Karen Memory Read Online Free Page A

Alice.”
    “For tonight, I damn well think I have.”
    He took two more steps away. “And it’s Hôtel Ma Cherie, you stupid slag!”
    I wrote down in my journal that the big grandfather clock in the parlor chimed three as he slammed the doors behind him, but I don’t remember now what it did that particular night. The clock is a particular project of Miss Lizzie’s. She’s clockworked the thing up so it has about a hundred different mechanicals and figurines and cuckoos in it and near as many chimes and bells. The gears have some kind of offset that makes ’em perform different combinations of actions and sounds every time. Miss Lizzie says it ain’t really random, but it sure seems that way. I do remember that one time she had it playing “Time Was When Love and I Were Well Acquainted” off a piano roll, so if you like, that’s what you can imagine.
    She probably ought to get her inventor’s license and pay the city its Mad Science Tax—which is less than the sewing machine tax, actually—but that’s a hard life for a woman, too. And I’d hate to see her leave Madame’s house.
    The chimes died down, and over the last echo we finally heard the boots on the broken ladder. Madame Damnable breathed out and let herself look around at us. “Well,” she said cheerfully, “what a mess. Effie, fetch a bucket. Miss Bethel, put that gun away and find the broom, honey. Karen, you go tell Crispin when they’re done with the Chinese girl he’s to come down here and board up this window and sweep up the glass. He’ll just have to sit by the door until we can get in a locksmith. Miss Francina, you go after Beatrice and tell her we won’t need the constable.”
    Miss Francina bit her lip. “Are you sure, ma’am?”
    Madame Damnable’s hand glittered with diamonds and rubies when she flipped it. “I’m sure. Go on, sweeties, scoot.” She paused. “Oh, and ladies? That was quick thinking. Well done.”
    *   *   *
    When I came back up the grand stair with coffee in the china company service, the sickroom door was still closed, but I didn’t hear any screaming, or any steam engine chugging through it, which could only be a good sign. If Merry Lee was still under the knife, she would of been screaming and the machine would of been whining and wheezing away, and if she had died of it I thought the girl would be screaming instead. So I rapped kind of light on the frame, on account of if Crispin or Miss Lizzie was busy in there I didn’t want to startle them. It took me two tries to make my hand move, I was still that ashamed of myself from downstairs.
    Crispin’s voice floated back. “It’s safe to come through.” So I set the tray on my hip and turned the knob left-handed, slow in case there was somebody behind the door. The sickroom’s different from our company bedrooms. There’s no wallpaper and the sheets ain’t fancy, and the bedstead and floor and all is just painted white. It makes it easy to bleach or paint over again if there’s a bad mess, and you’d rather paint stained wood than throw out carpets with puke or pus or crusted blood in them any day.
    The knife machine kind of hangs in one corner on a frame, like a shiny spider with all black rubber belts between the gears to make the limbs dance. It’s one of only three or four in the city, and it needs somebody skilled as Miss Lizzie to run it, but it don’t hesitate—which when you’re cutting flesh is a blessing—and it don’t balk at some operations like other doctors might. And you always know its arms and tools is clean, because Crispin boils ’em after every use.
    When I stepped inside, that whole white room looked like it had been splashed about with red paint, and none too carefully. Crispin looked up from washing his hands in a pink-tinged basin with clotted blood floating like strings of tide-pool slime around the edges. Merry Lee was laid sleeping or insensible in the bed—on her side, clean sheets tucked around her