“I want to come!” Nikolai protested.
“Bless my soul,” Dante said.
“No arguing.” Thad jammed on his hat and stuffed the map into his long leather coat. It felt good to be suiting up again, taking control of his life again. “I can’t afford to keep track of you. If you run into trouble, go see Mama Berloni or the Tortellis.”
“Am I forbidden from attending?” Sofiya asked archly.
Thad held out his arm for Dante. “Do as you like. We have to hurry.”
Riding Kalvis would draw too much attention, so they left the wagon and crossed the Field of Mars to the line of carriages for hire that always waited in front of the barrack, all of the drivers in their big coats and hats and beards. Thad, remembering what Sofiya had said last time, spotted the same driver who had taken them to the market by checking for the way he combed his beard.
“Vanka!” Thad called, and every driver started shouting at them.
“No, no, no!”
yelled “their” Vanka.
“I have driven them before, and they love my fine cab. Of course they will ride with me. For a much higher price because of all the mud from last time.”
“We paid for you to clean your cab,”
Sofiya countered.
“We will pay you—”
“No.” Thad flipped the surprised Vanka a pair of
coins.
“Another time I will play the game, Vanka. Today, we are in a great hurry. I will give you two more of those if you get us to this address within twenty minutes, and I promise to tell everyone that you argued all day about it.”
Nineteen terrifying minutes later, they pulled up at the address. Thad shakily paid Vanka the promised money, which also paid him to wait for them. They were standing in front of a nondescript building of stone, three stories tall, with nothing to indicate what was inside. Other similar buildings flanked it. A set of railroad tracks ran behind them. The street here was paved, and they were some distance from the river. There was little traffic of any kind, and no automatons.
“Doom,” said Dante. “Help!”
“Quiet, birdbrain,” Thad ordered. He trotted down the alley beside the building, searching the cobblestones until he found an actual grating over a hole, the first such thing he had seen since coming to Saint Petersburg. It wasn’t even fastened down. He flipped it aside with his brass hand and knelt for a better look.
“Are we going in?” Sofiya asked at his elbow.
“Griffin will have laid traps, if he’s down there,” he said. “Unless it’s a gingerbread house, and what are the odds of having two of those in a row?”
“Gingerbread house?”
“A technical term.” He tied a silk rope to Dante’s leg and lowered him upside down into the hole. Dante suffered this treatment without comment.
“What
are
you doing?” Sofiya asked.
“Look,” Thad said. “We won’t get very far with me explaining everything I do. If you want to come, you have to do what I say, without question.”
“Ha!” she snorted.
“Truth, Sofiya.” Thad continued lowering Dante. “I’m not saying it as a joke or to force you to obey just because you’re a woman. If I say something like
jump
or
run
or
close your eyes,
and you pause to ask questions, you could die. We both could.”
“Hm. Agreed, then.”
The rope went slack in Thad’s hand. He pulled Dante back up. His brass hand seemed to be working perfectly now, with no delay, though he couldn’t feel anything in it except vibrations or changes in temperature. He barely heard the little
zing
the gears made when they moved anymore. So much had been happening, he’d barely had time to think about his hand, and it had seemed to have wormed its way into his everyday life, becoming a normal part of it, without Thad’s much noticing.
Dante emerged from the hole, dangling upside down from the rope. “Traps?” Thad asked.
The parrot whistled. “Bless my soul.”
“Let’s go.” Thad started climbing down a series of rungs bolted to the side of the tunnel, with the parrot on his shoulder.
“How do you know there are no traps?” Sofiya asked.
“If Dante had seen any, he would have said something that started with the letter D. Or he would have set the traps off.”
“Doom,” Dante said sadly. “Death, despair.”
Thad reached the bottom and found himself in a long, low tunnel that smelled rotten and rank. He was something of a sewer connoisseur, and this one was poorly built—bad bricks, cracking mortar, uneven flooring. Within a decade, it would collapse and probably bring
down the buildings above it. Would the tsar care if he knew? The man was such a mix. He seemed to love his children, but he didn’t care about other people’s children. He spent money freely, which helped many businesses, but he collected taxes heavily, which hurt them just as badly. He wanted to free the serfs, but only out of economic necessity, not out of compassion for their lot.
