Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  He staggered backward, fumbling for the wall so he could lean against something solid. The room was swirling.

  The door flew open.

  “Freddy!” Gerik had a hand around him. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t quite know,” Uncle answered, when Freddy couldn’t find his voice. “It looks like magical backlash. As if he tried to tap into something too strong for him. It’s like something is working through that girl.”

  Freddy couldn’t focus, couldn’t even stand anymore. The room seemed to have turned sideways, and all he could see were swirls of color. He felt Gerik grab him under the shoulder and nearly drag him toward the door, away from Nan.

  “All right, lad, we’re here. Have a rest.”

  Freddy felt the edge of a bed and collapsed onto it. He shut his eyes, letting the spinning room wind down like a top. He didn’t have time to feel ill.

  “What happened?” Gerik asked again. “Was she violent again? Why were you holding a poker?”

  Freddy shook his head. He didn’t want to talk, especially not to Gerik, who was happy enough to call him “lad” and tell him to rest and eat, but not to answer a single question worth asking, much less truly take his side.

  “All right. Well, just get some rest.” Gerik patted his shoulder and left the room. Freddy lay still, waiting for his head to clear. He had to get back to Nan before he lost his chance.

  Suddenly he was coming to.

  The day had warmed. The sun had moved dramatically.

  Damn it to hell.

  He’d missed his chance to fight back and run Nan out of there, but then, she hadn’t exactly popped off the bed, either. Maybe neither of them was much good for a hasty escape. If she was still in the house, she might be feeling better now. Could he find a way to sneak her out?

  He crept to the door, hearing footsteps somewhere distant, but when he peered out, the hall was empty. He didn’t know the layout of Uncle’s upstairs floor well, but she must be in a different bedroom nearby.

  He heard voices and footsteps approaching, and scrambled back onto the bed, closing his eyes. If Uncle knew he was feeling better, he’d probably find a way to keep Freddy from further exploration. The door creaked open.

  “Looks like he’s still asleep,” Gerik said softly. “Maybe we should just let him rest a bit longer.”

  “Not too much longer. I have a few more revivals for him.”

  “Really? Do you think he ought to do any more of that, after what happened earlier?”

  “He skipped yesterday! It’s unpleasant when we leave them for too long. Anyway, he’s fine. He just had a reaction to the girl. What is she? Is she even human?” They were whispering now, and the voices became fainter as the door gently shut behind them.

  Freddy would not be dragged off to revive yet more people. He was going to find a way out of here. Now. No matter what he had to do.

  When he heard Gerik’s and Uncle’s footsteps go down the stairs, he rushed into the hall, passing empty bedrooms. One door at the other end was closed. Even as he turned the handle, he heard Nan groan.

  “Nan?” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

  Her hands and feet were bound, and she had a gag in her mouth. Her eyes were barely open. He could smell the metallic tang of her blood.

  He pulled the gag from her mouth. “We have to get out of here. I know about the underground, the serum, everything.”

  She looked at him, eyes glazed. Did she understand?

  “Freddy,” she said slowly. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you…before.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Let me get you out of here.” He reached for the bonds at her wrists and worked the knot free.

  “I don’t think I’m strong enough to escape….I can feel myself knitting back together, and it’s—it’s awful.” She winced as she spoke. “But you—you need to go. There’s an entrance to the underground in Vogelsburg. It won’t be guarded.”

  “Vogelsburg?”

  “You have to save them. Let them…see the sun before they die. Get Sigi…out of the cage. Please.” Her eyes shut tight, and a spasm racked her body. He touched her arm, instinctively trying to soothe her, but she flinched. Was she going to die, even with his magic? “Just—be careful. There are…things down there.”

  “I will,” he said. “But who is Sigi?”

  She had already gone limp again, her eyes open but glazed, and then they shut, and she breathed heavily.

  The sound of a maid’s voice elsewhere in the house pulled his attention from Nan. “Mr. Valkenrath, sir?” she was calling. “There is a woman downstairs to see you. Mrs. Arabella von Kaspar.”

