“Nice to see you among the living.” Nathan puffed gently.
“Where’s Alice?” Gavin asked.
“Exploring the midway. She slept and then wanted some air.” He drew on the pipe again. “That was interesting. You were cackling like…”
Gavin found his shoes on the floor and laced them on. “Like a lunatic? Yeah. Clockworkers are mad. You know that.”
“What’s it like?” Nathan said.
“It’s hard to describe.” Gavin sighed. “The plague shows me things, strange things, true things. I’m not insane. Not really.”
“You sounded pretty mad. You really hurt Dodd.”
Gavin winced. “Shit. Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Nathan.”
His pipe went out, and he tapped it into a bowl on the table. “You’re apologizing to the wrong person.”
“He and Felix aren’t—weren’t—really cousins, were they?”
That earned him a short bark of laughter. “You were young, weren’t you? They met in Hamburg when Felix was working some leaky old airship and Dodd was still winding spiders for Viktor Kalakos. They tried to stay together, meeting up in whatever large cities they could, but it just didn’t work. They did stay close friends. Dodd doesn’t have any other family, so he started calling him Cousin Felix, and it stuck.”
“And now you two…”
“Not ‘now,’ Gavin. For years. Since before Felix started bringing you to visit.”
“Right.” Gavin rubbed his face and remembered Simon, whose romantic tastes ran in the same direction. What were the chances? The corners of his mouth quirked, and he quickly ended that line of thought. “Even clockworkers can be stupid.”
“Damn right. You want something to eat? I’ve got beans and bread here, unless you’d fancy a candyfloss.”
At the mention of food, Gavin’s stomach growled, and he went light-headed. “How long was I… away?”
“All the way through the first show. The second starts in a few minutes.”
Nathan brought him a plate at the bed as if he were an invalid, but Gavin got up and ate at the table. He felt perfectly fine, except for the hunger.
“Where’s Dodd?” he asked around a mouthful.
Nathan looked surprised. “Dodd’s in the ring. The show must go on. If you’re done eating, let’s go find your two friends so you can tell me what you’re really here for. I don’t think you hid in the parade just to have an excuse to deliver bad news.”
Outside, afternoon was fading into evening. The Tilt and the tents cast canted shadows over brightly painted wagons. Gavin knew from his previous visits that the wealthier performers lived in the wagons, which were rolled into the train’s boxcars when circus left town. Poorer performers lived in tents. Other tents housed the sideshow exhibits and the animal cages. Smells of fried food and cooking sugar mingled with calliope music. Men, women, and children wandered about. A few stood in line outside the main entrance of the Tilt, handing over their tickets so they could file inside to find seats as the clock automaton shouted in French that the show would begin in one minute. The performers were out of sight behind the Tilt, awaiting cues and entries.
“There you are!” Alice threw her arms around his neck in a near choke hold and kissed him. “You scared the life out of me. Us.”
“I’m sorry. I need to apologize to Dodd.”
“You must wait,” Feng said. “The performance will begin soon. Mr. Storm, could we go into the main tent? We should not be out in the open in case Phipps has tracked us here.”
Nathan nodded and took them past the ticket taker into the Tilt. Inside, tall rows of bleachers were bent around a wide red ring, and chatting, laughing people filled most of the spaces. Sawdust lay scattered on the ground. Food sellers moved among them with trays of rich-smelling roasted peanuts and pink cotton candy. Off to one side, the automaton played its calliope. Just as the group arrived on one side of the ring, the tent flaps on the opposite side exploded open and Dodd strode into the Tilt. He had his red hat back, and his silver-topped cane waved in time to the music. Behind him came the mechanical elephant, its feet thudding unevenly on the packed earthen floor. The mahout looked a little seasick at the uneven footsteps. Then came a rainbow explosion of clowns and a group of horses, both live and mechanical, accompanied by slender girls in white feathered dresses, and behind them came acrobats in tight red shirts. A trainer led a lion on a leash and made it roar. For the hell of it, Gavin snatched the recording nightingale from his pocket and pressed the left eye just as the trainer made the lion roar a second time. Then he held the nightingale to his ear and pressed the right eye. It opened its beak and roared like a little lion, which made the real lion look around, startled. Alice shot him a hard look. Oops. He hadn’t realized it would be so loud. Gavin stuffed the nightingale into his pocket and looked innocent. The parade, a smaller one than the one in town, stomped round the ring and stormed out to cheers and applause from the audience while Dodd went into the center and leaped onto a small platform with stars on it.
“Bienvenue,” he said, “au le Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles!”
The audience, pleased that Dodd spoke their language, burst into more applause just as a troupe of clowns somersaulted into the ring. Dodd got out of the way, and the show began in earnest. He caught sight of Nathan and his entourage lurking at the edge of the bleachers and trotted over.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said before he could speak. “We clockworkers do stupid things sometimes. It’s not an excuse, just an explanation. I’m sorry.”
Dodd nodded. “You’re my last link to Felix, Gavin. I can’t be angry with you.”
“I need help, Dodd,” Gavin told him. The audience laughed. “And only you can give it.”
The ringmaster looked wary. “How?”
In the ring, a clown pedaled around on a unicycle with a bucket of whitewash, which he threatened to toss over the audience. Gavin swallowed, suddenly nervous. Dodd was part of the idea he’d gotten earlier, when Glenda was chasing them with the mechanical. He hadn’t had time to think about it further since the chase had started, and now that everything had slowed down, the day’s events were catching up with him. He glanced at Alice. She and Feng were counting on him. If Dodd refused to help, they’d be in serious trouble.
“We found out that plague cures have been invented or discovered more than once,” Gavin said, “but England and China have suppressed them. English cures were never able to cure clockworkers, only regular victims, but the Chinese ambassador told us the Dragon Men—Chinese clockworkers—might have a full cure.”
The clown flung his bucket, but turned it aside at the last moment. The audience whooped at him, half laughing, half fearful.
“So you need to get to China,” Dodd said. “I’m sorry, Gavin. We aren’t going to China.”
Gavin shook his head. “We don’t need to go that far. I have an airship, but she’s easy to spot and track. It’s how Phipps and the others followed us to Luxembourg. We need to lose them and earn enough money to fuel the ship for a flight to Peking.”
“What’s that to do with me?”
“The circus is a perfect cover,” Gavin blurted out. “You’re heading east. I can hide the ship on the train, and we can hide among you, do some work to earn money. Once we get far enough along, we’ll leave.”
“Oh, Gavin—I don’t know,” Dodd said. “I like you. Hell, you’re almost like a little brother to me. But the coppers already give us the hairy eye when we come to town.”
Feng muttered something in Chinese that sounded like a swear word, and Gavin’s heart sank. The clown drew his bucket back one more time. “Phipps has no real jurisdiction outside England,” Gavin said, still trying.