The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 13

Talk at every meal for the last several days has been nothing but building castles in the air. It’s almost as though the break-in with the Tinker thief never happened. Aunt Minta rambles on about the fine clothes and jewelry I’ll have, the engagements with Lady Whatsit and Viscount So-and-so. I talk with her of these things because it feels too dangerous to speak of anything else. I keep hearing the Tinker boy’s words in my head. Your father is planning to use you to lure the Manticore. I can’t begin to imagine what he means by that. And I’ve still heard nothing from Hal.

Discussing dresses and shoes is a relief, but there’s no greater relief than being allowed to enter the Museum at Father’s side. I have so much work to catch up on. It’s wonderful to pretend that life is as it has always been—no Tinker thieves or dangerous Architects, no witchcraft in my blood. I can even imagine that Lucy Virulen will forget about me. Somehow, I doubt I’ll be so lucky.

I try to distract myself as we walk up the steps to the Museum’s arched entrance by asking Father what he thought of the strange, white-eyed man who leaped in front of the trolley. I haven’t asked at home because Aunt Minta wouldn’t find it fitting conversation for a lady.

Father frowns. “White-eyed man?”

“Yes, the one who caused the accident. What was wrong with him, do you reckon?”

“I don’t know what you mean about white eyes.” He sounds irritated. Why? “But,” he continues, “I’d guess he was just a vagrant. No one to concern yourself with. You have much greater things to worry over now.” His smile is weak as he pushes open the heavy wooden door.

He’s lying. He remembers just as well as I do. But why would he pretend that he doesn’t? As far as I know, Father has never lied to me. Why would he start now over such a trivial thing?

Unless it’s not trivial at all.

Might it have something to do with his Experiment?

A chill slithers up my spine.

We pass through the atrium with all my display cases filled with glittering wings and false eyes. I think again of Piskel stuffing his cheeks with jam cake, and I feel like a butcher rather than a skilled unnaturalist.

There’s a commotion when we enter the Main Hall. I look toward the Sphinx, ready to engage in our customary morning battle of wills, pretending to forget that day when it nearly became a battle of life and death, but her plinth is empty.

The Sphinx is gone.

Father and I look around wildly, all conversation regarding the white-eyed man forgotten. Everything else is in order—the Wyvern, the Dragon hatchling exhibit, and the Griffin are all still in their places. There are no signs of struggle. Several Pedants and Scholars are examining the plinth and the nearby field box.

“What happened?” Father asks.

“She’s just gone,” old Pedant Tycho says.

“Are you certain?” Father says. “You’ve checked all the Halls and places where she might hide?”

Pedant Tycho nods. “’Twould be very hard to hide a Sphinx. And we’ve already seen how she might react were she set loose.” His eyes slide toward me. “Looks like an inside job,” he says. Despite his intimation, everyone can see that this is not my fault. I haven’t been here for several days.

“Like the Grue,” someone else mutters.

“Have the Architects infiltrated us?” another asks.

I can’t help but look around for Hal at that, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I don’t want to believe he would be behind such a thing, but then again, he’s the only Architect I know. The Architects steal or release Unnaturals from time to time, saints only know why. Father has always been certain that’s what happened to the Grue when it disappeared last year shortly after Charles came. I think about the breathing I heard in the dark downstairs and shiver.

Dim greenish light filters down onto the empty exhibit. It tricks out the scales of the Wyvern in the adjacent alcove. If the Architects are stealing specimens, what are they doing with them? And what will become of the Museum? I’m suddenly angry at Hal. If he is behind this, more than just his precious Unnaturals could be affected. I look at Father, who’s rubbing his chin with a gnarled hand. Ultimately, the responsibility for all of this rests on Father’s shoulders. I know there were repercussions from the loss of the Grue, though Father never speaks of it. I cannot imagine how he will fare with the loss of a prime exhibit like the Sphinx.

Father shakes my elbow to make me pay attention. “I must go to my office now, Vee,” he says. “This security issue is very serious. Stay in the Cataloguing Chamber today, do you hear?” He mops sweat from under the Sheep of Learning with his handkerchief.

