The Boneshaker (34 page)

Suddenly, there was nowhere else for Jack to go. The chair, cabinet, and wall slammed up against his back, one after another. Limberleg's gruesome corpse leaned over him, its twitching fingers inches away from his face.

"
That ... is ... not ... for ... you!
"

Jack held very still. "Why ... why not?"

The wagon door opened. Simon Coffrett stood on the threshold.

"Because he cannot be forced to defect. Even the dead may choose."

Jack opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Simon stepped forward and plucked the clockwork doctor out of his hands. As the drifter reached instinctively for what had been taken from him, Simon Coffrett turned to the thing that had been Jake Limberleg.

"Choose," he demanded.

For the briefest of moments, the dead, red eyes of the man who had once been Dr. Jasper Bellinspire flashed with gratitude.

"The choice is made," Simon Coffrett said. "Sorry, Jack." A column of blue flame spurted like a fountain from his palm. At the center of the column, the automaton in the shape of Jake Limberleg burned.

Then Limberleg's body crumpled face-first to the floor, once again lifeless and still.

The drifter scrambled out of the way. Simon shook from his hand all that remained of the automaton: a pile of hot ash and a few pieces of clockwork that bounced and rolled away to join the rest of the debris.

"Some things can't be stolen, and you aren't the only one who can parley with defectors."

The drifter grinned. "I wondered just how he worked a deal with you, jumper." Then his smile vanished. "How did you know my name?"

"I've been walking a lot longer than you have. I see more than you do, I hear more than you do, and I've had enough time to lose the arrogance I suspect you're stuck with." Simon stepped back out of the wagon and into the darkened fair. "You were right about one thing, though:
Limberleg didn't have the measure of this place. Thing is, Jack, I don't think you do, either. Get out of my town. Go do your recruiting someplace else."

Jack's eyes narrowed to knife-edge slits. "
Your
town?"

Against the gloom of the fair, Simon Coffrett turned to face the drifter. Without any change in the light, he seemed suddenly to stand out, distinct, from the murk and shadow behind him. As if someone had drawn around the outline of him, toe to crown, with a black charcoal pencil, or colored the rest of the world in an extra layer of shading that made Simon somehow not brighter but
clearer
by contrast.

"My. Town." Simon pronounced the words like bullets. He smiled, a grin that hinted at a snarl.

Jack grinned back, a gash of tooth and ire that twisted his face into something monstrous, and pitched his response in the same warning tone. "For now."

"Forever." Simon turned toward the entrance of the fair.

"Don't you dare," the drifter snarled, "turn your back on me!
Do you know who I am?
" Tense with fury, he launched himself to the door of the wrecked wagon and gripped the frame so hard his hands splintered the painted wood. "If you know who I am, jumper, you should be afraid. Or maybe you've just learned how to hide it.
You should be in fear!
"

Simon dusted the last of the ash from his palm as he stalked away. "Get out of there, if you don't want to burn with it."

***

Natalie watched the harlequin as she sped through the Old Village. The bells reflected the sparks in strange fits of light as it balanced at the curlicued edge of the glass chamber, waiting for the moment to jump. How could she possibly fight it off? Heavy, hot fear crept up her throat.

Dad would not be proud if I died on a bicycle,
she thought.

The harlequin crouched, about to leap.

There!

A patch of empty blackness opened up to her right. Natalie swerved, straight off the road and into the narrow space between two ruined houses. She flung a hand out in front of her and slapped off the electric lamp, then turned the bicycle again and rode parallel to the road, behind the row of houses. The steering was coming easier now; instead of seeming just wildly temperamental, the hinged frame of the Chesterlane was actually starting to feel responsive to the smallest suggestion Natalie gave it.

In the sudden dark, she hit a patch of loose stone. The wheels shook and slid, sending pebbles flying and raising clouds of dirt she could taste but not see, rattling her teeth and shaking her hands so hard they numbed on the handlebars. But somehow, the bicycle stayed upright.

