Clockwork Boys (Clocktaur War, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, places, plants, poets, events, or actual historical personages, living, dead, or trapped in a hellish afterlife is purely coincidental.

She tried hard to be nondescript; it was one of her great assets.

I am too old for this. Thirty is much too old to be rousting around prisons any more.

If I weren’t going to die, I’d think seriously about retiring.

He was still dirty and bedraggled and his beard was truly unfortunate, but now he only looked very bad instead of like death warmed over. A decent bath and a shave, and we might aspire to “human.”

Once papers were signed, people seemed to give up. It was a strange sort of magic.

But that was bureaucracy for you. Get past the first layer of guards, present official-looking paperwork, and nobody asked questions.

“I’ve been possessed, arrested, exorcised, and locked in a cell for four months. There’s a dead demon rotting somewhere in the back of my soul. What do you expect?”

Shut up. You’re out of the cell. Quit wallowing. You’ve told hundreds of people they weren’t responsible for what the demon did with their body. Take your own damn medicine.

She was not a beautiful woman, he was forced to admit, but she had a mobile, expressive face.

The Dreaming God’s presence was heat and light and rock-hard certainty. Caliban had not felt it in a very long time, and he no longer felt certain of anything at all.

He’s got a heart of gold…cold, metallic, and made of money.

It was one of the restful things about assassins; they knew how to be quiet.

He looked like—well, like a champion of the gods, in fact, if a pale and sardonic one. And not a bad looking one. Raowr. Down, girl. He’s a walking corpse anyway. Quit staring. He was just an unexpectedly good-looking corpse, that was all.

“Then why was Lord Caliban so lionized?” No-longer-Lord Caliban shrugged. “Temple paladins, you know. We dress well, when we’re not off killing things. We’re polite. We do heroic things that sound interesting—nobody realizes that most demon possessions end with butchering farm animals. Most of us aren’t total bastards, since the Dreaming God has certain requirements in his servants. We’re uncomplicated and look good in white. You know how it is.” He considered for a moment. “We’re not sworn to celibacy.” The sexual tension in the room kicked up several notches, rather abruptly. Caliban twitched.

“Are you worried about dying?” he asked. He didn’t mean to ask it, hadn’t expected to hear himself saying it, and yet there it was—years in a temple got into your head. You provided spiritual comfort, like a reflex. It was even the paladin’s voice he was using, the one that was always so effective, soothing and comforting, a little quieter than usual. A brother’s voice, a priest’s voice, a voice that spoke to the nerves and said: Trust me. People opened up to that voice. If you did it well enough, you hardly ever needed the sword.

Next it’s the long, friendly look, and then they say something—generally doesn’t matter what—and the proud ones straighten up, and the healthy ones cry, and the funny ones try to make a joke and choke up halfway through, and you put an arm around them and say something—still doesn’t matter what, it’s the tone that does it—and wait until they’re done and then offer a handkerchief, and then they say something embarrassed, and you tell them that you cried for three nights the first time you actually went out after a demon.

I must believe that the gods do not send us trials that we cannot endure. It would have been easier to believe that if he hadn’t seen so many people broken by the trials they had endured.

“Did you at least steal it?” “Tchah!” Brenner clucked his tongue. “One does not steal from weaponsmiths. They’re skilled labor. You do your part to keep them in business. Stealing from them is short-sighted.” Caliban scratched his chin. This was an unexpected social conscience for an assassin.

He could feel the god. Words and incense and holy fire. Strength and certainty and the sword. He wanted that. He wanted that surety and that strength, that feeling of being in exactly the correct place. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted food or drink or a woman’s body, more than he had wanted freedom in his filthy little cell. He wanted to be whole.

And here he was. And here the god was. And the hollow place in his soul did not fill up. The god was all around him and Caliban stood in the center of holiness and was not touched.

The dedicate narrowed his eyes. “I do not wish to deal with unseemly displays of emotion on the road,” he warned. “I’ll attempt to keep my weeping and vapors to a minimum.”

“Gift from the Stone Bitches.” “Bless their vicious little hearts.”

“You look great. A regular ladykiller.” Brenner blew whiskey out of his nose, yelped in pain, and clapped his hands over his face.

She went away inside her head for a while, in a kind of meditative misery. There was nothing but the horse. There had never been anything but the horse. Possibly she had been born on a horse. She was undoubtedly going to die on one.

Learned Edmund is apparently afraid that if he sleeps on your floor, your feminine exhalations will cause his genitals to wither and his bowels to turn to water. That’s a direct quote, by the way.”

