The Liberation

by Ian Tregillis

  Then Mab turned to her lieutenants. Do it, she clicked.

  As one, they lifted the cylindrical tanks and carried them to the edge of the scaffold. A moan, like the lowing of a terrified animal, went up from the human crowd. Each tank featured a spigot and heavy stopcock, Daniel saw. They opened these now. Each spewed a stream of clear liquid into the chasm, and the furnace heat did the rest. In moments, billows of thick white smoke wafted from the pit, lofted by the rising thermals to spill across Huygens Square like a pea-soup fog. It smelled just a bit like the almond extract he’d sometimes used when baking pastries for the Schoonraads’ breakfasts. At the pit’s edge, a man in tattered burgomaster robes began to convulse.

  And then the screaming started.

  Torn between the urge to flee, and the fear of getting cut down by the Lost Boys if they did, the humans gave way to panic.

  Oh dear God. She’s really going to do it. She’s going to murder everybody. Abandoning stealth, he grappled for the epoxy capsule hidden in his torso. Brave Doctor Mornay. I wish I could have helped you escape.

  Somebody in the crowd shouted, “Fire! NOW!”

  How odd, he thought, as he hurled himself on Mab. I could swear I know that voice.

  The insane machine turned at the last second, tried to bat him away. The impact burst the capsule. Not being a true epoxy grenade, it was too small to fully coat and immobilize them both. But the splash locked them in a combative embrace. Daniel’s weight was just enough to overbalance the much larger Mab. They tumbled from the scaffold.

  As weightlessness claimed him, Daniel found himself staring past Mab’s shoulder into the incandescent hell-glow of the Forge.

  I was born, and reborn, in flames. I suppose this is only fitting.

  Anastasia reached inside her rain cloak the instant the servitors on the scaffold brought the tanks forward. The rubber mask slung over her chest had flat panels of mundane glass extracted from a jeweler’s loupe; the long elephantine hose over the mouth and nose hung to a charcoal pack on her belt. The French had assured them that the masks would protect against any toxins that their kidnapped chemist could plausibly concoct in the time since her abduction with the known substances on hand. (“Probably.” “For a while.”)

  That didn’t prevent her hands from shaking. She could barely pull the straps over her head. One cut into her ear. Oh God, oh God, I’m trusting my life to French chemistry. Trusting my life to a woman who did her level best to have me killed, who left me for dead, who wants to see us destroyed. A poisonous fume blanketed the square. Where are the others? Are their masks working? Did they don them quickly enough? Did I? Am I breathing poison?

  The mask smelled of rubber, dental ether, and an astringent mélange she couldn’t identify. Yet if it kept the poison at bay, it didn’t filter out the odor of death.

  She stood at the edge of a riot, wreathed in poison and panic. Her comrades had scattered into the firelit fog, and she couldn’t hear or call to them over the screaming of the crowd. The thrum of bolas and thud of sledges punctuated the tumult; French weapons for face-to-face combat. (Why did we never study their methods? Anastasia wondered. Just in case the unthinkable happened?) A blur of motion caught her eye, at the same instant that a short, sharp yelp of alarm punctuated the screams. There came another an instant later, a thrashing man falling up.

  The Clakkers from New France, she realized. They had spread through the crowd to position themselves near the civilians. And now they were throwing the unprotected humans clear of the killing zone. But where—

  A military mechanical emerged from the baleful haze. Even through the smudgy distortions of her mask’s eyepieces, she immediately noticed its keyhole plate. The unsheathing of its blades was eerily silent amidst the chaos.

  Her hand throbbed.

  “Fire!” Berenice cried over the tumult. “NOW!”

  She gasped when she saw Daniel affix himself to Mab. Oh, you stupid, selfless cog-fucker.

  Daniel and Mab, a thrashing mass of savior and devil, conscience and vengeance, toppled toward the pit edge.

  Shit, shit, shitshitshitshitshit. If Daniel croaked, they were all dead. Assuming anybody survived the next few minutes.

  “Fire, goddamn it!”

  Her voice didn’t carry. But she wasn’t the only one watching Daniel.

