His uncle led him past the house and the barn, beyond the barley and alfalfa fields, into the forest and the darkness within. Ancient spruce loomed above them, caught in flashes of swinging lantern-light. Fallen timber, hidden in needles and moss, snagged his feet. Koru couldn’t discern a trail, but his uncle walked steadily northward, and around them the land began to rise. They arrived at their destination as clouds chased the last of the dark across the brightening sky.
“You want to know what happened to your brother?” his uncle asked. “If he passed through this forest, the man who lives here would know.”
Koru stared up at the building. He couldn’t think of any reason Nathan would have come here. But then, he couldn’t think of any reason Nathan would have disappeared in the first place. “Where are we?”
It was a pitch-roofed fist of limestone and granite rising above the surrounding hillsides, larger than any house Koru had ever seen. A dozen paths converged at its base, from roads rutted with carriage tracks to barely visible trails that snaked back into the trees.
Koru and Nathan had spent countless nights planning an escape from their uncle. But always in the opposite direction, to the capital. And always together.
Whatever had happened to his brother, Nathan had known he was going and planned his departure. His wyvern-scale knife—their father’s knife—had been missing from beneath his empty mattress.
Koru ground his teeth. Why did you leave without me? Why didn’t you say goodbye?
His uncle watched him. “It’s time for you to trust me, Koru.”
Koru didn’t answer.
“When your parents passed, I took you in. I cared for you.”
“You took our parents’ land. We work it for you. It was a good deal.”
His uncle’s hands twitched. It had been a long time since Koru had spoken that way to him. When he had, those were the callused hands that had struck him across the face.
His uncle drew in a long breath through his nostrils. Then he bunched his hands into fists and marched to the door.
Koru realized his own hands were shaking. He pressed them against his thighs to still them and followed his uncle. He would find Nathan. Whatever it took.
His uncle pounded the knocker against oak panels. The ring was clenched in the bronze mouth of what looked like the head of a small boy. The boy’s eyes were missing. “This is a workshop.”
A long time passed. Despite his misgivings, Koru stepped forward. “Should we knock again?”
“No.” His uncle held up his hand, as if blocking him. “By the number of knocks, he knows who to send.”
“Who is he?”
The door opened. The man behind it looked like a hibernating animal that had just been roused and was hungry for its first meal. He had a shaggy beard and uncombed hair, squinting eyes and arms bundled with muscle. He wore gloves and a blacksmith’s leather apron.
He regarded Koru’s uncle and grinned. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.” Koru looked at his uncle in surprise, but his uncle didn’t respond to the comment. The man opened the door wider and stepped back, revealing a long passage behind him.
The room they went to was broad and low-ceilinged. On the right-hand wall hung a row of brass masks with empty sockets and hinged jaws. Against the wall to the left, but angled slightly away from it, were three statues. Two girls and one boy, about Koru’s age of twelve. All three wore real clothes, but their skin was the same polished brass as the masks. Koru saw his reflection in their faces, but their eyes were closed. They looked so lifelike that he expected those eyes to snap open at any moment.
“What are these?” Koru asked, moving closer, for some reason afraid but also entranced.
“They’re clockwork children,” said their host.
Koru stopped almost close enough to touch the nearest one. “What do they do?”
“Whatever you want them to do,” the man told him. “Wash your floors, sweep your chimney. Anything parents might want their children to do that they can’t ask them to do, or that they would say no to.”
Koru realized how warm it was in the room. The ceiling was too close, making him feel trapped. He stepped back and stumbled into his uncle, who had come up right behind him. His uncle’s body was rigid, an immobile wall.
“They still need to eat and drink,” the gloved man said. “Not all the time. But depending on how often you wind them up.”
Koru’s uncle walked one way beside the statues, examining them, then the other. He stopped in front of one of the brass girls.
“Uncle,” Koru said, “Nathan’s not here. Let’s go.”
Their host grinned. He stood in the back of the room, where lockboxes and levers were embedded in the wall. “This must be Nathan’s brother. The one you told me about.”
Koru jerked his head back, looking from him to his uncle. “Where is he?”
His uncle brushed his finger against the statue’s metal cheek. “It will obey me?”
“You will need to train it. It will resist at first. But you will give it no choice.”
His uncle worked his jaw for a moment. “Let me see it.”
