Corroded

by Karina Cooper

  Alchemy I would allow. Magic?

  Worthless fantasy.

  There was no evidence to the contrary.

  Whereas evidence of alchemy’s viability was mounting all around me. My father’s dabbling, my mother’s own interest in the subject—as displayed by the book she’d given the marchioness long before I was born. The same book I’d had no choice but to abandon when the marchioness attempted to have me imprisoned within my own home.

  Damn and blast. I’d all but forgotten about that book until now.

  “What do you think?”

  I looked up from the paper I’d been staring at, blinked to find Maddie Ruth beaming at me.

  “One moment,” I muttered, glaring again at the precise handwriting with effort. There was little to find confusing. “It seems a simple enough mechanism.”

  “It’s the small size of the mechanism that makes it delicate work,” she said. “Eat this.” She held out a ball of brown tar with the other. Opium, darker resin than what I’d finished already. Enough for another day or two, at least.

  My eyes locked on it. My throat ached. “I don’t need it,” I said. It rasped.

  “Sure you do,” she said, not unkindly. “Take it. I save it for medicinal purposes.” Unlike mine, her excuse did not ring patently false. “I insist. You’ll need it soon enough.”

  I was not capable of so much pride—not for this.

  I snatched it from her hand. “Thank you.” Even that much seemed torn from me.

  I did not like the sympathy upon her face as she set another bit of tin upon the table between us.

  “What is that?” I asked, hoping to distract her.

  I should not have. “Salve,” she told me.

  “For?”

  Now, she hesitated, and I was reminded of the girl who’d attempted to entice my help with tea and jam. Gingerly, she cleared her throat. “For, ah... For tenderness. In areas...?”

  Unlike me, Maddie Ruth did not blush. Her round cheeks remained clear of shame or embarrassment, though she seemed to be making an effort of delicacy for my sake.

  I desperately wanted the ground to swallow me. “Thank you,” I said again, even if it did come out more a strangled whisper.

  Did everybody know what I’d done the night before? Did I write it upon my forehead with indelible ink?

  I pocketed both.

  “Just rub it.” A vague gesture. “Around.”

  “I am familiar with the application,” I snapped.

  “Well, then.” Maddie Ruth cleared her throat rather unnecessarily. “There was a tiny bit of the stuff left in the cameo.” She frowned, apologetic. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it here between glass.” She reached across the table, slid out a small clear square from a mix of other bits of stray items. Wire and gears and some twisted tubing.

  “That’s good,” I said, accepting the square. I raised it to the light, peering at the faint pink shimmer trapped between two thin layers of glass. “Mayhap I can use this.”

  “Really?” Delight colored her tone, and I looked to find her smiling quite happily. “I’m so glad. I was afraid there’d be nothing to find.”

  I hadn’t considered residue, myself. This frustrated me. As a woman of scientific hypothesis, I should have considered it. I knew better.

  How far astray had I gone of late?

  Too far, obviously. I had made too many mistakes, glossed when I should have investigated. How long had this been going on?

  I struggled to recall all the times I might have let facts go untested, or been reminded of clues I missed, but I could pluck nothing from the mess my memory had become. Blissful ignorance was all well and good in the dark of the night, but it could not last. As soon as I was able, I would rectify this. I was too intelligent a creature to allow this wayward meandering any further.

  To know this as truth, as it turned out, was far easier than what it would cost me to fix the problem at the root.

  I wrapped the bit of glass inside a black cloth for safekeeping, then pocketed it with the tin and opium ball. “Fine work. Now, where’s the cameo?”

  “Ah...” A hesitation, terribly obvious. “There was...” Another, and I raised my eyebrows as her round cheeks finally turned red. “It’s still in pieces,” she confessed, looking down at the table. “I haven’t yet put it back together.”

  For a moment, I was sure she lied. Something of the way she shifted, avoiding my gaze. Something of the way she tapped her fists together.

  “If I had more time?” she suggested.

