Alice, Lady Michaels, jumped away from the gunwale as the first squid man shot from the ocean in a fountain of water and landed on the deck with a rubbery thwap that echoed through the huge cave. The creature had a man’s body, though its skin was covered in greenish blue slime, and its head was that of a squid. Tentacles formed a horrid squirming bush around its neck, and enormous dark eyes too round and large to be human glistened in the half-light of the cave. Its fingers and toes were webbed, and they dripped more slime. Although it was naked and had a male build, it showed no male accoutrement. With a frightened squawk, Alice stepped back and bumped into Gavin as another squid man vaulted onto the deck, and another and another and another. In seconds, the deck was teeming with more than two dozen of them.
The sight of those doll-like eyes, the smell of the oozing slime, and the sound of the writhing tentacles crawled over Alice’s skin like cold worms. The creatures spoke no words and closed in around the trio with outreaching arms and faint squishing sounds. A fear she didn’t know she possessed poured ice water down Alice’s back and froze her voice. She had faced down zombies, gargoyles, and a mechanical war machine several stories tall, but these creatures touched something primordial. She wanted to leap behind Gavin and Phipps, or even hide in a closet.
“Good Lord,” Phipps breathed. She had her cutlass out, but it seemed small and senseless compared to the crowd facing them. Gavin didn’t react. He simply stared at the squid men, either fascinated or mesmerized, Alice couldn’t tell which. Thanks to the clockwork plague, Gavin fell into these fugues more and more often, and it wasn’t just when they came across something as strange as a school of squid men. A simple leaf or air current could capture his fancy with equal ease. This unnerved Alice even more than his recent dive over the side of the ship. Right now, the clockwork fugue was proving dangerous—Gavin had lost track of himself while he held their only weapon.
Alice tried to speak, but no words came out. She coughed and tried again. “Gavin! The Cube!”
Gavin came to himself with a snap. The eye-twisting Impossible Cube glowed in his grip, and he held it out in front of him. Metal wings formed a chain mail cloak that rippled down his back, and the blue light of the Cube lit his white-blond hair with an unearthly glow. The squid men oozed closer in eerie silence, and Alice’s breath came in fearful gasps. She couldn’t stand such horrible creatures, and she felt foolish and helpless hiding behind Gavin, who was four years younger than she. Still, she had rescued him from danger more times than she could count, so what was the harm in letting him and his powerful weapon take the forefront?
The squid men reached for Gavin with their dripping arms. He opened his mouth and sang a single, clear note. Alice had no idea which—Gavin had perfect pitch, not she—but the impact was electric. The Impossible Cube flickered in Gavin’s strong hands, and his voice . . . changed. It roared from his throat with the sound of a thousand tigers. A cone of sound thundered across the deck and flung squid men aside like toys, clearing a corridor all the way to the gunwale. The sound continued to boom from Gavin’s throat, and pride fluttered in Alice’s chest. He looked handsome and powerful and, God, he was so young, but Alice loved him with every particle in her body. The squid men crashed into one another and tumbled across the wood without uttering a sound.
Phipps was also busy. She slashed one creature with her cutlass, slicing off its arm at the elbow. Blue blood gushed over the deck and her victim staggered back, but Phipps was still in motion. She gave another squid man a side kick to the midriff. It fell back into the attacker behind it while Phipps back-punched another squid man in the face with her metal hand. Her knuckles sank into the flesh between its eyes, then pulled free with a sucking sound. Undaunted, the squid man grabbed her wrist. Like a cat, she twisted round and bent her attacker’s arm, sending the creature to the deck with its neck tentacles writhing in what Alice assumed was pain.
Meanwhile, the squid men Gavin had scattered began to recover. Their movements changed from slow and shambling to quick and nimble. The ones that had fallen rolled to their feet, and the rest surged forward. Strangely, they seemed to be ignoring Gavin and reaching for Alice.
“What the hell is going on?” Phipps panted. She took a punch to the jaw, staggered, righted herself, and kept on fighting. Her monocle gleamed an angry red, helping her aim.
