The Clockill and the Thief Page 5

  Hawk planted her feet apart and crossed her arms. “Who can name any sky-pirates?”

  “Wicked Reece,” said Trixie.

  “William ‘Three Arms’ Maguire,” said Mercy.

  “Red Jane,” said Stanley.

  “Eric Squint Eye,” said Claude.

  Hawk clapped her hands together. “Excellent. Two of those are dead and one doesn’t exist. Pirates trade on the fear of their name. Fear will dull your senses and influence your decisions. Fear will get you killed. Who can name any more?”

  “Lady Deathborne,” suggested Velvet.

  “Black Tom Two Blades,” added Jasper.

  Hawk nodded encouragingly.

  “The Clockill,” said Lottie, locking eyes with Hawk. Something passed between the two as the room erupted into sniggers.

  Hawk plastered on a smile, joining in with the merriment, yet her smile was a lie. The aviatrix was brilliant and full of machismo and this was the only time Sin had seen her putting on a mask of pretence. He’d never heard of the Clockill, but whoever they were, they clearly terrified the battle-hardened instructor.

  “Again, one dead, one captured and one very, very make-believe.” Hawk gave Lottie a sharp look and drew her cutlass. It seemed to Sin that the gesture gave her comfort.

  “COG Nobbs, front and centre,” instructed Hawk.

  Stanley hurried into the combat ring, taking a position opposite Hawk. He held his cutlass in a naval en-garde stance, with his sword hand at shoulder height and the cutlass blade pointing down, angled across his body.

  Hawk flicked her wrist and their cutlasses clashed. Stanley didn’t budge, his guard holding firm.

  “Good,” said Hawk. “A nice, strong stance.”

  A grin split Stanley’s face, and his skinny body swelled with confidence.

  “Now attack me,” continued Hawk.

  Stanley knocked his cutlass into Hawk’s, dodged right and then thrust. Hawk forced her blade over his and pushed it downwards before countering with a thrust of her own. Stanley retreated. Circling his cutlass, he pushed Hawk’s advance away from his torso so her blade slipped past his shoulder.

  Hawk withdrew, returning to the downwards-pointing en-garde stance. “Excellent. You’ve fought before?”

  “For my life,” said Stanley.

  “It shows,” Hawk said approvingly. She turned to the rest of the candidates. “COG Nobbs avoided the beginner’s mistake of making large, wild swings.” She tapped her blade against Stanley’s. “For the sake of demonstration, take a swing at me now.”

  Stanley pulled the cutlass back, ready to deliver a slashing blow. Before he could bring the weapon to bear, the point of Hawk’s cutlass was at his chest.

  “The moment your blade leaves your centre, you’re as good as dead,” Hawk told the candidates. “Now, pair off and practise attack and defence.”

  Normally Sin partnered with Zonda, but she had deliberately positioned herself away from him, next to Jasper. She met Sin’s gaze. Her eyes bore into him, then with a shake of her head she pointedly looked away.

  Sin felt a tap on his shoulder. “Do you want to partner up?” asked Lottie.

  There were an uneven number of candidates and Sin didn’t want to end up being the odd one out. “Yeah. I do.” He rolled his shoulders. Zonda was no good at bladework anyway.

  Lottie drew her cutlass and glanced across the arena. “You’re right about Jasper. He shouldn’t be in COG.”

  Sin placed the tip of his blade against Lottie’s cutlass. “Apparently not everyone thinks so.”

  “Zonda can be a trifle blinkered when it comes to Jasper,” Lottie conceded. “The Major asked her to be nice to him because Jasper’s father was killed under his command. Apparently it was his dying wish that Jasper serve in COG.”

  Sin frowned. “She’s never said anything to me about that. She thinks it’s just that I don’t like the git, but it’s more than that. He’s going to get someone killed and she just doesn’t see it.”

  Sin tapped Lottie’s cutlass aside and lunged. She drew her blade back and parried. Sin’s eyes widened. “Nice. You’ve done this before?”

  “I used to fence at school,” Lottie explained. “It’s jolly similar, although cutlasses are heavier. Noir taught me the naval technique when we went on that mission to Budapest.”

