Oh, no. No, that foolish girl. Why would she steal from the Veil for me?
Unless she understood that such a thing might lead to the Veil’s demands being met? I had spoken of that cameo, but not whose face was upon it. Did she see the resemblance and guess the rest?
No. I shook my head, clearing the uncertainties. It was long past time I ceased to worry about the others around me. There was work to be done—and perhaps it was the remnants of the tar speaking, but I was eager to see my collection over with.
The sweet tooth had been allowed to wander free for far too long.
“Maddie Ruth!” called the rough masculine voice. “The fires are high and set to last another hour or so.”
“Good,” the girl called back. I waited in silence. “Go for a smoke, if you like.”
“Aye,” he grunted, and then there was nothing but the dull rush of sound; that machinery that was similar to the noise an aether engine made, but larger. Fuller.
These must be some machines.
“Be careful with that cameo,” I advised, finishing my plait with more speed than care. “Do you see a small hinge upon it?”
She squinted, yet I saw no recognition on her face. “I need a glass,” she said after a moment, and once more left the nook.
This time, I followed.
I would never have imagined that such a place would exist beneath the ground of the Menagerie. It was a large enough room, but full half was taken by heavy, overlarge brass and steel fittings whose giant tubes vanished into the wall they rested against. That thrum filled the air, almost a palpable vibration I felt more in my teeth and bones than against my skin.
The rest was brick and mortar, windowless and lit by hanging lamps whose oil gleamed golden through glass bulbs. An overlarge work desk took up one space, while shelves lined the far wall and tools of various origin had been left where they had been laid down.
I saw bits of cast off metal, all sorts from tarnished brass to copper coated with verdigris stains and bits of iron salvaged from what I could only assume were other machines. Strung from the girders in the ceiling, a colorful kite swung gently in a faint breeze.
It was a working man’s paradise.
Or, I realized as I followed Maddie Ruth to the large table, a working woman’s.
My respect for the girl rose markedly.
She hunched over the cameo, turning it beneath a magnifying glass while I marveled at her space. “Ah!” An exclamation of success. “I see it. There’s tiny cogs here. It opens, then?”
“A part opens,” I corrected, forcing my attention fully to the matter at hand. There would be time enough to ask of the various implements I saw around us later. “Watch, but lean very much away.”
She did as I suggested, leaving the cameo upon her gloved palm and angling far as she could from it. I reached around her, found the small indent I searched for, and depressed it. The mechanism engaged, those minute cogs spinning slowly and with terrible purpose. All at once, a bit opened at the top, and there was a faint hiss almost lost beneath the machines.
My insides seized, my lungs frozen in remembered apprehension.
To my relief, nothing came from the opening. No shimmering pink cloud, as had been ejected the last time I’d come face to miniature face with the wretched device.
I breathed easier, but still with some care. “That,” I said, gesturing, “once held an alchemical serum with opium at its root.” All I knew of the stuff, really. “I must learn exactly what it was.”
“You’ll need an alchemist for that. I know of one, but you won’t like it.”
“It won’t be easy, but I know one or two who might—” Her words caught up with me. I blinked. “You what?”
Maddie Ruth turned the cameo over, tapping it against her palm in unadulterated curiosity. Though nothing came out, she nodded as if she understood something I’d missed. “Someone in the Veil knows alchemy.”
“Who? Who is it?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” she said thoughtfully. Her brow furrowed. “No one knows who’s in the Karakash Veil, right? But I know they—” She paused so suddenly, it was as a warning had slapped her in the face. The look she shot me was filled with guilt. “I’m not to say.”
“Maddie Ruth.”
The name was a benediction, and she flinched under the intensity of the demand. “I mean, I know someone knows it, that’s how the lanterns stay lit. It’s all alchemical light inside.”
The revelation stunned me. How had I not noticed that it was no candle but something approximating it inside the paper lanterns strung along the Menagerie grounds?
Then again, if I had noticed, would I have considered alchemy the answer?
Alchemy was not a science to which I ascribed much respect. Often the last resort of intelligent men gone daft with age and the looming promise of death, alchemy had led to many a man’s ruin—and certainly no small amount of insanity.
My own father’s dabbling in the mess had proven just that. As had Miss Hortense Hensworth, who had turned to alchemy to right a wrong and lost her life to its maddening effects.
Uncertainty and reticence warred with the guilt and grief I could not put to rest within me.
I needed to know what was in the bloody serum if I was to learn how to fool the Veil. Though the concoction was certainly not the magical mixture the Veil—the spokesman I dealt with, anyhow—was convinced it to be, it was heady stuff regardless. Heaven only knew what the Veil would do with it, were I to hand it over.
If I could figure out the formula, perhaps I could substitute a counterfeit.
I had no choice. I would be forced to reach out to Lady Rutledge, who had become a sort of mentor in Society as well as a lady of science. She would know where to direct my inquiries.
I had of late become a creature of scientific theory, as opposed to practice. What little I knew was not enough to tide me over here. “Right,” I said firmly, as if my concerns had no bearing. “I will not go to the Veil for this.” It would utterly defeat my intent. “I’ll have to locate another alchemist of some repute. Can you draw a diagram of the mechanism used?”
Maddie Ruth peered into the tiny black hole in the cameo’s side. Then, with a faint smile, she set it atop the desk. “No.”
Bloody bells. “What do you want?” I asked, no preamble at all. I was no neophyte when it came to the negotiations of the rabble below the drift. Maddie Ruth, for all her surprising know-how, was still one of them.
She stripped off her gloves, tucking them into her thick leather belt. “I want to be a collector.”
Bloody bells and twice the devilry. My heart pounded in a surge of fear I could not control. I half turned away. “Maddie Ruth, do not ask me to teach you what I cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have watched too many die,” I said sharply, scrubbing the back of my hand across my too-dry eyes. “There is a man out there who will stop at nothing to take away all those I love and admire. You would be easy pickings. I will not give him you too.”
Maddie Ruth could have argued. I expected her to do so; to tell me that she would not be so foolish, that she would not die, that she was too smart, too agile, too something. All excuses that would only prove my concerns valid.
Instead, she said thoughtfully, “This man. You’re hunting him, aye? The sweet tooth, they call him.”
This gave me pause. I frowned at her, but found her quite serious. “I am.”
“And if he’s collected, what then?”
I saw where this was going. Carefully, I said, “Then it may be time to revisit the matter.” It was no promise. It was no guarantee.
“What if I asked you to let me help you, then?”
“What are you suggesting?”