The Trap in the Clockwork

"A machine does not hate. That is why it is the perfect murderer."

She did not think. She had trained herself not to.

Thalessa Ashwood crossed the boards on her knees, took the forceps from her sleeve, and lifted the petal from the dead man's tongue. It came away damp and cold, and she dropped it into a glass tube and stoppered it in one movement and thrust the tube down the front of her bodice, against her ribs, where she could feel it lying like a splinter of ice.

"What are you doing?" said Roderick.

"Saving it."

"There'll be time—"

"There will not." She did not look up. "Listen to the clock."

He listened.

The great pendulum behind its glass had not stopped. It swung on, slow and tireless, but the sound of it had changed. The tick was no longer single. Under each beat now came a second, softer, dry little click, like the counting of a bone-dry rosary, and with each click one of the small brass levers along the wall dipped and rose. A cam turned. A pawl dropped into a ratchet. Far down in the dark of the gear-train, a spring that had been wound for hours began, with a very small sound, to let go.

"It's a second cycle," Thalessa said. "The first rang the bell. This is for the one who came to see it."

"Meaning us."

"Meaning anyone."

Roderick drew his revolver. It was a gesture of pure instinct, and as soon as he had made it he looked at the weapon in his hand with a kind of weary contempt. There was nothing to shoot.

"The door," he said.

They turned together.

The low wooden door through which they had entered the belfry stood open, as they had left it, and beyond it the black mouth of the secret stair. As they watched, a thin iron bar slid slowly down out of the lintel, as quiet as a snake. It was followed by another, and another. They came down side by side, each as thick as a man's thumb, and sank into sockets in the floor with a series of small, final clanks.

A grille. A cage. In less than five seconds the doorway had been closed.

"Quick," said Roderick.

He was across the room in three strides. He threw his good shoulder against the bars and they did not give. They did not so much as quiver. He took hold of two of them with his right hand and wrenched, and the muscles stood out along his forearm, and a hoarse sound came from his throat, and nothing moved.

"It's iron," Thalessa said. "Forged. It was made to stand."

"Then there's another way."

"The louvres."

"Nailed."

"Then break them." She was on her feet. She seized the lantern and ran round the circle of the wall, holding it close to each shuttered window in turn. The slats were of old oak, thick as her wrist, and nailed fast from the outside with bolts. "There must be—"

She stopped.

A smell had begun to rise through the air. It was a thin, sharp, greasy smell, like a lamp turned up too high. It came from the floor.

She looked down.

Round the whole circumference of the belfry, where the planks met the wall, ran a narrow channel cut into the wood. It was no wider than two fingers. She had taken it for a drainage groove, for the rain. Now she saw that it shone, in the lamplight, with a dark and glistening film. And as she stood there, the shining began to creep. A bead of oil slid from a spout above the clockwork, swelled, fell, and ran along the groove with a soft, thin, tinkling sound like a stream.

"Roderick."

"What?"

"It's oil. The whole floor is a wick."

Her gaze flew across the room to the hurricane lamp, still burning on the boards beside Malakor's bag. And as she looked, a little brass arm, moving with the slow patience of the clock, swung out from the wall, hooked the lamp's handle, and tipped.

It fell without a sound. The glass shattered. A pool of liquid flame sprang up on the planks and rolled, with a soft whump, into the groove.

The ring caught.

It went all round the belfry in a second, a bright, flickering, jagged circle of orange, no higher than a hand but fast, so fast, and with it came the heat and the stink, and the smoke curling up in thin black ribbons toward the rafters.

They were standing in the middle of a ring of fire.

…

"The bell," said Thalessa.

"What?"

"The bell. It's bronze. It doesn't burn." She had her hand in his sleeve and was dragging him toward the center of the room. "The oil follows the groove. It can't climb the boards. We have a quarter of a minute before the wood catches. We must stay in the middle."

"And then?"

"And then I shall think of something."

"I should rather you thought now."

