The Havoc Machine Page 25

  “I see.” The tsar ran a finger over his side whiskers. “Well, I didn’t survive all those military campaigns by cutting and running, did I? And it wouldn’t be good for the people to see a cowardly tsar.”

  “But you do believe him?” Sofiya asked. Maddie peeped over her shoulder.

  “I believe it is worth investigating,” the tsar said, “after the hangings.”

  “But you can’t do that!” Thad exploded, then remembered himself and backtracked, heart pounding and mouth dry. “That is—apologies, sire—this isn’t necessary. You know none of those people had anything to do with—”

  The tsar gave a curt wave that silenced Thad. “The clockworkers should have been executed long ago, and the others don’t matter. These events have their own momentum, and it would be difficult to…put a short circuit in this, I think the new term is.”

  Thad’s heart sank. “Sire—”

  “Enough. I thank you for your service, Mr. Lawrenovich. Have some wine. And how is that little automaton doing?”

  “Despair,” said Dante as an automaton flitted up with a glass for Thad.

  Thad watched in helpless dread as General Parkarov’s men dragged the first six people from the cages. They were bound with heavy rope and couldn’t fight back. The automaton band continued to play a disconcertingly merry tune that completely masked the chants of the people behind and beside the grandstand. The tsar sat, surrounded by the court, sipping wine as calmly if he were watching a parade. A hundred responses flicked through Thad’s mind—running up to the gallows to denounce the general or inciting the crowd to riot or even taking the tsar hostage. But none of them would end well. He looked at Sofiya. Her wooden mask had descended over her face, but he saw the tremors in her body. She was upset, angry. If she broke control and exposed herself as a clockworker, she would join the people on that gallows, and Thad and the rest of the circus too, for consorting with her.

  Six soldiers yanked the first six prisoners up to the gallows and pushed their heads into the nooses. Three of them accepted their fate with hopeless resignation. Two—a man and a woman—struggled and spat, but to no avail. One victim was a child, a girl, and she was weeping. Outrage made Thad’s brass hand shake around the wine goblet. He cast about for something to do, something to say, but nothing came. Parkarov watched with glittering eyes at the corner of the gallows, and it occurred to Thad that he had a clear shot at the general’s head from the grandstand. The tsar had all but said he believed in Parkarov’s guilt. A shot would almost certainly disperse the crowd and end the executions, at least for the day, and without Parkarov to advocate for them, the tsar might let the matter drop entirely, especially with beautiful Sofiya around to talk him out of it. Thad himself…

  Thad swallowed. He would almost certainly not survive. Even if the tsar spoke up quickly, it was highly doubtful the soldiers in front of the grandstand would act out of anything but reflex.

  The little girl’s head went into the noose and the soldier tightened it around her neck. Thad’s throat thickened, and he glanced at Sofiya. The moment he did, he knew she was aware of what he intended. She shook her head minutely, and he gave a small grimace. He couldn’t let more children die. Sofiya shook her head again, pleading. Her eyes were bright.

  Thad casually reached beneath his jacket, as if scratching. General Parkarov’s attention was on the hanging. He held up his arm to give the signal for the drop. The black automaton at the trapdoor lever waited. The crowd fell silent. Thad grasped the cool metal and wood of his pistol, his eyes on Parkarov’s head. He drew.

  And then the spiders came. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. They spilled over the roof of the grandstand and swarmed in from the streets and skittered over the buildings across from the Field of Mars. They were all exactly the same: six inches across, counting the legs, with boxy bodies and four-lensed eyes.

  They all had ten legs.

  “Havoc!” Thad gasped. “Impossible!”

  “Shto?” gasped the tsar at the same time.

  The crowd and the court shouted and screamed as the little machines crawled over them. General Parkarov spun and dropped his arm, but it wasn’t the proper signal, so the black automaton didn’t move. The automaton band played its happy marching song.

  “Mr. Havoc?” Sofiya said. “But you killed him!”

