The Clockwork Wolf (11 page)

That would draw too much attention. “No, put me on the lift—and don't drop me.”

He patted my hand. “Not a chance, love.”

The box, meant to transport items to the basement level, creaked a little as Docket wheeled me inside. I looked at him through the cage he lowered and crossed my fingers and my toes.

“Set that pulley brake when it stops,” he said, nodding to a lever to one side of me. “Else someone might bring it up while we're off ogling the dead.”

I nodded, and winced as he released the pulley ropes and began lowering me down. The lift worked like a gigantic dumbwaiter, and as I descended into the shaft the light from the hall disappeared. I'd never been afraid of the dark, but suddenly I realized what the lift was really used for—moving dead bodies down to the morgue.

The box round me shuddered and landed with a heavy thump, jolting me to one side. I set the brake, and wheeled myself over to the cage panel to raise it.

“Oy.” Someone beat me to the cage, and jerked it to reveal a blocky man dressed in his shirtsleeves and spattered coveralls. A brass helmet covered his hair, but he lifted its hinged front glassine shield to reveal a very young face with very old eyes. “What you doing on my lift, miss? Someone pull a prank on you?”

“No. Hello.” I wheeled myself out, extended a hand, and beamed up at him. “How do you do? I'm Charmian Kittredge.”

“I don't care if you're the bloody queen of Talia,” he said frankly. “You can't be coming down here like this. Not until you're dead.” He peered at my face. “That'll be awhile, I expect.”

“Your optimism is comforting.” I felt a surge of relief as Docket appeared behind him. “I think I've met your friend, Doc.”

“Dez, there you are.” Docket clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Kit, this is Desmond Holloway, known to one and all as Dez. Dez, my good friend Kit. We've a bit of a favor to ask, old chap.”

Dez looked from Docket to me and back again. “Is she the one they ravaged? What you bring her down here for? They're still laid out on the bloody tables. I haven't even stitched them up yet.”

Docket grimaced. “She needs to have a proper look at them, Dez.”

That request horrified the cutter. “No, she don't. Sodding Christ, Doc,
I
don't want to look at them, not after seeing . . .” Dez shook his head and turned to me. “See here, miss, you can't be down here. I'll take you back upstairs meself. We'll find the physick and he'll give you something, help you sleep. By morning you'll forget all about it—”

“Both men have wounds all over them; deep claw marks and bite marks, broken bones in their faces, fractured ribs, and dislocated joints,” I stated calmly. “One has most of his throat torn out, and the other has a shattered wrist.”

His jaw dropped. “How'd you know all that?”

“I shattered the wrist,” I told him, “and I watched the
rest happen. You let me look at the bodies, and I'll tell you everything I saw them do before they died.”

“But you've already seen them,” Dez countered.

“The outside of them, yes.” I met his gaze. “I need to see the mech that was put
inside
them.”

•   •   •

Dez took charge of my chair while Docket walked ahead of us to hold open the swinging doors. “You ever been in a morgue, miss?”

“A few times.” The smell of preservative, sharp and sickly sweet, was growing stronger. “Why did you take a job as a hospital cutter? Are you hoping to become a surgeon?”

“Cut into live people? I don't fancy that.” He turned a corner. “My da was a butcher, like his da, and his da before him. I only took this job 'cause it pays more, and I don't have to be neat or sell what I cut to no one.”

I tried to appreciate the advantages, ghastly as they were. “But they're people, not cows or pigs or chickens. Doesn't that, ah . . .”

“Bother me? Sure, it did for a long while. Still does, when they send down a little one. But someone's got to look after them, and I don't make a hash of it.” He stopped in front of a set of closely fitted doors. “This is the cutting room.” He handed me a cloth mask that smelled of peppermint. “Tie this over your nose and mouth; it'll help. If you feel sick, tell me. I've plenty of basins.”

Docket opened the doors and Dez wheeled me inside the brightly lit room. Five metal tables, two of them occupied by draped bodies, took up the center area. Each table had a perforated surface elevated over a long, broad
drip basin. There were trays of knives and tools scattered about, as well as some open books displaying anatomical etchings.