Thad shook his head. This wasn’t the time for such musings. He lit a candle and gave it to Dante to hold while Sofiya clambered down, mindful of her skirts.
“Which way?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Thad admitted. “This is the hard part, really. We could search for days without finding any—”
“Spider,” Sofiya said, pointing.
Thad’s knife leaped into his hand, and this time it connected. The spider, which was clinging to the wall about ten feet away, stiffened and dropped to the mucky floor with the blade sticking out of its back. It was the size of a small house cat. Sofiya ran over to pick it up.
“Poor thing,” she crooned.
“Is it dead?” Thad asked, pleased that it had worked this time.
“A strange question from someone who doesn’t see Nikolai as alive. You have tools, do you not? Bring them here with the light.”
Thad obeyed and watched while Sofiya prized the spider open with his little screwdriver. “What are you up to?”
She handed him his knife back with a wide smile that carried a hint of chill and held the spider close to the light. “I am making a few changes. Your knife pierced the back,
but only knocked its memory wheels askew. Give me a moment.”
Her quick fingers worked at the spider’s insides. She muttered to herself. Thad tensed, wondering if she would go into a full-blown fugue. But in a few moments, she shut the spider’s perforated access door and pressed a switch. It twitched and came to life in her hands.
“Pretty lady,” Dante muttered around the candle he held in his beak.
The knife leaped back into Thad’s hand. “What did you just do?”
“She obeys me now.” Sofiya put the spider on her shoulder. It bobbed up and down with little squeaking noises. “You have your pet, and I have mine. I believe I will name her
Avtomashtika.”
“Little automatic?” Thad translated. “You have to be joking. It should be something smashing like
Mechanica
or
Arachne
.”
“Avtomashtika,”
Sofiya repeated.
“Everyone’s going to call her Maddie,” Thad said. “Or at least, I will.”
“Maddie the spider? What kind of name is that?”
“Better than
Avtomashtika.
” He took his tools back and put them away. “I’m actually glad it showed up.”
“She,” Sofiya said airily. “If Nikolai can be a he, Maddie can be a she.”
“That makes as much sense as anything in my life does.” Thad sighed. “At any rate, I’m glad for it—”
“Her.”
“—because it means we’re on the right track. Come on.”
They moved slowly down the tunnel, ducking their heads to avoid hitting the low ceiling. Thad kept a sharp
eye out for trip wires, suspiciously clean sections of flooring, areas of wall that looked too new—or too old. Once, he found a guillotine-like device cleverly designed to drop from the ceiling. Another time, he stopped Sofiya from touching a trigger connected to a series of gas jets that would have ignited a ball of flame designed to incinerate them both. She examined the latter with interest, but Thad pulled her along. He felt in his element now, in control, the hunter going after unsuspecting prey. His senses felt heightened, and he was aware of everything around him—the rustle of Sofiya’s skirts, the grinding creak of Dante’s gears, the heat from the candle near his head, the drip of water from the stones, the dampness in the air. Every step brought him closer to Griffin, closer to finding the truth.
Light glowed from around a bend in the tunnel ahead, and unintelligible voices echoed against the stones. Thad also heard other familiar sounds—the
bloop
of thick liquid and the hiss of steam and the clatter of metal on metal, the same sounds he had heard from Mr. Griffin’s boxcar. Truly excited now, Thad put a finger to his lips, and the four of them—two humans and two automatons—proceeded cautiously forward. Adrenaline zipped through Thad’s veins and he had to force himself to stay slow. He drew his pistol. Sofiya produced her one-shot energy weapon. Maddie crawled around to Sofiya’s other shoulder. Slowly, carefully, they slid around the bend.
The tunnel ahead of them opened up and looked about fifteen feet down into a chamber that had clearly been enlarged recently to the size of a ballroom. It was lined with new stone and brass plating. Spiders of all sizes, from pocket watch to Saint Bernard, scuttled across all surfaces. But it was the center of the room that drew
Thad’s attention. The hub of the enormous space was occupied by an impressive apparatus of copper, brass, and glass. Pipes and cables snaked in all directions. Closed vats sat above quiet fires tended by watchful spiders. Banks of dials and switches and levers were everywhere. In the middle of it all was a high platform, nearly on eye level with the tunnel Thad and Sofiya were spying from. On the platform was a large bell jar filled with viscous fluid. Multiple pipes and wires were connected to the glass and the base it rested on. Inside the jar floated a pink, convoluted human brain.