"I am thinking."

The smoke thickened. It poured up from the ring in black curtains, rolling against the rafters, spreading, stinging her eyes. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it over her mouth. The air was hot already, dry and metallic. The boards of the floor, scorched from beneath, began to crackle and ping. And above them, high in the dark, the old oak beams of the roof gave off a faint, ominous, resinous moan.

She turned a full circle, with her eyes streaming, taking in everything. The louvres. The clock. The cage on the stair. The oil, dripping steadily from its spout in the wall.

The spout.

It was the oil feed. A brass pipe, as thick as her wrist, running down from a cistern in the roof to the channel on the floor. If the cistern was large it would feed the fire for hours.

"Roderick. The pipe. There must be a valve."

"Where?"

"At the clockwork. Look for a wheel."

He ran. She heard him cough, a ragged, tearing sound, and then the clatter of his boots on the planks. She herself was down on her knees by the dead man's bag. She wrenched the clasp open. Inside, in neat rows, were the tools of a surgeon's art, and among them, rolled in oilcloth, a long glass bottle with a ground stopper.

She read the label by the firelight.

Spirits of Ammonia. Strong.

"Oh, Malakor," she whispered. "You careful, careful man."

She tore out the stopper. The reek struck her like a fist. She held the bottle at arm's length and tipped it, steadily, over the little river of oil that still crept toward her across the boards, and watched the flame at the edge of it shiver and gutter and go out.

Not all. Only a hand's breadth. But it was a start.

"Valve!" Roderick shouted from the wall. "I have it! It won't turn!"

"Use the crowbar!"

"I haven't got the damned crowbar!"

"Use your arm!"

"I've only the one!"

She heard the wrench of metal, the squeal of a spindle, the grunt of a man working against his own pain. Then a hiss, a gasp, and a sudden loud drumming as the oil stopped falling and the pipe ran dry.

"It's off!"

"Then help me!"

He was beside her in a second, kneeling in the smoke. She thrust the bottle into his hand. "Pour it. In a line. Along the groove, in front of the flame, so it can't spread any farther." She was already tearing off her coat. "I shall smother the rest."

"With what?"

"With everything."

She beat at the flames with the thick wool until her arms shook. She dragged the dead man's coat from his body, and his waistcoat, and flung them down. She tore down a curtain of sacking from the window, a filthy gray rag that had hung there since the building was young, and spread it over the nearest stretch of fire. It smoked and sputtered and held. Roderick, with a hoarse cry, poured the last of the ammonia over the last of the oil, and the bright ring, which had fed so greedily on air and fat, gasped, shrank, and died in a dying cough of black smoke.

For a moment they stood in the middle of the belfry in a dark and stinking silence, black-faced, streaming, gasping. Little fires were still snapping on the beams overhead. The rafters ticked as they cooled.

"Is it out?" said Roderick, hoarsely.

"Mostly."

"Mostly."

"The roof is smoldering. We have a few minutes." She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. "And the door is still shut."

"The louvres."

"Yes."

"Then step back."

He took a stance before the nearest window, planting his feet like a man about to kick a door. He was gray with exhaustion; she could see the shaking of his knees. He drew his leg back and drove his heel against the shutter.

It cracked. Splinters flew.

He kicked again. And again. The old wood split down its length with a groan, and through the gap a gust of clean white air poured in, laden with snow, and with it came the whole vast roaring voice of the night.

Thalessa drew it into her lungs like water.

"There," said Roderick.

"There."

They stood together at the broken window, with their faces to the wind. Below them, a long way down, the lights of the house burned small and yellow in the darkness. Figures were gathering in the garden. A man's voice was shouting. Somewhere a woman was screaming, steadily and meaninglessly, on one high note.

"It will be Finch," said Roderick, "calling the fire brigade."

"The nearest brigade is forty miles."

"Then he is calling the whole house, which will do."

