Unease gripped me.
“What’s the story, Ish?”
He only waved me forward.
I shook myself as a dog might, girding what courage I had to forge through muck and soot. I did not have to walk far; the tableau placed for me could not be missed.
After the terrible scene in the Fish-Eyed Lady, I’d braced for blood and bodily fluids. A bit of relief eased my mind when I saw not a wide swath of gruesome leavings but a single individual, and this one rather more whole.
In a manner of speaking.
I’d seen corpses, even before the events that pitted me against the murdering Ripper and my violent rival. Such things were inevitable. It was always sad, a little bit grim, but one inured to such things at an early age if one had no other choice.
I had long been a student of anatomy—or at least those things that my scientific reading had led me to in regards to such. Blood splatter and torn flesh did not bother me overly much when in moderation.
Yet as I studied the splayed body left twisted upon the broken cobble, something twitched at my awareness. A truth waited for my recognition. I fumbled for it.
Ishmael lumbered into ready visibility behind me. “Not a Baker.”
“Ferryman?” I asked.
His grunt of assent was all he allowed.
Squinting, I stepped gingerly through discarded refuse and what I feared might be bits of late Ferryman, cataloguing the various wounds naked to the eye. Knife wounds, a fair few. Broken bones, judging by the concave shape of his back—likely courtesy of leaden pipes and hefts of splintered wood.
The back of his head looked fair kicked in.
A standard beating, I’d wager.
So why were my instincts demanding more?
I crouched beside the body, hands carefully tucked into my lap lest I inadvertently touch the corpse. “Your crew do this?”
“Aye.” No apology came with it, and I expected none.
A survey of the immediate surroundings brought nothing unusual to mind. This was, near as I could see, a simple beating—a Ferryman caught on Baker turf, like the poor sods near the shipyards.
I was ready to say just that when the sluggish and somewhat finer intricacies of my intelligence snapped into place. With a wary cringe, I reached out with a bare hand and very cautiously plucked at the ragged edge of his shirt. The wound beneath looked rather shallow, compared to the horror still etched in my mind. As I lifted the fabric, I asked, “Why is there not more blood?”
Ishmael said nothing; he had never been given to more words than necessary.
The material I held was stained, sure enough, but it was similar in scope to that bloody lip I’d nursed earlier. A stabbing required more bleeding, and that was a fact.
A took a closer look at the ruined mass of the back of his skull, and while the whole looked appropriately bloody and pink and gray, there should have been a veritable pool of red beneath him.
“Turn him over, would you?”
He obeyed, hunkering down beside the corpse to flip him with remarkable ease.
The front of the man was much the same as the back—stabbed, broken, not bleeding nearly as much as he should. As savage the wounding was, I stared instead at the remains of his face.
Something off there, too. What was it? I tilted my head, frowned. Utilizing my thumb by way of measurement, I calculated the length of nose and brow, and compared it to the jaw that hung slack and open.
Too large. Too square, thrusting forward more than a terrible underbite might allow. One eye had burst in its socket—a solid beating would do that and more—but the sockets themselves seemed oddly shaped.
He looked more human than not, but I wondered if I imagined the beastly characteristics.
I nearly tucked the nail of my thumb into my mouth before I remembered the grime I’d dragged it through. I chewed on the small scab upon my lower lip instead, pleased when it hurt.
The small pain created a space to think through all the carnage.
“What have you seen?” I asked, looking up at Ishmael.
He shook his head. “Some are strange, some aren’t. Always at least one in a group.” That explained the three Ferrymen I’d seen cornered in the shipyards. They’d seemed normal enough. “Takes more than one to bring them down, and never without at least one of mine taken with.”
“You’ve seen them fight?”
A solemn nod, and a flex of unmistakable muscle. He’d always been big, and while some might mistakenly call him soft at a glance, I could easily tell that the months had not been kind to that softness. His build had grown harder, like a crag etched by wear. “I’ve got no words, girl. They come, death follows. What is it?”
