Bitter Cold: A Steampunk Snow Queen (The Clockwork Republic Series Book 4) (13 page)

"The basement." The words were a tinny growl.

"Can you show me?" Greta asked, trying hard not to let her voice squeak in fear. Isadora was still weeping, staring at her husband's bizarre and unfamiliar form with a mixture of disbelief, misery and hope.

"Follow me." The metal man released his grip at last. She wiggled her fingers as the blood rushed back to them.

Part of Greta wanted to bolt for the front door. A voice in her head told her every second took Kit further away. What use could she be to these poor souls? Still, she had to at least try and give them some peace. And there might be something here she could use to free Kit when she caught up to him again. It was becoming clearer with every moment that underestimating the Snow Queen could be a fatal mistake. As much as she wanted to rush after Kit, she realized now she might need more than her wits and a few incendiaries to save him.

Especially since it looked like he didn't
want
to be saved.

After several twists and turns down one hallway after another, Gaskon opened a door which revealed an iron stairwell spiraling down towards a lower level. Taking a deep breath, Greta slipped ahead of the other two and descended the stairs. She had no idea what horrors might await her, but she needed to know, as much as the Halfacres, what the Snow Queen had done.

Gaskon turned a dial, and, with a hiss, the gaslights in the chamber rose to illuminate the laboratory.

Greta gasped. It looked far too much like the laboratory she had destroyed only a day before. Tables were covered with all manner of beakers and glass tubes. Different apothecary jars were lined up in rows on shelves holding neatly labeled ingredients. The stone floor was marked with stains, deep gouges and burns.

Along one stone wall was a row of glass tanks filled with milky translucent fluid which glowed a pale green, dark shapes floating within each one. A tangle of copper pipes hung over them, with spiral wires extending down into the liquid. A blue-white spark sputtered at the corner nearest Greta.

In the brief bright glare, she shuddered as something moved within the tank. As much as she didn't want to look, she couldn't tear her eyes away. A tiny body was immersed in each tank.

Her horror grew as she realized the small forms were not quite human. Hands and feet which had only four digits swam in and out of view, along with facial features which were half-formed. She forced herself to continue surveying the room, her heart clenched with fear.

A surgical table was pushed off to one corner. As she approached it with trepidation, she noticed the cabinets lining two walls of the large room. Greta crept up slowly to the first cabinet, and brushed a layer of frost from the porthole window in the top.

Inside lay an enormous, shaggy wolf. As she peered into the porthole, it moved.

She shrieked and tumbled backwards onto the floor. Regaining her courage, she looked in the window again. The animal was just breathing. It was asleep. She examined the cabinet, quickly recognizing the iridescent glimmer of an alchemical seal.

"Mr. and Mrs. Halfacre! Come here, I think I've found something." Suddenly excited, she ran down the length of the room to the last cabinet.

That's how she'd got away with it.

They weren't dead, so the enchantment never alerted the Guild.

The creatures were in a deathlike sleep, their spirits miles away trapped in automata. She had no idea how to wake them, or what would happen if she tried. She brushed the layer of frost away from the glass on the final cabinet.

This time, she was not surprised to find a man's face inside.

He was an older gentleman, whose once-dark hair was streaked with grey. A clanking noise behind her told her the Halfacres had caught up.

"Is this him?" she asked Isadora. The woman knelt beside her, and peered into the window. A muffled sob escaped her. She nodded, too overcome with emotion for words.

Greta looked up at the gleaming brass and steel automaton. She couldn't imagine what kind of monster would think it acceptable to turn a living human into a machine. But she knew one thing for certain; she was getting Kit away from Evelyn DeWinter, whether he'd left willingly or not.

"Mr. Halfacre, your body appears unharmed. But the cabinet is protected by an alchemical seal. I'm not sure how to break it safely. Or what will happen if we do. It could break the binding that's keeping your soul where it is. It could set off an alarm that notifies the Snow Queen we're here. And even if it breaks the binding, I'm not sure what that will do to you."

Isadora seemed to recover her wits in the face of Greta's sober appraisal of the situation.

"Then do nothing, child. I cannot risk losing Hiram a second time. And if Evelyn finds out we've uncovered her secret, I can't imagine what she would do."

Greta bit her lip. Breaking open one of the cabinets could bring Evelyn, and Kit, rushing back to the town house. They could open one of the wolves' cabinets, to avoid the risk of killing Hiram Halfacre. Of course, rousing a maddened wild animal also seemed imprudent.

Based on the lack of recognition in Kit's face, he was under the influence of a powerful formulae. Isadora had mentioned the Snow Queen's network of spies and agents. They could easily find themselves outnumbered and outgunned, an even worse situation.

Their biggest advantage right now was letting Evelyn believe everything had gone according to plan. At least for the moment.

"I might know someone who can help. He works with the Alchemists Guild. If anyone can figure out how to get Mr. Halfacre back . . . where he belongs . . . safely, it's them. I assume they have an office here in Little Rock, but I
must
follow Kit." She handed Isadora the card Neal Simms had given her before she'd discovered Kit's disappearance.

Isadora nodded. "There's a telegraph machine upstairs in the parlor. I can wire them a message as soon as you leave. Oh! The message!" She opened the large handbag she'd been clutching and pulled a black metal bird from its depths, shoving it into Greta's hands.

"What is this?" A shimmer of alchemical enchantment flashed across the dull painted surface of the clockwork device.

"It's a messenger. She told me use it to tell her you were . . . that I'd. . . ." the elderly woman's voice broke.

"I know."

Greta gave Isadora Halfacre a look that spoke volumes. She squeezed the older woman's hand, and the older woman in turn nodded at the automaton which held the essence of the man she loved. Tragedy and terror drove people to awful things.

