The Unnaturalists

by Tiffany Trent

  For an answer, she shook her head and opened her palm. On it sat the jade toad.

  “How did you—?”

  “Charles Waddingly returned it to me,” she said.

  Syrus frowned. Granny Reed had said the toad was terrible bad luck. He’d been only too happy to sell it and now here it was again, having survived the burning of Rackham’s hexshop. Charles must have taken it when he took the cursed jar. “Get rid of it,” he said, his voice rising in fear.

  Vespa looked around. “Come,” she said and dragged him by his elbow into the WC before he could protest.

  It was a large, spacious water closet with its own sink and even a fainting couch, but it was still a ladies’ water closet. Syrus shrank against the door, wishing he hadn’t suggested it. A toilet wight offered them a towel and a mint and looked perplexed when they refused both.

  The witch peeled him off the door and latched it.

  “Syrus,” she said. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You can just stop now, because I’m not getting rid of that toad. It belonged to my mother. It’s the only thing I have left of her.”

  “Miss Nyx . . .” he began. He scratched his head; he was still thinking about how and why Charles would have returned Vespa’s stolen toad to her. Charles seemed the sort who would want to withhold things from people who wanted them, just for the sheer pleasure of tormenting them. Syrus was worried that this boded very, very ill for what they were about to do. He resolved to steal it back from her again at the first opportunity and dispose of it once and for all.

  “Now, let’s not speak of this toad thing further. You’ve tried several times to speak to me and I’ve not listened,” Vespa said. “But Bayne said I should, so . . . I’m listening.”

  Syrus swallowed. He eyed the wight hovering by a basket of toiletries. Would it report their conversation? He’d never heard of such a thing, but he was beginning to understand that one could never be too cautious.

  “I realize this is a most inconvenient place for conversation, but don’t be tongue-tied,” she said. “We haven’t long!”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, like I said before, the Manticore wants to see you. She says she needs a witch to help free the Elementals and I’m to lead you to her.”

  “Apparently, everyone needs a witch for something.” Her smile was tight. “She won’t eat us, will she?”

  “Well,” he offered. “She didn’t eat me when we talked about my bringing you to her.”

  “Could that be because she wants to eat me instead?” It was becoming warm and swampy in the closed room. She opened her fan and fluttered it in front of her face.

  He considered. “Well . . . I suspect maybe it has something to do with what Charles was trying to get from Arthur Rackham before he killed him.”

  She snapped the fan closed. “The Heart of All Matter? Charles killed Rackham over it?”

  Syrus nodded.

  Vespa was silent for many moments, her gaze turned inward, as if remembering something too horrible to speak aloud. Bayne must have told her of the murder of all the Architects.

  Syrus thought again about the last story Granny Reed had ever told, about Athena and the Heart and how her father the Emperor had put her to death for giving it to the Manticore.

  “But why?” Vespa asked.

  “Charles needs it for his experiment—something about catalyzing a power source. I don’t know. Perhaps the Manticore knows some spell you can use to help stop him,” Syrus said.

  All this thinking and talking was giving Syrus a headache and making him irritable. He longed to run through the dark alleys of the Forest, his nose to the ground, his paws . . . He grabbed Vespa’s hand. “Well, then, let’s go!”

  He tried to pull her toward the door but she dug in her heels and refused. She was taller and heavier, and like a mule, couldn’t be budged.

  “Not now!” she said. “We’ve been gone long enough as it is!”

  Syrus scowled and was about to retort, but she followed quickly with, “Look, I’ll meet you, say, in a week. It would be too obvious if we disappeared now. We don’t want to arouse suspicion. Will you lead me there and back a week from today?”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t pleased that they couldn’t go right away. He had no intention of returning here once his mission was complete, and one less night spent in the servant’s gallery was one less night of worrying that someone might discover the truth about him—if, in fact, he’d become a werehound, which he still couldn’t bear to believe.

  And then the door to the water closet rattled.

