You ease the ajar door the width of a palm and press your ear into the crack. A cold breath brushes your face—metallic, salted, with a faint tang of oil. Beyond the threshold, a narrow service stair drops away into a claustrophobic shaft lined with riveted copper ducts. A strip of greenish light flickers from somewhere below, painting the edges of the steps in sickly colour.
From the throat of the shaft comes a sound that makes the hairs on your arms rise: at first a thin, sibilant whisper, then a voice shaped like memory—soft, male, the cadence of the portrait in the locket. “Elias…” it breathes, slow and coaxing. There is an odd doubling to it, as if two voices are layered slightly out of sync; one sounds like the man in the portrait, the other like a far-off rasp of something metallic inside the vents.
The three patient knocks from the wall behind the woman stop the instant you hear the voice; silence settles in its place like a held breath. The woman’s fingers dig into the carpet; she hisses through her teeth, “Don’t—don’t answer. It will take whatever it can.”
You hook your fingers beneath the warped brass panel and pry. The panel gives with a sigh of metal and a rasp of old paint flakes. Cold, damp air exhales from the shaft—salt and oil and something older, sweet and coppery. Your light slices down into a narrow well of riveted ducts and knotted pipes, cutting a cone of greenish illumination across damp steps.
Where the beam hits the nearest duct, condensation beads swirl together into a face—no solid features, just a suggestion that clings and unravels with the draft. A length of frayed rope is looped over a corroded bracket; beneath it, something small glints: a brass sailors’ button, pitted and stamped with the same crest as in the locket’s portrait.
From farther down, the coaxing voice returns, this time layered: one tone tender and familiar—Elias’ cadence—but underneath it an electrical, insectile whirr that makes your teeth ache. “Elias,” it croons, softer, closer. The condensation-face shudders, as if listening.
The woman hunches in the doorway, nails whitening in the carpet. “Don’t let it pull you in,” she whispers, breath fogging. “It takes pieces of what you love. It keeps them tethered to the ducts.”
You curl your fingers around the frayed rope and the cold brass button beneath it. The rope is slick with condensation; a faint, electric tingle crawls along your skin as you lift. For a heartbeat, nothing happens—then the shaft grabs back.
A heavy, dragging resistance pulls at your wrist, like a hand under water clinging to you. You jerk; the rope slides through your fingers and a wet, pale hand flashes into view for an instant, slick with oil and threaded with copper filaments. It lets go. The brass button drops into your palm with a dull, bright clink; on its face, the same crest from the locket is worn but unmistakable. The finger that held it snaps back into shadow.
The layered voice rises and fractures—Elias’s cadence threaded with metallic clicks and a thin insectile whine. “Keep it,” it hisses, closer and farther at once. The condensation-face along the duct shudders, beads running like tears, then collapses into a faint mist that drains down the pipes.
The woman behind you exhales so hard her shoulders shake. “You got it,” she says, fingers white on the doorframe. “Don’t open your mouth to speak his name. It listens.”
You feel the button warm very slightly in your palm, as if something inside it is aware.
You force your fingers past the slick ring of condensation and fumble for purchase. Something cold and flexible slides against your palm—hair, braided with thin copper wire—and beyond it a chain. You hook the chain with your fingernail and pull.
The shaft fights you. The metallic insect-voice spikes into a shriek that feels like frost over your teeth. Pressure surges up your arm, a suction that wants to drag you inward; the copper filaments tighten like barbs. You yank again. The chain comes free with a wet, metallic snap.
In your hand falls an array of objects tangled together: a sodden leather strap, a small tarnished pocket watch whose cracked glass reflects your flashlight in a dozen eyes, and a brass identity tag stamped ELIAS M—below the name, a faint scorch mark rings the edge in a spiral. The button from before thrums in your palm as if greeting the tag.
A pale, filigreed hand slams against the duct opening where your arm had been, then withdraws. The condensation-face puffs and blinks into a dozen beads that run down the pipe. The insectile whirr recedes to a low, angry buzzing. The woman at the door presses her palms together, lips moving in pressure prayers or warnings. “Seal it,” she whispers. “Now.”
You smell burnt sugar and machine oil; the tag is warm where it rests against the watch.
You force your arm deeper into the duct. The metal walls gape like teeth; condensation threads across your skin. The copper filaments tighten, then braid around your forearm like a cuff. The insectile whisper coils into a single, thin voice: “Keep… close.”
Your fingers close on something warm and oddly light. You draw it into the glow of your flashlight: a tiny filigreed cage no bigger than a walnut, its latticework etched with the same crest as the brass button. Inside, a miniature clockwork heart beats—each tick a faint blue flash. A scrap of oil-dark paper is wrapped around the cage, stamped E.M. and a set of cramped coordinates. The pocket watch in your other hand gives a single, wet clack; its hands stutter and then align with the heart’s pulse. The brass button in your palm hums in answer.
A pinprick sting runs up your arm—a shock, like someone touching a memory—and for an instant you feel a name ripple through you: Elias. The voice in the duct wavers between pleading and demand: “Return it.”
Behind you, the woman hisses, “If that is his—don’t let it hear you speak his name.”
You wrench the filigreed locket free with a grunt. It comes away sticky with old grease and the faint tang of wine. In the hollow of the wall, a scrap of paper flutters and falls at your boots; the pocket watch you carry—an ordinary soldier’s keepsake—clicks once as if to mark the moment. The locket is no larger than a walnut: a tiny polished heart of beaten silver, its face engraved with a fleur-de-lis and the initials E. M., sealed with a dab of red wax. When you press it to your ear, there is no clockwork, only the hush of your own breath—and, for the breadth of a heartbeat, the smell of lavender and river-mud, and a memory not entirely yours: a carriage, a broken glove, a man who laughs too late.
The woman by the door—no lady of high fashion but a housekeeper with eyes like flint—hisses: “If that belongs to her, speak not her name.” Her hand rests on the pommel of a knife at her belt. Behind her, the courtyard noises of Paris slip by like indifferent witnesses.
You press the tip of your knife into the red wax. It snaps with a tiny, brittle sound. The lid springs open.
A scrap of paper, folded twice, unfolds into a cramped, precise hand. You read it aloud—or the words read themselves into your mind.
“To Elias. If you hold this, know that the Heart binds what the Engine began. Return it to the Atelier on Rue du Verger before the third bell at dusk. Say only: ‘the lavender burns.’ Éloise Marchand will accept it. If it is taken beyond the Pont aux Singes, the bind will cry and bring him back. Destroy it if you cannot return it.”
The silver heart inside the cage pulses faintly against your palm, a cool blue that reflects the candlelight. Each tiny beat feels synchronised to the first toll of the bell somewhere down the lane.
The housekeeper’s jaw tightens; she does not touch you, but her voice is low and urgent. “Éloise Marchand. Rue du Verger—she is an ally, if she is in town. But if the Marshal’s men hear of a mechanical bind, you’ll have hunters at your heels. What do you intend?”
From the street, a cart creaks; a child laughs once and is pulled away by a sharp voice. The bell rings again, closer now—one chime—and the Heart’s pulse quickens.
