The Clockwork God Read online

  “Yes, Keeper.”

  The sword blade vanished. Micah heard footsteps moving in the darkness behind him. Ahead, beyond the flames, a shadow separated from the curtains that surrounded the machine. A man appeared. He was tall and thin with a long beard, clothed in dark robes with a hood pulled over his head that concealed most of his face.

  “You will find we are not unforgiving,” the stranger said in a hypnotic monotone. A goblet appeared before Micah and the guard pressed it to his lips.

  “Drink,” a second guard nearby commanded.

  Micah considered resisting, and quickly decided against it. The thought of that sword pressed against his throat was enough to convince him not to fight. If the wine was poisoned, at least it would be over quickly rather than the hours of torture the guards would probably subject him to.

  Micah gulped the wine. It spilt over his chin, forming into rivulets that streamed down his throat and trickled across the bare, pale skin of his chest. The liquid was warm and bitter on the tongue with an acidic bite; a poorly made wine from poorly grown grapes. The slightly sweet aftertaste was herbaceous and grassy, like a mouthful of leaves, and Micah wondered if that was the flavor of the poison or if someone had simply sweetened the wine to make it palatable.

  At last, the goblet disappeared. Micah gulped down the last swallow and closed his eyes, focusing on the warm sensation that spread through his limbs. A drop of water fell from his bangs and ran down his nose. The fire in the urns before him crackled. Micah noticed a numb tingling sensation in his lips, and suddenly began to feel very relaxed.

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” the robed stranger said. “What is your name?”

  “Erm.. ma name is… Miyyyyykah.”

  “Did you come here alone, Micah?”

  In his mind’s eye, Micah saw Kale. The large man wore a look of absolute horror on his face as he raced out of the cemetery gate screaming, “Run! Run for your life!” The image ran so counter to everything that Micah knew about Kale that he couldn’t help laughing. Kale, the tall, cocky warrior -the man with a chest like a barrel and arms like tree trunks-running away in absolute terror. It was just about the funniest thing Micah had ever seen. He threw his head back and the sound of his full-throated laughter came erupting out uncontrollably, echoing back and forth in the darkness around him.

  Chapter 7

  Kale woke to a deep throbbing pain in his skull. He moaned, reaching for his forehead, and heard more than felt the chains that bound his wrists. His eyes fluttered open and at first, he saw only a single ray of light beaming down through a crack in the exposed timber ceiling high above. Gradually, the iron bars of his cell came into focus. The mildewed scent of rotting straw and human waste filled his nostrils. Kale rolled over to vomit on the floor. It didn’t take long to empty the contents of his stomach. He moaned, spitting the taste of bile from his mouth, wiping the dribble away on the back of his sleeve.

  “Very poetic,” said a man’s voice. “I guess I won’t be sleeping there anymore.”

  Kale backed away from the mess and pushed to his knees. The world spun, twisting drunkenly around him. He saw the vague outline of a man leaning against the far wall, but couldn’t separate the body from the shadows. Awkwardly, he rose to his feet.

  “Sorry,” he said, kicking straw over the mess he’d left on the floor. Rays of sunshine streamed in through the narrow window at the end of the room, illumining the floor in a tall rectangle of light. Through the opening, Kale saw a few scattered rooftops, and a deep blue sky painted with snow-white clouds. Slowly, somewhat painfully, his vision at last came into focus.

  Kale twisted his head, taking in his surroundings. He was in a cage of iron that was bolted to a stone floor. Half a dozen similar cages surrounded him, scattered throughout the room, along with miscellaneous ancient torture devices. Halfway across the room, he saw the dark silhouetted shape of another prisoner watching them. In an adjacent cell, he noticed a small body lying on the floor and realized that it could only be Micah. His companion appeared to be sleeping.

  “Where am I?” Kale said.

  The man in the corner stepped forward, and a beam of light fell across his face. He was a good-looking fellow with fine, almost stately features. His jaw was strong but lean, like his build; both too feminine to be called rugged or anything like it. He had bright green mischievous eyes. He smiled and reached out for Kale’s hand, and Kale noted that the man’s teeth were perfectly straight and unusually white. He decided instantly that the man was in fact a noble.

