“Gavin,” Feng said.
He shook his head. “I know, I know. I’m not… fugueing. Just thinking out—”
“No.” Feng pointed. “Look.”
Feng, and most of the other people in the heavy crowd, were pointing at the stained glass windows at the back of the nave, the panes Phipps had flung casual stones at. The broken panes formed a pattern, one Gavin hadn’t noticed backward, inside the church. Outside, the broken glass formed a clear symboclass="underline" √2.
“The signature of the Third Ward,” Gavin said.
“What is the significance?” Feng asked. He was still clutching the firefly jar.
“It’s a message. Phipps isn’t giving up, and she has the power to touch even the church.”
“Gavin!” Phipps’s voice carried through the churchyard loud and clear. Alarm speared Gavin’s chest and he held Alice tight. “One last gift for you and your friends.”
At the last moment he spotted her on a shadowy window ledge above the crowd’s head. She had a pebble in her mechanical hand, and she threw. Fearful for Alice, Gavin spun, shielding her with his body. But instead of feeling the bite of stone on flesh, he only heard one more note of shattered glass. Feng stood next to him, the pieces of destroyed jar in his hands. Blood ran from a cut on his arm. A chill ran over Gavin.
“No!” he whispered.
The cloud of fireflies hovered in place for a moment, keeping the shape of the jar. Then they scattered, swarming over the crowd, streaking green starlight in a thousand different directions. The people scattered, yipping and slapping. Hundreds of dead fireflies dropped to the ground, crushed by hands and stomped by feet.
“Damn you!” Gavin cried at the church. But Phipps was already gone.
Interlude
“When will you be well enough to travel?” Phipps asked.
Glenda lay propped up in her hotel room bed with a steak on her eye and her arm in a sling. “I don’t know. Three days, perhaps four. I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“I should be sorry, Agent Teasdale. I’m your commander, and I let you down.”
Since Glenda had the bed, Simon occupied her customary place in the chair. “I’m not feeling very well myself,” he said. “We wrecked a church, Lieutenant.”
“A church that violated a number of laws regarding human-shaped automatons and the illegal sheltering of plague victims. Monsignor Adames knew the risks,” Phipps replied, fighting to remain calm. This was the second time Gavin and Alice had slipped away from her, and she hated looking the fool. She was also fighting to push aside a growing unease that Simon had a point. “In any case, I’m sure the amount of money he scavenges from the wrecked mechanicals will more than compensate him.”
“A church, Lieutenant,” Simon repeated. “How do we justify—”
A knock interrupted him. Simon answered the door and returned with a letter addressed to Phipps. She had a good idea what it was about, and reading the heavy paper inside only confirmed her suspicion.
“It’s from the office of the grand duke,” she said. “The gendarmerie is no longer available to assist us in our enquiries and we have been asked, in the politest manner possible, to leave Luxembourg as soon as we are able. I suspected as much.”
“Why did you break that jar?” Glenda asked.
Phipps almost grimaced and stopped herself. Breaking the jar had been a mistake, her temper getting the better of her. She had no idea what the jar had contained, only that it was somehow valuable to Gavin and Alice, and the final pebble in her hand had been too much of a temptation there in the shadow of the church. Lately, it was harder and harder to keep her emotions in check. How could she know if her decisions were based on logic or emotion when she was angry all the time? She was fighting for what was just, as Father had taught, and Father was never wrong. As long as she did that, she herself could not be wrong.
“Never let an opponent think he has the upper hand, even when he’s handed you a… setback,” she said in an explanation that sounded lame even to herself. “Better to take a small victory.”
“Hm,” said Glenda.
“So what now?” Simon asked, a little warily.
“Once Glenda can travel again, we will follow that circus.”
Simon blinked. “The Kalakos Circus? The gendarmes searched there and found nothing.”
“Of course they didn’t. Alice was out and about on her little mission at the time, and circus performers won’t admit anything to the police.”
“Then how do you know they’re with the circus?” Glenda asked.