  “I forgot you’d already been on the Swordfish,” said Sin. He started circling Lottie.

  “Hopefully I won’t be cramped in a secret compartment behind the Captain’s cabin this time. Noir’s pretty intense to be confined with.” Lottie thrust and Sin batted her blade away. He wasn’t as stylish as Lottie, relying more on his strength and speed.

  “So, tell me about the Clockill,” said Sin. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “It’s horrible. One of those stories children repeat to terrify each other. Created by an evil scientist, the Clockill are flesh and blood, except their brains and hearts have been replaced by clockwork. My parents would read us a nursery rhyme about them at bedtime to help us sleep. Do you want to hear it?”

  Circling left, Sin feinted. Lottie was wise to his ruse, and metal clanged as she blocked his blade. “Never heard a nursery rhyme before,” he said. “This may as well be my first.”

  “Tick-tock, chip-chop, cut out your heart and replace with a clock, stitch it and sew it and stitch it again, heartless, invincible with cogs for a brain.” Lottie shivered. “See? I told you it was horrible.”

  Sin had experienced real horrors on the street: violence, cruelty and neglect. What man was capable of doing to his fellow man – or even worse, to children – had ceased to surprise him. Hawk was no shrinking violet either. He knew she’d seen combat. If the rumours were true, she’d fought off a Teutonian air raid single-handedly during the last war. She wasn’t the type to spook easily, yet she had been genuinely shaken when Lottie had mentioned the Clockill. What had her so worried?

  “Don’t see how a story can be scary,” he said. “It’s just pretend.”

  Lottie held up the palm of her hand and lowered her sword to take a breather. “The only purpose of the Clockill is to make more Clockill. They feel no pain, they have no fear and they simply will not stop until they remake you in their own image.”

  “It’s still just stories, like Bloody Mary or Spring Heel Jack,” Sin reasoned. “You want real horror? Spend a month living rough on the streets.”

  Checking that no one was listening, Lottie lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not so sure it is a story. When I was on the Budapest mission I overheard Noir and Captain Hawk talking. Apparently airships have been going missing, and in a downed Teutonian zeppelin they found mutilated bodies with no hearts or brains.”

  Sin’s hand twitched, pins and needles prickling his fingers. “I’ve seen butchered bodies on the streets; don’t mean it’s no clockwork men.”

  “These weren’t butchered. Their hearts and brains had been removed with surgical precision.” Lottie swallowed uneasily.

  “Still don’t make it scary.” Sin thrust his cutlass through his belt and shook his arm, trying to rid himself of the needling sensation. It had spread all the way up to his shoulder and itched like a million biting fleas.

  Lottie leaned closer. “That’s not the weirdest thing.” She gave a little shudder. “Their skin was waxy like a manikin, and their blood had turned cobalt blue.”

  Sin made his way up the stone spiral staircase that led to Nimrod’s private lab. After sword practice he’d tried to no avail to make good with Zonda, but her continued rebuff wasn’t his most pressing concern. If Lottie, perhaps the most even-headed of the candidates, thought blue blood was weird, what would the others think? After being infected he’d let everyone believe Nimrod had cured him. At first he’d genuinely thought the scientist’s potions had worked. Then the injections had started, and the truth of his cure became a lie – one he wondered how long he could keep telling. His blood was no longer red. Every injection tainted it a little more, diluting his humanity
. If he continued to pollute his body, would his own skin turn waxy like the bodies they’d found in the crashed airship?

  Pins and needles still tingling his arm, Sin knocked on the oak panel door that led to the lab.

  “Enter at your peril,” shouted Nimrod jovially.

  Easing the door open, Sin peered inside. Based on previous experience, he knew the instruction to enter at his peril might not be entirely a joke. In the centre of the lab stood a manikin dressed in a boilersuit with what looked like a square of turquoise rubber pinned across its chest. The manikin was called Arthur. Sin had seen Nimrod use it on a number of occasions for various scientific purposes, and once to hold his tea.

