Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (12 page)

W
HEN THE FIRST
man was hanged, Lorcan merely watched. It was no one of any importance, a subject simply plucked off the street. The rope around his neck, he fell with such force that the grille dislodged from his nostrils and bounced away, clattering against the wooden boards.

Only a few people were there to watch, but word would spread. Fear would ripple across the city, and that fear would be loud enough to reach the boy, wherever he hid.

Indeed, it would be simpler now than convincing the fool to let him go ever was, or spiriting the child away from his London home in the dead of night. A plan was beginning to form in his head, based on his own secret knowledge.

And when Lorcan planned and plotted, it was with all the methodical accuracy of a man who has had many lifetimes to perfect his craft. He had led armies to war and emerged victorious, built this London to match the other for the Lady’s happiness, kept his own secrets hidden where none would ever find them.

There was no point now in attempting to find out just how the boy had come to gain entry through Lorcan’s doorway. The hair taken from his bedchamber had been enough to give Lorcan the briefest of glimpses, enough to show that the boy had slipped through the door.

Small hands upon the stone where Lorcan’s had been seconds before. The cracks growing.

He would only have had to turn around, just once, and the boy would have been his.

Lorcan swore. The footman at the throne room door jumped in surprise.

However perplexing, the boy was
here
, and that made it all so much easier, even as the idea was worrying.

Lorcan could not help but think that he had chosen perhaps too well; the boy had some kind of magic in him; that was the only explanation. Still, that would please the Lady when the boy was hers, as he would be soon.

And it was helpful. Now there was just the matter of providing a bit of incentive.

“Lorcan,” said the Lady as he entered. “News?”

“None yet, Lady.” But soon, soon. Surely the boy would come.

“Bring him to me, Lorcan. I am tired of waiting.”

“Yes, Lady.” But if Lorcan’s plan worked, he would not have to find the boy. The boy would come to him.

Out on the street, he raised his hand and pointed to a passerby, pretty in a plum-colored dress. “That one.” He did not watch the palace guards grab her, or her struggles as she realized what they were doing. He heard her kicks, her screams, through the window of his carriage until the driver started the engine. The hiss of steam obscured all.

It was a short journey to the gallows, where a larger crowd than the day before had gathered. Good. Very good. Of course, they were there to witness the hanging out of relief that it was not their own necks that would snap, but Lorcan could hardly blame them for that.

He felt only anticipation.

Minutes later, the rope swung, the woman, too. Lorcan lingered only long enough to confirm her passing.

He hoped he’d need no longer than that. Any child with a heart would want to make it stop, surely. A heart to love the Lady. That had been the problem with the failed experiments of that fool doctor.

Stepping away from the gallows, grime-slick cobbles underfoot, he made his way to his carriage, cloaked in gossamer steam.

Such a beautiful city. Pride filled him. The people busy, everywhere the hum and thrum of industry. Everywhere else, the delicate magic that had come before him. The same magic that ensured he would live as long as the faeries.

As long as the Lady. Forever, he would give her everything she wished, even if he didn’t want to, as a good son ought.

So first, the boy.

The carriage deposited him a few minutes from his destination, for it was never wise to let the lowly foot soldier behind the wheel see him approach the tower.

As he walked, he withdrew from his pocket a small device obtained from a metallurgist and swaddled in layers of protective cloth.

For one second, measured by the clock overhead, he considered visiting London, the other city, one final time. No. There was no need.

His fingers began to tingle with warmth as he neared. Blackened trees along the river shivered, starred with the silver specks of resting birds. The cloth flew away as he turned the clockwork contraption over in his hand, careful
not to shake it hard enough to break the vial of kerosene inside.

Lorcan wound the key that would release the spark. Just enough to give him time to step away from the wall where the doorway would no longer be after five . . . four . . .

It was not a terribly large explosion. Stone flew and smashed on the ground.

Oh, well. He would send someone to repair it later, completely new, its powers lost. The tower itself was still safe and strong, far too well made to be felled by the small destruction.

It took several minutes to climb the stairs, up into the sky burning with sunset, red and gold. Heat crawled along his skin. He had removed the clock parts from his pockets, returned them to their rightful places, and it ticked loud now in his ears.

The boy had magic in him, an affinity at least, or he would never have found the doorway. And Lorcan had his own, never stronger than in this spot, looking out over the grand city he had made for the Lady. He didn’t need to come here to make this particular magic work, but it felt right to do so, somehow. The boy had sneaked into the Empire directly below where Lorcan stood. He took a deep breath. He had never done this before, the risk
that someone might discover how he was able to was too great, but it was worth that risk to get the boy, who surely had not learned the legend. Lorcan had no doubt the boy would hear.

“Come to me.”

The clock began to chime.

J
ACK’S EYES FLEW
open. He’d dozed off, warmed by the fire and a full belly. The chimes pealed across the city, marking the hour, ringing through black mist shot with a red and gold sunset. The temperamental clock was working again.

Come to me. I know you are here, little Jack Foster.

He blinked. “Who said that?” he asked.

Dr. Snailwater looked at him, puzzled, from an armchair. “What, lad?”

“I thought I heard . . .” No, he knew he’d heard the voice, a man’s voice, and it seemed he’d heard it in his dream, too. But perhaps it wouldn’t be clever to say so out loud. It would be the asylum for him, just as the man on
the train by the Monument had said. All tied up in a straitjacket until his bones thinned and crumbled and his lungs turned black.

I know you are here,
the voice in his head repeated.
I have destroyed the doorway and you will never return home. Come to me, below the clock. You will be the most precious son of the Empire of Clouds.

