Angel of Brass (8 page)

“I don’t mind. It seems so...” he searched
for the right word “...normal.”

“I suppose it does.”

“That’s not a bad thing. Honestly, I’m a bit
surprised that I can even recognize normal when I see it.”

Her face softened. “Yeah. I’m glad.”

“So am I.” He shifted slightly in the chair.
Eerie music drifted from the wireless, accompanying a woman’s
breathless scream. The villain of the piece laughed maniacally and
began to deliver a monologue. “How long do you think it will be
before this spymaster acts?”

Molly pulled a rag from a pouch on her tool
belt, took off her spectacles, and began to polish the lenses.
“It’s hard to say.”

Something about her tone made him sit up.
“You don’t think Gibson lied about telling him, do you?”

“No, not at all!” Molly said hastily. “It’s
just that...well, Gibson is a nobody. He’s a minor noble, nothing
more than a jumped-up secretary when he actually does attend court.
When he goes to the spymaster and says his sister-in-law is
shouting conspiracy...”

Jin’s heart sank. “They might not take him
seriously.”

“I don’t doubt that they’ll look into it,”
Molly said, putting her spectacles back on. “It’s just that,
depending on how many layers of bureaucracy he has to go through,
it might take a while, especially since we don’t really have any
evidence.”

Jin held up one hand and extended his claws.
“I’m evidence.”

“Only that Malachi is a genius. He could tell
people that you were hurt in some kind of accident and that he gave
your limbs back.”

Jin sighed and let his claws retract. “My
word against his.”

“Exactly.” She hesitated, then leaned over
and put a hand on his. “I don’t want to discourage you. They
will
help, eventually, I’m sure of it. I just don’t want you
to expect that anything will be done tomorrow, or maybe even next
week.”

“I know.” Jin sat back, thinking. “What if we
got some sort of evidence? Would that speed things up?”

“Maybe. What did you have in mind?”

“The one thing I know for certain about the
conspiracy is that the resurrectionists are involved. If we could,
I don’t know, catch them robbing a grave, then track them back to
their lair, maybe we could find something.”

Molly sat silent for a long moment, a little
line between her brows. “All right,” she said at last. “It’s a long
shot, but I suppose we should try anyway. And here I thought my
life was about to get back to normal.”

“You don’t have to go,” he said quickly.
“You’ve already done a great deal for me. I can’t ask this of
you.”

The line deepened. “I’m not going to just sit
here while a friend heads straight into danger. Of course I’m going
with you.”

Even though he worried about her safety, her
words warmed him from the inside.
A friend? Have I ever had one
of those before?
“Oh. Thank you, then.”

“I might even be able to find out what
cemetery would be best to try,” she said, smiling now. “Liam knows
a boy in the medical wing of the institute—Liam knows a boy in
every
wing of the institute, but that’s beside the point—who
might know something about resurrectionists. The trick would be
asking Liam’s boy about it without seeming suspicious.”

“All right.”

“We’ll talk to Liam tomorrow,” Molly decided.
“His flat isn’t far from here. With any luck, we’ll be stalking
grave robbers by midnight!”

Chapter 6

Jin dreamed of flying.

He knew that it was just a dream, because he
was alone: no airship, no Dr. Malachi making observations from the
deck, no smiling men watching, as if they secretly hoped that some
day they’d have a reason to hunt him the way they hunted
trespassers. There was just the wind and the air rushing against
the skin of his bare chest. The world spread out below, infinite
and unbounded. He spread his wings and felt the pure, fierce joy of
a falcon, untainted by either past or future.

He opened his eyes and found himself
wingless, stretched out on Molly’s floor beside her bed. His body
ached from the hard boards, even though he’d slept padded by
blankets and spare clothing, and for a moment he felt such a pang
of homesickness that it took his breath away.

Stupid, that
. Despite everything, a
part of him wished to wake up in his own bed, with all his things
around him. He wanted his violin, and his books, and even the
little clockwork dancer Malachi had made for him as a birthday
present. Not that Jin had been born in any real sense of the
word.

