by Kesia Lupo
Lena raised her chin. ‘Why should it belong to you? It belonged to Patience Santini, and she’s dead.’
‘Well … by rights, it belongs to her daughter, Constance.’
She blinked. Constance. The masked lady. Chatham’s apprentice.
‘And I’d just love the opportunity to return it to her,’ he went on. ‘Constance and I are old friends, you see.’
‘I thought she was your apprentice. I thought she stole something from you when she ran away,’ Lena said, her voice slow and quiet. ‘Doesn’t sound like you were friends, to me.’
Chatham nodded. ‘Emris has told you … Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose: the huntsman appears to treat you as something of a confidante. I’ll tell you something else: Constance wants this butterfly.’
Lena looked at the creature in her palm, not quite understanding. ‘What?’ she breathed.
His voice was sharper, tinged with something sour and unpleasant. ‘Oh yes. That little butterfly may be next to worthless, but for reasons of her own, I believe Constance desires it.’ He looked genuinely angry now. ‘Isn’t that marvellous, Lena? If you let me have the butterfly, I’d have something she wants, and she’d have to come back and get it. And so the little butterfly flies into the net, along with the priceless treasure she stole from me.’ He held out his hand. ‘So, you see, it’s absolutely necessary that you give me the butterfly.’
‘No,’ said Lena firmly, holding it tighter in her hand.
Chatham slammed his fist into the table. His face had grown twisted and ugly – he looked ten years older than he had done moments ago. ‘What value is the damn thing to you?’
‘It’s mine, and I’m not giving it away.’ She leaped up from the comfortable chair and edged towards the door.
‘If you don’t give it to me,’ he hissed, ‘I will tell everyone that you stole it from me, and you will spend the rest of your life in prison.’
Lena’s eyes widened. ‘But that’s a lie!’
‘Who do you think they’re going to believe, stupid girl? Now hand it over!’
Lord Chatham lunged across the table, his arms outstretched, knocking over the teapot and spilling hot, steaming tea all over the hearth. The fire hissed as Lena flung herself to one side and ran for the door, but the air flashed bright yellow. She felt herself caught by the ankle and tripped. The butterfly flew out of her hand and hit the door with a clink before falling on the carpet.
Something flickered to life inside her, a coldness fizzing in the pit beneath her lungs, catching alight with alarming intensity. She gasped as the coldness rose from deep inside, burning through her gullet with its strange, freezing electricity. I’m not doing this, she realised, her heart thumping wildly. As Chatham’s hand closed around her boot and started to pull her out of the way, something jerked from her mouth like a scream: a cloud, dark and menacing, hovered in the air like a bad omen.
She felt Chatham freeze, his hand suddenly loosening. The cloud resembled the vapour she had been conjuring from her palms during her practice sessions with Emris, but it was much larger, darker – a low rumble filled the air. She flinched: the cloud appeared to have a life of its own. Lena and Lord Chatham watched it float towards the butterfly, momentarily united in their wonder and confusion. In a split second of strange silence, the cloud landed on the delicate mechanical body, enveloped it. The creature shuddered, flapped its wings a couple of times – and then, miraculously, the clockwork kicked in and with a whir the butterfly flapped its wings and started to rise into the air, puffing little clouds of dark-grey smoke out of its body as if it was coughing and spluttering to life.
What just happened? Lena’s heart was pounding. I didn’t mean to do that. Was it Chaos?
The quiet broke as Chatham roared and lunged for the butterfly. Lena pushed herself to her feet. The butterfly flitted up towards the ceiling and settled on the top shelf of ledgers, its wings peeking over the edge.
The magician started to climb the wheeled ladder, forgetting Lena in his total focus on the butterfly. She shot towards the ladder and kicked it with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, sending it hurtling along the rail, tipping sideways. Chatham, who was halfway up, tumbled into the shelves, sending several drawers of metal fixings crashing to the floor. Lena watched as one of the bookcases swung forward, and readied herself to jump out of the way – but it wasn’t falling. It was … opening.