  Nimrod emerged from behind the manikin with a steampistol in his hand. “Sin, excellent timing. I’m about to test a new material I’ve been developing.” He handed the steampistol to Sin. “Give Arthur two rounds in the chest.”

  This wasn’t what Sin had come for; the candidates were travelling to Coxford tomorrow and he wanted to sound Nimrod out about Noir’s visit the previous evening. Cocking the steampistol, Sin focused on the front sight, adjusting his aim until it sat central and level in the rear sight notch. He knew he’d never get the scientist’s attention until the experiment was done, so, squeezing the trigger, he exhaled and double tapped.

  The steampistol screamed twice in quick succession. Arthur shuddered and behind the manikin a bell jar containing a crystal-filled geode shattered, spilling glass shards across the floor.

  “Botheration!” exclaimed Nimrod. One of the nails remained embedded in the turquoise material; the other had punched clean through both the test swatch and Arthur. “I thought I’d got it that time. Back to the drawing board it is then.”

  Sin made the weapon safe and rested it on a bench among a mess of tools and clockwork. He needed to get his father’s attention now, before the scientist became distracted by his failed experiment. “I wanted to ask you something about the mission to capture Eldritch. Do you think it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Well, operational matters aren’t really my forte, that’s the Major’s domain.” Nimrod pushed his finger through the hole in the rubber-like substance, as if it might have been some form of illusion.

  “What if he’s wrong? What if it’s just a dangerous goose chase?” It would have been easier if Sin felt able to tell Nimrod about Noir’s ultimatum, but where the magician was concerned it was never that straightforward. There was always an unspoken menace that what was said was between the two of them, and that to break that secret accord would have unpleasant consequences.

  “I know you must be scared.” Nimrod stepped away from Arthur and placed an arm around Sin’s shoulders. “I’m scared too. I spent fourteen years searching for you, and the thought of losing you again terrifies me.”

  “I ain’t scared,” lied Sin. He’d be a fool not to be frightened of Eldritch – he was a cold-hearted killer. Only, Sin was more worried about Zonda than himself.

  Nimrod rubbed his eyes. “Your mother died to protect you. Every time I put you in danger I feel like I’m betraying her.” He waved the sheet of turquoise material. “That’s what this was about. I’m trying to make a new type of protective armour.”

  Sin looked up at his father. The scientist was the founder of COG; it was the millions earned from his inventions that financed the organisation. “You could always tell Major C not to send us.” That would solve one of Sin’s problems, then he wouldn’t have to choose between the Major or Noir’s directives.

  “Alas, it’s not that simple. If I used my position to shield you while expecting other members of COG to put themselves in danger, I’d be no better than those hypocrites in parliament. They send our young men off to die, knowing they themselves will never have to face the horrors of war.” Nimrod pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid that in COG, the decisions we make are rarely easy.”

  Sin’s gaze fixed on the tattered hole ripped through Arthur’s torso. He had an uneasy feeling about the mission and wished Nimrod’s new material had worked, for Zonda’s sake at least. He was already being killed from the inside, and no amount of armour was going to stop that.

  Sin pushed a porter’s trolley containing his steamer trunk and Zonda’s portmanteau onto the jetty at the palace’s main lake. Zonda stomped alongside him. “Don’t think for one moment this means you’re forgiven,” she scolded.

  “Of course not. I’d probably have to get expelled and nearly die again to get back in your good books.”

  “Don’t be such a drama queeney-weeney. I’d settle for an extremely painful, non-life-threatening injury.”

  The jetty’s rough boards creaked below the trolley’s wheels. Secured by sturdy mooring chains, a giant brassanium and ironglass vessel shaped like a fish bobbed in the water. The mid-morning sunlight glistened on the sculpted scales and fins.

  From behind a haphazard pile of luggage at the fish’s stern emerged a stout, grey-haired man. Sin drew to a halt and parked the trolley. “Do you need a hand, Mr Clark?”

  “No thank you, young sir. It’s hard enough to find a job that Nimrod hasn’t invented a machine to do. I don’t need the gentry taking over my chores too.”