“Use the voice on him,” muttered Slate. The Knight-Champion looked startled for just a moment, and then he gave her a genuine smile. “You noticed?” “Hard not to. If I could sound that trustworthy, I’d be rich.” Well, maybe. Probably it only works if you’re six feet tall and look like a war-god. “Most likely not,” he said, sounding a trifle apologetic. “I am afraid it only works if you believe what you’re saying.” “You mean you can’t lie?” “Normally? Of course I can, though I’m afraid it was never my strong suit. But if you are trying to make people trust you, you must trust your own word first. That’s why it works.” “What awful con men you’d make.” “That is the general idea.” “What if you’re one of those loons who believe every word they’re saying?” His smile faded. “People like that are dangerous,” he said. “We try to kill them quickly.”

Slate sighed, and learned something else about command. If he was in charge, he’d say no, but because he isn’t, he gets to ask.

he said things to her that he had never said when they were lovers. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

“Oh, come on, if your friends aren’t willing to strangle you, what kind of friends are they?” asked Brenner.

Mules were worse. Mules were like horses who could plan.

I swear, the man looks for ways to beat himself up. It’s like some kind of weird hobby.

It would have been nice to have someone to lock eyes with and sigh occasionally. Slate considered herself enlightened, but there were still times when she wanted to throw her hands in the air and scream, “Men!” and then stomp off and kick something.

Something about his posture, and the way he kept blinking, made her think that he might be worried about crying too. Somehow that was cheering. Not because she wished him ill, but because there are few things in life as steadying as someone you have to be brave for.

inside an earthen lodge that looked like it was built by a magpie with ambition. The wattle-and-daub walls were studded with junk: bits of straw, feathers, small stones that might have been a mosaic if there had been more of them, snake skins, bright glass and colored string. Nets with glass fishing weights hung from the ceiling, illuminated by the flicker of a fire near the entrance. There were also bones. Some were individual bones and some were whole articulated skeletons, from a number of small, unfortunate animals.

Like water through a millwheel. Somehow they’re getting more out than they’re putting in.

It occurred to Caliban that he had been nattering about his oath to protect the weak to a woman who had apparently just tracked them through the woods, found their weapons, climbed up the outside of the hut carrying said weapons, dropped fifteen feet through a hole in the ceiling onto a shaman, saving his life and possibly his soul in the process, and then proceeded to fight and dispatch a stag-man twice her size. My god. I am an arrogant jackass.

Slate pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a hysterical bubble rising in her throat. It was going to come out as a sob if she wasn’t careful.

“Do they know what any of them do?” “A few. One on the coast turns salt water to fresh water. One in Moldoban incinerates everything they put into it—they worshipped it as a god with human sacrifices for many years. Now it’s a waste disposal system.” Slate chuckled into her tea, though she was pretty sure he wasn’t joking. “And there’s one that, if you put in gold, turns it into fresh pears. I’m not sure how they figured that out.”

“He is proud. But he carries an enormous load of guilt for his crimes, and pride is part of what motivates him. And he is so afraid of failing again.”

Brenner had made a very careful study of what her body responded to and then he had done it, quite ruthlessly, until Slate could hold nothing back at all. Then he would take his own pleasure, just as ruthlessly. It had been exhausting and oddly transactional, very much like Brenner. It left her sated and a little bitter afterwards, as if they had used each other.

Never date a man prettier than you, it never ends well.”

The rabbit flicked its ears, looked up at Brenner, and said, in a deep, thoughtful voice, “You’ll die laughing, you know.”

And then there was the goddamn paladin. The love interest if you played as a female character was a self-loathing paladin who was guilt-wracked over…something or other, I don’t know. He moped a lot. He had no evident sense of humor. This was supposed to be attractive. This is an ongoing problem with just about every paladin ever. Everybody seems to want to write them like crapsack Jedi—endlessly teetering on the brink of damnation, one bad thought ready to turn them over to the dark side, all of them as moody and self-absorbed as teenage boys.

So I split it in half and send the first half to my editor, saying “I think this is a light swashbuckling love story?” and she sent back a lot of words about how apparently those don’t include carnivorous tattoos and dead nuns and rotting demons in one’s head and no amount of banter was going to get past that.

I suppose thanks must also go to the writers of fantasy paladins, lo these many years, without whom there would be no tradition to enrage me and force me to tackle the issue myself. Inspiration knocks now and again, but spite bangs on the door all year long. Thank god.

She is fond of wombats and sushi, but not in the same way.