I stare at the steep street filled with people going about their business and long for a life as uncomplicated as theirs.
Aunt Minta’s arm steals around my waist as her chin presses softly into my shoulder. I grit my teeth, imagining what she would say if she knew what I’m clutching in my fist.
“Come inside, darling,” she says. The compassion in her voice is almost more than I can bear; she melts my resistance.
“I should be with him,” I say, nodding toward Father’s retreating figure.
“I know it seems that way,” she says. “But your father is right; it’s getting time for you to lay childhood aside and think about your future.”
She ushers me back through the door and into the hallway with its glowing everlanterns. Even during the day, the lanterns are needed to dispel the eternal gloom of the Refineries. They say every city isn’t like this. Scientia is brilliant with light because of the prevailing winds off the Winedark Sea. Euclidea, which was halfway between New London and Scientia, was once green and rich with hanging gardens before the Waste swallowed it whole.
Aunt Minta draws me from such gloomy thoughts into the parlor where the radiators hiss with myth-made steam. She’s had a fire laid on too, for she knows how much I love the crackle-dance of true flame. I’ve heard that my mother loved such things too—Father told me so once when I was little and stared too long at the flames. I think again of the lost toad, the only thing I had from her, with a morose sigh. Aunt Minta pats the settee beside her and takes out her tatting as I sit. I watch, trying not to twist my hands in my lap.
“I’m making this for your trousseau,” Aunt Minta says, smiling. “It’ll make a beautiful collar on a dressing gown.”
“Aunt Minta . . .” I begin.
She looks at me sharp as the needle she’s holding in her hand.
“You heard your father, darling. We need to start thinking about these things.”
“Did my mother think about them?”
Aunt Minta’s lips crimp ever so slightly. She doesn’t like talking about my mother. No one does, actually. I learned that when I was very small.
“Well, of course she did, dear. She married your father, didn’t she?”
I can hardly imagine my own dear father bestirring himself from his laboratory or experiments long enough to notice anyone. “And she was a proper lady?”
The fire snaps through the long silence.
“But of course, dear,” Aunt Minta finally says. “Your father was quite enchanted with her.”
It’s a rather odd thing to say, considering the position of the Church on enchantments. “Yes,” I ask, “but did your family approve of her? I mean, were they happy with the marriage?”
Another knot, another loop pulled tight. “It was approved by the Imperial Matchmaker and done with all the proper forms,” she says at last.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
She looks up at me with that same sharpness. “Why are you asking these questions? Have you someone in mind already? Someone you fear is unsuitable?”
“I . . . just wanted to know about Mother,” I say softly.
“She found her place. As will you,” my aunt says. She reaches into her tatting basket and hands me an extra shuttle and thread. She pats my shoulder as my fingers fumble, trying to remember the patterns of knots I’d mercifully forgotten since the last time I resisted her teaching. “Don’t worry so much about it all, dear. We’ll help you. Once we finally get you out into Society, I know the perfect match will appear.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” I ask. “Or what if it’s someone Father disapproves of?” Or someone I disapprove of? No one really seems to care about that.
She nods toward the shuttle. “First things first. Learn to be a lady. The rest will take care of itself.”
CHAPTER 8
Syrus waited until the next night to return to the trainyard. If this was truly a Cull, the Guard wouldn’t have waited around very long. They would have hurried their catch as quickly as possible to the Lowtown Refinery. But he also knew that a Guard had been lost following him, and while they surely wouldn’t waste time trying to find him, they might at the very least have spies posted around the trainyard just in case he should be foolish enough to return.
And, foolish though it might have been, he went back, because he knew his extended clan would expect it of him. Nothing would be done with the Reed clan’s passenger car until it was determined without a shadow of a doubt that all had been killed or taken. It was his duty as the remaining free member of the clan to dispose properly of the bodies.
He came when the cookfires leaped around the rusting wheels. There was no music and no laughter, and there wouldn’t be for a while. Uncle Gen had been right about it being a long time since the last Cull. Everyone had begun to think perhaps the Cityfolk no longer needed new bodies for their Refineries, that perhaps the clans could finally live in as much peace as they could expect.
Suddenly, Syrus hated them all for being so naive.
At the edge of the trainyard, he heard muted voices inside one of the passenger cars. The Thornishes were a new family, still without a clan, who lived on the edge of Tinkerville; no one knew them very well. A stewpot bubbled over an unattended fire; he guessed perhaps they’d gone inside to find salt or bowls or somesuch. He took none of the stew, but he did steal a shawl and old bloomers from their laundry line. He draped the shawl around his head and neck, then wrapped a branch with the bloomers. He set them alight in the fire and walked off before the Thornishes could find him.
He left whispering silence in his wake as he passed through the trainyard with the burning branch. No one spoke to him or tried to stop him. They all knew why he was here.
Syrus’s heart thundered, sure at any minute he’d be accosted by a Guard. He glanced toward the caved-in roofs of passenger cars and iron engines, searching for ravens, but there were none that he could see. When he came to his family’s former home, he saw Truffler sobbing by the steps.
The hob’s great nose was even larger then usual—swollen and red with his crying. Syrus ignored him and his clutching hands and went up the steps.
The smell was the first thing that hit him. That and the sound of buzzing flies. He held the torch as close to himself as he dared, so that he could only smell the scents of burning cloth and wood, only hear the crackle of fire eating linen.
He stayed longer than he needed in the entryway, looking at all the things still hanging there—the weapons, coats, and other implements left undisturbed by the Guard in their passing. Standing in this entryway, seeing everyone’s things and noting who was in and who wasn’t had always been how he’d known he was home. And yet this would never be his home again.
He took a deep breath, wrapping the shawl tightly around his nose and mouth. Then he stepped in.
A macabre landscape of twisted blankets and bodies spread before him—a foot here, a dead eye gleaming there. Syrus wanted to retch, but his body was entirely empty. He could think of nothing to say, nothing to do that would somehow honor the fallen. He thought of Granny Reed’s stories of roaming, vengeful spirits, and he felt sure that these spirits would haunt him forever. Unless he somehow managed to free those who had been taken to the Lowtown Refinery.
But to do that, he would need help. And to get help from the Manticore, he would need a witch.
Something glittered nearby in the torchlight as he swung it around, something that was neither an eye nor the mirrors some of his uncles had sewed onto their hunting jackets. He stooped and saw the thing clutched in a small, pale hand. The hand of his cousin Amalthea.
He pried the Architect’s summoning stone free from her palm.