This Monstrous Thing(76)

“It was an accident,” I said, “but it wasn’t Geisler who killed you.”

Oliver looked up, as though he finally heard me. “You told me—”

“I know what I told you,” I said. “I lied. I’ve been lying to you since I brought you back.” I felt lightheaded, dizzy with what I was about to say, and I had to plant my hands on either side of the railing to steady myself. My shoulder was burning. “Oliver, Geisler didn’t kill you. He wasn’t even there; he was halfway across the city trying to get out. I convinced you to take me to his laboratory. We came here because I wanted his journals. Oliver,” I said, and my heartbeat shook, “I killed you.”

He took a step back, like I’d thumped him in the face. I had never known him to retreat from anything, and I had never known him to look at me the way he did now. He stared at me, like he’d never seen me before, and perhaps he never had until that moment.

It might have been all wrong to tell him then. I thought of Mary in Chateau de Sang, blurting at exactly the wrong moment that she had written Frankenstein; of sitting by Lake Geneva with her and kissing her at exactly the wrong moment; of Oliver in the clock tower the night we’d found Geisler’s journals, shouting at me that I was mad and wicked at exactly the wrong moment. Perhaps we all said the right things at the wrong time; perhaps we couldn’t help it. Perhaps words became too heavy to haul, and the moment we let them loose was always the wrong one, but they needed to be free. And I had carried this like a lead weight around my neck for years, feeling it get heavier and heavier every time I saw him, and suddenly I had dropped it down into the chasm of the clock tower. No matter what happened next, no matter if the timing was all wrong, no matter if everything was wrong, Oliver knew, and that was right.

I don’t know what I expected him to do. It wouldn’t have seemed strange for him to pick me up and hurl me over the side of the bridge right then.

I didn’t expect him to run, but he spun on his heel and bolted back the way he’d come, up the ladder and out of sight. I started to chase after him, but I felt Raif’s pistol in my belly. The barrel shuddered as the bullet clicked into its chamber.

I didn’t move, didn’t back away or try to fight him. It seemed sort of fitting if he killed me after that confession. A life for a life.

But then, from behind me, Clémence shrieked, “Look out!”

A shadow moved over Raif’s shoulder, then something smashed into the side of his head. Blood slapped me across the face as Raif pitched sideways over the bridge and fell, his body striking the beams below with a hollow clang.

Clock Breakers were swarming onto the bridge, each stiff-legged step rattling its length. I stumbled backward as the lead Clock Breaker took a swipe at me and tripped over Clémence. She seized me by the collar before I fell and dragged me after her, back toward the ladder we’d come from. Two of the Clock Breakers had made quick work of the others who’d been with Raif. One had ripped the woman’s clockwork arm out with such force that her shoulder had come out of its socket and was spraying blood as she screamed. The second man was on the ground, twitching with a Clock Breaker’s foot on his throat. And there were more, coming now from both ends of the bridge and trapping us in the center.

“Do you have pulse gloves?” I shouted to Clémence.

“Ottinger’s got my only pair,” she replied. “Anyways, I don’t think they’d be enough.” Between us, her hand snatched at mine, and I clung to it. I could feel her heartbeat galloping in her wrist.

“Do we surrender?” I asked her, though I wasn’t sure the Clock Breakers knew the meaning of the word.

“Not yet,” she replied.

There was a groan above us and we both looked up. The balance wheel was shifting, teeth slipping another step on the track as its airbreaks began to spin. The clock was striking the quarter hour, I realized, and a moment later the gong boomed in confirmation, the noise so low and loud that I felt it shudder straight through me. A weight began to drop from between the gears, and I wasn’t sure if it would hit us or just miss. Perhaps that would be a better way to go than being left to the mercy of the Clock Breakers.

Suddenly Clémence grabbed me by the shoulders. “Jump over to the glockenspiel platform.”

I looked over at the wheel and all the empty space between it and the bridge. “I won’t make it.”

“Don’t think about it, just jump.”

Before I knew what I was doing, she shoved me toward the rail and I hoisted myself onto it. The weight was dropping toward us and a Clock Breaker was near enough that I felt the skeletal tips of its fingers against my neck as Clémence yelled, “Jump!” And I jumped.

I landed half on the platform, my stomach and the bottom of my rib cage smashing into the edge and knocking all the wind out of me. My fingers found a hold in the track the figures ran on, and I managed to heave myself up and roll onto my side, trying to get out of the way for Clémence to follow, but she didn’t.

She was balanced on the rail, her knees bent to spring, but when she jumped, she jumped straight upward toward the dropping weight and caught it, arms wrapped around it like an embrace. The momentum of her body carried it sideways so that instead of passing by the bridge, it crashed directly into it. Metal slammed against metal and the electric current rushing through the entire clock tower funneled through the weight and into the bridge like a magnified shock from a set of pulse gloves.