Metal screamed in protest. It wasn’t any bomb, thrown from above; someone had jammed a stick into the machine itself. Bonecruncher, Dead Rick thought, through the ringing in his ears. He couldn’t hear the gears and rods grinding against one another, but through the haze he saw an entire section shudder to a halt.
It was as good a distraction as any. Dead Rick ran for the door, setting his teeth against the ghastly feel of the soul-fabric against his skin. Up the stairs—Blood and Bone; Eliza had followed him—where he shot the lock off the door at the top, and then he was back in the main room, this time at one end of the walkway.
Old Gadling stood nearest. Dead Rick transformed midleap, and the ease of it shocked him so much he bowled the thrumpin over and went sprawling himself. He’d eaten bread, of course—but even with that protection, he usually felt the iron, the mortal world frowning at his change.
Not here. Aside from the iron the constables had brought in, the prayers wielded as shields, he might have been on the most deserted moor in all of Yorkshire. As if nothing outside this building existed.
Nothing outside the fabric.
He rose to his paws in time to see Eliza wrestle Gadling over the walkway rail. The thrumpin fell with a surprised yell, and then Dead Rick moved on, past Gresh, past a faerie he didn’t recognize, toward the far wall, where Cerenel had lost his gun and was using a knife to drive Nithen up the other staircase. None of them mattered, except that they’d helped defend this atrocity; the only one who mattered was Nadrett. Dead Rick couldn’t carry water in this form, but his teeth would do well enough, if only he could find a target for them. Where did that bastard go?
Eliza went through one of the doorways; he followed close on her heels. The rooms on the far side were smaller, and they had Nadrett’s scent on them, but the master was nowhere to be found. Just tools, and cameras, and bits of machine, and a scrawny faerie cowering under a table, pleading for mercy.
And a room full of cages, twins to the ones Nadrett kept in the Goblin Market. These, too, were filled with people, and Dead Rick recognized two of them.
They wore the same face, and the same expressions of terror. But only one of them might be able to tell Dead Rick what he wanted to know. He shifted to man form and snapped, “Cyma! Where the bleeding ’ell is Nadrett?”
“He went back to the—”
Her words dissolved in a wail of horrified dismay. Unthinking, he had called her by her faerie name, and unthinking, she had answered. Louisa—the real Louisa—clutched her double’s shoulder, but it was too late; the symmetry of their appearances shattered, leaving behind one mortal girl and one former changeling.
Cyma gasped for air, clinging to Louisa and the side of the cage. Eliza pressed her hands to her mouth, staring at them both, and the expression on her face made Dead Rick feel a brief stab of guilt. I didn’t mean to do it. But it was too late now.
“Find a key,” he said to Eliza, and she began searching while he crouched down to grip the bars of the cage. “Cyma—Blood and Bone, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to tell me. I ain’t letting Nadrett get away. Where is ’e?”
She swallowed back tears and turned her pale face up far enough for him to see. “He went back to the Onyx Hall. Dead Rick, he’s going after Lune.”
The skriker’s heart stopped. He couldn’t even think of a curse vile enough to suffice. Lune—if Nadrett did anything to her—
Eliza threw a key to someone he could not see and dragged Dead Rick to his feet, breaking his paralysis. “I know where we can hire a cab. Come on.”
The Prince’s Court, Onyx Halclass="underline" September 2, 1884
I can’t die. Not now. Sweet mother of—oh Christ it ’urts—don’t let me die—
The earthquake went on and on, inside and out. Hodge wasn’t even trying to stand; he’d flung himself flat when the first tremor hit, pressing his body against the black stone of the floor, throwing every atom of his strength into the Onyx Hall. He could hear Lune’s scream in his head, a constant shriek of agony, never needing to pause for breath; his own throat was mute, paralyzed by pain.
He had just enough presence of mind to choke back the prayer that tried to form. Hodge wasn’t a praying man, never had been, save in the most extreme desperation—which most certainly described this moment. But he’d felt the extra strain when Christ’s name went through his mind, and he knew, with the part of him that was still capable of analysis, that his own battlefield piety might be the thing that broke them both, and destroyed the Onyx Hall for good.
Cracking splintering shattering collapse. The Academy, Hodge thought, and knew Lune was thinking of it, too; they must not lose the Academy, which held all the knowledge they might use to craft their salvation. They could surrender any part of the Hall but that one—the Academy, and the rooms that held Hodge and Lune. Like a man caught in a trap, Hodge amputated his own leg, knowing that if he didn’t he would die where he lay. And the blood, the life, poured out of him so fast he feared he would die anyway.
Not him. The Hall. The two spirits within the London Stone, Francis and Suspiria. He could neither hear nor feel them, but if Aspell was right, they were still there. And if they died—if their spirits were torn completely apart—
This is the one fucking thing I can do for this place. I can ’old it together. And I will. No matter ’ow much it ’urts.
And so he held.
The pain ended at last—the worst of it—and tears streamed without shame down his face. Still alive. I’m still alive, and so is the Hall—for now.
It was the smallest, most pathetic shred of victory. The iron chain had been linked together at last, the final pieces of rail laid down below Cannon Street. The Inner Circle Railway was complete.
It hadn’t destroyed them—not yet. But when the trains began to make their circuit, Hodge was a dead man. Him, and Lune, and the palace: they had not enough strength among them to survive it.
Those sons of bitches were early, too. The navvies weren’t supposed to lay the last bits of track until tomorrow; he’d thought Dead Rick and the others had just enough time to see what Nadrett was doing in West Ham. If that bastard actually had some way to make his own shelter, then this suffering could end at last.
Now he wasn’t even sure he would live to see tomorrow.
The stone beneath him had spiderwebbed into a thousand pieces. His hand trembled with palsy as he pressed it against the shattered fragments, trying to push himself up—not to his feet, that was out of the question, but at least as far as his knees. There was no strength in his arm. When he heard the door open, running footsteps approach him, Hodge almost wept with relief; then Dead Rick hauled him upright, and the panic in the skriker’s eyes killed that relief entirely.
“’E’s after Lune,” Dead Rick said, fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. “But I don’t know where she is. You ’as to tell us.”
Lune. And Nadrett. How the hell had that bastard learned where she was? It didn’t matter. Alone and vulnerable, maybe shaking with weakness like Hodge, she would be easy prey. I ’ave to warn ’er. He pressed his hand against the floor, tried to reach out, but all he got was silence.
“I’ll bloody carry you if I ’ave to,” Dead Rick said, desperate.