The Reverend Doctor Nora Pierce of the Ecclesiastical Commission and her colleague, the Reverend Doctor Phillip Chalmers, had relied on Ivor for their correspondence for the better part of a year. Ivor liked long-standing customers.
The longer they employed his services, the more of their letters he could steam open.
The packet Ivor now held was late—very late—because he had found its contents interesting. It would need to be carried soon, if only because the mailing pouch refused to hold any more. Ivor had been scowling at Pierce’s letters to Chalmers for nearly a month now. He was troubled both by how much and how little of them made any sense. There had been research. Apparently it promised to be big, though in what way was beyond Ivor. That didn’t trouble him. Indeed, he prided himself on being obtuse where matters of theosophical science were concerned. No, what bothered Ivor Ruenichnov about Nora Pierce’s letters was how much of them seemed to be written in plain language and still didn’t make sense.
Ivor was, at bottom, a thug, and though he had a spy’s ambition for gathering useful secrets, he lacked the discernment to make anything of them. He ground his teeth and resisted the urge to fling the letters at the coal stove in disgust. He had only a prickly feeling about Chalmers and Pierce’s business that foretold both danger and profit—but for whom? The woman’s last flock of letters said little about the research. The scientific scrawl had grown sparser and sparser, finally giving way to a desperate change of tone.
Ivor unfolded the most recent piece, dated a week earlier.
The sooner you can destroy our notes, the better, Phillip. They will be following not far behind these letters.
It was that last phrase that most bothered Ivor—They will be following not far behind these letters. “They” could mean more notes. But why warn Chalmers of that? No. “They” were people of some kind. People who Pierce seemed to think would make things hot for— Ivor frowned. For whom? Surely whoever “they” might be, they’d seek the recipient of the letters, Reverend Chalmers.
Ivor chewed his lip and stuffed the letter back into the pouch with little regard for the illusion of it being unmolested. He was, he supposed, technically a recipient of the letters, too. But what could Pierce have been afraid of? Some rival scholar in the Ecclesiastical Commission? Ivor snorted. As if reverend doctors and bishop professors hired guns to menace one another or steal research.
And he paused.
They didn’t, Ivor knew. Not exactly. They hired people whose job it was to hire those others. Middlemen. Go-betweens. He should know. Ivor had not always been a smuggler.
The thought that he had been sitting for a week on documents that could embroil him in something more hazardous than his retainer compensated loomed suddenly large. The sooner he was rid of the lot, the better.
Rowena needed to start picking up Bess’s routes. There was no time like the present to be about it.
2.
Smallduke Abraham Regenzi’s clockwork carriage clamored down the cobblestone streets of Westgate Bridge, throwing up a racket like an ill-tuned piano tumbling downhill. The carriage crew had hammered relentlessly at its signal bells, as if the power of sound waves might part the sea of people through which it had just recently passed. Now, they seemed to keep on making the racket for sport. The smallduke tapped a hand restlessly on the head of his walking stick. He had to speak quite loudly to be heard over the ringing outside, close to shouting words Bess was certain were meant in confidence.
“When we get to the shop, keep well away from the old man. I’ve business to transact of a most sensitive nature.” He fixed her with a stern look, his pursed lips nearly lost in a tawny bristle of moustache and side whiskers.
Bess nodded. Regenzi seemed satisfied.
Bess had always made a show of liking the style of a clockwork carriage and four winding men. Truthfully, she’d never actually ridden in one before. Now that she had, she longed for the familiar, quiet jouncing of an ordinary hackney. She sat looking to the quayside, watching barrow men lift their wobbly loads and make for the workhouses lining the riverbank.
None of this, she thought gloomily, is going to plan.
Three weeks ago, the idea seemed like simplicity itself. After only a few subtle inquiries to the maids of her finer clients, Bess received a note by way of a mute girl working for the Smallduchess Avergnon. Her ladyship’s good friend, the Smallduke Abraham Regenzi, wished to employ a courtesan. Bess was no trained companion, but her mother had been the matron of a rather fine brothel. She fancied she knew a bit about how to look at a man and move her hips. Odds on, she could convince him of her aptitude without any formal papers. Smallduchess Avergnon agreed to meet Bess, interviewed her briefly—most of the conference conducted without the bothersome imposition of clothing—and recommended her to Regenzi with many compliments.
