The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

  The rain had retreated from the full-on deluge, but it was nevertheless steady and unyielding. Already damp, he was soaked again in minutes. He jogged through the fairgrounds, splashing through puddles up to his ankles, past empty booths and under canopies that bowed dangerously in the middle under the weight of so much water. All the while, he kept his eyes trained on the trees.

  When he saw the orange light bobbing between two trunks down in the orchard, he followed.

  The wind lashed at his hair and his coat, blowing it out behind him. The leaves danced overhead, the rain made a pitter-patter percussion against the foliage, and wet thumps echoed around him as apples hit the grass. His quarry stayed away from the main paths, and Chris found himself pushing through long grass. His fingers brushed over slugs and his boots squelched in mud or something worse in the grass below.

  The light headed steadily downhill, curling between and around trees. Occasionally, he lost sight of it, but only for moments at a time. Then it would reappear, farther down. Headed towards the cidery, the mill, and the guest house.

  He went as far as the treeline, close enough to see the orange light reflected in the panes of glass of the lantern containing it. Then it vanished, disappearing behind the person carrying it. Their silhouette was highlighted in an orange glow as they entered the guest house through the kitchen—near the cellar entrance in the pantry.

  They paused.

  They turned.

  Chris ducked behind a tree and held his breath. His heart thudded against his ribs. There had been something about that profile. Something so familiar….

  It was Spencer, he told himself. It was Sister Margaret. It was Norwood. It was someone else entirely, someone Jones’s information had seemed to rule out.

  He gritted his teeth and pulled away from the tree, heading for the still-swinging kitchen door.

  It was dark inside. The only illumination was the glow from the oven, outlining every surface in a faint orange. Chris carefully latched the door behind him, putting out the sounds of the storm. He held his breath, unmoving.

  Somewhere deeper in the house, he heard a creak and then a thump.

  He recognized the sound of the trapdoor to the cellar being opened and headed that way.

  As he quietly made his way between the rows of preserves, the dried herbs, and the hanging cuts of meat, he desperately wished Olivia was present.

  Down in the cellar, drifting up from the yawning hole still open, he heard the scrape of the false wall behind being pushed aside.

  He descended the stairs, heart thumping in the back of his mouth. If it was Spencer, Sister Margaret, Norwood, someone else… what would he do? He was unarmed. He had no real talent for hand to hand combat. If he found someone down here, and they attacked him….

  But he didn’t think it would be any of them.

  A voice spiralled to him through the darkness. A quiet, familiar voice, breathy and barely above a whisper, raised in song.

  A great gale went up in the cellar. Copper and glass rattled, the great oaken barrels banged against one another, and the dirt floor stirred into dust devils. Chris cried out, blown back, hair and coat billowing wildly. He barely managed to grab onto a great steel contrivance and a clattering barrel for dear life before he was dumped onto the ground.

  A tiny, celery-green girl with eyes and wings like a housefly darted forward. Her wings beat wildly, and shining impressions of dust, grass, and leaves blew out from behind her, vanishing into motes seconds later. When the sylph blew past his face, she turned, whirled about in the air, and one of her grotesque, faceted eyes dropped into a wink.

  Chris’s heart stopped, and his fingers clawed the barrel desperately for purchase. He lost his grip, and both hands clung wildly to the steel contraption.

  But the sylph didn’t attack him. She merely giggled and tore off, becoming just a faint streak of green, leaving nothing but fading motes in her wake.

  Slowly, Chris managed to use the steel mechanism to climb to his feet. He flexed his fingers slowly, trying to bring life back to them despite their instinct to remain as claws. He swallowed hard and remembered to breathe.

  Footsteps in the dirt. Chris wrapped trembling arms around himself and turned his attention to the sylph’s master.

  “Rosie,” he breathed.

  His sister looked up at him. She was dressed in those outlandish riding clothes from earlier that day, her hair a tousled mess of curls, and her big blue eyes flashed at him dangerously. She wore no cosmetics to even out her complexion, and anger turned her skin blotchy red. Her hands were in fists at her sides, and they trembled wildly.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded breathlessly.

