The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 17

Two days after tea at The Menagerie a package arrives. I tear it open with unladylike zeal, praying to Mother Curie (though I know he wouldn’t like it) that it’s a gift, a letter, something from Hal.

I hide my face from Aunt Minta when I discover two books, two very unmagical books, sent from the Chatelaine of Virulen Manor to “aid in schooling the Mistress’s new Companion.” Aunt Minta picks up both The Handbook of Excellent Service and A Primer for Ladies’ Companions Throughout the Realm and Beyond, hugging them to her bosom as if they were the most precious of articles.

Then she drops them and embraces me until I’m gasping.

“I know I’ve said it so many times, my dear, but I’m so proud of you!” she whispers into my ear. I think my face must be turning blue from suffocation.

The carriage comes not long after the books. Aunt Minta is as tearful and fluttery over my departure as if I’m about to be wed. Father went to the Museum before daybreak, trying to beat the Carnival traffic, he’d said. With all the fluttering about, I’ve not once had a chance to speak to him about the Museum, and I admit after his forbidding air regarding Hal that I was afraid to try. I have a very disheartening feeling that Father wouldn’t tell me the truth about him anyway.

“Oh, my darling, have a wonderful time,” Aunt Minta keeps saying. “Write to us as soon as you can!”

I nod, sure if I open my mouth, I’ll vomit. I stare over Aunt Minta’s shoulder at the painting of Athena as my aunt squeezes all my remaining breath out of me in a last embrace. Looking at the princess this time, I see something different. Athena’s hand gleams faintly, as mine does when I do magic. I wonder how she learned and what she learned and why she allowed herself to be executed. Why did she not use her power to free herself? Perhaps there was more to it than anyone knows. I’m beginning to believe that of pretty much everything.

Aunt Minta finally releases me and shoos me toward the mythwork carriage outside. I climb in, pretending I don’t see all the neighbors peering out from behind their curtains or even watching from their covered porches. Our servants stand along the walkway, the maids dabbing their eyes with their aprons and the gardener removing his cap as I pass. I feel chagrined. I’m quite certain I’ve never paid this much attention to them.

The driving wight takes my carpet bag and helps me into the cavernous carriage. I sit straight against the red damask seats, clutching the reticule (in which Piskel snores among the magic books) and listening as my trunk is fastened behind. The carriage doesn’t sink as the driving wight climbs back into the box; wights are evidently weightless. Soon the unicorns march down the cobbled avenue.

For a blinding flash of a moment, I consider leaping out of the carriage and running away. But to where?

I sink back into the cushions. Surely I am the only girl to face these kinds of problems. And then I think of Athena and realize that I am not.

The carriage pulls into the Virulen’s Uptown villa just in time to avoid the first of many evening Carnival parades. A jostling, brightly-festooned crowd follows Saint Galileo from his chapel past all the Great Families’ houses to Uptown Square where the saints are housed during Carnival Week. Floats depicting the planets and stars are followed by acrobats in gold and silver trailing banners like streaking comets.

I don’t have more than a moment to watch, though, because a bevy of servants whisk me away from the carriage and up into the house. They pull me through the foyer and up the stairs before I can do much more than wonder how vast Virulen Manor must be, if this echoing cavern is really just the family’s in-town residence. The maids direct me to a chamber where they very efficiently begin stripping my clothes from me against my protests. Soon, I’m stuffed naked and shivering into a bronze tub, scrubbed until I think my skin will fall off, and then oiled until my eyes sting with the scent of orange blossom.

When they get me into chemise and corset and the hair iron is hot, the door bursts open. Mistress Lucy is in an emerald eversilk dressing gown, her hair up in curling papers, her face devoid of cosmetics. It’s a bit startling, but her curving smile snaps me out of gaping at her dishabille.

The maids make me face forward again. Lucy dismisses them with a wave of her hand.

“Tonight’s the night, my little witch,” she says, putting her hands on my shoulders. She grins at me in the mirror.

I nod, because I don’t know what else to say.

“Master Grimgorn will be there, and you must ensure his favor.” She squeezes my shoulders. Her cold hands feel a bit like claws.

