The Clockwork Wolf Read Free

lowered it over the bucket, cutting off the stink. “That’s better. Not a gift from a friend, is it?”
    I grimaced. “The tea, perhaps. The parcel, doubtful.”
    â€œLet’s have a look.” He perched a battered pair of spectacles on the end of his nose and peered through aglass panel. “When I was a boy a skunk got in the barn. Our best mouser killed it, but not before it sprayed the cat, the plow horse, and half the bloody hayloft.”
    I peered at the tea, which had grown very black. “That must have been . . . aromatic.”
    â€œNot so bad as this.” He reached under the bench, pulled out a pair of noz masks, and passed one to me. “Best put this on.”
    I pulled the mask over my head and adjusted the protective lenses until I could see clearly, then tightened the chin strap until the noz sealed off my nose. “Do we need tanks?”
    â€œGot a couple minutes of air in the canisters.” Once he’d donned his mask he lifted the glass cover and used long tongs to remove the soaked parcel. “Put this down and cover it,” Docket said, pushing the bucket toward me.
    I found a square of tin and a large rag to drape over the bucket, which I stowed to one side. By the time I returned to the bench, Docket was peeling away the sodden, stained paper from some coiled wires. “It was rigged?”
    He nodded. “To explode. The tea saved you from decorating the walls of your office with your insides.” Gingerly he opened the box’s sagging top flap and bent closer. “Well, what have we here?” He used the tongs to extract a dripping, twitching device no bigger than my fist. “Looks to be a rat after all.”
    The tiny animech had been painstakingly crafted to resemble the real rodent, from the hair-thin wires sprouting from its riveted snout to the narrow length of leather crimped over tiny rollers.
    I knew animech was all the rage in Rumsen now, butthis was a bit too realistic—I could almost feel the bite of the razor blades fashioned into its two long teeth. “Why would you want to make a bomb look like a rat?”
    â€œYou’re a female, love.” Docket made my gender sound like an incurable disease. “I’ll guess the villain thought you’d open the package, scream, drop it, and leap onto a chair while it went scurrying about.”
    I’d be more likely to trap it under my coal bucket and send for the vermage. “It would have done that without winding?”
    â€œWas wound before it was parceled. Had to, to trigger the boomer. These wires”—he pointed to the outside of the box—“are likely attached to a coil inside wound about the roller shaft. Soon as you opened it they’d trigger the coil to unwind and turn the rollers. Would make it scuttle about like the real thing for a minute or two. And then . . .” His cheeks puffed out as he made an exploding sound.
    Docket was a marvel with mech, and what he said made complete sense. It also made me suspicious. “You can guess all that simply by looking at it?”
    â€œI might have seen something like this during the war. Bad times, no one ever questions seeing a rat.” He put down the animech on its back, pressed a rivet by its ear, and a hinged belly plate popped open. “This is where they put the charge.” He frowned. “Hand me those pluckers in the tray, Kit. Yes, the smallest ones.”
    I passed him the tweezers and watched him extract a hunk of something pink, torn and definitely not mech. Even with the mask on the smell suddenly became unbearable. “Bloody hell. That’s what stinks. What did it eat, a dead rat?”
    â€œLooks to be a gland of some sort.” Apparently immune to the stench, Docket examined it from all sides. “Not rat, not this big. Not skunk, either. Could be stag.”
    â€œWhatever it is, get rid of it,” I begged.
    He took an