A conveyer belt that led out of the main machine clanked to life. A moment later, a figure emerged, rolling atop it. Sofiya stared in shock. The figure was Nikolai.
Nikolai reached the end of the conveyer belt and toppled off it to the floor. Sofiya automatically reached for him, and stopped herself. This wasn’t her Nikolai. It was a monstrosity, some wretched creature spat out by this awful machine. She watched, hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. The false Nikolai pushed himself unsteadily upright. He had no clothes on, his movements were uncertain, and his hair looked wild and patchy, but it was definitely Nikolai. His skin showed fresh rivets, and the pistons in his joints were similarly visible. With jerky motions and strange twitches, he pulled himself up to the silver chair and dropped into it. A spider pushed a thick wire into his ear with a heavy
click.
“Thad-de-us,” Nikolai said. His voice was guttural and made Sofiya’s skin crawl with worms. “Dan-te. So-fi-ya.”
The memory wheels changed their whirling. A spark crackled up the wire into Nikolai’s ear. He shuddered hard and went limp. The chair released him, and he fell out of it.
More spiders went into the hopper. The conveyer belt clanked, and another Nikolai rolled out of the machine, fell to floor, and jerked upright like a half-dead marionette. It started toward the chair. Yet more spiders went into the hopper. Sofiya was panting now. The machine
and its havoc spiders could build more than just more spiders—it could build other machines. It was also clear that the spiders had been searching for Nikolai. The moment they had found him and examined him, they had returned. It explained why the attack had ended so abruptly. But why Nikolai?
She thought about shooting the machine, or perhaps its bank of memory wheels, with her pistol. But a quick clockwork calculation told her that she would be unlikely to do lasting damage with her single shot, and the havoc spiders would no doubt exact immediate revenge.
A third Nikolai trundled out of the machine. This one landed without falling, and its movements were more lifelike. Practice, apparently, had an impact on the machine’s reproductive prowess. The third Nikolai pushed the second Nikolai aside and climbed up to the chair. The wire clicked into his ear, and the havoc spiders dumped the first Nikolai, who still hadn’t moved, into the hopper with more spiders.
“Thaddeus,” grunted the third Nikolai. “Dante. Sofi-ya.”
Suddenly Sofiya didn’t care what was going on. All that mattered was that she had to get out of there, make sure Nikolai and Thad were safe, and tell someone what was going on. Let the tsar and his soldiers handle this. For once, the Russian dislike of clockworkers would work in her favor.
“Sofi-ya,” said Nikolai III again in his thick voice. “Sofi-ya! Sofi-ya!”
A chill ran through Sofiya as she realized that Nikolai III had seen her. The machine, every bit of it, stopped. Silence slammed through the chamber. The main havoc spider looked at Sofiya with hard eyes.
“Sofi-ya!” said Nikolai III.
The spiders swarmed toward the door. Sofiya fled. Maddie popped her light to life as Sofiya bolted up the stairs. She didn’t dare look back, but she heard the horrible claws coming after her. The stones were slippery beneath her shoes. Her clockworker memory, sharpened further by fear, let her retrace her route, and she ran and ran and ran. Maddie’s light bobbed up and down with every step, and her breath came harsh in her ears. Still the spiders came. Sofiya was faster than a normal human or they would have caught her with ease. She tried to think, tried to find a way to slow or stop them, but she hadn’t had time to snatch any tools or weapons from the Black Tent, had nothing but Maddie and an energy pistol with one shot.
Sofiya scrambled up a staircase. Could her single shot bring down the tunnel behind her? Too risky. Even the most carefully placed bolt might bring down the entire thing. She was panting now, and a stitch pulled at her side. The blue glow of the spiders and their skritching claws came relentlessly after her, like dogs on a hunt. She ducked through a grate and climbed more stairs. Her shins and knees burned. Even a clockworker couldn’t run forever.
The door to the outside appeared just ahead of her, limned in light. A havoc spider leaped onto her back. Its claws dug in. She screamed and snatched it away. Another one got into her skirts. She kept running even as she fought with it. It bit her hands. The pain sliced through her flesh, and she screamed again. Slippery blood ran down her palms. Maddie dropped onto the havoc spider and fought with it. Sofiya was at the door
now. She managed to pull the two spiders apart. The havoc spider bit her a second time even as she flung it away and burst outside into blinding light. Panting and bleeding, she forced herself to leap up the steps to the spot where—oh thank God!—Kalvis waited.
