“Must be dealt with. And I thought it best that you do the dealing.”
“Of course, Father. It will be done.”
Mr. Bennet nodded just once, wordless, and headed for the north wing. Elizabeth went to the stairs.
She was barely aware of the steps under her feet, and the grunts and thumps and hammering from the halls below went unheard. All she could think of was Dr. Keckilpenny and what she could—and couldn’t—say to him.
She’d tried to see him the day before, during a brief lull between breaches. She’d found the door to the attic locked, and she lacked the nerve to knock. She’d laughed about it to herself as she’d gone back downstairs to face another onslaught. The dreadfuls she could face. But a man for whom her feelings were . . . complicated? That she ran from.
Only she couldn’t run from it now.
The door to the attic was still locked. She rapped on it firmly.
“Dr. Keckilpenny! It’s Elizabeth Bennet! I need to speak to you!”
There was no answer from the other side of the door. No sound at all.
Elizabeth knocked again.
“Doctor! Please! It’s urgent!”
Still nothing.
Elizabeth could hear the noises from downstairs. Shrieks and the scuffling of feet.
She pounded on the door with both fists.
“Dr. Keckilpenny! Are you there? Are you all right? Answer me!”
When there was no response, Elizabeth stepped back for a kick that she hoped would break open the door. She knew it was worse than futile: Damage the knob and lock, and the room beyond would be useless as a hiding place. But what choice was there?
And she had to know about the doctor. Would it end with him so embittered toward her that he’d actually leave her to the dreadfuls? Or could it be that he wasn’t up there at all? Perhaps he’d engineered his own escape, abandoned them, just like Master Hawksworth.
The thought of the Master gave her the rage she needed. No lock was going to stop her. She swiveled on her right foot and drew up her left just as steps started down the stairs on the other side of the door.
A moment later, the key rattled in the lock, and the door opened. Not wide. Just a crack. Then the footsteps began again. And by the time Elizabeth was inside, at the bottom of the stairs, Dr. Keckilpenny was nearly at the top.
He hadn’t said a word to her.
It was words she’d always liked best about the man. He had so many, and never quite the ones she expected. She found herself longing for a few of them even now, as the sound of fighting grew louder from the ground floor and she climbed to the attic with her hand on her sword.
Mr. Smith spoke to her first.
“Buh ruhz,” he growled. “Buh ruhz!”
He was in his usual position, standing with arms thrown back behind him as he strained against the shackles that held him in place. He was noticeably more decayed, however, his skin blotchy and bloated, peeling away here and there to reveal glistening sinew and bone beneath. A family of flies had discovered him, it seemed, for the right side of his face was aswarm with maggots.
“Buh ruhzzzzzz . . . buh ruhzzzzz.”
“Good day to you, Mr. Smith. And you, as well, Doctor. I must admit, I’m disappointed to find your pupil’s vocabulary unexpanded.”
Elizabeth winced at her own words. Death was at their door—quite literally—and here she was chattering away like it was just another guest come for high tea.
She stepped toward Mr. Smith.
“Yes, alas, our friend’s diction is no better,” Dr. Keckilpenny said, his own voice weary and rough. “Yet I find that I understand him now, all the same.”
Elizabeth stopped. “You do?”
There was only one small window in the attic, set high near the arching rafters, and the doctor was standing directly beneath it. The rays of sunlight caught only the topmost curls of his unkempt hair, leaving the rest of him little more than a faint gray silhouette.
“Perfectly,” he said. “I’ve already done some of your work for you. Hadn’t you noticed?”
He spread out his hands and cocked his head, and it took Elizabeth a moment to work out what he was referring to.
“Your trunk . . . the dead soldier . . .”
The doctor nodded. “Gone. I dragged him down to the second floor and pushed him out a window last night. I’ve overheard enough talk in the hall to know that sort of thing’s all the rage. And seeing as I didn’t need a spare anymore—”
A chill rippled across Elizabeth’s shoulders. “What do you mean you were doing my work for me?”
“You’ve been sent to kill my subjects, haven’t you?” Dr. Keckilpenny said. “I’m afraid, if you mean to see it through, you’ll have to kill me as well.”
Elizabeth laughed joylessly, and her fingers suddenly felt slick on the hilt of her katana, her grip unsure.
“Oh, come now, Doctor! Histrionics don’t suit you. You must face this with cold logic, as befits a man of science. Your experiment has run its course, and now necessity demands—”
“So that’s truly how you see me?” the doctor cut in. “A creature of unfeeling intellect without the passion even for a little melodrama when faced with his own failure? Failures, I should say because, by gad, the plural is called for here. No wonder you said I was . . . what was it? Only half a good man?”
Elizabeth was glad, at that moment, that she couldn’t make out the doctor’s face in the gloom of the room. She was sure to see pain she’d put there herself. And that pained her.
“I owe you an apology, Doctor. I spoke far too harshly.”
“Indeed, you greatly underestimated me. I am, at the very least, two-thirds of a good man, if not even three-quarters.” Dr. Keckilpenny chortled at his own joke, but the sound quickly turned into a snort of disgust. “I am an arrogant ass. I came here with the temerity to think I would accomplish what no one else could. All I ended up doing was what so very, very many have done before me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, I went and lost my heart. Who’d have thought I even had one to begin with? It was my mind people always thought I was losing. And then . . . I guess you could say I lost all the rest of me as well.”
The doctor stepped closer, shrugging off his cutaway coat as he came. His movements were stiff, deliberate, and as he moved forward into the light Elizabeth could see how pale and sweaty was his face.
He stopped a few feet from her, dangerously close to Mr. Smith. Yet the dreadful paid no attention to him. Its hungry gaze stayed only on her.
Dr. Keckilpenny tossed his coat aside and began rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. It was stained reddish black, and once it was up over the elbow, Elizabeth could see why.
She gasped.
His upper arm was bloody and mangled, with a chunk ripped away as large as her fist. The flesh ringing the wound had turned purple, and the rest of the arm was as gray and mottled as marble.
“When?” was all Elizabeth could say.
“Not long after our little talk up here with Master Hercules or Lord Samson or whatever his name is. My better—or at least bigger—half. I was trying to interest Smithy in a game of whist and I grew careless, and the ingrate bit me. After all I’ve done for him! I suppose I could’ve gone down to see Dr. Thorne about it. I find I’ve grown rather attached to my limbs, though, ho ho, and the survival rate of the doctor’s patients hardly inspires confidence. And, well, I suppose my pride wouldn’t allow—”
A deafening crash echoed up the stairwell, followed by frenzied shouts and a long, piercing screech.
“Buh ruhz!” Mr. Smith howled as if in answer, and he tried to charge at Elizabeth, his feet slapping and sliding over the floorboards even as he went nowhere. “Buuuuhhhhhh ruuuuuuuhhhhzzzzzz!”
“Yes, yes—the lady has them in abundance, and quite luscious they are, too,” Dr. Keckilpenny said. “‘Brains,’ he’s saying, Miss Bennet. Buhrain-uhz. I know it because I can hear the call, as well, though the plague hasn’t fully taken me yet. It’s really a rather delicious irony: It was your mind I was attracted to from the beginning. My longing’s just growing a little too literal.”