  Vespa’s face was already white with powder but her pale eyes glittered with terror.

  “Open the door, please!” a lady said.

  The toilet wight drifted forward uncertainly.

  “No, no, don’t,” Vespa ordered in a low voice. It hovered between her and the door, confused, its hand rising and falling as it tried to decide whom to obey.

  “Quick,” Vespa said. She helped Syrus into the cabinet under the sink. He crammed himself between towels, baskets, and bottles of scent, glaring at her.

  “In the garden in a week,” she whispered, as she closed the door tightly on him.

  He heard her straighten and then he heard the door unlock. There were murmured apologies, sniffs of disdain, and after an ominous silence, the most horrid sound Syrus had ever heard.

  The noble lady had unleashed a gigantic fart.

  The smell came next, washing over him in an eye-watering, throat-gagging wave. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t breathe!

  He crawled out from the under the cabinet. The lady, still enthroned, screamed. The wight moved to apprehend him, but Syrus scrambled away and out the door.

  He ran back to the kitchens, gulping fresh air like water. Next week couldn’t come soon enough.

  CHAPTER 21

  Over the course of the next week, there is much fluttering and consternation. I can’t find a single moment to steal away and the looks Syrus gives over the dinner table have gone from hopeful to terrified. I’m caught up in the middle of everything as Lucy’s Companion, from planning the wedding banquet to soothing her nerves nearly every night. At last, the day comes when the Imperial Matchmaker and the Grimgorns will arrive for what will hopefully end in a successful matchmaking party. The Matchmaker must approve the marriage based on the Church star charts and with the Empress’s input, since every noble match must receive her blessing before it can proceed.

  It is also my birthday. But since the mention of it when Charles arrived, no one else has remembered. Perhaps that’s just as well. I am up to my eyebrows in a seating chart, the nuances of which will all depend on the Matchmaker’s final pronouncement. Not to mention steeling myself as to how I will react when I see Bayne for the first time in weeks. Or Lord Grimgorn, I should say. My mistress’s fiancé.

  I’m getting a headache from thinking about all of it. Or perhaps it’s because I tried opening the magic books and still couldn’t read them. They resist my opening them, and when I manage to force them open, everything is gibberish. I feel immediately nauseated just glancing at the strangely slanting letters. Furthermore, there’s no sense of power anymore. It’s as if it’s all drained away, leaving the world dull and gray and familiar as it was before. It’s as if now that I’ve finally accepted I’m a witch and am willing to live with it, the power has been completely taken away.

  I set the plan aside and try the books again, to no avail.

  I’m feeling rather desperate, because Charles is frightening me. If what Bayne and Syrus said is true, then I need to be able to protect myself. Every night once Lucy has released me, I lay in my bed wondering what to do if he comes to kill me. There’s no one to help me now. Lately, Charles has been very kind—too kind. He’s often not at dinner, and if he is, he’s unusually respectful and quiet. This Charles is almost more disturbing than the openly hostile one I’d gotten used to at the Museum.

  Piskel is watching me, clucking softly and trying to hold the pages down
for me. Try again, he urges.

  I try to focus. For one second the letters resolve into something familiar and then melt away.

  “It’s not working!”

  Piskel sighs, his little face drooping.

  Lucy bursts into my parlor.

  “I’ve been searching high and low—where have you been?” she says.

  I frown. Piskel dives under a pillow on the settee.

  “I told the maid I would work here on the seating chart. My apologies if you weren’t informed,” I say.

  “Oh, seating chart be hanged!” she says. Her dark eyes are wild and her usually well-coiffed hair looks rather disheveled, like she’s been out in a windstorm.

  She starts pacing back and forth in front of the fire. She rings the bell by the door for service.

  We’ve been through this routine nearly every day for the past two weeks. It’s gotten monotonous, but at least I know what to do. Or I think I do, anyway.

  “Lucy, whatever is the matter?”