“Shout at them again!” Alice cried. “Shout at—”
One of the squid men grabbed her from behind with cold hands. Alice screamed as nightmares she didn’t remember having smeared her mind with slippery darkness. She struggled and kicked, and another grabbed her as well. Gavin turned, the Impossible Cube still glowing in his hands. Phipps was raising her cutlass against another group of squid men.
And then Alice noticed the spider on her arm.
Last spring, the iron spider had wrapped itself around her hand and forearm at the behest of her aunt Edwina, a world-class clockworker. Soft, flexible tubules had burrowed into her flesh and gorged themselves on her blood, which now bubbled and flowed up and down the spider’s body and legs. The spider’s head and five of its legs clutched the back of her hand and each of her fingers, creating a strange gauntlet. Alice had tried to get it off, but it refused to budge, and it had quickly become so much a part of her that she was now afraid to try more drastic methods such as cutting it away. These days, she didn’t entirely want to. What currently caught her attention were the spider’s eyes. They glowed red. Her fear vanished despite the rubbery arms that held her.
“Wait!” she cried. “These . . . people have the clockwork plague!”
Before Gavin could respond to this news, Alice swiped at the arm that held her with the claws that tipped her left hand. The hollow claws sprayed her own blood over the wounds she created, mixing scarlet and azure. The squid man released her and reeled away. Two more stepped up to grab at her, but Alice swiped both of them with quick, darting motions. More blood mixed in the scratches, and they staggered away, too. The first squid man was now writhing on the deck. Soft clicking sounds emerged from either its neck or chest; Alice couldn’t tell which. The other two soon joined it. Their skin tone was changing, shifting from dark blue to a mottled pink.
All this happened in just a few seconds. Phipps had dispatched or driven back half a dozen squid men of her own. Her cutlass and metal arm dripped with blue blood, and she had lost her hat. A wild look had come over her eyes as more squid men crowded toward her. Gavin opened his mouth to roar again.
“That’s enough!”
The new voice echoed through the cave. The squid men all froze, except for those writhing and clicking on the deck because Alice had scratched them or Phipps had lopped pieces off. Alice turned. What now?
Skimming across the channel that cut through the cave floor came a man. He was barefoot and wore a black bathing costume with short sleeves and leggings. Around his waist he had an elaborate, heavy-looking belt with a number of clunky pieces of machinery attached to it. Over everything, rather strangely, he wore a long gray cloak. He was standing sideways and seemed to be riding a low wave until he came closer and Alice realized he was standing on the back of another creature. How he kept his balance she couldn’t imagine until it came to her that, like Gavin, he was a clockworker and had the requisite enhanced reflexes that he would enjoy until plague burned out his brain. No doubt this was the man who had created both the giant squid and the squid men. Alice pursed her lips.
Gavin traded a look with Phipps while the scratched and wounded squid men squirmed on the deck. The ones Alice had slashed continued their metamorphosis, with their skin growing paler and their neck tentacles going still. Alice wanted to examine them, see if they were in pain, but she didn’t have the chance. The clockworker skimmed closer to the ship, and in moments he vaulted from his creature’s back and scrambled onto the deck, his gray cloak fluttering behind him. He had a Persian’s dark hair and complexion, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth put him somewhere in his forties, or perhaps near fifty.
“That’s enough,” he repeated in accented English. “Leave my poor men alone!”
Phipps, Gavin, and Alice stared. The crowd of squid men remained motionless. Alice recovered herself first.
“And you are?” she asked.
“You may call me Prince Mehrad al-Noor,” he said. “I already know who you are—or one of you, at any rate.”
“And that would be?” Phipps said.
“Alice, Lady Michaels, late of London,” al-Noor said. “You are the one with the cure to the clockwork plague, and you have demonstrated it on my poor men.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice said, still trying to get a full grip on herself. “Why did you bring us here? I assume that this creature”—she gestured at one of the tentacles still encircling the ship—“attacked us at your behest.”
