The Toymaker's Apprentice Read online

  Gullet regarded Stefan for a moment and closed the ledger. “With Boldavian mice?” He shook his head. “We will do what we can, but this is Nuremberg, not the Baltic. Far beyond our territory. I’m afraid it will be up to you. I’ll have my men search the city, but I suspect if he can deliver the goods they’re after, they will have taken him elsewhere. Nuremberg is too full of people for them to hide for long. My guess is they’ll bring him back to Boldavia.”

  Stefan felt ill.

  “Things have grown precarious in Nuremberg since you were last here,” Gullet told Christian in the flat tones of a history professor. “Both in the Brotherhood, and in the city at large. It’s as important to the rest of us as it is to you and your young friend here that what’s begun in Boldavia is ended as soon as possible.”

  Christian stiffened. “Of course, but how?”

  “Your hunt for the krakatook is legendary. Unfortunately, so is the nut, it would seem.”

  Stefan glanced at Christian—they had the nut, or so Christian thought. But his cousin shook his head very slightly and Stefan held his tongue.

  “If King Pirliwig cannot be persuaded to act without first having a krakatook, I’m afraid there is little I can suggest,” Gullet was saying. “Some things cannot be stopped, Christian. Only helped on their way. The mice will burn themselves out eventually. They always do.”

  He pulled a folded document from a drawer in the desk and spread it open on the table. “Mark this well, both of you.” He waved them closer.

  It was a hastily drawn map of . . .

  “Nuremberg?” Stefan asked curiously, forgetting the rule of silence. The map was fascinating, for it had the shape of his city from above, but the streets were not streets he knew, and the river ran far wider than it should.

  “Beneath the city, to be precise,” his cousin explained. “These are the catacombs.”

  Gullet nodded. “Not all of them, but the ones that matter. The ones that lead to important places. He’s your responsibility, Christian. Show him what he needs to know. When the time comes, he’ll have use for it.”

  “For what?” Stefan asked.

  Gullet frowned and pointed his chin at Christian. “He’s your master now, boy. Learn from him.”

  Mouth shut, eyes open, Stefan admonished himself.

  Gullet grunted. “Remember, Christian, the tide will rise from here, and here.” He indicated two wide avenues on the map. “Those are the best points of entry to take the town.”

  With a sharp snap, Gullet refolded the map. “Our people have their eyes open. It’s just this sort of overconfidence we must keep in check—in both mice and men,” he said, giving Christian another meaningful look.

  Stefan and Christian took a step back as Gullet rose from behind the desk. “If your father turns up, we will send word,” he told Stefan.

  “Thank you, sir,” Stefan said.

  “My duty is to the Brotherhood, first and foremost. But what are they without the city they hold?”

  “Thank you, Gullet,” Christian said sincerely.

  “You can thank me by cleaning up the mess you’ve made,” the little man replied. “Oh, by the way, the university clock tower chime is off.”

  Gullet’s eyes crinkled slightly. Stefan guessed it was what passed for a smile.

  “I’d noticed,” Christian replied.

  “That was your job to fix before you left, how many years ago? Sloppy of you, Christian. Really.”

  Stefan’s eyebrows rose, but Christian smiled. “Don’t look so shocked, Stefan. A clockmaker’s work is his and his alone. Let that be a lesson to you. Once you start, you must see it through to the end. When it comes to clockery, a second set of hands might ruin the balance.” He bowed to the clerk. “Fear not, Gullet. I’ll see to it when we return.”

  “Be sure that you do.” Gullet made his way to the moveable broom closet. “Behind the desk!” he called over his shoulder as he shut the door, leaving Christian and a bewildered Stefan to their work.

  FLEETFOOT LED ERNST down a long flight of stairs and an equally long corridor with thick wooden doors set at intervals along each wall.

  “We are deep in the bedrock now,” the little gray explained. “Where it is easier to find chambers of this size.”

