Llanwyre Laish | 41
emerges from the palace pale and shaken, bolting to his carriage through the garden. He decrees that the madman wind the bird only once a year, for the failing mechanisms need tightening, but he himself cannot work out the intricate insides. I do not remember creating such intricacies; our music box was fairly simple.
Just when I feel myself driven to madness by the shrieking song, the Emperor offers an exorbitant amount of money to the bird’s creators. Eo and I agree that we will take his money and escape the burden of our creation.
The next day, I put my assistant in charge of the other assistants, and make my way up to the palace. My steps are heavy, my tread slow. My friend and I meet at the gate and proceed in together. A chief advisor leads us to the Emperor's personal sitting room, where the Emperor sits on the floor on a tiger-skin rug, slumped over the pillow on which he has dumped the bird's little metal body. He looks like a spoiled child with a broken toy as he scoops up the bird with both hands and holds it up to us wordlessly.
Strange smells hang in the air. Incense in the fire creates heavy, cloying smoke so thick I can taste it. Underneath lies another smell, curled up like a snake, ready to bite. A rotting smell.
We hesitate, but I finally break the spell and take the little clockwork bird. I immediately recoil. Its center of gravity and its weight sit strangely in my hand. Its head lolls heavily, and as I turn it to examine the start mechanism underneath, it leaks fluid. Oil? I think, wondering if the clockmaker used too much lubricant and gummed the works, but then I realize that the fluid is too thick and too red.
My stomach turns as the little bird bleeds on me.
With trembling hands, I turn it over and see that someone has cut through the underside of our clockwork. Between the filigree curves I see skin and feather, bent and twisted and pinched.
I retch. The madman has stuffed a living nightingale into the clockwork's body. Still retching, I dig my fingers in, pulling the metal pieces away from the little bird's body. To my horror, I realize that the creature has just died: his body warms my fingers as I pull piece after piece away, accidentally removing feathers and chunks of flesh.