  Then I remembered. Had it only been a day since I asked her help? A day, and she’d already worked out designs, given me the residue. “My apologies,” I said, easing my frown. “You’ll have all the time you require, but may I take the facing?”

  I’m not wholly sure why I asked. It wasn’t as if I knew my mother, or even much about her save the comparisons Society ladies had often thrown in my face. She was intelligent, versed in alchemical theory, and much more beautiful than I. I knew my father had loved her to distraction—and far into madness.

  Yet still, I wanted that keepsake.

  Maddie Ruth flinched. “I—I’m so sorry, but it’s...” Her eyes darted away. “Oh, Lord have mercy.” That a groan, and I stared at her in mounting bewilderment.

  “Maddie Ruth, what is the matter with you?”

  “I broke the face,” she blurted. “Trying to prise the casing off.”

  “Well.” I wish that I’d felt something besides resignation, but I did not. I searched, plumbed myself for a feeling of dismay, of anger, even of relief, but I felt only empty.

  I’d asked for a memento of my mother, and there was nothing.

  At least there would be no way the Veil would ever get his hands on it now.

  “You’re sure this is the last of the residue within?” I asked, tapping the pouch at my hip.

  “Yes.” Her brown eyes shone with so much earnestness, I could not meet them direct. “I am so sorry, I was trying to be so careful.”

  “Stop.” I shook my head. “No need. ’Tis fine. As long as there’s nothing of the serum within, keep it all. Just give me this.” I raised the paper.

  “It’s yours.”

  It was the contents that would have been all the more upsetting to lose, anyhow. The stuff was designed, or so my father had claimed, to turn me into a revenant. Mad St. Croix had insisted it would remove me from my own body, allow the spirit of my mother to inhabit it as if it were her own. Even the Veil had suggested it.

  Ridiculous.

  Yet not wholly farfetched at the root of it. There were drugs, medicinal creations, that could make a body so pliant as to do what another suggested. Concoctions to strip the will and leave behind a vacant memory. It’s possible that my father’s madness had transformed the fact of its use to something his crazed mind could understand. The answer to his desires.

  If this serum was like that, maybe stronger, that would be bad enough.

  Regardless, the Veil would not benefit now.

  I stood. “Thank you, Maddie Ruth. You’ve been helpful.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad to.”

  “Then I’m to go.” I folded the paper, tucked it into another pouch. “Be careful, Maddie Ruth.”

  “I will.” She smiled happily at me, all traces of her earlier concern wiped away by my simple acceptance. To be so young. “Will you come by tonight?”

  “Ah.” I shook my head. “No. I’m exiled, now. I won’t be back again.”

  “What?” Shock abruptly claimed her smile. “Exiled? Why?”

  “Never fear. I am eager to leave.” More so, now, than I’d ever been.

  And if Maddie Ruth bought that lie, I would be so much closer to believing it myself.

  “You can’t go!” she said earnestly, leaning over the desk as if to impress upon me the intensity of her distress. “What of the sweet tooth? What of Haw—” Her eyes widened. As if catching herself, her lips sealed shut.

  I
could not summon the will to feel shame. Or anger. Everybody, it seemed, knew my business. Except me. “‘Tis time I end this farce. I’m off to collect the Ripper, first. The tooth will follow.”

  “Two? You’re after two murderers?” Her eyes were big as saucers. “That’s too much for one collector.”

  I did not go into further detail. If I had, if I explained that one of those murderers was a collector himself, I imagined that she’d never allow me to leave without fuss.

  I could not afford the attention that would bring.

  “Spare me the counseling,” I said, rather terse for her concerned sentiment. “I do what I do because I must. Have you an alternative?”

  “Bring help,” she replied promptly.

  I almost laughed, were it not for the certainty that it may come out too close to a fractured sound of dismay. “There are no more friends to ask,” I said, not without some kindness. “The Veil has declared all efforts to cease. No, this is how it should be.” How it should have been all along. “All will go on as it was without my presence, Maddie Ruth.”

