The Nightmare Garden

With that cheerful thought ringing in my head, along with a dozen considered and discarded plans to find information about the clock, I managed to fall asleep, but too lightly for any dreams except the dark things, writhing and twisting through an empty, starless sky.

* * *

The next day, I was woken by a white-clad servant. He gave me breakfast in my room, and soon after, Casey appeared. After I’d dressed in more brand-new clothes, smart trousers and a black jacket this time, we went together to a sort of laboratory, just a long table and a few microscopes and other scientific instruments arranged along the wall.

Crosley and a panel of stern-faced men waited for me. A single chair sat before the table, and in front of me was a machine with a variety of needles for scratching data onto a roll of paper.

The other end of the machine had wires running out of it, and one of the anonymous men taped two of the electrical leads to my temples. They were cold, and I flinched, but I tried to act as if everything were all right.

“It’s just for a few readouts,” Crosley assured me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “We need to quantify your Weird scientifically.”

I turned to look at him. “Did you do this to my father?”

“Of course,” Crosley said smoothly, not missing a beat. “All Gateminders go through these tests when they ally themselves with the Brotherhood of Iron.” His grip tightened, his nails digging in beneath my collarbone just a fraction, and I bit my lip. Don’t react. Don’t give him any reason to doubt you.

I sighed, trying to focus on my Weird. There was virtually no metal in the Bone Sepulchre, and my headaches and the shadows I glimpsed from the corners of my eyes had all but ceased. That, at least, was a relief. “What am I supposed to do for these tests, then?” I asked Crosley.

He took his pocket watch off the fob and placed it before me. “Can you wind it?” he asked. “Destroying things isn’t terribly useful in the long run, Aoife. The best weapon is one that you can carefully aim and fire.”

“Is that what I am to you?” I asked him, examining the watch. It was heavy, gold-plated, overdone. Much like Harold Crosley himself. “A weapon?” That was a stupid question. I already knew the answer.

“It’s what we’d like you to be,” Crosley said, with that clasp on my shoulder that was becoming all too familiar. “We’re not the Proctors, Aoife. We won’t force you to do anything. But we’d very much like you to choose to use your gift for the good of all, not just the few the Proctors deem worthy.” He leaned down as if to share a secret. It was a ploy that hadn’t worked on me when I was eight, and it didn’t work now. I was actually a bit insulted that he’d patronize me so. Maybe I’d overdone it on the simpleton act.

“Wind the clock, Aoife,” Crosley murmured. “Use your Weird for us. Show me that you’ll use it for the Brotherhood and be the loyal soldier your father refused to be.”

That was it, I realized. I had to tell the truth now, and then I could lie with impunity. I had to let the Brotherhood see the full extent of my skill with my Weird, and then I would be home free, because if they knew what I could do, they’d think they owned me, that only they could keep me from another event like the Engine. They’d believe that I was being honest with them, and I’d be free to do what needed to be done.

I put my fingers on the edge of the table and slid them forward so the tips just touched the pocket watch. My Weird gave a tickle, an itch I couldn’t quite reach. The watch was complex, and I breathed in and out, shallower and shallower, focusing on the mechanism that would make the tiny hands spin backward. The only time I’d managed this was with my father, and then I hadn’t been a virtual prisoner, being stared at like a curiosity by a cadre of men who could keep me locked up indefinitely. The pressure didn’t help.

After one tick, two, three, four, the hands finally stopped. After another breath, they began to run in reverse, my Weird sending the gears spinning back and back until they stood at exactly midnight.

More. I had to do more. I had to show them the earth-shattering power waiting in the dark places of my mind.

The watch was spinning so fast now it vibrated on the table, and I picked out each individual gear and cog as my Weird flowed, not a trickle now but a flood, one that could drown me if I let it have too much more rein. I could feel every bit of clockwork in the place now.

I was the machine. And the machine was me. Just as it had been in Lovecraft.

The glass face of the clock cracked open and the hands went flying, embedding themselves in the far wall. I picked it apart piece by piece, until every bit of the watch was turning around my head, spinning of its own accord.

As quickly as it had come, the flash flood of power vanished, as I knew it would. My control wasn’t that good yet.

The gold case dropped to the floor, smoking, and a few heartbeats after that I lost my grip on the clockwork and it too fell, raining gears and brass.

Murmurs, and an excited but subdued round of applause broke out among the Brotherhood members. My mind still itched, and I felt the familiar trickle of blood from my nose. The needles on the machine I was hooked to danced wildly. “I’d like to be excused,” I told Crosley. My head was spinning, I was sick to my stomach, and I was not going to faint in front of these men if I had any say.

“Of course, of course,” he said, and rang for Casey to take me back to my room.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, but made no move to offer me a handkerchief or a rag. I wiped the blood on my sleeve, where it stood out damp and dark.

“I’ll live,” I said. The walls of the Bone Sepulchre wavered in front of me. The ice appeared to shimmer in the low light, and with the way my head was pounding, I wasn’t sure I could make it out of the room. I scrabbled against the slick walls, vision blurring, and Casey caught me.

“Whoa!” she said. “You don’t look so good, Aoife. Are you all right?”

My shoulder began to throb again, ten times worse than it had on the submarine. Tears squeezed from my eyes, and I saw that they were red when they landed on the backs of my hands.

“This is wrong …,” I choked out, my tongue feeling too large for my mouth. My heart kicked into overdrive with fear, and it exacerbated the pain in my shoulder. Hot pain, searing pain, bone-deep pain that clutched at every bit of me, held me and didn’t let me go.

The sensation of falling gripped me as well, beyond the pain, the displacement of gravity acting on my stomach, and then the vertigo of being in two places at once, neither quite here nor there.

Fae magic. The kind that could rip me from one place to the next as quickly as I breathed.

I braced myself to land, but when I opened my eyes, I was in the same spot, standing just outside the door of the library, heart pounding and my breath coming not at all.

The Fae magic hadn’t reached out to grab me, but had thrust another figure into my path.

Tremaine smiled at me, his pointed teeth gleaming silver.

“Hello, Aoife. You have no idea how glad I am to catch up to you.”

14 The Fate of Thorn

FOR THE LONGEST of heartbeats, I simply stared at Tremaine. It couldn’t be. There was no way he could have found me again after Jakob had killed himself.

Well, my mind whispered, there was no way Jakob could have survived for any length of time aboard the sub, and he did that.

Casey stared at Tremaine, slack-jawed, but she stayed crouched protectively over me. “Who in the hell are you?”

“I think Aoife can tell you,” Tremaine purred. He extended his hand and put it on my cheek. “I think she’s even been dreaming of me. Is that right, Aoife?”

I swatted weakly at his hand. It was all the energy I could muster. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

Casey shrank back a step, staring at Tremaine still. “Is he …”

“Get away, Casey,” I said. My voice sounded faint, feeble. I felt the same—I couldn’t have moved even if I’d had the chance to stab Tremaine in the heart where he stood.

She hesitated, and I gritted my teeth, tasting blood. “Go,” I snarled.