I nod. His black robes swish down the corridor and off toward the old observatory.

He’s not going to his office.

Hm.

I follow him, far enough behind that I can see the edge of his robe as he turns corners. He vanishes through the observatory doors just as I peep into the corridor.

I follow, walking as softly as I can, but there’s no need. There’s a deep hum and rumble from within that obscures all sound. One of the doors is still ajar. I slip inside.

I’ve always loved the old observatory and was sad when it was mostly dismantled. The Pedants of the Astronomy Division said the ambient light from the Refineries made it hard to see the stars, so they moved the telescope to one of the mountains outside Scientia. But the old orrery is still here; the planets on its skeletal arms are connected by long cobwebs. Near it rises the sleek dome of a hellish-looking machine I’ve never seen before. Hoses snake out from its center like tentacles toward laboratory benches. A glass container sits under the mouth of the machine, and in it stirs the restless black sand of the Waste.

Father is over on the other side of the array. And there’s someone with him. Two someones.

I creep a little closer, hoping I’m well-hidden in the shadows of the entryway. I know I should be writing my letter of apology to Pedant Simian about the loss of his collection or perhaps helping the Scholars search for the missing Sphinx (if they would allow me), but I want to know what Father’s doing. He used to tell me everything; I don’t understand why he won’t now.

Charles leads a girl to the table, a girl with a checkered headband and long, dark hair. A Tinker? What is Charles doing with a Tinker girl?

“Don’t you have other things to do besides skulking around your father’s laboratory?” someone whispers behind me. All the hairs on my neck shiver.

Hal.

I do my best to turn slowly and keep my expression icy-calm.

“Don’t you have better things to do than sneaking up on people?” I retort.

“Vespa, if you have any sense at all, which I begin to doubt, you will come with me now before we are discovered and all my work is in vain.”

He’s so close to me now that I can smell him—crushed roses, ink, a whiff of jam cake. Piskel looks up at me from his pocket, nodding fiercely.

I turn and walk out of the observatory and down the corridor back toward the Main Hall. Reaction makes my knees hot and wobbly. If the Sphinx leaped at me from some corner right now, I don’t think I could run fast enough to get away from her. Hal catches up to me in silence.

“What do you want, Pedant?” I say, finally.

He slides a cream-colored, neversealed envelope into view. “This was delivered to your Father’s office. The clerk asked me to give it to you when he passed me a bit ago; he couldn’t find you,” he says.

The invitation from Lucy Virulen. It’s sealed with a tiny Manticore.

“Just in time, it appears,” he says, looking back toward the corridor where he found me.

My hands shake. I touch the seal and it dissolves. The letter unfolds like a living creature and rests lightly in my palm.

“Yes,” I say. Words with all their arabesques and illuminations swim before my eyes.

“What were you doing back there?” he asks. His voice is stiff.

“Why are you angry? Because I was about to discover information you haven’t dared to find out for yourself?”

Hal looks around at the flood of Pedants and Scholars moving through the Main Hall on their way to morning lecture or laboratories. A search party is still wandering through the halls, but I’m guessing they’ll call in the Raven Guard when they get desperate enough. Or else just forget about it and hope nothing untoward happens, as they did with the Grue.

“Not here,” he says. He takes my elbow. A little shock zips past my sleeve and beneath my skin. Before I can protest, we’re on the stairs toward the storage basement.

I clutch the letter like a limp bird in my hand as we descend. Fear slips through me—why should I trust Hal? He is an Architect and a heretic. He’s had every chance to use my own powers (about which I know nothing) against me. And yet he has risked his life for me more than once. He has kept my secret. Whatever else there may or may not be between us, he’s the only person in the world who could possibly understand me, perhaps even help me. Why, then, is he so angry with me now?

We go to a storage room beyond the iron gate. I peer down the narrow stair as we pass. That elusive breathing haunts me with thoughts of the lost Unnaturals.

A single everlight wanders an endless circuit around the room Hal chooses. Skeletons, collection boxes, and specimen jars cast strange shadows, but the musty smell of ancient things is infinitely comforting. I would like to hide here for quite a long while.