  Maddie bobbed madly on Sofiya’s shoulder with little squeaking noises, as if excited. A flock of the spiders swarmed over the black automaton at its lever. Even over the band music, there was a rending of metal. The black automaton crumpled like a ball of foil. Startled, Thad lost sight of the automaton beneath the spiders’ flashing claws. In seconds, the spiders cleared away, leaving behind a pile of more spiders exactly like the originals. Except they were black. They wobbled about uncertainly, then gained their legs and joined the others, which were swarming over the automaton band. The music wrenched into a squawking end as both musicians and instruments disappeared. Thad stared, his hand still on his pistol. He didn’t know what to do.

  “My heavens!” Sofiya cried.

  Several people from the crowd broke through the ragged regiment of soldiers and made for the gallows. Some of the soldiers made halfhearted attempts to stop them, but spiders skittered over them and devoured their rifles, replacing them with more spiders. General Parkarov drew his own pistol, but two spiders skittered up his arm and ate it, producing a third spider. Parkarov dropped the spiders and leaped off the gallows. Thad lost sight of him. The braver members of the crowd cut the binding ropes and nooses, setting the people free. A number of the spiders, meanwhile, were already eating the mechanical cages. The doors fell open, freeing the prisoners, who joined the chaotic, screaming crowd. The little girl was snatched up by a woman who hugged her tight and then vanished into the press of people. Thad had time for a flicker of gladness.

  The court was squealing in fear and trying to flee the grandstand, but the women’s skirts and the men’s tight, impractical clothes hampered them, and their human servants had fled. Spiders were devouring the little automatons. Two spiders crawled up Thad’s legs, intent on Dante. He felt their claws pricking through his trousers. Thad snatched the spiders off and flung them away, but more were bent on taking their places. It was impossible! Havoc could not have survived that explosion. But the evidence was here—ten-legged spiders that were smaller versions of the one Thad had seen in Havoc’s laboratory in Lithuania.

  One of the spiders got past Thad and reached his shoulder. Dante bit it in half and spat it away. “Applesauce! Doom!”

  The tsar recovered. Without a word to either Thad or Sofiya, he vaulted over the front of the grandstand and landed six feet below on the Field of Mars, whereupon he sprinted for the barrack. Three more havoc spiders crawled up Thad’s legs. Only a few steps away, the tsar nearly ran straight into General Parkarov.

  Time slowed. Thad grabbed havoc spiders and threw them down. They tore his clothes as they came away. Parkarov drew a knife. The tsar saw it. His eyes met Parkarov’s. Alexander’s expression was calm, almost serene. He knew he was going to die. Thad tried to grab his pistol again, but the spiders had delayed him. Parkarov’s arm came forward.

  A red bolt of energy cracked past his shoulder. It struck Parkarov full in the temple. His head vanished in a small explosion of heat and red light. Parkarov’s body stiffened, then dropped to the ground, trailing smoke from the neck. Both Thad and the tsar turned. Sofiya brandished her little energy pistol.

  “Nice shot,” Thad said.

  “The tsar agrees with you,” Sofiya replied. A havoc spider skittered up the back of her dress, but Maddie attacked it, and it dropped away. “We shouldn’t stay here. These spiders are attacking everything mechanical, and we’re carrying machinery.” She stomped on one even as she spoke.

  The court had nearly emptied the grandstand by now, and they added a dash of color to the throng outside the grandstand. The spiders were busy dismantling everything mechanical they could get their claws on—soldier weapons, aut
omatons, lampposts, engines on automated carriages. They devoured machines like locusts in a wheat field. They didn’t seem to be hurting actual people, though a number of them had been trampled, possibly even killed, in the panic that was still ongoing. The crowd to flee, but there was nowhere to flee to.

  “How is this happening?” Thad said. “Havoc couldn’t have lived. Did his machine survive and somehow come along on—”

  “The circus!” Sofiya finished. “It somehow got on the train in Vilnius, and now it’s eating mechanicals to make copies of itself here. But why?”

  “Griffin!” Thad said grimly. “He arranged this from the start. It’s why he wanted me to hire the circus for him.”

  Sofiya met his horrified eyes as the same awful thought crossed both their minds. “Nikolai!”

