Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

Thad thought of Nathan and Dodd. “Why? Beggars and gypsies and…the others? They have nothing to do with machinery.”

“They spread plague. Everyone knows that. They and their children.”

“Children are never clockworkers,” Thad said firmly, though he had no idea if that were true. Still, it seemed right enough to get the children out of this place. “The plague does not work that way.”

“Even when-?”

“Never,” Thad repeated. “I have made extensive studies, and there is no such thing. You can let every prisoner under the age of…” He pulled a number out of the air. “…sixteen leave.”

The general nodded. “As you say, then,” though he made no move. A young officer, meanwhile, brought down a desk and set it up in the hall. “You may examine them each from here.”

“Each?”

“Yes.” He gestured. The officer, a lieutenant, opened the first cell and dragged out a middle-aged man in a baker’s apron. “We cannot afford to make a mistake.”

The man fell to his knees before Thad and the general, his eyes filled with terror. “I beg you, sir-” he began.

Parkarov backhanded the man’s face. “Speak when you are spoken to, dog. Examine him, Mr. Sharpe. Is he a clockworker?”

Thad made a show of examining the man. He peered into his eyes and ears and even his mouth. He thumped the man’s chest and straightened his arms. At last, he said, “This man is no clockworker.”

“Are you certain?” asked the general.

“Positive.”

The general turned to the lieutenant. “Process this man and release him.”

“Ser.” The lieutenant returned the relieved-looking baker to his cell and hauled out another man, rather younger. Thad repeated the process and declared the man not a clockworker. And again with a woman, and with a teenaged boy. Each person took considerable time to examine, and the cells down here were filled with people. Through it all, the general puffed his pipe with amused patience. Whenever Thad tried to hurry the process, Parkarov asked questions-was Thad certain? Did all clockworkers fail to present such symptoms? Was it possible Thad was being fooled?

After fewer than a dozen people had gone through the process, they heard the faint boom of the noon cannon far above. Thad jerked his head up from the fruit seller he was pretending to examine. “I have to perform soon,” he said in Russian. “I’m sorry, General, but I’ll have to return later.”

“Of course, of course. My carriage is at your disposal. Perhaps tomorrow morning we will find the clockworker.”

Thad glanced down the long corridors of groaning cells, and his heart sank. “I suppose, yes. The tsarina, you know, wanted me to find-”

“Yes!” Parkarov clapped Thad on the back, a gesture of which he seemed overly fond. “The tsarina. And the tsar. We will do our duty to them both, eh?”

“Yes,” Thad said with a weak grin. “And with that in mind, I would be in your debt if I could examine a comprehensive map of the city. One that showed any tunnels and accessible underground areas.”

“Oh well.” The general waved his pipe. “I don’t know if such a map-”

“There’s one in the offices upstairs,” said the lieutenant helpfully. He was very young for his station and had pale blond hair and brown eyes. “We use it to divide up the city and search for miscreants, just like yesterday. Surely the general remembers.”

Parkarov shot the lieutenant a look of pure venom, and in that moment, Thad knew. The realization was a bucket of ice thrown over his skin and he almost staggered. Thad recovered himself quickly and said, “Thank you, Lieutenant…?”

“Markovich, ser.”

“Lead the way, then, Lieutenant Markovich. Thank you, General.”

He almost yanked poor Markovich, who would probably spend the rest of his posting in Siberia for his trouble, toward the lift and out of the dreadful dungeon. Thad didn’t want to believe what he had just deduced, but there was no other solution he could see.

“You must know the general well,” Thad said conversationally as he and Markovich exited the lift.

Markovich took Thad down a labyrinth of hallways to a room with a bank of pigeonholes, each with a roll of paper in it. He pulled down several sets. “As well as anyone can, I suppose. He is my second cousin, twice removed, on my father’s side.”

“Then you’ve been to his family estates.” Thad unrolled a paper on a slanted reading table and set lead weights on either end of it to hold it flat.

“Many times. I nearly grew up there.”

“The general spoke of them in great detail,” Thad lied. “They sound magnificent.”

“Oh yes.” Markovich gave a smile. “Especially in the spring, when the flowers bloom.”

He was young and naive, and Thad felt guilty about what he was going to do next. He leaned over the map, pretending to study it. “It also sounds expensive, running such a place and keeping up appearances here at court. The general complained of it quite a lot on the ride over here, how much this cost and how much that was bleeding him dry.”

Markovich paused for a tiny moment, then said, “It is very expensive. The tsar has expensive tastes, and the court has to keep up with him.” He lowered his voice. “The holdings have been mortgaged-twice, in fact. Even the serfs.”

“That’s terrible,” Thad said sympathetically. With his finger, he traced a line across the map without looking at it. “If the tsar emancipates the serfs, it would be a disaster for the general. He would owe a lot of money to the banks all at once. The family holdings might go to the crown, and you wouldn’t be able to visit any longer.”

“Very much so.” Markovich sighed.

And if the general found out you gave me this information, you would never leave this prison, Thad added silently.

“Could I borrow these maps, do you think?” Thad asked. “I really need to pore over them where I can think.”

“Oh, I don’t-”

Thad reached into his pocket, broke the clasp on the tsarina’s necklace, and slid off a single pearl. He handed it to Markovich. It was worth more than a lieutenant would earn in ten years.

“Keep them with my compliments,” Markovich amended. “Did you need the general’s carriage as well?”

“Back to the Field of Mars,” Thad said.

Sofiya was pacing in front of the wagon when Thad got back. Kalvis, saddled, stood nearby. Steam curled from his nostrils.

“Where have you been?” Sofiya demanded.

“In clockwork hell. I think I’m hungry, but after this-”

“Do you have any idea what is happening? Have you not heard?”

Dread, one of the more common among Thad’s emotions lately, started up again. “I’ve heard a lot. What have you heard?”

“The damaged wall in the Winter Palace did not come down, but it is irrevocably damaged, and so is the courtyard beyond it. The tsar has declared everything must be fully repaired within thirty days.”

“Thirty days!” Thad gasped. “That’s-”

“Impossible? Not when one is the tsar. Serfs will be shipped in from all over the country to work, though they will be paid little or nothing, and given no place to live, and that matters not a bit, for when they die, more serfs will be brought in to replace them. This is how Saint Petersburg was built.”

“I thought the tsar wanted to emancipate the serfs,” Thad said.