  Ernst was about to ask him to elaborate when they reached the end of the hallway. A scarred door no bigger than his escort stood before them. The mouse pulled a ring of keys from his belt, chose one, and unlocked it.

  The rat had to duck to enter the room. On the other side, even straightened to his full height, he was dwarfed by the massive space. At least ten rats tall, the ceiling was shrouded in darkness. A walkway several feet overhead was lined with torches, illuminating a nightmare.

  In the center of the chamber, stock-still and staring, was a life-size cat. Two times Ernst’s full height, its metal body was intricately detailed down to the tufts of fur on its ears, and its glittering, bejeweled eyes. Ernst Listz had seen many things in his life, but none had brought bile to his throat the way this did.

  “Good heavens,” Ernst whispered, nearly choking. “Is it alive?”

  The mouse shook his head and trembled despite the stillness of the beast. “It’s a clockwork,” he explained, leading the way into the chamber. “A toy. Silent, scentless, with no need to breathe. Impossible to hear coming. We call them the Breathless.”

  “Them? There’s more than one? What monster considers this a toy?” Ernst wondered.

  Fleetfoot whispered with a reverence born of fear, “Drosselmeyer.”

  The closer Ernst got, the more the cat-fear subsided, changing into fascination of the metal and cloth that replaced flesh and fur. “It’s a made thing?”

  “Devilish,” the mouse acknowledged. “When the clockmaker first came to Boldavia, he made these for the King Above. The man is allergic to cats. One of the reasons we have done so well on the island. Few predators.”

  Ernst could only imagine life without the feline threat. How lucky to walk the streets of a city unafraid. He could leave his sword behind and feel safe as a mouse in a hole.

  “How does it work?” he asked.

  “Like a cat. Only faster. It swallows mice whole.” Fleetfoot mounted a ladder that leaned against the side of the beast. “The belly here is a cage. Mice were held here. Some died in the crush. When the Breathless was full, it would go down to the ocean and sit beneath the waves. Machines have no need of air.” The mouse mopped his forehead with a paw.

  Ernst shuddered. A terrible name to describe both the killer and its victims. “They all drowned, trapped inside that thing?”

  Fleetfoot nodded. “And then . . .” He reached out a finger and unfastened something on the underside of the construct’s stomach.

  A soft whir sounded from somewhere inside the cat, like a dreadful purr. From where he stood, Ernst could see a seam split apart the soft velvet underbelly and drop, swinging from two hinges. The floor of the cage was a trapdoor.

  “It would dump the bodies, wash away any trace, and return to the castle to do it all over again.” Fleetfoot fixed the rat with wide eyes. “The Breathless do not sleep, and they are always hungry.”

  Ernst shook his head in slow horror. “I have never heard of such a thing,” he admitted. “This is a tale to be told across Rodentia.”

  “They’re an atrocity that must never happen again,” Fleetfoot squeaked. “The Queen’s sons will save us. It has been foretold.”

  By the Queen herself, no doubt, Ernst thought. It was worse than he had imagined. Not a backward country Queen, but an insane one, with a monster in her house, and a litter of messiahs waiting to be born. Suddenly, starving quietly in Vienna seemed the simpler choice.

  Fleetfoot climbed back down the ladder. “It cost many lives to subdue this beast. We have learned much from studying its workings. Just one of ten in all. Of the others,
some were destroyed, and a few fell into disrepair after the clockmaker left Boldavia.”

  “Left?” Ernst gasped. “Why?”

  The little mouse allowed himself a proud smile. “Our Queen. She poisoned the human princess and sent the clockmaker on a fool’s errand for the cure. One small nut in all the kingdoms of flora and fauna. She has given us seven years of peace. And now she will give us seven princes to bring about a golden age.”

  Ernst gave Fleetfoot a respectful bow. “I had no idea, sir. The Piper was generations ago, but this, this is war.”