  They shoved their way through the crowd. Sofiya became a snarling tiger, all but throwing people aside and bolting ahead. Thad found himself following her, though he also shoved aside people with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. They finally cleared the crowd and sprinted for the circus.

  “Kalvis, too,” Sofiya said as they ran. “Oh God.”

  “Death!” screeched Dante, clinging madly to Thad’s coat. “Doom!”

  Thad tightened his jaw and ran. Every muscle in his body bunched. His nerves hummed like cello strings. Every step brought him closer, but every step also seemed so damned slow. They reached the outer boundary of tents. The circus was also in disarray. The havoc spiders were climbing over everything, hunting for machinery. Performers and roustabouts fought back. A group of them had already formed up around the locomotive to beat them away, and Dodd and Nathan were fighting off another flock farther back at the Black Tent. Mama Berloni crushed one with a frying pan. Piotr the strongman picked them up and yanked their legs off. Dodd smashed others with a sledgehammer, but still they came. Thad and Sofiya ignored all this and ran past them to the wagons. Thad’s heart was in his mouth. The wagons were blurry, and he was running through the streets of Warsaw again, searching for David. But it wasn’t David. David was dead. He was going after Nikolai.

  Two spiders were just finishing off the hinges on the door to Thad’s wagon when they arrived. The door fell off, and a swarm of spiders poured in through the opening. Rage poured over Thad, and he actually pulled ahead of Sofiya. Beside the wagon, Kalvis was bucking and stomping. Havoc spiders were trying to crawl up his legs, and he was shaking them off to trample them. A little boy’s scream came from inside the wagon, and Thad’s heart stopped.

  “I have Niko,” he shouted. “Get the horse!” And he dove into the wagon without waiting for a reply.

  Inside, Nikolai was backed up against the wardrobe. Spiders covered his face and body. Thad bellowed something inarticulate and bolted for him. He tore a havoc spider off with each hand and flung them away, then grabbed two more and two more. Nikolai continued to scream and the sound put Thad right back in Power’s laboratory, and this time, this time, no one was going to die because he hadn’t arrived in time. But every time he pulled a spider off, another one crawled up to take its place. Nikolai screamed and screamed. Thad ripped spiders off with his hands, crushed them with his feet, and still they came. He grabbed the water pitcher and dowsed the spiders with it. The ones on Nikolai’s body made spitting noises and dropped motionless to the floor, but others leaped to take their places and now the pitcher was empty. Still Nikolai screamed. Dante leaped onto Nikolai’s shoulder and flung spiders away with his powerful beak. Thad didn’t know what to do except keep pulling.

  “I’ve got you, Niko!” he said. “I won’t let them—”

  And then the spiders fled. As one, they ran down Nikolai’s body, out the door, and away. Nikolai stopped screaming. He stood there, dripping wet, his mechanical face and too-human eyes staring up at Thad in disbelief for a long moment.

  Dante jumped to his perch. “Bless my soul.”

  Thad grabbed Nikolai by both shoulders, and a small, stupid part of him noticed that Nikolai was indeed taller. “Are you all right?”

  He looked at Thad for another moment, then slowly nodded. “They didn’t hurt me. They just crawled on me. What were they?”

  “They didn’t hurt you at all?” Weak with relief and unwilling to examine that relief too closely, Thad checked over Nikolai, but found nothing wrong—no tears or gouges out of him, nothing missing. No problems at all.

  Dante coughed up a spider leg. It clattered to the floor. “Death!” he said with satisfaction. “Doom!”

  “I was so scared,” Nikolai said. “I thought they were going to kill me.”

  “They didn’t,” Thad said. “And…and you can’t really die anyway, so…” Why was he saying this?

  “You’re supposed to embrace me,” Nikolai said.

  “Am I?” Thad said.

  “That’s what—”

  “A papa does, yes.” Thad sighed. The worst of the tension had lifted and things were returning to…well, he couldn’t call it normal. Usual, perhaps.

  “So, then?” Nikolai held up his arms.

  Thad suddenly didn’t know how to respond. He felt uncomfortable again, and caught between Nikolai the machine and Nikolai the little boy. His brass hand felt heavy. And then something else struck him. What had happened to Sofiya and Kalvis?

