A single dragoon separates from the others, gallops toward us with one hand on the pommel of his saber.
“Stay low, Elena. Survive the onslaught,” I say. “After I am finished, surprise them if you can. If they take you, do not let them discover what you are.”
“Yes, Peter,” she says.
I shove my cloak to the side and step away from Elena, drawing my long knife. The dagger is a simple blade the length of my forearm. Long and short, both my hands now sprout fangs.
The horseman yanks the reins and his mount comes to a prancing stop fifty yards away. Steam rises from the black flanks of his horse. The others are staying back, eyes dark under their red hats, watching this sport from a distance.
Arrogant and sure, they expect us to cower. Voices drift to me on the wind as mushrooms of mist sprout from their mouths. I hear a short bark of laughter.
Eyeing my blades, the dragoon hesitates. He begins to reach for his pistols, and I lower my nearly seven-foot frame to a knee and place my long and short blades flat on the wet grass. The backs of my hands are made of leather, stained dark with the rain. I can see the brass gears moving beneath them, ridges like foothills.
The dragoon leaves the pistols holstered. As he approaches, I keep my fingers pushed into the ground. Elena stands at my side.
“Be strong, Elena,” I say, without turning. “Protect Peter’s legacy.”
Elena’s face is the first thing I see—my first memory of the world—and she is the last sight I could ever forget.
I don’t remember opening my eyes.
The candle-lit path of her cheek eclipses the darkness, a perfect curve, shining like the sight of a city burning from the sea. Her skin is made of hard porcelain. As she moves, the silhouette of her doll’s face is a wavering blade of light. She leans over a wooden desk, clad in a girl’s dress, scratching out a message with a fountain pen held in frozen ceramic fingers. Her black eyes strafe the paper without seeing.
On this first day, Elena’s hand is a doll’s hand. It swoops back and forth as she mindlessly writes her message in the dark. She is oblivious to the world of men, for now. A flutter of gears is lost within the folds of fine fabric that she wears and I hear a faint clicking. This is the heartbeat of my world, a rhythm that is steady and quiet and mechanical under the warm wax-smell of candles.
Another shape moves—a man, shifting between shadows that flicker like tongues on the wall. Thin and bent, he drapes long fingers in delicate patterns over me. I turn my head slightly to inspect him, blinking to focus. His taut face sharpens into detaiclass="underline" wrinkled bags under glittering eyes. His lips are pressed together and white within a graying beard. The man’s limbs are shaking every half second as his heart beats in his narrow chest.
I will come to know this man as Fiovani. My father. Or the closest thing to it.
The man is holding his breath, watching me with wide eyes.
“Privet,” I say, and the old man collapses.
Without thought, I reach out and catch him by the shoulder. Eyelids fluttering, his head dips like a sail dropping to half-mast. For the first time, I see what must be my own hand. An economy of brass struts wrapped in supple leather. And now I truly begin to understand that I am also a thing in this world. Not like the doll who is writing a few feet away with all the mindfulness of water choosing a path downhill. Something more. But also not like this fainting man, made of soft flesh.
Somehow, I am. And, I tell you, I find it a strange thing, to be.
The idea of it settles into my mind. A world outside me, perceived through sight and hearing and other senses. And somewhere inside, I am placing the sights and sounds into a smaller, simpler idea of a world that is jarringly complex and unknowable. From within this little world in my head, I am making decisions.
Like the decision to catch my father by his shoulder.
The old man slumps, held upright by my metal fingers. His chin falls to his chest and his face is lost in strands of brown-gray hair. I have saved him from falling into a sharp patchwork of tools that lie scattered around my legs. This low room is a workshop, lit by a tilting confusion of candles placed on every surface. Splintery wooden beams stripe the ceiling, and the room stretches beyond the light and into warm darkness. A patchwork of desks and tables are arrayed in groups. Some are empty, but most are piled high with scraps of metal, twists of rope, wooden bowls filled with unknown substances, fouled spoons, and all manner of glass vials and tubes.
Somehow, the knowledge of this workshop is in me.
Half-formed body parts are sprawled among the clutter. Chunky torsos filled with fine gears, supported by whalebone ribs and riddled with India rubber veins. This place is a workshop . . . and a womb.
Sitting up, I gently lay the old man over an empty desk.
Now, I see that I am spread out on a long wooden table. Nearby, the doll-thing smiles sightlessly in the darkness, continuing to write. Her pen scratches audibly as she covers a piece of stiff paper with ink scrawls.
She and I are kin.
My shape is that of a man. Long golden legs, glowing dully as light winks from hundreds of rivets. My skin is made of bands of a beaten, gray-gold metal, fastened to a solid frame. Through narrow gaps in the tops of my thighs, I see a row of braided metal cables pulled to tension, wrapped around circular cogs.
When I move, I hear the clockwork sound again.
“Hello?” murmurs the old man. “My son?”
Gnarled fingers wrap over my golden wrist. Faintly, I can feel the heat inside his hands. I sense that he is full of warm blood, carrying energy around his body. His skin is not like mine. Nor his heart. There is no blood within me. My father and I are not alike. He is a man, and I am something else.
“Oh, you are alive,” he says. “Finally, you are here.”
“Who are you?” I ask, releasing him.
“I am Fiovanti Favuri Romanti Cimini, although you may call me Favo. I am last mechanician to the Tsar Peter Alexyovich. Practicioner of the ancient art of avtomata and keeper of its relics. Successor to the great alchemists who came and went before history. Knower of secrets from the past and from the future. And, if you will believe the Tsar’s wife, Empress Catherine Alexeyevich . . . I am a devil.”
“Last mechanician?”
“Ten years ago, the Emperor secretly visited the Netherlands, England, Germany, and Austria. He recruited hundreds of shipbuilders, artists, and mechanicians. To one group of us, he gave a special task. Given an extraordinary artifact from the past, we were told to build . . . you. But the Empress never saw the promise. And it has been so long. The rest of my group has already been sent east to exile. I am the last, toiling alone in the dark and cowering in fear from her.”
Spittle flies from his lips in the twilight.
“But you are here now,” he says, snatching a small hammer from the table. “Look at you! Talking! Can you see me? Tell me what you see!”
“A room. A man. Machines.”
“Concise,” he says, tapping my chest lightly and listening. “Perfect. The mixture was perfect. The old texts were right. The relic is working . . . ”
The old man makes no sense. Putting my gauntlet-like hands out, I clench my fists and feel the hard metal of my fingers. Squeezing, I push to the tolerance of my strength—until I can feel the gears in my hands straining. I swing my legs off the workbench and my wooden heels scratch the floor.
I stand, the top of my head nearly brushing the low ceiling.
Favo enters the darkness. In a moment he returns, his arms wrapped around a tall golden panel. The beaten-brass mirror groans as he drags it over the dusty wooden floor. The panel seems to glow in the candlelight. He props himself against it—holding the long rectangle before me—then stops and stares.