The man took a key on a chain from around his neck. He walked up to the statue and stuck the key into what must have been a slot in its back. He wound it half a dozen times. Then he pulled out the key. The girl’s eyes snapped open.
Koru had expected jewels beneath the retracting brass lids. Instead, they were human eyes. A child’s eyes.
Koru’s uncle told the bronze girl, “Walk to that wall.”
The girl walked stiffly to the back wall.
Koru rushed to the door behind them. He felt the brush of his uncle’s hand against his sleeve as the man tried to catch him, but Koru was too fast. He reached for the handle—and heard a lock’s click. When he threw himself against the door, it held firm and knocked the air out of his lungs.
Their host laughed. “I control the locks from these levers.”
Koru’s uncle only glanced back at him for a moment, as if satisfying himself that he couldn’t escape. He returned his gaze to the girl. “Go back to where you were.”
The girl walked back. Her face was smooth and expressionless, but her eyes were pits of terrified rage.
“I can take out her tongue for free,” the man said. “Some customers prefer them silent, but I think in the long run it’s easier if they’re still able to answer questions when necessary.”
Koru’s uncle stared at the girl before turning to Koru. “You didn’t have to try to run.”
Koru thought he meant just now, and he shoved harder against the door.
But his uncle kept talking. “I owed Archerus for sending his clockworks to deal with your parents. I wasn’t sure which one of you to give him. But when I caught Nathan trying to leave, the choice was made for me.” He shook his head. “I didn’t have to trade you, Koru. I could have let you keep working. But you’re just like your brother. Never grateful.” He faced the man and held out his hand. “You have your trade, Archerus. The clockwork for the boy.”
Archerus placed the key in Koru’s uncle’s hand.
Koru yanked harder on the handle and kicked the door. He heard himself whimpering. He was conscious of Archerus coming closer. He rattled the handle again. Archerus snatched Koru’s hand and snapped a cold bracelet around his wrist.
“Don’t scream,” Archerus said. “When I’m done modifying you, you’ll be just as pretty as all the others.”
Koru learned about his new world in snatches over days or weeks. Every time Archerus woke him with the key in his back, Koru had a brief window of time to carry out Archerus’ orders before the mainspring in the box bolted to his spine unwound, everything around him slowed and he dropped back down into the darkness of sleep.
His life revolved around the courtyard behind the display room where he had been captured. It was revealed to him one limited burst of awareness at a time. He carried split logs to the wood box beside the brick smelter. He trundled wheelbarrows down the passage to the front door where strangers filled them with ore and he caught glimpses of the open world outside. He mixed sand and clay for Archerus’ molds and polished finished pieces of brass. He watched as Archerus used hammers and tongs to pound and bend the yielding metal into human forms.
He itched beneath his metal shell. The brass encasing his body was heavy, and his movements were slow and clumsy.
When he disobeyed, Archerus would tighten the clamps to squeeze his flesh. On those days, Archerus wound him up again and again to keep him awake so he could experience the pain.
In between those moments, most of the time, Koru slept. In his dreams he relived his transformation, the brass casings buckled for the first time around his body, their anchors driven into his bones, the incantation Archerus whispered into his ears to fuse the metal forever to his flesh.
But, to be useful, the clockworks had to be kept awake for decent intervals after they were trained, and eventually Koru had enough time to start planning. To consider how to find his brother and escape.
He learned that the other clockwork boy’s name was Waylen and the remaining girl was Serah. Soon, a new girl appeared: Leticia. She seemed Nathan’s age, two years older than Koru. Leticia spent most of her time asleep, and Serah just shook her head and glanced nervously in whichever direction Archerus had last gone whenever Koru approached her. But Waylen was willing to talk. He was from a village Koru had never heard of in the mountains, and guessed he might have been a prisoner in this keep for half a year.
Waylen told him that there had been six clockworks shortly before Koru arrived, but the others had been traded.
“Was one of them named Nathan?”
“I don’t know. I only knew one of their names, and that was a girl. The others weren’t here long enough. They were asleep most of the time I saw them.”
A few waking periods later, Koru found an opportunity to talk to Waylen again. “I think I know the box where Archerus keeps our keys. If we work together, we can escape.”
Waylen gave a laugh that was half a grunt. “We can’t escape. As soon as our winding runs out, we stop.”
“That’s why we go together. We wake each other.”
Koru wished he could see an expression on Waylen’s motionless face. The other boy lowered his voice. “What if Archerus catches us?”