  “You are in the northern tower of Blackstone Castle,” the man said, shaking his hand. “Once the barracks, but now a jail for prisoners like us. There are only two ways out of here: The first is through that door, which is guarded night and day. The second is the window. There’s a narrow ledge that leads to the battlements and into the keep, but make one false step and you’ll drop a hundred feet to the courtyard. In case you were wondering, that is.”

  “Who are you? How do you know all of this?”

  “I’ve been here nearly a month. I almost escaped once, when I first arrived. I overpowered a guard and took his key to unlock my cell. I went to the window to test the escape route and found it impossible. For a full-grown man, at any rate. As for your first question, I am Thane, poet and bard of the royal court at Avenston.”

  “Avenston?” Kale echoed. “You’re from Astatia?”

  “Where else?”

  Kale looked him up and down, noting Thane’s fine leathers and worn but clearly expensive clothes. Thane’s vest was dark green leather, no doubt intended to set off his bright eyes. His shirt was made of fine white silk and his breeches were black suede. He also wore a black velvet cloak and knee-high boots, and topped off the look with a distinguished stovepipe hat.

  Kale’s gaze fell on the silver pendant around the man’s neck. It was shaped like an ancient oak, the symbol of an aristocrat or other public figure in Avenston. Despite the stains of travel and hard use, there was no doubt in Kale’s mind that Thane was telling the truth. He was indeed a bard.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Kale said. “I lived in Avenston once, while the Vangars still ruled.”

  “What do you mean?” Thane said, raising his eyebrows. “The Vangars have fallen?”

  “You didn’t know?” Kale said. “The Tal’mar discovered Sanctuary, the city of the ancients. They attacked the Vangars with a fleet of airships and overthrew them in a single night. They forced the Vangars into slavery to repay their debts!”

  “I never dreamed of such a thing!” Thane said. “Such tidings… Shayla and I thought we’d never be able to return-” Thane leapt forward threw his arms around the burly warrior. “Thank you Kale, for this wonderful news!”

  “Who is Shayla?” Kale said, somewhat uncomfortably trying to extricate himself from the bard’s arms. Thane stepped away, grinning broadly. “Shayla is my companion… she’s over there.” He pointed in the direction of the far cell. The silhouette moved, suddenly revealing the decidedly feminine features of a woman with long hair and a slender build.

  “Well met, stranger,” she said with a wave. “Wonderful news indeed, were we not all locked up in a cell and awaiting execution.”

  Kale’s gazed danced back and forth between the two of them. “Execution?” he said. “They mean to kill us?”

  “Not yet,” said Thane. “First you’ll have a hearing. The execution doesn’t come until the full moon. That’s what we’ve been waiting for. We have a day or two...”

  “But I don’t understand… why would they want to kill us?”

  “As a punishment,” Thane said.

  “For what? I haven’t done anything! I only wanted into the castle to escape those…” his eyes flashed as he searched for a word to describe the creatures that remained so vividly in his memory.

  “Those monsters?” Thane said. “That, my friend, is your crime: Murder!”

  Kale searched the bard’s face in disbelief. “Murder? Bu
t those… things are already dead.”

  “So it would seem,” said Thane. “Nonetheless, these backwoods peasants don’t take kindly to their relatives being killed… even the ones who are –as you say-already dead.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Indeed, I am. You’ve stumbled into a castle of nightmares, my friend. Our only consolation lies in the fact that it will all be over soon. When the moon is full, two days hence, our captors will burn us alive.”

  Kale’s mind flashed back to the Iron Horse and he suddenly, fervently hoped Socrates had finished the work of clearing the tracks and that they were now looking for him. The rational part of his mind told him they probably hadn’t even realized he was missing yet. His gaze strayed to his unconscious companion.

  “Micah!” Kale called out. “Micah, wake up!”

  The shape on the floor stirred. Micah slowly roused himself. He grumbled as he crawled to his feet and turned to face Kale. He grabbed the bars with both hands, pressing his face against them.

