Karen Memory (26 page)

And then everybody was around me, helping me out of the sewing machine, and Bea took Signor, which was good because she’s the only person on the planet who can pick up that damned cat without getting scratched. I staggered, and I stayed up because Crispin held me up. It seemed like I was doing a lot of that tonight—staying up because something else caught me.

Then he and Miss Lizzie was unwinding me, pulling his burned coat off, checking over my every limb. There was a little drizzle out here, and I turned my face up to it. There was a heavy mist, too, and it fought the smoke back and felt good, so good, on my scalded skin. “Connie,” I said.

Crispin put his finger on my lips. I pushed it away. Or tried to: I missed. But he moved it back a fraction. That’s what I like about Crispin. Well, one thing out of many. He leaves it to you to judge what you is and ain’t capable of. Most men seem to like to decide that for a girl.

Maybe it’s because he ain’t preening his feathers for no woman. Maybe Crispin’s just busy trying to run the lives of other men.

Or maybe he ain’t. This evening, my money’s on ain’t.

“Somebody did this on purpose,” I said. “There was fire at all the doors.”

“Connie was murdered.” He said it like he was getting it straight in his head.

I meant to nod; I don’t know if I succeeded. The firelight was painting us all weird through the mist, stark and glowy at the same time. Like somebody draped gauze over one of those Dutch oil paintings that show somebody’s face side-lit. And I don’t think it was just the fog made everybody look a little hazy at the edges.

Miss Lizzie finished inspecting me. She said, “You need aloe on all of that,” and then she said, “Honey, it’s a miracle, but if you don’t pick open a wound scratching and if it don’t take a taint you’re going to live without any big scars. Maybe a couple around the knees there, but stockings will cover that. Most of this ain’t even going to blister.”

I didn’t quite make sense of it.

But she moved away, and suddenly my arms were full of Priya hugging me breathless tight, which started me coughing again. “Stupid!” she yelled at me when she stepped back. “Stupid,
stupid
!”

And before I could try to hug her back she knuckled her eyes and ran off, shoulders hunched. The mist ghosted over her. I took a step after, Crispin steadying me, but Miss Lizzie had pulled his boots off me and the cobbles hurt my feet something fierce. “I don’t—”

“She likes you,” Crispin said with the tired wisdom of somebody who’s seen it all before. I half-hated him for his wisdom at that second, and I was half that grateful for it. “She’s running away because she’s scared of how much it would have hurt if you’d got killed. She’ll be back, no fears.”

“I’m sorry about Connie,” I said between coughs.
Lord, don’t let me retch.

He kissed me on the head. “I ain’t sorry it weren’t you, too.”

That was when, with a thunder of hooves and a clamor of bells, amid the barking of a pair of dalmatians who ran guarding the horses, the fire engine wheeled out of the mist, rampaged past us, and halted before the blaze with so much rearing and head tossing that I would of marched right over there and had a word with the driver about hauling on the horses’ mouths that way. I would of, that is, if I hadn’t of fainted.

Somebody caught me this time, too. But I didn’t see who, because everything was black in all directions.

Chapter Seventeen

I woke up. I wasn’t sure I had expected to. But I did it anyway. And where I woke up was someplace I had never been before.

It was a comfortable room, with green walls and ivory window ledges, and I was tucked up in a narrow bed. My hands and arms rested outside the mint-colored chenille bedspread laid over me. They was wrapped in gauze, which felt stuck to the skin with something slippery. Miss Lizzie’s aloe leaf, I was guessing. And I was wearing a clean nightgown, too big for me, red flannel. With a frayed lace collar.

My hair on the pillow was still in its braid, though pulled all which-a-way, and it still smelled like dirty fire. My skin smelled like dirty fire, too.

I was alone.

I sat up cautiously, but the room didn’t spin. My arms smarted, and the skin around my eyes. The burns on my knees from the sewing machine were welted, blistering, and I guessed before long they would scab. They were the worst of it, though, and I have never felt so lucky.

There wasn’t any gauze on my face, but the skin felt sticky there, too. And it itched as well as stinging. I reached for it with gauzy fingers, then remembered Miss Lizzie telling me the scalds weren’t bad and that I wouldn’t scar if I could leave it alone. So instead I groaned. I might of sat on my hands—or laid on ’em, I guess—but they hurt too damned much.

