The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 15

I’ve never been particularly enraptured with girlish things. Give me a sylphid net, a capture box, and a sketchbook and I’m the closest to Scientific Paradise one can rationally get. Now I feel guilty for my enjoyment of those things, with Piskel riding comfortably in my pocket by day and sleeping in a little nest I’ve made for him in my wardrobe by night. I had to coax him out from under the werehound’s skull with the mere promise of jam cake after Hal was escorted away. It wasn’t easy.

Hal. I have no idea what’s become of him. I tried to ask Father, but he very quickly set aside my queries. “Pedant Lumin was dismissed,” he said, not looking me in the eye, when I asked one evening. “He will soon be replaced, have no fear. You should turn your mind to other matters. You have much to learn before taking up your place in the Virulen household.” And with a snap of his newspaper, he’d ended the discussion. There has been no letter, no magic whisper, nothing since. Even when I ask Piskel about Hal, the sylphid only shakes his head and sighs.

So, I was actually relieved when Mistress Virulen’s request came for me to join her at the Night Emporium this afternoon. We’re to begin shopping for our Carnival gowns and she has promised to take me to high tea at The Menagerie, an exclusive Uptown ladies’ club, afterward.

Aunt Minta won’t allow me to take the trolley to the Emporium unaccompanied. “Let’s hire a carriage instead. There’s been trouble at the Lowtown Refinery and more predicted throughout the City,” she says, as she pulls on her kid gloves. “They suspect the Architects are involved.”

I try not to show any emotion at the mention of them. I have left Piskel behind in his wardrobe nest today, as his presence might be too dangerous for both of us. He must not be seen. He would be mounted for a Museum display and I would be sent to the decontamination asylum for certain if the sylphid were to be found on my person.

We wait in the foyer until the carriage is announced and then step out into another gray New London afternoon. The air is sharp with the promise of an autumn storm; green-edged gusts skirl down the cobbled street, catching our skirts and tangling them about our legs. I hold my new bonnet tight against my head as we hurry to the carriage; the driving wight blinks at us as we nearly trip over him in our haste to get inside.

“The Night Emporium,” Aunt Minta calls through the speaking tube, and we’re off, rocking down through the blustery streets.

We don’t speak much until we’re almost at my destination, and then Aunt Minta puts her hand over mine. “Now, my dear,” she says, “remember what we’ve been working toward. Discretion and decorum—these will be of utmost value to your new mistress.”

I nod. We’ve been through so many things over the last few days that I can scarcely remember more than pacing up and down in the parlor balancing a book on my head while Aunt Minta corrected every flaw in my posture with an old cane. “Shoulders back, bosom out—we want them to appreciate your attributes, my dear, not wonder whether you’re even female. . . .”

And the blushing, the hideous blushing, as my corsets were laced tighter, my gowns cut lower, a bustle added to make sure “back there” was as well-proportioned as “up front.” I have never thought of any of it before and now it seems it’s all I can think of, because I can’t bear to think about anything else.

Aunt Minta squeezes my hand, bringing me out of my gloom. The carriage has stopped at the entrance to the Night Emporium. Aunt Minta peeps out the door. “Ah, there they are.” She points out the guards near the gate. A Manticore rears red on their livery. “They’ll take you to Mistress Virulen.” She smiles and kisses me briskly on both cheeks. “Out you go. And remember—discretion and decorum, my dear!”

I embrace Aunt Minta, inhaling one last comforting whiff of her verbena and orange blossom perfume. Then I step out with the driving wight’s help, buffeted by the gusts that have chased us all the way down from High Street in Midtown. His grip is odd—one moment insubstantial, another firm as death. The Imperial Refinery just alongside the Tower makes and programs the wights to customer specifications, but the process of their making is a great trade secret. It’s said only the Empress knows how the wights are truly made. I’ve always thought of wights as mindless automata, but knowing the truth about the Elementals has made me question everything. The driver’s expressionless face flickers and then he drifts back toward the carriage as Aunt Minta calls to be returned to High Street. I’m left standing with no real answers.

The Night Emporium’s violet-swirled domes bloom over me, spanning half of the bridge that vaults the River Vaunting and joins Lowtown on the other side. Closer to Lowtown, there are gambling houses and other dens of iniquity, but on this side of the great bridge, we’re still firmly in Midtown. The arched gates are lit by twinkling everlights that flash like Piskel when he’s excited or happy. Various shop wights circulate through the crowd, offering samples of candied apples or eversilk ribbons. It seems a bit odd to me that a lady of such stature as Mistress Virulen would come here to seek Carnival gear, but perhaps she is bored of the Uptown boutiques and looking for a bit more local color.

