PART X
The Clockwork
Court
31
Four days after the Ides of Bestialis
The train journey south brought memories crashing in on Ashiol. He kept flashing back to that day five years ago when he had awoken, still half-drugged, miserable, broken, to find himself in a carriage en route to Diamagne. Three blank-faced lictors had been his only companions, charged with ensuring he arrive alive at his stepfather’s estate. (No, not stepfather; his brother’s estate. Diamagne was dead, there was a letter, but Ashiol had been so caught up in Garnet and his madness that he hadn’t even sent a card of consolation to his mother.) Ashiol had spent most of that journey trying to figure out how to steal one of those axes that the lictors carried, or to escape them long enough to throw himself off the train.
The smell of smoke and steam, the coal dust and the constant noise — rattle bang, rattle bang, rattle bang — were the same. It was even the same f*cking train line. Heading south. He was running away from Garnet again, all over again. Garnet was back from the dead and Ashiol was still running, tail between his legs, choosing some form of survival over doing what he should have done years ago.
He should have put Garnet in the f*cking ground and ensured he stayed there.
Last time, Ashiol had abandoned Heliora, Livilla, Poet, everyone he loved. He had been sick and wounded, empty of his animor, thinking of nothing but how to end it, how to get another drink, how to find some kind of f*cking oblivion. He had told himself he had no choice. The betrayal had been too great.
‘Forgive me,’ Garnet breathed, kissing the marks that the net had burnt into Ashiol’s shoulders, down his back. ‘I was angry.’
Ashiol closed his eyes, feeling the imprint of Garnet’s mouth slowly trailing down his spine. ‘You have to trust me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to take anything from you.’
Last time, Ashiol had been a wreck, powerless, his life at an end. The train journey had represented failure.
This time, he wore a respectable suit and sat in the first-class carriage opposite his cousin, the Duchessa d’Aufleur. Isangell sat upright, formal in her travelling attire, a little suit with a long skirt reaching to her ankles, her blonde bob concealed under a cloche hat.
The blank-faced lictors were the same. There were maids, too, just as blank. Ashiol had never bothered to learn their names. They were interchangeable.
He made occasional attempts at conversation, but Isangell gave only short, clipped answers. She still didn’t trust that he was doing this for her and not some other Ashiol-specific reason; and besides, the very fact that she was travelling so far to find a husband was entirely his fault. He couldn’t blame her for hating him right now.
Garnet’s mouth was in the small of his back now, his hands splayed over Ashiol’s hips. ‘Never again,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’
Ashiol gasped softly at the touching, fingers, mouth, light pressure here, and then there. ‘I always forgive you, bastard,’ he said, and then there were no words, there was just Garnet, mouth, tongue, lips, lick, lick, lick, fingers warm and urgent and everywhere …
When he came it was with a scream, and the pleasure dissolved into something else, something bad and dark and fierce that latched on and ripped him into pieces.
Ashiol blinked, back in the carriage, staring guiltily at Isangell. ‘What did you say?’
She gave him an acid look that said I knew you would be no help whatsoever. ‘Have you ever been to Bazeppe?’
‘No. Mother used to send there for her dresses, or to have Diamagne’s clocks mended, and sometimes she went for … some kind of season? She took Bryn there to find himself a wife. I think she preferred to avoid Aufleur if she could.’
‘Aunt Augusta has good taste. Bazeppe’s costumiers are said to be the best in the world,’ Isangell said primly.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It’s too soon.’
‘I was always going to have to find a husband, Ashiol,’ she said, sounding very much like her mother. ‘Silly to postpone the inevitable.’
‘So what are we looking for?’ he drawled. ‘Some older man who will take the reins of the city from you and tell you not to bother your pretty head? Or a young fop who’ll be so busy trying on apricot cravats and buggering the footmen that he won’t get in your way?’
