The Havoc Machine ce-4

by Steven Harper

  That got Thad’s attention fast, though me made no move to touch the purse. “Dante.”

  The parrot expertly tore the purse open, revealing the glint of silver and gold coins, a generous offering. “Pretty, pretty, pretty,” he said, plucking a coin from the pile with a claw and bending it in half with his beak.

  Thad didn’t relax his guard. “People don’t usually hire me to kill clockworkers. They usually beg me, and I’m always happy to oblige. Why offer money?”

  “You may do with the clockworker as you wish. It makes nothing to me. I want-or rather, my employer wants-something else entirely. That is why we are offering you money.”

  Now Thad leaned back in the hard chair. “Your employer?”

  “I represent a third party. He does not go out in public and needs people to do for him. He heard you were traveling with the Kalakos Circus these days, and when they came to Vilnius, he asked me to arrange for your employment.”

  “I’m not seeking long-term-”

  “This is a single piece of work,” Sofiya interrupted. “And it is very similar to what you already do.”

  “Money, money,” Dante said. “Pretty money.” He reached for another coin. Thaddeus absently moved the purse out of his reach and took a pull from his beer.

  “You can see my face,” he said. “I would like to see yours. So I know who I’m dealing with.”

  Without hesitation, Sofiya cast back her scarlet hood. Golden hair spilled across her shoulders and clear blue eyes looked out over finely molded features and a sharp chin. The small scar that ran along her left jawline was the only flaw to her beauty. Thad didn’t outwardly react, though inwardly he caught his breath. Such sweet loveliness ran a sharp contrast to the dull tavern and its sour drinks-and brought up bitter memories.

  “Thank you.” His voice stayed carefully neutral. “Who’s your employer, if you please?”

  “He is a person who hires people like me so he does not need to give his name.” Sofiya straightened her thick cloak. It must have been stifling in the heat of the tavern, but she showed no signs of sweating. “You usually kill clockworkers for no money at all, so I would have thought the prospect of having extra coins would be an encouragement, no?”

  “I just like to know what’s going on,” Thad replied.

  “Darkness, despair, death,” Dante squawked. “Doom!”

  Sofiya ignored him. “I will tell you. There is a castle ruin approximately half a day’s horseback travel south of Vilnius. A clockworker who calls himself Mr. Havoc has moved in to it, fortified it, and made it his own. He is quite brilliant, as all clockworkers are.” She paused to sip from her red glass. Was it wine? She had expensive tastes. “He has already managed many dreadful experiments with machines and men. The village nearby is quite terrified of him, but they lack the weaponry to assault his little fortress.”

  “And you want me to go in there and kill him,” Thad finished.

  “You are very forthright for such a handsome Englishman,” Sofiya said. “But I have already said that my employer does not care if you kill Mr. Havoc or not. He wants you to bring him a particular machine Mr. Havoc has created.”

  “Is that so?” Thad took another pull from his beer mug. It was only of middling quality, but it was beer and not giras. “You didn’t give me much information, Miss Ekk. How coherent is this Mr. Havoc? Does he go into inventing fugues quite a bit or only rarely? What sort of inventions does he specialize in? Who was he before he became a clockworker? Does he have friends or family who help him? Where does he get money from? Does he buy or steal to get materials? If he buys, who is his supplier? If he steals, who does he steal from?”

  Sofiya spread her hands. “I am afraid I have already told you everything I know, Mr. Sharpe.”

  “Why doesn’t your employer simply wait him out? The clockwork plague will kill this Mr. Havoc of yours in a couple of years, three at the absolute most.”

  “No. My employer needs the invention now. But I see you are reluctant.” She gathered up the purse and made to rise. “I will find someone else, then. Good day, Mr. Sharpe.”

  He caught her wrist. The skin was smooth. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, Miss Ekk. I’m just suspicious of strange circumstances and a secretive employer.”

  “The circumstances are this-you have the chance to rid the world of another clockworker, and make a great deal of money in the bargain by delivering one of his inventions to my employer. Will you do it?”

  Dante bit the candle in half. “Done, done, done.”