Inside the secret room, a low yellow light burned steadily over another workshop, twice the size of the one in which she was standing. She caught glimpses of metal objects scattered across a long desk and recognised them dimly as counterfeit body parts – legs, arms, hands … even a series of masks similar to the one Constance had worn. And on the floor, which was plain, pale stone, were several dark stains …
Lena knew a bloodstain when she saw one. And now she had noticed it, there were other signs of violence in the secret workshop. A saw discarded on the floor beneath the desk, its blade streaked with dried reddish stains, and various bloodied cloths tossed in a large metal bin. Whoever had cleaned up in here had done a slapdash job.
‘Get away from there,’ a low, menacing voice said. Chatham had risen to his feet, and there was murder in his eyes.
I should never have come here.
She staggered backwards, her heart in her mouth.
‘What did you do?’ she breathed, her voice barely more than a whisper.
As soon as she was clear of the bookcase door, Chatham slid it shut. ‘Now, now,’ he said softly, ‘don’t draw conclusions about things you don’t understand. It wasn’t me anyway.’
But Lena wasn’t listening. She shook her head, continuing to back away slowly. The butterfly was hovering around the door to the shop, its metal wings scraping against the wooden frame in clinking whispers.
‘I’m sure we can come to some arrangement, after all,’ the magician added, his voice now sweet as honey. ‘Just … stay here for a moment.’
He was drawing closer, but Lena’s hand had found the handle of the door. She burst through into the main shop, staggering backwards. The assistant and the customer, who was on her way out with a white box clutched under her arm, shrieked loudly as Lena slammed into the counter, Chatham at her heels. His hands closed for a second around her wrist, and she felt a lurch in her stomach as an unnatural warmth radiated from his fingers, a hum filling her ears as her wrist started to burn. His magic. She tried to pull away, but he was too strong, so she kicked out desperately – once, twice – and found his knee with the hard toe of her boot. He cried out, let go.
Fear propelled her forward. She couldn’t get the horror of the bloodstained workshop out of her mind. She skirted around the counter – wincing against the stinging, blistering ghost of his fingerprints around her wrist – hearing a tick-tock-tick sound close over her head. It was the butterfly, she realised, the sound conjuring the memory of the first time she had seen it, fluttering in the dark.
She raced for freedom. Lady Honoria screamed again, her voice raw with fear as she ran out of the front door into the sunlight. The butterfly settled on Lena’s shoulder as she put out a hand to grab the handle of the shop door, already swinging shut after the lady’s escape. She was almost upon it when a loud click and whir sounded and a metal gate shot from the top of the door to the ground. She snatched her hands away from the contraption, her racing heart sinking. She was trapped.
She searched around for another means of escape, but a dishevelled Lord Chatham was already emerging from the counter, a section of his heavily oiled ashen hair standing up on end. Fury glowed in his eyes. ‘Good work, Miss Evershott,’ he said to his pretty assistant, who had her hand on a lever to one side of the counter. ‘Now, Miss Grey – as you can see, there really is no escape. You might as well hand it over – and I might even forgive you for … the damage.’
Forgive her? After what she had seen? She had to get away!
Think of something else. Think! Lena told herself. A distraction. As Ch
atham stalked towards her, hand outstretched, she raised her own hand in the opposite direction, towards the bay window displays.
‘No!’ Chatham shouted, realising what she was about to attempt.
She called on the cold fire burning in the pit of her belly – and blessedly, a burst of magic shot through her in arrows of electricity. Bulbous clouds flew out of her palm, converging around the metal creatures in the window, and Lena watched in astonishment as the mechanicals absorbed the vapour, as if each creature were inhaling sharply. She flexed her hands, surprised at what she was now capable of. All at once, the shop was alive with whirring and clicking and even the noise of little bells playing tinny mechanical music as the metal animals sprang to life.
‘No!’ Chatham yelled again, his face pale with rage and disbelief.
In the split second before Chatham’s shock subsided and rage won out, Lena darted aside and ran around the display counters of the shop, shooting clouds of magic at every mechanical creature she spied as she knocked aside the plush velvet stools and upholstered chairs. Magic was coursing through her – suddenly it felt bottomless, surging like a great river, eager to burst its banks.
