Clockwork Birds

“Come inside,” Damien ordered, releasing my wrist and stepping through the doorway.

I remained beside the stairs, rubbing the place he had held, until footsteps sounded on the flight above.

There was enough room behind the open door to conceal me. He indicated it with two fingers, then turned towards the guard who appeared on the landing.

“There’s a fault in the lower mechanism. Keep this staircase clear,” Damien said.

“But Lord Hale told me to find his niece.”

“Fine. Then keep looking for her. I’ll see to this myself.”

The guard hesitated before leaving. Damien pushed the door closed, and the machinery settled into silence around us.

“How did you pass the entrance examination?” he asked.

There was no point in lying now.

I picked the false fingertip out of my glove and showed him its punctured surface. He took it to a nearby lantern without touching me again.

“Will you tell him?” I asked.

“That depends on what you do next.”

He had a use for me, then. I could listen to a proposal without mistaking it for kindness.

“This is the Founder’s vault,” he explained. “The fittings are ours. The lock beneath them is older. It requires living warmth and a pulse that continues after the first contact.”

I glanced at the door. A vampire warmed by feeding might have passed the first condition, but none could have supplied the second.

“You expected a human,” I said.

“My father spent twelve years proving there was no alternative. I had begun to think he mistranslated the instructions.”

“And now?”

Damien unfolded a map against the wall. His signet held one corner flat while he traced a line down its centre.

“There are inner doors. Help me reach the seal, and I’ll give you a way off the island—”

“And why do you presume I’d want to leave?”

“You’re a human hiding amongst vampires. Why wouldn’t you?”

That was perceptive of him. How much else had he already figured out?

“My family’s boat is tied up at the service docks,” he continued.

I moved closer. The map showed a stair branching from the pump room, ending at a narrow canal beneath the palace.

“The gates have readers. This one takes my signet. There is fuel aboard, and a compass. Follow the marked channel until you reach the outer buoy,” he said, tapping a small drawing beside the docks.

“They could come after me.”

“No. The boundary binds us vampires. Beyond the buoy, you would be beyond our reach.”

I studied the channel, the distance between the marks and the little cross beside the docks. It was considerably more than I had managed to learn during three visits to the harbour.

“Give me the ring.”

He slid it back onto his finger.

“When we reach the seal.”

I wanted to ask for it again. I had been refused at the harbour often enough that I didn’t want to get that far only to hit another wall.

I thought about putting my glove on, but folding it occupied my fingers and kept him from seeing how much the map had affected me.

“The boat must be there. And I’ll need the map.”

“Agreed.”

He led me down a passage lined with tombs. Gas pipes followed the arches of the vaulted ceiling; where one had leaked, soot spread across a carved angel’s face. I kept my skirt clear of the water running along the floor.

The machinery sounded louder below us. Damien stopped to turn a valve, testing its position before proceeding. He had removed his evening gloves, and a narrow burn ran across one of his knuckles.

“What will you do with it?” I asked.

“The seal?”

“You have decided what to do with me. I assume you have considered the rest.”

He looked back, then continued down the steps.

“Your uncle controls the council. We maintain the boundary, the harbour engines and half the lanterns in the ballroom, but he can close our foundries with a vote. The seal would give us authority he couldn’t withdraw.”

I knew the council’s habits. A chair had been removed rather than allow a member of Damien’s clan to sit beside my uncle at the last winter supper.

“You want his place.”

“No. I want him out of mine.”

At the next door, he stood aside for me. I laid my hand against the plate, and its slender needle pierced the side of my palm. The sting was brief; I was less prepared for Damien’s attention to fixate on the drop of blood that followed.

I covered it with my handkerchief, and he turned to watch the door open.

“My mother was a vampire,” I said, because he would ask eventually, and I preferred to choose the moment myself.

“Vivienne Hale,” he said.

“You knew her?”

“Only her name.”

I couldn’t explain why exactly, but I wanted a different answer. It was an unreasonable thing to want from him.

“Sarah told me the curse sometimes misses a child. The birth is recorded as a stillbirth. My mother told her to lie.”

Why was I telling him all this? Perhaps it was because I hadn’t really spoken to anyone since Sarah passed; now that he was listening, I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Owen signed my birth entry while he was visiting the western estates. By the time he returned, there was an infant in mourning and a maid who wouldn’t let anyone disturb her.”

Damien said nothing for several steps before speaking.

“The other children?”

“I never asked Sarah what happened to them.”

I had suspected enough to be grateful for the room she kept me in. Later, when I was old enough to attend court, she taught me to let people believe I disliked them.

The passage widened into a pump room. Below the iron grating, long rods rose and fell through black water. Damien checked his watch, then pulled a lever beside the next gate.

It lifted unevenly.

“Wait here,” he instructed.

He crossed underneath and put his shoulder against the frame. I watched the chain above him snag on a damaged cog. Another turn would pull it free, and the gate would fall on his back.

“The upper wheel,” I warned him. “It’s slipping.”

He reached for the chain as it jumped. I pushed the lever back into its housing, and the gate struck its stop hard enough to shake the grating beneath my feet.

For a few seconds we remained where we were, listening to the loose chain drag against the metal.