  He hadn’t expected Arabella von Kaspar. But Uncle wouldn’t be expecting her, either.

  As Freddy left the room where Nan lay unconscious, he caught his name amid the conversation drifting from downstairs.

  “I know who he is…” Arabella was saying. He couldn’t catch every word. “But of course, we both…”

  Murmur, murmur.

  “…boy.” She was talking about him. Freddy edged farther out on the landing to hear. From where he stood, he couldn’t see them and they wouldn’t see him, but there was the risk of servants’ noticing.

  “I know what you’re involved in these days,” Uncle said. “I don’t know what brings you here, and I don’t care to. I must ask you to leave.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “Well, if you’d rather I be direct, don’t think I don’t know what you’re involved in, Rory.”

  “Please leave,” Uncle repeated. “Or I shall have to ask my guard to assist with your departure.”

  “Just one guard?” she said, her tone now as hard as his under its false politeness. “I think I can manage him.”

  “Where is Wolff?” Uncle asked the guard.

  “He’d been at the bottle last night, sir. Passed out in the kitchen,” the guard said with some reluctance.

  “Go get Wolff!” Uncle barked at someone. Maybe a maid; he surely wouldn’t send his single guard out of the room. If Uncle had only one guard available, well, this was definitely Freddy’s best chance for escape. Uncle’s house would have at least one back set of stairs. He checked the bedrooms until he found an inner door. Although it was made to look like part of the wall, the door’s outline was still visible.

  Downstairs he heard some low, harsh words exchanged, and then Arabella called, “Freddy! Please come out. I know you came to see us last week! I won’t hurt you.”

  He opened the door to a narrow stairway and hurried down into the servants’ quarters. A boy of Freddy’s age was walking by with a tray of household silver. “Master Linden!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s the back door?” Freddy growled.

  “I can’t tell you that!” The boy looked behind him. “Somebody, help! Master Linden’s escaping!”

  Freddy knocked the tray of silver so it scattered on the floor. The boy gasped and seemed briefly frozen between gathering up the valuables and stopping Freddy. Freddy found a door that led up stairs to a narrow back alley. He started running for the nearer exit just as Uncle’s guard rushed into it, blocking the opening. Freddy quickly turned the other way. But the alley was much longer in that direction, running past several large houses. He pushed his legs—farther, farther—hearing the man coming closer behind him.

  A hand caught his shoulder, and the other grabbed his arm.

  “I’m actually a spy for the revolution,” Uncle’s guard hissed in Freddy’s ear. “Come peacefully and Arabella won’t hurt you.”

  Freddy lunged, trying to break free, but the guard caught him around the chest with one muscular arm. “Don’t make this harder on yourself,” he said.

  The guard hurried Freddy into Arabella’s car and climbed into the backseat with him. Arabella rushed out of the house with a pistol in her
hand. Uncle held one, too, as he stood in the doorway, but he didn’t shoot. He was shouting to whomever was behind him. Arabella took the driver’s seat.

  The car was pulling away now. Freddy was sweating, even in the brisk autumn air. He bit back an urge to curse, knowing he shouldn’t anger Arabella now, but he’d been so close to escaping.

  “Marcus, I’m sure the Valkenraths will be finding every guard they can spare to go after me,” Arabella said. “Give me two hours with this boy, and then inform the others.”

  “What do you plan to do?” Freddy asked, trying to keep his voice even.

  She smiled back at him, as if they were just out for a Sunday drive. “What a striking color your hair is. Do you know the saying about silver hair?”

  “No.”

  “All the old wisdom is lost these days. Each strand is a spell worked ‘too strong or all wrong.’ You work magic every day of your life, don’t you? And you do it at their bidding. But then, we shall talk about that more when I’ve gotten you home.”

  “I don’t know that we’ll have much time to talk before Uncle’s men catch up with us.”

