“I suppose I’ll just have to take my business elsewhere, then,” he said. He went to the door, his hand faintly stirring the bells on the latch.
The young gentleman looked at him. The bemused smile was plastered on his face, but his eyes were sharp.
“Wait,” Rackham said. “Wait.”
Syrus turned, careful not to smile. The fish wasn’t quite reeled in yet.
“Let me see it again.”
Syrus nodded and put the toad on the counter again. The tattler needle stood at attention.
Rackham bent over it, careful not to touch the toad for fear Syrus would snatch it away again.
“Vespa Nyx,” Rackham whispered. He said her name casually, as though he was speaking of something else—the weather or something he’d found at market. “Daughter of Malcolm Nyx, Head of the Museum of Unnatural History. He was seeking”—he lowered his voice so that Syrus strained to hear—“a Manticore lure.”
Syrus frowned. “A lure?”
“Yes, something to trap the Manticore. To take the Heart of All Matter, presumably,” Rackham said.
Syrus knew what he was talking about, but he wanted to be sure. “What is that?”
Rackham gazed at him sidelong, his giant eye making Syrus want to shrink from the counter.
“I’d think you’d already know, you being a Tinker who lives by the Manticore’s grace.”
Syrus stared at him.
Rackham’s fingers drifted toward the toad. “Surely you’ve heard the story of what the Manticore stole?” he whispered. “Old Man Nyx needs the Heart for one of his experiments. But before that he needs . . . a witch. That’s the only lure that will draw the Manticore from her lair.” He looked around as if a Raven Guard might step from the shadows and arrest him at any moment.
Syrus thought of the Manticore’s strange Heart with all its wires and hoses, its pulsing red light as she’d swallowed the Raven Guard whole.
“Why?” Syrus asked.
“Because she’s the only one that can get close enough to the Manticore to draw it out of its den and make it give over the Heart.”
Syrus knew the first bit to be false. Hadn’t the Manticore come out for him?
“This girl, this Vespa Nyx—is she a witch?”
Rackham’s lips wavered around his stained teeth. “Most assuredly. Funny that what Nyx wants has been in front of him all along. Reckon he wouldn’t want to have to sacrifice his own daughter, though.” He flung a few coins across the counter.
Syrus nodded, pocketing his payment. He headed toward the door, aware of the bearded man’s strange gaze on his back. He regretted that he’d had to cut a deal with Rackham with the stranger nearby; surely he had heard some of their conversation, despite their attempts to muffle it.
“Careful, boy,” Rackham said, before Syrus slid out of the door. “You may be stepping into things far beyond your ken.”
That he certainly knew to be true. He nodded swiftly again, and the little bells ushered him out.
As the door closed behind him, the young man walked to the counter.
“I’ll have that toad,” he said in a husky voice.
The tattler vibrated so hard it broke.
“And this,” he said, cradling the jar with a pale hand. “I’ll have this, too.”
He lifted his hand and a white mist rose around Rackham’s head, swirling much like the mist that had brought the Architects to the aid of the Harpy. The young man opened the jar and the mist hastened inside.
Rackham’s eyes went white. His mouth and shoulders slackened; but his fingers crept restlessly over the counter.
“There is no further use for you,” the bearded man said.
Without a word, Rackham pulled an antique dagger from below the counter and stabbed himself through the heart.
Before he left, the bearded man spoke a quiet word.
The room burst into flames.
CHAPTER 11
I’ve spent the past few days feigning illness and hiding in my room. Father has again come and said his good-byes to my door—I say I won’t see him for fear of contagion. Only my maid and Aunt Minta are allowed entry.
I wasn’t frightened the day Hal called me a witch, the day I nearly let the Waste loose on the entire city. But something about the encounter with Rackham and the thugs outside his shop has made this witch business all too real. It’s not that I can’t accept it. I’m still not entirely sure what it means, despite Hal’s words in the carriage. (Oh, those magenta-shadowed words!) Whether I can survive it, though, that’s the question. All I can see in my mind is the blank desert of the Waste spreading before me. Perhaps it’s no more than I deserve, heretic that I’m becoming.
And Hal . . . Nothing more was said after the incident at Rackham’s. We returned to the Museum in silence and he left me at the atrium without a backward glance. I struggle with what he must think and feel, what I feel. Princess Athena loved a guard in her father’s house, one who became the founder of the Architects. He was hunted all his days and it’s said that he met a dark and deeply unnatural end. I am no princess and Hal is no guard, but I have no doubt we would also be hunted—the Empress is as intolerant as her ancestors. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I’m only imagining that something lies between us, something more than the vast expanse of the Waste.
And I’m still a little angry with Hal for letting that boy who stole my toad get away, even if he did help us.
So, when Aunt Minta proposes that we go shopping in the Night Emporium, I’m filled with trepidation. Are Raven Guards out looking for me this very instant? Have Rackham or his thugs set a price on my head? Maybe that Tinker boy Syrus will change his mind and join in the hunt, take me down like an Unnatural with one of his darts.
“You can’t stay in there forever,” Aunt Minta says at the door of my room. “I’ve never seen you like this, Vee. I’d almost swear you were pining over someone if I didn’t know better.”
That settles it. I’m not some missish creature, overwhelmed by fate or sentimentality.
I bounce off of my bed and open the door.
Aunt Minta’s look of surprise vanishes into a smile when I say, “All right, then.”
If I’m to die soon, at least perhaps I should try just once to look fetching beforehand. And perhaps the next time I run into Hal, he’ll see an entirely new me.
We’re at the great crossroads of Chimera Park when the carriage halts abruptly.
“Sweet saints!” the driver exclaims above the hue and cry of traffic.
I throw open the curtain and look out, against Aunt Minta’s protests. At first I can’t make sense of what’s happening. Before us lies the great intersection of Industrial Way and several other boulevards. The old observatory dome of the Museum and the roofs of the University halls poke through the green fog.
Then, I see him. A man wending his way through traffic, stumbling, shuffling . . . Is he drunk? Wherever he passes, carriage animals rear and scream, trying to get away from him. Drivers and handlers struggle to maintain control. But then he passes a carriage drawn by mythwork unicorns, a conveyance only to be used by House Virulen, the third most powerful house in the realm.
What happens next I have never seen before and hope never to see again.
Steel sides heaving and joints steaming, the unicorns rear and plunge. Like the Refineries, they are also powered by myth. And like that power, they are supposed to be completely dependable.
But they aren’t now.
A trolley flies down the hill; its brakes are out. The conductor screams as the mythwork unicorns head straight for it. The crazy, stumbling man will be crushed between them if someone doesn’t stop the collision.
I leap out of my hansom. Aunt Minta’s shout is lost in the scream and press of traffic.
My lungs want to implode, but I push myself through the pain. The patrol officer shrieks at me with his whistle. The trolley flies down the hill toward the Museum entrance, the conductor waving his arms frantically. From the other side of the track, Hal races toward the nearest unicorn’s bridle.