  “Done,” Thad said.

  “Excellent. The invention is a spider the size of a small trunk. It has ten legs instead of the usual eight, and it has copper markings all over it. You will know it the moment you see it. I would approach the castle from the west. Our employer has information that says the west wall of the castle has an old doorway overgrown with ivy. The castle’s defenses are also weaker in that direction, which is lucky for you-us. That door will get you through the castle wall and into the ruins. After that, you are quite alone.”

  “I’m never alone if I have Dante,” Thad replied without a trace of irony.

  Sofiya got to her feet. “I have a horse waiting in the back, and a basket of food. The moon is full tonight, so you can see. Take the main road south, then turn west when you reach the village of Juodsilai. The ruins are there. The horse is fast and should reach the castle an hour or two before dawn.”

  “What, you want me to leave now? In the middle of the night?”

  “Must you make extensive preparations?”

  “No.”

  “Do you intend to attack Mr. Havoc during daylight, when he can see you coming?”

  “No.”

  “Then we go now, Mr. Sharpe.”

  “We?”

  “I will come with you, of course.” A grim smile crossed Sofiya’s face as she hauled him toward the back door. “I am suspicious as well.”

  Chapter Two

  Sofiya towed him into a noisome alley ankle-deep in autumn mud. A chilly wind spun angrily between high, narrow buildings beneath a heavy moon, and Dante settled his brass feathers. Thad pried himself out of Sofiya’s grip and faced her. “I don’t take observers with me, Miss Ekk. I work alone.”

  “That sounds lonely.”

  “No one else gets hurt that way.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” She waved a hand. “You are the brave warrior who faces great trials by himself. How trite.”

  “Listen, I don’t want you getting in the-”

  “I? Get in the way? Ha!” She huffed beneath the scarlet cloak. “Frankly, Mr. Sharpe, I am waiting for you to die.”

  “Die?” Thad echoed.

  “Certainly. One of Mr. Havoc’s machines will likely drill through your skull like, how you Englishmen say, a hot knife through butter, and while the blood gushes down your ear and Mr. Havoc watches you twitch on his worktable, I will slip in to take his invention-and the credit.”

  Thad stared at her. “Really?”

  “No, you idiot.” She shoved him down the alley and seized his arm again. “I am going to stand outside this ruined castle and watch while you go in and then I will hope you don’t die. Otherwise I will have to find someone else stupid enough for this job.”

  Thad allowed her to tow him along. “And you think I’m stupid enough, is that it?”

  “You keep on your shoulder a brass parrot that does not like you much and can, in your words, deliver more than two thousand pounds of pressure from the business end of that sharp beak. Is that smart or is it stupid?”

  “Stupid,” Dante echoed. “Stupid, stupid.”

  Thad halted. “Then perhaps this employer should go get this invention himself.”

  “No, no.” Sofiya held up her hands, and the red cloak spilled over her arms in a scarlet river under the moon’s silver shadows. “I have told you-our employer has a number of limitations and he cannot do for himself. If you do not wish the work, please say so and I will find someone else.”
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  “There is no one else, Miss Ekk, and we’re both aware of that.” He lowered his voice to a near growl. “I’m always willing to kill a clockworker, no matter what the circumstances, and I can definitely use the enormous sum of money you’re offering, but you can keep a civil tongue about it.”

  She bowed, and Thad couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to mock or not. “My apologies. I am very often forthright, especially these days.”

  He blinked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we have to leave now. Our employer wants that invention as quickly as possible, and I am coming along because I do not entirely trust you not to run away with the invention or destroy it once you leave the castle. But you can kill the clockworker or not, as you wish.”

  Thad let this pass and followed her down the dark alley again. “And once I give you the invention, you intend to kill me?”

  “What?” She glanced back at him. “Ah. Like me, you have many suspicions. That I can understand. No, Mr. Sharpe. I have no reason to kill you. And if I did, there would be simpler, less expensive methods to accomplish it than than offer you money and send you to a castle. I could, for example, offer myself to you and kill you while we copulated.”