Koru glanced at the metalworking tools hanging from the smelter’s chimney. “We use those as weapons.”
“I’ll think about it.”
The next time Koru woke up, Waylen and Serah were gone. The air smelled like butchered hogs. “There’s something for you to clean,” Archerus said, and led him around the smelter. A cloud of flies hovered over the workbench. The bench was piled with what looked like pieces of brass armor, but bloody flesh still clung to each concave curve. Leticia was scraping flesh away with a wooden adze. Archerus handed another adze to Koru.
Koru dropped to his knees and retched, but nothing came out past his bronze lips. He was still kneeling in the dirt when the world went dark.
“They tried to escape together,” Leticia told Koru the next time they were both awake and alone. By that time another two boys had arrived at the keep.
It was the first time Leticia had ever initiated a conversation with him. “What happened?”
“They decided to kill Archerus first. So they grabbed his tools. I saw it happen, but I didn’t know what they were planning, so I couldn’t warn them.”
“Warn them about what?”
“Archerus is a metal enchanter. That’s his power. He puts a spell on all the metal in the keep that’s not brass, so that none of it can be used against him. They tried to attack him with metal tools and it killed them instantly.”
Koru closed his eyes for a long moment. He was the one who had encouraged Waylen to use the tools. And if they hadn’t tried to leave without him, he would have died as well. “How did you know that, when they didn’t?”
“They told stories about Archerus in my village. Parents used them to frighten their children when they disobeyed. I didn’t know his real name, or where he was. But I knew he existed.”
Koru had been sweeping, but he noticed his movements slowing, so he leaned the broom against the wall.
“We need to escape,” Leticia said to him. “Before we’re traded.”
Koru asked the same question Waylen had asked him. “How can we defend ourselves if he catches us?” The darkness came before he could hear her answer.
When they spoke next, she showed him. He dropped an armload of pine into the wood box. “Reach under the bin,” Leticia said.
Koru knelt and slid his hand into the dirt beneath the wood. The box had short legs and there was a slight gap between the bottom and the ground. His fingers touched a bone hilt. He drew out a wyvern-scale knife.
“I don’t know how long that’s been there, or who it belonged to,” Letica said, “but it’s a weapon, and it’s not metal.”
Koru closed his hand around his brother’s knife.
Waylen tried to leave without me. Just like Nathan. Those were Koru’s first thoughts when he awoke.
Leticia stepped around to face him. “It’s time,” she said, holding out the key she’d used to wind him. Then her head tilted slightly forward and her eyes closed. She was asleep.
Koru grabbed the key and wound her up. She blinked, quickly reorienting herself. “Archerus is on the other side of the keep. We have to go now.”
They went to the wood box and retrieved the knife. Then they move through the display room. Koru tried to run, but his movements were rigid and mechanical. A lockbox door was bent and dangling from one hinge, the brick Leticia had used to smash it open lying cracked on the floor beneath it. There were more keys inside, on chains, and Koru slowed to seize a handful.
They had just reached the passage when they heard boots pounding in the courtyard behind them. “Koru! Leticia!” Archerus bellowed.
They pushed their stiff limbs faster.
And then Koru stopped. Halfway down the passage.
Leticia looked back at him and slowed. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to go back.”
“What? Why?”
“Devan and Lang. The two new clockworks. We have to get them out.”
Leticia halted, close to the door. “Koru, no. We barely know them and we’re out of time. Archerus can re-lock the door from the display room and I need you to keep me awake. We have to go now. Both of us.”
Koru thought of waking up beside his brother’s empty mattress. He thought of Waylen trying to escape without him. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave them behind.”
The door to the display room crashed open and Archerus entered the passage. He held a short sword in one hand and a long iron hook in the other. He glanced between them, evaluating the situation, and then he charged.
Koru’s skin was armor and his fists were weapons. He gripped the knife in his right hand and strode to meet his captor.
Archerus feigned a sword thrust, then sidestepped at the last moment and used his hook to catch Koru’s side and send him flying with his own momentum. Koru slammed into the flagstone floor with all his metallic weight and watched his brother’s knife skitter away across the tiles.
Koru twisted onto his back in time to see Leticia throw herself at Archerus while he was still looking at Koru. She bashed the sword and hook out of his hands with her brass arms, then struck his head, sending him sprawling. She hit him again and climbed onto his chest.
Koru sat up. “Don’t kill him! He knows where Nathan is.”