A number of thoughts rushed around Thad’s mind and crashed together like explosive meteors. It couldn’t be. The idea was utterly impossible, but it wouldn’t go away. All the clues had been there from the beginning, but Thad hadn’t seen them—the boxcar filled with strange equipment, the difficulty in travel, the communication by distance, the need to have others act on his behalf, that strange ability to work with others.
“That brain,” Sofiya breathed, echoing his thoughts, “is Mr. Griffin.”
There were other people in the room. One section sported tables and chairs, and several men were having an animated discussion over papers and diagrams spread over a desk. Others helped the spiders tweak the machinery. A number of large alcoves ringed the room, each outfitted with laboratory equipment, though one was stuffed with plants growing under an electric light. Some of the plants moved. Both men and women worked away, one to each alcove, six in all.
“Clockworkers,” Thad whispered, not sure whether he was shocked or disgusted. “Those are clockworkers.”
“Are you sure?” Sofiya touched the spider on her shoulder.
“Of course I’m sure,” Thad snapped. A large group of people was the last thing Thad had expected. No clockworker he had ever encountered operated this way. The surprise both startled and angered him. “The question is, how does he—”
“Mr. Sharpe! Miss Ekk!” It was the chocolate-smooth voice of Mr. Griffin. “I know you’re up there. Please come down.”
S
ofiya made a small sound. A pang of fear stabbed Thad’s chest. He tensed to grab Sofiya’s arm and run, though he was also aware that he had drawn his pistol. All the men in the room turned to look up at the mouth of the tunnel, which was about fifteen feet off the floor for them. The clockworkers, for their part, ignored the exchange.
“Don’t bother trying to fire that weapon,” Griffin said. “It won’t break my dome. Come down, please. No one will hurt you.”
Thad’s instincts still told him to run, but where would he go? Mr. Griffin knew where the circus was, knew Thad was here, so why bother? Carefully, he holstered his pistol and climbed down the rungs below the mouth of the tunnel, his brass hand clinking on the metal. Sofiya came next, and he helped her to the floor. The men, perhaps twenty in all, approached with serious looks on their faces. There was no consistency to them—some were young men, perhaps students, some were older, one was even elderly. Two wore well-cut suits, and others wore blousy
peasant’s clothing. One had a soldier’s bearing, though he was in a plain shirt and trousers. They looked concerned, but not alarmed.
“All right,” Thad said, “we’re here. What are you going to do?”
“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Sharpe, and you, Miss Ekk.” The smooth voice seemed to come from everywhere, and Thad’s eyes darted about, trying to find the speaker boxes. He finally settled on looking at the brain on its platform, but that was unsettling. “I would have had to send for you soon if you hadn’t arrived on your own. Might we offer you some tea? Or vodka, perhaps?”
“Thank you, no.” Thad’s mind was scrambling to keep up. He was still tensed for a fight. “Who are these men? What is happening? Why are you…in a…jar?”
One of the men, a dark-haired student in checkered trousers and a brown jacket, thrust out a hand. He was in his midtwenties, and had a mustache that didn’t begin to disguise his baby face.
“My name is Zygmund Padlewski. You are Thaddeus Sharpe and Sofiya Ekk, true? Mr. Griffin has spoken well of you.”
His Russian had a Polish accent.
Thad shook his hand in confusion.
“Has he?”
“Very much. My colleagues and I were just discussing the best way to approach you, in fact, but now you are here, and will save us a great deal of time.”
“What is going on?”
Sofiya exploded.
Silence fell across the room, broken only by the drip and
bloop
of liquid through the pipes.
“Yes, of course,”
Zygmund said at last, clearly embarrassed at such an outburst from a woman.
“We must explain. Tea? Vodka?”
“Just. Explain,”
Thad hissed.
Zygmund coughed and turned to the other men.
“I can do this. Perhaps the rest of you could return to our work?”