Page 24 of A Slipper in the Smoke
Elena shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. I never even left the workshop. Just fixed some bots of theirs, that’s all.”
No need to tell her about Pip. No need to tell her about anything.
“Just bots?”
Elena turned back to her work, yanking out a faulty gear with her tweezers. “Well, at the end of the night some scientist asked me to fix an arm of some sort. Nothing major.”
Snowdrop paused. “An arm? What kind?”
“Human-shaped. Maybe a bit bigger than most. Intricate piece of kit, brilliant workmanship.”
“What was it for?”
“I don’t know. It could have been a prosthetic? Bit too bulky for an automaton.”
“Hmm.”
“What is it?” Elena turned around to face her. Snowdrop was perched on the edge of her seat, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Snowdrop?”
“Just deciding whether or not to tell you a secret we’ve not yet released to the masses.”
Elena froze. “And your conclusion?”
“Yeah, I’m going to do it.” She sighed, shifting her position. “We didn’t want to tell people this one as it’s a bit horrifying and we don’t want to create panic, or incur the wrath of the Crown’s response if it was known that we know.”
Elena’s insides quivered. The Rebellion hardly seemed to care about spreading the news that the coal might be made from people. What could possibly be worse?
“The dread doctors aren’t human,” Snowdrop said.
Elena stiffened. The dread doctors were an ominous sight, and she didn’t have much trouble imagining them as clockwork underneath their beaked masks and thick leather uniforms, but that hardly seemed more horrifying than the possible truth about the coal.
“What?”
“Theyusedto be human,” Snowdrop continued. “A few years ago, the Crown experimented with some of their soldiers, trying to make them stronger. It didn’t go well. From what we can tell, it killed almost all of them, and after they were dead the scientists at the palace gave them clockwork parts to fix the ones they’d broken and made their corpses walk around again.”
At that, Elena recoiled. “That… that shouldn’t be possible.”
“I have it on very good authority that it is.”
Elena could understand not sharing that. It was somehow more disturbing, more sinister than the other rumours, especially as the dread doctors still prowled the streets. The people could check. Theywouldcheck. And even though it wouldn’t serve as irrefutable proof of the other accusations… it could start an uprising.
And the Rebellion didn’t want to start anything they wouldn’t win.
If it was true. And if that was true…
The ashes on the mantelpiece flickered in her mind.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Snowdrop said, tilting her head.
It wasn’t that she didn’t, it was that she didn’t want to. Couldn’t.
“It’s not possible,” she repeated, as if saying something again could make it true. “They wouldn’t.”
Snowdrop didn’t press it. She climbed to her feet, leaning against the side of the worktop. “You can believe whatever you want, I won’t force you,” she said. “But I’m trusting you not to spread it. We need to be ready.”
“For what?”
Snowdrop snorted. “Whatever comes next.”