Leticia raised her arm. “He won’t tell us.”
“Stop,” Archerus said. “I will. Whatever you want to know.”
Leticia lifted her arm higher. “Then talk.”
“He’s on a farm. The same valley he came from.”
“Which fa…” Leticia’s speech slurred, and her arm dropped. She swayed.
Koru’s vision went dim. Their time was almost up.
Archerus pushed Leticia to the ground and climbed to his knees. He laughed, despite the blood smearing his face. “I created you. Did you think you could defeat me?”
Koru’s world went black. Just before it did, he saw Devan, one of the new clockworks, step up to Archerus from behind with one of the keys from the display room around his neck, pluck Nathan’s knife from the floor, and cut open Archerus’ throat.
Koru’s hand went to the knife as they approached the farm. Nathan had told him once that their dad had received the knife and the farm at the same time, in appreciation for his service in the king’s army. Koru had only known his parents as farmers.
The barley was gilded beneath the falling summer sun, the sheep still in their paddock. Shadow whinnied in her stable. The four of them shoved open the door and saw Koru’s uncle sitting at his table, eating mutton with bread and ale. He looked up and scraped his chair back. Koru imagined he must have had the same look of horrified shock on his own face when he’d been captured by Archerus.
Koru walked across the room, his new companions fanning out behind him.
“Koru,” his uncle said. He wiped greasy fingers on his pants and tried to chuckle. “You made it out. Good for you.”
The brass girl stood in the corner behind him, immobile, waiting for her key to be turned.
His uncle saw him looking. “She doesn’t leave. That’s why I like her. She’s a good worker, yes, but that’s not why. That’s not the only reason why.”
“Stand up,” Koru said.
His uncle nodded quickly and rose to his feet. “You left, your brother left. Your parents were going to kick me off the land. I had been tending it, but they were going to kick me off. Everyone leaves. But she doesn’t leave.”
“Where is Nathan?”
“The night before I took you to the workshop, I noticed how long you spent grooming Shadow. Like you were saying goodbye. That’s how I knew you were planning to leave. Just like your brother.”
“Where is he?”
His uncle licked his lips. He glanced from Koru to the others standing ready beside him. “He’s on Neddy’s farm. I was going to get him, you know. I was saving my money. I was going to bring him back.”
Koru moved aside, leaving a path to the door. They’d learned how the windup boxes were adjusted. Each of them could stay up most of a day or night now, long enough when the four of them worked together. Five, if they counted the girl in the corner. “This is our farm. If we see you here after today, we’ll kill you.”
“The farm’s ownership isn’t just up to you.” His uncle made his voice a little deeper. “It’s up to the magistrate.”
“You’re not coming back,” Koru said. “But you can take out whatever you can carry.”
His uncle started to say something else. Then he looked into Koru’s eyes and stopped.
He left alone.
They brought Nathan back that night. As they walked back to the farm together, Koru realized that now, they could go anywhere. They could stay on the road until they reached the capital. They could see what was beyond it.
Koru and Nathan told the others they could stay in the main house. Tonight at least, they would remain in their own one-room cabin.
“He killed mom and dad,” Koru said once they were alone. “He used one of the clockworks to do it, but it was him.”
“You should have killed him,” Nathan answered.
“I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to find you.” Koru handed Nathan their father’s knife.
Nathan’s expression couldn’t change, but his eye lingered on the shimmering scale. “I didn’t think I’d ever see this again.”
“Nathan, when you left, why didn’t you say goodbye?”
Nathan slid the knife beneath his mattress. “Because I planned to take you with me. But Uncle caught me while I was gathering our things.” He looked up. “You didn’t think I’d abandon you, did you?”
Koru looked at him, not knowing what to say. But his brother wasn’t expecting an answer.
“When we leave, we’ll leave together,” Nathan said.
Koru had already moved his own mattress into a corner. He would get rid of it eventually. He had no more use for it. He would fall asleep standing. Probably soon, once his mainspring was exhausted. But they would each revive each other; they would keep each other going. When he woke, it would be with his brother beside him.
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Aaron Emmel’s stories have appeared in Fireside Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Dark Recesses Press, and many other excellent magazines and anthologies. Aaron grew up in the mountains of New Mexico and on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and now lives with his wife and children in Maryland. Find him at aaronemmel.com and on Threads and Bluesky at @aaronjemmel. |