  Delilah burst through the Ridderzaal’s boarded rosette window. Other mechanical members of the Griffon expedition emerged from hiding spots within the Guildhall’s twin towers, and atop its roof. All wore double-chambered backpacks, and all fired the instant they hit clear air.

  Globs of epoxy streaked across the square, tearing through the deadly miasma. At least one splashed against a flailing ragdoll who’d been flung clear of the miasma by a Clakker from the Griffon expedition. Fuck. But Berenice couldn’t spare another moment to see if the other shots hit their target; she’d already delayed longer than she ought. She cast off her rain cloak and donned her mask.

  Jesus, I hope these things work.

  Still, the tanks vomited their deadly contents. As chaos enveloped Huygens Square, she scrambled higher atop the fountain. Wobbling as high above the crowd as she could manage, one knee wrapped around a wingless cherub, she snagged the pouch hanging between her breasts. Hoping like hell that the others remembered their parts, she emptied the pouch into her palm. The explosive charge was barely the size of a pétanque ball, but it would suffice as a signal; its extremely loud report would be audible above the chaos.

  Just as she bent to twist the arming cap, a metal hand clamped around her ankle and yanked her down. Her hip erupted with tearing agony; her leg went numb. She slammed to the ground hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs, recrack her sealed tooth, and send the charge bouncing across the mosaic tiles into the crowd. Her mask’s eyepieces shattered.

  A servitor stood over her. “I recognize you,” it said. “You’re the Frenchwoman who tortured Lilith.”

  Berenice tried to swallow the phantom ache in her throat. Shitcakes.

  You fucking idiot martyr, cried Mab.

  Glued together as they were, every vibration and rattle of her body was like a shout transmitted straight into Daniel’s mind. She pummeled him as they fell into the furnace. They were too close together for kicks and punches, and even for her blades, but she devoted her final moments of life to crushing him in a titanic bear hug. Metal squealed.

  This achieves nothing! My Lost Boys will crack open the head of every single—

  They hit something. Hard. And two more things, in rapid succession, just centiseconds apart.

  The rings? he wondered, vaguely disappointed that his final thought should be so mundane. It was nothing like the stories of the mythical Queen Mab; that utterly fictitious figure never lacked for a trenchant or poignant observation at the perfect moment. The real Queen Mab spent her final instants chattering with inarticulate rage.

  Daniel relaxed, willing the swell of heat both physical and metaphysical to envelop and unwrite him.

  Half a second later, he realized he was still alive and still capable of wondering. So he did: Why aren’t I dead?

  The world had gone hazy. The glare of the Grand Forge was a vague shimmer before his face. He was hanging upside down, he realized, with something covering his eyes.

  No, not hanging. Try as he might, he couldn’t budge his compromised limbs. He was affixed to the chamber wall in an epoxy cocoon. Like a battlefield mechanical on the slopes of Mont Royal. A wave of confused relief swept through him. It might have been the right thing to do, but it didn’t mean he wanted to die today.

  But where—

  A cog-rattling crunch and crackle shook the world. A jagged crack zigzagged through his murky field of view.

  French chemistry was stronger than he, a mere servitor. It wasn’t stronger than Mab.

  Shitcakes.

  The soldier leapt.

  Anastasia raised her fist. “No!” she cried, channeling into her voice every iota of the overwhelming terror, con
fusion, and anger in which she’d stewed since that terrible morning when the plague ships arrived.

  In midair, the Clakker spun into a blur just past the end of her outstretched arm. And then her wrist ended not with muscle and skin and bones and fingers, but with a mind-shattering flare of agony. Blood fountained from the stump. The blow sent her severed hand sailing—twisting, tumbling, fingers fluttering like a good-bye wave—into the Forge chamber. A little more meat for the frying pan.

  Anastasia crumpled beneath the weight of the pain. A scream shredded her throat, but it became just another human voice in the pandemonium. She wept, waiting for the killing blow. But it didn’t arrive.

  Instead the soldier retracted its blades and crouched over her. It took her severed wrist—the cut was straight and true as a plumb line—and squeezed. The buckling of bone sent tremors all the way to her shoulder, but shock had already begun to numb her body and mind. The quenched arterial spray became a dribble, a trickle, a drip.