And until just now, things had been quite lovely. The smallduke asked very few bedroom favors and rewarded Bess with jewels and little pets and sweets. That morning had been pleasant. Abraham had let her sleep late, then met her in the breakfast parlor with instructions to wear a good hat and bring along a parasol. There would be a ball at his city manor that evening; she would need to dress well for it—very well, in fact. He’d flourished the invitation roll before her, as if the cascade of long, layered titles running down the page should mean anything to Bess at all. “Smalldukes and the governor’s cabinet and bishop professors, and even Reverends Pierce and Chalmers, the keynote speakers for the Decadal Conference,” he’d boasted. “Nothing less than the finest will do, poppet.”
And so, they had journeyed to the shops and spent hours choosing, trying, returning, rejecting, tailoring, cinching, lacing, unlacing, and fitting over and over again. Now, hours later, the carriage’s parcel platform was loaded down with tissue-lined boxes of petticoats and gowns, with high-lacing boots and teetering ivory heels: a freight worth two working men’s yearly salaries at one of the Regenzi family’s textile mills.
Yet, Smallduke Regenzi had grown stiff and commanding. They were traveling to the edge of the Old Town, toward Westgate Bridge. It was such an ancient quarter that this neighborhood, once farthest west in all of Corma, was now very nearly its easternmost appendage, the rest of the city swollen up against the seaside to the true west. The people of quality did not come to Westgate Bridge—a rumpled borough of fulleries and fisheries and pubs and common greengrocers—for any reason save one: they came for the Alchemist at the Stone Scales.
Bess supposed Corma had dozens of alchemists, being a city of better than a hundred thousand souls, and that excluding the aigamuxa in their shanty villages of fire escapes and rope ladders in the south river quays, and the lanyani in their traveling wains and secret hothouses. The quality might secure a reverend doctor to act as chemist and physick, but for the everyday citizen, an alchemist was Rational enough. Most were immigrants from lands far south and east of Corma, where the Divine Unity had never quite taken hold—women and men the color of ochre or ebony, with exotic accents and an eye for good clink. A few were castoffs from the many Amidonian seminaries, fourth- or fifth-year students who couldn’t afford the final examinations required for a doctorate of theosophical sciences. Couldn’t afford or, perhaps, couldn’t pass.
But there was only one man called “the Alchemist.” His shop sold a bit of everything. Rumor was he had never been asked a question he couldn’t answer with authority. His goods always worked, even when they promised unlikely results. Old men and women, recalling the superstitions of their ancestors, called him a sorcerer. Or a witch. The terms varied, but the implication was the same: what he was and what he sold were very real and not to be trifled with.
Bess felt a sharp rap against her knee and flinched from the window. Smallduke Regenzi leaned toward her, all but bellowing over the sound of drive-train chimes and scrambling feet.
“You don’t scare easily, I hope? Just hold your tongue and don’t dawdle about his things. He has a beastly temper. The folk around these parts thin
k the devil of him. But he’ll give you no trouble while I’m around.”
Regenzi offered her a wink and a salute with his crystal-headed cane, the picture of gentlemanly confidence.
Bess smiled, all beatitude, and thought, I already know him, you silly bastard.
Of course she knew him. The common alchemist needed supplies that were damnably hard to find, and so import and a bit of smuggling was an assumed professional overhead. But the Alchemist? He needed all these things and more. Since she was a pretty, proper thing of twelve, Bess had made Ivor’s monthly deliveries to Westgate Bridge and the infamous Stone Scales. There might not be a soul who had seen the Alchemist more regularly than Bess or knew his shop better. She knew very well the local people didn’t think the devil of him. He was, if anything, something like a talisman—held at a careful, superstitious distance, a human ward against whatever bugbears they imagined still lurked in the world.
Still, Bess was terrified of him, and with good reason.