  He straightened. “I—me? What are you doing here?”

  “It’s the middle of the night!”

  “This entire place is supposed to be a secret!”

  “I know! Did you—follow me?”

  “Have you done something to harm Miss Banks?”

  That stymied her, and she gaped at him, her mouth working but no sound coming out until she shook her head and then came at him in a flurry of girlish fists and rage. “How—dare you! How dare you, Chris! Urgh! How could you ask, how could you ask, you complete bloody arsehole—”

  He threw up his arms to ward off her wild, furious blows. “Since when does your vocabulary include—”

  “You’re going to criticize my language, right now, Chris? You just accused me of—”

  He seized both of her wrists in a tight grip, stopping her attack. She began to kick and spit, her fingernails scratching at the air. “Stop it!” he commanded.

  “I hate you!” she cried, and it hit him like a punch in the gut. “I hate you, I hate you, I—”

  And then a sound like a glacier exploding snapped through the air, and they both froze in mid tableau, Chris holding Rosemary’s wrists while she fought him for all she was worth. Their eyes met. Hers were as wide as his felt, twin blue stares.

  “That’s an icepistol,” Rosie breathed.

  Chris bit back a curse, because there was certainly no need to inspire his sister any further than she already had been. He glanced back at the staircase, the trapdoor. “Stay here,” he commanded.

  “Hardly,” Rosemary retorted.

  Chris resisted the urge to grab her shoulders and shake some sense into her. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Someone is up there with a gun,” he said, very calmly. “If you stay here, you’ll—”

  “Be alone while there’s someone with a gun about?” Rosemary finished.

  He floundered.

  She smirked triumphantly.

  She stepped away from him, tearing her hands from his grip. “It’s stupid to leave me down here,” she said. “Don’t separate when there’s danger. I’m coming with you.”

  “I don’t have any weapons,” he warned.

  She hummed a few bars, seizing his attention. He recognized the tune. He usually heard it sung in the arcane language a ‘binder knew naturally, threaded through one of her songs. “I always have a weapon,” she said simply.

  He bit down on the half-dozen things he wanted to say and started back toward the stairs.

  “Was that what you were doing with the sylph?” he breathed back at her, feeling bruised all over. “Attacking me?”

  “I didn’t even know you were following me!” she hissed back. “I didn’t know anybody was, not until you got knocked over by my messenger sylph!”

  “Messenger….?”

  “Yes! Something new I’ve learned. Now shh, stupid! You could draw the shooter right to us!”

  She was right, so he lapsed into silence.

  They crept from the pantry. Rosemary had one hand on the small of his back and the other wrapped around his ribcage as she walked on his heels. It made him think of when she was small when he would check under her bed and in her closet for monsters while she clung to him just like this. He swallowed down a lump in his throat. She was still his Rosie. Still his sweet siste
r. Whatever she was doing, there… there had to be an explanation, didn’t there?

  “What was that?” Rosie asked suddenly, tensing up against him.

  Chris stopped halfway through the kitchen. “What?” he demanded. His heart beat in his throat.

  “I… I thought I heard something. Footsteps… from the foyer, maybe?”

  Chris nodded. He steeled himself and turned about, headed in that direction.

  “I think it came from inside,” Rosemary murmured against his back. She spoke so quietly he could barely hear her. He thought that, perhaps, she wasn’t exactly talking to him. “What did I do?” she asked quietly, and now he knew she wasn’t talking to him. “What if someone’s shot?” Her fingers tightened into the fabric of his coat. “Chris,” she said. “I’m scared.”

  He closed his eyes tight, reached back, and gripped her shoulder. “I have you, Rosie,” he said.

  She nodded and breathed out deeply.

  The light in the second-floor hallway was still on. The illumination streamed down, turning a patch of wooden floor golden amidst all the blues and purples and greys and blacks of night.

  A body lay in the spotlight.

