“I don’t want to usurp your position, but if we all had some magic, and time to plan, maybe we can thwart the jinn next time.”
She sighed. “I wish I knew what Mr. Valdana would say. But I won’t stop you. You
I wondered if that was a fate we could escape, no matter which course we chose.
Chapter 12
The next day, Celestina handed over the key to the upstairs room in the hopes that I would find a book of magical instruction. Unlocking the door revealed a rather intimidating mess: stacks of books, unmarked crates, desks cluttered with tools and papers and writing implements and candles, things draped with sheets, and everything covered with dust. The walking space would have been almost entirely unnegotiable had I been wearing the standard array of skirts and petticoats.
“I see why the door was locked,” I said, stepping over a globe to get to some of the books. There was a shelf in the corner that looked like it had been arranged in some tidier era; it was all books of magic grouped by subject. There were books about magical species, advanced necromancy, astrology and divination, life after death. I started opening ones with promising titles, but many of them looked too difficult, while others seemed useless, and a great deal of them were written with the air that understanding magic was indeed a sort of gentleman’s club, not something useful so much as something with which to show off.
Erris started going through the books on the desk. While we searched-making feeble attempts to tidy up as we went-Violet opened one of the boxes on the floor. “Doesn’t this look like parts for clockwork?” she said, and then sneezed.
“Clockwork?” Erris turned.
Indeed, Violet was peering into a box full of cogs and gears nestled in hay. The parts were still attached to each other, for the most part, and when Erris lifted them from the box, they formed a small four-legged figure with a tail, like a cat. He set that aside and took out a crudely carved wooden head. It looked like the clockwork would move the eyes and mouth, but some of the pieces had broken apart.
Violet gasped. “A clockwork cat! I don’t remember anything like this!”
Erris was still digging past the hay. “Look at this, Nim.”
I stepped over another box to see an array of crude little clockwork rodents, nestled in the straw with their keys.
“How cunning!” Violet shrieked with delight. “Do they still work?” She grabbed one and began to wind it, but when she released it, it made a rather regretful clicking sound and went silent again without moving. She tested one after another, and some of them didn’t work at all, while others simply didn’t work properly: their gears didn’t catch or a broken foot made them wobble. Erris looked at them with a concerned expression.
“Violet, did your father ever talk about constructing things from clockwork?” he asked.
“No,” Violet said. “I don’t think he built them, or surely he would have made me some dear little clockwork mice.”
I knew Erris didn’t believe for a moment that these crates of clockwork animals were a coincidence. He started opening all the boxes within reach.
“I had no idea he had so many interesting-” Violet’s words cut off abruptly, replaced by a strangled gasp. Erris had thrown back one of the sheets and found a face beneath it.
The wooden face had no hair and was only half painted, yet it was well done, and the staring glass eyes made it look lifelike-or rather, corpselike. In the dim light of the workroom, I could see why it made Violet gasp.
Erris looked at it intently for a moment, and then he started wrestling off the rest of the sheet. It was not easy, for a number of boxes stood in the way of the table on which the clockwork rested. He had to bend and reach, his body tilted awkwardly to favor his good foot, kicking up a great deal of dust in the process.
“What is it?” I said. Her inner workings looked very much like Erris’s. I wondered if the same maker’s mark was stamped on her back.
“It looks like it was meant to be a clockwork version of my-my sister.”
“Your sister? Do you think she was ever-Do you think she-?”
“I don’t think her spirit is here, no,” Erris said. “Besides the obvious question of why Ordorio would have trapped her in such a way, we would know. You sensed there was something strange about me from the start, didn’t you?”
Violet seemed torn between stepping closer to the clockwork woman or farther away. “But why would he make my mother out of clockwork?”
“
“Yes,” I murmured. I was no expert on clockwork, to be certain, despite how often I wound Erris, but the clockwork woman was dusty and neglected, and moreover, appeared unfinished. Her armature looked prone and fragile laid out on the table, and it was hard to imagine her making any movement on her own power.
We resumed our search of the room, but now we were more interested in clues than magic books, although I set aside a few prospects in that regard as I went along.
I tried to hide my excitement at our discovery. If Ordorio had been experimenting with clockwork, maybe he did know how to free Erris. Maybe we hadn’t been sent here only to help Violet.
It was Erris who found the battered leather-bound notebook, full of Ordorio’s small handwriting and sketches of clockwork parts and mice.
“‘Three mice have been put into the death sleep,’” he read. “‘Three other mice were killed. The mice placed into death sleep could be coaxed into inhabiting clockwork bodies, but the dead mice have thus far been unsuccessful. Is it possible that a spirit is unwilling to inhabit a contrived body without retaining some tether to its true form?’”
Erris looked at me, briefly, then back at the book.
“‘Experimented with cat,’” he continued. “‘The cat has been sick and listless as of late, yet attempts to persuade it to inhabit a clockwork form were unsuccessful until the cat was placed into a death sleep. There seems to be a natural resistance in living beings to inhabit these artificial houses, unless they are placed in death sleep, in which case…? Thus far, I am still unable to raise the dead without a body, but I am excited by the prospect that death may be preempted by death sleep. How long will the cat continue to live in its clockwork body?’”
Violet chewed a fingernail. “Papa was trying to raise the dead without a body?”
“I suppose it would be a great goal for a necromancer,” I said, thinking of Karstor telling me how such a thing was impossible.
“He managed to revive mice and cats into clockwork bodies from a death sleep,” Erris said softly.
“What is a death sleep?” I asked.
“It’s like being frozen. You don’t need food. You don’t age. But typically, it doesn’t last forever. People tend to wake from it at some point, so you can’t just keep them comatose for decades. Another spell commonly used by human necromancers.” Erris was still flipping through the book, but he briefly glanced at the clockwork woman. “And clearly, he had hoped to revive my sister, but I think he failed.”
“That’s disturbing,” I murmured. “Why wouldn’t he simply let the dead stay dead? I don’t really like necromancy one bit. But what about you? Do you think he’s the one who did this to you?”
Erris slowly nodded. “Maybe you were right, Nim.”
Our situation was still precarious, but if Erris would share my hope…
“But why would he do that?” Violet asked in a panicked voice. “Uncle Erris, you told me human sorcerers cursed you! Would my father do something like that to you?”
“Sure he might,” Erris said. “He left to fight the fairies. He cursed me, but then he fell in love with my sister and defected. I guess only he can tell us for sure, but either way…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he met my eyes, and there was a spark there I hadn’t seen since I had first freed him from the depths of the curse.
