The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 23

Syrus leads us out of the garden, across an old pasture, and into the eaves of the Forest. He hesitates a moment before choosing a path. The moon weaves odd shadows through the naked branches. There is much creaking and scraping, and far off, a lonely howl that sets Syrus shaking.

Charles is an ever-present menace behind us with his cursed soul jar. I’m reeling with what’s come to pass, even as I’m angry at myself for not being more careful. We should have waited longer or I should have tried to go alone. But since Charles infiltrated the Architects and has known everything all along, perhaps it never would have mattered. He has us all at his mercy.

I rub the toad and pebble together in my pocket. They make a sound like a cricket singing. I’ve been trying since the moment the Wad revealed himself to summon up energy of the sort Bayne used to rescue me from the Imperial Refinery, wondering if I could transport Syrus in the same way.

But there’s nothing inside me. I don’t know how to make the magic work. I am so angry and frustrated I could scream.

I don’t know exactly what Charles means about the werehound bite, but after a while, Syrus is limping.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“I broke into the Lowtown Refinery. A werehound bit me.” There’s pain in his tone deeper than just the fact of the wound.

“Why did you go and do a foolish thing like that?”

He looks aside at me. “Because you wouldn’t help me. I had to try to get my family out somehow.”

I blanch, glad for the cover of darkness. I pull the old scarf closer about me. “Your family is locked in the Refinery?”

“Yes. With a bunch of other Tinkers. They turned my people into werehounds, too.”

His words clip off like there’s more that he just can’t bear to say. It strikes me how vulnerable he is. I can’t bear to tell him what I saw in the Imperial Refinery—the Tinkers being shoved into the boiler and made into wights. What if those people were his family?

“You’re very brave,” I say, “to have gone in after them like that.”

“Thanks.” He wipes his nose. I see the glimmer of snot or tears.

What he says next stabs me to the heart. “If you have so much power, why don’t you use it now to get us out of this?”

I realize he is just questioning the truth as he sees it, just as I did with Bayne many a time. I swallow an angry retort. “I’m trying. It’s just . . . I really don’t know how.”

Syrus snorts. “Figures.”

“Quiet!” Charles says behind us. “I have ways of stitching your mouths shut, you know.”

I very nearly turn and run back to punch him in the face, but I don’t. Yet it’s as if he hears my thoughts for, suddenly, Charles yanks me backward and closes his fist around mine.

“Enough of that,” he hisses.

I pull my hand from his grip.

“Be assured I can turn you to dust if I choose,” he says in my ear.

“Well, why don’t you?” I say. My destiny seems to be dust, no matter what I do. The stench of his breath makes me want to gag. “Why all the games? Just do it and have done!”

He releases my hand and steps back, far enough out of reach that I can’t punch him as I’d like.

“Whether I like it or not, I need you. But only for a little while longer. After that, you’re of no further use to me. Now move along.”

I turn and continue behind Syrus. We’re on a narrow part of the trail, so I get as close behind him as I can without stepping on his heels. “When the time comes,” I whisper to the back of his head, “you run like mad and get Bayne.”

He nods slightly, enough to show me he’s heard.

The rest of the walk is a grim march through moonlight. The wraith stumbles over roots and breaks limbs, his breath as heavy and ungainly as his shambling, and it makes me sick to the core. Though I joked that Charles was capable of much evil, I never guessed that he would be far more powerful or dastardly than anything my vivid imagination could conceive. He was always a nuisance, a thief of my father’s attention and time, but the sheer malevolence of his designs astonishes me. And what is the ultimate goal? To build some Engine that will take him back to Old London? Whatever for?

At last, Syrus stops at the edge of a clearing.

“Here,” he whispers.

I can see a bit of a mound, covered with bracken and tumbled flint that glows softly in the moonlight. A ticking sound, a little tick tock tock that reminds me of the clocks whirring in the Empress’s Tower, scurries under the noise of wind in the branches. My cheeks are so cold now that I press the scarf against them. I can’t feel my ears. I allow myself to wish for only a brief second that Bayne could be here with me.

I stare into the darkness of the Manticore’s den. Charles tells his men to surround the clearing, and they go stomping off. I can’t believe the Manticore isn’t awake and already ripping out their throats.

“Now,” Charles says to me, “it’s your turn. Lure her out and the men will chain her and bring her back to Virulen.”