  Chris froze. For a moment, it didn’t seem possible that it was real. This was a dream, they had dipped into some strange storybook dimension, they were watching a play, this was a joke. The body was too perfectly posed, too well-illuminated in the light, with one arm outstretched like a storybook princess fallen after pricking her finger on a spindle.

  But surely no illustration would capture the princess’s head half-caved in and rimmed with thick white frost.

  Rosemary shrieked and then gagged. Chris dove for her, covering her eyes with his hands and blocking her view of the body with his own. He took deep breaths. He was used to seeing death, used to the human body turned into nothing more than meat and memory, but Rosemary was something else entirely.

  “Chris!” Rosemary gasped against him. “Chris, Chris, that’s Mabelle! Maerwald, Chris, is she dead?”

  Chris shuddered. “Don’t look,” he said into her hair. “Don’t look, Rosie.”

  She tried to pull away from him. “Oh Gods, oh Gods, Chris!” Her voice was thick and desperate and wild. “She’s not dead, is she? She can’t be dead! We need to see if she’s—”

  A loud bang came from behind them, and Chris straightened to see a dark shadow move in the hallway they’d come from. “Wh—” he began, but Rosemary had gone rigid and was already tearing herself out of his arms, turning to run back the way they’d come. “Rosemary!” he cried.

  “The lab!” she screamed. “I’m so stupid, I left it open, I left the lab open!”

  He tore after her as she ran through the pantry so fast that herbs and jerky swung in her wake, down the flight of stairs, and across the dirt floor. He was right on her heels when she blew through the hidden door.

  “No!” she gasped and ran to the table that had, just moments before, been covered in Emilia’s scratched notes.

  It was entirely empty.

  “No, no, no!” Rosie cried, and Chris hurried to her side. Her hands fluttered helplessly over the table. “Oh, no!”

  “Rosie.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “I’m such an idiot,” she cried, falling to her knees. “I’m an idiot, she trusted me! She trusted me and I—All she needed me to do was mail the letter and keep the lab secret, keep it safe, protect her notes—”

  A loud, grinding sound was the only warning they had, and Chris took a second too long to recognize it.

  “Damn!” He turned about, throwing himself back at the hidden stone door, but it closed as he threw his weight against it. A hollow, rolling wooden sound echoed through the stone, and even as he tried to push the wall back to free them, something heavy crashed into it from the other side and blocked his way.

  Someone had rolled the barrel back down against the door.

  “Let us out!” he called. “Dammit! Let us out of here!” He threw all of his weight against the surface. It rocked slightly, but no more.

  Blast it. Someone—whatever villain had shot that poor girl!—had sealed the family vault up as good as it had been when Miss Banks had found it and enlisted a broad-shouldered stablemaster to get in. Even if he were strong enough, without being on the other side, he’d never be able to move them.

  But he might be able to free them another way.

  He closed his eyes, lowered his arms, seeking. Rosemary’s presence burned brightly behind him, and he thought he could sense the faint, bruised energy that was Doctor Livingstone, two floors up. And there was another presence. He could tell nothing about it, except that it was moving quickly.

  He curled around it and then stopped. What emotion even would convey “let us out?” Guilt, perhaps? He gritted his jaw and tried to reclaim that feeling that coursed through him, sick and green, when Rachel had taken him through the first steps of a waltz reserved for William, but it danced beyond his reach. He could only see Mabelle’s body and hear Rosie sobbing. He threw the unfinished, unrefined ball of emotions as hard as he could at the retreating presence, but it slipped out of his grasp.

  A skull-splitting headache crashed into him almost immediately, and he swayed on his feet, darkness pressing in at the corners of his eyes. He pressed his hand to his temple and closed his eyes tightly.

  Agnes Cartwright’s mysterious little smile was imprinted on the space behind his lids. All right, Christopher, it’s time to forget.

  He shook himself. Willed his mind and body steady and solid.

  He turned and pressed his back against the solid face of the false wall. Stars moved across his vision. Rosie was holding her head in her hands and weeping openly. He watched as she beat the dirt floor with a fist, as her shoulders heaved.