Most of all, I want my rig
. The rig
had been the one thing that made all the rest almost bearable. He’d
never been free to use it when he wanted—it would have made it too
easy for him to slip away. Malachi had kept it locked up securely,
and so Jin had been forced to escape without it, even though it had
been like leaving a part of himself behind.

Molly shifted in the bed and mumbled
something incoherent. Jin sat up, trying to move quietly so as not
to disturb her. She’d twisted the blankets around herself, and the
nightgown she wore had rucked up, exposing a lush expanse of soft
leg.

He swallowed against the sudden dryness in
his mouth and tried very hard not to imagine trailing his fingers
over her skin.
Don’t think about such things. There’s no use in
it
. Unbidden, he saw Rebecca’s face, her mouth twisted in
revulsion as she pushed him away.
“I can’t believe I ever kissed
you. If I’d known what you were...saints, what sort of sick freak
are you, to trick a girl like this?”

She’d tried to run away, shortly after that.
He feared that she’d decided that she couldn’t stand to be under
the same roof as him, even though he’d avoided her since the day
she’d broken his heart.

If that’s true, then I’ve got her death on
my conscience, too
. No one ever ran away from Dr. Malachi.

Ever since that day, he’d done his best not
to even look at any girl. Not in that way, at least. But in the
silence and stillness of the morning, with Molly tousled and
beautiful in her bed, it was impossible to drive the fantasy from
his thoughts.

She’s my friend. I’m glad for that. It’s more
than I deserve. If she knew what I was thinking, I wouldn’t even
have that.

Somehow, he summoned the willpower to turn
away from her. Moving quietly, he pulled on his vest, tucked his
gloves into his belt, and slung his boots around his neck. The
clock on the dresser was shaped like a man, the clock face in his
round belly and his jointed arm poised to strike the bell.
According to the clock and the gray-tinged light seeping through
the window, the sun was just breaking the horizon.

Time to go, then, before true daylight came
and someone spotted him climbing around on the roof. He found a
handy piece of paper and scribbled a note. Leaving it on the
blankets he’d used as a bed, he slipped out the window.

The morning air held a hint of frost, so he
found a small café one street over. Some of the coins Gibson had
given him went to a coffee, which he sipped for the next hour,
loitering at the window and keeping a sharp eye out for the smiling
men. Eventually, Molly appeared, her heavy coat tight against the
cold. When she spotted him, she smiled brightly and ducked inside
the café.

“Good morning! Did I keep you waiting?” she
asked, blowing on the tips of her fingers, which her gloves left
exposed to the cold air.

“No. But I haven’t had breakfast yet, so I’m
glad to see you.”

She linked her arm through his. “I know a
place that serves the best polenta you’ll ever taste. Use Gibson’s
money—if we’re foiling a plot, the very least the government can do
is foot the bill.”

* * *

As Molly had predicted, Liam did indeed know
a boy in the medical wing. More to her surprise, Liam’s friend was
perfectly happy to discuss resurrectionists, including the primary
sources of corpses and the differences between professionals and
amateurs. And so it was that, a few hours after dark, Molly and Jin
found themselves crouched behind a yew tree in potters field.

It had rained in the late afternoon, and the
chilly air was redolent of damp earth and mold. Restgate, the
largest cemetery in Chartown, sprawled high up on one of the hills.
Most of the space was given over to monuments and mausoleums, but
potters field was marked by nothing more than the occasional stone
or scrap of paper, slowly dissolving in the damp. Great trees
towered over the forgotten graves, water dripping from their
moss-festooned braches to plunk on the muddy ground.

“This is depressing,” Jin murmured, his mouth
so close to her ear that his warm breath stirred her hair. “All
these people just dumped in the ground, with nothing to mark their
passing. No one to mourn them.”

“Not all of them,” she said. “Funerals are
expensive. Not everyone can afford anything nicer than this.”

“I’m not certain that makes it any
better.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. “At any rate,
it’s a certainty that no one here could afford a mortsafe to keep
the coffin from being broken into, which is one of the reasons the
resurrectionists prefer the field. Not to mention that there will
be less of an outcry if they’re caught stealing the body of an
indigent.”

