Clockwork Heart: Clockwork Love, Book 1 (22 page)

The pause at the end of his speech went on long enough Conny felt he should fill the silence. “But do
you
think I should do it?”

He breathed slowly and carefully as he waited for Johann’s reply. In and out. A conscious act, willfully controlling his breath, yet at its core an involuntary mechanism of the human body. As was the pumping of a heart.

The credo he’d vowed to serve when he took his apprenticeship to study clockwork surgery was to always build clockwork that would serve the body, not supersede it. Was it worth breaking that vow to end the war? To stop his father? To free himself and his mother?

Would Johann still love the man he’d become?

Would he be able to live with himself?

Johann’s first response was a weary sigh that crackled and broke apart in the signal, yet still managed to wrap around Cornelius as warmly as a pair of arms. “I don’t know that I can answer that fairly. I know you want my advice, but I’m not certain it would help you.”

Conny’s flesh heart slowed, constricted and ached in his chest. “Because you don’t want me to. Because you would hate me if I did it, but you know it’s the only way to stop my father.”

The delay was almost nonexistent, meaning Johann must have begun speaking before Conny finished, and his voice crackled not with transmission static but the force of his passion and anger. “
No.
I would never hate you, and I
do
want you to do it. That’s the problem. I can’t advise you because I don’t just want you to install those terrible hearts. I want you to make them all explode. I want to burn down that castle, then find your father’s burned corpse and grind his bones into meal so I can eat them and consume him completely in his defeat like some barbarian warrior. I don’t care if the whole of France falls, so long as you escape whole and safe into my arms. I want anyone in the world who might exploit you like this destroyed so they can’t ever hurt you again.”

Conny cried. He wept as softly as he could, but this ocean wave of feelings rolled in from the depths of him, rousing emotional responses he couldn’t hope to control. Any effort to cling to rational discussion of a grave ethical matter crumbled into the surf of decades’ worth of longing for something he had never allowed himself to acknowledge he so desperately wanted.

That passion and anger was for Conny. Almost a possession, as if he were Johann’s most precious belonging stolen away, and he would lay waste to the world to see his return. No judgment about Conny violating his surgeon’s oath. No condemnation or accusation that here was what Johann had always known Conny would do to him, an act about to be made so much worse than Johann had ever feared. None of this mattered, because all he wanted was Cornelius’s safe return. By any means. At any cost. This ferocity, this consuming demand, this overwhelming instinct to protect—this love.

This
was what Conny wanted more than air. This was what Johann gave him, even from fifteen hundred kilometers away.

“I’m sorry to be so ruthless.” Johann’s voice was still gruff, though tempered now with apology. “It’s why I cannot help you. I have no objectivity. I only want you safe. I love you, Conny.”

“I love you too.” Conny wiped his tears away with his fingers and tried to compose himself. “I don’t want to kill innocent men to be with you. I don’t judge you for having killed as a soldier. I wouldn’t care if you carried out your threat and destroyed the castle, or if you or Master Félix installed those self-destructive hearts. But I don’t know that
I
can do it.” He drew a deep breath and sank into the tide of safety and calm Johann’s passion had aroused. “Yet I will, if you ask it of me. Please, Johann. Tell me what I should do. Please don’t make me be the one to decide. I don’t care if your reasoning is sound or not. I only want you to still love me when this is over.”

“Then I want you to do it. If you can find a way to make sure as few innocents as possible suffer, then do so. But alter the hearts with clean conscience. At least as far as judgment from me. And from all of us.”

It was astonishing how much freedom this permission gave Conny, not only to calm but to
think
more clearly, as if Johann had removed obstructions to a thousand alternate paths. “I could have the transmitter only
slow
soldiers’ hearts. For the generals, it could be a more compelling arrest.” He breathed a sigh. “I’ve installed so many clockwork hearts, darling. They make the pieces at my direction, and I assemble them until my fingers bleed.”

