Empire of Ruins by Arthur Slade Page B

tired. She thought he might have a hunch in his back. “Let’s take a quick look through his room before anyone notices anything.”
    In the cabin, Modo placed the broken clockwork falcon in the portmanteau along with the sketchbook. Octavia found a tin box with three clockwork spiders inside. She snapped it shut.
    “We must inform Mr. Socrates,” she said. “He’ll want to see this.”
    As they made their way to his cabin, Octavia felt that familiar exhilaration that made her love her life as a secretagent. She could have been killed at any moment during the struggle, and yet she had won again!
    “My dear Modo,” she said, “I must point out to you that for the third time I have saved your life.”
    “No, no, no,” he said, “I had everything under control!”
    Then they began to laugh.

 

An Outlandish Request
     
    V isser landed with a splash in the darkness and immediately kicked off his shoes to begin the long swim toward the coast. The decision to take to the water had been made for him. Perhaps he could have killed one of them, but taking both down at the same time would have been extremely difficult. Inevitably, he would have been captured.
    So into the water he went, performing a rather spectacular dive from that height, if anyone had been watching. He was pleased that he had angled it well so he didn’t go too deep; he still had plenty of air in his lungs when he hit the surface. He flipped onto his back, floating in the darkness and staring back at the
Rome
. The two agents were standing at the railing, searching for him, backlit by the ship’s lights.
    A good fight. It had been a long time since anyone had tested his skills so thoroughly. Modo had destroyed one of the birds with his bare hands, which Visser found particularlyshocking. He’d been told the falcons were nearly indestructible. His masters wouldn’t be pleased that the technology was now in the hands of the enemy.
    At least he hadn’t lost all of them. He made a short whistling sound and two falcons descended on him, one landing on each of his wrists, wrapping their metal-scaled toes around his arm and digging their talons into his skin. The salt water made the wounds burn. He winced only momentarily, then made a
cluck cluck
sound, and they flapped their wide wings and began pulling him toward his destination. He kept his head above the water. The birds weren’t powerful enough to raise him into the sky, but with their help he moved along with amazing speed.
    Just a temporary setback. There were Dervish tribes near Cape Horn who sympathized with the Clockwork Guild. He would find them and receive his orders at the next port.
    Visser had been employed by the Clockwork Guild for over ten years and had lost count of the men and women he had killed in its service. Each time he completed a mission he demanded something outlandish as part of his payment. A gold stiletto. A red ruby the size of his fist. He would have to think hard to surpass his last request: a human heart. They had brought him one. He didn’t ask whose heart it was, but it had tasted good with enough salt.
    Perhaps he would ask for Modo’s heart. He laughed fiendishly as he sped through the dark water. The Guild had asked only for a sample of the changeling’s body. Would they really need his heart?

 

A Marvelous Piece of Workmanship
     
    M r. Socrates examined the ruined pieces of the clockwork falcon, amazed by the intricacy of the device. No, it was more than a device. There were actual blood and brains in the falcon, as though some living beast had been dipped in metal. But the thing seemed dead. He eyed a metal tube that ran from a container inside the bird’s chest to the middle talon of each foot. So that was how they loaded the poison.
    It was disturbing how advanced the Clockwork Guild’s technology was—it gave them an advantage over the British. Mr. Socrates and his fellow Permanent Association members had been trying to discover their base now for