  Fleetfoot returned the bow. “And now you begin to understand, Herr Listz. Our kingdom has need of one who can teach her children about the world of Men. Languages, fencing. How they think, how they die. They will need to know all of this to scour the kingdom of mankind. You have lived with one paw in their realm for a long time, sir. You are a valuable asset.”

  Ernst gave the clockwork cat one last look; the emerald eyes danced in the firelight, far from real, but all the worse for it. “I’ll do what I can,” he promised.

  He would teach the boys swordplay, strategy, diplomacy, and language, all useful things in warfare. But, looking at the clockmaker’s creation, he wasn’t sure if it would be enough.

  GULLET WAS GONE. Stefan reached for the door to the descending chamber. “He’s locked us in!” He tried to sound calm, but time was rushing away in a torrent. Christian and Gullet had been speaking in a code he could barely follow, and now they were stuck in this little room underground. Heartsick and terrified, he kicked the door. The wood did not seem to mind.

  “Why didn’t you tell him about the—” Stefan began.

  Christian cut him off. “Now’s not the time, Stefan. These days the walls could literally have ears.”

  Stefan bit his lip in consternation. The sooner they were aboveground, the better.

  “We’ve got to get back to Samir,” he insisted. “We’ve got to find my father.”

  “And we will, but first there are things you must see.” Christian slid behind the desk and once again applied his master key to a section of the wall. He gave it a tap.

  A panel swung open, a hidden door about three feet tall. Hardly big enough for a man stooping over, but a door nonetheless.

  A trickle of anxiety crawled up Stefan’s spine.

  “A root cellar?” As he spoke, the map in his head suddenly clicked into place. “Oh.”

  Beyond the door was a narrow tunnel, barely lit by a single torch. His cousin crouched and stepped through the doorway. Plucking the torch from its brazier, he held out a hand to Stefan.

  “If you’ll follow me, Herr Drosselmeyer, the mysteries of the clockmakers await.”

  Stefan edged his way inside.

  A great grinding noise rumbled overhead. Stefan quickly raised his arms over his head, waiting for the cave-in that would bury them alive.

  Instead, his cousin just laughed. “Look up.”

  Above his head turned a cog, the lowest part of a giant clockwork embedded into the ceiling of the cavern.

  “What is this place?”

  “Nuremberg,” Christian said with a smile.

  “What do you mean?”

  His cousin thrust the torch higher and the shadows peeled back like dark curtains. “Remember the clock I showed you at the guildhouse?”

  Stefan caught his breath. Above him, a massive set of gears hung like storm clouds in a cathedral.

  The cavern itself was enormous. They were much farther underground than he had guessed. But, as high as the ceiling climbed, at least a hundred feet or more, the space felt close. Less than ten feet away, the lowest of the springs and spindles twined intricately, the bottommost workings of some great machine. The monk’s clock on display at the museum had been a model. This was the real device. They were standing inside of a monstrous clock. Its casing was the very bedrock of Nuremberg.

  The closest gear was at least five paces across. Stefan was no bigger than a church mouse crawling through the workings of a great organ. As he watched, a golden pendulum the size of a small moon drifted overhead on its long circuit to and fro. A cold breeze ruffled his hair, and beat like owl wings against his ears. He shivered.

  For all the cold and damp of the cavern, the cogs above were well oiled, grinding slowly in the dark. High above, the gears were larger still, passing through the bedrock on which the city stood. This clock must be several miles long.

  Stefan stood staring up at the shadowy device. The great gears made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Their sheer size made them horrible. And amazing.

  “This is what the Brotherhood is, what the Brotherhood does,” Christian said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I told you, clocks are the tools that run the world. Did you think that we only built timepieces for mantels and town squares? The Brotherhood is responsible for the cogs and springs of every great city. How many times have you used the expression ‘ran like clockwork’? Well, everything in the world of men does run like clockwork, Stefan. Some say, even the human soul. What you see here above us is the Master Clock of Nuremberg. The Brotherhood uses it to keep the city running smoothly. Come on, keep up.”

  Stefan followed his cousin through the cavern. His thoughts had considerably more trouble keeping pace.