I heard something dripping and looked beneath the shrouded bodies; the basins under them were half filled with dark, congealing blood.

Dez went to the nearest body and looked back at me for a long moment before he said to Doc, “Bring her closer.”

Docket wheeled me to the side of the table as Dez pulled down the draping cloth to expose the upper torso of the first Wolfman, which had been cut open from shoulder to shoulder and down to the waist; the skin and muscles were neatly folded back from an apparatus gleaming over the organs and the inner cavity.

The stink of the decaying body turned my stomach, so I pressed the cloth mask over my nose and mouth as I inspected the mech. A fist-sized sphere of riveted brass had been embedded in the breastbone, and layers of it moved in time with a loud ticking. From the sphere it sprang a dozen different geared, jointed shafts. The shafts narrowed as they spread out and disappeared into the arms and lower abdomen. A web of cords, some of them frayed, had been strung along the shafts, and vibrated slightly in time with the sphere.

I frowned. “Why is it ticking like that?”

Docket leaned over to take a better look at the sphere, and then turned his head to listen. “I don't hear nothing, Kit.”

“The other one has the same mech in his chest, but it was smashed.” Dez turned the Wolfman's head and
peeled back a flap of skin. “There's a recess here that goes right to the spine. I found a piece of brass stuck inside.”

He took a pair of tongs and fished a bloody chunk of metal from a dish fastened to the side of the table and held it up. “Looks like part of a key,” I said.

“Aye, to wind up the works, I'll wager.” Docket glanced at me. “You've gone plaster-white, Kit.”

I ignored the acidic roiling in my belly and rolled closer. “Show me the rest of the body.”

“He's naked,” Dez protested. “It ain't decent.”

“Cover up what you think is indecent and let me see the legs,” I said.

Dez hadn't cut open the corpse's lower limbs, and when he drew up the bottom half of the drape I saw they were mostly intact.

“There's something under the skin.” I pointed to a long ridge of bulges running from midthigh to ankle. “More broken bones?”

“Could be a shattered femur, but there's no swelling.” Dez took a long metal pick attached to a handle and probed one of the bulges. “That's metal. Has to be more of the mech.” He put down the probe and reached for a small blade. “Docket, move her out of the way.”

I rolled backward a few feet and watched as Dez cut open the leg, exposing more gears, four interconnected shafts, and cording weaving through all of it.

“How could he live through having so much mech put inside him like this?” I asked.

“He couldn't. The metal alone would have turned his blood septic.” Dez used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his upper lip. “It weren't put inside him. Look
at the skin on the legs. There's not a single surgical scar.”

Docket nodded. “And there was no swallowing it, unless it was in bits, and then once inside it all would still have to be fitted together. Although if you did use long probes through some of the other body cavities—”

I recoiled. “Doc.”

“The shafts have welds at the joints. You can't weld a man together from the inside or out.” Dez tossed down the knife and covered up the body. “I've shown you the bodies, Miss Kit. Now you tell me what you saw.”

He listened as I repeated what I had told Doyle. Unlike the inspector, he stopped me to ask very specific questions about the Wolfmen's anatomy. I described everything as best I could, and then lapsed into silence.

The dripping into the basin slowed to a stop before Dez looked over at Docket. “You still on the outs with the city's guild master?”

“I can get a word to him.” Docket eyed the shrouded bodies. “No names in the report, Dez. Once the details get out I expect Bonnie to be all over this.”

They were talking over my head, and I didn't like it. “Would you mind explaining to me what you're saying, because I can't make it out.”

“Take her back now, mate. Good night, Miss Kit.” Dez turned on his heel and left.

As Docket wheeled me out of the room I craned my head up to look at his grim expression. “What was all that about the guild master and no names? Who is this blasted Bonnie?”

“I have to tell the master of the city's magic guild about the mech inside these Wolfmen,” Docket said slowly.
“He'll know if one of his animech mages has wits and the power to have put it inside them. I asked Dez to keep our names out of his report because if he doesn't, you and I will be summoned by Bonnie—the Bureau of Native Affairs—to be questioned during the tribal inquest.”