Jin pressed his lips together in disapproval.
The distant gaslight limned his profile, but otherwise there was no
light to be had. Although the darkness helped conceal them, Molly
felt a little shiver walk up her spine at the eerie setting.
I
don’t think this is what Master Singh had in mind when he said I
needed to get out more
.

When a faint light finally appeared on the
edge of the cemetery, Molly started badly in surprise, even though
she had been expecting it. She sensed Jin lean forward a fraction,
like a dog on the scent. Silently, she laid a restraining hand on
his wrist, the heavy leather of his gloves concealing the hard
curve of metal beneath.

Coarse male voices drifted to them,
accompanied by the flicker of lantern light. A small cart, drawn by
a donkey, rolled into sight a few moments later. It stopped near
the newest row of graves, where the week’s crop of unclaimed bodies
had been laid to rest that morning. The men sounded cheerful,
taking no pains to move stealthily as they climbed down from the
cart and unpacked their shovels from the back.

“The cemetery guards and the police must be
in on it,” Molly whispered to her companion. “They aren’t even
trying to hide what they’re doing.”

Jin nodded; the movement sent the tip of a
feather trailing across Molly’s face. “I don’t know much about the
resurrectionists, but they’ve got money to spare. Father bought
from them a couple of times, when he didn’t have anyone on staff
who had outlived their purpose. I remember him complaining about
how much a good corpse cost these days. I suppose that’s why he
preferred to make his own.”

Molly shivered from more than the cold, and
wondered dismally how many of Chartown’s dead were still where they
were meant to be, and how many had disappeared into dissection labs
of various sorts. She knew that there would be an arrest every once
in a while, and someone would be sent to the bell jar to reassure
the public that the authorities were Doing Something About The
Problem. The way it looked from here, she would bet good money that
any resurrectionist who actually ended up on the docket was either
someone trying to cut in on the established business, or some
low-level flunky who’d managed to annoy those above him in the
hierarchy.

For the next few hours, the grave robbers dug
methodically, opened coffins, loaded the contents into the cart,
and then replaced the coffins and refilled the holes. It was an
eerie thing to watch: the flickering lantern light, the men’s
breath steaming from the cold, the sound of the shovel biting into
the wet earth, the occasional whiff of decay on the night air.
Molly’s legs cramped from staying in the same position for so long,
and she felt frozen to the bone, but she resolutely ignored her
discomfort. She didn’t know what the resurrectionists would do if
they caught Molly and Jin spying on them, but she doubted it would
be anything pleasant.

At last, the men finished their gruesome
harvest. Tossing the shovels on top of the shrouded bodies, they
climbed back onto their cart and set off. Molly waited until they
were almost out of sight, then motioned for Jin to follow.

The cart clung to the back streets and
byways. This was the poorest part of Chartown, where streetlights
were spotty, and people still used oil lamps and candles instead of
gas to illuminate their homes. Crumbling buildings crowded against
the narrow streets, and the air stank of slime and dead things. No
wonder the resurrectionist cart passed unnoticed, despite its
stench. Dark shapes lurked in alleys, smoking cigarettes and
drinking from bottles, or just watching with feral eyes. Molly had
tucked a heavy wrench in her belt, just in case she needed a
weapon, and she found herself touching it nervously every time she
spotted movement.

Eventually, the cart slowed in front of a
house that had been a fine manor a generation ago. Now, it hulked
back from the street, its paint peeling and its iron gate rusted.
Ancient trees shadowed the house almost from sight, their bare
branches spilling out over the walls like searching fingers. When
the gate swung open, it was accompanied by a lack of sound
inconsistent with the rust covering its bars, as if the hinges had
been recently oiled. The cart and its grim cargo passed through,
and the gate shut once more.

They stopped well back from the house, in
case anyone was watching the street. “Now what?” Molly asked.

“Now we go over the wall,” Jin replied. “Or I
do. You should stay out here.”