“Yes, yes.” Al-Noor waved his hands in a series of complicated gestures, and several of the squid men dragged the ones Alice had scratched and those Phipps had wounded to the side and leaped overboard with them. Splashes followed. They left trails of blue blood on the deck. “Why else would a giant squid attack a passing airship?”
“How do you know the name Lady Michaels?” Gavin demanded.
“Everyone knows this name,” al-Noor replied with a white grin. “She is the angel with a sharp metal hand who spreads the cure to the clockwork plague. She coasts through the heavens in a glowing blue airship piloted by her lover, dropping to Earth to bestow her blessings wherever people are good and kind and deserving of her notice.”
Alice felt her face turn hot. “Gavin’s not—”
Phipps trod on her foot, cutting her off. “So you’ve heard of me,” she interrupted, holding up her metal arm. “I’m flattered. That doesn’t explain why you intercepted us and tried to destroy my ship.”
For a split second, Alice found herself wanting to correct Phipps. Then she shut herself up. Any advantage they could take, including a case of mistaken identity, could work in their favor.
“I apologize if I gave you that impression, Lady Michaels. I got wind that the very famous angel of mercy was coasting over my ocean, and I merely wanted to invite you for a visit. Unfortunately, giant squids are not good at subtlety. We will, of course, repair any damage to your fine ship.”
“And your . . . men?” Gavin gestured at the crowded deck. The Impossible Cube glowed close to his chest.
“They guard the mouth of the cave and became too enthusiastic when your ship appeared. Again, I do apologize.” Al-Noor gave a little bow. “You will come with me, have a wonderful meal, spend the night in comfortable rooms, and in the morning, you will go on your way.”
“Oh?” Phipps said. “Well, if you—”
“Liar,” said Alice.
Al-Noor looked taken aback. “I do not understand. You refuse my hospitality?”
“Was I unclear?” Alice snapped. “Let me be blunt, then. You did not invite us here. You captured us, and now you’re acting polite to put us off our guard. Once we’ve eaten at your table, the laudanum you put into our food will send us to sleep, allowing you to do whatever you wish. So let’s skip over the bad food and the drugs and go straight to what you wish. What might that be, Mr. al-Noor?”
For a moment, al-Noor looked hurt and astonished, and Alice thought she had made a terrible mistake. Then a cool, calculating look slid over the man’s face. “You are a clever woman, Miss . . . ?”
“Susan Phipps,” said Alice. “At your service.”
“Miss Phipps,” al-Noor said. “Yes, very clever indeed.”
Phipps wiped her cutlass clean on a handkerchief. “Flattery from a liar doesn’t sit well, al-Noor. What do you want, then? Do tell, before my friend here blasts you into your component bits.”
At this, Gavin waved the Impossible Cube. It hummed softly and left a blue trail hanging in the air. His face was set hard. The squid men stood motionless on the deck, though their dark eyes seemed to be following the Cube.
“I think he will not.” Al-Noor pressed a switch on his belt, and a tremor went through the black tentacles wrapped round the Lady. Wood groaned and cracked.
Gavin cried out and lowered the Cube. “Wait!”
“Yes,” said al-Noor. “A flick of my finger, and electric impulses will force the squid to crush this ship to flinders. That famous metal arm of yours, Lady Michaels, will drag you to the bottom, and you will drown.”
Alice shot Gavin a hard look. He seemed upset, but was it over the idea that she was in danger or that the sea monster might destroy his ship? He was a clockworker and could get strange ideas about what was important. Her glance flicked about the deck, looking for solutions. Her gaze inevitably came back to the Impossible Cube resting in Gavin’s hands. It was the most powerful weapon on Earth, but the moment Gavin tried to use it, al-Noor would try to kill all three of them, and chances were better than even that he would succeed at least once. The Cube was useless in these circumstances.