I exhale a long, slow breath, approach the liveried guards, and hand them my invitation as instructed. Their appraising looks make me want to shrink back into myself, but I haven’t spent the past several days walking with a book on my head for nothing. I throw my shoulders back and say, “Take me to Mistress Virulen, please,” as if I’m giving a Scholar directions for finding a lecture in the labyrinthine Museum.

They turn in unison and begin shouting for the way to be cleared.

We pass through the arched gates with their fanciful lights and glimmering faces. People look askance and whisper behind their hands as I follow the guards. I wave away several wights before we enter Hooke & Smee’s, a ladies’ costume shop. The shop is empty of all but Mistress Virulen and a few of her retainers. She glances up from the fabric the seamstress wights have spread before her and rushes toward me across the honey-golden boards.

“Vespa,” she says, taking both my hands in hers. “I may call you that, mayn’t I?”

“Of course, my lady . . .” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own.

“Oh, stuff and nonsense, do call me Lucy. When we’re in intimate circumstances like this, of course.”

I nod, then blush when I realize I’ve forgotten to remove my bonnet.

Her eyes travel to it just as I reach for the gray ribbons. She clucks at me. “Wherever did you find that?” She touches it briefly, as if it might bite her.

“I . . . that is to say . . . my aunt . . .” I stammer, as she swiftly unties it, lifts it off my head, and passes it to one of her attendants.

“We shall do much better for you by far.” She turns to her attendant and says, “Get rid of that dowdy thing, will you?”

The attendant bows and hurries off to do her bidding.

Lucy turns back to me, her dark eyes intent on my face, lifting her small, porcelain-perfect hand to brush at my temperamental curls. “Yes, I can see it. You will be quite the catch when I’m done with you.” She leans forward so only I can hear. “And so shall I when you’re done with me, eh?” she whispers, winking.

I swallow my stammering and simply nod. I try not to follow the progress of the brand-new bonnet out to the wastebin with my eyes. Both Aunt Minta and I had thought it the height of fashion when we bought it last week. Somehow, I know better than to say that to Lucy Virulen.

“Now, come,” she says, taking my arm and leading me down the long aisles toward where the seamstress wights still spread fabrics across the boards. “Let’s decide our Carnival theme.”

And so it begins. Eversilk, organza, batiste, yards of lace, gilt thread, and feathers of every kind and description. Lucy’s eyes light up at a pile of feathers so brilliant, I’m certain they must have once belonged to a Phoenix. I turn the cerulean pinions, watch them change to fiery gold under the shop lights. Definitely Phoenix. Sickness clenches at my gut, especially when Lucy practically leaps at the feathers, crying, “Yes! These will be just the thing!”

“They’re Phoenix feathers.” My voice is stiff with unspoken things.

She tickles my nose with one. It smells of embers and sorrow. “Of course I know that, dear. That’s why I want them. I shall attend the ball tricked out as a magnificent Phoenix before her ascent in flame. But we have been thinking too much about me. What would you like to be, Vespa?”

My gaze wanders helplessly across the sheen of fabrics and glittering thread. “Whatever you want me to be, Mistress.”

“Such a cautious creature!” She smiles, running her hands along the fabrics on the table. The seamstress wight blinks, caught between holding out a swatch of peacock-blue silk and some golden braid.

“With that hair and those eyes,” Lucy continues, “we must be careful. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be dramatic.”

I nod. Aunt Minta often says that I’m not easy to dress because of my coloring. Therefore, I mostly keep myself to shades of gray, when I worry about it at all.

Lucy wanders down the table to where dark silk sparkles with silver threads, a swatch of night sky plucked from the clean air beyond the City walls. There’s a half-finished owl mask here; a few downy white feathers grace the edges of its hooked beak. I pray to the saints that no rare owl lost its feathers for this.

As if the saints would care. I’m beginning to suspect they don’t care about anything.

Lucy pounces on the mask and holds it up to my face. “Bewitching!” She smiles that infectious smile and I can’t help but return it. “How would you feel about going as the Strix, my dear?”

The Strix is a flesh-eating, owl-like creature, rumored to haunt the great rivers and caverns of the East. I’ve seen a stuffed one in the dustier vaults of the Museum, her feathers moth-eaten, her glass eyes vacant. But I imagine that if she had been preserved alive like the Sphinx or the Grue, she would have been very fearsome indeed.

“I’ve always found the Strix interesting,” I say carefully. I consider saying more about the one in the vault at the Museum or the Eastern expedition to capture her decades ago, but Aunt Minta has cautioned me not to speak too much of my work with Unnaturals.