For two weeks, she’d been protected from Ivor by dissolving into thin air. She hoped fervently the old bastard believed her dead. But now, the Alchemist would see her. If she were unlucky, he would recognize her as the mannerly young woman who had passed him his tight-wrapped parcels so many times before. If she were as miserably unlucky as she feared, he would assume her a runaway and contact Ivor with the news, and that would make an end of it. And why shouldn’t the Alchemist turn her in? Out from under Ivor’s boot, she could do anything—turn to the constabulary and testify about his operations, implicate the Alchemist in years of illegal trafficking. No. At large, she was a threat, and one didn’t become a fearsome legend by turning a blind eye to one’s own weaknesses.
A fortnight ago, Bess’s life began anew. The clench in her stomach warned it might soon be ending.
The carriage jangled to a halt in front of a familiar block of cross-framed buildings. Bess felt sick and dizzy.
“Abraham,” she said, smiling as sweetly as she could, “I feel a little under the weather. Might I just stay in the carriage? Please?”
Regenzi frowned. “What a pity, poppet. Still—” he stepped down to the curb and reached back to her with a gloved hand, “—if you’re feeling green, we’re sure to find a remedy here.”
Oh, Bess, you’re such a fool.
The color must have drained from Bess’s face, for Regenzi stepped toward her quickly, lifting her in a sweeping gesture about the waist. “Come, darling,” he said. “Be easy about the stairs.” His hand closed on her waist and squeezed, the grip sudden and fierce. “And remember what I said,” he hissed into her ear.
The road leading directly to the Stone Scales was too narrow to admit carriages, and so Smallduke Regenzi’s driver had parked one street below. Regenzi and Bess walked up a curving stone staircase, stubborn lichens making each step treacherous. The stairs led to the highstreets of Westgate Bridge, lanes so old they had no names and no need of them. The Stone Scales was a tall, slender building with a wide, leaded glass window, its deep sill displaying a menagerie of goods and décor. There was the dog, Bess saw, curled up on a battered, old cushion just inside the door. It was a shaggy hound, russet apart from its gray muzzle.
Bess tried not to flinch as the little silver bell over the door sang out. She peeled free of the smallduke’s arm to imitate a careful examination of some well-dusted books. She kept as close to the door as she might and put her back to the shop counter far down the center aisle. The dog raised its head and thumped its tail, a little nasal trill begging attention. Bess glared at it, shooing. The beast tucked its nose back under its tail and sighed.
Regenzi turned over a price tag dangling from some chemical apparatus with the head of his stick. He snorted and looked around again. “Hullo? I say, anyone here?”
“There in a moment,” Bess heard the familiar voice reply. The dog uncurled itself and trotted toward its master’s voice.
It sounded close by—off to her right. That way lay more and taller bookshelves. Bess could see the Alchemist’s left shoulder and part of his backside around the edge of a display case. He was up on one of the rolling ladders, nudging a sheaf of papers back into place before climbing down. The dog got no warmer a reception from the Alchemist than his customers and slunk under the front counter with its tail low.
Bess cut up the center aisle between a chemicals rack and a shelf of folded canvas smocks. They might hide her and still leave gap enough to watch Regenzi’s “private transaction.”
Knowing what she did of the Alchemist, Bess supposed Smallduke Regenzi could not have done a worse job of introductions had he been given lessons.
A handsome, dandyish young man in a robin’s-egg-blue tailcoat and high, black boots, Abraham Regenzi regarded the Alchemist and his rolled shirtsleeves and bracers—his canvas apron tied off around the front and his spectacles hanging from the button hole of his shirt—as one beholds a shoe shiner in a half-kept hotel. Regenzi removed his hat but did not offer his hand or his name. The Alchemist was a tradesman, and a gentleman gives a tradesman nothing more than his card. That was the proper order of things.
Abraham Regenzi believed quite strongly in the proper order of things.
The Alchemist took the card wordlessly, slipped on his spectacles to read it, then studied the smallduke over their rims. He was at least a hand taller than Regenzi and might have been twice his age. Bess found it very hard to guess ages, particularly men’s, who were so often much fussier about concealing them than any woman she knew. Then again, Bess supposed the Alchemist probably was not the sort to care what anyone thought of his age—or anything else about him.
