“I wanted to propose something,” I said quietly, making a big show of glancing around the room to reaffirm that we were alone.
He grinned up at me, at last taking a scone from the tray. Now when I looked at his narrow, handsome face I could see nothing but the stag skull beneath it, as if the flesh he wore were only a thin and fading covering that would slip any second, revealing the true monster. It took every fiber of restraint I had to keep from smashing him over the head with his own teacup.
Where is Mary? What did you do with her?
I was bargaining from a position of weakness, for as soon as he discovered I knew the truth about Mary he would have dangerous leverage. He had seen firsthand how dearly I admired her, and the knowledge of her true location was invaluable. If I did not play this game carefully, I would lose before it even really began.
“I am listening,” he said, inhaling deeply.
He did not eat his scone but rather abandoned it on his saucer. I took a step closer, loathing every minute I spent in his presence. My plan had altered in the night, but my original goal remained. I had to leave Coldthistle House for good, and avoid the mess he was determined to make.
“The book,” I whispered, giving another conspiratorial look about. “I’ll find a way to get it for you, but I want something, and I want it up front.”
“Money?” Of course he knew, the clever bastard, having heard it from my own lips last night. He smiled like the cat that got the cream, making death by teacup that much more tempting.
“Not just money,” I replied hastily. “A fortune. Enough to start over, enough for me to take Mary and my friends far away from here and begin a new life.”
“Intriguing,” he purred. “Go on.”
“It won’t matter if you give me the money first, since I want this bond to the book severed for good. I won’t leave until you help me with that, and that requires the book.” I sighed and put on my best fearful little girl face. “It will be very dangerous for me, do you understand? I’m risking everything to get you that book, so no tricks. Once I have my coin and you have what you want, then I’m finished. I don’t want any part in . . . in what you have planned.”
There were low voices in the foyer, the sound of men chatting to one another. I turned away and busied myself with the teapot on the table near the windows, waiting until the Breens and Samuel Potts left through the front doors. When I spun back around to face my father, he was staring blankly into the distance, still stirring his tea, as if he were a man lost in thought and I was not there at all.
“I wish I could change your mind. When these pretenders have been overthrown and the kingdom restored, we could look after it together. You could go home, to your real home, and be among beautiful creatures just like yourself.” He sounded wistful, but I did not trust it for an instant.
“You said yourself there’s a war coming, and I am not a soldier. No, a quiet life will suit me better. Perhaps I shall marry, or get a dog. May I ask why you can’t take the book for yourself?” I asked. “You must be far more powerful than me; surely you could survive its touch.”
“I’m weak, not nearly at my full strength,” he said calmly. “If you slept for over a thousand years you may find yourself waking with a slight crick in the neck and a stiff walk, too.”
He was lying. If he was strong enough to masquerade as Mary for hours on end, then he could damn well walk up the stairs and pick up the book. I had been tidying up the spilled sugar on the table when it occurred to me: he could take the book. In fact, he had probably tried already. But they had moved it, and now he was relying on me to discern its location.
“There is one complication,” I said slowly, sweeping up the sugar with my palm.
“And that is?”
“The book . . . Mrs. Haylam moved it somewhere. I think they know something strange is going on, and I don’t know how to find it without drawing attention.” I dusted off my hands over the tray with the teapot and fetched the tiered biscuit plate.
The chair creaked as he leaned forward, uncrossing his legs. I could feel him searching the back of my head, trying silently to persuade me to turn around. I ignored him, worried that the slightest twitch, the wrong blush, would give me away.
“You must be smart now, daughter. If this is a true proposal, and we are to strike a true deal, then I must receive something in return for the money,” he said. “They trust you here; turn that to your advantage.”
You’re using me, just like you used Mary.
“You’re not drinking your tea,” I pointed out lightly. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“Not at all. But I do not want tea, my dear daughter, I want revenge.”
“Indeed,” I said, brightening up and plastering on a fake smile for him. When I turned he had not moved and had not touched his tea. The pink-and-purple spider on his shoulder continued to stare at me, and I couldn’t help but think it was strange. I had never seen a spider behave so placidly. “And I’m sure you will have it. I fear I must be going now, if you don’t need anything else. Mr. Morningside is becoming anxious about his translations.”
“I’m sure he is,” my father replied with a deep chuckle. He sat back in his chair and sighed, relaxing, finally taking a single slow drink from his cup. “I wouldn’t keep him waiting. I overheard the housekeeper fretting about the trial tonight. He does so deserve to know the ending before his world comes crashing down around his ears.”
“I’ve just had the most incredible story from that ridiculous little kiss-up Finch.”
Of course the moment I sat down to work Mr. Morningside appeared, swaggering into the library with his usual grace. This time, however, he looked as if he had not been sleeping. I relished that a touch, since I knew now that he had kept back crucial information from me. As much as I disliked Father—and I disliked him intensely—I couldn’t shake the sense that he was right on a few things, one of those being Mr. Morningside’s affinity for keeping pets. Was that all I was to him? A charming novelty? One of the last Changelings and therefore valuable only because of the rarity? And if so, did that not mean he would be loath to let me go? There were stories warning against deals with the Devil for a reason. I was increasingly worried that he would break our contract, or find some loophole within it to keep me from what I wanted.