Havoc spiders poured out the door behind door. Sofiya flung herself into the saddle. “Go!” she shouted, and Kalvis leaped forward.
They tore through the streets, buildings on their right, the River Neva with its heavy load of boats on their left. Dripping blood from her injured hand, Sofiya arrived at the pontoon bridge back to the mainland and turned to check behind her. No spiders in sight. Kalvis had lost them. She allowed herself a relieved sigh and patted his brassy neck.
“You’re a fine horse, you are,” she said, and he snorted once.
Her hand throbbed and she examined it a little more closely. Two wounds but not too bad. They hurt and wanted cleaning, but—
The horde of spiders swarmed into view. Sofiya flinched. How had they tracked her?
A drop of blood landed on the stones at Kalvis’s feet, answering her question. What now? She couldn’t lead them back to the circus—and to Nikolai. But neither could she run forever. She glanced at the pontoon bridge, floating on its odd upside-down boats. Dammit! Everything was always impossible.
“Go!” she ordered Kalvis, who bolted onto the planks. His hooves pounded across them in a blur, but it didn’t drown out the sound of hundreds of havoc spiders and their claws scrambling onto the bridge behind her. Kalvis
galloped, and Sofiya clung to the saddle with bloody hands until they were halfway across. Abruptly she halted the horse and wheeled him around, nearly causing him to stumble. Maddie squeaked and jumped down to cling to the saddle. The havoc spiders swarmed closer. They were perhaps twenty yards away. Sofiya, mouth dry, dropped to the planking to face them. When the spiders saw she had stopped, they seemed to double their speed. They formed a seething black and gold mass that engulfed the bridge beneath them. A strange calm descended over Sofiya as she pulled out the single-shot pistol and took aim. The closest spiders were only ten yards away now. She fired. The bolt struck the planking in front of the spiders and slashed straight through. Flames roared up and a wave of heat rolled across the bridge. Black smoke belched into the sky. Sofiya threw up a hand and backed into Kalvis, half blinded by the heat and smoke.
The bolt had destroyed the center of the bridge, leaving no clear way to cross. The dry planks of the pontoon bridge burned eagerly. A number of the spiders, caught in the blast, were flung into the River Neva, and they vanished beneath the current. Shouts and cries came up from the boats on the Neva, and the rivermen paddled frantically to stay clear of it. The remaining spiders backed away from the flames and skittered about the other side of the bridge uncertainly. It was clear they were unwilling—or unable—to jump the gap or to swim. There was no other bridge from Vasilyevsky Island to the mainland. The havoc spiders would be isolated. Other people lived or worked on the island, and Sofiya had to hope the spiders—and the machine that controlled
them—would take no interest in them until the place could be evacuated by boat.
The flames were consuming the bridge now, and eating their way toward Sofiya. The heat was intense, and the smoke clogged her throat. The burning bridge was already earning attention, though it was taking time in the aftermath of the spider invasion. Sofiya could be away before anyone managed to ask questions. With another glance at the confused spiders, she remounted Kalvis and galloped back to the circus.
* * *
He was the third one. His name was Nikolai. He was defective. But he had a mission. The signal in his head told him these things.
“Dante,” he grunted. “Thad. Sofi-ya.”
The signal in his head and the wheels that spun in his body told him what to do. It never occurred to him to question either, and that, said the signal, was what made him defective. But he didn’t care. It didn’t occur to him to care. He climbed up the stairs and lurched into daylight. It was difficult to walk. The signal fought with his memory wheels to command his legs and arms, but he didn’t care about that, either. He was the third one. His name was Nikolai. He was defective. But he had a mission.
“Sofi-ya,” he said again.
The last of the havoc spiders scampered away, following the trail of blood. Nikolai followed after, getting practice with walking, then shambling into a run. Running was somehow easier. A few people—humans—poked their heads out of windows or doors as he passed and just as hastily withdrew when they caught sight of
him. Nikolai arrived at the bridge in time to see it erupt in smoke and flame. Some of the spiders fell into the water, and Nikolai knew that would end their existence.
