Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

His hair was still damp from the bath, and he had even managed a shave. He was reaching for a fresh shirt when he caught his reflection in the mirror inside the wardrobe door. The brass hand gleamed at the end of his wrist. It looked strange against his bare skin. Cautiously, he held it up. In the mirror, his reflection did the same. Thad had a long, lean build, and his muscles were tightly corded, every one etched with acrobatic precision. The hand, in contrast, was spiky and uneven. The cogs spun smoothly, but they showed through, pulling on the wires that served as tendons. He ran a finger down his forearm, feeling the normal slide of his fingertip on his skin, until he met metal a few inches below where his wrist had been, and the sensation ended. He rapped on the hand with a knuckle. That he felt, more or less, though it could have just been vibrations transmitted to his wrist. Impulsively, he stuck a metal finger in the candlestick burning on the nearby table. At first he felt nothing. Then a rising heat came, and actual pain. He snatched his finger back, but the metal didn’t cool down quickly. Hissing through his teeth, he plunged the finger into the water pitcher. A faint psst rose from the liquid. The pain stopped.

“Sharpe is sharp,” said Dante. “Bad boy, bad boy.” He was chinning himself upside down on a perch cobbled together from a pair of oaken ax handles and hung from the ceiling. The handles had deep beak marks all over them. Thad would have to build a new one soon. He was privately certain that if he left Dante alone with a block of marble, he would return to find a pile of stone chips and a cheerful parrot.

“You are asking for trouble, birdbrain.” Thad shook the water from his hand, and the fingers clattered together like Dante’s dented feathers. There was still a delay between the time he wanted his hand to do something and the time it obeyed. He held it up one more time, turning it this way and that. It was better than losing a hand entirely, but…he had lost a hand. He couldn’t throw knives with it, swallow swords, or perform sleight of hand. He was a cripple. Half a man.

Stop it, he told himself. Many people go through much worse. You just need practice. You’re fine.

He didn’t feel fine.

“Doom,” said Dante from his perch.

“Shut it!” Thad snapped at the parrot’s reflection in the mirror. Then Thad paused. Something was off. He pulled open the other half of the wardrobe. Instead of his collection of weapons, he found more clothing. Women’s clothing-dresses and skirts and petticoats and blouses. Below them were folded a small stack of ragged shirts which looked to fit a small boy. For a terrible moment of hope, Ekaterina and David were alive again, their clothes in the wardrobe where they belonged. Then the thought fled. Sofiya must have put these here, and she had moved his weapons to do so. Annoyed, Thad flicked through the hanging articles. One of them felt heavy in the wrong place. Curious, he felt around. From the pocket of one skirt, he drew a photograph in a small frame. It was of a young woman, quite pretty, with long hair and wearing a pale dress. The family resemblance to Sofiya was unmistakable. The woman was sitting next to a spindly table that held a vase with flowers in it. It took Thad a moment to realize that the woman’s chair had wheels, and that only one shoe peeped out from under her skirts. She was missing a leg.

Thad examined the picture more closely. Sofiya had mentioned her sister Olenka as a survivor of the clockwork plague, and the plague often crippled survivors, though as far as Thad knew, it twisted or paralyzed limbs. It didn’t cause them to fall off, except in people who became zombies. Perhaps an overeager physician had decided to amputate. In any case, it explained some of Sofiya’s reluctance to talk about her sister.

He slipped the photograph back into its place, pulled out one of his own shirts, and shook it out. Where had she put his weapons? It bothered him a great deal that she had not only touched them, but moved them where he couldn’t find them.

“Dammit, Sofiya!” he muttered.

“Yes?” she said behind him.

He dropped the shirt and spun around, automatically snapping out his hands for his knives, but the brass one fumbled, and the spring-loaded sheaths weren’t fitted to his forearms in any case. He got himself back under control.

“That’s a good way to get killed,” he growled, pointing a metal finger at her collarbone.

“That day will come later. You did promise,” she said. “What did you want?”

“Where did you put my blades?”

“In the Black Tent. Dodd gave me permission to store them there for now so Nikolai would not injure himself. You may retrieve them anytime you like.”

“And these are yours, then.” He gestured sharply at the clothes in the wardrobe.

She cocked her head. “Did you want to borrow something?”

“Not my color,” he replied, refusing to be baited. “Why are they here?”

“For three and a half days I could not leave you alone,” she pointed out. “Where else would I put my things? Nikolai needs something besides borrowed rags to wear, by the way. We are taking him shopping later.”

“We?”

“I have no wish to do this by myself. He is also your responsibility, so you will come to buy clothes.”

“Nikolai is an automaton!” Thad said. “What does he need with clothes?”

Sofiya put her hands on her hips. “He hauled us both onto the train as it was pulling away, but you begrudge him clothing? What sort of man are you?”

He gave up. “All right, all right. We’ll buy him clothes.” Thad held up his hands. “It looks bad for the circus if he’s wandering around like a beggar anyway.”

“Good.”

“And then we hunt down Mr. Griffin.” Thad turned his brass hand in the light. “I won’t let him run loose after everything he’s done.”

“Oh yes? And how do you propose to begin this hunt?”

“Any number of ways.” Thad folded down fingers on his flesh-and-blood hand. “Make enquiries at machine shops and metal forges, search the city for his spiders and follow them, check abandoned buildings-”

“Ah. And once he learns you search for him, he sends his army of spiders to tear the circus to pieces. Or perhaps just dismantle a few people while you watch. Very good planning. I like it.”

Thad fell silent. Sofiya was right, though he hated to admit it. There had to be a way around the problem. Griffin could not go free.

“While you are planning this hunt,” Sofiya continued, “we should also speak with a tentmaker about adding on to this wagon like I have seen some of the other performers do. Three people can live in here, but it is crowded.”

“Now look,” Thad began. “You can’t stay-”

“And where else would I go? I can’t leave the circus. I am performing for the tsar in a few days, and Mr. Griffin will be looking for me-for us-eventually, so it would be awkward to move into a boardinghouse or hotel, what with spiders and things crawling after me. I will stay here.” She patted his cheek. “Do not worry, little one. Your virtue is safe. Though I have to say, you are doing a fine job of tempting me.”

For the first time, Thad remembered he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He snatched his from the floor with a yelp and yanked it on. Sofiya covered her eyes with mock horror. “Oh me! I will go blind!”

“Pretty boy, pretty boy!” Dante chinned himself on the perch. “Sharpe is sharp!”

Thad turned his back to do up the buttons, but his new hand wouldn’t do the fine motions. He made a frustrated noise.

“Let me.” Sofiya spun him around and finished the job before he could protest.

“Thank you,” he said grudgingly. “Look, you can’t stay in my wagon. People will talk. We’ll get you a wagon or tent of your own.”