  “How can a clock run a city?”

  Christian threw him a curious look. “How can it not? For thousands of years, men struggled to merely survive. Then came the Renaissance and the Age of Reason. Suddenly, we were no longer sheep, but masters of our own destiny. Exploration, science, music, art. What changed?”

  Stefan shrugged. Images of the Sistine Chapel, of Napoleon and Marco Polo danced through his head. “Great men were born.”

  “No,” Christian corrected him. “Great clocks were made! Think. A farmer must know when to plant, when to harvest. If those dates change from year to year, how is he to plan ahead? He can’t. He must sit and wait. All free time is lost in the waiting. But, set it to a reliable timepiece, and suddenly days are not lost, but gained. Only in measuring time can we use it more wisely.

  “Now, what do you know about the sun and the moon?” he asked.

  Stefan’s mind stumbled, trying to keep up. “Um . . . The sun is a star and the planets move around it, and the moon moves around the earth.” He had read a little about it in school, but helping his father build whirling models of the heavens was what had cemented the ideas in his head.

  “How is that different from a clock?”

  Stefan stared at his cousin’s retreating back. “Very. A clock has cogs and gears and things that . . .” He spun his hands in the air, trying to show what he couldn’t say.

  “Things that turn and spin and move,” Christian said. “Like planets.”

  “But, where are the gears?” Stefan asked, following once again.

  Christian brandished a finger in the air. “Aha! And that is the question. Perhaps one for philosophers and angels alone. But for those of us with both feet planted firmly on the ground, the gears are right here above us. When do you wake up in the morning?”

  “When the sun rises?” Stefan hated that it came out as a question, but truly, he was no longer sure what to believe.

  “How do you know the sun has risen?”

  “It shines through the windows and wakes me.”

  “How can it shine through the windows if you have drawn the curtains and shuttered the glass?”

  Stefan hesitated. “I . . . just feel it?” he stammered. “I can tell when the sun is up.”

  “Yes, you can!” Christian announced proudly. They had crossed the cavern into another rough-walled passageway. Christian bent his knees as the tunnel floor angled upward beneath their feet.

  “But why? How?”

  “What sound does a clock make?” the clockmaker asked over his shoulder.


  “Tick-tock,” Stefan replied, feeling silly.

  “Put your hand on your chest.”

  Stefan did as he was told. He stopped walking to better feel the beating beneath his hand. His heart shuddered in his chest like a toy drum, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

  Overhead, the great gears shifted, tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tock.

  With a start, Stefan dropped his hand.

  Christian turned back to face him. In the torchlight, his cousin’s one good eye gleamed. “So you see? Everything in the world of men is clockwork. Everything can be wound up or run down. You simply need the key.”

  Stefan shivered, disturbed by this sudden knowledge.

  “But who winds it?” he asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  The eerie joy in Christian’s eye faded to simple bemusement. He shrugged and moved up the tunnel again. Stefan hurried to follow.

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? As long as it keeps working. And the City Clock is a much smaller version of the universal one. You’ve heard of the keys to a city? Mayors and bürgermeisters give them out to dignitaries and important folk, but if you ever look, it’s just one key. So why the plural? The other key is for the City Clock. The master key, which is given to no one outside of the clockmakers’ guild.” He patted his waistcoat pocket. “These little keys do more than open doors. They’re the ones that keep the old girl steady.” He waved a hand up at the ceiling, where the monstrous engine groaned. No matter how their path wound, it was always above them.

  “It’s synced to keep things moving. The milkman knows it’s sunrise and delivers his milk on time, the shops open and close, the ships sail when they are meant to.”

  Stefan was beginning to understand. “That’s why the university clock can be off sync for years? Because that’s not the clock that matters. This one is.”

  “Correct. The City Clock is part of what makes Nuremberg great.”

  “And every city has one?”

  “Only the best cities, Stefan. We are not everywhere. Not yet. The rest make do with what nature gave them.”