So instead I put my feet on the floor and winced. I had no socks, and the boards were ivory painted and rugless, cold. Not a rich room, by any means. But not a poor one, either. The bedstead was oak, and mended. There were sprigged gingham curtains over the windows, a blue and green that went with the green of the coverlet, and the blue-and-silver wallpaper. I wondered if somebody had just taken the rug outside to beat it, though that would be weird in the winter.

Sitting up seemed to be going better than anticipated. I felt … well, I didn’t feel dizzy. But I didn’t feel all myself, either. Light-headed, maybe. Like I wasn’t quite in my own skull, but above and behind and a little to the left. Watching myself rather than … I don’t know.
Being
myself.

I wondered if I could stand. At least my feet weren’t burned, and thank Crispin for that. I put my gauzy hands down—one on the bedspread, one on the sheets—and slow as I could I pushed myself up. Now, Da would tell you that Caution ain’t my middle name, but this once, honest, I was trying. There was a ladderback chair right there, too, that I could grab if I needed, or so I was thinking.

Turned out, I didn’t need it at all. I stood there, rocking, and gathered my wits and my dignity—such of both as I’ve got—for the best part of five minutes. I knowed it was five minutes, because there was a glass and brass shelf clock ticking away on that little side table. It seems strange to me now, but right then that little clock meant the world to me. It was almost like a companion, and its polished brass case and fresh-wound works told me I hadn’t been forgotten in this strange place entirely.

I guess it ain’t uncommon for a person to get maudlin under circumstances such as that.

Well, when I decided I wasn’t like to pitch over if I lifted a foot I did so—lifted one—and put it down again a little bit forward of its previous position. It turned out to be a blessing that the rug was up, because otherwise I might just have tripped on it and pitched right over. And that would of been embarrassing.

I made it to the window without needing to grab that chair, but then I didn’t get to look out it for a spell because I had to clutch at the frame and cough up several ounces of horrible black grit. Bits of burned-up velvet draperies and knotted wool rugs that had made their habitation in my lungs, no doubt.

It didn’t taste too nice.

Then I had to find someplace to spit it, because I wasn’t swallowing that Christ knows what back down and I didn’t appear to be equipped with a pocket handkerchief. Or for that matter any pockets. There was a brass spittoon tucked between the table and the bed, though, so I shuffled back over to it—walking was getting easier—and used it.

When I straightened up again, my eyes were watering so I didn’t dare go wandering around until they quit. I wiped my eyes on the gauze on my arm and wished I hadn’t; the pressure started up a raw throbbing ache underneath.
No scars,
I reminded myself, and didn’t scratch it.

By the time I made it back to the window, I was in a bit better form, though the gunk coming out of me looked and tasted like well-used axle grease. I leaned my forehead on the glass pane. It was cool and comforting, but I left a smear of aloe on it and felt bad about that for the housekeeper. Oh, well. There was aloe all over the bedsheets, too.

The view out the window was something special. As soon as I pulled the curtain aside, I knowed where I was. Well, not right where I was, in the sense of I could have told you the address.

But what I could tell you is that there was Rapid all spread out in front of me, a sweep like a lawn made of rooftops and the poky tops of trees. And there I was up above ’em all, looking down across the city like a Queen. It was a rare clear day. You could see the bristle of masts and smokestacks at the harbor, the glint of the sun off the Sound, the tumble of white that was the river moving fast over stones, unfrozen. Off to every side, mountains hovered on tails of blue distance.

I was up on the hill. And more: the gaudy-painted clapboard of the house I stood in framed the view. I could see part of a turret, a bit of wall. Lemon and sea green, with a thick row of fish-scale scalloping below the roofline banded in three different shades of turquoise. So then I did know whose cold wood floor I was standing on.

This was Mayor Stone’s house.

Down close to the water, a single slow black trail meandered higher and thicker through the haze of gray chimney smoke. I knowed what it was, and I knowed it should make me feel lost, or afraid, or something like that. But all it did was make me angry. So furious that if it hadn’t been for the gauze and the way my hands rocketed hot pain up my arms when my fists clenched, I would of been picking fingernails out of my palms for a month.