“Very well, then,” Lucy says. “You’ll be the Strix and I shall be the Phoenix. What a glamorous pair we’ll make for Carnival!”

One of the shop proprietors—Mr. Hooke, I believe—sweeps up to us, bowing and making grand flourishes with his scarlet sleeves. With little more than a pause for breath, Lucy launches into detailed instructions which Mr. Hooke copies onto a gilt-edged pad with an elaborate quill, somehow managing not to stain his lacy cuffs with everink as he writes.

Before I know it, seamstress wights are pushing me off toward the dressing rooms, where they whisk off my gown and undergarments, leaving me in little more than my stockings and a cold breeze. They take my measurements, their fingers appearing and disappearing as if I’m looking at them through running water. They pin a swath of the starry silk here and there, hold up the owl mask, nearly blinding me with the feather tips. There’s a low murmuring between them not unlike language, but still unintelligible.

While I’m still blinking with shock, the measuring tapes, pins, and fabric swatches are swept away, my clothes restored to me, and I’m returned to where Lucy chats with Mr. Hooke near the coveted pile of Phoenix feathers.

I would very much like to ask Mr. Hooke how he came by them, though I fear he would be coy. Phoenixes are terribly rare, far too rare to be found in some Midtown shop. And yet, I know without a doubt that these feathers are the genuine article.

Lucy takes my arm before I can open my mouth. “Mr. Hooke, we must be off, but I trust you will produce gowns that will make us the envy of Carnival!”

“Indeed, my lady!” He bows to us with yet another flourish. “Of that you may be certain!”

Lucy turns us and I nearly stumble. “Grace, my dear,” she whispers, “grace even before these rabble.”

I look back at Mr. Hooke whose nose is still nearly sweeping the floorboards in his aristocratic bow.

“Rabble?”

“My darling, everyone is rabble save for me and thee,” she says, patting my arm. “And you must start acting like it, lest people take advantage. I may dress you up, but you must learn to play the part.”

“The part?” I repeat, like some mindless parrot.

“Well, how else will you bag a handsome duke or baron for a husband unless you act like one of us?”

Hm. Such thoughts have never occurred to me, even as I realize that these are just the sort of thoughts Father and Aunt Minta expect me to have. I think of Hal and for one moment allow myself to imagine being swept along on his arm the way Lucy is sweeping me now.

We climb into the Virulen carriage that awaits us by the gates. The mythwork unicorns look newly polished and the old carriage has been replaced. I remember how Hal and I helped Lucy out of the wreckage. Memories of him are everywhere, thick as the glimmering New London fog. My gut twists so hard with sadness and frustration that it’s all I can do not to cry out. Perhaps Lucy’s right. Perhaps it will be better if I marry some duke or baron I don’t love.

“Why, my dear, you look positively wretched!” Lucy says, as she settles herself and looks over at me. Unlike the public carriages, this one is well-lit with an interior everlantern, so she can easily see my distress. I run my palm along the silver brocade walls. A tiny red Manticore rears against my fingertips. I remember how the Tinker boy was so desperate for me to find the Manticore. Somehow, that night I pulled the alarm on him seems like ages ago rather than a few weeks.

Lucy opens a compartment next to her and pulls out a bottle filled with carnelian liquid. “Perhaps you’d like a bit of cordial as a restorative before our tea?”

Two crystal tumblers clink gently together on the seat.

Her kindness undoes me.

“Yes,” I sigh. “Yes, indeed.”

She pours the blood-bright liquid and hands me a glass.

“To new endeavors and new friends!” she says, clinking her glass with mine.

“To new endeavors and new friends,” I say, trying to sound more enthusiastic than I feel. The cordial slides down my throat smooth as a dream.

“I believe we’re going to get along just smashingly,” Lucy says with her wicked little smile.

I can only hope she’s right.

Lucy chatters at me all the way to The Menagerie. I listen to her with one ear, but with the other I’m listening to the clatter and press of Midtown give way to the seething tranquility of Uptown. The cordial that’s made her overflow with gossip has calmed me and made me interested again in my surroundings. It’s said that the lords and wealthy merchants pay handsomely to have their district of New London clean and wholesome with everscrubbers and doubled security wights. I believe it. The quiet here is almost alarming; the manicured lawns of the townhouses and estates are immaculately green.

We stop where a building stands literally at the corner of several perfectly cobbled streets, its rounded cornices guarded by a grinning two-headed Amphisbaena. THE MENAGERIE is written below it in letters shaped like gilded Unnaturals, which turn to preen, swat at one another, or glare at passersby, never once forsaking the form of the word they spell.

“Come on, darling,” Lucy says. “You’re gawking.” She draws me inside.

