every note to fly free, and it brought a quiet tear to one eye.
“That was perfect,” Simon breathed. “Can you sing, Gavin?”
“Yes.”
“Sing something for me, then. Your favorite song.”
“ ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies,’ ” Gavin said. He raised his fiddle for accompaniment and sang.
Alice stared. She had never heard Gavin sing. His light, clear voice arrested her. His white-blond hair shone in the bright electric light, and his lithe body moved with the fiddle. He played and sang with his entire soul, and Alice wanted to get up and dance.
Gavin’s voice and fiddle tugged at Alice. They sang of adventure, of new places, of casting off rules and conventions. In that moment, she would have followed Gavin anywhere. Dr. Clef had abandoned his work and was now sitting at Gavin’s feet like a small child. Gavin’s blue eyes met Alice’s brown ones, and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to.
The song ended. Dr. Clef jerked as if he had been slapped awake. Simon applauded. Phipps stood nearby with her arms crossed, expression unreadable. Alice spun sideways on the stool, face flushed.
“Marvelous!” Simon said. “Worthy of a concert hall.”
“Not the first time someone has told me that, actually,” Gavin said with a wry smile. He tried to catch Alice’s eye, but she didn’t dare meet that gaze. “You still haven’t explained why this is worth something to you.”
Dr. Clef crept back to his table and set back to work, one eye still on Gavin.
“One last question before I answer.” Simon turned back to the piano. “What kind of interval is this?”
He played it, and Dr. Clef yelled. Alice twisted on her stool in alarm. The clockworker clapped both hands over his ears and yelled and yelled. Lieutenant Phipps was instantly by his side. She touched his cheek with her mechanical hand, and he calmed.
“I’m sorry, Doctor Clef,” Simon said. “I forgot you were in the room.”
“What was that all about?” Alice demanded. She was still half-ready to run for the door.
Gavin grimaced. “I don’t know the name of the interval, but no song I know uses it.”
“A tritone,” Alice put in. “The Devil’s Interval. The one you asked me to play during the zombie attack.”
“Exactly.” Simon closed the piano lid. “And it all comes back to clockworkers. They love music. They can even be entranced or hypnotized by an exceedingly well-played song, the more complicated the better, as Doctor Clef demonstrated. So you can see why someone who can sing and play like you do, Gavin, would be a tremendous asset to a group that collects clockworkers.”
“Why tritones?” Alice asked. “We used one during the zombie attack, but no one would explain why it worked.”
“They are horrible,” Dr. Clef muttered.
“Most clockworkers experience actual pain when they hear a tritone,” Simon explained. “The instrument you repaired during the zombie attack was designed to play music especially loudly, and you saw the impact a loud tritone had on that clockworker.”
“In addition,” Phipps added, “it’s important to understand that all musical intervals can be expressed as numbers, determined by the frequency ratio.”
“Frequency ratio?” Gavin said.
“In simple terms,” Simon said, “when an object such as a string of a certain length vibrates at a certain speed to create a certain sound, it produces a certain number of cycles-a measurement of sonic energy. If you compare that string with another string vibrating at a different speed, you get a ratio. Perhaps one string produces three cycles each time the other produces two cycles, giving us a ratio of three to two. That particular ratio, incidentally, makes the sound of a perfect fifth. Two strings vibrating at a ratio of two to one will give us an octave.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with clockworkers finding tritones painful,” Alice said.
“The frequency ratio of a perfect tritone does not exist,” Simon said. “In mathematical terms, the ratio of a tritone is one to the square root of two.” Dr. Clef shuddered at his table.
“The square root of two?” Alice repeated. “But that can’t exist.”
“That’s what I just said. The square root of two is an irrational number. On the one hand, it must exist-we can see it in a right triangle. We can hear it in the frequency ratio of a tritone. But on the other hand, no two identical rational numbers will multiply together to make two. The square root of two can’t exist, and yet it does. Irrational. We think this is why tritones bother clockworkers so much. They sense aspects of the universe that normal people can’t, and the paradox created by that irrational frequency ratio causes them distress.”
“And that’s why the symbol of the Third Ward is the square root of two,” Phipps said. “We shouldn’t exist, but we do. Which brings me to our next point. Gavin Ennock, you have a musical talent that would be very useful to the Third Ward. I would like to officially offer you a position as an agent. Will you accept?”
“Yes,” Gavin said instantly.
Phipps nodded, though her expression didn’t change. “And Alice Michaels, you have a talent for assembling and using clockworker technology, one never before seen. This would also be extremely useful to the Third Ward. Will you accept a position as an agent?”
Alice looked at Gavin’s expectant face, then at Phipps’s impassive one.
“No,” she said.
“No?” Gavin said. “Al-Miss Michaels! Why not?”
“I don’t wish to discuss it, Mr. Ennock,” Alice replied primly. “But I do wish to leave. Now.”
Phipps’s expression remained neutral. “If you like. But first I have to perform a quick procedure.”
She drew a strange-looking pistol, and Alice pulled back with a hiss. “What on earth?”
“This is not a weapon, Miss Michaels.” Phipps unwound a cable from the stock and plugged it into a receptacle in her own forearm. A high-pitched whine grated in Alice’s ears just as Phipps pulled the trigger, and Alice was half-blinded by a dazzling pattern of color. She rubbed at her eyes, trying to regain her vision.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“Another clockworker invention,” Phipps said. “As I understand it, the light patterns disrupt the connections between the portion of your brain that stores recent memory and the portion that controls speech. In other words, you won’t be able to talk about anything that has happened in the last two hours, more or less. It’s standard practice for all those who see our installation but aren’t part of the Third Ward. Simon will see you out. Gavin will, of course, stay here to begin his training immediately.”
And she turned her back on Alice to talk to Gavin. Alice left the room, leaving Simon to scramble after her. She kept an icy silence all the way up the elevator, out the main doors, and to the main gates, where Simon hailed a cab for her.
“Can you tell me why, Miss Michaels?” he asked, dark eyes almost pleading.
“I’m late for luncheon with my fiance, Mr. d’Arco,” Alice said. “Good day.”
And she was gone.
Chapter Nine
