This Monstrous Thing(6)

Inside, Oliver was pure machine, all gears and pins like an engine. In a way that’s all it was, an engine doing everything that his irreparably broken body no longer could. His rib cage on one side was gone, replaced by steel rods and a cluster of churning gears connected by leather tubes to a set of bellows that opened and closed with each breath. Where his heart should have been was a knot of cogs around the mainspring, pushing against each other as they ticked like a clock rather than beat like a heart.

The trouble was easy to spot. One of the bolts had come loose so that a gear was grinding against the oscillating weight as it turned. I tugged my magnifying goggles up from around my neck and fished in my bag for my needle-nose pliers.

“Can I ask you about something? It’s been bothering me that I can’t remember.” Oliver held up his flesh-and-blood hand for me to see. A thin white scar ran across the knuckles. “What’s this from? It’s older than the others.”

“Boxing, I think.” I gripped the gear with my pliers and jammed it back into place. Oliver sucked in a sharp breath. “Sorry, should have warned you that might hurt.”

He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but his voice was tighter when he spoke again. “It doesn’t look like a boxing scar. I thought I must have put my hand through a window or something.”

“No, you told me someone threw a bottle in the ring and you sliced up your hand.”

“Did I win the match?”

“God, Oliver, does it matter? You hurt yourself doing stupid things so many times. They all start to blur together.”

“Were you there? Did you ever box?”

I slid the pliers from under the weight and swapped them for a spanner that fit around a loose bolt. “No, boxing is too wild for me.”

“Wish I could box now.”

I tightened the bolt harder than I needed to, and Oliver yelped. “And then as soon as you took your shirt off in the ring, they’d see you’re mostly metal and haul you away.”

“God’s wounds, Ally, it was a joke.” He flexed his hand, watching the scar move with his skin. “It’s strange, you know. Having scars and not knowing where they came from.”

“Well, any others you can’t remember?” I asked.

“All of them.” He ran his fingertips along a seam in his skull. “I don’t remember getting any of them.”

I scrubbed at an oily spot on my spanner and said nothing.

Most of Oliver’s memory had come back to him, slowly and with coaxing on my part. He’d returned to the world blank, but things like speech and reading and motor skills had come back quickly. The memories had been harder. I tried to supply him with what I could, but I had a sense that instead of genuinely remembering things, he mostly just took my word for what I said had happened. Sometimes he’d surprise me with a memory I hadn’t fed him, though what came back was unpredictable—he remembered specific fights with Father but not a thing about Mum, the color of the walls in our shop in Paris though he had lost Bergen entirely, that he hated Geisler though I had to remind him why. It scared me a bit, the things he found without my help. Mostly because there was still a chance the truth of the night he died might return without warning, and it wouldn’t line up with the story I’d given him.

I snapped the band of my goggles to keep them from sliding down my nose. “Well, lucky you’ve got me and I remember everything. Take a breath.” Oliver obeyed, and I pressed two gloved fingers against the gear to test the placement. “That’ll work for now. One of the bolts is stripped, so it won’t stay in place for long. I’ll bring a new one next time I come.”

“And what am I meant to do until then?”

“You can hold on to my pliers in case you need to tighten it.” I fished around in my bag until I found them, then tossed them on the desk. They skidded to the edge with a clatter. “They’re not really meant for bolts, but Father will miss a spanner. How’s everything else running?”

“My arm feels stiff.”

“Probably needs to be cleaned. I haven’t got oil today, but I can give it a pulse. It might help.” Oliver made a face, and I almost made a smart remark about how he should be used to the pain by now, but changed my mind at the last second. I retrieved the pulse gloves from my bag and swapped them out for the leatherwork ones. Oliver slumped in the chair as I rubbed my hands together, both of us watching the pale energy gather between the plates. “Sorry, they take so bleeding long to get a charge going.”

“Tell Father you need new ones.”

“They’re hard to get now. Every tool the Shadow Boys use is monitored dead close. Shopkeepers have to do an inventory for the police of who buys them. Some places you need a permit.”

“Geneva’s getting smarter.”

I separated my palms with a grunt. A flicker of white-blue light ran along the plates. “Brace yourself.”

I pressed the gloves to the conducting plates on clockwork shoulder. There was a faint flash as the metal connected, then Oliver’s whole body jerked as the shock went through it. The gears in his arm sped up as the energy coiled through the mainspring, running faster than before. He bent his elbow a few times, and nodded. “Better.”

“Next time give me some warning before it needs oiling.”

Oliver swatted that away, then stood up and rotated his mechanical arm in its socket. “You think you’ll stay in Geneva?” he asked.