  She paces back and forth between settee and hearth for a few moments.

  “Assure me again that this will work,” she says finally.

  Every day I’ve reassured her, again and again. But today, my own confidence is wavering. I feel that it’s only fair she knows my fears, that magic isn’t as easy to summon as it may seem.

  “I can’t,” I say, before I can stop myself.

  She stops her pacing and stares. “What?”

  A maid enters with the tea tray. We’re silent until she deposits it on the table by the settee. I pour her a cup, but make no move to have any myself.

  “I just don’t know how this will go. I can’t turn people’s minds to my every whim.”

  “But you’re a witch!” she nearly shouts.

  “I . . .”

  “What?” she asks. Her tone is dangerous. I’ve seen her angry off and on again this week, but never directly at me. I’d take back my sudden desire to confess, except that I can’t.

  “I seem to be having trouble with the magic,” I say. “Something’s wrong and I don’t know what.”

  “Well, you had better figure it out before dinnertime,” she snaps. “This match must go forward or all these pretty little things you see around you will go away in a flash. As will you! How’s that for magic?”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say Miss Lucy is a witch herself. Of the very unpleasant, baby-eating variety.

  I swallow. So much for truthfulness.

  “I understand,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “I expect you to attend me at two o’clock.”

  I nod and she flounces out without ever having touched her tea.

  Piskel creeps out from under the pillows. He makes a few twittering motions, sashaying toward the door in clear mockery of Lucy.

  “I’ve had better birthdays,” I say to him. Yes, indeed.

  * * *

  At two o’clock, after all the cinching, powdering, and pinching I can stand, I meet Lucy in her parlor. She’s calm and collected now, and she takes my arm with a flurry of bergamot and rose-scented lace.

  “Oh, Vespa,” she says. “I do apologize for my manner earlier. I’m just so distraught over everything.”

  I take the initiative to pat her hand. “It’s all right.” I smile as if I’m confident, though inside my stomach is full of fluttering sylphids.

  She returns it with that winsome smile of which I’m so envious. Her face has been artfully painted and there are glittering butterflies affixed to her towering hair. She looks dazzling, so dazzling as to seem almost inhuman.

  “All is well, then. You figured out how to . . .” She doesn’t say it out loud. Despite her earlier remarks, she knows the servants hear things.

  I nod. It’s a bald-faced lie, but it’s better than incurring her wrath.

  She squeezes my hand. “Wonderful,” she whispers.

  I escort her from the parlor and to the Lord’s Sitting Room, where the matchmaking consultation will take place.

  “You know,” she whispers in the hall, “despite your coloring and those Tinker cheekbones, you really do dress up nicely.”

  I blush, whether with embarrassment or anger I’m not certain. Perhaps a little of both. How does she manage to compliment and offend simultaneously? It’s a trick I hope I never learn.

  And then I think about the poor Tinkers trapped in the Imperial Refinery and my heart hurts.

  There’s no time to say anything in reply, for we are at the door. Lord Virulen, who has been away on business until today, is already in the room. The silver werehound head on his ebony cane gleams near his chair. Firelight makes shadows of the seamed scars on his face. It’s still hard for me to believe sometimes that this shattered man was responsible for killing the Manticore’s child long ago. However he managed it, he certainly has paid the price.

  Lucy enters, leaving me to stand outside the door. There are some things, even as Companion, that I’m not meant to witness.

  The Grimgorns come down the hall—Lord and Lady and, last of all, Bayne. His wig is unobtrusive, his frock coat olive velvet, but his shoe buckles gleam. He wears no glamour and I see him fully as he is, as I never quite could when he was hiding out as Pedant Lumin at the Museum. He looks distinctly uncomfortable and sad.

  And then he sees me.

  His entire expression changes. That glacial cold comes into his eyes as they flit away from me; he raises his chin as if I’m no more than an ant under his heeled shoes.

  I drop my eyes and curtsy deeply, trying not to feel the icy knife of his disdain twist in my chest.