He strolled to the desk, sitting on it, as he usually did, and grinned down at me. My eyes rolled up to meet his and I sighed. I knew precisely where this was headed.
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with spiders, would it?”
“How did you guess?” Mr. Morningside had a good laugh over that, gasping for breath when he was finished. “Honestly, I wish I could have seen the looks on their faces!”
“So do I,” I muttered. “Tragically, I was busy escaping Sparrow’s overzealous accusations.”
He sniffed and drew out his handkerchief, embroidered with his initials of course, and dabbed gently at his forehead. Apparently he had laughed himself into perspiring.
“She’s a brute. Always has been. If Spicer were here, he would keep her in line, but Finch never says a thing, too much the devoted brother. Still, it invites the question, why were you out so late last night with your father?”
I glanced away, fumbling for a plausible lie. During my time at Pitney School, I had learned that the most believable lies not only held a grain of truth but also contained a shred of incriminating information. A sparkling-clean story never fooled anyone.
“We were taking a walk around the grounds,” I said. “He wanted to talk to me away from everyone else and tell me about my mother . . . about their courtship. I thought meeting him would make me hate him, but there is something there that I find intriguing. He is my father, after all; it would be a shame not to at least hear his side of the story. It will not hurt my chances of inheritance, either.”
“There is no need to hide such things or go skulking about in the night; I will not tease you for finding common ground with your own flesh and blood
,” he said with a chuckle. “But I do apologize for Sparrow’s behavior. I wish I could say I’m shocked, but this is utterly believable. Spicer would wring her neck; I’ll make certain he hears about all of this.”
I flinched, wondering if he had any idea that this Spicer person was more than likely dead. Was it worth taunting him with it? While I weighed my options, Mr. Morningside made the decision for me. He straightened his lovely maroon jacket and leaned one hand on the table, letting out a plaintive breath.
“They don’t make them like that anymore,” he murmured. I had never seen him like this, boyish, almost dreamy. “Spicer was one of the shepherd’s first servants. We were close. He never developed that wretched moralizing streak the others have. He never judged me simply because we were on opposite sides of things. Ha, he only judged me for my very bad decisions. Of which there were, and continue to be, many.”
I nodded along, growing more and more ill at the lie sticking behind my tongue. “His name sounds familiar. I think I read about it in your book.”
“Yes.” Mr. Morningside snorted, tucking his handkerchief away. “That was his copy, from better days when he actually visited. The shepherd has apparently had him chasing this book of Bennu’s all over creation. Old boy will be furious when he realizes it was all a wild-goose chase.”
We both fell silent, sitting amid the crackling of the hearth flames and the distant voices above us that echoed through the house. I enjoyed it, in fact, simply sitting there being, as I had come to like that hidden library, and it was a rare moment that he treated me like a friend and not a fool to be manipulated. It was hard to imagine him being friends with one of the Adjudicators, but then I had learned far stranger things in recent hours.
“This book,” I said, tapping the cover of Bennu’s journal, “why does it matter so much? I’m not just blindly translating this for you; I have been paying attention. You and the shepherd, the Dark One and Roeh, you were rivals, but you were also fighting this Mother and Father, weren’t you?”
He gave me a gentle but snobbish smile, one that clearly communicated how little he thought of my investigative skills. Oh, I know so much more, sir, just you wait.
“That’s why there’s an empty table at the Court. If the table is vacant and the flag is black that means they must be gone or dead. You have a book, the shepherd has one, and now you want theirs. Why?”
That drew his eyebrows up in surprise and his smug smile faded away. He was looking at me differently now, as if he was only really seeing me for the first time. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said flatly.
“No, it isn’t,” I scoffed. “When have you ever been principled?”
“Ha! Very droll. All right, but the answer might surprise you,” he said, wagging his finger at me.
“Try me.”
“I don’t like what we did,” Mr. Morningside told me, a haunted shadow darkening his normally vibrant yellow eyes. “It was a bloody business, brutal, and I listened to the shepherd when I shouldn’t have. They were first, you know, the Mother and Father, they were old, old beings by the time he and I appeared. They had many names, many incarnations, but their true followers just called them Mother and Father. At first I thought we might all get along. I didn’t need their worshippers and they didn’t need mine.”
“So what changed?” I asked, leaning onto the desk.
“What changed? Everything. The shepherd wanted more, more followers, more praise, more power. That was when our rivalry began, when it all became Satan or God, Hell or Heaven. We were both collecting worshippers so quickly, and we stopped caring about what they called us or what they did in our names. It . . . made something snap in the Father, I think. He was a god of tricks and trouble, the embodiment of nature’s chaos. And while we bickered and settled our differences he grew and spread, unchecked. Something had to be done. There were disagreements, of course; I thought it was cruel to unite against him, but what could be done?”
I swiveled in the chair and nodded toward the painting. “But there are four of you. What happened to the Mother?”