“So there are many out there with a transmitter, but no remote control. Yet they won’t know that. You could feint and tell them the ones affected are only a demonstration.” A pause. “You’ve installed them in officers? How many?”

“Only a few, but there are more and more interested, as they see how my patients improve with the clockwork. My father wants one as well. I think he is working up the courage to go under my knife but doesn’t want to admit it.”

“Then there’s your answer. Install the weaponized heart in as many officers as you can, and do whatever you must to get one inside your father. Call back those men you’ve already worked on and offer an upgrade. Can you do something to enhance them further? Make them want new hearts even if they don’t need them?”

Yes, he could, but oh, that felt terrible. But if Johann wanted him to, he’d do it. “I can. I will, for you.”

“Don’t bleed for the officers, Conny. If you know one is a good man, then lie and tell him he’s not a suitable candidate. Encourage your father to only give this upgrade to his closest and most trustworthy officers—that will ensure only those who think torturing your mother is an acceptable plan will end up in our crosshairs.”

That was quite clever, actually, and very helpful. “You’re a fine soldier, Johann. An admirable leader.”

“I’m a crafty pirate who wants his lover back. As soon as possible.”

They spoke a bit longer after that, more tender reconnections and wistful plans for their reunion. They couldn’t linger as long as they’d have liked, because Conny needed to maximize time to conference with Princess Gisa about the specifics for these new hearts. All too soon, Johann surrendered the wireless to her. She had the clipped gruffness of an Austrian, but her French was impeccable, more eloquent and polished than his own.

“Mr. Stevens. How good it is to hear your voice at last. I gather Mr. Berger has effectively eased your conscience regarding our proposed strategy?”

“I believe so. I assume you will send me appropriate instructions for the new transmitters?”

“Mr. Dubois is preparing the code as we speak. You should begin receiving it shortly. I urge you to keep the wireless telephone disconnected but assembled so we may further converse easily should you run into trouble. If someone questions what it is, invent a fiction about something to do with the construction of the hearts.”

“I will do so. Thank you, Princess.”

“We have plans in hand to covertly enter the castle, but we shall await your confirmation that the hearts have been installed in as much of the Army leadership as possible. Do not hurry yourself. Once you convince them they can have the prize you offer, they will delay and possibly alter any other plans in order to slake their greed.” Her voice tempered, less imperial though still bearing velvet strength. “Do not worry for your mother. I am personally acquainted with Miss Clarke. Not as well as you are, I acknowledge, but I recognize a woman of strength when I meet one. I also know how much she loves you, despite her frequent absence in your life. She would gladly bear any pain to keep you safe. And if they harm her body, you will make her beautiful clockwork when this is over. She will be the envy of Europe for her distinctive elegance and proof of the strength of her spirit.”

Conny could not help but smile. “Princess Gisa, I didn’t know I could have so much affection for Austrian spirit until I met you and Johann.”

“And I have learned to appreciate the aesthetic and grace of the French. The world is a better place when we carry empathy. And an electric parasol.”

Conny blinked. “An electric parasol?”

“I will send you this schematic as well. I’m certain you will find it stimulating.”

When Conny finally went to bed that night, after speaking briefly with a tearful Val and an encouraging Félix, he slept deeply and peacefully, his dreams full of clockwork women flying about the clouds with electrified umbrellas. When he rose, he fell to his work, absorbing Gisa’s schematics for the new transmitter, and set his assistants working double-time to create them. He read her notes on the electric parasol too, with a thoughtful expression and his eyebrows raised.

He incorporated
them
into the design he’d begun for his father’s heart, letting his hands dissolve into the flow of work while he contemplated the best way to convince his father to go under his knife.

Chapter Seventeen

Joha
nn understood Conny needed time to install transmitter-enabled hearts in as much of the French Army command as possible, and that the Society needed to fully coordinate its behind-the-scenes work to establish peace after what they hoped would be Archduke Guillory’s surrender. Princess Gisa had been adamant that simply defeating him would create a power vacuum too easily filled by other war-minded leaders. The Society was far-reaching and diverse in its membership, including a number of men and women of influence, and there was still much discussion to be had over their secret network. Yet Johann couldn’t help thinking every day gave the French more opportunity to learn about their plans and put Cornelius in greater danger.