  Her nose wrinkled, nostrils flaring as if she took a breath to say something, but she only grunted a sound wholly unladylike.

  My smile felt too brittle, and so I turned, prepared to climb the ladder that would take me back to the surface.

  “Wait.”

  I looked back to see her hurrying to a shelf half-hidden by the protrusion of the brass fixture bracing the fans she’d told me of. I realized I hadn’t gone to see them. A shame. Aether engines of this magnitude were usually only found on the large sky ships.

  “If you can’t find a friend in flesh, take one in metal.” She picked up the net-launching device from the shelf, shouldered its weight and hauled it to me. “She’s a mite temperamental in the damp—and Lord knows it’s always damp—but she’s solid.”

  “Maddie Ruth.” The gesture was kind, but the cost too dear. “I can’t take that. You made it. ’Tis yours.”

  “I’ll make another,” she said, shrugging. Before I could demur again, she pushed it into my arms. I was forced to hold it, or let it fall. “Long as you retrieve the net each use, you’ll be fine. I bet you can even make your own nets, given time.”

  I’d wager I could too. I smiled over the heavy burden, the polished brass reflecting back the curve I only felt as far as my features allowed. It did not warm the ache I nursed, or the empty hollow fisted inside me.

  Still, she charmed me, this eager young girl.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m just sorry...” Her own smile flipped crookedly, and she jammed her hands behind her back, leaving the thought unfinished. “Please be safe, right?”

  “I can’t promise,” I said with simple honesty. “Could you?”

  “I suppose not.” She hesitated. “Will I find you somewhere?”

  I hesitated, slinging the device over my shoulder. Shifting it into place, I thought for a moment. “No. I think not.”

  Her lower lip protruded a touch, but she firmed it before it could tremble. “All right.”

  That was that. Simply all right. I turned, feeling none of the weight I should have for leaving behind this brilliant young lady, and scaled the ladder to the daylight world.

  I had one more task before I departed these grounds forever.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They’d taken Black Lily to the sweet’s quarters where she could convalesce in familiar surroundings. Once she healed, I wasn’t certain that the Veil would allow her to stay there.

  The servants lived elsewhere in the grounds.

  I entered the familiar parlor, removing my hat out of deference to the hushed atmosphere and setting the net-launching apparatus by the door. All remained as I remembered it, although a fire had been kept bright in the hearth, this time, and the curtains drawn to keep out the daylight. At this hour, most of the sweets would be abed. The stillness within the shrouded parlor gave credence to this habit, though two sweets were still awake.

  Neither was Zylphia, much to my relief.

  Delilah sat upon an arm chair, her straight black hair and pale skin painted gold by the fire she read beside. Her feet remained tucked up under her nightclothes, but she looked up from her book and afforded me a small smile.

  Perched on the floor by Delilah’s chair, a sweet with midnight black skin looked up from her sewing—a needlepoint, of all things—and cocked her shorn head. Unlike the last I’d seen her, she wore no exotic feathers, no fanciful apparel. Her bedclothes were simple, plain cotton and without added decoration. I could not recall her name, but she was often the quiet sort.

  Delilah touched her index finger to her own lips. “She’s asleep,” she whispered, deducing that I’d come to see Lily.

  “May I see her?”

  The sweet glanced at the figure occupying the sofa, as if weighing the options.

  “I won’t stay long,” I assured her. I had only come to see for myself what damage her attacker had caused—to glean from it what morbid clues I might.

  Delilah nodded, then, her features settling into sad lines. “She’s been in and out of nightmares. We’re all taking turns here.”

  I shifted my weight from foot to foot. Nightmares, I understood. “How is she?”

  The other sweet raised her head from her work, her brown eyes uncomfortably direct. “Who wants her now?” she asked flatly.

  “Ephe!”

  The thin shoulders beneath her plain shift lifted at Delilah’s admonishment, but I don’t believe it was callousness that shaped it. Ephe’s words echoed Zylphia’s, and told me everything I needed to know.