  “Rosie!” He said. Gods, he needed to help her. Gods, they didn’t have time. “Here. Here, stand up. Sing up a gnome. We’ll be able to push the stone wall aside if you—”

  “I can’t,” she sobbed.

  “Don’t be modest. There’s nothing you can’t do with spirits, I—”

  “I can’t summon a gnome!” she cried, raising her face. It was streaked with dirt and tears. “Not with this place shut up! No one will be able to let us out without using the winch Em built! It’s warded, it’s all warded. I warded it.”

  She—

  None of this made any—

  “What the hells is going on?” he asked, the world spinning around him.

  His sister looked up. Tears glimmered in her big blue eyes, but there was fire there, as well. “Are you going to ask me if I hurt Em, again?” she demanded. “Because I wouldn’t. I’d never! Oh, this is all my fault! They killed May! They have the notes! This is all my fault.”

  He shook his head, stepping toward her, hands outstretched. “It’s not your fault. I–I’m sure this has nothing to do with you, Rosemary.”

  Rosie struggled to her feet. “It has everything to do with me,” she cried, throwing out her arms wide. “I’m the one who made all this!”

  hris stood stock still, staring at his sister. She stared back, tears streaming down her face.

  She shook her head, choking out a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “You find that hard to believe, don’t you?” she accused. “That I could do any of it. I’m smart. I’m brilliant. That’s what Emilia says.”

  Chris swallowed, feeling pieces begin to assemble. “You. You’re the one Miss Banks was working with. You… you know her.”

  “Obviously! Are you daft? She’s here all the time! I live here! Did you think that our paths just somehow miraculously never crossed? That I just… sit up in the estate house and take tea with Elouise all the time? Stand in front of the mirror with Rachel, waiting for you to have time for me?”

  “That’s not what I said!”

  “That’s what you think, though, isn’t it?” Rosemary fisted her hands and laughed again, wild and pained. “That’s what you wish! A pretty, porcelain doll! Gods, the way you looked at
me when you saw me riding Aes… Mabelle always said, don’t worry, Rosie! He’ll be so proud once he sees, and then…” Her face crumpled. “Oh, Gods,” she wheezed. “Oh, Mabelle.”

  Chris swayed on his feet. He felt her grief and her anger so deep in his bones, he almost thought he’d just awakened heartreading. He slid down the false wall that trapped them, settling down onto the dirt floor.

  Rosie looked at him, then buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking, sobbing.

  It felt like an hour passed with them like that, Rosemary weeping her guts into her hands and Chris struggling to breathe as he tried to put all of it into its proper place. Perhaps that long did pass. Perhaps even longer. Time warped, and they were entombed underground. It was impossible to tell.

  Eventually, Rosie ran out of tears. She dropped down to the ground as well, legs folded under her, hands limp at her sides. Perhaps it was them being on equal footing that finally let Chris find his tongue.

  “I’m so sorry about Mabelle.”

  His sister shook her head faintly.

  “It isn’t your fault,” he pressed.

  “She must have followed me down here,” Rosie whispered, her voice hoarse and cracked. “She’s been so worried about me.” She shook her head. “I wanted to tell her all about it. I did. I wanted to tell her. But Em said it right from the start. Don’t tell anyone. Anyone.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, closed her eyes, and lapsed back into silence.

  Chris took a deep breath.

  “Rosemary… what is all this? You were working with Miss Banks?” He shook his head. “You sent the letter? You set up the lights for the Festival? You were part of all this?”

  Rosemary lifted her head. It seemed like it took a great deal of energy. She looked about the lab as if with new eyes. He watched her examine the chemistry equipment, the tables empty of notes, and, finally, the copper, glass, and wood creations that filled one table. That’s where her attention stayed. “Isn’t Em remarkable, Chris?” she asked softly. “She’s magnetic and smart and interesting and unique, and I’ve never met anyone like her. She knows so much, about so many things, and the longer you talk to her, the more you realize that you don’t know about those things, but she never makes you feel stupid. She helps you learn things you didn’t know you already knew.”