“Too much—noise—stop—” She rolled her eyes up at Brenner in mute appeal.
He didn’t fail her. The assassin pounced, knocking her down, and curled himself around her head. She choked helplessly into his midsection, pounding weakly on the forest floor and his shoulder with her fists.
“What are you doing? Are you mad?” Caliban hauled at Brenner’s arm.
“Get down!” the assassin growled.
“You’ll smother her!”
“If I have to, yes!Get down!”
“But—”
Slate gathered the very last shreds of air in her lungs and gasped “Down—quiet—that’s an order!”
Obedience was a habit that prison and possession had not broken. Caliban sank to his knees, one hand still on Brenner’s elbow.
Down the road, three abreast, a column of Clockwork Boys came marching.
They were huge. They were horrible.
There were a great many of them.
The basic shape was centaur-like. Some had four legs, some had six. They stood between eight and ten feet tall.
Slate had seen drawings before, but she hadn’t known how much faith to put in them. The drawings were all strangely geometric, depicting enormous creatures made out of slabs and blocks, like nothing Slate had ever seen.
The brief glance she got, in the space between Brenner’s arm and ribcage, showed that the artists had not been so far wrong after all.
The Clockwork Boys were the color of old ivory. Their heads—if it was anything so normal as a head—were blunt wedges, like a squared-off horse head. Slate caught a glimpse of what looked like inlay—carving—something.
Gears. They’re covered in gears, like barnacles. It’s how they move, somehow—but it doesn’t makesense. They’re alive, but they’re a made thing, but nobody could havemadethat, surely—
She understood now why the artificers were tying themselves in knots.
The creatures could not exist, but they did. And they could smash apart a building or an army column with equal ease.
How did the army ever kill even one of them? I suppose you could take it apart with hammers, like a stone wall, but it would take hours…
They have to be stopped.
They expectusto stop them.
If she had not been about to choke to death, the sheer insanity of it all would have made her laugh. Or cry. Possibly both.
Impossible, uncaring, the Clockwork Boys slammed down the road. Their feet pounded the ground like hammers.
They were abreast of the trees now. Brenner curled more tightly around her, blocking her view.
Slate was going to suffocate. She was going to die with her face jammed into Brenner’s ribcage, which was not a way she’d ever wanted to go. She thrashed weakly, involuntarily, despite every nerve screaming at her to lay still, lay still, let the danger pass, don’t make a sound…
A black-gloved hand covered her throat. He didn’t squeeze—yet—but Slate could feel his fingers like bars of iron, ready to close the moment she began coughing again.
Panic seized her, and under it, relief.Good old ruthless Brenner. He won’t let me kill us all. He’ll kill me first.
Slate had to admit that dying with Brenner’s hands locked around her windpipewasa death she’d seen coming.Could be a lot worse.Brenner was a very efficient killer, even if he couldn’t ride a horse.
“It’s okay, darlin’…” he whispered into her hair, “I’ve got you.”