  Lily would never be the same again.

  Delilah gestured with her book, her smile apologetic and more than a little wretched.

  It was not until I crossed the parlor, my feet as soundless as I could force my steps, that I realized I held my breath.

  Lily was a bit of a saucy thing, with a figure men paid dearly for and a wicked light in her eye. Her skin was roses and cream in summer, her eyes a beautiful shade of green warmed by a truly genuine good-nature.

  Of all the sweets, there were them I liked more than others, and Lily was among those I favored most.

  The woman I found wrapped in soft furs and warm bedclothes was a shadow of that vivacious girl I recalled. It was as if the assailant had taken more from her than her looks—as if he’d carved away parts of her essence until she was little more than a shrunken creature all but lost beneath the swaddling.

  All this without seeing her face.

  Who wants her now?

  My fingers clamped over my hat, bending the cap near in half. With effort—clammy perspiration gathering in my palms—I dragged my gaze up, over the mottled skin of her throat, and looked her fully in the face.

  The world dropped out from beneath my feet.

  I had known—of course, I understood—what damage I would see. I knew what a knife was capable of; I had seen many a scar. Nothing, none of that, could prepare me for the visceral revulsion that gripped me upon seeing the truth of it.

  The blade that had done this was no ordinary tool, so fine as to cause the flesh to well-nigh melt beneath its honed edge. The skin had parted first from the trauma, then widened further when the muscle beneath had failed to hold.

  The bastard had begun just above her temple, carved a bloody swath down her cheek, over her chin, slicing a corner of her mouth in the process. The wound had swollen over the night, angry and red, leaving a chasm in her flesh so deep that it would never heal proper again. Scarred she would have been regardless, this much deliberate mutilation only ensured that she would be all the more unsightly for it.

  One corner of her eye leaked as she slept, her face white where the skin had not turned angry and raw.

  I flinched, turning my gaze to Delilah, struggling to maintain an expression of sympathy—as if it was not revulsion that forced me to look away. “What was she wearing when she was taken?”

  The sweet pursed her mouth. “I can’t
recall her assignation.”

  “Royal whore,” Ephe offered, blank-faced over the pejorative. “Papal purples, mostly.”

  “And her hair?” I asked, already dreading the reply. With a stone in my stomach, I knew what she would say.

  “Red.”

  It was all too coincidental. The signs slotted together neatly, like the pieces of a puzzle I’d been too bloody focused on to see the greater picture.

  The attacker had known exactly what he was about. Deliberately marring Lily’s face in such a way as to exploit the muscle beneath—this spoke of anatomical know-how the likes only a doctor or, as I well know, the well-read might comprehend.

  The very knowledge of this tore the rest of my fragile hope from me.

  This had not been the Ripper at all. This was my rival’s doing. Working for the erstwhile Professor Woolsey, he’d carved the living organs from otherwise healthy sweets, professing a certain amount of savoir-faire for the act.

  The first time I’d met her, Lily had worn a wig of false red hair, so that I was forced to ask why she went by the moniker of Black Lily. She’d laughed and showed me the raven’s wing tresses beneath, and explained it a name that had been offered by a satisfied john. Her reputation had grown, carried on a beauty that had not been exaggerated. From red hair to black, she changed her appearance as often as she wanted. Just as I did.

  Her choosing.

  Her scarring.

  My doing. My fault. More blood for my sake.

  The murderer had not only taken my challenge upon the collector’s wall, but issued his own.

  I see you.

  He may as well have carved the words in Lily’s milk-white skin; the closest to maiming me without touching me at all.

  I may as well have taken the blade to her myself.

  He’d beat me. Again. And who suffered for it?

  What monstrous things I had visited upon those who sheltered me.

  I sank to my knees beside the girl, one shaking hand reaching out. For what, I wish I knew. I didn’t dare touch the clotted wound, yet I desperately wanted to try—to heal this awful injury, soothe the hurt.