  “Rory Valkenrath isn’t stupid. We’re the same age, you know. I’ve danced more than a few waltzes with that man. I’m a woman of society and the face of a revolutionary movement with thousands of members. If he kills me in my own house, there will be a lot of angry people leading the investigation.”

  “I don’t know. Apparently, he’s pretty good at getting rid of people. And I wanted to escape him. But if we’re going to work together, we should talk now.”

  “We aren’t going to work together,” Arabella said. “I’m going to tell you what must be done, and you can make your choice from there. I’ve been waiting too long to find you. I heard talk of a silver-haired boy at the Telephone Club. I asked around there, and what do you know? I heard the boy was always accompanied by Gerik Valkenrath. The gossip in this city can be a beautiful thing. And here we are.” As she spoke, her words curled into anger. “And if Rory really wants to send his goons after me, I shall use you as my shield.”

  She had pulled down an attractive street. These were not the staid gray mansions of Gerik’s and Uncle’s, which had seen several emperors come and go. The houses here were fashionable, scaled-down versions of country villas—whimsical stone and pointed towers, glass greenhouses built on roofs, flowers spilling from window boxes. She pulled up to one of them. “Lead him into the house,” she told Marcus, trading her grip on the steering wheel for the pistol she kept under her coat.

  Marcus muscled Freddy along the stone path to the front door. A nervous-looking young housemaid greeted them and took their coats.

  Arabella took Freddy’s arm now, pressing the barrel of her gun into his back. “Marcus, I thank you for your part. Make yourself scarce.”

  “Are you sure I should leave you?”

  “Oh, yes. I know what I’m doing, and I want to do it alone. This way, Freddy.” Arabella waved him up the stairs. Through open doors along the upstairs hall, he caught glimpses of half-finished paintings and empty canvases, sheets and splatter and unglazed pottery. She brought him into a study adorned with a stuffed, spiral-horned gazelle, a tiger rug, and a variety of birds preserved in midflight around a painting of her as a young woman, with her long hair spilling free, twined with flowers.

  She was dressed modestly now, in a plain cream suit and pearls, but over her desk hung photographs of her youthful self—in pith helmet and sporting linen, posed with elephant tusks, or with only a draped cloth to cover her, exposing a white length of back. There was just one photograph of another young woman. Compared to Arabella, she looked innocent, though impish. “Do you remember when you brought her back?” Arabella asked, indicating the young woman’s picture.

  He nodded. “She came to slowly. Like she’d been dreaming. I don’t think she said anything to me.”

  “She was my daughter, Sigi.”

  “Sigi?” The same name Nan had mentioned.

  “Yes.” Arabella’s tone was bitter. She shut the door behind them. “You must listen to me closely and understand well. This magic of yours is causing thousands of people to suffer—including you. If you bring someone back from the dead, it is your responsibility to release the person again, but if you don’t do it, if you keep working more and more spells, it will take its toll on you, as it clearly has.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “If you know, then you would have already let them go.”

  “I can’t let them go without touching them.”

  She scoffed. “Of course you can!” She paced quickly to the window and back. “Have you heard the stories of Queen Sofie’s witches?”

  “No…” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear them, either.

  “A hundred and thirty-five years ago, this paranoid queen employed curse-workers to cast spells upon her enemies. These witches she demanded so much of withered away into nothing. The first sign was always the hair. Every strand of their hair turned silver, and their faces grew thin, just like yours. Have you noticed yourself tiring when you run or take too many stairs?”

  “A little…”

  “And I’ll bet you are always quite hungry, and you never seem to get enough sleep.”

  He shrugged, although it was true. He didn’t want to admit any weakness to her.

  “It will grow worse. Soon, walking will begin to seem like an effort. But of course, I’m sure Queen Sofie liked it that way. Bedridden witches can’t escape. They said she had a room of them, and servants to feed them and clean them and keep them alive as long as their magic didn’t kill them first. It is said that at the end they were nothing but skin and bones, and their hair had fallen out.”

