Not to mention his performance was making her feel pathetic.
The Inspector made sympathetic noises. “I must check the seal,” he said, and he stepped outside with the papers. Shortly an ominous whine emitted from without. Did she discern a tensing of the professor’s posture as he watched through the doorway?
The Inspector returned and handed the documents back to the professor. “Everything checks out,” he said. “It’s a fine thing you are doing, helping family.”
“Well, unlike you, Inspector, I’ve not been blessed with children of my own, so I guess I find a way to compensate. Speaking of which, how many do you have now? Last I heard, eight?”
The Inspector grinned. “We’ve a ninth coming along.”
“My word! Good man!” The professor clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait till I tell Mirriam.”
The two said their good-byes, the Inspector politely doffing his hat and saying, “Sorry to have troubled you, sir.” When the door closed behind him, the professor sagged against the wall, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.
“Everything all right, Professor?” a male voice asked from the room off the foyer. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but the speaker did not reveal himself.
“A close one, that,” the professor replied. “I’d only received these documents yesterday.”
“Rasper does good work.”
“Yes. Good enough to fool an Inspector and his mechanical. Thankfully it was Gant this time—he’s more, shall we say, reasonable than some of the others. But don’t give Rasper any idea of how good he is or he’ll start demanding that I pay him more.”
The two laughed, and the professor moved into the room, drawing a pair of doors closed behind him. Karigan sat where she was, dumbfounded that her patron had gone to such lengths to protect her. Obviously he’d be in trouble if he was found out. How odd this world was that everything must be approved and documented.
The idea that the Inspector had a mechanical something-or-other to help him made her shiver. The concept of “mechanicals” was not unknown to her or to others of her time. Mornhavon the Black had brought them to these shores in his conquest of the New Lands. Her ancestor, Hadriax el Fex, had referenced them in his journal. But none of her contemporaries, not even the scholars, seemed to know what the mechanicals looked like or how they operated, except that some incorporated etherea in their workings. They were part machine and part magic, but if magic was absent from this time, perhaps the Inspector’s device was purely mechanical. The future, it appeared, held many marvels both useful and frightening.
Encouraged by having witnessed this much. Karigan decided to try and learn more. She crept down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the carpeted treads. At the bottom, she glanced all around her. There was, as she thought, a formal parlor to her right, and the closed doors of the room the professor and his companion had entered to her left. A grand hall went deeper into the house from the foyer. No one else was about. She limped over to the closed doors and pressed her ear against one of them. She heard voices within.
“It’s downright strange, I tell you,” she heard the professor proclaim.
His companion made a muffled response.
“Both Samuels and Mirriam observed the wounds on her body as unusual,” the professor said, “the old ones and the fresh ones. The old ones, Samuels said, are like stab wounds from . . . from edged weapons.” He sounded disturbed. If he had believed she were a Green Rider, then perhaps he wouldn’t be so surprised, but it appeared there were no Green Riders in this time and no memory of them. To think all their bravery and efforts came to this, unremembered and disbelieved.
“Mirriam thought her muscles unseemly for a girl, too, even one who might have labored in the mills,” the professor mused. “Maybe a field hand? No lash marks, though. Her wounds, combined with the artifacts lead me to only one conclusion.”
Karigan did not get to hear what it was because someone said, “Psst,” behind her. She jumped.
“Miss,” Lorine said, “you must go back to your room.”
“I’m tired of my room.” Oops, that sounded a tad more petulant than Karigan intended.
Lorine gently took her arm and turned her toward the staircase. “Please. Mirriam will be home soon, and if she or anyone else sees you down here . . .”
Karigan heard the implication that if mad Miss Goodgrave were discovered wandering around, the fault would fall on Lorine, who’d be in a great deal of trouble. Not wishing to cause Lorine problems, Karigan started up the stairway compliantly, but was vexed not to have heard the rest of the professor’s statement. Midway up, she stopped, thinking to go back down, fling those doors open, and confront the professor. But Lorine anxiously tugged on her sleeve. With a sigh, Karigan continued her upward climb.
When they reached the top landing, the double doors opened, and Karigan paused to look back down. A man strode out into the foyer with books beneath his arm.
“Don’t forget I need those papers tomorrow morning,” the professor called from the adjoining room.
The man halted and turned. “The Hudson Study?”
“That’s the one.”
When Karigan saw the man’s profile, it took only a moment for her to recognize him. He’d been standing next to the professor in that lecture hall the night of her arrival. His voice also matched that of the man who’d helped her fight off the assailants in the alley and brought her to the professor’s house.
She ignored Lorine’s pulling on her arm. “Who is he?” Karigan asked in a whisper.
Whether the man heard her or some other impulse caused him to glance up the stairs, she did not know, but he did, and he stared hard at her, his face unreadable, brows drawn together. He was in his mid-twenties, she thought, very trim in his plain longcoat, but beneath his scrutiny she felt naked, as if he could see past her nightgown, through her skin, and right into her being.
Then it was all over. He turned curtly on his heel. “I’ll have the Hudson Study for you first thing, Professor.”