“What may I do for you, my lord?” he asked at last. His voice was deep, perfectly unaccented. Practiced. He folded his glasses and returned the card.
Regenzi held the slip of pasteboard, dumbfounded at having his imprint spurned. “I’ve come for something quite . . . specific.”
He looked around furtively. Bess realized it must have been for her. Regenzi reached for the Alchemist’s arm, meaning to turn him toward the back of the shop.
The older man saw the approaching hand and turned before it reached him, walking back to the counter. Regenzi spoke quietly, hurriedly, stalking beside the Alchemist.
Bess chewed her lip and watched. The sales counter was at the back of the shop on a raised step. The Alchemist lifted its hinged flap and walked to the other side. He stooped behind the counter, only half-listening to his murmuring customer. Bess heard a muffled response. Regenzi scoffed. The Alchemist straightened and shrugged. Leaving the counter, he shouldered past the smallduke, carrying a wooden crate well packed with straw and glass beakers, which he began arranging on a shelf so near Bess she could have plucked at his sleeve.
Regenzi stood stubbornly by. “If you can make it, say your price. There’s no figure you could name I can’t answer.”
“One thousand sovereigns.”
“For a dram?”
“Be happy you don’t require more.”
Regenzi tugged at his whiskers. He paced a tight path up and down the aisle, cutting in between Bess’s hiding place and the Alchemist’s perfectly disinterested backside. Finally, he cursed.
“And it will work?”
The Alchemist turned a gaze on Abraham Regenzi that made Bess’s heart stall. There was a tightening in his jaw, as if he had a response he’d closed his teeth on and needed to savage till he could be quite sure of its being dead.
“Yes, my lord,” he said quietly. “It will work.”
“Fine,” Regenzi spat, marching back to the counter. He reached in his breast pocket for his bankbook and counted paper notes in curt, snapping motions. “One thousand. Can it be made now, or shall it be sent along?”
The Alchemist set the last of the glassware in its place and returned behind the counter. He dropped the raised leaf with an absent gesture and began drawing items from the decades of potions and ethers and powders filling his workroom.
“It doesn’t take l
ong,” the Alchemist said, never looking up from his work. Bess saw several old catalogues and references shelved nearby. He never reached for them. Whatever had been ordered, he seemed to have its recipe committed to memory.
“Excellent. Good. Fine. Yes.” It was the smallduke’s peculiar habit to revise his assessments downward in quick succession. He turned and, as if he’d forgotten her entirely, startled upon seeing Bess half-hidden among the shelves. “Beatrice, darling!” He reached out both hands and smiled. “Look at you, trembling like a leaf! You’re feverish. There’s something here to see to that, isn’t there, my good man?”
No, no, no, no, no, no, no—
The Alchemist had been massing something grainy on a set of balances. He looked up over the rims of his spectacles as Regenzi produced Bess like a conjuror drawing a scarf from his sleeve. Bess felt the flash of recognition in the old man’s eyes like a physical blow. Her knees buckled. She leaned into Regenzi, shuddering.
The room swam. She felt herself bundled up in the smallduke’s arms, carried to a little wooden chair beside the front counter. She shivered with cold and sweated with heat, the morning’s toast and clotted cream threatening to find its way back up again. Regenzi fanned her with a folded gazette.
“She’s sick. Fainting.”
“Give her air,” Bess heard the Alchemist say, his voice very close. “Your fussing all over the girl won’t help.”
Bess stared at the floor, trying to fix her gaze to something steady. Regenzi’s polished shoes retreated, and she saw the Alchemist’s scuffed boots take their place. He crouched before her, lifting her chin with a bent finger.
The Alchemist was dark—of skin, and eye, and expression. Bess had always imagined his eyes to be as black as the rest of him, but this close, she could see a shadow of color, like the green gloss on an opal. They were watchful eyes, deeply creased at the corners. The spectacles hung at his shirt front again.
The Nine Page 2