My mind and heart race each other. I’m not even fully laced into my corset and my breath is so short I feel like I might faint. The Guide mentioned a charm for increasing affection, but many of the ingredients were impossible to procure, especially with Aunt Minta watching me like a hawk wherever we went. I’ll just have to make substitutions and hope for the best. This notion does not please me at all.

There’s a large vase of hothouse roses on the dressing table. I pull one free and sift through the petals until I find a perfectly undamaged one.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“What you just asked me to do.” I force a smile at her in the mirror.

I hold up the petal in my palm. “Kiss this,” I say, “and this will act as a seal on the charm to win his affections.”

The warm velvet of her lips presses my palm. A tiny spark shivers up my wrist. She looks at me quizzically.

“Place this in the palm of your left glove. It’ll work. You’ll see.” I entrust the rose petal to her with far more confidence than I actually feel. I’ve no idea whether what I’m doing is right or not. What if it doesn’t work? Will she have me sent to the Waste on principle?

“It had better,” she says.

She flounces back to her own rooms without further comment, and the maids descend again upon my hair. I look into my own eyes and I don’t like the haunted look I see there.

Hours later, steamed, plucked, scented, coiffed, and trussed like some sort of high-class chicken, I critique myself in the mirror. The maids fuss here and there over a stray curl or a ribboned sleeve, but I’m as perfect as they can make me. I hardly recognize myself. My hair glitters with everpowder and is so tall I’ve no idea how I’ll get through the door. I feel guilty and repulsed to know that sylphid bones have been dusted all over my hair, but there’s not much to be done about it. I hope Piskel will forgive me.

Silver feathers swirl across my silk skirts. The Strix mask we saw in the shop is finished, festooned with onyxes and owl feathers. Part of me feels ridiculous, but another part cannot believe that this person I see is truly me. I hardly recognize myself in this deadly dangerous gown with its beguiling mask. Would anyone else? Would Hal? I lift my chin. He hasn’t seen fit to contact me. So much for his reassurance that he would come find me. Perhaps tonight I will meet my future husband.

I don’t like the hitch in my heart as I think of that possibility.

The maids leave me at the foot of the staircase, and I’m looking around bemusedly at the gold-framed portraits of Virulens gone by when I hear a flutter at the top of the stairs. Lucy comes down and her Phoenix-feather gown is so blue it nearly blinds me.

“I must say,” Lucy says, “you turned out even more handsomely than I hoped.”

Unsure what else to do, I curtsy deeply.

“Oh, stop that, you ninny. You do that to the other duchesses, not to me.”

“Yes, my lady.” I smile.

Lucy wags a gold-gloved finger at me. “Come along then, my dear Strix!”

Lucy takes my arm and draws me toward the waiting carriage.

“Lord Virulen . . .” I say, looking back over her shoulder as if the house will disgorge him at any moment. I’ve never actually seen him, though I’ve heard he’s quite hideous. He barely survived an attack from the Manticore while hunting in his youth. He killed the Manticore’s offspring, but lost his hand and his handsomeness in the process, if rumors are true.

“Is already at the Hall with the other Lords, drunk as a hoot owl, like as not,” Lucy says. That wicked smile plays about her lips, the one I both like and dread.

“Ah.”

The carriage pushes through the mad crowd. Lucy slides her fan case to the edge of the curtain so she can peer out. “Oh my,” she says, covering her mouth with her silk-gloved hand.

“Here, look.” She nods toward my end of the curtain, and I pull it away so I can peek out too.

A few Carnival revelers have gotten early into the wine, it seems. Or else they had only imagined putting on their party clothes. They dance down the streets naked, as unconcerned as if no one is watching.

Lucy laughs at my expression.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen the Uptown version of Carnival before, have you?” she asks. “It can get rather wild.”

“Can’t say as I have,” I say, dropping the curtain. “Nor that I want to, if that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Lucy laughs again and taps my knee with her fan case. “I can see we have much work to do with you.”

I’m afraid to know exactly what kind of work she’s talking about.

“Is this your first Ball? You almost looked too young to be out in Society that day we met.”

“Not quite my first.” I don’t want to recount last summer’s horrid Pre-Debutante Ball. I managed to rip my dress by catching it under a chair leg to my shame and Aunt Minta’s everlasting horror.