  Thad flicked a glance of his own down the alley. “No,” he said. “You couldn’t. But I understand your point.”

  “Point is sharp,” Dante said. “Sharp on point.”

  “Shut it, bird.”

  Sofiya cocked her head. “So why do you keep this talking bird if you only tell him to shut up? And in such bad shape, too. I could arrange for him to be fixed.”

  “I’ll take your money, but I don’t explain myself to you,” Thad snapped. “Let’s go, then.”

  “As you say. Our mount is just around the corner.”

  They rounded the corner. Standing in a small cul-de-sac was a magnificent brass horse. Golden skin etched with fine designs gleamed in the moonlight and curls of steam wisped from its nostrils. Its mane stood up in a stiff wire brush. Thad stopped short, and Dante hunkered down on his shoulder.

  “No,” Thad said.

  Sofiya looked puzzled. “No?”

  “I’ll find my own horse.” He turned and stomped away.

  “But-”

  Thad strode off without looking back. Dante clung to his shoulder, wordless for once. Out on the stony street, Thad found a closed carriage for hire and paid the driver to take him to the southern edge of Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. By now, the only foot traffic on the street consisted of men stumbling home from the taverns. Through the carriage window, Thad also caught sight of a plague zombie lurching through the shadows. Its clothes were ragged, its skin in tatters. It seemed to have only one foot. Thad grimaced in loathing. He supposed he should feel pity, but all he could dredge up was disgust. The vile things spread the clockwork plague everywhere. Most people who caught the disease died quickly. Others lost brain and muscle function and shambled through the rest of their short lives as zombies. And a tiny few…

  The memories, always at the back of his mind, muscled themselves up to the front. They were nearly ten years old, but they tore and bled like yesterday’s wounds. To stanch them, Thad reached up and grabbed Dante. The brass feathers and exposed gears poked his palm.

  “Say it,” he hissed.

  Dante neither moved nor spoke.

  “Say it!” Thad barked.

  Another pause. Then Dante opened his beak wide. From somewhere inside, gears and memory wheels spun and from the mechanical parrot’s throat came the tinny voice of a little boy: “I love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy.”

  Thad sighed, then set his jaw and let Dante go. The parrot shifted on Thad’s shoulder and muttered, “Bad boy, bad boy. Bad, bad, bad.”

  “Shut it.”

  Dante fell silent.

  The driver had seen the zombie, too, and flicked his whip to make the horses pick up the pace. Thad watched the creature fade into the chilly night. His jaw ached. He realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax. The zombie wouldn’t last more than a few more days anyway, not in this weather. Rumors floated around about an angel with a sword, or perhaps a clawed hand, that cured the plague with a touch. Supposedly this angel traveled Europe with a mortal man who sang with a heavenly voice. The pair were spreading the cure everywhere, and one day the clockwork plague would end. Thad snorted and slouched lower on the worn leather seat. People would believe anything. The only cure for the plague was death.

  The carriage bumped through the streets until the buildings abruptly ended. Farmland, walled estates, and small plots of scrubby trees stretched to the south, but crouched on one of the fields at the town’s edge was a complex of tents and wagons scattered around a single enormous tent. To one side on a spur of iron track sat a long train, complete with locomotive and caboose. The colors of car and canvas were muted in the moonlight, as if a rainbow had fallen asleep. Thad paid the driver and loped into the network of wood and canvas.

  Up close, many of the tents and wagons showed wear and dilapidation-holes, dings, even scorch marks. The illustrated sign out front that read KALAKOS CIRCUS OF AUTOMATONS AND OTHER WONDERS bore signs of water damage. Thad wove his way among it all with an unconscious dexterity born of childhood practice. He sighed and relaxed a little. It didn’t matter what city the circus was in, or even what country; a circus was home. He had only been with this particular circus for a few months, but everything about it-the creak of ropes, the snuff of elephants, the whisper of a knife blade clearing its sheath, the stale smell of fried food and old peanuts-brought back memories of being a little boy with his parents. He had learned the delicate art of knives and swords from his father, an expert thrower and swallower. He had learned the art of control and patient fearlessness from his mother, Dad’s assistant and target. From them both and from the rest of the circus he had picked up a dozen languages and the ability to be at ease in a hundred cultures.

