The Deception by Taylor Blakemore Kim

Author:Taylor Blakemore, Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2022-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

CLEMENTINE

Russell held his hands to his chest, waiting just inside the attic door for Clem to look up from the table. It annoyed her; it was a telltale sign he’d left some responsibility by the wayside and now wanted to give penance for mucking things up.

“What have you done?”

“Why would you think I’ve done something?”

“You’re in your servile mode. So you’ve done something.”

“I am offended at the implication.”

“Hm.”

“I’ve merely brought the post.”

She flipped down the jeweler’s loupe to return to her task. She was in need of a cog. She scanned the materials arrayed on the table before her. A neat row of inks, a tidily stacked ream of paper. Coils in one box, pins and gears in two others. Another filled with the tin bodies of canaries and finches and a blue jay—all awaiting feathers. She’d glue them on at some point. Wings stored by size in a small cabinet. A mannequin’s arm. A hand missing two plaster fingers. Four sets of glass eyes in blue, brown, green, and topaz. The shell of a woman’s face leaned against a pile of books that had been removed from a crate. The jaw sat to the left of the mannequin’s cheek.

Russell cocked his eyebrow and glared at the table. “You’re working on that again?”

“I am.”

The automaton. Russell never called it by its name. He referred to it as “The Thing” and as her “ghastly pastime.” He prayed to all gods and devils it would never reach completion. Sometimes she feared the same, for no matter the drawings and plans she pored over late at night, there was always another coil or spring or tack or ratchet wheel needed.

My crowning glory, she said. One day, she also said. The one day was nearly here.

“Why can’t you work on the mechanical birds?”

“They’re simple.” She pinched a cog that had found its way to the box of spindles and held it out. Too large. “They’re amusements.”

“I’m fond of them.” He took a seat on a trunk across from her.

“Amandine is better.”

“You’ve named the thing.”

“I have.”

“You’ll scare the sitters into the grave with that.”

“Not the grave, Russell. We do need a live audience. To pay the bills.”

He sat on a trunk and held up a bundle of letters. “And I think we’re well on the way. The sittings have gone well, don’t you think?”

“They’re getting stale.”

“That’s only because that Sullivan fellow continues to sob his way through them.”

“I haven’t found his dead wife. She’s not in my book. She’s not in a graveyard, at least not here. I think we should put him off.”

“He’s coming tonight, I’m afraid.”

“I’m tired of posing as Mouse’s cousin. And you set off that flash pot too near the ferns last night. I saw your arm. Simplicity, Russell. If we could just have simplicity.”

“You keep calling out for some Sister Matilda—in fact, you cry out so often you step right on Maud’s meditation. You don’t even give her a chance, and I’ve barely wound in the catgut before you’re on to another effect.

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