There was one alternative. An obvious one, really. Alice could see that Gavin knew what it was, but he was hesitating to take it, waiting for her to give the word. One word. Alice started to speak, but her throat closed around the word, trapping it like hope at the bottom of a box. Gavin looked at her, his soul in pale blue eyes. Alice clamped her lips shut, and her chin trembled with the force of holding it in.
Phipps did it for her. “Fly,” she hissed.
Gavin gave her a sharp look.
“Fly,” Phipps hissed again.
He gave Alice a wild look, then ran for the gunwale through the gap in the crowd of squid men the Impossible Cube had created. Before the squid men could react, he hurled himself over the side. Alice held back a cry but still reached for him. She felt that her heart might spring out of her chest and follow after.
“Gavin!” Phipps cried, making a halfhearted leap after him that effectively covered Alice’s own movement. “Oh, what will I ever do?”
It would have been funny under other circumstances. Gavin’s wings snapped open. Still clutching the Impossible Cube to his chest, he caught the air with the grace of someone who had been flying all his life and glided away, trailing blue light behind him.
“You leave him alone, you awful, awful man,” Phipps simpered at al-Noor. Her monocle made the gesture even more ridiculous. “You have me. He can’t hurt you.”
“Indeed so, Lady.” Al-Noor looked after Gavin’s retreating form. He had already reached the mouth of the cave and vanished into bright light. “But you will pardon me for docking this ship and taking you somewhere more secure.”
“So, what is it you want from—from Lady Michaels?” Alice demanded.
“Exactly what is your position here, Miss Phipps?” al-Noor replied.
“I never go anywhere without her,” Phipps put in quickly. “She’s my maid.”
“Maid?” The word popped out before Alice could stop it.
“Well, you’re not a valet, Susan,” Phipps said pointedly. “And someone has to polish all this brass. You have to be my maid.”
Alice gritted her teeth. “Yes, mum,” she said between them.
“But regardless of her station, sir,” Phipps continued, “the question still stands. What exactly do you want?”
Al-Noor was still looking after the fading light trail left by Gavin’s wings. He thought a moment, then shrugged and turned back to the two women.
“I want all the tea in China,” he said. “Or perhaps its weight in silver.”
Phipps crossed her arms, flesh over metal. “No clockworker riddles. Be specific.”
“I noted your trajectory before I sent my pet to fetch you,” al-Noor said. “Based on that and on the rumors I have managed to intercept about you, I have decided you are trying to reach China. Is that correct?”
Alice kept her face expressionless, taking her cue from Phipps, though her insides were tight. Al-Noor had the right of it—they were indeed headed for China. A number of events allowed her and Gavin to hope that China could cure clockworkers. Weeks ago, Alice had discovered that over the years, a number of British clockworkers had found different cures for the clockwork plague—Alice wore the handiwork of one of them around her arm—but the Crown had suppressed them so the plague would continue to produce clockworkers, who would, in turn, produce useful inventions for the Crown. Never mind that the disease also slaughtered millions, including most of Alice’s family. What mattered to the Crown was that China was doing the same thing so its Dragon Men could produce similar inventions, maintaining a careful balance between the two empires.
Although the remedy Alice herself was spreading could heal the plague in zombies and in people who had recently fallen ill, no one in England had managed to cure a clockworker. That meant Gavin was doomed.
With Gavin’s help, Alice had ended the clockwork plague in England and was spreading the cure across Europe, though her ultimate goal was still China. Britain had never managed to cure a clockworker, but China . . . the Oriental Empire was known for its introspection, doing research about research. If anyone had a clockwork cure, it was the Dragon Men.
“We are traveling to China, yes,” Phipps said cautiously. “What does it matter to you?”
“I am doing you a favor. China has recently closed its borders. No one gets in these days. Or out.”
A pang jolted Alice’s stomach. “What? They can’t do that!”
“Hm,” al-Noor said. “This is not the place to discuss such things. Come and eat, and I promise—no drugs.”
