Chapter 5 #2
“An Everel, but he’s Father’s cousin. If it were up to me, I would give him to himself, although he’s been here so long now that he might not even want to be sasined. Master sa Everel does sound very odd.”
“Leaf sa Serral has a nice ring, though,” Leaf said. “I had sasinage papers drawn up for myself when I was eight, you know. I have so far presented them to my father twenty-three times to no avail, though he did almost give in once, before this whole contract thing.”
Nic’s experience of high society was limited to books and gossip pages, yet he doubted that a desire to be sasined from one’s family was common, especially for a woman.
No doubt she had been told all her life that her duty was to marry for the family, yet Leaf wanted freedom, and he couldn’t but admire her for it.
“Twenty-three times?” he said. “Nicholas sa Monterris sounds good too, though as my father’s only heir I could have asked four thousand times and gotten nowhere.”
Leaf paused to look around the old gallery, broken windows opening it to the elements along one side.
“That is the joy of having two sisters and three brothers, I admit. I intended to keep asking until he gave in, as it’s all I’ve ever wanted, but this marriage has somewhat ruined—oh! What in all the world are those?”
She pointed at a pile of chipped automata parts, faces and arms and legs all jumbled in with moth-eaten fabric and scattered gears.
“They’re automata. They were originally part of the old grotto display, before they were all broken up. I forgot there were some up here.”
“They’re so creepy.”
Nic stared at the blank white faces. “I guess.”
“You don’t think they’re creepy?”
“Not really. They don’t work unless you wind them and they need a smithed reel to do anything interesting. These are just scrap. I often dig through the piles in the grotto for working pieces to make my own automata.”
“What sort? Not like this, I hope.”
“No, more like frogs that can hop about or mechanical echoes that move their wings. And clocks. Lots of clocks that tell the time in different ways. It’s important to visualise life passing you by in as many ways as possible.”
“See, these are the sorts of things that ought to go in the preliminary notes. ‘Has morose sense of humour. Likes to conjure. House has an army of creepy broken automata. Doesn’t appreciate being likened to silverware.’?”
“Spoons just aren’t very gay.”
She snorted a laugh he could only describe as unladylike, and he liked her the better for it. “We should probably get back,” she said. “But perhaps we could come here again tomorrow?”
“For fun, or because you actually think we’ll find answers?”
“Both? The only other lead we have is that torn page you said Rowerre was holding, but it could have been anything.”
“Something someone didn’t want found on his body.”
She tilted her head, fixing him with her curious stare. “Did Lord Ellis’s son really die here, falling down the stairs?”
“Yes, about five, maybe six years ago. Father hasn’t had an apprentice since.”
Receiving only a frown, Nic turned back the way they had come, but Leaf’s gaze lingered on the pile of broken automata. “Why were they broken up? You said it like it was done deliberately.”
“Because they were thought to be dangerous.” For the first time that afternoon, Nic found himself loath to explain, and couldn’t but think of her aunt’s far more pointed questions at dinner the night before.
“Dangerous? Well, perhaps we should go, and maybe explore somewhere else next time.”
“As you wish.” He gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”
“After you, my darling husband.”
Nic wasn’t sure if the epithet was nice or he was just tired.
It had been an odd afternoon, but he was glad he had happened upon Lady Leaf on the stairs.
He’d been dreading everything to do with her, but he wouldn’t actually be sorry to spend the entire lock-in in just such bouts of exploration.
After they had finished with the house, they could go through the garden and the crypt and out to the old magic-scarred tower where the locals saw ghosts at night.
“You know,” he said, stepping back into the previous room. “If you want creepy, the tower—”
He stopped, feet sticking to the floor. Leaf bumped into him, yet he stood his ground, even when she peered around to see what had frozen him midstride.
“What is it?”
Nic nodded at the corner, where a figure stood perfectly still in the shadows.
“Hello?” he hazarded, earning not so much as a twitch.
A sense of inevitability crawled over him as he stepped closer, edging forward like a hunter creeping upon prey.
Or a frightened young man trying to look brave. He knew which he wanted to be.
“Nic,” Leaf hissed. “Who is it?”
Nic lifted his lantern, and its light shone off metal gears and a pale angular face. And the gold cording of half an ostentatious green-and-gold waistcoat.
“It’s—”
With the click-click-click of old clockwork, the head turned until the empty sockets stared right at him. And all at once Nic wanted to take back everything he had said about the automata not being creepy.
A clank of gears resounded within the automaton’s casing, and with a squeak of something turning unwillingly, a metallic voice emerged from the lipless mouth. “I am here for you.”
Another clank like a typewriter hitting the end of its row sent vibrations shuddering through the casing. “I am here for you,” it ground out.
Clank.
“I am here for you. Nicholas.”
It stepped forward, arm lifting upon a fast ticker of tiny gears. The lantern slipped from Nic’s hand and hit the floor. Glass cracked, tinkling loose as the light died in a hiss of hot oil, plunging them into velvet gloom.
“I am here for you. Nicholas.”