From the road, the violent light of the Amber Therapy Chamber threw horrible silhouettes through the skeletal houses. Natalie burst in and out of dark patches, dodging rubble and crumbling foundations. She stayed as close as she could to the wreckage so she wouldn't get too near the old riverbed that lay somewhere in the darkness to her right.

Nervine cursed. She could see him over the derelict rooftops, clinging to the flashing dome as it barreled along on its parallel course. Natalie grinned; they had to slow down the chamber so as not to lose her in the dark, and Nervine was
furious.

Then she saw something else moving in the alternating patches of darkness and light, and her smile disappeared.

It raced along the sagging lines of the old roofs and rafters between Natalie and the glittering glass box, swinging from what was left of the eaves of one house to a windowsill on the next as easily as if there were silver wires connecting it all. Almost as if it were capable of moving across the night air itself.

The giant glass chamber couldn't leave the road, but the harlequin could.

Instinctively Natalie veered right, farther away, desperate to put herself out of range of any of the Amazing Quinn's acrobatics, and this time she overdid it. Almost immediately she felt the ground slope and the bicycle list dangerously. A shower of stones slid out from under her wheels.

For a crazed, desperate moment, she imagined that she was back in the alley where she'd tried and failed for so long to master this bicycle. She longed to fall gracelessly against the wall of the stable, and for a moment she felt herself sway...

Put out a hand and the stable wall will be there to break your fall,
she thought, clamping her eyes shut. She hit a pile of rubble head-on but miraculously failed to lose her
balance.
Just fall, and open your eyes, and you'll be home, and this will all go away.

Her legs pedaled furiously as ever, but her right palm let go of its handle, and Natalie reached sideways, wishing with all her heart for the tumble and the bruises and the familiar alley to wake up to.... She listed a little farther, and one wheel slid...

Natalie righted herself with a lurch. It was so natural, it didn't even seem like a conscious decision. It was almost as if the Chesterlane was now as determined that she should stay upright as it had previously been to throw her off.

And then suddenly for a moment she was airborne, clearing a decaying back porch thanks to a timber that formed a ramp just big enough and high enough to help her over. She landed effortlessly, sturdy and sure, and for a moment forgot the predicament she was in. It used to be like this to ride—no obstacle stood in your way, no mere geographical inconveniences could hold you back. Pedal hard enough, and you might just leave the ground, like Wilbur and Orville. You might fall, but sometimes, oh, so rarely, sometimes, you flew.

Natalie was finished with falling.

She glanced over at the remnants of the buildings and picked out the harlequin's outline, nearly level with her and gaining ground. Up ahead was the big, wide façade of Trader's Mill's old livery stable. If the harlequin got there ahead of her, she would have to pass right underneath it to make the left that would get her back to the crossroads. She would be an easy target.

Half dead from exhaustion, Natalie gave the bicycle one last good push, one more shot to show her what it could do.

"Come on," she hissed through clenched teeth, "the only way now's to outrun them all."

The red bicycle surged ahead, with Natalie's aching knees and numb feet pedaling on.

On the road, the glass box fell back again, Nervine's curses ringing through the night. The harlequin hurled itself through the air onto the livery stable roof, all but flying, bent on a collision course with the place the bicycle would have to be....

At the last possible minute, Natalie pitched the bicycle hard to the left, aiming for what she hoped was a sliver of an opening in the façade of the stable. Gravel and dirt exploded from under the wheels as she passed over the ground where the building used to be. She screamed and flung up her hands to protect her face from the crash in case she was wrong ... and burst almost gracefully through the stable doorway to arrive back on the road mere yards from the junction.

She spun to a neat stop and turned just in time to see the harlequin, utterly confused by her emergence through the façade rather than around the corner where it had plotted its interception. It floundered in midair like a fish out of water, limbs waving uselessly as it smacked through the last remaining panes in the window of the general store in a spray of broken glass and shards of bone-white porcelain. The Four in their flickering electric machine were still a full twenty yards away.

She lifted her left hand carefully away from the handlebar, slowly so that the precious thing in her palm couldn't tumble out and disappear into the dust and darkness. The coin was still there, pressed into her skin. Natalie took the first full breath she'd drawn in what seemed like a week, and faced the crossroads.

