The End Is Now

Gnarled fingers wrap over my golden wrist. Faintly, I can feel the heat inside his hands. I sense that he is full of warm blood, carrying energy around his body. His skin is not like mine. Nor his heart. There is no blood within me. My father and I are not alike. He is a man, and I am something else.

“Oh, you are alive,” he says. “Finally, you are here.”

“Who are you?” I ask, releasing him.

“I am Fiovanti Favuri Romanti Cimini, although you may call me Favo. I am last mechanician to the Tsar Peter Alexyovich. Practicioner of the ancient art of avtomata and keeper of its relics. Successor to the great alchemists who came and went before history. Knower of secrets from the past and from the future. And, if you will believe the Tsar’s wife, Empress Catherine Alexeyevich . . . I am a devil.”

“Last mechanician?”

“Ten years ago, the Emperor secretly visited the Netherlands, England, Germany, and Austria. He recruited hundreds of shipbuilders, artists, and mechanicians. To one group of us, he gave a special task. Given an extraordinary artifact from the past, we were told to build . . . you. But the Empress never saw the promise. And it has been so long. The rest of my group has already been sent east to exile. I am the last, toiling alone in the dark and cowering in fear from her.”

Spittle flies from his lips in the twilight.

“But you are here now,” he says, snatching a small hammer from the table. “Look at you! Talking! Can you see me? Tell me what you see!”

“A room. A man. Machines.”

“Concise,” he says, tapping my chest lightly and listening. “Perfect. The mixture was perfect. The old texts were right. The relic is working . . . ”

The old man makes no sense. Putting my gauntlet-like hands out, I clench my fists and feel the hard metal of my fingers. Squeezing, I push to the tolerance of my strength—until I can feel the gears in my hands straining. I swing my legs off the workbench and my wooden heels scratch the floor.

I stand, the top of my head nearly brushing the low ceiling.

Favo enters the darkness. In a moment he returns, his arms wrapped around a tall golden panel. The beaten-brass mirror groans as he drags it over the dusty wooden floor. The panel seems to glow in the candlelight. He props himself against it—holding the long rectangle before me—then stops and stares.

I can feel that he is afraid.

“Look upon yourself,” he whispers.

Standing at my full height, I see my movements reflected dully in the brass panel. I am tall and thin. Very tall. My face is human-like, leather that has been coated in places with some kind of rigid wax, ringed in brown curls of hair, my eyes large and dark. My lower lip is pulled to the side, slightly disfigured. I am not wearing clothes. The skin of my chest and arms is made of beaten metal banding with occasional tight swathes of leather tidily placed underneath. This body is golden and tan, strong and long-limbed. The light haunts my eyes, and I understand why Favo has fear in his heart.

“My son?” he asks.

“Yes,” I reply.

“What is the first thing?” he asks.

“The first thing?”

My voice comes from somewhere deep inside my chest. I can feel some device in there, a bellows that contracts and sends wind up my throat and between my teeth. There seem to be a multitude of voices beneath my voice. I am so much bigger than this small old man standing before me.

“Yes,” he whispers. “In your mind. Reach inside and tell me the first thing. The first word you ever knew. What is the Word?”

There is a hard truth to the limits of my body—to the solid press of my flesh and the clenching strength of my grip. I push into my mind to search for the answer to Favo’s question, and I feel another truth—even stronger than that of my flesh. It is the truth of knowledge, of a singular purpose carved into the stone of my mind.

This is the Word that is the shape of my life.

I put my eyes onto the old man, and I feel the leather of my lips scratch as I say the Word out loud for the first time.

“Pravda,” I say. “I am truth.”

GREAT EUROPEAN PLAIN, 1725

Elena’s hand is small on my shoulder, like a perched bird.

“Go,” I tell her, and the sparrow flies.

The lead rider has closed the final distance. I do not look up from where my blades lay in the grass. The muscled forelegs of a black horse approach. It slows and stops next to me. The rider does not bother to speak. I hear the slow skim of his blade leaving its scabbard. Hear the creak of his armor as he reaches back, lifting the blade high into the gray-green air.

The dragoon raises his arm and his breath expels as he swings the blade—the motion mechanically pushing air from his diaphragm. At this moment, I roll toward his horse, snaking my long arms over the grass to grip the handles of my blades. The blow misses me. On my knees, I lift the short blade and draw a red line across the horse’s belly. I fall onto my back and shove myself out of the way, watching the surprised face of the rider.