A few moments later, the Lady had been dragged to a little stone quay and a contingent of squid men with clammy hands was escorting Phipps and Alice—without her little mechanicals—down a cavern tunnel and into a chilly, high-ceilinged cavern the size of a formal dining room. Stalactites dripped water from the ceiling, and the sandy floor felt gritty under Alice’s feet. The squid men shut and barred a thick door at the entrance to the cavern and brought the two women to a low table surrounded by pillows. Foods Alice couldn’t begin to identify heaped the dishes and filled the air with strange, spicy smells that turned Alice’s stomach. Electric lights clung to the walls to cast a hard, unmoving light over everything. The whole place looked like a dining room designed by, well, a madman. Alice stood unhappily next to the table with Phipps while al-Noor, still in his damp swimsuit and belt, seated himself on a plump pillow. A squid man took his gray cloak, and Alice belatedly realized it was made of sharkskin.
“Please, sit, eat,” he said as one of the squid men piled food on his plate.
Alice remained standing. Sitting cross-legged on the floor would put her at a further disadvantage, and she was too tense to sit in any case. Her muscles felt stiff as whalebone, and sweat trickled down her back despite the chill of the cave. She forced herself to relax—or try to. Gavin would come for them. He had the Impossible Cube, the most powerful weapon in the world.
A weapon they only barely understood. A weapon that had nearly destroyed the entire universe by stopping time. It hadn’t even been two weeks since she and Gavin had faced down plump, merry Dr. Clef at the bottom of the dam in Kiev, not fourteen days since she had watched in horror as he charged up the Impossible Cube with half the power of a city and reached for a switch that would freeze everything forever between two ticks of the universe’s clock. He had been her friend, a kind, slightly eccentric old man with strange theories that bent her mind and made her see the world on different terms. And she had taken a hand in his death. Feng Lung, another dear friend, had died as well, messily and horribly. She often saw the image of their mingled blood hanging in the air before she fell asleep in her bunk at night.
“Get to it, al-Noor,” Phipps snapped, also refusing to sit. “What do you want?”
“You are not in a position to shout.” Al-Noor stuffed a wad of flat bread into his mouth. “With a word, my men could kill you. Or perhaps they will pull your brass arm off so I can study it. Have some coconut milk.”
“My name is Lady Michaels, a peer of the British Empire. You will use that title when you address me.”
Alice wished Phipps wouldn’t antagonize the man. Although al-Noor clearly wanted them alive, he was a clockworker, and who knew what he might decide to do. The overpowering presence of more than a dozen squid men in the room made her continually nervous, and she found herself fingering her spider gauntlet like a security blanket.
Stop it, she told herself. You’re better than this. But the slimy squid men and the dank cave continued to press in all around her.
“Even a lady must eat.” Al-Noor waved away Phipps’s comment with a forkful of noodles. “But it is your prerogative to go hungry if you wish. A pity, when so many others in the world are starving.”
“What do you want with us, Mr. al-Noor?” Alice asked carefully. “You said something about China’s borders.”
“I did, I did.” Al-Noor sipped noisily from a porcelain cup, which was instantly refilled by one of the squid men. A bit of slime from its neck tentacles dripped into the cup. Al-Noor drank again, and Alice’s gorge rose. Phipps looked a bit green. “The borders are closed.”
“They can’t do that,” Alice said again. “The Treaty of Nanking opened free trade between China and England after that fight over opium—what?—nine years ago? Ten?”
“Nine, yes.” Al-Noor toyed with an oily bit of fish. “But the treaty was not about free trade. It was about letting British merchants ram Indian opium down Chinese throats. And the Chinese finally had enough. Fellow named Prince Cheng teamed up with a Manchu warlord named Su Shun, and they closed the borders, treaty or no.”
“There’ll be a fight,” Phipps predicted. “A big one.”
“Yes. I think Cheng and Su Shun are counting on that. You British took Peking by sheer luck. Everyone knows that if General Zexu Lin’s war machines hadn’t broken down at Canton and let the English forces through, the Chinese would have thrown the British out quite handily. And even so, the British took huge losses at Peking before the emperor surrendered. If General Lin had not backed down, the British might have still failed.”
