Escapement

by Jay Lake

  “We have not,” Childress said. “Though perhaps there are indirect connections.” She could not hide the trivial or the historic from this man, not if she hoped to cloak her purposes now. Please, God, she prayed, let one lie be sufficient.

  “Indeed,” said William. “Fascinating.” He gave her a long stare, piercing her eyes, her thoughts, her heart. “You met him, didn’t you?”

  “Who?” she asked, though Childress was certain she knew what he meant.

  “The boy Hethor.”

  “Yes. I sent him to you. Perhaps one of my great mistakes. My greatest.”

  “Madam, if you have lived the sort of life where only one great mistake was possible, I sorrow for you. But in the case of young Hethor, I believe your judgment was proven in the end.”

  “The world yet turns.”

  A nod. “And with no thanks to me, I might add. That boy caused many changes before he passed onward.”

  “He is dead, then?” She felt a surge of sadness for this boy whom she’d met once for an hour.

  “Not . . . precisely. No more dead than I am. Suffice it to say he is beyond any concerns of this Northern Earth.”

  So Hethor had found a life south of the Wall after his great work with the mainspring. That was perhaps not the end she would have prayed for him to find, had she known to hope for his life at all.

  “Wherever he is,” she said, “I wish him well.”

  “As do I, madam, as do I.” William twisted his cane in his hand. “We each touched something beyond ourselves.”

  “It is my hope, sir, to find the opportunity to continue to reach beyond myself.”

  “Indeed.” Another long, slow stare. “And with that reach, how is your grasp, Mask?”

  “Sufficient unto the needs of the day, sir.”

  With a laugh, William turned to Admiral Shang and began a torrent of Chinese. He nodded occasionally toward Childress.

  She could not tell if this was a blessing or a death warrant. Both men kept their faces impassive, even as the two of them argued back and forth, tall men in white carrying on like ghosts of barristers brought back to argue one final case.

  When they were done, William turned to her once more and bowed low, sweeping wide with his cane. “By strong words and stout heart you have earned whatever freedom of action remains to you, madam. Build from it as you see fit, with my own goodwill.” He favored Leung with a nod, then left.

  In the silence that followed, Childress kept glancing down at the street. William of Ghent emerged shortly from the Beiyang Admiralty, then began walking away. For all his height and the color of his clothes, he was quickly lost in the crowd. The swirl of bright noise swallowed him as a heron might swallow a frog.

  When she turned back again, Shang was watching her speculatively. Leung began to speak. “I am to tell you that the admiral does not agree with your assessment of the Golden Bridge. However, the foreign sorcerer’s endorsement of you carries great weight here in Tainan. It will even provide an echo of favor in the Imperial Court. As you have failed to bring the Great Relic promised by Poinsard, your role in the project can proceed no further.”

  She had a quick flash of thought that if Poinsard had possessed a Great Relic, it was now in the cold depths of the Atlantic, thanks to Leung’s attack.

  “To salvage some of what has been lost, the admiral will dispatch you to Chersonesus Aurea to meet with the priests and academicians gathered there. You may present your own case. They will judge the worth of what you bring and balance it against the loss of Poinsard’s mission.”

  “And thus,” she said, not caring if she interrupted, “the admiral is free of responsibility for my fate. William of Ghent is not angered, the Imperial Court will not be required to take notice, the Golden Bridge will be advanced in some fashion, if only in the aversion of negative result. I am once more pawn in someone else’s game.”

  “You understand the stakes for which all are playing, Mask Childress,” Leung said seriously. She realized he was speaking for himself now. “Your life is the only chitty you have with which to buy the seat you have already claimed at this table. Do not bemoan your pawnhood, any more than I bemoan my service to Admiral Shang, or he decries his own subordination to the Celestial Empire.”

  “I understand.” She suppressed a sigh, instead standing tall and proud. “Believe me, this is not easy. I was never born or bred to the politics of power.”

