“Now,” he says, staring at the door, “I don’t know what will be on the other side. I may need you to help me, if we are to return to the Empress’s ballroom in one piece.”
I swallow the ugly words I want to say and simply nod. I don’t know if he sees me, but it takes all my energy to keep what little composure is left to me.
The door rattles open, and anything I might say is drowned in the howl of machinery and a chilling blast that numbs my fingers. We walk out carefully, and I repress a hiss at the cold on my stockinged feet. I regret dropping my shoes in the Cabinet. The doors slide closed behind us, the lift rumbling down out of sight. I follow Hal to an observation deck. Despite the chill, greenish steam drifts upward like the exhalation of some vast Greater Unnatural.
We stare down at the floor far below us, waiting for a break in the shifting green fog. The smell is so terrible that I cover my masked face with my handkerchief as best I can. Hal looks askance at me.
I remove my handkerchief only long enough to ask, “Where are we?”
“Deep in the bowels of the Imperial Refinery, I believe. The most secret and guarded place in all the Empire. Funny that I rescued Syrus from the roof of the Lowtown Refinery not long ago and now I’m inside an even more dangerous one.”
“Syrus? The Tinker thief?”
“You really should trust him, you know. I think his intentions are ultimately good. When you go to Virulen, do what he asks and visit the Manticore with him.”
I don’t mention the fact that the boy stole my toad and refuses to give it back. That seems trifling now. “Won’t the Manticore eat us both for breakfast?”
Hal half-smiles. “I doubt anyone could have the power to eat you against your will. Especially not for breakfast.”
He’s joking with me now. As if he didn’t just say a few moments ago that he simply cannot have feelings for me. I stare down through the mists. The nevered bars of cages glow through the mist, row upon row of cages that disappear under the eaves of the catwalk. And in them are Unnaturals, scads of them, hordes of them. I glimpse the glitter of a Firebird’s wings, the curled horns of a morose Minotaur.
I tug Hal’s sleeve. “Look!”
Their voices rise up to me now through the scream of machinery—dirges of werehounds, the plaintive songs of mermaids. A cluster of dryads touches the bars with their leafy fingers, wincing and sobbing at the pain. I’ve never seen a living dryad before, only a single mounted one in the Museum basement. That one looked like little more than a pile of leaves and twigs, but these are beautiful and proud and sad. Somewhere, I know, an entire forest must be dead without its tree women.
And all because of us.
Then I see a line of people being led to a rusting boiler. I can’t see them very well, but the checkered headband gives one of them away—Tinkers.
Hal points at the same time I reach to tug his sleeve again.
We watch as the first Tinker enters the boiler. Stooping door wardens slam the boiler shut. There’s a screeching exhalation of both steam and pressure; my eardrums nearly burst from it. I tremble with the force of so much magic used at once. A door on the other side of the boiler opens then, and something airy and light is plucked out with a tool that looks much like a pitchfork.
The airy thing turns and flutters in panic like a trapped butterfly. A Refiner approaches in goggles and hood and touches it with a black device. It stills and then I can see it clearly enough to understand.
“A wight!”
“They make wights from Tinkers,” Hal says, his voice thick with disgust and remorse. He closes his eyes, leaning forward as if he might be sick.
I am again at a loss, this time from the sheer devastation of such knowledge. One more punch to the gut will leave me utterly hollow. But this is bigger than anything that has happened to me. Whatever anyone else might think, the Tinkers are people. To warp and enslave them in such a hideous way . . . I can’t even begin to comprehend the cruelty. And the poor Unnaturals . . . Their mourning songs tear me wide with grief. A little voice within reminds me that it wasn’t so long ago I was quite happily mounting sylphids on boards, little dreaming of their sentience. Now I’m taking magic lessons from one and carrying him about in my reticule. I feel him shuddering against my hip in terror.