As he stopped at the lift I sat back. “I still don't understand. How could a mage put mech inside men that turns them into beasts, and why would the natives be involved?”

“The mech inside those poor blighters made them strong, and the only way it could have been put there was by the dark arts,” he said. “But another kind of magic was used, too. The kind that turns men into beasts, Kit. The kind of magic only native shamans know how to use.”

My surreptitious trip to the morgue earned me a sound scolding from the ward sister once she'd ordered Docket to leave the facility and return only when he'd regained his sanity. I meekly accepted every stern word as she checked my bandages and helped me into bed.

I would have apologized, too, but my temporary escape had left me exhausted, and I fell asleep just as the sister was trying to decide if she should put me in restraints or have me transferred to the local loony bin where she suspected the rest of my relations surely must be residing.

I had troubling dreams of wolves turning into men, and men turning into animech beasts.

I woke briefly when they brought luncheon, some of which a much kinder nurse helped me eat, and then slept through a visit from the physick and the remainder of the day.

I felt much better in body than in spirit when I finally woke and saw Rina dozing in the bedside chair. She was wearing a brand-new gown, of course (Rina had long ago resolved never to wear the same garment twice, and earned more than enough from her pleasure palace to keep that vow), but the prudish style of it was no more Rina than the size of her new and somewhat pendulous
bosom. The staid lace cap and heavily silvered brown wig concealing her angelic golden hair and most of her face completed the costume, and utterly perplexed me.

“Stop staring at me,” she muttered without opening her eyes. “It was the only way I could get in to see you.”

“By dressing like my grandmother?” I lifted my head to peer at the top of her ensemble. “What on earth did you put inside your bodice?”

“I had to be a convincing old lady, didn't I?” She took off the hat, extracted some strategically placed hair grips, and slid off the wig. “Mary Mother, this itches. I hope I never go bald.” She regarded me as she drew off her gloves. “You're the heroine of the hour, or so I hear. Fighting off hordes of monsters in the streets to protect helpless women and innocent babies, are we? What was it, a slow day at the office, or did you just get bored with breathing again?”

“There were only
two
monsters,” I admitted, “and they did the fighting. I was busy crashing into crates and walls and having hysterics.”

She nodded, her expression satisfied. “That sounds more like it. I won't ask you why you were such an idiot as to go after two Wolfmen by yourself because then you'll tell me and I'll want to finish the job.”

“The part about saving the women and children was true,” I offered meekly.

“Twit.” She slapped her gloves against the edge of my bed. “Bloody stupid mule-headed reckless thoughtless blundering cow.”

“Come on, Rina, I can't be a
mule
-headed cow—”

“Shut up.” She rose and began pacing. “I don't need
a friend like you. I've
never
needed you. I'm the richest woman in the province, aren't I? Nearly a hundred gels working for me, and there are twice as many men—some of them bloody important—who would kill for me. Cheerfully. Do you know, I could sell the business tomorrow, buy myself an island, build a bloody grand mansion on it, and have a herd of handsome strapping young chaps feed me grapes and rub my feet for the next fifty years? But no, I'm dressing up like a granny and sneaking past the good sisters to see my friend Kit, the mule-headed cow.” She faced me and put her hands on her hips. “Don't you grin at me like that. I stuffed two butternut squashes in me bodice for you.”

I wisely swallowed a laugh. “And I can never adequately express my gratitude, Carina. Now come and sit down.”

She glared at me for a long moment before she plopped onto the side of the bed next to me. “So they knocked you about, then? That was all?”

“Cut up my back and bottom.” The relief on her face made me ask, “Why were you worried there was more?”

“Felicity and Janice, a couple of my gels, went out for a house call last night. They were coming back when they met up with one of your monsters. It got them both before they could blink. Dragged them into the bushes, knocked them on their backs, bit them and tore at their clothes some, but it didn't kill them.” She met my gaze. “Or the woman they saw it catch after it was done with them.”