  “Wait here!” he said to Nikolai, and dashed to the door to look outside.

  Sofiya and Kalvis were gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sofiya Ivanova Ekk saw the spiders abruptly rush away. A few remaining ones, injured by Kalvis’s hooves, tried to flee as well, but only managed a slow drag. Inside the wagon, Nikolai’s screams ended. Sofiya, her dress torn and her feet sore, gave Kalvis a split-second check to see if he were all right—he had a few nicks and scratches, but otherwise seemed fine—before running to the wagon. Inside, Thad was kneeling in front of little Nikolai to examine him.

  “They didn’t hurt me,” Nikolai was saying. “They just crawled on me. What were they?”

  The little one was safe. Kalvis was safe. Sofiya wanted to collapse with relief, but she didn’t dare, not yet. The spiders were getting away, and she couldn’t let this chance pass by. Thad could stay with Nikolai.

  With Maddie still clinging to her shoulder, Sofiya leaped onto Kalvis’s saddle broad back and he bolted forward, following the trail of mechanical spiders. The brass horse leaped over tent ropes and wagon tongues and once even a person. Sofiya followed his movements with ease. It was both frightening and exhilarating, having these strange abilities. It was as if someone had handed her the rule book for the universe. Every object around her was reduced to its component mathematics at a glance—weight, volume, inertia, trajectory. She could calculate with a razor’s precision where to throw, how high to jump, when to shove. Her own body had become a series of levers and wedges. The new strength was nearly more than she could contain.

  But contain it she did. The world was also full of enticements: elements to combine into new configurations; little parts to build into large engines; small ideas to expand into enormous ideas. She didn’t dare explore them. This new precision of body and intellect also etched into her mind the memory of looking down at the mangled body of her dear sister, the awful look of pain as Olenka awoke, the terrible feeling of fear and betrayal in her sibling’s eyes. Sofiya remembered every bit of black, crushing guilt, and she swore that she would fight the clockworker fugues from then on. She wasn’t always successful. Kalvis. The energy pistol. Thad’s hand. Nikolai’s head. She remembered very little of the building fugues, and Thad swore she hadn’t hurt him during the latest one, but she spied the bruises, and she noted him limping when he thought she couldn’t see, and the thought that she could have done worse made her shake inside.

  Thad had saved her more than once, and even though she had similarly saved him, she felt guilty for bringing him into Mr. Griffin’s web in the first place. Thad was a fine man, very handsome with his dark hair and whipcord build, and the clockwork part of her mind had taken a
thrill out of putting her hands on him during the operation, feeling how his muscles and bones went together. She had initially gotten a perverse pleasure in teasing him, tricking what she had taken to be a foolish, cruel man who hunted clockworkers into working with one. For one. But the more time she had spent with him and the more she had learned about him, the more she understood him, saw that his misery was similar to her own. It was painful to watch the way he tried to keep a wall between himself and Nikolai.

  Nikolai. He had also started as a way to annoy Thad. At first she had found amusing the little automaton’s insistence that they were a family, and she had gone out of her way to push him and Thad together, force the man who killed clockworkers to confront a clockwork invention. How she had laughed over that! As a clockworker herself, she would have no trouble remaining aloof, seeing Nikolai as nothing but a machine. How foolish. But at least she had come to accept the way she now saw Nikolai. Thad was another matter.

  When Sofiya was not much older than Nikolai looked, she had found a thin, starving tabby cat lost in a wheat field and brought it home. Papa had refused to let it in the house and told Sofiya to drown it in the river. But Sofiya took the cat to the barn, and when Papa saw her catch and kill a rat, he grudgingly allowed her to stay—as long as she continued to catch and kill rodents. Never, however, was anyone allowed to feed her or waste time playing with her. Some months later, Sofiya caught Papa rubbing the cat’s ears and slipping her some scraps from the slop bucket. Papa huffed away to finish feeding the pigs when he noticed Sofiya watching him, and neither of them mentioned the incident. But two years later, when a horse accidentally kicked the cat and killed her, Papa hid in the barn and wouldn’t come out for more than an hour. Thad reminded Sofiya of Papa.