“Good man!”
And he swept out the front door.
“Who was he?” Karigan asked Lorine again.
“One of the professor’s students. It’s not proper for you to be seen like this.” She fussed and pulled till Karigan followed her down the hallway.
Karigan assumed “not proper” meant the professor’s mad niece should not be seen by anyone from outside the household, especially when she was wearing nothing but a nightgown. “Does he have a name?” Karigan persisted.
“A name?” Lorine’s nervous disposition made her seem just about to quiver apart.
“Yes, a name.”
“Mr. Cade Harlowe.” Lorine spoke breathlessly, and when Karigan espied the pink in her cheeks, she thought she knew why.
“Does he come here often?”
Lorine nodded. “He assists the professor. To help pay his tuition, as I understand it.”
They were about halfway to Karigan’s room when another door at the far end of the hallway opened and a girl of about eight in servants garb stepped out. She stared openly at Karigan.
“Arhys!” Lorine said. “What are you doing? Mirriam is not pleased with you. She had to go to Copley’s after Miss Goodgrave’s slippers.”
The girl tossed her head. “Mirriam is never pleased about anything.”
That was for sure, Karigan thought.
“And mind your manners,” Lorine said. “This is the professor’s niece, Miss Goodgrave.”
“I know,” the girl said. She boldly walked up to Karigan and gave her a flippant curtsy as though she were above such things. Karigan almost snorted with laughter. This Arhys was no docile servant—she had cheek. Once she grew out of the round contours of childhood, Karigan predicted she’d be a great beauty with hair that varied in the light from deep amber to sunshine gold.
�
�I must dust the parlor,” Arhys announced as if she were bestowing a great favor upon the world. She skipped down the hallway toward the stairs.
“That girl,” Lorine grumbled. Then, “I apologize for her lack of manners. The professor dotes on her and has made her vain. I suspect she may be a little jealous.”
“Of me?”
Lorine nodded. “His attention has been diverted from her since your arrival. Though she has no call to be jealous. She is an orphan the professor took in as a servant, and he employs Mr. Harlowe to tutor her. Otherwise she’d have been taken to the orphanage.” Lorine shuddered. “Or she might have ended up living on the streets with the Dregs. She should show a little more gratitude, if you ask me.”
“The professor—my uncle—seems to help a lot of people,” Karigan said as they entered her room.
“Yes,” Lorine replied. “He helps when no one else will lift a finger. He’s a good man.”
A good man . . . Karigan wondered if he were simply altruistic, or if he had some other, hidden, agenda. The fact that he was willing to forge documents on her behalf and lie to an official suggested to her suspicious mind that perhaps he possessed motives beyond those that benefited her personal welfare.
PROWLING
It still took Karigan by surprise how the need for sleep dropped her so unexpectedly and with such immediacy. After her excursion down the stairs to spy on the professor, she’d been overcome as soon as she returned to her room. One minute she was alert and wide awake, and the next Lorine was rousing her for supper. Her healing body continued to demand its due.
It interfered with her plans to learn the schedules and habits of the household, and no matter how much she slept during the day, she couldn’t stay awake at night to prowl.
When she was awake, she restlessly paced, scuffing the soles of her new fur-lined slippers along the floorboards, wishing for some way to vent her energy. Instead of reading the novels Mirriam had brought her, she lifted them to keep her good arm limber, now and then adding a book to the pile to increase the weight. She practiced the various forms she’d learned in arms training, only without a practice sword, and while trying to remain silent so no one would come scold her and discover what she was up to—which was an exercise in itself. She came to know exactly which floorboards creaked, and which did not.
She eventually convinced Lorine to provide her with a broom by saying she wanted to keep her already immaculate room tidy. Lorine looked at her like she was mad, then probably remembered that Karigan was supposed to be, and relented, hoping it would keep her happy.
Working with a broom handle was not nearly as good as using a properly balanced practice sword, or a real blade for that matter. She of course had to use her left hand because of her broken wrist, but it was not as hard as it might have been since she was trained to use her non-dominant side after a previous elbow injury. Grateful as she was just to have the broom, she wished she at least had her bonewood, and planned to request it of the professor citing her bad leg, but she never saw him, which was hugely irritating. When she asked Mirriam where he was, the housekeeper informed her it was none of her concern, but let it slip later he was out at the “dig site” with his students.
The only people she continued to see were Lorine and Mirriam. If she had her way, that would soon change if only she could stay awake. There weren’t even any visitations from the ghost—none that she was aware of at any rate.
To make matters worse, beneath her cast the flesh itched so much it drove her wild. She had nothing to slide beneath the cast to probe the itches, and she was sorely tempted to go to the bathing room and soak it in water to dissolve it off. Instead, she furiously scratched at the cast itself as if she could somehow transcend the plaster and reach her skin to find release.
When next Mender Samuels appeared to check on her and remove the sutures from various wounds, she demanded, “When is this cast coming off?”
“Three or four more weeks, I should think.”
Karigan perceived the hint of a malignant smile as he said it, like he enjoyed telling her bad news. She wanted to scream her frustration but would not give him the satisfaction.
