Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Miss Barnes regarded her steadily. “You have some interesting talents, Miss Cooper.”

“But not enough,” Evelina said bitterly. “Not enough to do one bit of good.”

And then she started to weep in earnest.

Unknown

IMOGEN CROUCHED BEHIND A CLUSTER OF GEARS, CLUTCHING her knees to her chest in a desperate effort to make herself small. The air was filled with the hot, tangy smell of working metal, and the entire space pulsed with the incessant, relentless ticking of the longcase clock. It vibrated through her feet and rang in her skull, shaking every tooth in her head.

She was out of breath, and her hands and forearms were nicked and bruised from climbing through the bizarre landscape of the clock. Crawling through it was frightening, not to mention a challenge for someone more used to the ladylike arts. She’d had to be quick to avoid the swinging pendulum, and the sudden click of a gear could crush a hand or foot if her attention wavered.

But as bad as that was, being chased was worse. It had begun the moment she’d first felt the tug of Evelina’s mind on hers. Her friend’s touch had been just that, like a hand on her shoulder, bidding her to turn around and follow. And then a huge, fierce blast had torn her away, as if a giant had backhanded her into the gear works. Anna, she assumed. Her sister never had liked anyone else having friends.

Imogen had learned to hide after that, keeping to the spaces in between protective fortifications of brass and steel. When the blows came, ducking behind a solid object helped. She glanced up at the hands of the clock face, which was mirrored inside the clock as well as out. The hands always matched the chimes, and yet their movement was utterly random. Two o’clock might be followed as easily by eleven or six as three. Wherever she was, time obeyed different rules.

And today—or tonight, or this morning, because who could tell?—she’d been able to make at least some contact. Perhaps because Evelina had touched her, she knew at once when the séance had begun. The medium’s invitation to visit had been as clear as the peal of a bell. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been the only one to hear. Again, she had come under fire, but at least now her friends knew she was still trying to get home.

Imogen raised herself up just enough to see over a giant spoked wheel of brass. She pressed a hand to her side, feeling the ache of a bruise. As much as it hurt, the pain was worthwhile because she’d actually witnessed the séance through the eyes of the medium. She’d seen Tobias and Evelina, and the hope and worry on their faces gave her something to clutch like an amulet. And she needed whatever luck and strength she could get.

She stretched up another inch. The view offered a narrow sightline past the thing with the chain and a vial of bubbling green goo. She had no notion what any of these parts were called and didn’t care. If she got out of here, she was going to toss every timepiece in the house—whether or not it was made by a sorcerer—onto a gigantic bonfire. Imogen squinted and waited, the tick of the clock lapping around her like waves.

Then she saw something move, a shadow sliding between the wheeling gears. Her instinct was to catch her breath, but she stopped herself. Despite the racket of the machinery, she didn’t want even a tiny gasp to give her away.

“I can feel you watching,” said the voice from the shadows.

Anna . Imogen knew the timbre and the pitch, the slight roughness when the words dipped low. She’d heard that voice in her nightmares before—so like her own, but not. The voice was a relief in a way. There had been no way to tell how her sister would appear. She could have shown up as a monster or a mist or an ostrich or nothing at all. The dead seemed to have different rules. A sister who had been trapped in an automaton and slashed six women to death had none.

Imogen stayed silent as a mouse. Why had Anna chosen to emerge from the woodwork now? The séance, she supposed. Strangers were interfering in her domain.

“I suppose there are a number of things you’re wondering about,” Anna went on. “Why I brought you here, for starters.”

Because I blew your head off with Captain Niccolo’s aether gun and you’re very, very upset? Fortunately, while Anna had shared her dreams in the past, she could not read her waking mind.

Her sister continued with a lecturing air. “Last time we met, you saw me as Serafina. I was Dr. Magnus’s prize creation. He brought every automaton to life with a piece of his soul, but Serafina got a bigger piece because he wanted to make her—me—something more than the others. And so I learned everything that little nub of soul knew, and that included the secrets of this clock. He made it, you know.”

And that knowledge gives you an enormous advantage . Imogen’s gaze searched the shadows, trying to see Anna, but there was no movement where she’d been. And with the damned ticking, she could hear no footfalls. As interesting as this all was, she started looking for a way to retreat.

“It’s a very special kind of clock.” Anna’s voice filled with pride, as if she’d made it herself. “The tubes of liquid are aether receptors. They translate the vibrational frequency of thought into a concrete form through a series of selectors that choose precisely which thoughts from all over the aether to record. Those get coded onto cards.”

Imogen had always wondered what was on the messages the clock spit out from time to time. Only Lord Bancroft had ever collected and read the ciphered notes.

“And then of course there is the environment within the clock. Magnus built it as a magically protected refuge for when he was out and about in an incorporeal form. It seemed a perfect place for me to hide after Serafina went down with the ship. I didn’t know if I’d survive, but Magnus had made me strong.”

Imogen swayed where she stood. And she pulled me right out of my body to go with her . That was strange enough, but Imogen had even been on a different ship. She’s my twin. I’ll always be vulnerable to her .

She gripped a piece of metal frame, steadying herself. As she turned, she could see the narrow passage between gears led to one of the many sections of the clock that had no floor. There was a dark chasm below where the pendulum swung, and a misstep would be disastrous. Since, in her current state, the clock was huge and she was tiny, it would be the equivalent of falling off a mountain.

But there was a narrow steel bar that ran from this side to the other, and from there a chain, heavy and thick as a ladder, went up to another level. Imogen started inching that way.

“This place can be anything one likes.” The pride in Anna’s voice curdled to contempt. “I was able to wish you into that salon for almost a year before you found me out. It’s easy enough to do if you’ve lived with a piece of a sorcerer in your soul—and of course you always were such a gullible simpleton. You’d believe anything.”

Oh, really? The words opened up a wellspring of old resentment. Imogen flinched, dragged back to the thousand battles that had waged between them before both sisters fell sick. Imogen, the quiet shy twin, had survived. Vivacious Anna had not.

And apparently, Anna still resented the fact. “I should have been the one to live, you know.”

Imogen reached the beam that went across the deadly gap. She didn’t much like heights, and she could feel her heart skitter with apprehension. But the steel bar was a good eighteen inches across. Evelina had walked tightropes. She could do this. But then she looked over her shoulder and saw … herself. Her mirror image stood only a few yards away.