It helped that he could dispel his fears with daily conversations with Conny. They spoke rarely on the wireless telephone, relying instead on the coded transmitter. It was cumbersome, but it was safer than risking someone hearing Conny engaged in conversation when by rights he should have been alone. This signal, Gisa assured him, was isolated now between the castle keep and the
Farthing
, and so Johann did not hold himself back when professing his love of Cornelius and his determination to reunite the two of them.

I will make love to you for seven days straight once I have you in my arms again. I won’t take you out to let you indulge your exhibitionism either. I will keep you all to myself until you’re so sated all you’ll be able to do is lie in bed and breathe.

I look forward to my forthcoming exhaustion, my love.

Val was quite a comfort too. He spoke with derision as he always had, but it was all teasing now, designed to keep him distracted as they waited to act. Sometimes they drank together, and during those times Val wept with him, alternating between fretting over Conny’s safety and vowing ferociously they would get him back if they had to climb the mountains alone.

When the day finally arrived for
The Brass Farthing
to lead the Society to Liberate Europe into its best hope to end the war, Johann thought his pent-up yearning to damn their plans and go rescue his lover could possibly fill the balloon and carry them over the Alps with a single sigh from his clockwork-assisted lungs. They flew over Austrian and Italian airspace as much as they could, and once they entered French territory, Crawley ordered them into their oxygen masks and had them sail high into the atmosphere.

Félix and Gisa had designed the breathing apparatus and assured them it was perfectly safe at their altitude for the short flight to the castle, so long as they had an oxygen assist, but Johann couldn’t help being nervous at being so incredibly high from the ground. He’d heard stories of men passing out and dying at high altitude, and one tale of a man who had practically imploded. Valentin seemed uneasy as well, though Johann couldn’t be sure if this was because he feared the dangers of high altitude, because he was too conscious of the perils awaiting them, or because of some unknown and inexplicable reason only Val could invent.

They had used Conny’s transmitter to locate the castle, and when the keep Gisa insisted the signal came from appeared in Heng’s spyglass, they landed the
Farthing
in the forest and prepared to cover the remainder of the distance on foot. As they made their way along the edge of the woods, the princess fell in beside Johann. She had shed her elegant clockwork dress in favor of a more serviceable pair of trousers and leather bodice reinforced with steel plates over her white blouse, but she still had her electronic cuffs, waistband and her parasol.

“It’s time to arm your own electronic apparatus, Mr. Berger. Do you remember the settings?”

He nodded and demonstrated his knowledge of the knobs and dials she’d installed on him. Félix had made minor improvements to his clockwork when restoring it after the attack, but Princess Gisa had for all intents and purposes turned his left arm and right wrist plating into some mad kind of electronic pistol. The grounding wire and the shielding ensured he only electrocuted others, not himself. The ejection mechanism for the slim rods could extend from his wrists and send a significant burst of voltage into his victim, a trick similar to Gisa’s deadly parasol. And of course there was the last, most stunning and powerful setting, which he could only use once: the electric fingers. With a push of a button, he could send high voltage up to fifteen feet away, shooting in five arcs from the housing. It would fell his enemy, but it would also burn out the apparatus and damage some of his permanent clockwork.

Gisa listened patiently through his recitation of how to use his weapons, nodding approval as he finished. “Well done. As much as you are able, refrain from using the electricity. If you run out of charge, you will not be able to refresh it until we return to the airship. I suspect Mr. Stevens will have ideas on how I can loop the electricity to be powered by your heart and not damage your circuits, but of course that must wait for another day.”

It was Johann’s fondest hope he’d never have cause to weaponize his body parts again. “How will we enter the castle?”

