Free The Havoc Machine by Steven Harper Page B

boy?”
    “H-hello.”
    The spiders swiveled at the sound of the boy’s voice and stared at him. He made a low sound and tried to huddle under Thad’s chair.
    “Then I suppose the night wasn’t a total loss,” Mr. Griffin said. “Should Miss Ekk have the hotel send up something to eat? You must be hungry.”
    Now that Mr. Griffin mentioned it, Thad became aware of a gnawing hunger inside him, despite the unease and the spiders. He was also was grubby and dirty from his crawl through the castle and the long ride. He thought of refusing on basic principle, then decided it would be idiotic—and rude—to turn down hospitality,and he didn’t want to be rude to Mr. Griffin right then. Food would also prolong the conversation.
    “That would be nice, thank you,” he said.
    “Miss Ekk, if you would be so kind? And while you are downstairs, please see to that other errand I mentioned earlier,” Mr. Griffin said from the box. Sofiya quickly exited, and Mr. Griffin’s chocolate voice took on an edge. “As for you, Mr. Sharpe, I would like to hear what happened and why you failed. In detail.”
    So Thad told the story. He felt self-conscious talking to a box at first, and the spiders and his anger didn’t help, but it became easier after a while—he could pretend no one was listening but the boy. Through it all, the spiders remained motionless, and Thad relaxed somewhat. A maid brought the food—tea and bread and sausage and butter—and Thad continued speaking between mouthfuls. The boy, of course, had already drunk his fill of fuel some time ago.
    When Thad finished, Mr. Griffin said, “I see. I can’t pretend I’m happy, Mr. Sharpe. I needed that machine badly, and you failed me. I had heard you were quite skilled, and it disappoints me to be wrong.”
    It was meant to be a rebuke, but Thad didn’t much care what clockworker thought of him. Interestingly, this clockworker didn’t babble or go off on strange tangents like other clockworkers. He also stayed focused on what Thad was saying. Most clockworkers had short attention spans when it came to what other people were saying. Mr. Griffin had neither interrupted nor asked questions during Thad’s recitation. Very strange.
    “Look,” he said, “I had no choice but to let the machine go if I wanted to save—”
    “As you said,” Mr. Griffin interrupted. “But by your own admission, the boy means nothing to you.”
    Now that was typical clockworker harshness. What did the boy think? Thad shot a glance behind his chair. If the boy was listening—and how could he avoid it?—there was no way to read his expression, if he had one, through the rags and scarf.
    What does it matter?
Thad thought.
He’s just a machine and has no feelings to hurt.
    “At the time,” Thad replied simply, “I had no idea the boy was anything other than…what he appeared to be. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, and I’ll refund the money immediately.”
    A burst of static emerged from the speaker grill and Thad flinched despite himself. “The money is unimportant to me, Mr. Sharpe. I have other concerns.”
    The money was unimportant, meaning Mr. Griffin had access to a great deal of it. That was a bad sign. One of the few things that kept clockworkers in check was lack of access to materials. More than one clockworker had designed a weapon powerful enough to crack a country in half but had been thwarted by a simple inability to obtain enough need-more-ium, or whatever rare element they needed. Mr. Griffin was proving more and more dangerous as time went on, and Thad would have to do something about him. Unfortunately, the box didn’t even have a cord running out the back, which meant Thad couldn’t trace its source that way. The real Mr. Griffin could be anywhere in Vilnius. The man clearly a master of the wireless signal, another useful fact.
    “You have other concerns,” Thad prompted.
    “And you will help me with them, Mr. Sharpe.”
    Thad shifted uneasily. “And