Clutching the shotgun, I walk to the driver’s side of the muscle car and unlock the door. I can’t believe I’m considering getting inside.
I call to the tall man over the black hood of the car.
“Tell me how you know all this,” I say.
The man pauses at the passenger’s-side door, illuminated by the reflection of headlights off trees and wet pavement. Slowly, he removes his hand from his face. The flap of skin falls open and no blood gushes from the wound. There is no wound, exactly. In the smile of sliced flesh, I do not see blood or tendons or muscle.
I see a light golden skull made of plastic-like material.
“What? What are…” I stutter, reeling, unable to get the words out.
Only now do I consider the insane idea tickling the back of my mind. This tall, perfectly symmetrical man is made of clockwork, his body laced with metal and plastic—all of it sculpted into a human form.
“Who are you?” I whisper.
The man allows a small smile to tug at his lip under his mustache.
“I am Peter Alexeyevich,” he says. “Almost a century ago, I fought my way across the snowy battlefields of Stalingrad. On the banks of the Volga, I lost something of immeasurable value. Now, I have found it again.”
“The avenging angel…” I whisper to myself.
“The relic you carry around your neck, June…it has always been mine to protect.”
PART TWO
ISKAT’
(Searching)
Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold….His body was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.
—DANIEL 10:5–6
16
HELSINKI, 1725
The little girl who was my first sight very nearly became my last.
As I lie in the damp grass of the empty steppe, a disemboweled carcass, Elena strips the bloodstained armor from the fallen bandits, collects their weapons and their horses, and retraces our steps to gather the scattered pieces of my body that were left behind in yesterday’s battle.
With small hands and smaller fingers, Elena does her best to restore me. Hunched together under the driving wind, concealed in the waving grass, the girl fits me back together like a puzzle. She is surprisingly adept, pinching metal clamps with hard fingers and lacing my wounds tightly closed with strips of leather. By the time Elena is finished, I am able to stand and limp to the strongest horse. Mounted, we abandon the slaughtered bandits and leave their bodies to be consumed by roots of grass.
“You learned much from Favorini,” I say. “Things he did not teach.”
“My eyes are always open,” she says.
Though my limbs are partly repaired, there is little Elena can do about my appearance. The skin of my cheek hangs in my peripheral vision, and the brass planes of my face are battered. For two days, we ride west, into the kingdom of Finland, staying to the icy north and avoiding all contact with human beings.
Finally, we reach a plague-struck port village.
Elena and I make a monstrous pair, riding out of the frozen waste at sunset and into the lamplight of the settlement called Helsinki. We draw our riding cloaks tight around us, faces hidden under dark hoods. Stitched, bolted, and wound back together by leather cord, my features are set into a permanent grimace, brass work exposed beneath yawning tears in my skin. Elena is not much better, fabric and curls of fake hair concealing the chilling sight of her porcelain doll’s face, those pursed red lips painted onto a death mask.
“They’ll kill us, Peter,” says Elena. “Why don’t we hide in the woods?”
“Because we are not beasts. And besides, the elements will kill us, too,” I respond in a low voice. “Protect our secret, and we will pass among the humans. There is no other way to escape the empress.”
Helsinki is a simple fishing village, perched on the gulf shared with Peter’s expanding city of Saint Petersburg. The Oriental plague has decimated the population here, leaving few alive. Those who survived were further devastated by the Great Northern War. The defeated Swedish king wintered his navy here, gutting the city when its usefulness as a staging zone had gone. Now, the village is mostly a burned husk and its main street a muddy trench, the cobblestones harvested for ship’s ballast and the remnants left behind like broken teeth.
On the outskirts, stringy-haired, sickly children gather around us, begging for scraps. The blood on our clothes is ignored, too common a sight to draw notice. The possibility of gold or bread in our pockets is what makes us welcome.
Nothing else matters.
