As Gavin sang for Alice and the boy, a boy who struggled to heal as Gavin himself had done so many weeks ago, something inside him broke, shifted, and re-formed. The plague hurt a great many people, more than just himself, and Gavin, flying high above the earth or wrapped in music, had forgotten that. He pulled out his fiddle to accompany himself for the second verse.
The leering eyes and sticky blood of Madoc Blue faded a little. The sharp memory of Tom Danforth’s lifeless corpse falling from the rigging dulled around the edges. The opaque stone walls that trapped him in Edwina’s tower thinned. And then another memory came back to him. He himself was lying sick in bed, hot with fever. A woman— Ma—bent over him, bathing his face with a cool cloth. A man with pale hair played the fiddle and sang just for Gavin, his voice rich and low and perfect, and Gavin felt better, enveloped in the soft love of both parents.
The memory vanished when the song ended. The boy’s twitching eased. His breathing evened out, and the fever faded. He opened his eyes and looked straight at Gavin for a long moment. A connection between them held for a second that lasted an age, and Gavin felt that the boy somehow understood what had just happened. Then the boy smiled and dropped back into sleep. Tears wet and refreshed Gavin’s cheeks, and he felt both exhausted and exhilarated. The boy’s mother flung her arms around him, weeping with joy, and his father swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. He said something to Alice in a choked voice, and she answered gracefully. They spoke at some length, and Alice nodded.
“What’s going on?” Gavin wiped his own face and put his fiddle away as the father padded quickly out of the room.
“He knows of someone else who has the plague,” Alice said. “Do you think I should refuse?”
Gavin put a hand on her shoulder. “I never wanted you to stop helping, Alice,” he said. “I just don’t want you to get hurt because you don’t know when to stop. Look at you—you didn’t even take a wrap, and you’re shivering.”
Even though she didn’t speak English, the mother seemed to notice the same thing and with a firm gesture that she was to keep it, gave Alice a quilt to pull around herself. Alice accepted.
“You have to watch yourself,” Gavin added, “or I’ll tell Kemp on you.”
Alice gave a little bark of laughter at that. “Then come with me.”
“Anywhere. You know that.”
The father returned, dressed, and led Alice and Gavin outside to another house, where two adult brothers were down with the plague. Alice, the quilt still pulled around her, cured both of them while Gavin played, and one of them begged Alice to go to his niece’s house. Along the way, they encountered a pair of plague zombies rooting through a rubbish heap, and Alice swiped at them as well. At the niece’s house, Gavin stopped Alice and demanded that she be given food and drink, which the newly cured niece was happy to give before asking Alice to visit yet another house. And so it continued. As the night wore on, Alice hurried from home to home under cover of darkness, her quilt drawn around her like a cloak while she cured a number of people with the clockwork plague, and each one seemed to know someone else who was sick. The chain of people took them all through Luxembourg, to homes rich and poor, lonely and crowded, wood and stone. Gavin made sure Alice was given a bite to eat and a sip to drink in every household. Alice cured priests and drunkards, bankers and thieves, doctors and patients. Some offered money, always hesitantly, as if they might offend. Alice tried to turn them down, but Gavin stepped in and accepted.
“If they can spare it, we can take it,” he said, fiddle in hand.
“I won’t turn down someone who can’t—”
“Of course not,” Gavin said. “But even saints have to eat. And get to China.”
When dawn checkered the eastern sky, they left the final house. The air was crisp and clean and bright. Morning noises—horse traffic, food sellers, factory whistles, doors opening and closing, people shouting and talking—filled the street. Housewives and storekeepers swept the cobblestones in front of their homes and shops. Gavin noticed with a start that Alice was pale and shaky from the slow but steady blood loss, and she kept the quilt wrapped tightly around her body and head. Gavin himself didn’t feel tired in the least—clockworkers entering the later stage of the plague often went days without sleep—and he mentally kicked himself for not remembering earlier that Alice did need rest, especially after everything she’d been doing.
He flagged down a cab and gave directions back to the pub where he’d been drinking the night before. Alice leaned against him and dozed off, and he was surprised at how light she felt.
The pub was closed, but Gavin found the cheap hotel where Feng had gotten a room and used the money Alice had earned to get them a room while Alice collapsed into a lobby chair. At the last second he remembered not to give his real name and signed them in as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Danforth, in honor of his late friend. He had no intention of actually sharing a room with Alice—Feng’s room would have to do when Gavin finally felt a need for sleep and he would have to hope Feng didn’t have a woman with him—but it was easier to fabricate a married relationship than explain to the clerk, who only spoke a few words of English.
They met Feng, alone, on the way up the dark and creaking stairs, which saved Gavin the trouble of tracking him down. Explanations followed, and Alice went into her room without further discussion.