The shop assistant – Miss Evershott – snapped herself out of shocked stupor as Chatham cried, ‘Stop her!’ But the small golden cat with the fluffy tail that Lena had admired in the window launched itself at the assistant’s stricken face. She fell down, shrieking, and Lena heard her head rap sharply against the floor. Lena rushed to the lever but stopped short.
Miss Evershott’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling, a halo of blood spilling around her head.
Dead.
Time seemed to slow. The cat, animated by Lena’s magic, was sitting on the woman’s chest, gazing up at Lena with empty eyes, its mechanical throat purring. Or were its eyes really empty? She could see something swirling in their depths. The world was faded around the edges and she realised she wasn’t breathing, but she pinched herself, forced herself to face the truth.
I killed her.
Another, harder voice spoke in her mind. There’s no time. Just run.
Lena pulled the lever up and the bars over the front door shrank back into the ceiling.
Chatham was doing his best to pursue her, but his numerous bird and insect mechanicals were buzzing around his head, tugging at his clothes, and an elephant the size of a goat had started to sneeze great multicoloured spurts of gas into the air. Chatham was staggering and choking, enraged, in the wrong direction. The vicious metal insects dug tiny limbs into his face. Blood ran on to his collar. The elephant was ramming its shiny, sharp tusks into his shins. And now the cat was poised to leap on its second victim, its furry tail already soaked in blood, its metal teeth pointed and gleaming.
What have I done?
Lena stumbled, wondering whether to help the magician.
But then she remembered the secret workshop, and her heart hardened. There had been so much blood. Wasn’t it likely that he too was a killer?
She sprinted out of the unlocked door, pounded down the street and turned into a backstreet she thought might lead towards the temple district. No sounds of pursuit. Had she killed Chatham too?
She caught her breath in the little back alley, her mind spinning, her face hot and sweaty. A flash of metal suddenly glinted in front of her face, lit by the sinking sun, and she flinched, suppressing a scream – remembering how the creatures had attacked their creator.
But the brass butterfly merely fluttered in front of her nose, circled once around her head and landed on her shoulder. Lena started, but didn’t brush it away. It didn’t appear to mean her any harm. Carefully, her hands trembling, she picked it up and slipped it into its customary place in her pocket, where it was happy to stay.
By the time she reached the temple around half an hour later, the shadows were lengthening, and she realised Emris would arrive in the map room with supper shortly – that is, if he wasn’t already waiting for her. What would she tell him? Slowly, she climbed the stairs to the map room. Mercifully, it was empty. She flung herself into a chair, panting, unable to believe what she had done.
The little brass creature crawled out of her pocket, flew up and perched on the end of her nose, inspecting her eyes as if it was as curious about her as she was about it.
‘This is all because of you,’ Lena said quietly. ‘Why did you choose me? Why were you in the crypts? What magic was in you then, and why did it go away?’ She’d gone to Lord Chatham for answers, only to find more questions – and a lot more trouble than she’d bargained for.
The butterfly flew to her palm and she cupped her hands around it as she usually did. It seemed happy in the dark. It didn’t glow as it had done the first time she’d seen it, years ago. Instead, she noticed a little vaporous heart of grey cloud. The butterfly was animated by her own magic now, she realised. Chatham’s bee had glowed yellow, like his horse. The animals she had brought to life hadn’t glowed, because her magic didn’t either. The first time she’d seen the butterfly … what colour had it been? She remembered it only as a pale light. What colour was Patience Santini’s magic? And why had her spell flitted to life when she’d been dead for so many years?
But there were more pressing matters to deal with. She had killed a woman with her magic. She might have killed Chatham too. Blood drained from her face as tears stung her eyes.
‘Lena?’ Emris was holding a tray loaded with food, but as soon as he saw her face, he set it down on the table and rushed to her side, kneeling on the floor beside the chair. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve done something stupid, Emris,’ she said, the tears falling in hot, heavy trails down her cheeks.