The voice stopped, and Jack let out his breath. Destroyed the doorway? Well, that was all fine and good, if it was true. He didn’t want to go back anyway.

The first two were not your fault. You weren’t to know, but now you do. One each day, little Jack. Their blood will be on your hands. One each day until you come to me.

Jack’s whole body began to tremble. He didn’t need to think about what the voice meant. The hangings. When word of the first had come, the doctor shook his head and Beth whispered to Jack that the Lady must be upset about something or other. Five, ten, twenty people would meet their ends before the Lady grew tired and moved on to something else.

“Are you all right, lad? You look pale as one of us.”

“Yes,” Jack whispered.

But he most assuredly was not.

•  •  •

The third hanging drew ten thousand spectators, all in bright finery, rings glinting on pointed fingers—or the hands themselves catching the light.

For the fourth, tickets were sold, and people jostled one another for the best view. Rumor had it that the profits would pay to add another airship to the fleet Jack had seen flying on his first afternoon in the Empire.

The city grew dark with fear. Xeno visited briefly and was roundly shouted at by the doctor for walking the streets alone. The pockets of street urchins grew heavy with coins, payment for escorting anyone who could afford it safely to their destination.

Jack read all of this in the papers until Dr. Snailwater took them away, saying young eyes didn’t need to see such things.

But Jack
did
need to see. The hangings were his fault. The voice had said so.

He still hadn’t told the doctor or Beth about the voice. Jack knew what happened to mad people, and it sounded no better here than in London. Possibly worse. All their metal and clockwork couldn’t fix sicknesses of the mind.

Come to me.

It was Lorcan’s voice, Jack knew. Remembered it from listening at the keyhole to Mother’s parlor. Every night,
right at sunset, the faeries gathered beneath the gas lamps and the people gathered at the gallows and Lorcan spoke to Jack as the clock chimed.

You can put an end to this.

And then the gallows swung. Jack huddled in fusty blankets of mothskin and dust and tried not to picture the moment the rope dropped. The trapdoor would fall and the wood would creak, the man or woman would gasp and gasp. Perhaps their hands were bound at their backs to keep from pulling at the noose. Their feet, however, those would be free, and they’d kick out, scrabbling for purchase on the slick, oily air.

Come to me, little Jack, and it will stop.

He covered his ears, earning himself an odd look from the doctor, a mildly curious one from Beth, but it didn’t help even a bit, anyway.

“How sad it must be for their families,” said Beth, kicking her heels as Jack and Dr. Snailwater bent over an arm in the workshop. “I’m going upstairs to read.”

“Bless her,” said the doctor fondly, measuring the elbow. “She does try. Sometimes I wonder if I taught her too well; to this day she worries about the Lady because it’s the kind thing to do, even if the Lady doesn’t deserve the concern. Beth is most definitely my best work.”

“She said there were others. Twelve of them.”

“Hmm. Needs another three quarters of an inch. Yes, others, yes.”

“Where?”

The doctor dug about in his tools for a moment. “All in bits now,” he said rather sadly. “I don’t like to tell her that. Girl may not have a heart, but she has a soul, finest Xeno could get. It would frighten Beth to think someone might do the same to her.”

“They won’t?”

“I won’t permit it. She’s not hurting anyone, is she, now? Brightens the place up, having her hang about with that smile always on her face.”

It dawned on Jack that without himself and Beth here, the doctor would spend a great deal of time alone. He didn’t even have a woman to keep for him, like Mrs. Pond, much less a wife and family of his own. Beth must be something of a daughter to him, in her way.

Jack opened his mouth and closed it again. No, he mustn’t say a word about the voice, or admit that he had known how to get home but couldn’t now because Lorcan had destroyed the doorway. Either the doctor would think him mad, or dangerous, or he’d believe Jack, which was danger of another kind. He might cast Jack out into the street, fearing that Lorcan would somehow come to find him in the workshop.

Most of all, Jack didn’t want to admit that he could stop the hangings, if he wished, but hadn’t yet. It made him ill to think about.

So he passed Dr. Snailwater a turnscrew when asked and did the more finicky bits—for which Jack’s small hands were an advantage—and said nothing.

•  •  •

“Tell me about her. The Lady, I mean.”

Beth looked up from her book. A lunch of bread and cheese shot through with green churned through Jack’s belly. In his head, the rope was swinging, swinging.

“She’s not so very terrible, not at first. Very pretty, she is.” Beth stood to help a tiny gentleman who had dropped his case getting onto the model train. “She tries, you know. I would brush her hair and she’d send for cake, but I couldn’t eat it, ’course. And then she’d turn ugly. Not really, but her face’d be terribly angry and twisted, and she’d run to her rooms. You could hear the door slamming all through the palace. I was there for nearly a whole year, and at the end every day was like that, because she tries so very hard for things to be perfect and fun, and when they’re not, she doesn’t know what to do.”

“She sounds like a child,” said Jack, thinking of the hiding Mrs. Pond would give him if he acted in such a way.

Beth’s eyelids clicked, a blink. “Oh, no,” she said. “I
think she’s just so very old she’s never had to act like a grown-up. At any rate, there’s the most loveliest library. I’d go and read until she came to find me again. The doctor thinks it upset her that I was never bothered overmuch by her tantrums.”

The afternoon newspapers came, hitting the door with an enormous thump. Jack looked out the window to see an imp on a bicycle, trailing steam as it sped along the street, the creature aiming the papers at each house.

HANGING NUMBER SIX: RECORD AUDIENCE PREDICTED,
it read.