Isangell stared at him, half-shocked, then burst into peals of laugher. ‘Oh, they both sound such charmers. I’m glad you’re here to put it all into perspective.’
It was late in the day when they arrived at the station just north of the city walls. Isangell stood, pale and swaying as she contemplated what lay ahead of them. Ashiol took her arm.
‘You’re worth more than any of them put together,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Don’t convince yourself otherwise. You’re offering some lucky arsehole the chance of a lifetime.’
She squeezed his hand gratefully and then released it, the mask of formality coming down. ‘Please walk a few steps behind. I don’t want you to spoil my entrance.’
For once, Ashiol did what he was supposed to do.
There was a metallic tinge to the air as they stepped out onto the platform. The city of Bazeppe smelled like coal dust and machinery. Steam swirled around them, thick and masking everything from view.
It cleared to show a retinue of lictors in scarlet and gold livery lined up like toy soldiers on the platform. They saluted as Isangell approached. A gentleman in a bottle-green striped suit and top hat stepped forward to make a formal bow. He had a bristly moustache, and his monocle almost popped out as he straightened.
‘High and brightness, you honour us with your presence. I am Jenkingworth, Minister of Mechanism, and on behalf of the Duc-Elected Henri of Bazeppe, I welcome you to our fair city.’
Isangell bowed her own head graciously. ‘I am glad to be here, Minister.’
The station gates jerked open as if pulled on strings and Minister Jenkingworth led them towards an unlikely contraption. ‘If you would like to take your seat, high and brightness?’
Ashiol reached out a hand to Isangell before she could move. ‘What the saints is that?’ he asked, curbing his tongue against more violent swearing.
Minister Jenkingworth smiled broadly. ‘Why, Seigneur Ducomte, that is an automobile. One of Duc-Elected Henri’s personal fleet, as it happens. His pride and joy. It took a long time to source the racing-green paint, but the effect is rather splendid, don’t you agree?’
‘Isangell,’ Ashiol said in a low voice, ‘you can’t step into some random mechanised cabriolet you know nothing about. It looks dangerous.’
‘Nonsense,’ Isangell said defiantly, and allowed the Minister to hand her into the machine. ‘We don’t want to insult Duc-Elected Henri,’ she added, smiling brightly.
Glaring and grumbling, Ashiol followed her. The whole damned city smelled like metal and thunderstorms. The hairs on the back of his neck spiked up and it was all he could do not to snatch Isangell up and abduct her back onto the train and away.
‘What marvellously impressive factories,’ Isangell said as they jerked along in the ‘automobile’, which had a growl like a wounded panther. ‘The smokestacks are so very high.’
‘We pride ourselves on our industry,’ the Minister said, as if it was the culmination of his life’s desires to explain the history of Bazeppe to a pretty young demoiselle. ‘Our clock factory is the finest in the known world.’
‘Goodness,’ said Isangell, while Ashiol muttered darkly to himself and tuned out the educational ramblings.
The lands around the city were flat enough that you could see much further than you could from the shambling urban hills of Aufleur. The buildings were taller, for the most part, and there was a pale greyness to them. Steam was everywhere: funnelling out of factory stacks, rising from the urban outline and clouding the air around them.
Ashiol roused himself long enough to hear Minister Jenkingworth promise Isangell something called a ‘princessa clock’, which was apparently all the rage with the demoiselles this year.
Isangell demurred and told him that clockwork mechanisms were considered unlucky within the city bounds of Aufleur.
‘Good gracious, how do you live?’ the Minister said in surprise. ‘No, no, I’m sorry, that was dreadfully rude. Religious compunctions are the backbone of society, of course.’
Ashiol could not help but be reminded of the endless tick, tick, tick of his stepfather’s clock collection. Diamagne would have loved this fellow.
After a circuitous route designed to show Isangell the glories of the city, with Ashiol gritting his teeth at every bump and jolt in the road, they arrived at a wide tree-lined avenue leading up to a grand Palazzo. There were statues everywhere: along the road, and the stone edgings of the Palazzo, and overlooking them from the roof. They all gleamed metallically in the wintry sunshine.
