The Impossible Cube

by 1858. Of course, such people ignore semi-intelligent windup cats, talking mechanical valets, and artificial limbs made of brass.

For the record, the Consolatrix Afflictorum is a real statue of the Virgin Mary in Luxembourg, and local legend has it that she fell out of a tree trunk in 1624, right around the time the bubonic plague struck the region. The stories say her touch cured a number of the afflicted, and so many people came to visit her shrine outside the city that in the late 1790s, the statue was moved to the Church of Our Lady (Notre Dame) inside the city walls.

Also in reality, Nicolas Adames was made vicar of that church in 1863. Gavin and Alice visit Vicar Adames in 1858, so perhaps in our fictional reality, Adames’s predecessor died of the clockwork plague and granted him an early promotion.

In the historical 1870, Adames was named Bishop of Luxembourg, and the Church of Our Lady became Notre Dame Cathedral. I like to think it happened in fiction, too.

Ukraine has a long and sad history. Her rich farmlands made her a target for emperors who wanted to feed their armies, and she has at various times been overrun by Russians, Poles, Mongols, and Germans. In the 1700s, in both reality and in this work of fiction, Ukraine was divided in half by Russia and Poland. (Many modern people have forgotten—or never knew—that Poland was once a world-class military power.) Russia and Poland were far from kind in their rule, and in 1768, Maksym Zalizniak and Ivan Gonta led a Cossack rebellion against their oppressors. In history, they slaughtered the Poles and took over right-bank (western) Ukraine right handily. Afraid that the rebellion would spread to left-bank (eastern) Ukraine, Empress Catherine of Russia flooded the area with troops. Ivan Gonta was captured and chopped into fourteen pieces so his remains could be displayed in fourteen different towns as a deterrent to further uprisings. Maksym Zalizniak was captured and tortured but managed to escape with fifty-one of his men. He vanished, and his final fate remains unknown. Both men became national heroes, the subject of numerous Ukrainian folktales and songs.

In my fictional world, the clockwork plague arrived just before the rebellion, thanks to Dr. Clef and the Impossible Cube, so Ivan Gonta and Maksym Zalizniak were rather more successful. Although it would have been easy to have the downtrodden Ukrainians create a utopia for themselves, I was forced to remember that the rebellion was fomented by eighteenth-century Cossacks, who weren’t known for their tolerance or compassion. Fortunately, Ukraine has at last regained her independence, both in modern reality and in my semihistorical fiction, and with it, perhaps she can regain her former glory as well.

—Steven Harper

Read on for an excerpt from the next

thrilling novel of the Clockwork Empire,

THE DRAGON MEN

Coming November 2012 from Roc

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” said Alice.

Gavin spread his mechanical wings, furled them, and spread them again. He shrugged at Alice’s words and shot a glance across the deck at Susan Phipps, who set her jaw and tightened her grip on the helm. Her brass hand, the one with six fingers, gleamed in the afternoon sun and a stray flicker of light caught Gavin in the face. The world slowed, shaving time into transparent slices, and for one of them he felt trillions of photons ricochet off his skin and carom away in rainbow arcs. His mind automatically tried to calculate trajectory for them, and the numbers spun and swirled in an enticing whirlpool. He bit his lip and forced himself out of it. There were more important—more exciting—issues at hand.

“I completely agree,” Phipps said. “But he’s the captain of the ship, and he can do as he likes, even if it’s idiotic.”

“Captains are supposed to listen to common sense,” Alice replied in tart British tones. “Especially when the common sense comes from someone with a decent amount of intelligence.”

At that Gavin had to smile. A soft breeze spun itself across the Caspian Sea, winding across the deck of the Lady of Liberty to stir his pale blond hair. He started to count the strands that flicked across his field of vision, note the way each one was lifted by the teamwork of gas particles, then bit his lip again. Damn it, he was getting more and more distractible by minutiae. More and more individual details of the world around him beckoned—the drag of the harness on his back, the creak of the airship’s wooden deck, the borders of the shadow cast by her bulbous silk envelope high overhead, the sharp smell of the exhaust exuded from the generator that puffed and purred on the decking, the gentle thrumming of the propellered nacelles that pushed the Lady smoothly ahead, the shifting frequency of the blue light reflected by the Caspian Sea gliding past only a few yards beneath the Lady’s hull. Sometimes it felt like the world was a jigsaw puzzle of exquisite jewels, and he needed to examine each piece in exacting detail.

“Gavin?” Alice’s worried voice came to him from far away, and yanked him back to the ship. “Are you there?”

Damn it. He forced his grin back to full power. “Yeah. Sure. Look, I’ll be fine. Everything’ll work. I’ve been over the machinery a thousand times, and I’ve made no mistakes.”

“Of course not.” Alice’s expression was tight. “Clockworkers never make mistakes with their inventions.”

Gavin’s grin faltered again and he shifted within the harness. She was worried about him, and that thrilled and shamed him both. It was difficult to stand next to her and not touch her, even to brush against her. Just looking at her made him want to sweep her into his arms, something she allowed him to do only sporadically.

“Alice, will you marry me?” he blurted out.

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Will you marry me?” Words poured out of him. “I started to ask you back in Kiev, but we got interrupted, and what with one thing and another, I never got the chance to ask again, and now there’s a small chance I’ll be dead, or at least seriously wounded, in the next ten minutes, so I want to know: Will you marry me?”

“Oh, good Lord,” Phipps muttered from the helm.

“I… I… Oh, Gavin, this isn’t the time,” Alice stammered.

He took both her hands in his. Adrenaline thrummed his nerves like cello strings. Alice’s left hand was covered by an iron spider that wrapped around her forearm, hand, and fingers to create a strange metal gauntlet, and the spider’s eyes glowed red at his touch. Gavin had his own machinery to contend with—the pair of metal wings harnessed to his back. They flared again when he shifted his weight.