The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

I frowned. “Well, games of chance and I are no strangers. This trading in papers . . . is it a bit like gambling?”

“It’s exactly like gambling, Prince Jalan.” He fixed me with those dark eyes and I could imagine him sitting across a poker table in some shadowy corner rather than across his exquisite desk. “That’s what we do here. Only with better odds and larger wagers than in any casino.”

“Splendid!” I clapped my hands together. “Count me in.”

“But first the authentication. It should be complete by tomorrow evening. I can give you a note of credit and have the soldier outside escort you back to your residence. The streets are safe enough but one shouldn’t take unnecessary risks where money is concerned.”

I didn’t much like the idea of the clockwork soldier following me back to Madam Joelli’s. A touch of caution I’d developed on the road made me want to let as few people as possible know where I lay my head, and besides, the thing made me uncomfortable.

“My thanks, but I can make my own way. I wouldn’t want to have the thing wind down halfway there and have to carry it back.”

Davario’s turn to frown, an expression of annoyance, quickly gone. “I see you’ve been listening to gossip, Prince Jalan. It’s true much of the city’s clockwork is winding down, but we have our own solutions here in the House Gold. You’ll find we’re a progressive organization—the sort of place a keen young trader like yourself might fit in. Consider keeping your business in-house and we may have a good future together, prince.” He pulled from just beneath the lip of the desk what looked like a drinking horn attached to some kind of flexible tube, and spoke into it. “Send in the beta-soldier.” Davario nodded toward the door. “You’ll see something special here, Prince Jalan.”

The door swung open on noiseless hinges and a clockwork soldier walked in, smaller than the one that led me to the office in the first place, its gait smoother, a porcelain face instead of the side-on view of brass spacing plates and clockwork that lay behind the first soldier’s copper eyes and voice grille. A man came in behind the soldier, presumably the technician responsible, a white-faced and humourless fellow in the tight-fitting blacks and peculiar headwear of a modern.

“Show our guest your hand, beta,” Davario said.

The construct raised its arm with a whirr of meshing teeth and presented me with its left hand, a corpse-white thing, in every regard human save for its bloodless nature and the fact that brass rods slid into the flesh behind the knuckles and moved to flex and curl the fingers.

“The clockwork pokes around a dead hand? Did you buy some beggar’s hand, or rob it from a grave?” The thing turned my stomach. It gave off no discernible aroma but somehow made my nose twitch with revulsion.

“Donated to clear a debt.” Davario shrugged. “The bank will have its pound of flesh. But you’re wrong, Prince Jalan. The rods don’t drive the hand. The hand pulls on the rods and winds secondary springs within the torso. Not as efficient as the Mechanist clock springs, but something we can build and repair, and adequate for mobility if constantly rewound by flesh augmentation.”

The white fingers before me curled into a fist and returned to the soldier’s side.

“But the hand is . . .” The hand was dead. “This is necromancy!”

“This is necessity, prince. Necessity spawning invention from her ever-fertile womb. Need breeds strange bedfellows and those who trade in a free market find all manner of transactions coming to their door. And of course it doesn’t stop with just a hand or a leg. The whole exoskeleton of a clockwork soldier can . . . potentially . . . be clothed in cadaverous flesh. So you see, Prince Jalan, you need have no fears for the security and vigour of House Gold. The last of the Mechanists’ work may indeed be winding down, but we, we are winding up, gearing for a bright future. Your great-uncle’s investments and trades are safe with us, as are those of the Red Queen.”

“The Red Qu—”

“Of course, Red March has been at war or on a war footing these past thirty years. Some say west would be east by now if it weren’t for the Red Queen sitting in between them and saying ‘no’ to all comers. And that’s all well and good, but a war economy consumes rather than generates. Umbertide has financed your grandmother’s war for decades. Half of Red March is mortgaged to the banks you can see from Remonti Tower just across the plaza at the end of the street.” Davario smiled as if this were good news. “By the way, allow me to introduce Marco Onstantos Evenaline, Mercantile Derivatives South. Marco has recently been appointed to help audit our Red March account.”