Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

“I’m never alone if I have Dante,” Thad replied without a trace of irony.

Sofiya got to her feet. “I have a horse waiting in the back, and a basket of food. The moon is full tonight, so you can see. Take the main road south, then turn west when you reach the village of Juodsilai. The ruins are there. The horse is fast and should reach the castle an hour or two before dawn.”

“What, you want me to leave now? In the middle of the night?”

“Must you make extensive preparations?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to attack Mr. Havoc during daylight, when he can see you coming?”

“No.”

“Then we go now, Mr. Sharpe.”

“We?”

“I will come with you, of course.” A grim smile crossed Sofiya’s face as she hauled him toward the back door. “I am suspicious as well.”

Sofiya towed him into a noisome alley ankle-deep in autumn mud. A chilly wind spun angrily between high, narrow buildings beneath a heavy moon, and Dante settled his brass feathers. Thad pried himself out of Sofiya’s grip and faced her. “I don’t take observers with me, Miss Ekk. I work alone.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“No one else gets hurt that way.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” She waved a hand. “You are the brave warrior who faces great trials by himself. How trite.”

“Listen, I don’t want you getting in the-”

“I? Get in the way? Ha!” She huffed beneath the scarlet cloak. “Frankly, Mr. Sharpe, I am waiting for you to die.”

“Die?” Thad echoed.

“Certainly. One of Mr. Havoc’s machines will likely drill through your skull like, how you Englishmen say, a hot knife through butter, and while the blood gushes down your ear and Mr. Havoc watches you twitch on his worktable, I will slip in to take his invention-and the credit.”

Thad stared at her. “Really?”

“No, you idiot.” She shoved him down the alley and seized his arm again. “I am going to stand outside this ruined castle and watch while you go in and then I will hope you don’t die. Otherwise I will have to find someone else stupid enough for this job.”

Thad allowed her to tow him along. “And you think I’m stupid enough, is that it?”

“You keep on your shoulder a brass parrot that does not like you much and can, in your words, deliver more than two thousand pounds of pressure from the business end of that sharp beak. Is that smart or is it stupid?”

“Stupid,” Dante echoed. “Stupid, stupid.”

Thad halted. “Then perhaps this employer should go get this invention himself.”

“No, no.” Sofiya held up her hands, and the red cloak spilled over her arms in a scarlet river under the moon’s silver shadows. “I have told you-our employer has a number of limitations and he cannot do for himself. If you do not wish the work, please say so and I will find someone else.”

“There is no one else, Miss Ekk, and we’re both aware of that.” He lowered his voice to a near growl. “I’m always willing to kill a clockworker, no matter what the circumstances, and I can definitely use the enormous sum of money you’re offering, but you can keep a civil tongue about it.”

She bowed, and Thad couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to mock or not. “My apologies. I am very often forthright, especially these days.”

He blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means we have to leave now. Our employer wants that invention as quickly as possible, and I am coming along because I do not entirely trust you not to run away with the invention or destroy it once you leave the castle. But you can kill the clockworker or not, as you wish.”

Thad let this pass and followed her down the dark alley again. “And once I give you the invention, you intend to kill me?”

“What?” She glanced back at him. “Ah. Like me, you have many suspicions. That I can understand. No, Mr. Sharpe. I have no reason to kill you. And if I did, there would be simpler, less expensive methods to accomplish it than than offer you money and send you to a castle. I could, for example, offer myself to you and kill you while we copulated.”

Thad flicked a glance of his own down the alley. “No,” he said. “You couldn’t. But I understand your point.”

“Point is sharp,” Dante said. “Sharp on point.”

“Shut it, bird.”

Sofiya cocked her head. “So why do you keep this talking bird if you only tell him to shut up? And in such bad shape, too. I could arrange for him to be fixed.”

“I’ll take your money, but I don’t explain myself to you,” Thad snapped. “Let’s go, then.”

“As you say. Our mount is just around the corner.”

They rounded the corner. Standing in a small cul-de-sac was a magnificent brass horse. Golden skin etched with fine designs gleamed in the moonlight and curls of steam wisped from its nostrils. Its mane stood up in a stiff wire brush. Thad stopped short, and Dante hunkered down on his shoulder.

“No,” Thad said.

Sofiya looked puzzled. “No?”

“I’ll find my own horse.” He turned and stomped away.

“But-”

Thad strode off without looking back. Dante clung to his shoulder, wordless for once. Out on the stony street, Thad found a closed carriage for hire and paid the driver to take him to the southern edge of Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. By now, the only foot traffic on the street consisted of men stumbling home from the taverns. Through the carriage window, Thad also caught sight of a plague zombie lurching through the shadows. Its clothes were ragged, its skin in tatters. It seemed to have only one foot. Thad grimaced in loathing. He supposed he should feel pity, but all he could dredge up was disgust. The vile things spread the clockwork plague everywhere. Most people who caught the disease died quickly. Others lost brain and muscle function and shambled through the rest of their short lives as zombies. And a tiny few…

The memories, always at the back of his mind, muscled themselves up to the front. They were nearly ten years old, but they tore and bled like yesterday’s wounds. To stanch them, Thad reached up and grabbed Dante. The brass feathers and exposed gears poked his palm.

“Say it,” he hissed.

Dante neither moved nor spoke.

“Say it!” Thad barked.

Another pause. Then Dante opened his beak wide. From somewhere inside, gears and memory wheels spun and from the mechanical parrot’s throat came the tinny voice of a little boy: “I love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy.”

Thad sighed, then set his jaw and let Dante go. The parrot shifted on Thad’s shoulder and muttered, “Bad boy, bad boy. Bad, bad, bad.”

“Shut it.”

Dante fell silent.

The driver had seen the zombie, too, and flicked his whip to make the horses pick up the pace. Thad watched the creature fade into the chilly night. His jaw ached. He realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax. The zombie wouldn’t last more than a few more days anyway, not in this weather. Rumors floated around about an angel with a sword, or perhaps a clawed hand, that cured the plague with a touch. Supposedly this angel traveled Europe with a mortal man who sang with a heavenly voice. The pair were spreading the cure everywhere, and one day the clockwork plague would end. Thad snorted and slouched lower on the worn leather seat. People would believe anything. The only cure for the plague was death.

The carriage bumped through the streets until the buildings abruptly ended. Farmland, walled estates, and small plots of scrubby trees stretched to the south, but crouched on one of the fields at the town’s edge was a complex of tents and wagons scattered around a single enormous tent. To one side on a spur of iron track sat a long train, complete with locomotive and caboose. The colors of car and canvas were muted in the moonlight, as if a rainbow had fallen asleep. Thad paid the driver and loped into the network of wood and canvas.