good measure. Jon’s first instinct was to duck back inside the mill tower. He changed his mind. Blast them all to stars. If they come for me, I’ll know that Anna was right. He stood as tall as he could, stretched his arms out wide in the shape of a cross and dared the armoured men to see him.
The patrol marched straight past the mill, headed for the safety of the barracks in the Dowager Duchess’s residence. It was another sign, for sure.
‘The gods don’t care about people like us.’ What Anna had said made no sense. If the entire world was a dream of the gods, then how could they imagine something about which they did not care? Every brick in every building was part of their conception. Every branch in every tree. Soon enough they would send him a sign, show him what needed to be done.
Jon rubbed his forehead and smelled the liquor in his sweat. All men might be equal in the eyes of the gods, but the Peacock still needed paying, and soon. It was time to count out coins again. He climbed to the bin floor, mounted the ladder to the cap and poked his candle through the trapdoor.
The strongbox was gone, stolen, and he knew who had taken it. He roared with rage and blundered down rungs, intending to run the tunnels all the way to Barehill’s base.
The chest lay unhidden on the stone floor, next to the carousel. Barehill’s men moved it when they brought down the bodies, he realised, and felt foolish. The room still stank of corpse meat. It reminded him of Father, before the funeral, lying in state in borrowed velvet. He had spent three days at his side, stifling in the summer heat, waiting for mourners who never came.
He opened the chest and let a handful of coins slide through his fingers. I’m too drunk for counting work, he thought, too drunk to be useful to anyone. He wedged his half-empty bottle into a gap between the beams of the walls and lay uncomfortably on a grain sack.
Soft footsteps below. It had to be Laila. He peered obliquely through the trapdoor. She was looking for him on the reefing deck, still dressed like a man.
“Been sent to cheer me up?” he called down with an embarrassing belch. She looked him over, judgemental and disapproving.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“Let’s talk then.”
“It’s cold down here.” She rubbed her shoulders. Jon hadn’t noticed until she said it because the drink had hidden it from him, but she was right. Winter was nearly upon them.
“Come up then.” It was proper that they talked where the stink of death was strongest. Let it settle on her skin, he thought, remind her of what she’s done. He poured some liquor on his fingers and sniffed the drops up his nose to keep the death smell at bay.
Laila climbed the ladder sinuously and looked around the room. The carnival horse brought a child’s wonder to her hard face.
“The colours. They move.” She played peek-a-boo with her hands. Jon had forgotten that particular illusion. It didn’t bear confirming, half-cut as he was. Just the idea of it made his head spin.
“I thought the Freeborn were against magic,” he said.
“Can I?” She pointed at the horse. Jon shrugged. She sat astride it and rocked a little. The act was transparent, Jon thought. What kind of a fool did Barehill take him for, to send his girlish temptress on the very night that his wife had departed?
Jon threw himself into a routine of axle-checking and cog-oiling. It was hard to concentrate. Wine-addled, it seemed the parts themselves repelled his inspection. He thought about loading some grain into the hoppers. That was heavy work and he was still sober enough to know he was too drunk for it.
“George has given me orders,” Laila said. “There’s a mission. It’s very dangerous.” She pretended to sound nervous, uncertain. A good actress, Jon thought, and wondered into what she was trying to lure him.
“Seems like a waste of a young woman,” he said.
“I’d volunteer anyway,” she said defiantly.
Jon pulled at a gear strap looped around a rafter, hung from it one-armed, like a mountain ape.
“Then you’re as crazy as he is.” He suppressed another belch, souring the inside of his mouth.
“I don’t agree with everything he does. He can be very cold sometimes.”
Jon continued his aimless tinkering. In the weak yellow glow of the lanthorn Laila’s hair shone more burgundy than orange.
She watched him working. “Don’t be like him.”
“Your man’s a right bastard, that’s for sure.”
She looked away. “He’s not my man. We are the Freeborn.”
Jon snorted. “For a start he could stop telling people that I killed the censor. What if one of his men gets captured and sells me out?”
“That’s not his fault, Jon. I told him that you did it. I told everybody.”
Jon’s face tightened. He balled his fists. “You lying bitch.”
“I did it to protect you.”
“What?”
“You saved my life from that censor, or at least you tried to. I owe you, Jon, and my lie keeps you safe. George doesn’t always play fair. The men respect you now. Bill, Dyer and the others – some of them call you the Lion.”
The flattery made him angry. The woman was trying to manipulate him, pull his levers. He glared at her in silent fury, or at least tried to against the spinning of the room.
“Why are you here?”
“George needs you for the mission as well. He’s coming tomorrow morning, to explain.” She could barely look at him. Finally, the truth was revealed. Barehill needed him, for something serious. Was Laila his offer? The reward? He watched her chest rise and fall as she breathed, traced the shadow of her boyish jaw on the valley of her neck.
“I don’t agree with what he’s doing – with how he’s going about it,” she said.
“Say no then. What’s so special about George anyway? Do you do everything he asks?”
“Jon, you’re not listening to m
e. I’m trying to help you, save your family.”
“It’s not me that needs saving, it’s you.”
Laila caught the look in his eyes and slid backwards off the horse, stood ready on her toes. Jon slammed the trapdoor closed with a kick and tied the latch closed with the leather belt, kept her in his sight the whole time.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure we won’t be disturbed.” He rubbed the spit from his mouth with his sleeve and staggered towards her, steaming with drink and intent.
“Stop. No,” she said.
He watched the bulge in her throat rise and fall as she swallowed. She slipped sideways, tried to circle away from him, tried to keep pillars and stacked boxes of parts between them.
“This isn’t you, Jon. Something’s gone wrong in your head.”
He stalked her clumsily, kicking tools across the floor with his leaden feet. He had her trapped now, blocked into a corner by a half-sail too heavy to lift. He loomed over her; her eyes grew rabbit wide.
“I came up here to help you.”
“I know – get down on your knees.”
“What?”
“I want you on your knees.”
“No.”
“Kneel and pray. Pray for forgiveness. Look into your conscience and you’ll see. You’re not beyond saving. The gods brought you here tonight, not Barehill. Listen to them and you’ll see that you’re on the wrong path.”
The side of her hand slammed into his neck and then she hit him across the face with a thick wooden dowel. He fell to his knees, clutching his head, and collapsed sideways onto the floor. She jumped onto his chest. Faster than he could draw a breath, she snatched a dagger from behind her back and pressed its edge against his throat.
“You’re an idiot, Miller. I could kill you without blinking.”
Her brown eyes flared with anger, but he met them without fear and held his voice firm.
“But you won’t, will you? Your conscience sent you to me for a reason.”
The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy Page 29
