The Havoc Machine by Steven Harper Page A

simply take Niko—the
machine’s
head off and sell his body to a smith to be melted down. Yet that thought made him sick, and he felt guilty for thinking it, and he didn’t understand why he felt guilty. The mishmash was all very odd, and he felt out of sorts. Someone else had slid a sword down his throat, and he didn’t dare move.
    He sat down on the bed, pulled a brass key from a chain around his neck, and inserted it into Dante’s back, hoping the familiar task would steady him. Silence filled the room, heavy as molten iron. Thad abruptly noticed the boy was standing with his back to the wall of dismembered souvenirs, almost as if he were one of them. An image of Nikolai’s arm nailed to the wall invaded Thad’s head.
    “Let’s go back outside,” he said abruptly, and ushered the boy down the short steps to the ground. The cloudy sky still threatened rain.
    “Hungry,” Dante said in Thad’s hands.
    “How…how often do you need to eat?” Thad asked, winding Dante’s key. Perhaps he should take a nip himself.
    Nikolai pulled his scarf back up, and he looked like a normal boy again. “It depends on how much I use. If I am quiet, I use very little. If I run or jump, I use more.”
    “What happens if you don’t get any…er, food?”
    “It’s very painful. Then I become tired. Then I just stop. I don’t like it. Do you like it when you can’t eat?”
    “I don’t think anyone does.”
    “Done,” Dante announced. “Done.”
    “You don’t like me,” Nikolai said. “Did I do something bad to make you not like me?”
    Thad kept on winding, uncomfortable. “What makes you think I don’t like you?”
    “You called me a machine and you said I don’t mean anything to you.”
    Thad wanted to say that the boy
was
a machine, that he
didn’t
mean anything. The sight of the boy’s inhuman face inevitably twisted something inside Thad’s gut and made him want to back away, or reach for a weapon, or both.
    He said, “I don’t—”
    “Done!” Dante shrieked. “Done!”
    Thad was overwinding the parrot. He pulled the key out and Dante scurried about on the crushed grass in a furious circle.
    “What’s wrong with him?” Nikolai asked.
    “Too much energy,” Thad said. “He’ll be all right in a minute.”
    “Why doesn’t he fly away?”
    “He can’t fly. He’s damaged. And anyway, I don’t think he could ever fly. He
is
made of brass, you know.”
    “It would be nice to fly,” Nikolai said wistfully. “Then I could go anywhere I pleased.”
    Thad gave him a strange look. “You’re an automaton. How can you want anything?”
    “I don’t know. I just do. How do
you
want anything?”
    “Coo coo!” Sofiya came around the corner of thewagon at that moment leading Kalvis, her brass horse. “All the other wagons are loaded on the train and the stable tent is down. You are behind, and I have come to catch you up.”
    “You.” Thad rounded on her, simultaneously angry at the woman and glad she gave him a change in subject. “I want to talk to you.”
    “Hitch up the horse while you talk. I do not want to miss the train.”
    Thad folded his arms. “You owe me information.”
    “I
owe
you nothing, Mr. Sharpe.”
    “Applesauce, applesauce,” blurted Dante, still scurrying about the ground. “Doom, defeat, despair. Darkness, death, destruction. Applesauce.”
    “I’m tired of dancing, Sofiya,” Thad said, deliberately switching to her first name. “You’ve sucked me into this little game without telling me why or wherefore. I don’t know why or what you’re playing at, but you’re going to tell me what’s going on or—”
    “Or what, Thad?” Sofiya replied. “You will threaten me with your knives? Point your pistols at my head? Tell your parrot to squawk in my direction?”
    “Or you’ll keep suffering the way you have been.”
    That stopped her. “I do not understand.”
    “Griffin has a hold on you, just like he has one on me,” Thad said. “His spiders watch your