Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti Read Free Book Online Page B

on his cheeks.
    Once you get past the discrepancy between his castemarks and the way he dresses, he’s not so bad looking , she thought. He still had an exalted’s features, after all. His copper skin was smooth and his raggedly cut hair was thick and glossy. His features were sharp, though, and there wasn’t much extra weight on his tall, thin frame. Grey eyes were unusual for an exalted. He had foreign blood in his ancestry; Demican, maybe. Those pale eyes were what made his face so cold, their light color emphasized by the silver rims of his spectacles.
    â€œThis wing seems all right,” he said at last. She collected her thoughts.
    â€œMine, too, unless some of the joint mechanisms have been damaged.”
    He glanced at her hands.
    â€œYou’re getting blood all over everything. Sit down.”
    â€œThey’re just scratches.” She looked down and grimaced. He was right. She’d smeared blood on her flight suit, and blood had dripped on the table beneath the armature. The cuts weren’t deep, but working with her hands had been keeping them open.
    Cristof pulled off his greatcoat, threw it over a chair, and vanished through a doorway. Relieved to be free of his critical gaze, Taya looked around with wonder.
    The clocks and timepieces all indicated the same time, but otherwise they varied widely, from the somber black long-case clock standing in one corner to the fanciful jeweled stag-shaped clock set on a high shelf to the open-geared clock under a glass case that took up two feet of the top of a tool cabinet. Three shelves next to a worktable were covered with wind-up toys, the kind Taya had played with as a little girl. Two caught her eye: small birds that floated over the top of the shelf, tethered with pieces of string. She stood and walked over to them, holding her bleeding hand close to her chest.
    The birds were cunningly crafted with tiny, bright enameled feathers and little beaks of gold. The miniature keys between each set of wings looked gold, too. The birds’ eyes sparkled, and Taya wondered if they were made of cut glass or gemstones. Gemstones, she guessed, if they were the expensive toys they seemed to be.
    â€œThey have ondium cores,” Cristof said, returning with a basin and two hand towels. He put them on the table beneath the floating armature. “Wash your hand.”
    â€œThey’re beautiful.” She pulled herself away. Blood stained the cold water as she rubbed the cuts clean. “Are you repairing them for someone?”
    â€œThey’re mine.” Cristof held out a handkerchief, and she pressed it against her cuts. He’d washed his hands, too, she noted, but grease still smudged his shirt cuffs and the sharp bridge of his nose, where he must have touched his face to push up his glasses.
    â€œDo they really fly?”
    â€œLet me see your shoulder. The cut might not bother you now, but your harness will irritate it.”
    â€œI don’t think it’s too bad.” She tried to crane her neck around to see it. “It aches, but it doesn’t hurt much.”
    â€œLet me see,” he repeated, impatiently.
    She made a face, then unbuttoned the flight suit’s high collar, down to the top of her breasts. A clock repairman wouldn’t be her first choice of physician, but she supposed he was better than nothing.
    â€œThis may sting.” Cristof lifted the suit away from her bare shoulder. The suit’s cotton padding stuck to the coagulating blood as it peeled away, and she winced. Cristof pressed a wet towel between her suit and skin.
    Taya shivered as cold water dripped down her back. The outcaste’s fingers were cold, too, as he touched the edges of the cut.
    â€œYou’re right. It’s shallow. Have a physician look at it tomorrow. It shouldn’t impair your flight tonight.” Cristof’s voice was as detached as it had been when he’d reported on the status of her wings. She