But I still just don’t want to believe it could be true. “How can it be?” I ask. “How are they doing this? The Empress is the Head of the Church of Science and Technology. Magic is forbidden. . . .” I spout every doctrine I can think of, but none of it changes what’s beneath us.
“Because, as I told you before, it’s all a lie!” Hal shouts above the grinding blast. “The Empress and her Scientists and Refiners want to keep all the wealth and power for themselves. And this is the effect of their madness. Do you finally believe me?”
I nod. I already believed him, even though I had only the proof of the magic itself as evidence. This . . . this is something else entirely. Something incontrovertible. As ineffable as the Watchmaker is rumored to be, though I do not know if I believe in him anymore.
“This is not what magic was meant for,” Hal says, passion trembling in his voice. His knuckles are white on the metal railing.
“What are you going to do?”
He bows his head; frustration sets the muscles in his jaw twitching. “What can I do? I am the only Architect left. I—”
“What do you mean—the only one left?”
“Charles killed them all.”
“Charles?” I cover my mouth with my hands, feeling the truth sink in like a splinter. Charles has always nurtured a core of hatred, a core I’d brushed against and made fun of and mostly ignored, even though Hal warned me to be careful of him back in the Museum. But I’ve seen the burns on Hal’s hands and the scar on his cheek. I feel all the things he must have felt at seeing his fellow Architects fallen. “You narrowly escaped being killed yourself, didn’t you?”
He nods. “He is filled with a fell magic I do not understand. He was once one of us, but he left the Architects months before I came here. We were wrong to let him go, and it was nearly impossible to be sure that he was the one I sought once I did find him, so powerful is his magic. And now he knows about you.”
I think about the day I met Hal, the day someone pushed me through the field. “Do you think he pushed me through the field that day?”
Hal looks down again into the glimmering mist, as if it holds the answer. “It’s highly possible, if he was either trying to test or get rid of you. I am certain he will now make it his special mission to kill us both, especially since we know what he wants.”
“The Heart of All Matter,” I whisper.
“Yes. The Heart of All Matter. Which is why, when you’re at Virulen, you must let Syrus take you to the Manticore. Only she can stop Charles and this fell magic he possesses. I’ve never seen anything like it. Except for this,” he says, gesturing at the glimmering steam and darkness below us. “Charles and the Empress are somehow of the same magical ilk, I think. And they will destroy everything, if we do not stop them.”
I’m deep in shock at how the web has closed around me. I feel as constricted as Princess Olivia, with her mouth stitched shut by spells.
“Vespa,” he says. He grips my upper arms, shaking me a little to make me look at him. “Please say whatever happens, you will do this thing. You will go to the Manticore and help her. You are the only living witch. You have the power to save us.”
I swallow. I want to say so many things, but what comes out is a squeak.
Figures loom behind Hal, Refiners with leashed werehounds and soot-grimed boiler wardens with thunderbusses, their boots rattling the catwalk.
“Hal!”
He looks back. “Hold fast to me,” he says in my ear.
I have approximately one second to clutch his dark sleeves before his magic utterly dissolves me.
* * *
We become ourselves again in the strange Cabinet of Curiosities. Hal is pale and sweating.
“Go,” he says. “We mustn’t be seen together.”
I release him reluctantly, wishing he would say more though I know he won’t.
So I nod, slipping my abandoned shoes on at the polar bear’s feet. I pass as silently as I can back out into the hall. The clocks mock me, ticking away the precious time left to those imprisoned below. Tears feather my cheeks behind the Strix mask. But I am not crying for just myself now. I am crying for the beautiful things of this world, so perishable and fragile, and the Tinkers who have cleaved to them selflessly. I am crying for their loss and my loss and the loss that most people here cannot fathom. I am crying for what I have only brushed against but never fully known.
I take several deep breaths in the atrium before proceeding back into the ballroom.
Lucy finds me almost as soon as I step into the press of the onlookers and dancers.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” she says, locking her arm firmly in mine. I’d very nearly forgotten the rose petal hidden in her glove, and the reason for my being here at all. It’s time to set the love charm into motion.
