The Boneshaker (33 page)

She was riding, really riding.

Natalie let out a scream of joy, of relief, of escape as she swooped past the Four with their lamps. Her triumphant shout became a laugh at their stunned faces as she zoomed away down Heartwood Street toward the center of town.

"Look at that Natalie go," Tom said. "Good girl." He allowed himself a rusty chuckle as the Four broke into a run toward the fair.

"Tom," Miranda said, clutching at his sleeve, "they're still coming!"

"They won't want nothing with us. It's Natalie who's got what they want, and they can't afford to let her get away." He sighed and turned away from the four angry Paragons and called into the dark. "All right, now, you old buckra, show your face."

The Four sprinted right past them and disappeared into the dark of the fair with the Amazing Quinn zipping across the wires overhead. Miranda ducked behind Tom, but the old guitar player only shouted again into the night.

"Come on out, I say! It's time!"

Miranda squinted. "Who are you talking—"

"Don't tease." The voice that came out of the shadows was tired. "I'm old. I don't know how to joke anymore."

"Well, that ain't true. I heard you laugh good and hard just the other day." Tom smiled at the creature—half railway hobo and half dead man—all wrapped up in a threadbare suit, who hobbled into the dim light that spilled from the fair. Miranda's eyes opened wide.

"It felt good to laugh," said Chester Teufels.

"Well, old conjurer," Tom said, clapping him on the shoulder, "it might be that this child's ready to settle things up."

"Mr. Teufels?" Miranda stared at the little old man. "
You're
the demon?" She turned to Tom. "The demon who wanted you to choose your favor? He's the one who followed you around for so many years like a ... like a
lawyer,
Natalie said?"

Mr. Teufels frowned at her and looked down at his rumpled suit. "I clean up just fine, young lady, when I want to."

Natalie saw the first victim of the gingerfoot before she reached the water tower at the corner of Heartwood and Bard. She spotted him the second she switched on the chrome light between the bicycle's handlebars: Tyler Marsh, the groom who worked at Ogle's Livery Stable, dragging himself along by kicking one leg awkwardly out in front of him, and then kicking the second after it. Even in the bright glow from the bicycle's lamp, it was impossible to tell whether the expression on his face was pain or frustration before he passed out of view.

For just a moment, almost overcome with fear at the sight of what the gingerfoot was capable of, Natalie thought about turning left, away from the crossroads and toward home. She pictured the big light over the doors of the bicycle shop glowing. Just beyond that, the windows of her house would be flickering warmly, the porch smelling of the miraculously unburned chocolate cake. What if she just stopped there? Her father would be able to break these pathetic little machines. Her father would...

If she went home, she would find her mother and her brother with the gingerfoot.

The thought made her sway on the bicycle, and for a moment her feet fumbled on the pedals almost as if she had it, too, this horrible sickness that made you forget how your limbs were meant to move.

She pictured her brother, flailing in the middle of the
street like Tyler Marsh. For all she knew, even her father, made a believer by his wife's quick recovery, might have taken something. What if he had gone suddenly immobile in his workshop with a wrench dangling uselessly in his fingers? She imagined her mother, stricken suddenly in the middle of cooking supper, unable to save even a single pork chop as they burned on the stove. Like a Victrola record played to the end and forgotten, the needle skipping endlessly, helplessly, against the spindle.

Her mother, reduced to a human-shaped machine, helpless and haunted—it was this image that finally jerked Natalie back to herself. She forced her body straight and her legs into rhythm.

They were counting on her.

There was only one way to do this. She couldn't lose her lead, not now, when she still had so far to go. She put all thoughts of home out of her mind, steered for the center of town, and kept pedaling.

Tyler Marsh had it better than the next one she passed: Miss Tillerman, who at first looked merely drunk as she stood wobbling in the middle of Bard Street. Then Natalie realized with a twinge that Miss Tillerman couldn't move. She had lost control of her body completely, like clockwork winding down, helpless until someone took pity and wound it again.

When she saw the third one as she zipped between the general store and the saloon, she almost lost control of the bicycle and nearly ran the poor soul over. It was a woman, and Natalie almost didn't see her because she was dragging herself across the street on her belly.

It was horribly familiar, that image, and it only took Natalie a second to understand why. It was the same way the little Nervine automaton had dragged itself across the floor of Dr. Limberleg's wagon.
It might or might not move,
Limberleg had said when he described the gingerfoot's effect on a body,
but if it does, it does not move on any command the soul inside it gives.

The townspeople were turning into automata, without gears or keys, but automata nonetheless. Puppets. She shuddered.

Then the line of pearl buttons down the woman's back caught the light, and Natalie recognized the thing in the dirt as Mrs. Byron. Tears reflected wetly on the old woman's face as she dug reluctant hands into the ground—trying to move her own body or trying to hold it still, Natalie couldn't tell.
I should stop. I should help her get where she's going,
she thought miserably. In her basket, the miniature Paragons shifted restlessly. Natalie kept pedaling.

She passed others. She forced herself onward.

It had just begun to feel possible that she might reach the crossroads without incident when a sudden swoop of wind made her glance over her shoulder. She almost lost control of the bicycle again.

The Four were coming.

Behind her, at the far end of the street, a mass of sparks barreled down the road. It was something halfway between a greenhouse and a light bulb that cast strange, fractured light through old, bubble-pocked glass panes; frantic light that glinted on big brass wheels.

They were chasing her in the Amber Therapy Chamber, propelled by those huge high-wheelers. They were gaining fast.