He ran a thumb across her cheek. ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,’ he said gently.
‘It is,’ she choked. She opened her hands to show him the butterfly. For a moment, it was still, and Emris’s face remained caught between confusion and kindness – but then, with a flutter of its wings, it rose into the air, circling the chair. His expression changed.
‘All right,’ he looked up at her. ‘Looks like you have some explaining to do.’
Lena told him everything. She told him about the night she’d found the butterfly, the song she’d heard, the way the butterfly had glowed and flown towards her in the darkness. The way it had stopped as if it had chosen her. She told him how she didn’t feel like she belonged – not in the crypts, nor in the temples – and how Faul’s hold on her felt tenuous. She told him what she remembered of her strange dream when she’d fallen into the fountain. How, despite her progress in his lessons, every now and then she felt her magic bubbling over like a kettle left too long on the boil, uncontrollable. She told him how she had tried to find answers elsewhere, how this had led her to Chatham’s shop – and she told him everything that had passed. The secret bloodstained room. The woman she had killed. And maybe … maybe even Chatham himself.
As she spoke, Emris leaned forward in his chair, resting his chin on his hands, his face growing more and more serious as her story continued. When she had finished, he was silent for a few long moments.
‘You’ve given me a lot to think about,’ he said, his tone cold despite the calmness of his words. ‘But I can set your mind at ease on one score,’ he added. ‘Chatham is gravely injured but … he’s alive.’
‘What? How do you know?’ Lena’s heart clenched in an odd mixture of relief and terror.
‘A messenger arrived with the news a few minutes before I left the First Huntsman. He said Chatham was attacked in broad daylight, his shop vandalised. He’s unconscious, but he’ll survive. Apparently, he’s been taken to the palace for healing.’ He looked at her darkly. ‘But they’re saying his assistant was killed in cold blood. Do you see now how dangerous Chatham’s kind of magic can be?’
Lena shivered. The woman had been unkind, but she never meant for the mechanical cat to kill her. She didn’t mean to kill anyone. The thought of what she had caused was … overwhelming. S
he buried her head in her hands.
‘How long will it take for Chatham to heal?’ she murmured, trying to bring herself back to the present. ‘Won’t he come after me? He wanted the butterfly, but now he’s also angry about what I’ve seen …’
‘Yes, of course he’ll come after you,’ Emris admitted. ‘He’s protective of his secret workshop. Only those closest to him know the truth about what he creates.’
‘You knew about it?’ Lena asked, shocked.
He nodded slowly. ‘That was where I found Constance the night she ran away …’ He was about to continue, but suddenly stopped, bowing his head. ‘No, this is a story for another time – perhaps a story I should not tell you. It’s your test tomorrow morning.’ He glanced up at her. ‘I’m not saying that you’re safe, Lena. But if we can establish you as an initiate of Faul, or any of the temples, you will have legal protection and a chance to argue your case in a court of law. The bottom line is that Chatham threatened to steal your property and then to detain you against your will. You defended yourself in the only way you knew how.’
She raised her head, feeling a glimmer of hope. ‘Really?’
He sighed. ‘Yes, really. Some might even say the fault was in the mechanicals themselves. They’re powered by Chaos, Lena. Chatham obviously has tricks to ensure they are usually harmless … at least outwardly. But you didn’t know how to do that. Of course you didn’t.’ He stared at the butterfly curiously, as it rested on the top of Lena’s head. ‘You really should get rid of that thing,’ he murmured, clearly uncomfortable.
She scooped it up protectively. After all this time, there was no way she was letting it go. She slipped it safely into her pocket. ‘So basically, I just need to pass this test,’ she said.
‘Focus on that. You can’t fight every battle at once.’
Lena stroked the butterfly’s wings. ‘I’m sorry, Emris,’ she said quietly.
‘You should have listened to me,’ he replied, standing up, his voice businesslike again. ‘I have a lot to think about. You should use what time you have left to practise for the test tomorrow.’ He stalked away from her, turning at the door. In his eyes, Lena read sadness, and disappointment, and concern – but also fear. Fear for her?