The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire by Steven Harper Read Free Book Online

reflection in a soap bubble, shiny and distorted.
    “You can play just like Daddy. Would you like that?”
    Gavin realized Alice was waiting for an answer. “I’m… I’m not sure,” he said. “Gramps used to have it, but…”
    “Was Gramps your father’s mother or your mother’s father?”
    “Hold the fiddle like this and the bow like this. They’re big now, but you’ll grow. Do it right.”
    “My father’s.” Gavin’s voice grew distant. He feltstrange, mixed up. “He lived with us, even though Dad… didn’t.”
    “Didn’t? What happened to him?”
    “This one is D, this one is G, this is A, and this is E.”
    Gavin shook his head. “I don’t know. He left when I was very small. Ma refused to talk about him, and she became angry if anyone asked. After a while, I stopped wondering.”
    “Good! Keep that up, and you’ll play ‘I See the Moon’ for your ma just like me.”
    He raised the bow again. The horsehair was new, but the wood was old, burnished from hours of skin and sweat. He waved it, and the bubble burst, taking the memory with it.
    “I’m sorry, darling.” Alice put an arm around his waist. “I didn’t mean to awaken painful memories.”
    “It’s all right,” he said. “It was a long time ago, and I don’t really remember. Though,” he added wistfully, “I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have a dad. Gramps was there for me, of course, and Captain Naismith was kind of like a father, but… you know.”
    “I know,” Alice said. “I find myself wondering what it would be like to have a mother. Mine died when I was so young.”
    “Well, between us we had a full set of parents,” Gavin said with a small laugh to break the heavy mood, and Alice smiled. He buried his face in her hair and smelled her soft scent. “All I really need is you.”
    Feng spoke up. “The romantic moment unfortunately will not keep me awake all night. We have to anchor ourselves.”
    “I’ll take over.” Gavin took back the nightingale,stowed the fiddle in its case, and accepted the helm from Feng. “I don’t sleep much these days.”
    Feng disappeared belowdecks. Alice stood beside Gavin for a moment, her presence warm and solid. Gavin steered with one hand so he could put an arm around her. “We’re alone for the first time in ages,” she said.
    “Unless you count the
Lady
,” Gavin replied with a smile.
    She rested her head on his shoulder. “I want more time with you, Gavin. I feel like we never have enough.”
    “No one ever has enough time.” Gavin checked his heading on the compass set into the helm, visible thanks to the soft blue glow of the envelope, and corrected his course. “Especially not clockworkers.”
    Eventually, Alice kissed him good night and went below herself, leaving Gavin alone on the deck. He felt her absence, even though she was only a few yards away.
    In the morning, everything changed.

Interlude
    L ieutenant Susan Phipps threw her hat onto the rickety table. She had intended to drop into the ladder-back chair next to it, but found she couldn’t, and paced the tiny room instead, her hands clasped behind her. Her brass left hand felt cool and heavy in her fleshy right one, though the sensation was so familiar to her now she barely noticed it.
    Glenda Teasdale, her blouse and skirt looking worse for the wear, stood behind the other ladder-back chair while Simon d’Arco, equally disheveled, hovered near the bed. A tiny lamp shed grudging light over the table as the sun slid away. The quarters, part of what passed for a hotel in this little town, were dank and cramped compared to her spacious rooms at Third Ward headquarters back in London, but Phipps refused to voice a single complaint, even to herself. What sort of commander sent her troops into conditions that she herself refused to endure?
    “We were close,” Glenda said in that flat voice thatwas still new to Phipps. “So close. If that bloody Dr. Clef hadn’t shown up—”
    “It’s