Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

Author:T. Kingfisher
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Humour, Science Fiction, Romance, Fantasy, Adult, Adventure
ISBN: 1614504067
Publisher: Red Wombat Studio
Published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

They struck out north, through the woods, looking for the smuggler’s road. It was a stupid idea—they didn’t know how far it was, or what it would look like—but the other two alternatives were to go back, behind a marching column of Clockwork Boys, or forward, through territory that the Clockwork Boys were raiding, and there was just no way.

Slate had been entertaining a faint illusion that between the three of them—Caliban, Brenner and herself—they might be a match for a Clockwork Boy. She’d never seen one, after all, and she had a lot more faith in Brenner’s knives than a soldier’s sword. The sight of the column had squashed that flat. It would be like trying to kill an elephant made out of stone.

She had a persistent vision, though, of Caliban standing before one of the gear-riddled monoliths, his sword held upright before him, like a hero out of an old story. It bothered her, not least because Caliban had been just such a hero. She could see him meeting his death that way again, on his feet, with his sword before him.

Getting maudlin. Getting sentimental in my old age. I shouldn’t care how any of us die anyway—we’re all just looking for ways to fall down. If we even make it to Anuket City, I’ll be impressed, and if we do, I’ll be dogmeat as soon as I walk through the gate.

All this time, Slate had been expecting to die in Anuket City. She had personal history there that wasn’t going to lie quiet.

They’ll be so very glad to see me. One more loose end to tie off. Messily.

For all her fatalism, it had not truly occurred to her that the Clockwork Boys might get her beforehand.

Heh. What everybody told me was the great threat actually is the great threat. Who knew?

“How the hell do we fight something like that?” asked Brenner.

Nobody had to ask what he meant.

“You don’t,” said Caliban. “You run, unless you have an army with you.”

“They do not float,” offered Learned Edmund. “Most of those who escape, I am told, have been able to get into deep water. They walk along the bottom unharmed, but they cannot reach you if you swim.”

“That won’t work for me,” said Caliban, sounding more clipped than usual.

“You can’t swim?” asked Slate, bemused.

He did not meet her eyes, which was strange. “I do not do well with deep water.”

“An exorcist afraid of drowning,” said Brenner. “There’s irony for you.” Caliban ignored him.

“I said, it’s ironic that an exor—“

“I heard you.”

“You two stop bickering or I’ll scream bloody murder and call the whole lot of them down to put me out of my misery.”

“That seems excessive,” said Learned Edmund.

“Does it? Does it really?”

Learned Edmund fiddled with the reins in front of him and said nothing, which was the way that Slate liked it.

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