Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times (8 page)

The sitting room was as cluttered as the workshop. Binoculars of all shapes and sizes filled a glass case; a dozen pocket watches on the mantel told different times. A tiny model train chugged on a winding track overhead. In the middle of a round table by the window, a crystal ball sat on brass legs atop a faded black velvet tablecloth. These, Jack knew of. His mother’s spiritualist—before Mr. Havelock—had brought one, and the door to the parlor was always closed, the curtains drawn, a few moments after she arrived and took it from her bag.

“It won’t help you,” said Dr. Snailwater, ambling into the room in time to catch Jack with his nose almost touching it. “Tetchy thing. Only sees the past, which is frankly useless to a forward thinker such as myself. I keep it as a paperweight.” He set a mug of black tea down in front of Jack, muttering about always forgetting milk. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”

Jack looked at Beth, swinging her legs from a high-backed armchair. At the little train, which had paused beside a stretch of bookshelf to take on a group of tiny passengers clustered there.

“There’s nothing that would surprise me, lad. Speak up.”

“I want to know where I am,” Jack said.

“Now, that,” answered the doctor, “is a most interesting thing to say.”

•  •  •

In the darkness, Jack rolled over on the pallet of blankets Dr. Snailwater had made up for him on the floor. Fusty, crumbling, scented with the powdery death of a thousand insects.

Beth sat in a chair, fingers curled over the arms. She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t . . . anything. This time, Jack wasn’t tempted to wind her up again. Not yet, in the still and the silence where he could think.

The Empire of Clouds. It made sense. The swirling fog of steam, soot, and filth had hung over the land as long as almost anyone could remember and, Dr. Snailwater said, cleared for only a few minutes after each of the frequent storms.

And the people, the faeries, the creatures would run for cover when the rains came.
Dry as a bone, no rust be known
, that’s what Beth had said in the birdcage. Because of the metal, and it was this, this that made Jack’s heart race.

A land of brass and steel and clockwork, of steam and airships, cogs that turned and wheels that spun. He half wondered if he was dreaming, so perfect was this place, and would wake in his bed to the sound of Mrs. Pond clattering the breakfast things in the kitchen below.

Jack felt a bit sick. Mrs. Pond would miss him. But his mother would probably be glad for him to stay here forever, and he thought he just might do exactly such. That would show them.

On the other side of the room, the crystal ball glowed in the moonlight.

It couldn’t hurt to
look.

The blankets crackled under his knees; too-large socks slipped on his feet. Dr. Snailwater had put Jack’s clothes in a machine the size of a motorcar, and for several minutes Jack watched his filthy clothes froth in the water like angry sea serpents devouring a fish.

He crept to the table. Beyond the window, out on the street, silvery things the size of birds but were most assuredly not birds did a sort of elegant dance in the glow of a gas lamp, wings fluttering, flashing. Jack watched until the unheard music in their heads stopped and they lit on the lamppost.

Against the black velvet cloth that looked not so dusty in the dark, the crystal ball was a perfect moon, shining, suspended, ethereal. Close enough to touch and somehow too far away, too.

It did not occur to Jack that he wouldn’t be able to make it work. Time after time he’d knelt at the keyhole. There was nothing particularly special to do, no need to turn
around three times or say a special prayer to the dead. Just a simple matter of concentration.

The table creaked. The velvet whispered. “Show me,” he said, which was unnecessary, but it felt as if there should be
something.

Inside the ball, the mist shivered. Jack breathed deeply, leaning closer. A cloud skimmed the surface and cleared again almost at once.

“Show me,” he said again, louder. Too loud. Had Beth been able to hear him, he would certainly have awoken her. He saw his own reflection, bloated around the ball’s smooth curve.

Within, the milky glow began to thin, darken, ripple, and spread. Heat washed over Jack’s hands; he touched the crystal and immediately pulled back, sucking his finger to soothe the burn.