I’m about to protest, but Charles grabs Syrus by the collar. He’s fingering the lid of his horrid jar with the other. “You don’t want to be responsible for a boy wraith, do you? Summon the Manticore!”

I think wildly about our options. If I could get the jar from Charles, could I use it on him? If I can summon the Manticore, can I convince her to kill him and not me and Syrus? I don’t know.

Charles shoves me out of the trees. Faintly from somewhere behind me, I hear singing—a boy’s voice. Syrus. I stumble for several paces before I fall to the ground on my hands and knees. Twigs and gravel and . . . bones? . . . dig into my palms. The ticking grows louder and there’s a glow like the sun come to earth. My heart slams into my mouth. I crouch in a ball, all my vicious anger at Charles draining into a terrifying déjà vu. I am as I was before the Sphinx and this time there is no one to save me.

I look up and the Manticore smiles at me.

There are three rows of iron teeth behind that smile, but it’s the ticking that draws my eyes. Her clockwork heart burns with a spectral fire in her chest.

The Manticore’s voice is a chiming bell. In her song, I hear the shape of words, but they wash over me in waves of liquid silver. I cannot understand them.

The men creep forward with their chains. I’ve betrayed her. I’ve betrayed everything that I’m just beginning to believe in. I sob.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” I babble it over and over as if I’m only seven instead of seventeen.

And then her eyes look into mine. By the light of her heart they are blue, bluer than any ocean or sky or flower I’ve ever seen, bluer even than Bayne’s eyes just before we kissed. And I can’t hear anything. All is still.

Fierce compassion washes over me, a feeling I always expected to feel during the long masses to the saints, but never quite did. She understands me with a deep knowing that I can’t even begin to fathom.

“Why?” I whisper.

Syrus’s voice breaks through the stillness. “She says you must return the Heart to its rightful owner,” he calls.

“What?” I say. “How can you understand her but I can’t?”

“I understand their language,” Syrus says. “All the Tinkers used to be able to do it, but now I’m the only one left.” I hear a bit of a scuffle that involves Charles cursing and then I hear Syrus retort, “Do you want the Heart or not?”

I daren’t look back. The Manticore’s smile grows.

Then, Syrus is next to me. “Just because you know magic doesn’t mean you know everything,” he says, grinning. I suppose he’s right about that.

“So, what is she saying?” I ask.

He tells me quick and low about the Beast in the Well, Tianlong, whose empty chest is just below the Museum observatory and to whom the Heart rightfully belongs.

I think of that iron-gated stairwell that leads deep into the bowels of the Museum and the breathing I once heard there. A place I’ve never been . . . where I thought the Grue might be hiding.

“Under the Museum observatory, you mean?”

The Manticore dips her head. “Then, let’s go now and give it back,” I say.

She shakes her head.

Syrus listens and says something in a low, musical language in response. “She has a score to settle at Virulen,” he whispers to me.

A score to settle? Ah, yes. Virulen killed the Manticore’s child.

Charles’s men are trying to creep closer while we’re distracted; the chains clink coldly in their hands.

The Manticore’s tail lifts, and the barbed tips drip with poison.

“Stop!”

The men do, but Charles orders them to move on.

Syrus shouts: “She will not hesitate to kill you if you come closer. She says she will be led only by Vespa.”

“And why is it no one can hear this conversation but you?” Charles says. “Take her!”

The Manticore stands protectively over us and before I can even blink, I hear the snick-snack of poisoned barbs launching themselves at the men. Several of them fall dead, including the poor wraith.

I use the distraction to my advantage.

“Run!” I scream at Syrus. He leaps away. I see a brief tussle through the trees, and then a white werehound streaks away faster than a limping human should be able to run.

Charles strides up to me and slaps me so hard I fall to the ground.

I can’t understand why the Manticore doesn’t kill him.

“Kill him now!” I say. “Then you can go free!”

But the Manticore just shakes her head.

“What? Why?” I ask. I’m seeing stars and my mouth goes all coppery with blood.

“She won’t kill me,” Charles says, smirking. He opens the jar just a little bit. The Manticore’s grin becomes a grimace.

“I can take her soul before you kill me,” he says to the Manticore. “And if I die, you will never be able to retrieve her soul again. You will lose your precious witch, which we both know you sorely need for your misguided plan.”