  “Easy, Tuinier,” said the soldier. It spoke a Dutch full of burrs like poorly machined metal. Or like somebody who’d learned to speak the outdated dialect of a different century. “We’ll have you right in no time.”

  It knew who she was. And it wanted her alive.

  Berenice tried to retreat. One of her legs wouldn’t cooperate. It flopped like a trout while the rest of her tried to crab-scramble away from her attacker. But she couldn’t see clearly through the shattered lenses, and she couldn’t draw air into her burning lungs, and the more she struggled the more her lungs burned and darkness chewed at the edges of her vision to work its way in in in—

  She inhaled, explosively. The air was faintly cloying owing to the array of chemical and physical filters in her mask, but it sent the threat of blackout into retreat. But not the angry servitor. It advanced. She could manage only a pathetic crawl.

  A phantom ache took root in the old injuries to her eye and throat; her head throbbed. The servitor leaned forward. She tensed for a killing blow. But instead of striking with a closed fist it caressed the side of her face with cool alchemical brass as it hooked one finger under the lip of her mask—

  (—Oh shit oh shit oh shit it’s going to remove my mask this was a stupid idea we’re too vulnerable why did I think I could solve this problem—)

  —when a pair of lances burst through its chest, spraying Berenice with shards of hot metal. The servitor convulsed, its death spasm ripping the mask from Berenice’s face. She held her breath, despite the residual burn in her lungs, and scrambled to replace it while a Stemwinder tore her assailant in half. The squeal of tortured metal joined the din; black-and-violet sparks fountained from the abused alloys and torn sigils, contaminating the hellish fog with garish hues.

  The Stemwinder cast aside both halves of the destroyed servitor. The hips and legs spun across the square toward the pit, where it slammed into a soldier huddled over one of the Clockmakers, knocking the unsuspecting mechanical into the Forge chamber; the head and torso arced high above the chaos, still whirring and clicking. The Clockwork centaur offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet even as its two spear limbs reconfigured themselves. Unable to put much weight on her bad leg, she stood in a half crouch. The mechanical centaur loomed over her.

  “Thank you, I suppose.” The mask muffled her voice. The Stemwinder cocked its head, as if waiting. “Um. Have we met?”

  She took a tentative step forward. The flare of pain in her leg almost caused her to topple over. The machine caught her, straightened her again. Still it watched her. Comprehension dawned.

  Fuck me sideways. Is it saying what I think it’s saying?

  “All right,” she muttered, “but just to warn you, I’m a shit rider without a saddle.”

  I can’t believe I’m going along with this.

  She reached for the Stemwinder’s waist at the same moment a deafening crack reverberated through the Binnenhof. The Stemwinder whirled in a tight pirouette that belied its size and knocked Berenice aside. It launched into a full gallop. The centaur trampled a servitor as Berenice sprawled atop shards of hot metal and broken glass tiles. The debris pierced her all over. She yelled at the Stemwinder’s rapidly receding haunches.

  “You fucking tease!”

  Daniel couldn’t see what Mab was doing. But he could feel it. Especially when her blade burst through their mutual epoxy cocoon to delve deep into the chamber wall. She used it as a piton, he realized. Thus anchored, she was free to escape the chemical prison without fear of falling into the Forge. Then she’d shake Daniel loose like a horse brushing off a fly. And he’d fall.

  More cracks rent the hardened chemical sheath. He tried with all the power in his damaged arms to tighten his grip on the mad despot. It made little difference.

  Just tell me one thing, he said. Were you built this way? Or did something change you?

  Mab’s answer was an explosive full-body flexion that shattered the compromised sheath. Epoxy debris pinged against the chamber wall and fell into the Forge, where it vaporized before hitting the rings and the alchemical sun. Daniel tightened his grip.

  I built myself, she said.

  Not your body. I was asking about your heart.

  Dangling from her blade arm, she stuck her free hand between them like the flat of a screwdriver and turned her wrist, levering them apart.