Hal releases me. “Do you have any idea what’s at stake here? Do you have any idea how much you risk if we are exposed?” His anger flashes cerulean in the gloom.

I raise my chin and arch my brow in the way the Instructor of Refinement once taught us at Seminary. “We?”

“Yes, damn it,” he says. “You are part of this now, whether you like it or not.”

“Why? And I don’t particularly appreciate your cursing at me, Pedant Lumin.” I would almost swear the boggle fetus in its jar trembles at the frost in my words.

Hal closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose with a long sigh of frustration. Piskel peeks out of Hal’s waistcoat pocket. He glares at me and shakes his fist, as if reminding me that he’ll bite me again if I don’t cooperate, even though I’m not exactly sure what I’m to cooperate with. He slips out of Hal’s pocket and floats over to examine the specimens on the shelves.

“Well?” I ask.

“I am trying with all my might, little as it is, to shield you and keep you safe. And yet you are continually putting yourself in harm’s way.”

“It seems I’m putting myself in harm’s way no matter what I do. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Are you just jealous because I’m on the verge of discovering things you aren’t? Is that it?”

“Vespa, don’t you see? You’re at the center of a vast web of darkness that is about to close in on you. The Empress sits at the center like a spider, waiting for one such as you to be delivered into her clutches. And your father is just the one to do it.”

The everlight slowly travels the perimeter of the storage room. Things leap from the shadows—goblin spines, kelpie eggs preserved in spirits. Piskel floats between them, humming sadly.

I hear the Tinker thief’s words in my head again. “That’s what the Tinker thief said, that he meant to use me as bait. . . .” I choke on the words, unable to finish them aloud.

“The Tinker thief? What?”

I tell him of the boy Syrus breaking into my room, the things he said that I don’t want to believe.

He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he says, “It is worse, so much worse than we thought.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice squeaks inelegantly on the last syllable.

“First, did you tell your father what Rackham said to you that day?”

I shake my head.

His shoulders relax somewhat under his Pedant robes. “Good. Then perhaps he is not yet fully cognizant of your role.”

“Of what?”

“Do you know of the Heart of All Matter?”

It’s a non sequitur, meaning “a thing that doesn’t quite follow” in the Old Scientific language, but it’s firmer ground than the present subject matter. I swallow the scratchiness in my throat. “It’s said that the Manticore bewitched Athena into giving the Heart to her. That Athena ran off with the Manticore and the guard who seduced her to live in the Forest until her father, the Emperor, rescued her. And that Athena would not bend to her father’s insistence that she restore the Heart to him. He could not protect her any longer from her own witchery, and thus she was sent to die on the black sands.” I can still hear the rector telling the tale to us every Chastening Day, his eyes agleam with the zeal of Logic and Reason.

“That is a falsehood,” Hal says, a dangerous edge to his voice.

“How? The Church teaches—”

He retorts, “Everything it teaches is meant to ensure our compliance with Imperial mandate. The Empress needs us to believe in her religion. Otherwise, like Athena, we might discover the truth.”

Now I am angry. How dare he? I almost expect Saint Darwin to send his apes to carry this heretic away to the Infinitesimal Void right now! “And just what is that truth, if you are so sure you know it?”

“This world is alive, Vespa. And it is founded on magic.” He paces away from me, gesturing at the racks. “All these beings you see here—they are part of a great Circle of Being. They are sentient nations unto themselves, just as we are. But unlike us, this world needs them to survive. The more Elementals there are, the more this world thrives. When they are destroyed or taken from their native places, those places become a desert of null energy, what we call the Creeping Waste. Elementals continue to disappear and the Waste keeps growing. Our very lives may depend on the existence of things we are so thoughtlessly destroying. That is the true science.”

Piskel floats toward us, nodding and making chirruping noises of agreement.

“But if that’s true . . .” I fall silent, looking between Piskel and the jars of preserved things. I’ve always secretly thought there was more to the Unnaturals than meets the eye, but that they are intelligent beings, that our lives depend on them, that we are willfully destroying them for no reason—it goes against everything I’ve ever been taught.