The Manticore growls like a lion.

“Charles, just let me lead her back to Virulen, please?” I say. I am horrified at the thought that all the people he may have stolen souls from might never get them back. Somehow, there has to be a way. Somehow, there must be a way to free them and give them peace. I just hope I have time to find out how.

Charles doesn’t want to cave to me, but we are at an impasse. I shiver against the cold ground and stand up slowly. He throws a chain at me and turns away.

“I suppose we’ll have to find our own way back now that your Tinker brat has deserted you,” he says.

“I suppose,” I say.

My mouth is swelling. It’s hard to talk around my swollen cheek.

“Don’t think he will bring some miraculous salvation. There is none.”

I don’t say anything.

“Lead the way.” He gestures that we should go forward. I lift the chain to wrap it around the Manticore’s neck, and I nearly sob again when she bows her head and lets me do it.

We walk together, she and I, with Charles and his dark jar coming behind.

When we finally reach the estate, Charles lowers the nullwards just long enough for the Manticore to step into the garden. Then he directs us to the old Refinery doors.

I lead the Manticore inside, afraid he’ll shut us both in together, half-hoping that he will. I’d rather await my doom with the Manticore than have to go inside and pretend to smile and curtsy. Stars wink over the broken dome, and faint moonlight rustles the dark ivy that’s crept down inside the walls. Crumbling catwalks circle the upper level. A blasted boiler and its pieces are strewn across one end of the floor, and the sunburst motif in the center of the floor is broken and blackened almost beyond recognition.

Silver bolts have been driven through intact parts of the tiles.

“Chain her to the floor,” Charles says. He’s almost purring with satisfaction.

I look to the Manticore for confirmation, and she nods in assent. The chain is heavy and nevered and I worry that it will burn her, but she crouches low and allows me to slide the chain over her velvet fur. She smells of rosemary where she passed through the garden.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “Are you sure there’s not another way?”

Again that shake of her great head and that swelling of compassion and assurance.

I try to make the chains as loose as I can without bringing down condemnation from Charles. But he’s so satisfied with himself, he doesn’t notice. He escorts me out of the dilapidated Refinery.

Before I can get away from him, he grabs my arm with his free hand.

I try to shrug him off, but he holds me fast. My limbs deaden; I can’t move. My heart jumps around like a panicked rabbit.

He leans so close to me that I smell the carrion of his breath.

“I have known about you for a long time, Miss Nyx. Your misfortune is most certainly my gain.”

“You pushed me through the field that day.” Bayne had been right.

Charles nods, smiling at his own cleverness. “It seemed the proper thing—if you were a witch, you would survive and be of great use. If not . . .”

“You would be rid of me,” I finish through gritted teeth.

“I sometimes wish I had been wrong about you. Then, I’d have been rid of a nuisance a long time ago. But that is all by the by now, I suppose. And I will soon be through with you.”

“Once you have the Heart?” I ask.

“Yes,” he almost hisses. His flat eyes appraise me, and I’d almost swear a serpent’s tongue passes over his lips.

“You aren’t . . .” Human is what I want to say, but he shakes me, hard, before I can.

“Ah ah, not yet, little witch. Not yet.” He draws himself up, and when he speaks I recognize the cadence of magic in his voice even if I can’t feel it. “You will remember everything, but you will speak of it with neither your lips nor your hands to anyone.”

And then his lips are on mine, sealing them shut with the stench of death.

Tears of fury leak from my eyes, but the kiss is mercifully brief, though it can never be brief enough. It is as different from Bayne’s kiss as day is from night. My cheek throbs with pain, as though he’s just hit me again.

“Believe me,” he says, when he pulls back, wiping his lips on his shirtsleeve, “I didn’t enjoy it either. Only way to make the spell work.”

“You . . . you . . .” I try to curse him, but I can’t. I can say nothing evil against him, not even a filthy name.

He watches with a slow-curving smile.

“Now, off you go,” he says.

I run into the house and all the way to my room, scrubbing at my lips until they bleed. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel right again. I can’t understand where my magic has gone, and now it seems, Charles has also stolen my will.

All I can see in my mind is the Princess on her dais, her lips sewn shut by a powerful spell—seeing all, knowing all, but unable to say a word.