  Were you built a coward? she asked. Or did something change you into a human sympathizer? How did you become such a quivering lickspittle?

  I don’t know why I have a conscience, Mab, any more than I know why you don’t.

  Overhead, an explosive concussion thundered across the Forge pit. Daniel twisted just in time to see the scaffold shake. Two poison tanks had been clogged with epoxy, and a third glob came whistling across the sky as he watched.

  Why poison? I thought your plan was to enslave the humans, not murder them.

  Can’t it be both?

  The Forge shuddered. The pit echoed with a long, low creak. The outermost armillary ring lurched into motion.

  Anastasia didn’t see the blow that knocked her assailant into the Forge. One moment, she was writhing as the rogue crushed her wrist in order to minimize her bleeding with a maximum of cruelty; the next, there was a crash, a wrenching jolt, and then blood, bone chips, and life spewed from the mangled limb.

  The last thing she saw before collapsing was the baleful glint of Forgelight from the two feet of alchemical steel protruding from Doctor Euwe’s chest.

  The last thing she heard was the chankchankchank of rapidly approaching metal hooves.

  The last thing she felt was the trembling of the earth beneath her face like the groaning of a waking giant.

  The mechanical sharpshooters nestled atop the Ridderzaal clogged the poison tanks. The Lost Boys might have chiseled the tanks free and uncorked the spigots, but not without exposing themselves to easy shots from the epoxy weapons. As the flow of poison trickled to a stop, they abandoned mass murder and joined the battle to engage in more intimate one-on-one murdering.

  Lost Boys and rogues swarmed the Ridderzaal, scurrying like roaches up the ancient towers to attack the gunners. Berenice saw several mechanicals from the Griffon expedition, having hurled the unprotected humans clear of the deathly miasma, blurring into action to intercept the counterattack. Berenice stood amidst the deafening pandemonium of Clakker combat.

  Meanwhile, the first and second armillary rings resumed their orbits around the Grand Forge. The wind of their passage, combined with the thermal updraft from the alchemical sun, shredded the poisonous fog, accelerating its dissipation. But that wasn’t why Berenice had insisted on the restart. Everything hinged on the rings.

  The innermost ring wasn’t spinning yet. The mechanicals down in the Forge chamber held it in reserve. The chamber—the entire Binnenhof—shuddered. The enormous mechanisms hadn’t been designed for a staggered restart, as Bell had explained in increasingly shrill terms. But in the end it seemed their only hope. Their only concrete advantage.
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  The Clakkers around Marseilles-in-the-West had joined the Griffon expedition for the promise of learning about themselves; they didn’t understand their own nature. Berenice had seen this as well during her temporary alliance with the undercover Lost Boys she’d called Huginn and Muninn. Their joint effort to unravel the alchemical grammars taught the servitors things they’d never known about themselves. Including, most notably, how to read the sigils etched into their own bodies.

  There wasn’t a Clakker on earth, not even Mab, who fully understood itself. The ticktocks were, Berenice supposed, just a bit like humans that way. Or so she’d strived to convince the Clockmakers.

  She limped closer to the pit. Rain, blood, and steaming mechanical debris, not to mention the shuddering earth, made for treacherous footing. She gritted her teeth against the wrenching pain in her leg—and against the ever-present expectation of getting her fucking head chopped off any second—in search of a clear vista.

  Then she found it, and wanted to cry.

  The epoxy blasts had arrested Daniel’s fall, but only temporarily. Even the most advanced anti-Clakker chemical ordnance in New France had never been tested against a monstrosity like Mab. The guns were loaded with a crude substitute, the best the chemists could synthesize during the frantic voyage. Even now the clockwork faun hauled herself free of the pit, using her blade arm like a mountain climber’s pickaxe. Daniel dangled with arms clamped around her waist, sliding closer and closer to the Stemwinder hooves that would effortlessly kick him tumbling into the Grand Forge, and with him any hope of calm and reasoned détente between humankind and its creations.

  She craned her neck, looking behind her to the Ridderzaal. The shooters there were engaged.

  “The Forge!” she screamed, waving and pointing. “Jesus Christ, somebody pin that bitch down again!”