“Through the sewers. This is an old keep, and the drainage and water-carrying systems are large enough for us to walk through in most places and are accessible by crawling through the rest. They will no doubt have a few token guards on duty there, but if we subdue them before they sound an alarm, we shall have full access to the dungeon levels of the castle. Freeing Miss Clarke is our first priority, which makes that access point doubly convenient.”

Johann didn’t like that they were saving Conny to rescue
second
. “Won’t freeing her alert them and put a lockdown on Cornelius?”

“Freeing her removes their leverage over Mr. Stevens, and he isn’t without resources to fight back. My only concern is that he will need to deploy the heart transmitters before we can negotiate a surrender. It will be a much more prolonged siege if he must act out of turn.”

She spoke so calmly about invading the command center of the French Empire and negotiating what would essentially be a major act of treason. Johann envied her self-assurance. “What will happen if we succeed? What will Vienna do?”

“The emperor and every male member of the Austrian ruling class will likely need one of Mr. Stevens’s non-weaponized clockwork hearts after finding out what we’ve done. They’ll be furious with me and tell me how I’ve betrayed my country. They’ll do their best to take their fury out on you, I’m afraid. You’ll want to ask your pirates to keep you well out of Austria’s reach until matters have settled. But they’ll also be reckoning with the Society, who are preparing even now to go public and work to maintain the peace our blow today should realize. I look forward to this, as I know neither France nor Austria has any concept of how many of their citizens, particularly the nobility and economic elite, have no stomach for these prolonged conflicts. Europe is ready for peace and prosperity, and the Society shall lead us to that destiny.”

She spoke with so much passion and quiet conviction she managed to make even Johann’s jaded heart lighten. “Austria would be well-served to have you among its leaders, Princess.”

She waved this idea away with a gloved hand. “I considered leadership, but I find it too pedantic and shortsighted. Revolution is far more to my liking.”

As they approached the back of the castle and the entrance to the drainage corridors, they went quiet. There were indeed two guards at the entrance, looking bored and half-asleep. Olivia and Heng aimed crossbows at the men and took them down with only the
snick
of the mechanisms’ release and the muffled tumble of two bodies to the ground. The men were not dead—this had been decided by careful debate, which had been settled when Félix said he could easily tip the arrows with a swift-acting paralytic. This meant they spared several minutes binding and gagging the wide-eyed soldiers before they entered the castle, but it also meant they had not yet taken the lives of any men whose only crime was following orders.

Johann found, as he passed the men to crawl awkwardly through the opened grate, he appreciated the gesture more than he’d anticipated.

The drainage passages were damp, slippery and stank of refuse, but within fifteen feet they were indeed able to stand and sometimes able to walk along raised brick access paths. Félix and Johann had the most trouble navigating themselves, Félix because of, as he put it, his “damnable knees”, Johann because his clockwork legs decidedly did not care for sloshing through sewage and because he was petrified of stumbling into it face-first and ruining his electronics. When they finally made it out of the passages and into the relative dry of the dungeon level, he exhaled in relief as Félix double-checked his limbs to assure they had indeed survived the wet. While he and Princess Gisa fine-tuned him, Crawley, Heng and Olivia scouted the level.

“Only a handful of guards. If we divide up and use more of Félix’s paralytic, we should have no trouble.” He touched his ear, to the small wireless transmitter the princess had built for him and each one of them. “Will we be able to communicate with these?”

Gisa shook her head. “The walls are too thick. We must rely on planning and visual signals until we rise to a higher level of the keep.”

Johann’s clockwork heart didn’t alter its beats as he crept with Molly down a passage to the pair of guards they’d been assigned to stun, but his body filled with adrenaline all the same. It was easy enough to aim and shoot Félix’s paralytic, but with all the guards so close to one another, once they began to fall, they noticed each other’s struggles and shouted out. Fortunately the same thick walls that prohibited their transmitters also muffled the guards’ calls for aid, and soon one of the dungeon cells was full of paralyzed, bound and gagged French soldiers. Now all they had to do was free Conny’s mother, and they could make their way through the castle to Cornelius himself.