Mr. Morningside drew himself up and shrugged, shaking his head quickly and running his hand over his face. “I wish I knew. She was the only sensible one among us, I think. One day she just . . . vanished. Bennu must have taken her from Egypt to wherever he wound up, but there was no trace of her after that. Things with the Father only got worse. He went mad. So the shepherd and I made an alliance of convenience.” His voice lowered to nothing but a choked whisper, his eyes wide and staring as if a flood of awful memories had taken hold. “It was a bloodbath. We gave him no choice but to surrender.”
He glanced up at me then, and it was the most honest, the most vulnerable I had ever seen him. His hand shook a little as he passed it over his face again. “That’s why there are so few of you left, and why I’ve tried so hard to chronicle the Dark Fae and, well, take in any that I find.”
“Guilty conscience,” I murmured, using Mrs. Haylam’s phrase.
“Guilt is not a strong enough word for what I feel, Louisa.” Mr. Morningside stood and jerked on the bottom of his coat, sucking in his cheeks as he watched me. “Does that answer your question?”
He did not rush me as I came to my own conclusion, one that startled me even as I said it. “You don’t want to destroy the book. You want to protect it from the shepherd.”
A slow, wan smile spread across his face, chasing away the haunted shadow in his eyes. “It gladdens me to know you at least think that much of me.”
“But then, why this?” I asked, running my palm over the journal. “You’re handing him the key to destroying my people forever.”
The Devil’s smile deepened and he leaned toward me, eyes dodging toward the journal under my hand. “Clever, Louisa. Always too clever. That’s why I came to see you. I know you’re about to finish the translation, and I need you to make a few small . . . adjustments.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Year Two
Journal of Bennu, Who Runs
We arrived at the fortress at dawn, descending through a skylight surrounded on all sides by twining, reaching branches. It looked as if we were landing in a great wicker basket with the bottom cut out, but as we neared the ground I saw that the fortress went deep underground, too, a wide, stone spiraling staircase disappearing into the earth. Outside the walls stood a forest so dense and green that it looked like a single, unbroken sea of emerald.
I rolled from the back of the Sky Snake drenched from the rain, but that did not matter. At once, I tended to Khent, pulling him down, helping him limp, bloodied and sagging, toward . . . Well, I did not know where we were expected to go or whether we were expected at all. The Sky Snake departed before I could give it so much as a single pat of thanks, and soon its long black tail was again whipping along among the clouds.
The courtyard seemed deserted, silent but for an incredible racket of frogs. There must have been a swamp or river nearby, for it sounded as if we stood in the chorus of a million singing creatures. I had not noticed that a heavy bronze gate guarded the descent into the earth, and with a noisy clanging it began to move, receding into the wall and opening the way.
“Can you walk?” I asked Khent, but he had long since lost the ability to speak and simply moaned and rolled his head against my shoulder.
I had dragged him but a pace or two when two figures appeared, climbing up out of the depths of the inner fortress. Too tired to temper my response, I stood in openmouthed surprise at the sight of them, for they, like so many things I had seen on my journey, were utterly new to my eyes. They were human from the waist up, young women, each armored in what looked like smoothed wood chased with leaves, the straps of which were secured around their necks and arms with thick white webbing. Their skin was pale pink, and though they had big, pretty eyes as any maiden might, each had six more than they should, four smaller purple eyes curving up toward their white hair. Long plumes in every color were tucked into their braids and they had piec
es of bone lodged in their ears and noses. That was all strange, but stranger still were their lower halves, not humanlike but jutting out far behind them to accommodate eight legs. Eight massive, furred legs striped in pink and purple bands.
It was as if some twisted alchemist had taken the top of a woman and mingled it precisely with the body of a tarantula, and where woman met spider hung a long woven cloth painted with an elaborate deer skull with eight eyes. The strange design reminded me of the very book I had carried so far.
Both armored creatures carried wooden spears, and the one on the left, whose hair was longer and braided in twisting ropes over one shoulder, pointed the tip of that spear at me.
“Who is this that rides a Sky Snake into our midst and brings a bloodied companion? Speak, strangers, or be food for the forest.” She did not need to shout, for the threat was more than enough. Her voice was husky, and her lip curled in anger.
“My name is Bennu,” I said, trembling. I carefully pulled the book from its satchel and heard both women gasp. “Mother sent me. I followed the signs over a great, great distance. Please, we have come from half a world away, do not forsake us now.”
“No! No . . . you are welcome here,” the same creature said, giving an impressively elegant bow despite her strange configuration. She nodded to her companion, who skittered back down into the earth. She emerged a moment later with a trio of helpers, who looked much like me but for their entirely black eyes. “We will tend to your friend, and you will give us this precious gift—”
The three assistants took hold of Khent and carried him away before I could say anything. He gave me one last look, fevered and afraid, and I worried then that our tribulations were not yet at an end. As he was led away a commotion erupted below us, and soon a whole group of black-robed men and women arrived in the courtyard from below. Their faces were painted with elaborate designs and tattooed with green spirals. One stepped forward, an elderly man, and elbowed the spiderlike girl out of the way.
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