Part 39 (1/2)

Chickadee laughed. ”Oh, Live Mouse, I see now. Very well, I will accept Sparrow's wing so that later you may have a full set. Messrs DeCola and Wodzinski will be happy to have two customers, I am certain.”

The live mouse bowed to her and wrapped the key in his tail again. ”Sparrow, I'll be right up.” Scampering across the floor, he disappeared into the wall.

Chickadee did not watch him go, she waited with her gaze still c.o.c.ked upward toward Sparrow. With the live mouse gone, Chickadee became aware of how still the other clockworks were, watching their drama. Into the silence, Nightingale began to cautiously sing. Her beautiful warbles and chirps repeated through their song thrice before the live mouse appeared out of the ceiling on the chandelier's chain. The crystals of the chandelier tinkled in a wild accompaniment to the ordered song of the nightingale.

The live mouse s.h.i.+mmied down the layers of crystals until he reached Sparrow's flying mechanism. Crawling over that, he wrapped his paws around the string beneath it and slid down to sit on Sparrow's back.

”First one's for me.” His sharp incisors flashed in the chandelier's light as he pried the tin loops up from the left wing. Tumbling free, it half fell, half floated to rattle against the floor below. ”And now this is for the chickadee.”

Again, his incisors pulled the tin free and let the second wing drop.

Sparrow's clockwork whirred audibly inside his body, with nothing to power. ”I feel so light!”

”Told ya so.” The live mouse reached up and took the string in his paws. Hauling himself back up the line, he reached the flying mechanism in no time at all. ”Ready now?”

”Yes! Oh yes, wind me! Wind me!”

Lickety-split, the key sank into the winding mechanism and the live mouse began turning it. The sweet familiar sound of a spring ratcheting tighter floated down from above, filling the room. The other clockwork animals crept closer; even Chickadee felt the longing brought on by the sound of winding.

When the live mouse stopped, Sparrow said, ”No, no, I am not wound nearly tight enough yet.”

The live mouse braced himself with his tail around an arm of the chandelier and grunted as he turned the key again. And again. And again. ”Enough?”

”Tighter.”

He kept winding.

”Enough?”

”Tighter. The boy never winds me fully.”

”All right.” The mouse turned the key three more times and stopped. ”That's it. Key won't turn no more.”

A strange vibration ran through the sparrow's body. It took Chickadee a moment to realize that he was trying to beat his wings with antic.i.p.ation. ”Then watch me fly.”

The live mouse pulled the key out of the flying mechanism and hopped up onto the chandelier. As he did, Sparrow swung into action. The flying mechanism whipped him forward and he shrieked with glee. His body was a blur against the ceiling. The chandelier trembled, then shook, then rattled as he spun faster than Chickadee had ever seen him spin before.

”Live Mouse, you were rig-” With a snap, his flying mechanism broke free of the chandelier. ”I'm flying!” Sparrow cried as he hurtled across the room. His body crashed into the window, shattering a pane as he flew through it.

The nightingale stopped her song in shock. Outside, the boy shrieked and his familiar footsteps hurried under the window. ”Oh pooh. The clockwork sparrow is broken.”

The mother's voice said, ”Leave it alone. There's gla.s.s everywhere.”

Overhead, the live mouse looked down and winked.

Chickadee pecked the ground, with her mechanism wound properly. The live mouse appeared at her side. ”Thanks for the wings.”

”I trust they are satisfactory payment?”

”Sure enough. They look real pretty hanging on my wall.” He squinted at her. ”So that's it? You're just going to keep on pecking the ground?”

”As long as you keep winding me.”

”Yeah. It's funny, no one else wants my services.”

”A pity.”

”Got a question for you though. Will you tell me how to get to Messrs DeCola and Wodzinski?”

”Why ever for?”

”Well, I thought ... I thought maybe Messrs DeCola and Wodzinski really could, I dunno, fix 'em on me so as I can fly.”

Chickadee rapped the ground with laughter. ”No, Mouse, they cannot. We are all bound to our integral mechanisms.” She c.o.c.ked her head at him. ”You are a live mouse. I am a clockwork chickadee, and Messrs DeCola and Wodzinski are nothing more than names on a sc.r.a.p of paper glued to the bottom of a table.”

Cinderella Suicide.

Samantha Henderson.

Cinderella Suicide had the Wh.o.r.emaster backed against the greasy-smooth wall of the Tarot, blade beneath his chins. She had that grinning-skull look that meant she didn't give a d.a.m.n anymore.

We'd gone Tarot-side celebrating the fair end of a d.i.n.k.u.m job: supplies run through the Eureka Stockade. Diggers dug in for years, and likely wouldn't move, not since they'd found a nice vein of gold ore and settled like ticks. This time we'd been running meds to the troopers. Last time it was swizzlesticks to the diggers.

I scoped 360. Tintype leaned on the wall behind, apart from everyone else like always. He was hefting his swizzlestick, so I edged out of jabbing range. He was a better judge of her moods, anyway.

Swiveling back, I noticed blur at 170 left. Better take it to the tech gnomes stat; outfitting me wasn't cheap, even with a triune money-pool.

Suicide let the Wh.o.r.emaster and all his bulk slide down the wall, alive for now, so I quit reckoning the odds on who would succeed him and watched her back. Here a slithy one could punch out a lung, and the state she was in she'd never notice 'til later. Behind me Tintype sheathed the swizzlestick and unleaned. Sometimes Suicide killed, sometimes she didn't. I never asked why.

A little s.p.a.ce between push and pull you could drop coin into. In the wide gap between moment and moment the Wh.o.r.emaster was spared, but anyone unfocused could lose his life 'twixt breath in and breath out.

So I jangled my purse and smiled big. ”A round on me, and one on the Wh.o.r.emaster after!” I said. I nodded at the fat, sweating man and narrowed one eye. He frowned but nodded back, for no fool he after twenty years at the Tarot, and Suicide let him go and slapped him on the beefy shoulder. He didn't protest and wisely, for she hadn't lost her death's-head rictus, though the blade sheathed back into her hand and she stepped away.

So I smiled more and tossed the purse on the bar and the wh.o.r.es and troopers cheered and drank and toasted me, six feet of blue-eyed blond, and ”Superstar!” they cried with hoa.r.s.e voices.

That's us. Cinderella Superstar, Cinderella Suicide, Cinderella Tintype. Fourth-stage triune s.h.i.+pped together, forged together through circ.u.mstance. Our real names don't matter because that's part of the deal. They link you duet and triune because the survival rate's higher that way. After manumission, the bonds tend to stick. With duets there's more to share, but with three, two can sleep at a time.

Superstar, Suicide, Tintype: pensioners with tickets-of-leave, four years past the end of our term. Free to earn our keep and free to starve, long as we never tried to leave New Holland's sh.o.r.es.

It was my shout for wide-eyes that night, but when dawn cracked gray, Tintype strolled out of the burrow, trim as you please, a pulp under his arm. He nodded to me, squatted down, and unrolled it.

”All the Year Round?” I asked.

He shook his head. ”Traded it. Master Humphrey's Clock.” I nodded.

I never saw Tintype topsy; not in the freight womb of the Greats.h.i.+p; not on the wharves of Botany. Dressed in black, close-b.u.t.toned always. When the Bulls herded us down the planks off the s.h.i.+p to the Dockmaster, we two jostled shoulder to shoulder.