“Ancient history,” Phipps said. “The Chinese lost. They signed the treaty.”
“And now they have decided to fight again.” Al-Noor popped something blue and rubbery into his mouth. “Perhaps they have heard that the British are losing their clockworkers and they have decided to flex their muscles. It will be interesting to see how the British fare now that no new clockworker has been spotted in Europe for nearly two months and the ones they already have are dying out. Who will create and repair their engines of war?”
“So they’ve closed the borders to keep the cure out.” Alice sank to a pillow despite herself.
“It is what I would do were I ruling China.”
“But it doesn’t explain why you captured us,” Phipps pointed out.
“Ah, but it does. In a way.” Al-Noor checked the contents of a serving bowl, discovered it was empty, and made a face. A squid man snatched it up and hurried away with it. “I myself know quite a lot about the clockwork plague. I suffer from it.”
“Do you?” Phipps said without a trace of sarcasm.
“It was why my countrymen sent me here. This island is a men’s leper colony, you know. Up top, that is. They also send people who suffer from the clockwork plague here, but we, poor souls, are lepers among lepers and are forced to scuttle about down here. After nearly a year of hard work, I discovered how to alter the plague a bit, combine it with proteins from sea animals.”
“Squid,” Alice whispered in horror.
Al-Noor nodded with enthusiasm. “My process changes them. It slows the plague considerably but does not halt it. The two you cured, Lady Michaels”—he gestured at Phipps, and Alice remembered she had scratched the squid men before al-Noor boarded—“have died. Only my altered plague was keeping them alive, and you took that away from them.”
Guilt engulfed Alice, and she folded her arms across her stomach. The iron spider made a cold, dreadful weight.
“I still don’t understand why you captured me,” Phipps growled. “And I’m growing impatient.”
“My research is expensive,” al-Noor replied simply. “Do you have any idea how much I pay in bribes just to get a ship’s captain to land here, let alone bring me what I need? It is ungodly. Fortunately for me, a source of revenue skimmed across my little sea directly at me.”
“We don’t have much money,” Alice said, not quite lying. “We can pay a little—”
“Not you,” al-Noor interrupted. “The Chinese.”
That stopped Alice. “The Chinese?” she repeated.
“The emperor, to be specific. His Imperial Majesty Xianfeng is offering four hundred pounds of silver for the capture of Alice, Lady Michaels. Alive.” His eyes glittered. “I can breed a lot of squid with that much money.”
“Four hundred pounds of silver,” Phipps breathed.
“Good heavens,” Alice whispered.
“Wait—he wants me alive?” Phipps said. “So when you were threatening to drown me aboard our ship—”
“An excellent bluff,” al-Noor agreed. “I’m very good at them.”
Phipps closed her uncovered eye for a moment. “Why does the emperor want us? Me?”
“Rumor has it Xianfeng fears the clockwork plague. Perhaps he wants to ensure he avoids it forever. He’s also known for keeping pretty concubines, especially unusual ones. You can keep him occupied in any number of ways, I am sure.”
A chill slid over Alice, and her fingers automatically went to her spider gauntlet. Phipps caught her eye and gave a tiny shake of her head, which stiffened Alice’s spine.
“In any case,” al-Noor finished, “once I turn you in, I will have enough silver to buy everything I need for the next stage of my research.”
“And what is that?” Alice couldn’t help asking.
“A female squid.”
“Oh good Lord,” Phipps muttered. “Look, al-Noor, my maid is worthless to you. There’s no need to hold her hostage. Let her go as a sign of good faith, and I’ll do whatever you like.”
“No.” Al-Noor slurped more tea and held out his cup for a refill, which one of the squid men instantly gave. “I already regret letting that stunning young man go. This maid of yours will guarantee your good behavior. If you try anything strange, she will suffer for it.”
“I give you my word as a . . . as a lady that I won’t—”
Al-Noor cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Your pardon if I do not accept your word. I will alert the Chinese border authorities by wireless transmission in a moment, but first I want a demonstration of this cure.”