“You do want it to heal correctly, don’t you?” he asked, while tugging out another stitch.
Karigan grunted and said no more.
Finally a day came when she felt more herself. The combination of good food and sleep infused her with most of her old energy. Her wrist still ached and itched in its cast, and she still limped, but on the whole, she was ready to take on the world, or at least the part of it that contained the household of Professor Bryce Lowell Josston.
She’d made her plans, so now it was a matter of waiting for the night. She took her mind off the coming excursion by sneaking into the bathing room to attend to her own ablutions. She filled the tub with hot water, and just as she sank into it, settling her broken wrist safely on the rim, Mirriam barged right in.
“You get out this instant!” she ordered.
“I will not,” Karigan replied. “You will have to lift me if you want me out.”
Mirriam paced in agitation, perhaps considering her options. “I could ask the gardeners to help . . .”
Karigan did not reply, guessing she was bluffing.
After some moments, Mirriam jabbed her finger in Karigan’s direction. “You will not get your cast wet, and we shall speak when you are done.”
When the housekeeper left, the tension eased out of Karigan’s body, and she took a glorious, long hot soak and a thorough scrub, not getting her cast wet in the process, thank you very much. Afterward, while she dried off in her room, she endured Mirriam’s scolding with equanimity.
“As you can see,” Karigan said, brandishing her cast before Mirriam’s face, “no harm has been done. It’s obvious I’m capable of bathing myself, though Lorine will still need to help me with my hair.” Karigan thought she heard giggles from the hallway in response to Mirriam’s being bested. Arhys, perhaps?
Mirriam pursed her lips. A muscle twitched in her cheek, but she nodded curtly and left. When the door shut behind her, Karigan spun around in a little dance of victory.
And then she saw the cat watching her through the window, that same pair of golden eyes, the white and light gray fur. He appeared neither scrawny nor scruffy, so perhaps he was a well-fed neighborhood cat. Since she’d already defied Mirriam once today, it did not seem a great leap to do so again. She went to the window and started to lift the sash, but at the first hint of a squeal, the cat jumped. She looked down, but could not see where he went. She shrugged and decided she would have to find some grease with which to ease the window.
Karigan busied herself the rest of the day practicing sword forms and was pleased by the increasing strength and precision of her left arm. When she finished, she gazed out the window. The sky was heavy, deepening with rain clouds. By late afternoon showers fell, accompanied by rumbles of thunder, and kept falling as the household settled into night and eventually into sleep, until only one soul remained awake, or so Karigan hoped. The constant patter of rain on the roof would help cover up the sound of her movements.
Wrapping the shawl around her shoulders, her feet clad in slippers, she tiptoed to her door, opened it, and peered out into the hallway. At night time, she discovered, the hallways were kept dimly illumined by phosphorene lamps at low glow. Some were made to look like tapers in candle holders, the glass flame bright, but false in that it did not flicker like a real candle. These, unlike the larger lamps, could be carried with ease. She picked one up from its place on a small marble-top table and moved down the hall toward the stairs, followed by her own monstrous shadow.
She hadn’t the nerve to open the doors along the hallway, figuring they could very well be inhabited. She suspected Mirriam slept only a couple doors away from her. No, her goal was to look around on the lower level, where the professor’s business took place. If she wer
e to find out anything of interest, it would be downstairs.
She carefully descended, her shadow exaggerating her steps. When she reached the bottom landing, she ignored the parlor—one glance the other day had shown her an impersonal room of overstuffed furniture and the requisite portraits of important ancestors. It was enough to tell her the room was rarely used and that she would find nothing of interest there. It seemed to her parlors had not changed much since her own time.
She went straight for the room across the hallway, the one with the double doors. She pushed one door open and stepped inside. Her taper revealed walls of books, gold gilt titles on the bindings winking in the light. A library, then. A long heavy table gleamed in the middle of the room, stacked with a few volumes, and a fireplace yawned black and sooty on the far wall. Rain pelted at heavily draped windows.
She glanced at a few titles: The Complete Compendium of Archeological Implements, Pride of Empire, and The Wonderful Realm of Abstract Mathematical Intangibilities. She supposed if she looked further, she’d find history books on the empire, but they’d probably be propaganda from all she’d heard about the “true history” so far. They might be interesting, but probably would not illuminate what had really happened to her Sacoridia and the free lands.
As tempting as it was to linger and look through books, she thought her time would be better spent prowling. She backed out of the library, softly closing the door. Back in the foyer, she paused, listening. Except for the distant sound of falling rain, the house remained sepulchral in demeanor.
She forged ahead, trying to shake off comparisons with tombs, and almost immediately found a privy just as extravagant as the one upstairs, but this one had a bird’s nest theme. The bowl looked like a nest, supported by branches of brass. Tempted though she was, she did not pull the lever to learn what came out from the trap door above to fill the bowl with water.
She hastened on and found a dining room that attached to the parlor through a doorway. A crystal chandelier glinted in her light above the immense, polished table. She found a pantry and stuck her head into the kitchen but did not investigate.
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