Finally the f*cking inhuman rattletrap juddered to a halt, almost flinging them out in the process, and Ashiol could breathe again. He stepped out, and allowed Minister Jenkingworth to help Isangell, relinquishing his own role as consort with a combination of resentment and guilty relief.
As they walked towards the Palazzo, every statue came to life, saluting in jerky, automated fashion. Ashiol jumped and swore, while the Minister blithely pretended he hadn’t heard the stream of profanity. F*cker.
‘Don’t mind our saints,’ he said, leading Isangell forward. ‘They don’t bite, ha-ha, though you wouldn’t want them to, would you. Don’t fancy a pair of bronze choppers sinking into your leg.’
Bronze. The statues — the saints — were bronze, but articulated: an army of clockwork men with faces as flat and emotionless as those of Isangell’s maids and lictors. Ashiol was so busy staring at them, he almost missed the appearance of Duc-Elected Henri, who emerged from the large doors to hold out both his hands to Isangell. He was every bit as sartorially splendid as the Minister of Mechanism, in a bright purple coat and red boots, and both his moustache and beard rivalled Minister Jenkingworth’s for bushiness.
‘My dear demoiselle Duchessa, how splendid, how lovely, what roses you have in your cheeks, I had no idea what a tulip you are, the very pink of health, excellent, excellent …’ The man appeared never to breathe between words, let alone sentences. He turned on Ashiol with the same degree of gush. ‘My word, Ducomte Ashiol, is it, I know your mother well, excellent madame, such impeccable taste, the most educational dinner conversation, quite an elegante, we do miss her these days, you must give her my very best wishes, very best.’
They were ushered into the main foyer, through doors that steamed and hissed as they opend and closed.
‘Automation — a curse and a blessing,’ Duc-Elected Henri said gaily. ‘The entire mechanism broke down once and we had to go in and out of windows for a week; rather bracing but hard on the knees, don’t you know.’
Automation. It was everywhere. The Palazzo gulped and spat steam and smoke like it was some sort of mad, hissing dragon creature. The cats inside Ashiol wanted to run away, but he had to stay at Isangell’s side, had to prove to himself that he was here for a reason. That he hadn’t fled Aufleur like a coward.
This is where I am meant to be. I owe her this much.
The taste of iron clung to the back of his throat, but he forced himself to accept port from Duc-Elected Henri and, if not to make polite conversation, at least to glower in the corner with a semblance of civilisation.
‘I am delighted, beyond delighted, terribly honoured, that you have chosen to seek a consort among our humble people,’ Henri was saying, so earnest and polite that Ashiol entertained himself by wondering what noises the Duc-Elected would make if all his fingers happened to get broken, one by one, in some kind of dreadful accident.
‘It seemed a politic choice,’ said Isangell. ‘Our own city is so inward looking, with the Great Families dancing around each other in the hope of some slight crumbs of power. I do not want a husband whose agenda is separate from my own.’
‘Quite wise, quite wise,’ said Duc-Elected Henri, his head bobbing with enthusiasm. ‘We have a small reception for you this evening, discreet, merely a few notables who wish to make your acquaintance, some refreshments. I trust you are not too tired from your journey to attend?’
‘Nothing would give us greater pleasure,’ said Isangell.
Ashiol, naturally, was not consulted. Silence seemed appropriate, especially if kidnapping Isangell and taking her home weren’t an option.
‘Marvellous,’ said Duc-Elected Henri, and laughed merrily as a huge clock in the corner exploded with noise to chime the hour. Echoes were heard throughout the Palazzo. There were clocks everywhere, ticking, chiming, so f*cking delighted to be in synchronisation with each other.
Isangell smiled politely.
Ashiol estimated the measurements of the windows, in order to determine which would be easiest to jump out of.