  And then Thad had fallen in love and left them all for his dear Ekaterina in Poland. Thad set his jaw again and ducked under a tent rope. After any loss, the question that always plagued the survivors was whether or not they would do it all over again. It was a stupid question. There was no way to do it all over again, so what was the point in figuring out an answer? Still, Thad pulled at it like a child pulling at an old scab and making it bleed while the smell of stale peanuts and elephant’s breath swirled around him. Would he do it all over again?

  He still didn’t know.

  “Shut it, shut it,” Dante muttered.

  “Take your own advice, bird.”

  “Sharpe is sharp.”

  It broke Thad’s heart to see the shabby shape the Kalakos Circus found itself in. The Kalakos was elaborate, enormous, famous-or it had been all those things. Two years ago, the circus had had the misfortune to take in a clockworker named Gavin Ennock and go to Kiev, the birth of the clockwork plague itself. Thad, who was new to the Kalakos, had only gotten bits and pieces of that story. He’d heard about how the Dnipro River dam had inexplicably burst, of course-all of Europe had heard about that-and he’d heard about the way the succeeding flood had miraculously swept off the Gonta-Zalizniak clan of clockworkers who had ruled the Ukrainian Empire and treated its inhabitants like laboratory animals. But the circus folk were strangely tight-lipped about the rest of it, even among other performers. All Thad had been able to figure out was that the circus had come away from the flood much worse for the wear. A great many performers had fled, and much of the circus’s equipment had been destroyed, including its iconic mechanical elephant. This sort of thing came of dealing with clockworkers.

  At least clockworkers, unlike zombies, didn’t spread the plague. People who became clockworkers seemed to do something to the disease that kept it from spreading beyond them. This was, no doubt, small comfort to the flood victims of Kiev and to the Kalakos Circus.

  Thad arrived at his little wagon, parked near the train in the residential area of the circus. He
unlocked it and hopped inside, where he lit a candle. The thin light revealed a close, efficient space. At the front of the wagon stood a low wardrobe with a double-wide bunk atop it. Clever fold-down shelves on the walls could create small tables, stools, or even beds at a moment’s notice, and high, brimmed shelves held a few books and other knickknacks. A knife grinder’s wheel took up the front corner opposite a tiny stove. And from the walls hung a variety of damaged machines.

  Each machine had a different design, but all of them were clearly wrecked beyond repair. There were whirligigs with bent blades and spiders missing their legs, energy pistols with broken barrels, and automaton heads split in half, showing gears like metal brain matter. More than two dozen machines covered the wall, in fact. The shadows from the candle played across them, and their dead eyes seemed to focus on Thad. But none of them could actually move-a hard hammer and a satisfying set of nails had seen to that. As Thad set down the candlestick, Dante jumped from his shoulder and landed on a perch among them.

  “Sharpe is sharp,” he said.

  Thad opened the wardrobe. One half contained dull clothes and bright costumes. The other half clanked with weapons-short swords, silvery knives, heavy axes, thin stilettos, a spiked mace. And pistols. Six of those, including one of the new Smith amp; Wesson revolvers that accepted cartridge rounds. The rounds were much more accurate but also much more expensive, so Thad rarely used them. He hesitated, then touched the torn money pouch in his pocket. With a grim nod, he holstered the Smith amp; Wesson revolver at his belt. His long leather jacket fell open, revealing another small armory of knives and other blades. He checked to make sure they were all in place, put Dante back on his shoulder, and went back outside, carefully locking the little wagon behind him.

  From a storage box attached to the wagon’s outside wall, he took a bridle and saddle while Dante shifted uneasily. Thad glanced at the moon and realized he’d have to hurry if he wanted to make it to the village and the clockworker’s castle in time to go in tonight. For a moment, he considered waiting a day or two. It might be better to scout the area out, find out more about Mr. Havoc and his defenses.