I soon notice the ravages of the plague have left many folk here with scars. The grotesque pockmarks and twists of flesh are often blamed on devils, so many wear masks to hide their deformities. Their shadowed faces lurk in the dim light springing from licks of whale-oil flame, wretched creatures, their shivering bodies wreathed in streams of oily smoke that climb to a ceiling of stars.
I find a traveler selling masks from the island city of Venetia, where covering one’s face is tradition. Flipping a coin to the man from my steed, I lean down and lift a thin bronze mask from his shaking hands. The bright curve of metal is inlaid with elaborate carvings of winged horses. Holding it to my face and peering through its empty eyes, I turn to Elena on her steed.
“How do I look?” I ask.
She takes a long moment to consider.
“Horrible, Brother,” she says.
I try and fail to make a smile, nudging my horse to a canter. Together, we move straight through the town until we reach the docks. Here, we find men of the sea, drinking at a tavern that lies a stone’s throw from the ice-cold water of the bay.
Our faces hidden, it is our voices that save us this night.
The clear piping trill of youth comes from under Elena’s cloak, and the commanding gravel of my own voice rumbles from a towering vantage atop my steed. Speaking from behind the mask, I am able to rent a room above the tavern. And hailing a ship’s captain who is deep in his rum, I trade away the horses, saddles, and our remaining money for a terrible price, barely securing the purchase of two large chests and their passage to London.
As I shake hands with the captain, I notice his steward standing nearby, a corpulent man with high, round cheeks peeking over reddish-blond muttonchops. The man is pretending very hard not to listen. I flash a glare at him on my way out, my ruined face sinister behind the sculpted contours of the bronze mask.
The man hurries away. It will have to be enough.
Delivered to our room above the tavern, we find the chests waiting for us, squat and sturdy.
“Do you think it will work?” Elena asks me, running her fingers lightly across a rough iron band.
“The imperial guard is searching for a man and a girl fleeing from the mainland,” I say, resting my hand over hers. “They are not looking for two sealed chests, however heavy they might be.”
After preparing our few remaining possessions, Elena and I wait patiently through the still predawn hours. Our bare room is as cold and austere as a crypt. There is no fire in the fireplace. No need for one, without any flesh to warm.
As gray light rises, I help the little girl step into her coffin-like chest. She wears her spare dress, hair combed and ribboned. Lying down on a reindeer hide, she looks like the corpse of a child ready to be laid to rest.
“Thank you, Peter,” Elena says. Her voice echoes flatly from walls made of raw timber, still weeping sap. “You have been good to me. True to your Word.”
“Why do you speak this way?” I ask, one hand resting on the lid of her trunk, preparing to close it.
“If someone discovers us during the voyage,” she says, “there will be too many to fight. And if our ship were to sink…how long would we live under the water? Would we drown forever, trapped in a box at the bottom of the sea—”
“Ssh,” I interrupt. “Do
not think those thoughts. You are precious to me, Elena. By my honor, I will never allow harm to come to you.”
She takes my fingers in both of her small, cold hands and presses my knuckles against the carved ridges of her lips.
“I am glad you are my brother, Peter,” she says, and the words feel like a warm cape settling over my shoulders.
Elena lies down on the thick fur of the bandit’s sleeping hide, surrounded by the last of our valuables and weapons.
“I will see you on the other side,” I respond, closing the lid. “I promise.”
If we go under, the water would eventually weaken the walls of our trunks. I would be able to smash my way out, in time. If we do sink to the bottom of the ocean, there will be a chance to save her. I will find her in the cold blackness and drag her into the light, no matter what.
Lying down and pulling my trunk shut—hearing it lock itself—I tell myself this again and again, until I begin to believe it.
As the sun rises over lapping waves, a pair of heavy chests are collected from our room above the tavern. It takes two cursing, grunting men to bring down the one in which I rest. Carried deep into the wooden bowels of a ship, our containers are lashed to the walls of the storage hold along with all the other luggage.