I start to apologize but she interrupts before I can do much more than stammer.
“Never mind. You’re here now.” She leans closer. “I’ve not yet seen my future fiancé, but I hear he’ll be wearing midnight blue. Are you ready?”
I swallow. I try to inhale, but either my lacings or the crowd won’t allow it. All I can do is nod.
The crowd parts at one end of the hall, halfway between us and the dais, halfway between a waltz and the musicians tuning their instruments for the next. A young man in a sumptuous midnight velvet frock coat enters, wearing a horned Wyvern mask and trailing an entourage of admirers. The room seems to sigh in his presence. The Heir of Grimgorn. It must be him.
I grit my teeth when I think about what I must do. I have never, so far as I know, bewitched anyone, and the Guide didn’t make me feel very hopeful about performing a love spell as my first magical act. But a promise is a promise. And Lucy has me fair caught. I have no doubt that if I’d refused my new mistress, sweet as her smile is, she would not hesitate to send me to the Waste. And that would, in turn, ruin what little hope is left to us. Somehow I must get to the Manticore. The one thing I cannot risk above all others is failure. Especially with all I know now.
I pat Lucy gently on the shoulder. “Go on,” I whisper. “I’ll be watching.” And working the charm. Though I don’t say it aloud.
Somehow she must get his attention. I schooled her in the three levels of connections with people according to The Guide—eye, physical, and heart. Above all, one should strive to make connections of the heart, which are in turn the engines of affection. She threads her way toward him.
It is not difficult for Lucy to take a cup of punch and edge close to him as he looks on from behind his mask at those trying to court or entertain him. The Wyvern crest of Grimgorn glimmers in the intricate brocade of his waistcoat, and there’s a tiny Wyvern embroidered in the folds of his lace cuffs.
Closer and yet closer. She waits for a moment when everyone is laughing at some young gentleman’s expense. She glides close enough that he sees her out of the corner of his eye. The glance. It’s not hard when someone throws her head back, arms akimbo, to give her a gentle push and . . . her glass of punch spills down his arm, down his side, bleeding the blue velvet purple. The cup breaks like bells at Lucy’s feet.
A single shocked gasp ripples across the room; the sea of dancers grows still. All eyes are upon her as she apologizes, and the tremble in her voice is real.
“My lord, I am so very, very sorry.”
She reaches for his arm with her handkerchief, trying to soak up as much of the stain as she can. The touch.
If he reacts with anger, I won’t feel too badly about what I’m doing. But if he’s kind. . .
He crushes her hand under his. A servant rushes up with linen napkins from the buffet.
The magic is so potent I can hear him almost as if I’m standing right next to him. “I’ll forgive you,” he says to Lucy, his voice muffled by the mask, “if you’ll give me the next dance.”
His eyes are shadowed by his mask, but they’re oddly familiar, warm and fathomless as the sea as he looks upon her. Perhaps this will go better than either Lucy or I have imagined.
She bows her head and assents. The heart.
He removes his stained coat and hands it to a nearby servant. The edge of his cuff is stained, too, but he ignores it. He leads her out to the floor, and the musicians begin as if he is their cue. As he whirls her into the waltz, Lucy’s eyes glitter at me from her Phoenix mask. The young Princess with her stitched mouth stares emptily from her mother’s dais.
Then it all falls away, and it’s just Lucy, Master Grimgorn, and my spell.
He’s a very good dancer. It’s easy to be distracted by this, because I’ve never seen anyone dance the way the two of them do. I want so badly to forget the awfulness of what I’ve just seen, how shattered I am by Hal’s rejection. I lose myself in the magic, in making the two of them hopelessly attracted to each other. Lucy’s glove glows where the rose petal is hidden. I push the delicate, prickling magic from her hand to his heart. Their joined palms will surely catch fire soon so strong is the charm I weave.
At last, the waltz winds down and he bows. She curtsies.