“This, I’m sure, will be the most interesting one you’ve attended yet. I’m not sure what Carnival will be like in the Tower; honestly the Imperial Balls tend to be terribly dull. And the clocks that woman has all over the palace! She’s insanely obsessed with them.”

“Clocks?”

“Yes, it’s quite bizarre. Clocks. Everywhere. Usually all telling the wrong time. And the ticking!” Lucy rolls her eyes. She snaps open her fan and her bergamot perfume fills my nose.

“I’ve never been.”

Lucy rolls her eyes again. “Believe me, it will be quite the education! Just pray to the saints that the Empress doesn’t decide to hold every function in the Tower from here on out!”

The wild Carnival revelers dance everywhere, making offerings to the saints where their effigies sit in state at the Uptown Square. An audience crowds around a group of performers as they act out the Pageant of Saint Newton and the Apple, but the carriage turns up Tower Hill before I can see the apple actually hit the saint on the head.

The way up is steep and so narrow that only one carriage can pass at a time. The city falls away behind us. Only the Imperial Refinery’s yellowish-green plumes of smoke are visible above the dense thorn hedge that chokes the Hill.

Finally, we top the Hill and come under the Tower’s great battlements. A contingent of Raven Guards lines the courtyard, watching silently as we disembark and are shown toward the Tower’s Grand Entrance. Their cousins, the tower ravens, perch all along the rooftops, watching them with eyes as eerily empty and yet dangerously alert as the Guards’. The stench of moldering guano almost overpowers me; the walls of the inner buildings are streaked white with it.

My lungs compress, as if filled with dark, damp feathers.

“Can you feel them?” Lucy says. “The nullwards?”

I nod and hurry her inside. Yes. I will soon faint if I don’t stop feeling it. Now that I know I’m a witch, I know why nullwards make me feel so odd.

We join a long line of partygoers being searched by the Guard and security wights for weapons. Although the women aren’t searched as thoroughly as the men, even we don’t escape scrutiny. When one Guard attempts to lift Lucy’s skirts with a stick to see if she’s hidden anything under her voluminous blue layers, she fluffs them at him like an offended ostrich and takes my arm in hers.

“Really! Of all the nerve!” she says loudly enough for everyone to hear.

The Raven Guard steps back, expressionless as always. But his head swings to follow us, the white membrane shuttering his flat eyes in a way that makes me shiver.

Lucy is about to say more, but I drag her along past the cloakroom door. “Enough,” I murmur, even as I see my first clock.

Then I look down the corridor. She’s right. Clocks are everywhere. Cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, water clocks, clocks so ornate I’m not sure how they work. They fill the hall with a whirring hum that trembles below the rise and fall of conversation. When they all strike the hour, I wonder if anyone’s eardrums will survive intact.

Lucy makes a little growling noise under her breath, but lets me lead her into a vast room of arched, marble gables and circular chandeliers that blaze like wheels of light. It looks more like an ancient chapel than a ballroom, and it’s filled to bursting with people in Carnival dress. And there are yet more clocks.

My mouth goes dry as the herald announces us, and the room falls momentarily into silence save for the time-ticking hum.

Lucy barely notices. She’s seen people she knows and saunters toward them. I follow, glimpsing the empty throne at the end of the hall, flanked by gilded candelabras fitted with antique black candles.

It is the Companion’s duty to be her lady’s eyes and ears at any public function, the Companion Primer had said. Thus should she hang as gracefully in the background as a spray of flowers, present, beautiful, and yet not calling undue attention to herself.

Lucy maneuvers through the crowd, while I keep a wary eye on everyone who meets her, half afraid the Guard will haul her away for her earlier impudence out in the hall. There are several young suitors, some more graceful about their intentions than others, but none of them are the Heir to Grimgorn. What if he isn’t here?

Apparently all the highest-ranking nobles are missing. After Lucy manages to get rid of the most recent gawker, she says behind her fan, “These are the ones who couldn’t get into the smoking rooms with the other Lords. Wait until Father gets here. Then we’ll see something, I wager.”

“The Heir to Grimgorn, perhaps?”

Lucy snaps her fan shut and taps me hard on the arm with it. “Shhhhh.” A miniature version of that wicked smile plays about her lips. “The rumors are already smoldering. No need to set them fully alight!”

I nod.

