This Monstrous Thing(68)
I crossed the Rhone to Rive Droite, the north quarter of the city where the factories churned. The buildings here were all industrial brick, stained black by soot and grime, and the steamstacks belching into the sky made the air sweat. There were no casings on the industrial torches, just open flames tearing at the sky. Everything smelled damp and foul, and the shadows all around me seemed to stretch and curl like smoke.
If Oliver and Clémence had fled into the city like Jiroux thought, I was certain it was so she could take him to the rebels in the Cogworks. I could find him there, though I didn’t have a clue what I’d do if I did. When I closed my eyes, I could still see Oliver jamming his pliers into Geisler’s throat, and his fist on my shoulder when he stabbed me, and I couldn’t wed those images with the boy I’d grown up with, wild and reckless but good straight to his core. Perhaps Mary was right and I was foolish to try again. Perhaps he truly was gone.
The Cogworks was a single-floored, sprawling structure made of cut gray stone and grimy windows. The door was bolted, which rendered my lock-picking skills useless, but there was a window that opened without much coaxing. I managed to hoist myself up with only my good arm, grateful for once that I was so bleeding skinny, and dropped onto the factory floor with a stumble. The darkness made the room look as though it stretched for miles, all haunted shadows and impassable shapes. Black outlines of workbenches lined with saws and factory tools cut through the gloom, their edges made molten by the pale dregs of the day’s coal still smoldering in the forges. The air was heavy and metallic, so sharp it almost smelled like blood.
I started forward cautiously, good arm extended so I wouldn’t smash into anything. Rust and metal shavings crunched under my feet. My heart was slamming like a piston, and I kept waiting for someone to grab me. If they were kind, they’d cut my throat right there and spare me from having to sort out the wretched mess I’d gotten myself into.
But there was no one. The factory seemed well and truly deserted. I walked the floor end to end and found not a soul, nor any hint of a revolution being built there. No rebels. No clockwork men. No Oliver.
Then, just as I was about to give up, I found a gated set of spiral stairs that led underground. At their base, a pale light flickered. I hopped the gate and jogged down, a bit unsteady without a hand to put on the rail.
The stairs opened onto a storeroom a quarter the size of the floor above. The air was different here, sulfurous and chalky instead of metallic. In the center of the room was a Carcel burner with a glass shade—not a fine piece, but too delicate for a factory—and the flame cast a sheen of pale light across the low ceilings and the cracked stone floor. Beside the burner were a few loose sheets of paper, and when I picked one up, I realized it was a leaflet, same as the one Mirette had given Clémence and me. The paper was brushed black with something that looked like soot but felt coarse when I scrubbed at it. It was on the ground too, I realized, a light dust like something had spilled. I held my fingers above the burner shade and rubbed them together. A bit of the powder wafted down into the lamp, and the flame sparked with a loud pop. I jumped back, realizing what it was. Gunpowder.
I dropped the leaflet and crouched down in the center of the underground room, trying to figure out what I was meant to do with this empty room and a few leaflets laced with gunpowder, but the only thing I could think about was Oliver with his wild heart and now with devoted revolutionaries at his command, ready to let himself and his men loose on Geneva. I looked down again at the leaflet, black powder gathering in its creases—FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER LIVES!
There was a soft patter from behind me like scuttling footsteps on the stone. I looked up just as a brass gear the size of my fist was lobbed out of the darkness and clattered to the ground at my feet. “Hello?” I called.
Silence. Then a small voice replied, “I know you, Shadow Boy.”
And from the corner came Mirette, black hair striped amber in the lamplight and another gear in her hand.
I kicked the one on the ground. “Did you throw that at me?”
“I meant it to hit you.”
“Bleeding awful aim.”
“It’s heavy.” A pause as she took a step closer to me, head cocked so her tangled hair raked over her shoulders. “Were you crying?”
“No.”
“I didn’t know boys cried.”
“I wasn’t . . .” And then I stopped, because the light from the burner had sliced across her face and I realized she had tears on her cheeks. “What’s wrong with you?”
“They told me to stay hidden down here, but I wanted to help. Then I heard someone upstairs and I thought it was the police come for me.” She dragged her hand across her cheeks and gave a throaty sniff, then added, “You were wrong, you know.”
“What was I wrong about?”
“The resurrected man.” She pointed at the drawing on one of the leaflets. “He’s not just in the book. He’s real. I saw him with my own eyes.”
I sat up. “So he was here?”
“He came to lead us. I told you he would.”
“Where have they gone?” I asked. “Where’s he taken them?”
Mirette sucked her bottom lip. “I’m not supposed to say.”
“It’s important, Mirette, please.” She turned away from me, her face out of the lantern light. I crawled forward so I was right beside her, and I nudged the burner into the space between us. “How’s your foot?” I asked.