This Monstrous Thing(23)

“Sleep well?” Clémence asked.

“Yeah, good enough.” I glanced over at her and realized she was shivering, arms wrapped around herself and cheeks pinched scarlet. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re freezing. Here.” I cast around for something to warm her, but she cut me off.

“I said I’m all right. Let me save you the trouble of stripping off your shirt in an attempt to be gallant.”

“Can I make you tea?” My eyes darted to the hallway. “Will they come after me if I try?”

“Not if you’re sneaky about it,” she replied.

I stood up and retrieved the kettle from the counter. It was already full. “What were you doing out so early?” I asked as I hung it over the fire.

“What are you doing up so early?” she returned.

“All the traveling mucked me up,” I replied. “And my father always has me up early. It’s habit. What time is it anyways?”

“I’m not sure.” Clémence stood up for a better view of the clock on the mantelpiece, which, I realized after a silent moment, wasn’t running. “Damn, it’s stopped.”

“Probably just needs to be wound.”

“No, they’re not made to be wound. Geisler started them with the pulse gloves.” She flipped open the lid of the clock and stared at it as though unsure what she was looking for. Then she shut it and slumped back down onto her stool. “Never mind, he can fix it when he gets up.”

“Here, let me.” Clémence passed me the clock and I opened the face. I saw the problem right away—the gears were still moving, but the balance wheel slid out of place. As soon as I tugged it forward on its axel, the clock sprang to life, and I replaced it on the mantelpiece.

“Well done,” Clémence murmured.

“Couldn’t you fix it?”

She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re Geisler’s assistant. How’d you come about that job if you don’t know how to fix a clock?”

Clémence stared into the fire, and I wasn’t sure if it was the reflection of the flame on her face or if she was actually blushing. Then she looked back at me, pale as ever, and I guessed I had imagined it. “I could have fixed it,” she said. “I just wanted to see if you are as clever as Geisler seems to think you are.”


When two of the automatons took over the kitchen to fix breakfast, I carried my tea into the sitting room and settled in a chair beside the fire. Clémence followed me, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and took a spot on the chaise across from me. “Are you afraid of them?” she asked.

“Of the automatons?” I shrugged. “They’re a bit unnerving, aren’t they?”

“More than living men who are half mechanical?”

“At least with clockwork men, there’s some bit of them that’s human.”

“That’s not a common opinion. Most people think you surrender your humanity if you adopt clockwork parts.”

“I grew up a Shadow Boy—I’m not most people.” I took a sip of tea and winced. It needed sugar, but there was no chance I’d brave the kitchen now that it was full of metal men.

A gust of wind blew down the chimney, and the flames in the grate parted for a moment. Clémence turned her gaze out the window. “We’re lucky we beat the storm,” she said. “It’s not usually this bad.”

“It used to snow like this all the time in Bergen.”

“You lived in Bergen?”

“When I was young.” I took another sip of tea, stupidly hoping it would taste better. It did not. “My family was thrown out of Edinburgh when my father started working with Geisler, so we went there.”

“I’ve heard Norway is cold and dark all year.”

“No, not at all. At least Bergen isn’t. It looks out on this bay and across the fjords, and they’re mostly green and lovely.” I remembered something suddenly, and almost laughed before I’d told the story. “There was this poem Oliver—my brother—was really keen on when we were younger. It’s about a pond or a lake or something. Some sort of body of water. And Oliver read somewhere that the pond—the real one, the one the poem is about—is outside of Bergen. So one day he took me out into the country, up into the fjords, and we walked for hours looking for that stupid pond. . . .”

I trailed off. I hadn’t spoken about Oliver like this—stories from before—to anyone since he died, not even to my parents, and suddenly I could see him so clearly from that day, the sun on his face and the wind running its fingers through his curly hair as he darted up the path ahead of me, then turned back to wait until I caught up. Oliver, the way he used to be. The memory snarled something up inside me.

I watched the flames stretch up into the chimney, hoping Clémence wouldn’t say anything more about it, but after a moment she asked, “Is there an ending to that story?”

“It wasn’t really a story,” I replied. “Just something I thought of.”

“Did you find the pond?”

“No, turns out it was fictional.” I picked up my teacup and drained it in two swallows. “Not a real place at all.”