This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee Page A

the shovel. “Dr. Geisler? Is he here?”
    “No, but he asked me to find you. I’m to take you to Ingolstadt to see him. You are Alasdair, aren’t you?”
    “Yes.” My panic retreated just long enough to allow me a moment of reckless hope. Geisler was a name I could trust, and I needed to trust someone if I was on my own. I didn’t lower the shovel, but I took a step toward her. “How do we get there?”
    “I have a wagon waiting outside the city.”
    “I won’t get through the checkpoints.”
    “We can go along the river. I know a way.” A shout peaked from the men at the pub down the road, and the girl glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “If we go, we go now.”
    Father was in prison. Mum was gone. But Geisler could help us, and I wouldn’t have to run alone.
    “All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”
    “Hurry, then.” The girl turned back to the street, and I abandoned my shovel and followed her. We’d only gone a few steps when she stopped so suddenly that I nearly smashed into her. A light was bobbing toward us from the end of the lane, moving fast and accompanied by heavy footfalls.
    “Damn.” She seized me by the collar and dragged me after her back down the alley. Just before the dead end,she turned, wrenched open a door to one of the decrepit stone houses, and plunged us both inside.
    It wasn’t a house, I realized as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, but an abandoned shop with squatters and factory workers huddled together on the floor and against the walls. Glass display cases had been smashed out and small children slept inside them, curled around each other for warmth. A mist seemed to rise from the ground as everyone breathed, slow and steady in sleep. Somewhere amid the sleepers, I could hear clockwork ticking.
    The girl was picking her way across the floor toward a small window that opened onto the opposite alley. I followed, trying not to step on too many people as I went. Someone moaned, and someone else swore at me, but I reached her side as she jimmied open the window and climbed out. She was half my size and fit easily, but it was tight for me. I had one leg through when behind me, the door flew open with a bang. “Wake up! Police!” a voice shouted from the doorway.
    I crammed myself the rest of the way, in spite of the imprint the frame left in my side, and lurched onto the cobblestones. “Police,” I gasped as I steadied myself against the wall.
    “We’re close,” she replied, and I followed her down the street at a run.
    We weren’t as close as I hoped. She led me all the way out of Vieille Ville and back into the financial district, untilwe finally stopped at a bridge, the Pont du la Machine. A few rough-looking shipmen were there, smoking with their backs against the industrial torches, but none of them looked twice at us as the girl led me to the edge of the bridge. A stone stairway ran down to the riverbank trail people used in the summer, but the Rhone had flooded to its winter height and the path was submerged. The stairs dropped into the waves.
    She stopped on the step above the waterline and turned back to me. “How well do you swim?” she called over the rushing water.
    I laughed, partly from astonishment but mostly refusal. I’d throw myself at the police’s mercy before the Rhone’s. “Are you mad? There’s not a chance in bleeding hell I’m—”
    “God’s wounds, only joking.” She smirked. I glowered. “Come on, follow me.”
    She jumped nimbly from the steps onto a rim of chain that the winter boats used for mooring. It hung in drapes between fat iron pegs, with the lowest links just above the waterline so that it formed a slick track against the stone retaining wall. I followed her, less nimbly. My heavy work boots made me clumsy, and I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the back of her head and not look down at the rusted chain and the Rhone beneath. I could feel the spray on my face.
    We followed the river until the chain began to