I do not find the gloom of the chest to be claustrophobic. It is comforting to me, actually, reminiscent of Favorini’s workshop. The darkness is alleviated somewhat by a keyhole that allows in whatever dim light filters into the ship’s hold. And once the ship is under way, the world around me opens up with the sound and motion of the voyage. Each moment rocks past with the constant leaning of the ship, the creaking and groaning of the cargo, and the lap of water against the nearby hull.
My trunk is a womb, and the only hardship is being separated from Elena. It is too dangerous to speak, though our containers are separated by only a few handspans. During this precarious time, we can take no chances with our lives.
Despite our caution, danger arrives anyway.
Days into the journey, the hypnotic swaying of the ship is interrupted by thumping steps. Through the keyhole, I surmise it is the steward, fat and prowling, eyes twinkling with avarice over his wiry muttonchops. Carrying a guttering lamp, he creeps into the cargo hold. Facing Elena’s small trunk, he carefully sets the lamp down.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” he mutters, scraping his fleshy palms over the surface of the chest. Producing a metal pry bar, he forces the lock, grunting and wheezing with the effort. I hear no sounds coming from the girl.
The steward laboriously cracks the lock and collapses his panting bulk onto the trunk, breathing hard like a man who has just finished copulating. Then, with relish, he curls his fingers around the lid and tugs. It peels open on groaning hinges, already rusting in the damp hold. In profile, I watch as his face twitches with candle shadows.
“What the devil?” he mutters. “A bloody doll.”
Reaching inside, the steward brushes Elena’s hair away from her face. My sister lies still, an inanimate object for the moment. Her body is surrounded by the last of our treasure. The blades and flintlock of the bandit leader. A few remaining coins from the tsardom. Elena’s pair of stilettos. Stifling a laugh, the steward’s fingers fall upon Elena’s cheek, prying at her face.
When the mask doesn’t budge, the man grunts unhappily. He shoves her head to one side, her ghostly face lost in long curly hair. Patting down her body, he searches for jewelry and valuables. Finally, he picks her up by the armpits and shakes her, sending her head bouncing back and forth.
A shudder of anger courses through my limbs. Fists clenching, knuckles creaking, I try to resist interfering.
“Come on, you trollop,” mutters the fat man, holding Elena’s small body by a fistful of hair and pawing at her dress with his other hand. “Give it up now.”
Thump. I punch the inside of my case.
Startled, the steward drops Elena haphazardly back into her trunk. Eyes shining with fear, straining to see, he takes a step toward my crate.
“Hello?” he asks in a whisper. “What’s that? Who’s in here?”
He lays a pudgy hand on my trunk, notices the keyhole. Holding his breath, he leans in. His fearful eye looms large, breath reeking of alcohol.
Our eyes meet.
The steward squeals and falls backward.
“Someone—” he sputters to himself, wheeling around in a spastic, panicked dance. “There’s someone…help! Help! Stowaway!”
Behind the fat man, the shadowed body of Elena rises. Silent as a wraith, she stands in the coffin-like trunk, her small hands reaching for the steward. He spins around in time to see her as she clamps doll fingers to the roll of flesh around his neck, choking off his cries. Eyes bulging in fear, the steward stumbles toward my crate. His face contorts through disbelief to sheer terror at the sight of the inanimate coming impossibly to life.
The steward tries to scream, tongue swollen and red, face slick with sweat. Elena clings to him with a terrible strength. He paws at her face with one hand, pinning her small body against a crate, his fingers catching under the porcelain mask.
Elena’s face cracks and splinters as he pries it loose.
With another thump, I punch the inside of my trunk again, trying to force it open. I was supposed to protect my sister and instead I watched in dumb paralyzed surprise as this whole catastrophe unfolded.
My promise, I am thinking. What is my promise worth?