A sour worm crawled through Alice’s stomach. Phipps glanced at her again, then said, “I don’t understand.”
“I want to see this cure at work. You used it on two of my squid men before I arrived on the airship, and I had no chance to study the reaction before the two of them died. I wish to see it now.”
Alice’s earlier guilt returned in a black cloud. Who had those squid men been? Did they have families? Children? Had they understood what was happening to them? It had been an accident—she’d had no intention of killing them, or even hurting them. But she had done it nonetheless, and they were dead because of her.
Phipps crossed her arms. She was still standing. “What do you mean by see it?”
“Cure one of my squid men. Now.”
Uh-oh. Alice licked dry lips. The masquerade was going sour. She cast about for something to say, something to do.
“I feel I should ask,” she said, trying to stall, “exactly why you sent that enormous creature out to capture us. My . . . employer, Lady Michaels, is well-known for curing people with the plague. If you had sent her a message to say you had an entire island of plague victims who needed help, Lady Michaels would have sailed into this cave of her own accord and you could have betrayed her at your leisure, no squid necessary.”
“Oh,” said al-Noor. A long moment of silence followed. Then he added, “But that would have been dull.”
“Indeed,” Phipps said.
“In any case,” al-Noor continued, “I must insist that you show me the cure, Lady Michaels.”
“I am not a circus act, Mr. al-Noor.” Phipps’s posture stiffened. “And in any case, the cure kills your men. I won’t be responsible for more deaths.”
“They are all dying anyway,” al-Noor replied reasonably. “Fortunately, the mainland sends me a fresh supply of plague victims every few months. They do not even know what becomes of them—nor do they care.”
“And you don’t, either?” Alice burst out.
“As we already observed, they are dying anyway. Please, Lady Michaels.”
“No,” Phipps said.
Al-Noor snapped his fingers twice, and one of the squid men whipped the cover off a serving platter. On the platter lay an ugly brass pistol with a glass barrel. Almost languidly, al-Noor plucked the pistol from the table and aimed it at Phipps. A thin whine shrilled through the cavern, and the glass snapped with yellow sparks as the weapon powered up. “Cure one of my men or I will shoot.”
“No, you won’t,” Phipps sniffed. “The reward is to capture me alive. If I’m dead, you get nothing. And if you shoot my maid, I’ll be too upset to cure anyone, so don’t bother threatening her.”
“Oh, I will shoot you, all right,” al-Noor said. “And you, Lady Michaels,” he added to Alice, “will watch her die. Slowly.”
This caught Alice completely off guard. She sprang to her feet, not sure if she was more angry or afraid. “What?”
“I deduced it some time ago. This woman—is her name actually Susan, perhaps?—speaks and carries herself like a military officer and, oh yes, she wears a uniform. Lady Michaels serving in the military? I hardly think so. And you, madam, do not walk or talk like a maid. So, Lady Michaels, demonstrate the cure on one of these men here, or I will shoot your friend. I have the feeling you will prove rather more compliant.”
“If you shoot her,” Alice said, trying to imitate Phipps’s bravado and not quite succeeding, “I won’t help you.”
Al-Noor fired. A red energy beam slashed through the air and struck one of the squid men in the chest. It fell to the floor with a terrible squeal amid sizzling skin. The smell of cooked fish filled the air. The squid man twisted and screamed in agony, even though it had no mouth, and Alice watched in horror as its chest melted into a blue mass that bubbled like a witch’s cauldron. The squid man screamed and screamed. Alice clapped her hands over her ears in horror. The spider claws cruelly raked her skin, but she left them there through a century of seconds, until the squid man died. The other squid men remained motionless and impassive, their dark eyes reflecting the mess on the floor.
“That is setting one.” Al-Noor cranked a dial on the stock of the pistol and aimed at Phipps, who blanched despite herself. “This is setting seven.”
“Wait!” Alice cried.
“Yes, Lady?”
