The Unnaturalists

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.”

Syrus’s brain was ablaze with anger. He growled.

“Do you remember this?” Charles said. He patted the jar another man held for him.

No one said anything. He gestured for one of the men to come closer. He was a Tinker, someone who had left his clan to work for the Virulens a year or so ago. He refused to look Syrus in the eyes.

Charles flipped open the jar, and Syrus would have sworn the jar groaned like a starving animal.

Charles lifted his free hand and tugged. A white mist rose from the man’s head, streaming from him to the jar with barely a sound. Syrus watched his eyes go white and his shoulders slump, just like the dead Architects around the table.

He took his soul. A creeping horror shivered along Syrus’s limbs. And an anger so great that for a moment he was blind. Then, he felt it. The change rippling along his arms and back.

Charles shifted his grip to seize Syrus by the throat.

“Charles!” Vespa’s cry was strangled.

“Ah . . . how amusing! So the werehounds did get a taste of you. I had wondered the last time we met. How rich! Almost better than what I’d planned.”

He pulled Syrus to him. Syrus closed his eyes, clenching his teeth against the change. Charles’s breath was so foul he thought he might faint. Whispering moans from all the souls trapped in the jar made Syrus want to cry. How many of those were people he’d once known trapped within?

“No, no. I’ll not take you just yet. And you’ll not change now, do you understand?” A slow, deadening energy numbed Syrus’s senses, smothered his anger to a bare spark. “I have work for you to do that requires more consciousness than a wraith’s.”

He released Syrus, pushing him toward Vespa. She put her hands on his shoulders protectively. He wanted to sink back against her, as if she were one of his long-lost aunts, but he didn’t. “You will lead us to the Manticore now,” Charles continued. “And you, witch, will lure her to me. Or into the jar both your souls go.” He patted it before capping it.

Vespa stared at him. “You took that from Rackham, didn’t you?”

Charles’s grin looked ghastly in the half-lit shadows. “I can’t see how it matters, but yes.”

“Why, Charles? Why are you doing all this?” Vespa said. “My father has always been good to you. In time, he would have—”

The boy’s face hardened. “You will not interrogate me, witch. I will reveal my business all in good time. Enough talking. Move. And if you try to lead us into difficulty, Tinker boy, think again.”

He pushed them forward. The wraith who had once been a man shuffled along with the rest, as mindless and in thrall as the Tinkers at the Refineries.