The Impossible Cube

“Oh.” Alice looked flustered. “Probably not many.”

“And I’m glad.” He impulsively kissed her cheek. “God, I love you.”

“If Madam and Sir are quite ready,” Kemp said. “Someone may come at any moment.”

“How much time do we have?” Alice asked, still blushing a little.

“We have been in the house for thirteen minutes,” Kemp replied. “The circus was contracted for an hour’s performance, leaving us forty-seven minutes.”

Quickly, they posed the deactivated automatons in their original positions. Alice told Kemp to stay behind and run interference if necessary as she and Gavin headed down the stairs. The stairs, lit by a series of electric lights, twisted downward for a long, long time, and Gavin wondered how they’d manage the trip back up without using the lift, especially if they had to carry Feng.

Assuming he’s still alive, he thought, and then quashed the idea. Feng had to be alive. He would be alive. And unharmed. Ivana hadn’t held him prisoner for very long, and she must have been busy planning the banquet. Not much time to play with a new… acquisition.

They reached the bottom of the steps and emerged from the stairwell. Alice stopped dead and Gavin whistled under his breath.

“Good heavens,” Alice murmured. “What will we do?”

The space beyond was cavernous, easily large enough to store four full-sized dirigibles, in Gavin’s estimation. Worked stone arched up and away, several stories high. Rows of columns that looked too thin to hold up the ceiling—and the house above it—reached upward like graceful fingers. Staircases, ramps, doorways, and balconies studded the walls, as if a small city had exploded inside the giant room. More than forty hulking mechanicals two, three, and four times the height of a man and many times broader stood motionless on the main floor. One of them was Ivana’s giant bird. The cage that made up its head hung open and empty.

Gavin felt an urge to examine the machines more closely. The clockwork plague tugged at him, and his fascinated eye measured slopes and angles, calculated area, felt volume. Forges hissed from beyond the balconies, putting out thousands of calories in heat. The sharp smell of molten metal tanged the air, and the wrenching scream of it when it hit cold water bounced and echoed. Spiders scurried across every surface, and whirligigs whooshed through the empty spaces. Most of them carried bits of machinery or wicked-looking weapons. Electric lights lit everything, as did the red glow of coals emanating from the balconies. No actual people were visible, which both puzzled and relieved Gavin. In a flash of clockwork insight, he understood that the Gonta clockworkers didn’t spend much—or any—time out on the main floor, but worked in private laboratories that opened onto it. The clanking, hissing forges called to him, and the tiny laboratories on the Lady and in the Black Tent suddenly felt cramped and primitive. Here was a place where a man could work. Certainly there would be a vacant workroom somewhere in all this. In fact, he needed only to listen for empty space to find one. He could already feel the tools, see the machinery come to life under his hands. His fingers curled into fists and he started forward.

“What on earth is that?” Alice exclaimed.

Alice’s voice sliced through the terrible need, and it faded. Gavin shook his head hard. “What’s what?”

She pointed. “There.”

Gavin followed the line of her finger. Along one wall was a row of cages with square bars, ten cages at a fast count. Inside each was a child. Some were boys, some were girls. All were under the age of twelve, some were as young as three or four. They sat or squatted within the bars, eyes listless and downcast. Each had a dog bowl of water.

“Good heavens,” Alice whispered. “Oh, Gavin.”

Gavin felt sick again. He didn’t resist when Alice took his hand and pulled him over to the horrible enclosures. Some of the children looked up and scuttled backward in fear. Most didn’t respond. A girl in a tattered gray dress reminded Gavin of his sister Violet back in Boston, and it made him want to tear the cages free of the walls.

“We have to get them out,” he said. “Now.”

“Look at that one,” Alice said, “and that. Their faces are flushed and their lips are cracked. It’s the clockwork plague.” She held up her spider gauntlet, whose eyes were glowing red. “I need to help them. I’ll cure them and we’ll take them out.”

Gavin hesitated. He glanced around the great room uneasily, feeling torn and not a little helpless. “Alice, how are we going to get them out of here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“We can probably get these cages open with minimal work,” Gavin said reluctantly, “but what then? How will we get all these children upstairs and past all the people and automatons in the house and over the wall outside? We’ll get caught, the children will end up back in here, and everyone will be worse off.”

Alice’s expression darkened and she looked like she wanted to argue. Then she nodded once, hard. “You’re right of course. But we’ll find a way later.”

“We will,” he agreed.

“And I can still do this.” She reached through the bars with her gauntleted hand and scratched one of the sick children before he could shy away. He barely whimpered, though he did shuffle to the rear of his cage, the scratches dripping blood. The others, seeing this, also drew back out of reach.

“Poor things,” Alice said. “I wish I spoke Ukrainian so I could explain what’s going on. At least the first one will infect the others with the cure.”

One of the children began to cry, and Gavin caught something that sounded like “Mama.” In that moment, Gavin nearly violated the good sense he had just quoted to Alice. He had to force himself to avoid tearing at the cages with his bare hands. His rubbed at his face and realized his cheek was wet with salt water. Damn it. He had been beaten half to death by pirates, locked in a tower by a madwoman, and infected with a disease that was killing him by inches, but this brought a tear to his eye?

“Let’s go,” Alice said, “before I pry these bars open myself.”