The mist cleared, and there he was. Not his reflection, but him. The orb was the eye of a bird, looking down from the rafters of a train station at Jack, still in his school clothes, and Mother in her pretty green dress. Other passengers blurred unimportantly at the edges.

Mr. Havelock stood, perfectly clear, suit sharp as knives. Clearly, he was waiting.

Waiting.

Mother stepped away to see to Jack’s trunk.

Waiting for Jack.

It was clear, clearer than the crystal ball into which Jack gazed. Mr. Havelock stood aside, watched as Jack and his mother fetched his things, followed them out to the hansom that would take them to Mayfair. And he followed.

He’d ventured from the Empire of Clouds to the London Jack knew for Jack himself. This much, Jack knew already, but he hadn’t known Mr. Havelock was watching him so closely. Why, though? To teach Jack his magician’s secrets? What made Jack special?

You heard stories, Jack thought. Stories of evil men, of bloodied corpses left to rot. They came even to him, from
Wilson to the gardener to Mrs. Pond, to Jack listening at the keyhole. Where Wilson heard them, Jack didn’t know, but they slithered through the house in hushed voices until everyone knew.

Jack trembled. His eyes closed, and when he opened them again, he was in the cab, the horses snorting.

The mist in the ball darkened and closed. Jack pulled back, dizzied, confused. A thrill shot through him.

He was supposed to be here. This city of steam, this Empire of Clouds, wanted him, where none in his own London noticed or cared if he was there or not. Sending him off to school. Tucking him away in the kitchen or his bedchamber while parties tinkled in the dining room.

He almost missed it, so deep was he in thought. The mist flickered again.

And then it shook, so violently the crystal ball itself rattled on its silver stand, and from the parting gray something burst, copper and brass and silent screams from a pointed mouth.

A beak.

At him it flew, closer and closer until its eyes swallowed the orb, huge, golden eyes full of fire and rage, and the ball broke apart in large, jagged chunks that smashed the windows, sent Jack flying backward.

“Foolish boy!”

He was on the floor. His head pounded. Over him leaned the nightshirted figure of Dr. Snailwater. The blue stripes of the cloth wiggled, making Jack’s head ache.

“There, now, you’re quite all right,” said the doctor, and he was a doctor so he should know. “Did no one ever teach you not to touch what’s not yours?”

“I broke it,” whispered Jack, his stomach tying itself into a neat row of knots. “I’m sorry! I’ll find you another. I’ll—”

“It is perfectly fine,” said Dr. Snailwater, and it was. There, on its stand, floating above the black velvet, the crystal ball was a full moon again. Jack’s head pounded harder.

“I don’t understand.”

Dr. Snailwater was busy measuring the distance between Jack’s eyebrows. “Quite. But rest assured, it would take more than a titchy fingersmith like yourself to destroy it. You’d best be sitting and telling me what you saw.” The doctor stood and moved to the chair where Beth sat, a thing but a girl too. The turning of the key filled the room. Her eyes opened and her neck twisted so she could smile at Dr. Snailwater, then frown at the darkness.

“Your friend thought it mightn’t be a bad idea to poke his little pink nose into affairs that don’t concern him,” he explained.

“I saw myself in it,” said Jack.

Beth and Dr. Snailwater turned slowly to look at him.

“Before it smashed, I mean.” It was all a bit fuzzy, like the blurred passengers.

He told them.

•  •  •

Beth sat very rigid. Her key wound down.

“That explains a great deal,” said the doctor, returning with another pot of his thick tea.

“Why was he looking for me?” asked Jack, expecting Dr. Snailwater, who seemed to know a great deal about everything, to answer. But it was Beth who spoke.

“The Lady,” was all she said.

“Indeed,” the doctor agreed.

Jack looked from one to the other. He didn’t like this, that things were being kept from him. He was special, after all. Hadn’t he come through the door? Didn’t he deserve an answer? “Tell me,” he said, and it was not a request.

“Big for your britches, aren’t you?” huffed Dr. Snailwater. He waved his hand, the tea sloshing like a black ocean in a cup. “All right. All right. A place can’t be without someone to boss it about. You’ve got someone in your world, yes?”