Farther down the riverbank, he saw boats and rafts. Nikolai shambled down that way, followed by a number of spiders. The people at the boats all ran away when they saw him and the spiders, and he was able to get into a rowboat. Fourteen spiders got in with him. The oars took a little work, but soon he had the trick of it.
His name was Nikolai. He was defective. But he had a mission.
R
ed headquarters was in chaos. Zygmund Padlewski and the other men rushed about in all directions, some with grim determination, others shouting and gesticulating at one another, and yet others busying themselves with boxes and crates. Flatbed carts and hand lorries were piled up at one of the tunnel entrances. The spiders—Mr. Griffin’s spiders—ran in all directions too, most of them carrying bits of equipment. The clockworkers had varying reactions to this. Two continued to work. Two sprawled on the floor in a drugged sleep. And two more had apparently decided to join in the fun and scamper about. Nikolai held Thad’s hand tightly at the top of the high tunnel Thad had used the first time he visited Mr. Griffin’s lair.
The brain, the jar, and the machine that made up Mr. Griffin still took up a great deal of the floor space, and the machinery added its noise to the turmoil. Thad didn’t know what to make of any of it.
“Stay here,” he said to Nikolai. He had waited quite some time for Sofiya to return, and the longer he waited,
the harder it had been to sit still. He had no idea where she’d gone and couldn’t follow her. The only thing he could think of was to come and talk to Mr. Griffin, who clearly knew more than he was letting on, but after the havoc spider attack, Thad had been unwilling to leave Nikolai alone or with anyone at the circus. He hadn’t counted on such disarray here underground.
“I want to stay with you,” Nikolai said. “It’s dark up here.”
“Pretty boy, pretty boy,” said Dante on Thad’s shoulder.
“You shouldn’t go down there,” Thad replied, but he was wavering. “I probably should have left you with Mama Berloni, but—”
“A son stays with the papa,” Nikolai stated firmly.
It was the wrong thing to say. “Stay
here,”
Thad barked, and climbed down the rungs to the main room without another word. Mr. Griffin, through what ever mechanism gave him sight, noticed him immediately.
“Mr. Sharpe!” he said smoothly. “Excuse the disorder. Everything is happening so quickly, and you’re here a little early.
Master Primeval! I need you again.”
The clockworker with all the plants looked up from his work.
“But my plastids are nearly—”
“Now!”
Primeval sighed, picked up a beaker, sniffed the contents, and set it back down in favor of a corked test tube. He held it up and grimaced.
“How can I be early when I wasn’t even planning to arrive?” Thad asked. Alarms were blaring in his head. “Perhaps I should just come back later, when I’m not disturbing—”
Primeval threw the test tube at him. Thad automatically twisted out of the way, and it shattered on the stones at his feet. Sweet-smelling dust puffed in a small cloud. The room rocked around Thad. Dizzily, he tried to keep his feet, but he was already on his knees.
“Later,” said Mr. Griffin from a long ways away, “can have so many meanings.”
* * *
“Pretty boy! Pretty, pretty boy! Doom!”
Dante’s voice pierced the darkness surrounding Thad, though his eyes were heavy. Something hard forced its way between his lips, and a cloying, licorice-tasting liquid trickled down his throat. The darkness sucked itself away from his brain and he bolted upright. The spider on his chest clattered away. He was lying on the floor where he had fallen.
“What the hell?” He spat out the rest of the liquid. Absinthe.
“It does taste dreadful, I know,” said Mr. Griffin. “Or rather, I vaguely remember. I haven’t actually eaten or drunk in years. It’s tremendously freeing in some ways, but there are times when I miss it.”
Thad got to his feet. A lot of the machinery in the room had been shifted about. Most of it was in wheeled crates with cables snaking from them. The clockworkers and their equipment were gone entirely, even Primeval’s plants. Zygmund and his friends, however, were still at their desks. Zygmund was speaking urgently into a wireless microphone, and one of the other men was tapping out code on a telegraph sender. Dante sat poised above Thad’s head on a high crate, which was scarred with fresh beak marks. Next to him were two spiders, bent and broken.
“Applesauce!” he squawked, and fluttered brass feathers. Thad put up an arm so Dante could climb down to his customary shoulder perch. With a sudden stab Thad thought of Nikolai. He whirled and looked up at the entry tunnel. Nikolai, half in shadow, looked down at him. He hadn’t moved. Thad breathed a sigh of relief.