Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

“You think the two of us together will shock your friends?” Sofiya laughed. “Mama Berloni was divorced before she married Papa Berloni. Mordovo takes morphine when he isn’t sipping laudanum or drinking. And your ringmaster is all but married to his manager. I think everyone will find our living arrangements rather tame.”

“Mama Berloni left her husband because he beat her and their daughter,” Thad replied sharply. “Mordovo was in an accident several years ago, so he takes the drugs to dull the pain. And Dodd and Nathan are good men who will give a beggar the last coins in their pockets.”

“While we are flung together because of a dreadful clockworker who holds our loved ones hostage,” Sofiya added, “and because we are looking after a little automaton who fell into our laps. Honestly, no one cares what we do, Thad. Not here. You would know that if you spent more time out there instead of brooding in here.” Her tone lightened. “And there is no worry about the sleeping arrangements. Clockworkers sleep almost never and Nikolai sleeps not at all, so you may have the bed all to yourself.”

“Yes, fine.” Feeling out of sorts, Thad gestured for her to turn her back so he could finish dressing, and she obeyed with a shrug. “So what do you do all night, if you don’t sleep?”

“Dodd has said I can use the Black Tent.”

Thad twisted his head to look at her, though all he could see was a waterfall of golden curls spilling over the crimson cloak. “He let you in there?”

“Sometimes I must adjust Kalvis. His Black Tent has good tools for it, so he gave permission to use it as long as he is not there. I persuaded him.”

“Persuaded or bullied?”

“Is there a difference?”

Thad adjusted his braces and reached for his jacket. He also took the precaution of pulling on a thin pair of leather gloves. No point in calling attention to his new hand if he didn’t need to. “At any rate, what exactly are you doing in there?”

“Building.” She turned around and held out her hands. “Sometimes the madness comes on me, and I must build. The destruction of your hand brought the madness on me, fortunately for you. And it was good that Mr. Griffin had his own reasons for allowing it.”

“Hm,” was all Thad could say. The hatred for Mr. Griffin smoldered like a crust of ash over lava. He held out his arm, and Dante hopped onto his shoulder.

“Now that you are fully dressed,” Sofiya said, “we will shop. Bring money.”

After some searching, they found Nikolai in the very Black Tent they had been discussing. The Black Tent wasn’t actually black, nor was it even a tent. It was instead one of the boxcars attached to the train. The main door had been slid open, and sounds of someone hammering on metal came from inside. An unlit forge sat outside next to an anvil. Thad poked his head into the car. Tools of all shapes and sizes hung on the walls. Worktables sat beneath, and they were littered with small machines and machine parts-cogs and keys and memory wheels and small axles and iron bolts and copper plating and more. Dodd was punching holes in a bit of brass. Next to him on the wooden table were two identical toy dogs, both half finished. Nikolai stood on a footstool, his eyes on Dodd’s hands.

Originally the Black Tent had indeed been a blacksmith’s tent-hence the name-and it had always been pitched far away from the rest of the circus for fear of fire. Later, the Kalakos Circus had become successful enough to buy a boxcar for its metalworking, but the original name had stuck. Dodd was a tinker, a very good one, who could create clockwork toys and perform minor repairs. He could not, however, create anything like the machine at the end of Thad’s wrist or the rag-wrapped boy who stood by the tabletop, watching him work.

Dodd, Thad happened to know, had once been a chimney sweep’s apprentice, which meant he was an orphan boy the sweep had bought from the church and forced into slave labor, crawling into claustrophobically narrow chimneys to scrub them clean. Eventually he had run away from his master over events he still refused to speak about. Thad suspected he had become a second-story thief; climbing boys were experts at scaling bricks and getting into small spaces. At some point, Dodd had tried to steal from Victor Kalakos, but instead of turning the boy over the to the police, Victor had taken him on as an apprentice. Several years later, when Kalakos died without an heir, it seemed perfectly natural for Dodd to step into his shoes, even though his last name wasn’t Kalakos. Indeed, Thad didn’t know if Dodd even had a last name.

Thad had no idea how Dodd and Nathan had met, nor did he care to ask.

Dodd finished the holes on the metal plate, fitted it onto one of the dogs, and used a squeezer to pop the rivets that held it in place.

“There,” Dodd said. “Now you.”

Nikolai picked up the hammer and the punch, studied them them for a moment, and looked at a second piece of brass on the worktable. Thad heard the tiny whirring sound of memory wheels. In rapid-fire succession, Nikolai punched perfectly even holes around the edge of his bit of brass. His hands moved so quickly, Thad could barely follow them. Then he popped the piece into place and squeezed every rivet into place with mechanical precision. The entire operation took only a few seconds.

“Bless my soul!” Dante squawked.

“Oi!” Thad said, climbing the short staircase into the Black Tent. “What are you blackguards up to, then?”

“It’s fun!” Nikolai brandished the squeezer. His scarf had fallen away, creating a sharp contrast between his boyish demeanor and his half-mechanical face.

“Your…automaton has an interesting function,” Dodd said. “He learns quickly. Instantaneously, really. I’m not sure how, but he does.”

“It’s fun,” Nikolai repeated.

“Don’t let him get in the way,” Thad said. “If he bothers you, send him away.”

“Not at all. I enjoy his company.” Dodd picked up one of the dogs and wound it with a key. The dog strutted mechanically round the worktable, paused, sat, and sprang into a backflip. Nikolai wound his own dog, which did the same thing. “It’s nice to have the money to tinker again. I haven’t made anything in months and months. I do miss my spiders, though.”

Sofiya was staring about the Black Tent with a haunted look on her face. “Would you like them back again?”

Before Dodd could respond, Thad jumped in. “We’ve come to take Nikolai off. He needs clothes.”

Nikolai whirred again. “I don’t want to go.”

“Applesauce,” Dante muttered.

“What?” Thad said.

“I don’t want to go,” Nikolai repeated firmly. “I want to stay here with Dodd.”

Confused, Thad traded looks with Sofiya. Nikolai had never refused a command before. “We could go later, I suppose,” Thad said slowly.

“No!” Nikolai’s eyes flickered. “That’s not right.”

“Sorry?”

“You’re the papa. You have to make me go, even if I don’t want to. It builds character.”

Sofiya clapped a hand over her mouth. Dodd’s expression went carefully wooden.

“Ah,” said Thad. “And I suppose you’re going to complain the entire time we’re out.”

He jumped down from the stool. “Yes.”

“Doom,” said Dante.

* * *

They crossed the Field of Mars and the heavily trafficked street that ran along it to the long, elaborate barrack, in front of which waited a line of izvostchik, the little roofless carriages that provided for-hire transportation. At the forefront of each sat a man in a padded blue coat bound with a sash or heavy belt, and a flat-topped, black hat. All the men wore bushy beards, each combed and elaborately styled. The coats and the beards combined to make the men look big enough to haul the carriages without the help of a horse, and fierce enough to try.