“Too many, Father says.” The queen was old and gray, always dressed in mourning clothes for her husband, who
had died long before Jack was born—before even his parents were born—but there were others besides. Dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, enough politicians to fill Westminster.

Dr. Snailwater nodded. “Well, we’ve got the Lady. Been around long as anyone can remember. And Sir Lorcan, too. There’s lords and duchesses and such in the colonies, though for how much longer they’ll be the colonies is anyone’s guess. Here, we’ve got the Lady and Sir Lorcan.”

“They must be very old,” said Jack.

“Wouldn’t know it to look at them,” said Beth. “They say
he
made a deal with the faeries so’s he’d never grow old. Sir Lorcan is the Lady’s son, but the Lady likes children she can coddle and stuff with sweets. And she never lets you out, or takes you anywhere, and it’s very boring, but I liked her.”

“All mothers are like that,” he said. He wondered if she missed him. If she was frantic with worry, she and his father pounding their fists on the counter at Scotland Yard.
He’s just a little boy,
they’d say.

Dr. Snailwater laughed humorlessly. “Perhaps.”

“I don’t understand. Why does she need to steal children from . . . from
my
London? Why does she not have one of her own, or—”
Or steal one from here
, he wished to say, but it was a buzzing wasp of a thought, cruel inside his throbbing head.

“The Lady is not like us, not like any of us,” said Dr. Snailwater. “No one knows from whence she came. It seems she is no longer satisfied with children like Beth.”

“She likes pretty things,” said Beth. Her eyelids clicked. “Pretty, perfect things. Flesh and blood, with no metal parts. There’s lots of children here, but none like that.”

Jack thought of the very first person he’d encountered here. And of the people on the streets, with their metal coughs. Dr. Snailwater’s hand clinked against the china. Beth’s skin wasn’t really skin at all.

Oh.

“You understand.”

Jack nodded at Dr. Snailwater, though he didn’t understand, not everything. “You were hers,” he said to Beth, who did not answer.

“Thirteen, I made. Each better than the last. Beth the best of all. Why, to look at her, you’d think she was entirely human. But not good enough, not good enough. Hearts are tricky things, you know. Take all the measurements you like, still impossible to get right. Cast her out with nothing. Folks wind her up as and when. She can come here to get out of the rain if she likes. The Lady’s up to no good, and that rake Lorcan is worse.”

So the Lady had been given children, but they hadn’t loved her, and so Lorcan, who Jack had known as
Mr. Havelock, had come to steal Jack away. Jack pressed his hands to his eyes.

Dr. Snailwater pushed himself slowly from his chair, gathering cups, hanging their handles from his strange fingers. “If Lorcan could get to this London of yours, there’s a way back through. Off to sleep with you, and tomorrow we’ll find it.”

•  •  •

“Why, though?” Jack asked the following morning. Dr. Snailwater looked at him over the top of an oozing boiled egg. “Why must I go home?”

The doctor considered this. “Your mother and father will be missing you, surely?”

Jack was not entirely convinced. “It’s interesting here. London is boring, and I want to learn about all the clockwork and things. I’m good with that sort of stuff.”

The egg sucked gloopily at the spoon. It wobbled as the doctor raised it to his mouth. “Interesting comes at a price, dear boy. You cannot fathom what you are asking.”

“Then tell me,” said Jack in a tone that would have earned him a hiding from Mrs. Pond, but got only a raised, bushy eyebrow from Dr. Snailwater.

“The glory of the Empire of Clouds,” he said, almost to himself. “Look around you, lad. Do you want to end up as one of us?” He raised his metal hand. “Lives lost,
sickness, for the privilege of industry. I must put new lungs into infants before they might draw their first breath. Give them eyes so they can see.”

Better than a wig and a robe
, thought Jack,
or an office among stacks of paper, choking with dust and sums.
But he did not say so. Something told him Dr. Snailwater wouldn’t agree.