  “You are a mask,” said Shang unexpectedly. “Wear your power like skin.”

  She bowed to him, much as William of Ghent had bowed to her. “My thanks, Admiral. I will not betray your trust.”

  Leung began to speak, but Shang waved him off, laughing. “No trust, devil woman,” he said in English. “Only curiosity. Now go.”

  The captain escorted her out. Childress did not trust herself to exchange a final word with the admiral.

  THIRTEEN

  PAOLINA

  The Schwilgué Clock filled her vision like sunrise after an endless night. The device towered above Paolina, tall in proportion to the front of Strasbourg Cathedral, and ornamented with the same strange frenzy that had possessed the original builders. Where her case for the stemwinder was a simple shell, this was a wooden paean to the joy and skill of the clock’s creator.

  Two little balconies at the top held carved and painted figures that were meant to move at some impulse from the works within. Below them was a series of faces, each measuring a different aspect of the work of God’s Creation. One showed the position of the sun, another the position of Luna and the planets, another the hours of the day as reckoned by men. Smaller hands followed other patterns. She was certain one marked the time that beat at the heart of the world, synchronous with the smallest hand on her gleam. The mechanisms inside must be as fascinating as the clockwork that drove the Earth. Paolina could not know the meaning of them all, not without instruction and careful study, but she loved each of them already.

  A great face in the middle of the clock’s case was painted with mystic sigils. That had to be the sport, the spare hand that could be set, like the fourth hand of her gleam, to match the will and word of the maker.

  This work of wonder and might drowned her poor little gleam in the brilliant light of its presence. “By all the monsters of a Muralha,” she whispered, “it must be a perfect model of the world.”

  “What do you see?” The priest’s voice was low and urgent.

  “What anyone with eyes would see,” she answered slowly. “An image of Creation wrought by a master’s hand. With this clock, one might decipher all secrets, and set all wrongs to right.”

  Someone behind her clapped slowly.

  Paolina turned to see that a dozen men had filed in behind her. Among them was the onion-seller from the square outside, though Captain Sayeed was not with him. There were others in various elegant costumes she did not recognize.

  The clapper left off. He was a man in pale robes trimmed with purple, and a tall hat shaped like an unopened lily. The cut of his clothes was much like the priest who had escorted her in, save far richer. A high priest, then—a bishop?

  “We have awaited you down the centuries, Clockmistress,” he said in careful, patient cadence. “Be welcome to this, the heart of the Silent Order of the Second Winding, and to our clock, which marks the measures of the world.”

  “But I—,” Paolina began, then stopped. “You are not the builders?”

  There was a murmur of polite laughter, though a few exchanged harder looks.

  “No, no,” said the bishop. “We are the high council. Guardians of the work and the purpose. Tools are meant for the hands of . . . others . . . such as yourself. See how you found your way to us?”

  “Not to you,” she replied, “but to this clock. The Schwilgué Clock is a masterwork. I would learn from him who built it.”

  “Then you are late in asking,” said a man in a smartly cut burgundy coat. “Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué was laid to rest almost fifty years gone. You are the first
since fit to take up his tools and his purposes.”

  “Our purposes,” the bishop added.

  Where were the English sorcerers that Sayeed had promised her? Since leaving Praia Nova, she’d been looking for the ones who could teach her more. These were not learned men—they were fidalgos, just like at home, but in the larger world with more power. They saw her as no more than a tool to be set in their service.

  By God, she thought, if I would not serve the doms of my home, why would I serve these English fidalgos ? They are no better.

  Her hand closed on the gleam, fingers sliding out the stem. The priest beside her grabbed at her arm. Paolina shrieked and flinched. He struck her a hard slap with his free hand and snatched the gleam away, even as the Schwilgué Clock began to ring out the noon hour.

  It was a symphony, a cacophony, the figures dancing and clacking, chimes shivering, a trumpet blowing, while the great bells in the tower above commenced their tolling. The bishop and his cronies stepped toward her, walking along the pews, cutting off her avenues of flight.