Flapping canvas and splintered stakes marked the route the Amber Therapy Chamber had cut through the fair. Jack the drifter ambled down the center of it with the air of a man strolling along a broad country lane, light leaking through the punched-tin lantern over his shoulder and carpetbag swinging jauntily in one fist. He inhaled with gusto, as if taking in sea breezes rather than dust and the smell of cold frying grease.

Somewhere near the middle he stopped to examine something partly hidden under a pile of collapsed canvas. After a moment's study he lifted a section of fallen tent and shoved open the door underneath.

He picked his way into the wagon, treading carefully through the clutter on the floor: a jumble of mechanical toys, shattered ceramic fingers, and cogs and flywheels from smashed antique engines. When his pale eyes had adjusted to the dark, he saw what he had come looking for on the far side of the room, mostly hidden under a toppled dentist's chair: a pair of scuffed shoes at the end of two half-buried legs.

Natalie cycled harder, legs spinning so fast she could barely keep them on their pedals. Behind her, the glass room made strange noises as it cut through the night. She ventured another glance.

They had already cut her lead in half, plunging forward in the Amber Therapy Chamber as if it were some kind of nightmarish motorcar. Now she could see it more clearly: Acquetus and Argonault sat on the pedaling apparatuses on either side, the same ones that had powered the circuit when her mother was inside the box. This time Vorticelt turned the hand crank to generate the frightful current coursing through what looked like a thin gray body in a light brown suit—though it was difficult to tell through the thick, discolored glass.

A few moments later, the Four in their glass coach had halved the distance again. Natalie saw Nervine now, crouching on the convex, faceted roof of the chamber, clinging to the brass spire at the top with one hand even as the little lightning bolts shot out of it. The other hand was raised, pointing at her, and sparks flew from his fingers and the spiky ends of his gray hair, making his angry face garish and horrible as he shouted at his colleagues below, urging them on, demanding that they pedal faster, drive the dynamo harder. The little harlequin skittered across the dome, clinging to the brass between the glass panes, then hanging from the curling metal that hung like ivy from the roof edge, now perching for a moment at the very top of the spire like a lookout. The sparking light flashed briefly across its porcelain face, illuminating a web-work of cracks on the surface from when it had tried and failed to catch her with a flying leap.

Natalie pedaled harder. The next time she hazarded a glance, she saw the man in the brown suit give off a shower
of sparks that flitted along the wires hanging over his head. It would kill him, she thought miserably, but then she saw his skeleton show through his skin with the next electric surge. Even through those thick, greenish panes she could see that the skeleton was nothing but a mess of gears and chains.

An image of Vorticelt unloading a cart full of old bicycles and coffin-sized crates flashed through her mind ... a dozen such crates full of thin, pale men in identical brown suits. Natalie shook off the memory. She forced her legs, willed them to fly.

The glass chamber was less than ten yards behind her and closing fast; the crossroads was still at least a mile away. Natalie felt something shift in the basket and reached back to whack her palm on the lid as the half-destroyed buildings on the outskirts of the Old Village began to pass by in the dark.

Then sparks showered down onto her arms; the chamber loomed over her. It drew up alongside the Chesterlane, and Acquetus reached out from his seat, his fingers grazing her collar as his legs pedaled faster than was humanly possible. She flung an elbow back and connected with his arm out of sheer dumb luck.

Three quarters of a mile to go, maybe more.

She felt fingers swipe her shoulder, and more motion in the basket. Panic began to swell in her stomach. She could not outpace them.

Fingers again, this time on the top of her head, trying to catch in her hair. Natalie swerved, silently willing the

Behind her, the glass room made strange noises as it cut through the night.

bicycle to stay upright and biting her lip as she felt a hank of hair tear from her scalp. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the harlequin balancing at the edge of the roof, its small form curled like a cat ready to pounce, holding itself steady as the chamber bounced over the uneven road. It caught her eye. Then the Amazing Quinn actually
smiled,
its painted mask cracking at the lips as the pink mouth formed a ghastly grin full of menace and crumbling porcelain.

It was about to jump.

Jack squatted beside the upended chair and addressed the body beneath it.

"Told you, didn't I? Didn't I say you had this place measured wrong?" He lifted the chair easily with one hand and tossed it aside. It collided with a cabinet full of specimens, sending glass shards and skull fragments spilling everywhere. "Didn't I say that?"

Jake Limberleg's lifeless body sprawled, twisted. His arms lay at strange, improbable angles from his body. His face was mostly covered by a fallen shutter, but the part that could be seen was the same ashy ivory as his gloves ... except for the purple choke marks around his throat. His mouth was twisted in pain.

"Sorry to see you go this way, lad," the drifter muttered. "Wish we could've come to see eye to eye."

He stepped across the corpse and reached for the four little flowerpots in the corner. One by one he flipped them over. His easy grin faded, pale eyes hardening into jagged chunks of emerald.

The clockwork Paragons, of course, were gone.

Jack hissed, a snarl of fury through clenched teeth. He snatched up the one remaining figure: the doctor whose miniature hands in their pearly gloves had stretched over the pots as if conducting the Four with their instruments.

Jake Limberleg's body—his actual body—flung itself upright from under the rubble.

The drifter screamed and fell over backwards. The doctor, or anyhow his hands, with their many-jointed, gear-knuckled digits protruding from the ragged seams of his leather gloves, grabbed for him, arms flailing in from odd, disconnected directions. His lips snarled over broken teeth. His eyes bulged, sightless and red.

Jack scrambled back on his elbows through the wreckage. The demon hands dragged Limberleg's body across the floor after him. Its cracked teeth parted, and a string of strangled noises barely recognizable as words slid out through the contorted lips.

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