Alice looked down at the table and unhappily ran her hands around the rim of the empty plate before her. The spider’s claws scraped over china. Two awful choices, and no one to hide behind, no one to turn to. Just herself. Just as it always was. A wave of homesickness swept over her, and more than anything in that moment she yearned to be back in London, in the little house she had rented, with Gavin sitting across the kitchen table from her while they shared a meal and talked about nothing in particular. No clockworkers, no squid men, no iron spiders. Just she and Gavin, with his kind voice and blue eyes and that way he had of looking at her that made her feel like the only woman in the entire world. Her fingers continued their crawl around the plate.
“Very well, Mr. al-Noor,” she said. “I will ‘cure’ one of your squid men. Just don’t—”
She flung the plate at al-Noor. It glanced off his pistol and shattered. He yelped. The pistol fired, but the beam went wide. Phipps leaped across the table at him, brass arm outstretched. Dishes scattered and broke as she grabbed his fleshy wrist with her metal fingers. Except with the clockwork plague came enhanced reflexes, and al-Noor was quick to recover. He went down beneath Phipps but managed to keep his weapon hand free. The pair rolled across the stone floor as al-Noor brought the pistol around to press against Phipps’s temple. Phipps knocked it aside. Alice threw another plate at him and missed. It crashed next to his ear, and he ignored it. She dashed around the table, cursing her bulky skirts and looking for an opening.
“Take them, you fools!” al-Noor barked. “Hit this stupid woman!”
The squid men in the room moved. Two grabbed Alice from behind, and their cold hands chilled her skin through her dress. Another pair hoisted Phipps straight off al-Noor while a third cracked her over the ear with a hard fist. Phipps staggered, stunned but still conscious.
Al-Noor hauled himself to his feet. Blood from a split lip spattered his ridiculous swim costume, and Alice loathed him with a black hatred. She struggled within the grip of the squid men, but they held her like iron.
“That was a mistake.” He spat blood and raised the pistol. “The reward for your dead body is lower, but still sufficient.”
Alice forced herself to remain calm, though fear and adrenaline zipped through every artery and vein. Think, girl, she told herself. Al-Noor was a clockworker. Clockworkers were geniuses, but their thinking was far from perfect. Remember what happens to Gavin.
“I like what you’ve done with those droplets of blood,” she said with quiet desperation. “They’re so round, so smooth, so clear. There must be millions, billions, trillions of cells in each drop, spinning, whirling, swirling through liquid. How beautiful, how lovely, how perfect.”
Al-Noor looked down. Scarlet drops fell from his lip, just as Alice described, glistening in the air before they landed on the broken table, and the sight seemed to grab his attention. A drop fell, and his eyes followed it until it hit the wood with a tiny tip noise. Another followed. A third landed in his cup, spreading like a tiny fractal flower, and his attention remained rooted. He had the same expression on his face Gavin did when he became fascinated by something, and the similarity unnerved Alice. She ground her teeth. Gavin had nothing in common with this man, and he never would.
“The blood disperses through the water, expanding, flowing, moving. The blood is beautiful, the blood is entrancing,” she forced herself to chant.
Nothing in common? Truly? An icy finger of doubt slid around her thoughts. Gavin was a clockworker, and clockworkers always went mad. Always. Al-Noor was just further along than Gavin. How would she react if—when—Gavin decided her life was worth less than some new bit of technology?
Her voice faltered. “The blood is . . . is . . . ,” she said, trailing off, tried again, and failed to come up with a single thing to say. All she could see was Gavin’s face superimposed over al-Noor’s. The squid men, bereft of further orders, remained in place, holding the stunned Phipps upright and keeping Alice in their cold grip. She considered scratching the one on her left with her spider, but that would mean the poor creature’s death, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it, even to free herself.
Al-Noor looked up. His attention had only been barely diverted, and when Alice stopped chanting, he lost interest in the blood.
“Very good, Lady,” he said. “You have shown yourself more dangerous than I knew. You will die now.”
He aimed the pistol at Alice. The last thing Alice heard was the pistol’s high-pitched whine.