Apparently inspired by their magical perfection, the dance master calls across the crowd, “Lord Bayne Grimgorn and Lady Lucy Virulen!”
I send this last arrow of thought into his heart as he leans to kiss her charmed glove to uproarious applause: If you are well and truly bewitched, you will send the marriage proposal tomorrow.
Master Grimgorn straightens and tears the mask off as Lucy turns toward me. Hal—no, Bayne—stares at me in shock, betrayal in every line of his face. He may have changed his wardrobe since I left him in the Cabinet, but there is no denying the look in his eyes.
The clocks all throughout the Tower begin to chime, but his thoughts are louder even than their tolling. What have you done? Oh, you foolish girl, what have you done?
CHAPTER 18
The fever had seized Syrus almost as soon as he’d gotten out of the City. Bayne had directed him to make his way to Virulen and offer his services at the kitchen; he’d even written a letter of reference. “Go there and watch over Vespa when she arrives,” he’d said. “Take her to the Manticore as soon as you can. We must keep her safe from Charles.”
But something was in Syrus’s blood—a terrible itching. When the strange and beloved Forest greeted him for the first time in weeks, he fell under its spell as one who has finally found his oasis after wandering in the desert. He very nearly forgot who he was when he heard a distant dryad singing a swaddlesong he remembered from his childhood. He burned to find her, to hear her sing those words to him again. He ambled through the mists and dells, wild as any Elemental. Sometimes, he dreamed that he walked on four feet instead of two.
When at last Truffler found him shivering inside a hollow log, it took days of gentle ministration before the hob could bring the boy back to himself.
Then came the morning that Syrus sat bolt upright in the pile of blankets Truffler had dragged in from Tinkerville, nearly knocking his head against the wooden roof of their makeshift infirmary.
Truffler turned from the makeshift brazier. “Quiet,” he said, making gestures of peace.
“But I have to . . . I need to . . .” Syrus remembered the rogue warlock’s threats and how only the cave sprites’ intervention had saved him and Bayne. He thought of the witch, barely come into her power and mostly defenseless—the perfect target. “I need to go to the Big House!” he said.
Truffler eyed him. “Not now. Quiet.”
Syrus remembered a time when he’d been small, not long after Truffler had first bonded with him. He’d tried to climb up a sheer cliff by himself when all the older boys had left him behind. Truffler had wrestled him to the ground with his hairy arms and
held him there until he’d succumbed. Syrus had no doubt Truffler could still do the same if he wished.
“All right,” he said, lying back down. Rain drummed above his head. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it was the most comforting thing he could think of—outside of hearing his Granny tell her stories, of course—to be safe in the Forest with Truffler caring for him. He only wished it could last forever, instead of just a little while.
CHAPTER 19
As we approach Virulen Manor at last, I am still trying not to think of the horrendous Ball a few nights ago, still wishing I could erase the terrible betrayal in the eyes of the one who apparently betrayed me, as well. The Heir to the second most powerful House in the Empire masquerading as a Pedant! It felt as though the person I’d known—Hal Lumin—had died there on the Empress’s ballroom floor and Bayne, a man I’d never known, had risen to take his place. No wonder now that he resisted all my advances! Any self-respecting man of his station would have nothing to do with someone like me. His words of that night still echo in my head—What have you done, you foolish girl?
He was right. I had been a fool, and for more reasons than just him, though that was by far the most humiliating and heartbreaking. The Raven Guard had smelled the magic I’d made and had frightened many people wading through the crowd with their pikes, but with the density of so many people in the room and the sealing of the charm, they’d been unable to pinpoint its source. I had been lucky, I suppose, to escape them. The dark part of me I try hardest to shut away wishes the Sphinx had managed to take my life on that fateful day but a few months ago.
The driving wight takes my carpetbag. I swallow my nausea, thinking of the wight’s true origins, as it helps me and Lucy out of the carriage. A line of servants are waiting. I barely see them, caught between my humiliation and my revulsion at the wight.
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