For a moment, Gavin flashed on the conflicts between himself and Dr. Clef. How long before one of them tried to kill the other? Assuming Gavin survived the next few minutes.
“Ah, that is for normal clockworkers,” Danilo said. “We are not like them. We serve the family.”
And Gavin saw the pattern. “That’s what the collection is,” he said. “You don’t think of yourselves as individuals. You don’t even call yourself I. It’s always we. I’ll bet you weren’t born with the names Danilo and Ivana, either.”
Danilo grinned a demon’s grin. “You have good brain. We would like to see it.”
“He and the baroness are mine,” Phipps said. “You have the Oriental boy. As we agreed.”
“So, so.” Ivana removed her hand from the lever and waved it negligently. “Perhaps we wish to change the terms of our agreement.”
“What do you mean?” Glenda demanded. Simon remained silent.
“Do you think that you are the only ones who know of this cure your Alice carries?” said another woman. Her voice echoed about the chamber. “It interests us very, very much. This cure is already destabilizing Europe, and we approve. We predict that within five years, all European clockworkers will be gone because cure will destroy plague. China’s machinery will continue to grow, and she will easily take all of India and Africa and possibly west coast of America before cure reaches her empire and stops creation of more dragon men. By then it will be too late. China will reign supreme.”
“No,” Phipps said flatly.
“Feng,” Alice whispered. “Can you stand up?”
The young man stared blankly, and Gavin couldn’t tell if he had understood her or not.
“Feng,” Alice whispered again, “you have to stand up. Stand up!”
Feng instantly got to his feet. The blanket fell away. He was shirtless. Corded muscle moved under ivory skin recently scored with a series of terrible scars that ran across his chest and abdomen. Tiny, neat stitches held the edges together. Gavin’s nausea returned. Hadn’t the spider on his face been enough? What else had they done?
“Like or not like, Lieutenant,” Danilo said. “It will happen. We want it to happen.”
“Why would you want that?” Simon burst out. His voice was hoarse with stress. “It would destroy your family. Already, Alice is spreading the cure through your city. Who will become the next generation of clockworkers?”
“Is nothing, nothing,” said an old man who sported a set of steel teeth. “We have our own supplies of plague. You are truly stupid man if you think that we Gontas and Zalizniaks could not manipulate plague when it started here, in our own city.”
“You can cure the plague?” Alice gasped. She grabbed Gavin’s hand with her bare one. “But I’d heard you couldn’t.”
“Of course we can,” said the old man. “It is our secret. And we can infect people with it, and we have ways of increasing chances that victim will become clockworker. Is why we need children.”
“Can you cure clockworkers?” Alice blurted before Gavin could ask the same question.
Ivana gave her a scornful look. “Why would we look into such things? Stupid English. Even if we wanted to destroy our clockworker family, plague changes itself when it makes clockworker and becomes quite incurable. Waste of time.”
“Enough discussion,” Phipps said. “I will take my prisoners and leave now.”
“Nah, nah,” said Ivana. “If lovely baroness fails to reach China, Chinese Emperor will rule most of world, and probably hurt Ukraine. This is bad for Gontas and Zalizniaks. Lovely baroness must reach China to spread cure more quickly and destroy Chinese Empire as well. We have agreed.”
Gavin gasped. The Gontas and Zalizniaks were on their side?
“But we still think curing China is a bad idea!” Danilo Zalizniak protested. “We think that baroness must not reach China. Britain’s weakness will let Ukraine expand west.”
Ivana touched a button on her collar. Danilo cried out and clutched at his own collar with both hands, his face a rictus of pain. “We believe we came to agreement,” she said mildly as Danilo rocked in his chair. “Is this not so? Speak English for benefit of our guests.”
“No!” Danilo howled. “No! We— You are wrong! You Gontas are—”
Ivana touched a button on her collar again, and Danilo screamed. Alice put a hand over her mouth. Gavin stared, both sickened and transfixed. The other clockworkers watched in complete silence, though some of them—presumably Zalizniaks—looked unhappy or angry. Phipps sat in the center of them all, clearly trying to swallow her outrage. Gavin suppressed a mean smile. For once, she had miscalculated, overplayed her ability to persuade clockworkers.
“Baroness must reach China,” Ivana said. Her tone was quiet and kind. “Do we agree, brother?”
“Yes,” Danilo whimpered.
“And we should give her all aid necessary. Is this true?”
“Yes.”
Another tap on Ivana’s collar, and Danilo’s face instantly relaxed. He slumped down in his chair. Glenda and Simon exchanged startled looks.
“What did we agree, brother?” Ivana asked, her finger still hovering over the copper at her throat.
“That… that the baroness should reach China,” Danilo whispered. “And we should help her.”
“Just so.” Ivana touched a different button on her collar, and Danilo arched his back with a great gasp, but this time the expression on his face read pure pleasure instead of pain. His mouth fell open, and he groaned. Ivana released her collar, and Danilo relaxed.
“There we are,” she said. “We may clean ourselves up and change into different trousers, if we desire.”
“We are grateful, sister.” Tears streamed down Danilo’s face. “Grateful.” He got up and stumbled out of the observation area.
“We are sorry you had to see that,” Ivana called down to Gavin and Alice. “This is why experiment with Oriental boy is so important. If it works, we have no more arguments.”
“Well,” Gavin said, setting his rucksack on the floor and opening the top, “if you want Alice to reach China, I suppose that means we should be on our way. If you’ll just open that gate…”
“We said baroness must reach China,” Ivana agreed. “You, on other hand, are quite different. We need advanced clockworkers. You will join Gontas.”
“Or Zalizniaks,” said the old man.
Gavin had been expecting something like this, but the actual words still chilled him. Alice, meanwhile, had her traveling tools out, the ones rolled up in black velvet embroidered with Love, Aunt Edwina in gold thread. Ivana manipulated her console. A pair of long metal arms extended from the ceiling. They held a copper collar. Another pair of arms reached down with them, intending to grab Gavin and hold him.
“Don’t fight us,” the steel-toothed clockworker said. “It will go easier. Believe us.”
“No!” Phipps rose. “He belongs to me!”
“Sit!” Ivana barked, and grabbed Phipps’s metal hand. Two other clockworkers grabbed Simon and Glenda before the Third Ward agents could react, and handcuffed them to their chairs. Glenda shrieked in outrage. Simon kicked at his captor, who easily dodged away. The metal hands snatched at Gavin.
“Gavin!” Alice cried. She had a set of lock picks in her hands.
“Get Feng!” Gavin shouted, and the plague slowed time. He dodged the set of grasping arms and snatched the collar from the other set. Angles and trajectories drew themselves in the air for him. He moved his arm a precise two degrees to the left and half a degree down, and threw the collar. The gleaming discus spun through the air and hit the first lever on Ivana’s console, the one she had been holding when the gate crashed down and the lights came up. The lever deployed, and gate cranked upward.