  Paolina elbowed the priest in the gut. He tumbled to the floor, still clutching the gleam. Instead of pummeling him, Paolina stepped backwards to the face of the master clock and began to set the mystic hand. If she could find the rhythm that it matched, she could control that rhythm. That was her power.

  The high council of the Silent Order knew that, too, for they stopped their advance. The bishop spread his arms, shouting over the racket of the hour, “Come, let us not be at odds now.”

  Paolina could not concentrate amid cacophony and threat. She shouted, then launched herself toward the bishop. He had not expected so direct an attack. She took him in the chest, knocked him flat, and grabbed up his staff to lay into the man behind him. A moment later she leapt over the pews, stepping from top rail to top rail as they scrambled after her.

  The main doors were clear, her pursuers shouting as the bells died. Paolina burst screaming into the light.

  Karol Lachance waited at the bottom of the steps, smoking a cigarette as he sat in his wagon. He nodded at her.

  Not knowing what else to do, she raced down the steps, hurled the bishop’s staff aside, and leapt over the sidewall of the wagon. Amid the clutter there, Paolina wrapped herself in canvas and began shivering with fright. Karol clucked his team into motion as shouting men erupted somewhere behind her.

  She watched the sunlight glow through the sheet across her face as they made their unhurried way along the streets of Strasbourg. There was quickly enough a hue and cry of thief, rioter, mountebank. Bells and whistles carried the message, but Lachance drove on. Twice she heard him speaking in French—to policemen?—but with an easy familiarity and a chuckle that seemed sufficient to whatever was being asked.

  Eventually the wagon settled to a steadier pace. There was no noise of people or city, just the quiet susurrus of the countryside, until something big and slow rumbled overhead.

  Notus, she realized.

  Paolina continued to lie hidden as Lachance drove them on, away from Strasbourg and the Schwilgué Clock. A cold feeling stole into her then, along with a hard-breathing panic.

  They were heading away from the gleam.

  The English had betrayed her completely. She’d lost the stemwinder she had worked so hard to build. Paolina began to cry, weeping in great, long shudders, biting her arm to hide her sobs.

  Lachance threw off the canvas. “You must come now.”

  Shuddering, Paolina slid off the wagon’s back. They were next to a field of long brown grass that had been cut and stacked. Trees rose beyond the stubble. The sky seemed shallower, more pale. No airships lurked overhead.

  She stared at him. “Now what?”

  The Frenchman shrugged. “You are shut of the cathedral and her silent mice, yes?”

  “Yes. The Queen can have her own.” Paolina added bitterly, “I never should have left a Muralha.”

  “I am sorry?”

  “The Wall. I never should have left the Wall.”

  “Then go back to the Wall.”

  “Who are you to care?” she demanded.

  “Just a bird,” Lachance said. “A white bird far from home.” He opened his vest and took out a fat envelope of waxy brown paper. “A few maps, and some funds.”

  “From whom?”

  “White birds who do not want to see you trapped by those silent, orderly mice.”

  Pride warred with practicality. She was deep within the British Empire and very far from home. While she trusted his birds no more than Sayeed’s silent mice, whatever Lachance was giving her was more than she had now. “I lost the gleam,” she blurted as she took the packet.

  Lachance smiled sadly. “I will see what I can do to recover your property. If the bishop and his mice took it, your gleam will not pass readily into my hands, I am afraid.” He paused a moment. “If I may ask, why do you travel as a girl? Slim as you are, you could wear trousers and pass for a young man. People would devil you much less if you did so.”

  “I . . .” It wasn’t as if Paolina didn’t understand that to be a possibility. “Men are . . . men.” The venom in her voice surprised her. “I don’t want to be one, even for moment.”

  “Ah. My apologies. I should not have disturbed you with the question.” He pointed southward. “Erstein is beyond that rise. Follow the road, it will lead you to Colmar, then Mul house. As I take it you do not wish to continue onward to England, from there you may head south, perhaps by railway carriage. God be with you.”