It was tempting to give in to wild speculation, here in the damp and dark with the smell of death hovering over it all. The truth of the matter was that this could simply be an unfortunate soul cursed by terrible breeding, and whose gift for violence rivaled most.
The Menagerie claimed a circus filled with sideshow creatures, but I knew well enough that most were an act. Thumbelina and her gentle giant, the creature pulled from a lake that no soul had ever heard of, the bearded lady and the unusual twins—each were carefully crafted for the best of show. Such false performances did not preclude the Veil from retaining those with a monstrous conscience elsewhere in its ranks. One simply had to look at Osoba or Hawke for evidence.
What I was about to propose might just get me in terrible trouble.
More than I already was, anyhow.
“I’ve a request,” I said slowly.
Ishmael only looked at me, head tilted somewhat. His patience might have hardened, but it gave me some happiness that he had not given up on our friendship. He’d always been my man, and I was relieved to know he protected Zylphia where I could not.
Despite the grime, I couldn’t help myself. I rubbed at one stinging eye with the back of my hand; the less filthy portion. “Can you go stand watch at the alley mouth? None can come back here.”
Ishmael wasn’t the sort to ask unnecessary questions, but curiosity touched his flat features. “How long?”
“Until I’m done.”
A grunt, and a countered, “You’ll call if you need?”
“I will,” I said, summoning a smile that seemed rather inappropriate, given the corpse sprawled a few paces behind me. Still, it wasn’t as if either of us were new to the concept of dead men in an empty alley. A gang was bloody work, even at the basest of the abram’s calling. Beggars by trade were not immune to the dangers of the street.
He nodded, shoulders shifting like a tide, and lumbered back the way we’d come.
My insides cramped at the knowledge of what it was I intended to attempt.
The tattoos inscribed upon my soles had hurt rather more than I’d been prepared for, but the end result was well worth the pain—or would be, Ashmore assured me, once I’d learned enough of the alchemical art to make full use of them. For now, they allowed me to open myself to the aether that fueled all things. The draw upon my reserves lessened slightly due to the base formula, but only when I remained within those Trumps I had learned.
I did not plan to do so. This would be a monumental undertaking, and the consequences severe.
Fortunately, I did not have to remove my shoes to take advantage. We’d placed the tattoos there as the easiest to conceal.
My interest in standing barefoot in the cold, gritty muck of an East End alley hovered somewhere just below none. Especially when the cobbles of said alley were like as not smeared with the grisly remains of a grotesque cadaver.
I raised my chilled fingers to my mouth and blew hard upon them. The brief warmth from my breath did little to help, but the surge of anticipatory nerves uncurling throughout my limbs softened my shivers.
I’d never done this without Ashmore to help—and even then, he’d done all the metaphorical heavy lifting.
I shifted to the body’s head, looked down at the grisly remains, then stepped back until I could
frame the whole of the alley in my sight. The fog settled low and heavy around me, as though tossed away in the fight that cost this bloke his life. It moved like a living thing, and I crouched within it for a moment before I thought better of it.
I was stalling, of course. I knew that what I intended would have severe repercussions, and I intended to do it anyhow.
There was a mystery afoot, and one that could prove to be too large for the Bakers—for my friend—to handle alone.
Swallowing hard, I raised a trembling hand.
Closing my eyes, I centered myself squarely upon my feet, seeking that balance that served me so well before a tumbling. Ashmore had recognized early that the core of my strength—the well, he called it—stemmed from that same place.
Draw upon that, and I could unlock the alchemical secrets of the world.
One Trump at a time.
Or, in this case, skip three steps ahead.
My fingers sketched a symbol into the thick air, the letter E rotated upwards on its side. I thought it would be enough, but as my mouth shaped the word, my hand swept through the sign I’d called and drew a five-pointed star. Such instincts were a dangerous benefit to the art. “Eon,” I said.