“The problem is we can’t figure out what’s happening to them,” Hal continues. “That’s part of why I was sent here, to discover what the Refineries do with them after their capture. We think we know, but it’s all still conjecture at this point.”

“Part of why you were sent?”

A strange expression crosses Hal’s face. “I was also sent to investigate . . .” He pauses and shakes his head. “It’s delicate. All I will say is that I suspect your father’s assistant may be other than he seems. Have a care around him.”

I nod. I’ve always been careful of The Wad. I don’t really see how I could do more.

“What I didn’t expect to find is that your father is also involved in some kind of dangerous experiment, something involving the Waste. I never expected to find that he is trying to procure the Heart of All Matter from the Manticore as part of his experiment. Why would he need something so powerful? Surely, the Waste will overwhelm the City, if he attempts to use it as our theories suggest. I didn’t expect to find Nyx’s daughter a witch into the bargain, a witch it appears he will try to use for his own ends.”

“But it can’t be true, can it? My own father . . .”

Memory threatens to crush me utterly. All our tea times in his office, long walks by Chimera Park, Father’s approving smile whenever I showed him a particularly good sketch or mount, that day long ago when the sylphids crowded around me and he had them destroyed . . . I stare down at my shoelaces, noting absently that one is untied again before everything dissolves in runnels of silver and darkness.

“Vespa,” Hal says in that same low tone he used to keep me from looking at the Sphinx. I look into his eyes. His sad smile nearly takes my breath.

“I will teach you all I can. You will learn to protect yourself with your magic. No one will harm you.”

I can’t say anything. I find myself absorbed in the curve of Hal’s mouth, the edge of his cheek, the blue ocean of his eyes so very close to me. I don’t think about it. I lean forward and kiss him, just like we used to do in Seminary when we practiced on the backs of our own hands.

But this is so different from kissing one’s own hand.

For a moment, his lips yield to mine. The magic between us—for that’s what it must be—stings with gentle heat. Our thoughts merge, like that day in the laboratory, only more softly. We are together in a golden field with the sun pouring down all around us. I have never been so warm, so awash in light. Sylphids dance through the air in a sparkling cloud around us, playing in our hair, whispering their sibilant love charms. Other Elementals come to the edge of the light; I see their shapes before I’m entirely blinded. I sigh his name against his lips in wonder.

He breaks the kiss almost roughly, standing back and adjusting his robes with trembling hands. The darkness of the moldy storage room eats holes through the golden world until it’s gone. Piskel drifts near, shaking a finger at us. Then he sees what’s between us, and his little face darkens in confusion.

“Hal?”

Hal shakes his head, almost like a dog coming out from under a waterfall. “We mustn’t. I mustn’t. I don’t want—” He stops.

“What?” I feel cold outside his embrace, though my lips still burn with his kiss. I cross my arms over my chest. “You don’t want what? To dally with a witch?”

He glowers. “It’s not that. You know it’s not. It’s just . . . It’s not safe. . . .”

We hear the footsteps simultaneously. Piskel dives between jars, dousing his light under a werehound skull.

I am not sure what to do. In perhaps the most useless gesture of all time, I gather some dusty charts into my arms, trying to pretend that I’m fetching them as the Pedant’s assistant.

Two black-coated gentlemen enter. They are very well-dressed. Both of them wear a Wyvern brooch pinned on their cravats. They certainly carry themselves as if they hail from Uptown. They dip their heads and sweep their tricorns from their white wigs almost in unison.

“If you will come with us, sir,” one of them says.

Hal’s gaze moves from me to the two gentlemen as if he’s contemplating some insane magical feat.

Then his shoulders slump. He walks toward the gentlemen like a condemned man, letting them take his arms.

“Hal?” I whisper. “What—”

They usher him past me with sidelong glances of scorn. Hal looks back at me over his shoulder. “Be safe. Be wise. Be vigilant.”

And in my mind, I hear a whisper, I will come to you when I can.

He turns and allows them to escort him from the door without another glance. I hear their feet on the steps as the charts slide from my arms onto the floor.