I knew who had set that fire—or who had ordered it set. Who had burned up our house and all our books and the little wooden horse that Da had made me. Who had probably killed Connie and nearly killed Signor and me—no. That hurt too much to think about, so instead I thought about what I was going to do about it.

And I
was
going to do something about it, too. It wasn’t like Madame could put me out on the street now if I defied her.

Well, I was still standing there wishing I could ball my hand up to punch the wall when the door swung open and Miss Lizzie come in, carrying a little basket of gauze for dressings and such in her clockwork. I jumped, guilty like, because I knowed I weren’t supposed to be out of bed. But she just set her basket on that side table and said briskly, “You’re up. Good. We should see about getting you some clothes.”

She grabbed a silver-tassled bellpull in the corner that I hadn’t even noticed, it blended into the wallpaper so well, and gave it a tug with some decision behind it. Wherever the bells were, it was far enough away that I didn’t hear even a faint jangle.

“There,” she said. “We’ll get you some tea, too. Are you hungry?”

As if my stomach was a tiger trained to come to the word “hungry,” it rumbled. Miss Lizzie looked at me with her head cocked to one side, obviously wondering if I was going to try to brazen it out.

“I should eat,” I allowed. “Even as I don’t have much appetite right now.”

“Oh, honey. None of us do. But it’s wise to get what you can, when you can, if you take my meaning.”

There was no telling where we’d wind up come morning.

A maid came and Miss Lizzie sent her away again, on a quest for coffee and breakfast. As soon as the door shut behind her, I asked, “Connie?” I hoped, even though I knowed there was nothing to hope for.

“They’re still looking for her,” she said. “I’m sorry. Everybody else made it out, though, and that’s thanks in large part to you and Priya raising the alarm.”
We were lucky to only lose one.

Neither she nor I was going to say that out loud. And it was cold comfort, but I’d have taken the coldest just now. “Is everyone else here?”

“Nearly.”

I waited for her to say more, but she absorbed herself in the dressings so devotedly that I knowed she was avoiding the question. The hands looked better than I’d feared—about like I’d poured boiling water on them, sure, but no worse than that. One more small mercy.

Then, just about as she got my hands rewrapped, the food and coffee came, along with a basin and water for washing and a borrowed day dress. Soft-boiled eggs weren’t the best choice, it turned out. Because of my hands, she had to do the next best thing to feeding me. Fortunately, we got that out of the way before I tried on the dress.

“What happened to the Singer?” I asked.

“Downstairs,” she answered. She looked at me curiously.

“It saved my life,” I said. Then, heart in my throat: “How’s Signor?”

“He’s himself,” she allowed. “Soon enough, everybody is going to forget how happy they are he’s not dead.”

*   *   *

As she was lacing me up, I reminded her, “Nearly everyone is here?”

“Priya,” she admitted. I could see her in the mirror, looking everywhere but at me. “She hasn’t come back. We left a message with Merry Lee where to find us—”

“How long has it been?”

“The fire was just last night.”

I tried to rein my temper and my voice shook with the effort, but I managed it. “What if Bantle’s got her? What if something awful’s happened?”

She had my journal. And my little purse of savings. The Marshal’s silver dollar …

I realized with a sting that that was everything and everybody I had left in the world. All missing, all at the same time. “What if she needs rescuing?”

“What if she don’t?”

That stunned me into silence. She wouldn’t—Priya wouldn’t do that to me. I didn’t believe it for a heartbeat.

“She might of just made a run for it,” Miss Lizzie said. “Collected that sister of hers and moved on. Or she might be in hiding. Odds are better that than the other, Karen honey. There.” She patted my shoulder and stepped away from my laces to glance me over. “It’s not the best fit, but not bad for borrowed, and for now it’ll do.”

“Do for what?” I asked.

“For the parlor,” she said. “For the council of war we’re about to have.”

*   *   *

The character of the house changed from threadbare respectability to opulence when we left my sickroom and descended to the second floor. We used the servants’ stair, and I wish I could say that surprised me. From back there, I could see how expenses had been spared, but the public rooms of the house were as luxuriant as anything Madame’s had had to offer.