Clockwork Heart: Clockwork Love, Book 1 Read Online Free PDF

the mechanical leg apart for some reason—it wasn’t broken, that Johann could tell, but sometimes Cornelius liked to fuss and fiddle with things simply because he could. This seemed a more involved procedure, though Johann couldn’t work out why it was happening at all.
    He gasped in shock when Cornelius sawed off the wooden leg of a small side table and attached it with a screw below the artificial knee.
    “ Pirate ,” Cornelius kept saying, as he attached what was essentially a peg leg onto Johann’s otherwise beautiful, intricate clockwork limb.
    Was Cornelius sending him away? He understood the visitor earlier this afternoon had upset his host, but he hadn’t realized that encounter would be the reason he was sent away. He didn’t want to overstay his welcome, but he wasn’t sure he could properly care for his clockwork parts, and without them he had a single hand left of his formerly four functional limbs. He couldn’t even properly crawl from one beggar’s corner to another.
    Had this visitor known of Johann’s past, and that was why Cornelius was finished with him?
    He was certainly sending him off well-kitted. All afternoon Cornelius had tinkered with Cornelius’s clockwork parts—and then he’d hidden them all. Long black leather gloves covered Johann artificial hand, and what the glove couldn’t manage, great leather cuffs did. Boots hid his left foot, and breeches tucked around his right knee disguised any hint of the clockwork knee and thigh. The peg leg had been roughly screwed into the delicate machinery.
    Johann’s amber eye was hidden behind a leather eyepatch. Most of Johann’s body was covered in leather—leather vest, leather coat with long tails that brushed the floor, wide-brimmed leather hat. It had to have cost the earth to procure—and from where it came, Johann didn’t know, only that Cornelius left without it and returned with a wheelbarrow full of parcels. It was well-gilded stuff too, full of filigree and ornament and rivets. Once he had Johann kitted out, he sat him down on the bed and stared intently into his eyes as he spoke slowly and carefully.
    “You are pirate,” he said, touching Johann’s leather vest. “Sky pirate.”
    Johann’s heart sank. “You take me to ship?”
    “ Non, un faux pirate. ”
    Johann shook his head in confusion. “ Je ne comprends pas. ”
    Cornelius bit his lip, and as always the nervous tic tugged at Johann’s heart. He would miss that lip-biting more than anything else.
    Cornelius stood and paced, murmuring to himself. Eventually he stopped and took Johann’s hat and eyepatch away, and put them on himself. “ Grr, je suis un pirate. ” He hunched down as he said this, playing out a rather bad caricature of story-time pirates. He swiped several random tools from his workbench, still growling at random. Then he winked, smiled and put down the tools as he shook his head. “ Non, je ne suis pas une pirate. Je suis inventeur .” He mimed fixing the lower half of Johann’s leg. “ Je ne suis pas une pirate. Je suis un faux pirate. ”
    Johann did a rough translation. I am not a pirate. I am a…something pirate.
    Cornelius pointed to his eyepatch. “ Ce n’est qu’un déguisement.” He took the patch and hat off and put them back on Johann. He made his rather bad pirate face again. “ Voilà, maintenant vous êtes le pirate. ” He winked and shook his head. “ Non, vous êtes un soldat. Vous êtes un faux pirate. ”
    Johann’s eyes widened. I’m not a pirate, I’m a soldier. But I’m…pretending? “I am pretend pirate? No ship?”
    Cornelius beamed. “ Non. No ship.”
    Relief rolled off Johann like fog. Dare he press his luck? He had to know, though. “Johann…is stay with Cornelius?” He mimed picking up a bag and walking in place from his chair before nodding at the door. “I no go?”
    Cornelius gasped. “ Non. ” He clutched Johann’s hands tightly. “ Vous restez avec moi. ”
    Johann was fairly sure