  “So cool…” he said absently, touching his forehead to the bars.

  “Micah, we’ve been captured!”

  Micah nodded slightly and waved off Kale’s concern. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again, staring across the room. “They took my maps, Kale. My satchel, my parchments, my ink… what will I do?”

  “I’d say that’s the least of our problems right now. They plan to execute us.”

  Micah’s eyes widened. “No, they can’t! Then I’ll never get my maps back!”

  “That’s one way to put it,” said Thane with a wry grin. He turned his attention to Kale. “Your small friend came in a few hours after they dumped you in here. He appeared to be drugged. My guess is they spent that time questioning him.”

  “Is that true, Micah?”

  The impish man scratched the back of his head. “Aye, I think so. I don’t remember much.”

  Kale stepped up to the bars and gave Micah a dark look. “What did you tell them? Think about it! Did you mention the Horse?”

  Micah frowned. He pinched his chin and paced back and forth along the front of his cage. “I don’t remember… I honestly don’t remember.”

  “Don’t blame him,” Thane said. “They’ve done the same thing to Shayla and me. Neither of us could remember a thing… What is this ‘horse’ you speak of?”

  Kale looked Thane up and down, wondering if he could trust the man. It was one thing to share stories of their old kingdom, but quite another to hand over vital information that an enemy might use against them. The couple seemed trustworthy enough, but for all Kale new, Thane and Shayla might have been informants working with the townsfolk.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Nothing important.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Thane. “It sounded like something important. No matter. Tell me, have you ever been to the Dancing Dragon Inn on Merchant Row?”

  “Oh, please!” Shayla shouted across the room. “Not this again. So you played for a duchess. No one cares, Thane.”

  “I just thought he might know of her,” Thane said dejectedly. “Not that it matters. Titles of nobility meant nothing after the Vangars invaded. Still, she was a model among women. I can still remember her sweet lips…” He leaned back against the cage and bent over slightly, lifting the heel of his boot. He touched an invisible pressure point on the side of his boot and a small door opened on the back of the heel. Thane grinned as he withdrew a short straight razor and a tiny mirror.

  “If she truly is a duchess, she’s lucky to be alive at all,” said Kale, eyeing the bard as he wetted the razor in a cup of water and started to shave. Kale stepped over to the door of the cell and began fumbling with the lock. “No offense, but I think we’d be better off using our time to find a way out of here before they execute us, don’t you?”

  “Yes!” Micah agreed from his cage.

  “Unlikely,” said Thane. “You won’t open those locks without a key. We’ve already tried everything else. These iron bars are unbreakable, and the stones in the floor are immovable. It would take years to chisel through either, and we don’t have a chisel. We have nothing but our clothes and the straw under our feet. The watchmen saw to that before they threw us in here.”

  “Have you tried this?” said Micah. With surprising dexterity, he latched onto the bars and began climbing towards the roof of his cage.

  “I take it your ankle feels better,” Kale said.

  “Much,” said Micah, grunting as he heaved himself up towards the ceiling.

  “What are you doing up there, little one?” Shayla called out. “That cage has bars on the ceiling, too.”

  “They’re not as narrow up there,” Micah grunted as he pulled himself up. He reached the top of the wall and then twisted around to stand with his heels perched on a crossbar, somewhat awkwardly facing the inside of his cage.

  “Careful,” said Thane. “A fall from that height might break your legs, or worse, your neck.”

  Kale sized up the distance and realized Thane was right. The roof of the cage was ten, maybe twelve feet high. A survivable drop for a human, but for a man Micah’s size it may as well have been twice that.

  “What are you doing?” Kale shouted. “Get down from there before you break that ankle for real.”

  Micah ignored his companion. He took a moment to summon up his courage and then leapt. Kale caught his breath as Micah flew to the center of the cage and latched onto the bars along the roof with both hands. An involuntary squeal erupted out of Shayla. Micah hung suspended in midair, swaying back and forth more than ten feet over the stone floor.

