This Monstrous Thing(74)
I slid down from my knees so I was sitting cross-legged in front of her. “Why’d you take Oliver to the rebels?”
“He wanted to go. And I was looking for something to fight for. I’ve been a prisoner for so long, fighting for freedom seemed rather appealing.” She kicked the nutcracker at her feet and it splintered as it bounced across the floor. “Oliver’s not going to walk away.”
“Just let me talk to him.”
“I can’t promise they’ll let you through. They might . . .” She trailed off, but I filled in the silence.
“I’m dead either way,” I said.
“Well then,” she said, and she sounded herself again, “might as well go down fighting.” She climbed to her feet, reached out a hand, and pulled me up beside her. Our eyes met, and she smirked at me, that stupid twist of a smile, and the knot in my chest loosened just a smidge.
Ottinger, Clémence, and I slipped out of the market stall and took shelter near the banks of the Rhone beneath an abandoned carriage. Clémence said we could access the tower by the river path, but there were policemen blocking the stairs we needed to get there. We were arguing softly over the best way to pass them when they abandoned their post and started to jog to the other side of the square. I followed their progress, and through the spokes of the wheel I could make out some sort of commotion across the way. A pair of police wagons had just arrived, and a large group of officers were clustered around them. I spotted Jiroux near the center, the red feather on his cornered hat standing out like a splash of blood. He was shouting orders and gesturing at his men, overseeing a fresh batch of policemen filing out of the wagons.
Then the light from the industrial torches hit their skeletons and I realized they weren’t policemen—they were Clock Breakers.
“He’s sending in Geisler’s automatons,” I hissed at Clémence.
“It’ll be a massacre. There’s no chance Oliver will listen to peace once he sees them.”
“Then we need to stall them.”
“I can do that,” Ottinger said from my other side.
I twisted around to face him. “Are you sure?”
“I can try, if you tell me how.”
“Here.” Clémence dug in the pockets of her coat, elbowing me in the process, and pulled out a pair of pulse gloves. “You have to rub them together to get a charge,” she explained as she handed them to Ottinger. “Then just grab onto one of the automatons anywhere and they’ll disable it. Better if you can use both hands; they take a good shock to shut down. And if one of your fellow policemen tries to stop you, just grab him too. Pulse gloves can knock a grown man out cold if they’re fully charged.”
Ottinger took the gloves from her and fastened the leather straps around his wrists. “They’ll spot me fast with these. I can buy you some time, but not a lot.”
“Some is better than none,” Clémence replied.
“Are you sure you can do it?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“Sure you want to do it?” I corrected.
He raised his face to mine, elbows splayed to keep his balance. “I didn’t tell you this, Mr. Finch, but my sister’s clockwork. She was born with a bad leg, and your father gave her a new one a few years ago and kept our secret. So I’ve got a stake in this too.” He looked past me to Clémence. “I thought you should know, not everyone’s against you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He gave an awkward salute, careful not to touch his skin with the plates, then rolled out from under the carriage and took off at a run toward the automatons.
“Let’s go,” Clémence hissed, I followed her as we crawled back toward the riverbank.
The stairway that led to the waterfront path was submerged halfway up, but there was no chain here like when we left Geneva. Instead we had to walk along the top of the retaining wall, bricks slippery with moss and water. My boots were so wide that only half my foot fit.
Ahead of me, Clémence skirted as gracefully as an acrobat, though I thought I saw her waver a few times. I gritted my teeth, struggling to keep my balance, but the arm I needed most was useless in its sling. After nearly falling twice, I decided there were worse things than torn stitches, and ripped the sling off and tossed it into the river. I stretched my shoulder cautiously. The sutures pulled, but they held. I placed both hands against the damp wall and began walking again, steadier than before.
One of the clock tower struts moored on the riverbank was hollow, with a ladder running up the inside. Clémence went up first and I followed, close enough that I had to keep ducking to avoid getting kicked in the head. Water dripped down the metal walls, and the whole thing shook as the cogs churned above us. My shoulder was starting to burn, but I kept going, pulling myself up hand over hand through the damp darkness until a small circle of metallic light blinked into view above us. I pressed down the pain by focusing on that spot and counted the rungs as it got larger and larger, and then suddenly Clémence had her hand around my elbow and was hoisting me out.
We were on a narrow metal walkway that stretched like a bridge across the clock tower from end to end, nothing below it but a long fall broken by support beams and struts. Level with the bridge but a good six feet away were the glockenspiel chimes and the horizontal wheel where Oliver had stood when he called his army into the square. Clockwork figures as tall as I was were lined up and frozen along its edge. Above us, the clock face was obscured by grinding cogs, the underbelly of the giant timepiece now running in reverse. Sparks jumped between the teeth as the wheels turned, and the air was metallic and charged like the prelude to a lightning strike. I remembered this from the night Oliver died, and the resurrection. My stomach twisted sharply.