The word did not fall from my lips so much as fly, and as I opened my eyes, ashes of the letter I’d drawn crumbled to dust in the shadow of a brilliant blue star.
The alley no longer squatted in darkness and fog.
If the world was created of the four basic elements—water, earth, fire and air—then aether was the fifth that gave it all life. Unlike the obvious elements, quintessence, as the alchemists preferred it, hid beneath the four.
And while they were impermanent, aether was everlasting.
This trait, this peculiarity, might allow a learned alchemist to see the patterns within the world that aether formed.
True to the last time Ashmore had helped me call upon Eon, the whole of my sight filled with strains of color. Blue, mostly, as that seemed to be the manner in which the human mind was meant to view such matters. Farther down the alley, Ishmael’s presence burned like a star. Those that lived did so, for academic minds suggested that aether is what the soul was made from. It animated the flesh. A body without quintessence was not an ambulatory one.
The fog burned an ugly, sickly blue, and the strains of aether within my own hands gleamed in woven skeins. Within my flesh, there were other colors. Gold, violet and the faintest filaments of crimson.
The latter were most likely remnants of my mother’s scarring—or perhaps indication of the legacy I bore as her child. Before my sobriety took hold, I had dreamt of crimson threads strangling the life from me. They had been attached to Josephine St. Croix in more ways than symbolically.
I hadn’t dreamt of such things since her destruction.
Squinting in the overly bright glow assaulting my night eyes, I turned my attention away from the fascinating display and towards the body left to rot.
If the elements that created the physical body were meant to disguise the quintessence within, than the corpse splayed upon the sheened alley cobbles was clay molded by a harsh hand. The expected gleam of blue had become a muddled shade stained by copper, and a deep red that reminded me more of festering wounds than anything particularly healthy.
The bonds of aether that united all things seemed bent around the body, oddly kinked as a cable twisted too far, and stray threads vanished into nothing at all.
Whatever had been done to this bloke, it hadn’t been kind.
I approached cautiously, easily able to pick out the stains of unhealthy remains left smeared when it shimmered in that color reminiscent of a sickly kidney. Avoiding each now did not undo whatever I’d tread upon before, but I felt better for it.
I crouched beside the body, prepared to examine it closely, when the first sign of my efforts rolled over me—I felt as if I’d been knocked in the chest, kicked heartily by a pugilist with nothing to lose. My breath felt drawn from me, scooped out from my lungs, and its loss left me gasping.
Calling upon the Trumps took great energy. The ink carved into my skin was meant to balance that, but it was not a strong enough formula for this. There were precepts at work I only vaguely comprehended, and this was why Ashmore insisted I learn in order. Each Trump mastered increased my endurance.
I reached too far.
Spots of black popped into existence, marring the ambient light etched by Eon’s revelations, and I dragged in a breath that burned all the way down.
Fisting my hands against the damp stone, I leaned over the body and forced myself to look at it—look as though my consciousness weren’t straining at the edges.
Fatigue poured into me. A poor exchange for the energy the Trump claimed.
I gritted my teeth.
Beyond its sickening colors, a glint of a different hue winked under my laboring scrutiny. My arms shook under my own weight, and were I not so close, I might have mistook the color for a lingering shade of common blue.
It was anything but. Vibrant, startling.
Familiar.
My ears popped, as though I labored under a great pressure, and the world around me juddered. Sweat rolled off my face to drip to the cadaver that no longer cared.
I sucked in a rattling breath and croaked, “Ish!”
Whether the fog swallowed the sound or no, I couldn’t remain upright long enough to know. My limbs folded, the last of my energies drained from what felt like the soles of my feet, and I collapsed upon that twisted body without a second care.
The repercussion of my jaunt into weightier precepts than I could handle proved greater than I expected.
Chapter Fourteen
“Of all the brainless maneuvers in your vast and incredibly storied history of them, this must be the crowning glory.”
The voice, dear as it was, cracked open the black emptiness I slept in. Its irritable aggression gave no concession for the fatigue that smothered my head in muzzy cotton, and I winced before I opened my eyes. “Quiet,” I managed, a rusted rasp.