  “Thank you,” Paolina said automatically.

  He climbed onto his cart, clucked to his team, turned in a circle, and drove slowly away without a backward glance.

  This is it? she thought. She waited until his dust trail settled, then found a quiet spot beneath a tree to examine the packet he’d given her. There was three hundred English pounds, with several maps of Europe and the Mediterranean folded around them. Paolina had no idea what that amount of money represented, but it seemed quite a bit.

  She tucked the funds away and studied the maps. There was no reason not to go to Marseilles, she realized. Sailing from that great port around the western coast of Africa would get her home fastest, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near Notus’ patrol route. Maybe once in Marseilles, she could find another way to Africa and the Wall.

  There was a train from Colmar to Mul house. A local, she was told, once the station clerk found someone with decent English to speak with her. Tickets were four pence.

  The price confirmed that three hundred pounds was quite a bit of money. She felt odd even presenting a ten-pound note. Odder yet when her change was given in livres and centimes, apparently French pounds.

  The helpful citizen also was forced to explain about boarding, clearly baffled at how she could be such a bumpkin as not to understand trains and tickets.

  Paolina ate a meal of potato cakes mixed with onions while she waited. The train eventually arrived in a startle of screeching and steam. She could see the kinship the locomotive’s rods and flywheels had with the movements in the clock that was the world. That comforted her somewhat.

  On board, a conductor helped Paolina to her proper compartment. It was strange, passing down the lacquered wooden hall on footworn carpet, half-familiar from her time aboard Notus, yet as alien as anything else in the English world.

  Her bench seat was easy on her feet. Next to her, two swarthy men carried on an earnest conversation in some language she’d never heard. Paolina watched the French countryside roll by. It was chilly in the carriage. She wondered if she would move south fast enough to not require a heavy coat.

  Paolina had no belongings at all, now, save money and maps. She would need a few other things. Whatever train might carry her away from Mul house would surely allow enough time for shopping.

  And so it went that day. Mul house was not so large as Strasbourg. Had Paolina been about a normal errand, she certainly could have boarded the train to Marseilles back where she had started. Europe w
as crossed by lines and lines and lines, iron tributaries that flowed into streams and rivers of rail, all of it tying Europe together into one tightly laced whole under the watchful eye of British governors and tax collectors and stationmasters.

  There was time to shop. She thought about what Lachance had said, whether to buy clothes fit for a boy. She could claim to be shopping for a brother. But to play a man . . . They were deceitful, brutal, and careless.

  What if she liked it?

  Instead Paolina bought a decent dress of muslin and velvet with a pretty cutaway jacket over the bodice, yet somewhat practical. She could not find anyone to consider selling her the heavy workboots she craved, and so had to settle for the pointed toes of women’s footwear, though she insisted on a low heel against all fashionable advice.

  After that, a leather satchel—“Unfit for a lady, mademoiselle”—with some vegetables and bread and three dark sausages. She was ready for the train.

  When Paolina changed trains in Lyon that night for the Marseilles line, there were boys on the platform shouting something about Strasbourg in both French and English. She paid three centimes for a thick bundle of printed paper, which turned out to be the wrong language. Still, the headline was clear enough.

  CATHÉDRALE DE STRASBOURG DÉTRUITE!!!

  Paolina scanned the text, seeing references to the Schwilgué Clock, and dozens of familiar and half-familiar words; ville, prêtre, restaurant. She wandered around the platform until she found two ladies speaking to one another in English. Pale, dark haired, freckled, they were probably sisters. They were dressed as she was—not of the quality, but not workers either.

  Like the fidalgos, Paolina realized. She was thinking just like the fidalgos. The thought made her tremble with a disgusted anger.

  “Excuse me.” Both women smiled blankly at her. “I do not know French. Is it possible that you can tell me what this says?”