“Sorry,” he said, unabashed. “I’ve been a little busy.”
“Kemp said you wanted to see us,” Alice said.
“Yes, yes, come in.”
Linda ushered them into her comfortable wagon. Against the back wall stood an intricately carved bedstead with a plump featherbed and duvet covering it. Wooden cupboards hung from the walls, and a tiny stove took up one corner. A table folded down from the wall, with stools to sit on. But Gavin’s eye went straight to the automaton. He stood in the corner opposite the stove in a case of glass and metal similar to a ticket booth. From the waist up he looked like a brass man wearing a brown jacket and red vest. From the waist down, he was a complicated mass of metal and gears—no legs or feet. His jointed fingers gleamed in the light of the lamp hanging from the ceiling off the rivets on his face and neck. The top half of his head was made of glass, and suspended in some sort of clear medium within which floated a human brain. Copper clips and wires were attached to it, and little electric sparks flicked and jumped about like fireflies. No matter how many times he had seen that, it took Gavin a moment to remember not to stare. Alice put a hand to her mouth.
“Hi, Charlie,” Gavin said.
The automaton opened his mouth. “Gavin,” he said in a metallic voice. “And this is Alice?”
“I am,” she said. “You have the advantage of me, sir.”
“Sorry. Charlie Fabry. I’d offer to shake hands, but…” He tapped the glass in front of him with a brass finger. “And you’ve met my wife already.”
“Quite,” said Alice, and Gavin knew her well enough to see she was trying to cover shock.
“Charlie used to be a wire walker,” he told her. “He fell during a show and would have died, but a clockworker happened to be in the audience, and… well, you can see the result.”
“Gives you a whole new insight,” Charlie said cheerfully. “No appetites, fewer needs, simpler wants. Liberating.” He leaned forward with a creak until his nose nearly touched the glass and his voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “You can see what you never saw before.”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said.
“We’ve been discussing your little trip to the church in Luxembourg, honey,” Linda said.
Alice looked startled. “You know about that?”
“Everybody knows about that,” Linda said. “Not much goes on without everyone hearing about it eventually. I read in the newspaper that a large piece of the church was destroyed, too, but the vicar is planning to rebuild it even bigger, which will help when he applies to have it declared a cathedral.”
“Is that what you wanted to ask about?” Gavin put in.
“Lord, how I do talk. No, honey. This is.” Linda lifted a handkerchief from the fold-down table, revealing three tarot cards. The first card portrayed a skeletal figure swinging a sword over a field of grain and was labeled XIII. The second showed a burning tower falling to pieces. Two men fell screaming from it, and it was labeled XVI: LA MAISON DIEU. Laid crosswise over the dying tower was the third card, on which was rendered a man in priestly red robes. He held a golden staff in one hand and made a gesture of benediction with the other. This card was labeled V: LE PAPE.
“I don’t know anything about tarot cards,” Alice said primly. “I avoid this sort of thing as nonsense.”
“Place your hands palm-up under the window, if you would be so kind.” Charlie slid aside a small opening at the bottom of his glass case, much like a ticket taker might. After a moment’s hesitation, Alice obeyed. The spider on her left hand left her palm bare, but the metal clanked against the shelf beneath the window opening. Gavin watched warily. A pair of red lights beamed from Charlie’s eyes and ran over Alice’s hands. She jumped, but didn’t pull away. The lights ran over every inch of Alice’s hands, then went out.
“Very interesting,” Charlie said. “You have refined tastes, but you work with your hands. You’ve been touched by the clockwork plague more than once, you are deeply in love, and you can’t get this spider off your arm.”
“And you can tell all that from my palms, can you?”
“No, that’s just gossip around the circus. Your palms say the future is going to be difficult. Your fate line is ragged and rough, especially after your heart line. That means your future will be twisted and shredded by emotional decisions. You can change that, of course, but it’ll be entirely up to you.”
“Didn’t Gavin say you were a wire walker?” Alice asked. “Why are you telling fortunes?”
“I was a wire walker first,” Charlie replied genially. “But now that I’m freed of my body, I can see a great deal that other people can’t. It lends itself to fortune-telling.”
“So you’re not reading my palms at all.” Alice’s tone was shrewd.
Charlie shook his head with a faint creak. “No. I pretend because no one believes pronouncements from thin air.”
“That’s not true,” Alice said. “We believe pronouncements from teachers and parents and others in our lives.”
“You didn’t believe Monsignor Adames.”
Gavin blinked. “How did you know we talked to Monsignor Adames? The church… mess was in the newspaper, and I can see how people in the circus might put that together with our absence, but we didn’t even tell Dodd that we talked to Adames, or what he said.”
“I saw it.” Charlie ran a metal finger over the glass casing that topped his head. “Everything is connected. I told you that. Bits of pasteboard can give us a crude glimpse into the future, and the particles that run through my brain give me even clearer knowledge.”
Alice said, “That’s—”
“Nonsense? Ask your Dr. Clef about that,” Charlie said. “According to some very interesting theories he’s been busy proving as we speak, certain tiny particles affect one another over long distances. Turn one particle, and its twin, no matter how far away it is, will turn as well. Just like flipping a card. Clef also claims that time is nothing but