They found Elizabeth’s cell easily enough—she was the only prisoner in the dungeon, and she was easily visible by the central location where Heng, Olivia and Gisa had felled four of the guards. As they approached her, she lay still and silent on her pile of dirty straw on the farthest side of the room. Johann’s breath caught as he saw the bloodstains on her ragged gown, the cuts and burns along her exposed arms and feet. Her hair had been shorn as well, not shaved but hacked off in cruel, uneven patches. When she continued to remain huddled and shivering, Johann feared they had arrived too late, that the archduke had damaged her spirit beyond recovery.

As Heng struggled with the rusty lock, however, Princess Gisa stood straight at the bars and spoke clearly into the cell. “
Oderunt dum Metuant.
”

The huddled figure stilled, then straightened slightly. She replied in a quiet but steady voice, “
Per Ardua Ad Astra
.” Elizabeth sat up, hissing in her breath and grunting for the effort, but she turned to face the group of them calmly, with a resolve matching and perhaps surpassing the princess. She didn’t smile, but there was an admiration in her gaze as she studied Gisa. “You must be Princess Gisa. But I can’t imagine your compatriots are members of the Society.”

“No, but they will directly be commended for their service. They are companions of your son, here to secure his freedom and aid our effort to end this war.” She stepped to the side and gestured to Félix. “This gentleman, I believe, you know quite intimately.”

Elizabeth’s face transformed to happiness as she stumbled clumsily forward. Heng had the cell door open by this point, allowing her to tumble weeping with joy into Félix’s arms. She spoke animatedly in French. “Darling Félix! But what in the world are you doing here? You’re too old for this kind of adventuring.”

“A fact of which I am well aware, my dear. I’m here entirely for you. We will slip out of the sewers together, and when we’re at the ship, I’ll fix you up properly.”

“You will do no such thing. Since I began feigning a broken spirit, they stopped blindfolding me as they carried me around the castle. I know the layout better than anyone here, and if you have a spare pistol and a knife, I’ll be happy to give back to those who’ve been so generous to me during my incarceration.”

Crawley’s lips flattened as he took in Elizabeth’s battered form. “Yes, love, but can you walk up to them to drive the knife home?”

“I can if Félix builds a support for my leg. And yes, before you ask, we have time enough to linger. They won’t be down here again for hours. I promise you, I’m worth the wait.”

Princess Gisa glanced around the dungeon chamber. “We need something stiff, preferably metal. And twine, or wire.”

Johann gestured to himself. “Can you use something from my clockwork? Perhaps one of the electric rods? She wouldn’t be able to use it as a weapon without the charging unit, but it should do for a leg brace.”

Elizabeth had largely overlooked him until that moment, but she smiled as she regarded him now. “That’s my son’s work, if I’m not mistaken. My, my, aren’t you a dashing figure. If my son isn’t half in love with you, child, I’ll wonder what’s become of him.”

Johann blushed and inclined his head in a shy nod. “He is, and the condition is mutual. Though by much more than half.”

Elizabeth beamed. “Oh, how wonderful. What was your name, darling?”

Princess Gisa waved Johann into silence before he could reply. “Despite Miss Clarke’s insistence we can linger, we aren’t the only intruders converging on the castle. Yes, Johann, I will remove the rod from your left arm. Your right is more stable for extension of the weapon, being still largely flesh and bone, and I can retain the electric fingers in your left even without the rod. I’ll reduce them to a simple stun, however, so that they’re more serviceable.”

Johann did get to tell Elizabeth his name and a bit of how he and Conny had met as Gisa and Félix worked, but soon she was patched up enough they asked her to try out her reinforced leg, and shortly after that they were on their way.

They moved through the castle like ghosts. Once they were on the main floor, the princess announced the transmitters were live, and they broke into teams, speaking low into what Princess Gisa called a micro-phone, listening to each other navigate their way to the third level, which was where Elizabeth believed Cornelius was being held. None of the guards they passed were on high alert, and the ones they had to subdue to pass through an area fell almost too easily.