“So she deigns to rejoin the waking world,” snapped the strained tones of my tutor.
A wince turned to a flinch, and I opened my eyes to find him not so much looming over me as pacing the creaking flooring beside a bed that was not mine.
The whole of my body throbbed in aching lethargy.
Ashmore halted, planting both hands upon his narrow hips. His hair, returned to its usual copper stain, blazed like a corona in my watery sight.
I couldn’t see his expression as well, but I had no doubt it was fierce.
“I know what I did wrong,” I croaked, groaning as I struggled to sit upright.
“You will be the death of me,” Ashmore said tightly, but his hands were gentle as he caught me by the shoulders and gave me the balance I needed to rise. The mattress, patchy and thin, did not dip when he sat on the edge at my side. “What possessed you to go so far?”
“How did you know?” I blotted at my eyes with the back of my hands, frowning when I realized that I wore only shirtsleeves and trousers. Where had my coat gone?
Were the notes I’d purloined from the collectors’ station discovered?
“You test me,” he said, and sighed. “You great bloody fool. What did I tell you about skipping steps?”
Too much to repeat, given my weariness.
I leaned against his shoulder, my lashes feeling too heavy to keep open. I wanted nothing more than to drift away on a tide of sleep. “A fortnight,” I managed, yawning around it. “Wake me then.”
A sharp sting on my cheek jarred my senses loose, and I yelped, eyes slamming wide. “What was that for?”
“Wake up.” The patrician shape of Ashmore’s features had always been proud, but as I cupped the cheek he’d slapped, I recognized the careworn set of his mouth, and the creases carved of worry. His eyes flashed catlike fury, anger pinched his lips. “Sleep won’t save you from your comeuppance.”
He hadn’t hurt me; a restraint I expected from
him, for he was no bully save in the lesson room. Yet the fact he resorted to a quick pat made clear I’d frightened him with my latest tomfoolery.
And tomfoolery it certainly was.
Well worth it, though.
I grumbled, forcing my spine to straighten. The stretch worked its way from shoulders to toes, and I yawned again before I could halt it. “I’m tired.”
“You’re drained to the bone,” countered Ashmore, “and rightfully so.”
“I know, I know,” I repeated. I knuckled at my eyes, wiping the last vestiges of blurry sleep from them, then scooted to the edge of the pallet before I gave in and cuddled against his shoulder for another round of sleep.
It seemed so welcoming, that loss of awareness.
A gentle, if heavy-handed, tap came from the door.
Ashmore answered before I could. “Enter.”
I bent to search beneath the wooden bed frame for my missing boots. The pads of my feet were tender, but all of me felt tender. At least whoever had removed my outerwear had kept my stockings in place.
The floorboards creaked in an alarming manner as Ishmael pushed his way inside. A large man as him could never go unheard when indoors. Not unless the flooring were made of marble or built a sight better than most houses below the drift.
I looked up as I patted the floor beneath the bed. “Hello, Ish.”
His features, already not the sort given to kindness, settled into thunderous lines. “Girl.”
Another wince. “I know,” I said again, and brightened when my fingers hooked old leather. “Have you met, then?” I added. Too cheerfully, perhaps, for both men glanced at each other, and then at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, much more seriously. “I had good cause. I didn’t intend to worry anyone.”
“Your man tells me you weren’t hurt,” Ishmael rumbled. I took no personal offense to “your man,” for he meant it in exactly the opposite way Maddie Ruth meant it.
Ish was also my man, in the manner of loyalties given rather than romantic inclinations.
I tugged my boots on with effort, as my limbs seemed sluggish still. “I am only exhausted,” I assured him.
Ashmore said nothing, for that was the point. We couldn’t very well claim that I’d used alchemical arts and tapped the whole of my energies. I loved Ishmael dearly, he was truly a friend, but that meant I had more reason to keep him ignorant.
Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 17