The Unseen Tempest (Lords of Arcadia) by John Goode, J.G. Morgan

series of small white placards mounted in a brass frame. There were four different fields where the tiles could be spun about. It read like it was a status for the workshop.
    Right now it read WORKSHOP-LOCKDOWN-ALARM-WAITING ROOM. Underneath the grill, so caked in dust and dirt it was barely visible, was a single, small bulb. Caerus needed a moment’s study to realize the bulb was flashing red in time with the tone in the background.
    “Obviously I missed something,” she said, thinking out loud.
    A creaking sound arose from the workbench; it sounded like rusted metal grinding against itself and breaking in the process. Using a cleaning spell on the bench, she banished centuries of grime from the surface, revealing another clockwork face like the couch’s.
    “W-w-w-w-what tool are you missing?” it asked, even as it extended two flexible, cable-like arms, which began picking up the scattered tools and returning them to their proper places on itself.
    The sapphire was about to ask what it was talking about when she realized the bench had taken her rhetorical statement as an actual query. It was connected to the alarm panel, so she thought it might know what was going on. “What is that tone?” she asked the bench.
    “A lockdown alarm has been activated in the waiting room. As per protocol, all mobile clockworks are currently deactivated until an all clear can be signaled.”
    “Who can signal the all clear?” She was fairly sure she knew what the answer was going to be.
    “Workshop personnel with a silver or higher key card.”
    “How do I get back to waiting room?”
    The bench paused for half a second. “All movement between floors has been restricted until an all clear is signaled.”
    “That is not going to work for me,” Caerus commented as she floated away to examine the room she was trapped in. She passed over dozens more unconscious choppers, some in various states of disrepair. From the discarded pile of rusted parts, it looked as if the creatures had been cannibalizing themselves to keep as many in working condition as possible. Beyond them stood a huge grove of trees laden with rusted containers hanging from their branches. They were of varying sizes but resembled the ones that had been in the dumbwaiter. Though the gemling could not smell, she could detect the overpowering levels of microbes produced by rotting food.
    No one alive had been in this area for decades, possibly centuries.
    Arrays of mechanical arms hung suspended from the ceiling between the rows of trees. Caerus guessed they had been used to gather the ripe pails and replenish the workshop’s food reserves. The sapphire followed the arms upward, looking for their access to the elevator system. There had to be more than one shaft to supply a structure of this size. The trick was finding the hidden doors.
    Upstairs, Ferra had finished her patrol of the hallway outside the waiting room, disposing of the choppers passed out there as well. The barbarian had never encountered mechanical beings such as these before, but she was sure of one thing—whatever their construction, decapitation was an effective means of shutting them off. The hallway extended until it reached a corridor, but there were no signs of any more choppers.
    Taking care to stack the bodies up in one pile and the heads in another, she froze both, just in case they weren’t as dead as they seemed.
    Not seeing anything else that could be considered a threat, she returned to Molly’s side, leaned down next to her, and stopped the device from whirling. As soon as the sound vanished, Molly’s eyes snapped open and she sat up. In a startled voice, she asked, “How much time did I lose?”
    It was the closest to panic Ferra had heard from the clockwork girl since they had met, and it concerned her. “Less than ten minutes,” she answered softly. “They are all… taken care of.”
    Molly got to her feet and looked at the two ice structures in the room. Ferra watched her as