“Didn’t you catch the scent of peanuts and cooked sugar on Gavin when we were in the church? It was all over him,” Phipps replied. “He’s hiding there, all right. Unfortunately, we can’t confront them now, not with Glenda injured and the mechanicals destroyed.”
“And the gendarmerie unhappy with us,” Simon put in.
“True. Fortunately, while you were out fetching the steak, Simon, I was able to make some enquiries. The circus plans to spend some time in Berlin, and from there it will travel to Kiev.”
Glenda sat up straighter, and winced. “The Ukrainian Empire? Are they mad?”
“It will be an absolute hell,” Phipps agreed.
Chapter Seven
The world rocked and wobbled. Alice tossed about, trying to make everything settle down, and finally she came fully awake. It came to her that she was lying on her narrow bunk in her stateroom on The Lady of Liberty. She wore a nightgown and cap, and the blankets lay heavy atop her. How had she come to be here? The last thing she remembered was Gavin carrying her out of the ruined church.
The room continued to sway, more like a train than the Lady’s usual stately glide, and Alice’s sleep-addled mind finally remembered the day she had helped fit the airship with train wheels and hook her up to the circus train. They must be under way. Mindful of the low ceiling, she sat up as the door slid open and Kemp entered with a tea tray.
“So glad to see you awake, Madam,” he said brightly. “I thought you might be hungry.”
The sight of food and drink awoke a leonine appetite, and Alice gratefully accepted the tray. Tea, fresh bread, butter and jam, soft-boiled eggs, and… liver? Kemp knew very well she hated liver, and it was completely unlike him to serve her food she disliked, but when the smell reached her, something primal took over. She snatched up fork and knife and crammed in mouthfuls, heedless of ladylike manners. The spider gauntlet on her left hand clinked softly against the flatware.
“I noticed the change in your heartbeat and respiration,” Kemp said, answering a question she hadn’t asked, “and stepped out to prepare a meal. Sir said you had lost a fair amount of blood, and the proper remedy for that is tea and liver.”
Alice swallowed a mouthful. “How long was I asleep?”
“Nearly two days, Madam. I urge you to drink as much as you can.”
“Thank you, Kemp. As always, I don’t know what I would do without you.”
His eyes glowed. “You are quite welcome, Madam. In anticipation of your next question, Sir is in the workshop with the doctor. Shall I alert him to your present state?”
“Not if he’s in a fugue.” Alice tapped an egg with her spoon and unwound the shell. “Where are we? What’s been going on?”
“We left Luxembourg late last night. Ringmaster Dodd became nervous at the number of ‘mingers,’ as he calls them, patrolling the streets to look for you. In any case, their presence seemed to have a dampening effect on the number of people who attended performances. So we are moving on to Berlin. I believe the local baron is giving a birthday party for his son and he wants a circus. Eventually, of course, we will travel on to Kiev.”
Alice glanced out the porthole. Greenery rocked past in a blur, and the engine gave a long, low whistle. Sharp coal smoke and cinders mingled with the scent of liver and eggs. She remembered traveling by rail with her father and mother and brother and eating on tall-sided trays just like this one. Mother always bought a large bag of peppermint candies and shared them with Alice and Brent. Father sniffed that he didn’t care for peppermint, but pinched pieces outrageously and made Alice giggle. Then Mother assigned Alice the task of counting cows in the fields they passed while Brent was to count sheep. Father joked that it was faster to count all their legs and divide by four, which made Alice giggle all over again and lose count. That had been in happier times, in the days before the clockwork plague struck her family, sending her mother and brother to the graveyard and twisting her father’s body into a wheelchair. She held up the dark spider gauntlet for a moment. Her blood still coursed through the tubules. What would happen if she cut the tubes, sliced off its legs until it had nothing to grip with? It wouldn’t be difficult, just time-consuming. But the spider moved with her perfectly, responding to every muscle twitch far more efficiently than a simple glove. How deeply had it bonded to her and how much would it damage her own flesh to cut it off?