“And speak of the devils,” Lucy says, nodding toward one of the many arched doorways. “Here they come.”

The Lords enter in wreaths of drifting cigar smoke and bright frock coats, like a bevy of peacocks shooed before a heavy fog.

The last of them limps along with the help of a wolf-headed cane, and, unoriginally, wears a silver wolf-mask to match it. His clothing is fine, but rather plain for one of the most powerful peers of the Empire—black with a bit of lace trim and silver embroidery here and there.

He halts for a moment before spotting us.

Silver glints between the lace of his cuff and his leather glove. Rumors are true. The hand that grips the cane is not flesh but mythwork.

“Father.” Lucy curtsies.

I quickly follow suit.

A single steel blue eye rakes me from behind the wolf-mask. The edge of a thick scar snakes above his left temple between the mask and his wig and the left eyehole is completely dark. “And this is the one you hired for your Companion?” he says. His voice is gritty, as though the inside of his throat is also scarred.

“Yes, Father.”

“Isn’t she a bit young?”

I try not to bristle. I shouldn’t expect him to treat me like anything more than a servant; that’s what I am to him, after all.

Lucy looks over at me and pulls me as close to her side as her feathered skirts will allow.

“She’s a good deal more talented and intelligent than most older women I’ve met, Father.”

He stares at me again. “As long as the forms are met,” he says finally.

Whatever other scorn he wants to heap upon my head is interrupted by a blast of the herald’s trumpet.

“Her Most Scientific Majesty the Empress Johanna and the Imperial Heir Olivia! Scientia et Imperatrix Vincit!”

Everyone stops what they’re doing. If they’re seated, they stand. If they’re already standing, they drop their masks and put their right hands over their hearts.

It’s difficult to see much from a curtsy, but my first impression is of a tiny woman swallowed by her black gown, carrying a gnarled staff on which a large white raven sits. Its red eyes sweep the room and lock with mine for a moment. I shiver and bow my head even lower.

When the Empress sits, she signals that we may relax, candlelight winking off her beringed fingers. Her high collar keeps her head stiffly upright; I’m reminded of forbidden pictures of the ancient queen of Old London. Her face is peculiarly mannish; I can’t help noticing her uncannily close resemblance to her ancestor, First Emperor John Vaunt.

Next to her throne stands a fair-haired girl perhaps the age of the Tinker thief—Olivia the Imperial Heir. She’s an anemic flicker compared to her royal mother’s smothering darkness.

And when the candles dance just right . . . I try not to stare too hard, but it looks as if something binds the princess’s lips and hands. Dark threads that only I can see. Someone doesn’t want her to speak. I can see how I might unravel the end of the thread and free whatever’s being held on her tongue. The urge to unbind her is so powerful, I lift my hand before I realize what I’m doing.

Then I see a Guard pass outside the door. And the red eyes of the ghost raven. Right here, right now, it’s far too dangerous.

Something about the spell wards people away from her. No suitors come to court her; no courtiers flatter her. She stands quite alone in the hall of clocks and Carnivalgoers as if she belongs to another world and has been momentarily frozen here for display. Like an Elemental in the Museum. I feel a terribly sympathy for her. Is she a witch, too? And who has bespelled her?

Musicians tentatively begin the first waltz. Lord Virulen murmurs to Lucy and nods to me before replacing his mask and stumping off to where a crowd of other nobles stand. I’ve not yet seen Master Grimgorn. I must have missed him in the crowd.

As soon as her father leaves, young lordlets rush to find space on Lucy’s dance card. Underneath it all, the clocks hum, inevitably ticking toward the symphony of sound that will deafen us at the top of the hour.

“Vespa!” Lucy says, snapping my gaze to her face. She’s looking at me with a mixture of annoyance and impatience; clearly, she’s tried to get my attention before now.

“The young baron would like to dance with me.” A powdered boy simpers behind Lucy’s shoulder. “Hold my things, will you?”

“Yes, my lady.” I take her fan and reticule.

She takes her companion’s arm delicately, though he’s a head shorter than she is, and lets him lead her to the dance floor.

I take a seat with the other servants and Companions. None of them speak to me. Lucy whirls from one partner to another, while I search for some sign of Grimgorn, and the Empress and her spell-stitched heir look on.