The club seems much bigger somehow on the inside than out. We follow faint music and laughter down a colonnade, past alcoves of women murmuring at one another behind fans or plucking plump strawberries from platters carried by drifting serving wights.

The colonnade gives way to a forest. That’s the only way I can think to describe this vaulted room with its white, tree-shaped columns, the deep, mossy carpets, and the laughing stream that burbles and trips through the room. Unnaturals move here and there through sprays of flowers and curling vines, their wings trailing the ground as they bear trays of food or steaming cups of coffee. Others pose above or peep around the columns, their eyes following the movement of the patrons as they come and go.

“What is this?” It escapes my mouth before I can keep silent.

“Why, The Menagerie, of course.” Lucy spreads her hands to encompass it all and laughs. She leads me across a bridge to a little dell by the stream. We sit on mushroom ottomans before a table made from a single slice of a giant tree trunk. It’s then I realize the Unnaturals are either mythwork automata or servants done up in elaborate costume. It unnerves me deeply—the casual acceptance of this simulated reality. Here, people may pretend they are among the danger and mystery of the Unnatural world without harm or fear. Here, these Uptown ladies may even bend that unknown world to their will, forcing it to serve them cakes and tea. I shift on my mushroom, trying to ignore the mythwork Phoenix that dips its head toward me every so often. I don’t want to think about that pile of feathers that will soon grace Lucy’s skirts.

Lucy’s lips thin. “Do you find this disagreeable, my dear?”

“No,” I try to say, but my voice comes hoarsely. I clear my throat and force a smile. “Not at all. It’s just a bit of a shock.”

Lucy tilts her head. Her dark eyes sparkle with unspoken questions.

“I just never imagined that ladies of such standing would prefer this kind of venue.”

“And what did you think we might prefer instead?”

My gaze follows the brook. A mythwork naiad lifts her head above the water and grins at me, then slowly retreats back into the water again. Her mechanical grin looks more like a grimace. “Well, something more in keeping with Logic and Rationality,” I say carefully. “Something less . . . fanciful.”

“Pish tosh.” Lucy waves her hand. “It’s all merely for amusement. Just wait until you see Carnival! This will seem like nothing in comparison.”

At the wave of her hand, one of the servants comes over the bridge to us. She’s dressed as a sylphid, with giant, luminous wings that whisper along the path behind her. Lucy orders high tea—cakes, scones, sandwiches, teas, and other assorted tidbits. The servant bows and disappears back across the bridge. Lucy digs through her purple velvet reticule until she pulls out several books, which, at first glance, would seem too large to fit in any proper reticule.

Then, I understand. Her reticule is evered to contain whatever she likes. Within reason, of course. It isn’t as if she could stuff a pony in there. But she can store a number of items that wouldn’t otherwise fit into such a tiny contraption, which is why generally only the gentry are allowed to possess such items. If a thief got hold of such a thing, one could only imagine the disaster!

Lucy places the books on the table and slides them gently toward me, along with another reticule, this one a claret color.

“When you look at these later in the privacy and comfort of your own rooms”—she looks at me significantly—“you’ll understand why I gave them to you and what they’re to be used for. I expect you to study them well. I need you well-prepared for Carnival. I’m hoping these will serve.”

I slide my fingers over the covers. Tiny little shocks of magic slide under my fingernails. Unlike the dark curse manuals at Rackham’s, these books tickle all the way up my arms. I restrain myself from opening them, though their delightful magic is nearly irresistible. “Where did you get them?”

Lucy half-smiles. “That hardly matters, does it? The point is that they have what I—that is to say we—need.”

“And what is that?”

Lucy’s eyes hold mine. “A love charm, my dear. Possibly several. The Heir to Grimgorn will be at Carnival and rumor has it he’s seeking a wife. Or his parents are seeking one for him, at any rate. I want him to want only me, do you understand? My family needs this alliance desperately; Grimgorn is second only to the Empress in wealth and stature. They practically rule Scientia! Imagine what could be achieved there!”

I shudder to think. I slip the books into the claret reticule, thinking again of Athena’s scarlet-lettered execution gown. “This is the price for saving your life?” I ask.

“For not being wise enough to hide your powers from a sharp-eyed girl.” She smiles. “Would you believe I have secretly wanted to be one such as you all my life? But though I can see and feel it, the magic does not let me wield it.”

“Perhaps you could be taught.”

“Perhaps,” she says. “But for now, you will serve, I think.” She eyes me and the scarlet circle under my hand. “Won’t you?”

Have I any choice in the matter? I want to ask. But I already know her answer.

“I will.” I wish those two little words didn’t feel like a binding spell.