  She took a step closer, her long skirt rustling softly. “That will be you, Freddy. And Rory and Gerik know it, even if they haven’t told you. Day by day, they are leading you into an adulthood of complete helplessness—pure magic, neatly trapped for them in the withered shell of a boy. You might have ten or fifteen more years of this. Another several thousand people. And then one day you will die, and they will all go with you, because in the end they need their connection to you to survive.”

  No, Freddy had not expected a story like that. But it made sense.

  The pressure to have an heir. This was the explanation he’d wanted from them, because none of their reasons justified their urgency.

  Gerik really didn’t care about him.

  He knew Uncle didn’t; the man didn’t seem to care about anyone. But Gerik, for all his irritating gregariousness and chauvinistic views, had been indulgent and even kind. Whereas Uncle would have worked him to the bone, Gerik would limit the number of revivals he could do. He made sure Freddy always got plenty to eat. He insisted Freddy needed to see his parents at holidays. Gerik had let him keep Amsel, even though the cat sprayed on the curtains sometimes.

  He couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to be trapped in bed, with dead people placed under his skeletal hands. His rooms already felt like a prison, but at least he could walk the little garden, work on clocks, read a book. Maybe Gerik wanted him to have a child to save him from the fate of Queen Sofie’s witches. But if he really cared about Freddy, he would have told him it was time to stop.

  “You see, don’t you?” Arabella said. “You need to let them all go this moment.”

  “What about Sigi?”

  “I wanted to see her one last time. For so long, our plan was to get all of the dead out of the underground. But I never expected to find you. This might be my only chance to end all of this. If I kill you, they will all die, and I would still rather have put Sigi out of her misery than let this abuse continue. As I told you, I don’t have time to be nice. The Valkenraths will be here before long.”

  “But I heard…she’s being held in a cage.”

  Arabella’s hand twitched. “A cage? Have you seen her?” />
  “No. But I overheard.” It seemed like too much to explain Nan.

  He could see that Arabella was rattled, but it wasn’t enough to make her reconsider her plans. “Well, all the more reason to put her out of her misery,” she said, her voice low. “And then I will make the Valkenraths suffer for what they did. But I don’t blame you, Freddy. I understand you are a victim, too. You will not suffer—as long as you can end this magic.”

  “Wait—just listen. This isn’t the way. We have to get them out of the underground. There’s an entrance in Vogelsburg.”

  “I know there are entrances,” she said. “But there are also dozens of reasons why we might be stopped before we could possibly get them out. Viktor and the rest, they were always talking of these plots and logistics, how nothing could be done unless it was all done properly and peacefully. Well, I’m tired of waiting. Look within and feel it, feel those threads connecting you to all the people you’ve ever revived, and cut them loose. If you can’t do it, then the only way to undo it is to kill you. But I know you can.” She walked to the door. “Try to figure it out. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

  As soon as she left, Freddy went to the window. Prickly shrubs below and the gate beyond seemed to mock the very suggestion of escape.

  Arabella wanted him to destroy his life’s work and end thousands of lives in ten minutes. Maybe she was right that it needed to be done. But not at this moment. Not on her terms.

  He turned back to the study, which had an air of stifled adventure, with all the pictures of Arabella in linen pantsuits and the taxidermy on every wall. The gazelle seemed almost to stare at him with its glass eyes.

  Dead animals everywhere…

  A wild thought shot through his mind. Did these count as dead animals anymore, after having been skinned and reconstructed? He’d revived people with gaping holes in their vital organs, but Valkenrath had never brought him parts or pieces. Still, dead was dead. He brought life to things that shouldn’t function.

  He touched the wing of a pheasant frozen in mock flight. At first there was nothing—he might as well have touched the desk. But deep down, he felt the telltale tingle, a sweet strength rising to his command. It didn’t flow freely, the way it had when he brought back fresh bodies, but it was there to be coaxed.