Then I spot him—a man dressed in inconspicuous black, which makes him stand out to me like a dark sun. Hal. He’s wearing a wig and carries a horned mask listlessly in one hand. He doesn’t see me. I’m not sure what he’s doing here. Why would the Empress invite a lowly Pedant to her ball? Has he somehow magicked his way into the ball? I wonder.

It’s all I can do not to cry out his name. I bite my lip as he slips out into the hall. What is he up to? The Primer echoes in my head: A Companion may, under severe compulsion, leave her post. But only if it will cause no harm to her mistress or lasting social repercussions for the family.

“Saint Darwin and all his apes,” I mutter to myself. If I don’t go after Hal now, I don’t know when I might see him again.

As a new quadrille starts, I slide off my chair and weave through the crowd to one of the many arched doors. I look back. Lucy laughs and spins on the dance floor. I don’t want her to see me leaving, so I hold my breath and glide as quickly through the door as I can.

Raven Guards flank the entrances. One stares at me with that empty, clicking gaze. He and his fellows wear the Empress’s red and white livery over their armor, but they still smell like rusty guano.

“I must find the water closet, please.”

“That way,” the bird-headed guard says, pointing his pike down the hall. No matter how often I hear them speak, I can’t get used to the human voice emitted by that clacking bird-beak.

The dark magic that made him is palpable. I hope he can’t feel my magic, even though I’m not using it just yet. What will happen when I speak the love charm? I suppress a shiver.

I hurry down the corridor, my heeled shoes clattering on the marble, dulled only by the sounds of yet more clocks. They’re everywhere here, as well—clocks with ornate, gilded frames, with skeletal faces, or bodies like rearing horses. Portraits and tapestries nestle between them as if incidental to the décor.

Floating everlights beckon me down the corridor toward an ornate arch. The edge of a dark coat whispers round the corner. I want to shout at Hal to wait, but I know that would be foolhardy for us both.

I look back down the hall toward the Guard. The arches and columns block all but the tip of his beak and pike. If I keep to this side of the hall and move quietly, he won’t hear me. I slip off my clacking heels and creep past the door to the water closet. I just pray no one comes at me. I’ll have to throw a shoe at them before I can get my hands free. And even if I can get my hands free, I’m not sure what I could do. The Novice’s Guide didn’t say much about defensive magic, unfortunately.

The marble freezes my toes before I finally slip into the alcove. The heavy mahogany door is open, and I stop to read the words carved over the lintel. CHAMBER OF CURIOSITIES. Around the winged clock face of the Ineffable Watchmaker are carved these words: “Glory to Him, who endureth forever, and in whose hands are the keys of unlimited Pardon and unending Punishment.”

Unending punishment. That doesn’t sound nice at all. The image of the Creeping Waste sifts into my mind, but I banish it firmly. A Chamber of Curiosities. How can I help but be curious?

Besides, Hal disappeared in here just a moment ago. I must talk to him privately, no matter the cost.

I listen at the crack of the door for just a moment, shifting my shoes into one hand. I slide in and try to shut the door without letting it latch completely. I pride myself on being quieter than a mouse.

Then I turn. And nearly scream.

Shoes clatter to the floor as I cringe from the giant white beast looming above me. It’s nearly three times my height and with paws easily large enough to crush my head with one blow. Huge, yellowed teeth protrude from its black gums. I brace for the killing blow. Then I notice the dust on its muzzle, the cobwebs strung from head to shoulders. A plate reads Ursus maritimus in the Old Scientific tongue.

Light flares above my head, threatening me with brilliant pain. Instinctively, I raise my palms against it and hold it in abeyance. And then I see how to dissolve it. So, I do. Perhaps I’m better at this than I thought.

“Vespa?” Hal whispers, stalking toward me out of the shadows.

“Who else?” I ask. I can’t look into his eyes as they scan me from head to toe, so I look aside at the room instead. The light reveals things I’ve never imagined. Nearest me is a globe of a world I’ve never seen, maps of countries—Africa? China?—I’ve never heard of before. I scan city names until a familiar one jars me. London. On the river . . . Thames?