As each glance around the laboratory revealed more glimpses of Evelyn DeWinter's experiments, she shuddered to think what monsters the woman would make of ordinary people caught in her clutches for any length of time.

"She told me how to use the device. You press the wings against the body and speak your message. Then you press the wings again to make it fly to her to deliver it. Do you want me to send the message? Tell her you're . . . gone?"

Uncertainty slowly hardened into a flinty expression of resolve. "No."

Greta bolted for the stairs, more determined than ever to rescue Kit. She spared the Halfacres one last look as they clutched each other.

"I'm going to try to catch them before they leave the city. If I fail, I want her to know I'm coming."

Chapter 12

The Man in the Mirror

Kit shivered in the ice palace, his breath escaping in ragged puffs. No matter how fast he ran, he could not catch up to the woman he pursued. Even when he slowed or stopped to rest, she did not leave him behind completely. He was left in a state of longing and confusion.

After running for what seemed like forever, he stumbled into a room filled with machine parts, all made of ice. The room looked less like a palace, and more like a warehouse hewn from slabs of ice. Unlike the rest of the labyrinthine structure, no elaborate scrollwork had been carved into the walls or support beams. The room's light flickered down from a plain-looking orb, unadorned except for the crystalline rivets which held the beams and slabs of ice in place.

He turned his attention to the jumble of machine parts lying scattered around the room. The gears looked like great snowflakes. He paused, overwhelmed by curiosity. Each piece had a single word etched on its surface in a fluid script, like a maker's mark.

"Eternity."

The word reverberated in his mind. A memory came tantalizingly close, tied to that word. He could almost see it, engraved inside a circle of polished metal. His head pounded with the effort to remember where he had seen it, but the harder he tried to recall it, the more agonizing the pain in his head became. He finally relented, and picked up one of the frozen gears. He could no longer hear the tapping of shoes ahead of him. Either the woman had disappeared or she was standing and waiting for him to pick up the chase again.

Was this his purpose? Had the woman been merely a guide to bring him to this room? Scanning the bits and pieces of machinery, he doubted it. These looked more like spare parts. The same way Michelangelo could see a finished sculpture in a piece of marble, he had the ability to see a completed machine in a pile of loose cogs.

He could remember nothing of his life before arriving in the palace. No warm memories of friends or family rose up to greet him, no matter how hard he tried to produce them. In fact, trying to do so resulted in a splitting headache, and a stabbing sensation in his chest.

Nevertheless, his head was far from empty. Plans, schematics, blueprints for all kinds of devices all floated in and out of his consciousness. He was a maker of some sort, but that was all he knew.

His reverie was broken by a woman's voice echoing through the halls.

"Find me, Kit. I need you."

The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. Discarding the frozen gears, he set off again in search of the elusive woman. There was only one door out of the room. As he ducked through it, he saw a flash of blue-green skirt swish around the corner.

The walls were translucent in this part of the palace. He could see her form, but the weird bending of light through the prismatic surface kept shifting her appearance. One moment her hair was white-blond. The next it was a honey-gold. Her dress similarly shifted hues and shapes. He had no idea who she was, but with all the certainty he possessed, he knew he must follow her.

He turned another corner, and pulled up short. A long empty hall stretched out before him, lined with mirrors. Each mirror's frame was carved in rich detail, and each one was different. Above him, light filtered down from sparkling chandeliers. A myriad of colors of light bounced around the room.

He strained his eyes, searching for the woman, but she was nowhere to be found.

A flash of blue in the mirror nearest him caught his eye. He looked into the reflection, and slipped backwards, startled. He looked down, to confirm he still wore the simple workman's attire he'd been dressed in all along. He scrambled to his feet and gazed into the glass again.

The man in the mirror moved in perfect synchronization with him. He was the right height, his hand looked the same when he turned it over in front of the reflection. But he was also very unlike him. Dressed in a tailored suit of rich grey fabric, the man in the mirror seemed confident and assured. A diamond stickpin held his silk cravat in place. Then the man smiled at him. There was a bit of a wicked gleam to that smile, which Kit found both fascinating and terrible.

Movement caught his eye in the corner of the looking glass. A woman in blue, with platinum hair slipped into the frame. She smiled at him through the mirror. It was a dazzling smile, but it held no warmth. The woman in the picture slipped her arm around his dapper reflection. Slowly, the background of the reflection came into focus.

The room the pair occupied was a luxurious parlor. Polished leather and wood surfaces gleamed, covered with the accoutrements of success.

The other Kit seemed to beckon to him.

"Join me. Become me."

Kit hesitated. The picture framed in the looking glass had its appeal, but there was something tugging at the edges of his mind which held him back. Brief flashes of another woman, very different from the elegant creature in the looking glass, surfaced in his mind. He stepped away from the mirror to look down the hall.

The other Kit looked back at him from all the reflections along one wall. The other wall showed a different view. He walked over to examine the other reflection. Like him, this Kit wore workman's clothing, except his were filthy and worn. He looked older than his years, exhausted by care. As this new reflection solidified, the background appeared to be a ramshackle workshop.

He waited for a moment, to see if the woman from the other side would join this version of himself. Or possibly the other woman he'd glimpsed for mere seconds in his mind's eye.

The other Kit shook his head.

"You failed. You lost her. She's gone."

The words echoed through his brain. This frame held but loneliness and failure.

He turned and crossed the hall, hand outstretched towards the surface of the other glass.

~*~

Evelyn DeWinter sat placidly reading the papers in her traveling coach airship. The tinker slept on a chaise nearby, still under the influence of her formulae. He had seemed especially agitated for a moment as they left the town house, after pausing to look over his shoulder down the hall.