A horrific sight awaited Simon Coffrett at the entrance to the fair. In the streets beyond, figures lurched and staggered. Some crawled.

By the old watering trough under the hawthorn near the front of the lot, a cluster of adults and one girl waited.

"
What have you done?
" demanded Mr. Swifte, towering over everyone else.

Simon curled his fingers around the smudges of ash in his palm. "Wait and see."

"I'll have you know Natalie Minks is on her way to the crossroads," Tom Guyot said quietly. "If anything happens to that girl, Simon, I'll be knocking on your door."

Simon Coffrett smiled a terrible, sad smile that made even Tom's heart sink. "Everything is going to happen to that girl, Tom. You know as well as I do. It isn't anything I have the power to stop."

Old Tom didn't answer, only turned and struck off after Natalie's tire marks. Chester Teufels emerged from the shadows and fell into step beside him as he walked.

"Why?" Everyone turned to look at Miranda Porter as she stepped timidly to the front of the little group. "What's going to happen to Natalie?"

"All, Miranda....So much, I can't see the extent of it. This is..." Simon waved a hand as if to dismiss the fair, the gingerfoot, and whatever was happening to Natalie on her way to the crossroads as so much nothing.

"But
why?
"

"Because the place at the center is hers by birthright. You know what a birthright is? It's an inheritance." He glanced up at the people behind her: Edgar Tilden, Lester Finch, Christopher Swifte, Wiley Maliverny ... the dozens of townspeople lurching and helpless in the streets of Arcane. "You all know what that means. Dr. Fitzwater knew it weeks ago. Annie Minks was sick before this mess began. Natalie has begun to
see.
The
phantasmata
are already passing to her. It will be her fight, and make no mistake,
this
is not even the beginning of the fight I mean."

"If she makes it through tonight," Mr. Tilden said coldly. "There's no birthright to guarantee that."

"No, there isn't. That depends entirely on her. But this much is certain:
things are in motion.
"

"She'll do it," Tom shouted from a little ways down the road. "And not because of any old birthright! Ain't nobody braver in this town than that girl!"

"Wait and see," Simon murmured.

If there was anything Natalie didn't feel at that moment, it was brave. In fact, she thought she might be sick.

A little blue-flamed fire burned where the two roads met. She swung down from the bicycle. A man she had never seen before stepped forward. The crickets stopped
singing suddenly, as if they had never existed in the first place. Natalie knew she was looking at the Devil.

"Hello, Natalie Minks."

Her own name, spoken in that voice, made Natalie stop dead in her tracks. Goose flesh spread over her sweaty skin in cold waves, making her shiver hard. She didn't look up, only reached her shaking hand to unbuckle the basket in which she had imprisoned the automata. Her heart pounded; she hadn't spared a thought for them since turning off the road. What if they had fallen out? What if they had gotten away?

"That's a charming bicycle."

The clockwork things moved restlessly as she took them out.
One ... two ... three ... four...

"And it certainly does get some speed."

The Amber Therapy Chamber came to a screeching stop a few yards from the fire. Jagged shadows cast by the sparking chamber and the blue fire painted the crossroads in even odder shapes. Natalie held the clockwork figures tight. This wasn't going to be easy. Fear lumbered up and down her spine. She forced herself to remember why she was here.
To save Mama. To save Charlie. To save everyone.

"Would you like to have the fastest bicycle there is? Ever will be?" The Devil smiled charmingly, blue flames reflecting in his eyes and making them disappear. "Let me have that bicycle, let me have one little spin about on it. When you take it back from me, it will fly."

One by one the Four climbed down from the glass chamber. The automata lurched in her arms. It was not
that she had any desire to agree to what the creature across the flames was offering, but she didn't know how to begin to refuse. For a moment she could only think that this was unfair, that she was just a little girl, that no one could expect a little girl to stand up to the Devil.

Then, for a moment, she forgot the Devil was there. If anyone else had called her
just a little girl,
she would've given them an earful.