And then I understand. This is a chamber of wonders from Old London, the place we’re never to speak of in polite company, the place we all came from but know so little about. There’s a handbill for a lecture given by Charles Darwin at the Royal Academy of Sciences. A portrait shows him with a white beard in a plain dark suit. Not at all like the paintings I’ve seen of him in green robes and halo, surrounded by mythical apes. The sacrilege astounds me.

Hal glares at me. The circulating everlight in the room makes the powder on his hair and face glitter. He looks like an angry sugarplum, but I’m too hurt to laugh.

“Vespa, why in Athena’s name are you following me? Do you realize how much trouble you could get us both into if we’re discovered?”

I feel small and stupid, but I won’t let him see that. I lift my chin. “I needed to speak to you.”

“Well, what do you want?” He turns away and I follow him past skeletons and revolvers, lockets and tea cozies, past a case with a book inside it with Holy Bible embossed on its cover in gold letters. Why it’s not properly named the Holy Scientific Bible as all of ours are, I don’t know. This place gives me the chills.

“You promised you would come to me. Where have you been?” I know I sound like a peevish child, and it makes me even more cross and agitated than I already am.

The edges of his mouth fall into a frown as he inspects one of the cases nearest us. “There have been many matters that begged my attention. Not the least of which is staying alive to protect you.”

“What do you mean?”

I can’t see him perfectly in this light, but his hands are burned and there’s a scrape on his cheek that didn’t come from a valet wight with an unwieldy razor. “What happened?” I reach for him without thinking. I touch his face for only a moment, before he turns his cheek and leans away from me. My fingers slide down into his collar.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he says. His voice is flat and dangerous, a tone I’ve never heard from him before.

Before he can protest, I step into him and drag his head down to mine. “Can I do this?” I whisper, brushing my lips against his. I am startled at my own audacity, but I long to enter that golden country we knew before. Magic sparks along my skin.

“No!” he cries. He seizes my shoulders and sets me aside, hard, against a wall. A giant painting looms over me, a portly, sashed queen frowning at me as the frame cuts into my lower back. Then, the painting and the wall on which it hangs vanish. I fall backward.

“Hal!” I clutch at him, my feet sliding over the edge.

His fingers catch in the folds of my skirt, just as my feet find solid ground. I look behind me. The wall has dissolved and I’m in some kind of lift. Elegant mirrors reflect Hal slowly releasing me. There’s a gear box with controls; steam hisses and machinery clinks outside the compartment.

Hal steps inside with me.

“What is this?” I ask.

He looks at the controls, touching the polished levers. He ignores what went on just before and I don’t know what to say, how to tell him all the words bubbling up inside my chest. The scent of burned bone nearly gags me.

“It smells of the Refinery in here,” he says. “I wonder . . .”

He works the levers. The wall slides closed again and we are falling, humming down toward the saints only know what.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding answers, I hope.” He stands with his back to me.

I put my hand on his arm. I must make him look at me. I must make him see me.

“Hal, what is happening between us? I thought . . .”

He looks down at me and I realize just how much taller he is than me.

“Is it because of the gown?” I ask. “I know I look different, but I’m still me. . . .”

His eyes are so cold, so distant. I remember thinking I had never seen blue eyes so warm when first we met, and now I can only think how cold they are. He will freeze me to the floor if I look at him much longer.

Behind the glacial chill lurks a shadow, a whisper, something he’s not saying. He turns, though, before I can apprehend the unspoken.

“I . . .” He swallows, staring at the wall. “I made a mistake I should not have made. I must do my duty and only train you as a colleague, not. . .” He pauses, weighing words. “It is unfair to you to treat you otherwise.”

All my dreams—all the secret wishes I can’t even admit to myself—go up in smoke. Perhaps that’s why the smell of burning is almost choking. It’s my heart smoldering in my chest like burning paper. “Did I misapprehend your intentions?” I don’t know how he hears me above the whistling gears.

Hal turns, his face so tight it could shatter, his eyes cavernous with those unspoken things. “I can’t be with you in that way. Don’t you see that I can’t?”

I close my eyes before he can say more and I feel him turn away. I can’t tell if the punch to my gut is from the desolation that sweeps me or the lift settling and stopping. Something rises up in me—a stubbornness. I will not let him have the satisfaction of seeing my pain. I square my shoulders and lift the mask to my face, hoping it’ll shade the tears glimmering in my eyes.

“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?