She turned. At the foot of the great bell, in the dying light, lay the doctor's body, stripped of its coat, its throat bare, its poor gray face turned to the roof. His spectacles lay beside it, whole, glinting. In the black dust beside his hand lay the black leather bag, burnt at one corner, but unspoiled.

She stood looking down at him.

"He knew what the others were," she said. "He knew what he was. And he spent four years being the only one who tried to hold it all in." She shook her head. "I think he would have told us, if he had lived."

"I think so too."

"They did not let him."

"No." Roderick put his hand on her shoulder. His sleeve was scorched, and his face was streaked with soot, and in the red dying glow he looked years older and very tired. "But he did tell us one thing."

"What?"

"That whoever is doing this cannot be stopped by a lock." He glanced at the iron grille across the stair. "A lock is a thing a clever person opens. This is a thing that a clever person builds. It was ready for us, Thalessa. All of it. The bell, the fire, the cage, the oil. It was all waiting. For someone to come looking."

"Yes."

"Then they knew we would come."

"Yes."

"And they knew we would open the door."

She said nothing. In her bodice, against her ribs, the little glass tube lay cold and sharp. She put her hand over it.

They knew, she thought. They know everything we do.

Behind them, in the stillness, the clock's pendulum swung once more to the end of its arc, and stopped.

…

It was Uriah Finch who let them out.

They heard him first, a long way below, in the throat of the secret stair, a thin frantic voice calling "Sir? Sir? Ma'am?" It rose through the dark with a faint sobbing echo, and with it came the clatter of feet on wooden steps, coming up fast.

"Mr. Finch!" Roderick shouted. "Here! The belfry!"

"Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God, sir. I saw the smoke."

The footman's face appeared beyond the bars of the grille, small and white and glistening, lit from beneath by a candle in his shaking hand. His hair stood on end. His coat was buttoned wrong.

"Is the lady safe, sir?"

"We are both alive. Open the grille."

"I can't, sir, I haven't got the—" He stopped. "The lever. Wait."

His face vanished. They heard him fumbling, a scrape of wood, the dull ring of a metal handle.

"Don't pull it yet," said Thalessa, very quietly.

"Why not?"

"Because I want to know how he knows where it is."

Roderick turned his head. In the dying light the lines of his face were harsh as an old carving.

"He winds the clock," he said. "Sundays. He told us so."

"He told us he has the key to the tower door. He did not say he has the key to this one."

"He is a frightened boy."

"He is a frightened boy who ran straight to a hidden lever in a secret passage in the dark, while the rest of the house stood screaming in the garden." Her voice was low and steady. "I do not say he is wicked, Roderick. I say he knew."

There was a heavy click from below.

The bars of the grille shuddered. Then, with a long grinding rattle, they began to rise, slowly, slowly, back into the lintel from which they had come, and the doorway stood open again on the dark stair, and the footman on the other side of it was weeping openly.

"Oh, sir," he whispered. "I thought you was dead."

"We very nearly were." Roderick stepped through, put his hand on the thin shoulder, and held it there a moment. "Thank you, Mr. Finch."

"It's nothing, sir."

"It was not nothing."

"I only found the handle by chance." The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I was looking for a way up, and I felt along the wall, and there it was. I didn't know what it was for, sir. I swear."

"I believe you," said Roderick.

Thalessa, behind him, said nothing at all.

She stood on the threshold of the belfry with the lantern in her hand and looked at the footman's face. It was a good face, weak and anxious and young, the face of a man who had been kind to a corpse and ashamed of it afterwards. There was no cunning in it. She could not find any.

Either he is the most innocent man in this house, she thought, or the most skilled liar.

I have been wrong about both before.

She passed him on the stair without a word. But as she went down into the dark, step by step, she found that she was counting them, under her breath: twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. And at the thirty-first, on the wall by her hand, set flush into the plaster so exactly that it might have been a knot in the wood, she saw a small iron handle, newly oiled.

She did not touch it.

She only looked, and passed on, and kept her face very still.