I disassembled the disks, sliding the cylinder over the central rod, then pushing the rest into place. Rotating one disk moved the other, and as I lined up the first name, the second came together below. “Oh, God.”
“Who was Johann Fust?”
“A businessman,” I whispered. “An investor who helped to fund Gutenberg’s press. Gutenberg failed to repay the loan, so Fust ended up suing him. The details are scarce, but Fust nearly destroyed him. According to some historians, Fust took Gutenberg’s equipment as payment for that debt. One way or another, Fust then went on to set up his own press.” The gears in my hand twitched, rotating a single click on their own.
“Do you think Fust made the automatons?”
“No. I think this automaton is Fust.” I sat back, staring at the broken figure. “Libriomancers cheat,” I said numbly. We weren’t strong enough to work magic any other way. As a traditional sorcerer, Gutenberg had been a failure, so he had spent his life finding another path to power. “He used the magic of the Bible to define his automatons, to give them their powers, but he’s not God. He couldn’t give them life, or the independence they needed in order to fight his enemies.”
“So he used people?” Lena stared at the automaton in horror. “Which means when I dragged that thing into the tree with me, I killed it.”
“Or you freed it.” The gears clicked again. “Fust supposedly died of the plague. Gutenberg must have gone to him just before he died.”
Had he revealed his power? Offered Fust the chance to live free of the pain? Death from plague was a nasty way to go. Or had Gutenberg simply ripped Fust’s spirit from his body, trapping it in a mechanical head.
“He enslaved them,” said Lena. “Isaac, what happens to Fust if we repair this thing? If he’s finally at peace, are we dragging him back into servitude?”
“I don’t know. Ghosts and spirits… it’s hard to separate facts from superstition. Does a medium truly contact ghosts, or does the medium’s own magic create the ghost in the first place? I don’t think there’s a single Porter in North America who can talk to the dead.” Though there were a handful of vampire species who could theoretically do so. “Gutenberg has kept so much from the rest of us.”
“Can you find him without repairing the automaton?” Lena asked.
“Maybe eventually. But we don’t have time.” I jogged back to the Triumph, where I dug out an old space opera. When I returned to Lena and the automaton, I had created a small handheld monitoring pad and a shiny silver pellet the size of my thumb.
“That looks like the same toy you used on Ted Boyer.”
“Exactly. Which could be a problem, now that I think about it. Let me change the frequency.” I grabbed the pellet, gripped both ends, and twisted forty-five degrees. The light blinked three times. I adjusted a dial on the tracking pad until the red dot appeared again. “Are you able to carve out a place for this?”
She dragged her index finger through the inside of the automaton’s head, whittling a groove with her nail. I pressed the explosive into place while a lip of wood grew around it, securing it in place.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen when we fix this thing,” I said. “But if it decides to destroy us, that should take it out.” They might be invulnerable from the outside, but an explosive nested against the heart of its magic was another matter entirely.
“Promise me that when this is over, you’ll press that button.”
Whatever Fust might have done to Gutenberg back in the fifteenth century, he had paid for it many times over. I nodded and reached over to the other side of the head, carefully pulling it into place so that the horizontal rod slid into the matching hole below the ear.
Lena straightened the rod for the jaw. Her fingers slid between mine as we pushed the head together. Just as before, I felt her magic sinking into the wood, infusing it with life.
“This was an oak,” I whispered.
“That’s right.” She smiled at me as splinters on either side twitched and reached out, knitting the cracks.
“Hubert couldn’t repair it,” I said. “That’s why he left it behind.” I couldn’t have done it either, not without carving an entirely new head and body. I marveled at the magic flowing through her hands. It was like she was reaching into the tree’s past, reminding it of the days when it had stood tall and proud, drinking in the sun and the rain.
The automaton’s fingers twitched, and Smudge seared my ear in alarm. As one, Lena and I rose and backed away. I armed the explosive and held my thumb over the button, just in case. The head turned, then started to twitch. I could hear a metal clicking from within the neck as it tried and failed to straighten its head.
“I think we missed a piece,” I said.
“Do you know who you are?” Lena asked it.
The automaton rolled onto its side and slowly pushed itself upright. The hole in its chest was gone, replaced with young, bright wood, naked and unprotected. How many spells lay scattered on the ground, broken and useless?
Even as I asked the question, something crawled over my foot, making me jump. The metal keys were moving through the grass, climbing up the automaton’s body like silver insects. The automaton didn’t move.
On impulse, I stepped forward and touched the metal skin. I could feel the individual spells crackling with magic, but the metal nearest the chest was cold and dead.
“Isaac, what are you doing?”
More letters clicked into place, and I felt another line of magic surge to life. The sensation reminded me of steam rushing through a pipe, all of that energy waiting to be tapped and directed. “He transferred the essence of a living person into another body. Can you imagine what else we could do? You could build prosthetic limbs that respond like living flesh, or entire bodies for people dying of injury or disease.”
“Or living weapons,” Lena said, watching the automaton.
The automaton stared at us in return. Its jaw hung open, giving it a vaguely shocked and dimwitted expression. We hadn’t fixed all of the chains and cables inside. Would those repair themselves with time as well?
“Johann Fust.” I waited, but there was no sign of recognition or awareness. After so many centuries, it might not remember who it was. Gutenberg was the only one who knew the automatons’ identities, and I couldn’t imagine him ever addressing them by name.
“Isaac… are you sure we should be doing this?”
“Fixing a wood-and-metal golem that could crush us both? Not at all.”
“No. Trying to save Gutenberg. He enslaved his enemies in these things. He manipulated the minds and memories of people like Charles Hubert. He runs the Porters like his own little dictatorship. Does anyone know what other secrets he might be hiding?”
“De Leon might,” I said.
“What do you think Ponce de Leon was really banished for?”
I had asked myself the same question. All I knew was that de Leon had been a Porter for centuries. He had been one of the original twelve, and he had left the organization at some point during the twentieth century.
Maybe he had been right to do so.
The last of the metal blocks slid into place. The automaton limped forward. The jaw wasn’t the only damaged component, but overall, it appeared functional. Protecting Gutenberg would have been one of its core spells, and now those spells had been rebuilt.
Whatever crimes Gutenberg might have committed, we had to find him. We had to stop Charles Hubert, or whatever he had become. “Where is Johannes Gutenberg?”
The clicking in the neck grew louder as the automaton turned to look at me.
“Gutenberg is in danger.” It didn’t move. Maybe it couldn’t hear or understand me, or maybe it wasn’t programmed to obey anyone but its creator. I tried again. “Wo ist Johannes Gutenberg? Er ist in Gefahr.”
It was modern-day German, but hopefully whatever was left of Fust might recognize it. The automaton went perfectly still, and I sensed its magic building like a capacitor preparing to discharge. I backed away, gesturing for Lena to do the same.