  “Devils, Micah,” Kale shouted. “Think about what you’re doing!”

  “Quiet!” Micah commanded breathlessly. He began to pull himself upwards, twisting back and forth as he tried to work his way through the bars. His short legs kicked wildly in the air as he struggled. To Kale’s surprise, a moment later Micah’s head appeared on the outside of the cage.

  “He’s getting tired,” Thane observed quietly. “I hope his strength holds out. It won’t be pretty if your friend gets stuck up there with his head between the bars.”

  Kale grimaced at the thought of watching Micah accidentally hang himself. “Keep going!” he said supportively. “Push yourself up!” He couldn’t entirely banish the nervousness from his voice. Micah flailed around for a few more seconds and then managed to get his arms through the bars. He moved upward, but couldn’t slide his chest through the tight space.

  “Thanks,” Micah said cynically, fighting for breath. “Great idea, Kale. Really, very useful.”

  Kale frowned. “Just trying to be helpful,” he murmured.

  Micah rolled his eyes, twisting as he struggled to push his upper body between the bars, legs still kicking wildly in the air. “It appears…” he said breathlessly, “that I’m stuck.”

  “Exhale,” Thane said helpfully. “Let your air out!”

  Micah grunted. For a few seconds, he stopped moving. Then, he let his breath out in one great whoosh, and pushed. For a moment, it seemed to work. He made it halfway through the bars and then something caught, and held him in place. Micah twisted, grunting, struggling wildly. He tried to take a small breath, but found even that impossible. He was trapped with his chest centered between the bars so tightly that he couldn’t even breathe! Spots swam before his eyes and darkness closed in at the edges of his vision.

  “Try again!” Kale said encouragingly. “Push, Micah!”

  “Yes,” Shayla shouted. “Keep going. Don’t stop pushing!”

  Micah had heard this sort of thing before. An image of a birthing room sprouted up in the back of his mind, and he visualized himself as a tiny infant pushing through a narrow birth canal of steel bars. The ludicrous image almost made him laugh as it floated through his addled mind, except that Micah couldn’t laugh. Already, he felt consciousness slipping away, his thoughts drifting dizzily into darkness.

  This was it, he realized. This was how he
was going to die. This cage giving birth to him was going to kill him. Died in childbirth. No, not childbirth, manbirth. He’d already been born once. How many people got to be born twice? What a story that would make for the taverns! Born into the world, born into death. That was what they’d put on his epitaph. Then they’d all have a good laugh. If there was one thing Micah was always good for, it was a laugh.

  Micah’s energy was ebbing. The world grew distant, and the sound of blood roaring through his veins filled his ears. This, he realized, was death. This was what it was like to die.

  Deep inside his chest, something fluttered, and a surge of terror washed through him. The spark of life that was Micah suddenly announced that it didn’t want to die. In a surge of adrenaline-fueled panic, Micah summoned his strength and gave one last desperate push. The bars pinched his ribcage like the grips of a vise, squeezing out one tiny last bit of breath. Micah heard the distant, muffled sound of tearing fabric, and without realizing what it was, felt the release of a button ripping free of his jacket. Instantly, the bars lost their grip on him. Micah shot up through the opening. He came to rest on top of the cage with his legs dangling down.

  Micah sucked in a deep gasping breath and lay back across the bars, waiting for the world to stop spinning. In the background, he could hear his companions cheering quietly. His thoughts spun dizzily. For a moment, he may have even passed out. As the world slowly came back into perspective, all Micah could think about was how close he’d come to a horrible -and somewhat embarrassing-death. The word stillborn rolled around in his mind, and a surge of nausea almost made him vomit.

  When at last Micah felt half normal again, he pushed up into a seated position and glanced down at his vest. “Blast it!” he said angrily. He threw his gaze down to the floor and saw the button lying there in the middle of the cell. “I’ll never find a replacement for that button!”

  “Button?” Kale said loudly. “Forget the button, Micah. Get us out of here!”

  Micah lifted his gaze to his companions and at last remembered the point of his expedition. “How?” he said. “I can’t open the locks.”