  When the door closes behind him, I lean against the wall, limp.

  One of the maids grins at me. She’s missing some of her teeth. “Handsome thing, ain’t he?” she lisps.

  I don’t answer her.

  CHAPTER 22

  It had been a bit of a trick avoiding being swept up with the other boys and locked into the gallery for lights out. But Syrus had managed, hiding behind the enormous pie safe. He had learned his lesson hiding in the water closet; never again! The manor didn’t have regular security wights like other houses he’d heard of, so it was relatively easy to slip down the corridors and out into the garden once everyone was asleep. It was so cold that Syrus longed for his Tinker dart pipe and knife, but there hadn’t been time to retrieve them from their hiding place outside of the estate. If Vespa would just hurry, they could make it before they were discovered.

  He felt that itch again, that craving. The moon was rising and soon the Forest would be flooded with silver and shadows. He rubbed his hands along his arms, trying to warm himself. If she would just hurry . . .

  Then he saw something creeping low and hesitant along the hedgerow. He moved toward it, hoping it was Vespa. He smelled her before he could quite make out her face—the sharp sweetness of lavender and lemon soap.

  “Syrus?” she whispered.

  “Here,” he said, leaving his hiding place.

  She sighed in relief. She wore men’s trousers and a too-big old greatcoat, and her hair was stuffed into a bowler. A long knitted scarf was wrapped several times around her neck.

  He snickered. “Where’d you find that getup?”

  “In the trunk in my room,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what the proper attire was for meeting a Manticore, but I figured trousers were best in case we need to leg it.”

  “True.” He was glad she couldn’t see his face. She’d probably slap him.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He was relieved that they were finally on their way.

  A strange scratching sound made him turn.

  Vespa’s hand was in her pocket. She lifted her hand and showed him the toad and a pebble, which she’d been rubbing together in her nervousness.

  “You really must get rid of that thing,” Syrus said.

  She glared at him in the moonlight, looking more like a Tinker girl than she ever had. If she’d had darker hair and the checkered headband . .
. He betted there was something about her family history she either wasn’t telling or didn’t know.

  They started along a side path that Syrus knew would lead them out of the garden and into the surrounding pastures that bordered the Forest.

  Light flared. Syrus stopped and turned and Vespa tripped on his feet. They caught each other from falling.

  “Well, well, what have we here?” Charles Waddingly said. “The darling witch and her accomplice. Off for a moonlit stroll, are you?”

  Syrus glared at the rogue warlock.

  Charles was surrounded by men carrying everlight lanterns. A few of them carried heavy silver chains. Syrus’s teeth chattered, and not just because of the cold.

  “Charles—” Vespa began.

  “No,” Charles said. “I have no time to bandy words with you. I know what you’re on about. You’re going to the Manticore.”

  Syrus and Vespa were silent.

  “You will lead us there. We will capture the Manticore and bring her back as a wedding gift to Mistress Virulen and Master Grimgorn. And you will give the Heart of All Matter to me.”

  “We will never do that!” Vespa said.

  Syrus looked around. While they’d been talking, more men had filed silently down through the hedges. All of the escape routes were cut off. He could probably slip through a guard’s grasp—it was what Tinker pickpockets were good at, after all—but he was quite sure Vespa couldn’t. And she was what the Manticore needed.

  Charles came down the steps. He stood inches from Vespa. Most of his face was in shadow, but Syrus could just make out his sneer as he said, “You will do everything I say to the letter. To the letter! Do you understand?”

  “Or?” she said, raising her chin.

  Syrus wanted to hide, remembering the last time he’d dealt with Charles in the Archives. Her impudence would likely get them both killed. He stepped a little away from her, hoping to get enough leverage to bolt, but Charles’s hand shot out and held him in a grip of stinging iron.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Tinker imp? Your latest stunt in the caves hasn’t been forgotten. There is much I owe you for, it seems.”