to stab himself with his own sword and apologising to his opponent afterwards, with a minor in looking good?
“Go on then,” Kacha said. “What are we waiting for?”
“It’s just—”
Vocho didn’t wait for Cospel to finish; he was too eager to find out what kind of trouble he had in his hands, just how much shit they were really in, why that magician wanted the papers so badly and what it might take to make him stop. Or how much they were worth. Hopefully, with this lady’s help, he could work out all these things. A perfunctory knock on the door almost had it off its hinges, so he gently moved it aside and went in.
A musty smell was the first thing he noticed, like thousands of old books had decided to curl up and die. Then a whirring clank – clockwork under stress. Finally his eyes got used to the gloom just as a figure stepped forward.
He couldn’t see her very clearly in the murk, but he could see enough. She didn’t look like she belonged here; she looked like she belonged in a palace somewhere, or maybe in a temple overseeing prayers. She was tall, as tall as Vocho, so that her head brushed the manuscripts that dangled from the ceiling. He got a sense of a face that wasn’t beautiful in its parts – nose too strong, eyes too wide, lips too thin – but together they gave the impression of someone who was. Vocho had an almost overwhelming impulse to address her as Ma’am. She looked like that sort of woman.
She smiled at him quizzically, and at the others when they crowded the doorway before she saw Cospel. “Ah, there you are. And you brought your friends. How lovely – it’s so rare I get visitors these days. I’m Cassalily. I understand you have some documents you want translated?”
Vocho pulled them out from where he’d hidden them but felt suddenly reluctant to hand them over to someone he’d just met.
“I’ll need to see them, if you want me to tell you what they say,” Cassalily said reproachfully and held out a hand.
Vocho couldn’t help staring. The clockwork sound as he’d entered – who’d be able to afford clockwork here? Someone who couldn’t leave it behind, that’s who. A brass hand sneaked out of Cassalily’s sleeve, and the fingers curled Vocho’s way. A perfectly jointed beautifully polished clockwork hand. Hands, he corrected himself as he looked further. Then Cassalily stepped forward into the light of the doorway, turned to face him full on and it wasn’t just her hands.
A chittering sound as her left eye irised, the components sliding over each other to narrow the aperture at the centre. Clockwork hands had been shock enough, but a clockwork eye?
“A genius made all of it for me,” she said as her hands gripped the papers and tugged them from Vocho’s unresisting hand. “The eye especially is very useful. Built-in magnification. I’m a work in progress, you might say.”
Cospel was doing his thing with the eyebrows again, but Vocho still hadn’t learned the language.
Kacha recovered first. “That’s, er… nice. Do you think you can—”
“Of course! Everyone doubts me so. Well, it won’t be long before I show them. In the meantime, this will be quite easy, I think. Looks like straightforward Ikaran for the most part. Oh, and one in Old Castan – that’s from before the Great Fall. Not many people know it these days, but it’s quite simple really. I was hoping for a cipher of some kind, something interesting. This shouldn’t take me long. A day? Now did you bring the offering?”
Vocho pulled out his purse, wondering how much this was going to cost. It’d be worth it, whatever. “Of course. How much do you charge?”
The clockwork hands clacked indignantly. “Charge? Charge? I charge nothing. Cospel, didn’t you…? No, I see not. Doubting Cospel, is that your name?” She sighed. “Everyone doubts. I require an offering. A truth.”
“A truth?” Vocho asked, perplexed. “I don’t…”
She smiled at him and laid a cold and whirring hand on his shoulder. “It’s very simple. I require a truth, as you would offer to my statue down by the guild.”
“The Clockwork God?”
“Of course. I’m his human incarnation. For each truth I receive, my fathers and mothers who created me will allow another part, until I ascend to become him once again in his true form. Now, please, a truth from each of you. If it’s good enough, maybe a truth no one