The concussion attracts the steward’s attention. Eyes wide, hands wrapped around Elena’s writhing body, he cranes his neck to look up at my trunk.
Thump. I punch again, wood splintering over my knuckles. The world outside pulses with each blow against oak planks.
While he is distracted Elena twists out of his grip and climbs up his chest, latching her cruel fingers tighter around his throat. The steward grunts, trying to suck another breath, pawing and scraping at Elena’s billowing dress as the last of his air runs out. His plum-colored face is twisted in horror at the doll in his hands, not alive, and yet alive.
Thump.
“Peter,” Elena is saying, calling to me from the steward’s slumped shoulder, her ceramic face split with black lightning bolts. “Stop it.”
The fat man collapses against my trunk. His face has gone dark, hands wrapped around Elena as if the two were dancing. Finally, his ponderous body slides to the floor, rolling facedown, wispy reddish hair splayed on the rough planks.
Only now do I stop trying to escape.
Through the round eye of my keyhole, I watch a phantom in a black dress cross the cargo hold. Her face hangs crooked, the porcelain cracked. Pausing, she runs fingers lightly over her cheek, tap, tapping as she pushes it back into place. With pale hands, she smooths her hair and flattens the folds of her dress.
Demonstrating an incredible, demonic strength, she drags the scarlet lump of flesh away. The two of them fade into darkness, around a corner into the maze of creaking cargo. A moment later, her face reappears, inches from my keyhole.
Her black eyes burn with anger.
“Why!?” she whispers.
Pressing her mouth against the round gap, she blocks the light and fills the darkness with a fierce whisper: “Why did you make me do that? It was fine. I was fine. Now you’ve put us both in jeopardy. Next time, Peter, stay quiet and…and shut up your mouth!”
With that, the little girl crosses the cargo hold and nimbly climbs into her open trunk. She sits in the ruffled folds of her dress, shakes her head, and her locks tumble down to frame her face in black brambles. Still staring angrily at me, she puts one hand on the lid of her trunk and pulls it shut.
“You must learn to trust me,” she says, her voice dying under the closing lid. “Or we shall both be lost.”
17
OREGON, PRESENT
I check the rearview mirror again, searching for headlights against the dark road. Beside me, the damaged man called Peter—not a man, some kind of a machine—leans his long frame ac
ross the passenger seat of the black Charger, head tilted back as he struggles to get a hand into his jacket pocket. Incredibly tall and lean, he barely fits in the car, even with the seat pushed all the way back.
My fingers clench on the steering wheel, knuckles brightening as I wonder if he’s about to pull a weapon.
Instead, his fingers emerge clasping a pocket watch.
I exhale.
“A pocket watch?” I ask.
Peter frowns, ignoring me as he cradles the golden artifact in his hands, popping it open like a clamshell. He reads a dial hidden inside, protected by the metal casing. Glancing out the window, he frowns.
“Perfect,” I say to myself, turning back to the dark road. Stars are out over the conveyor belt of towering pines. “Just perfect.”
The clockwork man carries a clockwork watch.
Lit by the glow of dashboard lights, something familiar strikes me about the splayed metal leaves that protect the body of the pocket watch.
“That’s a trench watch,” I say. “World War One. Where’d you get it?”
Peter looks over at me, eyebrows raised, then back at the watch. Gently, he begins to wind the knob on top.
“Oh, right,” I mutter.
The tires thrum over Peter’s silence. Most ancient artifacts I examine don’t walk and talk. None of them have tried to kill each other with antique swords. The reality of this situation is failing to register, my mind continuously jumping away and trying to substitute normality for madness.
“Why didn’t Talus shoot you?” I ask. “Why swords?”
“I do not think he wants to kill me,” Peter says, with a trace of a Russian accent. “He wants to beat me. Always has.”
“And the swords?” I ask.
“We must keep driving,” he responds. “Things will move very quickly, now that the relic has resurfaced. I have a contact in Seattle who can repair me.”