“I think someone pushed me through the field the other day. I think they wanted to see what would happen to me.” I think again of Charles’s horrid smirk and shudder.
“Someone was trying to test you.”
“But why would it matter? What could they gain? And how could they have done it when no one but a fussy woman was standing next to me?”
“The answer to all those questions is simply this: magic. And if you are still unschooled, as I’m quite sure you are, you’re vulnerable. Your power is therefore accessible to any warlock or witch unscrupulous enough to seize it.”
I shrink against the seat. Accessible? Unscrupulous? “But I thought—”
“What? That we are all dead or exiled beyond the walls of this fair City? That only Architects are heretics, as you call us?” A bitter smile thins his lips. “I think you can see that is not the case. Forbidden as it may be, there are still some few of us who practice. And even fewer still who practice for the greater good.”
There’s an edge to his voice, a hidden dagger behind his words. Something wounds him. I can’t help it. “Who are you, really?” I ask.
There’s a breath, a tightening of his expression. How many glamours can one warlock possess?
“Who you see before you,” he says carefully.
“Pedant Lumin.”
He scowls. “Who I am does not matter. What you are, though—that is everything.”
“Why?” I whisper. Why should I matter so much? I am no one. My father is important, perhaps, to Men of Science. I think about my desire to be the first successful female Pedant and nearly laugh out loud. That especially will now be denied me.
“Because you are the catalyst. With your power, all kinds of things are possible. That frightens people, makes them greedy, all sorts of things.”
“But I don’t know how to use it. I don’t know what it means.”
He smiles. “We shall have to remedy that, Miss Nyx.”
I chew my lip, looking at the fading magenta lantern in his hand. I make my decision. “Vespa,” I say.
“Vespa.” He says my name as if it’s a spell or a holy charm, something blessed. The lantern dissolves into magenta butterflies which float lazily around the carriage until they disappear.
Saint Darwin and all his apes! What am I doing? I must not let this happen!
Just then, the carriage lurches to a halt and the driver cries out that we’ve arrived.
Hal opens the door onto the choking stench of Lowtown. It stinks of sewage and tanneries and the ever-present odor of burning bone from the nearby Refinery. He climbs out first, making sure the stairs are stable. Then he gives me his hand. “Miss,” he bows, and that rakish grin tricks a smile from me, no matter how much I’d just sworn myself against it.
Arthur Rackham’s is just along the alley, thank the Ineffable Watchmaker. Bells announce us when I open the door. A thin, bewhiskered man sits at the counter, a jeweler’s monocle over one eye. His mouth is pursed like a prune as he wipes blue grease over the guts of a tarnished, compasslike object.
“Whassis?” he says. He swings to look at us, his eye hideously magnified by his monocle. Next to him on the counter squats a small jar with a lid that looks a bit like a grinning mouth. I suppress a shiver of disgust.
“A missive for you, from Pedant Malcolm Nyx, Head of the Museum of Unnatural History and my father,” I say. I’m pleased at how steadily I manage to say it. Hal wanders over to a wall of shelves.
Arthur Rackham nods, grumbling. He puts down the thing he’s working on and fingers a greasy rag before taking the letter. The neverseal sighs as he breaks it open. He unrolls the letter and reads it so slowly that I join Hal.
“Do you see?” he whispers.
I notice that the wall is blurry, rather like his glamour has been at times.
“Look beyond,” he says.
The usual sorts of permissible antiquities are here—soap dishes, soup tureens, tarnished spoons, chamber pots, and moldering portraits. I look beyond them, behind them. The wall of shelves shimmers like silk. Through it, I see vials of things with labels so dusty I can barely read them. I glance at Rackham, but he’s still poring over the letter, sounding out every word in hisses and whispers through his broken teeth.
I reach through the illusion (for so it must be) and smudge one vial with a fingertip. Philtre d’Amour. Thick tomes murmur to themselves. Hexogony. Curses and Charms of the First Order. I touch the spine of the last one, about to pull it off the shelf. A little dark spark jumps from the cover, colder even than the nevered strongbox.
“Careful.” Hal looks as though he wants to grab my hand, but he doesn’t.
“This is a hexshop, isn’t it?”
He nods slightly.
I’ve heard rumors of such places, shops where heretics and the desperate go to obtain forbidden magics. Naturally, I’ve never been to such a place before and I can’t imagine why my father would send me here now. What does my father, a Rational Man of Science, want in a place like this?
Rackham clears his throat and we return to the counter. The strange silver object near Rackham’s hand trembles. One of its delicate arms sweeps toward me, pointing like a compass finding its true north.
The old man stares at the quivering needle and then up at me. His eyes narrow and an ugly grin splits his face. He looks rather like the jacklanterns people still carve for the Carnival of Saints.
“You tell your ole dad that what he’s looking for is right in front of him. If you make it that far.”
“I beg your pardon?” I say.
The letter begins to unravel in a hiss of spitting green sparks between us and I can’t help but jump.
When I look up, Rackham is staring at me. I feel as though I’ve once again opened Father’s office door and the Waste is stirring, stirring in the strongbox on the desk, sand spilled from an hourglass waiting to spell doom.
He reaches forward and grips my wrist. I’d almost swear the dark jar chuckles at me. “You know very well what I mean, witch!” He spits the last word as though it’s a curse.
“Here now,” Hal says. “Unhand her this instant!”
I struggle against the man’s greasy grip. All I can think is that I want to be free, that this man is hurting me and therefore deserves harm himself. Before I realize what’s happening, heat crackles in my wrist. An invisible tentacle of energy snaps and Rackham yelps and releases me.
I cover my surprise with a smirk and we make our way out, only to be confronted by a group of ruffians firmly intent on subduing us. Their faces are hard; their eyes gleaming. I don’t know if they’ve been summoned or simply take us for easy marks. Hal brushes my elbow with his fingertips as they approach. Even through coat and sleeve, his touch is like a divining rod striking a deeply imbedded river far beneath my skin.
I’m in trouble, both from within and without.
CHAPTER 10
Syrus may have been a Gatherer, but finding a witch in a city that forbade magic was quite a bit different than finding midnight morels. He had searched for many days, not sure how to identify the witch he sought. He chewed at a toothpick he’d swiped from a gin palace, swaggering down an alley toward a hexshop he knew. It would never do to look out of place or afraid here. He hoped Rackham would have some information that might lead him in the proper direction in exchange for the cursed toad. Perhaps there’d be enough coin for a pork pie, to boot.
Dark figures clotted the alley ahead not far from the hexshop door. It looked as though some rookery thugs had gotten the notion of a payday off some Uptowners. Syrus crept closer. Crates stacked by a permanently sealed door afforded cover and vantage. He spat out his toothpick and climbed them as quietly as he could, but his foot slipped on a broken slat. He peeped out from under a line of sad, gray laundry, heart crowding his throat. But all attention was focused on the two beleagured Uptowners—no one heard.