This Monstrous Thing(53)

“Bleeding hell.” I shoved the leaflet into my pocket and tugged my gloves off. “Sit down, let me look at your foot.”

She didn’t move. “I can’t run, but I’ll scream.”

“He won’t hurt you, he’s a Shadow Boy,” Clémence said. “He takes care of people like you.”

The girl stared at us for a moment with her chin up, then sat down hard on the frozen street. I crouched down and took her foot in my hands. The ball joint in her ankle had gone stiff and the rust was starting to creep along the socket welded to her leg and invade her skin.

Clémence leaned over my shoulder, though I wasn’t certain she knew what she was looking at. “What do you need?”

I needed my tools, and my files, and my magnifying goggles—all smashed up in our shop. I needed to know why this girl who looked like she could be knocked over by a winter breeze was handing out leaflets with my brother’s picture on them. I needed to get Oliver out of Geneva and I needed Geisler gone.

“Vinegar—it takes rust off. It’s not ideal, but it’ll work.”

“There’s a market around the corner,” the girl piped up. Then she added, “I haven’t got any money.”

“I do,” Clémence said. “Stay put, I’ll be back.”

Neither of us said anything for a while after Clémence disappeared. The girl was sucking on her bottom lip while she traced patterns with her finger in the muddy snowbank next to her. Her nails were black around the edges, and the chapped scrape of frostbite decorated her knuckles.

“You keep doing that, your fingers will fall off,” I said.

She glared at me, then stuck her hand up to the wrist in the snow. I sighed and turned my gaze upward, over the rooftops to the golden clouds settled above the chimneys. At the end of the alley, above the houses and shops, I could see the outline of the clock tower cut against the sun. “Do you know what day it is?” I asked her.

“Don’t you?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t ask,” I replied through gritted teeth.

“December the twenty-second,” she answered. Her eyes followed mine up to the clock. “The clock strikes again on Christmas Eve. Did you know that?”

“Yes.” I pulled my gaze away from the clock tower and instead took the leaflet out of my pocket and spread it flat against my knee. “Why are you handing these out?”

“They asked me to.”

“Who asked you?”

She crossed her arms. “I’m not supposed to tell because you aren’t made of metal. You aren’t like me.”

“If I fix your foot, will you tell me?”

She considered this, teeth still working on her bottom lip. She didn’t say no.

Clémence returned a few minutes later with a bottle of vinegar. I poured some onto my glove and scrubbed at the rusted joint until it consented to bend again. It badly needed to be replaced and the whole foot could use a good cleaning, but I didn’t have the means for either. The girl watched me with her elbows resting on her knees and her nose wrinkled at the smell.

“You need shoes,” I told her.

“No money.”

“Then you need to wrap your feet up better. When the metal gets wet, it rusts, and that gets under your skin.”

“And then your foot’s going to fall off and probably take your leg with it,” Clémence said. I hadn’t realized it was meant to be a joke, but the girl giggled.

The gears in her foot snapped against each other, and I slid my finger along them to guide the track for a few rounds before I let them go again. The girl straightened her leg so fast she almost knocked me in the face. “I can move my toes,” she said. “I’ve never been able to move my toes before.”

“Here, keep this.” I handed her the vinegar bottle. “In case it rusts again.”

She shoved the bottle into her hat, fingers snarling up in her black hair. “I’m Mirette,” she said.

“I’m Alasdair,” I replied. “And this is Clémence. And it would be magnificent if you could tell us who you’re handing out leaflets for.”

Mirette rotated her foot in its socket, watching it work with her head cocked to one side. She was so filthy and fragile, like a china doll dug up from the soil. “They said if I’m going to stay with them, I have to do my part.”

“Stay where?” Clémence asked at the same time I said, “Part of what?”

“The Cogworks,” Mirette said.

Clémence looked at me, and I explained, “It’s a factory in the north quarter of the city. They make the clockwork parts for the carriages and the omnibuses there.”

“That’s where I stay,” Mirette said. “With Frankenstein’s Men.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

She glared at me, and for a moment I thought I’d lost her, but then she looked down at her foot again. “People don’t treat us right, so we’re going to make them. We won’t be pushed down and stepped on anymore.” It sounded like she was reciting something she’d heard, words that meant little to her, though she knew the feeling behind them. “This man”—she tapped her finger against the drawing of the resurrected man on the front of her leaflet—“is going to come for us, and he is going to lead us. We show him that we’re ready for him, and then he’ll come and save us.”