Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (19 page)

The great clock tower chimed every quarter, and Jack measured the hours till dawn. In Londinium, Dr. Snailwater and Beth and Xenocrates would perhaps eat their Christmas dinner together, Beth’s oil in a special goblet for the occasion. In London, Mrs. Pond would already be awake, busy at cooking a fat roast goose.

Only in the dark hours did Jack allow himself to wonder whether they missed him, or if they were so used to his absence from the house while he was away at school that things seemed entirely normal. And then he’d think of the Lady, who wanted him with her all the time.

Dawn broke across the city, barely discernible but for a faint lightening of the layer of clouds. It would snow again today; the air was thick with the smell of it.

“Happy Christmas, your lordship,” said Arabella, bustling in. “Good gracious, did you sleep?”

“I’m all right.”

“Glad to hear it. The Lady’s that excited, she’d scarce stand still to be dressed.”

Jack did stand still, up until the exact moment Arabella finished lacing his boots. He ran ahead of her, out of his
chamber and down the stairs, through the throne room door to fling himself into the Lady’s arms. She laughed with delight and spun him around.

“Presents?” he asked.

“Of course! Lorcan, see to breakfast.”

“Right away, Lady. Happy Christmas, young Jack.”

Jack nodded to him. A kind of uneasy civility had settled between them after their ride in the carriage. Soon, soon he would learn Lorcan’s magic, just as Lorcan had offered in the parlor in London.

The pile of packages seemed to have grown overnight. Possibly it had. Wrapped in thin newsprint and fancy silks and everything in between, from the Lady’s subjects and her lords and ladies in the colonies. One faded into another as the stack of wrappings grew taller than Jack himself where he sat on the floor.

Arabella passed him the next, a small box neatly wrapped in shimmering emerald paper. Inside, cradled in a nest of tissue, lay an odd device the likes of which Jack had never seen. “From one of the Desert Dukes, I believe,” Arabella said to the Lady.

“You see, Lorcan?” the Lady asked. “They would not be sending him these lovely gifts if we had gone to war. Oh, it is so much
nicer
when we can all be friends.”

Jack turned the thing over in his hands. It was almost
like a rounders ball, only a little bit not. Stretched at one end, like an egg. Bronze and brass woven together in thick bands. He turned one and it clicked. Curious. Beginning with the top, he spun each, one by one.
Click
,
click
,
click
. He turned the last and the whole fell open, revealing a knot of gears within, a small latch on one side.

The room held its breath, waiting to see what the gadget would do next. The Lady grinned with delight.

Jack flicked the latch. The very instant he did, he knew doing so was a mistake. Trapped inside wasn’t the glittering, pink bit of soul that had once escaped from the errant foot in Dr. Snailwater’s workshop. No, this was a horrid, black, greasy thing, slick, evil, and alive.

It crawled from the egg ball over the hand that held it, burning, stinging.

Good-bye, little Jack.
Lorcan’s laughter echoed around Jack’s head.
Little, broken Jack.

Jack began to scream, and everything went dark.

•  •  •

The room—his bedchamber—drifted in and out of focus. Once or twice he thought he saw Arabella, Lorcan, an old man whom he did not know, but these might have been dreams. They might have been nightmares, brought on by the awful pain that oozed slowly from his hand and up his arm. A cup was held to his lips, and he swallowed vile,
thick liquid that made everything fuzzy like the snow outside. Arabella’s voice was far away and muffled as she told him a story to soothe his screams. Something about a bird, and fire, but he couldn’t pay attention. He slept again.

•  •  •

When Jack awoke, he was alone. Something felt very, very wrong, but he didn’t know what. Not at first. Blinking, he looked to the window. Daylight, at least what could be called that in the Empire, fell lazily through the glass between half-open curtains. The gift. He’d been opening a present and it had been strange, terrible. It had hurt his hand.

He looked.

And he began to scream anew.

•  •  •

Arabella came. “Shhhh,” she whispered, holding a cool cloth to his forehead. “I beg of you, your lordship, do not wake the Lady. Hollering, she’s been, all hours of the day and night. She’s having the fleets prepared for war.”

“No!” Jack tried to sit up, but Arabella held him down.

“Calm yourself, please, Jack.”

She had never called him Jack before. It was enough to surprise him into silence.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

Jack swallowed. “No.” Not a proper sort of pain, at any
rate. But when he lifted his arm and saw the empty space, the stump where his hand should be, where it
had
been until he’d opened the gift, a horrible ache spread throughout him.

Water dripped into his eyes. “You can have a new one made,” she said with false brightness. “No soul’ll wonder where you came from then, hmmm? You’ll be just as the rest of us. You’re lucky, really. T’was a magical injury. Those heal right quick, faster than the other sort.”

A clockwork hand, just like Dr. Snailwater or the footman at the throne room door or countless others Jack had seen. But it meant . . .

“Is she very angry?” Jack asked. Arabella’s smile melted.

“Never seen her in such a rage. Smashed up the whole throne room and the Christmas dinner and half the palace besides. Hanged a dozen people, all at once.”

“I want to see her.” He could comfort her, tell her he didn’t mind a new hand.

“Oh, Jack. It was all I could do to convince her that you shouldn’t be sent away until you were healed!”

“She doesn’t want me anymore?” Jack asked in a whisper, knowing it was true as he said it. He wasn’t perfect anymore. Not whole.

“I’m sure she’ll change her mind when she’s calmed down a wee bit. Let her have some rest, and you need
some, too.” Arabella dropped the cloth and rose from the bed to cross the room.

