I hear the Tinker thief’s words in my head again. “That’s what the Tinker thief said, that he meant to use me as bait. . . .” I choke on the words, unable to finish them aloud.
“The Tinker thief? What?”
I tell him of the boy Syrus breaking into my room, the things he said that I don’t want to believe.
He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he says, “It is worse, so much worse than we thought.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice squeaks inelegantly on the last syllable.
“First, did you tell your father what Rackham said to you that day?”
I shake my head.
His shoulders relax somewhat under his Pedant robes. “Good. Then perhaps he is not yet fully cognizant of your role.”
“Of what?”
“Do you know of the Heart of All Matter?”
It’s a non sequitur, meaning “a thing that doesn’t quite follow” in the Old Scientific language, but it’s firmer ground than the present subject matter. I swallow the scratchiness in my throat. “It’s said that the Manticore bewitched Athena into giving the Heart to her. That Athena ran off with the Manticore and the guard who seduced her to live in the Forest until her father, the Emperor, rescued her. And that Athena would not bend to her father’s insistence that she restore the Heart to him. He could not protect her any longer from her own witchery, and thus she was sent to die on the black sands.” I can still hear the rector telling the tale to us every Chastening Day, his eyes agleam with the zeal of Logic and Reason.
“That is a falsehood,” Hal says, a dangerous edge to his voice.
“How? The Church teaches—”
He retorts, “Everything it teaches is meant to ensure our compliance with Imperial mandate. The Empress needs us to believe in her religion. Otherwise, like Athena, we might discover the truth.”
Now I am angry. How dare he? I almost expect Saint Darwin to send his apes to carry this heretic away to the Infinitesimal Void right now! “And just what is that truth, if you are so sure you know it?”
“This world is alive, Vespa. And it is founded on magic.” He paces away from me, gesturing at the racks. “All these beings you see here—they are part of a great Circle of Being. They are sentient nations unto themselves, just as we are. But unlike us, this world needs them to survive. The more Elementals there are, the more this world thrives. When they are destroyed or taken from their native places, those places become a desert of null energy, what we call the Creeping Waste. Elementals continue to disappear and the Waste keeps growing. Our very lives may depend on the existence of things we are so thoughtlessly destroying. That is the true science.”
Piskel floats toward us, nodding and making chirruping noises of agreement.
“But if that’s true . . .” I fall silent, looking between Piskel and the jars of preserved things. I’ve always secretly thought there was more to the Unnaturals than meets the eye, but that they are intelligent beings, that our lives depend on them, that we are willfully destroying them for no reason—it goes against everything I’ve ever been taught.
“The problem is we can’t figure out what’s happening to them,” Hal continues. “That’s part of why I was sent here, to discover what the Refineries do with them after their capture. We think we know, but it’s all still conjecture at this point.”
“Part of why you were sent?”
A strange expression crosses Hal’s face. “I was also sent to investigate . . .” He pauses and shakes his head. “It’s delicate. All I will say is that I suspect your father’s assistant may be other than he seems. Have a care around him.”
I nod. I’ve always been careful of The Wad. I don’t really see how I could do more.
“What I didn’t expect to find is that your father is also involved in some kind of dangerous experiment, something involving the Waste. I never expected to find that he is trying to procure the Heart of All Matter from the Manticore as part of his experiment. Why would he need something so powerful? Surely, the Waste will overwhelm the City, if he attempts to use it as our theories suggest. I didn’t expect to find Nyx’s daughter a witch into the bargain, a witch it appears he will try to use for his own ends.”
“But it can’t be true, can it? My own father . . .”
Memory threatens to crush me utterly. All our tea times in his office, long walks by Chimera Park, Father’s approving smile whenever I showed him a particularly good sketch or mount, that day long ago when the sylphids crowded around me and he had them destroyed . . . I stare down at my shoelaces, noting absently that one is untied again before everything dissolves in runnels of silver and darkness.
“Vespa,” Hal says in that same low tone he used to keep me from looking at the Sphinx. I look into his eyes. His sad smile nearly takes my breath.
“I will teach you all I can. You will learn to protect yourself with your magic. No one will harm you.”
I can’t say anything. I find myself absorbed in the curve of Hal’s mouth, the edge of his cheek, the blue ocean of his eyes so very close to me. I don’t think about it. I lean forward and kiss him, just like we used to do in Seminary when we practiced on the backs of our own hands.
But this is so different from kissing one’s own hand.
For a moment, his lips yield to mine. The magic between us—for that’s what it must be—stings with gentle heat. Our thoughts merge, like that day in the laboratory, only more softly. We are together in a golden field with the sun pouring down all around us. I have never been so warm, so awash in light. Sylphids dance through the air in a sparkling cloud around us, playing in our hair, whispering their sibilant love charms. Other Elementals come to the edge of the light; I see their shapes before I’m entirely blinded. I sigh his name against his lips in wonder.
He breaks the kiss almost roughly, standing back and adjusting his robes with trembling hands. The darkness of the moldy storage room eats holes through the golden world until it’s gone. Piskel drifts near, shaking a finger at us. Then he sees what’s between us, and his little face darkens in confusion.
“Hal?”
Hal shakes his head, almost like a dog coming out from under a waterfall. “We mustn’t. I mustn’t. I don’t want—” He stops.
“What?” I feel cold outside his embrace, though my lips still burn with his kiss. I cross my arms over my chest. “You don’t want what? To dally with a witch?”
He glowers. “It’s not that. You know it’s not. It’s just . . . It’s not safe. . . .”
We hear the footsteps simultaneously. Piskel dives between jars, dousing his light under a werehound skull.
I am not sure what to do. In perhaps the most useless gesture of all time, I gather some dusty charts into my arms, trying to pretend that I’m fetching them as the Pedant’s assistant.
Two black-coated gentlemen enter. They are very well-dressed. Both of them wear a Wyvern brooch pinned on their cravats. They certainly carry themselves as if they hail from Uptown. They dip their heads and sweep their tricorns from their white wigs almost in unison.
“If you will come with us, sir,” one of them says.
Hal’s gaze moves from me to the two gentlemen as if he’s contemplating some insane magical feat.
Then his shoulders slump. He walks toward the gentlemen like a condemned man, letting them take his arms.
“Hal?” I whisper. “What—”
They usher him past me with sidelong glances of scorn. Hal looks back at me over his shoulder. “Be safe. Be wise. Be vigilant.”
And in my mind, I hear a whisper, I will come to you when I can.
He turns and allows them to escort him from the door without another glance. I hear their feet on the steps as the charts slide from my arms onto the floor.