This Monstrous Thing(56)

“No, I’m all right. I need to go see Oliver.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Sometime in Germany?” Other than the chouquettes the night before, I couldn’t remember the last meal I’d had.

“Let’s have some supper and then we can go see your brother. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

I didn’t like the idea of waiting a moment longer than I had to, but it didn’t seem likely Clémence would back down. “Yes, Mother,” I muttered. She laughed.

We left the inn and followed the Rhone as it wound its way through the city, across Vieille Ville, purposely avoiding the braziers and the music rising from the Christmas market. Above it, the black hands of the tower clock stood out like a shadow puppet show against the illuminated glass face.

Nearly everything outside the Christmas market was closed, but we found a man selling questionable-smelling cabbage and sausage off a cart on the rim of the financial district and sat on the steps of a church while we ate. I still had no appetite, but I choked it down because Clémence was watching to make certain I did. I felt better afterward, but I didn’t tell her.

“It’s a long climb to the castle,” I told her as we finished. “You don’t have to come.”

“I want to.”

“Oliver’s not really . . .” I wasn’t sure how to explain him, so I just said, “He’s not used to people. He might be difficult.”

She sucked a spot of grease on her thumb, then looked over at me. “Your brother thinks he’s the only mechanical man of his kind, and maybe I didn’t come back from the dead, but he and I are different from the other clockworks in the same way. It’s damned inconvenient to live without an arm or a leg, but you can manage. Oliver and I . . .” She hesitated, and her fingers traced the shape of her metal panel over her coat. “We’d be dead without machinery. It’s what we’re made of. So maybe if he meets me—if he knows there’s someone else like him—he won’t feel so alone.” She paused, then added, “It would be good for me as well. If that matters.”

She ducked her head when she said it so a curtain of her white hair fell between us and I couldn’t see her face. I realized with a sharp smart that I’d been so caught up in myself since we arrived that I had hardly thought of what being here and knowing Oliver existed must mean to her, a girl with gears beneath her skin who’d thought there was no one else in the world who lived and breathed by clockwork. I felt like apologizing, but I wasn’t sure what I’d say when she asked what for. So instead I said, “You can come.”

By the time we set off again, the first sparks of starlight were beginning to burn between the wispy clouds. “Should we go down by the river?” Clémence asked as we neared the checkpoint. “Might be safer.”

“I think we’re all right.” The river trail would be slower, and suddenly I felt like sprinting the whole way to the castle. We were so bleeding close, it almost didn’t feel real.

I held my breath as we passed through the checkpoint. The officers on duty glanced up, but neither stopped us or even seemed interested.

When we reached the foothills, the path turned steep. I was worried that Clémence, with her damaged lungs, wouldn’t be able to make it, but she didn’t complain or ask for help or a rest. It was hard to see, the darkness made deeper by the thick forest, and I kept glancing over my shoulder every time a shadow shifted. I stopped dead twice when I thought I heard footsteps crunching the snow behind us. Clémence stopped too. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I heard something.”

We both stood still for a moment, and the silence of the foothills caved in on us. I searched the darkness, but there were too many shadows from the pines and cliffs to make out anything properly.

Then Clémence said, “Alasdair, there’s nothing there.”

“I must have imagined it,” I said, though I was certain I hadn’t. We started climbing again, but I couldn’t convince myself it was just the two of us and the night. The lines from the Coleridge poem started darting through my head: Because he knows, a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread.

As we crested the hill and Chateau de Sang appeared against the black sky, Clémence finally halted, and I stopped as well, relieved to have an excuse to catch my breath.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful. Was it a home?”

“Once. Then a prison.”

“So which is it now?”

I pulled my coat tighter around me. “Come on, let’s go.”

I led her across the abandoned courtyard and around the back to the servants’ entrance I used. After a few seconds of fumbling with the bolts, I realized with a sick lurch they were all undone. I bent down to the lock and ran my fingers along the latch. It was hard to see by only the slivered moonlight, but I could feel scratches on the keyhole—the marks of sloppy lock picking done in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” Clémence whispered.

“I think someone was here,” I replied, “or Oliver’s gone.”

“Which is the better option?”

“Hell if I know.” I fit my key into the lock and propped the door open. Somehow, the darkness seemed deeper inside. I reached behind me for Clémence.