Then blood ran down his wrist.

“There’s a manual release,” he said. “It will take a little time.”

“Your hand first.”

“It will close when I’ve fed.”

“There isn’t anything here to drink.”

He glanced at me, then away. I wished I had chosen different words, but I held out my hand until he gave me his.

The cut crossed his palm.

Would he have stopped for me if I had been the one bleeding? I wanted to believe so.

I tore a strip from the clean lining of my petticoat and wrapped it around his hand, keeping clear of the joint. Sarah had made me practise on her cold fingers after I hurt myself on a broken cup; I remembered protesting that her hand was much larger than mine.

Damien’s was larger than both of ours; I had to turn it over to tuck in the end.

“Can you bend them?” I asked.

He did, and I adjusted the knot when the cloth pulled against his thumb.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

I smoothed the loose edge down once more before letting go. He watched my hands as I pulled them away.

“You can hold the lantern,” he suggested after a moment.

We worked beside the gate while the pumps continued beneath us. He explained which part of the release had seized, then stopped himself halfway through the explanation.

“Go on,” I said. “I’m still following.”

He showed me where to put the light. There was less force in his voice when he spoke about the mechanism, and he waited when I needed to move nearer to see. I found myself asking another question after he had answered the first.

“Did you always make things?” I asked.

“Mostly,” he said, working the pin loose with the edge of a small tool. “Although my tutors took most of them away. My favourites were birds.”

“Birds?”

“Clockwork. The bodies were straightforward, but I couldn’t get them to make a decent sound.”

I pictured one of those little painted birds people kept beneath glass, opening its beak to disappoint an entire drawing room. The smile escaped before I could stop it.

“What did they sound like?”

“A hinge,” he answered, considering the question more seriously than I had expected. “One of them was worse than the others.”

I laughed quietly, and he stopped turning the tool. He looked down again, but his mouth had softened.

“Do you still have them?”

“A few. In my drawer.”

He tested the release. This time it moved.

“I… I could show you, if you want.”

The words were so ordinary that I nearly agreed. I wanted to see the birds, to sit beside him while he talked about them. Then he reached for the map, and I remembered that I would soon be leaving this island.

He folded it without adding anything else, looking slightly disappointed that I hadn’t given him an answer.

While he reset the counterweight, I checked the vial. Its stopper had worked loose inside my garter pouch, leaving a red mark on Sarah’s cloth. I pressed the damp corner between my fingers.

There were only a few drops left. I couldn’t tell how many I had lost.

“Is it damaged?” Damien asked.

I shook my head, although my hands continued examining it.

“It was my mother’s.”

He lowered the lantern so I could see.

“Sarah sealed several bottles before my mother died. I know she left them to keep me alive, but sometimes I wanted to save one vial, so I’d always have a piece of her with me.”

The pumps went through another stroke.

I wished I could take that last part back; I had told him something I hadn’t even said to Sarah.

“You don’t remember her?” he asked softly.

“She only lived for four days after I was born.” I folded the stained corner out of sight. “Sarah said she ruined every plant she was given. I liked knowing that.”

Damien took off his coat and folded it over a dry section of rail. He pointed to the sheltered space inside the folds, and I put the vial there while I fixed its stopper.

He held the light steady until my hands stopped fumbling.

I had expected him to rush me, but he only moved the lantern when I needed more light. He was surprisingly gentle for someone who seemed so intimidating.

I found myself wanting to tell him more about Sarah. I could have cried quite easily then, which made no sense. I had managed the funeral, the clearing of Sarah’s room and every evening since without asking anyone to sit beside me.

“Lucy…”

I looked up, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. He looked worried, his attention still on my face even after I lowered my hand, so I gave him a small smile.

“It’s secure.”

I had been turning the stopper long after it was tight.

At the gate, he offered me his uninjured hand, so I took it. The grating beyond had rusted away in places, and crossing required more attention than I could give while thinking about how his fingers fitted around mine.

On the far side, my skirt caught beneath a bracket. Damien steadied me at the waist while I freed it, and I turned into the space between his arm and the wall.

He was close enough that I could see the faint nick on his chin where he had shaved recently. He had seemed older upstairs. Here, with his coat off, I wanted to straighten his twisted collar.

My hand reached his lapel before I decided whether or not that was a sensible idea.

He became very still, and his attention moved to my mouth. The small space between us began to feel like something I could choose to cross.

Then the edge of his signet pressed through my dress, and I lowered my hand.

I had nearly kissed him, and now I’d have to ask for the ring again. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at his face.

“The ring,” I said, staring at the floor.

His fingers loosened immediately, but he didn’t remove it. I stepped away from him, smoothing a crease in my skirt that no longer mattered.

Neither of us spoke as we reached the inner chamber.

Two carved figures stood above the last doorway. One showed the Founder’s fangs. The other had been chiselled from the shoulders upward, leaving only a hand extended towards the Founder.

My blood opened the door beneath them.

Inside, a silver disc lay between two shallow basins. Around its edge, in the lettering I had spent years copying into household registers, were the titles of its keepers.

The vampire custodian and the human witness.

Below them was a date, repeated on the brass calendar mounted on the wall above.

“That’s tonight.”