“Now,” she said firmly, “you will let him go.”
“Hodynnyk?” the clockworker said.
“Was that an insult?” Alice demanded.
“I think it means clock,” Gavin said. He aimed with the wristband again and fired another cog. This one struck a lever on the clockworker’s control panel and moved it. The cage holding Gavin abruptly opened from the bottom like a claw being released. Gavin, ready for this, kept hold of one bar and swung himself around to the giant bird’s neck, whereupon he skimmed downward until he could safely drop to the ground. The move was magnificent to watch, and Alice couldn’t help admiring it, despite the recent fight.
“You are clockworkers,” the woman said, switching back to English. She clucked her tongue. “You might have said instead of destroying our little pets. There are ethics.”
“Sure,” Gavin said. “And you might have asked before you snatched me up.”
The woman shrugged and pointed to herself. “Ivana Gonta. We see you are from other country. Would you like chocolate?” A mechanical hand emerged from the control panel with a small foil box. It extended itself down to Alice, who took the box without thinking. “You take. Is very useful.”
“Thank you,” she said automatically.
“Is good, is good. Because you are new, we will not kill you for hunting in our part of town, all right?”
“Oh,” Alice said. “Er…”
“The Dnepro divides Kiev. The Gontas and Zalizniaks rule as one, but everyone knows we Gontas are superior, so the Gontas hunt on the much better right bank and the weaker Zalizniaks”—she spat—“have the left. You go hunt over there for when you need meat, not over here.”
“Right,” Gavin said. “Good advice. Thanks.”
“Is good, is good,” Ivana said again. “Circus is in town, you know. We have seen. Wonderful elephant. You must visit. Perhaps we will bring elephant to our house for private entertainment for important foreign guests.”
“Oh, we shouldn’t… ,” Alice began.
“No, no, not you.” Ivana waved a gloved hand. “You are not important. We are only telling you because tomorrow night we are busy with guests and perhaps you can hunt then without that we kill you. You go now. Keep chocolate. Very good for luring children.”
The large bird turned and lumbered away into the city, its cage dangling open. The six little birds lay on the street like half-melted metal candles. Alice looked at the box in her hand, then abruptly tossed it away and scrubbed her hand against her skirt.
“That was very strange,” Gavin said absently.
“Do you truly think so?” Alice couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice.
“Definitely. Your parasol should have lasted much longer.” He took it from her and held it up to a streetlight with a critical air. The amber had turned black. “I’ll have to look at the design.”
“Gavin!”
“Eh? Oh! I’m sorry.” He handed her the parasol, straightened his clothes, adjusted the fiddle case, which was still fastened to his back, and went down on one knee. “Alice, Lady Michaels, will you marry—”
“Oh, good heavens!” Alice was all set to be angry, but she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window that the ever-present light had turned into a mirror. The sight of her wild hair and disheveled clothing and smoking parasol brought out a burst of laughter instead. It overcame her, and she laughed and laughed. Some baroness she was. An image of her late father’s probable reaction to the entire situation popped into her mind, and for a moment, she understood why Gavin laughed so hard on that awful day in the ringmaster’s travel car. The ridiculousness of the entire world was pointed in her direction, and helpless laughter was the only response. She nearly bent double under the onslaught. Gavin scrambled upright and put his arm around her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Per-perfectly,” she gasped. “Good heavens. Will you marry me, indeed!” And she laughed some more while the gargoyles and dead metal birds overhead looked on. “You’re a true rogue, Gavin Ennock. I don’t know how I ever let you go before.”
Before Gavin could respond, a shot rang out from the direction Ivana Gonta’s bird had taken. A second shot followed. Alice’s laughter instantly ceased. Gavin’s eyes met hers with the same thought.
“Feng,” they both said.
Chapter Ten
“We shouldn’t have let him go off on his own,” Alice panted as they ran. “Foolish in the extreme. What were thinking?”
“Guilt later,” Gavin said. “Run now.”
The twisting, narrow streets remained eerily silent and empty—except for plague zombies. They seemed to be everywhere, rooting through garbage bins, lurking in doorways, shying away from the lights on the main streets. Male and female, adult and child, Gavin noticed enough to populate a small village, and those were only the ones he saw. He had never seen so many plague zombies in his life. Alice was noticing them too, he could tell. She flexed her gauntlet as they hurried on, itching to stop and help them, but they didn’t dare. Not now. They had to keep running.
The trouble was, they didn’t know exactly where they were running to. Gavin’s keen ears tracked the sound of the two shots to a general area perhaps six or seven blocks away, but when they arrived at the place, they found nothing but an empty street.
“Here!” Alice plucked a pair of pistols from the pave stones as another plague zombie shuffled into shadow. The pistols were bent and broken. “Good heavens. What do—?”
“Sh!” Gavin held up a hand, hoping, and for once the clockwork plague cooperated. It rushed through him, thinning the world, making it transparent. Scents of oil and carbon and phosphorous floated on the air as conspicuous as feathers. Bits and beams of light rushed in a trillion directions, bouncing and battering against one another, trying to make a pattern amid their own chaos. Vibrations small and thunderous moved stone and brick and air and water, pressing and moving and swirling the mix. He felt the steady thrum and thud of factory dynamos in the distance, sensed thousands of heartbeats from the people tending them, felt electricity flick and dance. Through it all, he heard a steady pattern, a click-clack, click-clack combined with the hiss and swoop of steam trapped in a metal tube. The bird.
“This way,” he said, taking Alice’s hand. “Hurry!”
They followed Gavin’s heightened hearing, tripping on curbs and stumbling on cobblestones because Gavin remained more intent on listening to directions than on watching where he was going. The neighborhood shifted from lower-class residential to a mercantile district, with signs in Cyrillic that hovered at the edge of Gavin’s understanding, and he became aware that if he stopped and studied them long enough, they would begin to make sense, but he didn’t stop. The click-clack, click-clack continued, growing louder. Ivana was taking her time, which allowed them to catch up. At last, puffing and sweating, they came to a street that ended in an enormous courtyard with a spurting fountain in the center. Beyond the fountain stood a high wall that surrounded an enormous mansion of white stone topped by yet more gargoyles and grotesques. An automaton in the curved armor and metal skirt of an old-fashioned Cossack warrior was opening a double-wide iron gate with a