  Sin didn’t think of himself as gentry. In his mind, he was still an urchin from the streets. An urchin who could now read and write, admittedly, and who knew which knife and fork to use, but an urchin all the same.

  “Don’t call him gentry, Clark.” Velvet sashayed past, a lace-trimmed parasol over her shoulder. “Gentry are born, not made; merely learning to eat with cutlery doesn’t suffice. If he was truly gentry, he’d never have offered to help you.”

  “Of course, ma’am, very good.” Clark bent in a half-bow and raised a hand to his cap.

  Closing her parasol, Velvet pointed behind her to where a square-jawed, broad-shouldered candidate struggled with several giant trunks. “Beuford’s bringing my luggage. Make sure it goes in last, I don’t want it damaged.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Clark, stooping even lower. “It’d be a terrible shame if anything were to happen to it.”

  Her parasol beneath one arm, Velvet paraded into the passenger compartment of the fish. Clark straightened and rotated a brass wheel on the vessel’s stern. With a whoosh of steam, the upper portion of the fish’s tail lifted open, revealing a sizeable cargo hold beneath.

  “Thanks, Mr Clark,” said Sin. It probably wasn’t gentlemanly to thank servants either, but Sin had spent most of his life being treated like horse cark and he didn’t see the need to do the same to others.

  The only other time Sin had travelled by fish was when the candidates arrived at the palace, several months previous. On that occasion Jasper had suffered a panic attack and Sin had punched his lights out. Today, Jasper’s faced glistened with a pale, sickly sheen. Sin bit back a snarky comment. The boy knew something about the injections and that made him dangerous. Why hadn’t he come right out with it when they’d argued in the common room? What was he waiting for?

  Lottie, the last of the candidates, entered the passenger compartment.

  “Bon voyage. I will rendezvous with you at le Aquarinomic ’otel,” said Madame Mékanique from the jetty in her thick Fromagian accent. She was the matron at COG, and was in charge of patching up the injured and teaching the candidates first aid. Petite like a hummingbird, she somehow conspired to present a formidable figure that nurtured and terrified in equal measure. She wouldn’t be travelling with them; the teachers never did. Velvet claimed this was because of an accident where a mekanikal fish had once sunk, although, like the stories of the Clockill, Sin suspected that might just be scaremongering.

  The side doors sealed closed with a steamatic hiss and Mr Clark cast off the mooring chains. Reeled in by unseen mekaniks, they rattled back inside the craft. With a rhythmic swish, the fish’s tail beat from side to side, propelling them towards the centre of the lake. A cascade of bubbles erupted in the water around the hull and the fish sank lower.

  F
rom the ceiling descended a gramophone horn and a message played. “We are now submerging for the trip to Coxford. If you look to the left and right of the fish, you will notice there are no emergency exits. In the event of a calamity we strongly recommend holding your breath. We hope you have a safe and pleasant trip.”

  Sin pressed his hand against the ironglass. The lake’s green water rose above the brassanium sill, sloshing past the window. He shivered, a thrill running through his body. There was something frighteningly fascinating about the transition from boat to submersible. They were crossing a divide from safety to danger beyond their control. Like when he stood clamped to the airship’s ratlines, he was relying on technology to keep him alive. The slightest malfunction or manufacturing defect could send him to a watery grave.

  The window tops slid below the lake and chemlights in the ceiling glowed to life, accentuating the anxious expressions of the candidates. All except Jasper and Ada Irk were trying to put a brave face on – Sin had been in enough situations on the streets to recognise the false bravado. Whether it was waiting to do a robbery or ambush another gang, the apprehension had always been hidden behind forced smiles and mindless banter, but the eyes gave it away every time. Sin’s gaze travelled from Jasper, who wasn’t even trying to hide his fear, to Ada, whose deep brown eyes seemed genuinely unperturbed. She was a Chinasian West Winger with blue-tinged hair and a tough no-nonsense personality.

  “This doesn’t bother you, Ada?” he asked.

  Ada drew a finger across the glass, on which a thin layer of condensation had formed. “Father’s a subnautical in the Royal Navy. Our summer holidays were spent wreck-diving. This is child’s play.”