In the days that followed, it seemed the Lady was always resting. She was never in the destroyed throne room when he looked, or in the magnificent library. Arabella brought his meals to him on a tray, hurrying off again before he could ask too many questions.

The wound at his wrist started to heal, replaced by a growing, gaping one in his chest. A suspicion that Mother would not change her mind and that Arabella had said that only to silence him. It led him to wait until he was certain Arabella was in the kitchens, fetching his supper. Jack followed the winding corridors, along thick carpets, past wide-eyed, shadowy portraits.

“Let me in,” he ordered the footman at the door to the Lady’s chambers. Shocked, the man turned the handle before realizing that perhaps he shouldn’t, but the space was already enough for a small boy to slip through.

The Lady sat on a stool covered in plum brocade. Her gown was wrinkled, red lips smeared across her cheek, a messy curl hanging like a broken spring down her neck. The room was a mess. A torn curtain dangled limply from its rod.

“M-Mother?”

“I am nobody’s mother,” she said, quiet and hoarse. “What are you doing here?”

Heat prickled over Jack’s skin, burning hottest at his wrist. “I came to see you.”

“How nice.” Her eyes were cold and frosted over with tears. “You may leave now.”

Sickness churned his belly. “But—”

“I said you may go!” she shouted. “I try so very hard for everything to be fun and pretty. Why must people ruin it for me? You were perfect, and now you are not, and you may go! Already Lorcan is finding me another son. A whole son.”

For a moment, Jack cradled the truth in his hands. Lorcan would be furious, but Jack supposed that didn’t matter now. What more could either of them do to him?

“No,” said Jack, standing straight in the face of her fury. “He isn’t. Lorcan broke the doorway to keep me here. Ask him yourself; he’ll tell you. He did this to me,” he finished, raising his arm.

“LIES!” She lifted something from the table, and it smashed in a shower of sharp light against the wall. “He is the most loyal of all my sons. Performed magic you cannot even conceive of to stay with me forever!”

“What magic?” They deserved each other, to live eternally in this fantastic, horrible place with its beautiful clockwork and dying, choking people. But if there was magic Jack didn’t know, a sort he hadn’t seen, then perhaps, just
perhaps, there would be a way to make the doorway again.

“You think I shall tell you? Foolish child. Get out! Get out! Get out! Never show your face in my palace again!”

Little boys do what they’re told.

Jack ran.

T
HERE WAS NOTHING JACK WANTED
to take with him, or so he thought. No one tried to stop him as he fled through the palace, down the stairs, out the nearest door. Arabella caught up to him just beyond the palace gates, the hem of her dress streaked with mud and slush.

“Take your creature.” His dragon was shut up tight in its cage; she gave him the handle. “’Tis freezing,” she chattered, wrapping a warm coat around his shoulders. “There’s something in the pocket. I’m sorry.” And for a moment, she looked it. “I must get back before she starts up again. Keep care of yourself. You have a place to go?”

He hoped so. Jack trusted almost nothing now. “There’s
a doctor, in Harleye Street.” If that didn’t work, he might be able to find his way to Xeno’s house, full of faery nectars and wisps of magic.

“I know of this doctor,” said Arabella. “On with you, before you catch your death.”

Mrs. Pond used to say that. Arabella was gone before Jack looked in his pockets, and so she didn’t see the tears that fell to freeze on his cheeks. He’d thought it gone, the compass that was his only tangible memory of London. Of
home
. Where his real mother had cried when he went missing. Of all the things Lorcan had said to him, that was the one thing about which Lorcan had no reason to lie. The compass needle whirled, but the wood was solid, still warm from Arabella’s touch in Jack’s one hand.

It took a long time to walk to Harleye Street through the snow, and his lungs began to ache from the filthy air. Many times he nearly slipped on grimy ice, too caught up in thoughts to watch his feet. It came back to him in a rush, his house in Mayfair, the wooden soldiers lined up on shelves, his books. Mrs. Pond and his mother and father, who all comforted him when he was sick or hurt.

There
must
be a way back. Simply must be.

Harleye Street was swathed in gray, the tips of the wrought-iron gates frosted like a gruesome cake. No lamps shone from the windows of Dr. Snailwater’s, but Jack
climbed to the door, put the cage at his feet, and knocked, pain biting at his chilled knuckles.

A minute passed, then another, and another. He might well have to go to Xeno’s after all, and his body protested at the idea of the journey. It would be a terrible walk, with his toes numb inside sodden boots, and Arabella hadn’t thought to slip any coins in with the compass, if indeed she’d had any to give. The dragon’s cage was heavy, especially as he couldn’t switch it from hand to hand for relief.

Finally, the door swung open. Dr. Snailwater gazed at him through bloodshot eyes. The once-white hair had lost its fluff and lay on the doctor’s head, a filthy, greasy cap.

“Well, well,” said the doctor. “The prince returns. Grow tired of the parades, did you?”

Everybody was angry at him, Jack realized miserably. “I’m sorry I ran off,” he said. “It was important. I’ll explain, I promise.”

The doctor huffed. “Don’t fancy you turning to an icicle on my stoop,” he said.

Oh, it was blessedly warm inside the workshop. The steam was thick enough to cut, and he blinked several times before he could properly see. As soon as he could, he wished to be blind again.

“What . . . what is that?” he asked, his teeth clicking together, though he was no longer quite so cold. Every surface of the workshop was spread with wires and gears and the strange sort of skin that Jack had only ever seen on one person. On the table nearest him, toes lay scattered like dominoes. The ribbon Beth always wore in her hair was spread precisely in the middle of another.